“Not here. Make sure we are clean, then stop somewhere we can get a drink. I need a drink.” I flipped down the solar-visor and used the vanity mirror to check the damage to my cheek. “Damned Reptiles.”

Ray chuckled, circled the hovercar a couple of times, then headed for some beer-skellar. He parked down the street from it and glanced at me. “Will this do?”

“Yeah, fine.”

The close confines of a hovercar make some acts difficult. Having my way with Jill, for example, would have been impossible. Likewise, throwing a punch is tough, but I found it very easy to drive my left elbow into Ray’s face. His head snapped back, then rebounded off the head restraint. I slipped my left hand out, grabbed the back of his skull and smashed his face into the steering wheel. Twisting in my seat, I unbuckled his restraints, then reached across and opened his door. I shoved him out.

I got out of my side before he’d done much more than get his hands under him. I kicked his door shut, or as shut as I could given that his chest stood between it and closed. He shouted weakly, then moaned as I dragged him from the vehicle and pitched him into a trash midden. He was bleeding from the nose and had his arms hugging bruised ribs.

I grabbed a handful of blond hair and cranked his head back. “You get one chance to answer this question right, or I leave you here with a crushed windpipe. Was it your idea to use me as bait to bring Lakewood’s bodyguards into the open, or were you under orders?”

A bloody bubble formed under his right nostril, then popped. “Orders. Mr. Handy.”

“Mr. Handy?”

“The boss, what we call him.”

I pulled the bottle of water from my pocket, drank a bit then poured the rest down over his face to wash away the blood. “Okay, you’re going to call Mr. Handy. I expect him to be at our rendezvous by the time we get there. Reis used me as bait once, and now so has Handy. The next person who does that gets very dead. You can tell him, I’m not bait, I’m the hook, and he wants me attached to his line if it’s Reis he’s going to catch.”

Overton

Joppa, Helen

Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

21 November 3132

Ray managed to snivel directions to our new rendezvous point and I drove. We got there quickly enough and it didn’t surprise me to see Letitia already there. Her furious glare didn’t surprise me either. I put it down to her being angry that I’d not busted Ray’s jaw, but she calmed down when he clutched his ribs and moaned about them being broken.

I glanced at her. “You’ll want to call Mr. Handy and get him here, or get me to where I can talk to him. We need to have a serious talk. Now!”

Letitia hesitated. She didn’t like the idea of taking orders from me, but Ray eased himself down into a chair and waved her away. With her face set in a steely mask of resentment, she stepped into the kitchen to make the call.

We’d taken a safe house in the older suburbs of Overton. It was the kind of neighborhood where it took a year before you got to know your neighbors, and few were the neighbors who lasted that long. We could nod politely, exchange greetings, but beyond that we didn’t want to know each other or be known.

I stayed with Ray and didn’t explore the house. From the looks of it, and others in the neighborhood, they’d been first-generation tract homes created just after the establishment of The Republic. Others had been expanded, with second floors added, or window treatments and lots of landscaping, but our home was still the basic low box. Thirty years earlier the neighborhood would have been open and friendly, but now, after its golden age had declined, the houses and owners had aged and old suspicions returned. It could be best thought of as a place where folks once grew up and moved away from. If The Republic lasted, decay and gentrification would follow in natural sequence. If not, the neighborhood was doomed.

Letitia returned. “He’ll be coming. A couple of hours.”

I nodded. It was good that she had his direct line, whether it was connected to a mobile device or some location. That went a long way toward ruling her out as the CDRF mole. If she were, the CDRF would have been able to swoop down on him and there would be no reason why Reis wouldn’t have hauled his butt in after losing officers. Destroying GGF fast after that debacle would make his popularity skyrocket.

Letitia did what she could for Ray while we waited. That consisted mostly of sticking rolled-up gauze pads in his nose, getting him some analgesic tabs—though none of her high-speed stuff—and wrapping his ribs. When she removed his shirt to do that I could see the mottled purple lines where the door and the car frame had smashed him. I didn’t see enough swelling to make me think I’d broken ribs, but they were bruised enough to hurt for a long time.

It’s kind of funny how time passes in a situation like that. The two of them were radiating pure hatred for me. Not only did they resent my having hurt them, but they resented my presence. They didn’t want to leave me alone, but they also didn’t like having me there and able to listen to what they might be saying back and forth to each other. Watching them interact, I didn’t think there was anything going on between them, but they’d clearly been friends and united by the loss of their other comrades—another discomfort they could lay at my feet.

So time dragged on slowly. I really didn’t care that they didn’t like me. I actually enjoyed the fact that they feared me. That’s the funny thing about intellectual folks—and it’s only the educated who can get behind causes like endangered species. While they might be willing to embrace violence to further their cause, it’s always some imaginary, ennobled form of violence. It’s clean, the one-punch knockout, where you ask the other guy to say “uncle” and then you accept he’ll act according to his word.

I didn’t play by those rules and that really got under their skins. With Letitia, one punch would have been enough—heck, just trapping her leg and tossing her back into a table would have been enough. With Ray, the elbow made sense, but driving his head into the steering wheel, that was over the top. And kicking the door into him, well, that was just fighting dirty.

With their attitude toward violence, how could they justify shooting constables? It was easy. First, the shots were at range and they couldn’t see the aftermath. Second, they were defending a comrade. Self-defense layered nobility on their act while overlooking the fact that had they not been engaged in criminal activity, there would never had been a need for self-defense.

Eventually Handy arrived. He made no attempt to disguise himself. He still wore black and was cadaverously slender, with a pasty-pale complexion that suggested he was a vampire who had not fed in a long time. He did wear glasses that darkened in the sunlight, and left a gray haze over his eyes indoors. He’d shaved his head, confirming for me once again that there is nothing uglier than a white man with a bare scalp.

He surveyed the damage to Ray, then looked at me. His expression hovered between peevish resentment and amusement. “Well, Mr. Donelly, you have been busy.”

“I have.” I stayed slouched in the overstuffed chair I’d appropriated. “The two of them, out. This is just you and me talking.”

Letitia was prepared to take issue with my orders, but Handy waved her away. “Ray will be more comfortable lying down. We will not be that long. There will be no need for Letitia to safeguard me, will there?”