by M. D. Cooper
“Gotta protect the cave, Adama.”
Having made the decision that he needed to leave, Rondo went about gathering his traveling equipment. He put on a trench coat that would have hung below the ankles on a smaller person, but barely cleared his knees, then selected tools from the racks surrounding the room. Then he collected Adama from his bed and tucked the cat into a large inside pocket that Rondo had sewn in the coat for just this purpose. The cat flexed his claws, catching the material, then relaxed and was soon purring. Rondo sealed the pouch, which served as a cat-sized EV suit for short periods; fortunately, Adama had always been docile about this process.
At the hatch, Rondo set the security systems, including the dead man’s switch that would burn everything in the room if he didn’t return in the prescribed time. Fixing an oxygen mask over his face, he opened the hatch and stepped into the interior airlock that allowed access to the rest of the abandoned mine.
During the hour it took him to navigate back to the surface, his boots making hollow clicks in the deserted tunnels, Rondo pored over every step he had taken to locate Camaris. He kept returning to the fact that he’d found undeniable matches on Luna. Since she wasn’t physically present in any way he could verify, he could only conclude she had been using some form of remote access to systems in New Austin.
He reached the outer edges of the work encampment where he could catch a maglev back into New Austin, hunching to hide his height as he fell in with the crowd of workers filling the public corridors.
Sounds of people reminded him how alone he had been, and scents of hot noodles and sizzling meat made his stomach growl. He ignored his body’s complaints. He couldn’t run the risk of being recognized or even remembered here.
Feeding Adama bits of soft kibble, Rondo navigated the maze of the Andersonian work camp until he reached the maglev terminal and entered the next car with all the other tired-looking workers bound for New Austin.
Watching the people around him in his peripheral vision, Rondo mused on the fact that life was probably better on Luna for the average member of the Anderson Collective than it had been on Ceres. The Collective didn’t enslave anyone, so defectors had better a chance of reaching High Terra or Earth from Luna than they had ever had at getting off the Insi Ring. By occupying abandoned mines near New Austin, the people of the Anderson Collective had spent the last thirty years eking out an existence in the cast-offs of ancient corporations who hadn’t figured out those facilities were profitable.
Now, hundreds of formerly abandoned mines and manufacturing facilities were operated by morose but fed Andersonians, and their government had a seat on the New Austin city council, and they had their own governmental section in the booming city.
Chancellor Dean Osla was the charismatic leader of the Collective, a muscled man with piercing grey eyes who was said to be equally ruthless and kind to his people. Most of the bodegas and street vendors displayed tiny holos of Osla in various action poses: making a speech to the Collective Council, firing a projectile rifle, wrestling a lion, handing education tablets to children, and other idealistic dioramas that kept him a constant source of conversation.
There were other members of the council who represented their districts, but it was Osla who filled Andersonian hearts with pride.
The maglev passed above-ground for several kilometers on the outer edge of New Austin. Rondo ducked to look out the windows at the lights contrasting with the grey Lunar surface. The landscape was cratered and craggy since most of the activity was underground. Only the oldest structures sat on the surface, a time capsule that never changed unless struck by the ongoing meteor showers.
The car dove underground again and entered a brightly lit terminal with smooth plas walls covered in art and advertisements, a stark contrast to the utilitarian facility they had just left.
As the maglev went deeper into the city, Andersonians disembarked in small groups and headed to work. Rondo rode for another thirty minutes, nearly completing a full loop of the underground city, until he reached the shopping mall where he meant to buy supplies. He petted Adama idly until the car came to a stop, and then he stepped out into the open terminal.
Standing near a support column, Rondo waited until the maglev car had gone, taking in the sights of stores, shops and vendors all around, as well as checking anyone who had left the car with him.
He tensed as he realized that a man in a grey worker’s suit and utility harness was waiting near a column further down the terminal, watching him from the edge of a flashing advertisement.
“Here we go, Adama,” Rondo said, pulling his hand out from inside his jacket.
He brushed the pulse pistol resting in his jacket pocket, then oriented himself to the mall and started walking.
As he suspected, the grey-suited man followed.
“Time to find an alley, Adama,” Rondo murmured. “We’re in bear country.”
When had he picked up the follower? He had been watching carefully all through the worker’s camp, but it had become harder to track who was coming and going on the packed maglev. It was possible he had been spotted on the train, but he couldn’t take any chances that someone might know the location of his Mesh kit. He had to assume his pursuer had already shared his location.
With a heavy heart, Rondo sent the kill command back to his lair in the mine. Within seconds, every console and data storage unit would be consumed in fire and reduced to melted slag.
“I guess we’re free to find some new digs,” he told the cat. “But first, I’m going to make this guy pay for wrecking my life.”
Growing up on the Mars 1 Ring, Rondo had never had much. He’d joined the Guard in order to make something of himself, but he hadn’t appreciated what it would mean to give up his memory. He had substituted the Mesh for that blank spot in his life. He might lose all his worldly possessions, but the Mesh endured.
Still, inconvenience had a cost.
“Payback,” Rondo hummed to himself as he walked. “Payback’s in order, now.”
Scanning the busy surroundings, he walked through the thickening crowd as if he was looking for a certain shop. He was actually looking for a grocery store he could return to later, but before he accomplished that task, he needed a secluded spot where he could confront his tracker and offer a nice big bear hug.
He kept moving as he searched. This shopping mall wasn’t upscale enough that he looked completely out of place, but it was local, and regular shoppers might remember the inordinately tall man who didn’t look like he was shopping.
Entering a store filled with aisles of preserved food crates, Rondo walked directly to the back of the main room and then turned to cut across aisles. As he was walking back, he caught sight of his follower, now walking fast enough to have dropped all pretense at stealth.
Rondo spotted a door to an employee area and went through, finding himself in a breakroom with several people sitting at tables. One woman came out of her Link haze to blink at him. He waved.
“Looking for your main network filament,” Rondo said quickly. “I’m here from corporate.”
It was a lame excuse, but none of the employees seemed to care. The woman waved him toward another door at the back of the room. Rondo went through.
This door opened on a dark corridor with utility lights that came up as they sensed him. Rondo flattened himself against the edge of the door and waited, his heart pounding in his ears.
Through the closed door, he heard a man questioning the employees, who were more guarded this time. Then the door swung open.
Rondo caught the pushing arm at the wrist and just below the shoulder, levering the man around to slam him into the plascrete wall.
On a normal person, the arm bar would have caught them unawares and left their head smashed against plascrete. This man was twice as strong as Rondo expected.
Well, shit.
Two seconds later, as the arm was ripped from his grasp, Rondo realized he was in a fight.
Up close, the grey suit didn’t
look like any uniform Rondo recognized. The man’s face was thin, with high cheekbones and colorless lips. His dark hair fell over his eyes, which darted away from Rondo’s gaze.
Despite being half a meter shorter, the man moved like a jaguar, sliding under Rondo’s grabs to strike him in the kidneys and solar plexus.
One jab came dangerously close to Adama, and Rondo roared.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Who do you work for?”
“Someone who wants you dead, hacker,” the man said in a flat voice. “The sooner you stop fighting, the less painful this will be.”
“Fighting is all I know how to do.”
Rondo landed a hard strike on the man’s temple, a hit that would have snapped the neck of any normal person. This man absorbed the blow, shook his head, and continued to fight.
“You aren’t human,” Rondo said.
He was fighting a frame. He had never faced a mech in hand-to-hand combat, even in the Mars 1 Guard, but he knew he was going to need an advantage fast, or the AI would just wear him down. Rondo considered pulling his pistol, but didn’t trust himself not to drop it.
He blocked two strikes and got another hit on the frame’s temple. This time when the mech shook its head, Rondo pushed it hard against the wall. The mech flew back, head cracking on the plascrete, and Rondo grabbed its skull in a move that would have snapped a human’s neck. Parts inside the mech’s body creaked and popped, but it still caught him with two body blows.
Rondo took the hits, stumbling backward to make some space.
Then he smiled.
On his Link, he ran a quick signal sweep that caught the mech’s neural net. Without thinking, he ran a set of highly illegal cracking protocols with the power to hack a Link. Marsian by design, their use on a human would land him in prison or worse. Using illegal tools on a hostile AI was probably less illegal.
He didn’t have time to debate that with himself.
The mech squared off, shaking his hair out of his eyes, and charged. He caught Rondo around the waist, lifting him, as Rondo twisted in the mech’s grasp so he wouldn’t come down on his back. He landed on all fours.
Adama yowled.
The cracking script did its work.
Panting on his hands and knees, Rondo felt the mech go stiff, still clinging to his back. He waited a few seconds to make sure his freeze command had worked, then dove into the mech’s neural framework with his fresh administrative control.
He cursed as it became immediately clear he was dealing with a remotely controlled weapon. There were connection and command logs, however, and he could track his attacker through them.
Standing up slowly, Rondo shook off the frozen mech and carefully withdrew Adama from his pocket. The cat was stiff and angry, and took a good few minutes of whispers and ear scratches to calm down. As he stroked the cat, Rondo stared down into the open-eyed face of the mech.
The door from the break room opened, and the woman stuck her head out, took in the scene of red-faced Rondo, Adama, and the mech.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Rondo said.
She nodded at the mech. “Who’s that guy?”
“Works for the competition.”
The woman whistled. “Dang. Remind me not to go into network services.”
“It’s tougher than you think. Does this corridor go anywhere?”
“Dumps you back in the mall.”
Rondo told her thanks and started walking. He’d copied and wiped the mech’s control system, but he would need time to investigate its guts. His initial assessment seemed mostly correct, though. An SAI had tried to kill him.
“That’s some interesting shit,” he told Adama, who nuzzled his beard in response.
CONTRACT VIOLENCE
STELLAR DATE: 3.16.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Cosmodrome 51, Baikanur, Earth
REGION: Earth, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The vault-like security door rolled closed behind Cara, and she stood in darkness, sensing an immense space around her.
Felix walked a few meters, then activated a light on the drone’s head, illuminating the round walls of a tunnel leading back into the mountain. Dead lights hung from the ceiling, alongside ice-crusted conduit.
The walls were covered in Cyrillic, Chinese, and English words, all seeming to indicate the same direction.
Felix’s panther pointed its head at the words, then continued walking.
They reached an empty guard station, the muzzle of a crew-served machine gun sticking out from a slot in the wall. Cara kept the body of the drone between her and the gun as they passed.
Cara stopped in the middle of the tunnel.
Cara shook her head.
They passed through another junction with tunnels leading off to the left and right, each looking as cold and deserted as their current passage. Felix didn’t hesitate.
Just after another checkpoint with gun-slots in the walls—empty this time—Felix stopped. The panther sat back on its haunches and raised its head to the ceiling, statue-still.
Cara adjusted the heating in her suit. She had grown sweaty from the constant movement. Her exposed face was numb, while beads of sweat ran between her shoulder blades.
Cara jogged down the tunnel after the ship-killer. She was fully sweating when they reached another giant vault door, which Felix activated as they approached. The gear-shaped door rolled back on the wide expanse of a launch dome.
This area looked immaculate. The tower of a multi-stage rocket sat in the middle of the dome, power and fuel lines draping from various sections in its body to a gantry tower standing alongside. From the distance where they stood, the machines moving over the body of the rocket and the surrounding launchpad looked like services drones.
Cara found herself nodding, her feelings of certain death subsiding slightly. The scene was like walking through a window into the past.
Cara said.
There was a feral note in Felix’s voice that she hadn’t heard before. He seemed to think he was in control of the situation.