“What about him?” Leland asked. “What was it like to be beside him?”
The question surprised Spin, almost as much as what came to her mind first. “He could communicate so much without words. We were so aware of each other, the way we were holding hands, or the way one of us was walking, that it was like we had developed a special sense. When we got older he liked being cheek to cheek. We had busy days, but we stole time to dance together, and he had a way of creating a bubble around us, the rest of the universe disappeared. One time we were in the middle of trade negotiations for the estate with Uramma, and I remember being so bored as I prepared the Urammans. I was stuck alone with them, discussing protocol, educating them on how the Countess’ companies normally conducted business. I don’t know how he knew I was boring myself half to death, but he did, so I started hearing our favourite music through my private comm. No one else could hear it, but it gave me the lift I needed to finish the day and make things seem interesting for the Urammans. It doesn’t seem like much, but it was the perfect thing at the perfect time.”
“Keep going,” Leland said. “This is interesting, I feel like I’m getting to know him a little.”
To Spin’s surprise, telling stories about Larken became easier with time. She remembered things that she hadn’t recalled in years. Leland listened with interest, and she began to feel better. By the time they arrived in the Wayland System, she was ready to commit Larken’s body to space, where he and Trevor would slowly drift towards Celeste, a sun that burned white.
04
The end of the systems check scrolled across Dorian’s vision ending with the words:
ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL
COMBAT OPTIMIZATION COMPLETE
One thing still amazed him about his new body more than anything else: he could feel the synthetic muscle in his replacement limbs, the organ replacement package in his chest, and the high charge of his power cells all priming. High nutrient mixtures flowed through his synthetic and real veins, the pulmonary package pushed more highly oxygenated blood through organs that drank it in greedily, and the recently installed pulse emitter batteries drew on the small power plant in his middle, warming up for what he hoped would be a worthwhile payoff.
“One more thing,” he muttered to himself, drawing a cigar from a compartment in his right leg. It was black, and as thick as his middle finger. With a mental command, his fingers split down the middle, sliding to each side of his hand to provide a port for the heavy pulse emitter in his right arm. He warmed the business end up until it was red hot and used it to light his cigar, puffing great clouds of smoke before taking a long draw.
The drugs in the DICE smokeable flooded his system, making his completely organic brain race. Memories, thoughts, and a sense of hyper awareness that was so intense that he almost wanted to curl up into the foetal position to slow it all down crashed over him. This was DICE, his drug of choice, the kind of mad high he wished he could find when he was still all human, and he embraced it, breathing the smoke in, letting the organ package process it and fill his senses. He could feel every sensor in his body, process every signal from his synthetic nervous system, and make out every mote of dust floating in the tower top alleyway around him.
The filthy alley overlooked a freeway filled with slider vehicles, and the one he was tracking was near. “Coming, it’s coming, it’s coming,” he said as he readied the cable launcher in his left arm. “Brett is going to pay today. Hope you like me now, Captain.”
The wedge shaped personal vehicles, narrow single passenger slip bikes, and larger transport trucks moved along the many layered sky lanes at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Complex software, not artificial intelligences controlled the cars at that speed. People were lounging in their little transports, no one would expect someone to attack anyone on a high velocity stretch, that’s why his prey wouldn’t see him coming.
Closer, Captain Brett Hoket’s eight passenger planet hopper was in the stream of traffic that seemed to move a little slower with every puff of his DICE cigar. “Wings, I got wings now, you little bitch,” he said as he deployed a pair of multi-directional thrusters he had installed on his back and got them ready to fire. He could feel their heat increase against his synthetic skin, but it was well within limits. The flight guidance system came online and plotted the course between him and his former captain’s small ship. He knew that errand vehicle, he’d repaired it and inspected it in his previous life.
“I got wings, and I’m going to catch you!” he shouted as he activated the thrusters on his back and arced from the rooftop alleyway down to the expressway. The guidance system was new, only calibrated once, so it got the speed right, but he was going to slip between the Captain’s car and the one ahead. Dorian fired his hair-thin grappling line from his left arm and grinned as it struck right in the middle of the ship’s hull and punctured all the way through.
He reeled himself in and landed with his feet firmly planted on either side of the line. All at once he could feel the wind against the synthetic skin on his face, pulling violently at his overcoat, hear the alarms going off inside the car through the sensor on the end of his boarding line, and enjoy the sight of blurred lights all around as they passed between high skyscrapers and lanes of opposing traffic. “Caaaaaptaaaaaiiiin Hooooooket! Your past is heeeeeere!” The cigar had disintegrated thanks to the high wind, and he swallowed the wet end that remained in his teeth. Nutrient processing systems began to work on it, sending a new rush of chemicals through him. Someone was laughing so loud that he could hear it over the traffic. It was musically maniacal, and as he wondered who it was, and what they were on, he realized it was him. “Oh my fucking God this is the best DICE!”
The shuttle broke from the stream of traffic and headed down between a row of buildings that were in the massive war zone next to the city core. The night was lit by weapons’ fire between the field of plastic, metal and concrete towers. Gangs fought for any of a dozen reasons, and they did it on all levels, between dozens of buildings. Refusing to be distracted by the new light show, Dorian knelt down and began cutting a circle in the top of the shuttle with his pulse emitter. It took seconds to make a new door through the thin shuttle armour.
Dorian made eye contact with a terrified woman in a small tube dress as she pointed a stunner at him and he decided to let her shoot him instead of dodging. The stun shot made contact with his synthetic skin and didn’t penetrate to the layers below. “Do I look human enough for that to do anything?” he said, laughing as he dropped inside the shuttle. He tossed her to the back of the seating area and smashed his fist through the thin transparent steel partition. His fingers curled around the rough edge of the divider and he ripped the metal away, revealing his prey. “Hello, Captain. It’s time to land,” he giggled, catching Captain Hoket’s neck in his hand from behind. The sizzle of Hoket’s skin against his fingers revealed an oversight – the pulse emitter had heated his synthetic flesh up a couple hundred degrees, so Dorian adjusted his grip so he held the back of the man’s fancy blue suit instead, but he didn’t stop screaming.
“Shut up and land!” Dorian shouted. He waited as long as he could, a few seconds, for his old Captain to comply before firing his boarding line at the dashboard and using the interface in the end to signal an emergency to the ship.
The lighting inside turned red, and the vessel plotted its own course to the nearest landing pad, decelerating rapidly. Captain Hoket drew his sidearm – a respectable weapon that fired intelligent rounds – but Dorian snatched it from his hand and deactivated it. “Thank you,” he said, sliding it into a pocket inside his battered overcoat. “I always liked your taste in guns. What do you think of mine?” he asked, splitting the fingers in his right hand to reveal the smouldering emitter. “Cut right through this tin can, I wonder how it would do on your thick skull?”
“I paid to have you saved, I didn’t know Quino would turn you into this,” Captain Hoket said. “He said you could serve out your debt if the cost of
fixing you up went over what I paid, not that he’d do this.” The man was crying, Dorian couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of his tears.
“You disbanded the crew and fucked off to Nyja, everyone got their share, even your fucking whipping boy, but I woke up in a chop shop with less meat than some instant dinners and a debt that’s about two hundred murders deep.”
“I told them you were a ship thief, not a contract killer! I swear! He said you’d be useful.”
“I’ve killed twenty-eight people in the last thirty days, Quino won’t trust me to steal so much as a one man slider with all this expensive hardware under my skin. He won’t let me out of the city because he’s afraid the bomb he built into my chest won’t kill me either. Wait, didn’t you hear about this? About me? Didn’t you check on how your hull cracker was doing after you left him behind?” The business end of Dorian’s pulse emitter began to warm up and hum.
“I just got back, I was going to check in, I swear!”
“Bullshit! Make me believe what you say next, motherfucker!”
“All right! I heard and I am on my way off world right now! I just had some business to take care of so I could leave this shithole behind.”
The shuttle set down on a platform. Dorian’s navigational system told him he was half way up a skyscraper near the middle of the war zone. “Money! Pay my debt to Quino and the Red River Crew so I can at least get off their chain!”
“I have what’s in the back, in that box. You can have it,” Captain Hoket said, pointing.
Dorian glanced at the back long enough for his scanners to tell him that there was only thirty-five thousand UCA credits inside. “That’s not enough.” He snatched the Captain’s hand and snapped the bone behind his first finger. It made a satisfying snapping sound. There was something about watching Captain Hoket scream and try to free his hand from Dorian’s grip that made him feel a little better.
“Everything else is off world or spent. I was just about to get a new crew together so we could start earning again.”
“What about your ship? What about the Chimera?” Dorian asked, scanning for the command chip.
“I sold it, I’m here looking for a good rebuild.” He must have noticed something in Dorian’s expression that warned him about what would happen next, because he urgently pleaded; “No, whatever I can get, I’ll give you,” as he tried to guard his hand from further abuse.
Dorian smiled as he snapped the middle bone in Captain Hoket’s hand and shifted to the next unbroken segment. “What about the Dawn? What about the ship I nearly died saving?”
“Willy took it as his share!”
“Willy is dead,” Dorian said, snapping another bone. He waited for Captain Hoket to stop screaming. “Quino had him killed, I don’t know why, I was busy getting used to gears and wires instead of blood and guts.”
“Then that’s it!” Captain Hoket said. “Kill me if you want, but that’s all there is unless you let me go off planet and get more money for you from my stash.”
“Where’s your stash? I’m going to break your arm next.”
“Fuck you! You’re not worth the whole thing, you’re just a port rat from a career port wife!”
“Shouldn’t have insulted my mother,” Dorian said. He let go of Captain Hoket, pushed the side door open and left. He turned to the pilot hatch and watched Captain Hoket panic for a moment through the transparent aluminium window. He was trying to get the ship out of emergency mode, but he wouldn’t have time.
Four lightly armoured gangland warriors were approaching slowly, weapons drawn. Dorian spared a moment to wink at them. “Just finishing some business here then I’m off, boys.” He directed his attention at the pilot side hatch and gestured at Captain Hoket, requesting that he open the window. He chuckled as he watched Hoket panic for a few more seconds then punched his hands through the thin armoured door and tore it from its hinges.
Hoket was in his hands and out of the pilot’s seat next, and Dorian scanned him carefully. “New emergency medical module, and an upgraded shock circuit in your arm right under your computer. That’s some pretty expensive tech, especially since you didn’t have to replace your real arm to get it done.”
“Dorian! Listen! I’ll go get you however much you need to pay to get your freedom back, then come right back. Or I could transfer it to you!”
“There isn’t a bank that will trust you within three sectors of here, not since you started robbing them,” Dorian replied. “And you’d never come back if I let you go. I know I wouldn’t. Well, I can’t get anything for a used EMI, so it’ll have to be the arm. I might even be able to figure out where your stash is.”
“No, Dorian! I didn’t know what he’d do!”
“Didn’t much care, either,” Dorian said as he walked Hoket to the edge of the landing platform. They were twenty-one storeys up. He grasped Hoket’s arm firmly and held him out over the dark emptiness. “I’m going to leave your emergency medical implant installed, just in case it can actually save you from this, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be a pile of bloody meats for about thirty seconds, then it’ll be darkness forever. I’m keeping your arm.” Before his former captain could protest, Dorian fired his pulse emitter and separated Hoket’s forearm from the rest of him. His high had been slipping away for a few minutes, but there was still enough in him so he could enjoy every millisecond of Captain Hoket’s long fall. “Aye, just a pile of bloody meats at the bottom of that fall.”
Dorian turned back towards the shuttle, nodding at the gob smacked gang toughs as he crossed the distance. The woman in the back of the ship screamed and retreated the moment he was inside. He ignored her as he opened the credit box and dropped Hoket’s forearm inside then closed it back up. “You might want to get in the pilot’s seat, the ship should fly you back to wherever you were last if you hit the return button. Or you could stay here and entertain those guys. I’m sure they’d appreciate the company.”
Unsure if the woman heard anything he said, Dorian retreated from the car and took flight, his new thrusters propelling him across the sky at speeds only artificial skin and hair could withstand. The auto-medic at the base of his skull began administering anti-inflammatory medication to his brain as the hangover from DICE started to take hold.
A notification scrolled through his mind’s eye:
KNOWN IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS IN RANGE: Nigel Lozel, Sun Dell
His spirits rose as he set down atop one of the more peaceful skyscrapers to wait until whatever ship was carrying Nigel found its way to a port. It would be good to see a friendly face, even though he had to wonder if Nigel would even recognize him.
05
The disorder and hardships the galaxy had to offer its citizens were as good as fact to Spin, she’d been to megacities that were in the middle of ripping themselves apart before. Her previous experiences still didn’t prepare her for the wars surrounding Midtown. A clear column of massive buildings and port rises were peaceful. Landing instructions and proper guidance signals were provided as though the fall of civilization never happened, but everything around it was marked as a no-go zone, and along the edges of the safe zone signs that violence threatened to swallow the middle of the high rise megacity were constant.
From where they landed near the top of the Comtek Port Building, Aspen could see flaming high rises in the distance, and the light of weapons’ fire streaking through the night sky. That was kilometers away, but she knew that without Comtek’s energy shielding and security systems, they would not be safe.
Most of the people on her ship were leaving, and the Comtek building was the safest place for them. There were transports coming and going regularly, and accommodations in case they had to stay for a few days. Most of their passengers were used to living under safer conditions, some were even accustomed to having servants. None of them would be happy with where they would be left, but to Spin, the money they were putting in their hands and the place they were leaving them was the best they could do. They were l
ucky to be treated so well, other people would have flushed the lot of them out the airlock to limit the risk of being betrayed. She’d never admit it, but the thought crossed her mind more than once while she heard some of their passengers complain.
All the more reason why she was happy that Sun, with the help of everyone else who was joining her crew were telling their passengers what they could expect when they disembarked, not go leave the Comtek building, and making sure that they weren’t making off with more than the clothes on their back, and twelve hundred United Core World Authority, or UCA platinum each – a small fortune that would get any of them home, even if they wanted to travel to the furthest fringes. Their new medical technician would be scanning each person as they were handed their bag of coins to make sure they didn’t take anything extra, and then they’d be on their way.
Cool Pursuit: Chaos Core Book 2 Page 4