EVERYONE WANTED TO HIRE ME ON

“Get Berlin,” Hense snapped at Digby. “And find out why in fuck we didn’t know this asshole had set up camp here. Find out if he’s on Orel’s payroll. Find out anything. Then find out who gets their fucking server space wiped.”

Through some magic, Digby suddenly looked five years old, as if her avatar shell had some advanced capillary response simulation.

I looked out the tiny window again, but couldn’t see anything. “How in hell does he stop you from landing?”

Hense didn’t look up at me. “By finding all the possible landing zones within a few miles of Split and mining them, parking burned-out tanks on them, mounting whatever big guns they still have, and offering antiaircraft screening. By generally being a pain in the ass when I don’t have the resources to spare to turn Dai Takahashi into an outline of ash burned into the rock.”

Dai Takahashi. I’d never met the man, but I’d heard plenty about him, and I’d been within a mile of him in Hong Kong all those years ago, when Orel and Belling had been having fun making me look like an asshole. He was just one of a million ex-army officers who set up their own private little army during the civil war, renting out their troops and materiel to anyone who could pay. When everything just sort of fell apart, guys like him and Colonel Anners found themselves the only thing resembling authority within a hundred miles, and most set themselves up as tiny little kings. Five years ago the System Pigs would never have allowed that shit to stand, but the System Pigs weren’t what they used to be.

I remembered hammering out a deal with his girl with the funky glowing eyes, and I looked over at Hense, who was talking in a low voice as she gestured violently at her handheld.

“Director,” I said, giving it a little grin to remind her that I didn’t give a shit that she’d taken over for Dick Marin. She held one finger up and didn’t stop speaking or look at me. I pushed a smile onto my face. “Janet,” I said loudly.

She considered just ignoring me again, but then obviously thought better of that strategy and looked up from her handheld to stare at me, still talking quietly to someone either in the cockpit or a million fucking miles away, probably shitting diodes out their aluminum ass at the tone she was us.

“Tell Takahashi I want a meeting.”

She kept talking for a second or two, and then without transition raised her voice. “What?”

“Tell him Avery Cates wants a meeting.”

Hense just stood there again for a long moment, staring at me, her dark face blank. She was terrifying, this tiny, doll-like black woman with glossy, stiff-looking hair. I didn’t know if she was communicating with a dozen of herself like Marin used to do, holding seven conversations simultaneously—though Marin used to just seem insane when that happened, instead of terrifyingly calm—or if she was grinding a decision tree through her chipset brain. I remembered her leaving me for dead in Bellevue: I am a woman who keeps her deals. I see no reason to kill you, Avery. Because the Monks will almost certainly do it for me. She’d been pretty fucking calm then, too.

“Why,” she finally said, cocking her head to the side like she was listening to someone else, a gesture that reminded me so strongly of Dick Marin I shivered in sudden recognition, “would I do that, Avery?”

I tried to cock my head at a complementary angle. “Tell him we had a deal in Hong Kong and he fucked me over, and I have a complaint to register.” I nodded assertively. “Tell him he owes me.”

She kept staring at me. “Does he?”

I shrugged. “Nope. But he’s a reputation whore,” I said, thinking back on my conversation with his employee with the glowing eyes. “He’ll want to defend himself.”

Gall laughed, loud and off center. “Shit, takes one to know one, huh?”

We got permission to land one hover way outside of Split in the middle of fucking nowhere. We got a tight approach and a stern warning to make no alterations to the flight plan. We descended gently into a flat, open area that had once been cultivated fields, still squared off and obvious from the air despite the scum of brush and new, wild growth that had crept up. The landing was easy, just a slow glide down to the ground; I didn’t even realize we’d made touchdown until the displacers cut off, leaving us all in a throbbing silence.

Hense crossed to one of the open seats and sat, all without taking her eyes from her handheld. “We wait,” she said before anyone could even ask her. “When Takahashi arrives, Cates and Mehrak go. No one else. Avery, keep in mind you are not authorized to make any deals. Since you have a prior relationship, you can open the conversation with this piece of shit mercenary. You can bring his demands back. But you can’t agree to anything.”

I sketched her a little salute as I stood up. “Sho, boss, sho.” I gave Mehrak a slap on the shoulder as I moved toward the bay hatch, an entire side of the hover, designed to let dozens of Stormers shimmy down to the surface on silver wires. “C’mon, asshole. Let’s go out there and tell the man in charge we aren’t authorized to do shit, and so we’re just wasting his time.”

It was cool and damp, and my boots sank an inch or so into the ground when I jumped f

“Where are we walking to?” he asked. These were more words than I’d ever heard him speak. His voice was a pleasant bass, deep and smooth. He could have worked for the Vids, back when there’d been Vids.

“There’s another clearing just a bit this way,” I said, fixing the image of the area from above in my head. “He’ll most probably want to be out of sight of the SSF hover just in case.” I looked over my shoulder at him and almost laughed. He was staring in dismay at his beautiful shoes, now encased in thick, black mud. “We’re on his turf, so we came crawling. That’s the problem with the System Pigs. You never give in to the practical considerations.”

“Fuck” was all he said.

The next clearing was just a thin scrub of trees away, although every branch wanted to scrape me raw as we pushed our way through. The other side was almost identical, just long grass and deep mud, a few big rocks to spice things up. I made for the approximate center, and Mehrak followed me, cursing under his breath the whole way.

“You got orders to put me down if I do anything crazy?” I asked without looking at him, just scanning the horizon. I could see dark, thin smoke not so far off.

“Yep,” he responded immediately, without any hesitation. “But I’m also supposed to take the long view of what crazy means, darling.”

I smiled. Honest cops amused me. I could hear the roar of ancient engines, and a second or two later trucks burst into the clearing. They were old, rusty hulks from another century, rubber tires and retrofitted internal combustion engines with solar panels mounted on the hoods. The smoke was burning lubricant, I figured, and wondered if these old pieces of shit were one-time-use kind of vehicles—you drove them until they seized up, then you piled into the next one and hoped it made it the rest of the way.

Four trucks in total, each crammed full of people, each person armed to the fucking teeth. The trucks did a slow ballet around us, puking black smoke and grinding the mud into a lathery froth, and I guessed about a hundred shitkickers, all with knives and sidearms, rifles on their backs and in their hands. Most wore the remnants of the old army uniform, the weird, flowing white fabric—it still gave me the willies to think about it next to my skin—though some looked like they’d probably been slitting throats and shooting people for profit right up until Takahashi rolled into town one day with a better offer.

I wondered how much ammo they had left. I guessed they each had a handful of rounds for their rifles and probably nothing at all for the handguns. And they were probably under strict orders not to shoot without a really good fucking reason.

The trucks ground to a halt and the engines went dead immediately, filling the air with just the gentle clicks and taps of cooling metal. None of the men and women in the truck beds moved or said anything. After a moment the doors on one of the trucks popped open, and two people descended from the cab to approach us. One was a tall, thin black m in a nice suit of gray clothes, his collar popped and his necktie fresh and colorful. His tight curls were cut close to his round, small head, and his eyes glowed a soft blue I remembered from Takahashi’s other assistant, Mardea, dead back in Hong Kong.

Walking just slightly in front of him was a kid, the tallest, thinnest kid I’d ever seen, dressed head to toe in black skintight leather—leather pants, leather vest, leather jacket, leather gloves. He wore a pair of flashy sunglasses and his long, perfectly straight and perfectly black hair hung in greasy strands around his face. He was a handsome kid; his clear, tan skin, high cheekbones, and long, sharp nose gave him a nice symmetry. As he walked, he gestured continuously at a large handheld, about as big as one of his own hands, and didn’t look up at us even when he came to a halt a few feet away.

“Mr. Cates,” the black guy said, smiling in a way that was somehow precisely polite, without edging into friendly or sliding back into hostile. “Mr. Takahashi’s time is valuable. He recalls dealing with you in Hong Kong. He regrets that you feel he has not lived up to your agreement, but he feels strongly there are reasonable objections to your statement of injury. He would also like to point out that he lost a very valuable employee and did not receive payment on the bargain in any event.” He raised one eyebrow, again in a precisely calculated way—lower or higher, I decided, would have conveyed the wrong impression. “However, Mr. Takahashi respects you. You are famous for your ability and your honor. Thus he has agreed to this meeting.”

The kid just kept gesturing, all his attention on the handheld. I looked at him and then back at his man.

I stretched it out a little, letting my eyes roam, my augments sharpening my vision a little. I fixed on the details. The people in the truck, now that they were stationary and I could get a good look at them, were a mixed bag: Some of them were watching me with the alert, careful look of someone trained to it, but some were dozing, or staring with the unblinking look of fucking terror or stupidity. Some were holding their rifles—a mix of newer shredders and some old stock like SPS had used in Italy—with obvious familiarity and comfort. Others looked like they would shoot both their feet off before figuring out where the trigger was.

The trucks were in worse shape than I’d thought at first, and I could smell something chemical and sweet in the air—fuel, I decided. Exactly what, I wasn’t sure.

I looked back at Takahashi’s man, still giving me polite, his eyes still glowing. But I wondered if he was hooked up to anything. It was possible to run a private net off solar generators and your own booster dishes, but that was expensive and difficult and wouldn’t have much range anyway. I decided he wasn’t getting any signal from anywhere. The eyes just glowed.

I nodded my head, trying to match his dry approach. I didn’t even look at Takahashi himself, who was frowning at the tiny screen of his handheld, his long, elegant fingers working the gestures so quickly I wondered how he held onto the small square of hard plastic. Takahashi obviously thought he was above things like conversation and paying attention to known contract killers. Then I noted his lack of even a sidearm, and I took a breath and started lying.

“It was my understanding that I was under Mr. Takahashinders protection when we made our agreement. I was attacked just seconds later and no attempt to secure me or my party was ever made.”

The kid suddenly looked up, fingers pausing for a moment. A fucking reputation whore. People were always glad-handing me about my stellar reputation, but I knew it was just polite bullshit. I’d known assholes like Takahashi before. They thought it all meant something, and they were fucking prickly as shit about theirs.

Takahashi looked back down at his handheld and his man spoke again.

“Mr. Takahashi regrets this misapprehension. You had reached an agreement in principle,” he said smoothly, glowing eyes creeping me out. “But you had not transacted your business, and thus no responsibility was transferred to Mr. Takahashi. He regrets this, and wishes you to know he would have very much liked to have worked with you in Hong Kong. It would have been an honor.” Suddenly the black man grinned widely, his whole face unfolding into glee like a flower. “In fact, Mr. Takahashi would like you to know that if your current commitments allow for it, he would be happy to make you an offer for service in his organization, at a very high level.”

I thought back to Morales. Everyone wanted to hire me on.

I gave a stiff, overdone bow. “Tell Mr. Takahashi, when you fucking see him next, that I regret I cannot accept his generous offer to go sit in the mud and jack off for the remaining couple of months we all have left. And that I accept his fucking apologies concerning Hong Kong.”

The kid looked up sharply again, stared at me for a moment, and then as one he and his man turned and walked back to their truck.

“You always take the piss out of people who have a hundred guns pointed at you like that?” Mehrak whispered.

The trucks all started with a roar and a huge belch of black smoke. I turned my head to look at Mehrak, who was pin-perfect from the ankles up, and a slop of mud from the ankles down. “We’re under par-lay,” I said, remembering the word. “That stiff asshole wouldn’t even use harsh words as long as we’re negotiating with honor.”

As the trucks spun around us, heading back toward the woods, Mehrak and I both turned and started slogging our way back to the SSF hover.

“You didn’t really want to talk to him, darling, did you?” Mehrak said quietly, maybe with a note of unexpected understanding.

I shook my head, pulling out my pack of cigarettes and shaking two loose, holding them out to him without thinking. “Nope. Just wanted to get a look at him and his people. We were never going to make a fucking deal with that asshole. He’s been a tiny king for too long, too used to getting his way, being bought off instead of run off.” I shrugged, putting both cigarettes between my lips. “I’m going to have to just kill him.”