Free Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

yawn.
    â€œEnd of the line, folks. Everybody out.”
    We followed him back to the main cabin and watched while he strapped on one of the unsubtle sawn-off particle throwers we’d liberated with the shuttle. He looked up, caught me watching, and winked.
    â€œI thought these were your friends.” Tanya Wardani was watching as well, alarmed, if the expression on her face was anything to go by.
    Schneider shrugged. “They were,” he said. “But you can’t be too careful.”
    â€œOh great.” She turned to me. “Have you got anything a bit less bulky than that cannon that I could maybe borrow. Something I can lift.”
    I lifted the edges of my jacket aside to show the two Wedge-customized Kalashnikov interface guns where they rested in the chest harness.
    â€œI’d lend you one of these, but they’re personally coded.”
    â€œTake a blaster, Tanya,” said Schneider without looking up from his own preparations. “More chance you’ll hit something with it anyway. Slug throwers are for fashion victims.”
    The archaeologue raised her eyebrows. I smiled a little. “He’s probably right. Here, you don’t have to wear it around your waist. The straps web out like this. Sling it over your shoulder.”
    I moved to help her fit the weapon and as she turned toward me something indefinable happened in the small space between our bodies. I settled the holstered weapon at the downward slope of her left breast, and her eyes slanted upward to mine. They were, I saw, the color of jade under swift-flowing water.
    â€œThat comfortable?”
    â€œNot especially.”
    I went to move the holster, and she raised a hand to stop me. Against the dusty ebony of my arm, her fingers looked like naked bones, skeletal and frail.
    â€œLeave it, it’ll do.”
    â€œOkay. Look, you just pull down and the holster lets it go. Push back up and it grips again. Like that.”
    â€œGot it.”
    The exchange had not been lost on Schneider. He cleared his throat loudly and went to crack the hatch. As it hinged outward, he held on to a handgrip at the leading edge and swung down with practiced flier nonchalance. The effect was spoiled slightly as he landed and began coughing in the still-settling dust our landing brake had raised. I suppressed a grin.
    Wardani went after him, letting herself down awkwardly with the heels of her palms on the floor of the open hatchway. Mindful of the dust clouds outside, I stayed in the hatchway, eyes narrowed against the airborne grit in an attempt to see if we had a reception committee.
    And we did.
    They emerged from the dust like figures on a frieze gradually sandblasted clean by someone like Tanya Wardani. I counted seven in all, bulky silhouettes swathed in desert gear and spiky with weapons. The central figure looked deformed, taller than the others by half a meter but swollen and misshapen from the chest up. They advanced in silence.
    I folded my arms across my chest so my fingertips touched the butts of the Kalashnikovs.
    â€œDjoko?” Schneider coughed again. “That you, Djoko?”
    More silence. The dust had settled enough for me to make out the dull glint of metal on gun barrels and the enhanced-vision masks they all wore. There was room for body armor beneath the loose desert gear.
    â€œDjoko, quit fucking around.”
    A high-pitched, impossible laugh from the towering, misshapen figure in the center. I blinked.
    â€œJan, Jan, my good friend.” It was the voice of a child. “Do I make you so nervous?”
    â€œWhat do you think, fuckwit?” Schneider stepped forward and as I watched the huge figure spasmed and seemed to break apart. Startled, I cranked up the neurachem vision and made out a small boy of about eight scrambling down from the arms of the man who held him to his chest. As the boy reached the ground and ran to meet Schneider, I saw the man who had carried him straighten up