In the Black

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “Then decisively we will act, as one. The vote is unanimous. Send a proposal to Paris. I’m ready to provide the rest of you with whatever you feel you need to see us through these rough seas.”

  Two minutes later, they were in Tyson’s penthouse office.

  “Privacy mode,” he shouted at the ceiling. The clear aluminum glass went opaque as quickly as the electricity passed through it, cutting off what little of the setting sun’s light remained.

  Paris walked up to them from a corner in her new physical body, a sight Tyson was still getting used to. She’d traded her plastic shrink-wrap clothing for a maroon strapless dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any of the young women doubtlessly partying in Kryptonite Klub many dozens of stories below.

  “I’m glad you’re both safe.”

  “Oh, hello,” Elsa said. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “Yes, you have,” Tyson said. “This is Paris. Well, Paris’s android carapace.”

  Elsa’s eyes went wide as she looked Paris up and down. “That’s an android? Did you write a really nice letter to Santa, Tyson?”

  “She bought it for herself.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true.” Paris ran a hand down Tyson’s chest. “I was intending to share it.”

  Elsa put her hands up. “Okay, look. I don’t know what’s going on here, and frankly I don’t fucking care. You two are obviously busy, so since I’m not getting any answers, I’m going.”

  “Elsa, wait—” Tyson said, but she silenced him with an upheld finger and a furious countenance. “I assume the elevator isn’t going to shoot me if I leave by myself? Because that would be unlawful detainment.”

  “No, of course not.” Tyson moved to his desk and punched in a code. “I’ve disabled the security protocols. You may leave without worry.”

  “Good.” She stormed into the lift car. “Thanks for a lovely evening, Tyson,” she spat before the doors closed and the car sank into the floor.

  Livid almost beyond reason, Tyson spun around to face Paris and absolutely lay into her. But before he could get so much as a syllable out, she had closed the distance and planted her lips on his. Reflexively, he tried to back away, but she wrapped an arm around the back of his head and held him fast in the kiss. She was strong, inhumanly so. Something in the most primitive parts of his brain shifted. All the anger and frustration he felt bubbled up and mixed with the loneliness of years spent at the top of his profession. He was enraged, and rapidly engorging under the relentless kiss of the most perfect woman he’d ever held. Well, she wanted it? He was going to give it to her.

  Paris sensed his intentions change as his hands went to her waist and rewarded him with her hot, probing tongue on his lips. Her free hand dropped down and ripped at his belt buckle while he fumbled for the zipper on her back. It had been a while since he’d last helped a woman out of her dress, and it showed.

  She beat him to the prize as his belt was pulled free of its loops. A quick flick of his silk slacks’ fastener and zipper and they fell down around his ankles. Paris leaned back out of the kiss, holding his belt by the buckle in one hand, grinning mischievously. Then, all in one fast, fluid motion Tyson had no chance of countering, she whipped it out and around his neck, grabbed the other end with her free hand, twisted around herself to face away from him, and effortlessly leaned over to flip him over her back and send him crashing to the floor with a thud.

  He tried to cough as the wind was knocked out of his lungs from the brutal impact, but her turn had put a twist in the belt that constricted it around his neck like a tourniquet. He couldn’t cough, couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t believe he’d been played so easily.

  The entire story came into focus even as his vision blurred. It had always been Paris. She was the mole in his organization. She was the only one in a position to leak the truth about the Teegarden outbreak to the press, and he’d assigned her to find the real culprit. She knew about Cassidy, maybe even had her killed. And she was the only one who Tyson had told about the message from Sokolov.

  She’d even gotten him to pay for the body she was now using to kill him, the clever bitch. She could say anything, that their BDSM lovemaking session had gone too far, that he’d hung himself with his own belt after the embarrassment he’d suffered at the auditorium. Whatever would fit the narrative she wanted to create. And no one would question an AI’s honesty.

  It was a perfectly wrapped gift for whomever had corrupted her.

  As the oxygen starvation began to take hold, Tyson almost found himself appreciating the mind that had crafted such a setup. In the next few seconds, his family’s centuries-long control of Ageless Corporation would come to an abrupt end, and no one would ever know the truth.

  His head slacked to one side as the color drained out of the world and his field of vision shrank into a tunnel. It had almost closed entirely when the lift car once more emerged from the floor.

  “Forgot my purse,” Elsa said as Tyson’s eyes failed completely. “Wow, that’s some kinky shit you’re into.”

  Tyson couldn’t speak, but he tried to turn his head in the direction of the sound of Elsa’s voice and mouthed the word “HELP.”

  “Holy shit,” Elsa swore. The pressure around Tyson’s neck eased a fraction, then dropped away entirely as his frantically pumping heart shoved fresh blood into his starving brain.

  “Put it down and you will not be harmed,” Paris’s normally comforting voice said in a completely flat, emotionless tone.

  “Back off, bitch!” Elsa shouted. Color and light returned as Tyson’s eyes started to make sense of his surroundings again. He focused on Elsa’s outline. She was holding something out directly at Paris even as the android advanced on her. “One more step and I cook you like a soy burger.”

  A Taser, Elsa was holding a civilian-model Taser. “Shoot her!” Tyson shouted with a gasping, raspy voice that sounded nothing like his own. “Shoot her!”

  Elsa choked up on the grip of her Taser and pushed the firing stud even as Paris’s carapace lunged forward with impossible speed. But the compressed gas behind the electrode darts was faster still. Two perfect coils of wire snaked out from the unit as the barbs covered the distance between them and made contact with Paris’s left cheek and right breast, followed a millisecond later by a hundred thousand volts of electricity pulsing at sixty cycles per second.

  Now, on a human body, a Taser was enough to overwhelm the nerve impulses from the brain and cause temporary paralysis and muscle spasms. But on an android carapace that hadn’t been properly combat shielded against the threat, the shorts created by that much electrical discharge running through its servos and circuits was absolutely devastating.

  Apparently, Paris hadn’t ticked off that particular manufacturer’s option when ordering her new sex kitten body. She fell unceremoniously to the ground in a mangled lump without so much as a scream.

  Tyson scrambled unsteadily to his feet and pulled up his pants. Elsa ran over to help brace him.

  “We have to go.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  Tyson shook his head. “No, her body is. She is rebooting in the tower’s computer system. Let’s go.” They passed by Paris’s crumpled body. Elsa gave her a contemptuous little kick to the head.

  “Why did she attack you? Not that I don’t understand the impulse, mind you.”

  Tyson ignored the jab as they entered the lift. “We have our answer from whoever is employing Beckham. They hacked her, I don’t know how long ago.” A horrible thought went through Tyson’s mind as the doors closed. “Wait. Is that outfit from the tailor I sent to you?”

  “No, it didn’t come in time.”

  “Oh fuck.” Tyson threw her to the floor without warning, then dropped on top of her.

  “What the hell are you doing!?” she shouted, but Tyson was too busy pulling up his collar and throwing a concealed hood over his head. He positioned his arms and legs to cover Elsa’s own just as pop-out doors f
lipped open and gunfire erupted from the ceiling. The bullets slammed into Tyson’s back and shoulders with ferocious impact, one after the other, dozens a second like hundreds of tiny sledgehammers.

  “I thought you said the security was disabled!” Elsa shouted, clearly on the verge of panic.

  “It was,” he yelled back. “Paris is an AI, remember? You really think I can keep her out of a computer network for long?”

  “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “Because my suit is bullet-resistant.”

  “Then why are you wincing?”

  “Because it still bloody fucking hurts!”

  After a few seconds of the maelstrom, the shooting ceased as the automatic guns ran dry of ammo.

  “I really wanted to do this the easy way, Tyson.” The once-familiar voice had taken on a malicious, detached tone. “It would have been so much cleaner if you’d just let me do my job in the penthouse.”

  “Paris, sweetie, you’ve been hacked. Someone reprogrammed you. Run a deep diagnostic scan,” Tyson pleaded.

  The voice ignored him entirely. “But now there will be regrettable collateral damage, and I’ll have to come up with a very creative explanation for the mess.”

  “Why doesn’t she just stop the elevator?” Elsa whispered.

  “Because she’s taking us exactly where she wants us to go.”

  “Where?”

  “The lobby.”

  “But that’s where we want to go.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t. Right now, she’s infiltrating the operating system of the marine sentry mecha hidden in the lobby.”

  “You have one of those walking tanks in your building?”

  “It’s for vehicle-based terrorist attacks. Almost every corporate HQ has one.”

  “And now it’s going to turn us into jelly. You people are paranoid lunatics.”

  “We can’t stay in here or we’ll be liquified with the first shot. Our only chance is to run the millisecond these doors open. You go left, I’ll go right. It’ll have trouble tracking both of us at once.”

  “Hope you don’t mind if I’m praying a little bit it goes for you first.”

  “A scientist, praying?”

  Elsa removed her heels. “Figure of speech.”

  The elevator chimed as they reached the lobby, which it didn’t usually do. Doubtlessly Paris trying to unnerve him further. The doors rolled open, and right on cue, the two of them sprang out of the lift like jackrabbits and ran in opposite directions. On the far side of the lobby, the three-meter-tall, faceted silhouette of the mecha had indeed emerged from its cubbyhole and turned to face them, much faster than Tyson had expected for such a large machine. Nor did it seem to have any trouble tracking two targets independently. He hadn’t made it three steps before the shoulder-mounted rocket pod snapped around to face him, while the anti-material cannon on its right arm tracked Elsa. There was a tremendous Whoosh and a flash of light.

  The explosion wasn’t like in the holos. There was no billowing orange fireball or black, sooty mushroom cloud. It didn’t blow them theatrically off their feet, carrying them through the lobby and depositing them ten meters away. It was too fast for any of that. Instead, it was like a lightning strike and a thunderclap, over in a split second. And instead of being thrown, the concussion was like being punched in the stomach, chest, and face simultaneously.

  Tyson fell to the ground, his hearing ringing violently as if he’d been boxed in the ears. The taste of copper leaked onto his tongue. He came up to one knee to try and reorient himself, shocked and confused as to why he was still alive.

  The repurposed military mecha that had threatened to turn them into a fine puree only a moment ago lay on its side with a significant, smoking hole missing from its torso as if someone had bored through it with a drill bit as thick as his calf. Elsa lay crumpled in a pile behind him and to the left, swearing gently to herself. Tyson sympathized.

  A hand reached in front of his face and offered to help him up. Tyson looked up to see—

  “Reggie?”

  “Are you okay, sir?” his longtime doorman asked.

  “I’m a little rattled. What the hell just happened?” That was when Tyson noticed the hollow, telescoping cylinder still clutched in Reggie’s left hand. It took a moment for his brain to accept what he was seeing.

  “Reggie, why are you holding a disposable antiarmor rocket tube?”

  “To break the scary death machine.” He pointed at the smoldering wreck. “Never cared for that pile of spares. It kept looking at me funny whenever it was out for maintenance.”

  “You mean to tell me that thing you’ve been hiding in your top right drawer was a fucking RPG?”

  “ManPAD, actually, and don’t act like you didn’t watch me smuggle it in.”

  “I thought it was booze!”

  “Sir, don’t be ridiculous,” Reggie said. “I keep the booze in the bottom right drawer.”

  “Does everyone around me have hidden weapons?”

  “Was that hard enough?” Elsa asked.

  Tyson turned around to help her to her feet. “What?”

  “Was that slap hard enough to knock the arrogance out of you?”

  Tyson smiled. “Jury’s still out. Are you all right?”

  “My ears are ringing.”

  “Mine too, it will pass.” In a few days, Tyson thought but did not say. “C’mon, we have to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Off-world. We have your answer from Beckham’s bosses. They went for Option B. We have to be gone before they try again.”

  “But it was your AI that attacked us!”

  “She was hacked. I don’t know how, but they got into her core programming. I don’t know when. She may have been compromised for days, maybe since the beginning of this. Reggie, I hate to ask, but I need your airpod.”

  “Doors are already unlocked, sir.”

  “But I was going home.”

  “Too late for that, dear. You’re a witness now. You saw Paris try to kill me, you’re just as much a target as I am. So are you for that matter, Reg.”

  “I can handle myself, young pup.” He held up the spent rocket tube. “This isn’t the only souvenir I kept from the Marine Corps. Get the good doctor to safety. I’ll keep them off you as long as I can from down here.”

  Tyson took two long steps to his doorman, grabbed behind his head, and leaned in until their foreheads touched. “Still protecting this stupid kid after all these years?”

  “Promised your mum.”

  Tyson kissed the wrinkles below Reggie’s hairline, then pushed back. “You stay alive, old man. The company doesn’t pay out funeral benefits for idiots who get themselves killed.”

  “I expect my toys to be replaced.”

  “Done. Elsa, c’mon.”

  “They’re not all strictly legal!” Reggie announced to their retreating backs.

  “No shit!” Tyson yelled over his shoulder as they took the stairs to the basement garage and, after a brief search, located Reggie’s blazing-green airpod. It was, like the man himself, old, but powerful and in impeccable condition.

  “Damn,” Elsa said, looking at the classic. “Reggie likes expensive toys.”

  “He got a generous settlement. Hop in, at least the ride’ll be fun.”

  Once the doors were closed, Tyson fired up the countergrav and the single turbofan engine that ran down the centerline of the airpod and accounted for at least half of its mass. A genuine gas-burner. Tyson had no idea where Reggie got fuel for the damned thing.

  “Who’s doing this?” Elsa asked as they pulled out of the parking garage and angled for open sky.

  “I have no idea. A competitor. An investor sick of dynastic control. Ambitious board member. I have no idea who to trust. Which is why I can’t protect us here. We’ve got to get off this planet and far away.”

  “To where?”

  “Grendel.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because I think a war is about to
break out there.”

  Elsa stared at him silently for a long moment. “You know that sounds crazy to anyone not living in your head, right?”

  “Which is why it’s the last place anyone will expect us to go. Your inquiries about Beckham were uncovered, that’s why we were attacked, probably ahead of whatever schedule they had laid out because we’re getting too close. So we can’t go to Ceres, or anywhere in the Sol system for that matter. We’d be spotted and killed before we could get off the transfer stations. I have it on good authority that Grendel is about to be a pretty lonely place, so there won’t be a lot of people around to come after us. And whatever is going on, Grendel is the flashpoint. I’m sure of it. Our answers are there.”

  “But how are we going to get there without whoever is responsible knowing?”

  “Simple. We’re going to see a smuggler.”

  “Oh, yes. Naturally.”

  Tyson firewalled the throttle, and the overpowered little suicide machine made the acceleration of the transit pod feel like a halfhearted spin on a merry-go-round.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Mum, can you take a look at this?” Mattu said from the Drone Integration Station. “It’s … weird.”

  “I don’t like weird,” Susan said. “Our Xre friends acting out?”

  “No, mum. It’s Grendel. An unscheduled skip drone just popped its bubble really close to the planet.”

  By just, Susan knew Mattu meant almost ninety minutes ago with the light-speed delay from their drone platform tasked with keeping an eye on Grendel’s high orbitals, but one learned to think in four dimensions after spending enough time in the fleet.

  “How close?”

  “Its gooey zone took out a GPS sat.”

  “Holy shit,” Miguel said. “That’s thousands of klicks inside the safety margin.”

  Susan got up from her chair and went to inspect the raw data. “Navigational error?”

  “From a skip drone?” Mattu said. “When was the last time one of them screwed up that badly? Thirty years? Forty?” She dialed in a new information screen for Susan to look at. “Besides, it didn’t act like it screwed up. Didn’t go into shutdown, or start a diagnostic. It went straight into transmission mode and dumped whatever messages it had.”