There.
Pink flare off the darkened edge of the looming hull.
I pivoted my weight as smoothly as the mob suit would allow, lined myself up on the launch point and kicked the impellers up into overdrive. Somewhere below me, white light unfolded and doused the lower half of my vision. Carrera’s missile homing in on the bug.
I cut the impellers. Fell silently upward towards the ship. Under the faceplate, I felt a grimace of satisfaction creep across my face. The impeller trace would have been lost in the blast from the exploding bug, and now Carrera had nothing again. He might be expecting something like this, but he couldn’t see me, and by the time he could…
Sunjet flame awoke on the hull. Scattered beam. I quailed for a moment inside my suit, then the grin stitched itself back as I saw. Carrera was firing wide, too far back along an angle between the death of the bug and where I really was now. My fingers tightened around the Sunjet.
Not yet. Not—
Another Sunjet blast, no closer. I watched the beam light up and die, light up and die, getting my own weapon lined up for the next one. The range had to be less than a kilometre now. A few more seconds and a beam on minimal dispersal should punch right through the polalloy Carrera was wearing and whatever organic matter was also in the way. A lucky shot would take off his head or melt through heart or lungs. Less lucky would do damage he’d have to deal with, and while he was doing that I’d get close.
I could feel my lips peeling back from my teeth as I thought it.
Space erupted in light around me.
For a moment so brief it only registered at Envoy speeds, I thought the crew of the ship had come back again, outraged at the nuclear blast so close to their funeral barge, and the irritating pinprick firefighting in its wake.
Flare. You stupid fuck, he’s lit you up.
I snapped on the impellers and whirled away sideways. Sunjet fire chased me from a rampart on the hull over my head. On one spin, I managed to get off returning fire. Three sputtering seconds, but Carrera’s beam shut off. I fled for the roof, got some piece of hull architecture between me and Carrera’s position, then reversed the impeller drive and braked to slow drift. Blood hammered in my temples.
Did I get him?
Proximity to the hull forced recoding of my surroundings. The alien sculpted architecture of the vessel overhead was suddenly the surface of a planetoid and I was head down five metres over it. The flare burnt steadily a hundred metres out, casting twisted shadows past the chunk of hull architecture I was floating behind. Weird detail scarred the surfaces around me, curls and scrapings of structure like scrawlings in bas relief, glyphs on a monumental scale.
Did I—
‘Nice evasion, Kovacs.’ Carrera’s voice spoke into my ear as if he was sitting in the helmet beside me. ‘Not bad for a non-swimmer.’
I checked the head up displays. The suit radio was set for receive only. I nudged sideways in the helmet space and the transmit symbol glowed on. A cautious body flex put me parallel to the hull. Meanwhile…
Keep him talking.
‘Who told you I was a non-swimmer?’
‘Oh, yes, I was forgetting. That fiasco with Randall. But a couple of outings like that hardly make you a VacCom veteran.’ He was playing for avuncular amusement, but there wasn’t much hiding the raw ugliness of the rage underneath it. ‘Which fact explains why it’s going to be very easy for me to kill you. That is what I’m going to do, Kovacs. I’m going to smash in your faceplate and watch your face boil out.’
‘Better get on with it, then.’ I scanned the solidified bubbling of hull in front of me, looking for a sniper vantage point. ‘Because I don’t plan to be here much longer.’
‘Only came back for the view, huh. Or did you leave some holoporn with sentimental value lying around the docking bay?’
‘Just keeping you out of the way while Wardani closes the gate, that’s all.’
A short pause, in which I could hear him breathing. I shortened the tether line on the Sunjet until it floated close beside my right arm, then touched the trim controls on the impeller arm and risked a half-second impulse. The straps tugged as the racked motors on my back lifted me delicately up and forward.
‘What’s the matter, Isaac? You sulking?’
He made a noise in his throat. ‘You’re a piece of shit, Kovacs. You’ve sold out your comrades like a tower dweller. Murdered them for credit.’
‘I thought that’s what we were about, Isaac. Murder for credit.’
‘Don’t give me your fucking Quellisms, Kovacs. Not with a hundred Wedge personnel dead and blown apart back there. Not with the blood of Tony Loemanako and Kwok Yuen Yee on your hands. You are the murderer. They were soldiers.’
A tiny stinging in my throat and eyes at the names.
Lock it down.
‘They slaughtered sort of easily for soldiers.’
‘Fuck you, Kovacs.’
‘Whatever.’ I reached out for the approaching curve of the hull architecture where a small bubble formed a rounded spur on one side of the main structure. Behind my outstretched arms, the rest of my body shifted into a dead stop posture. A momentary sense of panic sweated through me at the sudden thought that the hull might be contact-mined in some way—
Oh well. Can’t think of everything.
—and then my gloved hands came to rest on the curving surface and I stopped moving. The Sunjet bumped gently off my shoulder. I risked a rapid glance through the gull-winged space where the two bubble forms intersected. Ducked back. Envoy recall built me a picture and mapped it against memory.
It was the docking bay, centred at the bottom of the same three-hundred-metre dimple and set about with bubbled hillocks that were themselves distorted by other smaller swellings rising haphazardly from their flanks. Loemanako’s squad must have left a locater beacon, because there was no other way Carrera could have found the place this fast on a hull nearly thirty klicks across and sixty long. I looked at the suit receiver display again, but the only channel showing was the one Carrera’s slightly hoarse breathing came through on. No big surprise; he would have killed the broadcast as soon as he got set up. No point in telegraphing his ambush point to anyone else.
So where the fuck are you, Isaac? I can hear your breathing, I just need to see you so I can stop it.
I eased myself painstakingly back to a viewing position and started scanning the globular landscape below me a degree at a time. All I needed was a single careless move. Just one.
From Isaac Carrera, decorated VacCom commander, survivor of half a thousand vacuum combat engagements and victor in most. A careless move. Sure, Tak. Coming right up.
‘You know, I wonder, Kovacs.’ His voice was calm again. He’d cranked his anger back under control. Under the circumstances, the last thing I needed. ‘What kind of deal did Hand offer you?’
Scan, search. Keep him talking.
‘More than you’re paying me, Isaac.’
‘I think you’re forgetting our rather excellent healthcare cover.’
‘Nope. Just trying to avoid needing it again.’
Scan, search.
‘Was it so bad, fighting for the Wedge? You were guaranteed re-sleeving at all times, and it’s not as if a man of your training was ever likely to suffer real death.’
‘Three of my team would have to disagree with you, there, Isaac. If they weren’t already really fucking dead, that is.’