by David Ryker
I cracked my neck and pushed it back against the headrest, my breath rattling in my ears.
“One minute to drop,” Volchec said inside my head.
I breathed slowly.
“Are you alright, James?” Greg asked. “Your heart rate is elevated, and your adrenaline levels have spiked.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, just never been dropped out of a plane before — at least not for real. In virtual it’s different. In fact, most things are different in simulation.”
“We will be fine,” he replied. “All systems are functional, including directional and landing-thrusters.”
“It’s not exactly the landing I’m worried about,” I sighed, feeling the headrest suck on my helmet.
He didn’t have time to say anything else before the rear doors opened and the wind started jangling the cargo nets hanging off the walls. I could hear it whistling and buffeting in the hold, but couldn’t feel anything. Greg was standing like an obelisk against it. We’d all turned around, and in front of me, I could see Fish waiting patiently at the edge. I couldn’t see or hear him inside his rig, but I knew he wouldn’t be freaking out.
“Alright, we’re coming over the drop-zone now — everyone ready?” Volchec’s voice was stoic in my ear.
I could see land below us — it wasn’t far, but it was dark and barren, and the temperature reading on my HUD said that it was minus forty down there. We were only a few kilometers from the city, but on this side of it, it was bathed in darkness continually, so the temperature never rose above what it was now. Overhead, snow clouds were swirling. The city was like a jagged horizon, cutting into the light burning beyond it, a place where the sun never set.
“You’re good to go,” Volchec said casually, and almost instantaneously, Fish disappeared through the door.
I didn’t even have my feet on the pedals. I was sitting back and was happy for Greg to take the plunge for me, and he did so without much warning or fuss. It was three steps and then he dropped into nothingness, turning us back toward the Tilt-wing. It zoomed away into the gloom, and seconds later I saw Alice and then Mac drop out — a dot and then a smaller dot.
The altimeter told me we were only a few hundred meters up, so there was no time for a parachute. Greg measured us in with deft ease and then pumped the thrusters. My guts bounced off the seat and then back into my stomach, and we landed with a cushioned thud, sending plumes of steam into the frigid air around us as the ice melted under our jets.
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Greg said encouragingly.
“Oh shut up,” I sighed. I wasn’t sure I liked this caring side of Greg. I kind of figured it was because I’d opted to take him off Draven, rather than abandoning him as the others had theirs. He’d wished me all the best on my career, and said that he hoped we’d meet again, though made it explicitly clear that AI cores weren’t uncommon, and that each new mech was built with one installed, and as such, he’d be destroyed rather than transplanted. If that wasn’t getting guilt-tripped by a computer, I didn’t know what was. But still, since then, and especially since I’d loaded him into this new body, he seemed pretty concerned with both my mental well-being and emotional needs. It was almost like being coddled. In truth, I missed Sally’s tough-love, and I also missed Greg’s cool derision.
“Pull up a map of the area,” I sighed.
“Affirmative.” The screen lit up with a translucent topographical map of the area. The others were showing as little green avatars, all moving toward each other. Greg was still guiding me and doing the walking, which I was glad of. I needed to gather my thoughts — get my head in the game.
“Can you get me some information on Telmareen?”
“What information would you like?” Greg asked, navigating us through a crystallized and frozen forest. Everything was covered with a thin layer of icy snow, and what was falling wasn’t sticking, but instead just hitting the surface and blowing away in sparkling gusts until it hit something vertical and amassed in a pile. The wind was harsh and the chill was down to almost sixty below. Greg had even gone so far as to give me an idea of how long I would last before freezing to death if I did pop the hatch. We were currently hovering around the three-minute mark, though if I took my helmet off, a single lungful of frozen air would burst my lungs, and then I’d suffocate on my own frozen blood. I thanked him for the description and assured him that I wasn’t contemplating either.
“Can you get hold of all the latest arrests in the city?” I asked.
“Sure.” As he said it, the topographical map of the area shrank down to the corner and was replaced with a map of the portion of the city we were headed into. It was only a kilometer or two wide at any given point — one half sun-drenched and the other icy and cold. The parts of the city on either extreme were the cheapest to live, and the parts in the middle, which were most temperate, were the most expensive, though the continually colliding hot and cold air made the city a stormy and tumultuous place to live no matter where you were. Rain was pretty much constant, except for those who could afford to live above the clouds. The tallest buildings poked through them and got the best of both worlds: a low-hanging sun that gave enough heat to live by but never got too hot, as well as a view to die for, or to kill for — or to risk skimming off the Federation for.
“Here are all of the arrests in the zone of the city that we’re heading into that have occurred in the last twenty-four hours.” The map lit up with little red dots.
“Expand that to the last two weeks.”
“Processing.” More dots began to pop up.
“Cross reference that with bars.”
“Bars?”
“Yeah, like where they serve drinks.”
“May I ask why?” Greg wasn’t questioning it, so I guessed he was just adding my process to his ‘vast’ data banks.
I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “Because bars are where the scummiest people go to discuss illegal shit. It’s loud and there’s a sense of safety when you’re in public — like there’s less chance you’re going to get shot without warning.”
“That is an interesting logic.”
“Eh, you learn a few things growing up in a backwater colony like Ninety-Three.” I shook my head and thought back to it, whether there was anything left of it, and if there was, who was sitting at our table these days.
“I will remember that. Highlighting now.” Buildings began lighting up green among the red dots.
“And with warehouses that have routes to space-ports that don’t include main transit routes.”
“I don’t really see what that—”
“Just do it,” I sighed.
“Processing.” More buildings lit up in green, and yellow lines started connecting them.
I looked at the map, a mess of red and green and yellow, and narrowed my eyes. “And where was the contact living?”
A blue dot joined the others. “I’m running out of colors, James.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” I muttered, staring at the screen. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“I don’t know what you’re seeing.”
I reached out and touched the screen with my finger. “There, and here.” I moved it down to another spot. “These two buildings.”
“Yes?”
“They’re dead-spots for arrests, and see these routes?”
“There appear to be less arrests by the Telmareen Civic Guard in those areas that you’ve specified.”
“And let me take a guess here — the ones that are there were all made by droids?” I cocked an eyebrow under my helmet. I was reaching a little, but I had a gut feeling about it.
There was silence while Greg ran the data, and then he came back. “That is correct. Here is the map without arrests made by droids.” A bunch of the red dots disappeared, and the areas that I’d highlighted were completely free of them. “How did you know?”
“Call it a hunch. Doubt Volchec or Alice have ever been to a dive-bar in their life.” I smirked
to myself. “Now then, how much would you bet that whoever’s moving the Iskcara is greasing the palms of the Guard to turn a blind eye while they move it from the warehouse to the spaceport?” I could hear the pride in my own voice, but I didn’t do anything to cull it. I’d not felt myself smiling over much lately, so I let the feeling swell in my chest. It felt good.
“I don’t bet. It is not in my nature. Chance is not a sound and logical way to make money.”
“I thought computers liked probabilities? Numbers? That sort of thing.”
“We view risk as a calculation, but rarely opt for anything with a low probability of success.”
“What would you regard as low?” I asked, intrigued.
“Sixty-six percent.”
I scoffed a little. “I’d say that’s pretty high.”
“Would you bet your life on it?”
I clenched my teeth and thought for a second. “I’ve bet it on worse and lived.”
“This is why AIs need pilots, to calculate their own risks, and then take them. Sometimes that is what is required.”
I laughed a little. “And pilots need AIs, don’t worry about that. Now, save the coordinates for that bar and warehouse. I’d say that’s where the sellers will be meeting potential buyers.”
“Why would they meet them in a bar?”
I shrugged as best I could in the harness. “You’ve obviously never been to Marcy’s in Ninety-Three. Smugglers and double-dealing merchants would touch down there pretty regularly, and they were never very quiet about what they’d done or what they had to move.”
“I don’t understand,” Greg said.
“Public place, you know — lots of eyes, lots of people — less chance of anyone wanting to make a scene. Less chance of anyone getting shot without warning.”
“Did they teach you that in the academy?”
I laughed. “No, they didn’t. But I always thought that sort of stuff was common knowledge, anyway. Guessing you don’t watch much TV, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Didn’t think so.”
I came up onto a rise alongside the others and stared at the dimly twinkling lights through the snow. We were only a couple of hundred meters from Telmareen City, but it was still near invisible in the wind and ice. It had thinned a little even in the short distance we’d walked, and the temperature had risen to a balmy twenty below. It was almost livable.
A channel-wide link had been opened, and Volchec was briefing us before we headed in. “Alright guys, remember, this is off the books, so you’re not going to get a warm welcome here. But there’s no laws against visiting the city, and there’s lots that goes on here, like everywhere else, so play it cool and keep your heads, alright? The Civic Guard will no doubt corner you at some point — four mechs trudging through the city — it’s not exactly low key, but it won’t be the first time they’ve seen it. Mech are pretty common in the hands of humanoid mercenaries. Anyone asks, you’re here meeting a client, alright? Not looking for Iskcara, and definitely not looking for Barva, you got it? We’ll keep our eyes open from up here and feed you what info we can, but otherwise, you’ve got no backup, so try not to start any shit if you can help it, alright?” They were in orbit — they’d already patched in to tell us. Volchec was running point and Everett was on overwatch, monitoring the Civic Guard frequencies, feeding us info, trying to keep us alive.
Everyone mumbled in agreement and trudged forward through the tundra toward the slowly brightening lights.
We barely got halfway in before Greg flashed an alert sign up on screen. “There is an aircraft approaching.”
“What kind?”
“It appears to be a rotor-craft of some kind. The Civic Guard uses them to patrol the city.”
I stopped where I was. “Guys?”
“Yeah, I see it,” Mac said back, turning half on to the right. Alice fell in next to him and I did too. “No one do anything hasty, okay?” He raised his arms. “And let me do the talking.”
A small two-seater craft, painted with the Guard’s green and white colors, descended out of the snowy squall, two rotors chugging in circles at forty-five degree angles. The snow whipped off them and swirled in the darkness. “This is the Telmareen Civic Guard — identify yourselves and state your business.”
“We’re just passing through,” Mac called into the air through his external speakers. “In and out in a day or two, tops.” He sounded calm, but then again, he had to.
“Identify yourselves.”
“Just travelers,” he said dryly. “Seeking shelter from the storm.”
“Where is your ship?” the voice from the craft barked. I could see the shapes of two pilots in the cockpit clad in white and green gear with full visored helmets. The lights on the craft shone brightly and quivered in the wind, bathing us in a harsh white light.
“Not far,” Mac said vaguely.
“Planetary visitors must dock their ships at a registered spaceport. It’s an offense to land without a permit.” The craft started clunking and the belly opened up. A cannon dropped down and focused on Mac, a red laser guiding its way in the snow.
“Who said it landed? We’ve got someone keeping it warm up top,” Mac replied, still unphased, pointing to the sky. “Didn’t care for our chances of getting back out of one of those Federation impounds,” he jibed.
“Why are you approaching from the wasteland?” the voice demanded, apparently trying to make up its mind whether to shoot or not.
“Three mechs dropping out of the sky into the heart of a Federation colony? Don’t tell me if we did that you wouldn’t have fired first and asked questions later. Now, come on, we’re not walking in weapons drawn, there are no laws against being out here, or going in there. We’ve done nothing wrong, and we’d appreciate you just letting us get on with our business. We didn’t come to start any shit, but if you think you can take us…” He trailed off airily.
He’d said three, and for a second it’d jolted me — but then I realized that Fish wasn’t next to us. He’d done his disappearing act again. He could be right there or miles away — there was no way to tell. I didn’t have a chance to think about it before Greg flashed a reticle up on screen and locked it onto the craft. “Target locked,” he said quietly. I ignored him, watching the blank exterior of Mac’s HAM for any hint of what was about to happen.
The craft hovered for a minute and then the voice cut through the storm once more. “We’ve registered and catalogued your mech. We’ll be keeping an eye on you.” The voice faded, and the light died, and the crafted peeled upward and into the clouds.
I heard Alice breathe a sigh of relief in my ear. “What the hell was that?”
Mac chuckled a little. “Telmareen is as crooked a place as it could be. It’s a hole, like most Federation planets. The scum that wash through places like this are about as dangerous as they come — these hubs, trading hotspots, make it easy for people to slip things on and off the planet. The Guard are more for show than anything else. They let a lot slide to keep their skins safe. There’s no doubt in their minds that we’re mercs rolling up in uncolored, new rigs. You know how hard it is to get a Federation rig under the table — especially one that’s not a battle-beaten F-Series?” There was silence between us. “Damn hard,” he continued. “Which means that we must be good at what we do, well connected, and in need of rigs this dangerous. Which in turn means we must be a couple of real dangerous mercs who make their money using their mech — and considering the price of these things, we must make a lot. So, in that train of thought, would we let a pair of jumped-up guards stand in the way of a paycheck, or would we blast them out of the fucking sky and stride over their corpses?” He huffed. “They don’t get paid enough to risk finding out.”
“Jesus Christ, Mac,” Alice whispered. “That’s a pretty gruesome series of assumptions.”
“I’ve been around the ringer — visited more than my share of worlds. Dealt with more than my share of scum-bags. When you surviv
e this long at the controls of one of these things, you get to know the darker side of the universe. I’ve faced off against all kinds driving Federation mech, flying Federation ships, shooting Federation guns. The Federation control nearly every planet from here to the dark zone and back, but what they make doesn’t always find its way into Federation hands. But the hands they do find their way into all have one thing in common — they want to use it to spill blood.”
Volchec’s voice growled in my ear. “Stay on-mission, MacAlister.”
“Affirmative, Major,” he said back darkly. “Come on, let’s go.” He trudged forward in my peripheral, toward the lights. Alice followed, and Fish appeared next to him from thin air.
I pressed my finger to the back of my ear and toggled off the comm-link. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. What the fuck was I getting myself into?
11
We trudged into the city as the sun rose in front of us. It was strange — when we stopped in the deserted, shade-drenched streets, it was a glow on the horizon, but with each passing step it edged upward until it was full on our chests. In front, we could see a main street in the city stretching out. We stood on frozen ground, surrounded by windowless buildings, shutter-fronted and pumping smoke into the air from chimneys, but in the distance, we could see vehicles moving, people and creatures walking, like ants bathed in the sun. The ice and dirt gave way to asphalt and crept into a true glass-windowed metropolis.