Rites of the Righteous, page 28
Grimes heard the reply, and if his ears were good enough to pick up on the intel, Mindy’s were too. Both laughed out loud at what was said.
Mindy snickered. “You bet on the Knight or Iron Britches, Killam?”
“Neither, though I never did like Jericho’s chances.” Grimes shrugged. “He escaped the fate of his brothers for a long time. Now we know why. At least the good Knight got to find out what happens in the FAST lane, it seems.”
Raphael shoved the comm back into his pocket. His glare at Mindy was meant to wilt her, and it failed. “Fine, then. You believe you have the upper hand? What is stopping me from killing you right now?”
Grimes saw the look that passed between the little blond killer and the tall Inquisitor and stifled another derisive scoff. Mindy’s answer destroyed any hope that intimidation was possible. “Elder Polito came all the way down here to pick me up, buddy.” She raised her arms above her head and writhed like courtesan. “If you big strong boys damage any of this before he gets to have it, well...” eyelashes fluttered, “I guess you’ll be cleaning toilets in the Reflection Cells for the rest of your life.”
“I might take that chance,” Raphael warned.
“Better check with the Templars first, silly boy. I don’t think they’ll cotton to that idea.”
Raphael’s head whipped to the side and locked one of the Knights into a fierce glare. “Is that true?”
The Templar tilted his helmet and replied in a bland, electronic baritone. “The woman is not to be harmed, Inquisitor.”
The smile returned to Raphael’s face in that moment. He turned to look at Grimes once more and said, “Well, I suppose we will simply need to collect dear Elder Polito and get his bride shipped off before her people find us, then.”
“Do as you will,” Grimes said. “I’ll make my own way out and find you when you are ready to uphold your end of our bargain.”
“I think not, Killam. You are in this with us, especially until we sort out exactly how we were outmaneuvered here.”
Mindy sniffed and inspected her nails. “I don’t think your buddy over there trusts you very much, Grimes. Or maybe he’s got other reasons to keep you close. I don’t suppose you have anything in your possession they might want more than my gorgeous ass, do you?”
“Don’t belabor the obvious, Mindy. I get it,” Grimes growled. To Raphael, he said, “Our business is concluded, here, Inquisitor. I am leaving now, with my package. Do you intend to try and stop me?”
“Killam,” Raphael began, “I can’t let you walk away just yet. Don’t be a fool.”
Grimes did not answer. He set his jaw and let his thoughts retreat into the comforting serenity of zanshin. Mindy’s implication may be the case, or she might be manipulating him into doing something stupid. He would not be stupid, of course. The archer might make a mistake or be swayed by doubt. But the arrow once loosed flew to the target no matter what. His goal was simple. Get out of the Underworld, get to Gomorrah, and hand off the core before leaving this wretched planet. He could not afford to let the ease and convenience of Inquisitor assistance blind him to the risks. Risks, he now knew, to be higher than tolerable. He must be the loosed arrow, flying true no matter what happened around him. Chaos was his ally, as both the Inquisitors and the fixers appeared to have well-ordered plans in play. He smiled. If confusion was to be his weapon, Killam Grimes would wield it as only a master could. He chose the most counterintuitive action available to him.
Baring his teeth in a fierce grin, Grimes tossed Mindy’s weapon belt back to the ferocious killer. To her credit, Mindy caught it as if she never doubted its arrival, though she failed to stop a lone eyebrow from raising as she did. She wrapped it around her waist in one smooth motion. Somehow her pistol found its way into her right hand and her dagger the left before anyone registered the action. Grimes had already duplicated the maneuver himself.
It was time for some chaos.
“We ain’t done, Grimes,” Mindy warned as the Templars surged to life around them.
“If we die, we are,” he replied. “First things first.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“How close are we?” Lucia asked,
“I cannot possibly know that, boss,” Manny replied. “It’s a trail of radioactive dust, not a transponder. We follow it until we get to her.”
“Right,” Lucia said. “Move faster.”
“Easy for you to say,” grumbled Manny. “This way.” He directed Lucia further into the maintenance chase, increasing his already reckless pace by another notch. “If Grimes left traps for us...”
“He didn’t. No time.” The space between Lucia’s words had shrunk to nearly nothing, a sure sign that her nanobots were working overtime restraining her anxiety.
“Right.” Manny knew better than to argue. Lucia’s brain worked on levels his could not, and just trusting her intuition saved time and headaches. “Okay, door ahead.”
Just as Manny stepped up to the wide gray door, the sounds of a horrific melee erupted from the other side. Muffled by the intervening steel panels, the nature of the brawl remained indistinct to the pair, though Manny supposed that this made precious little difference to their options.
“Breach it!” Lucia said, even though Manny was already working on the access panel. One wave of his left palm unlocked the door, and brisk slap revealed the carnage within.
Lacking enhanced reflexes, Manny needed a half-second just take it all in. He wasted another half-second not believing what he was seeing. Mindy and Killam Grimes were fighting two enormous Knights and six Inquisitors all by themselves. He saw the blue jumpsuit and blond hair of Mindy slide between a Knight’s legs while shooting frantically at an Inquisitor firing in her direction. Several of Mindy’s beads struck the other man in his abdomen, and he fell screaming. Now behind the Knight, Mindy spun and sank her dagger into the silver and gold metal at his thigh. The Knight turned, extricating the blade in a shower of sparks, and batted Mindy away like a man swatting at an insect.
Seeing Mindy tumble away galvanized Manny back into action. His hands were cold and slick with sweat, but he raised his shotgun anyway. Short enough to make one-handed use a problem for even a strong man, the weapon was perfectly suited to Manny’s prosthetic left arm. He fired directly into the back of the wounded Knight’s armor. The sound of a chemical propellant explosion startled all the fighters in the room except Manny. The enormous thunderclap and prodigious muzzle flash sent people diving for cover. Seven of the ten pellets in his shot struck the confused Knight. The tiny spheres neither shattered nor exploded against the armored surface. They stuck. The Knight spun to face his strange antagonist, then stumbled.
“Nyarrrgh!!!” The Knight’s cry of pain and confusion was as eloquent as any dissertation, and Manny whispered silent thanks to Donald Ribiero for hinting at how to interfere with the powerful suits. He fired again as the Knight hauled itself to a standing position. This time, his pellets covered the upper part of the cuirass and a piece of one pauldron. The Knight spun, a jerky, ataxic lurch to his left that ended when he pitched face-first into the deck. He writhed there while his armor’s scrambled signals sorted themselves out. Manny did not know how long that would take, so he shot it one more time before moving on to his companion.
The other Knight stalked Grimes, though success looked to be elusive. Grimes vaulted and spun out of danger with ease, avoiding each lethal swipe of a large vibroblade with a contemptuous smirk. Manny hesitated. Helping Grimes went against everything he believed in. Most of Manny desperately wanted the Knight to kill Grimes. It would solve a lot of problems if he did, but the part of Manny that courted reason acknowledged that the Knights were too dangerous to leave alone. He fired.
The Knight battling Grimes dropped his blade and howled. Grimes pounced like a cat upon the struck foe and plunged his dagger underneath the helmet and through the neck. The smell of burned flesh and boiling blood filled the room, and the glowing tip of the black blade erupted from the back of the Knight’s helmet in a gout of ichor and a plume of acrid smoke. Grimes twisted and flicked his arm out to the side, neatly severing the head and vaulting away before the dead man fell.
Manny gaped, his mind unprepared for the grisly scene. Something struck him hard, bowling him over and rolling atop his body.
“Head in the game, kid!” He heard Mindy’s country drawl through the roaring of his own pulse in his ears. Mindy held him there a moment, covering his body with hers while an Inquisitor peppered them both with beads from a large pistol.
“Oww!” Mindy yelped at two direct hits. “Fucker!” And then her weight on his chest disappeared. She was gone, back into the fray like a person born to it. Meanwhile, Manny cursed his own incompetence and rolled to his feet. Searching for targets, he swept his shotgun around the room. The first Knight had regained control of his armor, so Manny shot him twice more. Again, the hulking fighter went down shrieking. Dr. Ribiero had mentioned that both boosting and scrambling the control signals from the armor was going to be very painful for the wearer. Even thus forewarned, Manny found the agony in those screams unsettling. Mindy descended upon the steel giant, and for an instant Manny thought she was going to decapitate him as Grimes had the other. Her blade whipped along the Knight’s neck, and the young Venusian braced for the fountain of blood he knew came next. It never came. The helmet fell away from the gorget to reveal the twisted face of a young man in the grips of horrible agony.
“Peekaboo!” Mindy cried. Then her hand came down on the back of the Knight’s head, bashing the man in the base of the skull with her pistol butt. He dropped like a stone, and Mindy was off again to help Lucia with the Inquisitors.
Somehow, Lucia had remained aware of everything going on in the melee, because she shouted out an order without turning.
“Get Grimes!” Lucia yelled over the din of her own pistol cracking.
Manny looked around in horror. Somewhere in the action Grimes had slipped away from them. Mindy spun mid-stride to dart out the open door. Manny stopped, unsure what to do. He looked to Lucia and found her standing before four Inquisitors. Each of the men faced her unarmed, and two unmoving bodies lay at her feet. Manny could not tell if they still lived, though he hoped that Lucia had restrained herself. The men in front of her stared, some in grim defiance, others with noticeable levels of fear. All but one stared longingly at the pistols strewn about the floor around Lucia’s feet.
“I’m trying very hard not to kill any of you,” Lucia said to the men. “I’m not here for you. Walk away and we can be done.” She addressed the tall Inquisitor with green hair. “Just like we agreed.”
The man looked at Lucia through narrowed eyes. “The game has changed, Ms. Ribiero. I’d love to honor our agreement, but my orders come from a higher power.”
“Your orders come from a horny old fat man who can’t take no for an answer,” Lucia spat back. “If that is a higher power, then how low exactly do you rank?”
The insult failed to elicit the desired response. “You are not wrong about Polito, Ms. Ribiero.” The Inquisitor paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “And if your partner’s intelligence regarding Knight-Captain Jericho is authentic, I believe the Elder is going to be in a great deal of trouble.”
“And we all know he has the ego to doom Jericho’s soul in exchange for an unbeatable champion,” Lucia agreed. “He made that man into a cyborg and didn’t even tell him.”
“You have seen the scans as well, then?”
Lucia laughed. “Everybody on Gethsemane has seen them by now, Inquisitor.”
“Elder Polito has been Jericho’s patron for the man’s whole life. It is not hard to figure out how Jericho got himself augmented. It will be quite the scandal.” The Inquisitor held out his hands, palms up. “A deal, then? A new arrangement?”
“I’m listening.”
“Bring me Polito. The rabble are getting rather strident over this bit of deception, and I do not have the resources to take Polito in when he has Templars to protect him. You do.”
“And what do I get?”
“Melinda Carter goes free. Plus, I’ll give you Grimes.”
“You can do all that?”
“Ms. Ribiero, right now I want very badly to be the Inquisitor who brought down a corrupt Church Elder. Whatever Grimes is carrying interests me, but not enough to risk the bird I appear to have so firmly in my hand. Yes, I am willing to trade his package for a career-making apprehension.”
“I believe you,” Lucia replied. “But you no longer seem to have Grimes.”
Now the Inquisitor laughed. “Oh my goodness, Ms. Ribiero. Do you think me a rank amateur? I’ve had a tracker on Grimes since the first moment we met. I put it in his chicken. No one can resist The Comfy Chair, or real fried chicken. Bring me Polito, and I will wrap Grimes up and hand him to you.”
Lucia smiled and tapped her earpiece. “Heads up, team. Regroup on me. We have a new target.” She returned her attention to the Inquisitor. “Now where is Polito?”
The Inquisitor removed a handheld from one of his pockets and thumbed the screen. “Beaming his location now. I’ve told him that I am sending a contingent to move him to a safe location. He has four Templar guards. They need to be eliminated before I move in.” He jerked his gaze to Manny, and the young man jumped at the sudden scrutiny. “Whatever it is your strange weapon does, does it harm the wearer?”
“Not permanently,” Manny replied. “At least no more than wearing the armor does.”
“A fair bargain, then. Take care not to kill any Templars. I will make sure Grimes takes the blame for the fallen here, but I can offer no protection beyond that.”
“We are professionals,” Lucia said. “We know how to do this.”
“I am most relieved. Contact me when Polito is secure.” The Inquisitor moved to stand over the unconscious Templar. He leaned over, checked the man for a pulse and nodded. A small device appeared in his hand, and a second later a loud chirp made the man grunt. An electronic voice announced. “Armor shutdown complete. You may now safely remove your vestments, Sir Siegfried.” Satisfied, the Inquisitor stood and waved to the remaining fixers. “Good luck.”
“Let’s go,” Lucia said to Manny.
They met a breathless Mindy in the corridor. “Why’d you call me off, boss? I can handle him.”
“I know, but I don’t want you chasing him into whatever traps he has set. Not when there’s an easier way to get him.”
Lucia outlined the new deal with the Inquisitors. Manny suspected Mindy would be overjoyed with the new target and her delighted, yet predatory smile confirmed those suspicions.
“Dead or alive?” asked the little blond killer.
“Alive,” said Lucia. Then she added, “Sorry.”
“Did he really make Jericho a cyborg and not tell anyone? Or is that one of your crazy plans?”
Manny answered. “No, Dr. Ribiero confirmed it himself. Jericho really is a cyborg.”
Mindy curled a lip. “Well then, what the Church does to that fat piece of shit will be worse than anything I could think up, anyway.”
“That bad?” Manny asked.
Mindy sniffed. “Polito deliberately damned a god-fearing man’s soul to hell for personal gain. That’s usually worth a good long stay in a Reflection Cell. But the real crime that will get him worse than that is that he cheated his way to the top. He violated Church doctrine in a way that tells everybody pretty much what he thinks of the faith.”
Lucia scoffed. “Something tells me that Church Elders aren’t supposed to be avaricious and amoral.”
“Oh, they are,” Mindy said. “But they aren’t supposed to get caught. Everything on Gethsemane is bought and paid for by the faithful, you see. It’s the faithful who commit to the Penitent’s Path and tithe their whole paycheck to the Church. It’s the faithful who snitch on each other so the laws get obeyed, even when the laws hurt them. It’s the faithful who give up everything that matters in the name of salvation that make the Church powerful.”
“The faithful have to believe,” Manny said. Shades of Red Hat propaganda flickered through his mind. “If the people doubt the Elders, if they lose faith in their Church...”
“It all falls apart,” Lucia finished.
“Exactly,” said Mindy. Manny heard a catch in her words, a darkening of her tone that awakened his own memories of growing up during the troubles on Venus. “Everything the Church does has gotta reinforce the faith. The way the Knights look, the stupid rituals, the rigid hierarchies, all of it just reinforces patterns of blind unquestioning faith. Because without that, no one would put up with this bullshit place.”
“Polito’s fall...” Manny started to say.
Mindy finished his thought. “That will be punished severely. Jericho is a huge celebrity.”
They found Roland when they exited the maintenance chase. His jacket was gone, though a few wayward strings of black cloth remained to cling stubbornly to his shoulder holster. Black armored skin and muscle peaked through a large hole in his shirt, and several ugly gouges marred the silver-white surface of his faceplate.
“Did you have fun playing with the other boys?” Lucia asked.
Roland cracked his knuckles. “The Sword Brothers are fun, but that Jericho kid has a real attitude problem.”
“Looks like his left hook didn’t suck,” Mindy said with a giggle.”
Roland pointed to the hole in his shirt. “It was the right that made me nervous.”
“He’s handled?” Lucia asked.
“I think his armor broke his brain. I offered to help him, but he chose an honorable death over living as a cyborg. I decided he could get killed on his own time and left him to sort it out. I don’t think we’ll be dealing with him anymore, either way. What’s the plan?”
When Lucia explained it, the big cyborg grunted. “Four Templars? They any good?”
“Not when Manny shoots them,” Mindy said. “That stupid antique of his scrambles the signals they use.”
