Hardwired (48 page)

“Fuck you,” Steward said. He pushed his chair back. So did the two big boys. Steward stood up, gazed into their flat tattooed faces.

Spassky was still looking at him in his strange way, as if Steward were a vid show he didn’t quite understand.

“It’s my city, buck,” he said.

Steward turned and walked away. Lightning danced through his nerves. A surge of adrenaline hit him, and his hand trembled as he reached for his chit, walked through the detectors, and then put it in the machine.

No cabs in this town. No time to call one. He looked behind, through the open door.

The fat boy and the skinny boy were following, taking their time. It was their town after all. He could see chits in their hands, ready to reclaim whatever was being held at the door.

Behind them the pastel blue boy was sobbing onstage as he tried to put a needle through his foreskin.

The machine coughed up Steward’s tote. He took it and ran.

*

Griffith was pale. He seemed drained of blood, emotion, feeling. “The Powers came then, and it was all over. A whole lot of them on the move. Hundreds of ships, big ones. The Gorky ships in-system didn’t dare to try anything against them, just pulled out and ran. Left us on the ground.” His hands were trembling again. He reached for a tissue, blew his nose, then stood up and walked into the bathroom. Steward heard water running. When Griffith came back, he seemed better; his color was back. He sat in the chair by the silent video and took a few long breaths.

“That was when the Captain and the Icehawks had their showdown. The Captain didn’t want to come in, didn’t want to admit it was over. We told him this was the end, that we weren’t going to fight against a whole alien species. He was like a crazy man, fighting to keep the war going. He had become the whirlwind and he didn’t want the whirlwind to stop. I thought it would be Major Singh all over again, that we’d fight it out then and there. But then I figured out how to bring him over, to make him see reason. I told him that if we went on fighting, he’d never see Natalie again.” Griffith took a breath, let it out slowly. “That brought him over,” he said.

Griffith hung his head. “He put down his pistol and walked away, back into his little command center. I could see he was crying. A few minutes later he came back out, told us to destroy our codes and break our weapons. We took our transport to where the Powers were waiting.” He gave a short laugh. “De Lopez was there. The guy with the atom bomb on the moon. He’d just sat in his tunnel for months and listened to the war on the radio. He was fat, healthy, laughing…. He looked at us like we were some other species.

“I don’t know why the Powers didn’t just wipe us out like a bunch of bugs, especially after what we’d done to their planet. The place was a mess—cratered, looted, poisoned. But they took care of us. Fed us some of their own food, distributed whatever Earth medicines and clothing were left. They even asked us how to dispose of the dead. It was important to them to do it right. I was scared of them at first. The way they look, the way they move, the sounds they make—it’s like discordant organ music. We didn’t really have a way of communicating yet. But I realized, eventually, that they were better than we were. By the end of the first month, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. A lot of us had that reaction.

“When we came back, there wasn’t any Coherent Light. The people responsible for its policy were in prison. No one had responsibility for us, no company hospitals, no benefits. We were on the streets. And we found out how we’d been sold.

“CL didn’t plan to win. The Icehawks were like a bargaining chip that CL was using to get leverage out of other companies. Coherent Light decided Far Jewel had the best chance of winning control over one of the other systems, so they put all their logistical effort into supporting Far Jewel’s efforts in return for a share of the loot. All the attacks we were ordered to make—they were designed to tie up Far Jewel’s enemies in the Sheol system, so they couldn’t fight Far Jewel elsewhere. When I found that out—well, I’d just had it with humanity. When we came back to Earth, I went to work for the Powers, like a lot of the others. I was rated a translator, but I didn’t really have the skills for it. Then the Powers moved offplanet, and I was out of work. In a way, losing the Powers was worse than Sheol. I don’t know how to explain it. I was sick in bed for a week. Literally sick.”

*

Down a side street, through an alley. Heading for someone else’s turf, but zigzagging, trying to keep out of their line of sight. Steward reached into his tote, pulled out the monowire, and jammed it into a jacket pocket. He turned off the crystal display on his shirt by way of changing his profile. He looked behind him.

The big boys were moving faster now, eating up the street with their long stride and heavy boots. They hadn’t missed his evasions, which argued for good scanners in their eyewear. They’d stopped to put chits into the weapons detector at the club entrance, and Steward didn’t want to know what they’d come out with. Maybe even guns.

Steward was riding the adrenaline boost now, the first shock over. Moving easy. A liquid feel in his limbs. Ready for Zen.

Another alley. This one was of old concrete, T-shaped, with a turn at right angles. There were no lights at all. Steward began to run, putting distance between himself and his pursuers before they turned the corner. The warm summer air burned his throat as he ran. He neared the T-intersection, skidded, and ducked behind a dumpster. A damp brick wall slammed against his back, jarred breath from his lungs. He put the monowhip next to him on the concrete, then reached into his tote for the nautical flares. Their surface was cool against his palms. He held one in each hand and waited.

Heavy footsteps, coming fast, then slowing. Good eyewear, then. They’d seen body heat and warm breath radiating from behind the dumpster and knew to expect him. He gathered his legs under him, ready to spring. The cautious footsteps were coming closer. Ten meters? Eight? Five?

Steward felt sweat gathering at his nape.

He scratched the fuzes against the old concrete, saw them strike, and tossed them into the alleyway, toward his pursuers, just as the fire and smoke began to boil out. He heard a pair of cries as IR scanners were overloaded by sudden thermite heat.

Steward clawed for the monowhip and sprang. Orange smoke gushed into the alley. The big boys were moving fast, already striking out blindly, knowing he was there. One of them had a neural sword; the other, some kind of short hand weapon. Reflexes hardwired in, a union of implant thread and boosted nerve, speed Steward couldn’t match.

He struck for the face of the nearest, wrapped the wire around his head, pulled. There was a shriek, blood spurting into the smoke. The other had disappeared into the billowing orange haze. The neural sword hummed near Steward’s head and he ducked. He lashed out with the whip again, felt it wrap around something, hit the toggle. The line should have straightened into a sword, cutting right through whatever it was wrapped around, but there was resistance. Maybe the line had gone around a pipe, something too strong to cut through.

Cries were echoing from the brick walls. Tears filled Steward’s eyes. He toggled again, but the wire was yanked from his hand, and he fell backward in pure reflex as the neurosword swung through the place where he’d been. Steward kept moving backward, found a wall with his hand, followed it to a turning, ducked around it. He was out of the smoke and he could breathe. He drew in the hot summer air, jogged slowly so he wouldn’t trip over something, and wiped his streaming eyes. There wasn’t enough air in all of Los Angeles to fill his aching lungs. Screams pursued him as he ran.

He reached into the tote and dropped another lit flare behind him. He was beginning to see again. Brightness flickered at him from the end of the alley.

Steward burst into the street. Lights dazzled his eyes. The Pink Blossom logo reeled overhead.

Darwin Days, he thought. Whirlwind days.

There was a cab right in front of him. It was the only one he’d seen in the entire town. He dove for the door, shouted the address of his hotel.

Behind him, the skinny boy came out of the alley. The monowire was still wrapped around the armored sleeve of his jacket. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand, stared at the bright lights of the carnival.

The taxi was already out of range.