[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
easily the suppressed rage vented, and how good it felt. Better not go too
far.
"Gonna get you, mutie," the boy promised, hovering on the balls of his feet in
nervous threat. The hag urged her bravo on with a rude gesture at Mark. A
peculiar set-up; little old ladies and punks were normally natural enemies,
but these two seemed in it together. Comrades of the Imperium, no doubt,
uniting against a common foe.
"Better a mutie than a moron," Mark intoned with false cordiality.
The lout s brows wrinkled. "Hey! Is that back-chat to me? Huh?"
"Do you see any other morons around here?" At the boy s eye-flicker, Mark
looked over his shoulder. "Oh. Excuse me. There are two more. I understand
your confusion." His adrenalin pumped, turning his late lunch into a lump of
regret in his belly. Two more youths, taller, heavier, older, but only
adolescents. Possibly vicious, but untrained. Still... where was Ivan now?
Where was that bloody invisible supposed outer perimeter guard? On break?
"Aren t you late for school? Your remedial drooling class, perhaps?"
"
Funny mutie," said one of the older ones. He wasn t laughing.
The attack was sudden, and almost took Mark by surprise; he thought etiquette
demanded they exchange a few more insults first, and he was just working up
some good ones. Exhilaration mixed strangely with the anticipation of pain. Or
maybe it was the anticipation of pain that was exhilarating. The biggest punk
tried to kick him in the groin. He caught the foot with one hand and boosted
it skyward, flipping the kid onto his back on the stones with a wham that
knocked the wind out of him. The second one launched a blow with his fist;
Mark caught his arm. They whirled, and the punk found himself stumbling into
his skinny companion. Unfortunately, now they both were between Mark and the
exit.
They scrambled to their feet, looking astonished and outraged; what kind of
easy pickings had they expected, for God s sake?
Easy enough
. His reflexes were two years stale, and he was already getting winded. Yet
the extra weight made him harder to knock off his feet.
Three to one on a crippled-looking fat little lost stranger, eh
Page 119
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
? You like those odds? Come to me, baby cannibals
. The bakery bag was still clutched absurdly in his fist as he grinned and
opened his arms in invitation.
They jumped him both together, telegraphing every move. The purely defensive
katas continued to work charmingly; they flowed into, and out of, his
momentum-gate to end up both on the ground, shaking their heads dizzily,
victims of their own aggression. Mark wriggled his jaw, which had taken a
clumsy blow, hard enough to sting and wake him up. The next round was not so
successful; he ended up rolling out of reach, finally losing his grip on the
bakery bag, which promptly got stomped. And then one of them caught up with
him in a grapple, and they took some of their own back, pounding unscientific
blows of clenched fists. He was getting seriously out of breath. He planned an
arm-bar and a sprint to the street. It might have ended there, a good time
having been had by all, if one of the idiot punks, crouching, hadn t pulled
out a battered old shock-stick and jabbed it toward him.
Mark almost killed him instantly with a kick to the neck; he pulled his punch
barely in time, and the blow landed slightly off-
center. Even through his boot he could feel the tissues crush, a sickening
sensation richoceting up through his body. Mark recoiled in horror as the kid
lay gurgling on the ground.
No, I wasn t trained to fight. I was trained to kill. Oh, shit
. He d managed not to quite smash the larynx. He prayed the kick hadn t
snapped a major internal blood vessel. The other two assailants paused in
shock.
Ivan pounded around the corner. "What the hell are you doing?" he cried
hoarsely.
"I don t know," Mark gasped, bent over with his hands on his knees. His nose
was bleeding all over his new shirt. In delayed reaction, he was beginning to
shake. "They jumped me."
I baited them. Why the hell was he doing this? It had all happened so fast....
"Is the mutie with you
, soldier?" the skinny lad demanded in a mixture of surprise and dread.
Mark could see the struggle in Ivan s face with the urge to disavow all
connection with him. "Yes," Ivan choked out at last.
The big punk who was still on his feet faded backward, turned, and ran. The
skinny kid was glued to the scene by the presence of the injured man and the
old woman, though he looked like he wanted to run too. The hag, who had risen
and hobbled over to her downed champion, screamed accusations and threats at
Mark. She was the only one present who seemed undismayed by the sight of
Ivan s officer s greens. Then the municipal guards arrived.
Once he was sure the injured punk was going to be taken care of, Mark shut up
and let Ivan handle it. Ivan lied like a...
trooper, to keep the name of
Vorkosigan from ever coming up; the municipal guards in turn, realizing who
Ivan was, dampened the old woman s hysteria and extricated them with speed.
Mark declined to press assault charges even without Ivan s urgent advice to
that effect. Thirty minutes later they were back in Ivan s ground car. This
time Ivan drove much more slowly; residual terror, Mark judged, from having
almost lost his charge.
"Where the hell was that outer perimeter guy who was supposed to be my
guardian angel?" Mark asked, gingerly probing the contusions on his face. His
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]