Dark Sky (Keiko) (31 page)

Tanja frowned, but nodded. ‘Fair enough. Make sure you come and find me when you have finished, though.’ She tapped her comm meaningfully, then said something to the jeep’s driver and the vehicle rolled onwards.

Jenna huffed out a breath and turned to fiddle with the terminal on the wall. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her programming of course, nor would she have cared even if there was given that she had no intention of returning through this gate once she’d gone past it, but she needed to be out of Tanja’s way for a while. She busied herself for a minute or two doing pointless things on her wrist console until a horn sounded and she looked around to see Apirana’s tattooed face peering out of the window of a bulky flatbed truck.

‘All aboard who’s comin’ aboard!’ the big Maori boomed. He looked at Jenna’s three guards. ‘You boys still babysittin’ our girl here? We can look after her, no trouble.’

‘We have orders,’ one responded, his English broken but intelligible. ‘Must guard McIlroy, take back to Councillor Mironova.’

Rourke’s head, complete with wide-brimmed hat, rose up above the truck’s cab on the driver’s side. ‘That’s where we’re going anyway, so jump on the back if you want. Jenna, there’s room for you in the front if you don’t mind squeezing between A. and me.’

‘Sounds good,’ Jenna replied, disconnecting her wrist console, ‘I’m done here anyway.’ She headed around to the far side of the vehicle where Rourke momentarily disembarked to allow her to scoot across the bench-like front seat, while her three guards climbed onto the flatbed at the back. She was careful not to knock Apirana’s braced ankle with her feet: luckily, there was enough space for her between the big man’s bulk and Rourke’s diminutive figure to avoid her being uncomfortably crushed up against anyone.

‘We still goin’ through with this?’ Apirana murmured, looking straight ahead and barely moving his lips as Rourke put the truck into gear.

‘You have a better idea?’ Rourke asked, pulling away carefully.

‘Jus’ seems a bit cold-blooded, is all.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Rourke replied. Her tone wasn’t defensive, but there was steel in it nonetheless. ‘Look around you, A.: this hot-headed revolution would have led to a bloodbath without me. It was going to happen anyway, but I’ve given them ways of making it as efficient as possible. People will die, but people always die in revolutions. Hopefully, my cold-blooded input will lessen the body count.’

‘That ain’t what I was talking about,’ Apirana rumbled, ‘an’ you know it.’

Rourke shrugged. ‘It’s true on a large scale or a small. Just trust that everything I’m doing is based on getting all three of us to where we need to be with as little risk to us as possible.’

‘I ain’t necessarily doubting that,’ the Maori sighed, ‘I just wish there was another way.’

‘So do I.’

They were through Vehicle Gate 2 now and into Level Four proper. The remnants of the
politsiya
presence were scattered around, what parts of it hadn’t been gathered up to be used by the revolution itself as it surged through the streets. It seemed that some of the locals had already been swept up in the tide of bodies that was pushing onwards, and here and there Jenna could see walls daubed with crude yellow-and-black symbols or presumably triumphant graffiti.

Rourke drove the truck with quiet assurance through the streets, checking the schematic Jenna had downloaded for them all as she went. She mainly stuck to the larger routes, but at one crossroads she took a right onto a smaller street, then a left into one much narrower still. This was little more than an alley; there would barely be space for another vehicle to pass them here, and the buildings on either side seemed to loom despite their relative lack of height.

A helmeted face appeared at the window, its visor raised so that the Uragan’s face could be seen as he leaned forwards somewhat precariously from the flatbed behind them. ‘This is not route!’

‘I’m taking a shortcut,’ Rourke replied, sounding slightly irritated. They rounded another corner and she braked, hissing in vexation. ‘What in the …?’

Two shot-up vehicles blocked the road and in front of them were four figures apparently arguing with each other, figures whom Jenna recognised as Rourke rolled the truck to a halt not ten metres away.

‘Moutinho!’ Rourke called, half leaning out of her window. ‘What the hell are you clowns playing at back here?’

Ricardo Moutinho turned around, his eyes flashing over his bristling moustache. ‘Go suck an afterburner, Rourke!’

‘You’re blocking my road, you Brazilian piece of crap!’ Rourke retorted. ‘Did you wreck these things for fun, is that it?’

‘You can’t just blame everything on me, you know that?’ Moutinho snarled. ‘This wasn’t
our
roadblock: a bunch of cops decided to take potshots at us from behind it. If you’d actually been getting stuck in, instead of pissing about playing big shot, you might have seen that.’

‘Well, shift them!’

‘To hell with you, turn around and go back!’

‘I’m not going to try turning this beast around in here,’ Rourke replied firmly. ‘How about we give you a hand?’

‘
You?
’ Moutinho snorted. ‘You can’t choke a car and shooting it some more won’t help, so how’re you going to help, little woman? Plus I know your Maori’s got a broken ankle.’

‘We’ve got passengers,’ Rourke said, jerking a thumb at the rear of the truck. ‘Try to look like good citizens and I’ll see what I can do.’ She turned the other way, craning her head out of the truck’s window, and started speaking in Russian. After a few exchanges, in which Jenna thought her guards sounded a little tetchy, they clumped down from the flatbed and headed for the roadblock where Moutinho and his crew waited. Rourke slipped out of the cab and followed them, fiddling with her left sleeve as she did so.

‘I still don’t like this,’ Apirana muttered from beside her. Jenna, fighting down the acid churning in her stomach, had to agree.

It took much sweating and grunting, except for Achilles and Rourke who climbed into the wrecks and did their best to steer them, but finally the two vehicles were pushed aside and staggered along the alley’s edges so their truck could slalom between them. That done, the three Uragans dusted themselves down and turned to head back to their ride.

Rourke’s garrotting wire flashed out of her sleeve as she looped it over the head of the leftmost one and jerked backwards. The man’s hands flew up to his neck but the narrow polymer cord was already digging too tightly into his flesh for his fingers to get any purchase.

Skanda dropped to his knees behind the second and slammed his arm up between the man’s legs. As their victim doubled over, Jack slid his heavy knife from his belt and dragged it across the guard’s throat to spatter the ground with his blood.

The guard on the right had removed his helmet during his exertions. Achilles snatched it from his hand and, as the man opened his mouth to protest, Moutinho simply placed the barrel of the gun the revolution had provided him with to the back of the guard’s head and pulled the trigger. The bullet exploded from the front of the Uragan’s skull, carrying bits of brain and face with it.

‘Damn it, Moutinho,’ Rourke snarled, wrestling her choking, purple-faced victim onto all fours, ‘you got his uniform dirty! That one’s yours!’

AFTER STAKING AN
unassailable claim on the hearts and minds of the proles in the lower levels, the revolution had paused briefly at the threshold between Levels Four and Five to gather its strength and transmit propaganda to the rest of Uragan City. After watching the ‘news’ broadcast, Drift had taken this as a cue to grab some sleep, which he’d done in the corner of the
politsiya
canteen with the ease of a long-time smuggler, on the basis that as soon as anything kicked off again someone would wake him up.

It had kicked off three hours ago, and the revolution had promptly swept through Level Four and its carefully organised government military resistance. Level Three’s populace had seen the real-time broadcasts of this on their holoscreens and, presumably wishing to keep their homes in good order, had turned out onto the streets to declare for the Free State before Muradov had even had time to try to organise a new line of defence. It was now 8 a.m. local time, and Drift was back in Chief Muradov’s transport riding through Level Two. The security chief’s normal expression of stern professionalism had been replaced with the haggard grimness of a man aware that, short of a miracle, he was fighting a war that was already lost.

‘Chief, I’m not trying to be difficult here,’ Drift offered as Muradov studied the tactical holo as though there was some solution to be seen in it if he simply looked hard enough, ‘but perhaps you should just give up?’

‘The revolution is unlikely to be kindly disposed towards you, Captain,’ Muradov replied without looking up. ‘I would have thought you would be more interested in keeping your skin intact than suggesting I should surrender.’

‘Oh, I’m attached to it, don’t get me wrong,’ Drift replied seriously, ‘but you don’t get as old as I am doing what I do unless you can see which jobs are a losing proposition. The one you’re looking at right now is a loss all ends up, through no fault of your own, and you deserve to be told so. You’ve treated me and mine well, and fairly. You gave us protection when maybe that would have been the last thing on the minds of most—’

‘And you repaid me by keeping my team and me alive long enough for us to get out of that wreck,’ Muradov cut in, sparing Drift a glance and a faint, bitter smile, ‘so perhaps my judgement is not so bad as you think.’

‘I’m just saying, I’m sure that this Mironova’s going to recognise your qualities,’ Drift persisted. ‘You’ve done your job as well as you can, as well as anyone could, but perhaps it’s just time to let the inevitable happen, you know? Maybe take up your job again under this Free State.’

‘Captain, I appreciate what you are saying,’ Muradov said, pinching the bridge of his nose, ‘but let me make a few things clear to you. Firstly, although I have come to realise that you are not perhaps the scoundrel I initially thought …’

Drift put his best poker face into place and kept it there.

‘… there is still a great difference between the somewhat, shall we say, “fluid” nature of your commerce and the responsibilities of my role.’ He looked up, his dark eyes tired but focused. ‘I took a solemn oath upon the commencement of my duty as Uragan City’s security chief, and I will not willingly see that oath broken.

‘Secondly, I strongly suspect that “heads must roll” under any new state. There must be certain changes made, lest the revolution be seen as a sham. They have already declared that the governor will be replaced, as of course they would. I can see no reason why they would let me, the man who embodies the will of the governor and, by extension, the Red Star government, keep my job. In the frenzy of revolutionary fervour, it would be a miracle should I even make it to trial on some trumped-up charge. More likely, I would be lynched by a mob before that pretence of justice occurred.

‘Thirdly, the Red Star government
will
retake this city, or even this planet, no matter whether or not it is lost to the revolution. It may not be easy or quick, but it will be done. The minerals harvested here are too valuable for it to be allowed to secede. On the day when Red Star forces retake Uragan City, if I am found to be in any situation other than already dead or languishing in a prison cell, then I shall surely be tried and executed as a traitor to the state; and rightly so.

‘Finally, if this is some effort on your part to convince me to let you try your luck and attempt to get back to your shuttle, I should inform you that the spaceport has already declared for the revolution.’

‘What?!’ Drift slumped back in his seat, suddenly feeling a lot more tired than he had been. ‘
Jesús, Maria, Madre de Dios!
’ His admittedly somewhat loose plan, once it became clear that the revolution was going to win out, had been to ride with Muradov as close to the surface as he could and then make for the spaceport to wait for Rourke and the others when they got there. If the spaceport was already in the hands of the Free State, however …
but perhaps that means Rourke’s already there.
He tapped his comm, but found it dead.

‘Civilian communications have been disabled over all levels now, of course,’ Muradov said in response to his questioning look. ‘It is the only advantage we have been able to maintain.’

‘Didn’t the rebels manage to get them working again before?’ Drift asked, trying to keep the hopefulness out of his voice.

‘When we had only disabled it on certain levels, yes,’ Muradov nodded. ‘We have now shut down the entire network. I do not know how long it will be until they can gain control of it since they already have a foothold on Level One, but until then I am afraid you will not be able to make contact with the rest of your crew.’ He frowned. ‘Did you ever manage to, by the way?’

‘Uh, yes,’ Drift replied, ‘but when we were on Level Four they were still on Level Five and unable to reach us.’