Stormblood, стр. 18

I unlocked the door, only to find the turret had unfolded from the wall and was spinning around like a disco ball, gears whirring. Kowalski swore and was reaching for the thin-gun holstered at her hip when I stopped her, seeing a figure sprawled on my couch, chomping away at a bowl of cereal. There was only one person who’d dare to pull something like this.

I sighed. ‘Grim? What did we say about locked doors?’

‘Hey, Vak! Your place is nicer than I remembered. Good to see you made it out, by the way.’ His sly, foxy grin died when he saw I had company. He tumbled off the lounger, his gaze on Kowalski. ‘… and you are?’

‘How did you get in without triggering the alarms?’ Kowalski spluttered, bringing her palmerlog up. ‘This security system is airtight. And what the hell did you do to the turret?’ Knowing Grim, I was glad he’d not chosen to test its firing capacity.

‘Oh.’ He had the decency to look a little embarrassed as he flexed his spindly fingers. ‘I disabled it. Couldn’t have it stopping me from getting inside.’

For the first time, I noticed the AI rabbit in the corner of the room, reared up on its hind legs, its eyes engulfed in burning flames, stamping its foot and issuing clouds of smoke. ‘This vagabond has locked me out of my system!’ The rabbit sniffed. ‘He’s tearing my mainframe apart.’

‘Shut up, furball. I hardly did any rerouting!’ Grim protested.

‘Furball?’ the AI spluttered indignantly, holographic flames jetting from its eyes, nails extending from its paws. ‘I’m a Nova-Class, Pure Core Rubix with a platinum substrate rating, and I will—’

‘Oh, shut up. It’s not my fault your safeguard software sucks.’

The rabbit puffed its chest up. ‘You shut up, and you listen here; I’ll have you know—’

I interrupted before the argument spiralled out of control and told Grim to quit it. Grim gave me a cheeky, innocent smile I knew all too well and deactivated something remotely in his shib. The autocannon above me stopped spinning. The AI levelled one last demonic-looking death stare in Grim’s direction before vanishing in a puff of angry black smoke.

I strip-mined my brain for an appropriate response, but returned empty handed. I turned to Kowalski and mumbled an apology instead.

‘That’s top-tier Harmony security software. Supposed to be unhackable.’ She rubbed her face with the air of someone who doesn’t want to know any more. She threw me one last look as she steered for the door. ‘Get some rest, Fukasawa. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Oh boy.’ Grim sucked air through his hacksaw teeth and scraped both hands through his wild hair, tangled in a permanent mess. He was habitually seeking out weird new gadgets from across the Common. Today, he was dressed in an underskin with a nanoweave stitching that turned him into a neon skeleton from the neck down, his ribcage stuttering red and green like an adboard. ‘Man, I leave you alone for a few hours, and you get in bed with Harmony?’ he asked, slapping my arm.

‘It’s not like that,’ I protested.

‘What’s it like, then?’

‘They only found me because of you.’ Grim’s cheerful face turned pallid. ‘Yeah, they traced your untraceable feed back to me.’

‘That means—’

‘That means they know who you are, and that you don’t have Compass residency.’

Grim groaned. ‘Oh god.’

‘I’m handling it, don’t worry.’

Grim rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles. ‘Do you have the genome at least?

‘Smuggled it out right under Harmony’s nose.’ I grinned as I extracted the datapoint from my suit sleeve and tossed it to Grim.

A scattermash of HUD icons and multicoloured overlays grew over Grim’s retinas as he used his shib to send the genome to our buyer. ‘Done. They’re not too happy about us being late, but we’re in the clear.’ Grim scratched at a scab on his temple. ‘Now we’ve only got the Jackal to worry about.’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, word is, he wants to strangle you with your own guts.’

‘I’m well aware, Grim.’

‘But he’s the Jackal. Most crimelords get their blademen to take care of loose ends. This guy does his own dirty work, does his own finger and toe slicing. Up close and personal.’ Grim sniffed. ‘He enjoys hunting people down around Compass. Makes a game of it.’

My body remembered and tensed, expecting incoming danger. I clamped down on the sensation and focused on peeling out of my armour before pinching into the seat next to Grim. There’s only so many times you can be creatively threatened in a day before the novelty starts to wear off. ‘If selling the genome isn’t enough I can get Kindosh to get you Compass citizenship as part of our deal.’

Grim stopped scratching his head to stare at me. He must have realised the real reason I’d taken this job. ‘Wait. You’d do that for me?’

‘Consider it done,’ I said.

‘While you’re at it, get Harmony to upgrade my place, too?’

‘Now you’re pushing it.’

‘Can I move into yours, at least?’

‘Not if you keep breaking into it!’

‘It won’t happen again,’ the Rubix interjected in its usual sniffy voice. ‘I’ll do my utmost to keep this horrid ruffian away.’

‘Oh, good. I love a challenge,’ Grim shot back, wearing that infuriating grin of his that had nearly got us killed at the wrong checkpoint.

I went for the liquor cabinet to make us drinks to celebrate. The stormtech negates the effect of alcohol, meaning I could drink every drop of booze on the asteroid and not get tipsy. Doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the taste of alcohol, though.

The glass shelves were stocked with the classiest labels, courtesy of Harmony. And they’d stocked the bar with everything: whiskey, bourbon, vodka, gin, rum, genever, brandy, tequila, many bespoke Compass varieties. A terminal listed the botanicals and recommended mixers for each drink. I went straight for the gin. I always like to try the local colour so I settled on an unfamiliar label from a small distillery a few floors up from here. I built a cocktail