Black Steel (3 page)

"You got missiles on the roof?"

"Yes. Doppler-guided Peel one-oh-threes. Anybody who flies over my house at less than half Republic aircraft minimums is in for a big surprise."

Sleel nodded. He ran through the computer system's other armaments. His checks were permitted only after the security reader had identified Reason's voice, retinal patterns and a code phrase before allowing access. There were robot guns hidden about the grounds, gasbombs, and the house itself was sheathed in armor sufficient to stop small arms fire outright and probably slow down most bigger stuff. Not a cheap job, and one Sleel ordinarily would give passing marks to-except that the Puget Sound house and the one in Australia had similar protections. Whoever had come for Reason before knew some stuff.

Not good.

On the other hand, Sleel was fairly certain that should anybody swinging a big blade come knocking upon the front door, he could handle that. The first thing he'd done when he'd failed to stop the attacker at the airport with shocktox darts was change the loads on his spetsdods to a formulation designed to knock down large wild animals. It hit harder than shocktox, did the animal trank, but that was too bad.

People trying to chop him into soypro patties didn't rate real high on Sleel's popularity poll. If it took them two hours to wake up from the chem's effect, or if they didn't wake up at all, well, that was too bad, too. They should think about the risks before they pointed a sharp thing at him, that was how Sleel figured it. And if that didn't do the trick, he had some black-market Asp loads tucked away in his ammo case. Emile probably wouldn't approve such things, but he had higher principles than did Sleel. Where Khadaji had knocked down a big chunk of an army with Spasm so they could recover after six months in tetany, Sleel would probably have killed 'em outright. He'd never been much of a big-picture man himself. Dead attackers hardly ever bothered you again, Sleel figured, if you didn't count Marcus Wall, and when they tried to kill you, they lost their rights to keep wasting the communal oxygen.

"Okay," Sleel said. "I want to do a tour of the place on foot to check out things myself. To do this right we probably should have three or four other people rotating duty, but for now, we'll wait and see what your friends in the local cool shop have to say. If we get something, we'll check it out."

"I defer to your expertise."

Sleel shook his head. Funny old geep. Hard to look at him and realize he'd been the best thief in the galaxy, for longer than Sleel had been alive. Well. That didn't matter. What mattered was that he was now Sleel's client, and he couldn't have anybody killing him. That would make Sleel look bad, and that was the worst sin of all.

The com chimed and announced a call. Sleel took it. The woman on the other end of the call gave him visual, and she was quite attractive in a dark sort of way. She had brown hair chopped short in a military buzz, even features, and from what he could see, wore some kind of uniform. He kept his own transmission pictureless.

"I'm looking for M. Reason."

"He's not available. I'll take a message."

"I have some information for him."

Sleel recognized the voice from the call in the car earlier. It was the local cool; what was her name?

Bley? Bligh? "I'll download it, you like."

"I'd rather deliver it in person."

"At your convenience, fem."

"I'll be by in an hour."

Fifty-nine minutes later a small flitter arrived at the front gate. Sleel was watching it on the monitors, and the resolution on the holoproj was good enough to show him that Officer Bligh or her double was at the controls. He touched a control and the gate slid open. He watched the gate until it closed behind the car. The cool parked the vehicle near the front door. Sleel had one of the cameras zoom in on the flitter's interior tightly enough to show that it was empty save for the woman.

"Company," Sleel called out. "Stay out of sight until I check her in."

Sleel took a couple of deep breaths and shook his shoulders and arms, loosening them. The cool wore street sheets, tight-weave orthoskin pants and tunic, probably with spidersilk armor under them, he would guess, proof against the most common handguns. She carried a military-grade hand wand on her belt in an appendix holster, and a shockstik baton dangling from a crowpatch on her left hip. She also had a dispenser of plastic cufftape anchored to her belt next to the shockstik. Standard police issue all, it looked like. Still, you never knew for sure. Things weren't always what they seemed.

"V. Bligh," the woman said into the doorcom.

Sleel watched as the computer checked the voiceprint with the one Reason had on file. "Match," the computer said. "Vicki Bligh, Kona Police."

"Admit her," Sleel said.

Bligh entered the house and the door slid shut behind her. Sleel stepped into view, watching her.

"You're the guy at the port," she said. "The matador. You working for M. Reason now?"

"Yep. And I know you're a cool and all, but would you mind putting the hardware there on the table?"

Bligh nodded. She put her wand, the shockstik, and a single-charge backup hand wand she'd had tucked into a calf pocket on her left boot onto the table.

Sleel said, "Hard object scan, subject Bligh."

The computer said, "Keycard, left tunic breast pocket. Cosmetic tube, right tunic pocket. ID cube, left pants pocket, infoball, ID cube, three stad and two demistad coins, right pants pocket."

"If you would," Sleel said, waving at the woman.

"M. Reason is being very careful these days."

"A sad necessity," Sleel said.

She put the other items onto the table.

"Poison scan, table," Sleel said.

"Negative known poisons," the computer said.

"Okay. This way, please fem. You can collect your gear."

"Aren't you worried about this?" She hefted the wand.

"No. I can shoot you before you could use it."

"You have a high opinion of your skill."

"Yeah, well, that's how it is."

She holstered the wand and stik, and pocketed the other items.

"Okay, Jersey," Sleel called out.

In the library, Bligh slotted the infoball and extra ID cube into the holoproj's reader. The air lit with an image. It was the face of the woman with the sword, from her ID.

"The name given is Karenita Thompson," Bligh said. "That may be false, given that all the other information seems to be bogus. "

Sleel and Reason watched as the image turned in the air. A young woman, attractive enough, hair dyed a pale blue. Dead now.

Sleel had the comp enhance and enlarge the tattoo. It was odd-looking, a solid black design about the size of stad coin. "What's that?"

"Looks like a silhouette of a little house," Bligh said. "Not in our files. We're running it through Republic Security."

To Reason, Sleel said, "Any of the others wearing one?"

"I didn't notice. The first one is at the bottom of Puget Sound, the second probably feeding the dingoes. I should have kept them, but I didn't realize they were part of a parade at the time. "

"She died from a systemic toxic shock," Bligh said. "She had a chemical nanoimplant in her brain. The ME says it was triggered by a specific combination of delta and theta waves that come only in very deep sleep or unconsciousness."

"Yeah? What did she do at bedtime every night?"

"A manual override."

"Be nasty if you forgot to turn it off," Sleel said. So. The assassin wore a failsafe. Get knocked out and you died. Forget to turn it off, you died. Nobody would get it out of you unless they happened to pick it up on a scan before it triggered. And since you were put into a deep sleep for brainscan, that would pretty much stop anybody poking around in your skull for answers. Cautious.

"Here's the recording of the attack."

Bligh waved at the comp. The air shimmered and a high angle of the underside of the gamp at the port appeared. There he was, Sleel saw, and there was the woman who had called herself Thompson, stepping out with her sword. Sleel watched with a professional eye as the downscaled woman in the recording went for the smaller image of himself. Damn, he looked jerky when he fired that first round.

Sloppy.

"Anything on her of any help?"

"The lab is working on the clothes and sword. We found where she was staying, at one of the big hotels in New Kona. Nothing so far. The sword is interesting."

Sleel saw himself shoot the woman coming at him again without apparent effect. Damned if he didn't dance back a step when that happened! Fuck. You look like you were scared shitless there, Sleel. Bet you thought you had me then, didn't you, lady?

"Why is the sword interesting?"

"The steel in it is unique. Not quite like anything the lab has seen before. Doesn't match any known commercial grade. Got stuff in it they didn't expect, the way it's lined up."

The past-tense Sleel dodged the attack and began the dance of sumito. Looked pretty good . . . well, okay, his foot was off a little there during Air, and maybe he was bent too far during Neon Chain, but that punch was all right. Too hard, maybe.

"So the sword is funny. Does that help?"

"Not that we can determine. Her ID says she is from Thompson's Gazelle, and the cube has a Delta imprint, but the White Radio squirt from Thompson's Gazelle comes up no record."

"Maybe she lived a long way from town."

The assassin was down, and Sleel was scanning for more trouble. That looked okay.

"Maybe," Bligh said. "You want to tell me what this is all about, M. Reason?"

"Would that I knew," Reason said. "Somebody is sending people with swords after me; other than that, I cannot say."

"Well, if you figure it out, do let us know. A body in the port is bad for the tourist business." To Sleel she said, "I've never seen anybody move like that." She nodded at the final freeze-frame of the holoproj.

"Like lube on glass. I don't know anybody who could be that smooth and cool with an assassin coming at them."

Sleel shrugged. Yeah, well, it looked like shit to him, but he didn't say it.

Bligh collected the cube and infoball and headed for the door. There would be a record of both in the security computer, though there didn't seem to be anything useful there. The swordswoman was a pro; she wouldn't have left any obvious clues as to who had sent her, not if she was willing to die if they caught her.

Sleel had the computer open the door. An alarm went off, a keening whoop-whoop at the same instant Bligh stepped into the doorway. Sleel yelled "Down! On the floor!" as he snapped his hands up, looking for targets.

But instead of dropping, Bligh went for her hand wand. She was pretty fast, but not fast enough. The wand cleared the holster but before she could level it, the edge of a black sword cut into her neck from her left side, slicing all the way to the spine. Blood sprayed from the chopped artery and she fell back and away from the weapon.

Sleel saw in slow motion the fan of hot crimson from the black steel as it was jerked from the woman's half-severed neck. Red painted a Pollock-spatter pattern on the wall and ceiling.

As Bligh dropped, a man leaped into the hallway, screaming. He raised the weapon over his head and charged toward Sleel.

Chapter THREE

ON THE HOLY world of Koji:

The woman came up from seiza, the sword in her right hand as much a part of her as her arm. The ebon blade blurred and fanned horizontally through the air, bisecting the first of her imaginary opponents at the waist.

The flashing dark blade continued its loop, circling behind the woman outward and upward, then down to split the invisible skull of the next ghostly attacker. She stepped to her left and pulled the weapon back, locking her left hand on the hilt behind her right hand, point aimed at the throat of the third attacker. Her thumbs and forefingers were slack, middle fingers neutral, ring and little fingers tight against the silk cord and ray skin. It was not a thing of mind but of feel, it was either correct or it was not, and when it was correct, the sword was as the hand. When it was right, the woman lived in the steel as much as she did her own flesh. Now it was right.

The spectre lunged and was impaled upon the blade's tip, the woman's left hand driving the strike, heel against the stainless steel cap, right hand twisting and turning the weapon so that the cut became a blood-letting gouge, spearing and tearing asunder the unfortunate heart.

The imaginary attacker fell away, and the woman spun, slashing at the fourth and fifth and sixth opponents, driving them back. She leaped, cut, stabbed, ducked, and dodged, the sound of her bare feet squeaking on the wooden floor mingling with the whish of the blade whipping through the cool air of the dojo. She was sharpness itself, dividing upon her razored edges the layers of imagined reality around her.

The Kaji-te burned, covering the Five Attitudes, Upper, Middle, Lower, Left Side and Right, and the dancer danced among the attackers of her mind's eye, twirling, whirling, blocking death and striking it down until, all of a timeless moment, she was done.

She looked around the empty room, and her imagination covered the floor with bodies. She exhaled a short breath, inhaled again, and gave the vanquished a short nod of respect. She spun the sword in a circle, all wrist action, and snapped the point at the floor, slinging the blood. She moved to where the white wooden sheath lay. She kneeled next to the sheath, sat on tier heels seiza again and picked up the sheath without looking at it, turning it so that the convex curve was away from her hip. She brought the sword's spine across her belly and touched the metal just above the guard to the mouth of the sheath and slid the back edge of the blade along the opening, left thumb and forefinger pinching the steel lightly to remove any remaining traces of imaginary blood. When the point reached the opening, she pivoted the sword on it and slowly pushed the weapon home, until the catch on the hilt locked it into place. The mating of steel and wood accomplished, she replaced the sheathed sword on the floor, inclined her head in a bow, and was done.