Simoom Rising

Chapter Seven

WAVE Orbiting Station
Now

Harmony

She was grumpy the next morning, this detective of mine. The purr in her voice was hidden behind loud barking that hurt my head.

"What did the PCC members do?" she demanded.

I shrugged. I suppose she thought if she got me talking, I'd let slip where the rest of them were hiding. Did she think I was that dumb? I told her instead: "I want to talk about Sila."

"Maybe later. Tell me about Omari, Bergen and Ng."

I shrugged again. It was hard to know where to look when I spoke to her. Do I look into the camera? It's just a flashing red eye. Do I look down at the scratches on the metal table? Do I look at the dirt underneath my fingernails? Do I look at the scuffed walls of this small room that once was white, but now not so much? I couldn't concentrate; I couldn't keep my mind from wandering.

"Answer the question," my detective barked again. I wondered what she looked like. I wondered why she was in such a bitchy mood—maybe she hadn't slept well—maybe she had had a bad dream.

"Commander, are you listening to me?"

I wished she wouldn't call me that. "Yes, I heard you." My instinct was not to tell her anything about the PCC. I had spent a lot of time keeping their secrets; it was second nature to me. But then I thought I don't have to do that anymore. So why not tell the detective? "Omari did the organizing. Bergen and Ng did the supply runs back and forth to the Plat."

"Yes, we know all about the black market the PCC ran." She sounded like such a cynic. How old was she? "What about Mancy?"

"You could ask him, you know. But, sure, okay—Mancy did a little of this and that. He's good at chatting up people. He can be charming when he wants. Before the blockade and the barricades went up, before the riot, he used to visit the rich matrons on the Plat, charm them in to helping us."

"You mean Mancy conned those women out of their money—conned them into supporting political terrorists."

"That's not who we were."

"You deny the PCC tried to drum up anti-WAVE sentiment?"

Where in the Hell did she get that from? "Look, Mancy flirted with those trophy wives so they'd use their digi-accounts to buy us stuff—basic stuff we needed to survive. We weren't lobbying anyone. And we didn't run a black market. We never sold the supplies to the Pitters; we were running a charity."

"An underground charity—without a license."

"Oh for fuck sake!" I threw up my hands and the handcuff pulled at my wrist. "Who would have given us a charity license? WAVE? Your bloody bosses just wanted all of us Pitters gone."

"Can you blame them? You're all trespassers and vandals."

"No, no, that's not true." God, she's thick-headed. There must be a way to get through to her. "You don't know what it's like to live in the Pit, to grow up there." I heard a gruff laugh. "Yes, some people grow up there. Some people don't want to leave. It's their home." Another gruff laugh. I pushed back. "Why is that so funny?" I yelled at the camera and my voice echoed around the empty off-white room. "There are people in the Pit whose ancestors were among the first colonists—who settled in this area over three hundred years ago. Did you know that? Then WAVE came and pushed them off the Plat—none of them ever got paid for their land. They're good people. They're just looking for a little justice."

"If they're such lovers of justice, why don't they give themselves up? Why don't the rest of the PCC members come forward and tell us what happened?"

Must be nice to see the world so black-and-white. "Because...because..." How do I explain this to her?