Skybreach (The Reach #3)

by Mark R. Healy

  “They’re scared. They’ve seen the footage from Link, and they know there’s a very thin line between safety and mayhem.”

  “I guess so.”

  He considered for a moment. “What about Silvestri? I haven’t seen him around here much over the last few hours.”

  “He’s been rotating around, keeping an eye on things.”

  “Keeping an eye on you, I’ll bet.”

  A broad grin spread across her face. “What’s the matter, Knile? You jealous?”

  “No.” Knile shifted uncomfortably. “He just seems to be keeping you very close lately.”

  She leaned down and gently placed a hand on his knee, her face close to his.

  “You don’t have to worry about him,” she whispered. She stared at him for a moment longer, the corners of her mouth curved upward slightly, and then she turned and stalked away.

  Knile frowned as he watched her leave. He wasn’t particularly reassured by what she’d said. In fact, he was pretty sure that she was having fun with this whole scenario. She was probably laughing–

  “Knile!” Yun said, interrupting Knile’s train of thought. The tech appeared at the door. He took a hurried sip from a cup of coffee and blinked rapidly, as if staving off exhaustion. “Have Holger and the other brawlers supplied samples yet?”

  “I haven’t seen them,” Knile said.

  Yun made an exasperated sound in the back of his throat. “Give him a call, will you? We need those guys processed before nightfall. They’re hitting a weapons cache tonight up on Seventy-Two, and that could take hours. We might not get another chance with them.”

  “Yeah, okay. Hey!” Knile called as Yun turned to leave.

  “What?” Yun said. He stopped abruptly and inadvertently slopped his coffee on the floor, grunting in annoyance once again. “Terrific,” he muttered.

  “How are the chips coming along?”

  “Getting there,” Yun said, wiping the front of his shirt. “The first couple of prototypes were bunk. Didn’t come out right. The next one is looking promising.”

  He disappeared without waiting for a response, and Knile pulled out his holophone and began scrolling through his contacts for Holger’s number.

  He stopped, spotting a number that was unfamiliar to him, and then he suddenly remembered what it was.

  The number Hank gave me. What did he call it? The longwave.

  Knile had completely forgotten about the number after the explosion, the flight from Duran, the broadcast from the Consortium. The lockdown, the riots.

  It had been a hectic time. It was no wonder that it had slipped his mind, he supposed.

  Knile stared at the digits on the screen, wondering who it could be. Who would have contacted Hank in order to reach Knile? It didn’t make sense.

  Perhaps it was one of Knile’s old contacts, someone who had heard of his return. Or, on the other hand, it could have been one of his old enemies hoping to track him down.

  I should delete it. I don’t have time for this shit.

  Still, curiosity was beginning to get the better of him. His intuition was telling him that he needed to get to the bottom of the mystery, as odd as it seemed.

  The DNA sequencer beside him beeped as it completed its analysis. He glared at it in annoyance. If he returned his attention to the machine, he would be forced to spend the next half an hour filtering the data as Yun had instructed, preparing it for encoding with the algorithm. He would be trapped there while the puzzling question of the longwave gnawed at him incessantly.

  He looked back at the phone.

  It can’t hurt. One quick call and then I can get on with things.

  He selected the number of the longwave, got up and paced over to the storeroom nearby as it began to ring.

  Surprisingly, someone answered almost immediately.

  “Hello?”

  There was no video feed, and Knile didn’t recognise the voice.

  “Who is this?” he said.

  There was a pause. “Knile?”

  “I said, who is this?” Knile said.

  “It’s… it’s Ursie.”

  Knile stopped pacing and stared blankly at the wall, disbelieving.

  “Ursie?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “What is this? Where are you, Ursie? What do you want?”

  “Look, I know you hate me,” she said quickly, running her words together, “but please don’t hang up on me. Please.”

  “I don’t get it. Why are you calling me?”

  “I can explain all of that. Just don’t hang up.”

  “I won’t make any promises. You might as well start talking and we’ll see how it plays out.”

  “Listen, I’m up in Habitat Thirty-One.”

  “Huh? Where’s that?”

  “It’s what you call Habitat One. That’s not its real name. Anyway, it’s complicated.”

  “I’ll bet.” Knile glanced at the doorway, feeling like an errant child who was doing something he shouldn’t, and fearful that his parents might walk in. “Go on.”

  “Things didn’t work out for me up here, Knile. My Sponsor, the guy you met on the roof – his name was van Asch. Turns out he was a psycher like me, only he saw his abilities as a curse. He wanted to experiment on me to find a ‘cure’.”

  “I think I might have floated that possibility to you at the time,” Knile said, his voice filled with irony.

  “Yeah. You were right about that, too.”

  Knile glanced at his watch. “Ursie, I’ve got a lot to do here. Is there a reason you went to all this trouble to get in touch with me?”

  “Yes, there is. First, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about what happened between you and me. When the whole thing started I figured you’d be some criminal, some dumb mark who didn’t deserve a passkey in the first place. I figured it would be easy to take it, that I wouldn’t feel a shred of remorse afterwards. But as I got to know you on that climb, when I found out the things that had happened to you… in the end I didn’t really know what to do.”

  “I don’t remember you having any misgivings about hopping on the railcar.”

  He heard her sigh. “I know that you must hate me–”

  “Will you stop saying that? I don’t hate you.”

  She hesitated. “You don’t?”

  “No. But I don’t trust you, either.”

  “Yeah. I deserve that.”

  “Anyway, I’ll say this, kid. You played the game better than me. You earned my respect. I can’t say that I enjoyed it all that much, but it was something that needed to happen to me.” He thought of how Ursie’s deception had brought him to the realisation that he couldn’t leave the Reach without Talia and Roman. “You made me learn something about myself. That wasn’t your intention, of course. It was just an indirect byproduct of our encounter. You didn’t mean to lead me to any sort of revelation, but I’m grateful to you for it anyway.”

  She was quiet for some time, so long in fact that he began to wonder if she was still there.

  “Thank you,” she said finally. She sounded as though she were on the verge of tears. “That means so much to me.” He heard her sniff noisily. “I want to make it up to you, Knile.”

  “Make what up?”

  “I want to help you get off-world. That’s as long as you still want to.”

  Knile chewed his lip. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m sceptical here, Ursie. For all I know you could be working for the Consortium. You could be trying to drill me for intel right now.”

  “I’m not doing that, I swear.”

  “And like I said, I don’t trust you.”

  “If I could prove my honesty to you, I would.”

  “There’s no point arguing that.” He frowned. “How could you help, anyway?”

  “Well,” Ursie said uncertainly, “I haven’t been well over the past few days. I had to kill van Asch to get away from him–”

  “You killed the guy?”

  “He was trying to des
troy my mind, okay? I defended myself the only way I could.”

  “How did you kill him?”

  She paused again. “I’m not sure exactly. We were just tearing at each other with our minds, and then he was dead somehow.”

  Knile considered the ramifications of that. Was Urise able to kill people with her thoughts? Exactly how powerful was her mind? Although he didn’t know specifics, it was a scary concept.

  “Knile? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “I was defending myself against him. That’s all I know.”

  “If you say so.”

  “If you think this is too weird, if you don’t want my help… just say so now. I’ll understand.”

  Knile thought it over. Although he didn’t know exactly what to make of Ursie’s sudden reappearance, he had to admit that he was intrigued. Despite his doubts about her motivation for helping, a part of him wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay,” Ursie said, sounding relieved. “So, like I said, I haven’t been well. But in a few weeks, maybe a month, I should be settled in here. I’ll have my strength back, and then I could help you out. Gather some information, maybe.”

  “A few weeks?” Knile said dubiously. “Ursie, do you have any idea what’s going on down here in the Reach right now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The insurgents, the bombings. The lockdown.” He waited for a response, but she said nothing. “The Reach is falling apart, Ursie. There might not be anything left standing in a few weeks.”

  “What?” she breathed. She sounded shocked, numb. “When did this happen?”

  “The last couple of days.”

  “I’ve been in hiding, sick… I didn’t know. God, Knile. I’m so sorry.”

  Knile could hear the sorrow, the pity in her voice. The confusion. He’d always prided himself on reading people, and even without being face to face with her, he decided that what he was hearing was genuine. She really hadn’t known what was going on.

  However, that still had no bearing on whether or not he could trust her.

  “There’s nothing you can do, Ursie. Thank you for the offer, but it’s going to be impossible for me or anyone else to leave now.” He wondered if she was reading him in the same way he’d just read her, if she saw through the lie. “We’re going to find somewhere safe to live, far away from the Reach. I suggest you do the same.”

  “No,” Ursie said adamantly. “I’m going to help. I can’t just sit by and watch this happen.”

  “There’s no point.”

  “What? I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, Knile. I thought you’d been working for years to get off-world. It’s all you ever wanted.”

  “It just can’t be done. I realise that now.”

  Ursie made a frustrated sound. “There must be something I can do.”

  Knile considered for a moment. Although he didn’t want to give away information about what he and Skybreach were attempting to do, he knew that if Ursie could provide legitimate information about the habitat, that certainly could be beneficial. In many ways, it was the missing piece of the Skybreach puzzle. He took a moment before replying, ensuring his reply was as emotionless as possible.

  “If you could find out some information about the habitat – floorplans, routines of the Redmen, or whatever, I might be able to sell that to someone down here who’s trying to get off-world. Could earn me a lot of creds, y’know?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “It could help me get started on a new life.”

  “I’ll do what I can. I know a guy in maintenance here who might be able to help me.”

  Knile sighed. “Listen, Ursie,” he said, real compassion in his voice now. “If you’re really sick, you shouldn’t be attempting this kind of thing. You should try to find a way to get to safety. I mean it.”

  “You’ll hear from me soon, Knile. I won’t let you down.”

  The call terminated, and Knile stood there staring at the blank screen trying to make sense of it all. Was this for real? Was Ursie really trying to make up for her past indiscretions? Or was this a ploy by the Consortium to throw Skybreach off kilter?

  Knile heard movement behind him, and when he turned, Silvestri was standing in the doorway.

  “Who were you talking to, Knile?” he said.

  Knile slid the holophone back in his pocket. “I may have a contact at the other end of the Wire.”

  22

  Murtas flicked the switch on the terminal, shutting off the images of depravity and wanton destruction, and sighed.

  “I’ve seen enough,” he murmured.

  He’d been trying to delay this moment since he’d received the phone call from Administrator Valen. Now, judging by what he’d seen on the screen, the time for procrastination had well and truly passed. He had to act, or suffer the ignominy of losing face – not only with his peers, but with Valen and the rest of the Consortium as well.

  He wasn’t afraid of what he had to do. In fact, there wasn’t anything much that scared Murtas Dux. The reason for his reluctance stemmed more from the fact that he despised those cretins below, the filth that infested Gaslight. Murtas regarded them as parasites, lower than cockroaches. Normally he preferred keeping one hundred levels of the Reach between himself and them where possible. Who knew what diseases he might contract from simply setting foot there?

  Gaslight was thick with squalor, with sin. It was no place for an honoured member of the Crimson Shield. He felt pity for his brothers who were stationed down there, those who were forced to put up with the stink of it every day.

  Murtas had wanted to avoid trampling through that sewer if he could help it.

  However, the Enforcers had failed to bring any kind of order to the place in the face of the rioting. In fact, many of them seemed to have broken ranks, shedding their uniforms and turning tail like the cowards they were. That left Murtas with little choice but to intervene.

  They would pay, all of them, for making Murtas sully himself in this way.

  Do what you have to do, Murtas Dux, Valen had told him. Just bring order to the Reach until we can get our people out.

  “Yes,” he said to himself. “I will do what I have to do.”

  He turned away from the small round window that looked out upon the orange sky. On the bed, Faith stirred languidly beneath the sheets. Her lithe figure was outlined deliciously under the silk, and as she sat up her chestnut hair spilled across her bare shoulders.

  “Why are you dressed, baby?” she said, her voice thick with sleep.

  Murtas glanced down at his attire. He wore his full battle armour: high tensile ceramic plating across his torso, arms and legs; gauntlets; boots, all glinting with a metallic crimson sheen, apart from the thin strips of gold that ran across his shoulders, the markings of the Dux. In addition, his short sword hung at his hip, and a pulse rifle was slung across his back.

  “I have business to attend to.”

  Faith swept the hair out of her face and smiled. “You are so fuckin’ sexy in that getup, baby. Seriously.”

  Murtas stepped over to the bed and yanked the sheet off, exposing her naked body. Faith made no attempt to hide herself, easing back down to the pillow and opening her legs with a coquettish smile on her face. Murtas allowed his eyes to run over the body, taking in the honey colour of her skin, the curve of her breasts, her dark nipples. As he drew his eyes down further she slipped a hand between her legs and allowed her fingers to slide suggestively back and forth.

  Murtas briefly toyed with the idea of taking her right there, but knew there wasn’t time.

  “Hold that thought until I return,” he said, favouring her with a slight smile.

  Faith made a playful, disappointed sound as he stalked away.

  Outside the door of his quarters, Dixon was waiting for him.

  “Punctual as always, Dixon,” Murtas said, closing the door behind him.

  The old
man grunted. Dressed in his own battle gear, Murtas couldn’t help but think, not for the first time, how strange it was that a man of Dixon’s age still wore the crimson. His face resembled a gnarled piece of wood that had been left under the baking hot sun for a score of years, lined with deep furrows that remained unchanging no matter what expression he wore. He was as tough as nails, no doubt, but that did not change the fact that he should have been sent back to the Citadel years ago and given a vocation more befitting of his age.

  “I saw Faith from Administration enter your quarters last night,” Dixon said gruffly. “She has not yet come out again.”

  Murtas hitched up his belt and gave Dixon a cool glare. “Do you sit out here and watch my door all night, old man? Is that your idea of entertainment?”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s my cleaner.”

  Dixon narrowed his eyes. “What exactly does she spend ten hours cleaning?”

  Murtas smiled wolfishly. “I would love to tell you some time. I really would.”

  He began to walk away, but Dixon held out a gauntleted hand to bar his way.

  “You’ve fallen into sin, Murtas Dux,” he said acidly, emphasising Murtas’ title without any attempt at subtlety. “You forget your station.”

  “And you forget yours, Dixon Evocatus. Who are you to question your Dux?”

  “If the Citadel knew–”

  “You earned your title by returning from retirement, yes? A most admirable sacrifice.” Murtas drew himself up. “I earned mine through hard work and commitment. Through battle. I was made Dux with the blessing of the Citadel itself.”

  Dixon’s hand dropped away, and some of the fire went out of his eyes.

  “Yes, I know–”

  “And since we’ve been stationed at the ass-end of the Outworlds, cast down amongst brigands and scum who are not even worthy of drawing breath, I will conduct my own affairs as I see fit. I will answer to the Citadel if they should order me to do so, but to no one else. Is that clear?”

  Dixon stepped back. “Yes, Murtas Dux.”

  “Good. Then let us do what must be done.”

  Murtas swept along the corridor and Dixon fell in behind, silent now after his reprimand, but Murtas knew the peace wouldn’t last. The old man sometimes seemed to think that he was fifty years younger, still a ranked officer. This was not the first time he had spoken out of place, and it wouldn’t be the last.