by Mike Brooks
“It’s good to know you can sound uneducated even in your native tongue,” Alim told the back of her head.
“Fuck you, copper.”
Alim sighed, turned back to Drift and reverted the conversation to English. “I am ready.”
“You’re sure?” the Captain asked. “I’m taking a guess that you haven’t done much undercover work before.”
“It is hardly undercover,” Alim protested. “I am a former security officer who is meeting an old army colleague and pretending to be an undercover security officer. It does not require much acting skill.”
“Well, just shout if you need us,” Drift said, tapping the commpiece in his ear. “We’ll be listening.”
Alim nodded and watched the rest of the crew file off towards a nearby bar. Zhongtu had a day of roughly eighteen standard hours, which didn’t bother the crop plants any but was too short for humans to easily adapt to. As a result, Zhuchengshi, like the other population centres, largely operated around the clock.
He looked down at his pad, which provided him with a street plan courtesy of the local Spine, Zhuchengshi’s hub of electronic information and communication. His destination was a different bar on a different street: A quick glance and the map was memorised, a throwback to his military days when information had to be absorbed and retained quickly. He made his way through the small tangle of pedestrian walkways without any of the hesitation that might have marked him as a tourist or newcomer. The last thing he wanted to do was attract attention.
He walked past gambling dens and flesh houses without a sideways glance, and skirted the doorways of garish drinking establishments where every surface was a vidscreen. Drones whirred by overhead, transporting small packages or messages too sensitive to be entrusted to the Spine. Advertising holos reached out from the surrounding buildings, their pulsing messages blindly imploring passersby to drink Star Cola, or buy a diamond bracelet from Yang & Sons Jewellers, or take out travel insurance and visit the luxury void station resort of Cosmic Parcs.
Music thudded out of shop doorways and drifted down from windows above street level, faint snatches of song or tune that tugged at a memory of something he’d heard once, before fading into the surrounding cacophony as he walked on. People talked and laughed and shouted, a child’s scream of laughter or pain cut through the babble for a second, and somewhere he could hear the rumbling engine of a wheeled truck crawling through the streets. It was an almost overwhelming sensory stimuli, particularly for someone who had grown used to the relative quiet of Uragan City’s subterranean passages, and he nearly missed the doorway of the Lemon Tree. However, he spotted the sign at the last moment and turned into a very different manner of bar.
It was much darker, and subtly lit by rustic-looking lanterns. A quick glance at one showed that it was a holographic source, but with the appearance of a filament bulb. The furniture was replica wood—the real thing would have cost a small fortune—and the door that swung shut behind him blocked out most of the bustle of the street outside. It wasn’t silent, but it was quiet, and reserved.
He paused, looking around. A woman in a nearby booth raised one hand in greeting, and Alim walked over to her as casually as though they’d seen each other the day before. In fact, the last time they’d spoken face-to-face had been over a decade ago.
He swung himself into the booth. “Mariya.”
The seats were comfortable, but well-worn. She had taken the seat facing the door, which meant he could see down the bar but couldn’t watch who came in without turning his head. In these circumstances that made him feel a little vulnerable, despite the pistol riding in his inside jacket pocket.
“Alim.” Mariya Li smiled, and swirled an unfamiliar bright-red drink around the glass in her right hand so the ice clinked. Her hair was its natural dark colour, and cut so short that it barely covered her ears. Her role in the security force didn’t seem to have affected her physical fitness, since so far as he could see she had the bulky shoulders and lean waist she’d had in the military. “It’s been a while. What will you have?” she asked in Mandarin
He tapped the tabletop, which instantly became a menu, and selected a flavoured water. He winced internally at the cost: Zhongtu’s status as a breathable world meant it attracted the rich, and the prices matched the expected clientele. There was the additional problem that he didn’t have any money of his own, as he’d left every single personal possession other than the crescent moon pendant at his neck on Uragan, so he’d had to take a loan from the Captain.
“No drinking on duty, of course,” Mariya commented. Her tone was neutral, but her eyes held a faint hint of a question.
Alim looked at her levelly. “I’m Muslim, if you recall. Who’s on duty?”
“I’m not a fool, Alim,” Mariya sighed. “Sure, we’ve thrown a few messages back and forth over the years. And it’s been nice to stay in touch, but when you suddenly contact me from low orbit and ask if we can meet up? I doubt this is a social call.”
Alim smiled ruefully. He’d wondered how to approach this, but luckily it seemed that Mariya had already done most of the groundwork for him in her own head. “And how do you know I’m not fleeing the rebellion on Uragan, down on my luck and desperate for help?”
“Offhand?” Mariya took a sip of her drink. “You’d have gone to a cheaper planet.”
Alim couldn’t help but laugh. “You may be right.” A robotic waiter rolled up with his water and waited for him to drop coins into it before it released the clamp. He watched it trundle away, then turned his attention back to his former regimental colleague. “Your first guess was accurate. I’m here on business. My employment on Uragan ended just before the government lost control of the planet, as it happened, and I was reassigned.” Technically true, more or less.
Mariya’s eyebrows raised. “Interesting. I bet they regretted that decision when everything went to hell.”
Alim tried not to let his feelings show on his face. He still blamed himself for not giving more credence to the occasional whispers of discontent that had made their way to his office, and couldn’t help the feeling that perhaps another person might have been able to stamp out the revolution before it had taken hold. He grimaced instead and took a sip of his drink, which was at least cold and refreshing. He couldn’t help but ask after his homeland despite the pressing purpose of this meeting, although he privately dreaded the answers. “I’ve been out of the loop for the last few weeks. How have things progressed there?”
Mariya swallowed her mouthful and puffed out her cheeks, somehow managing to indicate a whole planet’s worth of chaos and confusion in one exhalation. “The government tried to take back Uragan City from the rebels and found that a lot harder than they expected. I don’t think they got beyond the first level, although you know as well as I do that they don’t let many details out when things don’t go well. Then some envoys from the Free Systems turned up and tried to get all diplomatic about things, saying Uragan had declared for them now and they wanted an independently moderated referendum on secession. The last I heard, it was rumbling on as a whole load of interplanetary trash talk and not much else, but you know anything could have happened in the last week and we wouldn’t have found out yet.”
Alim sighed. Better than he’d feared, although he suspected a government-sponsored genocide had merely been stalled. “Well, for better or worse, Uragan is not my problem anymore,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Mariya. “There was precious little to tie me to the place anyway, since my mother died.”
“So what brings you here?”
He leaned forward. “Corruption. You’ve mentioned the Triax here to me before, but it seems our paymasters have finally caught up with the situation. I’m on a fact-finding mission, getting an outsider’s perspective on . . .” He trailed off as Mariya’s face went stony, and resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder. “Is there a problem?”
“I never mentioned anything of the sort,” Mariya said. She was sitti
ng stock-still in her seat, and her knuckles were white where she gripped her glass. “You must have confused someone else’s messages with mine.”
Alim opened his mouth to remind her of what she’d said, but thought better of it. Mariya had always been possessed of a certain gallows humour even in their most stressful combat situations, and he’d never seen her this alarmed. He sat back slowly. “Perhaps I have. I apologise.”
She drained her drink in one swift motion and set the glass down on the table. “It was good to see you again, Alim, but I should be going.” She got up before he could protest and took a step towards the door, then bent in towards him. It was his turn to freeze—a kiss on the cheek had certainly never been on the cards between Mariya and him—but she stopped a fraction before her lips made contact with his skin. Her whisper was barely audible.
“Street market. Five minutes.”
Then she pulled away and turned towards the door. Alim watched her go, not bothering to hide his confusion, then returned to his water with his thoughts in a whirl. Two options quickly presented themselves. One, Mariya was very concerned about being overheard, even in this place, and wanted to go somewhere far noisier and more chaotic to continue their conversation.
Two, Mariya was now in the pay of the Triax, and wanted to go somewhere far noisier and more chaotic to ensure the person she thought was a Red Star Confederate anticorruption agent could be made to disappear quickly and easily.
He tapped his pad and opened a channel to Drift, using the Jonah’s communicator to avoid having to go through the local relays.
+Chief?+
He switched to English, scanning the Lemon Tree to see if anyone else was taking an interest in him. He couldn’t see anyone acting particularly suspiciously, but subterfuge had never really been his stock in trade. “Captain. We may have a problem.”
WORD ON THE STREET
Zhuchengshi’s street market was what Alim imagined mining must be like if the rock was made of people and his face was the drill. The crush was oppressive and the noise little better, and there was simply no way of making progress without shouldering or elbowing people aside. He went with it, keeping one hand on his wallet and the other close to his gun. He didn’t want to lose either of them to the eager fingers of the pickpockets he knew would frequent this place, and he might need both before this night was out.
How was he even supposed to find Mariya in this? Was that the point? Had she made this suggestion so he wouldn’t follow her straight out of the bar, so he would instead waste time floundering through this mess of people until she was long gone?
He gritted his teeth. He held no love for Sergei Orlov and didn’t want to enrich the mobster further, but he needed to prove his worth to Drift in order to keep a place to live, at least for the time being. That meant not falling at the first hurdle of this scheme to save another member of their crew, no matter how crazy that scheme might seem.
A waft of scent from one of the food stalls grabbed his throat, and he paused. He was hungry; there was no denying it, and the fresh, vibrant flavours promised by the market held great appeal for someone whose meals had mostly consisted of long-life military rations and Uragan food imports. Besides, he reckoned that stopping to eat on a corner would look less suspicious than just standing still and scanning the crowd for no good reason. A win all around, then.
He handed over a few stars and got a foiled container of rice, mushroom-based protein, and miscellaneous vegetables along with a disposable fork, which he put to good use as he found a place to lurk between a woman hawking candles and a stall offering fancy chocolates. The food was some Mexi-Szechuan concoction, all ferocious spices and deep flavours, and was simultaneously one of the most delicious and most painful things he’d ever eaten.
He was halfway down the container without having seen any sign of Mariya when something hard dug into his back and he felt breath on the nape of his neck.
“Don’t move,” a woman said in Mandarin.
He swallowed his mouthful. “Mariya? Is that a gun in my back?”
“No, it’s my cock.” She pressed it into his spine a little harder. “Of course it’s a gun, you prick! And do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”
Alim tried to think clearly. Things had taken an unexpected turn: Mariya sounded desperate, almost scared, and he was not fond of the idea of a scared person with their gun in his back. Stall for time, keep her talking, try to de-escalate the situation. All good policing tactics, and currently rather more viable than the military way to resolve the problem, which would have been to shoot her in the head from half a mile away.
“Why do you say that?”
He heard her hiss in frustration. “You expect me to believe that you’re here to address corruption on this planet? That you’re here to get an ‘outsider’s perspective’ on it? You wouldn’t have made it to the ground!”
Alim frowned. “Why . . . What? You’re saying the spaceport staff are corrupt too?”
“The entire damn system is corrupt, from the chief on downwards!” Mariya snapped. “We might fly the flag, but this isn’t the Confederate’s planet anymore.”
“So if you know this,” Alim said slowly, “why doesn’t anyone do something about it?”
“Like who? The force?” Mariya snorted. “I think there’s about three other cops I know who definitely aren’t on the take, and two of them are rookies who just haven’t been cozened into it yet. We’re the goddamn Dragon Sons’ pets so long as they pay us to keep us sweet, and no one’s looking to change that. If I start even trying to make trouble, I’ll end up dead faster than a blind woman in a gunfight.”
Alim nodded slowly and visibly. “I had no idea it was that bad. In that case, I can see how my conversation could have endangered you. I apologise.”
“You apologise.” Mariya’s tone was bitter. “How nice. That’ll help a lot.”
“It’s all I can do,” Alim told her. “So where do we go from here?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re holding a gun on someone in a busy market,” Alim pointed out, carefully resting his fork in his food container and trying to edge his right hand towards his concealed pistol without telegraphing the motion to her. “You might be tucked away back there, but someone’s going to notice you at any moment.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “Also, my food’s getting cold.”
“Fuck your food,” Mariya snarled. “How about you tell me what you’re actually doing here?”
Alim smiled a little wryly to himself, despite the gun in his back. “Even if I told you, I doubt you’d believe me.”
+Chief.+
He managed to prevent himself from stiffening in surprise as his comm clicked on and Kuai’s voice whispered in his ear. Every crew member’s personal comm was set to automatically receive incoming calls from every other member while in range of the Jonah’s transmitters, effectively giving them their own (fairly) private radio network. It could doubtlessly be handy, but was also potentially disconcerting.
+Duck when I say ‘now.’+
He’d asked the rest of the crew to be available, but hadn’t known that they’d been watching him. Then he realised that Mariya had said something just as Kuai had spoken again, and he felt his pulse rate suddenly soar because the last thing a person with a gun wants is to feel like they’re not being listened to. He turned his head, keeping the ear with his commpiece in it facing away from her, and looked over his shoulder at her for the first time. She was frowning at him, her mouth tense and her face stern.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” he asked, keeping his voice as level as possible. “It’s so noisy here.” Something caught his eye in the street, and he had to prevent himself from groaning aloud as he saw the Changs making their way towards his position through the press of people. Of all the people he’d trust to get him out of a tight spot, the bickering siblings were pretty much at the bottom of the list.
Mariya’s eyes narrowed into a glare that could have cut granite
. “You’ve heard everything else I’ve said, Alim.”
“I—”
+Now.+
He hadn’t truly known, up until that moment, exactly how far he trusted his new crewmates. In that split second when he heard Kuai’s voice in his ear again, his body decided for him, as he threw himself downwards and tucked his head in. Apparently he at least trusted that they would take potentially precipitous action without his involvement or consent, and that he should shield himself as best he could from the consequences.
There was a muffled squawk from behind him, but no hammer of a gunshot. He looked back and saw the massive shape of Wahawaha behind Mariya, hood up and rebreather mask over his face to hide his distinctive tattoos, his fingers wrapped around her gun and pointing it skywards while his other huge hand covered her mouth and nose. The big Māori was already stepping farther back into the narrow, shadowy spaces between the backs of the stalls, dragging Mariya with him. Alim got back to his feet to follow them in, then looked around for a second as loud shouting in Mandarin arose on the other side of the avenue where he had been standing. Kuai and Jia were engaged in a furious and, if he was any judge, entirely fake row. Any passersby capable of paying attention to anything other than fighting their way through the crowds were focusing on the noisy Chang siblings instead of the casual and near-silent abduction of an armed woman taking place opposite.
Alim sighed. The ease with which his new colleagues could pull off something like this said a lot for their character, and not in a good way. Then again, what he was about to do was hardly to be applauded.
Come now, Alim. Even if she’s not exactly crooked herself, she’s still taking pay to protect this city but is letting the Triax run it as they please. She’s no paragon of virtue either.
He grimaced, remembering Governor Drugov reached for the controls on his desk. That would have opened the vents in Uragan City, flooding the subterranean metropolis with the planet’s toxic atmosphere and killing the population rather than let the rebellion get control of its mining facilities.
