by Rick Partlow
Fontenot kept her handgun trained on the room’s other exit as she reached out with her other hand and cautiously yanked on the handle. The battered, cheap plastic door creaked open on old hinges, revealing a narrow, twisting flight of stairs heading to the next floor down. She winced as the wooden steps groaned beneath her weight, but there was nothing to be done about it; if no one had reacted to the door being kicked in, they probably wouldn’t hear this, either.
By the time she reached the next landing, she knew something wasn’t right. When Singh had busted her out, this place had been packed with troops, Jordi’s hired guns from the Pirate Worlds. If what Singh had told her about the shuttles coming in was accurate, there should have been dozens of them, maybe over a hundred. But the next floor down was dark and deserted; no sound filtered up the stairwell, no buzz of voices, no scrape of shoes on the floorboards, just a gently flickering light.
They’d suspected it from their recon of the outside of the building, and now it was certain. Jordi was on the move. She just hoped something he’d left behind would tell them where. Her steps were a drumbeat on the stairs now and if anyone couldn’t hear them, they must be in a coma…
Or a netdiver deep in the interface.
She saw them the second she hit the bottom stair, three of them arrayed in a semicircle around a quantum stack, settled into form-fitting “easy chairs” with the interface cables jacked into their implant sockets. Two of them were men, the third a woman, but in looks they were nearly identical: heads depilated, skin pale to the point of translucence, blue veins visible through it, loose clothes hanging like rags off their skeleton frames. Not just your average professional netdivers then; they were obviously ViR addicts as well, working for the cartels to feed their need for illegal ViRware that would directly stimulate the pleasure centers of their brains.
What they were, though, wasn’t nearly as interesting to her as what they were doing. There were cheap, obsolete, flat-panel displays mounted on the wall above the quantum computer stack, each about a meter across, showing the video feed from what could only have been a swarm of insect drones. It was early morning, well before dawn outside, but the view on the displays was as bright as noon, thanks to night vision filters and computer interpolation. The view on one screen was somewhere on the road out of the city, at least that was her guess from what little she’d seen of it. The plains outside Gennich were red and rocky, and barren but for a few hardy, bioengineered plants brought from Earth decades ago and the even hardier lichen left behind as a terraforming tool by the Predecessors hundreds of thousands of years before that.
The road that cut through those wind-swept plains turned quickly from pavement to gravel to graded dirt, and the convoy of vehicles rumbling down that road were throwing up a cloud of dust that challenged even the infrared filters and the computer enhancement. There were ten of them, she thought, most of them passenger vans, though she saw two cargo trucks and a smaller rover as well, and she would have been willing to bet that Jordi was in that car. That was enough vehicles to be carrying the whole lot of them, and where they were going…
The middle screen was showing a seasonal river bed, a wadi she thought they were called, crossed by a crude, stone bridge barely wide enough for one of those cargo trucks to pass over it. The bed was dry at this time of year, though she thought she might have seen a hint of mud from a light rain somewhere in the hills above. The road and the bridge were deserted, the lonely stand of genetically engineered Earth cottonwoods a dozen meters off the edge of the dirt track the only sign of life. Yet they’d taken the time to put it under surveillance, and she had no doubt that was where they were heading.
The third screen showed their quarry, their target, rolling the opposite direction much further down a turn-off of the same road, coming out of a deep canyon system over the pass through the hills and up near the distant plateau halfway to the next settlement. Dust roiled into the air behind them, though not as much nor as dry as the cloud around Jordi’s convoy. There were only three vehicles: two large, twelve-wheeled cargo trucks, lurching as aged and under-maintained transmissions changed gears to compensate for the downhill grade. Out in front a beat-up rover led them, and through the front windscreen of the smaller vehicle, Fontenot could make out enough of the driver’s face to see that they weren’t human.
“Oh, son of a bitch,” she muttered.
As if the words broke a magic spell keeping the two of them invisible, one of the men blinked, his eyes focusing suddenly on her and Singh, and growing wide with fear and shock.
“Stay where you are,” she was saying, but the words hadn’t quite made it out of her mouth before another man, one they’d missed, burst out of a narrow doorway in the corner of the same shop floor where she’d been held prisoner only hours before.
She had less than a second to evaluate the threat. He wasn’t a netdiver, she could tell by his healthy complexion and shaggy hair, and his clothes were cheap flash from a cheap fabricator. The belt around his multicolor pants was unfastened and she had the absurd thought that they’d caught him on the shitter. There was nothing absurd about the heavy machine pistol in his hand, though, and he’d started firing before he came out of the bathroom.
Fontenot fell to a knee, knowing instinctively that the netdivers were between her and the cartel gunman and feeling confident he wouldn’t shoot them. And then he did. The gun was ancient, a primitive slug-shooter older than her, and from the chatter of its discharge it still used conventional gunpowder propellant. The bullets it fired did a fine job on the female netdiver just the same, punching through her torso cleanly before they flattened themselves into Fontenot’s chest armor with bruising impact.
She fired by instinct, a two-round burst that took him in the chest. The pistol was loaded with anti-personnel rounds rather than solid tungsten slugs, and the wire-wrapped, frangible ceramic loads spent themselves inside his body. He jerked and spasmed, the gun dropping from strengthless fingers before he collapsed forward to the concrete slab floor.
Singh was moving, running past the dead gunman and into the back room, leaving her to deal with the remaining netdivers. They were both retreating from the interface now, yanking in panic at the cables that attached them to the quantum stack, and starting to climb out of their backwards-tilted chairs. The third one, the woman, was clearly as good as dead; her body thrashed and shook, blood gushing from her multiple gunshot wounds, from her mouth, from her nose.
Fontenot grabbed the nearer of the two survivors by the throat, slamming him back into his seat hard enough to send chair and man crashing to the floor. The last, distinguishable from his fellow netdiver only by a small tattoo of a unicorn on his left cheek, ran to the corpse of the cartel thug, trying to grab for the machine pistol laying on the floor next to the body. Fontenot bit back a curse and lunged across the room, knowing instinctively that she wouldn’t be able to reach him before he picked up the gun, counting on the probability that it would take the jackhead a second to figure out the weapon.
She was still a good meter from him when his head disappeared in a spray of red, and she dug in her heels, scrambling to keep from winding up wading through what was left of his brain. Singh was standing in the doorway of the back room, his Gauss machine pistol extended. He brought it back to low ready, his face as neutral as if he’d tossed a can into a recycler.
“I had it handled,” she snapped at him, stepping back from the wreckage of the netdiver.
The one she’d slammed to the ground was gasping for breath, attempting to roll off the chair and crawl away. She pinned him down with a boot between his shoulder blades, still glaring at Singh.
“We didn’t need him.” The bounty hunter tossed his head dismissively. “We have that one, and from the looks of things,” he motioned at the view on the monitors, “we don’t have much time.”
She grunted by way of reply, stepping off the netdiver’s back, then grabbing him by the collar of his loose, baggy shirt and hauling him to his feet.
This close, she could smell him; he stank of sweat and fear and stale piss, and his clothes were coated with overlapping stains of various ages and provenances. He was panting, his mouth hanging open, and it was a close thing whether his breath odor outpaced his body odor; his teeth were dark yellow, lacking the basic hygiene that even most Pirate Worlders could afford.
“You’re coordinating drone surveillance for Jordi,” she snapped, jabbing a finger into his chest hard enough to make the netdiver gasp in pain. “Where’s he going? What’s he after?”
He started to shake his head and she slapped him lightly across the face. Lightly for her meant that she merely split his lip and knocked out a tooth instead of breaking his jaw. He groaned and spat blood, and she scowled as drops of it splattered on the sleeve of her jacket.
“Let me ask the question again, in case you didn’t hear me right the first time,” she said, grabbing him by the back of the neck and squeezing just slightly. “Where is Jordi going? What is he after?”
“He’ll kill me…” The words were slurred through split and swelling lips, blood dribbling out of his mouth as he spoke.
“What the hell do you think we’ll do to you, boy?” Singh demanded, leaning in over her shoulder. “At least this way, you’ll have a chance to run.”
“Do I tell you how to do your job, Singh?” Fontenot growled at him and he stepped back, raising a palm apologetically.
“It’s guns,” the netdiver blurted.
Fontenot turned back to him, pulling his face closer to hers. He whimpered at the proximity, eyes going wider.
“Say again?”
“It’s guns,” he repeated meekly. “Jordi is going after the guns.” He pointed at the screen with the smaller convoy still navigating the canyon road. “The Tahni are getting guns and stuff from a stash their military hid during the war, and Jordi’s gonna’ steal them.”
“That’s what this was all about in the first place,” Singh declared, his face slack with the abrupt realization. “That’s what he’s been after…it’s why he stirred up trouble between the humans and the Tahni.”
Fontenot shook her head in reluctant admiration.
“He’s one clever son of a bitch,” she said. She focused her gaze on the netdiver again, giving him a gentle shake as a reminder she was still there. “You tell us one more thing and you can walk out of here alive. You get me?”
The hairless, skeletal man nodded as best he could with her metal hand wrapped around his neck.
“Anything,” he insisted, wiping blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“That,” Fontenot said, turning his head toward the middle display, the bridge over the wadi, the cottonwoods, the deserted stretch of road. “I need you to tell me exactly where that is. And how much time we have left before both sides reach it.”
Chapter Ten
The bed of the cargo truck sagged under the massive step of the battlesuit, and Kan-Ten thought for a senseless, panicked moment that the vehicle wouldn’t take the weight, that he’d tumble off the back and wind up unable to recover. He’d seen images on the entertainment streams aboard the Acheron of a hard-shelled Earth creature called the tortoise; sometimes, they’d be shown having somehow fallen onto their back, helpless, their legs kicking slowly in the air. That’s what he would look like, he thought ruefully, some stupid, slow-moving animal.
The on-board gyros did their job, though, and the truck’s suspension held under the weight of his powered armor just as the other cargo bed had held up for the suit Vala-Kel had loaded onto it. He moved into position behind the stacked weapons crates, leaned the upper body forward, then squeezed the correct combination of the finger controls, and the servos powered down and left the suit frozen in place. Another control and the chest plastron slid downward and he scrambled out of the suits metal and plastic embrace eagerly, trying not to hyperventilate as his feet slammed down on the steel plate of the cargo bed.
“Get it strapped down securely,” he ordered the two males who’d come along as cargo handlers, riding in the back of the truck on the way here.
Kan-Ten looked down at himself, at the black control garment he was wearing, and felt a wave of disbelief that he’d put one on again after all this time. It had been stored inside the battlesuit, and while any of them could have worn it, only he and Vala-Kel had experience operating the machines. There’d been no choice, but that didn’t make him feel better about it. No choice. Destiny, the humans called it, those who believed in it. Fate. The Will of the Emperor, the Path, his people termed it, but it was the same idea. An inescapable outcome. Death inside one of those damned suits.
“It’s just like old times, brother!” Vala-Kel exulted, stepping down from the bed of the other truck. He looked at home in the black garment, as if he’d worn it yesterday rather than ten years ago. “Have you missed it as much as I have?”
“We should leave now,” Kan-Ten said, rather than answering the question. He lowered himself to the ground, leaving the cargo handlers to their task. “I’m uncomfortable being out here in the open.” He looked over to where the Matriarch and her protégé waited at their vehicle, a proper distance away, deep in a conversation that he couldn’t overhear.
“Who would know where we were going? We need not fear any more…it’s the humans who should fear us!”
“Yes.” Kan-Ten showed nothing in his stance or the set of his shoulders. He started to yank at the fasteners of the control singlet, but Vala-Kel put a hand on his wrist.
“Leave it on, brother,” he insisted. “Get used to its feel again.” He motioned at the computer modules on the waist. “You know the longer you wear it, the more accurately it will read your motions.”
“I am aware.” He chanted a calming mantra inside his head to keep from venting his anger. “I will leave it on if we can depart now.”
“As you will.” Vala-Kel seemed disappointed in him. “I will ride in this truck.” He motioned at the one he’d helped to load. “You should stay with yours, with your suit.”
“It is not my suit, brother.” He turned away and headed for the cab of the truck, not trusting himself to say any more. The KE-gun he’d taken earlier was wedged in the floor of the passenger’s side, and he shoved it aside, falling into the ripped, worn seat and slamming the door.
He waited in the cab until he heard the other truck’s alcohol-fueled engine rumble to life. Even then he didn’t look aside at it, worried that Vala-Kel might meet his eyes and see the fear in them. The Matriarch and her protégé noticed the truck starting as well, and slid into the front of their own rover, the doors lowering shut with a grinding squeak. The rover scratched across the sand and dirt on knobby tires, this time taking the trailing position behind Kan-Ten’s truck, following closely as it lurched into motion with a grinding of the old transmission.
The road back seemed rougher than the road out, and Kan-Ten guessed it was from the massive load of weapons weighing down the truck’s suspension, but eventually he began to grow used to it. It was a deeper, stronger rhythm than before, but all rhythms were part of the Path, and he tried to submerge himself into it, but something nagged at the corner of his vision. He turned and saw the driver staring at him sidelong every few seconds.
“What?” he wondered.
“I feel as if I am in the time of legends,” the young male admitted, “in the company of the giants of old.” His tone was full of an almost religious awe. He motioned to the truck ahead of them. “Do you really think Vala-Kel is the rightful Emperor?”
“I suppose if he is,” Kan-Ten reasoned, “then our cause can’t possibly fail, can it?” He made a gesture of equivocation. “Of course, if he’s not, then we will be too dead to realize our mistake.”
The driver seemed scandalized by the idea and he fell silent, but at least he stopped constantly staring at Kan-Ten. It was very late and he was beginning to adjust to the day-night cycle of this part of the planet, which was inconvenient since it meant he was growing weary, and the cab
of the truck wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep. But if years in the High Guard had taught him anything, it was how to sleep wherever and whenever he could. He rested his head against the window and began to drift off.
“What is that up ahead?” The driver’s voice woke him, like a buzzing insect droning in his ear.
He pushed away from the door, straightening in his seat and staring out the windshield. The earlier overcast had cleared as they left the canyons, and between the light from Brigantia’s moon and the headlights from the vehicles, he could see the road up ahead several hundred meters. They were approaching the bridge they’d crossed earlier in the night, and just past it, behind the stand of cottonwoods, he could see vague, dark shapes blending with the shadows of the trees.
“You have a keen eye, warrior,” he complimented the driver, then picked at the pile of clothes he’d left in the cab when he’d changed into the control garment, finding his ‘link still attached to the shoulder of his tunic.
“Vala-Kel,” he called. “Do you see that up ahead, just over the bridge?”
“I see nothing.” The reply was terse, which seemed very unlike his usually effusive comrade, and Kan-Ten felt a curious sensation of foreboding, a grim certainty that something was wrong.
He saw Vala-Kel’s truck slow as it approached the bridge, saw its suspension shift as the front wheels hit the near side of the span and suddenly the shapes through the trees jumped into focus. They were vehicles, a large group of them, parked in the shadows, their lights off.
“Stop!” he yelled at his own driver and into the ‘link, but he was seconds too late.
It wasn’t much of a blast, certainly not the HyperExplosives the military used; more like something homemade, an “Improvised Explosive Device,” as he’d heard Fontenot refer to it. It was mostly flash, probably gelled petroleum or potassium nitrate or something, but it was more than enough to lift the cab of the lead truck off the ground nearly half a meter and dislocate the front axle, sending both the wheels spinning off the side of the bridge and down into the wadi.
