Page 59

It’s a very small committee. A single, slender Pan-Asian girl in a short, very untraditional kimono.

At first glance, she looks covered in abstract, silver and black tattoos, with just the brown oval of her face left bare.

Then the light catches on the circuitry patterns and I realize she’s a mech-mod, her entire hide imprinted and implanted with augmentations.

Her eyes, silver disks which spin hypnotically between chromed lids, tick over our little party. She curtseys, holding out the kimono’s miniskirt with her metal-tipped fingers. “Miz Kerryon, Mister Snow, Miz Payton, thank you for coming.”

“Sawhet,” Payton responds. “Where is the Xec team?”

“In Operations. Please let me escort you.”

Payton glances at Kez, who nods. Operations is at the top of the tower, two levels below the Xec offices, so I’m surprised when the mech-mod turns and sets off across the lobby toward the lower-level access.

The mercs fall back into formation without so much as a nod. With one finger, I beckon to Payton. When she pulls up on my free side, I lean in and whisper to her, “B’s obviously got nothing against mech-mods.”

Payton shakes her head. “Sawhet is a Tyng. First cousin twice removed. So is Keegan. Mister Tyng placed them within the organization personally.”

Tyng’s cousins, nieces, and nephews are peppered through the company. Tyng liked to keep things in the family. I haven’t tried to keep track of all of them. Just the ones at Xec-level, or who have tried to kill Chiara. “Loyal?” I ask.

“Sawhet? To her enhanced core,” Payton whispers.

Mech Tyng leads us through the stone, chrome and glaz lobby, through a set of security doors and down two levels. In most Tyng buildings, this would be an engineering level. When the doors snick open, I see why it’s not.

It’s a mezannine floor, a control pod, crouching over a huge, open floor one level below.

Even if Mech Tyng hadn’t told me this was Ops, it’d be obvious from the décor.

Black floor, black walls. A bank of silver breaks the velvet black monotony at waist-level: monitors and Xec workstations.

Above the consoles, the walls are smoked, one-way glaz, giving a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree view of the floor below.

Through the glaz, I can see that the open floor is filled with equipment.

Distillation tubs and tubes. Mixing vats.

Dryers. All very familiar to me now after several weeks of learning how Tyng’s most profitable product is produced.

“Damn,” Kez says beside me. Payton flinches but doesn’t comment.

B, looking a little more harried than when we last met, turns from where he stands in a little huddle with two other Xecs, clustered at the forward window-wall, and spreads his hands. “Thank you, my dear friends, for coming to our aid.”

I draw my katana with a flick of my wrist and rest the angled tip on his throat below his chin. “You’re welcome.”

“Mister Snow—!” he protests.

Kez slides by him with a shake of her head. “Just answer his questions. You’ll live longer.” She brushes by B’s two subordinates who are staring at us, open-mouthed, and examines the monitors. “You sneaky bastards.”

“What’s production look like?” I ask her.

“Mmm, about two-thirds of the Hemos output,” she says. She taps a monitor and examines the response. “But they’ve only been online for three weeks, so don’t be too hard on them.”

“Inefficient and insubordinate.” I arch an eyebrow at B. “Anything you want to say in your defense?”

“I-I-I don’t understand,” he stammers. B’s a middle-aged suit: polished and vacced the way all Tyng Xecs are, but soft where it matters.

He’s got a full head of hair that would probably be solid black if the Tyng corporate colors weren’t black and silver.

Since they are, he’s got the little silver wings over his temples that lots of the Xecs sport.

His eyes are as blue as Kez’s, but there’s no warmth in them.

They’re a little red and a lot watery as they flick from me to Kez.

“Lemme lay it out for you,” I say. “You converted the basement of our third biggest desal plant into an unsanctioned Hex lab. You recruited a bunch of expendable surf punks to open up the E.C. as a market for your illegal product. And you’re using the off-the-book profits to wage your own little war against extreme Mods. How’m I doing so far?”

“Pretty good,” Kez says. She taps the console a couple of times and a yellow light flashing on the console goes off.

“Except you left out the part about putting a hundred CeeBee bounty on my head .” She turns and hisses the last three words in B’s ear.

He twitches but stiffens into immobility when the katana’s edge scrapes his skin.

“I don’t understand,” B repeats. “This is all sanctioned?—”

“Sanctioned by who?” I ask.

“You-you, Mister Snow. Initially it was Sokun’s project. But after the leadership change, I received directives from you. Well, from your alter-ego, of course, since this is a blacklight initiative.”

I glance at Kez to see what she thinks of this. She leans back against the console and crosses her arms over her chest. “You’ve been a busy boy.”

“Father would never have collaborated with Sokun Tyng,” Payton says quietly from where she’s moved beside Kez to examine the displays. “They were rivals.”

B tears his eyes away from the shining metal length between us long enough to shoot Payton a withering glance. “You were such a disappointment to him.”

The silk over Payton’s shoulders flexes, but she continues to study the monitors serenely.

“Of course, we collaborated with the Tyng Heir,” B says after failing to get a rise out of Payton.

“He was initially very supportive of rho distribution, even over Kison’s objections.

Then Sokun chose to take that unfortunate direction.

” B’s eyes slew towards Acker before returning to my sword.

“Well, you see how that turned out. But I promise you, sir, we are one hundred percent back on schedule and this issue with the desalinization procedure will not affect production in the slightest?—”

“That unfortunate direction,” I repeat. “What, negotiatin’ with the rats instead of slaughterin’ them?”

B’s mouth purses, but it’s Payton who answers, “Father said Acker would change his mind due to pressure from without and within.”

Acker, who’s been silent up to now, but has clearly just been bottling it all up, explodes. “Did you kill my brother? Is this why Java hides from his own people? Is Diamond on your leash?”

B rolls his eyes. “I don’t speak to monsters.”

“You’ll speak to any monster I tell you to. Including me.” I press the tip of the sword against his Adam’s apple, just enough to draw blood. “Answer him.”

“Mister Snow, I’m sure we can work out this misunderstanding—” He chokes when I press a little harder.

“Yes, yes, we eliminated the creatures in Kuus. The third-in-command has proven much more amenable to our requirements. The first off-world shipment is already there. As I said, one hundred percent on schedule.”

So much misery because of this prejudiced fuck. I might not leave him for Acker to kill.

“On schedule for what?” I growl.

“ Rho distribution. As I said in my last report. I had understood you read it,” B says, his tone gaining a little edge. Like he’s disappointed in me .

“You understood wrong. What’s rho distribution?”

The term tugs at me. I’ve heard it somewhere before.

“One-hundred-fold distribution of the product,” Payton answers. “Throughout the Vespers. The first step is planet-wide distribution, including the E.C. The second step is the Orbitals. The third step is other planets in the system. My projections put rho distribution three to four years away.”

“Because you have no vision ,” B sneers. “We’re hours away from the first objective. We’ll be system-wide within two years, no more, I swear, Mister Snow.”

Hours away from doubling or maybe tripling the distribution that Kez and me are trying to shut down. I catch Kez’s eye again. She has tears standing in hers.

“Kitten,” I say softly.

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and hisses at B. “You killed my friend C.J. You crippled my friend Java. You burned Tee. You made me feel hunted in my own city. Just so you can spread that poison to other planets?!”

“Miz Kerryon.” B spreads his hands. “I don’t understand. I thought you were in agreement. Your sister said?—”

“My sister said what ?” Kez says, her voice dropping to a growl I’ve never heard from her before.

“That you fully supported ...” B trails off. His eyes flick from Kez to me and back to Kez. I see the moment the light finally dawns; his arrogance deflates like a punctured balloon. “I swear to you that I had clearance at the highest level. Miz Agosante will confirm everything I’ve said.”

“Yeah, how?” I ask.

“Let me call her down here?—”

Kez pushes off the console she’s leaning against and shoves her face into B’s. “She’s here ?”

He nods fractionally, probably wary of the sharp steel under his chin.

Kez snatches an eskey off the console. “Call her.”

B swallows hard before taking the eskey and opening a channel. Before he says anything, I give him another little kiss from the katana. “I’ll see her first. Two minutes.”

B nods and relays my message before shutting off the eskey.