A high-velocity slug punch tore through the reinforced plasteel pane, spattering shards across the titanium counter. The simmer sauce hissed into white smoke on the induction burner. "Get down!" Vancor's roar came not from a hover-chair, but on two solid boots that hit the deck with bone-rattling force. Without hesitation, he launched himself across the prep island, catching Tazoria around the waist and slamming her flush against the stainless storage lockers just as three more tracer rounds chewed through the hood vent. The man smelled like cedar, gunpowder, and the cardamom pod she had dropped into his espresso an hour ago. His chest pressed hard into hers, his grip like banded alloy. "You're standing," she gasped, her cheek smashed against his collarbone. "You fixed the kinetic dampeners on my leg splints, didn't you?" His breath burned her ear. "Don't play stupid, Loma. You balanced the load-bearing torque yesterday while I was asleep." "I used butter knife shims! They shouldn't hold a sprint!" "They hold fine." He yanked a mag-rail pistol from his shoulder holster, his thumb flipping the safety off with an icy snap. "Stay under the lip. Outlying shields are dead. The perimeter AI just flatlined." Across the floor, Banto crawled on hands and knees between the vegetable crates, whimpering in high C. "The glazed quail! My reduction! We are slaughtered like pork bellies, Master Morado! Pork bellies!" "Shut up, Banto," Vancor barked. He leaned out from the corner of the locker, squeezed the trigger twice, and dropped a black-clad infiltrator swinging through the blown glass frame. The body crashed onto a rack of copper pans, raising an ear-splitting clatter. "Slick aim for a shut-in," Tazoria muttered, kicking aside a burst copper pot. "I had a life before this bunker. Don't look so impressed." "I'm not impressed. Your firing stance exposes your left kidney." Another volley ripped through the pantry door, disintegrating a shelf of imported vinegar. Red liquid pooled across white tile. More boots crunched outside on the terrace. Orrin's dogs. That silver moth device—it hadn't just pinpointed her; it had dumped an electromagnetic pulse straight through the breaker grid. A ceiling-mounted sentry dropped from its recessed housing above the walk-in freezer, sparking violently. It sputtered, its swivel motor dead, whining pathetically as its heavy double-barrel pointed straight down at a sack of purple potatoes. "Secondary gun's burnt out," Vancor grunted, firing through the smoke to suppress two raiders advancing along the patio. "We're getting flanked on the east veranda. Three hostiles entering via the dry pantry." "Give me forty seconds," Tazoria said. "Loma, stay behind me!" "I said forty seconds, boss! Watch my back or find another cook!" She didn't wait for his permission. She slid across the grease-slick floor on her knees, snatched the fallen turret assembly by its thermal jacket, and ripped the housing open with bare fingers. The servo actuator was fried, melted by the surge. She needed an inductive rotary drive with at least nine thousand RPMs. Her eyes locked onto the stainless-steel prep station. The heavy-duty Vortex-9 industrial emulsifier. "Chef!" she yelled. "Toss me the mixer base! The titanium one!" "It's for the custard!" Banto wailed from beneath a prep cart. "Throw it or eat lead!" Banto slid the six-kilo motorized base across the tiles. Tazoria caught it, smashed the plastic jar against the corner of a drawer, and stripped the internal copper leads with her canine teeth. Spitting rubber insulation, she shoved the spindle shaft directly into the turret's ammo feeder gear. She tied off the hot wires to the appliance's pulse switch. "Low speed for chop," she muttered under her breath, "high speed for liquify." A gunner vaulted the worktable, submachine gun leveled at her forehead. Vancor lunged. His cybernetically reinforced heel smashed into the man's knee, bending the joint the wrong way with an awful wet crunch. Vancor caught the falling carbine with his off-hand, spun, and fired point-blank into a second breacher behind him, never letting his body drift more than six inches from Tazoria's flank. "Ready yet?" he growled, sweat dripping down his temple into his stubble. "Set to puree!" Tazoria hauled the frankensteined monstrosity up, propping the turret barrels across the steel ledge. She jammed the pulse button down. The industrial appliance motor screamed like a banshee. Linked to the turret's feeder, the fifty-caliber kinetic drum caught the spin, spitting out a deafening hail of high-velocity brass. Bullets ripped through the exterior terrace, cutting through balcony balustrades, glass, and three heavily armored commandos who had just cleared the terrace edge. Shrapnel and shredded combat rigs blew into the sea mist outside. The motor housing shook so hard her forearms went numb, but she leaned her weight into the kick, teeth bared in feral delight. "Eat hot lead and heavy cream, you gutter rats!" From the pantry shadows, a surviving intruder rose, aiming a heavy snub-pistol straight at her exposed neck. Vancor's gun clicked empty. Before the raider could pull the trigger, Banto charged out from behind the root-cellar rack like an enraged rhino, hoisting a massive, iron-spiked durian above his head. With a theatrical shriek of fury, the chef slammed the spiny, putrid fruit full-force into the operative's faceplate. The intruder collapsed, unconscious, bathed in noxious tropical stench. "Respect the ingredients!" Banto bellowed, panting, clutching a bruised rolling pin. The patio fell silent, save for the howling wind whipping off the ocean cliffs through the shattered glass. Acrid gunpowder mingled with the sharp tang of garlic and burnt spices. Tazoria let go of the pulse switch. The blender spun down with a tired, clicking rattle. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked up. Vancor stood above her, his pistol smoking in his lowered hand. He wasn't leaning on anything. His weight was balanced, athletic, formidable. His dark eyes drilled into hers, stripping away every shred of the submissive scullery routine she had worn for weeks. "You hotwired a military-grade automated turret to a kitchen blender in under thirty seconds," he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register. "You knew the spindle pitch. You knew the cyclic feed rate. And you didn't flinch when fifty-caliber rounds took the door off its hinges." Tazoria wiped a smear of black grease from her jaw with the back of her wrist, fighting to keep her smirk steady. "I told you. I'm very handy around the house. You want that quail served warm, or should I sweep up the dead guys first?" Vancor stepped closer, crowding her against the counter until she had nowhere to retreat. His chest rose and fell in ragged bursts. He reached out, his thumb catching the edge of her collar, brushing the skin right beside her pulse. "Who the hell are you, Loma?" She opened her mouth to spit another deflection, but her voice died in her throat. Three floors above, deep inside the estate's private communications suite, Drucia tapped her manicured nails on an amber holographic monitor. She had bypassed the scorched firewall through an encrypted offshore tunnel, intercepting the mercenary strike team's local command relay. An audio file looped on the console. A frantic field transmission from the dead commando squad leader, complete with biometric matching data running across the side of the display. *Target confirmed inside Morado perimeter. Heir to the Cobre hover-tech dynasty. Tazoria. Capture alive for Lord Orrin.* Drucia's painted lips curled into a razor-thin, venomous smile.

Blenders and Blasters