“Take me to their kin.” Rebecca puts an arm around the woman, who leads her past me and toward the bamboo screens. As they pass, Rebecca stops short. Our eyes meet, and her brow wrinkles, a hint of recognition. Then she gives me a long, apprizing look, and her eyes settle on my deformed hand. “Joad, where did you find the dalit?”
“He come with the monks,” Joad says as he swings a screen open for her. “Him and a female. Managed to catch themselves a couple Sturmnacht.”
Rebecca glances back at me. There’s something familiar about her. The eyes, maybe. Or her face? Seems like I’ve seen her somewhere before.
“Mimi?”
“Beat you to it, cowboy. I’ve run facial recognition protocols, and I have no matching data for her.”
“So we’ve never met?”
“Not that you remember, and certainly not since I took up residence in your skull.”
“She seems so familiar.”
“She does look very common.”
“Don’t be catty,” I say.
“I am not programmed for cattiness.”
“Yet you do it so well.”
“Haven’t you an apology to make?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
But she’s right. Better do it before the kid gets away. I’m rehearsing my apology outside the curtained area when the drape flies open.
“You caught the bad jacks!” Riki-Tiki cries and shoots past me. Tychon is nowhere to be seen. “Why didn’t you tell me? Come on!”
So much for apologizing.
She beats me to the corner of the infirmary, where Vienne still has her back to the patients. They are chatting when I arrive.
“Vienne says you captured the Sturmnacht all by yourself!”
“She said that, did she?” I shake my head at Vienne, who feigns innocence. “I’m not sure that’s the truth.”
But Riki-Tiki has already moved on. “My friend Tychon said those men have been harassing the farmers for months. They don’t look so tough now, eh?”
She nudges Franks with her sandal, the way I’ve seen Vienne do. He snorts, and she jumps into a fighting stance.
“Silly goose,” Vienne says. “They won’t bite.”
But she still looks skittish. “What now? Hang them by their thumbs? Interrogate them till they spill their guts?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Vienne says.
“Or we could turn them over to the farmers.”
“What’s the fun in that?” Riki-Tiki says, dead serious. “I’m going to tell Tychon!” Then she bounds away, giggling.
“You should call her bunny instead of goose.” I watch her disappear behind the screens. The gravity of the situation seems completely lost on her. My first instinct is to squelch her happiness, because it seems disrespectful to the injured. But no, that’s wrong. She is who she is. There’s nothing wrong with being happy. “Now about my idea for fighting and possible gunplay.”
“You’re serious about that? Dressing up in their uniforms and sneaking into the outpost?” She gives Richards and Franks a long, assessing look. “Okay, but you have to be the one to strip them to their skivvies. There’s only so far I’m willing to go.”
“What? You don’t love me?”
“If you have to ask . . .” Something behind me catches her attention, and her gaze shifts. “Here comes trouble.”
I turn to see Joad and Rebecca making their way toward us.
Rebecca’s jaw is set, and she’s striding with a purpose. “Four of our people are missing,” she blurts out a few meters away, clearly not somebody who stands on ceremony. “Lyme’s Sturmnacht kidnapped them.”
Even though I know what she’s talking about, I point at the prisoners. “These men? I don’t think they kidnapped anyone.”
“There were more thugs than that,” she says. “Maybe a dozen. Maybe more. Witnesses said they took our people away on trucks. Those two stayed behind. A diversion, maybe.”
“It doesn’t add up,” I say. “In my experience, Lyme doesn’t do kidnapping. He prefers to kill people by selling them drugs.”
“Look,” Rebecca says, “why they were snatched makes no difference at this point. I want my people back, and from what I see here, you two are pretty good at handling Sturmnacht. They have a base of sorts nearby at Tharsis Two—”
“No.” Vienne steps forward. “Find somebody else.”
“No?” Rebecca turns on her, clearly not used to being defied. That’s when she notices that Vienne is missing a pinkie, and I hold up my own damaged hand to show that we’re a matched set. “You’re dalit. Okay, you want coin.”
“Take your money”—Vienne makes a fist—“and shove it—”
“Vienne!” I pull her aside. “Give us a minute, Rebecca.”
After I escort Vienne out the side door, Riki-Tiki says something, and I hear Rebecca reply, “What do you mean I’m lucky to still have my head?”
Outside, the air carries the tangy scent of burned metal. A group of farmers has gathered by the infirmary. After a few seconds, they head toward the fire site with tools in hand. When the burning is over, I’m guessing, they plan to bury what’s left of the buildings. I hope that’s all they have to bury.
“Why are you saying no to the job?” I ask Vienne. “The prisoners are at Tharsis Two, which is where we need to go. Looks like a golden opportunity to both get the data and do a good deed for which we will be somewhat meagerly rewarded.”
“Stupid hussy,” Vienne fumes at Rebecca, who is visible through the windows. “Who does she think she is?”
“The boss,” I say, “who’s worried about what the lowest scum in the territory will do to her folk. You know the drill.”
“She didn’t have to call us dalit in front of Riki-Tiki.”
Now I get it. “Okay, that was a stupid thing to say—”
“That’s an understatement.”
“—but I don’t think she meant to offend you. She’s a farmer. They can’t tell one soldier from another one, much less recognize the finest Regulator on the planet. Right?”
She blushes, despite my clumsy attempt at flattery. “You accept the job if you want, but the hussy has to strip the Sturmnacht for us.”
Fair enough. Maybe Rebecca will learn to be more careful with her words. “Deal. I’ll let them know.”
“Wait.” She grabs my shoulder when I turn to go inside. “I— Never mind. It’s not my place.”
“If it’s not yours, it’s nobody’s. Spit it out.”
“It’s just . . . All these months looking for that data. What’s it gotten us?”
“You want to know if it’s worth the effort?”
“Not exactly.” She pinches her lip, thinking. “I want to know—is it still worth it to you?”
“To find the secret my father hid from me for years?” I say. “Vienne, I know I can’t undo the wrong he did by creating the Draeu. But what happens if someone like Lyme gets his hands on Project MUSE? They might be able to make more of the monsters. So what you’re really asking is—is it worth it to end that possibility? Yes, it is. Abso-carking-lutely.”
She nods. “Then it’s worth it to me.”
With that, she lets me know she’d rather stay with me than stay at the monastery, the only place where she’s ever felt safe, and with that, I make the decision to continue the hunt for my father’s secrets. Is this the decision that Ghannouj said I’d have to make? If so, I hope it’s the right one, and I pray that I won’t have to make a harder one.
Chapter 10
Outpost Tharsis Two
Zealand Prefecture
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 7. 20. 06:29
My father knew he had cancer for over a year before he bothered to tell me. It was the day of his sentencing, after he had been convicted by the InterCorporate Tribunal. He was charged with the murder of hundreds of soldiers—his own and the soldiers of bitter rival Vijaya Corporation—because he released a herd of Big Daddies on them. I know this because I was one of those soldiers, one of the luc
ky ones who survived. Murder was the official charge, but Father’s real crime was high treason. His goal was total global domination. It sounds clichéd, like something from a story, but he meant it, and he had the resources to make it happen. The thing is, he didn’t want to be the ruler of Mars himself. No, he reserved that honor for me.
I was born—no, designed—to become the Prince of Mars. Father hired an Earther, an astrophysicist with an athlete’s physique, to donate her eggs for in vitro fertilization, then hired a surrogate to carry me for nine months. From birth, I was given every benefit, every opportunity, every lesson he thought necessary to prepare me for my destiny. As an age three, he sent me off to Battle School, and at age six, I joined the CorpCom military. His scheme began to unravel when I chose to become a Regulator instead of an officer, and it really went to hell after his coup failed.
As a child and even later, I had no idea that I was living out a planned destiny. Not until Vienne and I teamed up with a couple of other Regulators to defend a group of miners did I learn just how convoluted my father’s plot was. The man had fingers in every pie, but before I could confront him, he died in prison, leaving me and Vienne to pick up the clues he’d left behind, including a horrifying one that keeps us searching: A hastily transcribed physician’s report mentioned the tantalizing phrases “hive mind,” “cyborg beta tester,” and my name, Jacob Stringfellow.
“You’re being a little hard on yourself,” Mimi says as Vienne and I rocket down the highway the next morning, a couple of hours before dawn. “You may be a cyborg, but you’re my cyborg, and you’re nothing like the Draeu. You don’t even like rare meat.”
“Thanks for that reassurance,” I say. “Glad to know that I’m defined by how I enjoy my chow.”
“As angry as you are about your father’s behavior, you should allow yourself time to mourn his death,” she says. “You are not immune to post-traumatic shock, either.”
“I don’t have time for the dead right now. Just the living.”
“Then why are you still haunted by your father’s ghost?”
“Do a scanner sweep, Mimi.” And get off my back.
“I heard that.”
“Then I hope you’re listening.”
When we can see the lights of Outpost Tharsis Two in the distance, I know it’s time to leave the highway. Vienne pulls the motorbike into a copse of banyan trees. I jump off and run to the road to check for patrols.
“Mimi,” I say, “give me a wider area sweep with a hundred meter—”
“Done,” she says. “Nobody here but us Regulators. Unless you count a few dozen scorpions and the random foraging nutria rat.”
“Those,” I say, “aren’t the kind of scorpions I’m worried about.”
After jogging back to the trees, I help Vienne snap off branches to build a quick camouflage net. We lock our armalites in the bike’s main storage compartment. We hate leaving them, but if a Sturmnacht suddenly showed up toting an armalite, it would be a dead giveaway.
We make some final adjustments to our stolen armor, and I toss a full ammo clip to Vienne. She jams it into Richards’s battle rifle.
“Ready?” I ask. In the predawn light, I can only make out the shadow of her body. I shine a penlight on her neck, which now bears the same tattoo the Sturmnacht wear on their necks, a scorpion’s tail. It’s a henna tattoo, courtesy of Ghannouj, who is almost as good at body art as he is at making tea. I have one on my neck, too.
“Ready,” she says sharply.
“Did I do something to make you mad?”
“No.”
We jog down the road leading to the outpost entrance. The lights grow larger as we get closer and closer.
“Are you sure? You sound mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
Now I can make out the faces in the guard shacks. We slow to a walk. Rifles ready. Trying to adopt the undisciplined shuffle of greenhorn troops.
“Look, if I did something to make you mad, I apologize.”
“If you keep asking me if I’m mad, I’m going to get mad,” she says. “Do you remember what happens when I get mad?”
“Someone gets shot.”
“Do you want me to shoot you?”
“That would be a negative.”
“Then I’m not mad.”
From behind, the yellow light of headlamps sweep across the pavement, a Noriker coming around the bend. We dive into a gulley. Crouching, we wait until the truck is almost on us. It’s a Düsseldorf, built for moving soldiers and armaments as uncomfortably and as slowly as possible.
“Here comes our escort.” It seems that Lyme’s operation has moved up the scale a few notches. He’s got enough manpower for a small army.
The truck rolls to a stop, the brakes squealing like a wounded javelina. Shock troopers in body armor like ours file from the covered truck bed. As the last one exits, I slip into the end of the line, then signal Vienne to join me.
In a couple minutes, we are part of a long line waiting at the guard shack. The sun has risen, casting everyone in an orange glow. With the light, the noise level rises, and the guards bellow at everyone to pipe down.
“There’s ten times more Sturmnacht than I expected,” I whisper to Vienne. “This mission just got a lot more complicated.”
“More fun for us,” she replies.
“Mimi, give me an estimate of the number of hostiles in the vicinity.”
“Inside or outside the outpost?”
“Both.”
“Hundreds.”
I do a quick visual scan of the entrance. There’s a catwalk over the gates, with a crow’s nest at either end. A dozen guards with shotguns pace the catwalk, and two snipers are perched in each nest. It’s a standard CorpCom guard detail, which surprises me. I expected Sturmnacht to be less organized. “Give me more specific numbers, please, Mimi.”
“More than a hundred, less than a thousand. Sorry, cowboy, the telemetry circuits in your suit just aren’t capable of the kind of precision you’d like.”
“So what’re you saying?”
“It’s you, not me.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“Want comfort?” she says. “Get a teddy bear.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
All goes well until we reach the guard shack. Three lines have formed. We’re in the one to the far left, with a guard who seems to be checking only two things—that the troops are wearing the right gear and that they’ve got scorpion tattoos on their necks.
“Next!” the guard yells, barely glancing at the soldier two up from us. “Next! Keep it moving! Next!”
Then it’s Vienne’s turn.
“Whoa!” The guard taps the piece of electrostat that I see now holds a duty roster. Then I notice the red light of a bar code scanner on the guard shack. I follow its light to Vienne’s thigh, where it’s reading an embedded chip in the body armor. “You were due six hours ago.”
“We—”
I push forward, acting annoyed. “Got delayed.” I give Vienne an overt wink. “You know how it is. Sorry.”
The guard is not amused. Apparently, he doesn’t know how it is. “Sorry don’t cut it. Archibald’s been informed.”
“Archibald?” Who is Archibald? I wonder. Why not Lyme?
“Yeah, the underboss himself,” the guard says. “Sucks for you. We’ll notify your next of kin, if you’ve got any!”
Since when does Lyme have an underboss?
When we’re clear of the guard shack, Vienne says in a low tone, “Thanks for bailing me out. I don’t know what happened. My brain froze up.”
“You’re just not good at making up stories.” I watch a pack of troops jog past us, cussing and arguing over who gets the last smoke. “I’m a much better liar.”
She slugs my shoulder. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
We follow the other soldiers marching to the barracks. As we round the line of latrines, the two of us peel off and head toward the control building.
�
�Mimi, find the data center.” I tap my temple and wince at the static discharge that signals my aural display to open. “Project a map of the outpost on my display. Pinpoint the target and show me the quickest route.”
“Got it,” Mimi says. “Your turn.”
I blink twice. A holographic image appears. The data center is two buildings away from the control building. I signal Vienne, and we take a darkened alley between the buildings, staying off the main sidewalks. A few minutes later we reach the back doors of the data center, a squat, two-story building that looks suspiciously like a bunker.
I pull on the door handle. “Locked.”
“Step aside.” Vienne pulls an empty shell casing from a pouch on her belt and a bobby pin from her hair. “I’ve got this.”
“Since when do you wear bobby pins?” I ask.
“Since forever. Don’t you pay any attention?”
“To your hair, yes,” I say. “To what you stick in it? Are you kidding?”
She squeezes the empty casing until it’s flat, then bends it to form a crude torque wrench. Finally, she bends the pin to make a rake. “Count down from ten.”
I roll my eyes. “Ten . . . nine . . . eig—” Click. “Show-off.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m more than a good shot.” She tosses the bobby pin and casing aside and opens the door for me. “After you.”
“Thanks.” I pause before going inside. “Mimi, scan the corridor.”
“Personnel clear. Four cameras detected. They’re transmitting on an encrypted frequency requiring a key code override.”
“Which means?”
“There’s no way to override the alarms using your telemetry functions.”
“Advise?”
“Smile and say cheese.”
With a signal for Vienne to follow, I enter the building. Then take a right down a long corridor. Noting the four cameras, all of them recording. We move quickly and silently, trying to keep from attracting attention, until we reach two glass doors marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” Inside the brightly lit room is the data center’s massive server farm, which houses the data for MUSE.
Finally, my quest is over.
“Do not pat yourself on the back yet, cowboy.”
Invisible Sun Page 9
