Route 666

yet, but she was trying to look like a dowager.

More than one panzer boy had mistaken the Daughters of the American Revolution for solids, tried the old mug-and-snatch routine, and wound up messily dead. The DAR were very snazz at what they did, which was remembering the founding fathers, upholding the traditional American way of life, and torturing and killing people. Personally, Jazzbeaux wasn't into politics. She called a gangcult a gangcult, but the Daughters tried to sell themselves as a Conservative Pressure Group. They had a male adjunct, the Minutemcn, but they were wimpo faghaggs. It was the Daughters you had to be conce with.

'Come for it, switch-bitch,' Jazzbeaux hissed, 'come for my knifey-knives!'

The Daughter walked forward, as calm as you please, and with a samurai movement drew the needles out of her hair. They glinted in the torchlight. They were clearly not ornamental. She grinned. Her teeth had been filed and capped with steel. Expensive dental work.

'Just you and me, babe,' Jazzbeaux said, 'just you and me.'

The rest of the DAR cadre stood back, humming 'America the Beautiful'. The Psychopomps kept quiet. This was a formal combat to settle a territorial dispute and shouldn't be queered by kibitzers. No matter what happened here, the 'Pomps could gain something from a quick fight rather than a long war.

This was not a funfight. This was Serious Business. Jazzbeaux heard they did much the same thing in Japcorp boardrooms.

Valli Forge drew signs in the air with her needles. They were dripping something. Psychoactive venom of some sort, Jazzbeaux guessed. Her system had absorbed just about every juju the GenTech labs could leak illegally onto the market, and she was still kicking. And punching, and scratching, and biting.

Still, she meant to keep straight. The shades-shadow in the back of her head was bad enough.

The Daughter was obviously pumped up on something. Conservatives abhorred recreationals but they went in for short-term enhancements the way newstrivia anchors went after facelifts.

'Steroid suestra, I hear they're talkin' about settlin' the Miss America pageant like this next anno. You get to do evenin' dress, and swimwear, and combat fatigues.'

Valli Forge growled. Her shoulders bulged with boosted meat.

'I wouldn't give much for your chances of winning the crown, Valli Girl. You just plain ain't got the personality.'

Behind her eyepatch, the implant buzzed open, and circuitry lit up. She might need her optic's burn function. It made for a grand fight-finisher.

Jazzbeaux held up her ungloved hand, knuckles out, and shimmered the red metal stars implanted in her knucks. Kid-stuff. The sign of The Samovar Seven, her fave Russian musickies when she was a kid. She didn't freak much to the Moscow Beat these days, but she knew Sove Stuff really got to the DAR.

'You commie slit,' sneered Valli Forge.

'Who preps your dialogue, sister? Neil Simon?'

Jazzbeaux hummed in the back of her throat. 'Unbreakable Union of Soviet Republics…' The 'Pomps caught the tune and joined it. The Daughter's eyes narrowed. She had stars on one cheek, and stripes on the other. The president of their chapter wore a Miss Liberty spiked hat, and carried a killing torch.

'Take the witchin' slag down, Jazz-babe,' shrilled Andrew Jean, always the encouraging soul.

The DAR switched to 'My Country 'tis of Thee'. The 'Pomps segued to 'Long-Haired Lover From Leningrad', popularised by Vania Vanianova and the Kulture Kossacks.

Valli Forge clicked her heels and made a pass, lunging forwards. Jazzbeaux bent to one side, letting the needle slice air over her shoulder, and slammed the Daughter's midriff with her knee. The spiked pad ripped through Valli Forge's blouse and grated on the armoured contour-girdle underneath. The Daughter grabbed Jazzbeaux's neck and pulled her off her feet.

Jazzbeaux recognised the move. Her daddy had tried it on her back in the Denver NoGo when nine-year-olds were worth a gallon on the streets. One thing she had to say about Dad, at least he had prepped her for the world she was going to have to live in. Other girls graduated from the Policed-Zone high schools, but she knew she was a woman the day she ripped her old man's throat out. If she was lucky, she might live to see twenty-five. She didn't believe she'd marry Petya Jerkussoff and move to a dacha on the steppes any more.

She bunched her fingers into a sharp cone and stabbed above Valli Forge's girdle-line, aiming for the throat, but the Daughter was too fast, and chopped her wrist, deflecting the blow.

Just what her dad used to do – 'Jessa-myn, cain't you be sociable?!' The low-rent ratskag. She danced round the bigger fillette, getting a few scratches down the back of her suit, even drawing some blood. Valli Forge swung round and Jazzbeaux had to take a fall to avoid the needles.

The 'Pomps were chanting and shouting now, while the DAR had fallen silent. That didn't mean anything.

She was down in the dirt, rolling away from the sharp-toed kicks. The DAR had good intelligence contacts, obviously. The girlie had struck her three times on the right thigh, just where the once-broken bone was, and had taken care to stay out of the field of her optic burner. Of course, she'd also cut Jazzbeaux's forehead below the hairline, making her bleed into her regular eye. Anyone would have done that.

But Jazzbeaux was getting her licks in. Valli Forge's left wrist was either broken or sprained and she couldn't get a proper grip on her needle. There were spots of her own blood on her suit, so some of Jazzbeaux's licks must have missed the armour plate. The hagwitch was tiring, breathing badly, sweating like a sow. That armour must be feeling mighty heavy and mighty confining. Her daintiness was gone, and she was flailing.

Jazzbeaux used her feet, dancing away and flying back, anchoring herself to a broken lamp-post as she launched four rapid kicks to Valli Forge's torso. The fillette was shaken. She had dropped both her needles. Jazzbeaux caught her behind the head with a steelheel, and dropped her to the ground. She reared up but Jazzbeaux was riding her now, knees pressed tight. She got a full nelson and sank claws into the back of her neck, pressing the Daughter's face to the hard-beaten earth of the street. Blood welled up around her nails. Jazzbeaux touched it with her tongue and caught a thrill from whatever was circulating in Valli Forge's system.

For a wavering moment, she thought the girlie was going to throw her off. A shadow seemed to fall over them, a shadow with silvery mirror-eyes and a fringe of horns.

This was no time for a delirium flash.

Finally, Valli Forge stopped moving and lay still in the dirt, and Jazzbeaux stood up. Andrew Jean rushed out, and grabbed her wrist, holding her hand up in victory.

'The winnnnerrrr!' Andrew Jean shouted, sloppily kissing. Sweetcheeks was crowding in, and the others. Only Varoomschka, sardonically impressed but certain she could have ended it in half the time, held back.

None of the Daughters made an effort to fetch their champion. They stood before the bank like American Gothic statues.

Jazzbeaux pulled her eyepatch away and scanned the DAR. They were impassive as the optic burner angled across them, glinting red but not yet activated.

'Is it decided?' Jazzbeaux asked, wiping blood out of her eye.

An older Daughter, with a pillbox hat and a grey-speckled veil, came forward and stood over her sister. The girlie on the ground moaned and tried to get up on her elbows. The veiled Daughter kicked Valli Forge in the side. The poison blade sank in. The fallen Daughter spasmed briefly and slumped again, foam leaking from her mouth.

'It is decided,' said the veiled Daughter.

The DAR picked up the deadmeat and faded away into the darkness.

The Psychopomps pressed around her, kissing, hugging, groping, shouting.

'Jazz-beaux! Jazz-beaux! Jazz-beaux!'

The Psychopomps howled in the desert.

'Come on, let's hit somewhere with intelligent life,' Jazzbeaux shouted above the din. 'I'm thirsty, and I could use some real party action tonight!'

VI