Invisible Sun

by David Macinnis Gill

  Invisible Sun

  DAVID MACINNIS GILL

  Dedication

  For Julie, a real prince

  Epigraphs

  “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

  —Plato

  “I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained.”

  —Zhou Dunyi

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Chapter 0

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 0

  Christchurch, Capital City

  Zealand Perfecture

  ANNOS MARTIS 238. 7. 16. 18:52

  Vienne points the gun, squeezes the trigger, and fires a live round square into my chest. As my hand goes to my heart, the pop-pop-pop of a string of firecrackers erupts on the next alley, marking the beginning of the Spirit Festival—and covering the report from her armalite.

  “Ow!” I catch the mangled bullet when it drops from my body armor. I toss the lead marble aside. It pings from rooftop to rooftop as it cascades to the bottom of the dawn-washed hillside. The sharp sound echoes off the corrugated metal shacks of Favela, the shantytown where we’ve been squatting the last week, plotting a snatch-and-grab on a high-value target at the local library. “Happy now?” I say.

  “I had to prove my point.” She grins as she collects her brass, then slides the armalite into a holster hidden by her trench coat. “No one’s going to notice a gunshot during all the festival noise, so there’s no reason to go unarmed again. We’ll be facing CorpCom troopers and Rangers this time, not some backwater constable.”

  “Okay, I get it.” It’s never a good idea to start an argument with your partner, especially when said partner is a highly trained Regulator who is one of the most lethal snipers on the planet. I massage the bullet burn away as another string of firecrackers rips off, followed by screams from our fellow squatters. “Did you have to do it from close range?”

  “No.” She takes my arm and leads me down the path muddied with raw sewage. The air is ripe with the stink of waste, burned gunpowder, and cordite. “But it was more fun that way.”

  The sun’s just coming up, I think, and already, I’m getting shot.

  “Suck it up, cowboy,” says the little voice inside my head, a voice that belongs to Mimi, the artificial intelligence flash-cloned to my brain. Mimi controls all the functions of my symbiotic body armor. Omnipresent and omniannoying, she is like a mom, an encyclopedia, a drill sergeant, and a bad poet all mashed together. “From your neuromuscular response rate, I can tell that it did not hurt as much as you claim.”

  “Pain is more than the sum of its neurons, Mimi,” I subvocalize so that only she can hear me.

  “Only because you are incapable of simple mathematics,” she says. “Take the next right. My map shows a shortcut through that alley.”

  “This way,” I tell Vienne, and follow the route Mimi chooses.

  We round the corner and come face-to-face with a pack of Scorpions—eight feral druggies, all about half our age. About half our size. About ten times as vicious and starved. Covered in piercings and homemade tattoos, stained with sewer mud, eyes pink from Rapture, they carry busted pipes and strips of corrugated metal.

  The leader holds a butcher knife. The tang of the blade is wrapped with duct tape, the edge raw, rusted, and very lethal.

  “What’s the hurry?” the leader asks in Portuguese, sneering over ragged teeth.

  “Step aside,” Vienne warns him.

  “Pay the toll,” the leader says. “Or I’ll gut you and have your vittles for breakfast.” He waves the knife in a figure eight, and the others fan out to block the alley.

  “How much for the toll?” I ask.

  He licks his lips. “Her,” he says, pointing the blade at Vienne.

  “Okay.” I shrug, then shake my head. “But remember, you asked for it.”

  Before a question has time to register on his face, Vienne separates the knife from his hand and then his shoulder from its socket. She sweeps his legs, and he hits the pavement, screaming, as three of his mates swing—and miss—with their pipes.

  Vienne strips the first one of his weapon, nails the second with a side kick, and using the pipe, kneecaps the third. When the first boy tries to run, she pipe-pings him in the skull. Either the plumbing or the pavement puts his lights out—I’m not sure which—but when his rolling body comes to a halt, he’s dead to the world.

  Vienne drops into the Regulator fighting stance—left palm out, right fist above her ear. She motions for them to bring it.

  “This is the point,” I tell the boys, “when smart lads usually run.”

  But Scorpions aren’t smart people.

  “Kill them!” the leader screams.

  One arm limp at his side, he lunges for the butcher knife. I stomp on the blade, and his hand just happens to get under my boot. He screams again until he sees the laser sight of my armalite shining in his eye.

  “Might want to belay that last order,” I say. “Now you all will be stepping aside, and we’ll be going about our business. I mean no malice, but anybody holding a hunk of metal by the time I count three will be the proud owner of a third eyeball. One . . .”

  Clang. Weapons hit the ground.

  “Smart boys,” I say. “And I bet your teachers said you’d never amount to anything.”

  Guns trained on the leader, Vienne and I move through the pack, then continue on our way, with an occasional precautionary look behind us.

  “Crafty work back there,” I say when we’re in the clear.

  “Now aren’t you glad,” she says, “that I suggested carrying our weapons?”

  “You didn’t need weapons to beat them.”

  “I didn’t.” She tugs her sunglasses down and gives me that look. “But you did.”

  As we wind our way through the hills of the Favela, Christchurch shines like a celestial mass of gas in the nadir of the morning horizon, a city of steeples built on an island in the delta where the River Gagarin meets the Dead Sea. The river is spanned by the Seven Bridges, which connect the suburbs to Christchurch, the biggest city on the planet.

  It’s also the only place I’ve ever called home.

  We pass up three chances to grab the Tram because it’s being patrolled by troops. Over the past few months, we’ve gotten used to walking. Plus there’s the little matter of our faces being plastered on wanted posters all over the media multivids, which gives us more incentive to stay out of the public eye.

  “Ready for this?” I whisper to Vienne.

  “Locked and loaded,” she replies, patting the holster under her coat.

  “You’re cute when you’re carrying live ammo.”

  She nudges me with an elbow. “You’re not so bad yourself. Even unarmed.”

  I
t takes an hour to reach Parliament Tower, the gleaming glass and steel headquarters of Zealand Corporation. As we travel, I mentally tick off the names of every alley, avenue, and boulevard, all of them familiar but somehow not quite right, as if the map of my memory has been wrinkled up and nothing is where it’s supposed to be.

  “Mimi,” I subvocalize, “do a sweep of the perimeter and give—”

  “Thought you would never ask,” she says. “No hostiles detected in a thirty-meter radius. You are good to go.”

  “Roger.” To Vienne I say, “If we bump into patrols, make sure we don’t actually bump into them, right? Keep your head down. If you make eye contact, look away. Don’t antagonize them.”

  Vienne feigns surprise. “Me? Why would I antagonize anyone?”

  “Vienne,” I warn her. “This is a covert mission, remember?”

  “All our missions are covert,” she says. “Until the bullets start flying.”

  “You!” a trooper shouts.

  He draws a gun.

  For a half step, I freeze.

  Vienne smirks, as if to say I told you so.

  But the trooper and his partner rush past us. They attack a street vendor. Slam him to the concrete sidewalk. Wares spill from his cart, and I can see what’s written on the flags he’s hawking: “Desperta Ferro!”—the slogan of the grassroots anticorporate movement.

  I take a step toward the fight.

  “Keep walking, hero.” Vienne takes me by the arm. “Don’t borrow trouble, remember?”

  We don’t have to borrow it, I think. It always manages to find us.

  “‘Others, I am not the first,’” Mimi recites. “‘Have willed more mischief than they durst.’”

  “I carking hate Keats’s poetry.”

  “It is Housman.”

  “His, too.”

  When we reach the Circus—the mammoth traffic circle in front of Parliament Tower—I step into the memories of my childhood. The buildings seem smaller, their glass skins less polished, their lights dimmer. Where I once had to shield my eyes from the reflections, I now barely have to squint. I’m taller than I used to be and harder to dazzle.

  In the reflection of storefront windows, I see Vienne as the rest of the world does: A tall young susie. Blond hair plaited into a single braid. Dressed in a trench coat, black leggings, gloves, and high heels. And very, very dark sunglasses that let in almost no light because they hide a tiny minicam.

  Now I see myself in the reflection: Young man, a couple of inches taller than the blonde. Clothed in a navy blue military dress uniform. Wearing a peacoat that covers the insignias of his rank and unit.

  “You clean up nice,” Mimi says.

  My reflection sets down two satchels. “Stow it.”

  Vienne’s reflection picks up one of the satchels and strides away to the tower. I pause to admire the poetry of her walk, then take the one she left behind and head for the library.

  A block away, I stop on the street corner and wait for the crossing signal. “Use the telemetry functions in my symbiarmor,” I subvocalize to Mimi, “and patch me into the security feeds.”

  “Done,” Mimi says.

  Pretending to adjust my sunglasses, I instead press an electrode hidden behind my ear. A video feed appears in the right lens of the glasses: carrying her satchel, Vienne enters the lobby of Parliament Tower.

  All eyes turn to her as she enters the security line. She presses the mic tucked behind her ear. “I’m in.”

  “Check.”

  My turn.

  I cut through traffic, avoiding a pedicab, and cross the street to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. There’s a library like this in each of the Nine Prefectures. Its purpose is to store corporate records and it is by law open to every citizen. But the real purpose of the library is hidden in its Special Collections area, which stores all manner of corporate trade secrets. This area is definitely not open to the public. Especially public who may be trying to steal said secrets.

  Public like me.

  Entering the library, I nod to the security guards at the door and approach the librarian at the main desk. “Requesting access for Special Collections vault.” I flash a smile. “Please.”

  The clerk tilts her chin and smiles back. “Fourth floor. But you’ll need a security pass.”

  I slide a keycard across the desk—it cost us a Bishop’s ransom on the black market—and hold my breath.

  A green light. I’m in.

  “Enjoy your research,” she says. “The lifts are right behind me. Let me know if you need, you know, anything.”

  “Absolutely,” I say as I leave the desk.

  Mimi chimes in, “If Vienne saw you flirting with that susie, there would be gunfire.”

  “That’s why I can see her video feed,” I say, pressing the button for the fourth floor, “and she can’t see mine.”

  As the doors close and the lift starts, the video feed flickers on the inside of my sunglasses. Vienne has reached the security scanner. She walks through, carrying the satchel.

  Alarms ring.

  Security gates drop.

  The lobby goes on lockdown.

  Three security guards rush toward her, blasters firing. The plasma shots burn through her coat but slide impotently to the floor. The look on their faces is priceless.

  Surprise! She’s wearing body armor, and you’re in for a heap of trouble.

  “You shouldn’t have a laugh at others’ misfortune,” Mimi tells me.

  “What? I’m only allowed to laugh at my own?” The doors of the lift open before the feed ends, but I’m not worried. We’ve pulled jobs far more dangerous than this. Vienne is a well-oiled fighting machine with fair dinkum tai bo skills.

  “If Vienne heard you refer to her as well-oiled,” Mimi says, “there would be even more gunfire.”

  “Roger that,” I say. “Let’s keep the ‘well-oiled’ between us.”

  I follow a long corridor to the door labeled “Special Collections.” Inside, I hand the keycard to the clerk, whose nametag reads “Mr. Gilbert.” He cocks an eyebrow over his horn-rimmed glasses. He’s old, his jowls flaky and wrinkled like onionskin paper, and his stare is so radioactive it could shred chromosomes.

  “It’s rude to wear sunglasses inside,” Mr. Gilbert says. “Your generation has no manners.” Though I try smiling again, he meets me with a blank face and scans the card. Buzz. “No access,” he says in a tone that actually means “Go stuff yourself.”

  “Run it again,” I say, co-opting an air of command that sounds more like my father than me.

  An alarm sounds.

  My heart skips a beat.

  Guards rush past the Collections room toward the stairs. “What’s that all about?” I say, passing off my gasp as a cough.

  “None of my concern,” Mr. Gilbert says. “Nor yours.” He notices the pinkie missing from my left hand, then throws the card back at me. “Access denied, dalit. Leave the premises, or I’ll be forced to call security.”

  “Go right ahead.” I smile, and this time, I mean it. “You’d be wasting your breath.” I move my coat aside to show him my holster. “There’s a certain server I want to check out, if you don’t mind.”

  On the video feed, Vienne drops the trench coat, revealing her symbiarmor, and pulls her armalite. She sprays the ceiling lights with bullets. Broken glass rains down, and most of the sentries scatter. Two brave but stupid guards rush her. She takes down the first one with an elbow that breaks his nose. She slams the second one with the satchel and when he doubles over, grabs a handful of his hair.

  “Do precisely what I tell you,” she says, her voice crackling in my earpiece as the lift opens. She shoves him inside, then pushes the satchel against his chest. “Hold this.”

  The guard’s voice quavers. “W-what is it?”

  “Five kilos of C-forty-two explosives.”

  “A . . . b-bomb?”

  “Not to worry,” she says. “It won’t go off—yet.”

  Carking-A, I think.
>
  My attention shifts from the feed back to Mr. Gilbert, who is escorting me into the vault, which houses a massive server farm. We turn left down a row marked “High Security.” He slow-walks me for a few seconds until I remind him that I’m carrying an armalite—by shoving it into his kidney.

  “Stop here,” I say when we reach server 451. “On the floor.”

  Gilbert drops, and I wrap his wrists and ankles with duct tape. I insert a chip into the data port.

  “Download commencing,” Mimi’s voice pings in my ear.

  “Thank you, Mimi. Let me see what Vienne’s up to now.”

  “Affirmative,” she says. “Maybe she has found a nice Ranger to flirt with.”

  “Or to shoot.”

  My attention returns to the feed as the lift door opens to a penthouse, where a special session of the board of directors is in progress. While Vienne swiftly, silently moves into position, the directors raise champagne glasses to toast the new CEO, a middle-aged matron with wispy red hair and patches of freckles.

  Her name is Martha Bragg, and she is Vienne’s target.

  Bragg is about to speak when she abruptly cuts a look at the young man to her right. The jack also has freckles, but his hair is straw colored. He is rail thin and rawboned, and even sitting down, taller than anyone else in the room.

  “Sit up straight, Archie!” She glares at him until he looks suitably chastised, then gratified, she makes a toast. “As the chief executive officer and general of Zealand Corporation, I raise—what the dickens is going on?”

  She is interrupted by a gunshot. All heads turn to Vienne and the trooper with the satchel clutched to his chest.

  “Why, you impudent hussy!” Bragg cries out. “Security!”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” Vienne says calmly. “Trooper, tell the CEO what you’re holding.”

  “A b-bomb,” he says.

  “Is this,” Bragg sputters, “a joke?”

  “Does it look like I have a sense of humor?” Vienne empties a clip into the windows behind the CEO. The safety glass cracks along countless fault lines, then showers the floor with harmless shards. “Everybody down! Now!”