floor.
'Feel better now?' said Hazel.
'Some,' said Owen. He wasn't even breathing hard.
That was when Pieter Romanov made his entrance, amid a loud hum of straining servomotors. Everyone turned to look as he stopped and posed in the doorway. He was wearing a massive exoskeleton, its metal bones surrounding and supporting him, while rectangular force fields buzzed angrily on both forearms. Owen had seen such things before, usually on dock-workers at starports, unloading heavy cargo. Because of their great weight they burned up a lot of energy really quickly, so they'd never really been practical for battlefields, but Owen had to admit it made a pretty good short-term answer to people like him and Hazel.
'Come to me, monsters,' said Pieter Romanov grandly. 'I am your equal now. I am faster than any human muscle can drive a man, and my strength is as the strength of ten because my tech is pure. I will rip your arms from their sockets, tear your heads from your shoulders, and my dogs shall feast on your entrails.'
Owen was still trying to come up with a suitably elegant answer that didn't involve four-letter words when Hazel stepped forward.
'My turn,' she said firmly. 'You're not hogging all the fun, Deathstalker.'
'Be my guest,' said Owen generously.
Hazel strode over to the waiting Romanov and stopped a careful distance just outside arm's reach. Other Hazels flickered in and out of existence around her, but she pushed them firmly away. She had a really amusing idea of how she was going to do this, and she had no intention of sharing the fun with anyone else, even other versions of herself. She holstered her projectile weapons and smiled nastily at the Romanov, who stirred uneasily. Whatever response he'd expected, being faced with bare hands and blatant self-confidence certainly wasn't one of them.
Hazel reached unhurriedly out to the abandoned meals on the table beside her and picked up a ripe piece of fruit. She crushed it in her hand, so that thick pulp and juice leaked through her fingers, and then she threw the sticky mess at the Romanov. Her arm snapped forward with more than human force and speed, and the sticky projectile shot past his defenses before he could even raise his shielded arms. The pulped fruit struck home with perfect accuracy, right in the heart of the exposed servomotors on the Romanov's left arm, and made a wonderful mess of the gears. Sparks flew, and several of the motors shorted out.
The Romanov yelled in outrage and surged forward, moving horribly quickly for something of his size and weight. Hazel hopped up onto the table and darted back out of reach of his arms. She snatched up more of the abandoned food, crushed it to oozing pulp, and threw it with devastating accuracy. The Romanov whirled his force shields desperately back and forth, but was no match for her speed and reflexes. More of his servomotors failed him, shorting out or hopelessly gummed up. Hazel laughed mockingly.
The Romanov roared with rage, grabbed the heavy table with both hands, and overturned it with one swift movement. Hazel launched herself from the table, tucked through a somersault in midair, and landed on the Romanov's shoulders. Her legs wrapped around his neck and squeezed. His face went bright red, and he couldn't get his breath. He started to raise his hands to tear her from him, and Hazel grabbed his exposed head firmly with both hands.
'Let us understand each other,' she said calmly. 'You annoy me, and I am going to rip your head off your shoulders. And your servomotors are so gummed up now that you haven't a hope in hell of getting to me before I do it. Clear?'
The Romanov considered the matter. Above the buzzing of his force shields he could clearly hear the shorting out of more motors. And he was going to have to breathe really soon now. He shut down his force shields and smiled hopefully at Owen.
'I'd really like to surrender now. Please.'
Hazel grinned triumphantly and loosened her hold a little. She looked across at Owen. 'Up to you, Deathstalker. If you need to kill him, he's all yours.'
'Oh, hell,' said Owen tiredly. 'Let's take him back for trial. He's too pathetic to kill. I just want Valentine.'
'In which case, I'd really like to offer my surrender too,' said the Kartakis. He carefully unbuckled his sword belt and let it drop to the floor. He then removed his disrupter from its hidden holster with thumb and forefinger and let that fall too. Hazel nodded briefly.
'All right, get over here with Lord Seize-up, and don't make a move unless I say otherwise.'
'I wouldn't dare,' said the Kartakis.
Hazel released her leg hold on the Romanov's neck and clambered down from his shoulders. Owen waited till Hazel was clear, and then fixed the two aristocrats with a cold, unsettling gaze. 'Where can I find Valentine Wolfe?'
'He left just before you got here,' said the Kartakis. 'Said he had a surprise to arrange for you. Didn't say what, and we didn't ask. One doesn't with Valentine Wolfe.'
'I've got him,' Oz murmured in Owen's ear. 'I'm still tapped into the Standing's security systems. Valentine is currently at security central, running a very strange set of programs on the computers. But don't ask me what they are. I can't say I've ever seen anything like them.'
'It doesn't matter what he's got,' said Owen. 'I'm going to kill him anyway. Hazel, you stay here and guard these two. Oz has got a lock on Valentine.'
'Hold everything,' said Hazel. 'I don't want you running around this place on your own. We're partners, remember?'
'I know,' said Owen. 'But I need to do this myself.'
Hazel nodded reluctantly. 'Don't take too long or I'll come looking for you.'
'Understood. Watch these two carefully. You can't trust them.'
'Of course not,' said Hazel. 'They're Lords.'
They exchanged a smile, and then Owen turned and left. Hazel sauntered over to the upturned table and leaned against it. The Kartakis moved just a little closer to the weapons he'd dropped, and then stopped as Hazel fixed him with a glittering eye. 'Feel free to start something, my Lords,' she said. 'And I'll feel free to think up something even more amusing to do to you.'
The two Lords looked at each other, and then stood very still.
Owen made his way quickly through empty stone corridors, heading implacably toward what had once been his security center. He was prepared to cut down without mercy any man who got in his way or tried to hinder him, but he encountered no one at all. Which was strange. Where were the guards? Owen slowed just a little as he considered the matter. So far the only people he and Hazel had come across in the Standing were a few guards, two aristocrats, and a single lab technician. Where was everyone? And just what unpleasant surprise was Valentine planning for him? Owen scowled, and increased his pace again. He didn't like mysteries. He just wanted, needed, to see Valentine lying dead and bloody at his feet. Owen might not have been able to save his people, but he could still avenge them.
He made himself move faster, and soon he was running down the familiar stone corridors, his boots pounding loudly on the thick carpeting, no room in him for anything but guilt and pain and the need for the bloody revenge that would quiet them.
Finally he came to the single steel door that led to what had once been his security center. He reined back on his anger and his need, and made himself study the door carefully. It was inches-thick solid steel, with no visible lock mechanism, and undoubtably booby-trapped in a dozen ways, from hidden disrupters to primed explosives. Owen didn't care.
He concentrated, reaching down past his conscious mind, into the back brain, the undermind, and something there woke up and uncoiled, bursting outward without restraints. The mental pulse blew the solid steel door right out of its steel frame, and sent it flying backward into the room beyond. The hidden disrupters and explosives tried to arm themselves, but Owen shut them down with a single thought. His power was fully awake now, and burning brightly within him. Owen stepped through the empty doorway into the room, only to be stopped by the sound of quiet, ironic applause. At the far end of the room, almost hidden in shadows, Valentine Wolfe was sitting languidly in a swivel chair, clapping his long white hands together. Dressed in utter black, his corpse-pale face seemed to float unsupported on the gloom.
'Marvelous entrance, Owen. You really have developed a sense of the dramatic. Such an improvement. You were always so proper and stuffy before you were outlawed. Really, it's been the making of you.'
