He shouldered the bag, stowed the machete, and continued across the bridge, scatterblaster ready, leaving them to the dark and silence of the aftermath beneath the lake.
The transit station up to the surface lay on the other side of the bridge’s vast span. Rechs turned one last time and saw the beady glint of every moktaar’s eyes watching him in the distance, and then stepped into the lift that could take him up-station. It took only a moment to hack Giles’s rudimentary lock he’d set as security.
The doors closed with him inside, and the lift started up toward the surface. Soft music from some lost easy-listening age played in the interior. Rechs reached into the tactical bag and pushed more charge packs into the scatterblaster.
He’d conquered the threats Giles had forewarned of in the deep dark underneath. Everything left before him would be up top, in the city’s streets and decrepit buildings.
The real fight was yet to begin.
29
The lift opened onto a graffiti-covered station hub where foundry workers had once gathered in tremendous numbers to head down into the works for their long shifts. The hub was essentially an amphitheater that opened up onto several main streets serving the downtown district, but it lacked architectural panache. Brutalist stacked platforms made the place look like an inverted pyramid where little joy ever took place, and bare concrete now served as beds for the few bums who slept here in their garbage palaces. The place reeked of bad urine, ripe feces, and unwashed bodies.
After the collapse of the shipyards, Detron had tried to bill itself as a “People’s Paradise for the Galaxy,” if Rechs remembered the slogan correctly. They tried to show they could continue to thrive without industry and commerce and that by enhancing their own lives with every free thing they could vote for, they’d somehow rise to the top of the galaxy.
It didn’t work.
From above, on the streets above the transportation well, came the sounds of amplified speeches and the roar and swell of a distant and approving crowd. The words were lost as they bounced between buildings, arcades, and dark alleys. Drums and occasional horns blared out and rolled on without seeming accompaniment or meaning.
Like some damned carnival, thought Rechs.
Not a full-scale breakdown of societal order. More like a planetary Colonization Day festival from the way it all sounded. Celebrating its founding the same way every other world did. The one day of the year when everyone went nuts and lost their minds until the next workday. The reminder that they’d all, in some way, come from somewhere else to make it in someplace new. Or at least, distant relatives had.
Rechs crossed the cracked and broken duracrete of the transportation hub, scatterblaster in a cradle carry across his chest plate, and climbed up the broken platform steps to street level.
It was early morning and hot. Sweltering already. The powerful sun rose above impressive towers, each comprising at least a hundred wagon wheels, or orbital rings, stacked one on top of the other, launching themselves up into the smoke-laden skies. Some of these wheels even still turned, spinning about their axis as they’d been meant to long ago. Most were frozen by dirt and long neglect. Between them, high above, the city’s once-fabled system of monorails snaked through the towers like the dirty arteries of some cardiovascular system that hadn’t pumped blood in years. And down below, the streets were littered with burnt-out sleds, couches, and other things that had been dragged down from the buildings and set afire. Papers were scattered everywhere. Across the intersection from where Rechs stood, a body lay on the sidewalk. The poor soul’s blood had congealed and dried in a nearby gutter.
Rechs bent over and picked up one of the papers lying loose on the street. It was a flyer. Many on the street had the same purple printing.
The Galaxy Must Fundamentally Change for Us to Achieve the Dignity We Deserve, it announced.
The message continued in the main body below. And that change begins here on Detron. Change the Government. Change the Galaxy. Be at the Noon Rally in Liberation Square (formerly Expedition One Heritage Park) to listen to Syl Hamachi-Roi speak her truths. Then be prepared to do whatever it takes.
None of those on the streets, many of whom were wearing the red and black get-ups, paid any attention to Rechs in his full bounty hunter armor. In gaggles and clusters, heading in every direction, they laughed, talked, sang, or chanted, “Resist the status quo for the galaxy to grow.”
Rechs let the gaudy flyer with poorly mixed fonts slip from his glove and flutter back down to the dirty street. None of this was Rechs’s business. They could burn down their own planet. He didn’t care.
His only problem was finding the network that had snatched the two leejes and the marine. And the next step to accomplishing that was finding an operative for the other side. Probably a low-level player who was working the crowd on the ground. One who did what they were told and followed the lead of the mastermind who put it all together.
Because there was always a mastermind. Few things were organic even if made to seem so. There was always someone looking to profit from the misery and outrage of others. Follow the money, his mother had liked to say. And she’d been right. And once he tagged an operative, he’d wait for them to connect with their network at the next level. So many connections would take him to wherever they were keeping their prisoners. He’d just have to work his way through it as fast as possible.
Rechs headed toward the sound of the distant crowd, betting he could probably put eyes on someone who was connected enough to lead to someone else who led to
