Tilted Axis

by David Ryker

  It was up to the AIA and the SB in equal measure to clean up the messes — though the AIA often took a more direct approach.

  “You good?” Ward whispered, feeling the throb of music through the hab wall against his shoulder.

  Sadler looked back at him with stalwart stoicism, her tanned skin nearly black in the darkness, her smoky eyes swimming under her short black hair, scraped back and pressed to her scalp. She was breathing hard, focused on the task at hand.

  There was a keypad next to the door — the code had been embedded in the merc’s tattoo. A hidden code that would give them access to the mercs’ HQ — to all the plans and information they would need to take Dharwan to the gallows. To pin all the bloodshed and drug-running on them — to nail them to the goddamn wall for it.

  Ward took a breath. “Ready?”

  She nodded once and flexed her fingers around the grip of her pistol. Ward was going to pull the door open and cover the left side of the room. She’d step back and cover the right. From what the merc had said, there’d be six guys inside — six would always be out, working. They did it like that, six on, six off, twelve guys. Except there were only five out working, because Ward and Sadler had one of them back at their safehouse, ziptied to a chair.

  Ward tapped in the code carefully, breathing quietly. An LED on the panel lit up in green. A moment of stillness hung in the air and he met Sadler’s eyes for just a fraction of a second, the look of sureness in them unmistakable — empowering. He took the handle in his hand and pulled it down. And then —

  Bang.

  Ward gasped upright on the couch, bathed in sweat.

  He checked his watch — nearly four-thirty. He huffed abjectly. “Nearly six and a half hours — not bad.” He stood up and pulled off his soaked shirt, heading for the bathroom. He picked up a tac-kit and took it in with him, showering and changing, and this time, slipped on a graphene-kevlar ballistic vest that covered up to the collar and down to the elbow. It was almost twelve millimeters thick and would stop everything except a square shot from a high caliber rifle. Usually, it would have made him feel better, except that’s exactly what he and Arza were being shot at with.

  Still, as he pulled it tight around his stomach, it gave him some semblance of comfort, even if it was a placebo effect.

  He pulled a long-sleeved black crew neck over the top and pushed them up his forearms. He looked in the mirror and thought he looked old, his once youthful mess of curly brown hair lying flat, the rugged stubble now a rough beard speckled with gray, the bags under his dark eyes deepening with the long days and longer nights. Life out on the mesa might have been boring, but it certainly wasn’t making him any younger.

  His stomach growled and he let himself out of the bathroom and headed for the kitchen. It was still an hour to dawn and Arza needed to sleep. Ward wanted her sharp.

  By the time she got up, breakfast was ready.

  Ward slid a plate onto the table in the kitchen and put his down opposite. She came over, blonde hair ruffled from the goose down pillow, blue eyes red from sleep. She pulled out a chair and sat. “Eggs?”

  “Powdered. Don’t get too excited.”

  “Got coffee?”

  He brought over a jug from the drip machine and set it down in the middle of the table, a jug of juice, too.

  “You been up for a while?” she asked, picking up her knife and fork.

  He shrugged. “Didn’t sleep much.”

  “Thinking about today?”

  He paused and looked up. “I never sleep much when I’m working. What about you? Nervous?”

  She chewed her eggs thoughtfully, a piece of freeze-dried toast held up in her hand, her elbow on the table. “How could you not be? Yesterday was kind of crazy.”

  “You ever been shot at before?” Ward took a mouthful of eggs and then one of coffee to wash it down.

  “Not since Ootooka’s.” She laughed a little. “First time I ever needed to pull my gun was in Old-Town.”

  “Jesus. Talk about a baptism by fire.” Ward was a little surprised. Hell, he knew she was new to field work, but to put someone like this on him? Either he had a higher opinion of himself than he thought, or Moozana had a lower one.

  She nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird. You know, you hear stories — I did, from my dad, and Klaymo — they’d sit out for hours, talking about the old days. About bullets flying. And about tracking down bad guys. And it gets romanticized, you know? It’s different when you’re actually there — when the bullets are actually flying.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, you do. You stop getting so scared after a while. You stop thinking, Oh no, what if this is it? What if I’m going to die here?”

  “And then?”

  “And then it gets easier to shoot back.”

  Silence hung between them and Ward scraped the last of the eggs onto his fork.

  “Come on,” he said, standing and taking his plate to the sink. “We should go.”

  Arza showered, pulled on a vest of her own, and came out of the bathroom. Ward was sitting on the couch with another tac-kit open. His M2.0 was in pieces in front of him. He was cleaning it meticulously as she approached.

  In seconds, he snapped it all back together and loaded it, pushing it into the holster in the small of his back.

  He stood and turned the box around so she could see, handing her a magazine clip to attach to her holster, as well as a pistol. “Here, try this on.”

  She pulled out her Pettler .22 and held it up next to the one Ward had handed her — a Compact M2.0 9mm. It was a smaller caliber than Ward’s .45, but it would be a solid step up in stopping power from what she was used to.

  “Here,” Ward said, handing her three loaded magazines. “Armor piercing. You know, just in case.”

  She nodded without a word and Ward took the Pettler out of her hand.

  She scoffed lightly, holding the handfuls up. “Guess this makes me AIA then?”

  “We could always use another set of steady hands.”

  She didn’t look impressed.

  “It’ll be here when you get back.” Ward put the Pettler in the case. “But for now, I’d feel more comfortable if you had that. It’ll put a good-sized hole in whatever you’re shooting at.”

  She nodded and holstered it, clipping the extra mags onto her belt.

  “One last thing.” He gave her a case the size of a small shaving kit.

  “Another spoofer?”

  “Not quite.”

  She opened it, looking at the contact lens and little black dot nestled in the black foam.

  “Camera and communicator.”

  She stuck out her bottom lip.

  “Lens goes on the left eye — it’ll record everything you see, as well as let me see what you see, if you want. And this thing,” he said, holding up the black dot, “is a comms device. Just stick it on the back of your ear. It detects vibrations in the inner canal, so you’ll be able to hear me and I can hear you, even at a whisper. If we get separated, you know.”

  “What are we planning for today, Ward?”

  Ward sighed and pushed the last of the rounds into his third magazine. “I don’t know, but I don’t want to be caught out again like we were yesterday.”

  Arza sighed. “I suppose we’d better get to it, then.”

  Ward cocked his weapon and closed the tac-kit. “After you.”

  15

  They rode quickly, using the access road to the wind farm, heading back toward town.

  Ward had put on a pair of goggles to stop the dust that blew in with the morning sun, and kept the throttle pinned.

  The bike snaked and glided over the cold, sandy earth, the long grasses waving serenely, lumps of sleeping cattle rising stoically at random, their humped backs dotting the green sea.

  The city came up quickly, the sun still slithering around behind the horizon. They had some time, but Ward didn’t let up.

  Before Ar
za had woken, he’d checked out the location of the brownstones — they weren’t too deep into the Human Quarter.

  About a kilometer outside the city, Ward let off and pulled into the grasses. There were a lot of ways in via the proper channels, but it always sort of relied on the honor system. While enforcing law and order was a top priority, it got to a point where safety became totalitarianism, so there were no hard fences, and no perimeter detectors. Considering how hard it was to get onto the planet at all, there was no real need for them.

  Ward headed down the long slope toward the salt flats and dropped off the bank with a splash.

  The canals fed in from the plains, picking up minerals off the rock bed and bringing them into the city.

  About sixty clicks out was a natural lake formed in the crater of a volcano. The bed there was rich in mineral salt and canals let it all float down to the city, flooding the flats in a thin sheen of water that would evaporate with the rising sun.

  Not long after, the scrubbers would come down and start scraping it all up.

  The repository would pay them for what they had by the day’s end and the stockpile would be shipped over to the industrial sector of Eudaimonia. The businesses there all ran on molten salt energy. It was a clean process with very little carbon overhead, but crucially for Ward, what it meant was that at this time in the morning, the salt flats were completely deserted, and covered with a few centimeters of water all over.

  The night was still and the surface stretched out like glass, the stars and buildings reflecting in it like a photograph that had been turned upside down.

  The tires hit and ripples started spreading out.

  Ward could feel them skating across the top, the thickly salinated water unable to get out of the way quickly enough.

  It was surreal, the line separating the reflection from reality invisible in the distance. It felt like they were riding through the Gate — nothing but a blur of light and darkness, the sound of unseen rushing of water.

  The edge crept up quickly and Ward had to hit the brakes hard not to lose control.

  The tires sank and bit into the flat. Water sprayed around them, and the illusion shattered.

  Arza swore, her head smacking into Ward’s back.

  He let off and cranked up a little, straightening out as they reached the far bank.

  The bike jostled and sighed on its shocks as they ran up the gravel rise and came to a stop.

  Ward and Arza stared down over the flat, watching as the waves spread and died in the viscous liquid.

  The stars settled and returned and suddenly it was like they’d never crossed it at all.

  They looked for a second longer and then set off into the silent city streets.

  Ward couldn’t help but crack a smile when they passed the spot where he’d taught those kids a lesson. And by taught them a lesson he meant punching one so hard that it scared the other two off.

  In another minute they were on the street with the brownstones, the white light spilling from the front of the bike dimming as the sun began to rise. Ward checked his watch. It was nearly six. He guessed they had a little over an hour before anyone arrived for work.

  Of the eight buildings they were constructing, the three on the right looked pretty much finished. The two in the middle were part finished — their windows still covered in manufacturer’s tape, their frontages still raw and without any shrubbery or rails on the concrete steps. The three on the left were still just shells, their foundations exposed like nerves — old-school Earth concrete and rebars sticking out of the ground.

  A chain link fence ran around the building site and wooden walkways stretched across the open foundations, suspended on scaffolding, crisscrossing the huge hole and running into the innards of the more finished buildings.

  Ward looked up at them knowing that somewhere up there, Sadler had made her home. She would have insisted on them hiding out there, and she was indomitable when she had her mind set on something. She’d wanted to finish out her days in one of these, and she had. She knew it was her end, and this was where she chose. She finally made it to New York.

  “Come on,” Ward said stiffly, his voice caught in his throat. “Let’s get inside.”

  Arza walked over to the chainlink and paused. A sign was mounted on the fence: “NO ACCESS TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL.” It was also in Martian. She went to the gate and stared at it. It was locked, a keypad mounted next to it.

  She laughed and pointed to it, turning to Ward. “What are the odds?” Her finger reached out. “One, seven—”

  His iron gaze sucked the laughter right out of her. “Don’t.”

  “Come on — this could be it. This could be what the—”

  He grabbed her hand. “Don’t. It’s not.”

  “But—”

  “Sadler’s smart. Not cruel.”

  “Cruel?”

  “Guess that wasn’t in my file.” He sighed, and let go of her arm. “Last time I typed a code that I found on someone’s arm into a keypad… I lost one of mine.”

  Her fingers curled back into her palm and she smiled awkwardly, looking up at the barbed wire over the top. “You want to climb over?”

  “What are we, teenagers? No, I’ve got a better idea.”

  Ward started forward and pulled a little device out of his pocket. It was black and looked like a key fob and he stuck it on top of the box. It lit up and the pad started making a beeping noise. The LED display started blinking furiously, and then numbers started to pop up on it. They churned all at once before beginning to settle, one by one. Seven, nine, six, one, three, three, eight, four.

  The gate buzzed and then opened a little. Ward took it and pulled it wide, slipping the device back into his pocket.

  “Another AIA gadget?” Arza lifted her eyebrows.

  “Yup.”

  “That work on all locks?”

  Ward shrugged. “All the human ones. Martian tech is trickier.”

  “Better made, you mean.”

  “Come on, before someone sees us.”

  They walked through the gate and Ward pulled it to, but left it unlocked.

  The boards creaked under them as they walked, the thin layer of dust that had settled overnight puffing under their feet. They both kept their hands off the rails. No need to leave prints if they could help it.

  They strode across the scaffolding toward the fourth building. The entryway into it was no more than a door-shaped hole in the wall big enough to cart supplies through. Inside, it was at first fix — all the electric and plumbing was in, plasterboards were tacked to the frames. But otherwise it was empty — cut wires curling from fist-sized holes in the walls, filler roughly pasted into the creases.

  Ward stood in the middle of the room and looked up through the gap in the ceiling toward the second floor, squinting in the darkness, the meager light of the pre-dawn sky filtering in through the clear-filmed windows.

  “You want to climb?” Arza asked, whispering.

  Ward shook his head. “No, Sadler wouldn’t choose this one. Too much effort. Carrying things up and down, going in and out with a rifle that weighed fifteen kilos. I don’t see it. Let’s try the next one.”

  Arza nodded. “All right. Your lead.”

  In the next three houses, they found nothing. The two in the middle that were part-finished were still missing staircases. The three on the end had them, but searching the first two of those proved futile. They were completely empty, and though their walls were smoothed and ready for paint, and the bathrooms and kitchens had been fitted, there was no sign of real life.

  But, in the fourth, the last house along, things were different.

  Into all the other houses, plywood had just been leaned against the holes that joined them. But, on the fourth, there was a door.

  A board had been cut to size and placed into a makeshift frame, hinged from the inside so it couldn’t be unscrewed from the outside.

  Ward paused and ran his fingers around the edges. Sawdust c
ame off into his hand. “Fairly fresh,” he said quietly, holding his fingers to his nose. “Few weeks maybe.”

  “You can tell that from the smell?”

  “It feels a little soft, musty. The cut-wood smell is fading. It wasn’t done in the last few days.”

  She let him go on with inspection, not knowing enough about wood shavings to argue either way.

  The door didn’t look especially strong — just a piece of wood, but it was secured with a hefty padlock — and not the electronic kind.

  Ward lifted it and inspected the keyhole. “Laser cut. We can’t pick this.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got a gadget for that, do you?”

  Ward sighed and laid his hand against the door, closing his eyes. All seemed silent on the other side, but he knew that there was something there. The door was enough of a giveaway to that. Him and Sadler that one day on Ganymede when a storm rolled through and knocked out all their sat comms, the tv, the network — all they’d talked about was those goddamn brownstones. This had to be it. It just had to. “No,” he said flatly, drawing his M2.0. “But I don’t need one.”

  He leveled the pistol at the padlock and obliterated it.

  Muzzle flash filled the room and their ears rang.

  “Jesus, Ward! A little warning next time — are you crazy? You’ll wake the whole—”

  But he was gone, already through the door and bounding through the rooms, pistol up.

  By the time Arza got through, Ward was already sweeping back down the hall and up the stairs.

  Arza pulled her own pistol and followed him up.

  He paused at the top and swung around to cover the landing. “Clear,” he muttered, motioning her with his head to head for the back bedrooms. “Eyes up.”

  He moved forward and they split apart. Ward nudged open the bathroom door and checked the room. It was empty, but water was beaded on the inside of the glass shower screen. He looked at it for a second, and then swept back out of the room, breathing slowly. His muscles were tight and oiled, the adrenaline slowly flowing into his system on a steady drip. Enough to have him sharp, not enough to shake his hands, or his aim.