LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  Miss Breen. How long since I’ve heard Jez called that?

  ‘Yeah, amateurs with big guns.’ So fucking amateur that Jez has us cooped up here together in the middle of nowhere so she can get our cover story squeaky-perfect. Maybe if I was with Jester and Cray I’d say yes, sure we can do it. Fuck it– the three of us could do anything. But I’ve never worked in the field with Jez, Doyle’s hardly spoken a word, the other Company woman I barely even know her name– Su, I think, and she hates me– and as for the other two, well, a pair of jokers hardly even starts it. I look Toni up and down.‘You tell me. You know damn well it’s going to be the three of us at the front trying to talk our way in, and here we are, I know jack-shit about you and you know jack-shit about me. Doyle’s Company and so’s Su. We know fuck all about them too, while they know everything about us. Mostly we know we’re expendable. Doesn’t it bother you?’

  Andreas grins again.‘I’ll start the ante at two. I think that’s why Miss Breen is waiting. So we have time to get to understand each other. Besides, if it bothers you, we could just… do without them…’ He winks.

  Oh dear God. Okay, never mind this getting to you know you thing, Andreas, I already understand everything about you that I need to know.‘See your two. Go ahead. I’ll watch. I bow to your judgement.’ I throw a couple of matches onto the table. As well as thinking I’m a paranoid coward, Andreas has it in his head that I’m a dangerous backstabbing criminal being given a chance at redemption in desperate circumstances. So for some reason– and I can only put this down to some sort of genetic deficiency– he likes to generally piss me off, which seems to be what he thinks is only fair and wise around desperate criminals.

  I give him my most unpleasant grin which, as usual, makes no impression at all.‘I have a fair idea what Doyle can do, though, so have fun.’

  Doyle. So many things about her, the way she moves, the way her eyes dart about the room. Now that I know, so many things remind me of Jester. Jez wasn’t bullshitting.

  Su comes into the room. Short, an oriental look to her. She speaks softly, without power, and has daggers in her eyes whenever she looks at me.‘I have the files on Space Race. Please read them. You will be required to make contact.’ Just that. She puts three wafers on the table and leaves. Toni pushes them in among the matchsticks.

  ‘See your two and raise one. What bothers me are these missiles. What if we can’t find them?’

  ‘That’s the easy bit,’ I say.

  ‘Your one and another two,’ says Andreas.‘Maybe they fired them all.’

  ‘You want to bet on that?’ Four matchsticks go in.

  Su comes back.‘Constantine. You have an incoming message.’

  I throw in my hand to a chorus of groans and leave the rest of them to it. The metal box I have that passes for a cabin is cramped and dirty but at least I get it to myself, on account of no one wanting to share with a dangerous desperate criminal because maybe… shit, maybe I’ll stab them in the neck for no apparent reason and then run away into the void of empty space? But I’m not complaining. When she was built, the crew of this ship were expected to share. Two men in a six by six by eight box. Bet Andreas can’t even stand up straight in his, but then if he’s banging Toni Flynn then I guess he doesn’t much care. Me, I got six inches of clearance. Times like this I don’t mind being short and skinny.

  The antique comms pad says I have a message incoming, though why it can’t just route it to my plug beats the hell out of me. I give it a kick and a face appears on the screen. Melissa. Just like I remember her. She smiles– I guess she can see the moment of my surprise.

  ‘What the fuck are you up to now, Ortov?’

  She pouts.‘Do you like it? I put it together just for you.’

  ‘What, to remind me that you’re human? I hadn’t forgotten.’

  ‘From what I’ve seen you’ll pay an order of magnitude more attention to me if I look pretty and dumb and fuckable. Not that I think you’re shallow or anything. Besides, being the messiah might attract attention. I have other people to talk to now.’

  ‘Jez, you mean?’

  Her– His? Its?– expression sours.‘Don’t be more of an idiot that you already are. Look, I did some digging, this is what I got. You want more, you got to be nice to me.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Bloody touchy for a messiah, especially a dead one.

  ‘Damn straight I’m touchy. I seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties integrating my personality or something. When I’ve sorted out the multiple schizophrenia I’ll try to respect your choice of lifestyle, moronic and self-destructive as it is. All I ask is that you do the same for me.’

  I shrug.‘It’s what I do. What they trained me to do. Sure. Last thing I need are your crappy personality disorders on my back.’

  ‘Christ, you’re a fucking oil film aren’t you. Molecular in depth and slippery as a bad shit.’ Reconstructed Melissa rolls her eyes.‘Since, God help me, it seems to be in my interest to keep you alive, I’ve pulled everything I can find on terrorist activity in Vednar. Starts the nineteenth of November last year. Shuttle carrying the managing director of Cestus Aerospace’s manufacturing plant in Cunningham follows a routine flight path through the Vednar asteroid field. Gets destroyed by a salvo of long range missiles from somewhere in the field. A week later another Cestus shuttle gets vaped on the exact same route. By the way, we’re talking about one of the busiest spacelanes around, here. Anyway, two weeks later and a third attack destroys another shuttle, this time carrying several employees of the Longthorne family. Another week and another shuttle gets it, a courier. After that the Cestus government upped their presence to several permanent escort frigates and the attacks pretty much stopped. There was one more, against an unmanned transport carrying materials for the Cunningham plant, but the damage was minimal.’

  ‘Longthorne. As in Victor Longthorne.’

  ‘Yes, as in Victor Longthorne. I’ll keep digging.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something else. I can’t help noticing that Cestus has had more than its fair share of accidents over the last year or so, particularly anything which has Longthorne money invested in it. About the only thing that hasn’t had a major fuck-up is Sunscreen.’ OrtovMelissa grins and then gives me a sour look.‘If I find anything more, I’ll consider letting you know.’

  ‘One thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Local law? Old Worlds navy? Or doesn’t anyone care about a few shuttles getting nuked?’

  ‘Navy did a sweep of the field and found jack-shit. Reckoned it was coming from the colony of travellers, drifters, drop-outs, whatever you’re headed for. Planetary government says much the same. They say that, short of blowing the Freeport into the Oort cloud, there isn’t much they can do. You ask me, everyone’s scared shitless that whoever’s popping those missiles off knows the field far better than they do.’

  ‘Well I’m glad to see everyone’s so concerned.’

  OrtovMelissa snorts.‘Yeah. I’m figuring this brave new future out pretty quick, I think. Basically, no one gives a shit.’

  ‘Welcome to the world of tomorrow.’ I hesitate. For some reason that hits a nerve.‘One more thing– you ever heard of Space Race?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have now. Next time, drop the face.’

  A moment after Melissa– Ortov– whoever he/she/it thinks it is– has vanished from the screen, Su is standing in my doorway.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Madame Mel,’ I tell her, just to have fun of watching her face.‘I’m arranging hookers for when we arrive. Want some?’

  Bannerman, J. & Yoshikawa, H. ‘Virtual Measurement of Human Conscience Through a Direct Brain Interface’. Journal of the Society of Neuro-Electronics, 21, 533-662 (2242).

  Old hat if you ask me. Not the same Bannerman as before but the same family and this one’s working for Digitech (remember them?). Six years after Walker and Davison’s seminal brainweb paper and th
is is getting pretty close to a public admission that personality recording might be possible. Gee, only a hundred and fifty years out of date … Anyway, in trying to record (measure, they called it) a person’s brain, it’s impossible to test every neuron. So what they did was to wire up every 1000th neuron (say) and try to guess how all the other ones are wired up. Sort of interpolate. Clever, huh? That way they could get a pretty good idea of what was going on in someone’s (or some AI’s) head without ripping it apart. And let me tell you, having your head ripped open was no fun at all. So what we’re talking about is the ability to use a Brainweb to extract someone’s entire essence. It’s a scary old world. By the way, Bannerman was one of mine, Bratstva. He disappeared in 2247 much the same time as Davison got whacked. Yoshikawa’s getting on a bit but as far as I can tell he’s still alive somewhere.

  Fifteen – Untamed News!

  Eventually Su gets bored of me pissing in her face. Shit, though, I don’t even know what Jez was thinking. It’s just like, yeah, C, we’re off into space to do something that might mean getting tortured and executed by crazy terrorists and by the way, here’s a bunch of people you’ve never met who are going to have your back. Well, y’know. Maybe. So bond and shit; but there’s only so much of Toni and Andreas I can take, the cabins are small and the walls are thin, if you catch my drift; Doyle just unnerves me, while Su yo-yos between haughty and sulky, trying to figure me out and then getting pissed when she can’t.

  I hide out for a bit with Ortov. Not that I particularly enjoy being told I’m a pointless heap of chemicals, but I figure it’s a step or two above being a pointless heap of semiconductors. We got something in common now. We got a game. Kinda weird, kind of an accident, but we’ve found a connection. It started with Jez. I ought to know better than to like her but I do, and I figure Ortov envies her. Ortov tells me this is a crock of shit. I point out I was trained for years to figure people out and I’m pretty damn good at it. Ortov points out that he’s been dead for two hundred years and there’s people still think he’s the messiah and he bloody well knows his own mind. I resist asking him which one.

  ‘ Messiah, my arse,’ I tell him. I kinda get off on his rants when he gets riled up. Reminds me of Mr Cray and it beats listening to Andreas being a moron. But for once Ortov’s not biting. His face– he’s taken to looking like the real Ortov back when the real Ortov was my sort of age– takes on a sly look.

  ‘ Suppose you’re right. Suppose I’m a fake. Suppose I conned all those people. Seems like I was pretty good at it. Maybe I can figure people out better than you. So fuck you.’

  I tell him that’s bollocks, brainwashing a horde of twenty first century hicks ain’t no harder than spooking a flock of sheep. Me, I have to work with the smartest of the smart.

  ‘OK,’ he says,‘let’s find out.’ Which is how it starts. Our game. Figuring out people’s personality disorders. Gets kinda competitive. First thing I do is download him the Company training manual for psychoanalytic deconstruction. Training manual might be fine for dipshits who don’t know their arse from their elbow but basically it’s full of crap. Takes Ortov about three seconds to tell me this, about an hour to hatchet the thing from start to finish. By now I’m paying attention. Kinda figured Ortov would be smart enough not to trust a peoplemanual, but by the time he’s done I gotta admit he’s good. Not shit-hot yet, but definitely good.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I could have told you you’d say that. Try to surprise me for once.’

  The next half hour gets pretty heated until we kinda reach a mutual agreement not to poke holes in each other and pick on other people instead.

  ‘Jez,’ he suggests.

  ‘Andreas.’

  ‘Oh, for fucks sake, you just want to hear someone else tell you that he’s a twat. I don’t know anything about him. Maybe I agree with you, maybe I don’t. Can’t help figuring you’d like him better if he wasn’t engaged in ungodly fornication with the whore.’

  I snort.‘Toni Flynn? Get a grip.’

  ‘You’d fuck anything with holes.’

  ‘Not her. You know she does porn channel?’

  ‘Fifty six recordings and counting. How many have you wanked over?’

  ‘Fuck off, Ortov. I’m not being her next cum-and-go conquest.’

  Ortov laughs in my face.‘You’re a slut, and I don’t believe you said that.’

  Touché.‘Figure it out, since you’re so good at it.’ Me, I do it for fun, not for victory points. Well, mostly. Usually. Sometimes…

  Bugger.

  We move on to more useful stuff, like profiling everyone we can think of who might be Jez’s turncoat inside the Cestus government, or maybe the Company, or maybe even one of the Longthornes. Doesn’t do us much good. Half our suspects live in the shadows and we’ve got sketchy intel. The other half live in the light and are all dodgy as hell; but it’s kinda fun, talking shop with someone who can actually keep up. Ortov’s pretty good. We work forty hours straight, Ortov because he can, me because I’m snorting Alert like there’s no tomorrow.

  Just to piss me off, the moment I let the you’ve-had-way-too-much-Alert-and-now-it’stime-to-pay coma take me down, Jez throws us into spinspace. Naturally we hit a patch of Black Lightning. Naturally, when I wake up, Jez tells me how cool it was and what a shame that I missed it. When she’s done pissing me off she gathers us for one last pep-talk.

  A few hours away the Vednar asteroids await. Toni and Andreas seem to have a dim sense that I’m hacked off about something and start double-teaming real hard to press all the wrong buttons. Toni’s patronising smile, Andreas’ smug invincibility. Do me a favour and die horribly, the pair of you. Mostly I guess I’m angry with Jez for not waking me up. Don’t suppose we’ve stayed this close to each other for so long before. Fleeting moments. I think that suited us better than claustrophobia.

  ‘We’re all clear on what we’re supposed to be doing?’ she asks when she finally has our attention.

  A dull chorus of yes, mummy.

  ‘Toni?’

  Toni flashes her perfect teeth. I have a sudden and powerful urge to smash them.‘Toni Flynn, Untamed News! Bringing you an unprecedented in-depth report into life on the fringe. Here in the Vednar system, a society of more than ten thousand men and women living on the edge. A hundred starships, some of them so old they constantly leak precious oxygen into the void, making the precarious lives of these hardy souls even harder…’

  Maybe if I ripped her throat out then her voice wouldn’t annoy me so much. That would probably work.

  Jez interrupts.‘And?’

  ‘I keep talking. As many people as possible. Community leaders, new faces, old hands, a complete cross-section of the population. Lots of questions about the missile attacks. I get their attention.’

  ‘Andreas?’

  Andreas leans back in his chair and yawns.‘I film Toni. I keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.’

  ‘Constantine?’

  I yawn and lean back in my chair as well.‘I’m the white rabbit. I’ve come from Wonderland to look for my cousin Harvey. Apparently he’s invisible. Anyone seen him?’

  When I close my eyes I can see Jester standing on the balcony of the Shithole hotel, shooting at poor people. I remember his face like he knew them, like they’d done something to offend him. I didn’t understand it at the time but now I do. I can almost read his mind. Lo, I am the mighty cybernetic death-bringer! Nothing can challenge me! How dare you pitiful creatures make me feel so fucking empty! Jester had a hole where his soul used to be. I think I do too. Talking to Ortov is doing my head in.

  Jez sighs.‘Constantine, try not to be more of an arsehole than you have to.’

  I’ve drifted so far I hardly hear her. I pull myself together.

  ‘I’m one of them. Bringing my own personal mound of rust and bolts to weld onto their nightmare. I wander around and stick my nose into other people’s business until someone shoots me. Then the rest of you know I was onto something.’

  ‘Don�
�t fuck with me. You’re supposed to be good at this.’

  I lean forward. Damn plastic seat’s getting uncomfortable already and I’ve only been sitting in it for a few minutes.‘Yeah, yeah. I cover myself in oil and grease and rust and shit and yeah, I’m one of the boys and I want to live in this godforsaken heap of crap, or maybe I’m a secret badass motherfucker with a bad vibe thing going between me and the Cestus monkey brigade– I don’t exactly know yet, I’ll figure it out. Somehow I get to rub noses with the shit of the universe. If I see any missiles, I’ll let you know.’

  Out of nowhere I have this feeling of fear. Not a sharp tangy thing, the sort you get when you just know there’s some alien motherfucker with six-inch teeth standing right behind you. More the leaden despondent sort. This gig probably isn’t even all that dangerous but suddenly I don’t want to die. Don’t see as I’ve got much to live for right now, but that just makes it worse and I think maybe it’s also why I don’t want to die. Not now. Not when no one’s even going to notice much less care.

  ‘You have a problem with firearms?’ The second time I’ve heard Doyle speak. The first was to say‘hello, my name’s Doyle and I kill things’.

  ‘Only when they’re pointed at me.’

  ‘The risk goes with the game, mate!’ smiles Andreas.

  Andreas, you’re such an arsehole. I turn on him, one hand feeling under the table for the Tesla pistol strapped to my thigh. I’m going to do something stupid now but boy am I going to feel better for it. I pull my gun and shove it in his face. The movement’s fast and fluid and firm. Not quick enough to be good, exactly, but good enough to be scary. Gives me some reassurance.

  ‘Ever been shot? Didn’t think so.’ Andreas shrinks back in his seat, his lips still grinning while the rest of his smile is already packed and heading for the hills. Yeah, I feel a whole lot better already.

  On the other side of me Doyle has a gun inches from my head. Faster than me. A lot faster. ‘Put it down!’

  I ignore her. Just pretend like she isn’t there, like she doesn’t even exist as I focus on Andreas.‘You want to find out what it feels like? You want to know what a bullet does to you? You want to smell the blood, hear the shattered bits of bone grate against each other?’ I can taste the blood in my mouth from when I was Charlemagne, from when Jester wasn’t quite fast enough. Don’t think I’ve held a gun in my hand since except for the room in Gateway, standing over Melissa’s corpse, and that hardly counts. Oh, yeah, and when I wasted the barcode in K’Tial. Oh well. Nice to see it’s still steady, anyway.