She snapped a glance back just as a military sidearm barked; chips exploded from the wooden face of the warehouse before her, exposing paler material beneath. Mako, sweat cutting clean tracks in the grime coating his face, barked as well, a single obscenity that told her he wasn’t hit and she shouldn’t slow down. She swerved, aware the ribbon of safety was fraying, and skated just on its outer edge, leaning to the left with her feet heel-to-toe like a child playing on a beam.
A massive door had not been fully closed the day of the Event. Now, molding and buckled, it sagged further; there was just enough space for her to nip into a caustic-smelling darkness. She dug her heels in as soon as she wriggled through the triangular aperture, her jacket tearing a little and her hipbag catching on a splinter. She lunged free, spinning to grab Mako’s hand and haul him through.
Why? Well, he was a good shield, and he didn’t want to kill her.
Yet.
“Come on!” she yelled, and his eyes were wide and rolling, their whites glaring. She found his wrist and heaved, his shoulders turning, and the gun behind them spoke again, along with the rising, nasty hum of angry metal shavings resisting a magnet.
“Run!” Mako yelled, shaking his hand free, gesturing her on. “Run!”
So he thought he was going to save her. Svin bent her knees, stuck her ass out, braced her grip on his wrist, and yanked backward as hard as she could, a long hggggn of effort escaping her burning throat. Wood splintered, and he fell through, his own jacket flapping and his rifle tearing more rotting wood from the door.
Inside, hummocks of yellow chemical dust rose and fell, an unbroken sea clinging to a thin strip of concrete shore along the walls. Svin took this in with a glance, and had to choose—yank the sardie up onto his feet and stand right there when Brood fired through the door, or leave the round-faced, makhorka-snorting man to whatever mercy the ghost-eyed asshole would dispense.
Oh, fuck.
Bullets plowed through the thin, dry-rotted wood in a deadly arc, tiny sharpened shafts of golden sunlight touching the dry yellow dunes inside. Puffs of nasty greenish steam rose wherever the light touched, and Svin, flat on the little strip of concrete floor next to the door, stared into Mako’s dark, terrified eyes. His pupils had swollen, his mouth was loose, and she tried to tell herself she’d hit the ground because she’d somehow sensed Brood would aim high. It would have been stupid to risk herself for Mako, too stupid to be believed.
And yet. One skinny-ass rifter with a bad wire in her head, deciding to do something stupid instead of saving her own skin. Someday that was going to bite her.
Maybe today. Mako shuddered. Brood hadn’t aimed too high, after all. Blood welled from the sardie’s back, his filthy moon-shaped face very close to hers. Nose to nose, the sourness of his makhorka-tainted breath brushing her cheeks, she watched the light fade from those narrow eyes as he bled out.
Her hands, quick, clever little paws that they were, were already worming their way under him, searching for clips. Grabbing what they found while she stared at him, watching a tiny spark carried to the end of the long black corridor of his pupils, vanishing under a gust of cold wind.
Brood yelled outside, a long wavering inhuman cry. No, his greed wouldn’t stop him now. Men like him were built for one thing only, and in here where everything else was stripped from you but essentials, he could give full rein to the urge to beat, shoot, kill, destroy. Svin scrambled to her feet, her palms burning from the rough concrete. The yellow dust had found Mako’s ankle and caressed it with a thin lapping tonguelet. His boot was already dissolving, tough leather sending up harsh angular steam.
She scrambled back, keeping to that too-thin ribbon of safety. Anything resting on the floor had been eaten away, iron stairs in the far back corner hanging instead of supported from below. Svin rounded the corner, her shoulder burning against the wall, and Brood kicked at the large warehouse door. A shower of splinters rewarded his efforts, and he kicked again.
Svinga jumped, gracelessly. Metal screamed as she pawed up the stairs, the entire world narrowing to a shuddering, swaying ladder under her palms and boots, blood torn free of her shredded fingers. There was a landing and a turn, and after that it was more solid.
Bitch, look up! It was Ashe’s voice, the sharp clear tone of warning she used in the Rift. Svin’s chin snapped up, a glaring shifting field of shadows and strange shapes—she ducked under the soft silvery streamers hanging from the ceiling, their tips stretching, fluttering to catch at her short, short hair. On hands and knees she scrabbled forward, along a narrow gangplank that had stopped quivering and shrieking under her.
Now stop.
Svin froze, not even daring to reach for the gun in her mapper. To her right and below, the dust moved, piled dunes slithering forward to caress Mako’s prone form. He shuddered once, kicking, but that was only because Brood had shoved his shoulders through the hole they’d made and sprayed him with a short burst of rifle fire—maybe a waste of ammo, maybe not. The sound made the silvery streamers above move uneasily, overlapping echoes bouncing inside the cavernous building, falling dead against the sandy yellow dust. She gapped her mouth as wide as possible, breathing softly though her lungs cried out and her eyes were full of hot water. Her hands throbbed, but she hardly felt them, peering at the bright bar of golden light from outside.
Brood pushed through. Wood splintered and he almost tripped on Mako’s outstretched hand. The dust made a dry rubbing noise, piling on itself.
“Motherfucker.” Brood spat; the light from behind made him a monster shadow.
The Rift don’t do anything, Paco Three-leg had said once, sitting across a small fire from Ashe with his otter-sleek head tilted and his hands wringing at each other. It just lets all-us in-us loose.
Ashe had just told him to speak for himself, and furthermore, to shut up because she wanted to sleep. She never did like philosophy. The Rift was there, they were walking in it, that was all the Rat ever needed to know.
“Oh, you little cunt,” Brood half crooned, his rifle-muzzle sweeping across the dust-dunes. Svin didn’t blink, barely breathed, watching his hulking dark shape in the flood of sunshine. One or two disturbed brittlebees buzzed in his wake, and as Svin’s eyes focused she could see their stings on his cheeks, swelling and darkening rapidly. Maybe they were so heat-drowsy they hadn’t been able to swarm him. “Come here. We got summin’ to talk about.”
He swayed, the rifle moving, its blunt snout seeking, seeking.
The dust made a soft, subtle noise.
“Come out!” he yelled, making a stabbing motion with the gun. “All you gotta do is show me where it is, rifter!” His eyes narrowed. Svin’s pupils, swollen just like Mako’s now, began to pick out details. Thin grains of yellow spilling forward, cringing as they touched the sunshine. More green steam-smoke rose. It smelled like a freshly cut apple, but under that was the heavy nasty scent of digestive juices stirring raw macerated flesh.
He moved not to the right, as she had, but to the left, into deeper shadow. It was probably a good tactical choice, if he hadn’t been in the Rift. Mako’s body twitched again, and Brood’s shoulder slammed the edge of the hole in the door as he leapt back, probably catching the motion in his peripheral vision.
“Come on,” he muttered. The warehouse amplified the words, turned them back on each other. “Come on, sweetheart. Kope sent me to take care of you, make sure you were all nice and protected. I been good to you. Coulda done you a hundred times by now.”
Svinga’s lungs burned. Her eyes did, too, drying out. She refused to blink. Refused to breathe. Crouched silent and small as a rabbit, not even trembling. Quiet as a rat who knows the cat is outside its hole.
Brood stepped sideways again, his back to the wall. Maybe he didn’t see the tangle of silver ribbons hanging from the ceiling, taking advantage of the deeper shadow next to the door’s thin shield. The wall was thicker there, a shed attached to the main building insulating it even further from killing daylight. Maybe h
e didn’t feel the slither of air against sweat-damp skin. Maybe he wasn’t sweating at all, so certain he would flush out the rifter and—
Something flickered. He sent a burst into the yellow dust. The bullets pocked the dune surfaces, threw up tiny puffs of heavy, oily yellow grains. The sand began to whisper, an angry note creeping into its rasp. The gun clicked, a dry nasty sound.
He’d used up all the ammo in the clip. Did he have more?
“Fuck,” he mouthed. Svin saw a single white gleam off his front teeth before the dingy bleached tips of his hair, standing up now that he’d run his hands through, passed within a millimeter of the lowest silver ribbon hanging from the roof.
Fwump. It dropped on him, the entire tangle slithering intestine-like over the interloper. A sucking sound carried it back up, and Brood screamed as he thrashed in its snarled embrace. The thick, shiny ribbons flushed, rubbing each other, and a pattering of crimson hit the dry floor and the yellow dust at once.
Svin let her breath out, softly, slowly. The knotwork mass of ruddy metallic tentacles convulsed once, and Brood screamed again. It kept massaging, a little at a time, and every once in a while that slurping, satisfied noise echoed against the walls. Sharp ribbon-edges rubbed against each other over Svin’s head, but they did not drop on her. They thickened, pouring toward the uvula near the door that had caught a tasty intruder.
It took a long time for Brood’s cries to fade into choke-muffled despair, and Svin watched every moment of it. After a while, she found out she was inhaling each time the mass tightened, and she waited for it to fall into its post-gorge doze before she began the slow, careful work of backing up, soundless, on hands and knees, praying the hungry ribbons in the roof wouldn’t sense her own cargo of meat and copper blood.
52
RED, RED RAG
Dusk came with a thunderous red glow, russet clouds boiling over the shattered city at the heart of the Rift. Morov leaned on the cut-down crutch, mopping his forehead. Barko, right next to him on the sidewalk before the door to their malodorous hideaway, shook his head. “It doesn’t feel any different.”
“What, you’re the rifter now?” There was no heat to it. Morov shifted his leg. The latest painpatch was wearing off; he grimaced. “Fucking Brood, man.”
Barko nodded. His fingers twisted at each other when he wasn’t rubbing the grime deeper into his scalp. His long, mournful face, dark circles under his eyes and his once-broken nose glaring-visible in the ruddy light, puckered itself. “I, uh, almost hesitate to ask. But do you think he … you know, Senkin?”
“Rifter didn’t think so.” And she’d watched Brood, for those long aching hours trembling on the knife-edge. Maybe she’d just wanted to see what would happen, but then, why would she have made any noise or sat up? Or was it just that with Morov gone, whatever tenuous restraint on Brood he represented would also be gone?
“She just might not have said.” Barko, true to form, found the worst goddamn thing to worry about.
“True.” Morov shifted again. He had only one cigar left, and it was a whole one. “It’s possible.” A whole lot of shit was possible in here. You didn’t even have to look at what was likely. “Senkin would watch Mako’s back.”
“So he had to go?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, baldy.” He didn’t even mind the chitchat. It kept him occupied, too.
“How’s the leg?”
“Hurts a bit.”
“Should have set it right before I did the plasma.” Barko’s sigh was familiar. He did a lot of that. Some people were just born to heave one after another. It was a pity, really. The scientist was a decent sort. Must’ve been why Kope sent him, to get any morality out of the way.
Decent sorts didn’t do well anywhere, inside a Rift or out.
“It’s fine.” Morov glanced up the street, scanning as if he were on watch. The amber sheeting on the buildings on one side ran with headache light, thick and golden as honey. It had stretched over the buildings across the street from theirs, too, and even the parts that were caught in shadow ran with that same migraine glow. Red clouds overhead were strangely shaped, blobs of heavier stuff than water vapor. Everything in here was wrong, in one way or another.
“Hey.” Barko straightened, shading his eyes with one broad, filthy hand. “Look at that.”
Morov turned, settling his leg a little more firmly. It ached like a sonofabitch. There was no more plasma left in the medikits; it was a wonder Barko had even found the one hypodermic.
A shadow at the far end of the block moved, hugging the ungolden side of the street. A ruby flutter, a lady’s handkerchief waved from a window. It paled as it hit the ground, and in the rubescent glare, a thin shape swelled and shrank. Morov’s hand dropped to his side, but found only an empty holster.
Losing your sidearm was a court-martial offense. The brig would seem like a goddamn holiday after all this. Asking himself who might have subtracted the piece was stupid. He sure as shit wasn’t going to ask for it back and possibly piss her off.
Unless Barko had taken it, but somehow that didn’t seem likely.
The thin, wavering shape drew closer, each time fluttering a red, red rag. Barko rubbed at his eyes, as if he didn’t believe what he saw. Morov braced himself.
It was the rifter. The fuzz on her head was full of dust, standing straight up. Her face, in that awful glare, had turned into a sere, set icon, the expression that of a deposed queen disdaining the executioner. Tracks on her cheeks had been washed clean, but it was impossible to think of her crying. Those protruding eyes had become large and liquid, full of terrible blank knowledge, and her full, carved lips, barely covering her teeth, had swollen. A trickle of blackness slid from one long narrow nostril, and she bent to scoop up the handkerchief with a stiff, aching motion. Strapped to her back was another load of firewood—sticks, broken pieces of furniture, hedgehog spines that would carry the fire through the night.
There was nobody behind her.
PART FIVE
CORMORANT
53
ACTIVE SERVICE
… since the governing body has seen fit to interfere, further investment in QR-715 is only mildly profitable at best. Attached please find a dossier for A-MAJOR HAN K. OCHKI, the replacement for GENERAL TIMOR KOPELUND. You will note the gaps in OCHKI’s CV, which seem to indicate some classified assignments. Our operative on the ground feels said replacement is dangerous to engage, at least until secondary sources can be plumbed. Said operative, having disbursed funding for a secondary and failed attempt at making objective C-3 (title: CORMORANT) viable, recommends a “watch-and-wait” attitude. Given that said operative has already made contact with new staff at QR-715 and has recruited at least three, as well as keeping contacts with the rifter population, it is recommended that Operative KARL E. ZLOFTER be given a commendation and kept in active service …
—Memo from the desk of Sidney Polkruv, Chairman of Section Committee QR712-QR716, DynaKrom Corporation
54
WHAT YOU REALLY DO
Barko handed her the ration packet. “He shot Mako?”
“In the back.” The rifter swiped at her face with her red snot-rag instead of the blue one, but it didn’t do anything other than smear the dirt around. “I ran.”
“Sure.” Morov didn’t sound like he believed her. “And tomorrow you’ll take us to the fairy-tale bird.”
“If you want.” She laid the rag on her knee. The thin cloth was too dirt-stiff to bend, but she didn’t seem to care. “Might be best to go for the wall, though.”
“Oh, yeah. Everyone fucking dead and nothing to show for it, that’ll go over real well.” The captain stretched his wounded leg out straight, wincing slightly. His cigar—unlit, a whole one—dropped from the corner of his mouth; he caught it, irritably. “Fuck that. We’ve come this far, I wanna see this Cormorant.”
“You sure?” She massaged the silvery pouch with quick, rolling motions. The clean tracks on her cheeks were now smudged over. It did
n’t seem possible for this woman to cry. Maybe she’d run across some throat- and eye-scouring fume, again.
“Maybe heading out of this goddamn place would be best.” Barko selected another ration pouch, handed it to Morov. The fire crackled, a cheery sound. “We don’t have any more plasma, can’t tell if the infection will come back. Or—” Or an embolism, he wanted to say. Or any other goddamn thing.
“Fuckbuckle your strap, baldy.” Morov clenched the pouch in one dirty fist. “It’s all the same. Either we go after this thing and die just like everyone else, or we step outside and have to deal with Kopelund. Might as well get something for all this shit. That is, if this bird-thing exists.”
“It does.” The rifter, solemn-eyed, kept working at her pouch. “Knew a rifter who went in.”
Silence. She stared at the fire, flames reflected in her shining pupils.
“The fuck you did.” But Morov only sounded weary. He gently removed the cigar, placed it carefully on his straightened knee, and began massaging his ration pouch.
“Ashe knew him too. Piotr Stepanovitch Vanich. Snaketooth, we called him. Always slithering out of trouble.” Her mouth turned down at the corners, her swollen eyelids dropping a little, too. “It’s a room. The very center of the Rift. You go inside, and it gives you what you want.”
“A room?” Barko settled back on his heels. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
“A room.” Morov stared at her, forgetting his pouch. It dangled from his dirty fingers. “You’re shitting me.”
The rifter shook her head. “Vanich. Family man. Went in. Came out, rifted all the way to the slugwall. Found out his house been burned. Whoosh, and just like the house, fam all gone.”
Cormorant Run Page 22
