by Alex Kirko
She punched him in the chest strong enough to force him to catch his balance. “You are a dick, Drummond,” she said, sitting on the bed. “You saved my life and then made me think you died before I could repay you.” She curled a lock of hair around a finger. “Do you like the new color?”
He laughed. “Oh, it suits you. As do the freckles and the extra height and the curves.”
She grinned in return. “My, did getting punched into the skyline make someone adventurous. But seriously, how did you survive?”
“The Federation had adjusted that section of city shielding before they mounted the attack on us, so I just flew through. Then they found me in the jungle. Didn’t have much choice from then on, you know?”
“That bug and the camera—they keeping you prisoner?”
“I suppose. I’m stuck in the suit. What about you? What’s with the getup? Did you join the enemy too?”
She could imagine him smirking. Tara hesitated, wondering how best to explain. “That hulk that attacked us? She turned out to be Moira Heatsworth, one of the Heatsworth’s Sisters or whatever perverted shit he calls them. Anyway, she’s mayor now, and she is obsessed with my family. I don’t know if she truly believes to be my dead little sister, or if it is just a ruse to help her get sympathy, and, frankly, I don’t care. But all the city sensors now have my genetic data, so I changed my DNA.”
“Huh. I assume you haven’t figured out a way to fool the military-grade installations at the edge of the city?”
“Yeah, not a hacker here, remember? And I met a guy, and he says it’s impossible. The damn things were built to prevent messing with them: they exchange constantly changing codes with the City Hall, and they have enough juice in them to see brain physiology and shit. There is no way past them.”
They sat in silence for a while. The room was small, the bed was small, and most of the lights were out because they both didn’t need them. It was easy to forget that Drummond was human inside that suit of his. It smelled of electricity and jungle and long-dry blood—and if he was here, that blood didn’t belong to Federation soldiers. She swallowed and turned to look at the wall.
He leaned back, looked at the ceiling, and said, “We are in deep, aren’t we, Tara? I remember my first battle, killing my first men. Then I got leave and went to this summer cottage with my girlfriend.”
She had never heard Drummond speak of his past before coming to Terra Nox. She felt a tightening in her chest that didn’t fit the useless revelation. “Is she cute?” she asked.
“She was,” he said. “Very cute. And kind and understanding and loyal. So much better than me.” He pulled up a holographic interface, probably for her benefit. “I see you are in the civil servant database. Mary, seriously? Couldn’t pick a more commonplace name?”
“That was kind of the point? I’m a minor noble who hasn’t left her home in a decade. It should hold up.”
It had been a surprise to find out that the Republic had hijacked a person to make the new ID for her. She wondered what would happen if anyone asked for Mary around the Dorheftung home on the outskirts of Delmor, but that wasn’t likely to happen. Top brass with the right skills had too much on their plate to call witch hunts on random employees.
Blake asked, “So, what do you plan to do now?”
“Same thing as before,” she said. “Only now I don’t have to wait twenty years for a promotion. All I need is get more info on the Federation and bring it to the Council. They would be happy to grant me a title.”
He sat down next to her. “I’m glad you are alive, Tara,” he said. “I’ll be staying for a while, at least until the Federation figure out how to mass-produce proper Ascended.”
She stared at him. “Blake, that’s impossible. Even I know that regeneration chambers wear down.”
He shrugged. “Maybe the approach has been wrong. I mean, the idea was that an Ascended should keep the appearance he had in life, and that the body should regenerate into that pattern when something gets damaged. But these guys, they are willing to push the boundaries.”
He walked over to a small teapot on a counter. “Damn. Spent a month in this tin can, and I already can’t remember the temperature settings.”
“Turn the little knob to the right until you hear a click.”
“Right.”
While he brewed the tea, she had time to think. His movements had got smoother since their last meeting. “Blake,” she said. “You said you were stuck in the suit?”
He shrugged, but it was too light to be real. “When the Butcher—Moira, I guess—hit me, she broke a lot of stuff. I didn’t get to the hospital in time. Now I’m sealed inside the suit.”
Tara got off the bed, walked up to him, and put a hand on his right shoulder. “I’m sorry. Is that even healthy? I heard you get side-effects is you stay in it for too long.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
His voice was a bit strained, and she figured it was a sore subject. She couldn’t even imagine being locked up inside a robot, unable to experience all the things that made life worth living. She said, “It’s great that you are here with me, darling, but shouldn’t you be searching for a way out of Seind? I mean, I can’t outrun them, but you probably can in that mech of yours.”
Drummond shook his head. “No chance. When we arrived, I saw artillery batteries getting installed along the perimeter. They won’t hurt me with the first hit if I root myself properly—”
“But then you’ll be pinned.”
“Yes. I’m not getting out of this, Tara. I’m lucky they didn’t kill me outright.”
She looked at him, sitting on a bed he didn’t need, thinking thoughts that didn’t fit his sarcastic personality. Tara scooted closer. “Maybe I can help you. If you help me first, that is. I know there is a regeneration chamber missing from Mortenton, and I know that a mech was seen there that looked like yours.”
He turned to her. “So you know.”
She patted him on a shoulder. “Blake, why so glum? Sure, you probably killed a couple people there, which makes you a traitor, I guess. But the Council doesn’t give a shit about the lives of their soldiers. What they care about is what we bring to the table, and if you working with the Federation can lead to valuable enough intel, then I’m sure all will be forgiven. Hell, they might even get you out of your suit.”
He cocked his head to the side and nodded. “We’ll need a way out of the city though.”
“Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to figure something out if we can get the chamber back. The only reason I’m still in Seind is because I’m more valuable to the Council here than outside, but that would change if we brought a gift.”
He nodded and rose from the bed. At least he didn’t look like he was heading for the gallows anymore. “I’ll think on it. Thank you, Tara, it’s great seeing you alive.”
“Ascended don’t die easily. Especially me.” She stood up too, walked to the door, and pulled up her personal assistant. “Here is my contact info. If you need to talk, just arrange a meeting.”
“We’ll need a cover story if we see each other again.”
“Oh, that’s easy. You are my boy toy. Knowing I am bad for you, and yet you can’t stay away.”
He chuckled. “That shit won’t fly, Tara, unless your cover identity travelled where we travelled for years. But we can be friends. Now more bonded than ever over us both working for the Federation. And we did sleep together, but it was a terrible mistake, and I nearly got eaten.”
She stepped through the door, turned, and said, “One day, Drummond, you won’t shoot me down. Contact me next week. I’ll call up some people, and maybe we’ll figure out some way out of this mess.”
“See you, witch.”
The door slid shut behind her, and Mary the clerk went home. She had two sitcom episodes to watch.
10
Danger of Nostalgia
Consciousness came like a flare in the night sky, and suddenly he was thrashing in the silence and dark. Som
ething heavy was on his chest, and he couldn’t breathe, he was going to choke. He tried to get the behemoth off him, but there was nothing there—no behemoth and no hands to shove it off himself.
“Blake,” said Aileen. “It’s alright.”
Her voice pierced the haze in his mind, and Blake remembered.
“I’m giving you control back,” said Aileen.
Optical sensors switched on, and he could move. Above him was the milky-white ceiling of his temporary quarters, and under him was a bed that hadn’t been designed for a mech. He didn’t remember why he hadn’t simply settled down on the floor. Blake let himself rest for ten more minutes. He knew he didn’t need to breathe, but the panic still felt like a layer of soot in his lungs, choking him in these moments between dream and awareness. It hadn’t been this bad in the jungle.
“Another day,” he said with a sigh. “I swear, a week more of this crap, and we are breaking in and using the chamber whether they like it or not. Aileen, how are we doing?”
“I’m marvelous, Master. Thanks to you being here all the time, I feel almost like old days.” She even managed a dark chuckle. “It’s refreshing being powered down only when you are asleep.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry, even If we get out of this, I won’t be taking you off for long—it’s a war after all.”
“Like you won’t run and get plastered the moment you are free, Master. I see only hints of the tissue degeneration Doctor Kitsune warned about. Then again, she didn’t get a chance to examine you properly, so her prognosis might be off the mark.”
“We still need to get me fixed.”
He got up and went to the shower. He usually used fire to clean the suit on the march, but water also did the job, and a shower felt more human than a low-power blowtorch. He felt almost nothing in the damn thing, but he could close his eyes and imagine the steaming water scalding his skin.
“The office of the mayor sent a message to you while you were sleeping. Someone called Lyndon Liun wants to see you.”
“Shit.”
Tara was a good partner, but that girl needed to learn to curb her impulses. She should have suspected his place to be watched. She could have approached him in the city.
Blake dried himself soaking three towels in the process. He ducked to avoid hitting the lintel and left the building.
The sun had just risen, and rays of gold glinted off the intact towers and played with the ruins, casting long shadows. Blocky construction mechs buzzed about, rebuilding a former entertainment center. People chatted with each other and barely glanced at the destruction around them. It was like the city was recovering after a war that had ended years ago.
He walked toward the City Hall for an hour and a half, stopping at the spots he remembered. The Council had reduced the Bizarre Shooting Gallery to a pile of smoldering plastic and metal, so there went his favorite kind of entertainment. Madame Natalia’s Erotic Emporium had three of its top floors blown off, but it wasn’t like they could offer him anything until he got the suit off. There was a chance they would rebuild the building by that time, so he made a note in his calendar.
“Look, Master, it still stands.”
He turned to the left and felt a knot he hadn’t been aware of dissolve in his chest. He had been looking too high to see that Will’s was still there in all its one-floor, drab, dark-brown glory. He’d have to hit that later in the day.
“I wonder if he stayed back and is still making Rhino Sweat. If I remember right, it had something from the capital in it.”
“Of course, Master. The alcohol stockpiles in Seind are ridiculous. You can’t drink though.”
Satisfied that at least one of his haunts was intact, Blake headed into the City Hall. Large dark glasses made the receptionist there look like a mantis that had turned hippie.
“Good morning. My name is Blake Drummond, I have an appointment with . . .” He checked his messages. “Lyndon Luin, I believe.”
“Lyndon Liun,” said the receptionist. “He has been expecting you. Let me upload the route to your personal assistant.”
“I was also hoping to find an old friend of mine. Mary Dorheftung?”
An eyebrow rose above the oversized glasses, but Blake got the directions to Tara’s office too. He decided to visit her first and resolved to think of her as Mary for now.
The City Hall was like a disturbed anthill, and although it didn’t give him much trouble in his mech, he had to be careful not to crush someone with his weight. Mary was in the same part of the building as Lyndon. There was a line of ten people in front of her office, but nobody called out to him when he knocked on the door. Before opening it, he said to the people in the queue, “Official business.”
She sat behind a slab of a black office desk that shielded her from an older man with wispy hair. Blake saw her eyes widen as he entered.
The man was saying, “You see, I don’t want the east side, it’s too windy there. You sure you can’t settle me in the industrial district? The smell of metal, it’s so familiar, and I want to spend what I have—”
Blake took a step forward, and the old man turned and glared at him. “Excuse me?” Mary’s client said. “We are in the middle of something important here, and people keep interrupting. Don’t you see? They are all dead. I need to get away.”
“Miss me already?” Mary asked, her mouth curling in a playful smile.
“I’m sorry, sir, it won’t take long.” Blake stepped closer to the table. “Mary, darling, I’m sorry I forgot to tell you my contact info has changed. Let me give you the new code.”
She raised an eyebrow at the way he called her but still flicked a couple buttons on her personal assistant. Blake sent her the address and the authorization for the encrypted channel Aileen had established. He said, “I got called in for some business, so I thought I would stop by instead of polluting the City Hall inbox. Take care.”
“See you soon, Blake.”
He existed the room to rising grumbling from the old man.
He had never thought Tara could play the role of anyone except the promiscuous airhead that she was. If only she had enough self-preservation to keep her from walking into the apartments of men under Federation surveillance.
There was no line in front of Lyndon Liun’s office. In fact, there was nobody in the entire hall, and the quiet made a shiver run down the back of his neck as he checked for an ambush. He pressed the red buzzer button to the left of the door, and it opened.
“Ah, Mister Drummond. Please, come in. Don’t worry, the chair can take your mech’s weight. I’m sorry for the quality of your personal quarters, by the way. There is a queue for the double-sized apartments, I’m afraid.”
He got in. The office wasn’t what he expected of a Freefolk official. “Is that an M-19 rocket launcher?” Blake asked, pointing to one of the artifacts on display along the walls.
Liun said, “I didn’t expect a soldier to have such an eye for Old Earth items. You must be quite a collector.”
He settled into the chair that made him feel small even in his mech. “This was made for Butchers, wasn’t it? The giant door, this chair, the renovations you are doing in the halls.”
“We try to be fair to all social groups, Mister Drummond. Do you know why I called you here?”
Blake made a show of looking around the room. It was about sixty square feet in size, and all of It was crammed with Old Earth junk. There were defunct AI units, a broken food processor, five disassembled energy pistols, a plastic bag of chewing gum, and a half-crushed dollhouse. He could see a window pane behind Liun, and it was large enough for Blake to crash through in an emergency. Not that he could outrun all the guards around the City Hall.
He said, “I assume it wasn’t to tell me how you managed to rob the Delmor Museum, Mister Liun. This has to be the largest private Old Earth collection I’ve seen.” He drummed the fingers of his right hand on the table in front of him.
Liun shifted in his seat, and Blake noticed that the man
kept his feet under his center mass, ready to pounce. The muscles rippling under the baggy clothes didn’t soften the image either. For a Freefolk Ascended, he looked human, but Blake could see dark-green scales dotting his hands, and his irises had hints of orange in them. All of his kind were hunters. Even Mei Kitsune, as kind as the mech researcher appeared, simply chased different prey.
Liun leaned forward and smiled. “How well do you know Mary Dorheftung?”
Blake was thankful for the face plate concealing his face. He said, “Not that well, to be honest. I met her at a bar a couple years back when I first visited Seind. Mech pilots turn her on.”
Liun’s eyes searched his face, but Aileen was modulating Blake’s voice and keeping the coolant pipes from acting up. He was as easy to read as a rock.
“So you are lovers then,” said Liun. “Sleeping with an Ascended doesn’t match your profile.”
“More like occasional bunk-buddies,” said Blake. “She is cute, but I get involved with your kind only when I’m feeling reckless. I don’t like putting my bits where they might get munched off.”
The Ascended went silent, and Blake wondered what exactly they had on Tara. Not much, or she would have been detained a long time ago. Blake said, “May I ask why all the personal questions?”
Liun didn’t answer for a whole minute. Eventually he said, “Judging by the reports Nat gave, I expected you to be marginally more intelligent. Your Council gave us this city willingly—there is no doubt now. They must have left all sorts of presents, and we aim to discover them before somebody orders the sleepers to wake up and do something that won’t help anyone. Your friend has no record. Just a routine check in case she is a Republic rat gnawing through our walls.”
