The sound of dishes crashing to the wooden planking of the balcony brought me back around. I still think the only thing that saved my life was the fact I’d been preoccupied with the woman on the river bank so I’d had my face turned to the side and he hadn’t seen me right away. Even so, it wasn’t exactly settling to see Richter standing there, that pale skin and jet-black hair contrasting in the way that only androids can pull off. Especially considering I’d put an end to him nearly fifteen years ago. And he was definitely after me. There were two waiters on the ground and he was moving fast, and I didn’t spare a second’s worth of hesitation.
It was easily fifteen feet to the next balcony below but I’d handled worse, albeit with proper preparation. Still, a broken leg was far more favorable than even two seconds in Richter’s hands. As I went over the edge of the balcony it exploded behind me and I heard a desperate howl of rage that was cut off halfway through the explosion. I hit the ground harder than I expected and was reminded again that I should probably give up smoking. It took me a few moments to catch my breath and I slowly rolled back over and eyed the balcony above. No Richter, but there was smoke and debris all around me and splatter from the bodies. A gaping hole carved out a ragged crescent in the ledge above where I had been sitting. I pushed myself up and ignored the gasps from the people along the river.
I was halfway back to my ship before I saw anything else. The last corner before the entrance to the hangar was where I saw them, standing there smoking sticks like normal flesh and bone. Three duplicates of Richter.
You know those moments when your heart literally skips a few beats and you are left breathless, wondering if it’s all over? That feeling stayed with me all the way back to the ship and halfway through the sector. That’s when I had sent the message to Barry and then jumped five systems to meet him here.
Barry’s face had paled during the last bit. He was a pasty shade of white by the time I finished, and he sat in stunned silence for a few minutes. I was halfway through another cigarette when his hand shakily reached for his coffee and he raised it slowly to his lips, trembling slightly. He drained it in one swallow.
“Richter again. Jesus!” Barry’s voice was calm, but I could tell how shaken he was. He reached a hand over his shoulder and unconsciously scratched at the scar I knew was there, snaking the length of his body from his left shoulder all the way to his right buttock. It was a livid thing, half an inch wide. The moment before I had pulled the trigger on the Devix device which had short-circuited Richter’s wiring, the android had managed to throw Barry on the ground and cut him almost completely in half with one sweep of a knife. It had severed Barry’s spine and left him bleeding on the floor. Thankfully I’d gotten him to a med cocoon in time, but it still took him over a year to fully recover after that. “What the hell does Ferdalis have to do with this?”
That question had bugged me as well, and when I had found the answer a few weeks back I’d been less than pleased. Maevis had called me a “lying bastard” and kicked me out of her quarters. “Apparently Ferdalis was one of the initial investors in the Richter project.”
The look of shock on Barry’s face was probably an exact duplicate of mine when I had first found out. Being in the information business, it was strange that this detail had managed to slip by us. I had to credit that to our relative newness in the industry when we had come across these particular clients all those years ago. Today, on the other hand, things would have been entirely different. It’s amazing how time can change some things for the better, considering in most regards it just wears them out and breaks them down.
“Believe me, I felt the same way when I found out.”
He shook his head slowly. “It’s hard to imagine, but it does make a certain kind of sense. Like why we never received the name of the client, only information on Richter, and the vids containing the security footage of him slaughtering his way out of the lab, and why the payment was anonymous. Ferdalis was probably more scared than we were.”
“Exactly. And if you think he was scared back then, he is terrified right now. Apparently he’s been receiving coded messages sent to his offices for the past year: his resort house, his bank; anywhere he has an inbox. I met with him last week he sent me a panicked message about seeing Richter watching him from across the street in front of his bank.”
Barry ran a hand over his face, rubbed his eyes. “Why didn’t he ever mention the messages to us before.”
I shrugged. “We all figured Richter was dead. You and I were pretty thorough. But that’s not the worst part.”
Barry snorted. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “All those messages? I received one through Renée as well a couple of days before Dunair. I didn’t think anything of it until after Ferdalis called me.”
Barry whistled softly, then took one of my cigarettes out and lit it. He puffed in silence for a moment. “Well, we did it once, so I’m sure we can do it again. Problem is, there’s more than one of them this time. What do you think? Clones?”
“That was my first guess. From the messages he’s sending, it looks as though it’s a simple revenge motive. The question is, where?” Cloning facilities were under federal lock-down, and illegal to all but the highest security-clearance military scientists. It was extremely unlikely that Richter had managed to hack his way in, so unless there was a rogue cloning facility out there we didn’t know about, we were missing something.
Not to mention, growing the synthetic flesh used on ‘droids requires time. Several year’s worth. Whatever was going down had been in the works for quite some time. The thought made me shiver. Androids aren’t supposed to have feelings or emotions, but Richter seemed to, and that’s what made him dangerous. Initially he’d killed over forty lab techs and scientists when he’d come to the realization that he didn’t want to be experimented on any longer. If he was back out for revenge now for putting him out of his misery… well, I’d be keeping Renée on high-alert status until this blew over.
“Where’s Ferdalis now?” Barry asked. “I assume Richter and his pals have some way of tracking him, since those messages were so conveniently relayed.”
I shook my head. “No, I think they just found out his daily schedule and linked up to his publicly-known residencies. I could do the same thing to anyone I wanted given about forty minutes. Don’t worry. They won’t find him. I took him to Five.”
His eyebrows threatened to run away with his hairline. “You took him to Five? You better hope Richter doesn’t find out. He could do a lot of harm if he gained access there.”
“Don’t worry. Maevis can handle it. She’s stationed out there at the moment, keeping an eye on things. I gave Ferdalis the entire north wing to tinker around in. After removing anything which he might accidentally blow up the base with. Genius or not, I still don’t trust him, even if his credits clear the bank. We, however, have quite the task in front of us. Do you still have your contacts in the Vein?”
“Yes. What do you need?”
“I need to find out anything and everything about known and rumored cloning facilities. They’ve been outlawed for a couple hundred years but you can still find them cropping up from time to time. I need to know exactly which ones are capable of handling synthetic flesh and AI wiring, like the kind used in android production. Any person buying mass quantities of parts or flesh components. While you get your feelers floating in the Vein, I’ll check on my end. Between the two of us I’m sure we’ll dredge up something.”
Barry nodded and ground his stick out in the ashtray, then slid out of the booth and stood up, hand outstretched. I grasped it firmly. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something. Tell Renée I said hi.”
“Will do. Good luck.”
He nodded and headed towards the door, pulling his hood up just before exiting. A small flurry of snow and wind whirled in briefly before the door shut it out. I took the last drag of my own smoke and stretched before standing up. It was going to be a long week.
*
/>
Dawn’s first light crept slowly over the horizon, casting a warm glow across the landscape before me. The low ledge that my feet were propped up on, the gentle slope of the courtyard beyond that, the almost-visible swirl of rainbows that glittered in the mist of the fountain that arched so quietly there in the center of the yard, and the blue-gray smoke of my cig-stick twining upwards as I exhaled into the morning air. My stomach growled, and my mind wandered back to the room where I could be eating breakfast right now. It also flickered back to the blonde from the night before who was enjoying the comfort and warmth of the bed. The hotel bill had already been paid and she would forget me by nightfall. I pushed myself up and started walking.
Two weeks spent on this hellhole of a planet. Two weeks of combing the streets for information, of mindless frustration as Barry and I searched endlessly for some clue, some tangible piece of evidence that would tell us where Richter and his brothers might be hiding. All the information the two of us had pulled between the Vein and the Womb had led us to this city. Erchlion, on the planet Teloa.
It was beyond frustrating. Even our contacts together hadn’t really given us that much to go off, other than letting us know that there weren’t any rogue cloning facilities out there and that Richter hadn’t been anywhere near the government-ran ones. So either he had learned the technology on his own and somehow acquired the money to build his own private facility, or he’d managed to hide his tracks. Either way it was odd to see an android following an emotional line of thought. Revenge wasn’t supposed to be part of their programming, but then again that’s probably why they had shut down the android production on Earth after the Eriook incident. When you give a computer the opportunity to think for itself, you might not like where those thoughts lead it.
I let that scenario play out in my head. Somehow he had managed to build his own private group of ‘droids in his likeness and was out for revenge, bent on the destruction of two individuals. Ferdalis, the man who was their creator, their divinity, and me—the man who had come along and wreaked havoc on his wiring all those years ago. It almost made one sentimental, until you remembered the ripped and shredded bodies that trailed in their wake.
The only question that still bothered me was how Richter had managed to survive all these years unknown to any of us. It was foremost in my mind at all times lately, the how of it all. It was beginning to rub me the wrong way. You learn to make sure the job is finished when you are in my line of work, and I had been absolutely positive that Richter had been done for good the first time. Melting the components had been only one of the steps I’d taken. So how had he gotten back?
Such questions moved to the back of the auditorium for intermission as Barry came into view seated at the pre-arranged park bench on Zilches Avenue. A pipe was dangling from his lips and his eyes appeared closed, but his hand moved towards his inner coat pocket as he heard my footsteps approaching, stopping only when he cracked an eye open to see me standing there.
“How was she?”
“A moment in time, friend.”
“Hungry?”
“Always.”
“Let’s go. I saw a new diner last night we haven’t visited yet, and the owner looked to be a Dhermian.”
Breakfast proved to be one of the best I’d had in weeks, although most of the food was made up of delicacies whose origins were probably best left unquestioned. It was slightly rubbery in texture but it was spicy and damn good. I was on my second cup of coffee and second smoke while Barry read the local paper when my com beeped.
“Yes?”
“A message just came through from the Womb.” Renée’s smoky voice sounded slightly agitated. “You’ll probably want to get back here as soon as you can.”
Barry looked up sharply, his eyes bright with anticipation. I felt a thrill as well. Maybe this was the break we’d been looking for. “Thanks, Renée. We’ll be up there as quickly as we can.”
The hangar was empty save for three mechanics welding some new parts on a ship four bays down from Renee. It was a dreary slop of metal looking like it had been put together by a five year old on mem-blockers. Compared to Renee, looking sleek and shining brilliantly under the fluorescent lighting, I almost laughed. I was still stifling it as she lowered the boarding ramp and we went up inside of my lovely maiden of refuge.
The conference room lights dimmed as we entered and took seats around the bench that followed the curvature of the wall. A halo projection of James and Neelan suddenly appeared, frozen in time. “Proceed with the message, Renee.”
Time flowed again and James suddenly lurched into motion. Neelan was still and silent behind him, his glowing blue eyes even more stark against his red flesh seen through the halo then when seen face-to-face. “Donnivan. I hate to bother you like this but due to recent—” James paused for a moment, his eyes closing as he sighed. “Due to recent events,” he continued,” Lonith will no longer be joining us. There were some… inconsistencies… that caused us some concern and when we looked into it we discovered something that requires your immediate attention. It is of the utmost importance that you respond as soon as you receive this message. Until then.” He and Neelan bowed and the halo faded. I looked over at Barry and found him staring back at me.
“I wonder what that’s about.”
He shrugged.
“Renée, put me through to the Womb now, please.”
Her soft voice came echoing from all around us. “The connection was already established before you entered the ship, Jeff.”
Barry’s eyebrows shot up. “Not bad for a machine.”
There was a distinctly un-ladylike comment over the speakers directed at Barry and I chuckled. The halo shimmered into existence and Neelan was there.
“Donnivan!” His voice was relieved. “It’s about time. James!” He shouted towards someone off-screen.
“What the hell is going on up there? What’s this about Lonith?”
James suddenly popped into view behind Neelan. “Donnivan! Finally!”
I motioned with my hands. “Alright you two, explain.”
James rubbed his eyes, while Neelan continued his blank stare. Alien species can be so hard to read sometimes. “Fun times here, Jeff. After you started prying into this whole thing with Richter for Ferdalis, Lonith started showing signs of increased agitation. He was very short with us when we asked how his systems were coming along with the investigation, and he missed two of our appointments. Neelan suggested we do some digging on our own and, well,” James paused for a moment, then rushed ahead. “Lonith found out we were investigating him and he pulled a blaster on Neelan and tried to kill him. I was forced to shoot him.”
I felt a momentary shock as he told me. Lonith, Neelan, and James were three of the five who had founded the Womb all those years ago. Barry and I were the other two. Lonith had been a partner of Barry and mine when we were running contraband and weapons during the Spirak war with the Uphirn, long before the Eriook episode. He’d always been a bit eccentric, but after twenty-two years I would never had expected this. “Any explanation for why?”
Neelan nodded. “I found encrypted messages origination from the planet Dunair, 15 hours before you arrived there, and two days before Richter attempted to take your life. Only three others besides you knew that you were going to be there. James, Lonith, and myself.”
I felt sick all of a sudden. Very sick. “I think I know what you are getting at here.”
James nodded. “After his death we began digging through his computers, his rooms, all his files we could find. We found hundreds of messages dating back over the years. Apparently our partner was involved in some military experiment with Ferdalis back before Eriook, and even helped him smuggle in some of the parts they needed at the time. Money is a powerful motivator, Jeff. It looks like Ferdalis paid him nearly three million creds to find the bits and pieces of the old Richter about three years ago to—”
“What?” I sat up straight in the bench. I couldn’t keep the shock
out of my voice. Barry looked like someone had just tagged him with a stun wand. “Ferdalis was the one who put Richter back together again, and with friends this time?”
“It’s certainly looking that way.”
Son of a bitch. That son of a bitch! My mind spun as I tried to cover all the possible angles. “Ok, see if you two can’t pull up anything about recent sightings of those damned Richter copies. We’ve been here two weeks and haven’t found anything, so they’ve either gone to ground somewhere or they’ve figured out a way to mask their travel. Either way, find out! And do what you can to freeze and backtrack all of Ferdalis’ assets. I don’t want him having any way out once I get my hands on that bastard. In the meantime I’m going to have a chat with the old boy and see what I can find out. Call me when you have something.”
James and Neelan nodded and the connection died. The lights spun up slowly and I suddenly felt the need for a shot of whiskey and a smoke. Barry sat in silence across the room, already deep in concentrated inhalation, his eyes closed and his face scrunched up in that thoughtful way that sometimes frightened me. Usually he was about to hurt something or someone when he got that look. This time, I was pretty sure what he was contemplating, and I had no problems with it whatsoever.
“Renée, set course for Five. We need to get there as quickly as possible.”
The ship began to vibrate softly and hum around us as we sat in our smoke-filled room, cultivating philosophy and painful ways of death.
*
The sight of the clustered mass of floating rocks and debris that made up the Antiron asteroid field whirled chaotically there in the distance, the six mile diameter of misshapen rock that was Five floating somewhere within that random mess of pummeling death. I’d set Renée to plotting a course through the field nearly fifteen minutes ago, and I was growing impatient with waiting. That, and the fact that all four of my hailing calls had gone unanswered, leaving me to wonder what the hell was keeping Maevis. I had visions of her bloody body lying crumpled on the floor, Richter standing there in grinning glory above her, his android brain picking apart all of my secrets and running scans on all my files. Paranoia is a dangerous companion, one that I’m familiar with, even if we’re not on what you would call friendly terms. I brushed the images aside and decided I would give her a stern talking to once I finally set foot on the base. Not that she wouldn’t get a word in edgewise, of course.
Bloody Knuckles (And Other Tales) Page 11
