by Leo Champion
“All three were pretty fucked up. Are you sure they’re going to be useful in time for what’s coming?”
“Don’t need legs except for balance, in the air. We’ll rig up some kind of a net to help ‘em land. It won’t be comfortable or pleasant, but that’s not my problem.”
“How do you know you can trust them?” the colonel asked.
“Canis is an airborne. His wings are his life and his word is his life. If he turns out to have broken a witnessed agreement, he’s never going to get another run anyway. Who’ll hire a liar?”
Benzi was silent for a moment.
“You offered him a good deal. Why didn’t you take him for life, if his word is supposed to be good?”
“Jacopo, I’ve got him for three or four years as it is. Two, I don’t want slaves. He’d resent that.”
“Nice trick you pulled with the balloons, by the way. I’m wondering why nobody else ever thought of that.”
“I’m just glad nobody had,” Hammer said. “But they could see the same movies I saw. Give us some winds and the fighting kites ought to work, too.”
“Wiped out two gangs as it was,” said Benzi with a grin.
Yeah. Six fliers sent on their one-ways to Candyland Mountain. Canis and the other two alive only because he said so. At the cost of…
Too many of his own. Too damn many of his own.
Benzi saw the look on Hammer’s face.
“So you’re not going to kill the hirelings,” he said. “I assume that means you’re going after the boss instead. That fucking Rev killed thirty-plus people! But you can’t bomb the Independent Hotel…”
The colonel’s tone implied the matter was at least potentially open to debate, which made Hammer laugh coldly. It had been his first thought, too, but it hadn’t survived a millisecond.
“You suppose right,” he said. “I’m not going to give that order and if I did, Marder would laugh in my face and walk. We took care never to even dispose of surplus ordnance over Times Square, Jacopo. Unless you think we need to pick a fight with Kalashov right now?”
“We’ve got to do something,” Benzi growled.
“We are,” said Hammer. “I’ve sent a man to Times Square with twenty grand for bounties. Ten on the Rev, five on his son the heir, five on Moncreve.”
“None on our old company commander?” Jacopo asked. “He was with Moncreve when they went to make the order…”
“He’d be fourth on the list,” said Hammer. Captain Daniel Garson had been the Reverend’s second son and commander of Fourth Company. He’d been a hardened soldier but a thoughtless and arrogant leader whose mistakes had gotten men killed.
“If we had another five grand… but we don’t. This drains any strategic reserve we might have, and Lock advised against it – but we can’t let this go un-answered or we look weak. Nobody’s going to make a kill in the Independent for that little, but - perhaps he’ll be someone’s target of opportunity, maybe he’ll leave the hotel, and it can’t help their negotiation with the Changs.”
* * *
Actually implementing the declaration of housing ownership, Hammer was realizing as he read Lock’s proposal for that, would ironically require him to bring back the Housing Registry just to keep track of who owned what. Well, they could at least name it differently?
It was almost a relief when Ali buzzed him.
“Boss, Kim Karstein needs to see you. Says it’s urgent and critical. I agree with her,” his chief of staff said in the same urgent tone as when she’d practically interrupted his speech. Now it made him sit up sharply; he was learning to take that tone very seriously.
“Send her in.”
Karstein was accompanied by a handsome young sergeant and an armorer with leather-gloved hands cradling a black scoped crossbow.
“What’s so urgent that it has to interrupt my” – Hammer glanced dourly at Lock’s proposal, which seemed reasonable enough, he only had a couple of questions – “civil administration?”
“You know there’s ten thousand on your head,” said Karstein flatly, as Ali Benzi said something to one of her assistants and closed the door with herself inside the office watching from the doorway.
“You know there’s ten grand on Carl Garson’s, now.” He was no longer willing to credit the murdering son of a bitch with any titles.
“I heard,” said Karstein. “I hope we both know that nobody is going to risk the Independent Hotel’s security for less than fifty. But right now we’re talking about your personal security, not the former Reverend’s. There may have been two attempts on your life today, not just the bombing raid.”
“Okay,” said Hammer. “Start from the beginning.”
Kimberli Karstein had heard a rumor. Investigating, it turned out that people sheltering from the bombs in an alley between buildings had seen a figure – male, female, or sewerganger, they’d disagreed upon – come stumbling down a fire escape and into a manhole shortly after the attack.
First priority had been to investigate the manhole, but the reports had been twenty minutes old and nobody was willing to go down there in pursuit. It was now being plugged back up.
Second priority had been to investigate where the figure who’d unplugged a manhole and disappeared down it, had been coming from.
“Because Boss, anomalies don’t just happen. We knew for a fact that someone came down from this roof to go through the manhole, which implies a certain confidence in their ability to deal with what we all know lurks down there,” Karstein insisted. “So I assigned Squad Kwan to investigate the rooftop our friend was fleeing down from. Sergeant?”
“Boss,” said the flat-faced brown sergeant with Karstein. “We did a sweep and found – this weapon.”
The armorer, a muscular balding man with a neat square grey beard, held up the crossbow.
“Amidst some tomatoes, directly overlooking the balcony of this building,” said Karstein.
“Nice weapon,” remarked Hammer. “Mind if I take a look?”
The armorer stepped forward and presented the weapon to Hammer, who inspected it. Was it really that light? Gingerly he picked it up. It was even lighter, but the unfamiliar materials had a solidly strong feel to them regardless. He knew crossbows, he’d handled them most of his airborne life, and holy crap was this a fine one.
“Someone was watching me through this scope,” said Hammer, raising it and drawing a breath. Digital optics and good ones. He’d heard of weapons this good. Some of them had names.
“Warren, tell him what you know about this weapon,” Kimberli Karstein said.
“Yes ma’am. Boss Hammer, you’re appreciating that this isn’t just any crossbow. This is to most street weapons what an M-4 is to a pipe musket,” said the armorer. “It’s handcrafted, probably customized to its original owner; Boss Hammer, that fancy scope might be the cheapest part of it. This has the mark of a Pachmayr.”
Hammer cocked his head slightly, not recognizing the name.
“California armorers – the family goes back centuries. Boss, this is a fifty-grand crossbow. There are probably not more than a couple of dozen circle-P weapons total in the conurbation. ”
“And one of those two dozen owners was watching you with this one, Boss,” said Karstein. “Someone who can afford a fifty-thousand crossbow – and is still willing to get out of bed for a ten-grand bounty. But then this guy chooses not to fire.”
“Or he missed,” Hammer observed. The crossbow was empty.
Karstein and the armorer both shook their heads.
“It’s a hundred yards and change from that point to the Chapel balcony,” Karstein said. “Through the scope, and remember that this person then went on to escape down a manhole with all of what that implies. But any of First Company’s raff recruits could have made that shot with this weapon. You’re alive because someone who could afford a fifty-grand crossbow decided this morning wasn’t going to be your time after all, Boss.”
“I feel oddly ungrateful for that.” He lo
oked at Sergeant Kwan and the armorer. “Thank you both. I assume you know to keep your mouths shut about this.”
“Yes sir,” the two said. Karstein turned to follow then, but he gestured for her to stay.
“Ali, sit down as well. Actionables are as follows: Check the seals on all manholes and drain covers in the precinct. This person opened one up, might be others. Kimberli, I assume you’ve already got someone keeping a discreet watch on the rooftop in case someone comes back looking for that thing?”
Karstein gave a predator’s smile. “Cameras and a response team have been waiting there for the last quarter of an hour and will stay until ordered otherwise.”
“And finally, Air Defense gets countersniper training. They’re already on the higher rooftops; teach them what to look for and how to react.”
Because this was troubling. He hadn’t been boss for seventy-two hours yet, but he was already drawing this level of attention. Was it because he was moving too fast on keeping his word to the people? Or because he wasn’t moving fast enough?
Or because – Karstein’s people had found the crossbow, wasn’t that convenient? The old families were connected to one another all over the city, bonds of blood, marriage, and debt crossing precinct and Association lines. They wouldn’t want another Commune.
He didn’t want another Commune: that had ended in bloody failure. But he’d promised to make the raffs’ lives better, he’d been disgusted by how the Reverend had treated them, and he was going to keep his word to the people who’d given him the precinct. He had to, if they were going to help him keep the Reverend out in the war due to start any day now.
And now there was this to worry about: whoever had been looking through that masterpiece crossbow’s scope – then decided against killing him. Who, and why?
Chapter Fifteen
Sparky was working door at the Last Stand that afternoon. They eyed her for a moment but nodded and gave some imperceptible signal to whoever was inside. She knew because the heavy door slid open a second later.
But she hadn’t expected trouble in Times Square – it had been most of two days, and the Hackensack boss would have gone home by now. Not many local bosses had the cash to grease Midtown’s people into jumping for them for long, not when the Midtown Association had its own purpose for its troops. The gate guards had given her a slight second glance but no more than that as she’d come in, still walking unsteadily from the blast that had rattled her brains.
And cost her the crossbow she’d left behind because of that. Maybe she could pick it up later? But that garden had been tended by people who would have found it by now. She just hoped that whatever raff ended up toting it had some appreciation for the quality of the weapon.
You’d be set for life on what you could sell that thing for.
In your own room or apartment, apparently, in the precinct of West Bowery now. Or you could keep the weapon for yourself, to use for your own purposes of self-defense, and Boss Hammer would be cool with that as well.
Worker’s committees would have surprised her less. She’d seen those in practice, every decision made by shutting the plant down for hours to get consensus from every worker, a process that from what she’d seen tended to involve a lot of really stupid questions being asked over and over. Inter-plant joint committees would then decide on every exchange proposal to be submitted to the Central Committee for debate and approval… the committee model had been terminally inefficient and you couldn’t govern a plant, let alone a precinct or a neighborhood, by consensus – but she had expected Hammer to try them anyway.
Instead his decree had simply given away two thirds of the precinct’s residential real estate, not as repayment for favors but en masse to the registered occupants…
On the one hand, it was insane. But if you looked at it from another angle, alongside the guns, it showed a certain stroke of political genius. He was giving them a means to defend their homes, and then he was giving them ownership of those homes – something to defend. In doing so they would defend the precinct for him.
Against the monster who bombed his own people this morning.
She was not happy about that, and not just because of the lost crossbow or how close to death she might have come when the bombs had rained from the sky. Airbornes were mercenaries who did as the client directed; this client had directed them to bring fragmentation bombs to a gathering of his own people.
She found her way over to the main bar, where the owner was working this afternoon. Jack Clemons was a grey-bearded gorilla of a man from Atlanta, a retired road warrior. He watched her through a pair of SmartGoggles, his eyes covered by the bulbous ghosts of digital projections. What software was diagnosing her right now, with what sensors?
“You okay, D?” It wasn’t a question.
She shrugged, trying to imply getting her head shaken with explosive blasts might be a routine thing. Happened almost every day, no big.
“You got anything for a blast concussion, Jack?”
Because somehow, amidst the antiseptics, sealants and local anesthetics in her medical pouch, she’d forgotten to stock anything for a ringing skull.
“Sure. You looking to make it with nitroglycerin or blackpowder?”
“Very funny.”
“Try this.”
He shook a couple of pills from a jar and filled a mug with frothy dark beer from one of the taps. She took her small-bills clip from its pouch and peeled off a twenty for him.
She pushed it across the counter. She didn’t see any movement on Clemons’ part, but when her eyes flickered back there the bill had vanished.
“So what happened?” He scowled. “If you’ve come red-handed again from another establishment in Midtown, by the way, take that drink and scram. Owner of the Hux don’t like it when people waste his customers then just saunter off to chill three blocks away. He don’t consider it neighborly of me to allow that.”
“I came from the No-Go,” she said irritably. “Got caught in an airstrike. Fucking pigeons.”
It turned out news of the airstrike – of two airborne gangs completely wiped from the sky by some trick involving balloons, at least – had already reached Times Square.
“Can you draw me one of these balloon things?” Clemons asked with interest. “A goodly percentage of the city wants to know how they work, since clearly they do work.”
“I guess. The real damage seemed to be from the ropes holding the balloons up. The gliders ran into them and – went down. Or they lost too much height while trying to avoid them, and went down. Or they were shot down.”
Whatever had been in the pills was helping to finally clear her head, at least. Clemons found a pad from under the bartop and she drew him a sketch from what she remembered.
“You just made up for bringing trouble here,” he said as he carefully scanned the sketch with a wand, committing it to data. He folded up the original carefully. “These things are going to be from river to river by tomorrow, probably in Philly by March. Good ideas spread, and this guy’s just made a permanent deletion to the quality of pigeon life everywhere. I wonder what he was thinking.”
“So do I…”
And not just with regard to the barrier balloons, Diana Angela thought.
* * *
“So you were in the NGZ precinct they bombed today, huh?” Rex asked as she took the fourth seat in a booth across from the corner one van Zanden usually occupied. The fixer was gone and his table empty, but his assistant was keeping an eye on it anyway. Next to him was fat Archie the detective; across from Archie and next to her as she sat down, his partner Nero sat with a half-empty glass of milk.
“I might have been,” she said. Information traveled fast in places like this.
“Missed, I guess,” Archie observed. “If the airborne’s the one you were after.”
“Someone put a bounty on---” She stopped herself, wishing she could take the words back. Of course whoever had hired the airbornes would have also spoken to the fixer network!<
br />
“Oh right,” Rex observed slowly. “You were persona non grata in Times Square all weekend, weren’t you? Yes, there’s ten thousand dollars on the head of that pigeon warlord down there. You weren’t there because of that…”
“No. I wasn’t,” she said. Paused. Playing poker with these guys never ended well, and they were as close as she had to friends on the street. She could afford a little honesty around them: “I went to see if it was another Commune, like they’re saying.”
“And is it?” Archie asked.
She scrunched up her face for a moment, thinking.
“I… don’t know. I expected workers’ committees, at least for a little bit. Instead he gave the population ownership, as individuals, of their dwellings. I think he’s crazy.”
And I want to see what he’ll do next, she thought. Nothing she’d ever seen, and the best people had attempted the most practical solutions from upstairs and downstairs, had alleviated the misery on the streets – their efforts had only made it worse. Maybe it was time for an inventive lunatic.
“You hope the crazy man stays alive,” said Archie mildly. “Nero and I were just talking about the strikes. Thirty-three dead, hundreds injured.”
You monster. She remembered those screams. But that was a very specific number for the detective to know. She raised an eyebrow.
“At last count,” Archie clarified.
OK, so he wasn’t going to tell her how he knew that.
He went on with the same degree of confidence: “And that’ll be just the start. The guy the airborne kicked out – he’s staying at the Independent right now – he says half his family was murdered and it’s Greenwich Village all over again. There’ll be reprisals when he takes the place back. Decimation level.”
Rex turned away, responding to a communication on his earbud. He grunted something and, after a moment, left the table.
“He’s lying through his teeth about the murders,” Diana Angela said. “I was surprised by the lack of bloodshed. There was fighting, but in the end the pigeon kept his promise and let them walk.”