P.M., Julie Steimle [unputdownable books TXT] 📗

The fly that buzzes loudest gets swatted first

Their flight scooters shifted down from higher gears and settled in front of the undercity apartment building. Dural Korad and Dural Mezela simultaneously kicked on the resting foot of their vehicles and swung their legs over the seats, stepping onto the hard concrete of the darkening neighborhood. The sky panels were turning to the late evening setting. The undercity was colder than usual.

Dural Korad kicked the trash that lay at his feet and straightened his collar. Filthy city. The rats never took care of it. Korad turned to his partner and motioned for them to go inside. They had a job to do.

Undercity dwellers in the neighborhood watched the two People’s Military officers enter the rundown building and shuddered. Someone was in trouble.

The two officers walked with distaste through the littered hallway that led to the lifts that would take them upward. Dural Mezela breathed hard in his helmet, panting like a tired dog, knowing the outside air had a stench that was unfavorable. Korad led the way, marching briskly toward the doors of the elevator. They passed several pale-face children, staring at them with wide eyes. The children ran away in fear, whispering those terrified sounds to each other.

“P.M.s!”

Korad and Mezela ignored them.

The elevator settled on the bottom floor and the doors opened. The ride upward in it was swift, but the helmets could not mask the stench that pervaded the box that carried them. Mezela had to hold his breath.

The elevator stopped sharply. Floor 32.

Dural Korad stepped off the elevator and Mezela eagerly followed him. Korad immediately marched to apartment 5563ax and inserted his all-access card into the code slot. The door popped open quietly, and Korad pushed it further stepping into the room. “You can take your helmet off, Mezela. You can be assured Zeldar keeps his place clean.”

Dural Korad walked about the room, unstrapping his helmet and lifting it off, revealing his white mop of hair that fell about his pale face. The apartment was dark. Only the dim night-lights glowed in the silent room. Zeldar was not home.

Mezela quickly took off his helmet and took a strong, relieved breath of air. Crinkling his nose, he said, “It may be clean, but it sure is stuffy. I don’t think that Zeldar guy has been here for a while.”

He walked up to the counter in the kitchen and wiped the surface with his fingers. Trails remained in the dust.

Korad noticed the dust as well. Jafarr Zeldar must have been gone a long while. Since he had not appeared for work for two weeks, they were sent to find out the reason. The Dural figured he knew the boy well enough. Jafarr was an unusual case: eight Arrassian years old, and an intelligent young man who had the wrong connections, the wrong influences, and the wrong blood. Some would say he was too smart for his own good.

But Jafarr was Dural Korad’s responsibility, and somehow Korad had failed to reform him though he had succeeded with so many others. The undercity half-blood rat was most likely up to no good if he wasn’t at work where he belonged. Korad had arranged that job for him under a great deal of stress, and this was how he was repaid? Terribly ungrateful, that boy. He should have seen it coming when he discovered that Jafarr had avoided taking the test until they had to physically drag him in with a guard against cheating. Even more so he should have seen it coming when Jafarr had looked annoyed at his high score as if he had been trying to make it low. The boy had scored higher than he did, and Korad’s ranking was impressively high. Yes, dangerously intelligent that boy, and for a rat that made him a threat to society.

Korad entered the small bedroom that belonged to Jafarr. It was clean except for the dust gathered on the computer consoles and sleep-bench. Opening the inset drawers that were in the wall, he peered inside. A few suits still lay in the drawer. It was obvious that when Jafarr left, he did it quickly.

Turning from the drawers, Dural Koral inspected the computer study desk on the opposite side of the room. Reaching over, he tried to switch it on, touching the screen. Nothing happened. The man tried again, tapping it hard, but it failed to boot. In frustration, he looked it over. That was when he noticed a broken piece of plastic on the keyboard. Peering down at it closely he felt it with his fingers, groping the loose edge where the computer had been pried open. Korad carefully lifted the panel and looked inside. Several memory cells were missing and wires were severed.

Clever boy.

Korad sourly grimaced, dropping the broken computer top where it had been.

“Dural Korad, come and look at this,” his partner called from the other room.

Korad quickly joined Dural Mezela in the kitchen. The visa-screen above the counter was also dismantled and the keyboard keys fell off the pad as Mezela turned it over. Korad glared at the boy’s handiwork, wondering what was Zeldar up to. Dural Korad knew Jafarr Zeldar knew his way around computer systems though they had yet to prove he was an experienced hacker. Korad suspected the boy had already tried to break into People’s Military records, possibly succeeding.

But where had the boy run off to? Did he actually think he could survive in the undercity, homeless? Korad wondered. It didn’t seem likely. He was sure he knew Jafarr better than that. Jafarr would not be out in the undercity on his own. That rat boy had to be with the rebellion now, helping them, teaching them perhaps his sneaky manipulative skills, maybe even leading them like all the Zeldars before him. Or he could have hidden in with the seers and forged a new identity. He was an unpredictable scamp.

Korad remembered the day he came home to tell Jafarr about the death of his father. Instead of reacting as a regular rat did, Jafarr had been bad as a Tarrn, sentimental and calculated. Jafarr had come home after another day of work at his repair job. Dural Korad had surprised him, standing in the apartment kitchen, playing with a small hand held riddle toy that he found sitting on the counter top.

“What are you doing here?” came the sullen speech of Jafarr. Even then Korad could tell Jafarr never liked him.

“I came to inform you…your father is dead,” he had said.

Jafarr had stood still, clenching his lighted hard hat in his hands. He had closed his eyes tight and then asked slowly, taking deep breaths in, as if in pain, but indeed controlling himself as a temperamental person would have to do to function in real society. “How did it happen?”

Korad was sure, at first, that Jafarr was taking it well, so he told him clearly, checking his gloves for loose threads.

“Your father was stealing weaponry from a People’s Military arsenal.” Then looking more directly at Jafarr, he said, “Did you know your father was a member of the rebellion?”

Jafarr appeared to ignore the question and clenched his fists tighter. “How did he die?”

Korad smirked and stood up straight, figuring the boy was handling the news as he should. “Your father was stealing weapons. I had to shoot.”

The boy’s eyes shot up, staring angrily into Korad’s face.

“You shot my father?” Jafarr seemed as if he could barely keep himself from exploding.

Korad stood with a nonchalant air, ignoring the boy’s obvious reaction. He did what he came to do. Korad patted Jafarr on the shoulder and walked toward the door. “I’m worried about you, Jafarr. You have had a terrible upbringing. First your mother…”

Jafarr flinched at the mention of his mother.

“…Now your father. You shouldn’t follow their poor example.” Dural Korad opened the front door to leave. “See that you learn from this kid. Be wiser than your parents.”

Dural Korad had closed the door behind him and walked down the hall. As he went, he had heard an angry thump on the door behind him, but he knew Jafarr would not follow him. The boy knew his place now. Obviously Jafarr understood that he could die also. Silence echoed in the hall. Peering eyes from other apartments looked out and he heard the whisper of dark words.

“P.M.”

Shrugging off the recollection, Dural Korad gazed at his partner, wondering if perhaps he had judged the boy wrong. Jafarr Zeldar was now unaccounted for, and that made the boy trouble. The two officers continued to search the apartment, but the only other missing objects were old photographs and computer memory components from the father’s old room, and some famous Zeldar musical instruments. Wherever Jafarr was, he was not coming back.

Dural Mezela’s communick beeped. He quickly picked up the device and set it up to his ear. Sharply, he said, “They found Zeldar! The Surface Patrol caught him. He was trying to escape to the surface.”

“Let’s go, Mezela,” Korad said, stepping briskly out of the apartment and into the hall.

They jogged to the lift and took a quick descent downward. It took them no time to strap on their helmets and fly into the cavern traffic above. The trash scattered in the exhaust that blew into the cold air. People watched with dark eyes, fearful, angry.

“P.M.s,” they heard the rats growl.

The two officers flew swiftly into the transit district, taking the metro tunnels upward and upward. Korad hoped to intercept the transport convoy and personally make sure Jafarr was safely tucked away in ISIC.

Their flight took them faster and faster. They passed most of the traffic below them. Only the Surface Patrol flymites overtook them in high speeds and Korad cursed at the flymites as they zipped by, reckless by People’s Military standards. Dural Korad could hear the irritated responses of the flymites as they vanished ahead. The communiqué was clear.

“P.M.”

They reached the Surface Gate. The clusters of shops and restaurants were teeming with people as usual. Dural Korad would have sped directly into the Surface Patrol corridor from there if it were not for the alert immediately sent to his flight scooter. Jafarr had escaped!

Slamming on his decelerator, Korad ordered his partner to halt. People in the gate hall scattered to avoid his mad flying. Onlookers watched the People’s Military officer land angrily on the floor. Several turned away, realizing who they were, some terrified, and others sullen. Only the High Class members welcomed the sight of the high blood soldiers.

Ignoring the dirty looks and turning to his partner as Dural Mezela parked neatly beside him, Dural Korad sat cursing, and he glared at the crowd. The High Class members ignored it and continued on their way. The other classes also dispersed as Korad look fiercely after them. Among them he spotted strange movement in the midst of the crowd, one that did not go with the flow of the people. Unlike the others it was not a sullen movement. It was a strategic black haired head bobbing lower among the blondes and redheads, maneuvering away from his position in the crowd. The man turned once to peek at him.

Korad narrowed his eyes. That face. That jacket. He knew that man.

“Zeldar! Stop where you are!” Dural Korad shouted, pulling his top-of-the-line Marksman 33 out. He pointed it to the back of the fleeing figure and fired a warning shot just above the boy’s shoulder. Jafarr turned to look back, but instead of showing the fear that Korad was used to seeing on people’s faces, he saw a wicked grin that pierced the officer like a real knife thrown at him. Without much of an effort, it seemed, Jafarr took three steps to the side and vanished in the crowd, his dark head gone from view.

Dural