Chapter 131: PB - #09 Hostile Katana

Hostile Katana

The leader of the brigands greeted the cutting remark: “He brought you down a peg or two, Carnegie, right?”

Above, the old man grinned. “Olive Grace Parkhurst, the renegade captain hired by a local telecom tycoon to clear the path for a new intraweb. But killed the man later on instead, and chose to fight for the orphans and poors scattered across her stolen frigates. Trampling on two oaths, she is now crusading with an absurd brutality—yet a tearful rhetoric—to clean her past sins.”

The smile on Grace’s face turned into a scornful expression. She swore. Her wired belt automatically adjusted her holster’s height. The clever mechanism brought the revolver’s grip closer to her gloved hand.

“What a lovely redemption tale—the both of you, really.”

The samurai elegantly leaped into the void. With small curious arm movements that made the beads of his bracelets clash, he slid to the ground as if held by an invisible zip line. But no harness nor cable could be seen. Such fantasy begot myriads of questions among the masked attackers and the old defenders.

“Your medicine is in my ship,” he went on once he had landed close to the moon owner without taking his eyes off the bandits. “I have moored my Oda within the small crater shaped like an hibiscus flower.”

“The—the Shuguang quarry?” Aïssata stammered. “That’s a twenty-minute spacewalk. Where is your suit? How did you get in?”

“Fuck this! That creepy fart’s insane, boss!” intervened Calamity Grace’s second-in-command, spitting on his bushy beard. His black armor grated as he turned to his captain, waiting for an order. His heavy M249 SAW rifle dropped over his left shoulder, the wide collection of Tellurium Hearts stapled on his heavy breastplate clinked. Surrounding a gold pocket watch, each medal displayed a half-melted round hole.

His last gesture made Aïssata startle. As she raised her rusty handgun in his direction, the marauder provoked her with an obscene kiss from behind his steamy visor.

“Insanity is the price of a far too long life wandering around Solaris, my young fellow,” the samurai calmly said. His hands remained along his thighs, off his custom katana.

An unusual weapon that Miles knew well. He had been able to examine it briefly during his first meeting with the Alliance hunter years before. Kumo Raïda’s blade included a stealth .44 Magnum within its guard. Another fantasy of the bounty hunter who had, however, never divulged the secret behind his graceful walks through the sideral void.

The tension immediately grew in intensity as the auxiliary carefully stepped between Aïssata and Miles to face Calamity Grace, her loquacious lieutenant and her two hitherto silent robot guards.

“Still alive, Mr. Villanueva?” coldly asked Kumo Raïda, cracking the knuckles of his wrinkled fingers as he stretched them. “Incredible. Simply incredible.”

Miles wanted to reply but Fate’s unexpected arrival on his right interrupted him. The woman gave him a brief glare before greeting Raïda with a nod.

The samurai smiled broadly at the fourth magnificent gunslinger. “Wonderful! Now, we are of equal strength for your little game, Miss Parkhurst…” he declared. “Shall we begin?”

A dead silence appeared to be the only answer. An old and crumpled magazine about drag racings on Canyon Creek flew from Andrew’s workshop and tumbled midway between the two rows of steady fighters.

Everyone, fingers dancing over the trigger or the grip of their guns, watched their opponents. Eyes met as tension rose. The question wasn’t who would blast first, the law being on the side of the Alliance no matter the first space cowboy biting the dust. Yet, the issue remained twofold: Who would shoot at you? And thus, whom to silence before it could happen?

All this daunting questioning passed over Miles, his eyes glazed and his hands still hidden beneath his oversized sweater.

Meanwhile, a drop of gritty sweat ran through the pockmarked temple and cheek of Calamity Grace’s second-in-command. His jumpy eyes underlined by silver-plated outlets betrayed his understandably growing anxiety.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It was him—not Aïssata—who first drew his gun when his pocket watch chimed, in a dangerous and obvious way.

Yet, no one fired. The bearded man and the others froze as Raïda immediately reacted, and caught everyone off guard oddly whooshing his arms backwards. His tempered sword has remained in its scabbard.

Two long and silent seconds later, the edgy pirate’s helmet snapped off his shoulders. It resoundingly bounced on the ground, freeing the head which trundled to the Roman cross-shaped feet of one of the unflappable androids.

“What the—” Grace swore before grabbing the colt ejecting from her spring holster. Quick as a flash, she unloaded her caliber in Aïssata’s direction, fanning her hammer.

Fate immediately bolted forward, and rolled on the floor. Kneeling down, she fired two bursts of three bullets aimed at the robots’ eyes. Their optics shattered, leaving them blind. The protective glass scattered in the dust while the deadly androids responded by emptying their already inaccurate wrist-machine guns in the air.

Turning to them, Raïda repeated his strange Tai Shi gymnastics. The beads on his bracelets tingled again, and both machines tumbled forward. Their weapons kept spitting at will. The pellets pulverized the concrete ground and hid them behind a screen of toxic gray smoke into which Fate jumped.

Alone in the middle of her falling comrades, Calamity Grace roared. The central loop of her automated belt loudly moved to the next crank and provided her with a new loaded two-barrels Colt previously concealed behind her back. The weapon jumped as she threw the last empty one over the torchlight welded on her left shoulder. Snatching the Colt before making it spin over her palm, she emptied another custom cylinder; this time aiming at Raïda. “Die, you fucking Jap!”

The samurai jumped and twirled in the air—a feat for his age—unfurling his kimono which swirled. When he landed on his feet again, flatten pellets bounced on the floor around his geta shoes. They have been stopped by the thick Kevlar lining of his deceiving traditional clothes.

“You had your chance, Miss Parkhurst…” he panted. Pointing his sword at his enemy, he pulled the comma-shaped trigger. The deafening detonation of his .44 Magnum shook the walls and the stacked steel plates of the workshop. Even the humming doomsday Baltimore turned silent.

The expanding bullet tunneled through the black powder cloud surrounding Grace and struck her in the philtrum—sending her feathered beret rolling along her twirling black cape. Held afoot by her heavy armor, her body stood motionless. What remained of her head disappeared behind a curtain of bubbling blood and shattered bone. Her exotic weapon fell to the ground. Her disarticulated corpse finally slammed backwards in the case-dotted dust.

While Fate finished off the crippled robots, the rest of Grace’s gang slowly retreated in shock to the airlock.

The samurai confidently turned to them. Smiling, he moved his arm slightly. But he stopped halfway, when he saw a crimson drop on his fingertips. Blood was running down his undershirt’s sleeve. A round had grazed his shoulder.

Raïda put his surprising ballistic kimono back on and sheathed his saber. “Oh? A bodyguard. Really?” he said before turning to the last participant in the shootout. “Still alive, Mr. Villanueva?”

“I am not his girlfriend…” Fate retorted.

“My apologies.”

As Raïda withdrew, she grabbed Miles by the collar, enlarging the neckline a little more. “What the heck are you doing? Are you so dense you have become bulletproof?”

“No one asked you to play the hero…” the potential suicide coughed as he tried to break free from the furious grip.

“I wouldn’t bet my bottom dollar-credit on that point...”

There, Raïda was holding in his arms Carnegie’s lifeless body. Calamity Grace had hit her in the heart, leaving her no hope yet a quick death.

“Why do you sound like you’re projectin’?” Miles snarled as his red-feathered duck arrived.

“Mr. Bounty Hunter…” interjected the old mechanic, who had the courage to abandon the barricade to join the duelists.

“Later,” Raïda cut him off as the bandits’ monopod made their mono turbines roar. Calamy Grace’s crew was about to dust off. “Some retreating scoundrels are going to leave nasty holes in your steel gates. You ought to hurry up and seal the airlock quickly. Or we will all be sucked into orbit. Dead. Alive. Or, like my friend here… in between.”