Steve Perry - Matador 02 - Matadora

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2024-12-04 0 0 818.02KB 135 页 5.9玖币
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Matadora
Steve Perry
CHAPTER ONE
DEATH CAME FOR her from behind a child's game.
There was only a single man this time, but Dirisha saw he was trained by
the way he moved, solidly within his own Center. She didn't know him, but
she knew what he was: a ronin, like herself. He was a player and it was the
Musashi Flex which drove him. He might have seen her work, or maybe
heard from somebody who had. So now, he had to test her. It was always the
way of it, that testing.
Damn.
Somebody might die, she knew, and death only had two contestants from
which to choose. It was no field of honor on which Dirisha Zuri stood,
watching her would-be assassin, only a dimly-lit arcade, bounded by banks
of holo-proj games and sturz-booths. The place was deserted, save for
Dirisha and her stalker—she had chosen it for that reason. He moved well,
this big man with tea-colored skin and blond hair, but he was all too visible a
tail to somebody with Dirisha's own training.
She nodded at him, resigned. "Armed?"
He shook his head. "Let's do it bare."
"All right." If he were any good, he'd be carrying half a dozen weapons. He
could have a buzzer, buckle blade, slap-caps, maybe even a projectile pen;
Dirisha had those. His hands were open and empty now, but that didn't
mean anything. If it went against him, he might go for a helper; certainly she
would. Honor was in surviving, not fair play. But first, you had to know...
Tea-skin slid his left foot forward a few centimeters and turned his body
slightly. He brought his hands up, left high, right low, and stiffened his
fingers, curling his thumbs down. He was four meters away.
Dirisha stood relaxed in a neutral stance and watched Tea-skin calmly as
she tried to figure out his style. One of the striking systems, obviously, and
likely he was a mono-stylist, too. He could be very good at it, but he gave
away more than he should by his stance; a really experienced ronin would
hide as much as possible until the last moment.
Tea-skin scooted forward half a meter, using the economical push-slide of
a martial boxer. Karate or kung fu, Dirisha figured, or one of the myriad
variants. He would be a power-fighter, judging from the swellings of his
muscles. He would likely hit hard and depend upon his strength to carry the
fight. All right. She knew she shouldn't expect anything, that she should
simply trance-react to whatever came, but her experiences wouldn't go away.
If she was right, she might be able to handle him easier, maybe get away
without killing or maiming him.
He moved half a meter closer, sliding across the grimy tile floor. A blue
light from some holoproj game program strobed across his face and he
blinked against it. The same blue light glinted from her own black skin.
He's nervous, Dirisha thought. A bad sign. For herself, Dirisha felt no fear.
She was deeply trained in four Arts, less well-instructed in a handful of
others. She would wki or lose, that was all. She would essay to perform her
techniques correctly, no more, no less; the consequences of failure didn't
enter into it. A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew
how. To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable.
Tea-skin slid yet closer, almost within his range and still outside of
Dirisha's zone. For a moment, she took time to wonder about the man facing
her. What would he be thinking? What he could see was simple enough; a
big woman of about thirty, with chocolate skin and green eyes, dressed in a
red body suit and tunic, standing loosely and watching. He couldn't know
what she had done, where she had been, what forces had formed her into
what she was. No, all he could see was another player, a follower of the
ancient warrior Musashi, a seeker after martial perfection. A personal test for
himself. A bloody battle.
For a brief moment, Dirisha thought about turning and running from the
arcade. It seemed pointless to fight this man, pointless to play the game she'd
first learned a decade ago on Mti. She wanted the perfection, but this part of
it had grown old. She had long since learned to avoid fights when she could,
especially with the untrained. At first, the competition had been exciting, it
had made her blood sing. Even when she lost and had to spend days or
weeks nursing her body back to optimum, it had been a part she'd willingly
played, a role she wanted. But now? Now she wished only to learn and be
left alone. She avoided other players when she saw them, never issued
challenges, kept a low profile at each new dojo. The only thing was, other
players knew of her; and, those who did not, would see evidence of her skills
in the most simple of movements. She might as well be wearing a flashing
sign for those with the same kinds of abilities.
The sound of a breath too sharply indrawn roused Dirisha from her
wandering thoughts. Tea-skin was almost ready for his attack. Outwardly,
Dirisha gave no sign she noticed; inwardly, she reached for the autotrance—
Tea-skin lunged and drove his fist at Dirisha's throat. It was a deathblow,
aimed at crushing her windpipe.
Dirisha pivoted to her right, planted her feet solidly, and grabbed the
outstretched arm as she twisted. She applied Atemi Waza Second, a kind of
tug-and-loop with her hands, and Tea-skin lost his balance and tumbled
forward. If he didn't know how to recover from the fall—the man tucked his
shoulder and rolled, coming up in a half-turn so that he faced Dirisha when
he regained his feet. It was a move which saved him from a bad fall, but from
his attack and recovery, Dirisha knew the more important thing: his skills
were no match for hers; the fight was as good as over.
"What say we call it a draw, Deuce? One pass for the fun of it?"
The man shook his head, angry. "No!"
Dirisha wanted to sigh, but held it. He wasn't very good at all, not as good
as she'd first thought. He moved well enough sub rosa, but his resting was
better than his active. That was unusual, but it happened. At this point, a
better ronin would know where he stood and back off; otherwise, he'd be
asking for grief.
Tea-skin yelled, a guttural grunt, and cross-stepped for his second pass. A
kick this time, low, so he knew that much, but far too strong and slow. His
foot came up from the floor, aimed at her pubis—
Dirisha V-stepped and was suddenly behind him. She cocked her right fist
and fired the punch, slamming the two big knuckles into the man's back,
over his left kidney. She heard the wind leave him as he moaned. Before he
could recover, she lifted her left foot and stamped it against the back of his
knee. Tea-skin's leg buckled and his knee cap smacked hard into the floor
tiles; she heard the bone give. But he dove away and rolled, and when he
came up, most of his weight was on one leg—not the one Dirisha had just
crippled. He stared at her as though he couldn't understand who she was.
She saw the pain twist his face.
There was no way Tea-skin had enough strength in the leg with the
shattered kneecap to come at her again, not unless he hopped. It wasn't good,
but it would do. Pain was the best way and following that, disabling injury.
A little orthostat glue and the patella would be as good as new. But for now,
Tea-skin was out of it. Dirisha said, "This dance is over, Deuce. Let me call
the medics—"
Tea-skin jammed his hand into his tunic pocket and came out holding a
single-blast shot tube. He swung it to point toward Dirisha—
Dirisha slapped her own hand onto her belt closure and ripped the
kinzoku dart from its hidden sheath; the throw was a back-handed toss. She
continued the flinging motion into a wide follow-through—that was
important, the follow-through—and then dived after her hand, in a twisting
back-flip. The gas charge in the shot tube went off and a spray of steel fanned
the air where she had been a second earlier. One of the pellets slapped into
her ankle, but glanced off the bone, leaving only small wounds. She landed
hard, on her heels.
Dirisha stood and glanced down at Tea-skin. There was no pain on the
man's face, no tension in his muscles. The kinzoku dart had buried itself in
his forehead; the brain-shock must have killed him. Tea-skin had checked
out, there was no longer anybody home.
Dirisha felt cold, a coldness which reached deeply into her and touched
something hidden there. This was not what she wanted, this was not what
she had trained nearly half her life to become: a killer, someone who could
calmly wipe away another human with as little effort as throwing a sliver of
steel at a target. Why hadn't he quit? It was obvious she was better than he
had been, it was illogical, it was stupid for him to continue after he was
beaten! She found herself angry at Tea-skin—she didn't even know his
name—for being so stupid. It was his fault, not hers!
No. Dirisha knew she was wrong. Sure, she had to defend herself, but the
other was just rationalization. She was too good to have taken the easy way.
She could have risked herself more and maybe put him down without killing
him, she knew it. She had done her technique correctly, but she had failed in
her Art. Suddenly, she felt very tired, as if she had climbed some tall high-
gee mountain into thin and lifeless air.
She looked down at the corpse. Methodically, she retrieved the stainless
steel kinzoku dart and wiped away the blood. This was a bad world to kill
somebody on, the authorities on Tembo were harsh and difficult to convince
of innocence under the best of circumstances. They were less than fond of
cults and Musashi players would receive little sympathy, either killed or
killers. It would be wise to leave, and quickly. There was no official
registration of Hex players on Tembo, but it wouldn't take the cools long to
figure out that Tea-skin had been such. Then, they'd be locked into suspects.
Sure, it was self-dee, and any straight scan would back her story, but Dirisha
had no desire to sit for some heavy-handed brain scrambler. People had been
known to come out of such sessions wiped or nearly so—especially if the
simadam running the scan didn't like the subject. It could happen easily on
this world.
Tea-skin was heavy, but she managed to shoulder the body and walk with
it. Corpses were always heavy, being literally dead weight with no muscle
tone to help; Dirisha counted herself unfortunate to know such things.
People who passed on the nearly-deserted street glanced at Dirisha and
her load briefly, if at all, and if they wondered about her, they did not do so
aloud. She staggered along for two blocks before she found a refuse container
large enough to accept a man-sized object. Too bad there were no public flash
disposals on Tembo, a decidedly backward world compared to some. With a
grunt, Dirisha heaved the body into the trash container and covered the unit.
He'd be found soon enough, but probably not until she had time to leave the
planet. She had enough stads in her account to travel nearly anywhere in the
galaxy; money meant little to her and she seldom spent it on anything other
than the barest items of survival. She could go to any world she wished,
but—where did she want to go? She had learned as much of the local
fighting art of T'umeaux as she cared to learn; after that, she had planned to
try the wheel world of Chiisai Tomadachi, orbiting Tomadachi itself in the
Shin System. There was supposedly a variant of kaiatsu, which actually
worked, being taught to a handful of students there. She had heard of voice-
stun styles, but had never seen one which was truly effective. So, Chiisai?
As she left the alley in which she'd dumped the corpse of the man who'd
attacked her, Dirisha felt that earlier weariness latch onto her again, as
though some kind of malignant leech had attached itself to her spirit. Her Id
seemed to drain away, leaving her exhausted. For a moment, the idea of
continuing to play the Flex seemed too much to bear, to even consider. But
what else could she do? Settle into some bodyguard job? Become a bouncer
permanently? Set up a school and teach what she had learned? She could do
that, she was good enough to attract the best students.
The face of a man dead nearly three years floated up from her memory.
She smiled at the recollection. She'd liked Khadaji, liked working for him. A
lot of people had been very surprised when they'd found out what he'd
really been doing on Greaves. Dirisha had always suspected there was more
to him than met the eye—he moved too well to be a simple pub owner on
such a backrocket planet.
Dirisha kept the smile, but wondered why she was thinking about Khadaji
now. Was it merely due to the death of Tea-skin, reminding her of another
death? No, there was something else scratching at her memory. Something
Khadaji had said to her once, shortly before he'd died. What was it, exactly?
Something about being on some world in a few years... ah, she had it. He'd
told her that Renault, also in the Shin System, would be a good place to be. A
town called—what was it?—Complex? Vindox? No, it was ... Simplex.
Simplex-by-the-Sea. A place she could stretch herself, he'd said. What had he
meant by that? What had he been trying to tell her?
Dirisha walked the dark street on Tembo, oblivious to her surroundings;
she wondered about Khadaji's cryptic comments, made three years past.
Simplex-by-the-sea. It had a nice ring to it, it sounded peaceful and simple.
Why not? She had no place else she had to go.
No place at all.
CHAPTER TWO
THROUGH THE DENSECRIS window of the boxcar, Dirisha could see a
world which looked to be made mostly of water. She had read the standard
promoscan on the Bender ship from Tembo, so she knew a little about the
place: Renault, fifth from the primary, one of six inhabited worlds in the Shin
System. The world had three continents, a tug equal to one-point-one
gravities, oxy around twenty percent. Eight million nine hundred and sixty
thousand or so inhabitants, mostly human, with a scattering of mues for
flavor. They produced a lot of trees and vegetables on Renault and some
refined metals, but not much of the last. And not much else. A backwater
place, just like her homework!—a place Dirisha didn't like to think about.
So—why was she here? Dropping in a rock-like glide from orbit, heading
toward a village on the southwestern coast of the smallest of the small
continents? Well, it was as good a place as any, until she decided what she
was going to do when she grew up.
Now, why had she thought that?
"Touchdown in six minutes," came the voice of the attendant over the com.
"Please engage your form-units to landing mode."
Dirisha reached for the controls of her seat, trying to put the thoughts
she'd been having out of her mind.
The main spaceport for the hemisphere was on an artificial island twenty
kilometers from shore—a precaution taken on a number of worlds she'd
visited—in case the forerunners to modern boxcars, the rocket shuttles,
decided to explode on impact. Apparently such things had been common in
days past.
It was summer in (he latitudes containing Simplex-by-the-Sea, and it was
hot. Even the breeze generated by the speed of the ferry did little more than
rearrange the sweat drenching Dirisha. The ferry was old and it shuddered
and vibrated as it rode its uneven cushion of air across the tropical water.
Dirisha stood on the forward deck, feeling the sun and air working on her
tightly curled hair. Her droptacts polarized automatically and cut a lot of the
glare, but it was still very bright. Just like home.
Ahead lay the village she was travelling to, a coastal burg set around the
perimeter of a bay girded with fishing vessels. The boats wore strange
rigging, wide V-shaped poles strung with mesh—must be nets.
There were a number of small sailing craft leaning back and forth,
crisscrossing the bay. One of them, a tiny boat of maybe eight or ten meters,
seemed to be having trouble aiming itself. The sailors were putting the boat
directly into the path of the ferry. As the two vessels neared, Dirisha saw
three people on the smaller boat, frantically pulling on ropes and gesturing
wildly.
The air was rent by the ferry's warning hom, a deep, dinosaur-like blast.
The sailboat seemed to stall at the sound. It was directly ahead of the
masive ferry and if it didn't move soon, it would be run down.
The sound of the ferry's engines changed, and Dirisha felt a slight tug as
the big craft began to turn slightly to starboard. The dinosaur bellowed
again, more insistently, but the smaller boat didn't seem to be able to move.
Dirisha calculated the angle between the sailboat and the ferry and it looked
to be critical for the sailors. The ferry was turning, but ponderously, and the
three on the sailboat must know how precarious their position was.
They weren't going to make it, Dirisha saw. She stepped toward the metal
railing at the deck's end and gripped it tightly, leaning over to stare at the
sailboat.
With perhaps fifty meters left before impact, the sailboat suddenly seemed
to lurch to one side; it would still be close—
Horn still blasting, the ferry slid by the sailboat, with less than five meters
to spare. The bow wave and side slip of the air cushion rocked the little boat
as if it were a chip of wood. The mast nearly touched the water as the boat
heeled over and then, miraculously, righted itself. Dirisha was close enough
to see the faces of the three people on the boat. Two men and a young
woman. It looked as if die three were laughing. Then the boat was past her,
still bouncing wildly in the turbulence of the ferry.
Maybe she'd laugh too, if she'd just missed death.
She had only a small bag containing the few possessions she owned, so it
was easy enough to walk away from the ferry into the village of Simplex-by-
the-Sea. A sleepy town, she decided, with most of the inhabitants staying
inside perched in front of air conditioners or exchange strips, to beat the heat.
Now what? She was here, but she had no reason to be. She could look for a
local pub, she figured, and maybe get a job as a bouncer. Or maybe just enjoy
the sunshine for awhile, take long walks on the beach and watch the seabirds
and the fishing ships shuttle back and forth. She had enough stads to play the
rich woman—for awhile, at least. A vacation, a real vacation. She'd never had
one of those before. There were times when she hadn't worked or hadn't
been training, but those hadn't been vacations, only times between. She
gripped the handle of her bag tighter and picked a direction—
"Hey, Dirisha!"
She dropped the case and spun quickly, startled. She slid into a defensive
stance reflexively, her hands coming up in the oldest of her fighting systems,
hard-style oppugnate. Nobody could know her here—!
Dirisha's green eyes widened in surprise and she grinned as she raised
herself from her martial crouch. It was Bork!
The man she stared at was five meters away and walking toward her as if
nothing on the planet could stop his progress. He was big, close to two
meters tall, and on this world must have weighed nearly a hundred and
twenty-five kilograms. His black hair had a little more gray in it, but his
massive frame didn't look diminished—if anything, he looked larger and
more muscular than when she'd seen him last. He wore loose-weave osmotic
orthoskins and a pair of spetsdods, one strapped to the back of each hand.
Saval Bork, homomue, and once a bouncer in the Jade Flower on Greaves, as
she had been. And a nice man.
Her smiled faded as the first question hit her: what was he (doing here?
Almost as quickly, the second question crowded into her mind—how did he
know she was here? From his purposeful stride, it was obvious Bork did
know, and that bothered Dirisha greatly.
Bork stopped next to her. "You look good, Dirisha. I'm glad to see you."
"I'm glad to see you, too, Bork, but I can't help but wonder why I am seeing
you."
He nodded. Bork had the big man's temperament in a lot of ways but he
wasn't stupid. "I didn't know you were coming until they told me to come
collect you," he said, "but there are people who keep track of such things at
the Villa."
"People? Villa?" She wasn't afraid, but she was definitely curious. There
was no sense in Bork being here.
"Yes ma'am. Look, I've got a track waiting, I can tell you what I can on the
way. This sun'11 dry you out if you stand around too long. What say we
ride?"
Dirisha thought about it for a few moments. She shrugged. Might as well;
she had a feeling whatever Bork was into was the reason she'd come to this
planet. She picked up her bag.
The track was a squarish vehicle which squatted on triple rails of what
looked like weathered aluminum. Inside, the air was twenty degrees cooler.
There were comfortable, if thin seats, and a dispensing unit for water sat
under one long window. Bork activated a control and the track moved
smoothly off, gathering speed until it was travelling at a good eighty or
ninety klicks per hour.
Bork turned away from the control panel and grinned at Dirisha.
"Automatic driver," he said. "I really am glad you're here. Sleel and Sister will
be glad to see you, too."
"Sleel is here? And Sister Clamp? Come on, Bork, what is happening?"
Bork scratched at the back of his left hand with a thick finger. "Stuff itches,"
he said, pointing at the plastic flesh which joined the spetsdod to his own
skin.
Dirisha repressed an urge to sigh. He was going to get to it in his own
time, she supposed. She pointed at the spetsdods. "Why are you wearing
them? Is it dangerous here?"
Bork laughed. "Dangerous? Nah, I'm only carrying stingers. Everybody at
the Villa has to wear them. Pen's second rule."
"Bork, you're giving me more questions when what I need is answers."
"Okay, it's like this. Sleel and Sister and I and a bunch of others are all
working here, at the school. It's called Matador Villa and it's a kind of...
training center put together in honor of a guy we used to work for, before he
died." "Emile?"
Bork's grin grew larger. "There are people who'd kill to be able to say that
name the way you just did. Those of us who actually knew him are looked
upon as kind of blessed." "What are you talking about?" "You remember
what happened on Greaves." "Of course I remember."
The rail car rounded a long curve at that moment, and the earth seemed to
drop away to Dirisha's left. The sea was a hundred meters below all of a
sudden, and the view was incredible; there was a pattern to the land ahead,
almost like giant stair-steps to the water. She hadn't realized they'd been
climbing. A series of buildings sat in the middle of one of the steps, terra
cotta blocks against dry brown grass. It was hard to tell how large the
complex was, there was little to scale it against, but it looked sizeable. "Nice,
huh? I always like this part of the trip." "Let's get back to the story, Bork.
Khadaji was part of an underground resisting the Confed on Greaves and
they finally caught up with him."
"Oh, there's much more than that. He was all by himself, did you know
that?"
Dirisha nodded. "I heard that rumor."
"No rumor. Did you know what the military found out, after it all wound
down? Our boss nailed over two thousand troopers, from bottom-grade line
up to the Befalhavare Himself."
"I heard that, too. Not a rumor, I take it?"
"Nope. He did it, and every one of them with spetsdods. And that during
the whole time he was darting troopers all by himself, he never once blew a
shot. Not one time. And that's according to the Confed military itself."
摘要：

MatadoraStevePerryCHAPTERONEDEATHCAMEFORherfrombehindachild'sgame.Therewasonlyasinglemanthistime,butDirishasawhewastrainedbythewayhemoved,solidlywithinhisownCenter.Shedidn'tknowhim,butsheknewwhathewas:aronin,likeherself.HewasaplayeranditwastheMusashiFlexwhichdrovehim.Hemighthaveseenherwork,ormaybehe...

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