Lost Valor

by Kal Spriggs

  “Yeah,” I spun, just in time to see a half dozen men who'd come out of a ground vehicle walk into the doors of the building. “Oh no.”

  I gave a loud whistle, but I was worried I was too late. Lokka leapt off my shoulders. “You pay attention better, or you get your friends in trouble.

  I was supposed to give warning if any vehicles came up, but talking with Lokka, I'd missed it. I cursed as someone in the vehicle looked over in my direction and pulled out a flashlight. I ducked back around the corner as a guard shone the flashlight in my direction.

  Jonna had gone inside in one of the utility tunnels. I hoped she and the others had got my warning in time. I was supposed to leave as soon as I gave warning, but I didn't. I waited and worried.

  I hadn't heard any shouts or anything from the building. After a few more minutes, I started to relax. Maybe my warning had come in time.

  Then, just as I was about to turn and leave, I heard the sound of harsh laughter and a man came out of the building, pulling Jonna along by her blonde hair. He was the one laughing, “Look what we found, a little thief.”

  The guard who'd been in the vehicle came out, shining his light on her. “Not a smart one. Told you someone had been thieving. She the only one?”

  “I think so,” the first one said. “I'm not sure how she got in, but the others are looking, they'll find it out, assuming we can't get her to talk.”

  The other guard laughed at that, “Oh, I can think of some ways. Hard to be a good sneak thief if you don't have any fingers...”

  There were two of them. They each had heavy lengths of pipe tucked through their belts as weapons. There were more of them in the building. Attacking them would be dumb. At best, I'd probably just get myself caught, too.

  But they were going to hurt Jonna and that was my fault. I tensed, getting ready to charge them. Behind me, as I ran around the corner and charged at the men, I heard Lokka's high pitched voice, “You not smart.”

  ***

  I charged out of the alleyway, running full tilt at the nearest of the two guards. I saw one of them look my direction and open his mouth to shout a warning, but I was nearly on him. I tucked my shoulder, lowered my head, and drove into him.

  I hit him hard, hard enough that I drove him back, into the wall behind him and I heard bones crunch. The impact dazed me and I stumbled back, shaking my head and seeing spots. The guard I’d hit was gasping and clutching at his chest, but he hadn’t gone down. He came at me, one arm cradled tight to his chest, the other reaching for me.

  I ducked under one of his swings and punched at him, catching him in the ribs and he gave a gasp of pain and fell back, landing on his backside. I looked around, trying to focus. The other guard struggled with Jonna and I stumbled in their direction. I’d only gone a meter or so when Jonna reached back, caught her attacker’s hand by the wrist, and did some kind of twisting motion with her arm. A moment later, the guard was on his knees, swearing. She brought her elbow down, right on the back of his neck and he went still.

  I stared at her, uncertain why she hadn’t done that already. She gestured at the alleyway and we hurried in that direction, just as I heard shouts of surprise coming from the doorway to the building she’d been robbing.

  We ran. I was having a hard time running in a straight line and with every step, I felt like my brain rattled around my head. I tripped over a pile of trash and bounced off a wall, but I kept running. We got to one of the rat-holes and Jonna led the way down into the utility tunnels.

  After a few minutes of walking through that darkness, we came to the meet up point, a broad, low room where several of the conduits linked up. The other Ragabonds were there, their faces hard.

  “Look, guys, I’m sorry—”

  “No,” Jonna interrupted me, spinning to face me, her pale face cold with anger. “No. Sorry isn’t good enough. You had one job. One.”

  I licked my lips nervously, “There was—”

  “I don’t care,” she snapped. “You didn’t follow orders. You didn’t warn us when the guards came. Then, you came running in like some stupid hero from a entertainment vid. You were supposed to keep watch, warn us, and if guards came, not get involved.” She held up two fingers. “That’s two strikes, Will, and you and Ted already had two each.” She shook her head, “you and your friend are out.”

  “The one had you by the hair!” I protested. “I was trying to help!”

  “I took care of him,” Jonna scoffed. “I was waiting for an opportune moment to escape, and you came charging in like an idiot. You’re out.”

  “But…” I swallowed, “What about Ted?”

  “He’s out too,” She shook her head, “though he at least followed directions. Because you can’t understand consequences, understand how things work.” Jonna reached out a hand, “Give me your cloak.”

  I took the patchwork cloak off. I folded it carefully and handed it to her. She wadded it up and stuffed it in a bag. “I’ll have Ted gather your things and meet you at Kayn Street. Don’t come back to the lair.”

  I felt tears well up in my eyes. This wasn’t fair. The stupid civet had distracted me. I half opened my mouth to say that, but Jonna’s hard glare made me shut my mouth. “You’re done, you understand? You have nothing more to do with us. Don’t talk to any of our people. Don’t ask for any favors or handouts. Don’t get caught in our territory.”

  I gave her a nod, feeling my stomach twist as I thought about it. I had nowhere to go. The Crooked Daggers would probably kill me. The other gangs might give me a moment to plead for my life before they did the same. Unless they wanted to torture me or something for information.

  “You talk about the lair, give away any of our secrets, and I’ll kill you myself,” Jonna told me.

  I closed my eyes, feeling pathetic. All I want to do is to go home. I heard footsteps as the Ragabonds moved out. I opened my eyes, feeling completely lost.

  Jonna still stood there, her expression slightly less harsh. “You stupid fool.”

  “Why are you still here?” I asked. “Gloating?”

  “I did what I had to do as the leader of my gang,” She told me. “Look, believe it or not, I understand why you came to help. Some part of me appreciates it… but that’s not the way to survive on the streets or even here on Drakkus. You can’t keep sticking your neck out. You have to think of number one, think of yourself first, or you’re not going to survive.”

  I glared at her, “Says the one who just threw me and Ted out on the street!”

  To my surprise, she looked away, “Will, believe it or not, it’s just as much about Ted as you.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said. You might be the one who violated the rules, but Ted…” She shook her head, “Ted is soft. He knows how to suck up, how to be helpful, but he hasn’t got any steel in his spine. Most of my people like you. Even Simon likes you, and he doesn’t like anyone. But Ted? The rest of the Ragabonds see him sitting around, working on numbers and eating. All he does is eat,” Jonna made a face. “I know he’s working hard, in his own way, but my people see him as dead weight… which means you have to work twice as hard to justify keeping him, too.”

  I swallowed, “What am I supposed to do, then?”

  “Cut him loose,” Jonna told me. “I know the two of you have some savings. Cut him loose, work hard, get your pass to the spaceport, and then get off this planet. Go home, while you still can.”

  “Why do you care what I do?” I snapped.

  “Because I like you, too, Will,” she told me with a snort. “You’re a fos, and you’re clueless, but you work hard, you’re smart, and you don’t give up. If things had been different, I might have made you my number two, let you take over after…” She trailed off, staring at me. “Well, doesn’t matter now. You’re out. It’s for the best, anyway. Go home, Will. Cut your dead weight and go home.” She turned and walked off, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  They weren’t pleasant thoughts to leave
me with. I had to fight the urge to just curl up on the dirty floor and cry. Darkness seemed to seep into me, a despair as thick and heavy as a heavy blanket. Only this blanket sucked the warmth out of me, leaving me feeling cold and hollow and alone.

  Jonna had told me to abandon Ted. To use the money I had, to escape this planet. Could I do that? Could I abandon him?

  I thought about how much I hated this place. How much I missed Century. I missed my family too, but going home wasn’t going to bring them back. The only family I still had back there was the Admiral, and while Jiden might have been close to her, I hadn’t interacted with her more than a few words at most.

  I tried to imagine how she’d react on finding me alive. The most I could imagine was a nod, maybe a faint look of respect. How would she look at me if I came back by abandoning Ted? Jiden had never left anyone behind. I’d heard that she’d even saved the life of Sashi Drien, who’d shot her in the face during a training event over some kind of disagreement.

  The very thought of the Admiral’s look of disapproval, of her blue eyes staring at me with disgust made my back go up straight. No, I told myself, I’d rather be dead in the gutter than have her look at me like that. I wasn’t going to give up. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I couldn’t give up and I couldn’t abandon Ted. We were in this together.

  ***

  Chapter 17: Looking For Inspiration

  “You lose again,” Lokka crowed at Ted.

  Ted sputtered at him, “Only because you’re cheating!”

  “Never cheat, only win,” Lokka answered. “Game boring.” He turned away, flitting his tail at Ted in a dismissive fashion. Since that end was where his musk glands were, it was also a none-too-subtle threat.

  Not that the civet needed to threaten us. We were staying in their territory. We were entirely dependent upon their goodwill. I gave Ted a level look, “Want some advice?”

  “On winning at chess?” Ted scoffed. “I was the president of my school’s chess club, I know how to play, just fine. He just moves the pieces when I’m not looking or when he thinks I’m not looking.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, “I’m sure you do.” The fact that the civets even knew how to play chess was kind of amazing. Combined with their technical expertise, I had the feeling that no one really knew how smart the creatures were. No, I told myself, not creatures, they’re human level intelligence… just not human. They’re people… my thought was interrupted as a pair of civet kits ran past, trying to spray one another with their musk as they shrieked insults at one another. …sort of.

  “Look,” I told Ted, “think about it this way. They’re hosting us. They’re keeping us fed and alive, when ninety percent of the people on this planet would either actively kill us or just watch as we died.” That was a bit of an exaggeration. I doubted anyone really even cared that we were alive, but I was trying to make a point to Ted. “Maybe letting Lokka win a few games wouldn’t be a bad idea?”

  “But he’s cheating!” Ted protested.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “And he knows that you hate it, which is why he’s doing it.” Truthfully, I’d found it amusing at first, too. But now the two of them bickering over pieces being moved had become irritating. It had been weeks of this.

  Ted muttered something and walked off, leaving me to my thoughts.

  Over the past months since we’d been kicked out of the Ragabonds, Ted and I had worked the streets where we could, begging, stealing, doing whatever we could to help the civets, which mostly involved moving heavy things they couldn’t or occasionally showing them how to use this or that bit of technology they’d stolen or scavenged.

  Mardal, the leader of the civet pack, had mostly ignored our presence. Some of the other older civets had followed her example. Most of the kits had reacted to Ted and I with fascination. Ted had noticed Lokka and a couple other civets playing chess and had begun playing him as a distraction.

  I hadn’t really liked chess. It was too formulaic, too orchestrated. I knew how to play, but I didn’t really enjoy it. Besides, Jiden had sort of ruined chess for me back when she and Tony Champion had been a thing. I’d been so excited to play with her, that she’d used it to humiliate me in front of Tony Champion and show how smart she was. She hadn’t ever really apologized for that, even though she’d gone out of her way to be a lot nicer to me after that business with Tony trying to kill her. I’d sort of hated chess since then.

  I’d actually liked my sister a lot more since she went to the Academy. She’d been nicer to me, for one thing. She’d encouraged my interest in space, in the militia, and given me a lot of tips. She’d been a whole lot less snide. She’d still been insufferably superior, but that was sort of who she was. She was my older sister… and now she was gone.

  A wave of sadness washed over me as I considered that. She’d died saving me. She’d died fighting Wessek’s people… crushed by tens of thousands of tons of sand. Jiden had accomplished so much in her life, she’d been on track to graduate from the Century Military Academy, she’d uncovered conspiracies, even my parents, as little as they wanted Jiden or me to go into the military, had been proud of her.

  And I hadn’t been fast enough, smart enough, or strong enough, to help her.

  I felt hot tears roll down my cheeks. I wiped at them, feeling the eyes of the civets on me. The kits watched me with attentive eyes, trying to figure out what I was doing. The adult civets were wary, most of them. They still didn’t trust me, though I wasn’t sure why. Ted they seemed to accept as somewhat clueless and non-threatening. Me they didn’t seem to know what to expect.

  I stood up, careful to move slowly and in a non-threatening manner. “I’m going out,” I told them. The adults pretended to ignore me. The kits went back to playing.

  I went up the stairs and got onto the roof. The old factory that the civets lived in was in a very decrepit part of the Barrens. Most of the buildings in the area were abandoned, empty even of vagrants and the other societal discards. There was nothing to live on, here, or at least, nothing for humans to live on. The civets had a farm, of sorts, where they grew a few small shrubs and tubers. They also seemed to hunt rats and other small vermin. They’d offered to share both, but the berries from the shrubs had made Ted and I sick for almost a week, and the tubers had been inedible, too dense to chew, even after trying to boil or bake them. Neither Ted nor I were desperate enough for raw or even cooked rat. Not yet, anyway. So we’d begged, stolen, or even bought food.

  The rain wasn’t falling as the constant, screening downpour and I could actually see a few kilometers around. The ruined apartment complex to the south lay exposed, like the bones of some ancient primordial beast, the smashed windows and open doors ominous and desolate. Ted and I had searched that area the first weeks we’d been here, but they, like the rest of the area, had already been picked over for anything of value.

  A few blocks to the south, there was a slave barracks and several pharmaceutical factories. Occasionally, I’d slip down there and steal any scraps I could, but most of the time there wasn’t much. The overseers monitored the slaves pretty closely, so there wasn’t any of the medication or drugs that they made to steal. The slaves had some food, but not enough that I was comfortable trying to steal any. Besides, I had to be careful so that the slavers didn’t grab me. I had the feeling I wouldn’t have any opportunities to escape from a place like that.

  Up to the north was Crooked Dagger territory, though it was edged by another gang, who I had learned to avoid. They were, if anything, more violent than Francis’s gang. I’d come across more than one street urchin who they’d found trespassing on their territory and… dealt with, leaving the remains as a warning to anyone else.

  Off to the west was Kayn Street, and past that was the Ragabonds. I hadn’t been back, though I’d gone as far as Kayn Street. There wasn’t much between here and there, just a dozen blocks of dilapidated warehouses and abandoned factories, with a thin belt of people closer to Kayn Street. That was t
he most profitable area for Ted and I to work, though neither of us were earning anything near enough to do more than barely survive. I’d lost weight. Ted had too.

  East of us rose one of the pirate spires, towering over the structures around it. I’d gone over there a few times, though I had to be careful. The pirate clan that operated out of that area seemed to be one of the really violent ones. They had some kind of deal with the factories to our south, providing slave workers and such, taking away drugs and medicines and whatever else the factories made.

  Twice I’d seen Hunters sally forth from that spire. Once they’d come screaming overhead, as I cowered under a ledge and prayed they wouldn’t see me. They’d gone after the civets, that time, sweeping through the factory and dragging a half dozen of them screaming into the air with their grapnel cannons. Then they’d flown back to their spire, their laughter echoing across the kilometers of Barrens, their laughter amplified beyond human voices.

  I’d been half afraid, half hopeful that they’d gotten Ted, when I’d first got back to the civet camp. But he’d just been hiding under a set of metal stairs, his face whiter than a sheet.

  I wasn’t proud of that part of me. But I knew it was a practical part that I needed to survive. Ted and I weren’t making the Marks we needed to survive. Every bit of food we had to buy was a bit more money we had to steal or be for… and Ted wasn’t good at stealing. He did alright begging, but neither of us were making enough off that to even warrant the time… except we had nothing else to do.

  I’d considered trying to set up some kind of shop, trying to sell some of the electronics the civets repaired. But they were extremely possessive. I’d tried to explain the idea of fixing other people’s stuff or selling what they had. This had generally broken down into arguments about not being able to trust humans and how it was all too much risk. Plus they didn’t want to give up their stuff.

  I’d learned that some of the electronics they wore, like Lokka, were jammers. Apparently they’d been implanted, just like human slaves. Maybe if I’d recovered my parent’s data, I could have tried the quicksilver to help them, but I somehow doubted they’d trust me to inject them with something.