Dark Run

by Mike Brooks

  Drift tried not to show how offended he was by her casual remark. ‘I promise you, you’d be in good and plentiful compa—’

  He was cut off by her leaning forwards and planting her lips on his, one of her hands reaching around to knot her fingers in the hair at the back of his head.

  He kissed back enthusiastically, instinctively. They remained locked together for long, searing seconds until she pulled away, leaving him trailing after and brought up uncomfortably short by the handcuffs which still secured him to the chair.

  ‘I haven’t been in good company since I was seventeen,’ Maiha told him, as conversational as though the kiss had never happened, ‘why should I want to break that habit now?’ She leaned forwards again but this time crossed her arms over his breastbone, so their faces were held a few inches too far away to make contact.‘Now, Drift? I’ve heard worse names, I’ll grant you, but Ichabod?’

  ‘What’s wrong with Ichabod?’ Drift protested, refusing to be fazed by her behaviour. His sporadic sexual encounters with Maiha had always been an odd mix of illicitly snatched and strangely competitive, and it seemed she was feeling nostalgic. ‘Well, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?’ She stood up suddenly, and her fingers went to work on a tiny bow tied at one side of her underwear. ‘Speaking of tongues . . .’

  COME TO NANA

  ‘You managed to persuade her, then?’ Apirana muttered, rubbing his wrists. The huge Maori seemed even bigger in the enclosed space of the elevator, which was currently taking them up to the top storey where Nana Bastard gave her audiences.

  ‘Apparently so,’ Drift agreed cautiously, ‘but I’m not expecting any other favours. We’re still not exactly among friends here.’ Even back in the day, if Cruz had ordered the crew of the Dead Man’s Hand to fire on the Thirty-Six Degrees then Maiha would have undoubtedly done so without hesitation. A familiar face and some sex would count for nothing against any orders from her current employer.

  ‘The list of people who know you’re still alive is growing, you know,’ Micah pointed out, as though that could have escaped Drift’s attention. ‘Can you trust her?’

  ‘No more than I can trust Alex Cruz,’ Drift replied, although he hoped that wasn’t true. After all, he and Mai had kept a secret for the other for several years. ‘They’re both in the same boat as me, though; stones and glass houses, et cetera. We’re all better off just keeping our heads down and hoping no one ever figures out who we used to be.’

  ‘So there’s no chance the Guard Captain won’t pass the details of your former identity on to the biggest source of off-Spine information in North America,’ Micah said. ‘I mean, it’s not like there’d be any loyalty there, or anything.’

  ‘You’re starting to sound like Kuai,’ Drift told him absently, earning himself a glare from the mercenary. The elevator dinged and the doors slid aside, allowing them to exit onto what had once been a high-level promenade of shop fronts. Huge air-con pipes ran overhead, branching off over the open spaces and plunging into walls. Ahead of them, two guards with shocksticks stood flanking Maiha Takahara at a place where the safety railings had been removed. Beyond them, looking to be floating in mid-air from this angle, was the chair in which rested Nana Bastard. She beckoned them forwards.

  ‘Why’re we here, anyway?’ Apirana asked quietly as they stepped out of the elevator. ‘I thought you’d see her on your own.’

  ‘Nana’s request,’ Drift shrugged. ‘Maiha said she insisted.’

  ‘Oh, that don’t sound good,’ the Maori rumbled. ‘My face don’t lie as well as yours.’

  Crap. ‘You know, you might be on the money there,’ Drift muttered. He hadn’t even considered that possibility, but it made sense. You often got the most telling information from the reactions of the person in a group whom you weren’t talking to. ‘Just try to look angry to start with. Micah, look bored.’

  ‘Waaay ahead of you,’ the Dutchman drawled.

  Nana did something with the arm of her chair and the platform glided forwards until it rested against the edge of the walkway with a faint chunk sound. Maiha waited until Drift and his two companions were about six feet away, then held up a hand. Drift stopped instantly, and Maiha stepped aside to give them their first proper, close-up view of the old lady who ran everything below Level 10 in the North Warrens.

  Closer to eighty than seventy, Drift thought instantly, taking in the ravines at the corners of her eyes, the sagging dewlap of skin beneath her jaw, the swollen knuckle joints on her fingers. But just as dangerous as Old Man Kelsier, if not more so. Especially since his wits were still feeling fuzzy; he’d snatched an hour or two’s sleep after his liaison with Maiha had concluded and before she’d arranged this audience, but it hadn’t been enough to recharge his batteries properly. He carefully sketched a bow. ‘Nana.’

  ‘Captain.’ Nana’s voice was strong, almost fruity, and dripped with an Old New York accent so strong you could use it to flavour coffee. ‘I wasn’t going to see anyone else this week, but Captain Takahara here put in a good word for you and that got me curious.’ She chuckled. ‘Truth to tell, most things make me curious, you know? So, what do you need?’

  Drift looked sideways at the guards, and at Maiha’s expressionless face. Mai had denied all knowledge of Kelsier’s whereabouts and had expressed roughly the same incredulity as Alex Cruz upon learning of his query, but he hadn’t expected to be conducting this conversation in front of her, let alone two drones in uniform.

  ‘Ignore them,’ Nana advised, waving a hand after following his gaze, ‘confidentiality is very important to me, and all my employees know it.’

  Drift didn’t ask what happened to those employees who broke it; he reckoned he could work it out. He’d also thought very hard about exactly how to phrase his question, in order to avoid any useless answers which were nevertheless technically true, and had come to the conclusion that the safest course was to avoid an actual question at all. He cleared his throat. ‘I need to know how or where to find the Europan Commonwealth’s former Minister for Extra-Terrestrial Resource Acquisition, Nicolas Kelsier, with the smallest possible chance of him knowing that I’m looking for him.’

  Nana didn’t answer immediately. One of her hands came up to rub thoughtfully at her chin, while those beady old eyes studied him intently. When she did speak, her voice had lost its previous chatty tone and taken on a far more businesslike manner.

  ‘That’s an interesting request. As I understand it, the EC’s been trying to track him down for a time now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Drift said, trying to keep his expression as neutral as possible. Nana’s eyes had rested on his, and he returned her – no, wait. Both of her eyes were focused specifically on his right one. He thought for a moment, then kicked up the zoom as far as it would go. It treated him to a disorienting, lurching view of the old woman’s eyebrow in the right side of his vision while the left side saw her face as normal, but the adjustment of the lenses clearly drew her attention to what she was doing. She started slightly – although he probably wouldn’t have noticed it had he not been looking for it – and the ghost of a smile touched her lips, perhaps with a hint of apology.

  ‘Well, Captain Drift,’ Nana said, as though the little exchange had never occurred, ‘are you acting for yourself here?’

  Drift frowned. ‘Excuse me?’

  Nana pursed her lips, as though his lack of comprehension vexed her. ‘The whereabouts of this man is something actively sought by at least one government. I’m simply trying to ascertain whether you’re here because someone told you to be, or because you’ve got a hankering to see Mr Kelsier your own self.’

  Drift studied her face. Why was she asking this? Would the price be higher if she thought he had a government backing him? Or would the threat of that sort of clout loosen her tongue? She makes a living off information, maybe she’s planning to sell everything on to Kelsier as soon as she can . . .

  He smiled at her. ‘I couldn’t possibly co
mment.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Nana’s face was as blank as his for a few seconds, before it moved into an expression of resignation which matched the sigh that escaped her lips. ‘Well, nothing for it then, I guess. We’ll play it your way.’ She straightened in her chair, fidgeting with a cushion behind her back. ‘As it happens, I do know where you can find Nicolas Kelsier . . . or at least, where he holed up after his little “misunderstanding” with the Europans, and where he was until at least relatively recently.’

  ‘And the cost for this information?’ Drift enquired. There was still a fair chunk of Kelsier’s original hundred grand left, and what he’d managed to gather about Nana Bastard was that her information was usually worth the price: as it would have to be, for her to have any hope of making a living off it.

  ‘You see that cage down there?’ Nana said, nodding to her right. Drift frowned, took a couple of steps and looked over the safety rails. Beneath him was the fighting cage he’d seen earlier: a grimlooking thing of wire mesh and sweat-soaked mats, spattered here and there with blood. It was a far cry from the sterile, advertisement-plastered rings of the Intergalatic Fighting League, whose roster competed in environments ranging from Zero-G grappling bouts to full-contact, full-grav, knockdown-drag-out affairs.

  ‘Yes?’ he replied, uncertain and unhappy about where this might be going.

  ‘One round,’ Nana said simply. He looked sharply back at her, saw her eyes studying him intently.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One round,’ she repeated, ‘that’s my price to you, Captain Drift. We’ll find you an opponent and you try to last one round against him. No submitting, no quitting early. You don’t have to win, you just have to survive, and then I’ll tell you what I know.’ She leaned forwards, and suddenly the resemblance to a predatory bird was back in her face.

  ‘Let’s see how badly you want this information.’

  RUMBLE BENEATH THE BRONX

  ‘This,’ Drift said, looking at the cage in front of him and fiddling with the padded gloves which left his fingers free, ‘is insane.’

  A crowd was gathering and regarding him with some considerable interest, but he was more interested in where he was going to be spending the next five minutes. It didn’t look big and scary. It might have been better had it looked big and scary. In fact, to his eyes it looked rather uncomfortably small, with very little room to manoeuvre.

  ‘What the hell is this going to prove, anyway?’ he demanded, not necessarily expecting an answer.

  ‘You step in that cage and take a beating, Nana’s gonna get a pretty good idea how bad you want this,’ Apirana shrugged. ‘Most men don’t get paid enough to take a shit-kicking for five minutes, no matter how much their boss wants a piece of information. You go in there and you stick it out, she knows that your beef with Kelsier is personal.’

  ‘And what does she get out of that?’ Drift said helplessly. ‘Beyond some sick sense of satisfaction, I mean.’

  ‘Information,’ Micah said. The Dutch mercenary wasn’t looking at the cage at all, but around them. Drift glanced at him and saw his eyes moving from point to point, taking in the guards, the crowds, the raised promenades: everything, in fact. ‘And information gives her protection.’

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘She’s scared of something,’ Micah said, matterof-factly. ‘We’ve got an entire community living down here in a goddamn shopping mall. There’s a whole team of guards, all professional, with your old friend in charge who’s set them at the right places to block access to Nana . . . but it’s not these people she’s scared of. She’s surrounded herself with a crowd which knows its neighbours and knows each other, and somebody’s always going to be awake. They’re like a giant early warning system, because no stranger’s going to sneak in here without someone seeing them.’ He saw Drift’s expression and shrugged, as though his explanation was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Only reason I can think of to know so much is because you really, really want to make sure you know about something before it happens to you.’

  Drift stared at him, then shook his head. He didn’t have time to think about that now, and wasn’t sure how it would benefit him even if it was true. Instead he focused on the ripple of movement passing through the crowd which seemed to indicate an opponent was on his way.

  He’d been expecting some sort of giant, a man the size of Apirana who’d corner him and pummel him with rib-breaking force. Instead, the fighter who stepped into view was perhaps an inch or so shorter than him, although more heavily built, with a flattened nose and ears which looked to have taken more than their fair share of punishment. His hair was short and blond, his fair skin was marked with a smattering of tattoos including one on his chest of a tiger’s face, and he bounced lightly on his feet as he met Drift’s gaze.

  ‘Whaddya know,’ Apirana grunted, eyebrows raised, ‘you might not die after all.’

  Drift snorted. ‘Thanks.’ He nodded at the man, and got an acknowledgement. Still, just because the man wasn’t huge didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t a bloodthirsty maniac; or just very, very good.

  ‘Attention, everyone,’ Nana’s voice rang down from above. Drift jumped, and looked up to see that she’d gained a headset from somewhere. Her voice was projected from what seemed to be speakers underslung from her raised platform. ‘The man in front of you came to me with a question. I have set the price for his answer at lasting one round with Jonathan Limberg. May you all be my witnesses on this.’

  ‘Old lady plays it straight, at any rate,’ Drift muttered. He unzipped his armavest and slipped it off his shoulders, then passed it to Apirana. ‘Fine. Let’s get this over with.’

  He wondered what the Maori was frowning at for a second before he remembered the scratch marks down his chest.

  ‘Oh, so it was that sort of “persuasion”,’ Micah snorted. ‘I might have known.’

  ‘Worked, didn’t it?’ Drift muttered, not feeling in the mood to discuss it any further. Micah opened his mouth to reply but then shut it again; Drift only realised why when Maiha appeared at his shoulder.

  ‘No nutshots, no biting, no headbutts, no eyepokes and no strikes to the throat,’ she informed him matterof-factly, with no hint of her earlier provocative manner. ‘Disqualification is instant.’

  Drift blinked. ‘There are rules?’

  ‘Of course there are rules,’ she snapped. ‘What do you think we are, barbarians? Two of our fighters have gone on to join the IFL! Shoes off.’

  Drift knew better than to question or argue, so he bent down to untie his boots. When he’d pulled them off and stood straight again Maiha inspected him thoughtfully, then motioned to Apirana and Micah.

  ‘Step away, please.’

  ‘Do it,’ Drift told them, and the Dutchman and Maori obediently stood back. Maiha stepped forwards and started to frisk him, her palms passing over him with a businesslike briskness completely at odds with their previous, private encounter.

  Drift sighed. ‘Do you really—’

  ‘Shut up and listen,’ Mai hissed as she reached around him, fingers feeling down his back for some sort of subdermal weapon, presumably. ‘Limberg is good, but you’ll have reach on him, you lanky fucker. Keep moving and keep your jab active in his face. He’ll wait for you to drop your hands and then kick you in the head, but if he gets frustrated he’ll try to get you on your back, and when he does that he tends to leave his neck open. Grab it and squeeze it, and you might get out of this one. Oh, and he’s lefthanded, but his stance won’t tell you that.’ She stood back, her face showing nothing but professional satisfaction. ‘He’s clear,’ she announced loudly.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Nana’s voice declared, ‘into the cage, if you please. That’s if you still want to go through with this, Captain?’ Drift looked up and met her gaze; there was no mockery or gloating there, simply interest.

  ‘Why the hell not?’ he retorted, loud enough for her to hear him. Limberg was stepping through the door which had
been swung open for him, and Drift jogged up to the cage to follow him in. He tried not to hear the clank of it shutting behind him as the sound of a prison cell. Although in fairness, in prison there’s always the chance that your cellmate won’t be trying to knock you out.

  ‘You know the drill!’ Maiha shouted at Limberg from outside the fence, who nodded. Then she turned to Drift. ‘Keep going until you hear the horn!’

  ‘Sure,’ Drift muttered, taking up a stance he dimly remembered; left hand and leg forwards, right leg back, right hand cocked by his ear to swing or ward off punches, chin tucked into his chest. Sure, he’d done this sort of fighting before, but that was the best part of twenty years ago when he was fresh out of high school on Soleadovalle, and he and all his friends were in the gym thinking they were going to be the next ‘Lightning’ Nik Alvarez. In the intervening years his main involvement in physical altercations had consisted of hitting anything with anything until the other person was unconscious or, in more recent times, until Apirana finished off whoever he’d been dealing with and came to help.

  Sadly, that scenario was not an option. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t asked, either, but Nana had been very clear that it had to be him going into the cage rather than the huge Maori.

  ‘Fight!’ Maiha yelled. Someone pressed a button on an airhorn and Drift strode forwards towards the centre of the ring, mainly because he remembered that the one place he really didn’t want to be was backed up against the cage wall with nowhere to go.

  Drift had forgotten the peculiar tunnel vision which took over at times like these. He’d been in his share of fights, of course, but that had always been something more organic; a firefight when an FAS freighter crew had decided to make a stand once the Thirty-Six Degrees had overridden their airlocks and forced a boarding, or a brawl breaking out over a payment dispute at a smuggling drop-off. In those situations everyone was involved and threats could come from anywhere, so you relied on your crew to watch your back while you watched theirs. This situation, where you were surrounded by bodies making noise but the only one you had to concentrate on was standing in front of you . . . this was unfamiliar.