by Ron Bender
“Of course.” Her voice is quiet with concern.
“Traffic,” I say as the doors glide shut behind me.
“This is Traffic.”
“This is Alpha-Wolf Actual, I need priority traffic routed. I need an advanced medical AV, a full medical team, a full Tracker Team, and Professor Greysen’s mobile forensic unit. Rooftop pad four. Immediate.”
“Understood, Alpha-Wolf. Your request for priority traffic has been processed and will be ready pending the Forensic team’s arrival.” The voice on the line says.
“Jen. Hook me to Greysen.” I know the technician well enough that he’ll be the slowest to respond.
“Ah, Basillio I just got the communication from traffic—"
“Set down your beakers and grab your mobile lab. I need you. Pad four, now.”
“I see. It’s that kind of urgent. I’m on my way….”
I don’t wait for him to continue. “Jen— Angel?” The maglift is already slowing. My com-link chimes. “I sent for her when you told Picasso you were coming out. She piped direct to the pad and is getting the VTOL into pre-lift condition.”
“Medical?”
“A team is on their way to the pad,” she says. There is a short pause on the line. “ETA: thirty-five seconds behind you.”
“Good.”
“Delta Two Nine is still on the active protocol list.” Her voice holds a subtle inquiry.
I know why she’s probing me. The delta protocols change a lot of things about how I live my life. “Keep it on the active list.”
“As per the protocol.” She says, with action her confidence is restored. “Air support is now dispatching two fighter craft and a second VTOL gunship.”
I step out onto the lift pad. Angel nods at me from inside the VTOL. I climb in.
“You okay?” She checks me out as I sit. “I’m asking because that’s a hey I’m back-in-South-Am look.”
I can’t tell if her glance is at my raw chrome arm showing under the sleeve of the cut up shirt, or at the gore crusted clothing I’ve opted to stay in.
“Concussion damage, internal bleeding, but I’m good. Dents in the legs are minor, fix them later, Torso is battered to hell, a lot of bruising. Pulled a few things across my back. And the new arm hasn’t been calibrated yet.” I show her the instant on-off capability of the new fist.
She chuckles wryly. “Holster up off-handed or you’ll crush your grip.”
I keep my grin to myself. “You’re not the first one to recommend caution.”
As I lift the composite diamene armor off the rack behind the front seats she comments. “You’re weapon load out kit is under the seat. It’s a big selection. Not a lot of time to pick out something you can man up with.”
I snort. “Thanks.”
If I’d have been carrying anything in the council plaza the situation there could have been very different. It’s not a mistake I’ll be repeating anytime soon. I lift out the bag. I know Angel was ripping me for how empty the kit is.
Morphing karambit … machete … ET-MP grenades …. I check the charge on the slender VMB, the monomolecular blade buzzes to life as I pull it from its sheath. I slide it away and pick up my old officers service sidearm. The worn leather holster was custom made for me. I traded some smokes and a new canteen to an old man in Caracarai for it. It’s my favorite.
As I buckle it on, the medical team swarm aboard in a flurry of stowing gear and strapping in. Greysen and his team board single file in with their wheeled crates and toggle them to the rails by the rear ramp. The cargo area is half full and the jump seats along the walls are occupied.
I sit up front next to Angel and look to the rear.
Greysen throw’s me thumbs up. I tap Angel on the shoulder.
Instantly we’re at full burn, the entirety of TopSide swings under our port canopy.
The rush of air vanishes with a thud as the ramp buttons closed.
Angel, her lips barely moving, keeps up a steady quiet chatter with the gunship and our fighter support. Our airspeed indicator is grazing the red.
From up here the morning sky is a beautiful blue. The sun crests the horizon throwing out at wide flaring diamond ring.
It vanishes as the canopy tints, and we drop at an increasingly sharp angle.
Angel locks onto Picasso’s private encrypted beacon and swings us in just above the treetops.
The scene below us is carnage. The front eighth of a trailer has been blown into shredded stands of fiber glass, and spears of twisted structural aluminum. The cone of scatter is tight and clean. Picasso had been right. It was a seriously pro-job.
“Greysen. You seeing this?” I com-link to him in the rear of the craft.
“Good sized device, strategically placed. Designed to kill an individual in a specific space without drawing a lot of attention to itself.”
He continues as we prep for landing. “I’ll have a prelim report for you in forty minutes.”
“Good.”
Angel knows I’m not going to wait around. At twenty feet, I unbuckle and the moment we touch ground I’m out, ducking away from the down blast.
The gearing on the fans clutches down and the polarity brake on the hybrid electric drives kicks in with an air shearing sound.
Silence fills the glade around the trailer like the echo of a death.
Picasso strides toward me. He looks tired and wired. If it weren’t for his charge being taken out he’d probably be happy to be eyeballs deep in it. He slows when he gets close. I know he’s assessing me for injuries.
“Nice arm.” He comments, his nostrils flaring. “You should run with it for a while, might get an honest woman instead of all those gold-diggers.”
“The blood you’re smelling isn’t mine.”
“I know. I remember what your guts smell like.” He points to a low plastic dome near the trees. “The girl’s in the medical pop-up. We lost time getting to her because we weren’t sure if of the situation.”
“Her status?”
“Critical.” His face says it all. He feels like he screwed up. “She’s in a field-bot with two surgeons riding the software. They want to get her stabilized for transport.”
“Jen?” There’s a short delay as my com-link bridges with the VTOL and boosts the signal to HQ.
“Here.”
“The bill for this goes straight to us, understood?” It’ll be high especially once the therapy starts. Some people have better resilience to events, and others fold up. Time would tell how it went for her.
“Understood.”
I point the medical team to the pop up. Greysen approaches us. He asks, “This area’s been check and is secure?”
“It’s clear for about thirty feet around the back and this whole area here.” Picasso gestures. “I swept if myself.”
Greysen motions the forensic team forward. “Has anything else been disturbed?”
“No. Aside from me prowling around it twice, inside my thirty-foot perimeter, and five tribals who did the recovery on the patio. I haven’t let anyone near.”
“Thank you operative.” He looks from Picasso to me. His eyes dart down to the metal of my arm. Whatever he was about to say he swallows; keeping on point. “I’ll get those trackers out.”
“Where’s Tessa?”
“In that mobile over there. The rest of the tribe has stopped their move until she lets them go.” He tries to deflect, shoving his anger at himself onto the situation and the old woman. “Fucking tribal types, Boss. People die every fucking day…”
I frown at him and he shuts up. I wasn’t here, I don’t know if it was neglect of duty on his part or if the situation just got complicated but dealing with the fallout rather than assigning blame is what I focus on now. “The girl, Shandra, was it?”
He grunts an affirmative.
“She’s Tessa’s only surviving relative for five, maybe six generations, on either side of the family. Out here people respect that. All they’ve got is tribe and blood. This could b
e, for her bloodline, an extinction level event. You need to remember that.”
I leave Picasso to think about that fact and check out the debris strewn patio. A technician looks up at me as I pass by. He goes back to pulling samples off the shattered wooden handrail.
Bloody blow-through makes his job difficult. He isn’t here looking for evidence of Vanessa touching the rail. He’s hoping that by eliminating anyone else from the tribe who touched it, that he can isolate the bombers sequence…get us a match. Intensely low odds but part of being thorough.
I put my good hand on Greysen’s shoulder and point inside with my chin. At his silent nod, I hop over the shorn floor and onto a swaying section of damaged trailer.
Stiffness across my torso sends sharp pain racing through me. An alert flag springs up on my optics. The medical monitor wants me to go easy and has pain meds ready. I override it and look around.
The kitchen looks pristine beyond the blast area. Shaped charge. Probably with a water blanket. A pro-job indeed. Probably not an improvised manufacture.
“Sir.” One of the forensic team stands up through the hole I just traversed. He hands Greysen a shattered piece of a tapered concrete cone.
“There’s also pieces of a water bin. It looks like a shaped charge from underneath the trailer, probably set up about eight feet in and angled upward toward the door.”
“Send images to the Doxi and start recovering what you can,” Greysen says, “and get a DNA specialist to go over all of it.”
The forensic tech nods and vanishes from sight back under the floor.
Greysen holds up the fragment. “Military. Probably Asian.”
“Asia is a large part of the world. Any chance we can narrow it down?”
“Well it tells me that they didn’t care about being tracked.” His comment is dry. “If we can develop a profile on the device, get lucky enough to find a detonator, I can do far more than that.”
If we find enough of the device, maybe even the detonator, we could scan it all in, build a profile. Because it’s a military device, parts of it will have been laser annealed with serial number. Manufacturers do that to try and trace use of their products by terrorists, find links, track funds…. Between those numbers and the profile, we’d know who made it, where, and when it was made, as well as who had it in their possession until it hit the black market.
I say, “Forward it all to Jen and ask her to back track it as best she can.”
Touching nothing, I ghost through the rest of the tailor, looking into every room. Maggie’s bed is rumpled up. An old, taped together copy of The Iron Giant has been abandoned on the pillow.
I leave the way I came. “Greysen, make sure that all of this comes back to AlphaPlaza. It’ll be easier to secure it in one of the lower level chain offs then leaving it here.”
“Sure, I’ll take care of that.”
“Jen. Status update on Shandra?”
“She has been stabilized enough for transport. The med team estimate two to five minutes.”
When I arrive at the mobile, sitting a short distance from the medical pop up, I’m greeted by a mix of tribe members clustered around the doorway. All of them are covered in mud, bruises, and fading rage.
I’m glad I’m here in a combat armor vest, gore soaked tee-shirt and dress pants, sidearm, and a raw un-skinned military grade cyberlimb.
No one stops me as I make my way inside but I get the feeling that I’m interrupting something.
The Eldest is sitting with her council on the built-in benches, sipping tea from frail looking porcelain cups and holding tiny antique saucers in their off hands…
When they see me they fall silent, waiting to see what I have to say, what explanation I’ll offer, what dodge, or deflection I’ll try. That’s what they’re used to when having to deal with people from the city.
“I misjudged my foe.” I say quietly. “I’m sorry. It’s a mistake that we’re all paying for. Your people are proud and strong but they’ve suffered because of me. I know the tribe’s pain is deep. It’s an insult to think that any amount of hard-fold will ever make that go away. But I accept responsibility for this and will pay whatever blood money the tribe demands.”
Tessa is the only one who doesn’t look surprised. She just looks tired, worried, a little scared, like any leader whose people have been beaten. She reaches into a wooden box and lifts tea cup and saucer from the threadbare velvet liner. “I thank you for your apology. The tribe will tally up what is owed by you.” She pours a cup and leans forward, extending it me.
There is a sigh from everyone else, it quietly spreads behind me and outside.
My stomach drops. This is a test within the tribe, and sign of acceptance. The uncalibrated arm is a huge problem. I scramble for a solution….
I take it with my flesh hand, snap open the metal fist, palm up. I set the saucer onto it and lift the tea cup to my lips.
Subtle nods wash around me like water in a tide pool.
Tessa must have noticed my problem and counted on me to solve it on the fly.
She continues. “It’s not my place to chastise you. Nor is it my place to remind you that the missteps of men scaling the mountain to greatness, can lead to calamity for all the climbers who follow below them. I can only ask that you be more mindful of your footing for the sake of people you may call friends.”
Sipping the tea once more, I meet her steady gaze. “I will. And I am grateful to be considered a friend after everything that’s happened.”
She grimaces. “Some here don’t like the idea. Some here will have to wait until I’m buried before they can express that opinion further.”
That’s as big a warning as I could ever expect about my position with this tribe. I nod.
After a moment of silence punctuated by the clink of tea cups on saucers I say, “Shandra needs to come with me to New White Sands City. There’s more we can do for her.”
“I know.” She voice is soft. “Take her.”
“Call me when your people have settled into their new spot. I’ll arrange discrete transport for you and some others to be with her. She’ll need that.”
“Very well.”
Since there’s nothing else to say, I bow my head slightly and leave. “Jen keep a gunship on station in the area.”
“Yes, sir.”
3.27
Remains
Picasso catches up with me as I make my way back to the AV. “My bike’s stowed. Medic’s have the girl on board.”
“The body?”
“What’s left you mean…”
“Yeah.” My back spasms hard enough that I inadvertently clench my fist shut and it doesn’t open again for a couple of seconds.
“She’s on board already.”
“Jen make a note. This is for release after we get a lock on this situation.” I’d need to talk to Baylen, explain what happened. “Hildebrandt, Vanessa, PsyD, MD, cyber-psychiatry, passed away unexpectedly. Her loss will be felt by the many people she helped. She is survived by her Ex-husband Baylen Lee, and her beloved daughter Margret Hildebrandt-Lee. Services to be held in The TopSide commemorative area of Echo park. Put in the appropriate date.”
My body is aching even more now. I hadn’t realized how much effort meeting Tessa would be.
I don’t want to lock up out here. I need to protect the image I’m crafting outside the city.
Angel opens the side loading door and I climb up and in on my own power.
“You look like shit.” Angel says quietly to me as I drop into the flight seat next to hers. “You need something, kill the pain a little.”
“Not yet. Anything now I’ll be out for a while. Too much to do.”
“Okay, Boss, your call.”
We lift. I look into the cargo area behind me. The medics have opened a surgical suite. Through the thick white plastic curtains, I can make out figures working to keep the girl alive.
Right behind me Picasso sits, his face completely blank as his hand rests on the
foot of a blue body bag. Hildebrandt V. and her CitOne number are printed down beside the full length re-enforced zipper.
With a sigh, I turn back and blink open my remote desktop. I drag it onto the center of my optical field. The overlay floats over my vision. I clear everything except for the Hercules files keeping the most relevant on top.
In one corner, I watch Greysen’s tracker team. Three men stand to one side and are carefully observe the motions of a fourth. All of them are wearing head-to-toe paper suits and full VR immersion gear.
The fourth man moves through the motions that have been dictated by software and human skill. He reenacts the movements the insurgent made during his approach.
I shrink the frame further and let it run in one corner. I open an update report from Brios. Raven hated filing field reports and generally didn’t include enough specifics. They’d already sniffed out a few places where Bransen and the last of his men might be holed up in Bangui. The best news is that as of forty-minutes ago Maggie was still alive.
“Picasso.” I turn to face him.
He expression doesn’t change; his eyes stay focused on some distant personal truth. “Soldier,” I say quietly, “Soldier, I need you here. Now.”
His eyes narrow tightly onto my own. He shudders a little and relaxes. “I’m here.”
“Good. I need you to go to Central Africa. I need you in Bangui .”
˜˜˜
I’ve been in this room for almost five hours. I shut down and charged up for most of it. I know when I’m being keep in the dark. A couple of officers had tried the same thing with the Hercules right before coup. Nelson was the only one we trusted after that.
After I woke, I ate everything that the room panel was willing to send.
Now I’m anxious. My daughter is still out there, and so are the men of my old unit. And Vanessa; she might not even know that Hall is dead.