“No one home,” she said awkwardly.
“So it seems. Shall we go and have a look?”
We got out into the customary blanket-snap of wind off the Bay and made for a tubular aluminium gangway that led onto the vessel near the stern. It was uncomfortably open ground, and I crossed it with an eye constantly sweeping the railed and craned lines of the ship’s deck and bridge tower. Nothing stirred. I squeezed my left arm lightly against my side to check the Fibregrip holster hadn’t slipped down, as the cheaper varieties often did after a couple of days’ wear. With the Nemex I was tolerably sure I could air out anyone shooting at us from the rail.
In the event it wasn’t necessary. We reached the end of the gangway without incident. A slim chain was fixed across the open entrance with a hand-lettered sign hung on it.
PANAMA ROSE
FIGHT TONITE—22.00
GATE PRICE DOUBLE
I lifted the rectangle of thin metal and looked at the crude lettering dubiously.
“Are you sure Rutherford called here?”
“Like I said before, don’t let it fool you.” Ortega was unhooking the chain. “Fighter chic. Crude’s the in thing. Last season it was neon signs, but even that’s not cool enough now. Place is fucking globally hyped. Only about three or four like it on the planet. There’s no coverage allowed in the arenas. No holos, not even televisuals. You coming, or what?”
“Weird.” I followed her down the tubular corridor, thinking of the freak fights I’d gone to when I was younger. On Harlan’s World, all fights were broadcast. They got the highest viewing figures of any transmitted entertainment online. “Don’t people like watching this sort of stuff?”
“Yeah, of course they do.” Even with the distortion of the echoing corridor, I could hear Ortega’s lip curling in the tone of her voice. “Never get enough of it. That’s how this scam works. See, first they set up the Creed—”
“Creed?”
“Yeah, Creed of Purity or some such shit. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to interrupt? Creed goes, you want to see the fight, you go see it in the flesh. That’s better than watching it on the web. More classy. So, limited audience seating, sky-high demand. That makes the tickets very sexy, which makes them very expensive, which makes them even more sexy and whoever thought of it just rides that spiral up through the roof.”
“Smart.”
“Yeah, smart.”
We came to the end of the gangway, and stepped out again onto a wind-whipped deck. On either side of us the roofing of two of the cargo cells swelled smoothly to waist height like two enormous steel blisters on the ship’s skin. Beyond the rear swelling, the bridge towered blankly into the sky, seeming entirely unconnected with the hull we were standing on. The only motion came from the chains of a loading crane ahead of us that the wind had set swinging fractionally.
“The last time I was out here,” said Ortega, raising her voice to compete with the wind, “was because some dipshit newsprick from WorldWeb One got caught trying to walk recording implants into a title fight. They threw him into the Bay. After they’d removed the implants with a pair of pliers.”
“Nice.”
“Like I said, it’s a classy place.”
“Such flattery, lieutenant. I hardly know how to respond.”
The voice coughed from rusty-looking tannoy horns set on two-metre-high stalks along the rail. My hand flew to the Nemex butt, and my vision cycled out to peripheral scan with a rapidity that hurt. Ortega gave me an almost imperceptible shake of the head and looked up at the bridge. The two of us swept the superstructure for movement in opposite directions, coordinating unconsciously. Under the immediacy of the tension, I felt a warm shiver of pleasure at that unlooked-for symmetry.
“No, no. Over here,” said the metallic voice, this time relegated to the horns at the stern. As I watched, the chains on one of the rear loading cranes grated into motion and began to run, presumably hauling something up from the open cell in front of the bridge. I left my hand on the Nemex. Overhead, the sun was breaking through the cloud cover.
The chain ended in a massive iron hook, in the crook of which stood the speaker, one hand still holding a prehistoric tannoy microphone, the other gripped lightly around the rising chain. He was dressed in an inappropriate-looking grey suit that flapped in the wind, leaning out from the chain at a fastidious angle, hair glinting in a wandering shaft of sunlight. I narrowed my eyes to confirm. Synthetic. Cheap synthetic.
The crane swung out over the curved cover of the cargo cell and the synth alighted elegantly on the top, looking down on us.
“Elias Ryker,” he said, and his voice was not much smoother than the tannoy had been. Someone had done a real cut-rate job on the vocal cords. He shook his head. “We thought we’d seen the last of you. How short the legislature’s memory.”
“Carnage?” Ortega lifted a hand to shade against the sudden sunlight. “That you?”
The synthetic bowed faintly and stowed the tannoy mike inside his jacket. He began to pick his way down the sloping cell cover.
“Emcee Carnage, at your service, officers. And pray what have we done to offend today?”
I said nothing. From the sound of it, I was supposed to know this Carnage, and I didn’t have enough to work with at the moment. Remembering what Ortega had told me, I fixed the approaching synth with a blank stare, and hoped I was being sufficiently Ryker-like.
The synthetic reached the edge of the cell cover and jumped down. Up close, I saw that it wasn’t only the vocal cords that were crude. This body was so far from the one Trepp had been using when I torched her, it was barely deserving of the same name. I wondered briefly if it was some kind of antique. The black hair was coarse and enamelled-looking, the face slack silicoflesh, the pale blue eyes clearly logo’d across the white. The body looked solid, but a little too solid, and the arms were slightly wrong, reminiscent of snakes rather than limbs. The hands at the ends of the cuffs were smooth and lineless. The synth offered one featureless palm, as if for inspection.
“Well?” he asked gently.
“Routine check, Carnage,” said Ortega, helping me out. “Been some bomb threats on tonight’s fight. We’re here to have a look.”
Carnage laughed, jarringly. “As if you cared.”
“Well, like I said,” Ortega answered evenly, “it’s routine.”
“Oh well, you’d better come along then.” The synthetic sighed and nodded at me. “What’s the matter with him? Did they lose his speech functions in the stack?”
We followed him towards the back of the ship and found ourselves skirting the pit formed by the rolled-back cover of the rearmost cargo cell. I glanced down inside and saw a circular white fighting ring, walled on four sides by slopes of steel and plastic seating. Banks of lighting equipment were strung above but there were none of the spiky spherical units I associated with telemetry. In the centre of the ring, someone was knelt, painting a design on the mat by hand. He looked up as we passed.
“Thematic,” said Carnage, seeing where I was looking. “Means something in Arabic. This season’s fights are all themed around Protectorate police actions. Tonight it’s Sharya. Right Hand of God Martyrs versus Protec Marines. Hand to hand, no blades over ten centimetres.”
“Bloodbath, in other words,” said Ortega.
The synth shrugged. “What the public wants, the public pays for. I understand it is possible to inflict an outright mortal wound with a ten-centimetre blade. Just very difficult. A real test of skill, they say. This way.”
We went down a narrow companionway into the body of the ship, our own footsteps clanging around us in the tight confines.
“Arenas first, I presume,” Carnage shouted above the echoes.
“No, let’s see the tanks first,” suggested Ortega.