Thirteen
THIRTEEN
“Little shit.”
Isako curses herself as much as Vincent. Of course he’d try to run. She catches a glimpse of the man’s back as he disappears down the stairs.
She sprints after him, taking the narrow concrete steps two at a time, using the sticky metal railing to keep her balance, but Vincent’s faster than her.
Just as long a stride, a lot younger, and more reckless.
His pounding footsteps echo back up the stairwell.
He skids on the bottom few steps and crashes into two people waiting in line for the bathroom on the first floor, eliciting startled, angry exclamations, but he regains his feet and dashes down the passageway toward the back door, still cracked ajar.
Vincent barrels into it at full speed, slamming the metal against the wall with an echoing clang and bursting into the alleyway behind the club.
Isako’s only a few steps behind him. “Stop,” she shouts. “I’m not going to—”
She reacts a fraction of a second too late.
Reflexively, she pivots, twisting her torso out of the way, presenting a smaller target.
The thrust knife gets under the flap of her coat, glances off the outside of her ribs, slices open her nice white shirt and the thin thermal layer beneath, parting skin and spilling blood.
She draws. Slams the top of her triggersheath forward with her left palm.
It rotates and ejects the longknife hilt into her waiting right hand.
The quick draw—practiced at her kithfather’s side since childhood, perfected over years of countless repetition—leaves barely enough time for an opponent to blink, must less react.
Adrenaline lends her strength as she throws her body weight into the blade; she barely feels resistance as the sweeping motion of the first cut guts her attacker.
The iron bar that swings down across the back of her shoulders sends her staggering forward.
The pain reverberates up and down her spine, makes her forget the gash in her side and the growing warm patch of blood spreading down her stomach into her waistband.
Isako ducks, drops to a crouch, avoids the whistling second blow that would’ve smashed the back of her skull.
She spins and slashes behind herself, too wildly.
Her longknife nicks the second assailant’s thigh, and he stumbles back, cursing, but much too alive.
“Fuck, Vincent,” shouts a third man, bent over the one who’s on the ground, bleeding out. “Jay’s termed. Get back here and help us! You didn’t say you had a fucking trac after you!”
She’s thankful but not at all surprised that Vincent doesn’t turn around to help his friends.
Most likely they’re not friends at all, merely fellow freelancers he fell in with or hired to cover his back should any of his customers give him trouble.
He felt as if he’d been watched. Even before Isako arrived, he must’ve been anticipating danger, to have guys already waiting around outside the club, ready to gang up on anyone who tried to come after him.
Isako backs up against the nearest brick wall.
Vincent’s footsteps continue pounding away down the street, but she can’t follow.
She has to contend with the two men in her way who’re angry about their dead companion.
It makes her regret killing Jay so quickly.
All three of them might’ve turned tail and fled after Vincent if given the chance.
To be fair, that one did try to stab her.
The skinny man crouched over his friend’s motionless form chokes out a curse before standing up with the short, bloodied knife in his hand.
He moves to Isako’s left while the one with the iron bar circles to her right, favoring his wounded leg but glaring at her over a bushy black beard. “Trac bitch,” he spits.
Isako’s wound stings like hell and her bloodied shirt sticks to her skin.
She can hear people passing by on the street ahead, but none of them stop.
No one with common sense is going to interfere in a fight between a trac with a longknife and a couple of freels.
Bystanders might assume she’s carrying out orders to clean up the area, to evict the badgeless squatting on Company property and claiming resources past their allowable grace period.
Most wagemen view freelancers with pity and secondhand embarrassment, but in this situation, they would sympathize with the underdogs just trying to survive.
She’s going to have to deal with this on her own.
Unfortunately, she’s already used up her greatest advantage.
No weapon can be deployed faster than a longknife from a triggersheath.
A blade thrust under the sternum or between the ribs into the heart; a slash severing the carotid artery in the neck or femoral artery in the groin; a stab to the abdomen to puncture the aorta or the lower vena cava—Isako can kill in a dozen ways with a single first cut.
But fighting with her back to the wall against two angry men with weapons is not a situation that favors her.
Earlier in her career, she’d be more confident, but she’s not who she used to be and would rather not come out of this laid up for days or weeks.
Or dead. It’s worth trying to talk her way out.
“This isn’t going to end well for you,” she says to the man with the knife. He seems the more fearful of the two. “I wanted to talk to Vincent, but he’s gone. I don’t have any problem with you two.”
“We have a problem with you , though,” retorts the man with the metal bar.
He glances toward Jay’s body on the ground, spreading a pool of blood on the street that’s starting to thicken.
Isako can see her breath but she’s grateful for the cold numbing her injury.
She’d like to put a hand over the gash in her side and hunch over the wound, but she forces herself to ignore it and stand with her back straight, eye to eye with the two men, their faces cut stark with shadows.
She keeps her longknife poised, feet angled in Fifth Stance, Guarding the Gate , the best position for defending oneself in close quarters against multiple assailants.
“Your friend tried to knife me,” she points out. “Let’s call it even.”
The skinny man snorts derisively and edges forward. “Is that contractor economics?”
Shit. They’re not backing down. She’s going to have to kill them.
Take out the stronger one with the crowbar first. She recognizes the look in that one’s eyes, the grim expectation of someone past their expiry date who’s decided, given the opportunity, to go out dramatically rather than wait any longer.
She shifts her left foot subtly, loads the weight into her right, gets ready.
“Move away from the doors, please.” A deep, polite voice comes from the silhouette of a large man stepping through the rear exit of the Epic Vibe nightclub.
His broad frame blots out the light from inside for a moment; his shoulders seem to barely clear the narrow opening.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow violence to disrupt the customer experience here. ”
The first thing Isako notices about the bouncer is the shape of the triggersheath on his thigh. Not a basic model either, but a fine Suzimachi 50, custom fitted, snug to his tree-trunk limb. The sort of longknife only the best can afford.
An atier contractor, working as a nightclub bouncer?
Then Isako raises her eyes to the man’s face and her jaw drops. “Rain Kob?”
The man grins a mouthful of straight white teeth through a trim salt-and-pepper beard that softens his heavy jawline. “Isthmus Isako, I’ll be a vastblasted son of a bitch, I thought that was you. Mother in Chains, it’s been years.”
“At least ten. Twelve, maybe?” Isako’s eyes flick between her old colleague and the two men, who are looking to each other hesitantly, unsure of what to do, how best to interrupt this amicable professional reunion with violence.
Kob shakes his head, still grinning. “By old Earth, it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Kob. You caught me at a bad time, though.”
“So it would seem.” Kob shifts his attention to the two freelancers. “I suggest you gentlemen clear out. Not only would the club owners authorize me to use whatever force necessary to remove you from the vicinity, but this distinguished lady is an old friend of mine.”
“He’s another trac piece of shit,” the man with the metal bar snarls, trying to bring the anger level back to a proper boil. His skinny companion, however, looks decidedly uncertain now. He liked the odds a lot better when it was two against one.
Kob raises a hand. “Wrong. I used to be a trac piece of shit. Now I’m badgeless, just like you.”
Isako startles and stares. Under the lined collar of Kob’s quilted bomber jacket, his thick neck is bare. She can’t believe she didn’t notice it right away—she was too astonished just to see him. Rain Kob, a ronin ?
“Still a piece of shit, maybe, but a large one who still has his longknife.” Kob pats his triggersheath.
Isako remembers that he was nearly—but never quite—as fast a draw as she was.
What he lacks in speed, though, he makes up for with physical dominance.
Kob’s weight behind a longknife swing could cleave through bone.
His expression is mild, but the gesture is an unmistakable threat.
The skinny man with the knife starts to retreat.
The other stands his ground and waves toward the body near their feet.
“What about Jay, huh? We’re just going to leave him, like a piece of trash, and not do anything about it?
” His anger seems suddenly desperate, the hoisted crowbar a feeble defiance.
“Jay’s passed on,” Kob says with the surprising gentleness of a man who, like Isako, has done more than his share of DTE work.
“He’s peacefully Waiting with the Mother and will walk again when she’s free.
Or maybe his soul will be reborn in the ancestral paradise of old Earth.
Or maybe there’s nothing after this life but oblivion.
In any case, you won’t do anything for him by dying yourselves. ”
The two men remain tense and hostile, but they back away.
When they’ve gone too far for it to make any sense to reverse course, the fellow with the crowbar snaps a parting “Fuck you, tracs” with the half-hearted bluster of a man determined to have the last word in an argument he’s lost. His friend yanks him along by the sleeve and the two of them hurry away—not fast enough to be outright running, but with enough haste that they’re soon out of sight.
Kob’s massive shoulders rise and fall in a sigh of relief that surprises Isako.
She can’t remember him ever being afraid of a fight, not even when facing much greater danger than a couple of untrained and desperate freelancers.
During the Transit Rebellion, the two of them alone defended a resupply station from ten attackers.
They were in the hospital afterward, but they were in better shape than the other guys.
Like her, Kob’s a lot older now. More cautious, it seems. Doesn’t want to fight if he can avoid it.
Isako waits another few beats, just to be sure some other threat isn’t about to materialize, before wiping down and sheathing her longknife.
Kob strides toward her and they catch each other up in a tight hug that crushes the breath from her lungs and makes her hiss with pain from the knife wound in her side.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She’s never been particularly religious, but some higher power must’ve been on her side tonight. “You couldn’t have shown up at a better time.”
Kob shrugs. “Eh. You had the situation well in hand. If I hadn’t been here, those two would’ve been following their friend in another minute.” He smiles down at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. There are not many people who can smile down on Isako. “You look exactly the same, Isa.”
He’s being overly generous; the Isthmus Isako whom Kob worked with more than a dozen years ago wouldn’t have been so carelessly ambushed and injured.
Back then, she wouldn’t have needed any help to handle a couple of freels.
“What are you doing here?” she exclaims, gesturing at the nightclub and the entire shoddy neighborhood. “How… how did you…”
She sways suddenly, losing her balance and nearly falling against him.
He catches and steadies her. “Talk more later,” he suggests. “Right now, we need to get you patched up before you lose any more blood. Come on, I know an all-hours clinic.”