by M. D. Cooper
As he watched the soldiers, his mind filled with useless information about the weapons they carried, from maximum effective ranges to field-expedient cleaning methods.
The group of soldiers moved into an arc in front of the party cart, training their rifles on Ngoba and Fugia. Smiling, Tina walked over to lean against the front of the vehicle. She picked at a loose bit of ribbon still hanging from its upper railing.
“You made it a little more difficult than we’d planned,” she said. “But that’s all right. I appreciate the challenge. When I couldn’t track your Link, we picked up on the two carts. That was smart and dumb at the same time.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ngoba saw Fugia shrug. Her arms hung at her sides.
“I should let you know,” Tina said, “Your friend Davin is dead, Miss Wong. Killing him was kinder than sending him down to the surface.”
Fugia kept her face calm. “Then he died for what he believed in.”
“A waste, if you ask me. But since Davin is taken care of, that means I don’t need to track you two anymore. The last thing I want to deal with is the documentation for a long-term surveillance.”
Ngoba did his best to keep surprise off his face.
He thought he saw Fugia flick one of her fingers, and realized she still held her data terminal. The cart, which had been stationary, jerked forward, and seemed to eat Tina in the process. It continued on, rolling over the nearby soldiers as others fell back. The air erupted in weapons fire.
Ngoba turned to see Fugia scooping up her satchel. She pointed toward a shipping container by the maglev track and sprinted that direction. He followed.
He made it three steps before his mind caught on fire. The world went white, and he felt his face hit the pavement.
BLOODY ANOMOLIES
STELLAR DATE: 06.15.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Industrial Zone, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Ngoba blinked through the pain, watching two soldiers run past him toward the stack of metal containers where Fugia had disappeared. There was another soldier laying in his line of sight, apparently dead from internal injuries, his rifle beside his head. Ngoba tried to reach toward the weapon, but nothing worked. He was caught in an unending electric spasm, fingers and toes curling as his back arched and twisted.
A shadow fell over him, and he strained his eyeballs to look up at Tina. He couldn’t move his head. His neck vibrated.
“Hello, lover,” Tina said. “You’ve got a control device implanted in your skull. You can’t get away from me.” She put her hands on her hips. “Maybe I’ll just have you taken back to my apartment. I’ll keep you in my closet to play with when I feel like it. How does that sound?”
Ngoba gagged, unable to control the spasms making his legs kick and seize.
Tina knelt next to him as more soldiers ran past. Rifle fire cracked in the distance. Maybe Fugia had a chance if she made it past the maglev track, but that was suicidal in itself. He hoped she had something in her satchel to at least save her life.
“That was a good move with the cart. I think it broke my collarbone.”
He felt her hand on his chin, pushing his head from side to side. The world moved with her hand.
“The pain is exhilarating, Ngoba. Really. We’ll get to play with pain, you and me.”
What happened to the smiling local girl? he asked himself again.
Despite the pain freezing his body, he was still able to think. That was something. But what was he going to do? Wait until they carried him back to Tina’s place and then plot an escape from her closet? He had to do something now, while she was hurt, and the soldiers were occupied with Fugia. He had to help Fugia.
There was a pause, and he was afraid her voice was going to answer in flat monotone.
Instead, she purred.
He knew Caprise wasn’t an AI by a long shot, not like what Fugia had been corresponding with, but he hoped it was within her power to fix whatever Tina had sabotaged.
Ngoba felt like a weight had dropped from his body. He collapsed loosely against the pavement.
Grabbing for the front pocket on his Collective worker’s suit, he pulled out the projectile tube and thumbed the power button. He jammed the tube into Tina’s belly and pressed the trigger.
“What are you—” Tina asked, before a loud crack sounded from the tube, burning Ngoba’s hand and throwing her into the air.
She landed in a pile on the pavement several meters away and didn’t move.
Ngoba rolled onto his stomach and looked around. None of the soldiers seemed to have noticed the sound of his hand cannon. Dashing over to the dead soldier, he grabbed the rifle and soaked in the information from his Link as he turned it in his hands. He checked the sights and fired up its power cell, then drew the rifle to his shoulder and started taking aim on the soldiers in defensive positions around Fugia.
Sighting a row of metal crates about ten meters away, Ngoba sprinted to the cover and found a concealed firing position between two crates. The soldiers couldn’t tell who was firing on them as he shot them down, one at a time. Caprise praised and encouraged him the whole time, offering helpful tips on getting a better shot, controlling his breathing, varying his rate of fire. He paused to let the rifle cool before hitting the final soldier in the back of the shoulder and then the leg.
Leaping over the crates, Ngoba dashed across the open space to the maglev track, jumping over fallen soldiers as he ran. He wasn’t pleased to see that most of them weren’t any older than he was, now lying dead with staring eyes.
“Fugia!” he shouted as he approached. “Fugia, are you there?”
“Ngoba?” she answered. He couldn’t tell where she was until her dark head appeared at the roof line of a shipping container. He couldn’t figure out how she’d reached such a high place, but it would have taken the soldiers a while to find her.
He stopped at the container’s wall, breathing hard. He wanted to feel relief, but they still had to get off Ceres’ Insi Ring. Any safety right now was going to be short-lived, if they couldn’t get away from the crime scene in the parking lot.
“Tina’s dead,” he said. “That little handgun of yours worked. Damn, did it work.”
“But your Link? I saw what she did to you. I thought you were dead. How did you get around that?”
“I, uh. I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here.”
“I know,” Fugia said. “I’m working on it. In fact…”
Her head disappeared from the lip of the roof, and then she was standing on top of the container, her hand shading her eyes to watch the distance.
Ngoba followed her gaze until he found a bright light moving along the maglev track.
“Did you call that?” he asked. “Or is it reinforcements for
Tina?”
Fugia shook her head. “It’s not for Tina. It’s for us. It’s the AI.”
“The AI is a maglev train?”
Fugia let her hands drop and gave him an irritated look. “No, dummy. The AI is controlling the train. The car is for us.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Good. That’s what I meant. Wait, you’re talking to it?”
“Yes,” Fugia said. “She answered me.”
Ngoba leaned against the side of the shipping container, letting the rifle hang in his hands. He watched the maglev car approach and pull to a stop at the loading dock.
He reached up to help Fugia down from the top of the container, and she surprised him by squeezing his neck in a long hug, shuddering a little with what felt like relief.
“Thank you, Ngoba,” she said into his neck. She rested her head on his shoulder. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Caprise murmured something in the back of his mind, but Ngoba ignored her, just wanting to enjoy the embrace for as long it lasted. He followed Fugia to the maglev car when she finally let go of him.
The train was an old passenger transport with stained seats and bright interior lights that shut out the dark outside. They sat next to each other as the door slid closed. The car vibrated and eased into motion, gathering speed.
Fugia sat with her satchel in her lap. Ngoba watched her staring at the black window for a long time, her eyes on their reflections sitting next to one another. Then she scooted toward him and lay her head on his shoulder.
He was exhausted but knew he wouldn’t sleep. He rested his cheek against the top of her head.
WOULDN’T IT BE NICE
STELLAR DATE: 06.15.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sharm Festival, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
The maglev car shot through the dark. Ngoba fought sleep for a long time, thinking about how good it was to be in a strange land with someone from home, thinking about Crash the Grey Parrot and knowing he would always be alone.
Fugia was quiet, eyes remaining fixed on the image of the two in the window.
“Are you talking to her?” he asked eventually.
She nodded without looking at him, consumed by whatever was crossing her Link. He was content to sit with her head on his shoulder, and eventually he rested his head on the seat cushion and drifted to sleep. It had been a long, long day.
He dreamed of the corridors of Cruithne, full of people and green vines, mixed with the wide avenues of the Anderson Collective, filled with revelers and Sharm poles. Tina stood in the background, watching him. He had a moment in the dream of wondering if she were truly dead, if she might still have some power over the strange thing she’d put in his head.
Caprise whispered to him, and then everything resolved into Night Park and the concrete fountain covered in black ravens, multi-colored parrots, and the one old, grey parrot who perched near the top, looking down at him, one yellow eye at a time.
Crash bobbed his head but didn’t speak. Ngoba didn’t know what he would say; there was so much he wanted to say. He was glad, somehow, that Fugia knew Crash, and had been trading math problems with him, probably communicating better than Ngoba ever could.
It might have been Caprise’s voice, or the fact that he was sleeping lightly on the train, but he realized in the middle of the dream, as he looked up at the grey parrot, that he would go home. It didn’t matter how much currency he made off this job. He would go back to Cruithne and build something there. Maybe he would convince Fugia to come along. That might be nice.
BEST LAID PLANS
STELLAR DATE: 06.15.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Industrial Zone, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Ngoba jerked awake at a change in the maglev’s motion. The car had stopped and was rocking side to side. He looked to his right and found Fugia gone. The air inside the car had gone cold, and he saw that the door was open. He stood, feeling the car shifting precariously beneath him, and went to the door.
Standing in the open access door, holding a safety handle, he looked up to find the maglev car was dangling from a crane arm. There was now a good five meter gap between the car and the dock. Following the crane arm down, he discovered Fugia standing near its base, watching him.
As he gauged whether he could make the jump during one of the car’s swings toward the dock, Fugia turned to leave.
“Hey!” Ngoba shouted. “Fugia, what are you doing? How am I supposed to get out of here?”
Fugia paused, smiling. “I got you a ride back to High Terra,” she called. “First class freight. Atmosphere, heat, shielding. You’re registered as a Saint Bernard.”
“What?” Ngoba shouted.
“The maglev car is going to a freighter off Ceres, and then they’ll transfer you to a medical transport headed to InnerSol. There’s a pack full of Andersonian military rations on the seat behind you.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. Wind blowing past the maglev car seemed to toss his words away, making them sound weak.
He couldn’t see the bottom of the gap between the hanging car and the loading dock.
She gazed up at him with her wide, dark eyes, her black hair moving across her face in the wind. She adjusted her satchel and pulled out her data terminal. Fugia made a show of pressing its face before putting the device away.
she said.
He looked at her, shaking his head. He finally had to laugh. He should have expected no less from Fugia Wong.
Holding onto the side of the door, Ngoba blew her a kiss. Fugia caught it with a raised hand and pantomimed saving it inside her satchel.
The crane rumbled, and a tone sounded inside the maglev cabin. Ngoba backed away from the door as it slid closed, and the car swung further away from the dock. He stumbled back to his seat and stared at his reflection in the black glass as the car joined a stack of shipping containers in the open belly of a transport freighter.
He looked around the cabin, grateful for a bathroom in the back, at least. Then he realized the car wasn’t made for zero-g, and ran back to use the head before he wouldn’t be able to anymore.
In another fifteen minutes, he was floating in microgravity as the freighter blasted away from the Ceres Ring. Through his Link, Ngoba watched a model of Ceres and the Anderson Collective grow smaller, until they were just a shimmer on the black.
With his hands behind his head, he drifted in the brightly lit maglev car. He had another six hours before the rendezvous with the ship that would take him to High Terra. He supposed he could decide ab
out Cruithne once he reached Earth local space. He’d never been down the gravity well before. Can I take it? He could spend time on High Terra, at least. How many billions live there?
He checked his bank account for the fiftieth time, marveling at the number that Fugia had deposited. He could almost lease an entire transport shuttle if he wanted. He had options for the first time in his life.
“What to do in the meantime?” he mused.
Ngoba tensed. Then he relaxed.
Ngoba chuckled, rotating slowly in the microgravity.
THIRD INTERLUDE
PSION
STELLAR DATE: 09.21.2971 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Night Park, Dead Fountain
REGION: Cruithne, Innersol
Thirteen (or so) years later…
The crowd moving beneath Crash’s gaze was the same as always. The people of Cruithne, from the straight-backed TSF officer to the worn spacer in a patched shipsuit, wandered among the vendors. Bits of tech flashed or sat impassively, hiding their true natures, across from rows of throwing knives and handmade clothing. It was the human jungle. He had been watching them intertwine with each other for decades now, signaling their emotions through their words, body language, or snippets of data across the Link. They still surprised him, always acting in such unparrotlike ways. Denying themselves the pleasures of life for purposes that he could now guess but still didn’t understand.
Now, the new voice entered his mind, roaring down his Link like an armored tank filling a street, pushing out everything before it.