Chapter 14
At an hour past midnight, Renner stood in the alley’s deepest shadow, watching the entrance to the used-goods store in the Canals.
The streets threatened to become rivers.
His waterproof camo cloak hid him and quietly deflected the rain.
Yet another practical gift from Charrascos that only a high-gliding pinzai-head would have refused. Didn’t make it easier to accept.
Resistance members had been drifting into the store one by one for the last thirty minutes. The CPS’s destructive raids — no one bought the “it-was-terrorists” story — had everyone looking over their shoulder.
He cautiously extended his talent toward the hunched figure sloshing through the rain toward the store. Finally, his friend had arrived, seemingly safe and well. Refusing to acknowledge his relief, he stepped out of the alley. “Lunesti.”
The figure looked up, startled, then nodded. “Chalio.” The drumming of the rain almost drowned out his soft tenor voice.
Renner fell into step beside him.
Lunesti glanced at Renner from under his extended hood. “What about your gig?”
Renner shrugged one shoulder. “Night off.” He glanced at Lunesti’s pale face, lit by the reflected glow from the street. “Is inhib controlled?”
“Supposed to be, but this is Ridderth.” Lunesti stepped around a puddle, putting him closer to Renner. “You gliding too high?” Concern laced his tone.
“No. Fronting.” He didn’t want to explain his possibly irrational belief in a forecaster’s warning. If inhib could disrupt a sifter’s influence on Charrascos or her team, it wouldn’t hurt to carry it. Besides, he really was buying for someone else. She just didn’t know it.
“Jet or patch? Adult or child? And how many and when?”
Renner hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Three of each type for adults. Before breakfast.”
Lunesti named a price. It was cheap enough that Renner just handed over the disposable anonymous cashflow chip he kept in his pocket for muggers and told him to keep the balance. They agreed on pickup arrangements just as they arrived at the used goods store’s entrance.
The crowded back room already held eleven people, none of whom seemed to be chemmed yet. Renner hung his cloak on one of the holdfasts as Lunesti did the same. No solardry, but the floor grate beneath captured dripping water.
Shukra pointed them toward chairs in the corner. “You’re the last.” She seemed bright, almost giddy. “Let’s get to it. Be’un, tell us your idea.”
Renner frowned as he half sat on a small table instead of taking the chair. Did these people have no sense at all? He snaked a tiny thread of his talent through the room and beyond, looking for monitoring tech, or anything out of the ordinary. Fortunately, he found nothing.
“No.” Be’un’s reply cracked like a whip.
Shukra blinked, clearly startled.
Be’un’s lip curled. “Fuckin’ CPS telepaths can rip any of you apart.” She pointed to her temple. “I’m a shielder, so they can’t touch me. I’m drawing up a battle plan. Each of us will have a role to play, but only I will know the whole.”
“What’s the objective?” asked Helios.
Be’un shook her head. “I already told you. We’ll be the shattered chain on their bloody anchor. We’ll hurt the CPS where it fucking hurts the most.” Fanaticism gleamed in her eyes. “They’re specialists in death and destruction, so we’ll speak their language.”
“What roles?” The questioner, code-named Hathor, was a chronically ill woman on permanent disability from the Minder Corps.
Now that Renner thought about it, she looked as frail as the irritating polymath professor from Arazak.
No news yet on whether she’d been killed in the raids, but it was a good bet.
The whole building had been slagged, supposedly by a completely unrelated fusion furnace malfunction rather than the CPS’s mythical terrorists.
“...make arrangements for my pets if I have to be somewhere,” Hathor was saying.
Be’un waved off the objection. “Your role will be nothing you can’t handle.”
Hathor winced at Be’un’s barely concealed disdain.
Anger stirred in Renner. The CPS deserved any and all damage, especially after today’s planet-wide raids. Be’un was obviously energized, but she might not know her ass from an asteroid as far as tactics and targets.
Shukra turned to Be’un with a frown. “Chaos, Bee, why don’t you try using a little tact? You’ve wounded or pissed off everyone in the room, even No-Worries Wairua. Helios is a heartbeat away from violence.”
Renner made a mental note that Shukra was both an empath and a sifter.
Be’un launched to her feet. “Tact is for tea parties. This is the opportunity we’ve been talking about for the last year.
” She caught Helios’s eye. “The CPS killed your career. Their fucking drugs killed Hathor’s health.
” She looked to Lunesti. “How many more Jumpers have to die of waster’s?
” She swept the room with her gaze. “How much more can any of you stand to lose to the CPS?”
She strode to the center of the room. “I’ll tell you the objective when you need to know.
It’s exploiting an upcoming security gap that the governments think they have covered.
I know they don’t. I promise the CPS will bleed rivers of salt and glass.
” She turned to make eye contact with each person in the room, then put her fists on her hips. “Are you in or out?”
Silence fell over the group.
To Renner, Be’un’s fiery hatred felt like coming home.
The thirst for vengeance got him through the agonizing months of rebuilding his body and retraining his brain to use it.
The months of terrifying nightmares for events he couldn’t fucking remember.
The nineteen bloody years the CPS had left him with a monster.
“I’m in.” Shakti stood. “I’m tired of talk.”
Helios stood and crossed his arms, making his tattooed biceps bulge. “In.”
A short male with a multi-hued triple mohawk and multiple glow-chains hanging from his ears stood and walked toward the holdfasts near the door. “Out.” His expression was unreadable as he grabbed his coat and left the room.
With the next two who stood and declared for the cause, pressure built in Renner. Why wasn’t he already standing?
Hathor pushed to her feet. “I’m in.” She clasped her trembling hands together. “I have nothing more to lose.”
After a long moment, Lunesti stood. “Sorry, but I’m out. I see too much blood.” He made his way to the door, pulled on his cloak, and left without looking at anyone.
Make your death worth dying for, Neirra’s voice whispered. He’d never believed he’d have the chance.
Lunesti helped Minder Corps people wean themselves off the vicious enhancement drugs and taught his patients how to cheat the CPS’s regular and random compliance tests.
Soleil taught Canals kids how to look out for each other like Jumpers did.
Charrascos uncovered dark CPS secrets and humanized the people who got hurt by them.
Her work made the agency bleed all across the galaxy, not just in one stinking city.
Suddenly, everyone else was standing and looking at him.
“You’re the last, Chalio.” Be’un’s sharp tone blended command and satisfaction.
Epiphany washed over him. Be’un’s secret plan promised a blaze of glory... but that wasn’t the only thing he was good for.
“I hope you gut-burn the ratfuckers.” He stood. “But I’m out.”
After a quick gasp, Be’un’s fists tightened as she clamped her jaw shut. Shakti put a hand on Be’un’s arm.
Renner wished he dared use his talent to drain any energy weapons Be’un carried, but he couldn’t risk it. Shakti’s active sifter talent would detect his activation, even if she didn’t recognize the talent behind it.
Helios sneered in contempt and looked away.
Renner walked with a calm he didn’t feel, pulled his cloak from the holdfast, and exited, listening intently until the door irised closed.
He quickly ducked into the cloak as he threaded through the used-goods aisles that were as jumbled as his emotions.
Lunesti, standing just inside the store’s entrance, turned to face him.
Surprise bloomed in Renner. “Waiting?”
Lunesti’s head tilted diffidently. “Hoping.”
Renner didn’t know what to think about that. “Metro station, then?”
Lunesti nodded and waved the store’s door open. They walked together into the dark and the rain.
After he left the metro, Renner realized he had no place to go until his dawn pickup appointment at the joyhouse where Lunesti was a medic.
Maybe he should go back to thinking of him as Haseem, his friend from Soleil’s martial arts studio.
They’d likely both cratered their cred with the resistance group.
With nothing better to do, he headed for the soup kitchen, hoping the daylight raids had left it standing.
They had. What’s more, despite the torrential downpour outside and the leaky roof over the former storage units and warehouse, business was booming. Punctuated conversations mostly centered on the raids.
The CPS publicity spinners proudly took credit for destroying a rotting Canals warehouse a kilometer north, which had stored and distributed blackmarket clone and reverse drugs. Somehow, that was supposed to excuse the deaths of several dozen squatters, many of them kids.
Giant-sized charity director Kooga looked down at him with her eerie cybernetic eyes. “Job terminé?”
“Not ended. Night off.” He stooped to pick up a discarded mealpack container. “You find a janitor yet?”
Kooga’s laugh boomed. “Jus’ you, bel homme, ‘cause no other sot want that push-pull.” She patted him gently on the shoulder with her bare biometal cybernetic hand. “Next time, make ‘em give you an upfront, so you can eat avant payday.”
He smiled in spite of himself. Only Kooga would call him a handsome man and a fool in the same sentence. He would have accepted the free mealpacks if he needed them, but it made him more comfortable to offer the trade.