by M. D. Cooper
At the bottom of the stairs, they passed through a security arch guarded by two local police officers. Tremon offered a smile and a nod to each of the guards as he and Yakob passed by.
“You’re so damn polite,” Yakob grunted.
“Habit,” Tremon replied with a shrug.
“You know they’re not your friends,” Yakob pressed.
A groan slipped past Tremon’s lips. “Yeah, I’m all too aware of that. But a kindness may buy us consideration later.”
Yakob didn’t answer as they stood on the underground platform, waiting for the train destined for the Rileside District.
The board indicated that the next Rileside train was five minutes out, and Tremon gave Yakob a look that said ‘see, plenty of time’, which the other man ignored.
Their destination was across the river, in the commercial district near the spaceport. That was where Gloria lived always keeping her ear to the ground, talking with crews and learning about what was going on outside the Iberia System.
Gloria was a partial mech, one of the early prototypes who only had one arm removed. He’d never seen her ‘gun arm’, but he imagined she still had it, even after all these years.
He supposed a normal-ish arm was better for all the skulking she did. A meter-long barrel on the end of one’s arm probably drew more attention than a person wanted.
Gloria already does enough of that on her own.
When the train arrived, they stepped onto the car and found seats close to the door—which was simple enough, given that there were only five other passengers. Three appeared as one would expect of Chusa’s denizens, which is to say, rough. The other pair, a man and a woman sitting at the back of the car, were dressed too nicely, and probably lived in Cartegena, or outside the city altogether.
“Gloria’s scouting the location,” Yakob said as the car began to move, picking up speed as it raced down the maglev track.
“Good,” Tremon replied, wishing that all of this wasn’t still necessary.
He was nobody, none of this mattered. He shouldn’t have any of Yakob’s or Gloria’s loyalty, let alone their continued efforts on his behalf.
When the train finally reached their stop, ten minutes had passed, and the others from Chusa had long since departed, replaced by other passengers who lived in Rileside.
Yakob was first off the train, and Tremon followed close behind into the much cleaner station.
Here, even more police patrolled the platform, keeping an eye on everything and paying extra attention to the train that had come from Chusa district.
Yakob and Tremon were dressed casually in the loose slacks and long tunics that were the style on Malta. Neither carried any weapons, and so the police didn’t have cause to give them more than a cursory look as they passed under the scanners.
The pair or men were the very definition of nondescript.
Having avoided any entanglements, they rode the—pleasantly functional—moving steps up to street level and out into the bright sunshine that reached down to them, filtered through the hundreds of aircars that flitted overhead.
All around stood low buildings, the tallest no more than ten stories. Their windows showed wares of every type imaginable, though most catered to clothing.
He felt a momentary pang of guilt that most people in Chusa district could only dream of shopping in any of these stores. Granted, he was in the same situation at present. It wasn’t as though he was drawing a salary anymore. Yakob’s connections were the source of most of their money.
“She’s in a café in that building,” Yakob said, gesturing to a bright red structure that housed several restaurants, as well as a store that sold a variety of home goods, including basic servitors—though Tremon suspected that they were all refurbished.
Tremon nodded and followed his protector across the plaza, deftly avoiding the hawkers and police until they came to the red building and walked through its main entrance.
Inside, the structure featured ruddy basalt walls, each block carved with intricate patterns. He gave them an appreciative look as Yakob took the first right and entered the café.
Gloria was easy to pick out, her towering height putting her half a head above any other patron. She didn’t wave, but her steely grey eyes fixed on the two men and followed them as they walked to the counter. Tremon ordered a coffee and an ‘everything’ bagel, while Yakob opted for a cup of tea.
“Don’t think you can have some of this,” Tremon said to Yakob as he picked up his bagel.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You took so long to get ready today that I had a full lunch back at the apartment.
“Har har.”
Coffee and food in hand, they made their way to Gloria’s table and sat down across from her.
“You look good, Gloria,” Tremon said, while Yakob gave the woman a curt nod before he returned to his natural state: watching everything all at once.
“As do you, Tremon. I’m glad that Malta’s climate agrees with you.”
Tremon snorted. “The climate does, though I don’t get much firsthand exposure to it over over in Chusa.”
Gloria shook her head, and her lips twitched in annoyance, but she didn’t strike up their age-old argument over location—or the fact that he was hiding on Malta to begin with.
The woman across from him may have looked like a steely-eyed menace, but he’d faced worse in his day and never backed down.
A connection request for a private network came to him with Gloria’s tokens. He validated them, and then accepted the request.
While doing that, he’d maintained light banter with her between sips of his coffee, growing more and more curious about what the woman could have to say.
She didn’t look quite as dour as usual, so either it was good news, or she was drunk—though he’d only seen her drunk once—but good news was about as rare.
Tremon and Yakob exchanged surprised looks; in addition to never drinking, the woman almost never joked. In fact, Tremon could barely recall her smiling.
Yakob corrected.
Gloria cast Yakob a look that said he’d just uttered the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
Yakob only shrugged and lapsed back into silence.
Tremon’s eyes widened as he sat back in his seat.
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Gloria gave him a measuring look, and then directed it at Yakob as well.
Gloria didn’t reply, only gave him a level stare for a minute before continuing.
She paused and looked at her empty cup. “Yakob, would you be a dear and get me a refill on my java-berry-juice? I’m mighty parched.”
Yakob lifted an eyebrow and groaned, but stood and grabbed her cup without further objection.
Gloria had become a touch too animated for someone discussing the summer’s crop yields, and took a deep breath while Tremon fought the urge to lean over and shake every detail out of her.
Tremon felt lightheaded as he absorbed the news, like he’d just been through a centrifugal sync process on a rotating station. If he didn’t trust Gloria implicitly, he would have dismissed the news out of hand, but she wasn’t prone to spreading baseless rumor—typically quite the opposite.
Tremon felt a pang of guilt stab through him at the mention of mechs. He wished he could have done something to stem the program once he’d realized that most of the ‘conscripts’ were less criminals, and more victims of both poor circumstances and a bankrupt justice system.
What’s done is done, Tremon, he said to himself, the words a mantra he found himself repeating far too often.
Gloria let the words hang, and the three fell silent for a moment.
“Wait a second,” Tremon whispered aloud.
He turned it around in his mind, wondering if it was possible. The ship looked different, but the main structure was the same…the pair of habitation cylinders made it hard to mistake for many other vessels.
TOWER ASSAULT
STELLAR DATE: 12.12.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Tarxien District, Cerulean, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
She hunkered down behind the rim-wall of the seven hundredth level of the Tarxien Tower alongside Q Company’s HQ element, feeding her drones up over the edge to survey the nighttime view of Cerulean, spread out far below. She spotted N Company’s positions in the Cerulean District to the north, hoping that M Company was faring better, hitting Sorna tower in the Naxxar District.
Rika didn’t like the idea very much either, but the seven hundredth level was a five-hundred-meter wide park that offered little in the way of cover—or access further up the fifteen-kilometer high tower. They couldn’t remain in place for long.
Rika s
ent back an affirmation and looked over the four platoons of Q company. They were spread around the perimeter of the park level, engaging the drones coming in from the tower’s exterior—some flying and others crawling—all intent on wiping out the Marauders that were trying to take the structure.
The mechs were doing their best not to bunch up, but with most of the perimeter being little more than low railings—so as not to obstruct the view of the city—they were mostly situated around the columns that supported the rest of the tower above them.
Or, like Rika, crouched behind the few sections with higher perimeter walls, which were likely in place to manage the winds in case the light grav shielding that wrapped around the level went out.
Niki didn’t respond for a moment, then came back with,
Rika’s response was preempted by a group of crawlers that suddenly surged over the perimeter wall and landed in front of her. Q Company’s Captain Ron and Gunnery Sergeant Bookie were to her left, and both beat Rika to the punch, firing on the crawlers before she even raised her GNR.
The machines were too close for anything but her projectile rounds, and she fired a dozen shots into one of the centipede-like machines while unslinging her PR-109.
Captain Ron had his heavy repeater firing kinetic grapeshot, and the Ka-CHUG Ka-CHUG shook the ground beneath her as well as the wall at her back.
Bookie, an SMI-4 like Rika, pushed off the wall and leapt into the air, her whip-arm extending as she flew over the bots, slashing half the legs off one as she sailed overhead to land behind them—well to the right of where Captain Ron was firing—and cutting the tail end off another bot.