I tensed. “Why? You think I can handle the idea of murder better than a Jagernaut?” I could never harm someone like the aide, Tavan Ganz. He was an innocent. He also had probably saved the life of the Finance Councilor, given that Calaj had asked to see the Councilor before she attacked Ganz. “I could never kill that way.”
“I know.” The Uzan showed no doubt. “I meant that you aren’t a psion. The stronger the empath, the stronger their reaction when someone tries to control their thoughts.”
“Then I shouldn’t have reacted at all,” I said. “I have no Kyle ability at all.”
He shrugged. “Maybe your tests were wrong.”
I doubted it, but it didn’t bother me. It was bad enough I had to protect my mind against empaths sensing my moods; I had no wish to have their emotions in my head as well. My ancestors had retreated to the aqueducts under the city, isolated from Cries, to protect their minds. Many had been Kyle operators, what we called psions. They had lived, loved, fought, died, and given birth in darkness and poverty for ages, but until last year no one had remembered why. Yet over the millennia, hidden in the dark, we had created one of the strongest communities of psions ever known.
Even if that particular genetic heritage had mostly missed me, I didn’t feel so great. I would’ve sat down, except I didn’t want to show weakness. So instead, I spoke to the Uzan. “Perhaps Calaj lost her ability to make moral judgments.” Gods knew, war could do that to you.
“The J-Force constantly tests us,” the Uzan said. “Even if she somehow bypassed all the safeguards, her spinal node would have rejected her.”
“Not if it had become corrupted as well.”
Max interrupted, speaking out loud instead of sending signals to my beleaguered mind. “Corrupted how? I damn near shutdown from what just happened, and you didn’t actually try to harm anyone. Even if someone could find a way to override my ethical protocols, which I doubt, they’d have to change my structure so much, I couldn’t function when they finished. And that’s nothing compared to what Calaj’s EI dealt with.”
The Uzan raised his eyebrows at me. “Your gauntlet EI?”
“Yah,” I said. “That’s Max.”
“The node implanted in a Jagernaut is more sophisticated than I am,” Max added. “If you couldn’t coerce me into abetting a murder, no way could you do it with the EI of a Jagernaut. It would shut down.”
So I had thought. Still, war could break anyone. To work in a squad where they were all linked, Jagernauts had to be telepaths, their abilities amplified by tech. When they went into battle, they experienced the deaths of the people they killed. It was a wonder they didn’t all go insane.
I breathed out. My head pounded even more now than before. I needed to go home.
The aqueducts had existed on Raylicon before humans came. We changed them, but they predated us. They would probably be here long after we left the planet, when it no longer sustained human life. The canals networked the Undercity, some huge, some small, level upon level of them in subterranean spaces beneath the desert. We called them aqueducts because our ancient records used that term, but it had come to mean the entire Undercity, including the mazes of caves and passages that surrounded the aqueducts.
Today I walked along one of the underground canals, wondering if water ever rushed through this conduit. It seemed absurd. This tunnel was ten meters across and almost as tall. I paced along its midwalk, a path that ran along the wall in a wide ledge, located midway between the top and bottom of the canal. The bottom of the aqueducts lay deep in red and blue dust, the detritus of millennia. Whatever architects built this place had been geniuses, placing braces, arches, and supports so well that these ruins had survived for more than six millennia.
In theory, the City of Cries maintained the aqueducts. Yah, right. Until last year, Cries ignored us. They considered this place a sparsely settled slum, the province only of a few archeologists who studied the ruins. We preferred it that way. We didn’t want them interfering with our way of life. Their neglect ended last year when war broke out between the drug cartels down here and slammed us with attention, big time. The battle destroyed two of the larger canals, which Cries was now rebuilding.
This deep down, no lamps chased away the darkness. I wore a light stylus on a cord around my neck. Its light flickered on the stone mosaics in the walls, which showed stylized pictures of Abaj thundering across the desert on their mounts, those gigantic lizards that resembled the Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur that in an earlier eon had dominated the Earth. In the wavering light, the figures seemed to move. I passed a column of gargoyles, a totem pole of grimacing beasts with gaping mouths and curved horns, like sentinels with unblinking eyes. I shuddered as a chill crawled up my back.
Stop it, I told myself. It’s only shaking light.
Was that directed at me? Max asked.
Apparently my thoughts were more intense today. No, sorry, just thinking.
Can I be of service?
I’m just brooding. These aqueducts have never made sense to me. This entire continent doesn’t have enough water to fill even part of this system. They don’t look like water ever flowed in them. Hell, it’d be a ridiculous way to transport water from one place to another.
I don’t know their purpose.
Nor did anyone else. If we’d ever known, we lost that knowledge during the Dark Ages. I dimmed my light. My pants, muscle shirt, boots—all were black, both the leather and the metal. The pulse gun in my shoulder holster reflected no light. My skin blended with the shadows. My footsteps made no noise. I became a wraith.
Somewhere a pebble skittered
Someone is shadowing me, I thought.
Two someones, I believe, Max answered.
I kept going, turning into a smaller canal. Crystal formations crusted the walls and ceiling, catching glints even from my dim light. The bottom of this tunnel lay only a few handspans below the rubble-strewn midwalk. To the untrained gaze, it might look like no one had come here in years. I saw the signs of upkeep, smoothing of the path, clearing the dust so it didn’t pile too high against the walls.
You’ve picked up a third shadow, Max thought.
You read anything about them?
They aren’t close enough for my sensors to pick up details, but I’d say they are young and physically fit.
I could have told him that with no sensors at all. You didn’t survive here if you weren’t fit, and the fatality rate from accidents, violence, disease, and starvation left our population young compared to the rest of the Imperialate, where the average life span had reached a century.
Eventually I came out to an airier region, not a canal, but a more open area with a path that wound among rock formations. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, formed as mineral-laden water dripped and hardened into ragged cones that resembled big rock icicles. Stalagmites formed below them, jutting up from the ground. I passed a translucent curtain of rock created by the dripping water, then walked between two columns formed by joined stalagmites and stalactites. They flanked the entrance to a small cave. Inside, delicate rock formations hung from the ceiling or stood in porous walls, creating an eerily beautiful space.
I sat on stump of rock and waited.
How do you always know? Max thought.
Know what? I asked.
That someone will come.
I don’t know. Just works that way.
Yes, but why? Someone from Cries could sit here and no one would come. More likely, they’d get mugged.
Oh, Max. No one is going to mug me. One gang had tried last year, when I first returned to the Undercity. They survived because I let them live. Word spread fast, and no one bothered me again.
You’re right, they won’t attack you, Max thought. But it’s not because they know you’re better trained, or that your biomech enhances your reflexes, strength, and speed.
Those seemed perfectly good reasons to me. Then why?
Respect. The legend.
I laughed. The legend?
Of what?
You.
Yah, right Max. I was as legendary as dust vole. I think you’re due for maintenance.
Very funny. He didn’t sound amused.
A girl stepped out from behind a flowstone curtain. Today she had pulled back her wild mane of hair, and her dark gaze had the look of a fighter, a vigilance that never wavered. She had grown again, just in the few days since I had seen her last. At this rate, she would soon be my height.
I nodded. “Eh, Sandjan.” She ran with the Oey gang, she and her lover Biker, the cyber-rider known as Tym. She had three names, Pat Oey Sandjan, almost unheard of down here.
She nodded back. “Bhaaj.”
I indicated another rock with a flat top. “Come sit.”
She settled onto the stump with a wary tension that had become so ingrained, I doubted she knew she held herself that way. The dust gang she led, two girls and two boys, protected a circle of twelve other kids. She and Biker were the eldest, fifteen and sixteen. A scar ran from her temple to her ear, a faint red line as gnarled as her life in the Undercity. She had earned the mark in the cartel war last year. A trio of drug punkers had gone after her gang, all of them running like dark flyers down the canals.
She spoke in the Undercity dialect. “Got problem.”
“Big or small?” I asked.
“Big. Dust Knight broke the Code.”
Damn. I tensed. “She know you’re talking?”
“He. Yah, he knows.”
Interesting. Sandjan wouldn’t talk to me if he objected, at least not this directly. Either he wanted me to know or he just didn’t give a damn. The kids chaffed at the rules I set up, the Code they had to follow as Dust Knights. They kept it because they loved tykado, the martial arts I taught them. They understood fighting. We ran and we rumbled; it had always been that way with dust gangs. In my youth, we’d run through the aqueducts day after day, year after year, for the sheer joy of speed, outpacing poverty, hunger, and pain. It wasn’t until I joined the army and started winning marathons that I realized the value of that lifestyle I’d taken for granted.
When we weren’t running, we fought. We learned hand-to-hand combat from older kids or by trying out moves when we practiced with each other. Our rumbles with other gangs became a violent sport where we spent our energy and desperation. We fought mainly to establish hierarchies, but if anger took over, it could turn lethal. Either way, our fists were our coin. In the army, I discovered the martial art known as tykado. In that coin, I became wealthy indeed. When I returned here, I had been gone long enough that the new generation didn’t know me. It didn’t matter. My patina of civilization fooled no one. After word about my fight with the muggers spread, the gangs sought me out. They wanted me to teach them tykado.
I showed a few kids some moves. Not long after, more of them showed up to learn. Then more. They became the Dust Knights. The Code evolved as the news about the knights spread through the whisper mill. They didn’t like my insisting they learn to read and write, but they tried. They liked the rest of the Code even less: no drugs or vengeance killing. They could defend themselves, yes, but I wanted them to learn more than fighting. Tykado was more than a fighting technique, it could become a way of life, a discipline as much about centering yourself as destroying your opponent. It offered the young people down here structure, a center, a sense of accomplishment. I wanted to give them more in their lives than their crushing poverty.
Then the adults came. They first showed up to my tykado classes after the cartel war. Cold and wary, they wanted to see what I had to offer. That group had included Dark Singer, the top cartel assassin. Former assassin. I told her straight out—swear by the Code or leave. Incredibly, she stayed. She rarely talked, but she had given her oath like the rest of the knights.
“Who broke the Code?” I asked.
She met my gaze. “Ruzik.”
Damn. At nineteen, Ruzik was no kid. Fired in the crucible of violence, he had seen too much in his life. I didn’t want to lose him. He was a strong leader when he wasn’t stalking through the canals with his gang, getting into trouble. He learned tykado so easily, it was as if he’d been born knowing the moves. That came from his expertise at rough-tumble, the street fighting used by gangs here. He was an exceptional athlete. He’d be a great leader someday, too, if he didn’t screw up.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Went to the Concourse. With Hack.”
Hack? I couldn’t tell if she meant the drug or the person. “The cyber-wizard?”
“Yah, Hack. Him and Ruzik.”
“Why go to Concourse?” Our people weren’t exactly welcome there.
“Liberate tech-mech.” After a moment, she added, “Food, too. From Rec Center.”
I scowled at her. Liberate. Right. “Don’t need to steal food. Rec Center gives. Free.”
Sandjan scowled right back at me. “Don’t take charity.”
“They get arrested?” I hoped not. The police would take one look at Ruzik, with his scars, tattoos, hardened muscles, and surly glare, and heave him into jail.
“Couldn’t catch them.” She didn’t hide her satisfaction.
It didn’t surprise me. Even if Ruzik had actually robbed someone, rather than mining junk from salvage dumps, the police weren’t likely to come after him here. They left the aqueducts alone as long as my people stayed put. In any case, the Code didn’t prohibit theft. I wanted them to stop, but the gangs lived on the edge of starvation, and stealing food was one way to survive. Until I had a viable alternative, I left it out of the Code. Besides, they weren’t stealing from the Rec Center; it was a soup kitchen. The volunteers called it a recreation center because they had figured out that none of my people would accept anything that looked like a handout.
“Ruzik didn’t break the Code,” I said.
Sandjan squinted at me and shifted her weight.
Not good. “Got more?” I asked.
“Yah.”
I waited. She looked around, ready to jump up and leave.
“Say,” I told her. “What else?”
She turned back to me. “Pinched pulse rifles.”
What the fuck? I rose to my feet, suddenly furious. “They start running guns, they’re out.” The war had exploded last year when two rival drug cartels went after each other with smuggled weapons. No way did I want the knights stealing guns or arming themselves for a vengeance battle.
“Not running guns.” Sandjan stood up, facing me eye to eye. “Hack took the rifles apart.”
I crossed my arms. “What for?”
“Don’t know.”
Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. I had to get on with my investigation, but when I had a chance to find Hack, he had better have a damn good explanation.
Sandjan shifted her weight. “Got to go.”
“Wait.” I uncrossed my arms. “Got question.”
She waited.
“Dark Singer,” I said. “I need talk with.”
She shrugged. “Hard to find.”
“Yah.” It was part of what had made her such an effective assassin.
“Maybe I can start a whisper,” Sandjan allowed. “See what comes up.”
The Black Mark Casino was more elusive than water in the aqueducts. Tonight, it hid in a cavern far from the main canals. Half above ground and half below, it looked like part of the ruins, its surfaces camouflaged among the ancient stone. I ran my hand along its smooth wall. No openings or marks showed anywhere. The surface felt cool, an illegal composite doped with designer nanobots. They could take apart the casino and reconstruct it elsewhere in record time.
After searching for a few minutes, I found the indentation I sought in the wall. I pressed it in a pattern of touches. Then I turned off my light stylus and stood in darkness unrelieved by anything as extravagant as moonlight.
A vertical line of blue radiance appeared, formed as a slit opened in the wall. In normal light, it barely would have been visible, but in the utter darkness, it looked like a
portal opening into a land hidden beyond the real universe. I slid my hand into the opening and pushed the wall aside. As I stepped into dim light beyond, the wall closed behind me. A hallway stretched out in front of me, dark except for holographic galaxies lazily swirling in the air. I walked through clouds of sparkles, an illusory beauty as fleeting as the pleasure offered by the gambling dens of the Black Mark.
At the end of the hallway I came out on a balcony. I stood at its glimmering rail and looked out over the main floor. Tables filled the large room, worked by handsome men and sensual women, their appearance guaranteed to suggest any vice a customer wished to indulge. They gave people cards, spun holo wheels, and slid chips. The floor and tables were dark, accented with silver hues like starlight. Holos glistened in the air, translucent shimmers of color. Yet all that glitz paled compared to the clientele. They dressed in fractions of clothes, women and men of all ages, gleaming and sleek, some subtle, some gaudy, skin showing everywhere, tattooed in glittering swirls. Gems sparkled in their hair.
A man spoke by my shoulder, his voice deep and sensual, as if he had gravel in his throat. “You breaking and entering?”
I turned. Jak stood there, lean and mean. He wore black trousers and boots, and a ragged black snug-shirt with torn sleeves. Not one holo or glint showed in the unrelieved black of his hair, which spiked above his ear. A scar arched above his left eyebrow. The sleepy look of his eyes didn’t fool me; danger simmered within him.
“Eh,” I said, as articulate as always.
“You come to gamble, Bhaaj?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Always a gamble, coming here.”
His lids lowered halfway over his eyes. “You like,” he murmured.
Gods, that sultry gaze of his would be my undoing. “You wish.”
He grinned, a sudden flash of white teeth. As fast as it came, his smile disappeared and he was dark Jak again, dangerous as all hell. It didn’t matter. That one instant was enough. That grin of his should be listed as a dangerous substance because, damn, it could be addicting.