Black Steel

by Steve Perry

  BLACK STEEL

  The seventh book in the Matador series

  STEVE PERRY

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter ONE

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Chapter TWELVE

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  Chapter NINETEEN

  Chapter TWENTY

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Chapter THIRTY

  Chapter ONE

  DEATH CAME FOR him by mistake.

  Sleel had left the commercial hopper and was walking in the shade under the protective gamp toward the airport terminal when a woman with a sword stepped out of a darker shadow. There were other people moving under the billowy canopy, but Sleel knew immediately that the swordswoman had come for him.

  “Stupid,” Sleel said, shaking his head. He was wearing the matador uniform, dark gray orthoskins, spun dotic boots, and bilateral spetsdods. The would-be assassin was a good eight meters away. She wasn’t a big woman, but size didn’t mean much when it came to this kind of thing; it was ability that counted.

  Still, even if he suddenly went blind, Sleel could hit her before she moved a meter. She wasn’t flashing a projectile weapon around; she’d have to get close to use that blade, and that was just plain foolish. And because it was so suicidal, it made Sleel think again. Maybe she had a partner? Since she didn’t have a prayer of getting to Sleel before she ate a load of shocktox, something was definitely wrong with this picture.

  Sleel scanned the people around him, extended his perception to its fullest, searching for another enemy.

  Overhead the neosilk gamp fluttered in the tropical afternoon breeze, making tent noises. Some of the other passengers on the flight had taken notice of the fern with the sword and were viewing her with alarm. The smell of hot plastcrete rose and mingled with the hopper’s fuel exhaust residue and machine lube from the luggage carrier that rolled past in the Hawaiian sunshine. The air was heavy with humidity and warm even under the canopy. Just another day in paradise, right?

  If there were others lining up to attack him, Sleel couldn’t spot them. Could it be just the one woman?

  Was she really that stupid, to think she could just stroll over and carve one of the galaxy’s best bodyguards, just like that? Somebody who outgunned her with two fully loaded spetsdods to her sword?

  Apparently so. The swordswoman smiled, a thin-lipped and tight expression. She had chocolate skin and very white teeth, with red-brown hair curled tightly into a cap over her skull. She wore freight handler’s coveralls with the sleeves rolled up, and there was a tattoo on her left upper arm a couple of centimeters above her elbow. The sword was about a meter long, slightly curved, thicker than a foil but thinner than a saber. Some kind of shiny handguard protected the grip. The blade was black. Maybe it was stacked carbon or squashed plastic to be that color. Maybe she was wearing body armor under the coverall; maybe she thought that would protect her.

  Lotta maybes here. The fem wanted him to see her coming that was obvious. Otherwise she could have just waited until Sleel passed and skewered him from behind. The swordswoman couldn’t miss seeing the spetsdods, and yet she was willing to go up against them with nothing more than what was essentially a real long knife, its use limited to arm’s-length range. She had to have a reason to believe she had a chance of making it. What?

  Sleel took it all in as he stopped and stood, waiting.

  The assassin started to move toward Sleel. She managed half a step before Sleel snapped up his left hand and fired his spetsdod. The little back-of-the-hand dartgun gave a dry cough and spat a missile loaded with shocktox. The tiny dart hit the swordplayer on the forehead directly above the bridge of her nose.

  Right between the eyes.

  So much for that.

  The sword player blinked but kept coming.

  Sleel frowned.

  The bodyguard fired thrice more, one dart for each of the assassin’s hands, one for the tattoo.

  Nothing. The woman kept coming. She was almost close enough to swing the sword. She was laughing soundlessly now.

  Well, shit! Should have gone for the eyes

  Sleel dodged, letting his body flow into the Ninety-seven Steps, his feet describing the last dance of Bamboo Pond, his hand lifting for the natural flow into Arc of Air, reacting with the proper patterns to the shape of the attack. It was almost a reflex after so many years of practice.

  The assassin twisted, altered her cut, and tried to follow Sleel. She was pretty good with that blade. Sleel ducked as the sword slashed the air over his head. The matador skipped into Neon Chain, and drove his fist into the woman’s left kidney with more force than he’d intended. Fear did that to a man, and anger at being made afraid added power to the strike.

  The swordswoman staggered, and Sleel finished the dance by shifting to Helicopter, spinning and hammering the woman’s temple with the edge of his knotted hand.

  The assassin fell, the sword clattering onto the plastcrete. The blade rang like metal when it hit.

  A man yelled something hoarsely, and a woman cursed.

  Sleel spun, looking for more attackers. There were none.

  He came up from his defensive crouch. There was a sharp gingery smell in the air, some local pollen, probably, that reminded him of his childhood. All of a moment, he felt like he was nine years old. He shook the feeling. He had other things to worry about. Like:

  What the fuck was this all about?

  The port cools were apologetic as to how the would-be assassin had gotten past them. Sleel showed them his ID cube and his permit for his weapons, but they were more interested in the their own loss of face. How’d a fem with a fucking unsecured sword get into the passenger area?

  Sleel on the other hand wanted to know why the woman had come at him. And how the still-unconscious woman had taken four shocktox darts and kept coming. That was why the fem had been smiling before she’d moved; she’d known the spetsdods wouldn’t stop her. Maybe she hadn’t known that matadors were as adept with their bodies as their handguns. Or maybe she’d thought the sword made up for it. Whatever, it made for a nasty surprise. Sleel remembered Dirisha saying something once about some world where people worked with poison fish and had developed a kind of immunity to certain spetsdod chems. Maybe that was it.

  Fucking lot of maybes here, Sleel. Best you clear some of them up before they get you killed.

  “You Sleel?” came a small voice.

  Sleel looked down to see a little girl of about eight standing there. A port rat. He restrained himself from pointing one of his spetsdods at her. “Yeah. So?”

  “Got a message for you. Jersey Reason is waiting outside.”

  Jersey Reason? Here on the Big Island? And how did he know Sleel was here?

  Questions, more questions. It was like being back in primary edcom, with the holographic teacher yammering at you. Sleel flipped the little girl a five-stad coin. She snatched it from the air, grinned, and took off.

  Outside Sleel spotted the flitter, an armored rig with protected fans. Whoever had built the thing had done a good
job of it; somebody less adept than Steel probably wouldn’t have immediately spotted the spidersilk plate and denscris windows.

  Sleel also recognized Jersey Reason, though he’d only met the man once and that almost a year past. The old geep had suckered them with his defenses, though at the end Sleel had seen through the holoproj. He looked pretty much the same as Sleel remembered, short, almost tiny, with thick white hair and a short beard, also white. Too much light from various suns had damaged his skin and he was wrinkled and tanned, crinkled smile lines framing his pale blue eyes. Reason stood next to the armored flitter, alone.

  “Sleek” he said. As it had before, the deepness of his voice came as a surprise.

  “Reason.”

  “You had some trouble inside.” Not a question.

  “Nothing to speak of. Not a test of yours, was it? You like to play games, I remember right.”

  “No, she wasn’t mine,” Reason allowed. “Although I’m surely responsible. She probably thought you were coming to help me and wanted to make a point by killing you.”

  “Now why would she want to do that?”

  Reason smiled, showing perfect teeth. “Want to take a little ride?”

  “Sure.”

  Inside the flitter, Reason said, “Got a place to stay?”

  “Not yet. I thought I’d surprise myself.”

  The flitter lifted in a blast of wind and tilted forward on its cushion of air, moving smoothly out into the traffic.

  “I have a house in Old Kona,” Reason said. “You can stay there. Plenty of room.”

  Steel shook his head. “Hey, this is a great song and shuffle routine and all, but why don’t you fill in the gaps here?”

  “Ever direct, aren’t you? When we met the first thing you did was shoot me with a spetsdod.”

  “No, I shot a holoproj image of you to prove it was a fake.”

  “That’s why I’m here. Your ability to cut through what was an almost perfect illusion intrigued me then and it still does now. I need your help.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Somebody wants to kill me. I’d like for you to keep them from doing it.”

  Sleel nodded. Well. He was a matador; that’s what he did. “I don’t work cheap.”

  “I know. Money is not a problem.”

  “All right.”

  “Just like that? No questions?”

  “Oh, I got lots of questions, but they’ll keep. Pull over at that intersection, next to the used flitter lot.”

  ” Why?”

  “Since money isn’t a problem, we’re gonna buy another vehicle. “

  “What on Earth for?”

  “Because I haven’t had time to check this one out. The thing with hiring me is, you do what I say when it comes to security; that’s the only way I can shade the odds our way.”

  Reason nodded. He guided the flitter to a stop.

  “I get out first, you don’t until I say it’s okay.”

  Reason nodded again.

  Sleel stepped out and looked around. Nobody obvious was following them. The sunshine was warm, the smell of local flora thick, mixed with the more acrid stinks of civilization. He waited for thirty seconds, scanning the surroundings. Nothing. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  As the two of them moved into the used flitter lot, Sleel felt an urge to smile. He hadn’t worked for almost six months and still had enough stads to go another half a year before he had to find a job, but this was the right thing to do. Reason had helped them when they needed it; fair was fair. Things had been slow since Sleel and the others had helped Emile kill Marcus Wall-again.

  “Pick something in a nice color,” Sleel said, gesturing at the flitters and ground carts parked around them. “And tell me about the woman with the sword.”

  Reason drove, Sleel watched for danger. The flitter was a couple of seasons old, low klickage, and while not armored, unlikely to be rigged for a bomb or any electronic listening devices. Somebody could retrieve the other flitter later when Sleel had time to check it out.

  “This is the third attacker with a sword,” Reason said. “The first one showed up on my island in Puget Sound three weeks ago. He somehow got past all my perimeter defenses and into my house. He didn’t see through my holoproj like you did-I’ve improved the image, by the way-and I had him immobilized for questioning when he came to. I used a mild form of sleeptox, but he didn’t wake up, he died.”

  “Unusual,” Sleel said.

  “It certainly surprised me. Not as much as the failure of my wards to keep him out. I figured that if one man could get that far it might be a good idea to move until I found the problem in my security systems.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “I have several houses on this planet. One of them is in Australia, almost in the middle of nowhere. Nearest neighbor is ten klicks away. I didn’t tell anybody I was going there. One afternoon a week after I arrived, another swordsman showed up. He had bypassed my outer security devices and was busy kicking my door in when I triggered a zap field.”

  “Real interesting. Lemme guess. This one didn’t wake up either.”

  “Correct.”

  “Hmm. Can they do a brain squeeze on an unconscious person?”

  “The woman?”

  “Yeah. “

  Reason nodded. “I don’t know. But I have some … influence with the local authorities. I’ll see what can be done.” He reached for the flitter’s com and waved it on. After a few moments, they were linked with Reason’s “influence” in the neighborhood coolshop.

  “Ah, M. Reason,” the female voice said. The voice was deep, throaty, and had a nice tone to it. Although the flitter was equipped with full com gear, the transmission was nopix from the other end. “I was just about to call you.”

  “Officer Bligh. You were going to call for … ?”

  “The woman who tried the matador at the port. It’s the strangest thing. She’s dead.”

  Reason glanced at Sleel. He said, “A pity. Find out what you can about her, would you? I would much appreciate it.”

  “Surely.”

  The contact was broken.

  “Well, well,” Sleel said. Then, “This cool on your payroll?”

  “No. I did her a favor once and she is grateful.”

  Sleel didn’t pursue that.

  “This is your area of expertise,” Reason said. They were floating along past a riot of plant life, thick tropical greenery splashed with bright orange and red and blue flowers. To their right lay the ocean, and a thin line of breakers washed up on the rocky shore below the road. “What do we do now?”

  “We go to your house, check it out, and wait until your friend the cool gives us something to go on. You have any enemies you want to tell me about?”

  Reason laughed. “I was a thief for more than half a century before I got out of the biz,” he finally managed. “After the Confed fell, it wasn’t as much fun as it had been. If all the people mad at me for what I took were to line up, they’d probably reach to the horizon. And those are just the ones who suspect I had something to do with it. I expect that the ones who are certain, men, women and mues, wouldn’t lose a second of sleep if I shuffled off into the final chill.”

  Sleel nodded. “Okay. So we have to narrow that down a little. It probably isn’t a conspiracy of all of them; we just need to find the right ones.”

  Reason laughed some more. “You’re an optimist, Sleel.”

  “Yeah, well, dead bosses don’t pay real well. You have to look on the positive side.”

  Sleel grinned. So this one might be hard. That was good. No point in doing easy stuff. He always liked it better when the odds were against him. You couldn’t show anything if a job was going to be a walk in the country.

  What was the point in being the best unless people could see it?

  Chapter TWO

  RIFT, IN THE Delta System, lies dozens of light years away from Earth, normally a six-day trip by Bender drive. It is one of three planets in the sys
tem, the other two being Lee and Thompson’s Gazelle.

  Rift is also the least civilized of the trio, exports mainly certain technologies involved in waste-recycling, and has upon it three major land masses, unoriginally called the Greater, the Middle and the Lesser Continents. Upon the Lesser Continent is the old Romantic Enclave, and deep therein a fair-sized hereditary estate known as La Casa del Acera Negro.

  The House of Black Steel.

  In the main gymnasium Hoja Cierto dodged the simulacrum’s cut and V-stepped to his left with his return strike. The lac’s parry blocked Cierto’s blade with a convincing ring of steel on steel, and the vibration might be ersatz but in the boosted sturz field, Cierto felt it nonetheless. He spun away as the lac stabbed at him with its cutlass. The computer’s gain was rigged to illegal standards and turned up to full; should the lac’s weapon get through his guard, the pain would be as real as that of an actual sword.

  A fatal strike would be just as deadly to Cierto, who wore no protection, and who was in fact naked save for his sword and a groin strap. He danced away from the lac’s stab and follow-up four-step attack: head cut, heart stab, back and forth slash, and lunge for the groin. The lac was programmed to the ability of an expert human in superb condition, and would be considered a worthy opponent for a top player in most styles of fencing. The lac used most of the power of a mainframe viral matrix for its moves, and could be adjusted to the rules of classical foil, epee or saber, kendo, the Indo hard-knife, keras pisau, or wojanaz, the Polay war-blade, among others. On open-program as it now was, it was allowed use of any of these techniques. The only requirement was that it alter its appearance if it changed modes, offering a half-second or so of warning.