by Mike Brooks
‘They have heard how you intervened for Sergeant Lukyanenko’s squad,’ Muradov said quietly, apparently picking up on Drift’s confusion at the mixed messages as he sat down next to the security chief. ‘It is rare enough that anyone will step in to help us, let alone an off-worlder.’
‘Not everyone’s heard, apparently,’ Drift remarked. One of the larger officers, a middle-aged male with close-cropped ginger hair edging towards grey and a blunt moustache, was still eyeing him uncertainly.
‘Oh, they all have,’ Muradov smiled, ‘but that does not mean all of them trust you. They are my officers, after all.’ The last member of the team jumped on board and pulled the doors shut behind her, and the man sitting opposite Drift hammered his fist twice on the hatch leading through to the cab. Moments later the engine roared into life and the sirens began to wail, and the big vehicle started rolling forwards.
‘Where are we heading, anyway?’ Drift asked, fastening the restraints around him and feeling for a moment like he was in his chair back in the Jonah’s shuttle, waiting for Jia to perform a spectacularly stupid atmospheric manoeuvre.
‘Tsink Ploschadi,’ Muradov replied absently, watching a readout on the tactical station. Drift watched coloured dots and icons move slowly over green-on-black grids and presumed it was some sort of display of contacts between politsiya units and protesters or rioters, but he didn’t know the key and lacked enough knowledge of Uragan City’s geography to make head or tail of it. What he did realise as Muradov cycled between screens was that there was one for each level of the city. Some appeared clear of conflict, so far as he could work out, but even so he was impressed at the Uragan’s ability to not only apparently make sense of what he was seeing but presumably remember it all.
‘Has there been more trouble there?’ he asked uneasily, a nasty image jumping into his mind of Jenna crumpled on the floor next to a window with a shattered hole through which a stray bullet had passed. ‘I mean, I doubt you’re making the trip just to get me back to my hotel.’
‘Captain,’ Muradov replied with strained patience while he frowned at the display in front of him, ‘I am trying to coordinate an operation to return peace and safety to a city of slightly over two million people spread over a dozen levels. I’d appreciate it if you could—’
He broke off suddenly and Drift saw his eyes widen, then he jabbed at a switch on the console and shouted something in Russian. Drift didn’t catch all of it, but judging by their sudden increase in speed, something had gone wrong somewhere.
‘Was that—?’
‘I do not believe that fate can be tempted, and I trust in Allah, not superstition,’ Muradov said grimly, casting him a dark look from beneath his brows, ‘but that said, Captain, I would appreciate it if you would keep your mouth shut until this issue is resolved.’ He turned to the officers riding with them and spoke again. Drift caught the words for gunfire and rebels and didn’t need to ask any further questions. It sounded like someone had employed the same ambush tactic he’d got mixed up in earlier. More and more, he was getting the uncomfortable feeling that he was getting caught in a burgeoning civil war.
Better just hope the other side doesn’t have anyone too competent in charge, then.
They cornered sharply – it felt sharp, at least, although with no windows Drift couldn’t say for sure – then accelerated again, and he was suddenly grateful for the restraints that prevented him from sprawling across the vehicle and into the lap of the officer sitting opposite. Still, it was nothing compared to flying into a storm system in a shuttle with no power like he’d done on his last visit to Old Earth. On the other hand, he did at least trust Jia’s piloting skills and he had no idea about the competence of whoever was driving now.
Of course, whoever it was would have been selected by a system devised by Alim Muradov, who did not strike Drift as a man likely to tolerate the advancement of the unsuitable.
A voice came over speakers, presumably the driver. +Komandir! Barrikada!+
Drift saw Muradov grimace. ‘Taran’ eto!’ The Uragan security chief turned to him as the other officers held on grimly to their own straps. ‘They have constructed a barricade, we are going—’
‘—to ram it,’ Drift muttered. ‘I gathered.’ He’d seen the massive dozer blades on the front of Muradov’s APCs, and since he very much doubted the Uragans got any snow down here there was only one conceivable use for them.
The speakers crackled into life again, counting down. +Tri, dva, odin …+
There was a crunching sound audible even inside the vehicle and it lurched alarmingly, throwing everyone against their straps, but the driver gunned the engine and despite their rapid deceleration, the APC powered through with nothing but an audible scraping sound for a second as some part of whatever had been rigged up was dragged a short distance beneath them. Muradov shouted a command and he and the squad with him slapped their harness releases, snatched up their weapons and got ready to disembark.
‘Well,’ Drift said to no one in particular, ‘that wasn’t so ba—’
Something hit the underside of the vehicle like the hammer of a god, and suddenly gravity was at right angles to where it had been a moment ago. Drift fell forwards and downwards but was caught by his crash restraints as the opposite wall suddenly became the floor and the vehicle slid forward on its side, its considerable momentum carrying it onwards with an ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal on stone.
The politsiya squad, on their feet and unstrapped, were mashed together to become a pile of bodies beneath him and pelted by items flying off the overhead equipment rack. Alim Muradov was thrown into the tactical comms unit and rebounded off, landing on his back with a bloody gash above his right eye and displaying no obvious signs of consciousness. As they came to a halt, the squeal of their progress was replaced by the muffled but distinctive sound of cheering voices from outside.
And then, as Drift became aware that his neck hadn’t liked that whole adventure very much, the cheering was replaced in turn by a hammering on the vehicle’s rear doors.
EXPLOSIVES AND THE WILL TO USE THEM
ROURKE LOOKED UP as an explosion loud enough to rattle the salon’s glass in its frames reverberated around the plaza. Some way up the street on the far side of the open space, she could see a crowd of rebels – and they surely were rebels now, not just rioters or protesters – advancing on a large black shape. Her brain took a moment to process it until she realised it was on its side, at which point she recognised it as a standard-issue Red Star urban riot control vehicle.
‘What the hell was that?’ she asked, perhaps slightly more calmly than she felt. Did Tanja’s people have access to a tank they’d failed to mention?
The other woman smiled grimly.
‘Mining charge with a magnetic clamp, hidden in a barricade.’
HOW APIRANA GOT HIS ANKLE BACK
HE FELT LIKE he’d swallowed a fork.
He coughed and the air ripped at his abused throat as it was forced outwards, making him cough again. The motion caused his body to spasm, and that produced its own problems because his body felt like it had been attacked with hammers all over, although in an oddly muted way. He reacted in the way he always did to pain.
He lashed out.
He was on his back on something hard and the lights above him were so bright he was nearly blind. He couldn’t see much to hit at and he couldn’t get much power into his arms, partly because he was lying down and partly because everything seemed to be made of cotton wool, especially his brain. A shadow moved, skittering away from him, and he made a grab for it, which overbalanced him as the edge of whatever he was lying on snuck up on him without warning. He nearly fell, but something grabbed him and pulled him back onto a level. He struggled against that, too, but whatever it was that had hold of him was terrifically, almost immovably strong. Then the shadow he’d grabbed for came back, cautiously, and warbled something. There were words there, but his brain couldn’t make sense of them at the moment.
The light dimmed a little, and the shadow’s face came into view as his eyes adjusted to the contrast. It had blue eyes, a slightly snub nose and a dusting of freckles on pale skin, framed with slightly reddish-blonde hair. It was a pretty face. He said some words, although he wasn’t sure what.
Jenna. It’s Jenna.
She pushed something towards his face, her arm seeming to extend crazily as she did so. It was a glass. With water in. He flinched back at first, then reached out a hand for it and became suddenly aware that the pressure that had been holding him back a moment ago had disappeared. He grabbed the glass on the second attempt, but getting the water into his mouth was a little more of a challenge and a fair bit of it leaked out down his chin. However, he managed to swallow enough that his throat felt a little better.
Something tugged at the glass in his hand. It was Jenna. She was saying words again, but he couldn’t make them mean anything. He found himself answering in spite of that, but wasn’t sure what he’d said and watched her face to see what effect it had had.
Then he fell asleep.
When Apirana came around for the second time his brain still felt slightly fuzzy, but thinking was a lot easier. He seemed to be in some sort of medical unit, not massively dissimilar to the one he’d been stitched up in on the Europan frigate after he’d taken a bullet while storming Kelsier’s asteroid base. He raised his head, not without some effort, and looked around.
Jenna was standing several feet away by the wall, watching him with an expression of guarded caution on her face, even though there was a chair next to the … bed? Table? Whatever it was he was lying on, anyway – and there was the memory of pressure on his left hand which suggested someone had been holding it.
‘What’re you doing over there?’ he asked, or tried to. The words seemed to come out a bit slurred. However, Jenna’s face lit up with a smile and she stepped over to him.
‘Last time you woke up you got a bit violent,’ she told him matter-of-factly. Her voice buzzed in his head a bit, but at least the words made sense this time. ‘General anaesthetic can make people react oddly, so I thought I was better safe than sorry. How’re you feeling?’
‘Sorry,’ he muttered. He remembered now, that sensation of confusion and pain. As if responding to her question the pain suddenly returned, as though his body had been waiting until it was certain his brain would process it properly before offering it up for consideration. ‘Ah, bloody hell. I feel like hammered shit.’
‘You got sort of …’ Jenna’s face screwed up uncomfortably and she brushed some loose hair absent-mindedly back behind her ear, ‘… trampled. In the crowd, when you fell over. I tried to get to you, but by the time I …’
The movement of her hair had revealed the beginnings of a livid bruise near her right eye. He winced in sympathy, despite his own pain. ‘Ow. Your face alright?’
‘Hmm?’ She suddenly seemed to become aware of it and let her hair fall forwards again. ‘Oh. Yeah, it’s nothing, don’t worry about it.’
Nice going, A. Draw attention to the big bruise, you dumb galoot. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘No, it’s fine, I—’
‘I’m just still a bit …’ He waved a hand near his face to try to indicate that everything was all a bit fuzzy. ‘Probably don’t quite know what I’m sayin’, eh?’ He smiled, but if anything Jenna looked a little more uncomfortable.
‘So,’ he said after a couple of seconds of deafening silence, ‘I, uh, assume there’s a reason I’m …?’
‘Here?’ Jenna finished for him, then shifted uncomfortably. ‘Yes, I …You mean, you … Well, I suppose …’
He blinked at her. ‘What?’
Her jaw moved for a second, then she pointed towards his feet and mumbled something incomprehensibly quickly.
‘Pardon?’
‘You broke your ankle! Or, well, someone else broke it, I guess they trod on it when you were on the ground …’
He lifted his head again and looked down, or possibly along since he was already on his back. Sure enough, his left boot had been removed and there was a lattice of plastic and metal around the lower part of his leg. The moment his eyes rested on it he became aware of a dull throb of pain from the interior of that limb, something bone-deep and noticeably separate from the other aches that seemed universally external in nature.
‘Oh,’ he said. He did remember a stabbing sensation of agony in his leg, but by that point he’d taken so many knocks to the head that everything had been somewhat blurred. Which, given the muddled memory he had of helpless pain, he was somewhat grateful for. ‘But someone’s fixed it up?’
‘Yeah.’ Jenna looked uncomfortable, then leaned close to him suddenly. For one startled moment he thought she was going to kiss him, which was a prospect he found simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating, but instead she just put her mouth next to his ear.
‘Circuit Cult.’
‘Oh.’ That seemed relevant somehow, but it took his brain a couple of seconds to make the connection. ‘Oh. Uh. Thank you.’
She frowned as she pulled back a little. ‘Well, I didn’t find them, they found me in the crowd, I—’
‘No, I just meant thanks for …’ He lowered his voice a little and looked around to check there was no one else in the infirmary with them. ‘I know how you feel about ’em. Means a lot that you’d stick around.’
‘There was no way I was going to leave you alone with them,’ Jenna hissed, her eyes flickering towards the door. ‘Seriously, A., I know you think I’m paranoid but—’
He reached out and took her hand. ‘I get it. I do. I wouldn’t wanna be left alone somewhere being operated on by people I didn’t know, anyway.’ He suddenly registered something cold pressing against the edge of his palm and looked over at Jenna’s forearm. Sure enough, her EMP generator was sat in plain view. ‘Ah. Not takin’ any chances, then?’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ she muttered again. ‘That seems to be my motto, these days?’
‘I’ve heard worse,’ Apirana grinned. ‘Hell, I wish that’d been my motto when I was …’ When I was your age, he’d been going to say, but he abruptly didn’t feel like reminding her of their age difference. ‘Y’know. Stupider.’ He coughed, and winced. ‘Man, my throat feels rough.’
‘They had air tubes down it, or something,’ Jenna told him. She passed him the same glass she had before, now apparently refilled. He made a much better effort of getting the water into his mouth without spilling it or dribbling this time around.
‘So,’ he said after he’d swallowed a couple of times, ‘what’s been goin’ on outside? You heard from the others?’
‘Comms are still down,’ Jenna grimaced, ‘and there was apparently some sort of power surge on the grid, but the cult’s got enough safeguards here that it didn’t seem to affect them too much. We don’t know what’s happening other than apparently there’s still a high alert in force and anyone who goes outside is liable to be shot on sight.’
‘Say what?!’ He broke off into a coughing fit again and took another swallow of water. ‘What the hell kind of place is this?’
‘It is a mining complex under the control of the Red Star Confederate which supplies resources directly to that government,’ a male voice said smoothly to his right, ‘and they do not take the security of such places lightly.’
Apirana looked around to see a man standing in the doorway to the infirmary. He was wearing loose red trousers with no shoes despite the cold metal floor and, more strikingly, no shirt. What was visible of his skin was several shades darker than Apirana’s own, but much of his upper body was sculpted from metal in a form that mimicked the human thorax were it slightly more angular. As he spoke his chest gently flexed in and out, exposing small areas – also metal – between the pectoral plates in what seemed to be a perfectly natural breathing rhythm. He also had a visor across his eyes, which Apirana assumed was a permanent replacement rather than a fashion statement.
‘A.,’ Jenn
a said in a relatively level tone, although he could tell she was still somewhat uneasy, ‘this is Kunley. He’s the logicator, and the man who arranged for you to be brought here and … helped.’
Apirana nodded. He wasn’t going to deny that Kunley’s mechanical chest gave him the willies a little, but a man had to breathe and he’d had no bad experiences with the Circuit Cult himself, unlike Jenna. ‘Well, thanks, mate. I owe you.’
‘Actually, you don’t,’ Kunley said, taking a few steps into the infirmary, ‘your friend here saw to that.’
Apirana looked sideways at Jenna. ‘Eh?’
‘Well, the Cir—’ She stopped herself and continued as though she’d said nothing out of turn. ‘The Universal Access Movement don’t tend to provide things for free, just cheap. So I had to—’
‘How much?’ He asked, narrowing his eyes and looking towards Kunley.
‘Five hundred stars,’ the logicator replied promptly, ‘which covers anaesthetic, the surgery and the materials. Your ankle has been braced with an advanced polymer which should fuse naturally with your bone, and you’ve been given a healing booster.’ He raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘I expect you will be unusually hungry over the next few days.’
Apirana grunted. Even with the after-effects of the anaesthetic, doing the mental calculation was easy for someone who’d spent most of his life outside prison moving goods, services and sometimes people between currency zones. ‘That’s very reasonable. Cheers, bro.’ He looked back at Jenna. ‘And thank you, as well.’
Jenna shrugged, and possibly blushed a little. ‘Well, I didn’t spend much of my share on New Samara and I had enough on me …’ She smiled. ‘Besides, I certainly can’t carry you.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ he muttered. ‘Right, then. Healing booster, you said?’ He sat up with a groan more theatrical than genuine and waited for the world to start swimming. Which it did, but neither as much nor for as long as he’d feared. He leaned forwards a little and knocked gently on the casing enclosing his ankle and heel. ‘Okay, so how long before I can walk on this bad boy?’