“Yeah, but no telling how good that neurachem is, huh? Now hold still.”
She knotted the red cloth with practised efficiency and spread it a little to cover my whole field of vision. I settled back in the seat.
“Couple of minutes. You just sit quiet and no peeking. I’ll tell you when.”
The car boosted up and presumably out because I heard the drumming of rain against the bodywork. There was a faint smell of leather from the upholstery, which beat the odour of faeces on the inbound journey, and the seat I was in moulded itself supportively to my form. I seemed to have moved up in the order of things.
Strictly temporary, man. I smiled faintly as Jimmy’s voice echoed in the back of my skull. He was right. A couple of things were clear about whoever we were going to see. This was someone who didn’t want to come to the clinic, who didn’t even want to be seen near it. That bespoke respectability, and with it power, the power to access offworld data. Pretty soon they were going to know that the Envoy Corps was an empty threat, and very shortly after that I was going to be dead. Really dead.
That kind of dictates the action, pal.
Thanks, Jimmy.
After a few minutes the woman told me to take off the blindfold. I pushed it up onto my forehead and retied it there in its customary position. At my side, the muscle with the machine pistol smirked. I gave him a curious look.
“Something funny?”
“Yeah.” The woman spoke without turning her gaze from the city lights beyond the window. “You look like a fucking idiot.”
“Not where I come from.”
She turned to look at me pityingly. “You aren’t where you come from. You’re on Earth. Try behaving like it.”
I looked from one to the other of them, the pistoleer still smirking, the synthetic with the expression of polite contempt, then shrugged and reached up with both hands to untie the bandanna. The woman went back to watching the lights of the city sink below us. The rain seemed to have stopped.
I chopped down savagely from head height, left and right. My left fist jarred into the pistoleer’s temple with enough force to break the bone and he slumped sideways with a single grunt. He never even saw the blow coming. My right arm was still in motion.
The synthetic whipped around, probably faster than I could have struck, but she misread me. Her arm was raised to block and cover her head, and I was under the guard, reaching. My hand closed on the blaster at her belt, knocked out the safety and triggered it. The beam seethed into life, cutting downwards, and a large quantity of the woman’s right leg burst open in wet ropes of flesh before the blowback circuits cut the blast. She howled, a cry more of rage than of pain, and then I dragged the muzzle of the weapon up, triggering another blast diagonally across her body. The blaster carved a channel a handsbreadth wide right through her and into the seat behind. Blood exploded across the cabin.
The blaster cut out again and the cabin went suddenly dim as the flaring of the beam weapon stopped. Beside me, the synthetic woman bubbled and sighed, and then the section of her torso that the head was attached to sagged away from the left side of the body. Her forehead came to rest against the window she had been looking out of. It looked oddly as if she was cooling her brow on the rain-streaked glass. The rest of the body sat stiffly upright, the massive sloping wound cauterised clean by the beam. The mingled stink of cooked meat and fried synthetic components was everywhere.
“Trepp? Trepp?” It was the chauffeur’s intercom squawking. I wiped blood out of my eyes and looked at the screen set in the forward bulkhead.
“She’s dead,” I told the shocked face, and held up the blaster. “They’re both dead. And you’re next, if you don’t get us on the ground right now.”
The chauffeur rallied. “We’re five hundred metres above the Bay, friend, and I’m flying this car. What do you propose doing about that?”
I selected a mid-point on the wall between the two cabins, knocked out the blowback cutout on the blaster and shielded my face with one hand.
“Hey, what are you—”
I fired through into the driver’s compartment on tight focus. The beam punched a molten hole about a centimetre wide and for a moment it rained sparks backwards into the cabin as the armouring beneath the plastic resisted. Then the sparks died as the beam broke through and I heard something electrical short out in the forward compartment. I stopped firing.
“The next one goes right through your seat,” I promised. “I’ve got friends who’ll re-sleeve me when they fish us out of the Bay. You I’ll carve into steaks right through this fucking wall, and even if I miss your stack, they’ll have a hard time finding which part of you it’s inside, now fucking get me on the ground.”
The limousine banked abruptly to one side, losing altitude. I sat back a little amidst the carnage and cleaned more blood off my face with one sleeve.
“That’s good,” I said more calmly. “Now set me down near Mission Street. And if you’re thinking about signalling for help, think about this. If there’s a firefight, you die first. Got it? You die first. I’m talking about real death. I’ll make sure I burn out your stack if it’s the last thing I do before they take me down.”
His face looked back at me on the screen, pale. Scared, but not scared enough. Or maybe scared of someone else. Anyone who bar-codes their employees isn’t likely to be the forgiving type, and the reflex of longheld obedience through hierarchy is usually enough to overcome fear of a combat death. That’s how you fight wars, after all — with soldiers who are more afraid of stepping out of line than they are of dying on the battlefield.
I used to be like that myself.
“How about this?” I offered rapidly. “You violate traffic protocol putting us down. The Sia turn up, bust you and hold you. You say nothing. I’m gone and they’ve got nothing on you outside of a traffic misdemeanour. Your story is you’re just the driver, your passengers had a little disagreement in the back seat and then I hijacked you to the ground. Meanwhile, whoever you work for bails you out rapido and you pick up a bonus for not cracking in virtual holding.”
I watched the screen. His expression wavered, and he swallowed hard. Enough carrot, time for the stick. I locked the blowback circuit on again, lifted the blaster so he could see it and fitted it to the nape of Trepp’s neck.
“I’d say you’re getting a bargain.”
At point-blank range, the blaster beam vaporised spine, stack and everything around it. I turned back to the screen.
“Your call.”
The driver’s face convulsed, and the limo started to lose height raggedly. I watched the flow of traffic through the window, then leaned forward and tapped on the screen.
“Don’t forget that violation, will you?”
He gulped and nodded. The limo dropped vertically through stacked lanes of traffic and bumped hard along the ground, to a chorus of furious collision alert screeches from the vehicles around us. Through the window I recognised the street I’d cruised with Curtis the night before. Our pace slowed somewhat.
“Crack the nearside door,” I said, tucking the blaster under my jacket. Another jerky nod and the door in question clunked open, then hung ajar. I swivelled, kicked it wide and heard police sirens wailing somewhere above us. My eyes met the driver’s on the screen for a moment and I grinned.
“Wise man,” I said, and threw myself out of the coasting vehicle.
The pavement hit me in the shoulder and back as I rolled amidst startled cries from passing pedestrians. I rolled twice, hit hard against a stone frontage and climbed cautiously to my feet. A passing couple stared at me and I skinned my teeth in a smile that made them hurry on, finding interest in other shop fronts.