There wasn't time for thought between Victoria's foot poking out of the lift and the crack somewhere down the hallway. Three blue flashes erupted from the darkness, and I pressed myself against the wall between her and them.

Each round should have felt like a kick to the chest, but instead, they slammed into place with soft knocks. They'd bruise, but it was hard to complain about getting shot leaving you a bit sore. Those had been stun rounds.

As Victoria yanked her foot back into the elevator, I trained my weapon down the hall. A ghost had slid out into view for a moment, the pale skin of one of the three Fotuans we'd seen upstairs, an energy rifle pointed towards me with the tip now fading from blue to red.

It was strange how much time slowed when you were staring down the barrel of a rifle. I'd used energy weapons before, the switch to lethal rounds never took more than a second, but that didn't matter. As their weapon crossed the hues between settings, I pulled the trigger twice, and my Hammerhead shaved two discs of a tungsten bar and accelerated them to Mach 7.

From any perspective, the second my finger touched the trigger, the Fotuan erupted into a shower of sparks. The discs shattered against his shield fifty feet from me, but he kept the gun level at aimed at me.

That wasn't good.

Wind erupted between us as physics caught up with my gunfire. The gale whipped up the glass on the floor and threw it at the Fotuan, who pulled his arms up to protect his eyes, the glass slipping by his kinetic shielding and breaking against his light armour. I used the reprieve to crack off two more shots down the hallway, both of which vaporized themselves on his shield as I dove into the elevator behind Victoria, almost slamming into her as I crashed onto the floor.

"I'm sorry. This lift has been chosen for maintenance. Please step out of the lift and wait for it to undock. Another will come shortly, thank you."

Coolant vented out of the side of my Hammerhead, and I peeled myself off the floor. Down the hallway, the hunter was stringing together a creative array of fucks; or whatever that was in their language. "Glass hurt, Hammerhead didn't," I explained, Victoria's grey eyes were wide, staring back at me. If I didn't know Fotuans better than that, I would have said she was shaking. "Personal kinetic dampener," I turned the Hammerhead over in my hands, ensuring that the dampener was doing it's job, "-which is just great."

"I-" Victoria began.

"It means I'm fucked." Anything going fast enough would get chomped by the shield, you needed slow rounds to deal with that but I had a pistol, not an arsenal. I had kept myself armed when headed to the bar in case I got into a scrap, not a fucking kinetic dampener, those things were made for vehicles on the front lines of planetary wars.

A personal kinetic dampener? Now that was some upper-class bullshit, and I had nothing that could pierce that upper class bullshit. "Got a gun?"

Victoria didn't shake her head. Instead she just kept staring at the floor. That was a no.

"Okay," I nodded, "then we're screwed and-" I stopped for a moment as I heard a foot crunching over glass down the hallway.

"I'm sorry. This lift has been chosen for maintenance. Please-"

"You're gonna go first," I cut in over the elevator.

That seemed to snap Victoria out of it as she stopped using the wall for support and pulled away from me, "What?"'

"He was using stun rounds on you, and my shield can block those."

"Then you go first," she pushed me with her foot. I barely managed to keep my precarious crouch intact.

"He's using lethal shots on me and this," I motioned to the entirety of myself event though my shield was invisible, "isn't my combat shield. More than one shot and I'm dead," I explained. In the moment of silence where the elevator wasn't prompting us to exit, and neither of us was speaking, we both heard his soft footsteps closing in. I stood up and grabbed Victoria's hand to pull her forward.

She was cold, and she was shaking.

"It's gonna be okay," I said out of instinct, "trust me."

"Bu-"

"Or both die in this stupid elevator," We were close enough now that the Fotuan hunter could surely hear us through his translator. He could preset his weapon to stun to try to take down Victoria. Be ready for when I came around the corner. At least they wouldn't be lethal shots. "Okay?"

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Victoria didn't say anything but let me pull her a little forward, which was just as good.

Footsteps. Closer now. About to round.

"Now!" I called, but I sprung into action instead of pushing her forward. There was going to be a second, a second where he'd heard my plan and-

I took the chance, diving out in front of Victoria. The half-second was enough. I had the draw.

Six shots, around him instead of at him, shattering the walkway, cleaving through broken lights and turning the space between us into a glittering testament to collateral damage. The last shot sent the Hammerhead careening backward out of my hand as the absorption system overloaded.

The hurricane kicked up between us again, the Fotuan raised his arms, and I followed the wind, crossing the four steps and getting my cheek inches to the right of his barrel as it flashed blue, then red.

He tried to snap the gun to me; I put my arm up to get in the way of the barrel as it cracked empty shots down the hallway. He took a hand off the gun shove my arm down, and I ducked with the momentum. The Fotuan shoved the barrel on top of me; I grabbed it with my free hand and struggled it toward the floor. Two panels around my feet warped from the impact of his missed shots.

I pulled hard on the gun, ripping him down to me alongside it. A sharp thud ran through my arm as my elbow caught his jaw. His leg found the back of my knee and knocked me to the floor.

As I tumbled, the gun glowed in front of me; I lashed out at it with my flailing leg and knocked it free from his grip. The rifle flew behind us down the hallway.

Good, he would chase it an-

The Fotuan grabbed my throat as I hit the ground, slamming my neck against the metal. Shields saved me from the impact, but they wouldn't do much as he pressed down on my windpipe. His eyes burned into me for a moment, the slightest hint of red slipping into his monotone pupils. His jaw locked in a growl, and he pressed a second hand against my throat.

I pulled at his wrists. He didn't seem to notice.

I reached up to his face, but his arms were long enough to keep him out of reach.

I found his hip as he moved a knee up to press on my chest.

Blood sprayed from his forearm as I pulled his knife and stabbed him. The black ichor poured over my glasses and dripped into my mouth. I spat out the warm blood as he let go of my throat and screamed.

I ripped the knife from his arm and rolled out from beneath him as he pulled away. I tried to stand, but my body demanded air and kept me on the floor, his blood dripping down my nose.

"You fucking dumbass human," the Fotuan hissed. The translator made his voice smooth like silk, which didn't feel appropriate.

"Feeling's mutual," I managed as I dragged myself to my feet and wiped his blood from my lenses. It took a second to blink away some of the black that had gotten behind my glasses into my eyes and by the time I had, he had managed to spray some synth-skin on the wound.

Well, I wasn't tryin' to bleed him out anyway.

The hunter reached for his knife and growled once he realized I was carrying it. After a moment, he started looking past me at his rifle.

I got low, ready to lunge as soon as he tried to force his way past me.

"Another lift is ready for you. Thank you for understanding our maintenance needs!"

The Fotuan charged, and I leapt to match. His arm caught me and a pushed me away from his chest, but I still found his waist with the knife, plunging it through electronics, a holster and into bone. He stumbled, and I twisted.

"Kingston!" Victoria called from down the hall. From the corner of my eye, I watched her throw my gun at us as the Fotuan turned his larger frame against me.

"Come'ere," the Fotuan growled as he grabbed my arm and tore at it, pulling the knife and almost my shoulder out. He wrestled me off the ground by the wrist, yanking it and forcing me to drop the knife. With his free hand, he caught the Hammerhead Victoria had thrown.

I swiped at the pistol. He kept it out of reach.

There was no witty line, no last words, no respect. I stared into cold eyes as the hunter pointed the Hammerhead at my chest and pulled the trigger.

Click.

He looked down at the gun and pulled the trigger again, and I kicked at his waist, finding the spot I'd torn into earlier as the Hammerhead refused to fire. He let go of my wrist, pulling the trigger one more time as he did.

Click.

The Fotuan hissed and went to drop the useless gun, but I snatched it away from him, spun it around in a practiced motion and pulled the trigger.

Railgun fire evaporated his shoulder. The second shot powdered the rest of his chest. Detached legs flopped across the hall and splatted against the windows as the sunshield started to open. Black blood blotted out my view of the stars.

I slumped against the wall he'd been pressing me against and spat out more blood, fairly sure it was, at least mostly, his. I took deep breaths as the adrenaline started to crash. "Who's the dumbass now?" I let my Hammerhead hit the floor, "human guns don't shoot humans."

"Kingston?" Victoria called with something that sounded close to worry in her voice. Of course, that was impossible; she was a Fotuan. Nonetheless, I'd heard it, though I had just taken a good hit to the back of the neck. The girl stopped several steps short of checking on me, standing stock still while staring at the dripping salsa that had just been hunting her.

"Nice throw."

"I'm-" she stopped short of saying sorry, but I heard it.

"Worked out," I scraped my hand across the floor beside me to find my Hammerhead so I could put it away. Everything hurt, and I hadn't even been hit that much. "I got 'em."

Victoria stayed silent, still staring at the corpse.

"Okay," I started, mainly to motivate myself, "let's get going. I'd prefer to answer a call from OpSec than be here for it." Then after a second of still not getting up. "I want a shower." Vocalizing the last part was enough, as my legs found the wherewithal to stagger to a destination.

"M-my ship's actually pretty close, we can go there."

"Oh yeah, don't help."

She kept walking.

"I'm fine."