Sentients in the Maze

by Chogan Swan

  “I’ve got them,” Tiana’s voice whispered on the com channel. Her green light drifted by over their heads.

  “Suppressive fire to keep their heads down,” said Jacksie.

  Jonah found another boulder and steadied his weapon on top of it. He aimed for the top of a rock sheltering another gunman and squeezed off a series of shots then changed the magazine.

  “All clear,” Tiana said. “Call to the ground crew from cover. I don’t want to startle them into shooting at me. Their names should be Hodges and Kieler, and one of them is wounded.”

  “Roger one,” said Jacksie. Then he cupped his hands into a megaphone and yelled, “Hodges, Kieler, sitrep. Are you two okay?”

  A voice drifted up from the cover of the vehicle. “Kieler caught a round in the stomach below his vest. They shot up the ASIP, and I can’t get to my MBITR. I can hear you, but I can’t reach it to respond.”

  “I’m on the ground,” Tiana said on the com channel. “And, Mister Hodges, do not move. My gun sights are covering you well within my best range. If your gun turns toward me, you will receive a .458 caliber round where it will do you no good. Now if you are whom you say, give me the code designation and countersign.”

  “Sierra, Tango, Foxtrot, two, zero, niner, eight, one. Arbitrageur.”

  “Arbitrageur,” Austin muttered, “What the hell does that even mean?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Jacksie said.

  Jonah couldn’t see Jacksie’s face in the dark, but his voice sounded like he was grinning.

  “Okay,” Tiana said, “You can take your hand off the wound now. I’ve got him, Mister Hodges. Please get me the med kit from your car and make room for transporting him back to base. Jacksie, check the gunmen to see if any are still alive. I’d like to question them if I can. Jonah, I might need your help here.”

  Jonah snapped on the safety.

  Light from the half-moon—filled in by the night-vision eyepiece—got him down the hill without stumbling in spite of his shaky legs. He intercepted Hodges and took the med kit. Tiana would need him to help her disguise how she handled Kieler’s wound. Jonah popped the med kit open and set it down in front of the patient, covering the view.

  As Tiana worked, pulling the bullet from Kieler's stomach wound then working the repairs back to the entrance point, Jonah pulled items from the kit and followed directions. Mostly he swabbed around the wound.

  “Almost finished,” Tiana whispered. “Prep an outer dressing and hand me the sutures. I can’t completely close the wound myself without raising questions.”

  When she finished, Jonah handed her the dressing and tape, then the pressure pad and wrap for binding.

  “Mr. Hodges, is transport operational?”

  “Yes,” said Hodges, his voice quavered with post trauma adrenaline. “They tried to shoot up the car to make sure we couldn’t retreat, but the armor plate and the airless tires survived.”

  “Any idea who they were?” said Jonah.

  “The drug cartels have stepped up air drops as the border has tightened. My bet is on that. Is Kieler going to be okay?”

  “It looks like he caught a ricochet,” Tiana said. “It came out easily.”

  “Break one,” Jacksie’s voice interrupted on the headset. “No survivors.” After a pause he continued. “Jonah, your shot was redundant. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks, Jacksie.” Jonah said. His stomach flipped again, but less violently this time.

  “Come here on the double,” Tiana said. “We need to move Mister Kieler to medical. He’s stable, but he’ll need blood. I’m going to take a closer look at our attackers first. Mister Hodges, call for a chopper and send our GPS coordinates so they can clean up this mess. Please tell them I’m calling for level-one procedures.”

  Jonah turned off his microphone and leaned closer to Tiana. “If it’s a coincidence, I want to bring in the tribal police. This is their jurisdiction. I don’t want to keep them in the dark.”

  Tiana paused. “I agree, but I want to investigate before I bring in people who might be endangered.”

  Jonah nodded.

  “Help me get him to the car,” Tiana said.

  Jonah stooped and lifted Kieler’s feet as Tiana picked up his shoulders, taking most of the weight.

  Tiana spoke in a low voice as the worked together. “I moved your children to a higher level of protection, but think you should ask them to relocate, at least for now. An unexpected business trip for them until we get this sorted will be easier. It’s a good thing you thought to suggest they apply for work at XYMBI.”

  Jonah pivoted to walk sideways, letting Tiana lead. “I know you waited for me to make that conclusion on my own. You don’t need to stroke my ego.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I agree though. A business trip overseas would be best.”

  “At the risk of stroking your ego, you’ve had more good ideas before I had them than anyone else since I arrived on your planet.” Tiana grinned. “… not counting my first month learning curve.”

  They slid Kiel’s limp body into the back of the SUV. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said and disappeared into the shadows.

  Austin and Jacksie arrived at the SUV. They piled a nest of gear and parachutes around Kieler to keep him from rolling. Jonah walked a few steps away from the SUV in the direction Tiana had gone. He punched the code for their private com channel into the headset. “Tiana, neither the attack in Charleston nor the ambush here strike me as a move from your enemies. Wrong target. Wrong methods. Do the bodies look like drug smugglers?”

  “Agreed to the first,” Tiana’s soft voice, drifted into his ears. “And yes to the second. Gang tattoos on the gunmen and old AK-47s. Their clothes hold trace amounts of cocaine. It could be a coincidence. My guess is that you were targeted for a political assassination, but not connected to this. We’ll stay undercover while we focus on the other front, but I’ll put a good investigative team on it. I’m heading back to you now.”

  In a few seconds, the door opened and Tiana slid into the back seat beside him. She turned and leaned over to check on Kieler as the SUV pulled onto the road and sped to their new home. Jonah closed his eyes, but the tape of the smuggler’s head played on loop in his mind, exploding over and over until Tiana kissed him, pushing her tongue past his teeth. Jonah fell into shadowy dreams.

  Chapter 25 (Race)

  The Sonoran Desert sky glowed with vivid indigo and teal as the sun peeked above the mountains on the eastern horizon. Jonah stroked Serenity with his left hand, making her sing with rapture in soft chords while his right hand caressed out a slow tumble of melody. Neither knew where their lovemaking would take them; the dance was new every morning. This morning’s was Desert Sunrise number thirty.

  It still seemed like a honeymoon to Jonah, though it was really more of a prolonged reunion.

  The final chords faded, and he closed the keyboard cover, stroking it and speaking the words that completed the ritual celebration, “That’s my girl… that’s my good girl.”

  He smiled. Inspired rituals never grew old.

  Serenity had come into his life during the early days of being embroiled in the divorce. When he’d seen her in the basement storage of a local piano tuner. Jonah had fallen in love with the elegant lines buried under the ancient blackened shellac. The resonant bass echoing from her fifty-four inch console’s soundboard had cinched it. He’d taken her home and stripped the gummy shellac from her skin with painstaking love and hours of scrubbing with steel wool and ammonia. The discovery of glowing mahogany molding and veneer underneath had been like finding buried treasure. He’d done what he could with his divorce-strained budget to restore her—partnering with a sympathetic piano technician—but he’d always wanted to do more for her. Jonah had shared his ideas with Tiana, back when they were both low on funds. They’d come up with ideas for a complete renovation, but their unexpected flight left Serenity stranded in Lynchburg.

  Gloria had helped sell his hous
e while he was in Charleston. Most of his things went into storage, but Tiana secretly had Serenity shipped to a piano restoration specialist who’d rebuilt her tuning system and soundboard.

  Her action was all new and now included a customized sostenuto pedal. Keys had all been replaced or rebalanced and fitted with Teflon bushings. The ivories had been removed, brightened, polished and refitted. A wood carver had replaced the plain poplar columns with mahogany that flourished lion’s feet and Art Nouveau female foliate heads matching the rest of her wood.

  Jonah wasn’t sure how much all the work had cost, but guessed it might have been the same as buying a new Steingraeber upright. The resulting action seemed comparable to one, but the sound carried more bass.

  Despite her elegant makeover, Serenity still only asked for a modest twelve-square-feet of floor space. This adobe ranch house in the wilderness would have been cramped with five people and a full-sized grand, but Jonah imagined Tiana was missing her piano in Charleston; the difference between an upright and the gravity-drop action of a grand mattered much more at her level of playing. For Jonah, thinking about the piano they’d left in Charleston seemed unfaithful or illicit somehow. Perhaps he needed to embrace a more polygamous approach to music.

  He rose from the bench and wandered out to the patio, pouring a cup of coffee for himself on the way. The house was on a sheltered rise of ground in the hills west of Tucson. When he sat on the patio at this time of day, he had a view of the morning sun rising and a glimpse of Baboquiveri peak to the southwest. A cactus wren, called to his mate while keeping an eye on Jonah from a nearby velvet mesquite tree.

  A year ago, Tiana had leased five hundred acres from the nation miles away from the XYMBI project. They’d hired local contractors to build the house using adobe bricks made on-sight from the sand and clay excavated for the foundation. The house was off the power grid. It used solar 'step cell' panels and wind turbine 'trees' from France for electrical power. The twenty-inch-thick adobe walls regulated the inside temperature well when coupled with passive solar heat in the winter and swamp coolers and spring-powered fans during the hot months.

  Someone rattled pans in the screened summer kitchen, getting ready for breakfast. Jonah wasn’t sure who was cooking today. His turn wasn’t until Tuesday.

  Jonah opened his laptop to check on the latest developments in the SimSociety models. The project didn’t need him for day-to-day operations at the moment, and he was enjoying the break from the day-to-day administration enforced by his reduced bandwidth.

  The graphics for simulations had taken off after a slew of game designers caught the SST bug and volunteered to add more animation to the game. Jonah’s favorite was the education module. It modeled a suite of virtual schools that thrived or faltered based on education policies. At the same time, it reflected the rise or fall of safety, growth and creativity by the scenes of the schools and student life.

  Iceland's Pirate Party had expressed tentative interest in looking into the SimSoc Turbo platform for their referendums.

  Interest in education practice and theory was on the rise—along with programs based on solid theory backed by studies with valid statistics. The local community college now offered an accelerated program in data, math and systems dynamics sponsored by XYMBI. It attracted students with rigorous, well-taught studies and a high, early job-placement rate.

  To Jonah, it came as no surprise that Native Americans were natural systems thinkers, but even he’d been amazed as a zeal for system science swept through the community.

  Local schools had been quick to take XYMBI up on the offers of free enrichment programs. When the seminars in data analysis for online business startups had shown strong results, the community had rallied behind the programs. People were finding applications for the methods. Not just in business, ecology was also a popular field. The students working on programs for preserving the tribe’s natural resources were rock stars in the community’s eyes.

  Grass-roots consensus-building discussions were springing up in many communities around the country and on the internet. Many had seen wins on low-hanging fruit. Those had given the initiatives hope for more progress with an understanding that it took time.

  It was here the words ‘Nash Sustainability’ was used in the way that was now sweeping the internet. The phrase had been coined to describe processes and plans that took into account the needs, beliefs and support of all relevant parties. It recognized the work of Nobel Prize winner John Nash with a riff on the Nash Equilibrium in game theory.

  An unhappy reactionary dynamic was that a few leaders of polar positions, seeing their support drifting towards consensus, had shifted from extreme to dangerous.

  The screen door to the patio opened behind him. Amber—reflected in his computer screen—padded across the patio in her bare feet and disturbingly sheer hot-weather pajamas. She plunked her coffee cup on the table and sat down next to him. “I hope you’re ready to get your ass kicked this morning, Brandyr,” she said.

  For a moment Jonah felt lost without a compass trying to understand what she meant. Then…

  Oh! The race.

  It was today….

  Jonah fastened the straps of his Camelbak across his chest and adjusted the tension so it would stay secure and still allow him to breathe without hindrance. He stretched and took a deep breath of fresh Sonoran air as Amber came out of the house with the whisper of the screen door closing behind her.

  “The two of you play nice now,” Tiana’s voice lilted from the patio.

  Jonah looked up to watch Amber sauntering towards him and the ATV. Already she wasn’t playing nice. Oh, no. Not at all.

  Her bronze, curly hair hugged her head beneath the lightweight climbing helmet that put her face and dark, gold-flecked eyes in shadow. The fabric of her white halter top and tri-shorts, a comfortable, moisture-wicking fabric, contrasted boldly with her cafe-au-lait skin. The whisper-thin material revealed the rippling thigh muscles that moved like poetry where the muscles of her ass, stacked high, flexed between firm and solid as she moved. Her breasts snuggled beneath the halter, framed between the washboard abdomen and pectorals that jumped and bunched as she slung her bag into the ATV’s luggage compartment. The whorls of her nipples and the topography of her smooth-shaved mons, clear through the fabric, etched themselves in his mind.

  “Let’s go,” she said, vaulting onto the seat. The engine purred to life, and Jonah climbed on the back and forced himself to wrap his arms around her waist and lock his hands. If he didn’t now, she would just make the ride so violent that he’d be forced to later.

  Amber let out the clutch and the ATV surged forward. She wriggled back against him as they sped down the hill. Jonah breathed deep, thankful for the meditation discipline that controlled the blood that wanted to surge to indiscreet territory.

  Psychological warfare, he reminded himself.

  They sped down the dirt track along the creek bed that meandered southwest toward a vertical outcrop of granite. A roadrunner paced them, its feet churning up a spray of soil, until it cut across a section of dry creek bed and disappeared into the mesquite. Amber pulled off the trail and parked the ATV behind a bush, hiding it from the trail.

  They were at the starting line.

  Jonah jumped off and took a long swallow of water. He moved the items he would carry to the Camelbak’s storage compartments. The polymer-frame Glock was already there in its holster. He added his climbing slippers and chalk bag, tightened the Velcro on his beach runners and scuffed the sole against a rock to dislodge a stubborn sandspur.

  Thank God for Kevlar insoles.

  “Com check.” Amber’s voice sounded from the speaker attached to the inside of his climbing helmet.

  “Clear,” he said.

  “Okay,” Amber said. “Before we start, I want to know if you agree that it’s a fair contest that puts each of our athletic abilities in an even mix.”

  “Sure, at least I think so. Why does that matter though? Life isn
’t always fair.”

  “Because we’ll make a bet to increase our motivation.” Amber said, her voice laced with challenge as she locked eyes with him.

  “We set it up together. So, since I can’t imagine you sandbagging on me, I’m going with yes. What do you want to bet?”

  Amber nodded. “The loser will grant the winner a wish—”

  “Like a genie?”

  “Right.” Amber grinned. “This wish must be legal, possible and inexpensive.”

  Jonah scratched his head. “You aren’t telling me what your wish will be if you win, are you?”

  “No, I’ll let the question distract you.”

  Jonah laughed. “You know, this sounds like a favor. Why don’t you just ask me?”

  “Honestly, Jonah, that should be obvious. Because I want a prize.”

  Jonah looked at her. This woman had almost died for him. “Well, of course I agree,” he said. “Don’t think for a second I’ll roll over and let you win though.”

  “You’d better not.” Amber glared at him. “That would ruin the fun.”

  “Besides,” Jonah said. “Maybe you should think about what I might wish.”

  “I thought you knew how to measure probability.” Amber chuckled. “Hhm, go figure,” she said, touching her microphone. “Austin?”

  “Right here, Chief.”

  “We’re leaving the buggy at the starting line now.”

  “Roger that. We’ll retrieve and meet you at the rendezvous.”

  “Copy that; start timing.” Amber turned off her microphone. “Ok, Jonah. I’ll give you three steps.”

  Jonah nodded and set off along the dirt track at an easy pace, knowing Amber would soon pass him. The first part of the course was a flat, winding trail for two miles before they hit the incline. Jonah lengthened his stride, letting his body relax into the ground-eating lope he’d learned on his high school cross-country team.

  Thousands of miles of training behind Amber had developed his stride into a five-minute mile he could keep up for over an hour.