Masada's Gate

by Chris Pourteau

  The greater good, Kwazi thought. Maybe that’s what Helena Telemachus said to herself when she ordered the executions of Amy and Beren and Aika.

  “Elinda, find someone you trust and leave them with a garrison to secure Valhalla Station,” Cassandra said. “They’re to maintain order and find Adriana Rabh. You, however, have a new mission.”

  “What mission?” Braxton asked.

  A smile bloomed on Cassandra’s face. She was a she-wolf scenting the next kill on the wind.

  “You’re going to Titan.”

  Chapter 22

  Ruben Qinlao • Darkside, the Moon

  The camoshades Brackin had given Ruben were killing him. The technology was old, a prototype that had never been commercialized because of the side effects—excruciating headaches for the wearer. The shades reshaped facial features temporarily, molding the wearer’s own skin and enhancing the alteration with 3D projection. The constant flow of that much frequency spectrum so close to the human brain and the resulting headaches had proven an insurmountable problem to solve, even for the Erkennen Faction’s brilliant inventors.

  Ruben Qinlao had the pulsing cranial blood vessels to prove it. But whatever the downside of wearing the glasses, it beat getting recognized. He’d left the hooded cloak on the drunkard, and Elissa Kisaan knew that man wasn’t who’d fired at her. She’d resumed the search, drawing in the local marshals.

  At least Tony was improving, thanks to Brackin’s new bacterial therapy. He was still unconscious, but he no longer suffered from hallucinations, and the doctor’s prognosis for him had improved. But the two days’ grace they’d gained by leading Kisaan astray wouldn’t hold. Nobody was that lucky. So Brackin had dispatched him to pick up a piece of proto-tech on the black market. It would supposedly kick Tony’s healing into overdrive. And then they could see about getting out of Darkside and off the Moon.

  “Hey, you here to buy? Or just scabbing for the marshals?”

  Ruben regarded the man. Young, broad, a bouncer type.

  “I’m looking for meds.”

  The man grunted. “Third stall. Myerson. Don’t dawdle.”

  He moved off.

  Probably paid by the merchants who’d set up shop here to move along the riffraff. And make sure no one was working for the law or, if they were, cared too much about enforcing it.

  Ruben surveyed the booth the bouncer had pointed out. Brackin had explained the way this would work. The floating caravan of black-market vendors calling itself the Darklight Bazaar would spring up from time to time at a random location in the tunnels below Darkside. The word went out on a private network, and buyers descended from up top. Then the caravan would evaporate into the Darkside underworld again before the Company or the marshals or, now, Cassandra’s Soldiers showed up.

  This time the caravan had set up where four underground tunnels converged. The bazaar was busy but oddly quiet as buyers and sellers haggled in murmured voices. The lighting was dim and schizophrenic. The price for the item he’d come to purchase would be outrageous, Brackin said, so he’d given Ruben six more of the preloaded burner bands to trade for it.

  The bouncer glanced his way with another get-about-your-business look. More attention Ruben didn’t need.

  He approached the stall, and an older man dressed in worn wraps of gray and black sidled up to the tabletop displaying his wares. His smile was broken and greasy. He looked Ruben over warily, like an expert appraising what was likely fake jewelry. Ruben’s headache flared again.

  “Do fer ya?” the man asked.

  “You Myerson?”

  “Sure, we can agree on that. Good start, eh?” A chuckle came through the broken teeth. It sounded almost genuine. It smelled moldy.

  “I’m looking for a Novy autoimmune stimulator.”

  Myerson’s smile dipped a little. “Those are highly illegal.”

  “That’s why I came to the black market.”

  “I mean, controlled illegal. Erkennen Patent Enforcement illegal. Hey, you need something for that headache?”

  Ruben forced his eyes open. Myerson was a rough portrait outlined in red.

  “No, it’s fine. Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Gregor Erkennen isn’t in much of a position to enforce anything these days.”

  “These days, yeah. Things change. Then they change back.”

  Ruben cleared his throat and leaned over. “Brackin sent me.”

  “Isaac Brackin?” At Ruben’s nod, Myerson’s cheek twitched. “Should’ve said so in the first place.”

  “My bad.”

  “Yeah.” The black marketeer glanced around the Darklight Bazaar. “Novys don’t come cheap,” he said.

  Ruben pulled out the handful of syncers from his pocket and placed them on the booth’s smooth surface. He didn’t remove his hand.

  “Half a dozen of these,” he said. “Each holds a thousand.”

  Myerson blew out a breath. “Are you kidding? For a Novy?”

  Leaning in again, Ruben said, “Watch your volume, old man.”

  “Right, right.”

  “This is what I’ve got. Brackin said it would be enough.”

  “He’s wrong. Price went up.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Why?”

  “Cuz you seem desperate,” Myerson said. His smile was natural enough now. “Also, the way things are these days? Everything I got’s going up in price, damned near by the hour. The banker-in-chief, Rabh, herself just got ousted. How the hell do I even know a SynCorp dollar is worth, well, a SynCorp dollar?”

  Ruben gasped. His head felt like a boiler about to explode. “I need that stimulator.”

  “We all need something. Life’s full of disappointments.”

  Ruben was tempted to reach across, pull the asshole off his feet, and demand he hand over the damned stimulator. The pain in his head urged him to it. But the bouncer was nearby, and a public brawl would just draw more unwanted attention.

  “It’s all I’ve goddamned got. Brackin said—”

  “I don’t like repeating myself. Dig deeper or get gone. The caravan’s moving on and … what the hell?”

  Ruben had doubled over, the heels of his hands pressed to both temples. The pain had redoubled. Unable to stand it any longer, he ripped the shades off.

  Myerson had reached out to steady him. “Look, bub, I don’t need no medical emergencies. I’ll get…” He stopped talking, and Ruben looked up to find the red haze surrounding the man dimming to an angry pink. “Holy shit, you’re him. You’re him!”

  “Volume,” Ruben warned. He could feel the bouncer’s eyes on the back of his neck. Words were hard to form. “Hear me out. Still want to turn me in after, it’s your call.”

  Myerson licked his lips. There was a serious discussion happening inside his head.

  “Yeah, I’m him,” Ruben said. “And I need your help.”

  Laughing, Myerson stuck his thumbs in his too-wide belt. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. The Regent of Mars, with half a million SCD bounty on his head? What could you possibly have to offer me that I can’t buy with half a million SCDs?”

  “How do you even know the reward’s actually worth that?” Ruben asked slyly. His ability to think was coming back. The agony in his temple had begun to lift.

  “I see what you did there,” Myerson said, clearly intrigued against his better judgment. “Keep talking. But hurry up before someone else recognizes … say, what was…” His eyes lit up, darting to Ruben’s hand. “Are those what I think they are?”

  In his peripheral vision, Ruben could see the bouncer sidling over. Myerson waved him off.

  “Camoshades,” Ruben said.

  Myerson clucked his tongue and reached out, drawing Ruben closer. “Volume, Qinlao, volume.”

  Ruben had a hard time keeping his smile inside. “Worth something, I see.”

  “Are you kidding?” Myerson glanced around them, keeping his voice soft. “There were only a dozen prototypes ever
made, and most of those were confiscated by SynCorp. The rest just disappeared—probably thrown away by people who didn’t realize the fucking mint they had. I’ve only seen one other pair and—” Ruben could almost see the saliva pooling in Myerson’s mouth. “—they didn’t work.”

  Ruben turned them over in his hand. “These do,” he said, wiping one of the lenses with his shirtfront. “Very well.”

  “So I saw.” Myerson chuckled again, clearly enjoying his own joke.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Ruben said. “The syncers and the camoshades for the stimulator.”

  Myerson’s shrewd salesman replaced the geek with a tech fetish.

  “Maybe I’ll just sing out to Meskal over there and take them and the half-million dollars the Soldiers are offering.”

  Ruben’s expression was musing. “You could do that. But before he’d get to me, I’d—oops!” He dropped the shades on the tunnel floor, then made grinding noises with his boot.

  Myerson practically leapt across the flat tabletop. “You didn’t—”

  “I didn’t,” Ruben said. “Yet. And think of the future, friend. Who knows who’s in charge tomorrow?”

  “I know who’s in charge today.”

  Myerson’s meaning was plain and menacing and on the cusp of a decision.

  “Today, yeah,” Ruben said. He shrugged. “Things change. Then they change back.”

  The exasperation on Myerson’s face resembled a roadmap of bad life decisions. “Pick them up. I want to see them work again.”

  Ruben squatted without taking his eyes off the vendor. He wiped the shades off and replaced them on his forehead. He hoped Brackin’s patch job to make them functional again had survived a three-foot drop to a lunar rock floor. The headache began to come back immediately. They were still working, all right.

  “Yeah, okay,” Myerson said, then wiped his forehead. “Things were so much simpler when Zeke ran things around here. Money and goods. Goods and money.”

  “Who?” Ruben removed the glasses. Once again, instant relief.

  “Never mind. Hand them over. And the syncers.”

  “Here are the syncers. You get the shades when I have the stimulator.”

  Myerson swiped the half a dozen burner bands into a basket Ruben couldn’t see. From a box he pulled out what appeared to be an oversized hypo and laid it on the tabletop. Ruben was almost disappointed in how simple the device appeared.

  “Shades,” Myerson whispered.

  Ruben put one hand on the stimulator and slid the other with the shades to Myerson. They took their trades at the same time.

  “Thanks,” Ruben said. “How do I know you won’t turn me in the moment I leave here?”

  “You don’t,” Myerson said. “But your point about who’s in charge tomorrow … if it’s you, I’ll come calling, and I’ll expect a grand reception. I’ve always wanted to see Mars. And here…” He reached to the display behind him and handed Ruben a hat. The logo on the front showed Earth and Mars connected by an oval ring. “I don’t want anyone tracing you back to me.”

  “Me either. You sure this is enough?” Ruben asked, putting the cap on his head and pulling it down as far as he could.

  “It’ll do,” Myerson answered, a critical eye roaming over him. “No one looks anyone in the eyes here. Now, get gone.”

  And Ruben did.

  • • •

  Whenever he made a run for supplies, Ruben always reconnoitered the clinic from the alleyway across from Eros Erotics. It had given him a clear firing angle at Elissa Kisaan, and now it offered a broad, hidden view of the street. The caution had proven its worth.

  Far down the narrow street, SSR troopers marched out of the alleyway near Brackin’s clinic. They were headed straight for it.

  Myerson.

  The sonofabitch had turned him in anyway…

  Or maybe not. How many members of Brackin’s black-market network had seen him in the last week? The doctor had assured him the marketeers were tight. No one ratted on anyone, or all the rats on the ship would drown, Brackin explained. And yet, here they were, the SSR surrounding his front door, and not an hour after Ruben had left the bazaar.

  Elissa Kisaan appeared while a Soldier pounded on Brackin’s door. Ruben could imagine the doctor’s terror. He fingered the gun in the right hip pocket of his workman’s overalls. He had half a clip left from the fox hunt before. Enough to make noise, maybe even enough to put an extra hole or two in Kisaan, if he was luckier this time.

  Brackin opened the door. Ruben could see him attempting polite conversation. The Soldiers pushed past his protests and into the clinic while Kisaan waited outside. She looked around. Could she feel his eyes on her? Her gaze lingered on his hiding place, and Ruben backed further into the shadows. Her eyes moved on.

  The ruckus drew curious bystanders from their homes and businesses. Ionia appeared in the doorway of Eros Erotics, a smile spreading across her face. She leaned against the window frame in her looking-for-business pose, then lit a cigarette. She was waiting for the show to start.

  A thin, elongated vehicle appeared at the far end of the alley, tailor-made for Darkside’s narrow streets. Two marshals stepped out. One was a short, unimposing woman with apparent attitude in her body language. Her male companion just looked nervous.

  Ruben pulled the pistol from his pocket. It felt heavy in his hand.

  Two troopers brought out Brackin, his wrists in gravity cuffs behind him. He was still making his case to an unsympathetic jury. The male marshal put his palm on Brackin’s head and ushered him into the back of the vehicle.

  Next came Tony. Two Soldiers escorted his medical bed, while a third brought along the IV. A fourth trooper bent his mouth to Kisaan’s ear. She nodded and surveyed the area again. And again her eyes focused on the shadows around Ruben, sending a shiver up his spine.

  This was it. It was all or nothing. Blaze of glory or whimpering in a prison cell? He knew what his sister Ming would want him to do.

  Ruben edged backward so he could extend his arm and aim without being seen. He bumped against something that wouldn’t move. Bracing his back against it, Ruben steadied the pistol with his left palm.

  “Not yet,” said a deep, weak voice behind him. It sounded familiar and foreign at the same time. A hand came down on his shoulder. “Lower the peashooter.”

  The hand was heavy. Massive.

  “Strunk?”

  He turned around expecting to see the mountain of a man he’d known before, returned from the dead. Instead Ruben found what more resembled the battered slope of a rocky hill after a fierce storm. Strunk’s left shoulder drooped, and there was a makeshift bandage protecting one eye.

  “Yeah, Boss Man,” Strunk said, his voice sounding like a bellows full of holes. “If we’re gonna break Tony out, we’ve got planning to do.” He paused to refill the bellows. “And there’s someone you need to meet.”

  Chapter 23

  Stacks Fischer • Masada Station, Orbiting Titan

  I didn’t like leaving Bekah alone, but her tech talk reassured me. If she could keep Richter out of the War Room by screening his bio-code, it was hard to beat that for security. And she’d already switched off the emergency lighting protocol. Erkennen’s camouflage program was back in place, running the utilities in the place. Minimal heat. Ahead of me, dark. Behind me, dark. And me lit up in half-light in the corridor I was in. I felt like a target in a shooter simulation set on easy.

  Where would Richter go? Masada Station’s ground floor contained a series of labs dedicated to technology development. The hidey-holes he might be in were too many to count. I could spend hours on Level One alone and still never find the bastard.

  I reasoned it out. He’d never go to his quarters because he’d assume that’s the first place I’d look. Then he’d think about that and decide I’d never go there looking for him. So that’s where he’d go. That made as much sense as anything, so I headed to the lift.

  Lying next to the lift doors was the a
ccess panel Bekah kicked out running from Richter. My knee said, Don’t get any ideas, but I got one anyway. Taking the lift like an old man was a good way to get myself ambushed. All Richter had to do was listen for the hydraulics and shoot me when the door opened. The rest of my body overruled my knee.

  I climbed into the small maintenance tube wondering how the hell anyone could work in such a tight space. I stared into the shadows above. Was Richter looking down? Doubtful or I’d be dead by now—so Plan B was working so far. I put my .38 in my coat pocket and grabbed two handfuls of ladder. My knee voiced its minority protest all the way up, so I had to go slow.

  But that gave me time to think. No matter how Cassandra’s crazy coup turned out, Bruno Richter was out of a Company job—permanently. The trust between an enforcer and his boss is sacrosanct. It’s stronger than man and wife. It’s stronger than man and God. When a faction leader hands someone like me or Richter or Daisy Brace the job of guarding their life, it comes with a nice compensation package—and the ironclad understanding that anything done against the leader’s interests kills the deal. Then, you. Richter had sold out Gregor Erkennen, Tony Taulke, and the whole goddamned Company. And for what? Some vague promises of riches and power from the lead snake in a snake cult? He should know better. Or maybe, once I knew Richter’s fondness for snakes, I should’ve seen it coming.

  And that’s a little payback I owe him, too. Oh, I was gonna enjoy killing Bruno Richter for all sorts of reasons.

  I’d reached Level Two, and my left leg demanded a rest.

  Richter had about twenty years on me. He’d run like a rabbit from the War Room. I hadn’t sprinted like that since … a long time ago. My arms and good leg lodged a class-action complaint demanding to know why Left Knee could get away with shirking like that. I gritted my teeth and climbed.

  Something activated the corridor lights above me. I froze and pulled my .38 and waited for Ferret Face to sight down his barrel at me.

  Nothing.