Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

‘Now, Mister Ironside,’ Schmidt began, ‘we shouldn’t make any rash decisions. You know what happened the last time you ventured out and…’

  ‘He might suspect that I’ll make this connection and come searching for him,’ Nathan said as he turned for the door, ‘and that might lead him to…’

  Nathan turned and ran out of the office, hitting the manual door switch and ignoring Schmidt’s protests.

  ***

  XX

  North Four Quadrant,

  New Washington

  ‘Let’s stay sharp kids,’ Foxx said as she guided the unmarked police cruiser down out of the flow of aerial traffic toward a landing pad on the edge of North Four. ‘We know the natives don’t play well with others.’

  Foxx pulled her plasma pistol from its holster, checked the magazine, and then slipped it back out of sight beneath her jacket as she took the controls once more. Procedures prevented her from activating the magazine inside the cruiser, after a particularly unfortunate episode a couple of years previously when an active magazine had exploded inside a cruiser and killed all three occupants. Behind her, she heard Vasquez and Allen likewise checking their weapons.

  Through the windscreen she could see the ugly pillars of steel that made up the tower blocks of North Four rising from the busy streets below. Black with age and grime, their spires reached high into the sky above and were either almost invisible against the blackness of space or silhouetted sharply against the earth’s glowing blue orb.

  Below, densely packed streets were filled with a miasma of races mingling in volatile hordes. The projects had been built from the left-overs used to construct the more decadent spires of the south side, once the home of the wealthy and famous and now a business district, the respectable spacers as they were called – those who lived in orbit and not on the surface. Designed to ease the overcrowding that had begun to blight New Washington thirty years before, compact living spaces affordable to the masses had inevitably brought with them the dregs of society forced to live off-world in the only habitations they could afford. Within a decade of construction, North Four and other settlements like it on New Chicago, New Los Angeles and other orbiting stations were hotbeds of violence, corruption and drugs.

  ‘Stand by,’ Foxx said as she aimed the cruiser for a landing pad elevated above the masses on a pillar of steel smeared with the grime of years’ of neglect.

  The cruiser’s flashing landing lights reflected off countless raincoats and glowing umbrellas below, rain falling from the cloudless night sky above as the dehumidifiers, overworked here more than anywhere else, drenched the blackened city streets.

  The cruiser settled onto the pad, Foxx shutting down the mass drive as Vasquez opened the doors and jumped out, ready for action as always even though the landing pad was deserted. Foxx climbed out with Allen, the entrance to the pad heavily secured and ID protected. Only police were allowed access to such pads, with the rest of the population under threat of lethal force if they attempted to climb up.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said as she pulled a cap down low over her eyes to shield them against the incessant rain.

  They marched together to the pad exit, little more than a basic elevator down onto the streets below where the hustle and bustle of the city filled the air with the buzz of conversation, bartering, arguments and blaring music from low-level apartments likely hoping to conceal the goings-on within behind the noise.

  The ride down was swift, the landing pad only twenty meters above the Belt, and the door opened as Foxx rested one hand on her blaster just in case of an unexpected “welcome” from North Four’s inhabitants. A figure that smelled of liquor, tobacco and unwashed skin tumbled drunkenly into the elevator, his thick beard stained yellow and filled with crumbs of material that Foxx didn’t want to even think about.

  Vasquez shoved the man back out and he landed on his ass on the sidewalk, his wild eyes filled with shock and fear.

  ‘Hey, take it easy!’

  Foxx walked out, looked down at the old man’s yellowing teeth and catching a waft of his rancid breath. She winced, tried not to cough.

  ‘Take off,’ she said, ‘or we’ll take you in.’

  The old man scrambled away from her on his knees, the milling crowds parting for the vagrant and casting suspicious glances at Foxx and her detectives. Ranks of dark eyes flowed by like rivers, gang tattoos that glowed with rippling bioluminescent light beneath dark hoods, other more nervous individuals shuffling along with their eyes cast down, hoping to avoid the attention of anybody they shared this corner of the city with.

  ‘It’s this way,’ Allen said, and gestured down 14th and nine.

  Foxx moved through the crowd, Vasquez and Allen flanking her and the hordes of pedestrians parting for them like a black wave, seeing the clearly displayed shields on their belts and cautious of confronting or, worse, being seen speaking to law enforcement. Foxx could see the entrances to the tenement blocks, all guarded by gangs of sullen looking youths with hoods over their heads. She knew that they controlled the neighbourhoods, that they charged occupants to enter and leave their own homes, ran rackets for protection for businesses and in general profited from the misery of those cowering before them. Foxx often fantasized about coming down here with mechanized infantry, tanks and heavy ordnance and blasting them aside, scouring the projects with a fearsome blaze of cleansing flame and pain, but in reality she knew that the department was undermanned, under-equipped and unable to tackle the sheer volume of crime that was a way of life down here on the blocks.

  ‘There,’ Allen said as he briefly consulted his ocular implant and saw the apartment block they were looking for.

  Foxx looked across the street and saw outlined in her own ocular implant a particularly run-down looking block surrounded by a battered metal fence that had long since succumbed to the gangs roaming the streets. The entrance was blocked by a half dozen muscular men, some of them sporting metallic enhancements such as bionic limbs. At least one of them had glowing red eyes, the result of black market surgery to install infra-red vision into biological lenses via a layer of nano-sensors sensitive to the IR light spectrum. The pair of eyes glowed within the darkness of his hood like those of a demon and flashed as they locked onto Foxx, Vasquez and Allen as they approached.

  ‘Police,’ Vasquez announced and flashed his badge at them, giving the thugs a chance to cooperate.

  Foxx saw the thugs turn their backs wordlessly, forming a wall of muscle and ignorance between her, the block entrance and the guy with the glowing red eyes.

  Foxx knew well enough the consequences of talking first and acting second. It had almost cost her life on one of her first foot patrols, years ago down on this very sidewalk. These days, she was neither green nor fearful.

  Foxx turned sideways and lifted her right boot before driving it like a freight train into the back of the nearest man’s knee. The heavy set man’s leg folded like a twig and he cried out in pain as he slammed down onto his back at her feet in time to see the ugly black barrel of her pistol pointing down at him. The blaster’s magazine hummed into life.

  ‘Morning,’ Foxx said to her victim. ‘If you roll over and put your hands behind your back, I won’t melt your face into the sidewalk right here and now.’

  The thug, his face a mess of scars carved in some horrendous knife fight, rolled over obediently as the other thugs backed up, taken aback by Foxx’s violence.

  ‘Cuff him,’ she said to Allen without even looking over her shoulder.

  As Allen cuffed the dude at her feet, Foxx looked up at the gang members. ‘The rest of you can disappear unless you want to spend the night at the precinct?’

  The gang members cast angry, sullen stares at her but none of them hung around. The guy with the red eyes made to move off, but Foxx shook her head and gestured at him with her pistol.

  ‘Not you, asshole. C’mere.’

  Red Eye hesitated and looked as though he might make a run for it, then she figured he thought better of it
and approached her. His optical enhancements shimmered unnervingly at her, devoid of an iris, just red lights that flicked from one side to the other as he looked at the three of them.

  ‘Bio-enhancement is illegal,’ Vasquez said as he pointed with two fingers at the glowing orbs. ‘We could book you right now just fo’ the hell of it.’

  The dude shrugged, devoid of anything approaching concern.

  ‘You live here?’ Foxx asked.

  ‘Ain’t done nothin’,’ he uttered, his voice surprisingly soft.

  ‘I bet you ain’t done nothin’ your entire life,’ Foxx replied, and held up a thin electrofilm emblazoned with Viggo’s image, ‘and that’s not what I asked you. You seen this guy around here with those IR eyes of yours?’

  The guy looked down at the image and shrugged again. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  ‘How ‘bout I remind you?’ Vasquez growled with clenched fists and stepped forward.

  Foxx put her arm out to block Vasquez but she glared down at the man before her.

  ‘That shit in your head will come out under the Bio-Enhancement Act of 2312,’ she said to him. ‘Whatever’s left of your real eyes will be all you’ve got kid, so start talking.’

  A ghostly smile drifted across the guy’s lips. ‘I was born blind so you won’t be takin’ nothin’ from me. I got my BE card and everythin’.’

  Allen peered closely at the kid’s face. ‘Sure you didn’t gouge them out for a free ticket to the surgeon?’

  ‘I ain’t an idiot,’ the kid replied. ‘I din’ see my mother’s face ‘til I was fourteen and by then all I had was the streets, so you can go to hell if you think you’re takin’ these eyes from me. You might as well just shoot me dead.’

  Foxx sensed a smarter guy than she’d suspected behind the hood. She holstered her pistol and whipped her hand up, flipping the hood back to reveal a dark-skinned kid of no more than twenty years old, the skin around his eyes laced with metallic filaments where the implants had been melded with his skin. Scars lacerated his skull where the neural tracts of his brain’s vision center had been accessed to connect the IR sensors, allowing him to see for the first time as a teenager.

  ‘You got a name?’ Foxx asked, softening her tone in order to encourage the kid to speak.

  ‘Asil,’ he replied. ‘Most all people used to call me asshole “for short”, ‘til I got me these eyes and they din’ call me names after that.’

  ‘Got your knuckles wet, huh?’ Vasquez suggested.

  ‘Easier to hit ‘em when you can see ‘em,’ Asil replied, his expression brightening a little before he became suspicious again. ‘What you want with Viggo?’

  ‘You seen him anywhere near those apartments before?’ Allen asked.

  ‘Sure, he hangs around some,’ Asil replied. ‘Don’t got his beef though ‘cause he doesn’t stay long.’

  ‘He ever armed?’ Foxx asked. ‘You ever see him with anybody else?’

  Asil shook his head. ‘No, but he runs Shiver for his crew on 9th. They got the north of the block. The other crew, The Westy Team, they run the west block, uns’prisingly. Most times they stay out of each other’s way.’

  ‘He got stock in that apartment?’ Foxx asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Asil replied, and then frowned. ‘I seen him carryin’ boxes in there the other day though.’

  Foxx looked at Allen, who smiled as he activated an electro-sheet and tapped in a request. ‘Suspicious cargo in the possession of a known drug runner, concealed within a previously unknown abode on North Four? We’ll have a warrant from the DA here in two minutes.’

  Foxx nodded and then grabbed Asil and spun him around, yanking his arms up behind his back. ‘You, you’re under arrest.’

  ‘I’m what?!’

  ‘You’re under arrest for illegal biomechanical implants.’

  ‘I told you, they’re licensed you dumbass bitc…!’

  ‘If I let you go your crew will think you talked,’ Foxx cut him off. ‘If I arrest you, and then it turns out you were pulling my chain and forgot to tell me your eyes were on license, then you’ll have a good story to tell your bro’s and nobody’s any the wiser, savvy?’

  Asil looked over his shoulder at her, his red eyes glowing.

  ‘Why’d you do that for me?’

  Vasquez grabbed his arm as Foxx fastened the cuffs around his wrists.

  ‘Because our names don’t sound like asshole and we’re good at playing fair,’ the former soldier said. ‘You’ll be out by sundown, so play along while we get our warrant.’

  ‘Already got it,’ Allen said. ‘Let’s get in there and find out what Viggo’s been up to.’

  ***

  XXI

  Nathan had barely reached the sidewalk outside the precinct station when he lost his balance and had to steady himself against a wall as he looked up at the towering skyline and the vast panorama of the earth rotating slowly far below… above… Damn it!

  He pushed off the wall and hurried through the throng toward the elevator banks linking the southern arm of the station with North Four, which he could tell from shimmering holographic maps located conveniently about the station was almost directly opposite his current location.

  The fastest way down there would be via one of the many craft humming through the limited airspace above the city, but Nathan had no idea how to find one of the craft or how to pilot it. Sure, it had looked easy enough to Foxx but then she was a child of the 24th Century, not the 21st. Nathan looked about desperately for a moment and then he almost laughed out loud.

  It wasn’t quite New York City, but even four hundred years later Nathan could recognize a cab when he saw one. Bright yellow, with vivid black markings denoting New Washington’s finest taxi service, a sleek vehicle hummed down out of the sky and its gull-wing doors opened upward to spill four occupants out onto the sidewalk. Nathan hurried across to see several of the craft waiting nearby, their lights glowing yellow in what he assumed was still a sign advertising their availability.

  ‘Yo!’ he yelled and waved to the driver inside the recently landed cab.

  The man inside, a grumpy looking overweight guy of around fifty with a heavily forested chin, cast a world-weary glance in his direction.

  ‘North Four,’ Nathan said as he ducked into the cab.

  The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Quicker to commit suicide here and now.’

  ‘It’s urgent,’ Nathan insisted.

  ‘I don’t want my ride scratched,’ the driver grumbled. ‘Fifty credits, all in advance.’

  Nathan reached instinctively for his pockets and then realized that he had no cash.

  ‘I’m working with the police,’ he replied. ‘They’ll pick up the bill.’

  The driver’s thick stubble parted to reveal white teeth as he grinned and leaned one thick arm over the back of his seat. ‘Oh, sure, okay then. My uncle’s the governor, so I guess he’ll cover it if the police can’t, and if he’s tied up I’ll ask my dad, Zeus, for the cash.’ The smile vanished. ‘Get out or I’ll throw you out from a hundred feet, asshole.’

  Nathan’s temper got the better of him. He lunged forward and threw one arm around the driver’s neck, then leaned back on his heels and half-pulled the fat man out of his seat, the harnesses yanked to full stretch as the driver gagged and his arms wind-milled around as he tried to get hold of Nathan. Nathan pushed the knuckles of his other hand up into the driver’s throat, closing it up.

  ‘You take me to North Four right now,’ Nathan hissed, ‘or I’ll pull your head off your shoulders.

  The driver’s skin turned an unhealthy shade of red, sweat beading on his skin, and Nathan felt him suddenly nod in capitulation. Nathan released him and the driver slumped against his controls gasping for air.

  ‘You realize..,’ he choked, ‘that I got all that on camera?’

  One podgy finger pointed to a small camera bolted into the ceiling just above the windshield. Nathan leaned forward and looked into the camera.

  ‘If this man does
n’t do what I say, three police officers could die in the next ten minutes. You can use this in evidence in a court of law, that I tried without success to obtain the help of this driver and he refused me despite my stating that I’m working with the New Washington Police Department to…’

  ‘Okay!’ the driver shouted, and the doors of the cab closed abruptly as the vehicle lifted off.

  Nathan scrambled to fasten his harness as the driver pitched the cab up at a steep angle and climbed away from the city below to join the flow of aerial traffic streaming across the sky. Nathan looked out of his window and saw other vehicles cruising back and forth within distinct lanes, those travelling counter-clockwise lowest, clockwise highest, with associated landing areas on opposite sides of the Belt like off-ramps from a highway.

  As the cab climbed to join the flow Nathan saw that the driver merely handed the controls to a computer of some kind, an autopilot that accelerated the cab smoothly into positon among the other vehicles and maintained perfect station with them. The city drifted by below, dense streets packed with civilians amid the towering buildings. It was like the view above Denver but there was no sunshine, just the glow from the Earth above and the glittering of street lights and city blocks, a bizarre blend of night and day.

  ‘How many cities are there in orbit?’ Nathan asked the driver.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘How many?’

  The driver rolled his eyes. ‘Fourteen. Even my kids know that and they never pay attention at school. You’re costing me money and this ride doesn’t include a cozy chat.’

  Nathan relented a little. ‘I do work for the police and you will get paid, so shut up and answer the questions. Do the different cities have links of any kind?’

  The driver frowned, glanced over his shoulder at Nathan. ‘Are you kidding me? Most of the traffic you see outside the stations is travelling from one to another. Most ordinary folk don’t have the coin to make it out of orbit in either direction.’

  ‘You live here?’ Nathan asked.