Ure Infectus

by Caleb Wachter

  Masozi slewed the hoverbike into a paid parking slot outside the building Jericho’s keycard had indicated. She wished she could have taken the keycard, but she hadn’t thought of a way to do so that wouldn’t have aroused his suspicion. She just had to trust that she could gain entry to the apartment without it.

  After receiving her receipt and change for a twenty three hour parking pass—the standard ‘day’ cycle in Virgin, which had been adopted since a moon colony like Philippa had too long of a rotational cycle to use in any meaningful way for regular human scheduling that did not badly disturb natural circadian rhythms—and Masozi pulled the hoverbike into the assigned slot before making her way to the lift system.

  The keycard had indicated that the room was on the twelfth floor of the complex’s ‘A’ building, so she made her way to the centralized lift boarding area and found herself facing a security checkpoint.

  The guard manning the checkpoint looked at her impassively, and Masozi screwed up her courage as she approached the checkpoint—which was surprisingly equipped with a simple weapon’s detector, making her thankful that she had abandoned the pistol at the crater’s edge.

  “Step through,” the guard instructed, and she did so. She was relieved when the alarms didn’t go off, but the guard waved her over to his desk while he opened up a link display built into the desk itself. She approached the desk and the guard said, “You’re not recognized by the system. Do you have a visitor’s pass?”

  “No,” she replied too quickly, realizing that she had all-but admitted she didn’t have any proper business there. She made a show of fumbling around in her vest for the ID cards which had been in the duffel and then produced the primary piece to the guard. “My…husband,” she said with a pointed hesitation before making brief eye contact with the guard, “isn’t here yet and I wanted to surprise him.”

  The guard’s eyes narrowed as he ran the card through the scanner, but he visibly relaxed before handing her the keycard. “Welcome, Mrs. Davis,” he said before gesturing to one of the lifts, “Lift Number Five will take you to your level. If you’d like, I can send up the superintendent with you; it doesn’t look like your room’s been accessed in…two years?” he said, his eyebrows rising.

  “My husband travels extensively,” she lied, “so we don’t get to see each other very often. When I heard he was planning on coming to Abaca, I thought I’d stop in and surprise him.”

  The guard nodded knowingly. “You should have a great view of the festival from your apartment,” he said before briefly glancing up and down her body with barely-concealed lust, “and your husband’s a very lucky man.”

  Suppressing the urge to roll her eyes, Masozi instead flashed a smile and placed her ID back in the vest before saying, “Thank you.”

  “Any time,” the guard said, and after turning for the lift Masozi could almost feel his slimy eyeballs all over her back-side. But it was a small price to pay for having successfully navigated the checkpoint.

  She stepped inside the lift he had indicated and it slowly rose to the twelfth floor—which was apparently the top floor of the entire structure—and she made her way to the unit designated on Jericho’s keycard.

  Masozi then had a startling thought: if that keycard had been on his person when he was arrested, it would be entirely possible that the local law enforcement agencies would soon be alerted to that fact.

  That meant she needed to conclude her business inside the apartment as quickly as possible—which, in turn, meant that not having the keycard would likely pose a problem.

  Masozi approached the unit—number 1201—and examined it. There was a standard keycard slot built into the wall beside the door, and the entire portal was otherwise featureless.

  She tried to swipe her ID’s in front of the keycard reader, but nothing happened after several such attempts. She looked up and down the hallway—even considering a humiliating attempt at ‘persuading’ the guard at the checkpoint to help her in some way—and her options began to limit themselves as she silently ran through them.

  The building didn’t appear to have any cameras in her part of the hall, but she knew that cameras could be easily hidden from the naked eye. It was possible that same, slimy guard was ogling her at that very moment. The thought spurred her mind into overdrive, and she had just resigned herself to the disgusting task of convincing that guard to help her when a speaker beside the door—apparently concealed within the keycard reader—crackled to life.

  “Come on in,” she heard a voice say, and it sounded suspiciously like Wladimir Benton’s. The door swung gently open, and Masozi gave serious consideration to fleeing right then and there.

  But she steeled her nerves, knowing that if she had just been trapped then it was inevitable that they would subdue—or kill—her if she tried to flee. The walls were solid concrete, and there was no exit other than the lift.

  So she stepped inside the unlit apartment and reached around for a light switch, but found none.

  “Light?” she said meekly, just before the door closed behind her and the entire room was plunged into darkness.

  “Come on in,” Benton’s voice said again and Masozi felt her hackles rise at the possibility of being murdered in that apartment, never to be seen again. She had once worked a case where a body had remained in situ for nearly three years before being discovered—and that discovery had been prompted by the occupant having gone delinquent on her property tax bill for that same period.

  Masozi moved into the room slowly, her hands sweeping blindly from side to side as she did so. She felt the short hallway end, and she was just about to follow the rightward wall to see where it went when the lights activated and she saw a pair of armored silhouettes near the far wall.

  Reacting instinctively, Masozi dived behind a nearby piece of furniture—which happened to a black couch—and reached around for an impromptu weapon of some kind.

  While she did so, she heard a muffled sound from near the figures. The sound grew in volume until she recognized it as an overly-feminine giggle—a giggle she had only heard back on Virgin.

  Masozi peered around the edge of the couch and saw the two figures standing motionless against the wall, and between them was a two-dimensional display built into the wall with a familiar face filling it.

  “Got you!” the display blurted before pointing accusingly with her digital fingers and erupting into a burst of unrepentant laughter. “You should see the look on your face, bakeshop,” Eve said after several seconds had passed, during which time Masozi had regained her feet as she glowered at the sexbot. “You’re just too gullible, honey pie,” Eve chided in mock consternation before waggling her finger reproachfully, “it’s going to get you in trouble someday.”

  “Eve…” Masozi began as she eyed the motionless figures—one of which was male, the other decidedly female—warily, “what are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to be your Operator, sweet cheeks!” Eve said proudly, flashing a ‘thumbs-up’ sign before jamming said thumb into her impossible cleavage indicatively. “Benton’s got his hands full back home so he sent me to fill in. Somebody’s got to take care of you two, after all. Say…” she said, her digital eyes scanning the room suspiciously, “where’s Jericho?”

  “He’s…indisposed,” Masozi said hesitantly. It was entirely possible—even probable, given Masozi’s limited understanding of synthetic intelligences—that Eve was little more than an alter ego of Benton. She might have even represented repressed homosexual ideations, or full-blown multiple personality disorder of some kind.

  But even Benton would be hard-pressed to establish an FTL method of communication which would allow him instantaneous, real-time access to Eve’s processes. That suggested that either Benton was on Philippa—an unlikely possibility, given his physical condition—or Eve had, in fact, been sent to provide some measure of assistance.

  Masozi nodded to herself as she took a step forward and elaborated, “Jericho sent me ahead to check on t
he preparations and make sure everything’s in order,” she lied. “He had to place the…the backup device before we rejoined.”

  “Ah…gotcha, babe,” Eve said with a knowing wink. “He sent you to do all the dirty work so he can swoop in at the last minute and snag all the glory for himself.” Eve rolled her eyes and sighed, “That’s a typical man for you. You know, there was a time Benton and I were trying to break into this orbital—“

  “Eve,” Masozi interrupted, knowing that if she got too deep into the lie she would be unable to sustain it—even to a glorified sexbot like Eve, “we need to check all the preparations as quickly as possible. This location might already be compromised.”

  Eve’s image reared back in the screen and her eyes began to flit from side to side for several seconds, “I’m not seeing anything on the local grids, babe. Are you sure you’re not just getting pre-fight jitters?” she asked with an accusing look.

  “I’m pretty certain we’re going to have to scrap the primary plan,” Masozi said with conviction, her eyes snagging on a truly massive rifle set on a tripod with the butt propped by another, smaller tripod. “That means we’ll be looking at the up-close-and-personal method. Can you bring me up to speed on it?”

  Eve smiled as though in ecstasy and began to clap wildly. “Sure thing, sugar!” she said excitedly. “Tell you the truth, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the whole ‘shoot the bitch from four miles away’ plan—it’s too anticlimactic, right? This way will be payloads more fun!”

  Masozi eyed her warily before saying, “I’m not sure Jericho’s going to know where to meet up with us.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem, honey. Benton already covered that,” Eve took a deep breath, and her face morphed into some pale imitation of the morbidly obese computer hacker’s, and when she spoke next it was with Benton’s voice. “I’m authorizing you to help both Jericho and Masozi; shit’s bound to get real thick up there so you give either one, or both, of them full access to your new protocols.” Eve ‘exhaled’ and her features returned to their usual, perky, cartoonish appearance. “See? We’re good as gadolinium, bakeshop; time for a double-dose of girl power!” Eve’s image pumped her fist and then struck a pose which Masozi vaguely recognized from some of the entertainment programs she had watched as a young girl.

  “What ‘new protocols’ are you talking about?” Masozi asked.

  A mischievous grin played out over Eve’s features and she whistled innocently before answering, “I’m afraid they’re mission-specific; we’ll only get access to them when we satisfy mission parameters. On that note,” she said as though just remembering something, “you’d better get into your suit!”

  “My suit?” Masozi eyed the immobile, female-looking form, and as she did so it came apart at several points and opened up revealing that it was actually a form-fitted suit of armor! She had heard of such suits, but they were supposed to be prohibitively expensive—she had heard of one such suit being logged into evidence and having it appraised at several million credits. In spite of herself, she stepped forward and touched the outside of the armor and felt a chill run down her spine.

  “Sexy, isn’t it?” Eve asked knowingly. “But forget about the form; this baby’s all about function and she’s been built just for you. She’s a stealth prototype based on top-of-the-line Imperial specs, and while not all of her systems are online yet she’ll make you more than a match for anything on this old lump of rock. Hop in so we can get going; I can’t wait to get out and play!”

  Masozi was in so much awe of the suit that she almost missed Eve’s little tidbit of information she had just dropped. “How could it have been built ‘just for me?’ A suit like this would take years to develop.”

  Eve giggled again before sighing. “We’re just a couple of bad bitches livin’ in the big man’s world, babe,” she said as though it explained everything. “Looks like you might have been right about the house being compromised, too,” she added laconically. “I’ve got a half dozen vehicles converging on our position. Guess the front door’s out as an exit; you’d better hop into the suit.”

  “What about the rest of this stuff?” Masozi asked, gesturing to the cannon and the suit of armor which could have only been intended for Jericho.

  “He snooze, he lose, sweet-ums,” Eve said indifferently. “Climb in the suit so we can make like a prom dress and take off!”

  Masozi took another look at Jericho’s suit and then cast a wayward glance at the massive, barely-portable cannon which Jericho had apparently preferred to use for this particular mission. Something didn’t seem right about the gun, which she recognized as a V-120MX model, but she didn’t want to take the time to examine it—especially since she had been correct about the flat’s security being compromised.

  Masozi took a deep breath and stepped toward the suit before carefully turning around and backing into it. As soon as her butt touched the inside of the armored suit’s housing, her legs were pulled back into the lower half of the armor by a handful of narrow, thin straps which criss-crossed her shins and thighs. Before she could see what they were made of, the fronts of the armored leg sections folded closed firmly around her legs, and she had a not-insignificant wave of anxiety.

  “Just slip your hands into the gauntlets, babe,” Eve encouraged, “the armor will do the rest.”

  “I hate tight spaces,” Masozi snapped irritably as she fought to control her breathing.

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Eve said cheerfully, “we’ll get you all fixed up once the suit’s calibrated to your current biochemistry.”

  Masozi warily placed her left hand into the gauntlet, and as she did so the vambrace closed around her forearm and then her upper arm was also encased in the matte, dark red armor. The joint at the elbow seemed to be relatively unarmored, but the rest of the suit had thick dimensions suggesting a heavy layer of protection—and probably some concealed equipment the purpose of which she could only guess at. But as she moved her left arm around, apparently without any motive assistance, she found it was surprisingly light for its apparent bulk.

  Exhaling sharply as her heart rate approached double its resting norm, Masozi reached her right hand into the gauntlet and the same sequence took place as with her left hand. Then the breastplate folded in on itself and she felt a surprisingly comfortable pressure on every inch of her torso as the helmet’s faceplate lowered into place over her head. When it had done so, she was plunged in darkness and all she could hear was her own breathing—which was bordering on dangerous hyperventilation.

  Then a series of lights began to flash at the edges of her vision and Eve’s image appeared in the lower right corner of her view. “The nerves are nothing to be ashamed of, baby cakes,” Benton’s glorified sex toy said confidently. “If your heart rate doesn’t come down below one thirty in the next minute, we’ll have to calm those nerves with a mild sedative—don’t worry, they’re built into the suit and are completely standard.”

  There was a whirring sound in her ears, and the visor of the helmet flashed brightly for a moment before it dimmed and she was able to see the room around her. Masozi moved her arms and took a step forward, awestruck at how well-balanced the suit felt. Even though the boots had soles that were nearly as thick as her highest set of heels back in New Lincoln, she was able to take several steps without any balance issues. She fought to regain control of her breathing as she looked down at her hands.

  “That’s better, babe,” Eve said approvingly, “heart rate one ten and falling. Oh, wait,” Eve said, looking down at her scantily-clad body in alarm, “I forgot to change! One sec.”

  Eve’s image disappeared briefly, but when it returned she was clad in an all-black bodyglove that somehow seemed to reduce her exaggerated bust and hips to more believable—if still considerably larger-than-average—proportions. She also had a pair of narrow black stripes ‘painted’ under her eyes, making her look like some sort of a cross between a spy and a professional athlete.

  “M
uch better,” Eve said with a curt nod after a self-appraising glance. “Primary systems are now fully online, but it’ll take another ten minutes for the secondaries to power up. In the interim, I suggest we make like an atom and split.”

  “Where are we going to go?” Masozi asked, looking around the apartment for an exit. All she could see was a bedroom adjoining the main living room, the door to the hallway leading to the lifts, and the large window which the V-120MX cannon was set up behind.

  “You guessed it,” Eve said when Masozi’s eyes lingered on the window. “Don’t worry about the fall, girlfriend,” she added, “the suit’s primary systems will help us get down without too much trouble.”

  Masozi noticed a series of readouts spring to life at the periphery of her vision, and she saw that several of them appeared to be reading her biorhythms. But there were dozens of minimized graphics the purposes of which she could not hope to understand.

  “Don’t worry about those, babe,” Eve said hastily, “just head on over to the window so we can do this.” One of the minimized readouts unexpectedly enlarged, and it showed a three dimensional representation of the building she was in. As she focused on it, she saw that there were at least thirty icons making their way up to her current position. Those icons were flashing an ominous, angry red color, and Eve said, “I’m guessing we’ve got about thirty seconds before they barge in here. That means you’ve got to get out that window in the next ten or we’ll be caught in the cleansing of the room—don’t worry though, none of the adjacent apartments will be damaged when it goes ‘ker-pow’ — and neither will the officers if you hurry.”

  Masozi took a short breath and asked, “What do I do?”

  “In case of emergency…” Eve said dryly, folding her arms across her chest and tapping her bicep with her fingers.