Baen Books Free Stories 2017

by Baen Books

  The punkers cleared a space for us. I took off my pack and set it behind a crate. Facing off with Mace, I watched her pace back and forth, trying to get a feel for her style. She lunged at me, and I dodged, but she caught my arm and swung me in an arc. I slammed into a crate stomach first and grunted with pain. Spinning around, I punched her hard in the torso, but she barely doubled up. I felt as if I’d hit a rock wall. She threw me against another crate. No finesse for this one; she just used raw power to toss me around.

  I dodged, evading her meaty fists, and sprinted across the fight area. She turned, fast for her, but now I knew her weakness. She had power, sure, but I was faster. When she came at me, I danced out of her reach, then lunged in, aiming a punch for her head. She brought up her arms with her wrists crossed and I hit them instead. Not hard enough to stop this mammoth; she barely swayed as she grabbed me. We grappled, fists clenched on arms, until she threw me to the ground. I groaned as I hit the stone. With a grunt, I rolled over and climbed back to my feet.

  So we went, back and forth. Mace pounded the bloody hell out of me. I could dart out of her reach sometimes, but I made no headway against her powerful fists. Nothing stopped her. We kept at it, again and again, until I could barely stay on my feet. I staggered from blow to blow, my left eye swelling up, my nose bleeding. Finally Mace slammed me to the ground so hard, I just lay there, unable to move. I heard her over me, coming in for the kill—

  “Enough,” Jadix said.

  For a moment, I lay still. Then I slowly pulled myself up to my hands and knees. After another moment, I climbed to my feet. My entire body hurt. I could barely see out of my left eye. Mace stood a few paces away. She didn’t look so great, either, with plenty of bruises and her muscle shirt half torn off her torso. She was still standing, though. She gave me just the barest nod, an indication of respect. I didn’t see why, given how miserably I’d lost.

  I turned to Jadix, my arms hanging by my sides, my hair straggling into my face. I wanted to collapse, but I stayed on my feet, glaring with all the defiance I could muster.

  Jadix glanced at her guards. “Go.”

  The three of them left without a hint of concern about leaving me with Jadix. They didn’t even bother to glance back. Yah, I was real intimidating today. I felt like an idiot.

  Jadix sat on one of the crates and motioned to another. “Sit.”

  I sat where she pointed.

  “Got moves,” Jadix said. “Good moves.”

  I hadn’t expected praise. “Mace better.”

  “Mace fights like shit.” Jadix snorted. “All punch, no brain. You got more skill. You get more training, no one beats you.”

  I shrugged. “Like to fight.”

  “Need good fighters for the cartel,” Jadix said. “Good pay. Food. Credits even, you want.”

  I shook my head. “Won’t punk for cartel.”

  “Who else you going to punk for, Bhaaj? This is all you got.”

  I didn’t know which I hated more, her claim that working for her was the best I could achieve in my life or my fear that she was right.

  “Go on.” Jadix motioned to my pack. “Take it. You earn. Get out of here.”

  I stood up and limped to my loaded pack. It hurt like hell to bend over, but I grabbed it without a sound. Then I left the cave. I felt Jadix watching me, as if her gaze was boring into my bruised torso.

  The rocky path outside wound away from the cave through stalagmites and stalactites that had grown until they joined together in columns. I staggered between them, biting the inside of my mouth to keep from moaning.

  “Bhaaj!” The whispered call came from up ahead.

  “Eh?” I squinted. “Dig?”

  She and Jak came out from behind a column and ran toward me.

  “Here.” Jak grabbed my pack. “I take.”

  “Not need help,” I lied.

  “Not helping,” Jak lied back. “Want food.”

  On my left, Dig slid her arm around my waist. “We go home.”

  Jak moved to my right side and slipped his arm around me, above Dig’s arm. I groaned as they pressed against my bruises, but I didn’t push them away. Without their help, I’d never make it home.

  #

  I slept an entire day, the full eighty hours. During the brief times I awoke, Jak, Dig, or Gourd tended to me. Dig put a bottle of water to my lips, and the liquid ran down my parched throat, clear and fresh. Jak brushed my hair back from my face, hovering, his dark eyes intense. When I moaned, he blew hack smoke into my face until my pain receded and darkness closed over me again.

  Gourd changed my bandages, his large hands gentle. He snuck onto a medical site and read up on how to clean my wounds so I didn’t get an infection. Seemed a waste of fresh water, but he insisted. He read something about “nanomeds” in the body, but whatever that meant, I didn’t have them. I’d end up with some fine scars, good for my reputation, the dust ganger who stood up to Jadix Kajada. Yah, right. I was a fool. If I pushed Jadix too hard, even my link to her daughter wouldn’t keep me alive.

  It hurt fiercely when they worked on me, but the next time Jak tried to blow smoke in my face, I grabbed his wrist. I’d seen too many people destroyed by hack, their lives alternating between the hours they spent doped up and their desperate pursuit of whatever they could steal to trade for more. I didn’t want to get caught in the deadening loop.

  “Not need,” I said.

  “Eh.” Jak put down his pipe. “Awake.”

  “Maybe.” I sat up slowly, wincing from the bruises all over my body. Jak was sitting next to me, leaning on one hand, with one leg bent and his other arm resting on his knee.

  “Look like hell,” he informed me.

  “Yah, you too,” I growled. He actually looked good, really good, but I wouldn’t tell him that.

  Jak just smiled. He knew me too well to be fooled.

  We were on the midwalk of Lizard Trap. Across the canal, Top Deck and two kids were roasting meat over a fire. Farther down, three little dusters played with toss-jacks, laughing and arguing as they spun their game pieces. Ketris and Byte were nearby, singing in harmonies, no words, just vowels. Their voices filled the air.

  Down on the floor of the canal, Dig and Gourd were practicing the rough and tumble, seeing if they could avoid blows by dropping to the ground for a roll. I’d always considered myself good at that technique, but Mace had bashed me anyway. Time to rethink my supposed expertise. Problem was, I needed training no one here could give me. I could search out older dusters in a more established gang, someone we didn’t consider our enemy, but I’d already learned most of what they could teach. Although Jadix had the best fighters in the Undercity, I had no intention of going to her. Her words were seared into my brain: Who else you going to punk for? This is all you got.

  “Nahya,” I said, negating Jadix, my life, and the Undercity.

  “Eh?” Jak regarded me with his sleepy look, his lashes half-lowered.

  I glared at him. “Doped up?” I couldn’t bear to think of him chained to a habit.

  “Nahya. Makes me lose at cards. Got better bliss anyway.” He pulled me into his arms and settled back against the wall. “Bhaaj bliss.”

  I leaned my head against his. “Eh, so, Jako.” That was more talky than usual about my feelings, but I wanted him to know it mattered to me that he sat here, warm and solid. I fought an odd sensation, a wetness in my eyes. I smeared it away with my palm.

  Jadix was wrong. This wasn’t all life had to offer us dust rats, the kids who lived in the ruins under Cries. It couldn’t be true.

  Could it?

  III

  Ruins of the Ruby Empire

  The whisper mill gave me the message. A fighter told her brother who told a girl in his dust gang who told one of the young fathers her gang protected who told a cyber-rider who told Gourd who told me:

  Professor Orin was in the Foyer.

  Spiral staircases carved from stone connected the levels of the Undercity. I took one up to the hig
hest level, going around and around, and climbing in places where the stairs had collapsed. I came out at the top onto a wide path. A lamppost stood a few paces away, one of the few maintained down here by the above-city. It had a bronzed look, like antique metal, with a top that curled in a loop. A lamp hung from a loop by a chain. I flicked off my measly gauntlet light and walked toward the Foyer.

  Supposedly the Foyer served as the exit from the aqueducts onto the Concourse. Of course we didn’t use the Foyer to leave the aqueducts. We had secret exits. We'd never be so stupid as to walk out there in plain view. The cops would throw us back into the aqueducts. Sure, the above-city slicks claimed the Concourse belonged to the Undercity, the highest level before you climbed out into the desert. Yah, right. Like anyone who worked on the Concourse actually lived in the aqueducts. The vendors, shop owners, merchants, restaurant chefs, jewelers, and everyone else up there, all those overfed, glitzy people came from the City of Cries.

  Upscale people visited the Concourse. Tourists. Flush with credit to spend at the boutiques and cafes, they came for the thrill of danger in visiting the Undercity. Or so they thought. The Concourse was about as dangerous as a soppy noodle. Sure, dust rats ventured up there, to explore, eat, or pick pockets, but we could never walk freely on that great, bustling boulevard. The city couldn’t have its ritzy Concourse sullied by the presence of the people who actually lived in the Undercity.

  I paused when I came to the final bend in the path that ended at the Foyer. Closing my eyes, I listened. Yah, someone was up there, fiddling with a holopad, it sounded like. That could be Orin.

  I walked around the bend, and the Foyer came into view. It consisted of a single cave about fifteen paces across, with a ceiling higher than two of me stacked foot to shoulder. It formed a stone chamber hollowed by whatever water had run through here eons ago, creating holes, cracks, and cones of rock. No water ran today. For as long as we remembered, this cave had remained as dry as the desert above, what people called the Vanished Sea.

  Across the cave, an archway opened into the Concourse. Light filtered from out there into the Foyer, revealing a man who had sat on a sawed-off stump of rock by the cave wall. Intent on his holopad, he didn’t notice me. I stood watching him. In some ways he looked old, maybe in his early thirties, except that people who lived that long had scars, weathered features, broken noses, and lined skin. This man seemed hale, hearty, and well fed, with a head of dark curls and a well-built physique.

  Finally I said, “Eh.”

  The man jumped to his feet and spun around. When he saw me, he relaxed. “Bhaaj! My greetings. How are you doing?”

  It always amazed me how many words Orin used to say the simplest things. Instead of Eh, Bhaaj, which itself was talky with two words instead of one, he added all that extra stuff, like My greetings, as if that wasn’t obvious, or How are you doing? like I would actually tell him.

  I walked over. “Come with?”

  “I was hoping you’d have time.” He slid off his pack and took out a snap-bottle of water. “For you.”

  I accepted the bottle and put it in my pack, which was much more worn and dusty than his.

  “I brought some spice sticks, too,” he said. “If you’d like them.”

  Yah! I loved spice sticks. I shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

  He smiled, which was odd because we rarely did that, only when we trusted a person, or with small children or lovers. It had taken me a while, but I’d finally figured out that Orin meant it as an act of friendship. He pulled a bundle of spice sticks out of his pack, ten of them, and handed it to me.

  I stowed the bundle in my pack. “Good sticks.”

  With our bargain complete, we headed down into the Undercity.

  #

  I had no idea why Orin insulted himself by saying he was an “anthropologist.” I’d tried to explain why he should find another word, but he used it anyway. Even a three-syllable word could be a problem, maybe rude, depending on the context, or else a huge thing, like the name of our home, the aqueducts. Using a four-syllable word was like shouting. Some of my people considered it fitting that the official name for where we lived, Undercity, had four syllables. Others claimed it was two words, each with two syllables, under-city. Five syllables either meant an extreme insult or else you were too drunk to know what you were saying. When Orin claimed he was an anthropologist at the university, I just stared at him. I mean, really? It was too absurd.

  As we walked together today, I thought of the first time he had come into the aqueducts, three years ago. I’d followed him in secret, intrigued by the way he explored niches in the walls. Then another dust gang tried to mug him for all that lovely food and tech-mech he carried. It pissed me off that they meddled with my new toy. I shouted at them from hiding places, running here and there, out of sight, throwing rocks and insults as if I were four dusters instead of one. They decided he wasn’t worth the trouble and ran off. All that noise from people he couldn’t see clearly alarmed Orin, but when it quieted down, he took a breath—and continued his trip into the Undercity. It impressed me. He had guts, especially for a pampered slick from the above-city. I followed him, using hidden spaces in the lacework of hidden passages that networked the aqueducts.

  Orin knew I was there. He finally lured me out with a bottle of water and asked me to act as his guide. I’d never have taken charity, but this exchange of services I understood. The Undercity worked on bargains. After Orin left that day, I convinced Jak, Gourd, and Dig to help me protect him if he came again. Word of our patronage spread, and after that, people left Orin alone when he visited.

  Today I showed him to a little cave where ancient pipes jutted out of the walls, broken and dusty. We sat on the ground, and while he cleaned dust off the pipes with his various brushes, I drank my fill of the water he’d brought.

  “I think these conduits are even older than the last ones you showed me,” he said.

  “Eh?” Sometimes I barely understood him. He claimed we spoke different “dialects” of the same language, whatever that meant, but it had taken me a while to get used to his heavy accent.

  He tried to speak more normally. “Old pipes.”

  Well, yah, of course they were old pipes.

  Orin wasn’t fooled by my attempts to look as if I had no interest. He motioned around at the cave. “I’ll bet this was a maintenance room in the aqueducts, thousands of years ago.”

  I frowned at all his unnecessary syllables. “Jibber.”

  “It’s not gibberish.” He went back to dusting the pipes. “These ruins are a great treasure for Raylicon.”

  And there was that. He continued to insist we lived on a planet called Raylicon. I didn’t really know what planet meant, but what the hell. I liked listening to him.

  “Why treasure?” I asked.

  He tapped the pipe. “Humans didn’t build these. They were here when our ancestors came.”

  “Who build?”

  “That’s the question.” He sat back and pulled a water bottle from his pack. “We don’t know.”

  “You find out?”

  “I’m trying.” He snapped open his bottle and took a swig of water. “Someone tried to terraform this planet, but we don’t know who did it or why.”

  I squinted at him. “Tear form?”

  “Terraform.” His voice always warmed when he talked about his work. “It means change the planet so people can live here. Except it failed. The planet is dying.”

  “How dead?” If he meant the canals and ruins, they had never been alive as far as I knew.

  “The air,” Orin said. “It’s losing oxygen. And the heat, the poisons in the biosphere, all of that, it kills people.”

  The air seemed fine to me, fresh and cool. It circulated through vents in the aqueducts. The temperature always felt the same, perfectly fine down here in the Undercity, though it cooled off in the lowest levels. Poisons, yah, they killed, especially the water, with all its minerals and salt and who knew what else. Gourd built
filters to clean it up, but we needed energy to run them, so we could only filter the water when our cyber-riders stole power from the above-city grids.

  “Air not kill,” I told him. “Kajada and Vakaar kill.” It was the first time I’d mentioned the cartels to him, but after three years, I trusted him more than when we’d first met.

  He stopped smiling. “You mean the drug dealers?”

  “You know?” I hadn’t expected that.

  “We hear rumors. The police try to crack down on them. Sometimes they succeed.”

  Yah, right. I’d never seen anyone “crack down” on the cartels, Either that, or a lot went on in Cries that we didn’t hear about in the aqueducts. I knew only that the cops didn’t come here. We were experts at hiding and killing, and they knew it. We had a bargain: as long as we stayed in the aqueducts, they didn’t bother us. I didn’t know what happened in Cries, though. The cartels ran product up there, too, so maybe more went on than I thought. Or maybe the police had deals with the cartels. I had no idea. I wanted nothing to do with any of them.

  I said only, “Maybe.”

  Orin was watching me with that look of his, the one where he seemed upset. “Bhaaj.”

  I waited for him to make his point. Maybe he liked to say my name because I’d let him know it. We gave our names in the aqueducts as rarely as we gave smiles, only to people we trusted.

  When he didn’t add anything else, I said. “Eh?”

  “You have bruises on your face.”

  Well, yah. He had a habit of stating the obvious.

  “Who beat you up?” Orin asked.

  I had no intention of telling him about a fight where I’d made such a miserable showing. So I just took another swallow of water. It tasted good.

  After a while, Orin exhaled and drank his own water. I took out a spice stick and crunched on it. Ah, I could eat a million of these. Softening toward him, I motioned with my stick at the ancient pipes around us. “How you know so much about these?”