“Someone tracked your order,” said the NetMini.
“Dammit. Who?” Kirsten crawled through puffs of powderized concrete chasing bullets through the wall above her.
“How should I know? I’m a NetMini, not a GlobeNet Neural Interface Deck.”
Kirsten scrambled to her feet as a lull in the shooting came. The sneakers made her feel faster. A short sprint later, she ducked behind a crashed hovercar embedded in the wall of an abandoned building. The ground in the area was etched and pitted by Cryomil that long-ago leaked from the wreckage. With one hand keeping the E-90 pointed at the window, she climbed through and seized her NetMini in her left hand.
“Where is my backup?”
“I have no idea,” it said. “I’m not on the department network, all I can do is make vid calls.”
“Did you call them?”
It made a soft chirp. “System logs do not show an ack.”
“Ack?” Kirsten blinked. “How did you not get an ack? You sent it?”
“The most likely scenario― “
Kirsten fired at the first orb to show itself.
“―is that the transmission was intercepted.”
She glared at the wounded orb spinning out of control. It tried to re-aim, but the damage kept it moving in the flight of a drunken moth. The bot had been a difficult shot before, now it was futile to try given her sense of skill with the weapon. At least the erratic movement ruined its aim as much as it prevented her from hitting it.
“Memory dial six,” said Kirsten.
“Calling,” said the NetMini.
“Patrol craft,” added Kirsten’s recorded voice.
Her chosen ‘ringing’ animation of a prancing white cat bounded across thin air in hologram for a little more than sixteen seconds before she heard the standard departmental voicemail announcement. Command did not permit personnel to customize the vidmail greeting in their patrol units, both for reasons of personal security as well as making it easier to trade assigned vehicles.
“Dorian? Are you there? Please tell me I left the damn speaker on. If you can hear this, I need a hand. Getting chased by a damn hacker and his pet bots.”
Static.
“Dammit.” She gazed at the indigo smog above her, lined with glowing green-white threads of hovercar traffic and ad-bots. I could beacon for him but… no way, not calm enough. Shit!
Another orb poked out of the window. She fired, chasing it back inside. It tried again, with the same result. The third time, it popped up and right back down. She held her fire. The damn thing is baiting me… why?
She spun at the sudden whine of a hover-inducer behind her, facing to the rear as another orb careened around the corner. Not bothering to shoot, it flew straight into her gut. She crumpled over it, carried into the air several feet before she slid away and fell onto the dead hovercar.
Despite being stunned and winded from the hit, she retained the presence of mind to hold on to her weapon. The orb continued to rise; unaware it lost its passenger for several more seconds. When it did, it flipped over and rocketed down. Kirsten flung her arm across her body, using the momentum to initiate a roll to the side. The fifteen-pound solid plastisteel ball smashed into the hood, denting it, and bouncing her to the street. She wanted to curl in a fetal position and cradle her stomach. Normal breathing felt like a distant pleasant memory at that moment.
Damn thing must be out of ammo. She forced herself onto her back and had the E-90 up and ready when the orb leapt at her for another try. Her aim was a split second slow. The shot gashed the side of it open, knocking the sphere into a wide spark-trailing arc that glanced off the building across the alley with a bell-like clang. Unable to fly any more, it swiveled to face her on the ground. She let her arm fall to the side, almost laying on the traction-coated driving surface. The trigger squeeze caused nothing. The readout showed the E-mag at two percent charge; not enough juice for the powerful laser core to get even one more shot.
“Shit.” She rolled upright.
Running again, she took the first left, went one block and a half and skidded through the next possible right. Two orbs waited for her, causing her to squeak to a halt on her new sneakers. With a startled yelp, she leapt back before they could shoot and continued straight. The orbs chased her around the corner, weapons extended but not firing.
A lone orb foiled her next attempt at a left turn in a similar manner. Another pair emerged from a street two blocks distant, forcing her to turn right. No orbs blocked that path and she sighed with relief until another one came out of an alley and caused a rapid left turn. Leaping over trash piles, Kirsten screamed at her NetMini.
“Siri, please get me some backup. Division 1, Five, Six, hell, even goddamn Nine. I don’t care, get someone out here!”
“I’m sorry, Kirsten. There is a lot of signal interference here. You’re off the map now, the closest relay point is approximately 1.44 miles to your relative northwest.”
“I’m in a damn black zone?”
“I’m sorry, Kirsten. There is no navigational information available for your current GPS location.”
“I’m in a damn black zone.” Kirsten all but shrieked as another sudden orb forced her to turn.
Panic lessened a dozen paces later, enough for her brain to reboot. Why aren’t they shooting anymore? They can’t all be out of ammo. It’s like… She stumbled to a slow jog. They’re herding me somewhere specific. She clung to her empty weapon for security. “They could’ve hit me, I bet. They’re trying to get me to go somewhere… What the hell is going on?”
“Eleven point three percent of victims of stranger-initiated sexual assault survive. Your odds will increase to seventy-three point nine percent if you inform your attacker you are a police officer.”
“Gee…” Kirsten gawked at her purse. “Thanks, Siri.”
“If you are being pursued by an organ-harvester, your odds of survival are somewhat less. Would you like to hear the―”
“No thanks.” She came to a halt and stuffed the empty weapon back in the purse.
Alone, off net, and with no charge left in her only E-mag, Kirsten surprised herself at how little fear she felt. For a few seconds, she entertained the fantasy of having ordered additional E-mags instead of clothing better suited for running and gunning with bots in the middle of a slum. As long as there was a living person behind this attack, she still had mind blast.
She was not going to be anyone’s victim.
Bullets danced across the ground, a shot obvious in its deliberate miss. Her brain figured that out a few seconds after she resumed running for her life. Okay, asshole. Fine, you want me, I got somethin’ for you. She went around another corner, ushered by the orbs through a series of turns until she found herself at the opening of a dead-end alley packed with trash-crushers. Spent autoinjectors covered the street in a glittering Christmas patina of red and green plastic. The area stank of chemicals and human waste; the aroma of synthetic booze and vomit was noticeable on every third breath.
“Alright, shithead. I’m here.” Kirsten folded her arms, scanning the alley for any sign of movement.
Given the surroundings, she expected organized crime or a gang. They probably saw me in that slinky thing and thought I was a damn call girl.
“Come on out, already. I’m not a damn escort, and I’m not at all interested in working for you.”
Her voice echoed. The orbs filled in behind her, all four of them, still not shooting. She gave them a dismissive smirk until she noticed the tiny clicking noises they made. They were still trying to shoot her; they had run out of bullets.
A loud metallic thud made her spin forward, as the sound of wrenching metal broke the silence. Two trash-crushers skidded to the side and tumbled over, flung out of the path of a spider-bot with a body as big as a car. A rotary cannon emerged from its back and blades extended from its two front legs, raised like the chelicerae of a massive tarantula.
No surface thoughts. Nothing to mind blast.
&
nbsp; Time seemed to slow as she whirled away from it in search of anywhere to dive for cover. She faced into blinding light coming at her fast. Arms crossed over her face, she threw herself to the ground amid the roar of a machinegun. Heat just shy of painful bloomed over her from above while the clatter of eighty rounds per second struck armor plating. A great concussive smash shook the air in the dead end.
Silence.
At the jangling of a small metal rod upon the ground, Kirsten’s head popped out from under her arms. The orbs were nowhere in sight. Hissing came from behind her, where a Division 0 patrol craft sat at the center of a cloud of fog and fumes. Ion drives shot lightning across the plastisteel from where the emitter ports touched the ground. The electricity flickered azure through the rolling mist. At the nose end, a mangled heap of metal spider legs curled over the hood. Dorian emerged through the closed door, jogging to her side. He crouched, the strain visible in his expression as he summoned the energy to become solid enough to wipe a trickle of blood from her chin.
“Am I going to have to start following you around?”
Her attempt to laugh hurt. “Guess you got my vidmail.”
“Yeah. This car’s getting quite the body count. A demon, a ninja, now a tarant bot.”
Kirsten would’ve laughed if it didn’t hurt so much.
She forced herself to stand, cradling an arm over her stomach as she leaned the other on the wall for support. Dorian opened his mouth as if to speak when the patrol craft shifted and slid backwards with a horrible scraping metal screech. Kirsten leapt backwards, not enough air remained in her lungs to voice the scream she tried to loft. Red lights and a menacing posture lent a sense of anger to the massive arachno-bot. The crash had reduced the barrels of the rotary cannon to a twisted ruin that flew to pieces when it tried to spin them up. Only the vibro blade-tipped legs remained for weapons. Kirsten swiped at Dorian, trying to cling to him as her body reacted with primitive terror.
Dorian glanced at it, his eyebrows drawing together in an unimpressed glare. A wisp of pale energy surrounded him for an instant and faded. The giant machine took a step closer before it shuddered, swayed, and collapsed to the ground―drained of power. One vibro blade flapped at them. He squinted, and the mass of metal went limp. He shook his head as if perturbed by the interruption.
Kirsten giggled, forcing herself solid to spirits before falling into him. He carried her to the car and waited for the automatic door to open. Alas, without the armband computer of her uniform, it did not recognize her.
“I’m not that messed up,” she said, reaching for the handle.
Dorian eased her into the driver’s seat, where she nudged the still-active car two feet straight up so she could extend the ground wheels before even closing her door.
“ Ops, this is Agent Wren. I need backup to my location… and a medic.” Kirsten let herself breathe for a moment before poking at the car’s comm. panel. Evan’s face appeared in hologram in the middle of the console.
“Mom!”
She hated the look on his face. He had obviously seen blood. “I’m fine, hon. Are you okay? Nila said you were upset.”
Now he looked embarrassed. “I was scared. I had a bad dream,” he whispered, no doubt trying to prevent Nila or Shani from hearing. “I nightmared Cappin Ezzeh was tellin’ me something bad happened to you.”
Son of a bitch, he’s a precog. Kirsten shivered. He’s gotta be. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Someone tried to hurt me, but they didn’t know who they were dealing with. I’m fine.”
He wiped his eyes. It took a few minutes―and the sound of approaching sirens―to convince him to let her off the line.
“He’s a precog, Dorian. Evan had a dream about me dying.”
Dorian cocked an eyebrow at her. “Precogs see the future for anyone, almost at random. The boy’s seeing danger in your future. Such things have been known to happen with clairvoyants without predisposition to precognitive ability.”
Kirsten could not stop shaking. “If he’s a precog, C-Branch is gonna take him in the middle of the night.”
“Now you’ve been watching too many fiction holos.” Dorian held her hand. “Chief Carter can overrule anyone other than the Senate when it comes to matters of psionics. Don’t panic yet. So far, it’s only been you he’s had dreams about. Guess it means he loves you.”
She smiled through tears. “Yeah, you’re right. They didn’t find precognitive aptitude when they ran his battery. It’s gotta be clairvoyance.”
“Most likely.” Dorian glanced to the right as several Division 1 patrol craft landed, lights aglow. “It is well documented that clairvoyants with a strong emotional bond to a person will feel it when the person is in danger. A precog would’ve seen it a week ago, not shared it while it happened.”
“Agent?” asked an armored woman to her left.
Kirsten squinted at the mounted lights on the helmet and shoulder pads pointing at her. “Yeah. Some asshat sent an army of killer bots after me. No, I don’t have any idea who or why, but I am going to find out―even if I have to invoke the dead to do so.”
“Umm. Medic, over here.” The Patrol officer stood up and leaned on the door. “Think she took a shot to the head.”
irsten traced her fingers over the four E-mags on the left side of her silver equipment belt as she stood behind Tech Chang in the network operations section of the Regional Tech Center. A jogging suit and sneakers had felt like putting on tangible confidence; her duty uniform made her feel superhuman. Fear and humiliation had gone down the drain of the autoshower following twenty minutes in a tube to repair whatever ruptured in her gut from the kamikaze orb. She had not paid attention to the doctor’s explanation―a combination of not caring to know and being too happy to be out of pain.
Kirsten glanced around while Sam worked, raising an eyebrow at a dozen incense cones on the workstation of the arrogant tech two desks over. The look on her face caused a chuckle from the pink-haired woman across the room.
Sam looked up. “He’s trying paganism this week. I’m not sure who did what to his system, but he’s convinced it’s possessed. Something happened to it he could not explain from a technical standpoint.”
Dorian laughed himself silly.
“Got something, Agent,” said Sam.
She stooped over his shoulder to look at the screen. He sat motionless, staring at her face. When he said nothing in a minute, she looked at him. They stared at each other for a moment more. He risked a smile. Kirsten felt guilty.
“Sam? Thanks for helping me out here; I hope you don’t think I’m taking advantage of you or anything.”
“No…” his face snapped forward, blushing. “I was just thinking of the dinner you mentioned a while ago. We, umm.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been very busy lately.” She picked at the bracelet. “I’m not trying to play with you, Sam. I meant that. We’ll go out. I just need to find time.” She leaned on the desk as a pang of nausea swam through her gut.
“What was that?” asked Dorian.
“I had a fifteen-pound orb bot fly at full speed into my stomach. Doc said I might feel pains here and there for a few days even though everything is fixed.”
“I got a signal lock on those bots.” Sam shook off his puppy-eyed stare and lapsed into professional mode. “I was able to filter out the signal from two dozen advert bots. Whoever did it routed the control signal through the GlobeNet into ComTec’s private network. Through that, they used the ad-bots as a citywide antenna. It didn’t affect ComTec’s operations. Even if they noticed it, I doubt they would have cared.”
“They’d have asked him to pay for the bandwidth, but let him do it,” she grumbled.
“Convinced it’s a man? It’s a hacker. You could be chasing a woman or even a little kid.”
Kirsten went stiff.
Dorian rocked back on his heels. “No, they’re not going to execute a kid for trying to kill a cop, but I still wouldn’t want to be them. Relax. Most kid hackers don
’t do the assassination thing.”
She shook her head and looked at the terminal. “That the address?”
“Yep,” said Sam.
“You’re awesome.” She kissed him on the cheek, leaving him limp in the chair as she ran to the door.
“Nicole,” yelled Kirsten, sprinting through their office area. “You bored enough to go tactical with me?”
“Huh, what?” She peeled pink and white Hello Kitty headphones off, the last birthday gift Kirsten had gotten her. “Did you say something?”
Kirsten jogged past her, shouting. “I’m going tactical, wanna come along?”
“You know it!” chirped Nicole, chasing her friend into the locker room.
Kirsten had just about stripped out of all the hard bits: belt, arm guard, boots, in preparation for donning Psi Armor when Eze rushed through the door. Nicole had stripped down to her underwear and had one leg in a mesh stim-suit when she gave him a stare like a child caught stealing cookies.
“Wren, what’s going on?” Eze halted nearby, hands held out in an inquisitive gesture.
Undeterred, Kirsten pulled leg plates out of a locker. “Tech got a fix on the shithead that sent those bots to kill me. I’m going after him.”
“K, you should put a stim-suit on.” Nicole shrugged the mesh over her shoulders and pulled the zipper up.
Kirsten stared at the five flat cartridges held tight to Nicole’s bare skin. “I got stimpaks on my belt. No time.”
“Yeah but these”―Nicole tapped one of them― “go off automatically when you get the shit kicked out of you.”
“ Fine.” Kirsten dropped the armor and slipped out of her Division 0 blacks.
Eze turned ninety degrees to his left to avoid the impression he was staring at two women in their underwear. “Are you sure you don’t want to leave this to One? They can handle a hacker.”
Nicole skipped the uniform, going right for the armor. At the look Kirsten gave her, she laughed. “The armor is enclosed, plus it’s damn hot. It’s like wearing two uniforms. You’d know that if you wore it every damn day.”
Division Zero: Thrall Page 16
