Dark Deeds

by Mike Brooks

  Also, the government she’s meant to be serving isn’t much better than the Triax anyway.

  He’d shot Drugov in the head to prevent that atrocity from taking place. Up until that point, he’d considered the man to be his friend.

  “Mariya,” he said softly, stepping up to his panicked former sister-in-arms, “he can break your neck with his bare hands. I would suggest letting him have the gun.”

  She stared back at him, her eyes wild and furious, but didn’t let go. He sighed again and pulled out his own weapon, then set it against the side of her ribcage. If he pulled the trigger, it would go right through her body crosswise, without any risk of hitting Wahawaha.

  Of course, he had no intention of pulling that trigger. He’d meant every word when he’d told Drift that he wouldn’t kill except in defence of a crew member’s life. But Mariya didn’t need to know that.

  “Mariya? Do not make me ask again.”

  She struggled for a moment—Wahawaha’s grip was hard to escape even when she’d let go of what he wanted, it seemed—and then let her hand fall, empty. Wahawaha pocketed the weapon while still keeping one huge hand wrapped around Mariya’s mouth and jaw. Alim had to concede that the big Māori took on a new and frightening aspect as this silent, hooded, and masked giant instead of the affable character Alim had started to get to know over the past few weeks.

  “Thank you.” He lowered his gun. “Now, Mariya; in a moment I’ll ask my friend to uncover your mouth. Please don’t try to draw attention to us. Just answer my questions and we can all go home afterwards.” He looked up at Wahawaha and switched to English. “Let her speak, please.”

  The big man didn’t reply, but his hand slipped downwards, leaving Mariya’s mouth free and settling almost gently around the base of her throat. Mariya’s lips were pressed tight and her eyes were wide. Alim could see her breathing fast.

  “What is this, Alim?” she asked in Mandarin, her voice barely more than a whisper. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Alim shrugged. “What I need to. I’m no friend to the Triax or your corrupt colleagues, I can assure you of that. You said the Triax here are the Dragon Sons?”

  Mariya’s lip twisted. “They came in force about ten years ago, it seems. Drove out the other clans and took over their interests. The Long Street Men and the Small Room Circle are still in other cities, but Zhuchengshi belongs to the Dragon Sons now.”

  Alim nodded slowly. “And the corruption extends all the way up the force?”

  “It feels like it,” Mariya replied bitterly. She glanced from side to side. “Listen, Alim, it’s not safe for us—”

  “The last time I took advice from you on where to talk, you stuck a gun in my back,” Alim cut her off bluntly. “If you don’t want to be here, speak quickly and stop stalling.”

  Wahawaha ever so slightly flexed the fingers he still held around Mariya’s throat. She swallowed noticeably, her eyes widening again for a moment.

  “Most of my colleagues are on the take; it’s part of the culture. Our wages aren’t high, so most people take a cut from the Triax and look the other way when they’re supposed to.”

  “How do the bribes get paid?” Alim asked carefully. Mariya hesitated for a moment, but clearly whatever reservations she had about informing on the city’s mobsters were outweighed by her current predicament. And perhaps, Alim thought, her own morals.

  “Regular cops send their uniforms to Triax-owned laundrettes to get cleaned. Arena Street, Northside Laundry, any branch of Wu Hao Cleaning . . . The clothes go back to the owners with money in the pockets, sometimes a slip of plaspaper with additional instructions.” She snorted. “They call it ‘second payday.’ ”

  Alim nodded again. “And the senior officers? The detectives?”

  Mariya grimaced. “I don’t know. Maybe some do it the same way. Others might have something else set up. The Dragon Sons have their fingers in half the businesses in this city; backhanders could come from anywhere.”

  Alim frowned. “How can they just operate with this sort of impunity? Is the planetary governor in their pocket too?”

  Mariya shrugged helplessly. “Perhaps? Personally I suspect that just enough progress is made to keep the higher-ups content, although it’s all a sham. Every now and then we shut part of the operation down, or make a high-profile arrest, but it never seems to do much. It’s probably a sacrifice the Triax make, letting us take something they’re about to stop using, or can easily replace. Any significant arrest is probably either taking one for the team or has been set up as a fall guy. The second sort usually die in custody, too, to make sure they don’t talk: The PR department plays it up as proof that we got someone big enough that the Triax had to take ‘desperate measures’ to shut them down, but really it’s just them dumping someone out of favour with us, and then their puppets in the force arrange an accident to get rid of them.”

  Alim fought down the anger rising in his stomach. This wasn’t his world, not his government anymore, and certainly not his fight; but he still struggled to listen to Mariya’s description of endemic corruption in an organisation that should be protecting the population it served. Forget ransoming Rourke: He was now quite happy to do what he could to harm the Triax’s operations here simply out of spite.

  However, it was quickly becoming clear that he and his new crewmates were going to have to tread very, very carefully.

  LINES OF ATTACK

  “ ‘I live through risk. Without risk there is no art. You should always be on the edge of a cliff about to fall down and break your neck.’ ”

  Jenna looked up from her seat in the Jonah’s cockpit. “Sounds dangerous.”

  Drift sighed. “What we’re trying to do isn’t exactly safe. Besides, I was quoting. What do they teach you in school these days?”

  “In my case?” Jenna tapped the screen of her terminal and slid whatever was on it across to his display. “A detailed understanding of digital security protocols that I have absolutely not and under no circumstance used for crime or personal gain.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Drift said, studying the list of faces and names in front of him. “What am I looking at?”

  “The proceeds of my trawling through the slicer back channels on the Spine,” she told him, tucking a strand of red-blonde hair back behind one ear. “This is a rich world, which means well-educated and well-resourced kids, and that means a whole lot of people with firebrand ideals and a lack of respect for authority, be it state or Triax. It turns out there’s quite a bit of information being bandied around on the quiet about who the biggest and crookedest fish are in this particular pond.”

  Drift scratched the skin around his mechanical right eye and scanned down the list. “Let me guess: There’s a whole lot of people saying whatever the Mandarin is for ‘someone should do something’?”

  He expected a laugh, or possibly a snort. He certainly expected something. When a second or so had passed and there was no sign that Jenna had heard his comment, he glanced over at her. The young slicer was staring fixedly at her terminal, her lips slightly tight.

  He frowned. “Jenna? You okay?”

  “I . . . yeah. Sorry.” She sighed. “You’re not wrong about that. It’s just that was a phrase my dad used to use. The ‘someone’ was never him, of course.” Her mouth twisted. “That would have meant actually taking responsibility for something outside of his office.”

  Drift nodded, without quite knowing why. Jenna had never really mentioned her family and he wasn’t sure why she had now—nor did he particularly care, in all honesty. Perhaps she was getting a little homesick. He made a noncommittal grunt and went back to studying the list.

  “He used to say it about you.”

  Drift paused, uncertain if he’d heard correctly, but the query died on his lips when he looked up at Jenna. She was staring at him. Not aggressively; more like someone who hadn’t been sure if they were going to say something until they’d said it, and now weren’t sure if they should have
done.

  He licked his lips, now feeling somewhat unsure for an entirely different reason. “What?”

  “We’d hear on the news about pirate attacks on shipping,” Jenna said quietly, watching him. “Freighters boarded, cargos seized, crew left for dead. Gabriel Drake and the Thirty-Six Degrees were mentioned a lot. My father used to say that something should be done about him. About you.”

  Drift grimaced, trying to contain the sudden hollow feeling in his chest at the mention of the name he’d used before he’d faked his own death. “A lot of things were blamed on me that I never did; I’d just like to point that out.”

  “My dad never did anything, though,” Jenna continued. “He never . . . I don’t know, he never went off to join the star force so he could help guard ships, or anything. I don’t know if it was even because he was scared to. I think it’s just that he wouldn’t have got paid enough. It’s like, because he could do whatever he does in finance, that automatically meant he didn’t need to care about anything else.”

  “Well, look at the upside,” Drift said, trying a smile and to gently move the conversation on from the parts of his past he didn’t want to talk about. “You got the education you did because he had that job.”

  “And at that posh, expensive university a friend on my course was abducted by the damned Circuit Cult,” Jenna said bitterly. “And when I tried to not be my dad, when I tried to do the right thing and do something about it, it ruined everything, and I had to get away, fast.” She sat back with a frustrated hiss and closed her eyes for a second, then sat upright again and looked at him, hard and direct.

  “What are you going to do if we don’t get enough money?”

  “We will,” Drift said, trying to project confidence.

  “But what if we don’t?” Jenna insisted, leaning forwards. “What if, this time, we don’t come up with a way out? What if we can’t go back to Orlov and hand him what he wants? Do we do the right thing and go back for Rourke anyway? Do we try to get her out, or do we leave her there and hope for the best?”

  Drift sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Honestly? Hell if I know.” He held up one hand to forestall any words Jenna might have. “I don’t want to leave her there, of course I don’t, but as a wise man once said: You’ve got to be realistic about these things. It’s going to be hard enough to convince Kuai to go back even if we have the money. Alim was Uragan’s Security Chief who never took a bribe from Orlov, so he won’t be popular if they realise who he is this time. Besides, if the government there find out he’s alive and not on Uragan, they’re going to be asking him some very serious questions about how he got away, how he let the revolution happen, and oh yeah, what happened to Governor Drugov? I can’t ask him to walk into that for someone he barely knows.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Yeah but nothing.” He spread his hands. “If Kuai ever absolutely and truly digs his heels in, I don’t know if Jia would stay on the crew without him. I know they fight all the time, but that’s sort of who they are; I don’t think Jia would know what to do with herself if she didn’t have Kuai to annoy. Trying to get Tamara away from Orlov with just you, me, and A doesn’t sound like a winning proposition to me. None of us can even speak Russian properly!”

  Jenna’s expression was challenging. “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we’d better raise the damn cash,” Drift said curtly. He tapped the screen. “This woman, Han Xiuying, is apparently Zhuchengshi’s Chief of Security. Based on what Alim’s informant said and what your contacts have turned up, she’s in the Triax’s pocket. The question is, is that through greed or blackmail?”

  “Does it make a difference?” Jenna asked, getting up from her seat and coming over to stand behind his chair.

  “Potentially a huge one,” Drift said, chewing the inside of his cheek as he thought. “She’s no street-level flatfoot; if she’s being bought, her price will be high. Maybe very high. It would be worth a lot to the Triax to have her definitely looking the other way.” He looked over his shoulder at Jenna. “That would involve a lot of probably untraceable currency changing hands.”

  She nodded slowly. “Which is exactly the sort of thing we need. Okay, so how do we find that out?”

  Drift traced down the display, highlighting names with a sweep of his finger. “These people, who are supposed to be Triax: Piotr Zhang is apparently a hotelier, Gao Dongfeng runs a . . . a private waste disposal and cleaning service?” He laughed. “Gee, can’t imagine how that might be useful to organised crime. But anyway, all of these are the sort of ‘concerned citizens’ who might have meetings with the city’s security chief to discuss issues of policing and their businesses, in a completely aboveboard and explainable way.”

  “And at those meetings they might talk about bribes, and when and how they’ll be paid,” Jenna said, understanding dawning. “So how do we get to listen in?”

  Drift grimaced. “Still working on that part. First of all, we need to find out if it’s actually happening. Is there any way you can get an itinerary for this woman?”

  “You want me to slice into the computer systems of the organisation in charge of security here, to find out what meetings the top brass is having?” Jenna asked.

  Drift thought for a moment. “Essentially, yes.”

  Jenna shrugged. “Sure, why not?” She went back to her terminal and activated her wrist-mounted console, something Drift knew she’d built from scratch and that included a particularly powerful processor, which happened to be illegal in most jurisdictions. “There’s bound to be someone on the force with a stupidly unimaginative password, and once I’m inside . . .” She trailed off as Drift got up from his seat and headed towards the cockpit door. “Where are you off to?”

  “I’m off to talk your boyfriend into doing something stupid,” Drift smiled at her.

  She snorted. “Doesn’t this already count?”

  “Fine, then. Stupider.” He ducked out of the cockpit before she could reply and headed towards the galley in the hope that he’d find Apirana there. Sure enough, the big Māori was cooking eggs in a pan and whistling quietly to himself. He looked around as Drift came in.

  “Hey, Cap.” He gestured at the light-yellow concoction. “You hungry?”

  “No, you go ahead.” He watched Apirana give his eggs a few more swirls around the pan before tipping them out onto a plate. “I, uh, have come to ask if you’d be interested in doing something stupid.”

  Apirana snorted. “Don’t what we’re doing already count?”

  Drift stared at him for a second. “Wow.”

  The big man looked up, brow furrowed in confusion. “Huh?”

  “No, it’s just . . .” Drift scratched the skin by his eye. “You and Jenna really are a good match.”

  “So people keep saying,” Apirana muttered, shovelling a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “Don’t see it myself, bro, but I surely ain’t complaining. But you were talking ’bout something else.”

  “Yeah. How’s your ankle?”

  Apirana looked down at his left leg. “Honestly? Don’t really think about it much now. Still get the odd twinge, but I ain’t as young as I used to be anyway. Seems to have healed fast. Wouldn’t wanna run any races though.”

  Drift nodded. “How about punching people in the head?”

  “Long as they don’t move about too much first.” Apirana looked back up at him, his eyes narrowing. “Oh, you got your planning face on. That wasn’t a hypothetical question, was it?”

  Drift pulled out his pad. “We’re going to need some capital to get anything moving here, and we don’t have much. So I’m looking at risking about half of it on what we do have on a long-odds bet that’s actually stacked in our favour.”

  The big man set his fork down, then slowly and deliberately put his head in his hands and took a deep breath. “Go on.”

  Drift reached out and tapped him on the hand. “Eyes front, soldier.” Apirana peeked through his fingers, and Drift held
up his pad so the other man could see it. “See this? There’s a fight event going down in three days, or what passes for days here. There’s a few superheavyweights on the bill, too. Now, if one of them should happen to fall ill at an inconvenient time . . .”

  Apirana lowered his hands and fixed Drift with a steady stare. “Because that can just happen.”

  Drift shrugged. “I can walk into a drugstore on any street in this city and buy a powerful laxative. The event’s in a couple of days, which means most of the fighters are probably already here, training and using gyms in this city. It’s not a big-name event, so odds are they’re not able to buy out a gym for private use. So it wouldn’t be impossible to change up a water bottle or something. After that, well, if I was shitting my guts out a few hours before I’m due to get into a ring to fight, I’d be backing out.”

  Apirana frowned. “Okay. Let’s say we manage that and we nobble one of the superheavies. How do we then get me onto a fight card in his place?”

  Drift smiled. “You looked at yourself in the mirror recently, big guy? You’re over two metres tall, with tattoos all over your face and upper body, and you’re built like a concrete block. All a promoter’s going to want at that late stage is someone the crowd won’t shit over before the fight. You look the part, and I can talk the talk. That’s all we’ll need.”

  “Damn it, I hate it when you make everything sound so easy,” Apirana rumbled. “You know we ain’t gonna be able to coax a big purse out of them, right?”

  “Of course not,” Drift agreed. “You’ll be a last-minute, no-name replacement. No, we’re going to make money on the fact that you’ll be a big underdog. And I’ll be wagering on you winning.”

  CLEANING UP THE ACT

  Stupid fucking Kuai.

  Jia Chang was not in the best of moods. That was partly because the overalls she was wearing were a bit too tight: Seriously, couldn’t the Captain have at least got the right size? It was partly because this planet’s stupid day/night cycle was messing with her head, which was why she preferred being on the Jonah or the Keiko, where circadian rhythms were what she set them as. However, it was mainly because Kuai had passed some smart comment about how this would be the first time she’d actually cleaned anything. Like she hadn’t had to tidy up after his mess when they’d been kids! Just because their parents had thought they were raising some sort of mechanical genius, and that meant it was perfectly fine for him to leave his little kits and screws and boring-ass manuals all over their little flat. No, when his mess actually started getting in the way, guess who got called on? Just their daughter, the one already acing flight simulators when she was eight, who certainly didn’t have anything better to do than clear up after her self-absorbed, idiotic lump of an older brother . . .