Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  The second proxy had fallen onto its face and was still attempting to right itself as Andrea slipped from behind the gold android and fired into the nape of its neck. After four bursts of gunfire, its head separated from its body and it went still.

  Vincenzo and I swept down the corridor, expecting human enforcers to be right behind the machines. Through the corridor was what the map showed as a guest bedroom, though it was more likely the room had once been a solarium. It was empty except for a bare mattress pushed against one wall.

  Thomas shouldered past our androids and knelt down next to the beheaded proxy. This is a late-model combat proxy, he subvocalized. Photo-absorbent coating. Expensive, but the aftermarket modifications were incompetent and sloppy.

  So that coating is why they didn’t show up on Raven’s scope, I said.

  Doesn’t matter, Andrea interjected. They know we’re here.

  The door at the far end of the room flew open, and an android stepped through, weapon already blazing.

  I was grateful then that my dataspike had noise mitigation. The cannons fitted onto these proxies were the same kind used by RST Red Guard on armored personnel carriers. I’d seen the rounds they took in person. eight ounces each and seventy millimeters long. Practically a shaped charge rather than a bullet. To call the thing loud is to call the Oort cloud cold—an understatement that borders on a lie.

  We each dove for the nearest thing to cover we had. Raven had been ready for it and was already falling back out onto the rooftop. A line of bullet holes across the wall marked her path outside as she fired through the plasticrete at the proxy. Vincenzo knelt behind the silver android, and it followed suit, lowering its shield to give him an impromptu cover to fire from.

  The proxy continued into the room unhindered, shrugging off our gunfire. I tried to take careful aim, but round after round from the proxy’s cannon cut through the room and forced me to consider little else beyond avoiding the monstrous .960 rounds. I threw myself to the ground and crawled behind the silver proxy to join Vincenzo.

  Though I was cloaked, the space was limited and the proxy seemed to be blind firing. Thermoptics were only hindering coordination at this point. I decloaked and subvocalized a message to Vincenzo.

  Eight shot magazine.

  So three more, he replied.

  Two rounds rocked the silver proxy. A third tore a meter-wide hole through the exterior wall.

  Now.

  We slipped from behind cover and advanced on the proxy, weapons streaming round after round of jacketed tungsten into the android. We stuck with what worked, concentrating fire on the joints in its lower body, and like the other proxies it collapsed to the floor under its own weight.

  We fanned around the android and fired into its neck as Andrea had done. My submachine gun was less effective at the task than Vincenzo’s rifle, and my magazine ran dry as the metal vertebrae finally shattered and the proxy went still. I glanced up into the room beyond the doorway as I reloaded and realized we’d made a mistake.

  The proxy wasn’t blind firing. It was applying suppressive fire to buy time. Another just like it had ascended the stairs outside of the room and was aiming directly at the two of us. We were framed in the open doorway, baited into a killbox by a machine. My first instinct was to get Vincenzo clear. I’d thrown myself into him before the thought had fully formed. We landed two meters to the right of the door, but to my surprise there was no deafening report.

  The air in front of the door shimmered, and Andrea flashed into view. In her hands was the heavy gun of one of the androids, and she swung it through the air like a club. It whipped over our heads, ripped through the fiber polymer wall, and slammed into the proxy outside. The penthouse shook, shards of broken metal rained, and the impact lifted the proxy off its feet.

  It landed and stumbled but didn’t go down. It regained its balance, then turned back to her and froze. Andrea was already moving closer, and she snapped her rifle up to finish what she’d started.

  Leave it, Andrea.

  Thomas stepped in from behind it as if from nowhere, a silver cable tracing a path from the back of its head to the small white device in his hand. Thomas rapidly gestured in the air, then pulled the cable from the proxy’s head a few seconds later. It stood straight up and glanced around, before walking back down the stairs.

  I stood and held out a hand to help Veraldi up. He took it, and I pulled him to his feet. What was that? I asked Thomas.

  I’ve rescinded its orders.

  So it’s fighting for us now?

  Rescinding orders is not the same as issuing new ones.

  You can just say no, Thomas.

  I walked past him and checked the bottom of the stairway. It opened into a living room, and I could see multiple pinch points on the map.

  We’ll need to leapfrog across to be safe. I said.

  I agree, Andrea replied. But stay behind the androids.

  We moved quickly across the living room, while our androids moved steadily a few meters ahead.

  They’re through there, announced Raven, pointing toward the master bedroom. The presence of androids invisible to backscatter scans meant there could be a dozen more proxies waiting for us, but all Raven would see is the handful of humans they were defending. I approached the door with caution and listened. A voice called out to us.

  That sounds like Russian, commented Vincenzo.

  Andrea called back in kind. “If you want to live, throw down your weapons and open the door slowly.” I’d never heard her speak another language before.

  A round of gunfire came through the door. I ducked instinctively, but the shooter was blind firing and every shot went high. Raven aimed carefully at the wall and squeezed the trigger. There was a pained yelp, and Raven fired three more shots across the wall.

  There are four left, Raven said.

  We only have room for three, Andrea replied. Raven fired another round into the wall.

  There are three left, Raven said. They all have their hands up.

  Tycho, cloak up, Andrea said. “One of you open the door. Slowly,” she called out to them.

  I faded out of view and raised my weapon.

  He’s moving, Raven announced. The door unlocked and swung open into the room. I could see a man with dirty blonde hair standing just inside the doorway. There was a man and woman who were on their knees further into the room, and two men bleeding onto the carpet from head wounds just past them.

  Clear it, Tycho.

  I leaned around the doorframe to check the adjacent walls before stepping into the room. It was hard to believe things had been this simple, and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  We’re clear, I reported.

  “You, by the door, come out slowly,” Andrea commanded.

  He did as he was told. I decloaked in front of the two kneeling on the floor with my weapon raised. It had the intended effect, and they looked like they’d just seen a ghost. Vincenzo came into the room moments later and bound both of their wrists with slip-ties.

  As we ushered them out of the main bedroom and into the living room, Thomas spoke out loud. “StateSec is responding to this location. I’m interfering with drone surveillance, but we have three minutes before ground forces arrive.”

  Andrea nodded. “That’s more than enough. Stay on top of it. Vincenzo, place mines in the penthouse access. Raven, Tycho, on me.” She shouldered her rifle and turned to our prisoners. “Go to the roof,” she said.

  Two of them began walking immediately, but the man with dirty blonde hair stood his ground and looked at Andrea with something like mild amusement. She drew her sidearm and motioned up the stairs. “I hate repeating myself.”

  His eyes went to the gun, then back to Andrea. He nodded, smiled, then turned and joined the other two prisoners. Raven took point and led the way with Thomas. I filed in behind our captives and walked with Andrea. I could see she was distracted with her dataspike, likely calling in our extraction.

  When we stepp
ed out onto the roof, Raven shouldered her weapon and took a blue case from her field kit. She walked a few meters away and set it down on the rooftop, dragging a long cable behind her. Thomas slipped a much larger case off his back and pulled similar cabling and a set of harnesses from it.

  He held the harnesses out to me. “Someone on the StateSec network is being obstinate,” he said. “I need to focus on teaching them the error of their decision.”

  I took the harnesses from him and slipped them around our prisoners, while Thomas waged his invisible war. Vincenzo joined us as I finished with our two androids in tow.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  “Good.” Andrea nodded. “Help Tycho thread the cable. Raven, what’s the status on our balloon?”

  “Launching it now, Chief.” Raven waved to get my attention, then motioned at the cable she’d strung out along the rooftop. I picked it up and saw that it was a thick braid of alloy fiber, each of the eight strands splitting off along the length and ending in a universal clip.

  Vincenzo took the four strands splitting off to the left side into his hands. He clipped one to his harness and walked back to the prisoners to do the same for them. I followed suit as Raven pulled a tab on the blue case and stepped back a few paces. A white balloon rose from the case and grew almost implausibly large.

  It quickly rose into the air, the other end of the alloy fiber braid in my hands trailing behind it. I passed a clip to Raven and walked back to hand one to Thomas, who took it. I heard a faint rumbling in the distance and the not-so-distant sound of sirens.

  “We have less than one minute, Andrea,” Thomas said, securing the clip to his harness with one hand and gesturing to his dataspike with the other.

  “Plenty of time,” she said, approaching the gold and silver androids. “Protocol Zeta 655. Confirmation code 4178L.”

  The androids knelt in unison and bowed their heads. Their graphene spines split open at the neck like blossoming flowers, and thin black rods slipped up from within. Andrea holstered her sidearm, then took each of the rods in hand and pulled them free from the android shells.

  She turned and tossed one to me. “Section 3 would sooner have one of us dead than lose these,” she said and motioned for the last alloy fiber cable.

  I passed it to her, and she attached it to her harness as both the rumbling and the sirens grew louder.

  “StateSec ground forces are on-site,” Thomas reported.

  “That’s fine,” said Andrea.“ Our ride is here.

  The rumble became a roar overhead, and we were suddenly pulled into the air. Like falling in reverse, the city of Xi’an sped by below, receding into the dark behind the clouds and night almost as quickly as we had arrived.

  11

  We flew in silence for a while. It probably had to do with the knowledge that we weren’t really safe until we were well out of RST airspace. Andrea was the first to break the silence somewhere over the Arctic

  “Do any of you speak English?”

  There was no response at first, but then a faint smile crossed the blond man’s lips. “We all speak English,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we have anything to say to you.”

  Andrea raised a hand and motioned at the drop bay. “You might want to rethink that,” she replied.

  “You’re not Bratva, and you’re not Triad. So what are you? NAS? Federation?”

  Andrea didn’t blink.

  “I’m a citizen of the Territories. You don’t have any authority to arrest me.”

  “Who said we were arresting you?”

  He frowned slightly, his brow furrowing.

  “Oh, I have your attention now?” asked Andrea. “I see. You didn’t understand your situation. Well, here are the facts. No one knows we have you, and no one will ever know what happened to you if we decide you can’t be of any use to us.”

  The woman we’d captured gasped.

  “What then? Torture?” asked the blond man.

  Andrea shook her head. “In our experience, the information we get that way isn’t reliable.”

  He gave a cruel smile. “Our experiences differ.”

  “Our time is valuable, and we don’t like to waste it. If you don’t cooperate, you won’t make it out alive. We won’t wait for you to break.” She leaned forward. “Once we get where we’re going, the interrogation starts. If you don’t answer our questions, you’ll be executed.”

  “Everyone dies.” His voice was flat, like he couldn’t care less.

  “Enough, Jovani,” the woman interrupted. “Your reputation doesn’t matter when you’re dead.”

  “I like her. Smart.” Andrea turned to her. “Let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?”

  “My name is Lihua Federova.” The woman was obviously eager to cooperate. “That man is Jovani Pang.” She tilted her chin to point. “That is Sergey Li.”

  Sergey growled something at her in Russian, and Vincenzo responded by smacking him in the face with his pistol. “No communication between prisoners,” he said.

  Jovani was still smiling. “You think this will go unpunished? We’ll see how long that lasts.”

  Andrea didn’t reply. A back-and-forth would have made us look weak. Instead, she gave the three of them time to reflect on their situation. Having several hours to imagine what was in store for them when we landed must have been torture in it’s own right. I recorded their facial topography while I watched them.

  Sergey Li seemed to want to project strength, but his toughness was just a symptom of his obvious fear. He scowled at us for most of the flight, but in the moments when he thought no one was watching, the mask slipped and his brows knitted with anxiety. I was all but sure he would break when it was finally time to question him.

  Lihua Federova was even easier to read. She was clearly terrified. She kept her head down and her eyes on the floor. The drop bay was pressurized and climate-controlled, but she hugged herself as if freezing. I wondered why she had ever gotten involved if she couldn’t handle the fear. I suppose it’s impossible to know ahead of time what you can handle and what you can’t.

  Four hours later, the plane landed. I wasn’t sure where we were when the doors opened. It was all gray sky and mist over an equally gray tarmac and sparse airfield. All I knew for certain was that this wasn’t Lakenheath. Raven and I helped Lihua to her feet and led her off the plane. Vincenzo hoisted Sergei up and shoved him forward when he refused to comply. Jovanni walked off of the plan of his own volition, with Andrea right behind him.

  A group of four men were waiting for us as we stepped off the plane. I could see the Section 3 emblem on the lapels of their black overcoats.

  “Welcome back,” one of the agents said. “We’re here to transport the prisoners to our safehouse. You can interrogate them there if that works for you.”

  “That works perfectly,” Andrea replied.

  Lihua held her hands up. “Please. I’m willing to cooperate.”

  Sergey glared at her. Jovanni chuckled and shook his head. An agent walked over and manacled her wrists, then slipped a black bag over her head without a word. They did the same to the others, before leading them to an armored transport. As the vehicle sped off, an agent marshalled us to a gray sedan. We climbed in and were on the road less than five minutes after landing.

  “I know you’re all tired,” Andrea told us, “but we can’t afford to waste any time here. Interrogation begins as soon as we get to the safehouse. Vincenzo, you’ve got Lihua Federova. Raven, you’re on Sergey Li. I’ll question Jovani Pang.”

  “I’ll monitor their vitals, of course,” Thomas volunteered.

  “That’s a good idea,” replied Andrea.

  I looked at her. “What about me?”

  “I want you with me while I question Jovani Pang,” she replied.

  I nodded. “I think he’s the one with any intel.”

  “The smug ones always are.” She smiled.

  * * *

  Jovani Pang was sitting on a metal chair in a
n empty room. The black bag was still over his head, and his hands were still manacled behind him.

  “I’m sure you want that bag off,” Andrea commented.

  “I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”

  Andrea waited to let his joke fall flat, then started the questioning. “Who do you work for, Mr. Pang?”

  “What kind of question is that? I don’t work for anybody. I am Bratva, but no man can call himself my boss.”

  The word bratva means brotherhood in Russian and was a common term for the Russian Mafia. So Jovani saw himself as an independent operator but was still eager to claim Mafia ties.

  “You’ll need to do better with your lies, Mr. Pang,” replied Andrea. “Why do you think we raided you in the first place?”

  Jovani shrugged. “I don’t care or claim to know the mind of dogs. You serve your masters. That is not my line of business.”

  “We took you because we know what you’ve been up to. We know all about your plans.”

  “Then you know me better than I do. I don’t even know my plans. I do what I want, when I want. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Sol Federation Secretary-General Claudette de Beauvoir.”

  That seemed to throw him. He sat silently for a long moment, then spoke in a more subdued voice. “You know what? I changed my mind. I’m not so comfortable after all.”

  Andrea reached over and pulled the mask from his head. He sat and stared at her, his expression unreadable yet emotional at the same time.

  “Do you know the story of Prometheus,” he asked. “He was a trickster who tried to defy the natural order. He stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals. He was punished for his crime. Chained to a rock in hell to have his liver eaten by vultures. Not until he died, but every day, forever.”

  His eyes narrowed with the last word, and I figured out what I was seeing in his face. It was rage, so tightly controlled that it looked almost calm. Jovani Pang saw himself as an important person. The sort of person you didn’t dream of treating this way. Something divine, being profaned by the unworthy.