Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  One other thing was tugging at his mind, though. He could remember all too clearly how unhappy his crew had been on their dark run into Amsterdam when they’d found out that he had known who their employer was, despite his previous protestations to the contrary. That – and the subsequent revelation of his previous identity as Gabriel Drake, notorious pirate – had sparked a near-mutiny. No one liked being kept in the dark by people they felt they should be able to trust, and he’d have put money on Goldberg and Karwoski wondering, right at the moment, whether Ricardo Moutinho had been as honest with them as he could have been.

  And that was something he might be able to use, should he need to.

  OVER OUR HEADS

  ‘SO WHEN THEY were shouting about “the American woman” …’ Jenna began, understanding starting to dawn.

  ‘They were telling each other to find me,’ Rourke finished with a nod. The pair of them, with Apirana hobbling behind, were making their way towards the politsiya building that was now apparently serving as the headquarters of Level Five’s new government.

  ‘And you’ve joined the revolution?’ Apirana put in. ‘Seems a bit reckless, I gotta say.’

  Rourke turned and looked at the big man, her expression serious and her voice low. ‘It wasn’t my choice. I wound up in the same place as some of Moutinho’s crew and Tanja, who seems to be in charge around here at the moment. Moutinho tried to land me in it as soon as he saw me, of course, so I had to throw Tanja a bone to keep myself alive.’ She shrugged. ‘Thanks to a bit of lucky timing that bone worked quite impressively, and now here we all are.’

  ‘So this isn’t actually some well-disguised GIA plot?’ Jenna asked. She didn’t genuinely think that – although the Galactic Intelligence Agency was rumoured to be very, very underhanded in its activities – but Rourke pursed her lips and seemed to be seriously considering the question.

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ the older woman said a couple of seconds later. ‘I’d have expected to run up against another agitator by now, if that was the case. No, I think this is purely organic. Which is probably why they had so little idea what they were doing.’

  ‘Come again?’ Apirana asked.

  ‘Almost invariably, any native with enough understanding of the system to bring it down has too much invested in it to want to see it fall,’ Rourke replied absently, turning away from them to head towards the main doors. ‘That’s how the system protects itself. Even if you set out to sabotage it, by the time you’re in a position to influence anything you’ve probably been caught up in it one way or another. Although there are always exceptions.’

  The three of them attracted a fair amount of stares as they approached the headquarters. Jenna had become used to that since she’d been spending any time with Apirana, but now it wasn’t just the Maori who was being studied. She got the uncomfortable feeling that she was being weighed up by many pairs of eyes, and as they reached the maglev pad that would take them to the next floor up without Apirana needing to brave the stairs, she leaned close to Rourke. ‘What exactly did you tell them I was going to do?’

  ‘You’re going to slice into the Spine to find instructions on how to work the broadcast equipment on this level so the revolution can spread the good news,’ Rourke told her placidly as the clear plastic doors whispered shut behind them. ‘Oh, and find some way for us to contact the others.’

  Jenna blinked. ‘You want me to do what?’

  Rourke turned to look at her, dark eyes cool. ‘I’d have thought that would be your area of expertise.’

  Jenna closed her eyes and swallowed an urge to swear violently, but when she opened them again Rourke was still studying her. ‘There is a hell of a difference between slicing a … a starport records system, where things are changing all the time and it’s probably cobbled together on out-of-date software and no one follows the security protocols because they’re too busy … and trying to slice through a governmental block.’

  ‘Well, we’d better talk fast then,’ the other woman said with a grimace. A moment later the platform rose up past the level of the next floor and slowed smoothly, bringing the corridor into view.

  ‘I’m touched by your faith in me,’ Jenna muttered as the elevator’s doors opened, ‘but did you ever think that governmental security measures might not be vulnerable to a university graduate?’

  ‘Not when that university graduate is you,’ Rourke whispered back, a comment which Jenna found both complimentary and infuriating in roughly equal measure. She took a deep breath and tried to project an outward calm to match Rourke’s. It was clear that their standing in this proto-state was somewhat dependent on the results they could deliver, and sweating profusely and stammering was unlikely to engender much confidence in her abilities.

  The room Rourke led them into had clearly originally been some sort of conference or presentation room, dominated as it was by a large holotable in the middle which was currently displaying a three-dimensional map. The windows had been blacked out to maximise the efficiency of the display and the other people in the room were mainly illuminated by the light it was giving off, which gave them a slightly sinister, unnatural-looking aspect in Jenna’s eyes.

  ‘Everyone,’ Rourke said in English, ‘this is Jenna and Apirana, two of my crew. Jenna is our slicer.’

  Four pairs of eyes turned to Jenna. She tried to meet them evenly, as though being introduced to the leaders of a Free Systems revolution was an everyday occurrence.

  ‘This is Tanja,’ Rourke continued, gesturing to a woman in some sort of uniform – probably a mining company – with short hair that was light enough to be coloured alternately red or green depending on which part of the display was most lit up at that moment. ‘She’s in charge.’

  ‘To an extent,’ the woman identified as Tanja replied with a slightly strained smile. Jenna’s first impression was that she was at least Rourke’s age – although Jenna had only ever been able to guess at that figure – but when she looked closer she realised that in actual fact the Uragan woman was probably only in her early thirties. The lines on her face belonged to someone a decade or so older, and the bags beneath her eyes told volumes about how well she’d been sleeping lately … which was probably not that surprising, if she’d been waiting for the right moment to start a revolution. Her eyes themselves were bright and sharp, however, and Jenna suddenly had an uncomfortable flashback to those rare moments when she’d done something as a child that had warranted her mother’s full, ferocious attention.

  Tanja gestured to the other people around the table, in turn. ‘This is Abram, who works for the power board; Marya, who served in the army; and Inzhu, who is … helping me organise everything.’

  Abram, whose dark hair was receding at the temples and who appeared to be compensating for this by growing a bushy beard, mainly under his chin, laughed nervously and said something in Russian. Rourke muttered a translation, just loud enough for Jenna to hear: ‘I’m not sure who I work for now.’

  Marya tutted at Abram’s words, just audibly. She was a robustly built woman in early middle age, with short ginger hair framing a face that carried the beginnings of impressive jowls. There was a pistol holstered at her right hip, and – Jenna felt her heart speed up a little more – her left arm looked to be mechanical. Jenna fought her body’s response down: it was unremarkable for an ex-soldier to need augmentation, and besides, she’d just walked in and out of the Circuit Cult’s headquarters here without anyone grabbing her. Marya responded to Abram, waving her natural fingers to make a point.

  ‘Marya says that Abram still works for the power board, but there will just be a different government in charge,’ Rourke translated quietly as the conversation continued. ‘Abram wants to know how he and his wife can buy food for themselves and their child when the revolution has disowned their own currency. Marya is …’ Rourke paused for a moment in the face of a particularly aggressive rattle of Russian, ‘… being impolite.’

  Inzhu, a pretty, round-faced girl wit
h dark hair pulled into two narrow pigtails, snapped something which apparently stopped the argument in its tracks. Abram and Marya both managed to look a little shamefaced, which surprised Jenna a little given that Inzhu was almost certainly the youngest of the four Uragans. Then she took in the sheet after sheet of plaspaper covered with scrawls, diagrams and reams of Cyrillic script that obscured most of the non-holographic part of the table, and noticed how they were spreading out from where Inzhu was standing. Ah, a logistical genius. I wonder if they’ll expect her to solve everything, too.

  Tanja cast a grateful smile at Inzhu, favoured the other two with a brief but pointed glare, then turned back to Jenna. ‘Tamara said that you can get onto the Spine.’

  Jenna tried not to grimace. ‘Maybe. It’s going to depend what sort of connection I can get. Rourke said there’s a broadcast terminal on this level?’

  ‘Not far from here,’ Tanja replied, tapping the table and causing a small section of the holo to start flashing, which wasn’t massively helpful given that Jenna hadn’t studied it enough to work out where she was right now.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, the faint ghost of a plan starting to form in her mind, ‘that’s a start. If it’s a government building then I’m likely to be able to find a terminal in there with a more direct link to the Spine, so I can at least eliminate some levels of the block outright. After that …’ She exchanged a glance with Rourke, who clearly seemed to think that she should be selling it more, but Jenna really didn’t feel like promising these people anything she wasn’t absolutely certain she could deliver. ‘Well, I’ll be working in an unfamiliar alphabet and my translation algorithm probably isn’t foolproof, but—’

  ‘Please,’ Tanja said, holding up one hand with a slightly pained expression. ‘I speak enough English to know I will not understand what you are about to say.’

  Beside Jenna, there was a very faint noise which might just have been Tamara Rourke suppressing a snigger. Jenna allowed herself a moment to glare sideways at the shorter woman, then addressed Tanja again. ‘If I’m inside the broadcast hub I can probably get you something, but I’m not sure how long it’ll take.’

  Tanja nodded. ‘It will take as long as it has to.’

  Great, so what you’re saying is that I won’t be leaving until you’ve got what you want?

  ‘We have not yet tried to get inside the hub,’ Tanja continued, ‘since we did not want to give the government any more warning than we had to of our plans. Marya will come with you to coordinate our operation.’

  Marya nodded briskly and made her way around the table. Jenna watched the other woman’s eyes and saw them skitter over her dismissively to focus on Rourke, who had one thumb casually hooked under the strap of her Crusader. The ex-soldier and former GIA agent simply regarded each other for a moment, each apparently waiting for the other to make the first move or acknowledgement, and Jenna was suddenly put in mind of the antique holos her father used to watch where two nineteenth-century gunfighters would stand facing each other in a street.

  ‘Uh, can we get moving?’ Apirana asked apologetically into the suddenly tense silence, ‘I could do with sitting down soon, if it’s all the same to everyone.’

  The big Maori’s interruption seemed to break the spell. Rourke nodded an affirmative and turned to lead the way out of the room, with Marya following behind. Jenna gave Apirana a smile which she hoped conveyed her gratitude at his timely (and almost certainly deliberate) intervention between their companions’ respective egos, but stopped short in the face of his pained expression. Of course, he’d been left hanging, and badly. But that was due to the circumstances – he had to understand that, surely?

  ‘A.,’ she said quietly as she slipped out of the door just ahead of his bulk, ‘we’ll talk, I promise. But later, when this is … done.’ She looked up at him, hoping he’d understand. ‘But we will talk.’

  Although I have no idea what I’m going to say.

  COMMUNICATION PROBLEM

  ‘THE PROBLEM WON’T be getting inside,’ Marya said in Russian, ‘the problem will be preventing those already in there from disabling the equipment before we can use it.’

  Rourke pursed her lips, studying what she could see of the blocky hexagon that formed the Level Five broadcast hub. Protective shutters had come down to cover the doors and windows and it currently looked more like a fortification than a media centre. ‘Do you think that’s likely?’

  Marya nodded once. Rourke got the impression that it wasn’t just the other woman’s career in the military that had bred this curt manner; she had an air of someone who had never suffered fools gladly, yet saw them most places she looked. ‘The government controls this world closely and everyone in there will be working to their agenda. They will not wish for us to be able to communicate across levels, or off-planet.’

  ‘I would have expected an ex-servicewoman to … have a greater affiliation to the government’s agenda,’ Rourke replied. She’d nearly said be more loyal, but decided at the last moment that it was probably not very diplomatic.

  ‘The government are quick enough to send people out to fight for them,’ Marya replied stiffly, ‘but I have found that they are somewhat less eager to provide for those who come back injured, or for the families of those who don’t come back at all. They do not respect the sacrifices others make in their name, so they no longer have my support.’

  ‘And you don’t think anyone in there would share your views?’ Rourke asked, although she was fairly certain she knew what answer she’d receive.

  ‘Not enough of them,’ Marya replied, as Rourke had predicted. The other woman didn’t seem the sort of person to be easily swayed from an opinion once she’d formed it.

  Rourke sighed. ‘Well then, I guess we do this the hard way. There will be security personnel, I imagine?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Marya confirmed.

  ‘And I assume they won’t start disabling or destroying anything unless they think it’s likely we’ll get inside?’ Rourke asked. Getting into buildings surreptitiously wasn’t anything new to her, and she was starting to put a loose plan together. It was a good job she’d never been claustrophobic.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Marya said, ‘they would be responsible for such damage.’

  ‘Then that gives us an opportunity,’ Rourke said decisively. ‘I’m going to need a laser cutter, a maintenance vehicle capable of reaching the roof, and a shockgun with plenty of ammunition.’

  ‘They will see us trying to cut in through any window, even one on the top floor,’ Marya warned.

  Rourke managed not to roll her eyes. ‘Which is why I’m not going in through the windows.’

  ‘You?’ Even though Marya was speaking a language which was not one of Rourke’s native tongues, the disdain and mistrust was audible in the Uragan woman’s voice. ‘Tanja asked me to coordinate this.’

  ‘You will be coordinating it,’ Rourke assured her, ‘but I’ll be the one doing it. You will be standing very obviously outside the front doors trying to talk them into opening up. You don’t have to do a good job of it,’ she added, perhaps a trifle nastily, ‘just don’t stop.’

  ‘I will be leading the infiltration,’ Marya corrected her, turning sideways as though to try to intimidate Rourke with her greater height and bulk. ‘What is your plan?’

  For answer, Rourke just pointed upwards. Overhead, running along the ceiling like a network of silvery veins, was Level Five’s ventilation system. The broadcast hub was supplied by one of the main pipes, but even that was hardly huge. Rourke wasn’t looking forward to it, but she’d been in such tight places before. Marya, on the other hand, with her broad shoulders and wide hips …

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ the Uragan said after a moment, suddenly looking less certain.

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’ Rourke asked. ‘I’d advise against trying the sewers.’ Subterranean settlements tended to use pressurised suction systems instead of gravity to move their waste, mainly because it often didn’t end up going
downwards anyway.

  Marya was clearly reluctant to back down, but after a few moments of indecision her stubborn expression faded slightly and she nodded. ‘Nothing that can be put into action quickly. Very well. We will attempt to reason with them to let us in while you get into position to act if we cannot.’

  Rourke didn’t challenge the other woman’s reassessment of her role from glorified distraction into main player. So long as Marya did what Rourke wanted, she wasn’t much bothered how the other woman thought of it. ‘Fine, just keep their attention on the front of the building.’ She nodded towards where she could see Jenna. Oddly, her and Apirana seemed to be keeping their distance from one another, and Rourke wondered what had passed between them while she’d been elsewhere. ‘For everyone’s sake, keep that girl out of sight. If they decide to open fire and she’s hit then you can kiss goodbye to this plan.’

  ‘No one is indispensable,’ Marya snorted.

  ‘That’s the kind of thinking that wins fights but loses wars,’ Rourke said, removing her hat. She turned to fully face the Uragan for the first time, catching her eye and holding it. ‘More importantly, that girl is part of my crew. My participation in your revolution is conditional on being reunited with all of them, not losing someone to a hothead with a gun because the person in charge couldn’t keep them safe. Am I clear?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Marya replied icily.

  ‘Very well then.’ Rourke shrugged out of her coat somewhat reluctantly. She found it helped with people’s attitudes towards her due to it partially offsetting her diminutive stature, but it would be nothing but an inconvenience where she was going. ‘Let’s get on with it.’