Blindspace, page 13
‘Ex-Reaper. And you think I’d be breathing today if I was skimming off my bosses’ supply?’ Another round of sniggers, this time far more ominous than before.
‘Surely there are … less volatile drugs you can ship.’
Grim gave a shrug in his bulky suit. ‘No risk, no profit.’
Mangy-Ugarit sniggered as he wedged a fresh bone between his crooked teeth. ‘You like risk? Want to place some bets in the sim-game? It’s a very good season.’
Of course. Morden-Ugly and his Pack of Sons of Bitches laundered their drug money and paid for this outrageously expensive dock space through the gambling den.
‘Why are they all hooked up to life-support for a simulation?’ I asked.
‘Because you cannot leave until the game is complete.’
‘How long does that take?’ asked Grim.
‘Weeks. Months. Sometimes, years.’ Hairy bodies shifted and suits squelched against the cradle fabric around us. ‘But the prizes are very, very good. We travel halfway across the Common picking up contestants. It would be very unfortunate if any died accidentally halfway through.’ Another round of crackling, this time from the creatures above, flapping their wings.
I resisted the urge to tug loose the area where my suit had plastered to my sweaty skin. ‘Fascinating. Now, are you going to make a deal or not?’
Morden-Ugly picked his teeth again. ‘Ah. Well. It would be our utmost pleasure. Ten stormtech canisters, cryogenically-cooled are yours. You will have access to our trade-routes and database. Greev will tell you more when the time is right.’
Our shibs pinged with an incoming transmission. An oversized bone, charred black. The virtual shreds of meat peeled away, exposing vertical streams of black graphics in the harsh scrawl of the Speroggs’ language.
I sighed inwardly. Good. We had the bastards. Grim could wriggle into their central mainframe and sniff out where the latest shipments of stormtech were coming from … and then we could deal a major blow to the Suns’ efforts to contaminate this asteroid.
And if these flying canine rats sicced Greev and his Rhivik on us when we didn’t distribute for them, well, I’d happily kill them and be done with it. Two flying dogs with one stone.
‘Thanks,’ I said, as six voices crackled with laughter.
‘Happy hunting!’ Morden-Ugarit sniggered and gestured at the rancid pile of meaty bones. ‘Do take a snack along for the journey. I can always get more.’
11
Kings of the World
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’
‘We can back out if you’re scared,’ I tell Artyom.
‘I’m not scared!’ Artyom lies.
Dressed in black thermal skins, belts, balaclavas and piecemeal ski helmets, we look like shinobi stitched from shadow and tech. It feels awesome, creeping down perilously icy ledges and pagoda rooftops, our cloth-swaddled snow boots finding purchase on the stone walls, helping each other down to the vodka distillery. The hiss of the nearby river muffles our steps, lanterns swinging in the frigid wind. We’re going to liberate some booze. There’re countless distilleries on New Vladi to pick from … but only one is owned by Gohin’s family.
It makes the choice pretty easy.
Our breath plumes in the night and we’re giddy with excitement. Artyom whispers for me to hurry up as I unlock the basement window and we slip inside to a world of riches. Past the bronze pipework are wooden shelves loaded with gleaming bottles. A wealth of flavours from seedbanks and offworld biospheres. Cherry, blueberry, raspberry, melon … there’re flavours here I haven’t even heard of.
Artyom shakes me by the shoulder, his hand trembling with excitement. ‘Don’t drop anything!’ I say.
‘I won’t!’
We’re quiet and quick. I pass him the bottles and he places them in the gel-padded satchel, just like we’ve practiced. Artyom sniggers and I shush him.
‘Vak! It’s full,’ he says a little later. He’s right. I’m not even sure how we’re going to get it all down the mountain.
‘We can’t leave without trying the flavours though.’ I grin.
Artyom snorts with laughter as I crack open a coconut-flavoured vodka, peel off my sweaty balaclava and take a long swig. It’s like drinking liquid gold, silky-smooth and rich with flavour that melts down my stomach. Artyom snatches it from me, spilling it in the process.
‘Hey! Greedy guts!’ I pretend to snatch it back, but Artyom shoves me, chortling. He swigs like I did, but it goes down the wrong way and he splutters, vodka spraying out his nose. He doubles over. I clap him hard on the back.
‘Oh god, it burns,’ he croaks.
‘Serves you right!’ I grin at him and peel the bottle from his grip. We lean back against the wall, chuckling like madmen. ‘I could live down here,’ I slur.
‘In this dusty old basement?’ Artyom snorts. ‘And live on vodka?’
‘No!’ I point to all the flavours. ‘Look at all the fruit. Cherry, peach, coconut, pineapple, whatever that is, and—’
Artyom laughs again. He’s so loud, I almost don’t hear the scrape of wood over the stone floor. It’s an old wizened man. Gohin’s grandfather, it has to be. I sway to my feet, try to dash with Artyom for the window. The bastard is so old he’s got to be haunted, yet he’s crazy fast. He jerks us down to the floor and kicks me hard. I’ve had worse from my father. Still, my vision goes double and puke tickles the back of my throat. Artyom’s smart enough to curl up and take it until it’s over. I’m not. I keep fighting back and earn a punch in the gut for my trouble. My stomach heaves and I puke a gut-full of vodka all over my assailant. His look of disgust sends me chortling, before he clobbers me in the head and knocks me flat.
He thinks we’re both out cold. I’m sober enough to play along as he gives us both a prod to make sure, and then shuffles out of the building. Probably to fetch Gohin, come back, and finish us. Artyom shivers next to me, coming to the same realisation.
Then my brother’s shaking me. I fight to open my eyelids, heavy as bricks, my chest feeling hollowed-out. Artyom points to the first fingers of dawn knifing down through the louvered shutters into the room.
‘Vak! It’s nearly light!’ Artyom hisses.
‘Oh hell,’ I mutter. I stand. The room sways. Maybe we’ve been unconscious after all. Artyom scrambles for the window. But I grab him by his belt, holding him in place.
‘Vakov! Gohin could be here any second!’
I’m drunk, I’m pissed, and I’m not about to just walk away. ‘So let’s not leave him anything to find.’
Artyom’s eyes go wide behind his ski-mask. ‘Vak …?’
‘Trust me,’ I say, extending my hand towards him. Artyom chews his lip. He’d never do it himself. But I know he’s going to follow me. He always does.
He gives that shaky little grin and takes my hand.
We break everything: vodka cabinets tipped over and smashed, every bottle broken, every machine overloaded, every last drop spilled out on the floor. We’re raging, caffeinated bulls in a china shop, competing to cause the most mayhem, the most destruction. There’s a music to it, a beautiful rhythm to the smashing and breaking and shattering. To sweeten the deal, Artyom finds a nearby stable of beautiful Eurasian steppe horses, enhanced from the genebank prototypes. Worth a fortune. Far too good for Gohin to keep. We set them free.
And then because I can’t help myself, I get a burner and set it all on fire.
It’s an inferno. A blazing, raging tower of flames that has me sweating inside my suit. We dive out the narrow window in a mad panic, down to the snowbanks and go scrambling for the safety of the hillside trees. A moment later, a stampede of very angry steppe horses bursts from the staples in a storm of frothing muzzles and thundering hooves, scattering for freedom. Hidden, we watch as Gohin’s retinue and family arrive to find their fortunes disappearing, one burning up in black smoke, the other stampeding and whinnying over the hills. Despite the danger, we’re almost in hysterics as Gohin shrieks and weeps like a spoiled child in the snow.
He’ll guess who did it, but we’ll never cop the blame. He can’t afford to have the whole yakuza know a pair of gutter rats like us destroyed his fortune.
‘That was so crazy!’ Artyom says as we reach a mossy cave higher up the mountain. ‘You’re mad, Vak. Totally insane. And you stink of smoke and vodka.’
I play-punch his shoulder. ‘And horse.’
Artyom’s grin melts. ‘Oh no. We forgot the vodka!’
‘Not quite.’ I pull a single bottle from my jacket, crack it open and take a sip before passing it to him and going back outside. Artyom scrambles after me. Swaying, I sling my arm around his neck and sweep my hand out. Dreamy pink clouds crown the jagged city skyline. Brutalist highrises and dilapidated kanji signs are silhouetted by shavings of pale dawn light that yawns out over the snowcapped mountain ranges. The clamour of faraway temple bells pierce the morning air. ‘What do you see, Artyom?’
The wind tousles Artyom’s black hair as he squints. ‘Um … a city?’
‘No. Our city.’ I pull my brother closer to me. ‘One of these days, this whole frozen hellhole’s going to be ours. Yours and mine.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And how are we going to do that?’
I shrug. ‘We’ll figure it out, like we always do.’
‘Sounds good, Vak.’ Artyom’s bright, hopeful eyes peer out at the dawn. ‘It sounds real good.’
And, for a minute, we’re the kings of the world.
12
The Upper Markets
Dehydrated and light-headed and and desperately needing a shower, I followed Grim from the Joint into a basement dockside bar that merged into a series of subsurface service shafts and smuggler’s routes.
There’re hundreds of little labyrinthine routes secreted away on each floor of Compass. A secret labyrinth that twists through the main dermis of the asteroid, twining, rerouting, zigzagging like the arteries of a human body.
We clambered along a maze of crisscrossing accessways, humid corridors, unlikely hairpin turns, steep stairwells, plunging causeways, random trapdoors, and infinitely echoing shafts. Occasionally passing through the service shafts of a spaceport or server farm before looping back down into swampy darkness. All cored out of raw asteroid rock, the walls racked with cable conduits and powerlines. The guts of Compass. Distant turbines blasted a sour wind in our faces as we scaled up creaking scaffolding, the cables dark and gritty with oil under my suit gloves, until we finally arrived in a private little unit I kept for moments like these. This place had saved our skins more times than I wanted to count. I peeled off my glove and pressed my hand against the biometric scanner, the door unlocking and we stole inside.
The military-grade autocannon packed itself away as the door pinched shut behind us and I addressed the AI rabbit, perched atop the autocannon and cradling a carrot like a rifle. ‘It’s just us.’
‘So I see.’ The rabbit thumped its foot impatiently. ‘I hope we have intruders soon. My skills are wasted, otherwise. I crave ultraviolence, and I will have it.’
I grinned. Can you ask for a better security guard than that?
Our freshly-printed suits were already waiting for us on the rack. I made a beeline for the bathroom and sighed with relief as I unlatched the neck seal of my suit, muggy waves of steaming body odour wafting out. There’s nothing worse than putting on a bad suit. Except the painful, hair-removing process of taking it off again. It was a welcome agony to dump the damp suit and harness in storage and scrub some feeling back into my sweaty skin in the shower.
It was only when I was drying off that I noticed the itch and saw my arm was covered with patches of dry and blistering eczema, dotted with burning blue welts all the way from my shoulder to my elbow.
I knew I shouldn’t scratch. But my flesh felt like it was burning and I couldn’t help raking my nails down the scaly patches of flesh. A milky blue fluid welled up in the scratches and coated my fingers, leaving my shoulder looking worse than ever. Tentatively, I picked at it and peeled off a long strip of old skin. It was like bad sunburn, only the skin was almost rubbery and beneath it was another layer of undisturbed skin. Was I moulting? I shivered as I glanced at the abnormally thick skin I’d peeled away.
What the hell was this? My body has racked up all sorts of gross and unpredictable surprises before, but nothing like this.
I dragged some medical supplies bags out of a subsurface cabinet and set about applying the right ointment as I heard Grim emerge from his changing room. I couldn’t let him see this. ‘Distract him, will you?’ I said to the Rubix.
‘Permission to ridicule him?’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
The rabbit bowed, whiskers twitching before the projection shifted to distract Grim. ‘Oh, it’s you again? The Hopeless Hacker.’
Grim took the bait, of course. ‘I know plenty of cool tricks! Like how to change an AI’s form projection. Back off, if you don’t want to be rewired.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ huffed the rabbit.
‘I would dare,’ I heard Grim shoot back as I hurried with the ointment. ‘How do you feel about a Mad Hatter skin, huh?’
‘So human. All threats, and no guts.’
I shoved the medical detritus into a deprinter, washing my face and checking for any visible rash or scar that would freak Grim out.
‘You impertinent creature. I would show you ways to improve your attitude, but I fear my wisdom will be wasted on you.’
‘Grim! Please stop harassing my AI,’ I yelled as I slipped into my freshly-printed underskin. The skin-hugging smart-material was deep red and black, and the nanoweave texture was reassuring and familiar when I rolled my shoulders. ‘I don’t want him to think all humans are like you.’
‘I would never brand an entire species based on this buffoon here!’ The rabbit snorted. ‘If I did, I would have destroyed you all long ago.’
I joined them, and did a double-take. ‘What the hell are you wearing?’
Grim was dressed as the Grim Reaper. Because of course he was. The cartoon skullface grinned at me, the exaggerated black cloak ruffling as he approached, clutching a bloodstained scythe. ‘Suit-ink, Vak. It’s the new fashion tech on Compass and it’s just my style!’ The skull’s jaws moved as Grim spoke, yellowed teeth chattering.
I stared at him, deadpan. ‘Really?’
‘Cool, huh? And get this.’
On command, three equally cartoonish figures appeared around us in a puff of smoke, quaking and begging in exaggerated fear. Grim decapitated each with a swing of his scythe, lurid, animated blood flying as three headless corpses windmilled their arms and toppled over dramatically.
The AI rabbit gave Grim an unimpressed look. ‘I weep for the future of your species.’
‘I’m with the bunny. You got issues, Grim.’
‘I am not a bunny!’ thundered the AI.
Grim swept up towards me, throwing one skeletal arm around my shoulder, the other flung out dramatically. ‘I have style, Vak. Not the same thing.’
‘Whatever. We’re meeting the fireteam in an hour. You ready to go?’
‘Vak. I’m always ready.’
‘Whatever. And for the love of god, Grim, take the death suit off.’
Grim didn’t take his death suit off.
He revelled in it when we left the storage unit, took a wrong turn and ended up in a hotel restaurant’s walk-in freezer, scaring the hell out of a chef. He wore it as we ran for the chainrail down at the Travel Depot, insisting on carrying his scythe for the entire journey to the Upper Markets, no matter what surprised looks he attracted. I swear at least one intoxicated individual believed the actual Grim Reaper had come along to pay a visit.
Despite our best efforts, the stink from the alien suits still stuck to us like a bad reputation. But that wasn’t a problem in the Upper Markets. Like always, it was madness made reality. The haphazard laneways were packed with booths, shops, workshops and attractions that ran the length of the asteroid and were filled with a tumultuous, diverse crowd. Everything was for sale here: spaceship paint-jobs and navsystem charts, advanced neuralware and home décor, cutting-edge hardware and supercore processors. Countless little worlds of chaos. I got a whiff of spiced eggs, delicious pan-seared dumplings, oversweetened fruit and pancakes, sour cheeses and peppercorn, simmering Japanese hotpot and spicy ramen, all blending with other unidentifiable alien spices that scented the air.
But like everything on the asteroid, you had to learn the little secrets: the bar that was only safe to drink at in the early morning, when they changed the kegs. The grumpy Torven running the biggest hardware stall on Compass, who sold you top-range starship engine parts and droids if you were nice to him, and sold you second-hand crap if you weren’t. The little family-owned Korean café behind a crumbling noodlehouse that served the best desserts on the asteroid. The corridors you never used because they stank of sickly-sweet jelly and rotten eggs from nearby restaurants.
It had all overwhelmed me the first time I’d come here. Now, I knew the layout of the twisting halls and looping back alleys as well as my own smell.
Compass is always evolving, and we came to a refurbished outermost sector of the markets that was dangerously close to being classy. A smattering of long-snouted aliens in crumpled spacesuits had already taken up permanent residence near the entrance, inhaling deeply from a purple bulb-shaped device, curlicues of sweet-smelling smoke ribboning out. Like always, I held my breath as we squeezed past.
‘Are we heading back to the Pavilion?’ Grim asked me, squirming a little.
‘Yeah, why? Don’t you like it there?’
He jammed his hands into his suit pockets. ‘I do. It’s just … I don’t always like the company.’
Of course. It was a Harmony watering hole. Even before Metalgrave, Grim was a bit uncomfortable there. I should have remembered that. We diverted to the Nebula Pumphouse.
