LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  ‘Fuck you!’ I disconnect the channel and leave it floating. Correcting for Mr Cray’s absence causing some confusion is it? Poor bastard. He might have been a crazy nut-job epithet machine but he could crack code like no one I’ve seen outside the Company and he was my… shit, he was actually my friend.

  The thought lingers. How many friends do I have now? About none. In a few hours I could be hanging frozen in space, gently orbiting the shittiest planet in the universe and not one single person would give a toss. Shit, yeah, might be a touch inconvenient not to have me around anymore but there’s always someone else. Friends? Tried that. Didn’t work out. Maybe I should have tried harder.

  ‘Mr Dal?’

  Is that what difference my passing could make? The hive mind of Gemini tutting to itself about having to correct for my absence? Piece of shit. Find yourself some other pawn…

  ‘Mr Dal. Excuse me, Mr Dal?’

  I start. One of the stewards is talking to me. Dal. So that’s what I’m called. Nice to know these things. I smile at him.

  ‘You have a message incoming.’ He tries to pass me a plug. I hesitate. Mr Dal is– was– a barcode. The only people he’s likely to be talking to are other Bratstva and they must know he’s dead by now. So whatever they have to say to me, I really don’t think I want to hear it.

  ‘Whoever it is I don’t wish to be disturbed. Now or at any point in the future.’

  The steward keeps his vacant grin and pushes the plug towards me. I shrink away. Adrenaline rising… The world begins to slow down… He’s one of them… They’re making their move… My hand slides into a pocket and settles around the late Mr Dal’s gun, only the gun isn’t there. I left it behind at the airport, not wanting to be arrested smuggling a projectile weapon into an orbital transit craft.

  The steward’s smile doesn’t change as he slots the plug behind his own ear. I watch, still tense. Nothing happens. The plug slips out again.

  ‘No message, Sir.’

  I sigh and nod.

  Tintenstrahl-Nachfullsatz. A data haven of minor infamy back when it belonged to the Rim and the Rim turned a blind eye– the Rim has a lot of blind eyes. No question that the first thing the Stars did when they got here was rape it. And probably left a small army of viral monkeys – what people like Mr Cray would call semi-autonomous pseudo-artificial intelligences, which is about as good as an AI gets unless its Gemini– crawling through its dataspace, digging up what’s left of all the dodgy shit that people like Mr Cray used to keep hidden there. The Rim may have kicked the soldiers out but my money says the monkeys are still there, will still be there for years, hiding in memory-corners where the Rim can’t find them, lurking in the deep processing, spawning copy-hordes now and then to go out looting and ravaging until the leopard-codes hunt them down. If the Stars kick arse at anything, it’s software. Whatever happens, you can be damn sure that anyone who once used this place won’t be taking any chances.

  The orbital itself is strangely reassuring. Dim red emergency lights, dark grey walls, a few scars of battle, armoured Rim spacers everywhere, watching us, herding us, never taking their eyes off us, orders shouted through damaged speakers. The air smells funny. Ozone? The rest of the tourists are sullen and cowed and so I play along, act the same, but secretly I’m smiling. Difficult for a barcode to make a move under this much scrutiny. Difficult to find Melissa too, but I’m in no hurry. No idea whether she’ll want to shoot me or fuck me. As for me? I think the answer is both. Not sure I’m that picky about the order either.

  Why the fuck am I even following her? This isn’t smart.

  We pass through what was once a glitzy shopping arcade full of souvenirs and in-flight entertainment wafers. The soldiers hurry us on, the scattered remains of the place crunching under their boots. Scorch marks on the walls, shattered shapeless globs of plastic clinging to severed wires dangling from the ceiling. Flashy happy buy-me posters half burned, lying crippled against the walls. Suddenly I like the Rim a little better. All this shallow crap, empty beneath its gaudy façade, it deserved to die like this. Jester would have liked it too.

  It troubles me that I don’t think I’m going to miss Jester.

  I pick up a wafer, just lying on the floor. Separated from its packaging it could be anything. Probably doesn’t even work anymore. I slot it in anyway for something to do and groan as it kicks to life. Some schmaltzy third rate romance reality. I throw it away and grind it under my heel. My little contribution to the carnage. Makes me feel good.

  We mill around. The soldiers don’t seem to know what to do with us. Beside me, a couple of obvious tourists, a man and a woman, middle-aged, Stars citizens probably, hassle one of the soldiers. They’re loud, demanding to know what’s happening, outraged and full of their God-given human rights until the soldier smashes the man’s face with the butt of his rifle. The man goes down and lies on the floor like he simply doesn’t understand what it’s all about, blood pouring from his nose, whimpering. The woman is in hysterics. I can read the soldier’s mind. He wants to shoot her. Fuck it, I want to shoot her. He wants to shoot us all. He despises us, hates us, and so do I. I edge away as someone with half a brain pulls the woman back, bowing to the soldier, apologising for the rudeness. The moment passes, the gun barrel points back to the floor…

  I see Melissa again for a moment, in the middle of the crowd. This time she sees me too. No sign of recognition but she’s staring right at me and holds the look just too long to be innocent. I wonder about fighting my way through the huddled masses to find her, but if the Bratstva are following her then they’d mark me too. It can wait. I just want to know: what did you do? And why the fuck did it have to be me?

  I do as the soldiers ask. Wait and queue and move as I’m directed. I am an obedient prisoner, which is what we really are, though most of these privileged fuckwit tourists simply don’t get it. Eventually Tintenstrahl-Nachfullsatz slips away behind us. I’d half hoped for a sleek liner full of unaffordable comforts, but whatever ship my ticket is for is long gone from this place. Instead it’s a Rim transport, the squid ships. A couple of hours ago these seats were full of soldiers, full of guns; now it’s just an angry murmuring echoing through the hull. The almost-rich whining about their surroundings while their brat-pack children race around their feet, infected with the thrill of being on the inside of a real warship. If this was a Stars crew they’d already be out selling pictures and models of it. Souvenirs. Treasure your memory of being caught in a skirmish.

  But what’s really unfair is that for the first time in my life I go into spinspace without being forcibly drugged into oblivion first, and there aren’t any windows. The lightning’s right out there and still I don’t get to see it. I wait and hope for the Whispers, but they don’t come either. God has no words for me today.

  Keldysh, M.V.‘Transplanted Nuclei and Cell Differentiation’. Biotechnical Journal, 136, 10376-10403 (2317).

  Basically a sob story about how it’s so hard to tinker with anything larger than a frog and vat-grow it to mature adulthood in a sensible amount of time. Keldysh was working for GZW at the time (and still is as far as I can tell) and they seemed to be working hard on the problem back then. Contrast to this:

  Frieman, J. L. & Butholeze, N.‘An attempt to Clone Viable Human Foetuses Using Gamma Enhanced Growth Techniques’. Letters to Helix, 39, 46-49 (2321).

  They’re not saying who funded this, but they sure had money. This was only a letter and doesn’t say much but they seem to be making pretty good progress. They predict by the end of the decade they’ll be growing human foetuses to maturity in less than six months. All as security clones, of course. Sure.

  Nine – Gateway

  Nothing in space is prettier than the Gateway orbital, or so they say. A fairy-tale castle floating thirty thousand miles above Cestus, the de-facto capital of the Old Worlds, spectacular enough that people fly from the surface just to pass it by and go home again. There still aren’t any windows in our Rim warship, so I miss the
approach, but the squid doesn’t dock with it and so we’re ferried over in a Cestus shuttle. Even then we’re already too close to grasp the whole structure, too close to get much of an impression at all except how big it is. Orbitals a mile long impressed me once, but this is ten times that, if not more and in all directions at once, big enough that if you’re nerd enough to give a shit, you can measure the tidal forces between one end and the other, whatever that means. From up close it looks more like a confusing lattice of plastic tubes and bubbles, a tangle spun by some cosmic drug-crazed spider on a serious bender. From further away it looks better, more coherent. It does in the pictures, anyway.

  Behind us the squid unfurls its tentacles and jets away on delicate streams of plasma. I’ve never seen a machine look more fluid and graceful. I watch it go until space puckers up and swallows it whole. By then we’re almost at Gateway.

  Gateway. As soon as I’m inside I feel the confidence of home. I barge and cajole my way through the milling refugees. Most of are Stars citizens, dumped here because the Rim couldn’t be bothered to do anything else. I forget about being Mr Dal and switch to a more familiar identity, the safe one that’s really me, full of deep background and history and never once marred by anything that makes it hunted. Constantine– pronounced tyne, not teen, thank you. Citizen of Cestus.

  The security clones are friendly, eager to know how the Rim treated us. The news has spread far enough that reporters are poised to pounce. I avoid them. Constantine is a private face best kept in shadows. Last thing I want is some Bratstva seeing me on the news and finding out where I am. Assuming they don’t already know.

  I pick up a oneshot commplug and find myself a public hyper-terminal.

  ‘Private message for Jezebel Breen, Okina Technologies, Analysis division. Cestus.’ Private my arse. God knows how many people monitor this line as a matter of course. The Company for one, but I’m sure everything I say will be picked up and processed by a dozen different pseudo-AIs. Viral monkeys with nothing better to do than sit and listen for words, phrases, tones and stress patterns, anything their masters might want to hear. You learn to live with it. Never say anything interesting unless you have to, and if you do, make sure they can never find out who you are and to whom you said it. Keep a spare identity and a freshly stolen link. First rule of business– be paranoid, because they really are out to get you.

  ‘ Miss Breen’s office.’ A faceless secretary answers my call. He looks mass-produced, and it makes me wonder: do they clone these people like they clone security guards? He has the Okina Technologies logo emblazoned on his regulation shirt, but everyone who matters knows that Okina is merely a front for the Cestus government.

  ‘ Take a message please.’ I tell him the commplug number and yet another name, one I only ever use with Jez.‘Have her call me urgently.’

  I close the connection and stick the plug behind my ear. A minute later it’s buzzing inside my head. She must have been listening. Figures.

  ‘Go secure.’ The first thing she says. No hello, how are you, we’ve been worried, you did a great job. None of that shit. I do so like working with a professional.

  I flick a switch with a thought. Jez and I have our own personal encryption key just short of a million bits long. It lives in my head and in hers and nothing can get it out again. You’d pretty much have to rip my head open and tear my brain out to get at the micro-memory core and I guess by then I really wouldn’t give a shit.

  ‘You there?’ I ask.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? I came damn close to releasing your file. Again.’

  Makes me smile. Jez and I know each other too well now. At the start of our little pact she’d have put the hit squad on my back in a matter of days if I didn’t report in like a good little puppy. Been almost a month this time. Puppy’s all grown up.

  ‘Long story. I don’t want to go into it, not even on this link.’

  ‘It’s as clean as they get.’

  ‘Not clean enough.’ Bound to be Bratstva in the Company somewhere, and I haven’t forgotten what Mr Cray said about the trace he sent after Melissa. An AI… Well, I know exactly one of those.‘Look, I got messed up in the fringe of something deeply shitty I don’t want any part of. I need to lie low and you owe me. I need the money.’

  ‘Got the wafers? Because I need proof you succeeded.’

  I feel myself flush with anger.‘Dammit, you know damn well we went in– it was all over the fucking news for Christ’s sake! What do you think we did? Shot up a few security clones, blew their main core to shit and then forgot to grab the wafers? You wanted them wasted, right? They’re wasted.’

  ‘I need to see them.’

  ‘Well, you can’t.’

  ‘No wafers, no cash. Rules. As you well know.’

  ‘Look, I got a couple of them with me. They’ve been exposed to a lot of radiation so I don’t know what state they’re in. Jester had the others and now they’re in tiny fragments just like the rest of him.’

  She sighs. I can hear the fatigue in her voice, the old drone of yet another round of tedious paperwork on top of a career already sucked dry of joy or meaning.‘I’ll see what I can do. Maybe they’ll give you partial payment for the ones you’ve got. But you’ll need to come in.’

  ‘Sure, Jez. I’ve only got an army of psychopaths breathing down my neck. But yeah, I’ll come in. Maybe I’ll bring them with me.’

  ‘I know, I know. The Bratstva, right?’

  A pause, as I take this in.‘Pardon?’

  ‘Szenchzuen. Someone stole something from some very bad people. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

  ‘I know the who. I don’t know the what. And how the fuck do you know anything at all?’

  ‘You want your money, find out what they took. Look, we need to talk. Somewhere private, just the two of us. I don’t know what’s going on, but right now I have another problem.’

  ‘You’ve got a problem? What about my problem?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do about the money, but you’ve got to come in.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Then you’re on your own. I can’t help you unless you help me.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Yeah, that could be on the cards. If you come in.’

  ‘Ha fucking ha.’

  ‘Think about it. I’ll call you again.’ Another pause. Seems to me this conversation’s gone as far as its going, but maybe Jez has a conscience to struggle with.‘You OK?’ she asks. Dumb question. I’ve been subjected to interstellar kidnap, shot at by inter-planetary weaponry, I’ve had both my partners blown up, I shot a man through the head and I’m being hunted by an inter-galactic cult of religious assassins who are all as mad as a bag of spiders and I haven’t the first inkling of a clue why any of this is happening. So sure, I’m just dandy right now.

  ‘I guess,’ I say.

  ‘Look after yourself.’ And she’s gone. Look after myself? Yeah, right. No money and the Bratstva gunning for me? How, exactly? And I can see exactly what she’s trying to do, making me think she cares so that I’ll have some empathy and care back about her and her problem and change my mind and go in like she asked, like a good little doggy. Trouble is, she does care, and I know it, so it’s fucking well working.

  I head to an information point in one of the great Gateway halls, a vast half-sphere, layers of balconies teeming with people, the higher parts of the ceiling clear and open to the stars. Or that’s how it looks. I can feel gravity under my feet, weak, but enough. We’re spinning but the stars are still. It’s a projection, an illusion. So much is.

  I explain to the artificial assistant that I came on the Rim ship, that I’m a refugee from Szenchzuen. I tell it how the nasty Rim soldiers dragged me away and stole all my stuff, that I haven’t got any money and I need to get home to Cestus. I hand over my identity, let them check my non-existent credit and walk away with a free ticket home. One thing I like about the Old Worlds. Everyone has a place. If you’re rich, yo
u choose what it is, if you’re poor, you have it chosen for you, but you always have one. Gateway is a palace where the rich indulge and so they’re happy to be rid of me. Everyone’s keen for a return to the status quo, to how it was before those scary Rim anarchists came and disturbed things. All these loud, scruffy, dirty people. People like me.

  Six hours until my flight, but that’s okay because I’ve just the thing to pass the time. Melissa. I feel for Mr Dal’s gun in my pocket again and it’s still not there. Not that I particularly like them, but times like this I feel naked without a good solid kick-ass highcalibre handgun. Preferably clipped up with high explosive rounds.

  With what she’s up to, no way is Melissa her real name. Takes me a couple of hours to track her down, but when I see the refugee list I know it’s her. Miss J. Sim, Citizen of the United Stars orbital Unprecedented Profit, registration number ML155A. I shake my head. Real fucking amateur leaving clues like that. No one in this business stays alive long thinking they’re smarter than everyone else.

  She’s booked herself into a small room in a suite of quiet low gravity apartments near the hub, the sort of place where couples who really can’t afford to be here might stretch for that once-in-a-lifetime holiday. The corridors are deserted. Hardly any real people here at all, everything automated. I stop at the reception desk and buzz her room.

  Why am I doing this? What’s to stop her from shooting me? It’s probably what I’d do if I was her.

  No answer. I try a few more times. Still nothing. I start to wondering how these rooms match up to GZW’s suite back in the Shithole. My guess is that the robes here aren’t bulletproof, the bathrooms less heavy on the chrome and mirrors look. Sterile and white, probably.

  The reception software doesn’t want to let me further. No invitation, no entry. I circumvent this easily enough by hiring a room myself. Says something that they can be hired by the hour; even so, it uses what’s left of my credit. Must try to remember I’m poor at the moment. I go to my own room first and fish through my pockets, my bag of bits, and cobble together something that looks vaguely threatening. Even if I had a real gun, I don’t think I want to shoot her. Not yet, anyway. But I’m sure as fuck going to scare the living shit out of her and find out just what she did to make the Bratstva turn Jester and Mr Cray into pizza topping.