Nigella Vibra's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Duncan drove out the servant's gate before the sky turned grey. Nigella sat with the sealed letter against her chest plate and watched the mirrored spires shrink behind them. The letter named the gatekeeper of the third city-state. It did not say where in the sprawl to find them. The third city was a week of desert and a maze of shanties around a walled core. Ask the wrong door and the letter would be taken from her hands. "We need someone who knows the sprawl," Nigella said. Duncan grunted and turned the wheel toward a plume of smoke on the flats. A salvaged airbase sat under it, all tarnished metal and salvaged tech, antennae leaning off a control tower. Traders parked in its shadow. Pilots drank in its bays. If anyone sold routes into the third city, they would be here. Inside the main bay, a woman in camo pants and a black tank was arguing with a mechanic over the price of a wing repair. Braid down her back, goggles on her forehead, scars on one arm. She spoke in short, hard sentences. The mechanic backed down. Nigella waited until the woman turned, then stepped in. "I need a guide into the third city," Nigella said. "Someone who can put me in front of a specific gatekeeper without a crowd hearing the name." Lara Sandstorm looked her over once. "I don't guide. I escort. Price is water, fuel, and half up front." Nigella opened her empty palms. Lara snorted and turned back to the glider parked in the bay, a sleek thing with folded solar panels catching the bay lights. Nigella spoke to her back. She said she had a signature on the peace accord from the second city and a sealed letter to the third. She said if the accord failed, the sprawl went first. Raiders. Bubblegum-painted tanks running the outer lanes. Lara had seen one last month, she guessed. Lara stopped walking. "You're the android everyone's whispering about," Lara said. She came back and stood close. "I don't take pay I can't spend. But my sister lives in that sprawl. If your paper keeps the councils talking, she keeps her roof." She tapped the glider's nose. "Two seats. We fly at dusk. I know the gatekeeper you want. Ex-quartermaster. Drinks at a stone tower on the sprawl's east edge, old robot outpost with a pirate flag. I can put you across a table from her by tomorrow night." Nigella looked at Duncan. Duncan nodded once and said he would drive the camper the long way and meet her at the wall. Nigella climbed into the glider. The panels unfolded and hummed. Lara ran the checks without a wasted motion. At dusk they lifted off the cracked apron and banked east. Nigella had a name in an envelope and, for the first time on this run, a hand pointing exactly where to take it.