by Adam Carter
Gritting my teeth, I refused to answer and, keeping low, moved quickly through the large room. Dressed head-to-toe in black, Cassiel came behind me. We made it to the motorbikes without incident and I told Cassiel to keep an eye out for any attention we might be drawing. From there I systematically tried the key in each of the bikes, but it did not fit any of them. I was down to just two bikes and my hopes that the key would belong to either were dwindling. I was just trying the first when I heard Cassiel hiss.
“What?” I whispered without turning round.
“Someone’s pointing a gun at us.”
That was something I would have classed as drawing attention, and in a panic I quickly turned the key. The motorbike revved to life and I jumped into the saddle just as the man with the gun came running towards us, shouting to his fellows.
“Draw your sword,” I told Cassiel. “Deflect some bullets.”
“I can’t use a sword.”
“Then why are you carrying one?”
“It came with the costume.”
“Costume? I thought it was a religious habit.”
“No, it’s a ninja costume.”
“It’s a … Just draw your sword and look fierce.”
“But I can’t use it.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
To her credit, Cassiel drew her sword and shrieked so loudly it would have caused bats to fly from the ceiling, if there were any. The gunman ground to a halt and dived for cover, all without firing a single shot, and I grabbed hold of Cassiel and shoved her behind me. “Grab on.”
Cassiel encircled my waist so tightly I could hardly breathe, but at least she had managed to sheathe her sword beforehand. Bringing the motorbike around, I tried to forget the fact I had not eaten in days and that my muscles were tired and weak. I was operating solely upon adrenalin and fear, and as I tore the bike through the massive room I was suddenly aware of various people emerging like woodlice armed with firearms.
The woodlice armed with firearms analogy is something else I put down to the delirious state my lack of food had caused.
Keeping my head down, I gunned the engine and headed straight for the main entrance. It was a large open doorway through which vans and trucks could be moved, so there was no problem with getting out that way. Over the roar of the engine, however, I heard the first blasts of gunfire and knew our lives were in the hands of fate.
A man stepped out ahead of us and raised his pistol, taking careful aim upon us. I couldn’t imagine what the fool was doing, but increased my speed in an effort to unnerve him. At the final moment he flung himself to the side, but not before releasing a single shot.
The motorbike emitted a strange noise which indicated the bullet had torn through something vital.
“Hang on,” I screamed back at Cassiel, the roar of the engine drowning out my words. The bike careened through the open doorway and out into the afternoon light. I received my first view of the local surroundings and my heart sank as I realised the building we were in may as well have been a warehouse because it was located beside a river. Beyond the water I could see the city stretch for infinity, yet getting there was going to prove impossible.
“Rosalita,” Cassiel shouted, “we’ve sprung a leak.”
I glanced down to see fuel was spewing everywhere. The bullet had shredded the fuel line, which was going to make our getaway a very short one indeed. Ahead was a narrow metal bridge leading to the city, but there was no way our vehicle was going to get us even a quarter of the way there.
“I have an idea,” I said, “but you’re not going to like it.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Probably for the best.”
Without another word, I floored the accelerator and propelled the motorbike through the rails preventing people from falling into the river. Behind me, Cassiel wailed, and I could not blame her. The bike shot into the air and came down hard, but by this time I had already pushed us away from it. As the vehicle plunged into the water, Cassiel and I struck the river barely metres away and I forced us beneath the surface where we would have to swim for our lives.
Gunshots tore through the surface, striking the bike, which presented the most obvious target. Having taken a few moments to catch up to us, the drug runners had not noticed that Cassiel and I had managed to swim to an area beneath the bridge, where we kept out of sight long enough for the hoods to get fed up with shooting the water. No one could see us beneath the bridge, and so long as we did not make a sound, we could have remained indefinitely within the shadows.
Finally, the drug runners returned inside to make their report, or to check on Tyron, or whatever. It allowed me and Cassiel the reprieve we needed to begin our long and arduous swim to the city, following the bridge we would have to keep forever above us.
It was not the easiest way to sneak into Ganymede, but for a wanted dust miner like myself and a teenaged religious ninja, I had to admit that things could have been a lot worse.
CHAPTER TWO
A dull rhythmic creak resounded through the room as the ceiling fan turned lazily. It had been new, once, but over the years pressure from the floors above and the general lack of upkeep by the landlord had taken its toll. It was too hot not to have the fan on, although the constant creak was giving me a headache. After the events of the warehouse, or whatever that place was, I could have done with a pleasant, quiet rest. Even without the noise of the fan, however, I still had to contend with the argument coming from upstairs, the booming thump of bass from speakers below me and the springy horror of what passed for the bed upon which I was lying.
The hotel was cheap and that was all that really mattered. It turned out Cassiel’s strange ninja costume did not come with any pockets sewn in, so I was being relied upon as the sole source of funding. I had learned from experience to make my money stretch as far as it could, and it was not as though I could just go to a bank and draw money from my account without the law noticing.
The faint light from the window was momentarily blocked and I glanced over to see Cassiel looking out at the city. It was evening, but the soft red glow of neon signs was illuminating the room nicely. That they flashed every few minutes as they advertised various sordid services only made my headache stronger, but harping on about my headache makes it seem the worst of my problems. If that was all I had to contend with I would have been a very happy woman indeed.
“This is all very exciting, Rosalita.”
“It’s not exciting,” I said, closing my eyes. “And call me Roz.”
“Look at all the pretty lights.”
“Pretty lights?”
“Ooh, that one’s flashing.”
“Read it.”
“Hmm?”
“Read what the pretty lights say.” I opened my eyes so I could look across to where she leaned forward excitedly.
“Oh, they’re words?” she said, straining to read them. “Live girls. That’s a feminist slogan if ever I heard one.”
“How is that …? It’s not live, rhymes with give. It’s live, rhymes with hive.”
She did not say anything. I could see she was trying to work that out.
“Try the one underneath,” I suggested.
“That says … Oh.”
“Crude nudes, right?” I asked. “Still think this is a feminist area?”
Cassiel drew back from the window and sat on the edge of the bed – we could only afford the one room and the one bed. She hugged herself tightly, as though to protect herself from the vulgar filth of this establishment and its local area. I had a horrible feeling she was about to start bawling again and that was something I could have sorely done without.
I had another horrible feeling, and that feeling was that I might have to actually try to bond with the emotional wreck that was my teenaged companion. Then I felt really bad. I was a teenager once, so I knew something of what she was going through. My teenaged years might not have been quite the upheaval as hers, but everyone had their problems.
“Cass,” I said, drawing my legs over the bed so I could sit beside her, “you need to pull yourself together.”
“Have you ever been to Themisto, Roz?”
“No.”
“Everything there is ordered. I’m told when to eat, when to pray, when to sleep. In some ways it’s great, but there’s no room to do anything you really want to. Do you know what I mean?”
“I can’t imagine anyone tying me down like that, Cass. Well, not unless …”
“Please, I could do without you saying ‘unless I asked them to’ or something.”
Even through her little-lost-lamb routine there was something I could admire about her. When I first met Cassiel I had not had much respect for her, but I’ve always liked women who can make quick comebacks.
“Then Gordon came,” Cassiel continued. “He landed in that massive sword-ship of his and I was blown away. I mean, there he was, a real-live man standing before me without the wrappings of our religious order. He was the first man I ever saw, you know.”
“And you fell in love with him?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I didn’t.”
“Good.”
“And he was with Iris, right?”
“You keep mentioning Iris as though I haven’t noticed she exists.”
“Like I said before, the two of them are together. Don’t try to come between that.”
“What if he’s not happy with her?”
“Has he given any indication that he’s not?”
Cassiel said nothing.
The pounding of the music downstairs increased to such an extent that the wall shook violently. Or maybe it was just the pounding of Cassiel’s heart, but I’ve never been one for romantic poetry.
“Gordon’s in his thirties,” I said. “You’re not. Can’t you find someone else?”
“I don’t want anyone else.”
“Cass, you left home – what? – a couple of months ago? Gordon’s the first man you saw and you’ve become … attached to him.” I stopped myself before I could say infatuated. “It doesn’t help that you live on the same sword-ship.”
“I don’t want to talk about me and Gordy any more.”
I don’t think she understood I had never wanted to talk about the two of them in the first place.
“Great,” I said. “Let’s just concentrate on finding them, then.”
Cassiel wiped away her tears, which was an odd sight since her face was completely covered and all she was really doing was absorbing her tears into her costume.
“Actually,” I said, “before we start on that, could you tell me something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why are you dressed like that? For someone of a religious order who finds it sacrilege to show any skin, you’re looking pretty weird in a sexy skin-tight ninja costume.”
“Why do people keep asking me that? I found it in a storeroom on the Glory. There were a few down there, all different colours. I usually wear the dark blue one but this is a mission of stealth so I went for black this time.”
“Why does your sword-ship have sexy ninja costumes in a storeroom?”
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
Now that we were discussing it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, either.
“Back to Iris and Gordon, then,” I said. “The first stage of our plan was to get into Ganymede undetected. Mission accomplished, so now we have to figure out what happened to them.”
“They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Cass, we’ve only been here two minutes. We can’t possibly know what happened to them.”
“They’ve been caught and now they’re dead.”
“They may well have been caught, but that doesn’t mean they’re dead.”
“Securitarn have them and now they’re dead.”
She was on the verge of tears again and I needed to put a stop to that so I acted without thinking and gave her a hug. She was so shocked she didn’t start crying, and I released her quickly enough for it not to mean much.
“There,” I said. “Now, if we stop being overly emotional we can get on with things. Let’s lay out what we know.”
“OK. Iris and Gordon are on the run from Securitarn. They used to work there and now Securitarn think Iris is dead, but if they knew she was alive they’d be trying to get her back. So, for the last few months they’ve been flying around the system in Jupiter’s Glory, where along the way they picked up the both of us.”
“I meant more to do with this situation. They came to Ganymede because they wanted to report a girl’s death to her family. Ganymede, obviously, is the largest of Jupiter’s moons, so for people to come here who are trying to stay hidden … well, it’s almost as stupid as an illegal halo ring miner coming here.”
“Once here,” Cassiel said, “they disappeared. They should have come back to the Glory ages ago, which means something bad’s happened to them.”
“Which is why we came to the rescue.” I did not owe either Gordon or Iris anything, not really. If anything, they owed me, for I had saved Iris’s life; but when I realised they were in trouble I felt it my duty to help them out. I had been flitting from place to place for so long it was strange to think I actually had some friends at last.
“So,” Cassiel said, bringing us back to the present, “we made it here. Now what do we do?”
“We ask questions.”
“To whom?”
“To people who might know stuff.”
“You mean the police?”
“The police? No, I don’t mean the police. If we talk to the police we’ll be putting everyone in danger. No, we talk to all the bad people we can find. The criminal underworld, the strippers, the drug addicts. People with their ears to the ground. We …” I stopped when I could see that – again – Cassiel was about to cry. “Cass, stop doing that. I’m being serious here. You’re not going to help save Gordon if you keep crying every two minutes.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t associate well with criminals.”
“I’m a criminal.”
“But you’re a nice criminal. I mean … strippers? Women who remove their clothes are bad enough, but women who remove their clothes before other people?”
“You’ve glossed over the criminal underworld and drug addicts to complain about strippers? People have to earn a living, Cass.” I had meant that as a joke, but there was no joking about such things with the girl. “All right,” I said, “I’ll handle the strippers, should either of us need to. For now, we need to get some rest. It’s been a long and tiring day and I for one would like to get some sleep.”
“So would I, but there’s all that noise.”
“Halo mining is a noisy business. I’ve learned to sleep through anything.” Without wanting to remove my clothes in case we needed a quick exit, I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. A moment later I felt the ancient bedsprings squeak as Cassiel carefully positioned herself beside me. The fan did not so much as blow cool air onto our faces as it did circulate all the hot air, but it would have to be good enough.
I was just drifting off to sleep when in a small voice Cassiel said, “I don’t like it here.”
“Not much I can do about that, honey.”
“It’s horrid.”
“That it is. Go to sleep.”
After a few moments I heard a dull thump coming from the wall behind my head. I knew what it was – the steady rhythm of the headboard of the neighbouring room as it struck against our wall.
“What’s that?” Cassiel asked.
“Probably best you don’t know, Cass. Cover your ears and go to sleep.”
“I can hear a woman moaning. She could be in trouble.”
“Not if she’s using protection.”
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Cassiel did not say anything more that night. Whether she slept at all I have no idea, but certainly the noises from the room behind us grew t
o such an intensity that I can’t believe even she couldn’t have known what was going on. As for me, I slept fine.
CHAPTER THREE
The club was lit by a pale blue glow, which was somehow even darker than the streets outside. The city of Rinden was one of the largest in all of Ganymede and it was where Iris and Gordon had been headed. As with all large cities, Rinden had its pleasant areas and its slums; and I did not think for one moment I would have been welcome in most of the pleasant areas. Ganymedian cities were peculiar in that they were formed almost exclusively of tall, thin towers. Each tower was like a tree fighting to gain enough height to block the life-giving sun from its neighbours, the result of which was that anyone walking at ground level could barely see at all. Most societies show off their wealth by stretching out like great lazy fat slugs, their estates being formed of one or two storeys and taking up as much land area as possible. Ganymede was the only place I had ever known where height was favoured over girth, and even then it wasn’t true in all their cities.
I had been to Rinden only once before and had no desire to return. That I had come back for the sake of Iris and Gordon surprised me more than I cared to admit.
It was morning when Cassiel and I found ourselves in the club, not that mornings meant much when one couldn’t see a thing outside. We had partaken of a quick breakfast back at the hotel – whatever the vending machine was offering – and had set off at once on our search. The club would be a good place to start, although Cassiel was not saying anything. Actually, she had not said much all morning. She may not have managed to get much sleep but at least she had stopped crying all the time.
The staff of the club were in the process of cleaning the place up. The bar was covered with empty glasses and spilled alcohol, and every chair had been placed onto a table so the cleaners could slap a mop across the floor. There were not many people in the club, which was not surprising since it was closed, and I looked around for someone who might be in charge.
“We’re closed,” a woman said. She was tall, wearing clothes which were an attempt at casual but which cost more than a halo ring dust miner earns in a year. Her eyes were narrow and suspicious and her cheeks were somewhat prominent, made more so because she held her head high. She was precisely the person I was looking for.
