by S A Asthana
“Am… I here?” Bastien peered into shadowy corners.
Belle chuckled. “No.” Crunching her features as if in contemplation, she said with a smile, “Maybe one day.”
He smiled back. Perhaps someday he could indeed reside here just like Belle. The brutal world outside would be forgotten. “Do you miss the outside?”
She responded as expected. “No. Not one bit.” She seemed happier than ever. She pointed to a small, flat screen in the far wall. “I have a view of the datacenter. That’s been enough of the outside world.” There was a pause and she tilted her head. “Then again, it has only been two weeks. Maybe one day I might extend myself into a robot. That way I could step out into your world again.”
It was a fascinating concept. A posthuman entity residing within a robotic body. Transhumanism — the soul married to a machine. Perhaps this was humanity’s future.
“For now, I stay here,” she said. “And, I heal. This simulation can never truly replace New Paris. But it still helps me move forward. Otherwise, I would just wallow in my defeat.”
Everyone had their coping mechanisms.
“Resume,” Belle commanded, and the people still as statues around her jerked into motion. The book fell to the floor. A man continued his laugh. The beehive buzz of voices returned. “Fresh croissants!” a shopkeeper announced. “Come get yourself some fresh croissants.”
Bastien couldn’t help but walk over to the stall. Croissants had been a rarity in New Paris. He’d had one when a child. It had been a stolen treasure ripped four ways amongst him and a few other orphans. The flavor of that first moment still clung to his taste buds.
The shopkeeper handed over a croissant and said, “This one’s on the house.” His smile was broad and warm.
“Merci.” Bastien raised it to his mouth and chewed on the bread, somehow. It melted into his mouth with a taste that was buttery and soft. And when he swallowed, his stomach filled. But how? Was the simulation’s code able to fool every one of his senses? He was wearing a helmet along with the haptic suit. Perhaps its many sensors manipulated the brain by way of electric currents.
As if reading his mind, Belle whispered into his ear, “Everything’s real if your brain thinks it is.” She was right. An illusion was reality if the mind couldn’t decipher the differences. Bastien scarfed down the rest of his croissant.
An old man interrupted. “Your highness, something requires your attention.” He was a familiar face. A ghost from the past. Bastien had met him in Belle’s tent when he’d been searching out the rebel on Marie’s behalf — Peter. He appeared the same within this simulation — bald and wiry, although the strong body odor was now absent.
Belle followed Peter, and Bastien trailed the two into the West End tunnel. Where there had once been darkness and muck, now there was bright light and cleanliness. A cool breeze supplanted any memories of humidity. Half way through the tunnel, Belle stopped at a steel door padlocked shut. A sign across it read “KEEP OUT.”
“I need to take care of something,” she said. Her face fell. Gone was the smile that had warmed Bastien moments earlier.
The door and its sign didn’t seem to fit into the surroundings. “…we’ve got her systems plugged into the High Council by way of a back door in their computing,” Dr. Bala had said. The words echoed within Bastien’s mind.
“Is this where the hack stems from?” he asked.
She stared at him with lips tight and nodded.
“Is this safe?” His voice was higher than normal. He’d lost her once already. He didn’t want to lose her again.
Putting a palm on his chest, she replied, “It is needed, safe or not. I need to complete the hack into the High Council. I took an oath to Dr. Bala and Greg.”
Her bravery was admirable. She’d been given a second chance, and yet, she was still willing to put it all on the line for a great cause. A true leader at heart. Bastien nodded, his eyes to the floor. Perhaps, it was time for him to focus on what he had to do — kill Marie. It would be his path to healing his wounds from the past.
“Bye for now,” Belle said, and New Paris melted into a swirl of colors spinning wild. Bastien shut his eyes as he tried maintaining his balance. Seconds later, he was back in the dark, cold confines of the datacenter. It was as if a beautiful dream had ended abruptly.
Reorienting himself to beeping servers, he blinked several times. The door swung open and Dr. Bala walked in as if on cue. “You have a message from a man named Reo. He wants to meet you.”
The hunt was about to begin. “Good,” Bastien said. “Tell him to meet me here.”
CHAPTER 18: ALICE
Alice caressed the dark bruise across her neck. Her lips curled downward. “Bastard.” It would be a lie if she said she’d never fantasized about killing General Crone. Hell, she’d fantasized about killing a lot of people — all those who’d called her Frankenstein monster, or those who’d been around her since childhood but still feared her. She was human, goddammit, just like them. Didn’t they understand? And couldn’t Crone see how hard she worked? It was never enough for him. Or the others.
“Locking landing to target coordinates,” her single-passenger craft’s computer blared. Alice took a deep breath, prepared to be thrust back into her pilot chair as the trajectory switched. The 1.V2 jerked and descended. One good thing about these vehicles, besides their ability to evade radar and their small size lending to agile maneuverability, was their noiseless ion propulsion engines. They were used routinely on reconnaissance missions and served their purpose well. The pilots called them Silent Spuds. They could enter and leave enemy territory without giving away the slightest hint of their presence. What they weren’t good at was attack operations, because they lacked artillery and defense — if found, they could only evade a larger, better equipped craft for only so long. But none of this deterred Alice from the day’s mission. She needed the 1.V2 to get her close to New Paris under the cover of Earth’s night, at which point her plan was to discard the vehicle. She wanted to exit the planet in something much larger.
The 1.V10’s location had been easy to pinpoint by way of boosted radar and satellite imagery. Had the pirates been smarter they would have not only found an entirely new location for holding the craft but also taken out the ten Martian satellites orbiting Earth. She was banking on such irresponsibility to pull off the mission. Pirates weren’t exactly known for their strategic powers. Stealing the 1.V10 in a moonless night would be easier sans a large fleet — hence, the solo undertaking. In and out without commotion. There was no room for mistakes now.
The view of the land below enlarged, the terrain’s black dunes brightened by the starlit sky. A cluster of lights sparkled by New Paris’ gaping entrance. Alice drew a circle on the cockpit’s windshield with her forefinger and commanded, “Expand view.” The spot zoomed in on the lights and magnified a scene of celebration — several hundred men danced and drank from mugs, their bodies draped in loose tunics, and a few naked women gyrated their hips by bonfires to music booming from loud speakers, their curves lit in the otherwise dark terrain. To be a pirate meant living outside the shackles of modern society. No rules, no regulations — only spontaneous plunder and merriment. The role had remained consistent throughout time.
Several spacecraft, small and medium-sized, sat parked around the scene haphazardly. Each had its door agape, most likely to provide swift passage inside if a green fog blew in on the desert breeze. The vehicles’ metal could provide safe haven to biology under such a circumstance. The fog’s nanotech devoured only flesh, leaving everything else untouched. It was a well-crafted weapon that remained dangerous despite the hundred years bridging back to its creation. The 1.V10 might someday be admired for its longevity too. It sat several hundred feet away from the scene. No one guarded it.
The 1.V2 landed softly on sand without as much as a peep. Its cockpit windshield, curved and smooth, lifted open with a mechanical whir and provided Alice an exit. Crouching some feet from the craft, s
he glanced back at the Silent Spud. No larger than a king-sized bed, the craft blended into the darkness with its black metal sheen. It had served well by depositing her a mile from the target.
She took a deep breath and for the first time, pure, natural atmosphere circulated in her lungs. There was no need for a surface suit unlike the red Martian terrain. She could move and behave as if still within the confines of Port Sydney or Nippon One, except there was nothing cradling her here. It was liberating. She picked up a handful of sand and brought it to her nose. A different aroma, one completely alien, flirted with her nostrils. The scent had a chewy texture to it. She let go of the particles and most flitted away upon a delicate breeze. Her own genesis might have been inside a lab, but the sand gave her an undeniable connection with this land, a strange homecoming even if to a foreign place.
A loud boom echoed in the distance. She ran up a tall dune to get a better vantage point. The view to the pirates was clear from atop the crest. They were shooting fireworks. Another loud boom echoed followed by a colorful spiral glittering against the night sky. Cheers made their way to Alice’s ears despite the mile in between. She spied the scene with a sleek telescope, its lens providing a sharp picture of the camp. Three men reveled at the center. She zoomed in to get a better look. Faces became clearer. The trio appeared to be the captains. A coming together of the Gemini, the Yellowjackets, and the Barbary required leadership, after all. It was hard to make out which man helmed which group — they were dressed alike for the most part in loose, brown tunics, and since the pirates weren’t segmented by race, the captains’ ethnicity didn’t offer any clues, either. One was dark skinned and the other two fair, all wearing beards like their followers. This was a man’s world. Women served few purposes. Tan girls clung to each captain, their smiles promising a delicious night.
The men were more than distracted. The night couldn’t be more perfect to pull off what Alice had planned.
She broke into a sprint towards the scene. The plan was to get close without notice, board the 1.V10 and simply depart. Straightforward. Alice was confident that the craft, even in its new dreaded pirate ship avatar, would remember her markers. General Crone might have designed it, but she’d coded its guts into existence. Her fingerprints and voice signatures were engrained inside the craft’s very structure. The 1.V10 would recognize her, surely. Unless, of course, the pirates had somehow erased all memory of the craft’s original code image. It was highly unlikely given their sloppy condition. Or so she hoped.
With singular focus she trekked up and down dunes, her army boots crunching the shifting sands. Her fiery ponytail streaked behind as if it was a flame to a rocket. Muscles contracted and released allowing her to keep a steady pace. Alice was in peak condition, and her dark red skintight body armor only enhanced her physicality. Within fifteen minutes, she made it to the edge of the pirate camp.
Hoots and hollers filled the air. Some men lay face down in sand, drowned in a drunken stupor, while others laughed and joked. Two potbellied pirates had their way with a woman at the edges of a bonfire’s glow. What exactly were they celebrating? Perhaps nothing. Maybe this scene was routine. Their ways were not clear. Her only interaction with pirates had been during conflict — the Martians often faced off against various space pirate fleets to ensure peace around the colonies. Therefore, her focus had mainly centered on their battle tactics, not necessarily their rituals. And now certainly wasn’t the time to conduct research.
The 1.V10 wasn’t far away — a few hundred feet at most. Its silhouette loomed large behind a cluster of smaller crafts. A dragon amongst birds, one that Alice hoped to ride it again. Slipping and sliding across a dune’s slipface, one facing away from camp, she carved her way to the craft keeping in the shadows all the while. Loud drums played and the tan hips gyrated. Whiskey flowed and pirates laughed. Not a care in the world. If only they knew an elite Martian officer was nearly at hand. She crouched a mere fifty feet from the craft, her body still sans sweat. The cargo door at the rear lay wide open — a lucky break, or a trap?
Taking a deep breath, she sprinted into the 1.V10, her Shift X rifle in her right hand with the safety off. As the vehicle’s darkness enveloped her, the sounds of merriment outside faded, overtaken by the clanging of her boots against the metal floor. Despite the lack of visibility, she needed to get to the cockpit to turn on the craft. Fortunately, she could make her way around blindfolded. Spending time in the 1.V10’s guts had imprinted its blueprint in her mind. But running through its corridors blind wouldn’t be required because the storage bay suddenly lit up. Alice squinted under the bright white lights.
An unseen force knocked the rifle out her hand, and a push from behind hurled her to the floor and sent her sliding across its metal several meters. Despite the sudden assault, she sprang to her feet as years of combat training prompted her body into response mode. A muscular woman equal in height to Alice but double in width stood battle-ready with fists up. She was a pirate but unlike her male counterparts, she wore a black jumpsuit with sleeves ripped off. Veins crisscrossed her pale, tattooed arms, and piercings adorned her leathery face. She spat to the ground and punched a red button behind her to shut the cargo door.
“We thought you might come back, bitch.” The woman flashed a row of rotten teeth. “Now it’s just you and me.”
“So, you’re the muscle?” Alice said, her brow scrunched. “Guess they employ women after all. Equal opportunity.” She took up a boxing stance, hands in front of the face and curled into fists, her legs placed shoulder-width apart and bent slightly at the knees. She was ready to unleash muay thai hell, the preferred old-world martial art employed by the Sydneysiders. Alice asked, “Why didn’t you just take me out in the dark? Would have been easier for you.”
The pirate snarled and shook her head. “No. We want you to fly this thing. We need to get to Mars after all. You up for it?”
“You want me to fly my craft up to my colony so you can attack it?” Alice scoffed. “Not bloody likely.” Her Sydneysider twang was in full force.
“We figured you’d say no.” The pirate curled her pierced lips into an ugly grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll convince you.” She took a step forward, her fists still up.
Cracking her neck to the side, Alice spat, “Careful. You’re going to hurt yourself.” The Lieutenant General could hold her own when needed. This wouldn’t be her first melee, after all. And it wouldn’t be her last.
The pirate swung but missed. Alice was fast. Another swing, another miss. “Oh, this is going to be good,” the pirate chuckled, her unruly red hair marking her as a bloodthirsty demon. “I like a challenge.”
Her face twisted in Alice’s mind as if it was water spiraling down a drain. In its place, Crone’s snarling mug materialized. It taunted her. “You meek, little rat.” A burning coursed through her veins and sprang Alice into action. She jumped forward with right knee jutting out, but the pirate blocked the blow. In an instant, Alice delivered an elbow to the face. The behemoth stumbled back, and Alice pressed forward with another knee, this time connecting with the sternum. When it came to combinations, Alice was second to none. Some had even thought her to more skilled than her trainer, Bastien.
As the pirate gasped for air, Alice let out a primal scream to the ceiling. She wasn’t a weak girl on the receiving end of daily abuse. No, she was a fighter. She shouted at the woman, “Fuck you, General Crone!”
The pirate’s face crunched in confusion. “What did you call me?”
“I said fuck you, Gener—”
The pirate sprung and tackled her to the floor. The impact stunned Alice as she found herself pinned underneath. Staying on top, the pirate delivered a punch to the face and shouted back, “Shut the fuck up, you weird bitch!” Another punch was delivered, and then another one. The blows were painful, each sending stars flooding into Alice’s vision. Recalling her training, she delivered a precisely timed counterstrike to the assailant’s throat and sent her reeling off. Springing uprigh
t, Alice pounced and soon had her opponent in a chokehold. The two women struggled on the ground, one flailing about to let herself loose of the other’s grip. Spit and gasps left the pirate’s trembling lips. Pained grunts gave way to silence half a minute later.
Alice stood, a single bead of sweat lining the side of her face. The pirate was dead.
“Fuck you, Crone,” Alice whispered to herself. “Fuck you.” Fixing her ponytail, Alice took a few deep breaths to compose herself. The storage bay was just as she remembered with its sleek metal walls, but there was damage present from the crash. Burn marks splintered across the floor, and dents adorned the ceiling. The Parisian defenses had taken a toll. But somehow the pirates had managed to make the vehicle operational again. Lucky for Alice.
She recovered her rifle and ran past the engine room to the dark cockpit. Ongoing merriment could be made out through the curved windshield. Lines etched across the glass indicated repairs using recycled materials. The same seemed true for the cockpit and its dashboard as well, although several buttons were still missing. It was obvious the craft had been cobbled back together. It was operational but not in its entirety.
The moment of truth arrived. Would the craft recognize her? “Computer on,” She commanded, her eyes studying the dashboard end to end. None of the screens turned on. Nor did any lights blink green. Nothing.
“Computer,” Alice said again, “I said on.”
Nothing. Did the pirates remove the original code image, after all?
“Compu—”
“Turning on,” the cockpit’s computer announced in a thick female voice. “Welcome back, Alice Smith.”
Sigh. Relief. Alice released a breath she’d been holding all this time. Smiling, she responded, “Good to be back.”
“What can I do for you, Alice?”
“Chart course back to Port Sydney.”
A beep indicated the computer processing the command. “Course charted.”
