Warlord of New York City

by Leo Champion

  Its main feature was a long table; some servant, as happy to serve the new boss as the old, had placed jugs of ice water and some empty glasses on it.

  He glanced at his watch. It was about five minutes to eight, after a few hours of uneasy sleep on a bed so soft he’d been suspicious. Tenement bosses lived well – he thought he’d known that, as an airborne, but the reality was wow. The Reverend’s old suite had shelves of books he was going to enjoy reading, and the shower, in an entire bathroom that was all his own, had been wonderfully hot. That, more than anything, had coaxed the tension from his body and he’d wanted to stay longer in there… but no, if he wanted to keep the precinct, he had to get to work.

  So he’d forced himself out of the shower after ten wonderful minutes, only to find clean clothes waiting for him – a pressed uniform of black trousers and a long-sleeved green shirt, his boots shined. Perhaps from the same servant who’d put out the water in this room?

  Hammer stood behind his seat at the head of the table as people filed in for the eight o’clock meeting. First in was Jacopo Benzi, Hammer’s former corporal team-leader and now Colonel of the military, second man in the precinct. He was a big, shaven-headed man of thirty-eight with the scars and hard-eyes of a twenty-five-year combat veteran, and he wore his officer’s shirt and gold eagle insignia like a gorilla in a tuxedo. He took the first seat to Hammer’s right.

  Major Don Karstein, Second Company’s former commander, was ten years older than Benzi, a scarred, heavily tanned man with a beaked nose and a bushy dark-blond monobrow. On each shoulder of his uniform was triple-tracked gold major’s insignia, and he placed a pad on the desk as he moved, limping slightly, to Hammer’s left, opposite Benzi.

  Hoshi came in, looking hung-over but alert, gaping a little at the inside of the rooms. Someone like the scarred, top-knotted streetganger was more used to abandoned buildings than the Chapel; he, Hammer, had at least had a few months of acclimatization to the tenement. Neither Hoshi nor any of his streetgangers would ever have been this far inside a tenement before, not one of its important buildings. He shrugged and took the first place available, then poured himself a glass of water. Hammer acknowledged him with a quiet nod.

  Kimberli Karstein was a pretty, short-haired, blonde woman in her early thirties, not as dark-skinned as her half-brother. She was Don Karstein’s younger sister and the precinct’s former intelligence officer, responsible for snitches internally and what little external data-gathering the Reverend’s administration had bothered with. She took the seat on Hammer’s left, between her brother and Hoshi.

  After them came Charlie Marder, a tall, lean, yellowy-skinned white airborne with a droopy, waxed black handlebar moustache and Mia diIorio, the Marauders’ olive-skinned goth number two, whose black leather outfit was festooned with a collection of short knives that would have done a sewerganger proud. They took the last two side seats and Marder looked at Hammer before reaching for the water jug. Last into the room, closing the doors behind her, was Ali Benzi, Jacopo’s early-thirties younger sister. She wore her old green-and-jeans soldier’s uniform and carried a pad. There was a wireless headset around her face, its mic dangling.

  “Be seated, everyone,” Hammer said. There was a buzz as people took seats.

  “Ali, tell the guards we’re not to be disturbed outside emergencies,” Hammer said.

  Ali said something into her mouthpiece.

  Hammer reached into his pockets and took out a handful of insignia.

  “First order of business, official promotions,” he said. It felt a bit redundant; Jacopo Benzi and Don Karstein had eagerly seized the higher-ranking insignia last night. But there were others…

  “Hoshi, you never wanted to retire as raff and you said they weren’t gonna take you as a tenement guard.” He slid a pair of gold double-tracks over the table’s polished surface in the streetganger’s direction. “Tenement captain a little more to your liking? Find yourself a uniform to stick that metal on, too.”

  “Fuck yeah,” said Hoshi. “I get to rank up my boys?”

  “Check with me before announcing anything. Tell me you can read at least a little bit?”

  Hoshi gave a shrug. “Who the fuck can read?”

  “Officers can,” said Hammer. “Learn. In the meantime, Ali, note that this man needs a secretary.”

  Hammer slid another pair of captain’s tracks across to Marder, who took them and held one up to the light as if inspecting a microchip.

  “Captain Marder.” And a single gold lieutenant’s bar to DiIorio: “Again, get yourselves uniforms. Second order of business: military reorganization.”

  He turned to Jacopo Benzi, who’d been tasked last night with starting that.

  “OK,” the new colonel said. “The deal is as follows: Reverend had two hundred fifty guards in five companies. First Company was the enforcers, picked for loyalty from good families. They’re all gone, the ones who weren’t killed yesterday. Third Company stayed loyal too, their survivors. That gives us three companies that didn’t, about a hundred and fifty people – but a lot of the officers and some of the grunts from those ones have gone as well. Actual strength closer to a hundred and ten soldiers in three companies.

  “Boss, you said to flesh that back out to two hundred and fifty, five companies again. A lot of the better corporals are now sergeants and lieutenants. We’ve got about fifty streetgangers who think they can take the discipline of being soldiers, and the rest are civilian volunteers – a lot of them raff, but also a surprising number of clerks and techs. They’re on probationary half-pay until they prove themselves. We’ve also got Captain Hoshi’s new Sixth Company, which you said to treat as independent skirmishers.”

  “Sixth Company needs the weapons you promised,” Hoshi complained. “Part of this deal was real weapons for my guys.”

  Hammer met the streetganger’s eyes. “Top priority once we have money.” He needed the streetgangers and the airbornes as a counter to the main force and the raff mobs…

  “Before we move too far past the subject,” Don Karstein said, “I have some names for promotion.” He slid a printed list across the table to Hammer, a copy of it across to Jacopo Benzi.

  Hammer glanced at the names. The ones he recognized were mostly Second Company sergeants and corporals.

  “Noted,” said Hammer. “Also noted is how you appointed Second’s lieutenant to acting command of Fifth Company without telling me or the Colonel first.”

  “It’s only acting command, and Lieutenant Haskins is a good soldier,” said Major Karstein.

  Yeah, and it put two of the three remaining regular companies under Karstein’s people. Hammer didn’t like that. On the other hand, removing the man would be politically troublesome now he’d been appointed. He would stay a lieutenant, though.

  “It’ll stand for now,” Hammer said. He glared at Karstein. “I appreciate your bringing Second Company in on my side. I owe you, which is why you’re here now. Pull that shit again and you’re relieved. Clear?”

  Karstein mumbled something and looked away.

  “I didn’t get that,” said Hammer. “Are we clear, Karstein?”

  “We’re clear.”

  “Good. Jacopo, how is the new First Company starting off?”

  “That’s what we’re calling the armed clerks, techs, and raff, is it?” Jacopo Benzi asked. “They’re not organized and they’re not trained. I’d be surprised if any of them can load a musket ball in under thirty seconds, and I could personally take any five combined in a hand-to-hand match.”

  “Then bring them up to speed,” said Hammer. “Appoint corporals and sergeants, and check with me before you appoint a captain.”

  “I was thinking of my sister,” said Benzi.

  Ali Benzi looked up sharply from where she’d been scribbling notes on her pad at the foot of the table, maybe transcribing minutes.

  “You want me to be a captain?”

  “You need some rank,” her big brother pointed out. “And bei
ng the boss’ assistant isn’t a full-time job.”

  “It’s going to be,” said Hammer. “If you want it.”

  “I’m not fit to command a company,” said Ali.

  “I’ll give you a good lieutenant,” said Jacopo.

  Hammer raised a flat hand, interjecting.

  “Captain Ali Benzi, you are now my chief of staff. If you want that job.”

  He trusted the Benzis as much as he could trust anyone in the tenement, and he had to trust some people.

  “I’m going to take stock of the military and see who we have left. Jacopo, Karstein, I’m going to be taking a hands-on role in appointing people. I want competence, not birth. We do not appoint people to leadership positions to repay them for political favors.”

  “We owe people for bringing this off,” Don Karstein pointed out. “You owe me, and I called in favors myself.”

  “Incompetent well-born people,” Hammer said softly, “get people under them killed. You can suggest people for rank, Karstein, but I have final say. Is that understood?”

  Karstein’s eyes met Hammer’s for a long moment before he looked down.

  “Understood,” said the major.

  I do not trust that guy, thought Hammer. He could easily envisage a scenario where Don Karstein took the military, two of the three remaining regular companies now being under his appointees anyway, to kick him out or worse. That was why he needed a counter; he needed Hoshi’s streetgangers and the armed raff and the airbornes. He needed them trained, effective and up to speed sooner rather than later. But a boss had to compartmentalize…

  “Item third,” he said, as though the little spat with his third-in-command hadn’t just happened, “is our financial position. Mr. Lock, who is now our head of production, was up at Times Square liquidating the precinct’s luxury cars. He’s on his way back now with a hundred and eighty-five grand.”

  Hoshi wolf-whistled. Marder and DiIorio looked impressed while the Benzis tried not to. The Karsteins weren’t.

  “As Major and Captain Karstein know, most of this is already pre-committed to industrial supply orders and glop from the Exchanges. Basic running costs of the precinct. The balance will improve during the day as more loads go to the Exchanges and out. Lock tells me that the workers, the clerks, and especially the technicians seem to be going to their jobs, for now.”

  “It won’t last,” said Don Karstein. “Pretty much the entire Chapel’s upper management, with the exception of our brother and your old squad leader’s dad James Beppe, are gone. Nobody to allocate resources or work out problems. But there are good people from middle families we can promote.”

  The major opened his folder again and handed Hammer another list of twenty-five or so names, which he scanned. None of these ones, he knew. A handful of the surnames he recognized implied them to be lesser-associate families, not the skilled clerks and technicians Hammer suspected would be the good ones.

  “Upper-management salaries and bonuses make up about twenty-five percent of the precinct’s operating expenses,” Hammer said flatly. “We keep those positions vacant for the time being. Your friends are welcome to apply for those jobs then. Until then, we save money on their salaries. Because item four, Reverend Garson.”

  The room erupted in a buzz, everyone wanting to talk at once. Hammer gave it two seconds and then brought the flat of his hand down, hard, on the table. Everyone shut up and turned his way.

  “Kimberli, brief us on where he is and where he’s gonna be.”

  “Rev and his exiles have rooms in the Independent Hotel, for now,” Kim Karstein said. “They’re definitely negotiating with the Changs, maybe others as well. When they make a deal, bad news is going to come down on us from all directions.”

  “I know,” said Hammer, trying to keep the dourness out of his tone. “But the Changs got bloodied when they faced you two” – he gestured at Marder and Hoshi – “working together.”

  God that had been glorious to watch – exactly as he’d envisaged it in his daydreams, a perfectly center-of-street and center-of-rushing-force bomb distribution, half-decent glick for once instead of the tepid firecracker shit the Airedale’s vendors sometimes sold, a blaze of flames and explosions that sent bodies flying and disarrayed heads. On a moving target from four hundred feet!

  And then Hoshi’s small horde of streetgangers had pounced, bursting through the acrid bombsmoke to emerge hacking and stabbing into the midst of the stunned and utterly disarrayed tenement soldiers, who as an organized force in a fair fight would have sliced apart the undisciplined streeter rabble.

  But the precision airstrike meant it hadn’t been a fair fight: a hundred and fifty soldiers had come east down Prince Street and almost half their number had been left behind dead while the rest fled. Because the streeter rabble had been attacking shaken and stunned men no better-organized, at that moment, than they themselves were. Total vindication of theories he’d spent years putting together… now that had been satisfying. And it had given him the precinct.

  Eyes were on him and he realized he’d been lost in thought for at least a couple of moments.

  “You think if streetgangers can kick tenement ass like that, imagine what competent soldiers could do,” said Don Karstein. “Assuming it wasn’t a fluke.”

  “You calling my boys un-compe—you talking shit about my crew?” Hoshi demanded, looking down the table over Kimberli Karstein at the monobrowed major.

  “I’m saying if professional soldiers practiced that drill,” said Don Karstein flatly, “they would have fired their own volley first and moved in step to block, engage and wipe out the entire enemy force. I’m also wondering how a force would deal with that tactic.”

  Well, he has been an officer all his life, thought Hammer. He’d need to pump this man’s brain further…

  “Four hundred feet those loads were dropped from,” said Marder proudly.

  “So get practicing,” Hammer told them. “Get some flyers up into streetganger country and start learning to work together.”

  “Boss, we’re fresh out of anything but rocks,” said Marder. “I dug into gang savings to fund what got you this precinct, and we could urgently use some reimbursement.”

  “Ali, reimburse him as soon as Lock returns,” said Hammer immediately. “Marder, we need armed flyers ready on short notice. This means you need to move a little bit closer than the Upper East Side. Like, to somewhere overlooking the Washington or the Charles.”

  Marder shook his head slowly.

  “Boss, my grounders, everyone is there. That was a prime roof.”

  “We’ll find you another prime roof. You need a couple of squads to escort your grounders over?”

  “Street dirt,” grimaced Mia DiIorio with feeling. “We’ll ferry them, they’ll fly.”

  Street dirt, thought Hammer wryly. He’d lived and died by that credo himself for thirty years, hadn’t he? It was a matter of religious honor for airbornes never to soil their feet with the street-level ground. That happened when you were shot down, never by choice; in that context it represented the worst of failure and usually death.

  There were airbornes in their thirties – Hammer had met them, retired to guild slots at the Airedale or a place like that, while others became tenement agents and fixers – who had never been to street level. He only had once, until that horrible night over Hell’s Kitchen that had seen his gang wiped out and himself not just dishonored with street dirt, but far worse.

  The sewergangers had cuffed him and thrown him into a locked room but they hadn’t searched him so thoroughly as to find the lockpick in his shoe. He’d soon gotten himself free, then the other three prisoners – two of them being the Benzi siblings, at the time just unknown voices in the darkness. They’d still been in a cell, unarmed but ready to jump whoever opened the door next, probably at least one of them getting badly cut or killed in the process of mobbing that guy, and no idea where to go from there… when the door had opened.

  From behind a blindin
g light, an incongruous accent – because what the hell was upper-class arkie doing in the sewers – had thrown him a spear and given them directions that had led them to the surface, past several very dead sewergangers.

  “Strange shit happens underground,” was all either Benzi would say about what had happened then. “Don’t worry about it, just be glad it happened.”

  But the incident had bugged Hammer since then, coming up in his mind every so-often: who the hell had it been behind the blinding light with the aristocratic voice?

  Marder had made noises agreeing with his number two, but Hammer shook his head.

  “There’s worse things than street dirt. You want to stay airbornes, stay on the Upper East Side and go with God. You’re tennies now. Tennie officers. You can still live on a rooftop, but get to Sally” – Sally Denonile was the Marauders’ chief grounder – “and tell her to prepare for a move. Mia, find a suitable place. Tonight.”

  Marder looked like he was about to say something, but didn’t. DiIorio simply jotted things down on a bit of crumpled paper she’d brought in.

  “OK,” said Hammer. “Meeting” – what was the word he’d heard from the TV – “adjourned.”

  * * *

  “Boss,” came Ali’s voice from the front desk. “Lock’s back.”

  “Send him in,” Hammer mouthed back, getting up from the laptop computer he’d been focused on. He’d used public computers at the Exchange, but this was the first one he’d ever had to himself. He’d been looking through the tenement records and trying to understand the production spreadsheets. And there were already twenty people waiting to see him… people he needed the clerk’s advice on, because he himself was lost here.

  The clerk came in with a briefcase. They were in Hammer’s personal office, a big corner room on the fourth floor that had been the Reverend’s until yesterday. Last night it had been covered in fallen plaster from the bombing but someone had cleaned most of that up, and taken down the Reverend’s wall of glory photos.