specifically for Envoy use, and there has not been time to arrange anything customised.”
“You’ve got a crisis on your hands?”
“Very astute, Kovacs-san. Yes, the situation might fairly be described as critical. We would like you to go to work immediately.”
“Well, that’s what they pay me for.”
“Yes.” Would she broach the matter of exactly who was paying at this point?
“Probably not. As you’ve no doubt already guessed this will be a covert deployment. Very different from Sharya. Though you did have some experience of dealing with terrorists towards the end of that campaign, I believe.”
“Yeah.” After we smashed their IP fleet, jammed their data transmission systems, blew apart their economy and generally killed their capacity for global defiance, there were still a few diehards who didn’t get the Protectorate message. So we hunted them down. Infiltrate, befriend, subvert, betray. Murder in back alleys. “I did that for a while.”
“Good. This work is not dissimilar.”
“You’ve got terrorist problems? Are the Quellists acting up again?”
She makes a dismissive gesture. No one takes Quellism seriously any more. Not for a couple of centuries now. The few genuine Quellists still around on the World have traded in their revolutionary principles for high-yield crime. Same risks, better paid. They’re no threat to this woman, or the oligarchy she represents. It’s the first hint that things are not as they seem.
“This is more in the nature of a manhunt, Kovacs-san. An individual, not a political issue.”
“And you’re calling in Envoy support.” Even through the mask of control, this has to rate a raised eyebrow. My voice has probably gone up a little as well. “Must be a remarkable individual.”
“Yes. He is. An ex-Envoy, in fact. Kovacs-san, before we proceed any further, I think something needs to be made clear to you, a matter that—”
“Something certainly needs to be made clear to my commanding officer. Because to me this sounds suspiciously like you’re wasting Envoy Corps time. We don’t do this kind of work.”
“—may come as something of a shock to you. You, ah, no doubt believe that you have been re-sleeved shortly after the Sharya campaign. Perhaps even only a few days after your needlecast out.”
A shrug. Envoy cool. “Days or months—it doesn’t make much difference to m—”
“Two centuries.”
“What?”
“As I said. You have been in storage for a little under two hundred years. In real terms—”
Envoy cool goes out the window, rapidly. “What the fuck happened to—”
“Please, Kovacs-san. Hear me out.” A sharp note of command. And then, as the conditioning shuts me down again, pared back to listen and learn, more quietly: “Later I will give you as much detail as you like. For now, let it suffice that you are no longer part of the Envoy Corps as such. You can consider yourself privately retained by the Harlan family.”
Marooned centuries from the last moments of living experience you recall. Sleeved out of time. A lifetime away from everyone and everything you knew. Like some fucking criminal. Well, Envoy assimilation technique will by now have some of this locked down, but still—
“How did you—”
“Your digitised personality file was acquired for the family some time ago. As I said, I can give you more detail later. You need not concern yourself too much with this. The contract I am here to offer you is lucrative and, we feel, ultimately rewarding. What’s important is for you to understand the extent to which your Envoy skills will be put to the test. This is not the Harlan’s World you know.”
“I can deal with that.” Impatiently. “It’s what I do.”
“Good. Now, you will of course want to know—”
“Yeah.” Shut down the shock, like a tourniquet on a bleeding limb. Drag up competence and a drawled lack of concern once more. Grab on to the obvious, the salient point in all of this. “Just who the fuck is this ex-Envoy you so badly want me to catch?”
Maybe it went something like that.
Then again, maybe not. I’m inferring from suspicion and fragmented knowledge after the event. Building it up from what I can guess, using Envoy intuition to fill in the gaps. But I could be completely wrong.
I wouldn’t know.
I wasn’t there.
And I never saw his face when they told him where I was. Told him that I was, and what he’d have to do about it.
PART 1
THIS IS WHO YOU ARE
“Make it personal.”
Quellcrist Falconer—Things I Should Have Learnt By Now Vol II
ONE
Damage.
The wound stung like fuck, but it wasn’t as bad as some I’d had. The blaster bolt came in blind