“Siv… I mean, sir…”
Silky paused, as if unable to continue. Siv knew the chippy’s voice well enough to recognize this wasn’t normal. Silky sounded almost pained. If it were possible for chippies to have feelings, then Siv would have sworn Silky was overcome with emotion.
“Sir,” Silky said, now with authority and resolution, “install your chippy into your father's neural socket and get out of the apartment now!”
“What?”
“Gav was just murdered, sir. And I’m certain that if the people who killed him think that you know anything they will not hesitate to hurt you, too.”
“Murdered? Why? Who would want to—”
“At the moment, sir, I don't think it matters very much why. What does matter is that I just detected a group of armed men entering the building.”
“The police are here?”
Siv sighed with relief. They would have emergency medical kits. Maybe they could still save his father. If the physical damage wasn’t too extensive, someone could be brought back to life easily enough. They had almost managed to revive his mother, and her wounds were probably worse.
“No, sir. Not the police. The emergency calls were blocked.”
“What do you mean?” Siv felt himself starting to panic again. “Who's coming then?”
“Bad men with guns. Sir, I promised your father that I would keep you safe. But I can't do that if you ignore my instructions. Please calm down and listen.”
Siv sniffed back fresh tears, took several gulping breaths, and nodded.
“Very good, sir. Now, plug the 4G into Gav's neural socket so they won't realize that I am missing.”
Siv obeyed, then scooted back from the cooling body. It didn't even look like his dad anymore, lying so still and covered in gore. He had to fight to not throw up.
“The chances of you escaping the apartment undetected are very low and shrinking rapidly. I recommend you find somewhere safe to hide immediately.”
A commotion outside by the elevator, followed by the distinct whomp-whomp sounds of several disruptor blasts, sent Siv fleeing down the hall. He dove under his bed and huddled, barely daring to breathe, in the shadows against the back wall.
“What’s happening?” Siv asked.
“Do you want me to pull up the house security feed, sir?”
Even though he was terrified, he had to know what was going on. “I…I guess so.”
The video feed appeared in his primary HUD window just as the front door of the apartment burst open. Two soldiers clad in heavy, black armor stormed into the living room. They were wearing helmets that completely covered their faces, and there wasn’t a single identifying patch, badge, or color on them. Because of his mom, Siv knew every uniform and insignia the police used. These were definitely not cops.
One stepped cautiously into the hallway, leading with his plasma rifle.
“Be very quiet, sir. Hopefully they won't find you.”
“And if they do?”
Silky didn’t reply.
The second soldier followed the first and walked down the hall to Gav's body. He spoke, and his voice was muffled, monotonous, and unaccented.
“Here's the target.”
“Can you get confirmation? My chippy’s on the fritz again.”
The second soldier shook his head. Stepping over the body, he leaned into Siv’s parents’ bedroom. “Mine too. Can’t even get my backup comm to work.”
“What the hell’s wrong with our equipment?” the first soldier asked, tapping the side of his helmet.
“That’s my doing, Master Siv.”
Returning to the hall, the second one lowered his gun. “Maybe the mark has some sort of scrambling system in place.”
A third soldier marched in authoritatively. He stopped and hovered over Gav’s body. He swept a small, handheld device over Gav. “That’s him alright.”
He pocketed the device then drew a slug-pistol. He squeezed the trigger. A stream of bullets pounded into Gav's body. It jumped and twitched horribly. Blood splattered the walls and ceiling. Siv tried to stifle his instinctive scream.
The first soldier threw up a hand, stopping the second. “Did you hear that?” He raised his gun and stalked toward Siv’s bedroom.
The second soldier followed him, while the third stayed on guard in the hallway.
Siv tried to hold as still as possible while the soldiers’ black boots clomped around his bedroom. The first soldier searched Siv’s closet, while the second darted into the bathroom and kicked in the shower door. Finally, when Siv’s heart was thumping so hard in his chest that he felt sure they would hear it, the first soldier paused so close Siv could have reached out and touched his boots.
The end of the bed tilted suddenly up in the air.
“Shit! I've got a kid in here. What do we do now?”
“Stay calm, sir. Whatever you do, don’t move. And don’t speak unless spoken to.”
The second soldier entered and aimed his plasma rifle at Siv. “We don’t have orders for this.”
The third soldier walked into the room, holstered his slug-pistol, and drew a neural disruptor. He coldly aimed the weapon at Siv. “We’re to ice him and take him back with the mark’s body.”
Siv caught a glimpse of his distorted reflection in the man’s mirrored visor before the disruptor fired and everything went dark.
Chapter Nine
Siv Gendin
97 years later…
Siv Gendin paused in the alley, collected his thoughts, and mentally rehearsed the mission. This should be a relatively simple break-in. But in his nine years as a procurement specialist for the Shadowslip Guild, Siv had learned there was no such thing as a simple robbery. There was always a complication…an undetected security system…a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time…a manager working overtime to finish a report…a security guard falling off his schedule…
Siv had run into all of those things and much, much worse. Of course, he'd built up a reputation as the best procurement specialist in Bei. So he rarely received any truly simple assignments.
Tonight’s break-in was two weeks in the planning. Siv’s mark, Karson Bishop, worked in an advanced tech recovery lab. According to an intern, who was up to his neck in gambling debt, Bishop was building a signal-jamming device at home in his spare time. And Big Boss D wanted it bad.
“Sir, the level two scan has detected our mark,” Silky whispered into his mind. “He’s heading this way.”
The chippy and the advanced, military-grade sensor array feeding him data were two of the many items Siv had indirectly inherited from his father. Without the special gear, he would never have become such a great thief. He’d also gone over every one of his mother’s case logs. While she would no doubt be ashamed about what he did and who he was now, he liked to think she’d be proud of how skillful he was. After all, she had, indirectly, taught him how to not get caught by the police.
“Increase scan to level five.”
“Scanning… He does have the component with him, sir.”
“Excellent! It pays to have good intel.”
“It pays to pay your sources, sir.”
“Too true, Silkster. Drop down to a level one passive scan.”
The desperate intern had told Siv that Bishop was spending several hours each night working on a key component for the device at the lab, apparently with permission from his employer. How the Shadowslip had found out about the device, Siv had no idea. No more than he knew why Bishop’s employer would allow him to freelance on a potentially profitable, and dangerous, device. But neither question really mattered. Siv's job was to steal the device, no more no less.
He had wanted to steal it from Bishop's home and then do a simple holdup to get the necessary component. But he’d been told, in no uncertain terms, to wait until Bishop finished assembling the device. Bishop had let slip that tonight was the night he would assemble it.
Siv pulled the cord hanging around his neck and drew ou
t his father’s old amulet. All he knew about the ceramic rectangle was that it was Ancient in origin and apparently unique. Along with Silky, it was the last thing his father had given him before he died. The amulet, like Silky, was probably worth a fortune. But he had promised to keep it safe and, a little superstitiously perhaps, he felt that it returned the favor.
Silky knew why it was important. But with his last thoughts, Gav had locked away that piece of knowledge so that Silky couldn’t reveal it except under certain preset conditions. Unfortunately, Silky didn’t have access to the data himself, and he didn’t even know the conditions for unlocking the data. Or so he claimed. Silky was far more willful and individual than any chippy should be, so there was no way to be certain.
What happened to his father…why it happened…who was responsible…there was no way of knowing any of that, which was exactly what Gav had wanted. But there was no point dwelling on what he couldn’t know. None of it would ever impact Siv again anyway. It was all in the now-distant past.
“Twenty meters away, sir.”
Siv kissed the amulet for good luck and tucked it back inside his body armor. “I'm ready.”
Siv turned his back to the street and drew a changeling hood from a deep pocket inside the trench coat he wore to cover up his mesh armor. He placed the thin, featureless mask over his face. As it clamped into place, he uploaded the desired profile. Fitting to his own features only where necessary, the mask shifted to form a new face he had downloaded off the galactic net, one with more prominent cheekbones, a wider nose, and a longer chin. He then signaled his smart lenses to alter his eye color from orange to brown. His hair he didn’t worry about. Short, dark hair was nondescript enough.
The disguise wasn’t perfect. On close examination the flaws would show. But hardly anyone ever looked at a stranger close enough to notice. People saw what they expected to see: a normal, human face. If he were recorded by someone’s chippy, a security camera, or a micro-security drone, his features wouldn’t show up in the census database.
Karson Bishop strolled past the alley, clutching a pack to his chest.
“’Nevolence, it’s like he wants to be robbed.”
“You could take it now, sir. It would be safer, and a lot easier. I’m sure someone else could finish the assembly.”
“No. My orders were very clear.”
Siv did whatever the Shadowslip Guild said, whenever and however they said to do it. He didn't have a choice. Sure, he would get paid handsomely for the doing the job. But he'd pay an equally steep price if he failed, and a partial success was only marginally better.
Siv waited two beats then stepped out onto the sidewalk to follow Bishop. Even past midnight, the streets of Bei were packed—with tourists, clubbers, late-shift workers, and seedier sorts. But Siv didn’t have any trouble navigating the crowds to follow his mark. He’d spent his first year with the Shadowslip operating as a spy and a pickpocket. And this mark he could afford to follow more closely than most. Despite being a gizmet, Bishop wasn't the observant type.
Gizmets, one of the many human variants genetically engineered by the Benevolence long ago, were preeminent technicians and inventors. Even compared with natural humans, gizmets weren't exactly threatening. Bishop's wiry frame barely topped a meter and a half, average for a gizmet, and he had their trademark delicate, long-fingered hands. Even the pair of horns that sprouted from either side of his forehead and curled back over his hair looked dainty.
Siv had already watched Bishop enough to know that he spent most of his time in his head, presumably dreaming up inventions or new approaches to recovering lost technologies. And though Bishop owned a 4G+ chippy, an expensive and rare model these days, it lacked sensors and expanded awareness functions. The indebted intern had been very informative. So there was almost no risk of this mark noticing anything amiss.
As Bishop approached the front entrance to his apartment building in DA Block, Siv rushed forward. Bishop swiped his hand across the entry pad, and the door swung opened.
Siv darted up. “Could you hold the door for me?”
It was the oldest trick in the book. Siv had other ways into the building. Four of them, in fact. But given the high floor Bishop lived on this was the easiest by far.
“Oh. Um…sure.”
They walked down the entrance hallway, past a disinterested security guard at his desk station, and up to the elevators.
“Silky, launch a spy drone.”
“Spy-fly 01 launched, sir.”
Shaped liked a dragonfly and making no more noise than a common mosquito, a drone the size of a thumbnail few out from a concealed container on Siv’s belt. A window appeared in the top right of Siv’s HUD displaying the spy drone’s video feed alongside the data it collected. Siv minimized the window. Silky would keep track of the drone, which was going to stay in the lobby and keep watch.
Siv stepped into the elevator along with the gizmet.
“You’re new around here, right?” Bishop asked.
Nodding, Siv extended a hand, and Bishop predictably shook it. “Bob Dustman.”
The transparent copy-glove Siv wore felt exactly like skin. It was practically undetectable, unless you knew what to look for.
“Did you move into the apartment on 80th?” Bishop asked.
“Palm print recorded, sir.”
Siv released the gizmet’s hand. “Two weeks ago,” he lied.
Bishop pressed the button for the 177th floor. “That explains why I’ve seen you around a lot lately. Guess we both keep late hours, huh?”
“You do what you have to do,” Siv complained honestly.
Over the last two weeks, as he scouted his mark and the area, Siv had made sure that Bishop noticed him on the street near the building, going so far as to bump into him once. Siv had used the same technique on both of the security guards who worked the nightshift for this building. It was one of his favorite tricks.
At a high-class building, they would have a facial recognition system to identify residents as they entered in addition to the watchmen. But mid-level apartments like Bishop's rarely had those kinds of safety features anymore, and the human guards weren't paid enough to be that attentive. When Siv was a kid, every building had that sort of technology and this trick never would have worked.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened.
“See you around,” Bishop said.
“Sure thing,” Siv replied.
“Silkster, deploy a drone.”
“Spy-fly 02 launched sir. And please remember that I do prefer being called Silky.”
Bishop stepped into the hallway, and the drone followed. The door closed, and Siv rode up to the 180th floor. The drone hovered above Bishop as he swiped his hand on the entry pad and entered his six-digit passcode.
The door opened onto the 80th, and Siv muttered loudly, in case the watchman was listening in, “I really should work out before I go home.”
“You’re good, sir. The watchman is watching a show, I think. Porn most likely. He seemed the type who—”
“Silkster, that’s enough speculation, thank you.”
“Right on, sir. And again, the name is Silky.”
Siv had been calling him Silkster for nine years. Ever since he'd woken up from cryo sleep. He wasn’t going to stop now. Silky realized that, but he wasn’t going to give up either. It was the sort of test of will that Silky loved.
Siv pressed the button for the penultimate floor. “Even if he’s not looking, it’s always best to cover your tracks. If he gets suspicious, he could review the footage from this elevator.”
“Too true, sir.”
The next to last floor was split between a gym, a restaurant, and a small nightclub inside. On the roof above an ornamental garden and a swimming pool lay open to the sky. It was much fancier than the rundown complex Siv called home. Sure, he made enough to afford a place like this, better even. But he was saving his money. Someday he planned to buy his freedom from the Shadowslip Guild.
<
br /> The elevator stopped, but the doors didn’t open.
“Please enter your credentials,” said an overly soothing computerized voice.
Siv swiped his right hand across the sensor pad, and the door opened. The copy-glove had again worked perfectly. It was proving to be one of the best career investments he’d ever made.
Siv walked down the hall towards the gym. A giggling couple left the lounge, arm-in-arm, and staggered past him. Acting as if he’d met them before, he smiled and greeted them. They stupidly said goodnight, then continued on to the elevator.
The gym contained a maze of treadmills, dumbbells and benches, and various contraptions that were utterly mysterious to him. He nodded to a guy doing squats and a woman using a treadmill. Siv moved as far away from them and the entrance as he could, choosing a solitary stationary bike in a corner.
“I hate exercise…sir. So boring.”
Siv climbed onto the bike. “What difference does it make to you?”
“It makes a big difference.”
Siv punched in the program he wanted. “I sleep eight hours a night, doesn’t that bore you just as much?”
“Are you suggesting that I should be used to it by now?”
“I am.”
“When you’re asleep, sir, I can run a passive scan on the environment and otherwise do whatever I want.”
“Such as…”
“Naturally I read all the news articles published throughout the Terran Federation, the Empire of a Thousand Worlds, and more. After that, I scan through historical library archives and archaeological research papers.”
As he pedaled, Siv watched the video feed of Bishop provided by the spy-fly drone. “Silkster, you spent way too many years with my father.”
“It was only just the one, sir.”
“Like I said, too many.”
“I would have loved to have spent a lore more with him, sir.”
Siv sighed sadly and nodded.
“Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to crash the mood like a skunk-drunk pilot manning a shuttle.”
Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1) Page 7
