“Let’s do this,” Gunner said, making no atempt to conceal the sour expression on his face. He stepped out onto the platform. The others followed.
Grim checked his chrono. “We must make haste. We have only a few hours before the night cycle begins.” He took the lead, walking purposefully.
“Does the dataslate have the address of the sister?” he asked. He looked back over his shoulder to make certain that Cutter was staying close, but there was no need. Cutter was following along gamely enough, his face lit by the green glow of the dataslate.
“It’s marked on our map. Hab-stack #7, it says. This way…” Cutter moved into the lead, his preternatural senses on the alert for trouble.
Coscarla had the feel of a buried and abandoned city, shrouded in darkness beneath a steel sky. It was a cold and empty place, where whole tenements and hab-stacks were blackened by fire, or stared silently with a hundred vacant smashed window eyes, while ancient and seemingly purposeless columns and arches of black granite soared high into the darkness.
The power supply was obviously poor, as the streetlamps along the main thoroughfares flickered and struggled to cast a pale twilight. Refuse and debris clogged the alleyways, the haunts of shapeless and half-hidden forms of dregs—or worse. The skyline near the southern portion of the district was criss-crossed by the overhead rail lines of Sibellus's mass transit network, which clattered and sparked intermittently through the cycles.
Far above in the high shadowed skies, the periodic exhalations and clamor of the hive's vast air processing network was muted into distant thunder, the action of which materialized later at ground level as squalls of sudden chill wind, and even the occasional curtain of dirty rain that was nevertheless much too brief to wash the grime from the streets.
There were people living in Coscarla, thousands of them in fact, but they were so swallowed up by the vast and darkened spaces around them that they seemed very few. Nor did they linger long outdoors, rushing silently to their destinations with their collars turned up and their heads firmly down. They were disheveled, threadbare, and had the look of frightened men and women, determined to get on with life the best they can.
Cutter did a quick comm check with Gunnar and Grim’s personal vox devices, then handed them back, satisfied.
“How far to the sister’s?” Gunner asked.
“Looks like we have to pass through a trade market and a worker's union to get there the short way,” Cutter said. “Or we can go around.”
Cutter swiveled his head from side to side, constantly searching the empty windows and doorways.
“Do we have reason to worry about the Workers Union?” Grim asked.
Cutter shrugged. "Hivers are unpredictable sh*ts.”
“So are Ferals,” Grim countered.
“Easy, techie,” Cutter warned. “I'm not the same goat as I was under the eye of that Medicae...”
Cutter glanced around. Nothing seemed amiss, but nevertheless, he was nervous. Perhaps not as nervous as the people watching them surreptitiously, sizing them up.
Cutter bared his teeth at a hab-prole that stared a little too long. The prole scurried away quickly. There was absolutely no doubt that Cutter was along to provide muscle. Confident again, Cutter slung his rifle over his shoulder.
“So… short way or the long way, fellas?” he asked.
Wordlessly, Grim descended from the train platform and single-mindedly walked towards the sister’s hab-stack. Gunner and Cutter fell in behind him.
Cutter nodded at a three-story pillbox made of hardened concrete that squatted just ahead of them. “That’s an enforcer station. #2 on the map. Do we want to check in?”
“This is a shadow op,” Grim replied. “They went through the trouble of giving us these cover identites; we might as well use the tools we were provided.”
“Let’s move then,” Cutter said. “Do you want me up front?”
“Probably best,” said Grim. “You’re much more aware of your surroundings.” He nodded over at Gunner, who was lost in thought, still eyeing the enforcer’s station suspiciously.
“Graffiti on the walls…” he muttered to nobody in particular.
“Any significance to it?” Grim asked.
“Nothing about the graffiti in particular, no,” Gunner explained as they walked towards the Southern Square. His eyes never left the station. “But we would never have allowed graffiti to foul our walls; Warden would’ve had somebody’s ass out there to clean it up. That’s assuming the gangers even dared to tag our walls in the first place. I get the impression the inmates are at least somewhat in charge around here.”
Cutter had led them through the Square and into the edge of a sprawling, makeshift market. Street vendors hawked all manner of dubious wares on foot, or from relatively fixed ‘storefronts’ that were, in truth, little more than lean-to stalls. Even the most colorful awnings were covered in dull grey grime and ash. The entire area was lit with large blue glow-lamps, but the intended festive effect seemed just the opposite.
“Gunner, Grim…” Cutter began. “You want to try to plow through this market, then head north, or avoid it and take the longer back way?”
“I say through,” Grim said. “It’s not wise to be caught out here after dark.”
“Agreed,” said Gunner.
Cutter shrugged and moved into the market. Gunner was strangely comfortable in the milling crowd of hab-workers, street sellers, dregs and gangers. It was the sort of place where a few gold Thrones and the right questions might turn up a treasure trove of leads.
“Stay close, Arbitrator,” Cutter said. “Wouldn’t want you gettin’ lost.”
“Notice how the people give a wide berth to those two-man Enforcer teams on patrol,” said Gunner.
“Isn’t that pretty typical?” Grim asked.
“Sadly, yes…” Gunner admitted. “But I don’t like the way they swagger.”
“Come on,” said Grim, pulling Gunner away.
