Black Steel Read Free Page B

her left knee, was a katana-patterned sword, edge outward, point to the rear, nestled inside a wooden sheath with twenty-three coats of white lacquer upon it. The blade of the curved sword was of black steel, hand-hammered in the old method; the handle was of pebbled ray hide, crisscrossed in the traditional manner with the diamond-wrap turnings of black silk cord, enclosed at the butt with a plain cap of stainless steel; the guard, too, was a circle of solid stainless steel the diameter of a small teacup, bearing a simple etching on one side. The weapon was four hundred years old; it had seen much use and it had dealt in both life and death, sparing more often than it had slain. It had come to the woman from her older sister, who had died during the overthrow of the Confed six years past. Before that, it had belonged to their mother, received as a wedding gift from her mother.
    The woman meditated upon the Void. Next to her the sword lay waiting. In a moment she would pick up the sheathed weapon and it would be freed in an eyeblink to move through the intricate motions of Kaji-te, the kata called "Fire Hand." In a moment. But for now, the sword waited as its mistress meditated upon her entrance into the Void-a sword which had been made with such precision and care it had hardly an equal in all the galaxy.
    Sleel looked around the house owned by Jersey Reason with grudging approval. He'd seen better private security, but not much better and not at many places. The house sat in the middle of a large lot-that had to be very expensive, given real estate prices on Hawaii-with clear views to the property lines in all directions. To the west lay the sea, to the east the road, and other houses bordered the north and south edges of the lot. A line of banana trees and other tropical foliage partially hid an electric come-see-me fence, but there were no trees close enough to offer a way over the three-meter-tall mesh. A locked gate to the front and one to the rear were the only ways through the fence.
    "Here's the security console," Reason said.
    Sleel nodded and looked at the setup. Overlapping sensor fields from permanent units buried under the ground covered every centimeter of the property, and any one could be disabled without losing a full scan. Zap fields could be triggered to cover the doors and windows; the house itself was hardwired to note circuit interruptions, motion, infrared or high-speed projectiles, any of which detectors could be combined with the others. On full alert, the house would be hard to sneak up on, Sleel knew. Armored photomutable gel cameras mounted in fifteen locations gave views of the house and all approaches to it, including from straight overhead, and the computer was smart enough to know what it was seeing.
    "You got missiles on the roof?"
    "Yes. Doppler-guided Peel one-oh-threes. Anybody who flies over my house at less than half Republic aircraft minimums is in for a big surprise."
    Sleel nodded. He ran through the computer system's other armaments. His checks were permitted only after the security reader had identified Reason's voice, retinal patterns and a code phrase before allowing access. There were robot guns hidden about the grounds, gasbombs, and the house itself was sheathed in armor sufficient to stop small arms fire outright and probably slow down most bigger stuff. Not a cheap job, and one Sleel ordinarily would give passing marks to-except that the Puget Sound house and the one in Australia had similar protections. Whoever had come for Reason before knew some stuff.
    Not good.
    On the other hand, Sleel was fairly certain that should anybody swinging a big blade come knocking upon the front door, he could handle that. The first thing he'd done when he'd failed to stop the attacker at the airport with shocktox darts was change the loads on his spetsdods to a formulation designed to knock down large wild animals. It hit harder than shocktox, did the animal trank, but that was too