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  He beams. “Hey Kirsty. I was going to come but then… you know what I’m like with crowds.”

  “Crowds of your friends, Scott. You hurt my feelings.” She sticks out her bottom lip. “I spent all day cooking for you…” She wobbles the lip a little and he hugs her and she’s glad she didn’t show up in a mood because it’s great to see Scott again.

  “So what happened?” she says when Scott finally lets go. “Two years ago you were super Fed and had that great apartment. Now you’ve got… this?”

  He shrugs. “Times change. I’m working nursing shifts over at St Christopher’s but the pay’s not great. And you?” He points to her jacket. “Still working Federal Environmental, I see?”

  “Yeah, but times change, Scott. I’m paying for bodyguards now. Last night, someone stabbed me. Tomorrow night… who knows?”

  He stares at her a long time, his welcoming smile fixed into a grimace. She stares back, deadpan. “You’re joking, right?” he says. “You’re just messing with me because I bailed on your party?”

  She points down the access platform to where a six foot two, two hundred and ten pound Grifter is guarding the end stairwell. “Look there,” she says. “That’s Kareem. He’s carrying a spraygun in a shoulder holster and a knife strapped to his calf. On the Tramtrax over here, he was telling me how he’s recently back on his feet after having eleven ounces of cultured muscle sewed into his buttock. He said it was to patch an exit wound.”

  She points the other way, to a girl standing by those stairs. From this distance, she’s Kirsty’s double in every detail. “That’s Judy Alexis,” Kirsty continues. “Last night after I met her, she cut her braids off to match my hair. She says by dressing like me and looking like me, she’ll halve the chances of me taking sniper fire. She’s sixteen years old.”

  Scott gapes first at Kareem, then Judy Alexis, then back at Kirsty. “Even I’m strapped,” she says, flashing the rented Jericho pistol in her waist band. “The creep that stabbed me? I shot him.”

  “Dead?” He looks freaked.

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “I shot his vest point blank. I’m pretty sure he shit in his pants.”

  He stands and stares and sways, “So are you going to let your old buddy in?” she asks. “Or am I going to have to shoot you too?”

  Scott and Kirsty had hung together all through college, even though she was a struggling student and he was primed to fast-track his way into which ever government agency he chose. Everyone thought he’d go for Environmental Cleanup, traveling across the country to deal with pre-Hub nuclear waste and chemical dump hotspots but when Kirsty was assigned wetvet duties, he surprised everyone by choosing Resource Management. She’d hit the streets while he monitored plastic, paper, water and energy consumption in the Hub, calculating measures to conserve and supply them in the future.

  Then after six months, he vanished – no minor feat in a District. No one heard anything for two years until he sent the letter. Since he hadn’t attended his own welcome home party, Kirsty’s the first person to see him.

  Scott gets over his shock and insists she tells him everything while he gets to making coffee. She explains the scene at Arclights and how Bishop had sounded so convincing – just one little lie to cut a few corners and make everyone’s life easier. She tells him about the Meat4 Power offices and Arnold Jarrow looking sick with worry while he threatened her. She finishes up with Georgy going down in the 49th Street Night Market.

  “That dumb fuck Georgy,” she says, as Scott hands her a drink, “he’s the one screwing it. After I shot him, I called Jarrow up and he looked like his heart was going to fail. He said Georgy hadn’t been detailed to grab Slate, which I’d already figured. I told him I was still playing along and he said he’d try to square things at his end.”

  She sips her coffee. “But then my G-boy bodyguards called their boss who’s planning on tracking Georgy down to give him one more beat down. Only Georgy’s gang-affiliated too and still runs with the Flame Warriors. So now the Grifters…”

  “…that’s the kids outside, right?”

  “Sure. The Grifters think Georgy will hit my place. But if the Flame Warriors help him, they’ll be infringing on Grifter turf which would mean a gang war on my doorstep. Literally.” She shakes her head. “They told me to keep my head down and for once, I’m willing to take advice from armed teenagers. So here I am.”

  Scott nods and thinks and sips his coffee to the last frothy drop. Finally he says “And after all this, you’re still going to go along with Meat4 Power’s version of the club attack?”

  “Sure,” she says. “What else can I do?”

  “Well, you could call Quantico and get the FBI on the case. Corporate interference of federal employees is internal terrorism.”

  “Yeah, Scott. If I wanted M4 to kill me.”

  “No really. They’ll relocate you to a different Hub. Meat4 Power would never find you.”

  She can’t believe he’s saying this. Not Scott. “I don’t want to relocate. Toronto’s my Hub.”

  “All Hubs are the same, Kirsty. That’s the point of them.”

  “But I don’t own a building in any other Hub. I don’t have friends there. If this is what it takes to stay in District 45…”

  There’s an awkward silence.

  “You’re such a jerk, Scott,” she says eventually. “Why not just call me a loser and be done with it?”

  “Kirsty…” he says. “All I’m saying is, in the same position, I’d go to the FBI.”

  “But you’re not me and, more importantly, I’m not you.” She feels like crying, or maybe throwing something at him. “And I can’t believe that after hearing what a shitty time I’m having, you’re making me feel bad about this.”

  “You’re right, I’m a jerk.” There’s another awkward silence. “What do I do to make it up to you?”

  “I came looking for somewhere to sleep.”

  “That’s a given. And considering the current level of my jerkness, I need to do better than that.”

  “Oh that’s easy,” she says. “You can tell me where you’ve been for the last few years.”

  “That’s easy too,” he smiles back. “I went west.”

  “Denver?” she asks, although since this is Scott the over-achiever, she already knows she’s way off the mark.

  “All the way west,” he says. “I watched the sun set in the sea and howled on an empty beach because no one I know has ever seen it.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t think of the last time I left District 45.”

  “But you never wanted to. Me? I always dreamed of seeing San Francisco and it’s still there, Kirsty. They told us the West Coast had been torn down to stop people moving back. And maybe they trashed Los Angeles to show the footage on cable access, but Frisco’s still there. And it’s beautiful.”

  They sit and he talks and he skips from one story to the next without any real structure but Kirsty doesn’t care because for a while, all she’s doing is hanging with her friend. It beats hiding from a corporation by a long way.

  Scott says he’d always wanted out but just couldn’t think of how to do it until one day he packed light, rode the Tramtrax as far as his District 45 ID would allow him and just kept walking. “You always think the Hub stops dead at the last District boundary” he says, “but it actually peters out. After residential blocks, there’s all the heavy industry that would choke up the Hubs. After that are truck stops and railway sidings because despite what President Vandernecker says, the Hub doesn’t entirely reclaim, regain and self-sustain. Day and night, they got trucks bringing stuff in, I’ve seen them. They drive past junk yards and grain silos and the Hub doesn’t really end until you hit the wheat. And then there’s nothing but… enough to feed millions of hungry livedrives.”

  He says he nearly went mad crossing the wheat belt. Hundreds of featureless, mono-cultured miles served by harvesters as big as city blocks driven by convict labor. “It’s agribusiness on a scale y
ou can’t imagine,” he says. “To see those pumps bringing up water and those harvesters working day and night, you wonder what would happen to the Hubs if the foodfuel dries up the way the oil did.”

  He says his route drifted south so she asks about the war down there. “I didn’t see any fighting,” he says, “but the NAU army’s always on the move. Texas stops just south of San Antonio now and the Southern Wall’s three bulldozed barriers in the soil that keep getting abandoned. The army’s pulling back. The NAU’s shrinking.”

  He says New Mexico’s a real bad place to be traveling on foot. “It’s the only travelers’ tale that turned out to be true,” he says. “It’s Africa there now, prides of lions in the long grass and mounds of bones that used to be people like me. Some say they escaped from Fundation Corp test sites before they’d had the wild side bioengineered out of them. Others swear the whole state’s gone wild by federal order and that the lions stop civilians drifting westwards.”

  He says one time, he crewed on a cargo-lifting airship hauling salvage out of Phoenix, Arizona. They set down and, apart from the encroaching sand dunes, it was pretty much how it had been abandoned, sixty years before. “But you know what?” he says. “We were there two weeks and I didn’t see a single solar panel. What were they thinking? Three hundred and fifty sunny days a year but no solar panels? Water channelled hundreds of miles across the desert to spray on golf courses. Oil-fired central heating. How did anyone think that was going to be sustainable?”

  He stops to make fresh coffee then tells her “One time, I traveled in a boat down the Colorado River. Pre Hub, they’d got it all damned up and it didn’t even reach the coast. These days, it’s fast and clear, now it’s not getting syphoned off to fill swimming pools in New Mexico or hose the dust off driveways in Los Angeles.”

  “It sounds as if there are people out there,” she says. “Lots of people.”

  “Sure,” he replies. “Since eighty three percent of the NAU live in the Hubs, seventeen percent don’t. They make you think the rest live on factory farms or Hub ancillary towns but it turns out most of the rest are just… somewhere else.”

  He describes a transport network of sorts. The delisted interstate network that’s supposed to be torn up but isn’t. Bush pilots who’ll fly you for gold or technical services. Sloops and yachts will take you all the way down to South America or up to Alaska on wind power, because that’s a fuel that’s never going to give out.

  “But without the army or PD or Urban Pacification,” she says, “how do people get on?”

  He shrugs. “Some do and some don’t and most stay away from everyone else. There are factions of every militia and religious group that evaded forced resettlement to the Hubs… white supremacists, black power, Zionist Free Radicals, Pacific Rim Reunited… there’s enough space for them all to hate in peace, each one in their own slogan-covered bunker.”

  He lifts his shirt briefly to show ugly, twisted scars and purple bands of stitching through his side. “Wrong place, wrong time, I was shot and nearly died from this. But another time, I lost three fingers to frostbite near Grand Junction, Colorado and got these…” He wriggles his right hand and she can sees clean pink replacements, as blank and smooth as a shop dummy’s.

  “I paid for tank-cultured replacements by digging spring meltwater silt out of a community irrigation scheme. Some places, farming communities provide schools and welfare. Other places, Hell’s Angels run bikes on methanol and tear shit up. I’ve seen both, I’ve seen families pulling teepees across the plains with horses. Right now, the West’s self sustaining and self regulating.”

  She asks “If it’s so good, why don’t we re-establish San Francisco and LA?” Scott just shakes his head.

  “Because in the old USA, problems were solved with brute force. By the end, water for Los Angeles came from Canada and had to be pumped over three mountain ranges. Which proves you can live anywhere if you burn enough energy – high in the Rockies or in the Arizona Desert or even on the moon. But try keeping astronauts alive on the energy equivalent of half a gallon of gasoline and a couple of gallons of fresh water a day. That’s all we’ve got left and that’s why the LA Hub’s not happening now, not happening ever.”

  Eventually, Scott winds down. Two years of his life condensed to a handful of recollections all remembered in a jumble. “It sounds like you had some scary times out there,” she says.

  “I did.”

  “But good times too.”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Yet here you are. Back where you started.”

  “Only to rest up and spread the word. Look… I’ve got to get off to work soon. Are you okay here on your own?”

  She nods. “All I really need is sleep. And don’t forget I’ve got armed children guarding the stairwells.”

  She rolls up in his duvet as he changes into surgical scrubs for his nursing shift. He’s about to leave when he stops at the doorway.

  “I’m heading out again soon,” he says. “I thought I missed this place. Now I’m back, I realize I don’t.”

  “I worked that out already,” she replies. “You decided when?”

  “Soon…” he hesitates. “Maybe you should walk away from your mess. Maybe you should come with me.”

  She’d thought about it while he’d talked. No more Georgy, no federal prosecution for failing her duties. “Let’s see how things work out,” she says. “Perhaps Georgy will stay away and M4 will stop screwing around and it’ll all settle down.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “If it doesn’t then, sure. Let’s me and you grab our bags and go see the old United States of America.”

  Saturday 15 January

  06:30 am

  “REMIND ME AGAIN” said Shane Cooper, his voice muffled behind the blank gray face shield clipped into his helmet. “If Calderon is Chalk One’s pointman, how come we’re the ones tasked to run a hundred meters of open ground?”

  “Because you’re the decoys,” Hemblen told him, kneeling next to him on the sidewalk, adjusting his webbing so the bulky rifle lay flat across the expanse of chest armor. “You hit the north side first then we go in on the south.”

  “Have you tried running that far in full mercwar kit?” asked Eric Boucher, nervously snapping together sections of shaped charge to form a slender square frame. “Thirty kilos of armor plus an M-81 and six ammo cassettes – we’ll be gasping before we even reach the target.”

  “You worry too much,” said Hemblen. “They’ll have gunned you both down way before then.”

  “You’re an inspirational guy, Hem,” said Boucher, cocking his rifle. “I can see why Monty made you the leader…”

  Hemblen’s war started right on schedule – 7am Mountain Time. Two days prior, Monty Cox had informed the Mercwar Union. The day before, a Union rep called Perry – an ex-marine with a craggy face and a plastic knee – had arrived in the Denver Hub with Chalk One’s weapons packed into an unmarked utivan. That night, he’d checked the sensors embedded in every set of armor and logged their identities against the data stored in the metal pin – the Ring – that dangled from each chest armor on a curly steel flex. Two hours before, Perry had signed over a full load of ammunition and watched each member of Chalk One activate their rifles by sliding the Ring into the receiver. Perry then told Hemblen that from now on, he was just an observer.

  Perry crouched behind Hemblen now, his mercwar armor slashed with orange day-glo chevrons and bristling with active don’t shoot sensors. His comms gear sat high on his back armor, a small Slate unit mounted on his forearm. Behind him, Crash The Pad waited, anonymous behind plain gray Pro-Chobham armor decorated only by their logo – a frog jumping onto a lily pad.

  They waited patiently, silently, as Hemblen lay on the pavement and slowly peered round the corner for one last look at the target building. It was typical Corp construct – a castle pretending to be just another ugly concrete office block. All round, a one story pit acting as the moat. No w
indows on the lower floors, walls angling outwards on the second and third stories to thwart ladder assaults. Not that it bothered Hemblen – he was going in through the front door.

  Hemblen slid back and knelt by Perry. “You ready with the TAC?” he asked and Perry nodded, turning his arm so Hemblen could see the TAC data – the Terms and Conditions – on his Slate. Hemblen held up a thumb in an armored glove and the remaining seven men and women of his Chalk returned the gesture.

  He touched the cheek panel of his face shield to open comms. “Chalk Leader…” He heard his own voice loud and clear through the molded earpieces protecting his hearing. “Cooper, Boucher…” he said, “go, go, go…”

  For long seconds, nothing happened. Perry waited with a finger above his Slate, waiting for the first gunshot, waiting to transmit the TAC data. Hemblen was uncertain, was about to transmit the go order again, when Cooper and Boucher’s lumbering run towards the loading bay finally attracted attention. A shot echoed round Denver Hub’s business district, a low, powerful boom followed by falling glass as the muzzle blast blew out the window. Then another, then overlapping shots as dozing guards snapped awake and opened up.

  Perry thumbed his Slate on the first shot, burst-transmitting the TAC data through encrypted MercNet channels. The Union matched the sealed bids of both attacked and defenders and left Perry to announce the results. “Mercwar, mercwar, mercwar,” he announced, his MercNet comms stepping over all other transmissions. Inside, any non-Union defenders were thinking about whether to lie down or fight while all mercwar elements were plugging their rifles into their armor.

  Perry transmitted again. “Crash The Pad inbound with eight, repeat, eight hits. Aurora Bor defending with three, repeat, three hits…” Hemblen grinned as he stood. Frog One’s higher bid was giving Crash The Pad the best possible chance. With eight hits each, Hemblen’s ten strong Chalk had become an eighty man assault.