Broken Angels

“Someone’s been here,” said Hand, jaw set.

  “Well, yes.” Wardani blew out smoke and pointed. “Oh, and there’s that.”

  Anchored in the shallows a few hundred meters along the beach, a small, battered-looking trawler wagged back and forth in a longshore current. Her nets spilled over the side like something escaping.

  The sky whited out.

  • • •

  It wasn’t quite as rough a ride as the ID&A set had been, but still, the abrupt return to reality impacted on my system like a bath of ice, chilling extremities and sending a shiver deep through the center of my guts. My eyes snapped open on the expensive empathist psychogram art.

  “Oh, nice,” I grumbled, sitting up in the soft lighting and groping around for the ’trodes.

  The chamber door hinged outward on a subdued hum. Hand stood in the doorway, clothing still fully not closed up, limned from behind by the brightness of normal lights. I squinted at him.

  “Was that really necessary?”

  “Get your shirt on, Kovacs.” He was closing his own at the neck as he spoke. “We’ve got things to do. I want to be on the peninsula by this evening.”

  “Aren’t you overreacting a li—”

  He was already turning away.

  “Hand, the recruits aren’t used to those sleeves yet. Not by a long way.”

  “I left them in there.” He flung the words back over his shoulder. “They can have another ten minutes—that’s two days in virtual time. Then we download them for real and leave. If someone’s up at Dangrek ahead of us, they’re going to be very sorry.”

  “If they were there when Sauberville went down,” I shouted after him, suddenly furious, “they’re probably already very sorry. Along with everyone else.”

  I heard his footsteps receding up the corridor. Mandrake Man, shirt closed up, suit settling onto squared shoulders, moving forward. Enabled. About Mandrake’s heavy-duty business, while I sat bare-chested in a puddle of my own unfocused rage.

  PART THREE

  DISRUPTIVE ELEMENTS

  The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn’t offer this assurance, so it’s very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you’re in control.

  QUELLCRIST FALCONER

  Ethics on the Precipice

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There is no subtle way to deploy an IP vessel across half a planet. So we didn’t try.

  Mandrake booked us a priority launch and landing parabola with the Cartel’s suborbital traffic arm, and we flew out to an anonymous landing field on the outskirts of Landfall just as the heat was leaching out of the afternoon. There was a shiny new Lockheed Mitoma IP assault ship dug into the concrete, looking like nothing so much as a smoked-glass scorpion someone had ripped the fighting claws off. Ameli Vongsavath grunted in approval when she saw it.

  “Omega series,” she said to me, mainly because I happened to be standing next to her when we climbed out of the cruiser. She was fixing her hair reflexively as she spoke, twisting the thick black strands up and clear of the flight symbiote sockets at her nape, pegging the loosely gathered bun in place with static clips. “You could fly that baby right down Incorporation Boulevard and not even scorch the trees. Put plasma torpedoes through the front door of the Senate House, stand on your tail and be in orbit before they blew.”

  “For example,” I said dryly. “Of course, with those mission objectives, you’d be a Kempist, which means you’d be flying some beaten-up piece of shit like a Mowai Ten. Right, Schneider?”

  Schneider grinned. “Yeah, doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  “What doesn’t bear thinking about?” Yvette Cruickshank wanted to know. “Being a Kempist?”

  “No, flying a Mowai,” Schneider told her, eyes flickering up and down the frame of her Maori combat sleeve. “Being a Kempist’s not so bad. Well, apart from all the pledge singing.”

  Cruickshank blinked. “You were really a Kempist?”

  “He’s joking,” I said, with a warning glance at Schneider. There was no political officer along this time, but Jiang Jianping at least seemed to have strong feelings about Kemp, and there was no telling how many other members of the team might share them. Stirring up potential animosities just to impress well-shaped women didn’t strike me as all that smart.

  Then again, Schneider hadn’t had his hormones wrung out in virtual that morning, so maybe I was just being unduly balanced about the whole thing.

  One of the Lock Mit’s loading hatches hinged up. A moment later Hand appeared in the entrance in neatly pressed combat chameleochrome, now smoky gray against the prevalent hue of the assault ship. The change from his usual corporate attire was so complete it jarred, for all that everyone else was similarly dressed.

  “Welcome to the fucking cruise,” muttered Hansen.

  • • •

  We cleared for dust-off five minutes before Mandrake’s authorized launch envelope opened. Ameli Vongsavath put the flight plan to bed in the Lock Mit’s datacore, powered up the systems, and then to all appearances went to sleep. Jacked in at nape and cheekbone, eyes shuttered down, she lay back in her borrowed Maori flesh like the cryocapped princess in some obscure Settlement years fairy tale. She’d scored perhaps the darkest, slimmest-built of the sleeves, and the datacables stood out against her skin like pale worms.

  Sidelined in the copilot’s seat, Schneider cast longing glances at the helm.

  “You’ll get your chance,” I told him.

  “Yeah, when?”

  “When you’re a millionaire on Latimer.”

  He shot me a resentful glance and put one booted foot up on the console in front of him.

  “Ha fucking ha.”

  Below her closed eyes, Ameli Vongsavath’s mouth quirked. It must have sounded like an elaborate way of saying Not in a million years. None of the Dangrek crew knew about the deal with Mandrake. Hand had introduced us as consultants, and left it at that.

  “You think it’ll go through the gate?” I asked Schneider, trying to extract him from his sulk.

  He didn’t look up at me. “How the hell would I know?”

  “Just w—”

  “Gentlemen.” Ameli Vongsavath had still not opened her eyes. “Do you think I could have a little preswim quiet in here, please?”

  “Yeah, shut up, Kovacs,” Schneider said maliciously. “Why don’t you get back with the passengers?”

  Back in the main cabin, the seats on either side of Wardani were taken by Hand and Sun Liping, so I crossed to the opposing side and dropped into the space next to Luc Deprez. He gave me a curious glance and then went back to examining his new hands.

  “Like it?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “It has a certain splendor. But I am not used to being so bulky, you know.”

  “You’ll settle into it. Sleeping helps.”

  The curious look again. “You know this for certain, then. What kind of consultant are you exactly?”

  “Ex-Envoy.”

  “Really?” He shifted in the seat. “That’s a surprise. You will have to tell me about this.”

  I caught echoes of his movement from other seats, where I’d been overheard. Instant notoriety. Just like being back in the Wedge.

  “Long story. And not very interesting.”

  “We are now one minute from launch.” Ameli Vongsavath’s voice came through the intercom, sardonic. “I’d like to take this opportunity to officially welcome you aboard the fast assault launch Nagini and to warn you that if you are not now secured to a seat, I cannot guarantee your physical integrity for the next fifteen minutes.”

  There was a scrabble of activity along the two lines of seats. Grins broke out among those who had already webbed in.

  “I think she exaggerates,” remarked Deprez, smoothing the webbing bond tabs unhurriedly into unity on the harness’s chestplate. “These vessels have good compensators.”

  “Well
, you never know. Might catch some orbital fire on the way through.”

  “That’s right, Kovacs.” Hansen grinned across at me. “Look on the positive side.”

  “Just thinking ahead.”

  “Are you afraid?” Jiang asked suddenly.

  “Regularly. You?”

  “Fear is an inconvenience. You must learn to suppress it. That is what it is to be a committed soldier. To abandon fear.”

  “No, Jiang,” Sun Liping said gravely. “That is what it is to be dead.”

  The assault ship tilted suddenly, and weight smashed down on my guts and chest. Blood-drained limbs. Crushed-out breath.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” said Ole Hansen through his teeth.

  It slacked off, presumably when we got orbital and some of the power Ameli Vongsavath had rammed into the lifters was allowed back into the onboard grav system. I rolled my head sideways to look at Deprez.

  “Exaggerates, huh?”

  He spat blood from his bitten tongue onto his knuckle and looked at it critically. “I would call that exaggeration, yes.”

  “Orbital status attained,” Vongsavath’s voice confirmed. “We have approximately six minutes of safe transit under the Landfall High Orbit Geosync Umbrella. After that we’re exposed, and I’ll be throwing some evasive curves, so keep those tongues tucked up safe.”

  Deprez nodded glumly and held up his blood-spotted knuckle. Laughter down the gangway.

  “Hey, Hand,” said Yvette Cruickshank. “How come the Cartel doesn’t just put up five, six of those HOGs, wide-spaced, and finish this war?”

  Farther down the opposite row, Markus Sutjiadi smiled very slightly but said nothing. His eyes flickered toward Ole Hansen.

  “Hey, Cruickshank.” The demolitions expert could have been speaking on Sutjiadi’s cue. His tone was withering. “Can you even spell marauder? You got any idea what kind of target a HOG makes from shallow space?”

  “Yeah.” Cruickshank came back stubborn. “But most of Kemp’s marauders are on the ground now, and with the geosyncs in place . . .”

  “Try telling that to the inhabitants of Sauberville,” Wardani told her, and the comment dragged a comet tail of quiet across the discussion. Glances shuttled back and forth up the gangway like slug-thrower shells chambering.

  “That attack was ground-launched, Mistress Wardani,” Jiang said finally.

  “Was it?”

  Hand cleared his throat. “In point of fact, the Cartel are not entirely sure how many of Kemp’s missile drones are still deployed offplanet—”

  “No shit,” grunted Hansen.

  “—but to attempt high-orbit placement of any substantial platform at this stage would not be sufficiently—”

  “Profitable?” asked Wardani.

  Hand gave her an unpleasant smile. “Low risk.”

  “We’re about to leave the Landfall HOG Umbrella,” said Ameli Vongsavath over the intercom, tour-guide calm. “Expect some kinks.”

  I felt a subtle increase in pressure at my temples as power diverted from the onboard compensators: Vongsavath getting ready for aerobatics around the curve of the world and down through reentry. With the HOG setting behind us, there would be no more paternal corporate presence to cushion our fall back into the war zone. From here on in, we were out to play on our own.

  They exploit, and deal, and shift ground constantly, but for all that, you can get used to them. You can get used to their gleaming company towers and their nanocopter security, their cartels and their HOGs, their stretched-over-centuries unhuman patience and their assumed inheritance of godfather status for the human race. You can get so you’re grateful for the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God relief of whatever little flange of existence they afford you on the corporate platform. You can get so it seems eminently preferable to a cold gut-swooping drop into the human chaos waiting below.

  You can get so you’re grateful.

  Got to watch out for that.

  “Over the rim,” said Ameli Vongsavath from the cockpit.

  We dropped.

  With the onboard comp running at combat minimum, it felt like the start of a grav jump, before the harness kicks in. My guts lifted to the base of my rib cage and the backs of my eyeballs tickled. The neurachem fizzled sullenly to unwanted life and the bioalloy plates in my hands shivered. Vongsavath must have nailed us to the floor of Mandrake’s landing envelope and piled on everything the main drives would give her, hoping to beat any distant early-warned Kempist anti-incursion systems that might have decoded the flight path from Cartel traffic transmissions.

  It seemed to work.

  We came down in the sea about two kilometers off the Dangrek coast, Vongsavath using the water to crash-cool reentry surfaces in approved military fashion. In some places, environmental pressure groups have gotten violent over this kind of contamination, but somehow I doubted anyone on Sanction IV would be up for it. War has a soothing, simplifying effect on politics that must hit the politicians like a betathanatine rush. You don’t have to balance the issues anymore, and you can justify anything. Fight and win, and bring the victory home. Everything else whites out, like the sky over Sauberville.

  “Surface status attained,” intoned Vongsavath. “Preliminary sweeps show no traffic. I’m going for the beach on secondaries, but I’d like you to stay in your seats until advised otherwise. Commander Hand, we have a needlecast squirt from Isaac Carrera you might like to have a look at.”

  Hand traded glances with me. He reached back and touched the seat mike.

  “Run it on the discrete loop. Mine, Kovacs, Sutjiadi.”

  “Understood.”

  I pulled down the headset and settled the discrete reception mask over my face. Carrera came online behind the shrill warble of unraveling scrambler codes. He was in combat coveralls and a recently gelled wound was livid across his forehead and down one cheek. He looked tired.

  “This is Northern Rim Control to incoming FAL nine-three-one/four. We have your flight plan and mission filed but must warn you that under current circumstances we cannot afford ground or close-detail aerial support. Wedge forces have fallen back to the Masson lake system where we are holding a defensive stance until the Kempist offensive has been assessed and its consequences correlated. A full-scale jamming offensive is expected in the wake of the bombing, so this is probably the last time you’ll be able to communicate effectively with anyone outside the blast zone. Additional to these strategic considerations, you should be aware that the Cartel have deployed experimental nanorepair systems in the Sauberville area. We cannot predict how these systems will react to unexpected incursions. Personally”—he leaned forward in the screen—“my advice would be to withdraw on secondary drives as far as Masson and wait until I can order a reprise front backup to the coast. This shouldn’t involve a delay of any more than two weeks. Blast research”—a ripple of distaste passed across his face, as if he had just caught the odor of something rotting in his wounds—“is hardly a priority worthy of the risks you are running, whatever competitive advantage your masters may hope to gain from it. A Wedge incoming code is attached, should you wish to avail yourself of the fallback option. Otherwise, there is nothing I can do for you. Good luck. Out.”

  I unmasked and pushed back the headset. Hand was watching me with a faint smile tucked into one corner of his mouth.

  “Hardly a Cartel-approved perspective. Is he always that blunt?”

  “In the face of client stupidity, yes. It’s why they pay him. What’s this about experimental—”

  Hand made a tiny shutdown gesture with one hand. Shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. Standard Cartel scare line. It keeps unwanted personnel out of the no-go zones.”

  “Meaning you called it in that way?”

  Hand smiled again. Sutjiadi said nothing, but his lips tightened. Outside, the engine note shrilled.

  “We’re on the beach,” said Ameli Vongsavath. “Twenty-one point seven kilometers from the Sauberville crater. P
ictures, anybody?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Clotted white.

  For fragments of a second, standing in the hatch of the Nagini and staring across the expanse of sand, I thought it had been snowing.

  “Gulls,” said Hand knowledgeably, jumping down and kicking at one of the clumps of feathers underfoot. “Radiation from the blast must have gotten them.”

  Out on the tranquil swells, the sea was strewn with mottled white flotsam.

  • • •

  When the colony barges first touched down on Sanction IV—and Latimer, and Harlan’s World for that matter—they were, for many local species, exactly the cataclysm they must have sounded like. Planetary colonization is invariably a destructive process, and advanced technology hasn’t done much more than sanitize that process so that humans are guaranteed their customary position on top of whatever ecosystem they are raping. The invasion is all-pervasive and, from the moment of the barges’ initial impact, inevitable.

  The massive ships cool slowly, but already there is activity within. Serried ranks of clone embryos emerge from the cryotanks and are loaded with machine care into rapid-growth pods. A storm of engineered hormones rages through the pod nutrients, triggering the burst of cell development that will bring each clone to late adolescence in a matter of months. Already the advance wave, grown in the latter stages of the interstellar flight, is being downloaded, with the minds of the colony elite decanted, awoken to take up their established place in the brand-new order. It’s not quite the golden land of opportunity and adventure that the chroniclers would have you believe.

  Elsewhere in the hull, the real damage is being done by the environmental modeling machines.

  Any self-respecting effort at colonization brings along a couple of these eco-A.I.’s. After the early catastrophes on Mars and Adoracion, it became rapidly apparent that attempting to graft a sliced sample of the terrestrial ecosystem onto an alien enviroment was no elephant ray hunt. The first colonists to breathe the newly terraformed air on Mars were all dead in a matter of days, and a lot of those who’d stayed inside died fighting swarms of a voracious little beetle that no one had ever seen before. Said beetle turned out to be the very distant descendant of a species of terrestrial dust mite that had done rather too well in the ecological upheaval occasioned by the terraforming.