Book Read Free

Epic Death

Page 25

by Mike Doom


  Infotainment Advertasm

  Running out of steam right when you need it? Is your stamina just not what it used to be? Do you find yourself left behind the pack, unable to fulfill your carnal desires?

  Full body modification is an option, but perhaps there is another, cheaper, but still quite effective way. Bone Amplification hardware can be installed in just a manner of days, with rehabilitation in our of our state-of-the-art clinics as simple as walking to the bank. Our surgeons remove the marrow from one or both of your legs, replacing it with high capacity batteries which are then hooked to your viral micromachine matrix, these marvels can even produce additional microbes directly, helping to regulate levels without pricey clinic fees.

  No more will you need to deactivate sensor sweeps, or plug into bulky external power supplies to restore power to internal systems. Bone Amps are a must have for anyone running full sensor diving boards remotely without external hardware, or using the most high tech medical servitor suites on the market, and will help you to continue at the highest levels of physical and electronic activity far beyond your wildest expectations. See our wos in all major cities for more information and for a free consultation.

  Bone Amps - Never run out of power again.

  Lap six goes, like all the laps before it. Cirrhosis hits six targets across, narrowly avoids getting a bolt to the ass twice, and keeps in a steady third. Paris has been holding the top spot in the race, but their guy is a terrible shot and he's pushing his horse too hard. Isis is his real competition, sitting calmly in second, he's taking smooth shots, wasting nothing. Cirrhosis should be doing better, but his eyes keep drifting to the audience. Nothing bad has happened yet, and he knows that it will. Soon. Probably when they gate to Selba Station.

  His horse whinnies timidly as he taps her gently with his heel, stiffening up to take a shot. He waits a moment for the rider in twelfth to move, and fires. Bulls.

  Cirrhosis is working hard, Truckee can tell that he is distracted though, he's giving A-game in a A+ sort of competition. He'll get at least second, but that is only because Paris is obviously not taking this seriously.

  "Char, you seeing anything out there?" Truckee is sitting in a small press box on the podium stuck to the central pillar of the stadium. He can observe through several news feeds streaming from throughout the crowd on Torch via almost countless official and unofficial lines via ansible. At this point nothing appears out of the ordinary, he has his eB scrubbing faces for anyone important. Nothing either.

  "No. Nothing near the locks, I have people scanning the crowd for anyone suspicious."

  "Who?"

  "Six guys from adgasms on 60th."

  "Hell. I'm going to send you a few pictures, see if anyone has seen these people." Truckee wishes they actually had a hunter on staff, but alas, he has to rely on baby lances and corporate shills. He pulls images for Sunshine, Stardust, Toro, and Vii Ariable. Never count a man out. He also had some pics of Agent Lipservice that Pepper had given him, and both looks for Iced Mocha. Truckee is unsure the last time he spent this long passing around pictures that weren't going to be tabloid fodder in moments. That said, it may turn out that way anyhow depending on how chips fall.

  "Why did you send me a picture of Sunshine Apocalypse?"

  "She's off-station, so if you see her."

  "She's in the press boxes, I let her in myself. She's with some GovNet agent in the President's box."

  "Shit. I'm heading there now, beef security in the boxes. That woman is a robot dupe." The guy is the real problem though, Pepper is sure he's either the mastermind or someone very close to it. That just leads Code Name to find, as usual.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Truckee rushes to the elevator behind his podium, the race still has about sixty minutes left at this point. Plenty of time to get killed before he has to make the final announcements, give out prizes, etc. The elevator is actually a gravlifter with a railing, so Truckee gets a good view of the VIP section while he descends. Built in front of the surrounding buildings, the semi-opaque line of small boxes are aglow with cameras pointing in and out. They form a solid wall on the bankers side of the plaza, only way in is through the Chinqi Building's lobby. There are supposed to be bomb and AI detectors there, but with Sunshine being on the payroll she used Char to skip the line. Helps to have GovNet in tow, as her bounty was only dropped six hours ago.

  Truckee gets to the base of the pillar, his platform moves forward over the crowd, getting him a few flashbulbs before placing him gently in the pantry for the VIPs. Cooks are abuzz about who received the most outlandish demands with the least grease money. The winner gets everyone else to spit in their food. Truckee gets a few worried looks as he walks in on story time, but he waves them onward. Iichi from He's Just Not That Into You: Armageddon deserves it honestly. Kid acts like he was stillborn. All flat and jiggly.

  The halls are filled with hangers on, busboys, personal assistants and mistresses. A waste of good recycled air mostly, but Truckee attempts to be cordial. Curtly so, but he has excuses today, as he technically should have stayed on stage the whole time anyway.

  "Big. It's on. Apocalypse and Agent Lipservice are in VIP. I thought you were watching for this sort of thing?"

  "I'm in their suite already!"

  "Really?"

  "Posing as the baby of the third seat for Cirrhosis' team!"

  "I should remember who that is right?" Truckee says mostly to himself, a passing assistant holding no less than ten drinks in this two hands, just sort of nods and blinks his approval. The real question is, should he burst in? They are going to know him, probably be armed, and willing to take him out or at least blast hostages. Truckee is three doors down, standing by a woman screaming at someone aloud, and presumably over ansible. Or she's insane. Either is possible.

  "Big, do you need me in there?"

  "No. I got eyes! You need to watch the race, these two are a distraction."

  "Fuck." Truckee mutters, nodding to the screaming woman and breaking into a run. These two are totally a diversion. There is no logical reason why two people, who are obviously working a cover, would just come out to a place with lots of cameras. They are there to pull Truckee from his post, but why? He needs to get his eyes on the crowd. Code could still be out there, and he's the one with weird powers.

  Cirrhosis holds his breath as a dull humming seems to permeate his chest. Glowing across the track as the jumpgate is opened on the track. One big gray lump of tubes and cylinders on the inside of the track begins spooling up, shooting various exotic energies to a similar object on the other side. The rumbling grows harsher, Cirrhosis manages to get two targets, even with the weird gravimetric wiggling, however he gets overzealous as they near the gate. His third shot misses the mark substantially and nicks the helmet of one of the racers fro S. United, the Sprawl team. Weird thing is, his helmet stays on, and the rider doesn't take it off. Nor does he knock the bolt out of the side of it either.

  This is the moment that Cirrhosis realizes that because he wasn't here before the race, he didn't take part in the time trials. Normally this would disqualify him, but as he's the main draw, and ranked first in the division, he got through anyway. He would have done fine, everyone but the most sticklery of sticklers would even argue about it. Which they had, but the voices wanting to see who would win beat out the voices that wanted an easy win for whichever team they supported. Also the fucking race ends on Selba Station, so of course Selba's team has to be there. Regardless, all of this boils down to one thing. Neither he, nor Truckee for that matter, saw the other racers without their helmets on. So they could be literally anyone.

  "Hell." Cirrhosis grunts, and whips the reigns slightly, the geneered horses used in these races all have wetwiring and respond to rider emotion. Any flicking of ropes and nudging of sides is more secondary to just telling the horse to hurry it up. This is why the Tigeran league even exists. Extre
mely limited animal cruelty. Bottom-line is, they need to get closer to that rider.

  Cirrhosis triggers a few hack programs as he rounds the turn quickly, passing Isis and closing on Paris. He has to use some subversion programs because hacking other riders will get him disqualified. He does hesitate before dusting Isis's rider, just to be sure. It is definitely, definitely, Rory Mashmouth, their first seat. He'd recognize him anywhere.

  Next up is Paris, he gets close easily, as the race is down to about three lengths at this point. Paris' rider should be Hodges Cuntmirth, the worst first seat in the league. His third and fourth got him here, everyone knows it, he'll get fourth if he doesn't stop sprinting the back half and sludging his aim. Cirrhosis has only met this guy twice, both times at shit industry parties. So he only knows him from shaking hands on the carpet. He actually has to dive him really quick and force query his eButler. Positive confirm, moving on.

  "Truck, I think I noticed something fucking stupid that we did."

  "Add it to my tab."

  "We never vetted the fucking riders."

  "Shit! I'll check with Char. Anything odd happen?"

  "SU's guy got nicked by my shot, and he's keeping his helmet on. With the bolt."

  "Hold it." Truckee LTs.

  "Like we have a choice." Cirrhosis is at the hole. That is the easiest way to describe it. Ahead is a shimmering blue ring of energy, in its center is a platform trillions of miles away. The subtle smell of ozone fills his lungs, but Cirrhosis can already smell the damp air of Selba Station pouring out of the gate. He is second through after Paris, who seems to make it to the other-side intact. Cirrhosis still holds his breath as his horse runs through on to the ramp.

  Cheering greets him as he makes it through. The actual movement between places is only noticeable in the queasy feeling he gets switching so rapidly between gravity-levels. Selba being quite a bit weaker than Torch. His horse doesn't seem to mind, but it takes them both a second to get used to the clear ramp leading them down to the new stadium in Crystal Plaza. Through the flashing of bulbs and bright lights Cirrhosis can see Truckee floating to the central pillar below him on some kind of platform. Floating like a reversed leaf in a forest of screaming people. Cirrhosis slows his horse, partly to catch his baring, partly to not waste energy, mostly because his target is about a turn behind him.

  "Truck?"

  "Fucking way. It's Jor. The President of Checktiza is riding for SU as a charity stunt."

  "Corialis's cousin. Great. Anyone else I should watch for?"

  "Apocalypse and Agent Lipservice are in VIP. Code Name is probably around here. I got pictures from Char, everyone else is traditional roster. Jor must be the ace."

  "Or a sacrificial lamb for his cousin to use to deny involvement later."

  "Or that."

  Cirrhosis debates his plan, what to do with Jor. Knock him off his horse, spoiling his run? Kill him with a well placed bolt? What is the real plan, what could he possibly do to foil it from here? Cirrhosis calms his horse and take a couple of easy targets floating high as he makes his way down the last few descending laps, hoping inspiration will hit him before something else does.

  "Was this all your grand fucking plan was? Stick the three of us with some bullshit rap for throwing a suddenly existent space station into a crowd of people?"

  "No. It was to end an era and start a new one. This would force GovNet and the Feds to listen to me, to stop allowing organized crime to just exist on its payroll with no repercussions for their actions whatsoever."

  "That is bullshit and you know it. Lances clean the streets, Federalis watch the LaGrange, but it's up to the hunters to guard the space between that. There is no manageable way you could train and coordinate an official police force over that much terrain. The fear of the hunt is what makes the hunt so powerful. It would require twice, fuck, five times as many people to do what one hunter could do. You'd need free-" Epic looks at Corialis seriously all of the sudden. Corialis has a smile on his face, like the kind you get when your son learns to add fractions.

  "Keep going." Relish for your hot dog?

  "This is about fucking business? You dumb fuck, you are risking a station full of civvies for fucking rolling out a police force of robots?" Epic is livid, he takes it out on Corialis' severed hand, kicking it across the room. It is truly time to go, the station is about ten from the LaGrange. Pepper has been in the ship attempting to figure a way out of Last's wish.

  "I have finally broken the wall down, a police force of Frees could truly make a sovereign space a reality. No more lawlessness between LaGranges, the Federalis could hold up to the stations, and GovNet could manage the rest. It is perfect, but to do it I need something to force people's hands. The romance of the hunt, the allure of vigilante justice, the sheer cost of throwing the first collection of Frees out into the unknown."

  "Not to mention that using true AI is a crime against humanity in the Federation."

  "That was something born of fear."

  "It was something born of the fucking Z'arkadar told us they would kill our star if we abused slave AI labor." Older races had banded together to alert the humans, probably about an hundred years ago at this point, that fully AI constructs must be treated as citizens. Hence why most robots are illegal now, and why androids like Big have jobs. It isn't some sort of tree-hugging initiative, it was a commandment punishable by death.

  "Frees aren't against the Coda if we pay them."

  "Yeah, but making a police force that can only be staffed by Frees makes them indentured servants. That is only one stage different, and the Z'arkadar aren't known for their nuanced views on slavery."

  "I need not explain myself to you, I only need you to understand that you die for a purpose." Cirrhosis says from the ground watching out the front window, so close now.

  "Fucking die by yourself for whatever you want. I'm dust, this party has been played out for years." Epic grumbles, walking away from Corialis. His job of distracting him officially over. Pepper figured out how to detach the station from the room. He says that the room has it's own propulsion, so most likely it will still make the jump unless they figure out a quick fix to that too. Either way, it is time to go. Leave the crazy guy to his dreams of splendor.

  "So you asked it then?" Pepper asks Sunshine, after the dusts herself off. Her wish wasn't a very big one, but it did cause her chair to randomly collapse on her.

  "The wish before Last's, before last... What the hell kind of name is that anyway?"

  "Swallow a load." Last grumbles from her seat in the back.

  "Whatever. The last wish was to see the Selba Tiger win the Race of the Ancients." Sunshine says moving back to her conversation with Pepper, who is smirking. Jerk.

  "So we have two wishes pulling the station through the jumpgate in the Crystal Plaza specifically."

  "Even if we do get the station broken apart it will probably just jump the room Corialis is in. He'll be able to play it off as the result of a grudge held by the three of us since his father's death on the same station." Stardust says as she ducks into the room, Last grits her teeth. Positive that Stardust got what she wanted from her. Stardust isn't taking their ship for some reason Last is unaware of, probably to torture her further.

  "Hemming and hawing about it won't get this done. Was Epic behind you?"

  "He still had something he wanted to talk to Corialis about. Did you figure out how to stop the station?"

  "The plans for the station put its jump mechanism in the engineering section, which i had sabotaged with some radio explosives on my way into the station. Mostly because i thought Corialis might do the pendant thing again." Pepper says, holding his arm. Stardust looks out the window at the engineering section of the station, which is still visible from the docking spindle they are sharing, until it explodes.

  "Isn't Epic still in there?" Last says hurridly.

  "The room he was in has it's
own propulsion, and the station itself is highly segmented, the nature of being built in parts as the original version was paid by multiple investors over the course of several decades."

  "Before it became a hang out for gangs."

  "Before that."

  "You still could have given me a minute to walk up here, the fucking station rocked like an amusement park ride when you blew that shit." Epic grunts when he climbs in. He nods at Last, and makes a strange face at Stardust.

  "You want to know why I am here?" Stardust giggles. Pepper and Epic share a look, Epic nods.

  "This is at least mostly your fault you know." Epic starts.

  "I kept Toro busy while you got the Jewel."

  "You ensured that Corialis' plan would actually happen by being fucking reckless."

  "I didn't even DO anything."

  "You gave the rock to that fucking flatliner-no offense-knowing what she would do with it. Same as making the wish yourself." Last blushes and looks at her feet.

  "I am under no responsibility to plan, coordinate, or otherwise dictate the actions of my employer. No matter how predictably fucktarded-full offense-they might be."

  "You are a child."

  "I am selfish and a bitch, but I am far from childish."

  "Enough. Watching you two have a spat is enough to turn me off my lunch. We need to get that fucking room disabled before it makes the jump." Pepper interjects.

  "What's that?" Last asks someone, everyone looks at her, and then where she is looking. Outside the window, several hundred small lights are blinking around the remains of the station. The room itself detaches from the station, pulling ahead as it sloughs off its heavy pupa. The lights appear to be spreading into a wide network. Stardust dives the station, and Pepper runs scans through the long-ranges as he detaches their ship from the docking spindle. Epic remains standing, Sunshine takes a new seat and straps in. Fully aware of how these things tend to go.

  "Station deployed some sort of drone network. They don't appear to be connected to the station in any way."

  "They are hot. I can't put a bead on their encryption. Top notch stuff."

  "So it is safe to say that they aren't a part of the original design then?" Stardust adds, Epic gets into the pilots seat, considering what to say to Stardust. He considers flushing her out the airlock, but is stuck on how much everything is exactly like what she would do. He can't really fault her for being the woman he fell for, even if that woman has always been reprehensible.

  "No. This could be his doing, even though it doesn't really mesh with the rest of his plan so far."

  "You are overlooking someone." Stardust laughs at the men, narrow-sighted as always. Another ship undocks from the derelict station. A longer teardrop shaped vessel, something made for speed. And violence.

  "Toro."

  "Yes. They could easily have come from his ship."

  "Yeah, but why? Does he really need to stop this from happening?"

  "He stands to lose a good deal on the end of the hunt."

  "It's revenge and you know it. Toro doesn't take being threatened well."

  "I always admired his attitude."

  "Well, admire his attitude when those things aren't surrounding us too." Pepper says through a grimace, short-ranges are picking several of the small round balls following behind them as well. He can't quite get a good visual on them though, the heat signatures are a dead giveaway. Gravlifters.

  "He's going to either crush us or scramble the LaGrange." Epic shouts as the alarms start blaring. Epic gets a bit more forceful in strapping himself in, Stardust does the same. Sunshine closes her eyes as tightly as possible, sure that this is going to be the big one.

  "So which side is he on?" Last adds from the back, being unusually astute.

  "Fuck!" Pepper shouts, the ship starts losing speed. He's triggered the lifters, pushing their engine to fight against a heavy gravity field. He wants Corialis to himself, Toro's ship zips past them to intercept the flying room.

  "I have eyes on him, we have some missles if-" Epic mutters, running through trajectories, attempting to judge for the fluctuating gravity well. He has about one solid shot, in probably ten seconds, should he decide to take it.

  "Fire if you can. I doubt you could hit him if you wanted to."

  "Why aren't you using some of your illegal tech?" Cannata says from a medical bench in the back, Last turns around to see her. She had forgot the injured woman was aboard.

  "You showed her the good stuff, darling? Shouldn't you be saving yourself for your new girlfriend?" Stardust lays on with a heavy serving of sarcasm. Pepper looks at her with venom, mostly because he is embarrassed that he relied on parlor tricks and tipped his hand. He's never felt so old and useless, and he can tell Stardust senses it too.

  "Weld it you fucking sociopath. Cannata, we are not going to use illegal technology to save anyone." He's not sure why she remembers that all of the sudden. He had wiped her after she agreed to join him, taken the gun back to his apartment too. Stardust seems a little too happy about this though. And how did she know that he had shown that to Cannata. Unless she hacked the woman at some point after coming on the ship. Bitch.

  "Why?" Sunshine asks honestly, Pepper avoids eye contact with her. Stardust is eating it up.

  "We get caught doing that, there could be serious repercussions."

  "Oh and you thought that whipping it out at a random woman was less risky?"

  "What is your deal?" Pepper shouts at her.

  "You risk my life when you take ridiculous risks like that too, you know."

  "Calculated risk. Also, since when did you actually care about your own safety?"

  "Since never. I only care about having an interesting life while it happens, and dying in a fucking alien raid doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I don't want to wake up dead, Pepper. I want to die in a blaze of terror and laugh during every moment of it."

  "Well sorry. But I didn't see any other way."

  "For a strategist you sure have a lot to learn about thinking things through."

  "She wouldn't have remembered if you hadn't hacked her."

  "If you didn't want her to find out, then why didn't you permanently delete the information from her memory core?"

  "I-fuck!" Pepper jerks the steering handle as he notices that they are being closed in on by Federalis. The fucking hornets nest that Stardust churned up when she arrived has finally pulled their heads out of their asses enough to notice that their is a very serious power play happening at the LaGrange. He gets four hails from various ships.

  "I should-"

  "Epic, take the fucking shot." If Toro and/or Epic doesn't crush that room before the Federalis decide to emp the gravlifter field, that room will make the jump.

  Epic grits his teeth, running numbers quickly using his bone amps to maximize his processing power. The ship is in sights, he fires. The gravimetric fields are swaying on the heavy side, his shot has to travel in a decaying arch along the horizontal axis. Toro is firing small arms at the room, but it appears to have some sort of defensive barrier. Probably something the station needed for asteroids. Upon closer inspection, it appears to have a least some small arms of its own, but their shooting isn't really going to accomplish much. This is a time game, Toro trying to get his lifters in place to scrub the LaGrange before Corialis can get himself through it, or another zero net location.

  Six missiles shot rapidly arch just as Epic intended them, catching closer and closer to the two fighters. The Feds are pinching in both directions, it is a moment game. Any time and-

  "Iced. We're fucked." Pepper slams his hands on the console. The Federalis triggered an emp, frying long-range sensors. Stardust grimaces slightly, apparently she wanted him to make the jump, but she wanted also to follow him.

  "What'll happen now?" Sunshine says with sadness in her voice. Pepper is trying to get the sensors back online, at least to see if Toro managed to
get Corialis before the Federalis muck this further.

  "Sucks to say, but that isn't up to us." Epic mutters.

 

‹ Prev