Neutron Solstice

Chapter Eighteen

Krysty wroth was angry with herself. Angry that she'd let her emotions govern her good sense. Mother Sonja's often repeated motto, Strive for Life, had been momentarily forgotten.

It was scant consolation that Baron Tourment's evening roll call would be two sec men short.

They'd come in a couple of minutes after the giant ville chief had lumbered clumsily out. They were both small, with sallow complexions, looking as though they'd been standing out in the rain for too long. When they spoke, she heard the nasal tones of the bayous and guessed they came from Cajun stock. The one with a small mustache looked around thirty; the other, with a three-day stubble on his chin was nearer twenty. Both men carried greased M-16 blasters.

There hadn't been time for Krysty to do more than hiss a warning to the sobbing Lori to try to hold out and tell the baron nothing. Then the sec men were walking cockily to stand between them.

"Yellow hair or red?" one said.

"Yellow."

"Why?"

"Already got her snatch warm and waiting. Red's got hers sewn up in her pants. Baron might guess ifСn we cut her naked."

The one with the mustache, called Neal, ran a hand under Lori's disarranged skirt, giggling as she wriggled at the touch, "Warm and wet, Alain. And yellow as a possum's guts."

Krysty had tried. "You do that one more time, you sack of cancerous pus, and I'll snake on you to the fucking baron."

"He don't care," said Alain, nibbing a hand thoughtfully over his rough chin. "Long as we don't do no mortal hurt. He don't give a fuck."

"Why not do yellow first? Then fuck red in the mouth; and see how she likes it."

"I'd bite it off, if it's big enough to get my teeth in."

Both guards laughed. "First off, Alain here'd push the muzzle of his old blaster half a foot up your fucking nose, bitch. You even set your fucking teeth in me, and they'll be wiping your fucking brains off the ceiling."

It crossed Krysty's mind to let them. Lie there and blank her mind clear of what was happening to her. She could do it. She'd done it before, back in Mocsin with the sec boss there. Kurt Strasser. Before she'd met Ryan Cawdor.

But there was Lori.

The girl, despite her bizarre upbringing, had an oddly unflawed innocence. If Krysty lay there and allowed these two brutish pigs to do what they wanted, she knew they wouldn't stop at a simple fucking. That would just set them on other ways of humiliating and hurting them both.

"Gaia, help me," she whispered, closing her eyes, trying to relax and draw on the immense power of the Earth Mother. Part of Krysty's mind told her this would be futile. But she recalled what Ryan had said about leaving a place a tad cleaner than when you came to it. That she would do.

The cords that bound her ankles and wrists were made of waxed whipcord, tied so tightly that there was blood seeping from under the nails of her fingers and toes, burst from the swollen flesh. The pain had been easy to control, but she worried that she might not be able to function well in a fight.

"Help me, help me, help me," she repeated, drawing on the strength in the way that her dead mother had taught her, way back in Harmony.

"Be real good fucking this. Better'n that 'fayette slut with boils on her tits," sniggered Neal.

"Yeah."

"Me first."

"Sure. Like my bun well buttered," cackled the younger man.

Drool hung from the corner of Alain's narrow mouth. He put his head back and laughed again, and Krysty saw the way the cords of his neck stood out like strips of thin iron.

The girl took a deep breath, her mind wandering back unbidden to a fine summer's day in Harmony. She would have been around sixteen years old then and filled with devilment. Carl Lanning, a fresh-cheeked boy who would pluck her cherry, was the son of the blacksmith, Herb. The lad had teased Krysty about her powers, challenging her to show him. The forge had been deserted; the fires had slumbered with a dull red glow, and the hammers were ranged on the walls. She'd picked up a freshly hammered iron shoe, the holes rough-edged and silver. "Go, Krysty," Carl had encouraged her, watching. He'd fallen silent, unbelieving as she'd gripped the horseshoe, putting a surge of incredible strength into her hands and wrists. She twisted it as though it was saltwater taffy, then dropped it to the floor of the forge where it rang like a bell.

Peter Maritza and Uncle Tyas McNann had learned of her trick, taken her into the smoke-scented parlor and sat her beneath the framed picture of a racehorse called Skyrocket. They had taken her to task for abusing her unique gift, warning her she must use it sparingly and wisely. "Only when you must, girl," Peter had said.

Now, watching the two men prepare for their corrupt sexual pleasures with the helpless Lori, Krysty's lips moved.

"Now I must, Uncle."

Both men had their backs to her, fumbling with their trousers, their blasters laid on the stone by their feet.

"Gaia, help me," whispered Krysty, feeling her energy increasing until it seemed as though her body might burst with it.

The cord around her right wrist snapped with a sharp sound, like a metal spring failing. The left followed only a moment later. She began to sit up, the bindings breaking together as she flexed both legs.

"What the fuck!" said Neal, looking around. Alain hopped off balance, his eyes wide as saucers in his pinched face.

Even Lori, lying still, opened her eyes at the crack of the cords disintegrating, unable to believe what she saw.

Gripping the table's edge with both hands, Krysty pushed herself off, aiming her feet toward Neal's face; the tapered heels of her boots sledgehammered toward his mouth.

"You..." he began, the word rammed back into his throat as Krysty's boots struck.

The power of her attack was utterly devastating.

The silver-patterned leather heels hit the sec guard plumb in the center of his gaping mouth; the blow tore his lip into tatters of bloody flesh, splintering his few remaining teeth into shards of bone. His lower jaw cracked like a dry twig, dislocated, the awesome force actually ripping it from its socket so it flapped loose as he staggered backward. He was momentarily lifted clear off his feet.

But the effect of the kick didn't stop there. Krysty pushed off like a gymnast, her boots crushing Neal's nose, destroying both cheekbones, pulping the left eye to watery jelly. Fragments of bone were driven upward through the soft palate into the lower part of the brain, beginning the irrevocable process of death.

Alain was still teetering, his trousers falling to his ankles and revealing a shrinking penis and sagging balls. Had his reflexes been honed, there was a split-second when he might have gone for his blaster and shot Krysty, while she was still recovering her balance, nearly slipping in Neal's spouting blood. But his hands went in panic to his groin as his eyes searched for a way out. His mouth opened with the beginnings of a request for mercy. "Lady..." he began.

"I don't have the time," she hissed, swinging around, pivoting on the right foot, the left lashing out toward his abdomen.

This time it was the toe that did the damage. The craftsman who had worked away, chiseling silver into points to ornament the western boots, could never have dreamed a hundred years ago how lethal those elongated tips could be.

Though Alain tried to fend off the kick with his hands, he might as well have tried to throttle a cyclone. Three fingers were crushed and broken, the thumb on the right hand agonizingly dislocated. The foot powered on, puncturing his scrotal sac, transforming his testicles to crimson rags of gristle, nearly severing his penis. With the cracking of bone, the entire pelvic girdle opened up. The guard staggered back, banging against the table, his face as white as parchment, a mask of silent pain. Falling to his knees, he collapsed, blood fountaining from his ruined groin, legs kicking and jerking spasmodically under the colossal shock.

Turning from the dying men, Krysty effortlessly snapped the cords at Lori's wrists and ankles.

"How did you kill them like that?" stammered the blond girl, instinctively hoisting her panties back to their rightful position.

"I guess it's 'cause I'm a fucking mutie, girl."

"Can you open door?"

Krysty shook her head, feeling the familiar wave of weariness touching her temples. Using the powers always left her drained and enfeebled. It was the price that her mother had warned her that she must pay.

"Too tired. Must sit down, or I'll..." At her feet, the body of the younger sec guard finally ceased thrashing. Blood oozed silently across the floor. There was no sound from beyond the bolted door to indicate that anyone had heard anything from inside.

Lori swung her long legs elegantly over the side of the table and rose. She put her arms around Krysty, hugging tier tightly and feeling how the red-haired girl was trembling.

"Be fine," she said. "Them fuckers dead. Got what wanted. Don't cry, Krysty. Be fine. I won't talk. Nor you. Even if that giant mutie mongrel kills us. One day Doc and Ryan and J.B. an' Finn'll do for him. Beg pardon, but it's fucking true."

Krysty Wroth was still angry with herself. If she'd waited, then a better chance might have come. A chance to chill the baron himself and go out on that. Or even a glimmer of a break. Now she'd have to invent a story that the men had freed her and that she'd been lucky enough to take them by surprise. It would be some hours before her strength would return.

Her acute hearing caught the noise of Tourment's clumsy braces creaking outside; then the bolt grated back. She held tightly on to Lori's hand to keep herself from trembling.