by F X Holden
AJ felt his stomach sinking, but kept going, “The name of one of the people you are looking for is Troy McMaster, he’s a private security contractor, lives in the Capitol, works for Congressman Kevin Winter. I don’t know the other guy.”
“McMaster, uh huh. That M-a-c or just M-c,” the guy asked. At least he seemed to be recording it.
“M-c,” AJ said. “He had a meeting last night with Leon Guerra, and his wife said he didn’t come home.”
“Guerra, that’s G-U-E-R-R-A? Just wait on the line,” AJ heard him run a Core search on Leon’s name. “Yeah, OK, I’m seeing a missing persons report on a Leon Arsenio Guerra. You got my attention now AJ. This is connected how?”
“I haven’t said my name is AJ and I…don’t know,” AJ said. “I know Leon met with him. Leon never returned from the meeting, and the next day McMaster turned up in the workshop at Sol Vista, going through Leon’s stuff.” It was as close to the truth as he could make it.
“AJ, look, I know this must be you,” the guy said. “But OK. You and this Leon Guerra, you had something going with these other guys, and it got all screwed up. Drugs probably, right? You stealing stims from the clinic there at Sol Vista and selling them to the wrong people? I really don’t care. But you’re a cyber who was seen carrying a gun. That’s as serious as it gets, AJ.”
“Still not AJ,” he said defiantly, relying on the voice scrambler to avoid the police getting a definite voice print.
“Sure, whatever,” the cop said coldly. “Come in and explain yourself. It’s your only chance to avoid being unchained the minute we catch you.”
“Find McMaster,” AJ said and he closed the call.
His next call was to his Ma’s facility, to tell them he probably wouldn’t be visiting for a while, but could someone tell her he was OK?
He got coffee for them both and waited for Cassie. “OK,” he said when Cassie sat down next to him and he’d handed her the coffee. “Oh mighty Core. How much of a lead do you think we have?”
They had synched their comms via TH band for quantum chirping, but Cassie held up a hand and spoke out loud, “Let’s speak at citizen speeds when we’re out in public. We have to try to look as normal as possible.”
“Says the skater chick with the punk haircut, manually piloting a bright red planer,” AJ pointed out.
Cassie smiled, “To your question? I’ve now rerouted your cloned drift signal to a cyber in Fort Eber who is due to reintegrate,” Cassie said. “It’s far enough away you could conceivably have got there during the last few hours. Same with mine; different cyber, different location. That will confuse them, and I can move the signals again before they work out what is going on, but they’ll get wise eventually.”
“But McMaster and his people are not the police or the military,” AJ said. “They’re contractors. Police aren’t going to put out a nationwide alert for me just because some private spook in the Capitol wants me found. Even if he works for a Congressman.”
“No, but you were seen with a gun,” Cassie said. “Yeah, I pulled the police report AJ. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
AJ felt his face color, “I just kind of went with the flow…”
“The flow? I get you’re scared AJ,” Cassie said, “But the people you are up against are what, ex-military? Ex-intelligence? We have to outrun them, outsmart them. Not get in a gunfight with them.”
“I know,” AJ said. “But it happened, so I brought the gun with me. Isn’t it good to be prepared?”
“Sure, tell you what, give it to me,” Cassie said, holding out her hand.
“You know guns?” he asked, though it wouldn’t have surprised him.
“No,” Cassie said. “But I’m thinking we can wipe it down and drop it off a bridge into a river. In the meantime I can work on the police records to wipe the report.”
AJ looked at her, realized she wasn’t joking. It was their only defense!
“Or, I could just shoot you in the face now, save everyone the trouble,” she smiled. “Your choice.”
AJ had a scarf around his neck and took it off, then reached inside his jacket for Warnecke’s little burp gun. It was an evil little thing that fired either single shots, or a rapid succession, of plasma bolts. He lifted it out, letting the scarf fall around it, tied it into a little bundle and handed it to Cassie, who took it and slid it into her own jacket pocket. “I’ve plotted a direct route to Whitehorse, where our Mountie lives. What do you think?” She sent it to AJ.
AJ studied the image on his cortex. “I say we go further in - Barrow, Gakona, Soldotna, Valdez, Ketchikan,” AJ said. “Less traffic, we overnight in Akutan, we’d be there in three days.”
Cassie looked at the route AJ was suggesting, “Yeah, or, we take the tourist trail, stay on the coast - Togiak, Kwethluk, then cut in toward Gambel - that way. Take longer but there’s way more traffic to hide in and our bright red self-drive won’t stand out so much.”
“Plenty of self-drives on the icefield highways. And that route would take twice as long,” AJ said, biting his lip, “I’m just going to feel a whole lot safer once we cross that State line and get onto Inland ice.”
“I like your optimism,” she said. “Because I’m calling it a max 32.24% probability that we’re going to make it there alive, no matter which route we take.”
AJ stared at her a moment, “Keep that kind of thing to yourself from now on will you?”
There was just one more call left for AJ to make.
“Hey, Cyan,” AJ said.
“You’re calling to quit I hope,” said the voice on the other end. “So that I don’t have to sack you and we can stay friends.”
“Yeah, look, it’s complicated. It’s a personal thing,” AJ tried.
“Don’t lie me, AJ,” she said. “Lie to the cops, lie to your Ma, but not me, OK?”
“OK.”
“One of those guys was my soul mate from that night at the bar, right? Well, my soul mate kicked out the side wall of the workshop and got away before the cops arrived,” she told him. “I had to tell them about the gun AJ, I’m sorry.”
Cyan was teetering between pissed and furious, AJ could hear that. “I know the law, citizen.”
“Don’t you dare ‘citizen’ me, AJ,” Cyan said. “Don’t you ever ‘citizen’ me. I care about you. You know that. And where’s Leon? He didn’t show for work today and he isn’t answering his comms.”
“Leon has gone missing,” AJ told her. “I think those guys know where he is. I surprised them in there going through our stuff.”
“This is about Leon?” Cyan asked, sounding worried now.
“Yeah,” AJ said. Which was as true as anything now. “I think he’s got into some trouble.”
“AJ, you can’t cover for the guy forever,” Cyan said. “I mean we can’t.”
“I know, but look, I just need some time to help get things straight, help find him,” AJ said. “Andreas can cover any urgent maintenance that comes up, I’ll sort things out with the police and get back to work when this is sorted out.”
“AJ?” Cyan asked in a sad voice. “You know it doesn’t work like that. You are a cyber, on the run, with a gun. This is out of control.”
AJ felt anger boiling in his gut. Cyan was right. Things had gone completely sideways. How the hell was he supposed to find the flow in this? He looked at Cassie, sitting on a wall by her planer, face tilted to the sun and her eyes closed. He was on the run, from killers and cops, on a Scarlatti being driven by the Core Incarnate, looking for an invisible girl. “Cyan, you are so right,” AJ said. “You have no idea.”
A day of hard riding and an overnight stay in a crappy roadside motel in Red Bluff and they were at the Inland border. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride AJ had ever had. The Scarlatti was made for speed, not touring, and even though it was fitted with a pillion seat instead of the usual single seat, AJ had to ride hunched over with Cassie’s backpack on his back, which together with his few clothes and personal stuff weighed nearly
30 pounds.
Plus, it was a city planer, made for conditions inside heated city domes, not for the raw environment outside the domes, on ice highways, sheltered from the planetary cold by nothing more substantial than the Skycap. The Skycap made Coruscant habitable, but it was a two-way membrane, made to allow interplanetary traffic in and out, and that came at an environmental cost which meant the world outside the city domes was barely survivable.
At a roadside station, Cassie got ice tires fitted to her planer. Large, balloon-like tires with a high surface to surface ratio and nano-tube vacuum tread that actively grabbed and then released anything it came into contact with. Luckily the roads were mostly just straight shot ice highways all the way from South Coast City to the border at Valdez, and they didn’t want to attract any police attention by weaving in and out of traffic, so keeping his balance wasn’t a big problem.
The only short break they took was on a bridge over a lake, when Cassie pulled Warnecke’s little burp gun out of her jacket pocket and dropped it into the lake, scarf and all.
AJ had to admit, if you were going to be on the run with someone, it was good they were as cool as Cassie. Highway patrol cars would ease up alongside them on the freeway, she wouldn’t even tense up. Even gave a cheeky wave to a jealous cop who was checking out her planer once, and he gave a little salute back.
But they were approaching the highest risk point of their trip. The time they would be most vulnerable was at the border crossing from Valdez into The Inland Territory. The Territory was fiercely protective of its independence, and there were no treaties for extraditing citizens or cybers from the Territory to either South Coast or Capitol States, so it was heavily policed on both sides.
They decided to go over at evening peak hour via the Ice Arch crossing, mingling with all the tourists, freight transports and commuters. “OK,” Cassie said before they joined the long queue of vehicles. “I’ve done what I can to wipe any reference to you from the border force Core-linked systems at this crossing, but we don’t know what other alerts your friend McMaster might have put out for you.”
“I was in there?” AJ asked. “There’s a police alert out for me?”
“With a mofo big red flag saying armed and dangerous,” Cassie nodded. “I can’t wipe it out completely without making the police back in South Gate City crazy suspicious. A glitch at the border is normal. You disappearing from right across the Core; that isn’t.”
“McMaster could have people here watching for me,” AJ said, looking at the queue for the border crossing. “If the look he gave me inside that tool shed could kill, I’d already be dead.”
Cassie bit her lip, “I know, and I’ll be honest. I’m scared too AJ. But if it goes to shit up ahead, I’ll do my best to protect you.”
“What the hell,” AJ said. “Inland Territory here we come.”
They climbed back on the Scarlatti and joined the queue. In about twenty minutes they had crawled up to the South Coast crossing. Freight went one way, foot traffic another, and passenger vehicles through a third gate. It was impossible trying to look inconspicuous on the Scarlatti and sure enough they soon had a group of four black-clad border patrol officers standing around the planer, checking it out. Cassie took off her helmet, smiled and gave a cheeky wink to one of the officers. Between the planer and the woman driving it, no one was paying much attention to AJ.
They had their ID chips scanned and their backpack emptied. They weren’t carrying enough platinum to raise serious questions – there were plenty of places on the Inland Territory where Core access was limited and good old fashioned cubes were the fallback currency.
What about our chip scans? AJ asked her on TH.
I can glitch their security system and hide that we crossed here, she said. But all someone would need to do is ask one of the guards. Yeah yeah, I should have given Cassie a less conspicuous ride. But you only live once, right?
After the others were finished walking around the planer one last time, an officer who had been leaning against a wall and watching with interest suddenly approached.
He held out a scanner and jerked his chin at Cassie to indicate she should hold out her arm again. He looked at the screen, and did the same to AJ, looking pointedly at AJ’s third eye, before turning back to Cassie.
“What’s with you and the cyber?” he asked.
“Holiday,” Cassie said guardedly. “I was born in the north.”
His face said he wasn’t convinced, or maybe it was something else, “You a couple or something?”
“Something like that,” Cassie said, no longer smiling. AJ saw his TH channel open, Get ready, Cassie chirped. His biometrics are spiking. AJ tensed. Cassie was apparently monitoring the biometric data being collected by the border guards’ uniforms and saw something she didn’t like in this guard’s hormones or heart rate.
AJ spiked his own hormones, ready for fight or flight.
The man spat on the ground, “Damn cybers,” he said, fixing Cassie with a glare. “A citizen and a cyber? It’s not freaking natural.”
AJ relaxed. OK, so the guy was just an asshole. There were plenty of citizens who still believed cybers shouldn’t have rights, or that citizens and cybers shouldn’t be allowed to … be together. They were obviously dealing with one of those.
Cassie grinned at him, “Not freaking natural, is kind of the point, officer,” she said.
He looked like he wanted to say more, but there were still other guards around, so he just stepped back and waved them through, a disgusted look stuck to his face.
Back on the planer, AJ risked a chirp, We’re through!
Nearly, don’t relax yet, Cassie replied.
On the Inland side an officer inside a kiosk just scanned their chips, waved them on and said, “Have a nice trip.” At the final checkpoint, where vehicles were scanned for goods and contraband, they were waved in, another officer asking if they were coming for business or leisure. Cassie said, ‘Few days in Ketchikan’. The officer looked at AJ, holding their small backpack. “Visors up please. Thank you. You’re traveling kind of light,” she said.
“Tell me about it,” AJ said, pulling the visor on his helmet up. “She only let me bring a toothbrush and some underpants so I don’t screw up her balance on the planer.” AJ got ready to hand her the backpack in case she wanted to search it.
“Speed limit for self-drives is 66 miles an hour until you hit the highway,” the woman said. She stepped back, looking at the planer. “Is that a ’95 or ’96?”
“Ninety-three,” Cassie said.
“Can I ask you a question?” the woman said.
Cassie raised her eyebrows, “I guess that’s your job…”
“Yeah, no. It’s a beauty, I was just wondering what you paid for it?” she said.
Cassie relaxed, trading biker stories with the woman. After a couple of minutes, Cassie said to her, “Hey, we need to swap the fuel cell on this thing. Is there a station up ahead?”
“Sure, about ten miles,” the officer said, stepping back from the planer. “Have a great trip, I envy you.”
AJ tightened his grip around Cassie’s waist as they pulled away from the border crossing and eased into the highway traffic.
Made it! AJ said.
So far so good, Cassie replied. Ketchikan here we come.
Do you really need to swap out the cell?
I really do, Cassie confirmed. I want to arrive in Ketchikan close to a full charge, in case we need to move on quickly.
The roadhouse came up quickly and Cassie saw most of the traffic was pulling in. It made sense, with the last station having been more than a hundred miles away. People needed fuel, food, and a break in the monotony of the ice highways.
Cassie coasted the planer up to a cell exchange and AJ swung his leg off the saddle and stretched. The sun was out, but the air was subzero, and he dialed his thermals up a couple of degrees. Cassie dismounted too and squatted to pull out the planer’s hydrogen fuel cell. AJ watched idly as she lif
ted it up and shoved it into a slot on the exchanger, fed some physical credits into a slot on the machine, and then waited for her fresh battery to be delivered.
Something made AJ tense up. His senses were still hyped from the hormone boost and he felt, more than saw, movement behind them. It was all he could do not to jump in the air when a voice behind them spoke suddenly, “That’s one beautiful old planer. You come from the Capitol or the Coast?”
AJ and Cassie both turned.
Two men were standing about five feet back from the planer. They looked relaxed, friendly. But their clothing gave them away. Both were dressed almost identically in black survival thermals with hoods designed to trap and recirculate body heat. The outfits were similar to the kind of gear campers used, so most people wouldn’t have paid them a second glance. AJ saw immediately that the suits had been modified with a pouch at the waist. He had no question what would be in them.
You see the mods? he chirped urgently at Cassie.
If their conversation had happened at citizen speed, and in the real, they would have had no time to coordinate. But they were both cybers, and the fact these two were so relaxed implied they didn’t know who they were dealing with yet.
Cassie turned back to lift the cell out of the exchanger and swing it down beside the planer, ready to insert.
I see them. Cassie chirped. Do you recognize either of them?
No.
Their data-sphere shows outgoing comms. They’re not closing to normal conversation distance. That’s suspicious. I'd say they’re deliberately staying out of hand combat range. I’ll mount the cell, you engage with them, try to get them to move closer but don’t show your face.
OK.
"Sorry, what did you say?” AJ said, tapping his helmet. It broadcast his voice through a small speaker so that he wouldn’t have to take it off in the cold air, and he kept his visor down.