Heading South on Canal Nine
Part 1
I bite my lip, take a quick look over my shoulder and let out a long sigh. Tough crowd in here tonight. Tough crowd every night. Heading South, the name of the bar, and not in any way ironic, buried deep in the back end of Horizon City’s Canal Nine district and about as far from the higher echelons of this place as you can get.
The pop-skull moonshine flows hard and fast in here. Gear-runners soak it up as the techno-dub beats blast through the speakers, making sure no one overhears the hushed conversations between any tipster or thief.
We’re not villains in here, but we’re not exactly the prize members of society either. All of us have a story, a reason to be here, myself included. A dying sister and a temporally displaced person for a father. No one said it was going to be easy. But you know, maybe not this hard. Right?
“Same again,” I shoot a quick wink to Misery Loves behind the bar, and he brings me over another shot of that moonshine.
“Late one for you, Kestrel?” he pours the clear white liquid into the glass, spilling some across the battered bar top with the shake of an alcoholic’s hand.
“You ever known me to have an early one?”
He shoots a wink back, big smile at full wattage from his old weathered face, pulls the bottle back under the bar and walks to another skulking type looking to eye up some action.
That’s why I’m here, why we’re all here. A gear-runner’s bar, hangout, den, whatever. Heading South; graffiti-covered walls, low lights, neon signs, dark corners and curling smoke. Here we shoot back the pop-skull and wait for a tip. Hard ground, but I’ve pulled enough runs now to show that despite my age and size (and sex to some) my crew and I are as capable as the rest.
“Heard you’re quick,” a voice comes from behind.
“They don’t call me Kestrel for nothing,” I say as I turn my head back a fraction.
“Good. Got a gig, something that needs more speed and brains than muscle and hardware,” he says, small guy, broad shoulders, square jaw, a flash of implants across his shaven head.
“Take a seat.”
He slides himself onto the stool next to me and shows two fingers to Misery Loves before he turns to face me. “Yeah, Keira Kestrel Vox, right? Heard some good things.”
“Oh, yeah, like what?”
“You and your crew, done some good Intercept Team takedowns,” he says as Misery Loves puts two shots in front of us, nods and turns back to the other patrons. “Clean and quick. No deaths. No extra heat.”
“Our speciality,” I say, truthfully. Most gear-runners around here, they’re squads of meathead guys looking for a fast buck selling the stolen Echo relics to the fences over in Grand Anvil. All guns and muscle. Our crew? We’re discreet, quick and important to some, never leave behind bodies.
Three of us, an all-female crew, late teens and raised in the gutters of Canal Nine, pulling a life together the best we can. If the occasional Intercept Team loses an Echo relic along the way? Someone high in the glittering townhouses over in the Spire Quarter misses their chance to place a bid at the Old Silk Exchange on these prized items pulled forward through time? Then too bad.
“Good. Listen, they call me Valve. Got a gig, white-hot and ready to roll. High risk, high payment. Interested?”
“Wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.”
He pauses. “Right. Listen, you hear about that chrono-spike a few days ago?”
“Hear about it? We felt it down here—a bad one. Knocked out the power for half a day.”
“Yeah, well, the item that came through, the Echo relic, landed on the outskirts of Grand Anvil. Some toxic waste industrial site. King Vargo sent us out to collect, but we couldn’t get to it before the Intercept Teams made it over.”
“And now he wants it back?” I say.
“Yeah, Vargo’s pissed. Most relics that show up in old Anvil we can get to before the Intercept Teams ever make it over, but this one, they were on it. Fast. We missed our chance to bag it, and he is not happy.”
“Don’t want Vargo pissed, I can tell you that much.”
“No shit,” Valve says, taking the top off his shot. “Gets worse. Vargo does some prying. You know, like, he wants to know why the Intercept Teams were all over this. He gets wind of what it is from his…connections. Unique piece, very high value. Now? Sure as hell, he wants it for himself.”
“And now you’re here.”
“And now I’m here. One of his lieutenants sent me over to find the right runner for the job.”
“Well, Valve,” I turn to him, look him in the eye. “Sounds like a tall tale. What else have you got? Deets, places, people, payments, you know.”
“You get all that when we make a shake,” he says, meeting my gaze.
“How do I know you’re on the level?”
“Here,” he places one of King Vargo’s infamous calling cards on the bar in front of me. Things of legend are these particular items. Like a get-out-of-jail-free card, only better. It’s a lifeline for those who can’t go to the cops when things turn bad. Hands them out for more nefarious favours in return. “Down payment,” he slides it over to me.
“Shit,” I say, picking up the plasteel ribbed, holo-decal card, King Vargo’s gangland insignia there, an old-school glitching skull and crossbones smiling back at me. “Half thought these things were myth.”
“Oh, they’re real,” he says, ordering two more shots. “Now, have I got your attention?”
“Huh,” I put the card down, take a deep breath. “Gotta know, Valve, why me? Why us? Our Crew?”
“Like I said, speed and finesse. No deaths, that’s the call. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know, just the messenger, right? So, I do the prying, ask around, and you come up clean,” but there’s a small twitch under his eye.
“There’s more to it than that, Valve,” I stare at him. “What you hiding?”
“Vargo’s lieutenant, the one who sent me over, did his homework.”
“Oh yeah, and what you learn from that?”
“Someone like you, in your situation? Well, for the price Vargo will pay to get his hands on this relic, we know you’ll be straight down the line and will not fuck this up.”
“Huh,” I take the shot from the bar, line it up with my lips. “My situation?”
“Your sister, Jenna,” he says as he does the same with his shot.
“What the fuck do you know about my sister?”
“Hard to get treatment for that lung disease down in Canal Nine.”
I pause, nod. “Right.”
“Well, you pull this off—no killing, in and out, get the relic back to Vargo in one piece? Even split three ways, the money will get her the treatment she needs.”
I turn to him with the shot raised. “Okay, Valve.”
“Okay?”
“Here’s to you and your homework. Let’s make a deal.”
Part 2
“Chisel, I-I’ve got Jenna to think about,” I break the silence as she turns her head back to me.
“Keira,” she pinches the bridge of her nose, sitting in the low light of our own little hideout. Old canal barge I inherited after my mom passed. Dad couldn’t find a use for it but refused to sell it. One last memory of her or something. He never gets over to the thing now, what with my sister and all. So it floats in the back of an underground canal that makes up one of the district’s more nefarious areas. Hidden enough that we can use it to split up any takings we might make from the gear-runs we pull, have a quiet place to hang back when the local police, Arkwright Industries or Intercept Team security come looking.
“I know, I know, bigger than anything we’ve done before, right?” I lift myself off the cushions scattered across the floor and come to sit next to her. “But this, Chisel, look at me,” she does. “This thing, it’s big pay, massive, right? You’ve seen the numbers.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen them, and I know we’re way out of our league here, Keira,” she turns to me, soft face, kind eyes in deep blue, long blonde braided hair and a smile that never fails.
“We can do this, Chisel, I know it.”
“Look, we do the small Intercept Team takedowns. We get a tip-off about an Echo relic and go hunting. Easy prey, low numbers. We build our savings so we can get out of here one day. That’s what we planned. That’s what we swore to each other. No big money. Keep it low and quiet.”
I look at her. She’s right. When Valve sat next to me and started talking about the gig, the need for speed and finesse, no killing, I wasn’t lying when I said it’s our speciality, but once he got deep into what this thing requires, I had a few doubts. No choice. Each time he mentioned something new, the adrenaline mixed with the moonshine and forced an image of Jenna into my head. Sat there in my dad’s barge with the lung disease eating away at her, her shallow breaths, wheezing coughs.
“Chisel,” I say. “We do this, and Jenna gets the treatment she needs. You and your dad can finally get the fuck out of this place. You agree to this, we bring in Orb, and we’re set. I know that crazy bitch’ll agree to anything.”
She lets out a small laugh. “She’ll do it just to piss off those bastards at the Old Silk Exchange.”
“You know it,” I say, bringing out my own half smile. “We’ve got the squad, we’ve got the means, and we’ve got the game.”
“It’s Vargo I’m worried about,” she says. “We screw this thing up? It’s not only the Intercept Team security on our ass, Arkwright Industries, it’s him as well. We’ll owe him big, and there’s no getting around that.”
“Got you covered,” I say, bringing out the card from the bar Valve gave me and handing it to her. “Down payment.”
“No shit. I thought these things were legend.”
“They’re real. It’s real.”
“Jesus, Keira,” she smiles this time, big and wide and ready for action. “Okay, the Echo relic—an astrolabe? What the hell is one of those things when it comes down to it?”
“Big money. That’s all I need to know.”
“A what?” Chisel says.
“An astrolabe,” I pull out my best smile.
“Jesus, Keira,” she folds her arms
I keep smiling as we sit in silence for a few long beats.
Made my way out of Heading South after Valve and I had spent an hour or two in one of the darker corners of the bar, discussing the gig’s specifics. We hammered back a few more shots of that pop-skull moonshine than I would have liked, but I got the details and after a hard handshake we agreed to a price.
Part 3
Ten seconds until the transport shows. Ten seconds until I jump. Ten quick seconds and it all changes.
A lifetime of suffering, hidden deep in the tunnels and back-end streets of Canal Nine.
A dead mother. A temporally displaced person for a father. A sick and dying sister.
A pristine world above that glitters against the hardship that Arkwright Industries caused with me and my kind at the very bottom of it all.
A gig that might give me a way out. My sister a chance at life. My father some peace in a world that pulled him from his home and presented him to a weird future he never asked for.
“Go,” Chisel’s soft voice comes through my comms-link as she and Orb follow behind the Intercept Team’s security transporter in the getaway car, both hammering down the street a few hundred feet below.
I hold my breath and jump. Arms out-stretched, legs wide.
The wings of my nano-polyfilament suit flex and hold the air.
Clean glide.
“Inbound,” I whisper back to Chisel and Orb as I watch the towering monuments to the Echo relic trade of Memory Row and the Old Silk Exchange flow past me at high speed.
“Lock acquired,” Orb’s voice now, gruff as she is, all business, leaning out the passenger side window of the car. “Lock steady. Here we go.”
She lets the harpoon fly, bright white light from down below as it pierces through the back doors of the heavy transport vehicle and blows. “BULLSEYE.”
The doors crumple and pull clean off, revealing the darkened interior of the vehicle’s hold.
“I got you,” I whisper as I hammer the parachute ejection button on my chest. It flies out of my back, and the drag pulls me almost still for a fraction of a second. I hit the buckle release with just enough momentum remaining to spring forward and land clean in the hold.
“The fuck is this!?” some Intercept Team security goon shouts, bringing up his gun.
“Lights out,” I drop the two flash bangs pulled from my tactical-vest and let them roll forward.
I crouch, cover my eyes with the pit of my forearm, and let the little grenades do the dirty work.
Big noise. Lots of light. Very little damage. No one’s dead as I stand and look at the two guards on their backs clutching at their eyes. Weapons dropped.
“Thirty seconds,” Chisel says this time. “We’re on you.”
The transporter rounds a corner fast. I’m thrown against the wall of the cabin, bounce down onto my hands and knees, the wind half knocked out of me.
Speed and precision—that’s what we’re hired for. I gulp a deep lungful of air, pulling myself up against a brace bar. There, a transport case, the astrolabe is supposed to be inside. One-two quick steps. The guards are coming around, and the clock is ticking. More security is on its way. Intercept Teams that’ll be ready to wreak bloody havoc on a small three-girl crew. The transporter hammering along, standard protocol, will not stop until support has arrived.
I look out the back as the escape car hammers in behind. Chisel there with her fine smile coming through the windscreen. Orb leans out the passenger side window, sporting double Berettas with that look in her eye. “Just in case,” she’d told me, same as always. I hope to God this isn’t the time she has to use them.
I turn, pull the nano-liquid-fibre glove from my tactical vest with another quick step over to one of the blinded guards. I grab his hand and place it up against mine. A five-second count for the palm print transfer. More like a lifetime. The wind rushes through the compartment. The other guard looks like he’s about to have enough semblance of consciousness to make a move. The glove flashes green, palm print copy ready. I turn, press it down onto the transport case in the middle of the compartment, strapped down other than the sealed lid at the top with the scanner embedded into it.
“COME ON!” I shout. Another three seconds and the reader flashes green as I take my hand off it and the lid pops open.
Quick breath, I pull the high-tensile steel handcuffs from my vest, strap one end around my wrist, the other around the handle of the small box inside, then grab it out.
“Kestrel!” Orb’s voice booms through my comms-link as I turn and see a guard coming to one knee, raising his gun.
He takes a shot to the chest, flying back against the wall of the compartment, the other coming around, and quick.
“SHIT-NO-NO-NO!” I shout back. “No killing—no fucking killing!”
“Kestrel!” Orb roars, letting rip with the double-Berettas for good measure as the bullets tear through the guards and they spasm dead. “Get your ass back here! Now!”
I quickstep around the container, case in hand, and watch. Chisel driving, smile gone, Orb still hanging out the window with her guns drawn. The world of Memory Row shooting past on either side, tall, grand buildings casting the shadows that show the power they hold. All the people in them, coming to their windows as we fire past, pointing and shouting. A world I can never reach, and I know it’s moments like this that life shows you, do or die.
I take a deep breath and jump.
Part 4
“We said no killing,” Rufus ‘Ox’ MacRae says, Irish-sounding accent laid on thick and coming out hard from his massive mouth set into the colossal head of the mountain of a man.
“Yeah, about that—”
“Listen, Kestrel, when we put a rule in for a job, we fuckin’ mean it, alright?” he steps forward, mean one is Ox, but I’ve dealt with him before, and I know he knows he’s got a soft spot for me.
Two sons of his own, one with a similar condition to my sister, thanks to all the shit they put in the air down here in the industrial heart of Horizon City. Grand Anvil and all its shit.
“Ox, we got the case out, right, astrolabe intact? King Vargo got what he wanted. We get our payment, and we disappear.”
“Not so simple now, Kestrel. Our source inside the Old Silk Exchange, the one that got us the tip-off in the first place? His cousin was on that transport,” he says, stepping back, half hidden in deep shadow, leaning against a big nanocrete wall. He takes out a black cigarette from a paper packet and lights it with a small gas lighter in his mammoth hands.
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, listen, kid,” he takes a long drag of the cigarette, specks of ash spinning down into his ginger beard. “That Echo relic? Big prize, and this was a big hit for the Intercept Teams. We had to dig deep with our insiders to get the intel to even think about pulling this off. Our source inside said his cousin was going to be on the security team. No deaths on this one or he goes quiet, informant even. Take one guess who one of those goons was that Orb gunslinger of yours shot up when she pulled the trigger.”
“The cousin?”
“Right.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, now we’re in some serious shit. Our source might turn informant. You know we’d never let that happen, but it means I’ve got to clean up this mess you’ve made. Lots of heat coming down on this. I’ve been told to make sure there’re no loose ends…” his eyes go soft as he looks down at me from the shadows.
“Ox…no…we wouldn’t talk, you know me. You know my team. We’re out of here. We wouldn’t give you up.”
“Been told we can’t take any risks, Kestrel,” he says, a hint of sorrow in his big voice as he flicks the cigarette to the floor and makes fists out of his giant hands.
My eyes go wide. “Ox, no! NO. WAIT!”
“Sorry, kid,” he steps forward. “Just business.”
“No, I mean it, wait! What about this? I got this!” I pull out the plasteel card Valve gave me with the vague hope the legend might be real.
He pauses, confusion written across his big face, half a smile pushing itself out from beneath his beard. “Christ, Kestrel, where the hell did you get that?” he says, stopping his slow march towards me.
“Valve, your guy, at Heading South, when he brought me the gig, said it was a down payment.”
“Wait,” he raises one colossal finger as his eyes look upward, listening to his comms-link as whoever’s been watching in on his live-feed gives him a new set of instructions. “Valve’s going to be in trouble for this.”
“But?”
“But that thing’s real alright, and you’ve got your out.”
I let out a soft laugh, a small splutter, and start crying.
“Come on, wee bird,” Ox moves over to me, putting one of his big mitts under my chin, raising my face to meet his. “Don’t be like that. Just business, like I said.”
“Right, Ox,” I sniffle, looking up into his big doe eyes. Poor bastard is all I can think, made to do this shit when he’s got two sons at home.
“It’s been a long day.”
“I needed that money, Ox.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“No, I mean, I’m not crying for me, I’m crying for my sister,” I say, looking up at the huge, grizzled man. Half prisoner himself with a family to look after, trapped by his size, another temporally displaced person pulled into a weird future and unknown world of violence he never wanted.
“Yeah, I know that too,” he takes a step back.
“So, what do I do now?”
“Listen, you won’t like this, but now I don’t have to put you in the ground, there’s the other option.”
I look up at him and his massive eyes, the things they’ve seen, and I know exactly what he means. “Come work for you?”
“I think Vargo would buy it. You did pull off the run, despite the mess caused.”
“There’s no going back if I do.”
“Yeah, means leaving your family behind, proper, but you can get your earnings to them. I can make sure of that. Get your sister the treatment she needs, a chance at life.”
“Yeah…and give up my own.”
“Listen, it’s your choice. We bring you in, and you earn what she needs in no time. You stay on the outside, gear-running like you are now, and after this slip-up? Who knows how long it’ll take. Bad rep travels fast in Grand Anvil.”
I think of Jenna, lying in her bed, back in the tunnels of Canal Nine, slowly dying. Nothing we can do to help her. My dad, a temporally displaced person, a refugee like Ox here, pulled through and into a world he didn’t know or want. He found love in my mother, and she in him, for all the help it did. They had the two of us, but after she passed, he could never quite make it work. Stuck in canals with the other temporally displaced people. There, trying to pull together whatever semblance of life he could for the both of us before I grew old enough to understand there was never any easy way out of that world. No way to pull yourself up. That’s when I turned to petty crime, to the streets of Grand Anvil and the gangs, to find my way out that way. The problem was that I was good at it. I am good at it. Years passed, and finally, I’m here. Now. At this point. So close. So far. Sitting on the edge of a real life and missing it by a hair’s breadth.
“What’s it going to be, Kestrel?” Ox says.
“I’m in.” I raise my head. “Make sure your goons don’t touch Chisel and Orb. Bring me into your squad and give me a chance at something big. Something that’ll make me the money I need to get my sister what she needs, and I’ll never slip up again.”
“Good, my wee bird,” he nods his massive head. “I’m glad to have you with us.”