The four crewmen watched the civil servant retreating, and laughed. Erick was congratulated for calling the other man’s bluff, Bev Lennon fetching him half a litre of of imported Lübeck beer.
“You had me panicking!” the wiry fusion specialist protested as he dropped the tankards down on their table.
Erick took a sip of the icy beer. “I had me panicking.”
It was going well, they accepted him, reservations (and he knew some still had them) were fading, breaking down. He was becoming one of the lads.
Along with Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, the ship’s node specialist, a brawny two-metre-tall bear of a man, Erick spent the next ten minutes talking trivia while André Duchamp sat back with a blank expression reviewing the vector he had just bought.
“I don’t see any problem,” the captain announced eventually. “If we use a Sacramento orbit to jump from we can rendezvous any time in the next six days. Fifty-five hours from now would be the ideal ...” His voice trailed off.
Erick turned to follow his gaze. Five men wearing copper-coloured one-piece ship-suits walked into the Catalina bar.
Hasan Rawand caught sight of André Duchamp as he was about to sit at the bar. He tapped Shane Brandes, the Dechal’s fusion engineer, on the side of his arm and flicked a finger in the direction of the master of Villeneuve’s Revenge. His other three crew-members, Ian O’Flaherty, Harry Levine, and Stafford Charlton, caught the gesture and turned to look.
The two crews regarded each other with mutual hostility and antagonism.
Hasan Rawand walked over to the window booth table, his crew right behind him. “André,” he said with mock civility. “So nice to see you. I trust you have brought my money. Eight hundred thousand, wasn’t it? And that’s before interest. It has been seventeen months after all.”
André Duchamp gazed straight ahead, his hands cupping his beer tankard.
“I owe you no money,” he said darkly.
“I think you do. Cast your mind back; you were carrying plutonium initiators from Sab Biyar to the Isolo system. Dechal waited in Sab Biyar’s Oort cloud for thirty-two hours for you, André. Thirty-two hours in stealth mode, with freezing air and iced food, pissing into tubes that leaked, not even allowed a personal MF player in case the navy ships picked up its electronic emission. That’s not nice, André; it’s about as close as you can get to a Confederation penal colony without being shot down to the surface in a drop capsule. We waited for thirty-two hours in the stinking dark for you to show so we could take the initiators in, doing your dirty work for you and carrying all the risk. And when we got back to Sab Biyar what did I find?”
André Duchamp grinned round at his own crew, trying to brazen it out.
“I’m sure you’ll tell me, Anglo.”
“You went to Nuristan and sold the initiators to one of their naval contractors, you Gallic shithead! I was left trying to explain to the Isolo Independence Front where their nukes had gone, and why their poxy rebellion was going to fail because they hadn’t got the fire-power to back up their demands.”
“You can show me the contract?” André Duchamp asked mockingly.
Hasan Rawand glared down at him, lips compressed in rage. “Just hand over the money. A million will see you clear.”
“To hell with you, Anglo filth. I, André Duchamp, owe nobody money.” He stood up and tried to barge past the Dechal’s captain.
It was the move Erick Thakrar was waiting for and dreading. Sure enough, Hasan Rawand shoved André Duchamp back in the booth. The back of the older captain’s knee struck a seat which almost tipped him off balance.
He recovered and launched himself at Hasan Rawand, fists flying.
Desmond Lafoe rose to his feet drawing a frantic gasp from Ian O’Flaherty when his size, weight, and strength became apparent. Huge hands reached forward, and Ian O’Flaherty was jerked off his feet. He kicked out wildly, toecap striking Desmond Lafoe’s shin. The giant merely grunted, and then threw his victim across the room. He landed awkwardly on one of the aluminium tables, his shoulder taking the brunt of his momentum before he crashed down backwards onto a pair of chairs.
Erick felt a hand close around the neck fabric of his ship-suit. It was Shane Brandes who was hauling him out of the booth; a forty-year-old with a bald head and small gold earrings, smiling with ugly anticipation. The unarmed combat file in Erick’s neural nanonics went into primary mode.
His instinctive thought routines were superseded by logic-based patterns, calculating inertia and intent with an ease surpassing any kung fu master. Nanonic supplement boosted muscles powered up.
Shane Brandes was surprised how easy it was to pull his opponent out of the booth. Gratification became alarm when he kept on coming. Shane had to backstep to keep balance, his own neural nanonics assuming command of his mass positioning. He cocked a fist back to smash into Erick’s face, only to have a nanonic warning blare in his mind as Erick’s forearm swung up with incredible speed. His punch was blocked, arm chopped painfully to one side. A furious kick to Erick’s groin—his knee nearly fractured from the impact of the counter-kick. He reeled to one side, banging into Harry Levine and Bev Lennon, who were locked together.
Erick slammed an elbow into Shane’s ribs, hearing bone break. He let out an agonized grunt.
The unarmed combat file said that speed was essential, take out your opponent as soon as possible. His neural nanonics analysed Shane’s movements, the half twist as he clutched at his ribs, bending over. The motion was projected two seconds into the future. Interception points were computed. A list materialized in his consciousness, and he selected a blow that would cause temporary incapacitation. His right leg shot out, booted foot aiming for a patch of empty air. Shane’s head fell into it.
A threat assessment sub-routine shifted his peripheral senses into priority focus. André Duchamp and Hasan Rawand were still battering away at each other on the side of the booth’s table. Neither was inflicting much damage in the confined space.
Harry Levine had got Bev Lennon into a head lock. The two of them were on the floor, squirming round like theatrical wrestlers, sending chairs spinning. Bev Lennon sent a flurry of elbow jabs into Harry Levine’s stomach, attempting to knock his navel into his spine.
Stafford Charlton obviously had a boosted musculature. He was standing in front of Desmond Lafoe, landing blow after blow on the big man, arms moving with programmed efficiency. He had almost doubled up from the pain, his right arm hung limply, the shoulder broken. Blood ran out of his flattened nose.
Ian O’Flaherty rose behind Desmond Lafoe, berserk loathing contorting his face, a pocket fission blade in his right hand. With his enhanced retinas on full amplification, the yellow haze emitted by the activated blade dazzled Erick for an instant. The threat assessment sub-routine activated the defensive nanonic implant in his left hand. A targeting grid of fine blue lines flipped up across his vision. A rectangular section flashed red, and wrapped itself around Ian O’Flaherty, adapting to his movements like elastic thread.
“Don’t!” Erick Thakrar shouted.
Ian O’Flaherty had already raised the blade high above his head when the shout came. In his wired state he probably wouldn’t have obeyed even if he heard. Erick saw the muscles in his lower arm begin to contract, the knife quivered as it started on its downward slash.
The neural nanonics program reported that even with boosted muscles Erick couldn’t reach Ian O’Flaherty in time. He made his decision. A small patch of skin above the second knuckle of his left hand dilated, and the implant spat out a dart of nanonic circuitry, barely as large as a wasp stinger. It struck the bare skin of Ian O’Flaherty’s neck, penetrating to a depth of six millimetres. The fission blade had already descended twenty centimetres towards Desmond Lafoe’s broad back. As soon as it sensed it was buried inside the flesh, and its momentum was spent, the dart sprouted a fur of microscopic filaments. They quested round on a preprogrammed search pattern for nerve strands, tips wriggling between the close-
packed honeycomb of cells. Ganglions were located, and the sharp filament tips forced their way through gossamer membranes sheathing the individual nerves. At this time the knife had descended twenty-four centimetres. Ian O’Flaherty’s right eyelid gave an involuntary twitch at the small sting from the dart’s entry. The dart’s internal processor analysed the chemical and electrical reactions flashing along the nerves; it began to broadcast its own signal into the brain. His neural nanonics detected the signal at once, but the circuitry was powerless to help, it could only override natural impulses originating from within the brain.
Ian O’Flaherty had brought the blade thirty-eight centimetres down towards Desmond Lafoe when he felt a million lacework rivulets of fire igniting inside his body. The blade fell another four centimetres before his muscles were convulsed by the besieging deluge of impulses. His nerves were burning out, overloaded by the nanonic dart’s diabolical signal, ordering the massive uncontrolled release of energy along each strand, a simultaneous chemical detonation inside every neuron cell.
Breath rasped out of his wide mouth, aghast eyes looking round the room in a final plea for life. His skin turned red, as if afflicted by instant sunburn. His muscles lost all strength, and he toppled limply onto the floor. The fission blade skittered about, shaving flakes of rock from the floor whenever it touched.
No one else was fighting any more.
Desmond Lafoe gave Erick a puzzled, pain-filled glance. “What ...”
“He would have killed you,” Erick said in a quiet voice; he lowered his left arm. Everyone in the bar seemed to be staring at the offending limb.
“What did you do to him?” a horrified Harry Levine asked.
Erick shrugged.
“Screw that,” André Duchamp rasped. There was blood running out of his left nostril, and his eye was swelling rapidly. “Come on.”
“You can’t just go!” Hasan Rawand shouted. “You killed him.”
André Duchamp tugged Bev Lennon to his feet. “It was self-defence. That Anglo bastard tried to kill one of my crew.”
“That’s right,” Desmond Lafoe rumbled. “It was attempted murder.” He waved Erick on towards the door.
“I’ll call the cops,” Hasan Rawand said.
“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” André Duchamp sneered. “That’s your level, Anglo. Lose and weep, run to the law.” He fixed the shock-frozen barkeeper with a warning stare, then jerked his head for his crew to go through the door. “Why were we fighting, Hasan? Ask yourself that. The gendarmes certainly will.”
Erick stepped out into the rock tunnel which connected the Catalina with the rest of the vertical city’s corridors and lifts and lobbies, helping a white-faced Desmond Lafoe to limp along.
“Run and hide then, Duchamp,” Hasan Rawand’s voice echoed after them.
“And you, murderer. But this universe isn’t so large. Remember that.”
True night, with its darkness and lordly twinkling stars, had come and gone above Cricklade. It lasted less than eight minutes before the red blaze of Duchess-night began, and even those scant minutes hadn’t been particularly dim. The ring of orbiting starships had looked spectacular, dominating the cloudless northern sky with their cold sparkle. Joshua had gone out onto the manor’s balcony with the Kavanagh family to see the bridge of heaven after they’d finished their five-course dinner. Louise had worn a cream dress with a tight bodice; it had come alive with a pale blue fire under the cometary light showering down. The amount of attention she had shown him during the meal verged on the embarrassing, it was almost as bad as the hostility he got from William Elphinstone. He was rather looking forward to being shown round the estate by her tomorrow. Grant Kavanagh had been enthusiastic about the idea once it was announced. Without consulting his neural nanonics he couldn’t be quite sure who had brought the subject up at the dinner table.
There was a light knock on his bedroom door, and it opened before he could say anything. Hadn’t he turned the key?
He rolled over on the bed where he’d been lying watching the holoscreen with its inordinately bland drama programmes. Everything was set on Norfolk, where nobody swore and nobody screwed and nobody scrapped; even the one news programme he’d caught earlier was drearily parochial, with only a couple of references to the visiting starships and nothing at all about Confederation politics.
Marjorie Kavanagh slipped into the room. She smiled and held up a duplicate key. “Scared of things that go bump in the night, Joshua?”
He grunted in dismay, and flopped back down on the bed.
They had met for the first time just before dinner, a formal drinks session in the drawing-room. If the line hadn’t been so antique and passé he would have said: “Louise didn’t tell me she had an elder sister.” Marjorie Kavanagh was a lot younger than her husband, with thick raven hair and a figure which showed that even Louise had still got quite a way to go yet. Thinking about it logically, he should have realized that someone as rich and aristocratic as Grant Kavanagh would have a beautiful young wife, especially on a planet where status ruled. But Marjorie was also a flirt, which her husband seemed to find highly amusing, especially as she delivered her teasing innuendos while clinging to his side. Joshua didn’t laugh; unlike Grant he knew she was serious.
Marjorie came over to stand by the side of the bed, looking down at him.
She was wearing a long blue silk robe, loosely tied around her waist. The heavy curtains were drawn against the red gleam of Duchess-night, but he could see enough of her cleavage to know she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
“Er ...” he began.
“Not sleeping? Something on your mind, or southwards of there?” Marjorie asked archly; she looked pointedly at his groin.
“I have a lot of geneering in my heritage. I don’t need much sleep.”
“Oh, goodie. Lucky me.”
“Mrs Kavanagh—”
“Knock it off, Joshua. Playing the innocent doesn’t suit you.” She sat on the edge of the bed.
He raised himself up on his elbows. “In that case, what about Grant?”
A long-fingered hand ran back through her hair, producing a dark cascade over her shoulders. “What about him? Grant is what you might call a man’s man. He excels in the more basic male pursuits of hunting, drinking, filthy jokes, gambling, and women. If you haven’t yet noticed, Norfolk isn’t exactly a model of social enlightenment and female emancipation.
Which gives him full licence to indulge himself while I sit at home playing the good wifey. So while he’s off rogering a pair of teenage Romany girls he spotted helping out in the groves this afternoon, I thought: Fuck it, I’m going to have some fun myself for once.”
“Do I get a say?”
“No, you’re too perfect for me. Big, strong, young, handsome, and gone in a week. How could I possibly let that opportunity go by? Besides, I’m fiercely protective when it comes to my daughters, a proper hax bitch.”
“Er ...”
“Ah ha!” Marjorie grinned. “You’re blushing, Joshua.” Her hand found the hem of his shirt, and slid across his abdomen. “Grant can be so very idiotic when it comes to the girls. He had quite a chortle at the way Louise took to you at dinner. He doesn’t think, that’s his problem. You see, here on Norfolk they are in no danger at all from the local boys, they don’t need chaperones for dances nor guardian aunts when they stay with friends. Their name protects them. But you’re not a local boy, and I saw exactly what was going on inside that testosterone-fuelled mind of yours. No wonder you and Grant get on so well together, I can barely tell you apart.”
Joshua squirmed from her hand as she stroked the sensitive skin at the side of his ribs. “I think Louise is very sweet. That’s all.”
“Sweet.” Marjorie smiled softly. “I was just eighteen when I had her. And I’ll thank you not to work out how old that makes me! So you see I know exactly what she’s thinking right now. Captain Romance from beyond the sky. Norfolk girls of my class are virgins in more ways than
one. I’m not about to let some over-sexed stranger ruin her future, she has a slim enough chance of a happy one as it is, what with arranged marriages and minimal education, which is the lot of females on this planet, even for our class. And I’m doing you a favour into the bargain.”
“Me?”
“You. Grant would kill you if you ever laid a finger on her. And, Joshua, I don’t mean metaphorically.”
“Er ...” He couldn’t believe that; not even in this society.
“So I’m going to sacrifice my virtue to save both of you.” She undid the belt, and slipped the robe from her shoulders. Sultry red light gleamed on her body, embellishing the erotic allure. “Isn’t that just so terribly noble of me?”
The emergent snowlily plants were starting to be a problem around the village jetties along the length of the Juliffe and its multitudinous tributaries. The tightly clumped red-brown fronds occupied the shallows, the banks, and the mud-banks. None of which affected the Isakore as it sailed its unerringly straight course along the Zamjan towards the Quallheim Counties, carrying its boisterous passenger complement of four Confederation Navy Marines, and three Kulu ESA tactical operation agents.
Isakore hadn’t put ashore once since it left Durringham. It was an eighteen-metre-long fishing boat, with a carvel hull of mayope, sturdy enough for its original owners to take it down to the mouth of the Juliffe and catch sea fish in their nets. Ralph Hiltch had ordered its thermal-conversion furnace to be taken out, and got the boatyard to install the micro-fusion generator which the Kulu Embassy used as its power reserve. With one high-pressure gas canister of He3 and deuterium for fuel, Isakore now had enough power to circumnavigate the globe twice over.
Jenny Harris was lying on her sleeping-bag under the plastic awning they had rigged up over the prow, out of the light drizzle sweeping the river.
The sheeting didn’t make much difference, and her shorts and white T-shirt were soaking. Four days of sailing without a break from the humidity left her vainly trying to remember whether she had ever been dry.