by Piers Platt
“Bullshit,” Rath told the drone. “Which ones? Which tests did I fail?”
The drone waited impassively.
“I’m not just going home … not after all of that,” Rath continued.
“You failed to meet Selection Phase minimum standards.”
“You tell me which ones I failed,” Rath yelled, “and I’ll fucking go do them again, right now!”
The drone was quiet for a second. “Considering your overall performance, we are willing to consider a reassessment. However, you would have to undergo the entire Phase again, not simply the tests you failed.”
Rath pulled his pack back on. “Let’s go.”
“If that’s your choice,” the drone consented. “Follow me.”
8
Ashish spent nearly a week flying around the seedier areas of Juntland before he found a mobile kitchen truck that matched the description Jordi had given him. He had identified a likely truck the very first day he had started his search, but after watching it for four hours from his parked air car, he saw two junkies emerge and realized it was a mobile kitchen that had simply been abandoned.
The truck he found at the end of the week was parked across from some kind of warehouse, and Ashish parked his air car up the street, watching the mobile kitchen through his car’s rearview camera. He took out his datascroll and waded through some messages as he waited, checking the rear viewscreen often, but he saw no one enter or leave the truck. When several hours had passed and still nothing had happened, Ashish decided his continued presence was becoming noticeable, so he started up and drove around the corner, out of view of the truck. He parked, took a small surveillance camera from his trunk, and walked back around the corner. When he was halfway to the truck, he kneeled next to a doorway into the warehouse, pretending to tie his shoe. He slipped the camera out of his pocket, tucked it under a torn cardboard box that sat in the doorframe, and then continued walking. He studied the mobile kitchen as he approached, but was careful not to seem too interested as he passed by. He continued down the block, turned the corner, and made his way around the rest of the block back to his air car. He was pleased with his work: the camera had a good angle on the truck and its entrance door.
He drove his car several blocks away to be safe, then parked again and went back to work on his datascroll. In the early afternoon, a movement on the screen caught his eye – an air car was settling down near the mobile kitchen. Ashish put his datascroll away and watched the camera footage. A middle-aged man and a teenaged girl got out of the air car and walked up to the truck. They waited for a few seconds outside the door, the man glancing up and down the street, before proceeding inside. Ashish rewound the footage and zoomed in on the doorframe as they entered, but there was little he could make out other than a bright light coming from the interior.
Several hours later, the door opened again, and the man and the girl emerged. Ashish started up his own car as they entered their air car, prepared to follow them, but he saw the mobile kitchen drive off first, disappearing out of the camera frame.
“Oh shit,” Ashish said. He had assumed the kitchen truck would stay in place, and he would be able to follow the Guild candidate in the air car – now both vehicles were on the move and his stationary camera was pointed at an empty block. He boosted power to the hoverjets and hurtled up into the air, rising over the buildings and heading in the last direction the mobile kitchen had been headed. The truck is the key, he decided. There’ll be more candidates.
He nearly lost it, all the same – the truck had made a right turn several blocks past the warehouse, and he just caught sight of its bumper as he zoomed past several hundred feet up. He swerved hard, matching the truck’s direction and speed, and then gained several thousand feet of altitude, using the car’s front camera to keep in visual contact with the truck.
“Phone on,” Ashish said. The dashboard panel activated and showed him a phone icon. “Call City Security Systems,” he ordered.
“City Security Systems: your one-stop shop for all security and surveillance needs,” an automated voice answered. “What can I help you with today, sir?”
“New order,” Ashish said. “I need a surveillance drone, something autonomous but very discreet.”
“Absolutely, sir. We have a wide range of devices that may suit your needs. Can I ask you for some more detailed requirements, so that I can recommend the right product?”
Below him, the truck made another turn, and Ashish followed. “Uh, sure,” he said. “I need something capable of following a vehicle in a city for a week or so.”
“Do you need audio-visual streaming capabilities, or is location tracking your only concern?”
“No, I need video footage,” Ashish said. The phone line was silent for a few seconds.
“Sir, I’m sending you photos and descriptions of several different models you can choose from. Our recommended item is also our highest-rated drone in this category, the Wasp CX-27. It is a tilt-rotor model about the size of your hand, equipped with dynamic camouflage and near-infinite loiter time using solar-powered batteries. The Wasp CX-27 retails for six hundred and ninety-nine dollars, but we can offer you a five percent discount and free shipping as a loyal CSS customer.”
“Can you deliver it to me now?” Ashish asked.
“The item is in stock and available to ship, sir, would you like it sent to your home address?”
“No, I mean bring it to me now, meet me in the city at my air car.”
The customer service bot thought about that for a few seconds. “Sir, I’m afraid that I can’t enter a shipping destination in the system, because you are still in transit. If you can find a safe place to stop, we can have it at your location in fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Okay, place the order, and stay on the line – I’ll let you know when I’ve stopped for good,” Ashish said.
The mobile kitchen drove for another ten minutes and then came to a stop, pulling into an alley. Ashish descended, decided he shouldn’t risk parking in sight of the truck again, and parked a block away. The Wasp drone arrived eighteen minutes later, via a delivery drone. Drones delivering drones, Ashish thought, with a wry grin. He took it out of the box, slotted the battery in place, and ran the start-up routine, slaving it to his phone. Then he rolled down the window and let it fly off the palm of his hand. To his great relief, the mobile kitchen was still in the alley. The Wasp attached itself to a drainpipe at the end of the alley and settled in, matching its color scheme to the stained cement wall behind it. Ashish went into the Wasp’s program and set up an alert to notify him the moment anyone entered or left the truck, and then he leaned back in his seat and stretched.
Ashish’s stomach gurgled a complaint, and he realized in his excitement at finding one of the trucks, he had skipped lunch. He checked his watch and saw that it was nearly dinnertime, so he drove several blocks and then flipped on the hoverjets, rising to join an air traffic corridor headed out to the suburbs, and his home. It took him forty minutes to reach the final approach glide path for his town, where he descended to street level and hovered the rest of the way home, amidst the other returning commuters. He parked his car in the garage, checked the camera feed one more time on his phone, and made his way into the kitchen, where his wife was spoon-feeding their infant son at his high chair. The results were messy. Ashish smiled.
“Going well, I see,” he said.
Anh shot him a sour look. “Do you want to try?”
“Sure,” he said, taking the spoon and pulling up a chair. His wife stood and walked over to the stove.
“I was thinking pasta,” she said.
“Fine by me,” he agreed. “It’s kind of late for anything else.” He wiped mashed vegetable off his son’s cheek, concentrating hard.
“How did it go today?” Anh asked.
“Good, for once. I think I finally found what I’m looking for, but time will tell.” He smacked his forehead. “Oh, shit.”
“The baby, Ashish,” she chided him.
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“Oh, sorry. Just realized I left one of my surveillance cameras back in the city.”
“Are you going to go get it?”
He sighed. “No, not tonight. I’ll pick it up in the morning – hopefully it’ll still be there.”
She was busy at the stove for a time. “Are you going to tell me what you’re investigating yet?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you worrying.”
She sighed. “That just makes my imagination run wild, Ashish.”
He smiled reassuringly. “You don’t have to worry.”
After his son was in bed, Ashish pulled up footage from both cameras – the first was still in the doorway of the warehouse, undisturbed. A few pedestrians had walked past the Wasp’s alley, but nothing else had happened around the mobile kitchen. He minimized the surveillance program and pulled up his notes from the conversation with Marie, adding notes from the day’s events. There was something else Marie said to look into, what was it? He re-read his notes from that day. Oh yeah, the incident on Alberon.
He opened a news aggregator and set up filters for the right timeframe, with keywords Alberon, Interstellar Police, and Guild. When it came up empty, he frowned. He replaced Guild with spaceport closed OR shut down. Several pages of results appeared.
“There you are,” he said. He switched between articles for a time, copying and pasting sections into his note-taking program, reconstructing the events. Then he sat back and read it through from the top. Next, he switched from straight news reports to the handful of opinion pieces that had been done by local editors at the time. Finally, he made several notes to himself to follow up on:
-Beauceron: Genuine fuck-up, or scapegoat? Seems to be the guy that identified the guildsman in the first place, and possibly the guy that raised the alarm when the suspect escaped at the police station. But also the guy who let the killer out by accident? Vilified in the press – not going to be an easy interview to get.
-How did they know it was a Guild kill? How did they track the killer to the spaceport? What evidence did he leave behind?
-Suspect’s escape: sounds too simple. Truly got lucky / took advantage of a mistake, or maybe was aided by someone on the inside? Another prisoner? A dirty cop?
Ashish stifled a yawn, and sat thinking for a few minutes, then saved his work and shut the datascroll down.
* * *
The novelty of surveilling this mobile kitchen is definitely wearing off, Ashish reflected, parking his air car on another run-down street. Since deploying his newly-purchased Wasp, the drone had pinged him five times over the past three weeks to let him know there was activity at the truck. Each time, he rushed to his air car and hurried downtown, then parked nearby, waiting while the candidate was tested. That generally took anywhere from four to six hours, after which time the mobile kitchen pulled up stakes and relocated to a different part of the city, followed by the Wasp, while Ashish trailed the candidate and their sponsor as they left in their air car.
The sponsors had never been the same – or at least, if it was the same sponsor, they used a different air car each time. Ashish had written down the license plates of all of the cars, including the fifth that had arrived this afternoon, in order to track down their owners when the time came. But his first concern was following the candidates themselves, in the hopes that they had passed the tests, and would reveal the next stage in the recruitment process. Each time, however, the air car had dropped the teen back at their school, foster home, or some public place, and Ashish had no choice but to abandon his surveillance of them. His assumption was that they had failed like Jordi, though he supposed it was possible they had passed, and the Guild was merely waiting for some time to pass to start their training.
But I have no way of knowing whether they passed or failed, and I can’t follow these candidates around for weeks or months, just hoping they passed.
This candidate spent just over four hours inside the truck before exiting. Ashish sat up and buckled his seat belt when the girl left the truck, accompanied by a middle-aged man in a suit. The two made their way back to the air car, which took off and ascended up into the nearest intra-city traffic pattern. Ashish throttled up, gained altitude, and joined the same pattern, but he was in danger of losing them in the rush of cars, so he maneuvered his way closer, weaving around several other air cars until just two cars separated them.
The other air car exited the traffic pattern soon afterwards, and eventually landed near one of the city’s public parks. Ashish sighed. Another one that failed? How hard are these tests? But he parked several hundred feet away, where he still had a view of the car. The girl got out and walked leisurely into the park, where she took a seat on a bench watching the duck pond.
And now the car pulls away … and your investigation continues to go nowhere.
But the car stayed, and in fact, the driver got out, as well. He closed his door and leaned against it, lighting a cigarette and watching the girl on the bench. When he had finished his cigarette, he called to the girl. She stood slowly, took a last glance at the pond, and walked back over to the air car. The man glanced briefly in Ashish’s direction, and then they were back in the car. The car pulled out, and Ashish felt his pulse start to race. He made himself count to fifteen, and then he started up and followed. This time the car stayed at ground level for several blocks before going airborne, which Ashish found odd. But he shrugged it off and concentrated on maintaining contact with the car as the air traffic intensified.
After ten minutes of flying, the car exited, and Ashish realized they were heading for the city outskirts. Two minutes later they took the exit for the spaceport, and Ashish slapped the wheel with triumph.
“Finally!”
He fumbled through the bag on the seat next to him, and pulled out a pair of glasses with a camera hidden in the frame. He activated the camera, slipped the glasses on, and checked that they were recording. The other air car headed for the short term parking lot, so Ashish followed, parking several rows away and waiting until the man and the teenaged girl were halfway to the terminal to exit and follow them. They made their way inside, and the man steered the girl toward the Vector Spacelines counter.
Ashish pulled out his phone. “I need a round-trip ticket on the next shuttle to the orbital transfer station,” he told it.
“What spaceline?” the phone queried him.
“Vector,” he said.
“Your account has been debited. Check phone for boarding pass and receipt. Thank you for your business.”
Ashish realized he had no luggage, which would look a bit strange to anyone watching him, but he had left his messenger bag in the air car. Can’t go back for it now. Instead he waited while the man talked to the girl for several minutes, handing her a datascroll and a paper ticket. Then the two shook hands, and the man clapped the girl on the back. Ashish thought he saw the man say “Good luck,” but he couldn’t be sure.
The man headed back toward the garage, and the girl set off for the security checkpoint. Ashish followed the girl.
* * *
“Identify.”
The man looked down at his phone as he walked through the garage, reading from the holographic screen. “Eight-oh-six-alpha-four,” he said into his wireless earpiece.
“Stand by,” the voice on the phone told him. “Identity confirmed. The line is encrypted, you may proceed.”
“I just dropped a candidate off for transport, and I have reason to believe I was tailed from the testing site. I think the candidate is still being followed.”
The line was silent for a few moments. “Acknowledged.”
“I’m still eligible for proceeds from this candidate, right?” the man asked.
“Yes. However, your recruiting privileges will be suspended for six months as a security measure. Can you provide any additional information about the person or persons that followed you?”
“Sure, I’m standing looking at his license plate right now.”
9
“I passed?” Rath asked, still confused.
“Indeed you did, congratulations. The final test can be most unsettling after what you have been through, but it is a useful measure of your resolve.”
Rath – clean, fully rested, well fed for the first time in weeks, and wearing a fresh uniform to boot – stood across a desk from a hologram of a middle-aged man dressed in a suit.
“Welcome to the Contract Review module,” the man continued. “I am John, an artificial intelligence avatar designed to ensure that you, ‘the contractor,’ understand the specific details of your contract with the organization I represent, popularly referred to as ‘the Guild,’ but the company is technically ‘the Janus Group,’ hereafter referred to as ‘the Group.’ ”
“What’s ‘Janus’?”
“Janus was a god worshipped by the ancient Romans – the god of beginnings, transitions … and endings. He is traditionally depicted as having two faces.” The avatar paused, as if to say more. “That fact will have more significance to you should you choose to continue with your training. Regardless, the company is simply known as ‘the Group.’ I’m told that is what employees call it¸ at least. At any time in this review, you may interrupt me with questions. You should interact with me as if we were having a real conversation. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Rath said.
The hologram rendering of John smiled amiably, motioning that Rath should take a seat in the chair across the desk from his projection.
“Good! Then let’s proceed. You are probably already familiar with the essence of the contract, which is generally known as ‘Fifty for Fifty.’ Simply put, if you successfully complete the fifty missions assigned to you by the Group, you are entitled to fifty percent of the revenue from the fees the Group charges clients for your services. Those fees vary depending on the complexity of each assignment, but generally range from two to five million dollars per assignment, meaning the average contractor can expect between fifty and one hundred and twenty-five million dollars upon completion of his or her contract.”