Zone War

by John Conroe

  “You do know that if you climb to the top of a building, you can see for kilometers, right? Oh yeah, you guys are strictly ground floor. I regularly shoot UAVs out to fifteen hundred meters.”

  “Right out in the open? Exposed to other drones?”

  “Well, I make sure my area of operations is clear of anything first, then take the shot on a decent unit like an Indian Falcon or Chinese Air Raptor. Then I clear out. Get the drone I shot next time I’m in the Zone.”

  “How do you do it? How do you know an area is clear?” she asked, blue eyes earnest.

  I hesitated. Her eyes started to narrow and I spoke before she could. “I have technology that detects the drones.”

  Annoyance changed to interest and then to confusion. “How? Anything electronic would emit EM signals.”

  “That’s fine if the signals are part of the drone communication net,” I said.

  Her eyes widened, getting bluer, if that was even possible. She sucked in a quick breath. “You reprogrammed a drone,” she guessed.

  I gave her a little nod, taking a bite of food. Her eyes searched my face while I chewed, impatience building. I gave her a grin, chewing slowly to drag it out. She smacked my arm.

  I swallowed even as I laughed, then almost choked on the tapas.

  “A Berkut,” I said.

  Her eyes got big. “Wasn’t your dad…”

  “Killed by a Berkut? Yes. The same one.”

  “And you reprogrammed it after it did that?”

  “Yeah. I know. We didn’t know Dad was bleeding out. He was the one who shot it. He got all excited about the chances of using it. Then he fell asleep and never woke up. Mom wanted to know exactly how he died. I told her everything. She was the one who insisted I use the Berkut. She told me that based on what he’d said to me inside the Zone, that it was his dying wish. She reminded me that he strongly believed in getting good out of bad.”

  “Wow. Okay,” she said, glancing at my mom, who was chatting with Trinity at the other end of the table. Astrid got a thoughtful look on her face, then suddenly turned to me. “That’s why you lost your Zone license, right?”

  “Yeah, I think. See, they cancelled it and wouldn’t really give a reason, then they begged me to go on the rescue. Rikki helped me during the rescue, and then they wanted to tear him apart and copy him.”

  “Rikki? You named it after the mongoose? Of course you did,” she said, laughing softly. “Wait… you were on the rescue?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not adding any detail. She looked at me with that cute frustrated look she always got in school when I yanked her chain. I could just about see the moment when she decided to forge ahead.

  “What happened to it when they took it apart?”

  “They didn’t. If you talk about destroying an autonomous drone in front of it, you might expect that it’ll opt for a resounding no. He took off and is at large somewhere in Brooklyn, I’d guess.”

  “AJ, you let a Berkut loose in Brooklyn?”

  “No, dammit. Everyone keeps saying I did it, but it was the major in charge who told Rikki he was going to destroy it. It winged out of the Quad before they could stop it.”

  “Then it could be anywhere… hunting people,” she said, worried.

  I raised a single eyebrow and gave her my most put upon look.

  “You know where it is?” she asked.

  I shook my head, smiling a little. “Rikki won’t hurt humans.”

  “But you’re okay with it just lurking any-old-where?” She didn’t believe that I didn’t know where it was. She knows me really well. Of course, I didn’t know exactly but I had my guesses. Not gonna help the G-men out though.

  I shook my head and pointed at my ear. She frowned, confused. It was a pretty friggin’ cute look on her, if you ask me. Then understanding blossomed across her face. She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her right ear and then casually looked around before looking back at me with a raised eyebrow. I nodded. She thought about that, then changed the subject.

  “So, back to the rescue? You were really there?”

  “Yeah. In a suit. Armor,” I said.

  Her response was instant—a sharp shove on my left shoulder. “Get the f… get out!” she said, glancing at the others, who were now looking at us.

  We had talked a lot about powered armor back in our early high school years.

  “What was it like?”

  “Really frigging cool. I was dialed way down because I didn’t have any training, but it was still amazing. And the operators at full power were jumping around like fleas. Punching holes in solid walls, stuff like that. It burns power fast, though. Makes it only for limited engagements.”

  “Did you use an M-45?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not checked out on one. Used a SCAR-M,” I said.

  She smirked at me.

  “What? Oh let me guess… you’ve used an M-45?”

  She nodded, still grinning like a maniac.

  “I pretty much hate you,” I said.

  “Please, says the punk who got time in powered armor,” she waved me off. After a second, we grinned at each other. Then her right eye turned red. Incoming message on her contact.

  She looked off to the right, a pleased little smile on her face. My good mood evaporated.

  “Music man?” I guessed.

  She frowned. “Like you’ve never heard his name before?”

  Of course I had. Everyone had heard of Xavier, one of the current it performers. Their recent spate of dates had been grossly overpublicized, in my opinion.

  She frowned again, this time at something she was seeing on the inside of her contact. Her fingers came up and flickered as she responded.

  I turned away, taking another bite of food before accessing my own AI. For a few hours, it had seemed like the old times were back. Wrong.

  >Status of Ghost query?< I typed.

  >Pasha Gachev agrees to meet tomorrow. 10AM, his house. Address loaded for travel.< appeared in my own iContact.

  Well, there was that. Maybe he could tell me enough details to shed some light on the girl in the Zone or send me in a new direction.

  When my own contact had cleared, Aama caught my eye and nodded at Astrid. I turned and found her frowning at her plate.

  “Everything okay, Trid?” I asked.

  She snapped around, glaring, but then it faded. She shrugged and turned back to her plate, poking a tomato with her fork.

  “Brad giving you shit for hanging with the Gurungs?” I asked.

  “No. He’s staying quiet. Makes me a little suspicious but then again, we did almost get killed in the Zone, and he knows it.”

  “X-man giving you shit?” I asked.

  Her frown deepened and her fork poking took on a stabbing sort of energy. “Shacking publicity hound,” she said, almost a whisper. “So, what’s your plan? You know… for the, ah, well, you know?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “What?”

  “That’s kind of the whole point of it. It plans for itself,” I said, spearing her worn and beaten-down slice of tomato along with the piece of cheese next to it. Popping both in my mouth, I gave her my own smirk.

  “You’re just going to let it do its thing? Really?”

  “Yup. Because I programmed its thing.”

  “But they’re self-programming. It will do its own thing.”

  “Sorta. I give it a thing, it then works out how to do that thing in the best way possible. So right now, I’m confident it’s doing its thing.”

  She glanced at the sky out the restaurant window. “Have you seen something?”

  “Hints of something. Tiny little flickers of something.” She looked at me with those eyes, then back out the window, frowning in maybe the cutest way possible. I wanted to tell her she was looking too high. Way, way too high. But I was pretty sure other ears would hear it as well. Zone Defense had access to too many really good micro drones for me to feel secure. “More importantly, I know the capabili
ties in question.”

  “Awfully confident, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I am. Do you think that’s stupid?”

  “No,” she said, studying me for a moment. “You’ve changed since school, AJ. It looks good on you,” she said, then turned to talk to Monique, who immediately asked her about Xavier.

  Whiplash. Pretty sure girls go out of their way to give you whiplash. Are there secret classes for that?

  Chapter 19

  Pasha lived in the Bronx, one of the more gentrified sections, another outgrowth of the Manhattan exodus.

  He had the whole top floor loft of a converted factory building, which seemed to indicate his time on the show and his forays into the Zone had paid pretty good dividends.

  “Come in, come in,” he said with only the very slightest accent. I had spent my evening, after the dinner out, watching the seven episodes that the City Slammers had been in before they had quit the Zone and the show. Pasha had immigrated to the US when he was a preteen; now he was in his early forties. His loft was decorated in a combination of US industrial design and Euro design, like upscale IKEA meets old manufacturing.

  Lots of sleek wood, light colors mixed with heavy, dark iron, brass, and bronze. Open floor plan with a few walls that didn’t quite reach to the three-meter-high ceilings. Iron beams, brick and black ductwork. He led me past the living room furniture and parked me at the concrete kitchen island. A glass of ice water waited for me, a slice of lemon floating inside. He, himself, moved around to the working side of the island, where a whole mix of greens appeared to be involved in becoming some kind of juice or smoothie.

  “I like to cook now. It was always a bit of a stress reliever after Zone runs, and now I find myself fully involved in the foodie lifestyle,” he said, sounding just a tiny bit embarrassed.

  “Hey, eating is one of my favorite ways to deal with the stress. I just don’t know how to make much,” I admitted.

  “I saw your interview yesterday. I think I remember seeing you around one of the Zone entrances a time or two, but I never realized you went in on foot. You have to be one of the craziest badasses I’ve ever met. Every trip was a panic attack for me and I had no less than two inches of hardened steel armor between me and those things.”

  “It’s all what you know. I’ve never been in an armored vehicle. Probably get claustrophobic. Anyway, thanks for seeing me. I saw something my last trip in and thought I must be crazy but I found a quote where you saw almost exactly the same thing,” I said.

  He paused in the act of putting spinach (at least I think it was spinach) into his auto-juicer. He turned to look at me, his whole demeanor different. He didn’t, however, say a single word. Just looked at me, his expression mostly unreadable. Mostly. I could see in the confusion that was his face that fear looked back at me from deep inside the emotional mix.

  “I saw a girl. Young, maybe my age. Black hair, dark eyes, something silver on her cheek,” I said.

  His eyes shifted to the door, then the living room windows. I waited. He put down the spinach, expression undecided, then it shifted—to decided. He left the kitchen, beckoning me to follow.

  We moved deeper into the loft, headed toward the center of the building and the heavily constructed central column that held the old freight elevator. We actually went into the elevator and then out the other side, closing both sets of mesh steel gates behind us, and then into a smaller room with a regular eight-foot ceiling and solid brick walls. He closed the old metal door and turned to face me.

  “I should never have given that interview,” he said, pushing one hand through his short, bristled salt-and-pepper hair.

  “There was trouble?” I asked.

  “You have no idea. A pair of dark suits showed up the same day the article came out. Government ID’s.”

  “They questioned you? Threatened you?”

  “No to the first, yes to the second. They basically told me I was crazy, had seen a hallucination, was spreading false information about the Zone, and could be charged with major federal crimes. Threatened me under the Terrorist Acts. Complete seizure of property, prison, or worse.”

  “Or worse?”

  “Under the terrorists laws, they can hold you indefinitely without due process. You just disappear. Like that guard did.”

  “The Zone Defense guard disappeared? The one quoted in the article?”

  “Gone. I don’t think he had any family and he just vanished. Maybe he took off on his own, but I always felt like the feds were involved.”

  “What did the feds look like?”

  “Basic government drones. One white, one black. Nothing distinctive about either one,” he said.

  “Shit. I think I’ve met them,” I said. “They took away my Zone access.”

  He stared at me, really frightened. “You’ve already met them?”

  “Well, they weren’t as threatening as you described, but then I think it’s ‘cause they want something from me.”

  He stared at me, then suddenly nodded. “Your secret, the secret to how you move around the Zone. They’re all about the Zone. Did… did you mention the girl?”

  “Not to anyone. You’re the first person I’ve said anything to.”

  “Keep it that way. Listen, it was nice to meet you, but I can’t add anything else, and I wouldn’t even if I could. I’ve got a good life and it’s pretty clear they can wreck it on a whim.”

  “Just one last thing… where were you when you saw the girl?”

  He was silent. “Okay, but this is it. We were in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street. That’s all I’m going to say. You have to leave.”

  I left.

  My AI came to life as I exited the freight elevator, confirming to me that the old structure with all of its steel and brick was pretty good at blocking electromagnetic signals. It was the same kind of structure I preferred to use for my hideouts inside the Zone.

  “Ajaya, you have voicemail messages from your mother and from Trinity Flottercot, and eleven thousand, four hundred and sixteen new email messages.”

  “Play Mom’s message first.”

  “Ajaya, it’s your mother. Trinity called the apartment looking for you. She told me that she wants to offer you an episode with the Johnsons… going back into the Zone. I want you to promise me that you will discuss this with me before agreeing to anything! I’m serious, Ajaya.”

  “Play Trinity’s message.”

  “AJ, Trinity here. Listen, yesterday’s episode was a runaway hit. Almost as many real-time viewers as the Wall Street trap episode and actually more secondary viewers chose to watch the recorded version last night than any other we’ve ever produced! I want to capitalize on this and follow up with a new one… one where you accompany the Johnsons back into the Zone. What do you think? It’s just like you suggested, right? Call me back, soonest.”

  A shadow flickered on the ground in front of me, cast from overhead. I looked up. Saw the quickest image of a drone. It was just a glimmer. It was enough. Idiots.