I was too busy with my fear to notice the junction and I hit it hard. My heart jumped around in my chest cavity as I swung up past ninety degrees and got to look at the ground from an interesting new angle. I almost tangled myself up in the cables. I managed to control my swinging. It didn’t look very dignified.
‘Move!’ It was Cat coming up fast behind me. I managed to clip the second sleeve over the next line and unclip the first head and move off just before she collided with me. The second stretch of cable was uphill. I had engaged the motor in the sleeve and the rollers were pulling me up the cable, but it was slow. This gave me time to contemplate dangling on a jury-rigged web of cable from a home-made climbing machine miles above rocky death on a high-G planet.
If anything this area looked more badly damaged, as if it had been more fiercely fought over, and the people who lived out here in the smaller stalactite dwellings and on the lighting rigs looked harder, more dangerous. There were more gang colours on view, more weapons. Tailgunner told me later that they were collectively known as the Sky Gangs or the Light Tribes. Most of Them could climb across any surfaces and when They’d come swarming across the cavern ceiling, the gangs here had put up a hell of a fight but had been forced back into the main stalactite time and time again.
We slid into an opening on one of the stalactites. The outside was painted. I think it was supposed to look like a theatre, like the kind you see in old vizzes, only it was inverted. We were met in the rock opening by gun barrels. One day I’d find a place where people didn’t want to point guns at me.
The opening was the entrance to a dome-like cave with various worn, low sofa-like pieces of furniture in it and a stall selling sweets, snacks, alcohol and recreational pharmaceuticals. It was decorated with murals that replicated posters from an earlier age promoting some kind of live entertainment. I think they were from a time before vizzes. If you wanted to go and see actors you used to have to go to a big building where the actors actually were and watch them with hundreds of other people, as ridiculous as that sounds.
The men and women pointing guns at us looked serious, capable and like they’d seen action. Initially I thought they were Maori with only one or two white guys. Tailgunner told me later that a lot of them were descendants of colonists originally from other islands in the South Pacific back on Earth.
I was less sure of the look, though. They seemed to be wearing their best clothes, like you see glamorous types wearing on the tabloid viz stations, if those best clothes had been made from a patchwork of rags. Presumably the rags were the only material they had to make their finery out of. All of them had long thick dreadlocks. I was sure I saw the silver of metal, as if some of the dreadlocks were made of steel camouflaged by the rest of the hair. Occasionally something would move under it.
I didn’t put my hands up but I did keep them away from where my pistols were concealed beneath the borrowed combat jacket. Many vets wore their combat jackets after they left the service. They were warm, rugged and some, like this one, were armoured. The others were doing likewise. Again it was useful not to have Mudge with us. On the other hand he could have spent some money at the drug concession. I’d have to get him something.
‘Don’t point those guns at me. I want to see Puppet Show,’ Tailgunner said, a little brusquely I thought for someone on the edge of a three-and-a-half-mile drop with guns pointed at him. One of the raggedy types seemed to agree with me. He took a step forward and pushed a shotgun barrel into the skin on Tailgunner’s face.
‘I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about, but you’re leaving now,’ the guy said. His voice was low, even and full of honest menace.
‘I know you,’ Tailgunner said. That was all he said. I turned to look at him. I had been hoping for a bit more.
‘Everyone fucking knows me, so what?’
‘It’s Tailgunner, you wanker.’
Again I felt that Tailgunner was pushing them a little harder than they needed pushing in our current position. I saw Morag turn to look at him. I was aware of Cat and Merle shifting slightly. I saw glances exchanged among the raggedy types. They definitely knew the name and it was a significant one.
‘You don’t look anything like him,’ the guy with the shotgun said. He was standing too close. He’d gone for the intimidation of physical contact with the gun and not the safety of distance. Tailgunner demonstrated this to him by ripping the shotgun out of his grip.
‘I’m fucking wanted.’ Tailgunner was all street snarl now. Show no weakness. ‘I’d be pretty fucking stupid to wander around without a disguise, yeah?’
Then he handed the shotgun back as if he couldn’t give a fuck. This was a different Tailgunner. This was his public face. He unclipped himself from the cable and started securing the rig about himself.
‘If you’re-’ the guy with the shotgun started.
Tailgunner fixed him with a glare. ‘It’s a call the Puppet Show makes, not you,’ he told him and then went back to what he’d been doing.
The raggedy types exchanged looks, mouthed questions and shrugged. It was clear they weren’t used to being dealt with like this. It was also clear that the big hacker’s name meant something here.
‘We’ll need your guns,’ another raggedy type said. Tailgunner finished packing away his cable gear and looked at her.
‘Go on then,’ he said.
I tensed. I hated giving up my guns, especially in the colonies, but there was no rush to disarm us. I noticed that one of them had left the group and disappeared through some thick red curtains into another part of the stalactite. Moments later he came back with one of the largest men I’d ever seen. He had the same dark but sallow complexion that many of the people of Lalande 2 had. He had the dreadlocks and a facial tattoo but it was much simpler than Tailgunner’s or the others’ in the whanau. He was pretty much the first fat person I’d seen since we’d got here, but judging by the patchwork of scars that covered his face he’d worked hard to get this fat. It was a muscular and solid kind of fat. His ragged finery strained to contain his build. I wondered how he could move his bulk in the high G.
‘Soloso,’ Tailgunner said, nodding a greeting. This time I heard caution and respect in Tailgunner’s voice.
‘He says he’s Tailgunner but he doesn’t look like him,’ the guy with the shotgun said.
‘Well, well, well hard Max Ruru,’ the big guy rumbled. At first I’d thought it was a heavy ground tank starting up.
‘We’ve come to see the Puppet Show,’ Tailgunner said.
Soloso was looking us over. I don’t think he liked what he was seeing.
‘Come to complicate our lives, more like it. Hear you’ve sold out, gone over to the other side. That true?’
Tailgunner met the other man’s look. ‘I think you’re the only person who’d get away with asking that question. Once.’
Soloso gave Tailgunner’s answer some thought. Then he smiled.
‘You get asked for your guns?’ he surprised me by finally asking. Tailgunner just nodded. Soloso turned to his own people. He looked angry. ‘Do you think we’re frightened of these people?’ The raggedy types shifted uncomfortably under the glare of his black plastic lenses. Then he turned back to us. He took his time shifting his bulk. ‘The Puppet Show will start soon. Please don’t make me waste my time by talking about the consequences of fucking around.’ Then he nodded his massive head towards the red curtains.
The rest of us unclipped ourselves from the cables and headed towards them. As Tailgunner passed Soloso, the big man stopped him with a massive hand on the hacker’s chest.