Under Dark Sky Law

by Tamara Boyens

  He sighed, and she was able to hear it even over the crackle of the communicator’s static. “Not good. I’m doing everything I can, but the zaps have her real bad. It’s that bad drug resistant form from Russia, I know it. If we can’t get her some Ketocillin soon, I’m going to have to start experimenting with stuff cooked up in the lab, and we both know that could be even worse than just letting the zaps take her,” he said, the heavy sadness coming through his words. They were all used to watching people die every day, but there were still some people that you just couldn’t let go.

  “I have no idea how things are going to go down tomorrow, but if at all possible I’m going to push for getting clearance to complete the Yuma run. That’s the only place we can really safely get to the antibiotics. That stuff is so precious that if we just send in a cover team to do recon, things could go south really fast,” she said. The security of the organization was worth more than any of their individual lives, and there was a high chance that any but the most elite teams would get caught trying to pull off something like that. The right kind of antibiotics were worth more than diamonds had been in the old world.

  “Thank you,” Milo said.

  “Look, this channel is scrambled, but we’ve already said too much. This communicator channel should be open until at least morning, but after that I can’t guarantee anything. If I’m lucky they’ll immediately re-issue all of my field gear and let me keep this stuff too, but I can’t promise anything. Keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll be in contact with you again as soon as possible,” she said.

  “Roger that. Thanks boss, stay safe out there,” he said and they signed off.

  Fuck. The fact that the recon team hadn’t found any sign of Argon’s body, but no one had heard from him yet was not good. It could have meant several things, including that he might have illegally snuck into the dome to escape an attack, but it also meant that he could be gravely injured and in need of help, or it could mean that he had been taken hostage. Knowledge was power, and Xero didn’t like blind spots in her information field.

  Her stomach rumbled and a painful cramp rocked her abdomen. She grabbed at her belly and grunted. She hadn’t had any solid food the whole time she’d been in the hospital, so it would follow that she would be starving. Whatever liquid nutrition they’d pumped her full of while her gut wounds were healing had worn off, leaving her insides twisted in knots. She rummaged through the rest of the bag given to her by Avery and Stone, but there were unfortunately no nutrition bars or gel packs stashed in there. Couldn’t expect them to have brought her everything, and they probably figured that she had the whole hotel at her disposal.

  There was an old fashioned phone and a booklet by the bed, and her hopes were realized when she saw that it was in fact a list of hotel services, including their room service menu. There was a lot of real food on the menu—actual vegetables and fruits, and even some real meat. Most of what the rest of the dome population ate was lab manufactured. Dome space was too limited to grow uncontaminated plants or raise uncontaminated animals. Most of the lab grown food still tasted pretty good, but there was nothing like real food. Out in the pits they still had fairly decent access to actual foods. Since they were resistant to the environmental toxins, they could stand to chow down on vegetables that were soaked in dioxin. After the climate collapse, things had been hard, but many regions were slowly but surely building up renewed agriculture using the modified plant seeds that were showing up. Just like people, some strains of animals and fish adapted to the contaminants and were learning to live again. It wasn’t anything like the selection they’d had in the old world, but you got used to it.

  She figured that hotel lobby would know what her room was allowed to request and what was forbidden. It turned out that she had been given clearance to order food at her leisure and without limits. As a smuggler, exotic foods weren’t quite the treat that they would be for the average person, but it was still nice to look forward to a really extravagant meal. She ordered steak and chocolate cake. She also remembered to stash all of the contraband items back in her luggage in the off chance that hotel staff or military personnel attempted to enter her room while delivering the meal. You never could be too careful.

  While waiting for the food to arrive, she took the chance to find a solution for the last thing she was missing: weapons. Obviously handing over an unauthorized assault weapon would have gotten them in even more trouble than anything else in that suitcase, but Xero still wished they’d at least slipped her a pocket knife or something like that. Be that as it may, she’d learned from many hard experiences that you could make a weapon out of anything in the right circumstances. The posh room was far too clean and modern, leaving her with little in the way of options for weapons. Even the lights were welded into the wall sconces, leaving no lamps or other handy projectiles. She had a few screwdrivers from the toolkit in the bag, but they were mostly small screwdrivers meant for taking apart delicate computer hardware. Rats.

  In the huge bathroom, she found that the towel racks felt flimsy enough to be jerked down and might be used as a potential weapon. Using the little screwdrivers in the toolkit, she loosened the racks enough that they would be easy to pull down, but not necessarily noticeable by hotel personnel. There were some soap containers and other toiletry items that might be usable as weapons. The shower curtain rod was welded too firmly into the wall to be taken down inconspicuously, but the shower curtain itself and the towels might be fashioned into something usable. The enormous whirlpool tub wouldn’t be useful as a weapon, but she was absolutely looking forward to using it to soak in later. Hot water after being in the flats and that cold hospital for the last week was going to be beyond amazing.

  Just as she had finished completing her makeshift weapons inventory, the food arrived and she ushered in the food before anyone had too much of a chance to see her decked out in such casual clothing. She had a feeling that hotel staff would be disturbed by her wilted Mohawk and unsophisticated clothes, and the last thing she wanted was trouble with the service staff. Never piss off service people. It was a guaranteed way to make sure that something unpleasant happened behind the scenes. She’d spent enough time counseling disgruntled workers to know some of the truly heinous things people would do when disrespected at work.

  Taking a long hot bath after eating seemed like a fabulous idea, but the whirlpool tub was so large it would take a long time to fill. Fortunately it was electronic and fancy, so after pushing the automatic start button it would fill itself, stop before overflowing, and stay hot until she was ready to climb in. Soft sounds of water filled the suite and she smiled. Water was always an issue, and a bath like this was another extravagance they rarely saw in the pits.

  She sat down to enjoy the succulent meal—it was fantastic even when compared with some of the things she got her hands on during smuggling runs. Perfectly cooked filet mignon and crisp vegetables with potatoes and a big salad. Unfortunately the steak knife was basically just a glorified butter knife, but she made a point to pocket it once she was done cutting the meat. The salad tasted clean, and it alone was probably worth several thousand dollars. The agricultural greenhouses were become more and more rare as resources continued to dwindle to dangerous levels. Wine would have been perfect with the meal, but she followed her own rule of remaining clean and sober unless there was appropriate supervision. They made some powerful hooch out there in the pits, and she enjoyed a good night of drinking as much as the next person, but it had been a long time since she felt comfortable letting herself have so much freedom. The only person she had ever truly fully trusted in that respect was dead.

  The chocolate cake was also fantastic. Being in Southern Arizona they actually had a fairly decent connection to some of the Mexican and South American chocolate dealers, but in most other parts of the country access to real chocolate was a rare thing indeed. There was artificial chocolate substitutes of course, but nothing could ever really replace actual chocolate. Heaven. Her turbu
lent belly was equally happy to be full and settled.

  The staff seemed like they had an uncanny ability to judge how long it took a guest to finish a meal—just as she put down her fork after the final crumb of cake was gone, there was a knock at the door. She would have thought they were watching via the security cameras if she hadn’t been fairly confident about ridding the room of surveillance equipment. A look through the peephole revealed another hotel staff member dressed in a creepy white suit. There were no soldiers in the hallway anymore, but that wasn’t all that odd considering they had been switching shifts and leaving gaps in their coverage fairly regularly. She assumed it was because they were short-staffed and there were a lot of people that needed guarding.

  When she unlocked the door to bring the food tray back to the staff member, he suddenly struck her as odd. Everyone else she’d seen working in the hotel had been homogenous enough for it to be disturbing—everyone was tall and white with blonde or very light brown hair, like some inappropriate Aryan holdover from previous centuries. This guy was short and Hispanic. It was total instinct, and she briefly thought about how she would look like a racist fuck if she was wrong, but instead of handing him the platter, she chucked full force at his face.

  The man reacted like a true pro, knocking it away from his face with his arms in the way that only a trained combat soldier or martial artist would be able to pull off. Anyone else would have gotten nailed with the fast moving platter, leaving them with a broken nose or worse. It was the only information she needed to process the next decision, and her brain clicked over to autopilot.

  She withdrew the steak knife from the back pocket of her jeans, very grateful to have had the forethought to stick it back there. Argon made fun of her for stashing weapons in any crevice possible, but time and again her paranoia was proven right. She stabbed towards the man’s neck with enough strength to force the blunt blade through his carotid, but with the powerful thrust she sacrificed speed. Even though he was short, he was incredibly fast, and he moved with the kind of grace that made her think he had gymnastics or more advanced martial arts training. She knew Calavera sometimes hired ex-luchadors, and as hilarious as some people thought pro-wrestling was, she’d tangled with more than one luchador that really proved their salt. He dodged her stab and rolled past her into the threshold of the doorway.

  Whirling around to face him again, she saw that he had withdrawn a large knife from within his uniform. Fortunately within the dome he was very unlikely to have a laser or other firearm—the dome itself did a good job of tracking firearms, and most businesses had detectors set up around the entryways. After the rioting several decades ago had nearly collapsed all of the major domes, the government got dead serious about gun control. Knives were much harder to detect and enforce, but at least if you knew what you were doing you could pull off a decent defense. In a laser fight, dumb luck could get you shot and killed, and there was nothing you could do.

  Her knife was significantly less useful as a weapon than the attacker’s, and even with the decent range she got just from being tall, this guy’s speed let her know not to take him lightly. One stab wound for the week was enough. It was a gamble, but she circled right until her back was to the entrance of the bathroom, and waited. He got impatient and flew at her with all of his weight, both feet leaving the ground as he lunged. Definitely a luchador. His short height was actually a benefit in this situation, and she rolled onto her back, just inches from striking her head against the toilet or edge of the tub. She flung her legs upward at a ninety degree angle, catching him in the stomach with just enough of the right leverage to slow him down long enough to grab his shirt collar. Using the torque from her legs and the pivot point where her hand clutched his shirt, she flipped him over her head. Between the added force from her legs and his own propulsion, he soared overhead and slammed into the tile wall over the tub. Tiles crunched and he screamed.

  She had hoped that the impact itself would knock him unconscious, but he thrashed and burbled when he hit the water. While leverage was still on her side, she leapt to her feet and used all her weight to press down on his throat, not caring if she strangled him or he drowned first. He thrashed in the water like a diver in the jaws of a shark, but Xero’s significant upper body strength and her weight advantage won out. No matter how hard he thrashed, he couldn’t escape her grasp. It felt like several minutes, but in reality it was probably only a few seconds before his thrashing slowed, and then completely stopped. Through the water his empty brown eyes stared at her, and she sneered. Served him right for trying to get the drop on her.

  Blood dripped down the smashed tile wall, and little tendrils of blood were blossoming in the water around his head from the trauma caused by the impact. Goddamn it, now there was no way she was going to be able to take a bath in that water. That upset her more than the attack itself. This would also cause another big investigation, and there was no way she wasn’t going to run into an ass load of administrative headaches. It occurred to her that soldiers should have arrived by now, and it was possible that more than one attack had been staged to occur at the same time. Great. Bath time was definitely not in her immediate future.

  In the struggle she had lost hold of her steak knife, and at some point the attacker had also lost his weapons. As she was looking around for the knives, another hotel staff member came in the door. It only took a second for her to process that it was another of the imposters—he could have been the brother of the one that was dead in the bathtub. His face exploded in rage when he saw the fate of his comrade, oozing blood into the water. Fuck. She wished that she had been able to recover the knives.

  The other man produced an identical combat knife and lunged towards her. She dodged to the right, hitting the wall. The man grinned, thinking he had her cornered, but after another split second of gratitude for being prepared, she grinned back, snatched the loosened towel rack from the wall beside her head, and lunged at him with all her strength. She caught him off guard, which was good because she needed both hands on the towel rod, leaving her open to attack. He raised the knife to take a swipe, but it was too late. With both hands she shunted the towel rack into the meat of his throat.

  The force backed him up against the other side of the wall, and the rod made a sickening noise as it tore through the meat of his neck. If it had been a sharp weapon it would have gone clear through to the wall, but the dull towel rack came to a rest somewhere in front of his spinal cord. Blood poured down the front of his white uniform. His mouth made gasping motions, but no sound came out. No air, no sound. He dropped the knife and it clattered on the floor mere inches from her foot. His hands clutched reflexively at the rod before his eyes went glassy and his body went limp. She released the rod and let his body slide to the floor where it settled in a bloody heap. Buenas noches, hermanos.

  She heard voices in the hallway, but couldn’t figure out if it was more attackers or military personnel coming to check out the scene. Looking around the floor for the latest guy’s knife, she saw the glint of more metal behind the toilet and found where the first attacker’s knife had landed. Awesome. Heads would really roll now. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, wet, covered in blood, Mohawk strands going every which way, dual blades in hand. The peculiar mix of adrenaline and blood lust filled her eyes, and she was ready, eager to go again. Bring it on bitches.

  CHAPTER 9

  When the next person stepped through the door it took all of the restraint she could muster to keep from lunging towards him, both knives slashing. The only thing stopping her was knowing that killing a solider in the dome, regardless of the reason, would amount to a heap of trouble so big even she would have trouble getting out of it.

  He was in fact wearing a soldier’s uniform, but there was only one person, and at this point that didn’t mean jack squat to Xero. The adrenaline was flowing and everyone was suspect. “Identify yourself, motherfucker,” she said, both arms raised to strike.

  It was another yo
ung recruit, and she knew from his reaction that he was also a rookie. A seasoned soldier wouldn’t have flinched at her knives or her appearance, but this little twat was visibly startled, and he fumbled to draw his weapon. “Private Johannes, National Guard, drop your weapon,” he said. His voice quavered when he said weapon, but he managed to get his laser out of the holster and sighted in her direction. He just might make it after all.

  His incompetence was actually what saved him. As much as she liked to pick on Calavera, all of her skeletons were absolutely well-trained in combat. None of them would hesitate to kill when the occasion called for it, and sometimes when the occasion didn’t call for it too. If Calavera caught any of them flinching in the face of a conflict, she’d kill them herself first. Before moving out to Nogales to expand her drug smuggling ring she’d been the territory boss of Juarez, and that was a place that even Xero wouldn’t want to manage. If she ever had a job that required extreme violence and inelegant force, she called on favors from the Juarez territory. It hadn’t required a lot of brains, which was why she’d been so successful, but it required a certain level of brutality and ruthlessness.

  Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t one of the rogue skeletons, and he likely wasn’t part of any of the rebellions that were going on. He probably really was one of the fantastically fresh new recruits that the military was serving up on a regular basis.

  Xero nodded, held her hands up in a surrender position, but didn’t drop the knives. Hopefully this dude wasn’t so nervous that he’d have a trigger finger accidentally flinch. Without knowing the rest of the scene outside, dropping her knives actually might be more risky than trying to dodge a laser shot.

  “Private, can you verify that the area of the hallway is secure? Is there backup out there?” she said, and he seemed surprised that a savage like her was able to speak in coherent sentences.