"Richard Morgan - Woken Furies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morgan Richard)

Quellcrist Falconer — Things I Should Have Learnt By Now Vol II




ONE



Damage.

The wound stung like fuck, but it wasn't as bad as some I'd had. The blaster bolt came in blind across
my ribs, already weakened by the door plating it had to chew through to get to me. Priests, up against the
slammed door and looking for a quick gut-shot. Fucking amateur night.

They'd probably caught almost as much pain themselves from the pointblank blowback off the plating.
Behind the door, I was already twisting aside. What was left of the charge ploughed a long, shallow gash
across my ribcage and went out, smouldering in the folds of my coat. Sudden ice down that side of my
body and the abrupt stench of fried skin-sensor components. That curious bone-splinter fizzing that's
almost a taste, where the bolt had ripped through the biolube casing on the floating ribs.

Eighteen minutes later, by the softly glowing display chipped into my upper left field of vision, the same
fizzing was still with me as I hurried down the lamp-lit street, trying to ignore the wound. Stealthy seep of
fluids beneath my coat. Not much blood. Sleeving synthetic has its advantages.

'Looking for a good time, sam?'

'Already had one,' I told him, veering away from the doorway. He blinked wave-tattooed eyelids in a
dismissive flutter that said your loss and leaned his tightly-muscled frame languidly back into the gloom. I
crossed the street and took the corner, tacking between a couple more whores, one a woman, the other
of indeterminate gender. The woman was an augment, forked dragon tongue flickering out around her
overly prehensile lips, maybe tasting my wound on the night air. Her eyes danced a similar passage over
me, then slid away. On the other side, the cross-gender pro shifted its stance slightly and gave me a
quizzical look but said nothing.

Neither were interested. The streets were rain-slick and deserted, and they'd had longer to see me
coming than the doorway operator. I'd cleaned up since leaving the citadel, but something about me must
have telegraphed the lack of business opportunity.

At my back, I heard them talking about me in Stripjap. I heard the word for broke.

They could afford to be choosy. In the wake of the Mecsek Initiative, business was booming.
Tekitomura was packed that winter, thronging with salvage brokers and the deCom crews that drew
them the way a trawler wake draws ripwings. Making New Hok safe for a New Century, the ads went.
From the newly built hoverloader dock down at the Kompcho end of town it was less than a thousand
kilometres, straight line distance, to the shores of New Hokkaido, and the loaders were running day and
night. Outside of an airdrop, there is no faster way to get across the Andrassy Sea. And on Harlan's
World, you don't go up in the air if you can possibly avoid it. Any crew toting heavy equipment — and
they all were — was going to New Hok on a hoverloader out of Tekitomura. Those that lived would be
coming back the same way.