Black Steel (14 page)

What was important was that the blot from more than five decades past had been at last erased. True, there had been some cost. So many of his students gone to join their own ancestors. He would particularly miss Juanita; she had been a good fuck, and was learning how to be a great one.

The thought of her made him grow hard, a sensation at best mixed under the tight suit. He often became aroused after a duel. Ah, well. Dona would suffice. She had not yet learned to enjoy that which Cierto liked most, but she would submit. Teaching her to take pleasure from her pain would happen in time.

Besides, the galaxy was full of women. He would start a new class, bring in new students, and among them he would fine one or more who could be taught all that he required.

Ah, si. Life was sweet. Never more so than in the moments after one's life was risked and retained.

Smiling, Cierto walked through the trees.

Wu waited at the port. Although there were sections that were kept fairly secure, with guards of both human and electronic stripe, the area near the private boxcars was relatively easy to enter. A clip-badge stolen from a maintenance worker Wu bumped into was sufficient to get her past the unmanned gate; once she was inside the compound, no one seemed to take any particular notice of her. Her baggage, including her sword inside its security tube, was stacked neatly on a small cart and Wu pushed this along briskly, striving to appear as if she knew exactly where she was going.

Cierto's boxcar was parked in a row of similar orbital shuttles outside of a large repair hangar. Heat rose in waves from the plastcrete. Wu found a cooler spot in the shade of the hangar and moved into it. She began to go through her bag unpacking and repacking it. She had learned that people tended to leave you alone if you looked busy. It did not matter so much as to what you were busy doing, as long as you seemed occupied and intent. Cierto's boxcar was perhaps thirty meters away and being fueled and made ready to lift. Just as she suspected.

Her com chimed. Scanner.

"Yes?"

"Fem, there's been a new development. Happened between passes. "

Wu listened as he described the scene at the religious retreat deep within The Brambles. "At least four bodies, maybe others. None of 'em in a position where I can tell who they are, so I don't know if Cierto is one of them; there's a thunderstorm blocking my visuals. I can see with UV and US and doppler but I can't get the detail, even with the computer-augs. Nothing moving down there now."

Wu said, "No point in staying with it, Scanner. Whatever is done is done."

"You're at the port," he said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Officially, I have no idea why, but unofficially, good luck. "

"Thanks. Discom."

She took a deep breath. If Cierto lived, he would be coming here very soon. She reached for the plastic tube that held her sword. In theory, such tubes could not be opened without special tools and codes, and also in theory, to open one without these tools and codes would cause a transmission to the nearest spaceport security office. In fact, there were ways around such things and Wu knew these ways. Still, she would hold off until the last possible instant, to save herself the problems that came with flashing a bare sword in a restricted area.

The rain on his face brought Sleel back from the gray.

He blinked against the downpour and for a moment, didn't know where he was or what had happened to him. It came back with a jolt like a spear into his belly.

Jersey Reason's head lay on the ground next to him, the rain washing down on its half-closed eyes.

Sleel could barely move. The effort to roll onto his side was monumental, hardly worth it, but he knew if he did not do something, he was going to die. The left side of his body was a wreck. No hand no eye, not much of a knee.

A meter and a half away was the flitter. He had to get to it. His client was dead, there were others dead here, and if he couldn't get to the flitter, he would follow them wherever they were.

Lightning flashed and sizzled and the boom of thunder treaded immediately upon its heels. The light and sound jarred him. On his right side, Sleel began to millimeter himself along, digging into the wet ground with his elbow, pushing with his good foot. It hurt to move, to breathe, to exist, and it got worse. The gray returned for him, but Sleel fought it off. He had never felt such agony. Bloody ooze from his torn wrist ran with the rivulets of rain water. His shattered knee throbbed as if it were being pounded by a madman with a hammer. The water ran into his eye and he had to blink it away to see.

He managed half a meter. It took him an eon.

Another half a meter. Another eon.

The door to the flitter was open but the threshold was twenty centimeters above the mud. Sleel grabbed it and pulled. Managed to get one elbow hooked over the edge. The effort exhausted him. He stopped.

There was a vouch in the main building, but even if he could call it, it would never be able to get to him.

The thing was designed for smooth surfaces; it would surely bog down in the mire. Didn't matter. He couldn't call it anyway. But there was a medical kit in the flitter. Very basic, pressure patches and a few medications, but if he could get to it, it might be able to keep him alive long enough to get the flitter operative.

And then what?

Worry about that if you get that far, Sleel.

It took everything he had to stay conscious and drag himself into the flitter far enough to reach the aid kit. He opened the kit and turned it over, dumping its contents onto the flitter's floor. He pawed through the stuff, found a skinpopper of dorph, and pressed it against the artery in his neck. A flush of warmth came over him, dulling the pain so that it was nearly gone. A second popper full of stimulant against the blood vessel sharpened his thoughts and brought him back from the edge a little more. He used his teeth and good hand to peel and trigger patches for his eye, wrist and knee. The microprocessors in the patches were rudimentary, but enough for the stupecomp to know to seal the wounds properly and begin coagulating the blood that wasn't already doing it on its own.

He probably was going to die anyway, and this was as good as it was going to get. The flitter had a voxcontrol, and Sleel used it. "Door close, lift to eighty meters and hold," he said. The rain pounded on the flitter's roof as the vehicle obeyed, raising above the soaked hillside. He managed to achieve the seat.

If he began yelling for help on the the emergency band, somebody might get to him in time to keep him alive. He'd lost a lot of blood and he was in shock, but a full ride in a Healy could repair a lot of damage.

He'd lost limbs before and survived.

But if he called for help, the man with the black sword who had killed his client was probably going to get away. His client was dead, Sleel had failed, and staying alive didn't mean a whole lot, knowing that.

"Radar scan," Sleel said. "Aircraft within fifty klicks."

The flitter's computer gave him two.

"Identify aircraft."

Blip One, the computer told him, was a fertilizer truck from Sindano en route to Mkufu; Blip Two was a chem delivery van returning from Dhahabu to Pua. According to filed flight plans.

Sleel's chemmed brain considered this information, jumping back and forth rapidly under the influence of the stimulant. Mkufu was a work station in the middle of nowhere. Where was Pua? Ah, yes, he remembered, thirty or forty klicks outside of Bandari. Okay, he knew that. What did it mean?

Think, Sleel, think! If you had just killed somebody and also left several of your own dead, where would you go? Farther into the woods? Or would you want to get the hell away from here?

The port was at Bandari.

"Overtake Blip Two," Sleel said. "Full throttle."

The flitter accelerated enough to press Sleel back into the control seat.

The rendezvous was uneventful. The glider was able to match speeds with the slow-moving van, and Cierto glided right into the rear of the vehicle to a stand-up landing. The van was nearly empty, only a couple of barrels of the chem remaining, plus a few dry tanks being taken back to be refilled with liquids or gasses. He shed the glider, tossed it out of the van, and called to Dona.

"Put the van on autopilot," he said. "And come back here." He began to remove his suit. The border was more than an hour away, plenty of time to exhaust himself in Dona's various receptacles.

"Patron?" she said as she entered the rear of the van. "What of the others?"

"They will not be coming," he said. He grinned. "But I surely will." He reached for her.

Despite the addition of a second popper of stimulant and of pain abatement chem, Sleel felt himself drifting. Remembering things he would just as soon forget. His graduation from primary ed, neither parent in attendance. His hospital stay when he broke his back after a fall, neither parent coming to see him while the boneglue set.

Damn

The radar screen beeped, pulling Sleel back into the present. "Distance to Blip?"

Thirty-five kilometers, the computer said. Holding.

"Increase speed," Sleel ordered.

The computer was unable to comply, it told him. They were currently traveling at allowable maximum.

"Emergency override."

Nature of emergency?

"Personal medical, you stupid fucking piece of shit!"

Acknowledged, the computer said. The fans whirred a bit faster, but not much. The flitter had not been built for speed. It began to gain on the van, but slowly.

Wu took deep breaths, working to center herself, to bring both balance and readiness to her body and mind. Scanner had called again to report the position of the chem van. It was heading toward her, and allowing for a brief inspection stop at the border, would be here in less than an hour. Plenty of time to prepare herself.

Cierto thrust with his hips as hard as he could. His weight rested entirely on his hands and groin.

Beneath him facedown on the van floor, Dona moaned. Buried to his base, he climaxed for the second time. Yes! Yes!

Sleel realized that even with the stop at the border, the van was going to reach the port half an hour ahead of him. If there was transportation waiting-and surely there would be-then likely he would miss his quarry. The thought of them lifting and getting offworld burned him, bubbling like molten metal in his soul.

No. Couldn't allow that.

There were invisible lanes in the air approaching the border, strict height and width limits to be obeyed.

Straying outside of these was just cause to be fired upon by the perimeter guns. No emergency override would convince this flitter's comp to venture from those lanes. It had been a long time since Sleel had disconnected the control unit from one of these flitters, but he still remembered how.

The computer squawked and blared the built-in warning as Sleel uncoupled it from the controls. In a moment, he was flying on manual. He had, he knew, a slim chance of making it. The perimeter guards were robotically operated, but had to be controlled by humans. The decision to fire was not automatic; somebody had to make it. And as he dropped the flitter to a height sufficient to clear the fence by less than a meter, Sleel hoped that whoever was watching the scopes would allow puzzlement to slow their responses. He had << couple of things going for him: first, the guards were more concerned with keeping people out than in; second, shooting at something that low would necessarily cause some splashback if it were hit, and anything close would suffer from it.

"Flitter one-oh-seven, you are out of approach," came the voice over the com.

Stall, Sleel. "Control, I have a computer malfunction here! I'm trying to override!"

"Say the nature of the malfunction, one-oh-seven."

"I don't know, the computer is not responding to diagnostic commands. "

The fence drew nearer. The operator talking to Sleel must be sweating blood; Sleel would be in his place. "One-oh-seven, kill main power and put the vehicle into an emergency glide."

"Right," Sleel said.

The fence loomed a klick ahead; Sleel could see it.

"One-oh-seven, kill your main!"

"I'm trying! The control is dead!"

"Goddammit!" the man on the ground said.

What would he do in the man's place? A local flitter, with a native of record in control, a declared emergency? Sleel was a matador, albeit an inept one it seemed, but he would blow the elbowsucker right out of the air. The guard on the ground had probably never had occasion to fire his weaponry except in a drill, and this didn't slot neatly, now did it? What would he do?

Sleel added to his discomfort. "Oh, Christo, I'm going to hit the fence!"

"Ah, fuck!" the man on the ground said.

And the flitter flew over the perimeter unmolested, just missing the top of the fence.

Sleel immediately dropped the craft so that it was nearly touching the ground and doglegged left. By the time the guard realized he had been fooled, Sleel had the flitter behind the plastcrete groundcar stop, where the guns couldn't hit it. He shut the com off; no point in listening to all those threats.

He'd bought himself a few minutes. The van ought to be no more than a couple of kilometers ahead.

There was a fair amount of traffic toward the port; that ought to slow the van even more. Maybe he could still catch it. He could hook the radar back up, but that would take time. He could see the van with his remaining eye if he got that close.

If he caught it, he would ram it. He was going to die anyhow, what the fuck.

Cierto, sated, sat next to Doha in the van's cab. They were approaching the port and the shuttle to his ship. All had gone well. Not as well as he had hoped, but it was the end that was important, and it had been nearly achieved. Once aboard his ship, it would be finished.

Wu saw the van approaching, spiraling down for a landing. She clutched the tube that held her sword, ready to extract it with the popper she'd attached to it. The van would settle just there, a hundred meters away. She stayed in the shadows of the hangar as the vehicle came to rest, fanning up dust and grit, then started toward it. If she circled around behind, she could use the line of boxcars for cover; they would not see her until she was almost on them.