“Now, aren’t you happy you dressed for the occasion? You’re the guest of honor,” Marciane said to him out of the corner of his mouth, as the crew walked onto the elevator platform and began the ascent to the formal welcoming chambers of the palace.
Jack’s only answer was an involuntary flinch. He carried his helmet under his arm, feeling as if his head belonged there, too, even as he listened to Tubs’ stammering admiration of the rose-pink walls of the immense palace.
The building dwarfed the city structures by virtue of being built on the area’s highest hill, its prominence heightened by its color, a rose that he’d never seen in obsidite before, like the inside of a rare seashell. He ground his teeth as the elevator climbed up the outside of one of the wings, carrying them to a grand reception. Marciane, as they understood it, was now a very big local hero for busting up a very unpopular strike on what had been declared by the Emperor to be a free labor market planet. Below, the crowd cheered and waved and screamed in happiness as their new-found heroes rose above them to claim their just rewards.
Only moments before, their cries had stalled to a deathly silence when Storm had moved forward, geared in the battle armor. Though many were too young to remember the suits, many others were old enough. Although he’d been too far away to hear well, he swore he’d heard the shocked intakes of breath. He’d had a split second to wonder if he’d made a mistake giving in to Marciane’s demands that he wear the suit, and then the voice of the crowd burst forth with a roar that swelled over the crew of the Montreal. Then Jack thought that maybe Marciane had been right, that to hide the suit would continue to endanger him. If he and his past were an embarrassment to the Emperor, it would be much easier to remove an unknown than a conspicuous presence. He’d hidden himself away long enough.
Marciane leaned over and flicked an invisible piece of dust off the Flexalinks. He grinned at Jack. “Like a baby’s first tooth,” he said, then straightened and tilted his head back, watching the rose wall of obsidite shimmer in front of them as the elevator continued inching up.
Short-Jump and Tubs were first off the platform as the elevator halted, and the sliding doors moved out to admit them onto the ballroom floor. The room was jammed with people, and tables, and free-standing bars. Jack smiled broadly.
Short-Jump grinned. “This is gonna be one hell of a party,” he said, before wading forward into a swirl of people who did not, for once, shrink away from him. Tubs followed after happily.
A pretty young woman reached for Jack’s arm. She was dressed from chin to toe in a shimmering gold veil that did little to hide her form, and she smiled as she recognized the look on his face. “My,” she said. “Is it true what they say about what you guys wear inside that stuff?” She was as tall as he was, and as he opened his mouth to reply, she leaned forward on tiptoe and craned her neck to look down inside the suit.
She pouted, as her blue-black hair tickled his nose. “It’s only half-true,” she announced, and waved her glass of champagne in the air. “Ah well. At least half-naked is a start.” She laughed softly. “Don’t tell me—you want to join the Emperor’s Guard, too. Well, this is as good as place as any to be seen. Now I want you to tell me all about Washington Two and that terrible war.” She drew Jack away from the other crew members, and he put up only a token display of resistance, as other laughing, drinking celebrants pressed around them.
The last thing he remembered clearly was the frown on Marciane’s face as he disappeared from view. The captain was talking to someone dressed in a relatively somber tone of brown, and they both looked after him, before a glittering veil of gold cut off his sight, and he gave in to the party.
He woke slowly. His head felt swollen and throbbed as though it would burst. Jack cautiously cradled it between his gloved hands. He groaned and rolled over onto his back, squinting at the bright yellow sun. Far away, he saw the shimmer of a rose-pink building hugging the horizon, towering above the city. His tongue felt thick.
“It’s a long way from the palace to the gutter,” he told himself, as he realized where he was. His right foot felt pinched and numb, and he realized he’d stuck his pay in his boot … a stack of Dominion credits that would have choked a Thrak. No wonder he couldn’t wiggle his foot.
The hangover surged through his cranium and he put a hand out for balance as he sat up. He stuck it into his helmet, cursed softly, pulled his helmet into his lap, then put his hand where he’d intended it to go, each movement as deliberate and painstaking as he could make it.
His eyes watered and, helpless to dry them, he sat until they quit, and he watched the shadowed alleyway, listening to the throb in his head that threatened to kill him. That had been some party, all right. He didn’t remember having been dropped here at all—and probably none of the rest of the crew, who snored around him in sodden heaps, would remember either. Jack smiled ruefully. They’d been wined and dined, and then put out with the rest of the garbage.
Tubs groaned in his sleep. He cradled an empty bottle of champagne to his chest, and a torn piece of sapphire blue veil.
Jack watched him. Then, as his mind and sight cleared, he examined all the other sleepers in the alleyway with him … and minded that he didn’t see Marciane anywhere. The back of his neck tickled in warning, and Storm got to his feet, even though the sudden rise in pressure threatened to blow the top of his head off.
What had happened to the reverence the captain had held for the Knights, Jack wasn’t sure, but it had evaporated, replaced by a sense of bitterness and wariness and—opportunity. Opportunity for what, Storm didn’t know, but he knew that Marciane was a soldier of opportunity if nothing else. Something about the suit and his background had led Marciane into an opportunity, and Jack didn’t want to be caught with his suit off, when he found out what it was. In the condition he was in, he was definitely vulnerable.
Stepping gingerly around the crew of the Montreal, Jack made his way to the mouth of the alleyway and peered out. The shock of what he saw added to the ringing of his ears.
They’d been dumped in what was definitely the underbelly of the city complex. The begrimed and garish buildings were a thin façade over the hellhole he looked out at. The only thing that had saved them from getting their throats cut was undoubtedly the earliness of the hour—and even that wouldn’t hold them much longer. Jack hesitated. He couldn’t leave Tubs and Short-Jump and the others behind to the mercy of streets that obviously had no mercy.
The hesitation nearly cost him his life. He only saw Marciane out of the corner of his eye when it was almost too late, and then, as he ducked, the slicing blow caught the point of his shoulder, and bounced off the Flexalinks. The power blade hummed nastily as Marciane gathered himself, the knife a blurred blue streak.
Marciane swore, as the alleyway filled with street toughs, hard-expressioned kids who jerked the crew of the Montreal to their feet. The hum of power blades cut through the groan of hangovers, as the crew stood up, their faces sagging, and abruptly sobered.
Jack faced down Marciane. “You’re ready to sacrifice your crew just to get me?”
“No … no, I had a deal with someone. It went wrong. Actually, I helped it. I decided that I already had all the advantages. Hurry up. Give me the suit, Jack—that’s all I want. Give me the suit, and you got a free pass to walk out of here. My ex-partners will be here soon.”
Jack laughed humorlessly. “Without the suit, I doubt I could get far in this part of town.” He gazed past Marciane to the dubious escort. One of the youths grinned and flashed his power blade. The knife hummed, slicers flashing in the morning light.
“Maybe. Maybe not. You could maybe catch a taxi that’d stop for you and that wad of Dominion credits I gave you last night. Course, you’d only have one chance to flash your bank roll—and if he didn’t stop, you’d be fair game on the streets.” Marciane’s dark eyes glittered. “I know you’re not hooked or powered up. It’s only a matter of time until we get our hands on you and turn the suit upside dow
n and shake it until you fall out.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s so. It’s only a matter of time.”
Jack glimpsed a sudden movement and shifted slightly, to protect his flank better. The buildings leaned in around them. They were close in the alleyway, too close, and it was to both Jack’s advantage and disadvantage. “Why just the suit now? Not too long ago, you wanted me in it.”
Marciane’s face worked, and then he spat to one side. “Because now I know what you’ve done in it and what you’ve done to it—to its honor. You’re a goddamn vigilante, killing Thraks in spite of the treaty, thinking you’re some kind of flaming hero because your dad won the right to wear the suit and then packed it away for you. Well, let me tell you something, kid—you’re not fit to polish the links or flush out the plumbing in that thing. Real Knights had honor.”
Jack saw the power blade swing up toward his head before the captain even finished his sentence. He put up his left arm in defense and the knife buzzed off the Flexalinks angrily. He flexed, bumping Marciane back, shoving him off balance. The captain came up, a hand gun filling his fist. Regretfully Jack moved his glove, flexed it, and blasted the man’s head off. As the body slumped to the ground, he said mournfully, “Marciane … a suit always has reserves. Not enough to fight a war on, but this wasn’t a war.”
He had a split second before Tubs let out a cry of anguish, and both the crew of the Montreal and the hired thugs rushed him. A laser wash flared up the side of his head. Jack cursed and leaned down to pick up his helmet, the side of his face in raw agony. Two punks jumped up and he shook them off, like blobs of grease. Short-Jump moved in with an ugly grin creasing his even uglier face and Jack kicked, sending the hand laser spinning across the alleyway. Beyond, Tubs hesitated.
It gave Jack the momentary advantage he needed. He was hurt too badly to play around with them, and he could tell that Marciane’s last swing of the power blade had cut into the suit’s seaming. Little crackles ran up and down his bare arms inside the armor in useless surges.
If he was going to get out of there, he had to leave now. Using the power vault, he jumped the length of the alley and took off running.
The crew of the Montreal was left behind, but the street punks Marciane had hired stuck to his heels like his suit contacts to his bare skin. They harried him as they ran through the near-empty streets, their jeers and signal yells bouncing off begrimed walls. Jack found himself gasping for breath. He hadn’t run in the suit since Basic. Though life rangering on Claron had toughened him up, he had yet to regain the peak fitness he’d had before seventeen years of cold sleep.
The side of his head throbbed. He must have a nasty second or even third degree burn … and his left suit arm dangled all but useless, the circuitry shorting out from Marciane’s lucky strike. Maybe not so lucky, for the now-dead captain had known a lot about armor. It was very possible he hadn’t just nailed the vulnerable shoulder seam accidentally.
Panting, Jack turned the corner and dove down another street. It wasn’t an alleyway, but the buildings leaned so close together that all vehicular traffic was denied access. One of the punks whooped in triumph. Jack bowled over a storefront owner who was just sauntering out his doorway to turn on the neons.
The punks gave up trashing him and stormed the unlucky merchant instead, yelling as they poured into the building and began to loot it. Jack kept on going.
The streets had filled and he slowed to a staggering walk. He kept a tight grip on his helmet as the citizens of the underbelly of Malthen gave him curious stares and decided he looked lethal enough to leave alone. He hailed a taxi, but it swept past him as though he wasn’t even there. Jack turned, and caught his reflection in a store façade. The laser burn had all but closed his right eye. He was dirty and sweating, and grime from the gutter covered the Flexalink suit. He looked thoroughly untrustworthy. With a grimace, Jack realized that was probably all that was keeping him alive right now. As soon as he showed his weakness, he’d be pulled down.
A dirty kid in a rag of a jumpsuit brushed against the dangling left arm. Jack flinched away from the bump, but it was too late. The kid had marked him as crippled. He disappeared in the crowd, but as Jack turned around to look for him, he saw the kid reappear, talking earnestly to an older boy on the corner. His thick black hair stood up in a brush. The older boy wore quilted body armor and a set of enamel bracers, and he turned to look at Jack. Their gaze met. The teenager’s lip moved into a jackal’s snarl.
Jack immediately reversed directions. He’d been made and his life was only as good as his ability to keep moving.
He made the far corner and crossed against the traffic. A blazoned wall proclaimed sleeping cubicles around the corner “with companion” for one hundred Dominions. Jack pressed against the building, looking for that stiff brush of black hair following him. It was out of sight at the moment. He dipped into the cubicle company’s entrance.
“One hundred Dominions or plastic,” a heavy-set woman droned, without looking up from her wall screen.
“In my boot,” Jack said breathlessly. “Give me a cubicle and when I get stripped down, it’s in my boot.”
“Fork it over, bud. Do I look like I was born yesterday? In a test tube or something? Show yer money and then you get in. Otherwise, beat it.” She waved down the wall of doors to the far end of the alley.
Jack pushed down the narrow corridor. The shoulders of his suit brushed the doors on either side. Someone pushed through a door just as he approached it, and he moaned without meaning to, the collar of the suit rubbing the laser burn with a jagged edge. The man glared at him.
“Get out of the way.”
Jack let him pass. He leaned against the bank of cubicles as the dark-haired, naked woman within gave him a leer and then slammed the door shut, saying, “Ask for number 22, honey, if you want more than a look.”
At the far end, he saw the brush-haired street punk edge past the woman custodian. The woman leaned out and caught him by the collar. They argued. Jack was done for, at the end of his strength. He leaned forward and pounded on the door, 22.
“Let me in. I’ve got the money, just let me in.”
“Get a key from Dora, honey. I’m no fool,” was the muffled response.
Frustrated, Jack went down the row of doors, pounding with his mailed fist on the compartments. Doors began popping open, tarts and customers alike yelling. From his vantage point, he could see the street punk break away from Dora and begin to make his way down the corridor.
Angry at the interruption, a few of the clients shouldered Jack toward the end of the building, where, reeling from a last shove, he nearly bowled over a young girl in her mid-teens, so fresh and young looking that he stopped in shock. She didn’t belong in these surroundings. She had mellow brown eyes, so light and golden they were amber colored, and as she looked up at him they filled with pain.
She stamped her foot impatiently, at war with herself over something. The street punk behind her yelled, “Give him over, he’s mine!”
The girl looked beyond Jack at the punk, then back to Jack. “Oh, hell,” she said. “Get in here, quick!” And she pulled him inside the tiny room, slamming the door in the face of the youth and his muffled curses.
The girl looked at him with a sigh. “You can’t stay here. He’s going to get help, and when he gets back, they’ll strip the suit—and you—for whatever they can salvage.”
The top of Jack’s head brushed the ceiling. The battle armor dominated the tiny volume of the cubicle. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ll leave as soon as he’s gone.”
“And get past Dora? He’ll have her posted.” The girl sighed. “Damn! I was havin’ a good day doin’ the dry hustle. Oh well. Come on. I’ve got a back way out of here.” She turned around and began to remove a very tacky holo from the end wall. She pressed her fingers against the revealed seams and squeezed through the opening. She looked back. “I don’t ask a second time, mister.” “Right,”
Jack answered.
Chapter 5
He lumbered after her, a clumsy shadow, as she skipped and ducked her way through the underbelly of the city she thought of as the beast. Thinking that way kept her on her toes. It was an animal, with fangs and claws and parasites, and great, raw, running sores where some greater beast had wounded it. And it might bellow at her or look down at her with cunningly slit eyes and snatch her up before she had a chance to even know that the beast had seen her.
For that was Amber’s goal in life … to get along with the beast without being seen or noticed until someday when she could somehow run fast enough to escape it … and the great beast that had mauled it.
Of course, her plans and the pains taken for escape would be a lot more successful if she didn’t keep picking up strays and extra baggage, like the dude she had trailing behind her now. She’d have to keep him from Rolf … yes, Rolf would be furious with her for cutting the day short. Best not to tell Rolf and dig into her private cache for the extra coin and credit it would take to put Rolf off her scent.
Amber paused, aware just before it happened, that the dude behind her was going to stumble in weariness, and so she caught him up by the elbow just before he toppled. She grunted, but remained unmoved thanks to her wiry strength, balancing the bulk of the man. He sweated as he rocked back in his boots. The bright pink washing the side of his face did not bead … laser burn, and a nasty one at that. Amber thought. She licked her lips in empathetic pain. He’d need ointments and they couldn’t hole up just anywhere tonight, else the rats would be drawn by his suffering to gnaw at them, and they’d spend the whole night kicking them off.
Her eyes widened in surprise at that thought. She hadn’t considered what she was going to do with this stray past the morning, let alone the evening. If Rolf caught her out of her territory for a night as well, there would be hell to pay.
Solar Kill Page 5
