One Jump Ahead-ARC

by Mark L. Van Name

  "Let's keep your innards as private as we can," I said. "Hover at a meter and a half, and on my command open a floor hatch. Seal it the moment I'm clear." As Lobo lifted gently above the ground, I put on a self-heating, lightweight, hooded jacket and crouched next to the section of Lobo's floor that would slide clear. "Now."

  The same hatch I'd used for the stealthie on Floordin slid open, and I hopped out. I crouch-walked clear of Lobo, holding my arms straight out at shoulder height the entire time. The snow whipped at me, and the jacket struggled to keep up with the outside temperature. The sides of the hood extended enough past my face to form a bit of a barrier, but the cold still clawed at my skin. I counted on the jacket's IR profile to be so strong that everyone watching on any frequency would see I was approaching with caution.

  A doorway opened in a building maybe twenty meters away. Someone dressed entirely in a white, floor-length coat walked toward me. The person was either quite overweight or heavily padded. When it was close enough for me to see the face, I voted for heavily padded; it appeared to be Lim.

  "Moore," she said, her voice confirming her identity.

  "Lim."

  "You're clean?"

  "Absolutely," I said. "All I want is to talk to you about a business opportunity. I have no weapons and no bad intentions."

  "What about your PCAV?"

  "I own it, so I use it—but in this case, only for transportation."

  "If it acts up at all," she said, "you won't live long enough to finish a sentence. We won't be anywhere that there won't be multiple sights on you."

  "Understood. As long as they can't hear our conversation, we'll be fine."

  "That sort of business?"

  I nodded. "Of course."

  "Fair enough," she said. "Follow me."

  We returned to the building she'd exited and walked straight into summer, the space on the other side so overheated I couldn't get the jacket off fast enough. The building was a hangar, currently empty save for a small table and two chairs in the center of its permacrete floor. Pockmarks and scorched streaks adorned its side and rear light-gray walls. The scent of fuel and oil hung in the warm air. When Lim wasn't using it to meet old comrades, this was a working maintenance facility. The four pairs of guards occupying stations in its black girder rafters were clearly Lim's additions to its standard equipment. When I pointed up at them, she smiled.

  "Why all the security?" I asked.

  Lim motioned to the chairs, and I followed her over, jacket in hand. She raised a gloved hand and ticked off reasons as she walked in front of me. "You ask for a meeting and won't say why. You arrive in a PCAV. We were never tight. And," she chuckled, "my people see so little action that I figured any excuse for a serious drill was worth taking. I made them think you are one seriously lethal ex-soldier."

  She motioned me to sit, took off her coat, and turned to face me.

  To the same extraordinary degree that Earl had stayed as he had been, Lim had changed. Even the standard-issue winter-white fatigues couldn't conceal the modifications to her body. When I'd last seen Lim, she'd been a little taller than most women and boyish, with close-cropped black hair sitting atop a wiry body you'd only realize was female if you saw it naked. This Lim was more gorgeous and astonishingly built than ninety percent of the women I'd ever seen in broadcasts, with large breasts over an obviously flat stomach and enough muscle mass that her uniform bulged at the arms and legs as she moved. She was taller, too, easily as tall as Earl. Where before Lim had shown signs of the mongrel stock from which almost all of humanity has grown, now her body glowed with trendy Asian chic, the folds of her eyelids perfect, the eyes themselves almost black, her lips full and wide, her skin tone an incandescent, perfectly consistent mellow golden hue. Her hair was still the flawless black of starless space, but now she wore it longer, a bit below shoulder length, and in a ponytail.

  "You can close your mouth now," she said, laughing.

  "I apologize," I said. "It's simply that you're amazing. I take it you've made a few mods."

  "More than a few, and all from the best clinics I could find. Everything's organic, pure gene-driven work, nothing surgical." She studied me for a moment. "I can't say I ever bothered to look at you all that closely, but you don't seem any older. Had some work done yourself?"

  One of the benefits of the combination of the changes Jennie made to me and the nanomachines the Aggro scientists melded with my cells is that I never appear to have physically aged past my early twenties. As long as I move around periodically, today's antiaging techniques make me no different from anyone else. Lim was more observant than she was suggesting, however, so I shrugged and forced a chuckle. "No more than the next guy. Who doesn't want to stay looking young?" I changed the subject. "Not that looking as great as you do isn't reward enough, but I never would have figured you for someone willing to drop that much money merely to be a sex bomb. Why?"

  "Business," she said. "I don't have the resources, team, or armament—yet—to land the big bids against the Saw and the others. That reduces me to tracking down the small stuff, and no one remembers the small stuff at contract time. Everyone expects anyone running my kind of business to be a scarred-up old warrior, so I went for the opposite look. They all remember me, and that's my ticket in. Plus, even after thousands of years of lessons to the contrary, I find that most men and a surprisingly large number of women reflexively assume that anyone who looks as sexy as I do is stupid, and that's a negotiating edge I can use. The Law is a security company now, but that's only a start. We're going to be much more."

  "The Law?" I said, laughing a little.

  "The Local Area Weapons Corp.," she said, not even smiling, "my company."

  "How do Earl and the other guys at the Saw feel about that name?"

  "They hate it, think it's a slap at them."

  "Is it?"

  "Of course," she said, still not laughing at all, her face deadly serious. She leaned forward and looked straight into my eyes. "Now, what can I do for you?"

  For a moment my mind jumped the business tracks and led me at high speed toward a contemplation of what this woman, this amazing body in front of me, could do for me, and then I more fully appreciated the power of Lim's approach. I looked briefly away, regained focus, and this time when I gazed into her eyes I made myself see only a person on the other side of a negotiation.

  "You're right," I said. "Your look is a powerful tool. I lost focus for a moment, and immediately I forgot about you as a person and instead thought only about your body as a sex object. I have to work to maintain my focus even now."

  She smiled and leaned back, waiting.

  "In this building, I have no way to verify we're not being recorded," I said. "If we are, however, and you end up working with me, you'll have at least as much to lose as I will, and probably more, because your business provides services to corporations and governments. I honestly recommend you not record this; you can always decide later which of your team to tell."

  "No recording," she said, the push of her cuff button so slight I almost missed it.

  "I want to hire you."

  "That's it? You could have saved us both a lot of trouble by saying so in your message. We have a rate card for our services and—"

  I cut her off. "No," I said. "I don't want to hire your company. I want to hire you."

  She shook her head slowly and exhaled loudly. "No," she said. "That's not what we do. We provide security and combat services. You choose the service, and I choose the appropriate staff." She studied my face for a moment. "I am curious, though. As I said earlier, we were never closer than any two other humps who served together, and as I recall the last mission we were on didn't end to your liking. So, why me?"

  "I understand your company doesn't do this, but I don't want your company. I want you. The reason why is simple: I need one person, someone I know, to help me solve a problem. I can't afford the time to try out someone new."

  "Your problem is not my problem," she
said. "Why should I even consider this?"

  "Three reasons," I said, ticking them slowly off on the fingers of my right hand in the same manner she had earlier. "First, money. Either I can pay you, or you can gamble, take nothing up front, and get half of a much larger amount if this works out the way I think it will. Second, the potential win for your company. If this goes well, the Frontier Coalition will emerge with more power than it has now, and helping it get that power should prove useful for you." I paused, leaned forward, and watched her closely. "Third, the action. Unless you've changed more than your body, part of you still craves it, and running prison security can't satisfy that craving." I slowly waved my arm to take in the men in the rafters. "This drill wasn't only for your company; it was also for you."

  "Prison security is serious work," she said, "with the potential to run hot at any time."

  "I'm not denying that," I said, "but has it gone hot since you've been on the job? When did you last get a chance to use your fighting skills?"

  "I work out and shoot every day," she said, sounding defensive.

  "I never doubted you'd stay in shape," I said, easing up my tone, leaning back. "If I did, I wouldn't have approached you. All I'm suggesting is that a little real action might interest you."

  She thought for a few seconds, then put as much sarcasm as she could muster into her voice as she said, "And you expect me to sign up for some mysterious mission because you need someone?"

  "Of course not. I'll run it down for you on two conditions."

  She raised her left eyebrow in question and motioned me to continue.

  "You tell me that you'll honestly consider it, and you give me your word not to tell anyone if you choose not to do it."

  She was quiet for longer this time, either considering it or playing me; I couldn't tell which.

  "Okay," she said. "I'll honestly consider it, and if I don't take it, I won't tell anyone."

  "Fair enough," I said. "Here's the short form: For reasons I won't go into, Jose Chung, the Xychek head on Lankin, put a bounty on my head. That's my problem. He also has Xychek buying arms from a private dealer and not reporting those weapons to the FC in the inspections. If anyone could prove to the FC that Xychek was buying those weapons, Xychek would lose power in this region—and the FC would get correspondingly stronger. That's the big-play angle at the end. The answer to both problems is the same: We kidnap Chung. I persuade him to drop the bounty and confess to the arms deals, and everyone but Xychek wins. I'd do it alone, but I can't. I'll go over the setup if you decide to help, and you'll get to design the final attack plan with me."

  "A snatch?" she said. "Of the head of one of the two biggest corporations in the region? Even if we succeed, no corporation will ever trust me after this."

  "Sure they will," I said, "because you'll stay anonymous. Chung will know about me, but he doesn't need to ever see you. You remain a hired gun he never meets. We snatch him, I interrogate him and persuade him to help me, and then we turn him over to the right FC people."

  She stood and grabbed her coat. "I'll consider it," she said, "as I promised. What's the timing?"

  "As soon as you can get me an answer," I said. "If you're in, we'll go in Lobo—"

  "Lobo?" she said.

  "My PCAV," I said. "The AI's good enough that most of the time I think of it as a person."

  "You need to spend more time around real people," she said. She headed for the door and motioned me to follow. "Call me in the morning. We're done until then."

  * * *

  I spent the night in Lobo in high orbit over an almost entirely desert continent on the other side of Velna. I'd considered taking Lim's advice and going into Dishwa to spend some time among people, but I decided not to push my luck in case Xychek security had a company-wide advisory about the bounty.

  When I called Lim in the morning, the construct passed me straight through to her. Her face filled the display Lobo opened. I was struck again by her beauty and its effectiveness: Concentration was as hard as she wanted it to be.

  "Earl backed your story," she said, the abruptness of the greeting at odds with the sweet look on her face. "He'd love to see us prove Xychek was arming illegally. You forgot to mention he was going to help."

  "Not my place to tell his business," I said, appreciating at the same time how close she and Earl must have been for him to have told her of his possible involvement.

  "So I'm in," she said, "but with three conditions."

  "And they are?"

  "One: If this goes right, I get half of any fee the FC pays for the Xychek information, and you credit the Law with doing half the work. I'd love to get the FC to see us as useful for more than prison security."

  "Fair enough," I said. Her desire to impress the FC had the potential to help me lower my exposure in this whole mess. "In fact, I'd be happiest if the FC sees the Law as having organized the whole affair and if I appear to be just one more member of your team—though I still get half of any fee."

  "Even better," she said. "Don't bother to thank me for the opportunity for the low profile."

  "Go on."

  "Two: You don't tell anyone about my involvement without my prior permission, so if this plan goes nova, the Law had nothing to do with it. As far as my staff knows, I'm heading out on vacation with a heavily armed and more than a little psychotic ex-lover."

  "No problem," I said. "If we blow this, I expect we won't be worrying about anything other than survival."

  "Three: We don't go until we both agree on the plan, and I use my own weapons. I'm happy to supply you, too, but regardless of what you choose, if I'm going into action I'm using my own gear."

  I paused, considering her demand. This one was tough, because small-team missions need single leads, and I already had strong ideas about how I wanted this one to go.

  I must have pondered it longer than I realized, because she said, "None of these are negotiable, Moore."

  "I have no problem with using your weapons," I said, "and I'm fine with both of us having to agree on the plan. We can work on it here, before we head to Lankin, because Lobo has all the intel we need. But, you have to accept two key points."

  "And they are?"

  "When the mission goes live, I'm in charge, and we make this as nonlethal as possible."

  She was quiet for a few moments, then nodded her head. "I can live with both of those," she said.

  "Then we're on," I said.

  "Deal," she said. "Pick me up at noon at the landing area where we met." The screen blanked.

  "Rather abrupt, this woman," Lobo said. "Still, she is human, so I bet she won't end up in storage for any of the mission."

  I was already looking forward to working with the two of them.

  Chapter 19

  Three days later, I was lying on my belly in the underbrush bordering the road about a hundred meters outside the main entrance to Chung's estate. Sweat ran down my back, arms, and legs as I sweltered in the heat-blocking camo blanket I'd wrapped around me. From the outside, I read as IR-neutral. Inside, I was baking, already missing the winter of Velna. Night was tamping down the last bits of daylight like a gravedigger smoothing the ground over a freshly buried casket. The climate control in the sealed suit Lim had provided was barely working, but I couldn't complain about its comm helmet: the faceplate shifted its light sensitivity with the setting sun so the scene in front of me remained clear and sharp at all times.

  In the heads-up display I checked the small mirrors of Lobo's monitor and Lim's display. Lobo was necessarily too far away from the entrance behind Chung's estate for his sensors to be able to pick up much visual detail, but nothing they showed indicated any problem. Lim lay in a position much like mine but on the opposite side of the estate, and her display remained still and boring, exactly as it should be.