The Hunt for Pierre Jnr

by David M Henley

  The bombs of the first drops built to a roar just before the automatic doors closed it out. They had only got a little sodden, Gock somewhat more so.

  They were in a small lobby with a single lift waiting, open. Five set him down in the elevator and saluted his way clear. There were no buttons inside, nor a command console for their symbs to interface. It simply rose at speed and broke into daylight — or what was left of it under the storm — before quickly arriving at their destination.

  Yantz was probably the greenest place Pete had ever seen. Set on a delta of narrow canals, it was painfully luminescent with algal blooms. It was only broken up by the whites and browns of the raised islands and the hovels of timber and fibro that encircled them.

  There were dozens of needles, just like the one he was now looking out from. The giant window in the main room looked squarely at Shima Palace. He only knew it as Shima Palace via Gock. It covered five hectares and rose three times higher than everything around it. It was big enough to act as a crossing point, allowing pedestrian traffic to flow in the tunnels beneath. In typhoon season the Shimas allowed the food markets to be housed in the open area on the ground floor. Their residence was held metres above by decorated pylons.

  Gock looked east. His home was out of sight, beyond the second kink in the river. He wondered what they’d make of him being up in a needle. Most likely, they wouldn’t believe him.

  ~ * ~

  The next morning Pete was able to walk without aid. He ate heartily, more than he had since the attack. Ten arrived early and immediately began working on his physical improvement regime.

  Pete’s training would be as accelerated as his healing. On the first day Ten made him complete three hundred circuits of the main room. This was more movement than he was ready for, but Ten made him suck on a strip of the dry chew that Servicemen often used in the field to boost their energy levels. Sugar and stimulants.

  ‘I need to rest. I’m not fully healed yet,’ he protested at the seventieth lap.

  ‘Physically you are. The aches and pains you feel are the new muscles in your body. They just haven’t been broken in yet. You need to use them or the pain will get worse.’ And so they continued until Ten declared it to be enough.

  Pete washed, trimmed his hair down to skin and scalp, ate a Serviceman’s dinner and slept through the night.

  Ten was right, the pain from the new parts was fading away; they had just needed to be used. He hadn’t known until now how they had healed him so fast, with grafts and implants. Anchali certainly hadn’t known.

  The next day he didn’t hurt at all and his exercise circuit trebled while Ten introduced weight carrying and light aerobics.

  On the third day he was taken outside and Ten stepped him through a long course that took him in a ring around the needle before returning him home.

  ‘Ten, this is all very good.’ Pete panted around his words. ‘But what is this training for?’

  ‘You are asking me? My rank doesn’t tell me anything except what I’m meant to do. But from a soldier’s point of view it’s never a bad idea to be able to run a little further.’

  The canal water, stippled with surface insects and clouds of midges, clung to the shadowy overhang of the wooden sidewalks. Most people travelled on foot, carrying their goods in netted sacks, or paddled in narrow canoes. Few could afford to squib, and few of the structures would be able to support any sort of landing.

  The richer families of Yantz had more permanent docks by their walls, with long staircases Pete had to climb. These artificial plateaus raised the communal areas and affluent families safely above the water level and held orchards of citrus trees and stone fruit, or pens for animals and market areas. The largest of these artificial islands held up the most established families, such as the Shimas. Other islands were the size of small towns. Such was the nature of Yantz; a million pockets of people that made up the megapolis.

  On the fourth day, Ten began teaching him how to use his symbiot better, how to think during an attack and how to act, assess and plan at the one time. Well, those were the instructions that Ten had been given. What it amounted to was increasingly hard circuits that Ten dotted with squad members who would leap out and attempt to push him in the canal.

  The water had a potent chlorophyll smell he quickly became familiar with. Each member of the squad managed to dunk him that first day.

  ‘The brain is a muscle,’ Ten lectured. ‘You train it until actions become reactions: just repeat and repeat. Every time you run down a street, before you turn a corner, or if you can’t see behind some hard cover, check your sensors. Both of them for you, telepath. If we do this for a few weeks, it will become automatic. We’ll take care of your conditioning, don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘Where are the rest of the squad?’

  ‘Always nearby. When you need us, we’ll be in range.’ By that he meant they would always be close enough to ambush Pete on one of his runs. Ten made sure he worked hard. He was a great believer in the mind-body connection.

  Ten was right, Pete did get better. He quickly made it his practice to use the sensors of his symbiot and any data it could access, as well as reaching out psionically to see who was coming at him and from where. It was tiring at first. He was used to tapping particular people, stationary ones who were in the same room as him, not running through a crowded city where the opportunity for steady contact could be counted in seconds. Keeping a cursory eye out like this was a huge strain.

  Each night he made it home exhausted. The high-speed lift nearly brought him to his knees. He often only had an hour to rest and eat before Gock was hounding him to review footage and case studies of psi collection missions.

  ~ * ~

  Once a week he had to report on his progress to the Prime, like a child to his parents after classes. Yes, sir, my heart rate has improved. No, I have not managed to stop the squad pushing me into the canals.

  Ryu’s prosecution, as part of Pete’s trial, was unrelenting. Every time they talked, through Gock, he would try to corner Peter with the same trap of questions: ‘What is the nature of the enemy we face? Is it one boy or a multitude? Or both?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was Pete’s most common answer.

  ‘Are you under the control of Pierre Jnr?’

  ‘No. I am not a puppet.’

  ‘The trial will determine that. Tell me the difference between Pierre and other psis.’

  ‘What do you mean? Pierre is vastly more powerful.’

  ‘But all telepaths have the ability to subjugate others. Is that correct?’ During the questioning Gock would often drift into his own reveries and merely repeat what was spoken to him while looking out the window and cultivating pornographic fantasies.

  ‘To some extent,’ Pete had to answer and try not to hear Gock’s mind at work. ‘But not all psis act like Pierre.’

  ‘But you see why they must be considered one and the same threat?’

  ‘You won’t convince me to hunt my own kind.’

  Gock could not accurately replicate the laugh that came from his speaking master, and Pete could hear both: Ryu’s amusement and his proxy’s vulgar schadenfreude. ‘The thing about you, Mister Lazarus, is that I know exactly how you will react to every situation. I know you may be frustrated by the process, but your reorientation is on schedule.’

  ‘What kind of monster are you?’ Pete asked, himself not sure if he meant the Prime or the proxy.

  ‘Me? I wouldn’t have to manipulate you if you were more willing to help with the conflict.’

  ‘It’s you who is keeping me away from the hunt.’

  ‘You are weak. You would be no match for Pierre Jnr, or any psi.’ Then, abruptly, Ryu would disconnect from his proxy and Pete was left with no chance to reply.

  Between the talks with the Prime-Gock and the constant instruction from Ten, Pete began to learn the collection procedure that Ryu Shima was enforcing across the WU.

&nbs
p; ‘The trouble with fighting benders is that anything we bring against them might be turned into a weapon against us. Same with telepaths: you may carry a gun, but they might pull the trigger. You know what I’m saying?’ Ten asked.

  ‘Of course I know what you’re saying.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Of course you do.’

  ‘So what do you do?’ Pete inquired.

  ‘Luckily most of the psis we go up against are young and have barely realised their powers. Intimidation is often enough, so we go in hard and loud. Stun, confuse, disable. Drop some flash, try to glue them in place and then try to get the mask on them. Once the mask is on we’re safe. If the first team doesn’t get it done, we send in a second, which gases the area and we all fall down.’

  ‘Why don’t you just start with the gas?’

  Ten shook his head. ‘The Will doesn’t like that. There can be unnecessary injuries.’

  ~ * ~

  Over a period of weeks Pete developed quickly. There was always something new that Ten or Ryu would add, and there was always something he thought of himself to try as well. His reach was now above one hundred and fifty paces and he was working on a more open way of tapping. Not targeting specific people, just opening himself up, sampling whatever he could as he went past.

  Pete felt sidelined though, excluded from what was happening in the investigation. Or in the world. He only managed to piece together bits and pieces from the passers-by during his training. It was not a good time to be psionic.

  Despite himself, he grew to like Ten, even with his daily administrations of forced exercise and Services catch-alls: ‘Pain is noise. Emotion is noise. Filter and focus.’

  Clarence had been in Services for a decade. He had one more tour before he could become an operator and run a team of remotes. Five years training, five years to get from ranks One to Ten. Most of that time was spent in soldier games, with only the rare disciplinary action. Until Ryu had taken over and set them to work.

  Marauders liked being the biggest guys around. Amongst the crowds they swaggered as only twelve-foot-high armoured men can. Disciplined and rough. Cut stone. The point of making men like this was so they would be there to do anything. Physically and mentally prepared for anything that was asked of them.

  The squad trained hard. After running the morning circuit with Pete, Ten spent the day putting his men through spread-and-sweep manoeuvres, which involved them dispersing as fast and far as they could, circling a set target and then coming together in perfect co-ordination.

  Pete couldn’t keep up. Eventually he had to give in. He was too tired to do otherwise. He did what Ten told him to do, and he did what the Prime told him to do.

  ‘Why can’t I just get synaptic training like the rest of you?’ Pete asked, doubled over, gasping for air.

  Ten laughed. ‘Chum, nobody gets syned until after their first year. They like you to do it the hard way first.’

  ~ * ~

  One day he returned to the needle, soggy with sweat and canal water, to find two teenage girls waiting on the crescent settee in the centre of the main room.

  Pete could sense no sentience from the two figures and as he got closer he found out why. They weren’t people at all, merely skinbots with the cursory dressing of humans. They wore flexible athletics clothing with their hair tied up in an array of tiny pigtails. They had exaggerated eyes and giggled like the schoolgirls they looked to be — if not for the hefty pistols on their belts.

  ‘May I introduce you to two new members of your team, Aiko and Endo.’ Gock indicated which was which, though they were too similar for Pete to distinguish between them. ‘Aiko and Endo are our most successful collectors in the Yantz province. They have been working with me for years and have an impeccable track record.’

  ‘Only thanks to me,’ one of them said.

  ‘Aiko?’ Pete guessed.

  ‘Endo.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re wet.’

  ‘And green,’ Aiko added.

  Well done, Prime, Pete thought. More non-people around the telepath.

  ‘What’s wrong? Doesn’t he like us?’ one asked the other.

  ‘Don’t you like us, psi-man?’

  ‘He hasn’t even looked at us, Aiko. I don’t think he’s into girls.’ The two skinbots giggled.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ one of them moaned.

  ‘I’m bored,’ the other added.

  ‘Today we are collecting a psi who has just entered the precinct,’ Gock announced.

  ‘Yeah, he’s in this room. Get him!’

  ‘No, not him. File 378.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘How have you detected him?’ Pete asked.

  ‘Target 378 is shopping. By that I mean he is not paying for anything, which is incredibly stupid.’

  ‘Yeah, stupid psi. If I had powers, I wouldn’t be so dumb about it.’

  ‘Yeah. Psis are so stupid. Pete, we’re going to show you how to take down one of your own. You can pretend it’s you if you like.’

  ‘But don’t get in the way.’

  ‘Watch and learn, psi-man.’ They both giggled.

  ~ * ~

  He had time to change before he took a squib north and landed on a small open area that branched out on all sides into the green lattice of canals. The only things on this particular island clearing were an old man with a muddy taxi and a single Serviceman. Like everywhere in Yantz, it was hot. Hot, humid and green. Pete had to frequently skim the sweat off his scalp.

  Aiko and Endo leapt out of the squib and sprang around the landing area before running off. ‘It’s on foot from here, tapper-man.’ The twins were quickly out of sight, but they pinged his symb and sent teasing messages about being slow, old and, of course, being a psi.

  ‘We’re going to catch your friend. Tee hee,’ they laughed and skipped ahead. Pete didn’t even bother correcting them. He trudged forward and Gock trailed behind. Gock’s family was to the east and he looked habitually in that direction. Their target pulled them west.

  ‘You can consider this a demonstration, Mister Lazarus,’ Gock sneered. ‘This is how we catch psis in my province. You won’t have to do anything. This time.’

  Two weeks ago Gock had been a vendor of refurnished tech, and would be again when he returned to his less-than-reputable business. He knew what Pete was now and he didn’t like that he had to be the one escorting him around Yantz. He didn’t want them to be seen together.

  ‘This way. He is on the move.’ One of the twins jumped forward.

  ‘Can you tell me more about how you discovered this psi?’ Pete asked Gock.

  ‘Firstly, we monitored a number of ambiguous interactions with some members of the opposite sex,’ Gock sneered, the kind of thing he would do if he could control minds.

  ‘And he wasn’t simply charming them?’ The proxy snorted in response.

  Endo: Psi-man, hurry up or you’ll miss the whole thing.

  Aiko: Uh-oh, 378 is about to squib it. Let’s go.

  Endo: I call that perfect timing, sis. We can pluck him from the air.

  Aiko: I bet I can jump higher than you can.

  Endo: No chance. This one will be on my count.

  Aiko: I thought we promised not to fight over men any more?

  Endo: Yeah, but that’s no fun. Let this one be the first exception.

  Pete and Gock had just crossed a bridge and climbed the side wall of a larger island. Well-dressed people milled around or sat in the open piazza. The twins were waiting perched on rooftops on either side of the square, watching the exit of the squib outlet.

  Pete: How do we know he’s inside?

  Aiko: He was painted days ago, silly. He hasn’t left our watchful eyes that whole time.

  Endo: We know what he’s been up to. We suspect he’s been playing the area for weeks.

  The showroom doors parted and a clean new squib floated out and began curving its ascent.
/>   Aiko: That’s him. Go, Endo.

  With a shout the twins leapt, Endo then Aiko. Endo landed on the nose of the squib and slashed her arm into the membrane, gouging a handhold for herself. Aiko’s jump just missed and she dropped gracefully down to the piazza. Two huge guns arose from her arms.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, 378.’ With her spare arm Endo drew a pistol from her holster and blasted smoking holes into the side of the vehicle until it began to flare and wobble. The power fluxed and the squib quickly succumbed to gravity. ‘See you on the ground, mister.’ Endo leapt off to land safely away from the crash site.