My face twitched where her foot had smashed my lip as the nanobe cable hurled it past me.
Is there an appeal, hmmm? A segmented houri at your command. A hand here, a hand there. Curved handfuls of flesh. Consumer cut, so to speak. Soft, graspable flesh, Kovacs. Malleable. You could fill your hands with it. Mold it to you.
Semetaire, you’re pushing me—
And unattached to any inconvenient independent will. Throw away the parts you have no use for. The parts that excrete, the parts that think beyond sensual use. The afterlife has many pleasures—
Leave me the fuck alone, Semetaire.
Why should I do that? Alone is cold, a gulf of coldness deeper than you looked upon from the hull of the Mivtsemdi. Why should I abandon you to that when you have been such a friend to me. Sent me so many souls.
All right. That’s it, motherfucker—
I snapped awake, sweating. Tanya Wardani was crouched a meter away, peering at me. Behind her, the Martian hung in midglide, staring blindly down like one of the angels in the Andric cathedral at Newpest.
“You okay, Kovacs?”
I pressed fingers against my eyes and winced at the ache the pressure caused.
“Not bad for a dead man, I suppose. You’re not off exploring?”
“I feel like shit. Maybe later.”
I propped myself up a little straighter. Across the platform, Sun worked steadily on the buoy’s exposed circuit plates. Jiang and Sutjiadi stood nearby, talking in low tones. I coughed. “Limited amount of later around here. I doubt it’ll take Sun the whole ten hours. Where’s Schneider?”
“Went off with Hand. How come you’re not doing the Coral Castle tour yourself?”
I smiled. “You’ve never seen the Coral Castle in your life, Tanya. What are you talking about?”
She seated herself beside me, facing the starscape.
“Trying out my Harlan’s World argot. Got a problem with that?”
“Fucking tourists.”
She laughed. I sat and enjoyed the sound until it died, and then we both sat for a while in a companionable quiet broken only by the sound of Sun’s circuit soldering.
“Nice sky,” she said finally.
“Yeah. Answer me an archaeological question?”
“If you like.”
“Where did they go?”
“The Martians?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s a big cosmos. Who—”
“No, these Martians. The crew of this thing. Why leave something this big floating out here abandoned? It must have cost a planetary budget to build, even for them. It’s functional, as near as we can tell. Heated, maintained atmosphere, working docking system. Why didn’t they take it with them?”
“Who knows? Maybe they left in a hurry.”
“Oh, come—”
“No, I mean it. They pulled out of this whole region of space, or were wiped out, or wiped each other out. They left a lot of stuff. Whole cities of it.”
“Yeah. Tanya, you can’t take a city away with you. Obviously you leave it. But this is a fucking starship. What could make them leave something like that behind?”
“They left the orbitals around Harlan’s World.”
“Those are automated.”
“Well? So is this, to the extent of the maintenance systems.”
“Yes, but it was built for use by a crew. You don’t have to be an archaeologue to see that.”
“Kovacs, why don’t you go down to the Nagini and get some rest. Neither of us is up to exploring this place, and you’re giving me a headache.”
“I think you’ll find that’s the radiation.”
“No, I—”
Against my chest, my discarded induction mike burred. I blinked down at it for a moment, then picked it up and fitted it.
“. . . just ly— . . . —ere,” said Vongsavath’s voice, excited and laced heavily with static breakup. “What-ver . . . was . . . don’t thin— . . . died of starv . . .”
“Vongsavath, this is Kovacs. Back up a minute. Slow down and start again.”
“I said,” the pilot enunciated with heavy emphasis. “Th— . . . ’ve found . . . ther body. A hu . . . body. Part . . . gang . . . —cked up at the dock . . . —ation. An— . . . looks li— . . . thing kill— . . . him.”
“All right, we’re on our way.” I struggled to my feet, forcing myself to speak at a pace Vongsavath might have a chance of understanding through the interference. “Repeat. We are on our way. Stay put, back to back, and don’t move. And shoot any fucking thing you see.”
“What is it?” asked Wardani.
“Trouble.”
I looked around the platform, and suddenly Sutjiadi’s words came rolling back over me.
We shouldn’t be out here at all.
Over my head, the Martian gazed blankly down at us. As far removed as any angel, and as much help.
CHAPTER THIRTY–THREE
He was lying in one of the bulbous tunnels, about a kilometer deeper into the body of the vessel, suited up and still largely intact. In the soft blue light from the walls, the features behind the faceplate were clearly shrunken onto the bones of the skull, but beyond that they didn’t seem to have decomposed appreciably.
I knelt beside the corpse and peered at the sealed-in face.
“Doesn’t look too bad, considering.”
“Sterile air supply,” said Deprez. He had his Sunjet cocked on his hip, and his eyes flickered constantly into the swollen roof space overhead. Ten meters farther on and looking slightly less comfortable with her weapon, Ameli Vongsavath prowled back and forth by the opening where the tunnel linked to the next bubble chamber. “And antibacterials, if it’s a halfway decent suit. Interesting. The tank’s still a third full. Whatever he died of, it wasn’t suffocation.”
“Any damage to the suit?”
“If there is, I cannot find it.”
I sat back on my heels. “Doesn’t make any sense. This air’s breathable. Why suit up?”
Deprez shrugged. “Why die in your suit on the outside of an open atmosphere lock? None of it makes any sense. I’m not trying anymore.”
“Movement,” snapped Vongsavath.
I cleared the right-hand interface gun and joined her at the opening. The lower lip rose a little over a meter from the floor and curved upward like a wide smile before narrowing gradually up toward the roof on either side and finally closing in a tightly rounded apex. There were two meters of clear cover on each side and space to crouch below the lip. It was a sniper’s dream.
Deprez folded into the cover on the left, Sunjet stowed upright at his side. I crouched beside Vongsavath.
“Sounded like something falling,” murmured the pilot. “Not this chamber, maybe the next.”
“All right.” I felt the neurachem sliding coldly along my limbs, charging my heart. Good to know that, under the bone-deep weariness of the radiation poisoning, the systems were still online. And after grasping so long at shadows, fighting faceless nanobe colonies, the ghosts of the departed, human and not, the promise of solid combat was almost a pleasure.
Scratch almost. I could feel pleasure tickling up the walls of my stomach at the thought of killing something.
Deprez raised one hand from the projection ramp of his Sunjet.
Listen.
This time I heard it—a stealthy scuffing sound across the chamber. I drew the other interface gun and settled into the cover of the raised lip. The Envoy conditioning squeezed the last of the tension out of my muscles and stowed it in coiled reflexes beneath a surface calm.
Something pale moved in a space on the other side of the next chamber. I breathed in and sighted on it.
Here we go.
“You there, Ameli?”
Schneider’s voice.
I heard Vongsavath’s breath hiss out about the same time as mine. She climbed to her feet.
“Schneider? What are you doing? I nearly shot you.”
“Well, that’s fucking friendl
y.” Schneider appeared clearly in the opening and swung his leg over. His Sunjet was slung carelessly across one shoulder. “We come rushing to the rescue, and you blow us away for our trouble.”
“Is it another archaeologue?” asked Hand, following Schneider through into the chamber. Incongruous in his right fist was a hand blaster. It was the first time, I realized, that I’d seen the executive armed since I’d known him. It didn’t look right on him. It marred his ninetieth-floor boardroom aura. It was inappropriate, a cracked front, jarring the way genuine battle coverage would in a Lapinee recruiting number. Hand was not a man who wielded weapons himself. Or at least not weapons as straightforward and grubby as a particle blaster.
Plus he’s got a stunner tucked away in his pocket.
Recently powered up to combat readiness, the Envoy conditioning twinged uneasily.
“Come and have a look,” I suggested, masking my disquiet.
The two new arrivals crossed the open ground to us with a blasé lack of caution that screamed at my combat nerves. Hand leaned his hands on the lip of the tunnel entrance and stared at the corpse. His features, I suddenly saw, were ashen with the radiation sickness. His stance looked braced, as if he weren’t sure how much longer he could stand up. There was a tic at the corner of his mouth that hadn’t been there when we touched down in the docking bay. Next to him, Schneider looked positively glowing with health.
I crushed out the flicker of sympathy. Welcome to the fucking club, Hand. Welcome to ground level on Sanction Four.
“He’s suited up,” Hand said.
“Well spotted.”
“How did he die?”
“We don’t know.” I felt another wave of weariness wash through me. “And to be honest I’m not in the mood for an autopsy. Let’s just get this buoy fixed, and get the fuck out of here.”
Hand gave me a strange look. “We’ll need to take him back.”
“Well, you can help me do it, then.” I walked back to the suited corpse and picked up one leg. “Grab a foot.”
“You’re going to drag him?”
“We, Hand. We are going to drag him. I don’t think he’ll mind.”
• • •
It took the best part of an hour to get the corpse back through the tortuous pipes and swooping chambers of the Martian vessel and aboard the Nagini. Most of that was taken up trying to locate the limpet cherries and illuminum arrows of our original mapping, but the radiation sickness took its toll along the way. At different points in the journey, Hand and I were taken with minor bouts of vomiting and had to give hauling the body over to Schneider and Deprez. Time emptying out for the final victims of Sauberville. I thought even Deprez, in his rad-resistant Maori sleeve, was starting to look ill as we fumbled the bulky suited burden through the last opening before the docking station. Now that I focused in the bluish light, Vongsavath, too, was starting to exhibit the same gray pallor and bruised eyes.
Do you see? whispered something that might have been Semetaire.
There seemed to be a huge, sickly sense of something waiting in the swollen heights of the ship’s architecture, hovering on parchment-thin wings, and watching.
When we were done, I stood staring into the antiseptic violet glow of the corpse locker after the others had left. The tumbled, spacesuited figures within looked like a gaggle of overly padded null-g crashball players, collapsed on top of each other when the field goes down and the house lights come up at the end of the match. The pouches containing the remains of Cruickshank, Hansen, and Dhasanapongsakul were almost hidden from view.
Dying . . .
Not dying yet . . .
The Envoy conditioning, worrying at something not over, not resolved.
THE GROUND IS FOR DEAD PEOPLE. I saw Schneider’s illuminum tattoo like a beacon floating behind my eyes. His face, twisted unrecognizable with the pain of his injuries.
Dead people?
“Kovacs?” It was Deprez, standing in the hatch behind me. “Hand wants us all back on the platform. We’re taking food. You coming?”
“I’ll catch up with you.”
He nodded and dropped back to the floor outside. I heard voices and tried to blank them out.
Dying?
The Ground is
Motes of light circling like a datacoil display
The gate . . .
The gate, seen through the viewports of the Nagini’s cockpit . . .
The cockpit . . .
I shook my head irritably. Envoy intuition is an unreliable system at the best of times, and sinking fast from the weight of radiation poisoning isn’t a great state to be in when you try to deploy it.
Not dying yet.
I gave up on trying to see the pattern and let the vagueness wash over me, seeing where it would take me.
The violet light of the corpse locker, beckoning.
The discarded sleeves within.
Semetaire.
• • •
By the time I got back to the platform, dinner was nearly over. Beneath the mummified hovering of the two Martians, the rest of the company were sitting around the stripped-down buoy on inflatable loungers, picking without much enthusiasm at the remains of tab-pull field ration pans. I couldn’t really blame them—the way I was feeling, just the smell of the stuff made my throat close up. I choked a little on it, then hastily raised my hands as the sound brought a ripple of weapon-grabbing from the diners.
“Hey, it’s me.”
Grumbling and guns discarded again. I made my way into the circle, looking for a seat. It was a lounger each, give or take. Jiang Jianping and Schneider had both seated themselves on the floor, Jiang cross-legged in a clear deck space, Schneider sprawled in front of Tanya Wardani’s lounger with a proprietorial air that made my mouth twitch. I waved an offered pan away and seated myself on the edge of Vongsavath’s lounger, wishing I felt a bit more up to this.
“What kept you?” asked Deprez.
“Been thinking.”
Schneider laughed. “Man, that shit’s bad for you. Don’t do it. Here.” He rolled a can of amphetamine cola across the deck toward me. I stopped it with one boot. “Remember what you told me back in the hospital? Don’t fucking think, soldier—didn’t you read your terms of enlistment?”
It raised a couple of halfhearted smiles. I nodded.
“When’s he get here, Jan?”
“Huh?”
“I said—” I kicked the can back at him. His hand jumped out and snagged it, very fast. “—when’s he get here?”
What conversation there was dropped out of the air like Konrad Harlan’s one and only attempted gunship raid on Millsport. Particle-blasted down by the rattle of the can and the sudden silence that found it in Schneider’s closed fist.
His right fist. His empty left was a little too slow, whipping out for a weapon fractions of a second after I had the Kalashnikov leveled on him. He saw, and froze up.
“Don’t,” I told him.
At my side, I felt Vongsavath, still moving for the stunner in her pocket. I laid my free hand on her arm and shook my head slightly. Put some Envoy persuasion into my voice.
“No need, Ameli.”
Her arm dropped back to her lap. Peripheral scan told me everyone else was sitting this one out so far. Even Wardani. I eased slightly.
“When does he get here, Jan?”
“Kovacs, I don’t know what the fuck—”
“Yeah, you do. When’s he get here? Or don’t you want both hands anymore?”
“Who?”
“Carrera. When’s he fucking get here, Jan? Last chance.”
“I don’t—” Schneider’s voice shrilled to an abrupt scream as the interface gun blew a hole through his hand and turned the can he was still holding into shredded metal. Blood and amphetamine cola splashed the air, curiously alike in color. Flecks of it spotted Tanya Wardani’s face and she flinched violently.
It’s not a popularity contest.
“What’s the matter, Jan?” I asked gently.
“That sleeve Carrera gave you not so hot on endorphin response?”
Wardani was on her feet, face unwiped. “Kovacs, he’s—”
“Don’t tell me it’s the same sleeve, Tanya. You fucked him, now and two years ago. You know.”
She shook her head numbly. “The tattoo . . .” she whispered.
“The tattoo is new. Shiny new, even for illuminum. He got it redone, along with some basic cosmetic surgery as part of the package. Isn’t that right, Jan?”
The only thing that came out of Schneider was an agonized groaning. He held his shattered hand at arm’s length, staring at it in disbelief. Blood dripped on the deck.
All I felt was tired.
“I figure you sold out to Carrera rather than go into virtual interrogation,” I said, still scanning peripherally for reactions among the crowd. “Don’t blame you, really. And if they offered you a fresh combat sleeve, full rad/chem-resist specs and custom-trimmed, well there aren’t many deals like that kicking about Sanction Four these days. And no telling how much dirty-bombing both sides are going to do from now on in. Yeah, I’d have taken a deal like that.”
“Do you have any evidence of this?” asked Hand.
“Apart from the fact he’s the only one of us still not going gray, you mean? Look at him, Hand. He’s held up better than the Maori sleeves, and they’re built for this shit.”
“I would not call that proof,” Deprez said thoughtfully. “Though it is odd.”
“He’s fucking lying,” Schneider gritted through his teeth. “If anyone’s running double for Carrera, it’s Kovacs. For Christ’s sake, he’s a Wedge lieutenant.”
“Don’t push your luck, Jan.”
Schneider glared back at me, keening his pain. Across the platform, I thought I heard the songspires pick it up.
“Get me a fucking mediwrap,” he pleaded. “Someone.”
Sun reached for her pack. I shook my head.
“No. First he tells us how long we’ve got before Carrera comes through the gate. We need to be ready.”
Deprez shrugged. “Knowing this, are we not already ready?”
“Not for the Wedge.”
Wardani crossed wordlessly to where Sun stood and snatched the medipack from its fibergrip holster on the other woman’s chest. “Give me that. If you uniformed fucks won’t do it, I will.”