The barman considered her for a moment. "So, you are MLOD. But you're not from around here, are you?"
"No, I've come over from Jezero." As soon as she said it, she felt as if the bar had just experienced rapid decompression. Everything froze; she felt fingers of ice spread their tendrils across every surface in the room. She had just said the wrong thing, to the wrong people, at the wrong time.
The barman leaned in and slowly took her mug away. "The coffee was on the house," he said in a low voice. "Now I think it's time you left."
Mia stared at him for a moment. She knew the score; she had just stepped on a landmine, and her best course of action at this very moment was to not make any sudden moves. She nodded slowly, stepped off the stool, and started for the street.
She glanced back to check the lay of the land, see if anyone was getting twitchy—always good to know what’s going on when your back is turned. The customers were all standing and facing her; their body language spoke of threat. Then they started to inch their way toward her. Mia considered reaching for her pistol, but reckoned it might be the very excuse they needed.
The barman came out from behind the counter in a fluid, purposeful motion and placed himself between Mia and the mob of customers. He raised a hand to them. "Go back to your food. She's leaving, party's over." He moved over to Mia, took her elbow in one hand, and gently got her outside. He walked her a few meters until they were out of sight of the crowd inside. Then he turned to her. "You want to know about Lloyd?"
Mia nodded. "Yes."
He glanced up and down the street, then whispered to her, "Take the next right, up there." He pointed. "Around two hundred meters, there's a small service corridor on the left. I'll meet you there in ten minutes. Now go... Go!"
Mia and Gizmo moved with purpose. "That was tense," said Mia after she felt she had gotten far enough away from the bar.
"They do not like people from Jezero. Very irrational."
"Well, that's humans for you. They convince themselves of all sorts of things that have no basis in reality."
"Like you thinking that Agent Dan Frazer was murdered?"
Mia stopped and looked at Gizmo for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose so. It's really just a hunch. Anyway, we might get something out of this barman."
"My analysis of the situation suggests that it could simply be a trap."
"I know. That's my guess, too, but it's the only lead we have." Mia unzipped the front of her jacket, pulled out the plasma pistol, and checked it to make sure it was ready for action.
"This is it. This is the place he wanted to meet at." Mia glanced down the narrow corridor. It wasn't very deep, maybe twenty meters. Small doors punctuated the walls, rear entrances to the industrial units on either side—all closed, presumably locked. It was deserted. "Not a good place to get trapped," said Mia as she looked around. "And we're a bit early. Maybe we should go and wait somewhere else first?"
The attack was sudden, and came from precisely where Mia wasn't looking—above her head. It felt like she had been hit by a falling shuttle engine. Someone had been following them along the rooftops and had now pounced down on her. He caught her on her shoulder and upper back as he dropped down, and she folded like a marionette with its strings cut. Her face was smashed into the floor, a heavy knee dug into her back, and a strong hand grabbed her hair at the back of her head and repeatedly slammed her face back down on the ground. She screamed in pain, trying to wriggle enough to get at her pistol.
"Bitch. Think you can swan in here from Jezero and start poking around like you own the place?" Mia thought she recognized the voice as one of the people at the bar.
She twisted and turned and managed to extract the pistol enough to try to take a shot. She fired off blindly, not looking to really hit anything—it was simply an action designed to give her some room to maneuver. She felt the hand on the back of her head release its grip, and she immediately looked around, trying to find a proper target.
She could see Gizmo was besieged by three assailants armed with heavy metal tools, bashing and beating at it. One assailant was using a long metal bar which Gizmo had managed to grab in one arm, but the assailant was hanging on. Two others were behind the droid, hammering its head and shoulder. Gizmo took a massive hit, and something seemed to give around its neck; its head tilted awkwardly to one side, and the arm holding the metal bar lost power. It hung limp and released the bar, freeing it up to be used against it.
Mia witnessed all this in the instant it took her to aim in the general direction of her attacker, still pressing on her back. But he sensed the threat, shifted quickly, and a heavy boot landed on her wrist. The shot cracked and fizzled off the side wall of the corridor.
"Bitch," she heard him say as the pistol was violently kicked out of her hand. Mia screamed in pain, and again as another kick connected with her lower ribcage.
"Stop!" a new voice shouted out above the melee, and there was a momentary pause in the assault. Mia craned her neck to locate its source. A tall, thin, elegant man strode up the corridor toward them, a hand held in the air. The group attacking Mia and Gizmo must have known him, as they all stood still, just looking at him.
The attacker raised an arm and pointed an accusatory finger at the advancing figure. "Stay out of this. You don't need to get involved."
"Is this how you deal with your anger, by beating up anyone from Jezero? And how's that going to do any good?" The man moved to within a meter of the group.
"These bastards need to know we don't want them around, after what they’re doing to us," the attacker continued.
It was now the man's turn to poke an accusatory finger. "You leave them be, or so help me, I will never fix any of your shit for you ever again." He swung around to look at the others. "That goes for the rest of you. Next time your oxygenator or scrubber breaks down, don't come crying to me."
Mia realized that this man's power came from his knowledge, his technical abilities. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and within this group, he was the one who had the skills they all relied on to keep the lights on, the oxygen generating, and the filters working. Without him and his abilities, life would get a lot more difficult for them.
There was a moment's pause as his threat began to sink in. He pressed home his advantage. "I mean it. You can all go somewhere else and pay for fixing your shit. So, you leave them be, you hear?"
The group grumbled as they glanced at each other. This man was respected, and his threat was obviously a big deal. The attacker looked down at Mia, then gave her another kick, followed by a gob of spit that splattered on the side of her face. "Don't come around here again. You might not be so lucky the next time." He walked off, and his group followed behind.
Mia slowly shifted her body so she could sit and rest her back against the wall.
The man approached her and knelt to examine her. "You okay?"
"Not really. I think I might have a broken rib." She grimaced as she felt her left side.
The man stood up and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "My place is not far. Let's get you sorted out." He extended a hand to help her up.
"Who are you?" said Mia as she got herself vertical.
"Lloyd Allen. Most people just call me Lloyd." Mia's shock at the mention of his name must have registered with him, as he raised a hand and nodded. "Yeah, I know. I heard some MLOD officer from Jezero was looking for me, asking about Agent Dan Frazer. Thought I’d go look for you before those morons from the bar took their frustrations out on you." He waved a dismissive hand. "Believe it or not, they're not the worst. This is a dangerous part of town to go poking around in. You need to be careful turning over a rock here—you never know what will crawl out from under it."
"Thanks," Mia managed, then looked over at Gizmo. The droid had taken a beating. One arm had been dislocated at the shoulder joint, and its head hung at an odd angle. But it was still functioning. "Gizmo, how bad are you? Can you move?"
"I am not liking this place very mu
ch." Its head moved to right itself, but seemed to grind and squeak as it did.
"Me neither."
Lloyd inspected the droid. "I think I can fix that. Come, let's get off the street. Then we can talk."
9
Allen Robotics
Mia presumed that Lloyd was taking them to an accommodation module somewhere on the periphery of the maintenance sector. What she was not expecting was to be ushered into a vast, cluttered warehouse space only a short distance from where they had been attacked.
The interior could only be described as ordered chaos, a kind of scrapyard with zones, like some war-ravaged city where the general tenor of each sector could just about be understood. There were several long lines of machines for metalwork, others for the more delicate electronics work, and other, more esoteric tech whose purpose was beyond Mia's capacity to comprehend.
Scattered around this central workshop core were the disemboweled carcasses of a great many machines: droids, drones, transport pods, life-support systems. There were even several rovers of varying size parked way at the back. And, if her eyes didn't deceive her, at least one small shuttle.
"Holy crap, is all this yours?"
Lloyd gave a nonchalant gesture with his head. "Yeah, some of it."
"You mean there's more?"
"Used to be a lot more, but this is some of what remains." He waved an arm around the space.
Mia had learned something of Lloyd's background on the short journey from the site of the mugging that she and Gizmo had just received. He told her that he had set up a shuttle and robotics maintenance business many years ago. It went well for a time, but then Montecristo Industries moved in when the entire industrial area was undergoing massive expansion. They undercut the locals, the smaller business, and slowly pushed them out as the businesses found it impossible to compete. He himself was one of the last to close, eight months ago. He laid off over a hundred workers, closed, and sold off most of his holdings to Montecristo, but kept this place, mainly because he simply did not want to part with all the stuff he had accumulated.
Since then, he had been doing some maintenance work for free, mostly for those in this area who were unemployed, let go by the many business that had closed down. They had little or no money. Most lived by scavenging, doing what they could; barter was their currency, and Lloyd had built up a large cohort of people who owed him one. It also struck Mia that he had, at some point, been quite wealthy, most of which was gone now, but he still had a lot more than most.
"Come, this way. Let's get you seen to." He threaded them through rows of machinery, crates of spare parts, and the carcasses of half-assembled machines to a walled-off section in the vast warehouse. They entered through a wide, open set of doors into a more intimate space. This was where he lived, Mia presumed. The ceiling was low, the lighting dim save for a long bench along the back wall that hosted an impressive array of technical equipment for the service and repair of electronics. Long, bright strip lights hung low over the bench, and Mia could see several units being worked on.
The rest of the space was filled with a myriad of domestic and personal effects—too many to take in in one quick glance around. The center of the space had three battered sofas around a low table fashioned from the escape-hatch door of a standard transport shuttle. The rest of the decor were equally upcycled parts from some machine or other.
"Sit. I'll get a med-kit."
Mia lowered her battered body onto one of the sofas. It was so low that she feared, with all the pain her body was experiencing, she would struggle to get up from it again. Her ribcage was the source of most of her trauma; it hurt when she breathed. Her left side was bruised and bloodied, but she didn't think now that anything was broken. As for her face, the right side hurt like hell since it had been smashed into the ground during the attack. She was afraid to look in a mirror for fear of what she might find.
Gizmo parked itself near the door. It had not spoken much since the attack—unusual behavior as Mia normally had trouble getting it to shut up. But perhaps it had finally taken heed of her requests for it to not say much to anyone, in case they start to get suspicious of the droid and have it reveal itself as a lot smarter than the average G2 unit. So maybe that was it, or maybe it was just being sullen after getting a good beating. Either way, Lloyd had not given Gizmo so much as a quick look-over, presuming it to be just an old, rudimentary service robot.
He returned with a small pack of medical supplies, along with a bowl of warm water and some towels. They went to work checking her over, cleaning her up. They talked.
"So how do you know Dan Frazer?" asked Mia as she wiped the blood from her face.
"I don't. At least, we never met. We just messaged once, and that was to arrange to meet."
"What about?"
He stood up, walked over to the long workbench, and started rummaging around in a drawer. "Let me show you. I have it here somewhere."
Mia had by now managed to clean up most of the cuts on her face. It felt much worse than it looked, but she did have a gash on her temple. Her right hand had been bandaged, but as for her ribcage, there was not much she could do about that other than try not to breathe.
"Have a look at this." He handed her a small, flat, square object, vacuum-packed in translucent plastic. It was small enough to fit in her palm.
Mia examined it. "Microprocessor?" She turned it over.
"Correct. The most valuable thing, by weight, on Mars. This is one of the new breed of radiation-hardened chips specifically designed for our current situation on Mars. It's made on Earth. But look at the date of manufacture on the package."
Mia turned it over and read the small print etched into the packaging. "This was fabricated four months ago, so it must have arrived on Mars within the last few weeks." Mia looked back at Lloyd. "Part of an aid shipment?"
"Yes, but I got this one on the black market. And the guy I got it from says there's a lot more where that came from. He didn't say exactly where he got it. But he does work for Montecristo Industries. So, my suspicion is that they are siphoning off inventory from the aid shipments. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it."
"Have you any proof of this?"
He shook his head. "No. But through my contacts I found out that Agent Frazer was investigating a black-market operation involving stolen components. So, I contacted him and told him about my theories. I thought we might be able to help each other."
"And now he's dead."
Lloyd gave a resigned nod. "And now he's dead."
They looked at each other for a moment without speaking. In the background, Mia could hear a machine starting up, out on the hangar floor somewhere. Lloyd jumped up, going into high alert.
"What’s that?" Mia was also getting to her feet.
"Where's your droid?"
Mia looked over to where Gizmo had parked itself earlier. It was gone.
"Gizmo," she shouted as they both moved in unison back out into the main warehouse space, where the machine noise was coming from. Mia deftly took out her plasma pistol and held it down by her side. Lloyd moved in behind her as they slowly zoned in on the source of the noise.
"Sounds like one of the CNC machines has started up."
Mia inched her way around a tall stack of crates and peered around. Then she immediately relaxed. "Gizmo, what are you doing? You scared the crap out of us." She came out from around the crates and put her pistol away.
Gizmo was working at a complex-looking milling machine. It stopped what it was doing, turned to face Mia and Lloyd, and waved with its good arm. Its other arm was missing. "My sincerest apologies. I did not mean to startle you."
It turned to gesture at the machine. "I decided, since we seem to be relatively safe here, and since you were being refurbished, that I would take the opportunity to do likewise and avail these machines of parts to put myself back together." It reached into the belly of the machine, extracted a newly fabricated component, and examined it. "Excellent tolerance. Less than a micron."
Mia looked back at Lloyd. "Sorry about this. Gizmo can be...unpredictable at times."
Lloyd didn't reply. His face was too busy looking stunned, and it took a moment for it to start responding to instructions from his brain. "That is not a G2 unit, is it?"
"Eh...no, not in the strict sense of the word. It's eh...something else."
Lloyd suddenly snapped to life and turned to Mia. "There was a droid by the same name, built a long time ago, before sentience was outlawed..." He started moving closer to where Gizmo was working. "Built by one of the founders, Nills Langthorp..." His voice trailed off as he stood and watched Gizmo reassemble its arm.
Lloyd turned back to Mia. "But it can't be. I heard it was decommissioned and ended up in a museum over in Jezero."
"You are correct on both counts," said the little droid as it tested the articulation of its reassembled arm. "But my dear friend Mia rescued me from oblivion. It would seem that desperate times require desperate acts, and my rehabilitation back into full operation was one of those. Not that I am complaining." Gizmo examined his handiwork. "Excellent."
It looked over at Lloyd. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to help me with these neck servos. I am having difficulty assessing the extent of the damage."
"Eh... Sure, of course. I would consider it an honor." He moved closer and started to examine the droid's neck joints. "Ah...there's your problem." He poked a finger deeper into the mechanism. "Sheared actuator shaft. Chrome vanadium, if I'm not mistaken. You must have taken quite a bashing to break that."
Mia raised a hand. "Listen, Lloyd, are we safe here for a while?"
"Absolutely. I've put the place on lockdown. Nothing is coming in here that we don't want."
"Good. Then if you don't mind, I need to rest. I'm feeling a bit...shell-shocked."
Lloyd looked concerned that he had not considered this. "Of course, I should have thought about that." He tapped his wrist screen and called one of his two service droids, Bumble and Bee. "Bee will show you where you can put your head down." He gestured back down along the row of machines to where the droid, Bee, was now coming toward them.
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