was. A noise in ducting.
A maintenance drone or a rigger-run cleaning robot? Either would be a problem. The dog-brain in a drone wouldn't be bright enough to recognize him, but the stupid thing might try to clean him out of the duct, a process that would be most painful. If it were a robot, a rigger could ID him as an intruder and would report his presence. That would make departure much more complicated and cancel any chance of returning another day. He did not want his hole through Grandmother's security sealed; it was his doorway to fortune.
The scraping sound came again, accompanied by a softer brushing noise. It was not a scrubbing rotor. What was it? It didn't sound mechanical. The important point was that it sounded nearer. Discretion being the better part of profits, Neko decided to leave.
His joints had stiffened less than might have been expected. A brisk crawl would have them loose again, He moved quietly from his perch. Once away from where he thought noise of his movement could be , transmitted to Grandmother's sanctum, he moved more briskly. Several turns later, he heard the sound again. Was it following him?
He was not far from his exit, but increased his pace anyway. He had no desire to be caught in the duct. Those dark confines left Neko no room to use his justly famed agility.
He twisted himself through the last turn and saw light slitting through the grating by which he had entered. Pausing only long enough to assure himself that no one occupied the storeroom beyond, he dug loose the putty holding the panel in place. He held it with one hand as he shimmied his torso clear. His free hand held him up as he worked his knees clear, then his feet. He dropped nearly noiselessly to the box beneath the opening.
He was out, unconfined. He grinned. Whatever roamed the ducts of Grandmother's fortress had not caught him.
As he reached up to replace the grating, something black, glistening-hard, and studded with coarse hairs reached through the slats. In startled reaction Neko jerked back, hands still clutching the duct cover. There was a rasping sound as metal slid along the twitching thing, then Neko was jerked back toward the wall. The black thing clamped onto the grating and Neko let go. The panel slammed crossways across the opening, crumpling as it was withdrawn into the darkness.
As it disappeared a second black thing scythed out of the duct, sweeping toward Neko's head. He ducked into a crouch. While the sharp, hooked end of the thing scraped along the wall, he uncoiled into a back flip. He landed surefooted, ready to run but unwilling to turn his back on the unknown thing in the duct.
An ominous silence descended on the storeroom.
Neko bunched the muscles of his left forearm as he twisted it, triggering the release of the carbon-fiber blades from their forearm sheath. Four monofiber-edged cutters slid forward to project seven centimeters past his cocked wrist. In close they would make sushi out of muscle and tissue, but he had seen the strength of whatever it was. He was not sure he wanted to get that close to it. He rejected his pistol; noise was as much his enemy as the whatever-it-was. His right hand slipped a throwing spike from among the half-dozen sheathed along his thigh. At ranges under five meters, his skill made the silvered steel as deadly as the pistol. Thumb holding the spike against his palm and fingers, he raised his hand into throwing position.
Again he heard the scraping, brushing sound that had pursued him through the ducts. Slowly the black claws appeared, and gripped the edges of the opening. The claws hauled a grotesque bulk into view, and he began to think he would have been better off running.
The claw-tipped things were arms, inhumanly thin and oddly jointed, but arms nonetheless. They grew from shoulders that barely humped above the swollen and bloated belly of the creature that tumbled from the duct. Its legs, almost duplicates of the arms, slithered free of the darkness as the thing dropped to the floor. It steadied itself for a moment on all fours before rising to stand in an insectoid parody of a man. Tattered cloth hung on its torso, snagged and split by bristly hairs. It was as tall as a troll, making it nearly three tunes Neko's height. Malevolent onyx eyes stared down at him from a face totally inhuman.
Deciding he could not afford to let it make the first move, Neko blurred into action. His hand snapped forward, releasing the spike and sending it speeding toward the obscene visage. The steel pierced its right eye, popping the orb in a gush of dark fluid. The thing made no sound as the bulbous head wobbled and the creature scraped at the spike with a claw until the weapon dropped free.
Then it sprang.
Neko barely dodged its first swipe. A claw snagged his clothes, gouging his flesh and tugging him back toward the creature. Twisting around, he slashed with his blades. He felt two of the edges strike the hard limb and slide, barely cutting. The other two sliced through the fabric of his clothes and freed him. He fell, hitting the floor hard.
Coming at him with both claw-tipped, glittering arms, the creature gave him no respite. Hoping to surprise it, Neko rolled forward. As it jerked its head to follow his motion, Neko felt the foul-smelling liquid from the thing's destroyed eye spatter him. Its claws almost caught him as he slipped between its legs.
He sent a second spike whipping toward the base of its skull, but the creature was turning and the weapon only glanced off hard bone. The thing rushed him again and he dodged toward its right side, cutting with his blades as he dove.
They danced a deadly, silent tarantella. Neko worried the thing's blind side, tearing at its limbs with his blades. His strikes were rarely clean, the monofiber edges of his weapons doing little more than scar the hard outer covering of the creature's appendages. It was well-protected. Whether it was armor, magic, or its own skill did not matter; it was wearing Neko down. He remained unable to close with it and bring his blades into contact with something vital.
His growing fatigue was making it more and more difficult to react quickly enough. First a claw raked his arm and scored the muscle, then the other caught him a glancing blow across the fibs, lacerating clothing and skin while tossing him halfway across the room. Half stunned, his eyes watering from the pain, Neko almost forfeited his phyrrhic respite. He had barely grabbed a new throwing spike before a new attack forced him to scramble away from the onrushing creature. Watching for an opening, he continued his desperate dodging. He doubted he'd have the opportunity to draw another spike. He had to make his throw.
His chance came after he had ducked low to avoid a sweeping blow and the creature's clawed limb became briefly entangled in the wreckage of the crate Neko had maneuvered between them. Neko's hand snapped up, then forward. The spike flew. Though not striking cleanly, the sharp spike scored the creature's remaining eye.
Blinded, its defenses faltered into a still dangerous but unguided flailing. Neko slipped through its guard to plant his blades in the soft tissue between the skull and carapace shoulders. The monofiber edges sliced arteries, veins, and windpipe before grating against bone. The creature collapsed with a bubbling moan. Panting, Neko skipped backward to avoid its thrashing.
It took a long time to die.
There was no chance the carnage would go unnoticed. Neko's pipeline into Grandmother's secrets would be closed, leaving him only what he had learned today. He had best make the most of it. His blood spattered the room, offering a trail to those who would seek him in the shadows. To close that avenue to pursuers, he disabled the sprinklers and used the cleaning supplies stored there to start a hungry fire. He would leave only ashes behind.
Urdli watched as the kulpunya ran in circles on the runway, howling in frustration. The thing was baffled by the loss of the trail, but Urdli understood. For all its supernatural tracking ability, the kulpunya could not follow a trail through the air. The thieves had escaped by aircraft.
He turned his eyes to the sky, where the running lights of an aircraft rose into the night over Perth. The craft headed west, turning into the air lanes that skirted the coast. It was on its way to the outside world. Oh, no. It was not going to be simple at all.
The Magick Matrix was the glittering star of the entertainment district of the Hong Kong Free Enterprise Enclave. The club was a haven for enclavers jaded by ordinary reality. Within its walls, patrons could leave behind their meat shells and step into other realities computer realities whose governing principles the user could select. Those custom creations would let a user look like anyone, be anywhere, and do anything, as long as he had the nuyen to pay for it. And he could do it all without working up a sweat. All it took was putting on the trodes or jacking in if he wanted the best resolution and response. Then he could dream away while the gnomes of the Magick Matrix zapped him into a pocket universe of cyberspace.
The hardware was expensive and the software more so. Protecting the investment was a wide array of
