One of the four elves inside came at him, firing point-blank. The bullets smashed against Skater's armor like hammer blows, stealing his breath away. Skater grabbed one of the elves and drove him backward, firing as fast as he could over the man's shoulder.

He put three rounds into another guard's knees and cut his legs out from under him, tried to home in on a second man, but then the sailor he was holding brought his pistol up. Headbutting him in the face and braking his nose. Skater stripped the Ceska vz 120 from the elf's grip and threw it to the floor. He spun and caught the elf with a roundhouse kick that put him down.

An elven female dressed in street synthleather, looking as slender and unthreatening as Archangel, suddenly bared two sets of forearm snap-blades. Coolly and dispassionately, she rushed Elvis.

Setting himself with difficulty in the belowdecks room, the troll met her attack with a series of blocks and parries that were too quick for Skater to follow. Flesh slapped flesh, and three lines of blood appeared like magic over Elvis's left eye.

Another elf had been moving near the massive computer array against the wall, pulling the datajack out of hiding and toward his temple. Skater fired a round without warning, putting it through the elf's thigh while Elvis and his opponent fought. Keeping the elf covered. Skater glanced back and saw that the troll was bleeding from another cut on his cheek and two on his left arm. But a cruel smile raked his lips back. Without warning, Elvis popped out of a defensive posture and backhanded the woman with a paw the size of a two-liter bottle.

The razorgirl flew backward and struck the wall. She struggled briefly to get to her feet, then gave it up. Elvis moved in to secure her with pulse cuffs that would keep her cyberware inactive even if she woke before the team was done here.

"Down on the floor," Skater told the elf he'd shot. The sailor moved slowly, looking for an opening, but Skater didn't give it to him. By the time he and Elvis had cuffed the other elves, Archangel was jacked into her deck.