The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  Carrera smiled faintly. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘There is no need to view things in such—’

  ‘I asked if you were threatening me,’ The Wedge commander’s tone was mild. ‘I’d appreciate a straight yes or no.’

  Hand sighed. ‘Let us just say that there are forces I may invoke which my colleagues have not considered, or at least not assessed correctly.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I forgot, you are a believer.’ Carrera seemed fascinated by the man in front of him. ‘A hougan. You believe that. Spiritual powers? Can be hired in much the same way as soldiers.’

  Beside me, Loemanako sniggered.

  Hand sighed again. ‘Commander, what I believe is that we are both civilised men and—’

  The blaster tore through him.

  Carrera must have set it for diffuse beam - you don’t usually get as much damage as that from the little ones and the thing in the Wedge commander’s hand was an ultra compact. A hint of bulk inside the closed fist, a fish-tailed snap-out projector between his second and third knuckle, spare heat, the Envoy in me noticed, still dissipating from the discharge end in visible waves.

  No recoil, no visible flash, and no punch backwards where it hit. The crackle snarled past my ears and Hand stood there blinking with a smoking hole in his guts. Then he must have caught the stench of his own seared intestines and, looking down, he made a high-pitched hooting noise that was as much panic as pain.

  The ultra compacts take a while to recharge, but I didn’t need peripheral vision to tell me jumping Carrera would be a mistake. Noncoms on the loading deck above, Loemanako beside me and the little knot of Wedge officers hadn’t dispersed at all - they’d just fanned out and given us room to walk into the set-up.

  Neat. Very neat.

  Hand staggered, still wailing, and sat down hard on his backside in the sand. Some brutal part of me wanted to laugh at him. His hands pawed the air close to the gaping wound.

  I know that feeling, some other part of me recalled, surprised into brief compassion. It hurts, but you don’t know if you dare touch it.

  ‘Mistaken again,’ said Carrera to the ripped open exec at his feet. His tone hadn’t shifted since the shooting. ‘I am not a civilised man, Hand, I’m a soldier. A professional savage, and I’m on hire to men just like you. I wouldn’t like to say what that makes you. Except out of fashion back at the Mandrake Tower, that is.’

  The noise Hand was making shaped towards a conventional scream. Carrera turned to look at me.

  ‘Oh, you can relax, Kovacs. Don’t tell me you haven’t wanted to do that before now.’

  I manufactured a shrug. ‘Once or twice. I probably would have got around to it.’

  ‘Well, now you don’t have to.’

  On the ground, Hand twisted and propped himself. Something that might have been words emerged from his agony. At the edge of my vision, a couple of figures moved towards him: peripheral scan, still squeezed to aching point by the adrenalin surge, identified Sutjiadi and - well, well - Tanya Wardani.

  Carrera waved them back.

  ‘No, there’s no need for that.’

  Hand was definitely speaking now, a ruptured hissing of syllables that weren’t any language I knew or, except once, had heard. His left hand was raised towards Carrera, fingers splayed. I crouched to his level, oddly moved by the contorted strength on his face.

  ‘What’s this?’ The Wedge commmander leaned closer. ‘What’s he saying?’

  I sat back on my heels. ‘I think you’re being cursed.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I suppose that’s not unreasonable under the circumstances. Still.’ Carrera swung a long, heavy kick into the exec’s side. Hand’s incantation shredded apart in a scream and he rolled into a foetal ball. ‘No reason why we have to listen to it either. Sergeant.’

  Loemanako stepped forward. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Your knife please.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Give Carrera credit - I’d never seen him ask any man in his command to carry out work he wouldn’t do himself. He took the vibroknife from Loemanako, activated it and kicked Hand again, stamping him onto his belly in the sand. The exec’s screams blurred into coughing and whooping sucked breath. Carrera knelt across his back and started cutting.

  Hand’s muffled shrieking scaled abruptly up as he felt the blade enter his flesh, and then stopped dead as Carrera sliced his spinal column through.

  ‘Better,’ muttered the Wedge commander.

  He made the second incision at the base of the skull, a lot more elegantly than I had back in the Landfall promoter’s office, and dug out the section of severed spine. Then he powered off the knife, wiped it carefully on Hand’s clothing and got up. He handed knife and spinal segment to Loemanako with a nod.

  ‘Thank you, sergeant. Get that to Hammad, tell him not to lose it. We just earnt ourselves a bonus.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Loemanako looked at the faces around us. ‘And, uh . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Carrera raised one hand. His face seemed suddenly tired. ‘That.’

  His hand fell like something discarded.

  From the loading deck above I heard the discharge, a muffled crump followed by a chitinous rustling. I looked up and saw what looked like a swarm of crippled nanocopters tumbling down through the air.

  I made the intuitive leap to what was going to happen with a curious detachment, a lack of combat reflex that must have had its roots in the mingled radiation sickness and tetrameth comedown. I just had time to look at Sutjiadi. He caught my eye and his mouth twitched. He knew as well as I did. As well as if there’d been a scarlet decal pulsing across the screen of our vision.

  Game—

  Then it was raining spiders.

  Not really, but it looked that way. They’d fired the crowd control mortar almost straight up, a low-power crimped load for limited dispersal. The grey fist-sized inhibitors fell in a circle not much wider than twenty metres. The ones at the nearest edge glanced off the curving side of the battlewagon’s hull before they hit the sand, skidding and flailing for purchase with a minute intensity that I later recalled almost with amusement. The others bedded directly in puffs of turquoise sand and scuttled up out of the tiny craters they’d made like the tiny jewelled crabs in Tanya Wardani’s tropical paradise virtuality.

  They fell in thousands.

  Game—

  They dropped on our heads and shoulders, soft as children’s cradle toys, and clung.

  They scuttled towards us across the sand and scrambled up our legs.

  They endured batting and shaking and clambered on undeterred.

  The ones Sutjiadi and the others tore loose and flung away landed in a whirl of limbs and scuttled back unharmed.

  They crouched knowledgeably above nerve points and plunged filament-thin tendril fangs through clothing and skin.

  Game—

  They bit in.

  —Over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  There was no less reason for adrenalin to be pumping through my system than anyone else’s, but the slow seep of radioactive damage had shrivelled my sleeve’s capacity to deliver combat chemicals. The inhibitors reacted accordingly. I felt the nerve snap go through me, but it was a mild numbness, a fizzing that only dropped me to one knee.

  The Maori sleeves were readier for a fight and so they took it harder. Deprez and Sutjiadi staggered and crashed into the sand as if shot with stunners. Vongsavath managed to control her fall, and rolled to the ground on her side, eyes wide.

  Tanya Wardani just stood there looking dazed.

  ‘Thank you gentlemen.’ It was Carrera, calling up to the noncoms manning the mortar. ‘Exemplary grouping.’

  Neural inhib remotes. State-of-the-art public order tech. Only cleared colonial embargo a couple of years ago. In my capacity as a local military adviser, I’d had the shiny new system demonstrated to me on crowds in Indigo City. I’d just never been on the receiving end before now.

  Chill, an enthusiastic young pub
lic order corporal had told me with a grin. That’s all you need to do. ’Course, that’s extra funny in a riot situation. This shit lands on you, you’re just going to get more ’dreened up, means they just go on biting you, maybe even stop your heart in the end. Have to be fucking Zen-rigged to break the spiral, and you know what, we’re short on Zen riot activists this season.

  I held the Envoy calm like a crystal, wiped my mind of consequence and got up. The spiders clung and flexed a little as I moved, but they didn’t bite again.

  ‘Shit, lieutenant, you’re coated. They must like you.’

  Loemanako stood grinning at me from within a circle of clear sand, while surplus inhibitor units crawled around on the outer edge of the field his clean tag must be throwing down. A little to his right, Carrera moved in a similar pool of immunity. I glanced around and saw the other Wedge officers, untouched and watching.

  Neat. Very fucking neat.

  Behind them, political officer Lamont capered and pointed at us, jabbering.

  Oh well. Who could blame him?

  ‘Yes, I think we’d better get you brushed off,’ said Carrera. ‘I’m sorry for the shock, Lieutenant Kovacs, but there was no other comfortable way to detain this criminal.’

  He was pointing at Sutjiadi.

  Actually, Carrera, you could have just sedated everybody in the ward ’fab. But that wouldn’t have been dramatic enough, and where transgressors against the Wedge are concerned, the men do like their stylised drama, don’t they?

  I felt a brief chill run along my spine, chasing the thought.

  And tamped it down quick, before it could become the fear or anger that would wake up the coat of spiders I wore.

  I went for weary-laconic.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Isaac?’

  ‘This man,’ Carrera’s voice was pitched to carry. ‘May have misrepresented himself to you as Jiang Jianping. His real name is Markus Sutjiadi, and he is wanted for crimes against Wedge personnel.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Loemanako lost his grin. ‘Fucker wasted Lieutenant Veutin, and his platoon sergeant.’

  ‘Veutin?’ I looked back at Carrera. ‘Thought he was down around Bootkinaree.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’ The Wedge commander was staring down at Sutjiadi’s crumpled form. For a moment I thought he was going to shoot him there and then with the blaster. ‘Until this piece of shit cut insubordinate and finished up feeding Veutin his own Sunjet. Killed Veutin really dead. Stack gone. Sergeant Bradwell went the same way when she tried to stop it. And two more of my men got their sleeves carved apart before someone locked this motherfucker down.’

  ‘No one gets away with that,’ said Loemanako sombrely. ‘Right, lieutenant? No local yokel takes down Wedge personnel and walks away from it. Shithead’s for the anatomiser.’

  ‘Is this true?’ I asked Carrera, for appearances’ sake.

  He met my gaze and nodded. ‘Eye-witnesses. It’s open and shut.’

  Sutjiadi stirred at his feet like something stamped on.

  They cleaned the spiders off me with a deactivator broom, and then dumped them into a storage canister. Carrera handed me a tag and the approaching tide of unoccupied inhibitors fell back as I snapped it on.

  ‘About that debriefing,’ he said, and gestured me aboard the ’Chandra.

  Behind me, my colleagues were led back to the bubblefab, stumbling as feeble adrenalin jags of resistance set off new ripples of bites from their new neural jailers. In the post-performance space we’d all left, the noncoms who’d fired the mortar went around with untamped canisters, gathering up the still crawling units that hadn’t managed to find a home.

  Sutjiadi caught my eye again as he was leaving. Imperceptibly, he shook his head.

  He needn’t have worried. I was barely up to climbing the entry ramp into the battlewagon’s belly, let alone taking on Carrera in empty-handed combat. I clung to the remaining fragments of the tetrameth lift and followed the Wedge commander along tight, equipment-racked corridors, up a hand-rung-lined gravchute and into the confines of what appeared to be his personal quarters.

  ‘Sit down, lieutenant. If you can find the space.’

  The cabin was cramped but meticulously tidy. A powered-down grav bed rested on the floor in one corner, under a desk that hinged out from the bulkhead. The work surface held a compact datacoil, a neat stack of bookchips and a pot-bellied statue that looked like Hun Home art. A second table occupied the other end of the narrow space, studded with projector gear. Two holos floated near the ceiling at angles that allowed viewing from the bed. One showed a spectacular image of Adoracion from high orbit, sunrise just breaking across the green and orange rim. The other was a family group, Carrera and a handsome olive-skinned woman, arms possessively encompassing the shoulders of three variously aged children. The Wedge commander looked happy, but the sleeve in the holo was older than the one he was wearing now.

  I found a spartan metal desk chair beside the projector table. Carrera watched me sit down and then leaned against the desk, arms folded.

  ‘Been home recently?’ I asked, nodding at the orbital holo.

  His gaze stayed on my face. ‘It’s been a while. Kovacs, you knew damn well that Sutjiadi was wanted by the Wedge, didn’t you?’

  ‘I still don’t know he is Sutjiadi. Hand sold him to me as Jiang. What makes you so sure?’

  He almost smiled. ‘Nice try. My tower-dweller friends gave me gene codes for the combat sleeves. That plus the sleeving data from the Mandrake stack. They were quite keen for me to know that Hand had a war criminal working for him. Added incentive, I imagine they saw it as. Grist to the deal.’

  ‘War criminal.’ I looked elaborately around the cabin. ‘That’s an interesting choice of terminology. For someone who oversaw the Decatur Pacification, I mean.’

  ‘Sutjiadi murdered one of my officers. An officer he was supposed to be taking orders from. Under any combat convention I know of, that’s a crime.’

  ‘An officer? Veutin?’ I couldn’t quite work out why I was arguing, unless it was out of a general sense of inertia. ‘Come on, would you take orders from Dog Veutin?’

  ‘Happily, I don’t have to. But his platoon did, and they were fanatically loyal, all of them. Veutin was a good soldier.’

  ‘They called him Dog for a reason, Isaac.’

  ‘We are not engaged in a pop—’

  ‘—ularity contest.’ I sketched a smile of my own. ‘That line’s getting a little old. Veutin was a fucking asshole, and you know it. If this Sutjiadi torched him, he probably had a good reason.’

  ‘Reasons do not make you right, Lieutenant Kovacs.’ There was a sudden softness in Carrera’s tone that said I’d overstepped the line. ‘Every graft-wrapped pimp on Plaza de los Caidos has a reason for every whore’s face they carve up, but that doesn’t make it right. Joshua Kemp has reasons for what he does and from his point of view they might even be good ones. That doesn’t make him right.’

  ‘You want to watch what you’re saying, Isaac. That sort of relativism could get you arrested.’

  ‘I doubt it. You’ve seen Lamont.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Silence ebbed and flowed around us.

  ‘So,’ I said finally. ‘You’re going to put Sutjiadi under the anatomiser.’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  I just looked at him.

  ‘We are the Wedge, lieutenant. You know what that means.’ There was the slightest tug of urgency in his tone now. I don’t know who he was trying to convince. ‘You were sworn in, just like everyone else. You know the codes. We stand for unity in the face of chaos, and everyone has to know that. Those we deal with have to know that we are not to be fucked with. We need that fear, if we’re going to operate effectively. And my soldiers have to know that that fear is an absolute. That it will be enforced. Without that, we fall apart.’

  I closed my eyes. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’m not requiring you to watch it.’

  ‘I doubt there’ll
be enough seats.’

  Behind my closed eyelids, I heard him move. When I looked, he was leaning over me, hands braced on the edges of the projector table, face harsh with anger.

  ‘You’re going to shut up now, Kovacs. You’re going to stand down that attitude.’ If he was looking for resistance, he couldn’t have seen any in my face. He backed off a half metre, straightened up. ‘I won’t let you piss away your commission like this. You’re a capable officer, lieutenant. You inspire loyalty in the men you lead, and you understand combat.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You can laugh, but I know you. It’s a fact.’

  ‘It’s the biotech, Isaac. Wolf gene pack dynamics, serotonin shutout and Envoy psychosis to pilot the whole fucking shambles. A dog could do what I’ve done for the Wedge. Dog fucking Veutin, for example.’

  ‘Yes.’ A shrug as he settled himself on the edge of the desk again. ‘You and Veutin are, were, very similar in profile. I have the psychosurgeon assessments on file here, if you don’t believe me. Same Kemmerich gradient, same IQ, same lack of generalisable empathy range. To the untutored eye, you could be the same man.’

  ‘Yeah, except he’s dead. Even to the untutored eye, that’s got to stand out.’

  ‘Well, maybe not quite the same lack of empathy, then. The Envoys gave you enough diplomatic training not to underestimate men like Sutjiadi. You would have handled him better.’

  ‘So Sutjiadi’s crime was he got underestimated? Seems as good a reason as any to torture a man to death, I suppose.’

  He stopped and stared at me. ‘Lieutenant Kovacs, I don’t think I’m making myself clear. Sutjiadi’s execution is not under discussion here. He murdered my soldiers, and at dawn tomorrow I will exact the penalty for that crime. I may not like it—’

  ‘How gratifyingly humane of you.’

  He ignored me. ‘—but it needs to be done, and I will do it. And you, if you know what’s good for you, will ratify it.’

  ‘Or else?’ It wasn’t as defiant as I’d have liked, and I spoilt it at the end with a coughing fit that racked me over in the narrow chair and brought up blood-streaked phlegm. Carrera handed me a wipe.