In the lounge itself I was relieved to see a frightened but uneaten Morag. She was sitting at an expensive-looking, long, dark wood table that had been polished to a fine sheen. With her was Balor, who was helping himself to what looked to be a well-prepared meal. He seemed oblivious to the rain. There were several people with him, including the ex-SEAL woman whose name I just couldn’t remember, and a number of his Fomorians. All the Fomorians had been extensively altered to adopt the sea-demon persona of their boss man but none to the extent of Balor. I was trying to decide on an approach but nothing was really presenting itself to me.
I was less than pleased to see Rannu, the Major’s man, sitting at the table. It was the first time I had had a good chance to study the small Nepalese. He was compact but heavily muscled, though his movements suggested that his surprising bulk did not slow him down. He was doubtless augmented, but I suspect he had been fast before he’d been turned into a cyborg. Sunglasses presumably covered lenses not unlike mine. His features were unreadable though he seemed to radiate a kind of passivity. His expression didn’t change when he saw Pagan and me but I knew he was sizing me up just as I was sizing him up.
‘You eat well,’ I said to Balor.
‘I work for it,’ he said without looking up. At the same time I messaged Morag, asking her if she was okay. One of the other people at the table, a nondescript individual wearing practical faded-grey overalls and with half his head replaced by hardware, looked over at Balor and nodded. Balor looked up at Pagan and me. Pagan was shivering.
‘I’m fine,’ Morag said.
‘You think we’re monsters here?’ Balor asked. There was some chuckling from round the table. The SEAL woman didn’t laugh. Reb, her name came to me. Presumably short for Rebecca or Rebel. Knowing the SEALs, it was probably the latter.
‘I thought that was the point,’ I said. Balor’s toothy grin disappeared; I was quite pleased by that, I didn’t like his predatory mouth. He looked between Morag and me.
‘Let’s keep everything out in the open, yeah?’ he told us.
‘You sure you want that?’ Morag asked, her voice sounding surprisingly even for the situation she was in. Balor turned to her, fixing her with what they described on the vizzes as his baleful eye. Morag looked down immediately. Oh, well done, you cunt, I thought, intimidate a seventeen-year-old girl, my anger taking me by surprise. This sort of shit is much easier when you really don’t care.
Balor stretched out both his arms expansively, gesturing at the fine, but increasingly soggy, meal in front of him.
‘In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pirate crews would go out of their way to make sure they had a good cook on board. Food was one of the biggest bones of contention on any ship. Pirate captains didn’t have the authority that the regular navies or even merchants had over their crews, so good food was one of the ways they kept their people happy.’
‘Kept them in line,’ Pagan said suddenly. I glanced to my side. He looked old standing there shivering in the warm rain. ‘Making it worth their while was one way pirate captains kept their crews in line, the other was fear,’ Pagan had no problem meeting Balor’s eye.
‘And fear is based around…’ Balor began.
‘What you have to lose,’ Pagan finished for him. I found the expression on Balor’s monstrous face difficult to read. He was either irritated by Pagan or impressed. ‘You’re trying to provide us with motivation.’ I wasn’t sure I was entirely following the conversation.
‘Not you,’ Balor replied. ‘Him.’ He nodded towards me. I felt that sinking feeling. I really didn’t think I deserved this. I pointed at Rannu without looking at the solidly built Nepalese. Balor smiled, reached out and tapped his wicked-looking claws on the solid-state memory cube that contained Ambassador.
‘This is bollocks. Let’s discuss this, make a deal. You’re a commercial operator. This pantomime demeans us all,’ Pagan said, quite eloquently, I thought. Rannu had already beaten the shit out of me once. I didn’t fancy it happening again, especially not in front of several thousand pirates. I didn’t think I had a particularly large ego, but these things got around and I could live without spending the rest of my life getting the piss taken out of me by every vet I met for such a public beating. Maybe Balor wanted to humble me for some reason. Weird really. I already felt pretty humble.
‘No, what demeans us is reducing everything to commerce,’ Balor said, his one visible eye rolling up in a disconcerting manner. ‘I am not some fucking merchant and you obviously need to remember that you are alive.’
‘A nice dram and a night with a beautiful woman reminds me I’m alive,’ I said with some resignation. Balor turned to look at me. He took his time, just looked at me until he’d decided I was good and uncomfortable.
‘You are a victim,’ he finally said. I gave this some thought. I had to agree there was an element of truth to what he said. ‘You do it to yourself,’ he continued. I was less sure about that. I hadn’t set these events running. We were dealing with powerful people and institutions way beyond my control. ‘You behave like a worm and as a result you will be treated like one.’
Fuck this. I moved towards the table expecting some of Balor’s people to shift in case I proved to be a threat. They didn’t. That was more worrying.
‘I see what you’re saying,’ I told him. ‘I should just fucking kill you and walk out of here.’ It was only later I realised that the pause was Balor deciding whether or not to kill me right then and there. Balor stood up. I took a step back. Balor climbed onto the table, knocking plates of food and wine glasses over. I took another step back.
‘Bluster and temper are no substitute for courage,’ he said. I glanced over at Reb as Balor began walking down the table towards Rannu. The ex-Ghurkha watched him approach impassively.
‘I’m not a coward,’ I told Balor. I was never going to take unnecessary risks but I could function when the fear came, and that was what it was about after all. Balor pointed towards Reb.
‘I know. I know that you are Soldier A, and Reb told me what you did on the Santa Maria.’ He reached Rannu. I noticed Rannu shift slightly, ready in case something went down.
‘Then cut me some fucking slack,’ I told Balor’s back.
‘Why?’ Balor asked, turning to look down on me.
‘The people here are mostly vets, right?’ Pagan asked, gesturing around at the multitudes beginning to line Times Square. ‘Special operators, yes?’ Balor nodded. ‘I refuse to believe that after lifetimes of violence these people will be impressed by this tawdry spectacle.’ And he was right: if you’d gone toe to toe with a Berserk, watching two guys beat the shit out of each other was going to be pretty tame, especially if you have the same skills.
‘This is just a decision-making process,’ Balor told us, the shark grin back. ‘Why did you come here?’
I looked at Rannu and said nothing. Balor followed my glance, then looked back at me.
‘You know, long ago you could be executed for talking politics in private. You had to have the guts to say what you believed in front of the whole tribe or they knew you to be a low person,’ he said.
I was getting tired of this shit. ‘So I’m a low person,’ I said.
‘And you have secrets,’ Morag said. I looked over to her and she was pointing at Balor. She looked scared but she also looked angry. Both Pagan and the other hacker were looking between her and Balor. What had gone down here? Had she just sent him something? This was the second time she’d implied that Balor needed to keep something quiet.
‘You up for this bollocks?’ I asked Rannu. ‘I’ve heard of you -you’re not supposed to be a wanker.’
‘I’m here for the box and you three. I don’t care what condition you’re in and I don’t care about anything outside my orders,’ Rannu said. His English was good; he spoke quietly and evenly with just a trace of accent. ‘At the moment this would seem to be the easiest way to complete my mission.’ He shrugged. There was not a trace of doubt in his voice that he could beat me.