We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  # # # # #

  Now You Don’t by Josh Hayes

  I probably shouldn’t have told her what I was doing. I hadn’t told any of the other spooks; why had I felt the need to tell her? It’s because I’m a sucker for punishment, that’s why. And, if I’m being completely honest with myself, I kind of like her.

  The mag-lev train vibrated ever so slightly under me as it zipped along the track at a brisk four-hundred kilometers an hour. Actually relatively slow for a mag-lev, but Hampson’s regulations were pretty damn strict on that point.

  Which is kind of ironic considering the entire place was built because the major corporations funneled money away from legitimate Alliance projects to fund their little playground here on Hel 2629A.

  I looked up as the mag-lev exited the tunnel and gazed up at the twinkling star field through the transparent panels of the geodesic dome that encompassed Hampson. The place had been carved out of the rock over a hundred years ago, creating an open crater out of the surface ten miles wide. Several tunnels connected various installations to the surface, deeper inside Hel 2629A and the various parts of Hampson.

  The original companies had specifically excluded any Alliance contracts, effectively locking them out and allowing them to establish their own laws and regulations governing Hel 2629A. Since then, countless other corporations had established operations here. Now Hampson was owned, in part, by a conglomerate of companies, all of which were constantly involved in a high-stakes game of industrial espionage that no one would ever admit to.

  But even if they had, the rules and regs of this place are a bit, shall we say, fluid. Trust me, I should know. I’m getting ready to break about twenty-seven of them in the next ten minutes.

  I’m going to steal one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the known galaxy, but by extension, the most expensive. And that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is, the people that hired me to steal it don’t even know what it is. This has to be the strangest contract I have ever had, and because of that, it was also the best paying contract I’d ever had. It would’ve just been nice to know what, exactly, I was going to steal.

  Does that make me a bad person? I guess that depends on how you look at it. I’m not Robin Hood by any means, but I’m not a selfish asshole either. Mostly.

  The track curved around to the right, between several high-rise office buildings, their metal and glass façades covered with multicolored three-dimensional advertisements, selling everything from clean air to strap-on foot fetishes. What can I say? The population of Hampson really ran the gambit.

  My matte-black chameleon suit absorbed the high-density neon lights reflected off the train as we passed. To anyone without an infrared scope I would appear as just another shadow in the night, which I know sounds trite, but it’s true. Even without the suit, my new internal countermeasure system could ward off most passive sensors on Hel 2629A. The only ones I really had to worry about were active security measures meant to physically keep people out.

  The suit’s internal restricted intelligence program chimed as it identified the target building five-hundred meters ahead. My optical suite outlined the building in red, opening transparent text panels and locations of the building’s active security fields. The Neurovation building was one of the newer additions to Hampson’s cityscape, and from what I could tell during my initial research, it could quite possibly be the most secure building in Hampson.

  No, not impenetrable, just difficult. And I handle difficult just fine.

  Neurovation employed four roving aerial patrols, two roof-top spotters, and three underground patrols, not to mention the squad of guards assigned as a quick response force in the center of the building, just waiting to respond to any threat. I’d gotten a look at a couple of the guys a day ago, and I definitely would not want to go toe to toe with them. Steroids were definitely not illegal here, and they partook of more than their fair share.

  The plan was to knock out the primary sensor suites on the south side of the building, masking my approach from the train, and enter through one of the unused offices on the eighteenth floor. Because the building was so new, all the spaces hadn’t been leased out yet, though rumor was a legal firm had their eyes on the space. Couldn’t blame them, really; the building was beautiful.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, taking off at a run across the train’s roof. The distance to target counted down in the bottom left corner of my visual field, my ocular implants displaying only the information I absolutely needed on this run.

  I held the flap of my jacket open and a panel on the side of my exo-suit opened, shooting out a dozen Gambits. The tiny bots zipped away, twirling into the night, searching for their predetermined targets. I say night like it’s ever day here. It was more cost-and-energy efficient to keep Hel 2629A stationary and provide artificial gravity. Otherwise, they would’ve had to build the dome so it would block the blue-dwarf sun’s harmful radiation.

  The track curved back to the left ahead, leading away from the Neurovation building and back into the interior of Hel 2629A. At its closest, the track was just under seventy-five meters from the south side of the building, not impossible for most people in our line of work, but barely even a challenge for me. With a running start, I leapt from the train, my cybernetically enhanced legs launching me high into the air.

  At the apex of my jump another alarm chimed, automatic optical programs were zooming in on the corner of the building just to the north of the Neurovation building. A lone figure stood on the corner of the roof. I clenched my teeth together.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. What’s she doing here already?”

  Well, there was nothing I could do about it now.

  Another optical display appeared, informing me that two of the twelve Gambits had lost connection, which meant two of the live targets wouldn’t be incapacitated. What? I’m not a manic killer. I steal things and get paid, it’s completely different than killing for hire. Yeah, sure I know some guys that make a killing at it—see what I did there?—but that line of work just wasn’t for me. Too messy.

  Cary had to have seen me. Son of a bitch! I should’ve just kept my big mouth shut.

  I landed on the side of the building, and magnetic friction pads in my fingertips and boots held me to the enormous bay window as if I was part of the building itself. Like a spider crawling up his web. You know what, strike that, I fucking hate spiders. Bad analogy. How about…an ant? Let’s go with that.

  A second later, two of my Gambits clamped into the security suite on the roof and synced my exo-suit’s chameleon field with the rest of the building. I froze there for a moment, watching as one of the patrol boats glided by, tendrils of blue energy from its repulsors trailing in its wake. It was an open top design, almost like a boat from back on old Earth. Four armed guards stood on the deck, scanning the building through their multi-spectrum goggles, looking for potential threats and intruders.

  They didn’t see me.

  That was until Cary decided to get all crazy and ruin my plans.

  Three more Gambit bots dropped out of my telemetry. No warning, no nothing. Just dropped off. Like I hadn’t spent a couple hundred credits a piece on their anti-penetration skin and signal protection packages. The one-eyed freak who’d sold them to me had all but promised me they were indestructible.

  Yeah. I guess fucking not. Well, you get what you pay for.

  I had to forget about it now, though; I was about to be in deep shit.

  Soon all the Gambit bots dropped off line, but not before the building’s internal security suite detected the intrusion and began actively searching. Several different things happened then, all of which were extremely bad for me.

  First, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the patrol boat flip-a-bitch and come back toward me. The armed guards moved to the gunwales, clearly looking for something, and I had a sinking suspicion it was me.

  I sprinted up the side of the building on all fours, heading for the roof,
but not really knowing what I was going to do when I got there. Why? Because the second thing that happened was that Cary made a running leap from her perch twenty stories up, hopped onto a passing shuttle, then ran along its wingspan like a fairy. Seriously, on her tiptoes and everything.

  I sent her a direct link. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you? Just couldn’t do it.”

  “Why, Gage,” she answered, giving me the best innocent Southern drawl she could manage. “Whatever do you mean, Sweetheart?”

  I knew better. “Knock off your shit; this is my score.”

  “Not if I make it there first.” She jumped from the tip of the shuttle’s wing, spreading her arms out to the side in a gracious swan dive.

  Eight out of ten. Definitely wasn’t perfect. I’da done it better. “You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Do me a favor, would ya?” Cary asked, flipping over and landing feet first on the edge of the building’s roof. She dropped down over the edge as I continued to climb. “Take a couple of those curious shits with you when you go, if you don’t mind. I’m sure they won’t appreciate what I’m going to do next.”

  I jumped over a window, still heading up the side, but knowing it was useless now, I couldn’t beat her in. But if I could—

  A spotlight flashed on, illuminating the building twenty meters below me. The patrol boat’s repulsors flared as it lifted, bringing the light with it.

  “For fuck’s sake.” I threw myself to the side again, trying to beat the light. My chameleon suit fooled sensors okay, but it wouldn’t do shit about the human eye, enhanced or otherwise.

  I didn’t beat it.

  The spotlight found me, and a second later I heard the distinct sound of a male voice shouting over a loudspeaker. “Halt! You’re trespassing on private property! You’re under arrest!”

  Oh yeah, I’ll just stop right here, that’s a great idea. I continued to climb, but I angled sideways, heading to the corner of the building.

  A bright red bolt of energy flashed off the building above me. For fuck’s sake. Of course they weren’t firing projectile bullets; they didn’t want to run the risk of hurting anyone inside the building. Apparently that’s frowned upon, but if they hit my exo-suit with those bolts, it could overload the suit and send me plummeting to the ground.

  “Careful down there,” Cary’s voice said over the direct link.

  There was another flash of red behind me, and I launched myself into the air, activating the small aero-thrusters integrated into the heels of my boots. The thrusters sent me arching away from the Neurovation building and right into the middle of a central air traffic lane.

  I twirled in the air, looking up at the underside of a shuttle, so close I could read the registration number stenciled on its belly. I rolled to face down again; two slow-moving transport barges glided past underneath me. I disengaged the thrusters and dropped down to run across the open deck of the first, checking the location of the security boat over my shoulder.

  It had turned away from the building, banking hard to pursue me. Two figures hunched over near the bow fired simultaneously, sending a barrage of red energy bolts through the mass of traffic between us. A small personal shuttle had to pull up hard to avoid slamming right into the side of the boat.

  They were definitely going to catch flack for that. I jumped across the gap between the barges and landed on the second one just as it started to back away. I had to tiptoe along the edge with my arms out to keep my balance. It wasn’t like I could fly or anything; the exo-suit wasn’t designed for that, but in hindsight that was a pretty lousy design flaw. I was definitely going to have to have a conversation with someone about that.

  A flash of red shot past my shoulder, smacking into the deck of the barge. I closed in on the bow, already looking for the next opportunity. It wasn’t every day I had a chance to play Frogger in real life. Then again, jumping from car to car, trying to escape some really pissed off security guards wasn’t something I generally woke up saying, “Shit, that sounds like a really good idea; let’s go do that.”

  A horn blared as I jumped off the last aircar, a red, compact, sport model probably operated by some rich kid who never had to work a day in his life. The car dipped down as I launched off the hood. I corkscrewed and released a stream of dazzlers. The microbots sprayed high-powered sensor masks in all directions, scrambling any sensor cluster that might be pointing in my direction.

  A little bit of my soul died every time one of the tiny machines burst into a brilliant flash of light behind me. At five hundred a pop, they weren’t cheap, but they were a necessary evil of the job. It didn’t matter how good you were at getting into a place, if you couldn’t get out, the job was pointless.

  I landed on all fours on the side of another office building, just below the roof, magnetic grips activating on contact. My exo-suit’s power was beginning to drop—still just above eighty percent—but you never can tell how long a mission is going to last until it’s over, and I hadn’t even started mine.

  At the roof, I activated the thrusters embedded in my boots, throwing me over the edge. I flipped, landed on my feet, and ran. I checked over my shoulder and cringed as the security patrol damn near crashed into a skycab. Both vehicles peeled away at the last second, the security patrol angling down, the skycab pulling up.

  Relieved, I slowed to a walk; I’m a thief, not a monster. I didn’t want the deaths of innocent civvies on my conscience. That, and shit like that doesn’t look good on a resume.

  I moved back to the edge, scanning the traffic ways below for any sign of the patrol boat. It took me a moment to spot them, even with my optical enhancements, but I finally caught sight of the boat banking away from me, pulling away from traffic. Even without dazzler’s, it was unlikely they’d spot me. I decided to throw them a bone.

  “Let’s see what you’re really about,” I muttered aloud, accessing their building’s security array. Any security team worth its salt would be able to detect the link almost immediately, tracing it back to my location using Hampson’s network grid. And by the look of things, Cary had done a bang-up job already.

  Making it through the first few levels wasn’t that hard; in fact it was relatively easy. For all the talk about the Neurovation’s security, their counter-intrusion software was shit. At least until I hit Level 4; that’s when things started to get a little tricky. It was also about the time the patrol boat turned, banking around in my direction.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  I was interested to see how far they’d take this. Downtown traffic was horrendous, not to mention they were outside their patrol jurisdiction. If the Hel 2629A cops caught wind of what they were doing, they’d be facing some pretty heavy fines, maybe even the suspension of their security licenses.

  Rules and Regs.

  Time for Phase Two.

  * * *

  I killed my link to Neurovation’s security network, then completely dropped off the network. I sprinted for the edge of the roof again, leaping back into the air. My jacket flapped in the air as my boot thrusters ignited, sending me rocketing through traffic. I kept a wary eye on the power consumption. The thrusters weren’t necessarily designed for flight—more for use occasionally—but hey, adapt and overcome, right?

  I spun between two oxygen haulers, their triple-sphere hulls making them look like peas in a pod. I flicked my wrist, producing a small coin-sized chip from inside my cuff, and held it between my thumb and forefinger. In less than a second, I’d transferred the codes to the chip and tossed it onto one of the oxy haulers. I didn’t even wait to see if it had stuck before hitting the boosters on my boots and flying ahead.

  Another two minutes of careful maneuvering landed me on the top of the Neurovation building. About time. I hadn’t seen Cary come out yet, which was slightly troubling, but if she was still in there, it meant she probably hadn’t found what she was looking for, which meant I still had a chance to find the interface before she did.

/>   I charged for the door. The retina scanner had obviously been disabled. It was not what I would’ve done—not very clean—but it worked, I guess. I’d used the neural link I created when I’d accessed the building’s security network earlier to disengage the security protocols when it detected my biometric signature approaching. The lock clicked as I pulled open the door and bounded down the stairwell, taking the steps three and four at a time.

  “Oh yeah,” I said aloud, jogging through the corridors. “Cary’s been here all right.”

  Following the map I’d downloaded during my intrusion, I made my way through the building, stepping over several victims of Cary’s handiwork along the way. To her credit, she hadn’t killed any of them.

  The door to the lab unlocked as I neared it. Inside was a maze of offices and work areas, clustered together in seemingly random order. I snaked through the main hallway, looking for Cary, but the entire place seemed to be empty. It was after hours, but there was always one or two pencil-necks that didn’t have anything better to do with their lives but work.

  To hell with that; I’m working to live, not living to work.

  I passed office after office with no sign of her. I was beginning to think maybe she’d left and I’d missed it. But I was sure if she’d found what we were both looking for, she would’ve let me know about it. Especially knowing her. I was about to open a direct link to her when I came to large glass-walled office. I looked through the window and stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Oh shit!”

  Cary’s body lay face down on the polished marble floor, not moving.

  I pushed through the glass double doors and rushed across the lab, taking a knee beside her. I didn’t see any signs of a struggle. There wasn’t any blood either. “Cary?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I shook her shoulder. “Cary, are you okay?”

  Still nothing.

  “What the hell?” I said, looking around the lab, trying to make sense of it.