Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (44 page)

"Benjamin ..." He let out a sigh. "I take it Scott won't be making the rendezvous, then?"

"You'll see him soon enough." Saxon's finger tightened on the trigger. Adrenaline and pain coursed through him, and he had to work to keep

himself in check; all he wanted was to kill the man in front of him. But he had come this far, and across the sky deck he saw Barrett hoist Kelso

off her feet, holding her in front of him like a human shield.

"Do you really want to do this now?" Namir asked him, his tone almost reasonable. "You can't win this."

Saxon's eyes narrowed. "Your wife. Your kids. Do they know what kind of man you are, Namir?" he snarled. "Do they know how much blood

there is on your hands?"

Namir's voice was ice cold. "If you were a smarter man, you would understand. Every life I've taken has been to make theirs better. You and

the woman? That's a cost I'll pay without even a moment of doubt."

The stink of smoke was everywhere. Belowdecks, the fire was taking hold, overwhelming the automatic suppression systems—but no one was

leaving the Icarus until Saxon had what he came for.

"Ben" Kelso cried out a warning. "Federova—!" Barrett silenced her with a jerk of his wrist.

Crouched behind the helo, Saxon hadn't seen the Russian assassin. She did her ghost trick again, shifting visibility as the EM aura of her cloak

hazed the air around her. In a split second, he sensed the prickle of the stealth augmentation's field as she came at him. He shoved Namir away

and turned the shotgun before Federova could plunge a fractal-edged combat blade into his chest. The weapon boomed twice and glutinous

plugs of tangler-gel hit the assassin in the gut and sternum. The impact force was enough to blow her back off her feet and send the woman

skidding over the polished deck.

Spitting like an angry cat, Federova tore at the sticky mess, downed and for the moment out of the fight.

Namir didn't hesitate to use the assassin's distraction and whirled on Saxon, the crimson musculature of his augmented arms bunching as he

threw a blow at the other man. The joints pivoted in unnatural ways and he swept down two high-low arcs, the first fist clipping Saxon's temple,

the second knocking the police-issue shotgun from his grip. The weapon rattled away and vanished over the side.

Saxon recoiled, trying to fall back before Namir forced him off balance. He heard the snap and click of machined parts and saw Barrett's face set

in a feral grin as his cyberarm reconfigured, growing a length of cannon barrel, rising up to aim at him.

"No," Namir ordered. "I'll finish this." The Tyrant commander's face turned to fix Saxon with a cold, determined glare. "The responsibility is

mine. As it always was."

Namir snarled and surged forward.

Anna struggled in Barrett's grip, but he was inflexible, inescapable. She strained to breathe, watching Namir lead into his attack on the soldier.

The mercenary moved with unnatural speed, his limbs twisting on hydraulic shocks that made him more agile than anyone she had ever seen;

Saxon seemed lumbering and slow by comparison.

Namir went low and threw out his legs in a blur, sweeping around in a swift spin-kick that almost took Saxon off his feet, but the soldier did not

allow the attack to put him on the reactive. Instead, Saxon launched himself at his opponent as Namir regained his balance, charging into him.

Legs pounding, Saxon gathered up Namir and shunted him bodily across the sky deck in a fast tackle, driving him into a support stanchion with

a heavy crash.

Anna heard the grind of fracturing bone and the dense thuds of metal fists on human flesh as Namir struck at Saxon's neck and torso, his hands

blurring as the apparatus in his arms went into machine-fast retaliation. He punched at the bloody patch on Saxon's belly, drawing a howl from

his opponent.

Fluid spattered from the soldier's mouth as he let the mercenary commander drop, and Saxon engaged him with a flurry of punches and kicks.

Strikes went back and forth between the two men, some blocked and parried, others hitting home.

The two opponents seemed evenly matched—at least at first sight. But Jaron Namir had come fresh to this fight and possessed some of the

most advanced combat augmentations in the world; Ben Saxon was already on his reserves, his stamina running raw, fatigue poisons turning

his bloodstream into acid, the knife wound in his gut weeping red.

Momentarily dazed by a snap-punch, Saxon shook it off and threw a heavy blow that knocked Namir back. The Tyrant turned with the strike

and pivoted on one leg, whipping up the other limb to plant a heavy combat boot in Saxon's jaw.

Anna saw the blow flash home, but at the last possible second, Saxon snagged his former commander's leg and twisted it, arresting the

momentum. He pulled Namir in with all his might and dragged the other man off-kilter.

Namir stumbled and Saxon snatched at him, arms curving up around his shoulders to lock behind his neck. In a heartbeat, he had the Tyrant in

a breaker hold, and he squeezed, drawing a howl of pain from the other man. "I never should have trusted you," Saxon grunted, applying lethal

pressure.

"I was about... to say the same thing ..." managed Namir.

Saxon felt the other man's augmented arms squirming in his grip, and it was all he could do to hold on. Just a few more seconds, and he could

end this—
Namir's arms went rigid and turned forward. Before Saxon could recognize what was happening, the limbs shifted and moved against the balls

of their joints, twisting opposite the true and folding back against the lines of flexion. Dislocating the cybernetic arms, Namir swiftly inverted the

chokehold and tore himself free, snapping his head back to crack Saxon across the bridge of the nose.

He felt a hard shock of pain and blood gushed from his nostrils. Namir snaked away and snapped his arms back to a more human mode, lashing

out with a cross-handed blow. Saxon tried to block him, but Namir pushed in and caught his left arm—his human arm—in a steely vise.

Saxon cried out as the humerus bone snapped with a wet crunch, agony tearing up his nerves in a burning wave. With a savage wrench, Namir

pulled him aside and threw Saxon at the fuselage of the flyer. Unable to arrest his motion, the soldier slammed into the blunt prow of the black

helo and collapsed to the deck near the body of the dead pilot. The pain was blinding, and the impacts from the storm of punches had cast

scatters of static across the vision field of Saxon's optic implants. He dug deep, reaching for a last reserve of strength even as he knew he had

little left to give.

The attack at the airport, the fight with Hardesty, and now this ... Saxon was tapped out, running on vapors.

He heard Namir coming up behind him. "Time to end this," said the Tyrant commander. "No more distractions."

And then he saw his last chance, lying there before him. He reached for it.

Anna choked back a gasp as Saxon struggled to his knees, trying to bring himself back up from the deck. Namir stood over him, and cast a

quick, frosty glare toward her and the other Tyrants. "We fix our own mistakes," he told them.

He turned back to meet Saxon as the soldier came up on one knee, releasing a roar of pain and effort. Something metallic glittered in his hand

and he cracked it across Namir's face with brutal intent; a pistol, torn from the holster of the dead pilot.

The mercenary was knocked away, blood streaming across his face. Saxon rose, the gun in his machine arm, and he fired three bullets into

Namir's chest from close range. The shots would have killed a normal man, but the Tyrant commander wore a tac vest lined with armor inserts,

and beneath that he carried dermal shell implants capable of stopping any low-caliber rounds that made it through; still, Anna felt a ripple of

pain-memory as she recalled a bullet from a similar gun that had cut into her.

Barrett was shouting as Saxon raised the pistol's muzzle a degree higher and laid his aim on Jaron Namir's head.

The big man's grip on her neck tightened again, enough to draw a strangled scream from her lips.

"Saxon!" bellowed Barrett. "You kill him and the woman dies next!"

Namir lay in a heap on the deck, scarred and wheezing. He looked up, one eye gummed shut, the other the bright lens of an augmented optic.

"Go on, then," he panted. "That was a very clever recovery, Ben ... It's one of your best skills ... The ability to evaluate and exploit a tactical

opportunity. You're quick that way." He coughed up a string of bloody spittle. "So do it. Kill shot." He tapped at his cheekbone, under the

undamaged eye. "Right here. I'll die, and you'll have what you want. Your payback." On the lower tiers of the yacht, glass portholes shattered

as the fire continued to spread, waves of heat radiating up through the floor of the sky deck. "Icarus burns," said Namir, chuckling painfully at

his own joke. "And so will all of us, one way or another.

What's it to be?"

"Drop the gun!" Barrett shouted. Pushing Federova aside, he dragged Kelso to the front of the upper deck and shoved the woman until she was

half over the guide rail. "You test me and I swear to you, I'll drop her into the fire!"

The muzzle of the pistol wavered. He thought of Sam and his men, the ghosts he had seen in the gloom of the field hospital. He owed them this,

this last bullet. This measure of justice.

"Shoot me," Namir demanded, "or save Anna." He shifted, dragging himself to his feet with slow, agonized motions. Blood was streaming from

the wounds in his chest, but he never broke eye contact with Saxon. "You're aggrieved. You've been lied to and used. But that's the world we

fight in. That's who we are."

"Not me," Saxon bit out. "I'm not like you. I never was."

"Then you have to decide." Namir gave a shrug. "Is your need for revenge worth another innocent life?"

He would never be this close again. Saxon knew it with ironclad certainty—if he did not pull the trigger, Namir would slip away, the Tyrants

would vanish into the shadows cast by the Illuminati, and all the deeds they had done would go unpunished ...

And the cost would be only one innocent life. Just one single person. Another name on the endless roll of sacrifices laid down for the ideal of the

Illuminati's draconian one world order. Anna Kelso's death in exchange for Jaron Namir's, a man whose soul had to be black with all the horrors

he was responsible for.

He could not let him live. It wasn't right that such a man should have a life, a family, a purpose, while all Ben Saxon had turned to ashes around

him.

It is not right!

With a sudden snarl of fury, he flung the pistol away into the waters of the lake, turning to Barrett. "Let her go, you son-of-a-bitch."

Barrett grinned through bloodstained teeth. "Sure, whatever you say." He opened his hand and Kelso screamed as she went over the edge of

the sky deck and into the churning black smoke.

Saxon heard him laughing as he exploded into a full-tilt run, racing toward the far side of the boat. Barrett brought up his gun-arm and let rip

with a screaming hail of rounds that chopped up the decking all around him, shredding wood and plastic.

Without halting, Saxon reached the lip of the rail and threw himself over it, Barrett's shots hissing through the air around him.

One moment, her world was a fog of pain, consciousness hanging by a thin thread, and the next

Anna was falling into the mouth of hell, gasping as black smoke filled her lungs, the heat of an inferno beating at her. She landed badly on the

slant of the hull, a glass-and-steel slope that ranged away down to the main deck. Anna flipped over and tumbled. She threw out her hands to

arrest her plunge, but she couldn't find anything to grab on to. The smooth, polished glass resisted all attempts to grip it. She slid inexorably