The Centurion's Empire (32 page)

"Quickly, in!"

"I can't see in the dark," Vitellan said as he shuffled forward, groping blindly.

"No need, I'll guide you. This is a transfer point, we won't be here long."

The door rolled down again. Vitellan counted his heartbeats in the darkness and listened to distant sirens. Light leaking
from outside outlined a brickwork pattern of stacked boxes. Brooms, grapples, discarded packing . . . Lucel's body heat
radiated against his arm through the tears in his shirt, yet her hand was cold on his wrist. He counted three hundred
heartbeats.

"I thought the Luministes wanted you alive," Lucel said, as if the attack had somehow been Vitellan's fault.

"Why ask me?"

"Because I was thinking out loud, but no matter. I've made other plans in case those loons at the ranch goofed out."

"So—but do your people know we're here?"

"They'll be driving past every few minutes and polling for us with a tight-beam radio pulse. When I get the pulse we
leave and walk to the left, two blocks down to the all-night deli. A dark blue Toyota roachvan will be waiting." An amber
spot glowed before her eyes on the dataspex. "There they are! Stay with me now."
She pulsed the roller door up and scanned the outer loading bay. "All clear, no—"
An autonic that was clinging to the right wall fired, hitting Lucel's lower left ribcage with a tumble-round. She collapsed
with a percussive wheeze as Vitellan saw a shadow step around the coiner and fire something at him with a soft stutter.
Darts stung his arms and chest, and he fell facedown over Lucel.

"Scrubbed the girl, tranked daddy," the shadow reported to a wristcomm.

Hands seized Vitellan's body and rolled him over. His right arm flopped over lifelessly—and plunged the steak knife
from the bistro into the shadow's throat. The second figure did not realize anything was wrong until his companion
collapsed. Vitellan picked up Lucel's gun and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Keyed to her palmchip, cannot
fire, the Streetwise imprint suggested within his mind.

Vitellan backed into the loading bay as the second man fired more tranquilizer darts into him. There was no effect.
Engineered bacteria administered by Lucel in the Paris hospital had manufactured enzymes in his blood that were
neutralizing the tranquilizer. The figure leaped onto the bay, crouching low, arms extended. Vitellan threw the image to
his imprint: formal martial arts fighting stance, tae kwon do with commando streetfighter variation. Vitellan felt behind
him and seized a broom. He snapped the brush off with his foot. The man lunged, easily deflecting the overhand blow
that Vitellan made with the handle—but the Roman gently drew it back in a smooth underloop and jabbed it forward.
The handle's splintered end smashed past teeth and lodged in the Luministe's throat. Vitellan stabbed underhand with
the steak knife, but the blade hit body armor and snapped. Seizing the man's back collar, the Roman slammed his head
into the ferroslab wall and he suddenly went as limp as a dead squid in a fishmonger's basket.
Alert for more attackers, Vitellan picked up Lucel's body. His hands clutched cloth soaked in slick, cooling blood. A black
shape on the floor vomited Glucoboost through the gash in his neck and died. The tiny autonic gun-platform
clinging to the wall followed Vitellan with its barrel, but it had a bar on shooting at his profile. He turned left outside the
loading bay and ran, Lucel's blood pouring down his shirtfront and trousers. Two blocks away a laser scanner from a dark
blue Toyota van identified the profile of Vitellan's current mask. The driver gunned the fuel cell engine, and within
seconds strong hands bundled Vitellan and Lucel inside. -

They were Africans, Nubians perhaps, Vitellan realized as the door slammed shut behind him. He had met Nubians
when he had been garrisoned in Egypt, so long ago that America was not even a legend in Roman folktales.
A medic pumped broad-spectrum stabilizing serum laden with nanoware into Lucel with one hand and slapped the skin
grapples of a heart pacer down on her chest without bothering to remove her shirt.

"She's dead, I brought her anyway," panted Vitellan, watching with the detached despair of one who had already given
up.

"Dead she is, mon, but we'll soon fix that."

They seemed to drive for quite some time. Although there were many turns, there was no sense of being chased. The van
finally stopped, and the back doors were opened from outside. Vitellan looked out, one hand on Lucel's cold forehead.
Four guards leveled automatic rifles at them and a man with mutton-chop whiskers walked up, a wide-beam weapons
scanner held before him. After some moments he held up his other hand. "All clear," he declared, and medical orderlies
swarmed up to take Lucel away. Vitellan stepped from the van, unsteady on his feet and feeling curiously lonely.
The man with the scanner noticed the blood soaking Vitellan's hands and clothing. He pointed and began barking
keyword-laden orders. More medics rushed forward, but Vitellan held up his hands.

"Ah, believe it or not, I'm uninjured," he said.

Vitellan and Lucel had been brought to a private medical clinic named SkyPlaz near Hermann Park. It specialized in
the treatment of those who could afford designer body enhancements that were unregistered, and hence in a murky class
of borderline legality. The whole fourth floor of the block had been reserved for them, with Village credit unwittingly
picking up the tab.

Lucel had arranged for a contract security firm run by one of the more respectable of Houston's Afro-gangs to pick them
up, and a protection bureau in Taiwan that guaranteed secure and discreet accommodation had booked them into
SkyPlaz. Lucel's life had thus been saved by the precautions meant for Vitellan.

In the hour after he had been admitted, Vitellan was given an intensive body scan and toxin flush, and his scratches and
dart strikes were bonded and sealed. Although he took a shower and was scrubbed thoroughly by the handlers, he still
imagined that he could smell blood as he dried himself. Completely exhausted, he lay on his back on a lounge, wearing
sandals and a kimono of white silk painted with leafy green bamboo stems. For comfort it was the closest that he had
worn to Roman clothing since the second century. Within moments he was asleep, and he barely noticed himself being
lifted from the couch onto a trolley.

Lucel was stabilized and put in a biosupport unit while her damaged skin, ribs, and organs were attended to. Vitellan had
his mask removed while his body was scanned for organic implants and his blood filtered for debris and toxins. When he
awoke the next day he lay running his hands over his stomach for a long time. There was no pain from his stomach,
there had been no pain in his stomach since he woke up in the Luministe hospital in Paris. He was free of pain for the
first time in a decade of waking life. How long had he been awake now? Three days? He almost wanted the pain back as a
reference point in this chaotic, headlong world of the twenty-first century. His body seemed unfamiliar too. Old scars
and marks were gone, and his fingers were longer and more delicate. More cosmetic work, he decided.
By mid-morning the doctors and medical engineers had finished with him and he went to visit Lucel. She was no longer
at danger status, but had only been revived suffi-

ciently to be integrated with a trauma attenuation imprinter, and was still hours from being allowed back to full
consciousness.

Vitellan ate lunch wearing his bamboo print kimono, watching an afternoon thunderstorm lash against the windows.
Managing rice with chopsticks was quite a challenge, and he sprayed a lot of food around while a puzzled waiter watched
patiently.

The Roman spent the rest of the day watching Lucel being built back into a viable body. Her face was covered in blue
utility gel supporting tubes that went into her mouth and nostrils. It looked as if some surreal jellyfish was feeding on
her. The tumble-shots had smashed two ribs, minced some abdominal muscles, and torn her intestines in several places.
One had pulverized a kidney as it left her body. Medical utility arms carefully cleaned her skin while computer-linked
cameras and scanners assessed what could be salvaged.

Her abdominal cavity was opened, and the small intestine carefully inspected and spliced where the round had flayed it.
When the surgical handlers had finished she had lost only a few inches of intestine. The damaged sections of rib were
reconstructed with a calcium matrix, while the torn muscles would eventually be replaced by vat-muscle keyed to her
antibody signature. One quick spray of gunfire, then all of this to bring her back from the edge of death, Vitellan mused.
Lucel's abdominal muscles were hard and well developed, so the handler cut, stapled, and bonded to retain the strength.
A small array of damaged tissue built up on a platter beside her in the unit.

While she was unconscious an interactive dialogue between a computer and her nervous system probed for brain damage,
but none was found. Although her circulation had ceased for a lethal period, the oxygen reserves built into her tissues
had saved her. Arms with electrical stimulators worked her muscles to preserve tone.

It was evening before the surgical handler completed the operation by clamping and bonding Lucel's skin where it had
been breached. The gel was slowly sucked out until she lay naked on the contoured surgical table within the biosup-
port unit. Vitellan noted her black wedge of pubic hair. For some reason he had not thought of her as having pubic hair,
like the women and goddesses of many ancient statues. Her breasts were small and firm, they would not get in the way
when she was fighting. Perhaps she had had them tailored that way, Vitellan speculated. He decided to check, and under
Vitellan's imprinted directions the monitor interface confirmed that her breasts had been altered by surgery. It was a
common procedure for combat-career military women, the cyclopedia imprint assured him. Her fallopian tubes had also
been clamped off, and there were some other minor surgical enhancements involving her muscles and nervous system.
The rest of her physique was the result of hard training, Dr. Baker later confirmed that when he called in to assess the
progress of his machines with the patient. That gave Vitellan some reassurance. Physical work still counted for
something, so there might be a place for him in this world after all. Baker began to talk to Lucel.

"Glad to have you back, Miz Lucel," the doctor spoke into a mouthpiece that curved around from the frame of his
dataspex. Vitellan stared at the body in the unit, but it showed no movement other than that of breathing and the induced
muscle contractions.

"Yeah, he's here, he's been watching you most all of the day. Sure, I can do that." Baker removed his dataspex and
swiveled around to Vitellan. "We've got a consciousness tap into Mix Lucel, part of the checks for brain damage that
we've been doin'."

"But she is not awake," Vitellan said with a gesture to the unit.

"Oh she's home all right, but don't ask how. Just watch, this might make it a little easier for you to get your head
around."

He tapped at some studs beneath a display on the side of the unit, and above the transparent bulkhead a green
holographic ball the size of an apple formed. "Consciousness being gated now," the female Texan voice of the unit
announced. The green ball expanded into an orange, life-size holograph of Lucel's head and neck. It was translucent at
first, then it slowly took on human tones and textures. Vitellan stood up, and his face was directly before her eyes as the
holographic eyelids blinked. It was the first time that he had seen her face without a mask for more than a few seconds.

"Good to see you up and about, Miz Lucel,"'said Baker as he stood up. "Now I'll just set the cloaker and leave you two
alone."

Lucel's holographic eyes followed Baker until he had closed the door behind him.

"Someone locked on to us," she said to Vitellan, her lips and facial muscles working too perfectly for life.

"Two of them," Vitellan replied. "And some sort of robot with a gun. They shot you."

"I... think I was hit in the stomach. Is—is everything all right?"

"I think so. We're in a clinic named SkyPlaz. Your contract gang team brought us here. The gangs seem more reliable
than the authorities in this century."

"That's the market economy for you. So, the gang's tac squad in the van rescued us?"

"No, I killed both of the Luministe agents and carried your body to the contract gang's van."

"You
killed two of the Luministe's enhanced contract lock-ons and rescued
me?"

"Yes."

"How humiliating." "You'd rather I hadn't?"

"It's okay. A little humiliation can lift one's game, just like a bit of guilt makes sex more fun."
Her approval sent a warm flush through his bleak feeling of helplessness.

"How did they try to stop you?" she asked after a moment.

Vitellan held up five tiny flighted wedges. "With these. The doctor gave them to me as souvenirs."

"Trank darts. They'd dissolve in your bloodstream for five hours or thereabouts, keeping you asleep for the duration.
Luckily I set up your body to be proof against a suite of chemicals like that when we first met. Who's running the shop?"