It was easy to forget, when I was wrapped up in the old world that felt so small, but Station 26 had over a billion souls working on it. That was part of what had made everything we’d been discussing seem so impossible.
Trying to knock Jie off her throne was like trying to oust the leader of a planet. Over the Station she would have had at least a million armed people working for her, a number so big that it was impossible for me to picture.
But that sword cut both ways. The same scale that made the idea of striking at Jie impossible would keep her from finding us, sure she knew that we’d come back to the Station, but as long as we could jam surveillance systems she’d be stuck waiting for news.
This wasn’t going to end with a crowd though, Songlai had never worked like that. No, when it had all come down to it there had been less than ten thousand people in the final massacre that lead to Jie’s ascension. They’d been the 1% of the 1% involved in Songlai politics, those that weren’t just trying to get by with enough food and water to wake up the next day. Privileged people with the time to care about who was in charge.
Distill the anger that always bubbled under the surface of places like this enough and you’d end up with a room of people willing to shoot each other. All I was trying to do was ensure that there were only two of us when the time came.
Until then, as long as Victoria and I didn’t do anything to stick out too much, we’d be invisible to automation and just another pair of masked faces in the crowd, albeit with no way back into the Pent without her blessing.
But of course, I knew it wasn’t going to go the way we wanted it to, it never did, because that wasn’t the way Merc life worked.
People had different names for the signature knock of opportunity; fate, destiny, luck. For my part I’d always called it the ‘sense,’ and it was something you got over time in the job, a knack of being in the right place at the right time. A habit for finding trouble when you needed to find it.
After all, the remarkable power to find an invisible needle in a planet-sized haystack was why people bought Mercs for hitjobs in the first place. You needed luck on your side to pull off that sort of thing and well-
I had a habit of calling myself unlucky, but every unlucky merc died on their first job. Anyone with a long enough rap-sheet to call it a career had to have some sort of divine intervention on their side. Everything past that was just learning the skills to act on it.
For the last part there, Victoria was a frighteningly fast take. The first time we’d sat down after leaving the building she’d shown me how fast she could field strip the Mako after ‘playing around with it for a while.’ It was damn impressive. That said, field stripping wasn’t going to make her any less likely to get shot. Which was why I had to keep her with me.
At the moment we were up in the rafters of the Foundry, weaved into the infinite lattice that made up the gap between floors in Station 26. Well, more accurately the gap between zones. It was easy to partition Songlai based on the zone names, but the truth was a little more complicated than that as long as you were willing to risk the ways around the gates.
We were willing to, but I just had to find the damn thing I was looking for.
“You sure it’s here?” Victoria asked after a while. She’d taken to lying down on one of the wider catwalks that we’d been using to get around. I might have usually said something but she deserved a break, after all, she hadn’t gotten a nap like I had. That, and she wouldn’t be used to the ‘hunt’ schedule.
“Somewhere around here.”
“Around?”
“Within a kilo,” I clarified.
“That’s not that close.”
“Place’s changed,” I pointed out, “and I can’t exactly pull out the scanner for it.”
“A single pulse should be fine.”
“Should be-” I stopped as a Daggeral with heavy work clothes and hollow eyes plodded along the catwalk within ear shot. They didn’t acknowledge Victoria on the ground as they marched by like they were headed to their death. I watched them walk away for longer than I had to. “But I’m looking for an old path we used a couple years back and I’m-”
“Worried that Jie’s going to be watching those?”’
“Exactly.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Wouldn’t she have blocked them?”
“Too useful. She doesn’t want to have to march all her shit through the gates either,”
“Doesn’t she have elevators for that?”
“She does, but those are official too,” I heaved myself up onto one of the upper beams again, leaving Victoria down on the catwalk proper. It was only a couple of climbs away from the actual roof of the Foundry.
“And?”
“Station 26 is pretty independent, and it’s out here on the Rim outside of most of the enforcement but most of her buyers aren’t.”
“Really?”
“Species militaries are the largest lithium purchasers in the Galaxy. Or, at least they were five years ago when I learned all this.” I offered the last part in the name of being correct as opposed to being suspicious that it had changed. Five years felt like a lifetime to me, but it was a sneeze to the Governments.
“Jie sells to-”
“Whatever holding company she uses to mark most of the trade through Station 26 sells to the companies and some of those with sticks up th- Some governments require a lot of regulation for their-”
“You can just say that the Anteraxi want them to follow the rules.”
“It’s not just them,” I offered once again for the point of being technically correct. “But yeah, mostly that.”
“So as long as she’s still selling to the Anteraxi she can’t do any of the-”
I snorted at that.
“What?”
“She can do what she wants as long as it’s plausibly deniable,” I corrected, “long as the government can say that they didn’t know she was peddling dust and locking people in ships in ships down here, they’re happy.”
“Because-”
“Because Station 26 was, and probably is, the largest and cheapest source of lithium in this arm of the Milky Way. They want a cut of the action. Or all the other governments can maintain a larger fleet and-”
“I get it,” Victoria cut in, finally sitting up.
And just in time too, because as I got to the rooftop again I found the telltale handle of a hatch, painted the colour that the shadows fell on the roof here. “And that-” I twisted the handle and felt the heavy clang of a door unlock on the other side, “is our way out of the Foundry.”
“And into the Loft.”
“Not the part we were in,” I corrected, “kinda between the two. Part of the Loft we were visiting was the bougie part. Main docks and the way into the Pent, all that.”
“Where’s that lead?”
“Nowhere relevant,” I half lied, “but it’s better than being the place that she expects us and I know more people up in the Loft than I know down here.”
“How many of them want to shoot you?”
“Rude.”
“It’s a legitimate question considering your track record.”
I kept quiet instead of shooting my shot back at her. Frankly I only knew enough about her past to say something deeply hurtful instead of something just on the edge of that. After I’d been silent for about 30 seconds, Victoria had climbed her way up to me. I pulled open the door.
Victoria stared into the pitch darkness of the maintenance tunnel I’d revealed as steam poured out of it and condensation buildup on the outside of her mask. Something hissed deep inside and she half recoiled.
“‘I didn’t say they were pretty,” I pointed out.
“These secret routes you were talking about are-”
“Old lines from building this damned place, yes.” I grabbed the first rung of the rusty ladder that was hidden just past the rim of darkness. As my hand passed the threshold of light, the PA on my wrist glowed to offer a mediocre flashlight.
“So just through there?”
“Mhm.”
“How long is it?”
“Took about ten minutes on the ladder if I remember it right,” I offered, “past that it’s a catwalk again for a bit.”
“Lighter?”
“Unless they’ve gone in there and swapped the pathway lights. No.”
“Oh good.”
“Hey, if you wanna keep away from the Fotuans and Jie,” I motioned to the hole, “it’s one of the best ways to do it.”
“Why?”
I growled at the idea of it and closed my eyes, giving myself enough time to steel myself about it. “Fotuans won’t know it’s here and Jie knows I fucking hate these things.”
“You hate them?” she asked.
“Adamantly. Soon as we’re inside.”
“The-”
“Because it’s the best option, and Jie might think I want to avoid it because,” I frowned at the light from my PA barely offering a competent outline of my hand, “well, because I do.”
“Is it the dark or the disease?”
“Don’t like feeling like I’m getting cooked alive, but neither of those help.”
“Oh good.”
“You’ll be fine, the thermal stabilizer on that shield is pretty damned good.” I nodded for her to go up first after pointing out that I’d done her a favor with the shield but she didn’t budge.
“I don’t know the way,” she protested.
I growled instead of responding and grabbed the first rung of the ladder, feeling the chipped paint’s edges rub against my gloves. “For what it matters, it’s a straight shot,” I pulled myself into the darkness, slipping past the veil of light and ending up only able to see a foot ahead of me. Everything past my hand was just suggestions made of shadows.
It immediately felt like I was sweating but I knew better than that from previous runs. Station 26 might not keep itself as humid as most species diverse stations, but it still needed an absolutely criminal amount of coolant and water was still the cheapest way to do that if you had the space. These tunnels passed close to some of the internal machinery of the station systems, and they were steam filled to match. The thin coat of water on everything was why you needed to wear gloves.
Well that and the hepatitis.
“Alright, I’m in,” Victoria said from the darkness behind me. I tried to crane my head far enough around to see her light, but it was never easy getting a good look behind you when you were on a ladder. Let alone in near-complete darkness.
“Perfect, ready for the fun part?”
“What?”
I only knew where the latch was from experience, having been through the tunnel more than a dozen times myself. Usually I would have pressed it with my hands but considering I’d had to let Victoria in behind me, it took a swift kick.
It sounded so much louder closing than it did opening.
There was a moment of complete darkness before I turned on the light on my wrist. It wasn’t a good view, but it was better than nothing.
Then a creak, far off in the darkness.
I shut the light off. We weren’t alone in here.