“I grew up in the undercity of Tanduou. There, if you’re not gaming the system, you aren’t playing at all,” she said. Tanduou was a moon of Guratahan Sfazil, one of the larger and more prosperous human worlds. Both places were renowned for their markets and merchants, and Tanduou in particular for not letting laws get in the way of good trade. Fergus had gotten his confuddler there, among many other probably illegal and inadvisable things, and he could not imagine surviving a childhood in that place. Coming from his background, that was saying a lot.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Cheers.” She tapped her coffee bulb against his and went back to the bridge. He sat down at the table by himself and sipped at the coffee, thinking about Venusian Monkeypoker and Cernee.
* * *
—
“Sixty seconds until we’re out of jump,” the pilot called over the ship comms.
Fergus had been staring at the underside of the bunk above him and trying to put all the pieces of information he had so far into some rational order. There were holes, strategies he couldn’t see. And always there were the Asiig, waiting, wanting something from him.
The shift to realspace, when it came, was so smooth he almost missed it, a change of pitch in the engine sound that lasted too few seconds to count. The pilot is good.
“Normal space,” the pilot announced. “Comms coming back online.” There was a brief silence, then a new rumble as the pilot shut down the jump engines and diverted power over to the normals. Gravity faltered for a second, then kicked in hard as the ship accelerated. “So hey, I just scared the crap out of a ship lurking in Dek’s shadow,” the pilot added.
Fergus’s handpad chimed. He picked it up and stared at the short, sharp message from Maha and Qai. “Uh. We have a prob—”
“Hold on.” The ship pitched sharply and decelerated, banking. Proximity alarms went off as something shot past them, and then the ship was accelerating hard, pressing them all down into the bunk foam. “We’ve got a second bogey on our tail. Looks like they knew we were coming,” the pilot said.
“We have a hefty bounty on us,” Fergus said. “Three hundred and fifty thousand, South Haudie-backed. Dead or alive.”
“Damn!” the pilot said. “That’s a new personal record. We have a third raider on our tail, and I’m catching echoes of more ships out there. Crossroads is too hot. I’m circling back around to the jump point and getting us out of here. Anyone who doesn’t have a suit on, get into one now. If I talk to you again, it’s because I saved your lives. If not, well, no refunds.” The line went silent.
Fergus began unbuckling the tethers holding him to his bunk. “What are you doing?” Mari hissed. “You’ve already got your suit on.”
“Much as I enjoy your company, I’m going to Cernee,” Fergus said.
“How are you going to do that? Jump out and fly?”
He got the last buckle off, sat up, and threw his tether clip up onto the safety bar that ran the length of the bunk area. “Escape pod,” he said.
Bale began undoing his own straps. “I’m going too.”
“It’s safer if I go by myself,” Fergus protested. He reached the droptube down to the pods on the ship’s underside as Bale managed to get free of his bunk.
“Sure,” Bale said. “You’ve been doing very well for yourself every time I’ve had to rescue you. Now hang on and wait for me.”
“Oh, there is no way you two are leaving me,” Mari said.
There was a crash, and the ship rocked sharply to one side. His hand still on the droptube bar, Fergus went briefly horizontal midair as the internal gravity burped. He hit the floor with both feet and hopped down the droptube to the cargo bay. Bale was right behind him, Mari practically crashing into them both at the bottom of the tube.
“Last chance,” Fergus said.
Bale hit the bay comm up to the bridge. “We’re bailing,” he said. “Get home safe, and say hello to the missus for me.”
“Will do. Count to twenty, then go. You’ll have brief cover in Dek’s shadow,” the pilot answered. The Ọlẹaja banked sharply again. “And tell that boss of yours he owes me another one. Out.”
Fergus cycled open the circular hatch, counting to himself. Six, seven. Grabbing the upper edge of the pod frame, he lifted himself up and slid inside feetfirst. “We need to run dark,” he said. “I’ll be on channel five-one-five.”
“And where the hell are we going, exactly?” Bale asked.
“You can’t guess?”
“No, Mr. I-Should-Have-Left-You-On-Coralla.”
“Attic,” Fergus answered. “Or as close as the pod can get me to it, anyway.”
Not waiting to hear what the others did—hoping, really, that they’d change their minds—he closed the hatch. As soon as the launch systems greenlit, he counted nineteen, twenty and punched the button. Instantly, 95 percent of the contents of his body tried to stuff itself into his head as the pod shot him feetfirst out into space.
He pulled up the viewer just in time to see the tiny flash of light that was the Ọlẹaja as it hit the jump conduit and vanished. He couldn’t see the other pods, which was the point of running dark, but it left him feeling cold and alone. Almost alone. There were at least three black triangles out there waiting, and he knew that once he played out the rest of the hand he’d been dealt, it would come down to him and them and his ship. He shivered, dreading that future, and unbearably impatient for it.
When he reached the first hab on the edge of the Cernee Halo, Fergus ejected himself out of the pod into space. The suit jets were more than enough to keep him moving at decent speed toward the tiny, dark can.
“Fergus,” Mari’s voice came over the comm. “Where are you?”
“About thirty meters from the surface of Flatcan,” he said. “Be there in another half minute or so. Where are you?”
“Behind you, ejecting now.”
“And Bale?”
“I undershot and hit Bogstone,” Bale answered. His signal was weak, crackling with interference. “Losing signal, but working my way back to you. Assuming this place doesn’t explode on me, which would be my luck since meeting you.”
“What? Explode?”
“Waste processing facility. Doesn’t like not being minded,” Mari said.
“Ah.” Fergus made a short blast with his jets, then grabbed onto the hab. A sliver of light passing between the sunshields lit it up like a small moon.
Caught in that same narrow slit of intense light, he could see the Stacks. Or rather, what was left of them. Fergus tore his gaze away from the ruined habs and could now see someone on approach fifteen degrees or so below. He waved; after a moment, the figure waved back. Mari. She was heading for the hab’s terminus.
“Someone killed the Stacks,” he said when he caught up with her.
Mari turned to look and was quiet for a while. “A lot of Authority personnel bunked there. And their families, of course. I wonder if they got out,” she said at last.
Fergus zoomed his goggles out as far as they would go and scanned the inner Halo. “There’s a lot of debris. Must’ve been one hell of an explosion. I don’t see any bodies, at least outside of it.”
“Can you see the Wheels?”
It took him a few minutes to orient himself, but he found it. “Still lit,” he said. “Hard to see much more from this far away, but it looks whole.”
Mari let out her breath. “Okay,” she said, the word heavy with both worry and relief. “So, what are we doing, exactly? Why Attic? Why not go straight for your ship?”
“Remember what you said about how they’re waiting for me to come back for it? I think you were right. But if they just wanted me to take the ship and go, they wouldn’t have dumped me back out into space again to start with. So they want something from me. And they’re watching me.”
“You think so?”
&
nbsp; He didn’t say, They came to Coralla. There wasn’t room in his own head yet to process that info. “Notice how the Asiig ships happen to be pointing right in our direction?”
“My zoom’s not that good. You’re the one with the military suit, not me.”
“Well, take my word for it. They were also pointing right at us when we were in the sunshield nearest the Wheels, which is way the hell over there,” Fergus said, waving.
“Oh.”
“Whatever started at that cable car, I think they want me to finish it. I got some good advice recently—”
“About the Asiig?”
“About Venusian Monkeypoker. Think about what everyone here has shown us about their hands. We know what Gilger wants, and every move he’s made has been consistent with that: power, control of Cernee, the destruction of his rivals. We know what the Governor wants: stability, security, to retain control. And we know what Harcourt wants and why he’s folded. So which player’s moves don’t make sense?” Fergus asked.
“Vinsic,” Mari said. “But he’s dying, you said. People don’t do rational things when their stars are going dim.”
“Vinsic may not be a moral man, but he’s always been methodical, organized, and careful. By all accounts he detests Gilger. But then he secretly allies with him and starts a war, all while keeping an inner team operating on separate orders. Why?”
“Whatever the reason, people have died, a lot of them civilians and children,” Mari said, gesturing toward the devastated Stacks. “If he’s just playing a game, that’s cold.”
“Yeah, but he’s a cold guy,” Fergus said. “He killed a lot of innocent people consolidating his own power in the early days before the Governor got things stable. So I’m going to go ask him what he’s up to, and I’ll even ask nicely the first time. Maybe he’ll be more willing to cooperate because everything’s gone to shit already anyway, or maybe he’ll do it just to spite Gilger for ruining it all. I’m just hoping to get enough info to figure out how to end this before more people die.”
“And if he won’t help?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t know anywhere better to start. I’m open to ideas, if you’ve got any.”
“Nope,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
Fergus peered out, saw movement in the dark. “Bale, is that you out there?”
There was an answering burst of crackle. “If that’s you, wave,” Fergus said, and the figure gave him the middle finger. “Good enough. Time to go get some answers.”
Chapter 24
To their good fortune, Flatcan’s lone terminus connecting it to Beancan and the rest of the Halo had a small but fully charged stash of flysticks and a modicum of emergency power, so they took a break to recharge their air. Fergus went to the tiny window beside the lock and stared out at Cernee while they waited.
“What do you see?” Mari asked him.
“Not much movement,” Fergus said. “But I saw something pass between the sunshields. I think the fourth Asiig ship is back and circling.”
“Great,” Mari said.
Bale hung by the terminus console, trying to get some sort of signal from the rest of Cernee. “No luck,” he announced at last. “Not even a new episode of One Star, Bright and Distant. That’s serious.”
“If we weren’t at war, there’d be rioting,” Mari said as she pulled her aircan and backup from the recharger.
They picked out ’sticks, hit the edge of the platform, and threw themselves into space, heading deeper into Vinsic’s territory.
Beancan was a large, three-line hab, connected through a few detours straight to Central. “Go down and dark,” Bale said, and pointed; two small groups of men were huddled along the platform in the dark, wearing gold-striped suits. Fergus and Mari shut down their ’sticks moments after Bale, and they glided under and past the stationary hab. Once they were well clear, they powered up again.
“Time to turn in-Halo,” Bale said. “Keep an eye out for trouble, all of you.”
Fergus could see something ahead in the dark, floating. “Uh . . .” he said. “What’s that?”
As he got closer, he saw that it was an arm, still suit-clad, neatly severed and floating in a small cloud of red ice pellets. More body parts lay past it, enough to be more than one victim. Enough to be more than a few, he thought. “Bale,” he said, coming to a complete stop, feeling sick to his stomach. “Bodies.”
Bale and Mari came up beside him. “Shit,” Bale said. “Filament. Stuff’s practically invisible and will slice you to shreds before you even know you’re in it.”
“These weren’t fighters,” Mari said. “I see a GoRound city mark. These were families, probably just trying to escape.”
“Is there a way through it?” Fergus asked.
“Pure, stupid luck, and a lot of it,” Bale said. “For all we know, we’re already in the middle of it.”
“Right,” Fergus said. “Is filament tethered somehow or a free-floating tangle? How big?”
“Could be, could be, and there’s no way to know.”
“How expensive is it?” Fergus asked Bale.
“Very. Why?”
“Do you have a pistol?”
“Yes, I—”
“Hand it over.”
“I don’t—”
“Hand it over,” Fergus growled.
Bale slapped the pistol into his hand. “As long as you give it back,” he said.
“Sure,” Fergus said. He pulled out the energy clip, pressed the pistol against the stock of his flystick, and switched on the pistol’s magnetic grip. He wrapped his hand around the energy clip and put enough zap into it to send it into a cascading overload. His suit rebooted, and he had to slap the clip back in blind.
“—the hell are you doing?!” He caught the very end of Bale’s anger as his comm came back up. Slipping his feet off his ’stick, he pointed it straight ahead at the filament trap and thumbed the throttle on so hard it jammed upright.
His ’stick rocketed forward, thrusting him backwards as it left his open hands. Streaking across space, at first it was unimpeded, but then it swerved suddenly as if it had struck something invisible, continued forward at an angle, and then stuck, hanging motionless at full power.
Seconds later, the overloaded pistol exploded. Tiny wires, visibly glowing with the heat from the explosion, split and spread away. “Go that way,” Fergus said, pointing. “And if you would, please take me with you.”
Mari fired up her ’stick and grabbed Fergus by his pack as she fell in behind Bale. Via infrared, he could see the fading streamers of cooling filament, undulating streaks around the hole the exploding ’stick had blown. By the time they had passed through, the filament had gone back to the temperature of space, invisible again.
“What if the trap had been thicker?” Mari asked. “We could have gotten halfway through and then been cut apart.”
“Bale said it was expensive, so I guessed that they went for height and width over depth.”
“And if you’d been wrong? What then?”
“Then we would’ve been back to stupid luck,” Fergus said.
“What’s our plan now?” Bale asked. “We’re down a ’stick.”
“Maybe we can find another at Pitch?” Fergus said. “We have to pass it to get to Attic anyhow.”
“Pitch is one step in from DockRock Four, which was in Authority hands when this all started,” Bale said. “There could be fighting.”
“Unless you want to carry me—”
“I’m just saying!” Bale shouted in exasperation. “Before you ask, no, I didn’t have a better way through the filament, but being down a ’stick is a problem, and we’re lucky we’ve had it this easy so far. If the Asiig weren’t prowling right outside, we’d be neck deep in all-out war.”
“I’d almost prefer that,” Mari said. “I don’t like this
quiet. I feel conspicuous.”
“It won’t last long. We’re not the only ones moving off the lines, if those poor people back there are any indication. As soon as word spreads that you can be out without getting nabbed by the Asiig, fighting is going to pick up again,” Fergus said. “So what do we know about Pitch?”
“Solidly Vinsic’s,” Bale said. “Some mine workers, a number of people who work at the Dock, some who work on shuttle runs between there and Crossroads. Peaceful under normal circumstances, but who knows? I don’t suppose either of you is armed?”
Mari snorted. “Not in any conventional way,” Fergus said.
“Great. Let’s just hope we can find a flystick and move on quickly,” Bale said.
Pitch’s outer terminus, where the line from DockRock Four came in, was still lit, and the emergency doors weren’t sealed. If that was a good sign or a bad one Fergus wasn’t entirely sure, but they approached it with caution.
There was nothing they could use outside the envelope, so Fergus volunteered to cycle through first and see what was what. When he pointed out that he should be the one to go because he’d blown up their only weapon, Bale grudgingly agreed to let him.
He cycled himself through and found himself in the inner terminal that was almost, but not quite, empty. Two men in Vinsic’s blues had a third in a civilian suit pressed up against the wall, one holding him steady as a second punched him in the gut. A fourth man lay on the floor, not moving. They were intent enough on their victim that they didn’t even hear the envelope rotating Fergus into the room.
One of the two Blues pulled out a pistol. “Should I put him down now?” he asked his partner.
Fergus coughed. “Yes, you should put him down,” he said loudly. Good, start something unarmed, ye idiot, he thought. Over the suit channel he shared with Mari and Bale he added, “Fight.”
At least he had managed to startle them both. They dropped the man, who even in the low gravity of Pitch’s mild spin sank to the floor. One of the men, his suit battered and poorly repaired, was wearing a Blue Eight patch. They both rounded on him.
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