by John Zakour
“I see. You mean the same way we do the tax returns.”
HARV’s hologram disappeared and I felt the discs surge forward and bank hard to the left as he took control.
“Keep your knees bent and your head down,” he said. “This is not going to be comfortable.”
We flew hard toward the maintenance buildings that encircled Ona’s ziggurat and snaked in and around the air filtration tubes, avoiding the lasers of the pursuing bots at every turn.
“What did Ona's computer say?”
“That the spheres are independent thinking organisms and therefore, it has no control over them. It is presently trying to contact Ms. Thompson and locate the Pfhauns.”
A few of the bots broke off from the main pack and tried to cut us off at various junctures but I managed to blast them to smithereens before the traps were sprung. Still after about three minutes of the high-flying chase I was breathless and more than a little airsick.
“How many of these bots did the Pfhauns say they had in the compound?”
“Thirteen hundred, but don’t think about it,” HARV said. “By the way, you have a call coming in from Randy. “Shall I take a message?”
One of the spheres ambushed me from the side and nearly took my head off with its laser.
“Sort of goes without saying, HARV.”
We swung upward as the spheres fired again and HARV was forced to slide the discs up and apart in order to avoid the blast. I ended up doing a split in the air with the laser blasts passing far too close to my crotch for comfort.
“Easy on the acrobatics,” I said. “I’m not a contortionist.”
“No, you’re more of a contusionist.”
“Good one. Can I use that?”
“Sure. If you survive.”
We banked wildly again and found ourselves headed directly toward the base of the force bubble.
“Whoa!”
HARV pulled the discs up sharply and we followed the curved edge of the bubble before banking away back toward the nearest building, which was the still-under-repair hoverjet hangar. I noticed however that one of the pursuing spheres didn’t quite make the sharp turn. It skidded and smashed into the force-bubble, bouncing off the translucent purple surface like sunlight off a mirror. It fell to the ground and short circuited with a silent burst of electronic shrapnel, no brighter than a camera flash.
“Okay,” I said, turning my attention back to the chase, “I now officially have a plan.”
“I hope it’s a short one,” HARV said as he swung me quickly up and over a charging pack of the spheres.
“Contact Ona’s computer. We’re going to need it to open a window in the force-bubble for us.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet. And slow down a little.”
“What?”
I turned around and fired another couple blasts at the pursuing spheres, blowing three of them to smithereens (which only left about eighty-five still in hot pursuit). “I don’t want to outrun these things just yet.”
“Oh, I get it,” HARV said. “Good thinking.”
A thin laser blast hit my back as one of the spheres opened fire. My armor protected me from injury, but it still felt like someone had jabbed me with a needle.
“And keep me away from those lasers.”
“Easier said than done, boss. They kind of move at the speed of light, you know.”
HARV banked me hard into a small walkway between two buildings. We spun so fast I thought the discs were going to fly off my feet and that my stomach would drop down to my ankles. Thankfully neither happened and we found ourselves on a headlong run toward the force-bubble wall.
“The computer knows the plan right?”
“I explained it in detail,” HARV said.
“Do you trust it?”
“You don’t have much choice at the nano.” HARV said, as another round of thin lasers erupted around me.
“Okay then, let’s go. Just make sure they’re close.”
I put my head down and dropped into a skier’s tuck position as we sped toward the force-wall. Lasers cut the air around me like little blue scalpels. I got hit a few times in the back. One singed my right ear and one shot I took in the leg nearly collapsed my knee and crashed us.
The spheres were faster than us on the straightaway so HARV didn’t need to ease up on the speed in order to get them close. On the contrary, he had to push the discs to their max just to stay ahead of them and I began to worry that maybe the straightaway was too long.
“Get ready with the window.”
We were close to the wall now, but I could feel the spheres gaining on us. The rush of air tingled my neck and their shadows below me were precariously close to my own.
But the wall of the force-bubble was closer.
“Now,” I yelled. “Duck and back, HARV.”
The purple bubble morphed open a window and I flew through I then spun away quickly to the left and stopped short. The spheres followed me through the window (although some hit the bubble wall and exploded), but they hadn’t seen me stop and turn so they shot past me. I lashed out and grabbed the last one through in my hand as it passed. It buzzed in my fist like an angry hornet and I felt it grow hot so I quickly stuck it inside the pocket of my trenchcoat and activated the containment unit that’s built into the pocket lining (a little something that Randy designed for me). An electromagnetic stasis field formed around the sphere, trapping it tightly and protecting me from any of its weapons. The coat’s fabric expanded to fit the stasis field and for a nano, I thought the seams would split but, thankfully, they held firm.
It took the rest of the spheres only a nano to relocate me but by then I was already on the move.
“Back now and close the window!”
HARV spun me around on the discs and flew me quickly back through the closing window. The spheres detected me and, realizing they’d been tricked, dove at me, en masse. But they were too late. I slipped back through the force-field window just as it closed and the dive-bombing spheres crashed into it like drops of angry rain, short-circuiting and exploding upon impact like a string of firecrackers.
“Nice work, boss,” HARV said as his hologram appeared beside me. “And by the way, is that an electromagnetic stasis field in your pocket, or are…?”
“Don't say it, HARV!”
“DOS, I never get to spout any of the fun lines.”
I shook my head. “HARV, you're really starting to scare me.”
39
HARV guided the anti-grav discs back to the ground and we gently examined the bot in my pocket.
“We should make this fast,” I said. “There are another twelve hundred of these things still around.”
“True, but most of them are stationed inside the ziggurat. I estimate that only one hundred or so are left out here.”
“That’s about a hundred too many,” I said as I detached the containment unit from the coat.
I held the stasis field up to the light and watched the bot inside as it skittered about like an angry goldfish in a bowl. It fired its laser at the field wall a few times before registering the futility of the action and then simply began bumping the field itself.
“What’s it doing?”
“I think it’s trying to lift the entire field?” HARV answered.
“Can it do that?”
HARV shrugged. “It depends upon the density of the field and the power of the bot.”
“What about firing its weapons.”
“It appears as though the stasis field is strong enough to withstand it.”
“Can it call for help?”
“The field is a no-transmission zone. Communications through traditional means are impossible.”
“So if it wants its programmer…”
“It will have to physically go to it.”
I smiled. “Perfect.”
I put the field down on the ground and stepped back as the tiny sphere inside tried to lift it into the air. The field shudd
ered a few times, got a few centimeters off the ground and then fell back onto the pavement.
“Can you reduce the field density?” I asked, “Maybe make it easier for it to get off the ground?”
“I can but that might make it possible for the sphere’s weapons to pierce the field or worse, for it to signal others.”
I turned my gaze back to the bot in the stasis field as it flopped on the ground like a sickly fish out of water.
“Let’s risk it. We’re sure not getting anywhere like this.”
The mass of the stasis field decreased, shrinking from about the size of a cantaloupe to that of a grapefruit, as it did so, the bot was slowly able to raise it into the air, unsteady at first, but with increasing strength as the field shrank. In a few nanos it was hovering at my eye level and I felt like I was in a staring contest.
“What’s it doing?” I asked.
“It thinks you’re up to something,” HARV replied.
“It can think?”
“Not in the traditional sense. It has preprogrammed responses for certain situations but this is most likely an uncommon scenario for it.”
“Fine,” I said. “Popping my gun back into hand. Let’s give it a scenario it understands.”
“What are you doing?”
I stuck the business end of my gun against the outside of the stasis field and made sure that the bot’s sensors saw my grimace.
“Giving it the simplest scenario of all. Fight or flight, baby.”
The bot hovered in front of my gun barrel for the briefest of nanos and then retreated, flying away at a slow but steady pace (the best that it could manage from within the stasis field).
“It appears to have chosen flight,” HARV said. “Shall we pursue?”
I smiled. “Tally ho.”
We chased the bot (I, floating briskly along on the anti-grav discs, HARV’s hologram beside me) across a good portion of the compound over the next couple of minutes. Every so often the bot would stop its flight and hover in front of us, as if making sure we were still in pursuit. During these times I’d fire a couple rounds at it (being careful to come close but not actually hit it) and that seemed to keep it running scared. We were still at it a few minutes later when Ona pulled alongside us in her personal hovercraft.
“Zach, I heard you were in some kind of trouble. Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“You didn’t destroy anything this time, did you?”
“No, I did not! Well, actually…Yes, I did. Two hundred or so of those little security spheres.”
“Gates,” she said. “I hate those things.”
“Join the club.” I said, firing again at the fleeing bot. “Right now, we’re hoping that the one ahead of us will lead us to your security experts.”
The bot came to what at first appeared to be a small hill. It was subtly shaped and covered with thick, green lawn and spotted with patches of purple and yellow flowers. It hovered beside one group of flowers for a nano and then disappeared through the morass of colored petals.
“And I think we just found the nesting place.”
“What do you want with the Pfauhans?”
I landed my discs at the base of the hill. Ona did the same with her hover and we examined the hill together.
“Well, I’m pretty sure that they’re the ones who programmed those bots to attack me a few minutes ago. And we’re also fairly certain that they tried to kill Foraa.”
“What?”
“Poison dart on her collar, tiny bots with attitude. Long story but trust me it points toward the Pfauhans.”
“They killed Foraa?”
“I doubt it. But they tried.”
Ona’s eyes narrowed into a steely scowl. “Why those identical twin bastards.”
As we approached the hill, half a dozen of the tiny spherical bots appeared from within several of the flowerbeds and hovered before us, menacingly.
“Uh-oh.”
“Why would the Pfauhans try to kill Foraa?”
I froze and kept my eyes on the hovering bots as they surrounded us. “I’m hoping that they’ll tell us that when we find them.”
Foraa took a step toward the hill and two of the bots moved at her. I put a hand on her arm to stop her but she shrugged it off.
“They’ll tell us all right,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
Ona’s hand shot out like a quicksilver jack-in-the-box and she plucked one of the hovering bots out of the air, then crushed it as though it were made of paper.
“Because if they don’t, I’m going to turn their annoying little bots into anal probes.”
“Anal probes?” HARV whispered softly.
I smiled as the five remaining bots quickly retreated back into the hill.
“Works for me.”
“Computer,” Ona shouted, “where’s the entrance to this hill.”
“There’s an access door beneath the holographic flower bed three meters to your right,” the computer replied. “I’ll need approximately five seconds to remotely access the lock.”
“Don’t bother,” Ona said as she angrily prodded the flower bed with her shoe and then grinned when she heard the clang of metal beneath her foot. “I’ll use my own key.”
She stomped her stiletto heel onto the door and I heard the metal creak as it buckled. The hologram flowers short circuited under her attack and blinked out, revealing, as suspected, a large steel door in the ground, looking like the entrance to an old (yet heavily fortified) storm cellar. Ona reached down and grabbed the damaged door with her finely manicured hand, tearing a hold into the surface with her fingertips then ripping it from it hinges as though it were a bow on a Gucci-wrapped package. The steel buckled and tore away with an anguished metallic squeal, revealing a stairwell underneath.
Ona gave her nails a quick once over for breaks or chips then headed into the stairwell. She was seriously angry now and I had a hard time keeping up with her as she stomped downward.
“Ona, perhaps you should stay topside and let me handle this,” I offered. But she ignored me totally.
“After all I’ve done for those two, this is how they repay me? By killing my sister?”
“Like I said, they didn’t actually kill her. They only tried.”
“Granted, but it’s still bad form.”
“Agreed.”
“Boss,” HARV whispered in my ear, “there’s another call coming in from Dr. Pool.”
“Now’s really not the best time.”
“Pardon me?” Ona asked.
“Nothing, Ona. I just have a call coming in.”
“Oh, by all means, take the call,” Ona said waving me away. “I’ll save you some of the Pfauhan’s vertebrae for your trophy shelf.”
“You’re not killing anyone, Ona,” I said. “HARV, tell Randy I’ll call him back as soon as I can.”
“He says it’s urgent.”
“My client is about to murder two suspects, HARV. I think that outscores anything Randy has to say on the urgent meter.”
The stairway ended at another large metal door with a small touch-screen rather than a handle or a knob. Ona stared at it for a long nano and then pushed gently against it with the palms of her hands, testing its resistance.
“That’s a DNA encoded lock,” I said, motioning toward the touch-screen. It’s probably programmed to only give the Pfauhans access.”
“I am the mistress of this compound, Zach,” Ona replied, rolling up the sleeve of her blouse. “Everything here either obeys my commands, or suffers the consequences.”
She placed her hand gently on the touch-screen and let the sensors map her DNA and cross-reference the genome with their files.
“Zach, are you there?” Randy’s voice came over the small speaker in my wrist interface.
“Randy?”
“I convinced HARV to put me through. Look, I know you’re in the middle of something now.”
“Yeah, you could say tha
t. So I can’t really talk right now.”
“I found the poison, Zach.”
“You what?”
The DNA lock answered Ona’s request for access with a series of red OLED letters flashing more brightly than a grand opening sign outside a brothel.
DENIED.
Needless to say, Ona was none-to-pleased with the response and angrily pulled her hand away from the touch-screen.
“All right,” she said, curling her fingers into a fist, “Plan B.”
“Randy, tell me quickly, about the poison.” I said.
“The answer was there all the time,” he said. “It was…”
But I didn’t hear the rest because at that nano Ona hit the door with a thundering overhand punch that sent a shockwave through the stairwell like a grenade. The mere echo of her fist on the metal, nearly shattered my eardrums and the concussive force as the door itself blew off its hinges knocked me to my knees. My head was still spinning but I somehow managed to stumble through the doorway behind Ona as she entered.
And that’s when things got really weird.
The doorway opened into a large circular room, shadowy at the edges but dramatically lit in the center with colored lights and spotlights. Dance music throbbed in the background and a throng of computer monitors crowded around the stage.
That’s right, I said stage. It was long, thin and covered with a red carpet and, as mentioned, computer monitors were packed in around its raised platform, like groupies in a mosh pit. Each monitor sported a computer generated face, men and women of all colors and ethnicities, some murmuring, some mumbling and some screaming with joyous (or drug-induced, I couldn’t be certain) hysteria.
And walking the stage, with the strut of a genetically spliced peacock, was Drang Pfauhan…in attire that was, how shall I put this, somewhat non-conventional.
“Is that my dress?” Ona said, mouth agape.
The dress Drang wore was blue, made of some shimmery plastic element, cut low in the back and slit high in the front. I remembered seeing a picture of Ona wearing it at some function a few months before. It looked much better on her than it did on him.
“This gown was designed exclusively for Ms. Thompson by the Glama-Rama Strumpet Fashion Cartel for last year’s People’s Choice Awards,” Sturm’s voice boomed from the speakers above the music. “It was worn only once, although it was heavily saturated with Ms. Thompson’s feminine fluids during that brief brush with her greatness. The bidding for this one-of-a-kind item starts at two-hundred thousand credits.”
