The Man in the Wrong Place
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES PRIOR
Darrack Vas was awoken by a pair of blinding headlights.
Blinking away his fatigue, the Vzngtch guard double-checked the pistol on his hip, mumbled a curse under his breath, then forced himself upright. In short order he was on his feet and out of the guard-shack and into the frigid night air, wherein a boxy old truck was idling noisily. It was three in the morning, he thought to himself – what the hell were they getting a delivery for now? He let out something between a weary yawn and an irritated sigh as he trudged over to the driver-side window, silently vowing to give this asshole a particularly hard time. He wanted nothing more, in that moment, then to simply return to the warmth of the shack and the comfort of his chair. Damn this driver and damn this truck and damn their stupid deliveries.
"Identification," he ordered, as slowly the window rolled down. "C'mon already, I ain't got all night." He held out his hand for the requisite documentation – and received, instead, four shotgun barrels to the face.
"Evenin’," a hard-looking woman said, from the driver’s seat.
"Hello," Darrack responded, sweating profusely. He waited for about a second and then, naturally, he went for his gun.
The shotgun roared, Darrack was blown clear off his feet, and what collapsed with a wet thump against the snow was little more than a headless, neckless corpse.
Every door on the truck flew open, and in short order every door was slammed shut. Kore stood now in the freezing night air, her breath forming a misty cloud about her skull. She was quite literally armed to the teeth, with the shotgun in her hands and a disruptor rifle – the same model used by the Emperor's Liquidators – slung over her back. Beneath her coat was a bi-weave thermal vest and strapped to her waist and legs were two pistols, two melt-blades, and a truly tremendous volume of ammunition. And there were not one but two overlapping bandoliers of shotgun shells slung over her shoulders – valuable nutrients for four hungry barrels.
"Let's go!" she shouted, gesturing a gloved hand as Diesch came around the corner. He, too, was armored in a bi-weave vest and carried, in addition to his usual las-revolver, a pump-action ion-cell shotgun. Now, the Black Hound withdrew the Vzngtch's car bomb from his coat and returned it to them in kind, pressing it snug against the double-doors and reconnecting a pair of snipped wires.
From behind them, both could hear the truck's back door swinging open.
The two of them stepped back, now, as Sekhmet – clad in little more than her usual red jacket and black jeans – leveled her borrowed disruptor pistol at the would-be bomb.
She fired – plasma struck the explosive charge and the fuse melted, then sparked, then ignited – and that enormous door buckled for just an instant before blowing violently outwards. The rusted metal let out a screech of protest as hinges were ripped from walls, the sound almost as loud as the retort of the explosion itself.
"Hey," Sekhmet said, quietly, and Kore turned her head – only to be surprised by familiar, unnaturally warm lips brushing against her own. "Je t'aime."
"I love you too, you moron," Kore laughed, a bit caught off guard – and she ruffled a hand through Sekhmet's hair, even though the compound was now on high alert and this was really not the time.
"I'll be right back," Sekhmet called, sounding more than a little nervous as she started off for the left.
"Je sais," Kore called back. I know. And with that, the bodyguard headed off to the right with Diesch in tow.
With that, the three of them stormed into the courtyard – and as a klaxon began to emanate a low, keening wail, the Vzngtch came out to meet them.
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Jaheed
Ten thousand feet in the air, safe and secure on the Cloud Gorger's pleasantly temperature-controlled bridge, Jaheed Vell was pacing like a madman.
Before him loomed three screens – footage from Kore's augmented eyes, a camera on Diesch's vest, and Sekhmet's occipital implant. He watched with eyes narrowed and mouth drawn into a thin line as the three of them fought their way across the courtyard, Kore and Diesch making for the left wing while Sekhmet barreled ahead to the right.
His hands were clenched so tight that, when he released them, he found pinpricks of blood running down each of his palms. The Acolyte scowled, producing a handkerchief and wiping away at the symbol of his unease as Tarsus turned back in her chair and gave him a sympathetic look.
"You just gonna stare all day?" Tarsus asked, apropos of nothing. Jaheed did not respond. "Seems like a waste of time to me."
"She's-they're risking their lives for my sake," Jaheed said, the words tight and clipped. "That means it’s my fault if-"
"Yeah, no shit," Tarsus interrupted bluntly. "But all you're doing right now is working yourself up, which means that if they do need your help you won't be in a state of mind to do so."
Jaheed's eyes flicked down.
"You don't understand," he said, quietly. "I'm responsible for whatever happens next."
"You never dug too deep into my file, did you?" Tarsus scoffed, turning back to her instrument panel. "I understand perfectly. And I'm telling you, Jaheed Vell, from experience, that you need to quit watching that shit. Sit your ass down. Relax. Have a drink or something, I dunno. But, when she calls for you-" she turned again, leveled a finger, "-you'd better be ready. You hear me?"
Jaheed hesitated, looked as though he wanted to offer a retort – and then just sat down in the navigator's chair with a long, heavy sigh.
"Y’know, you’re lucky," Tarsus remarked, after a few fraught moments had passed. "Kore's the real deal. If you're worried about her dying, well-" she chuckled, "I wouldn’t put money on that.”
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At that particular moment, Kore was kicking a door open, storming into the room, and blowing an irradiated slug right through the nearest guard's chest.
Kore, you see, was traveling back in time. Right now she was no longer a bodyguard but a rebel, a soldier of the Heraldry who charged fearlessly into the fray and dispatched her enemies with deadly, practical efficiency. Back then she had been just an untrained ex-miner with a strong physique, a strong will, and decent aim with a rifle. Now she equipped with some of the best equipment the Empire had to offer, and she had been spending hours daily at the Gorger's makeshift firing range.
The Kore of the past was a clumsy, makeshift instrument. The Kore of today was honed to a fine point.
She shouldered around the corner, blew a guard off his feet, ducked a swing from a naked blade, unsheathed her own melt-blade and cut a gouge into the other man's side before circling around and driving the knife straight into his back. Still, the gunfire came. She dropped to a knee, turning the dying Vzngtch into a makeshift shield as she unholstered a las-pistol and dropped the third aggressor with a trio of well-placed shots to the chest. The fourth brought his rifle to bear and then Diesch's revolver let out a shrill whine and the man staggered back, hands grasping fruitlessly at the molten hole in his jaw.
Kore shoved the corpse aside, rose to her feet, holstered both pistol and knife, then picked up her shotgun and slid four new shells into place.
In the distance, muffled but clearly audible, there were all manner of screams and explosions and gunshots and panicked shouts and this, of course, was all according to plan, for it was Sekhmet's job to make as much noise and draw as much attention as possible while Kore and Diesch went for the real prize – Ket Sal himself, presuming the Scion was still alive.
If he was dead, well, that was another matter entirely. Kore had learned long ago that in times such as these, too much thinking would only get you killed. Too little thinking, of course, was just as bad, but it was the extrapolating and overthinking and abstraction that were the real dangers in her eyes. Kore preferred to let herself be subsumed by the flow; to become a weapon and nothing more.
"All good?" she asked, snapping the shotgun closed. They had only precious few seconds of respite.
"Worry about yourself," Diesch snapped, sliding a new cartridge into place, and Kore was reminded quite painfully of the fact that this man was no friend of hers.
"Whatever you say," she shot back, perhaps a bit harshly, and then the two of them were on the move once more.
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Sekhmet
Sekhmet was having no fun.
Although, in theory, she should have been. The rogue Se-dai had almost immediately abandoned firearms in favor of bare fists and was now tearing through the Vzngtch compound with reckless abandon, breaking necks and smashing skulls and generally demonstrating her overwhelming superiority over people who had at least some chance to fight back.
Alas, in every Se-dai there slumbered an innate urge – an urge to protect, to shelter a chosen individual from any and all harm. After all, the Se-dai were bodyguards long before they became the Blessed Executioners. And so it was that – unbeknownst to either of them – Kore had imprinted upon Sekhmet, and the preservation of Kore’s life was now chief amongst Sekhmet’s internal hierarchy of needs.
And this, by itself, would have been fine, for Sekhmet loved Kore dearly – if not for the fact that Kore was somewhere else right now, somewhere that Sekhmet could not see her and could not protect her and...by the void, an ordinary human was so ridiculously fragile. Just one stray las-bolt to the brain, one particularly lucky piece of shrapnel…hell, Kore could just fall and hit her head and that would be that. All these thoughts were sending Sekhmet into an anxious tailspin that translated itself, usefully, into a sort of cold anger, and so Sekhmet was slaughtering the Vzngtch with silent, brutal efficiency.
Sekhmet killed a woman with a flying kick, dropped low, liquefied a man’s internal organs with a knee to the groin, then whirled around and simply grabbed a third by the collar. She hefted the terrified man up with one hand, almost effortlessly, then slammed him against the wall with just enough force to scare him shitless. And then she asked, quite pointedly: “Where are you keeping the Se-dai?"
"I don't know-"
"Should I ask someone else?" Sekhmet growled. Her patience was nonexistent, and her meaning was perfectly clear.
And so, naturally, the Vzngtch told her, which bought him only the briefest of reprieves before she smashed his head into paste. And then she was following his directions to the letter; hooking a left and then a right and then going up a floor and then again a left and then there she was, faced with a sign that read CRYO STORAGE FACILITY 67-B. Satisfied, Sekhmet set to work.
Before all else there was the matter of the guards. The first, she simply ripped the beating heart from his chest. The second she needed somewhat intact and so all she did was turn both his knees backwards-jointed. Then, there was the door – a truly impressive-looking titanite slab that was undoubtedly well beyond her power to break. She grabbed the surviving, screaming Vzngtch by the collar, hefted him roughly to his feet, and slammed his face against the retinal scanner – saw the panel light up green, then slammed his face again, this time hard enough to flatten his skull.
The door slid open slowly, ponderously – as if somehow aware that Sekhmet really needed to be somewhere else right now – and as a cloud of frigid air blew past the Se-dai's face she saw her there, her limbs wreathed in crackling ion energy.
Ammit was still alive and even still conscious, albeit very much in rough shape. Her armor had been fused to her skin and thus, when the Vzngtch had ripped it off they had taken as well a great deal of synthetic skin with it. She was wearing the tatters of a black bodyglove and chunks of her flesh were just outright gone, exposing the teal-colored mithril composite underneath. She looked like she had been through hell on earth; her eyes faded while her skin was pallid and her face crusted with chunks of frost. And, perhaps worst of all, still a two-foot blade was jutting from the top of her head and emerging from a point just below the chin.
It took the imprisoned Se-dai a moment, addled as she was by all manner of difficult conditions. But eventually Ammit's eyes did move, flicking to Sekhmet's own and then widening in surprise.
"Cousin....?" the Se-dai slurred, her voice strange and warped and decidedly un-human-like.
"Been a while," Sekhmet smirked, briefly savoring this sense of superiority over her orthodox cousin – and then she stepped inside that freezing little prison and got to work deactivated the plasma coils that suspended Ammit in place.
"I don't und...erstand," Ammit stuttered, while Sekhmet moved about her. There was literal static coming out between her words, garbling her speech. It all sounded extraordinary painful. "You...?"
"Don’t think too hard about it," Sekhmet said, and the first coil deactivated with a gentle hum. Ammit's shoulder slumped forward at once, limp. "Just consider it a favor from my boss to yours."
"Your...boss...?" Ammit muttered. She blinked slowly, lazily. "Wait. Ket...alive?"
"Don't know," Sekhmet admitted cheerily, deactivated the second coil. Ammit folded at the waist, suspended only by her ankles now. "But that's our working assumption, yeah."
"What about...Maít...?" Ammit asked. The third coil went off.
"No idea who that is," Sekhmet replied, working now over the fourth and final coil. "But I'm sure they're fine, too."
With that, the last coil went dark and Ammit dropped like a stone, hitting the floor with a colossal thud that sent icicles crashing down from the ceiling above. The Se-dai laid still, for a moment, and in truth appeared to simply be dead. And then, with a groan of terrible exertion, Ammit raised one arm – curled her skinless hand tight into a fist – and slammed it down against the floor, denting solid steel.
Upon that one trembling arm she hoisted herself up, performing a sort of one-handed push-up, and with another groan of pain she forced herself to sit upright against the wall. She looked now to Sekhmet with rapidly-flickering eyes and an obvious question writ across her face – which was an issue Sekhmet needed to address at once.
"I said this already," the rogue Se-dai declared, folding her arms. "But let me say it again, while you're still rebooting. My boss, Jaheed Vell, is doing your boss Ket Sal a favor. A massive favor. An entirely undeserved favor. More to the point, I am doing you a favor right now, Ammit. And so you, ma sœur, are going to do me a favor in return." She rose to her full height and tapped insistently at her chest. "What’s my name?"
"You're Sekhmet..." Ammit said, after a moment. Her eyes were flickering slower, and her voice was beginning to coalesce into something like a human woman’s. "The apostate."
"Wrong," Sekhmet replied – and then she was standing very, very close, and suddenly the heel of her boot was pressing hard against Ammit's forehead. The wounded Se-dai glared up, her hands curling into impotent fists, but said nothing as Sekhmet glared back with a look far colder than any holding cell.
"You don't know me," Sekhmet growled. "You've never met me. I am not a Se-dai and I am certainly not Sekhmet, the apostate. That is the truth and that is what you are going to tell Ket Sal. I am a hired cyborg, just like the man who put that spike in your head. Do you understand?" Her boot pressed down a little harder, and the back of Ammit's head began to dig into the wall. "Or were you already dead when I found you?"
Ammit didn't reply. She just reached up, wrapped a metal hand tight around the blade – and pulled, slowly, the spike retracting from the top of her skull with a creak of metal and a wet squelch. Finally, when the offending object was free, she hurled it aside – with such force that it was embedded nearly a full foot deep into the nearest wall – and extended to Sekhmet her other hand.
"Help me up, étrangère," she ordered, her voice even and flat.
"Gadly," Sekhmet replied, taking her hand and – after a moment of brief exertion – hauling the eight-hundred-pound woman to her feet. Ammit swayed for a moment, unsteady – then dug in her heels and forced herself to stand straight. She shook her head like a wet dog, as though she could shake off all the pain and fatigue and myriad of technical errors, then turned to Sekhmet and gave her a profoundly angry look.
"The cyborg," Ammit rasped. "He still lives?" A thick slurry of teal and red fluid was dribbling down from the hole in her chin.
"For now," Sekhmet answered, tapping the hilt of her sword. "Mais le temps des indignes touche à sa fin."
"Bien," Ammit nodded. "I am in no condition to fight – but when his end comes, it should be by the hand of le sang neuf."
"Who do you think you're talking to?" Sekhmet grinned. "Why do you think I came all the way out here in the first place?"
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Kore
Kore and Diesch were standing, exhausted and panting heavily, outside cell D-77 – surrounded by all manner of dead and dying Vzngtch.
Kore sported two scorch marks on her vest and a melt-knife furrow burned across her cheek. Diesch's signature overcoat had several holes blown clean through it, and he was limping painfully from a las-burst to the knee. It was only a tremendous cocktail of combat drugs that kept the Black Hound on his feet, something he was angrily reminding her of now as she fumbled with looted keys.
"Gimme a damn minute!" Kore snapped, thoroughly fed up with her current partner-in-crime – just as she finally hit the proper key. The door hissed open and Kore had just a moment to blink in surprise before a screaming Vzngtch flew out and tackled her to the ground, melt-knife thrust straight down and angled right for her face.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The two struggled, for a moment, with the air between blade and flesh shimmering dangerously – and then Diesch's revolver went off and the Vzngtch let out a cry of sudden pain. With his robotic hand the Black Hound grabbed the man by the collar and hurled him back, whereupon he crashed against the wall and slumped to the floor, screaming as a byproduct of his black-charred thigh.
"Shut up!" Diesch barked, and at once the man was silent.
Slowly, Kore climbed back to her feet and gave Diesch a small nod of thanks – and then the both of them stepped into cell D-77 to find a scene straight out of hell itself.
The walls were covered in wild streaks of blood; the floor was practically an ocean of the stuff. The air reeked of copper and char. And sitting there in the midst of it all were two individuals so thoroughly bloodied that Kore didn’t even see them at first. But amid one swollen mass of viscera currently passing for a face, Kore nevertheless glimpsed something unmistakable.
A pair of ferocious, sallow eyes.
"Lord Ket Sal," she said, by way of greeting, exactly how she and Jaheed had rehearsed. "My name is-"
"My wife, Maít!" the Scion interrupted, suddenly struggling wildly against his restraints. "Get her out! Now!"
"My name-" Kore tried again.
"Maít!" Ket Sal all but roared. "Now!"
And so, somewhat begrudgingly, Kore gestured to Diesch and the Black Hound stepped forward, pressing a single mechanical finger against the one-eyed woman's restraints. From a chip in his brain-stem there came a signal, an electrical impulse that ran down a nanowire all the way to the tip of his finger – a universal 'disassemble' command to just about any publicly-available nanotech. It was a skeleton key that had long ago cost Diesch a great deal of money and that had, time and time again, proven to be worth its weight in gold.
Maít's shackles simply dissolved into their component artificial molecules and she slumped forward, laughing and crying all at once. Kore's heart softened, for just a moment – and with one burly hand she helped the woman to her feet, at which point Ket Sal was out of his shackles too and the pair were sprinting towards one another, colliding somewhere in the middle and wrapping each other in a tight, shuddering hug.
Even the Ket Sal – the sneering, sadistic, psychopathic creature whom Kore had never seen display even the slightest hint of empathy – was weeping openly, and the two of them were whispering things to one another upon which Kore did not dare eavesdrop. In that moment she and Diesch both felt like unwelcome intruders in a profoundly private moment.
And then, reluctantly, Ket Sal stepped back. Straightened his spine, squared his shoulders, and with a voice brimming with hitherto-unseen confidence he said: "I am Ket Sal, thirteenth holy Scion to the Panoptic God-Emperor Doss Ken Volsif. You are Chief of Security Kore Vell, no?"
"I-ah-" Kore fumbled, momentarily caught off-guard. "I am."
"Then you have done my wife and I a profound service," the Scion declared, extending a hand – a hand from which the ring and middle finger had been violently amputated – and so reluctantly Kore shook it, put off as she was by both the volume of gore and the history of its owner. But the Scion's voice was thick with what seemed like genuine gratitude and his lip quivered as, behind him, Maít reached over and squeezed his other hand.
"Don't thank me," Kore said briskly, turning away. She was in no way equipped to have this sort of conversation with this sort of man and, besides, time was of the essence. "Thank my liege, Jaheed Vell."
"I intend to," Ket Sal said firmly, popping up beside her at once. Damn, but he moved quick for a man in such a sorry state. Again, he held out a bloodied hand. "Could you perhaps spare one of your sidearms, miss Kore? I may not look it, but I'm a crack shot with a las-pistol."
Reluctantly, Kore reached down, unstrapped one of her pistols, and handed it over – and without warning Ket Sal snatched the weapon up and shot the wounded Vzngtch twice in the chest. Kore jumped, startled – then leaned forwards and snatched the gun right back.
"I," Kore she growled, too irritated to speak politely, “would have appreciated a warning.”
"Forgive me, miss Kore, but I truly do not care," Ket Sal replied, distracted for a moment as he watched the Vzngtch shudder and die. Then he turned his head and gave Kore his full attention. "That felt very good, and nothing has felt good today. With any luck, Az-Azsad's neck in my hands will feel even better."
"Or my hands," Maít purred, from over his shoulder, to which the Scion gave a low chuckle.
"By all means, I’d be happy to cede the floor," the Scion smirked – and then a plasma bolt split the air and all were diving for cover as a full contingent of Vzngtch enforcers stormed in, disruptor-rifles blazing.
"My Se-dai!" Ket Sal said at once, his voice conversational yet still somehow audible overtop the screeching din. The product, no doubt, of an amplifier embedded in the back of his throat. "Does she still live?"
"Can't say for certain!" Kore shouted back, unslinging her own disruptor-rifle in turn. She leaned out from behind a concrete pillar and drilled one Vzngtch through the head, another through the thigh – then closed one eye and shot the grenade right from a third’s hand. The enforcers were scattered by a sudden storm of iridescent green fire and Kore darted back behind cover, breathing heavily as plasma-fire continued to whip and shimmer past. Then, she turned to Ket Sal, because diplomacy was very important here and the void-damned Scion was clearly waiting for a proper answer. “I’ve got my best soldier searching for her as we speak!” she called, for whatever that was worth.
"Let me be clear," Ket Sal said, his words loud and imperious even as his arm was wrapped tight around Maít, shielding her from any incoming fire. "My Se-dai, Ammit, is non-negotiable. Do you understand me, Kore? I will not leave this place without her." At that, Kore was forced to bite back a decidedly vulgar response.
"We'll do what we can," she hollered instead, dropping two more Vzngtch with three-round bursts to the chests.
"You will do as I have instructed, or you will leave this place with nothing at all," Ket Sal declared, and Kore couldn't help but turn to shoot Diesch an exasperated look. To her surprise, he returned it with a similar expression in kind. The message between them was universal, then: fucking Highborn.
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Sekhmet
Sekhmet was still not having any fun. With one hand, she was forced to lug around an enormous Se-dai who could barely walk, and with the other she could only spray down encroaching Vzngtch with whatever discarded rifle she happened to pick up. She had long abandoned single fire and opted instead for fully-automatic volleys; just filling the air with red-glowing death and treating her opponents is little more than obstacles to be removed. This was, she remarked to herself, truly the most unpleasant way one could possibly fight, and silently she vowed to never touch a firearm again.
Then, she rounded the corner, and Kore was there – Kore, Diesch, and a pair of maimed humans that could only be Ket Sal and this 'Maít' character. Kore in particular was absolutely stunning to behold, a towering figure with a surly expression and bloodshot, chem-addled eyes and – most importantly – a burn-scar across her cheek that Sekhmet found incredibly attractive. And thus, all negative feelings vanished as though they had never existed at all.
"Ammit!" Maít yelled, before Sekhmet could say something cool or even attempt to show off for her girlfriend – and then Maít was wrapping the wounded Se-dai in a tight hug, which Sekhmet rather hypocritically found both bizarre and amusing. To her further astonishment, after a moment of stiff hesitation the Se-dai actually hugged the woman back, apologizing profusely all the while, and now the Scion himself was striding over with hands clasped behind his back. The picture of arrogant nobility, despite his sorry appearance.
"Ket, you ass, get over here," Maít snapped, and thus the Scion's haughty indifference melted away and he did just that and the three of them were embracing as a sort of strange, blood-soaked, teary-eyed family.
Baffled and slightly revulsed and perhaps even a bit embarrassed, Sekhmet decided to turn her attention to something more interesting – and so she stepped over to Kore with a sly grin spreading unconsciously across her face. And Kore, despite the haze of adrenaline and combat drugs coursing through her system, offered Sekhmet a shaky smile in return.
"You two look like shit," Sekhmet laughed, and to that Kore just gave a rueful shake of her head. Behind her, even Diesch was letting out an unsteady, adrenaline-fueled laugh. "Do you really need my help for every little-"
A sound.
Movement.
Where?!
There.
Sekhmet's eyes darted to the left – and lightning-fast she leapt forward, not so much tackling as slamming into Kore and sending the larger woman flying back as the wall between them simply exploded into chunks of plaster and a pale fist shot out, grasping at empty air and missing Kore's skull by only the barest centimeter.
Sekhmet skidded to a halt, heels digging long furrows into the carpet, and her head snapped up on pure instinct to analyze this new and unexpected threat.
Only it wasn't new, was it? As the dust cleared, a figure came into view, and with her enhanced vision Sekhmet could see at once the bald-headed man standing there quite casually, one hand in his pocket and the other curled tight into a fist. His eyes were just as they appeared in the recording – blood red. Behind him, the door swung open, and out came Az-Azsad and a dozen Vzngtch enforcers whose barrels went up in unison. They spread out, forming a loose semi-circle as the ganglord just smiled and tilted his head.
He was saying something, of course. But Sekhmet didn't give a fuck about Az-Azsad. She had only eyes for his second-in-command, Gaun, the stranger who was looking at her now with a familiar hunger indeed. Oh, and he was augmented alright. Even without seeing his eyes Sekhmet could have all but smelled the danger emanating from his understated frame; the vivid death seeping from his every micro-action and permeating into the air around them. He was, without a doubt, the real deal.
And ah, shit. There it was, right on time. That old feeling. The heat rising from her core, spreading like molten lava all the way from her chest to the tips of her fingers. Raw power. An ancient engine, rumbling itself to life and churning – slow at first, then faster. Faster. Faster.
Sekhmet was getting worked up.
And, to her surprise, she took no pleasure in this – because Kore was here, and Kore was in danger. Her deepest instincts rankled, crying out that this situation needed to be resolved now. Sekhmet felt a new, cold, smoldering sort of anger, anger that felt like lightning between her fingertips. She did not want to fight. She just wanted this man dead.
"You," she called out, leveling a finger at Gaun's leering face. "You're the one who attacked my cousin?"
She had, of course, just blown her cover right in front of Ket Sal – but Sekhmet's blood was hot, and she cared for nothing but the next five minutes. Nothing else was real. Nothing else mattered but this.
"Cousin?" Gaun noted, rather than answer. "Oh, this is just fantastic. I get to kill two Se-dai in one day." A grey-metal tongue emerged from between his teeth and licked at his lips. "Maybe I'll carve you open once I’m done. Take out all the good stuff, augment it into myself."
"Ton sang est à moi," Sekhmet hissed. Her hand drifted down, slow and purposeful, to the katana sheathed on her hip. Her Ker-sot - or something close, at any rate. She had acquired the antique old weapon from a pawn shop on Proxima and honed it, lovingly, to a killing edge. Now, this motion - the hand drifting down, her fingers closing tight around the hilt - it felt old and familiar, like coming home after a long journey away.
Now she needed a Highborn's verbal permission. Fortunately, there was one close at hand. Without looking back, she called out to Ket Sal: "Permission for release?"
She couldn’t see his expression, but after a moment Ket Sal said the proper phrase. "Level one RAGNAROK full release granted. All permissions granted."
Sekhmet felt something uncork within her, then, an even greater surge of heat, and now that monolithic old engine was churning even faster and now her eyes were blazing bright. Her fingers closed tight around the hilt of her True Weapon. On the other side of what was now well and truly an arena, Gaun's right hand split open and a long, narrow blade came slithering out. The same style of blade Sekhmet had found driven through Ammit's skull.
"Confirm final authorization," the apostate Se-dai ordered. It was not a request.
"Granted," the Scion replied – and the very instant the word left his mouth, Sekhmet's sword leapt from the sheath like some terrible, ravenous predator – and then, to all but Gaun and Ammit she was but a blur.
There was a frozen second where, just before they clashed, Sekhmet and Gaun looked one another right in the eyes. Each took well the measure of the other. Each bared their soul for the other to see.
And then what followed next was borderline incomprehensible, an impossibly-fast series of strikes and clashes that carried the two of them from one side of the room to the other, their blades gouging long streaks into the floor and threatening to eviscerate anyone unfortunate enough to be caught within their killing radius.
Ammit had been one thing – a relatively sluggish Se-dai fighting in a state of heightened emotion and ultimately taken by surprise. But Sekhmet was something else entirely; a warrior who was considered blisteringly fast even for a Se-dai, fighting now with a clear head and her preferred weapon in hand. She had Gaun on the defensive at once, testing him with a hundred different cuts from a hundred different angles, pressing him and pressing him and pressing him until the Vzngtch cyborg could hardly even breathe. She came close a few times – carved off a chunk of his forearm, nicked his outer thigh – and then, from out of nowhere, his fist came and impacted hard against the side of her face and Sekhmet was blown back, though she twirled in mid-air and recovered quite solidly upon her feet.
The two were circling each other like sharks now. This was all quite common among augmented cyborgs; an explosion of full-throttle speed and power before a brief respite and then, after that, a more measured battle at a more sensible pace. Right now they were sizing each other up once more, each with newfound respect for the other's abilities. Sekhmet was surprised that Gaun had managed to endure her assault; Gaun was impressed by Sekhmet's blinding speed.
Sekhmet was dimly aware of conflict around her, of gunfire and shouting and even a stray explosion. But none of that even remotely concerned her at this moment and no-one would dare fire upon either of the cyborgs, for fear of invoking their wrath.
The muscles in Gaun's neck tensed. Sekhmet saw it and knew it was time and thus the two flung themselves forward once more. This time, however, Gaun got an early advantage, catching her off-guard with a backhanded feint and forcing her to take a full step back. His blade sliced a small chunk from the tip of her nose and then he was on her, refusing to allow the rogue Se-dai even a moment to recover. She was forced onto the defensive, blocking one strike and ducking another and leaping high into the air to avoid a third, then attempting to retaliate at once with a flying dropkick – only for Gaun to sidestep, snatch her ankle, and slam her down with enough force that every one of the un-augmented were thrown off their feet.
Sekhmet rolled, narrowly avoided a punch that would have obliterated her skull, then caught Gaun’s wrist between her ankles and snapped it clean in half. From there, she handsprung back to a standing position; yet already Gaun was surging forward, his wrist wrenching itself back into proper place as his blade carved a trough through her cheek and deep into her inner mithril carapace. Sekhmet swore, grabbed his blade-wrist, received a titanic punch to the stomach in response – one that had her internal readout displaying a dozen different mechanical failures – and narrowly drove him back, her sword carving a gleaming arc through the air that the Vzngtch cyborg was forced to respect.
Perhaps, in her prime, this battle might have already been decided. But Sekhmet was far from her prime and severely out of practice. The only things she had fought in the past few months were assassins and Vzngtch thugs; ordinary humans with guns and little else. But standing before her now was an equal, a peer, a creature on the razor's edge who was likely in peak form. Sekhmet hadn't sparred with a fellow Se-dai in over a year; now she was throwing herself into the fire with an opponent against whom she could not possibly afford a mistake.
He came at her again, eager where she was wary, and again Sekhmet was forced on the defensive, parrying and parrying and then leaping away as his right hook tore a chunk of concrete and plaster from the wall. She took the opportunity to feint low, then leap high with a snap-kick to the chin that would have killed an ordinary human on the spot. Gaun just laughed, spat out a glob of black blood, grabbed her by the hair, and slammed their skulls together. Sekhmet staggered back, momentarily dazed – then dug her heel in and surged forward with blazing eyes.
"Ne m'essaye pas!" she snarled, launching into a flurry of quick jabs before finally driving her antique katana clean through his chest...just a centimeter short of his heart. She had only an instant to jerk the weapon free before his own blade came down, carved her from shoulder to crotch, and then a spring-loaded kick sent her flying across the room and crashing into the far wall.
The entire room shuddered, and now great chunks of concrete were raining from the ceiling above. Sekhmet, embedded as she was, had to physically yank herself free from the wall and drop to her feet, her augmented body now venting visible trails of steam from her mouth and nostrils. The silver gleam of her eyes was beginning to fade, and she was breathing heavily in time with that old engine. An engine that was, damn it all, churning slower and slower by the minute.
From the smoke he came, then, just a pair of glowing red lights at first before resolving into a confident, smiling figure. His shirt had been sliced to ribbons and now he was bare-chested, his flesh showing all manner of bolts and seams as well as a myriad of open, oozing wounds. Both knives in his right hand had been broken so now he favored one from the left, his palm split open and his fingers parted to allow the blade its grand entrance. He grinned with perfect-white teeth, and a river of black fluid ran from the corner of his mouth.
"I really, really like you," Gaun said, sounding like he meant it. “I can’t wait to take you apart.” Sekhmet hated him, in that moment, perhaps more than she had ever hated anyone before.
Now, she took stock of her situation – a cold, mechanical, unemotional assessment of the facts, just as she had been trained to do on Ceres. And the facts were that she was off her game. He was on. She was wounded worse than he was. And, perhaps most importantly, she had more to lose. Because Kore was still right there, glancing over with worried eyes at Sekhmet even as she drove a searing melt-knife right through an enforcer’s heart.
Kore had to be protected. Kore had to survive.
And that meant Sekhmet had to win – at any cost.
And so, the rogue Se-dai simply returned her sword to its sheath. And, as Gaun laughed in surprise and disbelief, Sekhmet dropped once again to a low crouch, her entire body coiling in on itself as each and every one of those billion-dollar muscles tensed in unison. Every single one. A series of vastly complicated mechanical systems, all bent now to a singular purpose. The beat of the old engine slowed, slowed, slowed, then came to a complete halt, and the heat within her was compressed down to a single pinprick of light. A miniature sun; burning amidst a void of desolate cold. Even her eyes dimmed to a dull, faded gray.
Silently, Sekhmet disabled the final limiter herself. The last of the mental shackles fell away.
Slowly, and with tremendous effort, her hand creaked to her sword, whereupon her fingers once more curled tight around that old, antique hilt.
Beyond that, Sekhmet was so still and so silent that all witnessing must have assumed her for dead or deactivated – all save for Ammit and Ket Sal, who knew instead that they were about to witness the pinnacle of a Se-dai's technique. A move that could only be performed by an augmented human of the highest level, a move that traded any and all regard for personal safety in exchange for one thing and one thing only.
Thirty-four times Sekhmet had attempted this; only twice had she ever succeeded.
"Don't tell me you're already done," Gaun yawned, scratching at the back of his neck with a cruel smile on his face. "We’ve barely even had the chance to-"
The engine churned. Once. The pinprick sun became a supernova. Every single muscle in Sekhmet's entire body fired simultaneously with enough kinetic energy to flash-boil water and superheat the air itself and she shot forward faster than even an augmented eye could ever possibly track.
This was, of course:
The Seventh Vile Art:
L'art de la mort instantanée
The Art of Instantaneous Death
Some of the most powerful drugs ever concocted by man gave her just an infinitesimal second to angle her sword for Gaun’s heart – and then she blew past him and was careening out of control; impacting against a wall, bouncing, slamming into the floor, bouncing again, blowing through a concrete pillar and finally hitting the ground with the force of a small bomb. Each impact left behind a massive crater and shook the foundations of the compound so severely that the entire thing nearly collapsed upon all their heads.
Gaun's eyes twitched. His lips peeled back, his teeth bared – but this was all just vestigial reflex, of course, for he was now little more than a severed head and chunk of shoulder. The rest of him had all but ceased to exist.
From within a crater of her own making, Sekhmet saw – with blurred, failing vision – the sad remains of the Vzngtchian cyborg's corpse, and so she chuckled bitterly to herself even as a dozen flashing warnings were telling her in no uncertain terms that she had nearly torn her own body to shreds. That was the purpose of the limiters, after all – not to limit the damage a Se-dai could do to other, but to limit the damage a Se-dai could do to themselves.
"Je t'ai purgé," Sekhmet rasped, to the corpse. "Mort comme tous les autres." And then she was fading fast because her systems were taxed to the absolute brink – and because she had essentially just run a twenty-mile marathon in the span of five minutes. The last thing she heard, before the gentle darkness had fully enveloped her, was the sound of Kore shouting her name – and so it was with a satisfied smile that Sekhmet passed into the closet approximation a Se-dai could ever experience of sleep.
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Baron Az-Azsad
Az-Azsad slammed the door shut, withdrew a flechette gun from his sleeve, and leveled it dead ahead.
The ganglord was proud of himself, then. Because he wasn't scared. He wasn't some breathless, wide-eyed, sweat-drenched fool. He was cool and calm and collected and although he would certainly meet his end this day he would also most certainly be drilling a hole right through the skull of whomever emerged from that door first. He hoped, to himself, that it would be Ket Sal.
Still – what a truly heinous clusterfuck this had become. It galled Az-Azsad to know that he had made not a single mistake; the Scion had clearly been the more valuable and dangerous of the two envoys, after all. How could Jaheed Vell, some idiotic no-name twenty-year-old from a disgraced House, have access to not only a full-blooded Se-dai and not only some kind of Imperial Supercommando – but the fucking Black Hound of Proxima?! All of it boggled the mind, and now plans two decades in the making had all gone to ruin.
Yet in this moment none of it mattered. The past was the past. The future was the future. All that mattered was the present. All that mattered was right fucking now.
Az-Azsad gripped the fletchette-gun even tighter. One dart for them, and then one for him. He would not die at the hands of a torturer. He and Ket Sal would never be equals. He would-
And then the wall beside him simply blew apart and he whirled around, squeezed the trigger – only for a mithril-teal hand to reach out through the haze, snatch the gun from his hand, and effortlessly crush it into a ball of jagged plasteel.
The smoke cleared, and Ammit was revealed, her expression stoic and unreadable. And, behind her, there he came – the yellow-eyed bastard Ket Sal, bloodied and beaten but thoroughly unbowed.
The Scion looked Az-Azsad up and down, arched an eyebrow – and then burst out into a genuine laughter. He laughed and laughed and laughed and when he was done he sighed, reaching up and wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Even the emotionless Se-dai’s mouth twitched upwards in some impression of a smile.
"Oh, Ammit," Ket Sal sighed happily, clasping the towering Se-dai on the shoulder as he gazed upon the face of his former captor. “The universe has such a grand sense of humor, wouldn't you say?"