“I gotta go, Daddy. You get some rest. You’ve looked really tired lately.” Roxanne kissed her dad on his cheek and hurried to make her clock-in time. She was always too busy to spend enough time with her dad. Plus, now she had this pirate thing to worry about. And…she could not forget that warning about the poisoned nutria-blend. The last thought made her bend down and take an extra scoop of Rose’s food balls for the trip; not for Rose, it was for her.
“Let’s go Rose. We gotta clock in for the haul.” Roxanne and Rose left by the back door, taking the tunnel to her rig dock station.
The nano-drones had left a message that all systems were up and running. But, one vid stated that she would receive a three-chit dock for extra clean-up of debris on the underside of the rig, and that she’d be docked a week’s pay for that little maneuver around the school bus. It came with an extended and stern lecture about rig-ryder safety, which Roxanne and Rose were required to listen to, for the first fifteen minutes of the haul. It was followed by a verbal quiz, to confirm they had watched it. “Yeah well, I expected that one.” Roxanne noted the message as received and coded in the pass to open the control cab for another work day.
“Buckle up, Rose. Let’s do it.”
The organics lit, the engine whined to on, and the immense rig re-tracked. In some far off control booth in Hammerfest, an overworked union dweeb noted the rig re-track and set the proton tracks to positive/negative alternating charge.
I take that back. That job actually got outsourced to a robotic team in Nigeria two years ago.
“What kind of music do you want to listen to? It’s your turn to decide, Rose” Roxanne opened the wave to the world com, once they’d finished with their school bus safety exam. With five thousand channels to choose from, you could listen to anything from robo-rock, which sounded like a set of bad pistons, to off-planet, which sounded like cockroaches running across the floor, and anything in between.
“Let’s go for something smooth. How about the French version of I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata by Verdi,” Rose responded.
“You are such a snob,” Roxanne laughed, and tuned in to the opera. It seemed like the haul would be boring and uneventful, which was alright by Rose and Roxanne. Because if they got another chit dock they’d be going sans-Fueblaster for the next six months, which would be monumentally awful for Roxanne.
“Roxanne, have you noticed the rig butt warning light. It’s been flashing red since about three minutes ago.” Rose opened her eyes and glanced again at the warning flash. She’d had her eyes closed for the third act, La Conversion, at the part where the pilgrim was singing about the beauty of Jerusalem.
“What’s that all about? Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.” Roxanne slammed her hand on the rig butt detector, just to make sure it wasn’t jammed. “Damn, do you suppose it didn’t get cleaned up properly? I know the Inc. has been short-changing us on clean-up nanos, but you’d think they would at least keep the rig detectors clean for fee collections.”
“I don’t believe that’s the issue. Have you checked the reverse vids, Roxanne?” Rose pointed to the screen with her left paw, while leaning her head slightly out her side slot. She wanted to see if she could visually check the back of the rig, just in case the reverse vids were indeed crapped up.
“I have a visual on the problem. We have a visitor. He’s suctioned to our rig back fender. I’m not sure how long he’s been there. I hope he’s just hitching transport.” Rose, put her head back into the cab and shut the slot. Roxanne coded in the highest level safety, in case the hitcher tried to gain entry to the control cab.
“Well, I don’t mind, as long as he doesn’t try to gain entry to the control cabin. You know we’ve seen that more lately, more hitchers, as the nitro-chit costs increase. Maybe he’s just a solo-walk-about. This time of year you see them a lot, when University is out; solos hitching illegal rides to either coast. Should I vocal-vid him, ask him what he’s doing sucking a ride?” Roxanne got ready to open the com-bot to the back of her rig.
“Okay, but don’t execute a quick turn or any other maneuvers. We wouldn’t want to squash some poor University student out on his or her vacation.” Rose knew that Roxanne could be careless with life when her rig was endangered.
“Hey you, you need to ID or I’ll have to com the Inc. You could be in big deep if you don’t have a valid tunnel ID code.” Roxanne spoke into her com, which would broadcast to the back of the rig in 47 languages. The vids showed a big guy, but he was wearing a security suit and a helmet, so she could not identify her hitcher.
“It’s me, Roxanne. It’s Joster. Please open the top. I got real serious news. Here, I’ll slam some DNA onto the ID box so you can verify. Hurry up before the tunnel patrol detects me.”
Joster slammed his hand against the rig butt ID box, and his genetic sample sucked through a vacuum tube to the insta-sequencer behind the security dispatch box. The procedure took only two minutes, and the com voice then announced a 97.4562% probability of a positive for one Joster McClain, a 27-year-old librarian from the Tokyo WME Regional University Trewitt Memorial Library. It was named for General Trewitt, the bastard who’d spread the initial bioengineered flu virus, igniting a pandemic, offing 58% of the world’s population ( it was higher in Asia), and ensuring the entrenchment of world domination by the World Monetary Enterprise, the WME.
“Joster, what the hell are you doing plastered to the back of my rig. You could have just chimed me on my bot-com. Isn’t this rather melodramatic?” Roxanne opened the hatch and coded in back cab safe entry for Joster. If she had not, he would be vaporized by the rig’s entry safety device.
“What do you mean, “bot-com,” you know you can’t be reached when you’re hauling in the tunnel. Do you have some special com device or something?” Joster asked. Roxanne had to think fast. Her special bot-com to Dorian was; 1) a secret, and 2) illegal.
“Oh, right I keep forgetting you can’t com me when I’m on a haul. Only the Inc. can do that. Sorry, so what’s so critical Joster?” Roxanne asked, covering her mistake.
Joster continued to pull himself through the hatch, fell to the back cab floor, removed his helmet, and met face to face with a grinning and growling Rose, who never slacked on her role as rig chief security officer.
“Hi Rose, how’s life been treating you? Mind if I deliver a message without you eating my face?” Rose relaxed and gave a positive nod, after she was sure of his identity. An actual visual and smell ID was always safer. But because he could not enter the control cabin, Roxanne spoke to Joster through her com.
“Okay Joster, nice to see you. What was so important that you’d risk a flash freeze in a tunnel security prison to tell me?” Roxanne set the rig to auto and watched Joster through the control cabin portal, hand on her sonic pistol, just to stay on the safe side. You never knew if even a good friend had been pirate-recruited these days.
Joster took off his head gear, gulped in the fresh oxygen and said, wide-eyed,
“Gimlet’s gone missing!” HE SAID IT LIKE HE WAS ANNOUNCING SHE HAD BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH LEPROSY.
7
“THEY USED TO TREAT LEPERS IN THIS PLACE.”
Gimlet stared up at what looked like an old time Navy Seal type of guy. You know the kind, with huge muscles all over, short cropped sandy light brown hair, ruddy skin, very nice blue eyes…glowing blue eyes? She shook her head. That’s when she noticed she’d been chained to the wall, arms and legs shackled far enough apart so her lock-picking abilities would be useless, but not so far as to be in a compromising pose. She was wearing only a huge grey t-shirt with AFA embossed on the front. She leaned over to her arm to activate her bot-com tattoo.
“It won’t do you any good in here. The place is underground, lined with security mesh. Actually I haven’t been able to detect any waves escaping the place. It must have been set up as a holding cell for torture or something.”
The Seal-looking guy was sitting on the only chair in the room, reading an article on the saber too
th tiger de-extinction project from Science News Weekly. He had coffee. Gimlet might even tell this guy her name if he got her a cup.
“Don’t worry; I have no plans to torture you, Gimlet Nampeyo. You want some coffee?” The magic words; he handed her the cup of steaming brew. It tasted like real Kona.
“Who are you, and where am I?” Gimlet asked, after gulping down half the cup. It would make her have to pee, but she needed to clear her head. The last thing she could remember was a bug-bite sensation on her neck, when she’d turned left into the party tunnel entrance. She wondered how long she’d been out.
“We gave you Neuro-Pop™ laced with fentanyl and a touch of ketamine. We also gave it to that Mormon following you back at the party tunnel. The stuff works instantly but leaves a son of a bitch headache. Take these.” Big Seal guy held out two blue pills.
“I don’t think so.” Gimlet shook her head. She didn’t want to risk being knocked out again, or spilling her entire life story if he slipped her truth pills.
“Suit yourself; keep the head blaster. But you should know that we could have injected you with just about anything, including truth drugs. You have nothing new to tell me, Gimlet Nampeyo. I already have your entire dossier. By the way, you aced your finals and got two offers for senior robotic tech jobs at Cyber-facials and Stemworm. The second shouldn’t surprise you. Songtain’s been after Roxanne forever, and taking you as a hostage or employee would be an ideal approach to his getting at Roxanne Smoot, don’t you agree?” The seal guy put down the science journal and started to pocket the pills.
“Okay, give me the pills. If all you want from me is a Leo Songtain hostage bounty, then I might as well sit it out without a head basher.” Gimlet swallowed the two blues and finished the coffee.
“I repeat my two questions. Who are you, and where am I? Oh, and what happened to my clothes?”
“That would be three questions, Gimlet Nampeyo. Your clothes are being washed in cyber-wipe so no one can track you. You are under about one hundred feet of earth, in what we think was an old prison cell or bunker. I’ll leave it up to you to surmise where, and who I am is not of concern to you, not just yet.” Her huge companion got up, took the empty coffee cup, and asked, “More coffee?”
“Molokai…we’re on Molokai. I remember reading about how they had tunnels all over the islands for US soldiers, during WWII. So this must have been used for captured Japanese soldiers. Yes, more coffee, thank you.” Gimlet did not see why she should be impolite to her guard. He was probably only doing what he was told.
“A very interesting thought, but I never do what I am told, and I am not your guard. Your guard would be a big brainless thug of a guy named Ron. He’s standing outside, and no, he can’t read minds. You and I are the only ones here with that special talent. Molokai was the correct guess, by the way.”
“What do you want from me, Chad Yac?” Gimlet could do the mind reader thing too.
She was pissed at herself for not checking that out right away. She had been a university student for too long, forgot some of her rebel training. She cursed herself for not being more careful when she’d entered the tunnel, and for not having her mother’s special ability of doing a mind fuck. Gimlet was mostly normal, not all mutant like her mom. Her dad was not a mutant at all; he was an organo-digitally enhanced clone, with an almost limitless archival data storage capacity…but he was otherwise pretty human, in a reverse singularity sort of way.
“You’re not the same guy who was following me all over the Ginza. What happened to him?” Gimlet noticed her head was not knocking anymore. Whatever he’d given her, it was really fast-acting. She thought she could have used that during exam week.
“No, he was quite a nuisance. He’s now wrapped in shipping tape, crap-wrap, I think you call it, in the back of someone’s rig bound for Hong Kong, I believe. Well, now that you’ve been properly brought up to date, how about some breakfast. I take great pride in my culinary skills. This region of bubble-stop #3, or rather, Pirate Bubble-stop #3, the under ocean rest area, but underground in our case, has some excellent regional cuisine. Care for some spam and eggs, shipped over daily from Lanai?” Chad got up to leave, smiling a really rather attractive smile. If she were not his prisoner she might even take him to lunch, or maybe more.
They both smiled at that thought, and he exited her cell, leaving her rather embarrassed. Gimlet drifted off to sleep for a few minutes, still trying to metabolize the residual drugs in her system. It was not unpleasant in her cell. They’d been careful not to shackle her into a weird or revealing position, and her mattress was very nice, some cellular foam that read her body’s position and took it into consideration. It was probably a posture sleeper, or something very expensive. She hadn’t noticed she’d fallen back asleep until Chad returned with a plate of food that smelled like she’d entered heaven.
“I took the liberty of adding macadamia nut pancakes with coconut syrup. The syrup actually tastes pretty good when poured all over the eggs and spam. There are some up sides to living with #3ers; nice and close to Lanai. Oh, they are pirates, but with a hold on supplies for Lanai, that R&R Island over there, they get handled with soft mittens by the WME; they get the best food supplies of any bubble-stop I’ve ever been in. Lanai depends on them for safe Stem-wad® delivery. It’s probably why they haven’t been seawater purged by the Inc. yet.”
Chad placed the food near to Gimlet, careful not to get too close. Neither wanted a wrestling match, and even though Chad was much bigger he was aware of her martial arts training from the rebels.
“So we are on Molokai. That R&R Island would be the Refresh and Restore Island Retreat on what was formerly called Lanai, the place where the CEOs get new faces and bodies, then recuperate into seasoned minds with new bodies, as the advertisement states.” Gimlet stuffed a chunk of spam into her mouth first, after reciting the famous vid ad. Her rebel skills were coming back. Always eat the protein first; it stays with you the longest.
“You pass. Yes, this is Molokai, and we are across from the seasoned mind, new body island, as you so colorfully put it. This means we are less likely to be searched, and it’s a safer place to store you. So, finish your breakfast. We have business to attend to, Gimlet Nampeyo.”
Before Gimlet could respond, because she had a mouth full of eggs, Chad left, shutting the first of what looked like two solid steel doors. They had regular locks. If she could even manage to touch her bot-com tattoo, she would still not be able to send a message to her dad, and he would not be able to help her with non-digital locking devices anyway. Besides, they’d placed her underground in a sound-proof room, so she could barely hear the conversations going on outside her cell.
For the first time in her life she was stymied. Chad locked the second door with a key that only he and another guard on duty each had, and that each wore on a metal chain around his neck. And to make matters worse, unlike her mother Dina, she could not do a mind fuck on that guard. But, the place was not totally sound-proof. Gimlet could make out the conversation between Chad and the guard outside her cell.
“Remain here outside her cell. Don’t even think about going in there, especially if she cries and screams for help. Do you understand me?” Chad spoke brusquely, and with what appeared to be final authority, to a weasel-faced guard. The guy was terrified of Chad; you could tell that by the way he danced back and forth on his army-booted feet.
“Yes sir.” Was all he said, and he stood at attention like he thought he was some sort of trained real WME soldier, and not a #3er pirate, with teeth in great need of dental hygienics.
Chad left the guard, walking back to his office. He could not wait until this was all done. He hated having to deal with the pirates. Chad was not sure he could trust any of them. But his own people would die if something was not done, and soon. Those nineteen remaining clones would be delivered to the docks in Las Vegas in two days, and then Dina, the clone-killer obsessed mother of his prisoner, would summarily eliminate most of his family.
Chad left the guard, treading silently on soft-soled grab boots, to the room he’d selected as his office. He knew he was walking a fine and dangerous line dealing with the pirates. If they knew he was a clone soldier, or that his prisoner Gimlet was a half-clone, the pirates would sell them both at the slave market; they’d each go for big vouchers. But he was desperate. Chad sat down at his desk to go over the options.
“Why can’t the rebels just leave it be? Clones have not attacked any rebel enclave in ten, maybe twenty years. I know the history. A group of clones killed Dina’s father, Jordan Nampeyo. But that was years ago, and it was the rebels who’d first attacked us. We’ve changed since then. Why can’t she at least check the facts? We’re gene drifters.”
Chad knew that most of the clones had been genetically lobotomized to have some serious serial killer instincts. It was initially a problem in his group, when they escaped from Kyoto after that attack, to hide for years on Deceit Island. He was only ten-years-old at the time, and locked in a cell with the other “younger experiments”, as they were referred to by the scientists.
“You would at least think someone like Dorian would understand. Somatic mutations do occur; genetic drift can happen. We aren’t all killers anymore, and we have a right to live, just like Dorian, and Dina for that matter.” He mumbled to himself as he reread Gimlet’s dossier. Chad had launched the current plan; grab the daughter, get her mother’s attention, demand a meeting with Dorian the rebel leader…even have himself tested if necessary. He would volunteer to be a rebel prisoner if he had to. Surely he could talk some sense into the mother, or more likely, Dorian; call off what amounted to a clone-culling mission by the rebels. “You’d think they, of any group, would be accepting of the different,” Chad mumbled.
Gene Drifters: The Clone Soldier Chronicles-Book III Page 7
