Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  “Lights, Jack?” Sansan asked.

  “No! You might blind Sam. GaZe, audio rep. Cross hatch.”

  Two figures locked in combat leapt into being not twenty meters from me. They were going at each other with knives and the almost silent sounds of the arc of the blades and the thrusting, slicing moves were all translated into graphic representations. Even though one was larger than the other, I still could not fire. I could not identify the targets. I needed a point of reference. “Vocal, Sam!”

  “Here!” One of the figures was haloed in red.

  “Lock-on, GaZe! Invert and target.”

  The other figure flashed a blue outline. “Target acquired. All Drones.”

  Should I give the clone a chance to give up? I hesitated and Sam’s opponent broke free by leaping fifteen meters straight into the air. A grenade dropped at our feet. Sam was already rolling away from the point of impact and I had just enough time to twist aside before the flash flare detonated with the light of a super nova. Intense heat burnt the skin of my face. My SLR was ripped from my hands. My holoface screeched from the power envelope and darkened, and then the bastard opened up with a needle-round weapon. The Drone nearest me shredded a rotor and crashed out of the sky, bouncing along the stones and almost colliding with me.

  I leapt out of its path and rolled back onto my feet just as a second grenade detonated. The blast lifted me up and tossed me against the side of the cathedral. Two others Drones were thrown backward by another concussion grenade that followed the first blast. They slammed into a site shed hard enough to leave deep dents in the metal walls.

  “Update. Nine minutes to military arrival.”

  Sam opened up with her weapon at the clone as he descended. None of the rounds seemed to strike home. Bullets speared back at her in reply. She took three bursts in the chest, which threw her back ten meters, but still she rolled to her feet her gun tracking him as he disappeared into darkness.

  I wanted to help, but I couldn’t find him. “Where is he, Sam?”

  “He’s gone Stealth, Jack. Tomo,” she summoned her PAN, “check heat track, footprint, feed to Jack.”

  I tried to breathe normally as I got to my feet. A set of prints marked the intruder’s passage to the dark shadows on the cathedral wall. Sam moved toward him, her gun clattering, shells igniting as they sprayed into the air from the ejection chamber, chunks of masonry splattering the area.

  Gasping air into my lungs I staggered forward on shaky legs and grabbed for my weapon. Two sentinels came baying around the corner of the building, their weapons tracking us. My holoface screeched alarm at lock-on. I dropped to the ground as bullets flayed the stone around me, tossed off a shot, which smashed through one’s casing and blew it apart, then rolled toward the wall, hoping no lucky shot from the other sentinel would find me, tonguing up comm urgently, “Sansan, destroy sentinels!”

  The sentinels self-destructed on her command. And while pieces of them where raining down on me, I realised I had blundered again. I had asked Sansan to close all external communication. They were still open. I shouldn’t have told Bleeder to move the clones. “Sansan, close all external communications. And seal them this time.”

  “Unable to comply.”

  I swore. I rolled over and grabbed hold of the chin mount as if squeezing it would force my words into the system. “Full system abort!”

  “Unable to comply,” Sansan said calmly. “Please confirm full system reformat. All current and archive data will be lost.”

  “No! Under no circumstance. Full abort! Full fucking abort!”

  “Reformat authorisation accepted.”

  “I said no!”

  The pulse hit like a knife blade. All LEDs started flashing like blood spraying from a wound as the system purged data. The holoface went down. The PAN stopped humming on its mounts and the heat sink cooled rapidly against my chest. All peripherals slammed back to default and then with a final gurgle of drive revolutions, the PAN died.

  A tick of new colour showed along Sansan’s console. A tiny foreign voice pinged from the external speakers. “Please enter new file name.”

  “Sansan!”

  She didn’t reply, nor did any of the others.

  I heard laughter from my right and spun to find myself face to face with Kren who was levitating up over the wall using a Drone as a pedestal. He grinned through his red-light holoface, like the demon rising from the inferno. “Hello, Jack” he sneered. “Fancy meeting you here. You look as if you are seeing a ghost.”

  I turned my gun on him, but before I could pull the trigger, a body crashed against my side, knocking me from my feet and smashing the weapon from my hand. I looked up from my prone position just as a figure emerged from full chameleon camo and a holoface erupted into life in front of me. My heart lurched inside my chest.

  It was Shahn who stood above me, her face wicked in the green halo of the holoface she wore. She thrust a large calibre automatic rifle into my chest and pinned me to the ground with the barrel. “Move and you die!”

  She meant it. Her teeth were gritted in anger and I remember several times I had seen that look before, when she had pinned me down while we had been making love. I also remembered the pleasure she had taken when I had been hurt by the power she had over me. She looked toward Kren and I could see her face was still beautiful under the beard, and her lips were still full and moist., but her eyes were like daggers, flashing with razor-edged violence.

  Trying not to be too obvious, I looked to see if Sam was coming to help me, but she and the clone had disappeared. I could hear guns barking around the corner.

  Defeated, I relaxed against the pressure of the barrel and watched Kren as the Drone lifted him above the level of the parapets. He had the dramatic wide stance of a warrior standing over a victim, his arms behind his back. The armour he wore was in full night camo and it was almost like his head was floating across the walls, a balloon of malevolence filled with poisonous gas.

  When the Drone settled against the stone, he stepped off. In the same instance, I realised he had been using the same Drone Medusa had used. Attached to its side was a remote-control limpet, a mechanical override, which was feeding in commands. The Drone was scorched with blast marks, but seemed to be intact.

  Kren walked over to me, levelling a machine gun at my stomach. He was speaking into his PAN as he came. “Gaudimus, close Search and Destroy mission. Dayzen’s PAN has been eliminated. Ulysses, match previous search pattern. Find the woman’s PAN and infiltrate it.”

  He finally took notice of me. “Now to you, Jack.”

  Shahn wore the smile of a victor as she lifted the gun away from my chest, stepped back and motioned me to my feet. I was aware of the sound of the clone and Sam still fighting along the southern façade and knew I was alone against these two.

  Kren walked over and stood beside Shahn. “Having fun, are you?” he asked.

  I nodded and gave him a glowing smile. “I though a battle bikini was more your style, Kren. This sombre suit doesn’t match your eyes.”

  He shook his head and clucked his tongue at me. “Jack…my dear sweat Jack. I would have thought we had cracked you open and spilled out any humour you had by now.”

  I mimicked his head shake. “Kren…my dear sweat Kren. I can’t reply to your comments at the moment because I’m waiting for the free mule rides. I can see the asses they’re going to use now.”

  Kren screwed up his mouth in mock disgust. “Well, don’t hold your breath on getting a ride out of me. And bravery isn’t smart comments: it’s smart actions. Now, if you please….” He motioned for me to walk along the eastern façade, toward the door to the Annunciation. As we walked I looked from Kren to Shahn, not too certain what both were doing there. Especially with each other even though there was body history between them.

  “I’ve got it wrong again, haven’t I?” I said. “It’s not what I suspected, is it?”

  Shahn gave me the answer. She shrugged dramatically and said “Oh,
you know how it is. We saw you were having so much fun and we needed a breath of fresh air, so we found ourselves chasing you all the way from Haven to this wonderful little church. And did you enjoy yourself in Galle, by the way? Found yourself a soul mate, did you? And time for a little bit of rumpy-pumpy on the side?”

  God, do I hate voyeurs. Especially jealous ones. “Were you watching to learn how to use your dick properly?” I asked her.

  Shahn gave me a nasty smile. “I know your artless humour backward, Jack. It can’t get to me.”

  “Well, maybe that’s what you are doing wrong—using that thing of yours backward.”

  She didn’t bite, but I knew I had scored a hit. She just glared at me and I wondered if she had changed so much, or whether my memory of her had made her sweeter than she had been; somehow more caring and lovable because she was part of my past. Compared to Sam she seemed like the nasty Witch of the North. “You know,” I said, “I think you still love me.”

  An explosion drowned out her reply and the night sky was lit with a vivid flash of fire from the other side of the cathedral, but I could tell what Shahn said was bitter and vile just from the way she screwed up her face when she spoke. Kren stepped between us and the silence that followed the explosion allowed Kren to take control of the situation.

  “Well, there goes the mines on the cruiser, Jack. You’ve nowhere to run now, so I suggest you keep your comments to yourself if you want to survive this little episode. We may not kill the girl either. Now, how about you come inside for a while?”

  He motioned me inside the door. Two of the sentinels stood beside the doorway, which now stood open. Their turrets tracked me as I edged up to them. I wondered how Kren and Shahn could’ve taken them over so easily.

  “Those,” Kren said, seeing the direction of my gaze and guessing my train of thought, “are one of Bell’s products, Jack. And Bell has the overrides for them because they don’t want weapons they produced used against the makers. And what Bell has, I have. Now, toward the presbytery please.”

  As we moved through the doorway I could hear the two of them behind me, but without my PAN I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whatever it was, the words were sharp and bitter. Shahn must be casting a vote to do away with me. And I also realised shooting had ceased outside. Hoping I could keep them occupied long enough for the cavalry to turn up, I said, “I don’t understand what you are doing here. I was going to bring the Baeder Box.”

  Shahn laughed harshly. “Sure you were, Jack. With mines attached as well?”

  “Only one or two. Oh, I see now. You knew I would destroy the thing and you wanted to be on hand when I found it to prevent me doing that. Simple, huh?, but I just bet I’m missing something else.”

  I heard a siren roaring up toward the cathedral and then gunfire erupted outside, the siren stopped wailing and the sound of an explosion reverberated through the cathedral. They both swung their weapons toward the doorway and suddenly, in that united action I saw what I was missing. I could’ve slapped myself silly for not realising what was going on earlier. They had faked their own deaths because they wanted the Baeder Box for themselves. Not for either of the rival companies they worked for.

  And another jolt of inspiration came to me. The long discussions we had about infiltrating the Steel Hand and how the Steel Hand would recruit Shiners, it all led to them being the corporate arm of the Steel Hand, what was it called? Firestorm? And even back then they had said I couldn’t have been recruited because I was too idealistic, too afraid of becoming something more than I was. No adaptability for change.

  In the light from their two over-locked holoface, I saw them as they really were, a pair of greedy fools going after a mother lode. I waited until Kren looked at me. “You know,” I said, “Firestorm is going to fail. I’ve already sent out a burst about it to Bell and New Grendel.”

  Kren closed his eyes, as if he had been discovered wearing his mother’s underwear and was hiding his shame. Shahn snapped a look at me and snarled, then turned her gun on me. “You’ve said too much.”

  And right on cue, the two sentinels by the door opened fire on a nearby target and then were blown back into the building by multiple hits from a heavy machine gun. Shahn cringed away from flying debris. I dived for safety behind a nearby pile of stone, just as the Drone Kren had been riding came flying through the doorway in a blaze of light.

  I almost leapt for joy at seeing the cavalry coming to the rescue. Shahn dived behind the crate Kren was sheltering behind, and began fitting a rocket to her rifle as Kren opened up on the Drone. A canister spat from one of the Drone’s tube and slammed into the crate, spraying the area with resin glues coated with immobility bots. Kren and Shahn had no chance to escape – it wrapped around them like a spider web. When they had almost stopped thrashing about, I stood up and walked toward them while the Drone tracked around till it had full lock-on.

  Kren looked at me sadly. “They will kill us, Jack.”

  Shahn was much more bitter. She looked up at me through the Cloud and tried to spit at me. “I never loved you, Jack,” she said. “You never had Kren’s sensitivity or his insight.”

  And just as I was going to say something witty and snide, I saw her look down at her rifle, then at Sam. Both Kren and I saw what she was looking at: the rocket fitted to the muzzle, with its timing fuse set for two second. I looked up into her eyes and opened my mouth to say ‘no’ just as Kren and Shahn began to fight against the tendrils holding them apart. I watched them grasp each other’s hand and then Shahn pulled the trigger.

  The rocket darted off the end of the rifle and snagged on the Cloud between them like a fly caught by the spider, rocking backward and forward while the primer sprinted down to zero.

  I turned and threw myself aside just as the room bloomed into violent fire and the loudest sound I had ever heard ripped me out of the real world and into a pit of darkness deeper than my scream of horror.

  Chapter 22

  Kren sat beside me on the wharf, his rod dropping in his fingers and his beer plonked down between his thighs. I was swigging on my tenth can, well ahead of him in the count of beers drunken. I’d given up on catching any fish and was just enjoying sitting on the wharf with my feet over the edge and every now and then tossing a dead tin into the tide. We’d been at it all night without getting a nibble, even when we set our holofaces to heat search the water and cast just ahead of the fish.

  Fish are such cold things.

  Throughout the night we’d discussed the Beautification; the way the Big Boys were forcing the Luddites onto reservations in order to protect the society as a whole. “You know, Kren,” I confided in him, “I do not like this Beautification. It’s not what we were meant to do with our lives. And we shouldn’t be sitting here on this smelly wharf throwing lines in the water for enjoyment, we should be skiing down the Everest Run buck naked!”

  He smiled and shook his head sadly. “When it comes to the crunch, Jack, you don’t know how to make sacrifices, do you?”

  “You mean skiing buck naked isn’t making sacrifices?”

  He laughed and lifted his beer in a toast. “I give up. You figure it out for yourself. Here’s to the world to come!”

  We clunked beers together in a foamy celebration of the future.

  Shahn stood in the fountain in the town square, her hair plastered along her scalp and her dress wet from the dip she had taken. “Come on, Jack. Get in here and cool off.”

  I waved her away. “Nah, not me, Shahn. I haven’t waterproofed my PAN yet. It will rust.”

  “Well, take it off! They can play by themselves for a while.”

  “Someone will steal it. And besides, you shouldn’t be in there. You’ll get arrested.”

  She laughed and sprayed me with water. “As if that is a terror I dread. Do something wicked for once - no one is going to stop us. Come on! Take that thing off and we’ll have some fun.” Another spray flashed out of the fountain toward me.

  I backed aw
ay, shielding the PAN from the spray. “No, come out of there, Shahn. Let’s go home and wear out the sheets.”

  She danced away from me, kicking the water out over the fountain’s wall. “If you loved me you would toss aside those boxes! You’d give up everything to be with me.”

  “That’s not fair. These are my friends.”

  “You have to learn what to give up for your friends, Jack,” she said. And then dropped down into the water like a dryad seeking a lost soul.

  Sometime later I awoke in darkness. Heaven only knew what time it was. Sam was standing over me, her rifle tracking backward and forward like a caged lion waiting for the trainer to step into the ring. She was talking into her PAN and I realised I was inside the cathedral. “Tomo…how much time have we got?” she was saying.

  “One minute till military arrival, Sam. Thirty seconds to system closure.”

  “Thank you, Tomo. Tisha, task allocation. One: Prime limpet mines to destroy the Baeder Box in say ten minutes. Collateral damage to be kept to a minimum. Two: Steal me a local chopper and get it here as fast as you can. Three: Track for departure. Steal a jet and set it for Orbital. Check on traffic and satellite interference from say three minutes to say seven minutes.”

  “Three to seven minutes acknowledged.”

  “Thank you, team. Rest in peace.”

  “Confirmed, Sam. Good luck.”

  She looked down at me. “Oh. Awake?”

  “Yeah.” I rolled over onto my side. My head screamed at me to stop moving so I stopped. “What’s happening?”