Stormblood, стр. 11
Only the chiselled walls of the asteroid told us we were not planetside. Chunks of the bare, exposed rocks were scorched black. Fingerprints of war. But Compass had been lucky. I’d seen entire worlds blasted to smoking ruins when Harvest was done with them.
New Vladivostok’s population was mainly Russian, Japanese and Korean with a smattering of Poles, Ukrainians and Kazakhs. Compass is infinitely more diverse. We walked through a mix of Africans, Hispanics, Indians, Nordics, and races completely new to me. There were enough other folks equipped with armour, hardsuits and varieties of exoskeletons that I blended in easily enough.
As we walked down the streets, we passed one of Harmony’s rehab facilities. One of those polished, angular designs, desperate to stand out amid the throng. Looked like the place where I’d had stormtech violently detoxed from my body, stripping away my strength, enhanced senses and ability to heal. Advanced self-healing was one of the most valuable assets of stormtech; short of a decapitated arm or getting your skull split open, our bodies could patch up almost anything. But that ability had been wrung out of me along with everything else the stormtech bolstered, in exchange for being free from stormtech. Or as free as anyone could be. A sign outside was displayed with hotline numbers for all types of addiction and violent or suicidal thoughts.
‘When did you come here?’ I asked Kowalski as we picked up our pace through the rush hour. I glanced over my shoulder in case the Jackal really was stupid enough to attack me despite being under Harmony guard.
‘When I was a kid,’ she said over the roar of overhead chainships. ‘Dad worked on a mining colony on an asteroid belt in the Fernik Sector. Horrific conditions, even before the Reaper War. He hit it big one day and got the whole family over here. Joined Harmony when I was sixteen, working in narcotics. Kindosh took me under her wing.’
There was clearly more to it. Spend enough time with Harmony types and you learn to read them. I remembered her rigid posture in Kindosh’s office. There was definitely something she wasn’t telling me.
In the middle of a concourse was a colossal statue of a Reaper. The marble had been chiselled to the nanometre, from its bulky armour, helmet and autorifle to the heavy boot planted square in the squealing, mud-caked face of a Harvest insurrectionist with anti-Harmony slogans plastered on his armour. We had something similar in New Vladi, only ours was modelled after an axe-wielding bogatyr. Medieval warriors from the windswept tundra of east Russia, like my ancestors. A terminal underneath the Compass statue detailed the bloody statistics of the war. I didn’t need to read it to know how many habitats, planets and stations Harvest had levelled, how many civilians we’d lost: I’d lived through it. People gathered around the heroic statue in awe, remembering our fight. But they’d never built a monument to the battle we fought daily against stormtech. They’d never make a statue out of the dying man in the alleyway.
Kowalski must have sensed my thoughts as she carefully guided me back into the main road and away from the marble Reaper.
The conditions of the streets worsened as we approached the Southern District, the grimier part of Starkland. Squalid tenements hunched over crowded shopping plazas, neon blinking behind grimy display windows, the walls infested with jungles of exposed wiring. The streets were less streamlined, more haphazard, with industrial yards, smoking workshops, coffeehouses and street stalls weaving into the dermis of the floor like sweat glands, blood capillaries and nerve endings.
These areas were populated with skinnies. I saw at least three at an outdoor eatery, blue fluctuating down their arms as they slurped broth. It was clear that other people were avoiding them. To many, stormtech meant you weren’t entirely human anymore. You were tainted, transformed, infected. A younger man squatting in the alley was so far gone that the ropes of saliva drooling from of his mouth were blue.
My apartment building was the same ubiquitous gunmetal grey as the dozens of serried buildings around it. A quick scan of my palmerlog at my door at the third floor and we were inside.
‘What the hell?’ I froze in the open door as the room morphed around us. Tables, chairs, kitchen counters and wallframes folded away as the room expanded backwards, creating more space. Furniture melted into the walls or floors, only to snap back into position as if nothing had happened, upgraded and new. The nanoplastic dining table was now rich granite, the battered lounge now black leather, draped with wool blankets and pillows, the coffee table made of rich oakwood. The dingy kitchenette had dissolved into a marbled galley kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances. The whole room had adopted a polished, showroom sheen. Even the air was fresh with the smell of smoky wood and wet stones. The luxurious coffee machine pinged as we walked in, fresh beans grinding away. An elegant wine carafe filled with some local vintage sat waiting on the tabletop.
‘I take it this is your boss’s doing,’ I muttered. Kowalski didn’t say anything, and she didn’t have to. Harmony might be the same, but using bribery was certainly new. ‘Even a dump like this comes with upgradable living space?’ I asked.
‘Everywhere on Compass does. You can live somewhere like … well, like this place, and still have the most luxurious living space inside. Or the other way around.’
That explained the Jackal’s home, at least. I grinned at the absurdity of it all. I’d heard how defiant Compass could be. They’d carved out an asteroid and stacked cities atop each other inside it. Why stop there? And, of course, what was given could as easily be taken away.
‘Good evening,’ came a sniffly voice, like that of a classic