Carnival

He was getting blasted tired of trying to second‑guess people smarter than he was. And it wasn’t made any easier when they were women.

If this was the same crew that had attempted to abduct Vincent–as the lousy perimeter guard’s bandaged hand tended to indicate–they might be armed chiefly with nonlethal weapons. They would want everyone alive.

Which would be why the woman controlling Katya was using Katya’s weapon. Because itwould be loaded with lethal rounds, and Lesa would know that. If one meant to threaten, it never hurt to reinforce your intention with a little evidence.

If one meant to act, however, sometimes the element of total surprise came in handy.

Kusanagi‑Jones moved forward. The wardrobe’s camouflage function was designed to bypass automated security. Mere human senses never stood a chance as he picked his route between the attackers. The target was of average height, for a New Amazonian. Her dark brown hair was cropped short and brushed forward into a coxcomb, dyed cherry‑red at the tips. She held Katya’s weapon with confidence, and her voice carried.

“Please place your hands on your head, Miss Pretoria, and turn to face the wall.”

Lesa seemed to be obeying, slowly and with deliberation. Her hands rose, her eyes unswerving on the gunwoman’s face. Walter’s leash still slid looped around her left wrist, and the khir hissed as she turned, its nostrils flaring. Michelangelo wondered how long it could balance on its hind legs–it showed no signs of strain yet–and he wondered also why the cherry‑haired woman didn’t just drop it. Whatever need kept them from harming Lesa, he couldn’t imagine it applied to her pet.

That was, he hoped, secondary. He found a position behind the gunwoman before Lesa finished her hesitation‑march pirouette. His moment would come when Lesa’s back was fully turned. The target’s attention should shift, momentarily, from controlling Lesa and Katya to ordering her troops.

That would be the moment when Katya would be at the least risk from his intervention. And he saw it coming in the shifting of the target’s weight, the instant when she drew a deeper breath, preparatory to speaking.

New Amazonia had specified that the negotiators come unarmed, all security to be provided by Penthesilean forces. And so Vincent and Kusanagi‑Jones had carried no obvious weapons. But a utility fog was, by its very nature, adaptable technology, and they carried data under diplomatic seal. And among those data were licenses for weapons ba

The cutting wire that formed between Kusanagi‑Jones’s hands as he raised them wasn’t actually a monofilament. It was composed of a single chain of hand‑linked foglets, and it was neither as strong nor as sharp as a monomolecular wire.

It didn’t need to be.

He formed his arms into an interrupted loop, as if to capture her in a surprise embrace, and brought the wire down.

It caught the target below the elbows. Slight resistance shivered up the invisibly thin wire as it made contact, and Michelangelo jerked down.

The target made no sound. For a hopelessly long time–a third of a second, longer–she stared in shock at the abrupt termination of her arms. Both her hands fell, and Michelangelo had just enough time to hope the pistol didn’t discharge from the shock when they hit.

And then the target’s heart beat and blood sprayed from her stumps, soaking Katya and spattering Lesa, Walter, and the wall. A thin moan filtered through her teeth, cut off abruptly as Michelangelo slit her throat, passing the wire through flesh with a quick, sliding tug that didn’t sever her spine because he snapped the filament off before it pulled completely through.

He stepped clear as she fell. Shock would buy him split seconds, but there were five more enemies to account for. With any luck, Katya would reclaim her weapon and help even the odds.

Michelangelo surrendered to the mercy of trained reflexes. He spun, moved to the next target, slipping in blood. Its pewter stink and the reek of urine rose as he took a second woman down, striking nerve clusters in the neck and solar plexus. A bullet sank into his wardrobe, the sting unbalancing, but he recovered as she fell. Lesa’s gun spoke; the fair‑haired man grunted as Walter plowed into his chest.

It would be good to have at least two for questioning. Michelangelo used feet and fists and elbows, gouged and kicked. A tangler splashed against a wall, shunted aside by his wardrobe. He heard a second one discharge, but it wasn’t close. He didn’t see where; it was a blur of motion in his fisheye, and he was distracted by the passage of blows with a gap‑toothed woman whose hair lay in flat braids behind each ear.

She couldn’t see him, but she could fight. Air compression or instinct, she parried six blows, each one flowering blue sparks as his wardrobe shocked her. She gave ground as he advanced. She would have caught the seventh on the cross of her arms if she hadn’t slipped in blood.

The grin was a rictus as she raised her hands, seared patches showing on her forearms, one foot coming up, bracing to roll her over and aside. Too slow. Michelangelo stepped forward between her knees and kicked her hard, in the crotch.

Her expression as she coiled around the pain was almost worth three very long New Amazonian days of being treated like a child‑eating monster, and a not very bright one at that.

Lesa’s gun was silent, and as Michelangelo kicked his latest target in the temple to keep her quiet, he saw her snared in webbing, writhing against the strands in an effort to free her weapon hand. Walter was down, too, sprawled on his side with a gash through feathers and scales across his ribs. Katya pushed herself to her feet, so drenched in blood as to be barely recognizable, but with her sidearm clutched in one sticky hand. The last two assailants left standing were casting left and right for any sign of their invisible attacker.

Katya lifted clotted hair from her eyes left‑handed as she brought her weapon up. “Stand down,” she said.

The women stepped forward. Michelangelo kicked the one on the left under the chin; they ducked sideways as the other woman discharged a chemical firearm. The three‑shot burst stuttered against his wardrobe, transferred shock emptying his lungs.

“Stand down!” Katya yelled, before he regained his balance, but the other woman didn’t lower her weapon. He turned, moved toward her–

–and Katya shot her through the heart. Michelangelo didn’t even see an impact. Flechette rounds, maybe. She went down anyway, looking shocked, and hit with a liquid thud.

“Shit,” Katya said, wiping her bloody mouth on a hand that wasn’t any better. “Shit.”

Kusanagi‑Jones spared a glance around the battlefield. “Nice shooting for a girl who doesn’t duel.”

Katya put a hand down and pushed herself to her feet, then planted both hands on her knees and stood doubled over, panting, for a moment. “Mom made sure I knew what I was doing with weapons. It isn’t her fault I think shooting people for points of honor is stupid. Michelangelo?”

“It’s me,” he said, snapping off his wardrobe’s filters as she came upright.

She blinked, looked down at the weapon in her hands, and back up at him. “Wow.”

“Good trick, huh?”

She swallowed and didn’t nod. Instead she came toward him, pistol hanging from half‑curled fingers, shaking so hard her shoulders trembled. He looked down, frowned, checked one more time for enemies in a position to do damage, and uncomfortably dialed his wardrobe down to offer the girl a hug.

Not even shaking, shuddering,from the nape of her neck to the soles of her feet, and the only reason her teeth weren’t clacking was because her jaw was clenched so tightly the muscles stood out under her ears. “Never killed anybody before?”

She shook her head.