Tui said, “How much time we got?”
“I start my new job in an hour.”
Tui gave him a look. Not the deadline he meant.
Jackson brought up his timer, frowned, and then sent. “29:42 until spine-melting time.” He’d not checked it for a while. If he had he wouldn’t have been able to sleep.
Aloud, Tui said, “Yeah, I needed to get off the ship for a while, stretch my legs, try something new.” But the whole time he was shaking his head, like uh-oh. “When I heard how much this guy was paying for a mope like you, I figured he’d pay real money for talent like me.”
“Furthermore,” Tui sent silently, “Jane gave me the schematics too. I’ve got some ideas.”
“Good.” It was always nice to have more than one pair of eyes on a plan. “Very good.”
“Have they given you the second meet?” Tui asked.
“Not yet. I figure at breakfast or after work.”
Jackson dressed. He wore Raj beneath his clothes—might as well demonstrate that he was arriving ready to work—combed his hair with his fingers, then popped a cleaning tablet into his mouth, let it foam, swished it about, then spat in the sink.
“How do I look?”
“Like Warlord’s paying way too much money for a washed-up pilot. Get a haircut, you hobo.” Tui gestured at his boots. “I don’t even have a job yet but look at that shine. Look at the creases on these pants. Have some dignity, bro.”
“Who irons fatigues? You regular army guys are nuts.” But Tui really did look like someone you didn’t want to mess with.
Then they went down the breakfast and ate some cake made with cricket flour and sweet chewy bits that were supposed to be cherries. Not as good as the feast at the mansion, but good enough for a last meal if it shook out that way. Jackson hoped for the instructions to the next meet with LaDue’s people, but nothing came.
When they finished, Jackson stood. “Let’s see if Warlord will go for a twofer.”
Chapter 28
They arrived at the governor’s mansion a little before zero seven hundred. The gate guards checked their identities, then let them through. The grounds smelled fresh, earthy, wholesome. Jackson and Tui walked along the path admiring the grass that was dotted with small white flowers, all of which were real, and the drops from an early watering that still clung to them.
“That’s a lot of water,” Tui said.
“Perks of being a warlord,” Jackson replied.
His new boss didn’t come out to greet them, but one of the guards escorted them inside and led them to a room where Sam Fain was waiting with his hell hound lying at his feet.
Jackson was a bit surprised to see it there. “Prolonged exposure to the air up here doesn’t bother him?”
“Grendels are versatile,” Fain said.
Jackson nodded and noticed an odd smell coming from the devil dog. Bother was a relative term.
“It appears you’ve brought along a friend,” Fain said. “Tui Fuamatu. Head of security, right?”
“Head of head-knocking,” Jackson said and grinned. “If I’m going to be training that many people, I really could use the help.”
“And he can do it?”
“Tui’s a professional, well-seasoned soldier.”
Fain looked Tui over. “You’ve got the lines and build of one. Mods?”
“Some,” Tui said.
“More than some,” Fain corrected.
Tui shrugged.
“The governor’s always willing to pay for quality service.”
“And I’m willing to provide. I think it’s an opportunity that doesn’t come often.”
Fain cocked his head. “You’re hoping for some of the land we liberate?”
“Naw. I don’t want any land. I’m happy to take regular coin.”
Personally, Jackson thought coin would be splendid, but even better would be for him to walk away with his life.
Fain leaned back in his chair, pondering on it. “Luckily I already pulled your file. You’ve got an impressive jacket, Fuamatu. Meritorious service, several commendations, even an Earth Star with Valor.” Fain whistled. “Very impressive.”
“I was just doing my job. You know how it is.”
“I do. Only my boosts are newer and my downloads were a whole lot better.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
Fain sized Tui up. “Come on. We all know EDF is a bunch of softies compared to Syndicate training. But you’re not bad.” He leaned down to pet the grendel’s head. “In fact, we’re not so different, me and you.”
“Not even close,” Tui quietly sent to Jackson. “Don’t worry, Mr. Fain, I’m not after your job. Just a contract.”
“That’s not my decision to make…but I do know Warlord well enough to know he’s not going to pass on talent. You two will have to work out the payment details, but in the meantime, let’s get you processed. We already have your biometrics. But to work here, you’ll need a more thorough scan and a company ID chip in your arm…You as a head of security should know.”
“Of course.” Tui nodded, but said over Jane’s net, “A shackle.”
The devil dog made an odd noise. A low, breathy rumble.
Fain snapped his fingers. The huge beast gave him a baleful look with its four eyes but quieted down. “Forgive my grendel. It’s nearly as suspicious as I am.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.” But as Jackson said that, he wondered what else Fain knew. He also worried about what they’d find with this new scan. Because if they identified LaDue’s little gift, things might just become a teensy bit uncomfortable.
Fain led them from the room and down the stairs, the grendel padding along uncomfortably close behind. This section of the mansion was off-limits to visitors, and the Warlord kept it functional, no decoration at all. The medbay Fain led them to was all business. He took their bracelets, then directed them to strip and stand in front of a few bots that sniffed and probed and imaged and x-rayed and who knew what else. It was a little embarrassing standing there. Jackson was physically fit, but Tui was a block of muscle covered in warrior tats.
Fain studied the information on a screen they couldn’t see as the data came in. The massive devil dog sat on its haunches and watched them, the short feelers around its mouth wriggling like worms.
At one point, Fain said, “Samoan blood. Where’s Samoa?”
“It’s a group of islands on Earth,” Tui said.
Fain grunted and kept reading. He tapped his screen a couple of times more. And then the scanners finished their job. “All right. Each of you hold out your left arm.”
They did, and one of the bots flew around and stuck them with a little chip. A small drop of blood welled up on Jackson’s arm around the implant. He put his thumb over it and pressed, feeling mighty tired of how everything on this world felt the need to stab him.
Fain spoke to the system, tapped his screen a few times, then said, “Welcome to the Big Town Guard. Your chip will communicate through the flat wireless you already have installed in your bodies. They’ll only show your security clearance, rank, and last names. That’s all citizens here need to know. Your pay will be direct deposited in the Bank of Big Town. Have you got enough to tide you over until then?”
A footloose merc would never turn down money up front. “We could use some money to get set up,” Jackson said, wondering how much of Big Town Warlord actually owned. Because if he owned the bank too, so much for accessing that first third after he stole the Citadel.
“I’ll see to it.” Fain seemed pleased. “Well then, it’s time to pay a visit to our employer.” He led them out of the room, down a different hallway, and into the hangar that held Warlord’s mech collection. The Citadel was there at the end of the line, shiny and sleek.
The grendel absently bumped into Jackson as it sauntered past, nearly knocking him over. Apparently, it had a favorite spot in the hanger since it immediately lay down beneath one of the cargo haulers.
“That grende
l’s jaws look powerful,” Jackson said.
“Incredibly so. He’ll snap a femur right in two. Crunches heads like nuts. He loves brains.”
Jackson realized Fain could only know that if the thing was crunching heads on a regular basis.
“I guess that makes clean-up easy,” Tui said. “You have many of those things up here?”
“No. Just the one. Right now, that’s our arrangement.”
Arrangement? Jackson looked at Tui who just shrugged.
The Citadel was so close, but Jackson lacked the means to unlock it yet. He noted that techs and mechanics were working on it, gearing it up for extended surface operations.
They crossed the hangar and went through another door into a control room with lots of big displays on the wall, mostly maps of the surface. Warlord was there, back in his regular uniform.
“Welcome,” he said with his white-toothed smile. “And the big man has joined us to boot. Nice.”
“He wanted a job,” Fain explained.
“He’s not cheap, but he’s worth it,” Jackson said.
“I have no doubt.”
Tui looked around the room, and Jackson was suddenly very grateful he was there because Mr. Tattoo Crazy Pants of the Ancestors was no doubt cataloging everything about the place with his head-of-security eyes. “I’m just an old soldier looking for a new opportunity, sir.”
“A sentiment I can understand. Welcome aboard. Now, Jackson, let us continue our discussion from last night about how you could improve my forces. There are thieves stealing my CX and sabotaging my operations. I would like to deal with them once and for all. Do you have any problem with that?”
“No problem at all. Their actions almost got me killed.”
They spent the next few hours in the room discussing schedules and strategy. Jackson told Warlord he needed to train his mech unit on the ground, not up here. They needed to get used to the gravity, the weather, terrain, and even the friendly denizens of the forest.
“Up here, they can learn basic controls. But we’ll need to mirror what they’ll actually face as much as possible. Have you got someplace on surface we could use as a training ground?”
“There’s an area in the mountains that doesn’t get too much of the big wildlife, and there’s no CX production at that altitude to endanger.”
“Good. I’d like to check it out in person if I could.” He didn’t add, in the Citadel, just yet. Better to work up to that. Jackson laid out a training plan. It was an awesome plan. Top notch. A surefire plan to take his men from schlubs to mechsuited nightmares.
“I’d like them ready for a big operation in four weeks.”
“You’ll have them in ten, and not a day sooner, unless you want to lose half of them.”
“Six,” Warlord countered. “Mercenaries are replaceable.”
Tui tried to hide a frown when Warlord said that but didn’t dare say a thing.
“Mercs are replaceable, but are your mechs and your exos? This isn’t a negotiation. It’s going to take ten weeks. And that’s pushing it. I did this program in eight on Gloss, and we took massive casualties on our first big op. If you’re right and Kalteri has been arming these terrorists, this won’t be a cakewalk.”
“Ten then,” Warlord said.
Their new boss had guests coming, so had to excuse himself. With Fain they went over the records of the guard so they could see who they wanted to assign to their new expeditionary force. Precious hours ticked by, and Jackson was growing increasingly impatient as he watched his doomsday timer count down, but there were no opportunities to access the mechs without it being suspicious.
It was early evening when they finished. Now that they were employees instead of honored guests, they didn’t rate a dinner invite, so they were on their own. It was close to sunset, the globes all the way to one side of the orbital and glowing reddish orange, when Tui and Jackson left the mansion. They walked back the way they had come, past the earthy lawn, out the gate, and into Big Town.
“Do you think they’re onto our method of communication?” Tui texted.
“This is Jane-ware. She wrote this from scratch. You think someone’s going to hack Jane?”
“Just a feeling. Fain’s a smart one.”
“Even if they can’t get into Jane’s program, what about the feeds from our ears and eyes? Are our happy little tracking chips picking that up?” Jackson asked.
“We control those.”
“Do we?” He held up his arm where they’d planted the Warlord’s chip. “Or did we just let them breach it?”
“Crud,” Tui said aloud. If the chips had gained access to their visual feeds, Jackson’s mission was hosed. There was no way they could conduct any kind of clandestine operation with Fain watching first-person Jackson TV.
“Surely Jane’s protocols cover that.”
Tui shrugged. “Jane does a lot of stuff on the fly. And I’m assuming by now our lovely anti-hack goddess is eighty, ninety thousand klicks away. We’re on our own, flyboy.”
“We should have learned sign language and braille,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, you work on that.”
They went back to their hotel and got Tui a room. They spent a couple hours quietly going over the schematics and discussing a plan. If Fain had hacked their feeds, his goons would be showing up soon. But the goons didn’t show. However, LaDue’s organization hadn’t contacted him with the instructions for a second meet either. It was beginning to worry Jackson.
He decided that maybe he needed to be out and about, and so Jackson and Tui went out to find some grub. It was night; the globes in the Big Town sky glowed like a moon.
Jackson brought up the map on his visual display. When he did, a marketing ad popped up. It said, “Thank you for your visit to the Lucky Monk. Tonight’s special is Ice Cage.” It showed a picture of a blue drink on the rocks. And then another little message popped up, one with the same unmatched interface of the secret message from the night before. It showed the twenty-one over a thirty.
Jackson closed the message, then said aloud, “I got some drinks at a place last night. They were good. Let’s just go there. There was a cute waitress who seemed into me.”
Tui said, “Guarantee, she’ll upgrade her goals when she meets me.”
“Says the man with the ancestor pants.”
“We’ll see. Girls love the tats.”
* * *
His business meetings concluded, Warlord stood in his living room watching the video feed from a camera that captured Rook and Fuamatu as they walked down the street.
“So?”
“They got to him,” Fain said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Could you tell what it was?”
“No, but it’s got an unknown bio signature.”
“Slaveware,” Warlord muttered. “LaDue trying to plant her own vector in my organization.”
“It was between his shoulders. Slaveware’s normally installed in the head.”
“Could be she’s figured something new out,” Warlord mused. LaDue was clever.
“Or maybe it isn’t the Originals at all. He could be a plant from Graf, trying to double-cross us. Or maybe Kalteri set the whole thing up in advance and paid off the broker on the Tar Heel to sneak a spy into our ranks. It’s hard to tell. You’ve pissed off half the galaxy.”
“As Winston Churchill once said, You have enemies? Good, that means you have stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
“Who?” Fain asked.
Warlord chuckled. Fain was good at his job but hadn’t had the benefits of a quality education like he had. “An Earth politician from a long time ago. It doesn’t matter. However they intend to use Mr. Rook against me, I must admit the training program he presented today is rather good. It’s a shame to waste him. I think I’ll still implement some of his proposals.”
“After we neutralize him?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Just checking. Sooner or later he’ll show his cards.
I’ll keep close tabs on him until he makes contact with his handlers so I can roll up their entire network, then I’ll kill him.”
“No. I don’t want him dead. Bring him back alive. I’ve got a much better fate in mind for Jackson Rook.”
Chapter 29
Jackson found a rack for electric bikes. There was one left. And so he and Tui doubled-up and rode one through the streets and up the wall to the Lucky Monk. Toward the end, the battery ran low, and so Tui had to help propel it along with his feet.
Like the night before, the red doors of the tavern were open, spilling light out onto the street. Jackson checked the time. It was a bit early, but that just meant he’d have time to flirt with the waitress and sell his cover.
They entered, spotted a table in the back and sat down. They each ordered a drink and a selection from the plates of hash the Monk offered. When the waitress came with the drinks, it was the same one who had served him last night. Jackson put on his smile as she reached their table.
“The service was so good last night, I decided to come back to try the food.”
“Smart boy,” she said.
“Have you eaten dinner?” he asked.
She grinned. “Dang, I have. But Ian still needs to eat. Shall I let him know you’re looking for company?”
“Ian?” Tui asked.
“The lovely bartend,” she said.
Tui looked over, then raised his eyebrows at the big, meaty man. “Jackson, I didn’t know you had a thing for bruisers.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Jackson told her. “Me and my friend here are sticking around for a while. Are you from Big Town?”
“I grew up on Jersey.”
“I’ve been to Jersey. It’s a nice planet.”
They both chatted with the waitress a bit more, and then she left to pick up their food.
“I’m making progress,” Tui said.
“Whatever. I’m the one that got the hand on my forearm.”
“She just knows she can play you for a big tip.”
She really was cute, but Jackson’s heart wasn’t in it. He was kind of preoccupied with the whole impending death thing. Plus not having Jane in his ear made him feel kind of melancholy. But he faked a smile and flirted for the cameras.
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