by Jeremy Szal
‘Did you want it back?’ I asked, and returned the bottle by smashing it across the side of the Jackal’s head. Glass shattered, shards and alcohol splashing into his face. The stormtech rocketed at the fresh action and, barely hearing his growls of pain, I rammed past the two Sniffers and charged into the alleyway. I hadn’t had this much excitement in months; my body was rewarding me with extra speed, hot adrenaline shooting through my veins like a turbo boost.
They gave chase, all clutching slingshivs that danced like silver fire in their hands. The Jackal roared for me to stop. I turned to look back but ripped my gaze away before I was overcome by the urge to stand my ground and fight. There was nothing stormtech liked more than a good brawl, even if it meant getting my own teeth kicked in.
I locked down my instincts and focused on how the genome I was carrying would stop my friend’s deportation, letting that push strength into my legs as I ran further into the labyrinthine passageways of the asteroid. The halls blurring and smudging under sweat-logged vision. Puddles of muddy wastewater showering up my legs as I burst around a hairpin corner. They were so close behind me I could hear their ragged breathing. I cut the connection to Grim, even as he told me not to. Couldn’t risk him being traced if I was caught.
One of the Sniffers closed in on me, heavy footfalls echoing. Guys like this are all meat and muscle and zero balance. I waited until a flare of chainship lights had flickered down, stabbing light into our eyes, before I jerked to a stop, tilting my body backwards and letting the man crunch nose-first into my armoured back. He tottered backwards, dazed and cursing. I slammed him sideways, into the incoming path of the second Sniffer. While he was off-balance, I hooked his leg out from under him. My fist sank into his gut, right below the ribs, my elbow slamming into his throat and sending them both crashing to the floor in a graceless tangle of limbs. I dived through a stone corridor, the stormtech really riled up now, stamping down on my weariness.
They knew the terrain, knew all the exits. But if I gained enough distance, I could double back and out-manoeuvre them in a wide flank. The Sniffers might be able to smell the path I’d taken, but they couldn’t tell when I’d taken it. My legs burned as I ran on, spotting a burst of light in a narrow gap ahead. I grinned as I curved around a corner … and my heart plummeted to my guts.
Dead end.
Two metres away, through a tall slab of hard, unforgiving, solid asteroid rock, was the spaceport. Might as well have been two kilometres.
Soaked with sweat inside my suit, I stepped back to scout for a new route as the three men stuttered to a halt behind me. They’d swapped out slingshivs for nasty-looking handguns. The Jackal’s relaxed smile was replaced with a deathly-quiet expression, his cold, granite eyes dissecting me. Watching me search for an escape route. Trying to think the way I’d think. This man was a hunter, and he’d cornered his prey.
Eyes still fastened on me like restraining bolts, he spoke to his men. ‘Cage him.’
Screw it. You’ve got to make a last stand somewhere.
I thrust forward and smashed into the first bodyguard, going straight for his broken nose. He screamed. The handgun went off as I thrust it up, the helmet saving my eardrums. I punched him in the crook of his arm, wrenching the weapon away to train on the Jackal. But I was centuries too late. A sun-bright muzzle flash in the darkness and an electranet seized up around me. Thick, chainmetal cables wrapped around my body, pinning my arms and legs, my helmet cracking against hard rock as I toppled. Rough hands rolled me onto my back. The cables crackled with voltage, getting tighter and tighter as I strained against them, my chest heaving. The Jackal’s boots kicked up asteroid dust as he walked over, towering high above. He glowered down at me before delivering a series of vicious kicks to the side of my helmeted head. One, two, three, four, sending flashing lights scattering across my vision and blood flooding my mouth.
The safety of the spaceport whirled away two metres behind me as the Jackal straddled me. No one would hear me calling for help over the noise. ‘Don’t flatter yourself into thinking my dog-boys sniffed you out in the dark.’ The Jackal pressed his sly, angular face close to mine. ‘Truth is, I don’t need augs to hunt a man down.’
He held the white-hot blade of his slingshiv over me, daring me to jerk away. ‘What shall we do with him, boys?’ His lips twitched, as if wrestling with indecision, but I know what a man who’s made up his mind looks like. ‘Let’s crack him out of that metal shell to get to the gooey bits inside. Then flay his skin off. There’s a good word. Flay.’
The stormtech pounded under my breastbone in mimicry of my thudding heart. Survival instincts kicking in for real now. I struggled in the net, but the Jackal was waiting for it. He kicked me in the head again until I slumped back down. I was vaguely aware of being dragged across the rock by one ankle.
‘Business before pleasure, boys,’ the Jackal said. ‘First we take him home, tie him up properly and get to work. No interruptions there.’
‘On it, boss,’ the one with the broken nose gurgled.
A voice cut through the passageway, halting him. ‘What’s this? You guys picking on someone bigger for a change?’
Three figures stood silhouetted behind the Jackal. I recognised their sleek, black-barrelled marksman rifles; I’d spent too many years holding one myself. ‘Harmony to the rescue, huh?’ I let my head sag back against the rock.
‘Harmony?’ The Jackal’s sly confidence cracked. ‘How—’
‘Clear off, Akira.’ The trio were led by a woman, her voice sharp enough to slice bone. Her small service thin-gun remained holstered, her arms casually folded. There’s power in carrying a weapon and showing you’ve got no use of it. ‘You’re lucky I don’t have time for a chat about this today.’
‘We were just leaving,’ said the Jackal.
‘Yes, you were,’ she said. ‘And if I ever see you harassing folks around here again, I’ll find a nice airlock for you to play in. Plenty to choose from around here. You read me?’
‘Of course.’ The Jackal was all charm and charisma again. His sly, dangerous smile twitched at his lips, his gaze hooking mine before he and his men vanished into the smoky asteroid passageway.
I peered suspiciously at my saviours as they cut the electranet off me. ‘What’d you want?’
‘Harmony wants a chat, Vakov Fukasawa. A long, long overdue chat,’ the woman told me as I pulled my arms free. ‘I don’t appreciate having to backtrace your friend’s feed just to find you.’
Of course that was how they’d found me. At long last, Grim’s outrageous confidence in his own abilities had conspired with pure happenstance to completely screw me over.
But Harmony didn’t waste time with petty smuggling. They had a galaxy to run, after all. The stormtech sparked in my chest and I had the impulse to make a dash for it. Scramble to my feet and get a head start before they caught up. Wasn’t like I owed these people anything. Not after the poison they’d pumped into my body.
But they wouldn’t have dug me up unless it was important. Really important. I had to find out why. So I swallowed the urge and asked, ‘I don’t suppose I have a choice?’
‘No,’ she confirmed. ‘You do not.’
2
Blood, Politics and Coffee
As we walked through the brightly lit hallways towards the spaceport, I got a proper look my saviour. The shib interface implanted in my skull and overlaying my vision told me she was Katherine Kowalski, of the First Class Primer rank. While her black, one-piece underskin with its liquorice-like sheen was typical Harmony field gear, her loose leather jacket and salt and pepper scarf weren’t, especially not for someone so high up the chain. She was Slavic; fair skinned with sandy hair and grey eyes that had a wild, bright look that didn’t usually last long with Harmony types. At over two metres tall, she stood eye to eye with me. Unusual. Had she maybe come from New Vladivostok? No. People from my homeplanet
are less forthcoming, more habitually hunched over to shield themselves from the razor-like winds and freezing temperatures.
Watching her stride in front of us, I was acutely aware of the gunrunners maintaining pace behind me, ensuring I didn’t get any ideas about slipping away.
‘Stupid move, stealing from those guys,’ Kowalski said over her shoulder. ‘The Jackal runs Tipei-Corporation. Other darkmarket syndicates won’t even risk selling in their territory, let alone rob them.’
‘I’m not from here,’ I told her, unwilling to explain I was only doing it for a friend.
‘Tell that to the Jackal.’ She slid a chrome vaper out of a pocket, breathing deep and exhaling a thick plume of scented smoke. Hardly your standard Harmony accessory either. ‘He enjoys hunting thieves.’
‘I’m not a thief,’ I corrected. ‘I’m a smuggler.’
‘Don’t want to hear the excuses,’ she replied.
I could see we were going to get along just fine.
We bypassed the crowded spaceport and headed straight to a polished hangar bay. The metallic causeways were clustered with Hangarmasters and Shipmasters wearing flight suits. Flight schedules and docking designations for arrival ships were blaring out over the speakers. A vast viewport showed a black canvas, stained blue with stars and frantic with chainships and deepsystem spacecraft rendered in various metallic colours and swirling patterns. Their engines roared and left contrails of bright blue streaks as they shot out of view. There was even a lungship: a bulky, geometrical spacecraft several kilometres in length and built to traverse galaxies. More of Harmony’s signature flags hung from gleaming walkways and observation decks. As if anyone would forget who’d won the Reaper War.
We passed through unseen and boarded a Comet-class Harmony chainship, aerodynamic in build with a vanilla-white paintjob and a black trim along the elongated flank. Antigrav-nets kicked into gear as we strapped in, the ship smoothly disembarking from the berth and exiting the spaceport. Holographic icons glowed across the control screens, the viewport expanding to allow an unobstructed view of space. I folded my arms, content to travel in silence as the gunrunners gossiped about me in Japanese. My face was hidden behind my helmet, so they had no way of knowing I understood every word.
‘You think he’ll attack us?’ one asked, fidgeting with his thin-gun. ‘Stormtech screws with their heads, right? Gets them high on danger? Probably why he was messing with the Jackal in the first place.’
The stormtech swirled around my ribcage, as if it knew it was being talked about. I shifted against my five-point seat harness, tightening my hands around the shoulder straps.
‘Hard to think of any other reason. He fought in the Reaper War, after all,’ said the other, folding his hands around his bulging gut. ‘Besides, you get that alien DNA shot into your bloodstream and sooner or later you’re bound to go off the deep end.’
I knew they were waiting for me to remove my armour and expose my alien-infused flesh so they could see the blue zigzagging and looping through me. They were going to be disappointed. Stormtech increases the sensitivity of my skin, particularly my hands, feet and face, making my body temperature usually too cold or too hot. My armour was rigged up to counter this, actively scanning my biorhythms and stormtech, automatically adjusting the temperature to fit my conditions. The armour would press in on my body like an embrace, using a combination of gel-padding, thick tendrils and gritty abrasives to provide hard friction against my flesh, combating the stormtech’s influence with external stimuli. Right now it was dropping the temperature to cool me, my body heat declining and the tension in my muscles ebbing away as the stormtech settled. No matter how many times I used them, the suit’s custom-built functions never got old.
I exited the temperature controls as the chainship curved and the view of Compass took my breath away. The cratered surface of the gargantuan asteroid was spiked with titanic clusters of jutting, icy metal. Soaring kilometres tall, the dark spikes scintillating in the sun, it looked like the universe’s biggest sea urchin. All the damaged dreadnoughts, frigates, corvettes, spacecraft, warships and ordnance from our galactic region of the Reaper War had been wilted to slag and installed on Compass like this. Harmony’s final way of humiliating the self-established, bloodthirsty government that had come so close to destroying us all in the war. Some said it was the dwindling space and growing population that spurred Harvest’s hand. But Harvest were only after the stormtech: the DNA remnants of the Shenoi, a long extinct alien race. Now, Harvest was forever a part of our monument to victory.
Compass. If the greater galaxy has a capital city, this is it. Home to six hundred million and counting. Between the spikes of ships, the mammoth asteroid was barnacled with entry docks, spaceports, berths, dockyards, array towers, mooring gantries, hangars, surface facilities and hubs that were home to scores of defence weaponry. Gigantic black scorches scarred Compass’ rocky body like blistering skin moles. Traces of Harvest plasma artillery. We swooped closer to the pockmarked asteroid’s surface, the tall skyscrapers of slag whipping by.
Six hundred million people, and my little brother was one of them, down there somewhere. We hadn’t spoken in years. He’d cut me out of his life so thoroughly that when I ended up on Compass after the war I didn’t even try to find him. Losing him had been hard to bear. Hoping that time might somehow have changed things between us would have been harder still. But caring for someone means doing what’s best for them, even when it hurts, even when it scars.
But that didn’t mean I’d forgotten how we’d lain in our shared bed as children, my brother’s little body pressed against mine for warmth as our parents’ arguments bounced around our tiny apartment. Or covering his ears when our father hit our mother, each strike louder and louder. Or wrapping a protective arm around Artyom’s chest, the drumbeat of his heart under my palm. Or my sister Kasia leaning towards me the following morning and whispering so she wouldn’t wake our father up. Promise me, Vak. Promise me you’ll look out for Artyom.
No. Nothing good ever came walking down that path. He had his life, I had mine. And judging by present company, mine was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated.
The Kaiji ship caught my eye as I looked up. The aliens’ spacecraft was elongated and angular, a bullet-shaped chunk of dark, electric-blue ice, the hull sweeping forward in great sharp curves. It hovered like a sleeping monster in the dark of space, although its long-range sensors were surely watching us, along with every heat signature within five klicks. A warning not to approach blossomed on our chainship’s forward viewport. Our ship applied course-correction, veering away accordingly.
‘They’re here for peace talks, thrashing out some issues before they join Harmony and the Common at large,’ Kowalski said when I asked about it. It came as no surprise that Harmony was expanding their reach, as all galaxy-wide governments are wont to do. Wouldn’t be the first or last spacefaring alien species to join their ranks.
‘Sokolav’s not in charge of this outpost, is he?’ I asked casually. It’d be interesting to see the guy who’d first roped me into Harmony.
Kowalski’s eyes glazed over, her vision obscured by datastreams and icons from her shib overlay as she performed a quick search. ‘No,’ she said, the readouts vanishing. ‘He’s long gone. Missing.’
I leaned forward against my restraints. ‘How long?’
‘Seven years. He vanished a few days before Harvest surrendered.’
Harmony’s outpost had come into view, sprawling steel limbs locked into the asteroid’s surface like a starfish clutching a cosmic-sized rock. We docked in the auxiliary hangar and promptly disembarked before being ushered through a stream of gently lit hallways. It was the same as every other Harmony Special Service Command outpost. The same guards shelled in the same polished armour, same blur of glass offices and high-tech laboratories, same technicians and analysts poring over flexiscreens, same stench of lime-scented b
leach. I picked up a few curious looks as I was brought through into a sparsely decorated office with dark marble flooring. Sitting in front of a viewport overlooking the asteroid’s pockmarked curve was the Station Commander. Her dark hair was tied back in a severe bun, away from her pointed face, and her eyes were ice cubes rolled in ashes. She seemed to have adopted a permanent cynical expression, enamelled by long years of service.
She sat behind a desk of rugged black stone, typing away on a virtual keyboard. Spanish text crawled across the mid-air screen like neon liquid. A cup of coffee sat on the desk next to her. Her name, SSC Commander Juliet Kindosh, popped up in my augmented vision moments before the screen folded away, as if being tucked back into some invisible pocket.
As Kindosh’s gaze skimmed over us, Kowalski stood a little straighter behind me, her hands held tight behind her back. Finally Kindosh turned towards me. ‘Sit,’ she said. Even in a single word, her thick Compass accent hit home.
I almost gave a polite bow of my head, but caught myself. We weren’t on New Vladi. It wouldn’t mean anything to them here. Forearm shakes and smiles were the standard greeting on Compass. Kowalski’s men were armed and present, but they didn’t file into their corners as gunrunners usually do. They remained close by her side in a protective posture.
‘You can take that thing off,’ Kindosh said, staring at my visor. ‘I’m not talking to my own reflection.’
I seethed quietly behind my helmet. I don’t take well to orders. Especially not from Harmony types, and especially when they’re about my armour. But this was her station. Her office. Her rules. She had the power to disarm me, and there’s nothing people like her like more than using their power.
I took my time retrieving my palmerlog, finding the right switch and ordering my armour to release me. The chest and arms plates cracked and peeled apart, opening with a whirl of gears and servomechanisms. The air warm and muggy against my skin as I tugged the helmet off and stepped out of my suit. There was a brief, glassy click as I was severed from the electrostatic interface, the squirming tendrils along my back going dead. And there, crawling and curling and pulsing under my flesh, shining through the thick black fabric of my underskin, was the stormtech. A spool of blue circled my chest, writhing around my organs, sniffing between my ribs. Long threads coiled up my back, finding the notches in my spine and looping around my neck like a rope, as if to hang me.
