by Dave Swavely
“Stay down. The shooting stopped, but don’t count your chickens. Tell Lynn.”
“Michael says stay down,” he said dutifully. “And don’t count our chickens.”
Min and his shield also remained in place, as we all waited for a report from the valley below. It didn’t take long.
“We’ve got him,” Terrey said. “He’s dead—fried his own junk. But have Min take you back to the house, just in case there’s another one somewhere down here.”
“I’m on the line,” Min said. “I hear you.” The big cyborg turned his body 180 degrees to face Lynn and Jon, with the extended shields staying exactly where they were (another impressive trick). He moved slowly toward the two bodies on the ground, telling them that they could stand up when he was close enough.
“Thank you, my friend,” I said to him. “How did you know where to land and stand?”
“As I was making the jumps,” Min said, wrapping Jon and Lynn in his shimmering wings, “the triplets calculated the only possible trajectory of the bullets, using the Eye and their sweep data, and they transmitted it to me right before my last jump.”
“What about the baby?” Lynn asked, and I could see she was worried about being thrown to the ground so violently.
“Do you have your phone?” I said, and she got the idea. She pulled it out, brought up the BabyView app, and was relieved to see Lynley’s heart beating—though it was beating slightly faster than usual.
“She’ll be fine,” Min said. “It takes a lot more than that to hurt a baby inside its mother. And this will make your hearts race even more…”
He gathered both Lynn and Jon into his arms and leapt into the air, carrying them back to a safer place closer to the house. It made me wonder how far he could jump without the weight of several people in his arms. I also wondered what we might learn from the body of the sniper and the ballistics he had fired, when Terrey and his Trois were done examining them.
28
ARMED TO THE TEETH
“The good news is that we’re all still alive,” Terrey said, when everyone was gathered together that afternoon for the first time since the gravesite episode. “The bad news is that we almost weren’t.”
We were meeting in the cafeteria of the mountain base, which was one of the few parts of it that had a view. It was toward the top of the hill, and one wall of it was transteel, which allowed the people inside to see out, while from outside they were hidden by a large holographic cover, similar to the one that concealed the mouth of the hangar bay, which was several floors below. The protection team had eaten some lunch—mostly the astronaut food in tubes that Terrey had brought along. They were too rattled from the events of the morning to eat normal food, even though Tyra had been faithfully testing all of it. But the sniper had gotten by Terrey and the Trois, so clearly something else could as well. My friend was presently addressing this failure.
“Our opponent had us in check, and almost in checkmate,” he said. “Somehow he was more informed and aware than we were about the Ares’ Sunday morning habits, and managed to plant the sniper just beyond the range of our sweep. He also must have correctly calculated how far out we would conduct the sweep, and he knew that when Michael and Lynn walked that far out to the graves, they would pass just barely into the sniper’s range. I’m very sorry that I botched this, and put you both into danger.” He nodded at Jon and Lynn, who was still too shaken to go back up to the house.
“At least we know what the yellow part of the kaleidocide is,” Stephenson said. Terrey had told us that the sniper was wearing dark yellow and camouflaged in a grapevine of the same color. “And we know that part is over.” Stephenson and Korcz had spent the rest of the morning extending their sweep another five hundred meters on all sides of the house, and were fairly confident that the sniper had been the only one.
“Yeah,” Terrey agreed. “And we actually might know more than that. I thought to myself, How did Sun know about your Sunday mornings? And I had the triplets search the net about it. They found an interview where Michael was asked about remembering his daughter and shared how they visit her grave every week—obviously that was the source. Then it occurred to me: What else could the enemy have gleaned from information on the net? So we searched it from his perspective, trying to find data that could give him ideas, and we found another interview where Michael said that he and Lynn have a glass of red wine from Artesa almost every night.”
That was true. I didn’t remember saying it in an interview, but we did love the exclusive wines from our favorite winery, which was built into a hill between Napa and Sonoma. We kept a stash of their limited release and single vineyard wines, at over $100 per bottle, in our Le Cache portable wine cellar (over $7,000 for that beast).
“So you think he might try to poison us through the wine,” I said through the room speakers, and tried to introduce a little levity: “At least Tyra will have a good time tasting all of it.”
“I don’t think anyone should taste or drink it,” Terrey said. “It’s too high on the possibility scale.”
“First you tell me I can’t have my bananas,” Lynn spoke up, “and now you want to take away my wine? Sheesh.” She was smiling, but I could tell that her hands were shaking a little.
“There’s too good of a chance that Sun heard that interview.”
“What about the bottles that were already here?” she said. “We can drink from them … I did last night. We just won’t buy any new ones.”
“I wouldn’t even mess with the ones you already had,” Terrey insisted. “At least not anything you bought in the last year or so, since that interview was broadcast. I’ve underestimated Sun once already, I won’t again. It’s too easy to substitute a bottle or introduce something into one.” He shrugged at Lynn, as if to say “Sorry,” when he noticed her head sagging down. “But I would keep buying them.”
“What?” she said.
“Order more bottles from Artesa, to draw out any possible attempt. We’ll scan the packaging for explosives, and we’ll open the bottles and test the wine. If we get a positive, at least we’ll know what that we found the red-colored threat, and smoked it out. And maybe we can trace the foreign elements.
“Speaking of traces,” Terrey continued, “Go is working in the lab right now, a couple floors below us.” I noticed for the first time that only two of the triplets were in the room—Ni and San, presumably, though I couldn’t tell them apart yet. “She has the sniper’s body there and will be seeing if we can retrieve any information from his implants, which is unlikely because they were so well-fried when he killed himself, and if his rifle can be traced, which is also unlikely. He’s not even Chinese, so I’m assuming any connections between him and Sun are quite well-hidden. We also extracted two of the fired rounds from the ground near the graves, and she’ll be studying them as well.
“There was one curious thing about the sniper, in case any of you might have any ideas. I don’t know what to make of it, if anything at all. His ammunition had been stored in a belt that was painted red, unlike the yellow that covered every other part of his clothing.”
“So maybe the sniper was the yellow and the red,” Stephenson said, obviously interested in the colors like he was in the meaning of his dreams. “And we don’t have to worry about the wine so much.”
“I don’t know,” Terrey said. “Seems odd to me, two colors. But what was also odd is that the cases on the belt, which held the bullets, were not the typical equipment used for that purpose. The belt was a highly secure, waterproof container like we used for amphibious operations.” He looked up as if he were thinking about me, his fellow soldier, and added, “When we were in the military.”
“Do you have any theories?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said, “except that I’m wondering if he traveled to his position through water. But there’s not any around there. Like I said, it could be nothing, but colors never seem to be random with this barmy Red wanker.”
“What I’m most concerned a
bout right now,” I said, “is that Lynn was involved in this. I want her as far away from the double as possible, starting now. And Lynn, if you don’t feel safe enough in the house, Min should stay with you there. Her safety is a priority over the double, Terrey. No offense, Jon.”
“I agree,” Terrey said. “No offense, Jon. That’s fine for Min to stay with Lynn, but you should know that a tech from Chinatown Underground is on his way here to take a look at the big guy, because he took some serious pounding acting as a shield earlier. Do you have a problem with the tech coming up to the house?”
I told him I didn’t, because I knew that the techs from Cyber Hole who did maintenance on Min were also refugees from Sun’s autocratic regime, and had always been trusted implicitly by Saul Rabin. Besides, even if something really weird happened with the tech, I was confident that Min could protect himself and Lynn quite well, even if he was a little banged up.
“So, Lynn, you go up there,” I said to her, “and I’ll talk to you at the house. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, still shaken but trusting in me, and in Min. The big brown mountain of a machine-man escorted her out of the room.
“One more thing, for Lynn and Jon.” I said this because looking at Min reminded me of something. “If you do go out of the house together again, for Terrey’s photo op or whatever, make sure you have the shields he gave you. Now that you know why he did, hopefully you’ll think to use them.”
“You should be in the personal protection business, Michael,” Terrey said after Lynn and Min had left.
“You’re not gonna be,” I barked, rather impulsively, “if you don’t take care of my wife.”
“Easy, mate,” he said, holding his hands up. “I wanted to store her somewhere, but she—”
“I know, I know. She insisted on staying in the house. But you’ve got to juggle all that. That’s what you’re being paid for.”
“Actually, it’s not—I’m being paid to keep you alive,” he said. “Anyone else is usually extra.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. You want me to thin out my team more, or you want me to focus on her more, you should pay me more.”
“So you’re saying that if I pay you a million five per day, instead of a million, my wife will be safer?”
“Yeah, she’ll be on my radar more. She’ll figure into the plans more.”
“Okay, done. You’re now being paid to protect her, too.”
“That was easy,” he said, and raised his eyebrows at the others in the room, who had been listening to our conversation.
“I’m not laughing, Terrey,” I said. “If anything happens to her, I will hold you personally responsible.”
“Whoa, mate,” he said. “I’m not the one trying to kill her.”
“Me. You mean trying to kill me.”
“I mean I’m trying to save her life, too. Always have been. But now I’ll try even harder.”
* * *
A little later, I plugged one of the screens on the wall into the system at my house atop the hill base, and found Lynn moving around the kitchen, organizing and apparently beginning to prepare some dinner. She didn’t like to sit still for very long under normal circumstances, and probably felt an even stronger need to keep busy under these. She also didn’t like to wear an earpiece or glasses, and was one of the few people I knew who actually held her OutPhone up to her ear when she was talking on it. I had given her various earpieces and glasses over the years, and even tried an expensive gold necklace with tiny speakers and a mic built in, telling her that she could hurt her neck by working around the house with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, or get into an accident by holding it when she was driving. But she had consistently refused to use any of those beyond the first week or so, and usually ended up losing them (including the necklace, unfortunately). So I had given up trying to get her to change, and that’s why I often used the net room equipment initially when calling her, and only switched to a more private means when necessary.
In this case I could not only see her in the kitchen, but from the cameras up on the high walls I could also see three figures in the adjoining living room. They were Min, the Chinese tech who had just arrived, and a tall A.I. tool chest that followed the tech into the room on its own power. The white robot looked something like a refrigerator with controls and displays added to its surface, and treaded legs protruding slightly from its bottom.
“I’ve never seen any of your maintenance, Min,” I said, genuinely interested. And I became more so when I realized that I had never taken the time to find out all of the giant’s capabilities. So I said to the tech, who was fiddling with the refrigerator thing, “Could we have a tour of his augmentations?”
Min and the tech said something to each other in Chinese, and I remembered that the Cyber Hole employees didn’t speak English.
“Here,” I said, “let me turn on the room’s translation grid.” I did, and then spoke to the tech again: “Can you understand me now?”
“Shi,” he said, and right after the room said “Yes.”
“Do you want me to say to you the augmentations of this man?” The room translated this with an impressive speed also, and it was surprisingly good translation. But then the man added, “Good apples.” These programs were always a mixed bag, because of the complexities and colloquialisms of all languages. But I got the idea, from the “eager to please” expression on his face.
“Lynn,” I said, “I think you’ll find this interesting.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” she said distractedly, continuing whatever she was doing. “I’ll be listening from over here.”
The front panels of the tool chest swung open, like arms awaiting Min, who stepped into it. As he did, the whole machine sunk lower, hiding at least half of the apparatus that had been showing at the bottom, and making me glad for Lynn’s sake that our wooden floors were built and treated so well. Between the outstretched “arms” of the “medical closet,” as it was called, appeared a digitized display. From directly in front of the closet, where the smaller Chinese man stood, the display was overlaying Min’s body and showing the tech everything he needed to see inside of it.
“I can see already what we must do,” the tech said. “The shield repelled all the bullets. The clothing is not even holes, and not the skin damaged. But the force of blows on the shield pushed right shoulder back, out of line, and right hip. And plate of chest also must be moved forward tiny piece.” A little bit? Seemed like it, but I wondered if the Chinese really used that expression. I also realized that the area around Min’s right side must have been where the sniper repeatedly fired, which meant that the double and my wife had been just behind him at that spot, and well protected by him. It made me grateful again for the loyalty and help of the big bodyguard.
“My tool box can change to operating table,” the tech continued. “But I do not understand if you want me to work on him here. He will be, ah.… without clothing, and with blood.”
“You can use the medlab below,” I said. “But first tell us about his equipment.” I switched cameras on my screen and zoomed in so I could see the body display better.
In the halting translation, but well enough that I could understand most of it, the tech then proceeded to show me what made Min the most state-of-the-art, kickass weapon I had ever seen, even after the many years I served in British special forces. In addition to the Sabon antigravity augmentations in his legs and the Atreides shielding I had just seen in action, the seven-foot cyborg had plasteel armor plating under the skin throughout his body, and retractable rail cannons in his forearms that energized tiny caseless bullets, making them as powerful as a .50 caliber machine gun but only needing a small tunnel in his upper arms to store hundreds of them. They were also able to be fed thousands more from a rig that Min could strap on at a moment’s notice, for combat or high-danger situations.
Then the tech told the cyborg to turn around, so that we could see the display of
his back, which gave the term “shoulder blades” new meaning. In recesses of the plating on his upper back were stored two three-foot swords, which he could reach back and pull out anytime he wanted to wreak hand-to-hand havoc on some unfortunate enemy who would soon be “resting in pieces.” Min could wield the blades with the Atreides shielding extended to his hands, so that he could wade into opponents while repelling their ballistic fire, in the event he ran out of ammunition himself. And below that was something that left me speechless—I wasn’t sure whether to say “Wow” or break out laughing.
“Min,” I said incredulously, “am I mistaken, or do you have a cannon in your arse?”
The weaponry was actually more in his gluteus maximus, but the big cyborg still seemed embarrassed by the question. He stepped backward, out of the medbox, to defend himself like an insecure teenager.
“I must have some way to eliminate threats from the rear, in the melee of battle. So I can fire gas and explosive rounds when needed.” He lifted his big hands and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Where else could I have something like that? Not in my torso, near my vital organs. But there’s plenty of room back there.”
“‘Rear’ and ‘butt’ being the key words,” I laughed, prodded on by his very human discomfort—a side of him I had never seen. “Let me see … clearing out the area with posterior emissions. Well, I guess skunks have been doing that for a long time.”
“And football fans,” Lynn added, from out of my camera view. I didn’t even know she’d been listening.
I noticed that even the Chinese tech was smiling, though I wasn’t sure it was from what Lynn said or what he was about to say.
“He has weapons in his mouth,” the room’s grid announced after the tech said something in Mandarin. I figured this was a wooden translation of “armed to the teeth,” and again was surprised that the Chinese used that expression, too.
I didn’t have long to think about it, though, because at that moment the entire mountain shuddered below the room, causing Lynn to scream out as the lights and her kitchen appliances flickered off and on with several rapid-fire tremors that grew in magnitude. Even though I was only watching from the cottage far away, I was struck hard with the sense that people were dying in the hill below, and that what killed them was racing upward toward the house.