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It wasn't supposed to end like this.
Kruger clamps his teeth down, but he can't help the groan that escapes when he feels the neural interface rip from his brain, followed by the weight of his now-useless exo-suit dragging him down to his knees.
Fucking technology,
he laughs helplessly to himself.
It's great… when it works.
"You got some fire in you, boytjie,"
he acknowledges, gingerly touching the bloody back of his head, perversely pleased that it's a real scrapper who's put him down.
A worthy opponent, indeed.
Kruger's fought any number of cowards.
From the day he near-strangled his bastard of a father to the moment he finds himself in now, he's maimed and killed more men face-to-face then he cares to remember, and every last one of them begged for his life.
It's a normal reaction, he supposes, but as a warrior, he has no wish to face 'normal.'
When he battles a man, he wants to feel strength in him, and the determination to live.
He wants to face anger, not tears.
He wants an opponent worth killing… but now that he's got one, he can't.
Delacourt wasn't worth spitting on, for all that she had her own brand of toughness in life.
She didn't know when to shut her mouth, and she got off easy, as far as Kruger's concerned.
All that gurgling and guggling and the shocked look in her eyes… What the fuck did she expect, coming in and hollering at him like that?
When a man's just had his face blown off and pasted back on and his head doesn't even feel like his own yet, you cut him a little slack.
As for that woman and her brat… Kruger was itching for a fight, not a fuck, so he left her to Crowe's tender mercies.
A tough kid, Crowe, and he earned that privilege.
Besides, Kruger didn't want to hear any more mewling out of the child or shushing out of her mother.
As strange as it felt, he tried showing kindness — even sang the girl a lullaby — but she still didn't shut up, and even thinking about the sound made his head hurt.
That Max, though… he had possibilities:
a man who got pissed off rather than scared.
But it wasn't supposed to end like this.
Kruger doesn't have time to dwell on the raw, screaming pain in his head;
not when Max's fists and feet are connecting with his face, breaking his nose, smashing his cheek and his teeth, leaving gouts of blood all over the gantry floor and knocking him down on his stomach.
The suit is a burden too much for him to lift in this position and he can barely lever himself up to his elbows.
I'm a dead man,
Kruger thinks, though there's no real sorrow in it;
no longing for more life that would set him to pleading with Max not to kill him.
Fucking dead, but so what?
I've lived a good, long life, and this'll be on my terms;
it won't be just me.
"You almost had me,"
he chuckles at Max when the latter hauls him upright, intending to plant his droid-strong fist under Kruger's chin, only to find a grenade hooked to them both.
It'll be on my terms, and it won't be just me.
"We die together, boytjie,"
Kruger coughs through bleeding, broken teeth, and the certainty that there's nothing Max can do about it will allow him to die happy.
But no one tells that to Max as he stares at the ticking explosive, and he's not nearly as ready to die, especially at Kruger's hands.
He pulls at the piston holding the grenade's carabiner in place;
pulls harder and harder;
the hydraulic fluid starts to leak, then to spray, and Kruger's staring, suddenly unsure, praying that the countdown will end and the blast will vaporize them both before the piston breaks free.
In the instant before Max pries it loose, Kruger remembers the last man he knifed;
the last time he went home to South Africa;
the warmth of the last woman he held pinned and writhing beneath him.
It all whirls through his head so fast that he's not sure what's happening;
not until he feels the floor disappear from under his feet;
senses the gravity of being lifted;
and the sick realization comes that Max is heaving him over the rail.
Kruger has every intention of dying bravely, silently, with grace as a samurai does, simply waiting for the grenade's flash of fire that will shatter his body into irreparable bits, but he doesn't count on what it will feel like to make that endless fall from the gantry alone, watching Max's face get smaller and smaller above him.
This death is not on his terms and was never what he bargained on — what he lived for, what he fought for — and he's helpless to change it.
His resolve to die quietly breaks as he shrieks and shrieks and shrieks, but though Kruger's consumed by the extraordinary fear of a man finally forced to admit he's powerless to dictate anything to Death, not even after 184 years, one single uplifting thought still manages to break through:
Goddamn it, I was a worthy oppone………
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FINIS
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