Cates 04 - The Terminal State (15 page)

When we were looming over Blue Eyes’ table, he looked up at us serenely as a kid scrambled into position next to him, a short, runty kid who resembled a monkey in just about every aspect you could think of. I glanced at the kid as the Poet shoved a thin, white-haired old man from a chair and spun it around so he could sit with his arms crossed on the back, putting himself level with Blue Eyes, who didn’t even glance at him. After a moment, Blue Eyes said something I didn’t understand. Immediately, as he was still speaking, the monkey kid began screeching out an English translation.

“You’re gonna have a harder time pushing
me
out of his chair,” the kid shouted. His teeth were tiny black pebbles. I didn’t like looking at him. “Mr. Cates out of New York, and Mr. Panić out of Belgrade.”

The kid’s English was perfect, with an accent, but clear. Before I could say anything back, Blue Eyes was growling out syllables again, and the kid began overlapping him immediately.

“It’s funny. The SSF database still lists you officially as dead, Mr. Cates, but there’s a reward on your head. I’d say that was strange, except these days death ain’t what it used to be.”

I didn’t know whom to look at when I spoke—the kid or the Blob. “I know you can upload a report just by blinking your pretty eyes in code,” I said, looking at the Blob. “But I wonder how you imagine you’ll spend it after I inspect your cranial implants by hand.”

The kid translated in the chunky language they shared, and the Blob smiled at me.

“As I said, Mr. Cates: Death ain’t what it used to be.” The kid grinned at me. “And here is your associate.”

I turned and was startled to find Mara at my side. A flat slab of self-contempt dropped into my stomach, letting her creep up on me like that, a fucking
kid
. A kid with skills, though, I had to admit—Mara knew how to handle herself. She wasn’t even paying me any attention as she smiled blandly at the Blob.

“Hullo, Goren,” she said.

“Ms. Mara,” the kid said, translating so fast I almost thought he was just making shit up as the Blob rumbled. “Regards to my dear friend Mr. Garda.”

She nodded, once, regally. “We need weapons, intel, and sundries.”

The Blob grinned. “Luckily, your credit with me is good.”

Mara’s smile vaporized. “It better be, you fat fuck, or I might give Mr. Cates
permission
to inspect your augments, right?” She nodded once, smirking, as the Blob’s shining eyes flicked to me in a sudden change of mood. “Right. To business, then.”

The word
permission
hung there in the air, and I clenched my teeth.

Mara tossed a data cube onto the table. The Blob moved with surprising speed and snatched it up. “Londholm,” Mara said.

The Blob nodded, talking. The kid chattered away like he had a cable up his ass feeding him his lines. “Of course. Still in Hong Kong. Trapped. Hong Kong is going to declare independence from the System of Federated Nations any day now. Officially. The System Pigs”—here the kid paused to spit viciously onto the floor, immediately resuming his duties—“still claim the city, but word is a number of officers have gone over. Mutiny. The army sits outside like a spider, waiting to go in for the kill. Londholm normally would be long gone, but there’s no easy way in or out of Hong Kong these days.” The Blob inclined his head at us. “This is why Garda has resurrected Avery Cates, I assume, a man known for getting
in
places he is not supposed to.”

Mara nodded. “We need everything you have on the city.
Everything
. Sewage plans, building plans, SSF assignments, water approaches, defenses, cultural synopses. Everything. Everything on Londholm, too, though I doubt you have anything we don’t.”

The Blob raised an eyebrow, but said nothing to this.

“We need better papers,” Mara continued. “Too many checkpoints out in the open these days.”

The Blob pointed at me, rumbling, and the kid jabbed his sharp, bony chin at me. “He’s famous. Papers won’t help much if he gets OFR’d. I can recommend a good sawbones to give him a new nose or something.”

I touched my nose before I realized it. “No fucking way,” I said. I’d had enough surgery to last a lifetime.

Mara studied me for a moment, and then shrugged. “No go. Papers, then. Best you can do. We’ll hit a price when I see what you can come up with. We ain’t payin’ premium for simple forgers, follow? ”

The Blob nodded, smiling. The kid said for him, “You know, you are officially dead, too.”

There was a beat of bar noise, and then she leaned forward and simply slapped him across the face, a full-on, open-palm, roundhouse slap that jerked his head all the way around. She turned to glance at the kid, and then reared back and slapped
him
just as hard, sending the kid flying three or four feet in the air, crashing into a group of lanky men with unfortunate facial hair. When they turned to scowl in our direction, I stared back until they looked away and bent to help the kid to his feet. He pushed them away with a growl and scrambled back to the Blob’s side, just in time to translate the flood of consonants pouring from him.

“No need for that, now. We’re all—”

“Spare me the fuckin’
professionals
speech,” Mara snapped. “You ain’t here to
talk
, boyo, follow? ”

The Blob nodded, composing himself. “All right,” the kid said. He’d lost his snarl, though; a bright red imprint of Mara’s hand was on his face. She didn’t like him talking about her situation, and I decided to take some time later and wonder why.

“Weapons,” she said, giving him back his space and brushing imagined dust off her shoulders. “I need army-issue, remote-safety equipment with burnable chips—”

I moved my jaw until the joint cracked. “No.”

Mara paused and looked at me. “No? ”

I shook my head. “I’m not going into a job like this with a fucking gun that can be fucking
remotely turned off
.” I looked at my chest and shrugged. “You want to pop a vessel in my head, fucking fine. Do it. Do it now.” I looked back at her. “If not, step back and let me make my own fucking arrangements, because I am
not
going into this with a piece of shit, remote-controlled, blow-up-in-your-hand military piece, goddammit!”

I hadn’t realized I was shouting until the silence around us washed in. It lasted only a second, and then the Poet whistled appreciatively behind me. The noise rushed back around us, and Mara smiled.

Energy bubbled through me, fire in my arms, my heart steady but rapid. Every surface and opening had been calculated—I could leap up onto the table with just a thought, spin and bury a fist in the little kid’s hair, yank him down, smash an elbow into Mara’s face hard enough to dislodge some teeth, and roll off her holding onto her wrist, spin her off-center to the floor with a snap. The augments made it possible. The augments made it
impossible
with Mara’s finger on my button.

“All right, Avery,” she said, sweeping her arm in front of her. “My brief is to let you run this job. If you’ve decided this is your moment, by all means, make your arrangements. Goren, attend to Avery now.”

The Blob turned his shining eyes on me and licked his lips. I watched my HUD bars slowly shrink back into the green, and licked my lips.

“What can I get you? ” the kid said. I kept my eyes on the Blob.

“I’ve got a long list of heavy items,” I said. “But we can start with a Roon 87a, series three or earlier,” I said immediately. “Two.”

The Blob blinked, and scowled, putting his hands up and rumbling away as the kid chattered. “87a no good, Mr. Cates,” he said. “Prone to jamming.”

I shook my head. “Not if you shim the chamber.” I held up two fingers. “Two. Plus ammunition, of course—as much as you can get. Three shredders, standard SSF issue, and a series-16 fuel-injected SLR snipe.” I looked up at the Poet. “What do you want? ”

“Hamada two nine,” he said immediately. “Cut barrel, with sanded stock.” He winked. “And a steel garrote.”

I grinned. “Hamada. How old are you? I never met anyone under a hundred that still went for Hamadas.” The Hamada corporation had disappeared thirty years ago, sinking under the waves of Unification. “Besides, it’s a piece of shit gun.”

He frowned, hesitating, but quickly recovered and looked almost happy. “Three series, yeah sure. Two series will punch through walls, never jammed for me.”

“So you consider ‘exploding in your hand’ a feature, huh? ”

Before he could formulate his response, there was a sudden wave of noise at the front of the tavern, following a ripple of commotion. My HUD flashed as all three of us spun around. Someone shouted from behind us.

“Fucking cops,” I muttered, turning my head slightly as my eyes scanned the room. I looked at the Blob and smiled. “How fast can we get those guns? ”

In an instant, the bar was turmoil. The Blob suddenly seemed to rise up into the air; I blinked and saw that the group of bearded men behind us had stepped forward, laced their arms together under his bulk, and lifted him up. I watched them carry him back through the crowd and he stared back at me, the glowing circles of his eyes fading.

When I spun back around, the scene was so familiar I almost forgot I was in Brussels. People struggled back from the entrance, shitkickers in a panic and a few pros staying calm, standing their ground. The world around us melted into a blurry noise I knew well and felt at home in. The cops at the front looked like officers, but who the fuck knew these days: Everything was mixed up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the quality of your average System Pig had dropped a little—although I reminded myself that being able to run fresh units with old brains out of a factory probably reduced brain drain. I pictured the interior of the tavern in my head as my eyes roamed the chaos. If this were a typical raid, the rear was already cut off and the roof was going to get popped in a few minutes—the cops at the front caused a rush, and all the fish swam right into their net in the back, and the smarter or slower ones would get plucked up into the air.

My heart pounded; everything suddenly slowed down like it had back on the train.

Suddenly at leisure, I looked over at the bar; the beefy guys were gone, and I hadn’t seen them vaulting over the bar or heading for either of the exits. If they knew their business, there was a way out right under them, a way to skip the crush of assholes and just slip under the radar. The cops would know about it, too—or
would
have, back a few years, when the System Pigs raiding the joint would have been locals who made it their business to know.

My hands twitched, empty.

While bodies surged around me like they were trapped in syrup, I smiled, feeling limber and energized, almost happy. I turned back to Mara and the Poet in time to see Mara break a big blond Viking’s nose, just slamming her flattened palm up into his face and sending him staggering back into the crowd, blood floating in the air in tiny droplets. It cleared a little space around us, but we were about to get swamped by the shitkickers and then we’d be sitting ducks when the cops eventually got the situation organized.

The Poet suddenly leaned down and grabbed hold of the table the Blob had been sitting at. He flipped it over and with a savage kick freed one of the thick wooden legs from it, the broken, bent screws and the remnants of a cheap metal bracket like spikes at its far end. He tested the weight in one hand and looked at me, suddenly tossing the makeshift club my way. I snatched it from the air and it was a nightmare: top-heavy, too wide for an easy grip, splintery and brittle feeling. Mara leaped forward and they each kicked a leg free. For just a second, we eyed each other, twitchy little disbelieving grins on our faces—three professionals amazed that we were we really going to club our way past System Police with
table legs
—and then it was the crowd, everywhere, the only thing in the universe.

The Poet hefted his stick, planted himself, and with a loud animal growl stretched out in my ears he spun around, sweeping his perimeter with it and planting the rusty end in the neck of a tall, bald man just trying to scamper toward the back. The Poet tore the club out immediately, sending a spray of blood everywhere, and immediately swung back the other way, grunting with the effort, ignoring the blood dripping down his face.

“Head for the bar!” I shouted, just as the roof blew, a nicely synchronized series of charges that sent the whole thing crashing down on us, the rotten joists and slats vaporizing, turning magically into Stormers, Obfuscation Kit swirling as they slid down their drop wires, masks giving them one blind eye. I moved easily to avoid having any of them drop on me, my brain operating at clock speeds. The lights blinked off and we were in darkness, lit only by the cops’ swinging nova lamps, a confusion of spotlights. My vision immediately snapped into a sick, bad shade of green that outlined every edge in sharp detail, turning everyone and everything into nauseous shadows.

A Stormer landed right in front of me, dropping into a combat-ready crouch, slow enough for me to choose which ear to smash my table leg into. I dropped with him, both of us hitting the floor in a frenzy of legs and boots, mud and sawdust. I leaped onto the Stormer, pinning his arms and preparing to smash a fist down into his face mask, but the body beneath me was limp, and as I stared he seemed to fade subtly, appearing to go dark. I shifted my weight and clawed at the holster strapped to his hip, tearing the piece of shit auto from it and squinting down at it. After a second, I made out the telltale red dot on the grip—the gun was linked to the Stormer and wouldn’t fire for anyone else. This was a new policy for the SSF, since up until a few years ago the thought that some shithead would nick a piece from a System Pig was ridiculous. I tossed the gun aside and jumped back up to my feet, table leg poised.