At her side, Hutten stiffened and stared at her with wide, dark eyes.

Jaq led her mercs out of the Commuter, spreading them to establish a perimeter and cover the aircraft against a rush from any direction. To any onlookers, the raiders would look like a troop of Indians led by the mage Tsung and her new paramour, the renegade Samuel Verner. As her mercs took their places, the people waiting behind the boarding barrier reacted to the invasion, but it was not the frenzied panic of a crowd. Instead, they split into small groups, drawing weapons as they moved. It was, as Jaq had feared, a trap. The single snatch was about to become a pitched battle.

“Code Alpha,” she shouted. All around her, the mercs put their counterplan into effect. Rawlins, the heavy weapons specialist, snapped down his target sight and braced his assault rifle. As the underslung grenade launcher dumped a full clip against the observation deck window, concrete and glass joined the shrapnel exploding into the deck and showering on the landing pad. A banshee wail assaulted Jaq’s ears as a stray fragment caromed off the whirling rotors of the Commuter.

Jaq smiled. There would be no snipers shooting down on them from the vantage of the observation deck. To her left, another of the mercs tossed smoke grenades, sending up billowing black clouds to screen the control center. Fugitive figures in white coveralls retreated through the growing black fog. The rest of the mercs laid down a fire pattern on the so-called passengers.

Tsung ran up and crouched at her side, “What in fragging hell do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s a trap,” Jaq said calmly. “The passengers are all security. Can’t you see their armor?”

Tsung snapped a glance. “Drek!”

“Grab Hutten,” Jaq ordered, pointing at the tall man standing amid the scattering bodies. “We’ll cover.”

Tsung waved Jason and the other Indians forward. With them in a wedge ahead of her, she followed in a crouching run.

Jaq smiled. A glorious bit of mayhem.

Crenshaw’s call came almost too late. The intruders opened fire as her people started to move. A few went down in the first volley and more tumbled to the concrete when the explosions ripped open the face of the arcology.

“No!” Hutten screamed at her side. “No!”

“Get down, you fool,” Crenshaw ordered, putting a hand on his shoulder to drag him down.

With unsuspected ease, he batted free of her grip. Then his other hand snaked out, crumpling her clothes and the armor underneath as his fingers closed into a secure grip. Lifting her off her feet, his eyes were wild. “Betrayer! I won’t let you do this. Not now. Not now! He promised me a life of my own.”

Crenshaw struggled in his grip. Bracing against his arm, she threw a break grip into his elbow. As her hand struck an unyielding surface, she felt a shock of pain. Hutten wasn’t modified; his madness must have spasm-locked his muscles beyond the leverage she could apply. There was no time for this. So far the invaders had kept their fire away from them, afraid to hit their treasure, but sooner or later a marksman would take her off Hutten’s hands. Even spasmed muscles couldn’t work if they were sliced; she extended her hand razors and raked them down Hutten’s forearm.

Blood flowed over tattered clothing, but his grip never slackened. She struck again and again, not caring if she had to turn his arm into hamburger before he let go. His sleeve shredded to rags, and she saw the damage she was doing. Then her fear of being shot escalated to horror as she realized that the wounds were closing almost as fast as she made them.

This was not a man!

Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she fought it back. Hutten had snarled when she cut him. If that meant he could feel pain, he was not invincible. She lashed her foot into his groin, knowing that he did at least one thing like a man.

Hutten whuffed in pain and surprise. He bent at the waist, enough that Crenshaw’s second kick went wide and landed on the side of his knee. The leg buckled and the two of them went down. Crenshaw rolled away and came to her feet in a crouch.

Her antagonist landed sprawled, holding his genitals. One foot supported by the curb of the waiting area. Without hesitation, she stomped down, satisfied to hear the bone break. Hutten howled.

No, not invulnerable.

The firefight raged around them. Her scan took in the smoking observation deck. That was going to be trouble.

She had to minimize her own exposure, both to the shooting and to the repercussions. She bent over the writhing Hutten.

“You’ve earned this, whatever you are,” she said, drawing her knife from the sheath at the back of her neck. The monofilament line grafted to its cutting edge would cut through almost anything, even the polysteel cord that bound Hutten’s briefcase to the locked band on his wrist. She applied the blade to his arm and smiled at his scream.

Shaking the severed hand free of the still-sealed band, she started for the end of the pad, keeping low enough that the boarding area fences provided cover. The service door that was her destination would get her back into the arcology without passing through the firelight, which had intensified with the belated arrival of the Red Samurai reserves.

Crenshaw was reaching for the door control when something slammed her from behind. She hit the concrete hard, scraping painfully across its rough surface. The case’s bloodied grip slipped from her fingers and skidded along beside her to stop, teetering, on the edge of the landing pad. She rolled over, ready to deal with whatever runner had caught her, then froze.

Hutten, teeth bared, held her ankle in an iron grip. He laid his no longer bleeding stump across her shin. As he snapped her leg bone, he said, “We’ll start with this.”

Crenshaw didn’t scream until she saw the splintered edges of bone emerge through her skin, Heedless of the pain, she scrambled back, crashing into the fence that kept her from hurtling over the edge. Her frantic motion overturned the briefcase and it slipped, taking the fall from which the rail had saved her.

Hutten moved forward faster than she thought possible, but instead of attacking her again, he leaned over the railing and wailed. She turned her head in time to see the case hit a projection at a lower level and shatter open, spreading a debris of cassettes and chips to the wind. Hutten collapsed, bent over the fence.

A little leverage was all it would take to flip him. As her hand touched his ankle, he revived and slapped her away. Crenshaw tasted blood from her split lip. He reached down, hauled her up by the hair, and slammed her against the wall, pinning one arm against the hard surface.

“That was my ticket to life,” he screamed into her face.