Dawn of the Courtezan: Phase 01 (The Eighteenth Shadow)

by Grafton, Jon Lee

  Joan’s voice came over the com, “All firewalls and cloaks presently stable. Two armored hovtransports containing twelve MARX class German Shepherds, two armed deputy field pilots and Sheriff Proudstar will arrive at your location in approximately 5 minutes 59 seconds.”

  William had jumped off the Kawasaki before it stopped and ran down the hovroad’s shoulder into the field. He ignored the collision sphere and ran to his Rottweilers. All four DOGS units sprang to their paws as soon as they saw him. Dorothy was pleased to see that despite looking as though they’d been tossed through a meat grinder, all three of the female cyborgs were able to stand. LOFN was not putting weight on her right hind leg. The cyborg held it quivering above the ground exactly like a real wounded dog would. SIEGFRIED paced back and forth in front of his sisters. The large Rottweiler bayed reproachfully at William as he approached.

  “Aww hell, SIEG, I know… look what they did,” said William.

  He dropped to his knees. His hands hovered above SNOTRA and LOFN. The majority of the BIOSKIN© had been torn off the two DOGS units. Their cybernetic identities were now obvious. Both of SNOTRA’S ears were completely gone, revealing the bloody armored dome of her skull. Micro pistons and hydraulic joints flitted and shifted visibly as they made the slightest of motions. Most visible was the pink glow emanating from the fusion reactors nestled deep in the center of their torsos. William knew better than to touch the wounds. The DOGS units’ autonomic nervous systems would respond, the result of which might be a nip that would unintentionally slice his arm off. FREYA carefully licked her sisters’ torn flesh with her black, ciliary-mesh tongue. The synthetic layers of dermal material had long since clotted and stopped bleeding. Though undetectable to the human eye, the BIOSKIN© fur was already in the process of hypersynth cell replication.

  William’s voice was cold, “Joan, I need systems analysis on SNOTRA and LOFN as soon as…”

  Joan’s reply was instant, “That task was completed 47 seconds ago. Unit AK9CIVepsilon is 100% mechanically functional with damage to 56% of BIOSKIN© skeletal wrap. Tissue regeneration complete in 9 hours 52 minutes. Unit AK9CIVdelta has a crushed tarsus joint in its aft rear leg. The femur structure has been dislocated from the pelvis near the graphene ischium. Additionally, there are three caustic tears in the ciliary microweave controlling fine motor simulation servos 9 through 31. 61% of BIOSKIN© skeletal wrap on this unit is damaged, with cascading fusion light visible to the human eye. Unit AK9CIVgamma is 100% mechanically functional with damage to 14% of BIOSKIN© housing. Douglas County law enforcement units will arrive in 4 minutes 23 seconds. Immediate egress is strongly recommended. All cloaks presently stable.”

  William stood up and hooked a thumb through his black leather belt, “Alright. We gotta move. SIEGFRIED, FREYA, SNOTRA!”

  The DOGS units immediately came to attention, arranging themselves in a line before him.

  “SIEG, stay with us. FREYA, SNOTRA, go now. Run, full speed two kilometers east on the hovroad. Leave obvious tracks that vanish to a hard surface. Then backtrack. The land in every direction north of the road belongs to Purple Tree Farms. They have four barn Felixes and a couple of real cats who might be out chasing moles this time of morning.”

  “Joan, you’ve locked out Purple Tree’s private drones?”

  “That is correct. One will pass your location in 36 seconds. No human pilots, the unit will pass blind.”

  “Excellent.”

  William looked at his Rottweilers again, “FREYA, you especially, absolutely under no circumstances are you to engage those cats. No chasing. Avoid human contact. Run straight to the tree line, through the forest to the river. Then follow the river’s edge back west under the cover of the trees. Go directly into the barn. Now run, dogs!”

  FREYA gave LOFN a parting lick with her black tongue and whined mournfully. Then the two DOGS units rocketed east down the hovroad and within seconds were gone.

  Joan’s voice said, “William Thomas Angevine, there is no need to speak to the cybernetic units like they are human beings.”

  William tapped the comdot on his jaw, “Joan, I’ve said, it just makes me feel better.”

  “I do not understand how. You are the DOGS units’ autonomously chosen tether. Your neural engrams are one. Your thoughts are their thoughts.”

  “It’s a dead horse conversation, Joan. We’ll hash on such later, over a codfish and janebeer. Right now we gotta couple other irons.”

  “Agreed. Now is possibly not the optimal time to discuss your verbal inefficiencies” said the dolphin’s flat, computerized female tone.

  William shook his head and turned to his remaining Rottweilers, “SIEG, on my heels. LOFN, hobble yourself into the back of that Mule. I’d carry you if you didn’t weigh 500 kilos.”

  LOFN obediently limped past the dried out cattail stalks in the irrigation ditch and up the gravel shoulder of the hovroad. Even with a single functioning rear leg she hopped easily into the rear seat of the Kawasaki. The Solar Mule rocked and groaned in objection to the added weight.

  Dorothy’s voice came urgently, “Hon, you boys gotta get the sky outta there.”

  In the distance, they could hear the approaching wail of sheriff’s sirens. The faintest hint of dawn’s purple light on the horizon was beginning to crowd out the black night sky.

  William cupped his hand over the comdot to silence the wind, “I hear you. I’m on it. I don’t know what’s taking so long.”

  Using his Swiss Army Pocket Laser, Hugo had carefully cut the remaining elastic retention bands from the semi-conscious hovcar pilot’s ankle. He got back on his feet as William walked over with SIEGFRIED padding behind him. Dax was still keeping quiet. He held his chin in his hand and stood a couple of meters back, observing the girl inside the emergency collision sphere with keen interest.

  What’s on your mind, Dax Abner…?

  SIEGFRIED walked over to Dax and licked his hand, then took a couple of more steps and peered into the opening Hugo had lasered out of the collision sphere. The DOGS unit titled his head with curiosity, wondering what might possibly be of such interest to the humans in his pack.

  William threw his palms open as he walked over, speaking loudly, “Well? Who is she? We gotta float, gentlemen. This road is about to be knee high in assault cyborgs.”

  Hugo grinned like a twelve year old boy, “Eet’s a betty, William! She real preety looking too,” he said dreamily. “She keep saying something about crickets and stars or something… she’s real pretty looking. Maybe eet’s something to do with the tattoos on her neck?”

  Back in the aquarium, Dorothy shook her head, turning quickly in her chair to look at the dolphin, “Can you believe this crap, Joan?” She spun angrily back to the holomap, “William Angevine! You pick that girl up if that’s what we’re doing, and get outta there!”’

  William looked at Dax, “Boss? Anything?”

  Dax kept quiet and shook his head pensively. He swirled a finger around and nodded in the direction of the collision sphere, indicating simply to get the girl.

  William knelt and had a look. Inside the sphere was a bloody mess of a woman, fading in and out of consciousness. She was tangled up in her own matted black hair. Her right arm was broken backwards at the elbow and wrist. A jagged tip of bone poked wretchedly beneath the skin of her forearm. The fingers on that hand were likewise mangled.

  William reached down and put his arm on her left shoulder. The girl struggled weakly. Her green eyes popped open with fear.

  William said, “Don’t try to move. You’re safe now. You’ll do best to just relax.”

  She managed to respond through cracked, swollen lips mottled with dry blood, “Who are you people? The cops?”

  William spoke calmly, “Not exactly, ma’am…”

  He reached his hands carefully behind her back and pulled her body free of the balloon. She let out a sharp cry of agony, digging the nails of her good hand into his neck, then fainted. There was no time for a delicate extractio
n. Her shattered arm swung awkwardly backwards as he stood with her dead weight. Hugo turned so he wouldn’t have to watch, walking briskly to the Solar Mule.

  SIEGFRIED jumped backwards, eagerly watching every step William took as he re-situated the woman’s body in his arms and turned to carry her up the gravel shoulder.

  William gave Dax a sidelong glance, “You know I’m supposed to be the quiet one, right boss? Looks like we got a bloody angel flung to us from on high.”

  Dax shook his head again, speaking at last, as if he’d snapped out of a trance the moment the girl was safe in William’s arms.

  His voice was quiet but stern, “Quite the contrary, William. I do believe she will prove to be the prophet of war.”

  William frowned and turned away, “Dory, what’s our ETA on the sheriff and his growlers?”

  Dorothy’s voice was curt, “Just shy of 180 seconds.”

  Dax snapped his fingers and turned to Hugo, who was looking down from the edge of the hovroad, “Hugo, ready the Kawasaki.”

  “I’m on it, boss.”

  Hugo jumped behind the wheel and spun the Solar Mule around. LOFN whined in the backseat and kept her head low, her damaged leg tucked beneath her body.

  William dug his boots into the gravel and carried the unconscious woman up the embankment with SIEGFRIED close on his heels. Dax Abner brought up the rear. Once at the top, he nodded. William knew without a word to hand the girl’s limp form over to him. Dax took the front seat beside Hugo and held the woman’s body delicately in his lap, intently focused on her face and nothing else.

  William had never seen him look at a woman that way.

  He turned to SIEGFRIED, still dutifully following his every step, “Okay dog, we’re good. Follow your sisters. We’ll tend to them in the barn. Run!”

  SIEGFRIED turned and rocketed east down the hovroad with a single bark, leaping lightly over the destroyed chassis of the Coyote he had crushed in his jaws minutes before. His black form disappeared like a caliginous phantom in the waning night.

  William bent the lid of his cowboy hat forward and jumped on the back of the six wheeled Kawasaki, standing on the cargo platform.

  He tapped twice on the hard canopy, hanging on with one hand, “Alright Hugo, half a kilom west on the 1500 and we’ll cut down the jane fields with lights black. Joan will drop us some camo.”

  The Solar Mule’s electric motor whined and sped them away. Dorothy zoomed out her tracking view on the holomap, watching with a mix of irritation and worry, even after she had calculated they were going to make it away safely before being seen.

  Fifty five seconds later, as the Kawasaki disappeared into the vast darkness of the neighboring Purple Tree Farms’ jane fields, two armored hovtransports crested the ridge of the distant western hill. The vehicles’ emergency lights blazed red and blue as their sirens split the morning air. Ten meters in the air above the sheriff’s lead transport, four A7 assault drones flew in a tight formation. Their searchlights reached the crash scene first.

  The drones’ weapon ports were deployed. The lead unit promptly fired six botulinum darts into the motionless carcass of the Coyote that lay crushed on the asphalt. They blasted the area with infrared motion detectors and kinesis scans. Their sensor arrays were so finely calibrated as to detect any residual Ipv7 trails within a five kilometer circumference. They buzzed like angered bees, flying in wide circles, scanning and rescanning, recording and rerecording the crash site only.

  Two minutes later the armored hovtransports floated to a stop and extended their heavy docking mounts. The boots of Douglas County Sheriff Dale Proudstar hit the asphalt first. A dozen MARX class German Shepherd police cyborgs leapt to the ground after him. The animals swarmed over the crash scene, establishing a perimeter. They ran along the hovroad with their noses mere centimeters from the ground, analyzing, sniffing, prepared to give chase at the slightest sign of trouble.

  But there was no trouble to be found.

  Sheriff Proudstar chewed on the soft tip of a well smoked antique cigar, which smoldered beneath his long, silvering mustache. He adjusted a black rimmed monocle HUD glass to one side of his nose with irritation. He was a large man, with a heavy, grizzled jaw like a cinder block. The weak five am light was barely strong enough to cast a pale shadow behind him as he strode down the hovroad, methodically taking in the details of the scene. He stopped above the mangled carcass of the dead Coyote. He raised his nostrils and exhaled dual plumes of cigar smoke, squinting sternly across the fallow fields. Then he turned, slow, and studied the shredded collision sphere and smoldering crater where the second drone had been destroyed.

  Military grade particle weapons…

  Beside the dead Coyote was the square, black box belonging to the first destroyed drone. He picked it up and brushed off the carbon scarring, watching as the tiny pieces of ash flitted away in the wind. The MARX dogs ran to and fro. Those not piloted by deputy borg drivers in the lead transport had reverted to their default algorithms and were patrolling the perimeter of the crash site. Like robots.

  A small red diode on Sheriff Proudstar’s HUD monocle illuminated green and he frowned, then tapped his jaw and barked, “Proudstar. Hell! Look who it is, ten minutes too late! Congratulations on getting your sorry ass outta bed, Everquist! How stoned were you last night, son? Jeezus Mary! Tell me you’ve got somethin? Cause I got nothing out here but my cock swingin’ in the wind.”

  After listening for a moment, the sheriff’s mustache contorted with anger, “Are you kidding me!? Nothing?! On the entire fucking scan spectrum? How is that possible!? Who? Fine! Tell MTF they can mitz about out here till cows start sucking their own teets for all I care. Shit! Huh? Yeah. I Found one drive. Bringing it in after we finish our sweep.”

  The sheriff nudged the dead Coyote with his boot, “Yeah, it’s a Coyote. Oh… for Dog’s sake, don’t wet your panties, deputy. We’ll bring it in too. Whatever you do, Everquist, keep our coms locked. I want us to get first poke at this thing before the Feds descend on my ass like a case of bad scabies. Proudstar out!”

  The sheriff tapped his combud again, “Alright, deputies. Dial the MARX unit scans to molecular. Form them up in a line across the road and we’re gonna march, scan this whole scene slow. If they find so much as a hamster’s cunt hair, I want a klaxon. Let’s try and float home with something besides dumbass looks on our faces.”

  Sheriff Proudstar pulled a fresh cigar from a case in his pocket, bit off the end, lit it with an antique Zippo lighter and took a long, steady pull. He watched the German Shepherds form up fifty meters down the hovroad and begin slowly stepping his way, swinging their heads side to side in unison.

  Fucking cyborgs.

  Overhead, one of their A7 drones flew, hovering in a wide semicircle.

  He looked up at the drone and glowered, blowing out a blue stream of smoke as he spoke under his breath, “Only thing worse than a borg is a robot…” Then he kicked the lifeless form of the Coyote in front of him with his boot and walked off in the direction of the destroyed collision sphere.

  As the Solar Mule rolled into the barn, William jumped from the back and depressed a manual button on the wall, closing the heavy wooden garage door behind them. All three Rottweilers had already arrived, paws wet and muddy from their journey along the river’s edge. They surrounded the Kawasaki and mewled and whined as LOFN hobbled down onto the asphalt barn floor with a yip of pain. They licked her face enthusiastically. All four DOGS units lay down in a line and watched the humans with undue interest.

  Dorothy emerged from a green door at the far side of the barn and ran across the vaulted, open space to her husband, wrapping him in her arms, “Jeezus William, Jeezus! Don’t you ever do that again!”

  The couple held one another, exchanging kisses. At last, Dorothy let her husband go, wiping her tears on his WarmCoure© and turning to Dax Abner as he carried the mangled, unconscious girl past.

  She made no effort to conceal the relieved sarcasm in her voice, “Hey
boss, nice betty. Oh… by the way, you do realize mapping intel on cyborg warfare wasn’t in my job description? Got any pumpkins need a DNA tweak?”

  Dorothy smiled geekily at her own joke, expecting one of her employer’s usual quips. But Dax remained silent. His eyes were fixed on the woman in his arms. And her alone. It was as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

  Dorothy deflated. She frowned at Hugo, demanding an answer. Hugo merely pursed his lips and shrugged, unable to give any. He tossed his orange skull cap on the seat of the Mule and ambled away towards the green door she had just appeared from with an unlit joint dangling from the corner of his mustache.

  Dorothy turned to her husband as Dax disappeared the other direction, carrying the girl out of the barn and across the yard to the large white farmhouse where they all lived.

  “What’s that all about?” she asked.

  William shook his head, “Hell if I know. He’s been acting weird ever since Joan lit a ping on that betty. That’s back when she was still busy stealin’ the Mustang.” William shrugged and put an arm around his wife, “He didn’t say a word to us the whole time we were out there. You and Joan would have heard as much.”

  Dorothy looked out the barn door after Dax, longing to understand.

  She shook it off and turned back to her husband with a tired smile, “Well babe, as long as you’re okay, I’m okay.” She looked at the Rottweilers laying beside one another in a tight row, “Let’s get the ladies downstairs and let Joan have a closer scan, see what’s really broke.”

  With that, Dorothy and her husband, William Thomas Angevine, walked across the asphalt floor towards the green door on the far side of the cold, cavernous barn. A wild country pigeon fluttered from one wooden barn rafter to the next above them, though they did not look up. William gave an exhausted whistle as they shuffled past the Rottweilers.

  The DOGS units stood together, padding after them sadly, with an outward expression of fatigue it was theoretically impossible for them to possess. SIEGFRIED brought up the rear. He trailed his sister LOFN as she limped behind the humans. The exposed titanalum on one of LOFN’s paws tink-clicked and tink-clicked and tink-clicked on the asphalt as she stepped.