Undercity - eARC

by Catherine Asaro

  I sat up straighter. “What’d you hear?”

  He swirled his wine. “Rumors.”

  I regarded him warily. “What’ll it cost me?”

  “Your company for dinner.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  I frowned. “Having dinner with you is too easy.”

  His grin flashed. “That a compliment?”

  Damn, that smile ought to be classified as an illegal narcotic. “Jak.”

  “Yah?” He sat there looking dangerous with those simmering dark eyes. The tight-shirt was unraveling along one shoulder, showing glimpses of roughened skin. I wondered how it would feel to run my hand under the cloth.

  Get a grip, I told myself. And not on him. I loaded my plate with bubbles, a dish I vaguely remembered originated on the home world of some Ruby Dynasty queen. It all looked very round.

  We ate in silence. Jak washed down his food with wine and relaxed in hi chair, his goblet in one hand.

  After he had watched me for a while, I put down my fork. “What?”

  “A good-looking man sold some gems under the city,” he said.

  I tensed. “Prince Dayjarind?”

  “Don’t know. But these were genuine, the real biz, flaws and all. Worth a lot more than he got. Still brought him enough to buy a new ID.”

  “When?”

  “Four days ago.”

  Four days ago, Dayj had left the palace. If he had immediately sold his jewels on the black market, he must have already had a connection with someone. “Know where he went?”

  “Rumor says he tried to go offworld.”

  “Tried?”

  “Yeah. Tried.” No trace of Jak’s smile remained. “Man who looks that good will get himself sold if he isn’t careful.”

  “Hell, Jak.” I felt cold. “What happened?”

  “Don’t know. Just rumors. Some say he went offworld, others say he got heisted.”

  “You can’t ‘heist’ a royal heir. Anyone in this city who sees this guy or hears his accent will know he’s a Majda.”

  “Maybe. Maybe he’s worth the risk.” His voice hardened. “Trader Aristos would pay the moon for him.”

  “Skolians don’t sell to Traders.”

  “Offer anyone enough money and they’ll sell out.”

  “Says who?”

  “Don’t know.” He finished his drink. “Aqueducts are a big place. Especially the Maze. You can get lost in there.”

  The Maze. I’d been there twice in the past ten years, and that was two times too many. It looked, though, like I’d be going again. I aid only, “Thanks, Jak.”

  He met my gaze. “Didn’t say anything.”

  I speared a bubble with my fork. “Didn’t hear anything.”

  Jak nodded to me. We ate for a few more minutes. Then he said, “You like the dinner?”

  I knew he was asking about more than food. If I had any sense, I would say no. For some reason, instead I said, “Yah, I do.”

  He gave me his should-be-illegal grin. “Thought you would.”

  “Cocky tonight.”

  “You like, Bhaaj.” When I snorted, he let go with that throaty laugh that had always been my undoing. It hadn’t changed, neither the sound nor its effect on me.

  “Shouldn’t look at me that way,” he said.

  “What way?”

  “Like you want me for dessert.”

  “In your dreams.” Or mine.

  “Right, Bhaaj.”

  I put down my fork. “I need to go. Got an appointment in the Maze.”

  He spoke softly. “You’re scared. Of us.”

  It flustered me when he was right. “Got to go.”

  “For now.”

  I knew what I should tell him: I had a job to do and when I finished, I was leaving Raylicon, assuming I was still breathing. I opened my mouth to tell him that and out came, “Yah. For now.”

  His gaze smoldered. “Thought so.”

  Gods. It was a good thing I had business in the Maze, because I didn’t trust myself to stay here.

  * * *

  Over the millennia, the aqueducts under Cries had bent under the weight of their age. Our ancestors built well, but five thousand years takes a toll on even the greatest architectural wonder. In one section, all that remained was a maze of half-blocked passages and caverns thick with mineral-encrusted outcroppings.

  I followed a crumbling aqueduct toward the Maze, my laser stylus hanging around my neck, providing a glow to light the way. Memories came at me from all sides, like flashes of pain. When I was nine, I had stood on this path while a small child with a dirty face held out her hand, tears on her face because she was cold and had nothing to eat. I’d lifted her into my arms and held her while she cried. She had no name, so I called her Sparks, for the look in her eyes when she saw me. She became part of my circle, which included my dust gang, several adults who helped us, and two single-parent families. She and I lived together while I ran with the gangers, helping to fill our coffers with food, blankets, clothes, toys, and anything useful I could steal from topside.

  She fell sick when I was ten. We called it the carnelian rash, an illness that prowled the aqueducts like a specter, turning the skin of its victims red and scaly. No hospital in Cries would take a dust rat. I was the one who nursed her, who used wet clothes to cool her rash, who dribbled filtered water between her swollen lips, who traded raw steak to the drug punkers for the hack that eased her pain—and I was the one who held her in my arms as she died. She went in peace, in her sleep, but I never forgot. Too many memories. Too much hurt.

  After I retired from the army, I came back to Raylicon with some nebulous idea that I could find a place to live in the city of my childhood. I wanted to see Cries from the perspective of someone who lived in the above-city. It hadn’t worked and in the end, I had left, I thought forever. After all, they say you can never go home again, whoever “they” is. And yet here I was, once more in the undercity.

  Today I followed the midwalk of a shallow waterway only about a meter across. Up ahead, its wall had fallen, blocking my way, a mound of rubble nearly as tall as me. It hadn’t been here seven years ago. I clambered over the debris and squeezed through the hole it left in the wall, entering an even narrower canal. It didn’t surprise me that this entire area seemed deserted; with such a low population in the undercity and such extensive aqueducts, you could walk for a long time without seeing anyone.

  Of course that didn’t mean no one was here. These canals were networked with crannies, and crevices, and anyone could be watching from a hiding place. Although my holstered pulse gun was visible, I doubted that was why no one bothered me. For all that I lived and worked in the above-city now, I fooled no one here with my veneer of civilization. They knew their own. However, they hadn’t accepted me, either. They were waiting to see what I would do.

  I carried the jammer in my backpack, shrouding myself. No doubt Chief Takkar was trying to track me through the biomech web in my body. That was illegal of course, except for the topmost military brass. Like the General of the Pharaoh’s Army, eh? Although the signals my web produced were encrypted and invisible to most sensors, Takkar would know how to track them. I knew even better how to hide them. The image-dust on my skin also shielded me against the bee-bots in the Majda security arsenal. Blasted bees. They searched out the DNA of a specific person and reported in when they found a match. Several had buzzed around me earlier today, but when I activated my shroud, they became confused and wandered away. Although the “bees” were almost too small to see, I had sensors in my gauntlets that could detect their signatures, devices I’d bought on the black market, one of my savvier investments.

  Takkar would be thoroughly pissed when she couldn’t find me. Tough. The people I needed to talk with didn’t react kindly to intruders who came with Majda listening. The cyber-riders salvaged or filched tech-mech from Cries and its garbage dens, and what they did with that “junk” surpassed the best tech-mech Cries had to offer
. The undercity would know if I had Majda in my pocket.

  I followed the canal to a clogged area with more debris than open areas. Seven years ago, the wall here had a door into the Maze, but now I saw only dust piled everywhere. I nudged off the safety on my pulse gun, then knelt and swept away armfuls of grit. Red powder swirled into the air, saturating my senses with the smell of age and lost dreams.

  Eventually I cleared the door. It was hard to see, just a faint seam in the rock that gave away nothing if you didn’t know what to look for. It came up to my shoulders. When I stood up and pushed the door with my booted foot, it didn’t budge. So I kicked it with the enhanced strength provided by the bio-hydraulics that augmented my muscles and skeleton. Still no good. I tried again, and again—and the door scraped inward, stone grinding on stone. Drawing my gun, I ducked into the tunnel beyond, keeping its wall to my back. Inside, I had room to straighten up. I pulled the door closed and headed down the tunnel, my footfalls muted, the walls and ceiling close. Good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic.

  Whoever built the aqueducts had probably drilled these tunnels for access to machinery that had long ago disintegrated. After a while, I came to a junction where three tunnels met. I took the left branch. When I noticed a light ahead, I clicked off my stylus and continued in semidarkness.

  Even knowing what to expect, I wasn’t ready for the eerily beautiful sight at the end of the tunnel. A cavern stretched before me. Stalactites hung from its roof and stalagmites grew up from the floor, all sparkling in the radiance of an electro-optic torch someone had left jammed into a nearby outcropping. The light glittered off the white, red, blue, purple crystals that encrusted the stone like a gigantic geode turned inside out.

  My footsteps echoed as I entered the cavern. That announced my presence just as well as if I had shouted, “Hey, I’m here.”

  A scrape came from my right. I stopped and waited.

  A woman walked out from behind two stalagmites. “Bhaaj.”

  “Scorch.” I kept my arms by my sides and my gun pointed at the ground.

  Scorch had led one of the dust gangs here when we were kids, but by the time I enlisted, she had graduated to bigger game. Well-toned muscles creased her dark jumpsuit. I knew her biomech equaled to my own, except that I came by mine legally. Her chin jutted, and her nose dominated her face like on the giant statues in the ruins of ancient Cries. She wore her hair short with a black spike sticking up behind one ear. The torchlight glittered in the mirrored surfaces of her laser carbine and its bulging power pack.

  “Long time,” she said.

  “I went offworld,” I answered. “Selei City.”

  “I heard.” She shifted her gun, not quite pointing it at me. “Why come back?”

  “Job.”

  She snorted. “Worth leaving Selei City? Can’t see it.”

  “Majda,” I said.

  Her expression shuttered. “We don’t bother Majda, they don’t bother us.”

  I had no doubt the authorities in Cries knew about the smuggling operation Scorch ran through here, everything from proscribed liqueurs to hallucinogenic silks. Still, I’d never known her to traffic in people. The Traders based their economy on slavery, which was why we were at war with them. They saw us as fodder for their markets. Would Scorch sell to the enemy? I didn’t want to believe it, but a Majda prince like Dayj could bring her more than all her other product combined. Even so. It strained credulity to believe anyone would risk that gargantuan offense against the Majdas in their own backyard. Scorch knew damn well that if Vaj Majda decided to clean up this place, she could blast the undercity bare.

  “I’m searching for a man,” I said. “Good-looking.”

  She laughed harshly. “So are we all.”

  “This one had gems to sell.”

  “Lot of people got gems to sell.” Her eyes glinted. “Most don’t kick in my back door.”

  “Used to be front door.”

  “Used to be guarded.” She shifted her gun. “Still is.”

  I doubted she would shoot me. I’d first met her here when I was fifteen. I found her lying in her own blood after three of her “clients” left her for dead instead of paying their bill. I’d tended her until she recovered. Saved her life. Scorch might be a psychopath, but she paid her debts. That meant I had a pass here; for the three fools who tried to murder her, it had meant a long, ugly death.

  I said only, “Your door let me in.”

  “For now.” She held the gun in what looked like a relaxed grip. I wasn’t fooled. She could shoot faster than sin.

  Time to bargain. “Got information,” I said.

  She snorted. “You don’t live here anymore. How you got anything for me?”

  “Majda. Got access to their mesh.” If they caught me offering to sell their private data, they would draw and quarter me. But they didn’t have to deal with Scorch. Besides, Vaj said no measure was too extreme. I doubted this was what she had meant, but never mind.

  Scorch narrowed her gaze at me. We both knew she wouldn’t come by an offer like this again. That she paused for so long could be a bargaining tactic, but it made me uneasy.

  “What information?” she said.

  “Depends. What do you need?”

  “Flight schedules.” Her eyes took on a voracious glitter. “For their private ships.”

  Damn. A smuggler could do a lot of damage with the closely guarded schedule of flights in and out of the private Majda starport.

  “Might be possible,” I said, maybe lying, maybe not. “Depends what you got.”

  Her smile turned feral. “I know a lot about good-looking men. What you looking for, Bhaaj, that you can’t get legally?”

  I crossed my arms. “Dark hair. Dark eyes. Like a nobleman. Good build. Taller than average. Maybe sold jeweled clothes for a fake ID and offworld passage.”

  Her hand visibly tightened on the carbine. “That one’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Offworld. Don’t know.”

  Maybe she wanted more than the schedules. “Got a lot to sell.”

  “Not interested.”

  Ho! That made no sense. Scorch would never walk away from the opportunity to steal Majda flight schedules. Now suddenly she didn’t want them? Like hell. She was hiding something.

  “I hear rumors,” I said coldly. “About deals with Traders.”

  She lifted the carbine and aimed it at me. “Lies.”

  Sweat ran down my neck. I didn’t answer.

  Scorch jerked—and fired the carbine.

  The burst blinded me. I protected my face with my arm while thunder echoed in the cavern and stones crashed to the ground. Grit and debris rained over me, rough against my skin. When it settled, I cautiously lowered my arm and opened my eyes. The slagged remains of a stalactite lay broken on the ground only a few steps away. If Scorch had fired any closer, I’d be dead.

  “Get out,” she said.

  I beat a fast retreat out of her territory.

  * * *

  I didn’t turn off the jammer until I was above ground. Within moments my gauntlet comm squawked. I tapped the receive panel.

  Takkar’s voice snapped out. “Bhaajan, where the hell are you?”

  “Greetings to you, too,” I said.

  “Get back to the palace.”

  Charming. “You aren’t my CO, Takkar.”

  “Get your ass back here or I’ll throw it in jail.”

  My night was growing progressively worse. “For what?”

  “Murder,” she said.

  VI

  The Pin

  The Majda police station had no books, tapestries, brocaded divans, or anything else that remotely resembled the aristocratic gentility of the palace. Sleek and sharp, it was all polarized glass and white Luminex, and it looked as efficient as hell. Takkar met me in an interrogation room.

  The chief and I faced each other across a table, both of us standing up. Takkar looked ready to blow holes in the sky, preferably with me as the ammo
that got pulverized by the strike. People filled the overly bright room. Major Ebersole stood by the wall on my right, his handsome face schooled to neutrality. He would blend well into a crowd, making him even more effective in his job.

  The Majda sisters were all here, tall, formidable, and pissed off. Corejida Majda paced like a caged desert-lion on my left, back and forth in front of her sister, Colonel Lavinda Majda. The colonel stood by the door, looking stunned. It didn’t surprise me. She had just discovered the dead body of one of her best people. Vaj Majda stood across the table with Takkar, a silent figure who watched us all, her appraising gaze like ice. I had no doubt she missed nothing.

  Max, I thought. Record everything that happens here and store it in file “Interrogation.”

  Recording, he thought.

  The wall to my right doubled as a holoscreen. At the moment, it was playing the recording made by a Majda bee-bot that had followed Lavinda around today. The playback showed the flycar that had taken the colonel, her aide, her bodyguard, and Captain Krestone away from the palace.

  The playback showed Lavinda’s flycar as it settled on the roof of an office tower in Cries. Krestone was piloting and Ebersole sat in the front passenger’s seat. The colonel and her aide were in the back of the car, working with screens they had rolled out into thin films on their laps. Holos danced in the air above the screens showing graphs, images, and glyphs.

  Lavinda was professional with her male aide. It fit my research; the Majdas were scrupulous in their relationships. They treated everyone with the same distant professionalism. If they ever strayed in their personal lives, they had left no trace of their indiscretions. In their circles, heredity determined everything. During the Ruby Empire, the penalty for adultery among the nobility had been execution, and to this day that law remained in force. I had never heard of a noble House executing anyone for fooling around, and I seriously doubted they were all paragons of virtue, but they kept it discreet. As far as I could tell, however, the Majdas actually followed the law. They were annoyingly well-behaved, another reason blackmail would never work with them.

  In the recording, the colonel disembarked with her aide and Ebersole, and the three of them walked across the landing pad. A bland bodyguard I vaguely recognized from the palace staff met them at the lift shaft, which jutted up from the roof like a spire of modern art. The bee-bot flew with them. The airlift inside was little more than a disk in a chute, but it lowered them so smoothly, it didn’t ruffle a lock of anyone’s hair. It stopped at upper level of the building, and the four of them walked into a huge place, a confusing expanse of gleaming silver and white Luminex. Then my mind reoriented and I made sense out of the scene. The room spanned the entire floor of the tower. Partial walls of white Luminex stood here and there, but it was mostly open. Abstract sculptures of blue and silver chrome stood in a few areas. It was artistic in a weird sort of way.