“Happy?” Vienne asks me. “Now get in the truck!”
I start to open the driver’s door.
Vienne grabs it.
“I’m the driver,” she says.
“Since when?”
She looks me straight in the eye. “Since always.”
“It’s your truck.” I stare back into her eyes. My stomach turns flip-flops. “I reckon you get to drive.”
“Glad you see it my way,” she says, and grins, which makes my belly button feel like it’s spinning counterclockwise.
As soon as my door closes, Vienne slams it into reverse. The truck bounces backward down the dry creek bed, throwing rock dust into the air. She pumps the clutch. Rams it into first. And hits the accelerator.
My skull slams against the headrest. “I’ve got whiplash!”
“Quit whining,” she says, cutting me a look that could strip paint. “Or I’ll take you back.”
A moment later, as we bound over deep gullies, we come upon Jones, who has slowed to a jog, his face streaked with sweat and rusty dirt, his tongue hanging out.
Vienne swerves toward him, laying on the horn.
“Aiieee!” Jones screams, and dives into a copse of gorse bushes.
“That was harsh,” I say. But funny.
“He shot me—”
“You’re wearing bulletproof armor.”
“—in the back. The Tenets forbid shooting an adversary in the back.”
“He’s not a Regulator,” I say. “Our rules don’t apply to him.”
We cut from the creek bed, climbing up an embankment and pulling onto a road. The tires bark when they hit pavement, and the truck surges.
“You and I are not officially Regulators,” Vienne says, “but we still follow the Tenets.”
The Tenets are the guiding principles that govern Regulators’ code of behavior. Vienne is a strict adherent to them, following them with an acolyte’s zeal. But I don’t want to argue with Vienne, who has all the flexibility of wrought iron when she’s made up her mind, so I check the rear to make sure we’re not being tailed.
“Mimi, what direction are we headed?”
“South,” Mimi says, “with a general heading that will intersect with the Bishop’s Highway.”
South? Interesting. I’d guessed we would be heading back into Christchurch, the capital city. “I assume there’s reason for this daring daylight rescue?” I ask Vienne. “Other than the fact that you missed me.”
Vienne cuts me a look that says you wish. “When we get to the job, don’t use my old name. They call me Sidewinder now.”
“Who is they?”
“The rest of my davos.”
I can’t hide my surprise. “You’re working with a crew again?”
“That’s right. Now you are too.”
“What if I don’t want to work for some piker’s davos?”
Vienne hits the brakes. “We’ve got a job and could use a good extra hand. Either you’re in, or you can get out right here and take your chances with the Rangers. Your choice.”
I rub my whiplashed neck. “That’s not much of a choice.”
“Hard choices never are,” she says.
I look out at the unforgiving horizon. Either go on a job under the command of a chief I’ve never met, or walk the twenty kilometers to the next town without water, hoping a Ranger patrol doesn’t pick me up.
“My chief is dead.” I open the door. “I’m not hankering to take orders from another one.”
Vienne grabs my arm. “Mimi saw something in you. Don’t turn your back on that.”
I pause, thinking. Then close the door. “If I’m going to be working again, two things: I need to pick up my gear and get some grub. My stomach’s as empty as a black hole mine.”
“Where’s your gear?” she asks.
“In a high-security facility that can only be hacked into by one person on this planet.”
“How do we find this person?”
“By putting the Noriker in reverse.” I point my thumb toward the salt mine. “She’s one of the convicts you left behind.”
Chapter 1
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, City Central
Christchurch
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 2. 3. 08:32
Outside the Bibliotheca Alexandrina next to Parliament Towers in the government center, smack dab in the middle of Christchurch, Rosa Lynn Malinche jumps from the back of a delivery lorry. She’s cleaned up nicely since Vienne and I rescued her. Her red hair is tucked under a brown cap, and she’s wearing a brown jumper.
I let her get a head start, then move to the rear of the lorry. Open the back doors and slide out a ramp. Then swing a dolly around—it’s loaded with a tall rectangular wooden box—and steer it toward the loading dock.
When Malinche reaches the dock, she climbs up the stairs and hits the buzzer on the office door. She counts three and buzzes again before calling out, “Hop to! We’ve not got all day! We’re on the clock!”
“Just a minute!” the clerk inside yells over the intercom. “Stand back so I can take a look at you.”
Malinche steps back, spreading her arms but keeping her head down, the brim of her cap pulled closely over her face so that the recognition software in the camera can’t identify her features. Technically speaking, she’s still a library employee. Technically speaking, she’s also a fugitive from justice. Rangers all over the prefecture are hot on her trail.
“Technically,” Mimi says, “that is inaccurate. Malinche may be a fugitive. However, when I interfaced the multinets in the café where you drank too many transfat-laden beverages, there was only one bulletin seeking her arrest. There was no mention of a large-scale manhunt.”
“You suck the fun right out of things,” I say, my stomach growling because we still haven’t eaten. “Did you know that?”
“Fun is not one of my prime directives.”
“It should be,” I say, and roll the dolly up the loading ramp, stopping at the bay door next to the office. “Who wants to be a fun sucker?”
“I am only as interesting as my programming allows,” Mimi says. “Would you like me to establish new programming parameters to accommodate your preferences?”
“Sure,” I say, “but don’t go—”
Before I can finish, the clerk buzzes Malinche in, and the bay door begins to open. I wheel the box inside, where the clerk is tapping a sheath of electrostat with his finger.
“Assorted toiletry items, huh? In a crate like that?” He hands the stat back to Malinche and points to a spot behind him. “Set it over there, next to the other crap I’ve got to deal with.”
“You want to inspect it?” I roll the dolly into the back. “Sure thing. You’re the boss.”
“Son, I’m not anybody’s boss.” He grabs a crowbar from another crate and waves for me and Malinche to follow him. “Let’s see what kind of toiletries take a box like a coffin to ship.”
“Is this necessary?” Malinche says. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
She gives me the nod, and we start backing away from the crate.
The clerk rams the crowbar under the lip of the lid. “Susie, I sign nothing that I don’t know what is, capiche? Ten years I got on this job, and I’ve learned a thing or two about—”
Wham!
The lid flies off, slamming the clerk in the face and knocking him backward into a stack of cardboard boxes, which break his fall. The heavy lid lands on the warehouse floor with an echoing whap.
Vienne steps out of the crate, knocking packing material from her symbiarmor as Malinche heads for the office.
“Thought that fossicker was never going to shut up.” Vienne grabs her armalite from the bottom of the crate. “This is why Regulators are cremated on a pyre. No soul could ever find Valhalla in a box.”
I kneel by the clerk to check his breathing, which is fine. “Point taken.”
Not that I like the idea of having to send Vienne off to the afterlife. I’m not a big believer in the beautiful death that most Regulators
want to have when they shuffle off this mortal coil. Speaking of which, the clerk hasn’t lost his coil, though shuffling is all he’ll manage when he wakes up. There’s an angry knot on his forehead with splinters sticking out of it. I pluck the splinters and roll him onto his back for easy lifting.
With Vienne taking his feet and me his hands, we lift him into a large packing box that is filled with actual toiletries. We secure his hands and feet with zip ties.
“I’m glad he decided to open the lid,” I say.
“He decided to open it,” Vienne says, “the instant your special friend acted like she shouldn’t. Basic psychology. Mimi taught me that.”
I close the flaps on the box, hiding the clerk’s body. “What d’ you mean, special? We met each other in Battle School. Years ago.”
Vienne rolls her eyes. “Yes, Battle School. As if I’ve never heard that line before.”
“Line?” I say. “It’s not a line. It’s the truth.”
“Security systems overridden,” Malinche says as she returns from the office. “The lift’s on its way up. Vienne, can you cover us and keep watch on the clerk? This should take ten minutes, tops.”
“Roger that,” Vienne says with an icy edge, then cuts her eyes at me. “I’m very good at babysitting.”
“What was that all about?” Malinche asks, after I roll the crate inside the lift and the doors close. She inserts a key and holds the down button. The hydraulics engage, and we start to drop. “Vienne’s crack about babysitting?”
“Just a running joke,” I say. “When I joined my first davos, our chief assigned Vienne to babysit me till I earned my keep. She’s never let me forget it.”
“For a joke,” Malinche says, “it’s not very funny.”
“Vienne doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.” The lift stops. “But she does have an itchy trigger finger, so I hope for his sake that clerk stays unconscious.”
The door opens on a high-tech lab. From floor to ceiling, it’s all multinets. Most of the monitors are connected to lab equipment—robotics, centrifuges, laser bores, cryogenics boxes, and a metric ton of gear too advanced for my pay grade. It’s all coated in thick dust, uncovered, as if it had been abandoned in a hurry.
“Would you like me to tell you the function of the equipment?” Mimi says. “I can cross-reference it with the catalogs—”
“No thanks,” I tell her. For some reason, I don’t want to know any more about this place than I have to.
“Walk this way,” Malinche says, and leads me to a small lab.
This lab is anything but official. There’s no sign on the door, no mark identifying the place, except for four small letters stenciled to the transom: MUSE.
“What is this lab?” I ask as we step inside. “It sure isn’t the one I visited before.”
“It’s your father’s secret lair.”
“Ha ha, very funny. Vienne is starting to rub off on you.” I roll the crate to the middle of the room, and Malinche pushes off the lid. “Seriously, what is this? I spent my childhood in this library, and I didn’t know it had a basement.”
“That’s no surprise.” She starts loading the box with scientific equipment. “Because it really was your father’s secret lair. All hush-hush. We worked on all sorts of classified R&D projects that CEO Stringfellow didn’t want the public to know about, even his own board of directors.”
And apparently, his own son. My father, the secret keeper. I watch her load a centrifuge and a steel bending rig into the box. “Didn’t we come for symbiarmor?”
“We did,” Malinche says, moving with deliberate motion. “But I’m not leaving without my toys.” She raises the legs of her brown uniform, revealing flesh-colored prosthetic legs. “Give a cripple a hand, will you?”
“Sure,” I say, starting. “Sorry, you move so well, I forget about your artificial . . . you know.”
“Artificial legs? No sweat. Overlooking my disability is the effect I was going for.” She wipes perspiration from her face. “But once I get settled, upgrading my prosthetics is tops on my list.”
I can’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be stupid, so I grab the gear she points out and work in silence. We finish loading her equipment, then I secure the lid. “That should hold it.”
“Now for your toys.” She goes to a cabinet. Opens it with the key card and pulls out a suit of symbiarmor. “Voilà!”
The suit is shimmering, the fabric rippling with light even though it’s actually black. Like all symbiarmor, it’s not much thicker than a sheet of electrostat and it’s almost indestructible, but this suit looks different than my old one.
“That’s not mine,” I say. “I’ve never seen that suit before. In fact, I’ve never seen any symbiarmor like that before.”
“Oh, it’s yours,” she says, bringing it to me. “It’s an upgrade. A present from your father. Pity he got thrown in the gulag before he could give it to you.”
I strip down to my skivvies and pull on the suit. It slides like synsilk over my skin. I put on the gloves and flex my hands. The material feels rubbery for a second, then, with a shimmer, like second skin. I rub my fingers together and can’t tell that there’s fabric covering them “Wow.”
“Make sure the neckpiece is snug. That’s where the nanobots interface with the bioadaptive cloth,” Malinche says. “So it’s extremely vulnerable, as you well know.”
I think of the thick purple scar running down my neck but resist the urge to touch it. “If the spot is vulnerable,” I ask, “why not put a piece of steel plate or something over the spot?”
She shakes her head and hands me a helmet. “Think you’re the first genius to consider that? Try it. See what happens.”
“Bad stuff?”
“Very bad,” she says. “Like psychotic breaks from brain damage along with crippling neuropathy. The bots have got to breathe.” She fiddles with the settings, injects my arm with a syringe, and uses a charge of static electricity to power up the suit. “That’s all the juice you need. Give the nanobots time to interface with the armor’s circuitry, and you’ll be all set to go off tilting at windmills or whatever you heroes do.”
Her voice fades away. My body turns cold and rigid, an effect of the nanobots attaching to my cortex and central nervous system.
“Nanobot acquisition protocol initiated,” Mimi says.
My teeth start to chatter. “You’re programmed to talk to the nanobots?”
“Not specifically,” she replies. “But it appears to be within my capacity to control them. I will now test motor and cognitive function.”
My body herks and jerks.
“Motor function responding at one hundred percent efficiency.”
My tongue bobs in and out, and I shout, “Moo! Neigh!”
“Cognitive function responding at eighty-five percent efficiency,” Mimi says. “I will recompile systems to execute adaptive command code.”
“Baa! Baa!” I bleat as Malinche watches with a big shite-eating grin on her face. “Baad. That was baaad. I mean, bad. Very, very bad.”
“Cognitive function responding at hundred percent efficiency,” Mimi says.
I twitch. My right eye twitches and widens. I can hear it click.
“Bionic prosthetic linked to neuronano cortex,” Mimi says. “Synchronizing with optic nerve for optimum function. Internal check-sum routing is now complete.”
“Whoa!” I yell as my body relaxes.
“I love this part,” Malinche says, covering her mouth to hide her snickers. “But I’ve never seen symbiarmor cause that reaction.”
“What reaction?”
“The whole barnyard routine?” She knits her brow, worried. “Maybe we should run some tests. Take the suit off.”
“Negative!” Mimi says in my ear.
“No!” I yell, then get ahold of myself. “I mean, no thanks. I always go a wee bit gonzo when I get a new suit. My nervous system is—”
“Operating at ninety-nine percent capacity,” Mimi says.
“—twitchy,” I say. Then I decide to be nonchalant, which even I realize makes me look like a fossiker. “So, we’re all loaded up. Need a hand hauling the box back up the lift?”
Malinche eyes me oddly but lets it go. “Not yet.” She unlocks a second cabinet and pulls out an automatic weapon. It’s new and unpolished, the default barrel, bolt carrier, and magazine in place, with no attachments. Yet. The armalite is as adaptive as the shooter carrying it. Vienne’s is set up for sniping. Mine will be modified for close-range attacks.
“This is my armalite?” I ask.
“It is now. Records showed that the last one was destroyed in your battle with that Big Daddy. You’re due a replacement.” Malinche tosses it to me. “Put your right finger on the trigger.”
I eye it—and her—warily. “Won’t it explode?”
“Not until you encode it with your nanosignature.”
I put a finger on the trigger. For five seconds, nothing. Then there’s a high-pitched whine.
“Now it’s armed,” she says. “Anyone else touches it, and they lose a body part.”
I field strip the rifle, taking it apart and pushing it back together in less than a minute. There’s nothing fancy about this weapon, unlike my armor. It’s standard issue, the same style I’ve used since I entered Battle School.
“Reckon it’ll do in a pinch,” I say.
“Showoff,” Malinche says.
“It’s in my blood.” I sling the weapon over my shoulder. “So, what’s next?”
“Next?” she says, turning me to face the lift. “You’re doing the stupid thing by tilting at windmills, and I’m doing the smart thing by going into hiding.” She presses the lift call button, then stands on tiptoes and gives me a peck on the cheek. “If you ever find yourself lost in the wilderness, give me a shout, huh? And when you do, dispense with the formal Battle School crap. My name’s Rosa Lynn, not Malinche.”
“Will do,” I say. “Thanks, Rosa Lynn. I owe you one.”
“I’m the one still in your debt,” she says, then pushes me onto the lift. “Go. Your girlfriend’s waiting for you.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I protest.
“Oh, yeah? I’ve met susies like her,” she calls as the doors close. “They all like scars.”
Rising Sun Page 2
