LoneFire

by Stephen Deas

  Thirty-Three – Raining Blood

  We fuck, there in the Jacuzzi, Jez because she’s feeling bad and me because, well, because I’m a guy I guess. There’s no passion to it, just brutal animal need. The brainweb tracer hangs between us with Gemini now and we both know it. Afterwards we talk some more, strained business talk.

  ‘How you going to find him?’

  ‘I asked around. He’s on Cestus at a security conference. He’ll be there for another two days.’

  ‘That’s a bit fucking convenient.’

  But Jez doesn’t seem to get it.‘Yeah. Unless someone’s warned him off. Even so, it’s a start. We can find out what name he was using there and try to track him down.’

  Before we leave, I log a call. Technically, Gemini is the property of the Gemini Foundation, a Stars research institute. Anyone can call up and make an appointment for an interview if they’ve got the credits. I haven’t, but I remember the shuttle up from Szenchzuen. Maybe Gemini’s got something it wants to tell me. Listening doesn’t mean I have to do anything. And right now, I’m ready to listen to anyone and Gemini owes Charlemagne a favour or two.

  I guess I expect it to jump at the chance and call straight back, but all that happens is I sit in my room in Tybalt for two hours feeling sorry for myself until Jez knocks on my door again.

  Bugger. Why’d she have to do this to me?

  Do what?

  She’s standing outside, looking up at the entry camera, staring at me out of the room’s security monitor. Hard-faced. I’m such an idiot. It was a business arrangement, and we screwed because we both liked it, and that’s all there was to it. I could wish it was more but what’s the point? She’ll never trust me, I’ll never trust her. Guess we never did. Can’t even point a finger at her for that. It was me who started it. Did everything I could to get her into bed because I thought it would save my neck. Yeah, and what a waste of fucking time that was. Bitch knew we were going to cut a deal before she ever burst through that door. Company knew where I was from the moment I left. They sent her because they wanted me alive. For all I know getting into bed was part of the mission briefing. Get us peachy close. Maybe I should ask…

  Maybe not.

  So we’re the same then, each in it for ourselves. Only difference is that she knew it all along, while I was arrogant enough to think I’d done something special. Fuck. First rule the Company taught me: The negotiator is neutral. Impartial. Takes no sides, has no preferences. As soon as partiality exists, the negotiator has lost his objectivity and thus his ability to function. He becomes vulnerable to deception. He becomes a liability.

  That’s what she’s done to me.

  I let her in. The rooms we have are small, cramped, sterile, a tiny desk with a narrow bunk perched above it. Of course, anyone who’s anyone will just makes themselves comfortable, jack in and knuckle down to work in a virtual office, but not me. Keeping your eyes in the real world pays better. I sit on the bed, legs dangling, watching her as she comes in, forcing her to look up at me. Jez, Jez, why’d you have to do this to me now?

  ‘We’re going soon,’ she says as she walks through the door.‘I wanted to know if you were coming with us.’

  ‘Ready when you are.’ I jump down and look attentive. Experience tells me that acting servile pisses her off.

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Oh, like I have a choice. Tell me which bit I have wrong here: it’s either toe the line and get paid, or get stranded with no money, waiting to see whether it’s the Bratstva or the Company that catch up with me first.’ I don’t have to tell her this. I could just shut up and keep what cards I have left close to my chest. The negotiator in me says I should do that…

  Yeah, but they knew from the start that they were going to use me so they’d have sent someone who knew how I thought, knew the rules they’d drilled into my brain along with the tracer and God knows what else. So for once I’m just going to say what I damn well feel like.

  ‘Jez, I’ll do what you’re paying me to do. And then I’ll never work with you again. The Company can find me another puppet master for as long as it takes for me to get this thing out of my head. After that, no one ever sees me again. That’s the way it’s going to be. And it’s a shame, because deep down, under all the crap and bullshit of our lives, I actually liked you.’

  Don’t know what I was expecting, but not for her to laugh. Really laugh, not some mocking sneering thing, like I just cracked a killing joke.

  ‘Sometimes you can be a real dumb arsehole.’ I guess I just stand there looking exactly that, because next thing I know she kisses me. Soft, a touch, and then she’s gone.

  Bollocks to this. I pack my things and wait in the shuttle. Doyle ignores me– she’s pissing about under the pilot console, still trying to figure out a way we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Looks like she hasn’t managed that yet but at least there’s a few crude switches installed now. Not that I care. Jez dragged me under there because I was the one she trusted. Anything goes wrong this time and it’ll be Su. Which would be nice, because then I could kick her a few times while she’s down.

  I flick on the news. Headline story is how two Stars frigates launched an unprovoked attack on an Old Worlds Carrier in the Banshee system and came off worse– whoever programmed the article sounds like they’re none too upset. Talks between the Rim and the Stars have stalled but the Szenchzuen ceasefire is holding. Final integration of the Old Worlds financial system is being delayed again due to fears about the reliability of the LoneFire AI, not that it makes a blind bit of difference because it’s already de-facto done. GZW unveil a possible key to man’s eventual re-colonisation of Earth– maggot-like worms, genetically designed to excrete the right sort of gasses to bring the climate back under control.

  Purple worms. Like in that cheese.

  I lose myself in the mendacity of the outside world. The flight to Cestus is a real bore; everyone just sits around, engrossed in themselves, plugged into some virtual office or virtual stimulator or some such shit. Losche is gone, given over to some people who owe Jez a favour– all they have to do is hold her for a few days and then let her go. Guess by then whatever she says won’t make much difference. Jez and Su are digging up everything they can about Jervais and the security conference he might be at, trying to find out if he’s still there, trying to get what help they can out of the Company. Doyle’s probably plugged into the shuttle’s training program, figuring out more gut-wrenching manoeuvres she can put us through given half a chance. Me, I stare into spinspace, hoping for Black Lightning until I’m completely bored with the idea. Before we spin out I almost phone OrtovMelissa, electric sister-father-confessor, and tell him how betrayed I am. But what’s the point? Nothing he can do, and anyway, after what happened in Banshee he’s got to be practically sleeping with Gemini these days. Doesn’t have the time for us lesser beings. So I slump into a corner and start catching up on the files he’s been collecting, all sorts of stuff, snippets about cloning and AIs, and Gemini and LoneFire and anything else that might help him achieve his resurrection. After half an hour, I’m absorbed enough to forget that Jez even exists.

  And by the time I’m done, I feel like someone’s switched my blood for lead. Because hidden in all that is something that nags at me, that tells me we’ve got it all wrong.

  Either Jervais is real dumb or he doesn’t know we’re coming. We make a quiet landfall– can’t help feeling Doyle is disappointed not to have to fight her way through half the Old Worlds navy but there’s no sign of it. Jez mutters something about friends in the Company coming around to her way of seeing things and sure enough, there’s a lock-up full of interesting hardware waiting for us. Doyle can’t believe her luck and even Su and Jez nose around, pointing at stuff and making oooh– look! noises. Me, I couldn’t give a toss what’s there. I’m not even sure we need it any more. What use are a few pop-guns, even if they do come with underslung flamethrowers and grenade-launchers? Seven times I’ve tried to boo
k an appointment with Gemini. The little shit’s ignoring me.

  Software has backup copies, right? So an AI has backup copies too. Gemini gets whacked, and some nice lackey just re-installs Gemini-from-yesterday and hey presto, resurrection. So what happens if one of these backups gets loose while the original is still there? What happens if a whole load of them get loose, come to that? A multiple-schizophrenic AI? I’d ask Ortov, since basically he is one, except I might as well ask Gemini itself– if it’ll answer the bloody phone sometime this side of the end of the world.

  Except, if I read the papers right, each of those backups isn’t quite the same. Not an exact copy. Can’t be because of quantum measurement limitations.

  For all I know, Ortov and Gemini are part of the same thing now.

  Maybe I’m getting paranoid. I need to calm down. Some Relaxx perhaps.

  Mmmm. Better. A little more calming down, I think. Although maybe getting stoned just before we try to abduct the director of an espionage agency isn’t so smart. Just as well I’m stoned enough not to care, then.

  Maybe I should ask Ortov anyway, but I’d only get another load of your-body-is-a-templewhy-do-you-desecrate-it-so sanctimonious shit if I call him while I’m wasted; anyway, as far as I get the plan, Ortov is busy hacking his way into the hotel pseudo-AI. Usual story, semisentient building to keep everyone cosy. Only now it’s going to be Jez’s semisentient building. Oh well, it can wait. Either I’m right and Gemini– or bits of Gemini or Gemini clones or some shit like that– is trying to take over the universe or I’m not. If I am, then, Gemini may be a conniving scheming shit of a machine but it’s way too smart to lose. Doyle the head case, Jez, useless Su and me against an AI with more resources than a planet. Hmm. Let me just think about who’s going to win that for a minute… Yeah, I think I can see how that’s going to go. So all things considered I reckon I’ll be switching sides, and if that means I have to shoot Jez then I won’t be happy, but I’ll remind myself she deserves it. Only problem is, how do I let the other side know before it accidentally murders me?

  We book into Jervais’ hotel under whatever false identities Jez has set up this time. What with all this difficult thinking shit and being half off my head, I’m not paying attention and I have no idea who I’m supposed to be. Can’t see as it’s going to matter. All we’re going to do is wander up to his room, wait for Doyle to pile in and bring the body out. Hopefully alive. Hopefully with the hotel still standing.

  We go up the stairs. Hotel’s a huge posh thing, the sort so expensive that the only people who ever go to it are people high enough up the pile that they can tell their corporate accountants to fuck off, I’m going on a three month study tour of the galaxy and I’m not going to pay a credit from my own pocket. So it’s got a huge hallway about a mile wide and a mile high and full of cool stuff, about a hundred floors with balconies from all of them, looking down on us. There’s elevators all over the place but we take the grand sweeping staircase– stupidly extravagant but hey, it’s got to be done. Give her credit, Jez does at least have a sense of style.

  She slips me a handphone– not one of the slot-in brainweb wafers you simply plug in and voila!, you’re telepathic, but a hand-held job for the web-less, just big enough to fit in all the numbers.‘In case we get separated. Hit redial. No one else knows the number.’

  Yeah, so we’re going up the grand stair, and there’s a few other people going up and down around us, and I’m just looking out over it all, not paying attention, thinking, hey, and wow, and cool, enjoying my nice warm comfortable Relaxx trip, when a goon patrol starts coming down in front of us. I don’t really notice at first– mostly I’m looking down and thinking about how funny it is that there are people down there with hairdos more expensive than everything I own put together, and how much more funny it would be to spit on one of them. But something about these goons makes me look up– seems like the head goon, in the midst of his goonlings, is someone I should know.

  Seems even more like it when suddenly Doyle’s got a gun in each hand and there’s bullets flying all over. I stand there until something hits me in the back and shoves me over so I hit the deck, and so I then I lie there instead, wishing I’d hit it less hard on account of it being stairs. Some old instinct has me fumbling between my legs for my Tesla, but I ditch that idea and go for the innocent bystander approach– not that it’ll work, but at least they might think twice before using my innards as impromptu carpet patterning. Doyle and the goons have opened up on each other from about ten feet and bits of goon are showering all over the place. It’s all in a weird kind of slow-motion; I can actually see flesh tear and spin off into the abyss of space around us, the spent slugs tearing out of arching backs, individual droplets of blood spewing out into the air. God knows what Doyle is packing but it practically saws one of them in half, and by the time I stop fumbling there ain’t going to be anyone left to shoot. Still, the goons aren’t entirely dumb. Before even half of them are down, the rest are firing back. Jez is on the other side of Doyle like she’s cowering, but I see the subtle movement as she pulls a weapon of her own. Su is just too much of a dumbass to do anything except get in the way, so I bet it comes as a real surprise when Doyle, still churning out goon sushi with one gun, reaches round her with the other hand, grabs her around the neck and pulls her in front like a shield. I guess she has about enough time to think Hey, I didn’t see this in my job description, and maybe start to scream before a bullet drills through her skull and empties her brains over Doyle’s face. She takes a couple of dozen more. I could swear I see Doyle flinch too, and then the goons are all dead except the uber-goon in the middle, who’s sort of staring at the ceiling and sagging. Oh yeah, and there’s a dart in his neck, and Jez is looking real pleased with herself. At least, I think she is. Hard to tell under the blood– looks like she got a face full of someone’s artery.

  It can’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but it’s like it all happened in slow motion. The stair carpet used to be brilliant midday yellow. More of a sunset colour now, a creeping stain spreading downward, crimson tributaries cutting off and over the edge to rain on the crowds in the mezzanine below.

  I giggle. There goes a hairdo or two.

  Shit. I’m covered in it. This is really gross. Even the part of me that’s whacked out on Relaxx can figure that one out.

  Doyle drops Su, who falls like a sack of shit. She snatches the guy with the dart in his neck. Her gun sweeps over me and for a moment I’m sure she’s going to kill me too, like she did Su. I know there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. So I just stare.

  She doesn’t. She legs it back down the stairs. Jez follows. They leave me lying in the middle of the most bloody public massacre Cestus has seen in its entire history, doped up to the eyeballs and with an illegal firearm between my legs. It’s so fucked up that I have to take a moment simply to savour the depth of shit I’m in. But hey, I’m cool. Could even laugh about this later. The Relaxx is earning it’s keep.

  Takes a moment and then I sprint after them, faster than I’ve sprinted in a long time. I suddenly realise I don’t even know who that guy was. Jervais? Is that what Jervais looked like? Jez showed me a picture, but at the time I was mostly thinking about how much I’d like to wring her neck…

  I see a couple of security clones by the door. Getting a bit fat, over the hill, retired from doing real dangerous stuff, the sort a place like this hires to stand around and be unobtrusive yet obvious enough to give their customers a warm feeling of peace, well-being and immunity the from riff-raff. Bloody waste of space decorations if you ask me; they take one look at Doyle, figure they’re too old to be heroes, definitely way too young to be dead, and get the fuck out of our way. Even a clone gets smart, given time.

  Doyle wastes them anyway. Like Jester would have done. Underneath the veneer of selfcontrol, Jester was a complete sociopath, but at least he was my sociopath. We had an agreement, an understanding. He didn’t waste anyone I liked, I didn’t like any
one he wasted. But Doyle isn’t mine. She belongs to Jez and I’m not so sure Jez that gives a fuck.

  She runs out of the hotel. There are soldiers everywhere. Fuck knows how they got there so quickly. Doyle doesn’t care. Jervais over her shoulder, she runs out into them, both guns blazing. Jez skids to a stop and swears. She looks at me, sees both hands empty and swears again.

  ‘Where’s your gun, for fucks sake?’

  Explosions from outside. Can’t see Doyle, but the way stuff’s happily blowing up all over the place kinda suggests she’s still alive.

  ‘What the fuck is she?’ I ask.

  Jez frowns.‘Later.’

  I shrug, shake my head.‘No. I’m out of here.’

  I leave her looking like I just kicked her dog and tore the heads off her dolls, but this is insane and I don’t want any part of it. No point in trying to find another way out so I race back into the hotel. Soldiers outside in less than a minute means they were ready for us. Only thing I don’t get is why they didn’t simply take us out before we even walked in. Shit. Maybe someone else wanted Jervais dead, maybe hoped we’d get careless.

  Time for that later. First thing: find the helipad; second: find a pilot. Third thing: point gun at pilot, make helicopter go. Fourth: have head surgery and start new life as arable farmer on some frontier world no one has even heard of yet.

  We’re not getting out of this one. I know it. Jez and Doyle are probably dead already, Jervais and his secrets gone with them most likely. Whoever is behind Jervais, they wanted him gone and us too. Cleaning away the loose ends all at once.