LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  Jester snorts.‘It means bad ju-ju, but not as bad as it might have been. Sort of mediocre juju.’

  ‘So-so ju-ju offers Mr Cray.’

  ‘About at the level of my ever-present disdain for you,’ agrees Jester.

  ‘And we do what, exactly, about them?’ I butt in.

  ‘Well, they’ve got laser spotters on both of us and missiles already in the air homing in, but they let us know they’re coming and those missiles are still a good ninety seconds away so they’re obviously idiots. In about eighty of those seconds from now I’m going for dodging about a lot and hoping to make their pseudo-AI guided weapons miss. Oh and throw a load of shit into the air and hope it spoils their aim. Maybe if we’re particularly lucky and they’re particularly dumb, they’ll panic and crash.’

  ‘When have we every been particularly lucky? Or even only a little bit?’

  ‘Just don’t let them put a spot on you and keep it there.’

  ‘This is the United Stars we’re dealing with here,’ I remind him.‘“Miss” isn’t in their vocabulary. They replaced it with phrases like“unconstrained collateral damage”, and“zone of annihilation” years ago. They’re probably carrying fusion bombs. How do I dodge those?’

  I feel Jester shrug.‘We’ve done radiation poisoning now, remember? Holds no fear anymore.’

  ‘Your confidence is exhilarating.’

  ‘You’re in a hovercraft, jackass. You’re on a river surrounded by a wall of trees. If you happen to see some cover then by all means take it. Or pray, if it makes you feel better. And you can shut up now. They’ll be here soon.’

  Mr Cray hurtles us full-throttle towards the river bank.‘Try not to do their job for them before they even get here, will you?’ I say.

  ‘I’m fucking dodging, aren’t I?’ We lurch back across the river.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I would just bimble along in a straight line and make things just that little bit easier for the nice people with the big bombs. I mean, if that would make you more comfortable…’

  Words appear before my eyes: Warning: Laser designation.

  ‘Spot!’ Warns Jester.‘You got the spot! Lose it!’

  ‘Fuck!’ shouts Mr Cray‘I see them! Shit.’ Two angry dots, swarming down the river towards us. I think I see a plume of smoke but I’m not sure. I hit the panic button. Clouds of twinkling metal, smoke and rainbow aerosol plume and blossom behind us. Mr Cray veers across the river again. Ice grips me. For a moment I’m frozen.

  ‘Lose it!’ shouts Jester again. I try glaring. Nothing happens. My face screws up of its own accord, trying to be somewhere else. I stab the button over and over, sweat dripping down my fingers making me fumble.

  The words go away. I’m still stabbing.

  ‘Jink!’ screams Jester. Something howls so close it shakes us hard enough that I’m almost thrown from my seat even though I’m strapped into it. A roar as two savage winged lances rocket overhead while the world roller-coasters around us. Mr Cray starts swearing for real. I turn the gun turret so it’s pointing back the way we’ve come. Why I’m doing this I’m not quite sure. Jester, I notice, hasn’t bothered. We’d do better having Mr Cray mouth off at them.‘You’re spoiling my aim!’ I yell.

  ‘You haven’t fucking got an aim!’ Cray goes on but I filter him out. He works so much better at whatever he’s doing when there’s a torrent of abuse spewing out of him. Doesn’t take much to get him going either. He’s right about the aim though. Handguns I can handle, anything bigger I mostly assume will do the aiming itself.

  ‘They’re coming in low, down the river,’ says Jester. Maggot one has drifted across to the opposite bank.‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m still alive enough to be pissed off,’ I say. I’m shaking.

  ‘All the important shit still works,’ says Mr Cray. He grabs the microphone.‘Where the fuck are you, Carcass?’

  ‘Maggot Two, this is Bluebottle leader. You’re ninety seconds to the border. ETA two and thirty. Hang in there.’ Bluebottle leader has a calm steady voice and doesn’t seem unduly concerned. This seems to upset Mr Cray.

  ‘They’re coming back,’ warns Jester. He’s pulling away from us.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Don’t see them. They’re not painting me. I’ve got Bluebottle squadron on my scope, but nothing from the… Oh shit!’ I look up in time to see two shapes fly over us again. Higher this time, trailing smoke. I forgot to shoot at them last time and rectify my oversight. The hovercraft shudders from the recoil while the targeting computer kindly informs me that my kill probability is slightly less than zero.

  ‘Fucking stop that!’ bawls Mr Cray‘You’re pushing us—’

  Something slaps me round the head from every direction at once. Everything spins around and over. The noise stuns me even through the filters and then I can’t hear anything at all. Lights in front of my eyes– the turret system, trying to tell me how fucked we are, or is it my life doing that flashing thing it’s supposed to do? If it is then it’s a bit shit and frankly I’d hoped for something just a tad more coherent.

  The spinning slowly stops. I’m still alive so I guess they didn’t drop a nuke on us. Everything hurts. I’m upside down, but that’s because the rest of the hovercraft is upside down too. My turret isn’t the shape it’s supposed to be. It looks like maybe a small train ploughed into it.

  Jester’s voice murmurs something, coming through the wafer in my head. I look down at the remains of the intercom. Easy to see why it’s not coming from there.

  I groan.‘What happened?’

  ‘Fuel Air Explosion. Told you they’d probably miss.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Jester! We’re the wrong way up! This doesn’t feel like missed to me!’

  ‘You’d better get out of there. You’re about a hundred yards across the border but I guess you can’t be sure they won’t have another pop. Don’t forget the cheese.’

  I’m about to tell him where to stick his cheese, but he’s gone.

  The water outside is less than waist deep. We seem to be on the opposite side of the river to the one I remember, but then the last time I was remembering things we were the right way up too. Jester’s heading back down the river towards us, coming slowly, his hovercraft listing. There’s a gap in the bank a way behind us and another one across the river. Trees knocked flat by the pressure wave and hurled into the water. Drifting in splinters towards us. I crawl back inside the hovercraft. Mr Cray is hanging limp above me, blood dripping from his nose into the water but no serious damage. Probable concussion. I reach up for the microphone. His panel seems to have survived better than mine.

  ‘This is Maggot Two. We’ve been squished.’

  ‘Maggot Two, this is Carcass. What’s the state of your cargo?’

  ‘Carcass, we all know you have our health and well-being as your top priority really, but thanks for staying professional.’

  ‘Just bring in your cargo, Maggot Two.’

  I struggle into the hold. The boxes are submerged in river water. Their pressure-formed cardboard falls apart in my hands as I lift them out. I look in disgust at their contents. The smell is almost overpowering, but it’s the tiny purple worms wriggling in and out of the cheese that sicken me most.

  ‘Your cargo’s had a bath, Carcass. I’m not sure how edible it is.’

  ‘Bring it back, Maggot Two, as much as you can.’

  The planes haven’t returned. I pause for a moment to savour where I am. On a buttfuck backwater world up to my knees in a foetid tropical river polluted by things I really don’t want to think about, surrounded by boxes of cheese full of worms and being called a maggot. The evidence is pretty strong that somewhere along the line my life took a wrong turn.

  ‘Constantine?’ The voice in my ear again. Jester.

  ‘You’ll have to help me with Mr Cray. I can’t tell how badly he’s been hurt.’

  ‘And you think I give a shit?’

  Turns out Mr Cray’
s got nothing worse than a few scratches and bruises but it keeps him quiet while we limp back to Shithole– a mercy, since my filters are still sulking about the explosion. Mr GZW is waiting with some paramedics who fuss over Cray and then murmur their disappointment when they see there’s nothing seriously wrong with him. Men in white coats unload the cargo while Mr GZW peers over their shoulders with interest.

  ‘Corsican cheese,’ he says.‘An acquired taste.’

  Jester and I look at one another. Mr Cray staggers away from the paramedics. He takes one look at all the worms and pukes over them.

  Yakamura, I. et al. ‘Memory Transformation Matrices, a Comparison of Intelligences’. Cestus Mathematical Review, 71, 6943-7162 (2269).

  A study of how well different intelligences (humans and AIs) remember events. The suggestion is that it’s part of being sentient that your memories change with time; if you remembered everything perfectly, you wouldn’t have the capacity for extrapolative thought. They made an interesting comparison with spastics who’ve got great memories but have real problems relating to the world. Yakamura used to work for the Cestus government but he’s dead now.

  Four – Smoking Boots and Deadly Dustbins

  We climb into the back of a GZW truck. They return us to Shithole and back to the hotel and then fuck off. Apparently we’re done. Cut loose and free to go, which I take to mean that the worst is about to happen. Turns out I’m not wrong.

  Midnight is long gone, and if it wasn’t for the security drones buzzing overhead and the retro-style jeeps full of raucous policemen driving by every few minutes, the town would be quiet. I’m starting to detest this place, although I guess we’re no better, Jester, Cray and I. I get to remembering what got me into this business in the first place, what got me out of being a suit. I used to have some notions of what was right and what wasn’t. They’d probably haunt me if they could, but instead it’s the empty space that picks at me like a scar that won’t heal. I sometimes wonder: what happened to them?

  We don’t say much as we stand in the lift, waiting for it to reach our floor. We’re tired and it’s a long time since someone tried to kill me. I’d forgotten what it feels like.

  ‘Someone tried to kill you a few weeks ago,’ says Jester when I tell him.‘If you call that a long time then I think you should buy more insurance.’

  The shuttle and the particle beam or whatever it was. I shudder. How could I forget?

  ‘It doesn’t count,’ I say after a bit.‘That was a misunderstanding.’

  Jester snorts, too tired to tell me I’m talking out of my arse, that dead is dead, and dead by mistake is no improvement over dead on purpose. Sometimes even Jester feels the need for sleep; but he’s not going to get any tonight. I know something’s wrong the instant we reach the door. I don’t know why or how, but I know. My fingers stop, hovering millimetres over the panel, ready to let our suite of rooms know that its rightful occupants have returned.

  ‘Something’s off,’ I say.

  Jester looks at me. He feels it too. Mr Cray rolls his eyes but has the sense not to speak. He knows well enough to trust our instincts.

  ‘Put the code in,’ Jester says, pulling out his gun. Jester’s gun fits into the palm of his hand and has been known to stop light armoured vehicles. I do as he says, standing as far away as I can while I tap it in. Jester waits on the other side of the door. It opens. I tense, ready for the explosion…

  Nothing. Jester moves to cover the door. His movements are fast, fluid and elegant, not like he was on the way up. He’s already mainlining something.‘Shit,’ he says after a moment. He’s relaxed very slightly, enough to tell me that whatever happened, it’s been and gone. I join him in the doorway. Two men lie dead across the floor of our suite. I’ve never seen either of them before.

  ‘Who the fuck are they?’ asks Mr Cray.

  ‘Barcodes,’ says Jester. His voice is flat and dead as though he expects to follow.

  ‘What the fuck do they want?’ Mr Cray’s voice grows higher with every word. Barcodes means the Brotherhood. Rich, powerful, filled with righteous fanaticism, some of the most warped and dangerous minds the human race has produced with the possible exception of Mr Cray. Followers of Leonard Ortov, the last great religion, if only because no one dares disagree with them. Corporations steer clear when they can, tug their forelocks when they can’t. Governments get edgy and pander to them. The second most frightening organisation I can think of.

  ‘At least it’s not the United Stars Revenue Service,’ I say. No one finds this funny.

  ‘How the fuck do you know they’re Bratstva?’ demands Mr Cray.

  Jester strides into the room. He’s angry now. He throws the breakfast trolley aside– scrambled egg splatters across the wall– and kneels by one of the bodies. It’s lying face down in a sticky pool of half-congealed blood. Dead for a few hours at most. Jester pulls a knife from his boot and slashes open the back of the dead man’s jacket. He rips the tear wide so we can’t pretend not to see the barcode on the dead man’s back.‘See?’

  I step into the room and look at Jester. He stands and shakes his head.

  ‘We have to leave right now,’ he says.

  ‘What about our stuff?’ asks Mr Cray.‘GZW still got half my‘wares!’

  Jester ignores him. He shakes his head.‘Wouldn’t have had anything to do with this halfarsed scheme if they hadn’t had our balls and a blowtorch. Now we know what the catch was huh? Deep joy. Deep, deep fucking joy.’

  He looks around the room. Something catches his eye and he strides away into the bathroom. Mr Cray runs past me, muttering to himself. I take a look about. Don’t see anything odd at first. Well, apart from the two stiffs on the floor and the blood and that. But when Jester comes back from the bathroom, the look in his eyes makes my skin freeze. He’s still holding the knife he used to open the dead man’s jacket. A sparkle of blood glistens at its tip.

  ‘Could this be your fault?’ he growls. He stops just in front of me and points the knife at my face. A part of me wants to cower in terror but it’s important that I don’t. Jester and I still can’t decide who’s the alpha dog. All we know for sure is that Mr Cray’s at the bottom of the pile; but I see how Jester treats Cray and I have no intention of joining him there. Jester could easily kill me if he wants, but I don’t think he will. I meet his stare with one of my own, even though he’s a foot taller. Mr Cray is standing at the far end of the room, staring at us, hopping from one foot to the other and back again. He hates it when we fight.

  ‘Why?’ I ask. Years of practice make my voice calm and even. Jester doesn’t know everything about me, or he’d see through the masquerade soon enough. He glares a while longer then stands aside and points to the bathroom.

  ‘See for yourself!’ he snaps.

  The hotel suite GZW have given us is luxurious. The bathroom is large and covered with mirrors. Even the floor is a mirror, the fittings are chromed and kept well polished. The brochure that came with it describes it as sensual and erotic, but mostly I find it disorientating. Perhaps if Melissa and I had had the place to ourselves for a few hours then I’d think differently. This is why I’m thinking of her as I enter.

  ‘Sorry,’ says the writing on the wall. Written in Melissa’s toothpaste. Traces of blood on the taps.

  ‘Your bitch!’ says Jester, right behind me. Maybe the filters are still recovering from being bombed, but even the wafer in my ear didn’t hear him get there. I hate it when he does that. ‘She’s screwed us all now.’

  For some reason this makes me angry. I spin around and see a fleeting flash of alarm reflect back from Jester’s artificial eyes. Good.

  ‘Fuck!’ shouts Mr Cray outside.‘Some fucker’s nicked half my stuff!’

  Jester keep glaring at each other.‘What stuff?’ I ask.

  ‘What the fuck do you think? My interface has gone! Half my shit’s missing!’ ‘You mean you left some behind?’

  ‘I couldn’t carry it all.’ He sounds sulky now, deje
cted, like a kid who’s had his favourite toy broken.

  Jester looks at me.‘I’ll say it again. We need to leave. Now.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I turn to Mr Cray.‘Check our access records.’ We’ve been set up. Jester and I, we’ve both reckoned GZW brought us here for something like this. We need to find what it is and why before the barcodes show up again. Shit, though. Fucking Bratstva? Did it have to be?

  Mr Cray is shaking.‘Bitch won’t get away as easy as she thinks. Not now she’s up against the Cray.’ He disappears into his room, muttering to himself.

  ‘I’ll be outside,’ Jester growls. I’d be getting my own shit together as well, but everything I own I already have with me, a side effect of flying to New Amazonia by mistake, so instead I turn the shower on and wash away the blood and the toothpaste. As I finish, Mr Cray comes in.

  ‘Jesus fuck! You should see this, C! She was active almost five hours straight; I’ve tracked her all over the place, but…’ He shakes his head, his eyes full of wonder.‘She’s a star, way fucking good. She’s gone all out to hide her trail– bounced the link right through the Rim, through the Dusties, places I wouldn’t want to play with. I lost her somewhere in the Stars– I’ve absolutely no idea where she came out, but I’d guess the other end was in there somewhere. Shit, man, she even went through Gateway, and that’s a fucking Masada! If I saw this cold then I’d swear I was looking at an AI. You fucked her, man– you sure she’s human?’

  I think I might just hit him.‘Yeah, well, whatever she was, someone even smarter backtraced her here and had soldiers at the door before she was done,’ snaps Jester from the doorway.‘So let’s go!’

  ‘Whatever she was after, it was big. She brought something back.’ Mr Cray’s hooked. We get out of here, he’ll spend weeks plugged into the datastream, looking for Melissa and what she was up to. And yeah, I’d like to know too, but maybe when we’re back in the Old Worlds, or even better the Fading Suns. Somewhere the Brotherhood don’t have too much of a presence. Even then, I know how this goes. She’ll be a ghost. Never existed, never here.

  We run through the hotel and down to the underground car park where the jeep Mr GZW has kindly loaned to us is parked. On Szenchzuen, everyone, it seems, has jeeps, fuelled on locally refined alcohol. Our jeep has a policeman standing beside it. More precisely, he’s lounging against it, looking bored as though he’s been waiting for some time. He doesn’t see us.