Niko swallowed as he drew his talon knife and moved quickly but cautiously toward the rear of the building. His shoes crunched on broken glass. Lott was right behind him, Kenjo and Sim on either side, but he still felt like a student from the back of the classroom suddenly called up to the blackboard to face a question alone. The gems embedded in the hilt of his talon knife streamed hot, tense jade energy into his body. He could feel its bright currents swirling in his gut, thrumming up and down his arms and legs, swimming through his head. He held the energy coiled, ready to Steel or Deflect, to spring into motion with Strength and Lightness. Perception was Niko’s weakest discipline, but he strained it forward and picked out four men waiting behind the closed door, their energies burning an alarming, murderous crimson.
He tensed. This was it. Move.
A tremendous crashing noise exploded ahead of him. Niko launched himself forward and kicked the door open; it splintered under his Strength. At first all he could comprehend was a blur of fighting—gunfire, screaming, raging jade auras. A man with a gun ran wild-eyed toward him. Before Niko could react, an exiting bullet opened a hole in the man’s forehead, pitching him toward the floor.
Lott shoved Niko aside with one arm—to protect him, or simply because he was in the way. The First Fist swept the room with the other arm extended, his Ankev pistol raised and jade aura blazing like a gasoline fire.
Then he lowered his weapon and stepped inside.
Niko pushed himself off the wall. The gunfire had fallen silent. The only sound that remained was an animal-like moaning from a man lying on the floor, clutching his stomach. Three other men were on the ground, two of them dead. Ayt Ato and his cousins were stalking through the room. Sando Kin was grimacing and clutching a bloodied arm, but his injury didn’t seem serious. Through the rear door that the Kobens had torn from its hinges, a breeze from the alley outside flowed into the building and began to disperse the smell of gunpowder.
Koben Ashi walked around the grisly scene, shrugged, and tossed a smirk at the staring No Peak Green Bones. “Next time, we’ll try to leave a few of them for you.”
Sim retorted, “We took out the trash in the front, you smug ass,” but it wasn’t said with venom and both men laughed. Niko stood rooted in place, talon knife still in hand.
The room contained stacked plastic supply bins, a water cooler, a fax machine, and a table with an open briefcase and several stacks of cash, with more bills scattered across the floor by the violence. Three hard-sided metal cases sat on the ground. Lott pulled one of them onto the table and tore off the lock. Kenjo looked over Lott’s shoulder and made a noise of appreciation. Cushioned inside the case were two Fullerton P1 carbines with spare magazines and ammunition.
Ayt Ato caught Niko’s eye. “Kaul-jen,” he said, gesturing at the prone men on the ground. “Would you be so good as to tell us which of these men we came here for?”
Lott’s eyes narrowed at the tone of polite condescension in Ayt Ato’s voice, but Niko ignored it. He took a close look, comparing the faces to the images he’d seen in the photographs. “Those two,” he said. One of their targets was already dead. He’d been hard to recognize at first, on account of his shaved head and part of his jaw having been blown away. The other dealer, the Uwiwan, was the gutshot one flopping on the floor, his dark face contorted in agony. “Die screaming, you miserable whoreson curs,” he wheezed, trying to sit up. “Fuck every last one of you all the way to hell.” He cursed them in Uwiwan and Kekonese, spitting every profanity he knew in both languages as blood saturated his shirt and pants.
Ayt Ato edged his shiny black shoes away from the expanding pool on the concrete and motioned to his cousin, Koben Ashi, who bent down and opened the man’s throat from behind with a talon knife.
Ayt Ato turned to Niko. “It’s not so hard for us to work together after all. Who says we have to follow the examples of our elders?” The man’s arresting eyes were guileless, though a touch of wary curiosity turned up the corners of his shapely mouth.
Niko watched the man walk out of the building to meet the police, who’d arrived as instructed, right on time to avoid getting in the way during the fighting but swiftly enough to secure the area, clean up the scene, and arrest any surviving accomplices. Reporters in news trucks arrived seconds later. They pressed in around the Mountain Green Bones, taking photographs and video footage of the confiscated money and weapons being handed over to the police.
A few members of the media spotted the No Peak men exiting the pool hall and hurried toward them, eager to be the first to snap photographs of Kaul Niko and Ayt Ato in the same image. Lott Jin shot them a warning glare. “Not a chance,” he snarled, “unless you want to take it up with the Pillar of No Peak.” That made them back off. Kaul Hilo was well known for being intolerant of the press following anyone in the family, especially Wen and Ru, for security reasons, but more generally because he thought they were leeches and disdained the Kobens for pandering to them.