Chapters (56)
- PROLOGUE
- PART 1
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- PART 2
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- PART 3
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- PART 4
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- PART 5
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- EPILOGUE
“Four deComs, in a camp full of deComs.” Mari Ado made a face.
“Slaughtered just like that? Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“I don’t—”
She talked over me. “That they’d let it happen, I mean. This, what’s his name, Kurumaya was it? Old-school deCom big daddy, he’s going to just let the Harlanites walk in and do that under his nose? And what about the rest of them? Doesn’t say much for their esprit de corps, does it?”
“No,” I said evenly. “It doesn’t. DeCom runs as a competition-based nail-it-and-cash-in bounty dynamic. The crews are tight-knit internally. Outside of that, from what I saw there’s not a lot of loyalty. And Kurumaya will have bowed to whatever oligarchy pressure was brought to bear, probably after the event. Sylvie’s Slipins never did themselves any favours with him, certainly not enough for him to buck the hierarchy.”
Ado curled her lip. “Sounds charming.”
“Signs of the times,” said Brasil unexpectedly. He looked at me. “When you strip away all the higher loyalties, we inevitably fall back on fear and greed. Right?”
In the wake of the quote, no one said anything. I scanned the faces in the room, trying to reckon support against dislike and the shades of grey between. Sierra Tres cranked one expressive eyebrow and stayed silent.
Sanction IV, fucking Sanction IV, hung in the air about me. You could make a good case for my actions there being governed by fear and greed.
Some of the faces I was watching already had.
Then again, none of them were there.
None of them were fucking there.
Brasil stood up. He searched the faces around the table, maybe for the same things I’d been looking at.
“Think about this, all of you. It will affect us all, one way or the other. Each one of you is here because I trust you to keep your mouth shut, and because if there’s something to be done I trust you to help me do it. There’ll be another meeting tonight at sundown. There’ll be a vote. Like I said, give it some thought.”
Then he picked up his saxophone from a stool by the window and ambled out of the room as if there was nothing more important going on in his life at that moment.
After a couple of seconds, Virginia Vidaura got up and went out after him.
She didn’t look at me at all.
TWENTY-FIVE
Brasil found me again later, on the beach.