Black Steel

by Steve Perry

“Here’s the recording of the attack.”

  Bligh waved at the comp. The air shimmered and a high angle of the underside of the gamp at the port appeared. There he was, Sleel saw, and there was the woman who had called herself Thompson, stepping out with her sword. Sleel watched with a professional eye as the downscaled woman in the recording went for the smaller image of himself. Damn, he looked jerky when he fired that first round.

  Sloppy.

  “Anything on her of any help?”

  “The lab is working on the clothes and sword. We found where she was staying, at one of the big hotels in New Kona. Nothing so far. The sword is interesting.”

  Sleel saw himself shoot the woman coming at him again without apparent effect. Damned if he didn’t dance back a step when that happened! Fuck. You look like you were scared shitless there, Sleel. Bet you thought you had me then, didn’t you, lady?

  “Why is the sword interesting?”

  “The steel in it is unique. Not quite like anything the lab has seen before. Doesn’t match any known commercial grade. Got stuff in it they didn’t expect, the way it’s lined up.”

  The past-tense Sleel dodged the attack and began the dance of sumito. Looked pretty good … well, okay, his foot was off a little there during Air, and maybe he was bent too far during Neon Chain, but that punch was all right. Too hard, maybe.

  “So the sword is funny. Does that help?”

  “Not that we can determine. Her ID says she is from Thompson’s Gazelle, and the cube has a Delta imprint, but the White Radio squirt from Thompson’s Gazelle comes up no record.”

  “Maybe she lived a long way from town.”

  The assassin was down, and Sleel was scanning for more trouble. That looked okay.

  “Maybe,” Bligh said. “You want to tell me what this is all about, M. Reason?”

  “Would that I knew,” Reason said. “Somebody is sending people with swords after me; other than that, I cannot say.”

  “Well, if you figure it out, do let us know. A body in the port is bad for the tourist business.” To Sleel she said, “I’ve never seen anybody move like that.” She nodded at the final freeze-frame of the holoproj.

  “Like lube on glass. I don’t know anybody who could be that smooth and cool with an assassin coming at them.”

  Sleel shrugged. Yeah, well, it looked like shit to him, but he didn’t say it.

  Bligh collected the cube and infoball and headed for the door. There would be a record of both in the security computer, though there didn’t seem to be anything useful there. The swordswoman was a pro; she wouldn’t have left any obvious clues as to who had sent her, not if she was willing to die if they caught her.

  Sleel had the computer open the door. An alarm went off, a keening whoop-whoop at the same instant Bligh stepped into the doorway. Sleel yelled “Down! On the floor!” as he snapped his hands up, looking for targets.

  But instead of dropping, Bligh went for her hand wand. She was pretty fast, but not fast enough. The wand cleared the holster but before she could level it, the edge of a black sword cut into her neck from her left side, slicing all the way to the spine. Blood sprayed from the chopped artery and she fell back and away from the weapon.

  Sleel saw in slow motion the fan of hot crimson from the black steel as it was jerked from the woman’s half-severed neck. Red painted a Pollock-spatter pattern on the wall and ceiling.

  As Bligh dropped, a man leaped into the hallway, screaming. He raised the weapon over his head and charged toward Sleel.

  Chapter THREE

  ON THE HOLY world of Koji:

  The woman came up from seiza, the sword in her right hand as much a part of her as her arm. The ebon blade blurred and fanned horizontally through the air, bisecting the first of her imaginary opponents at the waist.

  The flashing dark blade continued its loop, circling behind the woman outward and upward, then down to split the invisible skull of the next ghostly attacker. She stepped to her left and pulled the weapon back, locking her left hand on the hilt behind her right hand, point aimed at the throat of the third attacker. Her thumbs and forefingers were slack, middle fingers neutral, ring and little fingers tight against the silk cord and ray skin. It was not a thing of mind but of feel, it was either correct or it was not, and when it was correct, the sword was as the hand. When it was right, the woman lived in the steel as much as she did her own flesh. Now it was right.

  The spectre lunged and was impaled upon the blade’s tip, the woman’s left hand driving the strike, heel against the stainless steel cap, right hand twisting and turning the weapon so that the cut became a blood-letting gouge, spearing and tearing asunder the unfortunate heart.

  The imaginary attacker fell away, and the woman spun, slashing at the fourth and fifth and sixth opponents, driving them back. She leaped, cut, stabbed, ducked, and dodged, the sound of her bare feet squeaking on the wooden floor mingling with the whish of the blade whipping through the cool air of the dojo. She was sharpness itself, dividing upon her razored edges the layers of imagined reality around her.

  The Kaji-te burned, covering the Five Attitudes, Upper, Middle, Lower, Left Side and Right, and the dancer danced among the attackers of her mind’s eye, twirling, whirling, blocking death and striking it down until, all of a timeless moment, she was done.

  She looked around the empty room, and her imagination covered the floor with bodies. She exhaled a short breath, inhaled again, and gave the vanquished a short nod of respect. She spun the sword in a circle, all wrist action, and snapped the point at the floor, slinging the blood. She moved to where the white wooden sheath lay. She kneeled next to the sheath, sat on tier heels seiza again and picked up the sheath without looking at it, turning it so that the convex curve was away from her hip. She brought the sword’s spine across her belly and touched the metal just above the guard to the mouth of the sheath and slid the back edge of the blade along the opening, left thumb and forefinger pinching the steel lightly to remove any remaining traces of imaginary blood. When the point reached the opening, she pivoted the sword on it and slowly pushed the weapon home, until the catch on the hilt locked it into place. The mating of steel and wood accomplished, she replaced the sheathed sword on the floor, inclined her head in a bow, and was done.

  Kildee Wu blinked, as if coming from a trance. She had danced the dance flawlessly, but she did not consciously recall any of the moves. Of a moment, she had reached for her weapon; the next thing she knew, she was back in seiza, finished. That was how it should be. Thought was too slow when it came to the iai; moves had to be nearly as automatic as reflex. As a meditation it could be no less. Iai was the sword, do the way, and it had been her life for twenty of her thirty-five T.S. years.

  She picked up the sword and went to the shower.

  With the sword placed carefully into its rack, Wu stripped and tossed her silks into the washer. She padded toward the shower, stopping briefly in front of the mirror. She smiled at her image, a smile that seemed a bit crooked to her. She was hardly an imposing figure. Her black hair was cut short, her features more or less Oriental, and she was barely a hundred and fifty-two centimeters tall. Fifty kilos, tight, hips a bit wider than she would like, breasts small and mostly formed from underlying pectoral muscle. Her arms were developed enough so that the veins showed in her biceps, and she figured her body fat was maybe nine or ten percent. “Sthenic,” that’s what her ex-lover the medic had called her. He said it meant “healthy-looking,” and she could live with that.

  Yep, and a good; healthy, sweaty body it was now. Her own smell overcame the barn-straw scent of the dressing room. Best she get cleaned up and into fresh silks before her first kendo class arrived. Sensei Wu needed to look neat for the paying customers. During the dance, she was other, but now, she was simply Kildee Wu, a woman who needed a shower.

  Bligh fell and the swordsman dashed past her toward Sleel. At the port, he hadn’t been working; here, he had a job to do, a client to protect, and he didn’t fuck around t
his time. He pointed his left spetsdod at the running man-better angle on that side-and snapped off two shots.

  One dart for each eye.

  The guy could have been wearing lenses; that was possible, given how prepared the woman at the port had been. But even so, he’d damn well have to blink when the darts got there; that was reflexive, and it would take a hell of a lot of specific training to get around that one. At the very least it was going to slow him down considerably.

  The swordsman screamed. He jerked his arms up over his face, still maintaining his grip on the black sword, then collapsed as the trank took him. He slid two meters to an unconscious halt.

  Well. Not wearing lenses, Sleel saw.

  They could grow him new eyes, assuming he lived that long. Probably not gonna happen, given how the other sword players had been rigged to self-destruct. Too bad.

  Sleel moved toward the door, alert for another attacker, but saw none. Somehow that figured.

  The matador squatted next to the fallen cool. The floor was awash in blood, the big artery still spewing it out, but slowing the flow as the heart finished the last of it. A few liters of it went a long way when spilled on the floor like that.

  “Com the medics,” Sleel said to Reason.

  Sleel used first aid, putting direct pressure on the throbbing wound, but it was gonna take more than he had to bring her back. If the medical team got here fast enough, they could revive her and stave off the brain damage.

  Abruptly the bleeding stopped. Shit. There went the pump.

  “And call your vouch,” Reason said.

  A box the size and shape of a squashed suitcase appeared in the hallway and rolled quickly to where the wounded policewoman lay. The vouch extruded needles and lines and plugged itself into the woman, piercing her armor easily. It began humming loudly as it diagnosed the condition-massive blood loss and shock and cutting trauma to the neck-and began pumping oxygenated plasmoids and coagulants into Bligh. Another line stabbed into the windpipe and began ventilation, while a small pump cycled the administered fluids through the circulatory system. A jointed arm with a surgical stapler began working on the sword damage, first rejoining the cut carotid artery portions and some of the other larger vessels with biostat glue.

  Nice toy, the vouch. Expensive, but handy. Sleet’ moved back and allowed the machine to work. If the assassin were still alive when the vouch got done with the woman, it would plug him and see could it stop the effects of his suicide device, but Sleel didn’t give that much hope. These people were careful, whoever they were, and it didn’t seem likely they’d leave somebody around to question. That was too bad, too.

  “Let’s go,” Sleel said.

  “Go? Where?” Reason asked.

  “Away from here. A medical team is gonna be fanning in shortly and a lot of people will be running around. Be easy to sneak somebody who didn’t belong in with them. Put spraywhites on somebody, he looks like a medic.”

  “But-but

  “We’ll leave the gate open. There’s nothing here worth dying for, is there?”

  “Hardly.”

  Sleel paused long enough to check the swordsman, who was still breathing. The man wore a handsized electronic device on his belt, and a smaller one stuck to his right boot top. Sleel didn’t recognize the models, but he knew what the things were: confounders, electronic scramblers, and unless he were very much mistaken, real good ones. Sleel would bet a year’s salary that the guy had come in hidden somewhere in Bligh’s flitter. The luggage compartment, maybe, or wedged under it somehow, between the fans. The security comp had spotted him, sure enough, but not until he’d gotten to the front door-which Sleel had opened to let Bligh leave. Must have tapped into the com when Bligh had called and figured she would be allowed past the gate without too much trouble. Not bad.

  The matador picked up the sword. Nice weapon, good balance to it. He touched the edge with one thumb, rubbing lightly across the edge and not lengthways, the way you were supposed to so you didn’t cut yourself. The sword was sharp enough, though he knew little about such things. They weren’t something you came up against very often in a high-tech society. Maybe in the Musashi Flex, where honor counted big, but not on the street where survival was more important. He nodded at Reason. “Let’s move.” He kept the sword as he led his client out toward the flitter.

  Getting old, Sleel. You almost blew it. What would the other matadors say? They’d never let you live it down, they heard about this. Sloppy, real sloppy.

  For a moment, as he and Reason lifted in their flitter, he thought about calling his old comrades. Bork would be through with his honeymoon by now, he and Veate. Dirisha and Geneva were probably looking for something interesting to do and this was sure as shit interesting.

  But-no. He didn’t want to run crying for help every time he stubbed his toe a little. Best if he figured out what was what first. No point in calling in the troops if it was something he could take care of on his own, was there? A few geeps with swords, how would that look? Man, he could almost Bear Dirisha telling Geneva: Hey, brat, poor decrepit senile old Sleel needs somebody to help him cross the street so he don’t get run over by some kid in his daddy’s flitter. We’d better go and hold his hand, you think?

  No, definitely not. Emile had taken on a planet’s army by himself, and the matadors had knocked the entire Confed on its ass. Sleel could surely keep one old thief alive, couldn’t he?

  Damned right he could.

  Hoja Cierto was most unhappy when Carlotta reported Pedro’s failure. Four of his students had died trying to erase the final blot on the family name. True, they had done so with honor, but failure was failure, and now the old thief had but that much more to answer for.

  Lying naked upon his bed, Cierto considered the ceiling of his room. He would spend all of his students if need be, but it seemed such a waste of his training to have them stopped. And according to Carlotta’s report, the condemned man had gotten himself a bodyguard, one of the matadors of whom so much had been spoken. Cierto had never dealt with these matadors directly, but he knew that some of them had walked the Flex before they learned sumito, taught by the Siblings of the Shroud. Some of them had been ranked quite high, if the stories could be believed, and the fighting art of shrouded priests was second to none when it came to bare hands. Two of the projectiles Cierto had fired had been stopped by this matador, and so he was responsible for their deaths, even though it had been the brainchoke that had actually killed them.

  Cierto grinned. In the Old Language, “matador” did not mean “bodyguard. ” It meant “killer. ” On Earth, these men had faced beasts in the ring and slain them with swords.

  He sat up, the muscles of his belly tightening as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Well. We shall see how this matador fares against a beast who also carries a sword. One who is without peer using his weapon.

  The thought of such a battle aroused him. He touched a button on the bedside com.

  “Juanita?”

  “Si, Patron?”

  “Come to my room. I have something for you.”

  The young woman’s voice trembled slightly. “At once, Patron. “

  Cierto smiled, hearing the touch of fear in her. There were swords, then there were swords, and a man must be adept in using both kinds, no? Cierto usually preferred his sheath to be the tightest of the three a woman had to offer, but this time he felt potent enough want to use them all when Juanita arrived. And he certainly intended to do so.

  Chapter FOUR

  ABOARD THE STARLINER Pachelbel, Sleel and Jersey Reason enjoyed the comforts of a first-class suite. The ship, completed after the fall of the Confed, was state-of-the-art interstellar travel, a luxury boat for those with stads to burn; it was like being in a resort town that could fly.

  “How much are you worth, anyway?” Sleel asked.

  They were in one of the restaurants, where the price of a single meal could easily equal a month’s rent for a middleclass family. They were both en
joying the special of the day, Green Moon beef. Reason sipped at an expensive blue wine, Mtuan Azure; Sleel, working, didn’t usually do strong chem; instead, he drank splash, as mild as beer. The smell of the meat was rich, the taste exquisite, and Sleel savored the texture and flavor.

  “I could scrape up perhaps a hundred million standards,” Reason said. “Depending on property values around the galaxy at any given time.”

  Sleel nodded, chewing on a mouthful of the steak. Big money didn’t impress him.

  “So, where to?” Reason asked. “I assume you have something more specific in mind than the entire Bibi Arusi System?” Yep. ,

  “And I must say I was somewhat surprised that you booked passage for us under our own names.”

  Sleel swallowed the steak and grinned. “No, you weren’t.”

  Reason tilted his head slightly to one side. “Oh’?”

  Sleel leaned back in his chair, automatically scanning the dining room again. He had done so a dozen times during the meal and now as then, there was no apparent threat. None of the waiters had offered to cut Sleel’s steak for him with a black sword. “You didn’t get to be the best thief in the galaxy by being stupid. And you didn’t stay out of Confed jails for more than half a century by accident. I think maybe you’re being a bit disingenuous here, old man.”

  Reason chuckled. “Why, Sleel. Where’d you learn a word like that?”

  Sleel said, “Where’s the best place to hide something?”

  Reason didn’t ponder that one. “Where nobody will think of looking. I didn’t know you were a fan of Poe.”

  “Mostly the poetry,” Sleel said. “But I liked `The Purloined Letter.’ Emile made us read it. Where’s the next best place?”

  “Where they know where it is but can’t get to it.”

  “What I figure,” Sleel said. “Now, we can hide where nobody will ever find us, but that limits things.

  You’ll always be looking over your shoulder.”

  “I am anyway.”

  “Maybe, but you’ve managed to stay ahead of the game until now. First we take care of the guys with swords, then we worry about other stuff.”