by Greg Herren
Twin moons glowed overhead, the sound of smooth reko-jazz filled my ears and a neon sign ahead blinked: “Beer, Boys and Babes.”
Downside?
The usual moment of rational dislocation was replaced by the familiar, as the holographic-construct of Cy-city’s shanty town folded around me.
What the hell were you doing here, Jimmy Strong? Back in the real-world my left hand worked the keypad to access one of my avatar cloaks. Form—mine—materialised out of the matrix and I found myself standing in one of the maze of back alleys near the notorious Pit Club.
“About time,” growled a metal-plated Neanderthal who was aiming a Rat Gun at me.
I flung myself sideways, tucked myself into a roll to get my feet under me, then hit the ground running—I love running—around the nearest corner and out of immediate harm’s way; while my real fingers, in that other reality, flew across the sensorpad searching for an exit. I found it, reached for the terminal connection point, and jacked out so suddenly that I flipped backwards across Jimmy’s office.
While I waited for the interference in my brain to clear I realised that someone was swearing up a storm. I opened my eyes to find myself upturned and hovering over a sprawled Chief of Police.
“That was a stupid place to stand,” I said, drifting away so I had a clear area in which to turn right way up. The motion, combined with perception-residue from the trawl, had a hokey affect on my vision. Still upside down, the shadows in the far corner of the room seemed to be alive with…with deeper shadows.
Ack! I haven’t done this flipping nonsense for years. Used to happen all the time when I first acquired Aggie. Caused me a great deal of aggravation—hence, the best reason for her name.
“Why’d you come out so fast?” the chief asked. “You were screaming blue murder.”
“A reject from a horror vid tried to take me out with a Rat Gun,” I said. “Think he was waiting in case Jimmy came back. Or maybe for whoever came in after Jimmy was shot.”
“Your uncle was shot?”
“Yes and no, Chief,” I said.
“Well there’s no sign of a struggle,” he said. “So he must’ve known who did this.”
“Why?”
“For the killer to be here and walk right up to him…”
“He wasn’t killed here,” Delta Anne said.
“What, so this is a body dump?”
“No. It was feedback.” Delta Anne turned Jimmy’s head indelicately to reveal the scorched flashpoint round the socket.
“So his socket blew a fuse?”
“Not exactly,” said Delta Anne. “This is more like a powder-burn from close proximity to a weapon.”
The chief looked exasperated.
“The doc means Jimmy was here, when he was killed elsewhere,” I said.
“Feedback,” Delta Anne said again.
“A Rat Gun,” I elaborated.
“Knew I should’ve retired last month,” the chief said. “Now, about your new partner, Capra…”
“Not gonna happen, Chief,” I said, distracted again by the weird shift in the shadow that shrouded the back of the room. I shook my head.
“No choice, CJ. This comes from High Command. Five Spacers have been missing for nearly two months and, according to their envoy, their case leads to your uncle.”
I laughed. Jimmy Strong dealt with crooks—it’s why the thing with Aunt Juno was doomed—but he wasn’t himself a bad guy.
“You find that amusing?” The shade within the darkness spoke for the first time.
“Yep,” I acknowledged, then turned back to the chief. “Let me guess. Secret Agent Shadow here is from the League of Space Loons. Chief, you know they have, had a gripe with Jimmy coz he whistleblew their smuggling racket.”
“I’m not with the Returned Spacers League.”
The chief looked like he was about to enjoy something way too much. “Agent Capra Jane,” he said, “meet Captain Zanzibar Black—of HomeWorld Security.” He indicated the shadow that was stepping out of the inky-dark, still morphing into something tangible. Literally. Not that the chief saw the transformation. His eyes were on me for some reason; and my eyes clearly needed testing coz I was seeing things…
Oh.
And crap! My world tilted as the darkest of hours-past engulfed my soul with all their reality: the nightmares, the peace, and the fabulous imaginings.
I’d long ago chucked the deluding meds that had made me relive the too-real bad, while yearning for the clearly impossible. The constant mind-shift from blood-spattered trenches to an irresistible beguine, from the pits of hell to a dance of sheer reckless joy, had been way too much.
“CJ? You okay?”
Frak’n hell—flashbacks are a bitch! I hadn’t had one for seven years; until this slight shift in perception, this trick of the limited light had turned a ghostly shade to a shimmer of such beguiling colour…
Maybe my implant needs realignment.
“Capra Jane!”
“Yes, Chief,” I said, blinking to refocus on the now completely corporeal HomeWorld rep.
Oh my!
Captain Black: eyes—green or blue, or green; hair—short and blood-red; mouth—perfect.
Zanzibar Black: sex on two long, long leather-clad legs.
“You sure?” He patted my arm.
“Yes. Chief. I’m sure.”
“That wasn’t quite the reaction I was anticipating.”
“Why were you expecting anything?” I glared at him and collected my senses before turning to the Amazonian spook from Espionage HQ. “Here are you—who. Why?”
“That’s more like it,” the chief said.
I ignored him and raise my eyebrows at Captain Black, waiting; as if I’d made perfect sense.
She had the grace to simply answer, “The late Mr Strong met with two of the missing Spacers.”
“Returned Spacers came to Jimmy all the time to catch up on the history they’d missed while out beyond the Belt. He’s the only merchant in the Free Zones who dealt the old tech. I assume they were cleanskins.”
“Yes. But only the men came to Mr Strong.”
“Well yes, of course,” I said. “The women from the Jump Ships have no need. It’s only the men who are banned from implants.”
Zanzibar Black shrugged—eloquently.
How was that even possible?
“In between meeting the Spacers and them going missing, Mr Strong also made contact with a Judah Plenty.”
Uh-oh. I always knew that connection was gonna bite Jimmy on the arse. I steered my pod over to the bank of computers, hovered higher, retrieved a framed vid-image, and handed it to Black. “They were in the same unit in the Border War.”
“I’m aware of that.” She glanced at the faded picture of Jimmy and his mates with the low-rider tank they’d liberated from the Raven Brigades. “But as you know, Agent Capra, ex-pilot Judah Plenty is now a known slave trader.”
I looked Zanzibar Black up and down, slowly—mostly because the view was great—before nodding. “If he’s so known, Captain Black, why haven’t your lot shut him down?”
“Please, call me Zan,” she said—for no good reason at all. “Plenty’s connections have been…”
“Let me guess. Plenty useful to HomeWorld Security,” I finished for her. I was trying valiantly to appear interested in late-Jimmy, bad-Judah, lost-Spacers or anything, while an aural flashback this time—a soft whispering of my name—began liberating my libido from its four-year hibernation.
The chief cleared his throat. “CJ, return to HQ and report to Chief Jayla Ellen so she can intro your new partner.”
“What?” I looked from the chief to… “Aren’t you my partner, Captain Black? Zan.”
“No. A Returned Spacer, one Milo Decker, will do the field work with you. He is a League member, and a cleanskin, just like those who are missing.”
“Oh.” Damn.
The chief waved his data-strap over my touchscreen and Aggie thrummed to attract my attention
. I read, aloud, all about my newest liability. “Ensign Milo Decker. Stellar cartographer. Born Geelong, January 4, 2040. Shit!”
“What?” he asked.
“This bloke’s nearly ninety!”
“Technically he’s only eighty-seven,” Zanzibar Black said.
“Is that a problem?” The chief flexed his eighty-three-year-old muscles in some kind of strange manly pose—which did not a thing for me.
“No, Chief, unless it’s combined with a lifetime in those Jump Ships flashing around the galaxy at fifty times the speed of light, exploring new worlds and fighting the Sakaas for the mineral rights to every asteroid they pass.
“Those spacers, especially the old codgers, have big trouble re-assimilating. This I know from personal experience. My great aunt Marin drove us batty every time she came home, just on leave, until she discovered the jetcar circuit. And she’s only sixty-six. And this one,” I protested, “this one will be old and whacko. Sixty-eight years in the Space League and the guy’s still an ensign!”
“He might surprise you,” Captain Black said.
“Don’t like surprises,” I snarled; but not at her.
I glared at the chief, who cajoled, “Hey, he’s healthy. There aren’t that many of us left. You should be nicer to us.”
“Why? You blokes brought the shit on yourselves.”
I began securing my gear, until two other things occurred to me: Zanzibar Black was also a cleanskin; and therefore, “Is this Spacer of yours bait?” I asked.
“Of course not, Capra Jane. And yes, I, too, am tech-free.” As she ran her hands through her hair in demonstration, my skin tingled with way more than lust. It was almost an erotic prompt or sensual proposal.
Bloody hell—these weren’t flashbacks. Well, not all of them.
The damn woman was a telepath.
No, Capra Jane. It’s not that simple. Look at me.
Okay. So although I “heard” that in my head, and knew without doubt that no one in this room had “spoken” those words, I did as I was asked. I looked at Zanzibar Black…and marvelled at the truth.
I am Beninzay. A second-generation hybrid.
While Zan was having a quiet little chat with my mind, the oblivious chief was searching his pockets. That means she…you, that means you can also turn invisible.
I felt rather than heard her laugh—and it was a joyous thing.
It’s camouflage, Capra, not invisibility. But we do have skills that even urban myth hasn’t dreamt up yet.
“CJ, go back to work.”
“Right. Yes, Chief.”
Later, Capra Jane.
I didn’t want to “think” anything revealing; well, than I already had—bugger—so I just left.
It took me ten minutes to get back to SIP Corps HQ, but an hour later I was still hovering around the chief’s forty-fourth-floor office. On my own. Bored out of my brain.
Report to the chief, the chief had said. Problem was, Chief Bascome’s new Co-Director of Operations was nowhere to be found. And there’s only so much you can do in someone’s space without resorting to hacking their Terminal. I’d already gone through her drawers.
Sure Chief Jayla’s office—in one of the causeways built back in 2051 between the Eureka and Southern Cross Towers—had a great panorama; but it was no more spectacular than the view from my apartment. Hers took in the Great Southern Harbour, which comprised old Port Phillip Bay, the tidal flow of the Yarra River—the lower reaches of which still flowed under there somewhere—and the multitude of inner waterways that formed our island city. Mine overlooked the canals that threaded what had long ago been the streets of Melbourne City. Whatever the view, it was a bloody lot of water.
“Ah, Agent Capra.”
Finally! I directed Aggie to face the side door, through which Chief Rho Jayla Ellen had entered her own office. At thirty-seven she was the youngest SIP agent ever to take the Corps’ top job, and therefore one of the Southern Hemisphere’s highest command positions. She deserved it, and even Chief Bascome admitted she was damn good at “their” job. The fifty-year age difference between the two chiefs was seen as a good thing by all who gave those things any thought. Not that the old man had a choice. All positions of any import held by men across the Southern Indian–Pacific had to be shared by the Alpha-Omegas. The Clan could hold solo positions, but the boys had to share. And there was no use complaining; it was all their own fault.
Chief Jayla tossed me a coffee tube, then thwarted any possible complaint on my part. “Your new partner is a done deal, Agent Capra.”
I sighed and cracked my tube. Instantly hot coffee fizzed as its perfect aroma jazzed my nostrils. I took a sip. “But an old codger?”
She shrugged. “HomeWorld Security’s choice.”
“So where is he?”
“He entered HQ about forty minutes ago. Probably sorting gear.”
“He’s an eighty-seven-year-old ensign. He’s probably lost.”
“Go find him, then, so he can help you find your uncle’s killer.”
“He’s not my uncle.” I smiled. I got as far as the open main door before she finally stated the bloody obvious. I manoeuvred to face her.
“You realise that HomeWorld Security’s interest makes this more than a simple murder.”
“No such thing as a simple murder, Chief. Even a snap domestic homicide carries a shitload of baggage.”
“But this could prove delicate.”
I laughed. “You realise I don’t do delicate, Chief. I don’t care about the politics; don’t really even give a shit about Jimmy Strong. I just do the job and go home.”
“Denial might be why you’re so good at your job.”
Denial? “You trying to shrink me, Chief?”
“I wouldn’t dare. I’ve read your file, Agent Capra. I know why you are…you.”
I seriously doubt that. “Yeah? We should compare notes some time.”
“Over dinner?”
Oh great! The new chief was flirting with me. When I smiled—a yes and no—an uncomfortable prickle scrambled up my spine, as if Aggie had sparked me right through my coccyx. I backed out of the office and into something that shouldn’t have impeded my exit.
I turned to find one of the finest specimens of manhood I’d ever seen, sprawled on his back in a silk Jimani suit. Not my type at all, in any sense—but definitely beautiful. And despite a strangeness about him, I contemplated taking him home for my mother.
This was the second bloke Aggie had flattened today, though; maybe she’d developed a thing against minority groups. Speaking of which, I realised Chief Bascome was also in the passageway, loitering and laughing.
“That better not be directed at me, Chief.”
“I’m laughing at your old codger,” he said, pointing at, “Milo Decker.”
“What,” I began, and then ran out of ideas.
“To allay your fears about my ability to assimilate, I do not suffer from space fever or any other stress-induced syndrome and I’ve never been on a Jump Ship,” Decker announced.
“I apprised him of your concerns,” the chief mocked. I scowled at him.
“But yes, Agent Capra, I was born in 2040 and I have been in space for sixty-eight years, although for me it was more like five.”
Oh—frakn—no.
“I was part of the original Australian Probe Ship Mission.”
“Give me strength!” I begged. “How long have you been back?”
It hit me then, that what was stranger than the thing I’d half noticed earlier—that Handsome had a full head of hair and no implants—was the fact that this cleanskin was so young.
No, take that back. The huge oddity was the fact that he was a man so young.
“One month,” he was saying.
I turned on the chief and snarled, “You assigning me a techno-retard as a partner?”
“Calm down. He’ll catch on quick.”
“Realise I sound like a walking cliché, Chief,” I began.
“I
don’t mean to be offensive, Agent Capra,” Decker interrupted, “but I doubt you could be a walking anything.”
Valuable commodity he might be, but Ensign Decker had just demanded an arse-kicking. I pinned him to the wall before he realised I’d moved. “Your file says you’re eighty-seven years old, Decker,” I said quietly. “What’s your calculation?”
“Twenty-three,” he stammered.
“Good, so by anyone’s calendar, you’re old enough to know that it’s unacceptable to say what you just said.”
“Yes, Agent. But you called me retarded.”
“Technologically retarded is what I said. That referred to an educational inadequacy, not your physical appearance. Did not call you brainless, did I?”
“No,” he replied.
“Then do not ever point out that I am legless. Got it?”
He nodded.
“Good,” I said, and hovered off down the hall. “You coming?”
Twenty minutes later I was sitting in my office crash chair, hot-wiring the lead wire from an elderly virtual reality helmet into my TI so I could piggy-back Ensign Decker into Cy-city.
“So, we’re going inside the computer?” he said.
“No. We’re going to use the Terminal Interface to hitch a ride into the matrix of cyberspace and go anywhere we like.”
“Except we don’t leave this room.”
“Of course not,” I replied.
“I’m having trouble with this.”
“They must have had some kind of cyber tech sixty-eight years ago.”
“I’m sure they did,” Decker replied. “But my experience was limited to what was relevant to my training. Preparation for my voyage began when I was six. It was a combo of survival skills and firearm drills, plus advanced biology and stellar cartography. My only personal interest at the time was archaeology.” He shrugged. “I wanted to explore the old San Francisco ruins.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Gone now.”
“Yeah,” Decker grumbled. “Guess I’ll have to learn to pilot a sub to realise that dream.”
“Okay, so that was then,” I said, handing him the helmet. “What’s stopped you since?”
Decker smiled. “Since? Agent Capra, you forget that by my body clock I was only gone for five years—during which time I mapped the Margolin quadrant and the entire sector between Allyo and Jajaray.”
