by C. Gockel
A few minutes later she sat in a corner, plastic mask still on, the acrid smell of treatment in her nose. Her eyes were on James’s back as he began assembling Molotov cocktails next to Gunny. The two men were working companionably, which gave her some hope. This might work; this really might work.
Her eyes slid down James’s back. He’d stripped down to only a short-sleeved undershirt, and his tattoos were standing out in sharp relief on the pale skin of his well-muscled arms. She shook her head and reminded herself that those shapely muscles were probably bought. She tilted her head—they didn’t look oversized, though—some augmented men looked as though they’d stuffed balloons in their biceps.
Chavez sat down next to Noa abruptly. “I think something came loose in my left leg’s connectors,” the other woman muttered. The ensign began ripping duct tape off her left limb. “How did this get in here?” Chavez wondered aloud. Noa’s eyes flitted over briefly, and she saw the ensign holding up a single pebble. The ensign tossed it aside, grabbed another roll of tape, and began re-taping the joint of her artificial limb. Noa looked away.
“Errr … ” said Chavez. “Ummmm … Commander … so I didn’t realize that you and Professor Sinclair were a thing.”
It was at that moment that Noa realized her eyes had roamed back to James’s back. Averting her gaze quickly, Noa blinked over her mask at the young woman. She almost pulled the mask off—but there was Hisha again. “Oh, no you don’t,” Hisha said, putting her hand over the plastic.
The ensign continued, “I never would have flirted with him if I’d known.”
Noa took another deep breath of acrid vapors. She’d missed that flirtation and felt a bit annoyed. She told herself it was because they didn’t need that sort of drama this early in the game. Her brows drew together … and what made the ensign think that discussing this right now was a good idea? Or discussing it ever? Although it didn’t break any rules per se, it was just not done. The young woman had no sense of proprietary and … Noa’s shoulders fell. This woman was part of her crew.
Jun said, “Why don’t we just walk through the gates of the museum like normal tourists?” He was assembling ‘bots to go into the decoy hovers that would crash inside the Tri-Center.
“Because we were in Manuel’s hovers and they have a visual ID on us,” Bo answered in a voice that said, idiot.
“Mr. Ghost says he doesn’t have enough holographic necklaces for all of us, either,” said Kara softly. “And we should all probably stick together.”
Kuin, one of the engineering students, said, “What is this?”
6T9 replied, “You asked for a woman’s arm. It is a woman’s arm.”
“The skin tone is too dark and it’s too large, you stupid ‘bot.”
“Would you like me to get a smaller one that is more appropriate in complexion?”
“I’ll get it myself, you useless hunk of silicone.”
“Don’t say that to him!” said Eliza.
“Useless hunk of silicone,” said the student, and Noa’s skin heated in anger. It might not be hurtful to 6T9 to say such things, but it was hurtful to Eliza.
Noa nearly pulled the mask away to correct the boy, but Hisha’s hand was suddenly on the mask again. “You can’t miss any of this dose, Noa.” Her brow was furrowed with concern. Noa scowled, but didn’t argue.
“Don’t touch that!” Noa’s eyes went to where Ghost stood over Oliver. Ghost raised his hand as though he might strike the toddler.
“Don’t touch him!” shouted Manuel, grabbing Ghost’s arm.
Kara gasped. All the attention in the room went to Ghost and Manuel. The engineer growled. Hisha darted over and picked up the little boy, snatching him away from Ghost’s reach. The timer on the treatment dinged. Noa ripped the plastic from her face, but before she could say a word, beside her Chavez said, “He’s pretty to look at though, ain’t he?” Noa’s head whipped in the girl’s direction and followed her gaze. She was staring unabashedly at James.
A scream ripped through the small space from the far corner. Noa’s head whipped again, this time to see Kara standing with her hand over her mouth. Kara’s eyes were riveted on Carl Sagan. Darting past her, the werfle was carrying cybernetic eyeballs in his mouth and with the tiny hands of his midsection.
“Stupid girl,” muttered Ghost, before resuming his quarrel with Manuel.
Kara quickly shuffled away, hand still on her mouth.
Noa felt her stomach turn. This was never going to work.
James looked from side to side in the intersection in the sewers. His hearing caught the sound of footsteps—it was impossible to tell how far—his tech didn’t adjust for the echo. But they sounded too close. The water in the tunnel had increased exponentially, but he could avoid splashing in the stream that ran down the center of the tunnel if he skirted the walls. He turned a corner, listened and verified that the Guard was coming in his direction. He heard someone say, “Jericho group will head down the tunnel beneath Liberty Avenue.”
Turning, James rapidly signaled the team some 405 meters away. Gunny’s augmented vision caught the signal, and he halted the others. They immediately began crawling into an accessory tunnel located about two meters from the ground.
James approached them slowly, carefully checking side tunnels before he crossed. By the time he reached them, everyone but Gunny and Noa were in the accessory tunnel. James kneeled down by Gunny, and offered a “leg up.”
Slipping his boot into James’s hands, the older man nodded and murmured a barely audible thanks. James didn’t respond, just lifted the man up into the small tunnel. He heard scuffling inside, and a hiss from Carl Sagan. He nodded to Noa, and she put her boot in his hand, and he lifted her in a fluid motion. He followed her up into the tunnel and there was more scuffling as the team moved farther back.
Outside James heard a Guard say, “I heard something!” and he felt Noa stiffen beside him.
There was some light from a grate in the tiny space, and James saw one of the engineering students touch his forehead, his stomach and his shoulders. It took a moment, but James realized he was making the sign of the cross. For some reason, James felt as though someone had doused the lights within his mind with a cold pail of water. Leaning against the tunnel wall, he tried to make himself small.
The sound of footsteps outside the access tunnel got louder. “I definitely heard something!” a Guard said.
“Check that accessory tunnel!” someone in the main tunnel commanded. In the dim light, he saw Noa raise her pistol, and Gunny and Manuel did the same. James was so close to the opening of the tunnel he was afraid to move, afraid that any motion he made might be seen from below. A flashlight beam jumped along the wall in front of his nose.
“I don’t hear anything,” someone outside his line of vision said.
Deeper down the tiny accessory tunnel came a sleepy cry from Oliver.
“I heard it!” someone said. “Give me a lift!”
James reached for his pistol. Beside him, silent as a snake, Noa shifted so she was sitting on her heels, pistol raised at the tunnel opening. Before the Guard was lifted, Carl Sagan’s body went hurtling past Noa and over James’s lap. The werfle hissed and poked its head out into the main tunnel.
Noa’s chin dipped. She readjusted her finger on the trigger of the pistol.
In the main tunnel line, someone said, “Oh, look. It’s just a werfle.”
“Someone’s escaped pet by the look of it.”
“Probably down here looking for rats.”
A hand from one of the Guards shot up so it was in view of James, but the owner’s face was not in view. Carl Sagan hissed.
“Easy, Mister,” said the owner of the hand, giving Carl Sagan’s chin a scratch. “We’re not taking you in.”
“We’re not?”
“Hot cores, no. These guys eat rats. Let him stay down here and clear the rest of ‘em out.”
The hand retreated, and then the light. James sat motionless. Noa lowered her pistol, but touc
hed a finger to her port, and met James’s gaze. James pulled a few lengths of cable and a square port box from his pocket as quietly as he could, and he handed all but one cable to Noa. Plugging one end of the cable into his port, he saw Noa do the same, and then her avatar flickered in his mind’s eye. “The ‘bot controlled hovers should be ten minutes from the crash site.” There was no segue, no, “that was close” or “thank the stars for Carl Sagan.” The werfle settled onto James’s lap in the physical world, and James idly scratched the creature behind the ears.
Another avatar flickered to life in the shared space between their minds. It was a young man in the camis of the Fleet: loose shirt and trousers speckled drab gray. “Who are you?” James’s avatar asked.
Noa’s avatar’s lips pursed. The new avatar also looked at him curiously.
“It’s Gunny,” said Noa.
“Old avatar,” said the mental projection. “But I didn’t think I looked that different.”
James studied the new avatar. He had trouble reconciling it with Gunny. The face was younger, clean shaven, and there was no gray hair or beer gut. However, the avatar did carry the same firearms and other assorted weapons as Gunny carried in the real world, and the eyes were the right color, James supposed.
Chavez and Manuel’s avatars came online. James had less trouble identifying Manuel—though the avatar was slightly more fit, he looked about the same age. Chavez’s avatar was indistinguishable from her person—minus cybernetic limbs. Ghost’s avatar appeared, too. It didn’t look military issue—it wasn’t in his Fleet grays, and it had the same sculpted face as the holographic necklace.
“We’re close to the Tri-Center now,” Gunny’s avatar said. “’proximately a kilometer.”
Noa’s avatar, bearing the same arms she did in the real world—an extension of the Fleet avatar programming, James decided—holstered her pistol and swung her rifle around. “Remember, we are bound to encounter resistance in the tunnels below the museum. They may fall back to protect the more sensitive areas of Central Authority, but we can’t count on that.”
“Aye, Commander,” said Chavez and Manuel.
Ghost’s avatar also bore a weapon—a rifle from his personal armory. Back in his lair, the engineering student, Bo, had asked if he could have one of the rifles, but Ghost had snorted and said, “I’d give it to the girl first.”
The engineering students weren’t in the shared mental space. They didn’t have avatars. They were commonplace things on Earth, but on Luddeccea, apparently, they were considered an extravagance. In the physical world, Bo was petting a Molotov cocktail. The other students were more subdued. Kara sat next to Noa, and James was certain he could hear the girl’s heart beating too rapidly.
“You all know your roles,” Noa’s avatar said. She nodded at James’s avatar. “Let’s go.” And then her avatar reached up and motioned pulling the data cord from its socket. All the avatars copied the motion, and James was suddenly completely alone in his own mind. The break in the connection felt like a cold slap. He yanked the cord out of his own port. Noa motioned for it, and he let her gather up the length of the cable. It kept his hands free as he slipped into the main sewer line. As soon as he was down, he swung his rifle around and focused his hearing. He couldn’t see anyone, but he could hear voices approximately 100 meters away. Catching Noa’s gaze, he reached up and touched her hand, the signal that the team could follow. As soon as they touched down, he touched one ear and then the other—the sign that they could be overheard. Everyone nodded—except for the drugged Oliver and 6T9. The ‘bot was blindfolded. Eliza had given him the exact route they were taking and told him they were playing an exciting new “game,” that “only he could play with her.” The ‘bot was smiling blissfully beneath the blindfold. There was no doubt that there would be resistance—and 6T9 couldn’t be allowed to see, lest he seek to render assistance—or report the team.
As the fastest member of the team with the best eyesight and second-best hearing, James took point, Noa and Ghost beside him. Chavez, Manuel, and Gunny were at the end of the line, the rest of the group in between. James’s dancing neurons homed in on the distant voices of the Guard beneath the Central Authority. James expected at any moment that the darkness would be split by a UV spotlight, or laser tracer, but none came. Within a few minutes, they were at the first hurdle: a gate that spanned the width and height of the entire tunnel.
Most of the sewer lines were open; gates like this one were traps for garbage and debris that could block the flow of water during the flash rainstorms frequently experienced by Luddeccea Prime. But they were almost directly beneath the Central Authority, and as Gunny had explained it, “’ccasional floods are worth the added security of a gate.”
The gate was made of crossed steel beams seven centis in diameter, set at intervals of fifteen centis apart. Set at the center was a locking mechanism—a steel plate as wide as James’s spanned hands. He knew, without knowing how, that he wouldn’t be able to open it with brute strength. It was not like the lock on the train … That had been brute strength, hadn’t it? Not a rusty lock as he’d first believed, or wanted to believe. He felt a rush of static beneath his skin.
Putting these thoughts aside, James carefully focused on the ceiling by the gate. Something glimmered in the low light—a holocamera—just as Gunny had suspected there would be. Noa lightly tapped James’s arm. Turning, he took the cable she had between her fingers. Ghost took the other end. It was too dark for Ghost to see without augmented vision. They plugged the cord into their ports, and there was the familiar rush of electricity and connection as James shared with Ghost what he saw across the link. Ghost’s avatar flickered in his mind’s eye and said, “I can handle it.”
“They will have frequency jammers here,” James responded.
Ghost’s avatar rolled its eyes and smirked. “I told you, I have something special.”
James knew he did have something special—they would never have been able to retrieve data from the mainframe without it; but, still … he felt his skin crawl as though expecting a bullet. He wanted to know how Ghost was connecting to the central computer. Next to him, he heard Noa shifting slightly on her feet. She was so close he could feel the soft kiss of her breath against his cheek.
Ghost abruptly ripped the cord out, and the stream of electrons running between their minds stopped. For a moment James saw stars behind his eyes, and then his gaze slid to Noa. She was biting her lip so fiercely it went pale beneath her teeth. There was no link between them, but he knew what she was thinking. If Ghost got this wrong, the whole show was over. Noa’s eyes went back to Hisha, and then to Oliver strapped to her chest. The toddler was sleeping in a drug-induced stupor, drool slipping from his lips to his carrier. Oliver was, perhaps more so than Eliza, the most vulnerable member of their group. James’s eyes went back to Noa, and he remembered what she’d said, “The death of a child is the death of hope.”
He didn’t believe it—not for himself—but he took in her pained expression and realized it wasn’t just a cliché for her, a sound bite picked up from a political speech.
He heard a soft thud above, and looked up. “That’s the hover crash happening right above our heads!” someone whispered, before another person hushed them. From the Guards down the tunnel he heard someone say, “Did you hear that?”
He heard an intake of breath from someone on their team, and then a crackle of static from a radio in the distance. His neurons and nanos dancing in anticipation, James focused on the sound. He heard another person say, “There was a four-hover pile-up above. Looks like a bad accident—Yao, Parvati, and Khan, go offer assistance.” James’s dancing neurons almost relaxed, but then from the gate came a loud clanking, like heavy unused gears grinding into motion.
Ghost spoke sharply in the darkness. “It’s all done. Cameras are disabled. Run.” James’s brows drew together. Ghost wasn’t supposed to say that aloud. Hunching over his rifle, the little man ran down the tunnel toward the gate.
That wasn’t the plan either; James was supposed to go first. Shaking his head, he ran after Ghost and quickly overtook him. He heard the team following, and down the tunnel shouts from the Guard. “What was that?”
James reached the groaning gate. It was slowly opening, the gears clanking faster and faster. James pushed against the ancient metal to hurry it along. Nothing happened.
Taking a step back, he rushed the metal bars, hitting them with his side with all his might. There was a loud groan, a snap, and the gate sprang open and James crashed through, just as a beam of ultraviolet light flashed in his eyes. “Incoming!” he said, flinging himself to the floor and raising his rifle as water trickled around his body. The rifle sights had built-in light adjustment; even without his augmented vision, he would have seen fine. Noa belly-flopped onto the ground beside him and lifted her own rifle. Ghost dove to the ground and crawled to the farthest edge of the tunnel before lifting his. There was the sound of rifle fire from the Guards, and bullets ricocheting off steel. Oliver screamed, and it pierced James’s consciousness just for an instant, but he blocked it out and fired. He fired off one shot, Noa fired off another; and from behind, two more went off simultaneously. He barely had a chance to blink … and it was over. Just like that. He looked back and saw no one else had come through the gate yet. Chavez and Gunny’s rifles were poking through the bars.
Manuel cried, “Is Oliver hurt?” and 6T9 said, “Eliza, this game doesn’t seem to be safe.”
“It is just a game,” Eliza said, “It’s safe.”
“He’s fine,” said Hisha. “Just scared.”
“Move!” said Noa, already on her feet. “We may encounter more resistance!”
And then it was chaos. Ghost was running ahead again, Noa was screaming for him to get back, Oliver was crying, and 6T9 was saying, “I am not allowed to play games like this with children!”
“It’s not a sexual game,” said Eliza. “Just exciting.”
James heard shouting down the tunnel, footsteps, and the hiss of the old-fashioned radios the Luddeccean Guard used. But then the footsteps stopped. James heard one of the Guards say, “Protect flight control and the Central Authority.” He felt a jolt of shock hit his system, a cocktail of relief, and bewilderment. He hadn’t, he realized, believed that this plan would really work, but Noa had been right. They weren’t expecting an attack on the museum, and no one thought about the flight capability of the Ark.