Richard Morgan - Woken Furies

“Going to be a deCom sensei, Sylvie? That the plan?”

She gestured impatiently. “I’m not talking about teaching in the real world, I’m talking about her. Down in the capacity vault, I can crank up the real-time ratio so we get months out of every minute, and I can show her how to do this. It’s not like hunting the mimints, that’s not what this stuff is for. It’s only now I realise that. All the time I spent in the Uncleared, it feels like I was half-asleep by comparison with this. This, it feels like I was born for.”

“That’s the software talking, Sylvie.”

“Yeah, maybe. So what?”

I couldn’t think of any answer to that. Instead, I looked across at the grav sled where Virginia Vidaura lay in place of Sylvie. I moved closer, and it felt like something was tugging me there by a cable wired into my guts.

“She going to be okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Sylvie pushed herself wearily off the mooring post.

“Friend of yours, huh?”

“Er—something like that.”

“Yeah, well, that bruising on her face looks bad. Think the bone might be cracked. I stuck her in there as gently as I could, kicked the system on, but all it’s done so far is sedate her, on general principles I think. Haven’t got a diagnosis out of it yet. It’ll need re—”

“Hmm?”

I turned to prompt her and saw the grey-cased canister at the top of its arc. There was no time to get to Sylvie, no time to do anything except fling myself, tumbling over the grav sled and into the scant shadow its covered length offered. Tseng military custom—at a minimum it had to be battlefield-hardened.

I hit the ground on the other side and flattened myself to the dock, arms wrapped over my head.

The grenade blew with a curiously muffled crump, and something in my head screamed with the sound. A muted Shockwave slapped me, dented my hearing. I was on my feet in the blurred humming it left, no time to check for shrapnel injuries, snarling, spinning to face him as he climbed out of the water at the edge of the dock. I had no weapons, but I came round the end of the grav sled as if my hands were filled with them.

“That was fast,” he called. “Thought I’d get you both there.”

His clothes were drenched from his swim, and there was a long gash across his forehead that the water had leached pink and bloodless, but the poise in the amber-skinned sleeve hadn’t gone anywhere. The black hair was still long, tangled messily to his shoulders. He didn’t appear to be armed, but he grinned at me just the same.

Sylvie lay crumpled, halfway between the water and the sled. I couldn’t see her face.

“I’m going to fucking kill you now,” I said coldly.

“Yeah, you’re going to try, old man.”

“Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any fucking idea who you just killed?”

He shook his head, mock-sorrowful. “You really are getting past your sell-by date, aren’t you? You think I’m going to go back to the Harlan family with a corpse when I can take a live sleeve. That’s not what I’m getting paid for. That was a stun grenade, my last one unfortunately. Didn’t you hear it crack? Kind of hard to mistake if you’ve been anywhere near a battlefield recently. Ah, but then maybe you haven’t. Shockwave knock-out and inhaled molecular shrapnel to keep everyone that way. She’ll be out all day.”

“Don’t lecture me on battlefield weaponry, Kovacs. I fucking was you, and I gave it up to do something more interesting.”

“Really?” The anger sparked in the startling blue eyes. “What was that, then? Low grade criminality or failed revolutionary politics? They tell me you’ve had a crack at both.”

I stalked forward a step, and watched him draw into a combat guard.

“Whatever they tell you, I have seen a century more sunrises than you. And now I’m going to take them all away from you.”

“Yeah?” He made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Well if they’re all leading up to what you are now, you’d be doing me a favour. Because whatever else happens to me, the one thing I never want to be is you. I’d rather blow my own stack out the back of my head than end up standing where you are now.”

“Then why don’t you do that. It’ll save me the trouble.”

He laughed. It was meant to be contemptuous, I think, but didn’t quite make it. There was a nervousness to it, and too much emotion. He made a displacement gesture.

“Man, I’m almost tempted to let you walk away, I feel so sorry for you.”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not going to let you take her back to Harlan again. This is over.”

“It certainly fucking is. I can’t believe how totally you’ve fucked up your life. Just fucking look at you.”

“You look at me. It’s the last face you’re ever going to see, you stupid little fuck.”

“Don’t get melodramatic on me, old man.”

“Oh, you think this is melodrama?”

“No.” This time he got the edge on the contempt about right. “It’s too fucking pitiful even for that. It’s wildlife. You’re like some lame old wolf that can’t keep up with the pack any more, has to hang around on the fringes and hope it can grab some meat no one else wants. I can’t believe you fucking quit the Corps, man. I can’t fucking believe it.”

“Yeah, well you weren’t fucking there,” I snapped.

“Yeah, because if I had been, it never would have happened. You think I would have let it all go down the drain like that? Just fucking walked away, like Dad did?”

“Hey, fuck you!”

“You left them just the same, you fuck. You walked out on the Corps and you walked out of their lives.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. They needed me in their lives like a fucking webjelly in a swimming pool. I was a criminal.”

“That’s right, you were. What do you want, a fucking medal for it?”

“Oh what would you have done? You’re an ex-Envoy. You know what that means? Barred from holding public office, military rank or any corporate post above menial level. No access to legal credit facilities. You’re so fucking smart, what would you have done with that hand?”

“I wouldn’t have quit in the first place.” “You weren’t fucking there.”

“Oh, okay. What would I have done as an ex-Envoy? I don’t know. But what I do fucking know is that I wouldn’t have ended up like you after nearly two hundred years. Alone, broke and dependent on Radul Segesvar and a bunch of fucking surfers. You know I tracked you to Rad before you got here yourself. Did you know that?”

“Of course I did.”

He stumbled for a moment. Not much Envoy poise in his voice, he was too angry.

“Yeah, and did you know we’ve plotted just about every move you’ve made since Tekitomura? Did you know I set up the ambush at Rila?”

“Yes, that bit seemed to go especially well.”

A new increment of rage twisted his face. “It didn’t fucking matter, because we had Rad anyway. We were covered from the start. Why do you think you got away so fucking easily?”

“Uh, because the orbitals shot down your swoopcopter, and the rest of you were too fucking incompetent to track us into the Northern arm perhaps?”

“Fuck you. You think we looked hard for you? We knew where you were going, man, right from the start. We’ve been on you right from the fucking start.”

Enough. It was a hard pellet of decision in the centre of my chest, and it drove me forward, hands raised.

“Well then,” I said softly. “All you’ve got to do now is finish it. Think you can manage that all on your own?”

There was a long moment when we stared at each other, and the inevitability of the fight dripped down behind our eyes. Then he rushed me.