Takeshi Kovacs - Broken Angels Part 52

"Oh, you're feeling proud of yourself, is that it?" She gestured down at the crater where Sutjiadi had died and the brightly reddened spillage of corpses and spread gore stretching up towards us. "Think you've achieved something here, do you?"

"You wanted me to die? Revenge for Schneider?"

"No!"

"It's not a problem, Tanya." I shrugged again. "The only thing I can't work out is why I didn't didn't die. I don't suppose you've got any comment on that? As the resident Martian expert, I mean." die. I don't suppose you've got any comment on that? As the resident Martian expert, I mean."

"I don't know. I, I panicked. Like I said. I got the stunner as soon as you dropped it. I put myself out."

"Yeah, I know. Carrera said you were in neuroshock. He just wanted to know why I wasn't. That, and why I woke up so fast."

"Maybe," she said, not looking at me, "You don't have whatever is inside the rest of us."

"Hoy, Kovacs."

We both s.h.i.+fted to look down the beach again.

"Kovacs. Look what I found."

It was Vongsavath, riding the other bug at crawling pace. In front of her stumbled a solitary figure. I narrowed my eyes and reeled in a closer look.

"I don't f.u.c.king believe it."

"Who is it?"

I rustled up a dry chuckle. "Survivor type. Look."

Lamont looked grim, but not noticeably worse than the last time we'd met. His ragged-clad frame was splattered with blood, but none of it seemed to be his. His eyes were clenched into slits and his trembling seemed to have damped down. He recognised me and his face lit up. He capered forward, then stopped and looked back at the bug that was herding him up the beach. Vongsavath snapped something at him and he started forward again until he stood a couple of metres away from me, jigging peculiarly from one foot to another.

"Knew it!" He cackled out loud. "Knew you'd do it. Got files files on you, I knew you would. I on you, I knew you would. I heard heard you. you. Heard Heard you, but I didn't say." you, but I didn't say."

"Found him in the armoury crawls.p.a.ce," said Vongsavath, bringing the bug to a halt and dismounting. "Sorry. Took a while to scare him out."

"Heard you, you, saw saw you," said Lamont to himself, rubbing ferociously at the back of his neck. "Got you," said Lamont to himself, rubbing ferociously at the back of his neck. "Got files files on you. Ko-ko-ko-ko-kovacs. on you. Ko-ko-ko-ko-kovacs. Knew Knew you'd do it." you'd do it."

"Did you," I said sombrely.

"Heard you, you, saw saw you, but I didn't say." you, but I didn't say."

"Yeah, well that was your mistake. A good political officer always relays his suspicions to higher authority. It's in the directives." I picked up the interface gun from the bug console and shot Lamont through the chest. It was an impatient shot and it sheared through him too high to kill immediately. The sh.e.l.l exploded in the sand five metres behind him. He flopped on the ground, blood gouting from the entry wound, then from somewhere he found the strength to get to his knees. He grinned up at me.

"Knew you'd do it," he said hoa.r.s.ely, and keeled slowly over on his side. Blood soaked out of him and into the sand. you'd do it," he said hoa.r.s.ely, and keeled slowly over on his side. Blood soaked out of him and into the sand.

"Did you get the impeller?" I asked Vongsavath.

I sent Wardani and Vongsavath to wait behind the nearest rock bluff while I fired the nuke. They weren't s.h.i.+elded and I didn't want to waste the time it would take to get them into polalloy. And even at a distance, even in the freezing vacuum on the other side of the gate, the nuclear sh.e.l.ls the bug mounted would throw back enough hard radiation to cook an uns.h.i.+elded human very dead.

Of course, previous experience suggested the gate would handle the proximity of dangerous radiation in much the same way it had dealt with the proximity of nan.o.bes-it wouldn't permit it. But you could be wrong about these things. And anyway, there was no telling what a Martian would consider a tolerable dose.

Then why are you sitting here, Tak?

Suit'll soak it up.

But it was a little more than that. Sat astride the bug, Sunjet flat across my thighs, interface pistol tucked into a belt pouch, face on to the bubble of starscape the gate had carved into the world before me, I could feel a long, dragging inertia of purpose setting in. It was a fatalism running deeper than the tetrameth, a conviction that there wasn't that much more to do and whatever result was waiting out there in the cold would just have to do.

Must be the dying, Tak. Bound to get to you in the end. Even with the 'meth, at a cellular level, any sleeve is going to- Or maybe you're just scared of diving through there and finding yourself back on the Mivtsemdi all over again.

Shall we just get on with it?

The howitzer sh.e.l.l spat from the bug carapace slow enough to be visible, breached the gate-s.p.a.ce with a faint sucking sound and trailed off into the starscape. Seconds later the view was drenched white with the blast. My faceplate darkened automatically. I waited, seated on the bug, until the light faded. If anything outside visual spectrum radiation made it back through, the contam alert on the suit helmet didn't think it worth mentioning.

Nice to be right, huh?

Not that it matters much now anyway.

I chinned up the faceplate and whistled. The second bug lifted from behind the rock bluff and ploughed a short furrow through the sand. Vongsavath set it down with casual perfection, aligned with mine. Wardani climbed off from behind her with aching slowness.

"Two hours, you said, Tanya."

She ignored me. She hadn't spoken since I shot Lamont.

"Well." I checked the security tether on the Sunjet one more time. "Whatever you've got to do, start doing it now."

"What if you're not back in time?" objected Vongsavath.

I grinned. "Don't be stupid. If I can't waste Carrera and get back here in two hours, I'm not coming back. You know that."

Then I knocked the faceplate shut and put the bug into drive.

Through the gate. Look-easy as falling.

My stomach climbed into my throat as the weightlessness swarmed aboard. Vertigo kicked in behind it.

Here we f.u.c.king go again.

Carrera made his play.

Minute blotch of pink in the faceplate as a drive kicked in somewhere above me. Envoy reflex fielded it the moment it happened and my hands yanked the bug about to face the attack. Weapons systems nickered. A pair of interceptor drones spat out of the launch pods. They looped in to avoid any direct defences the approaching missile had, then darted across my field of vision from opposite sides and detonated. I thought one of them had begun to spin off course, tinselled out, when they blew. Silent white light flared and the faceplate blotted out my view.

By then, I was too busy to watch.

I kicked back from the body of the bug, nailing down a sudden surge of terror as I let go of its solidity and fell upward into the dark. My left hand clawed after the impeller control arm. I froze it.

Not yet.

The bug tumbled away below me, drive still lit. I shut out thoughts of the infinite emptiness I was adrift in, focused instead on the dimly sensed ma.s.s of the s.h.i.+p above me. In the spa.r.s.e light from the stars, the polalloy combat suit and the impeller rack on my back would be next to invisible. No impeller thrust meant no trace on anything but the most sensitive of ma.s.s-sensing sets, and I was willing to bet that Carrera didn't have one of those to hand. As long as the impellers stayed dead, the only visible target out here was the bug's drive. I lay crouched upright in the weightless quiet, tugged the Sunjet to me on its tether line and cuddled the stock into my shoulder. Breathed. Tried not to wait too hard for Carrera's next move.

Come on you motherf.u.c.ker.

Ah-ah. You're expecting, Tak.

We will teach you not to expect anything. That way, you will be ready for it.

Thanks, Virginia.

Properly equipped, a vacuum commando doesn't have to do most of this s.h.i.+t. A whole rack of detection systems load into the helmet frames of a combat suit, coordinated by a nasty little personal battlecomputer that doesn't suffer from any of the freezing awe humans are p.r.o.ne to in hard s.p.a.ce. You have to roll with it, but as with most warfare these days, the machine does most of the work.

I hadn't had time to find and install the Wedge's battletech, but I was tolerably sure Carrera hadn't either. That left him with whatever Wedge-coded hardware Loemanako's team had left aboard the s.h.i.+p, and possibly a Sunjet of his own. And for a Wedge commando, it goes against the grain to leave hardware lying around unwatched-there wouldn't be much.

You hope.

The rest was down to one-on-one at levels of crudity that stretched all the way back to orbital champions like Armstrong and Gagarin. And that, the tetrameth rush was telling me, had to work in my favour. I let the Envoy senses slide out over my anxiety, over the pounding of the tetrameth, and I stopped waiting for anything to happen.

There.

Pink flare off the darkened edge of the looming hull.

I pivoted my weight as smoothly as the mob suit would allow, lined myself up on the launch point and kicked the impellers up into overdrive. Somewhere below me, white light unfolded and doused the lower half of my vision. Carrera's missile homing in on the bug.

I cut the impellers. Fell silently upward towards the s.h.i.+p. Under the faceplate, I felt a grimace of satisfaction creep across my face. The impeller trace would have been lost in the blast from the exploding bug, and now Carrera had nothing again. He might be expecting something like this, but he couldn't see me, and by the time he could...

Sunjet flame awoke on the hull. Scattered beam. I quailed for a moment inside my suit, then the grin st.i.tched itself back as I saw. Carrera was firing wide, too far back along an angle between the death of the bug and where I really was now. My fingers tightened around the Sunjet.

Not yet. Not- Another Sunjet blast, no closer. I watched the beam light up and die, light up and die, getting my own weapon lined up for the next one. The range had to be less than a kilometre now. A few more seconds and a beam on minimal dispersal should punch right through the polalloy Carrera was wearing and whatever organic matter was also in the way. A lucky shot would take off his head or melt through heart or lungs. Less lucky would do damage he'd have to deal with, and while he was doing that I'd get close.

I could feel my lips peeling back from my teeth as I thought it.

s.p.a.ce erupted in light around me.

For a moment so brief it only registered at Envoy speeds, I thought the crew of the s.h.i.+p had come back again, outraged at the nuclear blast so close to their funeral barge, and the irritating pinp.r.i.c.k firefighting in its wake.

Flare. You stupid f.u.c.k, he's lit you up.

I snapped on the impellers and whirled away sideways. Sunjet fire chased me from a rampart on the hull over my head. On one spin, I managed to get off returning fire. Three sputtering seconds, but Carrera's beam shut off. I fled for the roof, got some piece of hull architecture between me and Carrera's position, then reversed the impeller drive and braked to slow drift. Blood hammered in my temples.

Did I get him?

Proximity to the hull forced receding of my surroundings. The alien sculpted architecture of the vessel overhead was suddenly the surface of a planetoid and I was head down five metres over it. The flare burnt steadily a hundred metres out, casting twisted shadows past the chunk of hull architecture I was floating behind. Weird detail scarred the surfaces around me, curls and sc.r.a.pings of structure like scrawlings in has relief, glyphs on a monumental scale.

Did I- "Nice evasion, Kovacs." Carrera's voice spoke into my ear as if he was sitting in the helmet beside me. "Not bad for a non-swimmer."

I checked the head up displays. The suit radio was set for receive only. I nudged sideways in the helmet s.p.a.ce and the transmit symbol glowed on. A cautious body flex put me parallel to the hull. Meanwhile...

Keep him talking.

"Who told you I was a non-swimmer?"

"Oh, yes, I was forgetting. That fiasco with Randall. But a couple of outings like that hardly make you a VacCom veteran." He was playing for avuncular amus.e.m.e.nt, but there wasn't much hiding the raw ugliness of the rage underneath it. "Which fact explains why it's going to be very easy for me to kill you. That is what I'm going to do, Kovacs. I'm going to smash in your faceplate and watch your face boil out."

"Better get on with it, then." I scanned the solidified bubbling of hull in front of me, looking for a sniper vantage point. "Because I don't plan to be here much longer."

"Only came back for the view, huh. Or did you leave some holop.o.r.n with sentimental value lying around the docking bay?"

"Just keeping you out of the way while Wardani closes the gate, that's all."

A short pause, in which I could hear him breathing. I shortened the tether line on the Sunjet until it floated close beside my right arm, then touched the trim controls on the impeller arm and risked a half-second impulse. The straps tugged as the racked motors on my back lifted me delicately up and forward.

"What's the matter, Isaac? You sulking?"

He made a noise in his throat. "You're a piece of s.h.i.+t, Kovacs. You've sold out your comrades like a tower dweller. Murdered them for credit."

"I thought that's what we were about, Isaac. Murder for credit."

"Don't give me your f.u.c.king Quellisms, Kovacs. Not with a hundred Wedge personnel dead and blown apart back there. Not with the blood of Tony Loemanako and Kwok Yuen Yee on your hands. You You are the murderer. They were soldiers." are the murderer. They were soldiers."

A tiny stinging in my throat and eyes at the names.

Lock it down.

"They slaughtered sort of easily for soldiers."

"f.u.c.k you, Kovacs." you, Kovacs."

"Whatever." I reached out for the approaching curve of the hull architecture where a small bubble formed a rounded spur on one side of the main structure. Behind my outstretched arms, the rest of my body s.h.i.+fted into a dead stop posture. A momentary sense of panic sweated through me at the sudden thought that the hull might be contact-mined in some way- Oh well. Can't think of everything.

-and then my gloved hands came to rest on the curving surface and I stopped moving. The Sunjet b.u.mped gently off my shoulder. I risked a rapid glance through the gull-winged s.p.a.ce where the two bubble forms intersected. Ducked back. Envoy recall built me a picture and mapped it against memory.

It was the docking bay, centred at the bottom of the same three-hundred-metre dimple and set about with bubbled hillocks that were themselves distorted by other smaller swellings rising haphazardly from their flanks. Loemanako's squad must have left a locater beacon, because there was no other way Carrera could have found the place this fast on a hull nearly thirty klicks across and sixty long. I looked at the suit receiver display again, but the only channel showing was the one Carrera's slightly hoa.r.s.e breathing came through on. No big surprise; he would have killed the broadcast as soon as he got set up. No point in telegraphing his ambush point to anyone else.

So where the f.u.c.k are you, Isaac? I can hear your breathing, I just need to see you so I can stop it I can hear your breathing, I just need to see you so I can stop it.

I eased myself painstakingly back to a viewing position and started scanning the globular landscape below me a degree at a time. All I needed was a single careless move. Just one.

From Isaac Carrera, decorated VacCom commander, survivor of half a thousand vacuum combat engagements and victor in most. A careless move. Sure, Tak. Coming right up.

"You know, I wonder, Kovacs." His voice was calm again. He'd cranked his anger back under control. Under the circ.u.mstances, the last thing I needed. "What kind of deal did Hand offer you?"

Scan, search. Keep him talking.

"More than you're paying me, Isaac."

"I think you're forgetting our rather excellent healthcare cover."

"Nope. Just trying to avoid needing it again."

Scan, search.

"Was it so bad, fighting for the Wedge? You were guaranteed re-sleeving at all times, and it's not as if a man of your training was ever likely to suffer real death."