by James Maxey
“What qualifies an airplane mechanic to build prosthetic legs?” asked Clint.
“Look, if you think the main tools of a mechanic these days are a wrench and screwdriver, you’re behind the times. Every last component of a plane is wired into some kind of sensor. Mark spent as much time on a computer as he did digging around in the guts of an engine. At home, he was part of the maker community. He had all these 3-D printers and knew how to download plans to make just about anything. The technology in my new legs was patented, but some vet in Germany had taken his legs apart the week he got home and posted schematics on the dark web. A few of the computerized components couldn’t be printed, but Mark convinced me that since I handled inventory at work, it would be simple to order them then ‘lose’ them. The inventory system was a real mess long before I got there. Sure, we’d both have been fired if anyone found out what we were doing. But… he was promising me I could walk again.”
She looked out the window as a guy on a motorcycle pulled up. She pressed her lips tightly together as she watched him dismount the bike. She looked back at Clint and said, “And I didn’t just walk. I went out dancing with him. I fell in love. I mean, Jesus, how could I not fall in love?” Her eyes grew misty. “Even though… right from the start, I knew something was wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“He kept secrets. There were things he’d tell me that didn’t add up. Like, every other week he seemed to get a new 3-D printer delivered, one bigger and better than the last model he’d just had to have. I’m not talking about the little desktop units that cost maybe a thousand bucks. He was getting the same models big auto makers use to fabricate parts. These things cost a fortune. Of course, airplane mechanics bring home nice paychecks. He might have been living in a trailer, but he had more money than anyone I’d ever known. He told me he sold stuff he made on the internet, and did commission work for small companies that couldn’t afford their own printers, but, you know, it seemed fishy. One reason I wound up in an office job was that I was good with numbers, and his income just didn’t add up to what he was spending on his hobbies. I tried not to worry about it, but then Benjamin Borghart showed up on our doorstep.”
“Who?” asked App.
“Benjamin Borghart. Guy had a South African accent. Said he wanted to talk to Mark about fabricating a prototype for a new kind of wind turbine his company was building. They went off to the garage to talk in private. I had a bad feeling about Borghart. Luckily, we had, like, twenty drones sitting around the garage. A few taps of my smartphone and I could hear their whole conversation. They weren’t talking about wind turbines. They were talking about guns, and talking like they’d known each other for a long time.”
App had information flashing across his retinal monitors. Katya was listening to this conversation, of course, and helpfully providing additional reading material. Borghart’s picture appeared in his mind’s eye. An ugly bastard, squat and bald, devoid of eyebrows. He had a dozen different aliases and was a wanted man in thirty countries for trafficking arms.
Becky continued: “I confronted Mark. I’ve never been one to hold my tongue. He told me everything. He said, sure, he sometimes did work for people outside the law. He said that he knew that didn’t sound good, but ever since he’d gotten his hands onto his first 3-D printer, it had been like something had woke up inside him. He’d been a good mechanic, but fabricating stuff had triggered whole new areas of his brain. He said he felt like an artist. He felt like a genius.”
“A genius who got wrapped up with illegal arms smugglers,” said Clint.
She frowned. “Like I said, he had expensive hobbies. His friends on the dark web told him there were safe, easy ways to make money by helping people smuggle stuff across borders. As a mechanic, he had access to part of planes that customs would never search. He told me he never knew what it was he was helping smuggle. He guessed most of it was drugs, some of it was cash, and occasionally he had to hide some really large cargo, which he figured were weapons.”
“You were still in love with someone wrapped up in such evil work?” asked Clint.
She scowled at him. “These things were going to move across borders with or without his involvement. Why shouldn’t he get a little taste?”
“That’s a dangerous line of thinking,” said Clint.
“You think?” she said. She sighed. “Look, I knew it was dumb. But… I was bitter. I’d lost my legs in a war that I no longer believed in, and been screwed over by the government that had sent me into harm’s way. If the universe wanted to throw a little money our way, who was I to say no? But, it wasn’t really about the money. The thing is, I was having fun playing with all of Mark’s fancy toys. I’ve always had a gift for drawing. Now, anything I sketched out, we could plug into a computer and turn into something solid overnight.”
“What made you decide to build a dragon?”
She shrugged. “I still can’t tell you if it was my idea or his. We were at Dragoncon last year and—”
“Dragoncon?” asked Clint.
“It’s in Atlanta each year,” said App. “Big science fiction convention. A hundred thousand nerds show up as storm troopers and superheroes. There are people there dressed like you, Clint. How can you not know about this?”
“Probably because I’m not a nerd,” said Clint.
“Hardly anyone dresses up as a Stormtrooper anymore,” said Becky. “But there’s a big community for steampunk. We were hanging out at a bar when we spotted one guy there with a motorized wheelchair decked out as a steam-powered mini-tank. We talked about how we’d have to up our game the next year. And, somewhere around the sixth beer, I’d sketched out a steampunk inspired dragon, and Mark was punching numbers into the scientific calculator on his smart phone figuring out how big the wings would need to be to actually get this thing to fly.”
“You built it as a costume?” asked App.
She nodded.
“Then why is it so, uh, lethal?”
She shrugged. “I drew it with sharp claws and nasty teeth because, shit, it was a fucking dragon. We weren’t building a giant, fluffy bunny. Mark had just got the equipment to print this ultrahard carbon fiber capable of holding a razor edge, so, there you go, deadly claws. Of course we built carbon sheathes to put over them for when we finally debuted it a convention. Safety first. And, yeah, we could have built it from a flimsier plastic, instead of composite material that’s pretty much indestructible. But, you know, once we did the math on the toughness and the weight, and with money being no object… why not be bulletproof?”
“And the steam breath?” asked Clint.
“It was a steam dragon. We thought it looked cool.” She shook her head, knowing that didn’t explain it all. “I don’t know. Mark got a little obsessed about how hot we could make the jet. He wasn’t going to be satisfied until he could melt lead.”
“So you didn’t build this thing planning to fight criminals,” said App.
“Don’t be an idiot. Me? A superhero? I’m not exactly pure of heart.”
“But you went after the men who killed Mark instead of calling the cops,” said Clint.
“I… I watched the whole thing unfold with my drone. Mark got into an argument with Borghart about how he wouldn’t help smuggle the big drones they’d stolen from the Air Force. It was one thing to move cargo small enough to hide in a suitcase. These were full sized shipping containers. It was too risky. Borghart wasn’t taking no for an answer, and when Mark said he wasn’t going to help, Borghart explained he’d sent two men to our place to take me hostage until Mark played along. Mark lost his temper and took a swing at Borghart, punching him right in the face. Borghart snapped his fingers and the next thing I knew Mark was dead on the floor and Borghart was telling his men it was time for plan B. They were just going to flat out steal a cargo plane and get out of the country before anyone could figure out what was going on.”
“So… what about the two guys sent to kidnap you?” asked App.
&
nbsp; “Yeah. That was kind of on my mind as well when I saw headlights coming down my driveway. I slipped out the backdoor and made a dash for the garage as I heard car doors slam in the front yard. I wound up passing through the beam of a headlight and I heard a guy shout, ‘She’s making a run for it!’” She closed her eyes, looking as if the memories of what came next were painful. “I… I’d really just wanted to hide. In retrospect, Mark had a gun cabinet in the living room. I should have just grabbed a shotgun and charged out the front door barrels blazing. Now that I was in the garage, I didn’t have a gun. I did, however, have an invulnerable dragon suit with claws that could cut through sheet metal.”
“So you suited up?” asked App.
“And killed them,” she said. “Hit the first guy that came through the door with my steam breath. Scalded the flesh right off his face. His buddy came in a second later, turning pale when he saw what was left of his friend. I gutted him with my claws. It was over in, like, five seconds.” She smiled, looking proud of her accomplishment, before the reality of what she was saying gripped her and her face fell. “Look, I’m never going to be able to justify what I did.”
“You defended yourself,” said App. “No one can blame you for that.”
“They can if they knew what was in my head and in my heart. It didn’t feel like defense. It felt like revenge. These fuckers were part of the organization that had just killed the man I loved. I still had my drone, now tailing Borghart and his men as they headed for the airport. So why didn’t I call the cops?” She wore a chilling half smile. “I didn’t want these people thrown in jail. I wanted them dead.” She finished off her coffee. “I’m not saying what I did was right. When I got home and found the bodies of the first two guys I killed… I more or less knew I was finished. I’d gone past any reasonable claim of self-defense. I was going to go to jail for the rest of my life. Unless people thought I was dead.”
“So you blew the place up,” said App.
She nodded. “I’m just glad it was you two knocking at the house and not cops. I really didn’t want to hurt anyone with the explosion.”
“Where were you running too?” asked App.
“No fucking clue,” she said.
“What if you didn’t have to hide?” said Clint. “We want you on our team.”
She rolled her eyes. “You? Want me? To be a superhero?”
“You’ve got the codename, the costume, and an origin story,” said App.
“Since the events of last night involve top secret drones, the feds will bury this story,” said Clint. “With our connections, we’ll ensure you won’t face any legal problems over what happened last night.”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“You just spent a good part of last night on a murder spree dressed as a dragon,” said App. “Crazy is the first qualification for joining this team.”
She shook her head, looking as if the idea were the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. But instead of no, she said, softly, “Fuck it. Why not?”
Chapter Nine
Accelerator
Chimpion was unhappy she wasn’t sent along with Servant and App on their mission. With her keen ears, she’d listened in on their mission briefing from a distance. She understood that it wasn’t a combat mission, and sending a chimp to question a human suspect might make some people uncomfortable. Still, with her experience as Pangea’s top spy, a mission to gather intelligence would have been perfect for her.
She tried to assure herself that no slight was intended, but it was unreasonable for the Covenant’s logistics crew to refrain from sending her on missions where she might interact with humans. She hadn’t joined this team to stand around the headquarters doing nothing. Perhaps it would be useful to demonstrate the full range of her skills.
As it happened, she’d been on-site before Sarah had departed via the space machine to battle the dervishes. While waiting around the island to see if she’d be accepted as a member of the Covenant, she’d taken it upon herself to learn all she could about the workings of the team. Which was a polite way of saying she’d been lurking in the air ducts and eavesdropping on the conversation between Sarah and Katya when they’d discussed the mysterious list of names that Katya wanted Sarah to investigate. Apparently the list had been downloaded into the heads up display in Sarah’s helmet, and that helmet had been tossed aside the second they arrived at the medical unit. Jane found the helmet where it had rolled into the corner and put it on. She’d been eavesdropping on Sarah long enough to know the voice commands she used to control the displays. She quickly found the file she sought. Her eyes flickered over the list of names and addresses. Seeing them once was enough—her cybernetic upgrades left her with eidetic memory.
Chimpion dug deeper into the file, wondering what was significant about these people. She pulled up a gallery of photos. The first thing she spotted was that they were all male save for a single woman whose name was followed by the word “deceased.” Mark Porter, the dead man App had been called to investigate, was on the list below her, also marked deceased. African Americans and Hispanics were represented in disproportionate ratios to a random sampling of the US population, with less than a quarter of the list being white. The average age of the men was forty-seven. None were younger than thirty.
None had police records, which was odd, since most of the men looked as if they’d rough lives. Many of them had facial scars, and several had facial tattoos. As an elevated-ape, she was keenly aware of bigotry, so she reminded herself that scars and tattoos could be found on law-abiding people as well as criminals. Still, something about their faces was menacing. She looked at their addresses and found the men were scattered around the country, mostly living in rural areas. None lived in any of the ten largest cities in the US, which indicated their placement couldn’t be purely random.
Why had Sarah been assigned to investigate these men?
She took one last look at the file of the only female on the list. The woman looked familiar. She was a dead ringer for the famous televangelist Sister Amy McPherson. Which was interesting, since according to her research, Servant was a follower of McPherson, actively helping her complete her controversial New Jerusalem project. But, despite the resemblance, this was plainly a different person. The woman on the list had died in a car wreck years ago and her file had the gruesome autopsy photos to prove it.
Chimpion removed the helmet and pulled out the smartphone she’d been given when she joined the team. It took her about three minutes to remove the software that tracked her keystrokes and browsing history. She wondered if all members of the Covenant had this software or just her. Now free to go where she wished on the internet, she logged into the secret portal of the Pangean dark web. With the Pangean servers beyond the reach of any human government, people who wanted the ultimate in privacy paid handsomely to use of these networks. A great deal of criminal activity unfolded on these servers. What the criminals didn’t know was that, while no human government could see what they were up to, Pangean security forces kept track of everything. It took her less than ten minutes to cross-reference the recorded addresses on Sarah’s list against recorded login locations tracked by the Pangean servers. There were several matches, but one small town stood out: Hemlock, Tennessee, population 150.
Chimpion’s eyes narrowed as she double-checked the anomalous numbers. Usually traffic passing through the Pangean servers linked to dark web hubs trafficking in pornography, drugs, or stolen financial information. Someone in Hemlock was using the servers a bit more creatively, hacking into computers at particle accelerators all around the world. Seven terrabytes of raw research data had been downloaded in the last year. She pondered the mystery man on her list who lived in Hemlock. Neil Wayne Smith, fifty years old. He was a burly man with mismatched eyes and a crooked nose that had plainly been broken multiple times. His ears were also mangled, the telltale signs of a man who’d been in numerous fights. For the last five years, Smith had worked for the state highway departme
nt as a sanitation engineer cleaning toilets at rest stops. He had no criminal record, and his only education record was a GED earned in his twenties. Why was a high school dropout interested in particle accelerators?
She scratched the back of her neck. The network information only told her the searches were coming from his small town, not that he was the person reading up on cutting edge physics. Perhaps it was nothing but coincidence. It would have been helpful to know what Sarah had been looking for, or why she was looking.
On the other hand, Chimpion could conduct this investigation with fresh eyes and no preconceptions. This was a chance to show off her skills and earn the trust of the team.
There were controls for the space machine on a terminal in the jump room. She walked over to them and unlocked the workstation with a few keystrokes. She’d heard the technicians punch in PIN numbers for access. With her superior hearing and memory, she’d been able to memorize which keys they hit from the sounds they made. She’d also watched carefully whenever the technicians keyed in coordinates, a fairly simple process. She’d already been doused with tracking nanites that told the space machine the exact location of her body. She typed in Smith’s address before anyone had noticed her hack of the system. If anyone complained about her security breach, she’d explain that she’d done it to point out the vulnerabilities in the system. This was her team now. She wanted to keep it safe.
Chimpion tapped enter and the keyboard vanished. She found herself standing behind an old barn, the roof caved in. Chimpion pulled up her hood and hid the lower part of her face with her scarf. She slipped along the side of the barn until she could peek around to orient herself with the image of the property she’d viewed on Google Earth. She spotted the old farmhouse. It was in better shape than the barn, though not by much. Her breath came out in clouds as she breathed in the chill December air. She remembered her years in Russia, fighting in makeshift arenas in old warehouses and basements, places heated only by the assembled crowds turned out to watch two creatures tear each other to pieces. In the arenas, she’d heard every cruel slur that could possibly be thrown at a chimpanzee. Pangeans were thought of as inferior by the humans. Often in combat, that proved to be a valuable advantage. Chimpion shrugged off the memories. She wasn’t one to dwell on traumas. When they did arise to a level of nagging awareness, she embraced them as necessary steps on the journey toward being the chimp she was today.