was a smooth razor cut, filled with dark, coagulated blood that had soaked into the front of his gold and green shirt.
But what surprised Adam the most — this was not Bundnet.
Adam sensed another presence in the room He dove to his left, just as a bolt of electric blue energy slammed into the desk, sending splinters of wood trailing after him. Rolling on his shoulder, Adam came up on one knee just as a large, boxy figure appeared out of the shadows near the door to the bedroom. He leveled the MK-47 and fired. Instantly, a shimmering screen of blue light enveloped the figure, and then quickly dissipated. A diffusion screen! His sidearm would be unable to penetrate the shield. He would need something larger — like the flash rifle — to make it through.
But before Adam could un-sling his rifle, the large figure moved further into the room and stopped. It made no further threatening moves, so Adam slowly stood to face his attacker.
It was Bundnet, very much alive and encased in an exosuit. He had an MK-17 leveled at him — and he was smiling.
Hildorians often wore exosuits when off-planet to help compensate for the heavier gravity they encountered on nearly every other world in The Fringe. The suits were mechanical transports, attached to the limbs of the wearer, providing added strength and support to their brittle-boned bodies. They also carried their own power supply, to which Bundnet had obviously linked a diffusion screen. Diffusion screens were very basic shields against smaller bolt launchers, yet because they required an external power source, they were impractical for personal protection — unless you were wearing an exosuit.
“So you must be the assassin Amick sent to kill me,” Bundnet stated in a rough, gravelly voice. Adam couldn’t help but notice how the movements of his mouth were not in sync with the words he heard, a common occurrence with the implanted translation bug behind his ear. This oddity was something Adam had never gotten used to.
Adam did not answer. Instead he glanced around as he heard metal shutters quickly lower over the windows to the bedroom, effectively trapping him in the room with the mechanically-enhanced Hildorian crime boss.
“Yes, I’ve been expecting you,” Bundnet said. “You see, I have my sources as well. And I can assure you that plans are in the works that will have Amick paying a steep price of his own for sending you against me.”
Adam heard the servos whine as Bundnet stepped further into the room until he was only a few meters from Adam. With the alien naturally standing over two meters tall, in the exosuit he was now a truly intimidating figure, towering over Adam by a good meter or more.
“I’ve heard of you,” the alien continued, confident in his control of the situation. “At times, I have even considered enlisting your services for my own ends.”
“You should have,” Adam finally said. “You probably would have lived longer.”
Adam saw a look of confusion cross the alien’s face. “You don’t seem to realize the position you are in, assassin. You’re as good as dead. And I have options as to how I will do it. I can either shoot you, or I can rip you apart limb by limb and revel in the agony you will be experiencing. I think I prefer the second option.”
Adam just smiled, which did nothing to fit into the Hildorian’s vision he had of this moment. Here we go again, Adam thought. Then aloud he spoke: “Bring it on, asshole!”
Knowing that the MK in his hand was useless against the diffusion screen, Adam reeled back and heaved the gun at Bundnet. With the weapon carrying no electrical charge of its own, his MK passed through the screen as if it wasn’t there and struck Bundnet’s hand with the force of a sledgehammer, knocking his weapon away.
Bundnet roared with anger and pain and lurched forward, swinging with his right arm, the exosuit adding extra quickness and agility. Still, it wasn’t enough. Adam blocked the blow easily, then lifted the entire mechanical/alien contraption and shoved it to his right. The suit was able to maintain balance, but Bundnet found himself twisted around, with Adam now behind him.
Rather than attack, Adam simply waited for his opponent to spin back around. The smile had vanished from Bundnet’s face.
“You missed,” Adam said through a toothy grin of his own.
The Hildorian literally growled, displaying a double row of long, sharp teeth. He lunged again, but this time a mechanical hand was able to grasp Adam’s left bicep, sending a spasm of pain through his arm and shoulder. Adam reached across with his free hand and ripped the clamp from his arm, breaking the thin metal from its joints.
Bundnet screamed in agony as his own flesh and blood hand was twisted and bones snapped. But he was still able to counter with a swipe of the other mechanical arm. Adam was struck hard against the side of his head and knocked to his knees, temporarily stunned. Bundnet used the opportunity to step forward, crashing his metal- encased left leg forcefully into Adam’s chest.
Adam flew backwards in the light gravity and fell heavily onto the wooden chest next to the bed. Bundnet ran forward.
Quickly regaining his senses, anger flared in Adam. He pushed off of the chest, and the two combatants crashed into each other in the center of the room. Adam climbed on top of the suit’s metal frame and began to rip at the upper cage above Bundnet’s head. Metal bars easily broke from their joints, as Bundnet’s mechanical arms flailed wildly, trying to pull Adam from atop the cage. Then Adam dropped in behind Bundnet and ripped the power cords from the battery pack.
Instantly, the servos fell quiet, and Bundnet found himself trapped in the suit, only able to move it with his own feeble strength. He stopped struggling, and watched as Adam moved slowly back in front of him.
Adam just shook his head. “You don’t have any idea what you’re up against, do you?” The alien’s bottom lip was trembling. He didn’t answer.
“ This is what I do. I kill aliens for a living. And I’m very good at it-”
Adam then shot out with his right arm, clamping his hand around the alien’s neck. He squeezed, and could feel — and hear — the crunching of bone as the alien’s windpipe collapsed. In another moment it was all over.
Adam Cain, alien assassin, had successfully fulfilled yet one more contract.
After a brief moment of contemplation, Adam quickly gathered up his backpack and recovered his MK-47 — just as he became aware of the wailing of alarms outside the building. How long they had been going off he couldn’t tell; his mind had been on other matters.
But Adam didn’t panic. Yes, he had been discovered, but all he had to do now was get out of the compound. And that he had no doubt he could do.
The windows of the bedroom were shuttered and the exterior walls of the building were made of stone, so his only escape route was through the bedroom door. Gripping his ’47 firmly in his right hand, he flung open the door and immediately came face-to-face with two guards, just as shocked to see him as he was to see them. With lightning-quick reactions, Adam blasted the first one through the chest with a bolt from the MK, and then swung his left fist at the second guard. To Adam’s surprise, his fist sank completely into the guard’s skull and exited out the other side, effective hooking the alien’s head onto Adam’s forearm, in a bloody spray of brains and shattered bone material.
Damn! What else could go wrong?
Just then a whole array of bolt streaks filled the hallway, as yet another group of armed guards appeared to his right. Adam needed a new exit strategy…
One of the good things about a low-gravity world was that construction did not have to be as strong and sturdy as on a heavy-gravity world. Even though atoms were atoms everywhere in the universe, the strength of the compounds and building materials varied from world to world. So what Adam had discovered about construction on Hildoria — and Bundnet’s house in particular — was that everything was essentially built of material about as strong as balsa wood and popsicle-sticks.
So Adam leaped across the hallway, through the blaze of energy bolts, and smashed through the opposite wall with little effort, dragging the dead alien on his arm as he did so.
Stumbling through a fallen metal shelving unit, Adam found himself in the home’s kitchen area, and as he ran between rows of preparation tables, he continued to try and shake the stuck alien off his arm. At that moment, he could hear the words of Riyad Tarazi echoing in his head, as the Human leader of the Fringe Pirates had told him how Humans were the supermen of the galaxy. As he feverishly tried to dislodge the lifeless guard from his arm, Adam was pretty sure Clark Kent never had to deal with a problem like this…
Finally, the lifeless alien slipped from his arm. Adam holstered the ’47 and pulled the flash rifle from across his back. As he did so, he whipped the weapon around and sprayed a barrage of bolts at the guards entering through the hole in the wall he’d just made. Then he continued the arc, blasting more holes in the walls, cabinets
