“Sniper!” Will barreled into her and threw her to the ground behind the pillar. “That was meant for you!”
Horatio also took cover behind another pillar nearby, while Renaldo and the guide robot dove behind different benches.
The escorting sentries switched to defensive postures and raised their rifles to scan the buildings beyond the atrium.
Will’s dreadlocks had wrapped around her face, so she swatted them aside and peered past her cover. She spotted the hole punched into the floor-to-ceiling glass. She risked only a moment’s glance, and pulled back again just in time, because a plasma bolt whizzed by next to her head, cutting a small chunk away from the side of the pillar.
“Stay down!” Will said.
“This is why I don’t go out in public,” she told him.
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir, Dude,” he replied.
She heard two more THWACKS in rapid succession, and the combat robots toppled to the floor. Big, smoldering holes had been shot through their chests, right where their AI cores resided.
“How cruel,” Horatio commented.
She checked her overhead map and noted a security camera on the ceiling. She leaned forward to shield her lower body with her torso, and then activated the nano machines in her legs; the armor in her thighs peeled back, revealing the final hidden compartments where she’d stowed her Ban’Shar knuckles.
“Let Aradne security deal with this,” Will told her.
Three more bolts came in, cutting into the pillar, and forcing Rhea to retreat even further from the edge. The blast hole was quickly expanding… soon she and Will would be forced to leave cover entirely.
“We don’t have time to let security deal with it!” She retrieved the knuckles and the openings sealed.
Securing the knuckles over each hand, she stood up. Then she stepped away from Will and into the open.
She spotted the glow of three plasma bolts coming from beyond the glass.
Noting the source, she activated her Ban’Shar.
The bolts punched through the glass, collided with her plasma disks, and bounced harmlessly away. She tried to angle the Ban’Shar to reflect the energy back toward its source, but she hadn’t had time to properly line them up, and instead the bolts crashed into one of the nearby benches—thankfully not one of those harboring Renaldo or the guide.
She dashed forward, racing between the pillars. She reached the floor-to-ceiling window and leaped. She held the Ban’Shar in front of her so that the plasma melted through the glass upon contact. As she passed through, she tucked in her legs to avoid having her feet catch on the bottom edge of the gaping hole she’d created and lowered them again before landing.
She hit the ground at a run and continued toward the source of the blast: a small administrative building of some kind. Four stories tall.
More bolts came in, and she deflected them. This time she managed to send one of the attacks back into the building, and it plowed into one of the walls.
As she sprinted toward her target, she zoomed in on the upper floors. She saw the rifle barrel protruding from one of the fourth-floor windows.
Her peripheral vision remained at normal zoom, which allowed her to detect movement straight ahead.
She reverted her eyesight in time to watch turrets finish erupting from hidden recesses in the grassy ground before her. At first, she thought the three turrets were going to target the sniper, but to her surprise they swiveled toward her. She was forced to defend against the larger bolts they launched.
“I’m on your side, idiots!” she shouted, angrily using her Ban’Shar to deflect the attacks.
But they continued to fire. She swerved toward them, and as she weaved between the three platforms, she cut off their turrets with her Ban’Shar and disabled them.
She swung the plasma disks back toward the building in time to defend against the latest round of attacks from that quarter.
Police and security drones converged on the building as she grew near. The octocopter drones targeted the fourth-floor window with their wicked laser turrets: at least some of the security forces were getting it right.
The attacks from that window ceased as her assassin no doubt retreated.
She reached the building’s main doorway and rushed inside before the octocopters could change their minds and start attacking her as well.
There was a security robot standing at the bottom of the stairs, and it tried to stop her, but she cut away its rifle and gave it a good kick, sending the robot flying behind the counter.
She bashed in the stairwell door and raced up the zig-zagging flights.
I hope he takes the stairs…
She got her wish a moment later, because her assassin was barreling down the steps and she nearly plowed into him. She caught a glimpse of a man in a black robe; the hood was raised so that only his bearded face was exposed. A thick pair of black AR goggles covered his eyes. He had tossed the sniper rifle.
She swung at him with her Ban’Shar, converting them both to swords. But his hands moved in a blur to his waist, fetching a pair of hatchets hanging from his hips that she hadn’t noticed in her first glance. The tips of the small axes lit up as electrolasers activated, coating them in plasma, and he used them to bash aside her swords.
As with Veil’s attack in the caves of the Emerald Highlands, the plasma prevented the blades from disintegrating upon contact with her Ban’Shar. Rhea’s Ganymedean weapon deflected the energy, causing the hatchets to bounce well back, but her foe merely altered the impetus to bring the blades back in from different angles, forcing her to remain on the defensive.
He moved so fast that Rhea could barely keep up, even with her nano-enhanced body, and she was stunned when the assassin cut off her right hand, deactivating the blade it held.
He was just too fast. As her severed hand clattered to the
