by Jeremy Szal
We found a terminal sitting in a quiet alley of souvenir shops, the dimpled walls covered with graffiti. Grim swatted away the gaudy holos about daily offers, remotely hacking into the terminal mainframe with his shib. His visual cortex glazed over with flitting icons as he did his Deep Dive, digging through the composite layers of virtual worlds. ‘If there’s a shop with that ID registered with Compass, it’ll be in the mainframe,’ Grim said, his voice distorted from accessing the hardware, as if coming from a ghostly commslink signal.
‘And you couldn’t do this remotely?’
‘Hell no. Need to be directly in the terminal if you don’t want to get locked out. Watch the projection.’ A phantasmagorical riot of colours erupted around us in a wild blizzard, like an explosion of paint frozen in time. Membrane-thin strands grew between them like a nervous system in fast-forward, spiralling away in bewildering complex geometries that hinted at a larger world beneath the surface. A small cube, presumably Grim’s presence, navigated among them. I guessed we had a minute before someone spotted us. ‘Got to do a little virtual hunting is all.’
‘And we’ll find it? Just like that?’
His body twitched with convulsions, arm hairs all going stiff and rigid like bristles. Looked like he was having a seizure, but I think the little guy liked doing this. ‘Not so simple. Got to get the Rubix’s attention, make a few purchases to show we’re in the market.’
Before I could stop him, Grim had already purchased a massive fish tank, an antique diving suit, a vinyl record player, three Rubix skins, five buckets of nitromethane, seventy kilos of Torven snacks, and a year’s worth of rental space at the dockyard.
The virtual projection around us chimed with orders, the sum total reaching offensively expensive heights. ‘You’re in trouble if I end up paying for any of this,’ I warned.
‘You worry too much. It’s all going on a stolen account.’
‘You do this often, don’t you?’
He grinned, his head lolling backwards. ‘Would you believe me if I told you no?’
The colours abruptly exploded with counterintrusion icons, the lines between them pulsing red with fury. A series of torpedoes appeared, swiftly homing in on Grim’s presence. He seemed unfazed.
‘Ah. The security Rubix isn’t too happy we’re messing around in his mainframe,’ Grim muttered, his virtual presence darting away. The flashing torpedoes followed like sharks sniffing out blood. ‘It’s already started a countdown. Why can’t they just let guests tamper with them every once in a while?’
‘What happens if they catch you?’ I asked tentatively.
Muscles twitched down Grim’s legs. ‘Alarms go off, security drones get called, and we get sprayed with tracking pheromones, chased down and arrested. The usual.’
I felt my teeth gritting. I decided to trust Grim’s judgement and watched him play a cat-and-mouse game with the security Rubix, the AI getting more and more outraged, with its icons flashing so frantically I suspected Grim was moments from triggering an alarm. Knowing him, he was seeing how far he could taunt the AI before it turned on him. ‘Aha! Found our shop!’
He disconnected from the system, his body twitching, hands shaking, eyes bloodshot and sparking with shib warning icons as the projection around us disappeared like mist. ‘You okay?’ I asked. Never knew how much these Deep Dives messed with his grey matter.
‘I enjoyed that, actually.’ Grim clapped me hard on the back. ‘Now. Let’s pay a little visit to your drug dealer.’
Turned out the shop was at the very back of the Markets, built into the concavity of the asteroid. Little wonder we’d never found it. A figure blurred beyond the red-tinted window frames, a chime sounding as the door dilated open for us.
It was a robotics hire and parts shop, crammed with enough stock to last a century. Hippomechs, broken drones, and droid appendages were scattered like discarded toys on every available workspace, as if the owner was allergic to throwing anything out. The room smelled musky, like burnt tea leaves. Chunks had been carved out of the asteroid, connected to a nervous system of chutes that wormed through the rock and allowed deliveries across Compass.
The owner was a Bulkava. He was wearing a black and red suit with a helmet, elongated to fit the alien’s skull shape. I heard the quiet hum of a rebreather system built into the alien’s suit, thick cables extending from internal machinery and plugged into the base of his helmet. Two large eyes darted around in a furry, mammalian face, the slender creature a good half-metre shorter than me. I’d spotted the aliens around Compass, but never seen one up close before.
‘They’re not dangerous,’ Grim murmured to me as the door snapped shut, cutting off the noisy chaos. ‘They just can’t tolerate our atmosphere. Outside their dedicated biospheres they have to wear suits and helmets rigged with a life-support system at all times.’
‘Customers!’ The alien had a high-pitched, strained voice. He had two pairs of arms, each sporting four fingers, all four lifted in greeting as we approached. ‘Oh, it’s you again!’ It took me a second to realise he was speaking to me. I cocked my head, took another step. ‘Oh! No, no, no. My mistake! So sorry!’ He gave something resembling a bow. ‘I am Aras. How can I help you? Do you have an order? Anything you like?’
I slid the e-stamp across the scuffed counter. ‘Got a pick-up to make,’ I said, hoping Grim would be smart enough to play along.
Aras swept some clutter on the counter aside and turned the stamp around towards him. ‘For who?’
‘Samantha Wong. She needs her delivery today,’ I said.
‘Of course, of course,’ the alien said, lower-left arm reaching behind the counter while his other scratched his chest. ‘Hmm. I do not believe she’s placed any new orders …’
‘Orders for these?’ I asked, swallowing a lump of anger and holding the phial up in front of Aras’ face. ‘Look familiar?’
Aras recoiled as if I’d shoved a particle gun in his face. ‘I … I … yes. No!’ He began to scurry away. ‘I think its closing time. Do excuse me …’
I blocked his escape route. ‘Where are you getting this stuff from?’ The picture of Alcatraz flickered in my mind and I had to physically squash back the anger, stormtech squirming like tentacles inside me. Aras didn’t answer, but maybe he was finding it hard to speak after I’d grabbed him by the chest straps of his harness and hoisted him against the wall. The alien flailed at me with all six limbs, but said nothing. ‘Don’t want to talk to me? Fine.’ I made to drop him. ‘You can talk to Harmony instead.’
I wasn’t about to hand him over, of course. But Aras didn’t know that. The alien made a throat-clearing noise before squeaking out: ‘There’s an offworld supplier! They supply me and I have to sell to humans here and send the money to my family!’
I’d scanned the room. No chemical evidence he was manufacturing the product himself. Certainly not here. ‘Who’s your supplier? Where are they based?’
‘On Vilanov.’ It was a shipping moonbase, one of the many that clustered within serviceable shipping range of Compass. ‘We have an exclusive contract!’
‘And they’re Bulkava, too?’ I was guessing, and Aras hesitated before nodding.
‘How long have you been dealing?’ Grim butted in.
‘Two months.’ Aras shrugged helplessly with his upper arms and held up one finger on each lower hand. ‘Ever since I came here.’
I tagged the intel as high-priority and sent it over to Kowalski, although it was tenuous at best. These incidents had kicked off almost a year ago. There were networks of stormdealer syndicates and narcotic manufacturers threaded through Compass, many likely based on this very level. If Aras had any involvement, it was minimal. He likely didn’t even know his product was tainted. Whoever I was hunting wanted the chaos spread wide. They’d probably supplied it to third parties to throw us off their trail.
I might have all I wanted from h
im, but he still had a direct link to Wong and we’d have to turn him over to Harmony. Doesn’t matter why they’re doing it, I’ve got zero patience for drug traffickers. I set the struggling alien down, and he made a great show of readjusting his harness and smoothing down his creased suit. ‘Are you—’ he gestured helplessly ‘—one of them?’
I was going to deny it, but the lump moving along my breastbone seemed to discourage lying. ‘Yeah. I’m one of them.’ A sudden idea struck me. ‘When I first came in, who did you think I was?’
The alien cocked his head. ‘You look … very similar to another customer of mine.’
Grim adopted an expression of mock offence. ‘Oh right. All humans look the same to you, that it?’
I rolled my eyes as Aras made that desperate gesture again. ‘No, no, no.’ He nodded at me. ‘He has the same hair, the same looks—’
‘This man?’ I thrust my palmerlog with the picture of Artyom in Aras’ face. There was no way to gauge the alien’s reaction as he scooped up the palmerlog with his lower right hand and studied it.
‘Yes, that is him,’ he said.
I took my palmerlog back and snapped it shut. ‘Does he buy stormtech from you?’
‘No, no! Legitimate customer!’
‘Customer for what?’ When Aras didn’t respond, I leaned closer. ‘Selling stormtech is one thing, Aras. Down here, someone might turn a blind eye to it. But what you’ve been selling? Your customers end up dead, hours later. That’s bad. And selling your lethal product to Reapers? That’s even worse. Now, you can answer my questions, or you can answer to Harmony.’ I locked sights with the alien’s dark, fearful eyes. ‘Do you understand?’
Aras fell apart like a disassembled rifle.
‘He rents a Hippomech!’ Aras skirted over to the bulky, four-wheeled robot and patted its triangular head with affection. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that!’
‘How often?’ I asked. The stormtech had started to fold into my thorax again and all my words came out raspy and sandpapered. ‘What for?’
‘Once a week,’ said Aras, tugging at his suit. ‘Most weeks.’
‘You only need Hippomechs if you’re lugging something chunky,’ said Grim slowly. ‘Or something you don’t want seen.’
They’d snapped that picture of Artyom a week ago. The same day he routinely left the alehouse early. ‘He’s renting one again tonight, isn’t he?’
‘Err, yes?’
‘Where’s he collecting it from?’ I asked, voice still coarse with stormtech-induced thickness.
‘From the Warren,’ Aras muttered. ‘In the Hovergardens.’
‘That’s at the back of Level Forty-Seven,’ murmured Grim, turning over an expensive-looking component. ‘It’s a dump. Whole place smells like a nursing home.’
We were finally zeroing in on him. I couldn’t take the risk of going back to the bar – not after Kowalski’s tip that every cog in the stormdealer’s machine was under scrutiny. But if knew where he would be, I could pick up his trail without the risk of triggering any biochemical hardware in his head. It was a slim lead, but if it took me to the rest of the organisation then I could keep Artyom out of it. Maybe even stay away from him, as he wanted. I took a step back from Aras.
‘Luckily for you, you’ve been helpful,’ I told the anxious alien. ‘So, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to pack up shop and leave Compass this week. You can take your robotics business all the way out into a deepspace spaceport for all I care. As long as you’re not on Compass. Do that, and I won’t turn you in to Harmony. If you ever breathe the word stormtech again, let alone sell it, you’ll be hearing from me. Do you understand?’
He nodded feverishly, wringing all four of his hands together. ‘Of course, of course, of course. I’ll leave today! I promise.’ He gave me a final parting glance. ‘You really do look like him, you know. Do say hello for me!’
‘Don’t worry,’ I smiled, stormtech leaping through me, ‘I will.’
10
The Warren
Grim hadn’t been exaggerating about the Upper Markets, and he wasn’t exaggerating about the Warren either. The streets were broken and cracked landscapes of asphalt and concrete, caked with ash and grime. The rooftops were nightmares of warped steel and exposed rubble, spilling down into dark alleyways. Turgid wastewater dripped down rusted stairwells. The temperature-regulating systems were broken, leaving the level freezing and stinking like damp, rotten leaves. It was cold even by New Vladi standards, cold enough to form a thin layer of frost on my armour. Blocks of derelict buildings were long abandoned, windows like dead eyes, doors boarded up with electromagnetic seals, chainlink fencing with DO NOT ENTER signs in floating, blinking letters. As if anyone wanted to come here.
The Hippomech had already arrived, and Artyom could be here at any moment. I couldn’t risk missing it and bolted straight here from the Upper Markets. Although I’d barely slept since Harmony picked me up, the stormtech was feeding me energy, combating the exhaustion. Back when I was all Blued Up, I could go full speed ahead without a wink of sleep for days. Great if you’re besieged by Harvesters, or have an assault charge to lead or an outpost to recapture. But what the stormtech gives, it’ll eventually ask back, and I was waiting for the Crash Down to smash my system like a tonne of bricks.
The faded remains of adboards indicated this had been the old Latin Quarter. Digi-art murals of sun-baked Sicilian landscapes and Mediterranean beaches adorned the walls of open villas and espresso cafes, digital renditions of waves crashing on sandy shores on an endless loop. The Reaper War had left scorch marks where the fighting had been especially savage, leaving shelled-out highrises and streets across this section of Compass. They said they’d dug out all the bodies from the rubble, but I’ve seen what smelter-grenades do to human flesh. This floor was a graveyard. Always would be.
Nominally, the Warren was sealed off, but you’d always find skinnies holing up in hideaways called ratnests. I could hear them twitching under rags. Scampering in the dark, their rattling coughs echoing through the tenement halls and dilapidated warehouses like gunshots. Thousands of people, hiding away and left to rot in this miserable place.
Grim waited on the other end of the commslink, sitting in his technest for backup and auxiliary support. He’d already combed the Warren for any surveillance tech that might track Artyom’s movements. He’d turned up empty, but remained on watch as a contingency. If my brother was under scrutiny, I’d stand down. I didn’t want Artyom to be at risk just because I was tailing him.
I’d set myself up in the shelled remains of some kind of office building. A bank, maybe. I peered through a grime-smeared window into the heart of the Warren’s spider-webbing of blackened streets. The Hippo was stored for collection mere metres away. I flicked on my HUD’s spectral and thermal amplifiers and the world flickered into an overlay of cool colours and sound. My readouts scrolling with stats. Assuming our alien drug dealer hadn’t been lying through his teeth, Artyom would be along soon, and it’d be impossible to miss him.
I squatted on a mouldy old couch, rolling my shardpistol in my hands. Shardpistols fire crystals that punch into human skin. The more lethal versions detonate on impact, burying toxic-coated shards into the target’s body. Both are illegal, of course, the latter more so. I’d asked Grim to get one for me and, never one to let the tedious complications of legality bother him, he’d passed me one fresh out of its foam casing in less than two hours. I wore it like a knuckle duster, and when I flicked a button the weapon coalesced into my hand like millions of shiny insects scrambling over each other. Standard carbon-black stock. Long, thin barrel. Red holographic sights. No ammo. Like all ranged weapons, shardpistols autoprinted projectiles, something that had given us a monstrous advantage over Harvest. It varied on the calibre and weapon, but you could generally fire over two-hundred rounds before inserting a cartridge of quickmatter – the b
aseline material all printers used.
I flicked the shardpistol on and off, on and off, on and off. A habit I’d had ever since I was issued one, a year into enlisted duty. I’d still struggled to wear my bulky armour in the higher gravity. My fireteam had been deployed to a small city on the broken outskirts of a wasteland, rescuing stranded civilians and securing outposts abandoned by Harvest. We knew something was wrong the moment we entered the city outskirts, unease rippling from man to man. ‘Weapons up, eyes open,’ Alcatraz had said while following Ratchet, our quick-footed scout. Cable and Myra had my flank as we moved through abandoned concourses and desolate streets. There was a rank, sour stink in the air as we followed the shattered storefronts. Splatters and smears of dark blood congealed across the pavements. It was the silence that got to me. Like the quiet after an avalanche: total, complete, utter silence.
Didn’t take us long to discover everyone in the town was dead. Men, women, children, the elderly, everyone. Gunned down, dragged from their homes and into a flaming pyre in the middle of the town square. Dirt had been kicked up in a likely struggle, showing that not everyone had been dead when the burning started. On the edge of the pyre was a small, withered husk that could only be a child, the outstretched, skeletal hand of a parent reaching out one last time. The smell of burnt meat was still in the air.
I gagged, hoping to be sick, but the stormtech stuffed the sensation back down my body, keeping me alert to danger. I stood there, guts roiling and acid tearing up my stomach and chest.
‘No,’ Cable groaned beside me, his voice choking up, his heavy assault autocannon sagging in the dirt. He was always hit hardest by the horrors we encountered. ‘No, no, no.’
Myra, our sniper, was always more callous. ‘Stop it,’ she hissed. ‘We don’t have time for—’
‘They were just children!’ Cable all but roared. ‘They were just children.’
I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tremble in his bones through the armour. I wasn’t sure if the stormtech or paralysis was stopping my legs from buckling. Even Ratchet was just standing there, frozen at the sight. And that’s when Alcatraz pinged us on the commslink.
