SNOW CRASH

Mental note: Raven’s weapons do not show up on radar.

Hiro looks back in the direction of Raven, but he’s already gone. A couple more greaseballs, side by side, vault over the railing about ten feet forward of Hiro, but for a moment they’re dazzled by the flames. Hiro pulls out his nine, aims it their way, and keeps pulling the trigger until both of them have fallen back into the water. He’s not sure how many rounds are left in the gun now.

There’s a coughing, hissing noise, and the flame light gets dim and finally goes out. Eliot nailed it with a fire extinguisher.

The yacht jerks out from under Hiro’s feet, and he hits the deck with his face and shoulder. Getting up, he realizes that either they’ve just rammed, or beer,! rammed by, something big. There is a thudding noise, feet running on the deck. Hiro hears some of these feet near him, drops his wakizashi, pulls his katana, whirls at the same time, snapping the long blade into someone’s midsection. Meanwhile they’re dragging a long knife down his back, but it doesn’t penetrate the fabric, just hurts a little. His katana comes free easily, which is dumb luck, because he forgot to squeeze off the blow, could have gotten it wedged in there. He turns again, instinctively parries a knife thrust from another greaseball, raises the katana and snaps it down into his brainpan. This time he does it right, kills him without sticking the blade. There are greaseballs on two sides of him now. Him chooses a direction, swings it sideways, decapitates one of them. Then he turns around. Another greaseball is staggering toward him across the pitching deck with a spiked club, but unlike Hiro he’s not keeping his balance. Him shuffles up to meet him, keeping his center of gravity over his feet, and impales him on the katana.

Another greaseball is watching all of this in astonishment from up near the bow. Hiro shoots him, and he collapses to the deck.

Two more greaseballs jump off the boat voluntarily.

The yacht is tangled up in a spider’s web of shifty old ropes and cargo nets that were stretched out across the surface of the water as a snare for poor suckers like them. The yacht’s engine is still straining, but the prop isn’t moving; something got wrapped around the shaft.

There’s no sign of Raven now. Maybe it was just a one-time contract hit on Fisheye. Maybe he didn’t want to get tangled up

1~