Nemes raises her arms now and crouches, clawed fingers extended. How far can the thing jump? Can it jump over me to get to Aenea? My strengths—two years boxing for the regiment during my Home Guard tour—I hated it, lost about a third of my matches. The others in my regiment kept betting on me, though. Pain never stopped me. I certainly felt it, but it never stopped me. Blows to the face made me see red—early on, I would forget all of my training when someone hit me in the face, and when the red mist of fury cleared, if I was still standing, I tended to have won the match. But I know that blind fury will not help me now. If I lose focus for an instant, this thing will kill me.

I was fast when I boxed… but that was more than a decade ago. I was strong… but I have not formally trained or worked out in all the intervening years. I could take hard blows in the ring, which is different than giving in to pain… I’d never been knocked out in the ring, even when a better fighter had sent me down a dozen times before the fight was called. Besides boxing, I’d been a bouncer at one of the bigger Nine Tails casinos on Felix. But that was mostly psychology, knowing how to avoid fighting while moving the obnoxious drunk out the door. I had made sure that the few actual fights were over in a few seconds. I had been trained for hand-to-hand fighting in the Home Guard, taught to kill at close range, but that sort of business was about as rare as a bayonet charge.

While working as a bargeman, I had gotten into my most serious fights—once with a man ready and willing to carve me up with a long knife. I had survived that. But that other bargeman had knocked me out. As a hunting guide, I’d survived an offworlder coming at me with a flechette gun. But I had accidentally killed him, and he had testified against me after he was resurrected.

Come to think of it, that’s how all this started.

Of all my weaknesses, this was the most serious—I do not really want to hurt anyone. In all of my fights—with the possible exception of the bargemaster with the knife and the Christian hunter with his flechette gun—I had held something back, not wanting to hit them as hard as I could, not wanting to hurt them too badly.

I have to change that way of thinking immediately. This is no person… this is a killing machine, and if I do not disable or destroy it quickly, it will kill me even more quickly.

Nemes jumps at me, claws raking, her right arm pulling back and then slashing like a scythe.

I jump back, dodge the scythe, almost dodge all the claws, see the shirt on my left upper arm shred, see blood mist the air, and then I step in quickly and hit her—fast—hard—three times to the face.

Nemes jumps back as quickly as she came in. There is blood on the long nails of her left hand. My blood. Her nose has been smashed flat so that it lies sideways on her thin face. I have broken something—bone, cartilage, metal fiber—where her left brow was. There is no blood on her face. She does not seem to notice any of the damage. She is still grinning.

I glance at my left arm. It burns ferociously. Poison? Perhaps—it makes sense—but if she uses poison, I should be dead in seconds. No reason she would use long-acting agents.

Still here. Just burns because of the slashes.

Four, I think… deep, but not muscle deep. They don’t matter. Concentrate on her eyes. Guess what she’ll do next.

Never use your bare hands. Home Guard teaching. Always find a weapon for close-in fighting. If one’s personal weapon is destroyed or missing, find something else, improvise—a rock, a heavy branch, a torn piece of metal—even stones wrapped in one’s fist or keys between the fingers are preferable to one’s bare hands. Knuckles break more quickly than jawbones, the drill instructor always reminded us. If you absolutely have to use only hands, use the flat of your hand to chop. Use rigid fingers to impale. Use clawed fingers to go for the eyes and Adam’s apple.

No loose rocks here, no branches, no keys… no weapons at all. This thing has no Adam’s apple. I suspect that her eyes are as cool and hard as marbles. Nemes moves to the left again, glancing toward Aenea. “I’m coming, sweetheart,” hisses the thing to my friend.

I catch a glimpse of Aenea out of the corner of my eye. She is standing on the ledge just beyond the platform. She is not moving. Her face is impassive. This is unlike my beloved… normally she would be throwing stones, leaping on an enemy’s back… anything but allowing me to fight this thing alone. This is your moment, Raul, my darling. Her voice is as clear as a whisper in my mind. It is a whisper. Coming from the auditory pickups in my folded-back skinsuit cowl.

I am still wearing the damned thing, as well as my useless climbing harness. I start to subvocalize in response, but remember that I’d jacked into the ship’s communicator in my upper pocket when I called the ship from the summit of T’ien Shan and I will be broadcasting to the ship as well as Aenea if I use it now.

I move to my left, blocking the creature’s way again. Less room to maneuver now.

Nemes moves faster this time, feinting left and slashing in from my right, swinging her right arm backhand toward my ribs.

I leap back but the blade slices meat just below my lowest right rib. I duck, but her claws flash—her left claws go for my eyes—I duck again, but her fingers slice a section of my scalp away. For an instant the air is filled with atomized blood again.

I take one step and swing my own right arm backhand, chopping down as if I were swinging a sledgehammer, my fist connecting with the side of her neck just below her right jawline. Synthetic flesh pulps and tears. The metal and tubes beneath do not bend.

Nemes slashes backhand again with her scythe arm and claws with her left hand. I leap away.

She misses completely.

I step in quickly and kick the back of her knees, hoping to sweep her legs out from under her.

It is eight meters to the broken railing at the far edge. If I could get her rolling… even if we both go over…

It is like kicking a steel stanchion. My leg goes numb at the force of my kick, but she does not budge. Fluids and flesh collapse over her endoskeleton, but she does not lose her footing. She must weigh twice what I do.

She kicks back and breaks a left rib or two of mine. I hear them crack. The wind goes out of me suddenly, explosively.

I reel backward, half expecting a ring rope to be there, but there is only the cliff face, a wall of hard, slick, vertical rock. A piton bolt slams into my back, stunning me for an instant.

I know now what I will do.

The next breath is like breathing through fire, so I quickly take several more painful breaths, confirming that I can breathe, trying to get my wind back. I feel lucky—I don’t think the broken ribs have penetrated my left lung.

Nemes opens her arms to prevent my escape and moves in closer.

I step into her foul embrace, getting inside the killing sweep of the bladed forearm, and bring my fists together as hard as I can on either side of her head. Her ears pulp—this time there is a yellow fluid filling the air—but I feel the permasteel solidity of the skull under the bruised flesh. My hands rebound. I stagger backward, hands and arms and fists temporarily useless.

Nemes leaps.

I lean back on the rock, raise both legs, catch her on the chest as she descends, and kick out with all of the strength in my body.

She slashes as she flies backward, slicing through part of my harness, most of my jacket and skinsuit, and the muscle above my chest. It is on the right side of my chest. She has not cut through the comlink. Good.

She back flips and lands on her feet, still five meters from the edge. There is no way that I am going to get her to and over the platform edge.

She will not play the game under my rules.