by F X Holden
The two men didn’t move closer, but one of them raised his voice, “I said it’s a nice planer. You buy it in the Capitol?”
AJ tapped his helmet again, “Sorry, my mike is glitching. You’re from the Capitol you said?”
They looked at each other, shrugged and took a couple of steps closer. One of them put his hand on the bulge at his waist.
Cassie was closing the connectors on the new cell, but looking at the men as they approached. My analysis says they’re carrying neural disrupters, non-directional. If their suits are military spec, the mesh in their hoods will protect them. They won’t need to pull a weapon and aim, just hit the actuator in that pouch.
Shit, what do we do?
I won’t be affected, Cassie said. This body is shielded. I want you to try to take out the guy on the right.
I can’t get to him before he hits that disruptor.
I know babe, Cassie said. You’re taking one for the team.
Great.
Two and go, Cassie said, standing up and stretching her hands slowly above her head like she was working out the kinks from a long ride. One … two … She dropped her hands to her side. Go!
AJ had his move all planned. For what it was worth. He still had plenty of residual adrenaline. He threw himself forward, rolling toward the guy’s feet, intending to sweep them out from under him. He saw Cassie jump to one side, so that the goons couldn’t watch both of them at the same time. He saw one of the goons, startled look in his eyes, thump the bulge at his waist in panic.
But that was all he saw.
The neural blast hit him in a millisecond and his world went black.
He woke with a headache like he’d been on a bender for a week.
He wasn’t groggy, that was one advantage of being a cyber. A citizen hit with a neural blast would go down like a sack of rocks and could take hours, even days to wake. When they did, they would be disoriented, vision blurred, ears ringing. AJ boosted his oxygen levels and played with his hormone balance to help damp the headache. He was moving. On the planer. But he was sitting at the front, not behind on the pillion. Cassie had her arms under his armpits and was holding the handlebars, keeping AJ from sliding off. Damn, how strong was this woman?
“Hey there sleepyhead,” Cassie said, feeling him stir. “Keep down or I can’t see ahead.”
“Hey, what the heck happened back there?”
“I’ll pull over so you can get on the back where you belong. I’ve been propping your ass up for at least twenty miles.”
The planer slid to the lines marking the edge of the highway’s emergency lane and a freighter hummed past, slipstream kicking up flurries of ice powder.
Cassie slid off one side of the planer without letting go of AJ and helped him ease himself off. A neural blast also messed with the nerves in legs and arms, and it took a minute for AJ to get enough control of his to be able to balance without Cassie holding him up.
“Impressive,” Cassie said, letting him go and stepping back to watch. “Must be all that surfing. I thought you’d take at least an hour before you could stand unaided.”
“That is the first and last damn neural blast I ever want to experience,” AJ admitted. “What the hell happened after I got knocked out?”
Cassie lifted up her visor, and grinned, “You want to see? I’ve pulled the VR off the roadside station’s system. I can project it on your visor display.”
“Sure,” he said. “Show me.”
“I warn you,” Cassie said. “You may get aroused by my total awesomeness, but you’ll have to park your lust until we get to Ketchikan. That might be distressing for a mere mortal like you.”
“I’ll survive,” AJ said. “This headache is guaranteed to kill any lust your awesomeness could generate.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Cassie smiled. “We are talking total super-ninja.”
AJ’s visor display flickered and the small display of numbers and icons was replaced by a VR view of the station forecourt. AJ took a second to orient himself. He could see a freighter, refueling, to the left of their planer, its security rider jumping down out of his cab. Cassie standing and stretching her arms above her head. Two other passengers were leaving the station restaurant walking toward a car, and the two goons in black, were taking a step toward AJ and Cassie.
Cassie dropped her arms to her side. In his memory, at that point he began to dive athletically toward the goon on the right, ready to take his legs out. In the VR footage he saw himself start his roll and then crumple to the ground like a rag doll as the goon triggered his disruptor. It sent its blast out in a circular wave from where he was standing, and AJ saw the two car passengers and the freight attendant also crumple to the ground. Both goons had stopped and had their attention on AJ, which was what Cassie wanted.
Cassie was the only one moving. AJ remembered their duel on the skateboards and saw now that the woman had been playing with him. Dialing down her abilities to near citizen levels just to give AJ a chance. With two springing steps like a long-jumper, Cassie closed the distance between herself and the two goons and somersaulted over the top of them.
Before they could turn, she had grabbed one by the head from behind and snapped his head around, dropping him to the ground. The other spun around, punching the pouch in his suit uselessly, as Cassie pivoted toward him and delivered a stiff-fingered punch to his throat, then his solar plexus, before kneeing him in the side of the head so that he spun to the ground with a bone-jarring crunch. Both assailants were down for the count.
Cassie was half crouched, and she stood slowly, looking around her. It was only a small station, and a neural blast like that had a radius of about a hundred yards, so it had taken out everyone in sight except her. Those closest, like the freight rider, would be worst hit, and down for a long time. Those furthest away and partly shielded, like the ones inside the station restaurant, would wake first.
Cassie walked quickly over to AJ and crouched beside him, then lifted him onto her shoulders like she was carrying a roll of carpet. Walking to the planer, she lowered AJ onto the seat with a little difficulty, because his legs weren’t keen to cooperate with going either side of the frame, but she got him there, then climbed on behind him, arms underneath AJ’s armpits to steady him, took off her belt and tied it around both their chests to keep him upright, head lolling forward over the handlebars, as she kicked the planer free of its stand and slowly drove out of camera view, weaving around the unmoving bodies of the two goons in black. The vision cut out.
“You killed them?” AJ asked, shocked. Cassie was Core. Her prime directive was to protect society, protect all citizens, even those two.
“No, but the first one will need spinal surgery. I snapped his neck. The second I just knocked unconscious,” Cassie said. “Step in here and get your hug big guy,” she held out her arms. “You must feel like shit.”
AJ fell more than walked, and Cassie held him tight.
“Neural disruptors are military issue,” AJ said, stepping back. “Even police aren’t authorized to use them. I hope you were able to pull that VR footage down.”
“I did,” she said. “But the people there are going to report it when they wake up. The fact those two were carrying military spec non-lethal weapons tells us this is as serious as it gets, AJ. These guys want you bad.”
“Duh. They had agents waiting for us at a random roadside station way up in the Inland Territory,” AJ said, the import of it hitting him for the first time. “What kind of resources would that take?”
“If we assume they didn’t know where we were headed, then we’re talking a major dragnet,” Cassie agreed. “It was good you still had your helmet on - they didn’t appear to be 100 percent sure who we were, or they would have triggered the disrupters first and asked questions later.”
“We need to lose this planer, change out of this gear,” AJ said. “And fast. When his people wake up, McMaster will find out we’ve run for the Territory, if he hasn’t already.”
“Already on it,” Cassie said. “I cut the comms links in and out of that station. It will look like the neural blast took down a transponder. I also booked a car to meet us at the next station, about twenty miles ahead. We can dump the planer thermals, buy some clothes at the station and switch to something more local. I’ll get us to Ketchikan.”
“You need ID to book a car,” AJ said. “It will trigger a flag somewhere.”
“I don’t, honey,” Cassie grinned. “I Am Core.”
So it was, three hours after leaving Valdez they found themselves at a cafe by a frozen lake in Ketchikan, on a pier where every other shop was selling ice art or souvenirs. Cassie went through the motions of flicking through news pages on the VR built into their table, while she drifted and tried to learn more about the manhunt that had been directed against them.
They were out in public, so they stuck to their agreement to speak out loud, like citizens.
“Despite what happened, I feel safer here,” AJ said, watching people through the cafe window, walking around in the light misty rain. “Territorians are so friendly. Nothing bad ever happened to anyone in Ketchikan did it?”
“Bears. People get eaten by grizzlies here all the time,” Cassie pointed out.
“In Ketchikan?”
“Maybe not exactly in Ketchikan, but they do get bears coming in, and then there’s ice sport injuries,” she said. “Those big carbonite pucks can crack your skull…”
“How far to Whitehorse...” AJ wondered out loud, calling up a map. “Oh my god,” he said, and sent it to Cassie. “It’s another twenty-nine hours by road!”
“I know. It’s all mountain passes and twisting roads. But if we do it non-stop, sleep in the car, we can be there tomorrow,” Cassie said. “We can’t afford to stop at roadside stations. I’m picking up heightened comms traffic to and from all traveler rest points.”
“No wonder. That neural blast has hit the news,” AJ said, paging through the day’s headlines. “People are freaking out. No specific mention of us though.”
“Small mercy.” Cassie said. “If I was McMaster, I’d slip an apprehension order into the Mounties’ system with our images, in connection with the incident at that station. Make it look like we were behind it.”
AJ felt frustrated. They needed to get to Whitehorse, to talk to an ex-Mountie who would just as likely have them arrested as soon as he saw them. And he probably knew nothing that would help with Warnecke’s elusive daughter. He said as much to Cassie.
“Yeah, but someone out there wants to stop us. That’s almost reason enough in itself to keep going,” Cassie said. “Plus, I developed a soft spot for this place over the last 200 years. Territorians are good people. Come on, we need to buy food for this trip.”
“And juice bottles,” AJ said.
“Juice? Why not just water?”
“Wide tops, easier to pee into,” AJ explained. “If we’re going to push through without any roadside stops.”
“Ew. Biology sucks,” Cassie grunted, standing up.
They hit a convenience store for new thermals and ditched their biker gear. As she dropped her hard shell and helmet into a recycling unit, Cassie sighed. “It kills me leaving the planer here. I’m going to miss the old girl.”
“Yeah, because you’ve had it ever since you were born?,” AJ said.
“Exactly.”
“Wow, how many weeks?”
“A few weeks around you feels like a lifetime, AJ,” she said.
They stayed in the washrooms at the station until they got the signal their car had arrived. Walking out, AJ saw it was an all-terrain vehicle, with a long teardrop body and large balloon tires. The door popped as they approached and AJ paused before climbing inside. It was a two-person unit, with huge reclining bench seats and optional analog controls which meant a passenger could take it off autopilot and steer it themselves, if they were foolish enough. “This must have cost a million, how could you … OK, don’t say it. I am Core,” AJ asked.
“Never gets tired,” Cassie smiled. “Get in.”
AJ didn’t realize how sleepy he was until the car accelerated out of the station, pushing his back into the body-hugging contours of the seat. Before he could even recline it, he was snoring.
He woke to a voice – Cassie - speaking in the real, on the car comms link.
“Oh, hey there. Look, I have a possibly strange question,” she said. She saw AJ starting to stir and put a finger to her lips to signal her to be quiet.
“Try me ma’am,” the woman at the other end said, like she was totally used to fielding calls from weirdos. Which, this being the Inland Territory, probably she was. “You’re on audio. Do you want to go VR?”
“No, sorry, we’re in a vehicle with a crappy uplink, look, I’m trying to get in touch with one of your officers, who served there until a few years ago, name of Ferguson.”
“You mean Chief Superintendent Lyle Ferguson?” the woman asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Cassie said. “I can’t seem to find a comms contact for him.”
“Well, Chief Ferguson does prefer to keep his personal life off-Core,” the comms operator said. “He’s a bit of an old-timer.”
“Is there any way to get in touch with him?”
AJ knew Cassie could track him down a dozen different ways, but they’d agreed it was probably best to approach him conventionally so as not to make him suspicious before they met. They’d also agreed they’d approach the topic of Warnecke’s daughter at a tangent, via Warnecke and Farley. Not go straight into quizzing him about her.
“Well, I could put you through to his former assistant,” the operator said. “She can get a message to him.”
Before Cassie could respond, the line clicked and they got an audio news channel.
“The guy is technically retired,” Cassie said. “But his biometric data shows he still spends a lot of time at the Whitehorse police station. So I’m hoping …”
The comms started ringing again, with a different woman, audibly older, picking up this time, “Chief Superintendent’s office.”
“Oh hi, look I…”
“Yes, Liz was explaining,” the woman said. “Can I ask the nature of your inquiry?”
“It’s a long story,” AJ said. “I was just wondering…”
“Try me, ma’am,” the woman said, exactly as the receptionist had done. Maybe it was part of their training.
“OK, well, forty years ago there was an officer called Ferguson who helped search for a missing rafter, his name was Farley. One of his friends at the time was called Dave Warnecke and we have something from him, to give to officer Ferguson.” Cassie said. “So we are trying to find him, to see if we can meet up.”
“If you have information on a missing person, you should report it to your nearest ITMP office. Where are you calling from?” she asked. She sounded like she was tapping on a screen, like she was back tracing the call. “Oh, I see you are in a vehicle.” Then there was a pause, “Wait. Did you say Warnecke?”
“Yes ma’am,” AJ said. “Dave Warnecke.”
“Hold please,” she said. The line went silent. For a moment AJ thought she had hung up on them but then the news channel clicked in again. Cassie looked at the visual display from her earbud.
“Who was that?” AJ asked. “Are you still on the line?”
“Yeah. It was his former assistant I think…” the news channel cut out and the line clicked again
“Hello, this is Ferguson,” a male voice came on the line. “You’re calling about Dave Warnecke?”
“Uh hi, yes. We were wondering…”
“About a certain package I got last week?” he asked.
Cassie frowned, “Uh, no, we…”
“Last week, I get a mysterious package from Dave Warnecke, then today, you call,” Ferguson said. “And I’m supposed to think that’s a coincidence?”
“I don’t know, sorry,” Cassie said. “But if we could talk, maybe in person?”
“Oh, we�
��re going to talk ma’am,” the man said. There was a pause, “My assistant said you’re in transit but you’re on audio, and I can’t see a call location, or even a vehicle ID. What's going on?”
“We’re coming in from Ketchikan,” Cassie said, ignoring the question. “We’ll be in Whitehorse by, I don’t know…” Cassie waited as though she was consulting the car AI. “1600 hours. We’ll need to find a hotel and then …”
“You will come straight to the ITMP station at Whitehorse when you get here,” the man said. “You can find a hotel later. Don’t make me send my people out to look for you.”
The line clicked again. He didn’t even wait for a response.
Cassie leaned back in her chair, legs crossed, hands behind her head. “Anonymous message, about Farley?”
“That’s what he said,” AJ confirmed. “And he didn’t like that you were blocking our ID tags from view. I thought the guy was retired? He sounds like he’s still top cop in the shop.”
“It did sound like that, didn’t it?” Cassie said. She called the Whitehorse Mountie office again. “Hello, is that Liz?”
“This is she,” the woman said. “Oh, it’s you. Didn’t you get onto the Chief? He just told me to book you in for an interview at 1600 on the morrow.”
“Yes, we’re meeting with him, I just wanted to check; the Chief, he’s retired isn’t he? How come he‘s still…”
“Acting like he’s Chief Super?” the woman replied. “Well, we got a new Chief Superintendent five years ago. But he’s an out of towner and spends just as much time in Ketchikan as he does here. Everyone here still calls Citizen Ferguson ‘Chief’,” she said. “And he still acts like the Chief. It’s easier to just go along with it.”
“OK,” Cassie said.
“I told you that by way of advice,” she said.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Right, while I have you, can you give me your names and IDs? For the front desk.”
“Sorry, no,” Cassie said, and closed the line.
“So much for not getting them suspicious,” AJ remarked.
