B-spine

by Cam Winstanley

  “I said can you smell smoke?” she bellows. He sniffs the air and nods, then grabs his basket and jostles past the bar staff to try the elevator at the far end. Half way along, he taps one of the cocktail crew and presses his mouth to Taki’s ear.

  “Kenny made it back, bro,” he shouts.

  “I saw him,” nods Taki. “He looked pissed. You tell him about the cooks not paying?”

  “They’ll pay, they’re just messing,” Simon yells. “Also, me and Sheryl smell smoke. Like, burning plastic. You want to get Security to look into that?”

  Taki gives the thumbs-up and Simon shuffles further down the bar and that’s when he hears a bang loud enough to hurt his ears even over the speaker system and when he feels the stab of metal fragments driving into his shoulders. He flinches and turns towards the noise and a severed hand… Sheryl’s severed hand… gives him an open-palmed smack in the mouth as it jets blood from its wrist.

  Time wavers. Simon staggers as the glass tray drops and the air fills with metal as right in front of him, not five feet away, his buddy Taki spirals to the floor. Taki’s got both hands to his own neck in a futile effort to pin the edges of his slashed throat together. Simon sees a desperate panic on Taki’s face as the burst elevator cowling sprays metal across the club in an ever-expanding bubble.

  Directly overhead Simon, Arclights’ security system documents the devastation. It looks for a source of fire, but its infrared search sees only liquid body heat spraying over the walls. It looks for a gun battle, probing the air with millimetric radar and spotting only shards of shattered metal. It suppresses the music with a wave-form cancellation algorithm and records only screams and gurgles.

  Below the minicams, Simon kneels on the drink-sticky bar floor, eye-to-eye with Taki as his life drains out through his neck. Simon stares bug-eyed into the blurring eye of the storm. Mostly the movement’s too fast to register, just frantic, tearing, murderous motion savaging anyone within reach. But for a single moment, the thing on the bar stops dead and looks right at him. It’s only for a second but Simon stares at a familiar face.

  It’s Kenny Sossamon. Clothes torn and bloody, hair smoldering from the flames already chasing up the shattered service elevator from the burning kitchen. Kenny’s crouched on the bar but not the way anyone would choose to crouch. He’s bent and tensed and coiled and crunched. His head cranked over more than it should be, his dark eyes staring blankly. There’s a bloody kitchen knife in one hand, a dripping shard of metal elevator casing in the other.

  That’s all Simon sees, because Kenny dissolves into a blur of motion again that bats Simon aside and into unconsciousness as it slams through the fire escape and by that time, someone’s finally worked out that everything’s gone badly wrong. DJ Mandy kills the music and, for the moment before the screaming overwhelms everything, the silence is even more deafening.

  Friday 14 March

  12:35 am

  BISHOP FIRES AT the armored figure carrying the Fed and drops him with a single well-aimed headshot. He works the bolt as the RESC lying next to him rattles through a hundred rounds of link from her SAW without easing off the trigger once. He fires at the Fed as she’s slumped over the armored body of the mercwarrior but another one staggering against the weight of incoming fire from the SAW takes the hit on their impenetrable back armor. Bishop works the bolt and fires as the RESC churns through ammunition, the SAW’s barrel glowing dull red, clouds of fried lubricant boiling off the receiver. He works the bolt and fires as Crash The Pad lurch through fluttering flakes of delaminated armor to manhandle casualties into the APC. He works the bolt and fires as the SAW jams on a misfeed and the armored vehicle revs up its turbine and heads off, swatting a utivan in its rush for the main road.

  When his rifle clicks empty, he stands and paces furiously across a forecourt strewn with firefight trash and gray-faced wounded. He passes the flattened utivan that drenched him, mincemeat and bone fragments and a sludgy pool of spilled foodfuel drawing flies already. He walks past company vehicles holed by the shocking over-penetration of mercwar ordnance. Matted clothing makes his gait stiff, each step tacky through sodden socks. He finds a comms controller urgently calling in Medevac airships. “Hang up,” says Bishop in a tone that defies argument. “Get me Citadel.”

  Martha Bhaskar takes a call from a dripping meat puppet that she only recognizes as Bishop when he starts to talk.

  “Crash The Pad just trashed my op,” he tells her flatly. “You can explain why our mercenaries are fighting against us when I get back to Citadel but for now, I need a MercNet search. Who can get troops into Toronto in the next four hours?”

  She stares, frozen. “Sir… are you hurt?”

  He wipes stiffening viscera off his face and drags fingers through hair slick with coagulating matter. “I’m fine Martha,” he says through gritted teeth. “But about that MercNet search…?”

  It takes her seconds to consult her Slate. “Bangzai, Recon Offensive Consultancy and Business Decision Alternatives can get here in that time. Three others crews can Amtrak in within six.”

  He nods. “Book them.”

  “Which one?”

  “All of them.”

  She blinks rapidly.

  “Give our guys maximum shot advantage then send them against Crash The Pad’s base.” He grins, his teeth starkly white against his bloody face. “Then get Citadel RESC and to issue a bounty on Crash The Pad helmets.”

  “A bounty?”

  “To RESC, PD, gangs, freelancers… anyone,” he says. “Once Crash The Pad are flushed out, I want them hunted down. I want all the District exits staked out, the tollroads, the Tramtrax, the railhead. Let it be known that to pay out the bounty, I want to see heads in every helmet.”

  Martha Bhaskar notes it all down, as efficient as ever, but keeps glancing back to the screen. “Sir,” she says, eventually, “is this course of action…” She pauses for a long time. “Is it necessary?”

  “I’ve got people running down my face, Martha. I’d say getting even was pretty fucking necessary.”

  “Can I speak freely?”

  “Do you ever do anything but?”

  “My concern is that you’re getting even when you should be chasing the Fed,” she says. “By chasing Crash The Pad, I think you’re neglecting the Bostov takeover.”

  “Takeover…?” he shakes his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Martha, there is no takeover.” She looks confused. “Didn’t you know that?”

  She struggles for something to say. “We’re a smokescreen,” he tells her, “you, me, Bostov, all of it. The Board doesn’t care what we do, just so long as we distract everyone until their precious Reboot launch. Hadn’t you worked that out by now?”

  She’s staring open-mouthed at him as he cuts the feed, her expression the only answer he needs.

  Wednesday 19 March

  11:19 am

  SHE MARVELS AT the livedrive’s design perfection. It’s a load-carrying model, quadruped traction with stabilization that copes easily with the rugged terrain they’ve been traversing all morning. The self-regulating pace control matches energy output with foodfuel and hydration intake, yet this can be instantly over-ridden in short bursts by a user-operated speed/ direction cable control. It’s got big, soulful eyes and is called Scoot. Kirsty’s never seen a real horse before.

  “You ready to go again, honey?” She’s never seen an old guy like Earl Shrieb before either. He rides up alongside as they crest the rise, wrinkled skin the color of caramel against his checked shirt. Back in the District, people Earl’s age sit in unventilated rooms complaining about power rationing and the cold and how the old USA used to be a Superpower. Out here, Earl owns thousands of acres of ranch and his eyes have an unrestrained eagerness.

  He behaves like all the movie cowboys Kirsty’s ever seen – calm and confident and patient. Since she woke up in a strange room lit by a hissing kerosene lamp two days ago, he’s been her adopted father. He was the one who washed crusted blood out of h
er ears and nose. He was the one who held her hand during the headaches and tinnitus then listened to her plans with the filter fish while all the mercenaries ignored her. He was the one who sat her down and explained that even though she can’t remember doing it, she’d shot and killed a man back in that smoke-filled industrial unit.

  “I said, you ready to go again?” Her mind’s been drifting ever since the grenade exploded and as she snaps back, he’s leaning towards her and waving. She jerks Scoot’s reins tight and he stops hard, snorting and stamping a hoof in disgust. Kirsty’s not developed a gentle touch yet. She’s not used to taking her livedrive’s mood into account either.

  “Sure,” she says. “Where to now? Back to the ranch?”

  “Well we could,” he says, stroking his gray mustache. “But I was thinking we’d stay out until evening.”

  “To let the soldiers talk about me? Is that what they asked you to do?”

  “I’m just showing you the sights,” he says, sweeping a gloved hand along a hazy, distant horizon. “Warms a cowboy’s heart to show a town girl the country she’s been missing.”

  “You’re ducking the issue, Earl,” she says. “They lost everything and had to run here because of me. They hate me, don’t they?”

  “Sure, they took a beating, Kirsty but that’s the nature of their business. They just need time to work things out.”

  “Ahh…” she nods. “So you are keeping me away.”

  “Okay, yes. Me and Monty, we’re friends since way back. He wants time alone with his crew.”

  “They hate me,” she pouts.

  “They don’t even know you, honey. They need to grieve for their dead and start looking ahead. You need to start thinking about that too.”

  “Oh, I’ve been thinking alright,” she says. “Let’s go…”

  She whips Scoot round in a stuttering turn that explodes into a gallop that, for a few heart-stopping moments, she’s not sure she can contain. As she aims towards the dip between two low hills, she’s only in the lead for the first few strides. Scoot’s old and patient enough to put up with Kirsty but Earl rides a two year old colt called Jasper, all gray spots and temper tantrums. He’s fiery but Earl can handle that. Clods of wet earth splatter Kirsty as Jasper surges past and even though she feels like she’s the fastest woman on the planet, Earl’s already out the saddle and Jasper’s drinking from a pond by the time she and Scoot arrive.

  This is her second day out with Earl and all they’ve done is trek across the early Spring prairie from one of these ponds to the next. They’re high banked on three sides and the size of private swimming pools that rich people owned in old films. She thinks they might be wallowing pools for the livestock since one end ramps down into stagnant water. But do livestock wallow? She doesn’t know and doesn’t want to sound stupid asking so she’s hoping Earl will talk about them soon enough. He’s been doing plenty of that, leaving her to concentrate on staying in the saddle and gawping into open space. Big sky country – she’d heard the phrase before but only now does it make any sense.

  “So is this your boundary?” Kirsty’s are-we-there-yet? question makes Earl smile every time.

  “You just can’t imagine what ten thousand acres looks like, can you?”

  “I’ve never had to, Earl. There’s not a park in any District bigger than a soccer field. So when does your land end?”

  “I own grassland right up to the old interstate,” he says, “but my fences are set back a mile or so. Last thing I need are long distance haulers gettin’ curious about well-tended property and pulling off to investigate.”

  “But why does anyone need this much land?”

  “It’s those fellas down there that dictate the size,” he says, nodding down into the next gently rolling valley. “Each needs thirty acres of grazing. Any less and they’ll strip it bare and I’ll be left owning desert.”

  She looks down from the hilltop. They’re food units with free-roaming scavenge-and-sustain capability. Breed stock and harvest stock are the same thing, young and old mixing within herds. Kirsty’s never seen a real cow before either.

  “Thirty acres seems a lot of ground for one animal,” she says.

  “You’re seeing the land green and early in the year,” says Earl. “We’re lucky to get a foot of rain a year, and most of that falls over six months.”

  “That seems odd,” she says. “I thought problems with water started and ended in the Hub. Back there, the problem’s with pollution.”

  “Hence your filter fish.”

  “Exactly. Out here though, surely you just do and pump it up.”

  “I guess I could pump,” he nods. “My great great grandaddy sank a hundred foot borehole here two hundred years back and the groundwater shot eight feet into the air. They called it fossil water back then – water that had been down there since the end of the Ice Age. Back then it seemed foolish to think it would ever run out.”

  “It hasn’t,” she says. “The foodfuel companies still irrigate the corn and wheat belts with it.”

  “Ahh the foodfuel,” he says, stroking stubble on his leathery face. “The water that feeds the grain that feeds the livedrives that power the Hubs. Sure they pump it up and sure I maintain my great great grandaddy’s borehole.” Even though there’s no one for miles, he leans forward conspiratorially and drops his voice. “But you know what? I’ve deepened that old borehole from a hundred feet to four hundred and fifty and the water doesn’t shoot into the air any more. In emergencies, in the hottest summers, I fire up a diesel centrifugal pump and what I can lift is cloudy and tainted. Now I’m no geologist, but I’ve seen enough to question what state the aquifers under those foodfuel farms are in.”

  She steels herself for her big question. “Is that why you maintain the ponds? Because you’re scared the ground water might dry up?”

  “Ponds?”

  “These ponds.” She points to the horses drinking then feels dumb because she doesn’t know why Earl starts laughing.

  “Oh, these ponds? Yes, Kirsty, I keep them because I’m worried about water. But not in the way you mean.”

  They ride again, down through the herd which moos and moves aside grudgingly. The horses splash along a gurgling stream that braids and separates. Kirsty rides silently, hoping that Earl will explain himself in his slow, drawn-out cowboy way. At the bottom of the valley they reach another pool, regular and rectangular like the rest. Earl goes through his routine, jumping on each bank to see if it’s holding, peering down into the stagnant water. Finally, he walks back to where she holds the horses.

  “You can stay here, you know,” he says. “As long as you like. Me and the wife talked about it and it looks likely some of Monty’s soldier boys will be staying on to heal up and maybe work for me afterwards. And… well… we’d be happy if you thought of staying on too.”

  It’s an unexpected offer. The horses and open space and the endless sky have been a dream to her. But to stay here forever…?

  “I’m humbled, Earl. And it’s generosity on a scale I could never have hoped for, but I was saving this up to tell you over the meal tonight…”

  It’s his turn to look surprised. “Oh, come on, girl. You can’t be thinking about going back?”

  “You said I should look ahead. Well I’m a Federal Officer, Earl, a real lousy one. Only I’ve taken nine out of ten steps towards proving I might be a good one and all I can look ahead to is taking that final step.”

  He looks hurt. “You’re only a Fed back in the Hub. Out here you can be what you want to be.” He shakes his head sadly. “Whatever happened there, can’t touch you here.”

  “People died to save me,” she says.

  “People died back in the Hub,” he says.

  “That’s your distinction, not mine. The Grifters, Carmine Cares, Crash The Pad – they all protected me and they never once asked why. After what they did, I feel like I owe it to them to see this through.”

  “Do you think President Vandernecker will care if
you live or die?”

  “I’m not about to debate my work ethic, Earl, because it’s shaky at best. And I’m touched by your offer to take me in, I really am. But that District is all I know. It’s all I want to know.”

  He sighs. “I guess it’s true then. That you can take the girl out of the Hub…”

  “…but not the Hub out of the girl, right? The thing is, to finish what I started, I’m going to need the soldiers on my side.”

  He checks his watch. “Well, Monty wanted you out the way until nightfall, but if we turned back now, I suppose they’d all be gathered still…”

  “See? I knew they hated me.”

  “If you’re going to talk to them all, we’ll find out soon enough,” he says, pulling himself up into Jasper’s saddle. “You want to race back?”

  “Maybe. But if this is to be my last time out here, you’ve got to explain these damn ponds first. I just can’t figure them out.”

  “Like you said, honey, they’re insurance against the groundwater drying up.”

  “But the placement makes no sense,” she says. “They should be in valley bottoms to catch runoff but most are on slopes or rises.”

  He grins, white teeth against the ingrained tan even a long winter hasn’t diminished. “They’re not for livestock,” he says. “They’re for tanks.”

  “You’re going to install water tanks?”

  He laughs again. “M1A2 Abrams tanks,” he says. “I’ve got a half dozen sitting in underground bunkers so they won’t show on low-pass satellites.”

  She frowns. “You mean like, army tanks?”

  He nods enthusiastically. “They’re older than me and twice as mean. Each one’s got a one hundred and twenty millimeter main gun that’ll burst anything ever made, even those fancy new silicon bee laminates. Each one’s powered by a fat old Lycoming turbine too, so I can run them on grain alcohol.”

  She frowns, still not understanding. “And the ponds…?”

  “They’re hull-down fire positions, five concentric rings of defense covering all approaches to the ranch. I read training manuals, Cold War doctrine on how the old USA planned to fight the Russians on the plains of Germany. I pulled a simulator rig out of Fort Hood when they decommissioned the training base there. Me and the boys practice once a week so when the shit hits the fan, everyone knows what to do.” He straightened his wide-brimmed hat theatrically. “I’m the until commander, obviously.”