Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘I would advise waiting at least ten days before you stop using crutches,’ Kunley replied, nodding towards a pair leaning against the wall, before the blank stare of his visor returned to Apirana again. ‘Come to think of it, given your height and build—’

  ‘Don’t diss the puku, bro.’

  ‘—I would perhaps suggest two weeks,’ Kunley finished, unperturbed. ‘Unless, of course, you wished for a complete replacement? In that case you could be walking normally again after a day.’ The logicator glanced briefly at Jenna, with perhaps the faintest hint of reproach in the set of his mouth. ‘You were injured and distressed and we wished to stabilise your condition fast, so we did not wait to ascertain your wishes and Jenna here was very adamant that you should keep your existing foot.’

  ‘Yeah, an’ she was right to do so,’ Apirana grunted.

  ‘If it’s a concern about the cost then we would of course count the fee already paid against any further work—’

  ‘Mate.’ Apirana held up his hand. ‘I appreciate what you’ve done, seriously, an’ I thank you for it. An’ I know that maybe a fancy new robot foot would see me right, but I’m sorta attached to the bits of me what are already here, know what I mean? If it can be fixed up I’m happy for it to be fixed, an’ I’ll carry on my way.’

  Kunley smiled. ‘I understand. I once thought as you did. My first augmentation’ – he momentarily placed one hand on his metal chest – ‘was not a choice, but a necessity. It was only afterwards that I realised the boons further work could give me.’

  Apirana smiled a little in return. Circuit Cult equivalent of a priest or not, Kunley had the manner of a born salesman and a voice which was pleasant on the eardrums. Which now he came to think of it, was probably a good set of skills for a priest too. ‘What happened? If you don’t mind me askin’, that is.’

  The logicator’s face took on a more sombre aspect. ‘I was working as a freighter crewman. It was not well paid, but I made enough. However, on one shipping trip we were attacked by pirates who announced themselves with a shot that took out our Alcubierre ring, rendering us unable to flee. Our captain was either in thrall to the prospect of the earnings from his cargo or in fear of his employers should he lose it, as he refused the pirates’ demands to launch it in a shuttle for them to collect. So they came aboard and, fearful for our lives, I led the crew in trying to turn them back.’

  Apirana winced. A civilian merchantman crew taking on pirates confident enough in their numbers and equipment to risk boarding another vessel was only ever likely to end one way.

  ‘Three of my crewmates died,’ Kunley said simply. ‘I was shot in the chest three times. When we had surrendered they did not mistreat us further; they simply wanted the cargo as quickly as possible, and before our distress signal brought the authorities down on them. My vessel limped back to the port we had so recently departed from, barely in time for me since our medical facilities were relatively rudimentary.

  ‘The damage to my lungs was too great; I would never breathe properly again unaided. But the Universal Access Movement were able to offer another option for a merchant crewman with little money put aside.’

  ‘So you got a new set of lungs?’ Apirana asked. ‘Bloody nice of ’em.’

  ‘The experience was enough to change me,’ Kunley nodded solemnly. ‘I wished to help the Movement help others as it had helped me, so I devoted myself to it. Fifteen years later, and I have become logicator on this planet far from the African systems where I was born.’

  ‘Now, I’m not gettin’ at you at all,’ Apirana said, ‘but I’d have thought that New Samara would’ve been the obvious place for a logicator, given that’s the capital planet.’

  Kunley smiled. ‘The capital for money and politics, perhaps, but it is on mining and industrial planets where our work is required most urgently. New Samara’s farm workers suffer their accidents, it is true, but there is nothing quite so unforgiving as a mine face … save open warfare, of course. Uragan City was originally only five levels, and it was here on the deepest level at that time that the Movement chose to establish our headquarters, so we could be the nearest to those who needed us. No, this is where I belong.’ He frowned as a chime rang through the air, and looked towards the door. ‘Excuse me; I shall return momentarily. One of my colleagues wishes my attention.’

  They watched him go. Then Jenna leaned in close to Apirana again. ‘I’m not sure if I just heard a sales pitch or a sermon.’

  ‘Bit of both, maybe,’ he grunted, then paused as a nasty thought struck him. ‘You don’t suppose …’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You know?’ he said, casting a wary glance at the empty doorway. ‘African freighter crew hit by pirates? You don’t think it could have been the Captain?’

  He saw Jenna’s expression change as the possibility dawned on her, but she quickly schooled her features again and lowered her voice. ‘I think there’s been a hell of a lot of FAS shipping, and a whole lot of pirates going after it. Doesn’t mean it was the Captain. More to the point,’ she added, padding to the door and looking through it, ‘we need to work out what we’re going to do now.’

  Apirana grimaced. ‘Don’t see how we’ve got a lot of choice. We can’t call anyone, and I’m too big and slow to play dodge-the-bullet with a bunch of trigger-happy cops, even without a buggered ankle.’

  Jenna sighed in frustration, drumming her fingers on the door jamb, then turned around and pulled the sleeve of her top back to reveal the wrist console on her left arm. ‘To hell with this. The Spine might still be down, but there’s got to be some way to find out what’s going on.’

  Apirana felt a twinge of unease in his sizeable gut. ‘I dunno if that’s such a good idea, Jenna; won’t they be specially on guard against slicers if there’s some sort of revolution taking place?’

  She fired him a look from under lowered brows. ‘Well, what do you suggest then?’

  He swung his legs off the table and eyed the crutches resting against the wall. ‘I reckon we’re best off waiting.’

  ‘Waiting? But we don’t know what’s going on!’

  ‘Seems like a good time not to go walking out into it, then,’ Apirana said. His right foot was on the floor now, but he wasn’t going to chance standing on the left one and the crutches were out of reach. A quick hop, though …

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Jenna reappeared in his line of sight, crossing the room from the doorway and passing the crutches to him. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘If they’ve got any sense, they’ll be lying low,’ Apirana told her firmly, ‘an’ if there’s one thing the Captain and Tamara are good at, it’s staying alive.’ He pushed himself up onto his feet – or foot – and took a couple of practice strides up and down the infirmary. It wasn’t the most graceful he’d ever been, but at least he had enough upper body strength that he shouldn’t get too tired moving around. ‘I just wonder how long—’

  Only the faintest of scuffing noises announced Kunley’s bare feet on the floor a moment before the man himself reappeared in the doorway, his face creased in concern. ‘The situation is grave. The resistance we witnessed in the plaza has escalated, and it appears that a general uprising of the populace is taking place. People are in the streets and there are no politsiya to enforce the curfew; the rebels are claiming this area as theirs and say they have destroyed armoured vehicles sent in to put the riot down.’

  Apirana looked at Jenna uncertainly. On the one hand, freedom to move around the streets was welcome. On the other, when the authorities came back with more force – and he was damn sure they would – he didn’t want to be anywhere on the receiving end of it. He looked back at Kunley, and grimaced when he saw the other man’s expression. ‘You got a twist to your lip I don’t like the look of, bro. That’s the bad news, so what’s the worse?’

  ‘The rebel group appears to have started door-to-door searches,’ Kunley replied, looking straight at him. ‘We don’t know who or what they’re looking for
… but they’re moving in this direction.’

  SURVIVAL INSTINCT

  DRIFT WASN’T TOO worried by the hammering on the doors, unwelcome though it was: it would be a poor riot vehicle that could be easily opened from outside, after all. However, his assessment of the situation changed a moment later when a loud hissing became audible and a spark of white light appeared around the central lock.

  Laser torch.

  It was depressing, really, the amount of industrial items that could be turned to malicious use by a determined mob.

  He hammered at the chest-mounted release button on his straps, but his bodyweight was holding them at their full extent and there wasn’t the fraction of give they needed to release. He momentarily considered pleading innocence in the faces of the rioters – or more accurately, guilt – but there was little chance of passing himself off as a prisoner without at least sporting a pair of handcuffs. Besides which, Free Systems rebels were unlikely to be emptying penitentiaries or freeing suspects unless those individuals were affiliated to them. They weren’t trying to overturn society, just change government.

  Also, he had opened fire on some of their allies not half an hour previously.

  He couldn’t remain strapped helplessly to what was now essentially the ceiling, especially as the centre of the vehicle’s door was turning an alarming cherry red. Gritting his teeth, he reached up as high as he could and just managed to hook the fingers of his right hand into the wire of the equipment rack, then got some sort of leverage on what had previously been the floor with the heel of his boots and tried to ease his weight up off the strap buckle. He strained, pressed with his left hand …

  Click.

  Of course, this suddenly presented a new problem.

  ‘Shit!’ he bellowed in alarm as his momentary traction fled and gravity reasserted itself. His arms were still hooked into the straps, which he stupidly hadn’t been prepared for, and instead of a clean, free-fall drop or hanging athletically for a second before smoothly disengaging, he instead only managed a descent combining the worst parts of both, and landed in a crumpled heap. On the other hand, that still put him considerably better off than Muradov and his riot squad: not one member had managed to regain their feet in the handful of seconds since the crash, nor were they looking likely to in the next few. In fact, several were giving voice to moans or fast, spittle-flecked breathing which Drift would usually associate with the stabbing pains that might accompany broken bones.

  Sometimes a noise could be ominous, at other times it was the cessation of one which was most concerning. Such was the case now, when the hissing, spitting song of the laser torch abruptly died away. Either it had run out of charge, which seemed far too fortuitous to be possible, or …

  One of the rear doors, now running horizontally, was levered outwards and crashed down to form what was effectively a shallow ramp, revealing a worryingly large crowd of legs and feet and letting in a triumphant roar from their accompanying lungs and throats. There was no time to think: Drift grabbed a rifle from the weapon rack that now formed part of the floor, slapped in a magazine and flicked off the safety with his thumb, then dropped into a crouch to get a better angle of fire, braced it against his shoulder and pulled the trigger.

  It had been some time since he’d fired an assault rifle. It felt a bit like being punched repeatedly in the shoulder by a Wing Chun expert, and in the enclosed vehicle the roar of the action bordered on painful.

  By some miracle he managed to keep the barrel more or less level and avoided hitting the other door that was still hanging down across half of the opening, which would have resulted in potentially lethal ricochets inside. Instead, the hail of fire tore across the legs of the rioters, with dramatic consequences. He probably didn’t actually hit that many – even close together there was still a lot of space between legs for the bullets to fly into – but three Uragans fell screaming and the ones he hadn’t hit fled abruptly rather than risk their knees. One of his three victims had caught another bullet somewhere more fatal as they fell, judging by her lack of movement, and a second had rolled desperately away out of his line of fire. That left him staring down the barrel of the assault rifle at a dark-haired young man, possibly in his early twenties, howling in pain and clutching at his blood-spattered trouser leg.

  And with the pistol he’d been holding lying on the Uragan rock floor, still in easy reach.

  What did he do? The kid had already dropped his weapon, albeit involuntarily. An instruction not to move was unlikely to be obeyed by someone who’d just taken a bullet in the leg, and Drift couldn’t put the correct Russian phrasing together off the top of his head anyway. He was left with the option of shooting the youth dead, or waiting for him to become a threat again and then shooting him dead. He hesitated for a second in agonised indecision. Damn it, this was easier when I was younger and less moral.

  The politsiya had wisely been keeping their heads down when he’d been firing, but now a couple of seconds had passed with no further shots, one or two of them had started to stir. The large man who’d been looking at him oddly before raised himself painfully up onto his elbows, looked at Drift, looked out of the door at the writhing rioter, looked back at Drift, then drew his own pistol and shot the kid twice.

  Drift blinked. Well, I guess he was involved in crashing this thing. Probably. ‘Ah, to hell with it,’ he grunted aloud, and turned around to look at Chief Muradov who was sitting up and holding his bleeding head. ‘You alright?’

  Muradov responded with an emotion-laden burst of Russian, then gritted his teeth. ‘No, I am not “alright”! We have just been ambushed! A politsiya armoured vehicle has been attacked! This is not a riot, these people have started a war! Do you understand me? They have started a war!’ He pulled himself to his feet, using the tactical console which had knocked him out as a handhold. Drift realised with surprise that Muradov didn’t look angry. Instead, the security chief looked to be on the verge of tears, and his next words contained only bitter sorrow.

  ‘It is a war they cannot win.’

  ‘You don’t seem as happy about that as I’d have expected,’ Drift offered.

  ‘Captain, I have seen war,’ Muradov bit out, ‘and I have no wish to bring it down on the people I’ve sworn to protect. But this’ – he gestured at the riot vehicle and his team, some of whom were now getting to their feet – ‘this cannot be smoothed over and explained away to the governor.’ He pushed past and shouted something Russian at his team in a manner that had more than a little military bearing to it, now Drift came to think about it.

  Seven of the officers were now upright but three had remained on the floor, one of them unmoving and with his head at an angle that looked very unhealthy. Drift averted his gaze, feeling slightly sick, which meant he was looking directly at the hatch through to the cab when it fell open with a bang and the somewhat shell-shocked driver clambered through to find herself confronted with a blue-haired Mexican holding an assault rifle.

  ‘Whoa!’ Drift nearly dropped the gun as the woman wrenched her pistol out, stopped himself just in time when he remembered the safety was off and settled for raising one hand and using the other to hold his weapon at arm’s length, pointing downwards. ‘Chief?!’

  ‘Nyet, Vazirov!’ Muradov barked, and the driver – clearly rather surprised – stopped bringing her gun to bear.

  ‘Thanks,’ Drift muttered, then gestured at the rifle with his free hand. ‘Uh, about this …’

  ‘Captain, you have saved the lives of members of my force twice now,’ Muradov said, picking up and loading an identical weapon without looking at him. ‘So far as I am concerned, you can keep it until we are out of danger.’ He barked more orders in Russian, ones which saw two of the able-bodied officers move to assist both of the downed wounded, then beckoned to Drift. ‘In fact, come up here.’

  ‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’ Drift asked rhetorically, making his way to the Uragan’s side.

  ‘None of us will, I imagine,’ Mu
radov admitted, tapping the comm in his ear, ‘but the driver of the vehicle following says that there was no shot fired to knock us over. It must have been a trap planted in the barricade, and since the rebels could not know exactly where we would ram through it, there are likely to be more in the wreckage. The other teams dare not follow to get to us in case their transports are similarly damaged, so we must get to them.’

  Drift swallowed nervously. ‘So we’re meant to run through a potentially booby-trapped barricade in an area of town where it seems everyone’s out to get us?’

  ‘That appears an accurate summary, yes,’ Muradov nodded, ‘although if we head for where this vehicle drove through, then any trap in that immediate area may at least have already detonated.’ He frowned and looked back at Drift. ‘I have to wonder, Captain, how an off-worlder caught up in all this remains so calm.’

  Drift shrugged. ‘I’ve made a career out of never quite being killed by everything around me going wrong.’

  Muradov nodded. ‘Admirable. You take 90 to 180 degrees.’

  ‘I … what?’ Drift blinked, then realised what Muradov had meant. ‘Three o’clock to six o’clock. Right?’

  The politsiya captain turned to look at the rest of his squad, settled a riot helmet in place over his head and pointed at the door in front of them. ‘Vidvigaisya!’

  It was a strange sensation, trying to burst quickly and aggressively through what was now essentially a giant, half-length pet door. Drift wheeled to his right as soon as he was through and brought his borrowed rifle up to sweep the dimly lit street, letting the corner of the door rest on his right shoulder to try to make it easier for the officers supporting their injured colleagues. Not that he had any particular attachment to the wounded, but if he was going to get into even the dubious safety of another vehicle he needed to be with this group, and that meant he needed to ensure they all moved as fast as possible.