• • •
Most cultures don’t take kindly to you slaughtering their holy men. I couldn’t tell which way the roomful of hard-bitten sweeper crew might lean—Harlan’s World never used to have much of a reputation for religious fanaticism, but a lot had changed while I was away, most of it for the worse. The citadel looming above the streets of Tekitomura was one of several I’d run up against in the last two years, and wherever I went north of Millsport, it was the poor and work-crushed who swelled the ranks of the faithful.
Best to play it safe.
The grenade blast shunted aside a table like a bad-tempered poltergeist, but alongside the scene of blood and fury at the bar it went pretty much unnoticed. It was half a dozen seconds before the vented molecular shrapnel got into lungs, decayed, and started to take effect.
Screams to drown the agony of the priests dying around me. Confused yelling, threaded with iridescent laughter. It’s an intensely individual experience, being on the receiving end of an H-grenade. I saw men jerk and swat at invisible things apparently circling them at head height. Others stared bemused at their own hands or into corners, shuddering. Somewhere I heard hoarse weeping. My own breathing had locked up automatically on the blast, relic of decades in one military context or another. I turned to the woman and found her propping herself up against the bar. Her face looked bruised.
I risked breath to shout across the general uproar.
“Can you stand?”
A clenched nod. I gestured at the door.
“Out. Try not to breathe.”
Lurching, we made it past the remains of the New Revelation commandos. Those who had not already started to hemorrhage from mouth and eyes were too busy hallucinating to present any further threat. They stumbled and slipped in their own blood, bleating and flapping at the air in front of their faces. I was pretty sure I’d gotten them all one way or another, but on the off chance I was losing count I stopped by one who showed no apparent wounds. An officiator. I bent over him.
“A light,” he driveled, voice high-pitched and wondering. His hand lifted toward me. “A light in the heavens, the angel is upon us. Who shall claim
rebirth
when they would not, when they await.”
He wouldn’t know her name. What was the fucking point.
“The angel.”
I hefted the Tebbit knife. Voice tight with lack of breath. “Take another look, officiator.”
“The an—” And then something must have gotten through the hallucinogens. His voice turned suddenly shrill, and he scrabbled backward away from me, eyes wide on the blade. “No! I
see
the old one, the reborn.
I see the destroyer.
”
“Now you’ve got it.”
The Tebbit knife bioware is encoded in the runnel, half a centimeter off the edge of the blade. Cut yourself accidentally, you probably don’t go deep enough to touch it.
I slashed his face open and left.
Deep enough.
• • •
Outside, a stream of tiny iridescent skull-headed moths floated down out of the night and circled my head, leering. I blinked them away and drew a couple of hard, deep breaths. Pump that shit through. Bearings.
The wharfway that ran behind the hosing station was deserted in both directions. No sign of Plex. No sign of anyone. The emptiness seemed pregnant, trembling with nightmarish potential. I fully expected to see a huge pair of reptilian claws slit through the seams at the bottom of the building and lever it bodily out of the way.
Well, don’t, Tak. You expect it in this state, it’s going to fucking happen.
The paving . . .
Move. Breathe. Get out of here.
A fine rain had started to sift down from the overcast sky, filling up the glow of the Angier lamps like soft interference. Over the flat roof of the hosing station, the upper decks of a sweeper’s superstructure slid toward me, jeweled with navigation lights. Faint yells across the gap between ship and wharf and the hiss-clank of autograpples firing home into their shoreside sockets. There was a sudden tilting calm to the whole scene, some unusually peaceful moment drifting up from memories of my Newpest childhood. My earlier dread evaporated, and I felt a bemused smile creep out across my face.
Get a grip, Tak. It’s just the chemicals.
Across the wharf, under a stilled robot crane, stray light glinted off her hair as she turned. I checked once more over my shoulder for signs of pursuit, but the entrance to the bar was firmly closed. Faint noises leaked through at the lower limits of my cheap synth hearing. Could have been laughter, weeping, pretty much anything. H-grenades are harmless enough long-term, but while they last you do tend to lose interest in rational thought or action. I doubted anyone’d work out where the door was for the next half hour, let alone how to get through it.
The sweeper bumped up to the wharf, cranked tight by the autograpple cables. Figures leapt ashore, trading banter. I crossed unnoticed to the shadow of the crane. Her face floated ghost-like in the gloom. Pale, wolfish beauty. The hair that framed it seemed to crackle with half-seen energies.
“Pretty handy with that knife.”
I shrugged. “Practice.”
She looked me over. “Synth sleeve, biocode steel. You deCom?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Well, you sure—” Her speculative gaze stopped, riveted on the portion of my coat that covered the wound. “Shit, they got you.”
I shook my head. “Different party. Happened a while back.”
“Yeah? Looks to me like you could use a medic. I’ve got some friends could—”
“It isn’t worth it. I’m getting out of this in a couple of hours.”
Brows cranked. “Resleeve? Well, okay, you got better friends than mine. Making it pretty hard for me to pay off my
giri
here.”
“Skip it. On the house.”
“On the
house
?” She did something with her eyes that I liked. “What are you, living some kind of experia thing? Micky Nozawa stars in? Robot samurai with the human heart?”
“I don’t think I’ve seen that one.”
“No? Comeback flick, ’bout ten years back.”
“Missed it. I’ve been away.”
Commotion back across the wharf. I jerked around and saw the bar door propped open, heavily clothed figures silhouetted against the interior lighting. New clientele from the sweeper, crashing the grenade party. Shouts, and high-pitched wailing boiled out past them. Beside me, the woman went quietly tense, head tilted at an angle that mingled sensual and lupine in some indefinable, pulse-kicking fashion.
“They’re putting out a call,” she said and her posture unlocked again, as rapidly and with as little fuss as it had tautened. She seemed to flow backward into the shadows. “I’m out of here. Look, uh, thanks. Thank you. Sorry if I spoiled your evening.”
“It wasn’t shaping up for much anyway.”
She took a couple more steps away, then stopped. Under the vague caterwauling from the bar and the noise of the hosing station, I thought I could hear something massive powering up, tiny insistent whine behind the fabric of the night, sense of shifting potential, like carnival monsters getting into place behind a stage curtain. Light and shadow through the stanchions overhead made a splintered white mask of her face. One eye gleamed silver.
“You got a place to crash, Micky-san? You said a couple of hours. What do you plan to do until then?”
I spread my hands. Became aware of the knife, and stowed it.
“No plans.”
“No plans, huh?” There was no breeze coming in off the sea, but I thought her hair stirred a little. She nodded. “No place, either, right?”
I shrugged again, fighting the rolling unreality of the H-grenade comedown, maybe something else besides. “That’s about the size of it.”
“So. Your plans are play tag with the TPD and the Beards for the rest of the night, try to see the sun come out in one piece. That it?”
“Hey, you should be writing experia. You put it like that, it sounds almost attractive.”
“Yeah. Fucking romantics. Listen, you want a place to crash until your high-grade friends are ready for you, that I can do. You want to play Micky Nozawa in the streets of Tekitomura, well.” She tilted her head again. “I’ll ’trode the flick when they make it.”
I grinned.
“Is it far?”
Her eyes shuttled left. “This way.”
From the bar, the cries of the deranged, a single voice shouting murder and holy retribution.
We slipped away among the cranes and shadows.
CHAPTER THREE
Kompcho was all light, ramp after sloping evercrete ramp aswarm with Angier lamp activity around the slumped and tethered forms of the hoverloaders. The vessels sprawled in their collapsed skirts at the end of the autograpples, like hooked elephant rays dragged ashore. Loading hatches gleamed open on their flaring flanks and illuminum-painted vehicles maneuvered back and forth on the ramps, offering up forklift arms laden with hardware. There was a constant backdrop of machine noise and shouting that drowned out individual voices. It was as if someone had taken the tiny glowing cluster of the hosing station four kilometers east and cultured it for massive, viral growth. Kompcho ate up the night in all directions with glare and sound.
We threaded our way through the tangle of machines and people, across the quay space behind the loader ramps. Discount hardware retailers piled high with aisles of merchandise shone neon pale at the base of the reclaimed wharf frontages, interspersed with the more visceral gleaming of bars, whorehouses, and implant clinics. Every door was open, providing step-up access in most cases as wide as the frontage itself. Knots of customers spilled in and out. A machine ahead of me cut a tight circle, backing up with a load of Pilsudski ground profile smart bombs, alert blaring
watch
it,
watch
it,
watch
it. Someone stepped sideways past me, grinning out of a face half metal.
She took me in through one of the implant parlors, past eight work-chairs where lean-muscled men and women sat with gritted teeth, seeing themselves get augmented in the long mirror opposite and the banks of close-up monitors above. Probably not pain as such, but it can’t be much fun watching the flesh you wear sliced and peeled and shoved aside to make room for whatever new internal toy your sponsors have told you
all
the deCom crews are wearing this season.
She stopped by one chair and looked in the mirror at the shaven-headed giant it barely held. They were doing something to the bones in the right shoulder—a peeled-back flap of neck and collar hung down on a blood-soaked towel in front. Carbon-black neck tendons flexed restlessly in the gore within.
“Hey, Orr.”
“Hey! Sylvie!” The giant’s teeth appeared to be ungritted, eyes a little vacant with endorphins. He raised a languid hand on the side that was still intact and knocked fists with the woman. “You doing?”
“Out for a prowl. You sure this is going to heal by the morning?”
Orr jerked a thumb. “Or I do the same to this scalpelhead before we leave. Without chemicals.”
The implant operative smiled a tight little smile and went on with what he was doing. He’d heard it all before. The giant’s eyes switched to me in the mirror. If he noticed the blood on me, it didn’t seem to bother him. Then again, he was hardly spotless himself.
“Who’s the synth?”
“Friend,” said Sylvie. “Talk to you upstairs.”
“Be up in ten.” He glanced at the operative. “Right?”
“Half an hour,” said the operative, still working. “The tissue bond needs setting time.”
“Shit.” The giant fired a glance at the ceiling. “Whatever happened to Urushiflash. That stuff bonds in seconds.”
Still working. A tubular needle made tiny sucking sounds. “You asked for the standard tariff, sam. Military-issue biochem isn’t available at that rate.”
“Well, for fuck’s sake what’s it going to cost me to upgrade to deluxe then?”
“About fifty percent more.”
Sylvie laughed. “Forget it, Orr. You’re almost done. You won’t even get to enjoy the ’dorphs.”
“Fuck that, Sylvie. I’m bored rigid here.” The giant spittled his thumb and held it out. “Swipe me up, you.”
The implant operative looked up, shrugged minutely, and set down his tools on the operating palette.
“Ana,” he called. “Get the Urushiflash.”
While the attendant busied herself in a footlocker with the new biochemicals, the operative took a DNA reader from amid the clutter on the mirror shelf and rubbed the upsoak end across Orr’s thumb. The machine’s hooded display lit and shifted. The operative looked back at Orr.
“This transaction will put you in the red,” he said quietly.
Orr glared. “Never fucking mind. I’m shipping out tomorrow, I’m good for it and you know it.”
The operative hesitated. “It is
because
you are shipping out tomorrow,” he began, “that—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Read the sponsor screen, will you. Fujiwara Havel. Making New Hok Safe for a New Century. We’re not some goddamned bootstrap leverage outfit. I don’t come back, the
enka
payment covers it. You know that.”
“It isn’t—”
The exposed tendons in Orr’s neck tensed and lifted. “The
fuck
are you, my
accountant
?” He levered himself up in the chair and stared into the operative’s face. “Just
put it through,
will you. And get me some of those mil-issue endorphins while you’re about it. I’ll take them later.”
We stayed long enough to see the implant operative cave in, then Sylvie nudged me away toward the back.
“We’ll be upstairs,” she said.
“Yeah.” The giant was grinning. “See you in ten.”
Upstairs was a spartan set of rooms wrapped around a kitchen-lounge combination with windows out onto the wharf. The soundproofing was good. Sylvie shrugged off her jacket and slung it over the back of a lounger. She looked back at me as she moved to the kitchen space.
“Make yourself at home. Bathroom in the back over there if you need to clean up.”
I took the hint, rinsed the worst of the gore off my hands and face in a tiny mirrored basin niche, and came back out to the main room. She was over at the kitchen counter, searching cabinets.
“Are you really with Fujiwara Havel?”
“No.” She found a bottle and cracked it open, pinched up two glasses in her other hand. “We’re a goddamned bootstrap leverage outfit. And then some. Orr just has a datarat tunnel into FH’s clearance codes. Drink?”
“What is it?”
She looked at the bottle. “Don’t know. Whiskey.”
I held out my hand for one of the glasses. “Tunnel like that’s got to cost in the first place.”
She shook her head. “Fringe benefits of deCom. We’re all wired better for crime than a fucking Envoy. Got electronic intrusion gear up the ass.” She handed me the glass and poured for both of us. The neck of the bottle made a single tiny clink in the quiet of the room each time it touched down. “Orr’s been out on the town for the last thirty-six hours, whoring and shooting chemicals on nothing but credit and
enka
payment promises. Same thing every time we ship out. Views it as an art form, I reckon. Cheers.”
“Cheers.” It was a very rough whiskey. “Uhh. You been crewing with him long?”
She gave me an odd look. “Long enough. Why?”
“Sorry, force of habit. I used to get paid to soak up local information.” I raised the glass again. “Here’s to a safe return, then.”
“That’s considered bad luck.” She didn’t lift her own glass. “You really have been away, haven’t you.”
“For a while.”
“Mind talking about it?”
“Not if we sit down.”
The furniture was cheap, not even automold. I lowered myself carefully into a lounger. The wound in my side seemed to be healing, to the extent that synth flesh ever did.
“So.” She seated herself opposite me and pushed her hair away from her face. A couple of the thicker strands flexed and crackled faintly at the intrusion. “How long you been gone?”
“About thirty years, give or take.”
“Pre-Beard, huh?”
Sudden bitterness. “Before this heavy stuff, yeah. But I’ve seen the same thing in a lot of other places. Sharya. Latimer. Parts of Adoracion.”
“Oh.
Catch
those names.”
I shrugged. “It’s where I’ve been.”
Behind Sylvie, an interior door unfolded crankily and a slight, cocky-looking woman wandered yawning into the room, wrapped in a lightweight black polalloy skinsuit half unseamed. She put her head on one side as she spotted me and came to lean on the back of Sylvie’s lounger, scrutinizing me with unapologetic curiosity. There were kanji characters shaved into her stubble-length hair.
“Got company?”
“Glad to see you got those viewfinder upgrades at last.”
“
Shut
up.” She flicked idly at the other woman’s hair with hard-lacquered fingernails, grinning when the tresses crackled and shifted away from the touch.
“Who is this? Bit late for shore-leave romances, isn’t it?”
“This is Micky. Micky, meet Jadwiga.” The slight woman winced at the full name, mouthed the single syllable
Jad.
“And Jad. We are not fucking. He’s just crashing here.”
Jadwiga nodded and turned away, instantly disinterested. From the back, the kanji on her skull read
JUST DON’T FUCKING MISS
. “We got any shiver left?”
“Think you and Las dropped it all last night.”
“
All
of it?”
“Jesus, Jad. It wasn’t my party. Try the box on the window.”
Jadwiga walked spring-heeled dancer’s steps across to the window and upended the box in question. A tiny vial fell out into her hand. She held it up to the light and shook it so the pale red liquid at the bottom quivered back and forth.
“Well,” she said meditatively. “Enough for a couple of blinks. Ordinarily I’d offer it around, but—”
“But instead you’re going to hog the whole lot yourself,” predicted Sylvie. “That old Newpest hospitality thing. Just gets me right there every time.”
“Oh look who’s talking, bitch,” said Jadwiga without heat. “How often, outside of mission time, you ever agree to hook us up to that mane of yours?”
“It isn’t the sa—”
“No, it’s
better.
You know, for a Renouncer kid, you’re pretty fucking stingy with your capacity. Kiyoka says—”
“Kiyoka doesn’t—”
“Guys,
guys.
” I gestured for attention, broke the tightening cable of confrontation that was cranking Jadwiga back across the room toward Sylvie a couple of flexed steps at a time. “It’s okay. I’m not up for any recreational chemicals right now.”
Jad brightened. “See,” she told Sylvie.
“Although if I could beg some of Orr’s endorphins when he gets up here, I’d be grateful.”
Sylvie nodded, not looking away from her standing companion. She was clearly still miffed, either over the breach of host etiquette or the mention of her Renouncer background. I couldn’t work out which.
“Orr’s got
endorphins
?” Jadwiga wanted to know loudly.
“Yes,” said Sylvie. “He’s downstairs. Getting cut.”
Jad sneered. “Fucking fashion victim. He’s never going to learn.” She slipped a hand inside her unseamed suit and produced an eye-hypo. Fingers programmed by obvious habit screwed the mechanism onto the end of the vial; then she tipped her head back and with the same automatic deftness spread the eyelids of one eye and fired the hypo into it. Her tight-cabled stance slackened, and the drug’s signature shudder dropped through her from the shoulders.
Shiver is pretty innocuous stuff—it’s about six-tenths betathanatine analog, cut with a couple of
take
extracts that make everyday household objects dreamily fascinating and perfectly innocent conversational gambits sniggeringly hilarious. Fun if everyone in the room is dropping it, irritating for anyone left out. Mostly, it just slows you down, which I imagine was what Jad, in common with most deComs, was after.
“You’re from Newpest,” I asked her.
“Mm-mm.”
“What’s it like these days?”
“Oh. Beautiful.” A badly controlled smirk. “Best-looking swamp town in the southern hemisphere. Well worth a visit.”
Sylvie sat forward. “You from there, Micky?”
“Yeah. Long time ago.”
The apartment door chimed and then unfolded to reveal Orr, still stripped to the waist, right shoulder and neck liberally smeared with orange tissue weld. He grinned as he saw Jadwiga.
“So you’re up, are you?” Advancing into the room, dumping a fistful of clothing into the lounger beside Sylvie, who wrinkled her nose.
Jad shook her head and waved the empty vial at the giant. “Down. Definitely down. Chilled to flatline.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a drug problem, Jad?”
The slight woman dribbled sniggering, as poorly suppressed as the earlier smirk. Orr’s grin broadened. He mimed junkie trembling, a twitching, idiot face. Jadwiga erupted into laughter. It was infectious. I saw the smile on Sylvie’s face and caught myself chuckling.
“So where’s Kiyoka?” asked Orr.
Jad nodded back at the room she’d come out of. “Sleep.”
“And Lazlo’s still chasing that weapons chick with the cleavage, right?”
Sylvie looked up. “What’s that?”
Orr blinked. “You know. Tamsin, Tamita, whatever her name was. The one from that bar on Muko.” He pouted and squeezed his pectorals hard toward each other with the palms of both hands, then winced and stopped as the pressure touched his recent surgery. “Just before you pissed off on your own. Christ, you were
there,
Sylvie. I wouldn’t have thought anyone could forget that rack.”
“She’s not equipped to register that kind of armament,” grinned Jadwiga. “No consumer interest. Now
I
—”
“Any of you guys hear about the citadel?” I asked casually.
Orr grunted. “Yeah, caught the newscast downstairs. Some psycho offed half the head Beards in Tekitomura by the sound of it. They say there are stacks missing. Guy just carved them out of the spines like he’d been doing it all his life, apparently.”
I saw Sylvie’s gaze track down and across to the pocket of my coat, then up to meet my eyes.
“Pretty savage stuff,” said Jad.
“Yeah, but pretty pointless.” Orr acquired the bottle from where it stood on the kitchen bar countertop. “Those guys can’t resleeve anyway. It’s an article of faith for them.”
“Fucking freaks.” Jadwiga shrugged and lost interest. “Sylvie says you scored some ’dorphs downstairs.”
“Yes, I did.” The giant poured himself a glass of whiskey with exaggerated care. “Thanks.”
“Ahhh,
Orr.
Come
on.
”