Exo

by Fonda Lee

  Donovan scanned the front door and the street. There was a car parked at the curb and a pickup truck in the side driveway. Sudden, silhouetted movement in the windows. Two, maybe three people. Donovan’s pulse quickened. Corrigan’s supposed to live alone, isn’t he? The guy had a criminal history, stacks of seditious material, and visitors at night? Donovan toggled his transmitter. “PT 202 to Command, we have a suspected terrorist safe house here. Request permission to search.”

  Liz’s voice came back a second later. “202, you are unsupported outside of your coverage sector. Flag it and come back in.”

  “Scorch that,” Jet’s voice interjected. “We chased a live lead and we’re standing in front of the house now. If we don’t engage, this guy is going to spook and the place will be empty when we come back.”

  Donovan ground his teeth. He thought of the boy, Horatio. If they didn’t nab Corrigan, the man would be free to find out his nephew had turned him in. “Command, this is a reliable civilian lead on a prior record. We’re going in.”

  “This is Command One.” Commander Tate’s voice broke through on the line. “202, we have teams tied up dealing with a bomb threat on the other side of the Belt. Your backup is fifteen minutes away. You are on your own right now.”

  “Understood.”

  “PSO,” Tate snapped.

  Probability of Successful Outcome. Donovan pictured the Commander’s interrogative glare; no doubt she had pulled off her glasses and was leaning over Liz, rapidly tapping one arm of the thin wire frames on the dispatch monitor. She wanted his soldier-in-erze judgment: How reliable was the lead, how real and urgent was the threat, how likely was it that they could apprehend the suspect without endangering innocent civilians or making the Global Security and Pacification Forces look trigger-happy or incompetent?

  Soldiers-in-erze on patrol said that what PSO really stood for was Please Screw Off. As in, “Command, please screw off and let us do our jobs.” Donovan looked at the house. One building, no more than a few people inside, empty street. “PSO is high.”

  “Keep your line open.”

  “Jet.” Donovan jerked his head, and his partner advanced swiftly up the short walk to the front door. Donovan followed. He pressed his back against the brick wall beside the doorframe and drew his electripulse. He went to full armor, his exocel rippling from node to node, the living machine cells knitting their microscopic lattice structures across his skin.

  Jet pounded on the door. “This is SecPac! Open up!”

  They waited several heartbeats, then exchanged a nod. Jet drew his pistol. He stepped back, ready to kick the door in when it opened.

  Jet pushed into the house without hesitation. Donovan followed on his partner’s heels, scanning the room, his weapon pointed down, finger off the trigger but his thumb hovering next to the coil charger. Three people in the room—two men, one woman—all of them tense, staring in silent, undisguised hostility.

  “Sean Corrigan?” Jet asked the man who’d opened the door.

  A stiff nod. Sean Corrigan was a thick-necked man with a short beard. He glared at the invaders from beneath heavy eyebrows, his jaw working back and forth as if he were chewing something nasty he wanted to spit at them. Donovan could feel the hatred emanating from him like heat off of sun-baked black tar.

  “Face the wall, over there, all of you,” Jet commanded. “Hands on top of your heads.”

  Slowly, the man obeyed. “This is my house,” he said, voice thick with stifled rage.

  “Come on, move,” Donovan ordered the other two. He lined them up next to Corrigan. Not so close that they could talk. Then he swept the lower floor, fast, his gun up, moving entranceway to entranceway in a few seconds. The house was small and the other rooms were empty. He cleared the basement to make sure there wasn’t anyone else hiding down there, then returned to the living room. Jet had the three suspects kneeling with hands laced behind their heads. He held up a powder-based handgun. “Found this on Corrigan,” he said.

  Corrigan’s face was flushed, apt to combust. The olive-skinned man next to him was sweating, the whites of his eyes encircling wide pupils. The woman—Donovan startled a little. She was a teenage girl, about their age, maybe younger. Her hair was tucked up into a black wool cap. She stared up at him, quiet and unflinching, her chin lifted.

  Donovan holstered his gun, turned on all the lights, and got to work. He and Jet had conducted enough searches that he knew all the usual places to look, and covered them in minutes. He emptied out drawers, went through cabinets, knocked around for loose floorboards and false walls. He slit open the mattress and the sofa cushions. Dust and fluff swirled in the air.

  Jet kept a watchful guard over the suspects. “Find anything?” he called.

  “Not yet.” Donovan paused, surveying the wreckage uneasily. With a solid lead, they usually found something—sometimes small things like unregistered weapons, sometimes big things like explosives-making labs. Occasionally, though, they found nothing. Two weeks ago, they’d searched the house of a married couple, Jim and Mila Guerra; intelligence had linked the Guerras to several local Sapience operatives, but the search had come up empty. The woman had answered all their questions with hostile monosyllables while her husband stood behind her, arms crossed, the eagle tattoo on his bicep glaring at them as balefully as he did. Those two were sapes, he and Jet were sure, they just couldn’t prove it. This evening was looking like it would end the same way. Leaving a house after an unsuccessful search was the worst feeling. It meant they’d either made a mistake or been duped. It meant they’d just made SecPac look cruel and impotent, made people who hated exos hate them even more.

  Commander Tate’s voice crackled to life impatiently in his earbud. “Command to 202, what is your situation?”

  Donovan exchanged a frustrated look with Jet. “Command One, we have three suspects under guard. We’re still searching. Stand by. Over.” Had Corrigan removed all the evidence? Had Horatio been lying? Donovan saw Corrigan’s mouth twitch; he was stifling a smile. He thinks he’s won. He thinks he’s going to get off scot-free. Donovan’s jaw clenched. They weren’t making a mistake here. He tried to remember what Horatio had said. The boy had seen pamphlets and equipment. He’d been searching for a screwdriver …

  “Toolshed,” Donovan said under his breath. There had to be a toolshed.

  He rushed to the rear of the house. Through a yellow linoleum-tiled laundry room, he found the back door leading out into the yard. In the dark, he didn’t see the shed at first; a screen of thick shrubs shielded it from view. Donovan pulled the penlight from his uniform breast pocket and flicked it on, playing it over the weathered, gray cedar siding. He put the light between his teeth and tugged on the shiny new padlock. When it didn’t give, he bladed his hand and thrust it into the door slit. Splinters frayed and snapped as he shoved his arm in almost up to the elbow. After a bit more wood wrecking, he tore the padlock off. Donovan swung the door open.

  “Erze almighty.”

  Stacked against one side of the shed were crates of rifles: two dozen M4 clones and three (three!) SecPac-grade, laser-sighted E201s. A filing cabinet against the back held pamphlets bundled with rubber bands and thousands of rounds of ammunition in boxes. Donovan lifted the wooden lid covering a metal tub and stared at what must have been at least three hundred pounds of C4 plastic explosive. There were two rocket-propelled grenades, their tubes in a corner. There was even a stolen fission engine starter coil.

  He ran back inside the house. Jet smacked Donovan’s hand in a high five. “Sean Corrigan.” Donovan made his voice stern and official, though he was flying high with relief. “By authority of the Global Security and Pacification Forces, I charge you with possession of weapons, distribution of seditious material, and involvement in an illegal organization with the intent to commit acts of terror. You will be taken into custody to answer for these crimes before a court of law.”

  Jet prodded Corrigan between the shoulder blades with the muzzle of his gun. “Yo
u hear that, you terrorist scumbag? It’s the atomizer or penal camp for you.”

  Corrigan’s back went rigid, his whole frame quivering with helpless fury. The man beside him sagged like a deflating balloon, but the girl turned her head to stare at the two exos with a curious mixture of resentment and fascination. “Aren’t you awful young to be soldiers for the shrooms?”

  Donovan looked at her askance. “Aren’t you awfully pretty to be a terrorist?” He turned away and called in the triumphant news to Command.

  Tate took his report silently. Another moment passed before she said, “Bring them in. I’m sending a cleanup crew your way.” She sounded as no-nonsense as ever, but Donovan could hear the satisfaction in her pause. “Fine work tonight. Reyes—your father will be pleased to hear of it.”

  “I’ll bring the skimmercar around.” Jet headed for the door. “Not too shabby a way to end the day, eh, Lesser D?”

  “Not too shabby,” Donovan agreed. Six months on the job; he and Jet might be the youngest team in SecPac, but they were holding their own.

  A few years ago, after his father’s reappointment banquet, Donovan had griped to Jet, “You know, no matter what I do, I’ll always just be the kid of a famous dad. I’m always going to be Reyes Junior.”

  “McReyes,” Jet intoned. “Son of Dom.”

  “Reyes the Second.”

  “D. Reyes the Lesser.” That was a good one. Jet had turned it into Donovan’s permanent nickname.

  The skimmercar settled in front of the house. Jet came back in, nudging an overturned drawer out of the way. “Okay, let’s take them out one at a time. I’ll take Corrigan first if you stay with the other two squishies.”

  “Civilians,” Donovan mock-chided him. They weren’t supposed to call non-Hardened people squishies, even the criminals. Just last week, Tate had given all the exo soldiers-in-erze a lecture about it.

  “All right, squishy, get up.” Jet nudged Corrigan to his feet. He handcuffed the man behind his back and shoved him out the front door. A few minutes later he returned and escorted the other man out. It was important to be extra careful about suspects trying to escape; in these parts, anyone might be a sympathizer and it would be easy for someone to disappear into a friendly house if they got away.

  With a SecPac patrol vehicle parked out front, Donovan wondered how many hostile neighbors were watching from the nearby houses. Unease seeped into his skin, tingling up and down his exocel nodes. “Jet,” he said into his transmitter, “let’s hurry it up.” He kept one eye trained on the girl still kneeling on the floor and stepped back so he could see his erze mate coming back up the walk. A dog barked outside.

  And the night erupted in gunfire.

  Donovan saw his best friend knocked forward off his feet by a spray of bullets.

  He threw himself across the room, falling to a crouch inside the doorway. Where are they? Where are the sapes?! He scanned the street wildly. Another burst of gunfire peppered the skimmercar like hail and ricocheted off the street around it. There: powder-weapon muzzle flashes from the roof of the house next door, lighting up the darkness like sparklers. Donovan tabbed the coil charger on his gun as he swung it up and unloaded shots. The pistol kicked in his hand; he surged armor over his wrists, steadied his aim, and fired until he heard the snap of electric coils on an empty chamber.

  He ejected his magazine and fumbled for a new one from his uniform pocket. “Jet!” he shouted.

  Jet groaned and climbed painfully to his feet. “Man, that hurts bad. I am going to be sore.”

  It could be worse, Donovan thought. At least Jet hadn’t seen it coming; it was actually better not to be too tense when you took a bullet. As it was, Jet being laid up for the better part of a week would be the best outcome they could hope for. There was only so much lead an exocel could take, and his erze mate was still a sitting duck.

  Jet started to half run, half stagger back toward the relative safety of the skimmercar. Another burst of gunfire tore up the ground around him. Donovan slammed in a fresh magazine and leapt out onto the front walkway, opening himself up as a target as he poured fire back at their ambushers. The roar of blood in his ears drowned out even the gunshots. The only thing on his mind was laying down a barrage to cover Jet’s run.

  A bullet whined past him. Another grazed his shoulder, making him stagger. Donovan had just enough time to process, There’s gunfire coming from the other direction! before a round slammed into his thigh. The impact shuddered through his armor in a radiating wave up his leg and into his pelvis. He dropped to one knee, teeth gritted, and let off two more shots before rolling back into the cover of the doorway.

  The gunfire fell silent. Commander Tate was going ballistic in his ear. “202! SITREP!”

  “We’re taking fire,” he gasped. As if that wasn’t obvious. “Gunmen on the roof of the house on the right, and … somewhere on the left …” Sweat wicked up through his armor; he wiped his palms down his pants and rubbed his throbbing thigh. His exocel knit frantically over the impact site. The crushed bullet worked free and fell down into his pant leg.

  “Hold your ground!” Tate ordered. “Don’t let them take back the house, or Corrigan and his accomplices. Backup will be there in three minutes.”

  Donovan kept his gun raised and edged his head and shoulders through the doorway to see what was going on. He let out a breath of relief. Jet was bent over and grimacing, but he’d made it back to the skimmercar. Then, a flurry of movement: Corrigan and his friend jumped from the open skimmercar door and started running.

  Corrigan didn’t make it far; despite his injuries, Jet launched himself after the man and tackled him to the ground. With his hands still cuffed behind his back, Corrigan’s face smacked into the pavement and he let out a muffled howl. His companion kept going, running a wild zigzag across the neighboring lawn.

  “Stop RIGHT NOW, you—” Jet started after him, but bullets began raining down again from the determined rebels covering their comrade’s escape. Donovan braced himself in the doorway and opened fire. Jet dragged Corrigan back to the skimmercar with one arm and let off rounds after the fleeing man with the other. Answering shots sparked all around them. Bullets gouged the doorframe around Donovan and chipped the brick walls. The man jerked and went down. Donovan couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive, and he had no idea who’d hit him.

  The hum of a speeding skimmercar preceded the distinctive pulse of SecPac patrol lights sweeping the street, barreling closer and brighter. The shooters broke off. The night fell suddenly, incongruously silent.

  “D, you okay?” Jet’s voice.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.” A pause. “I think those bastards cracked some ribs.”

  Donovan slid down against the doorframe. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, exhaustion flooding in as adrenaline flooded out. Thank heaven and erze. That had been rough. He’d been under live fire countless times in training, and a couple of months ago they’d had to arrest someone who’d fired on the skimmercar, but this had been so much more real, and so … disturbing. The terrorists were just squishies. But they were so fanatical about their agenda they were willing to risk their lives just for a chance to take his and Jet’s.

  The night had not ended smoothly, but at least they were both okay, and still had—

  He opened his eyes. The girl was gone.

  He bolted to his feet. She’d been in here during the firefight. Where had she gone?

  There was a faint click from the laundry room. The back door closing.

  Donovan raced across the main level and threw the door wide. A slim, dark shape was hurtling past the shed, through the shrubbery, into the next row of houses.

  He sprinted after her. Tricky little—Donovan cursed himself for not keeping a closer eye on her, but in all that madness back there … “Stop!” he shouted. She put on more speed.

  Donovan pushed himself. His right thigh was still numb and he rebalanced his armor to compensate, letting his exocel stabilize his
gait. She was fast, for a squishy, but she couldn’t outrun an exo. He’d almost caught up with her when he realized she wasn’t just running away from him, but toward something. Toward a parking lot. At the far end of the lot, the red engine lights of a van turned on. It growled to life with a dirty, petroleum-burning cough.

  The girl dodged a bush and hurdled over a low retaining wall. She made it a short distance across the lot before Donovan grabbed her. His hand came down on her shoulder and pulled her back. She spun to face him. Her black wool cap tumbled off her head. For a second, her face was close to his—auburn hair falling around her ears, fine pixie nose and small mouth bared in a cry of anger—before she thrust a short black object at his torso.

  It was far too small to be a gun. He assumed it was a knife—a desperate, foolish act on her part—and didn’t even bother to defend himself. Only it wasn’t a knife. Electrodes sprang out, pouring fifty thousand volts into him.

  His entire body cramped violently. Pain and shock flooded in. His exocel spasmed uncontrollably, trying to defend against something that wasn’t there. Donovan lost his grip on the girl and fell. He couldn’t put his arms out to break the fall, and there was a sharp white flash across his vision when his temple hit the pavement. He heard the girl running again, and the sudden, very nearby skittering crunch of tires. A slamming car door, followed by urgent footsteps, and then a man’s harsh voice. “Don’t shoot it, you idiot. The zebrahands are crawling all over the place—they’ll hear. Hand me that iron.”

  The realization that he had made a terrible, fatal mistake coursed through Donovan’s mind. He willed himself to move, to scream a warning through his transmitter. Still half paralyzed and twitching, he managed to push up weakly on his hands and open his mouth, and then a blinding pain connected with the base of his skull.

  “Is he still alive?” The girl’s voice.

  “Of course it’s alive. You know what it takes to kill one of these things?”