The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  ‘Got to,’ Vlad informed us succinctly as something crunched under the armoured skirt. ‘Everyone’s been looking for you on the Strip, and not very well is my guess, ’cause they didn’t find you, did they. Hah! Anyway, wasted a fuck of a lot of time that way and my clients, they seem pushed temporally, if you know what I mean.’

  On the identity of the clients, he remained steadfastly close-mouthed, which, on that much meth, is no mean feat.

  ‘Look, be there soon, anyway,’ he jittered, face twitching. ‘Why worry?’

  In this at least, he was telling the truth. Barely an hour after we’d been taken aboard, Impaler slowed and drifted cautiously broadside towards a decayed ruin of a baling station in the middle of nowhere. The pirate’s coms officer ran a series of scrambled interrogation protocols and whoever was inside the ruined station had a machine that knew the code. The coms woman looked up and nodded. Vlad stood glitter-eyed before his instrument displays and snapped instructions like insults. Impaler picked up a little lateral speed again, fired grapple lines into the evercrete dock pilings with a series of splintering smacks and then cranked itself in tight. Green lights and a gangplank extended.

  ‘Let’s go then, come on.’ He hurried us off the bridge and back to the debarkation hatch, then through and out, flanked by an honour guard of two methed-up thugs even younger and twitchier than he was. Up the gangplank at a walk that wanted to be a run, across the dock. Abandoned cranes stood mossy with growth where the antibac had failed, chunks of seized and rusted machinery lay about, waiting to rip the unwary at shin and shoulder height. We negotiated the debris, and cut a final line for an open door at the base of a dockfront supervisor’s tower with polarised windows. Grubby metal stairs led up, two flights at opposed angles and a steel plate landing between that clanked and shifted alarmingly when we all trooped across it.

  Soft light glowed from the room at the top. I went uneasily in the van with Vlad. No one had tried to take away our weapons, and Vlad’s cohorts were all armed with a massive lack of subtlety, but still . . .

  I remembered the voyage aboard the Angelfire Flirt, the sense of onrushing events too fast to face effectively, and I twitched a little myself in the gloom. I stepped into the tower room as if I was going there to fight.

  And then everything came tumbling down.

  ‘Hello Tak. How’s the vendetta business these days?’

  Todor Murakami, lean and competent in stealth suit and combat jacket, hair cropped back to military standard, stood with his hands on his hips and grinned at me. There was a Kalashnikov interface gun at his hip, a killing knife in an inverted pull-down sheath on his left breast. A table between us held a muffled Angier torch, a portable datacoil and a map holo displaying the eastern fringes of the Weed Expanse. Everything from the hardware to the grin reeked of Envoy operations.

  ‘Didn’t see that one coming, huh?’ he added when I said nothing. He came around the table and stuck out his hand. I looked at it, then back at his face without moving.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here, Tod?’

  ‘Bit of pro bono work, would you believe?’ He dropped the hand and glanced past my shoulder. ‘Vlad, take your pals and wait downstairs. The mimint kid there too.’

  I felt Jad bristle at my back.

  ‘She stays, Tod. That, or we don’t have this conversation.’

  He shrugged and nodded at my newly-acquired pirate friends. ‘Suit yourself. But if she hears the wrong thing, I may have to kill her for her own protection.’

  It was a Corps joke, and it was hard not to mirror his grin as he said it. I felt, very faintly, the same nostalgic twinge I’d had taking Virginia Vidaura to my bed at Segesvar’s farm. The same faint wondering why I ever walked away.

  ‘That was a joke,’ he clarified for Jad, as the others clattered away down the stairs.

  ‘Yeah, I guessed.’ Jad wandered past me to the windows and peered out at the moored bulk of the Impaler. ‘So Micky, Tak, Kovacs, whoever the fuck you are at the moment. Want to introduce me to your friend?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. Tod, this is Jadwiga. As you obviously already know, she’s from deCom. Jad, Todor Murakami, colleague of mine from, uh, the old days.’

  ‘I’m an Envoy,’ Murakami supplied casually.

  To her credit, Jad barely blinked. She took the hand he offered with a slightly incredulous smile, then propped herself against the outward lean of the tower windows and folded her arms.

  Murakami took the hint.

  ‘So what’s all this about?’

  I nodded. ‘We can start there.’

  ‘I think you can probably guess.’

  ‘I think you can probably drop the elicitation and just tell me.’

  He grinned and touched a trigger finger to his temple. ‘Sorry, force of habit. Alright, look. Here’s my problem. According to sources, seems you’ve got a little revolutionary momentum up here, maybe enough to seriously rock the First Families’ boat.’

  ‘Sources?’

  Another grin. No ground given up. ‘That’s right. Sources.’

  ‘I didn’t know you guys were deployed here.’

  ‘We’re not.’ A little of his Envoy cool slipped from him, as if by the admission he’d lost some kind of vital access to it. He scowled. ‘Like I said, this is pro bono. Damage limitation. You know as well as I do, we can’t afford a neoQuellist uprising.’

  ‘Yeah?’ This time, I was the one grinning. ‘Who’s we, Tod? The Protectorate? The Harlan family? Some other bunch of super-rich fucks?’

  He gestured irritably. ‘I’m talking about all of us, Tak. You really think that’s what this planet needs, another Unsettlement. Another war?’

  ‘Takes two sides to run a war, Tod. If the First Families wanted to accept the neoQuellist agenda, institute reforms, well.’ I spread my hands. ‘Then I can’t see there’d be any need for an uprising at all. Maybe you should be talking to them.’

  A frown. ‘Why are you talking like this, Tak? Don’t tell me you’re buying into this shit.’

  I paused. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? What kind of fucked political philosophy is that?’

  ‘It isn’t a philosophy at all, Tod. It’s just a feeling that maybe we’ve all had enough. That maybe it’s time to burn these motherfuckers down.’

  He frowned. ‘I can’t allow that. Sorry.’

  ‘So why don’t you just call down the wrath of the Envoys and stop wasting time?’

  ‘Because I don’t fucking want the Corps here.’ There was a sudden, brief desperation in his face as he spoke. ‘I’m from here, Tak. This is my home. You think I want to see the World turned into another Adoracion? Another Sharya?’

  ‘Very noble of you.’ Jad shifted against the canted windows, came forward to the table and poked at the datacoil. Purple and red sparked around her fingers where they broke the field. ‘So what’s the battleplan, Mister Qualms?’

  His eyes flickered between the two of us, came to rest on me. I shrugged.

  ‘It’s a fair question, Tod.’

  He hesitated for a moment. It made me think of the moment I’d had to unpin my own numbed fingers from the cable beneath the Martian eyrie at Tekitomura. He was letting go of a lifetime of Envoy commitment here, and my own lapsed membership of the Corps wasn’t much in the way of a justification.

  Finally, he grunted and spread his hands.

  ‘Okay. Here’s the newsflash.’ He pointed at me. ‘Your pal Segesvar has sold you out.’

  I blinked. Then:

  ‘No fucking way.’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, I know. Haiduci dues, right? He owes you. Thing is, Tak, you got to ask yourself which of you he thinks he owes.’

  Oh shit

  He saw it hit me and nodded again. ‘Yeah, I know all about that too. See, Takeshi Kovacs saved Segesvar’s life a couple of centuries ago, objective time. But that’s something both copies of you did. Old Radul’s got a debt alright, but he apparently sees no reason to discharge it more
than the once. And your younger, fresher self has just cut a deal on that very basis. Segesvar’s men took most of your beach party revolutionaries early this morning. Would have got you, Vidaura and the deCom woman too, if you hadn’t all taken off on some crack-of-dawn errand to the Strip.’

  ‘And now?’ The last stubborn fragments of clinging hope. Scour them out, and face the facts with features carved out of stone. ‘They’ve got Vidaura and the others now?’

  ‘Yes, they took them on their return. They’re holding everyone until Aiura Harlan-Tsuruoka can arrive with a clean-up squad. Had you gone back with the others, you’d be sharing a locked room with them now. So.’ A rapidly flexed smile, a raised brow. ‘Looks like you owe me a favour.’

  I let the fury come aboard, like deep breath, like a swelling. Let it rage through me, then tamped it carefully down like a half-smoked seahemp cigar, saved for later. Lock it down, think.

  ‘How come you know all this, Tod?’

  He gestured, self-deprecating. ‘Like I said, I live here. Pays to keep the wires humming. You know how it is.’

  ‘No, I don’t know how it is. Who’s your fucking source, Tod?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  I shrugged. ‘Then I can’t help you.’

  ‘You’re just going to let it all go? Segesvar sells you out, he gets to walk away? Your friends from the beach get to die? Come on, Tak.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m tired of fighting other people’s battles for them. Brasil and friends got themselves into this, they can get themselves out. And Segesvar will keep. I’ll get to him later.’

  ‘And Vidaura?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She trained us, Tak.’

  ‘Yeah, us. Get on and save her yourself.’

  If you weren’t an Envoy, you would have missed it. It was less than a flicker, some millimetric shift in stance, maybe not even that. But Murakami slumped.

  ‘I can’t do it on my own,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know the inside of Segesvar’s place, and without that I’d need an Envoy platoon to take it.’

  ‘Then call in the Corps.’

  ‘You know what that would do to—’

  ‘Then tell me who your fucking source is.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jad sardonically, in the quiet that followed. ‘Or just ask him to come in from next door.’

  She caught my eye and nodded at a closed drop-hatch in the back of the tower room. I took a step towards it and Murakami could barely hold himself back from the blocking move he wanted to make. He glared at Jad.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, and tapped her head with a forefinger. ‘Dataflow alert. Pretty standard wincefish hardware. Your friend in there is using a phone, and he’s moving about a lot. Pacing nervously would be my guess.’

  I grinned at Murakami. ‘Well, Tod. Your call.’

  The tension lasted a couple of seconds more, then he sighed and gestured me forward.

  ‘Go ahead. You would have worked it out sooner or later anyway.’

  I went to the drop-hatch, found the panel and thumbed it. The machinery grumbled to itself somewhere deep in the building. The hatch cranked upward in juddery, hesitant increments. I leaned into the space it left.

  ‘Good evening. So which one of you’s the snitch?’

  Four faces turned towards me, and as soon as I saw them, four severely dressed figures in black, the pieces thumped into place in my head like the sound of the drop-hatch reaching the end of its recess. Three were muscle, two men and and a woman and the skin on their faces all had a shiny plastic elasticity where their facial tattooing had been sprayed over. It was a short-term, daily option that wouldn’t stand much professional scrutiny. But deep as they were into haiduci turf, it probably would save them from having to fight pitched battles on every Newpest street corner.

  The fourth, the one holding the phone, was older but unmistakable by demeanour alone. I nodded my understanding.

  ‘Tanaseda, I presume. Well, well.’

  He bowed slightly. It went with the package, the same groomed, old-school manners and look. He wore no facial skin decoration because at the levels he’d attained, he would be a frequent visitor in First Family enclaves that would frown on it. But you could still see the honour scars where they had been removed without benefit of modern surgical technique. His grey-streaked black hair was bound back tightly in a short ponytail, the better to reveal the scarring across the forehead and accentuate the long bones of the face. The eyes beneath the brow were brown and hard like polished stones. The careful smile he gave me was the same one he would bestow upon death if and when it came for him.

  ‘Kovacs-san.’

  ‘So what’s your end of this, sam?’ The muscle bristled collectively at my disrespect. I ignored it, glanced back at Murakami instead. ‘I take it you know he wants me Really Dead, as slowly and unpleasantly as possible.’

  Murakami locked gazes with the yakuza senior.

  ‘That can be resolved,’ he murmured. ‘Is this not so, Tanaseda-san? ’

  Tanaseda bowed again. ‘It has come to my notice that though you were involved in the death of Hirayasu Yukio, you were not wholly to blame.’

  ‘So?’ I shrugged to displace the rising anger, because the only way he could have heard that little snippet was through virtual interrogation of Orr or Kiyoka or Lazlo, after my younger self helped him kill them. ‘Doesn’t usually cut much ice with you people, who’s really to blame or not.’

  The woman in his entourage made a tiny growling sound deep in her throat. Tanaseda cut it with a tiny motion of his hand at his side, but the gaze he bent on me belied the calm in his tone.

  ‘It has also become clear to me that you are in possession of Hirayasu Yukio’s cortical storage device.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Is this so?’

  ‘Well, if you think I’m going to let you search me for it, you can—’

  ‘Tak.’ Murakami’s voice came out lazy, but it wasn’t. ‘Behave. Do you have Hirayasu’s stack or not?’

  I paused on the hinge of the moment, more than half of me hoping they might try to strongarm it. The man on Tanaseda’s left twitched and I smiled at him. But they were too well-trained.

  ‘Not on me,’ I said.

  ‘But you could deliver it to Tanaseda-san, could you not?’

  ‘If I had any incentive to, I suppose I could, yes.’

  The soft-throated snarl again, back and forth among all three of the yakuza muscle this time.

  ‘Ronin,’ one of them spat.

  I met his eye. ‘That’s right, sam. Masterless. So watch your step. There’s no one to call me to heel if I take a dislike to you.’

  ‘Nor anyone to back you up when you find yourself in a corner,’ observed Tanaseda. ‘May we please dispense with this childishness, Kovacs-san? You speak of incentives. Without the information I have supplied, you would now be captive with your colleagues, awaiting execution. And I have offered to revoke my own writ for your elimination. Is this not enough for the return of a cortical stack you have in any case no use for?’

  I smiled. ‘You’re full of shit, Tanaseda. You’re not doing this for Hirayasu. He’s a fucking waste of good sea air, and you know it.’

  The yakuza master seemed to coil tighter into himself as he stared at me. I still wasn’t sure why I was pushing him, what I was pushing for.

  ‘Hirayasu Yukio is my brother-in-law’s only son.’ Very quietly, barely a murmur across the space between us, but edged with contained fury. ‘There is giri here that I would not expect a southerner to understand.’

  ‘Motherfucker,’ said Jad wonderingly.

  ‘Ah, what do you expect, Jad?’ I made a noise in my throat. ‘In the end, he’s a criminal, no different than the fucking haiduci. Just a different mythology and the same crabshit delusions of ancient honour.’

  ‘Tak—’

  ‘Back off, Tod. Let’s get this out in the open where it belongs. This is politics, and nothing even remotely cleaner. T
anaseda here isn’t worried about his nephew once removed. That’s just a side bonus. He’s worried he’s losing his grip, he’s afraid of being punished for a fucked-up blackmail attempt. He’s watching Segesvar get ready to make friends with Aiura Harlan, and he’s terrified the haiduci are going to get cut in on some serious global action in return for their trouble. All of which his Millsport cousins are likely to lay pretty directly at his front door, along with a short sword and a set of instructions that read insert here and slice sideways. Right, Tan?’

  The muscle on the left lost it, as I suspected he might. A needle-thin blade dropped from his sleeve into his right hand. Tanaseda snapped something at him and he froze. His eyes blazed at me and his knuckles whitened around the hilt of the knife.

  ‘See,’ I told him. ‘Masterless samurai don’t have this problem. There’s no leash. If you’re ronin, you don’t have to watch honour sold out for political expediency.’

  ‘Tak, will you just fucking shut up,’ groaned Murakami.

  Tanaseda stepped past the taut, rippling tension on the furious bodyguard. He watched me through narrowed eyes, as if I was some kind of poisonous insect he needed to examine more closely.

  ‘Tell me, Kovacs-san,’ he said quietly. ‘Is it your wish to die at the hands of my organisation after all? Are you looking for death?’

  I held his eye for a few seconds, then made a tiny spitting sound.

  ‘You couldn’t even begin to understand what I’m looking for, Tanaseda. You wouldn’t recognise it if it bit your dick off. And if you did stumble on it by accident, you’d just find some way to sell it.’

  I looked across to Murakami, whose hand rested still on the butt of the Kalashnikov at his waist. I nodded.

  ‘Alright, Tod. I’ve seen your snitch. I’m in.’

  ‘Then we have an agreement?’ Tanaseda asked.

  I compressed a breath and turned back to face him. ‘Just tell me this. How long ago did Segesvar cut his deal with the other copy of me?’

  ‘Oh, not recently.’ I couldn’t tell if there was any satisfaction in his voice. ‘I believe he has known that you both exist for some weeks now. Your copied self has been most active in tracing old connections.’