Under Dark Sky Law (20 page)

He let out a small puff of air and ran a hand
through his hair. “That is one way to put it. In any event, since
it may come up at some point, I am kind of like the ultimate runner
because I have artificial lungs, and a few other modifications that
give me certain…advantages,” he said.

Illegal cybernetics or not, she wanted him
even more for the Grease Weasels. Considering the havoc going on in
the world, they needed as many extraordinary abilities on their
side as possible.

“Like turning yourself into a human Taser,”
she said.

He turned his palms upward. “Amongst other
things,” he said.

“I’m liking you more and more as time goes
by,” she said. “One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me
how that all went down. I’m sure it’s a great story.”

He sat up straighter so that he wasn’t
mad-dogging her so intensely. “I take it you’d like to keep me
around for awhile longer then,” he said.

“You’re a cool cat, Radar. I wouldn’t be sad
if you stuck around—I figure we could both use some good allies
right about now anyway,” she said and closed her eyes, listening to
the sound of the mob escalating in volume. As the sun rose higher
in the sky, the restaurant began heaving with an overflow of
bodies. Despite the growing crowd, their booth in the back of the
restaurant seemed to have a protective bubble around it, as though
everyone was reflexively avoiding the mercenary and the cartel
leader. Whether they were recognized or not, they just seemed like
the wrong kind of characters to mess with.

Trudy the waitress tromped back towards their
table carrying two huge plates of meat, two pieces of lemon
meringue pie, and big mugs of coffee, somehow managing not to spill
anything as she bounced her way around the increasingly rowdy throb
of patrons. She slung the plates and mugs across the table and all
of the food remained on the plates still. Amazingly, nothing
spilled. Trudy had skills. With a grunt and a nod but no words she
waded back into the fray of the restaurant.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had
real coffee—for some reason that loser Xed hadn’t had any at his
swanky casa, and it smelled and tasted amazing. She sucked half of
it down in one go, not giving a shit that it singed her tongue. The
rest of her body was already burned to some degree, may as well
finish the job in the name of a good cause. The big plates were
covered with what looked like turkey and mashed potatoes smothered
in gravy. It didn’t look particularly appetizing, and it was
certainly primarily sythmeals, but it was crafted to look and smell
like real food, and that was a step above the nasty packaged
slop.

She slid the plate over the uneven Formica
table, but found it snagged on what she thought was an especially
big crack. With another tug she revealed that it was a tiny manila
envelope, and with a quick jingle and she knew it was keys.

“Is this what I think it is?” she said

He laced his fingers together. “Would I ever
let you down?” he said.

She poked a finger at his chest. “You, sir,
are a stranger to me, but you have an honest face. You wanna tell
me where to stick these?” she asked.

He pointed to a back store room. “Where the
sun don’t shine, naturally,” he said.

After traversing a creepy and dirty network
of surprisingly labyrinthine back hallways, she came upon an
impressive array of communication devices. Jackpot. She’d hit the
mother load. They needed one of these in the Casa Grande flats—too
bad Gila Bend was too far away from Phoenix for the government to
move their staging area here—it would have made everything so much
easier. She found her mind wandering off track. It would almost be
worth expanding her distribution network further out here with the
help of Radar just to have this kind of communication set up.
Shaking her head to literally chase away those thoughts, she tried
to focus on the tasks at hand. There were a thousand other problems
to solve first, and kid in a candy store didn’t begin to cover her
lust for the primo transmission gizmos. It was enough to make her
forget that the store room smelled like decades of old grease and
rat shit.

Her excitement faded when she realized that
the information she had for the Grease Weasels back home would
devastate Milo. She had been going over scenarios to try and get
ahold of more Ketocillin, but there were no good options. The only
other place she knew that was actively stocking it at the moment
was New Orleans, and dealing with shit down there was extremely
complicated. She wasn’t on great terms with the dome folks or the
pit leader, and shit never went well when she had to do anything
down in bayou country. Some of her accomplishments of the last week
actually included meeting Xed and Radar—perhaps they would be new
connections that would continue to be fruitful.

She hadn’t thought that she would be able to
contact Xed until after she’d gotten back to the pits—it was much
harder making a discreet call into the domes from an unsecure
location without the right kind of equipment that one didn’t just
find laying about. However, the unexpectedly robust equipment
changed that, and she made the decision to try and get ahold of Xed
first.

“Xero. Where are you?” he said, and she was
taken aback by the concern in his voice. Boys. You fucked ‘em once,
and they got all attached.

“I take it you got wind of the fiasco in
Yuma,” she said.

“Absolutely. It’s chaos out there, but the
military and media are doing their best to keep any of that info
out of Phoenix. I can’t say I’m happy. I have operatives out there
that I’ve lost contact with, and I haven’t been able to get anyone
else on the ground to check it out. Do you have any intel you can
share with me?” he asked.

“Not much, unfortunately,” she said and
brought him up to speed on her adventures since departing from his
place in the dome.

“Jesus. Well, I’m glad you came out alright,”
he said. She hadn’t elaborated on the parts about Radar. Just as
she’d been about to tell him about that portion of the story, she
realized that she’d never really talked about Xed with Radar, other
than confirming that they didn’t work together. In these circles,
you never could be too careful. Your friend could very well be
someone else’s mortal enemy, and loose lips could do more than just
sink the damned ship.

“Barely, but I’ll take it, considering if I’d
gotten to Yuma a few hours earlier than planned I’d have been
toast,” she said, laughing when an awkward pause reminded her of
why she’d left later in the first place. Turned out fucking Xed
that last few times before getting on her way had been a really
great decision. She still wasn’t sure about the rest of him, but he
wasn’t a bad fuck.

“Now what will you do?” he said calmly.

“I was hoping you might have some
suggestions, actually. I can figure out a way to get back to the
Tucson pits, but I’m shit out of luck for Ketocillin,” she
said.

There was silence on the other side of the
line, and she waited for him to speak up. He cleared his throat.
“Not to be too judgmental here or anything, but aren’t you not
seeing the forest for the trees a bit here? We’ve had one of the
biggest terrorist acts of the century go down, and we don’t know
who or what might be next,” he said.

She scoffed. “Look, the world might be
burning down around us, but there’s not much I can do about that
right now. What I do know is that one of my comrades is dying, and
I’m not going to let that go while I still have a chance to do
something about it,” she said.

“You’re quite the admirable leader,” he said
and she laughed a little too loudly. She didn’t think there was any
way someone could hear her over the cacophony out in the dining
room, but that was no reason to be careless.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever called me
admirable before, but I’ll take the compliment. So. You got any
bright ideas?” she said.

“If you’re game, I think we might be able to
do a little bit of business. I want to figure out why whole cities
are blowing up, and you want to save your associate. I’ll help you
get to some Ketocillin, if you agree to help me find your buddy,
Calavera. Somehow her skeletons are involved, and from what I have
gathered she hasn’t been seen by anyone in over a week. If we can
get her hands on her, or at least figure out what happened to her
body, we might have some answers. I’m not exactly sentimental for
these domes, but I don’t want to be inside one when it blows up,
that’s for sure,” he said.

She stopped and thought about it. She wanted
to find Calavera and kick her fucking ass anyway. Even if she
didn’t have anything to do with the Yuma explosion, her skeletons
had royally jacked up her whole goddamn week, and that wasn’t
something she was going to let go without consequences. Getting
help rustling up some Ketocillin in the process was just a big fat
cherry on top of the sundae. Giving morons a good ass kicking
wasn’t something she needed any prompting to do anyway.

After working out some of the details, she
ended the transmission with Xed, feeling more hopeful about her
prospects for the near future. With that business taken care of she
was able to make the unpleasant call to Milo telling him what had
happened. He’d already gotten word from their operatives about what
had happened in Yuma, and he knew something was wrong when she
dropped out of communication in the middle of the day.

“You’re alive!” Milo said in their code
language when he picked up the call.

“I feel like we’ve been through this before,”
she said.

“Well it keeps being relevant,” he said. She
tried to feign annoyance, but it was kind of nice betting fretted
over. Good to know someone still gave a damn.

She brought him up to speed again on their
current status and her new plan to get some Ketocillin with Xed’s
assistance.

“I don’t know if I like having to trust some
stranger with Trina’s life,” Milo said, nearly whining.

“Do we really have much of a choice?” she
said. “I’ll keep brainstorming in the meantime. Xed said that it
would take a little bit of time to get back in touch with me once
he was done nailing down the details. In the meantime, I’m going to
get my ass back to the flats. I want all eyes and ears on the
lookout for Calavera and Argon—we need to find them. Even if it’s
just their corpses, I want to see bodies.”

Milo agreed with the plan and they resolved
to put the tentative put things into motion. Once she’d dealt with
the issue of the crawlers they’d find a good way to get Xero back
to the pits where she could join the hunt in earnest. She knew Milo
wasn’t comfortable with the plan, but neither was she—they just
didn’t have a choice at the moment.

Her next call was jumbled and strange, and
she was put on hold and passed around over half a dozen times
before anyone would actually stay on the line for more than a few
seconds. Eventually, she managed to convey the situation to someone
with enough authority that would actually be able to give her
authorization to deal with the cargo. The chaos actually worked in
favor, and they agreed to most of what she had hoped for. They were
striking the cargo and the crawlers from the record and releasing
the gear as a casualty. As long as she submitted proper
documentation for the losses they would be accounted for as acts of
nature and war.

She conveniently didn’t bother to mention
that she had maintained possession of her laser, but they wouldn’t
have expected her to return to a home base of operations across the
dead zones without a weapon. It was about as good of an outcome as
she could have hoped for, and she secretly wondered if Xed might
have had something to do with the smoothness of the process. No
reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She cut off transmissions with the dome and
clenched one fist. Finally she was feeling a tenuous control over
the situation. If they all didn’t blow up in the next terrorist
attack, there just might be hope for them after all. Either that,
or they would become giant shish kabobs in the next explosion.

CHAPTER 16

The room smelled as old as it really was,
but the fact that they had a real, functioning hotel room in the
first place was fairly amazing. It was connected to the back of the
restaurant and shared its same unfortunately cheesy space décor.
Ironic, because all space programs had ceased decades ago, and
there were hardly even any satellites left in the sky. Peeling
planet and star decals were clinging desperately to the walls and
ceiling.

“Damn, that’s a really big scar,” Xero
said.

“That’ll happen when your lungs are ripped
out of your chest,” Radar said.

She dragged a ragged fingernail along the
smooth line of old scar tissue that ran all the way down his
ribcage. He was propped up in surprisingly clean hotel bed with his
head resting on a stack of yellowed but fresh pillows. The faded
blue sheets were tucked up to his belly button and a thin sheet of
sweat coated his tan skin. He looked timeless to her somehow, like
he could have been wandering the desert for decades without
aging.

She flipped on top of him, her legs
straddling his waist, her figure casting a shadow across him, the
dim and bare lamp bulb illuminating her sagging Mohawk. Leaning
down, she followed the same track along the scar with her tongue,
licking back up the slick indentation and ending with a kiss on his
mouth.

“Tell me about how it happened,” she
said.

He folded his arms up behind his head, the
grooves in his arm muscles highlighted in deep shadows. “You want
to hear how I was sliced open and my lungs were cut out of my
body?” he asked.

She bared her teeth and wiggled playfully.
“Yeah, tell me the tale of your suffering. Hearing about someone’s
greatest misery tells me more about them than anything else,” she
said.