Serpent's Tooth

Kane dragged the corpse of his ambusher into a ditch and submerged the body beneath two feet of shantytown sewage. He had relieved the dead man of his walkie-talkie, as well as the twin single-action revolvers that he’d worn. The radio would give Kane even more intelligence against the bandits. The handguns were typical of what the robbers had, a blend of pump shotguns, bolt-action rifles and old revolvers, which explained Ruben’s confusion over Grant’s more complicated HK. In the two centuries since skydark, technology was no longer uniformly equal, and maintenance-intensive devices such as automatic weapons were nowhere near as common as manually cycled firearms and tough old solid-state circuitry, which could be reconstructed from simple wire. The bandit radio was one such cobbled piece of technology, presumably a simple circuit board, some magnets and wire wrapped in a hard little case. Kane figured that if he ran out of ammunition, he could use the boxy walkie-talkie to smash open an enemy gunman’s skull and not even cause harm to the electronics within.

Kane thumbed back the hammer on one revolver, then cut loose with a terrified death cry. The revolver boomed, a cordite cloud filling the alley.

“Banyon! Banyon! Report!” the coldheart’s voice cut over the walkie-talkie and the Commtact in stereo. “Second team! On Banyon’s position now!”

Grant chuckled. “Good luck catching Kane.”

Lombard whirled toward Ruben. “I thought that I told you to shoot that loudmouth!”

“I can’t get the gun working,” Ruben complained.

“You really think that shooting me is going to affect a hard bastard like him?” Grant asked.

“You’re annoying me, shithead,” Lombard grunted. “I’ve heard of Kane, and he’s nothing special.”

“No. He’s only the most dangerous man ever to patrol the Tartarus Pits,” Brigid countered. “Who else would I hire to protect us?”

Lombard grimaced. “Listen, bitch, Kane might have been hot shit in the old days, but I know all of his—”

“Lombard!” a bandit interrupted, shouting into his radio to the left of Kane’s hiding place. “We found a puddle of blood.”

“Banyon’s body?” Lombard asked.

“Nothing,” came the reply.

Sandwiched between two makeshift huts, Kane observed the search party that had stumbled upon the crimson slick that was the last evidence of Banyon’s existence. Six marauders milled around, their eyes wide and fearful. Counting the five hanging around Lombard, watching Brigid, Grant and the doctors, that made a full dozen coldhearts, with a few more most likely still hanging back on perimeter security.

Sure enough, Kane’s observation skills proved correct as a radio message crackled over his captured unit. “We found another wheelbarrow full of supplies. No sign of any Mags, though.”

“Son of a bitch!” Lombard cursed. “Leave the meds for now. Find that fucking Mag before he turns everything to shit!”

“Where’d your bravado go?” Kane taunted softly into his radio, loud enough to transmit but not enough to betray his roost to the hunting bandits. From his vantage point, Kane could see the blood drain from Lombard’s face.

“Show yourself, Kane! Or we start killing your people! And we’ll make it slow!” Lombard snapped.

Kane decided to up the ante. “Go ahead. I already have the first half of my pay. I’m sure I could find a good buyer for the dread bandit Lombard’s severed head, too.”

Lombard dropped his radio as if it were a venomous snake, dancing back in fright. Nothing like striking a cruel, casual predator with the knowledge that he was nowhere near the top of the food chain. Where Lombard had set himself as a brutal ruler of the Tartarus Pits, the bandit now lived with the knowledge that an even bigger bastard was poised to snatch him and carve him apart for blood money.

“Pick up your damned comm, coward,” Kane growled.

The rumble of Kane’s threat attracted the attention of one of the brighter members of the marauders’ hunting party. The shotgun-toting thug stalked cautiously along the alley between rows of huts, looking for a clear view of Lombard. Kane heard the man’s approach. If it hadn’t been for Kane’s well-honed senses, the thief would have been stealthy. Instead, every footfall and kicked bit of debris locked Kane on to the approaching gunman like drumbeats.

Lombard tentatively reached for the radio. “Okay.”

Kane reversed the revolver in his grasp and whipped the handle violently into the bridge of the curious bandit’s nose. Steel and wood crushed bone, pounding splinters of skull into the marauder’s brain for a sudden, decisive kill. Swiftly Kane snatched the still-standing corpse and hauled it between the two huts, jamming it down into the clutter on the walkway floor. He keyed the radio to Lombard. “You want the medicine, then you don’t need to bully those sheep. Walk away and I won’t have to waste any ammunition killing you fused-out pricks.”

Lombard glanced at Grant, who let his powerful shoulders sag in a display of false helplessness. Brigid also put on the airs of cornered, helpless prey. It was a good act, and if Kane hadn’t witnessed their efficacy against countless enemies, he would have been convinced. The two companions were figuring out the angles necessary to take down the bandits with maximum efficiency and the least harm to the Cobaltville healers.

“Where’s Russ?” a searching bandit asked. “Fireblasted punk…Russ!”

Lombard turned his attention toward the source of the shout. In that quick glance, the marauder leader glimpsed the silhouette of the wolf-lean Kane. “There! There he is!”

The five raiders around Lombard spun in unison, ignoring their “harmless” hostages as they raised their guns to burn down Kane. The warrior in the shadows lunged out of his hiding spot, twin revolvers cocked in unison.

“That’s right, idiots,” Kane whispered to himself. “Follow the bouncing bogeyman.”

GRANT EXPLODED INTO ACTION first, his long, brawny right arm circling Ruben’s throat. With a hard yank, the bandit’s feet were dragged into the air, whipping across the head of a second coldheart with stunning force. Ruben gurgled in surprise, watching his partner drop to the ground after the wrenching impact of booted feet on his skull. Grant’s left hand clawed the MP-5 K loose from stunned fingers, thumb stabbing the safety down to full-auto. As a third gunman fired his bolt-action rifle at the spot where Kane’s silhouette had been only moments earlier, Grant pumped a half-dozen bullets between the killer’s shoulder blades.

Brigid was only a half heartbeat slower than Grant. She pulled a box cutter from a nearby table and thumbed the razor edge out of its blunt-sheath nose. It was a quick, practiced movement. She whipped it in a savage backhand across the cheek and forehead of a fourth hostage-taker. The sharp blade carved skin and muscle down to the bone, the angled point raking through his eye socket. Milky fluid gushed from the gunman’s ruined orb, and he shrieked in horror, dropping his weapons to free his hands for the task of holding his face together. She scooped up the half-blinded man’s pistol in a lightning-fast movement.

Lombard and the remaining bandit were torn between the options of shooting Grant, Kane or Brigid. Grant rendered the dilemma moot with a withering hail of machine-pistol fire that stitched Lombard’s shotgunner from sternum to forehead. Lombard took a fourth option and charged down an alley. Brigid hammered off a single round at the rogue Mag, but the bullet was just a second too slow to catch the fleeing coward.

KANE STEPPED INTO THE VIEW of his pursuers, both revolvers held at eye level, their triggers snapping down twin hammers in unison. One shot missed Kane’s initial target, the buffoon who’d cried out for the clever but dead Russ. It was no matter, as Kane’s other revolver shot punched through the loudmouth’s face. The slug gouged out his brain, and the back of his skull erupted in gore. The brutal death of their comrade stunned the remaining four gunmen. That bought Kane the time to cock and fire the revolvers in his hands twice more. One of the marauders folded over in agony, a bullet burning in his bowels. A second gunman whirled with a shattered shoulder joint, collapsing as he clutched his ruined limb.

Kane sidestepped, taking cover behind the corner of a hut, but the remaining two bandits were in no mood to fight back. They were fleeing for their lives. Just to make certain, Kane put two more quick bullets into the dirt at their heels. The rebuffed predators only picked up speed, not even weaving to avoid being shot in the back. Terror, not tactics, ruled the minds of the pair. Any thoughts of returning fire had been abandoned with the elimination of their friends.

The man with the bullet in his belly lay in an ever growing pool of bright arterial blood. It had been only a few seconds since the initial hit, meaning that Kane had severed the bandit’s aorta. Unable to be staunched by tourniquet or direct pressure compress, the marauder was doomed the moment the bullet tore through the central trunk of blood flow in his body. The other raider, his shoulder reduced to stringy, bloody pulp, fumbled with his rifle, flipping it across the alley toward Kane.

“I give up! Don’t shoot!” the wounded man cried out. “I’m unarmed.”

“You think I’m blind?” Kane growled, stalking closer to the surrendering bandit. “Pull the pistol from your belt.”

The raider looked down at the handle poking from under the folds of his shirt. His left hand slapped at the gun, clumsily dislodging it while avoiding any semblance of grasping it firmly. The predatory instincts that had made the wounded robber into a thief had been quenched with his crippling injury. Kane stooped and helped the wounded gunman in his surrender.

“How large was Lombard’s gang?” Kane inquired.

“There were twenty of us,” the crippled prisoner answered.

Kane nodded, doing the math. “Baptiste, Grant, we’ve got about ten more raiders out there,” he subvocalized over the Commtact.

“We’ve got two prisoners here that confirm those numbers,” Grant responded.

“No medics were harmed, except for the initial rough-housing by the bandits,” Brigid added. Over the Commtact, Kane could hear Brigid check the action of her 9 mm pistol. “Do you think Lombard will regroup and try to finish the job?”

“Lombard lost half of his crew trying to get these meds,” Kane answered. “I don’t know. Black market medicine is worth a hell of a lot, but money won’t bring you back from the dead.”

Kane escorted his prisoner to the intersection, seeing Brigid tend to Phillips. The medic had a cut on his forehead, and blood stained his white coat pink from the seeping wound. On closer examination, though, Kane was relieved to see that Phillips’s eyes were focused.

“No concussion, just a mess,” Brigid confirmed.

“Good luck for me at least,” Phillips grunted.

“Us, too,” Kane answered. “I wouldn’t want to lose any allies here in Cobaltville. You’re worth more than any five gunslingers we could recruit.”

“Especially for rebuilding Cobaltville,” Brigid added.

Phillips winced. “I appreciate the sentiment, guys. Just wish these bastards hadn’t cracked my head open.”