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this. He would quite likely be ousted as Allgrave if he tolerated it.
The inside of Torio's extending right arm had presented itself, as good an
opening as any. Burning crab-stepped slightly, bringing his left hand in and
up to guard the right side of his head, cocking his right fist with the middle
knuckle out, and driving a KaJuKenBo punch into the nerves where Torio's
biceps and triceps converged. He made it fast, letting the angle and leverage
add the force.
Torio was half spun by the impact, the smile only beginning to disappear as
his right arm popped away, paralyzed. But where Burning was glumly expecting
an instant and expert counter, Torio's head came wobbling his way instead,
complying with centrifugal force.
In the calm of Flowstate Burning assessed it as one of those flukes not to be
gainsaid. Shifting his guard so he would not clothesline himself on his own
left forearm, he skull-butted Torio in the snout, feeling bone and cartilage
crack and stave.
Torio floundered back, making a gurgling, lamenting sound, with crimson
squirting from his face. Burning wondered how long it would be before matters
started going seriously wrong.
* * * *
"That's two hops you've made to Matsya in two days, Driver Elide. Getting
addicted to Steamer Quant's jolly naval camaraderie, is that it?"
"Why do they call him 'Steamer'?"
Tonii half turned, resting an elbow on the seat back. "It's a navy term that
goes back to Old Earth. It denotes a skipper who hates sitting still, who
feels the need to be under way and going somewhere, no matter what it takes."
Kurt Elide snorted. "He doesn't go many places these days.
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What I heard is that the damn ship just putt-putts in circles when it moves at
all."
"Mm-hm, but Commander Quant got the nickname a long time ago."
They were sitting in the passenger compartment of the air-limo, killing time
with the main holoscreen on mute, waiting for Dextra's call that would allow
Tonii into the Empyraeum. The aircraft was grounded in a VBP transport waiting
area downhill from the landing platforms. A few other drivers had gathered to
talk and kill time, but Kurt clearly wasn't pining for their society.
Covertly, he glanced at Tonii, unable to resist eyeballing the mixed-signals
body. When he had initially collected the gynander from Dextra Haven's villa,
he did not notice anything but the shifting patterns of Tonii's glamour, which
'e had politely dimmed to a phosphorescent puce to avoid impairing his
driving. Then he saw the breasts and assumed that his passenger was a woman.
But something in Tonii's glance, along with a slightly exaggerated contour to
the crotch, suggested otherwise.
It wasn't that Kurt had anything against nonstraights, not even a man who got
breast augmentation or a woman who packed a wagstaff or had traded in her vaj
for a penile graft. But it gave him misgivings about himself not to be able to
sort out the gender signifiers of someone sitting so close. Perhaps it was
pheromones or some other subconscious cue, but Tonii had Kurt edgy and
regretting that he'd been assigned to the Haven detail. First Quant's
hardassing aboard the Matsya and suddenly this& person throwing off very
disturbing emanations.
Tonii must have felt Kurt's eyes on 'erm, for 'e abruptly glanced at him.
Embarrassed, Kurt wrenched his head around to stare out the windshield, then
spoke to fill what seemed like ominous silence. "So the Steamer became a
floater. How come?"
He was relieved to hear Tonii shift around to face forward again. "Quant was
captain of an assault frigate late in the Turnback War. He put a team of SEALs
ashore one night to carry out a hard delete on a terrorist apparat that had
gotten hold of a pre-Plague AI and eleven hundred cryoed embryos from a very
exclusive natal polyclinic on Feracity Cay.
"The SEALs were ashore in two ultrastealth wing-in-ground-effect fliers
powered by SAT microwave tightbeams. One could just lift off with the
cryounit, provided the SEALs left the power module behind and steered it by
remote. The team got off the ground in the other WIGship only by abandoning
all weapons and equipment, even their knives and clothes.
"There was a counterattack that interdicted the SAT beams. The frigate
supplied backup with its own dishes, but one was knocked out by a freak-lucky
missile shot."
"So Quant could only save one WIGship, huh?"
Tonii's voice was soft, somber, and remote. "If Quant had had specific orders
giving the embryos priority, it might've been different. But for him it was
really no contest, and that's part of what the civilian authorities and public
opinion held against him.
"Those were his SEALs in the other WIG, his charges, his comrades in arms. So
the cryo unit got smeared all over a reef at low tide, and fish noshed on the
gamete caviar of some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the
world."
Kurt blew out his breath. "Jeez, and all he got was dead-ended? Staked out to
a target drone, Fd've thought."
"Some of his superiors were courageous enough to close ranks around him.
Especially his mentor, an admiral named Maksheyeva."
"The museum curator. I met him yesterday."
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