twice in the last week.”
“Don’t tell the people in Argentina that.”
“If those big ships had all gotten through, humanity wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“You’re not pros,” she said. “You have no right to rule. No one appointed you. No one voted for you.”
“The ships chose us.”
“And now this one has chosen me.”
I thought about that for a second. She had a point. Hadn’t we all challenged and killed to get control of a ship?
“Who are you?” I asked. “Who sent you here?”
“I’m nobody,” she said.
“You’re an assassin. A spook. Is the whole government in on this, or just one panicked branch? Or did you decide to go for it, solo? Are you what they call a fighter? ”
She smiled tightly. “Would it make any difference what I told you? Pick the one you like. Call it a lie or fact.”
I nodded, crossing my arms. That movement, as slow and harmless-looking as it was, put her on her guard.
“Someone sent you,” I said. “You don’t seem the type who is out for solo power. And it wasn’t the whole government, either. You didn’t have any backup in sight out there. No choppers. No agents. No snipers. You barely know the tests and you can’t operate the ship properly yet. I’d say you came from a panicked group of spooks somewhere.”
She shrugged. “Unfortunately, I’m tired of the conversation now. If you tell me how to turn off the ship, to stop it from bringing test subjects in here for me to kill, you will save some lives.”
“How about my own?”
She shook her head. “Can’t do it. I know the rules that well. Only one of us can leave this room alive.”
I nodded. My next surprise came when she put down her gun on the doubloon-encrusted coffee table. Was it empty?
“Not in a shooting mood today?” I asked.
“I need to save bullets if these tests keep going. And for you, I won’t need it. I’ve read up on you. A college nerd. Unarmed, and with very little combat training.”
She took a step toward me.
I smiled at her. Her face faltered, just slightly. Perhaps that wasn’t the fearful response she had been expecting.
Her first kick went low, to my knees. It might have crippled me, if I hadn’t had a new, hard surface under my skin. I think the kick stung her foot.
She hopped back, made a huffing sound and punched me. My nose stung, but not that badly. I swung back at her. She was very fast. She blocked my blow, but without taking the full force of it on her forearm. She staggered back, looking pained and surprised. My fists were harder now than they had been. Faster too.
She bounced forward again. She was muscular, and she was even stronger than she looked. She rained blows down on my face. My skin broke open in places, and it did hurt. But nothing penetrated deeper than, say, a quarter inch.
I reached for her and tried to grapple with her. I’m not sure what I wanted. I suddenly didn’t want to just kill her. Was it because she was female? Was it because Pierre had so obviously stolen everything that wasn’t nailed down to our good mother Earth? She had a point about us being pirates. The Nano ships had killed a load of people. For all I knew, one of them had murdered her family and she was here for revenge.
I wrapped my arms around her and I was too strong for her. She jabbed me with a half-dozen knees and elbows, but each blow hurt her as much as it hurt me. She might as well have been beating on that teak coffee table.
Before, when I’d had the strength of a half-assed gentleman farmer, she’d have broken away easily. But the nanites had definitely done something to me. She elbowed and twisted, but couldn’t get away from me.
She surprised me then. This time, with a sudden, passionate kiss. It worked on me. I relaxed fractionally for a few seconds, blinking at her in surprise. Was she going to bite my lips off? Worrying about that made it hard to enjoy the kiss.
She slipped an arm free, then managed to turn away from me. I’d loosened my hold on her enough to allow her partial escape. I reached to grab her again, but she was already reaching backward, toward the teak coffee table. I didn’t comprehend what she was doing until it was too late.
She snagged her 9mm pistol off the teak table with her outstretched fingers. She whipped it around, aimed it into my face and fired. Three times.
That did it. I let her go. I staggered back, putting my hands to my face. Blood and flapping shreds of skin came away. I thought maybe I was dead-but I wasn’t.
We looked at each other, both panting. I’m not sure who was more shocked. I must not have looked too good.
“You’re not human,” she said.
“You’re pretty amazing yourself.”
She looked at my face. There was disgust in her eyes, now. “There’s metal showing. You are metal underneath, where the skin is broken. Are you some kind of robot?”
“No, but I’ve been modified. You can’t beat me.”
“Your eye is blow away. It looks silvery, purple underneath. That isn’t a human eye. Drop me out of this ship. I don’t want to become like-whatever you are. I want out.”
I shook my head. “You need to give me a few answers first.”
I sprang at her. For the first time, I used my full speed. I crashed into her, scooped her up, and squeezed her arms against her body, pinning them. She fired a few more rounds, aiming down. I felt lead burn hotly on my foot. I shook the gun from her hand.
She stopped struggling when it became obvious she was helpless. We were close. Face-to-face. Sweaty and scared, she looked younger and prettier to me now.
“I’d make a bad prisoner, alien,” she said.
“I’m human, not alien.”
“No. No human could move like that. You’re a freak,” she said, “that’s worse.”
“Just talk to me.”
“I won’t become like you,” she said.
I heard a crunching sound. I looked into her face, and I knew what she had done. She had bitten into something.
“Why don’t you tell me your name, at least?” I asked.
“Esmeralda,” she whispered, and then she collapsed. I held my breath and hopped backward. I felt bad letting her slump onto the Persian rugs, to die in a heap on the floor. But I didn’t want to breathe that stuff in. I wasn’t sure the nanites knew how to fix a lungful of cyanide-or whatever it was.
I looked down at her body regretfully. Somehow, killing Pierre’s assassin hadn’t been as fulfilling as I’d hoped.
Small black arms dragged Esmeralda to an open spot on the metal decking, where there weren’t any Persian rugs. She slipped through the floor as if it were liquid and vanished. The ship had released her. To them, she was biotic waste now.
“Dammit,” I whispered to nobody.
19
I was different now, with a coating of nanites inside me. I was able to walk through the walls of Pierre’s ship, if I wanted to. It felt as if a soap bubble passed over my body when I did it. I supposed the nanites considered me one of their own now, and maybe they were right.
