by C. G. Hatton
There was no one else in the Maze. I got the impression he’d called ahead to clear the rota. I got changed, set it to an M3 and ran a three nineteen. Personal best. Best time of any field-op currently active. It almost killed me and I was still twenty minutes shy of Andreyev.
I limped back to my quarters, hesitated at the door, the back of my neck prickling, and turned to see Sienna heading down the corridor towards me. Her quarters were in the opposite direction. She had no reason to be there unless she’d been tracking me too.
She yelled a, “Hey, kid,” caught up with me and grabbed me in a bear hug.
She was wearing fatigues but she’d been back long enough to shower. Her hair was still wet, I could smell her shampoo. It didn’t smell of strawberries.
She let me go and looked at me with a smile. “Expelled that fast, huh? I had you down for another term. Jensonn had you tagged to last two weeks.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d been the subject of a betting pool amongst the grunts and extraction teams.
I shrugged. “Where have you been?”
“Out on assignment. We weren’t expecting you back so soon.” The smile turned into a grin. “Heard you got the dirt on McIntyre. Done me proud, kid.” She punched me in the arm. “C’mon, I have a bottle of the best Aruban curacao waiting for me in the mess.” She steered me away from my door, an arm around my shoulders. “So what was school like?”
I didn’t tell her how bad it had been. I laughed it off, refused the curacao and was just glad she was back.
I spent the next three weeks in the Maze, in Ops working on the last few pieces of the ledger, and in my cabin reading every scrap of intel I could gather on the tab for the amulet.
There wasn’t a lot but what there was made it clear – it was impossible. No viable access in or out. Even now, I have no idea how the guild knows the stuff that it does, but the intel we always worked with was beyond incredible. The amulet, according to the brief, was held in a private vault at Camborne, United Metal’s corporate headquarters on Winter. One of seven estates surrounding the capital city. Camborne was a fortress. Snowbound. Impenetrable itself unless you had personal security access Alpha Dark Ensiron status, the highest level UM access. The vault itself was discrete, cut off completely, might as well have been on a moon of its own. Located deep within the confines of a further security system that was controlled by an AI that was the highest level I’d ever seen. Every inch of the approach to the vault was protected behind layer upon layer of physical barriers intertwined with an AI mesh that went beyond physical normalities, then a final access that was not just biostat controlled… it was DNA controlled.
Foolproof.
Impenetrable.
Not wired to any system that could be hacked and reprogrammed with alternate biometrics, it was a stand-alone field, integral to the internal infrastructure of the vault, closed loop. It was coded to an individual DNA profile. One person. One living breathing person with that exact DNA profile. And I couldn’t get anywhere near figuring out who that was, no matter how much I backtracked and cross-referenced. Even if I could get to the door and get it opened, I couldn’t set foot inside, not without kit or tech I couldn’t even imagine, never mind engineer up out of nowhere, not if the best Science teams on the Alsatia couldn’t.
All in all, it was one helluva security system for a collection of art and jewellery.
It was impossible. Everyone was saying it was impossible.
It was like a red rag that I couldn’t ignore. And it was driving me insane.
Apart from that I played poker in the mess, taking money off the grunts. Serious money. It was another standing joke. It was becoming a regular attraction.
Thing was, I couldn’t just count the cards, that was easy. What I could do as well was shuffle the deck any way I wanted…
I smiled as I did it again. I could see Sienna watching my hands, wrinkling her nose in concentration, eyes narrow as she tried to spot what I was doing. I placed the deck on the table, pushed it away from me and reached for my soda. Jensonn picked up the cards, flipped them over and spread them in one slick motion. Four neat suits all lined up, in order, ace to king. Sienna gave a soft curse. Jensonn laughed and shook his head, swearing to himself as he gathered up the deck, shuffled it, really shuffled it, like going over the top shuffling it, and planted it back in front of me.
He glanced around to make sure no one else was watching and said quietly, “Do that again,” a smile in his voice. Jensonn had done a tour on Kheris. He had a black band around his wrist. I was sure we’d never run into each other, I would have recognised him if we had, and I didn’t know if he’d even known Charlie, but sitting there at that table with him in the mess of the Alsatia, a pack of cards in between us, it almost felt like he could have been one of Charlie’s mates, one of his teammates or crew. It made me feel warm. Like Charlie was okay and just out on a mission somewhere. And his teammates were looking out for me. And boy, did I need that right then.
I’d just failed another Paninski, in two hours ten that time. That was one personal best I was managing to beat. Mendhel had taken me to one side, spent two days going through it with me and finished up with a slightly exasperated, “Luka, I don’t know what else to say. If you’re going to fail, fail fast. That’s it. Stop wasting everyone’s time. When you get it, you’ll get it. Right now? Fail fast and be done. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
Fail fast? I could do that and laugh while I did it. The psychs were going to see through it at some point, but I didn’t care. There was no way I could figure out what they were after. I was trooping up there every other day to fail it. I’d tried lying, tried being honest, that was tough and got me my worst score ever… I’d tried pretending I was Hil and thinking through what his answers would be… I’d tried being neutral and calm, that didn’t go so well. Now I was just trying to beat my time, every time. Screw it.
So I was in the mess, celebrating a PB at the Paninski. I hadn’t figured out a way to the amulet and I still wasn’t done with the ledger. We had most of it and I had a feeling I’d uncovered something in there that was bad news for the guild but there was still a hole I couldn’t crack, no matter what I tried. I was just doing what I could and throwing the intel over to Mendhel to do whatever they needed to do with it. I’d learned fast on board the Alsatia that there was a lot going on, and none of it was anything I wanted to be caught up in.
I picked up my soda. I still wasn’t drinking. I didn’t touch alcohol. Couldn’t bear the taste of beer and still couldn’t handle anything stronger. The music in there was loud. Chatter even louder. It swirled around me as if I was in a bubble that repelled it all. I gave Jensonn a smile, caught Sienna’s eye, and shuffled.
That time I held onto the deck. “Mean queen,” I said, outright challenge to them both. “Double or nothing. No holds. Aces high.”
Sienna gave me a smile and a long lazy nod, like she was trying to figure me out, then she said, “Absolutely.” She turned in her seat and called out to the whole room, “This kid’s gonna show us how to play mean queen.” Like that was a joke. Like I was a naive sucker for even suggesting it. She raised her voice. “Who’s in?”
There were laughs, swearing, then a couple of the grunts pulled up chairs and placed a stake on the table, cocky and confident, Sienna, Jensonn and a couple of the ETs joining them.
I waited until they were settled, counted the number of people sitting there, shuffled again, hard and fast, and dealt.
A couple of hours later, Sienna folded her arms and looked at me, just me and her left at the table, everyone else drifting off as they got wiped out.
I gave her a grin, finished the soda and stretched, cracking my elbows. She was still staring at me as I looked up. “What?”
“You just took us for two thousand creds.”
I raked up the pile of chips in front of me. There was more than two thousand but I wasn’t going to argue. “You knew what I was doing with the deck. I showed
you.”
“You showed us you could line up fifty two cards into nifty little patterns. That’s a neat trick, kid. You didn’t show us you could line up a whole game, of mean queen, for Christ’s sake, against seven players?”
I gathered from the tone of her voice that she was impressed. She was probably thinking through who we could hustle with it next time I was let out, if I was ever let out again.
“I can do it with poker too.” I’d been practising more than rugby and sailing at Westings.
“You’re serious?”
I nodded.
She gave a little shake of her head, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Jesus, don’t let the grunts know. They’ll lynch you.”
I’d been fleecing them since I first got there and they knew it. They just hadn’t figured out how yet. I gave her a grin and pushed back from the table.
She laughed. “What are you doing now?”
She was keeping tabs on me. It was that obvious. Like they didn’t trust that I’d be okay left on my own. Hil still wasn’t back. And no one would tell me where he was or when he was expected to return. So I didn’t mind Sienna keeping close, especially when Mend was busy.
“Going to run an M3,” I said.
What else could I do?
I know I’ve said this before, but there was something special about the Maze on the Alsatia. Even just standing in that anteroom, kitted out in field-op gear, waiting for the door to open… it was like nothing else I’ve ever done, anywhere. I calmed my heart rate, and focused, breathing in, breathing out. My last run had been a PB. Even just knowing that elevated the run to more than just training, more than just a work out.
There had to be another way to do it. I knew the route Andreyev had taken, it was all documented. I just didn’t know how he’d done it so fast. And I could hardly ask the guy, he’d been dead almost a hundred years. One of the few KIA field-ops in the history of the guild. I wanted to beat his time. Mend kept telling me to let it go, give it time. I wasn’t fully grown yet, he told me time and again. But Nikolai Andreyev had only been seventeen when he set the current record. I was fast, I was strong. I knew every inch of his route. Even this long after Andreyev’s time, the Maze was identical. Physical climbs, balance beams, locks and trip wires, the zero-g Sphere at the centre. There was other more advanced stuff in there now that could be turned on and off, insane door locks, whole floors and bulkheads that moved, but that M3 setting was exactly the same as it had been back then.
I ran back over the schematics in my head as I stood there, waiting for the go ahead. There had to be a way…
The trick to M3 had to be the Sphere. It had to be. When we’d been given the all clear from Medical after Redemption, NG and Mendhel had shown us the fast way to get through it. I’d landed straight back in Medical with a concussion after my first attempt. Hil was better at it than me but once I got the hang of it, I was faster. The Sphere had two entrances, diametrically opposite each other. You had to run, sprint down a corridor, crack open a door release mechanism by remote as you approached, and that was tough because the door only opened for three seconds, so you had to time it right, then as you ran through the doorway you had to leap, curl into a tight ball and trust you had the trajectory and momentum to get you across to the opposite doorway. You got the timing wrong, the door slammed shut and nothing you could do would open it for another three minutes. You got the timing right but the trajectory wrong, you slammed into the far wall of the sphere. You got the speed too slow, you ended up drifting in zero-g and had to manoeuvre yourself out of there, and that trashed your time. You got the speed too fast, you flew through the far doorway and crashed to the deck somewhere on the other side. It had to be key to the whole M3 record. The Sphere and its approaches were the only part of the Maze that had that much scope to slow you down or speed you up.
I had it damn near perfect, but there was something I was missing.
There had to be.
I watched the countdown. Breathed. And I saw it. It wasn’t the Sphere. I’d been so fixated on perfecting the Sphere, I’d missed it. Holy shit, I could do this.
Running an M3 there was no margin for error. The other run we used to compete for was the Straight. Open Maze, all routes accessible, one end to the other in the fastest time. The Straight was the fastest route through, that’s all. And you could set your own environmentals. Once you had that sussed, it was simple. An M3 was different. The environmentals were pre-set. Tough. High electrobes, high gravity, high temperature. No variables the way there were in an M1 when a badly timed shift in gravity could throw a decent run. And the layout of the Maze was set up in a specific way for an M3, some of the easier routes locked out. Screw up for even a second and you blew your time. I had twenty minutes to make up. I had every part of that route perfected, fast. I knew I was fast. And I’d just figured out how Andreyev had been twenty minutes faster than I could ever possibly be… He’d cheated.
Chapter 10
The Maze was dangerous. There were fifty foot sheer drops. Parts where the walls would shift, gaps would close, traps could catch you out and give you enough feedback to fry a Senson. Hunter killer drones that patrolled, armed with fast takedown stun rounds, but still enough to knock you out if you weren’t careful. There were systems in there like FailSafes that you could activate to practise. All stuff we encountered out in the field, for real. Any organisation, especially the private corporations Winter-side, didn’t like to be breached, even when they themselves had stolen the intel we were after in the first place. There wasn’t much that we hit up against that we hadn’t already encountered in the Maze in training. Safety-wise, we only had the kind of kit we’d have with us in the field, lightweight, portable, easily concealed. So there were no safety nets, no harnesses. The danger had to be real because that’s what we faced out in the real world. But at the same time, they didn’t want to kill us. Some of the worst drops were monitored by an AG system that kicked in if you fell too far, too fast.
And that was the trick.
There was a point in an M3 where you had to jump a two metre gap then climb down a sheer wall with minimal handholds to the runoff at the bottom. It was taking me twenty minutes to climb down it, every time, no matter how good I was that run. That’s where the twenty minutes was. You had to go slow because if you skipped a hold and fell, the AG would kick in and lift you back to the top.
Andreyev had disabled the safety system. He must have.
It was against the rules to tamper with any settings once you were in there. But there was nothing, anywhere, that said you had to keep the safety protocols active. I checked and double checked while I ran. Just knowing there was a chance I could bust the record wide open gave me an extra surge of speed, clarity, focus. I aced the first few tough areas, ran the Sphere pretty much textbook perfect, rolled on exit and pushed up into a run through the Block that was exhilarating, leaping from wall to wall, pulling off running jumps that were inch perfect and running along the beam across the Void in a sprint that didn’t waver.
My time was on target. My knee was holding.
I hacked into the system as I ran towards it. I was half expecting a system admin to stop me, call the whole run and power down, leaving me stranded to walk out, but it was right there. Disable safety protocols. I did it, ran up and stared down into the dark for a second.
If I fell it was fifty feet to the bottom.
The handholds were miniscule.
It was a tough climb down at the best of times. After two hours of exertion, it was almost impossible.
I backed off, took a breath, ran and jumped.
I half climbed, half dropped down. It was exhilarating. I’d never done it without the safety net of AG. I was on fire. Pure gut feeling kicking in to make gravity defying leaps from hold to hold, freefalling on instinct, heart-stopping falls and tenuous fingertip grasps.
I was going to make it.
Holy shit, I was going to make it.
Then I misj
udged a drop, my grip failed and I fell.
As a way to get to the bottom fast, it worked. I lay there, breath driven from my lungs, thinking I could jump up and run on and be a good ten minutes ahead… except my head had taken a right crack off the deck and my left arm was hurting in a new and peculiar way that suggested it might not be okay. It looked okay. I’d never broken anything before. But I couldn’t put any weight on it. And there was still a third of the run to finish including the Wall at the end. Realistically…?
I managed to stand without throwing up. Just. I wasn’t sure what the protocol for this was. If Control were watching, and they would be, we were monitored every second we were in here, they’d either be pissed I’d messed with the safety settings or they’d be sending a medical team in, or they might just leave me to walk out on my own.
They left me to walk out on my own.
No one contacted me and I was damned if I was going to call for help. I didn’t leave. I worked my way back round, shakily, to the Void and stubbornly made my way along the beam, with a head that was spinning, lungs tingling with electrobes and an arm that had stopped hurting and was just numb. It occurred to me, stupidly, half way along the beam, that I might have disabled the safety protocols in the whole place and if I fell now…
I managed not to even though I was feeling light headed. I eased myself down and sat there, legs dangling, wondering if I could steal a ship and maybe fly it to Aston, jump calcs weren’t that hard. I was never going to pass a Paninski, and now I’d screwed up and I was going to be lucky if they didn’t throw me out of an airlock after all. Maybe I’d head for Winter and go after the amulet. Courier it back to the Alsatia to show them what they were missing.