by Isaac Hooke
He tapped in the Amytis and updated Ms. Bounty.
“We’ve noticed the same,” she replied. “It doesn’t change anything, though. Regardless of whether the Persians own the system or the Sino-Koreans, the mission is still a go.”
“I thought you’d say that.” Rade disconnected the line and sighed.
AFTER A WEEK, the two ships assumed a geosynchronous orbit above Lang.
The Mars-like planet was covered in a rocky red desert, and the average surface temperature was minus one hundred degrees Celsius. However orbiting arrays of reflective balloons focused sunlight onto the dome colony, providing extra heat and solar power to the inhabitants.
The atmospheric pressure at the surface averaged twenty-five millibars, well under the Armstrong limit of sixty-three millibars: the pressure below which water boiled away at a body temperature. For comparison, the pressure on Earth at sea level was a little over a thousand millibars.
Forma pipes distributed across the surface were attempting to remedy the atmospheric situation, spewing breathable air into the atmosphere at a rate of two hundred trillion tonnes per year—at that speed, Lang would reach a pressure of a thousand millibars in another twenty years. The network of satellites reinforcing the magnetosphere ensured the new atmosphere wouldn’t be ripped away by the solar winds like the original planetary gases.
It was odd that the Sino-Koreans would sell the planet to the Persians after sinking so much money into the terraforming infrastructure of the world, but it wasn’t unheard of for the SKs or even the United Systems to give up planets after laying such groundwork.
“So, Lui,” Rade said from his position at the Sphinx. “How does it look down there?”
“Well,” Lui said. “As far as I can tell, everything seems intact both on the main colony, and the military base, at least in terms of buildings and infrastructure. However, there’s no sign of actual human habitation. It’s completely dead down there. And there is no indication that any recent battles were fought: there are no blast craters, bore holes, scorch marks, or anything of the sort. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the inhabitants had all evacuated. But if that were the case, why are there so many vessels parked in the various hangars around the dome? Evacuation craft, shuttles...”
“Maybe the Persians haven’t moved in yet?” Tahoe said. “It’s possible they sent in a few remodeling robots ahead of time to start converting the architecture to their tastes.”
“No,” Lui said. “When I say it’s dead down there, I mean it. There’s no activity down there whatsoever. Not humans. Not robots.”
“Any answer to our latest hails?” Rade asked Harlequin. The Artificial was substituting for Fret, who was feeling under the weather.
“No,” Harlequin said. “I get the same automated reply in Persian: all is well in Lang Town.”
“It seems we have a mystery on our hands,” Rade said. “The question is, what does our client have to do with this, if anything?”
“Ms. Bounty knows more than she is letting on,” Tahoe said. “I guarantee you. She might even be behind this. We have to watch our step. Besides, since when have we ever really trusted Artificials?” He glanced at Harlequin. “Present company excluded.”
“No offense taken,” Harlequin said.
Bender frowned. “He never said ‘no offense’ to you, bitch.”
“I know,” Harlequin replied. “But that’s how I interpreted his words.”
“Well stop misinterpreting!” Bender shook his head. “Goddamn AIs. Always trying to reframe things to make us humans feel guilty. Tricking us into apologizing when there’s no need to apologize.”
“I’m with Tahoe,” Shaw said. “This feels wrong. Ms. Bounty had to have known we would find the colony abandoned like this. In fact, she was probably counting on it. If I had to guess, I’d say she was here to loot something.”
“Lui,” Rade said. “When the Amytis away team lands, I want you to make sure all our external cameras are pointed at them.”
“Will do,” Lui replied. “Though you know there’s only so much we can see up here, right? What we really need is to send in a few HS3s to give us actual eyes on the ground.”
“Yeah, except we can’t,” Rade said. “They’ll be too obvious.”
“I don’t understand this client,” Bender said. “She has us escort her all the way to the destination, and once we get there, she refuses a final escort on the ground. Won’t even let us deploy the Raptor.”
“It is a bit odd,” Rade said.
“That’s because she has something to hide,” Shaw said.
“Could also be she’s just cheap,” Tahoe said. “Rade did negotiate an extra twenty-five K if we provided boots on the ground...”
“Well,” Shaw said. “Whatever she’s doing, it can’t be legal.”
“We don’t know that,” Rade said.
“But it would be a safe assumption, wouldn’t you agree?” Shaw pressed. “Given the circumstances.”
Rade didn’t answer.
“Can’t we tell her our security protocols require us to send down HS3s at the very least?” Shaw said.
“She’s already told me she wants no escorts down there, neither human nor machine,” Rade said. “You know the client has final say in such matters. Client privacy takes precedence over our own concerns.”
“Well, she’s up to something,” Shaw said. “And I don’t like it.”
“Sometimes, it’s for the best if we don’t know,” Rade said.
“I’ll agree with that,” Manic said. “If it helps us avoid another Kenzo fiasco, then I’d rather be in the dark on every mission going forward.”
“By the way,” Bender glanced at Rade. “Lui mentioned a bunch of shuttles just sitting down there in the hangars, ready for the taking. Do we know the makes and models?”
“You think you could hack into them?” Rade asked, intrigued by the idea of expanding his arsenal of shuttles at no cost. Then again, he wasn’t quite sure where he would put a new shuttle. Both hangar bays were currently full—the first held two Model 2 Dragonflies, plus an outdated Raptor drone for air support. The second held six Hoplite mechs. Maybe they could magnetically mount the new shuttle to the external hull of the Argonaut somehow, like larger starships sometimes did, at least until he could afford the renovation cost of expanding one of his existing bays.
“Think?” Bender said. “I know I could. In any hangar there’s always one or two shuttles running outdated hardware or software. Get me and TJ inside, and in a few hours we’ll make those shuttles our bitches in britches, baby.”
“Did you just say you’d give those shuttles dog panties?” Manic said.
“Shut it,” Bender told him.
Rade pursed his lips. “Lui, forward Bender the make and model information of all the shuttles you’re reading down there.”
“You’re not actually going to lower yourself to the level of a common looter are you?” Shaw said. “We’re better than Ms. Bounty and her ilk.”
“It’s just for information purposes at the moment,” Rade said. “If ever the time comes when we have to ‘borrow’ a shuttle, either for ourselves or for our client, we’ll return it promptly to the owner when we’re done.”
“Assuming we can track him or her down,” Bender said with a sly grin.
“Dog panties,” Manic mouthed.
Bender growled. Somewhat like a dog, actually.
nine
Rade sat in his cramped office, drinking coffee as he observed the colony via one of the Argonaut’s external cameras. Tahoe sat across from him, sipping from his own mug.
Lui had tracked the shuttle from the Amytis all the way down, allowing Rade to watch from the relative comfort of his office. At that moment, the craft was docking with one of the external hangars of the dome colony.
The hangar doors sealed, and several moments later the Amytis away team, which included Ms. Bounty and twelve armed individuals, emerged from the terminal inside the dome. She was we
aring a jumpsuit, helmet and all.
Though he was in his office, Rade had the entire bridge crew on the line.
“Look at that,” Bender said over the comm. “She has her own little armed escort. Guess we’re not the only mercs she hired. I’m not sure whether to feel slighted, or privileged.”
“We’re security consultants,” Lui said. “Not mercs.”
“Same diff,” Bender replied.
“No, there’s a big difference,” Lui said. “Mercs do anything for money. We actually have values.”
“Speak for yourself,” Bender said with a laugh.
“Lui, can you tell me anything about her escort?” Rade asked.
“Looks like four ex-Marines in full jumpsuits,” Lui replied. “That, or ex-Army. Then there are the eight combat robots. They look state of the art. Latest model of Centurion, I think. Not sure how she got the license for them. Two of the robots are carrying some kind of glass storage bin between them. Big enough to fit a man. Looks heavy. And empty. They’ve also got about four HS3 drones fanning ahead, acting as scouts. Again, latest models, judging from the size and shape.”
“I don’t think her men are mercs,” Shaw said. “I’d guess they were in-house. You know, full-time company hires. One of them looks fairly out of shape.”
“Most of the career mercenaries I know are out of shape,” Tahoe said. He looked at Rade and winked.
Rade frowned at the double implication. Like Lui, he didn’t appreciate being called a mercenary. Nor out of shape. At least Tahoe hadn’t said it over the main channel.
“Harlequin,” Rade said. “Do we still have a comm ping?”
“We do,” Harlequin replied.
“Lui, have they set up any repeaters between themselves and their own ship?” Rade asked.
“No,” Lui said. “I’m guessing our client sent down everyone she had aboard. Left the Amytis on full automation.”
“She’s worried about us piggybacking on the repeaters?” Shaw said.
“What, you think she’s trying to lose contact with us?” Rade said.
“It would seem...” Shaw said.
“That’s a very bad idea on her part,” Rade said. “Putting herself out of contact with the only people she can call for help in the case of a bind?”
“Like I told you before, she’s up to something,” Shaw said. “Probably illegal. That empty container? She has to be looting valuables from the city.”
“Do you want me to launch a few repeaters?” Lui asked.
Rade hesitated. “Sometimes the client doesn’t know what’s best. Do it.”
“You got it,” Lui said.
“Keep them well away from the dome, of course,” Rade said. “And pull them back immediately when her team returns to the hangar. What Ms. Bounty doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”
“Actually it can,” Bender said. “But we won’t tell her that.”
Tahoe leaned forward and muted the comm to say: “We’re not going to pull a Kenzo on her, are we, boss?”
Rade shook his head briskly.
The drones launched from the Argonaut; when they were in place, Rade switched to the external camera of the closest, and the returned video of the dome city had triple the detail as compared to the feed from the Argonaut.
“You know, the client will wonder why she’s receiving such a strong ping from us,” Shaw said.
“Let her wonder,” Rade said. “I want the client to know she’ll always have the option to call backup if she needs it.” And that we’ll be aware if she does anything illegal.
Rade was able to observe the team for several blocks until they vanished in an alleyway near an elaborate minaret. He glanced at the overhead map representation of the city in the upper right of his vision. Because the away team hadn’t authorized linkage with their aReals and Implants, he couldn’t track their positions without a visual, therefore the dots representing their locations remained frozen at the entrance to the alley. In theory, the triangulation tech of the repeaters could estimate their position from the ping signals, but the tech didn’t work very well in cities, as evidenced by the frozen dots. That was what happened when buildings got in the way.
“The signal is getting weaker,” Lui said.
Rade kept an eye on the comm ping, which basically measured signal strength. It was growing longer as the moments passed.
About twenty minutes after they disappeared from view, Lui reported that they had lost signal entirely.
So much for being aware of any illegal activities...
“That’s odd,” Rade said. “Did they enter a shielded building of some kind?”
“It’s possible,” Lui replied. “Though the more likely explanation is that her team went underground. Maybe in one of the walkways that run below the city. According to the blueprints we bought from Veritas, there’s a complete underground pedway system running below the city, with passageways linking most of the downtown core.”
That was part of modern colony design. In the event of a dome breach, citizens caught out in the streets could evacuate to the underground passageways until the topside was repaired. Usually those passages were equipped with breach seals and fully stocked bunkers, in case they needed to ride out a major dome failure, such as the impact from a meteorite. That was a real threat on worlds with unfinished terraforming, whose atmospheres weren’t thick enough to protect against such phenomena.
“Ordinarily, that would make sense,” Rade said. “Except the team is nowhere near the downtown core. The pedway doesn’t extend that far east.”
“Actually it does,” Manic said. “Check the blueprints. There is an entry point not far from their location.”
Rade pulled up the blueprints. The data contained not only aerial maps of the streets and the underground pedway system, but also the floor plans of the buildings themselves. The vendor, a shady hacker by the name of Veritas, had promised that those blueprints were accurate, at least up to a year ago.
Veritas had a lot of positive feedback on the hacker forums, and he had served Rade and his company well in the past, so Rade had no reason to disbelieve him. And so far, aerial scans confirmed the correct placement of the buildings and other objects on the blueprints, so the data indeed seemed to be the real deal. Rade certainly hoped so, considering how much the plans had cost him.
Rade zoomed in on the appropriate area on the blueprints. “Well I’ll be... you’re right. Assuming these blueprints are correct, there is indeed a nearby pedway opening. Can we see it from the drones?”
“No,” Lui said. “Even if we reposition, there are too many buildings in the way.”
Rade scratched his neck. “Well, they must have gone down, as you say.”
“There’s another possibility, of course,” Lui said.
“And what’s that?” Rade asked.
“They’ve shut down their comm nodes entirely.”
“And I wonder why would they do that?” Shaw asked rhetorically.
Rade shook his head. Whether or not Shaw was right about the illegal activity, he still felt an obligation to the away team.
But how can I protect clients who don’t want to be protected?
“Well, have Bax keep a watchful eye on the entire city from orbit,” Rade said. “If they’ve truly gone underground, they could emerge from any of the pedway entrances. Let me know the moment you have a sighting, or they return to signal range.”
Rade disconnected from the comm and glanced at Tahoe. “If you don’t mind...”
Tahoe stood. “I’m sure they’ll be all right.”
Rade nodded absently. Good old Tahoe. He knew exactly what was bothering Rade.
When Tahoe departed, Rade stared at the bulkhead. He hadn’t set up any virtual decorations, so the metal appeared featureless. He preferred it that way. Staring at the rivets and the smooth surface helped bring his mind into the here and now. It calmed him in times of turmoil.
Or at least, that was what he told himself.
He gazed into
the polished surface and zoned out.
RADE,” LUI SAID. “Are you there? Rade?”
“What is it?” Rade said, snapping out of his trance. He glanced at the current time overlaid in the lower right of his vision.
Two hours had passed.
Lost time, again.
“One of her Centurions just emerged from the alleyway,” Lui said. “And collapsed. Looks like the combat robot took an extensive beating.”
“What kind of beating?” Rade said. “Are you talking laser bores and other weapons damage?”
“No,” Lui said. “This is all physical. Both of its arms seem to have been torn off, and chunks have been taken out of its torso and legs. Look like bites, actually.”
“Bites...” Rade said. He felt a tingling in his spine. Bites.
“Yes,” Lui said. “Could be some kind of bioengineered entities got loose down there and destroyed the city. Bender thinks they’re aliens, but he’s always quick to jump to conclusions.”
“The SKs are known for their bioengineering tech,” Rade said. “And given that this was once a former SK colony, I’d be more inclined to blame bioweapons, than aliens.”
Bender conferenced in. “Maybe the SKs sold the colony to the Persians, and they left a couple of bioweapons behind to wipe out the new colonists. That way they could come back and retake the colony, good as new.”
“Since when do the SKs double-cross their business partners?” Rade said. “I’d say it was a lone actor of some kind who got his hands on their tech. Not the SK government.”
“How do you know?” Bender pressed.
“Feeding your clients to bioweapons is bad for business.” Rade switched to the main circuit. “All right, everyone. Looks like we’re going to have to go boots on the ground after all. It’s time to earn our extra twenty-five K. Get suited up. Full jumpsuits. I don’t care if the air is breathable down there. I don’t want any of us exposed to biocontagions. Not with the rep the SKs have. Shaw, you have the Argonaut.”
