Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘Can I …’ Rourke continued, not needing much acting to appear a little breathless. ‘Can you get in here?’ She pointed at the door, but didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Can I come in with you, please? I just want to get out of the way, they’re using real bullets, I’m sure of—’

  ‘No,’ the Uragan man broke in sternly. He was little more than a youth, really, but was trying to look older by cultivating the side-whiskers-and-moustache combination that seemed to be some sort of fashion here. ‘No, you must go.’

  Rourke ignored him and returned her attention to the Indian man. ‘Please? I won’t be any trouble, I just want to get off the street but I can’t get back to my hotel.’ She paused a second, anxious not to come across as histrionic and therefore a potential liability. How did Drift manipulate people so easily? She had to think about her body language, pace her delivery, time things carefully … he just breezed ahead and did it. She tried an appeal to a shared concern. ‘I think the cops might blame this on us off-worlders!’

  The man’s face twitched behind his beard. She’d struck a nerve there, although she couldn’t say what or why exactly. He looked at his companion uncertainly.

  A gunshot sounded, and suddenly the shouts of the tide of people crammed into the street turned into screams again. Rourke poked her head out for half a second, then ducked back in again. She hadn’t seen anything, but the other two didn’t need to know that. ‘They’re coming!’

  ‘Open it,’ the man in the turban said, gesturing to the door. The Uragan hesitated, but his companion looked none too relaxed himself and slammed his fist against the metal. ‘For fuck’s sake, man, open it!’

  Rourke turned her face a little, as though she was peering anxiously for signs of approaching politsiya, but her sideways glance was enough to see and memorise the combination punched in by the scowling Uragan. The lock buzzed open, the noise barely audible over the crowd still piling past in their rush to get further away from the plaza, and the two men slipped inside. Rourke darted after them before either of them could change their mind, pressing up close behind her new friend in the turban.

  She found herself in a white-walled stairwell. Steep and narrow concrete steps, marked with yellow safety strips at the edge and flanked by metal handrails with flaking blue paint, rose up about a storey’s height to another door, which was slightly ajar. The Uragan youth cast a dark glance at her and went up first, followed by the Indian man. Rourke brought up the rear, surreptitiously double-checking the hidden wire sewn into the sleeve of her bodysuit. It wasn’t that she distrusted these two any more than she would any other pair of strangers, but it was always best to keep your options open and close at hand.

  The upper door opened into a room which continued the white theme, but rather than paint over rough concrete the walls here were polished panels interspersed with mirrors. The tiled floor was also white and one side of it was occupied by swivelling, padded chairs upholstered in what had to be fake leather, given how expensive the genuine stuff would be down here. Here and there on the walls were prints of good-looking men and women sporting a selection of unlikely hairstyles, with a couple showing off the same style of whiskers sported by the young man who’d led her up here.

  They were going to be taking shelter in a hairdressing salon, apparently.

  More surprising than the location was the fact that they weren’t alone. There were already three other Uragans, judging by their appearance and clothing, none looking much older than the one she’d entered with. Still more curious was the presence of another two off-worlders: a pale, skinny kid with tribal tattoos down one arm, standing slightly hunched, either poor posture or in some sort of pain, and a middle-aged man whom Rourke would have pegged as having Native American ancestry if she’d had to hazard a guess, left-handed and not happy to see me, given the way he started to reach for a gun at his left hip that isn’t there.

  ‘Skanda?’ the older man said, jerking his chin at Rourke with a suspicious look on his face. ‘Who’s this?’

  The man in the turban, apparently named Skanda, looked suddenly rather less certain than he had when thumping the door downstairs. ‘Ah … she was outside with us, and the cops were coming … I guess she must have followed us in …’

  Rourke didn’t like the sound of that at all, and it took no acting effort to protest indignantly. ‘Hey, wait a second, you let me in!’ The whiskery Uragan was scowling and she appealed to him. ‘He let me come in, right? You didn’t want me to come in, but he told you to open the door anyway.’

  The young man’s eyes flickered between her and Skanda, apparently uncertain which of them he currently disliked more. He settled for biting out a sullen, ‘Yes,’ and folding his arms.

  ‘Okay, but look, I didn’t know you guys were gonna be here too,’ Skanda protested, waving his arms to encompass the salon. ‘I thought me and Ruslan were just gonna duck in here and then leave after.’

  ‘That’s all I want!’ Rourke spoke up, raising her hand. ‘I don’t know if you’re having some sort of gathering or … or what, really, but I don’t want to get in anyone’s way. I just want to stay off the streets until the shooting stops and then I’ll be out of your hair.’ She was getting a nasty feeling about this group; she’d clearly stumbled into something less innocent than a simple group of salon employees and their off-world friends. She edged towards the salon’s window which overlooked the plaza, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jenna and Apirana from a higher vantage point, but was interrupted by a door banging open. It was the salon’s main entrance this time, rather than the back way she’d come in by.

  ‘—the hell you think you’re playing at?’ a male voice was shouting angrily in English.

  A Uragan woman stormed in first, her dirty blonde hair cut into a bob with a fringe. There was nothing to visually set her apart from her compatriots in the room apart from a few additional years, but Rourke noted how everyone, including the off-worlders, moved aside for her. The new arrival threw one arm up in a motion clearly intended to dismiss the ranting of whoever was following her, then slightly spoiled the effect by turning in place to address them.

  ‘This is the start,’ she retorted at the closing door, ‘this is what we have been building towards for years! This is what you have been working for!’

  The door ricocheted open again before it had fully shut, admitting a black-haired, well-tanned man with a thick moustache and a red-and-white spotted neckerchief. ‘I have been working to get you some damn guns and get me some damn money,’ he retorted, jabbing a finger at her and his own chest alternately to furiously underscore his words. ‘I don’t give a flying fuck what you do with them, but getting us caught up in a fucking war when we’re stuck down here with you doesn’t seem like—’

  He broke off in mid-rant, staring at Rourke with an expression of stunned fury.

  ‘Ta tudo fodido …’ He looked around the room. ‘What the fuck is she doing here?! Huh?’

  Rourke centred her weight, dropped her bag and folded her hands in front of her stomach, so she could easily draw her garrotting wire from her sleeve. She relaxed her face and let her voice come out naturally, free from the artificial strain and pitch she’d injected to make herself seem more vulnerable, and allowed the man’s name to slide from her lips with an appropriate amount of scorn laced into it. There was no point acting now.

  ‘Ricardo fucking Moutinho.’ She sighed. ‘I should have known this would be your fault somehow.’

  HELPING HANDS

  WHEN JENNA SAW Apirana fall, her first thought was that he’d somehow been shot through the crowd.

  Rourke was nowhere in sight and she had no idea if the other woman had even seen their crewmate go down. She tried to fight down the sudden sucking dread in her chest and angled herself ever so slightly across the flow of the crowd, nearly tripping over someone’s legs and only staying on her feet through good natural balance and sheer bloody-mindedness. Someone’s elbow caught her in the side of the head and she staggered, but the flash
of pain kick-started a violent response. She lashed out in anger and frustration, hitting someone to her left and gaining a half-second of space as the nearby Uragans veered away from this sudden minor disturbance, which gave her an opening to head for where she’d seen Apirana fall. She was on him almost before she expected, the only warning being the people directly in front of her stumbling slightly and suddenly shifting direction. Then she caught sight of one of his boots and the familiar navy blue of his jumpsuit on the ground, and shouldered a dark-haired woman aside to scramble down into a crouch by his side.

  ‘A.!’ The big man’s arms were covering his head and he was breathing, but he was face down and otherwise motionless. She couldn’t see any obvious wounds on his body, but—

  Someone fleeing headlong tripped on Apirana’s foot and nearly went over, only saving themselves by dint of planting a foot into his back. Jenna heard a quiet moan of pain as air was expelled from the Maori’s lungs: she nearly got a knee in the head before she could react, then the man was gone into the throng.

  She came up to her feet snarling, unslung the bag of hastily grabbed possessions from their hotel room and starting swinging it in a figure-eight, straddling Apirana’s prone body and yelling wordlessly at the onrushing Uragans. The sight of a screaming, red-blonde girl using a backpack as a weapon seemed to do what a fallen Maori couldn’t, and within a couple of seconds the crowd was parting around her.

  Of course, they were still fleeing from politsiya using live rounds, and the mass of onrushing bodies was already starting to thin out into stragglers; the older, the younger or the infirm. When even they were gone, Jenna would be left to face the authorities down with nothing but bad language and a bag that was already making her arms ache. She caught her first glimpse of black body armour through the thinning press in front of her. She had to get away, and get A. away too, but to where? And how?

  Two more pale-faced Uragans split apart to pass on either side of her, revealing a dark-skinned man behind them. He was wearing a red bodysuit decorated with a lattice of gold lines that formed geometric shapes, and the sight of him made Jenna falter where she stood. There were three metal studs along one side of his shaven head, his eyes were covered by a thin visor and the outline of his torso was strangely angular as though it wasn’t flesh and blood beneath the fabric he wore.

  A Circuit Cult logicator.

  He slowed from what had been little more than a jog and Jenna saw the brief downwards tilt of his head as he took in Apirana’s body beneath her. Then he stepped forward and spoke a sentence in rapid Russian.

  Jenna shook her head, shrinking back instinctively. ‘I … I don’t …’

  ‘Ah, North American, yes?’ the man replied, switching to English with what sounded like an accent from the Federation of African States. He gestured down at Apirana. ‘Your friend is hurt.’

  Jenna wriggled her fingers, checking her grip on her bag in case she needed to swing for him and aware of how fast her heart had suddenly started beating. God, but she hated circuitheads. ‘I think so, I haven’t been able—’

  ‘His ankle is broken,’ the logicator said, pointing. Jenna followed his gaze, realising almost absently that the circuithead’s mere presence seemed to be enough to divert the remains of the fleeing crowd away from them. Sure enough, one of Apirana’s feet was twisted at what looked to be slightly the wrong angle. She hadn’t had time to notice it before, being too busy trying to ensure that he didn’t get trodden on.

  Well, that was it. She’d been watching via co-opted security cameras when they’d assaulted Kelsier’s asteroid base with the Europans, and she’d seen the Captain trying to support Apirana’s weight when the big man had been shot. He’d barely managed to help Apirana move thirty feet, and Drift was certainly bigger and stronger than she was. Apirana probably weighed well over twice what she did, there was no way she could—

  ‘We will help,’ the man said, pressing a button on one of his wrist cuffs. ‘I am Kunley Ngiri, of the Universal Access Movement.’

  ‘You’ll help?’ Jenna was taken aback, and becoming even less comfortable with the situation.

  Kunley appeared to take her reaction as a comment on his modest size and build. ‘I have friends,’ he said with a smile, and suddenly there they were at his shoulder: two Uragans, a man and a woman, in white jackets with the Circuit Cult’s gold lattice on the sleeves, although the fabric did little to disguise the unnatural shape of their limbs. Jenna swallowed, uncomfortably aware of exactly how strong augmentations could make a person. These two could certainly pick Apirana up and move him even if he wasn’t able to do anything for himself.

  They could also likely break pretty much any bone in her body if they got hold of her.

  Now Kunley seemed to get an inkling of why she was hesitating. His face, so far as she could read it with his natural eyes obscured, fell into an earnest expression. ‘Please, we only wish to help. We can take him to our workshop and fix his leg.’

  Workshop. Damn circuitheads don’t even call it a surgery. ‘What about them?’ Jenna asked, pointing at the politsiya. They weren’t firing anymore, but were now roughly apprehending and cuffing anyone who had fallen in the crush or had been overcome by the gas, the remnants of which were starting to drift around them, making her throat feel like she’d swallowed powdered glass.

  Kunley’s smile returned. ‘In a mining town, the Universal Access Movement is well thought of. Everyone has family or a friend who we have helped after an accident, even the police. You will be safe so long as you are with us.’

  Translation: you’re not safe unless you’re with us. But then, Jenna had pretty much known that anyway.

  She stood back from Apirana’s body and knelt down by his head again. ‘A.? Listen to me, there’s some … people … who’re going to help you up, okay? Don’t try to use your left leg. If they hurt you, let me know.’

  He still didn’t respond and she sat back, biting her lip with worry, then looked up at Kunley. ‘What if it’s not just his ankle that’s broken? Should we even move him? There were people standing on him, what if his neck’s—’

  ‘His ankle is the only break,’ Kunley replied calmly. He raised a finger to his visor. ‘I scanned him.’

  X-ray visor. Right. Jenna was dubious for a moment, but the Circuit Cult were all about replacing or enhancing people’s limbs with mechanical augmentations so she guessed it kind of made sense for their leader to be able to scan for broken bones. She stood back, admitting defeat. She still couldn’t bring herself to trust a circuithead, but it wasn’t like she had many options. ‘Fine. Uh … go ahead, then.’

  Kunley nodded to his two companions who stepped forwards and squatted down next to Apirana and, murmuring things which were doubtless meant to be soothing but which probably did nothing as Apirana didn’t speak much Russian, started to roll him carefully onto his back. Jenna caught her breath: the big man’s face was visibly scraped and battered even under his tattoos, and although he appeared conscious he showed no sign of being aware of where he was. She started to reach out to him, but pulled her hand back – she certainly wouldn’t want to be touched on her face if it looked like that – and settled for quickly unhooking the satchel he’d had slung across his shoulders.

  The man took Apirana under the shoulders and the woman got his legs by the knees, then they lifted him up and set off at a steady pace towards the edge of the plaza without any real sign of effort. Jenna found herself staring open-mouthed at this casual display of strength.

  ‘Come,’ Kunley said, placing one hand briefly on her shoulder and gesturing with the other, ‘we should go.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jenna started walking with him, but unzipped her bag as she did so and pulled out her EMP generator bracelet which she secured around her forearm. It would knock out the circuitry in their augmentations if she activated it, which was why she’d built the damn thing in the first place. It was far from the best option this far underground, but she desperately felt the need for some sort
of equaliser.

  ‘What is that?’ Kunley asked, his tone no more than mildly curious.

  ‘This?’ Jenna tried to look casual. ‘Health monitor. It’s … been a rough day.’

  ‘I see,’ Kunley nodded. ‘Forgive me for asking, but are you already augmented at all?’

  ‘Me?’ Jenna shook her head, trying to suppress a grimace. ‘No.’

  ‘Have you considered it? Even for those who appear to be in good natural health, the benefits can be—’

  ‘Best discussed elsewhere,’ Jenna cut in, pointing towards the far end of the plaza where movement had caught her eye behind the politsiya she’d been watching distrustfully. ‘Run!’

  She was ten feet into her sprint and rapidly gaining on the two circuitheads carrying Apirana when the firefight started in earnest.

  OLD HABITS DIE HARD

  EVERYONE WAS STARING at Rourke. This was when she felt the absence of Drift most keenly: he always knew when to make a big show and attract the attention of an audience, thereby allowing her to make preparations for their exit.

  At least, she’d always supposed he did that consciously. It was always possible that he was simply an egomaniac.

  ‘She came in with Skanda,’ the First Nations man said to Moutinho, who looked about ready to haul off and hit someone.

  ‘Oh, thanks, Jack,’ Skanda retorted with heavy sarcasm. ‘Seriously, that’s really—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Moutinho thundered, rounding on him and pushing him up against the wall. ‘You brought her in here? Why?!’

  ‘Why not?’ Skanda demanded, although his face didn’t look half as confident as his voice. ‘Who the hell is she, anyway?’

  ‘I was about to ask the same thing,’ the older Uragan woman put in, eyeing Rourke warily.

  ‘My name’s Tamara Rourke,’ Rourke said simply, before Moutinho could respond. The skinny kid gave a small start of surprise, while Jack nodded sourly as though she’d simply confirmed a suspicion he’d started to hold. Skanda just closed his eyes and looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him.