Cybernation

outside Michaels’s range. Michaels stayed where he was.

“You waiting for me to make a mistake?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Santos laughed. Then he twirled and whirled and dropped, spun into a kind of crabbed cartwheel, and somehow ate up the space between them. His kick was low, and while Michaels dropped his stance, turned, and managed to get a sweeping block down, the kick was too powerful to do more than slightly deflect it. It glanced off his thigh instead of hitting it square on, but it still hurt even in passing.

Michaels should have blocked it, but it wasn’t major. The goal here was not so much to win as it was to not- lose. The winner was the guy who got to go home, under his own steam, and well enough to be able to hug his family.

Santos shifted back and forth from foot to foot, waving his arms in a pattern that was probably supposed to be hypnotic. “Not bad for an old man,” he said. “What you call this, Branco?”

Branco. Must mean “white.” “Does it matter?”

“Just curious. Always lookin’ to educate myself more.”

“I’ll tell you all about it after we’re done. Maybe you can find a teacher in prison.”

Santos laughed, a deep belly rumble. “That’s funny. You expectin’ to be around after we’re done, me in jail? No way. Tell me now.”

“I don’t think so,” Michaels said. He pivoted to follow Santos as he circled, switching his hands from high to low, still in the open-gate stance.

“Good economy,” Santos said, nodding. “No wasted motions. Maybe I let you live so you can tell me about this. Chinese, maybe? Burmese? Why don’t I know it?”

“You need to get out more. Lots of things you don’t know. We have the ship.”

“Maybe. But you don’t have Santos.”

Michaels took a deep breath. He let half of it out. “Relax, Alex,” he said quietly to himself.

The days he’d practiced the mental exercise Toni had showed him paid off. He dropped lower, with just enough tension to stay upright. His breathing deepened, and he felt much looser. Considering his current situation, this was more than passing extraordinary.

Santos raised an eyebrow. “What did you just do there, Mr. Federal Agent?”

Michaels smiled. “Bring your pretty little dance closer and see.” It was, Toni had always taught him, good silat to bait an opponent. Maybe it would make him angry enough to lose control, do something stupid. Probably not this guy, who looked as if he’d been carved out of stone and was just as impervious to trash-talk as he would be a hammer, but it didn’t hurt to try.

“I will, don’t you worry. But we have time, yes? No reason to rush. We might make the game last a while.”

Santos feinted a kick and punch, then spun and dropped, put his hands down on the floor, and shot out a mule kick with his left foot, low, aimed for Michaels’s knee—

Michaels sectored to the inside, blocked the kick, and threw a snap kick of his own at Santos’s groin—

Santos twirled away, and Michaels’s heel hit him on the thigh. The glancing blow didn’t seem to hurt him, but at least it connected.

Santos whirled back around and did some kind of acrobatic twist, ending in a back fist at Michaels’s head—

Michaels stepped in, his right fist covering his face, and did a block hit—

Santos leaned away, slipping the punch, but not quite enough — Michaels got one knuckle solidly into the other man’s forehead.

Santos backed off, shook his head. “Good one,” he said.

He came back immediately, dropped into a one-legged squat, and swept with his other leg extended—

Michaels didn’t expect the sweep from that angle — it caught his left ankle. He started to lose his balance, pushed off with his right foot, and managed to hop over the still-sweeping leg and come down without falling. He stepped forward and into a closed gate, right foot ready to kick or beset if Santos stepped in.

Santos did another twisting aerial move away. He came down lightly ten feet from Michaels. “I like this stuff you do. It’s tight, no wasted moves. Come on, tell me what it is so I can learn it. It will make my game better. Tell me, in case you aren’t able to afterward.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Michaels said. But he was worried about it. He wished he had a knife. Might as well wish for a gun. A hand grenade or a tank would be useful, too.

Santos laughed. “You worried, Branco?”

“Nah, I just don’t want to be late for dinner. You’re the one who should be worried. See, I know what your dance is — it’s Capoeira. You don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Let’s see!”

Santos flew at him—

* * *

The wound was minor, the handgun bullet had punched a hole through Howard’s side exactly where the vest tab left a tiny gap between the front and side panels. The slug had caught mostly skin and fat, maybe three inches above his belt. Another inch to the inside, and the body armor would have stopped it. An inch farther out and it would have missed entirely. Bad luck. A freak shot. What you got for not using your own gear.

It hadn’t done any crucial damage, though, and while his shirt was ruined and the nick oozed some, he wasn’t going to bleed out from it. He would worry about it later.

The man who’d shot him had taken Howard’s return fire square in the middle of his chest. He hadn’t been wearing a vest, and the Medusa’s two.357 semijacketed hollowpoints had punched holes right through his sternum, no more than a couple inches apart.

Julio would like that. A nice group. And so much for not killing anybody. Well. The guy should have thought about that before he shot Howard.

“General?” Gridley said, “You okay?”

“I’ve hurt myself worse shaving. I’ll put a Band-Aid on it when I get a minute.”

The voice on the LOSIR was Julio’s: “We have the ship secured, General.”

Howard laughed. He had never felt more alive. Risk was a part of life, he knew that now. And this was what he did, who he was. He was a man of war. A soldier. Death came to all, eventually, but he couldn’t stop living in the meanwhile. “Good work, Lieutenant. Where are you?”

“With the computers. Deck D, amidships.”

“We’ll see you in a few minutes. Discom.”

Gridley shook his head. “I’m gonna stop going out with you. Last time, I nearly got killed by some psycho drug fiend in California. This field work gets old fast.”

“You get a fix on the commander?”

Gridley looked at his virgil. “Yeah, his virgil is about a hundred and fifty feet that way.” He pointed. “But I can’t get an altitude on him — he could be on the top deck or down below.”

“Let’s go find him. Our squads will mop up the rest of these bozos. Stay behind me.”

“You don’t have to tell me that twice. Saji would never forgive me if I messed up the wedding by getting myself killed.”

Howard did a tactical reload, using a Bianchi speed strip to replace the two fired shells in the revolver. He snapped the cylinder shut, and headed past the row of slot machines and toward the blackjack tables. There was a corridor past those that led through a kitchen to a cafeteria. Michaels would have to be past that, according to Gridley’s GPS sig. He brought up the briefing map in his mind’s eye: past that, on this level, was a stairway leading up and down. Up was the main deck. Down was a gymnasium. There was an access to the locked-off computer deck that way, too.

Worry about it when you get there, John. Because if you aren’t more careful, you might not get there…

“Just ahead,” Jay said.

Howard nodded. He looked at Jay. “I’ll go through first. Try not to shoot me in the back.”

Jay laughed.