Chapter 23
Renner’s brain refused to work right. Thumping his head didn’t help. Reality tangled with memory and nightmare. Frost invaded his nose and lungs. Cold deadened his muscles and stiffened his joints. Wind numbed his hands.
In the cratered drain pipe, heavy snow blanketed the bottom, hiding toe-stubbing rubble. Whistling winds threatened to carry it into the service corridor where he huddled. Random adrenaline spikes threatened to pound his heart out of his chest.
In his youth, he’d only had stolen coats when the winter death storms came.
This time, he wore heated adaptive boots and a heated camouflage rain cloak he’d never seen before.
The bag he’d wedged between his knees and chest looked familiar, but half of its contents didn’t.
The unfamiliar, stiff grey pants and soft tunic he now wore fit like they were his.
He remembered waking from an autodoc several hours — minutes? days? — ago. Or maybe it was a nightmare from his days with Davidro, waking early after another full-body makeover, wondering who he looked like now.
Surreal image fragments darted in and out of his mind like sewer rats.
Pulling on the nearby clothes he found because he was cold, when he should have been burning hot.
Stumbling through Soleil’s studio and finding only empty rooms, abandoned crates, and lurking shadows.
The sense of being watched. Trapped in smoking ruins, timing his death with each ratchet of the mechanical collar around his neck.
Winds as loud as starship engines, punctuated by distant percussive explosions that hurt his ears.
Searching for Arco’s energy and finding only dead space.
Endlessly trudging through bands of blinding snow between hulking buildings. Deep dread that he was very, very late.
The memory of lurching into the flattened storm drain pipe and finding the poorly lit but bone-dry service tunnel entrance had to be real, because there he was.
And now that he’d stopped moving, his left calf throbbed, and tender spots stung from recently healed burns. At least he remembered the battle and the triumph of defeating the enemy spider mech.
But he also remembered Arco’s words at the time. “If you get killed, I’m firing your ass.”
Looks like she’d fired him anyway. No other reason for him to have the bag of all his stuff that came from her flat.
In the safe solitude of his shelter, he could admit that it was a forceblade to the heart. She’d done more than give him a life reboot. Her trust healed him. Made him want something better than vengeance.
The brutal truth was that she was right to let him go. He wasn’t doing her any good. He’d just been drafting in her slipstream, pretending it was a deliberate flight plan.
Shifting his weight to ease the pressure on his injured leg caused something in the bag to dig into his sternum. He stretched his aching leg out and moved the bag onto his lap so he could open it.
The hard object turned out to be a new, fully charged shockstick.
From Arco, he guessed. While moving it, he found an insulated flexin armor tunic and pants, along with heated gloves that matched the rain cloak he wore.
He pulled the gloves out, wishing he’d found them earlier.
It had taken long minutes after stuffing his icy hands under his knit undershirt to make them mobile again.
The practical cold-weather gear had to be from Arco, too.
At the bottom of the bag, he found a brand-new, shockproof percomp with an earwire and a mysterious packet containing six anonymous cashflow chips.
When he brushed the biometric reader on one of the chips, it lit up, meaning someone had keyed it to him.
A strong sense of déjà vu rocked him, but his bruised brain couldn’t be trusted, so he ignored it as he checked each chip.
The combined total would be enough to buy into a high-profit criminal crew. Or buy enough explosives to destroy the CPS half of the Ridderth military base.
Or find a new home on any other planet but this one.
He doubted any of his friends would come with him. They all had lives. If he rented a cheap sleep capsule on a slow freighter going to the other side of the galaxy, it might even be enough time to come up with a plan for what to do once he got there.
A howl of wind stirred the snow. The tunnel’s floor vibrated under his feet.
He didn’t dare send out a tendril to look for power sources.
The effort to trip the service tunnel’s electronic lock, fry the security eyes, and pry open the door nearly made him pass out.
All minders paid a price for overusing their talents, and he’d gone way beyond that when he’d destroyed the spider mech.
Probably part of what made his aching brain so sluggish now.
That and the autodoc hangover. Fucking autodocs never could keep him unconscious long enough.
He put three chips back in the packet and hid the other three in various pockets of his tunic and pants. As he did so, it occurred to him that the percomp could at least tell him the date and where he was.
Distant noise behind him stilled his movements. He’d been away from the tunnels for so long that he’d forgotten how to interpret the sounds. Shifting road glass? Rats fighting? Voices?
Staying in tunnels he didn’t know anymore was lamb odds. Keeping half his attention on listening, he fished out the percomp and snapped it over his forearm, then pressed the tiny earwire under his ear. The percomp responded to his biometric when he powered it up and connected to the net.
He hadn’t lost as much time as he’d thought. Only fifteen local hours had passed since he’d killed the mech. But he only had a couple more hours of daylight. Deep in the Canals at night during a death storm was no place he wanted to be.
For once, the streets would be safer than the tunnels.
Muggers avoided bad weather. Autocabs avoided the Canals, but he could walk to an adjacent district and find an autocab kiosk.
Thanks to Arco’s gifts, he could survive long enough to get there.
He sealed the bag, then pulled on the gloves, lacing his fingers to snug them tight.
Cautiously, he rocked forward to test his sore leg. When it didn’t collapse under him, he pushed up to his feet, softening his joints and centering his weight. If he’d learned little else from Soleil’s exercises meant for Jumpers with waster’s, he had at least learned balance.
The percomp vibrated so subtly he almost missed it. A single anonymous message, timestamped from early that morning, waited in his queue. It could only be from Arco. He took a deep breath to steel himself, then supplied the private security confirmation code and played the ping.
Sorry I couldn’t be there when you woke up.
The chips are a well-deserved bonus from your previous boss, and I’m working on extracting another.
Now you have plenty of other options besides your current gig.
If you take one, stay safe and take care.
I’m holed up at work, but going transit soon because of the fireworks.
If you’d like to do the same and want a partner for the journey, please ping me.
Stunned, he hit replay. He still had a chance to stay with her. To protect her, like the universe seemed to want from him. Like he desperately wanted. A bright flare of hope tangled his tongue. The best he could do was subvocalize a short reply and trust better words would come when he saw her.
Another sound from the tunnels behind spurred him to action. Pulling his hood over his head and face, he crab-walked around the pile of snow and headed out into the maelstrom.
The sense of being late returned. An autocab to Novo G would be fastest, but not secure.
Thigh-high snow immobilized ground transport altogether.
The only viable option was public air transport, which meant a longer walk to the closest air traffic platform.
He set his percomp to guide him and picked up the pace.
Twenty minutes later, his lungs and injured leg screaming, he turned a corner, expecting another urban canyon.
Instead, it was a scene from hell — rubble and ruin instead of the two buildings that should be there.
The neighboring buildings stood as silent witnesses, seemingly untouched.
Gaping holes exposed torn conduit under the street’s melted glass.
Remnants of a warped elevated train track hung by a sliver of metal.
He ducked away quickly and crouched next to a half-wall.
The devastation was so recent that the deformed road only had a thin layer of snow and was still trying to flash warning signals.
No telling who or what the target had been.
Now he wondered if the explosion sounds from his earlier nightmares had been real after all.
Ridderth police reveled in splashy destruction, not tidy implosions.
The raid could have been mercs, but more likely the CPS.
They considered themselves exempt from sovereign-planet rules and had access to top-flight military explosives.
If they were motivated enough, even a killer storm would merely be an inconvenience.
He reconsidered his options. If he’d had more sense than a brain-burned automaton, he’d have gone to Soleil’s studio, where he likely came from, instead of the opposite direction. In this part of the Canals, Kooga’s soup kitchen was closest.
He already knew where it was, so he powered down his new percomp.
His talent might be nearly flatlined, but it could still destroy small tech if he wasn’t careful.
The sense of being late returned and pushed him to hurry, but he told it to suck flux.
He could only go so fast through heavy snow with a half-healed leg.
Relief washed through him minutes later when he saw Kooga’s buildings still standing, still open for business. He’d been half afraid they’d been a CPS target, too.