Svaha, page 16
Lisa got off him slowly, Steeljack never wavering in her hand. When she was far enough back, she made a motion with the weapons that made the china jump nervously.
"Up you go," she said. "Get outta here."
The china wasn't prepared to argue. He went up the fence like it was a ladder and was gone in moments. Steeljack still in her hand, Lisa ran back the way she'd come. When she started to round the corner, she came face to face with a wall of flames that singed her eyebrows and the feathers of her headdress.
She backed around the corner once more, spotted a door. The lock wouldn't give, so she shot it out, then ran through the building to the street where she'd left Gahzee. All she saw now was a dead Plex drone in his black armour, lying sprawled in the middle of the street with his guts spilling all around him. Looking at him, she wanted to throw up.
Turning away from the corpse, she bolted for the alleyway and her worst fears were realized. She saw parts of the Usaijin and realized that it had taken a hit. And Gahzee? Clouds of smoke billowed from the mouth of the alley. She stepped closer, coughing until she got her mask back on. Though the air was still bad through its filters, it was at least breathable. Then she moved in.
She spotted Gahzee straightaway, lying just inside the mouth of the alley, the flames licking close to him, the smoke starting to settle down around him. Without taking the time to find out if he was alive or dead, she grabbed him by his heels and started to drag him out. When she reached the street she made a careful survey, but there wasn't much action. Most of the fighting was still down around the Ch'ing-jen Fan. It seemed to be dying down. There were a few figures moving on the street, but no one seemed to take much notice of one swagger girl dragging a yak.
She wrestled Gahzee up the stairs of a building across the street and inside, then collapsed in the doorway. She stared out across at the fire for long moments, catching her breath, before she had the strength to return to Gahzee's side.
He lay as she'd left him, half-propped up against the wall, head lolling on his chest. Even in the poor light, his ruddy skin looked washed out. You'd better not be dead, she thought fiercely, surprised at the vehemence of her feelings. Opening his overcoat, she took off her mask and laid her ear against his chest.
He was breathing. Faintly. His heartbeat almost nonexistent.
She laid him on the floor and cocked back his head. Pinching his nostrils, she blew a breath into his body, gave it a moment to come out, breathed in again. His skin tasted like a mixture of salt and soot. In. Wait. In again.
Suddenly he gasped and began to choke. She rolled him over on his side, slapping his back, wondering what the hell she was really doing. Just because she'd seen it on the vids, didn't mean it'd really work.
He coughed, a deep wracking sound.
"Oh shit, don't go and die on me," she told him, still slapping his back.
But then he was trying to sit up. She helped him lean back up against the wall. He tried to talk, but his throat was raspy from the smoke, his voice a croak. His eyes were barely slits, not really seeing her.
"Kinda different from your sacred smoke, huh?"
He coughed again, spitting up phlegm. She wiped his mouth on the sleeve of her jacket.
"Guess the only thing that kept you alive was you were lying so low, the smoke didn't have a chance to settle down to where you were."
"Sec—security off…" Another cough wracked him.
"The drone's dead. Looked like someone knifed him. That wasn't you?"
Gahzee shook his head.
"Are you gonna be all right?"
He nodded slowly. "J-just need…time…"
Lisa sat on her heels, her face level with his. "Look, the Usaijin's had it and I'm not up to dragging you around, so I'm going for some help. You just hang in here. Stay real quiet and don't move. I'll be back quick as I can."
"Wh-here…?"
"I'm gonna try and find the Ragman."
He reached out and weakly caught her arm as she began to rise. Gently Lisa disengaged his fingers.
"Don't worry. I'll be back. I'm not gonna abandon you here. I owe you one—remember? If anyone can help us, it'll be the Ragman. And if you're worrying about your chip, I know who's got it: the Ho Fung Triad. You just take it easy."
"B-be… careful…."
Lisa nodded. "Ja mata."
She stood up and looked down at him. Shit, he didn't look good at all. Then she put her mask back on and slipped out the door, heading for the Ch'ing-jen Fan. At least things seemed to be settling down. There were still drones patrolling the area in their black bug suits, but the yaks were gone. So were most of the chinas and tongs. She just hoped none of the bodies that the drones were dragging out in front of the Ch'ing-jen Fan was the Ragman's.
3
By the time Yip reached the Ho Anzen headquarters, most of his fellow officers were already gone. Suiting up in his riot gear and signing out one of the Juszuki three-wheelers that the security franchise preferred above the Usaijin, he sped out of the Megaplex and into the squats. The scene he found waiting for him outside the Ch'ing-jen Fan was a riot that could have been lifted straight from a war-vid by the Indochinese director Daongam.
It was a three-sided pitched battle between squats residents, yaks, and the Ho Anzen security force. Laser beams hissed and crackled through the air, indiscriminately cutting down chinas and tongs armed with only knives and sticks, as well as yaks with tech gear to match the security forces' weaponry. Smoke filled the already rancid air. Buildings smoldered. Disabled three-wheelers and one land cruiser sparked and burned. Bodies were strewn everywhere.
What had started it? How had it gotten so out of control?
He brought up his Juszuki to one of the control areas and cut the engine. Climbing into the cab of the land cruiser to get his orders, he nodded brusquely to his security head, Aoki, who was punching out a number on the cruiser's com-link. Glancing idly at Aoki's fingers, Yip realized that the number didn't begin with the 353 code that Ho Anzen used, so he filed it away for future reference.
"Calling reinforcements?" he asked.
"You're late," Aoki merely said.
"I was off duty and nowhere near headquarters."
Aoki gave him a considering look. "Well, you're here now, neh?" He disengaged the com-link and motioned towards the door. "Let's go in and clean out a couple of those buildings."
"Hai."
They left a com man in charge of the cruiser, with two backup officers. Aoki led the way to the nearest building, spraying the doorway and windows with rapid-fire blasts from his laser. Yip followed his security head at a trot, finding motion awkward in the riot gear. He'd better plan on getting some more training time in on the suit as soon as he had a chance, he thought.
When they entered the structure, a pair of chinas made a break for the rear entrance at the far side of the building's foyer. Yip's computer link automatically brought them in closer with magnified infrared vision. He saw that all they had was a knife each. He held his fire. Might as well let them go. They were out of the picture now.
Aoki cut them down before they got away, then turned to face Yip.
"Getting softhearted?" he demanded.
It was impossible to read Aoki's features behind the flat mask of darkened glass that made up the front of his helmet. Through the cheap speaker in Yip's own helmet, the security head's voice came through tinny and sharp.
"What?" he said.
"Letting the pukers go—have you lost your taste for your work?"
Yip's eyes narrowed invisibly behind his own helmet's glass. Aoki was enjoying this. As he'd enjoyed having Huan killed? It would be so easy, Yip realized, to simply lift his laser-rifle's muzzle and cut Aoki down.
"I asked you a question, Yip."
Outside, the battle was winding down. Yip stared at Aoki. I'm always doing what's right, he thought. Following the rules. You're the black and white man, Huan had told him. And now Huan was dead. While this…worm still lived.
That was wrong.
But killing Aoki would be wrong as well.
If the world was grey, if you had to balance one wrong against the other, which was more wrong?
"Yip—" Aoki began.
Then he saw something in his subordinate's stance, in the way Yip held his weapon. Aoki brought his own laser-rifle up in a defensive move, but Yip had already made his decision. His laser-rifle swept up in an arc, trigger thumbed to full blast, cutting Aoki in two. Aoki's weapon got off one blast that went wild, bringing down a part of the ceiling on the far side of the wide foyer, then he tumbled in a heap.
"For Huan," Yip said softly. "Now I'm a grey man too, Aoki-san. Just like you, neh?"
Shouldering his rifle, he bent down and removed the security head's computer pack and weapons to take back to the cruiser. They couldn't be allowed to fall into squats hands. As for Aoki himself, the body could be retrieved later.
Outside, the violence had been reduced to the odd sniping. The yaks were mostly gone, except for their dead. Chinas and tongs were fleeing now as well. The black-suited security officers moved in to clean up.
Standing there, Yip tried to feel some emotion for what he'd done—sorrow, anger, pain. There was nothing. Not for Aoki. Not anymore. The slate with his name on it was wiped clean inside Yip—all except for that number Aoki had been trying to reach in the cruiser.
The destruction that lay before him made Yip angry. He still felt sorrow for Huan—that was an ache that might never stop hurting. But he felt nothing for the security head's death, or the fact that it had come by his hand.
I've changed, he realized wearily. Truly a grey man now. In love with the enemy's Dragon Lady. Killing my own superior. Truly grey. Truly changed.
It wasn't until he started across the street that the first reactions to what he had done began to set in. Bile rose in his throat and he paused, shivering, trying to keep the vomit down, He swallowed the bitter taste with a quick convulsive motion of his throat. Took steadying breaths. Squared his shoulders. Started walking again.
He wasn't so certain that this change he was undergoing was for the better. Wasn't sure at all. But like a gambler at the Flower Cards table, he couldn't rise from his cushion now. He was in the game until its end. Wherever that might take him.
Deeper into the greyness of the world until what he became was so changed from what he thought himself to be, that the one would not be able to recognize the other?
He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to that.
FOURTEEN
1
The Ragman had bolt-holes all through the squats. It was through talking to him that Lisa had planned out her own extensive escape route from the squat she'd shared with Kaoru—over the rooftops and down through another building. But for all his bolt-holes and safe squats, the Ragman had never prepared for the madness that they were caught up in right now. They were in the middle of a small-scale war and—face it, Jack—there just weren't any safe squats. Nowhere to bolt.
When he and Jaenie reached the roof, a tong turned with a bootlegged Steeljack in his fist, aiming it at them.
"Tang i tang!" the Ragman cried. Hold on. "Watch where you're pointing that thing, Jack!"
But the tong had already recognized him and was turning back to the fight. A moment later a drone's laser beam caught the tong in the throat, and he fell in a welter of blood, head almost severed from his neck.
Jaenie bent over and threw up.
Crouching low, the Ragman made his way to the waist-high wall that encircled the building and looked down. So much firepower. He ducked back out of sight and returned to Jaenie's side. She was just starting to recover from losing the contents of her stomach. He laid an arm over her shoulder.
"Sorry to get you into this, darling," he said.
Giving her shoulders a squeeze, he let go. He took the knife out of her left hand and sheathed it, picked up the one that had fallen from her right and sheathed it as well.
"We're gonna stay low—wait for things to die down a bit—and then we're going over."
"O-over…?"
The Ragman pointed to the building on their right. There was a three-meter gap between the buildings.
"A quick hop and then we'll scurry outta here like the rats we are. When those drones get up here, we'll be—" he snapped his fingers, "—long gone."
Jaenie sat up straighter and looked at the distance between the buildings. Her face grew paler. "It's too wide…."
"Just looks that way, darling. We'll make it."
"Why can't we just—"
"Stay? You want to hang around and wait for the drones to bust up your pretty little ass?"
With his own Plex connections, he knew there was going to be a load of trouble when this was all over. Those drones down there knew it too. They had a chance to kick some ass right now. Tomorrow they'd pay for it—there'd be suspensions and all kinds of shit to pay for all the equipment that was getting trashed tonight—but right now they were having too good a time cutting down rats. They sure as hell weren't gonna be arresting nobody. Convicted felons just got dumped in the squats. That wasn't much of a threat to a rat who was already stuck here.
"They really hate us, don't they?" Jaenie said.
"Let's just say that we remind them of what they mighta been with the wrong turn of the cards, you know?"
"I don't know if I can make it, Ragman."
He shook his head. " 'Course you can, darling. You're tough, aren'tcha? Out in the badlands, junkwalking on your own.
Jaenie kept her face studiously turned from that of the dead china. "I just never seen this shit for real, Ragman. That's all."
"Yeah, well, I ain't seen its like for a long time myself."
It seemed to be getting quieter. He looked around the rooftop, and saw that the pair of them were the only live bodies up here. He chanced another quick glance down to the streets. The drones were moving in.
"Showtime, darling."
"I can't do it, Ragman."
"You gotta—plain and simple. Now are you going first, or do you want me to go and show you how it's done?"
"You go."
The Ragman gave her a long hard look. "You're not gonna play quitter on me, now are you, darling?"
She shook her head.
"Okay."
He crept over to the side of the building, checking the streets, clearing some rubble that he might slip on. It was dark on the other roof, but he'd been over there before. He hadn't been smart enough to leave himself a nice soft futon for the landing, but he knew it was relatively clear.
He came back to where Jaenie was waiting and gave her a broad wink. "Don't punk out on me, darling."
"I won't."
He took a run and launched himself over the gap, hitting the other roof in a roll that he didn't stop quite in time. He came up hard against a pile of refuse, but stood up quickly, not wanting Jaenie to get colder feet by seeing him all shook up. It took him a moment to catch his breath, then he waved her over.
"C'mon, darling!" he called in a low whisper.
She stood hesitating for a long moment, then gathering her courage, she took the run and jumped. No problem, the Ragman thought as he got ready to break her fall. She's gonna make it easy as—
A drone's laser beam caught her in mid-leap, right between the buildings. The Ragman reached for her, but it was already too late. The shot had blown a hole in her chest and all he could do was watch her plummet. He turned his head before she hit the ground.
"Bastards!" he screamed down at the drones. He stood up on the wall. "You fucking, puke-faced bastards. I'm gonna kill every fucking one of you. You hear me? YOU HEAR ME?"
Twin laser beams seared the air on either side of him, and he dropped out of sight. As the drones continued to fire at him, he huddled behind the cover of the roof's low wall, shaking with anger, then slowly began to crawl to the other side of the building.
Get away, he told himself. Get away and you live to kill them later. Hang around and all you do is die yourself.
Halfway cross the roof, he got to his feet and ran for the far side of the building, launching himself across the alley between buildings, landing in a sprawl. He lay there for a long moment watching the dirty smudge of the sky. When he closed his eyes, he saw Jaenie falling again. J.D. lying in the hallway outside his workshop. The china on the roof, almost beheaded.
Yaks and drones. Wasn't a whole shit lot of difference between them, was there? Give somebody a little power and right away they're shit king of the hill.
"Fuckers," he muttered as he got to his feet.
He pushed some rubble away from the roof's door and squeezed himself through the narrow gap he'd made, then headed down the stairs into the bowels of the building. He took out his Steeljack. Maybe they'd come here looking for him, maybe not. They were slow movers in their bug gear. They might just not bother trying to chase him down. But if they came, he'd be ready.
When he got to street level, he peered out a window. Nothing coming. Then he heard the scrape of a footstep behind him. He turned, finger already squeezing the 'jack's trigger, but the shadowed figure he was aiming at, threw itself to one side.
"Ragman!" it cried. "Are you nuts?"
He was already tracking the figure, ready to fire again, when the voice registered. He kept the 'jack pointed at her.
"That you, Lisa?"
"Yeah. You want to point that thing somewhere else?"
The Ragman looked down at the weapon in his hand, then slowly lowered his arm. "How'd you find me?"
"I saw you go crazy up on the roof. What the hell's going on around here?"
"Guess we were trying to start ourselves another world war—waiting for 'em to get the nukes out again, darling. You know what it's like. It was a dull night."
"You don't sound right, Ragman."
