Read Online Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Richard K. Morgan
Ads: Link
whispered itself up on the beach and back. Something popped and crackled in the depths of the fire.
âAll right.â She moved slightly, like someone bedridden shifting to a less aching posture. âGo on. Iâm listening.â
Relief gusted out of Schneider audibly. I nodded.
âThis is what we do. We target one corporate operator in particular, one of the smaller, hungrier ones. Might take a while to sound out, but it shouldnât be difficult. And once we have the target, we make them an offer they canât refuse. A one-time-only, limited-period, bargain-basement satisfaction-guaranteed purchase.â
I saw the way she exchanged glances with Schneider. Maybe it was all the monetary imagery that made her look to him.
âSmall and hungry as you like, Kovacs, youâre still talking about a corporate player.â Her eyes locked onto mine. âPlanetary wealth. And murder and virtual interrogation are hardly expensive. How do you propose to undercut that option?â
âSimple. We scare them.â
âYou
scare
them.â She looked at me for a moment, and then coughed out a small, unwilling laugh. âKovacs, they should have you on disk. Youâre perfect post-trauma entertainment. So, tell me. Youâre going to
scare
a corporate block. What with, slasher puppets?â
I felt a genuine smile twitch at my own lips. âSomething like that.â
CHAPTER SIX
It took Schneider the better part of the next morning to wipe the shuttleâs datacore, while Tanya Wardani walked aimless scuffing circles in the sand or sat beside the open hatch and talked to him. I left them alone and walked up to the far end of the beach where there was a black rock headland. The rock proved simple to scale, and the view from the top was worth the few scrapes I picked up on the way. I leaned my back against a convenient outcrop and looked out to the horizon, recalling fragments of a dream from the previous night.
Harlanâs World is small for a habitable planet, and its seas slop about unpredictably under the influence of three moons. Sanction IV is much larger, larger even than Latimer or Earth, and it has no natural satellites, all of which makes for wide, placid oceans. Set against the memories of my early life on Harlanâs World, this calm always seemed slightly suspicious, as if the sea were holding its watery breath, waiting for something cataclysmic to happen. It was a creepy sensation, and the Envoy conditioning kept it locked down most of the time by the simple expedient of not allowing the comparison to cross my mind. In dreamsleep, the conditioning is less effective, and evidently something in my head was worrying at the cracks.
In the dream, I was standing on a shingle beach somewhere on Sanction IV, looking out at the tranquil swells, when the surface began to heave and swell. I watched, rooted to the spot, as mounds of water shifted and broke and flowed past each other like sinuous black muscles. What waves there were at the waterâs edge were gone, sucked back out to where the sea was flexing. A certainty made in equal parts of cold dread and aching sadness rose in me to match the disturbances offshore. I knew beyond a doubt. Something monstrous was coming up.
But I woke up before it surfaced.
A muscle twitched in my leg and I sat up irritably. The dregs of the dream rinsed around the base of my mind, seeking connection with something more substantial.
Maybe it was fallout from the duel with the smart mines. Iâd watched the sea heave upward as our missiles detonated beneath the surface.
Yeah, right. Very traumatic.
My mind skittered through a few other recent combat memories, looking for a match. I stopped it, rapidly. Pointless exercise. A year and a half of hands-on nastiness for Carreraâs Wedge had laid up enough trauma in my head to give work to a whole platoon of psychosurgeons. I was entitled to a few nightmares. Without the Envoy conditioning,
âAll right.â She moved slightly, like someone bedridden shifting to a less aching posture. âGo on. Iâm listening.â
Relief gusted out of Schneider audibly. I nodded.
âThis is what we do. We target one corporate operator in particular, one of the smaller, hungrier ones. Might take a while to sound out, but it shouldnât be difficult. And once we have the target, we make them an offer they canât refuse. A one-time-only, limited-period, bargain-basement satisfaction-guaranteed purchase.â
I saw the way she exchanged glances with Schneider. Maybe it was all the monetary imagery that made her look to him.
âSmall and hungry as you like, Kovacs, youâre still talking about a corporate player.â Her eyes locked onto mine. âPlanetary wealth. And murder and virtual interrogation are hardly expensive. How do you propose to undercut that option?â
âSimple. We scare them.â
âYou
scare
them.â She looked at me for a moment, and then coughed out a small, unwilling laugh. âKovacs, they should have you on disk. Youâre perfect post-trauma entertainment. So, tell me. Youâre going to
scare
a corporate block. What with, slasher puppets?â
I felt a genuine smile twitch at my own lips. âSomething like that.â
CHAPTER SIX
It took Schneider the better part of the next morning to wipe the shuttleâs datacore, while Tanya Wardani walked aimless scuffing circles in the sand or sat beside the open hatch and talked to him. I left them alone and walked up to the far end of the beach where there was a black rock headland. The rock proved simple to scale, and the view from the top was worth the few scrapes I picked up on the way. I leaned my back against a convenient outcrop and looked out to the horizon, recalling fragments of a dream from the previous night.
Harlanâs World is small for a habitable planet, and its seas slop about unpredictably under the influence of three moons. Sanction IV is much larger, larger even than Latimer or Earth, and it has no natural satellites, all of which makes for wide, placid oceans. Set against the memories of my early life on Harlanâs World, this calm always seemed slightly suspicious, as if the sea were holding its watery breath, waiting for something cataclysmic to happen. It was a creepy sensation, and the Envoy conditioning kept it locked down most of the time by the simple expedient of not allowing the comparison to cross my mind. In dreamsleep, the conditioning is less effective, and evidently something in my head was worrying at the cracks.
In the dream, I was standing on a shingle beach somewhere on Sanction IV, looking out at the tranquil swells, when the surface began to heave and swell. I watched, rooted to the spot, as mounds of water shifted and broke and flowed past each other like sinuous black muscles. What waves there were at the waterâs edge were gone, sucked back out to where the sea was flexing. A certainty made in equal parts of cold dread and aching sadness rose in me to match the disturbances offshore. I knew beyond a doubt. Something monstrous was coming up.
But I woke up before it surfaced.
A muscle twitched in my leg and I sat up irritably. The dregs of the dream rinsed around the base of my mind, seeking connection with something more substantial.
Maybe it was fallout from the duel with the smart mines. Iâd watched the sea heave upward as our missiles detonated beneath the surface.
Yeah, right. Very traumatic.
My mind skittered through a few other recent combat memories, looking for a match. I stopped it, rapidly. Pointless exercise. A year and a half of hands-on nastiness for Carreraâs Wedge had laid up enough trauma in my head to give work to a whole platoon of psychosurgeons. I was entitled to a few nightmares. Without the Envoy conditioning,