CONTENTS
Chapter One - The Arcoiris
Chapter Two - The Underside
Chapter Three - A Gimcracked Barge
Chapter Four - Silenia
Chapter Five - A Torrid Pace
Chapter Six - Failure
Chapter Seven - Finding Things
Chapter Eight - The Contact
Chapter Nine - The Rubricon
Chapter Ten - False Impressions
Chapter Eleven - Last Wishes
Chapter Twelve - Just Reward
Chapter Thirteen - Slow Jams
Chapter Fourteen - The Doctor
Chapter Fifteen - The Cure
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
The Arcoiris
Sun li stared at the freshly cut arcoiris flower. Its rainbow petals were still crisp and buoyant, their color undimmed even in the fading light of her father’s shop. It lay on the counter, a bright splash of nature amidst the brown, overcrowded shelves stuffed with tea boxes and packets of incense.
“So what’ll it be? Will you take the job or not?”
The man asking the question looked up at her from the other side of the counter. He wore a worn military vest that was black and gray with a silver diagonal stripe across the chest, but Sun li could tell he had never fought a day for the Delegation. Every soldier Sun li had ever seen was an auger, someone who had been physically augmented to be superior to ordinary humans. Some of them for speed, some for strength, some for other, darker purposes that only those high up in the Delegation knew about. Weapon implants, artificial limbs, enhanced senses, anything to give them an edge in the Delegation’s wars.
The man in front of her was no soldier. Her sister probably could have bested him without breaking one of her manicured nails. He was short, had bloodshot eyes and a nervous tick on the left side of his mouth. And as if there were any doubt, he reeked of gutrot, the undersider’s beverage of choice.
“I need some time to think it over,” Sun li replied, though she knew she didn’t have any time left.
She didn't want to take this job. The man hadn’t given her many details, but he had said the job would take them to Silenia. That was at least a day’s journey away and her father was far too sick for her to be away from him that long. Besides, she told herself, she wasn’t qualified for infiltrating a military installation. Most of her jobs had been on the back streets of Bracken, chasing dishonest merchants or hunting down undersiders who the Delegation had posted a reward for.
However, none of that mattered when she looked at the arcoiris. On the humid world of Kess, these rainbow-colored flowers were rarer than a day without rain, but somehow this low-life had gotten his hands on one. He was either fabulously rich or as desperate as she was. And judging from his soiled clothes and rancid breath, she had little doubt as to which of those was the case.
He grabbed the flower off the counter and unfastened his satchel. “Well, I’m sure I could always buy the services of some other blade with this,” he said. “So I’ll just take my business—”
“Wait,” she said, her hand darting out over the top of his. “I’ll take the job.”
The man gave her a curt nod. “Excellent,” he said, flipping his hand and allowing her to take the stem. “I knew there was a high probability you would accept my offer. I look forward to working with you.” He turned to leave, but she moved to cut him off.
“On one condition,” she said, staring at him with her dark, narrow eyes. “I don’t kill innocents.”
The man shrugged, “You won’t be killing any innocents on this job. I can promise you that.” He smoothed down the silver stripe on his coat as if that were some sort of sign that he would honor his word.
“All right, then,” she said. “You’ve got yourself a blade.”
“You’ll do just fine,” he assured her. “You’re exactly the kind of blade I was looking for.”
Sun li gave him a puzzled look. “Why did you choose me, after all? There are other, more experienced blades to be found on the streets of Bracken.”
He paused, scratching his stubbled excuse for a beard. It looked more like a fungus than part of his face. If it hadn’t matched the black bushy eyebrows above, she might have believed it was some form of disease. She had seen enough bizarre illnesses in her short lifetime that it would not have surprised her if this were some new sickness he’d contracted in the underside.
“You’re honest,” the man explained. “At least that’s the word on the street.”
“With all due respect, you don’t look like the type who does honest work,” Sun li replied.
A gleam flashed in his eyes. “Even jammers have feelings, love,” he laughed, assaulting her senses with his reeking breath. “But I am what I am,” he added with a shrug. “Can’t apologize for that.”
“But if you’re running on the under side of things, why do you need an honest blade?” she asked, taking a step back to avoid the smell.
“It wasn’t my decision to seek you out, love,” he replied. “It’s the people who hired me. They said they wanted someone who strikes true for this mission. Too many blades cut and run when it suits them. They want someone who still abides by the Code. My benefactors are not interested in failure, if you take my meaning.”
She knew, if not from the look in his eyes, from her own knowledge of the profession, what such words meant: death if they failed to complete the mission. She’d never been offered a job like that before and she would have rejected it now if there she thought she could get the arcoirises any other way.
“Fair enough. I’ll be ready when you come for me,” Sun li replied, bowing in the traditional manner.
The man gave her a curious look, as if he didn’t quite know how to respond to the gesture. “I’ll come around for you after day break. Pack light. I like to run fast.”
He moved up the steps and parted the beaded curtain covering the entrance to her father’s shop.
“You forgot to give me your name,” she called up to him.
His lips stretched into what must have passed for him as a grin. “Brit. The name is Brit.” He gave her a parting wave that looked more like he was swatting a fly and then disappeared into the filthy streets of Bracken.
* * *
Zhu stroked his daughter’s long black hair with a trembling hand. The tresses were damp from the steam filled room. The bittersweet smell of the arcoiris filled the air. It would only stave off the sickness for a time, but hopefully long enough for her to return with the other flowers.
“I give you my blessing on this journey,” he told her in a low voice. Her father's face was still sunken and pale from the wasting illness, but his dark eyes still had that piercing look. “But remember that you must never dishonor the Code, even to save the life of someone you love.”
Sun li closed her eyes and tried to hold back her tears. Even with death so near, all her father could think about was Kamido—the Code. Sometimes she almost wished they could be like the rest of the world and just take what they needed. She was a skilled enough blade that it would have been easy to take the arcoirises from one of the corrupt merchants in the underside and her father would have been well by now. But he would never have allowed that. He would die before dishonoring the Code. And since she could never lie to her father, she had been forced to put in a bid for work in the underside instead.
It wasn’t that she did not aspire to follow the Code as well, and she was proud of her heritage, but he meant more to her than the ancient creeds of the Chayan people, a people that to most of the world no longer existed.
“Li li and Zhang will look after me while you’re gone,” her father reassured her, his hand collapsing back down beside him on th
e cot. “And besides, I am never truly alone,” he added, his eyes wandering towards the etching of her mother that hung on the wall.
“I know how much you miss her,” Sun li said, a dull ache forming in her heart, the same feeling that always came when she recalled her mother. She had died of the same wasting disease less than two years ago. “But we still need you here.”
She was trying to be strong for him, for their family, but she was only nineteen years old and there was only so much she could take. The first of her tears escaped, trickling down the side of her face. She hoped this sign of weakness might be lost amidst the vapors wafting across the room, but she knew better than that. The illness had robbed her father of his physical strength but his eyes and mind remained as sharp as ever.
“I do miss your mother,” her father whispered, “but that is not what I meant. The one who watches over her is the same one who watches over me.” He reached up and touched her moist cheek. “Your tears come too early for me, my blossom. I do not believe I shall see the eternal realms this night.”
She sighed and tried to smile, but his words only made the tears come harder.
“I still have work to do here,” he said, “Your training is not complete.”
“Father, I don’t care about the training right now,” she said, taking his hand, “The only thing that matters to me is seeing you well again.” She regretted the words as soon as she’d said them. They were rash and thoughtless and she knew they had hurt him the moment they left her lips.
Her father, as always, bore her carelessness with quiet resolve. He gathered himself up and for a brief moment he almost looked whole again as he spoke. “You think I teach you Kamido because I revere its wisdom, but that is not so. The Code only has power because of the One who gave it.”
Sun li bowed her head. “Yes, father. I know. Forgive me. I spoke without thinking.”
Zhu eased back down into his bed, clearly exhausted from the effort, but he managed to add with a whisper, “You will understand in time, my blossom, the Way of Adonai.”
A rustling at the back of the shop broke through the mists. Sun li knew that the jammer must have come for her.
She kissed her father on the forehead.
“I will pray for you,” he promised her.
“Thank you, father,” she whispered back. “I will return in an honorable manner,” she added, using the traditional parting words, knowing that would please her father. Inside, however, what she really meant by them was, “I love you.”
Her little brother Zhang appeared at the doorway to the shop. His hair stood straight up like always, like a living broom, but it was soft as silk as she rubbed her hands through it tenderly.
“Sister,” he said in his mousy voice, “You have a visitor.”
“Thank you Zhang,” she told him. Then she arose and gave her father one last glance, but his eyes were already closed.
She gave Zhang, who barely came up to her waist, a kiss on the top of the head and then Li li appeared in the doorway. She was only three years younger than Sun li, though she gave her far more problems than their little brother.
“Don’t let any undersiders into the shop,” Sun li instructed her. “And no giving away tea to those hollow-heads you call friends, either.”
“Yes, sister,” Li li replied in a monotone voice, pursing her lips in the way that so irritated Sun li. “So is that man really a jammer?” she added, shifting her tone suddenly and glancing over her shoulder back towards the shop.
“Father is ill,” Sun li admonished her. “Can’t you see that?”
“And I’ll take care of him, don’t worry,” Li li huffed. “It’s just that I’ve never seen a jammer in person before. Do you think you could get him to read Miguel’s mind when you come back?”
Sun li shook her head. She loved her sister, but had to wonder if leaving her father’s health in the hands of this flighty girl was the right thing to do. She wished she could ask one of the neighbors for help, but she didn’t trust anyone in their barrio with that kind of responsibility.
“Jammers can’t read minds,” Sun li corrected her, though she doubted her sister would remember the information once she left. “They just think a few steps ahead of the rest of us, that’s all.”
A loud cough sounded from the shop and Sun li caught a glimpse of Brit’s diminutive outline through the mists.
“I love you both.” Sun li kissed them good-bye. “And if Adonai wills, I shall return within a ten span. I leave father in your care.”
She gave Li li a lingering stare, hoping to see some resolve in her sister’s face, but her sister just looked back at her with the same wide-eyed expression she always wore.
Sun li sighed. There wasn’t time to say everything that was weighing on her heart and if she could, it would probably have only made matters worse. And so, leaving behind everything she held dear, Sun li departed through the mists into the shop and from there followed the jammer out into the streets of Bracken. Casting a glance back at her brother and sister who appeared in the doorway of the shop, she wondered if she would ever see them or her father again. But as the awful smells and terrible racket of the muddy streets enveloped her, she didn’t see that she had any other choice.
CHAPTER TWO
The Underside
The great red orb which gave light to the world of Kess was making a feeble attempt at licking the base of the horizon and infusing the brown skyline of Bracken with some much needed color when the jammer and the blade ducked into the junk shop. It was larger than most she’d been in, but no less unorganized. There was scarcely a bare spot on the rusted metal floor to step on as they picked their way through the precarious piles of worthless scrap.
At this hour the shop was still empty except for the slumped over and slumbering form of a round looking man dressed in what looked like a black sack with holes for his arms, legs, and head. It was too dark to tell much else and Brit barely gave him a passing glance as they crept by him towards the back of the shop.
The next moment he disappeared through a cracked, full length mirror at the back of the shop. Not sure she was seeing things correctly, Sun li stood and stared at her fractured reflection in the dim light and wondered where he had gone to.
A moment later and Brit’s arm appeared, springing unnaturally from the surface of the glass out to the elbow, gesturing for her to come towards him.
When she still didn’t come, he whispered to her from beyond the glass. “It’s a holograph. Now come on and walk through.”
Sun li ran her fingers along the metallic vambraces she wore on her forearms as she inched her way towards the apparently illusionary mirror. It was a nervous habit and one her father had been trying to break for months, but she liked the reassurance of knowing they were there. Though the energy glaives remained hidden inside the etched metal wrappings, a blade was never supposed to draw attention to his weapons. Still, it was dark and they were alone and she doubted that anyone would notice.
With a sudden gulp of air, she stepped through the mirror like she was about to dive into the water. The space she found herself in was even darker than the junk shop but as her eyes adjusted, she could make out Brit’s small frame standing at the top of a spiral staircase, waiting for her.
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?” Brit asked, his eyes glinting weakly at her in the darkness.
She did not answer his question. She was focused on staying alert. Absolute silence reigned in the room. Aside from Brit’s remark, she had heard nothing, not even the noise of the street, and this unnerved her more than anything. There was always noise from the street in Bracken no matter where you went. Wherever they were going had to be an extremely well hidden place.
She rarely made trips to the underside, but when she did it was always in the back of her mind that each trip might be her last. That thought was never more strong than at the present moment.
“Don’t you worry,” Brit assured her, “Cheddar and I go way back.” But his words
meant little to Sun li. The fact that someone was a friend of Brit’s friend hardly meant that they could be trusted.
At last they reached the bottom of the stairs, an empty black space stretching out before them. If it was a room, Sun li could not see the end of it.
Two spheres of light burst into existence ahead of them. When her eyes adjusted from the shock, she saw a large black man sitting in a shiny black chair on the other side of a polished aluminum table. To say he was colorfully dressed would be like saying that Bracken had a crime problem. The man’s clothing was overrun with clashing hues that had been injected with electro-glow to give them extra pop. It looked like something one of her sister’s friends might wear. “Colormob” was the word they used for the style, though even Li li’s friends had never taken it this far.
The man had jowls like potatoes attached to either side of his face. His wide lips parted to reveal a holographic smile which looked like two mirrored strips projected over his teeth. The lights in the room reflected off his scintillating grin, making it hard to look him in the face. Topping off his intriguing sense of fashion, the man wore a tinted visor over his eyes so that, despite his broad smile, it was hard to gauge his expression.
“Brit, my man,” the big man beamed, his voice rumbling from the depths of his chest. He gestured towards a row of plastic chairs on their side of the table. “Dock your station and sit a spell,” he said.
“Good to see you, Cheddar,” Brit replied, planting himself in a chair. “You’ve got a new look to the pad, I see. Nice.”
Sun li remained where she stood.
“Cheddar’s smooth. He won’t bite, I promise,” Brit assured her.
She ignored him and stared at the large man. She didn’t care who this person was or how powerful he was in Bracken’s underside, she was not about to take a seat when her host did not rise first.
“Brit’s right, Chay girl,” Cheddar crooned, “I’m harmless as a pillow.”
Brit leaned forward and spoke in low tones, but loud enough for Sun li to hear, “She’s heavy into the Code. Probably miffed that you didn’t get up to greet her.”
The Jammer and the Blade Page 1
