Sly Mongoose (21 page)

Pepper blinked away sleep. He had a long night ahead of him. When he’d rubbed his eyes and looked back up, Itotia had left.

Heutzin arrived just after she left, carrying two large boxes full of spare bits, electronics he’d scavenged from all over. He dumped them onto the table.

“Good.” Pepper knew the suit models. Somewhere deep in his past he’d used similar enough designs. “You’ll be glad to hear that one of the units still has a lot of juice, it was disconnected in an accident. It’s working again.”

Heutzin glanced at the half-assembled mechanical torso on the bench. “Just like that.”

“Don’t think lower of yourself. I have centuries of battlefield experience, including stripping and reusing crap like this. Get some of your assistants in here. This needs to be reassembled by dawn. In the meantime, I need you to help me to a communications center. I need to see if I can talk to any Ragamuffins in orbit.”

Heutzin still stared at the groundsuit pieces. “Are there any units that will fully power up?”

“No.” Pepper shook his head. “We have about four hours power on the one that is working.”

“That’s not a lot.”

Pepper agreed. But four hours of mobility would be better than none. And with some tweaking of the suit’s design tolerances, four hours could be a lot of havoc.

“Get me that communications setup, Heutzin.”

Heutzin shifted his belt. “I could get in trouble.”

“You’ll get in more trouble if you don’t help.”

“Again, you threaten.”

“I just need things to move, Heutzin. We’re still sitting around, waiting for fate to decide for us, when we need to be forcing fate’s hand.”

Without the strange avatar, Katerina, to help him figure out what was going on in the outside world, Pepper felt a bit nervous about timetables. The Swarm could be on its way already.

Most of the dilapidated cities near the Great Storm, like Yatapek, settled by Azteca immigrants from New Anegada, used shortwave radio to communicate back and forth. An ancient standby.

Through the crackle and hiss Pepper found that four of those cities still remained online.

A third of the Aeolian cities remained online and chatty, but they were buried deep in planning how to repel the Swarm and keep its infection contained.

Too little too late.

It took three hours to get things set up to scan orbit and call out, but eventually Pepper found a Ragamuffin ship. A few moments were spent exchanging prompts and codes, and then the familiar dialect of someone from New Anegada came through the tiny speaker.

“This the
Midas Special
, Jack Richardson speaking. Pepper, you all the way down there for real? We been hearing all kinds of reports about you getting move about, jailed. What the hell going on?”

He caught them up. The Ragamuffins had picked on some of what was happening, biological warfare of some sort. But they weren’t sure if a League threat had arrived.

Pepper wanted to know about the Ragamuffin response. “Is the Dread high council moving any big ships closer?” They would have been hearing
cities go silent, and picking up on some of the chatter. Anything suspicious usually prompted the Dreads to get some military might close to the problem in case things went sour.

“Moving slowly, but moving, man,” Jack replied. “This still the DMZ, seen? They don’t want provoke no war with the League. But all the merchant ship up here, fifteen standing to.”

“Doing what?”

“Keeping it lockdown. No traffic allowed between habitats up here, no traffic allowed into orbit. You move, we fire.”

“That violates the DMZ also.” Cautious leaders everywhere, on Yatapek, throughout the floating cities, and back home.

“Only because we trying help Chilo. The other problem, ain’t a single League ship here in orbit. They all hiding. We think they getting mass up for a big push, we seeing ghost images, that kind of thing.”

So a fleet was building itself up out there. No doubt the League used their merchant ships to house military elements as well, camouflaging intent. Now it waited.

The Swarm would destroy Chilo, and the League would mop up.

“Nothing entering, nothing leaving,” Jack said from orbit. “We waiting. Worse comes to worst, we clean from up high after we figure out what the League trying. You on your own for a good while if you staying down there.”

Pepper could only think about the images of the sterilized planet the crew aboard the
Shiek Professional
had seen.

And on this open channel, he couldn’t talk any further specifics. He faced the Swarm alone if he didn’t leave.

And then Jack added, “You get youself high enough and hail, we pick you up. We be around.”

Pepper squeezed the old transceiver in his fist and left the pieces on the bench by the radio and had Heutzin take him back to the workshop.

Time to see about getting him to the surface to contact these aliens. If he could figure out exactly what the Swarm was after that would help. And he would have to see about recruiting these secretive aliens into the fight.

A
nother beating. Timas again offered no resistance, choosing to protect his head as best he could while Luc exacted his revenge before a laughing crowd of pirates.

This time Timas woke up on the bottom of the storage space when the Aeolians splashed water on his face to revive him. One of the men had a large bruise across his face.

He didn’t want to talk to them. He took his soup and scuttled off into another hiding spot.

Timas found himself unable to keep down yet another meal, though. He found the drain again and jammed his index finger down his throat. It came easily.

Katerina, instead of pretending to ignore him, got up from her own corner of despair in the gloom. “What the hell are you doing? Are you sick?”

He held up a hand. “No, I’m not sick.” He felt good. Light, ready to fight, and in control. That’s how he felt. He might be locked up in the storage area of the airship, headed who knew where, but Timas never felt freer.

None of this was on his shoulders anymore.

“Are you doing this to yourself?” Katerina grabbed his hand and pulled him away.

“You don’t understand. It’s expected.” And he couldn’t stop. He pulled his hand from her. “We’re not like you: rich, brimming with technology. I can’t take a pill and thin my waist, I can’t ask for a bigger chest for my birthday and,” he snapped his fingers, “make it so.”

Katerina put a defensive arm over her breasts. “You’re being crude, Timas.”

“I’m being true. We don’t have your advantages, and as we got poorer we couldn’t fit in the suits when they got handed down. Used items that our grandparents got, not even realizing we’d be
normal
.” He hissed the last word. “So we do this to fit.”

“There are other ways.”

“Maybe, but this is being xocoyotzin and what we do. Leave me alone.”

“You don’t need to fit in a groundsuit, Timas, we’re prisoners right now. You need your strength.” Katerina sat next to him.

Timas leaned back against the wall. The sour smell of half-digested food made him feel queasier. “It’s not that easy. Doesn’t just turn off.”

“Listen, there can’t be that much food around here. They’ll stop feeding you if they find out you’re doing this.”

“I’m sorry.”

Katerina grabbed his hand. “Don’t be sorry. Just please stop it for now.” She pulled him to his feet. “Now come.”

“What are we doing?”

“This can’t continue, what they’re doing to us. I asked us all to take a vote. We can’t check back into the Consensus, but we can certainly run one of our own. We don’t think this treatment should continue.”

“What can you do about it?” Timas asked. They had no weapons and were cut off and outnumbered. “And what do you mean, ‘us’?”

“They wanted to grab Renata and take her upstairs,” the Aeolian with the black eye said.

“And risk their payments?” Timas didn’t understand. But he felt his mouth go dry. They lived at the mercy of these people up there. What if they stopped caring, and let Luc kill him?

“They’re having trouble getting a Consenus focus, the cities are distracted by the Swarm. There’s jamming, and their captain, Scarlett, hasn’t called back. They’re starting to think Pepper double-crossed them.” Renata, Timas saw now, had a long and bloody tear running up her forearm.

“I think Pepper’s right,” one of the men said. “We’re all on our own now. The Swarm is sweeping through everything.”

“We’ll need your help, though, to do anything,” Renata said to Timas.

He looked at all of them and felt the heaviness settle on his shoulders. He always helped. It was what he did.

“What do I need to do?”

“Fight back.” Renata folded her arms. “We need ten minutes the next time you get dragged away to get ready to jump them.”

“Ten minutes.” Timas stared at them. That was an eternity.

“Can you do it?” Katerina looked at him hopefully.

Timas looked down, scared to meet their eyes. “Yes.” He hadn’t started out hating Luc. He’d felt sorry for him. Now Cen’s brother had distorted himself and lost all self-control. Timas couldn’t afford that pity anymore. It had been beaten out of him.

Renata showed him several long planks of wood they’d pulled off the crates. “Just last ten minutes. When they come to throw you back in, we’ll have the crates stacked to reach the hatch.”

“Okay.” Timas nodded. “I understand.” He sat crosslegged under the hatch with them and waited for the next round.

The hours passed. Eventually shouting from above startled him. Feet pounded about.

“Come look at this.” Katerina had her face stuck against one of the slits in the belly of the airship.

They all joined her. Timas cupped his hands around his eyes and looked down at the whipped, rusted-out clouds below them.

A ponderous creature flew below them, made of canvas and spars, an airbag at its center, a spiked nose, and large finned sails stretched out around its circular core.

The wings flapped, pulling the contraption up closer in jerking motions. Timas could see thousands of gears, and equally as many articulated joints pumping and shuddering.

“Strandbeests,” Renata said. “I’ve never seen one this close, they usually make a run for it if they notice an airship.”

Timas had never seen, or heard of one. “I didn’t know there were living creatures in the clouds,” he breathed.

“They’re not alive, they’re all gears and pulleys and joints.” Katerina stood back up. “Analog machines, but they self-replicate. Or so we think, they’re pretty hermitlike.”

A cluster of them beat their canvas wings away from the airship. They wheeled about each other, flocking in a weird, grouplike pattern.

Eventually they dwindled away.

Timas had moved back to the end window in their compartment, pressing his face at an angle to try and see the last one, when the hatch opened.

Luc stood in the light of the square opening. He tapped the button that dropped the ladder down.

“Get up here, you little shit. We aren’t done. Now that we’ve gone this long without Scarlett calling in, they’re not as concerned about what happens to you.”

Timas walked, step by careful step, to the ladder. His ribs ached, his face felt puffed up, and he hurt all over.

“Ten,” Renata mouthed silently to him.

Ten.

Timas pulled himself up toward the decking.

L
uc wasted no time in kicking Timas. The moment the hatch slammed shut with a metallic clank and a bounce he had knocked Timas over.

Timas covered his head, but scrabbled backward like a crab. He groaned as he stood back up.

“You’re going to stand up to me now?” Luc shook his head. “Maybe you should have stood up for Cen!”

Timas glared at him. “He was my best friend. You know what it’s like to lose your best friend?” He balled his hands up into shaking fists.

“Is it anything like losing a brother?” Luc wiped away tears. “We were close, too. Cen dragged himself up to xocoyotzin, running every night since he was four. Four. Already at that age he knew what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to save us from the city’s depths.”

Luc attacked, smacking a fist into Timas’s nose. Timas wheeled back, bouncing off a door, then staggered around until one of the four pirates now watching grabbed him.

They shoved him forward.

“I know what it’s like,” Timas said. “I do know what it’s like for him. Always with your family on your back. Feeling like everything is your responsibility. I knew Cen better than you. We were the same.”

Now Timas ran forward and hit Luc. Luc absorbed the body blow easily enough. He twisted and threw Timas to the floor. The deck burned his hands as he fell again.

“You didn’t know Cen, you just worked with him.”

Timas struggled up. “You know why you’re mad?” He looked through Luc like he didn’t even exist. “You’re like all the others, the parasites around the xocoyotzin. The parents forcing them to stay thin in the hope that they’ll remain on the top level. The distant family that feeds off them, depends on them. All of you crushing him as you stand on his shoulders.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re angry because you lost your free meals,” Timas spat. “Your undeserved status by just being his brother and nothing more.”

Luc’s eyes widened. Timas smiled. He’d struck way too close, and Luc ran him down.

The previous beatings had been nothing, Luc screamed his rage out while the pirates laughed and bet on how long Timas would remain conscious.

Timas wriggled, trapped beneath Luc’s bulk, but suddenly full of fear as the desire to flee and the need to breathe took over his entire world as he was crushed.

A pair of mismatched wrestlers, the awkward contest of wills continued, Timas dragging it out for as long as he could.

At the ten-minute mark, with Luc still hitting him from a kneeling position, Timas rolled toward the hatch. “Please.”

“Please what?”

“I’m done, I can’t take any more,” Timas said with bruised lips, a bloody nose, and throbbing body.

“Damn right.” Luc leaned down and yanked the hatch open.