How Dark the World Becomes

by Frank Chadwick

  “Hello,” I said. “My name is Sasha, and I’m going to keep you safe and get you back to your family. Do you understand?”

  The boy nodded, but the girl looked to Marfoglia, who translated in what sounded to me like perfect aGavoosh—clicks and glottal stops like a native. The girl not speaking English was a problem; we’d need to work out some simple words so she and I could communicate in an emergency. Well, I had a couple words of aGavoosh, and it wouldn’t kill me to learn a little more.

  “What are your names?” I asked.

  “Barraki,” the boy answered.

  The girl must have figured out the question from his answer, because she said, “Tweezaa.”

  I held out my hands.

  “Take my hands,” I said. The boy took my left hand right away. The girl looked at Marfoglia, who said another couple words in aGavoosh and nodded, and then the girl reluctantly took my right hand.

  “Barraki. Tweezaa. I’m not just something you see and hear. I’m something you can touch. I want you to feel my skin, how warm my hand is, and remember how it feels, so you’ll remember I’m real. And remember I’m going to get you home safely.” I squeezed their long, bony little hands, and Marfoglia translated, but the girl looked away and said something softly.

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “She said, ‘There is no home,’” Marfoglia answered, and her voice had a catch in it.

  The funny thing is, I don’t even remember deciding to go along as their bodyguard. I just knew I was. And all of a sudden, a lot of things started looking clearer. There just might be a way out of this mess for all of us.

  Have you every noticed how often happy thoughts like that come right before a disaster?

  My comm link tingled behind my left ear. Then it stopped. Then five seconds later it tingled again, and stopped.

  “We’ve got company,” I told the three of them.

  EIGHT

  I expected more of an argument. When I told Marfoglia she had thirty seconds to grab the passports and identification we’d need, she did it almost that fast. She started to say something about getting dressed before we left, but she looked at me and something she saw in my face made her shut up—it was probably the fear. If I was afraid, she better be too. And believe me, I was.

  We were out into the hallway in under sixty seconds. I’d studied the floor plans before I broke in, so I knew there was a stairwell at the end of the hall—the far end, of course, on the other side of the elevator foyer.

  “Tell the girl I’m going to carry her and it will be okay,” I ordered. Marfoglia told the little girl—I couldn’t remember her name. Her eyes, already big with fright, got bigger and her ears flared out in alarm. She shook her head and reached out to Marfoglia.

  “I’ll carry her,” she said, but that would just slow us up.

  “Sorry, little girl,” I said, and scooped her up as I started to run. “Haul ass, you two!” I ordered over my shoulder. The girl gave a little cry when I picked her up, and held her arms stiff across her body, keeping them between us, but she didn’t cry or struggle, so I was okay with that.

  We got to the stairwell before there was any activity from the elevators. I was there first, but Marfoglia and the boy were close behind me, and I closed the fire door behind us—no way to lock it, of course.

  “Up,” I ordered, and started taking the stairs two at a time, still carrying the little girl.

  “Wait!” Marfoglia shouted from behind me. “That’s the wrong way!” Her voice carried and echoed up and down the concrete and stone stairwell.

  I stopped, turned around, and put my finger to my lips.

  “Quiet!” I ordered, but softly. “Sound carries a long way in here. The right way may be full of bad guys, so just shut up and follow me.” While we were talking, I shifted the girl from my right arm to my left and pulled the gauss pistol out of the pocket of my slacks. She started to make an “ooo”-ing sound—not really crying, but getting warmed up for it. I looked at her and shook my head. Not now, little girl. Cry later.

  She stopped making the sound, but then she kicked me in the stomach—not hard enough to really hurt, just enough to let me know that she was really frustrated with the travel arrangements. Lack of a common language is really no barrier to communication, provided your message is sufficiently emphatic. Despite the situation, I’d probably have laughed, but it just would have pissed her off more, and I had a feeling that this was a lady you crossed at your peril.

  I started running up the stairs two at a time again and went up four levels before I stopped. I was panting for breath by then, and told myself it was just because I was carrying the girl. The boy in his black pajamas and purple Chinese silk robe was right beside me by then, watching me to see what we’d do next, and Marfoglia wasn’t far behind him.

  “We’ll take the elevator here,” I said. “They’ll be coming up to your floor, we’ll be going down in the opposite direction—no chance we’ll run into each other.” The boy looked at me as if I were a genius. Really it was just common sense—foolproof, actually. I mean, think about it. They’re coming from ground level up to her floor. Once we get above their floor, we’ll be taking an elevator down . . . well you get the idea. There’s no way we could run into any of them—absolutely no way.

  The elevator door opened, and there were four of Kolya’s guys in it. They looked at me with that look of stupid surprise that I have seen so many times—that look that says that the last thought they’ll ever have in their life is wrong. For an instant, they wonder what will come next. For an instant, they wonder how this happened, and they wonder how they will get out of this bizarre, unexpected situation. They never, in that instant, actually believe they are going to die. And while, in that instant, they are wondering all of those things, I raise the gauss pistol and shoot them.

  Snap, snap, snap, snap.

  First I shoot the guy in front, who actually has his pistol drawn. Then I shoot the one in the far right corner, so he can’t use the body of the guy in front of him for cover while he draws his gun. Then I shoot the guy in front of him, because he’s in my sight. Then I shoot the last guy, in the corner to my left. He’s actually starting to reach for his gun when I shoot him.

  I shoot each of them once, in the head, and they fall down.

  “Get in,” I said, and I stepped into the elevator, being careful not to trip on a still-twitching body. Marfoglia and the boy had become statues, staring at the interior of the elevator, and the little Varoki girl in my arm began making that “ooo”-ing sound again. The first scent of ozone from my gauss pistol was already overpowered by the coppery smell of freshly spilled blood.

  “Get in, Goddamnit!” I shouted, and the two of them almost jumped into the elevator.

  They jumped in because they were afraid of me. I did this thing to protect them, to save their lives, and then they followed my orders because they were afraid I would kill them next. They knew I did it to save them, and it didn’t matter. They couldn’t have done it—no normal person could have done it—no matter how good the reason, or just the cause. I had become a monster to them.

  That was okay. It would make the job easier. Right?

  * * *

  “They don’t eat a lot,” Marfoglia said almost apologetically, as Big Meg looked through the bag of groceries.

  “No wonder,” she answered. “My brats wouldn’t, either, if you fed them snails and goose liver.”

  “No, that’s all Varoki food,” Marfoglia answered. She was dressed in a pair of slacks and a man’s shirt, both way too big, but on short notice it was the best we could organize.

  “Yeah, it’s Varoki rich grown-up food. Kids don’t like this stuff. Eddy!”

  “Yeah, babe,” her husband, Eddy, answered, already getting up from his chair because he knew the sound of a work order when he heard one.

  “Run down to the Waadi-mart and get a box of redroot porridge. What do you kids like on your porridge?”

  “Brown sugar,�
�� the boy—Barraki—answered at once, and Big Meg snorted in disdain.

  “In your dreams, buddy boy!” she answered with a laugh. Human-compatible proteins are poisonous to Varoki, but they have no problem with our carbohydrates—unless you consider refined sugar hitting the bloodstream as alcohol a problem. Brown sugar on his porridge would have left him drunk on his ass. “He try this scam on you?” Meg asked Merfoglia, and she shook her head. No, he’d probably been in shock when he got to her place. Now he was coming out of his shell.

  Meg rattled off a short, sharp string of aGavoosh to Barraki, which I didn’t catch any of except shaashka, which I knew was a small burrowing animal transplanted here from Hazz’Akatu, the Varoki home world—known for stealing food and being hard to catch. We’d probably say weasel boy. Funny, it never occurred to me how similar my name was to that animal’s until just then.

  The girl—Tweezaa—giggled when she heard Meg chew out her brother in aGavoosh. Barraki just smiled shyly and looked down, ears fluttering gently while a soft iridescent blush spread over his neck and face, and all of a sudden he wasn’t just some victim anymore—he was a smart kid, full of mischief, and I started liking the little weasel boy.

  Marfoglia didn’t react at all, and didn’t look at me when I spoke. Pretending I wasn’t actually there was, I suppose, her way of not dealing with what she’d seen in the apartment building. She hadn’t spoken to me since getting into the elevator. When I told her to do something, she’d do it, but she wouldn’t look directly at me. She’d look off to the side while she was listening, as if the voice were coming from inside her own head, not from the thing standing next to her.

  The kids were getting over it a lot quicker—they’d actually seen more killing in the last week than Marfoglia had in her whole life, and they’d seen what happened when you didn’t take down the bad guys quickly enough—no more father. Maybe next time no more brother, no more sister. The kids would be okay with me a lot sooner than Marfoglia would, which was fine. This wasn’t a popularity contest; all I needed her to do was follow orders.

  Once Eddy got back, the two kids started putting away porridge as if they hadn’t eaten in a week. Meg’s two older kids had already made friends, at least with Barraki. Tweezaa not speaking English meant it would take longer with her—maybe ten or twenty minutes. Meg’s kids probably spoke more aZmataan than any of us—because they hung out with local Varoki kids, and most Varoki on Peezgtaan were originally uZmataanki—but Tweezaa only spoke aGavoosh. aZmataan is a regional dialect on Hazz’Akatu, the Varoki home world, a national language, actually—but I didn’t know much Varoki history, and nothing from before space travel. All I knew was that aGavoosh was the official language of Varoki government and commerce, kind of like Mandarin was the court language of old China, even though a dozen or more different languages were spoken by the common folk.

  The e-Traak were not common folk—definitely Mandarins.

  With Eddie, Marfoglia, and the kids in the kitchen, Meg and I checked security. Her townhouse was at the end of a dead-end cul-de-sac, and she had two guys with thud guns down front and a light man—a high-energy-laser sniper—covering them from a second-story window. She had three or four more guys hanging around to relieve the others or back them up, as needed, and when we first came in I’d spotted a case of Mamba anti-vehicle rocket launchers stashed in the coat closet in the front hall. If Kolya wanted to make a fight of it here, he’d better bring a combat platoon with him—a dozen thugs wasn’t going to cut it.

  Once Henry and Phil showed up, Meg and I led them into her den and closed the door. We pulled chairs up around her card table and I looked at the three of them in turn, trying to get a feel for how much steel they had left. This was a tough spot. You could argue about whose fault it was we were in it, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was how well these three could stand up under the shit storm that was coming.

  “So, Kolya’s got a mine on your internals,” Henry started. “That’s not good.”

  “Not that good, no,” I agreed. “But I’ve been going over everything I’ve said over the wire since this whole thing with Ricky started, and I think we’re in good shape. I’m careful about anything over the wire anyway. Never thought I’d have a mine myself, but you never know about the guy at the other end.”

  Henry nodded. Loose lips crash ships.

  “The thing is,” I went on, “if I stop using the comm altogether, Kolya’s going to smell a rat. So we need to work out what we’re going to say. It has to be believable, but keep Kolya making wrong moves for the next couple of days. Once I’m gone, the equation here changes.”

  “You sure about this, boss?” Meg asked. “The leaving, I mean. I think we can win this war—on the ground. Kolya’s got a lot of guns, but we’ve got friends everywhere, even inside his organization. The only reason half of his people are with him at all is they’re sure he’s going to win, quickly. If we go to the ‘safes,’ hang tough, keep him from grabbing the quick win—and bleed him—his organization starts to crack, and then all bets are off.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re right, Meg. And if Plan A doesn’t work, we’ll go to ground and fight it out. Well, keep fighting it out, since we’re doing everything we can to make it look like that anyway. Hell, you’ve got the best head for tactics in the Quarter, and I think that if it comes to a hard fight, we’ve got a real good chance to win.”

  I wasn’t nearly as confident of that as I sounded, but sometimes you have to fib a little bit to keep your people from getting depressed. Depression lowers brain function, and I needed everyone’s brain at 100 percent.

  “But what’s winning going to cost us?” I asked. “We can’t take everyone to the safe houses. We can’t hide all of our people, all of their families. That’s where Kolya will hit us. So maybe we’ll win, but it’s gonna cost—and it’ll cost more than I’m willing to pay . . . at least if there’s another way. And I think there is.

  “The way to take the heat off of the organization is to remove me from the equation. Once I’m gone, Kolya’s mind is going to be on me, not you. That’s when Henry steps up, takes over, and makes peace with Kolya. Everything we do between now and then is a setup to let you guys make peace when I’m gone, and that’s how we play it.”

  “What makes you think this thing between you and Kolya is all personal, instead of just a business move?” Phil asked.

  “Everything between me and Kolya is personal,” I answered, and Henry nodded his agreement.

  They sat in silence for a few seconds, chewing it over, but it wasn’t anything we hadn’t talked about already, one way or another.

  “Okay,” Henry finally said. “So, what line do we feed Kolya? You think I play at taking you prisoner and turning you over to him, but you engineer another amazing escape?”

  “No. Kolya has an appreciation for loyalty—not for its own sake, but from a utilitarian point of view. If he thinks you double-crossed me while I was still your boss, he won’t trust you not to double-cross him somewhere down the road. But if you’re loyal to me as boss, as long as I am boss, and don’t make peace until after I’ve run, he’ll trust you to be loyal to him as boss. That’s the key. You’ve got to convince him—with action—that your loyalty is to the position, not to the man.

  “Beyond that, with Ricky gone, he doesn’t have anyone inside the organization to take it over and keep it together. Phil’s still a little young, and we know Kolya won’t make Meg a captain.”

  It wasn’t a coincidence that there were no female rankers in Kolya’s organization.

  Henry thought that over for a while, and then nodded in agreement.

  “Okay. That’s the way.”

  We worked out details for the next hour. We’d keep Marfoglia and the two kids at Meg’s until it was time to leave. I’d rather have gotten them somewhere else, to reduce Meg’s exposure, but somebody had to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t do anything stupid.

  Henry would come up with a
schedule of comm chatter that might fool Kolya long enough for me and the kids to get off-planet in three days, and cover Henry’s, Meg’s, and Phil’s collective backside at the same time. Meg would handle tactical security—getting everyone we could to the “safes,” but also making sure we had eyes and ears where they counted.

  At the same time, Phil and I would be the strike team—hitting them where it hurt most—silver and gold targets, primarily Archie and Bear’s banks. Archie made a lot of his money from pimping, too, but we couldn’t hit that side of the operation without hurting the girls, and we weren’t going to do that; working for Archie was tough enough on them. But by hitting Archie and Bear’s banks, we’d do two things.

  First, hitting revenue made it look as if we were in this for the long haul—a good message to send to the streets if we did have to go the distance, and good maskirovka if not.

  Second, by hitting Kolya’s allies, but not Kolya himself, we put pressure on him, but we didn’t open any wounds—which would make it easier for Henry to make peace with him once I was gone.

  Phil and I were doing it alone, without any other guns, because it cut the organization’s exposure, and it reduced the chance of a leak. In operations like this, firepower means almost nothing; surprise is everything.

  So when you’ve got a plan that good, what could possibly go wrong?

  NINE

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said to Doc Zhan. She took another stitch in my left arm—a bit more vigorously than she really had to, in my opinion. I guess I winced a bit, because Phil the Gil shifted from one foot to the other and then back again, like he needed to pee.