LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  Losche sits bolt upright, jerking the wires out of her head and scaring the fuck out of Su. Pupils dilated, jaw slack and rigid at the same time. A full-on Purge trip. If there’s any justice she should feel like she’s been sandbagged.

  Doyle moves easily, quick and smooth. I imagine it’s what people have in mind when they say catlike, although the only cat I ever had was so senile it couldn’t hit a stationary window sill at two paces without sliding off into a mass of fur and pot plants. Doyle wraps a wire around Losche’s neck.

  ‘The code,’ she hisses.

  I snigger. Thoughts of Doyle sitting amid pot-plant carnage, dusting herself down and making like she meant to do that all along; but I snuff those thoughts away. Time to look dangerous and menacing. I nudge Su aside– Su couldn’t menace a blancmange, and anyway, shoving her out of the way is always satisfying, especially when there’s no gravity and she flails like she’s going to fall and smacks into the wall instead. I squat above Losche’s knees, locking us together, and look her in the eye. Even with Doyle’s cord around her neck, I have her undivided attention.

  ‘Sally, you’ve been a naughty girl. You set up a deadbox transfer for some very bad people. And those bad people have used it to make other bad people go and hurt yet more bad people. And so those bad people– that’s the last lot, the ones getting shafted– have hired even more bad people to find the first bad people. That’s us. Are you keeping up with this? I’d hate to think I was losing you.’

  Losche squeaks. I’ve no idea what she’s trying to say but she’s shitting herself and that’s good enough for me.

  ‘I know, it sounds confusing. That’s okay, you don’t have to understand. All you have to do is tell us who the first bad people are, the people who gave you these instructions, and how you relay their messages. As soon as you do, this is all over. Forget about all those silly little ideas of client confidentiality. That’s for the world out there. Remember that world? The nice world where the nice people are, where sometimes nasty men shout at you and that’s about as bad as it gets? You can have that world back. All you have to do is tell some bad people about some more bad people. And ask yourself: why should you care what bad people do to one another? You’re not one of them. You’re a good person.’

  I give her a little time to reflect. The grey limbo of spinspace outside is dull and empty, no sign of the lightning, no hint of the Whispers. Inside, everyone is still. Jez and Su watch me with almost as much intensity as Losche herself. Only Doyle doesn’t seem to give a fuck. Just sits there, motionless, the cord taught around Losche’s neck.

  ‘Sally, the world in here is a very different one. I won’t hurt you much but you’ll probably die nonetheless. You’ll be injected with drugs that make you forget who you are, make you forget everything except what we ask you to remember. We’re in spinspace, and that means we have all the time we could possibly want. We could stay here for years, while outside, in the real universe, time stays frozen. No one can know where to find you. No one can come for you, and anyone who tried would be coming to kill you. Remember what I said? We’re bad people, your clients are bad people, your clients’ clients are bad people, and not one of them gives a flying fuck about what happens to you. By the time anyone even starts looking, your mind will be ruined and you’ll never work again. By the time anyone finds you, all that will remain of Sally Losche will be a cripple far beyond caring for itself. If you’re lucky they’ll put you into an asylum. If not, they’ll use your body to give some wrinkled bitch a full-organ regenerative transplant, you know, one of those aspirational pretentious fuckers who isn’t rich enough to grow a whole new clone of their own specific for the purpose and has to settle for the dregs, for what they can get. You know how it goes. Probably thought about one those for yourself, eh, Sally? Or a friend maybe? They’ll keep your brain in a jar for a year or two in case you get better, but you won’t. But I promise, on my word of honour, you’ll feel no pain. I’d hate to distract you from the rest– it’s so much more exquisite.’

  I could go on, but she’s scared enough now. Maybe she’ll have an attack of morals and ethics and fuck-knows-what, and make me do this the hard way. On the other hand, maybe all that shit will cave in like desiccated flesh. She is a lawyer, after all.

  ‘The code,’ whispers Doyle again, when Losche just sits there.

  ‘The computer inside your head. We require the decode sequence.’

  ‘W-Why?’

  Bad Losche, asking questions like you’ve got the luxury to give a damn. I grab her nose between finger and thumb and squeeze, clamp the rest of that hand over her eyes and the other over her mouth. Now she can’t see, can’t breathe. She flails behind her, expecting to fall backward, forgetting there’s no gravity. Doyle drops the cord and catches her arms. I wrap my thighs around hers and she’s trapped. I whisper in her ear.‘Hush, hush.’ She’s trying to shake herself free, thrashing from side to side without a clue what she’s doing. We all three drift up from what used to be the shuttle floor, if up and floor mean anything out here.

  ‘Surely you’ve seen this a dozen times,’ I say.‘The poor schmuck victim character asks a stupid question, and the person in my position says“Shurrup! We ask the questions!” and breaks lots of little bones in your face and your fingers. I won’t do that. I don’t like to see people hurt. Not like that. I have… other ideas. We’re in spinspace, after all. Think of the strange dreams you could have here once we’re gone and you’re all alone, your thoughts and you and nothing else, radiating away, searching for another soul to touch and finding nothing. No heaven and hell here. Just grey void, drifting sideways through time for eternity. And the Whispers, coming now and then, unmaking you, eating you up, one memory at a time.’ Doesn’t matter exactly what I say. It’s the tone that counts. The denial of hope.

  Strange noises are coming from her throat now as she tries to breath nothing. The thrashing changes to something wild and born of panic. I can feel the intelligence inside her letting go, letting loose the animal for one desperate stab at life.

  I loosen my hold on her nose, just enough to let in a little air. I feel her lungs pump, hear the wheeze. I guess maybe I should have looked at her medical records, but we’re a long way past any niceties. I squeeze again. She tries to cry out but she can’t. Then she starts trying to say something, over and over. I give her a few more seconds and let go.

  ‘Angels dancing,’ she gasps,‘Angels dancing, oh God please,’ Over and over. I give a nod to Su. Of course, if she’s a pro then that could still be a code to trigger a kill-everything virus, but I figure Su’s smart enough to be ready for that. I hope.

  Su nods. Grins. We’re in. And before I can even open my mouth to suggest it, Doyle slaps something onto Losche’s neck. Seconds later she’s back in fairyland.

  Ash, D. & David, J. ‘Artificial replication of a mature human intelligence’. Journal of the First Republic Academy of Genetics and Biotechnology, 210, 1122-1148 (2321).

  Thought you might like to see this since you’re sort of there (the Academy is based in Tybalt, though most of its resources are in the Old Worlds now). These guys started copying people into TALANN wafers to see whether the copies behaved any differently from each other or from the original. They’re kinda cagey about how they controlled this– they just say that both the original humans and the chipped copies were given the same sensory input and subjected to the same pre-recorded interview. Answer’s kinda dull– the copies all thought they were the original, which I kinda figured already. But I can’t help wondering where they got all these TALANN chips from. I mean, this came out only six months after Gurdy and Telman announced they could make the things. And we’re talking the Dust Sector here. Renowned for high-tech? I don’t think so. Not in the last fifty years.

  Thirty-Two – Sex

  Tybalt looks like the Vednar Freeport’s great grand-daddy. Used to be a large enough orbital as it was; after the Stars flattened everything on the surface of the fifty or so worlds that used
to call themselves the First Republic they left quite a few homeless ships behind. One way or the other a lot of them ended up bolted onto Tybalt. Thirty million people left out of what, maybe fifty billion? Whole thing was over in a couple of hours. And then, well, the Rim pretty much shut itself away, while the Old Worlds figured it was best not to provoke anyone who has an endless supply of rocks to drop on them, maybe mutter a little for the sake of form and get on with business as usual. And let’s all secretly spend lots of money on Sunscreen so it can never ever happen again. At least, not to us.

  Word has it there are thriving surface populations on a few of the worlds again now, maybe half a dozen, but they’re still small. More than half the sector’s population are up here. Ironic that they’re forced to live just as the Stars do now; in orbit, unfettered by gravity. Maybe that explains the end-of-the-world party feeling to the place. Maybe it couldn’t survive any other way.

  Losche has everything Jez could want in her head. Names, times, dates, messages, the works. She and Su sit in our hotel suite and pick over it again and again and can’t believe it. When they’re finally done cross-checking and making strange calls to Cestus, Su looks smug and Jez forgets how much I hate zero-g and rents two us hours in a micro-gravity love chamber just for the fun of it. And then has a giggling fit when I’m messily sick after ten minutes. Never would have thought being naked and adrift in a haze of vomit particles could be so amusing. Yeah, ha fucking ha. Certainly makes breathing a suddenly interesting experience…

  Turns out Losche is a relay for some company called Pan-Technical securities, small-time specialists in espionage brokerage according to Jez– and why am I not surprised she knows this? A little trawling and I find their adverts. Want to steal Elucida’s next generation brainweb blueprints? Pan-Technical can fix it. Want the CEO of your chief rival to suffer from a sudden case of terminal kinetic energy poisoning? Pan-Technical can fix it. Want to steal a copy of Leonard Ortov from the Bratstva without having the Stars figure out who did it and come drop rocks on you? Hmm– I wonder… I guess these guys survive by being useful to anyone, anywhere, anytime, able to fix up anything you want. Jez gives me an arch look and suggests I might have missed my true calling but I’m still feeling too green to properly tell her where to shove it. Must have some heavy insurance though. Someone pulled a number like that on me, you can be damn sure I’d dump on the middle man just for the sheer hell of it. Seen it happen enough times, mostly from the front fucking row.

  Whatever my true calling is, it bloody better not be that.

  They must spend a lot on shit-tight security. I mean, they’d have to, real state-of-the-art stuff to even be in business. Any holes and half the hackers in the galaxy would be jumping through looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow. None of which makes me feel at all great about having a crack at them. I point this out to Jez when we’re back in sensible gravity, sitting in a Jacuzzi where the water doesn’t just get up and wander all over the place. Breaking open an organisation like Pan-Technical ought to take something special, and I kinda suspect we’re not it.

  Jez grins and looks smug. I hate that look. It tells me I’m going to be asked to do something really fuck-witted in the near future.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says.‘But whoever is behind this has been a little too clever for their own good.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘Look.’ She’s got a baby portable with her, even here. Jacuzzi-proof. I shake my head and she shows me a list of names.‘This is a list of Pan-Technical’s employees, as best the Company knows.’

  I shrug. They mean nothing to me.

  ‘Stephanie Azure. She’s the MD and the one who actually owns the place. Ignore her. Probably doesn’t even exist, and if she does then you can be sure none of the details we’ve got on her are true. Far too dangerous. Same goes for the rest of the directors. Then you’ve got the pawns. Dirt on them is probably real and they won’t know shit about anything. Whole point about an outfit like this is no one can ever find any of the bits that matter. Only way it can survive.’

  Jez can be like this sometimes. Pointing out how it was impossible to figure out the piece of information she just figured out. You learn to live with it.

  ‘Let me know when you’re done with repeating everything I just said.’

  ‘There’s a pattern. Every attack uses our own products against us. The Teslas used to shoot up Dr. Pike’s bodyguard were made on Cestus, the missiles we recovered from the Crypt were Longthorne missiles, that sort of thing. The money behind it all leaves a trail to Victor. They’re even using accounts left in his name to pay off their hitmen. Someone’s trying very hard to make a point. They want us to know we’re being undone by our own creations.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And?’

  She splashes water in my face. I contemplate drowning her, then remind myself she’s stronger than I am.

  ‘We-ell…’ The smugness level ratchets from insufferable to somewhere around intolerable. ‘There’s one director of Pan-Technical that we do know about. His name– his real name– is Jervais Robers. He used to work for the Company. Good field agent. I met him once. He left not long after I joined. Much the same way as you did, really. Just buggered off thinking he could hide. Pillock.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Welcome. Whoever was sent after him had their head screwed on the right way. They watched what he was up to and figured it was better to leave him loose. That was ten years ago. We’re pretty damn sure he’s one of Pan-Technical’s top men now.’

  ‘You’ve been watching him for ten years?’

  ‘Yeah. Didn’t you ever wonder how I caught up with you?’

  ‘I used to. But now that I know you I put it down to a stroke of outrageous blind luck.’

  More water in the face.‘Your brainweb. I mean, would you ever, seriously, consider having it taken out? Never mind how long it would take to physically remove the thing. Don’t even know if it can be done, actually…’ She pauses, looks pensive, then shakes her head.‘How many times did they open your head up? Ten? Twelve?’

  I shrug. Can’t say as I kept count. Found the whole idea of buzz saws being applied to my skull far too disturbing.

  ‘You want to know how to make your life clean? How to get the Company off your back forever? It’s pathetically simple. Have that web extracted.’

  I snort.‘What, and give it back? That makes things even does it?’ Bollocks to that. No way I’m losing my web. Once you got used to it, you don’t know how you lived without it. Bit like coffee and cigarettes.

  ‘Just replace the core. You know, the bit with all the high-level algorithmic shit. The one with the Longthorne Nanotech logo etched into it. You don’t have to lose the web, just change the core.’

  ‘Why? I don’t…’ Oh. Shit. I begin to see.‘There’s a…’

  Jez grins.‘Yeah. To get the tracking device out. It’s just a pinger, really. But it’s enough. Or you can wrap your head in tinfoil like they did with Pike.’

  For a few seconds I just sit here, statue-like. Not a muscle moves. Wouldn’t be surprised if my heart’s taking the opportunity for a well-earned break. A tracer. Inside my skull. Where I can’t get rid of it. Takes those seconds to sink in, to really sink in, and then I start to feel like what I am: a butterfly with a pin stuck through it, nailed to some Analysis agent’s wall:‘Hey guys, look what that dumbass Constantine’s up to now– that’s sixteen identities he’s been through now trying to make sure we can’t find him. Wonder how much that cost.’ Yeah. Cue much laughter.

  Fuck. They always knew. They let me go, let me start getting into something they might have a use for, and then yanked the strings. I’m a fucking puppet. And I guess I always understood that much, but Jez, you lying piece of shit, you knew it all the time and you didn’t tell me.

  She sees these thoughts in my face, comes on all concerned, reaches out.‘Hey…’

  I shrink away.‘Fuck off.’ I don’t want her touch. If I had anyt
hing left, I think I’d be sick again.

  She looks hurt.‘Jesus, C, we put a fucking tracker in your head. Shit, I’d kinda thought you’d be smart enough to figure that out years ago.’

  Wouldn’t you do just the same to her? Without a thought?

  Charlemagne. Since when did you get to be my conscience? You don’t even know what one is.

  Yeah, yeah, well, I just do the black and white stuff. None of this shades of grey shit. I’ll just remind you how you were slipping all manner of shit on what you were doing out a dead drop to Gemini for all those years. And now you’re all hurt? You two are just the same. You deserve each other.

  I focus. Quickly. Back to business. Concentrate on the task at hand. All that shit.‘So, Jez, let me get this right. You can find this Jervais character, wherever he is, whenever you want to. And he used to be a Cestus agent, and every time something bad happens, we find Cestus resources being used. So you think he’s the one.’

  ‘Something like that.’ She’s got the same worried look she always gets when she knows I’m pissed at her. Well, boy, is she in for a shock. Pissed isn’t the start of it. I’ll need to invent a whole new word for this much anger.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re reaching a bit?’

  Jez slides deeper into the water and looks smug again.‘Yeah, had crossed my mind. But then I found out that every record of Jervais vanished about ten minutes after we snatched Losche. Closed, locked, no access, and could I please report to Analysis headquarters immediately. Whoever they are, they know. We’ve got them by the fucking balls. But we have to move. Fast.’

  Gemini. ‘Human-Computer Integration. The next stage of evolution’, (2317).

  Gemini’s second book. Can’t quite shake the feeling that this was rushed out to cash in on the success of the first since more than half is padding and rehashing of what it already said in‘A study of the Human Brain.’ Gemini sees TALANN technology as a way of merging human and AI consciousness into some sort of super-human– basically with a human brain structure but with fully integrated dumb and pseudo-AI sub-systems, enough that we’d all have perfect recall and be able to do spinwarp mechanics in our head. And consume vast amounts of data in no time flat (like learning a language overnight). And then we can all run around in interchangeable cyber-organic bodies manufactured to our own specification. A lot of this book is philosophy and social comment, about how this could practically be introduced into society. Interesting that the one thing Gemini seems to be clumsy talking about is breeding. Programmed by a man, huh?