Her Last Run

by Michael Penmore

  “What?” Isabel challenged his lack of appreciation for her excellent work.

  “That was a very charming and under the radar thing to do, miss broadsides. How can you be sure he won’t come back with reinforcements?”

  “That guy? Moonbeams, he’s definitely not coming back here. He just got hassled by a girl. Pair that with my threat to out him as a fishtails and boobs lover on one of the most popular social networking and dating sites of all time. Do you know what’s that gonna do to him so far away from Earth? This,” she guided Rhys' attention to the vacated computer, ”is most definitely connected to the intranet. It means the guys he meets and talks with are the same sort of losers: all stuck inside this fleet. That includes the tablemates at the cantina, best pals he chats to every single day. If I post incriminating things and they find out, he’s never going to escape their laughs and mockery. It'll be vicious. Local network is a dog-eat-dog kinda place, so you gotta watch your six all the time. If you don't, name tags galore! Some wisecracker will stick on you a silly calling card, the dumber the better, and it'll be your gooey shadow till the rest of your days. Believe you me, he’s gonna run to the next connection he can find just to do damage control. It’ll be an hour before he realises I never even touched his precious, long-nurtured neuronet profile.”

  Dreyfus changed the look. It was now the wrong kind of awe, the one you give someone when they tell you something they shouldn’t know, the type of embarrassing knowledge or memory. “And how do you know all this stuff?”

  “I went on a date with a guy once.”

  “You? On a date? Did he survive it?”

  She stomped on his foot. “Course he survived it. We’re best friends.”

  “Ouch,” Dreyfus crouched down and rubbed his toes. “Still, that much knowledge from one date? Pish, pash and posh on a bike.”

  “Cute,” Isabel treated him to her best pouty face. “Anyway, we don’t have time for chitty chit chats. Nadie, can you untangle my ship from the injustice the locals are putting her through?”

  Nadie was already working the keyboard the old-fashioned way. Her face fell. “Bad news. I can’t lift the anchor.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s on the network. Can’t do it without jumping online.”

  “All right. Anyone got a neural slot for this thing?” Isabel picked up the dangling end of the data wire. Nadie shrugged helplessly. Rhys shook his head from left to right and back again. “Really? You’re both naturals? Where have you been for the last twenty years? This job is getting better and better with every passing minute. All right. Here goes another uncomfortable thing I get to do. Lucky me. Amicon should have paid me two million.”

  “Are you going to stop talking and start doing something?” Dreyfus asked.

  “Relax, boyo, and behold.”

  It had been quite some time, but Isabel still remembered what to do. She lifted the fringe of hair on the left side of her face and in that move she exposed a couple of miniature cable slots embedded in the skin above her ear. The computer wire was pretty standard and fit snugly into one hole when she tried it.

  Dreyfus looked closely at what she had done. Isabel snapped at him, “What?”

  “One date.”

  “OK, I lied, big deal. Everyone lies.” She really didn’t see what the fuss was about. Maybe he’d never seen anyone jack in before. That was theoretically possible if he had lived in a barn among a small congregation of the Amish people in their wild mountain reserve.

  “So?” Dreyfus kept sniping at her.

  “So what?”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Ain’t you the nosey bloke.” She sighed and gave up before he annoyed her to death with the same boring questions on repeat. “Steel City. I did courier jobs between sectors for a while. It was ages ago. I sprang out of there and forgot about that unsavoury episode in my life for good.”

  “Neural courier is a dangerous trade,” Nadie eyed Isabel with a medley of concern and admiration.

  “You have no idea, friend.” Isabel jacked herself in and sat as comfortably as she could in the little chair without back or armrests. “OK. This won’t take a minute.” She closed her eyes.

  And she opened them to experience the familiar push of incoming data streaming against her digitally rendered body. Inside the neuronet, she could be anything: an Amazon warrior, a forty-storey mech, Mary Queen of Scots, Bruce Wayne or the Bats if she wanted. She stayed herself though: the glasses, the coat and the gloves, blue hair and knee-high boots, because she was perfection; she’d left insecurities behind her a long time ago and just embraced who she was. She rocked that look.

  She pulled her shoulders together, focused and dove ahead like a human arrow in a tunnel of ebbs and flows going in the opposite direction. Infodump. Trash. Among the grey noise, white blocks of structured data. She whooshed past them, adjusting her glasses display in search of what she was looking for: the anchor. She was on the information highway, a complete circuit on endless repeat. The Earth, or even Gliese, these worlds possessed far wider and longer digital thoroughfares. This thing was a backwater server, just the Higher Power’s inner data sanctum. Still, it was lots of data for one human brain to process.

  Isabel focused and landed heavily on one of the speeding blocks, sending ripples when she touched it. She went to one knee. The white surface shimmered under the tips of her gloves as she accessed images and speed-read through them. There was always the temptation to get stuck in the lecture, but it wouldn’t make any sense to her once she dropped out of the neuronet. People had tried to gain exorbitant knowledge by jacking into the network and gobbling up indiscriminate amounts of data. These guys were called data junkies. Things didn’t work that way, though; the brain wasn't wired to retain endless amounts of information. At best, 99 percent of data was lost on logging off. At worst, these data junkies got lost in the streams for days before the network's safeties booted them out as gibbering wrecks.

  Isabel searched through the feed without trying to retain anything. Her interest was the Anvil’s anchor. It wasn't there, so she shook her head, stood up and made an impossibly long jump to another block. The leap worked out without a hitch. And another one, and another. Searching on rinse and repeat.

  The seventh try proved lucky. She reached into the block, and it radiated brilliance. All sorts of blue went through it: Spanish, Egyptian, Argentinian, Neon, Ultramarine, Picotee, Baby… the list went on and on. Inside the neuronet, she was able to record and name the subtlest of changes between shades. She had got used to that a long time ago. It was useful, but dwelling on it was a waste of her time. Instead, she focused on finding a gate leading inside the block. She was on the outskirts. She needed to dig deeper.

  Her fingers tapped inside the cerulean flow under her hand. There. A ring of fire. Not quite a wall. She closed her eyes again, and the block sucked her inside.

  A library. An archive or repository. Someone was old-fashioned. She found herself standing amid old type filing cabinets, a whole room dominated by them, set up like a robust chessboard. This was vintage software. The EEF forgot to upgrade into faster methods of information storage.

  Isabel walked among the cabinets, from P to the top of the alphabet. She was looking for the very beginning: A for the Anvil. The name of her ship had to be stored as a file in the ship’s handling registry. Once she found the record, locating the anchor holding her freighter in place would be easy peasy.

  It was a more interminable slog than she had anticipated because someone failed to keep up proper maintenance routines. She quickly realised cabinets were repeating themselves as copies of the same data and some were mislabelled with strange symbols. Even so, she was getting close when she heard pattering of feet behind her back, followed by a growl. She turned around to witness a large black dog gaping at her. Its eyes glowed with passing streams of source code. The dog wasn’t your friendly pooch but a disconnector, an application deployed to safeguard the system from trespassers
like her. One touch from the beastie and she would get the boot out of the system.

  “Easy there, pooch,” Isabel deployed her rarely used hot-chocolate-and-cookies voice. “I didn’t break in. I used a door. That’s got to count for something, right?”

  The dog barked three times. A warning. Log out peacefully, or else. It had scanned her and found she didn’t have the kind of signature expected from someone with authorisation.

  “All right, champion. You don’t leave me much choice,” Rocarion’s voice became as sharp as a force blade. She took off her glasses, hoping that the old software still worked after years of disuse and that the dog wasn’t updated to shrug off the intended effect. She focused her gaze on the beast and her eyes amassed bright purple lights. It was an anomaly: a piece of code designed to jumble and scramble other programs.

  The dog cocked its head. The data streams in its eyes sped up. It opened its snout, mewled and backed off slowly. When it felt it retreated far enough, it turned away and ran.

  “Works every time,” Isabel declared as though she’d had no doubts beforehand. She put the glasses back in their place and made sure the anomalous lights died. They would make her an easy target for any EEFer with a chop or two in neural engineering.

  She resumed her search with doubled speed. The disconnector might trip a system alert, and she needed to find the A cabinet before its records were sealed. It was just a couple blocks away. She grabbed the thin metal handle and pulled out the top drawer. The files stretched out much, much farther than any physical archive ever could. Isabel took a peek. Within seconds, she found it. The Anvil’s name stood out, tied with a bright ribbon - the mooring anchor. She gave it a yank, and the filigree chain fell off without the slightest hint of a sound.

  The Anvil was free. Now she just needed to make sure it stayed so. The easiest way was to create gaps so automated systems would have to stop and repair them, like mending bridges to cross. Isabel took off her glasses again and started to pour over records at random. Wherever she looked, the light of her eyes created gaps like a flamethrower incinerating cardboard walls. When she was done, the files resembled a ruined city district hit by carpet bombing.

  Pleased with her work, Isabel opened her real world eyes and drew in a sharp breath. She was in the real world again. Now the nasty part kicked in. The one where her brain struggled to adjust to the rules of conventional physics. She’d been inside the network for two, maybe three minutes. Now she needed some time to get back fully into her old self.

  After the first bout of heartburn went away, she looked around. Her vision swam and blurred on the sidelines. That was the optical nerve readjusting. As far as she could see, nothing had changed in the real world while she was away in dreamland. She pulled out the connecting wire from the side of her head; it dropped out of sight like a new show after the first season, when it didn't pull in the projected number of viewers. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, but that was to be expected. Isabel blinked them away.

  “Hey there, princess. Are you OK?” Nadie leaned over her, smiling thinly.

  “Never better,” Isabel lied through a parched throat. Amazing how a little break of several years gave her withdrawal symptoms like she was a newbie to the neural interface. Her head was swimming, and her stomach churned. She swallowed and beat nausea to submission with her iron willpower. She tried to get up.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Dreyfus took her by the arm. Nadie grabbed the other one and together they helped her get steady on her feet.

  “I’m fine,” Isabel shook her helpers off her and straightened defiantly. Just a couple more minutes and the feeling of otherworldliness would blow off like dandelion seeds on the wings of a hurricane. “The Anvil’s free. Let’s get out of here. The air stinks.”

  “Couldn’t put it better,” Nadie nodded, but she didn’t have a smile for her friend, just a knotted forehead.

  “If you’re sure. You go first, ladies. I’ll secure the rear.” Dreyfus’ face crumpled with worry. Was it concern for Isabel Rocarion or for himself? She couldn’t focus on figuring him out. It was a considerable effort just putting one foot in front of the other.

  “You can do this, friend,” Nadie stepped aside, looking her gunrunner associate up and down.

  Isabel felt that gaze vividly and a new wave of strength washed over her: defiance.

  “Sure, I can do this. Question is, can you catch up with me?”

  She made that crucial first step and, thank the stars, she didn’t wobble. Encouraged by the early success, she set off on a brisk march, Nadie by her side, Dreyfus closing, watching their sixes like a big brother escorting his sister and her girlfriend home from a boozy night out.

  The Asian Corporal stopped judging Rocarion’s every move. Through the pins and needles playing acupuncture with her head, Isabel noticed her friend was occupied by her own brand of black thoughts. If they were similar to hers at all then they played like this: things had unfolded suspiciously well and easy so far, so the roof was certain to fall over their heads soon.

  * 9 *

  Specialist Crawley had only one desire: to wake up from this nightmare! The last couple of days had been relatively easy. The Earthers finally decided where he belonged - on his own in a cell with rudimentary facilities. He still wore the same clothes as on Beacon 139 but they were ripped after the treatment Ramsey had given him on the runabout after the EEFers busted through the door.

  Medically, he was better than in the first two days. Someone had come by to take a look at his hurting nose and black eye. Crawley was healing and getting used to a quiet jail existence. Boredom was the worst thing. After the treatment, no one came to visit apart from a small mute robot who rolled in between the glowing energy bars carrying a small tray of cheap food. The meals were scanty, and after two days Crawley was permanently hungry. And a hungry Crawley gets chatty. He ended up speaking to the walls. He would sacrifice all the hair on his body for a visitor. He was so desperate for another face that he’d even accept another tormenting from Ramsey and his more restrained sidekick, Moon.

  Wishes do come true. One day, as Crawley was sleeping on a shallow mattress, Ramsey and Moon came back.

  “Wakey-wakey, Stevie shaky!” Ramsey reminded Crawley why this visit was not a welcome one with a kick in the stomach. Next thing the prisoner knew, Moon was dragging him, yowling and scraping, out of the cell. This was similar to how it played last time: Ramsey was the violent leading man and Moon performed delegated minute tasks.

  Moon snapped chunky handcuffs on Crawley’s wrists. “In case ya come up with stupid ideas. I’m sure ya’ve come up with a dozen. Not that ya would do anything, fat Colon coward,” Ramsey ranted in a style Crawley had gotten used to. It was better to stay silent. They made him walk at a brisk pace through corridors, which all seemed the same. They talked.

  “What are we taking him for, Ramsey?”

  “I already told ya Moon, ya plonker.”

  “Did you? I forget.”

  Ramsey sighed. “We’re going to a Colon world, yeah? And he’s a Colon, yeah? I’m gonna betcha that he knows a secret stash or two of goodies that will make my... our lives much easier and more pleasant from the day we find it. Do ya get my thinking now, ya Moon-ron?”

  “I don’t know any secret stashes,” Crawley squeaked from behind them. They got him so scared that he hurried after them without thinking about escaping.

  “Quiet, bug!” Ramsey drew his fist back in a move that was likely going to finish in Crawley’s stomach. The Specialist squirmed, but the blow never came. Ramsey laughed as he dropped the fist and resumed his walk with Moon. “What a chicken shnitz. I’m almost afraid to punch him again. I think he’ll break in half! Ha ha ha!” Moon joined in the laughter after some hesitation.

  Crawley thought desperately hard. So hard that he worried his bowel would burst. Where were they taking him? He’d been out of the loop on the recent developments. The EEF armada broke through the energy barrier, that’s all he knew. And they di
d it with his help. He’d brought this on himself, and no one was going to bust him out.

  He had to come up with something before Ramsey and Moon tore him to pieces. Did he know any secret stashes? No, he didn’t. And if he couldn’t give them something worthwhile? He shuddered.

  The universe works in mysterious ways and one of those came to the aid of Crawley. When a weird looking EEFer walked past Crawley in the opposite direction, he didn’t examine her properly. Sure, she was bizarre: rushing but not running, her eyes hidden under big round glasses, hair streaming down around her head like a natural helmet. Didn’t all army type cut their hair short? He tossed her image out of his brain. He had bigger concerns to think about. His life was on the line and questions hovered above him without answers: What to do? How to avoid Ramsey’s wrath and survive?

  But in times of worry, Crawley’s eyes were super sensitive and never shut down. So a part of him observed the strange EEFer companions following her in an equal hurry. The woman with Asian features was a rare sight among the Expeditionary Forces but maybe not as exceptional as he had thought? The guy though...

  Crawley came to an immediate stop and turned to cast a look at the man’s back. He’d only seen his face for two seconds, no more, but this countenance had been staring at him for the last two days. Ex-Captain Rhys Dreyfus of the USSMC, presumed armed and extremely dangerous, had been plastered all over the video feed playing in the corridor just outside of his cell door. This was a fugitive on the EEF’s most wanted list. What was he doing aboard a ship crawling with Earth army? It didn’t matter. What counted was the award assigned for his capture. The sum ended with four zeroes.

  Crawley smiled like a salamander basking on hot coals. He had found the perfect fodder for Ramsey. “That’s him! Earth traitor!” he shouted, jumped up and pointed with his cuffed hands.