In a residential area of East Circet, where the old domescrapers district of the Ulyssese Underhive was, it was silent. In a better time, children would be out in the streets playing groxhop and marbles. Young gangers would pose on the corners and look tough, thinking of their loved ones and giving the children sweets, and the odd guilder groundcar would roll through on its way to Gelttown. But now, the lights were dimmed in the night cycle, and it was pitch black out on the streets. No children played. The gangers who had protected this area were long dead. Killed by the Falcons or the Reavers in that time of trouble. And the only light on the street shone out of a scant few windows.
One of them shone from the office of Fayde Timure, before he drew the curtains with a fearful look outside, and checked the magazine of his snub pistol for the dozenth time. Like always, it had ten dusty old bullets inside. Their brass casings gleamed dully in the light of the lone desk lamp. He snapped the magazine back in, but knew he would look again in half an hour. He edged away from the window, carefully making his way to his desk and setting the pistol down.
He spared a glance back at the windows again. The streetlamps outside were long burnt out, and the new local gang wouldn’t get around to replacing them until they’d got their own affairs in order – affairs that didn't include protecting an old record-keeper. He’d asked them, he’d begged them. He’d offered them money, information, obscura if he could get his hands on it, but the gangers had taken his money and laughed at him. So he’d had to stay at work tonight. He’d made a mistake, and knew that he would pay for it. He’d had to stay at work and open the ventilation shaft to get at the old snub pistol he’d hidden there years ago.
He had thought that life couldn't get any worse for him when the Reavers and the Falcons had been at war. When people were shot down in the streets in broad daylight, when they went missing from their homes. When the black groundcars rolled past, the men inside with their lasguns peering out for any suspicious behaviour had been an everyday occurrence.
Oh, perhaps there was less violence now, but not for him. No. The Falcons had made it known that anyone who ratted out any remaining Reavers or people who worked with the Reavers would be paid and protected by them, the Falcons, and Fayde, record keeper that he was, saw his chance.
But he’d messed it up. He’d messed it up and there would be no second chance. This was his only shot. He sank slowly into the chair behind his desk and regarded his office. The door stood opposite him, made of dark wood. The walls were plastered but hard enough to stop a slug-gun’s bullet, and for that he was thankful. They had pictures on them. Only three. Just pictures to make the place look less dreary. In the dim light from the desk lamp he could see them. A herd of grox in a field, a painting of the emperor in triumph (everyone had one of those, it seemed) and a framed certificate from the schola imperialis, designating Fayde Timure as a fully sanctioned scribe and record keeper.
He gazed at it for what felt like forever. The signature of the administratium official, the little patterns around the edges, his name, written in flowing, perfect servitor-script. He finally tore his eyes way from the certificate and they fell on something else. There they were, in a framed picture on his desk. The picture had been taken only six months ago. Jenna, only thirty three, Turing, his eldest boy was behind her, his Imperial Guard uniform stylistically rumpled, his hat perched jauntily on his head. Rudolf was there too, sullen as only a three-year-old can be. Fayde sat on a leather chair in the middle of it all, a smile on his face, brown hair beginning to gray, the dog curled up by his feet. His family.
Fayde blinked twice to clear his eyes and reached down to a desk drawer, opening it. Something inside clinked. Without looking, he reached in and withdrew a bottle of amasec. He looked at it. Fine vintage, nearly a century old, from the upperhive. A gift from his father’s father’s master, Baron Kiroff. It was only half full of course. His father’s father had had some, and his father had had some too, but it was a family heirloom, as much as it could be. He set it down on the desk with a thump, which made him look to the window again, but there was no vengeful shape there. Fayde reached down into his desk again and took out a single tiny shot glass, so dusty that it was opaque. He buffed it on his shirt and poured himself a generous measure of the amasec, before putting it back on the desk. He didn't truly believe that Turing would get it, of course, but it was nice to imagine the boy celebrating his first victory in the Guard with his squadmates by toasting his family with the bottle.
Fayde looked at the glimmering amber liquid, raised the glass and muttered. “To Alan Timure. Thanks for the vintage dad.” He threw it back and felt the amasec burn down his throat. Good stuff. Very good stuff. He sighed. No, it wouldn’t be found or given to Turing. After he was dead, long after the shots died down, the people who lived in this building, in their residential homes would come creeping fearfully down the stairs to loot whatever had been left behind by his murderers. He could expect no help from them, of course. Down in the underhive, your own safety and that of your family was all that mattered. He supposed it was why gangs sprung up. People banding together without a family, or maybe, to provide for their own.
Fayde left the bottle on his desk for now, and opened another drawer. From this, he took out a dozen manila folders, each crammed with information banged out by servitors or cogitators all penned by his own hand. He sighed again. This was why he was being hunted. His foolishness. It was all his records of those who worked for Grimm’s Reavers on their security payroll. Dozens of men, mostly dead now, but nine of whom had escaped the purges were on these records, and nowhere else. Nine men who had no doubt been behind the rash of disappearances of any people who knew anything about Grimm’s ‘secret police’ and seemed like they were ready to talk to the Falcons.
He wondered if he deserved to die for thinking of turning them in. If, on the offchance, someone ratted them out, he knew that the Falcons would stop at nothing to destroy them and put an end to Grimm’s network of feared security operators once and for all, but Raveon was ruthless. Just as ruthless as Grimm had been. He would not only kill them, but no doubt their entire families. Men might suffer the deaths of themselves, but their loved ones they would fight to the death to protect. And now, Fayde had fallen on the wrong side of that ancient truth, and had threatened their loved ones. And he might well die for it.
He hung his head. He had meant to do this to save his own family of course. It was no secret that he’d kept records for Grim, and three times, Falcon gangers had come over. First to ask him what he knew, then to offer him protection, then to offer him money if he disclosed what he knew. He had thought about that offer for a long time, and had finally told Jenna’s brother Michael, his own brother in law, an information broker, that he had meant to take them up on that offer, and contact Raveon tomorrow. But now, Michael had gone missing, and here he was, stuck without a vox-bead, and his time was trickling away. He only hoped that Jenna, Turing and Rudolf would make it out of this mess alive.
Fayde closed his eyes, letting himself be lulled into calmness by the warmth of the Amasec. It would all be alright. Come morning, he could get out of here, and if anyone tried anything…he thought of the stub gun lying on his desk. And he dreamed. He dreamed of escaping, of surviving until morning, then hiring a guilder groundcar for his whole family to take them to Falcon territory and protection. Then he dreamed about drums. Drums, thundering in the depths of the hive.
He didn't know how long he had been asleep for, but he knew that it was still night, and he knew that what had woken him hadn't been drums. His head shot up and he stared at the door for what felt like an eternity before it came again, a cautious knock. An askance.
Fayde slowly reached for his snub pistol and his fingers closed around the metal handle. It clunked heavily as he picked it up and aimed it at the door. Ten bullets, he remembered. Ten bullets. Fayde struggled with himself before finally speaking up. “Who’s there?” he asked, hoping his voice wasn't as quavering as it sounded.
“Just me, Fayde,” responded a tired old voice with a Steelfall accent.
Fayde raised the pistol a fraction of an inch higher, trying to triangulate the voice and aim at it. “Who’s me?” he asked, knowing full well who it was.
“If you don’ know that,” responded the voice, sounding just a tinge impatient and strained with age, “You’re even dumber than I thought you were.”
“Go away Vic!” shouted Fayde. “Just go away if you know what’s good for you!” A wild idea came to mind. “I've called Raveon! Half a dozen Falcons will be here any minute with the heavy squad! If you leave now, I won’t tell them that you were here!”
“Fayde,” responded the voice, sounding disappointed. “We both know I'm not that stupid, now come on, just open the door and face this with some dignity. You’re just embarrassing yourself.”
“That’s it!” shouted Fayde, flicking the safety off his weapon and offering up a prayer. “I warned you!
“Fayde, what-” the voice began, but he didn't hear the rest. He pulled the trigger and the weapon bucked and roared, the muzzle flash lighting up the dim room further and the brass casing rattling onto his desk. A hole appeared in the thin door. Boom, the gun went again, and a second hole joined the first, and again, and again. Fayde tried to aim at the voice, but the weapon’s powerful shells sent the muzzle bucking this way and that.
Finally, the thunder died away, and there was only the clattering of the last bullet casing hitting his desk and rolling onto the floor. Fayde was breathing heavily, the gun still in both hands, still pointed at the door. Then it fell from nerveless fingers and landed on his desk with a thud. He sat there for what felt like an eternity, his breathing slowing as he tried to listen for a noise in the hall beyond. There was nothing. He waited more. Still nothing. Fayde slowly stood up from his desk and took his coat from around it’s back. He put it on and fastened every button. He let the stub gun lay where it had fallen, and slowly walked over to the door and stood beside it with his back pressed against the wall.
Fayde reached out agonizingly slowly and twisted the handle. The riddled door swung outwards into the hall beyond and bumped softly against the far wall. Fayde let out a breath, and then extended one hand beyond, into the hallway and waved it about. Nothing. Then an arm. Nothing. He finally let out the largest sigh he had ever held in. He had won. He stepped out into the hallway.
Fayde Timure’s brains hit the back of his office wall with a splatter as a lasbolt took off the top of his head. He stood there for a second, rocking form the impact, eyes wide, and then slowly, like the fall of an empire, crumpled onto the floor in a heap.
From the ground, a man dressed in warm winter clothes and a hat with ear flaps slowly got up, stretching his back and dusting himself off. He had a laspistol in his hand, which he quickly stowed in the back of his waistband. He stepped over the rapidly cooling corpse of Fayde Timure and into the office. Coming into the light, he had a hangdog expression, heavily lidded eyes and a big nose.
He looked around for a long moment. He picked up the framed family photo and regarded it before setting it back down in the same spot. He glanced at the bloody, chunky spatter of the contents of Fayde’s skull that had been pasted onto the back wall just above the desk. Then he saw the bottle. He picked it up. It was dusty. The vintage read that it was over a century old. He uncorked it, took a whiff and nodded appreciatively. Then he glanced at the label again. He could make out some writing there, in low gothic, incised onto the glass. He read it aloud in a thick Steelfall accent.
“To my son and his sons after him, Jared Timure. Live long and well.” He raised his eyebrows and glanced over at the body on the ground. Then he upended the glass bottle and shook it about, scattering the pricless vintage all over the office. He finished it by smashing the bottle on the desk and letting it fall and soak the amasec into the carpet. Then he picked up the files on the desk, brushed them off, gave them a cursory glance and produced a lighter from his pocket and lit them on fire.
The man stood there and watched the files burn merrily for a moment and then let them drop, where the amasec-soaked floor caught almost instantly with a cheery
whoomph. The old man turned from the flames, stepped over the body, whose clothes were already beginning to smolder, and walked out of the burning office, down the hallway, out into the street beyond and into the darkness of the underhive.
ELSEWHERE
Mark Fornax stood on a dark street, his dark long coat blending into the wall behind him. He wore tinted glasses, a mask covering his mouth and nose, and a military cap. He leaned against the grimey wall, as he had for the past three hours. The dead brown eyes behind those dark glasses were fixed unwaveringly on the house opposite him. It was an ordinary affair for the underhive, a cramped rowhouse, most of the lights of the surrounding houses extinguished except for one or two where people were still up, talking or just sleeping with the lights on. Mark glanced up and down the street. Maybe one in every four street lamps were working. There was no light in front of the house.
Mark waited for what must have been another hour, listening to the sounds of the night. The ice-bugs chirping in the sewers, the clatter inside houses, the odd distant gunshot and every now and then the sound of a vehicle on the streets. The monotony was finally broken when his vox chimed. He reached into his jacket pocket and thumbed it on. “Mark here.”
“It’s clear,” responded the person on the other end.
Mark closed the vox-bead and dropped it back into his pocket. Then he got out of his leaning position and ambled over to a nearby bin full of useless garbage. Even so of course, some scavvie would be along to pilfer out of it eventually. He opened the lid and removed the lasgun he had stowed in it several hours earlier. He brushed off some clinging grime and removed a fruit peel from the muzzle before crossing the street, the lasgun under one arm like another man might carry a newspaper. He glanced both ways as he crossed the street, then stepped up to the door and reached into his pocket again. Mark found the keys, then inserted them into the lock. There was a click, and the door swung open.
It was an empty house. No one went in here much, as there were much nicer places to live. The juvvies and gangers had already been through here dozens of times years ago until there was nothing left to steal. Mark flicked on a lamp-pack on his lasgun’ muzzle and played it around the room. There was nothing but broken furniture and mould all around. A window was broken, someone had come in and spray-painted graffiti on the walls. In one place there was a crude scythe that someone had sprayed over with a falcon’s beak. The war had even come to the graffiti artists in abandoned homes.
Mark picked his way through the detritus and garbage before entering the kitchen. The kitchen was a small affair. All the usable metal had been long looted. He didn't bother with any of that. He stepped over the rotted and collapsed table and to the oven, which he opened. He bent down and pulled out the rust-covered rack, which was, miraculously, unstolen. After that, he stuck in the lasgun, butt-end-first and pounded away at the back of the oven until it gave and swung inward, revealing a black space beyond it. Fulvius glanced behind him before crawling inside and closing the oven door, then the false back panel behind him. He pulled the lasgun in last, and then reached up to flick on a small light switch.
A single ancient incandescent bulb, fizzled to life. It dangled on a string in the middle of the bare room, which aside from that, only housed a desk with an uneaten ration bar and a half-full jug of water, a dirty mattress and a man sleeping on it. Mark switched off the lamp-pack, removed his shades and approached the sleeping man. Upon closer inspection, he was shackled to the wall. Mark bent down and fished another key out of his pocket, which he quickly unlocked the shackles with. He straightened and prodded the sleeping man with his boot. “You, get up.”
The man rolled over and blinked in the light, raising a hand to shield his eyes. He had three days of stubble on his chin, and his left eye was swollen. He couldn’t see Mark for who he was yet, and Mark had kept the facemask and hat on the entire time. “Michael,” said Mark, shoving the lasgun in the man’s face. His eyes widened. “Here’s how it’s going to go down.”
“Please, don’t-” stammered the man, eyes wild and staring up at the shadowy black-clad figure pointing a large gun at him.
“Shut up,” said Mark, in his monotone voice. “Here’s how it’s going to go down. You are aware that Fayde Timure, your brother in law, had in his possession, documents containing the names of several men previously in the employ of Hardwell Grim, otherwise simply known as Grimm, former leader of the Reavers association.”
“Y-yes,” stammered the man, still staring at the gun. “Wait…had? He doesn’t have them any more?”
Mark continued on. “Were you or were you not informed of the identities of any of these men?” Mark already knew he hadn’t been.
“Who?” asked the man. “What? No, of course not.” He was slowly becoming used to the brightness, so Mark flicked a switch and the lamp-pack on his lasgun turned on, bombarding the man with light. “Good.” he said. “If you are telling the truth, you won’t be seeing me again.” He moved the barrel closer to the man’s face. “If not, I will hunt you down and kill you and your entire family. Minus Fayde Timure, who is already dead.”
“What?”The man looked shocked. “Fayde? Dead? How-”
“He crossed us,” said Mark, stepping back. “Now, stand up. I’m going to blindfold you, gag you, and then drive you back to Ulysses Hive, where I will leave you. When you regain consciousness, you may either return home or leave and begin a new life elsewhere, but if I discover that you have become inquisitive or talkative, I will kill you and your family.”
“Please, sir, be rational-”
“I am being rational,” said Mark, still watching the man with no trace of interest in his eyes. “Were it up to me alone, you’d be feeding the scavvies now. Now let’s put you to sleep.” Mark knelt down and moved closer to the man, who tried to scramble away. “Relax,” said Mark, as he grabbed the man’s neck. The fellow screamed for help, but it would do him no good in this underground pit. Mark located the correct artery and applied pressure. Within seconds, the man was out cold and as limp as a fish. Mark produced a bag and covered the man’s head, then bound his hands and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of wheat.
He left him on a street corner three blocks away.
