It took a while for Vic to realise what the tapping sound was. He only realised that it meant that someone was hitting his door wanting to enter because he’d experienced this phenomenon in the same historical immersion that he’d seen the text file in.
Vic deleted the ability to read from his current neunonic applications and ’faced an order to the room for the door to open. Scab was standing there. Vic was relieved to see that he was fully clothed in brown suit and raincoat.
‘I’m bored!’ Vic shouted at him. Scab nodded and lit a cigarette.
‘I can see that.’
‘Have they finished cogitating?’ the ’sect asked, trying out the taste of a new word. Scab almost raised an eyebrow but instead shook his head.
‘Coming?’ he asked.
The Basilisk was still docked back at the high-security habitat. Scab had reconfigured the smart-matter hull and hacked the ID code. It wouldn’t be enough to hide from the Church as they could sense the bridge-drive signature, but it might help against some of the less-than-thorough bounty killers.
They had taken one of the shuttles to a more interesting entertainment-based habitat. Vic should have been a more than a little nervous about this, but boredom had turned his mental capacities into a kind of grey-coloured slush, and a week of immersion porn made him want to touch real human flesh.
They were in a multi-level mall. The smart matter was designed to look like dark-green, white-veined marble with arched iron bridges over a vast atrium and food court. Some of the food concessions even had automaton service rather than just assembler-dispensing nipples. One of them even had sentient staff, but Vic had decided that was a little sick and demeaning for the employees, particularly when they could have found employment in one of the real-flesh brothels.
The ceiling was transparent and the habitat was tipped to look down at the planet. Looking up made you feel like you were about to fall towards the cloudy nano-swarms.
Vic was looking up, using his antenna sensors to avoid colliding with other pedestrians. His P-sat bobbed along above him, augmenting the sensor data, not that this was required for anything other than simple obstacle navigation as most of the other patrons were giving the seven-foot, hard-tech-augmented ’sect a wide berth.
Vic felt Scab stop. His P-sat had transmitted the reason why before he lowered his head and saw for himself through his multifaceted eyes. It was inevitable, Vic decided. After all, their job was to track people. Obviously they were going to find them, even if it was by random chance. Vic decided that he was not what the humans called lucky.
Jide was standing in front of Scab. There was a flicker of something on the feline’s game face. Later, Vic would run it through various analytical routines. He came to the conclusion that it was a moment of surprise. Then Jide read the situation.
The man-plus twins let go of each other’s hands and continued walking around Jide towards Vic. The lizard and the human half-and-half held back. Seven P-sats rose towards the transparent ceiling. It was only because the reactions of everyone involved were so wired that these moments stretched out, Vic thought as he backed away from the muscle-bound twins.
Jide was close to Scab, so close it looked like they had been about to bump into each other. Vic couldn’t understand why that would have happened. He also didn’t understand why his own sensors and those of his P-sat hadn’t picked up the other bounty killing team. Things weren’t making sense.
The twins closed on him. He knew that bid and counter-bid with Pythian subcontractors would be going on. Jide would presumably be asking permission for violence and Scab counter-bidding to avoid it. Vic hoped. Vic’s hand was close to the butts of his pistols but the twins were closing too fast. They wanted to mix it up with him. Vic knew that if he drew before they had permission, the habitat’s security systems would vaporise him, at best.
Vic and Scab’s P-sats were engaged in an electronic cold war with Jide’s crew’s P-sats. So far they were holding their own, as jamming signals confused sensors and countermeasures fought shutdown and control hacks.
Media P-sats came zipping across the mall towards them. A number dropped from the air as rival media providers engaged in their own electronics warfare for ratings.
The habitat’s security systems granted carte blanche permission for violence. No restrictions within current capabilities.
Jide swung at Scab. Scab placed his hands on Jide’s furry head and shoulders and jumped over the feline’s muscular arm, landing just behind a surprised Jide, face to face with the lizard berserker. The berserker was swelling, internal carbon reservoirs rapidly being converted to muscle mass as natural and artificial rage and speed-enhancing chemicals flooded its body.
Scab fast-drew his tumbler pistol and shot all six rounds into Jide’s back at point-blank range. Jide’s armour and hardened flesh just about coped with the first four shots but the spinning rounds were designed to penetrate armour. The final two penetrated; secondary charges detonated inside Jide, sending the bullets spinning and fragmenting through the Rakshasa’s body.
Scab rammed his synthetic diamond-tipped smart blade metalforma knife through hardened armoured flesh and soft-machine-augmented muscle into the back of Jide’s neck, then sent the blade a neunonic command to widen and grow in the wound, the small carbon reservoir in the hilt providing the necessary matter. Scab forgot about Jide.
The twins charged. Vic’s triple-barrelled shotgun pistol appeared in the hands of his lower limbs. ’Sect knees bent in the opposite direction to the rest of the uplifted races’ knees. He bent his left leg, balancing on the right, bringing the foot up to the bottom of his abdomen. He let the twins close with him and then emptied all three barrels into the left twin’s face at point-blank range. The explosive-cored flechette penetrators turned it into a red ruin. He staggered back.
Vic’s left foot then shot out. Humans never expected kicks like this. The power-assisted prehensile claw that was his foot hit the right twin’s knee and tore through it, leaving a mangled mess of metal, hardened plastic and carbon fibre. Right twin did not scream but his leg shot out from underneath him and he face-planted into the mock marble. Vic knew that all he had done was buy himself time.
The P-sat’s cold war went hot. It turned into a strobing red shooting war as they zipped around the bridges, using them for cover while they continued screaming their electronic war across ’face connections.
Scab ducked under the blade of the berserker’s smart sickle, stepping to the side and giving his opponent the slightest push in just the right place to keep him off balance.
The half-and-half was doing a backward one-handed cartwheel, the other hand throwing explosive burrowing knives. Keyed to Scab’s EM signature, the knives’ guidance systems would take them round the lizard berserker.
Above them, one of the twins’ P-sat’s energy dissipation grids was overwhelmed. It glowed red and then exploded.
Jide just stood still.
An electronic warfare burst from Scab’s P-sat jammed the burrowing knives thrown by the half-and-half, and Scab ducked under them as the berserker turned back towards him.
Scab dropped the tumbler pistol and raised his right arm. Razor-sharp discs flew from the lizard-made disc projector strapped to his arm. Like the knives, the discs were keyed to their target’s EM signature.
As the discs opened up the tumbling half-and-half’s face and side, Scab drew his spit gun with his left hand, the gun’s ergonomic grip moulding to the contours of his hand. He jammed it into the side of the berserker’s head and with a thought started firing. The weapon’s solid-state bullpup magazine was eaten up, disappearing into the weapon’s barrel quickly, used up by the spit gun’s ferocious rate of fire. The flechette penetrators buried themselves inside the berserker’s skull, the envenomed needles fragmenting. The berserker howled and grabbed the back of his head. It would give Scab moments, but that was all.