The Musashi Flex (12 page)

He
had
bet his life on it, but he was not worried. If his gift let him down and it killed him? Well, fuck it, nobody lived forever. He had gone everywhere he had wanted to go, eaten the best foods, drunk the best wines, slept with the best women. He was a giant of industry, worth more than some wheelworlds, and the only goal he had not accomplished was to become a player and win the Musashi Flex. This drug was going to give him that. And afterward? Well, he’d worry about that later.

He was supposed to see Baba for his training in a few minutes. It was too much to hope for that the drug would kick in while he was training, allowing him to astound the shit out of Baba. The little old bastard would be impressed if Shaw did a drumroll on his head before Baba could blink; but if the rock ape hadn’t come up to speed, so to speak, for seven and some hours, a few minutes for Shaw wasn’t likely.

Well. Whatever. There would come another time.

 
Weems led them to a public schoolyard. Apparently the place was not in session, and there were only a few people around, kids playing on outdoor rec gear, swings, twirlers, bouncers, like that. It wasn’t an empty alley, it was a big, open space, and the far corner of a playing field under some big oak trees was enough away from anybody so that it was effectively private. Even if somebody saw them and decided to head that way, Weems would have plenty of time to break Sola’s neck and be on his way before help could get there. Not that there was anybody around here who, short of shooting him,
could
help her.

That left out Mourn, too, since he was too far back to catch her without yelling, and Weems wasn’t deaf . . .

Nothing wrong with his eyes, either, so he could also see anybody trying to follow him across the schoolyard. Tailing somebody on foot across a tagball field unseen in the middle of the afternoon was pretty much impossible unless the person being tailed was blind or stupid, and Weems wasn’t stupid, either.

Sola had some chops, Mourn already knew. She saw which way Weems was heading and circled away, using bushes and benches for cover, trying to flank him. But if he hadn’t known she was behind him yet, all he had to do was glance back, and he’d spot her fast enough. She couldn’t stay back far enough to be completely hidden and maintain surveillance. By the time she got to the edge of the yard, he’d be long gone.

Mourn, once he realized what Weems was up to, backed off and ran, circling around the schoolyard out of sight, hoping to get to a hiding place where his quarry would emerge. It was risky. If Weems stopped and turned back, he’d be gone before Mourn could pick him up again.

Mourn made it around. There was a gate in the expanded-metal fence that surrounded the school; it was open, and that was where Weems would emerge. Mourn’s sense of time made it that he had thirty or forty seconds to find a hiding spot before Weems came through the gate. He spotted a big trash bin behind a cube complex and slid between it and the wall, crouched low.

Thirty seconds went by.

Sixty seconds.

Ninety . . .

Mourn swore softly. Weems could have hurried, gotten through the gate, and be six blocks away by now. Or he could have stopped in the yard, under the trees where he was hidden from Mourn’s view. Or he could have turned around and headed back the way he’d come, to catch out his tail.

Mourn smiled at himself.
Yeah, right
.

Only one way to figure it out. Go look.

Mourn moved from his hiding place and headed for the gate.

Inside the schoolyard again, he saw them fast enough. Weems, with Sola, fifty meters away. He had her backed up against one of the thick-boled trees, not touching her, but close. She was talking fast, Mourn could see that even though he couldn’t hear her, and maybe Weems was buying what she was selling—

Weems flicked a hand out and slapped her. It wasn’t much, enough to sting and rock her head a little; he was playing with her, but Mourn realized that Sola was in deep shit.

He took a deep breath and headed toward them.

Weems caught the movement peripherally, spared Mourn a quick glance, realized who he was. He grinned, real big. Reached out and patted Sola’s face where he had slapped her, a quick one-two. She swung on him, a hard right hand knotted into a fist. He blocked it, never taking his gaze from Mourn, slipped his hand forward and caught her by the throat. When she tried to punch again, he squeezed, enough to stop her struggles.

When he was five meters away, Mourn stopped.

“Hello, Mourn.”

“She yours? Or are you just . . . passing by?”

“She’s mine. Let her go. Dance with me instead.”

“You aren’t as pretty. And you don’t have the steps.”

“Maybe.”

Weems laughed softly, released his grip on Sola’s throat.

Mourn said to her, “Once we get started, you take off.”

“You can call it,” Weems said. He waggled the cane in his hand.

“Bare.”

“Smart. But it won’t matter, you know.” Weems hooked the cane over a projecting nail or screw on the tree and took two steps to his left away from Sola.

“Want to warm up? Do a few push-ups?” Weems smiled broadly.

Mourn continued breathing deeply through his nose, reaching for the bottom of his lungs with each inhalation. He had the oxygen he needed, he had started as soon as he had seen them.

Weems moved toward him, as if he was walking over to turn on a light switch, no tension at all.

Mourn turned sideways, angling into the
silat
stance, right hand high, left low. Then he opened his right arm, giving Weems a clear shot at his head.

Weems laughed again. “Come
on,
Mourn! You came all this way to
insult
me?”

Mourn shook his head. How had he gotten himself into this?

 
The place on South Park Njia ya Mji had been a plain-vanilla office building, with a lot more security than it would normally rate. Azul discovered why when she got to the suite with a pair of heavily armed guards accompanying her: Newman Randall, the Confed’s PR, sat behind a desk, smiling. He’d gestured at the guards, who vanished, then at the couch. She’d sat, and he’d laid it out.

There was a man, Ellis M. Shaw, who owned most of the largest pharmaceutical company in the galaxy. Randall wanted UO Azul to get next to the man and find out everything she could about a new drug he was developing. It was called “Reflex,” and he wanted to know
every
thing.

She had shrugged. Fine.

He was conducting some personal inquiries into this matter, he’d said. But he would keep any information he gathered to himself and check it against what she learned. He did not wish to influence her.

She shrugged again. Oh, by the way, did PR Randall know that somebody had put a tail on her when she’d arrived on this world?

No. He hadn’t known that. He would check into it. But what mattered was her assignment.

“That’s always what matters,” she’d told him.

He would contact her again soon, he’d said. He’d smiled, and she’d stood, nodded, and left. At least he hadn’t told her how to do her job. They sometimes did that. The more money and power they had, the more they tended to think that made them experts at everything. She recalled being fascinated the first time she met a really rich man and realized that he wasn’t particularly smart. You could be rich and stupid—a good lesson in that realization.

 
A few days later, after a lot of preparation, Azul had enough of a picture to begin working on ways to put herself into Shaw’s path in a manner that wouldn’t cause his, or his security’s, eyebrows to rise.

Having Confed Intelligence at your call to build you a plausible background was invaluable. CI’s ID Section could produce birth, education, job, and hobby records; they could fake holographs, a family, old friends; they could produce souvenir place mats from the restaurant where you ate lunch during your primary school trip to the San Carlos Zoo when you were nine years old, suitably aged and wrinkled and with notes on it in your undeveloped handwriting. This ersatz background would pass virtually any test because such history instantly became part of the official records available to anybody looking for them. The family or old friends were themselves operatives, and they would know your history and be able to offer it to anybody checking on you. It was as ship-hull solid as it could be: You became who you said you were, and nobody outside of CI who had set it up could tell differently. And if the CI op who had built your fake ID got into a traffic accident and died before she could log it into the proper system? You could become a whole new person and not even the Confed could see different.

Another good lesson to keep in mind against the day when you might need it . . .

For the moment, though, the trick was to build a character that would appeal to your target, and you had to assume that a man as rich and powerful as M. Shaw
would
check you out as a matter of course.

Shaw, it seemed, had an interest in the Musashi Flex. While Azul could certainly take care of herself in a routine physical encounter requiring self-defense, bare-handed or with a weapon, she was not skilled enough to fake being a high-level player. However, she could have a long-lost brother—she liked that idea—who had been, say, a Top Player in the Flex before he retired or died or whatever. Shaw was a student of martial arts, he had hired major players to come and teach him. It would be a connection of interest to him to meet a beautiful woman who was related to somebody he knew about. She’d never even have to make that claim, he would find it out on his own. And being beautiful? That was part of her biz. Normally, she could and did slouch around, dress down, and deliberately make herself less attractive. This was also part of the biz—you didn’t want the attention all the time. But when she needed it, Luna Azul could be a drop-dead gorgeous knockout. It was a big part of why she had been hired, and while all of her beauty wasn’t natural—there had been a couple of discreet surgeries to complete the package—most of her looks were innate, and such that, even unaugmented, they would open doors for her anywhere there were men—or women—who had eyes and lusts. It didn’t mean anything to her in particular. It was just a useful tool.

So, there were two things: a brother who was an adept in something Shaw was into, and her own attractions. The third would be to have some professional knowledge Shaw might find of interest. CI could supply that. It could be in the pharmaceutical biz. He was also an art collector of some note. Maybe she could be an artist. CI had some of those at its beck, they could produce some first-class paintings or sculpture, make them hers. She had a list of the major works Shaw owned; she could become an adept at drawing or molding something that would catch his eye. The trick was in figuring out what, not in the actual production of it. An up-and-coming artist from a world far away, with a history, some shows, local glowing reviews in news stats or entcom, some works that would be created specifically to appeal to one man, this was another easy task for Confed Intelligence.

Then there would need to be some public event at which they could meet, through his action and not hers. A showing, some theatrical thing, charity event, whatever. She had a list of charities Shaw supported, and of events he had attended, or was scheduled to attend.

It was all in the preparation and the timing. That he was rich and well protected? Not a problem. She had done this sort of thing many times before. She expected to do it many times again.

Trolling for a particular fish might not be the easiest thing, but if you had the right bait, it raised the chances of your success. Azul was good at what she did, she had no false modesty about that. If he could be hooked by anybody, then she would the one who could do it.

She would get her information and ID. She wouldn’t tell ID Section what her mission was, nor would they ask. She’d be cleared for whatever she asked them to get, because when a PR wanted something, nobody downlevels wanted to stand in his path; neither did they want to be too close to it—if the deal went sour, better to be able to deny you knew anything about it. Covering one’s ass in CI was practically an art form . . .

She smiled, not worried. If you had the will and you had the tools, it was just a matter of time . . .

 
When he was a step and a half away, Mourn jumped, bore in, and threw the fifth of the attack
sambuts,
a single beat broken into a triplet with a punch for each third—high, high,
low
—!

Even if you knew what was coming, it was impossible to block all three if the attacker sold them right. You had to short-circuit the attack with one of your own; pure blocking wouldn’t work, no matter who you were.

Weems apparently thought he could manage it. He bat-ted the first and second shots aside, but the third punch got through, hit him in the belly—

It was like smacking your fist into a wooden wall.

Mourn tried for the takedown, but Weems pivoted and hammered him with the edge of his fist, caught him in the ribs hard enough to break one or two. It drove him sideways, and Weems followed him in—

Mourn fired his right elbow, caught Weems on the left ear, staggered him, but when he tried to follow up, Weems ducked the next punch and slammed his fist into Mourn’s solar plexus, knocking his wind out—

Mourn dropped to the ground and swept with his left leg. Caught Weems on the left calf and knocked him off-balance, but Weems dived away, hit in a shoulder roll, and came up—

Before Mourn could get to his feet, Weems jumped in—Jesu, he was fast!—and snapped a front kick. He blew through Mourn’s block, caught him under the left armpit, broke a couple more ribs, and lifted him with the force of it—