B-spine
Page 29
“So here’s option three. Bostov Cryonics have been onto me to say they love the way you guys fight, both against them and for them. If you want it, they’ll looking to reassign you en-masse to their chosen mercwar crew.”
“Fucken’ Aurora-Bor? Those back-shooting bastards?” Jaime Calderon spits the name onto the dusty ground. “No way. We work for you, Monty.”
“And I’m saying you don’t. You need to find something else to do outside the Pad, because to be quite honest, I’m all out of options here.”
“Then I’ve got a fourth option for you…” The voice pipes up from the back and it surprises Monty who looks up and squints. Crash The Pad turn their heads as Kirsty steps out from a shadowy corner packed with barbed wire drums and a rusting John Deere bailer unit. She steps forwards into the light uncertainly. “How about you all stay together, the federal government refits you at its expense and everyone goes home?”
“And what’s in it for you, wetvet?” Shayla Bendix doesn’t try to hide her sneering tone. She lost her whole Chalk a few nights ago. She knows who she blames.
“I get to go home too,” says Kirsty. “But I can’t do it on my own. I need your help.”
Shayla stands and points accusingly. “You mean you need us to do your fighting? We heard all about you, girl. Your local gang’s wasted, your UPF crew’s wasted and now Crash The Pad’s wasted too. And for what? Because you needed help.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” says Kirsty. “I started out trying to do my job and I’ve ended up a federal fugitive. The way things stand, I’m never going back to Toronto and neither are you. Because I’m going to end up doing prison time and Meat4 Power are going to hunt you down like dogs.”
“That’s for us to sort out, lady,” says Shayla. “Maybe it’s time for you to fight your own wars and us to fight ours.”
“Or maybe we should hear her out.”
It’s Kirsty’s time to turn, caught between a hostile crowd in front and the voice behind her. He stands in the double doorway, the low sun dazzling right over his shoulder. When he walks, it’s slow and painful, hindered by the plastic neck brace. When he moves into the barn’s dusky half light, bloodshot eyes glow yellow-white from the middle of heavy purple black swelling. One whole side of his jaw is covered in bloody gauze taped to taut, bruised skin.
“Hate this woman all you want,” says Jude Hemblen, the words slow and thick as he painfully works his lacerated tongue. “But we signed up for all this and she didn’t. We get paid to be shot at but she doesn’t. And since you don’t like any of the other options, would it hurt to hear her out? What say you, Monty?”
Everyone looks back to their boss at the other end of the barn. “They ain’t listening to me anyhow,” shrugs Monty. “If you want to step up here and pitch an idea to this bunch of fools, go right ahead.”
Nervously, she does. Kirsty stands on a hay bail and starts her story from the very beginning. She finishes off by telling them what she’s learned and why she needs them and why Crash The Pad need her too. By the time she asks if they need to vote on it, they’ve already heard enough. She’s got her ticket home. They’re heading back to the Hub.
Thursday 20 March
06:22 am
THEY GATHER IN twos and threes in the dusty courtyard hemmed in on three sides by Earl’s ranch home. It’s dawn and barely above freezing and they stomp their feet and ask each other when the utivans are arriving to shuttle them to the Amtrak stop. Everyone knows the same thing – maybe sooner, maybe later. They shrug it off. They’re soldiers, they’re used to waiting.
Kirsty closes the door on her room and crosses the courtyard. Her wetvet uniform had magically reappeared last night, the blood washed out, the torn elbows and knees neatly stitched back together by Mrs Shrieb. Kirsty figures if she wants this whole operation to be approved as official Federal Environmental business, she’d better dress the part. No way this fails on a technicality.
Earl’s promised her satellite uplink time at seven o’clock so she’s hurrying over when she recognizes Hemblen standing around and shivering. He’s ditched the neck brace and the white dressing on his face is covered with skin-tone zinc tape but the double black eyes are hard to miss.
He sees her too as her pace slows and they gravitate together, kind of wary, kind of curious. A few steps apart, Hemblen holds up his offering. It’s her Jericho pistol. She takes it and it’s cleaned and oiled. She checks it over and sees an empty chamber but a full clip before pushing it into a jacket pocket.
She nods graciously. “Jude Hemblen,” she says. “I was wondering when we’d finally get to talk.”
He nods back. “Officer Powell. You’ve been keeping me busy of late.”
“I’ve been hearing things round the ranch,” she says. “Like how you stopped that sniper from gunning me down. Like how you blew that bear away point-blank.”
He scratches a peeling scab on his nose. “If you heard it from my guys, it’s mostly exaggeration. I’m paid to beat up on people. You holding off the bear with a handgun though? That took real guts.”
“Can’t say I remember much, other than a lot of people stood between me and the bad guys.” She shrugs and stirs the dust with her shoe. “So do you want to hug now or hug later?” she says, looking up and smiling a little. “Seems we’re the sole members of each others’ fan clubs.”
He tries to laugh but it pulls the stitches inside his mouth and makes him wince and grab his jaw. Kirsty steps nearer and puts her hands over his. “You okay?” she says. “They said you got shot in the head… or was that exaggeration too?”
He lets the shuddering pain pass and spits out bright blood before answering. “That part, unfortunately, is true,” he says, wiping his mouth. “My face shield stopped a round that punched out a couple of molars and cracked my cheekbone. I’m lucky though. The same shooter took down two of my people.”
“Took down as in dead?”
“Eric’s staying here with the Shriebs while he heals. Genevieve got hit in the throat and… well, she’s gone.”
So many people have died around her, she doesn’t know what to say any more. “What about you?” he asks, breaking the silence. “You looked pretty broken when I found you.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m still more or less deaf in one ear but compared to what you people went through…” She feels lame complaining about a bust ear but then she hears her name being called and Earl’s standing on his stoop waving and pointing to the sky.
“I guess Earl’s got my uplink. I’d better get going.” She turns but he holds her arm.
“This nightclub thing you told us about. How sure are you about making it stick to Meat4 Power?”
She raises her free hand, squinting at him through a tiny gap between thumb and forefinger. “Jude, when that bear hit, I was this far away from fitting all the pieces together. I wouldn’t risk anyone else if I didn’t think I could make my case.”
“And what will it take for us to get to…” he presses her finger and thumb together, “…this stage?”
“Honestly? We’re going to have to go head-to-head with Meat4 Power at some point. If they’re hiding something, we’re going to have to find it in the Citadel.”
“Well look, Kirsty,” he says. “Crash The Pad have worked for them and fought against them. Let’s see if anything I know matches up with anything you know.”
He lets go of her hand and she walks to Earl’s office where he’s got a battered old PC linked into a modern Slate monitor, the crude display of a web browser up and running already.
“Don’t imagine you see technology this old in the Hub,” says Earl, “but out here, the internet still works for us just fine. Should I show you how to interface?”
“No need,” says Kirsty. “My friend Tim’s addicted to this junk.” She’d typed out her email to Tim the night before. If he’s still alive, if he’s even half as counter-culture as he claims to be, then her road home starts the moment she sends it.
They gather in teams of eight and ten at every Amtrak stop, the strung-out remains of Crash The Pad still limping towards Earl’s ranch in exhausted, bullet-riddled utivans. Each railhead brings tears as friends listed as missing return from the dead. Aboard the train, they gravitate into their old Chalks, absorbing strays to make up numbers. Crash The Pad’s ranks swell to nearly a hundred.
Kirsty watches each reunion through a grime-streaked window, worrying that there’ll be fresh tears before she’s through. As they rumble eastwards, she sits with Hemblen and he tells her about Meat4 Power’s product launch while they watch the prairie gradually wither and die, killed by the Hub’s groundwater pollution. Strips of crumbling, delisted interstate peter out as traffic builds and rumbles along renamed, resurfaced toll roads. The towns clustered around each stop grow bigger, the distances between them smaller. Finally, they hit the outer edge of the Toronto Hub.
There’s no cheery sign welcoming visitors, since only commercial vehicles can move Hub-to-Hub. There are no gates or watchtowers keeping residents in since District-sensitive ID and cash cards do that. As the Amtrak rumbles parallel to the road, Kirsty can smell the Hub – piles of shit from utivan waste tanks clogging the ditches, heaving with beetles and hazy in a clouds of flies. Sixty years of mandated environmental concern and people would still rather save the couple of bucks a tank flush costs than save the very water they drink. She chokes as the stench intensifies, then they’re through the fly swarms and she’s back in the city sprawl she was born into.
Immediately, Slate starts beeping and, when she pulls it out, she’s surprised to see the screen glowing with prompts and official-looking warnings. It’s lain dead and lifeless during her time at Earl’s ranch but looks fine now. She guesses it only works where it’s meant to work.
She chews her nails nervously and decides not to launch any Federal software – a week away will have raised questions she’s not ready to answer yet. Instead, she launches comms and reaches into her jacket for the business card etched in Bostov’s bold, frosted font. She dials and he answers on the first ring without even bothering to look up from his food.
“Priest,” he says through a mouthful of ramen noodles. “Wassup?”
“I was hoping we could negotiate the whole ‘do your job or we’ll kill you’ deal,” she says. The Bostov RESC nearly chokes on his lunch.
“Officer Powell,” he coughs. “We’ve been sifting through ashes trying to find your teeth, yet here you are. Please tell me you’re going trump this triumphant return from the grave with loads of happy stuff.”
“How about Meat4 Power attempting to murder of a federal employee? How about an unlicensed, uncontained biological experiment going disastrously wrong? You want some of that?”
Priest grins and chews open mouthed. “If that’s what you’ve got, I’ll take it right now.”
“It’s never that easy though, is it?” says Kirsty. “It’s going to take a bit more snooping and I’ve got a shopping list for you.”
Priest picks up a pen. “I’ll see what I can do. Hit me.”
“I need names and faces of key M4 employees connected with product testing,” she says.
“I think I can get you that.”
“I need to know who to hit if I want to disrupt M4’s RESC command and control within the Toronto Hub.”
He’s loving it. “Oh, I can definitely get you that. What else?”
“An air plane,” she says. “Not an airship, not a balloon but a genuine plane with wings. Doesn’t have to be fast, doesn’t have to be new. But it does need cargo lift capability and a rear ramp door. Apparently, a twin engined Skyvan is ideal, whatever the hell one of those is.”
“You’re shitting me right? says Priest. “Where am I going to find a plane? Where am I even going to find fuel for a plane?”
“I wouldn’t ask if we didn’t need it,” she says.
He shrugs and writes it down anyway. “Am I allowed to ask why?”
“Fly one into Toronto then keep watching the newsfeeds,” she says. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
They gather in warehouses and Playdiums, underground vehicle ports and bars. Anywhere that ten, twenty, fifty people can gather without raising eyebrows. Kirsty has her own tearful reunion, arranging to meet Tim mid-morning in the Bowlerama then finding he’s brought along a hundred angry young people. He hasn’t shaved since she saw him last and the stubble suits him. He’s bagged a cool armored jacket from somewhere and carries Grandmaster Flash across his chest in a fancy clip-sling donated by one of the men from UPF Carmine Cares. Since they found out that Carmine sold-out Cusack and his crew, they’ve become his permanent bodyguards. Since Tim picked up her email message, he’s thrown himself into being what she suspected he’s wanted to be all along. Not a BASEracer or a gang-banger or even a hero like Cusack but a little bit of all of them. A leader.
“These are the BASEracers?” she asks, scanning the crowd after they’ve done with the hugs.
“Hell no,” says Tim, “probably only a quarter of them. But see that guy over by the bar? He’s Stephan Masse.”
She shrugs. “I should be impressed?”
“He’s, like, the LL Cool J of BASEracers. I tell you Kirsty, all I had to do was mention the name of Kenny Sossamon and things got wild. Everyone’s been wondering where he got to and no one’s seen him since the night of his big drop. If you’re right and M4 have got him, these guys’ll do anything to get him back.”
Kirsty frowns. “So if they’re not all jumpers, who are they?”
“Well that’s just it. I scored so big with the fallers that I kept stirring shit up. I trawled the internet and posted livedrive rights sites, telling them that M4 had been killing campaigners.”
“Have they?”
He shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Point is they believed me, everyone believed me. I tell you, once you scratch the surface, you’ve got to wonder how much control M4 really have over this Hub.” He grins his goofy grin. “Word on the street is that Meat4 Power know me by name and hate me personal now. If they catch me, they’ll do me like Biggie and Tupac.”
“Tim, I’ve no idea what that means,” she says, then sighs. “Shit, all I wanted to do was go home and get my fish back.”
Tim scrawls a number on an envelope and she steps out into the street. Two of Hemblen’s men stand outside, trench coats hiding flexible armor and assault rifles. She nods to them and walks to a paybooth on the corner and it feels spooky to be on the street where Kareem traded his life for hers. She shudders as she feeds quarters and dials. An old lady answers.
“Is Dee Money there?” asks Kirsty.
“Who?” the old lady stares blankly.
“That’s his street name,” she says. “I’m looking for a young man, shaved head, lots of muscles.”
“Oh yes,” she nods, “my grandson.” She turns and shouts down the hall. Turns out Dee Money’s real name is Walter.
“I’m Officer Kirsty Powell, Federal Environmental,” she says when he shambles into view, “Do you know who I am?” Silence. “I said…”
“I heard what you said.”
“And?”
“And you fucken’ broke my ribs. Course I know who you are.”
“But that was a long time ago. No hard feelings, right?”
He looks bored. “If you say so.”
“Since then, have you learned to keep wandering hands to yourself?”
“I’ve learned how to hang up on people not getting to the point,” he says. “Why y’all calling my grammy’s crib?”
“I need to speak to the Reverend,” she tells him.
He stares blankly. “Lot of people needing to do that,” he says, neutrally.
“But I can’t find him. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, he’s that all right, no thanks to you. Way I see it, the Grifters were doing just fine until you showed up asking for favors.”
“That’s funny,” she snorts, “the way I see it, the Flame Warriors and the Nu Metal Crew snatched all the Grifter territory and you’ve ended up hiding out at your grammy’s.” Silence and stares. “But since you brought it up, I realize I owe the Reverend. I’ve got a way to get even.”
“Little late for apologies,” says Dee Money, sulkily.
“That’s why I’m not offering them. I’m offering payback.”
“On the Flame Warriors?”
“Is that as big as you can think, Dee? I’ve got a way to set the Grifters up every bit as good as they used to be.”
“You taking me for a fool?”
“I’m playing no one, Dee.”
“Okay, so now I’m listening.”
“But now I’m not talking… Walter,” she says. “I’ll call you in an hour. See if you can’t get the Reverend to pick up next time.”
Saturday 22 March
02:41 pm
SIMON’S PLAYING TEMPEST 2000 when the doorbell rings. He’d downloaded it from a retro-gaming service because his buddy Taki had been raving about it. After playing it sixteen hours straight, he’s ready to start a religion around it. He’s been smoking and drinking and soaking up the game’s last-century dance tracks and all her really wants to do is tell Taki he’d been right to recommend it. Only Taki’s dead now, lifted out of a bloody pool on the floor of Arclights and taken away, never to be seen again. Since the club’s told Simon to stay at home until they call, he’s decided to honor his dead buddy by playing this game until he exhausts his non-disclosure check. Simon’s got few overheads and even in his stoned state remembers seeing a whole load of zeroes on the check, so that might take months. Years even.
The doorbell rings again and Simon remembers he’d been thinking about pausing the game and dealing with it. He struggles with the weighty issues this course of action might entail. Is it day or night the other side of his drawn curtains? Was he expecting visitors? In all honesty, can he be actually be bothered to get up off the couch?