Her Brother's Keeper - eARC Page 17

  Chapter 15

  Zanzibar

  Danzig-5012 Solar System

  City of Freeport, Equatorial Region

  Freeport wasn’t much of a city, but it was the only real city left on Zanzibar and the closest thing the desolate rock had to a capital. At its center was the lonely planet’s only functioning spaceport, and a town had sprung up around it in the aftermath of the war. Every few local weeks or so, Zak was permitted to take his assistant, Anna Kay, into town to gather supplies and do research.

  At first, Aristotle Lang had sent one of his goons to act as an escort. Zak made it a point to appear too afraid to try to escape, and eventually the old warlord stopped worrying so much about him. These days, Zak was permitted to take Anna and roam Freeport at will. Lang still had spies everywhere, and he was forced to wear a tracking device that recorded everything he said and everywhere he went.

  It didn’t work that well, though. Zanzibar’s satellite network was patchy and unreliable at best. There were times when the entire planetary network would go down, and it could be days before someone would get it running again. The device itself was old and had not been properly maintained. In any case, Zak had more initiative than Lang imagined he did, and he was good with electronics. He had long since been able to hack his electronic babysitter, and there were plenty of dead zones in the city where it would lose contact with its home station. Even Cecil didn’t know about this—it wasn’t that Zak didn’t trust him, it was just that Cecil sometimes had a hard time keeping his stupid mouth shut, especially when he was in bed with the woman that Lang had given him.

  It’s better this way, Zak thought to himself. If I get caught, they probably won’t kill Cecil, since he didn’t know anything about it.

  Freeport was a crowded, noisy, dirty, and dangerous city. It was a cluttered mess of poverty, crime, and advanced off-world technology. Those who survived the Maggots’ assault on the planet and its desolate aftermath were a hardy folk. “Native” Zanzibarans tended to be clannish, suspicious of off-worlders, fiercely loyal to their own, and tough. Their ways often seemed strange or even cruel to outsiders, but they were the descendants of the survivors of this world’s second apocalypse. As backward and sometimes barbaric as they seemed, Zak had a lot of respect for them. If you could survive on Zanzibar, you could probably survive anywhere.

  The “natives” weren’t the only people on Zanzibar, however, especially in the notional city of Freeport. When he’d first arrived, Zak had been surprised by the amount of commerce and interstellar traffic coming and going through the system. With no planetary government and no official ties to the rest of inhabited space, Zanzibar had become a hub for illicit trade of every kind. A few pirates made the planet their home port. Traders and corporations used the system for illegal or unethical deals that needed to be kept off the books. Criminals, fugitives, refugees, and exiles also often made it their home. Zanzibar was hard to get to, but it seemed to Zak that for a lot of people, that was the planet’s best quality.

  Freeport’s streets were narrow, crowded, and cluttered. Structures had been haphazardly thrown up wherever the builders fancied over the years, and there was little rhyme or reason to it. The nicest buildings tended to be the oldest—prewar relics that had survived the alien bombardment. The newer stuff was either imported prefabs or structures cobbled together with locally acquired supplies. Most of them were dirty and many looked unsafe.

  The streets were often too narrow and too crowded with pedestrian traffic for ground cars. As Zak and Anna wove through the crowds, they had to dodge bicycles, electric scooters, and even the occasional rickshaw to avoid being run over. Vendors peddled goods from carts or small trucks, shouting at passersby for business or loudly haggling with customers. Small shops lined the streets, selling every imaginable product, including weapons, drugs, prostitutes, and even livestock. The air stank of trash, an inadequate waste management system, and animals.

  I hate this place, Zak thought to himself, not for the first time. Zanzibar’s quaint, third-world charm wore off quickly, especially when the food gave you diarrhea and you witnessed a group of local teenagers beat a man and steal everything he had, including his shoes. In many ways, Zanzibar’s tough conditions had brought out the worst in the people who lived here. Most seemed to carry a kill-or-be-killed, take-whatever-you-can attitude. Not unsurprising in people for whom day-to-day survival is an uncertain struggle, but still depressing.

  As if Zak needed something else to be depressed about. Focus. The little program he’d written was about to start spoofing his tracking device, but it could only operate for so long before running the risk of the deception being detected. He had a limited window to get his real business in Freeport done. Anna would take care of the stuff he’d ostensibly set out to do, and hopefully that’d be enough to fool Lang’s spies.

  Zak took a quick look around, then leaned over to his assistant. “It’s time, Anna. I’m going to split off here. Just do your shopping. Please be careful.”

  “You’re the one who needs to be careful,” Anna retorted. “I can take care of myself. If Lang finds out what you are doing, he’ll have you flayed alive.”

  Zak worried about his assistant. She was a dark-haired woman of Greek ancestry, hailing from the Concordiat colony of New Constantinople. She was a veritable encyclopedia of historical knowledge, and actually held doctorates from that colony’s prestigious University Byzantium. She didn’t talk about her family much, but he knew she came from a background of wealth and privilege…and she’d walked away from it all to go with him.

  So Zak worried. They were unarmed, except for a few knives between them, and Freeport could be dangerous. A woman all alone in this trash heap could be subjected to worse things than just petty robberies and beatings. But Anna was Anna, with enough stubborn courage to dismiss Zak’s concerns as more pointless worrying (which, he had to admit, he was prone to).

  “You’re not wrong,” he said glumly. “But you’re the only person on this damned planet I care about, so please be careful.”

  “I appreciate your sentimentality,” she said, trying not to sound aloof (she always sounded aloof despite her best efforts), “but we cannot lose sight of our objective.”

  She was right, of course. Zak nodded. “If I don’t make it to our meetup point, you know what to do. I need to get going. If I’m late they’ll get suspicious.”

  “Go, then,” she said. “Mind yourself!”

  “You know me.” Zak gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m always careful.”

  Anna rolled her eyes, pulled her hood up over her head, and disappeared into the crowd.

  * * *

  Zak’s contact was waiting for him as expected. The man was dressed in typically shabby Zanzibaran garb. He looked as if he just walked out of the shantytown on the outskirts of Freeport. His face was concealed by a common respirator and dust goggles. Had the man not given Zak the expected signal, he never would’ve picked him out of the crowd.

  The mysterious individual told Zak to follow him, but after that said nothing. He led Zak on a winding path to the outskirts of Freeport, through alleys, markets, slums, and crowded streets. The off-world historian didn’t blend in nearly as well as his guide, and Zak began to get nervous. It wasn’t good for foreigners to be in this part of Freeport. The shantytown was dangerous. There were people here that would kill a man for his shoes, and to their eyes the historian probably looked like a prime target: a rich off-worlder, out of his element.

  As if sensing his concern, the guide paused and turned to Zak. “Do not worry,” he said, his voice sounding strangely mechanical. “You are safe with me. I am called Strelok.”

  “Where are we going?” Zak asked nervously. “I was told not to come to this side of town.”

  “That is because your benefactor’s men are not welcome here. They are rivals to the gang that controls the shantytown. They are less likely to have spies here. Anyone caught working with them is usually killed.”

&nbs
p; That didn’t make Zak feel any better. He took a deep breath through his respirator. “I’ve been planted with a tracking device. I created a program to fool it, but I need to be careful.”

  Strelok looked at a handheld device. “I see. It’s crude, nothing I can’t block. Will your program provide false location data, or will this leave a blank spot on your record? Will it draw attention? Can you take it off?”

  “It falsifies my location data,” Zak said. “Shows me moving back and forth across the bazaar and market areas. It’s a compilation of previous visits to town, randomized and stitched together. If you can jam the signal it won’t show up as a lack of location information.” Zak rolled up his pant leg, showing a metal bracelet locket around his ankle. “I can’t get it off, though.”

  Strelok said, “very well,” and double-checked the screen of his handheld. He seemed satisfied that the device was being neutralized. “Follow me.”

  Zak nodded, and followed as his guide continued on. The shantytown was constructed of whatever materials could be found to build with. There were a few intact prewar buildings, and a few ruins of old buildings, but mostly it was row after row of cobbled-together shacks and hovels, where Zanzibar’s poor scraped a living off of an inhospitable planet. Improvised moisture condensers collected what little water there was from the air. Crude solar panels provided a modicum of electricity, which was necessary for survival. There was no wood to burn on Zanzibar, and the winters were terribly cold.

  Beneath the crumbling ruin of a highway overpass stood a sturdy-looking prewar building. It had once been two stories, but the stop floor had been blasted away, leaving only part of a wall. The windows had heavy metal plates bolted over them, and the door appeared to be reinforced as well. Behind the building was the crude wall that surrounded Freeport and kept out those deemed not fit to live in the ramshackle city.

  “What is this place?” Zak asked. Strelok didn’t answer. He rapped on the metal door three times and waited. A camera on the outside of the building was trained on him, and Zak had the uneasy feeling that someone was hiding nearby, pointing a weapon at his head. After a few agonizingly long moments, the door clunked metallically as it unlocked and swung open. The guide motioned for Zak to follow and disappeared into the darkness inside. Zak was hesitant to enter, but he could feel eyes on him. If he turned back now, he doubted he’d make it out of the shantytown in one piece. With nothing else to do, he steeled himself and followed his guide.

  The building was dimly lit and dusty. There were multiple cots stacked against the walls, and what looked like stockpiled rations and provisions. It was some kind of safe house or hideout.

  “Were you followed?”

  Zak jumped a little at the voice from the darkness. Out of the shadows stepped a silver-haired woman with deep lines in her face. She had a boxy flechette gun leveled at Zak’s chest. He quickly raised his hands and tried to think of what to say. He had no idea if he’d been followed! He was a historian, not a spy!

  Before the woman painted the walls with the contents of Zak’s torso, Strelok stepped in and addressed her. They both spoke Commerce English with the same odd accent, but did so almost in whispers. Zak couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Some of the words he did overhear didn’t make sense, as if they were mixing languages. The woman had a dull gray synthetic plate on the side of her head, at her temple, but whatever had once been attached there was now gone.

  After a few tense moments of heated but quiet discussion, the woman lowered her weapon and addressed Zak. “My comrade insists that you can be trusted, young man. He tells me this even though you are in the employ of Aristotle Lang. Tell me, then, how can we trust you?”

  “I don’t work for Lang willingly,” Zak said defensively. “I’m a hostage.”

  “Hostages don’t get to wander around Freeport unescorted.”

  “I spent a lot of time convincing him I’m not a flight risk. Besides, Lang cares about my employer, whose family is very wealthy. He’s the real hostage. I just got swept up in the whole affair.”

  “You do not belong on Zanzibar, young man. What is it you do here? Who is this employer?”

  Zak removed his respirator and took a deep breath. The building was pressurized and had a functioning filter. “My name is Zak Mesa. I’m a historian. I spent years researching the pre- and postwar history of Zanzibar. Much was lost in the war, as I’m sure you know, especially regarding the native species that lived here millions of years ago. I published a dissertation covering several theories as to what happened, and my work slowly circulated through inhabited space. I was living on Columbia at the time. Out of nowhere, I’m contacted by a man named Cecil Blackwood. He tells me he’s basically a big deal on his homeworld of Avalon, he tells me that he wants to go on an expedition to Zanzibar, and he’s willing to pay me a lot of money to do it. I jumped on his offer. It sounded like an adventure, and it sure sounded better than the dead-end job I was doing there.”

  “Why did this Cecil Blackwood want to come to Zanzibar?” the woman asked.

  “Alien artifacts,” Zak said quietly. “Items from just about any alien species are worth a lot of money. But stuff from the ancient, native Zanzibari? It’s exceedingly rare in a market full of exceedingly rare things. They’re priceless.”

  “So you came here, seeking treasure, to rob the tombs of the dead?”

  Zak’s eyes sunk to the floor. “It sounds bad when you put it like that. But that’s why I’m here. I’ve heard that you folks can help me.”

  “What is it you want from us? We do not traffic in alien relics.”

  Strelok spoke up then. “He wishes to send a message off-world.”

  “You could do that from the communications facility in Freeport,” the woman said suspiciously.

  “Uh, no I can’t,” Zak replied. “If I tried, one of Aristotle Lang’s spies would see me, and he’d have me skinned or something. He may not have power in the shantytown, but he has spies and contacts all over the city proper.”

  “Indeed, he does,” the woman agreed. Her skin was very pale, but her eyes were sharp and piercing. “So you came to us? Why?”

  “I’ve been doing nothing but researching the history of Zanzibar since I made planetfall last year. Cecil was able to throw enough money around to get people to talk to an off-worlder about the history of this place. I learned a lot, stuff that’s not generally known to the rest of inhabited space.”

  “Yes. Zanzibar has very little contact with anywhere else. That is one of the reasons we chose it.”

  “Money talks. It was through talking to the locals that I first heard rumors of your group. Zanzibarans are so clannish and paranoid that they avoid off-worlders as much as possible. They didn’t know much, and it was hard separating rumors from the truth. But I determined that a group of political refugees from the Orlov Combine had formed a colony on Zanzibar, and were maintaining a low profile while they smuggled more of their fellows away from Orlov’s Star.”

  The silver-haired woman looked thoughtful for a moment, unconsciously touching the plate attached to the side of her head. One corner of her mouth curled up in a lopsided grin. “Well done, Mr. Mesa. You came looking for us, and now you have found us. The question is, why should we help you? Even bringing you here entails quite a bit of risk.”

  “Look, I’ve spent more time with Aristotle Lang than I like. I’m sure he’s heard of you, but I don’t think he’s worried about you.”

  “It is not Lang that we fear,” the woman said sternly. “If the Orlov Combine were to become aware of our efforts here, what do you think would happen?”

  “The Combine has no power here,” Zak managed. “I mean, do they? They’re pretty isolationist.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I know full well the nature of their policies, Mr. Mesa. They are indeed isolationist. They are also xenophobic and paranoid. If there is one thing that would cause them to send a punitive military expedition, it’s the knowledge that there is a colony of defe
ctors living on an undefended world, who have been smuggling out refugees and dissidents for decades. If the Combine sends a fleet out and simply blasts Freeport to dust, who will stop them? Who will even care? No one cares about Zanzibar. You risk not only our operation, Mr. Mesa, but everyone on this miserable world. So I ask you again: why should we help you?”

  Zak’s mind raced. The woman’s eyes were boring holes in him. Strelok was immutable, impossible to read. Zak feared that he was once again in over his head, and that the wrong answer would bring him to a swift and unpleasant end. This was a bad idea. One more bad idea at the end of a chain of bad ideas.

  “Listen to me,” Zak began carefully. “Please. Lang isn’t interested in the ancient artifacts out of some historical curiosity. He means to sell them to the highest bidder. He intends to use the money to buy weapons from off-world, heavy weapons that you can’t find on Zanzibar, like power armor, missiles, and combat robots.”

  “It is no surprise that a petty warlord enjoys such toys, Mr. Mesa.”

  “He doesn’t want them so he can enjoy them! I believe he means to take control of Freeport! Think about that for a moment, will you? He may be a petty warlord now, but what happens when he gets his hands on military-grade hardware, takes control of this stupid planet’s only functioning spaceport, and has a vast supply of impossibly valuable artifacts to sell on the black market?”

  The woman’s eyes widened slightly.

  “What happens to your colony then?” Zak asked more quietly. “Do you think for a moment that Lang won’t buy weapons from the Combine? They’ll probably be his biggest trading partner. Orlov’s Star is the closest major inhabited system, after all.”

  Strelok removed his cowl. Like the woman, he had a plate embedded at the temple, an attachment point for some device that was no longer there. “This is why I brought him to you, Maggie,” he said quietly. “If there is even a chance any of this coming to pass…” he trailed off.

  The woman, Maggie, nodded slowly. “You were right to do so.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then addressed Zak once more. “Mr. Mesa, you have made a compelling argument. But I cannot make this decision alone. I will need to consult with the others.”