We wrapped ourselves up in the oilskins from the cruiser’s trunk, drawing the heavy hoods over our service caps as the rain beat down without cease. As I locked up the car, I noticed another vehicle parked beside the ruins some distance from the cathedral. It was a big, ugly armoured van, matte-black and angular, with firing slits for windows and no license plates. An Inspectorate rig, buttoned up tight. Presumably, they were piloting their drone out of it, keeping out of the rain and well away from us lowly watchmen.

My unease deepened. I glanced at Jandra, and saw from her tight-lipped expression that she felt the same.

The Ninth Watch site team were happy enough to see us. Harondt, their watch-sergeant, greeted me on the cathedral steps with a gruff “You’re all Orczin sent?”, but he shook my hand firmly. Jandra got a somewhat condescending smile of welcome. Harondt was an old watchman, a lifer, and I think he was still getting used to the idea of women in the service.

“Is the Inspectorate here on a social call?” I asked him. The drone burbled in the night air above us.

The watch-sergeant shrugged, giving the black rig an unimpressed look. “They were already here when we showed up. They won’t tell me anything, other than they’re tracking suspected dissidents in the area. They said they’ll share anything relevant that their drone picks up.”

“Butt out, in other words,” Jandra said drily. She produced a crumpled packet of Stevedore Blues and bent over to shield her lighter from the rain. Then she offered the cigarettes to me and Harondt. I took one, meaning to smoke it later; Harondt declined.

“Thanks, girlie, but I quit a few years back,” he told her. “The wife was giving me hell for it. Said she couldn’t bear the stink any more.”

“She wouldn’t like our precinct much, then,” Jandra replied.

There were seven men from Ninth Watch at the scene, and a couple from Fourth as well – dragged out of their precinct at Koniel’s request, just like us. I didn’t know most of them by sight, aside from Harondt, but I did recognise one of the Fourth Watch chaps. It was Movar, a tall moustachioed Thas-Ralkan who’d collaborated with me on a robbery case several years back. He was a decent watchman, with a good eye for evidential detail. He was also a serious fiend for his stay-awake, to the point he made Jandra and I look like teetotalers. He looked as jittery as usual tonight, with darting eyes and a constantly tapping foot. If you asked me, he was well on his way to crashing out like Remkou had.

They had four rubble gangers under arrest, three men and a woman in ratty workmen’s jackets with their hands cuffed behind their backs. They were very young, in their early twenties at the oldest, and all wore the same sullen, downcast expression as they stood in the pouring rain. One of the men looked to have taken quite a beating, judging by his bloody nose and luridly swollen-shut eye. I didn’t ask whether it was another ganger or one of Harondt’s lot who had inflicted that.

“There’s at least ten more hiding out in the ruins,” Harondt told us. “The gangs fight over turf here all the time – this pile of rubble belongs to the Stonesiders, that sort of shit. But they don’t usually turn up in these numbers, and not so close to the cathedral. Locals phoned in a dozen reports of fighting, and gunshots, as well. These idiots had punch-knives and clubs on them,” he added, gesturing at the handcuffed suspects. “No guns, though.”

“So we have shooters lurking out there?” I asked, with a nervous glance at the ruins which sprawled for half a mile in the cathedral’s shadow. The street layout that once branched off of Blackwater Avenue was still roughly decipherable, if you squinted. Those fine old yellow-brick houses and shops had been caved in by the blastwave, scorched and melted by the subsequent firestorm, and then slowly ground down by the elements in the long years that followed. Weeds grew thick and wild in the rain-puddled shells of parlours and dining rooms. Anything of value had long since been salvaged or looted. The few intact walls which poked up from the drifts of rubble were all heavily tagged with graffiti. It was hard to imagine anyone trying to make a home in that desolation, let alone fighting over it.

“Seems that way. Hence why Koniel called you lot for backup.” Harondt sounded vaguely apologetic. Not apologetic enough, in my opinion. “We’ve already got half our precinct out in the industrial quarter, breaking up a syndicalist gathering. I was booking a couple of car thieves on Azalea Street when I got retasked for this. Had to leave them cuffed to a lamppost in the rain, poor buggers. I swear the whole bloody district chose tonight to make trouble.”

I eyed the empty, staring windows of the destroyed terraces. The drone’s searchlight darted back and forth across them, illuminating their collapsed ceilings and rain-scoured walls, creating moments of bonelike white clarity in the dark. “Have you started searching the place already?”

“We made a preliminary sweep before the rain started really chucking down. Found some footprints, heading deeper into the rubble. I’m hoping the weather dries up a bit soon. We can’t wait all night, though. Koniel wants more arrests made.”

“We’ll help you find them, don’t worry. Orczin’s promised us commendations,” Jandra said, with her sardonic stay-awake smile. “Again. He might even follow through this time.” The smoke of her Stevedore Blue curled around her pale face in the rain.

Harondt laughed. “Lucky for some. Koniel’s more of a missed-quota-reprimand kind of bloke.”

“Gonna be tough, sweeping in the dark,” I said. “There’s a lot of hiding places in there, and we don’t know the terrain.”

“We do,” Harondt replied flatly. “I’ve had to lead raids into that mess more times than I’d like to remember. I’ll pair you two up with one of my boys. He’ll lead the way, you just keep your eyes open. And guns ready.”

I patted the pistol holstered on my hip. “Orczin said no shooting, unless someone shoots first.”

The old watch-sergeant gave me an almost pitying look. “Orczin’s used to nice, cushy Seventh Watch. These gangers have nothing to lose. My advice is – wound if you can, kill if you have to.”

*

I reported in to Erkasri, as promised. “We’ll be back when we’re back,” I told him, tightening the hood of my oilskin against the rain, which was still merrily pissing down. “No telling how long a sweep will take in this weather.”

Jandra leaned on the Continental’s bodywork beside me, trying to finish her increasingly damp cigarette. She seemed curiously relaxed and collected, despite the dark and the rain, and the desolation surrounding us. Not many women can look handsome lit up in stuttering red by watchcar strobes, but she managed it.

“Call me back in an hour, if you can,” the dispatch officer replied. The poor reception made his voice crackle and buzz. “Orczin will want to know you’re both still alive.”

I snorted. “Only because otherwise he’d have to recruit two more sad saps to drive our cruiser.”

“Don’t say that. You’d be sorely missed around here. Well, Jandra would be.”

“Love you too, Kas,” Jandra piped up, as she squashed the end of her cigarette into the puddled tarmac under her boot.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Harondt was now organising his men into three separate search parties. He put us in a team of four, along with Movar and a bucktoothed young Ninth Watch lad named Petil. It was fairly obvious from the start that Petil had an eye for Jandra – he talked to her in a fast, nervous patter, full of unconvincing bravado, while barely saying a word to me or Movar. “I know where these fucks hide out, trust me. They’re easy to spot when you know what to look for. Let me take point, I won’t let them get the drop on us…”

Jandra gave me an amused sidelong glance as we clicked on our electric torches. If we’d been off-duty, and in some pleasant uptown park rather than a sodden avenue of atomic rubble, I might have dared to hold her hand.

Petil led us around the western flank of the cathedral. Tall limestone statues of the Blessed Martyrs looked down on us from among the soaring buttresses, cracked and weatherworn but recognisable. They’d been brightly painted once, and when I swept the beam of my torch over them, I could still see traces of faded crimson and royal blue. One or two were missing heads or limbs, but they looked to be free of graffiti. Not even rubble gangers were that blasphemous.

We passed into the ruins, where the darkness was thick and swallowing. Our torches were bright enough to help us keep our footing in the rain-slick rubble, but they couldn’t pierce deep into the gloom of the collapsed buildings on every side. The Inspectorate drone still whirred overhead, its searchlight flicking from house to ruined house in the distance. It did more to disorient us than to guide us.

Movar trudged along beside me, his torch noticeably shaky in his hands. Almighty knew what he was tripping on – more than just stay-awake, I reckoned. “I shouldn’t have taken the late shift tonight,” he muttered to me. His Thas-Ralkan accent was thick as molasses. “I swapped my shifts around with one of the others. As a favour. And this is what I get.”

I stepped carefully over a pile of shattered brickwork. Cold rainwater was seeping down my neck under the oilskin’s hood. “I know the feeling. We were halfway through a game of king’s-ransom when Orczin told us to head out here.”

“Fucking Ninth should learn to keep their own district under control.” Movar nodded contemptuously towards Petil’s back. The boy was currently trying to explain his brilliant search methodology to a very uninterested Jandra.

“It’s not all their fault. They’ve got a hard beat,” I said, with more generosity than I really felt. The ruins crowded in around us, huge and hideous in the darkness. Every shadowed doorway and shattered windowframe seemed full of silent threat. I saw what I was almost certain was a human skull nestled in a mound of fallen roof tiles. Officially, all of Indeleon’s war dead had been respectfully laid to rest in the new cemeteries out east. That was one of numerous official stories that nobody with any sense believed.

“Now, the gangs, they all have their own tags,” Petil was blathering on to poor Jandra. He was using his torch beam to show her the slashes of faded graffiti on the crumbling walls ahead. “I know them all by sight now. That one there, that’s the Stonesiders. The mushroom cloud is the Atom Bombers – I know, pretty tasteless name, right? Now, that one-”

A gunshot rang out, sharp and clear through the murmuring rain. It echoed among the forest of dark rubble, the distance hard to judge. A street away? Right behind us? Wherever it was, it was too damned close. Jandra and I drew our pistols by reflex, switching our torches to our free hands. Movar was a bit slower on the draw. I hoped he had his gun safetied, the way his hands were trembling.

“Oh, fuck it.” Petil fumbled for his two-way radio, trying clumsily to hold it up to his mouth without dropping his torch. “Watch-sergeant, this is Petil. We have shots fired.”

“Yes, watchman, we heard it,” came Harondt’s static-wreathed voice. He sounded as impatient with the boy as I felt. “Sounds like it was somewhere on the old Kolinu Road. I’ll ask the black-bands if they can fly their drone over it. Stay alert.”

Petil pocketed the radio and drew his gun with a quick flourish. “Follow me, you three,” he declared. “Kolinu Road’s this way. Watch your step, the rubble gets dense ahead. I’ll take point.” Perhaps he thought this would impress Jandra. She caught my eye and gave me another weary look.

We proceeded slowly into the gap between two collapsed townhouses, following the fool boy in a loose order. The alleyway was a mess of fallen masonry and rotted roof timbers, slippery underfoot from the rain. I felt things crunch beneath my boot heels that I didn’t want to think about. Huge puddles glittered under the light of our torches. I was keenly aware how easily we could be ambushed here, gunned down one after another by some faceless ganger. I tightened my hold on the pistol’s grip.

From above came the thrum of the Inspectorate drone’s engines. It zoomed over the devastated rooftops and came to a halt in a noisy hover a hundred yards or so ahead of us. Its searchlight glared down through the rain like the eye of the Almighty.

“Watch those windows up ahead. The gangers like to hide on the upper floors,” Petil told us as we emerged into an obliterated residential street. “I once nabbed one trying to slide down a gutter. Thought he could run faster than a bullet, can you believe-”

“Look,” Jandra hissed, curtly interrupting Petil. She shone her torch at the blast-shattered terrace across the road, casting elongated shadows into the hollowed, rain-drenched rooms. I saw scraps of smashed furniture, the scattered glint of broken glass, and then – silvery metal, polished and gleaming.

And moving.

It was only a glimpse, bright and dreamlike in the harsh torchlight with the rain sleeting down around it. A spindly humanoid figure, impossibly thin and elongated, all sharp angles and shining metallic surfaces. It made no sound as it moved with swift grace between one ruined house and the next, so fast that it almost left an after-image. It was gone into the shadows before any of us could react.

“What the fuck was that?” Movar growled. He swept his gun and torch skittishly left and right, peering into the darkness further along Kolinu Road. “You all saw that, yes? That thing?”

“Ganger in body armour,” Petil said with hollow authority. “Must have been. Got some scrap metal all polished up and strapped it on, like an old man-at-arms.”

“No. That wasn’t any fucking ganger,” Jandra replied. “That was…something mechanical. It wasn’t wearing metal, it was metal.”

Petil reached for his radio again. “I’ll call it in to Harondt. Ganger carrying some sort of weird machinery. Possible contraband tech.”

Jandra shook her head in frustration. “Are you even listening? I said it wasn’t a-”

More movement caught my eye. The shadows were shifting on the edge of our pooled torchlight. More figures, smaller and slower this time, more recognisably human. At least two of them, trying to run deeper into the rubble, the same way the silver thing had gone.

“Halt! City Watch!” I called out. My voice echoed eerily down the devastated street. I shone my torch at the fleeing silhouettes and raised my pistol, trying to draw a bead through the haze of rain. “Stop where you are!”

“Stop or we open fire!” Petil hollered. And then he opened fire anyway, loosing three quick shots seemingly at random into the ruins, making Jandra and Movar curse loudly.

“He Above, who’s fucking shooting?” came Harondt’s muffled voice over the radio. “All teams, report!”

“Petil here! Suspects on the move on Kolinu Road! I think they’re armed!” Petil called excitedly into the mic. “We’re in pursuit!” He dashed across the road, firing another shot into the night.

“Fucking moron,” I muttered under my breath, but I followed, and so did Jandra and Movar. You don’t leave a fellow watchman without backup in a hostile environment, not even a mouth-breather like Petil.

The dividing walls of the terraced houses had largely fallen in, either from the blast or the following years of decay. They weren’t buildings so much as tunnels now, with jagged routes cutting from one house into the next. The four of us ran through these dark caverns of slippery rubble, cursing and stumbling. I had no idea if we were even heading in the right direction. Surely those gangers had split up by now, or hunkered down in some well-worn hiding place that would be invisible in the darkness.

My mind raced, jumbled by fear and stay-awake. I thought of the thing we’d glimpsed, that swift, gleaming, inhuman skeleton. It had been so hellishly quick. Was that really something we wanted to pursue? Suppose it decided to attack us? Would our bullets even hurt it?

We passed into an open space where one of the houses had almost completely collapsed, leaving just a few shreds of its upper floors jutting into thin air overhead, wide open to the night sky. Thorny weeds grew almost to head height against the peeling outer walls. The Inspectorate drone buzzed lazily over us, illuminating the trash-strewn ground beneath us, and nearly blinding us in the process. I winced and tried to shield my eyes from its searchlight.

One of the dark figures was running through the caved-in house just ahead of us. It froze for a split-second, caught in the drone’s merciless white beam. It was a man, tallish and hooded, wearing the same sort of drab workman’s jacket as the gangers Harondt had arrested. I couldn’t tell if he was carrying anything. There was no sign of the silver machine.

“There’s the fucker!” Petil yelled. He fired another shot, missing by a mile.

“Stop! City Watch! I order you to stop!” Jandra shouted.

The ganger didn’t listen. Perhaps, understandably, he just wanted to get the hell out of Petil’s haphazard field of fire. He hunched his head forward and ran on, moving over the drenched rubble with quick and assured footfalls.

Jandra sank to one knee, lining up her pistol on the fleeing suspect. Even on the stay-awake, her aim looked perfectly level. “Stop now! Stop or I shoot!”

“Fucking stop!” I roared. My voice was lost in the rain and the darkness.

The ganger had almost reached the deep shadows on the far side of the street when Jandra fired. She didn’t miss.