Chapter 26 Catch the Fist

Three container walls have his shape in them now, and the last one had a corner that took two ribs on the way past.

He got up, since the alternative meant lying still in a yard where nine men sat behind a weighbridge with an ape between them and the gate.

'Ribs on the left, everything below the knee reporting late... one more of those and I do not stand up again,' Ossian counted what still worked, 'so no more of those.'

Bastien had all nine of them counted twice behind concrete, the only reason nobody in that crew wandered out for a look.

Maelle came over the comm before Calista did, and what she said had nothing comforting anywhere inside it.

"You have put roughly forty thousand joules into that animal this morning," her voice stayed flat, "and it is holding every one of them for you."

Stored force never leaks away or settles, and it stays available to whatever animal happens to be carrying the load around.

The ape has a full stomach with one man standing in front of it, so the arithmetic there finished several minutes ago.

'It is carrying my own morning inside its shoulders... waiting to hand the whole lot back at once,' Ossian braced against a stack, 'stop feeding it, right now.'

Which sounds obvious said aloud, except that everything he owns is built to hit things.

Grave Rush closes distance, Jackal Right hunts damage, Dreadweight puts mass behind a fist, and every single tool in that box exists to deliver force at a target.

Nothing in his kit was designed to receive, and receiving is the only move left on the board.

"Open the left hand," Maelle said it as though the idea were unremarkable, "and stop making a fist with a socket that has nothing in it."

He had been punching with a guard, and that is the rough equivalent of hammering nails with a shield.

An open hand is a different object altogether, as a flat palm spreads a load across the whole plate rather than driving it through four knuckles.

'She is telling me to catch it... to stand there and take a swing on purpose,' Ossian turned the left gauntlet over, 'shit, that is the stupidest thing anybody has said to me.'

He did it anyway, on a small one, on a swipe that came at hip height and carried nothing much.

Palm out, elbow soft, weight under the arm rather than behind it, so the impact went into the plate and stopped.

No load came back through the shoulder, no tissue tore, plus the empty socket in the left gauntlet turned warm for the first time since the shell arrived.

[Something arrived and did not leave]

[The stomach you fed a stranger has begun to notice you have one]

'It kept that... the left hand held onto the hit instead of passing it into my arm,' Ossian looked at his own palm, 'damn it, the socket is copying the ape.'

Calista stopped any celebration inside four seconds, sounding like a woman watching somebody mistake one result for a plan.

"One small hit is not a plan," she said it over the comm, "and you cannot catch the big one, so do not decide that you can."

She is right about the big one, given that forty thousand joules through a palm removes the arm plus most of the man attached.

What she gave him instead was the yard itself, mapped in full since the moment the drone went up.

Row two, positions nine through fourteen, where six containers stand stacked four high on a base unit with a corner already crushed.

Twelve tonnes of steel balanced on a footing that a crane crew flagged eight months ago and nobody has paid to correct.

"Get it to swing at the base unit," Calista talked him through the angles without any urgency in it, "and put yourself where the swing has to pass."

The plan is to make the animal spend its whole stomach on a wall, and to be standing in front of that wall when it decides to.

'She wants me standing at the one post holding twelve tonnes up... still there at the moment it commits,' Ossian looked down the row, 'hell of a job description.'

Getting an Ironback to swing takes almost no persuasion, and the difficulty lies entirely in choosing where.

He gave it the pattern it had already learned, the same first three steps, identical loading in the leg it had watched all morning.

The animal moved early, in the manner it had chosen every previous time, which put its body in the lane facing that base unit.

Step four went nowhere near the ape and put him flat against the crushed corner instead.

Everything that yard had fed the animal since dawn came out in one motion, forty thousand joules aimed at the space he occupied.

He went under it rather than through it, palm up along the plating, guiding the arm past his shoulder without one gram of resistance offered.

Redirection costs nothing when the thing is already committed, and an ape that has decided where to swing cannot decide again halfway.

The fist went into the base unit, and what had been a structure four seconds earlier stopped qualifying as one.

Twelve tonnes of container came down the way a stack of anything comes down, without drama, straight onto the animal that had removed its foundation.

'It spent everything on a corner post... and the yard did the rest,' Ossian rolled clear with steel landing behind him, 'nothing of mine touched it.'

Most of that twelve tonnes settled across the shoulder plating, and the Ironback stopped moving underneath it.

Nobody in that yard had killed anything, given that a stack fell over onto an animal, a distinction the paperwork treats as enormous.

[Ironback Ape, claim shared]

[The kill belongs to you and to the woman who drew the map, and a pack that argues about meat does not last]

'It is naming Calista on the claim... it has never split one before,' Ossian read the panel sitting on the concrete, 'that is the first honest thing it has said about her.'

[Identity Fracture, thirty-one percent]

Two points for standing still and catching things, a cheaper rate than every other morning this month has charged.

Paloma photographed the collapsed stack from four angles before anybody moved a container, on the grounds that insurers ask questions nine weeks later.

A crane crew flagged that base unit eight months ago in writing, making their report the most valuable document in the freight district today.

The core sat whole inside that shoulder plating, given that no blade or fist had been driven through the animal at any point.

Maelle reached it before the dust settled and did not ask permission from anybody standing near her.

"Undamaged," she held it up in both hands with the visor still down, "four years and this is the first one I have touched that nobody broke first."

Nine men came out from behind the weighbridge to look at a stack that had fallen on a monster, and not one of them looked at Ossian.

They looked at the containers, the dust, plus the foreman holding a receipt for four thousand two hundred credits.

Paloma's eight-hundred-and-forty gross share had already posted before anybody reached the office ledger.

'Nobody here can work out what happened... a man stood still twice and the yard fell over,' Ossian sat on the concrete holding his ribs, 'that suits me perfectly.'

Killing a monster earns a man a reputation, whereas arranging for a building to land on one buys him something a good deal stranger.

Then the panel opened again, in a wording it has not used before, addressed to the left hand rather than to the man wearing it.

With rent due in nine days, the account holds three thousand seven hundred and sixty credits, while two ribs have stopped agreeing with the rest.

'Paid, alive, ribs broken, one core in a woman's hands... best morning I have had since the badge,' Ossian read the first line of the panel, 'and now it wants something.'

[The unfinished socket requests a face]