by Mel Odom
I didn’t stop firing until he was down. Then, on shaky legs and with double vision, I walked over to him. One of my rounds had caught him in the neck and he was bleeding out, but he was reaching for his pistol again. Simon lifted our pistol and fired two rounds into his eyes.
Pain splitting my head open, nausea lapping acidly at the back of my throat, I turned and ran toward the yacht as fast as I could. My strides were erratic, but I was recovering quickly. The agony between my temples remained a constant.
Mara was a blurry figure at the yacht’s controls. I headed for her, trying to remember how many rounds I had left in the pistol. The breeze wrapped around me once I was in the open. The heat of the tropical sun burned down on me. The wooden dock creaked as the yacht rubbed up against it, and some of the planks sounded hollow as I trod on them.
“Simon! You’re hurt!” Mara abandoned the pilot’s chair and came toward me. “Let me see!”
I waved her off and knelt down to the first mooring rope, unwrapping it from the plascrete cleat and throwing it onto the yacht’s deck. “No time. I don’t know how many of them are dead. There could be more.”
Indecision showed on her face for a moment, but I knew she was a survivor. She knew how to prioritize on the fly.
Vertigo assailed me as I bent to untie the last mooring rope, then I held onto it as I leaped onto the yacht. I landed hard and almost went down, letting go of the rope and catching myself with my off hand as I gripped the yacht’s side.
Mara glanced over her shoulder at me and I waved to her to let her know I was all right. Blood fouled my right eye, and when I looked back at the shoreline, it was like looking through a scarlet-tinted filter lens. The dead man still lay on the ground and there was no one moving around the cabin.
I looked out to sea and saw the ship in the distance. The vessel wasn’t approaching us. In fact, it seemed to be heading away.
Mara had both engines engaged. The sea churned to white foam behind us, but the yacht was sluggish right out of the starting gate. The craft would cruise well at speed, but it took time getting there.
She pointed at the sonar screen on the instrument panel. We’d used it that morning to look for marine life. The yacht was equipped with an underwater camera that broadcast vid onto a monitor. She and Simon had recorded several dolphins, a shark, two sea turtles, and more kinds of fish than he wanted to keep track of.
“Something’s coming toward us.”
The blip on the screen was one hundred seventy-seven centimeters long. The dolphins and sharks had been longer, but hadn’t swum any faster. The blip closed on us rapidly, coming from an angle that led back to the shoreline.
“Pull to starboard!” I yelled to be heard over the roaring engines. “To starboard!”
Mara made the adjustment and the yacht heeled over hard because we crested the incoming waves at an angle now, not powering through them. We almost overturned into a trough before Mara course-corrected enough to keep us from swamping. The ocean rushed in over the side and soaked the deck with three or four centimeters of water.
The blip caught up with us and I turned to face it, struggling to keep my footing as the yacht twisted and fought the waves. Webbed hands slid over the side railing near the stern and the woman heaved herself onto the boat. I fired at her as she slid across the deck, moving incredibly quickly. I put four rounds into the railing and the deck and three more into her chest that didn’t penetrate the kinetic armor.
She took a final lunge, ducking down and grabbing my feet, yanking them out from under me. I went down hard. My head banged off the wooden deck and my senses swam again. Simon Blake slid away from me.
* * *
—Senator Lambert says that further violence in the Martian colonies should not be tolerated: “Corporate investors are losing millions in these attacks. Those colonists are insane if they think investments are going to continue to be made. If they can’t police their own people and get them under control, Earth has no choice but to police them itself. Or establish new colonies. That’s what those people better be thinking about.”
And now a word from our sponsor.
“Here at Haas-Bioroid, we are building the future. We can provide new technology—”
* * *
I held onto the memory link and the sudden glare of the tropical sun blinded me. I tried to shift to a polarized view, but I was peering through Simon Blake’s eyes again, not the optic sensors I’d been equipped with. I twisted my head and narrowed my eyes. The brightness had reduced the world to a confusing mix of elongated shadows and flashing spots that danced in my vision.
The woman held me pinned to the yacht deck, one hand in the center of my chest while the other slipped a knife free of her combat harness. Sunlight glinted off the edged steel.
I twisted violently and threw a forearm into her elbow. The joint snapped like kindling. Although the sea suit augmented her strength, it—like her joints—remained vulnerable to allow proper freedom of movement.
Her mouth and eyes rounded in pain, but the suit contained narcoslaps—patchware that negated pain and allowed a person to continue operating unimpeded. The major drawback was that the person remained injured.
I grabbed the woman’s wrist and twisted, feeling the injured arm grind. She tried to use it instinctively, but it wouldn’t support her weight. She slashed at me with the knife. I caught her other wrist and stopped the blow only centimeters from my neck, barely able to hold back her augmented strength. Then I twisted her wrist and snapped it as well. The knife fell from her fingers. Gripping her hair in my fingers, I closed my fist, rolled on top of her, and banged her head against the deck as the water ran back and forth under us.
Consciousness left her. Maybe her life did too. I didn’t check.
Simon stumbled to our feet. I was doing everything I could just to hang onto him.
Mara looked over her shoulder at me. “Simon?”
“I’m all right.” I stumbled over to her and stared out across the wide expanse of the sea.
She threw an arm around me and held on tightly for a moment. Then she looked at me again. “What you asked me earlier?”
I tried to remember and couldn’t. I had only brief impressions of Simon’s life with her over the last couple days. I said nothing.
“I do want to get married, Simon. Just as soon as we get out of here. Something simple. Just you and me.”
I nodded. “All right.” Simon held her for a moment and I felt uncomfortable, like I was intruding. Getting bioroids to recognize social situations they should not be privy to had been a software design ordeal, but the more integrated a bioroid was in human culture, the more sophisticated those subroutines had to be.
I kept track of the ship in the distance, the one I suspected had harbored the strike team that had attacked us. As I watched, though, the vessel set sail and drew farther away.
While I searched for line to secure our prisoner, Mara hailed a sat-link. I knew she didn’t want to call the Coast Guard until she had to. I had killed people. Even though Simon Blake was there as her bodyguard, she would want legal counsel present when I turned myself in.
A young face appeared on the vidscreen. He had long brown hair that fell into his eyes and hadn’t opted for the cosmetic surgery that would have negated the necessity of wearing the glasses he had on. His face was narrow, with full lips, high cheekbones, and a high forehead. He sat in a computer simulation room, the walls blank ceramic tiles colored hospital white. A ragged scar, also left when it could have been removed, ran along his right temple and folded over into his right eye socket.
“Hey, Mara.” He smiled. “I thought the two of you were on some romantic getaway.”
“The getaway part has become really important, Jonas.” Mara spoke calmly, her voice loud over the throbbing motors and the sound of the sea slapping the hull. “I need you to get in touch with the law firm. Have them find someone down here to represent us with the local police.”
“Sure. Want to tell me what’s going
on?” Worry tightened Jonas’s features.
Simon knew Jonas. I felt certain of that. But the young man’s information stayed separate from what I had access to. Still, I uploaded his image to my memory. Later, when I had the opportunity, I would search for him in the NAPD databanks.
While Mara told Jonas what had happened on the island, I returned to our prisoner. She was still unconscious. I used a plastic zip tie for securing things aboard the yacht and bound her hands behind her back. When I was done, I rolled her over and studied her face again, trying to recognize her.
Then I caught sight of the tattoo on her breastbone. I hooked a finger into the sea suit and pulled it low enough to see the tattoo of the chimera. The creature’s body was that of a lion, but the head belonged to a goat and the tail was a striking serpent.
I had first encountered the tattoo during the investigation of the man responsible for Shelly Nolan’s death. It was the tattoo worn by members of the mercenary unit Simon Blake had served with on Mars.
Shelly knelt beside me, appearing suddenly on the yacht’s deck. “You’ve got to dig into this deeper, partner. There’s a lot here that you still don’t know.”
“I know.” I looked back at the helm. Something about this whole tangled mess had caused Mara to disappear.
I started to get to my feet. Instead, I slid across the deck and plummeted into the green-blue depths of the ocean.
Chapter Four
I snapped my eyes open, no longer in the Simon Blake memory. The ding of the elevator announcing our arrival resonated within my auditory system. It had been what had called me out of the dream state. We’d gotten off the Beanstalk and entered the tube-lev station, then apparently gone up to one of the near-surface levels to cover a murderous terrorist act.
The microgravity of the elevator cage’s arrival provided a gentle bump. One of the uniformed police officers with us put a hand against the wall and lurched off balance for a second.
The three other police officers grinned and laughed at their comrade’s discomfort.
“First time on the Moon, rookie?”
The young patrolman shook his head. “Second tour. Always takes me a few days to acclimate to the microgravity.” He was in his early twenties, grey-faced now, and broad-shouldered.
I pinged his NAPD e-ID and found his badge number and learned he was Patrolman First Class Greg Robinson. His service record was unblemished, but unimpressive. He’d primarily been assigned to New Angeles proper.
“Maybe you should have stayed Earthside, rookie.” That was Sergeant Clancy Darbins, a moon-faced individual twenty pounds over the department’s guidelines. He had china blue eyes, a scar on his chin, and a wary attitude. He’d been hauled up on charges of excessive violence and ended up getting bounced to Starport Kaguya in charge of tube-lev security.
“I’ll be fine.” Robinson swallowed hard, then fished out a piece of gum from his uniform blouse. My olfactory senses detected the sour scent of bile on his breath. He popped the gum into his mouth and chewed vigorously. “Anybody know what’s going on?”
Darbins shook his big head. “We’ll find out when the brass decides to tell us.” He glanced at my partner, not me. “Unless the detective decides to let us in on the story.”
I stepped out of the elevator cage and led the way along the service tunnel. I logged the time in my field report in my on-board PAD automatically. It was 0622. Royo and I had been on the 0000 to 0800 shift, which had been relatively quiet.
Dispatch hadn’t been very informative and the uniforms didn’t care for that. Working on the Moon was dangerous business. If the airless terrain or an accident didn’t kill you, black marketers or organized crime members would. The fact that these detectives knew they were walking into a hostage situation and that the hostage takers claimed they had a bomb was terrifying to them.
Jorge Royo was my current partner. Unlike Shelly Nolan, Royo wasn’t happy with the assignment. He knew I had been kicked up to the Moon at the insistence of NAPD Police Commissioner Dawn after the events of the investigation I had conducted following Shelly’s death. As Shelly would have put it, I had “ruffled the feathers” of a lot of important people. I still didn’t know the full extent of the repercussions of that investigation.
I had hoped to dig more deeply into the situation, but I had been packed off to Starport Kaguya and placed under Captain Gopal Karanjai’s supervision. The NAPD had wanted to remove me from homicide and place me on some administrative duty. Haas-Bioroid had filed a quiet legal injunction against my reassignment. I was a test case, much like Floyd 2X3A7C, another bioroid assigned to the NAPD homicide division. Haas-Bioroid had invested a lot of time and money into my development as well as Floyd’s. If we failed or were found unsuitable, the corp would lose all of that. Director Haas wasn’t going to let that happen without a very dirty and expensive fight.
Still, the NAPD hadn’t backed off its position that I was—perhaps—more trouble than I was ultimately worth. Floyd 2X3A7C had his own issues and quirks as well. When programming neural channeling at such high levels, the end product tended to think more independently than the NAPD expected. Captain Rick Harrison had experienced his own problems with high-end gynoids that were stepping beyond the tethers of simply being labeled as a machine.
Royo was slim and dark and athletic and intense. He worked his cases diligently, always within the parameters of the NAPD guidelines. He didn’t take chances, but he craved recognition. His curly hair was neatly groomed and his suit had been tailored to fit him. He exercised robustly, and I often picked him up at his gym to review case notes on the tube-lev on the way to work.
“You guys know as much as I do, Sergeant.” Royo spoke flatly and met Darbins’s gaze. “Hostage situation. Possible bomb threat.”
“Yeah.” Darbins placed his hand on the pistol at his hip. “If the bomb guys don’t get here on time, it’s a good thing we have our own robot.”
I didn’t try to correct Darbins’s nomenclature. He knew I wasn’t a robot. His words were intended to disparage me. If I’d been programmed to worry about such social niceties, I would have been angry. As it was, I understood them and knew how to deal with them in situations where I was called on to do so.
I ignored him. Instead, I accessed the Net and plugged into the seccam coverage of the stalled tube car. The Moon’s surface was honeycombed with tunnels that allowed passengers to travel from district to district, to work, to home, and to play. Other tunnels were above those, used for making up the air deficit as the tube cars blew through at nearly Mach 1. Some of the above tube areas were used to lift out tube cars for repairs and to change out cargos. This particular section of the tube tunnels where we were lay close to the surface, rising up to be on a level with the tube station.
With the link established to the tube-lev network, I saw the train car hovering in the middle of the tunnel. The car was ten meters long and three meters wide. It was listed as a passenger service car, but cross-listed in the Heinlein Transit Authority cargo records.
Today it was being used as a cargo transport.
I attempted to take a look at the cargo manifest and was immediately repelled by corp programming.
THIS E-MANIFEST IS MARKED PRIVATE.
The warning didn’t even mention the name of the corp that had placed the ban on the information. I checked through NAPD files and discovered the necessary motions had already been filed through the district attorney’s office to open the file. An answer was forthcoming.
I peered into the train car through the on-board seccams. Five of the six cameras had been destroyed, and the sixth only worked in flickering spurts. The flickers weren’t enough to clearly see the scene because static randomly chewed away bits and pieces of the view, leaving holes scattered through the images in different places.
I captured several of those images, knowing that the NAPD cyber techs would be doing the same, and started reassembling them till I had a complete composite image of the situation aboard the tube
-lev car. Some of the people aboard the car moved constantly, so I had to choose one position for each of them and filter in the details. When I was finished, I had a complete image that showed the situation. By that time, we had arrived at the tube-lev station down the tunnel from the suspended car.
“Jorge.” I spoke softly, for his ears only.
Royo looked at me reluctantly. “What?”
“I have an image of what’s going on aboard the tube-lev car.”
The reluctance faded from my partner’s face. He pulled his PAD from his thigh pouch and checked the incoming messages. “HQ doesn’t have it.”
“They do. They just haven’t yet disseminated it.”
“Then how did you get it?”
“The same way the cybtech specialists got it: I went through the seccams.”
“They’re broken.”
“One of them remains partially active.” Logic told me why HQ had not yet sent this information to most of the police department. Controlling information in the PD was difficult. There were corrupt policemen and detectives who worked with orgcrime groups, and there were those that simply sold information to the nosies. The news media was constantly trying to get scoops on stories as they developed.
Especially something like this.
I pushed into the news services quickly to check on the story’s development. All of them—NBN, New Angeles Sol, Phases, and The Lunar Eclipse—had footage of the tube-lev car stranded in the tunnel. No one had the image I’d put together that I was sure the NAPD also had by now.
One of the vid bytes that broadcasted constantly was of the drone one of the news-nosies had piloted along the tunnel immediately following the train’s lockdown. The drone, a flat disc smaller than a tea saucer, had zipped down the tunnel and used infrared to capture vid. The seccams along the tunnel caught the drone in motion and I placed those two feeds side by side to better acclimate myself to the situation aboard the car.
The tube-lev stations were covered in plascrete, but the tunnels were left bleak and hard. The scoring marks left by the constructorbots that had dug the tunnels looked like scars on the stone.
