by Mel Odom
“Then why were you looking for me?”
“I want information on the mercenary action here on Mars.”
Hayim looked at me suspiciously, then stuck out a hand. “Help me up and get me out of here. Then we’ll talk.”
I extended my hand and gently guided him to his feet. I put him on the back of the minihopper, then climbed aboard and started the engine. I gazed back at the unconscious man, wishing there was a way I could ascertain his identity, but his e-ID would be inside his envirosuit. I briefly considered trying to bring him with us, but even if the minihopper would have allowed it, that would have meant kidnapping him. The sec team closing in on our location would pursue a kidnapping.
I engaged the hover ability and shot through the alley, putting as much space between the alley and us as I could.
Chapter Fifteen
Hayim lived off the grid in a ramshackle apartment building that looked like it was a week away from being condemned. Built into the canyon wall behind it so that it looked more like a frontispiece layered over the rugged rock, the structure was one of the more primitive dwellings in the area.
“It don’t look like much,” Hayim told me, “but it’s home. It was one of the first places built in this area. It’s solid and stable.” He pointed to a narrow path between the apartment building and the small bar next door. There were a lot of bars in the area. “Put the minihopper over there. I’ve got someone who can get rid of it for us.”
I rounded the corner and powered the minihopper down in front of an airlock built into the canyon wall beside the front of the building. The space was four meters back from the road that led to warehouses and the surrounding shops that looked as weathered as the apartment building. Evidently the whole section was falling into disrepair. Tucked around the corner as it was, the alley provided a natural blind spot from the street.
Hayim shoved himself off the minihopper and limped over to the airlock. I stepped off after him and watched the dusty red road behind us. So far I hadn’t seen any sign of pursuit by a sec team.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Shelly said beside me. “They could still be out there looking, and Hayim is someone that can easily be identified.”
“I know.”
Hayim cued the announce button beside the vid display next to the airlock. I walked over to join him so I could be part of the conversation. I held onto the Synap in my thigh pocket. Trust wasn’t even part of the equation at that point.
“Who is it?” The voice was thick and feminine. I could hear it as it linked to Hayim’s helmet frequency.
“It’s Hayim.” The light under the vid display winked green, letting us know that it was receiving our image. The screen remained blank. Whoever was on the other end of the connection wasn’t revealing herself.
“What do you want?”
“Got some salvage for you.”
“The bioroid?”
“No. A minihopper. It’s probably got a history, so it’ll have to be wiped from records and vanished. And if it doesn’t have a history, it will have one after tonight and it’ll still have to be wiped.”
The vid display popped out of the wall on a flexible waldo and adjusted to a new angle so it could take in the minihopper, then it pulled back in and focused on Hayim again.
“Where did you get the minihopper?” the unseen woman asked. “You didn’t have one when you left here.”
“Four guys jumped me at the Pyrite.”
“Anybody you know?”
“Men I’ve seen around. Tech vultures. They were after my legs.”
“You’re lucky you still have them. They find something else they wanted instead?”
“I can take care of myself,” Hayim growled.
“Maybe once upon a time.”
“You interested or not?”
“It’s not worth much. Can’t give you cred for it.”
“Just tack whatever you think it’s worth onto next month’s rent and we’ll call it square.”
The woman snorted derisively. “I should charge you for getting rid of it.”
“I’m leaving it there. Martian sec people could be along any time to start asking questions about it. You feel up to them going through the premises? If so, just leave it there. I’m not taking it any farther.”
The woman inside the building was silent for a moment. “Who’s your friend?”
Hayim looked at me.
“Norris 1JA5NU,” I replied, using Hayim’s frequency. I pulsed my e-docs across the reader.
“You’re bringing a sales rep home, Hayim?”
Hayim folded his arms across his broad chest. “He’s not like any sales rep I’ve ever seen. He took out the four vultures who attacked me like they were nothing. Says he wants to talk about mercenaries.”
“Interesting. You and your friend are cleared to come in.” The airlock irised open large enough to allow Hayim, the minihopper, and me. I engaged the minihopper’s parking hover and pulled it after me, feeling only somewhat uncomfortable about going inside. Staying out on the street was far less desirable.
* * *
The airlock opened onto a dimly lighted garage area filled with machines, equipment, and three low-end bioroids in various states of disrepair. The bioroids alone could have caused our hostess a fair amount of legal trouble. Haas-Bioroid and its competitors drew a hard line over reverse engineering and bad treatment of their product.
Inside the room, Hayim opened his envirosuit and hung it on a peg beside the airlock. He glanced at me nervously, then at the cutting laser on a nearby tool chest, then back at me again.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” I reassured him.
“A sales rep, huh?” A middle-aged woman with sandy grey hair cut to her chin line stepped out of the shadows beside a carbon scrubber hanging from chains in the center of the room. Judging from the way the scrubber was torn down, she was either repairing it or stripping it down for salvage.
She was short and a little overweight, broad shouldered and a little thick through the middle. Her eyes were mismatched, the left one blue and bloodshot and organic, the right one a paler blue with a pure white sclera that might as well have been stamped ARTIFICIAL, CYBERNETIC. She wore a mechanic’s grey jumpsuit stained with oil and burned in places. The sleeves had been crudely hacked off. A tool belt hung around her hips, heavy with wrenches, screwdrivers, and battery-powered hand tools. She carried a compact, large caliber slug-thrower in her right hand that looked out of place amid the other equipment.
“Why are you interested in mercenaries?” She stopped two meters from me and regarded me with jaundiced speculation.
“I’m trying to find someone,” I replied.
“Why?”
“This is the task I was assigned. Other than that, I cannot say.” That was close enough to the truth that I thought it would work. I was a bioroid, usually following someone else’s orders.
A cold, half-smile twisted her lips. “Who sent you?”
“I cannot divulge that information.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“I cannot di— ”
She fired the slug-thrower from her hip, not even bothering to lift it. I’d detected the slight shift of her shoulders as she set herself to absorb the weapon’s recoil, though, and I was already moving to the right as her finger tightened on the trigger. The bullet still caught me in the left arm and partially spun me around. My right hand snaked out for a drive chain lying on a nearby workbench at the same time the sound of the shot filled the garage space.
I closed my fingers over the chain and whipped it out as the woman raised her weapon to take aim. The chain wrapped around the pistol barrel and I yanked back immediately, popping the weapon from her hand. Effortlessly, I caught the pistol in my left hand. I watched her to make sure she didn’t pull another weapon from hiding.
My response surprised the woman and she stared at me, backing away three more steps. I braced myself, thinking she was going to go for another weapon as soon as she felt she c
ould safely turn her back and run for it.
“Reena!” Hayim yelped. He had ducked down and covered his head with his arms. “What are you doing?”
The woman ignored Hayim and focused on me. “Why are you really here?”
I tossed the chain back to the work table, then popped out the pistol’s magazine and thumbed the rounds free, ejecting them into a cup that was also on the table. I worked the slide and removed the chambered round as well, then disassembled the pistol and placed it on the work table.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” I said. “I came here with Hayim because he was in no shape to see himself home. I also did not get the chance to talk to him as I had intended.”
“And you just happened along in time to stop the attack against him?”
“I was following Hayim,” I admitted.
Reena’s gaze shot beyond me to Hayim for a moment, drawing his attention to what I was saying.
“I saw him there at the bar.” Hayim rubbed the back of his neck irritably. “I was watching him while he was following me, trying to figure out what he wanted. I thought maybe he was working for Martian Immigration and that they’d finally caught up with me. That’s why I didn’t see the men who jumped me until they took me.”
Reena reached into her jumpsuit and took out a narc-stick. She lit it with a small lighter and the blue flame lifted her face out of the shadows. She took a deep drag on the narc-stick, held the smoke a moment, then let it out. Over on the wall, a carbon scrubber kicked to life and started cycling the air, gently pulling the smoke toward that side of the garage so the pollutant could be removed.
“I was there to help,” I pointed out.
“That’s true,” Hayim said. He walked over to the work table, leaned down, and pulled up a bottle and two short glasses from a transplas crate. “If it hadn’t been for him, I might have ended up dead. I knew one of the guys that jumped me. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave witnesses. Probably still won’t like the idea that we’re—I’m—still alive.”
“You left that man breathing?” Reena’s voice took on a strained timbre.
“Yes. You know how I don’t like to kill someone in cold blood.”
“You’ve done it before.” Her response was cold and calculated, designed to damage.
Hayim shrugged and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I’m out of that business, Reena. You know that.”
“You should have killed that man.”
“I wasn’t able to defend myself. They locked a taser block on me that trapped me in my envirosuit.”
“Do you know the man’s name?”
“No.”
“Letting him live is going to be a problem. Better to correct that mistake before things get out of hand.”
Hayim poured amber-colored liquid into the two short glasses, handed one of them to Reena, and kept the other for himself. “He won’t be a problem long. Sec patrol has probably scooped him up by now. He’s probably got outstanding warrants.”
“And if he doesn’t? If they let him loose?” Reena shook her head. “Once he figures out that you’re not down there pressing charges he’ll know that you’re an even bigger victim than he had first thought you were. He’ll know you can’t go to the law.” She sipped her drink and never took her mismatched eyes from me.
“It was just bad luck.” Hayim tossed his drink back and shook his head.
“How much do you think your new friend has to do with your bad luck?”
Hayim laughed, then dragged an arm across his mouth. “Bad luck? He’s not bad luck. If he hadn’t been following me, those men would have taken my legs. Even if they didn’t kill me, which I think was going to happen, I wouldn’t have had any legs, Reena. I’m here illegally. Military veterans hospital wouldn’t get me another pair of legs. I’d have been dragging myself everywhere I wanted to go.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t live like that.”
The woman’s voice softened a little as she spoke, and she took her attention from me to focus on him. “I wouldn’t have let you do that, Hayim. We’d have gotten you another pair of legs. I would have worked something out for you.”
“My problems aren’t your problems.” Hayim set the empty glass on the work table. “And I’m not going to let this problem be yours either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to get gone for a while.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough to let this all die down. If you find out those guys aren’t looking for me anymore, or that the Martian authorities aren’t looking for me, send word.”
Reena was silent for a moment. “Where are you going to be?”
“I owe Norris for saving me. I’m going to try to square that.”
“You don’t owe this bioroid anything.”
“I figure I do. And who knows? Maybe I can find some work out there in the fringes. Get us a nest egg together that will help out.”
“Going with me won’t be necessary,” I said.
“With the situation the way it is,” Hayim said, “I don’t think I have another choice. I’m heading in the direction you’re going anyway. Two will be safer than one, and I may not have any friends left out there.”
Silently, Reena walked over to Hayim and put her arms around him. She looked into his eyes. “The fringes are a bad place to be. Worse than they were when we were out there all those years ago.”
“I can’t think of a better place to hide out. There are a lot of places where I can get lost for a time.” Hayim hugged her and stroked her back. He smiled at her. “Things will be fine. I’ll be back soon as I can.” He hugged her a final time and stepped away.
I hesitated, uncertain of what to do.
“Go with him,” Shelly said. “Like he said, he knows his way around out there, and evidently that’s where you’re headed.”
Reena looked up at me, a tear tracking under her biological eye. “Take care of him out there. He’s not as young as he used to be, and he hasn’t been the same since he lost his legs.”
I nodded. “I will.”
Since both women felt that I should accompany Hayim, I went.
* * *
A few minutes later, I waited in Hayim’s small room while he packed. His personal quarters had a bed that pulled down from the wall, a personal entertainment deck, and a food processor for hot and cold soy-sub meals. A privy and kitchen were down the hall. A screen on one wall offered a view out onto the Tharsis Region that contained Olympus Mons, a shield volcano that was three times as tall as Mount Everest. It stood 27 kilometers tall and was, according to some, the tallest mountain in the solar system.
Hayim threw a handful of clothes into a hard backpack, added a few toiletries, then lifted one of the floor tiles in the corner to remove a few credsticks that he shoved into his pockets. The servos on his left leg whined as he moved.
Some of the clothing on the bed belonged to a woman about Reena’s size. I kept quiet and pretended not to notice as Hayim shoved the clothing under the bedclothes.
“She stays up here sometimes.” Hayim kept moving, opening a small pantry built into the wall and removing a few food-subs, protein bars, and energy bulbs. “Some of the people that live here think it’s funny, two cripples like us hooking up.”
“It’s none of my business, and it’s none of theirs.”
“No, it’s not.” Hayim closed the pantry and stood. He faced me. “Part of me wants to blame you for the trouble I’m in, but those guys were coming for me before you showed up.” He ran a hand over his bleary-eyed face and I could see he was sobering up. He was going to crash before much longer, though. I knew the indications from past experience with alcoholics and addicts I’d handled while I’d been at the NAPD.
“I can carry the backpack,” I offered.
“I carry my own weight. I always have.” Hayim reached under the mattress and took out a large-caliber slug-thrower.
I shifted slightly, preparing myself.
“Not for you,” he said. “The place
s we’re going to go aren’t much on hospitality.” He rapped on his right leg and a section opened up. He shoved the slug-thrower into the empty space where the weapon fit like it belonged.
“Is there anything I can help with?”
“Not here.” Hayim looked up at me. “Cred is a problem, though. Riding the train would be the fastest way to get where we need to go, but you can hire out with different corps looking for someone to help out with overland deliveries to outland areas away from the colonies and the big corps.”
“I can pay.”
Hayim nodded. “Like I said, a train will be faster, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be any safer. Things out in the fringes, where terraforming is still going on, can be pretty dangerous. Which mercenary outfit are you looking for?”
“The Chimeras.”
Hayim snorted in surprise and shook his head. “Those people will be hard to find. When John Rath disappeared, most of those people disappeared as well.”
“Did you know John Rath?”
“No. But I worked in a lot of areas where Rath and the Chimeras did. Me and Reena both.” Hayim took a final look around the room, flicked a hand over the light sensor to turn out the illumination, and led the way out the door.
Chapter Sixteen
The line waiting at the train station spread out across the main building. Men and women sat on the floor with their envirosuits stripped down to their waist. Three-quarters buried in the Martian soil, the building was little more than an airtight shell with an airlock attached. People weren’t allowed into the building without buying a ticket because management didn’t want to waste oxygen on someone who wasn’t providing a profit. A small restaurant on the far side of the building served up a soy-sub menu.
I sat beside Hayim, who lay stretched out and snoring on the tiled floor. After I’d purchased the tickets and we’d found a place to sit down, he’d promptly fallen asleep. My olfactory sensors relayed the strong smell of alcohol seeping through his pores. A young couple had briefly considered squeezing in beside us, but the girl caught a whiff of my companion and campaigned for another location.
