Woken Furies Read Online Free Page B

old?”
    I shrugged. “I made a choice, yeah. Military or the gangs. I put on a uniform. It paid better than the criminal stuff I was already doing.”
    “Well, I was never
in
a gang.” He knocked back a chunk of his drink. “The yakuza made sure of that. Too much danger of corrupting their investment. I went to the right tutors, spent time in the right social circles, learned to walk the walk, talk the talk, and then they plucked me like a fucking cherry.”
    His gaze beached on the scarred wood of the tabletop.
    “I remember my father,” he said bitterly. “The day I got access to the family datastacks. Right after my coming-of-age party, the next morning. I was still hung over, still fried, and Tanaseda and Kadar and Hirayasu in his office like fucking vampires. He cried that day.”
    “
That
Hirayasu?”
    He shook his head. “That’s the son. Yukio. You want to know how long I’ve known Yukio? We grew up together. Fell asleep together in the same kanji classes, got wrecked on the same
take,
dated the same girls. He left for Millsport about the time I started my DH/biotech practicals, came back a year later wearing that fucking stupid suit.” He looked up. “You think I like living out my father’s debts?”
    It didn’t seem to need an answer. And I didn’t want to listen to any more of this stuff. I sipped some more of the cask-strength whiskey, wondering what the bite would be like in a sleeve with real taste buds. I gestured with the glass. “So how come they needed your de- and regear tonight. Got to be more than one digital human shunting set in town, surely.”
    He shrugged. “Some kind of fuckup. They had their own gear, but it got contaminated. Seawater in the gel feeds.”
    “Organized crime, huh.”
    There was a resentful envy in the way he stared at me. “You don’t have any family, do you?”
    “Not so’s you’d notice.” That was a little harsh, but he didn’t need to know the close truth. Feed him something else. “I’ve been away.”
    “In the store?”
    I shook my head. “Offworld.”
    “Offworld? Where’d you go?” The excitement in his voice was unmistakable, barely held back by the ghost of breeding. The Glimmer system has no habitable planets apart from Harlan’s World. Tentative terraforming down the plane of the ecliptic on Glimmer V won’t yield useful results for another century. Offworld for a Harlanite means a stellar-range needlecast, shrugging off your physical self and resleeving somewhere light-years distant under an alien sun. It’s all very romantic, and in the public consciousness known needlecast riders are accorded a celebrity status somewhat akin to pilots back on Earth during the days of intrasystem spaceflight.
    The fact that, unlike pilots, these latter-day celebrities don’t actually have to
do
anything to travel the hypercaster, the fact that in many cases they have no actual skills or stature other than their hypercast fame itself, doesn’t seem to impede their triumphant conquest of the public imagination. Old Earth is the real jackpot destination, of course, but in the end it doesn’t seem to make much difference where you go, so long as you come back. It’s a favorite boost technique for fading experia stars and out-of-favor Millsport courtesans. If you can just somehow scrape up the cost of the ’cast, you’re more or less guaranteed years of well-paid coverage in the skullwalk magazines.
    That, of course, doesn’t apply to Envoys. We just used to go silently, crush the odd planetary uprising, topple the odd regime, and then plug in something UN-compliant that worked. Slaughter and suppression across the stars, for the greater good—
naturally
—of a unified Protectorate.
    I don’t do that anymore.
    “Did you go to Earth?”
    “Among other places.” I smiled at a memory that was getting on for a century out of date. “Earth’s a shithole, Plex. Static fucking society, hyper-rich immortal overclass, cowed masses.”
    He shrugged