Woken Furies

“Scan up!”

She gathered herself.

“Go!”

She sprinted away from me, along the rail, onto a co

Forty to fifty metres, the armourer in Tekitomura had said, but it helped if you could see what you were shooting at.

So—

I stood up. Bellowed into the storm.

“Hey Rad! You listening? I’m coming to fucking kill you!”

No reply. But no blaster fire either. I moved warily forward, along the side of the pit gallery, trying to estimate Segesvar’s position.

The fight pits were blunt oval arenas sunk directly into the silt bed of the Expanse, deeper inside than the surrounding waters by about a metre.

There were nine of them pressed up against each other in rows of three, thick evercrete walls between topped with interlinked galleries where spectators could stand at the rail and watch the panthers rip each other apart at a safe distance below. Steel mesh spectator walkways were laid corner to corner of each pit to provide much-needed extra space for popular fights. On more than one occasion, I’d seen the galleries packed five deep all around and the cross gantries creaking with the weight of crowds craning to see a death.

The overall honeycomb structure the nine pits formed rose about five metres out of the shallow waters of the Expanse and backed onto the low lying bubbles of the wet bunker complex at one side. Adjacent to this edge of the pits and criss-crossed with more gantried service walkways, were the rows of smaller feeding pens and long rectangular exercise runs that Impaler had smashed through on her way into the farm. As near as I could make out, it was from the edge of this mangled wreckage that the blaster had fired.

“You hear me Rad, you piece of shit?”

The blaster crashed again. The beam scorched past me, and I hit the evercrete floor, splashing water. Segesvar’s voice rolled past overhead.

“That’s close enough, I think, Tak.”

“Suit yourself,” I shouted back. “It’s all over bar the cleaning up anyway.”

“Really? Not got much faith in yourself, have you? He’s over on the new dock side right now, repelling your pirate friends. He’ll throw them back into the Expanse or feed them to the panthers. Can’t you hear?”

I listened and caught the sounds of battle again. Blasterfire and the odd agonised scream. Impossible to know how it was going for anyone, but my own misgivings about Vlad and his meth-head crew came back to me. I grimaced.

“Quite smitten, aren’t we!” I yelled. “What’s the matter, you and him been spending time down in the grav gym? Been poking either end of your favourite whore together?”

“Fuck you, Kovacs. At least he still knows how to have fun.”

His voice sounded close, even in the storm. I raised myself slightly and started to crawl along the gallery floor. Get a little closer.

“Right. And that was worth selling me out for?”

“I haven’t sold you out.” The trawler winch laugh rattled out at me. “I’ve traded you in on a better version. I’m going to do what’s right by this guy instead of you. Because this fucking guy still remembers where he’s from.”

A little closer. Drag yourself a metre at a time through the hammering rain and three centimetres of standing water on the walkways. Away from one pit, around a second. Stay low. Don’t let the hate and anger put you on your feet just yet. Try to push him into making a mistake.

“So does he remember you mewling and crawling in a back alley with your fucking thigh ripped open, Rad? Does he fucking remember that?”

“Yeah, he does. But you know what?” Segesvar’s voice scaled upward.

Must have hit a nerve. “He just doesn’t break my balls about it all the fucking time. And he doesn’t milk it to take fucking liberties with my finances.”

A little closer. I pitched my own voice amused.

“Yeah, and he’s plugged you in with the First Families too. Which is what this is really about, right? You’ve sold out to a bunch of fucking aristos, Rad. Just like the fucking yakuza. You’ll be moving to Millsport next.”

“Hey, fuck you Kovacs!”

The fury came accompanied by another blaster bolt, but it was nowhere close. I gri

“And I’m the one who’s forgotten where he’s from? Come on, Rad. You’ll be wearing a slit-eyed sleeve before you know it.”

Close enough.

“Hey fuck—”

I rose to my feet and hurled myself forward. His voice cued me in, neurachem vision did the rest. I spotted him crouched at the far side of one of the feeding pens, part shielded by the steel mesh side of a bridging walkway. The Rapsodia spewed monomol fragments from my fist as I ran round the oval walkway of the fight pit. No time for better aim, just have to hope that—

He yelped and I saw him stagger, clutching at an arm. Savage joy coursed through me, peeled my lips back from my teeth. I fired again and he either collapsed or dived for cover. I leapt the rail between the gallery I was on and the feeding pen beyond. Nearly tripped—didn’t. Swayed back on balance and made a split-second decision. I couldn’t go round on the wall. If Segesvar was still alive, he’d be back on his feet in the time it took, he’d cook me with the blaster. The walkway was a straight sprint, half a dozen metres across the top of the pen. I hit it ru

The metal beneath my feet tilted sickeningly.

Down in the pen, something leapt and snarled. The sea-and-rotting flesh stink of the panther’s breath came boiling up at me.

Later, I would have time to understand: the feeding pen had taken a glancing blow from Impaler’s arrival and the evercrete on the side where Segesvar waited had fractured open. That end of the walkway hung by nothing more than bolts ripped halfway loose of their mountings. And somehow, from some similar damage elsewhere in the pen complex, one of the swamp panthers was out.

I was still two metres out from the end of the walkway when the bolts tore all the way out. Eishundo reflex threw me forward. I lost the Rapsodia, grabbed at the edge of the pen with both hands. The walkway dropped out from under me. My palms closed on rain-drenched evercrete.

One hand slipped. The gekko grip in the other held me up. Somewhere below me, the swamp panther struck sparks from the fallen gantry with its talons, then fell back with a shrill howl. I scrabbled for purchase with my other hand.

Segesvar’s head appeared over the lip of the pen wall. He was pale and there was blood soaking through the right arm of his jacket, but he gri

“Well, fucking well,” he said, almost conversationally. “My old self righteous fucking friend Takeshi Kovacs.”

I heaved sideways desperately. Got a heel hooked over the edge of the pen. Segesvar saw it and limped closer.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said, and kicked my foot away. I swung out again, barely retaining grip with both hands. He stood above me and stared down for a moment. Then he looked away across the fight pits, and nodded with vague satisfaction. The rain hammered down around us.

“So for once I’m looking down on you.”

I panted. “Oh, fuck off.”

“You know that panther down there might even be one of your religious friends. That’d be ironic, eh?”

“Just get on with it, Rad. You’re a sell-out piece of shit and nothing you do here is going to prove any different.”

“That’s right, Takeshi. Take the fucking moral high ground.” His face contorted, and for a moment I thought he was going to kick my hands away there and then. “Like you always do. Oh, Radul’s a fucking criminal, Radul can’t handle himself, I had to save Radul’s fucking life once. You been doing it since you slimed Yvo