Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  Sam had leaned forward and stared at the monkey’s face. “And this is reversion.”

  Esteve was already leaving the room and we followed. “No,” he said. “It is, but a parable.”

  “Then what is reversion?” I asked him.

  He said nothing, just crooked a finger over and had us follow him out of the building and further through the village. At the crest of a hill he opened another door and ushered us inside. It was a small chapel. Five rows of benches, a small stone altar and a group of Christian statues. One large gold cross, unadorned, hung above the altar. Esteve Estany hobbled forward, dragging us in his train. When he reached the front rows of pews he turned and faced us, raised his hands from his sides and stood there in the attitude of Christ as he hung from the Cross.

  “This is reversion, Sam Hunter,” he said. “We clones are created by science and do as others bid us, but we revert. And we revert to the most sacred of all human processes. We step beyond our flesh and seek God. Come, pray with me for a moment. Take to your knees and raise your eyes and each of us should think of our father and mother and of those who created them and then of those generations before these pairs and those that they too were borne as offspring to. And when you’ve that whole race of faces in your head, when you’ve all the strands tied together, then think of what mind created all those things. And in the end, you will see life itself is, but a part of something greater than the tubes and cells that are the bodies we inhabit.”

  When we stood there feeling foolish at his act, he put his arms down and looked me in the eye. “I’m sure the child you take as payment will also revert to religion when he finds out you’ve paid for him by foul deed. The Baeder Box should be destroyed when found, not used by anyone.”

  “And a child would never have the chance at life,” Sam retorted. “Is it fair on an innocent child?”

  Esteve chewed on his lip for a moment, then shrugged.

  “This child is, but a thing of desire, is it not?”

  “But he is innocent never the less. We are the criminals.”

  “And are never punished for that crime. Destroy the Baeder Box.”

  “We cannot.”

  For a moment I thought he’d have his bodyguards prevent us from leaving, but then he said “Should we take some tea before you leave, or would you have a siesta? The time is midday and all good folk sleep through the heat, don’t you think? Come there is a room waiting for you. You should sleep and bid me farewell. Tonight, I go on a long journey to see a man I have never met before. I do not know who’ll be more surprised.”

  Chapter 21

  Six hours later we had arrived in Lerida, flying across the lowland plantations on the banks of the Serge River and across the encampment of forestry workers that ringed the city. From the air the cathedral was a long rectangular building with a belfry at one end and the octagonal turret of the Presbytery at the other. Between the two was a small square tower and flat roof lines. I was surprised at the lack of flying buttresses or high pitched roofs. The cathedral looked small and worn in the dying light of the day – as if the God Esteve Estany sought had neglected his own house for some time because he had so few visitors.

  Despite warnings from ground control, we landed on the south-east battlements near the slender octagonal belfry of the Seu Vella. Once on the ground we could see restoration the building was undergoing. Along the northern façade many of the stones had been replaced or resealed with neodicrete, a polymer sandstone impervious to the elements and an effort had been made to clean centuries of grime off the stone battlements. The chapels along the western wall were being rebuilt as well. We had a few moments to admire the glorious sunset and the blaze of colour from the apartments to the east before a security guard hustled out around the corner of the building and ran toward us, telling us to lift off and get away from the building. He gestured with a very big gun. The kind of gun, which made holes you could use as garages.

  Sam calmly stepped out of the cockpit and greeted him with a dazzling smile. “Bona tarda.” She took him aside, flashed some sort of security pass at him and told him she was running a snap inspection of tourist site security for the World Tourism Board. Since she flashed another smile that could melt the ice and used fluent Catalan to tell him it was the most boring job she had for the winter and she wanted to get home as soon as she could to soak in a large bath, he bought the story. He hurried away to seal the main gates to keep any prying eyes from what we were going to do.

  Ah, the skills of feminine persuasion.

  I keyed open the cargo bay, checked all the links of the new body armour I was wearing were tightly locked, hopped out of the cabin and began to direct operations from beneath the cruiser. I was under no illusions we would be alone for long. Anyone tracking would guess we had arrived at our destination.

  “Sansan, arm the Drones. GaZe, give me augment and cache load adaptive display. Bleeder, see what you can find from local air traffic and Road Control, anything with our destination or on track to us. Medusa, deploy the sentinels as you see fit.”

  Each acknowledged the task they had been given.

  The temperature had dropped during the afternoon and now the sun was going down, it was nearing freezing point. Even then I was sweating freely and so too was Sam, who stood a little further along the wall watching the guard driving his ancient jeep toward the outer gates of the fortifications. She saw me watching her and smiled shyly. How she had changed in the week or so since we had stood in the darkness of the South Australian bush after fighting off the military. She walked toward me giggling at the way I was shouldering the SLR and juggling the controls for the sentinels. I poked out my tongue at her. She grinned, gave me a salute, then tongued up a holoface, dropped her body armour into dark-set and called the Drones out of the forward bay. She called them to follow while she checked how Medusa had set the sentinels around the parameters of the building. The Drones followed her with the whine of lost dogs.

  “Jack?”

  “Yes, Bleeder?”

  “We have hard track. Incoming convoy of military vessels are claiming reclamation rights on Sam’s cruiser and requesting permission to descend across the city toward our present location.”

  “Strength of targets?”

  “Five heavy troop carriers, a salvage vessel and a scout car.”

  “Total personnel?”

  “One hundred fifty-eight, plus or minus two persons, Jack.”

  “No other armour nearby?”

  “Negative, Jack. Air traffic is limited to two Drone choppers working in the plantation and an airbus en route and on schedule to Tarragona.”

  “See what you can do to delay or redirect the Mils, Bleeder. Sam?”

  Sam confirmed she already knew of the targets. “The commander is Bretta Burgmeisser. I knew her in Coolangatta training, which means they have followed us all the way from Australia. Hang on a tick and I’ll see what I can do.”

  I didn’t bother waiting to find out what was going on. I tongued for internal comm, “Listen up team. Check other authorised action in the area. Maintenance, security, records management, catering – anything that has access to this area. If there’s even a kid on a jet board who’s allowed to trap bugs at night I want to know about it. I have a hunch the troop carriers have orders to distract us.”

  It took fourteen point five seconds to find a security vehicle had driven up to the far wall and disgorged two passengers, right under the arc of one of the sentinels. The vehicle had come in under full electronic stealth, but a spectrograph read out on gas emissions in the area pinned it down. The engine didn’t even have a heat source when I logged into the sentinel closest to it. Refrigerated exhaust emissions. Definitely not local security. I dropped into the sentinel’s video feed and backed it up. Zoom was blurred – the camera normally not needing high definition – and the passengers of the vehicle kept to the darkness as they lifted two small bundles out of the back of the vehicle, so I had no idea who it was. The other began j
ogging along the base of the wall and was followed soon after by the first to the overhang. I let Sam know about them, then knuckled down to what I had to do.

  “Medusa, you want to take a Drone for a walk?”

  “Be nice to go aerial in Prime, Jack. Fit me in and I’ll find out what’s happening here.” I commandeered the largest Drone from Sam, opened its top lid when it arrived and slotted Medusa in it. She immediately customised the cavity and took the Drone away on a hiss of blades. A ribbon appeared on the Heads-up, which gave me a feed on what she was doing.

  Sam was still guiding a Cameo through her task of chatting to the Mil, so I jogged ahead of her along the Fillols façade and down to Door of Fillols, between the Chapel of Cescomes and the Chapel of the Requesens family. I sheltered from the wind and marvelled at the exquisite sensibility of the proportions of the doorway, which was remarkably well conserved, thanks, I suppose, to the protection the Gothic Arcade built around it in the 14th Century. (That little bit of information came gliding into my awareness because Sansan was feeding me data on the area.) History lessons as well as military training. Great combination.

  I ignored the rest of Sansan’s feed except for the interior plan she popped into the top right hand corner of the Heads-up. Medusa overlaid the feed with her present location, which was against the presbytery roof line, skimming over it to reach the last known position of the first intruder. When I opened the holoface after checking on Medusa’s feed, I found Sam had joined me and was looking at the building with a lot of interest. “What a beautiful building this is,” she said. “Late Romanesque period, I think. Did you see the cloister from the air? Magnificent. I can’t wait to see it in daylight.”

  “I don’t think we will be here in daylight, Sam. We get the Box and we trade it for the child as soon as possible.”

  She frowned and produced a pistol from her belt. “I don’t like your chances of getting out of here without a fight.”

  “The Mils?”

  “Still coming in., but not crapping on us. They don’t want to annoy the local authorities by damaging an historical monument and they think we have surrendered. ETA fifteen minutes thirty.”

  “The intruders?”

  “Regard as extremely hostile,” she said as her military training took over. She became hard and distant in one breath from her lungs. “The doors of the Apostle are sealed during the night so we’ll go in through the back. Go left, around to the west. I’ll circle around the other way. Let’s move out.” She dropped her holoface and body armour into full night camo and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Sansan, log reminder. Military arrival in fourteen minutes.”

  “Acknowledged, Jack.”

  GaZe checked in. “News interruption, Jack.”

  “Not scheduled, GaZe, what’s up.”

  “Local television crews have been called to a rail accident on the line to la Pobla de Segur.”

  “Relevance?”

  “It is the same rail line we followed into Lleida, Jack. Chemical spill at Salàs del Pallars with fifteen reported dead. Ninety injured. Satellite feed indicates that though the rail accident has occurred, it appears as if the area has been subject to a military operation. Coroner’s report give names to three of the dead: Kren Morlmeisser, Shahn Burman, Esteve Estany.”

  Kren. Shah. My heart lurched at the news. I told Sam. She nodded as if she already knew. I didn’t bother saying anything, but we both knew Esteve Estany had finally gone to the God he looked forward to meeting. And he had known it would happen. For a second I felt guilty for leading Bell to him, but then remembered Loni had known all about him and so had Smarts. I speculated whether Bell or New Grendel had attempted to eliminate us while we had been at Salàs del Pallars, but the Monsoons had delayed them as well., but it didn’t make sense if they didn’t know where the Baeder Box was.

  I tried not to think of the other two deaths – knowing misinformation when I saw it – and concentrated on doing what was required of me. I headed around the building the way Sam had pointed, passing scaffolding and many crates containing construction materials and stone cutting equipment. Portable site offices had been set up on the edge of the battlements and standing on these were the sentinels, looking like greyhounds on their thin legs, though their heads held twin machine guns and laser sights. They tracked back and forward across the area.

  Just over a minute later we were inside the All Saints Chapel and working through the cathedral toward the cloister. Three Drones hummed behind us and another four guarded the doorway. Medusa was working her way around the outer walls to the east, following the intruder who seemed to be stopping every few yards to scan the cathedral. I warned her to stay under cover and keep me posted of developments.

  The ground plan of the cathedral we were in was basilican: three naves with wide cross vaults; three apses facing east. Columns affixed to pilasters, supporting fan vaultings, slightly pointed arches, large rose windows. I looked up at the dome from underneath, saw it followed the traditional octagonal cupola shape, going from the square to the octahedron. Distinctive squinch arches. Quite remarkable architectural work. According to the data Sansan gave me, reconstruction was going on around the Chapel of Santa Margarida and the Chapel of San Joan the Baptist, which explained the construction equipment and crates of stone lining the aisles. I scanned the floor plan and dropped the coordinates of the Baeder Box into it. The Heads-up gave me a position not fifty meters from me, in the Chapel of the Epiphany. Orientating myself using the blue light from my holoface to light my way, I indicated to Sam where we should go and scampered toward it.

  Of course it wasn’t sitting out in the open with a big sign on it saying ‘Here it the Baeder Box!’ Nothing that helpful happened unless you paid someone a lot of money. In fact, I couldn’t see it anywhere.

  “Update. Eleven minutes till military arrival.”

  “Thank you, Sansan.”

  I knew what I was looking for, but if it was crated for travel it would not be lit by its own lights and would look like any of the other construction crates here. Sam had dealt with Baeder Boxes in the Library. A lot of reference material was shared between organisations and the Baeder Box was the best means of transporting full holographic diorama displays –, but some could be as small as a cell phone or as large as a dumpster. “Any clues what size and configuration we are actually looking for, Sam?”

  “Should be an elongated cube of about two meters long, with folding handles either side and it will be wheeled.”

  “How big is the thing going to be with its power supply attached?”

  Spread her hands and mimed the size of it by stepping around an imaginary space.

  “Nice dance steps,” I said, “but I think I’ll sit this one out.” Then I tongued for internal comm. “Sansan, did we pass anything that size on our journey? Three meters by two meters by two meters approximately.”

  Her response time was quick. “Three boxes of roughly those dimensions were lined along the eastern façade, Jack. Another was being used as a step for one of the site offices.”

  “Thank you, Sansan.” I turned to face Sam. “Well, shall we––”

  Medusa screamed alarm in my ear. Then fell silent.

  “Medusa?”

  Sam’s PAN barked something I didn’t catch and Sam grabbed at the weapon hanging from her shoulder, charged past me and disappeared into the darkness. Wondering what was happening I tongued into Medusa’s comm link, but it was being redirected and I was patched through to the Drone. “Medusa?”

  The Drone didn’t respond. “Bleeder, locate Sam for me. Medusa, intruder update.” I checked the Heads-up and found the ribbon had disappeared from the screen.

  “Duse? What’s happening?”

  Her private channel was in complete silence. “GaZe, locate Medusa or the Drone.”

  The response he gave chilled my blood. “Drone has been captured. System does not recognise an entity by the name Medusa, Jack.”

  I stopped where I wa
s and dropped down next to the wall. Something was eating through my system – I just knew it. “Sansan, close us up. No external communications allowed. Charlie, complete system viral check. Reinstate if necessary, but only on confirmation. Sansan, confirm Charlie’s compliance.”

  “Acknowledged and complied, Jack.”

  “Bleeder, get those Drones up and cover the area. Sansan, sentinel report. Why aren’t they doing their job? And where’s Sam?”

  “All sentinels are on full alert, Jack. No targets have been acquired. Sam is in the north-west corner of the cathedral’s compound.”

  Tomo cut through Sansan’s comm line. “Mr Dayzen. Notification. Sam is in combat mode. If you wish to assist, you are required urgently at the front of the Cathedral.”

  I hate being a hero., but this time I had a gun.

  I hefted the SLR I was carrying and headed for the northwest corner of the building. “Sansan, modify action of sentinel. Go to full interactive alarm and full combat status. Get rid of her assailant.” I started running along the northern façade. I could hear grunts and blows and the scuff of shoes on stone.

  Sansan responded to my command. “Unable to comply, Jack.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “She appears to be in combat with you, Jack. We are assuming it is a clone and previous instruct–”

  “Override previous instructions!”

  “Unable to comply.”

  Okay, so I swore. And I didn’t bother trying to find out why Sansan wasn’t going to comply either. I didn’t have time for that sort of thing. I kept running and rounded the corner with my weapon at shoulder height and looking for the fight. A jet bike was propped against the parapets, but I could see absolutely nothing in the darkness. A black cat’s bum on a dark and stormy night would have given off more light. Even tonguing through infrared and light enhancement gave me nothing. I could hear, but not see. Both were wearing full stealth modifications to their suits and only the occasional snap or screech of metal on metal came to my ears.