Solar Kill

by Charles Ingrid

  “Probably not.”

  “Then it’s not charity.” He recaptured his tools and concentrated on the shoulder seam.

  Into the dead silence, Amber said defiantly. “I won’t do anything for that.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “I don’t work! I just do the dry hustle.”

  “Fine.”

  There was a rustle as she got off the bed and went to the corner and hefted the helmet. Jack said, “Don’t touch anything.”

  “Right. Just put it in the sun?”

  “Preferably. Won’t take long … maybe a couple of hours, without a power drain on it.”

  Amber wondered what three hours in broad daylight would do to her, if Rolf found her. She licked her lips, then said, “Well, there’s a roof on the top of this building somewhere. I’ll be sitting on it. Does this thing play music or anything?”

  “No.”

  With a martyred sigh, she left.

  Jack had finished with the suit by the time she returned. She was flushed pink, and he guessed that she didn’t spend much time in the sun. She tossed the helmet at him.

  “If that wasn’t enough, I give up,” she said, crossing the room to the drink tray where she tossed off the last of the juice and let out an unselfconscious burp.

  He closed the last seam on the inside. He preferred having a tech-valet seal him in, but he could do the job well enough on his own—or he wouldn’t have made it through the Gate jump and in deep space. “Hand me the helmet.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You’re not going out in that!”

  “No, but I want to make sure I didn’t screw up my own repair work.”

  She watched him struggle with the helmet as he settled it on and screwed it into place. There was that always disconcerting moment of claustrophobia, then the suit came alive around him as it drew on the power in the helmet solars and recharged.

  “There it is.”

  He felt a welcoming warmth, and looking out at Amber, saw her frown again in that odd kind of concentration. He took the helmet off. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know … but it’s almost as if—”

  The plastic door shattered before she had a chance to finish, and an immense barrel-chested man stood in the remains of the doorway. “Amber! Get over here!”

  She quailed, her wide eyes desperately looking around the room for a way out, her muscles tensed as she poised, ready to run. “He’s a dude, Rolf, honestly! I’ve got him for all night!”

  “I told you never to spend more than half an hour with a guy.” Rolfs deepset, dark-as-flint eyes caught sight of the pile of Dominion credits sitting on the bureau. He flushed, and Jack recognized greed when he saw it.

  The man was built. Heavy in the arms and torso, narrow waist, straight and well-muscled legs. It was only in the neck and face that he showed his brutality, but Jack didn’t make the mistake of thinking him stupid. No … intelligence glittered like a diamond in the depths of those black eyes. And in the next split second, it was overshadowed by the killing instinct.

  Chapter 6

  Jack moved, as Amber’s mouth opened in a silent scream, the cords in her throat straining to mute the sound. The gun in Rolf’s hand spat, and fire sprayed the wall, washing past the suit as Jack hit the pimp, and the two of them went sprawling.

  Jack didn’t have to hit him again. The man went limp under the suit’s weight and the hatred in the black eyes disappeared as the eyes rolled back in their sockets. Jack got up slowly.

  Amber bent to pick up the helmet which had gone rolling.

  “He’s not dead,” Jack said, by way of explanation, but she shrugged, “I know. We’d better get out of here.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “No choice.” She swept the stack of credits off the desk and stuffed them into the waistband of her skirt.

  “Nothing happened between you and me.”

  “He knows that,” she said, toeing the limp form of her boss. “Anybody who ever tried to touch me has ended up dead. Let’s get out of here before the Sweepers come.”

  “Sweepers?”

  Her mouth pursed in annoyance. “Local police. Rolf’s got ‘em on his tab … they’ll be looking for us to come out. If not, they’ll be coming in.”

  No sooner had she finished when Jack heard the thudding of booted feet coming down the hallway fast.

  He swept Amber into his arms even as she gave a surprised squeak. There was no sense in going out the front door. He turned and, shoulder first, walked through the wall into the next room. He kept on going until he ran out of walls and looked down at the street, three stories down.

  “Hold on.”

  She was too frightened to do anything else as he jumped.

  The suit talked to him as he ran. Jack ignored the soft, subliminal buzzing in his head and the prickling at the back of his neck, and listened instead to the pumping of his heart and the thump of his feet on the broken pavement. Night covered them. Amber pointed out alleyways and clung to him with her too-thin arms wrapped tightly about his neck, the helmet sandwiched tightly between her body and his chest. She said nothing, her lips pressed together whitely, as he covered as much ground as he could.

  He stopped only when his pulse thundered and his heart fluttered painfully in his chest, grinding to a halt underneath a long-dead security camera, its blackened-out lens staring bale-fully at nothing.

  Amber stirred. She dropped to the ground and stood, leaning against the Flexalinks. The links caught the moonlight and shone whitely, reflecting it to her, making her seem paler than ever.

  She licked her lips and patted his shoulder. “I guess this thing could come in handy after all.”

  “You’ll have to go back to him.”

  She shuddered. “Never. I don’t want to. Besides, you need me.”

  “Just to get beyond the city limits.”

  “And do you know what’s out there? Come on … you’ve got no chip. You won’t be able to tap into Malthen. You’re like a newborn baby here.”

  Jack stood, looking down at the little wisp of a girl/woman leaning against him. She was talking about street smart, and he knew he had none. Even twenty years ago, he hadn’t had any … Dorman’s Stand had been a closely-knit farming planet. The ways of the city were foreign to him. “Chip?” he questioned, thinking.

  “Microchip. It’s implanted on the wrist, here.” Amber made a face. “The monitors pick it up, even through the skin. You need it to buy, sell … anytime you want to tap the source.”

  His gauntleted hand ran over her wrist. He picked up no chip. His arched eyebrows telegraphed his next question to her.

  Amber flushed. “Well, of course I haven’t got one. I’m underworld. Besides, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. See—I’ve got no record. No file. Nothing.”

  “Then how do you get along?”

  “Machines are stupid. They don’t know the difference between a chip taped to my wrist or one that’s been implanted. So, we use counterfeited chips. Stolen. Whatever we can get our hands on. Rolf rotated the stock constantly so that Sweepers couldn’t catch on.”

  “Outside the system.”

  “Right.” She’d caught her breath now and looked up at him. “And so are you, right now. But you don’t know how to get around it, make it work for you—I do. And that suit you’re wearing—it’s like a neon sign.”

  “Here maybe.” Jack’s mind flickered to the spaceport. “But not where I came through.” He hadn’t seen full suits, but he’d seen plenty of armor where they’d disembarked. There was a mercenary underworld on Malthen. The buzzing in his ears grew louder and he shrugged in irritation. Sweat poured down his back, aggravating it despite the chamois. “How do I get to the spaceport?”

  “Easy. Let the Sweepers catch up with you, that’s where the jail is.” Amber tilted her head. “Maybe I could get you through. I don’t know.”

  “Ever tried?”

  A gamine grin illuminated her face. “Tha
t’s not my line of work.”

  “Right.” He reached out and took his helmet from her. “But you’re offering to go with me?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t go back.” She pointed down the alley, toward a faint, night-piercing horizon. “It’s that way.”

  It turned out to be much easier than either Jack or Amber imagined. Near the border, he flashed a roll of credits at a taxi. The man practically smoked his vehicle stopping for them. Jack got in the car, carrying Amber with him, and caressing her for benefit of the driver.

  He leered at the driver. “Want to go home … but, as I’m taking this little bit with me, dampen the sensors, all right? Don’t want my chip picked up when we cross.”

  The driver mirrored his smirk. “That’ll cost you, dude, but I can arrange it. We can go back with the shields up, and no one’ll know either of you made the trip.”

  “How much?”

  “Two thousand.”

  He settled for one thousand Dominions, and they made the trip in relative quiet, illegal shields up that sheltered them from surveillance as the taxi buzzed over the borderline. Amber fell asleep in his arms and Jack was taken with an instinct he could only label as maternal as he paid the driver and disembarked.

  The driver grinned out the window. “You elite guys are all alike. I remember when I was a kid and that armor stuff was around. Now the Emperor’s brought you back. What’s the matter? Too hard to follow the code?”

  He shrugged. “Man’s gotta fuck once in a while.”

  Grin still in place, the driver peeled out, leaving him standing in the shadows of a fourth-rate hotel. It was too close to the pick up and drop off spot to be used, but Jack found a similar place four blocks over. Amber didn’t even stir when he raided her waistband for the money to pay for the room.

  Amber woke in strangely filtered light, to the tap of computer keys, and she frowned. Then she sat bolt upright in the bed and looked at curtains … imagine that, real fabric curtains, hanging over a bedroom window. She shuddered and her stomach turned as she remembered Rolf.

  She walked into the other room and saw the dude sitting at a computer terminal. He still wore the suit, though the helmet sat on the desk beside him, and he looked as though he’d had very little sleep. His sandy hair stood practically on end, as though he’d run his hand through it several times.

  She laid her hand on his shoulder as she walked up, and the emanation running through it shocked the words right out of her. She hadn’t felt anything like it before … it was as though there were two Jacks, and one of them was unutterably alien …

  He turned his face, and she saw the laser burn, festering at the edges, and with a soft cry, touched her fingertips to the edge. He winced and threw his head back, and the whites of his eyes showed, like those of a wild creature. A second passed, and the old, composed expression was back in place.

  Amber cleared her throat. “What are you doing? And shouldn’t you get out of the suit? There’s a dry shower here.”

  “I’m looking for answers.”

  “Get any?”

  “No.”

  She grinned and sat down next to his bulk. “I didn’t think so. You can’t access anything, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Idiot. That’s what I was telling you about yesterday. You don’t have a chip.”

  “And you do?”

  Amber fished in her bra and pulled up a tiny sliver. “Yes.” She affixed it to her wrist with skinstic and placed her hand palm down on the Ident screen. The rosy fight bathed her skin and then the computer screen came alight. “What are you looking for?”

  “Information on volunteering for the Emperor’s new guard unit.”

  Amber bit her lower lip, concentrating intently. Her fingers flew over the keys. “This’ll take a while. I’ve got bureaus to go through to find the right one to talk to. Why don’t you peel that thing off and go shower?” Not that she minded the scent of his maleness … it was powerful, but nice, compared to Rolf who always managed to smell like a Disposal drain.

  “No.”

  He said it so sharply that her fingers paused and she turned to look at him. Jack shrugged.

  “If we have to run again, it’s too hard to get back into in a hurry.”

  She looked at him, taking in the flush of his cheeks and the sweat dotting his forehead, despite the cool air of the room. “Okay. If we make it through the next twelve hours, we should be okay, though.” She looked back to the screen and became absorbed in her task.

  Jack gave over, letting her slide into place at the terminal. She didn’t seem to have noticed his violent aversion to taking the suit off just yet. He curled his fingers. Good. He was still in control. He flexed his shoulders and rolled his head about, trying to ease cramping neck muscles. He couldn’t face taking the suit off … it had crept into him, into his ability to handle himself and his environment, and it wasn’t that he wouldn’t, but that he couldn’t, take it off just yet. The tension that knotted his body spread toward his face, pulling at the laser burn, and he winced painfully. They’d left the healing ointment behind. After Amber broke through the layers of bureaucracy for him, he’d have to send her out for more cream. He couldn’t risk infection or permanent scarring.

  It took her several hours, hunched over the terminal, to find the department they were searching for, and she gratefully let him take over again. “What’ll I do?”

  “Just access this number. That’ll bring it up on the view screen.” She reached out, activating it.

  “How much of me can he see?”

  “For ident purposes when the call is placed, just your left profile. The camera’s there, see?”

  Profile identification shots were the norm until the call went through. Then the callers could go full face or turn off the view screen if they wished. Jack decided he would turn the screen off, not wanting to reveal the burn. If the Emperor was reforming the guards, he was taking the crème de la crème—no one would interview a scarred outlaw.

  Jack placed the call. The screen blurred and then came on, even as he typed in his inquiry.

  A stocky man sat at the console, butch-haired graying at the temples, his eyes narrowed into the bird’s feet of wrinkles at their corners. But it was the laser burn arching into a widow’s peak that caught Jack, a mark as distinctive as a tattoo. “Who’s there?” he snapped, even as Jack rocked back in shock. The servos moaned as the view screen camera reacted to follow his movement and record the ident profile.

  Jack felt ice cold. It had been twenty-two years, but he recognized the man. It was the man who inhabited his dreams—who’d sent a whole army to its death on Milos. Winton. His voice froze in his shock, but his hands clenched the corners of the keyboard. A band of interference rolled across the picture.

  Amber shot to her feet, as she recognized the color band going across the screen. “Jeez,” she yelped, as she cut off audio. “They’ve called the World Police. Jack, shut down! They’re tracing the call!”

  But Jack sat in shock, even as Amber leaned over him and flipped the view screen off. She tore his hands from the keyboard before it could scan for the chip once more, as requested by police authorities at the other end. She knocked him away from the terminal and shut it down ”Don’t touch anything!”

  She raced to the Disposall, turned it on, and the tap on full, dropped the chip and skinstic down it, and flushed them into the depths of the city’s sewer system, even as she wondered what had triggered the World Police and why. Hands shaking, she finally closed the tap. It could have been the chip—or it could have been what Jack had blurted out when the view screen filled, “Milos,” he’d said, without even knowing he’d spoken. Whatever that meant, the man at the other end of the call had reacted as though an assassin faced him.

  She returned, just as Jack’s head went back, and he and the suit sagged into an unconscious bulk on the apartment flooring.

  Chapter 7

  Amber froze over the massive body of the fallen man. The Fle
xalinks winked at her in the half-light of the room. She looked over her shoulder at the now dead terminal. If she’d broken the link in time, they were totally safe. If she hadn’t—the police would be there any second, and they would be found. They had no time to run.

  Amber flipped a wing of hair away from her face, put her hand up, found her temple wet with sweat. Fear. She tucked the hair behind her ear. First, she’d get him out of the suit … the suit that hummed with a life of its own. Feral. Selfish. Searching…

  With nails tearing and fingers that seemed too weak, she scratched and pulled at the sealing seams, from the inside, pushing her hands down through the narrow space between Jack’s neck and chest, reaching down inside the suit. The touch of his skin was fire hot. The right seam gave way, and then the left, halfway down. It was enough. She set her heels and tugged, worming Jack’s slack body out of the suit inch by inch. More than a dead weight, he seemed impossibly heavy as though—Amber shook her head, as drops of perspiration ran down her face—as though the suit fought to retain him.

  Suddenly, he came free, sliding into her arms and knocking her back on her fanny. She wrinkled her nose. He smelled rancid, like the plumbing of an old, decayed building. As long as she was dragging him somewhere, she might as well drag him into the bathroom. She one-quarter filled the tub, impressed at the sight of real water, stripped him and literally rolled him over the tub’s edge and into the recessed basin. He’d have to be conscious to get out—he was going to be slippery, now.

  Amber went back to the suit and looked at it, lying on the floor. The meshed armor retained most of its shape. She listened for the police and rolled a story around mentally that she might tell, though now she felt a little safer. They should have been here already.

  She pulled the suit into the sleeping room, into the shadowy alleyway between bed and wall, on the far side, where a casual observer might not see it. As she left, the suit twitched and the empty sleeve fell over the chest. Amber caught her breath, telling herself it had not moved on its own. Had not. Could not. Already that sentience she had felt was growing dim, was so far away she wondered if she had actually sensed it. Yet, why had Jack insisted on wearing the suit, as if he’d been bonded to it—afraid to go without?