by David Ryker
He let the smile slide off and cleared his throat. “What I mean is — I’ve been pushing things so far, and we’ve come up with nothing. I want to hear your opinion.”
Her eyes closed down to slits. “Really?” She thought it was a trap. On any other day, it would have been.
He nodded, feeling the words false behind his teeth.
She exhaled slowly and turned to the woman. “Someone smuggled some weapons onto the surface. We need to find out how they did it, what shipment it came in on, and who was paid off to look the other way.”
The woman laughed again. “Oh, darling,” she said, an American drawl slipping between her painted purple lips. “Ain’t nothing gets smuggled in here, not since they put them new security drones in. Was getting to be a real problem — all them people, you know, turning up dead in the salt flats. Nasty business. Illegals being brought in on container ships. Awful, awful stuff.”
“Security drones?” Arza said, ignoring the woman’s faux concern. “What security drones?”
The woman leaned forward onto the counter, her brass-effect name tag reading ‘Maude’. “Well,” she started, gesturing ethusiastically, “the OCA Central Shipping Company, or the CSC, for you know,” she said, motioning to herself, “the ones in the know.”
Ward and Arza exchanged glances but didn’t interrupt.
Maude cleared her throat and went on. “So, those nasty Zousis — that’s Chinese for smugglers — it’s what we call them, the smugglers — who bring in the people — for the salt flats. You following so far?”
Arza and Ward nodded diligently.
“Okay, so they kept opening containers and finding these people — you won’t believe this — dead.”
“No,” Ward said, gasping.
“I know!” She shook her head. “There was no pattern to it, either — just people squeezed into containers with breathing masks, a bottle of water, and — and this is the worst part — a bucket — for, you know.” She fanned her hand behind her.
“We know,” Ward and Arza said in unison.
“They were smuggling people into the crates after they were loaded on, and then taking them off before they were inventoried on arrival. And the CSC were thinking — how do we stop this?” Maude stood up and shook her head, raising her hands. Her hair shook, curls jangling like bells without the noise.
Ward and Arza stood stock still waiting for her to continue.
“So they got some of those nifty little robots — you know the ones that look like big crabs — with the spindly legs, and the arms with the grabbers.” She made pincer movements with her hands. “They move through the ship while they’re flying — you know, with those magnetic feet they got — and they open up the containers, one by one, and scan them inside — biometric, infrared, sonic — you name it. They shoot off these little drones, like fireflies, and they buzz around and make sure everything that should be there is there, and nothing that should be there isn’t… If you catch my drift.”
“We do.”
“They inspect every item during transit. If they find anything, they send up an alert and the authorities meet the ship when it gets to the outer port,” she said, pointing upward, meaning the geosynchronous port that stayed in orbit and dealt with all the loading and unloading prior to the goods being sent down to the surface. “It’s all automated up there — drones take everything from the cargo ship to the dropship — no human hands involved — or Martian ones — so there’s no way anything can get down here now.” She shrugged and slapped the counter. “First few times ships came in before the Zousis realized what was happening, they found people, some contraband, too — drugs, weapons — other illegal things. What people won’t do, right?”
“Right.” Ward nodded and looked at Arza, waiting for her to continue.
“And when did the advent of these security measures happen?”
“Excuse me?”
Ward stepped. “When did they start cataloging the inventory during the flights?”
The woman blew a raspberry between her lined lips. “Oh, I don’t know, must have been two, maybe three months ago now. You know, they don’t rightly tell us much. We’re just the worker bees — work, work, work, you know? The CSC implements the changes, the sentinels makes the arrests. All we do is watch. Like fish in a bowl, as the world goes by.” She laughed shrilly and Ward and Arza both flinched. “Anyway, you still want those manifests?”
Ward set his jaw and waited for Arza to answer. She sighed and shook her head. “No, that’s way outside the parameter. I can’t see them coming into the city with the hopes that there’s a rifle been waiting for them for eight weeks before they arrived. Too risky.”
“Not to mention,” Ward added, “that if the rifle didn’t come in through here, then how the hell would Sadler and her partners have gotten to the planet? They sure as hell didn’t come in eight weeks ago — she’s good — good enough to stay under the radar, but she’s good enough to know that eight weeks on Mars is too long to stay invisible. She wouldn’t risk that — she’d have wanted to come in late. Do the job, then get out again as quickly as possible. And if the SB are really cracking down on immigration—”
“What about faked biometrics, like Klaymo said? Come in on a tourist crusier?”
“He’s out of the loop. Maybe ten years ago they could have. Faking a passport is nearly impossible since the Thessaly Treaty came in, and trying to get a false biometric profile into the OCA central database? That’s a hell of an ask, no matter how many people are in on this.”
Arza looked pensive.
Ward kept going, letting his thoughts take shape through words. “They must have come in some other way, probably brought the rifles with them. There’s something we’re not seeing here.” Ward walked in a tight circle. “Maude — have these security measures come into effect all over the planet, or just in Eudaimonia?”
She stuck her bottom lip out. “I’d guess all over, but I don’t rightly know. Though I do know that there’s been no arrests or seizures here since they started. No doubt those Zousis are looking for alternative methods by now.”
Ward hummed and cracked his knuckles. “Alternative methods.” He just didn’t know what they were. They couldn’t canvass the whole planet — but they could rely on the thoroughness of the SB. They didn’t do things by halves. Sadler and the weapon didn’t come in eight weeks ago, before the lockdown. And they sure as hell didn’t slip through the SB’s fingers. That much was for sure. They might have been able to pay a couple of sentinels off — to bend protocol. They may have been able to bribe a cyber into doing some undocumented work, too. But, getting through automated systems? Immigration? Inspection drones? No, there wasn’t any paying off robots — that’s why the OCA used them.
Arza looked lost. Ward felt it.
“Come on,” he said after a minute. “We won’t find anything here. Maude — it’s been a pleasure.”
“The pleasure was all mine.”
Arza turned toward the door and they walked slowly, both folding the information they had into different shapes in their head, like origami being flattened and reconstructed over and over until it made a crane. Except it just looked like a crumpled mess.
The doors slid open and the warm mid-morning air enveloped them. Ahead, the container city loomed. Behind it, a crane swung lazily. To the right, Spire 2 rose into the sky. In the distance, the others did the same, blue against the gray sky.
Everything was still for an instant, the world cut out like layers of paper in front of him.
Ward stopped and looked up, his skin tightening into gooseflesh. Angles. Trajectories. Vantage points. The weight of his tombstone around his neck suddenly.
He drew in a sharp breath and the world slowed down around him.
His muscles tensed and groaned under his skin as he turned, throwing his hands into Arza’s shoulder, shoving her sideways.
The force shunted them apart, her flying right, and him kicking left.
The
glass-fronted sliding door behind them erupted in a shower of glass, the crack of shattering tiles ringing out from the reception area. Maude screamed. The air ruptured.
A boom rang out, a clap nestled inside it. Ward’s eardrums sucked against his brain as he landed, the force of the shot ripping between him and Arza enough to warp the air.
His hip cried in pain as he scrambled sideways, rolling and kicking himself to his feet, diving for cover that wasn’t there.
On the other side, Arza was scuttling in a bear-crawl toward some parked cars, swearing as she went.
Ward dove and rolled over his shoulder as another shot rang out, concrete shooting into the air in a geyser of dust and fragments.
He made his feet and started sprinting, legs pumping as he made a beeline for the nearest container, about thirty meters away.
Every few steps, he hit the brakes, twisted, sidestepped, and then took off again.
Two more shots rang out, neither hitting their mark. One clanged into the corner of the container he was heading for and splintered in a shower of sparks, and the other sailed overhead and ricocheted off the ground behind him, the angle too shallow for it to bed.
The main alleyway between the two sides of the container city was wide, but wherever the shooter was stationed, the angle wasn’t deep enough to cut around the near corner.
Ward’s shoulder hit the metal, and he stopped, breathing hard, his skin prickling with sweat.
He knew he trusted his instincts. The shooter had seen them come into the port — followed them maybe — maybe all the way from Klaymo’s, though he didn’t know how — and had watched them go into the admin building. Taking a shot at a moving target wasn’t easy, especially on a bike, and especially with Ward riding like he was. But from a high angle? Targets coming straight toward you? Unsuspecting, through a doorway? Both clustered together? No wind in the container city, a reasonably close shot considering how far Sadler had been picked off from? That was a sniper’s dream. Ward had seen it, felt the scope on him. If it was him, it was how he would have done it. That’s always what the AIA taught. If it was you, how would you do it? Like that, only he wouldn’t have missed.
Ward could see Arza, pinned against a car, about forty meters away, on the other side of the alley. The sniper was up on that side somewhere, probably at the far end — somewhere with a quick exit route. He couldn’t see Arza from there, but Ward didn’t think he was shooting at her anyway. Ward was the target. The bullets were meant for him.
Shit. He was going to bolt. If Ward didn’t get to him, he’d lose him in the docks, and their one decent lead since they’d started would just evaporate into thin air like the steam from the cooling pools.
He glanced at his bike over by Arza. It was too far — maybe the shooter would expect him to go for it, and was waiting for that. No, he’d have to go on foot. But how? He needed to be quick.
He ground his teeth — not liking, but not seeing any other option. “Arza!” he yelled, hoping the shooter was out of earshot.
“Yeah?”
“You good?”
“Yeah!”
“Can you run?”
“What?”
“Can you run?”
“I — uh — yeah, yeah I can run.”
“So run!”
“What?”
“Run! I need you to draw his fire.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Arza! Now!”
She yelled indistinctly and rolled from cover, sprinting into the open before darting back toward the cars.
Another shot rang out and one of the cars jerked, a flash of sparks dancing on the roof as a bullet glanced off, just over Arza’s head, peppering the building behind her with shrapne
Ward saw, regretting asking her to do it, but he was already running.
Arza rolled out again, pistol drawn, and popped off a few shots in the general direction of where the fire was coming from.
Neither of them knew where he was — the shooter was a few hundred meters away and the height of the stacks made it so that it was difficult to see from the ground. But Ward knew that the shooter would have come in fast and light — there was no way they could have spoofed their way through the entry checkpoint — a doorway maybe, but not a barriered checkpoint into a UMR port — which meant they’d slipped in on foot, probably left their ride outside the perimeter.
Ward tucked in close to the crates on the shooter’s side and looked back, watching as Arza dove out of the way and a plume of concrete shot upward, a bullet hitting the spot she’d been kneeling in just a second before.
He breathed a quick sigh of relief and kept moving, heading down the wall of containers just below the shooter. He wouldn’t be able to get a shot off at Ward without hanging over the edge, and if he did, Ward’s M2.0 was already in his hands.
The shooter would have to be a few stacks up at least — most of the way down — at least three hundred meters for the sound to take as long as it had to reach them after the bullet it. If he was up on foot, he’d have to be somewhere that could be accessed by stepped containers. If he was making the climb he’d only be able to do it one container at a time. They were two and a half meters high each — it was a good jump and scramble in itself. Two would be impossible. Ward didn’t think that left him a lot of options for how he could have gotten up. He’d know the route when he saw it. He just had to get there. Wherever there was.
Ten seconds later, another shot rang out, then another, in quick succession.
Arza swore, but there was no cry of pain, no mewling. No silence either. He could hear her shouting. Good. It meant she wasn’t dead. A close call, but no direct hit by the sound of it. The bullets clanged off the metal of the car like someone was hitting an anvil with a sledgehammer. If it was a two-click rifle it packed a hell of a punch. Even from that distance, the bullet had been enough to tear Sadler apart. Ward paused for a breath and looked back, seeing the damage on the wall that the fragmentary rounds had done. Dozens of bullet holes from a single shot.
He pressed on. Arza wouldn’t stick her head out again, but he hoped he wouldn’t need her to.
He stared upward, scanning the wall of containers. It was flat — six up. If it was him, he wouldn’t go that high — too exposed, if anything. No, he’d pick a lower level — less to get up, and down. He’d tuck into a corner, shielded from below and the front.
The far corner of the container corridor neared and his breath caught in his chest, nostrils burning. He kept fit, but sprinting three hundred meters with a pistol raised still took its toll — especially when the air was as thick and heavy as it was at the port, the steam from the ship still swirling from the pools.
He reached it and burst from cover, turning and skipping backward, scanning for any sort of way up. The corner he’d just passed was all three and four high, and the crane behind him was all automated — there was no way up or down that.
Ward started to circle, pistol up, looking for the single stack.
He made for the other side and found what he was looking for. The crane hung over him like a scorpion’s tale, the spires piercing the sky all around.
Three containers down from the corner was a single height stack. Next to it, one in from the outer edge was a stack of two, then one of three. It ran inwards like that for a few containers and then jumped up again, flat to the far side at four high.
This had to be it.
Ward stowed his M2.0 and took it at a run, springing and scrambling up the side, his lightweight boots finding traction on the flaking red paint.
He mantled it, conscious that he had to keep his pistol holstered to climb, and headed for the next one.
His toes clanged into the metal and he pulled himself up, vaulting over the edge.
The third was harder, the effort to lift himself sapping more of his energy. He was panting by the time he got up, but his heart rate quickly settled, the adrenaline in his system smoothing his pulse into a quiet, fast hum, oxygenating his system e
fficiently.
His pistol was back in his hand, neck craned and wrists cocked, looking over the lip of next container. It was six full lengths to the far side, which made twelve total in width. His math was right, but there wasn’t any sign of the shooter. Then again, if he was prone, he wouldn’t be able to see him from this angle.
Ward grunted and picked up speed, slotting the pistol back into its holster again as he took the last climb.
His toes hit the steel and pushed him upward. He spun in the air, rolling sideways, pulling the gun from his belt and swinging it around.
He landed on his hip and lifted the muzzle, finger on the trigger.
It all happened quickly.
The guy turned — he was human, tall, thickset, his lined face square under his bushy hair, shaved to the scalp on the sides. His right eye was red, like he’d been hit a dozen times in it. No doubt from the cyber-doc’s work — looked like the irritation had been worse than Sadler’s. He’d probably squirmed under the knife.
He was wearing a flak vest, a pair of combat pants and knee pads. He had shooting gloves on, but his arms were bare, thick but not overly muscular, and covered in gang-tattoos — the same kind that Sadler had, but there was barely any skin showing between them. It must have been an initiation ritual to get one — and it looked like he was very well initiated.
The squat guy was already up. No doubt he’d heard Ward coming.
The rifle, nearly as long as he was tall, was swinging around. Its thick black body and long barrel, bulbed at the end with a compensator, was almost too big to hold on to. In the second that it was in profile, Ward didn’t recognize the make or model. He’d never seen anything like it before — he was just glad it was so heavy.
Ward fired, twice, lying on his side. The first bullet hit the rifle in the body and shot upwards, the second hit the guy center mass, burying itself in the vest.
He kept turning, kept bringing the rifle up.