Horseplay

by Cam Daly

  The surveillance in the ESWAT HQ building was mostly directed towards external threats, and there would be none in the bathroom. The guard was in front of the sinks, talking into the phone and making gestures that her boyfriend couldn’t possibly see. Keryapt angled past the privacy barrier next to the door then ramped up to near maximum speed.

  “You call me at work with this, and you get mad at me? You know you’re acting like an-” The woman stopped for a moment as she realized Kery was in the room. She turned to enter one of the stalls. Kery pretended to to be uncertain of which way the woman was going and bumped into her, deftly removing the keycard from her belt and turning off her radio.

  The brief dance of uncertainty drew a glare from the guard, who continued to listen to what she thought was her boyfriend then responded with greater ire. “That’s not what I was going to say, but now that you said it, maybe it’s appropriate.”

  Keryapt let her duck into the stall and verified that the keycard was still generating its seemingly random succession of codes. After the close contact, her body had enough data to recreate the guard’s appearance. Her shapecloth suit stretched, gathered and altered its coloration to closely match the uniform, and it only took a few more seconds for Keryapt’s face to perfectly match the guard’s. The skin on the rest of her body couldn’t change color or shape like her face, but only her hands and neck showed and they were close enough. She slowed back to three times normal and pinned on the electronic keycard.

  As her body finished its changes she noticed that the detection threshold was still holding at 31%. She had been planning to escape, but if her identity wasn’t exposed then she might have other options. Whichever way she went, she couldn’t walk around the building as the guard with a lawyer’s attache case. That would give her away instantly.

  The shapecloth sleeves pulled themselves up past her elbows and she lifted her slender attache cast. She slid her right forearm inside then pulled it sideways to detach the metallic ribbing. It wrapped around her arm from wrist to elbow, forming an armored layer which should stop almost any human weapon. She left the weapons of the Paleon Gunsleeve in their inactivated state, since the projector barrel would stick out along the top of her hand and be obvious to any observer.

  The left Gunsleeve went on just as smoothly, leaving her with a thin sack of the former contents of her case. She put it under the front part of the shapecloth suit, over her abdomen. Her sleeves extended back over the Gunsleeves and completely covered them with a thin layer, leaving her forearms looking a bit thick but hopefully not too unnatural.

  She felt much better with the weapons in place. They would show up in any direct milliwave or X-ray scan, but the extra second it would take to put them on could make the difference between life and death.

  She took a second to switch her sensorium to the Planning Stage and studied the social graph for the Kery Lee identity. The orange attacking pulses seemed to be less numerous than before, and the blue blockages created by Shadow’s team seemed to be holding. For the most part. Shadow was there as well, focused on a different graph showing conversational options and statistically predicted outcomes for her call with the guard.

  Another attacking pulse winked out. Still 31%. She decided to take advantage of the situation while it existed. “Shadow - I’m going in. Keep the guard talking a few minutes longer.”

  She exited the Stage, rolled her shoulders and gave one shake of her arms to check that the fabric over the Gunsleeves behaved properly, then left the bathroom.

  “Going in? You’re supposed to be getting out!”

  “I know. But listen.” She glanced at the list of the more suspicious races as she walked deeper into ESWAT HQ. “If it were Tetatotetot, they would have contacted the Admiralty after the Dogpatch attack to apologize and explain why it was necessary. A Meliarch would’ve accidentally found a way to poke me with something, and a Vreen would have…I don’t know. Accidentally shot me in the face with a beamcaster of some sort. I’ve never met a Vreen in the flesh. But nothing has happened yet, and we know someone in that room or watching wasn't human. And it was someone who didn’t really care if we knew or not.”

  “Okay, but It seemed like you froze up when the Knight walked in. What was that? What if it happens again?”

  “That was nothing.” It wasn’t nothing, it was panic. But Shadow didn’t need to know that. “We can talk about it more later. But I’m the Active, and I’m making the call. If the guard goes back to her post and is on camera there then any usage of her keycard could trigger alarms. You focus on keeping her on the phone in the bathroom until I get back, and have Ruut on the Planning Stage in case I need interaction advice.”

  “Okay. He’s switching over to the Stage…now… and knows you’re at 3x. I’ve alarmed your threshold meter to sound if it moves up again. Good luck.”

  Even as Shadow spoke, Keryapt and the Interloper spotted another human moving towards her in the hall. In its infiltration mode, the combat control system of her body presented extra information about each target to let her know if it seemed to be accepting her disguise or not. The man approaching her gave her a cursory identification/sex trait inspection but entered an office instead of passing close by.

  “Ruut. I need to get to network and communications hardware. With minimal interaction.” The building was three stories above ground but the main entry lobby had been on the middle level. Despite the inconvenience and slight decrease in safety, humans preferred the upper levels of structures and would have optimized the top floor for offices and executive space. If there was any non-human presence or technology here it would probably be hidden on a lower level.

  Ruut’s reply was appropriately terse, since he was operating at a third of her speed and time spent talking was a distraction from his usefulness. “Lifts ahead left? Fast walk shows busy.”

  She increased her pace slightly to avoid unwanted social contact and aimed for the next left turn. The blue carpeting in this area wasn’t plush like the conference floor had been, so the Interloper was able to detect the sounds of movement in that area and provide ghostly silhouettes for the two humans heading her way before they rounded the corner.

  As they passed, one of them turned his head to see her posterior, probably believing she wouldn’t notice.

  “Ruut, how would this physical form rate for attractiveness, compared to Kery Lee?”

  The elevator was just ahead and she pressed the down button. Farther along the hallway, a dark skinned woman was walking in her direction and gave a quick wave as if familiar with the guard. Keryapt’s targeting system identified the woman as Helen Agarwal PhD, head of software systems for ESWAT. Keryapt gave a quick wave back but was thankful that the elevator door opened quickly. She entered.

  The Interloper targeting system painted a ghostly silhouette on the elevator car wall showing Agarwal’s continued approach. Keryapt pressed the button for the single basement level then the door close button.

  Nothing happened.

  Agarwal was almost at the door. Kery stabbed at the door close button repeatedly, letting the Interloper use more and more of her physical strength until the plastic cover of the button cracked. “Ruut? What’s going on?”

  Just as the woman was about to reach the doors, they finally closed.

  “Buttons to close doors in human elevators usually aren’t connected to anything.”

  “What? Why?” It would be a crime in Fleet Four, to have a security-related feature intentionally not work.

  Ruut responded to her previous question as the elevator started to descend. “Kery Lee is in the 80th percentile for symmetry of features, skin tone and externally visible sexual characteristics. Your current form is slightly less attractive, in the 70th percentile. Why?”

  “Review the records of the meeting with Ormlan, Maxwell and DeVries. Compare their visual and social cues with human average.” She cupped the Interloper’s synthetic breasts in her hands for a moment. “For example, how much time did they s
pend looking at these?” Fleet children didn’t suck milk from external sacs on their mother’s bodies, so Keryapt was unused to having the two hemispheres positioned there. But perhaps they could be of some use in determining who in the room wasn’t what they seemed.

  “We’re checking.”

  The elevator stopped at the basement level. Before the doors opened, she stomped on the floor a single time and used the echo from the bottom of the shaft to verify that it didn’t go any deeper.

  The doors opened on their own, revealing a concerned-looking man. “Did something just fall?”

  She had a list of possible explanations for unusual activity and selected the top one from the list of Apparently Random Movements. “My leg fell asleep.” She had no idea how a body part could sleep independently, but he nodded understanding and entered the elevator as she left.

  The short elevator lobby led into a longer and busier hallway than she expected. It went 20 meters left and at least 50 right. At the left end stood a piece of sculpture in the shape of a large man, while the other side had a number of people moving in both directions. Reflexively she stepped up to a much faster processing rate to study the area.

  The larger than life humanoid statue was posed as if sitting with its chin propped up by one hand. Its surface was made to resemble wires or circuitry, the gold and silver coloration probably not resulting from the use of those expensive materials. A placard next to it revealed to her telescopic vision that it was called The Deep Thinker. In Fleet Four anything with that much mass should serve some purpose, but to planet dwellers it was an unconscious luxury.

  She turned into the longer branch of the hall and studied the humans there, seemingly frozen by her accelerated perception. A group of technicians ten meters away were wheeling a Knight mech into an electronics workshop of some sort. Farther ahead, a suited man and woman were discussing something and Keryapt made out the words “turnaround times.” A solitary man was in the process of walking in her direction, just passing a four wheeled electric cart loaded with equipment.

  The Interloper’s automated survey system updated its map based on what she saw, sketching in approximations from emergency exit signs and physical boundaries of the building. This hall apparently reached from the south end of the ESWAT HQ building, under the concrete plaza outside and then led into a lower level of the vehicle launch and recovery structure to the north. It was wide enough for a pair of the electric carts to easily pass each other, and tire marks on the uncarpeted floor made it clear that it was a more industrial part of the ESWAT program.

  She took all this in the first two steps down the hall. At the third step, her exposed skin tingled and her scanning alarms fired. Shadow abandoned whatever she had been doing with the guard to focus her attention back on Keryapt. “Lidar target painting. Milliwave scan. Possibly exotech.” Exotic technology, not something that the humans could have built by themselves. “Coming from the south end, behind you. Try to give me a better look. And decrease-”

  “I know. Heat signature.” Keryapt dropped from ten back to three times normal processing speed. She hated doing it, however, since it meant she would react more slowly if something did happen.

  The approaching man hadn’t changed his step or appearance when the scan started. As he passed he looked like he recognized her.

  “Hey there.”

  She waited until he was almost past her then turned her head towards him. That gave her a view of what was behind her without making it look like an obvious reaction to the scan, which a normal human wouldn’t have noticed.

  She gave the man the minimum possible social acknowledgement. “Hey.”

  The Deep Thinker was the source of the scan. Her targeting system gave it an almost painfully bright red outline - significant proximity threat.

  Her left cheek tingled as the scanning beams played over her. She had to fight the urge to activate the Gunsleeves, fire everything she had towards the source of the scan and take cover as fast the Interloper could go.

  “What is that?”

  “No match in the system. Something custom. Be calm. Walk away. The cold door ten meters ahead on the right is the network systems room.” Cold. Good. Hopefully that meant it would just have equipment, and she wouldn’t have to explain herself to anyone.

  At full speed she could have dashed there in a quarter second. Instead it would take five seconds to calmly walk the distance, stretched to a subjective fifteen for her accelerated mind. She had crossed her arms just under her breasts so that the milliwave scanner wouldn’t spot the Gunsleeves, and now she kept them pressed close against the sack carrying the contents from her case. She had been lucky that the Deep Thinker hadn’t scanned her front.

  Shadow provided a constantly updated set of ghostly footprints to show the path to the nearest door which could provide cover from an attack. She also went into more detail about their lack of information. “Mass between 500 and 1,000 kilos. No openings that look like weapon ports or thrusters.”

  “The Observatory hasn’t ever detected any gravitic field usage on Earth, right?”

  “No, but it’s far enough out that it might not detect a small AG field. I’ll tell you if anything stirs.”

  “I think I’ll notice it before you do.”

  “It could just be a human statue with a sensor package in its head.”

  Keryapt shushed Shadow’s unhelpful commentary. She had been in close proximity with unknown enemies before, and it had almost always ended badly for one side or the other. None of the humans in the hall reacted in the slightest way to the scan, and none had any weapons or obvious places to conceal them.

  She verified that the identity detection level was still holding at 31%. If the enemy knew what she was, they wouldn’t have scanned her like this. Unless this was a warning of some sort, or a provocation. She couldn’t assume anything.

  “Is the guard still under control?”

  “Ruut has her.”

  Just as she reached the clearly labeled door to the network systems room, the tingling sensation stopped. The scan was over and she hadn’t been challenged or attacked. She used the stolen keycard to unlock the door.

  “Inside.” She felt immense relief to be out of the line of sight of the thing. If the Deep Thinker was a product of an advanced race’s equivalent to the Fleet Factory then it would be almost impossible to defeat it in a head on fight with her Interloper.

  “It’s nice and cold in there. Speed up some and show me the racks.” Shadow’s system would be able to quickly analyze what Keryapt saw and figure out the best place for their network intrusion device.

  She gladly complied and paced the room, glancing up and down each tower of computing hardware. She marveled at the huge amount of space it took. “How long until the humans start to use entanglement for communication?”

  Shadow sounded distracted. “A&O could tell you but they are too busy at the moment. Go back two racks.”

  “This one?”

  “Hmm. Not sure. Keep checking.”

  The Active continued her path around the surprisingly noisy room, glad there were no cameras or sensors here beyond the obvious temperature probes. She avoided getting too close to them. There was another door out of the room and a couple of storage cabinets. “Where does the other door go?”

  “Not sure. Might be humans in there. Finish looking around.”

  Keryapt took a moment to check on her pair of avian remotes. Hawk circled the ESWAT buildings with the other seagulls, while Dove watched Connor walk away from the HQ building towards the dock.

  She realized that she was still expecting the Deep Thinker to come charging through the door, but it would have been much more likely for it to attack in the hall. Shadow was probably even more nervous about the encounter than she was. “So, what’s new back at the Fleet? My assignment here is secret, any chatter about what my next stunt will be?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve had a data blockade around the team since you landed. That rack there - to
p level. Put the Sneaker there.”

  “You’re a harsh task master. No external contact for them at all? Just one big room with you and twenty of them? Are they even allowed to use the waste processor?” The Sneaker could pass for a normal human smartphone but was much more complex. It had an entanglement relay, short range network intrusion hardware and extendable legs equipped with tiny tracks which would let it move around on level surfaces. Keryapt placed it next to the designated hardware. “How’s that?”

  “Good. Getting data now. I think you should…uh oh.”

  “Uh oh? What’s going on?”

  “Damn! Ruut’s losing the guard. She’s shouting at him. I don’t know what he did. You have to get back there if you want to save the Kery Lee identity.”

  “I don’t want to be in the hall with that Deep Thinker thing any more than I have to. I’m going to see if this is a shortcut.” The Active quickly hopped to the side door in the server room, paused to try to listen for any telltale sounds then opened it. The room beyond contained a half dozen men in especially casual clothing, all clustered around one of many workstations and arguing loudly. She slowed her processing back to three times normal.

  Most of the men froze as she entered but one frantically stabbed buttons on his workstation, clearly trying to undo whatever action he thought might have made her appear. She strode into the room and glanced over them all, eliciting a wave of guilty glances back and forth between them. A taller, bearded one spoke. “We weren’t…it wasn’t…”

  She had no idea what was going on in the room, but that didn’t stop her. “Don’t ever let me catch you again. Understand?” Heads nodded assent in slow motion. If her presence here was unusual, the group of men wouldn’t mention it for fear of getting in trouble for whatever it was they were doing.