by Jim Keen
Alice headed for the first tower and its weapons dealerships. The press of people, the swirling blurs of colors, the garbled conversations, triggered her Marines training and an icy calm fell over her. As she walked, she watched. How many security teams worked the market? What were their routes and schedules?
The further she went, the more the stalls and crowd changed. The food market, with its mob of scruffy unemployed, was at the Bridge’s entrance. Next came hardware and tools: blowtorches, paint, ladders. Onward, the surroundings became more industrial. One stall had a broken analytical engine on display, the cracked brass sheet locked inside an armor-glass container guarded by a buzzing aerostat. The small ship’s mylar body reflected its environs as it hovered, its needle weapon aimed at any shopper who wandered too close.
Then, at the rear, she reached weapons.
These stalls bore as much resemblance to the previous ones as a nuclear sub did to a rowing boat, being part Virt-Hub, part firing range. A cute guy with red hair and garish skater clothes smiled from a lounge chair before placing Virt nodes on his temples. It made sense; this way he’d get all the thrills of MDK—murder, death, kill—without having to shoot live munitions in a crowd zone. Half of New York’s button men were here, buying the latest toys to kill cops.
Alice had to call Dispatch, yet she hesitated; was this enough to justify backup? Or would Central Dispatch fire her on the spot for being so far out of bounds? Her hand rested on her suit’s collar stud, ready to make the call, but then she dropped it to her side again.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
Yet.
She moved further along. Behind the stalls rose a twenty-foot-high wall of crushed cars topped with a line of remote guns and a satellite uplink array. A ten-foot-wide circular duct capped with ventilation grilles and a locked door projected from its center. A cheery neon sign read Unauthorized Entry Will Be Met With Lethal Force in bright pink. Beyond the wall, Alice spotted Pentagon habitation units, their interlocking cardboard walls forming recognizable offices, dining halls and training rooms. Above that, fading into the falling snow, were hints of glass and steel geometries.
Alice paused, unsure what to do next, as the deep thwack of a helicopter grew to buffet the crowd. She’d not seen a mechanical aircraft in years, and she squinted as a downdraft blew dust and dirt into her face. The large vehicle settled on a landing pad glued to an upper level platform. The machine looked old and repurposed, encrusted with weapons and comms gear. The Bridge rattled beneath it. The rotor’s vibration shook her feet, then the noise cut off.
“You a smoker, yeah?” a voice said.
Alice turned to see a slim boy dressed in a huge, threadbare fur coat. A knitted pom-pom hat was pulled over most of his face, with only his jug ears protruding.
“How could you tell?” She shivered as cold seeped through her clothing, the stimulant inhaler fading.
“You’re thin, got a hungry look, yet you’re scoping out the weapon shacks. You’ve enough cash to buy the latest toys, but not for food. That’s a vice or two right there.”
Alice laughed. “You got me. What you selling?”
“Twelve for five Obamas, singles for a Gipper.”
“Give me a single.”
Alice handed over the plastic note. The kid reached into a deep pocket and gave her a white tube. She flicked the toggle and sucked in the bitter smoke, let her bruised ribs protest as she exhaled a cloud of carcinogens. “Been here all day?”
“Sunrise to sunset.”
“Seen anything unusual?”
His expression was clear enough. Unusual? Here? He shrugged.
“Let me be more specific,” Alice said. “A friend of mine was jacked. Think he came through here. You see that?”
He shrugged again. “Seen a lot of things, maybe.”
Alice sighed, zipped open a thigh pocket and pulled out a wad of old notes. “Ten Gippers. All I’ve got. This help?”
The kid reached out; Alice raised the notes out of his reach.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, no need for theatrics.” He nodded at the money. “You better give that, though. None of this getting intel then zipping them away, right? I got friends here. You’ll never make it back to civilian turf, you do me wrong. Okay?”
“Talk, Einstein. I’m on a schedule.”
“So, yeah, a big-boy catch team came through maybes an hour ago, right? They had this poor dude all wrapped up in plastic. No respect for the little guy, those teams—knocked over my dad’s stall on the way. Hate ’em, but what you gonna do? That’s why I always sells personal. No stall for me, all goods are in my pockets, easy to avoid conflict and stuff if you go one-on-one.”
Alice held her frustration at bay. She lowered the money. “How many of them?”
“Two guys. One carrying, one clearing the way.”
“You willing to put that on the record, let me vid you saying it? I’d come back with more money later, make your day.” An eyewitness was one of Central Dispatch’s requirements to hit ninety percent probability and justify the expense of a SWAT rescue team.
The kid backed away from her, a look of disgust on his face. “You a Scorcher?”
“In a previous life.”
“You’re on Ward territory. You that stupid?”
She took a pull on the cigarette, blew out another cloud. Figured it couldn’t be that easy. “Just tell me where they went and we’re good.”
“Through there.” He pointed at the ventilation duct. The one with the cheery Lethal Force sign.
“Well, there’s a surprise.” Alice said and finished her smoke as the sun set behind her.
Alice looked through the grille. The duct doubled as a corridor; someone had welded a flat metal plate across the curve to form a basic floor. She tilted her head and listened. Faint echoes and shouts came from within, but nothing that hinted where the duct lead. A strong breeze sucked her forward and she had to hold her hair back with one hand. The grille and door were heavy steel mesh tied together by a rotary lock.
She had tools in her jacket that could open this in seconds, but she needed time to think, so she walked to the Bridge edge and looked down. There was a commotion around one of the fish holes cut into the ice and a small group chasing someone.
Manhattan glittered to her left, towers piercing the uplit sky. Through a gap in the storm clouds she saw thousands of automated craft streak back and forth in a mix of red and white navigation lights. Crystal droplets glistened on the towers’ upper skins, the faintest hint of blue and green under the dying sun. Alice had heard rumors of sprawling forests under geodesic domes, of seas trapped inside mile-wide glass bubbles, of rosewood boulevards filled with laughter. Each tower had its own internal security, so the chance she’d ever see for herself was remote.
She sighed and looked down at her hands. Why was she hesitating? Her plan was still valid: get the evidence she needed, then contact Central Dispatch while she escaped.
Because she was scared, that was why. Scared of the tunnels.
The dark edges of claustrophobia crowded her vision, the first tendrils of a panic attack that would trap her here. She could fool everyone except herself—Mars was still with her, inside, festering. Mars: it always came back to that hateful planet, everything did.
MARTIAN INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC, 2052
The drop ship It’s Been A Long Week fell from the Fucker like a lead brick. The descent was smooth at first, there being no atmosphere to kick it around, so Alice rechecked her gear. Eight straps tied her into the ejection seat, and the emergency-launch wire bobbed over her right shoulder. The seat was a smart composite that remolded itself to balance loads. She hated it, the crawling sensation was too much like being groped by an old man.
Her gun clipped to a tactical sling across her body armor. It was pre–machine phase and heavy. There were nineteen other Marines in the containment vessel, and everyone thought Alice was an idiot for lugging such a weapon around. She looked at them now, each equipped with a standa
rd-issue plastic centrifuge gun. They were lightweight, battery powered, and maintenance free. Alice had fought long and hard to use her own gear, but it was worth it. While her platoon would be hosing people down with tiny aluminum pellets, she could put a fist-sized hole through someone at a thousand yards. No one would be getting up and filing an HR complaint after that.
“Mission feed active,” a digital voice whispered inside her helmet.
Alice pulled a thin pair of yellow visors from a pocket and slipped them on, strapping her helmet again afterward. At first the feed was blackness. She guessed it was space, but no, it was just the log-in process. Then Mars was there, below her in such clarity that vertigo said hello. For a moment she thought she’d puke, but her training took over and she settled in, looking for details. Her drop ship was the middle of the three from the Fucker. The Why Can’t We Just Get Along? led the way, and would coordinate with the spec-ops team to blow the domes’ central hexagon. Her ship would land and secure the Parliament’s external circulation ring, while the Sorry For The Mess would take on Parliament itself. It had the glamorous job of breaking the sun dome and setting down in the midst of the debate chamber.
The UN envoy and her bodyguards were dead, of course. Alice still couldn’t figure why the Moles had done that. They had been logical in their demands until then. Unreasonable, yes, deluded, certainly, but they hadn’t crossed the line into crazy town. Even after their bootstrapped systems had slaughtered the first two waves of Marines, their requests had been clear enough: recognition of Mars as an independent colony, and ownership rights to the land they had already colonized. The UN agreed to open talks after those early military debacles, hence the envoy offering to speak at the Martian Parliament. That’s when it had all gone wrong. The Moles butchering the UN team on live TV, and sending the Virt worldwide.
There was no room for negotiations after that. The Fucker was not a warship, but it carried an orbital missile launcher fastened between its foil radiators. In the hours following the broadcast the ship blew two domes without warning, assault teams occupying the surrounding tunnels looking for survivors.
There hadn’t been any.
And now the Marines were going in. Both sides had limited resources and personnel. No one knew of the Moles’ exact numbers, but it was thought to be under four hundred. Two hundred Marines had traveled up from Earth, taking four-hour shifts wedged into bunks deemed too small for use even on submarines. The confines reminded Alice of the sewers back home, where she and Paulie had hidden that first brutal winter.
Military doctrine assumed the Moles would be cowed scientists armed with pitchforks and sharp sticks. Instead, they faced people who had switched planets in the search for a new life. People who were hard, smart, and desperate. But one way or the other, this would be over today. If the drop failed, the Fucker would nuke the structure from orbit, let fires cleanse the site for the next round of settlers.
The first edges of atmosphere shook the drop ship. Subtle at first, then harder, until Alice gripped the arms of her ejection seat, knuckles white, equipment clattering around her. Mars swelled below her, the thin air coating the ship’s camera with red dust.
The Fucker’s Mechanical Intelligence controlled their flight path. Alice watched the Why Can’t We Just Get Along? flatten out of its descent arc, the deep blue of its drive clipped from view. The Parliament dome grew ahead, a tiny white dot at first, then its structure became clear. Delicate trusses held fifty-foot-wide hexagonal pillows in place, their translucent plastic leeching radiation from the sunlight.
“We are green on all channels, execution in five … four …” Alice’s helmet said.
She sucked in air and blew it between her teeth. This was it. After all the training, all the drills, the long journey up here, they were going in. Another wave of turbulence shook the craft, and adrenaline sizzled through her. The air was cold, but sweat ran between her shoulders and her shaved scalp prickled.
Calm it girl, do your job.
“… three … two … one … ignition.”
The It’s Been A Long Week had two planar drives to its rear. Their shielding was over a foot thick, but the boom of activation rattled the whole ship. They accelerated, and a hand squashed her chest until she was gasping for breath.
Through her visors she watched the lead drop ship arrow down toward the dome. For a moment it appeared it would crash into the structure, then the central hex-panel glowed with blue-white fire and split apart. The Why Can’t We Just Get Along? powered through. Alice’s ship followed, increasing in velocity as it approached. As it shot past the opening, Alice glimpsed the spec-ops team that had climbed up to lay the demolition charges.
This dome contained the Moles’ main source of water and vegetation. The Parliament building comprised a lightweight metal roof capping an existing crater, the interior hollowed out to accommodate a pulpit and seating. A thirty-foot-wide boulevard of concrete encircled its exterior, in turn surrounded by a moat of fresh water. Only two feet deep, it glittered tropical blue under the dome lights. A stunted forest of modified fir trees filled the remaining space, with small circular playgrounds at each hour mark.
White phosphorous sprayed from the underside of the lead ship, and Alice watched it fall onto the forest, the dry woods bursting into flames. Another boom flung her against her straps, the aircraft engaging a hard-brake maneuver. Her visors slid down her nose so she lost the view, but for a moment she saw people running from the fires.
People on fire.
People only a few feet tall.
Then everything went black. Not nighttime dark, not countryside dark, but the absolute nothingness of an underground cave. The craft shook so violently that Alice’s visors flew away from her head, while her arms and legs lost contact with the chair and floor. Her stomach flipped as the ship rolled onto its back and plummeted, a dead weight. The buffeting grew until she saw stars, unable to breathe, g-force crushing her chest. People screamed around her.
“Marines, use your zip cords now,” Top, forever calm, shouted amidst the deafening racket.
Alice reached up and behind her for the emergency launch wire, but in the dark, her body spinning with the craft’s tumbling roll, she couldn’t find it. She tried again. How long had they been falling? She had no idea; the ground must be seconds away at best. The spin continued, shaking so violently that Alice didn’t know what was up or down. She grasped behind her, desperate, the seat’s hard edges under her fingers, the weight of her helmet crushing. She traced left along its edge, blood filling her mouth. She screamed in fear, found the cable, and pulled hard.
For a moment she thought it hadn’t worked—the leash came away in her hand—then it clicked and her seatbelts pulled agonizingly tight. There was a shuddering rat-tat-tat and something was in her mouth, bitter and dry, filling her up, swelling and hardening as it reached her lungs. A second of devastating inertia and she—
NEW YORK, 2055
Alice screwed her eyes shut, forced the memories away, and turned from the view of a frigid Manhattan. She unsheathed the riot gun, hung it on her tactical sling, and pulled a new battery pack from a thigh pocket. It clicked home with a low-pitched buzz as the cartridges accelerated. She took a small silver key from another pocket. In one smooth movement she crossed to the metal mesh door, inserted the smart key until it pulsed, then dragged it open and ducked inside.
The half-inch-long mylar teardrop of One-Eye’s aerostat waited ten seconds, then followed her.
8
“With this new reprinting technology, the entire medical profession, from the humble pharmacist to the most skilled surgeon, has become irrelevant overnight. Those able to afford these treatments could, in theory, live forever.”
Sarah Spencer, CEO of Hymann Reprint Boutiques Inc., Los Angeles, 2047
“Van Gogh obsessed over sunflowers because they are the lion of the flower world. Tall, beautiful, fleeting; Cortex surgical systems are proud to use them as a logo.”
Pa
tsy Conroy GS, unveiling Cortex’s MI remote surgical systems,
New York, 2049
Patsy Conroy, AKA Piggy Bank, AKA That’s Mr. Bank To You, dug into the greenhouse’s rich brown soil with a ceramic trowel. Its vibrating blade curled a small plug from the damp earth. He withdrew a single white seed from his belt, then placed it with the utmost care at the bottom of the new hole.
Conroy had seen the revolution coming. Unable to alter history, he’d sidestepped humanity’s downfall to take a seat on the sidelines. After mankind’s millennium at the apex, he watched it be replaced over ten years of MI rollout.
Creating a new life had been more challenging than expected, however, the ingrained patterns of the past requiring determination to overcome. He shouldn’t have been surprised; after twenty years as a surgeon, the last five with a certain notoriety, he had an abundance of personality to reprogram.
He reached into a nearby plastic bucket for a bolus of black soil, and inhaled the odor of peat with contentment. Conroy had sent a security team far north for this sod, a journey with costs that far outweighed the return. His assistants had told him the mission was a bad idea, a waste of resources. They were wrong, but Conroy didn’t blame them for such naivety. Like many of his young family, they lived day to day and knew nothing of world building. Conroy had survived and flourished because he understood the value of a brand, and built his with care.
Take his street name, for example: Piggy Bank. A long dead rival had meant it as a slur, suggesting that Conroy was the epitome of filth and greed. Conroy saw it another way. A pig would eat its own shit to survive, while banks were instruments of power. Power used to come from money; now it came from family.
He squeezed the fresh soil into a fat sausage, curled it around the white seed, and filled in the hole. His family hadn’t understood the long trip north, and didn’t understand his obsession with sunflowers, a symbol that permeated the Fourth Ward’s kingdom.
