Overthrowing Heaven-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  "Tourists took out one of your squad?" I said. I smiled and asked the question as lightly as I could, but Park's expression told me it was still the wrong move.

  "No," he said, "but you don't need the details."

  I held up my hands. "Sorry. I didn't mean to pry." I dropped my hands and searched for a new subject to take him off that topic. "That does remind me to ask, though: Do you guys cover med repairs?"

  "Were you sleeping when you sent us your data?" Park said. "That information is readily available from the application avatar."

  "I never bother to investigate that kind of thing," I said, "and I find myself easily distracted when it comes to overhead crap like applications."

  He nodded. "So why do you ask now?"

  "Because if I'm going to spend any more time scrapping with Ng," I said, forcing a smile, "I'm going to care about those benefits."

  "Fair enough," he said, and he wasn't smiling. "Yes, we have med repair coverage, including a better than average facility on site here. I think we both know, though, that the best plan is to do all you can to avoid needing them."

  "That's always my goal," I said, "but sometimes it doesn't work out that way."

  "No," Park said, his expression softening and his gaze unfocusing for a moment, "it doesn't." He snapped back to the moment.

  "Mind if I ask you a question?" I said.

  "Would it matter if I did?" he said.

  "I'm just curious: Your background has to be like mine, so why are you here?"

  His expression tightened. "I spent some time with a couple of backwater merc crews, had my fill, came home, and joined the militia." He shook his head. "I had a cushy back-office job, then they transferred me here to bring a little experience to a weak unit. It sure wasn't my choice."

  "They can transfer you from the militia to here?"

  "Were you listening to me, Moore?" he said. "Heaven's government runs this place and the militia, so like any government it can do what it damn well pleases within its borders." He crossed his arms over his chest; we were clearly done talking. "Go join the others. Try not to hurt any more of them until the next time we have to train them."

  I jogged over to the group. The other four men and the woman were standing at ease in a rough line near where I'd been. I stopped at the far end of the line and snapped to attention.

  Park marched over to us and stood at parade rest. He was completely still and completely present, and you could almost feel the energy he was containing. He didn't move his head as his eyes looked slowly down our rank from the left, focusing on one person at a time, then moving to the next.

  "The truth," he said, "is simple and unpleasant: Five of you don't know enough about weapons or tactics to keep you alive half a day in a frontier planet quiet zone." He sighed theatrically. "The good news for you, though, is that we don't see a lot of action, and we have time to train you. So, we're going to hire the lot of you."

  Several of the people smiled and started to speak.

  Park cut them off. "We'll start with discipline: Keep your holes shut until I say you can talk. We're not a military squad, but I run my teams like one for the simple reason that it works. Any problems with that?"

  No one spoke.

  Good; they could learn.

  "You've all told us you're available immediately," Park said, "so now you face the last choice you have to make about this job: Do you want to work residential or commute?"

  From what Lobo had gleaned from the Wonder Island recruitment avatar, residential guards logged longer days, slept on the island, and drew a pay premium that ranged from twenty percent up to fifty percent, depending on whether they stayed the three-day minimum or the two-week maximum before rotating out for a shift. Residential guards also enjoyed greater and faster opportunities for advancement.

  Park stared at us for several seconds, then continued, "Let the clerk know on your way out, and he'll tell you your schedule. Dismissed."

  Park stayed where he was as we headed toward the training area door from which he'd watched the hostage exercise. As I stepped by him, he put his hand lightly on my shoulder.

  I stopped.

  "Going residential?" he said.

  "Not tonight," I said. "I'm planning on an evening of celebrating, and then I figure I'll sign up for three on, one off."

  "Might as well start it now," he said. "It's the fastest way off the scut duty."

  I had to let Lobo, Pri, and Matahi know I'd gotten the job and check in with them, so I said, "It's also the quickest way I know to make that woman furious at me."

  Park chuckled. "Fine; don't tell me." All trace of mirth vanished as he added, "For as long as you're in here, you're in. You better be sure you understand that. Got me?"

  "You bet, Sarge," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  As I walked toward the door, I considered his comment and his questions. The odds were good that they would follow me when I left the island; if he was that curious about my past, so were others on the security team. That meant I couldn't go to Lobo without first identifying and then evading any surveillance. Given Wonder Island's status with the government, I couldn't be sure I could do that on my own. I'd have to get to a safe place with serious encryption and then link up with Lobo via the protocol we'd set.

  I also had to come up with a girlfriend—or a good reason that I lied about having one. I could meet Matahi and have that meeting play either way to anyone watching me, and we could go back to her SleepSafe room, but that would cause an observer to question the authenticity of my relationship with Matahi. If I tried to claim her as a girlfriend and went to my apartment, there was always the chance that one of the security team would recognize her from Wei's visit. Plus, that might strand her at the apartment, which wasn't safe. I could use Pri instead, but they might recognize her from the assault on Matahi's house, and she wouldn't be anywhere near as good at playing the girlfriend role. No, I'd have to see Matahi without them realizing it was her, and then I'd have to explain the girlfriend story later.

  Stupid. I should have gone with the simpler lie.

  That wasn't my only problem. Spending time with Matahi would almost certainly annoy Pri. I flashed on the images of Pri and Matahi standing in Lobo, staring at me and at each other, and I knew with a sickening certainty Pri wouldn't be very happy at the news that I was staying the night with Matahi.

  I shook my head as I walked. Working with these two was making Lobo's sarcasm more and more appealing all the time.

  Chapter 41

  Taking the cheapest shuttles to the southeastern sector of the old city fit the character I was selling to the Wonder Island crew, but it also consumed a couple of hours. If you're trying to shake a corporate tail, all you have to do is stay away from turf the company controls. Avoiding government surveillance is far trickier, particularly on a place as locked-down as a tourist attraction like the old town. Every public sensor is at the government's disposal, so you need either hackers to spoof them temporarily or enough knowledge of the area to know what nooks and crannies the authorities had decided weren't worth watching.

  I had neither. If Park and the Wonder Island security team were as tight with Heaven's government as I assumed, they could track my route.

  The odds were good, though, that they couldn't use sensors to see what I was doing when I was inside a business, because it's rarely in a company's interest for the government to be monitoring its every move. If I stuck to the tourist traps that megacorps operated, I should be safe from government machine spying once I was inside. I'd still have to keep an eye out for human watchers, but that was a much more manageable problem.

  I walked slowly through the streets of the old town, studying the restaurants and bars and brothels for one that possessed the right combination of size and rowdiness, the first trait to give me more places to hide, and the second so that if a little action proved necessary the management probably wouldn't call the police. I also wanted a meal; it'd been too long since I'd eaten. A light breeze ca
rried on the cool evening air the appetizing smells of more kinds of cooking food than I could identify. My stomach rumbled, and I was tempted to stop, but I wasn't ready yet, so I ignored the hunger and kept going.

  Something nagged at me as I worked my way toward the edge of the old city, and finally I realized what it was: I felt more exposed than the situation justified. Sure, they were probably tracking me, but they almost certainly weren't out to hurt me. If they'd known of my involvement in the attempt to kidnap Wei, they'd never have let me leave Wonder Island. So, I was as safe as I could reasonably be under the circumstances, alone in a city with a private security force monitoring me.

  Alone. That was it. I'd spent a couple of years rarely far from Lobo, and now I had no clue where he was. I'd gone into Wonder Island completely clean, no electronics of any sort on me, because it was the kind of place that would check for such devices very, very closely, particularly after our attack had injured some of their people. Lobo had been watching over me for quite a while, and I'd grown accustomed to it, but now I was on my own.

  Well, I could take care of myself. I'd done it for the vast majority of my life, and I'd do it again.

  Except, I had to admit to myself, I missed him. As annoying as he was, he was the closest thing to a friend I had.

  I recalled his concerns about telling me the truth about what Wei had done to him. He thought I'd hate him for the children that had died to make him, and he hated himself.

  I understood both those feelings all too well, though I couldn't bring myself to tell him—or anyone—why. Sometimes, it took all the willpower I could summon to make myself face all the awful things I'd done, all the horrors that had combined to turn me into what I am. Even though I knew that the worst, such as the torture on Aggro, were not my fault, at a very deep level the part of me that was the young man screaming in pain on that prison space station could not make sense of what had happened without blaming it on himself. If I hadn't done something to deserve it, how could they have treated me that way? Why would they have done those terrible things? I also had to admit that I had no one but myself to blame for my actions since then. I'd killed, in combat and to save myself and even on a few occasions because I could find no other way to avoid becoming a test subject once again. I always tried to avoid it, but I had killed, and I had set up situations that had led people to their deaths, and I had to live with those acts.

  Lobo, with all the vast computing power that was his mind, was apparently stuck in the same trap. How much worse might it be for him, though, with his capacity to do so many things simultaneously? Was he ever free of the choking grip of self loathing?

  Was I?

  Yes, sometimes I was. Many times. When a job or a situation absorbed my full attention, everything else vanished and I was there, present in the moment and nowhere else. Watching Pri fight to maintain hope, I had not thought at all of myself. Lying next to Matahi on the roof, I had been entirely there, free of my mind for a short time.

  Lobo, though, never was. With the level of computing capability he possessed, he was always at some level tearing at his past, hating himself what Wei had done, suffering simply for what he was.

  I'd long thought of him as a him, as an intelligence who might as well be a person, but now that I understand his composition—not just his body, but more importantly these core aspects of his consciousness—I realized that he was in many respects as human as I was.

  And, I had to admit, recalling my own past, fighting to push back the dark tendrils of my own awful deeds, I had at many points been as much machine as he was.

  Maybe I was now, taking my time to plot my moves while on Wonder Island Wei killed children in the name of making better machines and better people.

  Except, of course, that I had no real choice. If I wanted to stop Wei, I had to get close to him. This job provided my best chance at doing that, but it would take time, time some child probably didn't have to spare.

  Wasn't that always the case, though, not just for me but for all of us? Every time we rested, every time we played, every time we focused on fighting one bad thing, a million other evils all across the universe proceeded unchecked. All we could do was balance what we needed to do to stay sane with what we had to fight, and then hope others were doing the same with the evils they were tackling.

  To be human and to think was to know that you could never do enough—but also not to let that stop you from doing something.

  I turned a corner and saw at the end of the block a business whose façade was glowing so brightly with lights of all colors that it painted every building on both sides of the street in rapidly shifting rainbows. A huge sign across its third floor declared it The End of the Rainbow. Either a megacorp owned it and had paid a ransom in bribes for the privilege of violating every appearance ordinance that gave the old town its look, or someone in the local government was operating a side business. Either way, I'd be safe from planetary government sensors inside. About four meters of lawn and shrubs separated it on all sides from its neighbors; it fit in with the rest of the old city about as well as a bleeding, oozing sore on the face of a politician.

  The line to get in stretched about twenty meters from the door, but it seemed to be moving fairly rapidly, so I joined it. Smaller signs and holo barkers scattered along the edge of the building promised food, drinks, drugs, dancers, gaming—you name it, anything you might need to have a good time.

  I should be able to contact both Lobo and Matahi from here, and I was only a few blocks from the SleepSafe where she was staying.

  I moved forward a couple of meters in the queue. I rolled my shoulders and shook my head slightly. I turned and stretched as if tight and quickly scanned the faces of the people behind me.

  A man four people back looked away immediately.

  The woman with him was better. "Is this place really worth it?" she said to me when we made eye contact.

  "I sure hope so," I said, "but I honestly don't know. I saw the line, and I'm hungry, so I figured if this many people came somewhere it had to be good."

  "That makes sense," she said. She tugged on the sleeve of the man with her. "Doesn't it, dear?"

  He nodded and mumbled something.

  I turned around and faced ahead of me. If they put two people that easy to spot this close to me, then either they really did have trouble getting good staff, or they were using city sensors for most of the work and these two were around simply to see how I behaved inside. Or maybe they didn't care if I spotted my tails.

  None of that mattered. I took a few slow breaths and considered how I wanted to play this. I couldn't afford to let my attention focus anywhere but here, because tomorrow I'd be back at Wonder Island, and if I wanted to keep that job, I'd have to explain everything I did tonight. I needed a story that made sense but kept Matahi, Pri, and me safe.

  The queue moved ahead another three meters as I struggled to find a way to make it all work out.

  Chapter 42

  You could see the thinking behind The End of the Rainbow the moment you entered it. Gone were the screaming neon signs; in their place, fixtures carefully arranged to mimic the dappled lights of city streets at twilight washed the interior in a perpetually dim, slightly dangerous feel, as if you'd left the safety of the old town and anything might happen. Human wait staff in gray shirts and black pants mingled with the patrons, verifying their tables were providing the right food, answering questions, posing for pictures in suggestive or threatening poses, and increasing the sense that you truly were in another world. Seating was catch as catch can, but as soon as I was inside I grabbed a waitress wandering near me and negotiated a tip greater than the cost of anything on the menu in exchange for a small booth in the far left rear corner. The couple occupying it complained at first, but after I explained I was management and auditing the service staff, and of course I'd comp their meal, they moved on happily, enjoying another lucky night in tourist land.

  My watchers were already inside by the time I'd se
ttled into the booth, but the place was so crowded that it took them a few minutes to locate and secure a vantage point from which they could both appear busy and keep an eye on me.

  Once I knew where they were, I ignored them and slid as close to the wall as I could.

  A holo waitress popped into view on the table. "Good evening, friend. What could I interest you in tonight? We have food on this level, gaming on the next, and on the top floor you can find other attractions—" she winked "—if you know what I mean, and from the looks of you I think you do. We'll even package your food to go if you're itching to head right upstairs."

  "I'd like the lights in this booth as dim as possible," I said, "and I'd like to see a food menu."

  "So love isn't in your plans tonight?" she said as the lights went out and only she illuminated the small area. As we'd been talking, her breasts had grown and a few buttons on her blouse had popped open.

  "A food menu," I repeated.

  Pictures of heaping plates of meat, enormous bowls of vegetables, piles of fried goods, and half a dozen desserts snapped into the air beside her. "If I might show you a few of our specials," she said. "First—"

  "Stop," I said. "Bring me whatever fish platter uses the freshest catch, plus a large glass of the freshest fruit juice you have." When you can't have a great chef, you can at least aim for fresh ingredients. "And enable a public data access port here, then leave me alone."

  "As you will," she said. "I'm required to inform you, however, that there's a small surcharge for data access and an additional levy for hard encryption."

  "You're kidding me!" I said. "Free data ports abound all over this fake old city."

  "True," she said, "but how many of them can serve you a fish that the kitchen tells me will have been dead for less than eleven hours when it arrives at your table?"

  "Fine, fine. Now, go."

  She disappeared.

  Where she'd stood, a holo appeared, commercials for the Rainbow chain chattering at me from all over it. I could find sister establishments on all the better planets, one of them told me.