by Jaym Gates
“I’ve had worse,” she said. “So what now?”
“Let Cagehopper take that factory apart, and find out what they’re up to. Meantime, heal up.”
Cage didn’t take long. The drug Vaidyar’d been producing was designed to enhance the abilities of asyncs—and all of the people being prescribed the drug were asyncs. According to Vaidyar’s notes, it would make all of the asyncs nodes in a network that she could use to employ psychic sleights on a massively amplified scale, potentially killing or taking control of hundreds of thousands of people. Not quite an apocalypse—but a nice start.
Fortunately, the mutation the drug triggered in the Watts-MacLeod virus was easily reversible. Cagehopper could rearrange a few molecules in the next shipment of the drug, and the patients could all go back to being garden-variety neurotic, socially stigmatized psychic freaks instead of walking brain bombs.
The only problem now was jurisdiction. All of the patients were in Valles-New Shanghai, which wasn’t Park’s beat. And his counterpart there, Das Frettchen, was a paranoid, scorched-earth-lovin’ sumbitch.
Park braced himself, and gave Das Frettchen a call.
—
Park cut the mesh call a few minutes later. It hadn’t gone well. The team, including a hologram of Eidolon, had assembled in the medical bay. The air was clearer and cooler; they’d tweaked some parameters on the station’s life support.
“Das Frettchen ain’t playing ball,” he said.
“Who is this asshole, anyway?” Kim asked.
“He does my job, but he’s in charge of Valles-New Shanghai.”
“I still don’t know what your job is,” Kim said.
Cagehopper chuckled. “Membership equals privileges.”
She snarled a little, the asked Park, “So?”
“We move Cagehopper’s plan to inoculate the victims forward anyhow. Cage, how long you need?”
“About six hours to get a shipment sent out. Then we can bug out and scorch this place.”
“I want y’all alert. Frettchen gets extreme sometimes when he don’t get his way.”
“What was that you said to me a few days back about the Rangers having termites in the frame?” Kim asked.
Park shook his head. “No comment, ma’am.”
—
Das Frettchen inhaled the delicate aroma from the cup of white tea and waited for his old friend across the table to weigh the information he’d just shared. The tea room was private—very private—and they’d been speaking freely.
“Searle,” said Cheng at length—he and Cheng had known each other too long for pseudonyms—”You do realize that a liquidation on this scale will be challenging, even with my resources.”
“Pangs of conscience?” Searle asked.
Cheng’s face remained neutral. “No, of commerce. You’ll have to share your findings with me.”
Searle considered this. The Cult of the Destroyer had eluded Carter; Cheng’s friends would capture one of them and learn their secrets sooner or later, whatever Firewall did. “Of course, old friend. Gentlemen shouldn’t keep secrets from one another.”
Cheng smiled; he’d always enjoyed irony. “Done, then. Ozma will clean up here on the ground. And their orbital factory?”
“Leave that to Firewall,” Searle said.
—
Manager Leong looked at the small, elegantly dressed man in the airlock, still unsure how he should be treated. His credentials, which were very much in order, said he was Mr. Searle, here to investigate an insurance claim by one of the U-Facture’s clients on behalf of Llewellyn’s Offworld.
Leong’s uncertainty in dealing with the man stemmed from his inability to learn anything about Searle’s reputation. This suggested that he was either a complete nobody or someone very important indeed. Leong had not risen to management by being incautious, and so he decided to give the elegant man face.
Yes, clearly someone important. Leong let him inside with repeated insurances of offering every assistance.
—
Searle’s hacker reported back within a minute of Searle’s gaining access to the U-Facture.
[I have their AGI; it’s sleeved in the ranger shuttle. Scorch it?]
Searle messaged, [Stand by.]
On the tacnet feed, he could see that the trio of Guangxi cleaners he’d hired were in position.
[Go,] he messaged.
He watched the stream of status messages with interest as Eidolon’s consciousness was burned from the ranger shuttle’s computer systems.
—
“How much longer?” Kim asked, “Smoke’s been in the Skink all this time. There’s a limit to monkey housebreaking.”
[We’re almost done,] Cagehopper messaged, [Maybe half an—oh , fuck.]
“Eidolon’s offline,” Park said, “We got company.” He enlarged the tacnet feeds of security sensors in the module that Eidolon had created; several had gone dark. The rest were winking out, one by one.
“Shuttle’s still online, Eidolon just isn’t there anymore,” Kim said.
They were still in the med bay. Through the open bulkhead door to the manufacturing quadrant, they heard coughs of gunfire.
[Cage?] Park messaged.
[Hiding. One shooter, helluv professional.]
Park and Kim drew guns and made for the bulkhead. They flanked the doorway, sizing things up. Park went to t-ray vision and looked through the wall. He could see Cage huddled behind some equipment and the shooter stalking him, moving cover to cover.
Kim, watching the room behind him, said, “Behind us!”
Park whipped around. There was nothing there but a slight distortion of light on visual, but the t-rays showed the outline of another assassin—throwing something.
Three marble-sized objects flew toward them as the assassin took cover behind the doctor bot. Grenades.
They both tried to swing themselves around the bulkhead into cover, but they were too slow.
Last effin’ time I call that bastard, Park thought.
The grenades exploded in a blast of white plasma. It didn’t last long enough to hurt much.
—
Searle’s hacker didn’t take long extracting the necessary data. He’d review it before sharing it with Cheng, of course. The leader of the Guangxi killers approached him after they’d planted the explosives and visited the front office to dispose of Manager Leong.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Outstanding work, as always,” he said, “That will be all.”
The assassin cocked an eyebrow. “The ranger ship?” she asked.
“I’ll dispose of it,” he said.
The assassins left him there in the module’s outer ring with the three bodies.
Searle put the agonizer to the base of Kim’s skull, flipped it to roast mode, switched to t-ray vision to make sure he didn’t miss, and burned out her stack. This was a slow operation with an agonizer, and he held a handkerchief over his mouth and nose as hair and flesh burned under the beam. If the rangers followed policy, she’d hit her life timeout in about a week and be re-instanced from backup, none the wiser.
He sawed Cagehopper and Carter’s stacks out next. He considered simply discarding the monkey; he disliked uplifts and saw little use for this one. But he pocketed both stacks anyway before spacing the bodies.
He left the U-Facture module, went to the Skink, and powered it up. Piece of junk. Smelled like ape and stale cigarettes, but it would get him back to Mars quickly enough.
Unlike his companions, Jake Carter would be a problem. Searle would have no difficulty justifying the ranger and the ape as necessary information containment. The AGI had been a fork; the original would know nothing. But Carter was a proxy. Ming and those other fools rimward would demand Carter be re-instanced and briefed on the mission outcome.
Searle would probably have to claim that Carter’s stack had been unrecoverable, but doing so would call into question both Searle’s competence and his reliability. He didn’t see a better option; Carter had enough pull with the Eye that a memory wipe was out of the question.
As he was finishing the pre-flight check, something flew through the cabin and hit the windshield, bouncing toward him. Searle caught it; it was an empty, crumpled-up cigarette package.
He heard noise and turned around. There was a police baboon floating a few meters behind him, feet holding the rim of the cockpit door. It was rhythmically flipping open, flicking, and closing a lighter. It closed the lighter a final time, let go of it so that it hung in front of the baboon, and growled.
“Er, sorry,” said Searle, “I don’t smoke.”
The baboon launched itself at Searle, howling jaws opening to fill his field of vision.
Prix Fixe
Andrew Penn Romine
It’s a forty-day burn across the belt from Extropia to 1123 Hungaria, and Jule Cortez is ravenous. Her stomach growling, she sits up from the acceleration couch to get a better view of the misshapen asteroid spinning slowly outside the cockpit window. Just nine kilometers, end to end. She’s burned a lot of fuel and a lot of favors to get here, and the asteroid looks almost good enough to eat.
“Finally. I’m starving,” she whispers.
[Your blood sugar levels are normal], her muse, Thoth, assures in an androgynous purr.
“You’d be hungry, too, knowing Chef is down there.”
She means metacelebrity Chef Volkan Batuk, missing and presumed dead, but Jule’s found him at last, hiding on a speck of dust in the endless black.
[I can’t get hungry], Thoth reminds her. Her muse has been snarkier than usual since its last firmware update.
Small clusters of buildings cling to the crust of the asteroid. They’re leftovers from an old mining venture, abandoned when the mineral deposits proved shallow. Perfect place to hide, though, Jule thinks.
1123 Hungaria’s a Cole bubble, spun just fast enough to provide weak gs to the cavern hollowed out along the axis. The ship’s sensors ping power signatures. Another shrill alarm warns of targeting lasers locking on.
“What if he doesn’t want to be bothered?” she worries, punching transmit on the passcode she’d retrieved off the mesh. It took months to decipher the clues, and a generous deposit of funds to ghost accounts. She hopes it’s not a hoax.
[Why invite us all the way out here, then?]
The comm chimes.
“Spacecraft Peppercorn. Follow instructions for landing. Do not deviate.”
“That sure sounds like Batuk,” she admits to Thoth as she fires the vernier jets, matching Peppercorn’s orbit with 1123 Hungaria’s spin. An open hangar swings into view, beacons winking emerald.
[Voiceprint’s a probable match], Thoth confirms. [We found him, alright.]
“Yeah.” Jule can’t help but grin even though her feelings are an emulsion of amazement and apprehension. She might never have come all the way out here from Mars without her muse’s guidance. Thoth’s level-headed encouragement had been a foil to her anxiety over all the conspiracy theories surrounding the metacelebrity’s supposed death.
Batuk’s restaurant, Trimalchio, once orbited the limb of Mars in an absurdly expensive hab for the hyperelite. It took money, power, and kilometers of rep just to get in the reservation queue, and after that, a year-long wait. Batuk’s recipes were copied widely. Anyone with a half-way decent fabber could churn out his famous enoki-stuffed polenta shells or wet-print his divine poitrine de porc souffles with jus rouge.
Growing up, Jule had fabbed whole feasts from his recipes, using her EZPrint from Prosperity Group, Batuk’s chief sponsor. She had all the XPs, too. For her fifteenth birthday, though, all Jule Cortez wanted was to eat at Trimalchio, and because her parents were well-placed execs at Prosperity Group she got her spot on the wait-list.
But, a week before her meal, an explosion in Trimalchio’s kitchen depressured the hab and scattered its elite diners into the vacuum of space. The fire was ruled an accident, and there were few casualties after the guests were resleeved. Among the irretrievable egos, though, were a handful of Batuk’s most devoted patrons—and the chef himself.
Now, Jule might be able not only to prove he survived, but with luck, and at long last, to finally dine on Chef Batuk’s legendary cuisine.
—
The Peppercorn settles into the landing hangar as a docking umbilical snakes out. The crunk of the airlocks connecting follows, then the hiss of equalizing pressure. Jule’s ears pop gently as she reaches for the hatch.
[Are you ready?]
“Are you kidding?” She smiles, and her nervousness vanishes in a rush of endorphins. It might be a post-sleep reaction from the hibernoid morph she sleeved in Extropia, but she’s damn giddy all the same.
Stale but breathable air wafts up. The wide umbilical pulses like the esophagus of some slavering beast from a fantasy XP.
And you didn’t even bring a sword, a voice says. Her own or Thoth’s, she’s not sure.
Jule propels herself hand-over-hand down the rungs of the umbilical into a spherical chamber below.
A lone figure waits for her there, a trim male exalt with broad shoulders, short dark hair, and soulful, penetrating eyes. Chef Volkan Batuk’s smile is tight, but charming rather than arrogant, and he’s leaner—and handsomer—than he’d last appeared in the feeds Jule’s seen. His eyes dart from her to the umbilical and back, and the smile slips for a moment.
“You’re not what I expected,” he laughs nervously, a faint accent underscoring his bemused air.
“And what were you expecting, Chef?” she extends a hand, and he takes it. It’s dry and warm. He smells of honey and musk.
[No access to the outside mesh, but there’s a PAN with some guest codes.] Let Thoth worry about that.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. A Prosperity Group hit squad, maybe?”
“Oh, shit, no. I’m just your biggest fan, Chef, I swear.” Jule giggles, unable to contain her nerves.
“And you are?” Batuk replies, an eyebrow arched.
“Oh! Jule Cortez. It’s such an honor, Chef.”
“Welcome to Cockayne, Jule Cortez,” Batuk says, “and congratulations on deciphering my clues.”
“I had a lot of help from my muse,” she admits. Really, Thoth did all the work.
“Ah. So why did you seek me out?” Batuk’s gaze is intense, and a frown tugs at the corners of his mouth. Has she offended him?
“I’m famished!” Her stomach growls, on cue.
Batuk laughs, a throaty bark that dissolves the tension.
“Come, then, before that monster eats us both!” he motions her down the corridor.
[Ask him why he’s got a laser-guided railgun emplacement topside,] Thoth whispers.
Shut up, Jule whispers back.
—
Batuk leads her down a series of clean, dimly-lit corridors to a warren of hab domes on the inner surface of the asteroid. Through porthole windows, she glimpses the vast hollow of the interior. It’s spined with sunlight-reflecting mirrors, augmented by artificial lamps that bathe the entire interior in a misty, amber glow. Unfortunately, the giant windows of the south pole are smashed open, and the cavern is a vacuum-frosted wasteland.
“It serves little purpose now,” Batuk muses when Jule laments its loss.
“You could fix it. Grow your own food out there!” she says, a sudden idea kindling in her. “You wouldn’t have to rely on vat meat.”
“Livestock’s hideously expensive, even for me. And I’m hardly farmer material.” There’s a curious light in Batuk’s eyes as he palms a door open.
Jule tries to hide her disappointment. Cultivating exotic food sources are what metacelebrity chefs are supp
osed to do. Maybe she can convince him to reconsider.
Inside is a dormitory chamber—the standard hub of couches, vid screens, and exercise equipment—ringed with triple-stacked bunks and hygiene pods. In its mining days, the dorm probably housed at least two dozen, hot bunking through shifts of sleep, play, and work. Jule and Batuk seem to be the only ones here now.
“Meager accommodations, I know, but I hope they’ll do while I finish preparing a welcome meal.” He seems embarrassed, and Jule fights an urge to hug him.
“They’re fine, really, Chef.”
“Excellent. I’ll return shortly.” The door whisks shut behind him as he departs.
[Batuk’s rattled by our presence,] Thoth observes.
“He’s got a right to be,” she says, “he’s supposed to be dead.”
[And yet he left us an invitation to find.]
Jule sighs. “Thoth, when did you get so paranoid?” Not that she isn’t worried, too. She’s more convinced Thoth’s latest patch is buggy, though. The muse has been acting strange since they left Mars. She makes a note to run the update again when she gets access to the outside mesh.
[Next time you fangirl, just remember to watch your back.]
“That’s why I have you, Thoth. Any luck accessing the local mesh?”
[Yes. Just the basics, though. Nothing terribly interesting.]
“Show me what you’ve got.”
Jule settles on a padded couch as Thoth punches up the local mesh to her endos. She finds basic maps of the various habs of 1123 Hungaria; most are powered down. She wonders if that means she’s the only guest so far. Jule scrolls through terraforming designs the miners had intended for the interior. They’d imagined a lush paradise in the cavern. Maybe she could restore that dream—with Batuk’s blessing, of course.
She spends the next hour spitballing ideas. Faux-rustic farms from pole to pole, free-roaming livestock, maybe squid modified for a low-g atmosphere? She giggles, imagining old Earth bison bouncing around like shaggy balloons. Above all, a pinnacle of rock rising with unparalleled views. That’s where Batuk’s new restaurant would go.