Chapter 5

Arran’s office window exploded outwards as Mayor Searcy went through it. Searcy crashed backwards, driven by Arran’s knee, pushed ahead of the peacekeeper, whose eyes were aflame with righteous fury and activated augments. They went into the Hollow.  It was never truly dark in NEWSTEAD-SIX. Nighttime was spent in the shadow of a planet in a cyclic eclipse. The station’s prismatic shell was a burnished silver, imbued by protective chemicals and radioactive compounds that brought it a yellow-opalescent sheen. That shine, the light of the starforge some called it, caught the twirling broken glass that stuck in their clothes and made slicing paths across their skin. The glass flung away.  Arran was taking a long breath, chest swelling with readiness for his next strike, drawing back a fist.  Here on the civic end of the flat, the northern promontory overlooking the expanse of the Hollow ended near the base of the steps, and across them a wash of broken shards rained down. Arran punched Searcy into the Hollow. Surprised stationfolk on walkways across the winged halves of the ark flashed by.  A panesman who was sat atop his work-cart’s covered cargo bunched his hands in the canvas, bracing in sudden fright as the pair bore down on him. Searcy hit the cart first. Arran’s shoulder drove into him next.  At the impact the laden work-cart smoothly punted off-course and swerved downwards. The panesman went tumbling backwards and altogether his careful stacks of equipment and tools in metal crates came apart and lines tying down the covering came loose. The equipment drifted free behind them, suspended in the zero-g of the Hollow.  They dropped through the sandwiched sub-layers of the underflat, catching the attention of blinking, curious stationfolk living there, amongst the maintenance bays, foundries, and workshops. Welding torches sparked and engineers using them paused, raising protective masks to better see the commotion. Other watchers came out of the fluorescent dim, less human ones.  Gremlin hands extending out of the underflat brought inquisitive work-muties from the cramped shadows of structural gantry, scaffold, and hodgepodge junk assembled into a ghetto, a ghetto facilitating much of the station’s mechanical operation. Blotchy, distorted faces peeked out.  With Searcy pinned against the cart Arran unleashed a barrage of blows. Searcy was caught between Arran and the cart’s flank, his head bouncing between fist and metal. With each blow, tissue transformed under the toplayer of Arran’s knuckles, strengthened by reactive processes, hardening the bone and cartilage beyond steel. The face below his pummelling strikes grimaced, but held firm, toughening also in response. Arran’s intensity ensured Searcy bruised and cracked and bled. He couldn’t let the pressure drop. Bone shattered under a knuckle. Searcy’s cheek.  Progress.  The fighting pair descended further. The perspective flipped and they were upright again, rising now out of the Hollow and into the air above the underflat. Outside the station’s saloon, the careening wreck found an audience as the work-cart’s internal gyroscopes caught the inertia of its descent and corrected course.  The panesman was left stunned a ways behind them. ‘What the hell-’ he said.  Firmly braced against the Mayor, Arran had the leverage to swing vicious hooks directly into the Mayor’s face, a barrage lasting only while he had the bigger man pinned to the work-cart with his knee. He dug in and lay down more assault, fists flying in bloody rage. The work-cart’s motors whirred harder trying to push itself back on course.  Outside the saloon, two outer panesmen dusty from a long day’s clearing had forgotten the herbal cigarette they shared. It was held by one of them between two fingers, upright, and wasted smoke made a curling trail off it. The other had paused mid-reach for it. They saw the work-cart swerve in their direction and those fighting aboard it.  The saloon was built here over a busy corner. There was room for small skiffs or work-carts and worn balustrade hitches to tie them up. In the light past batwing doors, merriment made by a band entertained a score of stationfolk. Some were visible behind gauzy curtains, others through the doorway, all moving in there. On a quiet upper balcony a young mechanic in oily coveralls sucked down a cigarette and looked at the commotion. He saw Arran.  His face said Ah. He relaxed his position leaned over the rail. Just peacekeeper business.  The cart’s internal motors gave out. It tilted on its side. Arran’s purchase weakened and Searcy used the momentum to heave Arran off him. The peacekeeper drifted ungainly towards the saloon and sat up. He became aware of the audience growing, as below more people poked out of the underflat and stopped to watch on the esplanades. The panesman with the cigarette remembered it and put it back in his mouth.  The work-cart tumbled further over its side and Searcy rose off his elbows, nose streaming blood. He hacked a cough. His nose spurted. Blood gushed bright red into the air, flowing arcs becoming impermanent globules wobbling into arcing shapes again and spreading thin. Some of it spattered the cart. The Mayor wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It slicked off him.  His eyes locked with Arran’s. ‘I haven’t got time for this today,’ he said. He pushed off the cart and took to the air before the saloon. The orthorn-clad administrator turned to face him.  Searcy was slow. He lumbered into his turn. Arran was faster, each reflex honed by autonomous processes coded deep into his muscles. His blood pumped faster, his mind processed quicker, his body a protocol designed an age before to maintain a version of humanity that exceeded itself, and required excess to corral it.  He spiked forward to grab Searcy by the leg. He couldn’t let the big fellow grab him again. Trick the beast off his feet. Arran’s hand caught ankle.  A heavy balled fist dropped into the back of Arran’s skull. The peacekeeper spluttered, his vision going black. The blow rumbled him. He heaved, sprang back against the force of the blow, and yanked the Mayor like a weed from a garden. Using his attacker’s own weight Arran then easily flipped him. Without gravity the Mayor went spinning. He went tumbling away from the saloon, clearing the battle from the nearby onlookers. With a deep breath Arran shot after him.  One of the dusty panesmen beat a fist against the wall of the saloon. Grey shook off him. As the Mayor went end over end the panesman called out to the people within.  ‘Get out here! Arran’s fighting the Mayor again!’  Laughter sounded from inside. ‘Who’d he annihilate this time?’  Searcy kept spinning, clawing at the air and trying to see Arran moving. Arran shot across the Hollow and delivered a kick into his spine. He made it precise. Straight into the meat of his back. Searcy couldn’t avoid it.  Searcy soared away, grimacing. They stopped and faced each other. Searcy caught his breath, holding his stomach by the sides. He was winded. There in the middle of the Hollow Arran looked down the main street of the town to see who was watching.  It was a grand commercial corridor designed to serve humanity’s freighters and work-ships: the Hollow, an open hub of wide, flowing balconies, the masterwork of past artificers who linked the platforms by sleek, branching walkways. With the gradual motions of time, humanity’s alluvial hand had dressed the hub in organic sprawl. A vine winding around a baluster, a bright cluster of sporal agave flowers in an overgrown pot, fallen ochre leaves swept into corners. Lean-tos and shingles built from woods cut from planetside scrub extended frontages, and advertisements offered sale of foreign wares, curiosities, and local product sourced from Huon and the surrounding districts.  Stationfolk were watching from the saloon and from the hotel it faced across the Hollow. All along the merchant fixtures like the hardware, the EVA supply, the records-house, and the butcher, more people strayed about the balconies and watched two of their town’s officials fight. Searcy was still recovering.  They were lined up almost down to the freight yard, which opened onto the Hollow and faced the busy work-houses, the broad trade houses, the slaughter floors, and the oraculary district behind them. Several panesmen bringing their work-carts in for the night stopped to observe.  The invisible waves curated by the goliath Obels were hands that held it all together, those keeping the ark in careful suspension. One of the arcane obelisks was passing overhead to drench the lower town in slow, wubbing vibrations.  Arran could see all the way through to the massive gates on either end of the Hollow, with their atmos-field portals, those gates always open for transit. The screen of faint blue electricity kept out the vacuum of space. It kept in the air, and allowed the people to breathe. Outside meant death. A cold, slow death, until the body was collected and reanimated in one of the station’s few regrowth tanks. Panesmen who got caught out there said it was the worst death to come back from because of how much it hurt warming back up.  There was nowhere to go but out. It was either him or the Mayor that broke first, and Arran was not handing over his gun. He’d go as far as he needed to go. ‘It’s my gun, Searcy. I can’t give it over to you,’ he said. ‘It’s the way it is.’  There was nothing more to say. Arran launched into a winding trajectory, lining up a punch. Around him the images of street lights and faces spiralled, turning into long trails.  His fist hit Searcy’s palm. The lights arrested.  The Mayor took the full force of Arran’s punch. Arran might as well have struck the trunk of a tree. The deep thump! echoed. Searcy’s rigid stance braced against Arran, stuck mid-flight. The Mayor’s cold eyes stared at him from above a bloody chin, white teeth baring.  ‘I say what it is,’ he said.  Searcy’s hand clenched down on Arran’s fist, crumpling bone through flesh and hardened tissue. He crushed it like paper. He tossed Arran away.  ‘I saw you thinking,’ the Mayor said, flying after Arran and punching him in the gut. ‘You want to see how far I’ll take it.’ Though Arran’s own augments were strong he was no heavyweight like the Mayor. Arran’s lean body buckled into the fist.  A heavy knee came up and connected with his chin. The bone cracked again. Arran went flying backwards, vision spinning.  Another blow struck Arran’s cheek, walloping him senseless. ‘You’ll find out.’  The air rushed faster. Big hands had him by the collar. Searcy put on a burst of speed and hauled Arran straight down the Hollow.  He would put Arran through the gate.  The shipyards flashed by, their limpet clamps retracted and dark, and the pair were out in the open. Searcy accelerated. The wind behind them broke with a clap. Arran calculated the distance to the gate and wrestled at Searcy’s wrists. They didn’t budge. He couldn’t slip out of his coat. Arran swung fists into Searcy’s side. It made no difference. Each thud resounded through hardened flesh and muscle. The flat shrank into the distance below his feet.  Arran broke loose.  ‘It’s not your right,’ Arran said, driving a knee into the Mayor’s chest to force a gap between them. Searcy wobbled.  Searcy stopped, panting. His fighting augments took a lot of power to run, and he was an original human. Arran could go all day, but he still felt the damage the Mayor had caused. His brain was rattled from the blows to his head.  The pair stood out in the open. Empty sky framed them as they hung, alone for hundreds of metres there on the far outskirts of town.  Searcy said, ‘This is my station, Arran. This is my law. Hand over your weapon.’  ‘No.’  A guttural shout began from the Mayor’s chest and bellowed out as raw, primal anger. Every muscle swelled outwards, his chest expanding as he launched in for a punch.   The fist tracked towards Arran’s right eye. He slipped aside. The swing overbalanced the Mayor, who stumbled into him. Arran caught the arm and locked it under his own.  Outside the town they could fight without regard. The pair grappled in the weightless night, unaware of its dewy chill for the heat and rushing blood. Fists, elbows, and knees drove through the close distance between them. At once they broke apart and clashed again, the knock of their collision a loud, sharp smack!  They flung blows at each other and clawed. Their motions were for advantage, each trying to top the other in their aerial tango and drop heavy blows out past where the gravitational influence of the Obels was stronger. They caught at each other’s clothes, scratched at each other, and spat.  One freewheeling lurch brought Arran over the Mayor, and through shattered teeth Searcy cursed. He wound back a fist.  ‘Enough!’  Searcy activated his flight implant and snapped forward, buffeting Arran away with his whole body. The peacekeeper skidded back, bracing. Dust floating in the air brushed against him and whooshed towards the gate.  The gate. No, he thought. Not that far.  That distraction was all the Mayor needed. A wide solid palm planted across Arran’s forehead and clamped down. Arran was blinded.  The air rushed around him. He barely managed to let out a curse before again they stopped dead in the air.  ‘Don’t move, Arran.’  The gate was nearby. The sound of it was humming in his ears. The Mayor’s grip lessened around his head and his hand went away. Arran blinked at a sudden chill and looked aside. The Mayor had him right against the barrier. On either side, the long electric fence stretched out in the pentagonal shape of the panes that surrounded it. At each vertex small-field generators worked in tandem to keep tension on the electric membrane.  The air was thin as well as cold. Some of it escaped the field. The Mayor looked at him calmly.  Arran relaxed. Now it was one way or the other. The safety of the prism, or the dead cold of the vacuum. ‘I’ll give you the boot if you make any sudden moves,’ Searcy said.  ‘The boot?!’ Arran said, reaching for his pocket.  The Mayor’s eyes didn’t flicker from Arran’s. If they had, Arran would have lunged again.  Arran fished his pouch out with two fingers and unwound the old leather strap that bound it closed. He’d lost his papers. It always happened. They’d just fall out and then they were just floating anywhere. He sighed.  ‘It’s my fucking gun, you know,’ he said, winding the pouch back up. He fidgeted with his pocket. The button never held.  The Mayor said, ‘It’s either I take that or the hand it’s attached to.’  Arran fixed the button. ‘Sure. Okay.’