Windswept

by Adam Rakunas

yes but they all have walwa pais, not union ones

  Saarien’s people, whoever the hell they were. Can you try the knockout thing with them?

  i think it would kill them

  For a brief moment, I consider having him do it. No, don’t do that.

  good cause i don’t think it would work anyway

  Small relief, I replied, then sent to Wash: How do we stop cargo going up?

  which cargo? he replied. fifty thousand cans in queue

  All of it, then.

  won’t stop unless there’s a hurricane alarm

  Fine. How do we set one off?

  start a hurricane

  The electrosmash pounded in my ears, setting my teeth on edge. I know Wash wasn’t trying to wind me up, but I couldn’t help myself from texting: Well, shit, why don’t I just buy one, then?

  Banks perked up. yes. do that.

  I shrugged at him, making sure he could see how exasperated I was.

  you know someone who works on the anchor, texted Wash. Henry Ballesteros.

  I have no idea who that is.

  You had sex with him about three hours before you met me.

  I stared at Banks, then remembered: Anchor Boy.

  And then I remembered that Banks had looked into my buffer. Right.

  Wash looked at me, partly bemused, partly hurt.

  Mind your own business, I shot to Wash, then looked at Banks. And you need to stop hitting Send All.

  but you know him.

  Yes, I do, but I can’t call him.

  i can. wait. Banks’s eyes rolled around as he made the call. He smiled, then texted: he’ll do it.

  Do what?

  hit the button, texted Banks.

  What button?

  the stop button, replied Banks. though it’s really a series of switches.

  Fine, just have him do it!

  for fifty thousand yuan.

  I blinked at him. Did you miss a few zeroes?

  he was quite sure about the amount

  I swallowed the lump away from my throat and blinked up my balance. If I paid off Anchor Boy, that would leave me with three hundred fifty yuan, just what Bloombeck had asked for two days ago. Maybe I should have paid him off, and then I wouldn’t be on the verge of ruin.

  And then I remembered that there was still a possibility that Estella Tonggow was alive. After all, if Saarien and Jimney and Jordan and the rest were running around, she might be, too, right? That meant there was still a chance to buy the distillery and have a semi-normal life. I’d be in debt to her for the rest of it, but that was better than going mad. If I stopped the lifter, I would stop the Ghosts. If I stopped the Ghosts, I would still be alive and able to enjoy being in debt.

  OK, I texted Banks. You probably know how I move money around.

  He nodded, then gave me a sad smile before blinking in the message.

  I looked at Saarien; he was still yelling into the phone when he started like he’d been whipped. He straightened up, put on a beatific smile, then screamed so loud I heard him through the headphones: HOW? I looked away, but he’d already caught me looking at him. He stomped around the desk, pulled off the headphones and gag and yelled, “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Rutey,” I said.

  “You’ve stopped the lifter traffic,” he said, “and you will restart it.”

  “Do I look like I can control anything?” I said, hopping up and down, taking the chair with me.

  “You can read minds,” said Saarien, his eyes getting narrow. “You can see into the eyes of other men, and twist their words and thoughts, using magic.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not right,” said one goon, his arms going slack.

  “Not right,” said the other, taking a step back.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said.

  “Witch!” cried Saarien, stepping away and pointing a finger at me. “Sorceress! We must purify you! Cleanse you! Burn you!”

  “Burn her!” yelled one goon.

  “Torch her!” yelled the other.

  “You two!” Saarien yelled at the goons. “Bring help! Bring fuel and fire! We will purify this evil with the bright light of justice!”

  The goons fought each other to be first out the door. When it slammed shut behind them, Saarien gave me a bullet-eyed stare, then laughed. “Just when I thought they couldn’t get any dumber, they prove me wrong. Can you believe they bought that witchcraft bullshit?”

  “You have to stop this, Rutey,” I said. “Wash is gonna bleed out, and–”

  “I could really not care less what happens to ol’ Wash right now,” said Saarien, patting Wash on the shoulder. Wash pulled away, then groaned from the effort.

  “You realize we’re recording all this, right?” I said.

  “Sure,” said Saarien, flashing his pearly whites. “And do you realize your pai is cut off from the Public, and that no one will be able to read it once it’s melted down, along with everything else in this office?”

  A ball of acid churned in my stomach, and I sat back. “Holy shit. You’re really going to do it.”

  He nodded. “I have to admit, you’ve made it incredibly easy for me, what with your betrayal to the Struggle.”

  I paused, letting his words rattle around my head. “My what?”

  “Your betrayal,” he said, walking to the door and leaning against the wall. “That’s how I’m going to sell it: you’ve been consorting with your former lover” –he swatted Wash on the shoulder–“and with a Ghost Squad” –another swat for Banks–“to commit biological warfare on our brothers and sisters in Solidarity.”

  “What makes you think he’s a Ghost?” I said, nodding toward Banks.

  “Because I’ve read all the internals from Thronehill,” said Saarien. “My partners in WalWa were only too happy to feed me data.”

  “The ones with fake ink,” I said.

  He nodded. “Bright bunch of kids, really. Remind me of how I was when I signed my Indenture. I thought I was going to shine, move up the ladder at lightning speed, but then I saw what a horrific slog it was to the top. Even with the endless supply of idiots who want to become Indentures, there was no way to stand out. But here?” He spread his hands wide. “Here, with everyone grumbling their way through life, it’s easy to lead them, Union and Indenture alike. I talked those kids into working for me so easily, that it amazes me you didn’t try it yourself. They aren’t ready to Breach, but they still know they were getting a raw deal. Do you know that Indenture contracts no longer include transit time as part of Service? All those fishsticks who came down the cable, they have to do an extra four years here before their obligations are up.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said, “and completely irrelevant to what’s going on here.”

  “Is it?” said Saarien. “See, you’ve been so focused on making your number and retiring to Chino Cove that you’ve forgotten all about the Struggle.”

  “You’ve kidnapped a few hundred Freeborn and you pressganged my people into running an illegal refinery, you shot Wash, and you’ve got all of us tied up, and you think you can lecture me about labor theory?”

  “You forgot murdering Estella Tonggow,” said Saarien.

  My guts churned. “You didn’t do the bodyswap thing with her?”

  “No, because I didn’t need her,” said Saarien. “All those Freeborn, your people, they all fit in with my requirements, and it was easier for Bloombeck to tag a pile of meat with DNA than to make them disappear altogether. Your patron, Madame Tonggow? She’s dead, Padma. And she’s not coming back.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she was in my way. She was going to figure out what was making the rum go bad, and then it would’ve been easy for her to trace that to the source. She was a brilliant biochemist. Too bad you followed her path and turned away from us.”

  “I never–”

  “I know you have, because I live it every day, but you,” he said. “Yo
u’re so focused on your Co-Op plans that you’ve let your people down. I see the way they come trudging out of your treatment plant, beaten down, broken, robbed of a promising future that you can’t deliver.”

  “Because you keep stealing my fucking funding,” I said.

  “I’ve been reappropriating it,” said Saarien.

  “You’ve been stealing it,” I said. “Wash told me about the cash you’ve been siphoning off for your ‘reinvestment program.’ And I’ve seen where that’s all gone. I was there, Rutey. I saw the stacks of your cane getting churned into your molasses in your illegal refinery.”

  “What you saw was the future,” said Saarien. “One that will ensure that we will endure in the Struggle against our former masters.”

  “By wiping out all the cane in Occupied Space?” I said.

  “Not all of it,” said Saarien. “Just the corporate controlled cane.”

  “Which is all of it,” I said. “Even if you had nothing but your stuff planted on Santee, do you know how many people you’re going to hurt? How many powerplants run on industrial cane? How many food delivery trucks, ambulances, police cars all run on cane diesel?”

  “And they will continue to run,” said Saarien. “Like you said, you saw the stacks.”

  “There’s no way you’ve made enough molasses to run this planet,” I said. “You’ve only been working with Bloombeck for, what, six months? Seven?”

  Saarien shook his head. “I think I’ve said far too much.”

  “If you really believe in the Struggle, then you won’t do this.”

  Saarien smiled, and I had never wanted to hit him as badly as I did right then. “It’s because I believe that I will. As long as the Big Three tell us what to grow and how to grow it and how much we’ll get for keeping their rotting corpse of a civilization running, we will never be free. This is the ultimate blow for liberty, Sister Padma, and if you truly believed, you’d have asked to join me. Instead, you’ve blocked me, every step of the way.”

  I’d like to say that Saarien’s smug tone and unflinching certainty gave me superhuman strength, more than enough to tear my way out of the chair, rush him and beat him to death with his own arms. But I just looked at Banks, who had a small dribble of blood coming out his nostril. Wash’s eyes were closed, and his breathing grew ragged. I turned back to Saarien and said, “You don’t know a goddamn thing, Rutey. All this time you’ve run Sou’s Reach and howled for more Contract Slots and more money and more influence, you have never understood what it’s all about. You don’t get it, and you never will.”

  “There’s nothing to get,” he said, “nothing except a few gas cans and a match.”

  “This won’t end with me,” I said. “Even if you get your cane up the lifter and out into space, you think people won’t remember what you did? You think the Union’s just going to sit back and let you get away with murdering me?”

  “How will they know it’s murder when there’s no evidence?” he said.

  “I’ve got enough to tie you with all of this–”

  “I will be running this place,” said Saarien, laughing. “Everyone will be too busy panicking about how to eat to care about investigating any fires on the lifter terminal. And when I step in with a solution, you will just be a memory. The Union won’t care about you, not when I am the Union.”

  “You really think that?” I said. “You don’t think all the people who do the working and living and dying, they might have something to say about it?”

  Saarien smiled. “I think it’s funny that you’re choosing now to think about them.”

  “They won’t,” I said. “I think the Union will find you out and fight you. Everyone will see how you don’t care about the people, just the cause, and you’ll be stopped.”

  He clapped three times, slow and steady. “Bravo for the brotherhood of man.”

  “It’s the brotherhood of the fucked-over,” I said. “And our own people, one of these days, are going to realize how full of shit you are and feed you to the wolves.”

  “Not while I’ve got the guns and the dinner plates,” said Saarien.

  The door opened, and a trio of goons entered the room carrying red fuel cans. “Praise God!” called Saarien, the syrup returning to his voice. “Now you will see the power of virtue triumph over vice!” He uncapped one of the cans and kicked it over; cane diesel spilled on the floor, splashing its way toward us. I turned away, but the overpowering stench of the diesel made my head fuzz and my strength drain.

  Saarien rummaged through the desk until he found an emergency kit. He pulled out a flare and struck it. The office’s light, already hellish from the fluorescents, turned bright red as Saarien approached us. “Pour those two cans on them, and watch,” he said. One of the goons nodded, picked up a can and swung it at Saarien’s head. He went down, the flare flying away and landing on diesel-soaked paperwork. As it ignited, the goon wound up and flung the can at the other goons. They froze, wondering what to do with the diesel splashed over their armor, and our rescuer unslung her riot hose and sprayed their helmets. The stench of rotting vanilla clashed with the sharp diesel as both goons swatted at the hardening and expanding foam. With a few swift kicks, the remaining goon booted the other two out the door, firing a few extra squirts of foam after them.

  what the hell is going on? Banks and Wash both texted.

  “You’re still good for that thousand yuan, right?” said the goon, flipping up her facebowl. It was Jilly.

  “I’m good for a lot more than that if you get us out of here,” I said.

  Jilly found a pair of clippers in the desk and snipped all of our zipties. I sprang from the chair and gave Jilly a hug, then we helped Wash outside, where a waiting cargo van puttered away. “I got a ride in with a police boat, and then I saw this thing just sitting around. Had the armor and everything, so I figured, why not play dress up?” Jilly grinned, then scratched her neck. “Hope it’s easy to come off. This shit itches.”

  “That’s part of the joy of being a goon,” I said as we put Wash in the back. Banks cracked into the van’s first aid kit and got to work tending to Wash. I sprayed anesthetic on my wounded calf, sighing as the pain vanished. Black smudges of smoke puffed out of the doorway; in a minute, the fire would turn the can into an oven, smothering anyone left inside. I’d cleaned up after one can fire six years ago, and the results were enough to turn me off barbeque for months. It was a horrible way to die.

  I counted to five and saw no sign of Evanrute. “Goddammit,” I said, and hobbled into the can, Jilly following.

  Saarien was still where we’d left him, which was now on the other side of a low wall of flame. He was on his feet, but his eyes were closed and his mouth was moving. The bastard was praying. Jilly grabbed a fire extinguisher next to the door (dependable Wash, always keeping up with safety codes) and got ready to spray when I blocked her with an arm. “Rutey!” I called.

  He opened his eyes and smiled. “I knew you’d return. You believe in the Struggle.”

  “I believe you’re going to get roasted alive,” I said.

  “So, you’re going to let a righteous servant of the Union perish?” said Saarien.

  “Which one of us started the fire in the first place?” I said.

  “I was doing the Union’s work.”

  “And I’m here to do mine,” I said, picking up one of the gas cans and flinging it into the flames. The fire surged as diesel spilled out, and Saarien shrank back from the heat, his smile fading. “You’ll burn for this!”

  “I think you’ll go first,” I called over the roar of the fire. “How much?”

  “What?” he yelled, his arms hanging slack.

  I took the fire extinguisher from Jilly and aimed it at the fire. “How much is it worth to you to get out of here alive and uncooked?”

  He laughed. “You think my faith is that weak? You think I’m going to cave to your worldly bargaining?”

  “Not yet,” I said, fiddling with the pin on the extinguish
er’s handle. “A few more minutes, though, I think you’ll warm to the idea.”

  It may have been the firelight, but his face turned a deep red as he yelled, “You bitch! You blackhearted bitch, I will call down every one of my sisters and brothers and–!”

  The flames bloomed as they caught the edge of Wash’s desk, and Saarien yelled, “Fifty thousand yuan!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “that sounded like a number, but I couldn’t hear it.”

  “Fifty thousand–!”

  “Yeah, I can’t hear numbers that low.”

  Saarien gritted his teeth. “A hundred thousand!”

  I shook my head and headed toward the door. An overhead lamp popped, and a shower of sparks flew towards Saarien. He batted at the flames, only to have the desk catch fire, too.

  “A million!” he yelled, and I stopped.

  “I think you can do better,” I said.

  “Three million yuan! It’s all I’ve got!”

  “I don’t want your money,” I said.

  “Then take Sou’s Reach!” he said, tears streaming down his face.

  “I don’t want your Ward,” I said.

  “The refinery! The cane! Take it all!”

  “I don’t want any of that.”

  “Then, what – Jesus, what?” Saarien sobbed.

  “What are you doing with all that molasses?”

  “Jesus, Padma, put out the fire!”

  I shook my head. “Why are you sending all that molasses up the cable?”

  “They’re samples!” cried Saarien. “There’s enough to run every planet in Occupied Space for a few months, so the Big Three would know I was serious.”

  “Why would they give a shit about that when the black stripe is just here?” I said.

  “Because it’s not!” cried Saarien. “It’s going up the cable with everything else from Santee.”

  “You’ve been contaminating your cargo?”

  “Yes!” he said. “We thought we could transfer spores through rum, but the distillation killed it. Just left the stench.”

  “So the skunked rum can’t affect any crops?”

  “No,” cried Saarien.

  “Then what about the body in the freezer? And the bodies at the sewage plant?”

  “You already know that was me!” yelled Saarien.