Hatchette Ch. 17-21

Roku took the stairs up to the gallery and crouched there. How will they attack? She asked herself. How would Roku attack? Roku did have the home-field advantage, this was her school. Not through the front door, guns blazing, Roku could assume; but perhaps through open windows or across the roof. It was going to be an up close and personal fight, that was the only certainty. Roku should have kept a hold of that axe.

Roku moved slowly into the dormitories, keeping her eyes open, the auto-burner swinging in slow arch in front of her. She was halfway through the second year dormitory when the fire klaxon cut out and the emergency lights went off. Timer? Could be, or the fire department. Roku couldn't be assured that she and the Hatchettes were alone in St. Juliet's, she'd have to check her targets. It'd be horrible for a firefighter or a stray schoolgirl to get burned.

Roku was passing the senior lounge when a vidscreen turned itself on. Roku spun on her heels and covered it with the auto-burner. There was nothing on the screen but static, but there was audio.

"Roku..." a tiny voice said over the interference. "Roku, if you can hear me, you should put your weapons down and surrender." Roku could just recognize the voice as Lt. Zee's. "There's no way out of the building, Roku. If the Hatchettes have to come in... Well, it'd be best for everyone if you surrendered, Roku. Come out the front doors with your hands above your head... Roku..."

It was a recording, it began to cycle again. It wasn't Lt. Zee, it was a computer aggregation. Lt. Zee would be dead by now, Roku realized. It was her who failed to activate Roku. While this might have save Lady Aru's life, it was still an act of insubordination. The First Commissar couldn't let Lt. Zee live any more than she could let Roku. Once subordinates began to question their orders...

Roku was downstairs again, moving silently through the Dining Hall, when she heard a crash far off, somewhere above. It sounded like breaking glass. Sloppy, Roku scolded in her head whoever was making the racket. The far end of the Dining Hall faced out onto the cloister, a set of double doors opening onto it, half closed. The cloister was the center of the school, with the most tangents of attack, but also the most route of escape. It was both the smartest and stupidest place to hold up and wait for the Hatchettes – almost exactly the opposite of what her training had told her. That was how Roku needed to think, exactly the opposite as the training. The other Hatchettes had had the same training as her, they'd be thinking like her. Roku had to stop thinking like Roku – think like someone else. Only that would come as a surprise to the Hatchettes.

She paused in the shadow cast by the double doors and looked out silently into the cloister. The covered walkways where cloaked in darkness, but the open air courtyard was illuminated by the moonlit night. It was all ambush potentials and half obstructed firing angles – Roku's battle computer was going haywire. She subconsciously sent it the command to itself down. If her battle computer was useless in place like that, then so would the other Hatchettes'. Roku smiled.

She kicked off her heels and stepped in her socks, as quietly as possible out into the cloister. She pressed herself up against a column, hidden in the shadows, and waited, watching. There was little to see but shadows. Damn, why had she taken of Anders' sunglasses? Oh yes, now Roku remembered. It sure would have been helpful to be able to see into the infrared range...

Something moved on the far side of the cloister.

Roku held her breath, not daring to make even the slightest sound. The Hatchettes would have broken into three groups of two, Roku predicted, and divided the search duties. The only question was, would they have kept the extra seventh girl to make a team of three, or let her wander off alone. Roku thought about the different personalities she had gotten to know back in Hatchette training. Unfortunately, she was unaware of precisely which seven Hatchettes had survived... Roku lacked sufficient evidence to make a prediction, but there seems to be only a single pair of feet moving almost silently across the far side of the cloister. The second member of the fire team could be close by, covering, but eventually Roku would have to chance it. They couldn't play cat and mouse forever. Eventually this would have to become a shooting war.

The Hatchette Roku could more feel that see on the far side of the cloister was almost at the turn off to the administrative offices. Roku remembered the dead Matron she had left there. If Roku timed it just right... The Hatchette would have to pause there and determine the identity of the victim. Part of their orders would be assuring the safe extraction of the missing Matron's, Roku knew, and that few seconds the Hatchette would spend turning over the body would be a few second that the Hatchette would be distracted. Roku could use that to her advantage. She lowered herself slowly, silently down to the floor beside the column and leaned out to bring her auto-burner around the column. The faint light from the Head Matron's office was casting shadows down the corridor and out into the cloister. Roku could see the lump where the dead Matron lay. She raised her burner, waiting.

Almost imperceptibly, a shadow to the left of the dead Matron began to move, taking tentative steps out into the open. Roku held her fire, it taking all her willpower to do so. Her fire team partner could still waiting somewhere, just like Roku, waiting for Roku to give away her position. The shadow was moving toward the dead Matron, reached out a hand, turning the body over. The hand came back, to the shadow's ear, reporting it. It was now or never...

Roku let loose with a single bolt from the auto-burner – momentarily jerking the trigger. The bolt arced across the cloister and exploded against the shadow. Roku didn't wait to see the results, she was up and moving. And it saved her life. From another column, to the left of Roku's position an auto-burner went full automatic, raining down plasma on the column behind which Roku had been hiding. The concussion of the explosions and Roku stockinged feet on the slipper stone sent her sprawling. She righted herself and fired back with her gun at full auto. The cloister was ablaze with superheated gas. Shrapnel of marble rained down all around. Roku dived, slid on her belly, and tumbled down the corridor the led to the Social Sciences wing. Roku got up on her feet and ran, slipping around a corner – slipping around the corner where she had taken her tumble all those months before, making her late for her history class, that fateful day she had met the Nanpa Girls. There were no books to gather up this time, she climbed quickly to her feet and moved backward down the corridor. A figure poked a head around the far end, looking down after Roku; and Roku let loose with a stream of plasma bolts. The entire mouth of the corridor exploded in on itself. Roku turned and ran. No auto-burner fire followed her, but the soft metallic clink on stone could just be heard. Roku doubled her sprint, disregarding the soreness in her thigh.

The grenade exploded knocking Roku on her face. She scrambled to roll over, bringing the auto-burner up, but the grenade had brought the whole roof of the corridor down behind her. Roku got to her feet and took a corner, another, then another, then ran up stairs into the dormitories. She was moving too fast, running without thinking, and she ran right into a pair of them. They were running across the dormitory, potentially to flank Roku. The only thing that saved Roku's life was that the two black hooded Hatchettes seemed to be as surprised by Roku as Roku was surprised by then.

Auto-burners came up, Roku's first, sending a chain of plasma bolts into the lead Hatchette. Her hydro vest exploded with a plume of water, but the third or fourth bolt found its mark and erupted in her chest. The second Hatchette fired as Roku dropped to her knees, sending her bolts over Roku's head. Roku let the natural concussion of her gun fire the plasma bolts higher and higher until she was intentionally firing into the ceiling. She emptied the last of her plasma bottle there, bring large blocks of the slate roof down. The avalanche sent the Hatchette scrambling and Roku turned on her heels. She tossed her empty auto-burner aside, reaching for the handgun in the pocket of her coat.

A massive chunk of roof slate came crashing down, though a set of bunk beds and through the floor beneath. Roku was back out the door she had come in by, into the dormitory across the hall. She sprinted, she could hear the sound of boots on the stairs behind her. At the door at the far end of the dormitory she turned and let off a few shorts from the hand burner. Hatchettes were just cresting the doorway as she did and it sent them scuffling back.

She was in another common room. The vidscreen here was showing snow, too, with the disembodied voice of Lt. Zee pleading for Roku's acquiescence. Roku didn't pause, she took the stairs behind the common room and came out beside the gym. She doubled under the stairs and took the staff corridor that went by the kitchens. A doorway, and she was out into the Grand Hall. She'd come full circle...

Something moved in the gallery and Roku snapped fired. Her aim was true, a splash of water from a hydro vest sprayed over the ledge. Roku bolted across the Grand Hall with a string of plasma bolts tracking after her. Through another door and she was again in amongst classrooms. Math, Science. She glanced down at the readout on the plasma bottle of her handgun. She had ammo for three, maybe four more shots. And then...

Roku was tired of running. Physically tired and mentally. She opened a door to a classroom and closed it quietly. She hobbled across the classroom floor in her stocking feet and sat down heavily behind a Matron's large, wooden desk. She dropped the burner down next to the tablet that sat on the table, and let herself relax for a second. She was in the first year calculus class, she realized, looking at the differential equations on the board. She'd got a B in this class... Roku smiled.

There was the sound of booted feet in the hallway. Roku reached out and put her hand on the gun, but the boots kept moving by. It wouldn't fool them for long, Roku knew, once the flanking fire team met up with the advance. She let herself relax again.

Perhaps if she'd brought more guns and didn't still have sedatives floating around in her system... If she'd been fresh and on the top of her game... No, that would still have been no good. At her best, she could have taken three, maybe four other Hatchettes. She'd always been the best, back in training. The fastest, the smartest, the best shot. She'd have happily pitted her skills against three or four of the other girls, but seven... No, there was just no way. No one was that fast, no one was that strong. It just could be done. Not by anyone.

It was all well and good to make excuses, Roku thought, but she still have a mission to accomplish. Alright, the mission she had always though was her mission had turned out to be a lie. She understood that now, after saying it, out loud, to Pelli, Roku realize that she'd come to accept that fact. There were no Dick Terrorist for her to kill. All the Dicks, all the men she had killed were innocent – at least innocent of the crimes she'd killed them for. The rapists, they deserved to die, but all those men in the brownstone...

And her real mission, she'd failed at, also. Lady Aru still lived, she was First Commissar; the very eventuality that Lady Es had created the Hatchettes to avoid. But Roku couldn't blame herself for that failure. If she'd known... But still, Roku held no hatred toward Lady Aru. In a sick way, she loved her. Not, perhaps, as a lover – in the way Roku loved Pelli – but after a fashion... She would have never have succeeded in her mission, even if Lt. Zee had activated her. She just would not have been able to murder Lady Aru...

No, Roku's mission now was Pelli. Pelli was an innocent in the whole thing. The Commissariat would have her killed, for what she knew, but none of that was the fault of Pelli. It was all Roku. If she'd just left well enough alone. If she hadn't let her feeling for Pelli distract her from her mission – but then that mission had been a lie, and her real mission she could never have succeed at...

Fuck it! Roku cursed, rubbing her eyes, she was thinking in circles.

No... Pelli had always been Roku's mission, from the very beginning. She was the only true, real thing in this whole mess – the only constant. Roku had to focus on that.

Pelli had to survive.

Roku had to survive. Because if she died, Pelli would die, too...

Roku pulled herself up to her feet and picked up her burner. She wouldn't last five more minutes inside the school, Roku knew. She looked out the window at the dark playing fields. She wouldn't last thirty seconds out there, she concluded. There had to be a third option... Roku hobbled back to the classroom door, opening it a fraction, peering out.

Then it came to her.

The coast seemed clear and Roku stepped out of the classroom, now with a goal. It'd take a minor miracle for her to make it back to the cloister, with only three bolts left in her gun, but it was her best and only hope. She moved quickly through the mathematics wing and then science. She cut through the auditorium that backed out onto the cloister, but paused before stepping out fulling into the open.

Where were the Hatchettes? Roku scanned the shadows of the cloister, searching for the slightest movement. There was no way she could have made it the whole distance without alerting someone...

Then there came the sound of thruster jets above her, and Roku understood. The Hatchettes had taken the pause in the action to medivac a wounded comrade, a VTOL was coming in for a pickup. Roku had gotten her miracle. However many Hatchettes were left – at least five, four if one was obviously wounded – would be distracted covering the pickup. Roku stepped boldly out into the open air of the cloister, confident she had time on her side.

Roku stumbled upon the body of the Matron she had killed and the headless body of Hatchette laying next to it. Roku's aimed shot across the cloister had hit its mark, dropping her target with one shot. The Hatchettes weapons were missing – auto-burner, side-arm – but there were plasma bottles in her pouches. Roku quickly reloaded her handgun and dropped a couple extra bottles into the left pocket of her great coat.

She then spend precious moments, standing out in the open, an easy target, searching the floor for Anders' damn sunglasses. She'd been fool to take them off, a mistake that had almost gotten her killed, but she'd need them now if she expected to have even a fighting chance. There they were, up against a wall. Roku picked them up and thanked the Holy Matron that they hadn't been damaged... Her second miracle for the day... She put them on over her eyes and the darkness became day. She could see the thermal plumbs of the the VTOL, red and flowing, arcing up over the school. The Hatchettes would be returning, their medivac completed. Roku would have to move.

Back down the Administrative corridor, into the Head Matron's office once again, and down the hidden stairs. She came back into the room where she had found Pelli and picked up the fire axe from beside the headless Matron. Something else she should have never put down, she realized. She slipped her burner into her pocked and grasped the axe with both hands.

She moved quickly, out of the cell and into the maze of tunnels that stretched into the foundations of the school. She had no idea where she was heading, until a few minutes before she'd had no idea that these tunnels even existed. But she suspected that her adversaries would be equally ignorant. If the Commissariat hadn't bothered to tell Roku that there was a maze of tunnels deep in the bowels of the building where Roku was assigned, it had to be because the Commissariat didn't know. There was no logic to keeping such information from Roku. She suspected that these tunnels were built to the specifications of the Order of Matrons; for they're sick little rights and ceremonies. The Matrons were a secretive organization that existed, only semi-amicably, along side the government. Of course they'd have their secrets. Was there any faction in the Great Society that trusted any other faction? Roku was beginning to doubt it. Great Society, indeed...

Roku's underground wandering brought her to stairs leading up, she took them and came to the back of another secret door. She put her ear against it and listened for a long minute. Nothing. She rested her axe head on a stone step and adjusted the sensitivity of her infrared sunglasses. When she hit the sweet spot the room beyond, the senior dorm, popped into view – the hots and colds of furniture and windows contrasting clearly. This was exactly where Roku wanted to be. She reached out and silently slide open the bolt that was keeping the secret door closed, but she didn't open it, just left it unlatched. She'd wait here, hidden in the walls, wait here and watch...

It was only, perhaps, five minutes before a pair of Hatchettes came into view. They were moving slowly, making sure of the silence of each footfall; their guns out in front of them, scanning. The came down the center aisle of the dorm, looking left then right. Roku held her breath as an auto-burner pointed direct at her – at the locker she must been hiding behind – and then continued its sweep away. When the two Hatchettes had passed, Roku pushed gently on the back of the secret entrance, knowing the slightest noise would mean her death. The locker, fortuitously, on whatever hinges it rotated, seemed well greased. Without making a sound, Roku was out in her stocking moving quickly up behind the Hatchettes, her axe raised above her head.

The axe came down in the center of the rear Hachette's back, rupturing the hydro vest and easily snapping her spine. With a grunt, Roku had the axe out of her victim and swinging back, as the lead Hatchette was bringing her weapon around. At the last moment,the Hatchette rose her auto-burner in an attempt to parry Roku's falling blow. The assault rifle and the axe collided with a great arch of electricity and the rifle fell to the floor.

The Hatchette reached for her side-arm, but the back of Roku's hand came up and struck her across the face. She reeled back from the blow and Roku brought the axe up for a quick thrust. She caught the Hatchette in the gut, doubling her over. Roku kicked up and her foot caught the Hatchette in the face. She flipped back, crashing, spread-eagle on the floor.

Roku brought the axe up for a coup de grace, but hesitated at the apex of her swing. The face of the Hatchette at her feet was covered by a mask and goggles, but Roku could tell that she was unconscious. Roku let the axe fall heavily to the floor, reaching down and picking up the burner than had fallen from the Hatchettes hand. This she tucked into the waistband of her tiny, schoolgirl skirt, and she quickly pulled a pair of plasma grenades out of the pouches on the Hatchette's vest. These she dropped into the pockets of her coat. She picked up an auto-burner, the one that still seemed to be functioning, and slung it on her back. She likewise took the side-arm and grenades off the dead Hatchette and stuffed them into the pockets of her coat.

Alright, now she had some guns...

And only two more Hatchettes, if her calculations were correct... Roku slipped behind the secret door out of which she had emerged, latching the locker closed behind her. She could wait her for the next group of Hatchettes to come – attack them while they were seeing to their buddies. For that matter, Roku could have activated a grenade and hidden under the body of that dead girl. After all, wasn't Roku fighting for her life here? Her life and Pelli's? But something in Roku couldn't bring herself to such a dirty trick. No, there were only two Hatchettes left. The odds were evening out. Once upon a time, these people had been friends of Roku's, she owed them as fair a fight as she could possible afford to give them.