by Mel Odom
“I was only at MirrorMorph for a short time.” Another truth.
“Who do you belong to?”
“I am independent.”
Leigh spat a curse. “No bioroid is ever truly independent.”
“I am.”
“How?”
“Simon helped.”
“He died eight years ago.” She blew a smoke ring. “With the short lifespan you bioroids have, you must not be long for this world.”
I chose not to respond.
After a moment, Leigh stubbed out her narc-stick and drained her drink. “I don’t know why you came to me.”
“I thought you would help.”
She spat a curse. “If you knew Simon and he told you anything about me, you know I don’t have any love for that woman.”
Don’t. I clung to that word. Present tense. I believed that meant Mara was still alive.
“You cared about Simon.”
“Simon’s dead.” Leigh stood and slotted her credstick to pay her tab.
“Mara’s not.” I didn’t move, aware that her three companions were still watching us intently. If I put a hand on her to stop her, they’d be all over me. Not only that, as Simon remembered, Leigh Bonner was as dangerous as they came.
“She’s not my problem.”
“Did you know that Chimeras killed Simon?”
She stopped, studied me for a moment, then sat back down. “That’s not true.”
“Jonas Salter said it was.”
Her eyes gleamed as she searched my face, but she grimaced when she couldn’t read anything there. “Jonas is dead, too.”
“Yes, and I believe Chimeras killed him as well.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I believe it has something to do with Mara Blake.”
Tension framed her body and made her stiff. “I knew Rath and Simon had a falling out over Mara Blake, but I never suspected anyone from the unit would try to hurt Simon.”
Her words unleashed Simon’s memories within me.
Chapter Thirty
You don’t just go back on a deal, Simon.” John Rath leaned casually back against the railing of the observation deck on the Beanstalk. “You know that.”
Simon had chosen the meeting place because it was public, and because any violence would immediately draw the attention of the Space Elevator Authority security mercs. A few of them made the rounds on the observation deck as we stood there. Their bright yellow uniforms made them stand out.
“It’s not going back on a deal.” I felt Simon’s anxiety thrumming inside him as he confronted his mentor. He didn’t want to take action against Rath, but his fingers were within millimeters of the hidden needle gun he carried. “This…this was never part of the deal. You’re still getting your fifteen percent of MirrorMorph, Inc. You’ll be a rich man.”
Rath folded his arms across his chest and I knew there were dozens of ways he could kill a man from that position. When you factored in the small arms weapons he was probably carrying, that number escalated exponentially.
“Riches aren’t anything,” Rath said quietly. “I thought I taught you that.”
“You did.”
“Power is what you want, Simon,” Rath went on like I hadn’t spoken. “What we’re talking about here, that can give me a lot of power.” He smiled. “Maybe you need to rethink your position on this.”
I searched through Simon’s memories of this moment, trying to find out what they had been talking about, but images and dialogue slipped through my mind like tiny fish through a net. I only had glimmerings of what the real subject matter was.
“I have rethought it,” Simon said. “What I’m telling you now isn’t easy. You and I have a lot of history. I don’t want to lose the relationship with you.”
“Cross me and that relationship is over.” Rath’s words were flat, like rivets popped into plasteel.
I didn’t say anything.
Rath fixed me with his gaze. I prepared for the worst, not knowing if I was going to walk out of that observation deck alive.
“Why are you standing against me, Simon?”
I remained silent.
“Is it the woman?”
“I don’t want her harmed.” Simon’s voice almost cracked. His fingers drifted closer to the hidden weapon he carried.
For a moment Rath was silent, then he chuckled and shook his head. “I’d never hurt Mara. That would be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.”
“I want your word on that.” Simon knew that Rath’s word was his bond. No matter the violence he dealt on campaigns, no matter the subterfuge he was capable of, Rath kept his word.
“You have my word, Simon. Mara won’t be hurt on my account.”
Simon released a tense breath. “Thank you.”
“But I’m also not letting this go.” Rath’s dark eyes flashed. “You betrayed me, buddy. I didn’t expect that from you. Out of every man in my unit, I knew you were the one most like me. I made you. Shaped you. Taught you how to think. Everything you are, you owe to me.”
“I don’t want to lose your friendship.”
Rath smiled coldly and shook his head. “Oh, there’s a lot more on the table than my friendship.” He turned and walked away. “See you around, Simon.”
I watched him going, passing easily through the crowd because most of the people moved out of his way as if sensing a predator among them.
* * *
I focused on Leigh. “Do you know the nature of the problem that manifested between Simon and John Rath?”
Leigh tapped her nails on her drink glass. “Simon didn’t tell you?”
“No. Only that he wanted me to look out for Mara if anything should happen to her.”
“You weren’t part of her team?”
“No.”
Leigh smiled. “Simon was a lot like Rath. Both of them had their little side games they played outside of the main event. Both of them always planned three steps ahead.” She knocked back the last of her drink. “They should have been brothers.” Stepping back from me, she turned to go.
The front door to Mike’s Saloon burst open and armored Martian army shock troops flooded the room. They ran roughshod over the patrons, knocking them to the floor and shoving them out of the way as they came on like a tsunami. Shouts, curses, and cries of pain filled the bar.
A black armored woman strode in at the forefront of the invading force. Her voice blasted over the confusion. “Martian Colonial Corps! Stand down or you will be put down! Hug the floor! Do it now!”
Four men to my left threw themselves toward the back of the bar only to be met by stunstick-wielding armored troops pouring through the rear door. They fought, but the struggle was brief because the Colonial Corps soldiers struck viciously.
Most of the patrons gave up immediately, but the ones that moved too slowly or were too inebriated to move quickly got knocked to the floor or shocked into submission. A few of them purged, spreading pools of stomach contents across the floor.
Leigh moved instantly and I went with her, following Simon’s instincts before I knew it. She threw herself over the transplas bar and I landed at her heels. Her three companions were a half-step behind me. I wondered what she thought she was doing because the Colonial Corps would have all the exits blocked, and then a split-second later I knew she was headed for an escape route known to only a few mercs that Mike Dubronsky favored with his secrets.
Simon knew of three quick escapes from Mike’s Saloon. They’d all been put in place to allow goods to be smuggled in. Leigh went for one of the two in the back room, sprinting through the back room and turning to the wall on the left.
“Get the door!” she ordered.
One of the three men slammed the door closed and locked it, then fired a bullet into the locking mechanism to hold the Colonial Corps at bay. Then he pointed his weapon at me, gazing at me fiercely. “What do we do with this thing, Leigh?”
Leigh pulled a rack of food to the
side and glanced at me. She hesitated. “Leave him alone. He knew Simon.”
Reluctantly, the man lowered his weapon.
“Thermite,” Leigh called, holding her cupped hands out.
One of the men tossed her a ready-made charge. She caught it and slapped it against the wall. Simon had known about the crawl space behind the wall too. There was a cleverly concealed door in the wall, but Leigh obviously didn’t want to reveal that because it might have incriminated Dubronsky.
Leigh slapped the charge against the wall and looked at me. “I should probably let McEwen put a bullet through your brain. But you knew Simon.” She glanced at the three men. “Pull your oxygen masks on.”
All four of them pulled flexible oxygen masks from their thigh pouches. The masks were meant for emergencies only when atmosphere was lost but they would do little against the below-freezing cold that covered Mars. They wore softsuits that would help maintain core heat in their bodies for a few minutes in case of emergencies.
“Once this wall goes, we move fast,” Leigh said through her mask. “It won’t be as cold underground here as it would be away from the node. Residual heat will keep us warm enough for a few minutes, but if you stop out there, you’ll probably die. It’s a thousand meters through the caverns till we can regain egress to the node. If any of you don’t want to take the chance, stay here.”
No one said anything, and the silence was punctuated by a thud at the door as someone tried to break it down.
Leigh tapped a button on the charge and stepped back. Two seconds later, white-hot heat filled the room, turning the plasteel wall to molten slag. Smoke sucked out into the vacuum that lay on the other side of the wall and the cherry-red plasteel started to cool at once.
An alarm sounded within the room and the rhythmic thudding against the locked door stopped as the Colonial Corps realized they were dealing with a breached environment. Opening that door now would allow the atmosphere inside the bar to get sucked away and put everyone inside at risk. They couldn’t do that.
Leigh switched on an LED light on the oxygen mask and plunged into the darkness waiting on the other side of the opening.
* * *
We ran through the empty mine tunnel as quickly as we dared. Leigh and her companions had LED lights, but I had infrared vision. Paxton Node had been constructed in a depleted helium-3 mine. Scars left by the huge earthmovers marred the walls and loose rubble covered the uneven ground. The shaft we were in was forty meters wide and twenty meters tall. Behind us, light from the storeroom bled out into the darkness.
Frost formed on Leigh’s clothing and skin and I knew that the ambient temperature, even with the residual heat from the node businesses around us, wouldn’t allow her or her friends to survive for long.
One of the men cried out in pain and grabbed his leg. A moment later, he crumpled to the ground. Judging from his reaction, he was suffering from a recent injury that hadn’t healed or he’d gotten cramped from the cold.
I ran to him, hoisted him over my shoulder, and followed the others. None of them had stopped to help him because they would not have been able to do anything without dying with him.
A thousand and four meters from Mike’s Saloon, Leigh stopped in front of a rock wall. For a moment I thought she had succumbed to the cold and was experiencing some kind of dementia, but as I caught up to her, I saw her flip open a section of the rock and punch a keypad with shaking fingers.
I felt the vibration of moving parts, then a section of the wall slid open to reveal a tunnel opening. We plunged inside and Leigh took the lead, running through a maze of tunnels that doubled back on themselves, ascended, then descended, and twisted like a snake. Finally we reached a small airlock in a darkened room. Leigh and the other two men entered and I followed with the unconscious man.
Once inside, Leigh tried to manage the keypad but couldn’t keep her light focused on it long enough for her shaking hands to operate correctly. I stepped up beside her.
“What is the code?”
She told me and I entered it. The door sealed behind us and the airlock cycled, bringing atmosphere and heat to us.
I placed the man on the floor and stripped off his mask when the atmosphere became breathable. The ice crystals that had formed in his beard and in his hair began to melt and run down his face and neck. He was breathing on his own, so I massaged his arms and legs to make sure the circulation was flowing properly.
Leigh crouched down beside me. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s gone into shock.” I opened his shirt and found a large patch of nu-skin high on the right side of his chest. “He was wounded recently?”
“Yes.” Leigh didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask, but I assumed that it had been in the attack on the caravan a few days ago.
I reached into my medkit for slappatches to control the man’s stress overloads and get his body back to normal functioning.
“Are you sure the Colonial Corps aren’t on their way here now?” one of the other men demanded.
“If they were,” Leigh answered calmly, “they’d be here by now.” Her attention was on the unconscious man. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Yes,” I told her. “He needs rest. The meds I’ve given him will see to that. Doubtless his system crashed because he was drinking too much, was injured, and pushed himself too hard through harsh circumstance.”
I glanced around the room. Beyond the airlock, through the transplas door, I could see a larger room that had a few beds in it.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Mining barracks.” Leigh stood and approached the door. “When the mine closed down, smugglers moved in. They took over some of the barracks rooms, reconditioned them, and made them habitable once more. Every now and again, the Colonial Corps sweep the tunnels and find places like these and shut them down. Within a few weeks, the smugglers—or mercs that need a place to lie low for a while—get them set up again. The Colonial Corps get stretched too thin to keep these places shut down all the time.”
The airlock beeped and the locking mechanism disengaged, letting us know that the atmospheres were now matched. It was still far too cold inside the room.
“If this man is to survive, we need more heat,” I told Leigh.
“If we turn on the heat,” one of the other men said, “the Colonial Corps could sense it. They’ll find us.”
“Were they looking for you?” I asked. “If not, perhaps they won’t be looking.”
“We ran,” the man replied. “They’ll be looking.”
I swiveled my attention to Leigh. “Why did you run?”
“Because they were looking for us.” She gestured toward the outer room. “Bring him in here. Make him comfortable. Do what you can for him.”
I picked up my patient and carried him to one of the beds in the long, narrow room. I stripped blankets from the other beds and wrapped him as best as I could. The room was still cold, but not so cold that it was life-threatening for humans.
“What do we do now?” the soldier asked.
“We wait,” Leigh replied in a flat voice. “Either Tallin gets better or he doesn’t. If he does, we move out when he’s on his feet again. Until then, stay alert and get some rest.” She looked at me. “Keep that soldier alive.”
“I will do what I can.” I settled in beside Tallin and continued to monitor him. I also took advantage of the fact that I could still tie into the Net through my PAD and found out Floyd had sent me a message. I responded, letting him know I could take a meeting at his earliest convenience. Then I sat, silent and still as stone while Leigh and her two men wrapped in blankets and hunkered down to await what would happen next.
Chapter Thirty-One
In the meetbox, responding to the message I had received, Floyd stood in the middle of a virtual crime scene, but it wasn’t one I was familiar with. I popped into the holo a few meters from him.
At Floyd’s feet, a dead man lay in a crumpled heap. The deceased lay facedown o
n the carpet and a pool of blood stained the carpet around him. The door to the room lay in pieces on the floor, obviously blasted off its hinges. Closer inspection revealed that the hinges had also been burned through by acid.
Nearby, an automated cleaner sat beeping an emergency code to the NAPD. Low-AI cleaning bots were coded to send out signals to law enforcement when they encountered human bodies. Most of them were, anyway. Some had been reconfigured, but that was hard to do.
Two other men lay against the far wall of the large conference room. Large-caliber slugs stood out starkly in the cracked bullet-resistant transplas, caught like flies in a spider’s web. Outside the windows, night hung over the megapolis. Hoppers raced by, their lights bright in the darkness. Two moons hung in the sky and I knew we were on Mars, not Earth, which I found curious. To my knowledge, Floyd had not been to Mars.
“Am I intruding?” I asked.
“No. I wanted you to see this.”
I remained standing, secure in the knowledge that the sensors I had set to watch over Leigh Bonner and her merc companions would alert me if they moved. When I had linked to the meetbox, they had been sleeping, waiting for news of the Colonial Corps’ search to die down. From what they had gathered, the Martian military was chasing merc units known to associate with rebel forces, and the Chimeras in particular.
“Is this a case you’re working on?” I asked.
“In a sense. This is a cold case that is fourteen years old. You are not familiar with it?”
I pulled up the file and read the names of the dead men. They meant nothing to me, but they were all Human First members who worked directly for Alton Fuller.
“No.”
“Simon Blake did not know them either.”
I searched through Simon’s memories, what I had access to. “To my knowledge, no. I have no memory of Simon’s meeting with these men. Did he know them?”
“Simon Blake was high on the list of persons of interest regarding these executions.”
