Millsport yakuza apprentice. Street thug.
‘You don’t call me tani,’ he hissed. ‘You are the outsider here, Kovacs. You are the intruder.’
I left him at the periphery of my vision and looked towards Plex, who was over by the workbenches, fiddling with a knot of webbing straps and trying on a smile that didn’t want to be on his dissipated aristo face.
‘Look, Tak—’
‘This was strictly a private party, Plex. I didn’t ask you to subcontract the entertainment.’
The yakuza twitched forward, barely restrained. He made a grating noise deep in his throat. Plex looked panicked.
‘Wait, I…’ He put down the webbing with an obvious effort. ‘Tak, he’s here about something else.’
‘He’s here on my time,’ I said mildly.
‘Listen, Kovacs. You fucking—’
‘No.’ I looked back at him as I said it, hoping he could read the bright energy in my tone for what it was. ‘You know who I am, you’ll stay out of my way. I’m here to see Plex, not you. Now get out.’
I don’t know what stopped him, Envoy rep, late-breaking news from the citadel – because they’ll be all over it by now, you made such a fucking mess up there – or just a cooler head than the cheap-suited punk persona suggested. He stood braced in the door of his own rage for a moment, then stood down and displaced it, all poured into a glance at the nails of his right hand and a grin.
‘Sure. You just go ahead and transact with Plex here. I’ll wait outside. Shouldn’t take long.’
He even took the first step towards the street. I looked back at Plex.
‘What the fuck’s he talking about?’
Plex winced.
‘We, uh, we need to reschedule, Tak. We can’t—’
‘Oh no.’ But looking around the room I could already see the swirled patterns in the dust where someone had been using a grav-lifter. ‘No, no, you told me—’
‘I-I know, Tak, but—’
‘I paid you.’
‘I’ll give you the money—’
‘I don’t want the fucking money, Plex.’ I stared at him, fighting down the urge to rip his throat out. Without Plex, there was no upload. Without the upload—‘I want my fucking body back.’
‘It’s cool, it’s cool. You’ll get it back. It’s just right now—’
‘It’s just right now, Kovacs, we’re using the facilities.’ The yakuza drifted back into my line of sight, still grinning. ‘Because to tell the truth, they were pretty much ours in the first place. But then Plex here probably didn’t tell you that, did he?’
I shuttled a glance between them. Plex looked embarrassed.
You gotta feel sorry for the guy. Isa, my Millsport contact broker, all of fifteen years old, razored violet hair and brutally obvious archaic datarat plugs, working on world-weary reflective while she laid out the deal and the cost. Look at history, man. It fucked him over but good.
History, it was true, didn’t seem to have done Plex any favours. Born three centuries sooner with the name Kohei, he’d have been a spoilt stupid younger son with no particular need to do more than exercise his obvious intelligence in some gentleman’s pursuit like astrophysics or archaeologue science. As it was, the Kohei family had left its post-Unsettlement generations nothing but the keys to ten streets of empty warehouses and a decayed aristo charm that, in Plex’s own self-deprecating words, made it easier than you’d think to get laid when broke. Pipe-blasted, he told me the whole shabby story on less than three days’ acquaintance. He seemed to need to tell someone, and Envoys are good listeners. You listen, you file under local colour, you soak it up. Later, the recalled detail maybe saves your life.
Driven by the terror of a single lifespan and no re-sleeve, Plex’s newly impoverished ancestors learnt to work for a living, but most of them weren’t very good at it. Debt piled up, the vultures moved in. By the time Plex came along, his family were in so deep with the yakuza that low-grade criminality was just a fact of life. He’d probably grown up around aggressively slouched suits like this one. Probably learnt that embarrassed, give-up-the-ground smile at his father’s knee.
The last thing he wanted to do was upset his patrons.
The last thing I wanted to do was ride a hoverloader back to Millsport in this sleeve.
‘Plex, I’m booked out of here on the Saffron Queen. That’s four hours away. Going to refund me my ticket?’
‘We’ll flicker it, Tak.’ His voice was pleading. ‘There’s another ’loader out to EmPee tomorrow evening. I’ve got stuff, I mean Yukio’s guys—’
‘—use my fucking name, man,’ yelped the yakuza.
‘They can flicker you to the evening ride, no one’s ever going to know.’ The pleading gaze turned on Yukio. ‘Right? You’ll do that, right?’
I added a stare of my own. ‘Right? Seeing as how you’re fucking up my exit plans currently?’
‘You already fucked up your exit, Kovacs.’ The yakuza was frowning, head-shaking. Playing at sempai with mannerisms and a clip-on solemnity he’d probably copied directly from his own sempai not too far back in his apprenticeship. ‘Do you know how much heat you’ve got out there looking for you right now? The cops have put in sniffer squads all over uptown, and my guess is they’ll be all over the ’loader dock inside an hour. The whole TPD is out to play. Not to mention our bearded stormtrooper friends from the citadel. Fuck, man, you think you could have left a little more blood up there.’
‘I asked you a question. I didn’t ask for a critique. You going to flicker me to the next departure or not?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He waved it away. ‘Consider it fucking done. What you don’t appreciate, Kovacs, is that some people have got serious business to transact. You come up here and stir up local law enforcement with your mindless violence, they’re liable to get all enthusiastic and go busting people we need.’
‘Need for what?’
‘None of your fucking business.’ The sempai impression skidded off and he was pure Millsport street again. ‘You just keep your fucking head down for the next five or six hours and try not to kill anyone else.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then we’ll call you.’
I shook my head. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
‘Better than.’ His voice climbed. ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, Kovacs?’
I measured the distance, the time it would take me to get to him. The pain it would cost. I ladled out the words that would push him. ‘Who am I talking to? I’m talking to a whiff-wired chimpira, a fucking street punk up here from Millsport and off the leash from his sempai, and it’s getting old, Yukio. Give me your fucking phone – I want to talk to someone with authority.’
The rage detonated. Eyes flaring wide, hand reaching for whatever he had inside the suit jacket. Way too late.
I hit him.
Across the space between us, unfolding attacks from my uninjured side. Sideways into throat and knee. He went down choking. I grabbed an arm, twisted it and laid the Tebbit knife across his palm, held so he could see.
‘That’s a bioware blade,’ I told him tightly. ‘Adoracion Haemorrhagic Fever. I cut you with this and every blood vessel in your body ruptures inside three minutes. Is that what you want?’