Black Man / Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan

  He did it anyway. Maybe machete boy had gotten hold of another weapon and was up for another shot at killing the black man.

  He found a zone plan screwed to a wall at the next intersection, studied it, got a sense of how the area was laid out. The wall next to the map offered the deadpan grafittoed legend: you are here i’m afraid—deal with it. He grinned despite himself and prowled back the way he’d come, aiming to start a proper search pattern. Something to do until RimSec got there in force. He’d have to hope the lockdown worked.

  Behind him, the clank-punt of a door disengaging its locks. He spun about, combat crouch in the making when he saw the woman backing out of the open doorway. She wore nondescript coveralls, some logo he didn’t recognize, and had her corkscrew-unruly hair gathered up in a tight band. Mestiza complexion, unlit spliff tucked into the corner of her mouth. By the time she’d fully turned, he was casual again.

  “Hey there.”

  She appraised him with a head-to-foot look. “What’s the matter, you lost?”

  “Next best thing.” He built her a smile. “I’m supposed to meet some guy down here works for Daskeen Azul, think either I’ve taken a wrong turn or he has.”

  “That right?”

  She was looking at the S(t)igma jacket, he realized. Maybe the corporation and what it did wasn’t standard knowledge out this far west, but unless you were immune to continental American news digests, it was hard to misunderstand the style of the jacket and the bright chevrons down the sleeve. He sighed.

  “Chasing a job, you know,” he said, faking weariness. “Guy says he can maybe get me some hours.”

  Another flickered assessment. She nodded and took the spliff out of her mouth, turned and gestured with it, back to the corner with the map. “See that right turn there. Take that, two blocks straight then one left. Takes you through the bulkhead to starboard loading. Think Daskeen got a couple of berths there. You’re not far out—probably just got the wrong stairwell down off Margarita thoroughfare.”

  “Right.” He let the renewed pulsing of the mesh leak through as eagerness. “Hey, thanks a lot.”

  “No problem. Here.” She handed him the spliff. “You get the work, celebrate on me.”

  “Oh hey, you don’t have to do—”

  “Take it, man.” She held it out until he did. “Think I’ve never been where you are now?”

  “Thanks. Thank you. Look, I’d better—”

  “Sure. Don’t want to be late for your job interview.”

  He grinned and nodded, wheeled about, and stalked rapidly back to the corner. As soon as he rounded it, he broke into a flat run.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Guava Diamond. We are blown, Claw Control. Repeat, we are blown. Heaven-sent is endangered at best, fully exposed at worst. I don’t know what the fuck you’re playing at over there, but this is out of nowhere. We have no cover and no exit strategy I can guarantee. Request immediate extraction.”

  The bulkhead was a lustrous nanofiber black, raw and shiny and as distinct from the gray walls of the residential section as his Hilton-bought shirt was from the inmate jacket he wore over it. Bright yellow markings delineated the access hatches. By the look of it, they could be simply coded shut at a molecular level, hinges and locks turning to an unbroken whole with the surface of the hatch. He passed through, stabbed suddenly with memories of Mars. It hit him that ever since he’d gotten down from the shopping levels, that was what this place brought to mind. Life on Mars. Right down to the camaraderie of the helpful mestiza, the freely offered spliff.

  Don’t think you’re going to miss all this, Sutherland had grinned at him. But you will, soak. You wait and see.

  Beyond lay starboard loading.

  He’d been on factory rafts a few times before this, but it was always easy to forget the scale of the things. Looking over the rail of the gantry he’d stepped onto was like viewing some immense factory testing rank for cable cars. The loading space was a fifty-meter slope up from the ocean and a vast roof of the same nanofiber construction as the bulkhead, vaulted so high overhead it could almost have been the night sky. Cut into this base, a dozen or more cable-crank slipways led up out of the water to the undersides of the perched docking sheds they served. The nanofiber cables shone in their channels like roped licorice, new and wet looking in the overhead blast of LCLS arcs. Poised at various points between the underbelly entrances of the sheds and the sea, heavy-duty cradles held a variety of seagoing vessels secure on their respective slipways. Latticed steel gantries and stairs ran up and down the sides of the slips for maintenance and clung to the outer edges of the dock facilities above. Cranes and pylons bristled off the sloping surface. Dotted figures scrambled about, and faint yells lofted back and forth across the cavern-cold air. Carl scanned the roofing of the sheds for the Daskeen Azul logo, found it on the sixth unit in line, and started to run.

  “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 nanofiber 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 minisub jerked and started to climb.

  Here we go.

  He was still at the initial access level he’d come in on, behind and three meters 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 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 whom 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.

  Th
e 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 around 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-cheeked, 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 gotten 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 authorize 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 meters down the slope, frozen there. Inside the docking shed, the winding engine ran on but its sound had shifted. The licorice 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 was 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. Found the pressure point in the wrist, wrenched 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 signaled 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 toward the open door and tore him apart in midair. The screaming died in midsyllable, the wall and doorway 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 around 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 and hitched an elbow strike at Merrin’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 meters at most. But the impact broke their holds on each other and they rolled down the slope apart. Twenty meters farther down, the solid steel bulk of the locked-up cradle waited to greet them. Impact was going to hurt.

  Carl got himself feetfirst in the tumble and tried to jam a foot into the crank-cable channel. The sole of his boot skidded off the nanofiber, braked him, but not a lot. Merrin came plowing 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 meters 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 gray hull of the sub, and sprinkled warm on his face again.

  CHAPTER 39

  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 from falling. She reached the cradle and hung on to 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?”