Piter Uskaro glanced about him, and Solace saw plenty of black looks sent her way by those rubbernecking nearby.
‘Should I call those Hugh marines over, Patho?’ he asked. ‘Who will they back, do you think? I’m a citizen of the Colonies with diplomatic credentials. You, on the other hand, are a foreign agent – and not even human.’
Solace blanked. It wasn’t his words alone, but the fact the crowd were plainly in agreement. She was surrounded by angry faces, who probably believed all the anti-Parthenon propaganda. That sisters bore male children but murdered them at birth; that they poisoned water supplies to make men sterile, all the usual.
However, she had shifted Uskaro slightly away from the pair, and the lawyer took full advantage, shoving Idris forward with a brisk, ‘Enough, we’re going.’
‘I’ve not done with you—’ The Boyarin reached out and hooked Kris by the scarf, pulling the garment half off. Solace moved to club the man and his goons if she had to, but he’d frozen. The Voyenni hovered in confusion.
Solace couldn’t see what had happened. A moment later, she realized Kris had a knife out. But the Boyarin had stopped before he’d seen it, his fingers still caught in the scarf.
‘Well?’ Kris asked him. He’d gone pale, and the artful scar on his face twitched. Solace had no idea what question he was being asked. And it seemed Uskaro didn’t know how to answer.
‘I can quote official protocols, so everyone can hear,’ Kris said, calmly, quietly. ‘But then we’re committed, Messernbruder.’
The Boyarin stepped back, finally releasing her scarf. Solace magnified her field of vision through her visor and caught a glimpse of the pinkish line that encircled almost half the woman’s neck. It was a thin cut, just like the blazon on the man’s face. A very particular type of duelling scar.
‘Mesdam,’ Uskaro said coldly. ‘Our next meeting . . .’ But Solace saw a faint glimmer of sweat on his forehead, despite the Jerichan climate.
‘The hell?’ Idris exclaimed as the man marched off. People were still staring at Solace, and suddenly facing down Colonial scorn didn’t seem much fun anymore.
‘Just come on.’ Kris had her scarf arranged again, hiding the scar. Solace wondered what sort of a bloody mess that duel had been, to give her such a trophy. Not the mannered little game of blades that the Boyarin played. Messernbruder. Knife-brother.
‘You—’ she started, but Kris just brushed past, angrily.
‘I’ve arranged transport. We’ve got a land-car to catch, being as that’s the only way to get to this damn dig site of yours. If we miss it I really will end up having to knife somebody.’
‘Would you have actually—？’
Kris turned on her heel, and Solace decided that she’d never doubt the woman’s readiness to take up her blade again. As they left, someone bounced a rock off Solace’s shoulder-guard. Better that than face up to an angry Kris.
*
‘Can you configure that thing for chain shot?’ the biologist asked Solace, once they were past the last fence.
‘Why would I need to?’ She eyed him, clutching Mr Punch protectively.
He was a wiry man named Robbelin, with dyed-blonde hair and a strong accent that said he came from Somewhere Else far away from Jericho. ‘Your ’celerator,’ he drawled, ‘won’t matter piss to the locals. Their fucking flesh is this viscous goop and you’ve never seen the like . . . Bastards. You send a pellet into ’em, just comes out the other side with its energy intact. Doesn’t do a king’s piss of a damage. Hereabouts we use these fuckers.’ He showed her a chunky weapon with a barrel his fist would have fit inside. ‘Pops ’em with a bean bag, just about subsonic. Doesn’t kill the bastards, but it makes a mess of them and they don’t like it, you get me?’
‘Chain shot, right . . .’ Solace nodded. She made the necessary adjustments to Mr Punch and glanced at the jungle – looming far too close on either side of the trail. A tracked ground car wasn’t her preferred way of getting anywhere but the locals wouldn’t trust much else. Not between the planet’s EM chaos and the way a-grav systems attracted aerial predators like some kind of mating call.
‘Mockery of an ecosystem, this bloody place,’ Robellin went on easily. ‘There’s no actual species here on this godforsaken world, you know that? Just things that have a shape. And if that shape ain’t working for them, they start shifting into something else. These trees’re only going to stay trees as long as it works for ’em. Bastards’ll morph into fucking balls of teeth and attitude the moment the soil gets too poor.’ Abruptly he had his ‘beanbagger’ levelled in both hands, staring suspiciously into the jungle, or perhaps at the trees themselves.