The gate, seen through the viewports of the Nagini Nagini"s c.o.c.kpit...
The c.o.c.kpit...
I shook my head irritably. Envoy intuition is an unreliable system at the best of times, and sinking fast from the weight of radiation poisoning isn"t a great state to be in when you try to deploy it.
Not dying yet.
I gave up on trying to see the pattern and let the vagueness wash over me, seeing where it would take me.
The violet light of the corpse locker, beckoning.
The discarded sleeves within.
Semetaire.
By the time I got back to the platform, dinner was nearly over. Beneath the mummified hovering of the two Martians, the rest of the company were sitting around the stripped-down buoy on inflatable loungers, picking without much enthusiasm at the remains of tab-pull field ration pans. I couldn"t really blame them-the way I was feeling, just the smell of the stuff made my throat close up. I choked a little on it, then hastily raised my hands as the sound brought a ripple of weapon-grabbing from the diners.
"Hey, it"s me."
Grumbling and guns discarded again. I made my way into the circle, looking for a seat. It was a lounger each, give or take. Jiang Jianping and Schneider had both seated themselves on the floor, Jiang cross-legged in a clear deck s.p.a.ce, Schneider sprawled in front of Tanya Wardani"s lounger with a proprietorial air that made my mouth twitch. I waved an offered pan away and seated myself on the edge of Vongsavath"s lounger, wishing I felt a bit more up to this.
"What kept you?" asked Deprez.
"Been thinking."
Schneider laughed. "Man, that s.h.i.t"s bad bad for you. Don"t do it. Here." He rolled a can of amphetamine cola across the deck towards me. I stopped it with one boot. "Remember what you told me back in the hospital? Don"t f.u.c.king think, soldier-didn"t you read your terms of enlistment?" for you. Don"t do it. Here." He rolled a can of amphetamine cola across the deck towards me. I stopped it with one boot. "Remember what you told me back in the hospital? Don"t f.u.c.king think, soldier-didn"t you read your terms of enlistment?"
It raised a couple of half-hearted smiles. I nodded.
"When"s he get here, Jan?"
"Huh?"
"I said said," I kicked the can back at him. His hand jumped out and snugged it, very very fast. "When"s he get here?" fast. "When"s he get here?"
What conversation there was dropped out of the air like Konrad Harlan"s one and only attempted gunship raid on Millsport. Particle-blasted down by the rattle of the can and the sudden silence that found it in Schneider"s closed fist.
His right fist. His empty left was a little too slow, whipping out for a weapon fractions of a second after I had the Kalashnikov levelled on him. He saw, and froze up.
"Don"t." I told him.
At my side, I felt Vongsavath, still moving for the stunner in her pocket. I laid my free hand on her arm and shook my head slightly. Put some Envoy persuasion into my voice.
"No need, Ameli."
Her arm dropped back to her lap. Peripheral scan told me everyone else was sitting this one out so far. Even Wardani. I eased slightly.
"When does he get here, Jan?"
"Kovacs, I don"t know what the f.u.c.k f.u.c.k-"
"Yeah, you do. When"s he get here? Or don"t you want both hands any more?"
"Who?"
"Carrera. When"s he f.u.c.king get here, Jan. Last chance."
"I don"t-" Schneider"s voice shrilled to an abrupt scream as the interface gun blew a hole through his hand and turned the can he was still holding into shredded metal. Blood and amphetamine cola splashed the air, curiously alike in colour. Flecks of it spotted Tanya Wardani"s face and she flinched violently.
It"s not a popularity contest.
"What"s the matter, Jan," I asked gently. "That sleeve Carrera gave you not so hot on endorphin response?"
Wardani was on her feet, face unwiped. "Kovacs, he"s-"
"Don"t tell me it"s the same sleeve, Tanya. You f.u.c.ked him, now and two years ago. You know."
She shook her head numbly. "The tattoo..." she whispered.
"The tattoo is new. Shiny new, even for illuminum. He got it redone, along with some basic cosmetic surgery as part of the package. Isn"t that right, Jan?"
The only thing that came out of Schneider was an agonised groaning. He held his shattered hand at arm"s length, staring at it in disbelief. Blood dripped on the deck.
All I felt was tired.
"I figure you sold out to Carrera rather than go into virtual interrogation," I said, still scanning peripherally for reactions among the crowd. "Don"t blame you really. And if they offered you a fresh combat sleeve, full rad/chem resist specs and custom trimmed, well there aren"t many deals like that kicking about Sanction IV these days. And no telling how much dirty bombing both sides are going to do from now on in. Yeah, I"d have taken a deal like that."
"Do you have any evidence of this?" asked Hand.
"Apart from the fact he"s the only one of us still not going grey, you mean? Look at him, Hand. He"s held up better than the Maori sleeves, and they"re built for this s.h.i.t."
"I would not call that proof," said Deprez thoughtfully. "Though it is odd."
"He"s f.u.c.king lying lying," gritted Schneider through his teeth. "If anyone"s running double for Carrera, it"s Kovacs. For Samedi"s sake, he"s a Wedge lieutenant Wedge lieutenant."
"Don"t push your luck, Jan."
Schneider glared back at me, keening his pain. Across the platform, I thought I heard the songspires pick it up.
"Get me a f.u.c.king mediwrap," he pleaded. "Someone."
Sun reached for her pack. I shook my head.
"No. First he tells us how long we"ve got before Carrera comes through the gate. We need to be ready."
Deprez shrugged. "Knowing this, are we not already ready?"
"Not for the Wedge."
Wardani crossed wordlessly to where Sun stood and s.n.a.t.c.hed the medipack from its fibregrip holster on the other woman"s chest. "Give me that. If you uniformed f.u.c.ks won"t do it, I will."
She knelt at Schneider"s side and opened the pack, spilling the entire contents across the floor as she searched for the wraps.
"The green tabbed envelopes," said Sun helplessly. "There."
"Thank you," Wardani gritted. She spared me a single glance. "What are you going to do now, Kovacs? Cripple me too?"
"He would have sold us all out, Tanya. He has already."
"You don"t know that."
"I know he somehow managed to survive two weeks aboard a restricted access hospital without any legitimate doc.u.mentation. I know he managed to get into the officers" wards without a pa.s.s."
Her face contorted. "f.u.c.k you, Kovacs. When we were digging at Dangrek, he bluffed us a nine-week munic.i.p.al power grant from the Sauberville authorities. With no f.u.c.king doc.u.mentation."
Hand cleared his throat.
"I would have thought-"
And the ship lit up around us.
It sheeted through the s.p.a.ce under the dome, fragments of suddenly erupting light swelling to solid blocks of translucent colour spun around the central structure. Sparkling discharge spat through the air between the colours, lines of power shaken out like storm-torn sails ripped loose of rigging. Trailing fountains of the stuff poured down from the upper levels of expanding rotating light, splashing off the deck and awakening a deeper glow within the translucent surface where they hit. Above, the stars blotted out. At the centre, the mummified corpses of the Martians disappeared, shrouded in the evolving gale of radiance. There was a sound to it all, but less heard than felt through my light-soaked skin, a building thrum and quiver in the air that felt like the adrenalin rush at the start of combat.
Vongsavath touched my arm.
"Look outside," she said urgently. For all she was at my side, it felt as if she was yelling through a howling wind. "Look at the gate!"
I tipped my head back and threw the neurachem into seeing through the swirling currents of light to the crystal roof. At first, I couldn"t understand what Vongsavath was talking about. I couldn"t find the gate, and guessed it had to be somewhere on the other side of the ship, completing another orbit. Then I zeroed in on a vague blotch of grey, too dim to be...
And then I understood.
The storm of light and power raging around us was not confined to the air under the dome. s.p.a.ce around the Martian vessel was also seething to life. The stars had faded to dimly-seen gleamings through a curtain of something that stood hazed and shivering, kilometres beyond the orbit of the gate.
"It"s a screen," said Vongsavath with certainty. "We"re under attack."
Over our heads, the storm was settling. Motes of shadow swam in the light now, here scattering to corners like shoals of startled silverfry seen in negative, elsewhere exploding in slow tumbling motion to take up station on a hundred different levels around the re-emerging corpses of the two Martians. Sequenced splinters of flashing colour flickered at the corners of attenuated fields in shades of pearl and grey. The overall thrumming subsided and the ship began to talk to itself in more denned syllables. Fluting notes echoed across the platform, interspersed with organ deep pulses of sound.
"This is-" My mind spun back to the narrow trawler cabin, the softly awake spiral of the datacoil, the motes of data swept to the top corner. "This is a datasystem datasystem?"
"Well spotted." Tanya Wardani stalked under the trailing skirts of radiance and pointed up to the pattern of shadow and light gathered around the two corpses. There was a peculiar exultation on her face. "A little more extensive than your average desktop holo, isn"t it. I imagine those two have the primary con. Shame they"re not in any state to use it, but then I also imagine the ship is capable of looking after itself."
"That depends on what"s coming," said Vongsavath grimly. "Check out the upper screens. The grey background."
I followed her arm. High up, near the curve of the dome a pearl surface ten metres across displayed a milky version of the starscape now dimmed by the shield outside.
Something moved there, shark-slim and angular against the stars.
"What the f.u.c.k is that?" asked Deprez.
"Can"t you guess?" Wardani was almost shivering with the strength of whatever was slopping around inside her. She stood centre stage to us all. "Look up. Listen to the ship. She"s telling you what it is."
The Martian datasystem was still talking, in no language anyone was equipped to understand, but with an urgency that required no translator. The splintered lights-technoglyph numerals jolted through me, almost as knowledge; jolted through me, almost as knowledge; it"s a countdown it"s a countdown-flashed over like digit counters tracking a missile. Querulous shrieks fluted up and down an unhuman scale.
"Incoming," said Vongsavath, hypnotised. "We"re getting ready to engage with something out there. Automated battle systems."
The Nagini Nagini- I whipped around.
"Schneider," I bellowed.
But Schneider was gone.
"Deprez," I yelled it back over my shoulder, already on my way across the platform. "Jiang. He"s going for the Nagini Nagini."
The ninja was with me by the time I reached the downward spiral pipe, Deprez a couple of steps behind. Both men hefted Sunjets, stocks folded back for easy handling. At the bottom of the pipe I thought I heard the clatter of someone falling, and a shriek of pain. I felt a brief snarl of wolf go through me.
Prey!
We ran, slithering and stumbling on the steep downward incline until we hit bottom and the empty, cherry-flashed expanse of the first chamber. There was blood smeared on the floor where Schneider had fallen. I knelt beside it and felt my lips draw back from my teeth. I got up and looked at my two companions.
"He won"t be moving that fast. Don"t kill him if you can avoid it. We still need to know about Carrera."
"Kovacs!!"
It was Hand"s voice from up the pipe, bawling with repressed fury. Deprez dropped me a taut grin. I shook my head and sprinted for the exit to the next chamber.
Hunt!
It isn"t easy running when every cell in your body is trying to shut down and die, but the wolf gene splice and whatever else the Wedge biotechs had thrown into the c.o.c.ktail rose through the midst of the nausea and snarled down the weariness. The Envoy conditioning rode it upward.
Check functionality.
Thanks, Virginia.
Around us the ship quivered and shook to wakefulness. We ran through corridors that pulsed with sequenced rings of the purple light I"d seen splash off the edge of the gate when it opened. In one chamber, one of the spine-backed machines moved to intercept us, facings awake with technoglyph display and cluttering softly. I fetched up short, smart guns leaping to my hands, Deprez and Jiang flanking me. The impa.s.se held for a long moment and then the machine slouched aside, muttering.
We exchanged glances. Beyond the tortured panting in my chest and the thudding in my temples, I found my mouth had bent itself into a smile.
"Come on."
A dozen chambers and corridors further on, Schneider proved smarter than I"d expected. As Jiang and I burst into the open of a bubble, Sunjet fire spat and crackled from the far exit. I felt the sting of a near miss across my cheek and then the ninja at my elbow had floored me with a sideways flung arm. The next blast lashed where I had been. Jiang hit, rolled and joined me on the floor, face up, looking at a smouldering cuff with mild distaste.
Deprez slammed to a halt in the shadow of the entrance we"d come through, eye bent to the sighting system of his weapon. The barrage of covering fire he laid down boiled up and down the edges of Schneider"s ambush point and-I narrowed my eyes-did absolutely no damage to the material of the exitway. Jiang rolled under the strafing beam and got a narrower angle on the corridor beyond. He fired once, squinted into the glare and shook his head.
"Gone," he said, climbing to his feet and offering me his hand.