The Palisades, Ashakiran planet
For all the progress Michael was making with the post-combat stress deprogramming, Detective Sergeant Kalkov’s jeering face still haunted him, the nightmare grinding its way to the same terrifying conclusion. Thanks to Indra’s team, the nightmares troubled him less, but they came all the same, and tonight was one of those nights.
Shocked awake, Michael knew better than to lie there thrashing around in a futile attempt to get back to sleep. Quietly, he slipped out of bed. Throwing on coat and shoes, he made his way out of the house, leaving Anna dead to the world, a shapeless lump in the bed, exhausted by a brutally tough day climbing the rock walls behind the Palisades. Outside, the air was cool and crisp; dawn was hours away, the night dark under a moonless sky, clear, still, and star-studded.
Aided by the low-light processor embedded in his neuronics, Michael followed the narrow track, climbing fast but carefully until he reached a solid mass of rock that reared up out of the heavily timbered spine of the ridge, an island of granite in a sea of green. Scrambling up the scree that skirted the outcrop, he sat down where he always did, a small, comfortable heather-filled cleft slashed into the base of the huge rock. It had long been one of his favorite places, a place he used to clear his mind.
He needed to. He had hoped Anna would help him sort things out, but she had not. The exact opposite, in fact. He was more confused than ever by the competing demands that fought for supremacy in a badly conflicted mind: the irreconcilable demands of love, duty, family, and honor.
He loved Anna, and she loved him: He owed it to her to stay alive.
There was a war on: Walk away from his duty as a serving Fleet officer? Unthinkable.
His family had suffered more than any family should, at times his parents wracked to the point of utter despair: He owed it to them not to get himself killed.
That left the demands of honor. He had made promises, and he was old-fashioned enough to think that promises should be kept once made; otherwise, why make them? The problem was that every single one of those promises involved making the Hammers pay for all the pain they had inflicted … on him, on the family, on the crews of DLS-387 and Ishaq, on the Fed Fleet at the Battle of Comdur.
Michael was no fool. He knew that keeping those promises did little to increase his life expectancy, but what else was he to do? Walking away from them would make his mom and dad happy, Anna, too, probably. But he could never live with himself if he did. Jeez, what a mess, he said to himself. Soon Anna would be on her way back to Damishqui, and he to Comdur, doing what he always did-going with the flow, hoping for the best, and trusting that fate would allow him to deliver on his promises without getting killed in the process.
He pushed back against the rock and stared up at stars strewn in profligate confusion across the sky. He was there a long time, the warmth seeping out of his body, his mind churning without getting anywhere before a combination of cold and tiredness drove him to his feet.
Time to get back, he said to himself.
He scarcely made it off the scree slope before, through the treetops, a tiny, fleeting flicker of black smeared a path across the stars. He stopped, staring up. Whatever it was, it felt wrong-why he was not able to say-so, without thinking, he slid under the cover of a small overhang of rock.
Unable to see much, Michael chided himself for jumping at shadows when, with scarcely a soft hiss to mark its passing, a black shape leaped from the darkness below the ridge and shot overhead before disappearing back into the night. What the hell, he wondered, was an unlit flier doing this far from civilization in the middle of the night?
He had a bad feeling about this; whatever the flier was up to, it was probably nothing good. Had the flier spotted him? If it had done a high-level reconnaissance, it might have picked up his infrared signature. He hoped he had moved before they had.
Every instinct told him not to risk it, to get as far away as possible, to ask questions later. But he could not: Anna was back in the house asleep, and he refused to take the chance that the flier was just out joyriding the night away, even if that was the most rational explanation. Gambling that the flier would take its time before turning back, he started to run through the trees back to the house.
He had gone less than a hundred meters when the slashing hiss of a flier with its noise-reducing shroud deployed brought him skidding to a halt; he turned to see what was happening. The flier had returned, but this time the black shape, nose high in the air to kill its forward momentum, headed for the rock outcrop. Slowing into a hover, it spewed superheated steam into the cold night air, the blast driving pebbles skittering and tumbling into space while it came in to land.
Michael did not wait to see what would happen next; it was not hard to guess. The flier was small; assuming the pilot stayed where he was-he certainly would if he had any sense-the chances were that three, maybe four people would be on his heels before much longer. He ran, his mind desperately trying to work out how he could get himself and Anna safely off a ridge of rock bounded on all sides by cliffs he would think twice about climbing down even in broad daylight. Any way he looked at it, he and Anna were trapped, their escape route cut off by assailants certain to be well armed and invisible under chromaflage capes.
He sprinted down the track and did the obvious thing: commed a desperate call for help to the Bachou police. Find somewhere safe to hide, the cops said; an armed response team was on the way and would be there inside an hour. “We’ll all be dead by the time they arrive,” Michael said tersely before he cut the com. His next was to the sleeping Anna. To Michael’s frustration, she refused to wake up, but finally she responded, sleepy and confused, far too slow to understand the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly she worked it out. Snapping awake, she listened without a word while Michael laid out the only plan he could think of.
Michael broke out of the timber. He ran past his flier sitting silent on the landing pad and across the track that dropped into the valley in a series of horrific hairpin bends cut into sheer walls of rock. No escape that way, not on foot; too exposed, he decided. Pity they did not have a mobibot: He and Anna would have been well on their way to safety. Without stopping, he commed the flier’s fusion microplant to go online-shut down for most of the week, it would be a good ten minutes before it was flight-ready-and prayed that they would live long enough to use it. He prayed even harder that overconfidence would persuade the new arrivals not to disable it.
Without stopping, he ran straight into the house. “Anna! Anna!”
“Here, Michael,” Anna said, no more than her head visible in the gloom, the rest of her body unseen below a hunter’s chromaflage cape. She shoved a second cape and a thin-bladed ten-centimeter kitchen knife into his hands. “Now, if you think I’m going to mmmfff-”
Michael placed his hand across her mouth. “Anna,” he hissed, “I know you’re marine-trained and I’m not, but we don’t have time to argue this. I love you, so trust me. If it’s me they are after, and I’m damn sure it is, it’s up to me to deal with it. Let me find out what they’re up to, then we can decide what happens next. Okay?”
Anna’s mouth tightened into a slash of disapproval; she nodded, anyway.
“Good,” Michael whispered, relieved that she was not going to argue the point. “No neuronics for the next ten minutes; they are bound to have scanners running. Set them to standby so they think we’re sleeping. Done that?”-Anna nodded again-“Good. Ten minutes from now, that’ll be at 03:55 exactly, turn them on for ten seconds, I’ll update you, and we’ll take it from there. If you don’t hear from me, go back to standby, wait another five minutes, try again, and so on.”
If I’m still alive to com you, that is, Michael wanted to add, his stomach churning with fear. Anna nodded again.
“Good. Go!” A fleeting kiss, a quick hug, and Anna left, a shapeless blur under her chromaflage cape disappearing into the darkness.
Michael ran out of the house and sprinted hard up the track. Past the lander and he was back into the trees; he kept moving along the path for as long as he dared, gambling that whoever these people were, they would take their time to get close to the house. Why would they hurry on what ought to be a simple job? Provided that they had not picked up his infrared signature from the bluff, they would think he and Anna lay in bed asleep, alone in an unlocked house with no security alarms in the middle of nowhere, with no place to run.
Michael prayed that the attackers-he had no doubts, none at all, that they had come there to kill him-assumed exactly that. The more they believed this was going to be a quick and easy operation, the less prepared they would be when he tore their guts out.
Renewed fear banded Michael’s chest; for a moment he struggled to breathe. He and Anna would have been the softest of soft targets. He just hoped that was what the bad guys reckoned.
An easy job. Remote location. A slow, careful entry. Locate the bedroom. Find the bed. Two shots to his head, two to Anna’s. Couple more for luck. Confirm they were both dead. Withdraw. Fly away. How difficult could it be?
Far enough, he decided. Ahead, the ridge narrowed to a neck that brought the cliffs in close on both sides, forcing the path to negotiate a way through a small tangle of boulders. The attackers were compelled to come this way; they had no choice.
Carefully, Michael positioned himself off the path, his ambush position screened by the boulders at his back. His attackers would have to turn around to see him when they came past. Arranging the chromaflage cape to leave just his eyes exposed, he settled down, knife in one hand and a large rock in the other.
The wait seemed a long one, though it probably was not. Michael was relieved when a faint chink of stone on stone broke the stillness. His heart was racing now, the adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream. All of a sudden, the tiny patch of dirt and rock visible through the slit in his cape became the only thing that mattered in the entire universe. Michael slowed his breathing, exhaling softly downward to minimize the heat signature rising from his body. Please do not turn around, he prayed, his body poised to explode into action; please keep moving.
The first attacker drifted into view, a distorted blur. It appeared to be a man, a worryingly big man, broad-shouldered, tall, dressed in a commercial chromaflage cape-not a good one, thankfully; Michael’s neuronics had no trouble locking on to him-and carrying a small machine pistol sticking out from under his cape and clearly visible, a bulky silencer screwed to the muzzle. Sloppiness like that could get him killed, or so Michael hoped. Head and gun swinging from side to side, the man walked past Michael and on down the track. Michael stopped breathing, but the man never turned to check behind him. Anxiously, Michael waited; there had to be someone backing up the man on point.
There was, and he was not far behind. Backup was a chromaflaged blur in the darkness, his machine pistol visible, swinging slowly from side to side, just like Point’s. Thankfully, he did not look back. More sloppiness. These two were rank amateurs; they deserved to have their asses kicked. But he had a problem. The two men were in sight of each other, so he would get only the one chance. He had another problem. Should he wait to see if there was a third member of the team?
“Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered. The longer he waited, the closer the attackers got to Anna. But if he went too early and there was a third man, he risked a shot in the back.
Michael decided to go with what he knew. He needed to make his move. If he waited and found himself with three men to deal with, his chances of rolling them up one after the other without being detected were nil.
Steeling himself, he stood up; with infinite care, he eased himself onto the path behind Backup, a quick glance back confirming that there was no third man. Reassured, Michael knew he had to get this right. He did not have the luxury of wasting time. The second he neutralized Backup, Point’s neuronics would go ballistic, telling him there was something seriously wrong with Backup’s health. If Michael did not have Backup’s machine pistol pointing at Point when he turned around to see what was up, things were going to get difficult.
Michael closed the gap, but something must have warned Backup. The man started to turn, but Michael was ready for him. He moved quickly, his arm already up, the rock in his right hand slashing down brutally hard and fast, hitting the side of the man’s head with sickening force, the impact barely audible. For a moment, Michael worried that he had not done enough. But he had: Backup crumpled slowly to the ground with a soft “ooohhhh,” folding forward from the waist, twisting when he fell. Michael lunged for the machine pistol but could not tear it from Backup’s hands before the man hit the ground, dragging Michael down with him, the pair landing on the track in a confused jumble of arms and legs, the dead weight of Backup pinning him to the ground.
Point glanced back, his confusion obvious. “Jed,” he hissed, “what’re you doing, you dumb son of a bitch?”
For an instant, Michael wondered why the man did not shoot. At that distance, he could not miss. Belatedly, the reason dawned on him. Point could not see him. He would think he was looking at the unlucky Jed, a crumpled shape on the ground under a chromaflage cape. Michael snatched his chance.
“Aaahhh,” he moaned softly, waving his free arm at Point. “Aaaahhh … shit … sorry … tripped … head.”
“What’s up?” Point whispered. “For chrissakes, you clumsy sack of shit. We don’t have time for this. We need to kill Helfort and get the hell out of here.” He moved a few steps back along the track toward Michael.
Michael had not been lying there wasting time. Concealed under Backup’s body, he worked frantically to get the man’s fingers off the trigger guard.
Point stopped. Michael’s heart did, too, when the attacker’s gun swung up.
“Hang on,” Michael mumbled. “Hurts … head.” His fingers closed around the trigger; with a convulsive heave, he rolled Backup’s dead weight off his arm and pulled the gun clear. The instant it came free, he fired one-handed, the machine pistol firing with a stuttering phuttt, rounds stitching a wavering line through the air before hitting Point’s body, knocking him backward off his feet and onto his ass.
“Oh,” Point said softly, sounding puzzled.
With a frantic shove, Michael pushed himself away from Backup, rolled off the track, and fired a second burst. The rounds struck Point high across the chest, pushing the man onto his back, arms thrown out wide. He did not move.
“Shit,” Michael muttered, trying to control a sudden trembling before vomiting violently into the bushes. Jeez, Michael, he chided himself, wiping his mouth; finish the damn job first. He checked the time, astonished to see that less than ten minutes had passed since he and Anna had split up. Galvanized into action, he stripped both bodies of their capes, taking their small backpacks and Point’s machine pistol. Backup groaned, forcing him to waste more time while he dug around in the backpacks, hoping to find plasticuffs to tie the man up. Thankfully, he did; the hit team might be sloppy, but they came prepared. With Backup trussed and both bodies rolled off the path behind a boulder-Michael resisted the temptation to tip them over the edge of the cliff-he set off, running hard and turning on his neuronics.
On time to the second, Anna’s neuronics came back online. “You safe?” he said.
“Yes, Michael. Wha-”
“Listen, don’t talk. Two of the attackers are down. There may be more. I’ve taken their guns. Meet me at the house. Now! And turn your neuronics off.”
Michael ran fast, feet pounding down the track and onto the road. Relief swamped him when he saw Anna’s slight shape, a blur crossing the yard to the house, and then he was in her arms.
“Oh, Michael, what the hell is this all about?” she said, her voice shaking, pushing him back to talk.
“Hit team, I think. Bunch of fucking amateurs, thankfully. They’re after me,” he said, lungs heaving. “Two options. Stay here and wait or go back up the track to the flier”-he waved a machine pistol back the way he had come-“and see if we can get away. Who knows, we might be able to take out a few more before we go.”
Anna shook her head in despair. “No wonder trouble keeps finding you. You bloody well go looking for it.” Her voice hardened. “But I don’t like people who creep through the night carrying guns, and I certainly don’t like the idea of them getting away, so if you want to have a go, I’m with you.”
Michael hugged her again. “Right,” he said, “I agree. Let’s teach the murderous bastards a lesson. You stay back 10 meters or so. Keep me in sight at all times; close up if you lose me. Watch your six o’clock. Keep the gun under your cape and look behind as much as you look around. If you see anyone who’s not me, shoot the sonofabitch,” he said handing her a machine pistol and a pair of spare magazines. “Know how to use one of these, sweetheart?”
“Smart-ass!” Anna snorted scornfully, grabbing the gun. “Just try me.”
“Good. If things get too hot, we’ll go left off the track and hide. The damn cops can sort things out. If they ever get here,” he added. “Let’s go.”
Moving fast while still staying quiet, the pair moved off. They reached the flier pad without incident. Stopping short, Michael waved Anna to the ground while he wormed his way off the path and forward to the edge of the clearing. He moved slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements, scanning the low scrub that bordered the landing pad. The pad was clear; he beckoned Anna up to join him.
“Anna,” he whispered, “pad looks okay, but if there’s more of them, this is a good place for them to be, over there, just off the path back toward their own flier. I’ll work my way to ours and power up. Don’t move until I call you over. Keep an eye on the scrub. Let me know if anything moves. Neuronics on now.”
“On? You sure?”
“We have to take the chance. We need to be able to talk to each other. They’ll know something’s gone wrong.”
“Roger that.”
Michael eased his way around to put the lander between him and where he thought the bad guys might be before setting off through the short grass that covered the pad. He was dangerously exposed. If the bad guys caught him out here, he was finished. It took an age to cross the ground, his skin crawling at the thought of the damage a burst of machine pistol fire would inflict on his unprotected body, but finally he was at the flier. Trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement, he had stopped to recover when Anna commed him.
“Michael. Three o’clock from the flier. Where we thought. There’s someone there.”
He stopped and lay unmoving. With great care, he checked the scrub. No movement, none of the rippling blurry distortion of a chromaflage cape, nothing. “Anna, I can’t-”
He saw movement, just a flicker. Anna was right.
“Okay. Let me indicate it to you.” Michael commed the image to her neuronics overlaid with a scarlet target icon. “Is that it?”
“Yup, that’s the one. Small bush left of the pair of boulders.”
“Okay, on my mark, hit it hard while I go for the flier. On three. One, two, three!”
With ruthless efficiency, Anna fired two quick bursts into the small bush; she was rewarded by a scream of agony, and then a chromaflaged shape burst out of hiding before collapsing onto the ground, unmoving.
With a convulsive leap, Michael was in the flier, ordering the mass driver to power up. It was a lifetime before the flier’s AI confirmed that yes, it really was him, and yes, he was authorized to pilot the flier, and another lifetime until the engine was flight-ready. Michael sat hunched down in the pilot’s seat, waiting for the ax to fall on his naked neck. “About bloody time,” he muttered when the AI confirmed that the flier was good for takeoff.
“Anna. Flier. Go!” he commed. He did not wait for her, feeding power into the mass driver, the air around the flier erupting into a confused cloud of steam billowing up into the night. He lifted the flier into hover, holding it half a meter off the ground until Anna burst through the murk and threw herself into the passenger seat alongside him. The instant she was in, Michael rammed the mass driver to full power. The flier bolted upward, and he pulled it onto its tail, forcing the little machine backward off the ridge before turning it into a stomach-churning drop nose first into the valley below and away from the ridge, accelerating hard.
“Holy shit,” Anna said, her voice shaking while she struggled to strap herself in, “where the hell did you learn that little stunt?”
“I just made it up,” Michael replied, throwing her a grin, easing off on the power.
Anna shook her head. “Now what?”
“Well, the baddies are still on the ground-well, those still breathing, that is. So I think we’ll pay their flier a visit. If we can disable it, they can’t get away. It’s time you were my door gunner. Get the window open. Here, take my gun, too. Make sure you’ve full magazines and get the silencers off if you can. Hate to waste good muzzle velocity. Think you can manage one in each hand?”
“Oh, yeah,” Anna said with a wolfish smile.
“Thought so. Ready.”
“One second,” Anna muttered while she forced recalcitrant silencers off. “Okay, ready,” she said, twisting in her seat, both guns out the window.
“Right, here we go. Hold on,” Michael said, pulling the flier back into a steep climb and turning until the rock outcrop lay right ahead of them, on it the squat shape of the killers’ flier. “Okay, there it is. I’ll make one run low and fast, and then we’re out of here.”
“Roger that.”
Level with the top of the outcrop, Michael pushed the flier’s nose down and brought the mass driver up to full power. Shaking under the acceleration, the craft rocketed past the massive pile of rock, the hostiles’ flier clearly visible against a star-studded sky. Anna let go with both barrels; the cabin reverberated with the appalling racket of unsilenced machine pistols and filled with the acrid stench of burned propellant. They drove out hard across the ridge and over the valley before Michael, throttling back, pushed the flier into a slow turn, straining his eyes to see how the opposition fared. He was disappointed to see nothing but darkness, his night vision degraded by muzzle flash.
“What do you reckon?”
“Not sure,” Anna said, busy changing magazines. “It all happened a bit too fast. One more pass uphill of them, a bit slower this time, and we’ll get clear to wait for the cops.”
“You sure?” Michael replied. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Come on, I think we’ve done enough.”
“No bloody way, pal,” she said fiercely. “Don’t chicken out on me. These fuckers came to kill us. I’ll be damned if we let them get away. So let’s do it.”
“Okay,” Michael said, resigned. He banked the flier back toward the bluff. “In we go.”
The flier turned hard and started its run in. Once again, the outcrop and the flier stood out, looming black shapes against the stars, growing fast as Michael fed power to the mass driver, punching the craft forward.
“Slow down, slow down,” Anna yelled. “Not so fast, Michael.”
He ignored her. This was getting dangerous. They had had the advantage of surprise the first time. This time the bad guys would be expecting them. With less than a hundred meters to run, he was proved right when guns opened up from broken ground upslope of the bluff, muzzle flashes lighting up the ground around what had to be two shooters.
“Steady!” Anna called.
A burst of ground fire found its mark, slicing through the windscreen and into the cabin roof. “Shit!” Michael flinched away from the blizzard of plasglass that filled the cabin, stray shards slashing cuts into his face. He wiped away the blood dripping into his eyes. He pushed the mass driver to emergency power, the cabin once again filling with muzzle flash and racket and acrid smoke as Anna emptied her guns into the attacker’s flier, a metallic phock phock phock telling him that they had been hit again.
The noise stopped. “Oh, shit,” Anna said, her voice barely audible over the noise of air ripping through the shattered windscreen.
Michael paid no attention, his attention focused on getting them safely away. He steadied the flier on vector away from the Palisades and handed control over to the AI, ordering it to get to Bachou. He turned to Anna.
She lay back in her seat, head slumped to one side, hair thrashed wildly across her face by the blizzard of cold air pouring into the flier’s cabin. Michael commed on the cabin lights, shocked by what he saw. Her skin was pale under thin skeins of blood from plasglass cuts, her mouth a tight, pain-twisted slash. Michael’s stomach lurched. “Anna,” he said frantically, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the air buffeting the flier, “what’s up? Tell me!”
“Not sure. I think one of them hit me.” Her voice was faint.
“Where, Anna, where?” Michael yelled. Desperately, he threw off his straps and knelt in his seat to get closer. “Where are you hit?”
“Up here, I think.” Feebly she pointed to her chest, high up on the right-hand side. Michael’s heart skipped a beat; he saw the blood spreading across her chromaflage cape. He reached up to the overhead stowage to grab the first-aid kit.
“Nothing anywhere else?” he said.
“Don’t think so.”
Michael patched into her neuronics. She had a single wound to the shoulder; that was the good news. The bad news was that her shoulder was a mess and she was bleeding internally. Quickly, Michael packed the entry and exit points and commed Bachou Hospital. In seconds, the trauma AI connected to Anna’s neuronics and downloaded her vitals. The AI’s air of calm confidence did wonders for Michael’s state of mind, and it soon had him ransacking the first-aid kit for the unholy mix of drugs and nanobots it wanted pumped into Anna. The AI kept him so busy that the flier’s announcement that they were about to land at Bachou caught him by surprise.
He left the flier’s AI to it. Hands shaking, heart racing, and racked by guilt that he had allowed this to happen to Anna, he was in no fit state to pilot a flier. The instant they landed, the system took over; the paramedics had Anna out, in a trauma tank, and on her way to the hospital before he even left his seat. Not that he wanted to get out; he was exhausted, at a loss what to do next. He had trouble believing what he and Anna had just been through. Not even two hours ago, she had been in bed asleep and he had been lying on his back looking at the stars, wondering how to keep his life under control. It was total madness, he realized with a sudden flash of anger. What the hell was the world coming to?
A soft cough interrupted his thoughts.
“Michael Helfort?”
It was a tall rangy man in plain clothes. “Yes?” Michael said.
“Lieutenant Hartcher, Bachou police. I think we need to talk. You okay?”
“Yeah, think so. Minor cuts,” he said, wiping eyes gummy with congealed blood. “But I need to get to the hospital.”
“Yes, you should. You need to get checked out first, and we can get an update on Ms Cheung’s progress. I’ve spoken to the hospital, by the way; the surgeons are ready to start work on her when she arrives, but the initial report from the paramedics is that she should be fine. The trauma tank has her stabilized. Your parents are already there. Miss Cheung’s are on their way. You okay to go?”
“Yeah, think so,” Michael said, voice shaking.
He forced himself to follow Hartcher as the policeman headed for a small mobibot. Michael swore softly: The instant he showed himself, a small but determined group of holocam-toting media brushed aside the police holding them back and made straight for him. Ignoring Lieutenant Hartcher’s protests, they surrounded him, the questions thrown so thick and fast that he had no idea who wanted to know what.
“I’m sorry, folks,” Michael said, raising his voice to cut through the racket, hands up in a vain attempt to keep the holocams out of his face. “There’s nothing I can say. I need to get to the hospital. There’ll be a statement from my agent later. Thank you.”
Following Hartcher’s lead, Michael dropped his head and barged a way though the milling mob, the media’s strident demands for answers ignored while he fought his way to the safety of the mobibot.
“Let’s go over it again one more time.”
Michael stared at Hartcher. It had been a long day, and postcombat fatigue had set in with a vengeance, the energy draining out of his body as adrenaline burned off. But no matter how many times he told the police lieutenant what had happened, the man always wanted to hear it one more time. Something inside snapped. He shot to his feet, his chair skidding back into the wall. “Enough, Lieutenant! Enough! Tell you what, I’ll just give you my complete neuronics records. Uncut, unedited, the lot. Will that do?”
Hartcher’s eyebrows shot up, his surprise obvious. “We normally have to go to court for those, but if that’s what you want to do, fine. Com them over, but before you do, let me just confirm that you have understood the caution I gave you earlier.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Michael snapped. “I know my rights.”
“Don’t tear my head off, Michael,” Hartcher said patiently. “People died today, and by your own admission, you killed at least one of them. You and Ms. Cheung might be facing homicide charges.”
Michael glared at Hartcher. “Justifiable, don’t you think, Lieutenant?”
Hartcher shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s not for me to say. You know that. It’s a matter for the prosecutors and for the courts to decide if it ever gets that far. Anyway, com me your records and we’re done.”
Michael did, cursing his stupidity. If he gave Bachou police access to his full neuronics records, they would see every thought, emotion, and sensation, everything his brain had experienced during the attack. His mind would be laid bare for total strangers to poke and peer at, its every secret open to their examination. It was a deeply unsettling idea. No wonder there was a flourishing black market in full neuronics records; no wonder pornovid stars made so much money. What he was doing was something no sane person should ever do for free. He gave himself a mental shake; what was done was done. There was no point wasting any more time agonizing over it.
Hartcher nodded. “Okay, received. Thanks. You can go. I’ll arrange a mobibot to take you back to the hospital. We’ll need to talk to Ms. Cheung, of course, but that can wait.”
“Of course.”
“By the way, the hospital’s been in touch. The surgery’s gone well. Ms. Cheung will be fine. A bit stiff and sore until the nanobots finish putting her shoulder back together again, but otherwise okay.”
Overwhelmed for a moment, Michael was unable to speak, unable to forgive himself for risking Anna’s life. He just nodded.
“Come on, Mr. Helfort,” Hartcher said. “Let’s get you back to the hospital.”
Anna’s eyes flickered, two bottomless pools of green staring unfocused up at the ceiling; her skin, normally honey-gold below pink-dusted cheeks, was a dirty, washed-out gray.
“Welcome back, Anna,” Michael whispered. “How are you feeling?”
It was a while before she answered. “Tired,” Anna said finally. “Sore. What the hell happened?”
“Well, we nailed the bad guys, crippled their flier, and left them for the police to pick up. That’s the good news. Bad news is they managed to get a round into your shoulder. Did a bit of damage.”
“Oh,” Anna mumbled. “Since I’m talking to you, I assume I’ll be okay.”
“That’s what the doctors are saying. Give it a few weeks, and Damishqui will be expecting you back.”
“Bugger Dami-” Anna’s eyes rolled back up into her head, and she was asleep.
Four hours later, Anna woke up to demand a bowl of ice cream, then another and another.
“Jeez, Anna! Enough already,” Michael protested even as he commed the foodbot for more.
“Up yours, Michael,” Anna said. “I’ve got one hell of a sore throat, and ice cream is ten times better than those damn drugbots.”
“It’s on its way,” Michael said, stoic in the face of Anna’s determination.
When the ice cream arrived, it did not last long. “Mmm, that’s better,” she said, pushing the bowl away.
“Feeling better?”
“Am.”
“Your folks called. They’ll be here first thing in the morning.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. Something tells me I’m in for the mother and father of all lectures. Wish they’d stop treating me like some sort of china doll.”
“Well, you are small and perfectly formed, apart from your nose of course, so what’s the … ow!” Michael yelped when Anna backhanded the empty ice cream bowl into his temple. “Temper, temper,” he said, rubbing the side of his head. “That hurt.”
“It was supposed to; you deserved it. You are a rude bastard,” she said. “Shit, shouldn’t have done that. My shoulder’s killing me.” Anna lay back. After a while, she reached out and folded his hand into hers.
“Anna,” he said, his voice faltering. “Anna, look, I-”
“Michael, Michael, Michael,” Anna said. She squeezed his hand gently. “You don’t have to explain. You are the single most accident-prone man in humanspace. Being around you is like standing next to an unexploded Eaglehawk missile.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with sudden tears. “Loving you is a hundred times worse, and not a day goes by without me asking why I do. But here I am.”
“Anna-”
“Shh,” she said, lifting her hand to Michael’s lips. “You know what? You are what you are, and I might as well get used to it.”
Michael had no idea what to say, so he said nothing. He squeezed Anna’s hand hard, watching her slip away into unconsciousness.
Michael stayed with Anna while she slept, her face framed by jet-black hair stark against white linen, the faintest of faint blushes of pink across high cheekbones marking the start of her return to health.
For a long time he sat there. His vigil was interrupted when his mother stuck her head through the door. “How is she?”
“Hi, Mom. She’s fast asleep.”
“Good. Come on, Michael. You’re no good to her dead on your feet. We’re going home. Dad has supper for you. We’ll be back first thing tomorrow to meet Anna’s parents. The hospital will call you if there are any developments.”
A sudden wave of exhaustion swamped him. Kissing Anna on the forehead, he raised his hands and conceded defeat. “Okay, okay. Let’s go.”