The Centurion's Empire

by Sean McMullen

  The attack generated a report that was transmitted to the other side of the Atlantic:

  Seeker bion targeted on implants in Luministe agent Lucel Hunter. Successful impact took place at 3.17 pm Houston time in the Nin-gyo compound, Waugh Drive, Houston. Microcamera images from the seeker indicate that the implant carrier was an adult Doberman bitch, and subsequent datafarm sifting indicated that it

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  was part of the compound's security pack, and was designated by the name T-rexette.

  Lord Wallace crumpled the hard copy and flung it across the Deep Frigidarium. For a second time the Luministe agent had cheated death and evaded him.

  Within three minutes of leaving the freeway Lucel had exchanged her Sundart for a laundered Toyota Earthway electric sedan and sealed Hall's case inside Faraday cage mesh to smother any surviving beacons. By the time her former implants had attracted the seeker bion, she was in a shielded workshop in Eastward, watching a framescreen where a military surplus bomb disposal unit was drilling into Hall's charred metal case.

  "Checkin' the air," said the Creole technician as a probe replaced the drill. "Nitrogen, ninety-nine parts, one part argon. Someone's paranoid."

  "I want the contents, nothing else," said Lucel.

  "Hell lady, you'd sure be a kook if you just wanted the case. Sending in the camera." A silver cable with a surface like fine scales replaced the gas sensor probe, and an image of the inside of the case filled the framescreen. It was a jumble of paper notes, insulated sample phials and datacards, all stirred together by the explosion that had killed Hall. The back of the lock came into view. There was a red plastic lozenge bonded to the surface.

  "Now that's a gas-magnetic Shalis. North Ward got a batch in from Switzerland two years ago. A magnetic key shuts it down, otherwise it flames the goods if someone forces the lock and lets in oxygen. It's not a problem, a coat of polymer will make it think everything's dandy."

  "Or you could cut the case open in a nitrogen atmosphere."

  "Sure could, but poly is cheaper . . . hey now, lookey here. Another one on the back hinge. It's white, and, and shit, I never seen that type."

  "Like you said, someone's paranoid," Lucel reminded him. "You'd better hurry."

  "Think I'll go for poly and the N-two flood before I cut."

  "Listen to me!" snapped Lucel. "Just use nitrogen, and work fast." "I'd rather—" "Do it!" Once the chamber was flooded with nitrogen the tech made a narrow slit in the case and removed the cards and paper notes with a suction grapple. The phials needed a wider hole, but it took only fourteen minutes from the first drillhole to empty the insulated case.

  "No beacons, no sleepers, it's all yours," he said as he took a tray from the chamber's airlock. "If you—holy shit!" Flame and fumes belched from the incisions in the top of the case, quickly filling the chamber with yellowish-brown smoke.

  "So the white one was on a timer," said Lucel as she emptied the tray into her Faraday-cage bag.

  "Someone's real seriously paranoid," agree the tech, staring into the opaque smoke. The River Oaks checkpoint on Westheimer Road was all soft-contour white moldings and lattice-weave barrier pickets, but it had the strength and firepower to stop an old-style tank. To the east of it the suburbs were like a huge, exclusive, high-security condo and the checkpoint was as much to say your rates at work to those within as keep out to unauthorized drivers.

  Lucel's ID was for a wealthy British tourist driving a sensibly downmarket car while outside the exclusive Greenpark independent municipalities. The security guards waved her through with no more than routine facial profile scans. She drove to the hotel where she was staying, which was part of the Greater Galleria Center. The zone where she parked the Toyota was legal, but it would vanish within the hour with no questions asked and no alarm raised. Lucel scanned her hotel room very carefully before opening the Faraday-cage bag. With her dataspex plugged into a reader she examined the cards in turn. They were mostly scan data on Vitellan, thorough and meticulous scan data. Some of Hall's notes and impressions were there as well,

  under an encryption that took an hour of commercial processor time to break.

  Lucel had began to download data from software agents that she had left to monitor certain network lines. While working for the Luministes in Paris and Durvas, she had also been working for herself, and to an agenda that nobody could have suspected. The software agents cleared their data buffers and reset their address registers to a number of industrial espionage agencies once they had downloaded, giving both Durvas and Luministe systems security staff something to discover and purge before they had supposedly done any damage—and Lucel had plenty of other agents hidden in positions of trust. Both Durvas and Luministe Security would report an intrusion foiled before any data had been collected, so it was a win-win situation for all concerned. The encrypted messages that Lucel assembled had been further disguised by seeming outwardly innocent and unconnected, but once gathered together they interlocked to tell a very different story. That story was now negotiable currency in certain circles.

  Lucel approached the SpanTurf blockhouse the following evening. It was a calm, overcast dusk, and the reek from a breakdown in the sewage works just over the Buffalo Bayou was heavy and cloying on the cold air. The streets had a thin sprinkling of cars and pedestrians, about what one might expect for a chilly Houston evening. Stopping before the blockhouse entrance, she spoke to a comm beneath her wrist, then folded her arms and waited. A cell of five youths approached in a wide curve, guns out but held casually. They wore no tag-patches, she noted. Ronin-G kids, out to build reputations, out to get patronage.

  "You don't know where you be, slut."

  "Yeah, you don't know."

  "You got stop here, you stop here a lot."

  "You know, stop a lot, you know."

  Most of them wanted their say, and they were loud and brash. One had glazed eyes and did not speak at all, he just held his Mexican copy of a Makarova to Lucel's head. The others pushed and pummeled her, but made no attempt to force her to go with them. They were posturing for the monitor cameras in front of the headquarters building. The leader spat in her face. Spittle dripped from the lens of her dataspex.

  "I spit you, dirty bitch, but you not worth spittin' on. You owe me a favor, you know? How you gonna pay me back?" The one with the glazed eyes continued to point the gun at her head.

  They know I'm here, they're just watching the show on their screens in there, Lucel decided. They probably even sent these kids to pump the muscle. Sorry boys, nothing personal.

  Her head snapped about, deflecting the gun as her elbow came up into the boy's chin, and she was drawing her own gun as she spun and lashed the toe of her boot into the leader's teeth. Guns crackled, Lucel staggered as her armor stopped a bullet high on her chest, then she fired at the neck in an open shirt and the sternum beneath a red T-shirt. Suddenly everything froze, Lucel and the last youth pointing their guns at each other.

  "If you so much as move a muscle I'll kill you where you stand," Lucel said firmly. "You're pointing at my tits but I've got armor. / have a bead on your head. Drop the gun."

  He dropped the gun. The doors of the blockhouse slid open and two security guards dashed out into the street. Both carried Mossenberg slide-action combat shotguns. Urine suddenly stained dark at the crotch of the youth's citi-gray slacks as one of the Mossbergs drifted over to take a bead on him. The two other surviving Ronin-Gs got to their feet, dribbling blood and spitting teeth.

  Lucel turned to the youth who had been holding a gun to her head. The tumble-shot was steady in her hand.

  "You with the eyes," she said coldly. "If some scumbag holds a gun to my head I like to think that he's paying attention. I don't think you were paying attention just then. Are you paying attention now?"

  "Yes ma'am, 'deed I am ma'am, I'm sorry ma'am!"

  "Well, I don't believe you, I think you need a reminder."

  She fired into his left k
nee. He doubled over, howling, then toppled to the sidewalk. Lucel put a boot on his throat and jammed the barrel into his open mouth.

  "Are you paying attention?" His shrieks transmuted into whimpers. 'Wow you're going to pay attention with every step you ever take. Say thank you, ma'am."

  Lucel removed the gun from his mouth, but it took him some moments to articulate the words. She turned to the other two.

  "You may be thinking payback for your Ronin-G dead, but forget it kiddies. If I ever see any of your faces anywhere I'm going to make sure you take a week to die. You just touched something so fucking big that you wouldn't believe it." She played a burst about their feet and they jumped, then she turned to the guards. "You're late!" she snapped at the blank blastmasks. "All this shit is your fault."

  "Lady, we had orders—"

  "Shut up and take me in there! Now!"

  Lucel would not see Roarch before she was allowed to wash her face. He was scowling at an image on his wallscreen as she entered his office.

  "Did you have to mess up those kids so bad?" he asked as the scene replayed on the wall beside him.

  "It was a lesson in manners. Good manners are the gateway to the upper classes."

  "That's shit."

  She shrugged. "The right to spit in my face and point a gun in my ear comes with a very high price tag. Besides, you made it happen by leaving your fucking door shut so long. You wanted me taught what a mean fucker you are, but you

  went to school instead."

  Roarch switched to realtime on the wallscreen. The living youths were gone, leaving smears of blood, piss, and vomit. The dead still lay where they had fallen.

  "You got a nerve and then some, lady," he said as he powered off the screen. "At least I'll talk to you—none of the Ward Lords wanna hear any sound from you but splat after you torched their doctor."

  "Not me. I do know who bought the pipes that hit Hall and Baker, though."

  In spite of having a Shakespearean imprint, Roarch forgot himself and blinked in surprise. He recovered quickly.

  "We already got all what we want on how Hall and Baker died, ungrateful bitch. They patched" you back together, then

  you pointed your Luministe iceheads straight at them."

  "Not so. I have proof."

  "That's shit, I done a lot of scans and filters. The tiltfan was hired through their LA temple. The Go-Bucks were ridin'

  the contract, and right now they're in so much pain they wish their folks had never screwed."

  "So why did I shoot out the tiltfan?"

  Roarch hesitated. "Uh, coverin' I guess."

  "Now who's talking shit, Roarch? I was trying to get the real hit squad before they locked on to the car. Get a fact! I chased that damn car for two miles without firing a shot, didn't I? I was trying to protect Halll" Roarch snorted, then turned away from her and paced beside his desk. Lucel folded her arms and remained standing.

  "The Go-Bucks were paid in clean, mixed bills," she said when it became clear that Roarch was not going to say any more.' "I mean shit, the Pope himself could have handed over that stack of bills, but if he said he was a Luministe they would have still believed him."

  "How'd you know they were paid in bills?"

  "The Yakuza were very helpful after I tipped them about a hit on their datavend, Seishi. They own the franchise that the Go-Bucks work. They also want to taste blood from whoever dropped a half-pound of covalent into their Waugh Drive embassy."

  "I heard about that. Shredded the bodytats off a couple of grandsans by the pool. They're sore."

  "I've got something else you might like to know about," she admitted, her eyes narrowing. "I can finger who did the World Three Mall attack, and provide an audit trail."

  Roarch swallowed. World Three Mall had been a showpiece market for gang commerce, cooperation, and responsibility, and the attack by the unidentified crew of the stolen police tiltfan had annihilated more than the lives of 270 people. Years of public relations work and millions of dollars in

  potential business had been blasted out of existence, so whichever Ward Lord tracked down the culprits at the top of that contract would gain a lot of status.

  "Okay, okay, that's an offer too good to refuse," said Roarch, sitting on the edge of his desk and spreading his arms wide.

  "Who then?"

  "Durvas."

  "Durvas? As in the Village? Now hold on. Durvas was picking up the bills for that Vitellan icehead."

  "Durvas had no choice, he was under SkyPlaz security. Check the clinic's records: the contract was to keep Vitellan isolated from everyone, Durvas included. I should know, I wrote it."

  Roarch pressed his hands against his head, wanting to believe, yet still unwilling.

  "This sounds like so much shit," he muttered, feeling the blood vessels pump against his palms, his mind devoid of a better reply.

  "Okay then, I didn't know you take lumps quietly."

  "Hey now, I get one, I give ten," shouted Roarch, striding over and waving a ringer at her as if he could shoot it. "What's for us to see?"

  "I have a set of encrypted strings from the Luministe headquarters in Paris. They contain instructions to the LA Luministe Temple of Pure Light to buy the contracts with old bills."

  "You just said they didn't do it."

  "Uh, uh. The Luministes did the legwork, but the orders came from Durvas. I had a pattern filter on the Durvas research node, and an algorithm which compares that with outgoing traffic from the Luministe headquarters in Paris—even with encryption. I got a match dating back before Hall was torched, but it took a lot of time and CPU credit to break the message. By then it was late—too late, as it happened. I can tell you about an old man and a dead man, both a long way underground. Security, layouts, equipment, all that sort of thing. Send a payback team, I'll be project leader if you like—"

  "Hold it, just hold it!" shouted Roarch, holding his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. "What do you get out of this?"

  "The same as you: payback. I'm a mean bitch and I'm into revenge. Play back the monitor of what just happened on your doorstep if you don't believe me."

  Roarch was beginning to feel comfortable with Lucel, and he suspected that she would let him have all the credit for the payback as long as he provided the resources. He sat down and put his feet on his desk, pressing his fingertips together.

  "You're incommin' on a deal, mean bitch," he said . smoothly, "but I'm curious to know what Durvas did to get your

  gripes so sharp."

  "Uh, uh. That's on a need-to-know basis, and there's only one man alive who needs to know." D u r v a s , B r i t a i n : 2 5 J a n u a r y 2 0 2 9 , A n n o D o m i n i

  Anderson stumbled, then seized a railing to steady himself as he cut through the gardens of Durvas University on the way to the shafthead of the Deep Frigidarium. What are the warning signs of a hidden imprint? Blank spots, vertigo, atypical memories. He walked on, thinking carefully about his morning routine. He remembered breakfast in his bathrobe, showering under needles of hot water and being shaved by his new GE grooming unit. After that... nothing was missing. He arrived at the shafthead building after what should have been a nine-minute walk. He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes, ten seconds. No unaccounted time in his routine. Perhaps he really was working too hard. At the shafthead he had the security crew check him with particular care. He stripped completely, then thought the better of his morning routine and had a voluntary enema and stomach pump. Half an hour later Lord Wallace called him as he sat eating a second breakfast of thoroughly scanned food and wearing a security uniform from stores.

  "The duty officer says you are putting yourself through Core A-plus-plus security, old boy," said a hologram of Lord Wallace's head hovering just above his plate. "Anything I should know about?"

  "I had a dizzy spell on the way over," Anderson replied defensively. He was the Durvas marshal, the head of the se- curity system. The idea of admitting that he might be a security risk did not come easily
. The hologram bent forward and peered at him carefully. "Anything else? Time unaccounted for, lightheadedness, unfamiliar clothing, odd smells on your breath?"

  "Nothing, and the scans are all clear. No implants, no overlay, no obvious imprints, although the microimprint of a trigger would take hours to find."

  "What about VCA?"

  "Viral Culture Analysis shows nothing out of the catalogue."

  "And nanoware?"

  "That needs a full blood exchange to do properly, especially if we're looking for a multiphase biological mimic on a random switch cycle. I'd be two hours in the unit, and another to get the results. Still, I could do it." The little hologram of Lord Wallace brought his fingertips together at the point of his chin. His eyebrows converged slightly with the hint of a frown.

  "I need to speak to you soon."

  "So? You're doing it now."

  "It must be off-comm," the holographic Lord Wallace insisted.

  "We've got encryption." "Encryption's not good enough."

  "That serious? All right then, three hours more, that's when I get the all-clear."

  "And if they find some harmless anomaly? We might wait days, and I don't have days. We don't have days."

  "I'd prefer the screening to be finished," said Anderson reluctantly. "It's the proper procedure."

  "I wrote the procedure, and this can't wait. Look, meet me in the screen room of the Deep Frigidarium. That has total privacy and is as secure as anywhere on earth."

  Anderson pushed his plate away and sat back, arms folded and defiant. "Lord Wallace, the last time we bent our own rules some screwy Luministe faction blasted their way in and—"

  "I know what they did, better than anyone. You will be behind an armored, blast-proof partition, it will be quite safe."

  "You hope. What could be so damn important that we have to take risks again?" "It is time for Black Prince." Anderson sat up and put both hands on the table, staring intently at the hologram.