Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,14
like I would in microgravity, bowling full force into the much smaller coil and bearing it to the ground.
Even on the way down, he managed to keep throwing those short, heavy elbows, and I grunted as I felt a rib finally give way from the force. But then I was on top of him, punching down with hands much larger and more powerful than they had once been.
The assassin twisted beneath me, somehow managing to free his legs and get them wrapped around my waist, locking his ankles behind me. I had been raised in microgravity, one more hab-rat in the bowels of Selene, where the station admins had scarcely bothered with the power expenditure to run the artificial gravity. I’d had my share of tunnel fights in a place where combatants had little choice but to physically lock together in order to exchange blows, so I ignored his legs and concentrated on driving my fists into his still-expressionless face. He somehow slipped past one of the punches, and lunged upward, wrapping one arm around the back of my neck, and shoving the other under my chin, pushing and pulling, closing my airway.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and surged to my feet, bringing my attacker with me. He kept his grip, and as my vision dimmed, I looked wildly around. The edge of the sink caught my eye and I lunged forward, driving my attacker’s back against the ledge. There was an explosive whoosh of air as his breath was driven from his lungs, and his grip loosened. Loosened, but did not release. I reared back and smashed him forward again, and then a third time. On the fourth, a resounding crack echoed in the small bathroom, and the squeezing pressure stopped, leaving me holding a dead weight.
I drew in a gasping breath as I dropped the assassin, letting him fall unceremoniously to the ground. A chunk of the porcelain from the sink fell with him, broken from the brutal impacts. I slumped onto the commode, and for a moment it was all I could do to draw in breath.
My mind raced. What the hell was going on?
I would find no answers sitting on the toilet, so I steeled myself and dropped down next to the would-be assassin. I checked for a pulse and found none. I had killed the man. Or at least, I had killed the coil. Presumably, he was backed up somewhere. Not that it mattered. Murder might not have been permanent, and the definition and penalties had changed with the advent of re-coiling, but if it wasn’t ruled as self-defense, I was still looking at serious time. As for the killer, would he simply be shoved into another coil, and sent after me again?
Why even bother sending an assassin? If the other me had learned something, he had taken it to the grave. The me I was now had no knowledge of whatever had happened in those last days. What was the point?
My hands shook as I rifled through the pockets of the suit, but I found nothing but the sheath for the mono-knife. I left that, and the knife itself, where it was. Apart from that and the clothes on his back, the man carried nothing. Sarah, is the Net still inaccessible?
No, Langston. It appears the assassin’s agent was executing a denial-of-service attack. Do you wish me to contact the authorities, now?
That was an interesting question. If I called station security, it was very likely that the whole thing would be seen as self-defense… but it would take hours to go through the endless questioning, and at the end of it, I would still be confined to the hospital while they continued the various psychological and neurological tests to make sure the re-coiling of my “damaged” backup had gone okay. And anyone looking to kill me would know right where to find me. Or, I could walk out now, leaving a dead man in my room, and raising all kinds of questions, but whoever was after me would have a hell of a lot harder time tracking me down if I just… disappeared.
No, I replied. Don’t contact station security. Display a map of this facility. We’re getting out of here.
A window opened in the upper left-hand corner of my vision, outlining a blueprint of the habitat. It was toroidal, a giant donut floating in space, no doubt spinning around its central axis to give the illusion of gravity. I flicked my eyes, cycling