The Omicron Legion Read Online Free

from the shelter, but it might have been miles, his knees making him pay for every step. Seven years of high school and college football had ruined both of them, and spending the night on his feet wasn’t exactly aspirin. They’d been better since he’d lost the thirty pounds to get back to his college weight of two-fifty, but there weren’t enough working parts left in either of them to make any weight loss vanquish the pain.
    No jogging tomorrow, coach….
    Jerry Dean’s car was in sight when he realized he was being followed. The steps were just muted enough to tell him the walker was trying to disguise them. He tensed. People knew him around here, knew what he was about. And he knew the gangs and the junkies, some on a first-name basis. Most people left him alone, and those that didn’t know him should have been warned off by a frame that was still six-four off the ground, though a bit softer around the edges.
    Jerry Dean spun as the muted footsteps continued to clack on the concrete behind him. Nothing was there. Just the night and the splotchy glares of shattered streetlights. But there had been someone.
    Jerry Dean turned his attention to his car. Twenty feet away was all. Couldn’t run, though. Worst thing he could do under the circumstances was show his fear.
    But there’s no one here.
    Jerry Dean was scared, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him scared stiff as a frozen cheesesteak. He reached the car, relaxing a bit since the steps had not returned. His hand probed a key forward toward the lock, was just inserting it when the flash came. He flinched reflexively, but his hand stayed where it was. He heard the crackling thud just before the pain exploded in his wrist. Then he saw the glinting steel.
    Jerry Dean howled in pain as a dark shape whirled in a blur beside him. The steel flashed briefly again, and he felt the side of his head give under the force of another impact. Jerry Dean felt himself reeling. He was dizzy and nauseated, but something kept him on his feet. The shape swirled at him again, and this time he managed to raise an arm into the flash’s path. He felt his forearm give, and again pain flooded his insides.
    But somehow he didn’t feel scared anymore. He didn’t even hurt.
    All he felt was rage.
    “Come on, you fucker!” he challenged, swinging alternately with both of his damaged limbs.
    The blows, though, landed only on air. The shape was there, always ahead of him, dancing at the outskirts of his range. Jerry Dean had hauled back for a roundhouse punch when the worst of his two knees, the right one, got slammed and forced him hard to the pavement.
    He screamed in agony as the shape loomed over him. In that moment, frozen in the landscape of pain, he thought quite rationally that his attacker was at least as big as he. The man was Oriental, cloaked in black, only a thick, round face exposed. Jerry Dean tried to block the attacker’s downward blow with upraised arms. But the glinting steel split the distance between them and smashed his face.
    For Jerry Dean the pain stopped there, but he was somehow still aware of the trio of blows that followed before life and consciousness were stripped from him at the same time.
    Not even breathing hard, Khan stood over the pulp that had been a man. The screams he’d evoked caused lights to snap on and faces to peer out from behind the safety of windows. But before the first eyes looked down, Khan had melted into the night once more, his blessed steel killing sticks back in their sheaths.
    The yacht fought its way through the sea, pounded at every turn by the crushing swells. The storm had ended hours before, but its residue was a harsh wind that kept the waves mean. Water splashed freely across the big boat’s decks, lashing her windows like an unwanted guest determined to gain entry.
    It was only a short distance from the radio room to the library, but Tiguro Nagami struggled for every step, forced to grasp the rail firmly to pull himself