by M. D. Cooper
said Maggie.
Her lungs were really hurting. The compulsion to breathe was so strong, she had to clamp her lips shut to prevent herself from inhaling. Then, all of a sudden, a sense of peacefulness began to invade her.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to just stay under the water forever. Memories from Isa’s early life began to play in her inner vision. Scenes from growing up on the mining platform, hearing about things like sunshine and fresh, clean air—as much as you wanted and all for free—but not being able to really imagine what they were like. She remembered the moment her father died, struck down young by lung disease. She remembered the miners’ long, terrifying escape aboard the Hyperion, and the joy when they reached Victoria. She remembered stepping from the Intrepid’s pinnace onto the soil of Carthage, and finally feeling like she was home.
Home.
She wanted to go home. Suddenly, she knew what was wrong with her life. She wanted the chance to put it right.
Isa’s lips had been about to part. She clamped them tightly together. She wasn’t going to drown. She was going to return to Carthage. She wasn’t going to give it up. Focusing once more on her surroundings, Isa saw the bubbles again. They were all traveling in one direction.
They were going up. All she had to do was follow the bubbles.
With the last of her strength, Isa kicked hard. A moment later, her head burst through into sweet, rain-filled air. She gasped for breath. The rescue vessel was gone. No, it wasn’t. Though she couldn’t see it, she could hear it. She twisted in the water. The pinnace was behind her. Maggie was still swinging beneath it in her basket, her head weaving as she anxiously searched the water.
Isa shouted, but the noise of the storm drowned her out. She began to swim over. Delight suffusing her face, Maggie spotted her moments later.
“Got you,” Maggie said as Isa reached the basket, and the woman’s strong arms hauled her aboard.
Isa floundered on the bottom of the basket, probably looking very undignified.
“You had me very worried for a while there,” Maggie said. “We’ve never lost anyone yet. I certainly didn’t plan on breaking that streak today.” As she spoke, the basket was rising into the pinnace, swinging in the still-strong wind. “How are you feeling? Any pain anywhere?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m just cold.”
“We have something in the ship for that. And here we are.” They’d reached the interior of the craft. “Let me help you out.”
The hatch slid shut and the sides of the baskets collapsed. As Isa’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness and her ears adjusted to the absence of the rush of the wind and rain, she realized she was surrounded by twenty or thirty rescued surfers. They were all sipping from mugs as they chatted. No one she knew was among them. She contacted Usef quickly to let him know she’d been picked up.
Maggie gave her a hot mug of a steaming liquid. When Isa sipped it, warmth spread out from her mouth, throat, and stomach.
Usef chuckled.
Isa knew better than to ask for any details.
TARGET
STELLAR DATE: 12.05.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Island of Cyprus, near Thrace
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Nathan had become a thing of dark places.
His newly transformed state made him stand out, yet he couldn’t risk being noticed and approached, possibly asked to identify himself. Any attention he attracted could be the end of his anonymity. He was no longer able to access the Link, which made him invisible to Carthage’s planetary management AI. Anyone who saw him face-to-face and tried to find his information would draw a blank. His retinas were no longer readable, and his breath signature was no longer human. All these factors marked him as highly suspicious. He was an anomaly in civilized society.
He was a freak.
By day, Nathan remained hidden. He had no need for water or food, so he was content to remain in the same place all day, squatting down in an unused stairwell or beneath a maglev, biding his time. At night, when darkness concealed his movements, he would seek out and steal the things he would soon need. He had only a short time before the picotech would be deployed once more, according to the prediction of Myrrdan’s agent.
Carthage was home to no true thieves aside from him, so people were careless about putting away their equipment and locking doors at the end of the day. As such, Nathan encountered no difficulties in his small, petty thefts.
After all but one item on his list was gathered, he would walk in the shadows, no longer requiring sleep, his metal feet clunking on the sidewalk, his weight testing the pavers’ strength. It was during these journeys that he discovered the range of capabilities Myrrdan’s agent had granted him. He estimated his vision to have vastly improved. His night vision was as clear as it was during the day, only lacking color. He could see great distances at high definition. Once, during the daytime, when no one else was around, he had left his hiding place and looked into the heart of Canaan Prime. He found that he could do so without flinching.
Nathan also estimated that his strength had increased a minimum of tenfold. Solid metal would give under his grip, and he could leave large hand prints in surfaces that would normally only yield to heavy tools. The strength of his legs had increased by a similar amount. He could leap onto the roofs of two-story buildings with ease, though of course he never attempted this feat by daylight. At night, exercising his abilities helped to pass the solitary hours.
One night, curious about the extent of the transformation of his respiratory system, Nathan walked into a lake that bordered the town. His great feet sank deeply into the mud until he was buried up to his knees. His legs accepted the sticky, clinging challenge of the mud, and met it easily, forcing their way through the slime. Eventually, Nathan’s large, oddly shaped head sank beneath the water’s surface. Instantly, his altered respiratory system adjusted to the change and began to extract the dissolved gas he required from the water.
The fact that he still needed oxygen helped to reassure hi
m. Some of his body remained organic. A part of him held onto the wishful hope that, inside, plenty of organic parts remained. He clung to the idea that some part of him was the original Nathan Hart, the security operative who had made the long journey from Sirius to New Canaan. His brain, and perhaps some of his other organs were intact, he hoped, though not his heart. He was sure that his heart was gone.
Was he still a human being? He did not know. Most of his body and his thoughts were given over to the single goal of stealing the picotech and earning Myrrdan’s regard, but somewhere deep inside he had a sense of identity. Deeper than that, though, so deep he was mostly never even remotely conscious of it, a tiny sliver of Nathan’s free will lived still, entombed and silenced by a suffocating overlay of control that had been imposed long ago, somewhere on Victoria.
Only once during his long nights of wandering did Nathan come close to being discovered. He was at a place like the Party Field in the early hours of the morning. He did not know why he had gone there. A vague memory of a kindness someone had once shown stirred him, and his feet led him to the long grass and wildflowers that he could no longer smell. When he was deep within the field, far from the street lights and any sight or sound of human beings, he halted. In the darkness he stood, like a small tree, only his bulk did not waver in the breeze.
What remained of his mind slowly turned. He assessed his progress and considered how to achieve the one thing left to do. After that, he had only to wait until he was called. When the time came, Myrrdan’s agent would find him. He did not know how. Perhaps the person had implanted a tracker along with all the other technology somewhere within him. When the agent came, he would receive his final instructions. Then his task would begin.
As Nathan turned over the facts, he became oblivious to his surroundings. He didn’t realize until it was too late that people were drawing closer to him. By the time he was aware of their soft voices and footsteps muffled in the grass, they were close by. The couple was so near that if he left his position within the small grove, he would be quickly discovered. He could only hope they would pass by without entering.
Evidently, they had brought their pet, and the animal preceded them, racing into the grove where Nathan stood. The creature—he could not remember the name of the species, his memory and knowledge had been cleaned of trivial data—was immediately aware of Nathan’s presence. It ran up to him, its fur sticking up, and made its animal noises.
Nathan had to come to a decision quickly on how to react. Now that the couple’s animal had found him, they were sure to enter the grove and also discover his presence. They would be alarmed by his appearance, and if they recognized him as human, they might ask for his identity. They would try to find him on the Link. Then they would raise an alarm.
He would be discovered, reported, and Myrrdan’s plan would fail. Nathan could not allow that to happen. He stooped, picked up the animal, broke it, and threw it high over the trees so that it landed on the other side of the grove. The animal yelped once when he broke it, and again when it landed. The couple, expressing concern and fear, went in the direction of the second yelp.
While they were lamenting over their dead animal, Nathan left the trees in the opposite direction and walked away into the night.
He had left the most difficult task for last. Stealing and hiding an armored vehicle would be challenging. The information Myrrdan’s agent had left explained that he possessed the capability to disconnect any vehicle he could access from the planetary networks.
It was the accessing of a vehicle that would prove difficult. These were not odd items or tools that were left unsecured at the end of the working day; only the military possessed armored, weaponized vehicles, and even on friendly, safe Carthage, they were appropriately guarded.
Yet Myrrdan’s agent thought that this kind of vehicle could be essential to his task. Though his new body was strong and no doubt capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers over land and under the sea, a vehicle would allow him to travel farther faster, and allow him a degree of anonymity.
Nathan went to the military compound under cover of darkness. Lurking in the shadows nearby, he listened to the guards’ conversations. He was too far away for any ordinary human to hear their words, but his enhanced hearing picked up every syllable.
Hours passed, but Nathan was patient. Sleep never called to him, and his body could maintain the same position indefinitely without aches or cramps. Waste no longer built up in his digestive or urinary system to require excretion, for the simple reason that he no longer possessed a digestive or urinary system. A solid shadow within deeper shadows, he stood and listened until he finally he heard what he was waiting for.
“Only half an hour until Lin’s back from perimeter patrol,” a guard said. “I can’t wait. I’m falling asleep where I stand.”
“It’s Lin relieving you, is it?”
“Yeah. I hate night duty.”
Nathan watched carefully which guard spoke. He waited a while longer until, a little over twenty-five minutes later, another guard appeared at the far end of the compound’s fence. The guard who had expressed his tiredness and impatience shifted his position, readying himself to depart. From the overheard conversation, Nathan understood that if the restless guard’s replacement was on his way, that meant the perimeter of the compound was momentarily unguarded.
For the first time in many hours, Nathan moved. He deployed nano-countermeasures to mask his body from scan, and began his approach. Clinging to the edges of the street where the light didn’t penetrate, he made his way to the far end of the compound. Checking that no guard was looking in his direction, he stepped across the road and slipped around the corner into the wild area that bordered the compound. Confident now that he had at least a few minutes’ freedom to work, he ran to the compound’s rear, where the assault vehicles were parked in perfectly neat, straight lines.
The perimeter fence was primed to deliver an electric shock to any living thing that touched it, and though Nathan was mostly non-living, the charge was great enough that it could disrupt his new body. He considered jumping the fence; though it was high, he estimated that he could achieve the feat. He preferred not to take the risk, however. His landing would be noisy. Instead, he activated his a-grav system.
Unlike the packs that regular human beings used to defeat the pull of the planet, Nathan’s system was incorporated into his body. To become weightless required only a thought command.
Nathan walked from the surrounding wild brush into the cleared space that surrounded the fence. No guard was in sight, though perhaps a camera Linked to an AI had already seen him. If that was the case, he guessed that he had less than a minute. He activated his a-grav. Immediately, his heavy body lifted into the air. Within a second, he was at the top of the fence. A touch of his boosters sent him over it. Reducing his a-grav sent him gently to the ground. Nathan’s metal legs bent on impact, then flexed as his balance returned.
He thudded across to the nearest vehicle and laid a hand on it, sending breach nano flooding into the vehicle and bringing all its systems under his control. Another touch of his hand opened the door. He eased his bulk inside. The vehicle creaked ominously and sank low. Even hunched over the controls, he barely fit. Nathan started the engine, and heard a shout.
No one was shooting at him yet…. Perhaps the guards who had been alerted to his break-in thought he was a reckless, drunken grunt, planning on going for a joyride. A truly hostile force wouldn’t do something so minor as take illegal charge of a vehicle, after all.
Whatever the reason for the guards’ hesitation, it didn’t matter. Nathan had his chance and he took it.
The weakest area in the fence was at the locked gates. He drove directly at them, forcing the vehicle to its top speed. Still, when it hit, the force of the impact was greater than he’d expected. He was thrown forward, and his strange head bounced against the transparent reinforced metal of the windscreen. But the gates burst asunder and, in a moment, the ve
hicle was through and disappearing into the black, empty wilderness.
Before making his attempt to steal the assault vehicle, Nathan had sought and found a hiding place for it. On this new planet, there were no abandoned mines or disused quarries. Any tunnels that Carthaginians had constructed were new and in full use. Yet Nathan had to get the vehicle out of sight, in a rocky place. Hiding it among trees would not be enough. Scanners would penetrate vegetation.
After much nocturnal searching, Nathan had found a natural cave, as yet apparently undiscovered by Carthaginians. It was what the people of New Canaan called a ‘gift site’. The FGT had created many such pretty places throughout the four habitable planets. They were natural areas of special beauty that New Canaanites would eventually stumble across on their explorations. No plan or map existed that showed the sites’ locations. The FGT had intended them to be pleasant surprises for the colonists as they explored their new home.
The place Nathan had found was in a cleft in a gully. The entrance was overhung and surrounded by trees and scrub. Inside the cave were stunning stalagmites and stalactites, glittering with quartz and running with water that led to still, glimmering pools.
Nathan’s regulated brain barely registered the beauty of the cave. Its size was sufficient for his means and that was all that mattered.
After stealing the armored vehicle, he drove it pell-mell through the backcountry. Speed was of the essence if he was to make it to the cave and rush back to cover the tracks and traces of the vehicle’s passage before pursuers caught up—though he had a feeling that they’d be delayed.
As he worked to complete the theft, Nathan felt little of the tension and fear that would have permeated his unaltered form. He felt only urgency to complete his task, and an unwavering determination to make all his steps accurate and effective. Similarly, when the pursuit did not arrive to discover him or the missing vehicle, Nathan felt no relief or triumph at his success. His only emotion was satisfaction.
