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Standing before that very door, I froze.
Yes or no...
Yes...
(Inhale-exhale)... There was no choice anyway...
I activated the Sandy to full power and kicked the door down, but I didn't fly inside. This was the right decision, as I heard a burst of gunfire begin. But that wasn't the most dangerous thing; the spot where I would have been if I'd charged forward was sliced through by a katana. "Suk-a," I thought. I thought he didn't use those!
Just five seconds of subjective time, and I saw Smasher's figure appear in the doorway. I still hadn't disabled the camouflage system, and it hadn't stopped working, though it didn't hide me completely. Right now, I was an extremely blurred smear... Forward!
Smasher moved no slower than me; his speed was equal to mine, so this fight wouldn't be as easy as when Becca had my back. A dash forward! I ducked under the katana thrust out in a stabbing motion and struck his wrist, but it did nothing. The damned Borg merely twitched from my blow and immediately tried to kick me, but I slightly changed my body position, and his leg flew past.
Just as I was about to hit him, Smasher used the momentum from his kick to transition into a step and then a roll, escaping my attack zone. I was forced to dash again, but not toward him. Though dangerous, he wasn't the only opponent. I took the opportunity, slipped into the room, and shot toward his accomplice several times. However, I couldn't waste any more time on the accomplice, nor could I keep holding a pistol, which was useless in a fight at these speeds and which I'd only drawn to save a couple of steps. So, dropping the pistol, I immediately drew my tonfas, activated them, and blocked Smasher's strike with the crossed energy blades. However, the metal forming the Borg's body showed no sign of melting from the thermal effect of my weapons. That meant I had to hit critical points... But I only knew one, and hitting it would be tricky...
A kick! Suk-a! Good thing he tossed his sword after the first failed strike... and why did he even do that?! Well, I'm not complaining... I flew into the room's wall.
Praise the synthetic muscles and reinforced skeleton! Though that blow was painful, I didn't lose consciousness from the pain, didn't even black out. So, while still in the air, I managed to brace myself, and my feet slammed right into the wall, from which I pushed off using all the power in my legs.
I landed several tonfa strikes on his body and limbs. While I just hit his torso, when striking his limbs, I aimed for the joints. Even if my tonfas didn't melt metal, a few dozen such strikes should start affecting the Borg's body, if not the joints themselves, then the electronics inside. Strike-rebound-strike-roll....
That's what my fight with Smasher turned into. This Borg couldn't land a hit on me, and even when he did, it wasn't critical, and I braced myself while flying toward the nearest wall, which thankfully turned out to be quite...
It was at that moment, mid-thought, that I felt my feet go into the unknown... they simply crashed through the wall I was supposed to push off from, and I flew further, into one of the containers. I managed to gather myself and landed on top of it...
Smasher landed a little later and started some speech... Was he insane? Or... I smirked. It looked like he mistook my momentary stop for a Sandy deactivation! Suk-a, just like a cliché villain! Deciding to chat before killing his enemy! Idiot!
A lunge forward! I managed to reach him, jumped slightly, and even struck at that supposed weak spot and... SUK-A!!! I managed to jump back, seeing that my tonfa couldn't penetrate the layer of protection. And that bastard just smirked and continued talking about something.
Blyat! Either the critical points weren't located the same way in all his bodies, or he did reconnaissance and managed to change something in his body structure. However, the latter was unlikely; a Borg is a very complex mechanism and doesn't change just like that. He wouldn't have had enough time. So, the first option remained: the vulnerable points were located in different places...
A new dash... Right for the maw! The tonfa smashed into the Borg's mouth, and he staggered back from me. Smoke came from his mouth; it opened but couldn't close, but there were no other consequences. I seemed to have made a mistake...
Smasher lunged! I rolled left, correcting my trajectory at the last moment to avoid falling off the container where the fight continued. Smasher's foot landed exactly where my head had been moments before. Two more rolls, and I was finally able to get to my feet to start attacking my opponent's joints again. It looked like the only chance for victory was to make his limbs fail and then just rip his head off...
Well then... It looked like our fight was turning from an epic brawl into a common "annoy-your-opponent-to-death" type of duel, where I had slightly greater mobility simply because the opponent chose a different direction in his own development. If Smasher, with his experience, had relied not on armor but on mobility, he would have been one and a half to two times faster than me and would have already dealt with such an annoying little pest... But as it was...
The jumps continued. I bounced around my opponent like a flea, and he periodically tried to land powerful, sweeping blows on me... Kha! I flew into the wall of another container, and spitting blood, I pushed off it, and as I fell to the deck, I rolled away. And he did hit me sometimes!
Another hit, and now I finally noticed that his mobility was decreasing. The height he lifted his foot before bringing it down on the spot where I had just rolled was lower, which meant: keep going! Though this time, there were also a bunch of various... Hmm... if I compared myself to a flea just now, who were these Arasaka discards? Infusoria?
Shaking off the thoughts, I continued the senseless fight, which was not at all as beautiful as duels with villains are usually described. I just landed the same type of blows over and over... And then I noticed Smasher's arm froze for a fraction of a second of real time, but at our speeds, even that fraction of a moment seemed like eternity. So I rushed him precisely from the side of the frozen arm and started striking. Of course, he tried to kick me sideways, tried to turn around, but during that period of forced limited mobility, he took more than ten hits to the arm joint!
Perhaps this was the beginning of Smasher's end, as the next such pause cost him a completely disabled arm and a significant increase in my options... He understood this too, but he kept fighting, just as I continued to land blow after blow on his joints...
And then, Smasher froze. I got in front of him and delivered one powerful kick to his body, sending him flying toward the nearest container. During this duel, we killed about ten people—not just me; Adam himself didn't hesitate for a second if an employee of the corporation he worked for got caught in his strike. And neither of us was bothered that they exploded a few seconds after death. To us, those couple of seconds were equivalent to eternity.
But I didn't freeze for long. The thought of chatting with him even crossed my mind, but I dismissed it as idiotic, after which I simply walked over and ripped his head off. It was difficult to do, but I managed it, literally tearing it and the neck from the Borg's body. But I didn't stop there. Over and over, I tore off his limbs, and then pierced them from the severed end with my tonfa. I was simply burning out any electronics that might be inside. Only after burning everything out did I lower the acceleration and calmly walk through the ship, finishing off the Arasaka personnel.
"Ugh, finally…" I sighed with relief and disabled the Sandy when I confirmed there was no one else left on the ship.
"So, I'm left in proud solitude." I reported to the girls that I was fine and immediately heard a relieved exhale.
"You haven't checked in for twenty-nine minutes!" I blinked in surprise, then looked around.
"Well... the fight dragged on a bit."
"A fight?" Tension and a readiness to tear things apart were audible in Panam's voice.
"Yeah, that Smasher took too convenient a position, so I had to engage in a direct confrontation, as there was no way to deal with him quietly and discreetly. Truth be told, there never was."
"What do you mean?"
"The vulnerable point that Bookworm hit wasn't actually one on that body. Even when I shoved an energy tonfa blade into his maw, all he could do was stop talking. In short, it was a heavily armored platform with anomalously high speed. I'm afraid if they had prioritized speed over armor in its creation, I would have definitely lost."
"Blyat, are you messing with us?"
"No…" I shook my head. "He wasn't inferior to me in speed, except that his heavy armor hindered his movement slightly. Anyway, none of that matters. I'm alive, whole, and ready to give you work. I think we'll have to operate through me, just like at the very beginning."
"Well... we could take one of the boats and sail over…" Judy sounded slightly anxious, but unlike Panam, she wasn't gushing with emotion. Although, coming from her, such emotions were perhaps even louder than what Panam displayed.
"Well... we could, but we need to start working as early as possible. Although, I could just destroy everything, but…"
"Yeah, we get it. That ancient wreck must have a lot of loot that will be ownerless once we completely zero him." Kiwi chimed into the conversation.
"Exactly…" I confirmed her words.
"Alright, connect, but be careful, and first, let one of us take control of your chrome." Kiwi continued the conversation, and I immediately agreed to her plan.
"Granting access…"
"Access received…" Lucy's voice was right in my head, and I smirked at the corner of my mouth.
"Be careful in there…"
"Oh, come on, I'm not your first."
"But one of the favorites…"
"Flatterer… Now go to the computer and connect. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish."
"Can't argue with that…" I shook my head and went to the nearest computer, connecting to it and giving Lucy the ability to work with the data it held.
The next forty minutes passed in silence and peace. Lucy worked; I simply moved from computer to computer, not even approaching the bridge or the rooms with particularly powerful computers. And then the girls finally arrived.
"Mda, you guys had quite the party here…" Becca looked around, seeing the dents on the containers and deck from Smasher's blows.
"Only the iron-head was having fun here. I was mostly jumping around him, trying not to get hit too often. So…" I shrugged.
"Alright, stop talking. We need to delete all that goat's backups and sort through the data here. And honestly, I'm tired of eating store-bought food, so I really want to get all this done as quickly as possible."
"I could open a teleport to the clan, and we could grab some food that one of us would cook…" All the girls turned their gaze to me.
"Hey! I want some warmth and care too! By the way, the Iron Woodman beat me up pretty bad!"
"Aww, Davi-i-id…" Becca made a pitiful face. "...you cook better than all of us."
I looked at her mug for a moment. The other girls also put on pitiful faces, and I gave in. "Fine... but nothing serious. I'll make pizza and hot sandwiches for everyone. If the galley here is in working order, that is."
"I'll check!" Panam immediately dashed toward the superstructure, and within three minutes, she reported over internal comms that the ship's kitchen was fine. So, Triss had to open a portal, into which I disappeared while the girls continued working. Fortunately, I had disconnected from the local computers when the girls were still sailing up to the Ebony. I was tasked with gathering groceries and cooking for everyone....
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