I turned over gingerly and looked at the face of the woman sleeping next to me. She didn’t move. I remembered the fear in Nadia Makita’s eyes the night before as she let herself slide fractions at a time into sleep.
Increments of consciousness slipping like taut rope through her hands and away, and then stopped as she flinched and blinked herself awake again.
And then the moment, abrupt and unawaited, when she let go completely and didn’t come back. Now I lay and watched the peace on her face as she slept, and it didn’t help.
I slid out of bed and dressed quietly in the other room. I didn’t want to be around when she woke up.
I certainly didn’t want to wake her myself.
Dig 301 shaded into existence opposite me and opened her mouth.
Combat neurachem got there first. I made a slicing gesture across my own throat and jerked a thumb back at the bedroom. Swept up my jacket from the back of a chair, shouldered my way into it and nodded at the door.
“Outside,” I murmured.
Outside, the day was shaping up better than its first impressions. The sun was wintry, but you could get warm if you stood in its rays directly and the cloud cover was starting to break up. Daikoku stood like the ghost of a scimitar blade to the south west and there was a column of specks circling slowly out over the ocean, ripwings at a guess. Down below, a couple of vessels were visible at the limits of my unaided vision. Tekitomura made a backdrop mutter in the still air. I yawned and looked at the amphetamine cola in my hand, then tucked it into my jacket. I was as awake as I wanted to be right now.
“So what did you want?” I asked the construct beside me.
“I thought you would like to know that the site has visitors.”
The neurachem slammed on line. Time turned to sludge around me as the Eishundo sleeve went to combat aware. I was staring sideways in disbelief at Dig 301 when the first blast cut past me. I saw the flare of disrupted air where it came through the construct’s projected presence and then I was spinning away sideways as my jacket caught fire.
“Motherfu—”
No gun, no knife. I’d left them both inside. No time to reach the door, and Envoy instinct kicked me away from it anyway. Later, I’d realise what the situational intuition already knew—going back inside was a bolthole suicide. Jacket still in flames, I tumbled into the cover of the cabin wall.
The blaster beam flashed again, nowhere near me. They were firing at Dig 301 again, misreading her for a solid human target.
Not exactly ninja-grade combat skills, flashed through my mind. These guys are the local hired help.
Yeah but they have guns and you don’t.
Time to change arenas.
Fire-retardant material in my jacket had the flames down to smoke and heat across my ribs. The scorched fibres oozed damping polymer. I drew one hard breath and sprinted.
Yells behind me, boiling instantly from disbelief to anger. Maybe they thought they’d taken me down with the first shot, maybe they just weren’t all that bright. It took them a pair of seconds to start shooting. By then I was almost to the next cabin. Blaster fire crackled in my ears. Heat flared close to my hip and my flesh cringed. I flinched sideways, got the cabin at my back and scanned the ground ahead.
Three more cabins, gathered in a rough arc on the ground quarried out by the original archaeologues. Beyond them, the eyrie lifted off into the sky from massive cantilevered supports, like some vast premillennial rocket poised for launch. I hadn’t been inside the day before, there was altogether too much abrupt space underfoot and a straight drop five hundred metres to the slanted mountainside below. But I knew from previous experience what the alien perspectives of Martian architecture could do to human perceptions, and I knew the Envoy conditioning would hold up.
Local hired help. Hold that thought.
They’d come in after me hesitantly at best, confused by the dizzying swoop of the interior, maybe even spiked with a little superstitious dread if
I was lucky. They’d be off balance, they’d be afraid.
They’d make mistakes.
Which made the eyrie a perfect killing ground.
I bolted across the remaining open space, slipped between two of the cabins and made for the nearest outcropping of Martian alloy, where it rose out of the rock like a tree root five metres thick. The archaeologues had left a set of metal steps bolted into the ground beside it. I took them three at a time and stepped onto the outcropping, boots slithering on alloy the colour of bruises. I steadied myself against a bas-relief technoglyph facing that formed the side of the closest cantilever support as it extended outward into the air. The support was at least ten metres high, but a couple of metres to my left there was a ladder epoxied to the bas-relief surface. I grabbed a rung and started climbing.
More shouts from back among the cabins. No shooting. It sounded as if they were checking corners, but I didn’t have the time to crank up the neurachem and make sure. Sweat jumped from my hands as the ladder creaked and shifted under my weight. The epoxy hadn’t taken well to the Martian alloy. I doubled my speed, reached the top and swung off with a tiny grunt of relief. Then I lay flat on top of the cantilever support, breathing and listening. Neurachem brought me the sounds of a badly organised search thrashing about below. Someone was trying to shoot the lock off one of the cabins. I stared up at the sky and thought about it for a moment.
“Dig? You there?” Voice a murmur.
“I am in communication range, yes.” The construct’s words seemed to come out of the air beside my ear. “You need speak no louder than you are. I assume from the situational context you do not wish me to become visible in your vicinity.”
“You assume right. What I would like you to do is, on my command, become visible inside one of the locked-up cabins down there. Better yet, more than one if you can handle multiple projections. Can you do that?”
“I am enabled for one-to-one interaction up to and including every member of the original Dig 301 team at any given time, plus a guest potential of seven.” It was hard to tell at this volume, but there seemed to be a trace of amusement in the construct’s voice. “This gives me a total capacity of sixty-two separate representations.”
“Yeah, well, three or four should do for now.” I rolled with painstaking care onto my front. “And, listen, can you project as me?”
“No. I can choose among an index of personality projections, but I am not able to alter them in any way.”
“You have any males?”
“Yes, though fewer options than—”
“Alright, that’s fine. Just choose a few out of the index that look like me. Male, about my build.”
“When do you wish this to commence?”
I got my hands positioned under me.
“Now.”
“Commencing.”
It took a couple of seconds, and then chaos erupted among the cabins below. Blasterfire crackled back and forth, punctuated with shouts of warning and the sound of running feet. Fifteen metres above it all, I pushed hard with both hands, came up in a crouch and then exploded into the sprint.
The cantilever arm ran out fifty-odd metres over empty space, then buried itself seamlessly in the main body of the eyrie. Wide oval entrances gaped at the join. The dig team had attempted to attach a safety rail along the top of the arm, but as with the ladder, the epoxy hadn’t done well over time. In places the cabling had torn loose and now hung over the sides, elsewhere it was simply gone. I grimaced and narrowed focus to the broad flange at the end where the arm joined the main structure. Held the sprint.
Neurachem reeled in a voice shouting above the others—
“—pid motherfuckers, cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fucking fire! Up there, he’s up there!”
Ominous quiet. I put on desperate increments of speed. Then the air was ripped through with blast beams. I skidded, nearly went over a gap in the rail. Flung myself forward again.
Dig 301 at my ear, thunderous under neurachem amp.
/> “Portions of this site are currently considered unsafe—”
My own wordless snarl.
Blast heat at my back and the stink of ionised air.
The new voice below again, neurachemmed in close. “Fucking give me that, will you. I’ll show you how to—”
I threw myself sideways across the flange. The blast I knew was coming cut a scorching pain across my back and shoulder. Pretty sharp shooting at that range with a weapon that clumsy. I went down, rolled in approved fashion, came up and dived for the nearest oval opening.
Blasterfire chased me inside.
It took them nearly half an hour to come in after me.
Holed up in the swooping Martian architecture, I strained with the neurachem and followed the argument as best I could. I couldn’t find a vantage point this low in the structure that would give me a view of the outside—fucking Martian builders—but peculiar funnelling effects in the eyrie’s internal structure brought me the sound of voices in gusts. The gist of what was said wasn’t hard to sort out. The hired help wanted to pack up and go home, their leader wanted my head on a stick.
You couldn’t blame him. In his place, I wouldn’t have been any different.
You don’t go back to the yakuza with half a contract fulfilled. And you certainly don’t turn your back on an Envoy. He knew that better than anyone there.
He sounded younger than I’d expected.
“—believe you’re fucking scared of this place. For Christ’s sake, you all grew up just down the hill. It’s only a fucking ruin.”
I glanced around at the billowing curves and hollows, felt the gentle but insistent way their lines sucked focus upward until your eyes started to ache. Hard morning light fell in from unseen vents overhead, but somehow on the way down it softened and changed. The clouded bluish alloy surfaces seemed to suck it in and the reflected light that came back was oddly muted. Below the mezzanine level I’d climbed to, patches of gloom alternated with gashes and holes in flooring where no sane human architect would have put them. A long way below that, the mountainside showed grey rock and sparse vegetation.
Only a ruin. Right.
He was younger than I’d expected.
For the first time, I started to wonder constructively exactly how young.
At an absolute minimum, he was certainly short a couple of formative experiences I’d had around Martian artefacts.
“Look, he’s not even fucking armed.”
I pitched my voice to carry outside.
“Boy, Kovacs! You’re so fucking confident, why don’t you come in and get me yourself?”
Sudden silence. Some muttering. I thought I caught a muffled guffaw from one of the locals. Then his voice, raised to match mine.
“That’s good eavesdropping gear they fitted you with.”
“Isn’t it.”
“You planning to give us a fight, or just listen in and shout cheap abuse?”
I grinned. “Just trying to be helpful. But you can have a fight if you want it—just come on in. Bring the hired help too, if you must.”
“I’ve got a better idea. How about I let my hired help run an open-all orifices train on your travelling companion, as long as it takes you to come out? You could use your neurachem to listen in on that as well if you like. Although, to be honest, the sound’ll probably carry enough without. They’re enthusiastic, these boys.”
The fury spiked up through me, too fast for rational thought. Muscles in my face skipped and juddered, and the frame of the Eishundo sleeve cabled rigid. For two sluggish heartbeats, he had me. Then the Envoy systems came soaking coldly through the emotion, bleaching it back out for assessment.
He isn’t going to do that. If Tanaseda traced you through Oshima and the Slipins, it’s because he knows she’s implicated in Yukio Hirayasu’s death. And if he knows that, he’ll want her intact. Tanaseda is old school and he’s promised an old-school execution. He isn’t going to want damaged goods.
And besides, this is you we’re talking about. You know what you’re capable of and it isn’t this.
I was younger then. Now. I am. I wrestled the concept in my head. Out there. I’m younger out there. There’s no telling—
Yes there is. This is Envoy bluff and you know it, you’ve used it enough yourself.
“Nothing to say about that?”
“We both know you won’t do it, Kovacs. We both know who you’re working for.”
This time the pause before he called back was barely noticeable. Good recovery, very impressive.
“You seem remarkably well informed for a man on the run.”
“It’s my training.”
“Soak up the local colour, huh?”
Virginia Vidaura’s words at Envoy induction, a subjective century ago. I wondered how long ago she’d said it to him.
“Something like that.”
“Tell me something, man, ‘cause I’d genuinely like to know. With all that training, how come you end up a cut-rate sneak assassin for a living? As a career move, I got to say it puzzles me.”
A cold knowledge crept up through me as I listened. I grimaced and shifted my position slightly. Said nothing.
“Serendipity, right? It’s Serendipity?”
“Well, I have got another name,” I shouted back. “But some fuckhead stole it. Until I get it back, Serendipity’s fine.”
“Maybe you won’t get it back.”
“Nah, it’s good of you to worry, but I know the fuckhead in question. He isn’t going to be a problem for much longer.”
The twitch was tiny, barely a missed beat. Only the Envoy sense picked it up, the anger, shut down as rapidly as it flared.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, like I said. Real fuckhead. Strictly a short-lived thing.”
“That sounds like overconfidence to me.” His voice had changed fractionally. Somewhere in there, I’d stung him. “Maybe you don’t know this guy as well as you like to think.”
I barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? I taught him every nicking thing he knows. Without me—”
And there. The figure I’d known was coming. The one I couldn’t listen for with neurachem while I traded veiled insults with the voice outside. A crouched, black-clad form sliding in through the opening five metres under me, some kind of spec-ops eye-mask-and-sensor gear turning the head insectile and inhuman. Thermographic imaging, sonic locater, motion alert, at a probable minimum—
I was already falling. Pushed off from the ledge, boot-heels aligned to hit the neck below the masked head and snap it.
Something in the headgear warned him. He jumped sideways, looking up, twisting the blaster towards me. Beneath the mask, his mouth jerked open to yell. The blast cut through air I’d just dropped out of. I hit the floor crouched, a handsbreadth off his right elbow. Blocked the swing of the blaster barrel as it came round. The yell came out of his mouth, shivery with the shock. I struck upward into his throat with the blade of one hand and the sound choked to retching. He staggered. I straightened, went after him and chopped again.
There were two more of them.
Framed in the opening, side by side. The only thing that saved me was their incompetence. As the lead commando dropped strangling to death at my feet, either one could have shot me—instead, they both tried at the same time and tangled. I sprinted directly at them.
There are worlds I’ve been where you can take down a man with a knife at ten metres and claim it as self defence. The legal argument is that it doesn’t take very long to close that gap.
That much is true.
If you really know what you’re doing, you don’t even need the knife.
This was five metres or less. I got in a flurry of blows, stamping down at shin and instep, blocked weapons however I could, hooking an elbow round hard into a face. A blaster came loose and I fielded it. Triggered it in a savage close-quarters arc.
Muffled shrieks and a short-lived explosion of blood as flesh seared open and then cauterised. Steam wisped, and
their bodies tumbled away from me. I had time for a hard breath, a glance down at the weapon in my hands—piece of shit Szeged Incandess—and then another blaster beam flared off the alloy surface beside my head. They were coming in force.
With all that training, how come you end up a cut-rate sneak assassin for a living?
Just fucking incompetent, I guess.
I backed up. Someone poked a head into the oval opening and I chased them away with a barely aimed burst of fire.
And too fucking fascinated with yourself for your own good.
I grabbed a projection one handed and hauled myself up, hooking my legs onto the wide, spiralling ramp that led back to my initial hiding place on the mezzanine. The Eishundo sleeve’s gekko grip failed on the alloy.
I slipped, grabbed again in vain, and fell. Two new commandos burst through a gap to the left of the one I was covering. I fired randomly and low with the Szeged, trying to get back up. The beam chopped a foot off the commando on the right. She screamed and stumbled, clutched at her injured leg, toppled gracelessly and fell through a gash in the floor. Her second scream floated back up through the gap.
I came up off the ground and flung myself at her companion.
It was a clumsy fight, both of us hampered by the weapons we held. I lunged with the butt of the Szeged, he blocked and tried to level his own blaster. I smashed it aside and kicked at a knee. He turned the blow with a shin-kick of his own. I got the Szeged butt under his chin and rammed upward. He dropped his weapon and punched me hard simultaneously in the side of the throat and the groin. I reeled back, hung on somehow to the Szeged and suddenly had the distance to use it. Proximity sense screamed a warning at me through the pain. The commando ripped out a sidearm and pointed it. I flinched aside, ignoring the pain and the proximity warning in my head, levelled the blaster.
Sharp splatter from the gun in the commando’s hand. The cold wrap of a stunblast.
My hand spasmed open and the Szeged clattered away somewhere.
I staggered backwards and the floor vanished under my feet.
—fucking Martian builders—
I dropped out of the eyrie like a bomb, and fell wingless away from the rapidly contracting iris of my own consciousness.
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