Outriders

by Jay Posey

  “You can sit up front,” Mike said. Lincoln was about to say thanks, until he saw the stains.

  “Nuh uh, buddy,” Thumper said, sliding onto the bench. Lincoln looked at the two of his teammates sitting in the back. He’d just spent twenty-two hours wedged between two unpleasant companions. There was no way he was sitting in the middle. He picked the front seat that seemed least likely to give him hepatitis. The doors closed, and the engine rattled online.

  “Wow, Mike,” he said, with a cough. “You going to have to drive this thing yourself?”

  “It ain’t that bad!” Mike replied, his voice rising in pitch with each word. His response was more defensive than Lincoln had expected. Thumper just laughed.

  “Wright’s been riding you about it, huh?” she asked.

  “She won’t let it go, man,” Mike said, shaking his head. He seemed genuinely hurt.

  “I know we’re keeping a low profile,” Lincoln said, “but uh…”

  “You’ll understand when you see the place,” Mike said. He spoke to the vehicle, giving the address, and then sat back and waited. When nothing happened, he leaned forward over the front seat, pressed the module on the console more firmly into place, and tried once more. At this, the car lurched once, then pulled away from the curb and onto the thoroughfare. Thumper snorted.

  “Next time you can handle acquisition, Thump,” he said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said.

  It was about a forty-minute drive from the port out to the location, and the closer they got, the more Lincoln understood Mike’s choice of transportation. The surroundings grew more industrial; everything out this direction was greyer, shabbier. Still. It seemed like maybe Pence could have spent a little more on the car. Lincoln wasn’t sure if it was the smell, the lack of sleep, or the after-effects of space travel, but as they drove, he felt increasingly queasy, almost like he’d developed a mild case of seasickness. He laid his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.

  “Ugh,” he said. “Probably shouldn’t have eaten that fish on the trip up.”

  “Probably? Brother, it’s just SOP to avoid seafood in space,” Mike said.

  “Standard op procedure or not,” Thumper said, “I woulda thought it was just common sense.”

  “Yeah,” Lincoln said.

  “I’m feeling it, too,” Thumper said from the back. “And I most definitely didn’t eat the fish.”

  “Oh,” Mike said. “Yeah. Gravity fields aren’t super consistent out this way. I think they run between nine-eight and one-one, so that’s probably causing some of it. You get to used it. Sort of.”

  Lincoln opened his eyes again when they came up on the first connector between sectors and watched the transition. Moving from one dome to the next wasn’t that interesting, not much different than driving through a short mountain tunnel back home. But Lincoln had lived most of his life on Earth, had grown up with nothing between him and space but air. There was always something a little uncanny about the way the sky came bending down like a waterfall to kiss the ground at the edge of a sector.

  The self-repairing nanocrystalline domes here on Luna were smaller than the ones that housed the Martian settlements. They were thicker, more resilient, and couldn’t be sustained across as much open space. They were a few decades older, too, for one thing, especially down here in the southern pole where the first colonies had been established. Shackleton had been named for the nearby crater, though the city had expanded in leapfrog fashion well away from its original center. Supposedly the outer shells were impact rated up to something like five hundred kilotons, which was good enough to eat a twenty-meter rock without a breach. Fortunately, they’d never had a live event to test that limit. Like most people, Lincoln didn’t want to think about what would happen if something ever did get through.

  Once they’d passed into the next sector, the sky leapt heavenward again, and the industrialized scenery picked right back up where it had left off. A few minutes down the road, Lincoln realized these were the older shipyards, where many of the first generation ships had been constructed before sailing off into the Deep. Before the hops had become the primary facilities for ship manufacturing. Some were still hanging on, cranking out budget models or hoping to stretch out their legacy as being among the first, but it was obvious that the industry was drying up on Luna. With unfocused eyes, Lincoln watched it all flow past in a concrete blur.

  “Apsis must’ve really doctored up their corporate materials,” he said. All the public-facing material he’d seen while researching the group was clean, professional, very high-gloss. Nothing like the flat greys and rust browns that surrounded them now.

  “Yeah, well we’re not going to their main office, don’t worry.”

  “You guys found an off-site already?” Lincoln asked.

  “Wish I could say we worked that fast,” Mike answered, “but NID gets the credit for this one. They’d already sniffed it out before we even landed.”

  “They’ve got people on the ground?” said Lincoln.

  “Yeah. At least one. He might even be at the place when we get there. Seems like a good dude. Plays things kind of close to the chest, though.”

  “He’s NID,” Thumper said.

  “Yeah. But I mean he’s quiet even for one of them. Straight shooter when he talks, but doesn’t say any more than he has to.”

  “I’ll take that over the other kind,” Lincoln said.

  “Yeah, roger that,” Mike said. “One time, back in Indo, I had to work with NID Special Services and the officer I got assigned to…” He paused and shook his head. “We called him Best Guess. Not to his face, of course. But I swear that man must’ve had some kind of childhood trauma that made it impossible for him to say the words ‘I don’t know’. About the only thing you could guarantee with him was that however much you figured he’d underestimated enemy strength by, he’d underestimated it by at least twice as much. And if he said something was clear? Hoo boy.”

  They traveled on for a few more minutes. Lincoln was just about to comment on how glad he was that he didn’t have to live in a dump like this when the vehicle slowed. It bumped up onto the curb before correcting itself and then parked along the side of the road, just in front of a narrow five-story building that Lincoln guessed was abandoned and condemned.

  “I see what you mean about the car,” Lincoln said.

  “Thank you,” Mike said. “Probably oughta leave most of the gear for now. We’ll take it up in shifts after dark.” The domes were scheduled to match the twenty four-hour day-night cycle of Earth using Greenwich Mean Time.

  “You sure it’ll be safe here?” Thumper asked.

  “Nope,” he answered, as he opened the door. “But it ain’t worth blowing cover over. Just grab the essentials.”

  They unloaded a pair of packs, and Mike led them inside. When they entered, Lincoln was surprised to see an elderly man leaning against the door frame outside the first floor apartment by the stairs, smoking. He watched them with a mild hostility, as if they were walking across his front lawn.

  “Moy brat,” Mike said in Russian, jerking a thumb at Lincoln as they passed. My brother. The man didn’t even blink.

  After they’d climbed up the first set of stairs, Mike looked back over his shoulder and said, “Timur owns the place.” A moment later he added, “Don’t worry. I told him we had family coming in. He gave us the penthouse suite.”

  “Great,” Thumper said, and her tone of voice implied the opposite. Thinking about having to hump all their gear up five flights of stairs, no doubt. There were elevators, but Lincoln figured using one of those was a good way to spend half a day trapped in a metal box.

  When they reached the top floor, Mike went to the second door on the left. He knocked three times and waited five seconds before punching in the code on the lock. A series of bolts clicked on the other side of the door. Mike swung the door open, and Wright was standing there to greet them. She didn’t have a weapon visible, but from her stance
Lincoln knew she had one close at hand. When she saw it was them, she nodded a greeting.

  “Welcome to it,” Mike said. “Try not to make too much of a mess. I had to put down a security deposit.”

  It was pretty much what Lincoln had expected. The apartment was old and had a pervasive smell of dust, even though it looked like his teammates had cleaned the place up a bit. From the main entrance, there was an open common area, with a table and two chairs. Adjoining the main room was a small kitchen whose appliances looked like they predated the first lunar colony. Walking into the common area, Lincoln saw there were two bedrooms off the right side, with a single bathroom between. To the left, Wright and Pence had hung a large dark blanket up on the wall. None of their gear was visible from the door, except for two sleeping bags they’d laid out on the floor in the common area. When Lincoln poked his head into the front bedroom and saw the mattress on the bed, he understood the choice.

  “Timur’s charging us double,” Mike said, from across the room, “for all the extra space.” When Lincoln looked back at him, Mike was standing by the wall with the blanket on it. He dramatically pulled the blanket to one side to reveal the adjoining apartment. Technically, the apartments were connected. But that was only because there was a hole in the wall big enough to walk through.

  “Now that everyone’s rolling in,” Mike said, “We figure we’ll keep this one for operations, and through the curtain here can be for downtime.”

  Lincoln set his pack down on the floor.

  “Sounds good,” he said. “What’s the schedule been like so far?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a schedule yet,” Mike answered. “I’ve been out running errands. Mas’sarnt’s done all the real work. Not sure she’s slept since we got here.”

  “You ready for a break, sergeant?” Lincoln asked Wright.

  “Nah, I still got a good eight hours left of this stim,” she said. “Maybe after.”

  “What’d you take?”

  “Just a blue.”

  Lincoln nodded. “You got time to brief us?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Thumper, we saved you that room.” Wright pointed to the front bedroom, as she walked over towards the one in the back. Lincoln followed. “Let me know what you need, I’ll make One-time go get it.”

  “You saw the car he picked out, right?” Thumper asked.

  “Don’t,” Mike said sharply. Thumper laughed as she disappeared into the front room to drop off her gear.

  Wright took Lincoln into the rear bedroom, which they’d converted into their planning center. The bed frame had been broken down, and the mattress was leaning upright against one wall. In the middle of the room, they’d set up a couple of folding tables with chairs around it. Wright had stuck a thin-skin overlay on the longest wall so they could display whatever intel they needed to on it. A pair of terminals hummed quietly on the table. And, to Lincoln’s surprise, a man was hunched over one of them, reading something on the holo.

  “This is our NID minder,” Wright said. The man stood slowly, apparently reluctant to take his eyes from the report he was reading. When he did finally look over at Lincoln, he extended his hand and smiled. He was in his early fifties, maybe; dark hair frosted grey at the temples and scruffy, dressed in rumpled clothes. His look gave the impression that he’d jumped out of bed in the middle of the night a couple of days prior and had been working ever since. And, given the nature of his job, there was a good chance that’s what had actually happened.

  “Captain Suh,” he said. “Mr Self.”

  “Just Lincoln,” Lincoln said, shaking the man’s hand. “Mr Self, huh? Is that your real name?”

  Mr Self’s smile widened.

  “Oh. All right then,” Lincoln said. “I didn’t know we were in spook country.”

  “I didn’t know the 301st sent technicians out to handle this sort of thing,” Mr Self said.

  “Fair enough,” Lincoln said. “No one told me you were going to be here personally.”

  “I didn’t know it myself until recently,” Mr Self said. “But the Directorate’s trying to keep this one compartmentalized. Guess they figured I can keep a secret.”

  “Rumor is you’ve got a good history of that.”

  “Must not be too good if there are rumors,” Mr Self said with a smile.

  “Sergeant Wright was just about to get me up to speed.”

  Mr Self nodded and sat back down. “Still early, but I think we’ve got a good foothold to start from.”

  Wright woke the second terminal and tapped a few keystrokes on the interface it projected onto the table. A moment later, the lights in the room went out with a short, sharp buzz. Lincoln looked over at Wright who was bathed in the glow from the terminal interface. She glanced up at the ceiling and then shook her head.

  “It happens,” Wright said. “Don’t sweat it.”

  She finished with the terminal, and the thin-skin on the wall lit up with a top-down view of a section of the city. Thumper came in just as Wright was beginning.

  “What’s with the lights?” Thumper said.

  “Power distribution’s not the best out this way,” Wright answered. “Mainline will probably come back on in a few minutes. We’re running everything on portable anyway. But you probably better plan on losing juice whenever you need it most.”

  “Roger that,” said Thumper.

  “All right. Apsis Solutions,” Wright said. “When they say full-spectrum security, they’re not kidding. Front page, they do all the usual stuff. Close protection, threat assessment, information security, nothing special there. But, come in through the side door, and you get a whole bunch of other services. In this case, for example, safehouses for people that don’t want to be found.”

  “Or that other people don’t want found,” Mr Self added, without looking up from his terminal.

  Wright walked over to the thin-skin and tapped it at a location near the bottom. At her touch, the image of the building turned blue.

  “We’re here,” she said. Then, with her finger she circled a cluster of buildings a few hundred meters north. Within the circle she’d traced, labels popped up for several of the buildings and their surrounding streets. Street names were accurate, but the building labels were purely for convenience; for some reason, Wright had used the names of Shakespearean characters. “Safehouse is somewhere around here. We haven’t been able to get a fix on it yet, but we’ve narrowed it down to this area for certain.”

  “And any idea who’s in there?” Lincoln asked.

  “Not yet. But they’re taking a lot of measures to make sure we don’t find out.”

  “You get any skeeters in?” Thumper asked.

  “Nah. We tried, but they’ve got a net up. We’ve got a couple on station around the perimeter in case someone comes out. I didn’t want to risk tipping anybody off, though. They’re also masking the volume of traffic coming in and out of there, distributing it. Even so, it’s still running pretty hot for the area. Thumper, once you get set up, you should take a look at it and see what you can pull out.”

  “Easy day,” Thumper said.

  “What’s the assessment on security?” Lincoln asked.

  “First look says about what you’d expect. Automated surveillance augmented with personnel. We’ve ID’d four return customers that fit the profile. I’m sure there are more we haven’t sniffed out yet.”

  “Pop the sweeps up for me, would ya, Mir?” Thumper said. Wright walked back over to the terminal and keyed something in. A moment later, a series of multicolored arcs and circles appeared in the target zone.

  “Blues for motion, greens for bioscan, reds for full capture,” Wright said. “You can see the gaps in coverage, but I’d chalk that up to us not finding them all yet. These guys don’t seem like the sloppy type.”

  “You got makes and models for these yet?” Thumper asked. Wright shook her head.

  Lincoln scanned the top-down without looking for anything in particular, just soaking in the big picture. “I
’d like to get up there and walk it as soon as possible. When’s a good time?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it, sir,” Wright said. “Once Sahil gets in, we can handle the groundwork with good coverage. You just tell us what you need.”

  “You’ve been over, I assume.”

  “Sure, but Mom doesn’t care if I get scuffed up.”

  “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t expect me to sit around here and make you do all the work, sergeant.”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what he expects. He told me explicitly to keep you out of harm’s way on this one, sir.”

  “He’s going to be disappointed.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Lincoln scanned the image on the thin-skin, and took mild satisfaction in knowing that whoever was in that safehouse probably wasn’t much more comfortable than they were.

  “We’ll wait for Sahil,” Lincoln said. “And then I’m going to take a walk. You know. Just to clear my head.”

  * * *

  SAHIL ARRIVED THREE HOURS LATE, which had him in after dark. Unfortunately, he wasn’t on Lincoln’s side of the argument. Like Wright, he wasn’t a fan of the idea of Lincoln walking around the area at all, not to mention on his own. The other two weren’t much help. Sahil had helped haul the rest of Thumper’s gear up, and she was heads-down, bringing her AI-assisted surveillance system “Veronica” all online. Mike offered Lincoln some weak moral support, but seemed ambivalent at best about Lincoln doing anything other than running the op center. Lincoln got the impression that Pence was only on his side to get back at Wright for all the grief she’d given him over the car.

  In the end, they’d compromised. The team agreed to let Lincoln out as long as Wright could escort him, with the assurance that she could pull the plug at any moment. Mike would be on standby in his getaway vehicle, in case there was trouble; Thumper rigged it up so Mike could have manual control if he needed it. Sahil would post up outside the zone but close enough to act as back up, and Thumper would man the temporary operations center, keeping watch over the whole team.