Page 34 of Green City Wars

“Well then, I reckon you’ve got the wrong raccoon,” he says, and his voice shakes a bit but overall he’s proud of how steady it comes out. “This one’s got a clean conscience on him.”

Szerky oils forwards, eyes fixed on him like he’s prey. “You’ve got one chance to avoid making a final contribution to the city’s diet, Herr Skotch. Where’s the mouse?”

Skotch gives the world an aggrieved look, directs it at each interested party in turn. “I do not,” he says, very clearly, “have any idea where the damn mouse is. I am literally working the same case as all of you. I get the mouse, I’ll put the little squeaker up for auction and one of you can make me rich.”

Eddi the rat hunches forwards. “We heard from Tybelle. You and the mouse, you were together. Then she found you and he was gone. You expect us to believe he just slipped through your paws?”

“If this Meece was easy to hold on to, we’d none of us be here,” Skotch tells the rat, pushing the exasperated angle. “I don’t know if you’ve been out Madparrot Alley ways but it’s not exactly a stable regime they’re running there. Yes, I had him. Yes, I lost him. Or you’re going to take the word of some dilettante cat over a hard-working raccoon?” Working himself up into some real righteous indignation. “I mean I notice she’s not even here. Let me guess, she heard her owner’s can opener, right?”

“She’s hunting,” Eddi says, with the confidence of a rat who reckons he’s not on the menu, today at least. “But maybe you can shortcut that for us. Where’s the mouse, Skotch?”

“Or do we introduce you to the food chain?” Szerky signals, and one of the crows pecks a lever. The teeth start up their rotary chatter again.

It’s an old piece of agricultural economy, from back when animal-based agriculture was big business. The cheapest thing to feed to your animals is your animals. Waste as little as possible. Use every part of the pig. And the Farm Projects are all about hyper-concentrated and environmentally sound food production, great vertical stacks of green and gold, but Gehirner only get to taste it through the contraband that leaks into the city via Rattenkönig smugglers, or the waste that human diners leave behind in places like Franz-Ferdinand’s. The regular rations, the SLG bars, come out of the separators. And what goes into the separators is organic waste. Not just corpses, but they’re a big part of it. And there’s a whole system to inject vitamins and minerals and medication, the basic ingredients of a healthy Gehirner. But organic is organic, protein is protein. Green cities mean recycling, up to and including the Little Helpers themselves.

“I hope I poison the lot of you,” Skotch tells the world at large. “I don’t have the mouse.” Looking down into those teeth, feeling the cord of his nerve stretch thin. Like it was already caught down there and being pulled tauter and tauter every second. Confession, Szerky said, and right now he’s in a tug of war with his conscience over just what the hell is the right path.

But amongst his audience right now is whoever had Sly killed. Is whoever put an end to Fitch, thinking it was him. Bad people. Whatever else is good or bad in the world, his present company is stinking rotten.

“If I had the squeaker,” he tells them, “I wouldn’t give him to the likes of any of you.”

“Put him in,” says Szerky, but Maria speaks up: “No.”

The possum approaches, giving him all of her teeth in a vicious snarl. “You were one of us once, Skotch. You were born to the company. What the hell went wrong with your geneware that you ended up like this?” Mad marsupial eyes bugging at him, grey and white fur bristling, that ragged way possum pelts do. A Strain of animal that always looks a bit like it was put together in a hurry from ill-fitting pieces. “If you’d have just handed the squeaker over when you had him…”

Skotch’s hands clutch at one another for comfort. The vibration of those moving teeth is coming up his legs and making his bladder weak, even though they’re all engineered to only piss in designated areas. “I appreciate your confidence in my skills, that I somehow kept hold of him while all of you failed, but it ain’t so. Go ask the anarchists. Go ask the parrots.”

“We’re asking you,” Maria says. And she steps back, looking left and right at her impromptu co-conspirators. “Or we were.”

That’s when the shooting starts.

14DISRESPECT FOR THE DEAD

Skotch comes as close to dying as he ever has, right in that moment, because the first shot—the one someone had time to line up—goes right into the Gray who’s got a gun on him. Which means that gun goes off too as the squirrel’s slammed sideways by the impact. The barrel of the weapon passes right across the breadth of Skotch’s body as the trigger’s being pressed. The convulsive clutch of the rodent’s hands on the lever comes just as the path of the shot would take it through a solid knot of raccoon guts, but the infinitesimal delay between pressure and release means the spring-loaded projectile only hits fur. A moment of surprisingly acute pain, when Skotch thinks he’s shot, and then the next moment, when he’s still alive and whole and realises it was just a fistful of hair.

Everything goes to pieces all at once. The Graycoats around the Separation Plant are simultaneously returning fire and trying to find cover. The crows are all spreading black wings and flurrying out of the way—Skotch sees at least one of them brought down by a stray shot. Someone’s going to have some mausgelt to pay when this is over, and the Separatists will get to sing “All Small Beasts” over at least one of their own as they feed them into the machine.

Eddi and the other Rattenkönig foot soldiers have their spikers to hand but mostly as a rearguard action. Whatever is going on isn’t their kind of fight. It’s army stuff, clear enough, and the gangsters try to keep clear of pitched battles for exactly the same reasons Skotch himself does. Sadly, right now he’s in the middle of this one.

The other Gray who was holding him at gunpoint has a moment of indecision: kill Skotch or shoot back at whoever’s attacking. Despite everything, but in perfect accordance with Skotch’s luck to date, he chooses the former. That moment is enough for Skotch to get a claw on the gun, though, and an instant later they’re wrestling for it. Wrestling is complicated when one of you’s a raccoon and the other’s a squirrel who’s under half the size and a quarter of the weight, but the Gray’s a game fighter, trying to use superior flex and squirm to keep hold of the weapon. Doing so stubbornly enough that he ends up springing the popgun and himself out of Skotch’s hands with more force than anyone intended. Sending him backwards quite violently, which is a problem for him because at his back is the hungry maw of the separator.

Skotch makes a snap decision. Some connection of mutualistic geneware and the fact that he and the Gray were once both Uzco kids has him grab the squirrel by the tail and haul him back before his head meets the metal teeth. Then he shakes the Gray pretty damn hard so that the rodent lets go of the gun, which falls into the separator.

The machinery at the plant is good for bone and even teeth, but not really meant for metal. The popgun goes into the mechanical jaws and there’s a dreadful squealing shrieking noise. The weapon discharges convulsively into the ceiling as it’s crushed and then there’s a shrieking alarm to add to all the rest of the chaos and this set of teeth, at least, falls still. The half-mangled popgun projects outwards like a jaunty cigarette.

Skotch swings the squirrel by the tail and lets go just about at random, sending the Gray tumbling across the factory floor. Shot whines and rattles all around. The Grays are trying to entrench but it’s an open space without much cover unless you fancy getting down into the dents of the separators themselves. Which nobody sane does, needless to say. The rats have mostly cleared out, and he can see the attackers trying to push forwards against Gray counter-shot. It’s the Redcoats, of course. The other squirrel army currently trying to dominate Neuwien. Not immediately clear why they decided this piece of off-the-books mercenary action by their rivals was something they needed to break up, but Skotch doesn’t feel motivated to get into the geopolitics of it. Instead he just wants to get out of the middle of it.

A duck and a dive and he’s away from the stilled teeth. The alarm is deafening, and none of the crows is around to shut it off and work on the damage, on account of none of them want to get shot. Skotch reckons such unwillingness to meet their own final separation suggests a lack of courage in their convictions, but that’s the sad state of religion today maybe.

He tries to go for the closest Red, on the unwise assumption that they know he’s not with their enemies. That’s the second closest he gets to being shot, and it’s only second closest because the Red is panic-firing and doesn’t really take time to aim. Skotch suddenly feels himself a big target, and his US-engineered heritage is like a big stars-and-stripes flag on his back that means Shoot me. So the Reds aren’t his friends either, and no great surprise because honestly he feels friends are something he’s pitifully short of right now.

Except he can hear a voice. Even over the shooting, over the alarm, over the screech and chitter of injured squirrels, a voice. A clear, high bird voice exhorting one side or the other on or just generally shouting for things to happen. A bird who will be remembering every detail for later transmission to her human employer, no doubt. A bird who is supposed to be a neutral observer in the world but has apparently decided to start making the news and not just reporting it. Lulu, somewhere at the back of the Red advance.

Skotch snatches a frantic look at how the battle lines are drawn to see if he can get to her. Because the vapid, annoying, pointless pigeon has come through. Saw him get snatched and came up with a plan that might just work, if it doesn’t end up getting him killed. Saw the Grays and understood that meant she could tip a word to the Reds.

Started a little side war, here at the Separation Plant. Pissed off the Separatists and who knows how many other interested parties, but Lulu is more about the moment than the consequences, in Skotch’s experience.

He makes for the Red lines anyway, crouched as low as he can go, moving across the floor of the Separation Plant like an animated rug with a stripy tail. A crow gets in his way, wings beating at his face. He’s not sure precisely what it intends and never has a chance to find out because a shot tears it away from him a moment later. When the veil of feathers is torn from him, though, what he can see ahead is Szerky.