Richard Morgan - Black Man / Thirteen

“I don’t suppose you’d like to know how your other brother was persuaded to come home from Mars, would you, Manco?”

Onbekend tensed. His voice grated. “Marsalis, I’m warning you.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Carl told him. “I’ll put you down before your arse comes off the chair.”

He shifted slightly toward Bambarén. Kept the Glock leveled on the thirteen. The tayta stared back at him.

“See, Manco, your unexpected brother here did a deal with Mars. I’m guessing you didn’t know about that?”

“It was not a deal,” Onbekend growled. “It was a strategy, a deception.”

“Okay, he organized a deception, in your name. Your other brother was supposed to be coming back as an assassin for the Martian chapters. Some story about clearing out the Lima familias by way of reparation, laying the whole afrenta Marciana to rest so you could all do business with Mars again. That about right, Onbekend?”

“You did this?” Manco Bambarén whispered. “Even this?”

“Come on, Manco, we’ve talked about it often enough.” Onbekend gestured impatiently. “It wasn’t for real anyway, but—”

“You used my name?”

“By association, yeah. Marsalis, you fuck, listen to me—”

Bambarén lunged across the table at Onbekend. The thirteen jumped, blindsided, fended him off. Carl raised the Glock.

“Gentlemen,” he said warningly.

Bambarén appeared not to hear. He braced his arms on the table, still staring down into the face of the man he’d made into his brother. Rage brought up his accent, bruised the English he used.

“You used my fucking name?”

“Sit down, Manco,” Carl told him. “I won’t tell you again.”

But the familia chief did not sit. Instead he turned himself deliberately to face Carl and the Glock. He drew a deep breath.

“I wish to leave now,” he said stiffly. “I have no further interest in this matter. I withdraw my protection from Greta Jurgens.”

“Oh, Manco, you can’t fucking—”

“ Don’t tell me what I can do, twist.” Manco pushed himself off the table with his hands. He looked at Carl. “Well? Is our business concluded, black man?”

“Sure.” Carl hadn’t expected it to work nearly this well, but he wasn’t about to miss the sudden bonus. “Walk to the door, hands on your head. Let yourself out and shut it behind you. And I’d better hear those helicopters leaving inside ten minutes.”

Bambarén stood up and laced his hands together over his head. He and Onbekend looked at each other for a long moment.

“Don’t do this,” Onbekend said tightly. “I’m your brother, Manco. Fourteen years, I’m your fucking brother.”

“No.” Bambarén’s voice was as cold now as the chill coming off the alcove rock. “You are not my brother, you are a mistake. My mistake, my mother’s mistake, and the mistake of gringos without souls. You are a twisted fucking thing , a thing that crept into my family and used me, a thing that cut the living fat from my bones to feed itself. I should have listened to the others when you came.”

“You used me, too, you fuck!”

“Yes. I used you for what you are.” Bambarén spat on the table in front of the thirteen. “Twist! Pistaco! You are nothing to me.”

Onbekend stared down at the spittle. Then, abruptly, he swayed to his feet.

“That’s it, Onbekend.” Carl rapped on the tabletop, gestured with the Glock. “Sit the fuck down.”

There was a grim smile stamped onto Onbekend’s mouth. “I don’t think so.”

Carl came to his feet like whiplash. The chair went over behind him, the Glock leveled on Onbekend’s face.

“I said—”

And then Bambarén was on him like an opsdog.

Later, he never knew why the tayta jumped. Maybe the rage, rage at Onbekend but sloshing generally to include all thirteens, maybe all variants, maybe just anybody within reach. Maybe rage at the unaccustomed powerlessness of sitting at the table under another man’s gun. Or maybe—he hated the thought—not rage at all, maybe the two of them, Bambarén and Onbekend, the two unlikely brothers, maybe in the end they just played Carl, improvised, used the angle, and it worked.

Bambarén slapped a hand into the Glock, swept it wide, and came around the edge of the table yelling. The gun went off, once, nowhere useful. Carl twisted, took the other man’s momentum, and dumped it over his hip. Most of him was still trying to work out where Onbekend had gone. Bambarén clung on with street-fighter savagery, fingers digging for eyes, knee to groin. Carl dropped the gun. They both went down, thrashing to get the upper position.

Tanindo and the mesh won out. Bambarén had an antique street-honed savagery to call on, but it was blurred with age and years of rank. Carl broke his holds, took the punches through the padding of the weblar jacket, teeth gritted tight as pain flared across his cracked ribs and through the codeine veil. He vented a snarl, smothered a knee jab to his groin, and then smashed an elbow into the tayta ’s face. The other man reeled off him. Carl stabbed stiffened fingers in under the chin. Bambarén gagged and—

Behind him, the recently familiar chatter of a Steyr assault rifle erupted across the living room space. Short, controlled burst.

He flailed loose of Bambarén, rolled for the cover of the table and the chairs around it. The tayta yelled something, and then another brief storm of automatic fire swept over them both and the shout choked off. The tabletop was ripped into splinters, the assault rifle slugs punching through as if it were cardboard. He heard impacts off the rock behind him. Something slammed into his back, ricochet he knew fleetingly. The Glock, the fucking Glock—

—was gone. From his position on the floor, he saw Onbekend’s legs moving forward, cautious, bent-kneed stance, edging around for a clear shot. He did the only thing left, stormed to his feet, mesh-fed speed and raging strength, hurled the chewed-up table off two legs and forward like a shield. Onbekend snapped off more fire, the table toppled like a tossed playing card, impossibly slow, he dodged sideways. The Steyr chattered, impacts caught him, the impact jacket squeezed and warmed as it worked, the shots twisted and slammed him backward into the alcove wall…

And the firing stopped.

It was almost comical. Onbekend stood with the suddenly silent weapon in his hands. Faint ping of the load alert, into the quiet like a dripping tap. His gaze dropped from Carl’s face to the Steyr, saw the blinking red light. He’d had no time to check the magazine, must have grabbed the first decent weapon he saw off the pile on the breakfast bar, and he’d come away with one almost fully discharged.

Carl came off the wall with a yell.

Onbekend threw the emptied Steyr at him. He batted it aside. The other thirteen tried to grapple, he punched and stamped the attempt apart, drove Onbekend back across the space in a flurry of tanindo technique. The thirteen blocked and covered, launched jabbing counters, but all the time Carl read out the damage Sevgi’s slugs had done in the way the other man moved. He felt a snarl peel his lips, savage satisfaction, the heart-deep anticipation of damage. He closed, broke up a defense, lanced a high blow through, and caught Onbekend across the jaw. The other thirteen staggered, his back almost to the shattered picture window now. Blood and translucent light behind—Carl caught it out of the corner of his eye, dull red smears on the jagged lower line of the remaining glass, glint of the sun’s rays on the sawtoothed edges. He closed with Onbekend again—