Hammered

by Elizabeth Bear

  “As you can see from the files I beamed you, she had significant spinal injury to go with the head trauma and the gross bodily damage. We put a pretty serious enhancement package in her when we did the repairs, and she’s already got over twenty years’ worth of adaptation.”

  Holmes looked doubtful. “Which means what? She’s old and slowing down?”

  Valens chuckled. “It means we don’t have to wait for her to adapt to her enhancements, to develop the kinesthetic sense that goes along with moving differently than you have all your life, to learn to process the information overload that comes with the heightened senses. What you have to understand is that these people feel more, hear more, and the levels of information the enhancements provide have provoked some of them into a hypersensitivity syndrome resembling autism.”

  He stood, pacing around the desk. “I’ve got four survivors, Alberta. Two of them are probably useless for the project because they can’t stand human contact, loud noises, whatever. One might be a good candidate; he’s come through the nanosurgery well, but he’s emotionally unstable. He’s on Clarke already—”

  “So … Master Corporal Casey—”

  “Master Warrant Officer.”

  “I thought you said—”

  Valens shook his head, smiling like a proud and slightly bemused father. “She finished out her twenty. Even went back into combat as a medevac pilot—flying for pararescue techs—after four years as an instructor. Decorated a dozen times; saved a bunch of lives. And I know she’s out there somewhere, because the army is still paying her pension and disability.”

  “Can’t we use that to find her?”

  “Internet account. We could maybe have it cracked, but no success yet, and our best programmer on staff wouldn’t do it. Hell, couldn’t be told about the attempt. He knows Casey.”

  “Ah.”

  “She doesn’t want to be found. I’ve made a point of recruiting her old friends, though. That may provide us with a lead. I’ve got taps.” He leaned back against his desk, looking down at her.

  She met his eyes directly. “Illegal.”

  “Military Powers Act.”

  “Why not just pull your programmer’s connectivity bills instead of hiring him on?”

  “We did. She’s using an anonymous relay through the offshore Sealand haven; unless we can get a live trace, we’ve got nothing. I wish I’d known a year ago that we’d be needing somebody like her; I’d have her in by now. But I’ve also hired her older sister, who—conveniently to our purpose—is a ronin.”

  “Barbara Casey.” Alberta nodded. “She’s got a very good reputation. I’ve used her for a few jobs, through Unitek.”

  “That’s how I got her information, actually. There aren’t many people who do what she does.”

  “But why just these particular subjects, Fred? Why so much effort into finding this one woman?”

  Valens shrugged. “Not ‘just’ them, Alberta, or her. Them, and maybe a dozen other candidates we’ve identified through the preliminary testing. I think Genevieve Casey is by far our best bet, though, of the four like her we have left.”

  “But you can’t find her?”

  He grinned and spread his hands wide. “Not without access to some confidential files I haven’t been able to crack yet. But if her sister doesn’t work out, well, she would have needed regular follow-up care. The body never really recovers from the kind of insults hers has sustained, and her cyberware—it’s the rankest kind of flattery to call it primitive. There’s a lead there, too, and I’ve got her nailed down to a state, at least. Barbara’s there now.”

  Holmes stood, strong and graceful despite the lines mapping her gracious face. “She’d better be everything you say she is, Fred. Her, or one of the others. After the—is debacle too strong a word?—you oversaw on Mars, you need a damned success more than I do. Which is saying something.”

  Understanding the note in her voice, Valens swallowed once.

  2000 hours, Tuesday 5 September, 2062

  Bushnell Park

  Capitol Hill

  Hartford, Connecticut

  The western sky is still graying down to indigo, but the sun has long set behind the Gothic train station and crumbled yellow brick storefronts at the edge of the park. Hood of a bleach-stained sweatshirt pulled over my hair, I lean against a tatterdemalion white oak near an unmaintained baseball diamond and watch the dealers and the prostitutes saunter past. There’s one little Latina with big brown eyes, skinny as a rake in a glow-patterned miniskirt and leg-breaking heels, who is shattering my heart with every hey bay-bee at a passing car.

  I bet she’s thirteen, fourteen. Same age as Gabe’s older daughter. Same age I was when I ran away from home. After Maman died, and I had had enough of Barb’s tender care.

  Doesn’t much bear considering. I turn away, watching the street kids and the adult predators and the vagabond lost weave through the night. A pair of Hammerheads wander by, check me out to make sure I’m not 20-Love or a Latin King. My sweatshirt is dark blue, nondescript, and they let me pass.

  The king’s men.

  They’re watchful, and the park is peaceful for now, but it’s too big a humpty dumpty to really put back together, isn’t it? I turn my head and spit, scanning the area with my bad eye as darkness swells, the heat of bodies shimmering green-blue, barely distinguishable against the warmth of the night. Cars swing down Asylum Avenue, headlights razor-edging the party girls.

  Ladies of the evening.

  It all sounds so genteel.

  That little Latina is getting into the passenger seat of a dark-windowed sedan, and I want to go drag her out by the ankles and tell her the rules. Rule number one, you never get in the car. But then the door shivers closed, and it’s too late to do anything. I hope they’re just going for a ride around the block, brief pause in a side alley, no longer than the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.

  I’ve moved as close to the little knot of dealers on the corner of Asylum and Jewell as I can get without looking suspicious, but in the fading light I’m having a hell of a time seeing what they’re handing to the customers. Even low-light vision isn’t helping me—every little plastic twist, baggie, or vial is palmed to a client with a practiced flick of the hand just as the cash chits vanish into pockets. I even see some folding, old-fashioned American money change hands.

  Can’t have a black market without it.

  I’m still waiting while the Milky Way smears itself across the heavens and a a sliver of moon glides down the sky, shedding blue light. East, the lights of the Travelers’ tower drench the darkness, washing away the stars. I shove my hands into my sweatshirt and wander aimlessly toward the closest of the baggy-jacketed dealers, my boots scuffing dirt and dead grass.

  “Whatcha need, my man?” He turns to look me up and down. I stare at his shoes. Little lights flicker along the sides of shining white sneakers. Stupid if he thinks he might have to run, but there’s a lot of stupid on the streets.

  He’s checking out my sidearm. I keep my hands well away from it, shoving them deeper into my pockets. There’s no danger here. I even half-believe it. “I heard there’s some new shit. Army shit, make you ten feet tall. You got that?”

  “Ah, nah, babe. One batch came through, and some of the shit was bad. I got some tailored uppers though, good stuff.”

  “Maybe. You maybe know somebody who has some of the army shit left? Or knows where it came from?”

  He steps back. “Nobody. Nobody got any. Anybody got any not gonna sell it. Burned it if they’re smart. There’s some cop with a hard-on for anyone dealing it, I guess some other cop he was screwing got her head blown off.” A raucous laugh. “Teach her to fuck around in the North End. And word is the Razor says he’ll fry the balls of anybody he catches selling that shit. I know what’s good for me.”

  He’s sidelit for a minute, gaunt pox-scarred cheeks and eyes like buttered rum, hair black as the moonlit river sleeked away from his forehead. Something must have showed in my
face in the glow of headlights sweeping past, or maybe he knows who I am once he can see me, because he purses his lips and nods once, then turns away. He crosses the street by the waterless fountain with its statues supposed to represent the native peoples of the Northeast. Which include the Lakota, apparently, but then Europeans always have had trouble telling us apart.

  I try to hook him back—“Ah. Sorry, man. Look, about the other stuff …”—and he just shakes his head and stalks away.

  Made. Damn, and I’m not even a cop. I don’t know how I’m supposed to trace this shit back to a source when even a street-corner drug dealer won’t talk to me.

  Goddamn.

  And then the creak of leather and I turn as Razorface himself stops about ten feet away, waiting for me to notice him. He knows. He’s seen it happen. “Face.”

  “Maker. Walk and talk with me.” He’s got seven or ten of his ducklings tonight, my targeting scope picking out weapons on every belt and up every sleeve. That’s four or five more than he usually travels with, and Emery, his right-hand man, is with them—all scarred nose and bulging eyes, pinched and wary as a hungry dog. On the far side, I recognize Whiny—Derek—and a gangster named Rasheed, whose momma raised him right.

  I wonder if trouble’s afoot. Last time anybody got on Face’s bad side, 20-Love and Hammerhead blood got spread from here to East Hartford. I pull my hands out of my pockets, letting moonlight glitter on the scratched steel of the left one. “Bringing your friends?”

  He shakes them off without looking at them and comes forward. I sense the little knot of dealers melting away behind me, jackals when the lion comes back to the kill. Emery moves toward them, hand in his jacket, just to be sure.

  Razorface ducks down a little, speaking into my ear. “Whatcha doing out here at night, talking to trash?”

  “Talking to trash,” I answer. I turn to walk alongside him, down to the bowl of a filthy little mud-choked lake. There’s an underground river in Hartford, the Park River. They buried it, back in the last century, after it flooded one time too many. Now it breaks the surface in a few places, and mostly runs through concrete channels underground.

  Some places, you can still see phantom bridges, high arches the water doesn’t run under anymore. There’s one a few hundred yards west, in fact, ending the long sweep of lawn up to the wedding-cake-baroque Capitol Building. People sleep under it.

  “He offer to sell you anything?”

  “Nah.” I kick a rock out of the way. “Said you’d eat his balls with ketchup if he tried.”

  “Good.” Moonlight shatters off steel teeth, gleams darkly on the oiled smoothness of his scalp. “Gonna answer my question, Maker?”

  “Favor for a friend. No harm, no foul.”

  He grunts and gives me an odd, hard kind of look. “Anything you wanna tell me?”

  I shake my head. “I’m cool. I don’t think he wants his business spread around, is all.”

  “All right, Maker. You mind that’s all it is, though. Things about to get ugly. I got maybe some little boys, think Razorface getting old and slow.”

  “Funny that should happen just now, Face.”

  “Yeah,” he says, clapping a hand on my shoulder roughly. It could be an endearment. It could be a warning. It’s probably both—Face didn’t get where he is by trusting anybody. He turns away. “Funny thing.”

  Razorface turned back, frowning over his shoulder, watching Maker’s skinny form slink northward through the darkness. She probably parked at the train station. He let a breath roll out through his frustration and shook his head slowly, rubbing his jaw. “Derek.”

  “Razor. My man.”

  Don’t you forget it, little boy. I know you think I getting old, but I ain’t so old I can’t take your ass. Razorface peeled lips off a glinting smile and slid it up the kid and then over to Emery, who was strolling back down the hill, stride swinging. He gestured up the hill to the ornate white building at its crest, taking in the whole of the park, the hookers and the dealers and their clientele with a sweep of his hand. “You boys get this trash off my lawn.”

  Ten Years Earlier:

  1500 Hours, Thursday 15 February, 2052

  Hellas Crater

  Hellas Planitia

  Mars

  Valens watched excursion-suited Charlie Forster stop at the lip of the extensible, the xenobiologist’s right foot planted on its metal rim. Valens himself checked his glove and mask seals one final time, smiling when Forster snuck a glance over his shoulder. He knew the man was wondering if Valens was really in command of Scavella-Burrell Mars base, or if anybody but Unitek could really be said to be calling the shots. Money talks.

  Bare overhead luminescence stung his eyes. Valens glanced around one last time, thinking how mundane the whole apparatus looked. Like a big gray vacuum cleaner hose. No different from a jetway, or the access tube leading into the Unitek-Brazil beanstalk from the bustling equatorial port. The Galapagos and Malaysian orbital elevators weren’t much different: a train station is a train station the world over, and beyond.

  The differences lay before him. Beyond the improvised transparent atmosphere lock—just a foot or two ahead—he could make out the ragged outline of a hole torched in the hull of the alien vessel.

  Valens took a breath of recycled air and stepped through the airtight film after Forster, broadside into a corridor like nothing he would expect a human engineer to design. Work lights on yellow cabling had been strung the length of the gangway, their steady light revealing curved, ribbed walls and floor mottled black and red like cocobolo wood. Charlie moved to one side to clear the lock, turning to watch Valens, who gestured him forward. “The bridge—what we think is the bridge—is on your left. Follow the lights.”

  “What you think is the bridge?” Charlie stepped over a raised, gnarled ridge in the floor. Valens couldn’t tell if it was buckled plating or a design feature. “Haven’t the engineers looked the ship over yet?” The xenobiologist paused. “I’m walking on a starship,” he said, and Valens felt a slow thrill run from his rubber soles to the crown of his head.

  Concealed behind his breathmask, Valens saw Forster’s shoulders go up in delight and grinned himself. Like an idiot. And so what. This is an alien starship. He wanted to yank his gloves off and run his hands over the waxed-looking surface of the walls. “They have, briefly,” he said instead. “Of course we left everything that looked like biology to you. We’ve identified what we think are the engines. There’s some residual radiation; they’re set away from the ship on a shaft.”

  Valens kept talking, giving Forster a few moments. The xenobiologist took advantage of the time to marvel at the low, knotty-looking ceilings. A seam or a spine of sorts ran down the center of the passageway, knobbed at regular lengths. “The front of the ship seems to have been largely destroyed, although the pilot’s skill must have been enviable. Both recovered craft were in very good shape, considering what you might expect a space vessel found planetside to look like.”

  Forster nodded inside his heated suit, leaning closer to examine the smooth, mottled wall: polished as paneling, but without obvious joins. “I would swear this was organic.”

  “It appears to be. Akin to cellulose, if you can believe it. I thought you would find that interesting, as a biologist.”

  “Colonel. You’re telling me this is a tree?”

  Valens laughed, working to make it seem charming and easy. “No, it’s a starship.”

  “The other one was carbon, ceramics, and alloy, though. That tells me—two different civilizations. Or years of tech development. They lost one ship here and sent another looking? Which raises the unsettling question of what they ran into.”

  “I’m not going to tell you that the hull wasn’t grown, Dr. Forster. It incorporates nanotube technology in addition to the organics, however. Carbon, like the space tethers.”

  “Strong. And it’s held up for some thousands of years, based on areological analysis. Do we have any indication that there was a pilo
t, rather than this being the remains of some autonomous starfaring vegetable?”

  “Other than it being laced with tunnels and chambers, and some things that might be furniture? There’s not a damned thing that looks like an instrument panel, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Hmmm.” Forster reached past the hanging lights in their yellow cages and ran his gloved fingers along the knobby ridge at the center of the double-arched ceiling. “Colonel.”

  Valens licked his lips behind the faceplate. “Something?”

  “These are handholds. Colonel, I’m going to go out on a big old limb with a hypothesis. This appears to be a ladder.”

  “Why would you want a ladder on the ceiling?” I bet I know the answer to that.

  Charlie was reasonably fresh off the shuttle from Friendship Station. “For freefall, Colonel. Something to haul yourself about with.”

  “Ah.” Valens tilted his head back, reaching up to push one of the work lights to the side. “Come on. Let’s go look at the thing that might be a bridge.”

  It was a long walk. Valens didn’t see how the echoing space could have housed a command crew’s instruments without some sign of where they had been removed, and he was wary of jumping to conclusions, no matter how tempting. For one thing, presuming that the engines were aft, this large chamber wasn’t anywhere near the front of the ship—despite cracked and shattered crystal panels that had once hung against the walls. “Those look like view screens or interface panels. But I don’t see anything like controls.” He shook his head inside his helmet. “So how did they fly the damned thing?”

  “And why aren’t there any bodies on this one, either?” Forster wandered in slow circles around the diameter of the room, footsteps stirring swirls in the rust-colored fines that blanketed the chamber. As large as the center ring of a circus, the “bridge” contained nothing except those panels and a number of raised concave structures that invited comparison to unpadded papasan chairs. Or perhaps bowls on stilts. Here, there was metal—flexible coils like segmented snakes lay across the floor or dangled over the papasan chairs, tangles of hair-fine wires drooping from the tips.