Woken Furies

I stared at the darkening horizon. “I don’t know.”

“Got to think past that stuff, sam. Got to. It’ll kill you if you don’t.”

On the other side of one of the bubblefabs, someone went past in the thickening gloom and called something out in Stripjap. Oishii gri

“How long you been doing this?” I asked him.

“Oh, a while. While longer than I’d like, but—”

A shrug. I nodded.

“But it pays. Right?”

He gri

“Yeah, they’ve really fucked things up since I was last here.”

“Been away, huh?” He didn’t push the point the way Plex had. Old-style Harlan’s World courtesy—if I wanted to tell him I’d been doing time in storage, he probably figured I’d get round to it. And if I didn’t, well then, what business was it of his anyway.

“Yeah, about thirty, forty years. Lot of changes.”

Another shrug. “Been coming for longer than that. Everything the Quellists squeezed out of the original Harlan regime, those guys have been chipping away at ever since it happened. Mecsek’s just the late stage bad news.”

“This enemy you ca

He nodded and finished the quote for me. “You can only drive it back damaged into the depths and teach your children to watch the waves for its return.”

“So I guess someone’s not been watching the waves very carefully.”

“That isn’t it, Micky.” He was looking away towards the failing light in the west, arms folded. “Times have changed since she was around, that’s all. What’s the point of toppling a First Families regime, here or anywhere else, if the Protectorate are just going to come in and unload the Envoys on you for your trouble?”

“You got a point there.”

He gri

“They lost at I

“Yeah, and how often have they lost since? I

Memory roared briefly down on me. Jimmy de Soto screaming and clawing at the ruins of his face with fingers that have already scooped out one eye and look like getting the other if I don’t …

I locked it down.

Minor glitch. Blip on the scope.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

“Maybe I am,” he agreed quietly.

We stood for a while in silence after that, watching the dark arrive. The sky had cleared enough to show a waning Daikoku spiked on mountains to the north and a full but distant Marikanon like a copper coin thrown high over our heads. Swollen Hotei still lay below the horizon to the west.

Behind us, the fire settled in. Our shadows shaded into solidity amidst flickering red glow.

When it started to get too hot to stand there comfortably, Oishii offered a ma

What the fuck are you doing out here, Kovacs?

Always the easy questions.

I left the fire and picked my way through the bubblefabs to where we’d pitched three of our own, diplomatically separate from Oishii’s. Smooth cold on my face and hands as my skin noticed the sudden lack of warmth.

Moonglow on the ‘fabs made them look like breaching bottlebacks in a sea of grass. When I reached the one where Sylvie was bedded down, I noticed brighter light splintering out around the closed flap. The others were in darkness. Alongside, two bugs leaned at canted angles on their parking racks, steering gear and weapon stands branching against the sky. The third was gone.

I touched the chime patch, pulled open the flap and went in. On one side of the interior, Jadwiga and Kiyoka sprang hastily apart on a tangle of bedding. Opposite them, beside a muffled illuminum night-lamp, Sylvie lay corpselike in her sleeping bag, hair combed carefully back from her face. A portable heater glowed at her feet. There was no one else in the ‘fab.

“Where’s Orr?”

“Not here.” Jad rearranged her clothing crossly. “You might have fucking knocked, Micky.”

“I did.”

“Okay, you might have fucking knocked and waited, then.”

“Sorry, it’s not what I was expecting. So where’s Orr?”

Kiyoka waved an arm. “Gone on the bug with Lazlo. They volunteered for perimeter watch. Got to show willing, we figured. These people are going to carry us home tomorrow.”

“So why don’t you guys use one of the other ‘fabs?”

Jadwiga looked across to Sylvie. “Because someone’s got to keep watch in here too,” she said softly.

“I’ll do it.”

They both looked at me uncertainly for a moment, then at each other.

Then Kiyoka shook her head.

“Can’t. Orr’d fucking kill us.”

“Orr isn’t here.”

Another exchange of glances. Jad shrugged.

“Yeah, fuck it, why not.” She stood up. “C’mon, Ki. Watch won’t change for another four hours. Orr’s not going to be any the wiser.”

Kiyoka hesitated. She leaned over Sylvie and put a hand on her forehead.

“Alright, but if anything—”

“Yeah, I’ll call you. Go on, get out of here.”

“Yeah, Ki—come on.” Jadwiga chivvied the other woman to the doorflap.

As they were stepping out she paused and gri

I gri

“Yeah, you wish. In your dreams, man.”

Kiyoka mouthed a more conventional thanks, and they were gone. I sat down beside Sylvie and stared at her in silence. After a couple of moments, I reached out and stroked her brow in an echo of Kiyoka’s gesture. She didn’t move. Her skin was hot and papery dry.

“Come on, Sylvie. Pull out of there.”

No response.

I took back my hand and stared at the woman some more.

What the fuck are you doing out here, Kovacs?

She’s not Sarah. Sarah’s gone. What the fuck are you—

Oh, shut up.

It’s not like I had another choice, is it?

Recall of the final moments in Tokyo Crow came and demolished that one. The safety of the table with Plex, the warm anonymity and the promise of a ticket out tomorrow, I remembered standing up and walking away from it all, as if in answer to a siren song. Into the blood and fury of the fight.

In retrospect it was a moment so hinged, so loaded with implications of shifting fate, that it should have creaked at me as I moved to step through it.