Ghost Black

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Mr. Staanek, I heard a loud bang, like a body hitting the floor. Is everything okay?”

  Virtual holo-panels popped into being in front of her. She mentally dragged the icon of the recording of Lars’s conversation with his superior into the control interface for her vox unit. She moaned louder.

  General Everett’s face appeared on the desk terminal. Fortunately, the sight of a pink-haired woman bouncing up and down and emitting sex-type squeals stunned him mute.

  “Mr. Staanek?” asked the man in the doorway.

  Risa’s heart stopped for the three seconds it took for a ‘ready’ to appear. She activated the mod with a thought, and spoke in her electronics’ best recreation of Lars’s voice. “I’m busy. Go away.” She hoped the desk gave her enough cover for the man not to see her black bodysuit under the jacket. “Other way, bitch.”

  “Okay,” said Risa in a demure whimper using her normal voice.

  She spun around, grabbing the desk. The man in the doorway had a metal right arm with an implanted ballistic gun as well as a compact laser weapon in his left hand. Risa faked an expression as if Lars was too big for her, and it hurt. Everett recognized her right away; his look of displeasure, likely at being pranked, became one of confusion. She hid her face behind the terminal, and mouthed ‘need a minute’ without lending voice to it.

  “Sorry, Boss.” The guard backed out and closed the double doors.

  She made a dismissive grunt in Lars’s voice, and squealed in hers afterward.

  Click.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, and stopped bouncing.

  “I’m sure there’s a very interesting story behind what I’m watching.” General Everett smiled.

  “There is. Would you believe me if I told you the Corporates had a spy in the middle of Elysium City?”

  “I’d find that highly improbable.”

  Risa pulled Lars up into the view of the terminal’s camera. “Meet Lars Staanek… or whoever he is.” She reached up to the NetMini and flicked her recording at the terminal. “Have a look at that. I’m sure you’ve got lab rats who can run a voice print analysis on it and figure out who the other guy is. I’ve got about twenty minutes of tranq in this guy. I was hoping you’d prefer to take him alive rather than scrape a body off the rug.”

  Everett’s dark complexion went a little grey. “Shit, Risa… That’s Nikolas Zheleznov on the other end of that vid. Can you secure the area? I can have a team there within ten minutes.”

  She eyed the vent. “I’m not sure I want to be here when they show up.”

  He raised a hand. “Nothing to worry about. You’ve been on the payroll for years, even if you didn’t know it. The team lead will be informed you are an undercover asset.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Hurry up if you want him alive. He’s gonna wake up soon.” She slipped off the chair and crawled over Lars to hunt for weapons. “Who the hell is Zheleznov?”

  “Senior Vice President of Military Operations Mars Division. An executive. Probably the number three or four man they’ve got up here.” Everett looked as worried as he did hungry. “Lars sounds unhappy.”

  She shivered. “Yeah. I don’t think he appreciated my visit.”

  Everett chuckled. “They’re on the way.”

  Heaviness coalesced in her gut as the terminal went dark. She removed one full-sized handgun from under Lars’s suit jacket, and small holdout pistols from the back of his belt and left ankle. Nothing in the room looked useful for binding him. After putting her skirt back on, she planted herself in the corner forty feet away, seated on the floor, and kept one of her Hotaru-6 pistols trained on his head.

  Eight minutes of idle trigger flicking later, screaming filtered in from the vents as the emancipated dispersed in a panic. Forty seconds after the first shout of “cops!,” a brief exchange of gunfire erupted close to the double doors. An explosion of Epoxil dust trailed a bullet into the room near the ceiling. The door opened at the push of a nondescript Marsborn man with short hair wearing a sand-brown coat over a familiar bodysuit, only dark grey instead of black. Two figures in MDF armor behind him raised laser pistols toward her, but the lead man waved them off.

  A woman and two more men wearing the same semi-rigid bodysuits she’d seen on Everett’s people at the remote base brought up the rear. The woman dragged the dead bodyguard by his arms in from the bar area.

  “Agent,” said the man in the raincoat as he approached. “We’ll take it from here.”

  Risa let her pistol droop, stood, and tucked it back under her jacket. “Fine with me.”

  He walked up beside her, staring at Lars. “Nice catch… at least if this guy turns out to be the genuine article. You have an out? Need a fake arrest to exfiltrate the scene?”

  She looked at the vent. “Nah, I’m allergic to binders.”

  “Climbing down from the roof looks suspicious. No need for cuffs.” He waved one of the MDF guys over. “Just an innocent misguided teen being ‘escorted out of the area.’”

  It would be less work than climbing through all those vents again. She sighed. “Okay, fine.”

  The armored man grabbed a fistful of her jacket and walked her out. When they reached the bar room, he started pushed her along. She fed off his aggression and struggled.

  “I didn’t even fuckin’ do anything. Damn cops, what the fuck?”

  He remained silent as he dragged her out the front doors to the street in front where two plain black cars and a handful of marked MDF vehicles parked, red roof lights popping in staccato camera flashes.

  “Get your fuckin’ hand off me! Damn police state!” Risa twisted back and forth in a more than a halfhearted attempt to pull free.

  He hauled her to the perimeter of the cars and gave her a toss hard enough to cause a stumble; if not for boosted agility, she would’ve flown into a chin-plant. She controlled the wipeout, falling anyway, but without injury. The cop stomped over and descended on her as if about to continue with a beating. She rolled onto her back, grabbing his forearm as he took a fistful of her jacket in a strangling-tight grip, and pulled her close.

  “Everett got the neural memory dump from your friend. Nice work.” He flung her to the ground. “Damn kids. Go back to school so you can get a real job.”

  Risa curled up in mock fear, raising her arms to guard her face. That’s not a bad idea.

  Someone skidded to a halt behind her. “Hey, girl. You okay?”

  She looked up at the face of a teenage boy with aqua hair. His black mesh top showed off a glowing NanoLED tattoo of a flying dragon on his left shoulder. “Yeah… I think so.”

  He helped her up. “I thought that prong was gonna light your fine ass up. I just scored some Proteus. Wanna go evolve?”

  “I gotta go. Runnin’ shit. Three more drop offs. It’s my ass if I’m late.”

  The boy nodded, holding up a strange hand sign. “Righteous.”

  Risa jogged down the street. A few blocks later, she collapsed against a wall, face in her hands, and hyperventilated. For all she knew, Lars could be as deadly as the operator from Arden. Then again, the ACC was cheap. He might’ve been all charisma with minimal combat boosts. She head-dialed a PubTran car, and sank into a ball with her arms wrapped around her knees. A strange mixture of relief and worry enveloped her.

  At least Gen’s not in the crosshairs. I am.

  16

  Autonomous

  Death Row already felt different, as though Risa lugged an empty plastisteel cargo box down the corridor of someone else’s home toward the private room that she’d been assigned to, but had never truly felt like a place she belonged. Despite being two inches longer than a standard footlocker, and made entirely of metal, the container weighed two-ish pounds. At one point, it had held medical supplies, stimpaks mostly, which the MLF had ‘liberated’ from a military shipment. In retrospect, she wondered if that cargo had left the base with the intention for it to wind up here.

  Probably.

  She butt-bumped the door open and
set the box on the floor near the bed. Within seconds, Kree stood inside it, gawking at Risa’s matching glittery skirt.

  “It’s like mine!” squealed the girl.

  Risa grinned. “When I was your age, I liked girly stuff.”

  Kree folded her arms, eyes narrowed in doubt.

  She twisted side to side, modeling it. “I had to get dressed up to meet someone.”

  “Pavo?” Kree tilted her head.

  “No.” She laughed, picturing his reaction to her ‘gang teen’ outfit. At least disabling the CamNano let her into the safehouse without being teased. “Just someone I had to talk to.”

  Kree nodded and sat in the box.

  “What are you, a cat?” Risa picked her up and set her on the bed. “All these clothes have to go in there.”

  “All of them?” asked Kree.

  “Yep. The entire floordrobe.” Risa grumbled in her head. As long as she crashed on her old cot in Garrison’s office, she’d have nowhere to put them. Not like she could ‘explode’ all over that room. “We can’t stay in this room anymore.”

  Kree flopped on her side. “Why?”

  “Because I am not going to hurt people with bombs.” Risa sat on the floor, grabbed the nearest bit of clothing, and folded it. “Down here, you have to do bad things to have your own bedroom.”

  “I don’t like bombs.” Kree stared down at her chest.

  Risa burst into tears before her thinking mind processed all the guilt she felt at those words. Two seconds more and I’d have killed her. I knew there’d always be casualties, but kids? And that was one bomb… how many innocent people did I catch in the blast zones of all the others? Street rats? Citizens? Workers? The cleaning people weren’t part of the war effort. Kree climbed out of the box and put a hand on her shoulder. How did I ever justify this?

  “I’m so sorry, Kree…” Risa wrapped the girl in a hug, clinging to her as if she were a giant doll. “I didn’t know you and your friends were in that tunnel. I didn’t know…”

  Kree waited for her sobbing to quiet. “I believe you.”

  Risa leaned back and looked her in the eye.

  “If you wanted to hurt us, you wouldn’t have gone back to turn it off.” Kree squirmed into a hug, resting her cheek against Risa’s neck. “It was a accident.”

  “I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” Risa squeezed her.

  “I know.” Kree stepped back and smiled.

  Sniffling, Risa wiped her face on the back of her arms, before resuming packing. A little over an hour later, the box approached full. Two small hands stuck a gauzy black skirt in. Risa smiled at a rather naked Kree, save for her favorite moon boots.

  “What are you doing?” Risa laughed.

  “You said all the clothes.” Kree looked up with an expression of complete innocence.

  “Not the ones you’re wearing, goof.” Risa plucked a small plum dress from the box and pulled it over the child’s head. “We need to do some shopping. You’ve only got two outfits.”

  Kree shrugged.

  Risa dug around the box. “Where’s your underpants?”

  “I burned them.”

  “What?” Risa blinked. The answer came too fast for it not to be true.

  “See-bee said I had them on so long I should burn them before they walk by themselves.” She shook her head. “I didn’t wan’ them to walk. Underpants shouldn’t be alive.”

  She buried her face in her hand. “It’s a figure of speech… he didn’t mean for you to light them on actual fire.”

  “Oh.” Kree looked down. “I’m sorry.”

  Risa dug out the girl’s leggings, and handed them over. “Put those on. Next time I go to civilization, I’ll get you some new things to wear.”

  “‘Kay.” Kree sat on the floor and kicked off her boots.

  For a minute, Risa looked around at the small, private room. Considering how long it had been assigned to her, she hadn’t spent much time here. Certainly, it never felt like home, or safe, or even a place she’d wanted to be. She’d only taken it out of a weak sense of tradition, or maybe some feeble tribute to Genevieve.

  She smiled. On the way back to the safehouse, she’d called her friend to relay the news the rigged detonator had never been meant for her personally. An enemy operative had been trying to strike at the MLF, regardless of who they killed. Genevieve had let off such a scream of relief that it hurt her ears even though they had nothing to do with hearing it. By now, she and Aurelia were probably out somewhere for a romantic evening.

  That got her thinking about Pavo.

  “Kree, honey… it’s not safe for us to stay here. Do you want to come with me outside?”

  “No.” Kree shook her head. “I don’t wanna go outside. I’m scared.”

  “I can―”

  “No!” shrieked Kree, before diving under the bed and wailing.

  Maybe Gen was right about knocking her out. “Okay… Okay… not now. Dinner time.”

  Sniffling.

  “Come out from under there. We’re only going down the hall.”

  Kree crawled out, stood, and stared at her with red-rimmed eyes. The look would’ve been appropriate if Risa had killed a cute furry animal in front of her. A lump grew in her throat. She picked up the box and carried it out into the hall. Kree followed her to the end of the corridor, down the curved ramp, across the command center, and down another passage to Garrison’s office. He wasn’t there, which meant a likely meeting with General Maris. Given Everett’s moratorium on operations, they hadn’t been doing much but sitting on their thumbs.

  Wonder what they’re discussing?

  She took Kree by the hand and walked her back to the common area where Genevieve had set off the ‘vindaloo incident.’ Osebi, Ralek, Donovan, and Huang sat at the round steel table. All picked at various forms of food. Osebi and Donovan played cards, while Ralek engaged Huang in a holographic versus match that seemed to combine chess with a fighting game. Whenever a ‘capture’ took place, the holograms grew to nine inches tall and played like a standard over-the-top punch up type game.

  Kree shadowed her to the ’sem, remaining silent as Risa dialed up two plates full of ‘chicken nuggets,’ and glided like a mini ghost back to the table. As soon as Risa sat, Kree crawled into her lap.

  “What’s dis I ’ear ’bout you goin’ inactive?” asked Osebi. He glanced at Donovan. “Two cards.”

  The other three men froze, hanging on her reply.

  “There’s no point feeding you dustblow. I’m done.” She tossed a nugget into her mouth.

  Kree bit two nuggets in half and pushed the remaining bits together in an attempt to re-form a whole one.

  “Done?” asked Donovan. He gave Osebi his cards, keeping his hand tucked against his chest while Risa got the eyebrow lift. “How can you just be ‘done’ like that?”

  Risa let out a silent sigh. “It’s complicated.”

  “Found out that angel of yours ain’t real, so you don’t feel ‘protected’ now? That it?” Donovan raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think we’re all not scared.”

  She nibbled the tip off a nugget. “That would be an easy explanation, but if I wanted to lie to you, I would’ve said that.”

  Osebi gave her a concerned look. “Ya still believin’ in dat ting?”

  Risa shook her head. “That’s not the part of it that would be the lie. Raziel’s a synth, not an angel.”

  “How come Donnyvan doesn’t talk funny?” Kree leaned her head back, staring up at her. “He looks like See-bee.”

  Both men chuckled.

  “Osebi talks like that because English isn’t the language he learned as a kid. He’s from… uhh, Earth. Donovan grew up on Mars.”

  “Nigeria,” said Osebi. “Tis nice most days, but I be allergic to bullets. Always be someone wantin’ ta take ovah. War all da time.”

  Ralek grinned. “So you joined the Front to get away from constant war. Great plan.” He moved a piece onto one of Huang’s. A scantily clad woman with nunchaku
squared off against Huang’s power-armor-encased Valkyrie.

  Donovan offered an almost apologetic shrug before patting Kree on the head. “I grew up in Secundus. No great stories here. Shit, I didn’t see a green plant until I was twenty-four.”

  Kree pointed at Huang’s character. “Her armor’s weak in back. If you get behind her, she takes double damage.”

  Huang glared at the child. “Don’t help him… he’s already winning.”

  “So… what’cha mean done?” asked Osebi.

  “I mean I’m done. No more bombs. That last mission was… too close.” She pushed nuggets around her plate.

  Osebi patted her shoulder. “We all told ya not ta go. Glad ye be in one piece.”

  She held back tears as she smiled; trying to talk would break her outward calm.

  “Eat my nuts,” yelled Huang.

  The Valkyrie lay ‘dead.’ After a two-second fanfare, she floated up off the table in a dazzling array of shimmering light and resumed her fighting stance. A tinny voice said, “Round 2. Fight!”

  Kree grabbed the controller away from Huang, leaving a nugget stuffed in her mouth. Ralek’s grin evaporated in eight seconds. Kree anticipated his attempt to jump behind her, and caught his nunchuck-bimbo with a rearward strike and cornerized her against the arena wall, beating his toon to the ground before he could so much as move it again.

  “That’s cheating!” yelled Ralek.

  “I didn’t cheat!” shouted Kree.

  “Not you.” He pointed at Huang. “Giving the controller to a little kid. Unfair advantage.”

  Risa laughed. “I’m… not sure what we’re doing is right anymore. Our ops never have the desired effect. The NewsNet always makes us out to look like terrorists. The war is no closer to being over than it was ten years ago. Even the people we’re trying to liberate think we’re criminals and killers.”

  The men murmured varying degrees of agreement.

  Ralek didn’t try to jump over the Valkyrie on round three. After twenty seconds of nickel-and-diming each other, Kree grabbed and judo-flipped his avatar whenever he blocked. The fourth time, Ralek snarled. He moved in to grab Kree’s character when she blocked, but she was faster and staggered him with a series of light pommel strikes from the power armor’s vibro-sword. Ralek managed to get a block going by the fifth tap, and Kree grabbed and threw him again. His scream of rage overpowered the game playing nunchuck-bimbo’s death wail.