Trapped

Two Keepers went down with me, unable to keep their balance after the tackle. We all hit the stone floor hard. I took the impact on my shoulder, slamming into the uneven rock; fortunately I was still wearing my winter coat, padded with enough eiderdown to soften the blow… but shoots of pain still lanced down my arm, leaving my fingers numb. The Lucifers, clad only in light robes, made more of a splash: close to my face, one of their arms literally exploded when it struck the stone, like a sandbag rupturing at the seams. The arm devolved into black grains spurting out the robe's sleeve. The splashing cellules made a raspy sound; but seconds after they burst apart they began skittering together again, trying to re-coagulate into the semblance of human flesh.

More robes rushed past me as I sprawled on the floor. I lashed out wildly, hoping to trip someone; my leg caught somebody's foot but I don't know how much effect it had. The world was a chaos of robes, cellules, and pseudo-anatomy. I couldn't see either Sebastian or Annah. The Lucifers seemed as disoriented as I was-if they'd made an effort to hold me down I could have been pinned easily, but they showed no interest in doing so. Even the Keepers who'd tackled me had scrambled off, struggling toward Sebastian. He was their target; I was nobody, a mere distraction. Therefore I had the freedom to claw at the creatures that crawled close beside me, with no answering attacks from the Lucifers. They were simply trying to get disentangled while I was doing everything I could to slow them down.

In the middle of all this confusion, I caught sight of Sebastian: still on his feet, but with three Keepers clutching him, one with its hands on the boy's head. It was trying to snap his neck… to give a sharp twist that would crack the cervical vertebrae or even rip the head clean off. Sebastian was fighting back, and perhaps a small number of nanites were helping him-resisting the pressure that torqued on his skull-but thus far, there was no overt sign of nano coming to the boy's aid. Millimeter by millimeter, Sebastian's head was turning too far; and even as I watched, one of the other Keepers sprouted a long bony claw and reached out toward the boy's exposed jugular.

A mass of black fury hurtled into the fray. For an instant, I thought it might be a chunk of the good Lucifer, ‹BINK›ed in from the moon. Then I saw it was…

Impervia.

Blood smeared her hands and the front of her clothes. I thought I could see a bullet hole pierced through her shirt high on the chest; but she was moving too fast for me to be sure.

She slammed a foot hard into the knees of the Keeper who was trying to break Sebastian's spine. Her heel drove straight through the Lucifer's legs, spraying cellules in all directions: instant amputation at the knees. The Keeper, no longer braced and supported, couldn't maintain the pressure on Sebastian's neck… and a moment later, the creature had to worry about its own head, as Impervia's elbow smashed into its temple.

The Lucifer's skull burst like a melon struck with a ball-peen hammer. Gunpowder grains flew in a black shower, splashing hard into the faces of the other two Keepers holding Sebastian. Considering that neither had eyes, they couldn't have been blinded by the sandy facefuls… but they were distracted long enough for Impervia to sweep one of the attackers off its feet and to hit the other with a palm-heel that dislocated its shoulder. Literally. The arm ripped off the torso and slumped limply, its fingers still gripping Sebastian's jacket.

I don't suppose any of Impervia's blows caused the Lucifers true pain. When you're a galaxy-spanning intelligence, a little wear and tear on your component parts can't hurt very much. But Impervia was striking hard enough to disrupt the intercellule cohesion that kept limbs attached and bodies in one piece. In other words, she was destroying the Lucifers' effectiveness. A detached arm has no leverage; a legless torso has no balance or mobility. The pieces were still dangerous-lethally so if you gave them time to sprout sharp extensions or garroting tendrils-but Impervia was systematically eliminating their capacity to fight in human form, and they obviously needed a few seconds to reshape for other modes of combat. One of the legs Impervia had kicked off was starting to shove up spikes along its surface, and the other was stretching out into something like a spear. In half a minute, both might be serious threats… but I doubted they'd have nearly that long to do what they wanted to do.