by Kai O'Connal
“I have a lot on my mind.”
She pursed her lips as Pineapple lumbered up, followed by Cao. “That stuff back at the airport really unnerved you, huh?”
Elijah made a gesture that was supposed to be noncommittal, but mainly felt awkward. He looked to the astral so he didn’t have to look at her. A quick scan didn’t reveal Leung. “Where’s—”
Leung’s texted message broadcasted out on everyone’s AR.
Elijah checked his AR and found a virtual ticket waiting. A nod from the others confirmed tickets with new identities.
Elijah passed Leung when he boarded the second plane. The decker seemed happily ensconced in first class with a flute of champagne in his hand. He winked as Elijah passed by. Elijah made his way back to his seat, and soon Kyrie was there next to him. They kept their conversation private.
Elijah looked out the window.
Kyrie shrugged.
He smiled. A little. But it was the smile of someone with a shadow of doubt clouding the edges.
By the time they reached Tierra del Fuego, Elijah was ready for a shower, clean clothes, and a good, long rest. Preferably somewhere safe and out of the public eye. They grouped outside the airport in a huddle against the cold. None of them had the appropriate clothing.
A large hotel van pulled up in front of them. The driver, a well-dressed dwarf with braids in his beard, loaded their luggage before anyone had a chance to question.
“Hey,” Cao wouldn’t let her bag go when he tried to take it. “Get your hands off my stuff.” She shifted her head a bit and her hood slipped back.
The dwarf stepped back quickly as Elijah spoke in perfect Spanish. “Sir … how do you know this is the hotel for us?”
The dwarf rattled off Elijah’s spoofed identity in English. “You’re here with four guests.” He counted each of them, stopping when he finally saw Pineapple. “Uh … I need to call ahead. Excuse me.”
Kyrie glanced at Pineapple. “I don’t think they have a Jacuzzi to fit you.”
“‘So ka. They got a fountain in the lobby, I’m in.” He shivered. “Fuck, it’s cold here.”
“It’s going to get a lot colder,” Elijah said as they boarded the van. “We’ll need to buy some supplies before we leave.”
The vehicle tilted at a dangerous angle to the right as Pineapple stepped onboard. He nodded to the driver before he took up a position in the middle of the aisle, carefully distributing his weight.
As the door closed, the dwarf leaned back in his chair and strapped himself in. His eyes unfocused and his body relaxed, his mouth dropping open as the van signaled before pulling out into port traffic.
The city of Tierra del Fuego was picturesque, nearly untouched by the decimation of urban sprawl. Elijah watched the towering, snow-capped mountains looming behind the city as the dwarf took them to their hotel.
Elijah’s AR lit up as they pulled into the circular drive. Five star accommodations, reservations in the restaurant at six, five rooms booked on the fifth floor. In less than ten minutes, Elijah found himself in a room overlooking the bay. He stepped out on the balcony and instantly regretted it the moment the bitter cold struck his face. To his right, he could see the leading edge of the snow-covered mountains bordering the city, while in front of him lay open water and an evening sky.
He looked to the south, thinking about what was waiting for him under the Antarctic snow and ice. It was going to be wondrous, it was going to be impossible, and it damn sure was going to be dangerous.
Remembering the package he’d received at the airport, he retrieved it from his bag. With the balcony door closed, warmth quickly returned. Sitting at the mahogany desk, he spread everything out on the surface and took stock.
There were ten certified credsticks, along with several packs of documents—hard copy, nothing traceable on the Matrix. One stack was a list of supplies they’d need to take with them. Another smaller packet contained their itinerary for the day after tomorrow, starting with a pick-up outside the hotel at 0500. The third packet contained five dossiers. Elijah opened the first one, scanned through the information, then picked up the second and scanned it, too.
An uneasy feeling crept up his back and settled on his shoulders. These were files on a second shadow team.
Elijah stared at the dossiers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Mr. Johnson said there would be others on his payroll?” Kyrie asked between bites of butter-soaked lobster. “If he sent you the package—and who else could it be, since it’s got our tickets in it?—then I say he was giving you a heads up.”
“I know,” Elijah replied as he picked at his plate of asados, or barbecued beef short ribs. “We all know that Johnsons never tell the whole story. The big question on my mind now is, how different will their mission be from ours?”
“Maybe they’re part of that larger effort he talked about.” Pineapple picked up a lobster, broke it in half, and shoved one piece into his mouth, shell and all. Elijah winced. It sounded like he was chewing rocks.
Leung laughed. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.” The hacker had ordered a simple meal of linguini and steak. As usual, he ate carefully, to avoid getting any Alfredo sauce on his shirt.
“Oh, I’m always paying attention.” The troll spoke around the lobster in his mouth. One of the crustacean’s claws caught on his tusk, and he picked it off with a flip of a finger. “But seriously, professor. I don’t think you gett’n them dossiers is all that bad. This is good. Now we know who we’re working with.”
“Not really.” Elijah ate a tender bite of beef as he handed them out. “Names yes, education if applicable, former employment if applicable, and race.”
Leung nodded slowly as he looked over the one he had. “Eyetooth. Really? No real name? She’s twenty-two, got a good face.” He frowned. “And some mad hacking skills, it looks like.”
“Whoa …” Pineapple said as he opened his folder. “Hubba hubba … this piece of nice is all that and a bag of chips. Ho! And her name’s Cake!” He looked up and grinned, bits of lobster shell and meat studding his teeth. “Pineapple and Cake…that’s right…”
Leung snorted. “Good luck, omae.”
Kyrie held her folder close. “Tango … elf … coordinator,” She narrowed her eyes. “I know that face. I just can’t put a handle on where.”
“Gauntlet looks nice.” Cao looked up from her folder, then ducked her head back down.
Pineapple leaned over to look. “Bah. This face is nicer. See?” He grinned again.
Cao ducked her head even deeper into her hood.
Kyrie closed her folder and picked up the last one. “Nikolai Minovski, Turkestan. Sorry Pineapple, we got a much nicer-looking troll right here.” She held up the folder for everyone to see.
“Wow … he is better looking.” Leung reached out to steady the photo in her hand. “Why does he have smaller tusks and horns?” He looked at Pineapple. “Even his face isn’t as …”
Pineapple glared at him. “What?”
Leung shrugged. “He looks more … human than you do.”
“His loss,” Pineapple grunted.
Kyrie handed the folder to Cao when she wanted to see it.
Leung spoke up. “0500. Shit, that’s five in the morning.”
“Yes.” Elijah sipped his wine.
“I’m assuming we’re flying to Antarctica? Otherwise a boat trip could take eight days if you go through the Drake Passage.”
“Flying sounds good. Just as long as we’re not trudging through a jungle again,” Cao said, still perusing the troll’s dossier in front of her.
“There’s nothing in there about where the plane’s taking us?” Kyrie pressed.
Elijah looked down at the instructions attached to the list of supplies. “No. According to this, we’re going to have a lot of gear. Plus…there’s no indication of where we’re going.” He looked up at her. “Our destination is a mystery right now.”
“So, this is Mr. Johnson’s way of keeping us under his thumb,” Kyrie said with a frown.
“It would appear so, though we still haven’t established what spot on the ice is represented by the place on the map.” Elijah looked past her and frowned. “Leung? What is it?”
Everyone turned to look at the hacker. The dossier he’d been looking through was still on his plate of food, his hands on the table. It was his expression that had caught Elijah’s eyes. Leung’s eyes were unfocused, and his facial muscles were slack. Physical signs he was in the Matrix or riding both sides.
There was a pause before he answered.
He blinked and sat up as he closed the folder and added it to the pile. Grease stains from his meal dotted the cover. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tune out.”
“Something interesting?” Elijah watched him closely, noticing that Kyrie was also paying close attention to his response. Leung was usually much more confident than this.
He shook his head, “No … no … it’s nothing. Just monitoring our PAN link. Watching for any possible threats.”
Kyrie looked sharply at Elijah.
Elijah kept his expression neutral as he replied.
After a day of shopping and packing, the group was more than happy to eat an early dinner and call it a day. Elijah was still too giddy to sleep, so he took a walk around the hotel, keeping indoors as it started snowing outside.
Pineapple was in the lounge by the fire, his massive feet propped up on the trunk of an old oak. He patted it as Elijah came near. “Ain’t it great? That sweet thing behind the desk got it for me. Said her uncle was a troll, and had all his stuff remade from wood. Might have to look into doing this myself.” He leaned back in the large wooden chair and crossed his ankles. “So, what brings you down here, professor? Figured you’d be asleep just so you could wake us up bright and early tomorrow morning.”
“That’s just it. My mind won’t rest.” He sat on one of the smaller chairs and propped his feet on a small, matching ottoman. “This place is very nice, if not a bit rustic.”
“It’s all right by me.” The two sat quiet for a few minutes before Pineapple sighed. “You thinking Hualpa might have made the same offer to this other team?”
“I’m counting on it.” Elijah turned his head to look at the troll. “He wouldn’t be a proper dragon if he didn’t.”
“You don’t like ’em, do ya?”
“Dragons? Not particularly.”
“Personal experience?”
“Not my own. Other runners I’ve known over the years. Dragons can’t be trusted. Ever. Anyone who makes a deal—”
“Winds up dead.”
“Or worse. And trust me, Pineapple, there are much, much worse things out there than being dead.”
Pineapple looked over at him. “I know. But you want to know when really bad things happen? It’s not when you run into something really nasty. It’s when someone who’s supposed to have your back doesn’t.”
“If this is about Chicago, I had spirits ready to—”
“No, it’s not about Chicago. Lighten up, wilya? No, it’s this other crew. This whole bunch of people we don’t know.”
“Everyone said they had nice faces.”
“Which is worth exactly dick to me. Look, we’re gonna be in one of the most hostile spots on Earth. If we can’t trust these people, we’re screwed.”
“Any reason not to trust them?”
“Well, beside the fact that they were hired by our own employer, with the implication that they’re there to do the same job we are…” Pineapple leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “They’re people. And people tend to screw you over.”
Elijah thought about arguing the point, then decided not to.
“We’ll just have to be careful. That’s what we do.”
“And hope that’s enough.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Elijah’s first glimpse of the base camp came from the air. The size and number of buildings was a clear indicator that Mr. Johnson’s backers—Elijah decided to cave and just mentally refer to them as Aztechnology—clearly had been planning this dig for quite some time. He counted three large, silver domes in a triangle, connected by linking tubes.
Kyrie leaned over his shoulder to share the view. “Elijah …”
“I believe this is more of that ‘something greater’ Mr. Johnson spoke of.”
Sixteen smaller, silver structures ringed the three larger ones. They looked like fallen tin cans, each connected by the same tube system. As the carrier landed, the enormity of the situation pressed down on Elijah’s shoulders.
They stepped out into light snow as a man in a gray parka, black goggles, and white gloves approached them, holding his hand out to Elijah. He had Aztlán markings on his uniform, confirming that Elijah’s decision to cave was quite justified. “Sergeant Danvers, senior military projects advisor. I’m here to escort you inside.”
Elijah nodded, and the five of them followed the man over a packed-snow path to a regular size door in one of the smaller structures. Once inside, the door was closed and the dim light brightened. Elijah felt a slight bit of pressure against his ears, and the sergeant gave him a thumbs up. “Use this space to stow your coats, gloves, and goggles.” He said this as he removed his own outer gear, revealing a gray set of fatigues underneath. Once everyone was stripped down to warm clothing, he opened a side panel and pulled out a handful of lanyards and badges. He handed them to Elijah. “You’ve all been cleared to be here, and you have free access to most of the base.”
Elijah pulled his badge out and handed the rest to Kyrie, who did the same. “Are you the leader of the excavation?”
Danvers laughed. “No sir. That would be you and Miss Tango. She and her people are doing inventory in Dome Two. My men and I are here for support and labor. You guys get to do the brain work.” He leaned out to make sure everyone had their badge on. “Good. Now if you’ll follow me, bring your bags, and I’ll show you to your quarters.”
The facility Danvers lead them into was nothing like the mudroom they’d left. The hallway was smooth white with a luminescent quality. Lights glowed in soft relief along the base, illuminating the floor. Elijah was surprised the walls were warm. This was one of the connecting tubes he’d seen from the carrier.
They stepped through two more buildings, each with an entrance and exit that opened and closed with a swipe of a badge.
Elijah agreed, but didn’t respond. The first building was obviously a cafeteria of some sort. The smells of onions and beef followed them through the door and into the next connecting tube. The second building had a lot of closed doors on one side and windows on the other. The windows looked at the three domes. Up close, it was obvious the domes were made of some sort of transparent material.
“What the hell are those?” Cao broke out from behind Kyrie and put her hands to one of the windows.
Everyone moved closer and peered outside. “What’re you lookn’n at?” Pineapple had to duck to look outside.
“There!”
It took a few minutes but Elijah finally saw it. It was hard to make out because it looked like part of the domes structures, but it wasn’t.
Sergeant Danvers stepped up. “Those are Airdox drills. Tango’s rigger tested them yesterday to see how they handled ice.”
Elijah stood back and looked at Danvers. “And?
“I don’t think drilling will be a problem.” Everyone stepped back and looked at the Sergeant. “We just need to find it first.”
They continued to the next building, where another set of doors on the left greeted them. Only these were open. Five rooms, each with a bed, desk, light, cabinet for clothing, and thick carpet for cold feet. “Pick your rooms and settle in. We’ll need a briefing from you, Mr. Tish, around seventeen hundred. If you finish here before then, I suggest introducing yourself to Miss Tango in Dome Two. Maps are on the desk. Passwords for the base host are also provided, which will provide satellite connections to the Matrix.” He shook Elijah’s hand again. “Nice to meet all of you. See you this afternoon.” He turned and headed back the way they came.
Elijah turned and looked through the window at the domes and the monolith drills parked outside.
“There are locks on either end of this thing.” Kyrie stepped up close to him. “I don’t like it. These buildings are all modular. They can be picked up and set down anywhere.”
“That’s what the base is supposed to be, right? Mobile?”
She turned to look at him, her voice low. “I mean, we can be locked in here, picked up and just plopped down in the middle of nowhere. And we either go along—or freeze.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Even inside the base, his toes were cold.
Leung followed everyone as they made their way to Dome Two, the base map grid visible on his AR. He was getting his bearings with the base host, and it was faster than he’d thought it would be. A lot of times hacking through satellite connections felt like wading through cold mud, but this one was surprisingly responsive. The host was bare-bones—simple architecture, limited programs, primitive user interface—but it had what he needed. He could provide the bells and whistles if it provided the speed.