George Martin - Suicide Kings

She wasn’t his usual type. He’d be the first to admit that. It wasn’t that he went for the big-boobed blond cheerleader types, especially not with augments out to here: fake tits symbolized capitalism’s obsession with conspicuous consumption. But he usually did like his women fuller-figured.

Not to mention younger. Sun Hei-lian wore her years lightly, although he knew they’d been spent in hard service. She kept herself in remarkable shape, gymnast shape, martial-artist shape. She’d been taught taijiquan and internal martial arts by her Daoist-priest father, and more violent applications by her employers.

She claimed he made her feel years younger. She’d laughed more in the last year, she said, their year together, than in her entire life previously. As serious as she still normally was, he believed that.

She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, not despite her years but because of them. And she was smart, fierce smart, a trait he respected. More than a skilled, and now passionate, lover, Hei-lian was something the Radical had never known in his brief years of freedom: a confidante.

“You seem thoughtful, lover,” Sun said.

He turned and leaned on the rail. Sun-heated wood stung his arms. “I miss Sprout,” he said softly. “I miss being able to have her with me.”

“You could’ve brought her along.”

“Would you be running around like that?”

“Of course not,” Sun said in mock outrage. “Not in front of a child.” She came up to put her chin on his shoulder and tousle his hair. He felt the heat and yielding firmness of her body on his back and buttocks, skin on skin, the slight rasp of her bush. Unlike a lot of chicks these days she didn’t shave her pussy. Her pubic hair was on the sparse and wispy side anyway.

As sunset approached, vast flocks of scarlet ibises, pink-pale from their season in the north and long flight back to southern summer, fell on sandbanks and overgrown islands and the dense mangal on either bank like cotton-candy rain, to feed on mangrove crabs among the tough, gnarly roots knuckling down into black water. Their cries bubbled into a sky being overtaken by bands of orange and yellow.

With a sloshing of syrupy water a crocodile, what the locals called a jacare, emerged from the water by the little dock. No boat was tied there now: no need for one. The jacare was a big fucker, maybe twelve feet long. It dragged itself up by the gravel path and stared insolently at the humans from gelatinous armor-lidded eyes, as if laying claim on them for supper.

Tom pointed. A pencil of fire stabbed from his finger and crisped a tuft of grass a couple of inches in front of the croc’s sharp snout. Moisture in plant and mud flashed to steam, scorching the animal’s nose and shooting grains of dirt against it. Opening its yellow-pink mouth to roar surprise, displaying impressive teeth, the beast wigwagged its fat tail hastily backward into the water and was gone.

“Arrogant prick,” Tom said. He raised the finger and blew away imaginary gunsmoke.

Hei-lian laughed. “That’s more like it. I was wondering why you brought us here to this rustic tropic paradise for the night. Other than the usual security considerations, of course. I didn’t think you went in much for that whole hippie back-to-nature thing.”

Supernova anger burst inside him. He spun. Hei-lian leapt back like a startled cat. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he shouted in her face. “What the fuck?”

There was more surprise than fear in those wide black eyes. But there still was fear. Colonel Sun, consecrated to service of Guoanbu and country since prepubescence, survivor of decades of full-contact play in some of the world’s most blood-soaked open sores, did not scare easily.

But Tom was the most powerful ace on Earth, except maybe for Ra. He swatted fifty-ton main battle tanks like bugs. She knew far too well what he could do with her. “Nothing,” she said. She managed to keep her voice almost steady. “I was just making a joke. Trying. Failing.”

The stricken look on her face stabbed through him like that Kalashnikov slug through the back. He let out a big breath. The anger had already vanished, as quickly as it had lit. It left behind a kind of clammy, shaky emptiness.

“I’m sorry, man,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to rattle you like that.” You got to maintain, man, he told himself. You can find another woman. But there’s way more at stake here than that. More than he dared let anyone suspect. Not Hei-lian. Not even Sprout. More than he cared to let himself think about. Everything.

Shaking his head, he turned back to the rail and the river and the gathering birds and evening. “I’m just a little uptight these days.”

She was back, pressed against him, stroking him soothingly. Mingling sweat made a slick membrane between them. He respected the nerve it took her to approach him.

“The Sudan?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning heavily on the rail. “Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.” Tom picked up the soda, now past tepid to near hot, chugged half of it. He wished he dared let himself have even one beer to take the edge off. But he didn’t. Hadn’t in the almost decade and a half since he’d… come into his own. Nor had he gotten stoned. He couldn’t allow himself to alter his brain chemistry. “Nshombo’s always been hung up on Muslims, especially Arabs. He remembers it was always the Arabs who encouraged the slave trade, thinks they mean to bring all that back.” He shrugged. “Shit. They even might. In South Sudan we found some local Muslims-they call themselves Arabs, even though they don’t look any different from their neighbors-keeping animist tribesmen as slaves. We gave the slave owners to their own slaves. Perfect propaganda by deed. This Caliph’s just a puppet, and Siraj is a Western wannabe. I’m cool with putting him up against the wall. But in ten years. Maybe five. When we’ve shown the world the revolution works, made this place the People’s Paradise in reality as it is in name. It’s too early. Way too fucking early.” Tom turned away to lean on the rail. “And Alicia’s pet aces

… they’re too big a risk. Look at what happened with the last one.”

“Dolores.” She laid a hand cool on his shoulder. “Butcher Dagon killed her.”

Tom turned away. “Alicia’s first success story, and look how that turned out.” The sun poured in crosswise beneath the thatch awning as it sank toward the mangal and the big river’s origin in the Chapada Diamantina in the middle of Bahia state. The light had softened, lost some of its sting. But the air stayed still and hot, the humidity thick enough to swim in. The bugs, ever-present, had gone from busy to frenetic.

Tom blew out his lips in a sigh and turned to Sun with a lopsided grin. “What say we go inside and get, you know, horizontal?”

Jackson Square

New Orleans, Louisiana

And then she’s back in the pit.

Adesina is crouched down. Her hair has come undone from its braids and is a tangled cloud around her face. She looks feral.

Michelle glances around. Corpses. Check. Leopards. Check. Adesina. Check. No bunnies. Check.

She closes her eyes hard and wills herself back to New Orleans.

Juliet and Joey were staring at her. “What was that you were saying?” Juliet asked.

“I wasn’t saying anything,” Michelle replied.

“Hell you weren’t,” Joey said. “That was some fucked-up shit, Bubbles. You were talkin’ in tongues.”

Michelle wanted to shake her head, but she only managed to move it a little. “No. That was Adesina.”

Ink and Hoodoo Mama glanced at each other.

“Hey!” Michelle exclaimed. “I saw that!”

Juliet stroked Michelle’s forehead. “Sweetie, you’ve been in a coma for a year. You’re probably tired.”