Shadow of Victory - eARC Read Free

hand slammed into Bochart’s jaw, shattering it and snapping his head back viciously.
    That sledgehammer hand continued its upward thrust, and Harahap’s forearm snaked around the back of Bochart’s neck. His arm locked, his spine bent, and the heel of his right foot smashed into his would-be killer’s right kneecap as he jerked forward and down.
    * * *
    Grant’s surprise became shocked disbelief. Bochart’s nascent scream as his kneecap splintered ended before it was well begun in the sharp, clear crack of a breaking neck and his body flew forward over the target’s back. The vibro blade fell from his nerveless hand as he hit the sidewalk, whining as its blade sank effortlessly into the obsidian-tough ceramacrete before the auto cutoff killed it, and the man who was supposed to be already dying spun into Franz Gillespie like an outstandingly ordinary cyclone.
    Gillespie saw him coming and his own vibro blade cleared his jacket with a lethal, ugly whine. That was as far as it got, though, before Harahap was upon him. One hand, far stronger than it looked, locked on the wrist of his knife hand. The other hand darted up, wrapped its fingers in his hair, and yanked his face down to meet a rising kneecap. Bone crunched, blood splattered, and Harahap pivoted, turning in place and yanking the half-blind, three quarters-stunned Gillespie past him.
    The killer from Old Terra stumbled forward, directly into the nearer of the two locals, and both of them went down in a tangle of flailing limbs.
    The second local gaped in astonishment as the neatly planned ambush disintegrated. He was still gaping when Harahap swept into him and a bladed hand crushed his larynx like a mallet. He reeled backward, hands clutching at his ruined windpipe, and Harahap twisted back towards his fallen partner.
    Gillespie had risen to one knee, one hand clutching his demolished, broken face, trying to clear the blood from his eyes, while his other hand swept the ceramacrete, searching for his dropped vibro blade. The other local rolled to his feet with commendable quickness…only to meet the heel of Harahap’s shoe before he was fully upright. It crashed into his solar plexus, doubling him up, sending him back to his knees, and the gendarme captain brought the point of his elbow down on the nape of his neck like an ax.
    * * *
    It took Brandon Grant almost two-point-six seconds to reach his decision.
    Fuck the plan!
    His hand came out of his own jacket—and not with another ganger’s vibro blade—as the second Meyerite went down with a sodden thud. The pulser snapped up. It found its target, and his finger started to squeeze.
    * * *
    Harahap spun from the bloody-faced “ganger” still trying to find his feet as a burst of pulser darts shrieked past him. That hissing, hypervelocity scream was the sort of sound no one in his line of work was ever likely to mistake for anything else, and his eyes widened as the fifth and final ganger’s chest exploded in a vapor cloud of blood and shredded tissue.
    The corpse was still falling and Harahap’s brain was still trying to catch up with his trained instincts when the same pulser fired again. This time it was only a single dart, not a burst, and Franz Gillespie went down again.
    “I think you’d better come with me, Captain Harahap,” a voice said far too calmly, and Harahap looked up from the five sprawled corpses.
    “Pine Mountain’s finest will be along shortly,” the fair-haired, gray-eyed man he’d never seen before in his life pointed out as he slid his weapon back into the concealment of his tailored tunic, “and I imagine they’ll have all sorts of questions you’d really rather not answer. I know I’d rather not, anyway. So…”
    He half-bowed from the waist, flourishing one hand elegantly in an “after you” gesture, and pointed up the street.
    * * *
    “So perhaps you’d like to explain what the hell that was all about?” Harahap asked just a bit acidly fifteen minutes later.
    The