Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘Clear!’ he shouted, trying to look everywhere at once but fairly certain he hadn’t missed anything. There were no other barricades or improvised fire screens set up, and the various windows that passed under the roving barrel of his gun stayed reassuringly empty. He could see movement on the plaza at the end of the street, but that was some distance away and none of it appeared to be focused on them. However, that caused an ugly question to bubble to the surface in his mind. ‘Muradov! Are you still planning on heading to help out your boys on the plaza over there?’

  ‘Keep your mind on the job!’ Muradov shouted back, his voice rendered slightly metallic by the speakers on his helmet.

  ‘Just checking whether I want to get into another of your cars, is all!’ Drift replied, taking a few cautious steps backwards as the party began an agonisingly slow ‘dash’ away from their wrecked vehicle. He was terrified he was going to trip and fall during his backtracking, but he was damned if he’d turn around to see where he was going and let some Uragan rebel pop up to shoot him in the back.

  ‘I have ordered anyone there who can still hear me to stand down,’ Muradov replied heavily. ‘We are pulling back to Level Four.’

  Drift cursed under his breath. For all the risks involved, an armour-plated ride to his hotel’s front door had seemed like his best chance of getting back in touch with Rourke and the others, but now that option was being taken from him. With no comms and no politsiya escort, he had no clue how he’d find them again. For a moment he considered grabbing the Changs and heading off in search of the other half of his crew anyway, but—

  There was a flash from around the corner of what looked like some sort of shop and the air was torn by the report of a gunshot. Drift ducked instinctively and then, belatedly, fired back. His volley of shots tore holes in the wall near where the attack had come from, but a second after he released his trigger again a dark shape edged out just enough to aim a gun once more.

  And promptly collapsed backwards as a single shot rang out.

  Drift turned, despite himself, to see Muradov lowering his rifle. The politsiya captain barked another order and the group stumbled into movement again; Drift followed a second later, more certain than ever that when Chief Alim Muradov said he’d seen war, he hadn’t been employing a metaphor.

  They’d nearly reached the barricade now, a ramshackle collection of furniture and miscellaneous metal items, plus at least one door. It had stretched across most of the street at a crossroads, but there was a hole in it where their vehicle had punched through and the detritus from that impact was now making their footing troublesome. On the other side, with rear doors facing their group and turrets rotated so the water cannons and linked guns were covering them, were the other two armoured transports.

  Drift, casting nervous glances over his shoulder, had half expected Muradov to send someone else through first in case another trap was detonated. Instead, still covering the twelve-to-three angles of their retreat, the politsiya captain made a dash for it and fetched up against the rear of the right-hand vehicle before anyone inside could even get the door open. The driver of their transport, who’d ended up taking the nine-to-twelve quarter, made it through next, followed by the two injured officers and their minders.

  Drift had had enough. He turned and ran for the beckoning safety of the transports’ opening doors, eager to put as much metal between himself and any incoming bullets as he could. Hell, he didn’t even have a problem with these people! He was just trying to make a living and they had to go and have a damn revolution while he and his crew were—

  Something hit him in the back like a thunderbolt, and he fell.

  DECONSTRUCTING THE STATE

  TANJA HADN’T BEEN exaggerating about the populace rising for the rebellion, Rourke noted. The protest in the plaza had melted away in the face of gunfire, it was true, but that wasn’t necessarily surprising. However, there was almost a party atmosphere now that the security forces had been ‘subdued’ (most of them not fatally, she was pleased to see) and their reinforcements driven away, and the amount of people out in the streets with pro-independence placards and banners or just generally rejoicing was quite telling. Tanja was instructing everyone to announce that Level Five was now free of Red Star rule, which seemed slightly premature but was probably good for general morale, and reports trickling in from the lower levels suggested that similar things were occurring further underground.

  ‘What we need to do now,’ Rourke said, puzzling over a diagram of Uragan City’s various levels, ‘is to spread the word.’

  ‘We have people on the streets,’ Tanja replied, gesturing outside. They were on the first floor of a politsiya station which had turned out to be not far from Tsink Ploschadi, and which had apparently decided that opening its doors and playing nice was preferable to undergoing a siege. Rourke had immediately suggested it should be requisitioned as the new state’s headquarters. This had been opposed by some, who’d argued that they wanted to distance themselves from the Red Star regime, but Rourke had pointed out that people tended to react to a change better if they had at least some familiar reference points. Besides, she’d added, the cells were a handy place to put the politsiya officers who’d surrendered until it could be decided what to do with them, and it would be good to have the armoury under their direct control.

  That last point in particular had seemed to swing it.

  ‘People on the streets is fine, up to a point,’ Rourke said carefully, ‘it shows that we’re not scared of reprisals. Still, this isn’t the twentieth century; we need to be broadcasting to everyone. Civilian comms are down, so unless people see us from their windows they won’t know what’s happening, and the government are probably playing this down as much as they can on the official channels.’

  Tanja nodded, tapping one finger on her lips. ‘We can probably get to the official broadcast wires and disable them. Once people are not hearing the government anymore they will know that something is happening.’

  ‘It would be better if you could use them yourself,’ Rourke pointed out. ‘Everyone will know that the government imposes a communication blackout when there’s any sort of disruption taking place. Imagine the impact it would have if you started broadcasting through that and announce your new state. They wouldn’t be able to pretend it was all under control then.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Tanja said dryly, ‘but you have to understand who we are. Most of us are miners. I’ve been a shift supervisor for twelve years. If we ask for people to build a barricade, or make a bomb from a mining charge, or fight for us, they will do it. But if your holoset or your comm goes wrong, you take it back to the shop. I doubt there are many people in the revolution who would know about broadcasting equipment.’

  ‘There’s a transmission hub on this level,’ Rourke said, spinning the plans around with a sweep of her finger along the holoboard. ‘It’ll be standardised gear; there must be someone who can work it.’

  ‘Probably Uptowners,’ Tanja replied, jabbing a finger towards the ceiling. ‘It is mainly us workers down here, and you do not get time to learn fancy skills when you work fourteen-hour shifts. I only speak English because my parents saved for lessons and insisted I learn as a child.’

  Us workers. Rourke managed not to snort in derision. This sounded like it was a class uprising as much as anything else, but while maintaining the city’s communications network didn’t exactly match up to working at a mine face in terms of hard graft, she also doubted that the techs were swimming in money. Still, Tanja had played into her hands and Rourke didn’t care whether this revolution took once she and the rest of the Keiko’s crew were clear.

  ‘So we pull specs off the Spine and do it ourselves,’ she shrugged, as though it were nothing. To be sure, even on a relative backwater like Uragan the Spine would contain an enormous amount of data, including innumerable manuals and user guides. However, there was one problem.

  ‘The Spine is blocked off by the security protocols,’ Tanja to
ld her, sounding quite surprised that Rourke hadn’t worked this out for herself.

  ‘Well then,’ Rourke replied, looking up with a smile, ‘we need a slicer, don’t we?’

  Which was how Rourke, holding a Crusader 920 donated to her by the revolution since her own was still locked up on board the Jonah, was able to begin leading an organised search party for her crew. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Tanja not to go back on her word, but each of them were smart enough to know that theirs was a marriage of convenience and Rourke wanted to bump her partner’s side of the deal up the priority chain somewhat. Besides, having an expert slicer with a somewhat cavalier attitude to things like governmental authority was practically essential for a revolution. It wouldn’t solve every problem, but it would reduce the pile considerably.

  It was as she was leaving the politsiya station at the head of half a dozen of the revolution’s best English-speakers that she caught sight of Ricardo Moutinho and his cronies. They were standing in the street and were clearly doing their best to smile and look cheerful as groups of Uragans bustled past in knots of nervous, excited energy, but every time they thought no one was watching they returned to a sullen huddle. Rourke weighed them up for a second then beckoned to her escort’s leader, a grey-haired, retired spaceport worker named Nikita, and mustered her best Russian. ‘Can you please start making enquiries around here? I need to speak to these people.’

  Nikita looked startled. ‘I didn’t know you spoke Russian. Tanja asked for English-speakers.’

  Rourke shrugged. ‘Not all my crew do, and you may need to explain to them who you are. We are looking for a tall Mexican man with blue hair, a dark-haired Chinese brother and sister, a white American girl with blonde hair and a very big Maori man with facial tattoos and a shaved head.’

  Nikita nodded. ‘We’ll start asking.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Rourke watched them drift off up and down the street, accosting people as they went, then strode over to her fellow off-worlders with her new rifle rested casually across her shoulders.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ Moutinho snarled as she approached.

  ‘Best mind your language,’ Rourke advised him mildly, ‘you’re talking to the revolution’s chief advisor now.’

  ‘I still want to know how the hell you span that bullshit,’ Moutinho snorted. ‘You’re going to regret it when they figure out you’re a fraud.’

  ‘Why don’t you let me worry about that?’ Rourke asked. She frowned at the four of them: Moutinho, Jack, Skanda and the kid whose name she still hadn’t picked up. ‘You’re running a smaller crew than you used to, Ric.’

  ‘The others’ll be along,’ Moutinho replied, but the suddenly expressionless cast to his face told her everything she needed to know.

  ‘With no comms, and fighting on the streets? I doubt it.’ She glanced over her shoulder to check her escort had cleared the area, then leaned in a little closer to Moutinho. ‘Truth is, I don’t know where a damned one of mine are and I’m thinking you might be in the same predicament.’

  ‘And you’re telling me this because …?’

  Rourke sighed. ‘Neither of us planned to be caught up in this, you numbskull. I’m playing nice with the big bad revolutionaries because I don’t give a shit who owns this planet, but I do need their help to find my crew so I can leave it as fast as possible.’

  ‘You really think that all this is gonna help?’ Jack threw in, arms folded and face stern.

  ‘I was just being an innocent bystander until your captain here decided to blow my cover,’ Rourke bit out, nodding at Moutinho. ‘Then the head of the revolution that you’ve been supplying said I needed to die, and when someone decides to kill me I try to find a way to persuade them not to. So, I’m taking it you didn’t realise that they were going to kick off their party here and now, when some of yours were elsewhere?’

  ‘Hell, if I’d known this is what they were planning I wouldn’t have even come back to this shithole,’ Moutinho growled. ‘I thought we were supplying a gang or something, not getting mixed up in politics.’

  ‘Here’s what I’m suggesting, then,’ Rourke said, lowering her voice further and speaking fast. ‘Help me look for my crew; they shouldn’t be that hard to find. You help me with that and I’ll talk to Tanja about helping you find your lost lambs. While we’re at it, we all keep an eye out on what’s going on and which way the wind is blowing, and we all try to get off here as soon as we can.’ She looked from one to another, trying to meet their eyes. ‘We’re all off-worlders, we’ve got no loyalty to anyone here, and this is a bad thing to be mixed up in. I think we need to stick together.’

  ‘You’re saying you’d sell out this “revolution” if it came to it?’ Jack asked, so quietly Rourke could barely hear him.

  ‘I’m saying,’ she replied with a meaningful look at Moutinho, ‘that I’m a businesswoman, and business is looking better elsewhere.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Moutinho muttered. ‘How do we know you can hold up your side of the bargain, though?’

  ‘Out of the five of us,’ Rourke retorted dryly, ‘who has the revolution trusted enough to give a gun to?’

  ‘C’mon, boss,’ Skanda piped up, ‘I think she’s got a point.’

  ‘You can shut up,’ Moutinho snapped, rounding on his crewman and causing him to flinch back. ‘It’s your damn fault we’re in this mess!’

  ‘Actually,’ Rourke offered, ‘if he hadn’t brought me in there then this revolution would already be faltering and you’d still be standing around wondering where your crewmates were, only you’d also be more likely to get arrested very soon.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not saying I can give them success, but I might be able to swing it long enough for us all to get away while we’re still flavour of the month.’

  ‘Oh, fine,’ Moutinho growled, and stuck out a hand with visible reluctance. ‘But if you double-cross us, I swear I’ll take your head off.’

  ‘Noted.’ Rourke shook his hand and fought the instinctive urge to wipe her palm on her bodysuit afterwards. It still perplexed her that she’d ever been to bed with this man, although admittedly it had more been out of curiosity than desire, and the experience had squashed her curiosity fairly comprehensively. It wasn’t that he was physically unattractive as such, but his personality was so abhorrent that it almost polluted everything else about him. ‘The only member of my crew you haven’t seen is Kuai, the brother of the Chinese girl in that bar. They’ll probably be together anyway, and with Ichabod; around here I’m hoping to find Jenna and Apirana.’

  ‘I think we know what that big babaca looks like,’ Moutinho grunted, a sentiment that seemed to be shared by his crew judging by the uncomfortable shuffling from Skanda and the kid. ‘Okay, Skanda goes with Jack. Achilles, you’re with me.’

  Achilles? Rourke shrugged mentally as the skinny pale youth sloped over to Moutinho’s side. There was simply no accounting for parents. ‘So that I know, who are you looking for?’

  ‘My first mate Lena and a guy called Dugan,’ Moutinho said. His tone was all business now; the man might hold grudges, but he was able to keep his feelings in check when he wanted to. Rourke had worked enough deals with people she hadn’t cared for personally to know that was a valuable skill when you were a freelance crew taking work where you could find it. ‘They’re both white American,’ Moutinho continued. ‘Lena’s kind of wiry, dark hair, got a scar down on cheek. Dugan’s a big guy, with quite long, brown curly hair.’

  ‘Got it.’ Rourke mentally filed the information away, then pointed back towards Tsink Ploschadi. ‘I last saw Jenna and Apirana on the square, before we got separated, so I’m going to start there and try to find someone who saw them.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it’d be hard,’ Moutinho snorted, looking at his wrist chrono. ‘Okay, Achilles and I are going this way,’ he pointed into the narrow streets just off the main promenade they were currently on, then jerked his thumb in the opposite direction. ‘Skanda and Jack go that way. We�
�ll meet back here in half an hour, or as soon as you find anyone.’

  Rourke watched them go. It wasn’t exactly the help she’d have wished for, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and she’d meant what she’d said to Moutinho: so far as she was concerned, any off-worlders on Uragan right now would do well to stick together. The Brazilian’s crew might have been rivals and enemies of the Keiko’s, but the very same initiative and ability which made them so annoying as rivals would make them useful allies if needed. She just had to hope that A. or Jenna would stop to listen if they were hailed instead of punching someone in the face or running for it.

  And where the hell is Ichabod? She shunted the thought away, slung the Crusader across her shoulders by the strap and started to trudge back towards Tsink Ploschadi. One thing at a time. Drift was a born survivor and she wouldn’t be surprised to find him sheltering in a bar somewhere, having commandeered a bottle of the most tolerable whisky he could find. Probably seducing a barmaid while he was at it, if she knew him. Meanwhile, the Changs weren’t the type to take unnecessary risks so long as Jia wasn’t in a pilot’s chair. They’d keep their heads down and ride it out.

  She hoped.

  CAT AND MAORI

  JENNA FELT HER mouth go dry, but forced herself to remain calm. ‘There’s no reason for them to be looking for us. They’re probably searching for hidden politsiya officers, or something.’

  ‘As you say,’ Kunley replied, although neither his voice nor his face held much certainty. ‘You have no connection with either the rebels or with the government here?’

  ‘Hell no,’ Apirana rumbled, sitting down again. ‘Sure, we all got picked up by the cops on some gun-runnin’ charge, but it got dropped when they realised it weren’t us.’