Richard Morgan - Woken Furies

Now we cruised past rows of smashed-in Settlement-Years warehouses, containers and cranes tumbled across the docks like children’s toys and merchant vessels sunk at anchor end to end. There were lurid chemical stains on the water around us, and the only living things in view were a miserable-looking clutch of ripwings flapping about on the canted, corrugated roof of a warehouse. One of them flung back its neck and uttered a clattering challenge as we went past, but you could tell its heart wasn’t in it.

“Want to watch out for those,” said Kiyoka grimly. “They don’t look like much but they’re smart. Most places on this coast they’ve already polished off the cormorants and the gulls, and they’ve been known to attack humans too.”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s their planet.”

The deCom beachhead fortifications came into view. Hundreds of metres of razor-edged livewire crawling restlessly about inside its patrol parameters, jagged rows of crouched spider blocks on the ground and robot sentries perched brooding on the surrounding rooftops. In the water, a couple of automated minisubs poked conning towers above the surface, bracketing the curve of the estuary. Surveillance kites flew at intervals, tethered to crane stacks and a communications mast in the heart of the beachhead.

Guns for Guevara cut power and drifted in broadside between the two subs. On the dockside, a few figures paused in what they were doing and voices floated across the closing gap to the new arrivals. Most of the work was done by machines, silently. Beachhead security interrogated the hoverloader’s navigational intelligence and gave clearance. The auto grapple system talked to the sockets on the dock, agreed trajectory and fired home. Cables cranked tight and pulled the vessel in. An articulated boarding corridor flexed itself awake and nuzzled up to the dockside loading hatch. Buoyancy antigrav kicked over to mooring levels with a shiver. Doors unlatched.

“Time to go,” said Lazlo, and disappeared below like a rat down a hole.

Orr made an obscene gesture in his wake.

“What you bring us up here in the first place for, you’re in such a fucking hurry to get off?”

An indistinct answer floated back up. Feet clattered on the companionway.

“Ah, let him go,” said Kiyoka. “No one rolls ‘til we talk to Kurumaya anyway. There’ll be a queue around the ‘fab.”

Orr looked at Sylvie. “What are we going to do about Jad?”

“Leave her here.” The command head was gazing out at the ugly grey bubblefab settlement with a curiously rapt expression on her face. Hard to believe it was the view—maybe she was listening to the machine systems talk, senses open and lost in the wash of transmission traffic. She snapped out of it abruptly and turned to face her crew. “We’ve got the cabins ‘til noon. No point in moving her until we know what we’re doing.”

“And the hardware?”

Sylvie shrugged. “Same applies. I’m not carting that lot around Drava all day while we wait for Kurumaya to give us a slot.”

“Think he’ll ramp us again?”

“After last time? Somehow I doubt it.”

Below deck, the narrow corridors were plugged up with jostling deComs, carry-on gear slung across shoulders or portered on heads.

Cabin doors stood folded open, occupants within rationalising baggage prior to launching themselves into the crush. Boisterous shouts ricocheted back and forth over heads and angled cases. Motion was sludgily forward and port, towards the debarkation hatch. We threaded ourselves into the crowd and crept along with it, Orr in the lead. I hung back, protecting my wounded ribs as much as I could. Occasional jolts got through. I rode it with gritted teeth.

What seemed like a long time later, we spilled out the end of the debarkation corridor and stood amidst the bubblefabs. The deCom swarm drifted ahead of us, through the ‘fabs and towards the centre mast.

Part way there, Lazlo sat waiting for us on a gutted plastic packing crate.

He was grinning.

“What kept you?”

Orr feinted at him with a growl. Sylvie sighed.

“At least tell me you got a queue chip.”

Lazlo opened his hand with the solemnity of a conjuror and presented a little fragment of black crystal on his palm. The number fifty-seven resolved itself from a blurred point of light inside. A string of muttered curses smoked off Sylvie and her companions at the sight.

“Yeah, it’ll be a while.” Lazlo shrugged. “Leftovers from yesterday. They’re still assigning the backlog. I heard something serious went down inside the Cleared Zone last night. We may as well eat.”

He led us across the encampment to a long silver trailer backed up against one of the perimeter fences. Cheap moulded tables and chairs sprouted in the space around the serving hatch. There was a scattering of clientele, sleepy-faced and quiet over coffees and foil-plated breakfast. In the hatch, three attendants moved back and forth as if on rails. Steam and the smell of food boiled out towards us, pungent enough to trigger even the meagre taste/scent sense on the synthetic sleeve.

“Misos and rice all round?” asked Lazlo.

Grunts of assent from the deComs as they took a couple of tables. I shook my head. To synthetic taste buds, even good miso soup tastes like dishwater. I went up to the hatch with Lazlo to check what else was on offer. Settled for coffee and a couple of carbohydrate-heavy pastries. I was reaching for a credit chip when Lazlo put out his hand.

“Hey. On me, this.”

“Thanks.”

“No big deal. Welcome to Sylvie’s Slipins. Guess I forgot to say that yesterday. Sorry.”

“Well, there was a lot going on.”

“Yeah. You want anything else?”

There was a dispenser on the counter selling painkiller dermals. I pulled a couple of strips out and waved them at the attendant. Lazlo nodded, dug out a credit chip of his own and tossed it onto the counter.

“So you got tagged.”

“Yeah. Ribs.”

“Thought so, from the way you were moving. Our friends yesterday?”

“No. Before that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Busy man.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” I tore dosage off one of the strips, pushed up a sleeve and thumbed the dermal into place. Warm wash of chemical well-being up my arm. We gathered up the food on trays and carried it back to the tables.

The deComs ate in a focused silence at odds with their earlier bickering.

Around us, the other tables started to fill up. A couple of people nodded at Sylvie’s crew in passing, but mostly the deCom norm was standoffish. Crews kept to their own little knots and gatherings. Shreds of conversation wisped past, rich in specs and the same sawn-off cool I’d picked up in my companions over the last day and a half. The attendants yelled order numbers and someone got a receiver tuned to a channel playing Settlement-Years jazz.

Loose and painless from the dermal wash, I caught the sound and felt it kick me straight back to my Newpest youth. Friday nights at Watanabe’s place—old Watanabe had been a big fan of the Settlement-Years jazz giants, and played their stuff incessantly, to groans from his younger patrons that swiftly became ritualised. Spend enough time at Watanabe’s and whatever your own musical preferences, it wore you down. You ended up with an engraved liking for the tipped-out-of-kilter rhythms.

“This is old,” I said, nodding at the trailer-mounted speakers.

Lazlo grunted. “Welcome to New Hok.”

Grins and a trading of finger-touch gestures.

“You like this stuff, huh?” Kiyoka asked me through a mouthful of rice.

“Stuff like it. I don’t recognise—”

“Dizzy Csango and Great Laughing Mushroom,” said Orr unexpectedly. “Down the Ecliptic. But it’s a cover of a Blackman Taku float, originally. Taku never would have let the violin in the front door.”