Warden 4

by Isaac Hooke

  “There’s a growing number of people on Mars who do dress this way, yes,” Burhawk said. “They’re part of a privacy-conscious movement sweeping the planet. The robes are meant as a form of protest and prevent the facial recognition technology from registering and identifying their features. There’s a piece of legislation waiting to pass that will ban such attire, but it’s still legal at the moment. Just as the city can’t force us to connect to their wireless networks to reveal our IDs. As an added bonus, the robes will also conceal your weapons: the fabric is lead-lined. Remote scans won’t penetrate.”

  When they were all dressed, Burhawk continued to lead the way through the corridors.

  Rhea was close to the center of the group, following behind Miles. Will was just behind her.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth about all this?” Will asked softly, placing his head close to her shoulder.

  “He does seem to have intimate knowledge of my situation that no one else should,” Rhea replied, at an equal volume. “He knew that a drone gave me a pistol in city hall, and he knew that someone unlocked my handcuffs. That’s something only a handful of people are aware of. You, Horatio, and the Wardenites in this corridor. No one else has that knowledge.”

  “Still, I don’t trust him,” Will said. “He could be leading us into a trap.”

  “Why rescue us from the robots, only to lead us right back to them?” she asked. “Or to Khrusos himself?”

  “Because he might want to claim the bounty on your head,” Will said. “It might be true that Khrusos didn’t set that bounty. Or it might not. Either way, I doubt this dude cares, as long as he collects.”

  “I remember his face,” Rhea said. “If that counts for anything.”

  “I don’t know, does it?” Will asked. “Do you remember if he was a friend? Because that’s the more important memory…”

  “That, I don’t,” she replied. “But if he truly did help me at city hall, and prevented me from getting chipped, then he’s someone we can trust.”

  “He might have been doing that for other reasons,” Will said. “Again, you don’t really know him, or his motivations.”

  Rhea shrugged. “We’ll just have to be on our toes.”

  “Come on, I hear the sarcasm,” he said. “Don’t be naive about this.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic,” she told him seriously. “I meant what I said. We’ll have to keep on our toes. And I intend to.”

  “Good,” Will said.

  Burhawk soon led them to the surface, emerging in a minor governmental building. The corridor they stepped into had no cameras, according to the map data she had. And there were no robots waiting to accost or record them.

  Burhawk led them into the street beyond via a back door. A quick glance at her map confirmed once again that no cameras resided nearby.

  He led them down a ramp and to the sidewalk, where they passed by a group of sentry robots standing at an intersection. The machines didn’t accost them, probably because the Wardenites kept their heads bowed.

  Around her, skyscrapers towered in the air, and after the robots were well behind her, she risked an upward glance to take in the view. The buildings were very much like the crystalline towers of Aradne, but much taller, glittering brightly beneath the sun’s rays. She supposed that with a geodesic framework enclosing the city, thus limiting growth outward, the only direction the builders could expand was up, at least until they reached the inner boundaries of the dome. Some of the skyscrapers in the center of the city reached so high that they almost touched the glass ceiling. Beyond that glass, the sky was a bright red.

  She lowered her gaze, because there were a lot of drones buzzing overhead, and while many of them were couriers, she didn’t want to risk having her face recorded by any of them.

  A few roadside sellers offered miniature versions of the dome: tiny buildings duplicated inside crystal balls, minus the geodesic lines composing the larger framework. When the miniatures were shaken, small particles would float into the air, simulating snow.

  The road traffic to her right seemed dominated by delivery vehicles. There were some self-driving buses and taxis, but her party couldn’t use them: the social credit system of Hongton required active comm nodes in order to board public transportation. At least according to DragonHunter.

  On the sidewalk, delivery robots and remote-controlled androids composed much of the foot traffic, though there were also locals, both human and cyborg, who looked to be of Chinese descent. They didn’t wear parkas like on Ganymede—the inner environment here was a comfortable seventy-one degrees Fahrenheit, as the Martians didn’t have to worry about melting through the crust, which was made of iron-rich rock rather than ice. Because of the warmer air, the dress code seemed fairly casual, and dominated by bright colors; the youth wore clothing shredded so badly that she could often see their underwear.

  “And I thought grunge was bad on Earth…” Will quipped.

  The biceps and thighs of the humans she saw were smaller than usual, given the adaptions their bodies had made to the lower gravity. However, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the human limbs she had seen on Ganymede, which appeared outright skeletal.

  The gaits of the passersby were identical to that of humans striding across a typical Earth city, again no doubt because of those muscle adaptions. However, the cyborgs and robots among them had a certain bounce to their step, which Rhea and the others possessed as well. After Rhea pointed it out, she and the Wardenites were careful to mimic the gaits of the human residents instead. And because the robes they wore were so bulky, no one would be able to tell how well-built their frames were underneath, compared to the typical Martian.

  As she continued along the pavement, she noted a good number of privacy-conscious individuals wore black robes with the hoods pulled low, like Rhea and the others, which made her feel less out of place.

  She remembered DragonHunter’s warning regarding the cameras built into the AR goggles of passersby, cameras that the city’s AI was very likely to tap into, and she purposely tilted her head away from anyone who walked by, be they human, cyborg or robot. The others were doing the same. She and her companions also made a point of keeping their heads down when passing any of the cameras marked out on the map, or when walking underneath the roving security drones that traveled to and fro overhead.

  As she walked those streets and spotted the different robot sentries standing guard at every intersection, a plan to take the presidential palace began to form in her head.

  “How much of a lag is there between the time a robot records something on the street, and the time it actually sends the data off to the main AI for processing?” she asked Burhawk.

  “Because there are so many robots and security cameras transmitting throughout the city, you can imagine it uses up a lot of bandwidth,” Burhawk said. “So the robots have to queue. In ordinary circumstance, it’s about one minute for any particular robot or camera. Though groups of robots can jump the queue in a time of crisis. So, for example, if there’s some sort of robbery, or some wanted criminal arriving in the terminal, the robots and cameras in the immediate area can have their queue positions bumped up, dropping the lag to less than a second if necessary. Meanwhile, other robots in the city will have their transmission lag doubled. It can be good for diversions.”

  That only made her plan all the more viable. And it wasn’t even the diversion part that excited her.

  She put the idea in the back of her mind to let it simmer. She’d share it with the others when the time was right. She still needed to know what kind of defenses she could expect to find inside, and what sort of weapons Khrusos carried on his person. Burhawk claimed he had hoarded Ganymede technology. That could pose a problem.

  The man led the group to part of the city where the buildings were only mid-rise, versus all-out skyscrapers. Here, personal air pods weaved to and fro among the buildings, at a height just above the drones. They were probably self-driving, like similar
vehicles on Earth.

  At the bottom of these mid-rise buildings were often different stores, manned by robots: a clothing store, a refrigeration shop, a power cell stand. Most of them lacked any obvious inventory, but no doubt 3D printers in the back printed up purchases on demand. Delivery drones or robots would park in front to receive any completed orders, then take flight or walk away with the parcels.

  There was occasionally a cafe or restaurant as well among the stores, but these were mostly empty save for a few customers. The staff were automated.

  Higher up, the buildings contained residential suites with balconies and windows. There was always at least one lobby nestled between the stores of the first floor, with a locked door that led to the elevators or stairways providing access to those suites.

  Burhawk stopped in front of one such door. His eyes defocused, and Rhea had the impression he was temporarily reactivating his comm node.

  He spoke a moment later. “It’s me.”

  The door clicked open.

  Burhawk glanced over his shoulder at Rhea, giving her a significant look, then he stepped inside.

  Confused by that look, Rhea followed.

  “Do I know this person?” she asked as she followed him up the first flight of stairs.

  Burhawk didn’t look back at her as he said: “That remains to be seen.”

  After climbing several of those zigzagging flights, Burhawk stepped into the hallway of the fifth floor. He proceeded to the door directly in front of the elevator.

  It was ajar.

  He pushed it open and entered.

  Rhea followed. The air with was hazy, and smelled of sweet spice, as if someone was burning incense.

  The kitchen was close to the entrance, and she walked past the island with Burhawk and the others, entering the living room next to it.

  The furniture was old and threadbare, as if the owner could afford only hand-me-downs. The curtains were closed, blocking out much of the light, so that the room was dim and murky.

  Seated on a tattered couch beneath the curtains, past that swirling haze, sat a woman with her head bowed so low that Rhea couldn’t see her face. Long black hair hung down on either side of her head, further concealing her features.

  She was dressed in a loose-fitting, long-sleeved blouse, paired with sweatpants and runners. Metallic hands were visible beneath the sleeves of the blouse, hinting at a potential cyborg. On the coffee table in front of her, an incense stick burned in a tray.

  “Min,” Burhawk said.

  The woman looked up.

  Rhea recognized her immediately.

  Like Rhea, she had eyes that were much too big, and a mouth too wide, to be human, which sent her face into the uncanny valley. Her other features were relatively normal: a button nose, thin brows, high cheekbones. She was the very same woman Rhea had seen in the flashback that had come to her on Ganymede, when she had been exploring one of the destroyed domes of her people.

  “Sensei,” Rhea said, lowering her hood.

  Min glanced at Burhawk. “I thought you said she was wiped?” The woman even sounded the same.

  “She has been,” Burhawk said. “Believe me. But her memories seem to be coming back faster than before.”

  The woman nodded. “It happens sometimes in subsequent wipes. They fail to take entirely. The engrams of the mind adapt, the weakest are sieved out, leaving only the strong.” She looked off into the distance. “The memories that are used most are likeliest to remain: the muscle memories of the body, and of the tongue.”

  “Teacher,” Rhea said, returning the woman’s focus to her.

  “Don’t call me that,” Min said. “Never call me that.”

  “Why?” Rhea said. “It’s who you are.”

  “You don’t understand,” the woman said. “I’m the one who set the bounty on your head.”

  Rhea switched to an attack posture and activated her Ban’Shar.

  12

  “Why?” Rhea said, her voice little more than a hiss, like the drawing of a blade from its sheath.

  The other Wardenites followed her lead, unholstering their hidden pistols; some pointed them at Burhawk, others Min.

  The Ban’Shar had cut through her long sleeves when they emerged, and the constituent plasma disks tinted everyone blue in the swirling murk.

  “I didn’t realize your mind had been wiped at that point, nor that you were free of mind chips,” Min said. “Burhawk told me this only recently. I had already quadrupled the bounty on your head by then. I thought you were still Khrusos’ pet. His Dagger. When I saw you on the streaming sites, fighting those bioweapons—the Hydras—I believed it part of some campaign to increase the president’s popularity in some way. That you would reveal to the world that you fought for him all this time, and that he was the one who ordered you to protect Rust Town, or some such garbage. I was wrong.

  “Even when Khrusos issued the warrant for your arrest, I still thought it some ruse… some big show to recall you in a manner that would deter assassination. But then your mentor came to me. I nearly killed him”—Burhawk snorted at that—“but something held my hand. He said he had been trying to track me down for years. I didn’t believe it when he told me you had attempted to assassinate the president, nor that he had personally seen to your subsequent mind wipe. I laughed and told him never to return. But then a few days later—today—I saw footage of you fighting against the security robots in the space terminal. That was when I knew I had made a very big mistake.”

  Rhea stared at the woman for several moments.

  “So you posted the bounty to kill the Dagger of Khrusos?” Rhea asked. “And not the Warden of Rust Town?”

  Min nodded. “That is correct.”

  Rhea tentatively deactivated the Ban’Shar. But she remained in a battle crouch. Will and the others lowered their weapons.

  She glanced at Will. “Why did Veil tell me it was Khrusos himself who posted the bounty?”

  “Dunno,” Will said. “Maybe she had unresolved business with the president and wanted you to conclude that business for her.”

  “I can tell you why,” Min said.

  Rhea and Will returned their gaze to her.

  Min continued: “When I posted the job, I used the alias ‘Harbinger 59,’ a reference to a Trojan Khrusos made many years ago, which allowed him to hack into the Department of Defense and consolidate his control over the space navy. I knew there would be a few bounty hunters applying for the job who would recognize the alias, but I never thought any of them would actually believe it was the real Khrusos. Apparently there were: such as Veil.”

  Rhea studied her old sensei.

  “So I’m not the last Ganymedean after all,” Rhea said after a moment.

  “No,” Min agreed. “There are a small network of us left. A handful, scattered throughout the solar system.”

  “What was our original mission?” Rhea asked. “When we came to Earth? I remember escaping from a Ganymedean ship burning up in reentry, and nothing more.”

  “Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to recall what our mission was, even after all these years,” Min said. “Khrusos is the only one who knows.”

  Rhea cocked her head in confusion.

  “Oh,” the woman said. “Yes, you wouldn’t know this. Like you, my mind was wiped. I became a slave of Khrusos, and lived in his palace on Earth, until moving with him to Mars. Also like you, I began to remember. But when I finally realized who I was, rather than trying to assassinate Khrusos, I took the more prudent course of action and ran away, going into hiding.”

  “Why did you want to assassinate me, a fellow Ganymedean?” Rhea asked. “Yes, I was the Dagger, but I was also your sister. One of your pupils at that.”

  “You were my greatest student,” Min said. “I couldn’t bear the idea of you continuing to serve that beast. I remembered you as you were, and the thought of your skills being perverted to perform such evil deeds was too much for me to bear. If I couldn’t kill Khrusos, at least
I could kill you, his favorite pet, and thus free you from his servitude, and deny him his most powerful weapon. It was cruel, perhaps, but I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.”

  The woman’s gaze drifted to Rhea’s exposed hands, and she stood up, coming closer. She didn’t lift her eyes from those hands. Something strange glinted within them, but for only a moment. Rhea wasn’t quite sure what it was. Greed?

  “This technology was believed lost,” Min said. “May I?”

  She extended her fingers, and glanced at Rhea, as if requesting permission to touch her.

  Rhea nodded.

  Min touched Rhea’s hand, and slowly intertwined her smaller fingers between Rhea’s.

  The touch was intimate, yet also probing.

  Rhea was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and was about to ask Min to let go, when the woman squeezed, hard. Rhea attempted to pull away, but Min held fast. Rhea couldn’t move her fingers at all—and she certainly couldn’t form them into a fist, meaning she could not access the Ban’Shar of that hand.

  She considered activating the opposite Ban’Shar, but held back for the moment, mostly out of respect to the woman who was once her teacher.

  “Let go,” Rhea told her.

  Will looked between Rhea and Min, seeming unsure of what was going on, and obviously wondering whether to intervene. Her other companions seemed equally confused.

  Will finally raised his pistol, and looked at Rhea, waiting for her to give the signal. The others followed his lead.

  The nano machines inside Rhea began to activate of their own accord. Vents opened up in her hand, and the metal insects began to flow onto Min’s fingers.

  Rhea suddenly understood what Min was doing: by touching her, the woman had somehow gained control of her nano machines. As her former sensei, of course it made sense that she would know things about the technology that Rhea didn’t.

  Perhaps Min was merely making a copy of the nano machines. Duplicating them, so that both of them could harbor the technology. But no, that didn’t make sense, given what Rhea knew of the iteration limit. A memory somewhere at the back of her mind told her that the machines had to be made in a special lab, and could not be duplicated in the field, only transferred.