by Victor Milán
Cassie stifled a groan. It was the person on Luthien she least wanted to catch her right now.
"Excuse me a minute," she said to Tchang. She turned and walked over to where Kali MacDougall, dressed all in black again, was propping up a wall.
"Hi, Kali."
"You sound like a schoolgirl who got caught wiring plastic explosives under the math teacher's chair. Not feeling guilty, are you?"
"Guilty? Why guilty? You know I never feel guilty, I—"
"And the only time you run off at the mouth is when you're nervous. You aren't thinking of turning Mr. Tall, Dark, and Charismatic over there down, are you?"
"Well—"
"Leaving aside the fact that it'll make Vanity want to kill you, since by the looks of her she wants that already, you will turn the females of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment into a raving lynch mob. If you go out with Johnny Tchang you'll make everybody jealous. If you don't it'll make everybody just outright hate you. Everybody—even the guys—will get a major vicarious charge out of Johnny taking one of us on a date."
"Why don't you go out with him, then?"
"Because he didn't ask me, doll. Look, Cass, it's up to you, as always. But the boy seems to like you, he's not hard to look at, and there's at least a measurable chance he's not too stupid to live, even if he is an actor. Besides, you're just spinning your wheels on this yak-war thing right now. If it were me I'd quit pushing so hard and live."
Cassie sighed. "All right." She walked to where the actor stood waiting with his hands in his pockets.
"Thank you, Mr. Tchang," she said. "I'd love to take you up on your offer. Shall we?"
She half-turned, stuck her elbow out from the side. After a momentary hesitation Johnny Tchang grinned and slipped his hand through.
The watching Caballeros applauded. The two sewanuki took up vee-formation behind the pair.
As they strolled arm in arm through the front door, Cassie said from the side of her mouth, "One condition."
"What's that?" Johnny asked, equally discreet.
"We lose the leg-breakers."
"You think we can?"
"If you're up for it," she said, "I know we can." He grinned.
* * *
"Somehow I feel like I know you very well already," Johnny Tchang said, pouring red wine from a green bottle. The restaurant was small, dim, and crowded. Conversation was muted. The tablecloths were checked, red on white.
Cassie stiffened. "Why do you say that?"
"No offense, Lieutenant," he said, setting the bottle down and taking a chunk of bread from a basket. "It's just, somehow I can't see too many people taking me to dinner dead in the middle of Impy City and winding up in an Italian restaurant."
She shrugged. "Actually, there are quite a few scattered around. Italian food's popular on the Pearl." She shrugged at the mystery of it all.
He laughed in appreciation. "So. How'd I do at giving my friendly escorts the slip?"
She broke off a chunk of bread, began to gnaw at it. "You followed my lead pretty smooth. Maybe playing all those spies and secret agents, something's rubbed off."
"So would you say I'm streetwise yet?"
"Let's just say you're a hell of an actor, Mr. Tchang."
He laughed. "Johnny. Please."
"Only if you lose the 'lieutenant' stuff. My rank isn't who I am. Call me Cassie."
He nodded. Their meals arrived, his spaghetti primavera and her linguine with chunks of native pelagic arthropods in white sauce. He sampled his, smiled big, and dug in. She did likewise.
As they ate they talked. Tchang told stories of his experience making adventure vids. He was as passionate about movies as was Lainie's new boyfriend, and displayed a surprisingly broad knowledge of all phases of holovid production. His ambition, like Migaki's, was to take off one day and form his own independent company. He had a light, easy touch, good timing, and a way of keeping himself off center stage. Despite herself, Cassie found herself enjoying his company. Almost she managed to relax. Almost.
The other patrons kept shooting them discreet side-glances. Nobody's gaze lingered long enough to trip any of Cassie's internal alarms. And she could understand the scrutiny. Even if her escort wasn't recognized, he was a strikingly handsome man. And she had not dressed to hide her appearance tonight. She wore a form-fitting black top, long-sleeved, with cutouts that left both shoulders bare. Her trousers were a black synthetic that looked and felt exactly like the finest Capellan silk but resisted dirt and tearing even better than Drac trichloropolyester. The trousers were baggy in the leg and snug in the rump, and had slashes running hip-to-knee down the sides, baring flashes of smooth brown hide as she walked. She looked like a beautiful woman of Bohemian propensity out for an evening on the town. She was a sultry whisper to Vanity's shout.
What the other diners—and presumably Johnny Tchang—did not know was that the openings at shoulder and thigh could be sealed with invisible clingstrips, turning the ensemble into a serviceable nighttime snoop-and-poop rig. The outside slits on the leg were matched by slashes running down the inside, currently sealed, which provided her quick access to Blood-drinker strapped to her right thigh and to her snubby hideout revolver on her left.
As they finished their pasta, a plump Upper Middle Class type in tie, coat, and trousers, came bowing up. "Please excuse the intrusion by this unworthy one, but would you happen to be Johnny Tchang?"
Johnny flashed his grin. "You got me dead to rights," he said, evoking a brief look of consternation from the questioner. It went away soon enough when he agreed to autograph a paper napkin.
In moments they were surrounded by a crowd, jostling, shouting, thrusting forward objects for the superstar's signature.
* * *
"You have a direct approach, Cassie," Johnny remarked as they walked down a side street at the fringes of Imperial City's central district, where the black teak and marble were giving way to less somber facing materials. The street was still dark; the only illumination came from sporadic purplish mercury-vapor streetlights and Tsu Shima, the planet's innermost moon, bluish-white and three-quarters full. The shops were hidden away behind armored shutters. The street was full of smelly steam from the underground mass-transit system. Few pedestrians were abroad in the area, shutdown as it was, and fewer vehicles. Private car ownership was comparatively rare in the Combine, and more so here on tradition-minded Luthien than on Hachiman. "Triggering the sprinkler system was a pretty abrupt way to spring us from that mob scene back at Lo Scalo."
"I guess I'm what they call result-oriented," Cassie said. "Goes with being a scout."
The man glanced down at her. She wore a bulky jacket against the cool of the late-spring night. She was holding her flowers as though they were a pet bunny somebody had given her as a birthday gift. He thought it was a charming counterpoint to her subdued air of tough competence.
"Sometimes it's not exactly real easy to tell when you're joking, either," he said.
"I'm not to everybody's taste."
"You are to mine, if you don't mind my saying so."
She shrugged. For a space they walked in silence. The actor had expressed a desire to get a look at some of Luthien's steamier night-life—from the outside, he hastened to assure her. His Voice of the Dragon handlers had carefully steered him away from anything that might reflect badly on the Combine in gaijin eyes—which his were, despite their distinct Chinese epicanthic folds. Cassie was taking him by a shortcut she knew.
"So tell me something, if you don't mind," he said. "Why did you agree to fight me? You didn't strike me as the sort to fight for fun then, and you don't now. I thought you were going to refuse. Not that I'd've blamed you."
"I was about to. Then you patronized me."
"Patronized you? When did I do that?"
"You said it wouldn't be a fair fight—a man against a mere woman."
"No, I never said that. Be honest."
"You did say it wouldn't be a fair fight."
"I said that and nothing else.
I was about to say it would be hard to make up for my greater weight and reach. But somebody didn't let me."
She looked up under her brows. "So it's my fault."
"No. It was our misunderstanding."
"You're glib."
"I'm an actor. I've been taught to be smooth, and maybe that's not always a good thing. But 'smooth' doesn't mean 'insincere,' not always." He looked at her. "I'm sorry we had a misunderstanding."
She had her head ducked down farther inside the jacket collar. It'd be real easy to blame Vanity, she was telling herself. But I'm afraid I was all ready to take offense.
"Me too," she said softly.
"You have a different perspective on the martial arts than I do," he said. "I mean, my whole life's been devoted to them. I was the son of a famous Capellan martial artist, and I was given over to the Ducal Opera Theatre Company of Sian for training when I was four." The brand of classical Chinese opera that the Ducal Theatre Company had made famous throughout the Inner Sphere combined musical theater with martial arts and acrobatics.
"So I've done this a long time. It hasn't been exactly easy. You know what training's like with the Ducal Company, and I do all my own stunts. I've always tried to keep as much realism as possible in my fight scenes, even the really gymnastic or slapstick ones. But despite the danger and the injuries—the broken back, the plate in my skull, that's one aspect of my life the tabloids haven't exaggerated— I've actually led a very sheltered life." He spread his hands.
"Which means I haven't had call to do much actual fighting."
"That might be about to change," Cassie said.
She spoke so quietly that he did a double-take at her before looking down the street to see three men approaching, spreading out across the sidewalk to keep them from slipping by. A glance over his shoulder showed three more approaching from behind.
Cassie had stopped and taken a step away from the actor's side. Her hand was in the right pocket of her jacket— before setting fire to a menu right under Lo Scalo's smoke sensor, she'd palmed her snubby and slipped it unseen into the holster sewn into the pocket. She would draw the piece only in emergency. On Luthien even the yakuza used firearms only on particularly serious occasions. Strewing the sidewalks with bullet-riddled corpses might attract ISF interest, and despite her past association with the Dragon's Breath, not to mention its sinister Assistant Director Ninyu Kerai, she didn't really want the ISF looking at her.
"Evening, lady, gentleman," said the man in the middle of the street, approaching them most directly. He was about midway between Cassie's and Johnny's height, with a moon face, pronounced charcoal-smudge eyebrows over black Asian eyes, well-mashed nose, full lips, and neat beard. He wore a light gray sports jacket with pale blue pinstriping, like a mattress cover, whose padded shoulders—and the body armor possibly concealed beneath—bulked out his already sizable torso to the point of caricature. His shirt and trousers were black, his tie white silk that appeared self-luminous in the moonlight. His legs were bowed and so skinny and short he looked to've borrowed them from somebody else. His shoes were two-tone Oxfords with dagger tips. It was classic zaki, gangster bad taste. His companions were dressed with similar discrimination. "Do you enjoy our lovely neighborhood?"
"It's real nice," Johnny Tchang said. Cassie kept quiet.
"It is of course customary to bring gifts for your host when you visit someone's home," the barrel-bodied man said. He held out his hands. "These streets are our home."
By this time the six had come up to form a ring around Cassie and Johnny, who stood almost back to back. "We're guests of the Coordinator," the actor said. Cassie winced.
"Then you can afford to be real generous," said one of the men who had come up behind them, a tall, thin mugger with a face like something hacked out of a log by untalented tiki-makers and eyes like slits in ping-pong balls.
"Yes," Cassie said in Japanese. "May the kami bring you good fortune. Now get out of our way."
Moon Boy took a slap at her. She sat down beneath the blow. Johnny Tchang hopped lightly in the air, brought his straightened right leg up and around pretty and flowing as a stroke from a calligrapher's brush, and axed the fat mugger behind the ear with the heel. The yak fell down.
Cassie sensed Tiki Face rushing her from behind. Without even looking she fell forward, caught herself on her arms, and swept his right foot out from under him. As he landed with a thump and muffled outcry, she did a forward roll into the man charging from her right, passing him to his right and gifting him with a roundhouse kick in the solar plexus as she rolled by. He folded like a cheap jackknife. She jumped up and dropped a serious elbow to his kidneys. He screamed and dropped to his knees.
She gave him a hammerfist to the nape that put him on his face, moaning, turned to see Johnny block a left-right combination from the thug who'd come up to their left, then just sort of walked a series of triphammer wing chun punches up the front of him, ending with a shot that squashed his nose like a tomato. The goon stumbled back squalling like a cat with a stomped-on tail.
Tiki Face had gotten up. Cassie glided forward to engage him. The remaining two behind them grabbed Johnny by the arms. Moon Boy clambered to his feet, shaking his head. Roaring with ursine wrath he slammed two punches into Johnny's gut.
Johnny kicked him in the crotch. As he clutched himself the actor planted his feet against his paunch, then ran up the front of the barrel-shaped man, culminating in a backward somersault that brought Johnny behind the men who still held his arms. He slammed their faces together and threw them at the fat man.
Tiki Face feinted two jabs for Cassie's nose. She bobbed out of the way. He front-kicked for her belly. She grabbed his foot, began to twist it to the outside. He jumped, rolled in the direction of the twist, bringing his other foot around in a scissors-kick for her temple. Cued by his shift in body weight, she leaned back out of harm's way. Momentum spun him face downward. She slid a hand up his calf and levered him face-first into the cracked blacktop.
Moon Boy bellowed and shoved his two underlings back at Johnny. As much by luck as anything else they grappled his arms again. Moon Boy's ham hand dove into his mattress-cover sports coat and came out with a big shiny black autopistol.
Unfortunately for him that move was of a nature to catch Cassie's eye if it happened anywhere in her field of view, which thanks to naturally generous peripheral vision and her guru's training, was upwards of two hundred degrees. She had her snubby out and thrust forward into an arms-locked isosceles stance before his bigger piece cleared his shoulder rig.
"Johnny—down!" she screamed. To his credit the actor went utterly limp without hesitation, dragging his captors down with him.
Cassie fired twice. Her vision had shifted from soft-focus to pinpoint particularity; she saw two holes appear within a handspan of each other in that vast expanse of sportscoat. The autopistol blossomed fire. She heard no sound from the gunshot, but very clearly heard the crack of the bullet going past her ear at better than the speed of sound. She gave the mugger the last three right in his fat moon face, her own reports thunderously loud, the distinct slap-slap-slap of the impacts blending with the echoes from the buildings fronting the narrow street.
There came that special silence that falls after sudden gunplay, a silence such that it seems no sound will ever be heard again—which for the big-bodied guy in the sports coat was just about the size of it. From the ground Tiki Face kicked the hideout revolver from Cassie's hand. Big deal, she thought, it's empty. He jumped up with a tanto in his hand. She drew Blood-drinker, began to weave it and her live hand—as Guru Johann taught her to call the hand that didn't grip a weapon—sinuously before her.
She was back in soft focus. She sensed Johnny Tchang whomping on the two he'd been playing catch with, plus the man whose nose he'd punched concave—the thug Cassie had dropped with blows to nape and kidney was showing no sign of relinquishing his grip on the street. She was concentrating her attention on her own opponent, who was making quick
cobra-strike flicks of his knife at her face. She sensed that he wasn't even trying to feint so much as he was to get her hypnotized with the knife, fixated on its moon-glittering menace, so that he could score an attack with foot or empty hand.
He's good, she realized, and then he astonished her by saying, "I know you. You're the mercenary bitch. I'll teach you to interfere," in Cantonese.
The shock of having the language of her childhood streets thrown in her face froze Cassie for a microsecond. The tanto licked for her throat. She threw her weight back and dropped her head. The blade sliced across her chin.
Blood-drinker struck. Tiki Face screamed as the tip of its wavy blade skewered the back of his forearm, passing cleanly between radius and ulna.
But he was very good indeed. Even as his knife-arm was impaled, he flicked a spike-bladed stiletto hidden in a pen open in his left hand. He stabbed toward Cassie's belly. She pivoted into him. The triangular-sectioned spike sank into the side of her right buttock.
She yanked Blood-drinker free in a spray of gore and poked it through Tiki Face's throat. Then she put a foot in his belly and thrust him away from her.
She turned, Blood-drinker dripping in her hand, face sprayed with blood, the pen-stiletto jutting from behind the ball of her right hip-joint. Johnny had reduced the odds against him to two, and them visibly the worse for wear. When they saw Cassie stalking for them with her horrible-looking knife, they gathered up their wounded but still-breathing comrades and made it out of there.
Cassie made a beeline for the man she'd shot, who lay on his back with arms outflung and eyes staring like glass marbles out of the red ruin of his face. She tore open his jacket, began to rip at the silk shirt beneath with her kris. Johnny came up beside her, said, "Wait one." Then he pulled the stiletto out of her.
"Thanks," she said. "Give me a hand."
Johnny closed the stiletto, dropped it into the blazer pocket. He helped Cassie manhandle the dead man's bulk onto his side. She ripped open the clingstrips that held his vest shut, pulled the polymer armor panel away from his back. The skin beneath showed a couple of scars, but was all skin-colored.
