She said only, “Yah. Dumb punks,” but that was enough, an apology, undercity style. It was also her admission that yes, they were her punks, which meant she now ran the Kajada cartel. No surprise there, but I wished it weren’t true.
“Long time,” she said.
I nodded. How else could I answer? Dig was the last person I had seen before I enlisted. We had stood together by the exit from the undercity into the Concourse, and in all the years since, I had tried to forget our bitter argument that morning.
Today she said only, “You done with the army?”
“Yah,” I said. “I work private.”
“Heard.” Her dark gaze remained impassive. “Whisper says Majda.”
“ISC.”
“So you’re still military.”
“Nahya.” I wondered why she cared. “They just hired me.”
She nodded. I waited, wondering what provoked her to come here in the open, which punkers avoided like the plague. It seemed a big deal just to apologize for her runners doing something stupid. She could have done that down deep.
“You,” she finally said.
“Me?” I asked.
“Almost shot my jan,” she said.
Ho! Did she mean “my jan” as in “my daughter”? I was Bhaajan because my mother had been Bhaaj. It was the sole piece of ID found with me as a newborn, a scrap of film with the words She is the daughter of Bhaaj. Had one of those punkers that jumped me been named Digjan?
“Which?” I asked.
“Had knife. Not gun.”
Not the leader, then, but one of the other two girls. Yes, I remembered. The taller of those two had seemed familiar. Of course. She looked like Dig.
So Dig had a kid. No surprise there. She had always valued family and would make sure her children knew their mother as Dig had never known hers. I wondered about the father. Undercity lovers ignored the elaborate courtship rituals followed in Cries. Young women approached young men with no fuss, and the fellows enjoyed their compromised honor as they pleased. Contrary to what the above-city believed, that didn’t mean we valued our relationships less or that we didn’t respect our men. Our code of honor placed great value on the ties people formed.
I would never forget how Dig and I had run laughing through the aqueducts like sisters, confident we ruled the undercity, though of course we hadn’t ruled even our own misspent lives. The day I left for the army, angry words had flown between us, filled with a pain neither of us knew how to articulate. How could I walk away? I tried to tell her how much my meager education meant to me, the schooling I’d hacked from Cries, how it opened my eyes to the rest of the empire, but the terse dialect of the aqueducts left no way to express my wanderlust, not even to Dig.
I said only, “Digjan’s father?”
“You don’t know him.” Her closed expression said Stay out of my business as clearly as if she held a gun on me.
I changed the subject. “You train Digjan?” She’d want her daughter to take over the cartel someday. Right, multi-generational drug cartels, just what the human race needed.
She spoke flatly. “No train.”
“Why not?”
“So she can enlist.”
That I hadn’t expected. “Does she want that?”
“Mostly.” Dig leaned forward, her face intent. “Get out.”
I read her meaning from her body language. She didn’t mean get out of my business this time, she meant she wanted her daughter out of the family business. Apparently I wasn’t the only one here who didn’t like what Dig did for a living.
“She has to want it enough,” I said. “She’ll have to work harder than the rest to survive.”
“She’s smart. Strong.” After a moment, Dig added, “No punking.”
Another surprise. Dig didn’t let her daughter run drugs. Good. It was the smart choice.
“Keep her clean,” I said. “No criminal record.” Cries had no prisons. They sent convicts to a colonies on the moon of another planet in the system. I could have seen Scorch in that miserable place, but not the stunned girl who had gaped at me in the canal.
“What else she need?” Dig asked.
“Got to pass tests,” I said. “Reading, writing, numbers.”
“Hacked her learning from the above-city. She can pass.”
I hadn’t expected Dig to school her daughter, not after our argument that day I left to enlist. If Digjan was like her mother, though, she would do well. Dig was damn smart.
I lapsed into full speech so I could give a better picture of what her daughter faced. “She’ll have to go to the recruitment office in Cries. She won’t have any problem with the physical tests.” From what I’d seen of Digjan, she could probably outperform any above-city recruit. “If she can read, write, and do math, she should be all right for the other tests. And she should have a sponsor.” Gods knew I could have used one when I enlisted.
“Sponsor?” Dig asked.
“Like a reference. It open doors.” I paused. “She can give my name.” I wouldn’t sponsor a dealer, but I knew Dig. If she said her daughter never ran drugs, I trusted her word.
Dig nodded her thanks. Then she said, “Scorch.”
I understood. Dig had come to pay her debt. Whatever acrimony lay between us, I had let her daughter go free and unharmed.
“Scorch had boxes,” I said. “Crates. They’re gone.”
“Guns.”
“Yah.”
“They belong to Kajada now.”
No surprise there. The cartel hadn’t wasted any time moving in on Scorch’s operation after I eliminated the competition. “Scorch planned to sell them. To the Traders, it looks like.”
Dig tapped her temple. “Scorch was screwed here.”
“Yah.” I regarded her steadily. “You going through with the sale?”
Dig slammed the table with her palm. People around us turned to look. When they took in Dig’s appearance, several got up to leave.
Dig spoke flatly. “Never.” She had her other hand under the table, no doubt resting on some weapon hidden in her clothes. I had never been so glad to see someone ready to shoot me for insulting them. She wasn’t selling to the Traders.
“Good,” I said.
“Those guns belong to Kajada now.”
That wasn’t much better. “Got a war?” I asked dryly.
She met my gaze. “Time to clean out the Vakaar vermin.”
Damn. If she went after the other cartel, the Vakaars, that meant trouble.
Dig stood up. “Bhaaj, eh.” It was the undercity version of, “Good to see you, got to run.”
“Wait,” I said.
She stood there with one hand resting on her belt. A dart gun showed under her fingers.
I waited.
Dig sat back down, her expression closed. I had better make this quick.
“I heard someone put a food kitchen down here,” I said.
She snorted. “You hear shit, Bhaaj. It’s useless. Police set it up.”
That wasn’t the answer I expected. “You mean it actually exists?”
She turned in her seat and stretched out her arm, pointing up the Concourse. In the distance, a long, low building stood across the main throughway. “There.” She stood up and added, “So.”
With that, Dig left, her shadow following her until neither remained.
A chill walked its fingers up my back. Kajada was going after Vakaar. War was coming to the undercity.
XV
Dust Gangers
Displays throughout the Imperialate often showed images of Cries. It was good public relations: look at our beautiful, futuristic city. The wide streets were for pedestrians only. Designed in red tiles streaked with blue, they used stone that existed only in the Vanished Sea. The towers of Cries rose like obelisks honoring the architectural achievements of the human race. The few hover cars that flew above the city made clean arcs in the air, gleaming with wealth. Of course they never ran into each other, not in Cries, where nothing was ever o
ut of place. You never saw wild kids out on joy rides, shrieking with laughter while they hung out the windows and dropped trinkets on annoyed pedestrians. The transit authority would say it was because you couldn’t drive in the city until your twenty-fifth birthday. I would say it was because the kids with the guts to defy the rigid structure of life here were too busy dying in the dark under the glitzy city. Screw Cries.
Stop it, I told myself. Jak was right, we couldn’t expect the above-city to solve our problems. The rare time Cries offered help, they wanted to “fix” the undercity by making us like them. We had failed the mother who died in childbirth and we needed to fix that cause of that failure ourselves.
Although the undercity had no formal legal structures, we had plenty of unwritten laws. Adults like Gourd, who took responsibility for providing clean water, looked after all the children. Although few jobs existed, our population was sparse enough for most adults to find work. We learned trades undercity style, like the cyber-riders who exchanged their wizardry for whatever they desired. Some grew up to be crime bosses, like Jak, Scorch, and Dig. Charming company I kept.
Even so. Jak was no Scorch; he treated his people well and paid good wages. Who knew what his employees were doing now, though, with his casino hidden so well that even I had no idea where he stashed the place. Given that I was currently working for the military, the less Jak told me, the better. I couldn’t reveal what I didn’t know.
Cries, however, wasn’t the poster child of the Imperialate propaganda machine. Its beauty was too stark. When it came to glossy testimonials to the human race, most broadcasters showed images of Selei City on Parthonia. Hell, even I liked living there. It was peaceful to my ravaged mind, which in that idyllic place could repress anything I wanted to forget. But it wasn’t home. I had to acknowledge the truth. I couldn’t run from Raylicon forever.
Today, I sat on a stone bench by a spacious boulevard in Cries. The sun beat down on the city and the desert beyond, which was visible in the distance between two widely spaced towers. Farther down the avenue, a couple strolled together. They were the only ones out during the midday sleep. I didn’t feel like resting, though, so I commed the one person guaranteed to keep me awake.
The brusque voice rose from my comm. “Takkar here.”
“It’s Bhaajan,” I said.
“Glad you deigned to acknowledge us,” she said sourly.
“I’m filing today’s report.”
“You find anything?” she asked. “One more day, Major. Then we send in the troops.”
“I finished the investigation.” It wasn’t true, but I’d found what they asked me to find. “The drug cartels have the guns. They lifted the weapons while we were bringing Prince Dayjarind to the palace.”
Takkar swore with an expertise that could outshine any punker. “Which cartel? Kajada or Vakaar?”
I couldn’t give her Dig’s name, but it didn’t matter. “I don’t know. But whoever has them is about to attack the other cartel, and when they do, it’ll be a fire bath.” Kajada would win, given their shiny new weapons, but Vakaar would fight until the bitter finish. “The cartels are going to war.”
“Well, shit,” Takkar said.
“Yeah.” That summed it up quite well.
“I’m sending in troops,” Takkar said. “They’ll wipe the goddamn ass of the aqueducts clean of all those punk vermin.”
Charming. Maybe she wasn’t as smart as I thought. Only one thing could unite the cartels: an invasion by ISC forces. If the army sent in troops, it would provoke Kajada and Vakaar into open warfare with the military, and the enraged drug bosses would take their combat into Cries. Nor was that the only reason to keep out the troops. Commander Braze wasn’t the only Cries VIP with undercity ties. The last thing any of them wanted was for the military to declare open season on undercity crime. Takkar’s method would get ugly fast, and civilians would die. A lot of them.
I said only, “Troops probably aren’t the best idea.”
The chief let out an angry breath. She didn’t argue, though. After a moment, she said, “I’ll report to Colonel Majda and we’ll get back to you.”
“I’ll keep the line open.”
“You do that,” Takkar growled. “No more jammers.”
“All right.” I was too tired to argue.
* * *
Lying in front of a window-wall in a tower penthouse that looked over the desert, all that open space under the sky, would never feel real to me. Jak and I had spread a blanket on the plush carpet and made love while red light from the sunset bathed our bodies. He was like a fire demon rising from the darkness into this world of dying light.
Afterward we lay together, my back spooned against his front, the two of us gazing out the window-wall while the sunset filled the world with its fading light. The cloudless horizon burned deep crimson. When I had first come above ground at age fifteen, stepping out into that gift from the gods, I had stood stock still in amazement for a full five minutes under the red sky.
Then I had walked to the recruiting center.
I had worn my best clothes that day. They were still rags. I didn’t tell the recruiter I was a dust rat, but she must have known. My only ID came from the orphanage where I had spent the first years of my life. As soon as she looked up my record, she must have known I ran away when I was three, back to the undercity. I hadn’t been important enough for anyone to come after me.
The recruiter said I could enlist without a guardian’s permission when I turned sixteen. She suggested I find a sponsor. Such a person did nothing overt, but the better positioned your sponsor, the better for you. Promotions came faster and postings were better. To this day, I wondered where she thought I’d find a sponsor. I had no one, so when I returned on my sixteenth birthday, I started on the lowest rung in the lowest category for an enlistee. It didn’t matter. The universe changed for me that day I walked into the red light of sunset, and I never regretted those steps.
Jak bit at the nape of my neck. “Awake?”
“Yah,” I said. “Just watching the light.”
“Like fire.”
I turned on my back to look at him. “When did you first see a sunset?”
He pushed up on his elbow. “Full sunset, all around? Don’t think I remember.”
“You must.” It was a big deal for us. He wouldn’t have forgotten.
It was a moment before he spoke. “I saw red light through the Concourse skylights. Got curious one day, when I was a kid. Walked up into the city. Cries was red. Everywhere. Bathed in that light.” Softly he added, “That day, I promised myself I’d never be too poor to leave the aqueducts.” In his normal voice, he said, “I started planning the Black Mark that night.”
Strange the effect of that light. It prodded me into uniform and him into crime. Ultimately, it had pushed us both toward what we wanted.
Jak stretched in the evening’s light, long and lean on the blanket. Nice. Then he sat up, rubbing his neck. I didn’t want to get up, but I still had work to do. I sat up too, and grabbed the clothes I’d been wearing earlier, before the sunset distracted us with its sensuous light.
We dressed in silence, but as we stood up, I said, “Jak.”
He finished fastening up his trousers. “Yah?”
“What does Dig sell now? Still funk, dot-dope, bliss, and hack?”
“That’s right. And node-bliss.”
Node-bliss? “You mean bliss?”
“It’s different than the usual. Softer.” He grunted as he tugged on his black pullover. “Hell, it’s so soft, you can’t feel it at all.”
It didn’t surprise me. Bliss was one of the less addictive drugs. Kids used it above-city. Illegal, yes, but less serious than the hardcore monsters like funk or hack.
I pulled on my shoulder holster with its pulse gun. “Never heard of node-bliss.”
“Doesn’t do shit for me.”
“You tried it?”
“Yah.” He shrugged, all decked out in his dark leathers. ??
?Whisper says it makes people go crazy, but I didn’t feel squat. Nothing. Scorch sold it. Now that she’s gone, probably it’s gone, too.”
Scorch? That was odd. I would have thought the cartel would stop her. They made fast work of anyone who poached on their territory. Hell, they were about to make fast work of each other.
“Dig and Hammer Vakaar are going to war,” I said.
Jak had been looking at the sunset, but now he turned with a start. “Say what?”
“Dig has Scorch’s guns.” Probably Scorch’s node-bliss, too, whatever that was. “She’s going to kick Hammer’s ass.”
The light from outside cast a red glow across Jak’s face. “Not good.”
“Yah. Majda knows.”
Anger flared in his gaze. “You turned in Dig?”
“No. I just told her the cartels had the guns.” Quietly I added, “They have to know, Jak. All hell is going to break out down there. We need to get people to safety.”
“The dust gangs will fight.”
“We need to stop them.”
“Stop them?” He snorted. “I don’t think so. They’re warriors.”
I scowled at him. “They’re kids. They should be worrying about going to proms or whatever, not which side of a drug war they’re going to fight in.”
“Oh, fuck that, Bhaajo.”
“No, I don’t want to fuck that.” I smiled slightly. “Anyway, we already did, you and me.”
He laughed and touched my cheek, the barest scrape of his rough fingertip. “Yah.”
Gods. If someone could bottle his sexuality and sell it, she’d make billions. But I couldn’t let him distract me. “We have to warn the aqueducts.”
“Why?” He dropped his arm. “It’s not our war.”
“It’s our code. Protect our own.” The interconnected ties in the undercity should have kept that mother from dying alone with her baby and small son. The authorities above-city didn’t care. If the Chief Takkars had their way, they would wipe us out like an infestation. The aqueducts survived because we lived by a code. Protect. Every gang, punker, rider, and crime boss knew that code.
“I’m going down tonight,” I said. “See if I can warn people. You come?”
It was a moment before he answered, but finally he said, “I’ll pull together what I can. Meet me at the foyer exit from the Concourse, three hours.”