Soul Full of Guns: Dave vs the Monsters (12 page)

She left open the doors to the room in which she had been meeting with her superiors. They too should draw Hooper’s attention at the moment when she needed. She took up her station in the room across the corridor, angling herself just out of sight.

He was coming up the stairs. Karin heard his breathing, the rustle of his stiff black coveralls. The squeaking leather of his boots and the creak of polished hardwood under their tread placed him on the main staircase. He must have just walked past the two guards down there. But she did not need to listen for him now, she could sense him, and not just the dumb, heavy shape of his feelings, but their very particular outlines and meaning. Hooper’s emotional state and the mindless, blundering train of thought which carried it, always threatening to crash off the rails, were nearly as lucid to Karin as her own thoughts. Being in his head was…unpleasant.

In a weird echoing effect, she found herself in there. Or herself as imagined by the American. That was disturbing, finding yourself floating through a cloud of somebody else’s thought bubbles. Some of them paranoid delusions. Others grossly pornographic fantasies.

She turned her mind away from all but the most relevant images and introspections.

Hooper knew, or thought he knew, that she had picked up most of the same powers as him. Through him, she understood Trinder to be horrified by this, and desperate to contain or neutralize the perceived threat. Hooper simply found the very idea of her frightening, and the prospect of facing her more than a little daunting. He was not a killer, trained for combat like he imagined her to be. In his fevered mind a cold-eyed woman pulled a trigger on him, ran a blade between his ribs, or whipped a wire garrotte around his throat, pulling back hard.

He was scared. He doubted himself. Not his newfound strength or speed, but his ability to put them to any effect against someone like her.

He was not entirely stupid then, she conceded. Most men would assume they could defeat a woman, even one schooled in such arts as she. What was it de Beauvoir had written of them, of their entire oafish gender? That they feel in their fists the will to self-affirmation, the confirmation of their sovereignty. How much more imperative would such a presumption be in one like Hooper, raised to real power? Strangely though, he had no such assurance and swagger to him. He came hunting for her, not entirely sure that he was not the prey.

She felt him searching for her, pushing out his senses, and she withdrew her own thoughts, made them small, slowed her breathing. She did not fear that he could divine her thoughts or feelings as she could his. Pr’Chutt un Threshrendum was an empath daemon. The BattleMaster which Hooper had chanced to kill was not. The Hunn would have been more than a match for the Superiorae of the Qwm in single combat, but the Threshrend did not seek or enter battle on those terms. It was not their role.

 Karin held Sorrow before her in a basic guard, ready to strike as soon as Hooper moved into her line of attack. If he fought with the power of a BattleMaster of the Hunn, he would be stronger than her. But slaying Pr’Chutt had still gifted Ekaterina Varatchevsky with strength and speed many times that of a mortal being. And she had her own very particular set of skills which were somewhat better suited to this encounter than Hooper’s undoubted facility with chug-a-lugging cans of beer and lighting farts for the amusement of his redneck friends.

“Karen,” he shouted.

She almost jumped at the sound of her name. It came as a jolt on her raw nerve-endings, already frayed by the unearthly silence and stillness. But she let any nervous surprise flow out of her body, remaining utterly relaxed, so that she might move with terrible swiftness and fluidity come the moment to strike.

He was on the second floor now. She distinctly heard the heavy fall of his boots. He was not even attempting to move with stealth, although she did sense his caution. His fear. The tightness of his hands around the long, hardwood shaft of the giant hammer…

…Or was it an axe?

No, it was a crude combination of both, she realized. A block splitter, she had heard them called, a long time ago.

In her own hands, Master Nagayuki’s beautifully crafted weapon rested quietly. Sorrow’s disengaged presence gave no impression of having any real investment in what was about to happen.

“Karen Warat,” he called out again, using the American form of her name. The cover under which she had lived for so long in his country. “My name is Dave Hooper. I’ll guess you know who I am. They sent me in here to get you…”

He was even more of an idiot than he had first appeared. His blundering approach, so loud and graceless, allowed her to track him almost to the inch. And she could have done so without any sixth sense. Trinder had sent a ham-fisted troll after her. The only thing to be said in his defense was that he was demonstrably ignorant and out of his depth.

It would not save him. This thing he had done, this huge and dreadful power barely hinted at in New Orleans, it could not be allowed to stand. Not now that he had so brazenly used it to walk in here, violating the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation. It bespoke an arrogance which was shameful even for an American. He was not provoking her. He was mocking her and the Rodina.

That is good
,
Comrade Colonel,
Podolski repeated in her memory.
Because if you conclude that Hooper poses such a danger, you are to terminate him. Immediately. I give you this order now.

“If you can hear me, perhaps we could just…”

Hooper came into view outside the room where she waited and Karin launched her attack. She did not explode with a war cry in her throat. She saw the way his head was turned, his attention drawn to the oddly out of place flower arrangement, just as she had intended. His neck, thick and sunburned, was exposed to the killing stroke—the same lethal strike she had used to cut down Pr’chutt un Threshrendum. Sorrow’s sub-aural hum suddenly turned into a madwoman’s shriek and Karin was shocked to feel the irresistible force of her downward stroke intercepted at the very last moment by some immovable shield.

The hammer!

Hooper had somehow used the steel head of the sledgehammer to ward off Sorrow’s cutting edge. A lesser swordswoman might had faltered at that point, tripping on the surprise of an unexpected defense, but Karin allowed the momentum of her attack to flow around the obstacle, ignoring the inexplicable blast of light and sound which seemed to come from deep within Hooper’s weapon, not just from the impact of steel on steel but from the energy of two souls attempting to annihilate each other. She pivoted on her left leg and drove the blade of her right foot into his exposed rib cage, feeling the satisfying crunch of bones breaking, and then marveling at the kinetic effect of the American’s body flying away from her, as though hit by a wrecking ball.

He flew, literally
flew
, across the corridor, yelling in pain and outrage, crashing right through the wall on the far side with a booming eruption of masonry and plaster dust. That did stop her, if only for half a second. The force needed to do that to a large man was…unfeasible. The damage he must have sustained from the impact would be…

Well, he should be a mound of pink jelly across the hallway.

But he was not. She could see him through the open double doors, hear his pain and distress, feel at a distance the awful damage she had done him, and he to Comrade General Podolski, who appeared to have been struck by flying debris and perhaps even the body of the American in flight. The general was nowhere to be seen, and Karin had no time to look for him. She could feel the dizzying heat that suffused Hooper’s body as it repaired itself at a rate that was frankly impossible to believe—even for she who had seen what her own body was capable of doing to mend itself.

This was intolerable. She attacked again. Meaning to finish him. She held her sword on high in preparation for
tobokami-waza
, the appropriate technique when attacking an opponent of weak spirit or vigor. She did shout her
kiai
now, to fix the downed American with the spear point of her intent.

Using her inhuman strength, Karin leaped into the air, calculating the arc of her descent to deliver another stunning blow to his failed defenses, preparatory to taking off his head. Mortal terror throbbed off him in sick-making waves and she could visualize the result of her attack even before it was complete. But then she was flying, pinwheeling uncontrolled away from Hooper. Pain erupted through her body, as though a neutron star had birthed itself somewhere deep inside her. Bones cracked like boulders sheared apart by earthquakes. Her organs liquefied, their structural integrity destroyed by whatever he had done.

No. By whatever that fucking hammer had done.

Ushi to yasashi to
was singing now. Sorrowful and Unbearable, fully awakened to the fight. And in an instant her enchanted blade had told her without words that she was locked in a death struggle not just with Hooper, but with the soul of the fallen champion animating the weapon with which he fought.

The room where she had of late conferred with the third secretary and the comrade general turned upside down and around and around and now it was her body which burned with a terrible healing heat.

To no avail.

She crashed bodily into the heavy oaken desk where Third Secretary Sitnikov had done his work, splintering the enormous piece of furniture. She cried as waves of devastation roared through her body, followed by waves of heat and healing. But not fast enough. Hooper was over her, his weapon raised on high, the cutting edge of the block splitter already descending towards her skull. He cried out and stumbled, lost his grip or his footing, and all the force of his hammer blow went into the remains of the desk, which exploded as though it had been rigged with dynamite. Vicious splinters flew outwards, one of them embedding itself in Sitnikov’s thigh. He did not move or respond in any way.

Dizzy and disoriented by the furnace burning at white heat to repair the damage done to her body, Karin rolled away from her attacker, hooking his legs out from under him as she went. The effect was almost comical, upending Hooper like an idiot cartoon character. The man had no idea of even basic close combat. He crashed to the floor as she regained her feet and counter-attacked.

“Stop!” he cried out pathetically.

But she did not. Karin raised her sword again and again it flickered down on a trajectory to cut him in two.

Again the damnable shield of the steel hammerhead intervened, throwing off a shower of sparks. The American seemed to lever himself away from her, a move that must have taken great strength and speed given the awkward position in which he had been lying. But she had regained her feet and her balance now and Sorrow sang in her ears, filling Karin’s head with hymns of violence and negation as she advanced on her enemy. The ancient steel fang bit into the air, cleaving it with a hissing whisper and driving Hooper back across the room, his footing uncertain, his face a mask of desperation.

She wasn’t even looking at him anymore. She was looking through him as though he were irrelevant. And in a very real sense he was. Karin knew it was the weapon and the soul of the weapon she must first defeat. Best this foe and she could deal with the lesser problem of Hooper at her leisure.

He was panting, begging her to stop as metal clashed and clanged and bright blue and white sparks flew from the metal maelstrom that engulfed them. Hooper backed into the third secretary losing his balance and his concentration. She felt him do something she did not understand but which she guessed was related to the stasis field in which they fought. It was futile, she could feel her way through every fumbling move he made now, and respond in kind. The din of their battle was deafening as they danced around the room, destroying everything they touched upon.

Including Third Secretary Sitnikov.

A glancing block from Hooper’s war hammer turned her blade aside and before Karin could adjust her flow, the Sorrow had sliced cleanly—or perhaps not so cleanly—through the torso of the fourth-ranking officer of the Second Directorate of the GRU. There was nothing for it but to press on and she went at Hooper
through
the disintegrating remains of her superior.

He swung the hammer at an antique globe which had so far escaped destruction. It came apart in the threshing machine that encircled her.

And then, as though using the chaff of the ruined globe to cover his advance, the American, or rather his lunatic hammer-axe was at her again. Jabbing and swinging and forcing Karin to give up ground. She retreated in a controlled fashion, but there was no denying it was a retreat—all the way back to the gigantic hole she’d made in the wall by virtue of kicking him through it. She broke off contact by reverting to an earlier discipline, gymnastics, leaping backwards through the breach to escape the assault of the weaponized berserker.

Hooper punched through the breach in a storm of debris but by then she was gone, down the main stairwell, past the guards and into an alcove to regain her breath and balance. A rumbling shock announced his landing on the ground floor. He was a fucking show-off too, then. He charged after her, heedless and unthinking, naturally. Karin launched herself from hiding at the lumbering redneck fool, smashing into the shaft of the hammer, which seemed to wrench itself around into a guard position without Hooper’s conscious help. The impact still sent him through another wall and she accelerated after him, leaping with a flying sidekick.

She almost cried out in victory as the stunning blow landed squarely, his rib cage collapsing like rotted floorboards beneath her heavy boots. Then she cried out in frustration as the bastard flew through a window, which disintegrated around him. Nothing for it but to press on, through the yawning hole of the ruined window. She landed lightly on her feet, raised the sword and closed on him at a rush before his ensouled weapon could respond.

Lucille
, she thought.
He called it Lucille?