Chapter 9
Hi there! With each chapter I release of this novel-in-progress, the more I feel the story getting tightened up, the wrinkles being smoothed out. It’s slowly coming together and I hope that some folks enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!
If you haven’t read any of the previous chapters, you can find them HERE!
Adio took the news rather well. When I told him that Ferro was dead, he asked:
“Dead-dead?”
“Dead-dead.” I confirmed.
Adio laughed from his belly. A deep, crackling sound that made the floor vibrate under my feet. It was surprising for such a thin-framed man. His shoulders bounced as his laugh dwindled to a chuckle and he wiped a tear from his cheek.
“This is excellent news, my friend. Well done!” He said jovially, putting his arm on my shoulder and guiding me out of the narrow corridor and into his cabin.
“Ahh, well, actually–” I protested
“Come, we must drink to celebrate!” He wasn’t listening. His cabin was lit only with his purplish UV strips in the growing nook to his left. It smelled sweet, almost like perfume but with something more savoury mingling through it. It reminded me of the greenhouse at my parents house in Norway, Earth. My Mum always said my Dad had a green thumb. I didn’t know what that meant for a long time. I’d never seen either of his thumbs be anything other than a pasty beige colour. And, when he came back from the greenhouse, most of the time his thumbs were brown. He grew tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers every year. Lingonberries and blueberries too. Actually grew all of them! From dirt and seed and water. How he found the time around his job, I was never able to figure out. Most people just relied on the print farms for their produce, but there was still a huge growing culture. Greenhouses, communal gardens, even independent, old-style farms were still dotted around, and everyone within a radius of these projects benefited from them. Mostly doing so with a superior attitude and snobbery.
Industrial agriculture, the kind that had to grow to massively unsustainable proportions in order to meet the demand for food as the population of the planet hit 8 billion, the kind that was responsible for gratuitously pumping carbon and methane into the atmosphere, had collapsed long before I was born. When print farms started being able to replicate fresh produce on an industrial scale at a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the footprint, and a fraction of the pollution, traditional farming just kind of whimpered out of existence. There was a huge revolt from the agricultural community, of course, but it was explained in pretty certain terms that traditional farming was done. Like being politely told that they can protest all they want but it is, in fact, over.
I was ushered into Adio’s cabin.
“Yeah ok, but I should tell you it wasn’t really–”
“What is your drink of choice, En? Or do you prefer a smoke?”
“No, I uhh.”
“Anything you want, I’m sure I can accommodate.” His smile was wide and somehow emotionless.
“I’m good, honestly, but you should know, I didn’t kill Ferro.”
Adio’s smile dropped into his characteristic slightly down-turned scowl.
“You did not kill the man?” He asked, suddenly sober, all revelry in Ferro’s death doused by the fact that I hadn’t murdered him myself.
“I didn’t.” I held his stare, resisting the primeval urge to break eye contact. “It’s not what we agreed, so why would I?” It was only when I heard the tone of my voice that I realised I could feel some anger building deep in my gut, manifesting first as mere annoyance.
He seemed a little disappointed by this. I guess he had hoped that I saw what kind of guy Ferro was and decided to just end him on the spot.
“The important thing is that he is dead. I have been saved from the trouble. However, since you, in fact, never fulfilled your end of our quid pro quo arrangement, I cannot in good conscience fulfil mine.” He turned to his growing nook and began spraying the sweet-smelling mist over the delicate leaves.
“Wait a minute. The hell you can’t! We still stalked the guy out for two days and we were making headway before someone shattered the liosen of his balcony!”
The memory replayed in my head. I was looking up at Ferro’s apartment building. I could see him, at least I thought it was him. He had his back turned to the clear railing, something in his hand. Was he talking to someone? Del? Maybe he had been pleading for his life, or threatening Del to scare her off. Then that noise. Powerful and unusual. If Del had some liosen shattering sonic weapon, I didn’t see it. Maybe it was a kind of planted explosive already on the balcony, linked to a detonator. Del would’ve had to have been there before Ferro got home. For the entire time Cora and I were in the park. What could they have been talking about for 2 hours?
“The liosen was shattered?” His attention piqued.
“Like ice under a pick-axe.”
He thought about it before he said:
“You have seen this technology work?”
“No.” I said, unsure of where he was going with it. “I only heard the noise then the shards started hitting the deck.”
“You know who used it, though?”
“I don’t,” I lied. I immediately questioned myself.
Why am I protecting Del? What do I care if Adio knows about her involvement in Ferro’s death? It doesn’t make one bit of difference to me, and Del sure as shit wouldn’t do the same were the roles reversed.
“Hmm.” The tall man said. “You realise, En, that weaponry that may, as you say, shatter liosen, must be either new or kept secret. I am in the business of secrets, En.” His smile was a neat knife slash. Malevolence and violence with a pinch sadism for good measure.
“With respect, Adio, I don’t have many fucks to give about your business. I’m here to see what you found out about Del. If you don’t have any information to give to me, I’ll be on my way.”
Ahh, I get it. Cora is why I’m protecting Del. Duh. It might even benefit me to sell Del out to Adio, but that would put Cora in an awkward position. Maybe even in danger. I have no idea how far Adio will go to get his hands on the liosen-shattering tech, or even information about it.
Adio had lost, or rather dropped all sense of hospitality from his low voice. Instead, what was left was a deep, sonorous rattle.
“I was able to find some information about Del, but regardless of your feelings on my business, I will not exchange that information for less than an equal value of goods or services.”
He took a small step toward me. Enough to make him seem even taller, backlit by the UV strips in his growing nook. He lit a limp, hand-rolled cigarette, or joint, and took a long drag, holding for a second before exhaling downwards into my face.
Definitely a joint.
“So do you have something of equal value for me? A good? Or a service? What can you offer?” He looked me up and down.
My eyes stung from the smoke. I blinked and felt them water. For whatever reason, the entire conversation had pissed me off. I felt an urge to attack him. It wasn’t rational. More like something bubbling in my stomach, ready to erupt. I felt like forcing him to tell me what he knew. The scenario played out in my head.
I slap the joint out of his mouth. Before he can retaliate, I launch a knee into his groin. Cross with an elbow into his jaw when he doubles over. Smash his nose with a jab. Straight kick to the chest.
“I’m not offering you anything,” I said, squaring my shoulders and puffing out my chest a little. “You’re going to tell me what you found out about Del, or I’m going to start breaking stuff.”
Good job, Hagen, keep it vague and maybe he’ll shit his pants.
Adio chuckled. There was no mirth in it.
“You–”
Before he could finish his thought, I launched the faux wood coffee table towards his growing nook where it clattered and tumbled to the floor. The big man flinched as I did it, letting out a stream of what I can only assume was Amharic curses.
“I’m in no mood for games, man!” I said, putting as much venom and aggression into my voice as I could. “Tell me what you know about Del.”
If he doubled down, this was going to turn ugly. This was a trick I’d learned from Cora. Break something and raise your voice. Like if you see a wolf in the wilderness. Be big and noisy. Most people will be intimidated enough to give you what you want. It wasn’t like we went around intimidating people often or anything, just that sometimes working as a merc, you had to have a little chutzpah or, better yet, a reputation, or people would walk all over you. Cora was great at intimidating people. She didn’t even have to do much, just stand there and let her presence speak for itself. She had a look and a stance that would turn even the toughest sonofabitch to jelly. All that being said, it wasn’t smart to try it with just anyone. Khalo had become the stomping ground of some legitimately dangerous people. People it would be downright stupid to try and intimidate like that, like Liv, for example. A criminal empire in the middle of nowhere. Cora said you should never do it unless you know who you’re trying to intimidate, and if they’re likely to fold.
I didn’t know Adio. At least, I didn’t know him well enough to be trying to intimidate him. And I didn’t have a clue if he would fold at the aggression.
He was silent and still. Staring me down. I stared back, this was one of the most important steps. Don’t break eye contact. Don’t even blink. My eyes stung as they dried out but I didn’t blink nor break eye contact. Neither did Adio.
Until he did.
He had clearly been weighing his options, deciding whether I was worth the trouble. Seems like I wasn’t. He fished a data stick out of his pocket and held it out with his thumb and forefinger. When I reached for it, he tweaked it back.
“Be careful what you wish for, En” He lowered his hand again and let me take it. I snatched it quickly so that he wouldn’t see my trembling hands and I fled towards the door. My hands always trembled when I was in confrontations with people, but nobody seemed to notice so far. I didn’t know what he meant by what he said and I didn’t care. The relief that flooded my body took the form of some dizzying lightheadedness that sent the corridor spinning as I bee-lined back to the lift. I felt a pang of guilt as I waited for the lift to make it’s way back up the long course to Cho central.
Cora would’ve handled that a lot better.
***
I got back to Cora’s place around 11H. As soon as I got to her floor, I could hear the raised voices, muffled by the layers of paper-thin aluminium and only slightly thicker insulation. The voices were raised but they weren’t as argumentative as a full-on screaming match. Maybe that had already happened and this was the phase of the conflict where they were trying to find some common ground. The lighting vein that ran through the corridor, along the centre line of the ceiling, let a soft, sky blue shade wash over the walls and rubberised floor. I loitered in the corridor for a minute and thought about pressing the call button before deciding to come back later. I knew Cora wouldn’t mind the interruption, but the thought of getting between her and Del while they clearly had some shit to work out made me opt for going to check out the data stick Adio gave me first.
The contrast between Cora’s floor and mine, 5 stories down, was conspicuous. I strode out the lift as the door irised open, into a cloud of whatever the young lukshae was exhaling. It smelled like the ocean on Earth with a hint of something more acidic. I fought the urge to cough when I felt it scratch the back of my throat. There were four of them standing waiting for the lift. One of them was Sonny Jim, from next door, two other lukshae and a human. Teenagers. Part of me wondered if Nana was okay. I had never really spoken to either of them but Nana seemed like a sweet old lukshae lady, worried about her grandson. Her L’raon.
I passed the biometrics for my locker and went inside. Everything was how I’d left it that morning. Messy. I pondered straightening it out then, by habit, sat down, pulled the terminal screen towards me, flexing the articulated arm, and plugged in the data stick Adio had given me.
A list of file names appeared. I opened the first. Footage of Del’s stall before the explosion. The time mark said 1535H. I hit the button on my Instabrew, commanding it to conjure and spit out a cup of coffee, the little screen blinking a warning that this would be my last cup before having to replace the cartridge. I started to scrub through the footage. I knew from the angle exactly which security feed this was from. It faced the front of Del’s stall, almost squarely. Quick shapes darted in, out and past the stall’s entrance. Then Del. Then the explosion. I scrubbed back.
1613H - She left the stall with a backpack, leaving the door wide open and the sign still illuminated.
1620H - The stall exploded.
She knew.
I took a minute to process the thought.
She knew the stall was going to explode at exactly 1620H. The only way she could know about it was if she was in on it. Maybe she even orchestrated the whole thing by herself. But why?
I tried to understand before making a mental note to question her when I went back to Cora’s place.
I opened the next file, and the next, and the next until I had gone through everything on the stick with at least a medium tooth comb. There were more angles of the vicinity of Del’s Data Dominion matching the time frame from the first file. Every one of them corroborated with each other. No discrepancies.
So, unless someone took the time to go through every feed on the secure server and rotoscope Del in, then the footage is genuine.
Cracking Khal-Sec’s system wasn’t simple, but it wasn’t impossible by any means. I had done it before, not long after arriving on Khalo. I’d struck up a loose aquaintenceship with a lukshae who had worked for one of the industrial printing plants in Works. She’d wanted a feed pulled from the system and destroyed, and asked me to do it. Turned out she had been running a grift on the printing plant. Printing stuff off-the-books and selling to a third party. Most of the time she was doing it under the noses of the administration but after organising a larger-than-usual print, she needed a break in the feed so she could move it unnoticed. Luckily, at that point, Khal-Sec’s server security was pretty rudimentary. It didn’t take me long to find holes to weasel in. Once I’d cracked a user account it was easy enough to escalate privileges and pull a window of quiet footage and loop it over the live feed.
In the past few years, though, Khal-Sec had noticeably improved their server security. As such, it might be a little more difficult to gain access to their security feeds.
Might be worth a shot if I could track Del after she left the stall.
I put the thought to the back of my mind while I checked the rest of the files, maybe my questions would be answered there.
Sure enough, there was another video file. This time, it was a wide view from a high corner of a Redstone plaza. It looked like one of the upper plazas. The light from the heart looked more intense than on the ground or mid-levels, like there weren’t many buildings casting shade over it. The clip lasted about two minutes. The plaza was busy. People gathered in groups to watch performers of various disciplines. The biggest crowd by far was gathered around a young lukshae woman playing a haltone. The haunting melody she was producing was captivating at least fifty people in the plaza, and one watching the security feed four days after the fact. So much so, that I had to scour the clip two more times, once without audio, before I caught sight of Del at the far side of the plaza against a wall of storefronts. She was fairly inconspicuous, but she had a characteristic gait that was emphasised by looking over her shoulder as she walked, clearly concerned she was being followed.
Redstone, being two sectors over from my home district of Cho, I knew it well enough to navigate through it, but not well enough to visualise it. I cursed my inability to make out where Del was headed. I’d have to question her about it or go there myself to see if I could track her.
Or hack the Khal-Sec server. I don’t understand why she would blow up her own stall. What are you up to?
I continued to brood on it as the still frame of the plaza feed was magnified and focused on Del glancing over her shoulder as she walked.
If I ask Del about any of this, I give it a 50/50 chance the answer I get is bullshit. She already lied about it. No real reason to come clean now. Except, maybe Cora.
I swiped through the rest of the files hoping to find some indication of where she was running to. A few stills, timestamped and in order, of Del moving through Cho and then, catching the tram through Vacko. The trail ends in Redstone. The first sign of her after that was when she pulled me through the window in Sheim. Or, possibly, when she was fleeing the scene of Ferro’s murder.
That’s a point. What did Ferro have to do with this? Why would Del kill him? And why Redstone? If she was spotted near the ground, I might’ve thought that she squirrelled her way into the guts of the station again, but the plaza is pretty much in Redstone Central, near the Heart.
…
The Heart.
Nobody ever really goes up there except for routine maintenance, and the occasional group of kids looking to have some fun in the null gravity.
The portion of the heart that controlled the light cycle occupied very little space within the structure itself. Not counting the actual lighting hardware. A small pod at one end with a CPU and a control surface. Pretty much just a fancy LED on a timer. It interfaced with a lot of environmental control systems in the Heart too. Each district had it’s own climate profile, light hue, temperature, humidity, all regulated by the heart.
It’d be a good place to lay low. Each system up there has a dedicated maintenance team that runs diagnostics every fifty days, staggered over a ten-day period so that the teams aren’t scrambling over each other.
I checked the maintenance schedule on the station’s public server and saw the last maintenance crew had been up there twenty days ago, so unless something had gone wrong with any of the systems, there would be no one there for at least another sixteen days. Plenty of time to hide out, or plot, or whatever the hell she’d been doing. As far as I knew, there were only a couple of live security feeds in the Heart, and no biometric scanners. Anyone who wanted to remain undetected by the scanners throughout the station could pretty easily circumvent them with some readily available code that could be uploaded directly into the public server. A basic patch that obscures any biometric signature from the user-defined individual. It was supposed to be a privacy feature for the people who could pay for it but it was so easily exploitable that Khal-Sec didn’t even bother with biometrics anymore, opting instead for good old-fashioned live feeds, backed up onto a drip-fed hard drive. Del was almost certainly using a fresh bypass patch for the biometrics so there was no point even trying to trace her with the scanners.
Maybe one of the live feeds in the Heart caught sight of her.
I weighed each option in my head. Go to the Heart and see what I can find, head to Cora’s place and confront Del, or break into the security server to check the feeds from the Heart. I didn’t much like zero G, it was okay after a while but it turned my stomach at first. It was rumbling as I sat in my locker and reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything yet. So, physically going to the Heart is probably the least desirable option. Confronting Del also made my stomach turn a little but for different reasons. I was pretty sure Cora would contact me when it was time to have that conversation. That leaves option C, but if I was going to launch an attack on Khal-Sec’s system, I was going to need two things. Breakfast and more coffee.