Escapology Page 3

  “This bitch,” she pokes a thumb at her chest, hoping she looks way more casual than she feels.

  He smiles, and this time it reaches his eyes. Her violence always delights him. She used to be proud of that.

  “I’m done with this now. You Clean the rest ASAP. This little shit gave up the whole op. It’s in your IMs.”

  She nods. “What do you want me to do with him?”

  “Toss him. And leave the others where they can be found. Be creative. I want Nero to understand the full import of his mistake.”

  “You want Nero for your collection?”

  “Of course. He wants some notoriety, he can reside amongst others who shared the same delusion.”

  “Understood.”

  Back in the shoot, Amiga calls for the top floor. The Streek’s pretty much given up fighting. He’s slumped in her grasp, whimpering away to himself. He fucking stinks. Probably he’s shat himself as well. Being on the unpleasant side of her boss will do wonders for your digestion first, and then your mortality.

  Amiga is as afraid of Twist Calhoun as everyone else is. She’s a Cleaner; her job is all about swift, discreet violence, but he’s not one of those crime lords who employ Cleaners because they themselves can’t clean house. She’s seen him commit violence with brutal, cold efficiency. Needless cruelty. He’s something else, her boss. He gets his hands good and dirty when he wants to, and these days working for him fills her with a blank, all-consuming loathing. But a girl’s got to eat, and once you work for someone like Twist, you don’t just walk away.

  At the top floor she hustles the rat up a flight of stairs and out onto the roof. Over to the edge. He gains some fight back here, struggling and wailing. She yanks him close enough to speak right into his ear.

  “I do not enjoy this. It’s my fucking job. We all do our jobs, don’t we? Sometimes there’re consequences for that. This is yours.”

  And she throws him over the edge, listening impassively as that final scream fades away. Somewhere down there, over a mile away, he’ll hit the ground and shatter into a wet heap. That’s what bodies do from this height.

  Maybe someone will witness it and start screaming. Maybe he’ll hit a passer by, crushing them as he splatters. Fuck but she hopes not. This is her job, and she does what she’s paid to, and this is what Twist means when he requires someone tossed. That’s the rat’s consequence. Hers never seem to end.

  The price you pay for doing a job like this is just about everything.

  Dock of the Bay

  Petrie doesn’t trust calm seas. In these vast waters, calm is a face without expression, hiding its true intent. A mirror for pirates to catch you unawares, for sea creatures grown monstrous large without the limit of land to contain them to sneak up and drag your ship to impossible depths. He’s seen it happen, even to land ships bigger than the one he calls home. No, a calm sea fills him with nothing but dread.

  Hollering instructions to his crews via IM, he makes his way to the pinnacle of the central crow to keep a better look out. Just ahead, the Tri-Asian ranges breach the serenity of the surface in snaggle-toothed clusters. Beyond them lies the Gung, so close now he can almost smell it on the air: heat, dust and sweat.

  The people of Foon Gung like to call it the last land on earth. Plain ignorance. They imagine the great ocean mountain ranges as nothing but underbelly; exposed innards of earth and rock. In truth the earth broke ugly and whilst some lands shattered or drowned, others were lifted to precipitous heights, and if you look, you can find land everywhere.

  Tiny islands of green clinging to the bottoms of harsh ranges. Continental shelves tilted at unnatural angles, carrying the remains of cities, their buildings collapsed to a mass and broken but still usable. Ripe for looting and for the occasional group of desperate folk, home. They share their craggy dwellings with huge colonies of raucous seabirds, herds of sea lions and seals, all under the shadow of great albatrosses with wingspans so wide they resemble dragons in the fire of dawn.

  And then, of course, there is the land that sails. Land ships. Great chunks that floated away in the first quakes 200 years ago and did not immediately crumble into the sea, held up by a fortuitous grasp on oxygen, stowed away in great pockets in their depths. Miracles of the ocean, some people call them. From the tip of the crow, Petrie looks down to survey his home, Resurrection City.

  She’s so massive from prow to stern that, from up here and on a day as calm as this, it might be possible to believe yourself on dry land if you didn’t know any better. Before the breaking of the world, Resurrection City was a corner of Eastern Africa, Somalia to be exact, and her crew and citizens comprise an ethnic mix of Africans, Afrikaans, and émigrés from other land ships all living and working together. An extended family of once-strangers.

  Shaped like a Palaeolithic spearhead, she scythes through the waves on twelve sets of massive jerry-rigged wheels much like an old steam-boat’s, but larger, leaner and forged from steel. They gleam darkly in the sun, the sound of their churning a thunderous roar like the approach of giant waves. Her sides like cliffs, she supports upon her extraordinary back a tri-level haphazard city of freakish driftwood and metal towers, dazzling in sunlight and twisted to wind-defying complexity, all strung with a cat’s cradle of ropes upon which crawl the thousands of citizens and crew whose daily toil keeps her afloat.

  It’s a sight that never fails to move him. This immense lady, this ship formed of land, is home. He wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. No other ship would be adequate, no city hub grazing the edge of space, no bedraggled commune eeking out an existence on the tiny green spars of land or half-intact cities clinging to the ranges, and certainly not the Gung, whose claustrophobic streets he tried and failed to survive as a teen, running from one horror it seemed right into the jaws of another.

  Through the Tri-Asian ranges the sun plays hide-and-seek with Resurrection’s haphazard towers until they emerge out the other side, threading between jagged rocks to sea like glass, a mirror for the sky. If you could see to the bottom of the ocean here you’d find the tsunami defence wall. In an emergency the wall rises from the water high enough to blot out the view of the sea for the highest-living citizens in the Gung.

  Sailing as long as he has, Petrie’s witnessed them testing it more than once; all that steel against the might of the ocean. One day there’ll be a wave too high to hold back. Everything down here is on borrowed time, hanging on by sheer dumb luck.

  The harbour at Foon Gung is dead ahead now, rearing from the water like a metal-capped grin. Only ten minutes away at full speed, but they daren’t come in that fast.

  Steady! he yells to the wheel crews. Half power. Don’t wanna scrape anything off those harbour arms.

  Carved out of the Gung’s south-east corner during the breaking, the harbour is only twenty miles wide, with two long arms reaching plaintively into the ocean, and, like the rest of the Gung, every inch of it groans with architecture. Foon-Gung being the last solid land, every one of its seven hundred miles, including the mountains to the rear, bristles with steel and glass and stone, reaching up into the clouds in audacious rebellion against nature.

  The Resurrection’s come close to nudging one of the ’rises teetering on the edges of the arms before now. His chest shrinks thinking how many people they might kill if they inadvertently topple one—those ’rises are cage apartments, hundreds of families crammed into tight spaces like barnacles on a rock. Not life at all, at least not one he wants.

  Bosun Petrie, slow your boat. You’re set to break my arms there. Harbour Master Sigmund lacks basic IM manners, always slamming in without so much as a warning chime.

  Petrie takes a breath, thankful that Sigmund can’t see his face.

  We’re slowing. Half speed already. We’ll dock safe just like we always do. We’re a ways out yet.

  Sigmund snorts. Sure son, and these folk from Fulcrum love to be kept waiting. Don’t spin me any of that bullshit you try with the deputies, I can see your wake from her
e, and you’re coming in too fast. Make ’em wait. You’re paying aren’t you?

  Irritated, Petrie snaps, We are, through the nose as ever, but we’re not going to crash in like pirates trying to please them.

  Silence.

  Petrie curses his tongue. He shouldn’t have said that, it was damned foolish. But Sigmund merely comes back with a warning.

  Careful, son, a loose tongue is a dangerous thing. Now get that speed down for crap’s sake. I’ve got crews out; don’t need ’em ploughed under your wheels.

  Aye, aye.

  A cantankerous, mannerless old bastard Sigmund might be, but he feels the same about Fulcrum as everyone does. Fulcrum’s the Corp that runs the Gung, that owns and runs the Slip that keeps the world together. That’s some goddamn power right there. Too much. Four times a year they send Techs to check your server equipment. It’s mandatory and costs a bloody fortune. Resurrection isn’t alone in sometimes being unable to pay when it’s due and Fulcrum always charges more for delays.

  When they’re close enough for dammit, Petrie clips on to a line and slides down to the central crow deck to stand by his Captain, Cassius Angel, as they negotiate the southeast arm. Folks hang out the windows on the edge ’rises to wave and holler. Used to be they might throw confetti but though a land ship berthing is still an event, it’s not the wonder it used to be. Familiarity breeds complacence.

  Once they’re in the harbour proper, the berthing klaxon begins to sound. Resurrection responds with three of her horns and they have an ear-splitting exchange as the harbour crews and Resurrection wheel crews coordinate her toward her berth, 800 metres out from the docks. The splash of great wheels, louder by far in the enclosure of the harbour churn her to a gentle halt, waves slapping at her sides, loosing small clods of earth they’ll have to stop and patch at the Tri-Asian ranges on their way out.

  Petrie roars the order to anchor via IM. Feels rather than hears them drop, a deep dragging and grind, a vibration like a shudder, as if the Resurrection dislikes her sudden immobility.

  He pats the ropes, grinning. “Easy, old girl. We’re not here long.”

  For the next ten minutes he supervises the wheel crews with lashing and clearing, organizes the Tech teams into groups to make sure the server checks run smoothly.

  Hoi, Bosun! Petrie! The head of their medical team, Lane, barely reining in her impatience. We off? I’ve got four of my staff by the schooners ready to go. Going to need all the time we can squeeze out of this server check.

  “Shit!” he mutters, remembering.

  Several vicious attacks in the two months since they last berthed to drop off trade goods have left their hospital supplies dangerously low and he promised Lane time to stock up whilst the servers are being checked. Reaching the bays he vaults onto the lower ropes, clips on his zip and sails down the line to unclip and land beside her. A large man and packed with muscle, he towers over her. Petrie towers over most everyone and it never feels normal. He’s never become used to the body good nutrition gave him.

  “Let’s go then,” he says.

  “Impressive timing there,” she says, smiling.

  “Hey, you call, I come running. Let’s go wangle some inland time.”

  She places a hand on his arm as her staff scramble down the ropes to the schooner.

  “I know you hate handling Sigmund, Petrie. This is much appreciated.”

  He pats her hand. “Just do me a favour and sneak me some brandy, will you? Chances are I’m going to need it.”

  “Done.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  Their schooners are thirty feet long, solar powered and nippy as hell, and the journey from shipside to dockside takes less than ten minutes. The negotiation for an inland trip on the other hand takes over fifty; despite Sigmund knowing he’s keeping Petrie from dealing with Fulcrum’s Techs.

  Maintaining calm by willpower alone, Petrie manages to wangle Lane a whole hour and hire her a truck at half charge so she can bulk buy. He sees her and her team off safely before heading back to oversee the transfer of Fulcrum’s Techs to Resurrection. They’re none too pleased. They can’t leave until they’ve done their job and they think he’s stalled on purpose. Yet another irritation in his day.

  Once they’re soothed and on their way, Petrie ventures over to the dock to vet the waiting refugees, a bedraggled bunch who’ve likely checked the berthing schedules and made certain to be here on the right day for a good ship. His head aches at the sight of them. It seems cruel, especially when people are desperate, but a land ship is a working community and they’ve learnt not to be indiscriminate, as much as they might want to be.

  For Petrie, this process is especially tough. He knows what it’s like to be willing to do anything to escape a bad situation and yet terrified of somehow walking into something worse. And there’s plenty of something worse to go round. Of the hundreds of land ships sailing the ocean, maybe three quarters could be described as friendly. The rest, not so much.

  Some are scavengers, taking what’s already been remade useful, their grotesque visages built to terrify smaller ships into submission. Others are pirates out for trash, flesh and treasure, preying on any ship caught in their sights and occasionally hitting the harbour district for whatever can be snatched before the sec-drones attack. The worst of all are totalitarian states, with flags and laws and dire punishments for transgression—and the most notorious of these is the Saskatoon Ark, captained by Daly Pentecost.

  Petrie was born on the Ark, amongst all that filth and horror, under the iron hand of Pentecost. He ran away when he was fifteen during a short dock for supplies at the Gung. Jumped clean over the side. Pretended to drown so no one would think to follow, swimming through icy waters to hide under the dock, shivering and terrified of being found.

  He thought then that he could survive anything, but two years living rough on the streets of the Gung left him so desperate to get back to the ocean he took the first ship that came in. Lucky for him, that was Resurrection City.

  Today there are thirty refugees hoping for the same luck, and only he stands in their way. From the info they shoot to his IM, he has to turn down six straight away. The rest are a mix of skilled WAMOS—Passes, the so-called well-adjusted members of society—done with living inside the system, and Fails wanting to try out life on the seas—all of whom are easy to accept. Except one.

  Her records seem perfect: a high-level Tech WAMOS fresh out of Corp life and wanting freedom, but her timing is interesting. Questionable. He beckons her forward.

  “Name?”

  It’s on her info, but sometimes they forget their own cover stories, the names on fake records bought in haste.

  “Volk,” she replies in a soft voice with a burr of accent he can’t place. Perhaps Nordic. Unusual if so. Close up, he can see she’s packed with augments, her gaze remote, but he can feel the life in her. She’s angular and fair-skinned, with untameable red hair to match the energy he can sense leashed within. She’ll make a good sailor if she’s fit for it.

  Volk. Just like her records. That’s a good start maybe.

  “No other names?”

  “None I like to give. I’m not close to my family.”

  “Any reason for that?”

  “The usual. Confliction of life goals, gradual estrangement none of us particularly tried to prevent.”

  “I see. You realize we’re an extended family aboard the Resurrection? We’re pretty much obliged to get along even if we don’t agree with one other. Not many places to get away from someone you dislike on a land ship, not even one of her grand size.”

  She forces a smile, clearly struggling hard to make a good impression.

  “I said I’m not close to my family, that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of getting along with other people. You can’t choose the family you’re born to. It’s not like you get a free pass from being the offspring of absolute arseholes.”

  Her dry humour is such a surprise he finds himself laughing.


  “True enough. How are you with teamwork?”

  “I’m ex-Corp, Bosun. Teamwork was my life.”

  “Why the Resurrection? I see you’ve been waiting on a ship for over two weeks. Rest of this bunch have only been here ten days—missed the Hepzibar. You didn’t though. Good ship, that. Not good enough for you?”

  She regards him steadily, her remote eyes giving away nothing.

  “It has a good reputation, yes. But it isn’t Resurrection City.”

  “Afford to be choosy, can you?”

  She raises her brows, as if it’s obvious.

  “With my stats? Of course.”

  Petrie considers her carefully for a moment. His instincts tell him she’s in some deep trouble. Frightened. Is she trouble for the Resurrection though? He thinks not. Not only is her record clean but he’s finely attuned to hidden malice and he gets no sense of it from her. He has no concern about anyone who might be after her. Resurrection is a titan, well armed and battle hardened. Coming after her once she’s on board would be foolhardy.

  “Well, okay,” he says to Volk, “I can see you’re in some kind of trouble, but you aren’t trouble yourself, so welcome to the family.”

  She nods, but her relief is like a tidal wave, it almost knocks him over.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t prove me wrong.”

  “I’ll do my very best.”

  “Do better.”

  “Aye, aye Bosun.”

  Aye, aye, indeed. He watches her go, clutching her bag so tightly he knows for a fact her hands are going to hurt for a week, and hopes he hasn’t just made a very big mistake.

  Fed to a Joon Bug

  A neural drive is like a mind, there’s no switching it off, no running from it. You can mute it, sure. You can even do as Shock does and fry your brain on bumps, wiping as many clear seconds as possible from the clock. But much like a persistent thought a drive will let you know by hook or by crook when you’ve a million and one messages backed up and pounding on their horns like angry drivers in a ten-mile tail-back.