Free Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan Page A

on impulse I forced
out a sudden, racking cough.
    “What—”
    Bending
forward with the force of the cough, I raised a hand to my mouth and licked my
thumb.
    “The
fuck are you playing at, Kovacs?”
    I
straightened again and snapped my hand out to the keypad beside the screen.
Traces of fresh spittle smeared over the matt black receiver. A split second
later a calloused palm edge cracked into the left side of my skull and I
collapsed to my hands and knees on the floor. A boot lashed into my face and I
went the rest of the way down.
    “Thank
you sir.” I heard the voice of the hotel through a roaring in my head.
“Your account is being processed.”
    I tried to
get up and got a second boot in the ribs for the trouble. Blood dripped from my
nose onto the carpet. The barrel of the gun ground into my neck.
    “That
wasn’t smart, Kovacs.” The voice was marginally less calm.
“If you think the cops are going to trace us where you’re going,
then the stack must have fucked your brain. Now
get up
!”
    He was
pulling me to my feet when the thunder cut loose.
    Why someone
had seen fit to equip the Hendrix’s security systems with
twenty-millimetre automatic cannon was beyond me, but they did the job with
devastating totality. Out of the corner of one eye I glimpsed the twin-mounted
autoturret come snaking down from the ceiling just a moment before it
channelled a three-second burst of fire through my primary assailant. Enough
firepower to bring down a small aircraft. The noise was deafening.
    The masked
woman ran for the doors, and with the echoes of fire still hammering in my ears
I saw the turret swivel to follow. She made about a dozen paces through the
gloom before a prism of ruby laser light dappled across her back and a fresh
fusillade exploded in the confines of the lobby. I clapped both hands over my
ears, still on my knees, and the shells punched through her. She went over in a
graceless tangle of limbs.
    The firing
stopped.
    In the
cordite reeking quiet that followed, nothing moved. The autoturret had gone
dormant, barrels slanting at a downward angle, smoke coiling from the breeches.
I unclasped my hands from my ears and climbed to my feet, pressing gingerly on
my nose and face to ascertain the extent of the damage done. The bleeding
seemed to be slowing down and though there were cuts in my mouth I
couldn’t find any loosened teeth. My ribs hurt where the second kick had
hit me, but it didn’t feel as if anything was broken. I glanced over at
the nearest corpse, and wished I hadn’t. Someone was going to have to get
a mop.
    To my left
an elevator door opened with a faint chime.
    “Your room is ready,
sir,” said the hotel.
     

CHAPTER SIX
    Kristin Ortega was remarkably
restrained.
    She came through
the hotel doors with a loping stride that bounced one heavily weighted jacket
pocket against her thigh, came to a halt in the centre of the lobby and
surveyed the carnage with her tongue thrust into one cheek.
    “You
do this sort of thing a lot, Kovacs?”
    “I’ve
been waiting a while,” I told her mildly. “I’m not in a great
mood.”
    The hotel
had placed a call to the Bay City police about the time the autoturret had cut
loose, but it was a good half hour before the first cruisers came spiralling
down out of the sky traffic. I hadn’t bothered to go to my room, since I
knew they were going to drag me out of bed anyway, and once they arrived there
was no question of me going anywhere until Ortega got there. A police medic
gave me a cursory check, ascertained that I wasn’t suffering from
concussion and left me with a retardant spray to stop the nose bleed, after
which I sat in the lobby and let my new sleeve smoke some of the
lieutenant’s cigarettes. I was still sitting there an hour later when she
arrived.
    Ortega
gestured. “Yeah, well. Busy city at night.”
    I offered
her the packet. She looked at it as if I’d just posed a major
philosophical question, then took it and shook out a