by J. N. Chaney
"Path, can we get to my ship on this level?" I asked.
"You can," he said. "But there is a tube train that would be faster. If we can get to it."
I marched past wary citizens who backed away, retreating to expensive restaurants that provided the best meals in the city and soft jazz played by live musicians.
None of the security guards on the concourse intervened on Henshaw's behalf.
Carrying Henshaw over one shoulder was getting old, so I set him on his feet. "It's time for you to walk. Try to run and I’ll cut off your legs."
"Promise me you'll take me to my yacht, and I'll promise not to run," Henshaw said, coughing a little bit from having my shoulder dug into his gut. "This wasn't at all what I paid for."
"You didn't pay," I reminded him. "You made promises you never intended to keep. So now you're going to magic up some software upgrades or I'm gonna find some other way to be compensated. Maybe there is someone on Roxo who would like to speak to you. Maybe they would pay me enough to make it worth my while. I could turn you over the guards that have your ship surrounded."
"You came here for my help. I provided services in exchange for escort to my yacht, which you didn't complete. I'm not sure how I owe you anything,"
"Bartering with a Reaper is hazardous to your health," I warned.
"I fixed your eye the best I could with the tools available at my mansion," he said. "If you want more, then you have to get me to my ship."
"I put people I care about at risk to get you through that mob. Now you owe us something of equal value," I said.
"I don't care about the mob!" he shouted, his voice strained from the way I had been manhandling him. “I care about getting to my yacht!”
I couldn't continue to drag him against his will. Sooner or later, we would encounter guards who would do more than watch us pass. Or the riots would spread to the more affluent sections of the tube world.
Most of the problems were still on the ground level. Henshaw was smart enough to know I was tired of lugging him along the concourse. I only hoped he was smart enough to take my threat seriously.
I relaxed my grip but didn't let go of his arm until I was confident he wouldn't do something stupid, at least not right away.
He leaned on the wall and looked sick in the face, like he was trying his best not to vomit. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm accustomed to the rotational gravity of the main level. The concourse gravity generators always make me sick."
"They are no different than what will be on your yacht," Tom pointed out.
Henshaw ignored him.
Elise pressed close to me and whispered, "Why don't we just leave him? Can he really do that much more for your vision?"
"It's not about that anymore," I said, watching the ocular engineer get sick.
"Then what's it about?" she asked.
"No one plays me false," I said, feeling like a vindictive jackass even as I said the words. This was something I couldn't blame on my Reaper training or my upbringing. It was just the way I was. Henshaw played a game and lost. Now he had to pay the price. He had to do something to make it right, and it might as well be an upgrade to my Reaper ocular nerve-ware nexus. He couldn’t tell me my LAI was in trouble and then refuse to deliver a solution.
"Leave him," Elise said, jerking her head toward Henshaw. “He’s useless. I don’t know why we brought him this far.”
“Reasons,” I growled.
“Whatever, Hal. Let’s ditch him before he causes us real problems,” she said.
"Listen to the girl. I'm no use to you," Henshaw said in a pleading voice. "Just leave me here and I will find my way to someone who can actually help me."
Ignoring Elise, I snapped out the blade from my left arm and held it to his throat. "I don't trust you, Henshaw. You made a promise, and you're going to see it through."
Face pale, he carefully nodded and said he would comply. He attempted to adjust the now tattered trench coat and smashed hat. The sunglasses, however, were gone, lost during our ordeal getting onto the lift, or maybe when I was manhandling him along the concourse.
Tom followed further behind than normal, witnessing the unfolding drama with growing concern. Path brought up the rear with no apparent fear of what might or might not happen when things went bad.
The farther we walked, the fewer people we encountered. That didn't mean we were out of touch with the increasing chaos below. Video screens played sensational footage of the riots at several of the abandoned sports bars and expensive cocktail lounges. A few of the retail shops were still staffed by bored-looking employees, while others were empty or closed because the staff couldn’t make it in.
A single guard stood at the checkpoint to the train tube. He was old and possibly half blind, probably working this job long after he should have retired. I explained to him what we wanted and he nodded without appearing to actually understand me or care.
"When does the train run?" I asked.
"Yes, sir," the attendant said, obviously misunderstanding or not hearing what I had asked him. "Trains running right on time. Now taking passengers. Don't stand there lollygagging. We keep a tight schedule on the Roxo Premier Line."
His pitch sounded rehearsed and tired. He'd been at this job forever. I pulled Henshaw forward. "Tip him."
"I don't see why I should," Henshaw said indignantly. "He's just standing there. How hard can that be?"
Several seconds passed in which the other man attempted to stare me down. I guessed he thought his optical enhancements gave him an edge, but he was wrong. Leaning forward menacingly, I started to smile, showing my teeth.
"Fine," Henshaw said hurriedly, rummaging in his tattered clothing. He handed the man a credit chip. "You're doing great work. Here's a little something in appreciation," he said sarcastically.
We boarded without further incident.
The conveyance was a simple design, merely requiring us to step out to a series of linked shuttles that would run along the outside of the concourse.
"Take a seat," I said, pointing at one of the cheap plastic benches along the wall of the shuttle.
Henshaw complied, but his resentment was growing, judging from the glower. "I'm not looking forward to slumming on some hunk of junk smuggler’s ship. And look at me, my wardrobe is ruined. Remind me not to hire you for personal protection in the future."
"We could've left you on the surface. And I'll remind you that we wouldn't have tried to get through the riot at all if you hadn't made promises you had no intention of keeping."
Henshaw scanned the area to his right and left, then lounged against the wall, spreading his arms wide. “Well, in that case, maybe this isn't so bad, but I could really use a change of clothes and a spa treatment right about now."
Without the sunglasses to hide his augmented vision, silver and blue lines flickered around the iris of each eye, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise. The effect wasn't constant but was noticeable if I studied him long enough. From time to time, I sensed more than saw a dim red light in his pupils… because he was recording.
I knew what he was doing. The man probably had his own version of a LAI. Everything was being documented and analyzed. I felt dense for not seeing it sooner.
I turned away from the others and muted the group channel to have a private conversation with X-37. “Why didn’t you alert me that Henshaw was recording everything?”
“You didn’t ask, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said dryly.
“I’m trading you in on a newer model the first chance I get,” I complained.
“Promises, promises.” X didn’t seem worried by my threat.
I faced the others, stifling the curses I wanted to fling at my LAI.
"Why don't you just shut up until we get to the ship," Elise said, standing nose to nose with Henshaw now. "You almost got us killed back there."
"I'm terribly sorry about that," Henshaw said.
I pulled him away from the others. "Why didn't you tell me you have a limited artific
ial intelligence?"
"I didn't know what you would do," he said. The tremor in his voice made me believe him. "And I don't want everyone knowing. It's caused me some problems in the past."
"Because people think you use it when you're gambling," I said.
"Yes, that is essentially correct. What they don't know is that my limited AI is very rudimentary. I built it myself. Mostly just a recording device."
"I see," I said. "So why did you really want me to take you to your yacht?"
"Well, I thought my limited AI might benefit from some cross-contamination with yours. Maybe increase its computational powers."
"So you can gamble better," I stated.
"No, I would never do that," he said, but he smiled wryly.
"That's the kind of thing that gets an ocular engineer like you killed," I said.
"Can you help me or not?"
"That depends on what's in it for me and my people," I said. This latest revelation started an idea in my head. If Henshaw could benefit from augmentations, perhaps I needed to think about Elise and the rest of my crew. The idea of letting someone as untrustworthy as Henshaw work on me again, or my friends, didn’t feel smart, but I had to at least consider the option. We couldn’t defeat the Union without maximizing every advantage we could get our hands on.
There were pros and cons to becoming a cyborg. They wouldn't thank me for forcing something like a limited AI on them. One look at Henshaw's now somber expression told me I was right; I wasn't the only one who felt cursed by my augmentations.
9
By the time we got back to the Jellybird, we were all exhausted. Henshaw reluctantly accepted a room, closing the door in my face with a claim he needed to get his beauty sleep.
"Jelly, make sure he doesn't leave," I said. “Or tamper with anything.”
"I have the door locked," Jelly advised. “And will notify you the moment he tries to open it. Will you be turning in for the evening?"
"No. I’ll be in the exercise room. I need to blow off some steam," I said.
"Very good, Captain," Jelly said.
The Jellybird wasn't a large ship, and therefore did not have the same type of fitness facilities as a regular fleet ship. There wasn't a running track. The free weights were improvised from spare ship parts and were highly unsafe. The training room used to be a storage area. What did come with the ship were a few machines and two treadmills I had relocated to this slightly larger space.
When I stepped inside, I found one of them already in use by Elise.
The noise of the running platform was alarming. Elise didn't jog, she sprinted without stopping, and though she was breathing hard, it seemed she’d been at this for a while and could keep going as long as she wanted. Her stride was long and smooth, not the plodding motion of a less skilled runner. Sweat dripped from her face and soaked parts of her shirt, her braided hair flailing wildly behind her.
I limbered up and mostly ignored her, not wanting to intrude or make her feel self-conscious. My warm-up took longer than it had when I was younger and less damaged. There was a good chance her workout would be over before I worked all the kinks from my battered form. The muscles and tendons connecting my augmented arm to my shoulder ached, but there were other, more mundane injuries earned during my long career. Stretching and light calisthenics got the blood flowing.
Every few minutes, I thought Elise would take a break or walk between speed intervals. But she just kept going.
Her stride was long and powerful. At this pace, she pumped her arms and had to maintain her balance with a lot of core strength.
I wasn't a bad runner, but I wondered if I could match her speed even for a short distance. The strength and power I’d developed over the years was impressive, but she was young, athletic, and talented.
The treadmill required the force of the runner’s stride to move the belt over a slightly concave deck. It developed a type of momentum but would basically stop whenever she stopped. This was the answer designers had found for ships with variable gravity.
I stepped onto the treadmill next to her and set a comfortable pace. She ignored me.
I picked up the pace.
She ran faster.
I ignored her efforts for a time then increased my pace.
Our contest grew more ridiculous the longer it continued.
My feet banged the deck, turning the wheel with violent force. I smoothed out my stride and settled in for a long contest.
She pushed the speed of the treadmill as fast as it would go.
I did the same, breathing hard, holding the new stride rate with effort.
Her foot strikes were smoother than my crude, hammer-like efforts, which annoyed me, because on missions I moved as silently as a cat when needed. The artificial training environment was totally different.
She glanced at me, just for a fraction of a second.
"This isn't a competition," I panted.
"Feels like it is," she snapped.
The next thirty seconds crept by slowly.
"Truce?" I suggested.
She nodded. We slowly edged down the speed until we were walking.
"Why didn't you just leave him on the concourse? Why do we care if he gets to his yacht or not?" Elise asked, picking up her towel.
I took a moment to catch my own breath, then grabbed my own towel to wipe sweat from my face as I moved away from the treadmill. "I don't trust him."
"That's not good enough," she said. "You can't just kidnap or kill anybody you don't like. I was being sarcastic when I told you to do that. What are you going to do, hold him prisoner until you're sure he's harmless?"
I faced her, forcing her to meet my dark gaze. "He made substantial repairs to a cybernetic eye designed by the Union in less time than would take most people to repair a coffee maker. Do you think that's suspicious?"
"Well, yeah," she admitted.
“You saw his mansion and that entourage. Do you think he's an honest businessman? Did he earn that money through hard work and sound investments?" I asked.
"He said he was a gambler," she said, crossing her arms, clearly not happy about being talked down to.
"He's the type of man who’s always running a scam," I warned. "I let him put software modifications in my cybernetic eye. Then he decided he needed to leave Roxo III. I can't prove it, but I bet he could've departed this tube world at a better time."
"He's been here for years and probably saw the riots building." Elise spoke aloud as she started thinking it through. "He could have gone to his yacht days before now. But he said he couldn’t make it unless you escorted him."
"You're piecing it together," I said. "He probably needed to confirm who I was, and maybe who you were. In either case, he might be planning to sell us out for a payoff big enough to handle his gambling debts. My gut tells me it’s something less obvious," I said. “This puts us in a tough spot. I have to trust him but can’t trust him. No one outside the Union has the training to work on my cybernetics.”
Elise started to get mad. "Why don't you let me interrogate him?” she said fiercely.
"Patience," I said. "I brought him to the Jellybird so that I could have X-37 and Jelly monitor him. I need to know what he is really up to. Jelly doesn’t like the plan, but she’s learning how I do things."
"It's like you're conducting surveillance," she said. “The same as when you watched me in the diner."
I smiled. "Yeah, just like that. But this is continuous and not much work on my part. Jelly and X are all over the guy."
"For how long? I'm not sure I can take the wait," she said honestly.
"Long enough for me to make sure my eye is working and to find an angle to begin interrogation with," I said. "In the meantime, we've got work to do. I think it's time to try the mask again."
Elise was quiet and thoughtful during our walk to the mask storage room. I went through several breathing exercises to calm my nerves. I wasn't looking forward to trying the mask again. I wasn't ready for Hensha
w to help me, and hadn't decided if that was a good idea at all. The logical side of my brain warned me to wait until we found a facility with adequate analysis and safety features for this task. No situation was perfect. There was an infantry maxim I remembered from my early training: “in the absence of orders, attack.”
The mantra had served me well enough so far. I needed to take action early even if it would be smarter to wait until I had better tools and skilled personnel to help me analyze it.
"Jelly, can you send a silent message to Tom asking him to meet us on the training deck? I don't want Henshaw to leave his room."
"Tom is currently in a discussion with James Henshaw. They seem to be bonding, telling stories, and working out mechanical engineering problems," Jelly advised.
"Did he respond to the message?"
"It was delivered, but Tom has not responded," Jelly said. “Henshaw has been asking Tom to give him a tour of the ship, but Tom keeps changing the subject. Shall I send him an instruction? Perhaps he would learn more about Henshaw during such a tour?”
“No. Don’t interrupt them. Let their conversation play out naturally.” I really wanted to have Tom nearby when I tried the Reaper mask, but I wasn’t ready to deal with Henshaw and the mask at the same time.
"Should we wait for Tom?" Elise asked. “He can’t talk to the rich eye geek forever.”
I considered my options: wait for Tom or go on my own and possibly get Elise and myself killed. It was hard to believe I could have thrown myself into the void the last time I tried the mask. Had I done it, I'm sure I would've been surprised to find myself dead.
"I’d prefer both you and Tom watch me this time," I said. "But I'm also curious to see what Tom learns from Henshaw. They’re both engineers, after a fashion. Maybe Tom's infectious curiosity will cause Henshaw to open up—spill some of those secrets he’s guarding."
"X-37 and Jelly could help," Elise said.
"Ready and waiting," X-37 announced.
"As am I," Jelly said.
"Where is Path?" I asked. He hadn't asked to stay with us but neither had he left.
"He is sitting in a cross-legged position staring through the observation deck window at ships coming and going from the space docks," Jelly said.
