The woman had a small gray ceramic pistol, perhaps a four-millimeter, Lou thought. Very tasteful with sublime curves.
The tiny square muzzle was pointed at Lou’s body.
Lou swore under her breath. Her hands sweated.
“Good evening,” the woman said.
Lou blinked twice, taking her time, trying to play it smart, despite being scared witless. Her mouth was dry. She said, working to get more moisture, “Nice gun.”
The woman said, glancing at her gun, “One never knows when one might need protection. I am Giselle Tourignon, Madame Meagher.”
“And those two are the Glittering Tourignon Dancers?” It was worth a shot. And it gave her time to think a bit. Giselle Tourignon. Where did she fit into that family picture? Lou thought fast…
“Please, come with us. We’ve much to discuss, you and I.” The woman smiled, and made it sound like an invitation to a posh soiree.
Lou said, getting up, “You know, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just hang around here.”
And it came to her: Giselle Tourignon was cousin to kidnappers Michel and Marcel. Since Etienne handed control of the family business to his daughter Claudine, that would make Giselle…
Etienne’s granddaughter.
Giselle gave Lou a look that indicated what she thought of Lou’s sense of humor. Lou glanced at Dog. He looked dubious, but resigned. She felt the Bausch and Franke, heavy and cool, in her trouser utility pocket. An insane idea began to form, and right now Lou felt up for an insane idea. She only had to think back to what the Otaru guy had said, that there had been a Tourignon goon squad in Stalktown the night the Otaru guys bagged her and Dog. Her enquiries had stirred up something best left alone. She felt a general ache through her body as the tink struggled to meet the demands of the stress she felt.
Damn damn damn.
Taking a deep breath and keeping an eye on Giselle, she whispered to Dog, “I need a diversion!” Blinking, she felt her face shiver.
Dog nodded, a little. She prayed he could see the look on her face, and understand.
Giselle said to Lou, “Please be kind enough to bring along your animal. He will be safe with us. I love beagles.”
Lou thought, Yeah, with relish and a side of fries!
She smiled, and replied, “I wasn’t going to leave him to roam the streets.” Bending down to pick him up, her left side faced Giselle. She popped the flap on her trouser utility pocket, right-side, as she moved.
Then the quiet evening broke wide open; the sounds of cop-hovs braking overhead, deafening gunfire, and the scream of urgent processed male voices insisting that all civilians clear the landing zone.
It wasn’t much, and it was taxing the capability of Dog’s synth-box, but it was enough to buy the moment Lou needed. Both Giselle and one of her body guards looked at the sky.
Lou, still crouching next to Dog, brought up the Bausch and Franke, snicked the mode over to ready and, in her near-panic, accidentally set the gun on full-auto. The gun’s gyros whined and held the weapon stable in Lou’s hands. It loosed a spray of caseless, hissing rounds straight at Giselle and the bodyguards. The shots made a piercing hissing sound.
Lou panicked, accidentally crushing the gun’s trigger-stud. It felt like a living thing, with a mind of its own.
The targets fell, shocked, bleeding, gasping, and twitched a little.
They were down, but the gun kept firing. Lou screamed. How do I turn this bloody thing off? Spent propellant gases burned in her nose; her eyes watered. Trying to take control of the thing, she wound up shooting the grass. Soil and leaf litter burst from the ground. Still, the weapon kept firing. Lou was crying, trying to stop it, trying to pull her finger off the damn stud.
She managed at last to pull her finger free, and untoggled the auto-fire.
Two rounds were left in the magazine.
She cried, wheezing, scared and shaking all over.
In the silent moment that followed, Lou stood, wiping her nose and eyes with her free hand. Dog howled, distressed. She looked at the big white gun. The stink of propellant in her nostrils stung, and she wiped her eyes again. I’ve got to get the hell away from this gun. She tried not to look at the bodies, or at the gun.
Breathing. Yes, she had to breathe, but that turned to coughing.
Her first impulse was to chuck the gun into the sea.
No. Dumb idea.
Oh, holy crap.
She saw a few civilians wandering around on the boardwalk, some fishing boat guys at the docks. They might be able to see her in the distance. Almost certainly they heard her yelling, and perhaps even wondered about all of the commotion?
Lou felt numb with horror. How could she have panicked like that? Where was her nerve, her poise?
It was dark, though. And the gun had not made that much noise. If she could get clear of here, she might buy some time — even though she felt a weird urge to stay, to look at the bodies. Dead people.
“Dog,” she said, hoarse-voiced, pocketing the gun, thinking about how the authorities could trace it straight back to her. Dog flinched from her touch.
Unless, her fevered mind whispered to her, she could find a way to flush the gun off the Orbital.
Which left only the rounds in the victims to finger her.
She stood there a moment, contemplating digging all the rounds out of the bodies. Three bodies. Blood and flesh still warm.
The thought made her sick. She didn’t have time for this.
And what about stray rounds that hadn’t hit anybody? Stuck in trees or the side of a building. Glancing about, Lou noticed plenty of warehouses, shops, restaurants, boatsheds, and houses. Trees everywhere, too.
Damn!
Dog said, voice soft, “I never saw someone do that.”
Lou ran a hand through her hair.
“I never did this before, Dog. I’m real sorry. Really sorry.”
Dog went on. His voice was cold and remote. “I … I had to … deal with opponent dogs in the fights, that the police … that the police put me in. I had to survive. And they had other dogs, bigger … with razor-hooks, barbed claws. Berserkers. I had to … do things…”
Lou felt herself wanting to cry again, but there was no time for this! No bloody time! But Dog looked ready to jump over the wall.
“Sorry, Dog, we can talk later.” She picked him up, and walked away into the shadows.
Chapter 18
On her way up a small sidestreet to Skulldugger Row, Lou glimpsed a gleam of light coming from an empty lot between two hostels, not far from where she’d shot Giselle and her bodyguards. The lot was wire-fenced off, with a gate. Dark now, all around. Lou expected to hear cop-hovs and sirens at any moment. She was still sick in her guts, her mind’s eye replaying the scene on high rotation. Covered in a sheen of cold sweat, her clothes stuck to her back and legs. The gun in her trouser pocket was an impossible weight. How could anybody not see that huge gun down there, that telltale outline against the heavy cotton camo? And carrying Dog under her right arm; he was shivering and saying nothing.
God, he’s heavy. Never noticed it before.
But what was that gleam? Something about it made her uncomfortable. Better check it out. She felt petrified, trembling from head to foot. First day on the Orbital and she’s killing people. Stupid! Never mind that she had reason to think these people didn’t exactly wish her well. She should have tried to find a different way.
She was approaching the garish lights of Skulldugger Row. There were lots of tourists milling about, checking out how the poor folks lived, enjoying the buzz of the place. Music and laughter echoed everywhere. The music sounded off-key to her, jangling in her ears, too damn loud and irritating, the heavy rapid beat pounding her brain. The lights were too bright, colors too hot, and both hurt her eyes.
A warm evening breeze wafted spicy aromas down to her: incense and burning methane. Still feeling sick, Lou had to stop a couple of times, dry-heaving.
Lou peered through the gaps in the fence.
She swore under her breath at the sight.
She saw a small black hov poised in the air over the rubble, suspended in floatfields. That gleam was a streak of neon sign reflecting off the cockpit bubble, blue, white and yellow, over and over. A waft of thruster-fuel hung in the air, mixing with the hiss and crackle of radio bursts.
Two more well-dressed bodyguard types stood by the hov’s gullwinged entry hatch. They looked ready for trouble. There was a dim red light from inside.
She flung herself away from the fence. Leaning against the front security wall of the three-story hostel, her mouth was dry, full of filthy bile taste. She wondered about the minimum surveillance capabilities for guys like that, and if Giselle’s group was expected to report in if something untoward happened, or if there were automated bot-systems taking care of things. Lou sniffed the air, trying to pick up the faint tang of spybots, but there was too much interference from the Row. She figured they’d be stupid not to have a contingency plan.
Lou ran like hell the other way, away from Skulldugger Row, away from the hov and those two guys. Keeping close to the waterfront, dodging streetlights, bars, restaurants, clinging to shadows, she ran as fast as she could. The breeze off the water was cold on her skin. Lou knew she was having a bad shock reaction. That, and she was scared out of her mind. She ran on, listening for sirens and hovs, for some bastard to yell, “Hey you, stop!” She tried desperately not to see that damned scene in her head, Giselle and her guys going down. She tried not to remember the stench of hot blood in the air.
Lou pulled into a quiet, dark alley, and squatted behind a dumpster, breathing hard, feeling her muscles burn. She heard distant hov sounds and sirens, which didn’t mean anything, she told herself. There were lots of hovs around the place. Lots of vehicle traffic on the streets, too. Busy place.
“Dog — you okay?”
He grunted.
“Good enough. Look, I need you to earn your next meal, okay?”
“What do you want?” He sounded less than interested.
“You’ve got universal data access. I need you to get into emergency services comm traffic, listen for an alert regarding us.”
“Okay. What else?”
Trying to take slow deep breaths, wiping stinging sweat out of her eyes, she continued, “If you can figure out how to break into the Tourignon private channels that would be bloody brilliant, but I’m assuming they’ve got umpteen layers of crypto, just for openers.”
Dog said, after a moment, “The alert’s just gone out, Ms. Meagher. They’re looking for both of us. You’re wanted for questioning, and presumed armed and dangerous. There’s a series of images of you from your passport documents. And me. Oh dear. Do I really look like such a stupid dog?”
Lou gave him a squeeze. “You don’t look stupid at all. You’re a wonderful dog and I’m just sorry I got you into this.”
She wondered what to do next.
Lou put Dog down. He took the opportunity for a toilet break. Lou reached into her underwear and pulled out her Paper, powered it up, and found a directory of public dataports on the Orbital that could do remote anonymous linking: there were four of these. Lou worked fast, huddled down tight against the stinking dumpster, trying not to think about the bacteria in there digesting all the garbage, bugs that’d go nuts in her body. She threaded her encrypted signal through three different dataports. Satisfied she couldn’t instantly be traced, she called up some maps, and got Dog to transfer tracking data from the emergency services band, and patched it over the maps, showing where the cops were looking for them.
She saw traces for two separate cop-hovs sweeping the waterfront area, surrounded by rings indicating the sweep of their sensors. As she watched, one of the hovs moved within sensor range of the alley where she and Dog were hiding. Two blips appeared on the map. The hovs closed. Voice traffic registered some pleasure at finding their target.
The thruster-stutter, as the hovs nudged ever closer, was deafening; sirens howled. Lou caught a glimpse of a searchlight beam cutting the night overhead.
Still feeling sick inside, she thought, Is it worth running?
Hell, yes.
But where could she run?
The map glowed. The hovs were almost on top of her; she’d be able to see them in a couple of minutes, squinting against their searchlights.
Dog said, “I hope you have a plan, Ms. Meagher.”
Inspiration born of sheer panic seized her. She punched up her phone, and hit the pad labelled “Otaru.” She was rewarded with a window filled with a stylized animation of a woman’s pale hands making an origami crane. Soothing music played in the background. The table surface was unreflective black material. The contrast was stark. Only there was nobody there she could talk to. A soft voice, like a child’s, said, “Transform your perception; perceive your transformation.” The display image itself began folding, becoming, unaided, a crane. And then it faded to black.
Lou stared in shock at this unhelpful crap. She screamed, “I’m in huge deep trouble, you bastards! I need help now! Answer me!”
The call was killed from the Otaru end and Lou was left staring at a blank window. She swore very loudly indeed. Folding the page as fast as she could, she jammed it back into her underwear and grabbed Dog as she got up.
Set up! Bloody set up! Damn!
The cop-hovs were almost upon her. She could hear the public announcement voice saying, “Louise Meagher, please step out into the street. Repeat: Louise Meagher, step out into the street. You are obliged under the terms of your entry visa to cooperate. Failure to cooperate will be noted in your casefile.”
Lou was thinking fast, wondering what she could do in a few seconds that would help. She felt so sick, scared and angry she couldn’t think straight. “Dog — you’re getting broadcast signals from Kid’s psychic thingy, right?”
Dog nodded. She felt him shivering.
“Is he here, on the Orbital?”
“Yes and no, Ms. Meagher. I’m having trouble—” Restless, he squirmed in her arms.
“Maybe you can get some kind of bearing on his signal from here, and again when we get wherever the cops take us. Huh?” She spoke fast despite her dry mouth and the doomed feeling like ice water in her guts.
“It’s not something I can explain. I’m sorry, Ms. Meagher,” Dog said, looking up dismally. He couldn’t stop shivering in her arms. The cops were too close.
The two hovs drifted over the alley. Searchlights stared down like the eyes of God.
An amplified cop-voice said, “Louise Meagher. Step into the street. This is your final warning. Comply in less than five seconds. Failure to comply will be taken as a hostile act. We are authorized to use deadly force.”
Screaming, “Bloody hell!” Lou ran into the empty street, staring up into blinding searchlights and the hot stink of thruster-blast. She could no longer hear the nearby sea. Yelling to Dog, “If you get a bearing, dump it into my Paper’s map file. I left it powered up.”
Dog wasn’t interested. He was struggling to get away from her. “It’s police, Ms. Meagher. Police! Run!”
The clamor from the thrusters eliminated the possibility of conversation. The world was full of heat and fuel-stink and soul-crushing sirens.
Lou hugged Dog tight. He was starting to whimper, shivering worse than ever, and was increasingly hard to hold as he struggled to get out of her arms. She yelled at him, “It’s no use, Dog. They can catch us any—”
Dog fought her grasp, barking, yelping. Lou tried to hold him. He said, “Not again! I. Can’t. I can’t. Not police!” He fought and twisted in her arms. His words were lost in the storm of sound.
“Dog — don’t!” she yelled, Dog’s back claws dug into her shoulder, her neck. He was barking in panic. She could smell his fear. “Don’t be stupid!”
He was growling now, a potent pre-sentient sound. Dog bit Lou’s right hand, bit hard. Lou gasped at the astonishing pain, saw Dog’s teeth lit in flickering blue-white thruster-fire. She hung on, ignoring the pain, sobbing hard, knowing Dog was terrified beyond language. She knew he could feel the power of the hovs, too, a subsonic rumbling in the guts and head. She wondered, briefly, how had it been the day the Stalktown cops caught him. Did they come out of the sky on that occasion, too, like ancient sun gods, full of pain and awesome power?
The hovs were about three meters off the ground, taking their time landing. Lights from the uptown towers gleamed off their smooth dark shells. Floatfields shimmered.
Still Lou held on, wishing she could let him go, wishing he would forgive her this betrayal. He was attacking her now, scratching her face with long black claws, yelping and growling, a savage bestial sound, something from deep beneath his human personality emulators. She was scared of him. He could kill her, she understood. A frightening predator look filled his mad eyes, lit with fire. Nothing familiar there. No withering irony, no sadness.
The dog bit her hand again, much harder. He kept his teeth in her flesh and dug, twisting.
Lou gasped, doubling over in shock, and released her grip. Dog hung on to her hand.
Shock flashing to agony, she wrenched her shredded hand away, and held it. Tink fluid dripped and foamed over the wound. The pain of rewriting her flesh was almost as bad as the pain of injury. A vital, burning heat.
The animal let out a yelp of victory. He tore off down the street.
Lou screamed after him, even as the hovs tracked him with searchlights, and fired their big nanophage launchers. Phage shells burst in Dog’s wake; none hit him. To her panicked mind, a few shots came close, and she screamed. He dodged and wove, evading fire-control systems not designed to track agile cop-phobic dogs. Lou saw him zoom around a distant corner, a white, brown and black blur. Punching the air, bouncing on her feet, she yelled, “Go, Dog! Run like the bloody wind! Run!” And she hoped one day he might forgive her.
Orbital Burn Page 21