by Adam Thielen
“Desre!” remarked Cho.
“Well, I see you two have been stirring up trouble,” the psion replied.
“Are you alright, Ms. Somer?” asked Drew.
“What?” She puzzled for a moment. “Oh, right. I got shot in the face. It’s fine.”
“Do you need help? Can we come get you?” asked Cho.
Desre shook her head. “I don’t want to go back. I can’t. But I can’t let Kate die for me either.” She pressed the screen on her com. “I’m sending you my location. I’m trusting you to not hand me over. Come get me and let’s come up with a plan.”
“I am lifting off now,” said Drew. The copter rose into the air and headed toward Beijing. Desre’s car had gotten only halfway to Baoding when she had her change of heart, and it would take only a few minutes to reach her position.
Tsenka thumbed her com, sending a message to Teo in a last attempt to sway him, then looked up at the seer. “I have something of a plan,” she said. “We have to set up a trade. It’s the only way to get Kate clear. Then I will bring him down.”
“You still believe you can,” said Desre.
“More than that,” said Tsenka.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
Tsenka stood and placed her hands behind her waist. Her thoughts swirled about, slowly congealing. “Kate came here not just to help me but also for intel on Chantech, and we aren’t leaving with our tail tucked between our legs. No. This is going to be an offensive strike. Drew has located what is likely a research facility where nocturnals are imprisoned, studied, and experimented on. That will be our target and with you in the mix, Roland will be forced to show.”
“Ms. Cho,” said Drew. “That is all very fantastic, but this site is not far from where the Behemoth patrols.”
“Then we take it out, too,” said Cho.
Desre scoffed. “You are crazy, Tsenka Cho.”
“How do you intend to destroy it?” asked Drew. “We have no weapons capable of scratching it, and electronic countermeasures are Kate’s specialty. Even then, I doubt she would expose a vulnerability in time.”
Tsenka thought about the data Drew had collected about the giant walker that she barely had escaped. There were no flaws in its design. Its body was constructed from a carbyde-woven steel capable of resisting almost all conventional weaponry. She pinched Desre’s video window smaller and pulled up a map of the city on the windshield in front of Drew. The vampire pressed her fingertip against the glass, smudging the window.
“Here is where I destroy it,” she declared, moving her finger out of the way.
Drew studied the smudge and began doing tensile, hardness, and resistance strength calculations in his head. “That may do it,” he concluded.
“What?” asked Desre, lost.
Tsenka ignored her and zoomed the map out further, then smudged the window in a new location. “Here is where we will take Desre for the trade.”
“Now, hold on,” Somer protested.
“You will deliver a message to Kate,” continued Tsenka. “It’s unlikely they will shield her mind with polonium. Deliver the message, then get out of there.”
“What if he threatens to execute her right there?” asked Desre. “This is an awful idea.”
“I said I wasn’t going to let them take you,” said Tsenka. “But this is the only way. If you want to save her life, you can stall or you can hand yourself over if it comes to it. I leave it up to you. I’m wagering that he will keep her alive for the planned trial this evening.”
“Chantech would not forgive him if he disrupted their plans,” said Desre. “But if Roland has killed her before, he will do it again.”
“I’m open to alternatives,” Cho said, sitting again.
“We could simply lure Roland somewhere and kill him like we had planned from the beginning,” stated Drew.
Cho sighed. Ostensibly it seemed like the better, safer plan, but it would no longer sate her. “He’s got Kate now,” she said. “If he feared his life was in danger, who knows what he might do, how rash he might act. The concept of a trade is that both parties have leverage so that no one gets hurt and people are exchanged. We can’t do that. Someone has to get hurt, and no one is getting bartered.”
Desre did not respond.
“We are coming up on your position now,” announced Drew. “Please bring the car to a stop.”
“Fine,” she replied. “I’ll do it.” She commanded the car to halt, and it pulled over to the shoulder and turned on an emergency beacon. Drew landed the copter in between two shanties and waited for the seer to board.
“Let’s go,” said Desre, slapping the switch to close the hatch behind her.
* * *
For all their surveillance, Chantech had given Somer almost nothing to go on in his search for the mysterious woman. He visited protests, a few of which had sprung up on the third and fourth layers of the city, and took the time to beat a few of them, asking everyone around about the woman with a sword.
He wished he could dispatch all of the riffraff. “Bunch of deadbeats,” he repeated to himself. “Now would be the perfect time for a cleansing of this city.”
But that was not the public relations the corporation wanted, at least not yet. The board was still making plans on how to best respond to the New Republic in order to save face. They were confident a show of force and a farcical trial would settle the unrest. The more time Somer spent around throngs of angry poor, the less sure he was of that.
After three hours of questioning and discounting erroneous leads, he took a seat at an outdoor bar and ordered a club soda. His com buzzed and he looked to see who it was. The word UNKNOWN was almost welcome, considering he had nothing to report should the chairman call. His cerebral implant interfaced with the com and he answered. A phantasm of his sister Desre Somer appeared before him.
Desre grinned; it was the second time she had surprised someone in as many hours by simply calling them. “Don’t speak, just listen,” she said. “I told you I would trade myself for her. Is she alive?”
Somer folded his arms. “Maybe. I left her with Dan, so who really knows.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss,” said Desre.
“Yes, she’s alive,” he begrudged. “But now you aren’t enough to get her back. I want to know about the other woman. She’s with you, isn’t she?”
“You will know all about her soon enough,” teased Desre. “And you won’t even need to trade for it. I’m sending you the time and place. Pull anything funny, and my current kidnappers have assured me that I will not be taken back to Chantech, even if that means my demise.”
“Such lies,” spat Roland. “What game are you playing now? Show her to me.”
“You will see her when she wants you to,” said Desre, shaking her head.
“Fine,” he said. “I will be there to smack that smug look from your filthy whore mouth.”
Desre frowned. “Good,” she said, disconnecting the call.
As Kate was pulled from her cage by a disgruntled cyborg, she realized what was happening and considered committing suicide in order to avoid allowing her capture to play a role in the death of her friends or the embarrassment of her home country. She staved off the desire and decided to wait. She set up the cyanide injectors located behind her jaw to engage on a countdown should she lose consciousness unexpectedly.
“Where am I g-going?” she demanded to know. “Where are you taking me?”
Dan said nothing. Instead, he threw the hood over her head again and handed her off to two other men. The four went down the elevator, through the apartment’s lobby, and outside. Fluffy clouds with dark edges had gathered in the virtual sky, blocking out the image of the sun. Again, men threw her inside the back of an SUV.
As it made its way through the city, the vehicle was forced to stop as protesters blocked the road. The driver eased the van against them, nudging them out of the way.
“Ram them,” egged on the man in the front passen
ger seat. He was bald on the top of his head and the eldest of the three.
“No,” commanded Danliti. “No ram today.” The other two knew not to go against his orders and did not respond. Instead, the driver continued to ease himself past men and women with handmade signs promoting various causes. Some signs had messages contradicting other signs, but all of them were unified in their discontent with the status quo.
After traversing a large bridge straddling the Yuyuan pond, the van stopped, and Roland entered the back, sitting next to one of his men and across from Kate, similar to their first meeting.
The van chirped its tires and Roland stared at Kate. “It seems Desre is willing to give herself up for you, after all,” he revealed. “I might have been wrong about that, but I’m sure this is all a game to her. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can give you up. I’ve spent too much time thinking of all the fun we’ll have together when this is over.”
Kate rolled her eyes, and the psion continued to stare at her menacingly. If Kate had ever feared him, such emotions had only waned the more he continued to speak and the more she accepted her fate.
While the meet wasn’t scheduled for another hour, Roland wanted to get there early and make sure that Desre and company were not able to plan any surprises. So without delay, the van backtracked from where it had picked up Somer and headed to the designated location, a spot not far from the Behemoth. The thought of using the walker to decimate the instigators crowding the streets of his city made Somer giddy.
A second van with more men pulled up next to the SUV. All exited their vehicles and synced communications except for Roland, who stayed with Kate while his men secured the area. The psion watched the seconds tick away on his HUD.
“Want to play a game or something?”
Kate stared at him, dead-eyed. “No.”
* * *
Anti-aircraft guns mounted on the western edges of the platters tracked the movements of Drew’s monocopter, currently too far out of range to be effectively targeted. Drew ascended, almost reaching the stratosphere. Dark clouds surrounded the craft.
Tsenka Cho stood on the descending ramp with one hand on its hydraulics. Wind whipped past her, causing her body to sway despite her aerodynamics and strength. Small droplets of water smacked her in the face and splattered against her suit.
Drew shouted from the cockpit, “This is the best spot,” he claimed. “The wind will help carry you.”
“What about the guns?” asked Cho.
“You are too small to target… most likely,” amended Drew.
“This is it,” she yelled. “No going back from here.” Lightning flashed, flooding Cho’s eyes. She flinched at the light, then again as the thunder shook the craft.
“See you on the other side,” Drew yelled back.
Cho grinned and dove from the ramp. The whole of the city rested underneath her, rumbling and expanding. Her ears popped as the air pressure shifted. Cho’s HUD displayed her current trajectory and target landing zone. She would not make it there because it was not particularly close to the edge of the top layer of the city, but as long as she landed without dying, it would be good enough.
Her suit webbed its material between her legs and between her arms and torso, allowing her body to catch air and glide in at a gentler angle. Drew could not get close enough to drop her on top of the city, requiring her to make up a two-kilometer gap.
Extending her limbs fully, she moved horizontally, closing that gap quickly. Then the air around her exploded with high-caliber gunfire from the automated turrets below. Her HUD warned her that their systems were getting closer to tracking and leading her motion. Tsenka pulled in her arms and straightened her hips. Her angle steepened and her body accelerated toward the ground.
Once she had gained speed, and the guns missed wide enough for her to be comfortable, she spread her arms again to fly forward. Her HUD read out to her the horizontal distance to the edge of the platter. Just before it read zero, the guns had caught up to her again. A shell exploded close enough that it flung her body into a spin. The blast knocked the wind out of her, and she began to plummet head first toward the edge of the platform.
Cho’s HUD buzzed in alarm as her altitude quickly approached one hundred meters from the surface. She yanked at the ripcord, and her parachute ejected from her pack and expanded. It slowed her fall, but the guns were still tracking. As they homed in on her slow-falling body, Tsenka knew she had to move. Her HUD read eighty-six meters. Too long of a fall, she thought.
The number ticked down to seventy-eight when the first of the guns opened fire again. Tsenka smacked the emergency release on her pack, and its straps came loose, whipping past her suit and dropping Cho into free fall again. She slowed herself with the webbing, then pulled her legs under her and braced for impact. Using her perfect recall, she positioned her body into a precise rolling configuration. A few seconds later, her feet slammed into the ground at almost half terminal velocity and her body curled forward. Her knees buckled, and she used all her strength to direct her momentum forward into a roll.
It worked, and she rolled along a strip of grass turf, broken up by stepping stones and a sidewalk. The vampire felt something in her left leg pull, and her suit quickly sprang to action to numb the pain. She crashed into a wooden fence, tearing it apart and unfolding her body onto a small side road.
As Cho tested her ability to move, she was unable to find a spot that did not hurt. A few citizens gathered around the crash site to observe the woman. They wore remarkably clean clothes in the current style of aristocrats and made from fine materials: a woman in a robe with a banner that hung across her like that of a beauty contestant, a man in an expensive set of slacks and a leather vest, a kid with his hair parted neatly in the center and then seemingly glued into place. She was definitely on the sixth layer.
“Should we call security?” asked the woman, according to Cho’s translator.
“Yes, I believe we should,” answered the man.
“I think she needs a doctor,” said the kid.
Thunder filled the air and rain began to slowly fall. Drops of water splattered on Tsenka’s face. She took a deep breath, inhaling the ionized air. She looked up at the sky that had borne her, then made brief eye contact with the rich and curious before standing and getting her bearings. Her HUD told her she had to cover a kilometer to make it to her target. She brushed past one of the men and broke into a jog as the group stared after her, one of them conversing through a com with the local security station.
A smaller pack fastened to Cho’s waist threw her off-balance as she ran, slowing her progress and making her second-guess jumps over fences and concrete dividers, but its contents were essential for the mission.
Tsenka had landed in a residential area, with trees and fake grass and houses not that dissimilar to pre-Collapse America. It was hard to believe that she was six hundred meters above ground. Halfway to her destination, she spotted a corpsec vehicle tracking her position. She expected gunshots but then remembered that the police on the upper levels didn’t carry firearms because they intimidated the monied folk that resided therein.
Cho reasoned that as long as she stayed clear of open streets, she could outrun the cops all the way to her target. But what then? she pondered. No time to worry about that. Focus on getting there.
The rain was coming down harder now, and two hundred meters from the mission objective, the police had constructed a blockade that was twenty meters wide consisting of vehicles with men waiting in between them and on each side of the wall. She spotted weapons in their hands, but they weren’t firearms. Her optics zoomed in and identified them as electroshock stun guns. A few of them appeared to have shock batons at the ready.
A single drone hovered in the air above them with cameras mounted to its spherical exterior. The symbols painted on it indicated it was not part of the security force but instead news coverage for one of the major streams.
Cho commanded her HUD to count the number of
security officers that were chasing her and now blocking her. The number climbed until it stopped at twenty-nine. Holy shit grenade! she gasped. How did they all find me so fast? I’ll never lose them all.
She considered jumping the wall of cars but considered being airborne a potential vulnerability. On the off chance that they had a way of disabling her, she didn’t want to be stuck in the air unable to dodge. She angled toward the left side of the wall and the men and women of Chantech security set an intercept course, running to meet her.
Tsenka sighed, realizing she was going to have to take a lot of extra time to make her way around these people. She switched directions, heading for the right side of the blockade in an all-out sprint. The officers switched directions as well, bunching up together. They were not fast enough to make it to the other side before Cho, but two men had stayed on that side and they moved in front of her. One held a stun gun and the other a baton.
The man with the gun fired it, and metal darts tethered to thin wires shot out. The tips of the darts were needle-thin barbs that penetrated Cho’s suit. Her armor diverted the current around the vampire. She pulled the barbs out and jump-kicked the man with the baton in the chest. He flew backward then curled into a ball.
Some of the officers in the larger gaggle had gotten close enough to fire their guns, sticking eight pairs of needles into Cho’s back in quick succession. She yelped after the fourth set. Her suit was becoming overloaded. The vampire felt her back stiffen from the excess voltage, and she started to stumble forward but caught herself and dashed onward. The tension from the wires almost yanked the guns from the officers’ hands, but they held on and pulled the needles from her skin instead.
The men continued chasing but moved at a comparative snail’s pace. They yelled and shouted together like a drunken chorus. The first drone camera had been joined by two more, and they had no problems keeping up with the nocturnal woman. But with no further interference, Tsenka reached her destination, stepped over a cute white picket fence two feet tall, then climbed a much taller chain-link fence that surrounded the spot. She removed her oversized fanny pack, unzipped it, and checked to make sure nothing was damaged.