by David Bruns
“You can take my stepmother home, Lander,” Ming said coldly. “I’ll drive myself.” Without waiting for an answer, she moved her maglev into the waiting shuttle that had been modified for her chair.
Lander shrugged and reached for Sying’s elbow. “Ma’am, if you’ll come this way. I’ll get you back to—”
Sying shook him off. “I’m coming to see you tomorrow, Ming.” She strode into the shuttle and threw herself in a chair.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Ming said without looking back. Her voice did not break.
Lander’s shuttle dropped away from the dock and made a broad turn away from the building.
Ming took a deep breath and used the arms of her chair to stand. Her legs shook, but they held her weight. She extracted the small bundle containing the MoSCOW suit from the storage compartment under the seat and tucked it under her arm. As she turned to make her way out of the shuttle, she spied the picture on the seat. Young Ming grasping for the butterfly. She snatched it up and tucked it into the bundle.
In the hallway, she used her retinal display to access the shuttle’s remote-control feature and program a course due east. She made sure the transponder was working and dropped the craft away from the dock.
The brick of explosives under the seat of her chair would detonate in one hour.
• • •
The air on the street level was stifling and thick with the heavy smells of close-packed humanity as Ming navigated the foot traffic on stiff, aching legs. She found a cab, an electric model illegally siphoning a charge off the Qinlao power meter. Ming pulled her cap lower on her face and hugged the bundle close to her chest as she negotiated with the driver to take her to an address in the old city.
The van had quaint, hand-sewn curtains covering the windows. Ming opened them a few centimeters to watch the Shanghai night scenes. It had been years since she’d spent time on the street level in the city. Through the driver’s open window, the scents rode in on the humid air. Street vendors, baked concrete, barely functioning sewers.
When they crossed the river into the old city, the roads narrowed even further, alleys grew darker, and the odors intensified. She could smell the river clearly, the mud, the rotting vegetation, and who knew whatever else the Han drew in from the countryside.
Her retinal display alerted her that the explosives timer in the shuttle had reached the final countdown. Ming twisted in her seat in a vain attempt to see the explosion. Buildings blocked her on all sides and the shuttle was miles away, but she looked east anyway.
The timer ran to zero.
Ming Qinlao was dead.
Too late, she realized the cab had stopped. She checked her position and saw they were at least two hundred meters from her destination.
“Why have we stopped?” she asked in Mandarin.
The driver twisted in his seat. “I miscalculated your fare,” he said with an evil leer. He spoke in Shanghainese, the local dialect of the area. Ming cursed to herself; using Mandarin had pegged her as an outsider and now she was paying the price. She didn’t need Echo to tell her she was in trouble.
Ming fingered the wad of cash in her pocket. If Ming Qinlao was dead, there was no way she could make a credit transaction.
“We had a deal,” she snapped, switching to the local dialect and surprising the man as she did so. Good, she had him second-guessing himself. Ming pulled out some cash and counted out the bills for the original fare, adding one more to the pile. “You take me where I want to go and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
The man’s eyes flicked from the cash to her face.
He’s not going to take the deal, Ming, Echo said.
She held out the cash tentatively and the driver reached for it. Ming dropped the money, gripped his wrist and twisted as hard as she could. With her free hand, she jabbed her fingernails into his eyes, then levered his arm over the seat until she heard something pop. The driver screamed in rage and pain.
Ming pushed her door open, still clutching the bundle with the picture and the suit. She swayed on her feet in the alley. She could barely walk, much less run. If this guy made it out of the vehicle, she was in real trouble.
The driver’s side door started to open and she saw his face, a blotchy mass of wild hair and wilder eyes. Ming seized the door and yanked it open. The driver, suddenly off-balance, began to fall out of the car. Ming slammed the door shut on his body again and again. He slipped lower and his head fell into the path of the doorframe.
She kept going until he stopped screaming, then gave two more wet, mushy slams of the door for good measure. His limp body slid to the ground. He did not get up.
Ming staggered down the empty alley toward her destination. Each step was a jolt of pain through her legs and hips and all the way up her spine, but she kept going, the dot on her retinal display slowly drawing closer to the dropped pin of her destination.
She hadn’t chosen this part of town for its safe neighborhoods. If the driver woke up or someone decided to take advantage of the strange wandering girl, it was all over for Ming Qinlao.
The warehouse was deep in an alley, but there was a dingy light over the doorway. Ming collapsed against the wall and slid the cover off the security panel. Her handprint opened the door and she fell inside.
Automatic lights came on, but she kept her face pressed against the cool concrete. Just a short nap, she told herself.
No rest, Echo said. Keep moving.
Ming startled awake. A quick check of her retinal display showed she had been asleep for seven minutes. Between the fight with the cabbie and her nap, she was almost thirty minutes behind schedule.
She drew her knees up under her chest and came to a kneeling position. The pain moved through her like a wave and a surge of nausea threatened to overwhelm her. A few deep breaths later and Ming stood on unsteady legs. Another handprint to another room revealed her destination: a one-seater aircar racer, unmarked, matte black, and equipped with a spoofed transponder.
Ming stowed her now-dirty and blood-spattered bundle under the seat, then lowered her body into the cockpit. The conforming cushions hugged her aching body like a lover and she sighed with blessed relief as she strapped into the harness. Her retinal display connected with the controls and started the preflight check automatically. The destination was preset, she noticed, and she smiled at his thoroughness.
When the craft was ready, Ming ordered the roof retracted. The aircar made a fast vertical ascent and entered the Shanghai air traffic patterns, just one of millions of vehicles buzzing over the massive city.
They ascended swiftly through a series of traffic loops until they entered the transcontinental lanes heading westward and Shanghai was a glow on the horizon. Blots of light showed cities in the dark velvet carpet beneath her car. These thinned as they moved farther west.
A drowsy hour later, Ming felt it in her stomach as the craft dropped rapidly out of the traffic lane. The aircar slowed and settled at a few hundred feet off the ground, engaging the terrain-following feature. In the dimness, Ming could make out shapes of trees and a few buildings as they flashed by. Up ahead, she spied the silver of a lake and knew they were close now. She saw a pattern of cultivated fields and the geometry of a white building looming out of the night as the aircar slowed and dropped to a landing.
She popped the cockpit top and sat for a moment in the night. Sweet air passed over her, carrying the scent of cut grass and turned earth, taking her back years to her childhood. Crickets sounded and the wind soughed through the trees bordering the property.
A light from the building pierced the night, making Ming squint. She clambered out of the cockpit, her legs like formed rubber beneath her, but somehow still holding her weight. A doorway opened on the building and more light spilled out. A silhouette, short, blocky, but still light on his feet despite his years.
Ming drew herself up and walked toward the man.
They paused a few steps from each other, as if by mutual agreement. Ito�
��s voice was older, but still strong, still comforting.
“Are you ready to begin your training, Little Tiger?”
Ming tried to bow to her former sensei but nearly lost her balance. “Not so little anymore, Ito.”
His chuckle was like a warm bath to her senses. “It is not the size of the tiger that matters, it is her will to hunt.” He reached for Ming. “Welcome home, Ming.”
She leaned into his sturdy frame, then sagged against him. Her breath caught, her eyes burned.
Step three.
Chapter 10
Adriana Rabh • New York City
Adriana studied the man across the coffee table from her. Short and bowlegged, with a belly that obscured his beltline and blocky facial features. Her dossier on him said he was native Chinese, but she doubted the accuracy of the file. His size and dark wavy hair spoke of some strain of a South Pacific nation. His face was placid, almost vacant, but she knew there was a sharp intellect behind this benign exterior.
He looked as unlike a spy as one could imagine, which is probably why he was so good. His day job was as a middle-manager bureaucrat in the Chinese Unit 8200, the notorious hacker corps of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. While the hotshot young engineers did the sexy cyber work, he kept the lights on and made sure the garbage got taken out every night. Over the years, he had developed his own tools to monitor what was going on inside the Chinese military and he sold the fruits of his labors to the highest bidder: her.
Adriana winced as her guest slurped his tea, years of breeding rebelling against his lack of social graces. She cleared her throat, anxious to get the meeting over with. She had gone to great lengths to bring him here, to her Park Avenue penthouse, to deliver his intelligence report in person because he refused to divulge it to anyone but her.
“Perhaps we can…?” Adriana began.
The Chinese spy, whose name was Wen Liu, grunted and took a cookie from the silver tray on the table. He chewed with his mouth open.
“There is a coup coming,” he said.
“A coup?” Adriana replied. “You mean in China?”
“I mean in the world.” He took another cookie. “The Chinese are tracking two military leaders, one army, one navy, for possible crimes against the State. They’ve been meeting secretly with Russian and European military leaders.”
“The State? I thought you said it was against the world.”
The man grinned, bits of crushed chocolate cookie clinging to his teeth. “That’s why they haven’t picked them up yet. For every action, there is a reaction—the action might be in China’s favor. They want to see what happens.”
“Do they have any association with the New Earth Order?” she asked.
Liu pulled a face as if he was considering the idea. “Possibly,” he said finally.
Adriana resisted the urge to snap at him. Liu had always been a reliable source, one of her best, but this was the first time she’d met him in person. She needed to tread carefully. “What does possibly mean?”
“One of the officers is a Neo, the other is not, but they work together. There is no other connection that I know of.”
Adriana got up and strode to the windows overlooking the city. She could see the UN Headquarters from here, even see her office window near the top of the gleaming building. She made an appearance at least once a week, but she preferred to work from her own apartment.
The UN office was adequate as far as government offices went—better than most—but she had grown accustomed to a higher standard of living. Her own quarters offered comfort, privacy, and security that the UN building did not. As for access to her colleagues, that was not a problem. Anyone from the UN who wanted to see her in person seemed happy to travel the half-mile to her penthouse to pay their respects to the Council of Corporations’ only representative on Earth.
“How long do you need to verify that the Neos are behind the coup attempt?” she asked him without turning around. She could hear him masticating another cookie and she wasn’t sure her stomach could handle it.
“We don’t know if that is true or not,” he said.
“I know it’s true,” she said back. “I need you to bring me the proof.”
The Neos were on the move, of that she was sure, but their end game was less clear to her. Intel from all over the world showed Neos congregating in population centers and refugee camps. Some of it could be explained by population displacement, but not all. Local leaders were getting established, as if they had shifted their strategy to one of decentralized management. The most persistent voice on the newsfeeds was the woman in Fort Hood, Corazon Santos. Even the name made her sound like a revolutionary. And now she found that the Chinese knew about subversive activity and sat on their hands. What did it take to exercise some good old-fashioned military might? Instead of feeding the would-be terrorists, why not lock them up?
But Liu’s report was the first to connect Neos with a potential coup. The fact that China was willing to sit this one out gave her pause. Her inclination was to stamp out the first sign of a Neo insurrection, but maybe drawing them out first wasn’t a terrible idea either. Perhaps she should invite the Chinese ambassador to the UN for dinner…
“Who else knows about this?” she asked.
“No one. The party is keeping this closely held.”
Adriana studied his face. The problem with spies was that she never knew if she could trust them. Her mind ran through the permutations of who else could gain from forcing her to act on this new intel. “Keep me posted,” she said. “And prove a link with the Neos.”
He seemed about to object to her request, then thought better of it. She heard him take another cookie on his way out.
She folded her arms and surveyed the city—her city—again. From this vantage point, the metropolis was a beautiful piece of miniaturist art. The weather stains on the building across the way looked beautiful at a distance, and the cars and people all merged into a never-ending flow of unified movement from this remove. Exactly the way she liked it.
Her virtual queried her about an unscheduled visitor. President Teller.
She allowed an inner smile as she accepted the request. Even the very mighty made the trek to see her.
Teller had apparently checked his political charm in the elevator. He stormed into the room, his face a deep red, and stalked toward her at the windows. It was all Adriana could do to hold her ground.
“What have you done?” he hissed at her.
His normally coiffed hair was mussed from where he’d run his fingers through it and his body seemed to quiver with emotion. “Don’t tell me the council is not behind this because it’s got your stink all over it!” Teller shouted.
“Calm down, Mr. President,” Adriana said in a neutral tone. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”
Teller looked wildly around the room. “Don’t you watch the fucking newsfeeds?” He found a wallscreen and connected to it. The YourVoice commentator was a breathy young blonde dressed in a jumpsuit that was sized just small enough to mold to her figure. Behind her was a mob of coveralls-clad people in a narrow hall celebrating. The chyron said: “LUNa City elects governor from opposition party.”
Adriana frowned. “Since when is there an opposition party on the Moon?”
Teller threw up his hands. “There isn’t! That’s the problem.” He changed channels rapidly. All of them carried the LUNa City takeover as their lead story. Members of the United Nations were already reacting to it, and not in a positive way. She could hear Teller’s teeth grinding together.
“Calm down.” She said again, pointing to the couch recently vacated by her Chinese spy. “Sit.”
Teller held his face with both hands. “I put myself on the line for you. Go along with the council, I told them. We can work this out with them. They’ll fund the Marshall Plan and we’ll get things back under control.” He glared at her. “And the very first thing you do is lose control of the Moon! You can buy all the He-3 you want, why do yo
u have to take over the supply?”
Adriana didn’t bother to answer the question. The council didn’t want to buy the He-3, they wanted to take it. All of it. But Anthony wouldn’t be that bold, not yet, anyway. He was still trying to save the world, not destabilize it.
“Who is this opposition leader?”
Teller’s eyes defocused as he consulted his retinal display. She felt a pulse as he sent her a data packet. “Young guy,” Teller said. “Total unknown, no political experience. Used to drive an extraction rig, for God’s sake, now he’s in charge.”
Adriana ignored his chatter. She could read. Her eyes scanned the dossier for one fact. There, under religious affiliation, she found what she was looking for.
New Earth Order.
“It’s a coup,” she said, her blunt pronouncement shutting down Teller’s rant.
“What?” He stared at her.
“It’s a coup. The Neos are launching a coup.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Teller said. “The opposition party ran on only one issue: alignment with the council. They’re in your pocket.”
Adriana shook her head. “If this was the council’s doing, I’d know it. I give you my word, we had nothing to do with it. This is the first step in a global takeover, and if you don’t get ahead of the problem, you’ll get run over, Mr. President.”
Teller’s face showed a war of emotions. He had no reason to believe her, even she could see that, but politics makes strange bedfellows.
“What do I need to do?” he asked.
“Get one of these Neo organizers. Question them.” Adriana thought frantically for a name. “The woman in Fort Hood, the one that’s always on the newsfeeds spouting her refugee bullshit.”
“Corazon Santos?”
“That’s her. Bring her in and get to the bottom of this mess fast.”
