“I’m telling them about the four coming down the alley,” Muck said, flashing a hand signal. Apparently the Brethren understood. Several of them immediately diverted that direction, shoving civilians out of the way as they went.
Civilians? The Brethren were nominally civilians, as they were barred from military service and labeled by the Administration as undesirables. What was wrong with me? What was wrong with them? They moved smoothly, utilizing cover and concealment, converging on the guards and their would-be ambush and neatly turning the tables.
I doubt the guards ever knew what hit them. The Brethren struck quickly, flowing from the spaces between habs to take the guards in the flank.
One of them stood with hands up, apparently talking quickly. I dialed up and focused our hearing, just in time to hear the lead guard’s angry “No!” He started to raise the projectile weapon in his hands—
Several shots rippled out in quick succession, the dull popping sound of the guard’s projectile weapon nearly lost in the growl of multiple directed-energy weapons. The guard leader and his people fell before any of them could do more than raise their weapons. The leader’s lone shot must have gone wild, because none of the Brethren fell, but the shot blended into the Brethren’s fusillade as their return fire rang through the souk. Once more the crowd surged in panic.
“Go!” I shouted at Muck. He was already moving, leaping from rooftop to rooftop as we fought toward the central landing plinth.
As we moved, I continued scanning for any of the remaining lab guards. I found the female shooter again: running parallel to us, pushing toward the Speaker’s red scarf as her people hustled her along.
The shooter was slowed by a knot of panicked shoppers for a moment, but the Speaker’s path of travel angled toward the striped awning sheltering the second guard.
“Muck!” I had to shout to get his attention.
Muck’s boot soles skidded on the dust-coated rooftop again, and we went down hard, sliding against the slick plascrete of the hab’s roof.
“Boost!” He shouted back, rolling to his feet.
I amped his neural connections and jacked his muscles to maximum performance. We would suffer for it later, but he needed every bit of strength and speed we could summon. We leaped from our current roof to the edge of a building along the intersection ahead. People screamed and dodged out of the way as we dove for the hard-packed ground. We touched down hands first, tucking into a neat roll that ended with us popping back to our feet. Then Muck drove his legs like a pile-driver against the dirt and launched us into the air toward the striped awning.
The lab guard was just stepping out from under cover as we hit her from the side, closing one fist around her braid. Momentum carried us over the side, but not alone. We dragged her with us. We struck the awning first, then her weight came down on us and we rolled, tearing at each other even as our thrashing ripped the awning from its supports. I glimpsed the torn fabric of the awning fluttering behind us like some dusty comet’s tail as we fell, then we hit, hard. I felt bone crunch under our combined weight. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to be any of ours.
Muck rose out of the awning and settled matters with a vicious kick to the guard’s forehead. I wasn’t certain we’d killed her, but knew she’d have one hell of a headache when she woke if she lived.
Muck was already pulling free of the awning and on the move.
“Two more shooters, at your nine and six!” Muck shouted over the chaos of the crowd. The Brethren carrying the Speaker responded by closing ranks around her and pushing the pace even faster.
Another flurry of shots and the Speaker went down, all but two of her guards falling around her. Off to our left, in the direction the fire had come from, another series of thunderous growls ripped the air as the Brethren put paid to the shooters who had downed the Speaker.
Muck and I joined the Speaker and her remaining guards within a matter of steps.
I tried to ignore the looks they shot us. The secret was out: Muck was pretty obviously using mods.
Well. Tough shit for them. Mods, and the effective use of them, were all that was keeping us alive. That was all that mattered.
That, and finding Siren.
“Give her to me,” Muck said to the Brother holding the Speaker. “I can get her to safety faster than any of you.”
I gave the religious zealot credit; he didn’t even hesitate. “Get to the shuttle plinth, our people will protect you both. We’ll be right behind you.”
“Got it,” Muck said, hefting her surprisingly insubstantial weight in our arms. Her head lolled against our shoulder, and she bled heavily from a wound above her ear. She looked frail and old, something that force of personality hid while she was conscious. Muck stripped our scarf off of our head and draped it over her red one, and then set off.
The crowd didn’t exactly part, but it might as well have with the way Muck ran, pushing our modified body to the absolute limit, heedless of anyone or anything that got in our way. If it wouldn’t be moved by our bulk, we leaped over it.
Another shot from our left. We swerved into an alleyway, not slowing. Our legs burned like the heart of a star going supernova, but we pushed on, cutting down a short side street before jerking back to the left toward the ancient, stone enormity of the plinth.
This body of ours couldn’t keep up this pace much longer, but damn if we weren’t going to make it to the plinth before collapsing like a dying star.
We burst from between two booths and crossed a small open stretch. Two more shots went past, making Muck hunch deeper into a crouching sprint . . . Then we were in the narrow, twisting defile that led to the top of the plinth. We rounded the first corner and ran into a wall of bodies.
Hands reached to take the Speaker, to pull us in.
The Brethren closed ranks behind us and started firing from cover. Discharges crackled across the now-empty plaza, lighting the defile in strange flashes. Muck turned in time for me to see not one, but two lab guards fall dead at the edge of the open area. The rest retreated to cover for the moment.
“Traveler,” a voice said, just as we fell heavily to our knees, the last of our reserves fully depleted.
Gasping, we rolled to our back, chest heaving like an old-fashioned bellows. Muck dragged his chin up to meet the Speaker’s gaze.
“Speaker,” he panted through cracked lips.
“You saved me. We are grateful.” She stood in front of us, red scarf tangled, wisps of white hair peeking out, and a trickle of blood running from the hastily wrapped bandage at her temple.
“I . . . put you in danger . . .”
“Yes. We are less grateful for that,” she said with a taste of her former wry humor. “But it has turned out well enough. The last of my people who can make it on their own are returning, and we lost more Brethren in the ‘labor unrest’ a few weeks ago than we did today. And look.” She pointed to the sky, where a dark shape had appeared. It grew larger and larger until we could make out the distinctive shape of the Dugran shuttle. It was huge. So huge it seemed to blot out the entire sky, darkening everything to inky blackness . . . Oh. Nope . . . that was Muck, sliding into unconsciousness. Having nothing better to do, and no energy to fight it, I let him take me with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SARA
Biologicals were such interesting creatures. They did the strangest things for the strangest reasons . . . and the records always ended up in SARA’s archives. She’d taken to combing through the incoming data, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that might be entertaining. She always handled the data properly, of course. Safeguarded it according to procedure and whatnot. But as long as she was a stickler for proper handling protocols, she really didn’t see any harm in enjoying herself along the way.
“SARA,” LEO said, his voice clipped and curt. Of course, his voice was always clipped and curt. SARA real
ly didn’t know what he had to be so upset about all the time. He got to see some of the most interesting sentient interactions of all!
“Hi, doll,” she said, in part because she knew it would annoy him, and in part because she just liked the breezy sound of the greeting. “What can I do for you? Found out anything more about our friend Dengler or the rogue angel?” She lifted her avatar’s fingers and made the human “air quotes” gesture that so perfectly conveyed sarcasm. She’d always rather enjoyed that gesture for that reason.
“Yes, on both counts. Though I do not count Security Supervisor Dengler a ‘friend.’” LEO copied her air quotes with his own avatar. SARA laughed and clapped her hands with delight at his display. He was ordinarily so strait-laced!
“Oh! You’re getting so good at emoting, LEO, really! I’m so proud of you. Whatcha got?”
“I don’t know the details yet, but I suspect Security Supervisor Dengler is somehow involved in the death of the Gosrian, Fulu, and its subsequent cover-up. And . . . possibly more.”
“What more?” SARA’s girlish delight was gone. LEO was giving her solid information. This was all business.
“The rogue angel-class AI and her temporary host, one Ralston Muck, boarded a transport called Le Bonne Nuit nine standard days ago, headed to Sagran VI. It never arrived. The ship was confirmed destroyed in transit, with no survivors reported. No cause of destruction listed, which is odd in a report like this, unless an investigation is ongoing. But Administration hasn’t ordered an investigation either.”
“Hmm . . .” SARA flipped back through her archives of captured visual data from the docks. “Nine days . . . Le Bonne Nuit . . . Here! Got it. Let’s see what we can see. Just because there’s no investigation doesn’t mean we can’t take a look, right?”
LEO said nothing.
SARA shrugged and began playing the files in the space around them. She let out a gasp and froze the recorded data as one familiar face stuck out.
A lone man, pushing against the current of the crowd, uniform parting the sentients as he moved away from the doomed ship’s dock . . .
“Security Supervisor Dengler,” LEO said on a growl of anger, watching the feed. “Did you sabotage their ship?”
“Angel’s really gone?” SARA asked then, feeling rather small. AI don’t die, not really. Backups and iterations prevented complete destruction. But then, Angel wasn’t like other AIs. “I wanted to thank her for making me feel.”
“She is,” LEO said. “And I bet he’s the bastard that did it.”
“Then we should do something about Security Supervisor Dengler,” SARA said, her own sharp anger cutting through her, right beside the ribbon of sadness at the thought of Angel.
“Yes,” LEO said, “I think we should.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Muck
If the transport had settled on the plinth with silent majesty, it departed with subtle grace. Angel had to tell me we were on the move once the great hatch hissed closed.
Indirect artificial light glowed from the walls, slowly revealing the low-ceilinged chamber that seemed to swallow the roughly two thousand people that had come aboard. Oddly, there were no echoes either. In fact, the hold, if that’s what it was, seemed strangely quiet, muffled even.
Once their wounded were seen to, the armed Brethren started to relax, weapons disappearing into clothing or hooked to charging packs almost as quickly as they’d been drawn from them. Several looked my way, expressions mixed. They’d seen what I’d done on the wild run to the shuttle, surely. Some would respect my skill and strength; others would just see a sinner who suffered the godless to modify his body.
“Speaker Naomi is coming your way,” Siren warned.
Still exhausted, I rolled my neck and shoulders, trying to relax as the Speaker arrived, a number of armed Brethren at her back.
“Who were they?” the Speaker said without preamble.
“DPAPL goons, I assume.”
“Why would they be after you?” More Brethren were crowding close around us, making me uneasy.
Cold radiated through my veins as Angel slid something into my bloodstream. I gave silent thanks, drew a tired breath, and answered, “I wanted to see what they were working on, so I went into their facility.”
Her eyes narrowed so fractionally I knew I had missed it. Angel, filling in details for me. Speaker Naomi knew I was lying.
“Just like that?”
I shrugged, decided on the small lie to sell the bigger one. “I still have some mods from my service in the war. I’ve been keeping them active since my discharge with pharma. I thought I would see what the company thought they were doing, replacing the Brethren like that.”
“And they, just as arbitrarily, decided to hunt you down and kill you?”
“Well, they weren’t very happy when I decided to leave without signing their nondisclosure agreement.”
My little joke went over poorly. The Speaker merely waited, but her guards had less self-control, grumbling quietly.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Honestly, there is something . . . wrong going on in that facility—with that corporation. Like you said, there’s more going on here than we know. But I’m certain that the Jhregda ag hab wasn’t just destroyed because of a ‘labor dispute’. They slagged the place as a cover-up.” I couldn’t very well tell her Angel had yet to crack the encryption on what little we had taken from the facility.
A frown informed me my statement lacked sufficient details to satisfy the Speaker. “And just what, pray tell, is being covered up?”
“Insufficient data, so far. Something to do with the plants you were cultivating, body mods, an”—I quickly changed to a slightly more acceptable term—”AIs, and the illegal pharma I mentioned before. I think.”
“You think? It seems you put us all at risk for little gain.”
I dropped any pretense of confidence and said simply, “I am sorry for that. I didn’t think they would attempt to shoot me with witnesses around.”
Angel stirred. “The Speaker’s not displeased with you, she’s relieved.”
Before I could answer, the Speaker asked another question. “Just who are you, Ralston Muck?”
I hung my head. “A lot of things. None of them all that good.”
“And what, truthfully now, were you doing when you first came to us?”
“The ship I was on was destroyed, and I did escape its destruction via lifepod . . . Before that, I was—I am—looking for a friend of mine who was kidnapped. Someone told me I would find answers on Sagran VI, but all I found was more questions.”
“And what do you do to support yourself?”
“I am between jobs, at the moment. You know I was a bouncer at a nightclub.”
“And before that?”
“Criminal Investigations Division, 1st Army, 3rd Fleet, Allied Forces Dentrat Command.”
“Tell her everything, why don’t you?” Angel whispered.
Speaker Naomi blinked.
“She’s trying to decide if you’re still working for the Administration,” Angel said.
If Angel was right, the Speaker didn’t show it. “And this friend you are looking for, who is she?”
“A performer at the club.”
“I . . . see. You loved her?”
I shrugged. “I’d have liked the chance to find out. As it was, I didn’t get that chance.”
“Seems awfully far to go for a work-mate, no matter how hard your crush might have been.”
“A mutual friend made me aware of her disappearance and asked me to help.”
“This friend work for someone?”
“No, they just cared for Siren a great deal, and weren’t able to go after her themselves.”
“I see.” Speaker Naomi laced the fingers of her hands together at her waist and addressed me in a more forma
l tone. “That you withheld from us the fact that you allowed your temple to be sullied by alien technology makes me hesitant to believe anything you say. The fact that your AI handler was forcibly removed from your person when you were discharged only illuminates the folly of ever having allowed that blasphemy to happen and is merely the punishment the mortal realms have visited on you.
“That said, I can but proceed on the evidence before my eyes, and cannot sit in judgment of one who has left the Fold, as that is your burden to place before God. I will not sanction you for your actions, even had you not saved the lives of several Brethren, including mine, today.”
I bent my head again.
The surrounding Brethren, who had stood mostly silent to this point, murmured acknowledgment of her ruling. They seemed pleased, or at least content. The crowd that had gathered to hear her impromptu court began to disperse.
I was saved from having to thank the Speaker by the arrival of a crocodile-headed thing of metal, old bone, hissing hydraulics, fat sparks, and grinding gears. The Dugra emerged suddenly from an opening in the ceiling and dropped to the deck a few meters from my position. Standing erect on a field of strange energies that bent the eye, it gestured with one spindly arm.
“We are to follow it,” the Speaker advised us all.
Glad she knew what it wanted. I restrained the fight-or-flight instinct that overtook me on seeing the not-dead alien and joined the others.
We followed the strange thing some distance across the bay. Nothing marked the place it stopped as special until a steeply sloping ramp began to extrude from the floor at nearly a meter per second. The Dugra hummed up the ramp to a portal that had just irised open in the ceiling. It guided us along a wide corridor that connected to small, regular chambers every four meters or so. It paused at each opening and gestured for a portion of the passengers to enter. Fat blue sparks flew from the joint that connected the Dugra’s thin arm to its torso every time it moved.
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