‘Where’s Sander?’
She shrugged. ‘How should I know?’
‘You know what’s going on, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do. He left right after you went on your delivery gig. He had more important places to be. He asked me to take care of you, but I’m not sure you belong.’
He left me here. That no-good son of— Why? Why did he do this to me? How do I go home now?
‘Get me to Runcor, then.’
She chuckled. ‘That will be difficult. It’s a slow season for anything headed that way. It’s always a slow season with Runcor. Except… I believe I heard the Runners had a recent bombing gig around there. Don’t know the details, though.’
‘Bombing gig?’
‘You wanted to know who killed your father, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I’m sure the Runners organised the bombs.’
‘The Runners? Who are they?’ The blood throbbed through my veins as my heart pounded faster.
‘The problem is that you don’t want to know.’
‘No. I want to!’
She grinned. ‘Just like coming here, you might not have a way back once you cross the line with those guys.’
Maybe she was right, but I wanted to find my father’s killers. I didn’t like what the Sweeps did, and wanted to get out, but if I could use them to get whoever bombed the building, it would be worth the pain. Avenging my father was the priority.
‘I’d do anything to avenge him,’ I said, with a newfound resolve.
The corner of her mouth tilted slightly upwards. ‘Well then, come and look at this.’
She stepped across the control room to a massive screen and flicked through a few menus and lists, and a video started playing on the screen. It had a timestamp on the corner and showed a small craft landing in some city, with about a dozen men in black running out, and forming around a tall building. The feed cut a few hours forward, to daylight, and showed the same building collapse in an explosion.
I didn’t recognise the building, but I understood what she had meant. ‘Looks familiar.’
‘Wait, there’s more.’
The video showed another city and the same craft flying in, a similar number of black-clad folks running out, and then cut to the exploding building. Three more examples followed, of buildings ranging from modern Jindalar temples to Andron technology centres.
‘What is this?’ I asked. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘The Sweeps are connected deep in the Ghostnet… over there, this is the Runners’ advertising.’
‘So, that’s what the Runners do.’
She nodded. ‘And as far as I know, the business is lucrative, and the Runners are professionals. They don’t get caught, and until they strike, they remain hidden in plain sight.’
‘There must be some way to get to them.’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but your problem will be that they’re just the tool. A gun will kill a person, but it’s not the gun that decides.’
Tool or no tool, if the Runners were behind my father’s murder, I wanted to get them. ‘Where can I find them?’
She laughed. ‘Look at you, all feisty. What are you going to do when you find them?’ she said and pulled the gun from her hip. She pointed it at me.
Instinctively I raised my hands, closed my eyes, and turned my head. I had never been held at gunpoint. The thought of a trigger being pulled and a plasma bolt flying right through me was terrifying. I held my breath.
She laughed. As I dared to take a peek, she holstered the gun. ‘Your brother’s gone, and you need to toughen up. Sander is in another system, and there are no ships headed to your backwater before he returns in three months. Meanwhile, if you wish to have food and shelter here, you’d better work. It’ll toughen you up, too.’
Three months! I hated Sander for leaving me on this rock and I hated what the Sweeps had had me do. But if the Runners had killed my father, I hated them even more. Even though I couldn’t forgive Sander, I wanted to find my father’s killers. That’s why I was there in the first place.
‘I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get my father’s killers.’
‘Let’s make a deal. It will be about ninety days before your brother gets back. During that time, you work for me, and I’ll find out whatever I can about your father.’
There was nothing else I could do and nowhere else to go. Three months was a long time, but still, perhaps I could make something out of it. If what Jude said about the Runners was true, maybe I could dig deeper.
I had told Tiana I would be back soon, and now if I was staying longer, I would have to tell her the full story. But it wasn’t as easy as that. I found myself in my small quarters, sitting on the bunk trying to compose a message to her. But words failed me: how could I tell her I would be gone for three months and would miss applying for the Academy of Virtuous Knowledge? For me, the ends justified the means, but she wouldn’t understand. Already I missed her, and wanted to send her a message before she grew worried. I needed time to think.
To my surprise, time passed quickly with the Sweeps. I worked mostly in collections, getting people to pay their due debts. You’d think they’d need some serious bad guys to do it, but no, the threat of those guys was enough. Sometimes the clients called our bluff, and we did what the Sweeps did best: strike unannounced, strike to where it hurt the most, and strike hard. Delivering bombs or sending fighter squadrons was the Sweeps’ way of kicking someone in the balls. It wasn’t honourable, nor was it pretty, but it was effective.
At first, my conscience fought against me, and I had to spend a lot of energy trying to preserve my integrity, and doing the right thing. But as time passed, in my mind, the right thing changed. Soon, what I thought of as the right thing and the benefit to the Sweeps were in perfect alignment. Everyone around me wanted profit and expansion—morals were a moot point. It was purely business, and business was good.
Still, I couldn’t forgive Sander for his cheap trick—he’d surely gotten a recruiting bounty off me—and planned what I would do when I saw him again: most options involved the hard knuckles of my fist meeting his mouth at top speed. I could deal with Sander, but with Tiana it wasn’t as straightforward. I still hadn’t sent a message back to her; I tried, many times, but never found the right words, and every passing day made contacting her more difficult; I spent my nights thinking about what she might have been doing and wondering if she ever thought of me.
At the end of the first month, Jude presented me with what she called a cookie: a small round device, like a polished approximation of a real cookie. With my DNA inside the seamless frame, the cookie worked as a method of authentication between the Ghostnet members. Like a passport for outlaws, it was a graduation gift that signified I was a real Sweepster and part of the underworld.
In my second month with the Sweeps, Naido and I got to visit the biggest casino complex in the Dawn Alliance-controlled space. The five-spoked Centurion space station in the Vegasos system held the Ace of Spades, Sweeps’ flagship casino.
It was a reward for a job well done, and we got to hit the casino with one million terabucks each. It was all the Sweeps’ money, but we could keep the winnings. Use them or lose them, they said.
‘Let’s play some Jester,’ I said, as we cleared the lobby. A colourful sign invited players towards the tables.
‘You know how to play?’
‘No,’ I said, as it was the first time I had set foot in a casino, ‘but I’d like to try.’
Naido stopped with a serious gaze. ‘You know what happens when a man with money meets a man with experience?’
‘Huh?’ I failed to understand his question.
‘Simple: the man with experience ends up with the money and the man with the money ends up with experience.’
I thought about it, then chuckled. ‘Nice one.’
‘Jester is a game of skill,’ he said. ‘Those professional players would bleed us dry. Our best bet is on games of pure luck. The Zag’ong has the best return pe
rcentage, while the Bank-Bang has the biggest jackpot.’
I glanced at the signs. The Bank-Bang jackpot was over a hundred million terabucks and rising. ‘The Bank.’
‘Why not?’ Naido said.
We sat down in front of two colourful Bank-Bang terminals. I swiped the card that held my bonus money, which worked as if it were real. I chose a small bet and let the bank notes run. I hit some streaks, but the payouts were scant and didn’t cover the cost of the bet. Even so, I had trouble using even one percent of my bankroll. Meanwhile, Naido had ploughed through a third of his.
‘Mate, you need to up your bet,’ he said. ‘With five terabucks, you’re not even eligible for the jackpot.’
I followed his example and upped my bet to ten thousand. I just thought about the amount I was spewing with every roll, but told myself it was play money, and let myself enjoy the thrill.
It didn’t take me long to get down to my last ten thousand. The previous roll turned three Bangs in a row, and my heart skipped a beat.
The fourth one. ‘Check this out.’
‘Wow,’ Naido said, as the fifth one appeared.
My palms were sweating, and a smile curved my lips with the sixth Bang on the screen. If the next one were Bank, I’d be the jackpot winner.
‘Bank, Bank, Bank…’ Naido chanted, and I joined him.
The seventh sign rolled in, and a bank… slipped slowly past, only to give way to a spade that took the seventh spot. I missed the jackpot, but the screen blinked bright with a win: I got a division-two prize, which was a cool half-million terabucks.
A waitress in a tight black dress hurried to the scene and offered us free drinks. She handed me what looked like a cowboy hat. She called it a lucky hat and wished that the next time it’d bring the extra bit of luck I needed for the jackpot. I wasn’t one to don a wide-brimmed hat, so I gave it to Naido.
‘How does it look?’ he said.
‘Looks great, hope the luck part is great, too.’
‘Doubt it, but it’s a delightful piece. Thanks, mate.’
The hat didn’t help Naido: he ended up playing the winnings he had accumulated. I was happy with what I had won, and cashed my winnings as two gems. They were small semi-transparent red stones that each held a piece of code that translated to a quarter-million terabucks in cash.
After the break, we went back to work on the Sweeps’ business of collecting money. As the collections unit served all other Sweeps units, it gave me a unique view of the whole organisation.
The Sweeps also trained me. I learned situational awareness, so when guns appeared, I didn’t just cover my face, but had automatic reactions that helped me stay alive. They also got me into an extensive physical training regimen to toughen up my body. But still, it was the missions that built my resilience.
Once, down in Spit City, a guy king hit me, and I saw stars. But I kicked his feet from under him, and when he hit the ground, I rolled over him and pounded his face blue. Another time, a customer drew a gun on me, and shot through my jacket, the bolt scraping a bleeding wound on my side before Naido shot them down. And once, I barely made it back to base with a shuttle on fire from a short-circuited oxygen system after a collision with an asteroid.
Every single brush with death made me less scared of it.
Someone—my mother—might have said that what we did was dirty and wrong, but for me it was brilliant. My skin grew tougher, and I learned the tricks of the trade.
The family business back in Runcor now seemed sleepy. Digging dirt from the ground was trite, whereas with the Sweeps, the possibilities were limitless.
I was hooked.
Chapter Ten
One day, in the docking bay, when I was about to return to my quarters, I heard a familiar voice behind me. ‘Hello there, soldier!’
I turned around. Sander. Just then, I realised it had been three months. I had lived in this asteroid for three months. After the rough start, I had become so comfortable that I had lost track of time. And now my brother was smirking at me.
I had been waiting for this moment.
With a wide smile, I walked up to him and said, ‘Sander, so good to see you!’
Inside, I was fuming. All the pent-up anger that had been building up since he left me came crashing through the floodgates. As I approached him, just like I had planned, I took two quick steps and threw a punch right to the side of his face.
He stumbled to the side and tripped over a bollard. I held my hurting knuckles with the palm of my left hand, relishing the fact that although it hurt me, it hurt him more.
‘You blasted piece of scum,’ I said, and stomped over to him. ‘Why did you leave me here?’
He pushed himself up to sit on the floor, his long hair a mess. He swiped it back and touched the spot where I had hit him. A slight drop of blood emerged, and he winced. Looking up and meeting my gaze, he smiled.
‘You’ve learnt something during your time here,’ he said. ‘Look at you; you pack some punch.’
‘I will never forgive you for what you did,’ I said, and turned away. I didn’t want to see him anymore.
‘Bro, wait!’ he shouted.
I stopped and stood still with my back to him.
‘I didn’t mean to. It was Mr Pereen; he summoned me. I couldn’t stay. Believe me when I say I’m sorry.’
I turned around. He wasn’t acting so cool now, getting up from the floor, wiping the grime off his pants. He wore the same smug face as always, but he seemed smaller, and his eyes told me he might actually have been sorry after all. ‘What was so important you had to leave me stranded here for a hundred days?’
He swiped his hair back. Someone walked past us—Tirian, a mechanic—paying no note to our discussion. Sander said, ‘I was in Spit City. That moon is a battleground. We got a part of it, Kisha Clan has a piece, and the Runners got some, too. FIST controls the rest and is lobbying for the Dawn Alliance to grant them control over the moon. The city’s in a snafu.’
‘Did you say the Runners?’
‘They’re a group of intergalactic criminals hiding on gloomy moons, now striving for prominence in Spit City.’
As if it differs from the Sweeps, hiding inside asteroids like this, I thought. ‘They say the Runners are the ones behind Dad’s murder.’
‘I’ve heard the same rumour,’ he said. The smug expression gone, his grave face reminded me of Usher.
‘We have to find out,’ I said.
His seriousness turned into a wide grin. ‘Perhaps we could. I wasn’t planning to go back to Runcor, but hearing Jude tell me you want to bail made me think of my dear brother, wanting to return to his mother’s—’
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘You know what I want. You know why I came here with you in the first place.’
He nodded. ‘And in the hundred days on Karu-124, you’ve grown more than in the last few standard years. You were still wet behind the ears when we got here, but now you talk like a man.’
I felt almost embarrassed hearing this from my brother’s mouth. I realised I had changed. Each mission had taught me something, I had become space-smart, and through Jude and the Sweeps operatives, I had learnt the tricks of the trade. It was a tough life in space, but I had grown tougher. It wouldn’t have happened without Sander. ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’
‘It’s all right, bro. I had it coming.’ He put a hand on my shoulder, and we started walking through the docking bay.
‘How are things back at home?’
He winced. ‘Not good.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Runore is in trouble. The rebuilding sucks funds, and the shipping companies’ pilots are on strike all the time. The mayor says he’s trying to help the industry, but Usher doesn’t see it that way.’
‘What do you care? You sold your shares.’
‘I care because he’s my brother. I feel his pain,’ he said, and put his other hand on his heart. ‘I feel your pain, too, and that’s why I want to take you with me to Spit City.’
I had always wanted to see the infamous city that looked like a black sea anemone floating in space, but now I was hoping to get back home. The thought of seeing Tiana after all this time made my heart skip a beat, but so did the idea that the people who killed my father would get what they deserved. Only once I avenged him would I be worthy of Tiana’s love.
‘When do we go?’ I asked.
‘Whenever, bro. My ship’s over there. I’ve put my stuff in and I’m ready to go.’
Reacher was as beautiful as I remembered, and somehow seeing it made me feel both relief and nostalgia. Jude leaned against a railing by the ship, peering into a terminal in her hands. We stepped up to her.
‘Jude,’ Sander said, and kissed her on the cheek. As he pushed back, she slapped him in the face.
He stared at her with his mouth open and stepped back. ‘Ouch… what was that for?’
‘You know what. Don’t play with me.’
Sander glanced at me, and I thought I saw him blush. He turned to Jude and said, ‘Thanks, I guess I deserved that, too.’
‘Be sure that’s the last time,’ she said.
‘It was,’ he said, looking uncomfortable. ‘I need to take my bro to Spit City. Mr Pereen has requested him. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t. We agreed one hundred days.’ She turned her cap around. ‘But don’t think that’s all. You’ve another youngster to take with you.’
‘I don’t have room for—’
‘Yes, you do. Mr Pereen said specifically to take him with you to Spit City.’
Sander wheezed. ‘And he is?’
‘Fernando de los Angeles.’
‘Naido?’ I said, surprised.
‘Is he good?’ Sander said.
‘He’s all right,’ I said. Jude nodded along.
Sander opened his arms. ‘If you insist. Any friend of my bro is a friend of mine.’ He turned to me, and said, ‘Now get your stuff, the city’s got a job for us.’
Chapter Eleven
The tall obsidian buildings of Spit City covered the whole moon. With a circumference of just fifty kilometres, the curvature of the moon turned the spiked buildings in the distance so that they seemed to fall away from me. With the massive gas giant Heeg filling the sky with its red clouds, the atmosphere in the city was like nothing I had ever witnessed.
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