by Mel Odom
“It is your unit,” Shelly said. “More than that, that—” she pointed at the figure in the black combat hardsuit “—is you.”
“Is it? All of those mercs look the same to me. That’s how we keep from shooting each other out in the field. I’m sure the police wear uniforms and hardsuit strike gear for the same reason.”
“You were identified by someone who was there.”
“Who?” Simon smiled again. “The jackers we went up against all died. The Chimeras don’t give up fellow soldiers. Whoever took this vid couldn’t have identified whoever was in that suit.” He shrugged. “Nice try, Detective, but no prize. No one identified me as the rocket launcher operator in this vid, and I didn’t kill Gerrold.”
* * *
The case file remained inconclusive. No one was ever arrested for murdering Conway Gerrold and his bodyguards. Human First had hounded the NAPD, but the investigation went nowhere. As it turned out, Simon Blake had an alibi for the time Gerrold was killed: he had been with Mara Parker. She had vouched for him.
I still didn’t know if that was true. If Simon believed Gerrold was a threat to her, I believed that Simon would have killed him without compunction.
Still in the darkness but aware now that the sun was rising, I sat and listened to Hayim sleep, knowing that he wouldn’t be up for hours. I tried to dredge up more of Simon Blake’s memories now that there were even more questions about his culpability in events on Earth and Mars, but they remained beyond my reach.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hayim got up at 1200 Mars Standard, which surprised me. After the previous day we’d had, I’d expected him to sleep much longer. But by 1300, we were breaking into a small shop he assured me belonged to a forger who specialized in mercenary e-IDs. The shop was closed. According to Hayim, it was only ever open when the forger was doing business. Most of that business took place late at night.
Uncomfortable with breaking into the shop hidden in an alley and three floors below ground, I checked the background on the premises and on the woman who owned them. Lara Guignard, who Hayim promised owned the shop, had a past history of brushes with the law over e-doc discrepancy, but none of her arrests had ever resulted in a conviction.
According to megapolis records, the shop didn’t exist. The forty square meters were supposedly taken up by the Indian laundry that fronted it and a recycling shop. Guignard owned both of those on paper, but it took some inspired digging to discover that.
The second underground floor was taken up by a transient motel that specialized in migrant farm workers that floated through the colonies during harvest season. Most of the colonies managed to stagger their harvests so the workers could go from ag-bubble to ag-bubble, constantly staying on the move. Crop production depended on human labor because it was cheaper than purchasing bioroids or clones or even robots to do the job. Earth corps kept trying to undermine the local labor population, but hadn’t been able to offer a better system. There were some valid arguments that Earth corps didn’t really want to replace human workers. They just threatened those migrant laborers enough to exploit them further.
We checked into one of the motel rooms above Guignard’s shop. Hayim paid with a private credstick and the young man at the desk didn’t even raise his head from his PAD. I scanned the PAD briefly to see if it linked into any sec vids overseeing the rooms, but it didn’t. Privacy laws weren’t the same in transient quarters, and Earth corps didn’t announce when they were spying.
Corp human intelligence gathering on Mars as well as Earth operated everywhere, gathering information from human sources and projected trends. They were always open for business. Execs sometimes forgot that flesh and blood laborers weren’t as docile as machines or clones. Every biological thing on any planet had an agenda. Gossip was as good as cred in some circles.
The rooms were small and rough. Graffiti and children’s drawings covered the hallway walls as well as inside the rooms. The drawings usually centered around family or activities, and the graffiti was angry rhetoric.
Hayim swiped the room card and we entered. Instead of clothing and personal belongings in his backpack, he carried an industrial mining laser we had picked up from a pawn shop on the way over. The laser was small enough to isolate pockets of ore and to be carried in a backpack.
Once we were locked inside the room, Hayim pulled the laser out and set it up. I took out the power cord and hooked it up, then took out the cheap holo player we’d also bought and set it up as well. When I had a vidcast going that showed the turmoil breaking loose in the colonies, Hayim pulled the laser to the center of the floor.
“You’re sure there are no squealies in the room below?” I asked.
Hayim looked up at me and shook his head. “No. I’m not. In fact, there probably are. That’s why you’re here. See if you can sniff them out and shut them down.”
I walked over the room, tracing the dimensions of the small space below me. I found three squealie hot spots and hacked into them with my PAD. Getting through their defenses was labor intensive, but I managed. One of my subroutines for the NAPD had required me to be able to break and enter.
“Police officers are one step removed from criminals when you think about it.” Shelly stood over against the far wall and watched us. “That’s why so many police officers make such good lawbreakers if they decide to go that way.”
All of the squealies were tied to a comm node that broadcast an alert to a single PAD. I tried to ascertain who the unit belonged to but was unable to secure that knowledge.
“Doesn’t matter who they’re tied to,” Hayim said. “We can assume the PAD is Guignard’s or belongs to a secman she’s hired for the job. The main thing is that we don’t set them off getting inside or while we’re in. Are they disabled?”
I nodded.
Without another word, Hayim sliced through the floor.
* * *
Minutes later, I watched the room and the squealies while Hayim used the equipment. I also hacked into the sec cams that watched over the alley entrance that offered direct access to the forger’s shop.
Seven hours passed. During that time there were seventeen false alarms on the alley cam, and I had to ping the squealies’ response code four times when Guignard or her secman checked on the shop. The pings came at regular intervals, so I felt certain it was a pre-set sec check, not an honest inquiry.
When he was finished, Hayim had two e-IDs, one for him and one for me. He merely reactivated one of his old aliases for himself, but he created a new one for me, which would not draw undue attention because mercs expected bioroids to get “sanitized”—lost in the system.
“You’re a McDreamy model,” Hayim said as I lifted him from the floor below. “Good with medicine but not so much with bedside manner. Can you do that?”
The McDreamy models were based on an old 20th century sensie that had a cult following even today. Haas-Bioroid had capitalized on that when they released their med units.
“I can do that,” I replied.
“Good. Then let’s get out of here, get back to our room so I can rest, then let’s see about getting hired.”
* * *
Securing a contract for a merc unit took five days of sitting at the Inn of Two Moons. As a bioroid, I did not get anxious or bored. I simply sat and organized my files, drew down more reports of the rising violence escalating between the Earth corps, pro-Earth Martians, pro-Mars supporters, terrorists, and the criminals that profited from being in the gaps between all of those. The body count in the colonies continually rose, as did the need inside me to do something.
“Just wait,” Shelly advised me. “This is all tied in together somehow. You know that’s true.”
I did, but waiting became increasingly difficult. The thing that most kept me from acting was certain knowledge that I would be arrested the moment I was identified by the authorities—any authorities. I told myself that I was better free and in reserve as I was.
Believing that was hard.
* * *
On the fifth day, however, Hayim and I met with Liam Rector at one of the back tables in the Inn of Two Moons.
Rector was a fireplug of a man in his middle years. Pink, ragged scars showed on the left side of his face, announcing that he’d been the recent recipient of the outer fringes of a shrapnel burst. According to the med subroutines I had jacked from the Net, the wound was no more than three weeks old.
With quiet contemplation, Rector regarded us with his mismatched eyes. Both were organic, so he’d received a transplant somewhere along the way. Both eyes moved well together, so it had been a good replacement.
“I’m with the Screaming Mimis.” Rector grimaced. “Not my name. We’re Earth corp sponsored and they wanted to brand us. Have you heard of us?”
I had. The Screaming Mimis were a pro-Earth merc unit and had been on-planet for five years. They had fought in several skirmishes and held their own, but they weren’t heavy hitters. They were average in every way and usually regulated to small protection contracts.
Hayim nodded. “I know who you are.”
“Then you know we’re select when it comes to choosing people to round out a roster.” Rector tried to say that with authority, but Hayim and I both knew he was lying.
“I’m looking for work,” Hayim said. “I’m not going to be too particular. You guys have a rep as a meat grinder unit. You put people on the ground and a scary percentage of them die. Don’t try to gild the lily with me.”
Rector frowned and spat a curse. “Meat grinder or not, we’re not in the habit of hiring ancient half-men.” He nodded at me. “We want the McDreamy.”
Hayim stared back at Rector’s mismatched eyes. “We come as a team. You want him, you get me as part of the package.”
Rector swiveled his attention to me. “Is that true?”
I didn’t hesitate. At least, I didn’t show any sign of hesitation, but that was only because I processed information and variables so much faster than a human could. “We come as a package.”
Cursing again, Rector brought out his PAD and pulled up contracts. He glared at Hayim during the process, but Hayim didn’t care. In the end, Rector had no choice.
Once our contracts were sealed, Rector gave us the location where we’d be meeting up, deposited our signing bonus to credsticks that he gave to us, and headed upstairs with a gynoid that had caught his eye.
Hayim looked at me. “We’re mercs, McDreamy.” He cursed. “I don’t know whether to celebrate or throw up.”
“You could have stayed out of this,” I pointed out.
“And do what? Sit here until I run out of cred or get busted by Martian police or military looking to roust pro-Earth mercs?” Hayim shook his head. “No, thanks. I’d rather take my chances out there in the killing fields. I’m more at home there.” He slapped his bionic legs. “Besides, after you reworked the legs, I’ve got to admit, I’m feeling pretty spry.”
“I do not want you to get killed.”
“Then make sure you stay close, McDreamy. Keep me patched up and keep blood in me if I take a hit.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Keeping Hayim alive was difficult. Keeping all of the Screaming Mimis alive was impossible.
Three days later, we were north of Podkayne colony running security for limited cargo routes. Terrorist forces or pro-Mars mercs were taking munitions shipments pro-Earth corps tried to get into Podkayne colony. The soldiers in my unit speculated that this meant the weapons from the train robbery had been intended for Podkayne’s pro-Earth sec teams.
There was no way to know for certain. Even if one of the megacorps like Argus, Inc. had stood up and reported that they had shipped the weapons from an illegal subsidiary, no one would have believed them. Lies and accusations and crisis management ran rampant in the vidcasts. There were more lies than truths, but no one could pin down the truth.
On the fifth day, the cargo shipment the Screaming Mimis were escorting from a handoff by another merc team got hit in a surprise attack at dawn. The announcement came when a salvo of rockets took out the lead crawler in the convoy, crippling the craft and dumping it in the middle of the passage we were following down out of the mountains.
Our unit leader, Major Carroll Randall, had debated taking the passage because of the probable choke points, but trying to go across the expanse of ancient sea bottoms filled with powdery red sand would have been just as risky. Probably more so because the sand would get sucked up into engines as they dumped heat into the chill environment or into the leg joints that propelled us.
Our crawler’s pilot screamed curses as she struggled to find some way out of the passage. However, on either side of us steep plunges of hundreds of meters led down to the powdery sand that wouldn’t be much more crash friendly than rock. Even in the lesser gravity, the crawler wouldn’t withstand a sudden impact like that with all the mass it had.
As soon as the crippled crawler flipped over onto its side, a fresh salvo of rockets burned across the sky and hit the vehicle again. This time there wasn’t just the first series of explosions. Another set of explosions followed almost immediately, letting me know the second round had been sabots, designed to penetrate a target vehicle and deliver a fissionable payload into its interior, eliminating all the squishy targets within.
While our pilot jockeyed with the controls and yelled at gunners to take their positions, I grabbed a backpack, slid into it, and fisted another medical bag as well. I barely fit into the vehicle’s airlock but I squeezed in and punched the cycle button.
The air around me was sucked away and redistributed inside the crawler. The only reason the crew didn’t stay in envirosuits was because the crawlers came equipped with carbon dioxide scrubbers that stretched the oxygen. No one wanted to be out on patrol and run out of air.
Once the airlock was a vacuum, the platform spun and the outer hatch irised open. I leaped out, making the three meter drop easily, hitting the ground running, taking five-meter long strides.
A trio of hoppers flamed by and dropped Taejo mines while our crawler gunners filled the thin atmosphere with anti-aircraft fire. Flak hung in the sky like immense bruises. All of the attack hoppers emerged from the deadly cloud unscathed.
I sprinted toward the stricken crawler, going over the specs in my mind. The crawler carried a ten-man crew: a pilot and navigator, four gunners, and four loaders. All of those lives were currently in jeopardy.
Welby 4JU3LI, another med-programmed bioroid, also ran toward the overturned crawler. The Welby managed four strides before a Taejo mine struck the ground and unloaded its deadly cargo of monofilament wire. Transfixed by the wire, lifted from the ground a meter, the Welby kicked frantically for a few seconds, then ceased to function as its operating system went inert.
I took cover behind a stand of rock that had slanted facets. Still, three of the wires pierced the rock and perforated my chassis a few centimeters. Nothing vital was hit.
Standing, I looked over the battleground and discovered our attackers had expertly placed the Taejo mines. Nine of our fifteen escort vehicles had been rendered useless in the initial attack without a single loss of soldier or vehicle for them.
Cries reached my comm. “Medic! Medic!”
Scarlet dots filled my GPS overlay, letting me know where the calls were coming from.
I ran, heading for the initial vehicle because if the crew aboard that one might be made ready, they could perhaps remove the crawler from the passage and allow the other crawlers to maneuver.
“Where did they get those Taejo mines?” a woman demanded over the comm-link. “Those aren’t permitted in combat.”
“You want to call foul?” someone else asked. “I don’t think those guys care. I’m sitting in the middle of six dead mates with Taejo wire through both of my legs.”
I marked that transmission on my comm, pinged it back to its source, and hoped that the assessment was not realistic.
“Medic!”
I reached the
downed crawler, clambered on top of it, slapped my hand against the airlock controls, and pulsed the override frequency through my palm. I laid in the airlock at an angle, unable to keep from thinking how much it reminded me of the coffin I had seen Shelly in. I brushed the image from my thoughts as the airlock cycled and spun me into the vehicle.
Pinging the med stats of the combat suits of all ten mercs in the unit, I discovered two of them had expired. Three others were severely wounded from shrapnel, and one of those was going into cardiac arrest. All of the others had been injured, mostly cuts and bruises, and three of them were leaking air from their envirosuits.
I threw the backpack and medkit onto the floor, opening them up fast as I could. Seconds measured human lives now. Using spray epoxy, I patched three rents in the heart victim’s suit, ascertained that his injuries were within my capabilities to salvage him, and pinged his suit to restart his heart. The first attempt failed, and blood squirted from a wound on his back.
I rolled him over and discovered a length of shrapnel jutting from his side. Laying my right hand next to the wound, I flicked the thirteen centimeter piece of plasteel with my left forefinger and used a program for a limited sonogram subroutine to ascertain the length. The piece projected a full centimeter into his right lung. Blood was filling the lung even then.
Reaching into the medkit, I drew out a surgical laser as I withdrew the piece of shrapnel. Digging into the wound, I seared the lung wound closed, did the same for the outer flesh, then took a vacu stem line from the kit, readied it, and punched it through his chest into his lung. Triggering the vacu program, the line started pumping blood from his lung. I used the spray epoxy to seal the suit around the stem line as his blood bubbled out of the lung.
I hit his suit again, triggering the built-in defibrillator which shocked his heart. It started on the first time. The pulse was weak and thready, but it was there.
