Close quarters Read online

  It came into Pete Malloy's mind that he was well and truly sauteed. He opened his mouth.

  Eddie saved him the disgrace of uttering a denial that would not be believed by smashing his face with a quick right that sent Malloy flying into the crowd. The crowd, anticipating just this turn of events, opened before him as if by magic, so as not to interfere with his flight time. His head slammed against the musicbox, making the Purple Tailfeathers squawk indignantly and jitter briefly, as if fire ants had gotten into their tights. Next to the box a tutelary statue of elephant-headed Ganesha, god of thieves, teetered and almost toppled from its niche. A hand missing its little finger caught the idol and eased it back in place.

  Two of Eddie's hatamoto were flanking the hapless Malloy by the time he subsided into a heap on the tatami that covered the floor. One relieved him of the stolen pen. Then they caught him under the armpits, dragged him to the back entrance, and pitched him into the alley.

  Eddie had already lost interest in the proceedings. He grunted and flipped a coin to the waitress and turned back to the bar. The crowd, meanwhile, had returned to the serious business of drinking.

  * * *

  Cassie caught the coin with casual aplomb, slipped it into a pocket, then resumed her rounds almost without missing a beat. She hadn't even watched her former benefactor's brief, inglorious flight.

  She felt no remorse for his fate. She had tried to square things with him, but only because the whole point of the exercise was to hang around this locale for a while, rather than the fast fade that usually followed a successful touch. It was easier to pay off and avoid trouble.

  She'd suspected Petey might not care for the coin he got paid in. But Cassie always covered her bets. If Malloy hadn't gotten greedy, big Eddie never would've had a clue as to the whereabouts of his favorite pen.

  The issue was likely settled. The Sumiyama lieutenant thought she'd done him a favor, and had tipped her to get out from under the on, the obligation. If Petey showed his face in here again, he'd get it smashed again and worse.

  Of course it might occur to him to lay for the presumptuous potato and settle accounts with her outside the confines of the Kit-Kat. But that would be the worst mistake of his life. Also the last one.

  "Here, girl! Bring some more beer!" Cassie plastered a smile across her features and scurried to obey. Her mind was once again a Void, but her eyes and ears were open.

  * * *

  With a lifetime of practice at showing only those emotions she chose to, Cassie found it easy not to smile when she felt the jostle on the narrow noonday street.

  She wore her long black hair coiled in a braid at the back of her head and a DCMS aerospace jock's jacket against the autumn chill blowing down the Yamato from the mountains. The jacket displayed no unit patches, and everyone knew the Combine wasn't wasting any of its aerospace assets, already stretched membrane-thin, on a low-threat world like Hachiman. To any onlooker the jacket would have suggested that Cassie was probably flight crew off a Drac merchant spacer, pushing the envelope of Combine sumptuary laws. Even before the current permissiveness, that would have been nothing out of the ordinary on Hachiman. The Masakko were loyal sons and daughters of the Dragon, but they figured their devotion entitled them to expect him to look the other way if they didn't hew to the letter of every last petty regulation his servants saw fit to impose. The people of Masamori reckoned that they and the Dragon were like that.

  Observation of the rules tended to be especially lax here in Sodegarami, Masamori's lively ukiyo, across the river from the HTE complex.

  Cassie was just cruising, like a spacer scoping the lowlife district in advance of a nocturnal excursion or one unwilling to wait for the sun to roll below the horizon. Anything that could be had in Masamori's Floating World—which was anything—could be had in daylight as easily as dark. But the semi-licit pliers of Sodegarami's version of the water trade were creatures of the night. In daytime like this, they were just going through the motions.

  So she walked along with her hands in her pockets, craning around at the strip clubs, geisha parlors—which, around here, was a euphemism for "whorehouse"—and the pachinko halls as if undecided where she was going to blow the thick roll that bulked out the right rear pocket of her whipcord trousers.

  Sodegarami's main drag, Camellia Way, was closed to vehicular traffic. When the rightmost of the two young men, seemingly lost in emphatic conversation, who loomed up from the pedestrian-stream in front of Cassie accidentally bumped into her, she knew that somebody had decided to make up her mind for her.

  The dip was good, the touch feather-light. Even Cassie might not have noticed if her peripheral vision hadn't been tuned way out just as Guru had taught her, so that she made out almost no detail but was sensitive to motion in an incredibly wide arc.

  Even before he could get her wallet out, she had the pickpocket's hand bent backward toward his forearm. "You make a single sound," she said into the ear of the young man whose arm she had trapped, "and you'll never make a touch with this hand again."

  He gritted his teeth and nodded. A shock of black hair hung over his frightened black eyes. As if strolling with a friend, she steered him deliberately but purposefully into an alley so tight she could have spanned it with her outstretched hands.

  She held him in the come-along, waiting. A few steady heartbeats, and his two accomplices appeared. One twirled a balisong knife with ebony handles. The other was uncoiling a thin chain from around his waist.

  Cassie's left hand came up. It held a snubnosed, five-shot, 10-millimeter revolver, hammerless and matte-black. Civilian ownership of firearms was proscribed in the Combine, which of course didn't inconvenience those willing to bend the law. The local Masakko toughs, like criminals throughout the Combine, didn't actually use guns much, but that was out of personal preference. They preferred mayhem of a more intimate variety, the kind where you got to feel blood on your knuckles. But Masamori's punks and gangs knew enough about heat to recognize an altogether serious concealment piece, and draw the proper conclusions.

  These two dropped their weapons and raised their hands without needing to be asked.

  Cassie smiled. "Smart boys."

  "You won't get away with this," groaned the one in the wrist lock.

  "Save it." She spun him face-first into the wall—enough to give him a few lumps, but not draw blood. Also enough to stun him so he didn't immediately bolt. Then she put the piece away.

  "You want what's in here?" she asked, fishing out the fat wallet. "Well, you can have it—some of it. And all you have to do is talk to me."

  * * *

  Yoshitsune Spaceport on the coffer-dammed floodplains east of town was an ukiyo of a different stripe. Even in the tightly regimented Combine, spaceports were filled with activity that could not always be overseen and shadows that could not always be penetrated by light. A vague sense of extraterritoriality always seemed to surround spaceports, as if they belonged to the Combine at large rather than to the world where they happened to reside.

  Of course, most Combine worlds were much more orderly and obedient than Hachiman to begin with.

  The recent opening of the Combine to greater intercourse with its neighbors had the effect of loosening the limits within Yoshi-Town—a miniature satellite city rising out of the reeds—even further. HTE, especially, had been doing an increasingly brisk business with the wealthy Federated Commonwealth, building a reputation for probity it wouldn't even have occurred to earlier generations of Kurita magnates to envy. Davion and Steiner spacers, accustomed to standards of personal freedom that seemed extravagant even in comparison to Hachiman's, had left their own marks.

  Finally, though the yaks controlled the spaceport's dockworkers, they did not exercise that stranglehold on street crime that kept it to such a low level throughout the Combine—an apparently enviable state of affairs that outside commentators universally and mistakenly attributed to the iron grip of the Friendly Persuaders and the ISF. That meant the mean
streets between the warehouses and the spacer honky-tonks were mean indeed.

  But if there were secrets to be had on Hachiman, they would almost certainly filter through Yoshitsune.

  * * *

  Night was kind to Yoshi-Town, as to an aging whore. It hid some of the cobbled-together shantytown look of the place, and the bright, ever-dancing lights even gave it a certain semblance of exotic charm. At least to the upper-mid and lower-upper class Masakko who came slumming here, looking for adventure; the very claptrap ephemerality of the pleasure palaces tickled their sense of the mujo. But to the denizens of Yoshi-town and the spacers who had seen Yoshi-town under a hundred names on a hundred worlds, it was the same old dreary same-old.

  The blacktop streets glittered with oil and recent rain. A shuttle lifting off from Number Nine pad sent a wave of glare rolling tsunami down the display windows of the rinky-dink curio shops and flesh bars, touching the faces of everyone on the street with the light of Hell with the hinges off. The three hookers talking to the diminutive spacer woman ignored it.

  It was a shame about the spacer with the Davvy French accent, the hookers thought. She obviously had a fine figure, though she did her best to hide it with that heavy jacket and baggy trousers, and her features were quite lovely. But she must have felt disfigured by the port-wine birthmark that covered the right side of her face. When the street lit with exhaust flare, she ducked that side of her face into her collar by reflex.

  She paid standard hourly rates just to sit and talk in a café. That made her almost transcendentally kinky. But none of the hookers was exactly averse to easy money.

  Besides, she was easy to talk to. A working girl needed a sympathetic ear, now and again.

  "Been some tough customers coming off the regular packet from Luthien lately," Lulu was saying, fiddling with her platinum wig. The breeze was blowing out to sea, and with the blast from the shuttle takeoff boosting it along, it kept trying to snatch the hairpiece off and send it skittering down the street like a frightened animal. "Men and women both. Hard faces and tight lips."

  "Who gives a damn?" said Bonnie, short and tough, with neon-orange hair she claimed she'd been born with.

  "That means they keep their wallets closed, too," Kimiko explained around her mouthful of chewing gum. "They don't exist for Bon unless they fork over."

  "Who's got the time to mess with 'em?" Bonnie demanded.

  "They don't say anything?" the Davvy spacer asked.

  "Not to nobody I talk to," Lulu said. Kimiko nodded, chewing. After a moment Bonnie shook her head too. The spacer woman did fork over, after all.

  "They just flash their papers and breeze through Customs," Kimiko said.

  "What about their baggage?"

  "Travel light, I hear," said Lulu. "Bag or two. Just clean clothes for the jump from Luthien."

  "How about baggage shipped in the hold?"

  The streetwalkers looked at each other. If any of them thought the gaijin woman's questions were strange, they didn't show it.

  And if the Friendly Persuaders ever came asking—no, they'd never seen a woman like that. They'd remember that birthmark, sure.

  "I can ask Shiro," Kimiko said. "He's one of my regulars, offloads the packets. Drives the little carts, you know?"

  "Watch it," Lulu warned. "He's Sumiyama all the way."

  Kimiko made a dice-shaking gesture with her right hand to signify exactly what she thought of the local yak organization. Then she looked past the Davvy spacer's shoulder and her almond eyes got wide.

  "Well, girls," called the man dressed in a robe and skull cap and walking up the street toward them. If one didn't look close and didn't know Combine dress customs real well, he might have been mistaken for a minor official of some sort. A large pair of shadows followed him. "So, so, so. You got nothin' better to do than hang out on the corner of Walk and Wait and break wind with this bimbo?"

  "She pays, Rikki," Lulu said in a nasal whine.

  Rikki stopped. Then his right hand lashed out and cracked the woman across the face. The heavy gold rings on his fingers left welts visible even through stucco-thick mock-geisha makeup.

  "You get paid for making the futon bounce, baby," the pimp sneered, "not for running your face. Maybe Leon and Teruo oughtta rearrange that face a little, to help you remember." He nodded to the shadows, who stepped forward meaningfully.

  Lulu whimpered. Then to her surprise the little spacer stepped forward.

  "My money's good," she said. "What the hell do you care what it buys?"

  "Excuse me?" Rikki had a long, narrow face and a little chin beard. It was a face well-suited to sneering. "I'm taking care of business now. You can butt out."

  "As a matter of fact, I paid to talk," the spacer said stubbornly. "I'm not leaving until I get my C-bills' worth."

  The hookers exchanged glances. Bonnie shrugged. Oh, well. There goes the easy money ...

  Rikki smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. "Well, well, well. What do we got here?"

  "I dunno, boss. What do we got here?" asked Leon. His job description seemed to include straight man. Teruo just glowered and cracked the knuckles in his fingerless-glove clad hands.

  "We got an interfering gaijin bitch here, looks like to me. One who's fixing to miss her liftoff. Found floating facedown in the canal, so sorry—"

  He seemed about to expand on the subject, but words failed him abruptly. It might have had something to do with the three centimeters of wavy steel that were jutting out the back of his neck, just to the left of his spine.

  Cassie twisted Blood-drinker, slashing outward in a spray of arterial blood that spattered Leon's startled face and ruined his suit. Rikki collapsed, writhing.

  She stood holding her kris aimed midway between the two goons. "Who wants some?" she asked, not omitting to keep up her cute little Davvy space-cadet accent.

  The thugs had started to reach inside their loud zaki sports coats. The look in the spacer woman's eyes made them pull their hands slowly out again.

  "Looks like you did a hell of a job guarding your boss' body," Cassie said. "You boys better hunt up a new line of work."

  Leon and Teruo looked at each other with frightened animal eyes. "Now," Cassie added.

  The pair turned and walked briskly off, presumably to seek new careers. Lulu spat on her former pimp, who had quit wiggling around. Kimiko turned and vomited.

  "You're such a wimp, Kimmi," Bonnie said.

  Kimiko stared at Rikki's form, face-down in a big dark puddle. "Who's gonna take care of us now?" she wailed.

  "Me."

  The three turned to stare at the diminutive woman in spacer garb. "You're just a little thing," Bonnie said. "Why would anybody take you seriously?"

  Cassie shook the blood from her kris with a flick of the wrist and turned Rikki over with her boot toe. The lights of Yoshi-Town danced on his dead eyeballs.

  "They could ask him, for a start," she said with a smile.

  16

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  5 September 3056

  "Jesus boy howdy," Kali MacDougall said. "What would Colonel Cabrera say if she knew you were running a stable of pros?"

  She giggled, looking and acting about fourteen. A well-developed fourteen, a certain jealous part of Cassie couldn't help noticing. Then, despite herself, Cassie giggled too. Lady K had that effect on her.

  Have to watch yourself, her inner censor cautioned. She sobered at once.

  An hour into the midnight shift at HTE's Masamori Compound, the commissary wasn't particularly busy. A couple of shirt-sleeved middle-management types sat in the corner, discussing production targets over cups of tea. Cassie and Captain MacDougall were the only mercs in the place, Kali wore jeans and a shirt tied up above her midriff; she'd caught a late workout at the well-equipped HTE gym, and had her bag beside her chair. Cassie still had on her jacket and baggy pants, though she'd scrubbed the waterproof birthmark makeup off with a special solvent
.

  "Hey, I'm paying money into the I & D pool," Cassie said, referring to the fund the Regiment maintained to cover injuries and disabilities to members and their dependents. "She ought to love me—I'm saving the Seventeenth cash." It was well known that Marisol Cabrera, who was, among other things, the unit comptroller, hated spending money as passionately as she loved Don Carlos.

  Kali grinned and nodded. "You think these ladies know something?"

  Cassie shrugged. "Maybe the hardcases from Luthien signify, maybe they don't. Right now what I'm concentrating on is getting my network in place."

  "I don't envy you your job, hon. You don't even know what you're looking for."

  "That's what makes it a challenge." Cassie leaned forward. "I just know it's out there." She touched herself over her flat belly. "In here I know."

  In a quieter voice she said, "I trust my gut. Ignoring it's what landed me in the Larsha militia—"

  "Facing down BattleMechs with a bolt-gun," Kali said. "We all trust your instincts, hon. Well, except for Gordo and Cabrera and that psycho Bobby Wolf."

  "Don't forget Captain Torres."

  "I'd like to. Anyway, you were telling me what you're doing out there on the mean streets of Masamori. I thought you got that waitress job to troll for info."

  Cassie held up her hand. "What I'm looking for might pass through the club," she said, "but I'm not counting on it. I'm mostly there to get up to speed on the local street life."

  "You're the perfect scout, as always, Cassie," Kali said, sipping her inevitable fruit juice. "Looking to get dialed-into your environment as quickly as possible."

  Cassie watched her new friend closely for a moment. She saw no signs of falsity or deprecation—and she knew how to look for them. Strange as it was, the tall and flamboyant 'Mech pilot seemed to like Cassie for her own sake.

  That made her dangerous.

  "My idea," Cassie made herself say, "isn't so much to lay hands on the information directly. No matter where I go or what I do, that'd be a matter of sheer luck."