Table of Contents

THE CLEAN UP

AN APPOINTMENT

THE CLEAN UP

She heard her own breathing echoing in her earpiece– elevated, but under control. The underground environment was hot, confined; a maze of tunnels and walkways, stained from the raw sewage that bubbled past her. You had to go carefully on the narrow ledges, stay pressed to the curved brickwork, watch the algal smears underfoot that made every surface as slippery as glass.

But then, Sanctioner Sergeant Marta Onorova had always been careful. She checked her equipment before every assignment. She kept her weapons cleaned and stowed, logged her ammo boxes with the armoury. She murmured the right benedictions to the machine-spirits when she needed to use a gunship or assault groundcar, all vehicles that she piloted through the city’s spires with precision and care. Her armour was in peak condition, responding to her movements silently and without lag.

It paid off, all that work, once you were on-mission. She hunkered down in the dark now, clad in her heavy, overlapping black lak-plates. Her noctis-gear kept her invisible in the deep shadow. Her helm’s visor showed her the route ahead – a grey-green overlay of false colour, lickering as her head moved. In her right gauntlet she clutched a slender service laspistol – quiet, but punchy. Her left hand was free, but stayed close to the cluster of blind-grenades at her belt.

Not all of her colleagues were so conscientious. Some let the power go to their heads. Some were drunks or narc users. A few were no better, temperamentally, than the thugs they should have been keeping in check. She avoided those ones. She kept Varangantua’s coiled-serpent sigil polished on her breastplate, clean and visible. She knew the Lex-Alecto, what it was for, what it could do, what it could not. She kept her eye in, she kept her mind sharp, she kept her body honed.

Out of habit, she activated her augmetic iris’ translexer function

> Targets located.

She half-rose, edging forward, keeping her sidearm held in front of her. A circular access tunnel ran straight ahead, pitch-black save for some dull, old maintenance lumens blinking away in recesses. Had she not activated her helm’s filters, the stench would have made her retch. As it was, all she could smell was her own sweat and the latex of her helm’s tox-seals.

Being an enforcer was all about these moments – alone in the dark, free from the nagging interference of the command Bastion, just a single weapon, just a single target. So much of the rest of her work was done in squads – crowd-culls, rabble-cleansing, cult-breaking in grimy habs full of grimy people. This, here, was what she’d joined for. The quiet hunt. Though the detection cadres – the probators, the analysers thought of sanctioners as dispensable gristleheads to be wheeled in when the need for a little violence became pressing, Onorova had never thought of herself like that. She was a professional. Everything was in its place; all tools out and ready. It had to be clean, in and out, job well done. Take some pride. Take some care.

She reached an intersection. A larger sewer ran left to right, its roof soaring into a gothic arch, its loor lost under the foaming ef luent. She was a long way down, far under the tangle of transitways, hab-blocks and landing stages that made up Varangantua’s titanic sprawl.

From the right came the faintest blush of light, picked up by her helm, isolated and analysed as hand-lumens moving jerkily. They were carried by her targets, and there was no reason for them to suspect she was coming for them. This was their kingdom, after all, a world of buried tunnels that smelled so bad and carried so many contagions that only the insane or the very well protected ventured down into them.

> First visual.

Onorova paused for a moment, letting the light fade again before slipping around the corner. She picked up her pace, half-jogging, relying on her thick-tread boots to keep her footing. Her helm-display started to pick up fragments of other things – heat-signatures, echoing noises – and she noted the results.

She blinked up a cartographic overlay and saw where the targets were headed: a chamber, part of a large pumping station, a place with lockable hatches and access up towards the surface and the mag-train railheads. If they were moving there, they were aiming to get out and reach a transport. Once out onto the rail lattice, they could get to anywhere in the huge labyrinth of the Vostoka habclave.

> Engaging now.

She dismissed her helm’s spidery overlay map and started to run. The sewer squirmed ahead, writhing around like a brickwork serpent, before she caught sight of the targets’destination – a high rust-streaked metal wall, riveted and double-braced, sunk into ancient filth. The sewer’s contents gurgled onward, sloughing down into a barred culvert. The only other mark on the wall’s blank surface was an access hatch– a heavy circle of burnished steel, thick-rimmed and crusted with corrosion – reached from the sewer walkway by a shaky-looking ladder.

The last member of the gang was still making his way through the gap. She saw a pair of boot-soles disappear into darkness just as she reached the ladder’s base, followed by a gloved hand emerging to pull the heavy door closed. She could hear the echoing clang of footfalls, moving faster now from up ahead inside the chamber.

She took aim and snapped off a single las-bolt, angled up through the narrowing hatchway. She heard a grunt of surprise as she raced up the ladder, hand over hand, before pushing her way through the gap.

She saw a man wearing cheap armour – big, muscled, grey skin and a scraggly mohican over a shaved scalp – clutching at his bleeding stomach. Silently, she shot him through the throat, shoved the body aside and pressed on after the rest of the gangers. She could smell the

topaz now – the narcotic had a potent odour in its uncut form. They carried it this way in sachets and capsules, ready to process for the users in the hab-blocks. It stuck to the clothes like pollen on an insect – hard to shake off.

> One elimination.

None of the others had noticed her coming after them, or the loss of their comrade. It was dark and they were pressing on, running through a tangle of pipes in the pumping station, their progress now masked by the roar of the processors in action. It was a steamy, close interior, hazy with condensation, shuddering from piston thrusts and valve discharge.

Her helm-display gave her four targets. Three of those would be gangers, indentured muscle like the one she’d just wasted. The last one was her target, Ero Zerkoj – narc-runner, thief, sadist, all-round undesirable.

Onorova ran faster, weaving through the huge pipes, picking up the distant growl of a mag-train engine starting up. Just beyond the chamber, out in a larger space beyond, it sounded like they had their transport waiting. She saw two shadows ahead of her, lumbering, hampered by cumbersome, ill- itting armour.

She shot four times, two for each target, hitting them just where she wanted. They tumbled forwards, skidding on the slick deck before crashing down, head first.

> Two eliminations.

The third ganger found something to hide behind – some kind of wheezing regulator housing – and fired off some wild projectiles. By then she’d already dropped low and scampered into cover, the bullets smacking into a bunch of overhead pipes. One of them burst open, showering her with scalding steam, and the temperature sensors on her armour went crazy.

She surged out of the thundering spray, relying on her helm’s machine-spirit to get a target. Her lasbolt hit the crouching ganger in the head, searing through a low-grade helmet and sending a puff of red out the other side.

> One elimination.

That only left Zerkoj. She’d lost sight of him in the steam but could still hear the transport’s engine going just up ahead, out across an open rockcrete deck. She could sprint straight for that, catching him before he could make a break for it.

But that would leave her out in the open, if only brie ly. Zerkoj was a sneaky breed of gutter-rat and she guessed he’d have hunkered down somewhere in the machinery, waiting for her to break for the transport, knowing it would give him a shot.

She went carefully, keeping her body low, edging towards the regulator housing, then moved along a brace of pipes the width of her waist. Once out of the worst of the steam, she picked up his heat-signature again. He was crouched down over to her right, lodged deep within the metallic entrails of a pair of exchangers. The waiting mag-transport stood at the railhead, out in the open, twenty yards straight ahead, driverless, powerplant idling.

‘Show yourself, citizen!’ she shouted, her voice rasping through her helm-vox. ‘Running won’t help you now.’

She heard him swear.

‘Yeah. Tell that to my entourage.’

‘Entourage. Big word for a small crew.’

‘What’s this about? You want to tell me that?’

She sidled a little closer to his position, keeping plenty of cover between them. Silently, carefully, she slipped a fully-charged powerpack into her laspistol.

‘It should be obvious. There’s too much ilth on my patch. Filth that comes from you.’

‘Hells. You know all about it. Your master sergeant – Mhurov. Ask him how it works. He knows.’

‘I already did. You think we don’t talk?’

Zerkoj swore again. This time he sounded jumpier, like he was thinking about making another break for it.

‘This is zone aleph, Vostoka, grade-sevens,’ he said. ‘The hovels, the shit-heaps. My kind of concession.’

She sidled a little closer, trying to gauge which way he’d bolt. Go left, he’d only have a few yards to cover, but he’d be exposed. Go right, and he’d have to get through a nasty mess of hissing engine workings before getting out, slowing him down. She only needed one shot – his clothing didn’t look like it hid any decent armour underneath.

‘Then you’ll have permits,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Permits? For this stuff?

‘Exactly. I get bored of carting the bodies away, Ero. I feel the need to clean things up.’

‘You … know my name?’

’I know plenty about you.’

Then he bolted, bursting from cover, heading left, racing for the transport and freedom. She’d guessed he’d go the other way, so had to compensate, shifting her weight to one side and taking aim.

She loosed two las-bolts – one missed, the other sliced through his thigh, and he hit the loor with a thin wail.

She emerged from cover herself, walking up to him as he lay on the deck, writhing. She shot him in the other leg, just to be sure, kicked away the combat knife he’d drawn, then lowered herself, kneeling into the small of his back.

She sniffed.

‘I can smell it on you,’ she said softly. ‘It never gets less disgusting.’

Zerkoj stopped squealing, teeth gritted. He tried to lift his head, only giving up once the laspistol muzzle landed against his temple, pressing down.

‘I’ve got friends down here,’ he grunted.

‘You don’t have any friends, Ero.’

He rolled his eyeballs to look up at her. ‘I had an understanding.’

‘Not from me.’

‘So, what now? You’ll go back to Mhurov? Tell him he’s a liar. Tell him I spit on his face.’

‘He’ll like that.’

She turned her head away as she fired, so that his blood didn’t splatter over her face mask. She felt Zerkoj’s body go limp under her knee.

> Target elimination.

Then she holstered her pistol and rummaged through his clothes. He was carrying a few capsules of lime-green powder– probably samples. High-grade, worth some slate. She peeled back the collar of his jacket and felt around the collarbone. The telltale bulge of a subdermal augmetic caught her finger. She reached for a knife and cut it out – it would be a comms node, something that, once cracked, would give up more contact details, exposing his network of suppliers and buyers. Then she worked her way down, going methodically, looking for more. She didn’t find much – a dataslug, another knife, some physical slate credits wrapped up in a greasy paper sleeve.

She sat back on her haunches. It was all rather pathetic. No one made a fortune dealing topaz in the habclave underwarrens – the ones turning slate were a long way away, protected by private armies and forti ied spires. For all the misery Zerkoj had caused, for all the lives wasted and the violence inflicted, he was still a scruffy urchin, able to count on only a few gangers in poorly fitting armour, vulnerable to elimination from anyone in the grade-sevens with a decent crew. No doubt he’d dreamed of rising up the ladder quickly. That was why he’d been throwing his weight around, getting people killed, making enemies. Left alone, he might have become a bigger problem. So she hadn’t left him alone.

AN APPOINTMENT

Onorova got up, brushed herself down, pulled out a sealed bag for the evidence and stowed it at her belt. Then she walked over to the mag transport, still pumping out fumes. She clambered up into the cab, disengaged the drive controls and shut down the powerplant.

When she got out again she headed back the way she’d come, through the pumping station, through the acrid stench of the sewers, tracing the winding path underground before climbing back up the slippery access shaft again to street level.

She emerged feeling grubby. The space around her was busy, crammed with workers shuf ling between habs. The transitway was dark, noisy, the air a fug of human smells. Groundcars juddered their way slowly through the crowds, alert-horns blaring. Viaducts soared overhead, black against a blood-red night sky, and chameleon screens flashed and scattered their commercia bulletins. The serpent-sigil of Varangantua jostled up against the Imperial aquila on the lintels of the great towers, and the mag-trains on the elevated tracks clattered between the boles of the dark hab-towers. It was all massive, rising up and up, spreading out like a plague of rockcrete and asphalt, burgeoning, churning, alive with the stink of danger and energy.

She took a deep breath. The air was acrid with promethium, wet, too hot for comfort, but still better than the sewer’s had been. She had accomplished what she had set out to accomplish, had the evidence of the kill, and now all that remained was to return to the Bastion to file a report for the analysers.

Every face on the street was averted. She walked through the crowds like a cutter scything through the waves, bodies shuffling out of her path. To meet the gaze of a sanctioner was dangerous, and the chief survival strategy of the average citizen was to remain nondescript, invisible, just a part of the great mass of undifferentiated humanity. That suited Onorova. She didn’t much like looking at them either.

She reached her groundcar – a heavily armoured Mukha squad-vehicle. The security bars slipped back and the gullwing doors hissed open. She got in, roused the machine-spirit, ignited the engines. Then she was pulling out, threading her way through the masses, inching her way out of the crowds and up onto the transit viaducts.

Before long, she could see the huge profile of the command Bastion on the horizon – a lumpen mass of dark granite, floodlit, as imposing as it was impenetrable. Zhurov gunships hovered over it, keeping station amid throngs of whirling servo-skulls. The next intersection would take her there, sweeping up the access ramps, under the gaze of the gun-towers and the augur-screens.

But she wasn’t headed there, not yet. Another appointment beckoned, still deep in the Vostoka habclave, that ruinous conglomeration split between mouldering industrial units and run-down hab tenements. She steered the groundcar off the main route, plunging back into the twilight of the under-city. Lumens blinked above her, watery and pallid against the seamy night. She went deeper, winding under a series of low rockcrete arches before pulling up in front of a brick facade. Suspensor lumens blundered around high above her, casting very little illumination on the glinting asphalt below. She got out, secured the groundcar, then walked up to a steel door covered in laking red paint. It smelled of refuse, with a lacing of hard-to-place chems.

She banged on the door. After a while, a slide-panel was jerked back, and a metal ident-reader was thrust out. Onorova took off her left gauntlet and let the machine take a pinprick of blood. After that, the ident-reader withdrew, and the panel slammed closed.

It didn’t take long before she heard the heavy clunk of bolts being pulled. The door swung inward, revealing a dark hallway and a steep set of stairs. The smell of raw topaz spilled out on to the street. At least three guards hung back in the shadows, not hindering her, just there to look threatening. They were well armed – las-carbines, shock-mauls – and wore decent body-protection.

Onorova ignored them and went up the stairs. Across the landing at the top was another metal door, which she pushed open. On the far side of that was a large room with sodium lumens and walls that looked like they were made of synthleather panels. Low couches were placed against the walls, and a vial of cotin smoke gently hissed atop a plastek table. The blinds were down, and the air was tangy with topaz.

A woman lounged on one of the couches. She was large, running to fat, with jowly cheeks and lank hair. She wore a crimson gown, cut high at the neck. Ganger tattoos ran down one exposed arm. She had a needle-gun strapped to her left boot.

‘Hello Livia,’ Onorova said, sitting down opposite her.

The woman looked at her through a haze of cotin.

‘Wasn’t expecting to see you here,’ she said. ‘You took a risk coming.’

Onorova reached for the evidence bag, and placed it on the table between them.

‘You don’t have to worry about Zerkoj any more. He decided to exit the business.’

Livia sniffed.

‘Wise man. Why come here to tell me?’

‘Because he had friends. Four of them. I’m getting bored of dropping gangers, Livia. Very bored.’

‘You don’t look bored.’

‘It’s not as easy as it used to be. I’ve got real work to do, as well as cleaning out your rivals for you.’

Livia gave her a sour look.

‘I see. More slate, that it?’

‘It would help. Keeping all of this quiet, keeping Mhurov out of the loop, it takes effort.’

For a moment, it looked like the woman might refuse. Eventually, though, she nodded. Onorova felt a twinge under her eyeball as her iris processed the payment.

Fifteen percent – that would do.

‘Thanks,’ she said, getting up, leaving the evidence bag on the table.

‘There’ll be things in there you’ll want to read.’

Livia didn’t look up.

‘You should be careful, enforcer,’ she said. ‘Don’t get too many ideas about how this works. That’s the route to trouble.’

Onorova was already walking out.

‘I never get too many ideas. I’m just the muscle, see.’

Then she was heading back down the stairway. She kept tabs on the gangers in the hallway, but they did nothing but glower at her. She got out, headed to her groundcar, got in, locked it.

For a moment, she sat in the pilot seat, looking out at the forests of hab-towers ahead, half-lit by scatters of lumen-points, piled atop one another, buzzed by clouds of atmospheric lyers and servo-skulls. Under every one of those towers was a basement level, and then an underwarren, going deeper, getting darker. She knew too many of them. After a while, it felt like you lived in those places. Maybe they left a stain, after a while. Maybe that would be hard to rub off, when the time came.

She started the engines. Once the groundcar was moving, she activated her tracker-scrubbers, removing all trace of her activities from her mission-cogitator and translexer. Once back at the Bastion, she’d file the usual reports – crowd-culls, rabble-cleansing, cult-breaking in grimy habs full of grimy people. She’d do it carefully, covering her tracks, not making it look too clean, just enough to keep Mhurov’s eyes elsewhere.

It was what you needed to do. It was how it was, how it had always been. Livia knew it. Zerkoj, for all his protestations, had known it. A sergeant’s stipend barely covered basic food rations. This was how you made a living.

It was dangerous, of course. Everything was dangerous. But Onorova did things properly. She was careful. The model of a sanctioner sergeant. It had to be clean, in and out, job well done. Take some pride. Take some care.

She drove hard then, out into the night, back up into the heart of the city. Overhead, where a transit overpass crossed the heavy arch of a mag-train route, the serpent sigil of Varangantua glinted in the dark, just like the one she wore proudly on her chest. She passed under its gaze, smiling, already thinking how she’d spend the slate.