“Coming to the Black Mark?” Jak asked.
She shook her head. “He’s a clinker. Came by himself.”
I couldn’t fathom why a police officer from Cries would come here. “He got a death wish?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know.”
I gave Jak a look of apology.
“Go with.” He paused. “And Bhaaj.”
“Yah?”
“Still looking for Jagernauts?”
I tensed. “Why?”
He glanced at Sandjan, then at me.
“She’s good,” I said. “Got Code.” That oath included a pledge of loyalty. Whatever she heard here would go no further.
“Don’t know much,” Jak said. “One whisper, almost too faint. Try the Down-deep.”
I touched the cleft in his chin. “Thanks.”
His gaze turned sleepy. “Now you owe me a debt. Might come to collect later.”
I could pay that debt all night. “Got interest,” I said.
He laughed. “Good.”
He went off to run his casino, and I left with Sandjan.
We found the intruder in a medium-sized canal, standing on its midwalk. Gods. He wasn’t just a police officer, he was a Majda cop, tall and muscular, a handsome man with dark hair and the black palace uniform. He carried a power lamp, top-of-the-line. I was surprised no one had tried to knock him out and pinch his equipment.
Sandjan and I watched him from across the canal, hidden by an overhang of rock.
“How long he been there?” I asked.
“Maybe fifteen minutes.” Sandjan glanced at me. “Lost, maybe.”
“Stay on guard here, eh?”
“Yah. I stay.”
I stepped out into view on the midwalk. “Duane,” I called.
The Majda officer swung around and lifted his lamp. “Bhaaj? Is that you?”
“Yah, it’s me.” I jumped into the canal, which was about a meter below the midwalk, and then strode toward him, sending up swirls of red dust. I passed the dust sculpture of a warrior, no doubt created by whatever gang claimed this territory. They were probably watching us from the walls. At least they hadn’t tried to whack Duane, possibly because they recognized him from the cartel war last year. He had done well by my people, bringing our children, the aged, and the injured to safety. That reputation could only protect him so far, though. The last thing I wanted was Captain Duane Ebersole beat up by thieves or just because he was a cop. He was a good officer, better than most, and he liked me a lot better than the Majda police captain, Takkar, who’d love to kick my ass off Raylicon.
I climbed up to the midwalk on his side, using ledges jutting out from the wall.
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
I went over to him. “Around.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Heard.”
He smiled. “What, you just happened to hear me walking around?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He seemed fascinated. “You’re speaking Undercity. I’ve never heard you do that before.”
“Aqueducts.” In other words, we were in my world now, and we called it the aqueducts more than the Undercity. I was surprised he understood me so well. Although our language and that spoken in Cries came from the same roots, the words and grammatical structure were no longer identical. The two didn’t yet qualify as separate languages, but they differed enough that people often needed a translator if they weren’t used to hearing both forms of speech and their associated accents.
“Why you here?” I asked.
“Actually,” he said. “I came to find you.”
I couldn’t see why he’d risk his life to find me. It was true, I went shrouded when I worked, using the jammer I carried in my backpack, which meant the authorities couldn’t locate me with their usual sensors. Even so. He could have left a message at my penthouse.
“You got to go.” I headed along the midwalk. “Shouldn’t be here.”
He walked with me. “And you shouldn’t hide behind that shroud of yours.”
Captain Takkar never tired of telling me exactly that. Well, tough. No one here would talk to me if they thought the Majdas might be listening. The shroud in my pack interfered with sound waves, jammed electromagnetic frequencies, and used false echoes to fool neutrino sensors. The inner surface of my clothes kept my body at a comfortable temperature, but their outer surface matched their temperature to my surroundings to fool IR sensors. Majda couldn’t find me.
“Why you here?” I asked.
“The Ruby Pharaoh wants to talk to you.”
Damn! How many people had just overheard those words? Sandjan for certain, probably her man Biker, since he often ran with her. Whatever gang claimed this canal would’ve heard, and anyone following us out of curiosity. It wouldn’t be long before the whisper mill spread Duane’s words all over the Undercity. I had to act fast.
“Can’t say that about Majda,” I said. “Call her the pharaoh, you get ripped from your job.”
Duane gave me a strange look totally fitting for my bizarre comment. After a pause, though, he said, “Yeah, I suppose. Anyway, Colonel Majda wants to see you. Something about sports meet between Cries and the Undercity.”
Sports meet? I’d have laughed, except it would ruin his clever diversion. The idea that an ISC colonel would send a member of the police force that guarded her palace to the Undercity to find a retired army major and suggest she help set up a tykado meet—it was so freaking bizarre, people might actually believe it.
“Ho!” The shout came from somewhere ahead in the darkness.
I stopped smiling. “Got IR?” I asked Duane.
“What?” He was staring in the direction of the shout.
“Turn off your lamp.”
He touched the lamp and blackness descended. “Yes,” he said. “I have IR lenses.”
“Good.”
Activating IR, Max thought. The canal reappeared, a ghostly vision, faint red, except for Duane, who blazed red-white.
Crank up my ears, too, I thought.
Done.
I suddenly heard the whisper of air in a nearby crevice, rustles of lizards in the canal, and somewhere in the distance, the pound of running feet.
“Someone is coming,” I told Duane. “Come with, yah?” I stepped behind a jagged column of rock. Behind it, a break showed in the wall of the canal, one just barely wide enough for an adult to squeeze through. I went first and Duane followed. He trusted me more than I trusted Majda cops, because I’d never have followed him into some crack in the wall. Inside, we stood among a lacework of stalactites and stalagmites, a fractal-like wonderland of rock.
“Good gods,” he said in a low voice. “How did you know this was here?”
“Just knew.” I stood listening. “Dusters on the midwalk. Running.”
“How do you know?” he asked. “I can’t hear anything.”
“Got biomech,” I said. “Enhanced auditory.”
“You think the runners are a threat?”
“Yah.” To him, anyway.
“Based on what?”
“Logic.” We were in the aqueducts and he was a cop. Of course they were a threat. The pound of their running vibrated through me.
“I hear them now,” he said.
A woman spoke. “You’re lizard meat, key-clinker.”
What the hell? I whipped out my gun with enhanced speed.
Combat mode toggled, Max thought. Duane was also drawing his gun, in slow motion it seemed, though I knew he was moving almost as fast.
“Can’t shoot here,” I called out. “Knock over walls.”
She’s up ahead, Max thought. About twenty meters.
I saw nothing up ahead but rock formations lit in the ghostly IR light. Apparently her gear masked her body heat. Down here, you didn’t come by that equipment legally or cheaply.
“You brought a cop,” she said from somewhere ahead. “He’s dead.”
“Fuck that,” I told her. “
He’s with me.”
“I got no jack with you,” the woman said. “Just him.”
“Why?” Duane asked, his gun aimed in her direction.
“Shut up, key-clink.” Her voice rasped. It sounded familiar.
“Got no jack with him, either,” I told her.
She spat, so hard I could hear it. “Cop.”
“And I’m army,” I said. “So what?”
Outside the runners pounded by our hiding place, oblivious to us. Our ducking in here would have worked perfectly if someone hadn’t already been using the space.
A muffled pop came from up ahead, the sound of a gunshot. In my side vision, I saw Duane slam back against a stalagmite, shaking rocks around us as if a giant hand had shoved him.
“God damn it!” I barely stopped my reflexive response to fire back.
She is shooting at Captain Ebersole, Max said.
I know that! Estimate her position and light it up.
An area ahead glowed red, two stalactites glittering like rubies. I fired between them, hitting neither. In the same instant, I said, “Duane?”
“I’m okay,” he grit out. “It just hit my shoulder.”
Either she wasn’t a great shot or she was firing to disarm. Regardless, it was stupid. The stone formations here acted as support columns, and if we broke them, the walls could collapse.
I spoke to Duane in a low voice. “Don’t fire back.” I called out, “No shoot! Bring down walls.”
Her voice came again. “You defend a cop?”
“Defend a friend,” I said.
“You vouch?” she asked.
Yah, asshole, ask if I vouch for him after you shoot him.
Are you talking to me? Max asked.
No. Aloud, I said, “Yah. I vouch.”
Silence.
Then she said, “Get out.”
I spoke fast, under my breath. “Duane, get out now.” She might change her mind. Hell, she might just want us in the open so she could shoot without bringing down a ton of rock.
We squeezed back onto the midway. My situational awareness was so hyperextended, I caught the flicker from a totem a few meters down the midwalk. I whipped up my gun. With my bio-hydraulics drawing full energy from the microfusion reactor that powered my body, I moved so fast, the rest of the world seemed to slow down. A woman lunged out from behind the totem, her pulse gun drawn. Despite his injury, Duane was bringing up his revolver. In my side vision, I saw Sandjan step onto the midwalk across the canal and hurl a dagger at our attacker. Farther down, Biker stepped out as well, throwing another of those huge daggers. None of us were fast enough. The woman’s thumb touched the firing stud of her weapon—
And her body exploded in a flash of leather, blood, and guts.
An instant later, my shot blasted through her falling remains, then Duane’s shot, then the daggers from Sandjan and Biker.
Duane and I spun around. A woman stood on the midwalk a few meters away from us. Bigger than me, bigger than Duane, bigger than anyone, she was all muscle, from her hardened biceps to the rippled abs that showed through her torn muscle shirt. The tech-mech embedded in her arm glittered, and gauntlets circled her wrists, set with poisoned dart throwers. The insignia of the Vakaar drug cartel blazed on her left gauntlet, a slash of red across a white orb. She had a monster gun, a Mark 89 Automatic Power Rifle, which she held as if it weighed nothing. She stood there like a nightmare reincarnation of a barbarian goddess from the Dark Ages, ready to wreak havoc on the world.
Dark Singer had arrived.
“Bhaaj,” she said casually. “Heard you were looking for me.”
Gods almighty. Singer must have fired right between Duane and myself, a feat of pinpoint accuracy that would have scared the hell out of me if I’d had time to think.
Singer. It meant assassin. They sang death to their targets.
I took a breath and tilted my head toward the remains of the woman behind us. “Big shot.”
“Didn’t break the Code.” Singer motioned at us with her gun. “Protected you.”
No kidding. She had just saved my sorry-assed hide, and Duane’s life too, despite his being a police officer. I remembered now where I’d heard our would-be killer’s voice. She was Driver, a high-ranked member of the Vakaar cartel, one of the punkers jockeying to become the boss since Dig had died. Dig’s daughter had joined the military and shipped offworld at her mother’s dying wish; Dig wanted her children out of the cartel. That meant the Vakaars had no leader. And here stood Singer, huge and forbidding. “Dark” was a title, naming her as the most effective killer among the Vakaars. They would follow her in a second if she decided to take over that brutal, soul-parching cartel, and she had just smeared her competition all over the midwalk.
We were screwed.
Duane, being a highly intelligent person, kept his mouth shut. Being a less intelligent variety of human, I told Singer, “We need to talk.”
She glanced at Duane, then at me. She’d never talk to me in front of a cop.
“Find me later,” I said.
“Yah.” She tapped her gauntlet and vanished from our IR sight.
“Great,” Duane muttered. “Where’d she get that tech?”
“We need to get out of here.” I set off down the midwalk. I didn’t want to talk to a police officer about Singer’s gear, especially not if she might hear. That gun and the shroud she used to hide from our IR sensors had to be stolen from the military or the police.
Duane walked at my side. “The first gunshot shattered my lamp.”
I turned on my stylus and a sphere of light appeared around us. “You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
I hoped so; he looked terrible, with blood soaking his shoulder, arm, and torso. I lifted my gauntleted wrist. “I’ll call the medics.”
“And have them carry me out?” He pushed down my arm. “Like hell.”
“You need help.”
“I have meds in my body. They’re helping.” His strained expression suggested otherwise.
“You need more than that.” Meds could only do so much.
He kept walking. “When I volunteered to get you, it was understood I’d go without backup, to minimize tension with the Undercity. If you call in help, it looks like I can’t do my job.”
I stared at him. “You volunteered for this?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Whatever for?”
“I figured I was less likely to be viewed as a threat here than another police officer.”
I was surprised he realized that; most of the Majda authorities had no clue how the Undercity worked. “You staying alive is more important than you not asking for help.”
“Bhaaj, for flaming sake, I’m not dying.”
I hated this. If he had agreed to come without backup and I called in the Majdas, it would be a mess. Sure, they’d send a medical team and officers to protect them, but my people would see it as an invasion, upsetting the balance the Majdas wanted to establish with the Undercity, now that they had decided we were worth their time. It didn’t help that their attitudes toward men were so outdated, they belonged in a museum. Majda women had to live in the modern world, which included sexual equality, but the Matriarch made no secret of her antipathy toward those laws. It couldn’t have been easy for Duane to attain his high rank in their police force. Of course he didn’t want to look as if he couldn’t handle the situation. My interfering would also damage the trust I had built with the Majdas. They would insist I stop using a shroud so they didn’t have to rescue people who came searching for me. With Majda looking over my shoulder, no one here would talk to me, which could ruin my chances of finding our murderous Jagernaut. More people might die, and their deaths would be on me, because I screwed up Duane’s agreement with Majda.
After some internal cursing at myself, the Majdas, the Ruby Pharaoh, and life in general, I said, “I’ll call a flyer to meet us on the surface.” It wouldn’t draw attention; tourists often had taxis drop them off or pick
them up at the entrance to the Concourse, which was about half a kilometer beyond the city outskirts. “I’ll time my call so the flyer won’t have to wait around for us.”
He nodded. “That’s fine.”
We walked in silence after that. I couldn’t get the image of Driver’s exploding body out of my mind. I had never become hardened to seeing people die. Damn it, I should be glad. Driver had been a drug dealer and a killer. She destroyed lives in her avaricious pursuit of wealth and power, and she had been about to slaughter both Duane and me.
Even so. I’d seen too much death in my life. Now we had a Jagernaut committing murder, a human weapon, and we had reason to believe she posed a threat to the Ruby Pharaoh. Dyhianna Selei wasn’t some towering warrior queen like her ancestors; she was a fragile woman with a towering intellect. Calaj had somehow drawn her into whatever neurological nightmare was burning out Calaj’s bio-enhanced brain, the tech so advanced that no one seemed to know what the hell had gone wrong.
It felt like forever before we reached a stairwell that spiraled to the upper levels. We climbed up and around, treading stone steps so ancient, the symbols carved on them were mostly worn off. If any handrail or walls had ever bordered these stairs, they had fallen long ago, leaving open air around us. Duane’s breathing grew more labored, but he never complained. After a few eons, or maybe it was only a few minutes, we came out at the top, into a spacious tunnel that sloped upward on our right. A lamppost stood about a hundred meters up the path, spreading a cone of light. The city maintained a few lights this close to the Concourse, in case a misguided tourist ever wandered down here.
I paused at the top of the stairwell. “Safer here.”
Duane nodded, standing still, his face strained. He pressed his hand against his shoulder and blood ran over his fingers. Even now, he said nothing. I hoped the damn pharaoh realized the exceptional officer she had almost sacrificed to the aqueducts.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” he asked. “You didn’t shoot me.”
“For getting you into this.” When the pharaoh said she wanted to see me, they had to find me. Period. They couldn’t just leave a message.
“It’s not a problem.” He stood up straighter. “Let’s go.”
The Bronze Skies Page 7