“Uhh.” Pria’s Marsborn-white face tinted with blush. “Not what I meant. I mean… You’re walking away. How can you give up like that? We’ve gotta kick them off our planet.”
She threaded her arms around Kree, holding the girl close to her chest, and rested her chin atop her head. “You’re still young, Pria. You’re in that same pissed-off idealist mindset I had when I was seventeen. Don’t be so ready to give your life away to the war like I did.” Risa sighed. “At least, if you do… make sure you know what you’re fighting for. I’ve gotten into dozens of places, planted at least thirty charges… I can’t count how many people I’ve killed.” Tears ran down her cheeks.
“Stop crying in my hair,” said Kree, squirming.
Pria thrust her arm at the garage door. “But you killed the enemy! That’s how war works. One close call, one kid, and you forget all about the people of Mars?”
“You don’t know who I killed. I’m not even sure I do.” Risa closed her eyes. “You don’t see, do you? The people think we’re the bad guys. The NewsNet twists everything we do. It’s all dustblow anyway. The Martian Liberation Front is fake.”
“Fake?” Pria’s conviction seemed to waver with her voice. “What the fuck do you mean, fake?”
“We’re part of a military intelligence operation designed to allow the UCF to strike deep in ACC territory at questionable targets, targets they make look like civilian installations but are, in actuality, military. An overt combat action would trigger a media backlash on Earth, and they’d blame the UCF for murdering civilians. C-Branch invented the MLF to do what the government couldn’t.”
Pria froze as if she’d been slapped across the face.
“That’s why I’m getting out. I’m not angry anymore. I don’t know what to believe.”
“But…” Pria grabbed Risa’s shoulder. “If it’s all dustblow, what the fuck was up with the prison camp thing? Those sons of bitches kept me locked up for months! They treated us like total shit. Was that all ‘keeping up the illusion?’ Was leaving me in a freezing cell for two days with only chains on fake too?” She lifted her pant leg to show off a dark line around a stick-thin ankle. “I still have fucking scars from those shackles. You’re damn right I wanna blow some people to hell for that.”
“I don’t know. Nothing makes sense.” She relaxed her grip on Kree. “The people at the top, over Maris, are pulling strings in different directions. Maybe they rationalized it as survival training… trying to prepare you for what the ACC would do to you if you were captured. That whole team was too young… Maybe they wanted to scare you off.”
Pria growled. “I can’t believe this.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her eyebrow, as if trying to hold back a migraine. “Even if what you’re saying is true… that’s your answer? Run off an’ hide?”
“Yeah.” Risa powered up the Foxbat. “Hiding’s what I’m good at.”
“Don’t you care anymore?” Pria’s face went from pink to red.
“Look. You’ve got real skill with these machines. You don’t have to waste your life on being pissed off. I don’t know you. I don’t know where you came from or what’s lit the fire under your ass, but I do know you can get out before all of this collapses on top of us.”
“I grew up in T-84. Ever hear of it?” Pria walked between Risa’s Foxbat and the next, and leaned against the side.
“Can’t say I have.”
“It was a small settlement in Tharsis, maybe twenty families.”
Risa cringed. “Near the southern edge of UCF territory.”
“Yeah.” Pria looked away and folded her arms again. “Too close to the front lines. ACC hit us; guess they mistook us for military or didn’t care. We saw it coming, tried to call for help, but the UCF never bothered. Guess our town wasn’t ‘significant’ enough. Whoever survived the attack, mostly kids, got rounded up and locked in the generator building. Once the ACC realized T-84 was a shitty little settlement with no strategic value, the commander told them to kill us and pack it up.”
Risa scowled.
“We got lucky.” Pria covered her mouth for a moment, fighting tears. “The two men waited for the commander to walk out and shouted over the screaming and begging. They told us to be quiet like we were dead or they’d shoot us for real… and then they shot up the other side of the room. Couple hours later, we got out. I found my parents’ bodies. That was six years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” Risa guided Kree’s grip to the handlebars. “I won’t tell you what to do. I understand how you feel, really… I do. Before you sell your body to revenge, make damn sure it’s what you want. Once you get to where I am―if you even live that long―there’s no going back.”
Pria stared at the floor with an unreadable expression somewhere between sorrow and anger.
After a quiet moment, Risa squeezed the handlebars and drove forward, past the open doors and down a quarter-mile of tunnel to the Martian surface. Kree’s scream of fright became a squeal of delight as the wind and sun hit them. She drove around in lazy circles up and down hills, scrunching up her face whenever Kree’s hair blew into it. The sound of a little girl giggling took her far, far away from who she’d been.
For a little while, the war ceased to exist.
18
Ghost on the Wire
Martian dirt sprayed to either side as Risa steered into a tight, decelerating turn. Much to her surprise, Kree reacted to the outdoors with wide, eager eyes. Like a cat stuck in a moving car, she leaned from side to side, staring at everything.
A handful of dingy metal buildings covered in silt clustered in the distance by the ‘official’ entrance of Primus, lurking in the shadow of shuttle huge landing pad next to a terminal building full of elevators. When the city had been the main presence of human habitation on Mars, interplanetary shuttles landed on the dirt. No one had built an actual starport until Elysium. Primus got one about ten years after, and from here, it looked like a glorified camping stove, a raised metal surface you could put a thermogel can under and a pot on top of.
Of course, it was four miles away. Kree held on to the handlebars, shrieking with glee as they bounced over a run of head-sized rocks. Twenty-odd miles per hour felt scary fast without helmets. Risa had always wondered how the UCF managed not to find them when the safehouse connected to a manmade cave tunnel that led straight to the surface. Roughly two centuries ago, the shaft had been used for carting away the dirt and rock that once took up the interior of Primus. She’d guessed it too obvious a place to look, so they didn’t bother. Funny how so much started to make sense now.
They’ve known where we are the whole time. Risa glanced down at Kree. Fuck it. I’m driving to Elysium. I’ll deal with the panic attack later.
The child giggled as they crested a small hill with enough speed to make it feel like a jump, though the wheels never left the surface. She plotted a route in her headware so Kree wouldn’t see the screen. At current speed, their estimated arrival showed as seven hours. Shit. What am I doing? I promised myself I wouldn’t trick her.
She steered down an incline, feathering the brakes to keep from going too fast. Kree held her hands up, reveling in the breeze.
“This is fun,” yelled Kree.
Not so fun when you’re stuck on one of these things for three days. “I’m happy to see you smiling.”
“What’s that?” Kree pointed at the sun.
Risa tried to explain as best she could. Kree asked about the gradient shades of blue and indigo in the sky, and got a basic overview of terraforming. Wind-driven bands of different atmospheric compositions, a blending process that would take decades before an Earthlike atmosphere covered the entirety of Mars. Primus sat under one of the major downdrafts from the North Polar Region where most of the terraforming machines were. A few miles south, and the wind diffused into the ambient atmosphere too much to breathe.
Beep. An incoming call flashed in the top-left of her vision, an icon with Tamashī’s face.
「He
y.」 Risa smiled at the apparition of her friend. The smile faded in seconds under the weight of a pleading stare. Despite knowing she looked at a forty-something woman inside a body subjected to enough nanosurgery to make her look thirteen, her friend’s expression triggered motherly protective instincts. 「What’s wrong?」
「I need your help, or I’m gonna die.」
Risa stopped the Foxbat, set her feet on the dirt, and stared at Tamashī. 「Whoa, slow down. Is that teenager ‘I’m going to die,’ or are you being serious?」
「Serious die.」
「Okay. What do you need?」
Kree twisted around to look up. “Why’d you stop?”
“Tamashī called. One minute, kiddo.” Risa pointed up at an incoming inter-city shuttle.
“Wow!” Kree stared.
Tamashī shivered. 「I have two ways out of getting my head cut off. I’m pretty sure you’re not going to want to help with one of them so, please come over. I need a second brain for a net job. Either that, or could you do me a huge favor and kill off the entire executive team of Míngtiān Corporation? You’d umm, have to go to China, but I’d hack your ticket.」
Risa blinked.
「Didn’t think so.」 Tamashī smiled for a nanosecond. 「I cost them a couple billion credits a few years ago and they finally found me. Offered to buy me from the Syndicate, or pay them to kill me slow. Walsh said he agreed to protect me, and doesn’t want to go back on his word, but that means I gotta do this job… and I can’t do it alone.」
「Tamashī… I’m not a deck jockey. I dabble. It would be like me taking Kree on a job for the MLF and expecting her to help.」
A whirlwind of dust and tiny stones pelted them as the shuttle passed a few hundred yards overhead. Kree held her ears, guarding against the roar of ion engines. Risa closed her eyes; only Tamashī remained against a field of endless black.
「It’s not that bad. This network has a particular type of construct that’s impossible for one person to get past. All I need you for is killing programs. Another body so I don’t get overrun. I’ll do all the heavy lifting; you just kill stuff.」
「You want me to kill programs?」
「Yeah. Not people.」
「Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.」 Once Tamashī’s digital apparition faded, she leaned down over Kree. “I have to go help a friend. It’s like playing video games. She’s in Elysium. Do you want to go with me?”
“Do I have to?” Kree shivered.
Risa debated saying yes, but caved in to the power of wide blue eyes. “Only if you want to.”
The child sniveled and looked down.
“Okay. It’s all right.” Risa kissed her on top of the head. I’m not bringing her to a Syndicate hotel. “You can stay with Garrison.”
Kree nodded.
She turned the Foxbat, and drove back to the cave, cursing in her head over and over about caving in, Tamashī’s bad timing, and still being no closer to getting her child out of the safehouse. Kree hid her face in her hands once no trace of daylight remained behind them. The child trembled against Risa’s chest until they pulled in to the motor pool garage, at which point she seemed comfortable again.
Pria hadn’t moved from her sidesaddle perch on the other ATV. Clean streaks in the grease on her face betrayed dried tears. Risa parked the quad, picked Kree up, and looked at the teen.
“Hey,” muttered Pria.
“You okay?” asked Risa.
Pria shrugged. “If you had a wish, would you go back to seventeen and do shit different?”
Risa shook her head. “No.”
The girl blinked, confused.
“I’d go back to seven and stay the hell away from this war.” She shifted Kree to a better grip. “But my life isn’t yours. What do you think would make your parents happiest?”
Pria laughed out a few more tears. “Not getting myself killed.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Risa winked at Pria, took Kree’s hand, and headed off to Garrison’s room.
One hour and six minutes later, Risa waved at the black metal skeleton lurking in the corridor outside Tamashī’s room at the Orbital Hotel, and went in. Her friend sat under a pile of blankets and pillows as if hiding from the ‘closet monster.’
“Risa!” Tamashī leapt from the bed in a spray of pillows, almost climbing out of her knee-length white T-shirt in the process, and tackle-hugged her. “I’m so scared. Walsh is gonna hand me over to Míngtiān if I don’t get this done.” A few trembling seconds later, she sat on the edge of the Comforgel pad, shaking. “Do you think Walsh will keep his word? I mean, what’s to stop them from handing me over even if I do this?”
“For some of the things they do, I want to kill every last one of them… but, they do have this odd sense of honor. I know it sounds completely fucked up, but I’d trust what they say more than the government.”
Tamashī scrunched up her nose. “They sell orphans into prostitution, do contract murders, trade in drugs, extort money from corporations.”
“That’s different from government how?” Risa sighed. “There is one difference. The Syndicate doesn’t try to hide what they are.”
“The government doesn’t grab kids off the street and make them whores.” Tamashī scooted onto her bed and uncovered two net decks from the pile of pink blankets.
“No, not in so many words. But lack of infrastructure and support plus so many war orphans basically forces them into it anyway.” Risa examined the silver slab in front of her. “I hope you know what you’re doing here. I’m going to feel like dead weight.”
Tamashī smiled. “It’ll be easy. That’s a Nishihama Netspider. It’s optimized for data combat and ghosting. All you have to do is attack something like you’re used to in the real world. I set up all the combat routines to feel like using claws with Kung Fu and a bit of Aikido. Everything should feel natural. Oh, if you wanna borrow a shirt go ahead. You probably don’t want to wear that suit while we’re in. It doesn’t breathe.”
“Right.” Steeping in her own sweat didn’t seem like an awesome idea. After a quick run to the bathroom, Risa stripped out of her ballistic stealth suit and slipped into a red knee-length tee with a psychotic cartoon bunny rabbit holding giant rocket-pistols. “The sleepover from hell.”
She lay sideways across the foot of the bed, pulled her hair away from her neck, and plugged the asterisk-shaped prong into the M3 port behind her left ear. An instant later, she felt as though the bed opened into a bottomless void, into which she plummeted headfirst.
Several seconds of falling/flying later, the darkness in front of her exploded in a kaleidoscope of vibrant color. A loud sonic boom came with a white flash, and she wound up lying flat on a surface that looked like a Comforgel pad stretched to the horizons. She looked down at herself: a black and violet lace corset made her modest boobs look a cup size larger. Around her waist, she had a gauzy skirt like the one she’d worn to sneak into Iniquity. It bared most of her thighs, only this one had glowing purple sparkles instead of black glitter.
“What on Mars?” The tiny, squeaky voice made her grab her throat. “What the fuck?”
A reverberating bellow came from the left―a slowed down, twisted version of Tamashī laughing. Risa looked to her right at a knee the size of a small house. Tamashī, in the guise of a nine-year-old ninja girl with cat ears, towered over her like a ten-story building.
“Okay, what gives?” Risa thought about standing, and found herself hovering on indigo faerie wings. “Oh, great. I’m three inches tall. Wonderful.”
Tamashī apparently couldn’t handle the squeaky voice and doubled over laughing.
Risa folded her arms and tapped her bare foot on nothing. “I can deal with Goth Faerie, but can I at least be normal sized?”
A minute or two later, Tamashī recovered her composure and sat up. “Okay.” Her expression shifted contemplative.
“Eep.” Risa squeaked as the room shrank around her, fast enough to make her cringe. When she risk
ed a peek, everything appeared normal in terms of size, including Tamashī, who looked only a touch bigger than Kree. “You’re adorable.”
Tamashī hopped off the bed. “Thanks, but cute isn’t going to work for this job.” The child-sized ninja expanded to a seven-foot-tall cloud of diaphanous black vapor with two silver glimmers in the approximate shape of eyes near the top. Her voice changed from that of a little girl to a glassy, scratchy whisper that sent icy shivers down Risa’s spine. “Back to my original avatar. Tamashī means ‘spirit’ or ‘soul.’” A wispy shadow-finger traced ‘魂’ in midair. “Saw some drawings of this thing when I was sneaking around the Division Zero database on Earth. It’s supposed to be a ‘harbinger’ or something like that. Sounded scary as hell.”
“So what are we doing?” Risa thought about popping claws, and sure enough, her fingers sprouted blades. Only in cyberspace, instead of transparent synthetic diamond, glowing purple light stretched out to seething edges two-feet long. “Damn.”
She waved them around, mesmerized by the luminous trails they left behind in the air.
“We are breaking in to RedEx’s network to insert shipping documentation for stuff the Syndicate needs to transport. Hiding it as legitimate cargo.”
Risa retracted the laser claws. She felt fine until she glanced at Tamashī. Her mind blanked from the visage of infinite darkness creeping toward her. Flickering mercury eyes pierced her soul; dread clutched her heart in an icy hand, crushing, freezing the blood in her veins. For two seconds, she forgot how to breathe―then let off a scream of terror.
“Oh, shit. Sorry.” The billowy wraith cringed. “I gotta set up an exception for you. I’m running a program that causes other avatars’ decks to tweak a fear response by stimulating the amygdala.”
The strange fear vanished as fast as it had manifested.
“Whoa. That’s… so twisted.” Risa concentrated on stopping the involuntary trembles in her legs. “Look. If you’re hiding human trafficking, just book me a flight to China and tell me who needs to die.”
Ghost Black Page 22
