The Orion Deception

by Tom Bielawski

  "Sirens!" announced Lainne. Heck nodded, the sound of the approaching police cruisers thundering in fast from the distance echoed off the walls of the small-town buildings. The airborne cruisers were incredibly fast and could drop from full speed onto a ground parking lot within seconds. There was little time to hide. They ran through the parking lot and across Highway 19 toward a McDonald's, luckily for them there was little ground traffic in Mason these days.

  Just as the pair disappeared inside McDonald's the first police cruiser rocketed overhead, engines screaming, and circled back to hover over the Osprey's Nest. A second cruiser flew in fast and landed hard on the ground, its landing struts causing the old concrete parking lot to spray fragments into the air.

  Heck turned away from the door as the bottom hatch of the police cruiser opened and a squad of heavily armed police officers emerged, rushing into the bar. As patrons inside left their fare and conversations to watch the scene across the street, Heck and Lainne moved to the back of the restaurant. A "closed for cleaning" sign hung on the door of the men's bathroom. With everyone's attention diverted to the front of the restaurant, no one was looking as they ducked inside and closed the door behind them.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded angrily, rounding on him in the bathroom. Heck shoved the woman into the handicap stall and closed the door.

  "Something drastic."

  "They're right on our heels!" she said as Heck removed a small holophone computer from his backpack. Then he hastily removed a small case with a syringe, vials of blue liquid, and a small electronic device. He activated the electronic device and it wirelessly connected to his holophone computer. The he inserted a vial of blue liquid into a receptacle on the device where it snapped neatly into place. A holographic interface hovered over his holophone and images flashed before him.

  "Hey," said the blue-eyed blond as the computer interface revealed what Heck was doing. "Isn't it illegal to use microbots to alter your appearance?"

  "Yes," he said absently, selecting visual characteristics. "If you'd rather not use them, you can report me when the police catch you and hope they let you off with a warning."

  Then he removed the vial from the device and filled a syringe with a tiny amount of the liquid. "Give me your arm."

  "What?" she exclaimed. "No!"

  "Suit yourself," he said. He placed that vial back in the case connected the second vial to the device. The interface flashed and danced in the air of the stall as Heck tapped this and flicked that with his fingers. Then it stopped and he closed the interface.

  "Is this it?" she asked. "This is your plan?"

  "Do you have a better one?"

  "No," she said in a pout.

  "Then I suggest you inject the contents of that syringe into a vein."

  "With a needle? You have cutting edge genetic masking technology and you're using needles?" she asked as she took the needle and looked helplessly for a vein in her arm. "What about those smart injectors that doctors use?"

  "You mean the ones that are synchronized with government databases that every law enforcement entity has access to?"

  "Yeah," she acknowledged miserably as her hopes for avoiding the needle dwindled. "Those."

  Heck finished programming the microbots in the serum and filled a small syringe. Then he quickly injected the contents into his arm.

  "You might want to hurry."

  "But..." She was amazed to see his features changing right before her eyes. His hair shifted to a sandy blond color, before settling into a platinum gray. His face contorted in an involuntary spasm as his beard thinned, becoming more scraggly and gray, and moles sprouted on his cheeks and his eyes became brown. When the transformation was through, mere seconds later, Heck let out a breath.

  "You're wasting time," he said angrily, taking the syringe from her trembling hand. Then he stuck the needle into her jugular vein and injected the liquid.

  "Ow!" she shrieked, trying to move away. Heck gripped her shoulder firmly with his free hand to steady her as he finished injecting the serum. Then he put the kit away. Lainne began to mutter but he held up a hand to silence her and listened.

  "Quiet," he hissed as he dropped to the dirty floor and slid under the stall divider.

  Lainne suddenly felt dizzy and short of breath as her heart rate sped up. She became extremely itchy, scratching horribly as hives formed on her skin.

  "Oh yeah," he said quietly. "You're going to feel dizzy and your heart will start racing. And you might get hives."

  "Oh," she groaned, placing her hand on the stall divider. "I think I might vomit."

  "And you might vomit too," he offered helpfully.

  "How come you aren't sick?"

  "I've done this before. You might want to have a seat on that toilet for a minute, if you know what I mean. There are other side effects too."

  "What?" she asked. It sounded as though Heck were speaking to her through a tunnel and she felt lightheaded and hot. Her hives were so itchy she wanted to scratch her skin raw. And as her insides felt like they were turning to water.

  "You'll feel better in about ten minutes. You're going to want to throw that dress in the trash too, you've been seen wearing it. Meet me by the soda fountain. If you don't recognize me, I'll be drinking a sweet tea."

  "You think I just carry a change of clothes with me everywhere?" she demanded angrily. The serum was definitely putting her in a very bad mood.

  "Yes," he said simply. Then the door to the restroom swung open and then closed. She wondered how he knew she had a spare minidress rolled up in her purse.

  Heck strolled out of the bathroom just as three Harris County deputy sheriffs in green fatigues walked into the dining room. He walked away from the bathroom and approached the soda fountain at the same time as a deputy with his K9 partner, a Belgian Malinois with a very angry disposition. The other two deputies were walking through the dining room, checking the identifications of each and every patron.

  "Good day, Deputy," he said genially though he felt his day had been anything but. Malinois dogs made him nervous.

  The deputy gave him a smirk but said nothing as Heck went about his business, filling a cup with tea from a vat next to the soda fountain. He paid for his drink wirelessly with prepaid charge account built into his anonymous holophone and turned around to find a seat.

  "Lose someone, did ya?" Heck asked in his best smart-ass tone as he passed the K9 officer. The K9 officer was following his dog as it moved this way and that through the room, alternately sniffing people and the floor, finally returning to the area where Heck was standing. He grimaced as the black muzzled dog sniffed the air around him in confusion and the K9 officer scrutinized him closely, the officer's free hand hovering near his Glock sidearm.

  When the dog seemed to lose interest in Heck, the young deputy, no more than twenty-five years old, cast him an angry glance and stalked away. As the dog led its handler in another direction, Heck was glad he paid for the top of the line identity masking microbots. If he had chosen anything less sophisticated, his odor would not have been masked by the microbots and that dog would have made him for sure.

  The deputies converged near a table in the back and placed a holographic communications device, or a holocomm, on the table and the cloudy image of a person, probably the dispatcher, appeared. Lainne emerged from the bathroom and strolled, angrily, to Heck's table. She sat down gingerly beside him. The K9 officer seemed to have received some special instructions and left the restaurant, but not before giving Heck a villainous look.

  "Enjoying your tea?" she asked sweetly.

  "Mmm?" he responded absently as he surveilled the room.

  "I think it needs something," she said. Then she picked up the salt shaker, opened the top, and emptied its contents into Heck's formerly sweet tea.

  Heck slowly brought his gaze to bear on the woman and raised an angry eyebrow.

  "Thanks for the warning about the digestive effects, jacka-!" she started in a scalding voice, but Heck
interrupted her. Lainne had been prepared to unleash a string of unladylike curses and was bristling with angler; until she realized there were police in the room.

  "Shh," he said quietly, nodding toward the police. After a few minutes the other deputies turned off their holocomm and settled down to eat lunch. He looked at her and began to grin. "Nice disguise ma'am, uh- sir. Which one are you, by the way?"

  Lainne was furious. Her body mass had doubled adding a layer of muscle and causing her breasts to virtually disappear. Her facial features were now more chiseled and definitely more manly-looking.

  "That minidress really accentuates your large frame," he said, laughing.

  "You should talk!" Then Lainne started to laugh too. Because Heck now looked like an elderly man with hairy moles on his face and a scraggly white beard. He changed and was now wearing mismatched clothes that made him stand out like a sore thumb.

  "Why did you pick such outlandish disguises?" she asked, noting how many people were giving the pair shocked looks.

  "When there is nowhere else to hide, it's better to hide in plain sight. Sure, we are getting some looks, but most people tend not to look very long at things they consider shocking or distasteful, at least not for more than a few moments."

  "I see," she admitted. She glanced at the officers who had now seated themselves at the table and put away their holocomm. "Looks like they've given up."

  "Patrol officers, especially younger ones, aren't skilled man-hunters. When a suspect runs these folks are pretty good at catching them with K9 officers and air cruisers. But when a suspect does evade capture, it becomes somebody else's job to start man-hunting. These guys go back on duty and wait for the next call from dispatch."

  "So we're safe."

  "No, the man-hunters will come next."

  "That doesn't sound very good," she said, stirring her drink as she stared out the window. "What do we do?"

  "We? What makes you think I've agreed to help?"

  "You will," she said confidently. When the ex-lawman cast her an angry look she added, "My brother can help you find her."

  Heck just nodded, she was right. He was going to help her, and he was going to help himself.

  Chapter

  Two

  ~

  "What about my car?" Lainne demanded. "We can't just leave it here, someone might steal it!"

  Heck said nothing as he looked at the flight schedules on his holophone computer. He would not answer the woman's questions about her car, trivial matters like that would only slow him down. He was planning their escape, it wouldn't be long before the man-hunter teams arrived at the bar and used more sophisticated tracking equipment to find them. If the Commonwealth agents were behind this, then it was likely that the hunters would have cutting edge technology at their disposal that could even sense the presence of microbots in a person's body.

  After things had settled down enough in McDonald's, and Heck was reasonably certain no one had penetrated his disguise, the two left the fast-food joint, and the scene of their near apprehension, behind. They walked several miles along Highway 19 away from Mason to the city of Eustis where there was a small air shuttle station. Heck ignored Lainne's protests and only tersely answered her questions along the way.

  When they reached the airfield they were both sweaty from the humidity, even though the sun had nearly set. Heck wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and stood outside the terminal, gazing at the shuttles coming and going. He loved to fly. Ever since he was a small child Heck had wanted to fly airplanes. He loved air and space flight and had a very good understanding of all the known forms of propulsion used in air and spacecraft. And right now, there was no place he would rather be than in his cruiser or aboard a climate controlled drift far away from Earth.

  Eustis was a much bigger city than tiny Mason and there were a number of people milling about. A shopping mall was located within walking distance of the airfield and many shoppers were on their way back to Harrisburg, the county seat, or other major Florida cities after a hard day of bargain hunting. He took Lainne by the hand and two made their way inside the terminal.

  Heck bought two tickets aboard a shuttle that would take them to Tampa where they would change their identities again and board a flight somewhere else. After leaving the ticket counter, Heck and Lainne walked down a tunnel that led to the main hatch of the bus-like aircraft.

  "Why do we have to ride in this? My BMW would be much more comfortable."

  "Don't make a scene, Bill." The sarcastic comment from Heck earned a few bemused stares from the pilot and the few patrons who were on the Mason Shuttle...and a well-muscled punch in the shoulder from Lainne's very masculine frame.

  "You're precious car has probably been impounded and ripped to shreds by now anyway." Heck said with a gasp, hoping to get under her skin. He was beginning to dislike her incessant complaining. She was spoiled and high maintenance, and he did not like high maintenance women. Well, not usually. "Besides, ground transportation will attract the kind of attention we don't want. Ain't too many ground cars driving around anymore these days, even in these parts."

  Lainne stalked down the aisle of the bus-like shuttle and sat down. Heck sat down beside her and the two remained silent until the hubbub on the air-bus resumed and everyone else had forgotten the unusual looking pair.

  Heck relaxed and passed the time trying to get a look at everyone on the shuttle. After a few minutes an announcement was made and a number of the passengers were called off the aircraft by name. It was a strange occurrence. The announcement claimed that these patrons were going to have to take a follow-on flight, something Heck had never seen happen before. That left four on the aircraft beside Heck and Lainne. There was a grim looking man in a suit behind them, a man and a woman seated together toward the front on the left side of the aircraft, and another man in front on the right.

  "Where are we going now?"

  "Not sure."

  "You're not sure?" she demanded.

  "No. Now, please be quiet so I can think about it."

  Heck laid his head back and closed his eyes, ignoring all of the woman's attempts at reviving the conversation. After a moment the vibration from the shuttle's engines told Heck that they were about to ascend. In moments, he felt himself sink slightly into his seat as the shuttle climbed vertically into the air. He looked out the window as the shuttle reached its cruising altitude and began the hour-long journey to Tampa, far to the southeast of little Mason City. It was nighttime now, and soon the lights of Harris County were replaced by those of Disney World, Universal Studios, and other Orlando area attractions.

  With a disconsolate huff the formerly beautiful woman sat back and looked around the shuttle. She had given up on getting anything useful from the ex-lawman and cursed him for being as talkative as a stone. But Heck just grunted in acknowledgment and refused to rise to the woman's bait. Being fond of antiquated ground transportation, Lainne likened the shuttle to about the same size as a ground coach bus with two rows of seats flanking each side of a center aisle. The shuttle did not have wings like an old-style airplane, instead it combined anti-gravity technology for lift and thrusters for directional movement.

  Some mild turbulence made her regret leaving her BMW behind, but she knew the ex-lawman was right; their pursuers would have had her antique car impounded by now. Still, flying always seemed to make her ill. Lainne made a trip to the restroom and looked in the mirror, noticing that the microbot cloaking technology seemed to be wearing off, albeit slowly.

  As she returned to her seat she glanced at the holovision in the front of the shuttle to read the destination ticker: Port of Tampa. The holovision display flickered on and off but the three dimensional letters were legible enough to make out the flickering display. A list of tourist attractions in the Tampa area blinked on between the blinding flashes of light and spans of total darkness.

  Broken, just like the government that put it there.

  She glanced around at the other travelers as
she maneuvered down the aisle, just four of them. They seemed ordinary for the most part and she could not hear much of any one particular conversation over the noise of the climate control system. She thought it was ironic that a 22nd Century shuttle-craft still had a noisier air conditioner than her 21st Century BMW. But one person caught her attention as she passed him, he was seated near an emergency exit about midway along the cabin. It was the grim looking man in the suit.

  The man glanced up at her disinterestedly as she walked by, then returned to thumbing his way through a thin magazine tablet. There was something familiar to her about those eyes. She thought about that as she returned to her seat. She gave Heck a poke in the shoulder but he just snorted and continued to sleep.

  She glanced back at the man behind them but he did not seem to notice or care.

  Lainne attributed it all to nerves and put the well-dressed man out of her mind and glanced at the clear, paper-thin, glass tablets stuffed into the seat pocket in front of her. The first was covered in smudges from greasy fingers and she had to wipe the viewing area with a tablet cloth from the seat pocket. The label at the top of the tablet read: Women's Interest.

  She tapped the button on the outside corner and the clear piece of glass flared to life, displaying a selection of hundreds of magazines to choose from. Nothing interested her very much and after returning the magazine tablet she saw something odd on the main display above the pilot's head. For a moment she thought it had displayed, Jacksonville. But when she looked again it displayed Port of Tampa.

  Was it her imagination? She watched for a few moments and anxiously picked up another tablet, the display still showed Port of Tampa. When she found nothing of interest in the Men's Interest category, she returned it to the pocket and took out her holophone; but it didn't seem to work now.

  "Hey!" she said loudly, poking him in shoulder. An angry eye opened up and glared at her. "How come the phones don't work?"