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“Hurry up, Roland,” said Lucia. “We don’t have all day.”
The Knight swung again, his punch a long curving red smear of movement against the bad lighting. Roland ducked it and fired the exact same jab as the last six times, ringing the helmet like a bell.
“Trying not to kill him, boss.”
“I appreciate that,” she replied. “But take it up a notch. We’re drawing a crowd.”
“Ignore me at your peril, monster!” shouted the Knight as he swung again.
Roland slipped the punch, snapped another jab into his face, then dropped a hip to drive an overhand right directly into the cuirass. A strangled grunt exploded from the armored man, and his feet left the deck. His flight path distressingly horizontal, the brief airborne traverse ended with a flopping tumble across the floor more than twenty feet away. His contortions scattered a knot of onlookers who hooted with laughter and threw trash at the fallen Knight. Food wrappers, packaging, and more than one half-empty drink splattered across his body in a grubby fusillade. The armored man rolled to his knees and braced to leap back into the fray.
“Stay down,” Roland ordered.
The Knight did not stay down. It charged once more, an oblivious bellowing red bull tilting headlong into its own destruction. Roland side-stepped and kicked the feet out from underneath the hurtling behemoth. When the Knight went down on his face, Roland pounced onto his back. Black hands seized the red gauntlets in a grip of steel and bent the arms backward to secure both in a double hammerlock. “Will you cut it out?” Roland snarled at his struggling prey.
“Never!” With a roar like a lion, the Knight lurched to his feet. Still locked in Roland’s hold, the joints beneath his pauldrons shrieked in protest. A horrible keening whine split the air, followed by the pained groaning of overworked actuators. Roland’s face contorted into a deep frown and his own arms began to shake. Inch by inch, the red gauntlets crept down the Knight’s back, loosening Roland’s hold.
“Shit,” Roland grunted. “Fuckers are strong, boss.”
“The Lord is my strength, monster!” said the Knight. He forced his hands lower, nearly freeing them.
“I bet he is,” replied Roland through clenched teeth. “But it’s your intellect that needs help.”
Roland put the sole of his boot into the back of his foe’s knee, buckling the leg entirely and sending the red-armored brute back to the ground with another crash. No longer interested in testing the armor, Roland released both wrists and transferred his grip to an ankle. With a savage, pitiless, insulting ease, Roland spun in place. He whipped the Knight off the floor, spinning two full rotations to generate momentum before releasing his victim.
The Knight hurled outward in a flat arc that took his body into a nearby support column at more than ninety miles per hour. Three feet wide, solid metal, and nearly indestructible, the obstacle arrested the Knight’s flight with a dull thunk that Roland felt in his bones. The crowd gasped, and several people stumbled backward at the horrible sound. The Knight did not even bounce away. He struck flat, hard enough to dent the column before dropping straight to the deck.
To Roland’s surprise and horror, gauntleted palms scraped against the dirty metal floor, pushing the fallen man up to his knees. “Oh, come on!” Roland growled. “Just don’t, man...”
The Knight planted a foot and hauled himself upright. He turned, slow and labored, head tilting to look back at Roland. A single red hand rose, pointing. “I am not so easily bested—”
The Knight never completed his empty boast. With a running start, Roland drove a straight right into the Knight’s faceplate with all the force his techno-organic body could generate. The punch would have crushed an armored vehicle. It would have shattered a boulder. It was a killing blow, sent without remorse or quarter. The noise from the impact made the gathered crowd flinch and hiss as one horrified body. Orange and white sparks plumed from the point of impact, an explosion of light and fury that tore an ornate piece of the faceplate away and sent it spinning off into the shadowed corners beyond the onlookers. The Knight slammed into the column once more, ringing the unyielding steel like a gong. His body dropped in the same place as the previous fall, and his flaccid body rolled to one side. A bloody mess of a man’s face looked up from beneath his ruined helmet. One bright blue eye glared from those red-streaked features, burning with indescribable fury. He flopped his arms, questing for purchase against the floor. Grim-faced and blank-eyed, Roland hit him again. The crowd stepped back, no longer amused. Seeing the unpopular constabulary humiliated was great fun. Watching a man get beaten to death proved quite another thing altogether.
A third blow clipped the Knight across the top of the helmet, bouncing his head off the floor hard enough to gouge the metal. The light in that one visible eye at last went out, and the red-armored brute slumped. Roland stood up, his face a map of dark lines and his eyes so narrow as to be invisible. He answered the unasked question without prompting. “He’s alive.”
Lucia let out the breath she did not realize she held. “Good. Good.”
“That armor...” Roland shook his head and examined his fist for damage. The knuckles wept silver fluid as thick as oil from several ugly gashes. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I knew it was good stuff,” said Mindy. “But I’ve never seen it in a fair fight outside of a tournament. I... I didn’t know, Roland.”
The big cyborg shrugged and wiped his hands on his pants. “Now we do. I’ve hit armatures that hard. I’ve bashed in vehicles, for fuck’s sake.” He nudged the Knight with his toe. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish I had my hammer again.”
Some of the humor and composure returned to the onlookers. Hoots of approval and a smattering of applause ended the discussion and returned their attention to the matter at hand. Mindy took it upon herself to capitalize. She held up her handheld and waved to a group of young women who had stopped to watch the brawl.
“Step right up, folks! Come get a holo taken with a sleeping Sword Brother! Do it now before he wakes up!”
The knot of girls tittered and stepped forward on cautious feet. Mindy exhorted them closer. “Over there now. Go ahead. The armor is sedating him for medivac, so he won’t wake up for a bit. Yup. Get close. All together now, girls!” The young women clustered over the drooling Knight’s recumbent body and flashed smiles toward Mindy who captured the image on her handheld. The little blond killer transferred the image to their devices with some chitchat and went back to Lucia. “Now watch what happens. In thirty minutes, we will be the toast of The Underworld. Grimes will have to hide very deep to avoid us.”
“Who is that?” Lucia asked, jerking her chin toward the sleeping Knight.
Crouched over the body, a man in plain brown clothes fussed with the armor at the neck. An audible click split the air, and the broken helmet fell away to reveal the Knight’s face. Mindy scrunched her nose. “What are you doing, friar?”
The man spoke without looking up. “Rendering aid to one of God’s servants.” He wiped at the bloody face with a disinfectant cloth. “God loves all his children, even the stupid and mean ones.”
“Mindy?” Lucia spoke the name as a question.
The assassin stepped over to the man in brown. “He’ll be fine. The armor will keep him stable until he gets medivac.”
“It will take a while for his brothers to get down here and pull him out. In that time, the denizens of this place will strip him of his weapons, violate his body, and probably injure him worse.”
Mindy sniffed. “My heart bleeds for him.”
The man’s laugh was not unkind. “He has suffered enough for his arrogance today, I think. Better to let God judge him than leave his fate to those he has offended.” The man turned to look up at Mindy. Brown eyes lined with tight wrinkles sat in a face neither pale nor dark. His bald head and weathered features masked his age, but those eyes could not hide the weight of many years. He may have been fifty or seventy, it was hard to tell. His clothes were simple. A brown shirt and brown pants sat on a frame both lean and wiry. His hands looked strong. Over all of this he wore a three-quarter-length jacket, held closed with a length of white rope tied in an intricate knot. Mindy pointed to it. “You don’t look like the other friars I’ve known.”
“And how should I look?”
“Fat,” she replied.
The man laughed out loud now. The sound burst from his lungs full of boisterous delight. “Hah! You are not exactly burdened by false courtesy, I see!”
Manny chimed in. “Or any kind of courtesy, really.”
The friar laughed again, then turned back to the fallen Knight. “Well, I can’t deny that most of my brothers spend too much time reading scriptures and eating rich foods. That is not how I choose to serve, though. Down here, amongst the sinners, I often find physical prowess to be a bit of a necessary inconvenience.” He stuck out a hand without looking at her. “I am Brother Martin, from the Order of Saint Martin.”
Mindy took the hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Brother Martin. Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Why are you down here in The Underworld taking care of Knights?”
“I go where I can do God’s work. There’s not a lot of need for me in the nicer places. This is where the sinners are. This is where the poor and the hungry are. This is where God is needed most and found the least. As for the Knights? I help anyone who needs it. People down here know that.”
Mindy fanned herself theatrically with one hand. “Holy shit, I think we got ourselves a true believer.”
This earned her a pointed stare from Martin. “Is that so funny to you, young lady? Is it so hard to understand?”
The blond assassin met the stare with an even darker version. “I dunno, Brother Martin. I’m just a heavily augmented lesbian killer. What do you think?”
Martin did not flinch, though his face softened. “I think that God loves you just as much as anyone else, but I suspect his servants have probably wronged you greatly.”
Mindy’s lip curled. “What an astute deduction.”
“Where did you serve,” Roland asked.
The question startled Martin. “What?”
“Saint Martin is the patron saint of soldiers. You’re obviously a medic.” His shoulders rose and fell. “Which army was it?”
Martin did not answer right away. He peered into Roland’s face with a strange intensity. “Same as you, I suspect. UEDF.” He again turned back to the Knight. “I was a spacer, assigned to a destroyer. I left the service after March Hare. It... changed me.”
“Wars can do that.” Roland had gone quiet as well. He held up his hands, revealing the synthetic black mesh of his arms. “Some of us more than others.” He let the hands drop. “Why Gethsemane? You don’t seem to be all that offended by me or Mindy here. Aren’t you a touch too worldly for this place?”
“Why not here? I was called by God to serve. He does not call me to hate, or to offer his judgment unto others.” Martin waved a hand to stave off the comments. “Yes, I am very much aware of how poorly our Lord’s tenets are kept by most of the government here. I am not called to fix governments, though. Most of the penitents and pilgrims who find their way here do so because their souls are in pain. They need guidance, and love, and to be ministered to. That is what I do. The rest is for God to sort out.”
Mindy made no attempt to hide her bitterness. “And you do it down here because everywhere else you go on this planet is filled with pious assholes.”
If he was offended, Martin hid it well. “It is not my place to judge them. It is my place to serve God in the manner that suits me best.” He stood and dusted his hands off on the tails of his jacket. “Sir Francis here will be fine. You’ve given him quite the concussion, but there is no sign of edema. According to his armor AI, you can expect three of his Sword Brothers to be here in the next twenty minutes or so. I’d suggest hiding yourselves before they arrive.”
“Why?” Roland did not sound like he wanted to hide.
“Because despite your obvious capabilities, three armed and angry Fratres Militae are a credible threat to anyone or anything. While I concede that you are very strong and capable...” he gestured to the downed Knight, “...I figure you already understand just how tough they can be. Just because a fight is winnable—”
“Doesn’t make it desirable.” It was Lucia who finished the thought. “I don’t suppose that your priestly vow of charity extends to helping us find a place to lie low?”
“Friars are laypeople, not priests,” Martin said with a cheeky smile. “And my sense of justice works just fine, madam. The Sword Brothers have fallen quite a bit from their lofty origins. What you see here in the Underworld are all that is left of a once noble order, now reduced to a swaggering gang of thugs and bullies. They will be out for blood when they get here, and that serves no one, least of all God. Sir Francis needed to be reminded of God’s mysterious ways, and your good works here today have helped enlighten one poor misguided sinner to the value of humility.” Martin tilted his head to Roland in a mock bow. “But now it’s time to cut your losses. Follow me.”
Martin guided the group across the wide floor to the large bay door with the glowing inscription. He gestured up with one hand and said, “Abandon all hope, friends. It’s time to enter the first circle.”
Roland shook his head in disbelief. “This place really digs into that sense of drama, huh?”
“It’s part of the whole mystique,” Mindy answered. “Living here gives folks a kind of, I dunno, connection. Like gangs that wear the same colors or have special slang.”
“Or a group of terrorists who buy into an ideal that died long ago,” Manny added.
“Or a cult,” Lucia said.
This earned her a sharp look from Martin. “Sometimes, yes. It can feel that way. But the nice young woman said it best. Gethsemane loves its pageantry. It loves all the rituals, the drama, the performance. All of which are unique to Gethsemane. It gives people a shared experience that ties them to this community. No matter where they come from, pilgrims who come here learn to become part of it. Memorizing a prayer or a performing a rite is easy enough, and when everybody does it, people feel included.” He gestured to Roland. “Soldiers wear uniforms and learn to march in neat rows. Why do they need to march in rows? They don’t. It’s about the shared experience and the pride in participating in something impressive with a rich history. When I came here, it helped me a lot to simply sit down and memorize a mass or do the stations. I found God in these details, and He helped me banish my devils.”
“Rituals don’t make you righteous,” Mindy said, her voice glass-brittle and razor-sharp. “And not all of what happens here is beautiful.”
Martin answered without turning. “I have no comfort for you, young lady. I do not know you, but I know if you grew up here what it must have been like for you. I can’t imagine your pain.”
“Pain ain’t shit,” she replied. “It’s the anger that oughtta make you nervous.”
“I was at March Hare,” said the friar, as if that explained everything. “It’s not easy to scare me anymore.”
“I keep hearing about that,” she replied. “It happened before I was born. Was it really that bad?”
Roland coughed. “Are you serious? More than forty thousand people died there. It nearly ended two colonial navies. Vlad the Impaler cut his teeth at that battle. So did Captain Fischer. It secured piracy as an inescapable part of interplanetary commerce. It is the most significant economic and political event since the discovery of Anson Gates. How do you not know this?”
“I left school at fifteen, remember?” She let her eyes fall back on Martin. “Because I did not want to be ‘re-educated.’”
Martin did not rise to the bait. “It was a terrible battle and a terrible day for everyone involved. It solved nothing and only made the universe a worse place to live in.”
“So I guess you’ve seen some shit?” Mindy asked.
“All of it,” Martin replied.
“Fair enough,” said Mindy. She did not sound impressed.
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