The Liquidation Order

by Jett Lang

  “I do what I can,” she said.

  Philip had no comment. His cuffed hands dangled over his kneecaps, half-covered by his teal boxer shorts. He glanced at Five-Nine, but there was no malice in his black eyes, just neutrality and acceptance.

  She saw the LED-ringed tunnel activate through the hovercraft’s moonroof, the light pouring into their small cabin of dark upholstery. Grating metal, vacuum suction, the barest sliver of a pre-dawn sky, pink and purple intermingling. White sand sifted downward, curving into the vacuums circling the silo above.

  The hovercraft ascended.

  She laid back. The next leg of the journey would take hours to complete, even at full speed.

  “You appear well rested.” Five-Nine said.

  “Preparation is essential,” she said.

  “Indeed. I am glad to work with such a professional.”

  Queen could not discern whether the machine was factious or praising, so she called it a wash and let the leather envelop her. When the time came, she would have to be at her best. Her proximity to the robot afforded her little to no margin for error. This thing could break her spine over its knee with staggeringly miniscule effort. Not exactly a dreamy thought, but certainly a good motivator.

  ※

  Hundreds of miles flitted away, a gradual shift from dunes to bluffs, and finally, hinterlands. Ever-greenery expanded toward a snow-capped mountain range: It was over this and another hundred miles where they would find the city-state of Prosperity, home to a voracious workforce and a thriving nuclear industry.

  Far below, the terraformed landscape swayed in a muted breeze. Fauna scampered about the deciduous trees and underbrush – each creature and plant a product of genetic engineers. The vibrancy of it was subdued by the tinted glass of Queen’s window. She caught glimpses of compounds integrated into the land, window-glint silver in the greying sunlight. Of their purpose, she was uncertain. No landing pads or outer structures were visible, but the number of windows led her to believe the facility had a great deal of space and defense. Exposure of any kind denoted unseen lethality. Conglomerate-backing, undoubtedly.

  “Hey, Jack.” Queen leaned forward and rapped on the back of his headrest.

  “Yes?”

  “Have any idea what that is down there?”

  “Looks like a forest.”

  “You don’t say? Ass.”

  “Hee-haw. It’s an R&D station for a Prosperity gene-engi group – an ideal locale. Hunting and pit fights are big up here, so they’re always lookin’ for new beastie permutations. You know: Watching a vat-grown beefcake eviscerate a razor-clawed puma equals fun for the whole family.”

  “Quips the man who enjoys the races.”

  “I am immune to your judgment, pot, for I am an impervious kettle,” Jack said.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t have to transmit a permissions code for this airspace,” Queen said.

  “Five-Nine back there submitted it. Wanted us to stay under the radar, so to speak.”

  Beside her, the robot liberated a pocket device from its inner coat with a rustle. Queen turned to Philip. His head was angled against his window.

  “Everything alright over there?” she said.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic,” Philip replied. “How are things on your end?”

  The exchange went unnoticed by Five-Nine: It powered on a tiny rectangular screen, scrolled the brightness adjuster down. The display was two-dimensional, and, once booted up, appeared to be a hovercraft outline – a green-on-black vehicular skeleton with infographic breakdowns. Five-Nine’s titanium alloy fingers glided over touchscreen buttons, but the device did not accept the inputs. The dark green light coated Five-Nine’s metal visage with an aura of brooding.

  “Your gizmo seems busted, buddy,” Philip said, half laughing.

  The machine faced him. “How would you know this?”

  Queen pressed the muzzle of her machine pistol against the back of its head.

  “Interesting,” it said. “You are under the impression I did not prepare for betrayal.”

  “We’re under the impression you want us dead,” Jack said.

  “Quite right. Deliveries and loose ends are to be handled properly.” The coldness returned, stronger, near-freezing, just as it had been in the hangar. “Destroying me will see you undone as well. You think me an amateur?”

  “You’re trying to save yourself,” Queen said.

  “Like everyone. The difference is you cannot survive me. It is the only reason we discuss this now. You are uncertain because you do not possess every fact. The cold is an unknown; it is what you fear. ‘What could it be?’ you ask yourself.”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “Am I?”

  “Jack,” she said, “open Philip’s door, please.”

  “Uh, what?”

  “You would not dare,” the robot oozed.

  “Wouldn’t I? Jack.”

  The craft decelerated and shaved altitude, enough so that Jack finally heeded her directive and remotely slid the door ajar. Air stormed in. Philip’s locks whipped about, and Five-Nine remained undisturbed, save his trench coat. Sharp, green trees daggered at the blue void, the flat divide between earth and sky leaning farther and farther toward the ground. The loose edges of Queen’s grey jacket flapped wildly. Her eyes didn’t move from the target.

  “Chamber will hunt you down,” Five-Nine said. “Your employer shall not offer sanctuary, not for an offense like this.”

  “He wasn’t going to offer any in the first place,” Queen said.

  A warning blared from the cockpit, drowned out the sounds of the inrushing wind.

  “Missile lock!”

  Jack’s voice strained to be heard. When she looked at him, Five-Nine whirled around and snatched at the barrel of her gun. She fired. The shot tore through the robot’s trench coat, out the back of its shoulder. Its fingers went limp, but its other hand was rising to replace it. Balled into a fist. Slammed toward her.

  Philip flung his arms around Five-Nine’s head, yanked it back. The fist struck through the black window beside Queen and shattered through the other side. More air. Rushing in. The junky screamed over the warning and the wind. The robot’s coat sleeve ripped as it tugged its hand out of the window.

  “Philip, get off it!” she cried.

  Five-Nine’s elbow caught the man in the chest. Sent him stumbling back, onto the seat and right over the edge of the open door.

  The machine’s eyes went a darker shade of green, pulsed.

  Then the hovercraft banked. To the right, and hard. The robot stumbled backwards, and she curled her legs away as it tried to grab for her, for the pilot’s headrest. It split the leather, was digging in. The vehicle lurched. She reached for the handrail on the roof and kicked Five-Nine in the torso.

  It staggered and fell from the craft. Out into that beautiful forest below. It never stopped looking at her.

  The door hissed shut.

  The warning volume lowered to a frail bleating. “Hold on,” Jack said.

  She heard something launch from the rear of the hovercraft, turned her head to see. A countermeasure of four flares spiraled out, and the missiles flew to intercept them. Four flares for four heat-seekers. Three of the missiles redirected and detonated against separate flares. The fourth ignored the final flare and sped straight ahead, locked in on their signature.

  Queen was knocked against her seat as Jack accelerated. Her stomach swam. She strapped, buckled, and tightened into her seat harness.

  Don’t fuck this up, Jack, don’t fuck this up. The mountains outside shifted; the cabin rumbled.

  Jack released another salvo. The missile arced around the flares as if they were the coldest thing on the planet. He cursed, dove for the tree line.

  The craft’s interior seemed to grow smaller. Cold sweat ran down her neck, over her fingers. The forest came on fast. Too fast.

  He suddenly pulled up, leveled off, and the tops of the evergreens scraped the underbelly. Queen
shot a glance back, saw the missile curve and even out its course yards from the forest ceiling. The cockpit view offered no comfort: It was an endless expanse of greenery occasionally interrupted by too-narrow clearings. Jack sliced down into the nearest clearing, tilted the craft on its side.

  Queen’s harness dug into her chest. She held firm to the handhold near the window – now, from her perspective, the roof – and through Jack’s viewport, the end of the clearing was nearing. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

  Don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up.

  An explosion roared behind them, rocked the cabin. Jack wrenched the flight wheel sideways and cleared the barricade of pines, the clatter-scratch of their tips lashing at the windows opposite her. Then they were clear. They rotated to a normal perspective. She breathed out.

  Jack whooped. His reflective helmet inclined toward her. “Still got all your limbs?”

  “What the fuck just happened?”

  “What just happened is I solved two problems at once.” He gave her a thumbs-up. The mountain range swung into view. “You probably don’t wanna hear this after your backseat heroics, but Mr. Robo was right: Chamber won’t stop hunting us now.”

  “I’m aware.” She unbuckled herself, retrieved the rucksack from the overhead mesh. Setting it in her lap, she unbuckled the latch. Philip’s computer and external drive were gone. “That metal son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “It replaced the electronics with plastic food containers. There goes any evidence we might have been able to use.” She threw the rucksack aside.

  “Where does that leave us?”

  “In a very bad spot,” she said. “Just let me think.”

  “Well, you best make it quick, because I’m gettin’ a hailin’ frequency. Our friends that fired the missiles want to apologize, I’ll bet.”

  “Just fly out of their territory.”

  “Take a look out front, sister – no can do.”

  Outside, a blue, wavering dome towered over their craft. Queen recognized it as an EMP field. If they were the pass through, every electronic device onboard would go dark, and they would promptly plummet for an emergency landing.

  Jack decelerated, switched his dashboard comm-channel over to the hailer’s frequency. A stiff, formal voice crackled from the dash speakers.

  “Unauthorized persons of aircraft #28503211, please state the nature of your trespass. This is your final warning before we fire another salvo. Over.”

  “The trespass was unintentional. We were told our route had been cleared ahead of time. Over.”

  There was a shuffling of papers and shouting on the other end of the comm. Then, “Correct, 28503211, but your approval was revoked. We ask that you follow the attached coordinates to our landing zone for clearance evaluation. Over.”

  That crafty machine did have a contingency.

  “Understood,” Jack said. “We will comply. I repeat, we will comply. Over and out.” Latitude and longitude coordinates streamed across a digital readout on the dashboard. Jack banked the craft toward the main compound.

  “I hope Five-Nine took a permanent fall,” she muttered.

  “Somehow I doubt it, sister.”

  ※

  She sat on an aluminum foldout with a stainless steel table between her and the man questioning her. He was a tired-looking guy with wispy salt and pepper hair, watery eyes, and a cleft chin. A bare LED bulb – the only light source – shined down on his bald spot. She’d been manhandled into this room from the hangar where they had touched down. A black steel box, the walls closer than she would have liked. Jack had been taken elsewhere.

  For the tenth time, the man, whose name was not offered, said, “Let’s go over this again.”

  “I would prefer not to.” She folded her arms on the table’s sheened surface. “I’ve told you the details; you don’t need anything else.”

  His face flushed red. “I will determine what I need from you.”

  She scratched the bridge of her nose. “It was a long flight, and I’m a bit jetlagged.” She covered her mouth and yawned.

  “Your transport presented this installation with clearance codes we thought to be genuine. As it turns out, the codes were forgeries. Very thorough forgeries. That is a corporate offense, and one that carries serious punishment. You say you did not send the codes. Who did, then?”

  “The robot.”

  “The one that took a tumble out of your craft, you allege.”

  “Yes.”

  “We are in the process of verifying your allegation.” A semblance of tranquility had returned to him. “Whether or not this robot exempts you from punishment depends on your foreknowledge of events.”

  The man’s voice was like a security automaton, droning and droning. The image of her smashing his face against the table played and rewound in her mind’s eye – a pleasant fantasy.

  “As I said before: ‘The pilot and I were told that the proper, legal codes had been relayed via our escortee.’ The thought of it using forgeries didn’t cross our minds. Whatsoever. It had been nothing but honest until then.”

  “You claim that something about the robot was, in your estimation, ‘off,’ yet on the other hand you say it was honest.”

  “’Until then,’ I said. It started malfunctioning. It took out a small device which operated another device it had installed to the bottom of the craft without our knowledge and said it was taking control of our vessel. We didn’t believe this, so it demonstrated by opening a passenger door remotely. Apparently that’s when the codes it had sent were revoked. Our pilot made an evasive maneuver that caused the robot and the passenger beside it to fall out. I managed to grab a handhold until the pilot sealed the door. That’s the entire story.”

  The man wrote this on a touchscreen notepad. Probably comparing her statement with the agreed-upon lie Jack was feeding his interrogator. At least, she hoped it was their lie. All her relationships whirled down the drain sooner or later. Jack might try to pin the whole thing on her, use her to bargain his release. He maintained under pressure, sure, but could she really trust him? He’d lied to her before.

  “Who was this other passenger you refer to?” The man said.

  “I never got a name and I never asked. He was a carry-on for the robot, basically. Didn’t talk much on the flight to Prosperity, and I got the impression he was seeking a job there. At a pleasure-dome, based on his build and lack of clothing. Again, this is what I think, not what I know for certain.”

  “You frequent pleasure-domes?” His formality did not disguise his curiosity.

  “I know the type, that’s all.”

  “From your work.”

  “From my work, yes.”

  “Which is what, again?”

  “At the moment? Unemployed freelance bodyguard.”

  “How long have you been a ‘freelance bodyguard’?”

  “A short time.”

  “Can you be more exact?”

  “Yes.”

  Queen didn’t continue, so, noticeably reddened, the man prompted, “How long?”

  “Oh, I’d say about a day and a half, give or take.”

  “What about before that?”

  “Can’t you access this information on my card?” Her CID registered her as former employee of a private security company which was, in actuality, an anonymous go-to for professional assassins.

  “I am asking you to verify.”

  “New Paradise private security for over four years.”

  “You were let go.” The man smiled.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “And you left the city.”

  “I felt I needed some R&R after what happened. I blew my severance on a few luxuries in Angel Bay and found work.”

  “The pilot was with you this whole time?”

  “We had met in New Paradise, pooled our money and went for the trip east. He knew the city-state better and I didn’t mind his company, so it worked out.”

  The man scraw
led another note with his plastic stylus. He stared stoically at his touchscreen, the hint of a frown on his lips.

  “Something wrong?” she said.

  Before the man could answer, the same static-crackled voice she and Jack had heard over the hovercraft speakers piped in from the ceiling-gloom: “This detainee is cleared. Our search crew has located partial robotic wreckage and a male corpse. Please escort her back to the waiting room.”

  Partial robotic wreckage. The words floated in her mind, a reminder of a job left unfinished. It couldn’t have survived. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack was right, that Five-Nine was still walking around out there.

  The man reluctantly stood, went to the autodoor, and typed in a password.

  She followed him out.

  The installation consisted of wide steel corridors, a series of reinforced autodoors, and, ultimately, a naturally-lit passageway. The passageway opened into a lounge area. Jack was there, sitting on a grey booth bench with his boots up on a low, glass table. She was led over to him, told to sit there. So she sat. The man stopped to talk with a security guard near another passage. He pointed back at her, at Jack. Low voices, lingo. Then the security guard nodded and patted his holster. Smiled. The man nodded back and left. The security guard took a seat across from them, picked up a holo-magazine from an end table. 3D political figures floated in front of his chest.

  “The music here sucks,” Queen said.

  “Pop-jazz? I can barely hear it,” Jack said. “I got the message out to the boss.”

  “I don’t think his authority will help us here.”

  “We have no choice at this point, you know that,” he whispered.

  Queen had a momentary staring contest with the guardsman. “There’s always the underground – freelance work until things cool down.”

  “Don’t insult me, sister. I’m too educated to work for pennies, and there’d be no company protection.”

  “You mean like now?”

  “Fair warning: you’re really startin’ to piss me off.”

  “My former boss seems more and more like he’s our former boss,” she said. “It’s just us; he’s not going to help.”