Sasha looked grim. “No, we won’t. You were right, Max. I should’ve listened, should’ve taken your advice, but didn’t and paid the price.” Her face softened momentarily, and I saw something that might have been affection in her eyes. “You’re good at what you do, and don’t ever let people say you aren’t. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”
Something rose to fill my throat, tears brimmed in my eyes, and a feeling of warmth suffused my body. I fought for control and got it. “Thanks…a letter of recommendation would be vastly appreciated. But why not? Build a fort, I mean.”
“’Cause we’re going to hunt the bastard down,” Sasha said coldly. “And his friends too…if he has any left.”
The idea hit my brain like the dawning of a new day. Bodyguards are reactive by nature, always looking to defend rather than attack, so the concept seemed radical at first. But the more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. Why wait for the bastard to attack when you could find the creep, put him away, and spend the rest of the trip relaxing? The plan made excellent sense.
So we lifted the android to a standing position, checked to make sure he’d stay that way, and made an adjustment to his right hand. I thought the upraised finger said it all, and hoped the popper would see it.
It didn’t take long to gather our gear, stuff it into the duffel bags, and clear out. However, things that weighed nothing in zero gee were suddenly heavy and slowed us down. Sasha carried a bag plus the pressure suits, and I toted the rest. Joy wasn’t large enough to carry anything and scouted ahead. We were headed to starboard and on high alert. A second attack seemed unlikely but not impossible.
“We can’t carry this stuff all the time,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “We’ll be dead meat if a popper comes along. No, what we need is a stash, or a number of stashes in case some are discovered.”
I may be mentally challenged, but I know a good idea when I hear one, and the stash thing sounded good. My head swiveled back and forth looking for a good location. And, much to my own amazement, I found one.
The air vent was obvious really, especially to someone who lived on Sub-Level 38 of the Sea-Tac Residential-Industrial Urboplex, where good hiding places are few and far between. Four stainless-steel screws held the screen in place, but one of the recently deceased poppers had been the proud owner of a stainless-steel all-purpose pocket knife, the kind that comes with enough tools to perform brain surgery, and weighs a pound and a half. I pulled the monster out of my pocket, selected the Phillips head screwdriver, and went to work. Sasha supervised. “Don’t leave any scratches. They could give us away.”
I didn’t think there was much chance that my scratches would show among all those left by the maintenance bots and tool heads over the years, but I kept my mouth shut. Some things are worth fighting over and some aren’t.
The screen came free with relative ease. We made an arbitrary decision to divide our supplies into three equal portions, making sure there was a weapon in each—this against the possibility that one or both of us lost our weapons but remained at liberty. And, since the heavily armed poppers had contributed a total of five guns to our arsenal, that left each of us with a backup plus enough ammo to fight a small war—something I hoped we wouldn’t have to do.
So, having placed a duffel bag and the pressure suits inside the air vent, and having reinstalled the screen, we followed the bulkhead towards the starboard side of the ship. Since we were located near the barge’s stern, and knowing there was a great deal of space between us and the bow, it seemed logical to suppose that the popper or poppers were camped towards the entry lock or beyond. I had assumed that we’d climb up through one of the access tubes, recross the sky bridge, and retrace our steps from there. I even said as much. Sasha put me straight.
“Sure, Max, it could work, but tell me this: A popper escaped, right?” Well, where did he go? If he crossed the bridge, we’d have seen him.”
I frowned. She was right. The bridge was completely exposed, so we would have seen him. “How ‘bout the forest? Maybe he’s hiding in the bushes.”
“Anything’s possible,” Sasha said patiently, “but he’s wounded, and that makes it likely that he’ll head home. Wherever that is.”
Thoughts piled into each other as they tried to find a way through my head. The popper had headed home, the popper lived up towards the bow, the popper didn’t use the sky bridge, ergo, the popper knew of another way to get there. Brilliant, huh? But Sasha was way ahead of me. “The way I figure it, we should make another stash, work our way around the forest, and find his escape route. The rest will be simple.”
The rest would be simple? Tracking a professional killer to his lair would be simple? Was Sasha out of her mind? I looked her way, half expecting a sardonic smile, a hint of irony, but no, she was completely serious. I felt confused, very confused, and my head started to hurt. I wanted Sasha to be smart, wanted her to assume control, but couldn’t quite let go. In spite of the fact that Sasha thought circles around me, and was more competent than any girl her age had a right to be, she lacked experience. A sometimes fatal flaw. I fought the headache and prepared to assert myself when and if we found the popper’s escape route. We had just dropped a duffel bag containing a gun, ammo, and a third of our food into a large junction box when Joy pointed towards the other side of the bay, and gave the alarm. “Look!”
We looked, and saw what appeared to be a black dot quartering the area where the battle had occurred. Sasha kept her voice flat and unemotional. “The bastard has a spy cam.”
“Yeah.” I said grimly. “Or took control of a maintenance cam.”
She gave me a look, the kind reserved for occasions when I’m a pain in the ass, and gestured towards the grating. “Come on, let’s get the cover on.” I hurried to help. The grating clanged as it dropped into place.
“Look!” Joy said for the second time. “It heard! And it’s coming our way!”
We looked. The spy cam had heard and was coming our way. My reaction was to hide and hope for the best. Sasha had other plans. She pointed towards the deck. “Lie down! Pretend you’re dead!”
The order went against all my instincts, all my desires, but she gave it with such certainty that I obeyed. The deck was cold and the lights were bright. I closed my eyes. Black blotches floated on an ocean of red. I heard a whirring noise, air caressed my face, and the scene grew darker.
I felt the spy cam hover over me, or thought I did, and wondered what Sasha would do. The answer came as the darts thumped into the spy eye’s metal housing, servos whined as it tried to get away, and the whole thing landed on my unprotected stomach. Air whooshed out of my lungs, my eyes flew open, and my arms wrapped themselves around the still-struggling machine.
I was eyeball to lens with the blasted thing when Sasha drove a twelve-inch commando knife into the camera’s cylindrical torso. The weapon had been liberated from one of the poppers, and the combination of the saw-toothed back edge and the high-tensile stainless-steel blade proved more than equal to the task. It passed through the housing, punctured a vital part, and ended the machine’s life. The robo-cam jerked a couple of times and lay dead in my arms.
Or so I thought until a voice came out of it. A voice identical to the one that had addressed us before. “Thank you. There is nothing so boring as an easy hunt. I shall relish the days ahead.”
And with that the machine discharged whatever electrical power it had left directly into my body. I awoke to the smell of burned chest hair. Two faces were looking down at me. One large and one small. Both looked concerned. Sasha was worried. “Max? Are you okay?”
I lied. “Never better. How long was I out?”
“Twenty or thirty seconds.”
“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here before the sonofabitch sends reinforcements.”
An unspoken consensus carried us out into the forest. If the popper could send one maintenance cam, he could probably send more, and the canopy would provide at least a modicum of protection.
I waited until we were a good fifty yards out before I allowed Sasha to break out the first aid kit and rub goo on my chest. It continued to hurt after she was done, but not quite as much. I sealed my shirt and we moved on. I was dizzy, sick to my stomach, and determined to hide it.
I wished there was something we could do about the clouds of metallic insects that rose in front of us. circled like windblown foil, and resettled when we had passed. They were like miniature spies, checking on our movements, and reporting them to anyone with the patience to watch. Our only hope lay in the fact that it would take the popper some time to treat his wounds and locate another surveillance cam. Or so we hoped.
The bushes were laid out in rows to facilitate the movement of various robots, and it wasn’t long before we started to encounter them. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from box-shaped contraptions that we called “leaf suckers,” to snakelike machines that slithered through the canopy and trimmed unwanted foilage.
I watched them carefully at first, afraid the popper would use them to spy on us, but, outside of sluggish attempts to move out of our way, the robots continued their work. But that could change, so I continued to keep an eye on them. The whole thing became monotonous after a while. Trees, robots, trees, and more robots, with no sign of the popper or his trail. Then it rained, a fine, penetrating mist that seemed part of the air around us. It coated the leaves, soaked our clothes, and slicked the deck. Joy loved the water the same way she loved everything else. Oblivious to our discomfort, she giggled and did cartwheels up the path.
The mist turned into a steady rain, and I found the blood shortly thereafter. Little brown dots of it, fuzzy around the edges, and dry prior to the rain. The drops came slantwise out of the forest, and a broken branch marked the point where the popper’s path had intersected our own.
I motioned for Sasha to stop, took a careful look around, and considered the risks. Softened by the mist and battered by the rain, the dots were coming apart. In twenty minutes, thirty at most, the trail would disappear. The answer was to pick up the pace, in spite of the fact that doing so would make us less vigilant, and vulnerable to an ambush. The part of me that remembers and takes over at unpredictable times made the necessary decision. I waved Sasha forward and she obeyed.
It was warm, and the humidity increased as we jogged through the bushes, preceded by wave after wave of robotic insects. It felt good to run, good to push my luck, and I found myself grinning like what? An idiot? A wolf on the trail of wounded prey? The second seemed more suitable, and I hoped it was true. But too much time had passed, the trail was cold, and we reached the other side of the forest without spotting the popper. The little brown dots came less and less frequently now, then stopped in front of a stainless-steel airtight door. Had he brought the bleeding under control? Or stepped through and continued to hemorrhage on the other side? There was only one way to find out.
I positioned myself on one side of the portal and Sasha took the other. Joy jumped upwards, hit the large green button, and dropped to a crouch. Our weapons were drawn and aimed as the door swished open. I waited for defensive fire that didn’t come. I started to move but the kid beat me to it. She went through the opening fast, but a hair too high, making herself a better than average target.
I followed, eyes searching for things suspicious, but found nothing more than some unimaginative graffiti. Though a good deal smaller, the corridor was similar to the first one we’d been in, complete with vertical ridges, emergency com sets, fire-fighting gear, and surveillance cameras. I saw no escape slots, however—an omission which could mean that the automated trains didn’t travel this particular passageway, or they did and pedestrians were S.O.L.
Satisfied that the popper had cleared the area, we looked around. There were ten to fifteen drops of blood, all clustered together, and smeared by a bootprint. Some partial prints marched into the distance and disappeared: a clear indication that our quarry had rigged a bandage. I looked at Sasha and she nodded. We hugged the sides as we made our way down the hall, hoping the popper had better things to do than watch the security cameras, fearing that he didn’t. Motors whirred as they tracked our progress.
It was a weird feeling, knowing something was watching, but unsure of whether it mattered. The situation must have spooked Sasha too, because she opted for the vertical ladder the moment we encountered it, and I followed. For reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, I assumed the popper had continued down-corridor, but cameras made me nervous, so I kept my feelings to myself. The cameras tilted to follow us and stopped when they could tilt no more.
The ladder led to a narrow maintenance tunnel. If cameras were present, I couldn’t identify them. Though equipped with rudimentary hand-and footholds, the passageway had been intended for robots, one of which blocked our path. It was shaped like a large turtle, and judging from the noises it made, was engaged in cleaning the gratings beneath our feet. The strong smell of disinfectant reinforced that impression.
Sasha solved the problem by stepping onto the robot’s gently rounded back and off the other side. Joy jumped, caught hold of my pants leg, and held on as I followed suit. If the turtle-shaped machine objected to this treatment, it gave no sign of its displeasure.
We followed the corridor for a hundred feet or so, stopped in front of still another airtight door, and took the usual positions. Me to the left, Sasha to the right, and Joy wherever she wanted to be.
The hatch slid open and I saw darkness beyond. Darkness and the flicker of what looked like flames. The kid made eye contact, nodded, and stepped onto a narrow balcony. I joined her. Below us, three-quarters filled with thousands upon thousands of crates and boxes, was a space similar in size and shape to the one occupied by the forest.
And there, at the hold’s epicenter, burned a large bonfire. The barge’s automatic fire-fighting systems had been defeated somehow. The flames leaped higher as they consumed an especially choice piece of fuel, then fell back, as if tired by their exertions. And, moving around in the foreground, their forms silhouetted against the flames, were people. Lots of people, fifty or sixty at least, all talking, laughing, and swigging from a variety of containers. There was something primitive about the scene, and ominous as well.
I had just turned towards Sasha, and was about to say something stupid, when a beam of white light shot across the hold and pinned us against the bulkhead. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at all. It belonged to the man who had addressed us through the maintenance cam. “Well! Look what we have here! I hoped you would follow. Welcome to hell.”
Sasha turned, hit the door release, and nothing happened.
Another light popped on. This one roamed the crates below, paused each time it touched someone, and moved on. They were a motley lot. I saw men, women, and yes, children. And, judging from the way they avoided the light, as well as the generally ragged condition of their clothing, it was obvious that they had no more right to be aboard the barge than we did. The voice spoke to them. “Look! Look at the catwalk! They are worth ten thousand dollars each! Do as you will to the girl, but keep the man alive.”
There was silence for a moment while the stowaways considered what the man had said, followed by a howl of approval, and the sounds of movement.
Sasha tried the door, found it still wouldn’t budge, and set out along the balcony. I stuffed Joy into a pocket, checked my weapon, and followed. It’s funny how life works. Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, they sure as hell do.
14
“Surgeon flees after botched operation.”
The headline on a press clipping wadded up in the bottom of Doc’s duffel bag
Our fellow stowaways had been on board at least as long as we had and knew their way around. They swarmed up ladders, dashed through passageways, and burst onto the catwalk. The hatch that refused to work for Sasha opened smoothly for them.
We ran for the other end of the platform. Our boots pounded the metal gratings and our breath
came in gasps. I put a dart into every surveillance cam that I saw, but knew that a long sequence of disabled cameras would be like an arrow pointing towards our destination. It felt good, though, and might provide an edge later on.
The catwalk ended where it met the port bulkhead. Sasha pounded on the green button and swore when nothing happened.
We turned to face our pursuers. Knowing we were trapped, and eager to collect the reward money, the stowaways charged. A couple of scroungy-looking men led the attack with some equally ragged women close behind. A collection of scraggly-assed kids brought up the rear. One of the men brandished what looked like a homemade dart gun. The rest were armed with a wild variety of clubs and knives. The balcony was narrow, so they had little choice but to come at us two at a time—a factor that didn’t exactly even the odds but didn’t hurt either.
I turned sideways in an effort to reduce the target profile and felt Joy scramble down my leg. I had no idea where she was headed and couldn’t take time to look. A dart whispered by my shoulder and clanged off metal. I raised my pistol, took aim, and fired. The lead man, the one with the gun, stumbled and fell. The rest jumped over his still-twitching body and kept on coming.
Sasha fired. A woman clutched her throat, staggered, and fell. A little girl cried, “Mommy!” and stopped to help.
I heard someone yell, “Stop! Stop, damn you!” and realized it was me. But they didn’t stop. They screamed their hatred and kept on coming. My stomach felt queasy, and bile filled my throat as I continued to fire. It was a one-sided battle in which their weapons were completely ineffectual and ours were deadly. The imperative “kill or be killed” is written in our genetic code somewhere, and that’s what we did.
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