Richard Morgan - Woken Furies

I came off the wall, spinning to cover them all with the Rapsodia.

Too late.

I took in a glimpse of the three of them, gaping in shock. Segesvar met my eyes and flinched. Jad stood braced, shard gun riding her hip, levelled.

Anton saw and reacted, deCom swift. He seized Aiura Harlan Tsuruoka by the shoulders and hurled her in front of him. The shard gun coughed.

The Harlan security exec screa—

—and came apart from shoulders to waist as the monomol swarm ripped through her. Blood and tissue exploded through the air around us, splattered me, blinded me—

In the time it took me to wipe my eyes, they were both gone. Back through the cell they’d come out of, and the tunnel beyond. What remained of Aiura lay on the floor in three pieces and puddles of gore.

“Jad, what the fuck are you playing at?” I yelled.

She wiped her face, smearing blood. “Told you I’d get him.”

I grabbed at calm. Stabbed a finger at the carnage around our feet. “You didn’t get him, Jad. He’s gone.” Calm failed me, collapsed catastrophically before focusless fury. “How could you be so fucking stupid. He’s fucking gone.”

“Then I’ll fucking catch him up.”

“No, we nee—”

But she was already moving again, across the opened cell at a fast deCom lope. Ducking into the tunnel.

“Nice going, Tak,” said Murakami sardonically. “Command presence. I like that.”

“Shut up, Tod. Just find the monitor room, check the cells. They’re all around here somewhere. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

I was backing off, moving before I finished speaking. Sprinting again, after Jad, after Segesvar.

After something.

The tunnel came out in a fight pit. Steep, sloping evercrete sides, ten metres tall and torn ragged for half their height by decades of swamp panthers trying to claw their way out. Railed spectator space around the top, all open to a sky clogged with a fast-moving stampede of greenish cloud cover. It was impossible to look directly up in the rain. Thirty centimetres of thick mud in the bottom of the pit, now pounded into brown sludge by the downpour. The drainage vents in the walls couldn’t keep up.

I squinted through the water in the air and on my face, spotted Jad halfway up the narrow maintenance ladder cut into one corner of the pit.

Bawled at her over the sound of the storm. “Jad! Fucking wait!”

She paused, hanging off the ladder rung, shard blaster pointing downward.

Then waved and went on climbing.

I cursed, stowed the Rapsodia and went after her up the ladder. Rain cascaded down the walls past me and drummed on my head. I seemed to hear blasterfire somewhere above.

When I got to the top, a hand came down and grasped my wrist. I jolted with shock and and looked up to see Jad peering down at me.

“Stay low,” she called. “They’re up here.”

Cautiously, I got my head above the level of the pit and looked out across the network of gantries and spectator galleries that criss-crossed the fight pits. Thick curtains of rain skirled across the view. At more than ten metres, visibility faded to grey, at twenty it was gone. Somewhere on the other side of the farm, I could hear the firefight still raging, but here there was only the storm. Jad lay flat on her belly at the edge of the pit. She saw me cast about and leaned closer.

“They split up,” she shouted in my ear. “Anton’s heading for the moorage space on the far side. My guess is he’s looking for a ride out, or maybe the other you to give him some backup. The other guy cut back through the pens over there, looks like he wants to fight. Fired on me just now.”

I nodded. “Alright, you get after Anton, I’ll take care of Segesvar. I’ll cover you when you move.”

“Done.”

I grabbed her shoulder as she rolled over. Pulled her back for a moment.

“Jad, you just be fucking careful. If you run into me out there—”

Her teeth split in a grin, and the rain trickled into her teeth.

“Then I’ll waste him for you at no extra charge.”

I joined her on the flat space of the wallwalk, drew the Rapsodia and dialled it to tight dispersal, maximum range. I squirmed about and settled into a half-reclining crouch.

“Scan up!”

She gathered herself.

“Go!”

She sprinted away from me, along the rail, onto a connecting gantry and into the murk. Off to the right, a blaster bolt split the curtain of rain. I triggered the shard pistol in reflex, but reckoned it wasn’t close enough.

Forty to fifty metres, the armourer in Tekitomura had said, but it helped if you could see what you were shooting at.

So—

I stood up. Bellowed into the storm.

“Hey Rad! You listening? I’m coming to fucking kill you!”

No reply. But no blaster fire either. I moved warily forward, along the side of the pit gallery, trying to estimate Segesvar’s position.

The fight pits were blunt oval arenas sunk directly into the silt bed of the Expanse, deeper inside than the surrounding waters by about a metre.

There were nine of them pressed up against each other in rows of three, thick evercrete walls between topped with interlinked galleries where spectators could stand at the rail and watch the panthers rip each other apart at a safe distance below. Steel mesh spectator walkways were laid corner to corner of each pit to provide much-needed extra space for popular fights. On more than one occasion, I’d seen the galleries packed five deep all around and the cross gantries creaking with the weight of crowds craning to see a death.

The overall honeycomb structure the nine pits formed rose about five metres out of the shallow waters of the Expanse and backed onto the low lying bubbles of the wet bunker complex at one side. Adjacent to this edge of the pits and criss-crossed with more gantried service walkways, were the rows of smaller feeding pens and long rectangular exercise runs that Impaler had smashed through on her way into the farm. As near as I could make out, it was from the edge of this mangled wreckage that the blaster had fired.

“You hear me Rad, you piece of shit?”

The blaster crashed again. The beam scorched past me, and I hit the evercrete floor, splashing water. Segesvar’s voice rolled past overhead.

“That’s close enough, I think, Tak.”

“Suit yourself,” I shouted back. “It’s all over bar the cleaning up anyway.”

“Really? Not got much faith in yourself, have you? He’s over on the new dock side right now, repelling your pirate friends. He’ll throw them back into the Expanse or feed them to the panthers. Can’t you hear?”

I listened and caught the sounds of battle again. Blasterfire and the odd agonised scream. Impossible to know how it was going for anyone, but my own misgivings about Vlad and his meth-head crew came back to me. I grimaced.

“Quite smitten, aren’t we!” I yelled. “What’s the matter, you and him been spending time down in the grav gym? Been poking either end of your favourite whore together?”

“Fuck you, Kovacs. At least he still knows how to have fun.”

His voice sounded close, even in the storm. I raised myself slightly and started to crawl along the gallery floor. Get a little closer.

“Right. And that was worth selling me out for?”

“I haven’t sold you out.” The trawler winch laugh rattled out at me. “I’ve traded you in on a better version. I’m going to do what’s right by this guy instead of you. Because this fucking guy still remembers where he’s from.”

A little closer. Drag yourself a metre at a time through the hammering rain and three centimetres of standing water on the walkways. Away from one pit, around a second. Stay low. Don’t let the hate and anger put you on your feet just yet. Try to push him into making a mistake.