The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  Playing back the position of the gunmetal discharge tubes from memory, I guessed most of his right side was prosthetic, charging the five vents from a powerpack buried somewhere in the lower half of his ribcage. Given recent advances in nanotech, you could get large blotches of energy to go pretty much anywhere you wanted over a limited distance. The nanocon shepherd fragments just rode the blast like surfers, sucking power and tugging the containment field wherever the launch data had them headed.

  I made a mental note, if I had to hit him, to go left.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t see another solution right now.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Orr.’ Sylvie made a sideways chopping gesture. ‘Tats, this place, time.’ She shook her head. Another sign, thumb and forefinger forced apart by the fingers of the other hand. From the look on her face I got the sense she was emitting data through the team net as well. ‘Cache, the same. Three days. Puppetry. Torch and wipe, now.’

  Kiyoka nodded. ‘Sense, Orr. Las? Oh.’

  ‘Yeah, we can do that.’ Orr wasn’t plugged all the way into this. He was still angry, speaking slowly. ‘Yeah, I mean. Okay.’

  ‘ ’ware?’ Kiyoka again, some complex counting off from one hand, an inclination of her head. ‘Jet?’

  ‘No, there’s time.’ Sylvie made a flat-palmed motion. ‘Orr and Micky. Easy. You run blank. This, this, maybe this. Down.’

  ‘Got it.’ Kiyoka was checking out a retinal screen as she spoke, eyes up and left to skim the data Sylvie had shot her. ‘Las?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll flag you. Go.’

  The Maori-sleeved woman disappeared back into her room, emerged a second later pulling on a bulky grey jacket and let herself out of the main door. She allowed herself a single backward look at Jadwiga’s corpse, then she was gone.

  ‘Orr. Cutter.’ A thumb at me. ‘Guevara.’

  The giant gave me a final smouldering look and went to a case in the corner of the room, from which he took a heavy-bladed vibroknife. He came back and stood in front of me with the weapon, deliberately enough for me to tauten up. Only the obvious - that Orr didn’t need a knife to grease me - kept me from jumping him. My physical reaction must have been pretty obvious, because it got a derisive grunt out of the giant. Then he spun the knife in his hand and presented it to me grip first.

  I took it. ‘You want me to do it?’

  Sylvie moved across to Jadwiga’s corpse and stood looking down at the damage.

  ‘I want you to dig out the stacks on your two friends there, yes. I think you’ve had the practice for it. Jad you can leave.’

  I blinked.

  ‘You’re leaving her?’

  Orr snorted again. The woman looked at him and made a spiralling gesture. He compressed a sigh and went to his room.

  ‘Let me worry about Jad.’ Her face was clouded with distance, engaged at levels I couldn’t sense. ‘Just get cutting. And while you’re at it, you want to tell me who exactly we’ve killed here?’

  ‘Sure.’ I went to Yukio’s corpse and manhandled it onto what was left of its front. ‘This is Yukio Hirayasu - local yak, but he’s someone important’s son apparently.’

  The knife burred into life in my hand, vibrations backing up unpleasantly as far as the wound in my side. I shook off a teeth-on-edge shiver, placed one cupped palm on the back of Yukio’s skull to steady it and started cutting into the spine. The mingled stink of scorched flesh and shit didn’t help.

  ‘And the other one?’ she asked.

  ‘Disposable thug. Never seen him before.’

  ‘Is he worth taking with us?’

  I shrugged. ‘Better than leaving him here, I guess. You can toss him over the side halfway to New Hok. This one I’d keep for ransom, if I were you.’

  She nodded. ‘What I thought.’

  The knife bit down through the last millimetres of spinal column and sliced rapidly into the neck below. I switched off, changed grip and started a new cut, a couple of vertebrae lower down.

  ‘These are heavyweight yakuza, Sylvie.’ My guts were chilling over as I recalled my phone conversation with Tanaseda. The sempai had cut a deal with me purely on the strength of Yukio’s value in one piece. And he’d been pretty explicit about what would happen if things didn’t stay that way. ‘Millsport-connected, probably with First Family links. They’re going to come after you with everything they’ve got.’

  Her eyes were unreadable. ‘They’re going to come after you too.’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you. However,’ she paused as Orr came back out of his room fully dressed and headed out the door with a curt nod, ‘I think we have this handled. Ki is off wiping our electronic traces now. Orr can torchblast every room in this place in about half an hour. That leaves them with nothing but—’

  ‘Sylvie, this is the yakuza we’re talking about.’

  ‘Nothing but eye witnesses, peripheral video data, and besides which we’ll be on our way to Drava in about two hours’ time. And no one’s going to follow us there.’ There was a sudden, stiff pride in her voice. ‘Not the yakuza, not the First Families, not even the fucking Envoys. No one wants to fuck with the mimints.’

  Like most bravado, it was misplaced. For one thing, I’d had it from an old friend six months back that Envoy Command had tendered for the New Hokkaido contract - they just hadn’t been cheap enough to suit the Mecsek government’s freshly rediscovered faith in unfettered market forces. A sneer across Todor Murakami’s lean face as we shared a pipe on the ferry from Akan to New Kanagawa. Fragrant smoke on the winter air of the Reach, and the soft grind of the maelstrom as backdrop. Murakami was letting his cropped Corps haircut grow out, and it stirred a little in the breeze off the water. He wasn’t supposed to be here, talking to me, but it’s hard to tell Envoys what to do. They know what they’re worth.

  Hey, fuck Leo Mecsek. We told him what it’d cost. He can’t afford it, whose problem is that supposed to be? We’re supposed to cut corners and endanger Envoy lives, so he can hand the First Families back some more of the tax they pay? Fuck that. We’re not fucking locals.

  You’re a local, Tod, I felt driven to point out. Millsport born and bred.

  You know what I mean.

  I knew what he meant. Local government don’t get to punch keys on the Envoy Corps. The Envoys go where the Protectorate needs them, and most local governments pray to whatever gods they give house room that they’ll never be found wanting enough for that contingency to be invoked. The aftermath of Envoy intervention can be very unpleasant for all concerned.

  This whole tendering angle’s fucked anyway. Todor plumed fresh smoke out over the rail. No one can afford us, no one trusts us. Can’t see the point, can you?

  I thought it was about offsetting non-operational costs while you guys were sitting on your arses undeployed.

  Oh, yeah. Which is when?

  Really? I heard it was all pretty quiet right now. Since Hun Home, I mean. Going to tell me some covert insurgency tales?

  Hey, sam. He passed me the pipe. You’re not on the team any more. Remember?

  I remembered.

  Innenin!

  It bursts on the edges of memory like a downed marauder bomb going up distant, but not far enough off to be safe. Red laser fire and the screams of men dying as the Rawling virus eats their minds alive.

  I shivered a little and drew on the pipe. With Envoy-tuned sensitivity, Todor spotted it and shifted subject.

  So what’s this scam about? Thought you were hanging out with Radul Segesvar these days. Hometown nostalgia and cheap organised crime.

  Yeah. I looked at him bleakly. Where’d you hear that then?

  A shrug. Around. You know how it is. So why you going up north again?

  The vibroknife broke through into flesh and muscle again. I switched it off and started to lever the severed section of spine out of Yukio Hirayasu’s neck.

  Yakuza gentry, dead and destacked. Courtesy of Takeshi Kovacs,
because that was the way the label was going to read, whatever I did now. Tanaseda was going to be looking for blood. Hirayasu senior too, presumably. Could be he saw his son as the lipslack fuck-up he evidently was, but somehow I doubted it. And even if he did, every rule of obligation the Harlan’s World yakuza girded themselves with was going to force him to make it right. Organised crime is like that. Radul Segesvar’s Newpest haiduci mafia or the yak, north or south, they’re all the fucking same. Fucking blood tie junkies.

  War with the yakuza.

  Why you going up north again? I looked at the excised spinal segment and the blood on my hands. It wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I caught the hoverloader up to Tekitomura three days ago.

  ‘Micky?’ For a moment, the name meant nothing to me. ‘Hey, Mick, you okay?’

  I looked up. She was watching me with narrow concern. I forced a nod.

  ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, do you think you could pick it up a bit? Orr’ll be back and he’ll want to get started.’

  ‘Sure.’ I turned to the other corpse. The knife burred back into life. ‘I’m still curious what you plan to do about Jadwiga.’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Party trick, huh?’

  She said nothing, just walked to the window and stared out into the light and clamour of the new day. Then, as I was starting the second spinal incision, she looked back into the room.

  ‘Why don’t you come with us, Micky?’

  I slipped and buried the knife blade up to its hilt. ‘What?’

  ‘Come with us.’

  ‘To Drava?’

  ‘Oh, you’re going to tell me you’ve got a better chance running against the yak here in Tekitomura?’

  I freed the blade and finished the incision. ‘I need a new body, Sylvie. This one’s in no state for meeting the mimints.’

  ‘What if I could set that up for you?’

  ‘Sylvie.’ I grunted with effort as the bone segment levered upward. ‘Where the fuck are you going to find me a body on New Hokkaido? Place barely permits human life as it is. Where are you going to find the facilities?’

  She hesitated. I stopped what I was doing, Envoy intuition wakening to the realisation that there was something here.

  ‘Last time we were out,’ she said slowly, ‘we turned up a government command bunker in the hills east of Sopron. The smart locks were too complex to crack in the time we had, we were way too far north anyway and it’s bad mimint territory, but I got in deep enough to run a basic inventory. There’s a full medlab facility, complete re-sleeving unit and cryocap clone banks. About two dozen sleeves, combat biotech by the signature traces.’

  ‘Well, that’d make sense. That’s where you’re taking Jadwiga?’

  She nodded.

  I looked pensively at the chunk of spine in my hand, the ragged-lipped wound it had come out of. I thought about what the yakuza would do to me if they caught up with me in this sleeve.

  ‘How long are you going over for?’

  She shrugged. ‘Long as it takes. We’re provisioned for three months, but last time we filled our quota in half that time. You could come back sooner if you like. The ’loaders run out of Drava all the time.’

  ‘And you’re sure this stuff in the bunker is still functional.’

  She grinned and shook her head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s New Hok, Micky. Over there, everything’s still functional. That’s the whole problem with the fucking place.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The hoverloader Guns for Guevara was exactly what she sounded like - a low-profile, heavily armoured shark of a vessel, spiking weaponry along her back like dorsal spines. In marked contrast to the commercial ’loaders that plied the routes between Millsport and the Saffron Archipelago, she had no external decks or towers. The bridge was a snubbed blister on the forward facings of the dull grey superstructure and her flanks swept back and out in smooth, featureless curves. The two loading hatches, open on either side of her nose, looked built to disgorge flights of missiles.

  ‘You sure this is going to work?’ I asked Sylvie as we reached the downward slope of the docking ramp.

  ‘Relax,’ growled Orr, behind me. ‘This isn’t the Saffron Line.’

  He was right. For an operation that the government claimed was being run under stringent security guidelines, deCom embarkation struck me as sloppy in the extreme. At the side of each hatch, a steward in a soiled blue uniform was taking hardcopy documentation and running the authorisation flashes under a reader that wouldn’t have looked much out of place in a Settlement-Years experia flic. The ragged queues of embarking personnel snaked back and forth across the ramp, ankle deep in carry-on baggage. Bottles and pipes passed back and forth in the cold, bright air. There was highly-strung hilarity and mock sparring up and down the lines, repeated jokes over the antique reader. The stewards smiled back repeatedly, wearily.

  ‘And where the fuck is Las?’ Kiyoka wanted to know.

  Sylvie shrugged. ‘He’ll be here. He always is.’

  We joined the back of the nearest queue. The little knot of deComs ahead of us glanced round briefly, spent a couple of measured looks on Sylvie’s hair, then went back to their bickering. She wasn’t unusual among this crowd. A tall, black sleeve a couple of groups down had a dreadlocked mane of similar proportions, and there were others less imposing here and there.

  Jadwiga stood quiet beside me.

  ‘This thing with Las is pathological,’ Kiyoka told me, looking anywhere but at Jad. ‘He’s always fucking late.’

  ‘It’s wired into him,’ said Sylvie absently. ‘You don’t get to be a career wincefish without a tendency towards brinkmanship.’

  ‘Hey, I’m a wincefish, and I turn up on time.’

  ‘You’re not a lead wincefish,’ said Orr.

  ‘Oh, right. Listen we’re all—’ She glanced at Jadwiga and bit her lip. ‘Lead’s just a player position. Las is wired no different to me or—’

  Looking at Jad, you’d never have guessed she was dead. We’d cleaned her up in the apartment - beam weapons cauterise, there’s not often much in the way of blood - rigged her in a tight marine surplus combat vest and jacket that covered the wounds, fitted heavy black EV lenses over her shocked open eyes. Then Sylvie got in through the team net and fired up her motor systems. I’d guess it took a little concentration, but nothing to the focus she’d have to have online when she deployed the team against the mimints on New Hok. She got Jad walking at her left shoulder and we formed a phalanx around them. Simple commands to facial muscles clamped the dead deCom’s mouth shut and the grey pallor, well, with the EV lenses on and a long grey sealwrap bag slung over one shoulder, Jad looked no worse than she should have done on a shiver comedown with added endorphin crash. I don’t suppose the rest of us looked too hot either.

  ‘Authorisation, please.’

  Sylvie handed over the sheaf of hardcopy, and the steward set about passing it through the reader one sheet at a time. She must have sent a tiny jolt through the net to the muscles in Jadwiga’s neck at the same time, because the dead woman tilted her head, a little stiffly, as if scanning the ’loader’s armoured flank. Nice touch, very natural.

  ‘Sylvie Oshima. Crew of five,’ said the steward, looking up to count. ‘Hardware already stowed.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Cabin allocation.’ He squinted at the reader’s screen. ‘Sorted. P19 to 22, lower deck.’

  There was a commotion back up near the top of the ramp. We all looked back, apart from Jadwiga. I spotted ochre robes and beards, angry gesticulating and voices raised.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Sylvie casually.

  ‘Oh - Beards.’ The steward shuffled the scanned documentation back together. ‘They’ve been prowling up and down the waterfront all morning. Apparently they had a run-in last night with a couple of deComs in some place way east of here. You know how they are about that stuff.’

  ‘Yeah. Fuckin
g throwbacks.’ Sylvie took the paperwork and stowed it in her jacket. ‘They got descriptions, or will any two deComs do?’

  The steward smirked. ‘No vid, they say. Place was using up all its capacity on holoporn. But they got a witness description. A woman. And a man. Oh, yeah, and the woman had hair.’

  ‘Christ, that could be me,’ laughed Sylvie.

  Orr gave her a strange look. Behind us, the clamour intensified. The steward shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, could be any of a couple of dozen command heads I passed through here this morning. Hey, what I want to know is, what are a bunch of priests doing in a place runs holoporn anyway?’

  ‘Jerking off ?’ suggested Orr.

  ‘Religion,’ said Sylvie, with a sudden click in her throat as if she was going to vomit. At my side, Jadwiga swayed unsteadily, and twisted her head more abruptly than people generally do. ‘Has it occurred to anybody that—’

  She grunted, gut deep. I shot a glance at Orr and Kiyoka, saw their faces go tight. The steward looked on, curious, not yet concerned.

  ‘—that every human sacrament is a cheap evasion, that—’

  Another choked sound. As if the words were being wrenched up out of somewhere buried in hard-packed silt. Jadwiga’s swaying worsened. Now the steward’s face began to change as he picked up the scent of distress. Even the deComs in the queue behind us were shifting their attention from the brawl at the top of the ramp, narrowing in on the pale woman and the speech that came sputtering up out of her.

  ‘—that the whole of human history might just be some fucking excuse for the inability to provide a decent female orgasm.’

  I trod on her foot, hard.

  ‘Quite.’

  The steward laughed nervously. Quellist sentiments, albeit early poetic ones, were still marked handle with care in the Harlan’s World cultural canon. Too much danger that any enthusiasm for them might spill over into her later political theory and, of course, practice. You can name your hoverloaders after revolutionary heroes if you want, but they need to be far enough back in history that no one can remember what they were fighting for.

  ‘I—’ said Sylvie, puzzled. Orr moved to support her.