Sunrise by Mike Mullin Read Free Book Online Page B

sword, in his right hand and a short blade with a wicked serrated spine in his left. He played with the shorter blade, rolling it across the back of his hand over and over, as if it were a habit ingrained through hundreds of hours of practice. Other than the motion of that hand and blade, he was preternaturally still.
    Ed was on my right, another squaddie on my left. All three of us aimed our guns up the stairs. Ed had the shotgun he’d taken from one of the warehouse guards—the only gun that was loaded. “You brought knives to a gun-fight,” I called up the stairs.
    I fought to keep my hands steady, to keep the tremors rattling my innards from leaking out. If my gun shook, surely he’d notice, realize I was bluffing. Then what?
    The guy at the top stared at us over the tip of the larger knife. The smaller knife flashed in the lamplight, its motion unceasing. “Knives to a gunfight?” he said. “Really? That hoary old saw? It’s not such a bad strategy as you might think, bringing a knife to a gunfight. Within twenty-one feet, the guy with the knife can win every time.”
    I didn’t believe him, but it didn’t seem like the time or place to argue the point. “Put your knives down. On the floor. Now!”
    He continued in a conversational tone. “If there were only two of you, you’d be dead already. Julia, my throwing knife, would enter your body just above the suprasternal notch. It would puncture both the trachea and the jugular vein. You’d asphyxiate, drowning in your own blood. In the meantime, I’d charge the other guy. His hands would shake—like yours are. He might not even get a shot off, and if he did, it would miss. The first blow with Claudia, my gladius, would sever his arm at the elbow. It’s tough to pull a trigger when your hand isn’t connected to your arm. The second blow, the killing blow, would be an uppercut through the stomach, the liver, and into the descending thoracic aorta. He’d go into hypovolemic shock in seconds and be dead of blood loss within two minutes.”
    The other two guys in my squad, Cliff in tow, clattered into the foyer.
    “Shoot this guy, Ed,” I said. “I’m tired of listening to him.”
    Ed raised the shotgun to his shoulder.
    The guy dropped both his knives. They stuck, quivering in the hardwood floor, handles up, ready for fast retrieval.
    I charged up the stairs, Ed and the rest behind me. The guy didn’t move, not even when I reached the top and grabbed his knives. When I stood, I was just inches from him, so close I could smell him—an alcohol scent like cheap cologne.
    “Where’s Doctore?” I asked.
    He smiled and said nothing.
    “Ed, watch him. The rest of you, search this floor. Find Doctore. Make sure there’s nobody behind us.”
    Ed took the lamp from the floor. I stepped around him to let the other guys past and tucked the gladius into my belt.
    I was stowing Julia, the smaller knife, just as the front door near the base of the stairs burst open. A stream of guys dressed in black rushed in, guns raised. I stepped behind our captive and raised his own knife under his chin. He barely flinched.
    A forest of rifles aimed up the stairs toward us. “Tell them to put their guns down,” I said, pressing the point of the knife into his chin.
    The guy in the lead yelled up at us. “Orders, Doctore?” He very nearly growled his response. “Standish, you idiot. To start with, don’t give the enemy intel—the fact that I’m in charge, for example.”
    “Tell them to put down their weapons,” I said. “S-s-sorry, Red,” Standish said.
    “You know why they call me Red?” the guy asked. As he talked, the knife I held nicked his throat, a thick line of blood dripping downward.
    “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “Tell them to put their guns down!”
    “Red is the color of the knife, the color of blood, the way of iron, the way of the new world, the world of men. Our laws are the ancient laws, the Laws of Steel,” Red said. His