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
The vibroknife broke through into flesh and muscle again. I switched it off and started to lever the severed section of spine out of Yukio Hirayasu’s neck.
Yakuza gentry, dead and destacked. Courtesy of Takeshi Kovacs, because that was the way the label was going to read, whatever I did now.
Tanaseda was going to be looking for blood. Hirayasu senior too, presumably.
Could be he saw his son as the lipslack fuck-up he evidently was, but somehow I doubted it. And even if he did, every rule of obligation the Harlan’s World yakuza girded themselves with was going to force him to make it right. Organised crime is like that. Radul Segesvar’s Newpest haiduci mafia or the yak, north or south, they’re all the fucking same.
Fucking blood tie junkies.
War with the yakuza.
Why you going up north again? I looked at the excised spinal segment and the blood on my hands. It wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I caught the hoverloader up to Tekitomura three days ago.
“Micky?” For a moment, the name meant nothing to me. “Hey, Mick, you okay?”
I looked up. She was watching me with narrow concern. I forced a nod.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Well, do you think you could pick it up a bit? Orr’ll be back and he’ll want to get started.”
“Sure.” I turned to the other corpse. The knife burred back into life. “I’m still curious what you plan to do about Jadwiga.”
“You’ll see.”
“Party trick, huh?”
She said nothing, just walked to the window and stared out into the light and clamour of the new day. Then, as I was starting the second spinal incision, she looked back into the room.
“Why don’t you come with us, Micky?”
I slipped and buried the knife blade up to its hilt. “What?”
“Come with us.”
“To Drava?
“Oh, you’re going to tell me you’ve got a better chance running against the yak here in Tekitomura?”
I freed the blade and finished the incision. “I need a new body, Sylvie. This one’s in no state for meeting the mimints.”
“What if I could set that up for you?”
“Sylvie.” I grunted with effort as the bone segment levered upward.
“Where the fuck are you going to find me a body on New Hokkaido? Place barely permits human life as it is. Where are you going to find the facilities?”
She hesitated. I stopped what I was doing, Envoy intuition wakening to the realisation that there was something here.