I’d spent a week watching the people come and go to make sure I knew what this area’s “normal” looked like. My initial sweep of the street began to set my mind at ease, if not the knot in my stomach. It wasn’t until I was about to step out onto the lit street that I caught a glint of light from further down the street Partially hidden in the shadow of heavy ferro-steel girders that supported the cities light rail, a small dark vehicle caught my eye. .
Had it not been for a street lamp’s unexpected flicker of life, I would never have noticed the vehicle, which was out of place in this part of town. I barely made out the form of a man sitting in the driver seat. He parked in a way to watch the street from a non-descript vantage point. At this point, my instincts screamed high alert. I scanned the street again. If I had missed the vehicle, I wondered what else I had missed. Nothing else stood out on the street, but that brought up another question: Why would they send a lone person after they had already sent an assault team? Were these two even related?
I fought with myself about what I should do. To leave and come back another time would be the safe move, but if I did that, I’d lose this chance to verify my paranoia, and I’d likely sacrifice my gear in the safe house. While I told myself that material things are replaceable, my curiosity wouldn’t be stymied regarding the real threat.
Nature took over as I decided to risk it. I guessed the amount of time it would take for someone to reach the safe house door after I entered. I’d have just enough time. As nonchalant as possible, I stepped out scanning the street as if looking for traffic before I crossed toward the door to the safe house. I kept the vehicle in my peripheral view, to make sure the occupant hadn’t started to pursue me.
At the door, I activated the key card locking mechanism, which welcomed me with a buzz and a click as the door opened. Inside, I turned to close the door and activate the double locking system, but that would hold someone for only a minute or two, not longer. I moved into the living room, grabbing the two large duffels on the center table. My pace quickening, I walked into the bedroom, then the closet. I pulled a square of carpet aside to reveal a large metal door in the floor.
Pulling the door open, I dropped the bags down and followed closely behind, replacing the door behind me. The carpet would fall back into place, just as I had designed it to do. One of the advantages of having the company backing my ops was that I tended to get low-key safe houses with features that make it a true “safe” house. I began moving along the tunnel lit by a small line of soft krylon lights.
My timing couldn’t have been better. I made it into the tunnel just as three muffled pops reverberated through the floor. A crash resembling metal and wood torn from a wall, followed immediately by three more loud pops, made me jump. I moved quicker along the small square space, hoping to reach the exit before whoever was in the apartment found the hatch.
Finally, the destination appeared: a large metal door with no handles or knobs. Only a key card slot with a number pad below gave any indication that the door would open. Inserting my card and punching in my code, a muffled thud released the door, which slowly swung open into a sewer maintenance shaft a few hundred meters from the house in a direction that would be hard to discern from outside of the actual tunnel.
Pulling myself and the duffels into the shaft, the door closed behind me and the same muffled thud signaled the door had locked. I followed the maintenance shaft for about ten minutes before I found an exit point, which opened to a fairly run-down collection of warehouses and factories. I found myself a building with a heavy metal door that swung open just enough for me to enter. Satisfied that I was safe for the moment, I fought to bring my heart rate back down and concentrate on what I needed to do
I rested for a moment, letting my heart rate settle and my mind focus on the problem, and my next priority: finding a safe place to lay low until I could drop off the Cypher and figure out what was going on. I ran the layout of the city through my mind via one of the other advantages of my transformation: eidetic memory. Knowing I was in the southwest industrial region, I figured out the fastest way to the part of town closest to the drop point, then figured out which hotels were in that area and how to get to them.
Buoyed by the belief that I had a solid plan despite my current circumstances, I checked the area outside the building before heading down a street to the east and the nearest light rail station. Keeping a rather low profile, I moved along the streets, my senses and instincts hyperactively watching my surroundings as I tried to maintain a casual pace. I’d found out a few years ago that a hurried pace on a deserted city street in the middle of the night tended to highlight you, not hide you.
I reached the light rail station without encountering anything out of the ordinary, but I wouldn’t relax until I was safely hidden from the streets in my own room. The way things were going, I couldn’t let my guard down.
The ride to the center of the city was quiet, and finding a hotel that overlooked the square where the drop was scheduled to take place wasn’t too difficult at this time of year. As I stood on the balcony looking down on the square, I peered into the morning bustle of people heading to their day jobs, searching the faces for anything that stood out. An inquiry into the online activities of the buyer and my handler came up empty, which began to worry me. Not responding for a few hours after acquiring the target was one thing. No answer after almost a day was a bad sign.
From the balcony, I walked back into the large hotel room. The immense thick bed had been soft and comfortable, and the room service brought a breakfast fit for a king. A sheepish grin spread across my face as I thought this was how I should be living, not in some dumpy out-of-the-way hole in the wall apartment on the edge of town.
Regardless of the comfort of the bed, sleep had only come in fits as my mind fought to make sense of things. The drop was still a few hours away, but my instincts were already telling me to run and find a buyer that I knew wasn’t tied up in the events of the past day. That was my clue to prepare the ground for what I imagined would be an inevitable betrayal. Too many unforeseen problems had arisen, and this op was beginning to spin beyond my control. My chance to change the course of events in my favor was now.
As in real estate, when you're planning to steal corporate secrets, it’s all about location, location, location. I'd made sure the drop point was in a high traffic area with multiple exits and sightlines. The beautiful thing was that only two people besides myself – my handler and the client – knew the actual location.
I found a vantage point at a corner cafe that gave me a chance to watch the local business people come and go. Everyone looked the same: the latest fashion in suits and dresses, briefcases, purses and expensive shoes. They also behaved similarly, hurrying to wherever they were going with little concern for what was going on around them. The advantage in everyone looking the same was that it would be easier to pick out the ones that didn't belong.
I'd set the drop time to occur during lunchtime, because it was the busiest time of the day, and there would be lots of people on and along the streets to camouflage our activity. Being on my own and not able to call in support put me on edge while I watched.
When it was finally time to make the drop, I paid my bill and walked slowly into the flowing crowd. I was to wait on a very specific bench for the client. They would sit on the other end of the bench, seemingly uninterested in me. They were supposed to have my payment in a black briefcase that they would set on the ground between us. I would be pretending to eat my lunch, setting a bag with the merchandise on the bench between us. The client would nonchalantly take the bag, check the contents and leave me with the briefcase.
That was the plan, that had been the plan before two different times someone tried to capture or kill me. Keeping pace with a group of businessmen walking through the center of the park, I utilized them as camouflage, like a predator using a herd of elk to hide his approach to a better prey. Once close to the drop point, I took a seat at a nearby bench, which g
ave me a good line of sight. Pulling out a news datapad, I quietly pretended to read.
It didn't take long for me to realize how royally fragged I was. At the far end of the park a pair of large sleek black transports pulled up to the curb and stopped. Four men exited the vehicles; dark glasses, black suits and angry expressions told me everything I needed to know about their intentions. They moved closer up the walkway, with the two rear men splitting up onto the right and left walkways, keeping their sightlines with the front men clear. They were blocking the routes out, in order to trap their quarry.
Realizing that this was where all of my planning would work out, I stood, tucking the datapad into my jacket. I turned toward the two men on the walkway, moving with the flow of traffic. The men were searching the benches for familiar faces, or for someone eating a lunch. It was lucky for me that my paranoia and instinct overruled my need to end the op.
I kept my demeanor plain and calm, walking easily up the path towards the approaching men. Only a few feet from the men, I saw them scanning the faces without truly seeing anything. The largest of the four men, the person I deemed to be in charge, stood in the middle of the walk with his side to me as he signaled one of the men further out.
The flow of people up and down the walk didn't seem to change. The men stood out, but not enough to warrant looks from most of the people on the street. As I approached the assumed leader, preparing to pass him and make my escape, I had to shift my movement to the right to allow a woman nudging past the man to go by. That was when all hell broke loose.
As I moved aside, the woman's chest imploded in a bloom of red, spraying blood in every direction behind her. She flew back into the lead man, and his training kicked in. Instantly, he crouched, pulling his weapon from his jacket. Screams filled the air as people ran in every direction, diving behind trash cans, benches and bushes.
The shot that hit the woman had startled me, my instincts kicked in as I dove for a nearby trash can, watching as chaos took over the park. The sound of a ricochet off of the metal pulled me back into reality, and I realized that the first shot had been intended for me, not the man or woman. That was when it dawned on me that there were two players in this game, not just one.
The four men all started shouting over the screams of the crowd as they began running in the direction of the shots. I took this moment to make an exit, in the hope that my assailant was more concerned with being tracked than killing his target. Keeping myself low, I moved along a line of benches and bushes until I couldn't hide anymore.
There were ten meters between me and the edge of the closest wall. Ten meters I would have to run in hopes that whoever had been shooting was more concerned with the armed men in the street than with me. The throng of running and screaming pedestrians was beginning to subside, so I knew I needed to take a chance before I became a lone target on an open field.
The sound of gunfire erupted behind me, which I assumed came from the four security men. Taking my cue, I launched myself forward, running straight for the corner of the building. Gunfire continued as I ran, crouched as much as possible without ruining my momentum. The wall grew closer and closer and I just knew I was going to catch a bullet the instant before I reached it.
I ran like I was at the end of a marathon with the finish line in sight, and all I had to do was not collapse before I reached it. Ten meters seemed like a hundred, time seemed to slow as my lungs burned in my chest and blood pulsed in my ears. I burst past the corner of the building; a spray of brick greeted me as a piece of the building’s corner exploded less than a foot from my head, but nothing in my body signaled I had been hit by anything other than flying brick shards.
No matter how much my chest hurt or my heart churned inside my chest, I kept moving until I knew I was safely removed from the firefight. Lights flashing and sirens blaring, security and emergency vehicles fought their way through retreating civilians, headed for the square. As soon as I had a chance, I waved down a ride, jumped in and pointed the driver toward the space port while I hunkered down in the seat to keep a low profile.
I hated to admit that I expected a need to escape the planet quickly and disappear. I hated that I had to plan ahead by leaving my bags at the Spaceport and buying a seat on an outbound transport. I was frustrated that things had gone downhill so fast that I couldn’t keep ahead of the problems, but I realized I had to drop off the grid long enough to find a solution to my problems.
***
Getting off planet hadn’t been difficult; the transport took off without delay, one of my many aliases clearing me through security with a valid reason for having secret tech tucked away in my luggage. The trick was where to go next. If my support network and mission coordination had truly been compromised, I couldn’t rely on my usual channels to find answers.
I held Cypher up in front of my eyes, letting the overhead light of the soft first class seat fracture through the crystal. This one little piece of engineered glass had turned into the bane of my existence, and nothing I did brought me any closer to getting rid of it. How had the soldiers known I’d be in the office? Who was shooting at whom at the drop? Questions ran randomly through my mind, trying to figure out what to do and how all of the pieces fit together. The only common element was the Cypher, but I still didn’t know how it mattered or how they might be tracking it.
I turned away from the crystal to stare out the viewport as the planet slowly grew smaller and the transport slipped smoothly into the local trade lane, thrown forward at such speeds that the stars blurred into streaks against the blackness of space. It was going to take the better part of two days to reach the transfer station. From there, I could go anywhere: farther out toward the rim world, farther in toward the Republic’s core worlds, or even disappear into Androken space.
Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to vanish into the ether and hope my assailants might forget about me, there was something inside me that ate at me, feeding a need to solve this riddle. We’d all but arrived at the transfer point when I finally decided where I needed to go.
There were only a handful of people I knew who were far enough outside my normal support network that I could be reasonably sure they weren’t compromised. As I considered the short list, I concluded that there was only one person I knew who had the expertise to find the information I needed, and who could also find me a way to get rid of this ball-and-chain merchandise. When I reached the station, I booked a transport to the Republic’s outer core planet, Sanctuary. The trip would take a few days, but my hope was that that would be enough time for my contact on the planet to set up a meet.
I found an open interweb terminal and sat down. Knowing that my usual system access could be tracked, I inserted a second crystal I had picked up from an asset a few years back. It gave me the same level of access, but could not be tracked by the company. As soon as I logged in, I reached out, looking for clues or information to point me in a direction.
At the same time, I logged into a site I knew my contact used regularly and sent him a message;
Cyberjunky –
Lost your number, would really like to talk. Traveling for a few days but free for kava when I get back. The three moons here are blood red and it’s Really Ass Hot. Hope to see you soon.
– Harlequin.
I smiled briefly as I looked over the message. There wasn’t anything in the message that would stand out, but there was enough to point him in the right direction.
Kava at the Three Moons Café in Sanctuary’s capital city had been our meet point the last time I had used him on a mission. One of the downsides of being an operative was the need to keep track of all the aliases I had had, as well as all the assets I had ever had contact with, in case I needed to work with them again. On the bright side, Kelvis Trena had never been an asset as much as he had been last-minute support for a job, which meant he didn’t cross the company’s radar.
Four days, three way stations, and two false alarms that I was being followed finally turned into
a boarding call for a flight leaving Freeport Five for Sanctuary. Freeport Five was a deep-range space station between Republic Space and the Republic’s colony system called the Drandelion Freehold.
Freeport Five was one of seven waystations between the Trokus core, home of the Trokus Republic, and its outlying colonies. Each station provided a location for the regions merchants to trade goods and services to travelers moving back and forth. Each station also maintained a hyperspace jumpgate that allowed near-instantaneous travel between the edges of the two systems. Republic trade lanes made up a large “rail” system, providing hyperlight acceleration for smaller ships that weren’t able to generate the massive power required for hyperlight travel inside the systems. While traveling from one side of a system to another would usually take years, hyperlight acceleration turned that into hours or days depending on the size of the system. All ships relied on the massive jumpgate network to travel between systems.
As the transport turned from the station toward the jumpgate, its massive dimensions came into view. Monstrous gold wings, which collected untold amounts of energy to generate the vortex ships used to jump, shimmered in the system’s red dwarf sun. The wondrous generators formed an almost perfect oval around the void where the shimmering energy swirled.
As our ship turned, another moved into position to jump. The almost insubstantial field forming the blue lightning that jumped from one generator to the next fluctuated like the heat of a desert valley. The stars behind moved with the shifting light as the ship drifted into the field and disappeared with a flash. A moment later, the field wavered again as a small transport appeared on the event horizon of the vortex. As the transport turned between the pylons, our turn came. The ship drew closer and closer to the generators as the blue lightning increased in power, until we finally drifting into the field.
The millisecond that it actually took for the ship to travel from one system to the other seemed like a long moment of extended black and calm as the blackness of space behind the jumpgate became the planet of Sanctuary. The massive asteroid field that drifted close to Sanctuary’s orbit drove the many reasons for the jumpgate’s proximity to the planet. In most systems, jumpgates were located at the edges, with trade lanes carrying ships to the major stations or planets.
Cypher: Chronicles of Rah Page 2
