Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

came to infighting, the long blade could be wielded nowhere near as quickly as a knife.
    The Silvestri launched the first attack, his right hand moving almost too quickly for the human eye to follow. Owen parried the blade, and then had to jump back as the left hand came swinging in from nowhere with vicious speed and purpose, heading for Owen’s undefended gut. The flashing blade missed Owen’s stomach by a fraction of an inch. Owen brought his sword around in a swift backhand sweep that clipped the Silvestri’s head as he ducked at the last moment. And then they were circling again, calm and collected and deadly cold. The Silvestri feinted with his right hand, waited until Owen had committed himself to the counter, and then his left hand snapped forward, throwing the knife at Owen’s right eye.
    His sword was too low to deflect the knife, and both of them knew it. The Silvestri’s eyes widened in triumph. And then Owen’s golden Hadenmen hand came up out of nowhere to intercept the knife’s flight and slap it to one side. The knife chunked harmlessly into the tabletop, and while the Silvestri was caught momentarily off balance, Owen swung his blade with all his strength behind it and sheared cleanly through his opponent’s neck. The head fell to the ground and rolled away across the floor to bump up against the Kartakis’s feet. He made a silent moue of distaste and moved his feet a little away. The headless body stumbled forward a few steps, blood gouting from the neck, and then it crumpled to the floor.
    “Feel better now?” said Hazel.
    “Some,” said Owen. He wasn’t even breathing hard. That was when Pieter Romanov made his entrance, amid a loud hum of straining servomotors. Everyone turned to look as he stopped and posed in the doorway. He was wearing a massive exoskeleton, its metal bones surrounding and supporting him, while rectangular force fields buzzed angrily on both forearms. Owen had seen such things before, usually on dock-workers at starports, unloading heavy cargo. Because of their great weight they burned up a lot of energy really quickly, so they’d never really been practical for battlefields, but Owen had to admit it made a pretty good short-term answer to people like him and Hazel. “Come to me, monsters,” said
    Pieter Romanov grandly. “I am your equal now. I am faster than any human muscle can drive a man, and my strength is as the strength of ten because my tech is pure. I will rip your arms from their sockets, tear your heads from your shoulders, and my dogs shall feast on your entrails.” Owen was still trying to come up with a suitably elegant answer that didn’t involve four-letter words when Hazel stepped forward. “My turn,” she said firmly. “You’re not hogging all the fun, Deathstalker.”
    “Be my guest,” said Owen generously.
    Hazel strode over to the waiting Romanov and stopped a careful distance just outside arm’s reach.
    Other Hazels flickered in and out of existence around her, but she pushed them firmly away. She had a really amusing idea of how she was going to do this, and she had no intention of sharing the fun with anyone else, even other versions of herself. She holstered her projectile weapons and smiled nastily at the Romanov, who stirred uneasily. Whatever response he’d expected, being faced with bare hands and blatant self-confidence certainly wasn’t one of them.
    Hazel reached unhurriedly out to the abandoned meals on the table beside her and picked up a ripe piece of fruit. She crushed it in her hand, so that thick pulp and juice leaked through her fingers, and then she threw the sticky mess at the Romanov. Her arm snapped forward with more than human force and speed, and the sticky projectile shot past his defenses before he could even raise his shielded arms. The pulped fruit struck home with perfect accuracy, right in the heart of the exposed servomotors on the Romanov’s left arm, and made a wonderful mess of the gears. Sparks flew, and several of the motors shorted out. The Romanov yelled in outrage and surged forward, moving horribly quickly for something of his size and weight. Hazel hopped up onto the table and darted back out of reach of his arms. She snatched up more of the abandoned food, crushed it to oozing pulp, and threw it with devastating accuracy. The Romanov whirled his force shields desperately back and forth, but was no match for her speed and reflexes. More of his servomotors failed him, shorting out or