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CHAPTER VI

A New Wind



The cartels came in force, Kajada and Vakaar alike, gathered in one place with enough punkers to massacre each other if they changed their minds about acting human for this meeting.

Bhaaj and crew also arrived en masse, or at least as much mass as eight people could muster. They walked onto a peninsula of rock that jutted out at midwalk level in a large canal. The canal, which was over twenty meters wide and even taller from ground to ceiling, ended at the jutting finger of rock. Cartel punkers waited on the dusty floor below, on the midwalks, and undoubtedly spying from within the walls and ceiling, which were riddled with caves, passages, and breaks, all made from eons of poisonous, mineral-rich water dripping through the nooks and crannies of their world.

“Not good,” Ruzik said at Bhaaj’s side.

Bhaaj grimaced. “Yah.” She’d chosen this place from three suggested by the cartels because it offered the easiest way out of their territory if her group had to run. They all stood at the end of the peninsula with a tunnel exit in the sheer wall at their backs, the only obvious escape from this end of the canal. Wide spaces separated their section of rock from the midwalks on either side, so only Bhaaj’s group had access to the tunnel exit. She hoped.

Their light came from torches or lamps that people held. The Vakaars waited on the left and the Kajadas on the right. They didn’t need the tunnel exit behind Bhaaj; any of them could take off in the other direction, running down into the canal or along its midwalks. So yah, everyone had a way out—except Bhaaj had to take her people down into the canal to meet with the cartels.

Too many punkers waited down there. About twenty had come with each cartel, and probably another ten from each hid in the walls, spying on the meeting. They’d brought pulse revolvers, blast-pistols, and machine guns, including military-issue weapons from the black market. Knives, maces, daggers, and other instruments of mayhem glinted everywhere. Cutter Kajada and Hammerjan Vakaar had both come, each surrounded by their lieutenants, their groups separated by only a few precarious meters. In the dim light, with the flickering torches and the sea of darkness beyond, the scene looked like an artist’s depiction of hell.

“Goddess,” Lavinda said in a low voice.

“We can still leave,” Bhaaj told her.

“No, we should stay.” Lavinda paused. “How do meetings like this usually go?”

“Hell if I know,” Bhaaj said. “It’s never happened before.” The only other time she’d seen punkers from both cartels in one place without fighting was at Dig’s memorial.

“Have you figured out what they want?” Lavinda asked.

“Not a clue,” Bhaaj admitted.

“Unless they plan to kidnap a royal heir,” Captain Morah said, her voice tight.

“This can’t be a grab,” Bhaaj said. “Better ways exist if that’s what they want, besides which, they’d never cooperate for it.”

Lavinda looked out over the waiting cartel. “You see anyone you trust?”

“No.” Bhaaj tilted her head to where the Kajada cartel queen stood on the left below, her gaze intent on them. “I’ve known Cutter Kajada for years, since before she took over the cartel. She’s Dig’s cousin. Most of the time, she’s crazy pissed at the world. She knows Dig and I were like sisters, though. In her mind, I’m family.” With a shrug, Bhaaj added, “Yah, she’d kill me if I challenged her. As long as neither of us pushes it, though, we get along. Sort of.”

“Not exactly an overwhelming endorsement.” Lavinda nodded toward the other side of the canal, where the top Vakaar punkers surrounded Hammerjan. “What about them?”

Bhaaj snorted. “They’d love to finish me. They know if they do, though, the Dust Knights will turn against them in full force, starting another war, this time between Vakaar and the gangs. As soon as Kajada saw any sign of Vakaar weakening, they’d take advantage. It’d be chaos. Vakaar hates Kajada even more than they hate me, so they keep peace with my Knights.”

Lavinda stared at her. “Why the blazes do you come down here all the time, if you’re dealing with all this? We gave you a penthouse in the city, for saints’ sake. You could live there.”

“This is my home. I give back what I can.” Although the Vakaars would never admit it, that was probably another reason they didn’t take her on. They benefited as much as anyone else from the changes she was helping bring to the aqueducts.

A restless wave of mutters rolled through the gathered watchers.

“We have to do something,” Bhaaj said.

“Then let’s go meet them,” Lavinda said.

“You sure?” Bhaaj asked.

“Yes. Do you have a way down there?”

Bhaaj motioned at a staircase carved into the sheer wall of the peninsula that led down to the bottom of the canal. “There.”

“Colonel, wait,” Captain Morah said. “You can’t go down there.”

Lavinda’s gaze never wavered. “Captain, I understand your concern. But we won’t get this chance again. These groups have power. If they decide they don’t want us here, we aren’t getting détente with the Undercity. Period.” Bitterly she said, “We need the Undercity, regardless of anything you may have heard, read, or seen. We need the people here. But if they think I’m a coward, they’ll never deal with us.”

Ruzik spoke with respect to the colonel. “We all come with you.”

Lavinda inclined her head to him. Enough said.

Morah gave her own reluctant nod and turned to her guards. “You flank Colonel Majda at all times.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Warrick answered in the same moment that the still unnamed guard said, “Understood, Captain.”

With that done, they headed to the steps. The staircase was carved into the peninsula and ran from left to right down to the floor of the canal. It was narrow enough that they had to descend single-file, Bhaaj in front and Lavinda in the middle with guards in front and behind her. The stairs had no railing, nothing protecting them from the drop-off, so they took it one slow step at a time, always watched by the silent cartels.

It felt like it took forever to reach the bottom, but Bhaaj finally stepped onto flat ground, stirring the dust into eddies that drifted in the air and settled on her clothes. She never took her gaze off the cartels, which meant she couldn’t look back to see if the others followed her. She heard them with her augmented senses, though, the scrape of feet, the clink of a pebble falling down the wall, the rustle of their clothes.

As Bhaaj walked forward, the punkers shifted position, forming an aisle bordered on one side by Kajada and on the other by Vakaar. She walked down that gauntlet, acutely aware of them watching her. Both cartels had brought their best fighters, muscled hulks with embedded tech-mech glinting on their arms, hands, and hardened abs. Some boasted cyber implants in their faces, replacing a lost eye, a shredded ear, or anything else they wanted. It was all as illegal as badass-bytes, created from black market parts by cyber-riders who gave exactly zero shits about above-city laws.

Slow and easy, Bhaaj thought. She kept going as if it were perfectly normal to walk past two lines of killers bristling with weapons. They studied her with no outward reaction, which meant the others in her group must be following, no one provoking their hosts either by acting like a threat or by showing weakness.

She felt naked without her pulse revolver. No way could they carry weapons here, not even hidden, since the cartel’s cyber-riders could scan for them. However, she’d put two drones in her jacket pocket, her red and blue beetle-bots. Red acted as a snoop bot, optimized for spying. Technically, Blue was the same, but she’d weaponized its buzz-bug self. Although it could squirt ink into someone’s eyes or blast digitized nonsense into a cyber-spy, neither ability would register as a weapon. Normally it also carried two sedative darts, but today she’d left those with Dara.

Bhaaj, your pulse is too high, Max thought.

Yah, big surprise there. You getting anything you don’t like from these punkers?

They’re armed to the teeth, literally in some cases. Not just what you see, but explosives in their cybernetics, poison capsules, dart throwers in their gauntlets, knives of every kind of metal and composite I can detect. And guns. A lot of guns.

And yet, they aren’t fighting.

No. They aren’t. He sounded as baffled as she felt.

Cutter came toward Bhaaj from the left and Hammerjan from the right, both flanked by their lieutenants. The other punkers shifted position to form an opening in their midst. As Bhaaj slowed to a stop, aware of her group gathering around her, the cartels formed a circle, leaving Bhaaj’s crew in the center with the two cartel bosses, cutting off all escape.

Cutter and Hammerjan stared at each other, two scarred warriors, both in their early thirties yet looking far older. Although they stayed impassive, Bhaaj felt their animosity like a fire in the air. Neither spoke; no threats, no violence, nothing. Instead, they each gave the barest nod you could offer a person without it being impossible to see. Whatever they wanted from Lavinda ranked even higher on their bucket lists than butchering each other.

They turned to the colonel.

“You Majda?” Cutter asked.

“I am,” Lavinda said.

Hammerjan’s voice hardened. “You come to pinch our people.”

Damn! They thought Lavinda intended to kidnap Kyles from the Undercity? Bhaaj started to answer, but Lavinda shook her head, then spoke to Hammerjan in passable dialect. “Not take people. Ask people.”

Cutter waved her hand in dismissal. “Ask, take. You want us to serve you. Make us your byte-bitches.”

“Not serve,” Lavinda said. “We give jobs. Good bargain. Good trades.”

Cutter snorted and the Vakaar boss crossed her arms, her muscled biceps ridged with tension. Neither bothered to ask what “bargain.”

Instead, Cutter spoke to Bhaaj. “Majda queen lie?”

“Nahya,” Bhaaj said. “Is truth.”

Hammerjan narrowed her gaze at Bhaaj. “You lie.”

“Nahya. Not lie.” Bhaaj doubted she’d fully convince a Vakaar, but they knew she had a rep for straight-talk.

Cutter motioned at Lavinda as she spoke to Bhaaj. “You vouch?”

“Yah,” Bhaaj said. “I vouch.”

Hammerjan’s lips curled with disgust. “For Majda.” She made the name sound like mud on the wall.

“For this Majda.” No way would Bhaaj bring any other Majda here.

Cutter studied the colonel, then turned to her Vakaar rival. Hammerjan met her gaze.

“We go,” Hammerjan said to Cutter. “You?”

“Yah,” Cutter said. “We go.”

Bhaaj blinked. Go where? Did they plan to leave now that she’d vouched for Lavinda? That made no sense. Why go to all this trouble? They knew she’d never bring Lavinda here if she couldn’t vouch for her. Maybe they meant to take the colonel hostage after all, not for ransom but as insurance, to make sure Lavinda kept her word when she claimed the army wouldn’t kidnap anyone. The Concourse cops sometimes rounded up whatever “dust rats” they could find sneaking out on the boulevard and forced the kids to work on the water farms, vicious labor that could grind you down until you died. Maybe the cartels wanted to ensure the army didn’t inflict the same on anyone who followed up on their offers for jobs.

Except—they knew the Dust Knights had committed to looking out for anyone approached by the army. The cartels might not trust Bhaaj, but however much they wanted to whack her for cracking down on drugs, they knew her Knights would make good on their vow to protect the Undercity.

Maybe it has nothing to do with protection, Max thought. It could be a challenge to the Knights, a way to establish cartel dominance over them using Lavinda.

Good point, Bhaaj thought. I hope you’re wrong. The last thing anyone needed was a war where Kajada and Vakaar joined forces against the Dust Knights.

With no other comment, Cutter motioned to her people. In the same moment, Hammerjan raised her hand in a signal. Bhaaj instinctively went for the gun she usually wore in her shoulder holster, which of course she didn’t have today, damn it.

Whatever she might have expected, though, it didn’t come close to what happened. The crowd of Kajada punkers rippled like water stirred by some invisible effect. What—? There! Several children were walking through the crowd, which shifted as people moved aside to let them pass. Same with the Vakaars; three kids were making their way through the protective ocean of muscle. The cartels had brought their children? No wonder they wanted to make sure they thoroughly outnumbered and outgunned Lavinda’s people.

Cutter and Hammerjan offered no explanation. Their hostility felt tangible, like embers ready to ignite, yet they just stood, watching each other and Lavinda.

The Vakaars at the edge of the circle parted, and the three kids stepped into the open space. One boy seemed about sixteen and the girl was a younger teen. The other boy looked seven or eight. All three came to stand with Hammer, watching Bhaaj and Lavinda. The Kajadas moved aside to let three of their own come forward, a girl in her late teens and two younger kids, a boy and a girl.

Bhaaj looked from Cutter to Hammer, at a complete and utter loss. “Eh?”

Neither answered. Instead, Cutter spoke to Lavinda. “You get mooders?”

Lavinda squinted at her, then glanced at Bhaaj.

Don’t interfere, Max warned. Their business is with Colonel Majda.

Yah, well, the esteemed colonel doesn’t know what the hell they’re saying.

I might be able to link with her EI, Max thought.

No, don’t. With all the cyber muscle here, someone would probably sense that you sent a signal to Raja. It would look like we’re plotting.

Then think at Colonel Majda.

What?

Don’t use a cyber link. Just think.

Bhaaj doubted it would work, but what the hell. Lavinda was a Kyle operator. So Bhaaj tried what she’d made it a policy never to do, in part because she didn’t know how but also because she was usually too busy denying her Kyle ability. She sent Lavinda a mental message.

Hammerjan is asking if you’re looking for empaths, Bhaaj thought, adding as much force as she could to the idea.

Although Lavinda showed no reaction, Bhaaj had an odd sense, as if the Majda queen gave her a mental nod. The colonel spoke, directing her words to both Cutter and Hammerjan. “We look for people who feel what other people feel.” Although she wasn’t using pure Undercity dialect, her speech had the right cadences.

“From any in Undercity?” Hammerjan demanded. “Or just fucking Dust Knights.”

“For all,” Lavinda said. “With or without fucks.”

No, shut up! Bhaaj wanted to shout. This was not the time for bad jokes.

Fortunately, Hammer almost smiled, just barely, yah, but down here that equated to a belly laugh. For one fraction of a second, she’d actually found Lavinda funny. Cutter didn’t look any more pissed than usual, so apparently the joke hadn’t ticked her off.

No more jokes! Bhaaj thought at Lavinda. Don’t risk it.

Cutter motioned to the children who’d come forward, both Kajada and Vakaar. “For them?”

“They mooders?” Lavinda asked.

“Yah.” Cutter and Hammer spoke at almost the exact same moment.

Holy shit, Bhaaj thought.

“Yah.” Lavinda kept her voice firm, but Bhaaj sensed her puzzlement. “Children, too.”

“Even cartel jans and sons?” Cutter asked.

“Majda call cartel cri-min-al.” Hammer made her last word an insult.

“They come as cartel?” Lavinda asked.

“Nahya,” Hammer told her. “Not as cartel. As kid.”

“As selves,” Cutter said.

“Then, yah,” Lavinda said. “For all. Any person. From any place.”

“For med too?”

Lavinda looked confused, but before Bhaaj could react, light dawned in the colonel’s expression. “Yah,” she told the cartel queens. “Can get med help. Can go to clinic with healer Kar. Always, even if not go to army. True for all.”

Bhaaj felt as if a roaring filled her ears, maybe from her sudden surge of adrenalin or maybe from shock. The cartels didn’t want to stop Lavinda. They hadn’t come to fight, kill, assert dominance or peddle their seductive death. They wanted something else, wanted it so much they risked forming a united front and—for this one time—even denied their brutal trade.

They wanted their children to have a chance at what Lavinda offered.

Although it wasn’t unheard of for punkers to be Kyles, it warped them. Horribly. To be an empath and soak up the violence, cruelty, and malevolence dealt by the cartels—to take that in every day of their lives—it destroyed a person. No one here taught empaths to defend their minds. They didn’t know how. Either they repressed their “gift,” as Bhaaj had done, or else they fell to the agony. She’d seen Cutter change over the years, turning a curious child into a sociopathic adult. Yet incredibly, both Cutter and Hammer saw the value in what Lavinda offered, a way out for their youth who hadn’t yet become so twisted by their lives that they lived beyond redemption.

“We send whisper,” Cutter told Lavinda.

“Through Bhaaj.” Hammerjan tilted her head at the three Vakaar kids. “For pups.”

Cutter motioned at her trio. “If they want.”

Both cartel bosses went silent, then, waiting.

Lavinda exhaled, her breath so low it was almost inaudible. “I ken.”

“Good,” Hammer said. “We go now.”

“Send whisper later,” Cutter said.

With that, the cartels melted away as if their mutual repulsion finally drove them apart. First the most distant punkers vanished into the shadows, then those closer in, and finally those in the circle around Bhaaj and Lavinda, including Cutter and Hammerjan. Within moments, Bhaaj’s group were the only ones in the canal.

“Gods,” Ruzik said.

“That’s it?” Lavinda said.

Bhaaj stared at her. Ruzik stared at her. Tower and Byte stared at her. The Majda guards still looked ready to fight, as if they’d prepared for mayhem and didn’t know what to do with vanishing cartels instead.

After a moment, Lavinda said, “I don’t get it.”

Bhaaj finally found her voice. “What don’t you get?”

“Everyone made a big deal about this meeting.” Lavinda gestured at Bhaaj and Ruzik’s gang. “You all especially. Then nothing happened. I mean, a lot of people showed up to ask me a couple of questions, but that’s it.”

“They not kill anyone,” Byte-2 said.

“Not fight,” Tower said.

“Not stop you,” Ruzik said.

Bhaaj spoke as the roaring in her mind eased. “Do you remember Dark Singer, the Vakaar assassin who turned herself in last year and told the Cries authorities everything she knew about the cartels?”

Lavinda frowned. “You told us she was a Dust Knight, that she’d left the cartel.”

“Yah. She became a Knight.” Bhaaj regarded her steadily. “She could have taken over the Vakaar cartel, Lavinda. They would have gladly followed her.”

“You convinced her to give herself up instead.”

“No. I didn’t. She came to me on her own. Why? Because she was an empath.

“Yes. I know.” The colonel seemed baffled by this new direction. “That’s why we gave witness protection to her and her family and let her serve her sentence in a military internment center instead of a high-security prison. She’s learning to work for us.”

“Yah.” Bhaaj met her gaze. “She also used to be the worst assassin in the Undercity. Why do you think she wanted an out, even if it meant going to prison?”

“Being an empath in the cartels twists you,” Ruzik said. “It destroys you.” He tapped his temple. “Angel and I, we help each other. Make haven. Singer, the assassin—she had husband. Daughter. Both Kyle. They kept her from dying in the darkness.”

“If she’d taken over the Vakaar cartel,” Bhaaj said, “she’d have become a far deadlier crime boss than Hammerjan. Singer is damn smart, Lavinda. Most Kyles are, with all those extra neural structures in their brains.”

“I get it.” Lavinda looked as if she didn’t get it at all. “And?”

“The cartels don’t have Kyles,” Bhaaj said.

“It kills them,” Tower said.

“Or they turn into killers,” Ruzik told her.

“They go crazy,” Byte-2 said.

After a pause, Lavinda said, “There were times in the army, during combat—” She spoke with difficulty. “Being a Kyle, soaking it all in during battles, especially up-close combat—it changes you.”

“Yah.” Bhaaj met her gaze. “And you had the resources of a military trained to protect its Kyles, the guidance of the military doctors if you had problems, and the support of one of the most powerful families in the Imperialate. Our people have nothing. Those few Kyles in the cartels rarely survive. If they do, they become so warped that they end up as assassins, sadists, or gibbering idiots.” Even Bhaaj, despite her circle of loved ones, had needed to suppress her ability so she could survive. “It would’ve happened to Singer if she’d stayed here. It was already happening. Somehow she had enough insight—and enough drive to protect the family she loved—to seek a way out, first by joining the Knights, and then, when that wasn’t enough, by giving herself up to the Cries authorities.”

“Yah,” Tower said. “The cartels, they like their crazy mooders, but not for good.”

Byte-2 grimaced, drawing furrows in the cyber implants along his neck. “Cartels use mooders.”

“Make them killers,” Ruzik said.

Lavinda spoke carefully. “Are you saying they’ll want to use any Kyle work they do with the army to profit their drug trade?”

Good question. It wouldn’t surprise Bhaaj. More was going on here, though. “They always want to maximize profits. But Lavinda, they all know about Singer, that she lost her freedom, her home, even her world. She almost lost her life.” The Cries authorities had wanted her executed even after she made her deal with the army.

Lavinda scowled. “Of course she lost her freedom. She was a murderer.” When Bhaaj started to speak, Lavinda held up her hand. “Yes, I know, she was killing other drug dealers. Kajada dealers, in service to the Vakaar cartel. Who does that help? And it’s still murder, Bhaaj, with the intent of furthering a drug trade that’s destroying all our peoples.” She spoke with a bitter edge. “Until a few years ago, addictions were the sum total of the interaction between your people and Cries. Drugs and your husband’s charming trade. Gambling.”

Bhaaj had no intention of going there with anyone. She had many issues with what Jak did for a living, but that was between the two of them and no one else. “The point,” she told Lavinda, “is that as far as the cartels know, any empaths who go to the authorities are lost to the cartel. It offers them nothing.”

“Then why would they ask me about it?” Lavinda said. “And why would both Kajada and Vakaar come together to see me? Isn’t that unusual?”

“Unusual?” Bhaaj gave a harsh laugh. “It’s unheard of. They’d rather have a bloodbath.”

“So what you’re claiming,” Lavinda said, “is that they came together in force, both Kajada and Vakaar, in a manner that drew immense attention to their trade at a time when they most want to avoid it, when the Cries authorities are conducting their largest drug crackdown in history, when both cartels are weakened from the war and the data we got from Singer, yet they still wanted to risk meeting with one of the most powerful authorities in the city, all to ask for something that has no benefit to them.”

“No benefit to the cartels.” Bhaaj took a breath. “It does have a benefit, one that many people, even some drug punkers, put beyond greed and power.”

Lavinda considered her for a long moment. “It benefits the people they love.”

The people we love. If Bhaaj hadn’t considered Dig Kajada her sister—if she hadn’t known Dig’s capacity for human decency—she’d never have believed the cartels could act for anything beyond their own greed. Dig’s mother, Jadix, had never put love ahead of self-interest. Whatever in the human brain allowed a person to feel love had burned out of Jadix long before she gave birth to Dig.

And yet . . . 

Jadix’s granddaughter, Dig’s oldest daughter, was a strong Kyle operator, abilities that came from recessive traits passed by biological parents to their children. Recessive. It meant the traits had to come from both parents to manifest. If Dig’s daughter was a Kyle, then both Dig and her husband had carried at least some of the genes, which meant, incredibly, that either the monster Dig called mother or the dead punker who’d fathered her, or both of them, gave her the genes. Could Jadix Kajada have been an empath? Had she represented the horrific end result of surrounding empaths with the worst of human nature?

Dig had loved and protected her children. Eighteen years later, her oldest daughter became the first Undercity native to qualify for admission into the Dieshan Military Academy. And now, incredibly, these new versions of the cartels sought better lives for their children. They wanted it enough to present a united front, a challenge to Lavinda, sure, to test her resolve and bravery, but that wasn’t the main reason. Today they’d put love for their children ahead of their trade.

What did that mean for the Undercity? Everyone in the aqueducts lived in the shadow of the crime empires that shared their world. It hardened the lives of an already poverty-stricken population. If the cartels took a new direction, even for just a few of their children, could that offer hope that they might make other positive changes?

Hope, my ass, Bhaaj thought. If Kajada and Vakaar joined forces, they’d become that much more powerful, since they wouldn’t be fighting each other anymore. It could turn into a nightmare beyond any the Undercity had previously faced.

“Bhaaj?” Lavinda asked.

With a start, Bhaaj realized she’d just been standing there, staring at them. She glanced at Ruzik, and he nodded, just barely, but enough to let her know he understood.

“We need to check in with Doctor Rajindia,” Bhaaj said. “Make sure she knows the cartels may send their children to the clinic.” It sounded like Cutter and Hammerjan didn’t realize that going to Doctor Rajindia differed from what Lavinda offered. They saw the struggles of their Kyle children as an illness. “We should get going,” she added. “We have work to do.”


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