by Patty Jansen
Two of the dead hypertechs were strangers; the others were barang-barang, young men Melati didn’t recognise. Who normally joined the hypertechs? Mostly angry and lonely youths, smart but without prospects for decent jobs.
So many in this group had become ignored and shunned. They didn’t fit in with the expected barang-barang activities. They had dreams and interests. They wanted something other than to become miners. That’s what made them vulnerable to criminal infiltration, not so very different from the way the New Hyderabad baby smugglers used hopeful and starry-eyed girls.
Melati ended up with an outfit made for a man much larger than her. There was no privacy to change, so she bunched her sarong up around her waist when she pulled the pants on. It felt restrictive and uncomfortable. She had to roll up her trouser legs. The black turtleneck shirt stank of male sweat and burnt plastic, a cocktail of smells that made her think of disintegrated bodies. The sleeves extended to over her hands so she had to roll them up, too.
Then the helmet. It, too, stank. There was a facemask inside, attached to a dust and fine-particle filter such as miners used. Melati couldn’t see the point of wearing that, so she let it dangle down the side, where it poked into her neck. A black shawl went around her neck. The material felt rubbery.
The visor was surprisingly clear and not as dark as she had expected. Movement of her eyes set off a projection of text that scrolled across her vision.
Two fake hypertechs—which she thought were Troy and Jao—were wrestling Paul into a suit. So far, only his eyelids had made an attempt at movement.
“What do we do about him?” Ari asked. He had also changed, but carried his headgear under his arm.
“You and your friend can carry him between you.” The speaker box distorted the voice, but it was probably Jao. “I want you—” He pointed at Melati. “—to be with me, and you two at the back.” Those two had to be Elko and Troy. Melati made note of small differences in their clothing. One wore a broad belt, the other a shirt with sleeves that were too short. The tall one was Elko.
“Make sure you recharge that thing,” Jao said, gesturing at Melati’s gun.
There was a small display on the side of the barrel. “It’s already recharged.” Her voice sounded oddly distorted through the voice box even though she wasn’t wearing the facemask. It was beginning to get claustrophobic in this thing.
Ari glanced at Melati, with a flicker of anger and jealousy on his face. God, Ari was angry about being told to babysit while everyone else did serious stuff. Well, he could have the damn gun, if only he had a licence. Stupid.
“Ready?” Jao said. It sounded like he had recovered a bit from whatever hit he had taken.
Ari put on his headgear, turning into a buggy face.
Jao went first into the corridor, but stopped so abruptly that Melati almost crashed into him.
Tendrils of smoke rose from underneath the floor panels where the plasma gun had hit.
“Hey, what’s that?” His voice sounded distorted.
“Just a plastic fire,” a similarly distorted voice said behind her. Elko grabbed the nearest fire extinguisher, shoved the body aside and lifted a buckled panel—to a blazing inferno underneath.
“Whoa!” He jumped back, and pressed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher. A cloud of white powdery stuff sprayed into the hole. The flames went out. Elko crouched, peering down.
“Make sure it’s all out,” Troy said. “You don’t want any fire going into the leads. It can pop up anywhere.”
“It’s out,” Elko said and dropped the buckled metal sheet.
“Come on, guys, let’s go!” Jao called.
Two figures came into the corridor dragging a third between them. Melati saw herself reflected in their buggy facemasks, unrecognisable in similar gear. The tallest one of the three had to be Ari.
Jao led the way back to where they had entered the apartment. No one in the group spoke while they navigated the mess in the corridor, zigzagging between debris and bodies. The walls and ceiling bore many fresh scorch marks. A hazy layer of smoke hung near the floor, creeping over the ground in the antispinward direction.
They turned into the room where Melati had first shot the aggregate.
The light was still out here. Jao’s pocket comm cast a small pool of yellowish light which lit a small part of the room as he turned. A couple of ceiling panels had come down or hung dangling. A number of boxes had disintegrated. There was flour and oil all over the floor.
The door into the maintenance tunnel must still be open because a stream of freezing air blasted in, but Melati couldn’t see it by the faint glow of the light.
“What a mess,” Jao muttered.
He turned his hand to swivel the light. Patches of blood and sprays and smudges on the walls came into vision. At least four bodies lay strewn amongst the shattered boxes. One of them was tall and dressed in white.
God, no.
Melati crossed the room in quick steps.
Desi’s eyes were open, and didn’t react when Melati shone a light in them. Her mouth was slightly open, and her teeth were stained with blood. A dark, wet stain seeped into the front of her uniform.
Melati knelt next to her. Tears pricked in her eyes. So much death for this stupid scientist. They should never have come here. Desi didn’t deserve this. Rina didn’t deserve this. None of the young hypertechs deserved this.
A male voice said, “Melati.” Jao’s voice sounded far off.
She looked up, but couldn’t see him against the glare of his light
“Let’s go.”
“What about her?” She didn’t understand the way constructs dealt with the deaths of their fellows. They seemed so attached to their brothers and sisters when they were alive, but never seemed to care much after a death.
“We’ll send someone later, if it’s safe. We need to go now.”
He was right, of course.
Melati slipped her hand from her glove and gently closed Desi’s eyes. The skin was cool, but still soft.
“I think we already got the killer,” Jao said.
The same monster that had killed Rina and wrestled Socrates into the drawer at the mindbase exchange. The monster that had tried to kill Jao, and that had fooled the IR scanner into thinking he was dead.
Jao led the way into the maintenance tunnel where the freezing air was blasting out. After they all went in, Troy pulled the wrecked door closed as best as he could, securing it to the door frame with a piece of wire. It might fool someone casually looking into the room, but probably not for long.
Then they were off through the dark and freezing tunnel. Melati followed Jao, hoping he knew where to go. Fortunately, the suit kept her warmer than her clothes had, but she was still shivering.
Behind her, Paul mumbled. His feet dragged over the metal walkway and Ari and Budiman had trouble getting him through tight places. No one said anything about noise.
In fact, there was a fair bit of noise from other parts of the station, the sound of people walking and talking overhead or underneath the passage. Melati listened out for shouts and sounds of fighting, but for now heard none.
Chapter 28
* * *
THEY CAME OUT OF the tunnel in the same place they had entered: the service passage behind the shops. Jao was the first to reach the panel that gave access to the ladder that led down into the dead alley. Melati helped him lift the panel aside. The lights were on in the passage, but somewhere in the distance an alarm went off. Fire?
“How are we going to get him down?” Ari asked.
Jao said, “Me and Elko are going to go down and the rest of you will lower him down the hole.” He descended the ladder.
Elko wormed himself past the others and did the same.
Ari and Melati took one of Paul’s shoulders, Troy and Budiman the other. The light from below made Melati see her own reflection in Troy’s facemask.
“We must get the body to Jas,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t care what else happens, and what that clown wants, but I have to have my Jas back. You’re with us for the station’s people, right?”
“We’ll try our best.” God, she hated being forced to choose sides. Why couldn’t they see that ISF was on the same side as the station?
Jao called from below, “Hey, what are you doing up there? I said we’re ready.”
The four of them let Paul down into the hands of Jao and Elko and then climbed down as well. Melati lifted her facemask for a bit to sniff the air, but could detect no strange smells, certainly not of burning plastic. Yet that alarm was still going off. It wasn’t the main fire alarm; maybe a security alarm of one of the shops.
Ari was the last, and he was just pushing the cover back on the manhole when a blast of thumping music drifted into the alley, together with whoops and shouts.
“Sounds like someone just turned up the volume,” Troy said.
“Lucky us,” Jao said.
“Why?” This was Elko. “They’re having a party in the main hall and we need to go through there.”
Jao gave an exasperated sigh. “I was joking.” He started moving again. “Stay close.” This to Melati, and to Ari and Budiman, who carried Paul, “Let him walk as much as he can.”
The passage that led from the market hall to the docks was quieter than usual, even at this time of the day. Many shops were closed and the warung owners had packed up their wares, probably because people expected trouble, or because they didn’t trust the youths coming to the party, or the foreign refugees, or both.
The alarm Melati had heard came from a control box on the wall, where lights flashed red. It wasn’t particularly loud, and people walking past were ignoring it.
Troy stopped, opened the glass cover over the front of the box and pressed a few buttons at the control panel. The alarm kept blaring.
“Oh, well, it was worth a try.” He shrugged and shut the panel again.
“What is that for?” Melati asked.
“It’s a data-storage box, probably for the businesses here. I have no idea why it’s making that sound. I didn’t even know it had an alarm.”
Melati thought of an alien network and sentient mindbases hiding inside computers trying to evade capture. The thought made her shiver.
A bit further up the passage, another box was doing the same thing. That was too much of a coincidence, right?
Some teenage boys had forced open the door to a shop opposite the data box. It was dark in the shop, but by the light that came in from the main thoroughfare, Melati spotted one of them carrying an armful of clothing.
Elko yelled into the opening, “Hey guys, whatever you’re doing in there, come out now.”
The boys ran. They were all barang-barang, skinny, filthy and young, probably those who lived in the back alleys of the BC block. Those who had been displaced by the arrival of the refugees, who were desperate and hungry and now had no place to live.
A bit further, a couple of them stood around a locked-up warung stall, clearly trying not to look suspicious. One of them raised a hesitant fist, and then turned around and pretended not to have seen Melati and the others. Clearly, he had expected some kind of response from hypertechs.
Melati started to feel seriously claustrophobic inside the mask. She wanted to turn her head to see who was behind her. Bits of electronics encroached on her vision. The corners of the visor had various tiny wires. That annoying red text kept scrolling across her vision, with questions like
In the market hall, a steady stream of people was coming past the B sector checkpoint and walking towards the main station hall, towards the noise and light.
They were no longer only miners, but all kinds of young people. Some of them, too, were sekong.
She caught some snatches of conversation about the party.
The greatest show you’ve ever seen.
We’ll show the newcomers who we are and what we do.
Things are going to change from now on.
Slogans Harto had used. A sense of dread came over her. She could stand against Harto at the election, but the evidence was that he had already won the hearts of the young and bored, of those who wanted to fight. Those who wouldn’t shy away from engaging enforcers or even ISF in tussles. They would never listen to voices of moderation, nor accept leadership of someone with a foot in what they perceived as the other camp.
Being in the council was not about facing ISF or StatOp. They were not the enemy, and as long as people didn’t see that, the real enemy crept around unnoticed, feeding on discontent.
The closer they came to the main hall, the louder the music got. Red and pink light flashed into the corridor, and the floor vibrated with the noise.
The entire floor of the hall was a heaving mass of people. Miners, teenagers, sekong. God, it looked as if everyone in the station under the age of thirty was here.
The temporary rope barriers had been moved against the far wall.
The hypertechs had built a couple of towers out of scaffolding, and long strings of lights hung between them, shining down on the heaving crowd and winking on and off in time with the music. The jaipongan band was on a stage in the middle, surrounded by huge sound boxes. Some poor soul had carted most of the gamelan instruments from the Bintang Club, and at least ten players were on the stage, together with an electric bass, drums and an electric saxophone.
“That way,” Jao said, jerking his head. He had his IR sensor out and pointed it at a hypertech who stood on top of one of the towers observing the crowd.
Melati looked over his shoulder. The screen showed a mass of moving people-shaped shadows at the bottom, but nothing at the top of the tower.
Another aggregate.
Jao said, “Try to move between the people as much as we can. Split up, but try to keep each other in sight. You two in the middle.” The latter to Ari and Budiman. Paul had regained some use of his legs, and probably made a good enough imitation of a drunk. Except hypertechs didn’t drink, did they?
God, any minute now someone—like a real hypertech—would ask them what they were doing and who they were.
Melati followed in the path that Jao cut through the crowd. It was hard to see inside her mask and all she could do was try to keep his back in view. He held one hand on his hip where his gun was hidden under his jacket.
Many in the crowd were unfamiliar to her. Most of them had pale faces and straight hair. Melati assumed they were New Pyongyang refugees. Many of them stared at the hypertech masks from the corners of their eyes. Some turned around and elbowed their friends.
Melati didn’t know where to look. She was sweating inside the mask, and it horribly restricted her vision in the crowd. She felt faint and clumsy. The unused facemask cut into her neck. People bumped into her. She was afraid that someone would discover the gun, or that someone would come out of a corner where her vision didn’t reach and attack before she had a chance to defend herself.
The lift to the ISF sector on the other side of the hall stood out like an unreachable oasis of sanity. She spotted the silhouettes of a number of guards at the railing of the platform that looked out over the hall. From where she was, it seemed impossibly far away.
Behind her Troy muttered, “What the . . .”
Melati looked over her shoulder across the gravity-curved floor.
A lot of people had turned to the other side of the hall, where the main lifts to the large-ship docking deck had been off-limits for days.
The lights above the lift flickered in time with the music. Hypertechs on the towers directed beams of light at the lift doors. People started cheering.
The lift doors opened. Inside the bluish light of the cabin stood two men. One of them was Harto, the other Pandyakhar.
The partygoers burst into cheers.
Pandyakhar came out of the
lift.
The music stopped and someone brought a microphone, which Harto took. A hush fell over the crowd.
“We wanted to give you a surprise in return for our support.” His voice boomed through the hall. “We thought long and hard about what sort of surprise would be useful, and would be more than a token gesture that doesn’t mean anything in a time that we face hardship.
“Well, here is our gift to you. These lifts have been out of operation for the last few days, and everyone wanting to go to work has had to use the small lift. Many of you, of course, have not been able to work at all, and no work means no money and with that comes a whole lot of things you are sadly familiar with.
“Because you haven’t worked, the factories have been running nowhere near capacity. No ice, no fuel, no sales to ships, and no money coming into the station.
“There was never a clear reason for StatOp to stop us working. No reason at least beyond wanting to gain control over us and wanting to spy on our every move. So, with our friends here, and our hypertech friends, we have opened up the lifts once more. If you go up to the large ships deck, you will find a mining vessel there. You can go inside and it will take you to collect ice. When it comes back, it will deliver the ice to the factory and the fuel back to us. We will sell it to private ships. We will use the money as we see fit. We will run our own operation. We will determine our future!” He balled his fist.
A huge cheer went up in the hall.
“Who will come on the first shift?” Harto yelled.
A number of men ran into the lift, and more of them followed until the lift was full. A voice boomed through the official announcement system of the hall, in Standard. “Anyone who leaves this hall through the lifts will be prosecuted.”
The man repeated this a few times.
People in the crowd started yelling protest. One youth climbed on another’s shoulders and smashed in the loudspeaker.
The disembodied voice continued. “Please move away from the lift. Please move away . . .”
Harto yelled over the top, “Come and join us, little people. We will show them who is the boss in this station.”
