“They saw something,” Zhaff stated.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I had a USF warning sent out to all citizens in the area to keep a lookout for any elderly men braving the cold. One of them displayed signs of guilt, as if he has seen one.”
“Of course you did…You can go back and ask them if you’d like, but people way out here don’t tend to talk to collectors.”
“It is irrelevant. He can no longer help us.”
Zhaff again stopped suddenly and turned to face a rusty door sunken into the corrugated metal backside of a structure beside an overflowing dumpster. It belonged to the hauler repair shop we were looking for. The door was slightly ajar, rattling as the cold air breezed through. I quickly positioned myself at the corner and pulled out my pistol. Zhaff did the same.
“They don’t leave their doors open, either,” I said before using my boot to push the door open just enough to edge in with my pistol aimed. Zhaff stayed right on my heels.
We rushed into an open space filled with inactive machine belts and broken-down vehicles. The only audible noise was coming from a newscast on the view-screen by the front desk that was left on. A report about the bombing in New London was playing, the news finally making its way to the forlorn slums of Old Russia. The garage door adjacent to it was wide open, flakes of snow aimlessly drifting in.
I ducked behind the frame of a deconstructed hauler and signaled Zhaff to take cover by a workbench up ahead. As soon as I went to follow him a bullet glanced off the chassis, the sparks shooting out directly in front of my eyes. I fired off a frantic shot and dove, slamming into the workbench and landing beside Zhaff.
“You never should have come here!” a man yelled. It was without question the Ringer from the Molten Crater. His voice was hoarse from coughing.
“You are in violation of four federation laws,” Zhaff responded, as calmly as ever. “Lay down your weapon.”
“Come and take it, mud stompers!”
The noisy engine of a hauler facing the open garage door turned over. Images of Undina flashed through my mind until I peered around the corner of the table to see the Ringer’s pale arm sticking out the window. He had a pre-Meteorite, powder-based revolver aimed at us. I pulled my head back behind cover when he continued firing in our direction. I counted five more shots, and then it clicked. That was when he hit the gas.
Zhaff and I simultaneously sprang up to return fire. Our pulse-pistols were quieter at the barrel, but they packed two times the punch. Bullets clanged loudly off metal parts and shattered the narrow glass window on the back of the hauler. One of us managed to nick the Ringer’s forearm as his vehicle swerved out onto the streets. It caused him to shriek, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. Soon after, he was out of view and I was left shooting at nothing but snowflakes. Zhaff had stopped as soon as he knew he was wasting rounds.
“Damn!” I grunted once the sound of the hauler disappeared and I finally lowered my pistol. “You hit?”
“No,” he answered. He bent down to examine one of the bullet holes left behind by the Ringer’s gun.
I realized instantly that if it was his first time on Earth, he’d probably never seen an ancient weapon like the one the Ringer had wielded.
“It’s an old-fashioned revolver, pre-Meteorite,” I said. “He probably found it in the owner’s desk. Shopkeepers like them out in the slums. They’re small, unregistered, and easy to hide from robbers…or security.” Despite their age they were also actually fairly cheap on the black market. The wealthy preferred their old-world relics to at least be attractive if they weren’t going to be useful.
Zhaff’s eye-lens tilted in my direction and he nodded. It felt good to finally have something to teach him.
I gestured for him to get up, and we continued to investigate the room. I kept my gun raised as we did, making sure to check every corner. Zhaff had his holstered. He strolled along calmly, as though he already knew we wouldn’t find anybody alive.
“Dead,” he declared, right on cue. He pointed at something behind the front desk, and I skirted my way around a machine belt to see.
The body of a man was slumped against the wall, his head cracked open like a melon. The pool of blood that had formed beneath him was frozen, with a sullied wrench resting in the center right beside his outstretched hand. Signs of struggle were evident, with many of the items from on top of the desk carelessly strewn about. An open drawer revealed a pile of loose bullets that had been left behind in the Ringer’s apparent rush. I got near enough to make sure nobody else was hiding behind the desk before finally stowing my gun.
“Poor bastard,” I said softly. Upon closer inspection I found that the dead man had a fairly youthful look to him. My guess was that he was an apprentice put to work while the shop’s owner was out celebrating M-day. That was when it hit me exactly how sloppy the Ringer really was. He had taken every precaution to get out of New London safely, but as soon as he got off the train at Glazov station it was like he didn’t care about being captured. Murder weapon lying out in the open. Getting spotted on camera right outside. None of it seemed right.
“It appears he is no longer disguised,” Zhaff said.
I buried the unsettling feeling deep inside, hoping that Zhaff hadn’t noticed, and then glanced up. The Cogent had already moved past finding a corpse and was crouched nearby, examining something on the floor. I would’ve been relieved to find someone else as numb to death as I was if I hadn’t already discovered exactly how young Zhaff was. Beneath his hand lay a cane wrapped by a tattered scarf with a sprinkle of blood on the frayed end. Whether it belonged to the murdered apprentice or to Jack Fletcher’s now frozen eyeball lying on top of it I wasn’t sure.
“The Ringer’s death toll is starting to pile up,” I said gravely. “This other one probably startled him and got himself killed.”
Zhaff got to his feet and approached the gaping garage door. He stared outside for a few moments before turning back to me. “The tracks continue toward the border of the Euro-String and into the wilderness.”
“What the hell would he want out there?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he replied, using those words for the first time in our short partnership.
“So you’re human after all.”
I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. Zhaff knelt down by the spots of the Ringer’s blood outside and placed a drop into a reader on his hand-terminal for analysis. I started perusing the shop to see if there were any haulers left in good condition. They weren’t complicated. They were basic, land-based vehicles used to transport goods across distances too short to require the rail line.
“No DNA record on file,” Zhaff said, precisely loud enough for me to hear him across the shop.
“An illegitimate Ringer who’s never been to the doctor?” I replied. “I doubt that.” I spotted a decent hauler in the corner. The belted wheels were a little off track, but it looked like it would run. “Let’s take this hauler after him and find out.” I strolled up next to the vehicle. It was apparently due for repairs, because the physical key was left dangling right outside the ignition. “We’ll call in USF security to clean up this mess on our way.”
I reached in and turned the ignition a few times, but the engine merely sputtered. “This thing—” I was cut off by a clank near the back door. My gun was drawn and aimed in an instant, with Zhaff beside me doing the same.
“Hold your fire!” someone shouted.
A pair of hands rose up from behind a machine belt. I wasn’t sure who they belonged to until I saw a pistol identical to my own held in one of them. I fired a shot five or so meters to the left of him on purpose. It made me feel better.
“Whoa, hold it!” Trevor Cross yelled. He popped up farther so that we could see his face.
“Oh, sorry,” I responded. “I couldn’t tell it was you from here. Old eyes and all.”
Trevor released a nervous laugh and shuffled toward us. He went to lower his arms, but Zhaff said
: “Why are you here, Collector?”
“I heard shooting,” Trevor said. “Thought it might be a lead.”
“Holster your weapon immediately,” Zhaff ordered.
“All right, all right.” Trevor lowered his weapon slowly and slid it into his side holster. “No need to get angry. We’re all on the same side here.”
I tapped Zhaff on the shoulder and whispered to him: “I’ll handle this.” Zhaff nodded, stowed his pistol, and lifted the hood of the hauler I’d selected to start tooling around with the engine.
I kept my gun in my hand and my eye on Trevor. There was no way I was going to trust a Venta Co rat when we had a real lead to follow. “So you just happened to be out here?” I asked him. “You weren’t trying to follow us for a lead, were you? You know how I feel about contract poaching.”
Trevor shrugged. “Hey, we’re all after the same person. I followed the trail same as you did.”
“Right. So you figured out it’s a Ringer, did you?”
His eyes went wide. He nodded, but I could tell he was as shocked as I was when I first saw the Ringer standing next to me in the Molten Crater. He was an awful liar.
“Why don’t you go home, Trevor?” I said. “This is no place for kids.”
“Tell that to your—” He stopped when he noticed the split head of the shop attendant slumped against the wall.
“Like I said. The Ringer we’re after has a flair for killing. I’m sure Venta has a crooked shop owner you could go after, or a streetwalker who isn’t paying dues. That sounds more your speed.”
“Funny, Malcolm. But I’m not the one who let him get away.” He gestured toward the hauler tracks and the spots of blood on the snowy street outside. Then he walked up next to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “How about this: I help you find the Ringer and we split the reward?”
I grabbed his hand as tight as I could and removed it. “I’d rather the Ringer kill me.”
“Don’t be a fool. He went to the wilderness. You know how big that is? If we find him I’ll let you be the one to turn it in. Pervenio doesn’t even have to know I helped.”
Zhaff stopped working and slammed the hood of the hauler shut. “Locating the bomber is our priority, Malcolm. It is true he could provide assistance in the wilderness and benefit Pervenio relations with Venta Co. I will contact Director Sodervall to draft an arrangement.”
“I was wrong about you.” Trevor stepped past me toward Zhaff, who was pulling himself up into the driver’s seat of the hauler. “Listen to him, Malcolm. Think of the headlines, all of us working together in the name of justice.”
Zhaff turned the ignition, and this time the engine clicked a few times and hummed to life. Of course he knew how to fix one. He could do everything, but nothing more expertly than foul my mood. He pulled out his hand-terminal and started typing.
“I thought I told you to keep your mouth shut next time?” I said to Zhaff.
“I apologize, but I am unable to keep my mouth shut and also speak,” Zhaff replied without looking up at me with his eye-lens. “Communication is critical for this mission.”
Trevor snickered. “This guy gets better and better. What do you say, Malcolm?”
I shoved past him and climbed up into the hauler. “Move over, you’re too young to drive,” I said to Zhaff, not even thinking that it was probably true. For once he did something without a fuss. I took my spot in the driver’s seat and wrapped my hands around the wheel. Then I sighed. “All right, hop in,” I said to Trevor.
He was beaming. “I knew your brain wasn’t too withered up. This’ll be fun.” He grabbed on to the side of the vehicle and started to draw himself up into the tight backseat when I hit the gas. The hauler zoomed forward, causing him to roll over the back. He squealed like a young boy as he hit the ground and rolled even though I knew we weren’t going fast enough for him to receive anything worse than a scrape.
“Malcolm!” he hollered behind us. “I’ll kill you!” The echoes of his screams grew softer as we zoomed toward the edge of civilization. The only thing keeping me from bursting out in laughter was the cold air rushing against my face. Leave it to the Earthers of Old Russia to build their haulers without tops.
“That was not advisable,” Zhaff remarked, still unruffled as always.
“We’re doing this alone,” I replied. I reached over with one hand and ended his pending call to Director Sodervall. “He won’t get away again.”
Considering that I had no clue what the Ringer was trying to do, Trevor’s help would’ve made things easier. But I wasn’t sharing the credit, and I definitely wasn’t sharing credits, which Zhaff seemed to be okay with. I wasn’t sure if Cogents even needed money, so it wasn’t his choice to make. I was in charge.
There were no more people for the Ringer to kill where we were going. It was time to put his spree to an end and put what happened on Undina behind me where it belonged.
Chapter 8
There was no wall to pass through when leaving the boundaries of the Euro-String, only a final row of shanties standing in a line and then nothing. Civilization stopped and all you’d find beyond were ruins and wasteland. Most species of life on Earth weren’t as fortunate as humanity when it came to surviving after the original M-day. Wild animals were nearly as rare as diamonds, and you’d have to search high and low to find any foliage growing naturally. Livestock, forests, crops—they were all grown in contained zones along the strings.
I’d chased targets into the wilderness before. Most of them were dead by the time I found them, either frozen solid or starved to death. You could find shelter in the skeletons of ancient cities, but any supplies from the pre-Meteorite world had been used up a long time ago. The Ringer we were tracking wouldn’t last long if we weren’t fast. I had no intention of letting him die on his own.
Zhaff spotted the stolen hauler a couple dozen kilometers away from the string. It was parked in a ditch at the edge of a frozen river that skirted an abandoned city and ran off toward the horizon in both directions. Every building on the other side of it was dilapidated, with entire walls missing on some and rooftops caved in on most.
It was a different sort of emptiness than what we had found in the slums, as if an entire culture had vanished suddenly and left behind only the bones to slowly wither away. The first time I’d experienced the wilderness, a similar sight filled me with trepidation. It didn’t affect me much anymore, but it was hard not to feel a slight sense of mourning.
When we reached the hauler we found it empty. There weren’t any visible footsteps leading in any direction. We’d traveled so far from the Euro-String that the snow had already covered any shallow tracks left behind by the light weight of a Ringer. The frozen river had no cracks on it from being walked upon, either.
The remnants of a bridge were about half a kilometer east, but nothing was left of it except for the tarnished structural members around its landings and a few lonely, metal columns poking up here and there through ice. Still, I had to assume the Ringer had crossed into the forsaken city somehow. There was nowhere else to go.
I switched off our hauler and hopped down over the side. Taking my first step after sitting in the cold for so long reminded me that I wasn’t as young as I used to be. My legs were stiff.
“Looks like he crossed here on foot,” I said. I stretched out my leg and tapped the ice a few times with my foot to test it. It felt solid as bedrock, as if the river had been frozen for centuries.
“The ice is more than a meter thick,” Zhaff clarified. “It would take at least four men of your mass to break through it by walking.”
“Thick enough to drive this piece of junk across?”
“Doubtful. The hauler would be unable to traverse the debris-laden streets in the settlement regardless.”
“All right, then like I said we’ll have to follow him on foot. With the head start he’s had we’ll be lucky if we ever find him in there.”
Zhaff stepped toward the river and turned his
head slowly from side to side, surveying the length of the urban area across it with his eye-lens. “Without more than two of us it would take too long,” he decided. I couldn’t tell if he was taking a shot at me for leaving Trevor behind. “The dense portion of this settlement covers approximately eight hundred hectares,” he continued. “I will message Pervenio Corp to send airships to sweep the area.” Zhaff began typing into his hand-terminal, but I held out my arm.
“Hold off on that,” I ordered, remembering that, as far as I knew, I was in charge and Zhaff had to listen. “We’ll cross here and split up to cover as much ground as we can. If we can’t find any sign of him by nightfall, then I’ll let you make the call. It’ll save them money.”
I knew that we, or at least I, would be paid handsomely for finding the Ringer’s location, but I was still determined to bring back the culprit myself. Even if the carelessness of the mechanic’s murder had me feeling uneasy, it wasn’t enough to sway me from that desire. Getting a short break from Zhaff wouldn’t hurt, either.
“It is unwise to separate,” Zhaff advised. “We have no knowledge of the suspect’s training.”
“He’s a Ringer,” I scoffed. “Here in Earth’s gravity he’ll be about as strong as a child compared with us. Plus I saw him. He looked sick enough to topple over at any moment without even needing the help of our planet. He emptied his gun at us earlier and didn’t have time to grab bullets so I think either one of us could take him.”
“He remains strong enough to crack that mechanic’s skull.”
I bit my lip. “Who knows how many swings it took.”
“I have been instructed to follow your lead, Malcolm. This is, however, the third instance since our meeting when my recommendation has been disregarded. I will be taking note of all such occasions in my task report. Would you still like to proceed?”
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