Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘Are you hurt?’ She placed her hand on my shoulder. ‘Do you need autosurgery?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ I said.

  ‘Just as well.’ Katherine leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. Weirdly, I felt guilty for rebuffing her question of concern. ‘You’d better explain.’

  I did. And by the time I was done she looked ready to throttle me. Probably would have if Grim hadn’t been there.

  ‘When you agreed to work with Harmony,’ she said slowly, each word carefully measured, ‘what part of our agreement did you not understand?’

  ‘I never agreed to work as a team,’ I said.

  ‘You really don’t understand, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice—’ I started before she cut me off.

  ‘No. You could have contacted me at any time. Before you stormed their hideout, before you started your book hunt. Before you went to the Collective and got yourself get captured. I trusted you, Vakov.’ In a flash, I saw the disappointment beneath her fury. Disappointment not just in what had happened, but in me. ‘I trusted you enough to give you the space you insisted you needed, and you threw it in my face. After you promised we’d investigate this together.’ She poked me hard in the chest and began pacing around me, making no attempt to hold back her anger. ‘Your heroic stunts might have worked in the Reaper War, but they don’t work here.’

  ‘Because Harmony’s been making such great progress,’ I said. ‘You don’t even know what’s been going on. These aren’t petty stormdealers looking to make an extra buck. This is a cult, Kowalski. Crazy zealots determined to find the Shenoi, murdering Reapers to burn your credibility into the ground.’

  ‘But you still disobeyed us. There’s a chain of command, Vakov. I’d think a Reaper would get that. We follow procedure to get things done.’ She blinked heavily and I saw her exhaustion in her eyes. This was the last conversation she wanted to have. ‘And procedure sure as hell doesn’t land you in an arena about to kill your best friend.’

  I knew she had a point. But my body was still livid from the fight and I wasn’t in any frame of mind to back down. ‘You wanted answers. You got them. We know Sokolav’s alive, and we know who we’re dealing with. Or would you rather not know, and let them continue playing you?’

  ‘Discretion, Vakov. Discretion. They know we’re onto them now. It’s not a matter of dragging them out onto the streets; we have to build a case in order to tear them out by the roots. Do you know how we found you? Remember Hausk? That fellow we captured at the Suns’ compound, down in the Warren, told us they operate in the Pits. The moment our backs were turned, he slit his wrists on the edge of his chair.’ She looked me straight in the eye. ‘We work together, or we’re going to lose.’

  ‘What makes you think Vakov wants your help?’ Grim had been silent this entire debate. Now he was by my side, his fingers clenching into a tight fist. ‘He cares about saving his brother. He’s had enough help from the likes of you.’

  ‘Since when are we the enemy here?’ Kowalski actually recoiled, as if she couldn’t believe he was speaking. ‘He agreed to help on our terms, not the other way around.’

  ‘You put that stuff into him, knowing what it’d do. You bastards screwed up the rest of his life. And you think he should play by your rules?’

  ‘We haven’t arrested you for multiple hacking infringements,’ Kowalski told him, her voice creeping into a low and dangerous tone, ‘or for the smuggling ring. We gave you citizenship here. You want to keep it?’

  ‘You think I care about that?’ Grim snorted. ‘Vakov doesn’t owe you people anything. Least of all his brother.’

  ‘Of course.’ Kowalski clapped her hands around the nape of her neck. ‘This isn’t just about Vakov, or you. It’s about us, isn’t it?’

  I was confused, right up until I saw her looking at Grim’s Harvest tribal tattoo and the dots connected. The tendons on Grim’s neck stood stark like bridge cords.

  Oh.

  There aren’t many taboos left when it comes to cultural prejudice, not even on colonies late to join the Common. But trying to paint Harvest immigrants as Harvester supporters – the same Harvesters who had tried to wipe out a good chunk of the human race – rarely ends well. I’d seen people get killed for it, even when it was meant as a joke. Only Kowalski wasn’t joking about Grim.

  Grim raked in a breath and whispered something to himself in his own tongue. His shoulders shook not with rage, but pain. The anger in Kowalski’s eyes guttered out as she realised what she’d done.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Please, I—’ She shook her head. ‘Forget I said that. That was so terribly cruel.’

  Grim gave a dark chuckle, masking the sob beneath it. I’d always known he kept a sensitive side buried beneath his jokes and infuriating cheer. Watching Katherine scrape it all back to expose the naked bedrock of his pain with such ease hurt. He was trying so hard not to look at me, but it was only making it worse. He swallowed, spread his arms. ‘Going to send your Sub Zero buddies to raid my place at midnight? Drug me, stick me on the next lungship out of here? Nothing stopped your folks from doing that before. Why not now?’

  Katherine couldn’t meet his eye, but after a few seconds Grim backed away, wiping his face. I realised it was a strain for him just to share space with someone from Harmony. Kowalski couldn’t have been finding it easy, either. And here I was, caught in the middle.

  ‘You didn’t deserve that, Grim. Neither of you do.’ There was an ache in Katherine’s eyes, like she was barely holding herself together. ‘They want us divided, working against each other. We can’t let that happen. Which is why you can’t go off alone like this, Vakov.’ Her eyes met mine, pleading. Help me help you. ‘You can’t fight for this and pretend you’re working alone. You have to trust us to get this done together. Otherwise more Reapers die, the stormtech keeps flowing on the market, and this cult gets stronger. Do you understand that?’

  I did. I dredged up an image of water flooding a cracked riverbed, cool wind filling up an airless room, as I’d been taught to do when the stormtech grew too strong. Kowalski was fighting to make Compass a better place for everyone, because this was her home, because she had family here, because it was the right thing to do.

  She didn’t just need my help to do it. She wanted it. And in that thought came the guilt at betraying the trust she’d given me. Not Harmony. Her.

  I wanted to regain that trust. I nodded. Katherine gave the tightest of smiles. ‘I’ve spoken with Kindosh already. Harmony is pouring resources into this. We’re launching undercover operations to hunt the House of Suns down. There’re SSC patrols and checkpoints at five Compass spaceports. We’re sending out a galaxy-wide transmission across the Common to all outposts, habitats and installations, in case they try and make a break for it.’

  I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak.

  ‘It’s going to take a while to build a case against them. While we do, lie low for a bit, and I mean it this time.’ She threw one more apologetic look at Grim and left, leaving me wondering how the hell any of this happened.

  Easy.

  One step at a time.

  26

  Confessions and Gin

  I’m a restless guy. Maybe it’s my size, maybe it’s the stormtech, maybe it’s my body chemistry, but I can’t sit around for long. When I’m worked up, I’ve got to get out of the house. Once Kowalski left, my apartment walls were pressing in on me like a prison cell and I had to find a bar someplace.

  ‘There’re some wicked bars around here,’ Grim told me. ‘You’d never find them on your own. Come on, there’s a very special place I know.’

  Grim’s Very Special Place was on one of the top floors, near the edge of the asteroid. The whole thing was shaped like a giant egg or cylinder, running at least four or five kilometres tall. A conglomerate of bars, lounges and exclusiv
e establishments had been built into the outer edges of the structure, looping around and around, each with its own specifically styled atmosphere and audience. The central bulk of the structure between the bars had been hollowed out, so it looked like you were staring down into a small canyon in the middle of space, with venues chiselled into the surface. Tubes at least five metres thick were grappled to the sides of the bulk, allowing various aquatic creatures to swim along the structure’s length in a winding loop. The bars and eateries narrowed as they reached the pinnacle, becoming more and more exclusive, before seeming to grow outside of the asteroid rock itself: offering a naked view into space. I craned my neck to stare at the endless floors honeycombed into the raw asteroid rock, drinking in the mind-boggling view as Grim dragged me up the various stairwells branching through the floors.

  The first bar was drenched in gentle white light. Widescreen windows ran the full length of the room, superimposed with ever-changing views of space. Navigational charts, lungship parts, paintings and sketches of spacecraft and various celestial bodies decorated the area. A nearby terminal boasted that it had served patrons of nine different species, from fifty-seven solar systems. It was the bar closest to a nearby spacedock, with furniture and glassware designed to accommodate clientele still wearing their heavy suits.

  Sure enough, the place was packed with folk in exoskeletons, spacesuits, EVA suits for spacecraft repairs, thick armour with temperature-regulating tubing for extended journeys where crews wore their gear for months at a time. Glyphs and jargon indicated crews and syndicates who travelled together across the far regions of deepspace, operating independently. There was an entire network of them out there among the moonbases and habitats and stations, where the law was more fluid. I recognised one from Darkstar: a ragtag, multispecies, interstellar crew that explored the greater galaxy, performing odd jobs no one else wanted to touch. Last I’d heard, most of those jobs weren’t legal, but I’m in no position to judge.

  We made our way to the very back. An armoured Torven slid out of the booth, leaving it free for me to slide into the seat the alien had just occupied. It was the only available space. Perfect. I needed room, but I also needed to be around people tonight. Needed the atmosphere to swallow me up and drown out the past few days.

  I sprawled across the wooden table that showed years of alcoholic spills, and watched the blue-white planet slowly turn beneath us as Grim went to get drinks. I was no stranger to places like this. On New Vladi, I’d go with Artyom and our friends to similar little bars sandwiched between buildings and in basements. Niches in the city. We’d sit there, letting the conversation and music wash over us as we drank. As if the bars could hold off the darkness outside. But the flexiscreen was always on, and we couldn’t ignore the reports of Harvest carving their way across deepspace, more and more worlds going dark.

  I sat up and wiped my nose. Glanced up at the dark canvas of space through the domed viewport. There were promontories of ochre and crimson powder, billowing backdrops of green and violet, like pastel oil colours smeared across light years. Through them, a myriad of pulsing stars glistened. It was an overwhelming abundance of richness, a galactic tapestry. I felt light-headed, as if the world could tilt sideways and I’d fall into the infinite ocean of stars swirling above me. I shook my head, grounded myself in my body and focused on the bar around me. Glasses of vodka, liqueurs and whiskeys sliding across bar-tops made from obsidian, the chink of bottles knocking together. Limes and olives dropping into planetary-themed cocktails. People cracked crude jokes, made advances, boasted about surviving combat encounters with hostile aliens in deepspace. Glyphs shone on armoured knuckles and nebula patterns swirled down chestplates. I drank it all in, savouring the press of people while deciphering the wide-ranging accents and dialects that stemmed from all over the Common.

  They really weren’t kidding when they said that Compass was the capital of space, and just being here made me want to get out there and explore the universe. Apparently, an ocean planet called Kholan had built an entire metropolis deep under the sea. I’d go there and further: as far away from cults and drug markets and war as I possibly could. Though a glance at the tangle of blue in my arms reminded me it was pretty hard to escape something fused to your blood cells on a molecular level. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t ignore it for one night.

  ‘Here we go.’ The table jolted as Grim returned with two towering glasses brimming with a bubbly sunset-coloured liquid. ‘Get that in you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dunno. Bartender said it’s an offworld brew. A real hit on space stations, apparently.’

  ‘So you don’t know what it is?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  I drank. It had a strong, fruity flavour and a spicy aftertaste that crackled down my throat and buzzed vibrantly in the back of my skull. We grinned at each other and ordered the next round, and another after that, the stormtech burning off the alcohol.

  The next beer was a reddish, copper colour and had to be drunk from the bottle or it’d go sour. Two more of those and we were both starting to crave a nibble or two. We picked another lounge at random: a seaside-style bar decorated with carpets stained with crustacean ink, terrariums filled with sea shells and sand, dangling windchimes and white timber flooring deliberately ridged and roughed to appear as if belonging to some beach villa resort. We moved past a soiree of party-goers to an alcove in the corner of the room, where a table was already filled with complimentary offerings of soft bread, oils and balsamic sauces, chunky salt and pepper. I’d eaten half of it by the time Grim returned with a food called pizza I’d never had before, and more beer. Black in colour, tasted like liquorice and roasted nuts.

  ‘Isn’t this food a bit … cheesy?’ I told Grim as I chewed through the pizza.

  ‘Don’t look a free horse in the mouth, Vak.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. Just eat.’

  I did. When we’d finished, I discovered we were dining in one of Compass’ most prestigious gin bars. I meant to put that to the test, ordering two gin and tonics, mixed with Cointreau and Curaçao, blue as my own stormtech. As with every time I went drinking with Grim, it didn’t end at one round, and we were quickly onto our third. Grim swore he’d keep pace with me to the tenth, not counting the beer we’d had in the previous bar. He was tipsy by the fifth. By the eighth, he was passed out, stone-cold drunk, snoring loud enough to turn heads. I smirked, knowing I’d have to get him home.

  I spooned the blueberries out of my gyroscopic glass, my thoughts turning back to the House of Suns. This was more than some sort of alien obsession. And they were hoarding stormtech for something more than to poison it to kill Reapers and skinnies. They were stockpiling the stuff, studying it. So why kill scientists? What did they not want the rest of us to find out? By killing Reapers off in public, they obviously wanted to send a bloody message. But if anything, turning people away from stormtech seemed counter-intuitive to their zealot manifesto.

  And how involved was Artyom?

  The flexiscreens above me began replaying the terrorist attack from a few days ago. They had more intel now, about where the terrorist had sourced the bombs, how he’d gained access into the building, and as the piece unfolded I noticed people were staring at us. At me. Not directly, of course, just side glances and quick looks. Wasn’t like I wasn’t used to it. But there were more of them now. And where before there’d been curiosity, now there was a quiet anger. Fear. Trepidation. As if I’d snap off the leash at the slightest provocation.

  I felt my fingers tighten around the glass, suddenly feeling vulnerable without my armour.

  I glanced up to see Kowalski. ‘You got my message,’ I said. I’d invited her when we’d left the second bar. I’d only half expected her to join us. Not sure why I did it. Maybe I’d enjoyed our little chat in the French restaurant more than I’d realised.

  But I knew I was
glad she was here.

  She stood awkwardly in front of the table. Her hair was wet from a recent shower, her trademark scarf around her neck. ‘You still got room for one more?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, leaning back in my seat. Grim stirred and gave a loud snort but didn’t wake up. ‘That alpha-male quip cut me deep. Fragile masculinity and all.’

  Katherine rolled her eyes. There was a vacant chair, but I moved sideways so she could sit next to me in the booth. She did. ‘Reapers don’t hold grudges,’ I said, ‘not worth it. Except for when we do.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The cloudy residue of her vaper clung to her clothes with a vague peppery smell. ‘Well, I’m no stranger to that department.’

  ‘What’s your poison?’ I asked, gesturing at the menus bobbing in the air, held out by drones designed as various aquatic creatures. Katherine placed her order with the drone built like a stingray. Vodka, triple-filtered through porous asteroid rocks. I guess you’d need something strong if you worked under Kindosh’s belt.

  ‘Today’s been a kick in the gut for everyone,’ she said as her drink came. She plonked the entire bottle on the table between us, poured herself a decent measure and knocked it back. Poured herself another. ‘Kindosh knew you didn’t like us and locked you into a deal you couldn’t refuse. It’s hard to stay angry with you when you do exactly what she expected.’

  ‘So I’m off the hook?’

  ‘Nice try, Vak. But Harmony understands you had your reasons.’

  She twirled the glass in her hands. ‘Remember Andrezj? That nephew of mine who dabbled in stormtech?’ She didn’t look up, as if she didn’t have the willpower to raise her head. ‘That was him today. The one who brought down that building.’

  My throat went tight. Her behaviour in my apartment now made sense. ‘I’m afraid to call my sister.’ Her gaze was still fixed down, searching for answers in the clear liquid. ‘I keep trying to come up with things to say. Playing them in my head over and over and over. None of them end well. He won’t be the last, Vakov. Not by a long shot. And it scares me. It scares me that so many people are going to die before we stop this.’