Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘Unless …’ Jenna thought furiously, but the logic appeared to be alarmingly sound. ‘What if Moutinho’s crew were the real gunrunners?’

  ‘Sounds feasible,’ Apirana grunted, his tattooed face frowning, ‘what’re you thinkin’?’

  ‘If they’re the real gunrunners, then that means they’re in with the rebellion,’ Jenna said, growing more alarmed even as she explained it. ‘If they are, then what if they’ve decided to paint us as some sort of … government spies, or something? Yeah, we got arrested earlier, but then we all got released without charge.’

  Apirana grimaced. ‘I wish I could say you’re wrong, but you might just be right. I can imagine that kai kurakura spinnin’ it to say that we got let out because we cut a deal to report back, or something. It’s not like there ain’t bad blood between us.’

  ‘You think you may be in danger?’ Kunley asked. He sounded concerned, but Jenna was willing to bet that the concern wasn’t solely for them. The Circuit Cult here had treated them kindly and fairly, so far as she could tell, but there was a difference between taking someone in to attend to an injury for a reasonable payment and denying entry to armed rebels.

  She looked at Apirana. ‘Can you move if you have to?’

  ‘Hell, I got three legs now instead of two,’ the Maori snorted. ‘Can’t promise I’ll be quick, but that ain’t exactly news.’

  Jenna turned back to Kunley. ‘Do you have a back door?’

  ‘Of course,’ the logicator replied, looking dubious, ‘but he really shouldn’t be—’

  ‘A.’s lived through worse than a broken ankle before,’ Jenna assured him, casting around quickly to check that they’d left nothing important around. She picked up the two satchels of rescued belongings and slung them across her shoulders, one resting on each hip so she was as well-balanced as possible.

  ‘Yeah, I’m hard as, me,’ Apirana chuckled, although there wasn’t a great deal of humour in it. He levered himself back up onto his crutches and nodded to her. ‘You wanna make a move?’

  ‘Sooner seems better than later,’ Jenna agreed. She pulled up a map of Uragan City on her wrist console, grateful for her own foresight in taking it off the Spine as soon as they’d arrived and before it had been blocked off.

  ‘This is surely foolishness,’ Kunley said, worry now clearly audible in his voice. ‘You don’t even know what these rebels want!’

  ‘An’ by the time we do it’ll be too late, if what they want is us,’ Apirana pointed out.

  ‘Besides, if the police aren’t around to shoot people on the streets then there’s no reason we can’t try to find our crew,’ Jenna added. She fixed the logicator with a level look. ‘Thanks for fixing Apirana’s ankle, but it’s best that we go now. For you as well as us.’

  ‘Yeah, that way you can say we’re not here and you ain’t lyin’,’ Apirana said. He took a couple of crutch-assisted steps towards the door, then stopped and looked around at Jenna with an embarrassed expression. ‘Uh … you got my other boot anywhere? I might need it sometime.’

  Jenna couldn’t help but laugh, and patted her left satchel. ‘Don’t worry, big guy, I’ve got your boot.’

  ‘Well, they’re good boots,’ Apirana muttered, although Jenna had no idea why he felt the need to justify himself any further.

  ‘This way, then,’ Kunley said, apparently resigned to their decision. The logicator spun on his heel and turned right out of the doorway, padding barefoot down the corridor which was walled in white, with the intricate gold filigree of the Universal Access Movement’s stylised circuit design etched into the walls. Jenna knew from having made the anxious journey in watching over Apirana that each of the several other doors off it led to a surgery bay.

  ‘Easy, bro!’ Apirana called after him. He was making good speed on his crutches, but it was obviously faster than was comfortable for him and Jenna felt a surge of annoyance directed at Kunley: the man worked to fix people up, surely he should be a bit more understanding about their limitations afterwards? However, the logicator turned right again through a swing door and stopped, holding it open for them as they approached.

  ‘Through there,’ he said, pointing with his free arm towards another door, marked with what Jenna guessed was the Russian for ‘Fire Exit’. ‘That leads into an alley at the rear. Turn left and it will take you to the next street over.’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Apirana said earnestly, pausing for a moment to grab the other man’s shoulder with one massive hand, his crutch trapped awkwardly under one arm. ‘Best of luck to you.’ Then he swung off towards the external door, leaving Jenna face-to-face with Kunley and his unreadable visor. She hesitated for a moment, and her stammer of uncertain gratitude was brought up short by the logicator raising his hand.

  ‘Please. I can see that you do not trust the Movement, and I know that there are certain … extremists … whose actions have caused us all to be painted in a bad light.’ He took a deep breath, the metal plates of his chest flexing and sliding over each other. ‘I just wish you to remember that although we may have less of our original bodies than you, we are no less human.’

  Jenna felt her cheeks heating. Kunley only had his metal chest because he’d been shot, and it seemed cruel and unfair to mistrust someone on the basis of a life-saving operation … but that could just be a story he tells. And he didn’t need to join the cult afterwards.

  ‘Thanks for fixing A.’s leg,’ she managed, then turned to hurry towards where Apirana was shuffling through the exit while trying not to knock his bad ankle on anything. She heard the other door close behind her, but didn’t look around.

  ‘You still think the Circuit Cult’s so bad?’ Apirana asked, shouldering the door open wider for her to step through. Sure enough, they were in a narrow alley which apparently consisted of the back doors of the various properties around them. The UAM’s Uragan headquarters was no taller than anything else – every building was three storeys high and joined the roof at that point, which had apparently been denoted as the optimum height for one level of the city by some past architect – but it made up for that by being fairly wide. However, there were no stylised circuit representations on the rear walls and no shiny white lacquer. Instead, it was simply hewn with laser-edged precision from the grey Uragan rock and the door marked with a small plaque bearing Cyrillic script. On either side, and facing them, were the rears of less expansive properties: mainly retail outlets, judging by the rubbish that had accumulated in the narrow, poorly lit space.

  ‘I just don’t trust them,’ Jenna replied honestly, letting the door swing shut behind her and feeling some of the nebulous tension that had been bothering her for the last few hours dissipate slightly. ‘I mean, this lot seemed fine – weird, but fine – but I don’t trust the cult itself. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ That was a fairly non-committal response for Apirana, and she looked up into the big Maori’s face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I dunno.’ He made an awkward twitch of his shoulders, the closest he could come to a shrug while on crutches. ‘What about if you’re being unfair? I mean, I know the cult are a bit weird, but they listened when you told ’em not to put a new foot on me an’ it’s not like they shoved a load of metal into you, either.’

  ‘It’s … look, that’s not the point,’ Jenna replied, turning away from him. She really didn’t want to get into an argument with Apirana, especially not here and now, but he appeared in her field of vision again with a swing of his body.

  ‘I think it is,’ he rumbled, his tone of voice reasonable enough but apparently either ignorant or uncaring of the fact that she didn’t want to talk about this. ‘If people keep not acting like you expect them to act, maybe your expectations are wrong.’

  ‘Oh?’ she snapped, whipping around to face him. ‘And why do you care about the cult so much?’

  He recoiled slightly, looking surprised at her vehemence, but then his eyes narrowed and his cheeks set in an expression of stubbornness wh
ich she recognised. ‘Look, I got no thoughts much one way or the other about the circuitheads, but you obviously do. I’m just suggesting that maybe you don’t need to worry so much.’

  Jenna tried hard not to roll her eyes. ‘So you’re telling me what I should and shouldn’t worry about?’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Apirana said, and now his voice really was a rumble, like one of Franklin Minor’s rare atmospheric storms, ‘as someone who’s been on the receiving end of more than his fair share of mistrust an’ prejudice, I don’t like seeing good deeds brushed off.’ He gestured at his moko with one hand. ‘A lot of people see these, my culture, my heritage, an’ still, they think it makes me a savage. They expect one thing from me an’ I do my best not to give it to ’em, but you know that if I do get in a fight it’ll only be what they expect, an’ if I don’t then they’ll just assume the fight’ll happen somewhere else, some other time where they don’t see it.’

  Jenna knew that what she should do – what they should do – was head out of the alley and try to track down Rourke or the Captain, or preferably both. That went double for the fact that the rebels were apparently nearby looking for something and they had no idea exactly what it was. But she just couldn’t let that lie.

  ‘It wasn’t a good deed, A., I paid them for it!’

  ‘I remember – sort of – being carried off that square,’ Apirana replied, ‘and there ain’t no way you could’ve hauled my carcass to wherever the hell we are now. So that was with some panicking crowd, and gunshots and gas and I don’t know what else going on, and they still decided to stick around to help two off-worlders they’d never seen before because one of them had fallen like a damn fool and broke his ankle.’ He shook his head. ‘Five hundred stars don’t cover that sort of danger.’

  ‘Some of them not being assholes doesn’t make their cult any less creepy!’

  ‘But just because you’ve met some creepy ones don’t mean that—’

  ‘Damn it, A.!’ She was shouting now, but she didn’t care. Apirana had been the one person on the crew whom she had really and truly counted as a friend, and now he was being infuriating and confusing in equal measure. ‘Do you think I’m just some dumb rich kid who looks down her nose at everyone?!’

  His expression abruptly shifted from stubborn to aghast. ‘What? No, I—’

  ‘These … “people” abducted my friend! A girl I was studying with was grabbed on her way out of college by circuitheads and I never saw her again! Don’t you dare try to tell me their fucked-up cult might not be as bad as I think it is! It’s probably worse!’ She stepped back, biting her lip to keep from saying more.

  Apirana’s lips narrowed and he turned his head slightly, as though eyeing the building behind him. ‘Maybe we should get moving.’

  Jenna nearly hit him. She’d been trying to get him to move away and stop talking but he’d provoked her into what, okay, had possibly been an unwise outburst given where they were standing … and now he wanted to say it was time to move?

  ‘Fine.’ She turned away from him and started to walk towards where the alley bent at right angles to meet the next street over. Behind her, she heard a shuffle of crutches and Apirana’s one good foot.

  ‘Jenna! Damn it, hold on!’

  She was possibly moving faster than she needed to and, yes, she’d been annoyed at Kunley earlier for doing the same thing and, yes, it was possibly petty, but … she’d been so worried about him! She’d never seen Apirana look so helpless, even when she’d been watching over the camera system on Kelsier’s asteroid and had seen him get shot. And then he’d woken up and … well, it wasn’t that she was unhappy he was up and around again, far from it, but did he have to be so damned contrary?

  She followed the alley to the right, avoiding a discarded packing crate and some smashed glass, and stepped cautiously out into the substantially wider street it led onto.

  ‘Hey!’

  The shout came from her right and she couldn’t prevent herself from whirling around guiltily. When she did so she found herself only a few paces away from a familiar-looking, skinny pale youth wearing overalls which left the tribal tattoo on his right arm visible.

  Shit.

  She backed hastily down the street and across the mouth of the alley, away from the member of Moutinho’s crew whom she’d last seen in Cherdak. He advanced after her, one hand outstretched and his mouth starting to form the first syllable of another word.

  ‘Hoi!’

  The only audible word, however, came from the throat of Apirana just before he erupted from the alley mouth about as fast as a human could reasonably move on crutches. Moutinho’s crewman had just enough time to turn towards him, which in turn gave Apirana a larger target for the thunderous kick he unleashed with his good leg that caught the youth square in the chest, much like he had in Cherdak. The difference in their respective masses was so great that the youth was sent sprawling to the ground while Apirana simply killed his momentum enough to land on his foot with a satisfied grunt. He looked towards Jenna and his face twisted in alarm at the same moment as she became aware of the presence of someone behind her. She whirled and lashed out instinctively, and the heavy metal casing of the EMP generator on her right forearm collided with someone’s skull.

  ‘Puta de merda!’

  Ricardo Moutinho staggered sideways on unsteady legs, clutching at his face. His situation didn’t improve much when Apirana crutched up to him, readjusted his grip on one of his supports to hold it like a club, measured the Jacare’s stricken captain for a moment and then swung his improvised weapon with enough force to take Moutinho off his feet completely. Jenna took a couple of quick steps to Apirana’s side and gave him a shove towards a narrow street on the other side of the main concourse on which they’d come out.

  ‘Over there, go!’

  Even when the big Maori was on crutches it was still somewhat akin to trying to push a wall, but thankfully Apirana was rather more amenable to suggestion and he hobbled off with her following after. She looked around, but apart from the two floored gunrunners everyone in sight looked like a Uragan native. That wasn’t a massive comfort, however: their brief scuffle had attracted a lot of interest and Apirana on crutches was even more distinctive than usual, which was saying something.

  ‘So where now?’ Apirana huffed from ahead of her. His best pace was little more than a jog for her, but it was better than nothing. She checked her map.

  ‘Take a right at the next street. That’ll take us towards a justice station, maybe the rebels will be steering clear of that.’

  ‘Never thought I’d see us runnin’ towards the cops,’ Apirana grunted as they passed another narrow alley to their right. ‘Still, needs must, eh?’

  Needs must, indeed. Jenna wondered for a moment what her parents would think if they could see her now. Apirana might have spent most of his life on the wrong side of the law, but she’d grown up being taught that the purpose of the justices was to keep people like her safe from the dangerous, the criminal and the poor (which in her father’s opinion were usually one and the same), and yet since joining the Keiko’s crew she’d broken most laws she could think of. As a teenager she’d always maintained that her increasing interest in slicing had been due to an interest in getting a job as a security tester. However, they normally waited to be contracted before finding out how easy it was to break into an organisation’s records whereas she … well, by that point she certainly hadn’t been fooling herself anymore.

  Still, even that was a long way from being part of a smuggler crew and running from revolutionaries in a Red Star mining town. But she’d needed to get off the Franklins somehow and the Keiko had been her only way out, so … needs must.

  She placed a restraining hand on Apirana’s shoulder, holding the big man back as they approached the next junction. ‘Hold up a second, let me look first.’

  ‘Not complaining,’ the Maori puffed, coming to a grateful halt. Jenna slipped past him and sauntered out into the street, as
casually as she could manage with her heart pounding, and cast her eyes down the street towards the politsiya station. She was hoping to see a quiet, law-abiding street, but her stomach sank when she saw the station’s doors thrown wide and the yellow-and-black flags of the Free Systems flying from its windows with a group of armed civilians milling around in front of it.

  ‘Shit!’ she hissed, retreating back into the side street while trying to look like she’d simply realised that she’d come the wrong way.

  ‘Problem?’ Apirana muttered.

  ‘It looks like that’s their damn headquarters!’ Jenna told him, trying to fight down the frustration building inside her. Why the hell was the galaxy against her today? To make matters worse, an elderly Uragan woman was already eyeing her suspiciously from across the street. She turned to Apirana. ‘Back the way we came and into that alley on the left, casual as you can.’

  ‘Next time we see the Captain, remind me to yell at him for bringing us here,’ Apirana grunted, turning and hobbling in the direction she’d indicated. He cut left into the alley and she followed him in, then grabbed the back of Apirana’s jumpsuit as they passed another opening to their left.

  ‘In here!’

  Apirana looked at it dubiously: it was little more than an inlet between two stone walls leading up to a small rear door and dominated by two large refuse dumpsters. ‘It’s a dead end.’

  ‘We can’t outrun anyone chasing us anyway,’ Jenna told him as reasonably as she could, ‘just get down the end and hide! And quickly,’ she added, feeling a thrill of fear as voices rose into the air behind them and she recognised a couple of the Russian words. ‘Someone’s shouting about the “American woman”. They’ve recognised me.’

  ‘Ah hell,’ Apirana grunted, and started edging his way down the alley as fast as he could. He nearly slipped over when one of his crutches slid sideways on a piece of discarded plastic, but caught his balance at the cost of jarring his ankle and swearing sulfurously, albeit quietly, and managed to stumble into the deep shadows behind the rearmost dumpster with no further incident. Jenna squeezed in after him and tried her best to support him as he sank down into a sitting position to get his head out of sight. She ended up next to him on the floor, back pressed against the cold metal of the dumpster and listening to the breath rasp in and out of his big chest.