by Jack Lance
Bailey pressed the button and the door closed shut, and then turned to them and calmly said “Ok, run.”
Behind him the tip of one of the mantis claws sliced through the thin metal of the door, followed by a barrage of others as they clambered to chase their new prey.
The three ran along the corridor toward the parking bay where the bikes still stood, while the creatures piled through the door behind them and began to give chase.
“I hope the ice has melted.” Bailey shouted. “Barron you’re on the back. Forget the suits.”
They ran out and both Bailey and Jayne jumped onto the bikes and began kick starting the motors. Both fired up almost immediately, and Barron, who had been apprehensive at first, moved to get on the back of Jayne’s bike.
Jayne craned her leg around and kicked Barron back, and shouted “Live bait!”
Barron slipped back over a patch of ice, and looked at Bailey who patted the wheel guard behind the seat and shouted “Let’s go!”
Barron jumped on and held tight, and the bikes raced up and over the last hillock of ice that remained in the doorway. They jumped down onto the ice outside, and felt the harsh flow of cold winds over them.
“Faster!” Bailey yelled, and Barron looked back to see the creatures leave the dome and run out onto the snow after them.
They almost immediately stopped and began cringing against the sun, before retreating back into the darkness inside.
“Keep your speed up!” Bailey yelled and pointed over at the heletank, that was still half frozen in the ice a few miles away.
It had already seen them, and began its strange synthesized howl. It was frozen face down into the snow so that all of the weaponry under its wings were unable to aim at them. It fired its chain guns down into the snow and then launched missile after missile, causing huge mushroom clouds to bloom around it. Only one of its rotors had thawed out, which it spun constantly in a bid to give chase. But the other was frozen solid in the ice, and so they were free to ride back to the cable car, and then back up to their own city.
Activity.
It was late in the day, and the hour was late on the espionage of Aaron Bailey’s business.
The computer Thom had set to crack Aaron Bailey’s more trusted office password had taken its time, as the password was so intelligently designed, but it had eventually found each of the characters that made it comprised. It was just a string of random numbers and letters, far from any recognizable word, which made it doubly difficult for password testing software to deduce. Now here he was armed with the passcode to the office unit of Colec Warehouse B.
"We'll play it your way, Jayne." Thom hissed as he stepped from an elevator plate, in a heavily trodden lobby.
Thom stalked into floor five Sagar building, and cautiously walked down the steel steps to the narrow gangway containing the office units. He was wearing a dark grey silken mask that covered his entire head, and similar matching gloves that would hide him from the surveillance grid and its AI personality recognition systems.
He knew he’d have to be careful now as he approached the offices junctioning to Warehouse B. He walked up to it, and with it now being evening the place had emptied of haulage workers, but he was careful still in case there were any working late.
Thom inputted the code and cracked open the door and then slowly closed it behind him once inside. He was standing in a front reception office that was now thick with dust, and with most of the office furniture shoved back and piled away from the two doors. He moved over to the inner door and listened close to it.
There was a patting of paws and a growl, and Thom whispered “I knew it.”
He took from his pocket a piece of raw meat he had marinated with a strong dose of tranquilizer. On opening the door very slightly the dog within began barking fiercely while scratching at the gap.
“Son of a shit.” he said and managed to flip the meat around and into the warehouse.
Thom tugged the door shut again and then sat with his back to it waiting and listening. Eventually after listening to the hound chew the meat down, the paws and growling stopped, and Thom stood up.
He opened the door fully and looked within, and saw beyond a parking and mechanics bay, the dog limping into a strange workshop. Thom chuckled and walked through to it and kicked the dog on its side, where it lay and panted.
Thom scanned around the workbenches, and the designs and robotic equipment that Bailey had half constructed and tested meticulously each night here in the unit.
He looked them all over panting fog through his mask into the cold air of the place, until finally he found the wall that led from the reception door to through the workstation. As he'd passed by it in the low light he hadn’t noticed what now was glaringly obvious.
Thom looked the wall over from left to right, reading what was spread all across it. He then held his head, and staggered as his legs weakened and his mind became dizzy.
Thom fainted and fell backward onto the floor, beside the panting dog.
Across town, at the ridge outside of the Old Gang districts, Bailey, Jayne and Barron returned. They were greeted from the cable car by a group of thugs led by Josep and Nash Fincle.
While the Fincles shook Bailey’s hand and ushered himself and Jayne back into the colony, the thugs set about beating Chester Barron within an inch of his life.
Above them an after storm of the winter began with an unravelling of thunder.
They took time to get freshened up before leaving Old Gang territory. Bailey headed back to the East Syndicate building and the Colec warehouses, while dropping Jayne off at the nearest safe district in the North.
Jayne watched Bailey drive off to the south and then began walking along the grimy streets below a series of apartment towers. As she turned a corner onto a particularly abandoned alley she saw a Border Security car pull up and stop.
Quite a few officers got out and approached her, led by someone she recognized as Kane Minik.
“Hello Jayne.” he said with a half broken smile.
“Good day, Officer Minik.” she nodded as she backed away from the crowd.
She backed far enough to bump against a poster abused wall. Above them, high above the dome the storm continued to ripple its thunder.
“Sources in Old Gang tell me you’ve been to the other dome. Now I can’t prove this of course as your close friend Aaron Bailey has a bad habit of covering his tracks quite well.”
Jayne looked at him in silence, sinking back into the fur collar of her coat.
Minik went on, “I’d hate to think you’d fallen in with a crowd like that, Jayne. I mean, I feel a little responsible for you, ya know?”
Jayne remained silent, realizing how unorthodox this encounter had become. The other officers seemed as wounded and fixated as Kane himself.
“We’ll be in touch again. So be good.” Minik said turning away with the others while pointing at her briefly.
Jayne watched them depart while more thunder rolled over the dome roof above.
Back at the unit in the Sagar building, Thom awoke, and was pleased to see that the dog hadn’t. In a daze he stood back up and steadied himself on his feet.
“Oh hells!” he whispered, holding his head through the mask.
Realizing the time, he took one last glace at the weird wall and quickly walked to the door and left the warehouse. Once outside he heard voices from above, from the nearest elevator to Warehouse B, and ran to hide behind an office unit across the way.
He looked up at the platform, and saw there Bailey making his way down and then walking across to the unit. Thom hid and listened as Bailey inputted the code and entered the place.
It would be less than a minute before he realized that his dog wasn’t sleeping, and had been doped.
Thom didn’t waste time, and so gave the command to unlock the skates, and silently rolled around and past the office door. He walked carefully and quietly up the steps up to the elevator, and then within seconds was headin
g down to the lobby.
Thom made it back to his home at the factory, and skated around it to the storm drain, and then down through the tunnels to the oval window. Jayne was waiting there, standing looking out over the mountains. He walked up beside her and watched them with her.
After a while she said “I was wrong. You were right I shouldn’t have gone.”
Thom looked at her, knowing what he knew, and said “Stay here with me. Stay close from now on. Something bad is about to happen.”
A Bit of Me Time.
So far so spit. Our love is bleeding…
Bailey sat in the workspace in the warehouse, slumped on a high stood against the bench. He typed a couple of instructions into the desk holo-terminal behind him without looking. It pulled the infrared security recordings that he had hardwired to the warehouse himself. The various holo screens were projected over the floor and the sleeping dog, and he watched as the intruder sneaked into his private space, appearing as a bright shining silver figure of a man.
“Bastard.” Bailey said, since whoever it was had infused his mask and clothing with a silver particulate gloss, that reflected all penetrating light back at the cameras.
Bailey switched the screens off, and the holographic ionized gas began to dissolve in the air.
He stared forward until the dog came to, stood back up and shook itself off. It cocked its head at Bailey and whimpered slightly.
“I could pull the images and sounds out of your furry little head.” he stared wide eyed at it. “But it may not be necessary. I’m sure whoever it was will reveal themselves soon enough.”
The dog whimpered a little more stepping forward a little.
“We don’t have much time. Time to pull in the web.“ Bailey said, and stood up.
He walked across to his jacket on a stand, and took out his multi-com. He dialled Bede Sagar’s number and waited for her to pick up.
“Bede? I’m back, darling. I’m sorry, but I really think I may have done something wonderful for our futures. Wendall’s fine too. She was fantastic.” he said in a low voice, and then bit his lip and said “I need to speak with you about something. Dinner, tonight… Eight is good for me. I appreciate it. I love you, Bede.”
Bailey hung up and stood in silence for a few moments while his mind cooled again.
He walked across to the workbench where he had lain the small shoulder bag he had brought back with him. From it he brought the old sphere and pushed out another of the EMP devices. He gripped it in a large vice, brought a set of three unmagnetised screwdrivers and began a combination of prizing apart the two halves of the blue ball, and unscrewing the tiny screws that were revealed within. Once they were each laid on the workbench he separated the two hemispheres and laid them side by side with a gathering of nanowire bundles strewn between them.
Bailey began fishing around the drawers and boxes in the workroom, finding spare parts that exactly matched those that had been used to make the device. He had already established from Colec’s diary that the EMP emitter had been designed and constructed in this place. All he needed was the functional device to work from, and a with few rare mineral nano-circuit boards dissected from the device he could employ his own knowledge to titrate the device's settings, for a much bigger bang.
Bailey worked through the early morning and lunch time and on into the afternoon. In the end he had a perfectly resealed blue orb, only with far more dangerous internals. It would emit the same pulse of electromagnetic energy that had worked so well in the other dome, but enough to fry the central nervous systems of even the thickest pill head.
Happily he clapped his hands and petted the Romano, much to it’s content.
Not wasting time, Bailey then dialled the number for Nash Fincle, and said “Nash, it’s me. I have what you need. I’ve checked it over, and it’s all still working fine. I need to meet with you and the preacher. Then I think you’re good to go.”
After this call he made his way from the Sagar building across the lower highways to Old Gang Central. He drove directly between two leering effigies of the monstrous brothers and into the district. Without earplugs this time he drove through to the stable-lanes of the Old Gang block and got out in the pumping sound and pulses of light from the other side.
Bailey let his valuable sportscar roll to the stables without a second thought. His car would be safer here than anywhere else in the prison since nobody in this district would mess with the cars of Old Gang.
He strode across the hollow to the lobby and ran up the stairs a couple of levels to the VIP club. The sound insulation on the windows and walls blocked out all noise of the partying from the army of degenerates on the other side of the district.
The atmosphere within was one of dulled respect. Bailey now knew, if there was one thing to remember about the Fincles and the arseholes they frequented with, it was that they liked their space, and their respect.
Bailey walked slowly up to a table full of these characters.
“Nash.” Bailey smiled and stood waiting for him to stand up.
“My good man.” Nash said and then joined him, this time without his brother.
Nash Fincle and his two minders left the people he had been with and walked with Bailey out of the club and through to a staff passage that led to the inner parking lots of the stables. They walked out onto the cold concrete within the lot, keeping to the side as cars swung by up and down the ramps on automatic drive.
At an empty parking bay Bailey pressed his key and the car came from above and parked beside them. He then opened the boot of the car and let Nash look at the folded tripod shaped droids within.
“Enough here to keep an army busy.” Bailey said and closed the boot. “And over here we have our secret weapon.”
Bailey reached over the front seats into the glove compartment and produced one of the EMP emitters he had made himself.
“So this is it? And it works?” Nash looked at him harshly.
“Tested it already. Knocked out a giant squid, if you can believe that…”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Nash said looking it over carefully, holding it to the light. “But will it work on robotics?”
“It blew the shit out of the dome control tower, and I was standing over a mile away. This thing is powerful, man.” Bailey said with earnest. “Those old boys ramped the frequency higher than anything I’ve ever seen outside of a dynasty grade lab. Hat’s off to them, I say…”
“And now its mine.” Nash looked up with a cold grin, and Bailey smiled back.
“You’re going to kick this colonies ass, friend.” Bailey said. “This planet will remember the name Old Gang.”
“Like they don’t already.” Nash grinned. “My boys will collect this stuff. Then we’ll meet with my brother and Francine.”
“Francine Adyms?” Bailey smiled. “How’s it going with my old colleague in crime?”
“She’s a star, Bailey. I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to her. I wouldn’t have looked twice at her under normal circumstances.”
“That’s why I got you involved. I could see potential fireworks there.” Bailey smiled in his way.
Bailey handed over the droids and the EMP device to Nash’s aids, and then watched them return to the corridors in file with the huge bags.
Nash leaned on the roof of the sports car and said “Well, I hope this works. This needs to work.”
“Be confident it will.” Bailey said looking at him over the roof.
He ordered the car to park, and Nash looked at him within the dancing light from outside, and said “You do believe me don’t you? Me and Morton both want to change things… My grandfather has suffered my temperamental family for too long… as has the city. Once the worse elements are back with the rest of Old Gang in the empire, we can really begin to make a difference. And I know… this regrettably includes my brother.”
“It does, I won’t lie to you.” Bailey said sharply as they walked toward the closest stairwell leading
down to the throbbing party grounds.
Nash took Bailey out of the block and around the dancing crowd. They walked through the outer wastegrounds where there were less intoxicated junkies and drug lords, all the way around to the graffiti-thick Naturalistic Mind church.
They avoided the sermon hall and instead walked up the tall flight of stone steps to the top floor.
The steps were steep and were uncomfortable to climb, and led to a kind of broad, shared dressing room for the evangelists. Bailey observed the various pains these reverends went to before they presented themselves to the hungry flock. A stone archway at the rear led to the annex of the church.
Through it they walked deeper into the bowls of the place, through a claustrophobic stone corridor. At the back of the annex they entered a gaudy red and green furnished social lounge where they found Reverend Dane Angell sitting in the corner, talking to Francine Adyms and Josep Fincle, at a table below a long stained glass window.
“Dane.” Nash said and the reverend broke his conversation.
“Greetings children.” Dane said as he, Josep and Francine stood up and walked across to meet them.
“This must be good news.” Francine said, and kissed Nash on the lips.
“You could say that.” Nash then nodded. “Bailey has delivered the droids we need, and also an added bonus.”
“Colec’s device?” Josep asked with a broad smile.
“This is right. It’s a powerful EMP grenade. Perfectly safe to humans but deadly to the old screw heads.” Bailey said. “Josep, you and the team won’t need to waste any more time now. I need to ask you a few things about the robot center. The whole plan hinges around the technicality that the heletank is based there. You must be sure.”
“It definitely is.” Dane said, ushering them to come and sit by the huge stained glass mural looking out over the back of the church. “All of our records show it. The church made an expedition there about three hundred years ago. They found the heletank launch bay within, and also an interesting story.”