by eden Hudson
I cackled. “Medical care that can’t even cure a fucking plague.”
“But it does prevent easily treatable illnesses and injuries from becoming deaths. In the Upper Swamps alone, the infant and childhood mortality rate has—”
“Beausoleil!” a dusky voice shouted over the crackle of welders and scream of grinders. A woman in a grease-stained mechanic’s jumpsuit and a welding helmet waved at Nickie-boy from across the hangar. “Thought that was you. I sure hate to see an able-bodied mechanic sitting around with his thumb up his butt while there’s work he could be doing. Get over here and give me a hand with this HSC, would you?”
Nick looked at Iceni. “Will you message me when Carina’s got the carrier release and we’re ready to go?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” Nick lumbered toward the mountainous HSC the mechanic with the sexy voice had disappeared into.
“Me, too!” I shoved my bags closer to Iceni for safekeeping and followed Nick.
He made a fist, the tines on his bracelet popping new holes in his wrist meat, but he didn’t stop walking or protest. Not that I would’ve changed my mind if he had. It was just contrary to what I had pegged as his character. Maybe he had finally resigned himself to my presence.
Nickie-boy’s boots clomped up the steel grating into the Hyperarmored Swampland Carrier. My sneakers whispered up behind them like shadows.
A string of work lights had been hung from the ceiling, and a rolling tool cabinet sat with its door open in the center of the engine compartment.
Nick inhaled deeply through his nose, then called, “When was the last time you flushed out the synth chambers?”
“Flushed and refilled last week,” Hot Mechanic’s voice called back from somewhere a few miles to our right. “Work order tablet’s hanging by the door if you remember how to read one.”
“I smell burnt synth.” Nick started digging in the cargo pockets of his cammies. “If it’s not the chambers, then one of your lines got clogged when you flushed them.” He pulled out a penlight and shined it around. “You’ve probably got a chunk of the old stuff stuck in there somewhere.”
“I’ll run a full sysanalysis after you replace this tensioner assembly.” She came out from behind a bulkhead, packing a pneumatic wrench the size of a whale boner, which she foisted off on Nick. “This HSC’s pre-915, so you’ll be fighting air bolts. Enjoy.”
“I’m shipping out with my call team as soon as the release comes through,” Nick said, shifting his grip on the p-wrench.
“Then you’ve got plenty of time.” Hot Mechanic pulled out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat from her face and neck, then stuck it back in her pocket. “If you need somebody to hold your hand, I’ll be welding retreads.”
“I’ll come get you when I need my wrench spot-welded to the table,” Nickie said.
Hot Mechanic made a rude noise, but she was smiling as she left. More Guild inside jokes.
Nick hefted the p-wrench onto one of his huge shoulders, then without glancing in my direction, ducked behind a bulkhead and disappeared into the works.
I checked the visibility in there. Darker than the inside of an angler fish’s anus. I went back to the rolling tool cabinet, grabbed a hand lantern, then followed Nick.
I caught up with him just as he realized that all of the illumination from the work lights in the center of the engine compartment was blocked by the engine itself. He turned around to go back.
Before he could tell me to get out of the way, I clicked on the hand lantern and held it up. “Looking for one of these bad boys?”
“Yeah.”
I tossed it to him.
He caught it, frowning. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He stalked deeper into the belly of the beast. I grinned at the back of his head. Reluctant gratitude is the doorway to bromance.
“I’ve never been inside one of these things,” I said. “Why don’t they retrofit PlyoLuminEssence strips down this walkway? It’s probably a bitch packing around hand lanterns when you’re trying to do repairs.”
“Takes time to push improvements through the red tape,” he said.
“And in the meantime, everybody wants you to fix their broken shit first,” I said.
He grunted.
We came to the tensioner assembly. The belt—about as wide as I was and twice as thick—had to be loosened so it wouldn’t slingshot the rod and turn us into meat pancakes. Nick set down the p-wrench and looked for a good spot to put the lantern.
“Here,” I said. “I’ll point while you deal with this.”
For most of the next hour, I held the light while Nickie dismantled the assembly. A less patient, less skilled manipulator would’ve spent the whole time trying to draw their target into a conversation. Nickie-boy, however, was the type who preferred to work in silence, so I let him. The only things we said to each other went along the lines of, “Shine that over here.” After a while, it got to the point where he trusted me enough to ask me to grab him tools out of the cabinet.
Finally, Nickie’s wristpiece beeped. He checked the notification and said that we were ready to go. Nick had finished with the tensioner, so I helped him retighten the belt. We put the p-wrench and the other tools we’d dragged out away, then found grease rags to wipe our hands clean.
“I’m going to let Velasco know how far we got,” he said, hanging his rag on the tool cabinet.
I scrubbed at a greasy smear on my forearm. “All right. I’m going to go find a bathroom before we start this little expedition and your future wife tells me no potty breaks.”
Nick didn’t say anything, but I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked away. Poor sap didn’t know what to make of me. I grinned at the whole wide world.
***
Carina was waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom.
“You’re going to want to find a different toilet,” I said. “I basically destroyed that one.”
“Nick said you helped him work on one of the engines.”
“And I didn’t even charge him. Call me Father Charity.” My hands were still damp from the sink, so I wiped my thumb down her nose.
She slapped my hand away. “I know what you’re doing, Van Zandt.”
“What’s the matter, Bloodslinger? Jealous? I get that. I’m a little territorial myself.”
“You know I wasn’t bluffing in Soam when you called him a retard,” she said. “I would’ve killed us both if you hadn’t apologized. You don’t want to find out what I’ll do if you actually hurt him.”
“Threats? After everything that we’ve been through?” I shook my head as if I were disappointed. “Look, you love this guy. I want to love him, too. I want to see what it is you see in him.” I laid my hand over my heart and put on my most earnest face, brow furrowed and everything. “If Nick’s important to you, Carina, he’s important to me.”
She snatched my hand away from my chest and dug her fingernails in. “Don’t you dare fuck with him.”
I grinned. “That’s a lot of intensity coming from somebody who’s only reflecting me.”
“He doesn’t have anything to do with us—”
“Oh, so we’re an us now?”
Carina’s lips twisted into a snarl. She took a breath to say something that already had my scalp and the back of my neck tingling, but that damn Kuchera stick bug picked that second to come around the corner of the closest HSC. His eyes jumped from Carina’s hand to her snarl to my bright smile.
“Oh, uh…” He nodded at the bathroom behind me. “I was just…”
“Loud and clear,” I said, shooting him a finger gun with my free hand. “One last low-five before we move out and privacy becomes scarce. I warmed the seat up for you.”
Kuchera stared wide-eyed at Carina. “I—I wasn’t—I just have to—”
“Don’t worry, kid, the Bloodslinger gets it. She was eleven once, too.”
He shook his head hard. “I’m not—”
“S
orry. Twelve,” I said. “You have a blast, now. Paint the town white. Come on, Carina, let’s give the kid and his fist some privacy.”
Once we were out of the kid’s earshot, Carina realized she was still digging her fingernails into my flesh and retracted them.
I rubbed the little half-moon indentations. “I wonder what kind of wild tales your fiancé’s going to hear about you clawing me. If I get the chance to embellish the story, I’m going to move your grip a little lower.”
“This isn’t over,” Carina said.
“It’s you and me, sister,” I said. “This’ll never be over.”
Up ahead, Jha, Nick, and the candy knight were loading bags into the back of an amphibious personnel carrier. When she saw me, Iceni grinned and gave me a little sugar-sprinkle wave of her fingers.
Carina sighed. “Is there any way I can convince you not to have sex with my lead investigator? Maybe appeal to your sense of professionalism?”
“It’s not my sense of professionalism you’re going to have to convince,” I said.
SEVEN
The interior of the amphibious personnel carrier was almost as luxurious as the Guild’s airbus had been. The seating consisted of a criminally narrow bench down each sidewall. Over each bench and along the top of the doors at the back, a squinting arrowslit let a sliver of slightly brighter pitch black in. While we’d still been in the hangar, the bright overhead lights had forced enough illumination through the slit to see Nick and Carina on the bench across from Iceni and me. Now that we were out cruising across the moonless landscape, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. It was a lot like the Hotel at night, except no one was trying to shank me or eat my flesh. At least it smelled better than the Hotel—like an outboard motor left running in a sweat lodge full of hobos.
That Kuchera kid was officially our driver for this mission—I assume because he didn’t have the skill set to be considered anything else official—and he was finding every single bump, hole, and knob in the landscape. Standing up was out of the question. Most of my time was spent trying to keep my ass on the bench and wondering if the candy knight would slip me an exploratory crotch grope. Just in case, I let my knee brush against hers now and then as a point of reference.
After a while, Jha’s voice said, “Crossing into no man’s land,” from up front. Jha was the spotter, riding in front with the stick bug.
In the darkness around me, armor plating shifted and clinked. Nickie-boy groaned as he stretched. To my right, Iceni popped her knuckles one at a time.
I didn’t hear Carina. Just before we left the hangar, she had taken the seat next to Nick, but she was being too quiet for me to discern anything she might be doing. The image of a sleek and silent black onca slipping in and out of the shadows surfaced in my mind.
I shifted from one side of my butt to the other and wished I could see anything in this darkness.
“We probably won’t run into anyone out here,” Iceni said beside me. “The fishing people are the closest tribe, but they don’t like the drained swampland. They think it’s cursed.”
Up front, Jha made a disagreeing sound in his throat. “Popular misunderstanding. When they say they don’t like the feel of it—aakani ong vi—they’re referring to their legs and feet. They mean the physical aakani, the literal feel of it. What used to be swamp is too dry for walking through now, so they don’t like to walk through it anymore.”
“Either way, we’re not likely to engage anyone in no man’s land,” Iceni said, and this time I could tell by the direction of her voice that she was talking to me.
As if I needed reassurances.
“I’m not worried about it,” I said. “I’m inside a tank, surrounded by heavily armed and armored knights who should have superior firepower. If you guys can’t protect me from a few dozen pagans, then they deserve to take over Emden.”
And if anything bad was going to happen, my flame kigao would let me know beforehand.
We rolled on like that for a while. In spite of the candy knight’s assurances that we were probably safe in no man’s land, the small sounds of movement inside of the APC had picked up. Knights cleared their throats or scratched or shifted around. Every now and then I heard metal tink against metal or the whisper of skin or cloth. The knights were staying alert, waiting for contact, however unlikely it might’ve been.
“Fishing people,” Jha said. “Two full, two initiates. Subsistence weapons only.”
“Any craft markers?” Carina asked.
“None.”
I got up and stepped all over several pairs of boots on my way to the front of the vehicle.
“What are you doing?” Carina asked off to my left.
“I’ve never seen fishing people before,” I said. “Not in real life. I need to scout potential future markets.”
“This isn’t a field trip, Van Zandt. Sit back down.”
“We’re not even in any danger right now.” I found the metal partition, opened it, took the two stairs up, then had to hunch down between our official driver and Sir Jha, the spotter, so I could see the exterior viewscreen. “Where are they?”
Jha pointed a leathery hand at a group of slightly brighter green shapes far to the left of the dark green phosphor viewscreen. Four males, two older, two younger, naked, smeared head to toe in either shit, mud, or paint, with stringy hair that showed up almost white on the screen. Each one carried a flimsy fishing spear. The fattest one had a knife strapped to his ankle.
“That’s an old-school combat knife, isn’t it?” I pointed. “The grip’s almost rotted off the handle.”
“They find them digging in the mud,” Jha said. “We used to lose five or six knights a day to drowning and bog traps. Most of those bodies were never recovered. Swamp just swallowed them up. You’ll find a few of the more primitive tribes around here wearing rusted armor and carrying knives, but they’re harmless. A few of them have items passed down from their grandfolk, who took them as trophies back before we came to peace, but that’s not as common.”
I watched the little group of fishing people watch the bulky amphibious vehicle full of Guild knights pass. “You said they weren’t using craft. How can you tell?”
“Fishing people’s clerics dip themselves in mud from a hot spot sacred to their people. They won’t tell outsiders where that hot spot is, but we do know that, once it’s dry, the mud itself doesn’t reflect any light.” He tapped the screen with one stubby finger. “It would show up as an absolute black on here.”
“Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.” There were bound to be high-tier hobbyist collectors out there who would gush money to get their paws on a jar of sacred fishing people mud once they heard just how impossible it was for outsiders to possess. I filed that info away for the future. Maybe I could even use it as an enticement to get a witch to help me if I had to get into anything dark to cure the PCM.
I considered telling Jha that he was turning out to be more of a fount of useful information than elderly gasbag, but then thought better of it. An old schooler like him would respond better to an old-school gesture. I clapped him on the shoulder.
Then I climbed back down the two steps and walked across the boots of my fellow passengers, who still weren’t getting their feet out of the way.
“Satisfy your curiosity?” Carina sniped.
She couldn’t see me grin in the dark, but I knew she could hear it in my voice. “You of all people should know that I’m never satisfied.”
***
The slate skies of early morning had just started to show through the window slits when Jha called back, “Crossing into the active zone.”
The bulky armored shadows around me made quick checks of the weapons they were holding, regardless of whether or not they had checked them during the night. Carina, Nick, and Iceni all took turns getting up to keep watch out the window slits while they held onto handles welded to the ceiling.
When it was Iceni’s turn, I stood up with her. That groping had never materialized, but that
didn’t mean I was going to throw the tardigrade out with the dishwater.
“I’m surprised you’re not carrying a flashing bright pink flail,” I said, nodding to her rifle.
She grinned, her dimples just barely visible in the low light because I knew where they should be. “The only reason I don’t is because the gangsters in Taern got to them first. If not for all that negative publicity, you bet your tight tush I’d be carrying one of those bad boys.”
“Somebody’s been paying attention to my best side.”
Iceni elbowed me. “You joker! You know you’re just as handsome from the front as you are from the back.”
“Just because I know something doesn’t mean that anybody else has noticed it yet. But you’re a perceptive one. I like that.”
I stole a glance at Carina when I said that.
Carina rolled her eyes.
I twitched my eyebrows up just barely, but she saw it. Watch this.
Beside me, Iceni said, “I don’t know if perception’s got anything to do with it. I’ve met plenty of criminals and civilians who couldn’t spot a uniformed Enforcer in a crowd, and they don’t seem to have any trouble catcalling when they see something they like.”
“Yeah, but you’re lead investigator on this mission and an investigator with the TE. They don’t give those jobs to just any siltbrain off the street.”
“Nope,” she said. “They give them to the siltbrains dumb enough to apply.”
I laughed my That’s So Clever laugh. She laughed with me, her dimples cutting deeper into her cheeks.
“It’s too bad we’re out here in the middle of nowhere and you’re working,” I said.