Storm Warning

by Jaxon Reed

  33

  The droid posing as Gina Wilcox touched the access pad of her neighbor’s apartment, ringing the doorbell.

  The door swished open and a middle-aged woman of Hispanic ancestry stared at her.

  “Hi, how are you? I’m Gina. I live next door.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen you in the elevator a few times.”

  “Right. So, it looks like we’re all being evacuated tonight.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Look here. Apparently it’s some sort of extermination procedure. Something about an infestation on this floor.”

  The droid pushed a holosheet floating in the air toward the woman. The older lady read it quickly, her lips moving.

  “Poison . . . health hazard . . . Oh look, we get to stay in the Ashton. Management has already made reservations. And, my goodness, 500 credits for the casino. That was nice of them.”

  “I thought so, too. Can you be out by the top of the hour?”

  “I . . . Yes. Let me just pack a bag and I’ll take an autocab over there. I don’t want to be here during all this and if someone else is paying for me to stay at the Ashton, I’m out of here.”

  “Great!”

  The door swished shut and the droid turned back toward Gina’s apartment.

  It waved at an elderly couple heading to the elevator.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Bakker, I hope you have a good time at the Ashton tonight.”

  “Oh, we will,” the elderly woman said. “We haven’t been out in ages!”

  They both smiled as the elevator dinged open while the droid continued to Gina’s apartment.

  Of the five neighbors on her floor, one was off planet at the moment. The other four had been amenable to leaving for the night, especially after finding out they had a room reserved for them, free of charge, at the Ashton. And a line of credit at the casino.

  The building’s management did not, in fact, have an extermination procedure planned for Gina’s floor. But they were nonetheless coerced into issuing such a statement by the droid. It paid for the rooms at the luxury resort and conference center out of Wilcox’s personal funds, along with the gambling funds as an extra incentive to evacuate.

  The droid re-entered the assistant director’s apartment and made motions in the air to turn on four holos.

  The displays lit up, showing views of the building’s hallway, stairs, lobby, and front door.

  All the cameras had been placed surreptitiously by the droid. Nobody could enter or leave the building without its knowledge.

  Since droids needed no food or sleep, it sat down and observed the holos carefully, granting the surveillance feeds undivided attention.

  Droids did not get bored, either.

  Within 45 minutes the last neighbor left, bringing along an overnight bag as promised. The droid watched her get into an autocab in front of the building.

  Now the entire floor was empty, save for the droid. The floors above and below had enough metal and other materials to block blasters and explosions, so it did not consider evacuating them to be necessary.

  It waited, watching the holos.

  -+-

  Back in her converted apartment, hidden inside an abandoned warehouse in the Eastside slums, the real Gina Wilcox was on a call with Director Fonteneaux as they watched the droid’s visuals.

  Jodi said, “We got actionable intelligence there is another hit out on you by the Meisters.”

  “Those guys don’t give up, do they?” Wilcox said.

  “No. Plus, I think their leader is still a little peeved at your breaking into his house.”

  “That was the droid, not me, Boss.”

  Fonteneaux smiled, although Gina could not see her.

  She said, “It’s your droid. The droid is supposed to be you.”

  “Yeah, but . . . it’s your droid. It belongs to AOJ.”

  “Anyway, we put out surveillance on all the identified personnel from that treasure trove of data our droid recovered when invading Goodman’s place. Most of the subjects were smart enough to change implants or otherwise cover their tracks, but we latched onto four or five top assets. Our intel guys and gals captured a message indicating there was to be a home invasion at your apartment tonight.”

  “Oh, I see,” Wilcox said. “It’s a case of sweet revenge. I broke into his home, so he’ll have some flunkies break into mine.”

  “That’s probably it. We decided, and by that I mean I decided, to set up a honey trap. I told the droid to order up some fake extermination notices and evacuate your floor. That way, nobody will get hurt when the fireworks start.”

  “Except the bad guys, of course.”

  “Except the bad guys,” Fonteneaux said. “Have you seen the video of how she handled that car that tried to run over you? Or her, I guess I should say.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it, Boss. I almost feel sorry for the goons Goodman sends over tonight. Almost.”

  -+-

  A Multi-World Moving and Storage Company truck pulled up on the street near the front entrance to Wilcox’s apartment building.

  The droid noticed it and made a quick reference check on the company.

  AOJ’s desk jockeys had worked several late nights on the files the droid recovered from Griff Goodman’s house, in an effort to uncover as much information as possible about the Burgomeisters.

  Piecing that data with other parts already known by the police and AOJ led to a comprehensive picture of the criminal organization’s corporate and political ties, despite the almost constant harping by Assistant Director Applegate that nothing they found would be admissible in court.

  Everyone ignored Applegate’s protestations. Mostly this was because Director Fonteneaux gave the project her blessing. But also, the work offered an unprecedented look into Octavia’s criminal underbelly, and that proved highly interesting to anyone in law enforcement.

  The droid could plainly see in the newly updated AOJ database that Multi-World was owned in part by five separate corporations, all of which were controlled by one large holding company. This company in turn was owned by private shareholders with controlling stakes, and they all had ties to the Meisters in one way or another.

  Multi-World, in short, was a dirty company controlled by organized crime, although with no direct ties to Griff Goodman or anyone else publicly linked to the Meisters.

  There was little to nothing incriminating about Multi-World, on the surface at least. But the droid could see at a quick electronic glance that the van’s arrival spelled trouble.

  Three men stepped out along with two large loading bots standing six and a half feet tall, or an even two meters.

  The bots were far more concerning than the humans, at least in their combat capabilities, and the droid gave them some additional attention.

  They were not Verberger bots. Verberger was the dominant droid manufacturer in the Planetary Republic, but not the only one. These were made by a company called Escalating Armature, Robotics, Intelligence and Electronics, a defense contractor more commonly known as Earie, Inc.

  Earie specialized in heavy-duty bots designed for manual labor. These particular models were based on the company’s “Longshoreman” chassis. Adaptable to a wide variety of labor-intensive duties, Longshoreman units were often used for the loading and unloading of cargo, farm work, heavy industry and other related jobs.

  A note on the Longshoreman model revealed that a hacker was arrested in the final year of the war for illegally modifying certain android software.

  Cecil Flaugherty had figured out how to override some of the built-in protective parameters, specifically in Earie Longshoreman units. The hack allowed the bots to perform heretofore forbidden actions, such as attacking people.

  Flaugherty was currently in jail, serving a five-year sentence for his crimes. Earie recently issued an updated operating system for all their droids.

  But several were not upgraded. The company estimated 231 models had failed to report in as required.

&nbs
p; Gina’s droid tapped into PLAIR’s probability matrix and within a couple seconds came up with a 68 percent chance that the Earie bots now headed up the stairs were not upgraded with the new and enhanced safety parameters. The number floated in the upper right corner of her vision, in red.

  The droid also noticed the group carried several empty boxes on anti-grav dollies, including one big enough to hold her.

  As they exited the stairs and came out on Wilcox’s floor, the probability matrix increased steadily higher while they moved down the hall toward her door.

  The number kept climbing . . . into the 70s . . . then the 80s . . . the 90s . . .

  34

  The leader of this small band walking down the hall preferred to think of his group as the Movers.

  Gustavo Diego Musico, more often known as Gus Music, thought the Movers had a nice ring to it. The name reminded of him of “movers and shakers.” Maybe some other hit squad reporting to Mr. Goodman could pick up the name Shakers.

  Gus would not mind. Maybe he would even encourage it. They could work together sometime.

  A relatively short man of five foot seven, or 170 centimeters, Gus had used Multi-World Movers before to take out people causing problems for the Meisters.

  It worked well the times he had tried it. So far, the cops were none the wiser. Or if they were, Mr. Goodman kept the heat off.

  Musico had no idea what strings Mr. Goodman could pull down at City Hall, or maybe even in Harrington House.

  Mr. Goodman, as far as Gus was concerned, could do no wrong. And it was Gus’s job to keep Mr. Goodman in power.

  One way to do that involved eliminating pests like this AOJ woman.

  Gus nodded to his two accomplices and shouldered past the tall loading bots to reach Wilcox’s door.

  “Always try to get in the easy way first, am I right boys?”

  He smiled at the two other men the Meisters sent along. He did not know them personally. In his mind, he called them Fella One and Fella Two.

  Fella One had light brown hair, almost the color of straw but a shade or two darker. Fella Two had a dark brown complexion, with Pacific Islander ancestry.

  Neither one smiled back at Gus.

  He shrugged and pressed the access pad, ringing the apartment’s doorbell.

  For good measure, he knocked.

  “Hello? Moving company. We were called here to move some furniture?”

  The door remained closed.

  “Huh. I know she’s home, boys.”

  He knocked again and pressed the access pad a couple more times.

  Musico said, “Maybe she’s in the shower or something. That’d be fun, right boys?”

  Again, the two taller men simply stared at him.

  He shrugged and said, “Alright, alright. We’ll go in the hard way. Let me look at this pad.”

  He pulled out a door panel rootkit, an illegal device akin to lock picks. They were not completely uncommon. Certain occupations were licensed to use them in limited circumstances. Musico had no such authorization, though.

  He carefully attached a square box over the access pad and activated the tiny computer on top. It remained unconnected to the neural net, affording a modicum of privacy.

  A series of numbers appeared on the readout as the device worked through a variety of circuits.

  When a hand touches an access pad, sensors lined up the prints. Higher end locks might do a topical DNA scan. The circuits could be electronically manipulated, though, and the rootkit used brute computing force to try out all possible combinations in order to chance upon the right one that would open the lock.

  Two minutes passed as billions of combinations were applied to the door’s circuitry. At last, the pad turned green and the door swished open.

  Gus was used to barging in on people in their homes. They might plead for their lives or fight back, but he killed them regardless.

  The Movers, with Gus in charge, were a highly successful hit squad.

  Using the moving company allowed Gus to stuff a body in a box and take it away to dispose of properly. It followed the old maxim of “No body, no crime.” If someone disappeared, unless their body showed up they would simply become a missing person statistic.

  Ready to rush in, he pulled out his sidearm, just in case the AOJ lady was ready for them inside.

  Fella One and Fella Two likewise pulled out their side arms as the door slid open.

  -+-

  The droid watched the holo showing the group at the door and made a threat assessment.

  Based on the fact these men and their (almost certainly) hacked bots were breaking in, force appeared to be fully justified.

  The castle doctrine, where homeowners were allowed to defend themselves, was fully acceptable and even celebrated in the Republic.

  While Gus fiddled with his electronic lock picks, the droid stood and walked to Gina’s wall panel storage safe, touching its access pad.

  Since its prints matched Wilcox’s, the panel turned green immediately and the two doors for the large safe swished open and outward.

  It scanned the weapons Wilcox kept at home, interior lights showing a wide variety of pistols, rifles, daggers and grenades. It made some quick selections, recalling a recent successful assault on a police station by the Black Goggles Gang.

  The droid touched the safe’s access panel again, turning it red. While the doors closed, it made its way back to the easy chair, taking up a position behind it and facing the door.

  -+-

  No one expected a heavy rifle.

  In a distant corner of Gus’s mind, it sounded like an old comedy routine. Somebody jumps out with a giant weapon and says, “Nobody expected a heavy rifle!”

  ThuppaThuppaThuppaThuppa!

  Giant bolts slammed into Fella One, obliterating his chest and splattering the doorway with blood.

  Then the bolts sprayed into Fella Two, taking off one of his arms and ripping a chunk out of his side.

  Gus fell down to the floor and rolled to the side, out of the doorway.

  He looked up at the giant loading bots and screamed, “Get her!”

  The bots moved inside, pausing to pick up the fallen guns.

  Gina’s droid homed in on them.

  ThuppaThuppaThuppaThuppa!Thuppa!Thuppa!

  The first bot took several blasts to its torso and immediately malfunctioned. Its arms twisted as connections scrambled.

  Thuppa!Thuppa!Thuppa!

  The droid shot up the other bot’s front and focused several bolts at its head.

  The Longshoreman model was never intended for combat, although its heavy industrial design helped make it resilient against gunfire.

  But the heavy rifle took a toll, as blast after blast pummeled its head and upper torso.

  ThuppaThuppaThuppaThuppa!

  The second bot finally managed to open fire on the droid.

  Thoopah! Thoop! Thoopah!

  Three bolts plunked into the easy chair. Its stuffing poofed out in a small cloud.

  ThuppaThuppaThuppaThuppa!Thuppa! Click . . . Click . . .

  The droid looked down at the heavy gun, noting the depleted powerpack with one raised eyebrow.

  Out in the hall and still on the floor, Gus scrounged through his pockets until he pulled out an egg grenade.

  “Ha!”

  He pressed the plunger and reached around the corner, tossing it into the apartment. Then he scrambled back on his butt and covered his ears.

  The droid watched the tiny explosive sail into the room in an arc. It hit the floor, bouncing with a Plink!

  The droid blurred into motion, moving far faster than a human possibly could.

  It dropped the rifle, sped around the chair and plucked the grenade off its bounce.

  In one smooth motion, it tossed the explosive back into the hallway.

  Gus watched in horror as the little bomb sailed out the door and bounced on the hallway floor in a near-perfect mirror trajectory from the way he threw it.

  Pli
nk!

  “Oh sh—”

  KABLUMPH!

  35

  Wilcox watched the droid’s feed from her place in Eastside while Fonteneaux observed in her office, working late.

  All three shared a conference call over the neural net, although the visuals remained solely from the droid, transmitted through its eyes.

  Wilcox and Fonteneaux both jumped when the grenade exploded.

  Acrid smoke filled the hallway and billowed through the door. The building’s fire suppression system sprayed retardant from the ceiling, covering up broken and bloody bodies and snuffing out residual flames.

  One Longshoreman loading bot remained active in the apartment, despite all the damage it took from the heavy rifle.

  Gears were broken and it could not move much, but it slowly crawled across the floor toward the easy chair.

  Gina’s droid looked down at the bot. It walked over to grab the bot’s head and pulled, hard. With the squeal of tearing metal she ripped it off the broken torso and tossed it back out the door.

  Gina said, “Wow. She is a bad ass, isn’t she?”

  “She left a mess in your hallway,” Fonteneaux pointed out.

  “I know a company. They’ll have it cleaned up overnight. It’ll be like no shootout ever happened.”

  “I suppose I should send a team of our people over to collect the bodies before you call them. Hmm. Maybe it would be more convincing if the droid called instead of me. Let’s try to avoid any awkward questions, like how I already knew about this. Can you take care of that? I should get home before the kids go to sleep.”

  “Sure thing, Boss.”

  After Fonteneaux disconnected, Wilcox turned back to the droid.

  “Hey, babe.”

  The droid stopped, devoting more attention to the call.

  Wilcox said, “We want to be sure nothing happens to that moving truck before our people get there. It’s evidence that ties the company to the Meisters.”

  The bot nodded in acknowledgment, its visual feed moving up and down on Gina’s holo back in Eastside.