Black Steel (4 page)

Kildee Wu blinked, as if coming from a trance. She had danced the dance flawlessly, but she did not consciously recall any of the moves. Of a moment, she had reached for her weapon; the next thing she knew, she was back in seiza, finished. That was how it should be. Thought was too slow when it came to the iai; moves had to be nearly as automatic as reflex. As a meditation it could be no less. Iai was the sword, do the way, and it had been her life for twenty of her thirty-five T.S. years.

She picked up the sword and went to the shower.

With the sword placed carefully into its rack, Wu stripped and tossed her silks into the washer. She padded toward the shower, stopping briefly in front of the mirror. She smiled at her image, a smile that seemed a bit crooked to her. She was hardly an imposing figure. Her black hair was cut short, her features more or less Oriental, and she was barely a hundred and fifty-two centimeters tall. Fifty kilos, tight, hips a bit wider than she would like, breasts small and mostly formed from underlying pectoral muscle. Her arms were developed enough so that the veins showed in her biceps, and she figured her body fat was maybe nine or ten percent. "Sthenic," that's what her ex-lover the medic had called her. He said it meant "healthy-looking," and she could live with that.

Yep, and a good; healthy, sweaty body it was now. Her own smell overcame the barn-straw scent of the dressing room. Best she get cleaned up and into fresh silks before her first kendo class arrived. Sensei Wu needed to look neat for the paying customers. During the dance, she was other, but now, she was simply Kildee Wu, a woman who needed a shower.

Bligh fell and the swordsman dashed past her toward Sleel. At the port, he hadn't been working; here, he had a job to do, a client to protect, and he didn't fuck around this time. He pointed his left spetsdod at the running man-better angle on that side-and snapped off two shots.

One dart for each eye.

The guy could have been wearing lenses; that was possible, given how prepared the woman at the port had been. But even so, he'd damn well have to blink when the darts got there; that was reflexive, and it would take a hell of a lot of specific training to get around that one. At the very least it was going to slow him down considerably.

The swordsman screamed. He jerked his arms up over his face, still maintaining his grip on the black sword, then collapsed as the trank took him. He slid two meters to an unconscious halt.

Well. Not wearing lenses, Sleel saw.

They could grow him new eyes, assuming he lived that long. Probably not gonna happen, given how the other sword players had been rigged to self-destruct. Too bad.

Sleel moved toward the door, alert for another attacker, but saw none. Somehow that figured.

The matador squatted next to the fallen cool. The floor was awash in blood, the big artery still spewing it out, but slowing the flow as the heart finished the last of it. A few liters of it went a long way when spilled on the floor like that.

"Com the medics," Sleel said to Reason.

Sleel used first aid, putting direct pressure on the throbbing wound, but it was gonna take more than he had to bring her back. If the medical team got here fast enough, they could revive her and stave off the brain damage.

Abruptly the bleeding stopped. Shit. There went the pump.

"And call your vouch," Reason said.

A box the size and shape of a squashed suitcase appeared in the hallway and rolled quickly to where the wounded policewoman lay. The vouch extruded needles and lines and plugged itself into the woman, piercing her armor easily. It began humming loudly as it diagnosed the condition-massive blood loss and shock and cutting trauma to the neck-and began pumping oxygenated plasmoids and coagulants into Bligh. Another line stabbed into the windpipe and began ventilation, while a small pump cycled the administered fluids through the circulatory system. A jointed arm with a surgical stapler began working on the sword damage, first rejoining the cut carotid artery portions and some of the other larger vessels with biostat glue.

Nice toy, the vouch. Expensive, but handy. Sleet' moved back and allowed the machine to work. If the assassin were still alive when the vouch got done with the woman, it would plug him and see could it stop the effects of his suicide device, but Sleel didn't give that much hope. These people were careful, whoever they were, and it didn't seem likely they'd leave somebody around to question. That was too bad, too.

"Let's go," Sleel said.

"Go? Where?" Reason asked.

"Away from here. A medical team is gonna be fanning in shortly and a lot of people will be running around. Be easy to sneak somebody who didn't belong in with them. Put spraywhites on somebody, he looks like a medic."

"But-but

"We'll leave the gate open. There's nothing here worth dying for, is there?"

"Hardly."

Sleel paused long enough to check the swordsman, who was still breathing. The man wore a handsized electronic device on his belt, and a smaller one stuck to his right boot top. Sleel didn't recognize the models, but he knew what the things were: confounders, electronic scramblers, and unless he were very much mistaken, real good ones. Sleel would bet a year's salary that the guy had come in hidden somewhere in Bligh's flitter. The luggage compartment, maybe, or wedged under it somehow, between the fans. The security comp had spotted him, sure enough, but not until he'd gotten to the front door-which Sleel had opened to let Bligh leave. Must have tapped into the com when Bligh had called and figured she would be allowed past the gate without too much trouble. Not bad.

The matador picked up the sword. Nice weapon, good balance to it. He touched the edge with one thumb, rubbing lightly across the edge and not lengthways, the way you were supposed to so you didn't cut yourself. The sword was sharp enough, though he knew little about such things. They weren't something you came up against very often in a high-tech society. Maybe in the Musashi Flex, where honor counted big, but not on the street where survival was more important. He nodded at Reason. "Let's move." He kept the sword as he led his client out toward the flitter.

Getting old, Sleel. You almost blew it. What would the other matadors say? They'd never let you live it down, they heard about this. Sloppy, real sloppy.

For a moment, as he and Reason lifted in their flitter, he thought about calling his old comrades. Bork would be through with his honeymoon by now, he and Veate. Dirisha and Geneva were probably looking for something interesting to do and this was sure as shit interesting.

But-no. He didn't want to run crying for help every time he stubbed his toe a little. Best if he figured out what was what first. No point in calling in the troops if it was something he could take care of on his own, was there? A few geeps with swords, how would that look? Man, he could almost Bear Dirisha telling Geneva: Hey, brat, poor decrepit senile old Sleel needs somebody to help him cross the street so he don't get run over by some kid in his daddy's flitter. We'd better go and hold his hand, you think?

No, definitely not. Emile had taken on a planet's army by himself, and the matadors had knocked the entire Confed on its ass. Sleel could surely keep one old thief alive, couldn't he?

Damned right he could.

Hoja Cierto was most unhappy when Carlotta reported Pedro's failure. Four of his students had died trying to erase the final blot on the family name. True, they had done so with honor, but failure was failure, and now the old thief had but that much more to answer for.

Lying naked upon his bed, Cierto considered the ceiling of his room. He would spend all of his students if need be, but it seemed such a waste of his training to have them stopped. And according to Carlotta's report, the condemned man had gotten himself a bodyguard, one of the matadors of whom so much had been spoken. Cierto had never dealt with these matadors directly, but he knew that some of them had walked the Flex before they learned sumito, taught by the Siblings of the Shroud. Some of them had been ranked quite high, if the stories could be believed, and the fighting art of shrouded priests was second to none when it came to bare hands. Two of the projectiles Cierto had fired had been stopped by this matador, and so he was responsible for their deaths, even though it had been the brainchoke that had actually killed them.

Cierto grinned. In the Old Language, "matador" did not mean "bodyguard. " It meant "killer. " On Earth, these men had faced beasts in the ring and slain them with swords.

He sat up, the muscles of his belly tightening as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Well. We shall see how this matador fares against a beast who also carries a sword. One who is without peer using his weapon.

The thought of such a battle aroused him. He touched a button on the bedside com.

"Juanita?"

"Si, Patron?"

"Come to my room. I have something for you."

The young woman's voice trembled slightly. "At once, Patron. "

Cierto smiled, hearing the touch of fear in her. There were swords, then there were swords, and a man must be adept in using both kinds, no? Cierto usually preferred his sheath to be the tightest of the three a woman had to offer, but this time he felt potent enough want to use them all when Juanita arrived. And he certainly intended to do so.

Chapter FOUR

ABOARD THE STARLINER Pachelbel, Sleel and Jersey Reason enjoyed the comforts of a first-class suite. The ship, completed after the fall of the Confed, was state-of-the-art interstellar travel, a luxury boat for those with stads to burn; it was like being in a resort town that could fly.

"How much are you worth, anyway?" Sleel asked.

They were in one of the restaurants, where the price of a single meal could easily equal a month's rent for a middleclass family. They were both enjoying the special of the day, Green Moon beef. Reason sipped at an expensive blue wine, Mtuan Azure; Sleel, working, didn't usually do strong chem; instead, he drank splash, as mild as beer. The smell of the meat was rich, the taste exquisite, and Sleel savored the texture and flavor.

"I could scrape up perhaps a hundred million standards," Reason said. "Depending on property values around the galaxy at any given time."

Sleel nodded, chewing on a mouthful of the steak. Big money didn't impress him.

"So, where to?" Reason asked. "I assume you have something more specific in mind than the entire Bibi Arusi System?" Yep. ,

"And I must say I was somewhat surprised that you booked passage for us under our own names."

Sleel swallowed the steak and grinned. "No, you weren't."

Reason tilted his head slightly to one side. "Oh'?"

Sleel leaned back in his chair, automatically scanning the dining room again. He had done so a dozen times during the meal and now as then, there was no apparent threat. None of the waiters had offered to cut Sleel's steak for him with a black sword. "You didn't get to be the best thief in the galaxy by being stupid. And you didn't stay out of Confed jails for more than half a century by accident. I think maybe you're being a bit disingenuous here, old man."

Reason chuckled. "Why, Sleel. Where'd you learn a word like that?"

Sleel said, "Where's the best place to hide something?"

Reason didn't ponder that one. "Where nobody will think of looking. I didn't know you were a fan of Poe."

"Mostly the poetry," Sleel said. "But I liked `The Purloined Letter.' Emile made us read it. Where's the next best place?"

"Where they know where it is but can't get to it."

"What I figure," Sleel said. "Now, we can hide where nobody will ever find us, but that limits things.

You'll always be looking over your shoulder."

"I am anyway."

"Maybe, but you've managed to stay ahead of the game until now. First we take care of the guys with swords, then we worry about other stuff."

"All right. Meaning . . . ?"

"We go somewhere where they can find us but can't get to us-unless they do it on our terms. Then we got time to figure out who is behind this and take them out."

"Cut off the head and the body dies?"

"It worked against the Confed." Sleel said.

Reason nodded. "That makes sense. So, where are we going?"

"To The Brambles," Sleel said.

Reason shook his head. "That will be a neat trick. I'm given to understand that there are only a handful of people in the whole galaxy who can go there without spending a year getting the needed permissions and documentations to visit. They don't encourage visitors."

Sleel's smile was tight and bitter. "I know somebody," he said. "Let me tell you a story."

There were three worlds in the Bibi Arusi System: Mwanamamke, Mtu, ,and Rangi ya majani Mwezi, the Green Moon. The center planet, the backrocket-lanes Mtu, had but few things of galactic note upon it, Sleel said, some decent wines, colorful silks-but it did have The Brambles.

The area known as The Brambles covered almost four thousand square kilometers on the semitropical side of the fourth continent, Ua Ngumi, which translated roughly meant, "Flower Fist."

Much had been written about The Brambles: that it was the largest briar patch in the galaxy; that it containeddepending upon whom asked-either mankind's salvation or damnation. That it was the most brilliant botany experiment ever conducted. So important an idea was it that the Confederation had left it virtually alone for more than fifty years, no small accomplishment in itself, rather than risk interfering with its mission.

Even stupid Confed officials wanted to live forever.

For the unique plant that formed the dense sticker bush that was The Brambles might hold within its nodular roots the secret to an unlimited life span.

To be sure, there were already drugs that increased productive human lives considerably. The Bindodo vine, the genetic grandmother from which the bramble bush-Uzima edmondia-had been developed, was native to the Green Moon, and its adaptogenic properties had already given mankind and its mues up to a hundred and fifty useful years. That seemed to be the limit, however. Even eliminating most diseases, discounting accidents or murder, anything over a hundred and sixty or eighty T.S. years was still far beyond man's grasp. Past this, normal cells hayflicked and died, and while no "deathhormone" had been discovered, something wore out. Certain cancerous growths could be kept going virtually forever, but though scientists had been trying for hundreds of years, no way to impart the benefits of this growth to people without the side-effects had been uncovered.