A low voice said, “Only a fool keeps a family in Big Town.”
Jackson startled and turned. There was a man they hadn’t noticed sitting in the shadows of a porch. He had a tattoo covering his neck.
“What did you say?” Tui asked.
But the man just rose and walked into his flat.
The three of them continued on. Jackson transmitted through Jane’s net, “It’s as if they’ve been warned to avoid us.”
Tui never let his perpetual smile slip as he sent back. “Us in particular? Or all strangers? I think Warlord is hiding all sorts of things.”
Katze responded. “Maybe Swindle isn’t the happy place it’s made out to be.”
“Do you think he’s telling the truth about our trip tomorrow?” Jackson asked. “Or do you think he’s going to try to eliminate us after the trade?”
“Because we’re going to tell the worlds he has mangoes?” Katze chuckled.
“More like he’s stockpiling sophisticated weapons, and not just what he’s got from us, but somebody else has been supplying him too.”
Katze didn’t seem convinced. “I’m sure the superpowers already have spies and informants here. They must know all about it. In fact, I bet he leads them to believe he has more than he actually has. Just to keep the ISF piranhas cautious.”
“Whatever the game is, we keep our eyes open,” Tui said aloud. “Stay alert.”
Both Katze and Jackson agreed to that.
There was a church sandwiched in between two bigger buildings. All over the front of the church were plastered little crosses and stars and other religious symbols. Tui walked over and looked more closely at them. “They’re names.”
Names of the dead. Jackson didn’t know that, but he was pretty sure that’s what they were.
Big Town got uglier the farther they got from the hotel. They finally came to a neighborhood that was practically a shanty town. It was so far around the orbital from the hotel that the Warlord’s palace was visible in the distance, except sideways.
“Should we turn around?” Jackson asked.
“No, look,” Katze said, pointing down a street. There was a commotion a few streets ahead and locals were flocking in that direction. There was music. Flashing lights.
“Maybe this is where the nightlife is.” Katze sounded curious. “A little concert in the park.”
They joined others walking that way. A fairly large group was gathering. An unfamiliar song was blaring as they reached the back of the crowd. This wasn’t a park. They’d taken over an intersection. Furthermore, the people already here weren’t happy. Their faces were somber.
Someone was projecting an image onto the side of a building. It was a picture of a boy, maybe nine or ten, with bruises all over his face. The video cut to another clip of a cluster of tall trees. They looked like palm trees, but these were thinner and taller than any palm tree Jackson had ever seen. Thinner with feathery leaves. In the clip, there was a small cluster of people at the base of the trees, shouting up at two kids close to the top, and waving for them to come down. A large creature suddenly flashed into the picture from the side. It leapt halfway up the tree trunk, grabbed hold, and began to scuttle up toward the children.
The people below the trees started shouting. Two women began firing guns up at the creature. All of this was playing on the wall of an apartment building, large as life. Someone had brought portable speakers. The cries of dismay from the people in the video sounded like it was happening right there in the street.
And then a woman in the picture screamed and fled from the trees. Others followed. One of the women with the guns turned to face a new threat. Another creature flashed into the picture, charging the woman. It knocked her over and bit into her neck. A third creature took the other woman down.
Up above, in the tree, the first beast bit into a boy’s leg and ripped him from his perch. The boy flailed and screamed, and then the creature changed its grip and bit into his neck. The other boy in the tree suddenly fell.
Jackson watched in horror. The tree had to be sixty, seventy feet high. The boy turned in the air, then struck the ground. Some of the people in the crowd gasped in dismay.
The boy lay stunned for a second, then tried to raise an arm. But his body was broken, and his arm looked like something out of a horror show.
Back up in the tree, the beast was feasting on the first boy’s head. The image froze. The sound cut.
The crowd was silent, their faces full of anger.
“That was number fifty-four and fifty-five,” a man said over the sound system. “Out in the red zone. Out where he promised us no children would work. Fifty-five lost this month!”
“How do we know it’s not another fake?” someone shouted. “Kalteri is always trying to stir things up.”
“Because I was there,” a man said and stepped forward. He had a fresh, livid scar running right down his bald head.
“And me,” another man said and joined the first. He was tall and built like a mountain.
“And me,” a woman said. Her face was stitched from a recent gash. “I’m the one there at the bottom. And this is what’s left of my son.” She held up part of an arm and a hand.
The crowd took a collective gasp.
“Oh damn,” exclaimed Katze.
“Could be a stage prop,” Tui sent over the link.
But Jackson wasn’t thinking of stage props. He was thinking that surely Warlord’s security forces wouldn’t be happy with this gathering. He glanced around the rooftops and poles, but there were no stationary cameras visible. There was a hornet’s nest, but one side was missing. It was clearly defunct. But that didn’t mean this happy party wasn’t being watched by a drone.
“Come and see it,” the woman declared. “Satisfy yourselves. It’s his, right down to the birthmark. How many more have to die? He lied to us. He’s importing children. Children you don’t know and sending them out. We can prove it!”
Most of these people had to be harvesters, the poor bastards who went down to the surface, and it didn’t look like they were going to give the Warlord’s operations a ten on job satisfaction. Jackson could feel the current of anger growing stronger.
Tui said, “So I think this is where we turn around.”
“Yep, time to backstroke,” Jackson agreed. Only that meant shoving their way through what seemed to be an ever-increasing number of bodies.
There was a commotion at the far edge of the crowd. A number of people began shouting and banging on something.
“Please disperse.” The voice was loud, like it was coming out of a loudspeaker. “Return to your homes.”
Jackson turned. A small security car had pulled up. The vehicle was like the ones that had driven them to the mansion, made of superlight composites and running on magnetics, only instead of sleek black, this one was painted blue with white and orange accents, like the colors Lotte and Frans had worn. Inside the car were two cops.
The warning was repeated in Spanish, and the crowd around the car started booing and throwing trash. Someone bashed a brick against the car’s window, but the plastic was far too strong.
The thump must have made the cops panic because the driver threw the vehicle in reverse. Unfortunately, some people had moved behind the car. Two of them got knocked down. Luckily, instead of running them over, the car got stuck on something. The cop gunned it anyway. A man screamed in pain. Someone else shouted, and then the mob surrounded the car and started rocking it back and forth. They got it up on two wheels and…it turned out the thing they had been stuck on was a person. His friends dragged the man they’d tried to run over clear. Three others tossed a large hunk of stone or composite under the car to keep it wedged, and then the mob really started to vent their rage on the vehicle.
The loudspeaker on the car activated again: “Step away from the car!” The driver gunned the engine again, but they were high-centered on the hunk of composite, and so the car simply zipped around in a tight circle. However, that was
enough to hurl people aside. And then the car broke free, only to slam into a security pole.
A number of harvesters charged the side of the car. One of them was wearing an exo. The men lifted. The car rose onto two wheels again, this time a bit higher. The men continued to lift, exposing the undercarriage. The wheels were spinning, and the cop might have broken free, but even an old exo could deadlift a ton. The car went onto its side, and then crashed onto its roof.
Tui put one big hand on Jackson’s shoulder and shoved. “There’s about to be riot or a murder. I don’t want to stick around for either.”
Someone tossed a clear bag of liquid that burst when it hit the car. Someone else followed the bag with a burning bit of cloth. There was a whoosh, and then a surge of orange flames leapt into the sky.
“This way.” Katze slipped into a jagged slit in the crowd. Jackson and Tui followed, weaving through people whose faces were set with hard determination.
A bloodcurdling cheer rose from the crowd behind them, and Katze picked up her pace.
And then the street sirens around the area began to sound.
“Lovely,” Tui said.
A few steps and shoves later they broke free from the press of bodies. The sky above them began to buzz. Jackson looked up, expecting hornets, but saw a swarm of fliers. There was a soft pop, and something struck one of the drones. It flipped, careened down into the side of a building, and fell to the ground. More soft pops followed.
People in the crowd were shooting at them.
“Pick up the pace,” Tui said, and moved into an all-out sprint. But Katze had already beat him to it, and the three of them ran down the middle of the street in a jagged line.
Jackson dodged a man with an eyepatch, then ran around a woman who was pulling a pistol from underneath her shirt.
Two cops in exos rounded the bend ahead of them. They were carrying shotguns, heavy drum-fed models. Jackson had seen those used on angry mobs before. They basically turned protestors into hamburger.
“Take cover.” Tui turned off the road and dashed for a clump of waist-high shrubs growing in front of a building. Katze was faster than either of them and got there first, sliding in and squatting behind the plants. Tui and Jackson crowded in behind.
“They’re not here for us,” Tui said. “Stay down and we’ll just wait here until they pass by. This isn’t our problem.”
“It’s a regular peace and daisy festival,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, and you forgot to get me a flower,” Tui retorted.
The little clump was barely big enough for the three of them to hide, but a man was suddenly shoving Jackson from behind, also trying to take cover with them. He was so grimy his odor just about knocked Jackson out.
“Back off, scrub,” Jackson warned.
“What’s going on?” Tui asked the stranger.
“Fah no pay callum,” the man said. “You dem blind?”
Or something like that. Some Bigtowner dialect or language that Jane’s codes didn’t have translations for.
“We aren’t from here,” Katze said.
“You be lucky dan,” the man said. He had odd eyes.
Jackson wondered if they were mechanical and peered closer, but the man rose, extended some kind of gun, and shot one of the cops.
“Shanks!” Jackson hadn’t seen that coming.
The gun didn’t make a huge bang. He wasn’t throwing lead. It was something else. But the cop that Stink Man had hit grasped his neck and stumbled.
“For con hala,” Stink Man said, then pointed his gun at the other cop who was targeting two men down the street. But the cop saw the danger, and sprang up, a huge leap that took him at least a story high.
The gun popped again. But this time whatever he was shooting bounced off the cop’s body armor. This was not good. Jackson and the others had picked that spot because it was a good place to hide. The bum had picked it because it was a good ambush point. And they were now going to draw fire.
With superhuman speed, Tui grabbed Jackson by the arm and pulled him up. “Run!”
Stink Man kept shooting. A moment later, a flier buzzed from over the building. There was a tat, tat, tat.
“Hobo down!” Katze said as they ran for their lives.
The guy might have still been alive. Drone guns were usually small caliber to save weight. But then the exo cop opened up on the bush with his automatic shotgun and shredded everything. Jackson didn’t dare look back. It took everything he had to keep up with the two augmented former soldiers ahead of him.
They made it half a block before Tui suddenly looked back. “Get down!”
They took cover behind a pile of trash and old crates. Jackson was squatting there, trying to catch his breath, when he heard heavy footsteps walking down the street in their direction.
The mech wasn’t a huge one. It couldn’t be if you wanted to navigate these streets. It was maybe a nine-footer. More of a glorified, armored exo than a proper mech, but a nine-footer could still pack a punch. Still moving, the mech lifted a rotary cannon and banged out three rounds that arced down the street, trailing smoke. He lobbed them right into the mob, an easy shot for anything with a targeting computer. A moment later, there were three bangs, and gas began to pour out.
Jackson caught movement out of the side of his eye up on top of one of the buildings. Another small mech was up there, jumping from roof to roof, running with huge, powered strides. Three hovercars with flashing lights flew overhead. One opened up bay doors. And that’s when the hornets finally came flying out. A huge black cloud of them.
The mob was about to get dispersed, whether they liked it or not.
Jackson waited nervously, hoping nobody had spotted the three Tar Heelers behind the trash. But the mech that had launched the gas canisters stomped past to engage the crowd.
“Wait,” Tui whispered.
They waited long enough to hear a series of screams and gunshots.
“Now we go,” Tui said.
* * *
Sam Fain straddled his motorcycle at the end of the street, watching the police engage the rioters. What a mess. What a waste. It was time for a purging. Long past time. He’d told Warlord this was coming. He predicted the dissidents would grow and act out if he wasn’t given a free rein to take necessary action. Malcontents were like weeds, and weeds were controlled best by removal, early and often.
“This is Fain. Have you identified the instigators yet?”
“Facial recognition caught Mion and Eberle,” one of his security team transmitted back. “There’s a third man with them we can’t match.”
Somebody smuggled in by the Originals, then.
“He’s a big man. They’re on the run.”
“Visual,” Fain said.
An overhead view of this part of the city appeared in front of Fain’s eyes. It wasn’t a projected image because Fain, just this last year, had been fitted with a next-gen mod that fed directly into his optic nerves. It was much better than depending on some external display that could be broken or knocked away. The targets popped up on his display. They’d been tagged. He watched them for a second, saw where the trio was running.
“They’re armed and dangerous,” Fain’s security man transmitted “They just gunned down a squad from the fourth precinct.”
“Continue to track them,” Fain said. “But don’t interdict. Leave that to me.”
“Yes sir.”
Fain’s computer plotted his route and he was just about to give his cycle some throttle when he spotted some familiar faces among those trying to get away from the chaos.
Fain blinked. His mind processed what he was seeing. It was three of the gun runners who had been meeting with the governor earlier. The trio ran along the front of a building, then turned down a narrow alley and sprinted away.
Fain watched them go and wondered. You couldn’t have an uprising without weapons. And if that prick Graf had pulled back his support from the Warlord, then Kalteri would want to accelerate whatever
plans he had and send over ordnance for the dissidents here. Who better to deliver arms than an arms dealer? Especially one that had Warlord’s trust.
Fain called the tech back. “Have you been tracking the crew of the Tar Heel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are three near my current position. Put a flier on them.”
There was a momentary pause.
“Yes sir, we have them. We will track them.”
“Good. Make sure they go directly back to their hotel.” Fain twisted the throttle and his motorcycle leapt forward. Fain leaned into it. It was a security vehicle, so unlike most of the transportation allowed inside Big Town, the electric motorcycle didn’t have a governor to limit the speed. Furthermore, he had access to the traffic protocols. A signal was sent ahead, alerting all pedestrians and traffic to clear the way, and if they didn’t? Too bad. He took the next right, leaning low into the corner. He straightened and opened it up to full speed for the next three blocks, not worrying about traffic because the eyes in the sky would alert him if anything was in the way. Fain raced down the road, silent as death.
Even as quick as he was moving, he knew his grendel would keep up. Greyhound thin, but twice as fast, it would be shadowing him, leaping from rooftop to rooftop.
Fain reached his destination, parked his bike, and was waiting when the criminal ringleaders appeared, out of breath, and thinking that they’d gotten away. He knew them all from their files. J.D. Mion was a thin man who worked on the gas lines at the CX plant. Aus Eberle was a blond with a scar on his face who’d fought as a sniper in the orbital’s gang war. Like most of the gangsters, he’d had to get a real job and was in the engineering detail now. The final man, the unknown, was at least a head taller than either of them. A head taller than Fain himself. With a broad chest and thick-muscled arms.
Fain aimed and shot three times. He hit each one in the neck with a small dart.
The men yanked them out. They’d been planning on starting a riot. They’d probably juiced for that in anticipation.
Eberle tossed his dart to the ground and sneered. “You’re going to have to do better than a little sleep juice, pig.”
Gun Runner Page 17