The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  ‘Guava Diamond?’

  ‘Still holding.’

  ‘We are unable to assist, Guava Diamond. Repeat, we are unable to assist. Suggest-’

  ‘You what? You bonobo-sucking piece of shit, you’d better tell me I misheard that.’

  ‘There are control complications at this end. We cannot act. I’m sorry, Guava Diamond. You’re on your own.’

  ‘You will be fucking sorry if we make it out of this in one piece.’

  ‘I repeat, Guava Diamond, we cannot act. Suggest you implement Lizard immediately, and get off Bulgakov’s Cat while you can. You may still have time.’

  Pause.

  ‘You’re a fucking dead man, Claw Control.’

  Static hiss.

  Carl was almost to the Daskeen Azul unit when the crank cables leading up to it whined into sudden life. Shifting highlights on the nanofibre black in its recessed channel, it looked more like something melting and running than actual motion. He heard the change in engine note as the cables engaged a load. Somewhere down the line, a cradled mini-sub jerked and started to climb.

  Here we go.

  He was still at the initial access level he’d come in on, behind and three metres above the roofing of the line of docking sheds. Long, shallow sets of steps ran out from the walkway he stood on, sank between the units and joined with a lower level gantry that fringed each shed. He made it for the access level to the doors and hatches leading inside the facilities. Below again, further sets of steps snaked down on themselves and connected to the slope the slipways were built into.

  There were hatches set into the roof of the Daskeen Azul unit, but they were very likely sealed from the inside, and even if they weren’t, going in that way was a good recipe for getting shot in the arse. Carl slowed to a crouched jog, made the corner of the shed and started down the flight of stairs at its side. The murmur of the winch engine came through the wall at his ear. A couple of small windows broke the corrugated alloy surface and there was a closed door at the bottom of the stairs. No easy way in. He paused and weighed the options. He had no weapon, and no sense of the layout within the unit. No idea how many Daskeen Azul employees he might be up against, or what they’d be armed with.

  Yeah, so this is where you back off and wait for Rovayo’s cavalry.

  But he already knew he wasn’t going to do that.

  He crept under one of the windows and eased his head up beside it, grabbed a narrow angled view into the space on the other side of the wall. Cleanly kept flooring, stacked dinghy hulls and other less identifiable hardware, LCLS panels shedding light from the walls and ceiling. The squat bulk of the winch machinery at the head of the slipway and four gathered figures. He narrowed his eyes - the glass was filthy and the winch system blocked a lot of the room’s light. The four were all wearing Daskeen Azul jackets and the face he could see clearly was a stranger, a man. But the profile of the figure next to him was machete boy, gesticulating frantically at a woman who Carl identified as Carmen Ren by poise and stance before he made out her face. She had a phone in her hand, held low, not in use.

  The fourth figure had his back turned to the window, had long hair gathered into a loose tail that hung below the collar of his jacket. Carl stared at him and a solid slab of something dropped into his chest. He didn’t need to see the face. He’d watched the same figure walk away from him in the mind’s eye of the Horkan’s Pride n-djinn, along the deadened quiet of the spacecraft’s corridors. Had seen him stop and turn and look up at the camera, look through it as if he knew that Carl was there.

  He looked round now, as if called.

  Carl jerked his head back, but not before he’d seen the gaunt features, a little more flesh on the bones now maybe, but still the same slash-cheek, hollow-eyed stare. He was checking the door, twitched around on some whisper of intuition from the weight of Carl’s gaze.

  Allen Merrin. Home from Mars.

  Carl sank back to the step, fuming. With the Haag gun, Rovayo’s gun, any fucking gun, he would have just stormed through the door and got it over with. Merrin’s mesh and thirteen instincts, Carmen Ren’s combat poise, the unknown quantity that the other Daskeen Azul employee represented, any weapons the four of them might have - it wouldn’t matter. He’d fill the air with slugs going in, looking for multiple body hits, clean up the mess after.

  Unarmed, he was going to end up dead.

  Where the fuck are you, RimSec?

  Rovayo’s words rinsed back through his mind. Alcatraz can authorise a block on traffic in and out. Might have to get a couple of people out of bed to do it, but-

  But nothing. Merrin and his pals here are going to bail out before RimSec’s dozy fucking authorities get the sleep out of their eyes . . .

  The cradled sub came on up the slipway.

  And stopped.

  Carl peered down through the steel lattice of the gantry he stood on. The haul cradle was still a good twenty metres down the slope, frozen there. Inside the docking shed, the winding engine ran on but its sound had shifted. The liquorice black of the cable was frozen in its channel. The winch had disconnected.

  He peered across the sweep of the loading slope and saw the same story all the way along. No motion, none of the cables were working.

  Lockdown. He’d done RimSec an injustice.

  He saw it coming, just ahead of time. Moved off the wall, shifted stance for the combat crouch, and then the door ahead clanked open, three steps down. The mesh pounded inside him. Ren came out, the others crowding behind.

  ‘. . . yank the cradle releases and ride it down. There’s no other-’

  She saw him. He jumped.

  Their numbers made it work for him. He cannoned into Ren, knocked her flying back along the walkway and to the floor. Machete boy roared and swung at him, hopelessly wide. Carl blocked, locked up an elbow and shoved the boy back into the two other men behind him. All three staggered back through the confines of the doorway. The nameless Daskeen Azul employee yelped and brandished a weapon awkwardly, one-handed. Yelling get out of the way, get out of the fucking way. Carl made it as a sharkpunch and his flesh quailed. He rode the attack momentum through the door, sent them all stumbling. He got his hands on the gunman’s arm and wrenched, forced him to the floor, followed him down, knee into the stomach. Find the pressure point in the wrist, wrench again. The sharkpunch went off once, symphony of dull metallic plinks and clanks as the murderous load punched ragged holes in the roof. Then he had possession and the former owner was flailing under him disarmed. Carl twisted, pointed down point blank and pulled the trigger. The other man turned abruptly to shredded bone and flesh from the waist up. Blood and gore splattered, drenched him from head to foot.

  Proximity sense signalled left, Carl rose and twisted at mesh speed, still blinking the blood from his eyes. Machete boy ran onto the sharkpunch, screaming abomination and hellfire. This time, Carl pulled the trigger in sheer reflex. The impact kicked the boy back towards the open door and tore him apart in mid-air. The screaming died in mid syllable, the wall and doorway were suddenly painted with gore. Carl gaped at the damage the weapon had done-

  -and Merrin hit him from the side. Locked out the gun in exactly the same way Carl had taken it from its original owner. Carl grunted and let the other thirteen’s attack carry the two of them round in a stumbling dance. Kept the gaping muzzle of the sharkpunch angled hard away as best he could. He tried for a tanindo throw, but Merrin knew the move. They lurched again, feet on the edge of the opening in the shed floor where the slipway ran in.

  ‘Been looking for you,’ Carl gritted.

  Merrin’s fingers dug into his wrist. Carl heaved and let the sharkpunch go, through the hole in the floor. It hit the slope below and clattered heavily away downward. Better than leaving it lying around for Ren to pick up and use. He tried another technique to get loose, worked his feet back from the hole, hitched an elbow strike atMerrin’s belly. The other thirteen smothered the blow, hooked out Carl’s ankle with a heel and brought both
of them down. He got in an elbow of his own, blunt force into the side of Carl’s face. Vision flew apart. Merrin got on top. Grinned down at the black man like a wolf.

  ‘I did not cross the void to be killed like a cudlip,’ he hissed. ‘To die like meat on the slab. You have not understood who I am.’

  He drove a forearm up into Carl’s throat, bore down and began to crush his larynx. Carl, vision still starry, took the only option left, levered with one leg, rolled and tipped them both over the edge.

  It wasn’t a long drop, the height of the haulage cradle when it slotted into place at the top of the ramp, three metres at most. But the impact broke their holds on each other and they rolled down the slope apart. Twenty metres further down, the solid steel bulk of the locked-up cradle waited to greet them. Impact was going to hurt.

  Carl got himself feet first in the tumble and tried to jam a foot into the crank-cable channel. The sole of his boot skidded off the nanofibre, braked him, but not a lot. Merrin came ploughing past at his shoulder, grabbed at him and tugged him loose again. He kicked out, missed, slithered after the other thirteen. The cradle loomed, smooth curve of the sub’s hull held in its massive forked iron grasp. Merrin hit, shrugged it off at mesh speed, braced himself upright against one of the forks. He turned to face Carl with a snarling grin. Carl panicked, jammed his foot hard into the cable space again, tried to sit as his knee bent. He must have hit a bracket or a support brace. His fall locked to a halt a couple of metres off impact with the cradle. The momentum flipped him almost upright, hurled him down to meet Merrin like a bad skater fighting to stay upright. The other thirteen gaped, Carl was coming in impossibly high. Carl snapped out a fist, some reflex he didn’t know he owned, and drove into the side of Merrin’s neck with all the force of his arrival.

  It nearly broke his wrist.

  He felt the abused joint creak with the impact, but it was lost in the surge of savage joy as Merrin choked and sagged. He pivoted off the punch and cannoned into the side of the sub. Merrin made some kind of blocking move, but it was weak. Carl beat it down, seized the other thirteen’s head in both hands and smashed it sideways, as hard as he could against the edge of the cradle fork. Merrin made a strangled, raging noise and lashed out. Carl shrugged off the blow, smashed the thirteen’s head into the metal again - and again - and again -

  Felt the fight go finally out of the other man. Didn’t stop.

  Didn’t stop until blood made a sudden blotched spray across the grey hull of the sub, and sprinkled warm on his face again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Sevgi came down the gantry stairs through a flood of CSI lighting and experts setting up their gear. RimSec had cordoned off the whole of starboard loading, shepherded everyone out for questioning and then locked the place down. There were uniforms along the upper walkways at every entry point and a sharkish black patrol boat prowled the ocean alongside the open bay. Smaller inflatables fringed the water’s edge at the bottom of the slipway like orange seaweed, wagging back and forth with the slop of the waves against the slope. There was a sense of hollowness under the vaulted roof, of something emptied out and done.

  Sevgi fished her COLIN identification from a pocket and showed it to a supervising officer at the Daskeen Azul docking shed. Surprised herself with the faint stab of nostalgia for the days of her palm-wired NYPD holobadge. Being a cop, back in the day. The officer looked back at her blankly.

  ‘Yeah, what do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for Carl Marsalis. I was told he’s still down here.’

  ‘Marsalis?’ The woman stayed mystified for a moment, then the light dawned. ‘Oh, you’re talking about the twist? The guy that did all this damage?’

  Sevgi was too churned to up to call the Rim cop on her terminology. She nodded. The officer pointed down the slope.

  ‘He’s sitting down there on that empty cradle, one across from this slip. Was going to have him forcibly removed for questioning, but then some Special Cases badge calls down and says to leave him be, the guy can sit there all night if he wants.’ She made a weary gesture. ‘Who am I to argue with Special Cases, right?’

  Sevgi murmured something sympathetic and headed on down the stairs beside the Daskeen Azul slipway. When she got level with the empty cradle on the other slip, she had to pick her way awkwardly across the sloping surface, once or twice teetering and dropping to a crouch to stop herself falling. She reached the cradle and hung onto one of the forks with relief.

  ‘Hey there,’ she said awkwardly.

  Marsalis glanced down, apparently surprised to see her. It was the first time she’d seen him so unaware of his surroundings, and it jolted her more than the surprise had shaken him. She wondered, briefly, if he was in shock. His clothes were covered with drying blood in big uneven patches, and there were smeared specks and streaks still on his face where he’d washed but apparently hadn’t scrubbed hard enough.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked

  He shrugged. ‘Few bruises. Nothing serious. When did you get here?’

  ‘A while ago. Been upstairs, shouting at Daskeen Azul’s management. ’ Sevgi hauled herself up onto the cradle, propped herself against the fork next to him and slid her legs out in front of her. ‘So. Turns out you called it right, after all.’

  ‘Yeah. Thirteen paranoia.’

  ‘Don’t gloat, Marsalis. It’s not attractive.’

  ‘Well, I’m not looking to get laid.’

  She shot him a sideways glance. ‘No, I guess you’ve probably had enough of that for one night.’

  He shrugged again, didn’t look at her.

  ‘Daskeen Azul are denying any knowledge,’ she said. ‘As far as they’re concerned, Merrin, Ren and Osborne were all casual employees, automatically renewed contracts every month unless there’s a problem, and there never was. They’re lying in their teeth, but I don’t know if RimSec are going to be able to prove that.’

  ‘Osborne?’

  ‘The guy who jumped you with the machete. Scott Osborne, Jesusland fence-hopper. RimSec forensic reckon he was one of the Ward Biosupply employees who ran when Merrin showed up there. DNA match with genetic trace leavings from here and Ward’s place.’

  He nodded. ‘And Ren?’

  ‘That’s a tougher one. There was no genetic trace for her at Ward’s place, so looks like she or someone else went over there and cleaned up after they left. But we’re working off witness description composites and yeah, looks like she was there too.’

  ‘What about gene trace here. Have they run that?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She looked at him again, curiously. ‘You don’t seem very happy about any of this.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  She frowned. ‘Marsalis, it’s over. You get to go home now. You know, back to London and your smug European social comfort zone.’

  He raised an eyebrow, stared out at the water. ‘Lucky me.’

  Abruptly, there was a light tripping pulse in her throat. She tried for irony. ‘What, you going to miss me?’

  He turned to look at her now.

  ‘This isn’t over, Sevgi.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ She felt a little crime scene macabre creep into her tone. ‘Well, you could have fooled me. I mean, you did just kill them all. Osborne and the other guy are all over the walls and floor up there. Merrin, you just brained. I’d say we’re pretty much done, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘And Ren?’

  Sevgi gestured, throwaway. ‘Pick up her up, sooner or later.’

  ‘Yeah? Like you did after she split from Ward Biosupply?’

  ‘Marsalis, you’re fucking up the victory parade here. Ren’s aftermath, she’s a detail at most. Merrin’s dead, that’s what counts.’

  ‘Yeah. Suppose we should be celebrating, right?’

  ‘That’s right, we should.’

  He nodded and reached into his inmate jacket. Produced a well-made blunt and held it up for her approval.

  ‘Want some?’

  ‘What is it?’

/>   ‘Don’t know. Someone gave it to me. In case I needed to celebrate.’ He put the blunt in his mouth and crunched the ember end to life. Drew in smoke, coughed a little. ‘Here, try. Not bad.’

  She took it and drew her own toke. The smoke went down sweet and silty, enhanced dope and an edge of something else on it. She held it in, let it go. Felt the cool languor of the hit come stealing along her limbs. All sorts of knots seemed to loosen in her head. She drew again, let it up quicker this time, and handed the blunt back to him.

  ‘So tell me why you’re not happy,’ she said.

  ‘Because I don’t like being played, and this whole fucking thing was a set-up from the start.’ He smoked in gloomy quiet for a while, then held the blunt up and examined the burning end. ‘Fucking monster myths.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Monsters,’ he said bitterly. ‘Super-terrorists, serial killers, criminal masterminds. It’s always the same fucking lie. Might as well be talking about werewolves and vampires, for all the difference it makes. We are the good, the civilised people. Huddled here in our cosy ring of firelight, our cities and our homes, and out there’ - a wide gesture, warming to his theme now - ‘out in the dark, the monster prowls. The Big Evil, the Threat to the Tribe. Kill the beast and all will be well. Never mind the-’