by Piers Platt
“I think I’m following,” Rath told him. He glanced in the mirror again, and saw the woman on the bench looking in their direction. She turned away suddenly, as if talking to her companion. The hairs on the back of Rath’s neck stood up.
“The cornerstone of the program was a database hack,” Beauceron was saying. “We broke into the major criminal databases in the Territories, and built in a backdoor so that we could access them as well. That’s MirrorLine.”
“Martin, I think we better go,” Rath told the detective.
“Where?” Beauceron asked.
“Just go,” Rath said, eyeing the couple in the mirror.
Beauceron started the car and pulled out into the street. When the couple on the bench had disappeared in their rear view mirror, Rath let his breath out.
“Sorry. Just had a hunch about something,” he said. “Back to MirrorLine – I thought we checked the criminal databases for Paisen. She wasn’t in there,” Rath pointed out.
“No,” Beauceron corrected. “We checked Federacy databases. MirrorLine is a separate program entirely, you need special permission to access it.”
Rath cocked an eyebrow at him. “Rozhkov?”
Beauceron sighed, “Yes.” He checked his watch. “Saturday evening: he’ll be home. I think I better go myself this time.”
* * *
Rath was finishing his second beer when Beauceron made his way into the biergarten. He spied Rath, alone at a small table near the oak tree, and made his way over past several other benches of patrons, before sitting with a sigh. He set his notepad and pencil on the table. Rath eyed it with interest.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, I am officially out of favors to call in,” Beauceron said. “But she’s on New Liberia.”
“Yeah?” Rath said, a slow grin spreading across his face. “You found her in MirrorLine?”
“I think so,” Beauceron said. “But you’re not going to like it. We found an arrest record for a female with all the right implants. She was picked up for breaking and entering several months ago.” Beauceron pulled out his phone, and showed Rath an arrest photo of a dark-skinned woman with long, black hair. “Using the alias ‘Suli Potfin.’ She’s in a penal colony, serving a five-year sentence – that’s why she missed your rendezvous. Nasty place. It’s on the outskirts of a city that was the site of a nuclear attack, and the inmates are made to salvage raw materials from the fallout zone.”
“I’ve got enough cash for another flight, I think,” Rath said. “You’re coming this time, right?”
Beauceron gave Rath an incredulous look. “Why would either of us go?”
“To get her out of there,” Rath said, frowning.
“If we simply wait, she could be out on parole before the year is out,” Beauceron said.
Rath shook his head. “No, if we found her, so can the Guild. The clock’s ticking.”
“Not necessarily,” Beauceron said. “But that’s beside the point. You’re talking about effecting a prison break.”
“Absolutely,” Rath said.
“Absolutely not.” Beauceron glanced quickly around the biergarten, lowering his voice. “You’ve already made me an accessory to a bank robbery; there is no way I’m letting you break someone out of prison, too. I don’t care if it’s in the Territories or not.”
“Beauceron, her life could be on the line,” Rath argued. “If the Guild doesn’t get her, the radiation could.” Rath held his beer glass in his right hand, but casually slid his left hand under the table.
“No,” Beauceron said. “You made a promise to me. If I helped you find her, you’d turn yourself in. Well, I found her.”
“I’m not turning myself in yet, especially not now that we’re so close,” Rath said.
“You are,” Beauceron said, taking out his phone. “We’re going to the station right now, and we’ll get you into protective custody while we wait for Paisen’s release. If you try to escape, don’t forget that I can track you with that cuff you’re wearing. And I’ll call the penal colony and warn them that you’re coming.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone,” Rath said. “I’m done with that – one was too many, never mind fifty. I’m going to get her out without hurting anyone.”
Beauceron shook his head. “I believe that you’ll try. But I still can’t let you go.” He keyed the phone on.
“I’m sorry, Martin,” Rath said. He fired the stun dart under the table, hitting Beauceron in the stomach. The detective grunted and frowned, then slumped forward onto the table. At a table nearby, another patron gave Rath concerned look.
“He’ll be all right,” Rath said. “Just had a few too many.” He crossed and sat next to Beauceron, making a show of shaking him. “Come on, Martin – wake up.” Under the table, Rath removed the dart, tossing it away, and pulled out Beauceron’s phone and wallet, which he pocketed discreetly. After another half-hearted attempt at waking Beauceron, he stood and headed up to the front of the biergarten, signaling to get the bouncer’s attention. The man walked over, leaving his post by the bar’s entrance.
“Mind giving me a hand?” Rath asked. “I need to get my friend home, he’s in a bad way.” He tapped Beauceron’s phone against a payment scanner at the table, sending the bouncer a fifty dollar tip.
“Sure,” the bouncer said. They hefted Beauceron up, each passing an arm around their shoulders, and half-dragged, half-carried him to the front entrance. Rath pulled Beauceron’s phone back out and used it to summon his air car.
It was a short flight to Beauceron’s apartment, where Rath parked the car, then triggered an EMP grenade before getting out. He dragged Beauceron up to his apartment, stopping twice to rest. Beauceron’s holophone and unconscious fingerprint allowed him inside, where he quickly shut the door behind him, before a second EMP grenade ran out. Finally, he set Beauceron down on the bathroom floor, laying the detective’s head carefully on a rolled-up towel. He made three trips to the kitchen, grabbing a variety of different food items and stacking them in the bathtub, before taking a pillow and blanket off of Beauceron’s bed.
“That ought to keep you comfortable for a couple weeks,” he told Beauceron’s unconscious form. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
He scribbled the words DO NOT TOUCH – motion sensitive bomb on outside of door, on the inside of the bathroom door, then added Bomb deactivates in two weeks, and after a second of contemplation: Sorry. Rath shut the door and then flipped open his Forge, waiting while it built a multi-purpose grenade. As he waited, he bought himself a ticket to New Liberia on Beauceron’s phone. Then he attached the grenade to the door’s outer surface, setting it to Stun and activating the motion sensor and timer functions. He left Beauceron’s phone on a side table by the living room couch, and set off one more EMP grenade before leaving the apartment.
18
Paisen stepped into the room and grimaced. It looked like a kindergarten classroom, with faded, soot-streaked posters of the alphabet and numbers tacked up around the walls. Molding corpses huddled beneath the tables in the room, in a futile attempt to seek shelter from the bombs. Paisen gave the tables a wide berth, and concentrated her search on the cabinets and shelves lining the walls. She found a number of toys with electronic circuitry, and dumped them into the trash bag she was carrying. Finished, she left hurriedly, and found Grip back in the main hallway, prying lockers open with a crowbar and then tossing their contents onto the floor.
“That’s the fourth one,” he told her, when he saw her.
“The fourth what?”
He grunted as he strained to wrench another locker door off its hinges. “Unh. The fourth scrap-hauling team that’s been attacked by Warriors this week. They’re looking for you.”
The locker spilled open, and a musty backpack fell onto the floor. Paisen stooped and unzipped it, finding an old datascroll inside. She slipped the device into her trash bag.
“Let them look,” she said.
Grip shook his head and set
the crowbar down. “I need a drink of water. You want anything from the sled?”
“No,” Paisen said. “I’m going to check the classrooms on this side of the hall.”
She spent ten minutes sorting through a music room, stacking the metal instruments into a large plastic tub, but when she dragged the tub back out into the hall, Grip had not returned. On instinct, she set the tub down and cranked up her audio implants. It was entirely quiet. Should have heard him moving around outside, she thought, frowning and taking hold of the knife in her belt. She traced Grip’s path back to the building’s lobby, but before stepping out of the corridor, she stopped, sniffing as a gust of wind blew in through the building’s shattered windows.
Body odor. Grip’s … and several others.
Paisen grimaced and made her way back down the corridor to the roof access panel she had seen earlier. Standing on a chair, she slid the panel back, then hauled herself up onto the building’s roof, flattening herself against the flat tarmac. Her radiation badge buzzed gently, warning her that the roof was mildly contaminated. She ignored it. The roof was edged with a low wall that hid the street from view, so she crawled to the side of the building, and slowly pushed herself up off the roof, tilting her head so that her left eye was the first thing to crest the wall.
In the school’s driveway, Grip was kneeling with his hands behind his head next to the hoversled. A Warrior armed with an auto-pistol stood behind Grip. Paisen saw another Warrior seated on the sled, holding a sledgehammer. Two other Warriors stood covering the entrance to the school, both armed with compound hunting bows, but only the one with the auto-pistol bore the red tattoo on his cheek – a bird’s skull, this time. She lowered herself back down, and crawled to the other side of the roof. She saw no one at first, but when she raised herself higher, she spotted a fifth gang member just below her, covering the back of the school. He looked to be holding a mace of some kind. Paisen shifted several feet forward, then silently levered herself up on top of the wall, before dropping off. She rolled as she landed, letting her momentum carry her into the back of the Warrior’s legs. He toppled backwards with a cry of alarm, but Paisen straddled his chest a split second after he landed, pinning his mace under one boot, knife to his neck.
“Drop it,” she ordered.
She walked him around the side of the building, knife still pressed at his throat, using him for cover. The two bowmen drew their arrows back as soon as they saw her, but the tattooed man with the pistol merely smiled.
“Well, now,” he chuckled. “You’re as feisty as advertised. We’re going to enjoy this.”
Paisen pushed her hostage forward, forcing both of them closer to the group by the hoversled.
“Are you proposing a prisoner swap?” the bird-skull Warrior asked. He indicated Grip with his pistol. “This piece of shit, in exchange for my man, there?”
Paisen shook her head. “No, you can keep him.” Grip’s eyes went wide with shock and alarm. “I’m taking this one with me as a hostage,” Paisen continued. “Drop your weapons, and I’ll let him go when I get back to the compound.”
The Warrior lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so? Betraying a friend to save your own skin, eh? Your survival instinct is admirable. But I’m afraid I happily betray my friends, too.” He lifted the pistol, and casually shot Paisen’s hostage in the chest. The man stumbled forward, groaning and coughing up blood. “He was a lousy fighter, anyway. Now drop the knife.”
Paisen glanced at the two bowmen, judging distances and angles. At last, she flicked the knife into the ground at her feet, and raised her hands in surrender. The bowmen covered her while the Warrior on the sled placed her in metal handcuffs. They cuffed Grip, too, and dumped both of them onto the bed of the hoversled.
“Let’s head back to base, boys,” the bird-skull Warrior said. The hoversled fell in behind him, and the group set off across the city.
* * *
From the looks of the church, the Warriors had spent considerable time and effort fortifying the ancient stone building that served as their base of operations. Sitting in the hoversled’s cargo bed, Paisen saw a deep moat, bricked-up windows with small weapons ports, and a serpentine of razor wire leading to the church’s main entrance, to force would-be attackers to double back multiple times as they approached the thick wooden doors. A guard holding a rifle greeted them from the church’s bell tower. The sled stopped, and the tattooed Warrior cut the cords around Paisen and Grip’s ankles, allowing them to climb off the sled. The heavy doors swung slowly open, and they followed the Warriors up the marble steps and into the church.
Inside, little of the original church remained. Broken pews had been stacked for firewood along outer walls, doubling as fire steps for defenders to stand on in order to access the firing ports in the windows. At the head of the church, the great stone altar served as a map table, and seven Warriors stood around it, deep in discussion. The rest of the church’s floor space was taken up with a field kitchen, and a dozen gang members sat talking and eating at tables and chairs scattered around the room. Paisen guessed that the gang slept in the crypt underground. None of the people seated around the floor bore tattoos, but all of the men by the altar had them.
The Warrior with the bird skull tattoo took Paisen by the elbow and guided her down the central aisle of the church. “Yo!” he shouted. “Where’s Wingar?”
“Out hunting,” one of the men by the altar replied.
“Well, radio her to come on back in. I got what she’s looking for.”
At that announcement, the men turned from the map table to examine Paisen as she approached. The oldest of them, his stubbled hair greying at the temples, stepped forward. He wore a pistol belt and a tactical vest with a radio on it. The pistol was an antique, Paisen saw – a revolver with an ornamental handle. The red skull on his cheek was unique, too: it was some kind of large predator that she didn’t recognize, and it bore a crown.
“Prisoner Potfin,” the man said, looking her over. “Five years, breaking and entering. An R&D facility, if my sources are correct.”
“You must be the king of the dead animals,” Paisen replied, nodding at his tattoo.
He laughed, but his eyes were hard, and icy cold. “Mm. I’m Mats. Where did you serve?”
“All over,” Paisen said.
“Special operations?” Mats asked.
“More of a freelancer,” Paisen corrected. “But if you’re hiring, I’m interested.”
Mats cocked his head to one side. “Your audition was impressive. But I’m afraid reputation is everything in these parts, and you’ve sullied ours. So you’re going to be an example – a warning, if you will. A reminder of what the Warriors do to their enemies.”
He stepped closer to her and leaned in, taking a deep breath as if sampling the bouquet on a newly-poured glass of wine. Mats turned to the other Warriors. “Fresh meat.” He smiled. “Never get tired of it.”
They laughed, and Paisen smiled, too. Mats frowned at her. “You’re not scared?” he asked.
“I can be, if that’s what turns you on,” she told him.
Mats’ laughter was genuine this time. “I like you. You’re a survivor, like me. But we’re still going to break you for what you did. I’m going to go first, then each of my men are going to have a turn. And I look forward to seeing what Wingar’s got planned for you.”
“Are we talking about rape or torture, here?” Paisen asked lightly. “I just want to be clear.”
Mats slapped her hard across the face, then fixed her with a harsh glare. “It’s going to hurt,” he continued, as a trickle of blood ran down from the corner of Paisen’s mouth. “But we’re not going to kill you. And then weeks from now, when you’re just a shambling, incoherent shell of a human being, I’m going to parade you back into the compound, so that all your inmate friends can see what happens when you fuck with the Warriors.”
The Warrior holding Paisen’s arm pushed her to the ground, and she felt Mats drag her back to the altar, thro
wing her so that she slid for the last few feet and then slammed hard into the stone. Next he yanked her arms up and slipped a link of the chain between her wrists over an iron hook mounted on the front of the altar. The chain caught on the hook, pinning her arms up over her head. Mats pulled her feet out straight, stretching her flat on the ground, then methodically stripped her from the waist down, before cutting off her shirt. On the floor below, the gang members stood at their tables and pushed forward, clustering in a group below the altar for a better view. Paisen saw one of them grab his crotch, grinning in anticipation. One of the tattooed Warriors by the altar took a swig from a bottle of liquor, and then passed it to his friend. Grip was kneeling in front of the Warrior who had captured Paisen, eyes closed, shaking in fear.
Mats stood over Paisen for a minute, eyeing her naked body. Then he slipped off his gun belt, and let it fall to the floor by their feet.
19
Inside the abandoned cabin, Rath checked the chains one last time, ensuring they were firmly attached to the wall. On the floor nearby, the two prison staffers sat close together, watching him warily as he completed his final checks. The woman flinched when he came close, but he merely tested the chains where they were attached to her wrist cuffs, doing the same for the man. Rath studied the man closely, adding his face to the others he had collected in his memory. Then he set the box on the floor next to them and removed their gags.
“You have food and water for two weeks,” he told them. “It’s not going to be comfortable, but you’ll live.” He held up the electronic box. “This box is programmed to open at the end of one week. It contains a key to your handcuffs. So at that point you’ll be able to get out of here. You need to head south,” he pointed behind them. “That way, understand?”
