Broken Angels

I looked up at the desiccated, spreadeagled corpse again, feeling a fresh surge of the respect I’d first felt when I realised the Martians had died at their posts. Something indefinable happened in my head, something that my Envoy senses recognised as the intuitive shimmer at the edge of understanding.

“No, it’s selective,” I realised as I spoke. “It would have driven them. It would have made them the toughest motherfuckers in the sky.”

I thought I spotted a faint smile crossing Tanya Wardani’s face. “You should publish, Kovacs. That kind of intellectual insight.”

Schneider smirked.

“In fact,” the archaeologue said, falling into gentle lecture mode while she stared at the mummified Martian. “The current evolutionary argument for this trait is that it helped keep crowded roosts hygienic. Vasvik and Lai, couple of years ago. Before that, most of the Guild agreed it would deter skin-feeding parasites and infection. Vasvik and Lai wouldn’t actually dispute that, they’re just jockeying for pole position. And, of course, there is the overarching toughest motherfuckers in the sky hypothesis, which a number of Guild Masters have elaborated, though none quite as elegantly as you, Kovacs.”

I tipped her a bow.

“Do you think we can get her down?” Wardani wondered aloud, standing back to get a better look at the cables the webbing frame depended from.

“Her?”

“Yeah. It’s a roost guardian. See the spur on the wing. That bone ridge on back of the skull. Warrior caste. They were all female as far as we know.” The archaeologue looked up at the cabling again. “Think we can get this thing working?”

“Don’t see why not.” I raised my voice to carry across the platform “Jiang. You see anything like a winch on that side?”

Jiang looked upward, then shook his head.

“What about you, Luc?”

“Mistress Wardani!”

“Speaking of motherfuckers,” muttered Schneider. Matthias Hand was striding across to join the congregation beneath the spreadeagled corpse.

“Mistress Wardani, I hope you weren’t thinking of doing anything other than look at this specimen.”

“Actually,” the archaeologue told him, “We’re looking for a way to winch it down. Got a problem with that?”

“Yes, Mistress Wardani, I have. This ship, and everything it contains, is the property of the Mandrake Corporation.”

“Not until the buoy sings, it isn’t. That’s what you told us to get us in here, anyway.”

Hand smiled thinly. “Don’t make an issue of this, Mistress Wardani. You’ve been well enough paid.”

“Oh, paid. I’ve been paid.” Wardani stared at him. “Fuck you, Hand.”

She stormed away across the platform and stood at its edge, looking out.

I stared at the Mandrake exec. “Hand, what’s the matter with you? I thought I told you to ease up on her. The architecture getting to you or something?”

I left him with the corpse and walked across to where Wardani stood with her arms wrapped tightly around her body and her head lowered.

“Not pla

She snorted. “That piece of shit. He’d have a fucking corporate holofront on the gates of paradise if he ever found them.”

“Don’t know about that. He’s a pretty serious believer.”

“Yeah? Fu

“Yeah, well. Organised religion, you know.”

She snorted again, but there was a laugh in it this time and her posture unlocked a little.

“I don’t know why I got so bent out of shape. I don’t have the tools here to deal with organic remnants anyway. Let it stay up there. Who gives a shit?”

I smiled and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You do,” I said gently.

The dome over our heads was as transparent to radio signals as it was to the visual spectrum. Sun ran a series of basic checks with the equipment she had, then we all trooped back to the Nagini and brought the damaged buoy up to the platform, together with three cases of tools Sun deemed likely to be useful. We stopped in every chamber, flagging the route with amber limpet cherries along the way, and painting the floor with illuminum paint, much to Tanya Wardani’s chagrin.

“It’ll wash off,” Sun Liping told her in a tone that suggested she didn’t much care one way or the other.

Even with a couple of grav harnesses to ease the lifting, getting the buoy to its designated resting place was a long, hard job, made infuriating by the bubbling chaos of the ship’s architecture. By the time we’d assembled everything on the platform—off to one side, at a discreet distance from the mummified original occupants—I was shattered. The radiation damage raging through my cells was getting beyond the power of the drugs to do anything about it.

I found a section of the central structure that wasn’t directly below a corpse and propped myself against it, looking out at the starscape while my abused body did its best to stabilise my pulse and damp down the sickness in the pit of my guts. Out among the stars, the open gate winked at me as it rose over the platform’s horizon. Further right, the nearest Martian tugged at an upper corner of my vision. I looked up and across to where the corpse peered down at me through shrouded eyes. I raised one finger to my temple in salute.

“Yeah. Be with you shortly.”

“I’m sorry?”

I rolled my head sideways and saw Luc Deprez standing a couple of metres away. In his rad-resistant Maori sleeve, he looked almost comfortable.

“Nothing. Communing.”

“I see.” From the expression on his face, it was pretty clear he didn’t. “I was wondering. Want to go for a look around?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe later. Don’t let me stop you, though.”

He frowned, but he left me alone. I saw him leaving with Ameli Vongsavath in tow. Elsewhere on the platform, the rest of the party were gathered in small knots, talking in voices that didn’t carry much. I thought I could hear the songspire cluster making faint counterpoint, but I wasn’t up to focusing the neurachem. I felt an immense weariness come sliding down out of the starfield and the platform seemed to tilt away beneath me. I closed my eyes and drifted off into something that wasn’t exactly sleep, but came equipped with all the disadvantages.

Kovacs…

Fucking Semetaire.

Do you miss your fragmented Limon Highlander?

Don’t—

Do you wish she were here in one piece, eh? Or would you like the pieces of her squirming over you unattached?

My face twitched where her foot had smashed my lip as the nanobe cable hurled it past me.

Is there an appeal, hmmm? A segmented houri at your command. A hand here, a hand there. Curved handfuls of flesh. Consumer cut, so to speak. Soft, graspable flesh, Kovacs. Malleable. You could fill your hands with it. Mould it to you.

Semetaire, you’re pushing me—

And unattached to any inconvenient independent will. Throw away the parts you have no use for. The parts that excrete, the parts that think beyond sensual use. The afterlife has many pleasures—

Leave me the fuck alone, Semetaire.

Why should I do that? Alone is cold, a gulf of coldness deeper than you looked upon from the hull of the Mivtsemdi. Why should I abandon you to that when you have been such a friend to me. Sent me so many souls.

Alright. That’s it, motherfucker—

I snapped awake, sweating. Tanya Wardani was crouched a metre away, peering at me. Behind her, the Martian hung in mid-glide, staring blindly down like one of the angels in the Andric cathedral at Newpest.

“You OK, Kovacs?”

I pressed fingers against my eyes and winced at the ache the pressure caused.

“Not bad for a dead man, I suppose. You’re not off exploring?”

“I feel like shit. Maybe later.”

I propped myself up a little straighter. Across the platform, Sun worked steadily on the buoy’s exposed circuit plates. Jiang and Sutjiadi stood nearby, talking in low tones. I coughed. “Limited amount of later round here. I doubt it’ll take Sun the whole ten hours. Where’s Schneider?”