A Warrior on a Harsh World: Part 5
Where Kandi goes underground
A Warrior on a Harsh World is a story resurrected from our archives. It’s a prequel to The Lyra Cycle, telling the tale of how Kandi — Kandira Sakherani, dutiful daughter, promising soldier — ended up joining the ragtag crew of the Lyra. If you’re just joining us, hop back to part 1.
Kandi crouched low, squat-walking like a badamir ape through the tunnel while trying to avoid the drops that oozed from the rounded roof. She jerked away as an iridescent beetle skittered past. Her foot slipped on something, and she reached a hand out to catch herself, grimacing as it contacted the goo that coated the walls.
When the man had said he was a water man, she’d assumed that one of the vans parked outside belonged to him, and he delivered captured water to businesses and residences. No part of her brain considered he meant that he worked in the ancient water tunnels and sewer systems that ran under the city. She thought they’d all been decommissioned, replaced by newer, more efficient, cleaner sewers. But apparently not here in the old parts of the Antaran capital. Not even under the hospital. The slick goo seemed to be all that held the crumbling brick together.
She peered at her palm, then ran it down her pant leg. Ahead of her, the old man ambled along the narrow ledge beside the sluggish river. Glancing at the water, she thanked the gods that at least he’d taken them into a freshwater channel. Between them, Bash chattered about fantastic cities in the clouds and alien ships with sails of gold and secret mothers. The old man appeared to eat it up, nodding and smiling back at her brother now and again.
Kandi tried to pinpoint where they were, given where they’d left the hospital and how far they’d travelled. But without her usual waymarkers, she was lost. She didn’t even know which direction they were headed.
She coughed. Bash kept talking. “Ahem.” Still no reaction from the two men. She stood straighter then instantly regretted it as her head almost touched the arched ceiling. “Excuse me.” Her raised voice echoed along the tunnel.
The old man peered around Bash to look at her. “You might want to keep it down.” His gaze shifted to the tunnel over her shoulder. “They could be following us.”
She stopped, hands on her hips, pinkies resting on the hilts of her knives. She intended to look imposing but was sure she just appeared ridiculous. “Where are you leading us?” she asked, but kept her volume low.
“To Noumi, of course.” The man turned around and continued moving.
“Noumi.” Visions of street fights in the narrows lanes tumbled through her brain. She pushed past Bash and grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Are you trying to kill us?”
He pointed beyond her to Bash. “The Nouminen won’t kill him.” Once again, he started walking. “And it’s the one place a person can disappear. From cameras, from brigadiers, from oneself.”
“Yeah, because their body is…” She waved her hand around. “Dumped in the sewer.”
“Eh, I won’t let that happen.” He laughed but didn’t stop. “Not to him.”
With a scowl and a gentle nudge from Bash, she followed. Her fingers twitched on the pommels of her daggers. She hated just following blindly — she wanted to act. As she picked her way along the ledge, she reviewed her options, assuming this man didn’t deliver them to their deaths.
Hiding in the city was out. All Antaran cities were monitored by cameras and the occasional drone, which in turn were supervised by an AI that could identify someone based on a sliver of face and snippet of speech. Noumi was the only place in the city without the cameras, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying — every time the Security Services installed them, they were promptly destroyed. Though it still had drone flights.
They could hide out in the countryside, the Marken Wilderness even. But, assuming they made it through the city and surrounding towns undetected, she had no survival gear and only basic desert training. Her shoulders rose and fell in a heavy sigh.
She huffed out a loud exhale. There was only one option: he had to go back to the Sisters of Elazir.
There is another option, a quiet voice told her. “That’s not an option.” She glanced back at Bash. She was not delivering him to their mother to be executed.
The Sisters had the power to protect him from any house that wanted him dead. Even the Matriarch herself wouldn’t attack them. And maybe they could help heal his broken mind. Their ship was now parked at the main spaceport, having overstayed their welcome on the Mount, but apparently not finished their business on the planet. And the port was on the outskirts of Noumi.
“Uh oh.” The old man had stopped.
“Uh oh?” Kandi peered over his shoulder. She could just make out a flash of red ahead. “What’s that?”
“I think you call it a net.”
“A net.” The words escaped in a breath. She’s seen one in action once, when it was to clear the narrow lanes during the Nouminen riots last year. A mesh of bots with laser beams running between them as they scurried along walls, slicing anything in their path. Even the local branch of the Secretariat of Interplanetary Peace and Stability had deemed them a step too far. “They were all supposed to be destroyed.”
“Someone didn’t listen.” The man leapt to the other side of the water with a spryness that belied his age.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a hatch.” He pointed down the far side, a few metres in the direction of the net.
“You’re going to leave us here?”
“Of course he isn’t.” With that, Bash jumped over the water, his long legs clearing the channel, though he skidded on the other side, hitting the wall with an oomph. If the old man hadn’t grabbed him, he would have fallen into the river.
Kandi scowled at them, then glared at the advancing net. Her legs weren’t as long as Bash’s. But the only other escape was to jump into the river and let it carry her back to the hospital. No doubt into the waiting arms of her mother. She took a deep breath and flung herself across.
One leg landed, the other slipped on the grime, and went down into the chilly water. “Bleeding Hades.” She scrambled to find purchase, but in the end it was her brother and their guide who hauled her onto the ledge. Without a word, their guide led them to the hatch. He twisted it open and shimmied through. Kandi and Bash followed as he led them to a ladder, at the top of which was another hatch. He stopped and ran his fingers over a series of worn symbols.
“Ah, good.” He nodded and opened the hatch. “It leads out into Maitinen Park.”
Kandi knew the park and the surrounding neighbourhood from her time patrolling the section as a cadet. The man’s head disappeared through the hole.
“It’s clear.” His voice wafted down, then the rest of him disappeared. Bash moved to follow, but Kandi grabbed his arm and shook her head sharply as she stepped in front of him.
“Me first.” She pulled herself up the ladder and peeked out. It was indeed clear. She didn’t even see a camera. The hole was beside a pump house that fed a waterway that led to the pond at the center — a human construct in a water-starved city. She leaned down to offer Bash a hand. Once they were both out, she breathed in deeply as she straightened and arched her back. Even with the cameras that peppered the streets, at least this was a world she knew.
She turned to the old man, only to see him toddling off across the park. Recognizing his help was at an end, she didn’t suggest they follow, though she wished she’d had a chance to thank him.
“What now?” Bash squinted as if the sun was too bright. His shoulders slumped, and he shoved his hands into the pouch of the borrowed sweater.
She smiled and grabbed his arm, pulling him along. “Now we head to the Moaning Bridge.” The bridge didn’t span a waterway, not really. It was a lookout, over the green water that pooled at the bottom of the cascade that fell from the Lake of Sighs. Kandi couldn’t believe it had been just last night that she’d stood there next to Pilhadi, looking up at the stars. She glanced up at the imposing rock, then turned back to her brother. “Then to the port. To space and beyond.” She started striding at a tangent across the park, heading towards the House Mount.
“Ah, hey, maybe we can find the aliens, and I can introduce you.”
Kandi just kept walking. Now that she was above ground, she knew exactly where to go.
Apparently, their pursuers knew exactly where to go too. As they approached Eumoni Avenue — the wide thoroughfare that ran to the base of the steps leading to the Moaning Bridge — flashes of uniform caught her attention. She pulled Bash behind one of the pillars that supported the tram tracks overhead. Even more security personal than usual roamed the avenue. And not all of them wore the Citizen Security Forces uniform. With a jolt, Kandi realized that the people looking for them might not even be wearing uniforms.
Glancing around, she took stock, shushing Bash when he tried to speak. A smile formed on her face when her gaze fell on the sign over her brother’s head.
“Amity Pass.”
“That’s what I was trying to say.” He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked.
She grimaced. “Okay, fine. Come on.” She’d forgotten that Bash had spent as much time, maybe more, on these streets growing up. Grabbing his hand, she started walk-running down the cobbled side street that ran between Eumoni Avenue and the next street. They’d have to go down to go up again, but there were fewer cameras in the shadowed lane, and fewer people to spot them.
Twenty metres along, they came to an offshoot. It headed up to a set of stairs which would take them in a roundabout way towards the bridge. Kandi turned into the lane then stopped.
“A net,” Bash said, his tone even, as he came up beside her.
“Hera wept!” Kandi slumped against the wall, sliding down to sit on the cobble stones. Bash wobbled slightly, then dropped to the ground as his knees buckled. “Bash?”
“I’m fine. We’re fine. Everybody is fine. Nothing to see here.” He waved a hand. “Did you know the aliens can become invisible?”
Kandi groaned then eyed the net, sure it was there for them. Her eyebrows pulled together. “How did they know we were down below?” Using the wall, she hauled herself up. “They shouldn’t have known where we were headed. First at the park, now here.” She frowned. “They’ve to be tracking us.”
She patted herself down — if it was her, it would be external since there’d been no chance for anyone to inject her with a trace. “Check my back, Bash.” His fingers ran over her back and along her legs, then he stood and mussed her cropped hair.
“Nothing, except sewer goo.”
“It wasn’t a sewer.” She turned to do the same check on him, taking extra care with the sweater the orderly had given her brother — she knew she shouldn’t have trusted the man. She dug deep into the pockets and checked for things sewn into the cuffs. “Bleeding Hades!”
“You found something?”
Her hands came to her hips as she peered at the net that headed their way at an increasingly fast clip. “No.” She frowned as she looked both ways along the lane, then her frown lifted. She yanked up the hood on Bash’s borrowed top and grabbed a fistful of fabric. “Come on.”
Striding down the street, she tried to add some swagger to her steps. She felt the instant Bash noticed the sign of the establishment she was steering them towards — the fabric tugged as he slowed, but she kept her grip firm.
“No.” His tone was half statement, half question. “You wouldn’t.”
“Yes.” When he pulled away, she yanked him towards her. “We need to see if they injected you with a trace.”
“But a brothel?”
“Both the brothel and their clients have a vested that their employees —” She poked him in the chest as he stared over her shoulder. “— aren’t tracked. They’ll have a scanner at the door. And without the cameras of a Citizen Security Forces post.” She patted him on the face and smiled. “Now, turn that frown upside down.”
He grimaced at her but started walking towards the sign with the black cat.
Kandi paused at the door, letting Bash step in ahead of her. Sure enough, an alarm sounded as they passed through it. Microseconds later, it stopped, and a hush descended around her, any sounds trapped in the plush tapestries and soft furnishings. Kandi frowned at the person who stepped from behind a desk.
“One at a time.” The words dripped like syrup in their throaty voice.
Kandi took the smallest step back, trying to stay off the street. When Bash walked through again, the door was silent. A flutter started just below her sternum, like she’d swallowed a jula bug. She stepped through the door.
“It’s me.” The alarm masked her whisper. She patted her legs.
“Are you the agent, love, or the escort?” The concierge lazily waved a wand over her, without so much as a beep. Though they did arch an eyebrow at her blades.
Kandi knew the intent of the question: as the agent, it didn’t matter if she had a tracer. “No, sorry. Wrong address.” She shuffled back, as she ran her hands over her torso and nudged Bash behind her.
“Are you sure?” The concierge ogled her brother.
Kandi nodded, sliding her hands up to her neck. Pilhadi’s pass. She tugged the thing off as she turned and pushed Bash back, scowling at the lopsided grin he gave the concierge, before turning in front of her to head out the door.
But as soon as she was over the threshold, she bumped into him. He’d stopped, and peered up the street they’d come down. Blue uniforms filled the entrance to Eumoni Avenue. Her mother’s personal guard. As of yet, they hadn’t seen them, or at least didn’t realize who they were. Kandi contemplated popping back into the brothel — she was sure the concierge would welcome them, or at least Bash. She discarded that idea as soon as it arose in her brain: the sanctity of a brothel wouldn’t put their pursuers off. Instead, she dropped Pilhadi’s pass and crushed it under her heel.
Glancing towards the next main street, she saw a security drone fly by. Then her eyes lit on another offshoot lane across and down from them. She ducked into the alley, Bash on her heels.
Together they jogged along the small back street, veering left when it forked, away from Eumoni Avenue. Over her shoulder, she heard Bash’s breathing become laboured. She slowed, turning around.
“Duck!” She crossed the few steps between them as he peered at her, a question on his face. He couldn’t see the drone behind him or its targeting lights flashing. Her training kicked in. In one hand, she drew her knife. With the other, she shoved him down and used his shoulder as leverage to boost herself onto the conduit case that jutted out of the wall.
She aimed her knife hand at the drone, trying to knock it out of targeting alignment. When she slashed at its side, it sank a few feet, whirring angrily. She dropped to the ground when it turned its lenses on her. They clicked and beeped as they tried to focus on her.
Not wanting to turn her back on it, she glanced over her shoulder to see her brother staring wide-eyed. “Run.” She shoved him with her free hand, even though his pale pallor and his still heaving chest told her he couldn’t run fast or far.
Returning her attention to the drone, her jaw clenched. Her eyes narrowed as she peered at it. Its targeting lights flashed, but it struggled to gain lift. A grim smile crossed her face. She lunged towards the drone, launching herself at it full-body. In the same moment, it released a blast at her. Pain seared through her shoulder. She grit her teeth as she drove her knife into its back, and they both fell to the cobblestones. The drone let out a warbling chirr, then went silent and dark.
Her chest heaved as she tried to calm her breathing. But she couldn’t rest — the drone certainly sent its position and recordings to its minders before its death. She rolled over to find Bash staring at her, a piece of brick in his hand.
“I told you to run.”
“I thought you might need help against that alien insect.”
She blinked at him as she stood. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
A few metres ahead, they arrived at a junction, and Kandi peered into the dim lane on her right, overhung with brick walls. She recognized it from her patrols during the riots — she knew where it led.
“I guess we’re going into Noumi sicola after all.”
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