Dark Sky (Keiko) (17 page)

They could also likely break pretty much any bone in her body if they got hold of her.

Now Kunley seemed to get an inkling of why she was hesitating. His face, so far as she could read it with his natural eyes obscured, fell into an earnest expression. ‘Please, we only wish to help. We can take him to our workshop and fix his leg.’

Workshop. Damn circuitheads don’t even call it a surgery.
‘What about them?’ Jenna asked, pointing at the
politsiya
. They weren’t firing anymore, but were now roughly apprehending and cuffing anyone who had fallen in the crush or had been overcome by the gas, the remnants of which were starting to drift around them, making her throat feel like she’d swallowed powdered glass.

Kunley’s smile returned. ‘In a mining town, the Universal Access Movement is well thought of. Everyone has family or a friend who we have helped after an accident, even the police. You will be safe so long as you are with us.’

Translation: you’re not safe
unless
you’re with us.
But then, Jenna had pretty much known that anyway.

She stood back from Apirana’s body and knelt down by his head again. ‘A.? Listen to me, there’s some … people … who’re going to help you up, okay?
Don’t
try to use your left leg. If they hurt you, let me know.’

He still didn’t respond and she sat back, biting her lip with worry, then looked up at Kunley. ‘What if it’s not just his ankle that’s broken? Should we even move him? There were people
standing
on him, what if his neck’s—’

‘His ankle is the only break,’ Kunley replied calmly. He raised a finger to his visor. ‘I scanned him.’

X-ray visor. Right
. Jenna was dubious for a moment, but the Circuit Cult were all about replacing or enhancing people’s limbs with mechanical augmentations so she guessed it kind of made sense for their leader to be able to scan for broken bones. She stood back, admitting defeat. She still couldn’t bring herself to trust a circuithead, but it wasn’t like she had many options. ‘Fine. Uh … go ahead, then.’

Kunley nodded to his two companions who stepped forwards and squatted down next to Apirana and, murmuring things which were doubtless meant to be soothing but which probably did nothing as Apirana didn’t speak much Russian, started to roll him carefully onto his back. Jenna caught her breath: the big man’s face was visibly scraped and battered even under his tattoos, and although he appeared conscious he showed no sign of being aware of where he was. She started to reach out to him, but pulled her hand back – she certainly wouldn’t want to be touched on her face if it looked like that – and settled for quickly unhooking the satchel he’d had slung across his shoulders.

The man took Apirana under the shoulders and the woman got his legs by the knees, then they lifted him up and set off at a steady pace towards the edge of the plaza without any real sign of effort. Jenna found herself staring open-mouthed at this casual display of strength.

‘Come,’ Kunley said, placing one hand briefly on her shoulder and gesturing with the other, ‘we should go.’

‘Yeah.’ Jenna started walking with him, but unzipped her bag as she did so and pulled out her EMP generator bracelet which she secured around her forearm. It would knock out the circuitry in their augmentations if she activated it, which was why she’d built the damn thing in the first place. It was far from the best option this far underground, but she desperately felt the need for some sort of equaliser.

‘What is that?’ Kunley asked, his tone no more than mildly curious.

‘This?’ Jenna tried to look casual. ‘Health monitor. It’s … been a rough day.’

‘I see,’ Kunley nodded. ‘Forgive me for asking, but are you already augmented at all?’

‘Me?’ Jenna shook her head, trying to suppress a grimace. ‘No.’

‘Have you considered it? Even for those who appear to be in good natural health, the benefits can be—’

‘Best discussed elsewhere,’ Jenna cut in, pointing towards the far end of the plaza where movement had caught her eye behind the
politsiya
she’d been watching distrustfully. ‘Run!’

She was ten feet into her sprint and rapidly gaining on the two circuitheads carrying Apirana when the firefight started in earnest.

EVERYONE WAS STARING
at Rourke. This was when she felt the absence of Drift most keenly: he always knew when to make a big show and attract the attention of an audience, thereby allowing her to make preparations for their exit.

At least, she’d always supposed he did that consciously. It was always possible that he was simply an egomaniac.

‘She came in with Skanda,’ the First Nations man said to Moutinho, who looked about ready to haul off and hit someone.

‘Oh, thanks, Jack,’ Skanda retorted with heavy sarcasm. ‘Seriously, that’s really—’

‘
Shut up!
’ Moutinho thundered, rounding on him and pushing him up against the wall. ‘
You
brought her in here? Why?!’

‘Why
not?
’ Skanda demanded, although his face didn’t look half as confident as his voice. ‘Who the hell
is
she, anyway?’

‘I was about to ask the same thing,’ the older Uragan woman put in, eyeing Rourke warily.

‘My name’s Tamara Rourke,’ Rourke said simply, before Moutinho could respond. The skinny kid gave a small start of surprise, while Jack nodded sourly as though she’d simply confirmed a suspicion he’d started to hold. Skanda just closed his eyes and looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him.

‘I’m from a ship called the
Keiko
,’ Rourke continued, ‘where I’m a business partner with its owner, Captain Ichabod Drift. This man has crossed paths with us a few times before over the years, and we aren’t friends.’ She nodded at Moutinho, then addressed him directly. ‘It was you who left that anonymous tip about us being gunrunners, am I right?’

‘Is all that true?’ the Uragans’ leader asked Moutinho.

‘As near as makes no difference,’ Moutinho growled, clearly angry at having his thunder stolen, which had been Rourke’s intention: when the truth was going to come out anyway it was best to reveal it voluntarily yourself. That way you could avoid others putting less complimentary spins on it.

‘Including the part about the tip-off?’ the Uragan asked, and suddenly there was an edge in her voice. Moutinho was sharp enough to catch it. He released his hold on Skanda’s shirt and turned to face her, his brow furrowing.

‘Drift and his crew are troublemakers, Tanja, always have been. If they’d caught wind of what we were up to they’d have run to the law the first chance they got and sold us out. Then where would
you
have been? No,’ he shook his head emphatically, ‘we tarred them with the only brush they could have used on us, cos that way they’d have been ignored if they’d tried it.’

‘You
told
the
politsiya
that there was gunrunning going on?!’ Tanja shouted in response. Rourke saw Jack shift his stance slightly. The First Nations man suddenly seemed to be counting heads and realising that his crew were one short compared to the Uragans present, none of whom were looking particularly relaxed now. Two short, if Rourke was classed as an enemy.

‘They’re not as dumb as you want ’em to be,’ Moutinho snorted. ‘I’ve heard about that Muradov, he’s a sharp card. This was gonna be our last drop here, anyway; I didn’t fancy running the risk again. No customs official can be bribed to look the wrong way for ever.’

‘You told me you wanted to help!’ Tanja snapped.

Moutinho shrugged. ‘I
did
help. You got any other contacts who’d be willing to risk their asses hauling illegal firearms into this place? I’m not a revolutionary, I’m a businessman, and business is looking better elsewhere.’

‘What about her?’ the Uragan youth Rourke had followed in asked, pointing in her direction. Tanja looked at Rourke thoughtfully, pursing her lips, then sighed with every appearance of genuine regret.

‘She knows too much, now.’

Well. That doesn’t leave me with many options, does it?

‘Actually,’ Rourke spoke up, ‘I don’t know anywhere near enough if I’m going to help you.’

Tanja’s brow furrowed. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You’re clearly heavily involved in planning and executing a Free Systems revolution and we are’ – Rourke made a show of checking her wrist chrono, – ‘approximately seven minutes after the general alert sounded. The security forces have already deployed live rounds. That means they’ve escalated response by two levels, so civilian communications through the public hub will have been cut off, correct?’

‘You mean your comm doesn’t work?’ Moutinho snorted. ‘That’s not hard to spot.’

Rourke gave him a thin and completely false smile, then turned her attention back to Tanja. ‘So given we’re in a multi-levelled underground city and you therefore can’t use independent short-range comms, I imagine you’re getting around that by deploying hard-wired communication points that use the power lines, right?’

Tanja’s eyes narrowed. ‘How do you—?’

‘But what you probably
don’t
know,’ Rourke ploughed on, ‘is that standard Red Star anti-insurgent protocol in areas where hard-wired comm points are considered likely to be in use is to induce a power surge in order to knock as many of those units out as possible. That’s meant to happen five minutes after the first officer reports that live rounds have been deployed, in order to give time for government devices to be switched off or otherwise protected, so …’ She looked at her chrono again, then back up at Tanja. ‘You’re on the clock.’

Tanja stared back at her, then turned to one of the younger Uragans who was lurking near a cupboard and spoke in Russian. Rourke missed some of the words, but caught the gist:
Unplug the transmitter and tell the others.

Ricardo Moutinho’s expression was getting more and more incredulous as the youth opened the cupboard door and started speaking urgently into the transmission equipment concealed there. ‘You’re actually
buying
this?’

‘A power surge will knock out a lot of things,’ Tanja said, ignoring him to focus on Rourke once more with a weighing stare, ‘we’ll soon see if she’s telling the truth. Where did you learn this information?’

Rourke raised her eyebrows slightly. She was aiming for authoritative without coming across as superior or condescending, but that was always a fine balancing act. ‘Let’s not rush into anything here. It sounded like you were planning on killing me a minute ago. That doesn’t exactly engender trust.’

Tanja nodded. ‘A fair point. If your information about the power surge is good—’

There was a bang as the salon’s lights brightened momentarily, then went out with an air of finality. The only light left was from the muted communal lamps outside in the plaza, still mimicking the night-time level of illumination in an open-air city like New Samara.

Rourke sighed. ‘I could have done with them waiting a few more seconds, really.’ She allowed herself a small smile, which was at least partly due to the look of outraged consternation on Moutinho’s face. ‘How were you planning on ending that sentence?’

Tanja had the look of someone who wanted to believe something but was being assailed by the fear that it was too good to be true.

‘I take it you’ve done this before?’

‘Three times,’ Rourke nodded. ‘Don’t bother asking me when or where.’

‘I think I can take that on trust,’ Tanja said slowly.

‘How do we know she’s not a spy?’ one of the Uragan girls demanded.

‘Because Captain Moutinho has already told us that he’s known Ms Rourke for years,’ Tanja smiled. ‘A case of “right place, right time”, perhaps?’

‘More like “wrong place, wrong time” from where I’m standing,’ Rourke admitted. ‘I hadn’t intended to do this again, but given the circumstances …’ She gave a slight shrug. ‘If I’m going to be mixed up in this, I might as well give myself the best chance of coming out alive.’ She crossed to the salon’s window and looked out, still half hoping to see some sign of Jenna and Apirana and half worrying that if she did, it would be because one of them would have caught a bullet.

The plaza was largely empty, but the drifting remnants of gas made the air hazy and it was hard to see many details. Rourke could make out the black-clad forms of
politsiya
moving here and there, securing and arresting the luckless ones who’d fallen, but she couldn’t see any sign of her crewmates. Hopefully they’d managed to flee the plaza unharmed and had fallen in with better – or at least less potentially troublesome – company than she had.

A cluster of movement at the far end of the plaza caught her eye, visible even through the haze. At first she thought it was yet more law enforcement officers, perhaps ones who hadn’t yet heard quite how thoroughly the protest had been dispersed. Then, however, she saw the unmistakeable shards of light which constituted muzzle flash. A fraction of a second later the reports reached their ears, muffled by the salon’s window but still identifiable to anyone who’d been in a gunfight or two.

Wait until the riot squad think the threat’s been dispersed, then attack from behind.
Rourke nodded slowly, even as her stomach sank.
Goad them into inflicting a few civilian casualties to sway the populace to the justice of the cause. Callous, but effective: I might have planned this myself, other than the timing.
She was already slipping back into the insurrectionist thinking model. The Galactic Intelligence Agency had never particularly wanted any planet to genuinely defect to the Free Systems – any one of them could be the pebble that would cause a landslide across into USNA space – but a single bad apple could throw an entire system into disarray, or even more. That could be very useful in the right circumstances, and so the United States of North America had carefully planted GIA agents on planets belonging to rival governmental conglomerates. Then Rourke, and others like her, would harness pre-existing public unrest and turn unsettled mutterings into a chaotic, destabilising roar. The important difference this time was that she wasn’t in control of the timetable, and she didn’t have an extraction protocol.