The Tell run was a wide tunnel off the main run we’d been walking. The walls changed color, becoming more red than gray. I’d read somewhere it meant there was iron in the ore, but I could have been mistaken. Geology isn’t my forte.

  Killing is. So is sneaking. Not that I could sneak in a brightly lit, empty tunnel. There wasn’t even a rockfall to hide behind.

  But I wasn’t in the mood for hiding.

  I had a life ward going, a silver thread sewn to the inside brim of my hat. It pulsed pale green with my heartbeat, and pale yellow in time with Hao’s. We were a hundred meters up the tunnel before it started pulsing weak red.

  I raised my hand and tilted it, but Hao didn’t react. I had to put my hand in front of her face, almost straight-arming her, to stop her. I’d almost forgotten that she wasn’t a trained marine. Either that, or the Feds’ hand signals had changed since I learned them.

  “Someone up the tunnel,” I said. “Another hundred meters.”

  “Straight up?” Hao said.

  I shrugged. The ward wasn’t directional.

  “Might be the lower branch Tells,” Hao said. “They’ve got a small complex off the main run. The complex Third-son likes to stay in is two branches up.”

  We moved on, passing a secured airlock door with a massive locking wheel on the right-hand side. By the time we reached the branch Tell squatted in, my life ward was flashing red strongly enough to make the brim of my stockman glow.

  Lots of people around.

  I tuned the ward, pausing for a second and conjuring a thread of force from the planet, not quite as cold as conjuring it from the void, then used it to down-tune the ward’s sensitivity. Less flashy than Maurice’s fireball, but a lot more useful. Warding is a subtle art.

  The complex didn’t have a door, only a set of slightly over-pressurized chambers separated from the tunnel by sliced, overlapping, clear biopolymer sheets. A poor man’s biohazard airlock, to keep the sand out, most likely. We walked through the sheets unhindered, venting the isolating air, the heavy slices slapping at us. The tunnel smelled of rot and sour sweat. Third-boy Tell wasn’t one for cleaning, that was obvious.

  Inside, the light was tuned an annoying brothel red, the kind you use if you don’t want to see clearly. My ward pulsed with more heartbeats than I could count. Lots of people in my way.

  But I was prepared for it. I jimmied out the safety pin of a short-fuse flash grenade, keeping the safety lever firmly pressed in my fist. The grenade would just flash, no bang. I didn’t fancy the whole Tell clan coming to the rescue. Also, it made for a decent knuckleduster.

  We walked deeper into the red-light den. There were low couches and stacks of mattresses spread out around a central heat generator, with people sitting or laying about. A couple jerked and swayed to slow, psychedelic music. It wasn’t a style I recognized, heavy on the rhythm with lyrics weaving in several languages, only a few of which I understood.

  The whole place stank of sweet incense. Coupled with the ammonia residue, it made me think of the cheaper kind of public toilet.

  “Which one is he?” I asked Hao. People were starting to notice us. A few were standing up.

  “I’m looking,” she replied. The music wasn’t loud enough to make her words hard to hear. The people standing up were kicking or poking those still lying down. It was like watching a nest of sting-biters going on the alert in slow motion.

  “There,” Hao said, pointing to a tall, skinny shape. More tall and skinny than the normal Jacksonian. They were all scarecrows to me. I moved toward Third-boy Tell.

  “Hey,” I said, giving him a friendly wave. “Got something for you.”

  “Yeah?” said Tell, half belligerent, half confused. Offering hostiles a gift often unsettles them.

  “Yeah,” I said, quickly showing him my grenade, then hiding it back in my pocket.

  “Whassat?” said one of Tell’s friends, a zoned out kid looking like a shorter, beardier version of Tell himself.

  “Who are you?” Tell grunted, ignoring his friend. The friend smelled like a field hospital, alcohol disinfectant mixed with sweat. Both of them looked like black shadows against the red glow.

  I hate low-light areas.

  “A ship landed today,” I said. “There was something on it.”

  “Yeah,” said Tell, “You’re Tomlin’s off-worlder.”

  “Yeah,” I echoed again. Tell sure had a limited vocabulary. “But that’s not why I’m here. You took something from my ship. I want it back.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Din’t take nutn’,” Drunk Beard said, leaning on Tell.

  Tell pushed him away. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  More of his friends were approaching, creating a thin wall of scraggly bodies around us.

  “And if I said I had you on camera?” I said, regretting the fact that I didn’t have a camera on the Bucket.

  “Then you’d be lying,” Tell said. “Besides, who are you going to complain to? Tomlin?”

  “Why not?”

  Tell laughed, a surprisingly deep and booming laugh full of genuine amusement. Made me want to punch him.

  “New times, space man,” he said. “The Tomlins and their old-timers are gone. The Baylens rule. They got everybody’s debt. Even Old Vincentes owes them.”

  “That’s crud, and you know it,” Hao said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tell said. “The Baylens got all the hardware, and all the manpower. The old-timers can nag all they want, Baylen’s Da can have them shot whenever he wishes.”

  “Void, you’re stupid,” Hao said.

  “He could have you shot,” Tell said, poking her in the chest with a finger.

  “Don’t mucking touch me,” Hao growled, but she didn’t try to deck him.

  “Back off,” I said, getting between Tell and her before she walloped him. I needed his information. Tell grinned. His friend ruined it.

  “Whassa gonna do?” Drunk Beard said, shoving Hao.

  She whipped about, smashing him in the side with her crowbar. I heard Drunk Beard’s ribs crack.

  He fell, howling. Two of Tell’s pals jumped Hao from behind. Another one decided to jump me. I returned the compliment with an elbow to his groin, kicking the outside of Tell’s knee at the same time.

  More of Tell’s friends joined in and I flung my flash to the floor, just past my legs. I had time to crack the reinforced crown of my stockman into someone’s chin before it went off.

  Everything went white. I was ready, keeping my eyes closed. Two of my wards flared and brought down the intensity of the flash. I sensed one of the wards in Hao’s wardvest triggering as well, preventing her from being blinded.

  Everyone else screeched and howled. Some collapsed, pressing hands to their faces. Others stumbled about, still swinging, hitting each other often as not. Those I helped along with well-placed shoves or trips. The ones who wouldn’t stay down got a boot in the groin or gut.

  In moments, Tell’s little force was disabled. The whole brawl had taken some thirty or forty seconds. I pulled Hao away from kicking Drunk Beard. He looked pretty bad, bleeding and curled up on the stone floor, but at least she hadn’t used her crowbar any more.

  “The crud was that?” Hao said, blinking furiously.

  “Magnesium flasher,” I said. I handed her a slender metal flashlight and pulled a ward-light from my pocket for myself. “Help me search this place.”

  She swept the beam of her flashlight in a wide arc, revealing empty bottles, piles of dirty plates and glasses, and a broken table among a pile of broken chairs. The whole place smelled like a health hazard, the sourness of spoiled food mixing with the choking stench of lots of dust.

  No hatchling.

  “Why don’t you just dowse for it?” Hao said.

  My hand on the Hurmer, I jogged over to a doorless opening leading into another red-lit room. Small room, more trash, no bodies, no hatchling.

  “Void wyrms are creatures of almost pure magic,” I said, heading for another opening as Hao kicked over a stack of mattresses, revealing a storage container. “They have a natural ability to conjure force, drawing it into themselves. Makes them invisible to dowsing.”

  Short corridor. I flung the ward-light into it, then pulled on the string attached. The corridor was empty, door at the end. I readied the Hurmer in a one-handed grip, steadying it with the sling. In these close surroundings, aiming wasn’t a problem. Anything came out, it would be armor versus velocity.

  “Nothing here,” Hao called. Her light moved up to the tunnel. “That’s the crapper you’re heading for.”

  I down-tuned my life ward, shutting out most of the heartbeats in the room behind me. The rest fell away as I moved down the corridor. No new heartbeats flashed as I neared the toilets. Four stalls, two showers. I kicked in the doors and was greeted with more sweet incense, masking worse smells. No people, no hatchling. At least I hadn’t been wrong about the purpose of the incense. One takes what victories one can.

  “Anywhere else?” I asked when I got back to Hao. My internal clock said five minutes since the start of the brawl. Likely it was less. When stressed, I tend to overestimate time.

  “Kitchen,” she said, pointing to an alcove shielded by a drapery. “I think there’s a pantry behind it.”

  We checked together, Hao trailing me on my right-hand side.

  I kept out of crowbar range, just in case. The kitchen was surprisingly clean, bright white light coming on the moment we passed the curtain. Two coolers, four burners, door to the pantry.

  The pantry was almost empty, stocked with a pair of white biopolymer cartons of what I surmised were staples, or the world’s biggest narcotics containers.

  No hatchling.

  “Now where?” I said.

  “Nowhere,” Hao said. “That’s it. It’s a small complex.”

  “We need to have a chat with Tell.”

  “He won’t tell you anything. Uppity crudmucker.”

  “Sometimes they tell you more by not talking,” I said.

  Turned out I was right.

  Tell had a com. Unlike mine, it was a semi-stiff bracelet, wrapped twice about his left arm. The inside was a DeuTonic chip, unsecured. Why people don’t bother encoding their coms is beyond me.

  It held nothing. No images of the hatchling, no recorded calls to Baylen. Some amateur pornography, featuring Tell’s friends – who were unaware, going by the horribly red lighting in the recordings. Likely they wouldn’t care. I erased it anyhow, mostly because I was angry.

  Some of those same friends were now moaning and groaning, rolling slowly on the ground, sans the pleasure. None looked willing to stand up and take issue with me, but it was only a matter of time.

  I’d gotten into a big fight, taken down what had to be a large proportion of Jackson Depot’s delinquent element, and found nothing.

  Except a list of receptor towers.

  “How far do the data hookup links reach below the ground?” I asked.

  “Not far,” Hao replied. “Why?”

  “This looks like a branching grid number scheme,” I said, pointing to the list on the readout.

  “That’s what they use,” said Hao. “Pretty effective when you need to locate someone after a cave-in.”

  “Well,” I said. “If these first three are the main routing, and these second three are the first branching, and that’s the universal time stamp, then Tell hasn’t been out of this location all day.”

  Hao looked over my shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I thought he would be the most likely candidate.”

  “Most likely doesn’t mean correct,” I said, tossing the com to the floor beside Tell. “We better leave. Not like we can apologize and make up.”

  Hao was already moving, her bushy eyebrows drawn together over those blue eyes. Maybe she was thinking that I’d reevaluate my opinion of her usefulness and leave her behind when I fled Jackson.

  I wanted to tell her that wasn’t a problem. Our problem was leaving Jackson in the first place.

  Because I wouldn’t do it without the hatchling.