by David Ryker
“Sure.” As he said it, the topographical map of the area shrank down to the corner and was replaced with a map of the portion of the city we were headed into. It was only a kilometer or two wide at any given point — one half sun-drenched and the other icy and cold. The parts of the city on either extreme were the cheapest to live, and the parts in the middle, which were most temperate, were the most expensive, though the continually colliding hot and cold air made the city a stormy and tumultuous place to live no matter where you were. Rain was pretty much constant, except for those who could afford to live above the clouds. The tallest buildings poked through them and got the best of both worlds: a low-hanging sun that gave enough heat to live by but never got too hot, as well as a view to die for, or to kill for — or to risk skimming off the Federation for.
“Here are all of the arrests in the zone of the city that we’re heading into that have occurred in the last twenty-four hours.” The map lit up with little red dots.
“Expand that to the last two weeks.”
“Processing.” More dots began to pop up.
“Cross reference that with bars.”
“Bars?”
“Yeah, like where they serve drinks.”
“May I ask why?” Greg wasn’t questioning it, so I guessed he was just adding my process to his ‘vast’ data banks.
I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “Because bars are where the scummiest people go to discuss illegal shit. It’s loud and there’s a sense of safety when you’re in public — like there’s less chance you’re going to get shot without warning.”
“That is an interesting logic.”
“Eh, you learn a few things growing up in a backwater colony like Ninety-Three.” I shook my head and thought back to it, whether there was anything left of it, and if there was, who was sitting at our table these days.
“I will remember that. Highlighting now.” Buildings began lighting up green among the red dots.
“And with warehouses that have routes to space-ports that don’t include main transit routes.”
“I don’t really see what that—”
“Just do it,” I sighed.
“Processing.” More buildings lit up in green, and yellow lines started connecting them.
I looked at the map, a mess of red and green and yellow, and narrowed my eyes. “And where was the contact living?”
A blue dot joined the others. “I’m running out of colors, James.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” I muttered, staring at the screen. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“I don’t know what you’re seeing.”
I reached out and touched the screen with my finger. “There, and here.” I moved it down to another spot. “These two buildings.”
“Yes?”
“They’re dead-spots for arrests, and see these routes?”
“There appear to be less arrests by the Telmareen Civic Guard in those areas that you’ve specified.”
“And let me take a guess here — the ones that are there were all made by droids?” I cocked an eyebrow under my helmet. I was reaching a little, but I had a gut feeling about it.
There was silence while Greg ran the data, and then he came back. “That is correct. Here is the map without arrests made by droids.” A bunch of the red dots disappeared, and the areas that I’d highlighted were completely free of them. “How did you know?”
“Call it a hunch. Doubt Volchec or Alice have ever been to a dive-bar in their life.” I smirked to myself. “Now then, how much would you bet that whoever’s moving the Iskcara is greasing the palms of the Guard to turn a blind eye while they move it from the warehouse to the spaceport?” I could hear the pride in my own voice, but I didn’t do anything to cull it. I’d not felt myself smiling over much lately, so I let the feeling swell in my chest. It felt good.
“I don’t bet. It is not in my nature. Chance is not a sound and logical way to make money.”
“I thought computers liked probabilities? Numbers? That sort of thing.”
“We view risk as a calculation, but rarely opt for anything with a low probability of success.”
“What would you regard as low?” I asked, intrigued.
“Sixty-six percent.”
I scoffed a little. “I’d say that’s pretty high.”
“Would you bet your life on it?”
I clenched my teeth and thought for a second. “I’ve bet it on worse and lived.”
“This is why AIs need pilots, to calculate their own risks, and then take them. Sometimes that is what is required.”
I laughed a little. “And pilots need AIs, don’t worry about that. Now, save the coordinates for that bar and warehouse. I’d say that’s where the sellers will be meeting potential buyers.”
“Why would they meet them in a bar?”
I shrugged as best I could in the harness. “You’ve obviously never been to Marcy’s in Ninety-Three. Smugglers and double-dealing merchants would touch down there pretty regularly, and they were never very quiet about what they’d done or what they had to move.”
“I don’t understand,” Greg said.
“Public place, you know — lots of eyes, lots of people — less chance of anyone wanting to make a scene. Less chance of anyone getting shot without warning.”
“Did they teach you that in the academy?”
I laughed. “No, they didn’t. But I always thought that sort of stuff was common knowledge, anyway. Guessing you don’t watch much TV, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Didn’t think so.”
I came up onto a rise alongside the others and stared at the dimly twinkling lights through the snow. We were only a couple of hundred meters from Telmareen City, but it was still near invisible in the wind and ice. It had thinned a little even in the short distance we’d walked, and the temperature had risen to a balmy fifteen below. It was almost livable.
A channel-wide link had been opened, and Volchec was briefing us before we headed in. “Alright guys, remember, this is off the books, so you’re not going to get a warm welcome here. But there’s no laws against visiting the city, and there’s lots that goes on here, like everywhere else, so play it cool and keep your heads, alright? The Civic Guard will no doubt corner you at some point — four mechs trudging through the city — it’s not exactly low key, but it won’t be the first time they’ve seen it. Mech are pretty common in the hands of humanoid mercenaries. Anyone asks, you’re here meeting a client, alright? Not looking for Iskcara, and definitely not looking for Barva, you got it? We’ll keep our eyes open from up here and feed you what info we can, but otherwise, you’ve got no backup, so try not to start any shit if you can help it, alright?” They were in orbit — they’d already patched in to tell us. Volchec was running point and Everett was on overwatch, monitoring the Civic Guard frequencies, feeding us info.
Everyone mumbled in agreement and trudged forward through the tundra toward the slowly brightening lights.
We barely got halfway in before Greg flashed an alert sign up on screen. “There is an aircraft approaching.”
“What kind?”
“It appears to be a rotor-craft of some kind. The Civic Guard uses them to patrol the city.”
I stopped where I was. “Guys?”
“Yeah, I see it,” Mac said back, turning half on to the right. Alice fell in next to him and I did too. “No one do anything hasty, okay?” He raised his arms. “And let me do the talking.”
A small two-seater craft, painted with the Guard’s green and white colors, descended out of the snowy squall, two rotors chugging in circles at forty-five degree angles. The snow whipped off them and swirled in the darkness. “This is the Telmareen Civic Guard — identify yourselves and state your business.”
“We’re just passing through,” Mac called into the air through his external speakers. “In and out in a day or two, tops.” He sounded calm, but then again, he had to.
“Identify yourselves.”
“Just travelers,” he said dryly. “Seeking shelter from the storm.”
“Where is your ship?” the voice from the craft barked. I could see the shapes of two pilots in the cockpit clad in white and green gear with full visored helmets. The lights on the craft shone brightly and quivered in the wind, bathing us in a harsh white light.
“Not far,” Mac said vaguely.
“Planetary visitors must dock their ships at a registered spaceport. It’s an offense to land without a permit.” The craft started clunking and the belly opened up. A cannon dropped down and focused on Mac, a red laser guiding its way in the snow.
“Who said it landed? We’ve got someone keeping it warm up top,” Mac replied, still unphased, pointing to the sky. “Didn’t care for our chances of getting back out of one of those Federation impounds,” he jibed.
“Why are you approaching from the wasteland?” the voice demanded, apparently trying to make up its mind whether to shoot or not.
“Three mechs dropping out of the sky into the heart of a Federation colony? Don’t tell me if we did that you wouldn’t have fired first and asked questions later. Now, come on, we’re not walking in weapons drawn, there are no laws against being out here, or going in there. We’ve done nothing wrong, and we’d appreciate you just letting us get on with our business. We didn’t come to start any shit, but if you think you can take us…” He trailed off airily.
He’d said three, and for a second it’d jolted me — but then I realized that Fish wasn’t next to us. He’d done his disappearing act again. He could be right there or miles away — there was no way to tell. I didn’t have a chance to think about it before Greg flashed a reticle up on screen and locked it onto the craft. “Target locked,” he said quietly. I ignored him, watching the blank exterior of Mac’s HAM for any hint of what was about to happen.
The craft hovered for a minute and then the voice cut through the storm once more. “We’ve registered and catalogued your mech. We’ll be keeping an eye on you.” The voice faded, and the light died, and the crafted peeled upward and into the clouds.
I heard Alice breathe a sigh of relief in my ear. “What the hell was that?”
Mac chuckled a little. “Telmareen is as crooked a place as it could be. It’s a hole, like most Federation planets. The scum that wash through places like this are about as dangerous as they come — these hubs, trading hotspots, make it easy for people to slip things on and off the planet. The Guard are more for show than anything else. They let a lot slide to keep their skins safe. There’s no doubt in their minds that we’re mercs rolling up in uncolored, new rigs. You know how hard it is to get a Federation rig under the table — especially one that’s not a battle-beaten F-Series?” There was silence between us. “Pretty hard, and expensive” he continued. “Which means that we must be good at what we do, well connected, and in need of rigs this dangerous. Which in turn means we must be a couple of real dangerous mercs who make their money using their mech — and considering the price of these things, we must make a lot. So, in that train of thought, would we let a pair of jumped-up guards stand in the way of a paycheck, or would we blast them out of the fucking sky and stride over their corpses?” He huffed. “They don’t get paid enough to risk finding out.”
“Jesus Christ, Mac,” Alice whispered. “That’s a pretty gruesome series of assumptions.”
“I’ve been around the ringer — visited more than my share of worlds. Dealt with more than my share of scum-bags. When you survive this long at the controls of one of these things, you get to know the darker side of the universe. I’ve faced off against all kinds driving Federation mech, flying Federation ships, shooting Federation guns. The Federation control nearly every planet from here to the dark zone and back, but what they make doesn’t always find its way into Federation hands. But the hands they do find their way into all have one thing in common — they want to use it to spill blood.”
Volchec’s voice growled in my ear. “Stay on-mission, MacAlister.”
“Affirmative, Major,” he said back darkly. “Come on, let’s go.” He trudged forward in my peripheral, toward the lights. Alice followed, and Fish appeared next to him from thin air.
I pressed my finger to the back of my ear and toggled off the comm-link. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. What the fuck was I getting myself into?
11
We trudged into the city as the sun rose in front of us. It was strange — when we stopped in the deserted, shade-drenched streets, it was a glow on the horizon, but with each passing step it edged upward until it was full on our chests. In front, we could see a main street in the city stretching out. We stood on frozen ground, surrounded by windowless buildings, shutter-fronted and pumping smoke into the air from chimneys, but in the distance, we could see vehicles moving, people and creatures walking, like ants bathed in the sun. The ice and dirt gave way to asphalt and crept into a true glass-windowed metropolis.
With every passing intersection the temperature rose incrementally, creeping up toward zero on my screen. We saw droids milling around before we saw anything with blood pumping in its veins. Telmareen wasn’t an inherently inhabited planet, and for the most part now, the species that did live there were a lot larger than humans, which was why the Federation used mechs and droids, to even the odds. It was only specific settlements and colonies that were humanoid-centric. Genesis had been one such planet. Geared up for humans and humanoids with doors and living spaces just that much smaller than everywhere else. But Telmareen wasn’t a Federation colony originally and had only been humanized over the last century or two. The species that had settled here first was a lot bigger than the Federation would have liked.
New settlements were always easier with smaller species, and humans were puny in comparison to most of the things roaming the universe. The Federation dealt a lot in humanoids — we’re easy to breed and to keep. A humanoid requires a lot less space and food than larger species. We’re intelligent for our size and reasonably reserved, too, it seems. Apparently not very strong willed, either. The origins of the Federation are millennia old — tens of millennia, hundreds even, buried in the histories of the universe. One race of humanoid-type creatures evolved beyond their planet and colonized one, and then another, and then another.
Then came the discovery of Iskcara and what it could do — and the universe suddenly got a lot smaller. Hyperdrives went into production and then the mass-colonization began. Other civilizations were found, brought into the fold, and everything was smooth sailing. Evolutions and permutations began to set in — genetic engineering, natural and unnatural changes, crossbreeding… Things got big, and when things get big, they get hard to control.
One planet wants to live by one rule, another by another. And when you can’t ask politely anymore, you get the stick. I smirked for a second, thinking back to what Alice had said about her father on the destroyer, on a ‘peacekeeping’ mission. Showing them the stick, she’d said. And that was it — the Federation went from being a peaceful group of planets to being an intergalactic military. Natural progression, I guess.
Some say the Free were around long before that, and that they were just minding their own business until one day the Federation decided to colonize the wrong planet, and all it took for a blood feud that had split the universe in two to evolve was one person who decided to say no. No one quite knows where the Free came from, or if they’re even a group — some say that there’s the Federation, and then there’s everyone else, and if you’re not in one, then you’re the other. You’re either with the Federation, or you’re Free, and you’re against them. I didn’t really believe in blacks and whites like that. Good thing I was getting used to wearing grey, then.
“Maddox?” Volchec’s voice rang in the cabin.
“Yeah?” I said suddenly, snapping out of my train of thought.
“You’re off comms. Why?” She’d patched straight into Greg’s transmission system.
“Sorry, I had something in m
y throat, was coughing my guts up,” I lied. “Didn’t think they’d want to hear that.” I touched behind my ear and the commline opened again. Mac was talking to Alice, telling her about Telmareen and the last time he’d been there.
“Alright, well, stay plugged in, okay? We need to stay sharp.”
“Major.” Truth was, I liked the peace and quiet, the solitude in the cockpit. The isolation. I wondered sometimes what it was like to be in a womb, protected. I’d never had one. I was grown in a glass tube.
My first memory was of a distorted blue world when they electrified the oxy-gel and it snapped me out of the long sleep — what tubers call everything that came before. Not many people know, but tubers aren’t pulled out of their pods until they’re the equivalent age of a five-year-old.
Apparently it’s the optimum time for learning and integration into society, and having a million screaming babies to raise wasn’t anyone’s idea of an ideal colony. Opening your eyes for the first time already knowing what the world is and how it works is such a fucked-up feeling — like being made and programmed, not born.
During the long sleep, the Federation map the brain and upload information directly into it. You come out knowing how things work — who you are, and what you’re meant for. I grimaced at the thought. You can’t speak, can’t stand, can’t hold your shit in. You’re all tears and floppy arms.
You’ve got to learn to walk and talk and make your mouth form the words you’re already saying in your head. Most people have no idea what it’s like for a tuber to grow up — or to be reared, as they like to call it. I scoffed at the thought. I’d belonged to them from the second I was ripped out of the darkness and dumped onto that cold steel grate.
“Red, you with us?” Mac was facing me.
I’d zoned out again. I couldn’t shake this feeling. I was all over the place. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“We should head to Barva’s apartment. It’s not far.”
“Wait,” I said, not really thinking. “I’ll… I’m going to follow up a lead.”