His words seemed to make sense, but the assignment made Emry uneasy. “I don’t know. Sure, Thorne’s politics rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but he never made a violent power play on Earth, and he’s never caused any trouble in the Belt. So if he wants to hold a summit meeting, what business do we have spying on it? We just keep the peace. We don’t judge anybody’s politics, so long as they don’t make trouble.”
“That’s exactly the thinking that gave the Neogaians the freedom to attack Chakra City. That would’ve let the Michani unleash a plague of killer robots within the week if you hadn’t stopped them.”
He handed her a sheet of e-paper from his desk. “Look at the invitation list, Emerald. Neogaia is on there. Zarathustra, Wellspring, Mars Martialis, the Moreau Foundation. Even the Michani got an invitation, though they refused.” He leaned over her, putting his hands on the arms of her chair and staring into her eyes. “These are people who have no qualms about using unborn children as guinea pigs for untested, potentially dangerous mods. People who believe that mods are destined to rule or supplant baseline humans, by force if necessary. People who use their enhancements to pursue terrorist or criminal—”
“You don’t have to tell me what they do. I know what the Neos did to Arkady. I know what the Wellspringers do to kids.”
“Then you know what it suggests if the Vanguard is getting in bed with them.” He straightened. “The fragmentation of the militant mod nations is possibly the only thing that’s kept them from emerging as a serious systemwide threat. But the one thing they all have in common is their reverence for the Vanguard as the ones who started it all, the ones whose example they’ve all tried to follow. If they were united under a charismatic, ambitious leader like Eliot Thorne … just imagine, Emerald.
“You’re right, they’ve done nothing wrong yet. Just getting together to talk. But if that talk is going to lead to something dangerous, we need to know about it before it happens. And you’re the best Troubleshooter for the job, Green Blaze. Not just because of your heritage, but because of your skills, your training, your insight.”
She was silent for a moment. Could Tai be right? Whatever her unease with her own Vanguardian heritage, she’d always seen Thorne himself as a glamorous figure. In her youth, her father had often shown her news footage and documentaries about the Vanguardians to help her learn of her heritage, but with an unintended consequence: as Emry grew older, the images of Eliot Thorne had inspired some of her first stirrings of sexual desire, and he had been the subject of her earliest erotic fantasies. Even after she’d turned her back on Richard Shannon and his side of the family, Thorne had lived on in her fantasy life as the ideal of masculine beauty and sexuality. What if that romanticized image was blinding her to the truth about the man? Still, she hesitated. “It’s asking a lot of me.”
“I know.” His hand touched her shoulder, and lingered there. “It’s clear there’s no love lost between you and your father’s family. That’s why I can count on you to be objective, to see through any smoke screens they put up.” He smiled. “You just have to let them think otherwise.”
Emry smirked. “I’m a lousy poker player.”
He looked her over. “So I’ve heard. Just remember how much higher the stakes are. Make sure the uniform stays on—figuratively, at least.”
She shrugged. “Okay. I got it, boss.” She rose. “I’ll do my best, I promise.”
“I’m certain you will. But Emerald?” She stopped on her way to the door, turned back. “I do like to keep things professional. In the future, please wait until I dismiss you. And … I’d appreciate it if you’d call me ‘sir.’”
She stared for a second, but then decided it was a harmless enough request. It wasn’t the way Sensei did business, but surely Tai had earned it by now. “Yes, sir. Will there be anything else?”
“No, Emerald. You’re dismissed. I’ll have the staff arrange your invitation.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Zephyr spoke up in her head after she left the office.
She rolled her eyes.
Zephyr went on,
“They’re hooking up with Wellspringers and Neogaians,” she said aloud, not caring who might be listening. “That’s reason enough to be suspicious. You know what kind of things they do. There was a time the Vanguard fought people like them.”
Emry scoffed. “Peaceful. That’s what they call it. But it means neutralizing unpleasant emotions—ones like guilt and shame. I’ve seen the things they’ve done.”
She was forced to laugh, as he’d no doubt intended. “Maybe,” she told him. “And maybe I didn’t feel much shame about it at the time. But the difference is, I never pretended I was doing something good.”
6
Origin Stories: Banshee’s Cry
April 2100
New Zimbabwe habitat
In orbit of Vesta
Javon Moremba resisted the urge to run.
For one thing, it would make him look guilty. He was guilty, of course, but he didn’t want to look like he’d just broken into an upscale house, cracked their home weblink to update his ID-erasure worms, and stolen a bunch of fancy jewels when the whim took him on the way out. He couldn’t easily keep track of what was still valuable in the “evolving post-scarcity economy” Solsys was supposed to have now, but he knew as well as any Vestan that natural gemstones—like the peridot, garnet, and jade produced by Vesta’s unusual geology—were still prized for their beauty and scarcity. And it was about time, he thought, that someone from his side of New Zim got his share of Vesta’s wealth. But he couldn’t do that if he got caught.
For another thing, it would just feel too right to run. He didn’t want it to feel right. That would be giving in.
Still, even walking, he called attention to himself. People tended to notice a two-meter-tall teenager with unnaturally long limbs, bulging joints, no hair, and an oversized rib cage. They didn’t notice as much as if they saw him running at sixty klicks, but they still noticed. So Javon decided he needed to steal a car.
Luckily, this cylinder of New Zim had plenty of rich people, so there were plenty of high-end aircars to choose from. He soon spotted a gorgeous one, a gleaming green Gyrfalcon 8K with gold trim around its ducted fans. It was sitting right out on its launching pad, with only the property fence between it and him. The house looked dark, and the sniffer beeped an all-clear tone in his ear, reading no active security devices. It seemed too good to be true, but he was in too much of a hurry to care. After making sure there were
no spectators, he got up a running start and leapt easily over the fence. Jogging over to the Gyrfalcon, he circled around to the driver’s side and reached in his pocket for his lockpicks.
Only he found the door already open, with a really rageous pair of legs sticking out of it. The girl attached to the legs, lying on her back inside the car trying to hot-wire it, was even more spectacular. She was kind of short, her muscles making her a bit stocky, but she had a huge rack, flattened out some by her position but still wide, round, and proudly bulging. Her position gave him a good look at the equally interesting bulge between her legs. That and her tits were covered by a tight cutoff tank top and shorts flickering with animated flames and transparent above them, making it look like she was wearing nothing but fire.
The girl raised her head at his approach, and he saw her hair matched her wardrobe. It was cut short on the back and sides, but a thick, wavy mass poured over her forehead, shading enormous eyes whose green made the Gyrfalcon’s look dull. Her china-doll features—she was younger than that body made her look—twisted in surprise and anger, and Javon realized her eyes matched her fiery wardrobe too. “Hey!” she snarled in an incongruously girlish soprano. “Steal your own ride, I was here first!”
He stared. For a thief, she was dressed damn conspicuously. “Hey, how do you know this isn’t my car?”
“You kidding? The way you’re sweating? I know a thief when I see one. A bad one, anyway.”
He reined in his anger. “Look, I probably need this ride more than you do. We could share it—”
“I don’t share easy, Stilt-boy.” She looked his body over appraisingly, and to his surprise, she grinned. “You want it, you gotta take it from me.”
An instant later, she lashed out a foot at his gut. The move was lightning-quick, and he was barely able to dodge it. Her red-orange boot took him in the left forearm. “Oww! You bitch!” He grabbed her calf, finding it very firm, and jerked her out of the car so that she fell on her ass and hit her head on the step.
But if anything, she looked impressed, even pleased. “Ooh, you’re fast! Fast enough for this?” She did some kind of twisty move and her open right hand took him in the gut. He landed flat on his back, and in a second she was straddling him in a way he would’ve liked very much if she hadn’t socked him in the gut a couple more times—not as hard as she could hit, he sensed, but enough to knock more wind from his lungs.
Luckily he had big lungs, so he could still grab her arms and pull her sideways, intending to roll over and reverse their positions. She was a strong little thing—had to be a mod—but he had more bulk.
But she saw it coming and rolled away. He scrambled to his feet, knowing the little spitfire would be doing the same. He sidestepped her charge and tossed her across the Gyrfalcon’s nose. She landed on her feet on the other side and ducked beneath it. Knowing she’d be grabbing at his ankles from below, Javon leapt straight up, spun, and came down with his feet on her broad, muscular back, slamming her into the hard carpad. He hurriedly jammed his right foot onto her neck and got his left on solid ground, putting a hand on the Gyrfalcon to steady him. The girl writhed and shrieked, but it was a good pin, with her lower body still caught under the car’s nose. “Say uncle, little girl!”
“Go fuck your uncle! How’s that?” Her hands closed around his ankle with a viselike grip. “Lemme up or try running from the cops on one foot!”
“Stop it or I’ll break your neck!”
“Liar! You want me too bad.”
“Less every second!”
“Bullshit. And you’re no killer either. But me, I’ve broken plenty of bones. And I’m a lousy bluffer.” The vise tightened.
“Owww!! Okay, you crazy bitch!” He pulled his foot away as quickly as she’d let him, leaning on the car for support. She came up tensed for action, but grinning. What, she’s not through yet?
Then he heard shouts, saw lights in neighboring windows. “Damn, you moron, they’ll be calling the cops on us! Look, let’s both just take the ride and get the suck out of here, and then we’ll get out of each other’s way and hopefully never see each other again!”
The insane redhead looked disappointed, but she nodded. “Okay, get in.” He got into the driver’s seat, only to be forcefully shoved aside. “No, leakbrain, I’m driving!” she shrieked.
“Okay! Okay, you crazy punkhole, just stop hitting me! And don’t scream like that in here, you’ll make me go deaf!”
She stuck out her tongue as the car’s fans whirred to life. Then she shut the door and screamed the shrillest “Waahoo!” he’d ever heard just to piss him off. Instead of taxiing antispinward to cancel the car’s weight like any sane driver, she took off perpendicular to the runway, straining the fans to maximum as they fought the car’s inertia along two axes. They barely scraped past the roof of the house, the fans’ roar no doubt waking everyone for a block around, and Javon scrambled to strap himself in, praying to Allah, Buddha, Jesus Krishna, and whoever else might be listening that her hot-wiring hadn’t disabled its collision avoidance.
“Listen!” he said. “Listen, slow down! You want us to get caught?”
“Ha! I’d like to see ’em try!”
“Well, I wouldn’t! I’d rather not get caught with these!” He pulled the jewels out of his pocket.
Her eyes widened. “Ooh, gasmic!” Her hand shot out and snatched an emerald pendant. “Mine!” she cried, draping it over her head.
He was about to object, but then he saw how good it looked between her breasts. Besides, considering how reckless the little brat was, she’d probably wear the thing publicly and get nabbed for the heist so he could slip away. So he didn’t object as she rummaged through the rest of his haul—aside from trying to keep the jewels from flying around the cockpit, now that the car was on a stable course and their weight was gone. At least the CA light was on, so he figured the car wouldn’t crash if her attention was elsewhere—especially since this less populous cylinder would have less air traffic than his own. She skipped over most of the jewelry, only showing interest in the emeralds. “Hey, these are real,” she breathed, though he couldn’t tell how she knew. “Must come from Earth.”
“Why?”
She looked at him like he was stupid. “Takes water to make ’em, genius.” She ended up with a ring and a bracelet and tossed the rest back to him.
“You’re welcome,” he said pointedly as he scrambled to snag them all. She just grinned and studied her new baubles.
“So you got a name?” he asked.
“Got a whole bunch. Right now I’m Kei.”
“Okay, then … call me J.”
She glared. “K-E-I. Japanese.”
“Oh.”
“No, Kei.”
“Okay.” To his surprise, they shared a laugh.
For a while, they just soared over the artificial forests, rivers, and country estates of this half of New Zim. Kei ignored the scenery, admiring her emeralds instead. “So you born a mod?” she finally asked.
Javon shook his head. “Parents retroed me. Wanted me to be the fastest runner in Solsys, make them rich. Whatever ‘rich’ means anymore.”
She looked him over, starting at his hairless head and ending somewhat lower. “You bald all over?” she asked with a purr in her voice.
“If you’re lucky, you’ll find out.”
“Hah. You’d be the lucky one.”
“Hell, girl, if I’d been lucky I’d never have met you. I’m gonna be bruised all over in the morning.”
“It ain’t real fun if it don’t leave a mark.”
“You think all this is fun? Don’t tell me, is that why you stole this thing? Just for kicks?”
“What else is there?”
“For me, it’s about freedom. I didn’t want to be a, a commodity, have my body and my life molded to fit what my parents wanted. That’s all, I’m just tryin’ to be free.”
She scoffed. “Nobody’s ever free. Just running. You stop and there’s always something that�
�ll catch up with you.”
Javon studied her. “You been running a long time now, Kei? From your parents, maybe?”
That brought a fierce glare. “No! None of your suckin’ business anyway!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Just my daddy,” she said after a while. “My former dad. Couple years now. He brought me back a few times—till I practically tore the house apart. Then he got the message and stopped tryin’.”
“Tore it apart? With what?”
She stared. “How’s your ankle, Stilt-boy?” Javon stared at her hands, intimidated and oddly aroused.
“But that means nobody’s chasing you anymore,” he said after a while. “So what’s left to run from?”
“There’s always somethin’,” she said softly. Then she shook it off and grinned at him. “Like the law on half the habs in the Belt,” she boasted. “Still workin’ on flaring off the rest.”
Her brow furrowed. “You know what? We should ditch this ride. We wanna get to the spaceport, they’ll be expecting it. We should vack it and go the rest of the way on foot.”
He nodded. “I’m free with that.” He looked at the underside display monitor. They were curving up the slope of the cylinder’s end cap now, over the craggy simulated mountains that covered its interior. “But there’s no good place to set down.”
Her grin grew positively scary. “Thing’s got ejector seats, right?” She reached under the dash and ripped out the innards. The CA light sputtered and went out, along with all the rest.
“My God! Dammit, bitch, you’re completely vacked in the head!”
“Just hold on to your jewels and punch out!”
“But I loved this car!” he called in vain, for she was already erupting out of the canopy. Realizing he was out of options, he stuffed the jewelry back in his pocket, made sure he was strapped in, and followed suit. He felt the glider wings spread out and the seat cushion fall away, and then watched as the Gyrfalcon spun out of control and descended on an accelerating spiral path in the Cori winds, finally smashing itself to pieces on the rocks below.
Only Superhuman Page 10
