Like a Boss (26 page)

“One of the architects, Smitty Pryde, said the lathes could be repurposed into rooftop windmills. The place needed power, everyone hated the lathes, so I asked Giacomo to do his thing. He refused. Said it would be sacrilege to dismantle the lathes, even though we both knew they would never be turned on again. He was so attached to them, even though they’d cost him a finger.” I waved my pinkie in the air, then popped it down.

Onanefe grimaced. “What did you do?”

“I kept on at him, kept pointing out that the lathes did more good apart than whole. He kept saying if the plant was closing, he wasn’t going to take orders from anyone ever again. I thought he was just being a stubborn ass until I asked the other machinists, and they told me that Giacomo and Smitty were neighbors who shared a common wall. When Giacomo got home from the night shift, Smitty was awake, messing around with his windmills. Giacomo couldn’t stand the noise, and he couldn’t stand Smitty. Giacomo didn’t want to give Smitty the satisfaction.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “And I had a brilliant insight: Giacomo was in charge of the construction and maintenance of the windmills. He got to boss Smitty around. Smitty didn’t like it, but he wanted to see his designs happen in real life. Took me six hours to deal with that, but it worked.”

Onanefe sighed as he fiddled with his mustache. “People, right? That’s the problem with the FOC: no one wants to talk about what they want ’cause they’re afraid they won’t get it. Or that they’ll get it and be disappointed they didn’t ask for more. I keep telling everyone we need small, discrete goals that add up to a big payoff, but everyone wants the big sweeping changes now. Big changes have a tendency to knock innocent bystanders aside. I’d rather minimize that.”

I nodded. “When all this settles, and if I’m still alive, I’m going to make sure you talk with the right people.”

“You think someone’s going to get you?”

I shrugged. “First time’s an accident, second time’s a coincidence, third time’s a trap filled with machete-swinging nutbars.”

“You think it’s Letty? She did set fire to your building.”

“True, but I think that was more of a ploy to freak me out. If she wanted me dead, wouldn’t she have done it then and there? Knocked me out, left me to burn?”

“Then who?”

I had no problem remembering the Temple pins on the mob on Shahjahan. I rewound my buffer to the kid who’d stabbed me. He did indeed have a Temple pin attached to the collar of his jumpsuit. I zipped ahead to the riot at Bakaara, and crawled through the footage. There were those guys arguing, there were the cops, there were–

Wait. The men getting worked up at the cable stall. They had a pin.

So did the cops.

They were all made of glass.

“Hey,” said Onanefe. “You okay?”

I let out a breath as the whole thing formed like a fresh soap bubble. “Evanrute Saarien once had a glass-blowing operation. He also had people who built a covert refinery underground where there was no pai reception. Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“It
is
Saarien. All of the people who attacked us, they wore glass Temple pins. Even at Bakaara.
That’s
how they’re communicating, even with the Public down. Saarien’s running this whole deal.”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “But I thought he was this meek little lamb now.”

I shook my head. “No, that was just another act. I should have seen through it. Every time Saarien talked to me, there was someone else around. He always had
witnesses
. He didn’t want anything to mess with his image as a non-violent man of the cloth.” I gave Soni a prod. “Now I really want her to wake up so she can go arrest that asshole.”

“But why?” said Onanefe. “I don’t see that. The man’s built himself this movement. He can get the entire planet to come here and flood the streets. Why try and off you?”

I sat back, the handrail dangling from my fingertips. “He talked about wanting to keep the first attack quiet because he didn’t want people to get worked up over my death.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Wasn’t it? Except now I think he would have been perfectly happy to see me killed. If there were any kind of unrest, he’d be able to step in and play the great peacemaker. ‘Let’s rally around the death of dear Sister Padma’ and all that.” I rested my chin in my hands. “Plus, there’s always good old revenge.”

“For putting him in jail?”

I shrugged. “Why not? He lost everything. And what he’s got now may be big, but it’s not
as
big.”

“You don’t think commanding a planet-wide strike is big?”

“You and I would, because we are not insane. Saarien wanted to upend the entire economy. Not just Santee. All of Occupied Space. He wanted the biggest platform possible to stage his great victory in The Struggle.”

“Hm.” Onanefe pulled his knees in to his chest and wrapped his arms around his shins. The big cane cutter suddenly looked small. “Then why not another knife attack? Why something like the market or the machetes?”

I wound up to the footage of the machete men. They all had handsome faces, but there was a darkness in their smiles that said:
we
like
hurting people
. Saarien had that look when he tried to immolate me. I couldn’t see any Temple pins on them, but I didn’t need to. People who cultivated that look didn’t need any outside markers. They wore it in their eyes.

“Maybe when the first attack didn’t work, Saarien figured I’d outlived my usefulness,” I said. “He used Bakaara as cover to get me crushed to death. And when
that
didn’t work, he set up that ambush. He doesn’t just want to win. He wants to dominate. And he’ll do it by scaring the living crap out of anyone in the Union or the FOC by having hit squads. It would have been a very messy, very public way to die.”

Onanefe
hmm
ed. “Then how does he wind it down?”

I clanged the handrail with my foot. “I don’t think he does. It would take a lot of work and a lot of talking, and I haven’t seen any signs of that. People are scared, they’re passing around rumors, they don’t know what’s up. He’ll let the rioting burn itself out, then step up as hero and savior.”

“How?”

“We know he’s got his own communications lines. We know he’s got stockpiles of food and meds at his Temples. I bet he’s got bigger caches all over the city. Hell, he built a state-of-the-art refinery underground. He can send out gangs like the one we saw at Shahjahan, subdue any opposition, buy everyone else off with food. The Union leadership will collapse, and then he’s in charge.” I gripped the handrail and replanted my feet on the gurney’s frame. “I have no idea what happens next. Maybe he’ll just fiddle while Santee burns. Maybe he’ll be the great leader we need. Either way, I’m not going to sit here and wait it out. I’m going to go out and do
something
.”

Onanefe took hold of the handrail. “That sounds like an epitaph.”

“I didn’t say it would be something
smart
.”

“
Definitely
an epitaph.”

“I’ve written better. Come on. Let’s get me loose.”

We squared our shoulders to the handrail, gave each other a nod, and
pulled
. There was a screech, and the nut popped off the bolt, straight into my right eye.

I didn’t even have time to cuss. I just let go of the handrail and put both hands over my eye. I was vaguely aware of the thing still cuffed to my wrist, but the mild pain of the handrail bumping into my torso was nothing compared to the burning in my face. I could see nothing but dull orange.

Eventually, I opened my unjabbed eye. Onanefe crouched in front of me, worry lining his face. “There’s no blood, but that looked bad.”

“Another epitaph,” I said. My right eye throbbed. “I really don’t want to move my hands.”

Five dull
boom
s sounded in the distance, like all the bass drummers in the Brushhead Memorial Band warming up. A moment later, the building shook.

“Does that happen a lot in the city?” asked Onanefe.

I shrugged. “Could be heavy equipment. Maybe someone’s building barricades.”

“For what?”

“For whatever’s coming next.”

Three
boom
s, a little louder. I felt them in the pit of my stomach.

“I don’t think I like what’s coming next. You think we should go?”

I looked at Soni with my good eye. “All three of us are in no condition to run.”

Onanefe dug through the medical bags until he held up a spray stick. “This says it’s a topical painkiller.”

“Does it say to keep away from eyes?”

He looked at the label. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe we should wait to find a pro.”

Another four
boom
s came from down the street. This time, the air filled with the smashing crunch of houses collapsing. One of the konbini’s walls buckled, and I jumped up to cover Soni as ceiling tiles rained down. The panels tumbling on my back helped me forget the pain in my eye for a while.

When the shaking stopped, I opened my good eye, only to jam it shut again quickly. What felt like sandpaper rubbed the inside of my eye, probably grit from the plastered ceiling and the busted tiles. I coughed and put an arm over my mouth; I got a lungful of dust in return. “We need to go!” I managed to say. I felt something move to my right, and Onanefe croaked, “Can’t.” He coughed, and the gurney shook.

Everything from my nose down to my lungs burned. I could smell nothing but the must of plaster powder. The air in the office was getting impossible to breathe. We had to get out.

I nudged the gurney toward where I remembered the door was. The wheels jammed on the debris that crunched under my boots, and the frame bumped into the doorframe. Onanefe held on for dear life as I shoved and shook the gurney through the dust. It battered my face as I fought towards what I hoped was the door.

Screams filled the night air. Screams from sirens, screams from shattered pipes, screams from wounded men. I didn’t want to open my eyes, but I also didn’t want to be killed by something I couldn’t see. I scrabbled around until I got a grip on the medical bags. I dug inside them until I felt a squishy caneplas bag that I hoped was full of saline. I forced my left eye open enough to make sure; in the dim light, I saw “NaCl” on the label. I tore it open and splashed the solution into my face. It stung like ocean water, but it was enough to wash away the dust. My right eye stayed swollen shut.

Onanefe had shielded Soni’s lower torso. Dust made a trail from the crown of his head down to his tailbone. I helped him stand up and cleaned his face. Gray slurry ran down his cheeks, dripping off his chin. He sputtered as he wiped it away with his sleeve. “Is she okay?” he said, nodding at Soni.

The top of her body, where we had shielded her, was dusted with a few particles of plaster. Everything from her waist down was now a dingy gray. I gave her a prod, and she snorted.

“Okay enough.” I coughed more dust out of my lungs, then made the mistake of looking up.

Of the twenty shophouses on the street, five of them had been stomped flat. Gouts of flame rolled up from the wreckage, lighting the clouds of greasy smoke that loomed overhead. Frantic rescuers dug at the rubble and shoved aside the wreckage of a tuk-tuk. People wandered the shattered sidewalk, arms hanging loose at the wrong angles. In the flicker, I could see bodies and pieces of bodies hanging off crooked streetlamps. I grabbed the medical bags. “Stay with Soni,” I said, walking toward the closest fire. If Onanefe protested, I couldn’t hear it over the wailing.

A man not much older than me stood on the sidewalk, holding another man in his arms. Both of them were covered in soot and blood; their skin shone in the firelight. As I got closer I saw the unconscious man had a face full of glass shards and burns across the side of his head. “What happened?” I said as I eased them to the ground.

The crying man just sniffed and looked down at his partner. I dug into the bags and realized I had no idea what to do with their contents. There were packs of loaded syringes, rolls of gauze, bottles of pills. I’d been through disasters before, but I didn’t know much more past basic first aid.

The crying man let out another sob. I pulled out an antibiotic spray and squirted wherever I saw blood. There was a pair of caneplas exam gloves, but they were too small. I put them on anyway and started wrapping both of their wounds with gauze. That got the crying man calm, though he never took his eyes off his partner. “What happened?” I asked again.

He wiped blood off his cheek; there was ink there, but I couldn’t make it out. “We were having a block meeting at the Pulaski’s, and then–”

Another
boom
shook the air. Three blocks east, a lick of flame curled toward the sky. I shivered as three more explosions sent fire and debris upward. The night sky glowed red and orange under a cloud cover of smoke. The city wasn’t just on fire. It was exploding.

A hand clamped on my shoulder, and I yelped. I turned and saw Soni, her eyes fixed on the distance. Onanefe stood with her. She looked down at me and said, “What do you want to do?”

I swallowed a lump out of my throat. “Whatever we can.”

She nodded and clicked on the radio on her belt. “I’ve heard worse plans.”

We turned the ruined konbini into our triage hospital. Onanefe and I walked up and down the street, helping people to the space we cleared inside. The konbini’s roof had stayed intact, so we shoved the shelves to the sides to make room. In less than fifteen minutes, we had thirty people with burns, cuts, broken legs, and concussions all laid out on the floor.

We worked until our legs and the bags of meds were out. The three of us huddled together in a corner of the konbini. When I woke up, weak dawn light was trying to break in through the shattered storefront. I wormed my way out from between Soni and Onanefe and walked outside.

The damage looked even worse now that I could see it. The fires had died down thanks to the survivors’ efforts, but not before half the buildings had been burned to the ground. The stench of ash and charred meat hung in the air, like a barbeque gone horribly wrong. I didn’t want to think about what caused the smell. Overhead, crows made lazy circles, their
caw
s soft and distant.