Black Steel

by Steve Perry

  Uncle Sleel. Gods. What a strange thought.

  “I’m happy for you, Bork.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’ve changed, Sleel.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get her out.”

  “Yeah. “

  Wu rubbed at her sore wrists as she paced back and forth in the gym. Cierto had given her a set of workout clothes, blue cotton shirt and pants, and she felt considerably less vulnerable dressed. He was allowing her to exercise, he said, because he wanted her to stay in good shape. The gym had been stripped of possible weapons, however, even wooden practice swords. That was smart on his part.

  Thinking that she would bear him a child was, on the other hand, pretty stupid. She would kill herself first, and despite whatever medical miracles he might have stashed away, she was pretty sure she could manage it. Master Ven had left his body intentionally, so it could be done. She was pretty sure that if she could move far enough into the Void without making any effort to return, she could shut things down permanently. It would not be her first choice to remedy this situation, but it was there as an option.

  So. Given that, what else could she do? She could pretend to give in to him, so that he might get careless that way. If while in the middle of rape her hands were free, she could hurt or maybe kill him. A sword was only an extension of one’s own body, after all. Allowing Cierto to think he was enjoying even a moment’s pleasure with her, however, had only slightly more appeal than killing herself.

  She could fight directly when he or whoever he sent came to fetch her after her exercise, but that was probably futile in the extreme. If the place wasn’t wired for zap, surely her guards would be armed. They could just dart her again and she’d wake up naked and bound again. No, better to stay conscious as much as possible.

  None of her solutions so far sounded particularly appealing. Maybe time could give her some other ideas. She hoped so.

  Cierto watched her go through a series of warm-ups, the four cameras giving him views of her from that many angles. He had chosen well, he knew. That she had managed to thwart his first assault on her was, in the abstract, admirable. Very clever, the mother of his son-to-be. She had determined what would be the most frustrating for him in the small time before he had entered her body and done it. Once the anger of the moment passed, he had laughed at himself. You did not want it to be too easy, and she is certainly a worthwhile opponent. So much the better. When she is finally brought to heel, it will be that much sweeter.

  Yes. Here was a game worth playing, after so long a time of lesser pursuits. She would fight him, but in the end, she would lose. It was only a matter of time. Once she was pregnant, it would become even more complex.

  The four holoprojic versions of Kildee Wu danced athletically before him. Such a woman.

  He leaned back in his form-chair and sighed deeply. Such a woman.

  Dirisha and Geneva hugged Sleel in a long embrace. Like him and Bork, they also wore civilian clothes.

  He felt warmth fill him. After what seemed a long time, the two women stood away.

  “Okay, down to biz,” Dirisha said. “Here’s what we have. Computer on.”

  The air danced with the images Dirisha called forth from the computer, and she and Geneva took turns pointing out the information for Sleel.

  “That’s the main house,” Dirisha said. “Our overfly was in a commercial liner so we wouldn’t spook him. Here’s the enhancement …”

  Sleel watched the pictures and numbers flow past, letting it all sink in and be absorbed. He would view it again, as many times as needed until it became a part of him, memorized to the last detail. For just a moment, the old arrogance flared within him. This Cierto had made a bad mistake. He didn’t know who he was fucking with.

  The arrogance melted under the memory of Jersey Reason’s head bouncing against his leg. But Sleel’s determination remained solid. That was a lifetime ago; he had been another man then, a lesser man. Now he was more. And now he wasn’t alone.

  Hang on, Kee. We’re coming for you.

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  KILDEE WU LAY naked upon Cierto’s bed once again, face up. Cierto did not mind that his students saw her that way, and he gestured at her. “Turn her over,” he said.

  The two hurried to obey.

  “Put a pillow under her hips.”

  They did so.

  “Activate the pressor as you leave.”

  The field reached out and gently caught the nude woman’s wrists and ankles, and spread them so that she formed an “X” facedown upon the bed. She moaned softly, still unconscious.

  “We will see how strong your resolve is this time,” Cierto said.

  Sleel considered all the material he had seen and read and the reports from the others. They had all taken elementary precautions, arriving on Rift under false names and registering at different times at different hotels. It was almost impossible that Cierto would or could visually inspect every person who came and went on an entire planet, but even if he did , Bork, Dirisha, Geneva and Sleel had been skinmasked as they arrived, and not wearing their matador gear. So Cierto probably didn’t know they were here. They would proceed as if that were the case.

  As he lay on the bed in his room, mulling it all around in his mind, he thought about what Dirisha had said earlier. “I’ll call it if you want, but I think you ought to do this one.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “You know the players better.”

  “That’s the only reason?”

  There was a pause. “You need to do this. I dunno why exactly, but that’s what it feels like.”

  Sleel chewed at his lip. He didn’t want to risk Kee’s life, he didn’t want anything to go wrong, but Dirisha was pretty good when it came to intuition. He’d trusted her too many times not to believe that.

  Then again, if he fucked it up …

  “All right,” he said. He would take the responsibility.

  That had been the choice and he had made it. He hoped to hell it hadn’t been the biggest mistake of his life.

  Wu awoke. She realized where she was, that she was naked and bound again, her face pressing into the silk-covered cushion, a softer pillow lifting her hips away from the bed. She heard Cierto chuckle behind her. “Awake again?” he said.

  Before he could say or do anything else, however, she went back into the Void. If he would play, then he would do it without her.

  Cierto stormed into his office. There was a sculpture of a Yuzmekian water ballet on the bookcase next to the door, a lacy thing carved from green crystal from Rangi ya majani Mwezi, the Green Moon in Bibi Arusi. A dozen swimmers seemed to float in the air, held up by nearly invisible strands of the crystal. It had cost a quarter of a million standards and had been a bargain at that price.

  Cierto swept his right arm hand in a semicircle and smashed the edge of his hand into the delicate artwork. The rare crystal shattered into thousands of pieces.

  He screamed wordlessly. Damn that woman! He would have killed her a dozen times were she not dedicated to bearing his son!

  And yet, even in his anger, the Master of the House of Black Steel found a glimmer of admiration for her. In her position, how well would he have fared compared to how she had done?

  He sighed and allowed much of his anger to escape with the used air. Time was on his side, was it not?

  He had more than nine months to break her, and break her he would.

  And after that, she would die.

  For three days Sleel and the others studied the material, posed hypothetical solutions and problems to be solved, and worked their way toward the path they would take. Sleel directed the operation.

  “Once more,” Sleel said. “Communications?”

  Bork said, “Scanners on the four main open channels. A com-ferret set to catch the three coded opchans; we’ve already broken those scramble codes, they’re in the comp. He’s got two hardwired voice-only lines buried under the ground and both are
tapped. If he talks to anybody outside, electronically or vocally, we got him.”

  “Transportation?”

  Geneva said, “He has forty-six registered vehicles, twenty-five of which are stationed at his compound permanently. Sixteen six-passenger flitters, four ten-passenger hoppers, two orbital boxcars, two airbikes and one medical transport, a four-passenger full-ride ambulance. Repairs are done in the compound in his own shop, but repellor harmonic standards inspection must be done yearly at official stations. One of the hoppers and two of the flitters are due to be inspected this month. We have the location outside the compound where the inspections are normally made.”

  “Defenses?”

  Dirisha’s turn. “The estate’s perimeter fence is electric, four meters tall, and buried two more meters under the ground. Motion sensors set for human-sized masses every fifth post. It’s a big fence, so that’s not cheap.

  “Inside the estate the main buildings are surrounded by another fence, come-see-me zap-rigged, also with sensors. All gates in both fences are manned with human guards backed by deadman dins set to scream and start shooting if the live guard doesn’t deactivate them within ten seconds of the gate’s opening.”

  Sleel said. “We have the codes for the dins yet?”

  “No.”

  “Go on.”

  “They’ve got doppler spikes for unwanted air traffic, automatic shoot-down if the vehicle doesn’t put out the right pulse. Computer, hologram six.”

  The holoproj flowered with an overhead view of the estate. Dirisha pulled a transponder from her belt and pointed it at the map. “Perimeter missile silos are here, here and here.” The pulsing red dot from her transponder lit on the map and caused little purple rockets to strobe to life where she pointed. “There are also four launchers in the inner compound, here, here, here … and here.”

  Sleel and the others nodded.

  Dirisha continued. “The main house is protected by door zappers, carbonex doors and full-frame bolts. Windows are class-two denscris where they are externally exposed, except in one place. The walls are ferroconcrete with internal overlapping plates. Computer, hologram eight.”

  The image altered, fading from that of the estate into an overhead schematic of the main building of the compound. There was a central courtyard, an octagonal design completely surrounded by the house itself. “The windows facing into the courtyard aren’t armored; however, there is a rollover roof that can be electrically motored into place to cover the courtyard, from bad weather or attack. The roof is carbonex with denscris skylights. “

  Sleel looked at the holoproj, then at Dirisha. “So if he hears us coming, he can bottle himself up real tight.”

  “Like an Aquanian turtle inside its shell. It would take heavy military hardware to dig him out.”

  And if they threw that kind of weaponry at him, even if they had it, it could easily kill everybody inside.

  “Power supplies?”

  Bork said, “He’s on the ‘cast, plus he’s got three backup generators, one for the exterior fence, one for the interior fence, one for the house. Missiles and such are all selfpowered. You want to see the holo?”

  “No, I remember where they are.”

  So, that was the layout. The bottom drill was plain. They either went in quiet, so nobody noticed them until it was too later, or they didn’t go in at all. Simple.

  Well. Easy to say, anyway. But Sleel had an idea; it had flown with Dirisha, and it could work. More, there was a certain amount of irony in it, given that it was only a slight variation on the way that Cierto had come at Sleel when Jersey Reason had been killed.

  “All right,” Sleel said. “We go with my idea for the alpha. The beta will be what Bork suggested yesterday. Let’s lay out some grids and timings. Give me the interior of the house.”

  Cierto was calling his art supplier to arrange for a replacement for the sculpture he had shattered.

  Something grander, he thought. And more expensive.

  A priority beep interrupted the call. Cierto discommed the art dealer.

  “Yes?”

  It was one of the men who had been working on Koji to set up Wu’s abduction, but not the head spy.

  “Patron,” the man said.

  “Where is Verdimez?”

  “Dead, Patron. Killed in the attack on the matador.”

  Cierto shrugged. So? “Why are you calling me?”

  “The assassination of the matador apparently did not go exactly as planned. We have only just learned of this.”

  Cierto sat up straighter. “Meaning what?”

  “Verdimez and the other three are all dead, Patron. But the matador, he-of him there is no sign.”

  “What? You mean he got away?”

  “I cannot say for certain. Only that his body was not among those the local police found with Verdimez and his team.”

  “Perhaps you think one of the neighbors came out and stole the matador’s corpse, eh? To use as a garden decoration? Or a conversation piece for company!”

  “Patron-”

  “Idiot! Find him!” Cierto broke the connection.

  Damn. It seemed as if the matador had a charmed life. Cierto would have thought him dead at least three times since they had met and yet, somehow, he had survived.

  He called up the file on the matador. There, there was a good view of him. Cierto put in a com to the Chief of the Planetary Police, an official securely in his pocket.

  “Ah, Patron. How may I assist you?”

  “Chief. I am told that an offworld assassin has been hired to kill me. I am hardly worried, but it would probably be wise for an alert for this man to be issued via the Planetary Police force immediately. “

  Cierto touched a control and sent the hologram to the official’s computer. “If he makes planetfall, have the port cools detain him. He is to be considered armed, and deadly force is authorized against him.”

  “Immediately, Patron,” the Chief said.

  Cierto sundered the connection and leaned back in his chair. Though the machineries within hummed and tried to soothe him, they did not manage it. This matador was suffused with luck, and such a thing was sometimes better than skill. Perhaps he had been gravely wounded on Koji and had crawled away somewhere to die unseen. Or perhaps he had recognized his mortal danger even if unhurt and fled, knowing he could not prevail against an opponent such as he faced.

  Or, perhaps he was at this very moment on his way to assassinate the head of the House of Black Steel as Cierto had told the Chief of the Planetary Police. Worse, perhaps Cierto had underestimated this man.

  Such mistakes could be fatal, and best if he took steps to correct himself. If this matador showed up knocking at his door, he would soon regret it.

  Cierto smiled. Another contest, eh? Break the woman and kill her tame matador, two chores instead of the one. Both had proven more formidable than he had expected, but that was fine with him. Better a valiant enemy than not. Victory was much sweeter when the contest required that a man work for it.

  This victory would be like nectar of the gods to him, the culmination of a life already steeped in winning. A touch of bitterness in that thought. What would a man do for an encore? A question to disturb one, to be sure.

  Ah, well. Something would occur to him. It always had.

  Geneva said, “Sleel?”

  Sleel looked away from the house plans he was studying.

  “Looks like Cierto figured out you aren’t dead. He’s called the local cools and put out an alert for you. Look here.”

  Steel glanced at the holoproj over her station.

  “Nice picture, Sleel,” Bork said from behind him.

  Sleel shrugged. “They don’t know I’m here yet for sure. I’ll stay skinmasked.”

  “Might make things a little harder. He’ll be sharper,” Dirisha said.

  “So the impossible takes us a little longer,” Geneva said. “Right, Sleel?”

  “Right,” Sleel said. But he felt that cold pit-of-the-sto
mach rush he got in free-fall. Kee was what was important here. Not Cierto. “Let’s keep working, folks. We don’t know how much time we have to get this right and-”

  Geneva waved Sleel to silence. After a moment of watching her computer and listening to something coming in through her earpiece, she grinned tightly. “That was the transportation chief in Cierto’s compound. They’re bringing one of the hoppers to the inspection station tomorrow for the repellor check. Tomorrow morning.”

  Sleel felt his breath catch in his throat, and the coldness in his belly turned to liquid helium. Well. Now they knew how much time they had to get ready.

  Until tomorrow morning.

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE VEHICLE INSPECTION Station was in Riftville, the small town bordering Cierto’s estate to the southeast. The place was little more than an open-ended and squarish box full of harmonic scanners and calibration gear. It was in the warehouse district that made up nearly half the town.

  The building was set back off the road in a large empty patch of paint-lined plastcrete, and there were three lanes leading into the front of the station, all of which also exited from the back. It was fairly busy, with two of the lanes crowded nose-to-tail with maybe eighteen or twenty flitters and a hopper or two; the third lane was blocked by red flashers.

  The appearance of Cierto’s vehicles here was, as Geneva explained, merely pro forma.

  Geneva and Sleel sat in one rental flitter, Bork and Dirisha in the other, both parked so they could watch the inspection station. The blonde said, “Nobody would be so stupid as to offend the richest man on the planet by denying him the codes that say his equipment meets the standards. His mechanics are probably the best for a thousand klicks anyhow, and their equipment is at least as good as anything the government has. What happens is, one of Cierto’s drivers brings the flitter or hopper in, one of the inspectors smiles and puts the current magnetic number on the inspection strip. If any of the local enforcement people-a traffic cool or truck regulator-happens to be stupid enough to stop and pull the codes from something registered to Cierto, then it will be found to be in compliance. It wouldn’t matter if half the dogs in the city howled their lungs out or the thing shattered windows every time it went by, it would be officially covered.”