by Leo Champion
Chapter Eight
Jeff Hammer, boss of the precinct formerly known as the Garsons, looked out onto the crossroads from a third-floor window of the Chapel, watching with relief as people dispersed back to their buildings. They were guided by picked Fourth Company people who would have the sense to be gentle with their encouragement.
So he’d bought himself thirty-six hours from that direction, at least. A day of normal plant operations, a day of training for the citizen company to learn the basics, and for the raff and streetganger recruits to be integrated into the regular companies. He’d have to come up with something to say during the Assembly to placate the mob and convince the troops that he did have something to offer them – something to say that would convince them not to depose his ass and replace him with one of their own, and to fight for him when the time came. Which it would. He would be lucky to have until Monday before that.
“You run those numbers yet?” he turned to ask Jon Lock, who was a light-brown beanpole of a clerk in his late twenties with a high forehead and a prematurely receding dark hairline. The man had done a valuable service by minding a number of important prisoners during the coup, committing himself to Hammer in the process of doing so because one of them had been Lock’s own plant manager. And Hammer needed someone who understood spreadsheets. He stood at the other end of the boardroom table behind an open laptop computer.
“Yessir.”
One of the precinct’s computer techs had joined the revolt, providing passwords and backups for the tenement’s data systems that remained. A lot of them, along with every penny of the precinct’s own money, were gone. The problem was that the Reverend had taken the common fund with him, ruling it his personal account. Hammer was running a precinct about to go to war with an exiled enemy who would be back, with bigger neighbours, very soon, and he was dirt broke.
“I run an organics plant,” said Lock. “I know a bit of this stuff, but I’m not an expert on data modelling.”
“Become an expert,” Hammer snapped, then softened his tone a little. “You’re what we’ve got. Just how fucked are we right now, Lock?”
The clerk frowned and looked away.
“Figured. Any good news?”
“I think I’ve found some assets we can sell – the precinct cars, to start with. You specifically permitted the Reverend and his high-ups to walk away, with whatever they could carry. This gives us their personal wheels, since nobody said anything about what they could drive. I posted a man by the garage as soon as you got that word out – they did try, but Vinnie told them where to stick it. Three town cars and two cabs.”
“Send an agent to Times Square. No, go yourself. Bring that laptop, keep it away from people, and run the following projections while you’re selling those vehicles…”
“Now?” You didn’t want to go around the city, at least not through abandoned-building country, after dark. Too many large groups of nasty people lurking around.
“Take a squad – no, two squads. They can walk back with you tomorrow morning when the vehicles are sold. I’ll see you then.”
He couldn’t trust an agent not to run with the money themselves. He could trust Lock. And just to be sure, he’d have a word with the senior sergeant of those escorting squads.
He scribbled Ali Benzi a note for that purpose and gestured at Lock to go.
The man left. Hammer stood looking down at the crossroads of his precinct, the small precinct he had narrowly taken today. Shouldn’t he feel relieved, thrilled, exuberant? Not… more burdened than he’d ever felt as a gang leader, let alone a tenement grunt.
He was still fighting for his life. It seemed like he’d bought a day, assuming the Reverend didn’t attack tomorrow. It would take at least a couple of days for him to work something out with the Changs, right? It was going to take time for Reverend Carl Garson the Second to acknowledge just how bad his terms would be, from the position of weakness he was now in. To get the Changs to join his exiles and give him some of the precinct back, he’d probably have to sacrifice a big chunk of it.
After that point, and Hammer would not know what moment that was, the outnumbered and un-integrated forces he’d assembled to take over, augmented by two companies who’d spent most of the coup sitting on the fence, would come under a motivated and professional attack from the Changs and the Reverend’s exiles. From two directions, literally as well as probably physically.
The street histories he’d found in the precinct library, usually published by someone trying to gain favour with an Association high-up or some wealthy and powerful overboss patron… those and the stories he’d heard were full of ‘twenty-four hour warlords’ – momentary precinct bosses but no more. Too many of them had died horrible deaths.
How to avoid joining them…
He began to pace back and forth in the empty boardroom, thinking through options.
* * *
The Airedale was bustling tonight, thought Santos Hogan, formerly Santos Hammer-Hawk, as she and Hogan made their way from the landing strips to the main bar area of the Upper East Side rooftop complex that had once been Mount Sinai Hospital. But it usually was busy this late, about four thirty, on a Saturday night when people had done what runs they were going to do that night and wanted to socialize.
Santos was a tall girl in her mid-twenties with plaited hair that was naturally the same shade of light brown as her skin, but had been dyed radioactive purple with sparkling glitter dotted all over the waist-length braids. She wore a minimal black dress and stiletto heels, going-out clothes as she entered the bar with her lead since the Hawks had been wiped, Hogan.
Hogan was more muscular than most airbornes, with a scruffy red Mohawk, and right now he was dressed up himself, showing around his lead bitch after a successful run over Harlem. Weight counted when you flew runs, so action dress for every airborne gang was as few ounces as possible. You didn’t carry ordnance to the Airedale, though, so you could afford to go heavy when you went out partying. Hogan’s black leather jacket was studded with colorful rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and other gleaming cut gems the size of marbles, as valuable as colored glass since the spacers had learned to grow them en masse like buds on stems. With it he wore diamond-studded jeans tucked into shined black boots.
Santos didn’t get off the gang’s roof as often as she’d have liked to, and she got to dress up even less. So it was nice to walk into Manhattan’s airborne trade center with her gang lead, to see and be seen. Hogan’s crew had been on a run earlier so they had money to flash around.
“Hey!” came a man who sold Exchange special-orders at the market. Not everyone in the busy common room were airbornes; anyone with the entry fee could come up from the streets, too, and the Airedale had a significant community of manufacturing guildspeople whose members might be found in its bars as well. “Guess what happened yesterday? Someone you know really went up in the world!”
Hogan was sometimes the possessive type who bristled at any man talking with his lead bitch, so he pulled his arm around Santos and spoke for her: “Yeah, who?”
“Your old gang leader,” said the Exchange agent. “Remember how we thought Jeff Hammer had given it up and retired to the tenements?”
“Bullshit,” said someone else. “I always knew he was up to something with Marder and those streeters. Having them drop rocks like he used to himself. Only question was where he was making his plans.”
“Long story short,” said one of the bar staff, “your old lead just took control of his own precinct. Worked his way up as a guard and then took over. Marder’s Marauders helped; so did a bunch of streetgangers.”
There were grins, and a few raised glasses clinked.
“A fucking tenement boss! One of ours is a fucking boss!”
“Dirt-eating traitor to his wings is what he is,” said Hogan. “Real airbornes stay clean. We fly over dirt, but our feet are clean.”
“Like you wouldn’t take a tenement job if someone offered it to you, Hogan,” some
one scoffed.
Hogan was being a fool, thought Santos; Mr. Too-Good-To-Fuck-Ganger-Bitches-Any-More had really gone up in the world. It was stupid to envy, and beneath even an airborne bitch to, because envy was a waste of opportunity.
Airbornes were mercenaries who didn’t waste time on unprofitable bullshit. Her old gang leader, the lover who had pushed her aside, was a full-on tenement boss now? There had to be an opportunity somewhere in that, Santos thought. A chance, an angle, a way to make a profit from the situation…
* * *
Justin Canis hung around one of the Airedale’s secondary bars watching the crowd, looking for work. He was a very small guy, although airbornes did generally tend toward the smaller and wirier end of the body spectrum, in his mid-twenties with a shaved head. He wore tight jeans and a leather jerkin over a long-sleeved shirt, a leather-sheathed knife just barely under the Airedale’s nine-inch maximum at his hip.
He looked up hopefully as a couple of well-fed tenement types came in from the main bar area. They spoke to one of the bouncers, who motioned his head at where Canis was slouching against the bartop.
Opportunity?
One of the two men, aged sixtyish, wore a suit and tie. The other one, a harder-looking type in his thirties, wore a green-shirted uniform with captain’s tracks and a black Sam Browne belt. They were escorted by a couple of obvious bodyguards, helmeted men in green shirts who seemed a bit on edge here.
“You Justin Canis?” the one in the suit asked.
“I might be,” said Canis, trying not to sound too eager.
“You flew some down Bowery and Houston way,” the suit said. “Last summer. South of the Washington Building, in the No-Go. Rogersons said you did a good job for them.”
Not every paying customer identified themselves, but some did. You could usually figure it out by asking about who the target was clashing with, but Canis had never really given a shit. He was paid to drop ordnance; nobody gave bonuses for caring about why.
“Hey, you want to sit down somewhere?” Canis asked. “Can I buy you guys a beer or something?”
He transferred his own beer mug to his left hand and offered his right to shake. The green-shirted man with the circular haircut accepted it and they shook.
“I’m Daniel Garson,” the man said. “Captain Daniel Garson, of the Garson family. This is Mr. John Moncreve, who reports to my dad the Reverend himself. You guys fly during the daytime?”
“The Sky Wolves fly any time,” said Canis, the name ‘Garson’ meaning nothing to him. He preferred night, but his gang hadn’t worked in weeks. They’d take anything.
“Let’s sit down.”
They found an empty booth and sat down across from each other, the pair of helmeted bodyguards keeping a wary eye out around the room. Unnecessary, thought Canis, because the Airedale had some of the best security in the city; anyone who started trouble here would get kicked down the stairs if they were lucky and off the roof if they weren’t. But a lot of tenement types were insecure off their own territory.
“So who do you want my flyers to fuck up?” Canis asked. Work!
* * *
“Yo, Santos.” Her bartender friend Maria pointed toward one of the Airedale’s secondary bars, a couple of rickety bridges away across the rooftops of the sprawling abandoned hospital complex. “You know who just went in there?”
“Who?” Santos asked idly. Hogan had left her to hang with some of his buddies and talk man stuff. She’d split off with his buddies’ girls and circulated, chatting with people and thinking of Jeff Hammer the tenement boss.
At the time, she’d dismissed his ambitious talk as bullshit, the sort of bullshit that got you killed. Which was exactly what had happened; the gang had drawn the wrong attention and they’d been wiped out. But then he’d come back, surfaced from under the ground all the stories said, and retired from the air. Only he hadn’t retired; he’d been scheming with Charlie Marder and Hoshi the streetganger to take over a tenement, and now he’d succeeded.
“That’s John Moncreve, I’ve seen him here before,” said Maria. “Represents the Garsons, people your old leader displaced!”
Really, thought Santos, a smile spreading across her face.
“Yeah, you think they’re going to find someone willing to bomb him?”
Santos laughed. “Who’d turn down paid runs?”
She slipped Maria a five. “I’m interested in this kind of thing now. More of those if you tell me more.” She headed toward the bar where these Garsons had gone, keeping her eyes to herself but her ears open.
* * *
“He’s gonna do an Assembly at nine o’clock Sunday,” said the one who’d introduced himself as John Moncreve. There was an edge in the older man’s voice, a cold edge of suppressed fury. “Whole precinct is going to be gathered there. Three thousand people in the middle of the crossroads, got it?”
“Hit the people?” Canis asked brightly, clarifying. Different customers wanted you to prioritize different things, and he wanted to get this one’s order right.
“The people-killers,” said John Moncreve coldly. “Load up with cluster munitions.”
“Huh?” Oh, the man was talking about frags. Justin nodded.
“Sure, we can do frag bombs,” he said agreeably.
“Ungrateful fucking raff. Traitors the entire precinct,” said the other man, Daniel Garson. “They don’t deserve my father leading them.”
“We want you to kill as many people as possible,” John Moncreve said. “When we take back the precinct we’ll find the exact numbers and give you a bonus of five dollars per confirmed death.”
Canis smiled. He liked bonuses.
“You got it, chief. Anything else I should know?”
“Additional bonuses: ten grand if you take out Jeff Hammer personally. There’s a bounty on him now, ten thousand for his head.”
“Are you going to have any kind of a problem hitting one of your own?” asked Captain Daniel Garson, warily.
Canis shrugged. Not relevant, so far as he was concerned. Hammer would understand it was nothing personal. From three hundred feet it was never personal.
“Five grand. Half up-front.”
“Three thousand five hundred,” Moncreve countered.
“Come on, man. Frag bombs are expensive and you’re asking us to really load up with them. Forty pounds of frags apiece times five, we’ll drop for forty-five hundred.”
Moncreve paused for a moment and then started counting five-hundreds and hundreds onto the table between them. When he’d reached two grand he put down five fifties on top of the small stack, then slid it over to Canis, who accepted the bills and slid a gold clip across them. He’d watched Moncreve count the bills – he didn’t need to insult the man by making his own check.
He tucked the clip happily into his shirt. Work!
* * *
Santos idly sipped a drink and watched the tenement men talking with a gang leader she recognized as Justin Canis. Sky Wolves, and she was pretty sure they lived on a roof near the Madison Park Building, in lower Midtown. She wished she could lip-read, or get close enough to hear what they’d been saying, but one of the helmeted bodyguards had glared at her when she came past their table.
But the people Hammer had kicked out were hiring airbornes, and from the money she saw change hands they’d definitely hired Justin Canis.
She didn’t like Hammer, and she supposed he was no less aloof and abstracted as a tenement boss than he had been as the gang leader who’d stopped fucking her. But as a tenement boss he’d have money; certainly he’d pay something to know he was going to be bombed shortly. She wished she knew more than that, but… it was still information worth something.
She hung around, nursing a beer and trying to look like she was waiting for someone as out of the corner of her eye she watched the men in the booth. Canis gestured across at another airborne, a shaven-headed beak-nosed teenager who Santos didn’t know, who was standing by one of the pool tables half-wat
ching the game. One of the helmeted guards was sent off to bring the beak-nosed teenager over while the other one continued to look watchfully around the room. He glared at Santos for a moment and she turned away.
Over the next half-hour or so, the Garsons interviewed three more people from three different gangs, but Santos only saw money given to the beak-nosed kid and to Canis. Then they headed out.
They were probably staying at the Independent Hotel, but Santos didn’t care about that. Hammer would probably pay for warning, although he’d have paid more if she’d been able to tell him when. The question was how to get word to him. Marder had a radio; she’d seen the Marauders practicing with Hoshi, although she hadn’t known Hammer had apparently been directing them in those practice runs. But she didn’t have one of her own, or know what digital frequency they were using. She’d have to go see Marder in person…
“Hey, Santos. Where you been?” came a voice, a friend. “Your lead’s been looking all over the place for you. Thought you might’ve run off to join your ex or something.”
You, Krista, she thought as she followed the other girl toward where an angry Hogan would be waiting – she wasn’t supposed to leave his sight at the Airedale, he would be mad – are not entirely wrong.
She’d always been one to work angles. And an idea was forming…
Chapter Nine
Two obviously raff guards in stiff new green shirts, jeans and shiny boots stood at the entrance to the third-floor Chapel boardroom. As Hammer appeared down the stairs, coming from his top-floor quarters, they raised unfamiliar pipe muskets to stiff port-arms.
“Mr. President,” they intoned, and banged their right fists to their foreheads in clumsy salutes that Hammer, who had himself been a tenement soldier for less than six months, returned. As the head of the precinct and its military he would accept their salutes. But there would be no more raff knuckling their foreheads to the military going forwards, he thought as the guards stepped aside and he entered the conference room.
