And they weren’t far wrong. Regular intelligence agencies, like the first eight sections of Sol Federation Intelligence, had rules to live by. They had official standards, clearly defined areas of operation. They were accountable to the law, in theory. They might bend it sometimes; they might break it frequently. It all depended on their mission, and on how attached their agents were to doing things by the book.
Section 9 had no book. We weren’t accountable to anyone, not in any meaningful way. The people who would want us to be accountable to someone didn’t know we existed and would never be allowed to find out. We were effectively outlaws but acting in the security interests of the Sol Federation. So, when the local syndicate members assumed we were criminals, they were half-right.
Of course, there was one big difference between us and criminals. Criminals can go to prison. Even in a gangster’s playground like East Hellas, it happens occasionally. We don’t go to prison. Just before I joined up, I killed an officer of the Arbiter Force and injured another. Not only was I free, there wasn’t even a warrant out for me. Section 9 had quashed it all. The only way that would ever change is if our existence got exposed, and the politicians decided to cover their own asses by washing their hands of us for good. Even then, they wouldn’t want us naming names in resentment. Much easier to kill us all.
Then there were places like East Hellas that didn’t acknowledge the authority of the Sol Federation in the first place. We could go to prison in a place like this, but only if they caught us. Whatever the gangsters on the rooftops were planning, I was pretty sure handing us over to StateSec wasn’t what they had in mind.
We went single file, squeezing our way between the buildings. Every now and then it was worse than that, when an old piece of furniture or a broken-down machine of some kind blocked our way. We’d have to suck in our stomachs as we wiggled past, a perfect spot for an ambush if there ever was one. Sasha barely made it through some of those tight spots, and never once without complaining.
“I am a prominent researcher. An important witness. How is it even possible that I am being treated like this?” Sasha’s belly was sucked in as far as it would go, but he was still having trouble getting past the rusted old motor blocking the alley.
“Because we haven’t quite decided to execute you yet.” Jones pushed him through, and Sasha cried out in irritation.
“My shirt! You insipid buffoon, you’ve ripped my shirt!”
“Move it, or you’ll lose more than a few buttons.”
Jones turned to me. “All informants are a pain, but this one rates particularly high. If anything happens to me, shoot him in the head before you run off.” Sasha turned back and glared at me, which hardly seemed fair. I wasn’t the one who said it. He had been rather fond of that shirt though, and it did seem like a shame.
We came to another small open area where the path split. At the left fork, a man with his face covered by a black scarf stood holding a rifle. There were others behind him, and the shadowy figures on the buildings to the left were openly aiming at us.
At the right fork, there was nobody blocking our path. There were still people on the rooftops, but they weren’t actually aiming their guns at us.
The message was clear. They didn’t want us to go left and were willing to go as hard as necessary to prevent that from happening. They would let us go right, either to funnel us into an ambush or to direct us back to one of the main streets.
Veraldi went right without a word. There wasn’t much choice.
After the first time, it kept on happening. We’d be left alone if there was no choice about what direction to take, although we were shadowed the entire way. If there was a choice, armed gang members would block one of the two choices and allow the other one, directing us along a single route. At one intersection with four alleys, they blocked three of them and let us use the remaining option.
It was a strange journey, like a conversation without any words. It was a little like having a local guide directing the lost traveler back to the main drag. They didn’t seem to want to kill us, just to control our journey through their territory. But there were hints of tension. At one point, they blocked us from proceeding by either alley and just left us where we were, while seemingly debating something with each other in whispered voices.
Jones leaned in toward Veraldi. “Should we be getting ready to shoot our way out of here?”
Veraldi held up a hand. “Don’t do anything yet. If they had decided to kill us, they would have opened fire by now.”
For maybe thirty more seconds—it was a long thirty seconds, with my hand itching for my concealed gun the whole time—they kept debating our fate, before one gangster finally stepped aside and waved us forward. I felt their eyes on my back as I took those last few steps, knowing that they must have been talking about whether to make an end of us. Veraldi kept walking, and the rest of us followed him. His voice was quiet, but the tone was deadly serious. “Whatever you do, don’t touch your weapons.”
We passed through that last alley, which felt darker and narrower than any of the others. At the end of it, the lights of a broad street gleamed cheerfully ahead of us. They had escorted us through, and now they were letting us leave the maze.
As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, I heard a voice behind me. It was the only time in that entire journey I heard one of them speak. In a mocking voice, one of the gangsters called out to us.
“Y'all come back now, you hear?”
8
It was early morning, and the streets were just starting to come alive. The section walls would cast deep shadow into all but the highest levels of the city until midday, but the pink glow of Martian dawn was visible through the ice overhead. Across the street from us, a restaurant serving the local breakfast specialty was turning on its lights. The smoke from the train crash in Med Lab had reached Fast Bend, creating an unnatural early morning fog.
“Be careful from here on out. We’ve entered Geneicide territory.” Veraldi was glancing up and down the street, discreetly scanning for potential threats.
I blinked in confusion at him. “What?”
He pointed to a graffiti tag on the wall across from us. It showed a stylized GC with a crude drawing of crossed thighbones.
I pointed back to the way we had just come. “So, whose territory was that?”
“You should be reading the briefing supplementaries before entering the field. Or did you not read the graffiti?” He looked a little bit irritated that I hadn’t already done so.
Jones spoke up. “Those guys were from the Hive. This section’s split between the two of them. They aren’t at war yet, but it’s tense.”
“So, why do we need to be more careful now than we were before? I mean, they shadowed us the whole way.”
“Right.” Veraldi nodded. “They only shadowed us because the Hive’s main concern is to protect their territory. Geneicide’s different; they have a reputation.”
“I take it we’re not talking about a good reputation.”
“Depends.” Jones shrugged. “They’re supposed to be good at killing people.”
“They have no reason to want to kill us,” Veraldi added. “We’re on the street now, not wandering around in the back alleys where we might see something we’re not supposed to. Don’t do anything to give them a reason and we should be fine.”
If there was ever a less encouraging pep talk, I’m glad I wasn’t there for it.
Veraldi started walking, so I followed.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The station. You don’t think I’m trying to walk to Great Wall, do you?”
Having survived a train derailing, he was ready to hop onto another train less than an hour later. I formed a reply dripping with sarcasm, but Ivanovich asked the next question.
“When do we eat?”
Veraldi stopped and looked at Sasha like he thought the man must be intentionally messing with him. “This isn’t a guided tour.”
“
I need energy. I need food.” Sasha’s body language had a stubborn intensity that suggested he might be about to make a problem for us.
Veraldi gave a hard stare before answering. “Okay, then. Let’s get some breakfast.”
We crossed the street and went in through the door of the restaurant. Back on Venus, Gabriel Anderson and I had come across a breakfast buffet in which the owner had been murdered. Like a lot of things in Tower 7, it was a somewhat over-the-top interpretation of its Earth counterpart. The colonies on Mars are much older, and Hellas is the oldest among them. Because of that long history, the city has several distinct culinary traditions of its own.
One of those is red porridge, a gruel colored and flavored with ground red peppers and cinnamon. It’s warm and nourishing, but spicy enough to burn the back of your throat. A few years back, there was a bit of a fad for red porridge breakfast places back on Earth. If I still had any friends there, I imagined they’d be envious. I was about to enjoy the authentic red porridge experience. Unfortunately for me, I hated red porridge.
The owner was listening to the news, but I couldn’t hear it clearly. They were talking about the train disaster, and something about potential suspects.
“This stuff is glorious,” Sasha rumbled, taking his bowl from the counter and walking to a table with it. At the table next to him, a young man with a shaved head and mismatched eyes was savoring a bowl of his own. I took my breakfast, knowing I would need the energy, and sat down across from our defector.
“How does it taste?” asked Sasha eagerly.
“Like wet sand drenched in spice.”
The scientist frowned at me and went back to enjoying his own meal.
“I don’t know.” Jones shrugged and put a heaping spoonful in his mouth. “At least it sticks to your bones. Oh wow, yeah that’s hot.”
“Don’t take all morning.” Vincenzo had already eaten his and was scraping up the last little bits from the sides of the bowl. “We need to get moving.”
“You people have no appreciation for Martian cuisine.” Sasha finished his bowl and stood up as if to get another one.
Veraldi put a hand on his arm to stop him. “We need to go now.”
I forced another few bites of the red porridge down my throat, drank some water to cool myself down, and pushed my bowl away. I was getting tired and would have liked a break, but Veraldi was right. We all stood up and were back on the street within five minutes of having stopped. Once we had crossed the street, I saw the young man with the mismatched eyes slip out of the diner and start walking in the same direction.
“We can’t take the line we were on,” Veraldi mused. “It will be closed all day. We’ll have to take the 67-V and then the 452-H.”
“No way.” Jones caught up to him, and they began a vigorous debate about the best way to get to Great Wall. “If we take the 325-H to the 89-V, then—”
“Nobody ask me,” Sasha grumbled. “I’m only the local.”
They took his advice. Behind us, the guy from the diner was joined by another man. I couldn’t afford to turn full around, but from the brief glimpse I had I thought they both might have shaved heads.
I sent Veraldi a dataspike message.
Behind us.
He was still debating the route with Jones, but he answered me anyway.
Yeah. Three more just joined them. Take Jones and peel off with the genius.
“If you don’t want to listen to me, I’ll go my own way!” Jones snapped at Veraldi and turned angrily toward me. “Come on, guys. This prick doesn’t want to listen!”
That’s when I realized the argument about how to get to Great Wall was fake from the beginning. They’d spotted the tail immediately and started setting up the split-off. Sasha didn’t get it, though. He just stood there with his mouth open.
“Come on.” I put my hand on his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Is this professional, to behave this way?” The researcher stopped in his tracks. “Does it really matter so much which way we go?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. Come on.”
He finally listened, allowing himself to be dragged along. The point of the exercise was to confirm the tail. If they were really following us, they’d have to either split up or decide who they wanted to follow most. Either way, it would tell us something. Sasha, Jones, and I turned right at an intersection, heading for the train station Jones had vocally preferred.
Two stayed with Veraldi, three went with us. Unquestionably a tail then, and they wanted all of us.
Jones sent me a message. Stay ready.
As impressed as I had been with the way they’d handled the tail, I wasn’t exactly helpless when it came to this sort of situation. As we continued walking, I looked for any place where I could force the men following us to split their numbers again. At first there was nothing. The streets were broad in this neighborhood, and there weren’t too many people out and about yet. The tail was gaining on us, and I began to suspect that Jones was right. The goal wasn’t just to see where we were going, or to make sure we didn’t cause any trouble. These guys were stalking us, and they would move in for the kill as soon as they were ready. In fact, they could just as easily be driving us toward someone else waiting in ambush up ahead of us.
Then I spotted my opportunity—a farmer’s market where people with their own greenhouses could sell their produce. Sellers were already out, setting up their tables with whatever they had. I split off to the right, while sending a message to Jones.
Don’t follow. I’ll take this one.
He did what I asked him to do, but he didn’t seem too happy about it.
You left me two of them, dick.
One man stayed on me and the other two stuck to Jones and Ivanovich. They were walking through the center of the farmer’s market and I was off to one side. Between the tables and the buildings there was a little stretch of sidewalk hidden from view behind the booths. I hurried down that way, knowing that there would be a blind spot where my tail couldn’t see what was up ahead of him.
I turned around, and the seller noticed me. “Don’t make any trouble, man. I’m just trying to make a living,” he said.
“Get out,” I told him. “Come back in five minutes.”
He scowled at me but scurried out of the way before the trouble started. I waited in place, half-concealed behind the booth. A few seconds later, I heard hurried footsteps coming close and was relieved. My tail had lost sight of me and was trying to catch up as quickly as he could, oblivious that I’d made him.
When he came into view, I could see it was the guy with the mismatched eyes. They went wide when he saw me, but it was too late for him to stop what was coming. I grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face into the market stall counter. He lost his balance and fell to the ground on his back. I straddled his chest and started hitting him with short punches to the jaw. The goal was to keep him from getting up again without having to kill him, since I didn’t know for sure that he meant to kill me.
The guy turned out to be a lot tougher than I would have liked him to be. Despite being surprised, he was able to come up from under my attack and grab my ankles. I went over hard, and the next thing I knew he was sitting right on top of me. It would have been a simple matter to pound my head into the pavement until my brains came out my ears, but that wasn’t what he tried. He had a weapon of some kind, and he paused long enough for me to realize he was trying to use it.
I twisted under him and grabbed at whatever it was to hold it away from him. He kept lifting his weight up, then slamming it down as hard as he could. It was hurting my ribs, but it was also a huge error on his part. People without any formal training tend to make tactical mistakes like that. When he went up again, I bucked and rolled him off me. He fell sideways on the ground, and I pulled his weapon hand into an armbar.
Still fighting for the weapon, he couldn’t do anything to prevent it. I arched my back against the joint and felt his arm break. He gave a shr
iek and stopped struggling against me, curling into himself in pain. I rolled up behind him, wrapped my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist, and pressed with all the strength I had. Despite his broken arm, he still thrashed violently from side to side. He was a surprisingly tough guy, but none of that matters when your brain isn’t getting any blood. He slumped in my arms, unconscious, and I stumbled to my feet at last.
I checked the weapon he had slung around his neck, and it turned out to be a semi-auto shotgun with a suppressor mounted to it. Not exactly the sort of thing to just carry around, even as a gang member. Either someone had handed him the weapon when they got the order to tail us, or he’d been looking for us all along.
He must have spotted us in the diner and called in help from his buddies. But how did this guy know who or what to look for? I rifled through his pockets but didn’t find anything that could answer that question. I pulled the strap off from around his neck and took the shotgun for myself, figuring it might help me get out of this section alive at least. Then I got to my feet and went to look for Andrew and Ivanovich.
I expected them to be in the immediate area. According to my schematics, they had already gone much further ahead. So far ahead that I couldn’t even see them. No Andrew Jones, no Sasha Ivanovich, no shaven-headed gunmen. Just a bunch of farmers setting up their market stalls.
I stood there for a few seconds with my mouth hanging open as a wave of exhaustion passed through me. I’d been awake for too many hours, and most that had been spent in the thick of it. I shook my head and snapped out of it. They had gone ahead, but I could catch up if I ran a few blocks. Jogging away from the farmer’s market, I started a message to ask Jones his status. Before I could finish subvocalizing the sentence, I heard a cluster of shots.
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 55