Settlement-Years architecture. Natsume had been almost scornful. So fucking baroque, they might as well have built a ladder into it. And the glimmer of pride that all his time as a Renouncer didn’t seem to have taken away. ’course, they never expected anyone to get up there in the first place.
I examined the ranks of carving on the upward sloping underside of the flange. Mostly, it was the standard wing-and-wave motifs, but in places there were stylised faces representing Konrad Harlan and some of his more notable relatives from the Settlement era. Every ten square centimetres of stonework offered a decent hold. The distance out to the edge of the flange was less than three metres. I sighed and got back to my feet.
‘Okay then.’
Brasil braced himself next to me, peering up the angle of the stone. ‘Looks easy enough, eh? Think there are any sensors?’
I pressed the Rapsodia against my chest to make sure it was still secure. Loosened the blaster in its sheath on my back. Got back to my feet.
‘Who fucking cares.’
I reached up, stuck a fist in Konrad Harlan’s eye and dug in with my fingers. Then I climbed out over the drop before I could think about it. About thirty hanging seconds and I was onto the vertical wall. I found similar carvings to work with and seconds later was crouched on a three-metre-broad parapet, peering down into a cloister-lined, tear-shaped ornamental space of raked gravel and painstakingly aligned rocks. A small statue of Harlan stood near the centre, head bowed and hands folded meditatively, overshadowed at the rear by an idealised Martian whose wings were spread in protection and conferral of power. At the far end of the rounded space, a regal arch led away, I knew, to the shadowed courtyards and gardens of the citadel’s guest wing.
The perfume of herbs and ledgefruit blew past me, but there was no local noise beyond the breeze itself. The guests, it appeared were all across in the central complex, where lights blazed and the sounds of celebration came and went with the wind. I strained the neurachem and picked out cheers, elegant music that Isa would have hated, a voice raised in song that was quite beautiful.
I pulled the Sunjet from its sheath on my back and clicked the power on. Waiting there in the darkness on the edge of the party, hands full of death, I felt momentarily like some evil spirit out of legend. Brasil and Tres came up behind me and fanned out on the parapet. The big surfer had a heavy antique frag rifle cradled in his arms, Tres hefted her blaster left-handed to make room for the Kalashnikov solid-load in her right. There was a distant look on her face and she seemed to be weighing the two weapons for balance, or as if she might throw them. The night sky split with angelfire and lit us, bluish and unreal. Thunder rumbled like an incitement. Under it all, the maelstrom called.
‘Alright then,’ I said softly.
‘Yes, that’s probably far enough,’ said a woman’s voice from the garden-perfumed shadows. ‘Put down your weapons, please.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Figures, armed and armoured, stepped out of the cloistering. At least a dozen of them. Here and there, I could see a pale face, but most wore bulky enhanced-vision masks, and tactical marine-style helmets. Combat armour hugged their chests and limbs like extra muscle. The weaponry was equally heavy-duty. Shard blasters with gape-mouthed dispersal fittings, frag rifles about a century newer than the one Jack Soul Brasil had brought to the party. A couple of hip-mounted plasmaguns. No one up in the Harlan eyrie was taking any chances.
I lowered the barrel of the Sunjet gently to point at the stone parapet. Kept a loose grip on the butt. Peripheral vision told me Brasil had done the same with the frag rifle, and that Sierra Tres had her arms at her sides.
‘Yes, I really meant relinquish your weapons,’ said the same woman urbanely. ‘As in put them down altogether. Perhaps my Amanglic is not as idiomatic as it could be.’
I turned in the direction the voice came from.
‘That you, Aiura?’
There was a long pause, and then she stepped out of the archway at the end of the ornamental space. Another orbital discharge lit her for a moment, then the gloom sank back and I had to use neurachem to keep the detail. The Harlan security executive was the epitome of First Family beauty – elegant, almost ageless Eurasian features, jet-black hair sculpted back in a static field that seemed to both crown and frame the pale of her face. A mobile intelligence of lips and gaze, the faintest of lines at the corners of her eyes to denote a life lived. A tall, slim frame wrapped in a simple quilted jacket in black and dark red with the high collar of office, matching slacks loose enough to appear a full-length court gown when she stood still. Flat-heeled shoes that she could run or fight in if she had to.
A shard pistol. Not aimed, not quite lowered.
She smiled in the dim light.
‘I am Aiura, yes.’
‘Got my fuckhead younger self there with you?’
Another smile. A flicker of eyebrows as she glanced sideways, back the way she’d come. He stepped out of the shadowed archway. There was a grin on his face, but it didn’t look very firmly anchored.
‘Here I am, old man. Got something to say to me?’
I eyed the tanned combat frame, the gathered stance and the bound back hair. Like some fucking bad guy from a cut-rate samurai flic.
‘Nothing you’d listen to,’ I told him. ‘I’m just trying to sort out the idiot count here.’
‘Yeah? Well I’m not the one who just climbed two hundred metres so he could walk into an ambush.’
I ignored the jibe, and looked back at Aiura, who was watching me with amused curiosity.
‘I’m here for Sylvie Oshima,’ I said quietly.
My younger self coughed laughter. Some of the armoured men and women took it up, but it didn’t last. They were too nervous, there were still too many guns in play. Aiura waited for the last guffaws to skitter out.
‘I think we’re all aware of that, Kovacs-san. But I fail to see how you’re going to accomplish your goal.’
‘Well, I’d like you to go and fetch her for me.’
More grating laughter. But the security exec’s smile had paled out and she gestured sharply for quiet.
‘Be serious, Kovacs-san. I don’t have unlimited patience.’
‘Believe me, nor do I. And I’m tired. So you’d better send a couple of your men down to get Sylvie Oshima from whatever interrogation chamber you’re holding her in, and you’d better hope she’s not been harmed in any way, because if she has, this negotiation is over.’
Now it had grown quiet again in the stone garden. There was no more laughter. Envoy conviction, the tone in my voice, the choice of words, the ease in my stance – these things told them to believe.
‘With what exactly are you negotiating, Kovacs-san?’
‘With the head of Mitzi Harlan,’ I said simply.
The quiet cranked tight. Aiura’s face might have been graven from stone for all the reaction it showed. But something in the way she stood changed and I knew I had her.
‘Aiura-san, I am not bluffing. Konrad Harlan’s favourite granddaughter was taken by a Quellist assault team in Danchi two minutes ago. Her Secret Service detachment is dead, as is anyone else who mistakenly tried to come to her aid. You have been focused in the wrong place. And you now have less than thirty minutes to render me Sylvie Oshima unharmed – after that, I have no influence over the outcomes. Kill us, take us prisoner. It won’t matter. None of it will make any difference. Mitzi Harlan will die in great pain.’
The moment pivoted. Up on the parapet, it was cool and quiet and I could hear the maelstrom faintly. It was a solid, carefully-engineered plan, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t get me killed. I wondered what would happen if someone shot me off the edge. If I’d be dead before I hit.