Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  The face-sucking couple paused to stare at them.

  “Oh… no. I, uhh, couldn’t do it.” She looked down, fidgeting. She blushed, but had long ago learned the currency exchange associated with acting pathetic. “He got mad and kicked me out. Kept my clothes. Some gang found me and… I guess left me here.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t no gang.” The woman stuffed a baggy blue jumpsuit through the hole in the glass and ducked out of sight. A thunk came from a metal hatch below the counter a few seconds before a motorized drawer slid open with a pair of boots and a dark blue jumpsuit in it. “Howl and his boys are bounty hunters, sometimes mercenary escorts for trade runs. Try those on.”

  Risa pinned her thighs together and bounced from need. “I left my ‘Mini behind in Arcadia…”

  “Don’t sweat it, hon. He left enough for your room and somethin’ to eat. If you skate, I’ll guilt him into covering it.” The woman gestured at the boots. “Go on, you look like you’re about to burst. Take care o’ that, and my dad’ll see about getting you fed.”

  “Thanks.” She grabbed them and the jumpsuit. “You got a Vidphone? I need to call someone.”

  he deep vents of Primus City had made for a welcome, if uncomfortable, night. Tons of rock and metal created shelter and afforded her a dreamless sleep she found perhaps too reassuring. Crawling out of the darkness had felt as difficult as leaving a warm bed on a cold morning. Risa lurked in one corner of a subterranean square, cloaked in the shadow of thrumming air filtration units. Even after an hour of being awake, she continued to find crumbs in her eyes and lead in her limbs.

  People shuffled across the courtyard, oblivious to her watchful eyes. Those who looked at her mistook the two violet dots for some advert bot or electronic signage. Most came from the northern passage, navigated a gauntlet of ragged street vendors and a handful of beggar children, and exited through the eastern tunnel. A handful went south, down a half-width hallway too small for the cars that never quite saw widespread use in non-surface cities.

  Wisps of steam and smoke gathered around at least two electric grills, where people hawked street meat to more fortunate citizens on their way to jobs. A scrawny adolescent girl in rags helped a man offer food. They seemed to be doing more business than his competition on the other side of the square, who worked alone. A trio of shoeless boys in shredded ponchos made of old tarps darted among the crowd. They appeared to be playing, but Risa’s augmented hearing caught the chirp of a credit skimmer each time they got close to someone.

  Hmph. I guess it does work better when you hide the device.

  She found odd comfort in the foulness of the chemical reek wafting from the machinery in front of her. How something that stank to such a degree could purify air was a mystery. Each time she inhaled, the smooth material of her ballistic suit tightened around her chest, making her feel safe. Warm and secure inside her heavy boots, her feet still ached.

  The CamNano had changed her hair to a light shade of brown. The hologram face of a fashion model from Earth hovering over her NetMini had served as a point of reference for a temporary alteration of skin tone. She left her hands stuffed in the pockets of her long black coat so she didn’t have to see the southern West City tan. Blonde seemed the most likely choice of disguise, but it reminded her too much of the old plasfilm poster on the wall inside her bunk space.

  Growing up, her ‘room’ had been the back corner of Garrison’s office, a battered bunk bed behind a freestanding partition. From around the age of ten until midway through her teens, Risa had envied the woman on her wall: always tanned, always blonde, and always smiling. The nameless woman had posed for a lipstick ad: Chromacolor Cosmetix. Link the tube to your NetMini, you could put it on once and wear any color you wanted for six hours. Risa still didn’t understand why someone would be so happy over lipstick―or need to wear a bikini to advertise it.

  How she had hated her snow-hued skin.

  She’d wanted to be the girl in the poster. Free of war, free of poverty, free of cares. The grinning idiot in the orange bikini didn’t worry that the military might kick in her door and kill everyone she knew. The beautiful model never knew what it was like being unable to sleep for days after a new recruit gave her a creepy look.

  Normal little girls sleep hugging dolls. I had a gun under my pillow.

  A man and a woman in matte-red armor walked astride into the square. Both had the insignia of the Mars Defense Force on their shoulders. The ‘playing’ boys ran like hell, disappearing into a vent in the back. Some of the vendors tweaked hidden buttons on their ware carts, causing motorized shelves to shift and hide their less legal merchandise. The cops moved against the flow of the majority, heading from the eastern tunnel to the north.

  Pavo and his duty partner drew toward her, and Risa frowned at the woman. Shoulder-length black hair framed a face of Earth-normal skin, somewhere between caramel and coffee. Her eleven-year-old self brimmed with jealousy. Real-time Risa squinted, wondering if the woman’s color betrayed a lack of loyalty to Mars. Did she make a choice not to go Marsborn, or was she a new arrival with no ties to this world other than a paycheck?

  He stopped to chat with some of the vendors. They seemed at ease around him, devoid of the usual barrier of fear that so often gummed up interactions between citizens and police. His partner stopped two steps later, arms folded and hip thrust out. If her skin color wasn’t enough evidence, her apparent contempt for the poor all but proved she couldn’t be trusted. Risa caught a subtle exchange of a data fob disguised in a handshake. The man selling refurbished NetMinis must be one of Pavo’s helper network―indirect supporters of the Front.

  Risa had all she could do not to sprint out and jump on him. All the angst and worry from her ride in a prisoner transport hit her at once, forcing her to duck out of sight in case the unexpected sniffle attracted attention. As soon as the want for Pavo to hold her and tell her everything would be okay manifested, she got angry with herself. She couldn’t afford to lower her guard. She was not weak. She did not need to be coddled. Risa Black wasn’t a civilian woman wanting safety or a family―she couldn’t have such things.

  Weakness meant death.

  She peeked around the vibrating machinery, catching sight of the MDF officers as they resumed walking against the flow of the crowd. Her spike of anger, which she refused to admit to herself was shame, fueled a daydream of killing the woman with Pavo so she could talk to him alone. It made for an entertaining fantasy as she stalked them.

  This really isn’t healthy.

  The northern tunnel had the width of a two-lane road, plus a little extra. Beveled corners at each side of the ceiling held tracks of LED strip lights, about half of which worked. A lower ceiling and closer walls conspired with increasing thickness in the air, outside the reach of the square’s atmosphere circulators, to build a sense of claustrophobia. She clenched her fists, wondering how a wide corridor could feel more confining than a vent shaft that forced her to crawl. Pavo didn’t seem to notice or react to the change in ambiance. His attention remained on the crowd and the scanner on his left arm.

  A few shops in properties hollowed out of the walls offered more reputable food, electronics, and cyberware for the first two hundred meters. After that, the tunnel became featureless red rock with the occasional bit of graffiti, indie concert poster, or political propaganda holo-projector. In the areas known as ‘dark stretches,’ vagrants and criminals often lurked. Pavo, and the woman at his side, paid particular attention to everyone slumped against the wall sleeping―or faking it.

  Light up ahead came from where a bust of City Administrator Daris Yin hovered a few inches from the wall, her head at least two feet tall. The shape of her shoulders hinted at a black suit jacket with thin military epaulets in stark silver, which in addition to her forced smile and tight-bunned hair, made her look… evil. Risa couldn’t pull her gaze off the ethereal figure, feeling the stare as if directed at her alone. The politician’s smug lip curl all but said, ‘I will find
you, all of you little burrowing rats, and I will crush you.’

  Don’t be silly. Risa crunched her eyes shut. All that woman cares about is being comfortable. She enforces the law only when it suits her purposes.

  Grey blurred from the darkness at her left, taking the shape of a humanoid figure with an arm going for her face. Her Wraith rendered the lunging man’s motion as an apparition. A grab like that meant one thing in her mind―a rag soaked with ‘sleepy time.’ Speedware plunged the world into slow motion. She whirled, punching the near-motionless figure in the gut three times and face twice. A snap kick caught him in the groin before she threw all her strength behind one last strike. Flabby skin, coated in grease and dirt, mushed around her fist as it sank into the front of his throat. Risa ducked out from under his body before his fingers closed around where her face had been.

  To the outside world, her strikes appeared as little more than an indecipherable blur accompanied by a rippling crack.

  He hit the ground, clutching a chemical-soaked rag to his throat in both hands and gurgling. She fell on him, grabbing his forearm in both hands and forcing the rag into his mouth. The fumes meant for Risa overwhelmed him, and he passed out. She considered killing him. He’d be a threat to some other solitary woman, but the last thing she needed was the hallway full of MDF forcing everyone in the area against the wall for interrogation. After a steely glare, she sprang upright and headed for the far end of the dark stretch, hoping she had crushed his trachea. On tiptoe, she scanned the crowd for Pavo. Her anger became worry when she could no longer spot red armor.

  A half-minute of jogging brought Pavo and his partner back in sight, and she resumed breathing. The crowd had thinned enough for her to follow from a greater distance, but she kept herself dangerously close. Eventually, the tunnel expanded into a four-way intersection, where shops and two hotels disrupted the monotony of plain walls. People in this courtyard node seemed in no hurry to be anywhere, leaving the crowd feeling stagnant.

  While Pavo struck up a conversation with a man behind a folding table full of suspicious electronics, his partner ducked into a door bearing a hologram of dancing potato-sized cartoon coffee beans. She took the opportunity and walked up to him.

  He spun and put a hand on his sidearm, a trained reflex to sudden approach. At the sight of his face, her resolve slipped and she flung her arms around him and kissed him full on the lips. For a few seconds, he struggled. At the point he overpowered her and pushed her away, she remembered her altered coloration.

  “Pavo,” she whispered. “It’s me.”

  His fingers squeezed her shoulders at the sound of her voice. After a second’s hesitation, he pulled her into his chest plate. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “It was reckless.”

  “No shit.” He let go, but kept her hand in his. “I think your Cat-6 is rubbing off on me. The only reason I wasn’t tearing up the planet looking for you was a message from your ‘angel.’”

  “I’m not Cat-6. I don’t have ‘vivid hallucinations’ or delusions of importance or anything.” She lowered her voice. “If anything, I have daydreams of normality. I don’t think I’m the only one who can save the world. I just want to live in it.”

  “He said you might want to walk away… what did you find?”

  Risa glanced past the frolicking hologram coffee beans at the woman inside. “This isn’t a good time, is it?”

  “I don’t want to lose sight of you again.”

  “You think I’m defenseless?” She squinted at him. “Tell that to the shithead I left unconscious in the alley. I got myself into that mess. I’ll keep my head down.”

  “What shithead?” He peered over her shoulder.

  “Someone wanting to play grabass with a ‘defenseless’ woman. He thought I’d like the smell of chloroform.”

  He sighed.

  “I didn’t kill him… unless he’s choking on his own tongue. How long until you’re off duty?”

  He caressed her cheek and lifted her face into a kiss. “An excruciatingly long four hours.”

  His partner emerged from the coffee shop, coming straight at her.

  “For the third time, I don’t know!” Risa yelled, gesturing back the way she’d come. “I never saw the fucker’s face.”

  Pavo’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Is there a problem, miss?” asked the woman.

  He jumped at the voice.

  Risa gestured at the tunnel. “Someone tried to kidnap me back there.”

  The man behind the table gave Pavo a meaningful look. “Yeah, someone did.”

  “You saw this?” asked the female officer.

  “Yeah. Well, I saw the commotion when this one started screaming.” The merchant pointed at Risa with a half-disassembled NetMini. “Think anyone with a guilty conscience took off when she screamed.”

  “I’m sorry, miss,” said Pavo. “The cams in this section of tunnel have been out for months.”

  “Of course they are. Miss Yin’s gotta have her two-thousand-credit-a-plate dinners. Who gives a rat’s ass about us?” Risa tried to act livid. “What the hell do our taxes pay for? Lunar lobster?”

  Pavo held his left arm out in front of him and tapped a few buttons to create a holo-panel. At the same time, his headware called her headware. “Can you describe your attacker, miss?”

  Virtual Pavo, floating in the corner of her vision, shook his head. 「Can’t talk now. Aurelia is unaware of the PVM.」

  “Didn’t I just say it was fucking dark?” She yelled. “A man. Big. Dirty rag coming for my face. I didn’t stick around to get his goddamned picture.” 「I’m okay. Close call, but I’m okay.」

  “Calm down, miss.” Pavo’s duty partner glanced at the tunnel. “Looks like they cleared out already.”

  “There’s nothing we can really do here,” said Pavo. “If it happens again, try to record them. You have a NetMini, correct?”

  “Record them?” She gawked for a few seconds. “W-why do you people even exist? He’s probably still unconscious on the goddamned ground.” Risa walked backwards, shouting. She turned on her heel, stomping into the crowd. 「I’m sorry for scaring you. I’ll be at the hotel?」

  Virtual Pavo nodded and blew a kiss at her before he hung up.

  A few women gave her supporting looks, as did several men. Another guy approached the cops and corroborated her story, saying the attacker was still limp in the road and being picked at by scavengers. A trio of women offered to walk with her, but she politely declined. She would make good on her promise and lay low. Pavo still had half his shift. He was right.

  They would be a long four hours.

  She trudged through a maze of underground passageways, eyes closed and using the Wraith to see every detail around her. They say you have to have eyes in the back of your head to survive down here. Good thing I do.

  Eleven times over a forty-minute walk, people got too close. Her sudden spin and glare managed to spook away muggers and pickpockets. I guess being a tí-zhèn does have an upside. She ducked into the lobby of a seedy one-story hotel, the kind of place where people usually paid by the hour. All things considered, she should’ve gone to the safehouse, but she couldn’t face Garrison yet. Not after discovering the size of the lie he’d been spinning for so long. No, she wanted Pavo alone for now.

  A wall with four old flat-panel screens embedded in metal vending-machine-sized blocks provided self-serve booking for a room. She paid for six hours, and her NetMini chirped to acknowledge receipt of a code that would open the door to Room 18. A pop-up on the screen offered birth control, condoms, and cheap booze. Risa jammed her finger on the cancel button too hard, not being used to a physical screen.

  Grumbling, she trudged to the left, into a hallway stinking of sweat and sex. Okay, Eebo’s bathroom is not the worst place I can imagine to be barefoot now. Dingy rug peeled up from the floor, clinging to her boots for a few seconds with each step. Room 18 lurked at the end of the hallway after she took a ninety-degree lef
t and passed six doors.

  It opened automatically, with an accompanying beep from her NetMini. The holo-bar came on, projecting a sixty-inch immaterial screen playing a documentary. Some addled-looking man with frizzy blond hair rambled on and on about his ‘conclusive proof’ humanity was not the first sentient species to set foot on Mars. She took off her coat and set it on a small table, the only object in the room not covered in suspicious stains. For about fifteen minutes, she sat on the couch and tried to pay attention, but the conspiracy story didn’t hold her interest.

  Leaving it on but muted, she got up and went to the bathroom, hopping in the autoshower only as an excuse to do something. The pulsing jets of hot water soothed her still-sore feet. Ignoring the discomfort of putting it on while damp, she slipped right back into her ballistic stealth suit and curled up on the floor at the innermost corner of the room, hidden behind a four-foot-tall thrumming appliance.

  Creeping shadows danced upon dark metallic walls, writhing in the fluctuating colored light from the holo-bar. From where she sat, she could see neither the holo-panel nor the door―though someone kicking it down wouldn’t see her either. She cradled one of her Hotaru-6 pistols flat to her chest, as though its mere presence could protect her.

  Does Everett know the MPs were ours? Would he care? She suppressed a shiver as a droplet of cold water slid from her hair down her back. He’s a spymaster. Of course he knows. The PVM can’t be that good. Maybe it was his way of letting me go out of pity.

  For hours, she sat there, hiding behind the air scrubber like a frightened child. Whenever someone or something made noise in the hallway outside, her heart skipped a beat. The first two dozen times, she popped up like a curious meerkat, convinced it would be Pavo, and each time she settled back down jamming her emotions into a bottle. Elation became disappointment, which grew to sadness swallowed by indignant anger at feeling vulnerable. How could a girl who’d survived for months alone in the city at nine all of a sudden feel desperate to have someone to protect her?