“Guava Diamond?”
“Still holding.”
“We are unable to assist, Guava Diamond. Repeat, we are unable to assist. Suggest—”
“You what? You bonobo-sucking piece of shit, you’d better tell me I misheard that.”
“There are control complications at this end. We cannot act. I’m sorry, Guava Diamond. You’re on your own.”
“You will be fucking sorry if we make it out of this in one piece.”
“I repeat, Guava Diamond, we cannot act. Suggest you implement Lizard immediately, and get off Bulgakov’s Cat while you can. You may still have time.”
Pause.
“You’re a fucking dead man, Claw Control.”
Static hiss.
Carl was almost to the Daskeen Azul unit when the crank cables leading up to it whined into sudden life. Shifting highlights on the nanofiber black in its recessed channel, it looked more like something melting and running than actual motion. He heard the change in engine note as the cables engaged a load. Somewhere down the line, a cradled minisub jerked and started to climb.
Here we go.
He was still at the initial access level he’d come in on, behind and three meters above the roofing of the line of docking sheds. Long, shallow sets of steps ran out from the walkway he stood on, sank between the units, and joined with a lower-level gantry that fringed each shed. He made for the access level to the doors and hatches leading inside the facilities. Below again, further sets of steps snaked down on themselves and connected to the slope the slipways were built into.
There were hatches set into the roof of the Daskeen Azul unit, but they were very likely sealed from the inside, and even if they weren’t, going in that way was a good recipe for getting shot in the arse. Carl slowed to a crouched jog, made the corner of the shed, and started down the flight of stairs at its side. The murmur of the winch engine came through the wall at his ear. A couple of small windows broke the corrugated-alloy surface, and there was a closed door at the bottom of the stairs. No easy way in. He paused and weighed the options. He had no weapon, and no sense of the layout within the unit. No idea how many Daskeen Azul employees he might be up against, or what they’d be armed with.
Yeah, so this is where you back off and wait for Rovayo’s cavalry.
But he already knew he wasn’t going to do that.
He crept under one of the windows and eased his head up beside it, grabbed a narrow-angled view into the space on the other side of the wall. Cleanly kept flooring, stacked dinghy hulls and other less identifiable hardware, LCLS panels shedding light from the walls and ceiling. The squat bulk of the winch machinery at the head of the slipway and four gathered figures. He narrowed his eyes—the glass was filthy, and the winch system blocked a lot of the room’s light. The four were all wearing Daskeen Azul jackets, and the face he could see clearly was a stranger, a man. But the profile of the figure next to him was machete boy, gesticulating frantically at a woman whom Carl identified as Carmen Ren by poise and stance before he made out her face. She had a phone in her hand, held low, not in use.
The fourth figure had his back turned to the window, had long hair gathered into a loose tail that hung below the collar of his jacket. Carl stared at him and a solid slab of something dropped into his chest. He didn’t need to see the face. He’d watched the same figure walk away from him in the mind’s eye of the Horkan’s Pride n-djinn, along the deadened quiet of the spacecraft’s corridors. Had seen him stop and turn and look up at the camera, look through it as if he knew that Carl was there.
He looked around now, as if called.
Carl jerked his head back, but not before he’d seen the gaunt features, a little more flesh on the bones now maybe, but still the same slash-cheeked, hollow-eyed stare. He was checking the door, twitched around on some whisper of intuition from the weight of Carl’s gaze.
Allen Merrin. Home from Mars.
Carl sank back to the step, fuming. With the Haag gun, Rovayo’s gun, any fucking gun, he would have just stormed through the door and gotten it over with. Merrin’s mesh and thirteen instincts, Carmen Ren’s combat poise, the unknown quantity that the other Daskeen Azul employee represented, any weapons the four of them might have—it wouldn’t matter. He’d fill the air with slugs going in, looking for multiple body hits, clean up the mess after.
Unarmed, he was going to end up dead.
Where the fuck are you, RimSec?
Rovayo’s words rinsed back through his mind. Alcatraz can authorize a block on traffic in and out. Might have to get a couple of people out of bed to do it, but—
But nothing. Merrin and his pals here are going to bail out before RimSec’s dozy fucking authorities get the sleep out of their eyes…
The cradled sub came on up the slipway.
And stopped.
Carl peered down through the steel lattice of the gantry he stood on. The haul cradle was still a good twenty meters down the slope, frozen there. Inside the docking shed, the winding engine ran on but its sound had shifted. The licorice black of the cable was frozen in its channel. The winch had disconnected.
He peered across the sweep of the loading slope and saw the same story all the way along. No motion: none of the cables was working.
Lockdown. He’d done RimSec an injustice.
He saw it coming, just ahead of time. Moved off the wall, shifted stance for the combat crouch, and then the door ahead clanked open, three steps down. The mesh pounded inside him. Ren came out, the others crowding behind.
“…yank the cradle releases and ride it down. There’s no other—”
She saw him. He jumped.
Their numbers made it work for him. He cannoned into Ren, knocked her flying back along the walkway and to the floor. Machete boy roared and swung at him, hopelessly wide. Carl blocked, locked up an elbow, and shoved the boy back into the two other men behind him. All three staggered back through the confines of the doorway. The nameless Daskeen Azul employee yelped and brandished a weapon awkwardly, one-handed. Yelling Get out of the way, get out of the fucking way. Carl made it as a sharkpunch and his flesh quailed. He rode the attack momentum through the door, sent them all stumbling. He got his hands on the gunman’s arm and wrenched, forced him to the floor, followed him down, knee into the stomach. Found the pressure point in the wrist, wrenched again. The sharkpunch went off once, symphony of dull metallic plinks and clanks as the murderous load punched ragged holes in the roof. Then he had possession and the former owner was flailing under him disarmed. Carl twisted, pointed down point-blank, and pulled the trigger. The other man turned abruptly to shredded bone and flesh from the waist up. Blood and gore splattered, drenched him from head to foot.
Proximity sense signaled left. Carl rose and twisted at mesh speed, still blinking the blood from his eyes. Machete boy ran onto the sharkpunch, screaming abomination and hellfire. This time, Carl pulled the trigger in sheer reflex. The impact kicked the boy back toward the open door and tore him apart in midair. The screaming died in midsyllable, the wall and doorway suddenly painted with gore. Carl gaped at the damage the weapon had done—