Silent Order: Axiom Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  March nodded again. “Which means that if you were going to have someone disappear, he’d be a perfect candidate. Likely why they sent him. When he vanished, did anyone notice?”

  He felt a flicker of pity for Philip Reimer. The man’s life seemed to have been thoroughly wasted, a useless parade of empty pleasure and empty diversions. Likely Reimer had been out of his mind and had no idea what was happening when March killed him.

  Of course, that didn’t make the naval officers that Reimer had murdered any less dead.

  “Well, if we’re going to stay here, I’m going to order some dinner,” said Dredger. “You want anything? The food here isn’t great, but it’s better than the crap we sell in our vending machines.”

  March started to say that he didn’t want anything. The menu looked unappealing, with every single entrée a combination of salt, grease, cheese, and simple carbohydrates. He had brought some ration bars in his luggage, and when he found a hotel for the night, he would just have one of those.

  Then something on the dais caught his eye.

  One of the outworlders had gotten to his feet and spoke in Deveraux’s ear while the gaunt crime boss nodded. The man was not Rustari and had the lean, compact build of an experienced fighter beneath his expensive suit. Deveraux nodded, and the man straightened up, revealing a hard face with a scar running down the left side, turning his mouth into a permanent sneer.

  March knew that face far better than he would have liked.

  He looked back to the menu, hoping that Simon Lorre hadn’t noticed him.

  “Changed your mind?” said Dredger. “Well, the bacon sandwich isn’t too bad. Course, it isn’t real bacon. Haven’t been real pigs on Rustaril for centuries. We…”

  “Don’t be obvious about it,” said March, “but look at the outworlder standing on the right side of the dais. Rough looking man with a scar on the left side of his face, but wearing a nice suit.”

  Dredger yawned and glanced to the left, then looked back at the menu. “Yeah, I see him. Looks like a dangerous sort.”

  “His name is Simon Lorre,” said March. “Or at least that’s one of the names he uses.” He felt his voice growing harsh and did not bother to soften his tone. “He’s one of the most effective Machinist agents I’ve ever encountered. I’ve gone up against him twice before, and both times he got a lot of innocent people killed.”

  “Damn,” said Dredger. “You sure?”

  “I’m certain,” said March.

  “Well,” said Dredger. “Guess we found Reimer’s connection to the Machinists.”

  “Yeah,” said March, thinking fast.

  During both of March’s previous encounters with Lorre, the Machinist agent had been using one of the Wraith devices. Did he have one here? March remembered Censor’s report that Reimer’s cybernetic implants had been in a state of quantum flux. Was Lorre experimenting with more technology of the Great Elder Ones? March had only encountered those damned quantum inducers so far, but the Machinists might have dug up more of the Great Elder Ones’ relics.

  “Okay,” said Dredger. “You recognize Lorre on sight. Would Lorre recognize you?”

  “Immediately,” said March. “Did his best to get me killed a couple of times.”

  “Is he pissed enough that he would shoot you in front of a crowd?” said Dredger.

  “He wouldn’t have to,” said March. “If he’s friends with Deveraux, he can have Deveraux send his men after me. We’ll walk out to the van and have Deveraux’s men waiting to kill me. And probably you.”

  “Maybe we should leave now,” said Dredger.

  March glanced around the cavernous room. “If we leave now it will draw attention to ourselves. Let’s wait a few minutes until the tournament starts. Then we can maybe slip out without attracting notice, or get out through the kitchen or the emergency exits.”

  It seemed his luck was a double-edged sword. March had been expecting to spend considerably more time investigating Deveraux and the Video Parlor. Instead, Simon Lorre had simply strolled through the front door with Deveraux. However, that also proved that Lorre didn’t know the Silent Order had discovered his involvement. If he saw March, he would realize that things had gone wrong and would take steps to protect himself.

  March needed to get out of the Video Parlor without drawing Lorre’s notice.

  “Yeah,” said Dredger. “Yeah, that makes sense. We’ll slip out when the tournament starts.” The screens had switched to the pregame commentary, with announcers speculating on whether the blue team or the green team would do better at Renarchist Hero. “Meanwhile, I suppose we had better order something to eat. It’ll look weird if we don’t.”

  Considering the enormous trays of snack foods that the Companion waitresses were bringing to the Citizens’ tables, March thought Dredger had a point. He saw one man start on a plate of fried potatoes, deep-fried cheese sticks, chicken tenders lathered in sauce, and onion rings, a 144-ounce container of a soft drink at his side. There had to be something like ten thousand calories on the tray before him, and March thought that was just the first course.

  “All right,” said March. “I will take…”

  Right then, everything went to hell.

  March glanced at the dais again and saw Lorre speaking with some of Deveraux’s bodyguards. Were any of those men Machinist agents? As they spoke, March’s eyes drifted to the massive window behind them, to the huge industrial complex rising against the darkening sky like an artificial hill.

  A glint of light caught March’s eye.

  Something was moving on the roof of the industrial complex, and he was certain that nothing had been there before. It was likely nothing. Perhaps a bird had landed on the rooftop and disturbed one of the machines. The Renarchist government had made a hash of Rustaril’s ecology, but they hadn’t killed all the native birds.

  But something about the distant shape set off alarms in March’s mind.

  It occurred to him that if someone wanted to attack the Video Parlor, shooting through those huge windows behind the dais would be a superb way to do it.

  “Dredger,” he said. “Who owns that industrial complex behind the Video Parlor?”

  Dredger blinked. “Damned if I know. Place has been abandoned the entire time I’ve lived in Rykov City. No one manufactures things on Rustaril if they can avoid it.”

  “Would anyone be in that complex?” said March, slipping his phone from his pocket.

  “Shouldn’t be,” said Dredger. “Not many criminals will even use them as bases. Too many old chemicals and malfunctioning repair drones and so forth. People might use them for a quiet meeting, but that’s about it.”

  “Yeah,” said March, raising his phone and pretending to scroll through something, “but there’s someone up there right now.”

  His phone had some useful modifications, and one of them was a camera lens that could pivot and zoom. While pretending to check his phone, March adjusted the angle of the lens and zoomed in on the industrial complex. He saw a metal walkway running along the side of the building, a hundred meters above the ground. A woman in a dark coat stood there, her hood pulled up, sunglasses concealing her eyes. No, not sunglasses – tinted goggles.

  And there was something long and black in her hands, something mounted on a tripod facing the Video Parlor…

  A sniper rifle.

  There was a flash of light.

  March looked up just in time to see one of the gaunt men near Deveraux keel over, the top half of his head burned away, a smoking hole melted in the window behind him. For a moment, no one noticed except for Deveraux and Lorre, both of whom threw themselves to the floor. The crack of the plasma bolt burning through the window had been drowned out by a round of applause from the commentators on the video screens, but as the applause died down, the woman on the walkway fired three more times. Her shots killed two of Deveraux’s bodyguards and another of his lieutenants, and this time everyone in the Video Parlor heard the noise.

  The reaction
was instantaneous.

  “What the hell?” said Dredger as the dining room exploded into chaos. Those Citizens and Administrators capable of walking sprinted for the doors in a chaotic rush. Those in carts tried to turn their vehicles towards the exit, fleeing as fast as the carts would allow. Deveraux’s bodyguards closed around him, and together with Lorre and his lieutenants, they hastened towards the kitchens.

  March shoved to his feet, looked around, and spotted an emergency exit near the dais.

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Dredger.

  “Get the van to the front gate of that industrial complex,” said March, shoving an earpiece into his ear and sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Link your phone up to mine, and I’ll keep you informed. Quantum encryption only. I’m going after our sniper.”

  There was no time to explain, but he outranked Dredger, and the other man only nodded, heaving to his feet with a grunt.

  March wasn’t sure, but he thought the first blast might have been aimed at either Deveraux or Lorre. That meant someone knew what Lorre was up to…and the woman with the sniper rifle might have all the information March needed to stop Lorre’s plan.

  He saw Deveraux and Lorre and their guards vanish into the kitchens, and March sprinted for the emergency door.

  Chapter 4: Clockwork Eye

  March burst out the door and looked around.

  He found himself in the wide rear parking lot of Deveraux’s Video Parlor. A few service vans were parked next to a pair of overflowing metal trash dumpsters awaiting the recycling trucks, and some of the Video Parlor’s employees escaped through nearby emergency doors. But for the moment, March was alone.

  Without the obstruction of the massive window, he got a clear look at the walkway and the woman standing upon it. From this distance, she seemed only a black speck upon the walkway, but she hadn’t moved since pulling the trigger. That seemed sloppy. A clever sniper had escape routes prepared. But perhaps she already did and knew that she could escape at will. Or maybe she had someone coming to pick her up – a helicopter, maybe, or a low-flying spacecraft.

  Confronting her was a gamble. It was also possible that her attack had nothing to do whatsoever with Maurice Deveraux and Simon Lorre. Yet it was too much of a coincidence. Lorre walked into the room, and then someone shot through the window? The woman was either a potential ally or a potential foe.

  Either way, he could not pass up the possibility of useful information.

  March ran across the parking lot, heading for the chain-link fence that surrounded the industrial complex. There was no barbed wire atop it. March sped up, jumped, and drove the fingers of his left hand into the gaps in the fence. His left arm contracted, pulling him up, and he seized the top of the fence, heaved, and rolled over the top.

  He landed in a crouch on the other side.

  The courtyard at the base of the industrial complex had once been a parking lot, though the asphalt was crumbling, weeds shooting up from the cracks. March spotted a door below the sniper’s walkway and hurried towards it, keeping a wary eye on the sniper. The woman hadn’t moved. What was she waiting for? Almost certainly someone in the Video Parlor had notified the Securitate, and the emergency response vehicles were likely on their way.

  He reached the door and saw that while it had been locked, the heavy padlock lay in pieces on the floor. It looked as if someone had cut it with a laser cutter or a plasma torch within the last few hours.

  The sniper had come this way.

  March eased the door open and stepped inside.

  He found himself in a cavernous room filled with rusting machines and robot arms, cables dangling from the ceiling beams far overhead. Light leaked through the skylights, throwing wild shadows over the machinery. Unless March missed his guess, this place had once manufactured cars. Come to think of it, he saw half-assembled Rustari cars still on the line, moldering along with the rest of the machinery. It looked as if the entire factory had simply stopped in the middle of the day, and no one had ever bothered to repair it or even strip it to sell for parts.

  A good metaphor for Rustaril, he supposed.

  His earpiece chimed. “March?” It was Dredger.

  “Yeah,” murmured March, tapping a button on the earpiece.

  “I’m back in the van,” said Dredger, “and bringing it to the gate. I’ll wait as long as I can, but if the Securitate starts sniffing around, I’ll have to go.”

  “Acknowledged,” whispered March. He spotted a flight of metal stairs clinging to the concrete wall, rising towards the metal rafters of the ceiling and the equipment installed there. March saw no other nearby stairwells. The sniper would almost certainly have to descend this way. “I’m in pursuit.”

  “And for God’s sake,” said Dredger, “if the Securitate starts looking at the complex, get the hell out of there. You’re an outworlder and a Calaskaran. If the Securitate needs someone to blame for the murders, you’re a perfect candidate. If this blows up bad enough, it might even get to the boss.”

  “I’ll be careful,” said March. He reached into his jacket and drew the cheap plastic pistol. It wouldn’t have much stopping power, but at close range, it would still kill. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need it.

  “Hey, wait,” said Dredger. “Doesn’t that earpiece of yours have a camera? I can watch from here, and if you get your head blown off, I’ll at least have a video to give back to the boss.” March tapped the button on his earpiece again, activating the camera. It was a good idea. In the heat of the moment, he might not notice an important detail, but reviewing the video later would prove helpful. And if March was killed, the camera in the earpiece would provide some record of his death for Tolox and Censor.

  Though he had no intention of getting killed.

  He hastened up the stairs, the brutal training he had endured as an Iron Hand letting him move in relative silence. March kept his eyes on the steps above, pistol raised, watching for any sign of movement. Dredger kept a steady stream of updates coming into his earpiece. The Securitate rapid response team had arrived and locked down the Video Parlor, though no doubt generous bribes from Deveraux would convince them to depart in good time. Until then, they were interviewing witnesses. Dredger had a scanner on the Securitate’s local channel, and so far, they hadn’t shown any interest in March or Dredger or even any awareness that they existed.

  March kept climbing, listening with half an ear. At last, he reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto a broad metal catwalk encircling the wall. Dozens of smaller catwalks led to service gantries where technicians had repaired the ceiling-mounted equipment.

  It was a long way down to the factory floor.

  About twenty meters to his right was an opened door, gray daylight leaking through it. That was the door the sniper had used to access the outdoor walkway. It was entirely possible she was still there. March took one step forward…

  The woman walked through the opened door, saw him, and froze.

  The face behind the black goggles was pale and gaunt, and her head had been shaven. Beneath the long coat, she wore gray cargo trousers and a black T-shirt, and part of his mind noted that the T-shirt fit her very well. The rest of his mind examined the extensive amount of weaponry that she carried. There were pistols on either hip, a bandoleer across her chest holding grenades and ammunition, and to judge from the bulge on the coat’s forearms, she had a pair of knives hidden up her sleeves. She carried the long black sniper rifle and a collapsed tripod. March didn’t recognize the model, but it was a familiar design, and the weapon could spit out a plasma bolt across a long distance at great accuracy.

  Every weapon she had was superior to the cheap plastic pistol in March’s hand.

  But March’s weapon was pointed at her, and she would not be able to bring any of her guns to bear before he fired.

  A look of irritation went over the woman’s face as she came to that realization.

  “I just want to talk,” said March.

  “Inquiry?” sa
id the woman, her voice flat and toneless. “State your purpose.”

  Something in her voice scratched a memory. Did he know her? No, March was sure he had never met her before. But he had met people who talked like that, usually people who were linked to the Final Consciousness and part of its hive mind. Was she a Machinist agent? Or a member of the Final Consciousness?

  If so, why had she just shot at Deveraux and Lorre?

  “Why did you try to kill Maurice Deveraux?” said March.

  “Because I was hired to do so.” Irritation went over the pale face. “And since he escaped, I have waived my fee.”

  “Who hired you to do it?” said March.

  “Pattern alpha three,” said the woman.

  An odd answer. No, it wasn’t an answer. It was an attack pattern, the sort used by commandos or covert operatives when coordinating their movements, or by…

  The realization came to March in a blazing flash.

  Or by attack drones with voice command.

  He threw himself to the floor, which was the only thing that saved his life.

  A plasma bolt blazed through the space his head had occupied earlier and blasted a smoking crater in the concrete wall. March rolled to one knee, his gun hand automatically tracking towards the source of the blast. Six meters further down the walkway was a thing that looked like a black metal spider the size of a dog. Its head was a mass of optical and infrared sensors surrounding the emitter of a small plasma cannon. It was a security drone. Likely the sniper had set it up before she tried to kill Deveraux, and had only been stalling until the machine could get a lock on March.

  His gun would be useless against it. The heavy armor on the drone could shrug off small-caliber bullets with ease. Already the spidery legs were clanging against the metal walkway as the drone shifted, lining up another shot.

  But March was already moving. He sprinted forward, and the drone’s second shot missed him. Before it could line up a third shot, March hammered his left hand down. His cybernetic limb drove his fist forward with terrific force, and his blow smashed the drone’s head, crushing it to twisted metal and broken plastic. The drone shuddered, its legs drumming against the walkway, and March seized one of its legs in his left hand.