Poncho, the Gunslinger from Io
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Three ominous smoking mouths closed in. A loud beep from the smart weapon’s auto-lock made Miles’ feeble heart stop. It was the end. He was about to die in a holosex cabin. A fucking horny booth.
Fortunately, the Red Swan pilot remained unharmed. An incoming fire tearing new holes around him—quickly turned into those cans you would find in a shooting range—forced his angered attacker to retreat.
In the brief moment he could glance at the maniac blasting without a polite warning, Miles remembered his first encounter with Clover Watercress of the Pinkerton. He immediately made the connection between the rabbit-Freak’s nemesis and the assailant. The android’s features clearly belonged to Miguel Francisco Moreno, known as Poncho in the Alliance’s register.
“Damn, Pinkerton!” Miles mumbled, as a fifteenth bullet hole bloomed above his scalp. “Can’t count on them to catch anything—unless…” Another option—the mutant being six feet under—crossed the pilot’s mind.
Poncho, the kind of psychopath who shares the same spoon for both the jam and the peanut butter—before beating a kitty to death with it—started shooting back towards the hotel.
A violent firefight ensued. Loud whirring sounds, followed by the crash of steel against concrete, shook the cobblestones nearby. A torrent of dust rushed into the cabin as an electric fire spread over the melting screen.
Threatened with asphyxiation, the airman contorted his body to place his feet against the twisted sliding opening. After several unsuccessful attempts, the door finally gave way and he toppled outside. His head out of his bullet-riddled sarcophagus, he took a deep breath of polluted air.
When the dust settled around, the confused pilot faced Moreno’s steely profile. The robot’s green photoreceptors glowed beneath his black sombrero, as he calmly rummaged under his poncho. With a quick movement, he reloaded his pump-action shotgun featuring three large and still-smoking barrels. His weapon appeared to be really heavy. Only a cyborg or an android could handle such Belter-made nonsense without suffering from a concussion from each burst.
Once the massive chrome-ringed red cartridges were swallowed by the smart firearm, the steel killer slowly advanced towards the guesthouse, ignoring Miles, the pitiful crippled bird crawling among the litter.
Another ricochet of bullets against the ground made Moreno stop dead in his tracks. Gun down, he looked up at the wide fuming hole on the hotel’s second story, right to the burning neon sign. The magnificent hanging balcony that had once been Belvedere’s pride lay on the sidewalk, its wrought iron twisted and concrete base shattered. The sculptured entrance gates had jumped off their hinges, buried beneath a red brick rubble.
The brief yet violent shoutout had turned the street into a reenactment of the fall or Eros. But who could have paid Moreno back in his own coin?
Fate, obviously. She stood in the opening on the second floor. Exposed but defiant, her foot on the base of the doorway once leading to the balcony, she held the rogue mechanical killer at gunpoint with her overheated P-90.
“After all this time… They will never leave me alone, will they?” she shouted, glaring at the android.
The iron man’s dactyls danced on his rifle’s metal stock. He swiveled his head from left to right without saying a word, as if stretching his neck.
“I guess you are the type of hitbot to go all the way…” she resumed, her finger trembling on her trigger. “No questions asked. No pity…” she looked at the damages caused, and what Miles thought to be dead civilians at the corner of the street. “No pity at all … like all WarTech dogs.”
“WarTech?” Miles coughed. Clover had also warned him the assassin had become a mercenary in the war-bogged down Rings.
As an answer, Moreno only shrugged.
“That fucker’s name’s Poncho,” Miles then uttered, breathing heavily and struggling to straighten.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Miles?” Fate reacted. “You simpleton! Get out of here!”
Alas, quick as a flash, Poncho had turned around, raising his weapon towards the foolish pilot, who ducked in reflex. Bangs ripped through the air while Miles rolled to take cover behind the glass front of the Mimas Buggle, the newspaper across the street from the hotel.
The pilot’s daredevilish shenanigans earned Fate a welcomed advantage. Smart, she had immediately retaliated. Emptying half a clip into Poncho’s back, she tore a hole in his piece of clothing and knocked off his sombrero.
From his cover, Miles witnessed the hitbot slip and cheered: “You’re as slow as molasses in January, Poncho! Clover Watercress oversold you!”
Alas, protected with kevlar-mixed armor, the Wartech’s killer turned around unharmed. He fired twice at the woman taken off guard.
The pre-programmed first shot missed when Moreno staggered, and cut the last steel cable holding the hotel’s neon. The sign toppled over the gutter of the neighboring barber shop and collapsed in the adjacent alley. Just after, the second shot pulverized the wall where Fate had just disappeared behind.
Collecting another burst—the origin of which Miles didn’t fathom—Poncho reloaded, then carried on his brainless attack on the façade, turning the legendary inn into a Swiss Gruyere.
Taking advantage of the confusion, the pilot jumped out of his hiding place. “I’m getting him!” he alerted Fate.
But alerted by some kind of sensors, Poncho had already swung around and targeted him with his tri-cannon. If it weren’t for Fate’s cover fire, which brought the robot to its knees again, Miles would never have been able to reach his target in one piece. Thanks to her, the brave pilot succeeded in tackling the menace to the ground.
“Got him!” he exulted.
Carried away by his momentum, he shattered half his teeth against the android’s metallic shoulder. An unexpected punch probably finished breaking the other half. Blood dotted the pavement.
Miles roared. Red foam dripped from the edge of his lips onto Poncho’s face as the hitbot tried to reach his smart weapon. It had slid near the Holosex cabin. Tucking his legs on the struggling mechanical killer’s thighs, Miles threw a dozen uppercuts that had little effect but to turn Poncho’s eyes carmine in his hollow sockets. Tired of breaking his half-organic phalanxes, Miles finally decided to plunge his bloody thumbs into the latter.
His last senseless act provoked the robot’s fury. Poncho nudged him with choking punches; then, with a headbutt, sent the feeble human flying through the air. The android was up before his barely conscious victim hit the ground, smashed back to the fetus stage.
Her companion out of combat, Fate resumed firing from the hotel, screaming at him to get up. Too late. Vomiting blood and mucus, he was lifted by Poncho. His enemy had managed to grab him by the throat through the rain of bullets.
“Kare o tebanasu!” Fate yelled from the disfigured building. “Let him go!”
The robot tightened his grip further, making the joints of all his limbs creaked. Above him, Miles screamed in pain.
“Let him go, at once!” Fate shouted again, leaving her cover.
A bang interrupted the android, who abruptly let go of Miles.
Bolt of blue lightning erupted from Poncho’s eyes and mouth, and he reached over his shoulder to pull out a static charge. As he ripped the steel tip from its joint, a shower of levin arced between his arm and the Holosex cabin. The robot finally threw the charge away, before it exploded on an electrical transformer connected to the halogen lights.
Confused and disoriented, Miles got up to see the fire starting to burn through the Mimas Bugle’s roof. When he turned, Fate launched another static propellant from the hotel.
“Would have been handy sooner…” he spat, cursing at the woman. She probably kept the overpowered ammo in case of extreme emergency—meaning when her own life was on the wire.
The fortuitous static round drew an azure line across the empty street. This time, however, Poncho snatched it mid-air. Mad with rage, the relentless mercenary crushed it with his palm.
“We’re dead…” Miles coughed, collapsing among the shotgun’s casings.
Judging by her wide-open eyes, Fate shared the same reaction. The duo was definitely outmatched by the invincible WarTech envoy.
From Poncho’s hand flew a thin cable, a hissing snake’s tongue, which went to fetch his master’s scattergun. Sharp, Miles jumped up to grab it, and succeeded. But he was surprisingly reeled in with the weapon.
Suspended in the air again, confused, terrified and his nose two thumbs away from Moreno’s, he felt a cold breeze on his bosom.
He choked. Oxygen was sucked clean from his lungs.
Touching the ground, a warm liquid flowed against his ribs, stomach and thighs. Amid Fate’s screams and the military police’s whistles, he looked down at the wide hunting knife embedded in his patched up chestbox.
“F—fuck…” Miles stuttered. “Kat’s gonna be pissed…”