Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  ‘People change, Vakov. Harmony got us into this mess when they experimented with stormtech. Now it’s our duty to fix it.’

  I laughed. ‘Compass is a hell of a lot less diplomatic than New Vladi. It’s all contracts and bargains there. If we have a problem back home, you either go to the Babushka or you go to the Five Courts. Or settle it via combat. Guilty parties fight it out to the death.’

  Kowalski cocked her head. ‘The Babushka? You mean like the grandmother?’

  ‘Exactly like the grandmother.’

  ‘And what does this grandmother do?’

  ‘She’s the one person on New Vladi who can give you permission to break the law if she sees fit. And you do not mess with her.’

  ‘Did you ever go to her?’

  A shockwave travelled up through the coils of memory. ‘Just once.’

  Kowalski nodded but said no more. I liked that about her: she sensed discomfort like a bad wound. Knew exactly when to stop speaking, when to let the moment pass undisturbed. It’s a skill more people could use.

  I glanced up at her. ‘So. What happens next?’

  ‘We’re all over it,’ said Kowalski. ‘We’re reaching out to stormdealer syndicate leaders, informers, folks who used to work the streets and know the spaceports and shipping routes these guys use. If any of them know who our new friends are, we’ll know, too.’

  ‘You think they’ll turn on another stormdealer?’

  ‘The only thing they hate more than each other is us. The question is whether they’re afraid of each other more than us, or want to get an advantage by turning someone else in. And unfortunately, the top dogs know it. They’ll skin anyone who talks, if they’re lucky. We’re talking about the control of entire asteroid floors here. Plus, we’ve got a prisoner to interrogate and salvaged intel to trawl through. Forensics are tearing the Warren apart. If they’ve left anything there, we’ll find it.’

  ‘And Artyom?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone dark. His apartment’s cleaned out and he hasn’t shown up for work. Plenty of lowlevel hideouts he could be biding his time in, places that won’t look at new arrivals too closely.’

  ‘You were going to arrest him, weren’t you?’

  ‘Before, not knowing if he was wired? No. But now we’ve found the base, he’s wanted big-time.’

  I’d known it the moment I’d seen the drug exchange. I leaned forward. ‘How about this. If, if, I could find him, would convincing him to come in help his case?’ I knew the odds were astronomically against it, but what sort of brother would I be if I didn’t try?

  ‘Too big a risk for you to go looking for him solo,’ Kowalski said. ‘If we nab him, I promise you’ll be the first person I call. If you can win him over this time, that’d make a world of difference. By all means, give him a call and see if he gets in touch. Otherwise, we don’t need you urgently. I’ll call you in a few days – sooner if there’s something to be done. Until then, you’ve earned a breather.’

  ‘One other thing. Grim’s been having trouble with his Compass residency card. I wouldn’t have found Artyom’s route or their base in the Warren without him. I don’t want a reward, but I think he should have one.’

  ‘There’s good news on that front.’ A series of documents flitted into my visual overlay, the pages trimmed with platinum. Kowalski smiled at me as I realised what they entailed. ‘It took a while to bring Kindosh around, but I convinced her.’

  I grinned at her. ‘Grim’s going to go bonkers when he sees this. Thank you.’

  ‘We’re up one live prisoner, one compound and several servers of intel. It’s worth it.’

  ‘So Harmony does have a heart after all.’

  Kowalski swept sandy hair back from her face. ‘Honest question, off the record.’

  ‘Completely off the record?’

  ‘Completely. Do you think Harmony deserves another chance? To try and rebuild the Common?’

  I glanced out the window as I turned the question over. Watching people trickling into streets where tiny eateries and niche shops were nearly hidden under a canopy of silver-flecked ivy. My gaze rose past the tiered balconies and townhouses, all the way up to the parklands and stalwart trees the size of highrises. I turned back to her. ‘In all honesty: no. No, I don’t. Harvest was a monstrosity that needed to be put down, but Harmony doesn’t get much credit from me either. Though the mess both left behind isn’t going to mop itself up.’

  ‘You’re very honest.’

  ‘I’m very practical.’

  ‘Maybe practical is what we need. Like any drug, stormtech hits the little guy the hardest. The poor, the young. The stupid. Have you heard of the Blue Wave?’ I shook my head. ‘It’s part of an underground music festival. Bluesmoke and grimwire is popular enough, but now there’s a concert where the band, the DJ, the audience, everyone has stormtech. They turn the lights off and blast the music, so the only light in the room comes from the stormtech. The audience makes patterns, shapes, Mexican waves. Sometimes, they select half a dozen people and sync the soundtrack to their heartbeat as they dance. You, quite literally, dance to the beat of your own heart. Your body becomes an instrument.’

  ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘Yeah. The same alien biomass used to win a war, used to get high, used by drug traffickers, and now used for a night out. I don’t want to imagine what it might be used for in a decade.’

  Breakfast arrived and halted our conversation. I hadn’t realised how ravenous I was. I speared a wedge of French toast and smeared it with the butterscotch sauce. I was halfway through the bowl of fruit before Kowalski pulled up the restaurant menu again. ‘Working nights does my head in. Nothing a good breakfast cocktail can’t fix.’

  I looked at her. ‘Booze? With breakfast?’

  Katherine gave something between a shrug and a nod.

  ‘And here I thought I was the only one who drank this early in the morning,’ I said.

  ‘Shall I make it two, then?’

  ‘By all means.’

  Soon, I was trying my first breakfast martini. Didn’t much like it at first, but by the third I was coming around to the taste. We shared knowing grins with each other, happy to have found a kindred spirit. It was our first chance to talk, really talk, and our conversation leaped from alcohol to technology to recent arrivals of alien species to Common politics, to the new Compass floors under construction and soon to open for business. I found I could talk to Kowalski easily. She always had something vital and interesting to contribute, something that would surprise me. I enjoyed the conversation with her, the time flying by. It was good to focus on something so mundane and simple. We both deserved the distraction.

  When we were done, Katherine scooped up the bill and we parted ways, with me promising to take her out some other place when we had time. I was sorry to see her go, watching her walk down the steps just a little bit tipsy, her blonde hair flowing in the breeze behind her.

  My mood elevated, I went straight to Grim to tell him about the citizenship card. His eyes were wild and happy at the news, grinning wide like a kid who got a dog for his birthday. ‘You did it,’ he breathed out, crushing me in a hug. He was practically shaking with joy. ‘You actually did it, you big, mad bastard.’

  I peeled out of his embrace. ‘Take it easy. Drinks on you, by the way.’

  Unfortunately, I made the mistake of letting Grim choose where we drank. He dragged me to an underground bar in a subfloor sandwiched between two larger Compass levels. I’ve sat in some rundown bars in my time, but I’ve never been to a place that took pride in being so deliberately shoddy. Sticky purple, turquoise and red lights glistened around the darkened, smoky space. The booths were too small and the low ceiling too close. Subsurface lighting turned faces sinister. Metallic, pulsing membranes throbbed on the wall in tune to the music. One glance at the customers in their heavy, hooded clothing, che
ap bioaugs wired into their bodies, exchanging circuitry-laced cards with hands with pulsing colours at their fingertips, and I knew this was where Grim’s hacker friends hung out. Databrokers, system divers, people who knew the digital world inside out. I spotted a scattering of aliens among the mostly human crowd. Had to be one of the many bars that offered food and drink catering to their biology. A collage of tattoos and florescent glyphs adorning cheekbones and necks indicated three, maybe four separate hacker collectives in here. They circled each other like sharks, but left it at that.

  Grim was on a rampage. He jabbered non-stop about the eateries he’d take me to, the markets we could shop at. ‘Did I end up telling you how big the genome pay-out was?’ Grim asked as he downed a geometrical glass brimming with spicy rum.

  I sipped mine at a more measured pace, shook my head.

  My shib chimed with an incoming transmission of currency. ‘That’s your half,’ Grim said.

  The stormtech flared like a lightning bolt down my arm as a figure blinked up in my vision. A grin spread across my face. ‘That’s insane.’

  ‘I know! We don’t ever have to work again.’

  ‘You? Retire? You’d be bored in a week. At least you can move out of that dump you’re living in.’

  ‘Yeah, about that.’ Grim fixed me with his best toothy grin as I poured two more shots. A glass should never be empty, as far as I’m concerned. In the background a fight between a human and an alien belonging to a species I didn’t recognise had broken out, barely earning a glance from surrounding customers. Probably standard in here. ‘Property’s tight at the moment.’

  ‘Grim …’

  ‘Come on, man. We’ve lived together before!’

  ‘Spending three miserable weeks in a shabby flophouse in a glorified mining dockyard two systems away from civilisation is not living, Grim.’

  ‘It’s the experience that counts.’

  I swear he dredged these conversations up just to test me. ‘Grim, you’re my best mate, but we’re not living together. End of discussion.’

  ‘Can’t blame me for trying.’ Grim thunked his glass down and allowed me to pour more rum. ‘So what d’you think of the place?’

  I glanced over my shoulder to see a man with a pulsing tattoo make a connection between a wall socket and the open port embedded in his skull, interfacing directly with substrate. Grim had told me you could tweak the modules and get a little extra kick when you dived in and out. ‘It’s … unique.’

  ‘Pretty cool, right? Just don’t ask the bartender to surprise you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just … trust me.’ The booze was hitting him faster than I’d expected. ‘I pick up most of my gigs here. It’s neutral territory. Hacker collectives, smugglers and brokers are always at war for fresh intel, always trying to sell each other out. But there’s no stealing from or breaking into other people’s neuralware allowed in here.’

  ‘What kind of data gets exchanged?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything,’ Grim slurred.

  ‘Could you be a bit more specific?’

  He shrugged. ‘Everything. Bank details, trade routes, dead-drops, navigation firmware, darkmarket narcotics buyers and sellers. Everything. These guys know stuff before it happens. They can even target select organisations if you pay them enough.’

  ‘Well, that’s comforting.’

  ‘Not all of them are like that. Some just like to mess with people. Send them on scavenger hunts all over Compass, making puzzles, planting clues in mainframes, that sort of thing.’ Grim pointed to a Torven with blood-red tubes snaking down his spine. ‘A few months back, Kashyk got all the octodrones in Limefields to play a twenty-hour game of tag. Before that, he rerouted a bar in the Upper Markets, nullified all the payments. Free booze for a whole week!’

  I drained my glass. Worlds within worlds within worlds. It didn’t matter how well you thought you knew Compass, there was undoubtedly another five hidden layers, buried beneath the asteroid’s surface.

  I didn’t have high hopes for Harmony tracking Artyom down, even as I sent him an urgent transmission asking him to pull his head out and get in contact immediately. Didn’t have much else to do but sit around and wait. Relaxing, really relaxing for a length of time, isn’t something I do too well anymore. My body and muscles always want to move, sniffing out anything that gets my blood up and muscles pumping. The stormtech’s always looking for a way to strain the human body, pushing me over the edge one inch at a time.

  But now, I had the time to try and relax.

  After another twelve hours asleep, I spent two quiet days in my apartment ordering takeaways, soaking in the jet-shower, sipping gin and working through Grim’s filmlogs. I enjoyed most of them, but would never give Grim the satisfaction of admitting it.

  I checked my shib’s comms regularly. Nothing from Artyom. No surprises there.

  Knowing it was hopeless, I sent another message before heading out to explore Compass and get some shopping done. The Rubix can monitor my supplies and put in an automatic order, but I’m a hands-on type of guy. Not everything can be printed, especially not food if you want something that tastes better than blended leftovers. Besides, if you’re going to go shopping anywhere in the Common, Compass is the place to do it. Grim, shopping entrepreneur that he thinks he is, told me that if it exists, it can be bought here. And if it doesn’t exist, it can still be bought.

  First order of the day was getting my shoulder-length hair shorn back to a crew cut. Afterwards, I trooped to the upper echelons of Compass, home to a luxurious health centre. A swimming pool, an assortment of saunas and spas, timbered steam rooms and fitness equipment greeted me. Tension from my little experiment in the cradle was still playing out in my muscles and I needed to unwind. It wasn’t quite as good as the Russian banyas back on New Vladi, but there’s something special about doing laps in a pool with a kilometre-long viewport that offers a sweeping view of an asteroid field against the backdrop of distant stars, under and above the water. The sauna was less successful. The compressed heat and tight space was uncomfortably close to being tortured inside my armour, and my stormtech lashed in response. I was getting a definite sense of being stared at. People avoiding sitting next to me, like I was going to attack them.

  They didn’t realise that if you treat someone a particular way for long enough, they’ll become exactly that.

  I ended up relaxing by myself in a private spherical spa, the transparent glass turning into a shifting canvas of space. Ambient sound effects rendered from a surveillance drone speeding along a planet ravaged by ion storms played to me as I was gently whisked through simulated space. I floated past swirling nebulae and dwarf stars gently pulsing with solar flares and drifted across the quiet, cratered surface of a moon. I passed a massive gas-giant, its brown surface swirling with turbulent storms. Brown, black, blue and white, coiled together like a marble painting in motion, a breathtakingly peaceful piece of cosmic art. Hot water dripped down my back, the gas-giant’s belt of dust-rings rippling as I was sped through them. I let my hand drift through a sweeping asteroid field, breathing in the calming scent of petrichor as we swooped down to a green forest planet wreathed with white mist. Whatever shreds of peace I had in this place, I was going to enjoy them while they lasted.

  Several galaxies later, I headed back to the eternal chaos of the Upper Markets. As I threaded my way through the cluttered and packed hallways, I passed an alien cultural centre. I casually inventoried the products in the display windows. Books, language groups, translation software for various alien dialects, support groups for aliens who wanted to assimilate better into the Common.

  A thousand shops tempted me, but I wasn’t here to browse. Thanks to my good friends in the Warren, my armour was in desperate need of repair. Already, I was starting to feel uncomfortable without it. By the time we’d left the Warren, it had been two steps away from scrap met
al, the suit’s inner surface pushing uncomfortably against my hamstrings, tendrils squirming furiously like sandpaper against in my armpits. It would be just the thing for faulty wiring to catch fire and roast me alive for real.

  I ordered the suit to march behind me as I picked my way to the outermost sectors of the Upper Markets, towards the armoury Jasken had spoken about. One sniff of the suit’s reeking insides and I’d decided my stomach wasn’t strong enough to wear it again without a serious chemical clean.

  The suit’s hydraulics wheezed and complained as I found and entered the shop, the sign Gunpowder Milkshake lit up above the lintel. I stood in the middle of a three-storey armoury. Black and gold timbers with geometric engravings rose up around me. The smell of woodsmoke and burnt copper scented the air. Armoured suits of varying colours and designs gleamed on dark podiums in a showroom, crafted and custom-built for humans and aliens alike. I heard a scrabbling noise and glanced up to see a giant metal spider picking its way over the highly stacked shelves. It was a mechsuit, its many-jointed limbs replacing and re-ordering a dozen items on the shelves simultaneously. I waited until the insectoid head swivelled around to peer at me with aquamarine photoreceptors. The mechsuit climbed down the shelving with a slow, oiled grace, reached the bottom and peeled apart to reveal the owner.

  ‘Fox, at your service.’ Fox wore a stonewashed T-shirt and sloppy grey beanie that couldn’t have been more of a contrast to the filigree furniture around me. A toothpick jutted from his cracked lips. ‘Come now, what’s the order of the day?’

  I pointed to the two holes in the back of my suit. ‘What can you do with these?’

  Fox barely paid me heed as he ducked and swerved around the suit with the casual grace of a dancer, fingerless gloves skittering over his datapad. ‘Heavy damage, this.’ He glanced at an icon on his datapad. ‘Oh, look at you, you little bugger. Nasty bit of foreign malware in the deep-layer substrate. Been putting your metal right through the ringer. You aware of that?’

  ‘Intensely aware.’