THE GUARDSMAN: Book 2: Blood Debts – Chapters 60-61

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The Guardsman, Book 2: Blood Debts:

Chapter 60)

The farthest thing from Samson’s mind, as he closed his eyes and sunk into a crouch, was the billions of people who were now watching, mesmerized by the unfolding live action. He wanted the camera on and broadcasting live to call for help in real-time to the reaction platoon in the Citadel. However, by the time they scrambled, it would still take them close to forty minutes to fly the distance to this distant plant. Then more time was required for them to deploy, then locate, then clear, and finally extract them to rescue. The noose was closing faster than the rescue would arrive at this rate.

And he knew it.

So, the camera was forgotten.

All Samson had left was being such a mean nasty opponent that the attackers would kill him outright or balk. When that failed, only the brutal certainty that if he failed Persephone would die shortly after remained.

Billions of disbelieving viewers held their collective breath.

A hysterical mother screamed and flailed in the Citadel. Her husband held her eyes away from the screen. A small smile quirked Phyllip’s lips. If any of his hundreds of guests had seen it, they would have labeled him as an unhinged loon, but they were all glued to the massive screen, looking away from him, as sure as their monarch.

The footsteps had stopped on the grating around the corner. The covering fire from the far side squad had been silent for many seconds.

From his crouch Samson’s eyes flicked open to slits, still centered somewhere beyond the decking in front of him.

The steel claw of his sword floated vertically behind him. It was perfectly still and serene, it was silver-crystal beautifully gleaming against the drab colors of the factory and his dirty, bloodied, and battered form.

At some point, the factory machines had stopped.

The only warning was Samson’s twitched feral smile.

Samson rocked left and up the blade skimmed centimeters over the grating. Samson’s enhanced Guardsmen muscular-skeletal-circulatory system allowed him to explode forward and up with so much force that when the blade struck the point man, just above the ball of his left femur, the blade sliced through the hipbone like it was not even there. The blade traveled on severing all the arteries and organs while slicing and displacing the ribs. Samson’s shoulder caught and carried the rifle up and away from its intended targets. His follow-through literally broke the man in half from his left hip to his right armpit.

Unable to scream with a severed diaphragm and both lungs split open, the assailant’s finger convulsed on the trigger, with his left-hand grip sending rounds down the barrel. It was the barrel that Samson was lifting with his shoulder while turning and shoving the half-man back over the railing.

The assailant tumbled backward, his heart still frantically beating. The soon-to-be corpse’s moving eyes and terrified face could do nothing while the passage of Samson’s rupturing sword sprayed blood back into the faces of the attacker’s teammates. The shock of Samson’s unanticipated attack broke their careful coordination and caused a moment of hesitation in the attacker’s ranks.

The point man’s boots and legs clumped and clattered to the grating behind where he had stood, while the jagged strip of abdomen released control of both bowels and fell backward. The remains of the upper body and head caught briefly on the railing on a severed rib before gravity won, and it tumbled to the waiting abyss below.

Samson stepped forward around the corner into the spray of blood and gore, over the still twitching legs, firing while raising his pistol, into the unseen enemy from the audience’s perspective.

If the video viewers blinked, they missed half of it. If they sneezed, they missed all of it.

Recovering to the relative safety of the nearby wall, Samson pulled the partial magazine from his bandoleer, that he had ejected earlier from his damaged pistol, and replaced the now empty one in his pistol. He returned the empty to his ammunition pouch. “Time to go, everyone. That won’t slow them down for long.”

April returned to her reporter mode and blurting the first thing that snapped into her head, April spat, “How many did you just kill?!”

Samson coughed a laugh of ill humor, and flashed a devious smile, pointing with his pistol to the door not far down the catwalk, which was no longer covered by the enemy point team, “My word Miss Nightingale, I’m not sure you can go back to being a human interest reporter after that question. You might end up as a combat correspondent by the end of the day.” Her scowl at his off-color joke set his eyes rolling. He smiled and laughed quietly, “After the point man, I got the ‘two’ and ‘three’ men in their stack and a few probable hits behind them. I don’t know how many I got down past the switch back. But they are still trying to follow us.”

She filled in, “And what happened to the ‘one man’? Whatever that is.”

His rolled eyes, confused look, and dubious patience with the reporter did everything but scream ‘Are you stupid’. Instead with a flourish of the wrist the blade flipped and rolled into his hand in a standard grip. Blood and gore dripping from his blade while he advanced on the unmoving reporter and herded her to the door, with her cameraman and Persephone, “I guess you can count him too, the ‘one’ man in that stack was the point man, but I guess that the two halves still make a whole.”

Samson’s amused smile, at this disgusting version, of one of his goofy old math jokes, made Persephone groan. The man was just enjoying himself entirely too much.

April demanded, “Well, where are you pushing us now?”

Remembering the camera, “April, I’m not pushing you anywhere,” Samson said. “I won’t say where we are going just yet, but we are almost there. Now you can either keep jawing at me and standing in my way, which will really irritate me, or you can start moving. It won’t take those guys behind us long to straighten themselves out. And when that happens the bullets will start flying again. I’m not going to tell you again to get moving.” Herding her and Guillermo off the catwalk and into the maze of offices where Persephone was waiting by the door, tucked into cover, he looked both ways got his bearings, and started them to the left. Sword and pistol still in hand Samson led them at a fast trot, almost a double time through the corridors of the office.

Slowing at the end of the warren of administrative offices, Samson pulled Persephone into the gap between the wall with the door and the room beyond. The structural member between the main wall and the door behind made an excellent point for a tactical pause.

When April and Guillermo tumbled to a halt, April’s question interrupted his turn to the door, “How are you fighting them so easily?”

Taken aback, Samson looked at April, and to the unseen billions watching over her shoulder through Guillermo’s camera, and paused with a stunned look of disbelief and confusion, “‘Easy’? There is nothing ‘easy’ about these guys, April. What the hell are you thinking?!” Kicking the door open to the hall beyond, Samson led with his pistol. He started to trot up the hall to where he remembered the utility stairs were supposed to be located.

When he stopped, frozen, in the middle of the hall, April started to ask another question. She was interrupted by his curtly raised finger. The three and the billions riding along with Guillermo watched as the ragged man, covered in blood, faced left, stepped back from the wall, and began tracing their path with his finger, silently speaking in tongues, to himself. His right hand traced from his feet to the opposite end of the hall from where they started and began the same absurd silent exercise. The blade of the sword twitched like an insect’s feeler at the end of his finger.

Overlaying his inner vision, Samson was recalling from his memory the last known locations of the enemy, along with what he remembered of the structure’s upper-level designs. Satisfied the far-side shooters would need to detour to get to this corridor and could not head them off unexpectedly, he shifted focus to the main element.

The murmur from April was ignored as he plotted out the progress and speed that the enemy was likely to travel. Counting the wounded and accounting for their speed as best as possible, Samson traced them forward into a fresh breach of the administrative offices they had just left. They would have to move slowly for fear of another of his surprises. Samson nodded once and completed his inner monologue and planning session with a verbal, “Okay.”

April took the opportunity to readdress the question he had missed during his twenty seconds of tracing positions, “What makes you say that they are not ‘easy’?”

The question called Samson back from his distraction, “Hum? Oh, sorry,” turning to stride down the corridor a few more meters, he backed into a fireproof security door silently and motioned his three companions to follow him. Samson answered the question in a whisper, which was duly picked up and boosted by April’s microphone, “Because they are professionals. These guys are really good.” He checked the stairs up and down, they clamored and clanged from far below, but that was still some distance away and not of immediate concern. What could be hiding on the next two landings was of concern.

At the next higher landing Persephone latched onto Samson’s belt in the small of his back and followed as closely as space and movement allowed. Samson’s careful hunter’s movements around the corners set them drifting up two levels of the building before he stopped and cracked a door, still maintaining a tense silence, he peeked into the corridor. Satisfied it was empty he motioned the rest through the door and pointed along the wall where he wanted them to wait and slipped the door closed silently behind them.

Samson unfolded the sword and pistol from his chest, in an effort to silently close the door, and prevent them from rattling on the metal. He lowered the blade, by opening his hand. As the blade swung forward and down, he tracked the door at the far end of the corridor with the pistol. Persephone had maintained her distance. April had not, and when Samson snapped the blade back up into place behind him along his right forearm, she almost received a nasty gash across her chest and chin, had she not stopped in place at the last second. Samson was focused on the doors to their front and didn’t even realize she had been so close.

As Samson plodded forward, Persephone reattached her hand to his belt and was followed by April and Guillermo.

The next office was occupied by dozens of workers in the maze of stations and terminals. Samson didn’t want to dally and picked up the pace. These unperturbed people had not seen or heard the chaos the hit squad was creating below. Since they were all equally surprised and there were no bad acting jobs, he was confident they weren’t being held as hostages by hidden assassins.

He double-timed his group through the several hundred meters of office space.

Samson paused at the next set of doors several minutes after entering the office. April, still slightly out of breath and still without shoes, rephrased her question, “How do you know they are professionals?”

Samson looked back the way they came and saw only an office settling back into whatever its normal routine was. He answered calmly, “Because these guys are good. They are highly disciplined, well trained, and consistent.” Pulling the other three behind the structural support and flush with the door jamb he decided they could take a moment to catch their breath. His quick once-over of Persephone was that she was worried but otherwise unharmed. The other two were their own problem and none of his.

The reporter in her had to fill the air, so she asked, “How do you know?” April gasped as the exertion and stress worked her harder than any trainer ever had before.

Samson answered easily, “I can tell by how they move and how they behave.” He asked, demanding April think, “As they were trying to sneak up on us, did you hear a single one of them say anything all along that catwalk?”

April took the moment to slow down and recall and couldn’t remember hearing a single word passed between the attackers. The only sound they ever made was when they were hurt. “No, I don’t remember hearing them talking to each other.” She was standing straighter and somewhat recovered after their brief breather and the sane calming questions.

Samson filled in, “That’s right. They were using hand signals to coordinate all their movements. You couldn’t have seen it where you were, but they also held their fire and maintained good discipline when they had members of their team in the front. That was how I could hit so many of them.” Looking around the office in their immediate area, Samson noticed the number of eyes taking interest in them again. He decided the break was over and it was time to move. Holding one finger up to forestall her next question, he kept them back along the wall while he crouched low and pushed the door open for a peek down the next corridor.

This one was a warren of mid-level executive offices and Samson cursed. It was not how he remembered the blueprint for this level. He motioned the rest to follow and set a rapid pace but kept them low, as they hurried past the dozens of open and closed office doors, some occupied others not. Strange looks followed them but fortunately no bullets.

The sign for ‘Shipping and Receiving’ reoriented Samson to their location. He realized they were several floors above where he thought they were. That was why this was not just another cross tunnel, along the exterior of the factory. Why they would use the same floor plans on a dozen floors in a row was irksome enough but not labeling them was just aggravating.

Then it dawned on him that at this level they would all use the elevators anyway.

Thick doors flanked both far ends of the corridor, one on the left leading to an exterior stairwell that traced its path to the lower levels for fire evacuation. On the right was the difficult and risky decision his navigation error had forced on them.

April accused more than asked, “If these men are so professional how are you handling them so easily and how are we still alive?”

Samson caught himself in a rueful chuckle when he remembered that he was on camera and on a live broadcast, with Persephone still hanging onto his belt, “Because what we are doing is so stupid and un-tactical that they have to work extra slowly.”

Confused, April pursued him, “What do you mean by that?!”

Samson calmly narrated, “April think of it this way, those men know what they are doing, every turn they have made they have paid while following us along that catwalk. Their training and long experiences are screaming at them to take it slow and be cautious because if they run into it, they have to worry that I have more bullets than they have men left.”

She snapped, “Well then why the hell are we crouching here in this stupid hallway just waiting for them?! Why aren’t we running like hell?” April’s demanding questions continued to roll, “How do you know what they are doing now? How did you know that man was going to step out when he did? The one you hit with your sword?!”

Samson sighed and hated thinking about all those questions but liked what he would probably find on the other side of the door even less. The delay would actually serve his purpose, hopefully. “We are here because I don’t want to go through this door yet. We have been running like hell. I know what they are doing because it is what I would do … What was the last one?”

Persephone grumbled, “The sword…”

Reminded, Samson continued, “Thank you … The sword. I caught that guy because they do the same thing, the same way, every single time. Professionals remember? First, there was heavy crossing fire from the far side team, then it shifted slightly outside, even when they possibly had me for an easy target. They were acting professionally to preserve their assault element safely while providing suppressing fire. It was close enough and consistently disciplined enough to keep most people’s heads down. That was when I motioned you all back along the wall and to get low, they shift fire before the breach team moves forward, so they don’t hit their own men. They were setting their assault team up for the kill and maintaining discipline, and not all diving in for the lucky shot like amateurs would. They did that really smoothly without shouting, which is really hard to do under fire. It takes skilled soldiers to do it right with spoken commands, doing it without verbal cues requires hundreds of hours working together very closely in training and rehearsals. Then I listened for their boots. When I heard them stop, I waited for their signal.”

Struggling up from the depths of confusion and information overload, April asked, “Their signal?”

Samson smiled again, this time a little wickedly. “Yes. The point man couldn’t take his eyes off the corner where we were hiding. I was listening for the man behind him to tap him on the shoulder.”

The incensed and frustrated reporter sagged when she asked, “Tap him on the shoulder. What in the great blue sky does that mean?”

This time Samson did get a chuckle, “I told you he couldn’t look back and the guy to his rear couldn’t speak or hadn’t spoken, so I knew it had to be some form of tactile signal. I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew the point man had to feel it through his equipment. The guy behind him just tapped the point man twice on the shoulder to let him know everyone behind him was set. When I heard his uniform rustle and his boot heel stick to the catwalk I started to move.”

A stunned April could only manage a confused, “Oh…”

Samson’s barked laugh startled her back to reality, “Don’t worry April. I’m still trying to figure out how you walk backward doing interviews with Persephone so you can face the camera the whole time and not fall over.”

April was baffled and told them, “Well that’s easy! I just do it! I know where I need to be and can see from Guillermo’s eyes and movements if there is anything behind me.”

“Exactly”, Samson cut her off, “You just know where things are and where they should be because it’s your job. Just like you, I’ve been doing this stuff all my life and it really isn’t that different.”

Persephone chimed in, “Samson.”

Samson asked, not wanting to rekindle the last spat she held, “Yes, Persephone?”

Persephone challenged, “Are you done playing Ancient Earth, Ancient Chinese Philosopher man? I would like to leave before someone hears your teachings from this mountaintop precipice, situated high atop your massive ego, and finds us.”

She smiled at his scowl and wounded pride.

A corporate royal Lady groaned into her hands, at the formal table, as her guest chuckled, at her wayward daughter’s ill manners and bad jokes. Her husband barked a laugh, which stirred another tittering in the mixed company at The Citadel and drew his wife’s momentary ire at the dinner table.

Chapter 61)

Samson eased the left door open a fraction of an inch and immediately leaned back and placed his finger at his lips for silence. He crept forward onto the catwalk. Part of his problem visualizing was that the internal layout and plans for the factory’s office and administrative buildings were ‘separate’ from what the designers considered the mechanical systems of the factory.

Persephone slipped through the door behind him, staying low, April, then Guillermo followed. Guillermo smartly and quietly guided the door shut behind himself. He had momentarily forgotten the camera in his hand which spun and panned. Guillermo’s camera inadvertently fell out of focus, and momentarily fell victim to the more pressing task of ‘not dying’. What the viewers saw as a result of Guillermo’s movement was carnage. Several hundred meters away across the cavernous plant was a scene strewn with broken bloody bodies, bullet holes, wasted equipment, and blood stains splattered across the walls. It was like some macabre artist’s nightmare. When Guillermo regained control of the camera, he realized what he was seeing and adjusted his sighting for a more accurate assessment of the carnage from start to finish. He was no expert and it was a long two hundred meters away but there were at least a few dozen dead bodies down there. Since he broadcasts live so rarely, he forgot for the moment that there would be no editor splicing these images or acting as censors and filters. He just did his habitual video capture of everything and let the editorial process sort it out later. Instead, he zoomed in for his own journalistic interest to satisfy his meticulous attention to detail the story, so he swung back to track their progress again.

His zoom pulled out details of the carnage Guillermo wished immediately he could forget that he ever viewed it in the first place.

Guillermo panned back over April and his two subjects. They were creeping slowly along the catwalk. Only long practice with the tool of his trade allowed him to pull the zoom in that quickly and accurately. They had only moved a few meters down the walk.

Samson turned suddenly and held his finger to his lips, along his pistol, and pointed down. Guillermo crouched to the side and noticed, about fifty meters to their front, and below, two of the gray-clad assassins slowly scanning the opposite side of the factory through their rifle scopes.

As they crept painstakingly slowly along the metal, Guillermo was very glad April had lost her shoes somewhere along their way. Focusing on their tedious progress back to the silent riflemen below and back, he was just doing what he always did. He was capturing the best images he could, in the most logical and easiest-to-edit fashion possible. While he patiently slipped along behind the other three, the billions in the audience that he had forgotten he was connected to needed to hold their collective breath.

They were directly over the riflemen, who were intent on their sight pictures.

Samson was right.

They were completely silent, communicating only in hand signals. With enough patience and time, you could decode the signals and understand what they were telling each other but creeping along a catwalk only a few meters over their heads while they were trying to kill you was not the place to do that exercise. Not when their full auto rounds would chew chunks from your hiding spot and there was no cover between the barrels and your soft, squishy flesh.

Once to the far side, Samson reversed their train. He placed himself in the rear, with Persephone towing him along by the belt while he covered the assassins with his one working pistol. April was in the front guiding Guillermo while he walked backwards for a change recording back and forth between the assassins, Persephone and Samson.

Backwards they crept until April’s hand touched the door at the far end of the catwalk. She stopped. The door didn’t open. Turning back in a near panic she said in an all too loud whisper, “It’s locked! We’re stuck!”

All three of her fellow escapees rounded on her, even her trusty cameraman. All shushed her. Samson turned back to the rear guard. They didn’t stir. Her voice must have been lost in the cavernous room.

Backing along the railing and covering the riflemen almost a hundred meters away and down, below their feet, Samson tried the door gently. Turning to face it in frustration it was a single-angled door catch.

Samson raised his pistol to the lock. He stopped and looked at his blade, then back to the door.

Slipping the blade between the flush doors he tripped the bolt and pushed out into the hall. The surprising movement of the doors caused the four to tumble into the hall, in their press to get away from the enemy rear guard. Samson ran face-first into one of the enemy riflemen in gray, while the assassin turned to look at the locked door that had suddenly opened behind him.

Tangled with Guillermo, Samson couldn’t raise the pistol. Instead, he punched past the man’s face with the blade along his forearm. The blade thumped to a halt after passing through the assassin’s oral cavity, cracking the hinge of the jawbone, slamming the back of his head into the wall behind him, and severing the man’s cerebral cortex at the base of his skull.

Samson felt the movement of another gray assassin behind him. He pulled his arm back, ripping the blade free from the nearly decapitated enemy. He stabbed the center mass of the next target he saw. Samson’s force of movement was to his right rear. He was still tangled with Guillermo on his left side and dragged him over the slumping half-headless man. Samson’s follow-through pulled Guillermo over the tangle of the decapitated man’s legs and left Guillermo staring down the silver blood-streaked blade into the other guard pinned to the wall, through his nasal cavity.

The pinned rifleman’s eyes were devoid of life, but his jaw was working. His weapon clattered against the wall, dropped from his lifeless hand but held off the floor by his harness. He blinked and twitched periodically pulling his right shoulder up and slapping his left shoulder and elbow down and back into the wall.

The eerie part of the whole thing was the blinking and moving jaw. Like the adrenaline that spilled into his system when his battle buddy died, etched the last nerve impulses into his muscles and set them to repeat. The last nerve impulse was to raise and fire his weapon.

Guillermo was staring straight across Samson’s chest, down his arm, over his bruised, swollen, and dislocated right trigger finger, and Guillermo’s sight slipped over the horizontal blade, that sliced the nose, leaving the point sliced, but the sides still in place, to hang absurdly as the only visible wound. Everything Guillermo saw, was translated directly into the lens of the vid camera, he was holding to his face. In less than three-tenths of a second Samson had delivered two lethal sword strikes to two separate targets, while tangled with three civilians. The deed was done so quietly the rear guard didn’t hear a thing until the doors, forgotten in April’s hand, slammed shut.

Told as a story among friends in the barracks, a listener would have discarded it as barracks lies and wishful fantasies.

But this deed was done on camera and broadcast live.

No one realized what they were seeing. It all just happened too fast. The viewers were all too hypnotized, by the stunningly close and brutally fast actions.

The worldwide viewers were collectively stunned until Samson ripped the blade out of the wall, allowing the second body to fall.

The heavy bony mass of the dead man’s skull carried the point of the blade to the floor.

Samson grumbled his wordless irritation.

He placed his boot heel over the assassin’s neck and yanked.

The sickly crunching-sucking sound, of the blade pulling free of bone and brains, wretched millions of viewers’ stomachs at the same time.

Samson calmly enunciated, “It’s time to go.”

The calm statement, directed at them like he was telling them they were leaving a foodcourt, knocked his three companions into action. They followed silently, keeping pace with his slow jog down the corridor.

Samson used the fingers of his right hand to pull the next door open. His blade pointed to the ceiling as the stairwell door slipped open. His group and the viewers, following along through Guillermo, heard the thunder he had heard earlier, only louder, and Samson again cursed his luck as the door handle slipped from his fingers, looking back to Persephone with a pinched and pained expression on his face. His pistol tapped back and forth against his left leg between the barrel and magazine slide. The tense pause was broken for all when he sighed, “Come on, back to the offices. We will go up from there.”

He turned first and was several steps ahead of the group as exhaustion began to creep into their bones. Desperation was starting to sink into his charges. Even Guillermo’s hands weren’t as steady as he would have liked as he followed with the camera lens focusing on Samson as he trotted ahead to the double doors at the far end of the hall.

They hadn’t gone ten steps when the double doors to the front jarred and the right was flung open. Pistol already tracking when the gray rifleman pushed the door open, Samson pulled the trigger in rapid succession while shouting “Back! Stairs!” Over the violent cracks of Samson’s weapon, the rifleman responded in kind, lunging forward and to the right while falling prone so more could spill through the breach he had created.

In the second it took him to fall to the floor and realign his rifle with his targets, the following two attackers breached the hallway and added their fire to the pointman’s fire, from their own combat crouches.

The streaks of white light ripped the air in both directions as the five-millimeter pellets ionized the air, filling the confined area of the hallway with an ozone stench. It was like the smell after a ‘too close’ lightning strike.

Near the end of his magazine and his frantic firing Samson was aiming for the attacker between the right-side crouching target and the prone point man. He missed and winged the crouching man on the far right instead. The wounded man spun and fell to his right from the impact low on his right leg. He fell directly into the path of his middle companion who hadn’t noticed his buddy was hit and falling into his line of fire. Both men had just enough time, as it was already too late to see what was coming, as they passed into each other’s vision, face to face. His vision narrowed down his sights. The shooter didn’t have time to release the trigger. He pumped three rounds into his falling buddy’s head which shattered like a crushed melon.

The sound of the impact and curse from the man behind him distracted the prone point man. It caused him to look back as the dead man thumped into the wall and began to collapse.

The body hadn’t hit the floor before the point man was recovering his sight picture and Samson ran dry of rounds. Ducking behind the double doors to the stairwell the thunder of approaching attackers on the stairs was even louder.

Samson barked instructions to the three wide-eyed fugitives he was trying to protect but it failed to uproot any of them, “Upstairs! Go!” When he undid his pants belt buckle, April’s jaw dropped in shock as he began to undress in front of her. He shouted again, “Move!”

Whipping the belt out of its loops and ripping several in the process Samson wrapped it around the interior, waist height, and levers of the two doors binding them closed. Samson made three full loops and buckled the ends making them tight and secure over a triple-wrapped nylon belt.

Turning to follow the three who should have been running, he found them only standing there with dawning expressions of comprehension. But they were still only one landing up, unmoving. Samson said calmly, “Go … That will slow them down for a while unless they have explosives or blow out the doors with rounds.” He pushed April and Guillermo up the stairs after Persephone who had already turned to begin the climb.

The pounding of feet on the stairs was getting closer. Samson considered putting a few rounds down the stairs to slow them down but realized he needed to change magazines. Changing magazines was something he normally did automatically but had almost forgotten in the fury of the moment.

He slapped his new magazine into place and stowed the empty.

The group had made four switchbacks on the stairs before a body thumped into the door below like a battering ram trying to break open the fire doors that Samson had expended his belt to secure.

Frustration and expedience thrust the attackers into an anger-fueled rage as they fired repeatedly into the doors. There were many more than just two rifles from the hall earlier and the fugitives could hear clearly that they were cutting the metal as quickly as an industrial saw could have cut the lock open.

Another three quick turns up the stairwell, the rapid firing ceased, and the double metal thumps of the doors being thrown forcefully opened again, signaled the end of the last barrier between them and pursuit.

More, and much closer, boots joined the crescendo of approaching thunder from far below.

At three meters per floor, a meter and a half elevation per switch back, and passing the tenth switch back Samson knew it was nearly three times that many stairs before they reached the roof.

It was a foot race now, and the dogs were closing on the bear.

April continually pushed Persephone from behind with her left hand while pulling herself up the stairs faster with her right on the handrail, because Persephone kept looking back at Samson. Guillermo was beginning to turn red-faced and sweat profusely.

The annoyingly calm little voice in Samson’s head asked, ‘I wonder how long it has been since he went to the gym?’ Thrusting aside the annoying and useless thought with a growl, Samson lunged up the stairs and must have startled the others into moving faster.

At the two-thirds mark, Samson turned suddenly and randomly fired half a dozen rounds down the stairwell at the pursuit.

It was immediately answered in kind, from under ten meters below. They were closing. But now they had to add some caution to their step.

Skidding to a halt on top of his gasping charges, standing at the top of the landing, next to the door April pleaded, “It’s locked! What do we do?!”

Forcing past the journalists Samson rumbled, “Bullshit”. Handing the hilt of his bloody blade to Persephone, Samson mumbled “Hold this please.” As soon as the sword’s balanced weight was gone from his hand, Samson lunged an adrenaline-fueled right foot into the door plate just above the handle. The door bent open at the top, but the metal snapped back into shape and remained closed.

Furious at his failure to open the door, Samson stepped back with a fierce growl and launched his whole body into the door. At his furious rumble, nervous and frayed, attackers below mistakenly began firing up into what they feared was his last desperate attack.

Instead, the audience at home watched the man smash bodily through the fire and security door. He disappeared into the hole he made in the wall where the door had once stood.

The bolt had held. The door hinge mountings in the concrete failed. The whole door collapsed into the outside world, and Samson fell with it. He smashed his head on the ground in a plume of shattered concrete and construction dust.

Shaking off the stars, looking left and right from his kneeling palms down orientation, he pointed right, “That way…” He pulled himself to a crouch while both women arrived at his arms. He could see Guillermo’s shoes as he shook his head. Construction dust fell from his hair as he shook his abused shoulders and joints back into place. “My nanobots are gonna hate me for that…” He allowed Persephone to steer him to the right while ignoring April. “I’m going to be really hungry tonight.”

Samson shook his head, one last time, before coming fully back up to speed. He made sure he still had both pistols, working and damaged.

Samson heard April, ever the reporter, ask, “Why would your nanobots hate you? And how did you get nanobots?!”

Trotting along the cut-out channel between the exterior wall of the factory and the massive landing grid to the right, Samson answered, over his shoulder, “Because they accelerate my natural healing, and I just made their job harder. I have nanobots because I’m a Guardsman First Class.”

Samson received his blade from Persephone. He led them up the right turn and onto the ramp up to the landing grid. The finished crates and containers were being automatically hoisted into position in the cargo tender’s myriad of ports and receiving slots. This one was preparing to go orbital by the looks of the containers.

Finishing with the ramp he silently pointed the others to run around the shuttle, under its nose and left to its rear.

He ghosted along the raised lip of the grid, pistol pointing down at the exit and cracked door frame below his feet, lying miserable and broken in the late afternoon sun.

The first man through the breached door cleared right and tracked to the left, instantly with his rifle. Samson put two rounds into the back of his head, dropping him instantly. Samson tracked down to the second target as he stepped into the trench. The number two man tracked the origin of Samson’s rounds and returned fire in a fraction of a second.

Samson’s rounds missed high, as he ducked back to avoid the track of the rifle, followed by the rifle’s rounds. His rounds whacked harmlessly into the exterior wall of the plant missing his target.

Sprinting back to the others while the rifleman’s rounds continued to track and burn into the air in front of the shuttle’s nose. Samson could look over his shoulder and see additional tracks of rounds added to the suppressing fire and the pointman’s fire moving rapidly to the ramp as he moved quickly to create more space for the rest of the team behind him.

As massive as the shuttle was, it made for disappointing cover from weapon fire. The constantly changing position of containers and loading lifts made the landing legs the only viable cover. Thick as they were to support the shuttle’s massive weight you couldn’t hide behind one all day. And you certainly could not hide with three other people.

‘Interesting’ was a bad word, during Samson’s military service, and it applied here.

The new point man was the first onto the grid and took some time to locate the four fugitives through the chaos of the cargo tender’s loading procedure. Once he did, he wasted no time before laying down accurate and disciplined fire in their direction. His rounds plunked angrily off the shuttle’s thick legs and the containers, while he advanced slowly, pitting and scoring the metal of both.

Samson’s paltry group fell back to the control tower at the far end of the landing pad and the additional cover it provided.

Over the hundred-meter distance across the landing grid, the pointman was followed by two, then five, then ten, and finally, thirteen companions, making a total of fourteen men with rifles trying to kill them. All those rifles were stacked against Samson’s one little pistol.

When the fugitives had worked their way all the way around the control tower to the back, the far side from the attackers, Samson stopped them and peaked around the far corner they had reached. He peaked out quickly.

He unhappily observed that the attackers advanced in an orderly firing line with good spacing, active scanning, and combat crouches. Samson knew it was the end of this particular line.

Dragging himself back Samson looked at Persephone, “We can’t stay here … are you ready?” Samson wiped his blade off on his pant legs and snapped it home in his scabbard.

April pleaded, “Ready for what,” while Samson and Persephone ignored her.

Persephone’s frayed nerves made her voice high, “I don’t want to do this, Samson. This is really scary.”

Slipping past their debate, Guillermo stuck his camera around the corner. It was for only the second time that day that he spoke while he was recording, “Samson, you might want to look at this…”

Standing behind the cameraman, before the nothingness of the ledge, around the control tower and the two-kilometer drop to ground level, hand on Guillermo’s shoulder Samson peaked over the camera and at the advancing gun line.

He had seen the gun line. What he hadn’t seen before were the employees of the plant, silently spilling onto the grid, behind the assassins, advancing and focused for the kill.

Speaking without thinking as his brain-mouth filter failed again, Samson stated, “Shit. Well, this is going to get ugly…”

Then it did.

The advancing gun line of assassins, which was not less than fifty meters away, hadn’t been watching their rear, they were too intent on the coming kill. The assassins noticed the crowd behind them when April’s fan, Sven, holding a giant metal wrench of some kind, jumped into the air and clobbered one of the riflemen on the wing of the line formation. The heavy wrench and crushing blow delivered to the back of the man’s skull sent a horrific crunching sound that alerted the other attackers and set the employees into a frantic charge. A melee with the attackers ensued.

The first man struck was dead before he hit the ground. His skull was shattered into a giant dent, around the head of Sven’s wrench.

For the first time that day Samson heard a verbal command from the attackers. “Second, assault through! Third and Fifth, rear guard! Move!” Four attackers advanced firing at a run, while nine that must have comprised the remnants of the other two squads formed into their own distinct but unbalanced formations to ward off the press of the surprise rear attack.

Samson grudgingly admitted, “Good troops,” while he pulled back from the edge.

Instead of finding Persephone, he found that April had moved next to him and she accosted him with the question, “Why do you say that?”

Samson informed flatly, “Because they know if they are taken from behind, they will all die. They are also good enough to know that they need to finish the mission to make it worth their while, which is why the remains of their second squad are attacking under the cover of their fellows.” Reaching Persephone around and past April, “Persephone, are you ready? Remember what we talked about?”

Persephone accepted, “I do,” she didn’t look convinced.

April plunged into where she was unwanted again and asked, “Won’t those men in the back die?”

April was really starting to annoy Samson. He snapped, at her lack of understanding and disrespect for the enemy’s heroism, as much his own frustration, “April. They know they are dead anyway. Their op is blown, if they are caught, they will be interrogated and then executed. If they run, they will be hunted until they are found. If they fail to complete their mission, their employer will hunt them down and probably torture them to death for their failure because he won’t want them talking. The only way for any of them to survive this mess they got themselves into is to kill Persephone, fight through the mob, and then execute whatever their escape plan is. If any of them are going to live, the only way they can do it is this way. And that means that most of them know that they need to die so that some of their buddies might survive.” Turning back to Persephone, “Remember to push hard, body straight and relaxed, head up, point where you want to go.”

The reporter snapped, “What the hell are you talking about!?” April was scared, confused, and frustrated, and it showed.

Persephone smiled at her, “Thank you for our time together, April.” Sounding ominously formal, April could only watch as Persephone closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and leaped from the side of the building.

Stunned, April stepped rapidly forward and started to stumble over the edge of the building. Samson caught the back of April’s shirt and dragged her back to the wall, and away from the plunge to her death in the abyss below.

Samson’s rapid burst of rounds at the corner sent the assassin ducking back behind the wall. From the grunt, he was probably grazed over the left arm, since his back was now to Samson and pressed against the wall.

April looked at the sound.

Before April could turn to speak again or even register what had happened, Samson was gone too. He was a receding shadow, far down the side of the building.

The curse from the grizzled man in the gray uniform, with the blood streaming down his left shoulder, next to her startled her so badly she almost jumped out of her socks. The man turned the corner and signaled to his companions who were out of sight, around the corner. He too disappeared.

Following Guillermo, around the opposite corner from where the assassins had arrived then disappeared, the moment before, April realized the melee had ended badly and quickly for the men in gray uniforms, even with their rifles as soon as April and Guillermo rounded the corner of the control tower.

The man who had startled April rapidly shot and killed two workers on his left side with headshots and tracked back to the battle with his rifle where he took a rising haymaker to the underside of his jaw, from Sven’s wrench. The blow cracked his neck and jawbone. He fell lifelessly over the edge of the landing grid. As Sven turned around to his fellows, he saw April and smiled, “Hi honey! Look at me! I’m on vid!” Little did he know he was on vid live all across the planet. The rangy man had just become a star. The man who earned the headline, ‘single-handedly ended the attack on Persephone’, with a wrench of all things.

Persephone was still falling but flared her arms and legs to slow her descent like they had practiced on the bed at home.

She waited for Samson to catch up.

She saw him dive after her during her head-down dash for the ground.

This was so stupidly dangerous.

The plan was to free-fall along the side of the building if they ever had to make an escape like this and trace the buffer zone between traffic and the incessant billboards that hung along the exterior of every structure.

The problem was they were on the wrong side of the building. The plan was to ‘land’ using the gravity harnesses on one of the building’s transit hubs. That was around the building and getting farther and farther away with every second.

The closest transit hub was now ‘across the street’, only accessible by falling through over two hundred meters of air traffic, running horizontally. Never mind the fall at terminal velocity, to the ground, which made it much longer. All the while dodging vehicles and traveling diagonally.

Samson pointed from far above, at the only option and she nodded. He snapped his arms into his side and arrowed down to the transit dock across the street which was starting to fill with commuters trying to leave work early.

As he shot across the traffic, Samson was fortunate to avoid any vehicles.

Persephone grazed one but her anti-gravity harness nudged her out of the way before she and the vehicle collided into a tangled, bloody mess.

She was suddenly very glad Samson had insisted that they rework and reinforce their harnesses those weeks before.

She corrected course, from her brush with the air car which had slowed her and bounced her up. She was glad until Samson reached the terminal first.

His harness detected the rapidly approaching matter and kicked into high response to arrest his rapid fall. The cells worked perfectly, but the sudden anti-gravity projection bounced him around like a rubber ball in a tight corner and knocked dozens of people off their feet, as he distorted gravity in his local area, before he crashed to the ground.

Suddenly this was a really stupid idea.

She pinched her eyes shut at the last second of the fall and squealed in anxiety.

She bounced off the ground, rebounded into the wall, bounced back, and settled lightly to her feet next to Samson.

His groan, followed by protracted and heartfelt, “Ouch”, let her know he was still alive, as he rolled over onto his back.

The smoking scorch marks on his shirt along the lines where the harness’s anti-gravity generators ran, told her just what happened. He overloaded both sets and had dropped the last bit, in the grasp of normal planetary gravity, like the standard chunk of matter he was.

Her mid-flight bounce had slowed and saved her from that same fate.

As he lay on his back with both pistols showing and his chest smoking, the gathering irate crowd closed the distance, looking for blood. That is until they also realized he had two pistols showing. Then they quickly and quietly backed off, as Persephone knelt next to him.

When Samson’s eyes finally focused, he groaned, “That was really stupid. I don’t want to do that ever again.”

If he was healthy enough to crack jokes, he wasn’t going to die in the next few minutes. Persephone said, “I’ll send the assassin’s guild a memo, in the morning, reminding them to be more considerate next time.”

Samson groaned again as she helped him up from his back.

They still had to escape the crowd of spectators who would soon recognize her.

Thank You!

Thank you for reading this chapter!

Your next chapter is HERE.

If you liked what you read and you are interested in the full book the links are HERE on the Blood Debts book page…

However, if you are more interested in the narrated version, you can catch the start of your author-narrated series HERE:

Enjoy!