“Clear.”
We picked our way through the gore and moved cautiously up the corridor, into the heart of the wet bunker’s base levels. Tanaseda hadn’t known where exactly the captives would be held—the
haiduci
were twitchy and aggressive about allowing the yakuza a presence in Kossuth in the first place. Precarious in his new role of penitent failed blackmailer, Tanaseda had still insisted, on his own admission because he’d hoped to retrieve the whereabouts of Yukio Hirayasu’s stack from me by torture or extortion and thus cut his loss of face, at least among his own colleagues. Aiura Harlan-Tsuruoka, for some byzantine reason or other, agreed, and in the end it was her pressure on Segesvar that forged the diplomatic cooperation between yakuza and
haiduci.
Tanaseda had been welcomed formally by Segesvar himself, and then been told in no uncertain terms that he’d best find himself accommodation in Newpest or Sourcetown, stay away from the farm unless specifically summoned, and keep his men on a tight leash. He’d certainly not been given a tour of the premises.
But really, there was only one secure place in the complex for people you didn’t want dead yet. I’d seen it a couple of times on previous visits, had once even watched some doomed gambling junkie conveyed there while Segesvar thought about how exactly to make an example of him. If you wanted to lock a man up on the farm, you put him where even a monster couldn’t break free. You locked him in the panther cells.
We paused at a crossways, where ventilation systems gaped open above us. Faintly, down the conduits, came the sounds of ongoing battle. I gestured left, murmuring.
“Down there. The panther cells are all on the right at the next turn; they open onto tunnels that lead directly into the pens. Segesvar converted a couple of them for human holding. Got to be one of those.”
“All right then.”
We picked up the pace again, took the right turn, and then I heard the smooth, solid hum of one of the doors on the cells sliding down into the floor. Footsteps and urgent voices beyond. Segesvar and Aiura, and a third voice I’d heard before but couldn’t place. I clamped down on the savage spurt of joy, flattened myself to the wall, and waved Jad and Murakami back.
Aiura, compressed rage as I tuned in.
“. . . really expect me to be
impressed
by this?”
“Don’t you hand me that shit,” snapped Segesvar. “This is that slant-eyed yak fuck you insisted on bringing aboard. I told you—”
“Somehow, Segesvar-san, I do not think—”
“And don’t fucking call me that, either. This is Kossuth, not the fucking north. Have a bit of cultural sensitivity, why don’t you. Anton, you sure there’s no intrusion ’cast going down?”
And the third voice slotted into place. The tall, garish-haired command head from Drava. Software attack dog for Kovacs Version Two.
“Nothing. This is strictly—”
I should have seen it coming.
I was going to wait another couple of seconds. Let them walk out into the wide, brightly lit space of the corridor, then spring the trap. Instead—
Jad surged past me like a trawler cable snapping. Her voice seemed to strike echoes off the walls of the whole complex.
“Anton, you motherless fuck!”
I came off the wall, spinning to cover them all with the Rapsodia.
Too late.
I took in a glimpse of the three of them, gaping in shock. Segesvar met my eyes and flinched. Jad stood braced, shard gun riding her hip, leveled. Anton saw and reacted, deCom swift. He seized Aiura Harlan-Tsuruoka by the shoulders and hurled her in front of him. The shard gun coughed. The Harlan security exec screa—
—and came apart from shoulders to waist as the monomol swarm ripped through her. Blood and tissue exploded through the air around us, splattered me, blinded me—
In the time it took me to wipe my eyes, they were both gone. Back through the cell they’d come out of, and the tunnel beyond. What remained of Aiura lay on the floor in three pieces and puddles of gore.
“Jad, what the
fuck are you playing at
?” I yelled.
She wiped her face, smearing blood. “Told you I’d get him.”
I grabbed at calm. Stabbed a finger at the carnage around our feet. “You
didn’t
get him, Jad. He’s gone.” Calm failed me, collapsed catastrophically before focusless fury.
“How could you be so fucking stupid. He’s fucking gone.”
“Then I’ll fucking catch him up.”
“No, we nee—”
But she was already moving again, across the opened cell at a fast deCom lope. Ducking into the tunnel.
“Nice going, Tak,” said Murakami sardonically. “Command presence. I like that.”
“Shut up, Tod. Just find the monitor room, check the cells. They’re all around here somewhere. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I was backing off, moving before I finished speaking. Sprinting again, after Jad, after Segesvar.
After something.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The tunnel came out in a fight pit. Steep, sloping evercrete sides, ten meters tall and torn ragged for half their height by decades of swamp panthers trying to claw their way out. Railed spectator space around the top, all open to a sky clogged with a fast-moving stampede of greenish cloud cover. It was impossible to look directly up in the rain. Thirty centimeters of thick mud in the bottom of the pit, now pounded into brown sludge by the downpour. The drainage vents in the walls couldn’t keep up.
I squinted through the water in the air and on my face, spotted Jad halfway up the narrow maintenance ladder cut into one corner of the pit. Bawled at her over the sound of the storm.
“
Jad!
Fucking
wait
!”
She paused, hanging off the ladder rung, shard blaster pointing downward. Then waved and went on climbing.
I cursed, stowed the Rapsodia, and went after her up the ladder. Rain cascaded down the walls past me and drummed on my head. I seemed to hear blaster fire somewhere above.
When I got to the top, a hand came down and grasped my wrist. I jolted with shock and looked up to see Jad peering down at me.
“Stay low,” she called. “They’re up here.”
Cautiously, I got my head above the level of the pit and looked out across the network of gantries and spectator galleries that crisscrossed the fight pits. Thick curtains of rain skirled across the view. At more than ten meters, visibility faded to gray; at twenty it was gone. Somewhere on the other side of the farm, I could hear the firefight still raging, but here there was only the storm. Jad lay flat on her belly at the edge of the pit. She saw me cast about and leaned closer.
“They split up,” she shouted in my ear. “Anton’s heading for the moorage space on the far side. My guess is he’s looking for a ride out, or maybe the other you to give him some backup. The other guy cut back through the pens over there, looks like he wants to fight. Fired on me just now.”
I nodded. “All right, you get after Anton, I’ll take care of Segesvar. I’ll cover you when you move.”
“Done.”
I grabbed her shoulder as she rolled over. Pulled her back for a moment. “Jad, you just be fucking careful. If you run into me out there—”
Her teeth split in a grin, and the rain trickled into her teeth.
“Then I’ll waste him for you at no extra charge.”
I joined her on the flat space of the wallwalk, drew the Rapsodia, and dialed it to tight dispersal, maximum range. I squirmed about and settled into a half-reclining crouch.
“Scan up!”
She gathered herself.
“Go!”
She sprinted away from me, along the rail, onto a connecting gantry, and into the murk. Off to the right, a blaster bolt split the curtain of rain. I triggered the shard pistol in reflex, but reckoned it wasn’t close enough. Forty to fifty meters, the armorer in Tekitomura had said, but it helped if you could see what you were shooting at.
So—
I stood up. Bellowed into the storm.
“Hey Rad! You listening? I’m coming to fucking kill you!”
No reply. But no blaster fire, either. I moved warily forward, along the side of the pit gallery, trying to estimate Segesvar’s position.
The fight pits were blunt oval arenas sunk directly into the silt bed of the Expanse, deeper inside than the surrounding waters by about a meter. There were nine of them pressed up against each other in rows of three, thick evercrete walls between topped with interlinked galleries where spectators could stand at the rail and watch the panthers rip each other apart at a safe distance below. Steel-mesh spectator walkways were laid corner-to-corner of each pit to provide much-needed extra space for popular fights. On more than one occasion, I’d seen the galleries packed five deep all around and the cross gantries creaking with the weight of crowds craning to see a death.
The overall honeycomb structure the nine pits formed rose about five meters out of the shallow waters of the Expanse and backed onto the low-lying bubbles of the wet-bunker complex at one side. Adjacent to this edge of the pits and crisscrossed with more gantried service walkways were the rows of smaller feeding pens and long rectangular exercise runs that
Impaler
had smashed through on her way into the farm. As near as I could make out, it was from the edge of this mangled wreckage that the blaster had fired.
“You hear me Rad, you piece of shit?”
The blaster crashed again. The beam scorched past me, and I hit the evercrete floor, splashing water.
Segesvar’s voice rolled past overhead. “That’s close enough, I think, Tak.”
“Suit yourself,” I shouted back. “It’s all over but the cleaning up anyway.”
“Really? Not got much faith in yourself, have you? He’s over on the new dockside right now, repelling your pirate friends. He’ll throw them back into the Expanse or feed them to the panthers. Can’t you hear?”
I listened and caught the sounds of battle again. Blaster fire and the odd agonized scream. Impossible to know how it was going for anyone, but my own misgivings about Vlad and his methhead crew came back to me. I grimaced.
“Quite smitten, aren’t we!” I yelled. “What’s the matter, you and him been spending time down in the grav gym? Been poking either end of your favorite whore together?”
“Fuck you, Kovacs. At least he still knows
how
to have fun.”
His voice sounded close, even in the storm. I raised myself slightly and started to crawl along the gallery floor. Get a little closer.
“Right. And that was worth selling me out for?”
“I haven’t sold you out.” The trawler-winch laugh rattled out at me. “I’ve traded you in on a better version. I’m going to do what’s right by this guy instead of you. Because
this
fucking guy still remembers where he’s from.”
A little closer. Drag yourself a meter at a time through the hammering rain and three centimeters of standing water on the walkways. Away from one pit, around a second. Stay low. Don’t let the hate and anger put you on your feet just yet. Try to push him into making a mistake.
“So does he remember you mewling and crawling in a back alley with your fucking thigh ripped open, Rad? Does he fucking remember that?”
“Yeah, he does. But you know what?” Segesvar’s voice scaled upward. Must have hit a nerve. “He just doesn’t
break my balls about it all the fucking time. And he doesn’t milk it to take fucking liberties with my finances.
”
A little closer. I pitched my own voice amused.
“Yeah, and he’s plugged you in with the First Families, too. Which is what this is really about, right? You’ve sold out to a bunch of fucking aristos, Rad. Just like the fucking yakuza. You’ll be moving to Millsport next.”
“Hey,
fuck you, Kovacs!
”
The fury came accompanied by another blaster bolt, but it was nowhere close. I grinned in the rain and dialed the Rapsodia up to maximum dispersal. Pressed myself up out of the water. Cranked the neurachem.
“And
I’m
the one who’s forgotten where he’s from? Come on, Rad. You’ll be wearing a slit-eyed sleeve before you know it.”
Close enough.
“Hey fuck—”
I rose to my feet and hurled myself forward. His voice cued me in; neurachem vision did the rest. I spotted him crouched at the far side of one of the feeding pens, part shielded by the steel-mesh side of a bridging walkway. The Rapsodia spewed monomol fragments from my fist as I ran around the oval walkway of the fight pit. No time for better aim, just had to hope that—
He yelped and I saw him stagger, clutching at an arm. Savage joy coursed through me, peeled my lips back from my teeth. I fired again and he either collapsed or dived for cover. I leapt the rail between the gallery I was on and the feeding pen beyond. Nearly tripped—didn’t. Swayed back on balance and made a split-second decision. I couldn’t go around on the wall. If Segesvar was still alive, he’d be back on his feet in the time it took, he’d cook me with the blaster. The walkway was a straight sprint, half a dozen meters across the top of the pen. I hit it running.
The metal beneath my feet tilted sickeningly.
Down in the pen, something leapt and snarled. The sea-and-rotting-flesh stink of the panther’s breath came boiling up at me.
Later, I would have time to understand: the feeding pen had taken a glancing blow from
Impaler
’s arrival, and the evercrete on the side where Segesvar waited had fractured open. That end of the walkway hung by nothing more than bolts ripped halfway loose of their mountings. And somehow, from some similar damage elsewhere in the pen complex, one of the swamp panthers was out.
I was still two meters out from the end of the walkway when the bolts tore all the way out. Eishundo reflex threw me forward. I lost the Rapsodia, grabbed at the edge of the pen with both hands. The walkway dropped out from under me. My palms closed on rain-drenched evercrete. One hand slipped. The gecko grip in the other held me up. Somewhere below me, the swamp panther struck sparks from the fallen gantry with its talons, then fell back with a shrill howl. I scrabbled for purchase with my other hand.
Segesvar’s head appeared over the lip of the pen wall. He was pale and there was blood soaking through the right arm of his jacket, but he grinned when he saw me.
“Well, fucking well,” he said, almost conversationally. “My old self-righteous fucking friend Takeshi Kovacs.”
I heaved sideways desperately. Got a heel hooked over the edge of the pen. Segesvar saw it and limped closer.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, and kicked my foot away. I swung out again, barely retaining grip with both hands. He stood above me and stared down for a moment. Then he looked away across the fight pits and nodded with vague satisfaction. The rain hammered down around us.
“So for once I’m looking down on you.”
I panted. “Oh
fuck
off.”
“You know, that panther down there might even be one of your religious friends. That’d be ironic, eh?”
“Just get on with it, Rad. You’re a sellout piece of shit and nothing you do here is going to prove any different.”
“That’s right, Takeshi. Take the fucking moral high ground.” His face contorted, and for a moment I thought he was going to kick my hands away there and then. “Like you always do.
Oh Radul’s a fucking criminal, Radul can’t handle himself, I had to save Radul’s fucking life once.
You been doing it since you slimed Yvonna away from me, and you
never fucking change.
”
I gaped up at him in the rain, the drop below me almost forgotten. Spat water out of my mouth.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know fucking well what I’m talking about! Watanabe’s that summer, Yvonna Vasarely, with the green eyes.”
Memory flared with the name. Hirata’s Reef, the long-limbed silhouette above me. A sea-wet, salt-tasting body on damp rubber suits.
Hang on tight.
“I.” I shook my head numbly. “I thought she was called Eva.”
“You see, you fucking
see.
” It came seething up out of him like pus, like poison contained too long. His face distorted with rage. “You
didn’t
give a shit about her, she was just another nameless fuck for you.”
For long moments, my past swept back over me like surf. The Eishundo sleeve took over and I hung in a lit tunnel of kaleidoscope images from that summer. Out on the deck at Watanabe’s. The heat, pressing down from a leaden sky. Scant breeze across the Expanse, not enough to stir the heavy mirrored wind chimes. Flesh slick with sweat beneath clothing, beaded with it where you could see. Languid talk and laughter, the acrid aroma of seahemp on the air. The green-eyed girl.
“That’s two hundred fucking years ago, Rad. And you weren’t even
talking
to her most of the time. You were snorting meth out of Malgazorta Bukovski’s cleavage, as per fucking usual.”
“I didn’t know how to. She was.” He locked up. “I fucking
cared about her,
you
cunt.
”
At first I couldn’t identify the noise that came out of me. It could have been a choked cough with the rain that forced its way down my throat every time I opened my mouth. It felt a little like a sob, a tiny wrenching sense of something coming loose inside. A slippage, a loss.
But it wasn’t.
It was laughter.
It came up through me after the first spluttering cough like warmth, demanding space in my chest and a way out. It blew the water out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop it.
“Stop laughing, you fuck.”
I couldn’t stop. I giggled. Fresh energy curled up my arms with the unlooked-for hilarity, into my gecko hands, new tensile strength down the length of every finger.
“You stupid bastard, Rad. She was Newpest money, she wasn’t ever going to waste herself on street like us. She went off to study in Millsport that autumn and I never saw her again. She
told
me I’d never see her again. Said not to get hung up about it, we’d had fun but it wasn’t our lives.” Barely conscious of what I was doing, I found I’d started to heave myself up to the lip of the pen while he stared at me. The hard evercrete edge of it against my chest. Panting as I talked. “You really think. You’d ever have gotten
near
someone like that, Rad? Thought she’d have your. Babies, and sit on Spekny Wharf with the other gang wives? Waiting for you to come home. Fried from Watanabe’s at dawn? I mean.” Between grunts, the laughter came bubbling up again. “How fucking desperate would a woman,
any
woman, have to be for that?”
“Fuck you!”
he screamed, and kicked me in the face.
I suppose I knew it was coming. I was certainly pushing him hard enough. But it all seemed suddenly very distant and unimportant alongside the glittery bright images of that summer. And anyway, it was the Eishundo sleeve, not me.
My left hand lashed out. Grabbed his leg around the calf as it swung back from the kick. Blood gouted from my nose. The gecko grip locked. I yanked back savagely, and he did a ridiculous little one-legged jig at the edge of the pen. He looked down at me, face working.