Cates 05 - The Final Evolution (12 page)

“And what are
you
gonna be doin’ while I’m out there makin’ noise?”

I took a breath and resisted the urge to smack Remy again. “I’m out the door on your heels. I’ve got your flank covered,” I said slowly. “I’m gonna make sure you and Adora don’t get shot in the back.”

“All right,” he said. “All right. Then what?”

“Up. We just start moving and we go up every chance we get until we see some sky and can get oriented.” I shrugged, getting back into a crouch. “Shoot anyone who gets in between us and out. Simple.”

“Simple,” Adora said with a snort. “Let’s go. I don’t care if I get shot—as long as I am shot outside this damn room.”

That was a sentiment I could get behind. I was relieved, in a way—my whole world had finally narrowed down to one solvable problem: get out of the fucking room. Everything else—Michaleen, the Angels, Remy—all of it just sloughed off and left me simplified.

push, Avery

I gave Remy a slight push. “Let’s go.”

He muttered something but I ignored him, and he grunted his way past me in the shadows. I heard the hammer click back on his gun, and then I let Adora slip past me. She didn’t smell too good anymore, but she felt delightful as she pushed by. I hadn’t had much to enjoy in the last few days, crammed into this black box, and every little bit helped. I gave her a moment to get her hands on the locking lever.

“Go,” I whispered, as urgently as volume would allow. “Go!”

She went. I was impressed; she yanked down the lever and smashed herself into the hatch, sailing out into the blinding rectangle of the corridor. The hatch banged against something soft and bounced back lazily as Adora dropped down out of my view. Remy wasn’t moving; I could see his slumped silhouette in the doorway and I lunged forward to give him a hard shove.

“Move!”

He grunted something and launched himself for the doorway, firing the revolver before he’d even gotten out. That was okay. It was the noise I wanted. It would have been a nice bonus if he’d actually aimed at someone, but just seeing him stumble out of the hatch, waving the gun around like he’d recently figured out what it did was good enough. He was squeezing the trigger slowly, irregular explosions of painfully loud noise that would terrify and confuse just about anyone. I balanced myself, made sure of my grip on the Roon, and pulled myself through the hatch after him, trying to stay low and move fast.

As I’d hoped, my augments had enough left in them to throttle down the sudden blindness in the bright hall to a second or so of sizzling white and then a bleached-out but workable clarity. Remy had staggered after Adora for no fucking reason I could invent, so I spun right just in time to get socked in the jaw by something really heavy, spinning my head around and making my convulsive shot go wide. I let myself fall backward, hoping Remy maybe had found his footing and might put a shot over my bow and kill the second guard, but nothing happened as I smacked down onto the hard metal floor, my teeth sinking into my tongue as my head lit up for a second with pain.

I’d had a two-week training course in pain management, though. The guard was a fat black guy in a shirt two sizes too small, as if he thought he was muscular instead of tubby. In one greasy hand he had an old-school blackjack, a piece of weighted leather wrapped around his knuckles, and he threw himself at me with it held high, meaning to smash it dow on my head. It was an awesome sight as his shirt rode up with the effort, exposing his perfectly round, hairless belly. It was a target I could have hit five times with my eyes shut, and I managed twice before he landed on top of me, suddenly transformed into a side of wet, pulsing beef.

“Ah, fuck,” I groaned, my gorge rising. “Ah,
fuck
.” I thought of Belling. Belling had always seemed to be dressed in expensive suits, killing people via suggestion and disdain. I was always covered in blood and bile, pinned under fat guys who never bathed. It was enough to make me question my approach.

There was a moment of staticky silence. “We all okay?” I gasped, rolling tubby off of me with some effort.

push, Avery

Remy grunted. “Yes,” Adora gasped from a few feet away. “What now?”

The air was torn by a piercing klaxon that didn’t waver or change in any way: an ear-shredding wail of alarm.

“Fuck,” I muttered, picturing Belling in his clean suits, smiling at me. We were out of the black box, at least. “We
run
.”

IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE GUNS, I’D BE INSULTED

The corridors were tight and filled with the steady, nerve-shredding noise of the alarm. I led the way, followed by Adora, then Remy facing our rear and making sure no one got behind us. We owned the straightaways; so far, the crew didn’t have a fucking boomer among them, and I was shocked and appalled that they might have scrupled to lie about being armed.

There were multiple staircases leading to and from each deck, and at each one we had to stop cold and make sure the way was clear before I hedgehogged up, boosted by Adora so I could keep the Roon in action. The first three decks went by fast, empty and grimy, little used. I didn’t know how much crew a tanker like this normally required, but it looked to me like they were running light, with the lower decks largely abandoned. As I was pushing my head up over the top step from the third deck to the fourth, I contemplated the fucking ridiculous bad luck that we’d been noticed in the first place.

As I looked up over the lip of the stairs on the fourth deck someone tried to put a boot on me and I had to let go of the railing and slide downward, colliding with

we’re going to try a hot shot

Adora and sprawling to the third deck floor. Behind me I heard three of Remy’s deafening shots, loud enough to hear even over the endless whine of the alarm.

“What the
fuck
are you shooting at?”

“We got a crowd,” he hollered back. “Just keeping ’em back!”

“Watch your bullets!” I growled, pulling myself up and ducking up the stairs to check the way. “We can’t shootvery cocksucker on this boat!”

so try to relax; the effect is not going to be

To make myself look ridiculous, I underscored this advice by putting two shells into the air straight up the stairway, making one burly-looking man with a bald head and a heavy-looking striped shirt screech and throw himself backward from the stairwell.

“Coming up!” I bellowed. “Back the fuck up!”

I grinned. Reminding myself that just because we hadn’t seen a gun yet didn’t mean there wasn’t a gun somewhere on the ship heading our way. I had to admit I was enjoying myself. Two weeks sleeping in the dark, breathing Remy’s farts and having headaches—just being able to
move
was

pleasant, which is why we had to

fantastic.

Creeping up the stairs, I took a breath and popped my head up again, then ducked down. Below and behind, Remy peeled off another two shots, and I got the impression we were in a rush to keep moving. I took a step up and sighted down the fourth deck—about four or five crew carrying heavy wrenches and pipe fittings in their hands, ten, twelve feet away. I spun rapidly and found three more creeping up the other way.

I squeezed the trigger and put one shell into the floor right in front of the trio, then spun again, putting my gun on the first group.

“Kid! Get up here and take my flank!”

I felt Adora pushing up behind me. The five in front of me were four men and one woman. One of the men, a short man with a tan, deeply wrinkled face and a yellowed beard like cake frosting on his face took a step forward, holding his spanner out in front of him like a shield.

restrain you. You’re experiencing a dissociative

“What in
fuck
is wrong wit’ ya, you fuckin’
blödes arschloch
?” he shouted, his eyes wide in outrage. By his accent I marked him as Captain Kaufman. “We ain’t tryin’ to
kill
ya!”

I put a shell at his feet, too, because I could—I felt so sharp and light, I thought I might be able to put a bullet between his eyes without even looking, just based on my spatial memory.

“That’s good news,” I shouted. The alarm, I had to admit, was getting under my skin like a termite and chewing on my nerves. “Because if this is you trying to kill me, it’s a fail, and when people
fail
to kill me it gets unpleasant.” I gestured a tight arc with the Roon. “We just want off this fucking boat. You have my apologies for stowing away.”

He squinted at me, chewing his lip, but he didn’t move. Remy fired again, and someone behind me started screaming like a cat in a sack.

“Mutterficker!”
Kaufman yowled, eyes going wide. “We canna let you go!” His voice had taken on a pitiable quality I didn’t like. “We fuckin’
sold
ya, and took the yen already.”

I grinned again, a thrill going through me. I’d been sold like cargo so many times, it was familiar territory, but this time, for once, I still had my gun and a field of vision. I suspected this transaction was going to

break due to the Psionic’s pressure, causing you to relive immediate experiences, and we have to introduce a

turn out differently than I was used to. For a moment, I imagined the cosmos had tried to put me back on the Rail, and I’d kicked a stone under the wheels and bucked myself off. It was an exhilarating thought. I grabbed onto it and decided to see how far the ride would get me.

“You sold me?” I said slowly, stepping forward and keeping the gun directly on Kaufman’s face. “You sold
me
?”

He put his hands up and took an involuntary step backward, colliding with his crew and stopping short. “We—we put the name out there, an’ hell, we got an offer in two hours. A decent offer.” His face reddened and he found his balls again. “What the
fuck
were we supposed to do? You were stowaways! You don’t have any fucking
rights
!”

I nodded. “Back up.”

Kaufman pushed himself back up straight and cocked his head. “You can’t shoot
all
of us, Mr. Cates.”

I raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “I can’t? You sure?” His crew, standing behind him, weren’t convinced; I could see that. “
Back up.
”

He swallowed, and for a second I thought Captain Kaufman was going to try and be a hero, but his crew started to fall back and that settled him. He didn’t turn his back on me, though; he started walking backward, hands still up to show me he wasn’t going to try anything. I trusted Remy to guard my rear and we started walking. Now that he was doing what I wanted, I was inclined to feel friendly toward Kaufman.

“All we want is

disruption

off this ship,” I offered.

Kaufman’s anxiety seemed to bloat inside him, pushing out the leathery skin of his face. He almost looked back over his shoulder, but caught himself, and a sudden idea

in order to

formed in my head. “They’re here—right? Your buyers. Taking possession?”

We’d reached the next set of narrow, steep metal stairs leading up to the next deck. A bilge of dirty water stood an inch deep on the floor here, and I figured that meant we were near the main deck.

After a moment’s hesitation as the crew behind him stopped moving, confused, at the bottom of the stairs, he nodded. “Ya. They came just before the alarm. We assured them it was just a malfunction.”

I nodded, gesturing up the stairs with the gun. The stairs were going to be tricky, because if anyone was inclined to try rab of the gun that would be the ideal spot—my field of vision truncated, a third dimension I couldn’t easily police introduced. If there was any talent in there, this would be where I’d find out. I didn’t have much choice, though; it was up the stairs or

sever

stay in the floating hell forever.

The buyers were another problem altogether—the chances that people who would pay money to buy me
did
have guns were about one hundred percent. If they didn’t have guns, I’d be insulted.

the connection

The crew began climbing the stairs, one by one. When the captain, a man who was shrinking right before my eyes, stood nervously at the base of the stairs, watching me in an agony of indecision and horror at the twist his life had just taken, I stepped back and gestured Adora ahead of me.

“Backward,” I said. “Be my eyes.”

She scowled and muttered a string of Spanish. Then she waved at the gun. “Are you pointing it at me, as well?”

“That depends,” I said, “on whether you’re doing what I tell you.” I smiled. “Just

prepare yourself

tell me if anyone’s trying to fuck with me as I come up.”

She nodded. “I cannot wait to say good-bye to you, Mr. Avery Cates,” she said, smiling a little. She was filthy, caked in a dark sort of mud that glazed her hair and stained every visible inch of her. “You are the worst thing to happen to me in many years, and that is
saying
something,
señor
.” She fell into place in front of the captain as they backed up the stairs. When she had cleared the deck she looked around and then shouted down to me.

“They’re all still backing away down the corridor. Oh, thank you, the fucking sun.”

I chanced a glance behind me to make sure Remy had everything under control, and headed up the stairs quickly, ascending into bright, liquid sunshine streaming in through the huge plate-glass windows that lined the corridor of the main interior deck. The ocean, gray and listless, stretched away from us on all sides, and for a moment, I was dazzled just like Adora. Fresh air and sunlight had never looked so good. My HUD even snapped into clarity for the occasion, showing me mostly green status bars with a few yellowed ones here and there—but I never knew how much I could

if you can

trust the HUD anymore, with my implants rotting away in my head, gifting me with audio hallucinations and sudden, random headaches like a sweating drum of toxic waste buried in my brain. I stepped aside to let Remy come up and stand next to me, then gestured with the gun again.