by Rajan Khanna
They feed me, too. Scraps and slop, but it’s something. I guess Mal’s sticking to his promise to Miranda. I can imagine him rationalizing it, too. Telling himself he’ll punish me at a time and place of his choosing. He has an overdeveloped sense of honor. Something tells me that Miranda picked up on that and used it against him.
Thinking of Miranda sends a pang through me—not knowing where she is, or how she is. What she’s doing. How Mal’s treating her.
There’s no way that he’s going to let her see me. That will be off-limits, even if she wants to, but. . . . But there’s this strange, nagging voice inside my head that says maybe she doesn’t want to see me. I don’t think it makes sense, but it still pipes up from time to time. I keep trying to stamp it down.
And this is the problem with being stuck with no one but yourself. With no books or music or people to talk to. You start having crazy thoughts. In one of these, Mal charms Miranda and, well, let’s just say she responds.
I’m definitely going to go crazy in here.
Of course I search my cell for means of escape but, well, there doesn’t seem to be any. The door to the room is locked from the outside, and there are no windows or other openings inside. There is the toilet, but judging by its dimensions, the hole beneath it would be too small for me to squeeze through.
Just one book, I think. One book. It wouldn’t even matter which one. Once, when I was holed up in an old house that just happened to sit next to a Feral nest, I read the same book four times. In a row. And it was about rabbits. Another time, when Dad had dropped me off on a rooftop, circling around to pick me up later (and got delayed), I read the same romance novel twice, the second time acting out all the parts. I sometimes go to great lengths to pass the time.
A short time later, my food arrives. Those scraps and slop. It’s skins and rinds and cores, cartilage and bone. The vegetables are just shy of rotting, the fish is too soft and has a smell that almost makes me gag. Something that was once leafy and green is now a muddy smear. Yet I open my mouth and shovel as much as I can in. Because I need to eat, and I’m hungry. I need to heal. That I don’t enjoy it doesn’t really come into it. Much. It helps that I’ve been on my own and hungry for much of my adult life. I’ve eaten all kinds of things out of desperation. This is tolerable at its worst. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
Especially every time I start to gag.
I start marking the days on my mattress, scoring lines into the fabric covering. One. Two. Three.
I start talking to myself. Except that quickly that loses all appeal. I’m a terrible conversationalist.
So I start thinking about the old days. About the last time I saw Mal.
It wasn’t a good time.
CHAPTER TWO
It happened back a short while after my father Faded, when I was still flying around with Claudia. This was back before she got the Valkyrie, when the two of us were living on the Cherub.
I had been telling Claudia that we could get by with foraging, but she wanted to do other things, take on jobs, try for the big score. I eventually agreed. I think we were both reeling from what happened to Dad and were trying to strike out into new territory. And, I can’t speak for her, but I was definitely feeling a little self-destructive at the time.
So we spent more time around people. There was no Gastown back then, but there were other settlements, either fixed or roaming. It’s hard to keep track of people in the Sick, but there are ways. When you move on, leave a message behind about where you’re headed, and a radio frequency. If someone is looking, all they have to do is go to that location and scan for signals. Of course you have to do it in code so not just anyone can find you.
So we kicked around zep dives until we found what we were looking for. The ultimate score.
“A police storage facility,” Cheyenne said. She wore a cowboy hat and always seemed peppy. The smile on her sun-freckled face was as wide as the sky. We sat on a rooftop in San Francisco, our airships anchored around us, five folding chairs arranged in a rough circle.
“Forget it,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “Too much trouble. I’ve hit police installations before. Getting past security is tricky enough, and it’s almost certainly crawling with Ferals. Not to mention that it’s probably been looted before. Or maybe someone’s living there.” A lot of police facilities had shelters in them. That made them attractive to anyone looking to hole up. Not to mention the weapons and ammunition they usually held.
“Don’t worry about security,” Cheyenne said and winked at me. She actually winked. I looked at Claudia, who shrugged. We knew Cheyenne the least out of everyone involved with this job. But of course she’s the one who came with the details.
“No, seriously,” Cheyenne continued. “That’s what Malik is for.”
All eyes turned toward Malik standing quietly behind his chair. His hair was shorter then, and he favored a mustache over a full beard, but he otherwise looked much the same. He seemed preternaturally calm, unruffled.
Out of everyone involved in the job, I had known Mal the longest, excluding Claudia. We were about the same age, ran in similar circles. Mal was a forager, too, though he often trod the fine line between foraging and pirating. Oddly enough, he had a good reputation—he didn’t kill or attack the vulnerable. And he seemed more interested in forming a group, getting like-minded people to work together. He had asked me to join several times, but I couldn’t really see myself doing that. We had worked on opposite sides in the past, but also together.
I shouldn’t have liked him, but the thing is, I really did. We had a kind of friendly rivalry.
“Benjamin is quite familiar with my ability to crack locks,” he said. He directed a smug smile at me. “Surely you remember Portland. Or Reno.”
Both places where he’d scooped me.
To the others he said, his smile never wavering, “I am quite practiced in cracking old locks. Often the cargo I liberate is locked or secured, and it’s worth far more in pristine condition. And I’ve been in military installations before.”
Already that had become part of Mal’s reputation. It kept him and his entourage well-armed and well-stocked. It also meant he was a good addition to this job.
“Do we know this place hasn’t been hit before?” I asked.
“That’s just it,” Cheyenne said. “It’s not on a base or a station. It’s not an obvious target.”
“Where, then?” Claudia asked.
Cheyenne tipped her cowboy hat back from her head. “A warehouse. A big storage facility.” She leaned in. “It’s military-grade equipment. Sold to the police. The way I hear it, the police were like small armies back in the Clean. They had too much to keep in their station.”
“There’s plenty of stories about that kind of thing,” Tess said, leaning back in her chair. “A lot of that kind of equipment saw use when the Bug hit.” Tess had been making a name for herself, at the time already an expert in the Clean. She was older than all of us, short and square and smart. She looked at us from behind large, thick glasses.
“It’s quality equipment,” Cheyenne said. “But the scuttle is that they never got a chance to use it. Because of where it was.”
“And how exactly did you find out about this cache?” I asked. I looked at Tess, who shook her head, indicating it wasn’t her.
“What’s it matter how I found it?” Cheyenne asked.
“Because if some cracked-out drunk told you about it, I want to know,” I said. “If some plod sold it for a ride in your ship, I want to know. It matters.”
Cheyenne held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I did a favor for a guy I know, a fixer, and he was gonna patch up my ship. Only the favor was a fuck-lot more dangerous than either of us expected. The ship didn’t need no more work, and so he offered something else. This location.”
“How’d he get it?” Claudia asked.
“His father, read? He’d been trying to get people together to go after it, but he doesn’t fly in the right circles.
So he gave it to me.”
“Just like that,” I said.
“Well, he wants me to bring him back something. A taste of sweet barter. But that’s it.”
“And you swallow this?” I asked Tess.
She nodded. “I did some preliminary checking, and it seems to be legit. As far as these things go. It wouldn’t exactly have been common knowledge back then.”
Everyone was silent as we mulled the whole thing over.
“So what’s the plan?” Claudia asked at last.
Cheyenne smiled. “We use only one ship. That way we don’t attract too much attention. Ben, yours should do. She’s fast, Claudia says, and you have the cargo space we need to get anything we want off of the ground.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Malik and Lord Tess help get us in, dealing with any physical or electronic security. The rest of us are muscle—we clear out any Ferals in the way. Then all of us grab what we can carry, bring it back to the ship, and get the fuck out of there.”
“Even split?” I asked.
Cheyenne nodded. “Fairest way possible.”
I looked at Claudia. It sounded fine, especially with five of us, but what it ultimately came down to was a matter of trust. I trusted Claudia, of course. And probably Mal. Or maybe not trust, but respect. I knew that I could depend on him and his abilities. I’d heard of Lord Tess—she had a reputation even back then—and she seemed on the straight, but I didn’t know Cheyenne from a patch of cloud. “What do you think?” I asked Claudia.
She narrowed her eyes. “I think that if this bears out, it could keep us flush for some time. And I think that with this kind of score, I might just be able to get my own ship.”
I gritted my teeth at that. She had been talking about getting her own ship for weeks now. I wanted her to stay on the Cherub with me. Sure, we sometimes came close to killing one another, and I often found myself wanting to be by myself. But back then I never had been. I had always been with my father. I think the thought of being truly alone scared me to death.
“What do you say?” Cheyenne asked.
With a sinking sensation in my stomach, I stared her in the eyes and said, “We’re in.”
When you’re an independent airship operator, your ship is your home. It’s often your livelihood. It’s usually one of the most (if not the most) important objects in your life. So, leaving one behind always makes you apprehensive. For the job at the police warehouse, I was going to be flying the Cherub, but that meant that everyone else had to leave their ships behind. Tess didn’t have one, but Mal and Cheyenne were trusting that their ships would be okay in their absence. Back then, Mal was flying a cargo ship, very similar to the Cherub, though made by a different firm. He had cronies, even back then, so he gave it over to them. I never knew what Cheyenne had arranged.
Using a single ship had been a good plan, of course. People in the Sick are opportunists. See a few ships together, especially down on the ground, and you have an indication that something is up. Something potentially lucrative.
A lone ship, though. That could be someone looking for food. Or making hasty repairs. Or anything. Lone ships are often not worth the trouble. Unless, that is, you’re desperate. And of course one ship means less resistance than three. But on this trip the plan was to not be noticed.
I stood by the Cherub as the others approached. Mal eyed the ship appraisingly. “Still no weapons?” he asked.
Mal had outfitted his ship, called A Star without a Name, with several weapons he had liberated from military installations.
I shook my head. “Not my style.”
“People change, Benjamin,” he said with a smile.
“There’s no need for weapons on this job, is there?” I asked. “She’s fast and she can carry. That’s all that matters.”
He tilted his head.
“What’s her name?” Tess asked.
“The Cherub.”
Cheyenne laughed. “What the fuck kind of name is that?” she asked.
“It’s named after a type of angel,” I said.
“A smiling, plump, baby-angel if I’m not wrong,” Lord Tess said.
I sighed. “The cherubim were guardians and divine messengers, winged and terrible. Cherubs guarded the Garden of Eden in the Holy Scripture. They were said to have four wings, like the fins of the ship.”
“Stupid name,” Cheyenne muttered.
I came very close to throwing them all off of the ship.
I had been used to having Claudia and my father aboard the Cherub (toward the end, my father let me fly her) but having four other people made the gondola feel cramped. Even though I was at her controls, I could feel the other people around, behind me, in my air, my space. The Cherub’s gondola wasn’t small, but it felt like it had been invaded.
“Something’s been bothering me,” I said. “You’re saying that this wasn’t the first place the police came when the Bug hit? You’d think they’d load for bear.”
Cheyenne came around to face me. “They didn’t have a chance, so I’m told. They were overrun pretty quickly.”
“And that’s all we have to go on?”
“I did the due diligence,” Tess said, dropping her weird phrases like she always did. “Records seem to indicate that this area was overrun pretty quickly. Other places around the country made good use of their military-grade weapons, but at this location, they didn’t get a chance to.”
All those weapons, I thought, and in the end they did no good. I don’t like Ferals at the best of times, but at least we know what they are and to some degree how they operate. Back in the Clean, when everything was just starting to go down, they must have been scared out of their minds. Friends, loved ones, comrades-in-arms, all of a sudden turning into creatures monstrous and violent and, most of all, hungry. At least when Dad Faded I knew what I was dealing with. I had been trained in how to handle myself, in how to handle Ferals. They had no idea.
But they soon found out.
“All right, people,” Cheyenne said. “Ante up.”
I groaned. “Really?”
She gave me a chastising look. “It’s tradition.”
Which was true. Zep crews would often select personal items or something from their last haul and put it in a communal pool. The person who performed best during the run (determined by communal vote) would get to take it. Dad and I never did that, even with Claudia. We felt that something earned was yours to keep. Didn’t make much sense to add gambling to the mix. But on other crews, I suppose it made a kind of sense. It was incentive to go above and beyond. But I often wondered if it didn’t also foster resentment. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few antes led to murder in the dark.
“What’s the win condition?” Claudia asked.
“Kills and fills,” Cheyenne said, meaning the person with the most kills (assuming there were any) and the most haul.
“Fine,” I said. I grabbed an old plastic box and shook out the dust, three plastic pens and an old razor blade. Then I slapped the box down in front of them. Cheyenne dropped in a knife—nothing you would want to fight with, but good for utility work, stripping wires, things like that. Tess dropped in a book, of course, but I didn’t look at the title. I was too busy trying to figure out what to put in. You couldn’t half-ass it—put in something like the pens I had just discarded. But I wasn’t putting in something valuable. The idea of this trip was to come away with extra, not less.
Mal, who hadn’t really said much or reacted in any way when it was announced, simply reached for a ring on one of his fingers (of which there were several—rings, I mean) and pulled one loose. It was silver, and wide, with a large, green stone in the center. It was, strictly speaking, ornamental, but metal could always be melted down. I decided not to give him shit for it.
Claudia went next, dropping in a flare—useful and rare enough to be of value. I wouldn’t have done it, but I knew for a fact that she had several more.
Which left me.
I was on the
Cherub, which meant I had access to all of my things. The question was, which thing? It came to me a moment later—a bottle of wine. I had found a few with Claudia a few weeks earlier. I could put one in and save the rest. The winner could either drink it or sell it. Either way, it was a good score. I grabbed one—a Merlot—and put it in the bin.
“Good,” Cheyenne said. “We’re all set. Let’s get moving. Ben, if you would be so good as to take your fat baby up into the air?”
I gritted my teeth and moved to the controls. As I passed Claudia, I said, “I am rethinking this whole thing.”
She patted my shoulder. “It’s a little late for that, honey.”
“Yeah.”
The police facility was in what used to be Arizona. I’d only been through that area a few times, but it was striking how the land changed. The mountains here were knobby and red, a far cry from the steep, knife-edged, snow-covered mountains I was used to, in the Rockies. The colors of everything seemed to change.
There was more desert here, too. That was a good thing when it came to Ferals—they weren’t really equipped to be out in the desert. Dehydration would still kill a Feral dead like it would anyone. But we were headed to the city, and there were bound to be pockets there.
It took us a little while to find the police department and a little longer to find the storage facility where they stored their extra equipment. I didn’t mind any of that—we were in the air. But what came next made me nervous.
One of the great things about the Cherub, what distinguished her from a lot of other ships (apart from her name, which was excellent), was that she was equipped with VTOL engines. That meant that, unlike a lot of other airships, which had to either stay in the air or needed complicated launch procedures, she could descend right to the ground for easy loading and then rise back up again, easy peasy. Well, not so easy—it was hell to maintain those engines, and thankfully my father had taught me how to do a decent job, but for a long time the Cherub was all I had and I took good care of her.