But the scraps had worth enough. They were worth ferrying crews of impoverished Uwiwans by boat to Kekon’s shores, and then by truck into the densest jungle regions of the island’s mountainous interior. Worth hiring local supervisors like Bero and Mudt and paying them with money and shine, and if they stuck around for more than a year, with their own cut of jade. Last summer, Bero and Mudt had been brought into a room in a disused gym along with a couple of other new rockfish initiates. In front of Soradiyo and each other, each man pricked his bottom lip with a clean knife and kissed a slip of parchment paper with his name written on it. The papers were held together over a candle, burning their wet blood and sealing their pledges of loyalty and silence to Ti Pasuiga.
Bero pretended to take it seriously, but he smirked to himself. They were acting like kids joining a secret club, even though they were only here to get money and jade—same as what everyone wanted. Nothing secret or special about that.
Soradiyo, their barukan manager, usually met them in the Rat House and gave them three to four days’ notice of a nighttime scavenge so they had time to trek out to meet the loads of pickers when they were trucked in. Sometimes the weather or advance warning of a Green Bone patrol caused a change in plans and the job was canceled or delayed, in which case they had to pitch a tent and wait in the forest, eating dried food and grousing until conditions improved and the operation could proceed. Their job was to supervise the pickers—specifically, to make sure that none of them tried to steal any of the jade they found. A poor laborer might try to hide a bit of jade in his pockets or inside his cheek or up his ass crack, in the hopes of selling it himself for far more than he was paid by Soradiyo. Jade-wearing foremen could Perceive unsanctioned auras among the workers. A first attempt resulted in a warning. A second in death. Bero hadn’t had to kill any workers yet, but Mudt had. He’d had to shoot a man in the head last month, roll his body into the trees.
Bero took the marked stone and climbed up the overlooking ridge with short, Light jumps to the metal rolling bin, half-full of similar stones, each marked with workers’ numbers. Mudt guarded the bin tonight and kept watch next to the three military trucks splattered with mud and covered with camouflage-patterned tarps. Bero dropped the rock into the bin; it clattered amid the others. “How much longer have we got to do this?” Mudt griped, rubbing the outside of his arms and stamping his feet. Winter was the best time to scavenge because it was usually dry, but high in these mountainous areas, it was bitterly cold at night, cold in a relentlessly damp and clingy way. “This is a miserable job, keke. We could be back in the city right now, practicing. And fucking warm.”
“And working for shit wages in a gas station or shoe store or something? You’re grumpy because of the cold, but this is good money, keke. And if we keep doing it for three more months, we get jade.” Bero’s eyes ran covetously over the rocks in the bin. “No other job is going to give us that.”
“We have jade,” Mudt retorted. “We haven’t done anything with it except watch over these poor, dirty saps and freeze our asses off in the jungle. What do we need more jade for?”
“What for?” exclaimed Bero. “What do you think?” That was like asking why a person needed more food, or more money, or more women. You could never have too much; that was why the Green Bones were always fighting each other. Sometimes Mudt asked the stupidest questions.
“We should be training. We should be going after No Peak,” Mudt groused again, but Bero had stopped listening because he thought he’d heard something in the forest. The slag heap was entirely exposed, but dense, dark foliage surrounded them on all sides. He tried to reach out his sense of Perception. Staring into the darkness, his heart began to race and the night suddenly seemed to be full of danger.
“They’re coming,” Mudt whispered in sudden, certain fear. An instant later, Bero sensed it as welclass="underline" swiftly approaching jade auras that could only belong to Green Bones. He couldn’t tell how many there were or how long it would be before they arrived. In his mind, they seemed like bright missiles flying through the darkness toward him.
Bero shouted, “The trucks! Get to the trucks!”
He seized the rolling metal bin and dragged it toward the nearest tarp-covered vehicle. He threw open the back but didn’t bother to take the time to lower the metal ramp; with a heaving of Strength, he tried to lift the rocks inside. The container must’ve weighed at least a hundred kilograms; it wobbled and nearly upturned but Mudt ran to help him, and together, they wrestled the fruits of a night’s scavenge into the back of the vehicle.
Mudt ran to the top of the slag heap and broke open two flares, which sizzled and burned with painful red light and drew the attention of every picker below. “Green Bones!” Mudt yelled. “Run! Run!”
The pickers began to scramble up the hill in a panic, clawing with hands and feet, dislodging loose stones and sending them tumbling noisily down the slope. The first pickers to make it to the ridge dove into the trucks like rabbits into a burrow, eyes wide and white in their dark faces. They gibbered in frantic Uwiwan, begging the Abukei drivers to start driving, while their fellows shouted and cried for the trucks to wait. Bero stared down the hill. The pickers who were too far away, who knew there was no way they’d reach the trucks in time, were running toward the forest, hoping to scatter and hide among the trees. They were right to be afraid. At first, the clans had beaten the pickers and shipped them back to the Uwiwas, but that had not been enough to dissuade the scavenging; now the usual response was to snap the necks of any foreign thieves. Along with their jade-wearing supervisors.
Bero sprinted for the nearest truck. Mudt had already climbed into the one behind it. “Go, go!” Bero shouted, even as two pickers leapt for the open tailgate. One of them made it in; the other stumbled and fell as the truck shot forward, spraying him with mud as it left him behind. Bero stuck his head out of the window and looked behind them to see half a dozen figures emerging from the trees. They were moving so quickly their bodies seemed blurred, but Bero could see that they carried guns and moon blades.
If he had not been so terrified, he might’ve been awed. The scene looked like something out of a movie, one in which the Green Bone rebels flew out of the jungle and ambushed the Shotarian soldiers in their camp. Except that this was not a battle, but a crackdown. Gunfire broke out along with distant screams as the Green Bones began to sweep the slag heap for pickers. Nothing to be done for those poor bastards. Bero swiveled around to face the front again—just in time to see three men burst from the trees ahead and land in the road in front of them.
“Keep going, keep going! Run them over!” Bero screamed at the driver, but any further words caught in his throat as he watched the three men plant themselves in a line and throw a massive low-sweeping Deflection in unison. It tore across the surface of the narrow, pocked road like an amplified wave, flinging dirt and gravel up into the truck’s windshield. The truck’s tires skidded violently. The driver tried desperately to straighten them, but the vehicle spun nearly ninety degrees and careened off the path. It banked in a precarious, stomach-lurching jolt, then toppled sideways into the gully full of rocks and bushes.
Bero was flung against the side door; his hip and shoulder slammed into the metal, and he heard a crack that he hoped had not come from any of his bones. The driver landed heavily on top of him. In the back, Bero could hear thuds and cries from the trapped Uwiwan workers. A few sickening heartbeats passed, then the door of the truck was flung open so hard it was nearly torn from its hinges. Several hands reached in and yanked out the driver, screaming, then reached back in and latched around Bero’s legs. Bero shouted and kicked, but his flailing, imprecise Strength did not prevent him from being pulled out of the overturned vehicle like a hooked tuna being dragged from the water.