I smiled. “So, that’s why you brought me?”
She looked at me with those dry, humorless eyes. “Exactly.”
We passed through the last layer of windwall and Austin spread out before us. The noise of the wall dropped away, eclipsed by the roar of the city. Streams of cars floated in layer after layer above and below us. Shining curved buildings stretched high above us into the sky. The sharp tang of electricity and iron assaulted me. There were people everywhere.
My heart raced and my palms began to sweat. It felt like the city’s weight was crushing me. There was so much activity. A dozen twisted humans crawled up the side of a nearby building. Cars zoomed close—too close. Above, flashing neon advertised tech and women and food all at once. Each display lasted only a second before rapidly pulsing to something else. With augmented senses, many people could easily handle this overload, but not me.
I flipped on my sunglasses and ordered them to start filtering. The ads disappeared—completely erased from view. Activity and noise faded into nothing more than a dull background blur.
Trish smirked at me, her eyes glowing as we passed through a building’s shadow. She was enjoying this. She was back in her element and my discomfort seemed to amuse her.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said through clenched teeth. “Sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
It’s funny how sometimes we say things that are truer than we know.
When I didn’t hear a response from Trish, I tore my gaze from the overly busy landscape and looked over to her. Another wave of panic surged over me; the weight of the city pushed down on me again.
Deputy Chin had disappeared.
Chapter 5
If a person counts “Howdy” as a sentence, then I had managed to deeply offend a man in a metal suit named Chester with only three sentences.
He looked like he was ready to hit me, and he didn’t look like the hitting type. He looked more like the snivel-and-grovel type, with a touch of delete-your-data-stream-later. The small, black-haired man sported a wispy mustache and something they call an accountant’s jack. It reminded me a lot of the prehensile tool arms that old Ma Brown had, but this ran straight into the man’s spine and probably consisted of nothing more than a data line. It was plugged into the wall next to him. Flecks of light flickered in his eyes from time to time. I was certain that he hadn’t bothered to stop working just to talk to some lowlife like me.
After Trish had inexplicably vanished her cruiser had landed me near the work entrance to the Goodwin Dairy distribution center, halfway up a building called the Alamo Center. The place was a hive of activity with cargo tubs coming and going in dozens of different directions and some sort of bottling operation happening inside. Trish had used her connections in the city to get me a meeting with the angry little man, which I discovered as soon as I was able to track down someone who resembled a receptionist. The whole business bothered me, and I couldn’t help but think it was all just Trish playing a mean trick to make me feel uncomfortable. Also, I was having trouble understanding what good we could get from this.
“Listen, wastelander,” Chester said. “Big Milk, as you call it, happens to be some pretty big business. Blood nannies can stay functional for weeks in the stuff—so yes, people still drink it on a regular basis. Without it, we’d all need to have integrated nanny fabbers like they did in the old days. So, you backwards bumpkin, if you have nothing else to do but insult the proud tradition of this company, then you can just show yourself the door.”
His eyes glazed over and I was certain his attention had left the room.
What happened next was not entirely my fault. The room seemed like it was designed specifically to make me uncomfortable. The walls were lined with fake plants—like somebody enjoyed the idea of plants but thought the theme would be improved if plants were brushed aluminum and copper. The walls were a mixture of enameled steel and white glowing glass. Above the glass was a network of wires, tubing, and some sort of mechanical arm. The table between the skinny man and me was heavy steel and mahogany. My coat hung in the corner on one of several metal protrusions that may or may not have been put there for that purpose. My hat was still comfortably on my head and my sunglasses were securely in place, recording everything.
The security guards outside had checked me over, but for some reason they had let me keep my revolver. They had smiled at it as if it were some toy gun, which might have been the case, given the armored skin that most city folk seemed to have. Mr. Skinny across the table was no exception. The plastic shine of his face gave the impression of something far better fortified than the average unmodified human. My gun wasn’t of any use anyway. It wasn’t loaded.
It was then that the rage hit me. It was frustrating getting nowhere with the milk man, but the rage didn’t come from that. This rage came from nowhere.
It bubbled in the pit of my stomach. My jaw clenched and my fists gripped my chair so hard that one of the aluminum arms bent. I stared down at my black metal hand and willed it to release, which it did reluctantly.
The man still stared off into space.
I stood, sending my chair flying across the room. I pounded my metal fist onto the table, cracking the mahogany and denting metal.
That got his attention.
He looked with confusion into my rage-filled eyes.
I reached forward with my right hand, grabbed a handful of his greasy black hair, and slammed his head into the desk. Hard.
“Listen, milkman,” I said, surprised at the angry growl of my voice. “I need to know why you dropped the Brown account. Now.”
I couldn’t see the expression on his face. “Okay, okay.” I felt him struggle to raise his head, but I held it down. “The Brown account… I don’t know. There have been a lot of reports of contamination.”
“What was the reason?” My grip tightened.
“I don’t know. We have independent agents checking the field—”
“Don’t give me that shit,” I said. I gave his head another good pound against the table.
“Well…”
I leaned over to look at his face. I didn’t like what I saw.
The bastard was smiling.
He had been stalling.
I dropped his head and turned just in time to see two teched-out goons shoulder their way into the room. These guys were more metal than man, and they looked like they had been big to start with. The first one looked at me with glowing red orbs and raised something that could be nothing other than a weapon.
I rolled backward over the desk and dropped into cover. The goon fired the weapon—a pulse of energy hit the desk and sent numbness through my hand where I was still touching it. I could hear a low hum from the other side of the room.
The weasel of an accountant twitched a couple times and then slumped to the ground.
I heard a clump, clump as the second goon moved forward.
“Come out with your hands up,” one of them intoned.
I shook my hand to get the feeling back into it. “I’m a lawman.”
There was a pause. “Then stand up, sir, and we’ll talk about it.”
The rage was completely gone now, replaced by a touch of confusion. What had I done?
The weasel’s arm hung limply next to me, so I grabbed it, put a hat on it, and held it up. Soon as it crossed the top of the desk, a pulse of yellow filled the room.
“Fuck!” I yelled. My arm went numb again, as did the entire right half of my body. Again, I heard a low hum rising steadily in pitch. Whatever they were using to shoot at me had to recharge.
It was my only chance to escape.
I jumped, intending to roll back over the desk at the closest goon. My right leg was still numb, though, and didn’t respond properly. I stumbled over, landing in a heap on the other side.
Still, it surprised them. Goon 1 raised his weapon at me, but it was still charging. Goon 2 moved forward, leaning down to either restrain or murder me.
I rolled bac
k and kicked hard at Goon 2’s face. I landed a solid blow to the jaw. It stopped him for all of one second.
He lunged, reaching for me with his etched steel arms.
I slid under him and pushed, directing his momentum at his unsuspecting ally. The two crashed together in a heap. I quickly snatched my coat from its hook and made a run for it.
I was halfway to the door when a flash of yellow filled the room.
I turned to look at the two goons, still tangled together on the floor. Goon 1’s weapon was pointed at me, trails of yellow particulate streaming from its business end.
It hadn’t hit me.
The air between us shimmered and crackled like static on a broken vid.
Then Trish was there with wide and unfocused eyes. She’d appeared from nowhere. She swayed back and forth, and then toppled toward me.
I would like to say that I caught her. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough. I barely got a hand under her to soften her face’s impact with the ground.
Instead, I stood and sputtered, “You’ve been here all along?”
She was in no condition to respond.
I scooped her up, surprised at how light she was, and tossed her over my shoulder. I ran out of the door and down the hall before the two thugs could follow.
Reinforced glass doors opened up into chaos. My heart raced and I bit my lower lip. To the left, I saw bins carrying polished steel containers—dozens of them. Workers were placing them in these bins, then the bins would float themselves by some unknown route to destinations elsewhere in the warehouse. People were running everywhere. To the right, there was a robotic wall. Hundreds of arms jutted from its surface, each performing some mundane task over and over: filling bottles and kegs, welding, sanding, molding. I couldn’t even hope to understand everything that was going on.
The center of the room was something that I supposed must be the control center. A twenty-meter array of displays, dials, and buttons dominated the space. Just outside of its technological magnificence there were other, lesser altars of steel glory, each with its own worshipper.
There’s a funny thing about chaos. As a lawman, I hate the stuff. My instinct is to control it—make it go away. When I can’t, it rankles me. It gets under my skin and burrows holes in my skull. Standing there in that warehouse brought back that headache.
It wasn’t chaos, though. It was a well-orchestrated machine. Every piece of this hustle and bustle understood just exactly what it was there for and how to interact with the pieces around it. A hustler wouldn’t bustle any more than a bee would fetch slippers. They all had their places, machines and men, and it was getting hard to tell them apart.
Everything had its place but me.
A noise behind me spurred me into action. I ducked to the left and down a fiber mesh staircase. Twenty meters below, the warehouse floor seethed with movement—a vast sea of machine and humanity. I could get lost down there, I thought.
The goons burst through the doors just as I reached the warehouse floor. I ducked low and pushed into the crowd.
But I didn’t fit. First from the left and then from the right, people bumped into me. One jarred me so hard I nearly dropped Trish. The far-off gaze of a worker snapped into focus for long enough to give me an offended, questioning look. I pushed past him and moved on. Trish stirred on my shoulder.
The other side of the warehouse was the docks. If I could make it there, we would be able to summon Trish’s cruiser, and we’d disappear into the city.
I glanced back over my shoulder. The goons had multiplied, now there were half a dozen of them swarming the upper levels of the warehouse. They pointed down at me, tracking me as I parted the seas below. Not only was I failing to blend in, but I was also pretty much making it impossible for them to miss me.
I needed a new plan. I put Trish down next to a console that jutted up from the grated floor.
“C’mon. Wake up,” I muttered at her. She made no response other than fluttering her eyelids.
I was out of breath and just about finished running. So what if they shot me with their stun gun? They would probably let me go once they figured out who I was, right?
One of the job requirement of the Texas lawman is unwavering, undeniable stubbornness. It’s something of a point of pride. Sure, logic dictated surrender. Fighting my way out was both stupid and nearly impossible. Yet, there I was.
I stood and scanned the upper levels. One, two, three of them had guns pointed at me. Three more goons were muscling their way through the crowd below. One of them was Goon 2. His face still bore the anger of the recently humiliated.
My jaw jutted forward and my fists went up. I shrugged my coat off onto the floor and faced Goon 2.
“What’s your name, son?” I asked as he stepped forward. He was sizing me up.
“Jenkins. Yours?”
“You can call me Sheriff Crow.”
The crowd around us parted, but it didn’t stop. It just flowed around us, giving us a little space to work with.
Jenkins was about as opposite to me as I expected a person could get. My arm was black metal, an alloy designed and produced by the Texan Armed Forces. His augments were shiny, like etched steel or possibly painted plastic. His right arm and both legs were covered in exoskeleton. Most of his face was too. His skin had the sheen of something new and improved, and much of it had been replaced by something that looked like a cross between fish scales and burned meat. I just had the regular sort of skin. It had done me fine all my life. Apart from a few scars, I think I had taken pretty good care of it.
Trish groaned at my feet. Maybe she was starting to wake up or maybe she was just dreaming of headaches and hot baths. Either way, I didn’t think she’d be ready for action. I had to take care of this myself.
“You know,” I said to Jenkins, “in the old days, people would walk ten paces and then shoot each other.”
He slowly circled left, looking me right in the eyes as if we were going to hypnotize me into submission.
I lowered my voice so that only he would hear me. “Everyone’s watching this time, Jenkins. Wouldn’t want to get humiliated again, would you?”
The fleshiest parts of his face got just a little redder. He kept circling.
“You know who you’re dealing with, don’t you?” I asked. “Special Forces Ranger, Natural Division. I took down bots like you during the war. You probably got that data dump already, though, didn’t you?”
The stare continued. His head was bobbing back and forth.
“I’m not a natural anymore, though, son. I’ve been fighting kids like you for twenty years.”
Finally he responded. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, old man.” He opened and closed his oversized exoskeleton fists. He definitely had reach on me—strength too, probably.
He took a swipe with his left, but I dipped back out of reach.
I smiled at him tauntingly.
He lost all focus and lunged. I grabbed his right arm with my left and yanked it as hard as I could. He stumbled forward, but he was ready this time. He kept his feet underneath him and made an awkward attempt at a backhand. I dodged and we separated again.
In the distance, through the doors of the warehouse, I saw something. It looked like Trish’s cruiser. I fought off the urge to look back at Trish, but I figured she must be awake by now. If I could just stall another minute, we might be able to make an escape.
“Of course,” I said, “I don’t have my brain hooked up to some fancy network. I just need to make some guesses about who you might be.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“My guess is you grew up fatter than the other boys, so you got picked on a lot.” His jaw tightened. “You eventually found that your size would let you win most fights, so you pretty much just let it do all the work. No need to train for any real skills.”
He made a wide haymaker with open fingers. It was probably supposed to be a grab, but instead of ducking back I ste
pped forward. My augmented arm formed a box so that he wouldn’t be able to just bear hug me to death. My face was inches from his. We locked gazes.
“Jenkins,” I said. “Back off and let us leave. Save yourself the humiliation.”
I shifted a little and grabbed his shoulder from the armpit. It was armored in heavy metal, but I had a good grip. I started to squeeze.
There was panic in his eyes as he began to feel the pressure. The metalwork covering his shoulder screeched as it bent and twisted. Still, he didn’t back down. With his left fist, he jabbed at my ribs but I was too close. He couldn’t get any force into it—not even with his strength. The exoskeleton prevented him from properly reaching me.
So he fell on me.
Jenkins made a sudden push forward, launching his whole body at me. He landed on me hard. A sharp stab of pain ran up my leg and his weight pinned my left arm against my chest. It was a sorry way to win the fight, but still I knew I was beat.
“Who’s humiliated now?” Jenkins’s face was awkwardly smashed up against mine.
I made a futile push to try to get him off of me. My arm was strong, but people are just so damn awkward. Every time I pushed part of him, he would compensate with another. His fellow goons were laughing about it, which did not improve my mood.
“Well,” I said. “I suppose you beat me fair. What’s your plan now?”
The fleshy parts of his face got a quizzical expression.
“Sometimes in the heat of battle we fail to think ahead,” I spoke so that only he could hear me. “For instance, if you so much as move I’m going to be at you again.”
Jenkins shifted his weight and another bolt of pain ran through my leg.
“No shame in asking your friends for help, is there?” I had to admit to myself that Jenkins had earned a little of my respect. Still, my own pride demanded that I mock him just a little bit more. “I mean, you already won the contest of mass, so who out there can doubt your ability?”
With his jaw hardened, Jenkins boomed, “Take him down.”
Laughter dropped hard into silence. Above, Trish’s looming cruiser blackened the light out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her fly into the air.
Justice in an Age of Metal and Men Page 5