Archon's Queen

by Matthew S. Cox

  “How do you know all this?” Anna started for the door.

  “While you’ve been making kissy-poo with James for the past four days, I’ve been a ghost in this place. Grab the damn gun so you look like a guard.”

  Anna ducked through the automatic door and jogged to the end of the corridor before turning right. The firearm in her hands felt like carrying fear in solid form. One bad fright and she could detonate all the ammunition in the magazine. Electronic triggers worked with small sparks instead of a percussive pin; in her hands, it was as good as a bomb. The chime of another elevator opening coincided with her rounding out of sight. Comm chatter in the stolen helmet reported on the abandoned elevator and an unrecognized white-haired woman who had gone into the bathroom. Hearing them coordinate movement made her step up to a run, and she burst through the door of a fancy office.

  A startled executive assistant looked up at her, before a single thin spark of lightning between the eyes knocked him senseless. The intense crack shook the windows and filled the air with the taste of ozone. She zapped him without breaking stride, continuing through an interior door to a large corner office. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a breathtaking view of a cityscape that could have been a mural. White and silver buildings caught the powder blue glow of the sky, while hovercars and advert bots danced like fake snow in a shaken globe. Behind a monolith of black marble serving as a desk, a middle-aged Hispanic man with grey hair looked over a bank of holo-terminals with stunned indignation.

  “Who the hell are you? How dare you barge into my―”

  A dozen crackling arcs connected her fingers to his desk, destroying every piece of electronica before he could trigger an alarm. He cringed away from the shower of silver dust exploding into the air, reaching for a handgun under his jacket.

  It never quite aimed at Anna, as he wobbled in a drunken sprawl and fell over the desk of annihilated components. After a moment, he straightened up, grinned, and tucked the pistol back under his arm before walking out from behind the desk.

  “Come on then, luv.”

  Anna grinned at the English accent. Several more security officers swarmed past them. She kept her head down, acting like a security guard on escort duty. They greeted the older man in turn as they passed, apologizing for the disruption. Aurora did not speak, offering only nods and grunts. Past a handful of offices and a conference room, the possessed man swiped his badge over the wall and opened a concealed elevator among the imitation marble tiles. This one maintained the faux opulence with gold and black panels and a holographic plant in the back corner.

  “How did you know that was there? Can you read minds when you’re inside them?”

  Lauren’s laugh sounded wrong in that voice. “No, I went snooping about. Walls don’t stop me.”

  The borrowed executive poked at the elevator controls, sending them down several floors to a plain grey-carpeted area full of cube farms. Aurora nodded at people as they passed; most everyone seemed afraid of making eye contact with whomever she had taken. Hooking left at the end, she walked her victim over to an armored silver door.

  A tall black man stood up from behind a nearby security desk, giving the executive a hesitant nod.

  “Good morning Mr. Alvarez. Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

  “I’m conducting a review of the facility. I’d like to check up on the Angel team, see how they are doing.”

  The guard stared for a long few seconds. Anna sensed doubt in his surface thoughts. He sensed something ever so slightly wrong with the executive. Aurora’s best lack-of-accent seemed off enough to raise suspicion. The senior vice president, military project division, seemed different to him in a way the officer could not pick out. His finger reached for the door control, hesitating. He thought of pushing the alarm.

  “Mr. Alvarez, are you feeling all right?” asked the guard.

  Too friendly! Anna shot her thoughts into her friend’s mind. Alvarez is a raging twat!

  Aurora leaned at him with a hostile glare as her smile snapped into a flat smirk. “Is there something wrong with the door or are you being a simpleton on purpose?”

  “No, Mr. Alvarez, I’m sorry, must be hot in here today.” The guard poked a button, and a pair of reinforced doors rumbled apart.

  The executive spun on his heel, a look of alarm on his face.

  Anna, count to two and step left.

  She obeyed without thinking. Glass shattered as fire scraped the outside of her right bicep; a sniper’s bullet stalled on the security officer’s armor, doubling him over to the ground. Anna’s heart resumed working after she leapt through the doors and collapsed against the walls of a hospital-clean hallway.

  Klaxons and red flashing lights erupted everywhere.

  Alvarez hauled Anna standing by two fistfuls of armored vest. “Seal the door!”

  Lightning crawled up the walls, seeking the threads of circuitry on their way to the motors. The door slammed shut, cutting off an onrush of security officers in the antechamber outside. Anna and Mr. Alvarez exchanged a lingering stare, the silence broken by their heavy breathing and muted fists pounding at four inches of armor.

  “What was that?” Anna leapt up, cradling her nicked arm.

  “A shooter.” Aurora couldn’t help but laugh at Anna’s expression. “Buggered if I know. It’s outside the plan.”

  Raised floor tiles shifted and thunked as they walked over a short ramp through an overpressure hallway and into the secure data room. A dozen workers in white coats looked up like prairie dogs from terminals arranged around a central computing core. The amount of power in it called to Anna like a candle to a moth.

  “Freeze!” A man shouted.

  A huge brown-skinned figure in armor rushed at them from the left. Anna cringed away from the flash of laser light in her eye, frightened by where his weapon aimed.

  “About god damned time.” The exec barked. “This bitch has had me at gunpoint for twenty minutes.”

  Her mouth hung open. Lights and terminals faltered. Anna held her rifle out, away from her body in case it went off.

  “Drop it or I’ll aerate your skull!” The guard edged closer.

  Techies hit the deck.

  Anna shrieked and let go of the weapon.

  “On the ground, arms apart.”

  She spread herself out on the floor and he ambled over, keeping his pistol trained on her until he took a knee at her side and gathered her arms behind her back. While he fumbled for restraints, Alvarez lunged and yanked the stunner from his belt.

  “Sir, I don’t think that’s―”

  The huge guard blinked in shock as the vice president applied the device to his own thigh and face-planted the ground. Taking advantage of the distraction, Anna shocked the ogre through his grip about her wrist. Trapped beneath three hundred pounds of twitching security guard, Anna screamed and clawed at the floor. A few techies peeked at the three bodies on the ground. She couldn’t pull herself forward, wasn’t strong enough to shove him off her, and couldn’t breathe under the crushing pressure driving her hipbones into the floor.

  After an agonizing few seconds, the guard roared to consciousness, sending techies ducking out of sight. He seized her by the armored vest, hauling her up and over his head in preparation to slam her headfirst into the floor. He hesitated, staggering to the left. She fired an arc into his face, which he appeared to disregard aside from changing the direction of his drunken lope to the left.

  Then he stopped.

  “Sorry, Anna. This bugger’s quite the strong-willed one. You might want to keep a few steps away in case he slips my leash.”

  Anna landed on her feet as the big man set her down. She tried not to let her worry show in the form of trembling.

  “Took you long enough.”

  sing the security officer’s body, Aurora rounded the technicians up in the rear of the data room. Anna followed, retrieving the rifle she had been carrying only to keep anyone else from using it against them. Aurora-turned
-guard shook his head at the way she held it.

  His aim point shifted from person to person. “Right, which one of you is the project lead?”

  The soft technological thrum of the gargantuan computer almost drowned out the whimpering. Anna ducked around the guard and grabbed a Chinese woman by the collar.

  “This one’s the project lead.”

  The big man smiled. “Love having you along, dear.”

  You’re not telepathic?

  Aurora shook the giant’s head. “Nope. Well, maybe a slight bit… But I can’t do it from inside someone.”

  “Recognized her face from the personnel records.” Anna lied, trying to keep their captives calm by grounding things in terms they could understand.

  “Okay then.” The guard dragged the woman to the terminal and tossed her into the chair.

  “Kinnel! This dogsbody is strong.” He blinked.

  The techies glanced at each other.

  Oh, that’s real subtle. Anna smirked at him.

  Anna removed a blank holodisk from a pocket and placed it in the terminal.

  Aurora had given up trying to conceal her accent. “Access the system and copy all of the design specification documents for the CSS Angel. Schematics, codes, everything.”

  With the barrel of an automatic rifle in the side of her head, the tech did as she was told. A three-by-six-foot panel of holographic light spread out in front of them, and a sequence of file icons filled in across it. Anna kept an eye on the other techs, all huddled in a mass of trembling white coats.

  One man thought of his three children, another longed for his wife. A dark-skinned woman worried what would happen to her cats if she died today. The man next to her could not wait to go home to his cyberspace gaming habit. Faces of spouses, kids, and pets ran a slideshow through the forefront of their minds. By the time the copy finished, Anna felt sick.

  A scream made her jump up. Her gaze snapped to the head tech, cowering from the giant’s raised rifle. Anna grabbed Aurora’s arm, doing little stop the tree trunk of a limb from pointing the gun at the Chinese woman’s head.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He looked down at her. “We can’t leave witnesses.”

  The techs growing panic stalled when Anna shouted back.

  “No. These people aren’t our enemy. We can’t kill them.”

  “If they learn we nicked this data, it will become a big bag of wank.”

  Anna felt six inches tall; her pull at the arm lifted her off the ground before it altered his aim. “Do you honestly think they won’t assume we took everything if they find a room full of bodies? This will just give the police a dozen times the motivation to breathe down our necks. We came here to get away from government pressure, not make more. We can’t prove them right about us.”

  He lowered his arm. “Still got a bit of the softie in ya, I see.”

  The head tech sank to the floor, sobbing and thanking Anna.

  “I’m being practical. Killing for the sake of killing won’t help us.” Anna squeezed past him to the terminal. “There’s got to be a way…”

  She ducked out of sight behind a wall of neural memory storage cabinets and called James. In a moment, a small holographic head stared up at her.

  “What the devil are you calling me for?” He blinked.

  “James, she wants to kill all these people. They’re not our enemy. We don’t need the extra attention from the police.”

  His lips curled into a patronizing smile, the sort of smile given to a child offering an unwanted gift to a parent. “That’s rather precious of you, Anna. Still plagued with a bit of regret I see.”

  “Think about it James. If we leave the room bloody, the cops will come after us for the killing and the company will assume we have every bit of data about that starship you’re so enamored with. That’s what everyone in here is working on, right? If we wipe them out, it’s as bad as telling the cops what we took. I don’t know what to do.”

  He pursed his lips. “Yes, I suppose it would be cleaner if they had no recollection of what happened. Very well, transfer the call to a desk terminal and round them up in front.”

  “You want them to see your face?”

  “Yes, yes. Bring them over.”

  “What?” Anna blinked. “What good will that do?”

  “Have a little faith, Annabelle.”

  She approached a desk, waving the NetMini at it as if trying to fling his holographic head off it onto the larger device. It reacted to the gesture and James’s head vanished and reappeared life-sized over the terminal.

  Anna pointed her rifle in the general direction of the hostages. “Everyone come over, look at him.”

  The crowd stood, wary of the big man who looked as confused as they did. Once they had all gathered around, James closed his eyes, seeming lost in concentration for a few seconds. When they opened, Anna gasped. The hologram had surface thoughts, as if he was there in the room.

  The employees stared at James’ floating head; his widening eyes became fields of white digital snow, hollow grey spots in an otherwise lifelike visage. He looked at them one by one, each individual fainting after a long, pointed stare. He smiled at the tall, thin man who wanted to go home to his video games.

  “You will access the system logs and remove all traces of your supervisor’s account logging in today. Do you understand?”

  The young man nodded, and hurried off to another terminal.

  The static faded back to brown eyes. “My dears, it would be a most excellent idea if you no longer remained in the room when I am done working with these people.”

  larms rang through every hallway in the building. Anna shuffled against the tide of employees headed for the exits. In their panic, they all mistook her for one of the security team. Her running in the opposite direction only seemed to reinforce their belief. She hit the stairwell, following Aurora’s suggestion to make her way to the executive parking deck.

  Drab grey walls of unpainted concrete passed one after the next as she climbed a dozen flights. The air stank of dust, and the helmet’s visor fogged to a blurry obstruction. Comm chatter buzzed with the search for the white-haired woman who had, according to them, tried and failed to kidnap one of the VPs. They also searched for the source of inbound weapons fire from an office building across the street.

  At the doorway to the seventy-fourth floor, she collapsed on the stairs to catch her breath. After two gasps, her back arched stiff as a freezing mass of heavy air settled on her. Clamping her hands over her mouth to stifle the shriek, Anna twitched and let Aurora in.

  Her teeth chattered. Little bloody warning, please.

  Sorry, luv. I had to drop the suit somewhere other than the data room to keep the illusion up.

  Content to be little more than a presence in the back of Anna’s mind, Aurora rode as a passenger while they continued. At the end of the stairs, she emerged from a door adjacent to a silver elevator and jogged into a lavish corridor of white marble, gold trim, and black carpeting. Glass comprised much of the right wall, beyond which the executive’s café teased her with the smell of food and coffee.

  You’re not seriously considering stopping for a munch are you?

  Anna kept going. I should, I’d be eating for two.

  Thirty meters later, the hall descended at a mild grade to a pair of double doors, which opened at the approach of people. Outside, beyond a small cadre of umbrella-bearing orb bots, a handful of high-end hovercars sat arranged in named spaces. Anna went for the nearest one.

  The last two paces to the car went by in a flash as a severe impact caught her between the shoulder blades, driving her into the fender. Stunned with no air in her lungs, she slumped to the ground, wheezing.

  Good thing you’ve got that armor, eh?

  Whatever had hit her hurt too much to reply, even with a thought.

  Aurora took over, dragging her under the car out of sight.

  You all right, Anna?

  A sniper just
nailed me tits-first into a bloody car. How do you think I feel? She curled on her side trying to breathe. Thanks for telling me to take the vest.

  The strange sensation of Aurora winking crept through her mind. Be glad they got the good ones. Most vests can’t stop rifle slugs.

  Again in control, Anna rolled out from under the far side and sat up.

  You’ve any idea how to steal one of these?

  Her left arm moved on its own, offering a shrug. Imagine it’s got some manner of biometrics, fingerprint reader most likely. Didn’t you nick a few cars when you were little?

  Bloody hell. I’ve never even sat in a hover much less nicked one.

  The shivering chill of Aurora’s departure ran down her back, followed by a ghostly voice. “Stay still then, I’ve an idea.”

  Anna figured if she could see the man shooting at her, she could force him not to see her. She crept to the end of the car to peek. The taillight exploded from another shot, spraying her with tiny fragments and making her grateful to have taken the helmet. Without a clue where the sniper was, Anna waited. Nerves got the better of her, and some of the nearby cars sparked.

  Flashing lights came over the edge of the roof atop a white and black hovercar bearing Timmons-Orben security markings. It glided to a landing a few meters away, bumper to bumper against the car she used for cover. Rather than point a gun at her, the driver waved her over.

  Anna tilted her head. “Aurora?”

  He offered a hat-tipping gesture at her. “Good guess. It’s easier to steal one that’s already moving.”

  “Yeah sure, if you can fly and just possess people willy-nilly I suppose it is.”

  The guard feigned shock. “What, you mean you can’t?”

  Aurora slid the car sideways off the edge of the roof deck. Several shots clanked in from the unseen gunman, one of which blew out the rear window. Aurora jammed the throttle forward, but the car tumbled end over end as a detonation hit it like a kick in the trunk. The possessed man lost his British accent for a few minutes of shouted obscenities as he brought their plummet into a careening dive a few degrees away from actual control. He shot Anna a glance as if he wanted to punch her, but was too petrified to let go of the sticks.