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  Dirty Dealings – Rachel Harrison

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  Dirty Dealings

  Rachel Harrison

  When you do the kind of job that I do, you become good at hiding things. It keeps you alive, moment to moment. Keeps you on the good side of everyone who has a bad side, until the moment you need to show them your own.

  I was hiding a lot of things when they brought me in. My real name. My bad side.

  Enforcer Drova wasn’t aware of any of it. Not what I was hiding, or how bad my bad side could be, until his blood shot up the interrogation chamber wall. Some of it hit the ceiling and the flickering strip lumens. Rain in reverse. Or at least that’s how I imagine it to be. I’ve never seen real weather. Never seen the surface. Had true air on my skin. None down here have. Our rain is runoff. Our sun is on a timer, if it comes on at all. All of the air has been breathed by someone else. Everything is dirt, or dirtied, including the people.

  Though that applies to some more than others.

  My knee is pressing hard on Drova’s chest. His eyes are wild and angry, but he’s bleeding too much to fight me. It’s all over his carapace armour and the uniform underneath it. It is spreading into the grooves between the flags of the floor. More runoff. More dirt.

  ‘You’re dead, Kora Zekk,’ Drova says. The words are blood-wet. He’s got one of his big, scarred hands over that wound in his chest. ‘You won’t leave this place unless you’re in pieces.’

  I shake my head at him.

  ‘Who said anything about leaving?’ I say. ‘We’re just getting started.’

  The job began before light-up. There’s no dawn down here in the Sunder. Because of that the word dawn is gone too, because it implies a rise. A swell. Not just the flicker and snap of lumens, quick and violent. Light-up. Like you might light up a lho-stick, or light up a target when you shoot them.

  It took me a long time to get to the furnace-houses, because of the guns. The containers were big and unwieldy, and I couldn’t take the mag-lev because then I’d be seen. Reported. Dirt will report on dirt for a price, or for a favour, and the last thing I wanted was to blow the deal. Not after weeks of planning.

  So I lugged the guns through back alleys, past the dive-bars and steaming, thronging markets, down through the dead middle levels that give the district its name, to the low-Sunder. Nobody alive now remembers what killed those middle levels. Could have been plague, or poison in the water or the air. Could have just been the people. The only thing everyone knows for sure is that there is nothing good to be found there.

  I took Baud and Fule on the job as muscle. They were both thieves and killers. Hungry for credits and an excuse to hurt people. We took the old pilgrim’s walk to the furnace-houses. A long passage framed by tall ironwork arches, half eaten by rust. Like bones, cracked open by vermin. It was busy at one time, the pilgrim’s walk. Hundreds of souls flowed through it every day like wastewater through a pipe, but not now. Not after the old church collapsed through to the sinks.

  I miss the church. It was a beautiful hulk of black iron and murky, badly set glass. The cleric who led service there wasn’t Redemptionist. He didn’t do it for fury, or fervour. He did it because he thought he could help the Sunder. Because he wanted to heal it. Clean it, through faith. When that old church was full of lit candles, it felt like how it must feel to walk out into the sun. Warm and golden.

  But nothing golden lasts, not down here.

  ‘This is as far as you go,’ I told Baud and Fule, when we reached the end of the petitioner’s tunnel and moved the grate aside. I could see the collapse, yawning in front of us like a ragged mouth. There was a gantry laid across it. A spar of iron and plasteel to keep you from falling into the sinks below like the church did. Beyond the collapse were the furnace-houses, wreathed in smoke with their grated windows lit red from the fires inside.

  Baud turned and looked at me. He frowned, his heavy brow collapsing over his eyes, and put one big hand on the container beside him. He was short one finger on that hand from a deal that went badly.

  ‘No way,’ he said, in his slow, deliberate voice. ‘This is a big deal. You need us.’

  ‘Not anymore,’ I told him. ‘I don’t need muscle in there. Just my wits.’

  Baud put himself between me and the crates. Rolled his shoulders.

  ‘You want to go,’ he said. ‘You give me my cut first.’

  Fule took up that frown too, at least with her eyes. I couldn’t see her mouth for the respirator she wore that made her voice sound like a tunnel echo. She had her hand on the needle pistol at her belt. She was sworn to the Acid Dolls under House Escher once, before her whole gang got scrubbed in a raid. Saying it like that makes it sound like she was done wrong, but she wasn’t.

  Because she was the one who sold them out.

  ‘Yeah,’ Fule said, in that echo-voice. ‘I want my cut, too.’

  I had known it would be that way. What I was going to have to do. You get used to it, when you do the kind of job that I do.

  ‘Your cut,’ I told them. ‘Okay.’

  I drew my stub revolver and fired it four times before either of them could move. Two rounds each. Half the chambers emptied. Fule went over on her back with that respirator shattered along with her face underneath it. Baud fell against the container. He painted a bloody line all the way down the side. It took him a moment to die. A wheezing, gasping moment.

  ‘Liar,’ he said.

  I said nothing back because there was nothing to say. He wasn’t wrong. Instead I reloaded my revolver, holstered it and took the controllers for the grav lifters off their bodies.

  Then I took the guns to the furnace-houses.

  To the Orlocks.

  There were two of them outside the furnace-house. The gangers were dressed in heavy, layered jackets with goggles pushed up on their heads. One of them was smoking lho. Both of them wore heavy laspistols openly in shoulder harnesses. I knew that there would be more watching too, from inside.

  It’s what I’d do.

  ‘This the delivery?’ asked the first. ‘As promised?’

  He was tall, with a nasty scar that made a smile of his mouth. His beard and hair were dark with furnace ash.

  ‘As promised,’ I replied. The words were pre-arranged. All part of the deal. ‘A fine weight of iron.’

  His scar-smile became a real smile, and he motioned to the other one. The one with the lho-stick. His hair was shaved on both sides to show off the gang tattoos there.

  ‘Punch Hammers,’ I said. ‘Subtle.’

  His laugh came with blue smoke from the lho. He gestured at the revolver at my hip.

  ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Give it up. Outsiders don’t go armed here.’

  It was my turn to laugh. I was hardly about to give up my gun. He went for it then. Tried to take it right off my belt. I caught his wrist and twisted it. Used my weight to roll him right off his feet and put him on his back. It knocked the wind out of him, so when he tried to curse me, the words wouldn’t come.

  I looked up to see the other one pointing his laspistol at me. It was modified with a burn cartridge. If he had fired it, it would have taken my head clean off.

  But I wasn’t about to let that happen. I’d planned for that too. That’s how you survive this kind of life.

  Meticulous planning, and assuming that everyone you meet wants you dead.

  ‘Hey now,’ I said to him, holding my arm up so that my sleeve rolled back to show the bracer bolted around my arm. ‘See this? T
his is broadcasting to every one of those containers. Kill me, and you kill the broadcast. All of that fine iron inside will be burned out by the shock charges I rigged.’

  That made him lower his pistol. Made his friend stop cursing me too. Leverage. It’s often the difference between life and death, down here in the dirt.

  I followed the two gangers through the furnace-house to the smeltery. I got the impression they thought it would impress me. Or intimidate me. The space was industrial, and massive. It stretched up above me, the ceiling lost to smoke. Ladders and scaffolding clung to the walls, zig-zagging upwards. On either side of us, machines poured iron, filling the place with a warm glow like the candles I remembered from the old church, though here the air wasn’t sweetened with incense. It was fire and dry and it made your lungs burn in your chest.

  There were five of them waiting for me in there, though just like outside I knew there would be a dozen more watching. I could feel it, a sensation like cold water running down my back.

  ‘Kora Zekk.’

  The one who spoke my name surprised me. He was young. Mid-twenties at the most, with hardly a scar to speak of. He wasn’t heavy with augmetics or muscle either. The ganger was lean under his padded jacket, his bandolier and his faded worker’s clothes, but when he spoke my name, nobody else said a word. The other gangers didn’t even look at him. That told me a handful of things about him. That he was clever. Vicious.

  And definitely the boss.

  ‘Tias Runo?’ I called out over the sound of the machines.

  ‘Right you are,’ he replied.

  Runo stood up from the crates he was sitting on and smiled at me. An easy, lazy smile.

  That told me another thing about him. He had confidence.

  Probably too much of it.

  ‘My iron,’ he said. His voice was almost educated. His words barely softened or blurred by his accent. ‘As promised.’

  I brought up the containers and deactivated the grav-lifters. They hit the floor of the furnace-house with a clang.

  ‘Exotics,’ I said. ‘Needlers. Plasma. The lot, just as you asked.’

  That smile of his widened as he looked at me. At my old scars and my long hair bound up in a heap by tattered feathers and silver pins. My duster coat and my flexi-armour. At the cheap-looking rings on my fingers and the gun worn openly at my hip.

  ‘As trustworthy as you look to be,’ he said, ‘I’ll need to see them before we pay you anything.’

  ‘And I’ll need to see the payment before you get a look at those guns.’

  He laughed. Nobody else did. I got the feeling they knew better.

  ‘Show her,’ he said to one of the others.

  The ganger took a couple of steps towards me. The furnaces roared around us, rolling smoke between us. It made me wish I’d not shattered Fule’s respirator. I could have used it, then. He opened the triple-locked case he was carrying and showed me.

  ‘Clean credits,’ Runo said. ‘Fifteen thousand. As promised.’

  It was more money than I’d ever seen, all in that one box no bigger than an ammo crate. Seems a strange thing, all that wealth in such a small space.

  ‘Alright,’ I said.

  And I inputted the keycode to deactivate the shock charges in one of the containers. I saw the way Runo’s face lit up at the sight of those guns. Those sworn to House Orlock think they’re better than the brute Goliaths or the wicked Escher, but they aren’t really.

  It’s like I said, everyone down here is dirt.

  ‘Looks like we have a deal,’ Runo said.

  That was when it happened. A noise loud enough to hear over the furnaces and the panel hammers and the quenching machines. An explosion, followed by the distinct clatter of autogun fire. It was followed swiftly by a bellowed shout from up in the gantries that told me what I already knew from the sound of those guns. You don’t forget it once you’ve heard it.

  ‘Enforcers!’

  That light in Runo’s face snapped off just like the lumens at the end of day cycle. Light-out.

  ‘Deal breaker!’ He shouted at me. ‘You’re dead!’

  But I was already moving, snapping the container full of guns closed with the bracer on my arm. I rolled behind it as the firing started. The container was shielded, so it took the hard rounds and shrugged them off. It gave me no cover from the gantries and the two gangers above me though. Their shots rang off the riveted floor, casting sparks like the furnaces. They were shooting angry.

  I wasn’t. I had planned for this too.

  I unclipped the flash flare from my belt and threw it up onto the gantry, then ducked my head and squeezed my eyes closed. I knew when it had gone off because of the way they screamed. I followed it up by shooting at both of them. Even at range, the revolver’s rounds hit hard. It made one of them stagger backwards and go over the railing, right into the furnace.

  That was when the enforcers blew the door and breached the furnace-hall.

  ‘Forget her!’

  I got to my feet and saw Runo. He had his glare goggles down and the case full of credits under his arm. We traded fire. The bolt from his laspistol grazed my ribs and made me fall against the container, but not before the round from my revolver took him in the chest. It put him back a pace, but didn’t knock him down because he was wearing an armoured underlayer beneath that heavy coat.

  Clever, like I said.

  He looked past me, to the blown door and the enforcers, and he smiled that easy, lazy smile.

  ‘You’re dead, deal breaker,’ he said.

  Then he ran. I got up to go after him but stopped at the sound of an autogun ratcheting at my back.

  ‘Drop your weapon, scum,’ the enforcer said.

  I did as I was told, because otherwise I really would be dead.

  ‘Take her in,’ said a second, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming.

  A hard strike to the back of the head from the butt of that gun.

  I came to with my hands manacled in front of me through a loop in a steel table. The chain glinted under the flickering light from the lumens overhead. My chair was bolted to steel tread-plate floor. The air was dank and stale. It smelled of disuse. Somewhere, water was dripping, slow and rhythmic. The room looked like an interrogation chamber, and a bad one at that. The enforcers had taken my gun and my armour and from the way my dark hair hung loose around my face, they’d even found the micro-blades hidden amongst the pins in it. They hadn’t taken the bracer on my wrist though, and the three lights for the three containers were still green. That meant they hadn’t tried to open the containers either.

  Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Light-up, Kora Zekk. Time to talk.’

  I looked up at the sound of my name. Or the name they thought was mine anyway. I’ve had a lot of names over the years.

  There was just one of them sat opposite me, which was bad too. A solo interrogation means it’s likely going to hurt. The enforcer was big, and made even more so by the heavy carapace plate he wore. He had blunt features and a nose made crooked by a lifetime of being hit. A long scar ran from his jaw to his hairline where someone had tried and failed to kill him. His accent was low-Sunder, which told me he’d fought hard to earn his badge and his plate. Those things taken together told me exactly who he was.

  ‘Drova, right?’ I said. ‘Lem Drova, of the thirty-third Adeptus Arbites precinct.’

  He smiled at me and I saw that was crooked too.

  ‘And how does someone like you know my name?’ he asked.

  ‘All lawbreakers in the Sunder know your name,’ I told him. ‘And your reputation.’

  He leaned forwards then, elbows on the table. The bracers on his forearms were scored from knife strikes, and his knuckles were split and bruised. The kind of damage you do hitting other people. Breaking bones.

  ‘And what’s my reputation?�
�� he asked.

  ‘Bloody,’ I said. ‘I heard it was you who led the raids on the Sump Rats and the Acid Dolls. Burned them to the ground. Nothing left to loot.’

  That wasn’t all I’d heard about Lem Drova, but it was enough for now. Enough for him. He smiled again. I noticed it never quite reached his eyes. They stayed dull and flat like the casing of a well-used weapon.

  ‘You heard right,’ he said. ‘Which means you know to take my questions seriously.’

  There it was. The reason I was sitting there at all and not burned down too. He needed something from me, and I had a good idea of what.

  ‘You tell me what I want to know,’ he said. ‘And I will show you mercy. Even give you back your freedom.’

  He took out a revolver from a holster at his belt. I saw wear-polished steel. The way the leather binding on the grip had gone thin from handling.

  My revolver.

  ‘Or you can say nothing, and see what that gets you,’ Drova said.

  He flipped the chamber and checked the number of rounds. I knew there would be five. I make a habit of remembering exactly what’s left to me.

  Drova flipped the chamber closed again and put the revolver to my head. The cold barrel pressed against my skin.

  ‘Lie to me, and you’ll get it quicker,’ he said.

  I waited a beat and then bared my teeth at him.

  ‘Seems no choice at all to me,’ I said.

  The cold let up as Drova dropped the revolver away a little.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s talk about you, Kora Zekk.’

  He kept my revolver trained at me lazily in his right hand as he spoke. That’s something worth knowing, if you are planning on fighting someone. Watch the hand they favour. The way they place their weight.

  ‘Let’s talk about how a no-name scum ends up trafficking exotics in the Sunder,’ he said. ‘And where exactly those exotics came from.’

  ‘I got the job because I’m good at what I do,’ I told him, which was true. ‘Because when I make a plan I’m careful about it.’

  I smiled.

  ‘And because I don’t allow myself a reputation.’