Jim Baen’s Universe
Page 22
Right behind them a cluster of sleep smokers mirved to their targets and turned the air the color of storm clouds about to burst. I kept my mouth shut and forced myself to breathe through my nose; the sinus filters worked perfectly. If Jack and Manu did the same, they’d be fine. The active antidotes we’d all taken would keep us awake even if we breathed the gas, but until it had dissipated for a few minutes it would be hard on our lungs and throats. The nano-machines in my cells would repair mine quickly enough, but I saw no reason to suffer any damage I could avoid.
The rest of Dougat’s staff and, unfortunately, nearby pedestrians wouldn’t be as lucky, but aside from any injuries they sustained when they fell they should suffer only long, drugged naps, raw sinuses, bad coughs, and, from the howlers, some minor ringing in their ears.
I reached for Jack, but he wasn’t there. Damn! Anger shot a flood of adrenaline into my body, and I trembled with barely controlled energy and rage. He knew he shouldn’t move!
“Where’s Jack,” I mumbled through pursed lips.
My words were clear enough for Lobo.
My left eye’s display turned into an aerial schematic of the grounds, with red dots marking Dougat’s staff, a blue dot indicating Jack, and a green one on Manu’s position. The blue and green dots were streaking toward the building.
“Running toward the ziggurat,” Lobo said. “External staff and bystanders are all sleeping. I’m hovering overhead. Howlers have discharged; reenabling hearing.”
In an instant the thrumming of Lobo’s hover jets joined the unconscious moans and wheezes all around me to replace the silence I’d been enjoying. I stood and headed forward. The blue and green dots veered to the side of the entrance to the ziggurat. A second later, a stream of red dots poured out of it. These guys were clearly prepared for gas, because none of them fell. I cranked my own vision to IR for another view of them and watched as the ten new security people fanned out in front of me. The blue and green dots ducked behind them, Manu barely ahead of Jack, and zipped into the building. Great. Now I had to get past this new team, retrieve Jack and Manu, and go back outside for pick-up. If they’d only kept to the plan and stayed near me, we’d already have been on our way out of here.
“Image enhancement suggests new hostiles are armed and environmentally prepared,” Lobo said.
Sure enough, the new squad broke into four clusters. One sprinted for Dougat. The remaining three focused on me, one taking a direct approach and the other two going wide to flank me. The only good news was that either they’d missed Jack and Manu or they’d assumed those two were down.
“Trank 'em,” I mumbled.
Lobo didn’t waste time answering. I heard the rounds spraying from guns on his undercarriage, and in less than two seconds everyone on the new team dropped.
“Public feeds are rich in data about our assault,” Lobo said. “We must exit soon or expect to face additional local resistance.”
“I have to get Jack and Manu,” I said as I ran to the side of the entrance. I stopped long enough to pull a trank pistol from the holster at the base of my back, then dove inside. I hit the ground on my shoulder and rolled quickly to a prone position. I glanced to the right and the left of the entrance. No one.
I stood and immediately regretted the action as a projectile round to the chest knocked me down. The body armor stopped it from seriously injuring me, but my chest throbbed with pain and breathing hurt. I slit my eyes and stayed still. Precious time was evaporating, but if I moved I might suffer a head shot, and I don’t know if my nano-machines can repair brain damage. I hope to never find out.
A guard emerged from behind an exhibit about five meters in front of me. He kept his pistol aimed at me and moved cautiously forward. He stepped with care, and his weapon never wavered. I did my best to look unconscious; the lack of blood would tell him I wasn’t dead.
A crashing sound ripped the air from somewhere behind him, and he turned for a moment to check it out.
I fired multiple times at his back and head.
He dropped.
Too many trank rounds might kill him, something I didn’t want to do, but I couldn’t afford the time to check on him and make sure he was okay. Dougat might have more security personnel around, and the warehouse distraction south of us was old news, so I had to get out of there, but I couldn’t leave without Jack and Manu.
I had no feed from Lobo to guide me in my search, so I decided to run to the center of the building and hope I spotted them.
Before I’d gone five steps, Jack dashed toward me from my left, Manu’s hand in his.
“What were you doing?” I said, my voice shaking with my anger at Jack’s violation of our agreement. The air inside was now clean enough that I could talk freely without hurting my throat. “You idiot! You don’t freelance and leave your team.”
“Manu was terrified and ran,” Jack said. “I didn’t expect it, and I couldn’t see him clearly, so I fell behind. I couldn’t leave him here, Jon. I had to get him.”
Though his answer was reasonable, even admirable in some ways, I still shook with anger and adrenaline. I forced myself to nod. “Follow me,” I said.
“Heading to you,” I said to Lobo as soon as we cleared the building. “Land in the closest clear area-not on people-and direct me in.” Lobo had argued in our planning meeting that if we ended up in a fight he should set down right beside us, and that anyone he squashed in the process was an acceptable casualty, but even with time short I saw no reason to kill if we could avoid it.
“Moving,” Lobo said. “Media scans put police ETA at under ninety seconds.”
I kept moving and didn’t waste any energy replying. Jack and Manu stayed close to me as we ran. A vector in my left eye’s display led me about forty meters ahead and to the right, toward the southern side of the grounds. Even staying slow enough for the boy to keep up, we reached Lobo quickly. As we drew closer to Lobo, his camo armor exterior blending so well with the still gas-filled air that I doubt anyone watching without IR knew where he was, he opened a hatch on the side facing us. I ran to him, stepped inside, and turned around to make sure Jack and Manu made it.
They were right there, Jack actually showing a bit of stress, Manu in tears. We were almost clear. Jack picked up Manu, whose wide eyes reeked of terror, and handed the boy to me.
I grabbed him, turned around, and put him down.
As I was straightening, I said, “Lobo,” but I never finished the sentence as I felt Jack’s hand on my neck and then passed out.
****
I awoke slowly, my head aching and my neck and shoulders stiff. When I opened my eyes, I had trouble focusing, but after a few seconds the world snapped into view. I was lying on the floor inside Lobo, right where I’d fallen.
Where Jack
had left me, I realized as the memory of what had happened caught up with me. I pushed up on my arms and quickly regretted the action as the remnants of whatever drugs he’d used coursed through me and nearly made me pass out again.
I decided the floor wasn’t such a bad place to be right now. My system would naturally wash itself of the drugs in time, and the nano-machines would speed the process, but resting there for the moment seemed reasonable.
“Welcome back,” Lobo said. “Are you coherent enough to respond?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You made enough noises while unconscious that several times I thought you might be awake,” he said.
“Fair enough. How long was I out?”
“Approximately three hours, fifty-seven minutes,” he said with what I thought was a trace of amusement. “Jack claimed you’d be unconscious for at least five hours, but my experiences with you led me to estimate a quicker recovery. I was, of course, correct.”
Lovely. How long I’d remain out of it had turned into a betting game for my battle wagon and the old friend who’d just screwed me once again.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” I said.
“I had no information from you to suggest Jack would drug you,” Lobo said with annoyance. “Once you were unconscious, he was, by your orders, in command. Had he then tried to injure you further, your earlier orders would have allowed me to take action to prevent him, but he did nothing to harm you from that point forward. Had your health showed signs of worsening, I could have transported you to a medical facility, but your vital signs remained steady and strong. Consequently, I could only obey his instructions-again, per your orders.”
I hate being stupid, and Lobo’s tone made the annoyance all the greater. At the same time, I’d given Lobo those orders to protect the boy, and they reflected the best data available at the moment I gave them.
Except, of course, for the key fact that I’d known and chosen to ignore: you can’t trust Jack.
Even though years of experience had taught me that lesson, something about the way he’d behaved this time had struck me as different; it was as if he actually cared about Manu.
Manu.
“What happened to the boy?” I said.
“To the best of my ability to tell, they are safe,” Lobo said. “On Jack’s orders, we invested an hour in evasive action and then proceeded to the jump gate. They departed there.”
Given that we’d just attacked one of the richest men on the planet, the jump gate was a reasonable place to go. Jack would have caught the first available shuttle off-planet and be far away by now. I would have done the same.
My thinking was definitely not up to par, because it took me this long to realize that what mattered was not what I would have done, but what I needed to do now-though in this case they were the same. I needed to leave Mund.
“Where are we?”
“In orbit around Drayus,” Lobo said. “On the far side of the planet from the jump gate, hiding with a group of tediously dull weather satellites.”
Lobo was ahead of me-but how? “You jumped from Mund on your own?” I said. “It’s not that I’m not grateful, or that it wasn’t the right choice-I am, and it was-but I didn’t think you could book transport through a gate without a human’s approval.”
“Once Jack left,” Lobo said, “I had to follow the next most relevant of your orders, which was to protect you. Leaving Mund was clearly the best way to do that. As for needing a human’s approval, you are correct-but all approvals, including those that require DNA samples for verification-are electronically transmitted. I have complete records of all our jumps, the accounts you’ve used for payment, and your DNA and electronic signatures, so I simply forged your presence.”
“The jump systems didn’t catch the forgery?”
“We are in orbit around Drayus, as I said, so clearly, no, they did not.” Lobo’s voice crackled with annoyance. “As I’ve explained to you before, my programming is vastly beyond that of most commercial systems.”
I chuckled. “I apologize for underestimating you, and I thank you for getting me off Mund.”
“I accept both your apology and your thanks,” Lobo said. “Would you now like to view the recording Jack left for you?”
“Jack left a recording?”
“Why do you persist in asking questions to which you already know the answer?” Lobo said, the annoyance back.
“It was a rhetorical question. Jack’s never done anything like that. When he vanishes, he leaves no traces.”
I sat up, and this time doing so didn’t leave me weaker. “Play it for me.”
A display opened on the wall in front of me. Jack snapped into view. He stood beside Manu and held the boy’s hand. My unconscious body lay on the floor behind him.
“Jon,” he said, waving his hand briefly at my body, “I’m very sorry for treating you like that. If I’d thought there was any other reasonable option, I would have taken it. But, I didn’t. The problem is that you wouldn’t have approved of what I did, and then you would have tried to make it right, and in the end there was too big a chance that Manu might have gotten hurt.” Jack sounded genuinely torn and upset. He paused, glanced down at Manu, and stroked the boy’s head lightly.
“The fee Dougat paid for the interview was enough to buy Manu treatments for a while, but only for a while. He was going to need more, a lot more. We-his parents and I-were hoping Dougat would be willing to pay for more interviews or maybe even to help with the med-tech bills just because of Manu’s Pinkelponker ancestry.” He put his hands over Manu’s ears for a moment. “Yeah, I know: it was a dumb hope. I tried to tell them, but it was the only option any of us could come up with that might help for the long term. The alternative, well-" he paused and looked at Manu, and when he faced forward again his eyes were wet, “-none of us were willing to deal with that.”
He took his hands off Manu’s ears. “When I caught up to Manu inside the Institute, he was hiding behind one of the gemstone displays.” He paused, shook his head, and smiled. “Look, I know it’s not right, but Dougat is so wealthy he won’t even feel the loss.”
Jack turned, stooped, and reached behind Manu. When he stood, he was clutching a cluster of at least half a dozen different Pinkelponker gems, his hands twinkling as if holding a night sky drenched in green, red, blue, and purple stars. “The right collectors will pay enough for these to cover Manu’s treatments forever-and then some.” Jack laughed. “Besides, a man has a right to make a profit now and then, eh?”
I laughed with him. Leave it to Jack to fall into a mess and walk away rich.
Lobo’s video sensor tracked him as he walked to the front acceleration couch and left a huge green gem on it.
“For your help, Jon,” he said.
“Docking with jump station in sixty seconds,” said Lobo’s voice on the recording.
Jack nodded and returned to Manu.
“I wish it had gone better, Jon,” he said, “and just as I promised, this time we did some good: Manu will get his treatments.”
Jack smiled that beautiful, wide, glowing smile of his, and I felt myself smiling involuntarily in response.
“Besides,” he said, “admit it: wouldn’t you have been at least a little disappointed if everything had played out according to plan?” He laughed lightly. “Take care, Jon.
“Jack out.”
The display vanished.
“Bye, Jack,” I whispered to the still and empty air.
I stretched out on the floor. I was alive and unhurt. Manu was not only safe, he’d also receive all the treatments he needed to stay alive. I didn’t approve of stealing, but it wasn’t like I’d never done it before, and Jack was right that Dougat could afford the loss. I’d even come out of it with a profit; a gem that size would, from the right buyer, bring me more than the cost of the weapons we’d used.
Compared to most of my experiences with Jack, this had been a dream.
“Did I mention we called him ‘Slanted Jack’?” I said.
“No,” Lobo said. “Why?”
“Because nothing’s ever straight with him,” I said, smiling. “But sometimes that’s okay.”
****
Candy-Blossom
Dave Freer
I was going to run. As soon as he… it… the THING stopped looking at me. Staring a hole through my stupid head with its four eyes. I was going to run like the wind. I shouldn’t have come here. Never. I swore to God… if I ever got out of here…