It was good to see her again.
The beach, now I came to look at it, was a mess. In every direction as far as my limited vision could make out, the sand was torn up and furrowed around the shallow crater of fused gla.s.s the Nagini Nagini had made when she blew. The blast had taken the bubblefabs with it, leaving nothing but scorchmarks and a spa.r.s.e few fragments of metal that professional pride told me could not possibly be part of the a.s.sault ship itself. The had made when she blew. The blast had taken the bubblefabs with it, leaving nothing but scorchmarks and a spa.r.s.e few fragments of metal that professional pride told me could not possibly be part of the a.s.sault ship itself. The Nagini Nagini had airburst, and the explosion would have consumed every molecule of her structure instantaneously. If the ground was for dead people, Schneider had certainly won clear of the crowd. Most of him was probably still up in the stratosphere, dissipating. had airburst, and the explosion would have consumed every molecule of her structure instantaneously. If the ground was for dead people, Schneider had certainly won clear of the crowd. Most of him was probably still up in the stratosphere, dissipating.
What you"re good at, Tak.
The blast seemed to have sunk the trawler too. Twisting my head, I could just make out the stern and heat-mangled superstructure jutting above the water. Memory flickered brightly through my head-Luc Deprez and a bottle of cheap whisky, junk politics and government-banned cigars, Cruickshank leaning over me in- Don"t do this, Tak.
The Wedge had put up a few items of their own to replace the vaporised camp. Six large oval bubblefabs stood a few metres off the crater on the left, and down by the snout of the battlewagon, I picked out the sealed square cabin and the bulk pressure tanks of the polalloy shower unit. The returning vacuum commandos shucked their heavier items of weaponry on adjacent tent-canopied racks and filed in through the rinse hatch.
From the "Chandra came a file of Wedge uniforms with the white shoulder flash of the medical unit. They gathered around the stretchers, powered them up and shunted us off towards one of the bubblefabs. Loemanako touched me on the arm as my stretcher lifted. came a file of Wedge uniforms with the white shoulder flash of the medical unit. They gathered around the stretchers, powered them up and shunted us off towards one of the bubblefabs. Loemanako touched me on the arm as my stretcher lifted.
"See you later, lieutenant. I"ll drop by once they got you sh.e.l.led. Got to go and rinse now."
"Yeah, thanks Tony."
"Good to see you again, sir."
In the bubblefab, the medics got us unstrapped and then unsuited, working with brisk, clinical efficiency. By virtue of being conscious, I was a little easier to unpack than the others, but there wasn"t much in it. I"d been without the anti-rad dosing for too long and just bending or lifting each limb took major efforts of will. When they finally got me out of the suit and onto a bed, it was as much as I could do to answer the questions the medic put to me as he ran a series of standard post-combat checks on my sleeve. I managed to keep my eyes jacked half open while he did it, and watched past his shoulder as they ran the same tests on the others. Sun, who was pretty obviously beyond immediate repair, they dumped unceremoniously in a corner.
"So will I live, doc?" I mumbled at one point.
"Not in this sleeve." Prepping an anti-rad c.o.c.ktail hypospray as he talked. "But I can keep you going for a while longer, I think. Save you having to talk to the old man in virtual."
"What does he want, a debriefing?"
"I guess."
"Well you"d better jack me up with something so I don"t fall asleep on him. Got any "meth?"
"I"m not convinced that"s a good idea right now, lieutenant."
That merited a laugh, dredged up dry from somewhere. "Yeah, you"re right. That stuff"ll ruin my health."
In the end I had to pull rank on him to get the tetrameth, but he jacked me. I was more or less functional when Carrera walked in.
"Lieutenant Kovacs."
"Isaac."
The grin broke across his scarred face like sunrise on crags. He shook his head. "You motherf.u.c.ker, Kovacs. Do you know how many men I"ve had deployed across this hemisphere looking for you?"
"Probably no more than you can spare." I propped myself up a little more on the bed. "Were you getting worried?"
"I think you stretched the terms of your commission worse than a squad b.i.t.c.h"s a.s.shole, lieutenant. AWOL two months on a datastack posting. Gone after something that might be worth this whole f.u.c.king war. Back later Gone after something that might be worth this whole f.u.c.king war. Back later. That"s a little vague."
"Accurate, though."
"Is it?" He seated himself on the edge of the bed, chameleochrome coveralls shifting to match the quilt pattern. The recent scar tissue across forehead and cheek tugged as he frowned. "Is it a warship?"
"Yes, it is."
"Deployable?"
I considered. "Dependent on the archaeologue support you"ve got to hand, I"d say yes, probably."
"And how"s your current archaeologue support?"
I glanced across the open s.p.a.ce of the bubblefab to where Tanya Wardani lay curled up under a sheet-thin insulating quilt. Like the rest of the Nagini Nagini gang survivors, she"d been lightly sedated. The medic who did it had said she was stable, but not likely to live much longer than me. gang survivors, she"d been lightly sedated. The medic who did it had said she was stable, but not likely to live much longer than me.
"Wasted." I started coughing, couldn"t easily stop. Carrera waited it out. Handed me a wipe when I finished. I gestured weakly as I cleaned my mouth. "Just like the rest of us. How"s yours?"
"We have no archaeologue aboard currently, unless you count Sandor Mitch.e.l.l."
"I don"t. That"s a man with a hobby, not an archaeologue. How come you didn"t come Scratcher-equipped, Isaac?" Schneider must have told you what you were buying into Schneider must have told you what you were buying into. I weighed it up, split-second, and decided not to give up that particular piece of information yet. I didn"t know what value it held, if any, but when you"re down to your last harpoon clip, you don"t go firing at fins. "You must have had some idea what you were buying into here."
He shook his head.
"Corporate backers, Takeshi. Tower-dweller sc.u.m. You get no more air from people like that than you absolutely need to get aboard. All I knew until today was that Hand was into something big, and if the Wedge brought back a piece of it, it"d be made worth our while."
"Yeah, but they gave you the codes to the nan.o.be system. Something more valuable than that? On Sanction IV? Come on Isaac, you must have guessed what it was."
He shrugged. "They named figures, that"s all. That"s how the Wedge works, you know that. Which reminds me. That"s Hand over by the door, right? The slim one."
I nodded. Carrera wandered over and looked intently at the sleeping exec.
"Yeah. Missing some weight off the pix I"ve got on stack." He paced the makeshift ward, glancing left and right at the other beds and the corpse in the corner. Through the meth rush and the weariness, I felt an old caution go itching along my nerves. " "Course, that"s not surprising, the rad count around here. I"m surprised any of you are still up and walking around."
"We"re not," I pointed out.
"Right." His smile was pained. "Jesus, Takeshi. Why didn"t you hold back a couple of days. Could have halved your dosage. I"ve got everybody on standard anti-rad, we"ll all walk out of here with no worse than headaches."
"Not my call."
"No, I don"t suppose it was. Who"s the inactive?"
"Sun Liping." It hurt more to look at her than I"d expected. Wolf pack allegiances are a slippery thing, it seems. "Systems officer."
He grunted. "The others?"
"Ameli Vongsavath, pilot officer." I pointed them out with a c.o.c.ked finger and thumb. "Tanya Wardani, archaeologue, Jiang Jianping, Luc Deprez, both stealth ops."
"I see." Carrera frowned again and nodded in Vongsavath"s direction. "So if that"s your pilot, who was flying the a.s.sault launch when she blew?"
"Guy called Schneider. He"s the one put me onto this whole gig in the first place. f.u.c.king civilian pilot. He got rattled when the fireworks started out there. Took the ship, trashed Hansen, the guy we left on picket, with the ultravibe and then just blew hatches, left us to-"
"He went alone?"
"Yeah, unless you want to count the riders in the corpse locker. We lost two bodies to the nan.o.bes before we went through. And we found another six on the other side. Oh, yeah and two more drowned in the trawler nets. Archaeologue team from back before the war, looks like."
He wasn"t listening, just waiting until I stopped.
"Yvette Cruickshank, Markus Sutjiadi. Those were the members of your team the nan.o.be system took out?"
"Yeah." I tried for mild surprise. "You got a crew list? Jesus, these tower-dwellers of yours cut some mean corporate security."
He shook his head. "Not really. These tower-dwellers are from the same tower as your friend over there. Rivals for promotion, in fact. Like I said, sc.u.m." There was a curious lack of venom in his voice as he said it, an absent tone that seemed to my Envoy antennae to carry with it a tinge of relief. "I don"t suppose you recovered stacks for any of the nan.o.be victims?"
"No, why?"
"Doesn"t matter. I didn"t really think you would. My clients tell me the system goes after any built components. Cannibalises them."
"Yeah, that"s what we guessed too." I spread my hands. "Isaac, even if we had recovered stacks, they"d have been vaporised with just about everything else aboard the Nagini Nagini."
"Yes, it was a remarkably complete explosion. Know anything about that, Takeshi?"
I summoned a grin. "What do you think?"
"I think Lock Mit fast a.s.sault launches don"t vaporise in mid-air for no reason. And I think you seem less than outraged about this guy Schneider running out on you."
"Well, he is dead." Carrera folded his arms and looked at me. I sighed. "Yeah, OK. I mined the drives. I never trusted Schneider further than a clingfilm condom anyway."
"With cause, it appears. And lucky for you we came along, given the results." He got up, brushed his hands together. Something unpleasant definitely seemed to have slid off his screen. "You"d better get some rest, Takeshi. I"ll want a full debriefing tomorrow morning."
"Sure." I shrugged. "Not much more to tell, anyway."
He raised an eyebrow. "Really? That"s not what my scanners say. We registered more energy discharged on the other side of that gate in the last seven hours than the sum generating cost of every hypercast to and from Sanction IV since it was settled. Myself, I"d say there"s a reasonable chunk of story left to tell."
"Oh, that." I gestured dismissively. "Well, you know, galactic ancients" automated naval engagement. No big deal."
"Right."
He was on his way out when something seemed to strike him.
"Takeshi."
I felt my senses tilt like mission time.
"Yeah?" Striving to stay casual.
"Just out of curiosity. How did you plan to get back? After you blew the a.s.sault launch? You know, with the nan.o.bes operative, the background rad count. No transport, except maybe that piece-of-s.h.i.t trawler. What were you going to do, walk out? You"re barely two steps ahead of inactive, all of you. What the h.e.l.l kind of strategy was blowing your only available ride out?"
I tried to think back. The whole situation, the upward-sucking vertigo of the Martian ship"s empty corridors and chambers, the mummified gaze of the corpses and the battle with weapons of unimaginable power raging outside-all of it seemed to have receded an immense distance into the past. I suppose I could have yanked it all back in with Envoy focus, but there was something dark and cold in the way, advising against it. I shook my head.
"I don"t know, Isaac. I had suits stashed. Maybe swim out and hang around at the edge of the gate broadcasting a mayday squawk across to you guys."
"And if the gate wasn"t radio-transparent?"
"It"s starlight-transparent. And scanner-transparent, apparently."
"That doesn"t mean a coherent-"
"Then I"d have tossed through a f.u.c.king remote beacon and hoped it survived the nan.o.bes long enough for you to get a fix. Jesus, Isaac. I"m an Envoy. We make this sniff up on the fly. Worse-case scenario, we had a close-to-working claim buoy. Sun could have fixed it, set it to transmit and then we could all have blasted our brains out and waited until someone came out to take a look. Wouldn"t have mattered much-none of us have got more than a week left in these sleeves anyway. And whoever came out to check the claim signal would have had to re-sleeve us-we"d be the resident experts, even if we were dead."
He smiled at that. We both did.
"Still not what I"d call leaktight strategic planning, Takeshi."
"Isaac, you just don"t get it." A little seriousness dripped back into my voice, erasing my smile. "I"m an Envoy. The strategic plan was to kill anyone who tried to backstab me. Surviving afterwards, well that"s a bonus if you can do it, but if you can"t." I shrugged. "I"m an Envoy."
His own smile slipped slightly.
"Get some rest, Takeshi," he said gently.
I watched him walk out, then settled to watching Sutjiadi"s motionless form. Hoping the tetrameth would keep me up until he came round and found out what he had to do to avoid formal execution at the hands of a Wedge punishment squad.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.
Tetrameth is one of my favourite drugs. It doesn"t ride as savagely as some military stimulants, meaning you won"t lose track of useful environmental facts like no, you can"t fly without a grav harness or punching this will smash every bone in your hand no, you can"t fly without a grav harness or punching this will smash every bone in your hand. At the same time, it does allow you access to cellular-level reserves that no unconditioned human will ever know they possess. The high burns clean and long, with no worse side-effects than a slight gleam on surfaces that shouldn"t reflect light quite that well and a vague trembling around the edges of items you"ve a.s.signed some personal significance to. You can hallucinate mildly, if you really want to, but it takes concentration. Or an overdose, of course.
The comedown is no worse than most poisons.
I was starting to feel slightly manic by the time the others woke up, chemical warning lights flashing at the tail-end of the ride, and perhaps I shook Sutjiadi over-vigorously when he didn"t respond as fast as I"d have liked.
"Jiang, hey Jiang Jiang. Open your f.u.c.king eyes your f.u.c.king eyes. Guess where we are."
He blinked up at me, face curiously child-like.
"Whuhh-"
"Back on the beach, man. Wedge came and pulled us off the ship. Carrera"s Wedge, my old outfit." The enthusiasm was peeling a little wide of my known persona among my former comrades-in-arms, but not so wide that it couldn"t be put down to tetrameth, radiation sickness and exposure to alien strangeness. And anyway, I didn"t know for sure that the bubblefab was being monitored. "f.u.c.king rescued rescued us, Jiang. The us, Jiang. The Wedge Wedge."
"The Wedge? That"s." Behind the Maori sleeve"s eyes, I saw him scrambling to pick up the situational splinters. "Nice. Carrera"s Wedge. Didn"t think they did rescue-drops."
I sat back again, on the edge of the bed and put together a grin.
"They came looking for me." For all the pretense, there was a shivery warmth underlying that statement. From the point of view of Loemanako and the rest of 391 platoon at least, it was probably closing on true. "You believe that?"
"If you say so." Sutjiadi propped himself up. "Who else made it out?"
"All of us except Sun." I gestured. "And she"s retrievable."
His face twitched. Memory, working its way across his brain like a buried shrapnel fragment. "Back there. Did you. See?"