by Duncan Long
Then motorized wheels would grind forward relentlessly, maintaining a constant speed that would eventually nibble away the distance between us until they were chewing on my tail.
And I couldn’t sustain my speed much longer.
Already my lungs felt like they were going to explode and my heart danced heavily in my chest. And a cramp threatened to immobilize my left calf.
I’m dead meat on wheels.
Chapter 3
Louis Berlioz
It was only my fifth mission, but I enjoyed my job — after all, it was one of the few where you were paid to take drugs.
Legally.
And with a nice health plan to boot.
I worked for Untied Interplanetary Mining. UIM hired us to run remotes. The operation was expensive, but still cheaper than putting men out past Mars to harvest the asteroids of all sorts of rare metals and compounds that were hard to impossible to manufacture here on Earth.
The heart of the operation used a system based on quantum entanglement. Fortunately I, and the other operators, didn’t have to understand how it worked. All I knew was that when I moved here on Earth, my robotic counterpart a bazillion miles away (give or take) in space moved instantly as well, without the hours of delay it would take a radio wave to travel the distance through space to get to it.
The catch was that the system demanded those of us operating through the system to our distant robotic selves be under with Jet.
Thus our near addiction to the drug.
But there was little danger, we were on for an eight-hour shift and then off for eight days, a system that gave us lots of time to spend the small fortune we made with each “trip” out to the orbiting mining ship.
I’d discovered that Jet transformed the experience of running our automatons into something that was almost like being where they were. One minute I was closing my eyes here on Earth, the next opening them in a mining ship deep in the asteroid belt. I’d only done four missions, but found the experience almost as addicting as the Jet we needed to enhance our work.
Today was a little different. Some big wig was coming in to talk to us.
My buddy Sam had been showing me the ropes, taking me under his wing from my first mission on. He’d been working with the company for four years and was the oldest on the crew, outranked only by our grumpy foreman Gus Franklin.
“Meeting with the big wig,” Sam said as we walked down the hall to the conference room. “Big yawn.”
“More like,” I said, then jammed my fingers down my throat and mimicked a gag.
Sam laughed. “Yeah, Louis, more like that.”
A few minutes later we were seated at a fake oak table and the suit droned on and on about the new and improved Jet we were going to use, how safe it was, and, oh, yes, be sure to sign your waivers before you leave.
Right.
“New and improved” generally only meant “new” and — if you were lucky — not degraded or outright dangerous. Probably some scheme from a corporate bean counter to save a little cash.
“Hopefully the crap doesn’t cause our heads to explode like junkies,” Sam quipped as he signed the waiver.
The suit glared at us as I nodded grimly, following Sam’s lead, feeling like I had just signed a pact with a corporate manager with cloven hoofs. But as was always the case when selling one’s soul, the pay was good. So we all went along with it and signed on the dotted line.
Jeff Huntington
We sat in a paneled office overlooked by shelves of leather-bound books and the smoky ghosts of pipe tobacco. I sat in my wheel chair. I slipped the unsealed envelope containing my bribe that was not a bribe across the wide oak desk to the Dean of Students, who sat enthroned in his leather chair, pipe hanging limply in his lips.
The balding monarch opened the envelope as if it were Pandora’s box, and extracted the check, studying it for a full minute, like a vulture surveying a fat corpse. Then he leaned back with a creaking of leather and tight ass to clear his throat. “Let me see if I have this right, Mr., uh, Huntington. If we let you pursue a double degree in chemistry and biology here at the university, you’ll make this, uh, donation, of one hundred thousand dollars?”
“That’s correct.”
“I’m not sure… We are grateful. But…” His voice seemed to vanish meekly into the smoke hanging next to the ceiling.
“It’s simple,” I said. “Your university, these departments, have the best reputation in the country and are also the best equipped. I need certain knowledge to continue my line of business research. My GI bill has helped, but I want to learn more. I need unfettered access to learning. And since your board of admissions won’t admit me, I need to have a few rules…”
“Broken?” The dean’s eyebrows arched as if trying to cover his bald head.
“No, no,” I reassured him. “Only bent. In just the tiniest way.”
The dean looked through my transcript for a moment, fidgeting and worrying the papers as if trying to rearrange the print with his fingertips. “It would be unorthodox for us to let you into our program with your, uh, record. And I, we, can’t guarantee your grades if we were to let you in.”
“I’m not buying degrees or grades,” I replied, fastening my one good eye on him.
“That would be, uh, unethical.”
“Of course it would. I’m only asking to be accepted into your programs. After that I’ll sink or swim on my own and the money is the college’s regardless of how well — or how poorly — I do.”
The dean sighed as if he’d agreed to be raped, and carefully replaced the check into the envelope and hid it in the top drawer of his desk. Then he stood and came around his desk, hand outstretched. “Mr. Huntington, welcome to our University.”
Ralph Crocker
A volley of shots echoed from behind me; bullets ricocheted like angry hornets as I raced on. Another fusillade thumped on my body and produced dull pain in my leg and back as slugs were absorbed by my plastic armor, bruising the skin below. I lowered my head to protect it behind the high neck of my ballistic vest and concentrated on maintaining my speed, trying not to become distracted by the gunfire behind me.
I knew I must devise a plan other than simply fleeing if I were to save my hide. To continue would eventually spell certain failure. Perhaps, I thought, if I can just get to the end of the gang’s turf. Then I’d be free — at least until I ran into the next band of hooligans.
My hopes were dashed when I saw movement a block ahead of me. Six more Harvies rolled across the street and sidewalk, blocking my escape, their long, outstretched claws snapping to show they meant business. Two of them unfurled capture nets, and one had a machine gun turret where his head should have been.
Obviously time for me to devise a Plan B. Either that, or resign myself to being sliced and diced when I reached the barricade of well wishers forming in front of me.
I glanced at the street ahead, searching for some way out. And there it was: A sign proclaiming “Sporting Goods” halfway up the block between me and machine gun head.
I had an idea.
Reaching down to my thigh, I unlocked and released the mini-claymore and then, with shaky fingers, peeled the backing from it, exposing the sticky surface underneath. I slowed just enough to slap the claymore onto the thick armor plate of a rusty postal box as I whistled past it.
Speeding up again, I could now see the machine gun ahead of me being trained at my chest. But as I expected, the Harvey held his fire, knowing if he could avoid damaging me, my body would be worth a lot more to the snatchers that bought parts from them. The machine gun would only be employed as a last-ditch method of stopping me. The other Harvies were spreading their nets, hoping to capture me alive for minimal damage to the body parts on skates headed their way.
I glanced back.
My pursuers were nearly even with the postal box. I slowed to a stop and thumbed off the cover of what appeared to be a decorative insignia on my vest, exposing the claymore’s remote firin
g button underneath. As the group tailing me came into range, they slowed, realizing they were in danger.
But they were too late.
I pushed the button. There was a resounding explosion and a cloud of smoke and dust rose over the place where they’d been.
I didn’t wait to see the results produced by the spray of high velocity plastic fragments thrown in a wide swathe across the street behind me. With any luck I would have gotten nearly all the Harvey’s, but there now had to be fewer working models behind me than in front. I went a few more feet and then slammed to a stop alongside the sporting goods store, turned, and glanced back.
Luck had been with me. All the Harvies that had been pursuing me were down, with only a few showing even a hint of life, their clawed arms snapping and thrashing madly in their death throes.
Seeing that I was no longer boxed in, the machine gunner fired a short burst; the armor-piercing slugs cracked through the air over my head as I dived through the wide portcullis leading into the cool interior of the sporting goods store, a business I hoped, given its location, would be devoted to death and mayhem toward man and animal alike.
My hope was fulfilled. While the store displayed a few obligatory bows and arrows and an ancient Frisbee that looked as if it might have been an original, in keeping with its location, most of the merchandise behind bullet-proof display windows was armament — everything from grenades to mortars to flame throwers and all stops in between.
“Need to do some business,” I said loudly over the machine gun fire on the street. I held up the smart card Death had given me so the wizened man behind the thick bullet-proof glass could see it.
The sight of a card full of creds brought a rising smile to the dealer’s face, wrinkling his skin until it looked like his skull might crack. I shoved the card into a reader for a quick cred check. The unit glowed green and “500” appeared in its readout.
“What can I take you for?” the store owner asked, smile now permanently frozen in place.
“Cartridges. Two millimeter SRR, armor piercing.”
The man behind the counter scratched his chin, raised an eyebrow, and then vanished behind the counter. He reappeared a second later with a box of pre-loaded, disposable magazines in his hand. “Anything else?”
“No — but I’m in a hurry.”
He plinked the ammo on the counter and shoved the packet through the transfer slot that cycled and brought the ammunition to my side of the armored window. I pulled my charge card out of his machine and pocketed it, then snatched the ammo packet, broke it open, and jammed a magazine into my pistol.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d settle your differences outside my store,” the owner said.
I nodded as he vanished behind blast shields that were lowering themselves over the windows. I turned back toward the entrance as my gun cycled itself automatically. The view screen on the rear of the pistol showed it was fat with forty-eight rounds of destruction, a green diode announcing its readiness to kill.
Before I could exit, the rusty machine gun headed Harvie appeared, his gears grinding as he struggled to bring the long barrel of his weapon onto target.
Reflexively I centered the aiming dot of my weapon on his neck and squeezed off a burst. Three hyper-velocity needles connected an instant before he could fire, stitching his neck with a bloody triangle of holes. He tumbled backward onto the sidewalk, a cacophony of lifeless metal.
Harvies are nothing if not persistent, so I braced myself for the coming onslaught. It would only be a matter of time before others came, rolling over their comrade to take their turn at trying to ace me. And I was cornered in the store, any avenue of escape now blocked by impenetrable blast shields.
A grating of gears and clanking of spare parts echoed down the street. But, as I listened, I realized the noise was moving away from me. I chanced a peek outside; the creatures had left.
A trap?
I couldn’t imagine what would have inspired them to leave, but wasn’t going to wait around while they regrouped for another assault.
I took a deep breath, muttered a prayer of thanksgiving, and “thought” my imbedded cellular on so I could call a taxi.
No dial tone.
Then I remembered Death’s henchmen had stolen my subphone. I turned toward the shop owner who was reappearing as the shop’s blast shields retracted.
“Nice shot. Watched it all on the closed circuit.”
“Can you call a cab for me?”
“Good idea,” he replied. “Anybody that aces the leader of the Demons TTS should be getting out of Dodge as quick as possible.”
It took a moment for what he’d said to sink in. “Aced their leader?” I asked. “You don’t mean that —”
“That one lying there in the street with the three holes in his neck was the leader of the pack.”
“Then why’d they leave?”
“Regrouped to choose a new leader. After that, their first order of business will be to get your scalp.”
I gulped.
“I’d give you about a half hour, tops,” he continued, “I’ll be more than happy to call you a cab and get you out of here. ‘Cause I most certainly don’t want you around my shop when word gets around about what you did. Buddy, you’re in deep —”
“I get the picture,” I interrupted. “Make the call, would you?”
Chapter 4
Louis Berlioz
We’d settled into our work couches, Jet running in our veins. My mind drifted in nothingness, then there was a shuddering shift and I was in my robotic self, orbiting the vast asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
I looked down at the finely jointed mechanical hands that now were mine as I unlatched what we jokingly called our crypts — the official name being the “Mark 4 Unit Maintenance and Containment System” — the usual mouthful only a corporate bureaucracy can create.
It took me a minute to adjust to the change — the old timers didn’t seem phased by the transfer. Most of the crypts were already empty and I would be the last one to the job once again.
Finally I rose and pushed off with my feet from the crypt, grabbing a handhold on the wall as I cleared the storage bin, then kicked the lid of my crypt shut like the old-timers did, though lacking their practiced grace, let Newtonian physics propel the lid shut while propelling me in that equal and opposite direction. After traveling through the air for ten meters, I latched on to the slowly rotating ladder leading from the the inner ring of the crew quarters, where the real flesh-and-blood crew lived on the outer edge of the spinning assembly, enjoying the centrifugal artificial gravity needed to maintain their health.
I aligned myself with the central shaft and floated along the long ladder leading toward the inner hub of the ship, shedding the last vestiges of gravity with each rung I passed until I was all but weightless, only the micro-G forces of the mass around me having any say in the matter, and for all practical purposes non-existent.
Once at the hub I — my mechanical self — kicked into another short flight, traveling through the narrow passageway 30 meters before grabbing a handhold to pull myself toward my work station.
“Glad you could grace us with your presence,” the foreman groused as I neared the nose of the spinning spacecraft. Like the rest of us, he had a human face but lacked an articulated mouth, his words instead being transferred directly into my skull.
“Hey, I have fifteen seconds to spare,” I quipped, knowing it would irritate him. There was something about the foreman that got under my skin and I took every chance I got to irk him, even though doing so wasn’t too bright.
The foreman snorted as I slammed the safety hatch shut behind me and pulled my weightless body onto the worn work couch in the center of the cramped quarters. The warning gong clanged just as I finished strapping myself in.
I stared into the blackness beyond the porthole. Only four inches of transparent quartz stood between me and a sudden, airless death. Well, not really, I reminded myself. Since my mechan
ical body didn’t need air, the protection of the glass was mostly illusionary. In fact Sam had heard we worked in an airless environment. I don’t know if that was true or not, but it made sense in terms of less corrosion and wear and tear on our mechanical bodies. On the other hand, with the out-gassing problems plastics have in a vacuum…. Well, bottom line was none of us knew if we were working in air or not, and it didn’t really make any difference to us because our unconscious bodies were alive and breathing air millions of miles away.
But the cold glare of the distant stars seemed real enough, and reminded me that if something went wrong, it was nice to know that the real me was safe back on Earth out of harm’s way, even though it felt like I was out here in space right at the moment.
“One minute,” the foreman’s voice warned. If I’d had lungs, I would have taken a deep breath, ready for the release of our probes. I adjusted the light in my cubical so it was dark, giving a clear view of stars beyond the portal in front of me. Then I flicked at the dust mote that floated between me and the glass.
“Ten seconds until launch,” the foreman warned. He counted off the seconds and they yelled, “Launch!”
The spaceship’s deck rattled almost imperceptibly as our mining probes left their tubes. I eased my joystick forward and watched my probe race from the ship, propelled by its impulse rockets. Unlike the other probes that moved smoothly, mine jerked along, betraying my lack of experience. Once my probe had cleared the others flanking it, I shifted my view from the port to the TV camera on the probe’s nose.
My probe on course, I slipped my control from my android remote hand to that of the claw on the probe, again having a momentary feeling of being in two places at once before my hand became that of the probe’s. I flexed my new fingers, rotating the claw to be sure it was functioning properly, then I double checked my speed and studied the radar display superimposed in my view.
My speed was a little low, so I kicked a rocket control for a brief correction and repositioned, putting it on a course that would overtake a blip that hadn’t yet been designated by one of my fellow miners. Once my target was marked in the main computer, I picked secondary targets that I could quickly scoop up once I captured the main target.
