The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner Page B

course, the man sprawled on the OR floor. I’d eliminated another three scoundrels upstairs, reducing the opposition to eleven less however many had been taken out by flying oxygen tanks. There was no way to guess the number of men who’d charge the OR, but even one hooligan with an Uzi was a serious threat—we had no guns of our own.
    Of course, we weren’t
entirely
unarmed . . .
    I took a position in the doorway. Reuben stood behind me, ready to pass armaments as needed. I saw a ruffian begin sneaking up the corridor and I held my hand out to Reuben. “Scalpel.”
    “Scalpel.” He slapped the scalpel’s handle into my palm.
    The approaching mercenary had almost reached the gurney. He was farther away than my favorite dartboard in the Fox and Trotter, but I thought I could still hit the bull’s-eye.
    With light from the emergency lamp shining in his eyes, all the man might have seen was my arm in the doorway, cocking back and throwing. Then he stopped seeing anything at all . . . at least with his right eye. He screamed for a moment, then fell silent.
    One down.
    I held out my hand to Reuben. “Forceps.”
    “Forceps.”
    Surgical forceps come in many sizes. The biggest are huge tongs for gripping a baby’s head during difficult births. The smallest are tweezers that can delicately manipulate blood vessels and other tiny tissues. Between those extremes are a multitude of variations. I’d chosen a set like the tongs used to lift hard-boiled eggs out of hot water. With rubber surgical tubing tied between the outstretched prong arms, the forceps made a nice little catapult . . . or what American weaponry catalogs call “a high-powered hunting-grade slingshot.”
    I held out my hand to Reuben again. “Hypo.”
    “Hypo.”
    He passed me a hypodermic syringe of truly prodigious dimensions. I wondered if Dr. Jacek sometimes needed to vaccinate elephants. Despite its monstrous proportions, the needle fit nicely on the slingshot’s rubber strap . . . and it flew nicely, too, as soon as I caught sight of another mercenary skulking toward us.
    Who knew that syringes were aerodynamic? It shot forward like a javelin, spiking into the bad guy’s ski mask and burying itself deep, deep, deep. An instant after impact, the hypo’s glass body broke, splashing the man with its contents. I don’t know what the fluid was—Dr. Jacek had simply handed me a bottle and said, “Fill the needle with this”—but whatever was in the hypo, it worked a wicked treat. The villain gave a gagging cough, loosed a three-bullet burst into the ceiling, and collapsed like a sack of bananas.
    Two down.
    The next mercenary tried to learn from his comrades’ mistakes. He charged toward the gurney, shooting suppression bursts down the middle of the corridor in an attempt to discourage answering fire.
    “Ether,” I said to Reuben.
    “Ether.”
    We had a big bottle of the stuff, easy to launch with the slingshot. By reflex, the gunman shot the bottle as it hurtled toward him. The glass broke; the flammable ether inside caught fire from the muzzle flash and continued forward in accordance with the usual laws of momentum. The hooligan was inundated with a faceful of blazing liquid he’d ignited himself.
    Howling ensued. A torch dance.
    Three down.
    The corridor wasn’t wide enough for two, but a pair of mercenaries tried it anyway. They opted for caution; they also opted to pop a few bullets at the emergency lamp, shooting out the bulb.
    I’d wondered when someone would think of that.
    In the resulting blackness, the gunmen moved forward as silently as they could. Bulletproof vests make stealth difficult, but I gave the men points for effort—they kept the rustling to a minimum. I held out my hand to Reuben and said, clearly and distinctly, “Grenade.”
    “Grenade.”
    This was a ruse we’d arranged earlier. Instead of a grenade—which we didn’t have—Reuben gave me a cake of antiseptic soap. I counted under my breath, softly but