Matthew S. Cox's Blog, page 22

Divergent Fate #66

(Start at the beginning)

Conflicting stories warred for prominence on the NewsNet; the heated debate regarding Arden emanating from numerous holo panels scattered about a commerce quad faded in and out amid the din of the crowd. The area formed by the crossing of two extra-wide passageways lined with stores had evolved into a mixture of food court and hangout. No one had bothered decorating the bare rock columns holding up the ceiling, though they were covered in plenty of plasfilm posters for local shows―as well as holo emitters.

Whenever the voice of a distant child rose above the background noise, Risa’s mood darkened. She glanced from a bouncing tween girl tugging on her father’s arm while pointing at a store window full of video games to the table in front of her, peering into the depths of an untouched bowl of self-warming noodle soup. Despite her best effort to focus on the sound of chopsticks scratching the bottom of the bowl, the pervasive voices on the NewsNet kept reminding her she failed. No answers lurked in the swirling mixture of broth, scallions, and ramen noodles.

Officer Imari, in the facing seat, tapped her fingers on the table in a rhythmic march, creating ripples in the surface of her own untouched bowl of soup. “You should’ve let me take you to Cheng’s. He cooks it while you watch.”

“Been there… there’s dozens of ramen bars around Elysium, too.” Risa lifted some noodles on her chopsticks, and pondered them for a minute before stirring the clump back into the broth. “It’s not the soup. I didn’t want you to waste your creds on good food right now.”

“You’re really worried about him.”

“From the looks of it, you are too… or are you just not used to self-warming ramen?” Risa flashed a halfhearted smile.

“Well, I’m more inclined to believe you now.” Officer Imari picked at her meal.

“If I were you,” said Risa, “I’d have established trust before giving me my gear back.”

“I did… mostly. I look much calmer than I am, only because I can’t think of a reason anyone would want to hurt him. I’m sure he’s still alive.”

Risa suppressed a shiver at the thought. She looked away from the table, captivated for a moment by six holo-panes of various sizes projected from support columns scattered throughout the area. Each bore the same image, four talking heads in bright colored frames arguing about whether they felt the destruction of Arden’s dome was an act of fate, war, or terrorism. A mousy-looking man in dark blue suit had been offering timid opinions that he thought it an accident, though much of what he said was ignored by the others. A young woman with bright violet lip gloss in the far right frame (also purple) insisted it was corporate action to drive up the price of food in the region. One panelist, a thick-bodied man with frazzled white hair, bellowed over the others and caught her ear. He argued such an attack on an agricultural outpost is contrary to the stated goals of the Martian Liberation Front. Arden had no military value; crippling it would only harm civilians.

A dour-faced older woman in a dark grey suit jacket interrupted him, implying he had traitorous leanings and must have sympathies with known terrorists. The two got into a back and forth of pseudo-facts; the woman brought up a number of bombing events over the past fifteen years, emphasizing the amount of civilian casualties. For each incident she mentioned, the white-haired man countered with ‘supposed’ proof that it was not the MLF.

Only two were really us… both ACC targets. The civilians were caught up in it because they wrap their military targets with citizen shields. Risa shuddered, despair having flashed to anger. Neither of them had been her work. The Eridania city bombing happened six years before she was even born, and the explosion at Thyle had been the one which killed her friend Genevieve. The clamor of political harpies chewing on the dead meat of a few dozen Arden settlers faded out of Risa’s consciousness.

What if Gen knew?

The ACC had built three production facilities at the bottom levels of their subterranean city, which produced armored combat vehicles. The four stories above that were all civilian. If Genevieve figured out her mission would kill innocent people, perhaps her bomb’s malfunction wasn’t an accident.

No… Genevieve would’ve refused. She wouldn’t have done it.

“Hey,” said Officer Imani. “You okay?”

Unexpected fear in the woman’s voice caught Risa off guard. “Not really.”

“File says you’re psionic, that you hear shit from the other side. For a second there, that look on your face made me think you’d gotten bad news from the other side or something.”

“Your file’s full of shit.” Risa’s anger had given her a small appetite. She twirled noodles around her chopsticks. “I’m about as psionic as this piece of shrimp.”

“Didn’t you get the beef?”

“Whatever.” She ate it, whatever it was. All flavors of Nippy-Nom brand Quick-Ramen tasted the same except for varying degrees of saltiness. “Sometimes an angel talks to me. It’s nothing I can control.”

“Did she say anything about Pavo?” Officer Imari leaned closer.

“He, and no.” Risa scowled. “Why does everyone always assume an angel is a woman?” Her annoyance faded with a sigh. “Raziel has been quiet as a mouse since Arden fell on me.”

“Convenient.”

After the third mouthful, Risa looked up. “Was that directed at me or him?”

“I don’t know.” Officer Imani raked her fingers through her short, black hair and grumbled. “I’ve been back and forth through Marsnet, looking for any trace of Pavo. There’s nothing. I can’t figure out why anyone would bother with him. I’d never have believed the man was that… clean if I didn’t research it myself. What was that thing you mentioned… Pueri-something.”

“Pueri Verum Martis,” said Risa in a half-whisper. “I shouldn’t be so casual about this but… What does it matter anymore?”

“Could it help find him?”

Risa shrugged. “Have any other MDF officers gone missing recently?”

“Nothing but the usual sick callouts and stress cases.”

“Then probably not. I don’t know exact numbers but I know there are a lot of people associated with the PVM.” Risa held up a lump of ‘meat’ to the light, trying to figure out if she’d gotten beef, or square nuggets of vat-grown shrimp flesh. “Secret society within the military and the MDF. At first they were patriots, but now they view Earth’s senate as a FOG.”

“Fog?” Officer Imani showed some interest in her soup, watching Risa eat.

“Foreign Oppressive Government. The PVM has decided to help the MLF free Mars, especially since we seem to hit the ACC more than the UCF.”

“Did you do that on purpose?” Officer Imani broke up laughing, sputtering soup and noodle fragments. “You need more acronyms.”

“The Defense Force is basically the military with police powers instead of assault weapons.” Risa smirked. “You should be used to acronyms. I don’t think Pavo was very high up in the command structure of the PVM… or even if they have a command structure. When I first met him, he seemed like a clumsy rookie.” She couldn’t help but cry remembering him walking headfirst into the pipe. “He did such an awful job of faking an Icewhisper high, I’m surprised Denmark didn’t shoot us both.” She wiped her eyes and gazed at the broth. “He couldn’t be important enough to grab.”

“Aurelia,” said Officer Imani.

“What?” Risa blinked.

“My name.”

“Oh… pretty.”

The armored woman stabbed a chopstick through a hunk of egg floating in her soup. “Thanks. Who do you think did it?”

Debating gave way to screaming; all six holo panels erupted with an explosion of sound and light; armored men flying in a three-dimensional arena, chasing a powered metal sphere. Risa whispered a silent thanks in her mind to whatever person in whatever small, dark office hit the switch to change the station on the holo panels. Gee-ball might be mindless and violent, but it was better than listening to those people discuss dead civilians like pieces on a board game.

“The way you described the attack makes it sound like either Syndicate, C-Branch, or some expensive mercenaries.”

“I hope you can suggest more than things I’ve already considered.”

Both women remained quiet as a crowd of teens meandered past. They looked bored, and grumbled about social atrocities like the next installment of the Colony Commando series VR game being pushed back two months or some musician Risa had never heard of going on ‘hiatus’ instead of releasing another album.

“Tragedies of modern youth,” whispered Aurelia, once they’d gone out of earshot.

“Yeah.” Risa kept her bitter stare aimed at the table. It wasn’t those kids’ fault they had a comfortable existence. She couldn’t blame them for what happened to the mineshaft kids… or her. “I’m going to check the Syndicate angle.”

“Where to?” Aurelia grabbed her helmet, as if to stand. “How?”

“I’m going to go ask them.” Risa smirked at the soup. “I should probably finish this; it might be my last meal.”

Divergent Fate #65

(Start from the beginning)

Luck and Risa had never been on the best of terms; once again, her old ‘pal’ seemed to have gotten the upper hand. Most of her effort went to holding back a geyser of energy wanting to explode as the armored MDF officer approached. Scream, cry, panic, pass out, run away, kill, and throw up cycled through her brain as if on a carnival game wheel. The feminine figure in brick-red armor with black highlights and grey patches stepped into the room. A reflective, gold-tinted visor plate concealed any cues to her intent based on expression.

Risa closed her eyes. Please let this be nothing. Please let me go home to Pavo.

“Miss?” asked the woman.

Risa rolled her head to the side, facing the cop. Something about the officer’s posture struck her as wrong. Not enough aggression; the woman had an almost conciliatory stance, like a child about to ask for a cookie ten minutes before dinner. The unexpected passivity caught her off guard, and let her fear of imminent arrest weaken.

“Are you feeling alright? Do you have a few minutes to talk about what happened?”

“What happened?” She thinks I’m a victim?

The armored woman stopped within arm’s reach of the bed. “The hospital contacted us based on your injuries… as well as the statement from the man who brought you in.” She held up a datapad. “I’m here to help.”

“I’m okay. Really, I’m just tired.” Shit, maybe I shouldn’t brush it off. That’ll make her more suspicious. “I got jumped by some Scraps lookin’ for points.”

“Scraps?” The officer tapped two fingers along the top edge of the datapad, making a soft woodpecker-like noise. “They don’t usually abandon their victims alive, naked in a hotel room. I understand if you find it difficult to talk about.”

She’ll know if I lie about something like this… “They didn’t. My clothes got ruined, I’d just showered and―”

“Given the hardware you’ve got, I’d have expected you to be a better liar.” The woman pivoted on her heel and walked to the door, nudging it closed. “I your Hotarus under the bed. Nice guns, they’ve had a bit of tweaking. Funny thing, both e-mags were at full charge.”

Fuck. Why? Risa glared at the ceiling. All these years and the cops don’t nab me until I want out. Maris, you bastard.

“Nothing to say?” asked the officer. “Well, hopefully you’re not thinking about killing me just yet.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone.” Risa looked away.

“An odd outlook for someone with military grade Chinese neuralware and nano claws.” The woman lifted her head, the sound of a smile in her voice. “So if you’re not a victim of a sex crime, what happened?”

All the strength fled from Risa’s muscles. “If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I’ve had an interesting week.” The officer sauntered closer.

“I used to do merc work, but I’m trying to get out of it. Caught a job trying to defend an ag settlement from ‘unknown hostiles’, but they turned out to be C-Branch.”

The cop’s body stiffened. “Military intelligence? Are you sure?”

“One of them told me as he was kicking my ass.” Risa sat up, making an effort to move in a slow, nonthreatening way. “I’m sure you saw the medical scans.”

“Yes. Your injuries didn’t seem likely for a DV case. Did you kill the person who attacked you?”

“No. Raziel did.”

“Who is Raziel?”

“An angel.” Risa chuckled and clasped her side where a lingering ache reawakened. “No, not like the man who brought me here. A literal angel, glowing gold wings, sword, all that.”

The officer stared in silence for a moment.

“I did say you wouldn’t believe me.”

“When was the last time you saw Officer Aram?”

Pavo? Risa’s head snapped to the right, locking her gaze on where she imagined the woman’s eyes to be, behind the mask. “The morning before I left for Arden.” Why did I just answer that?

“You haven’t seen him since?”

Risa leaned towards the woman, clasping the bedding on either side of her right knee. “No. Why? Why are you asking about Pavo?”

The helmet let off a weak pneumatic hiss as the visor pulled up, sliding over the top of the helmet to expose the face of his duty partner. Risa looked from her Earth-toned skin to the nameplate above her left breast―Imari, A

“Got wind of a possible DV or rape vic fitting your description. I swiped the dispatch before anyone else could. I was coming here to slap you around until you told me what was going on. First time I laid eyes on you, I knew something wasn’t right.”

Risa’s somatic detection system projected a half-dozen indicators in her electronic vision, keyed to the woman’s eye motions, perspiration level, vocal inflection, and heart rate. All signs indicated calm and truthful. “So what happened? You have a sudden attack of friendliness on the way down the hall?”

“Saw your medical report. Didn’t feel like getting my throat slit by a blurry ghost. If I was only interested in ass-kicking, there would’ve been thirty of us. What happened to Pavo?”

“What happened to Pavo?” Risa raised her voice.

“That’s what I asked. I was hoping you could tell me.” Officer Imari folded her arms. “What kind of shit is he involved in?”

Risa flung the blanket off and got out of bed, pacing circles over a freezing floor. The clingy medical smock, much thinner than her flexible armor and more snug, left no secret of her body’s opinion of the cold.

“This is off the record.” The woman sat in the chair by the bed, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Unless you’re a serial killer, I’m only worried about finding him. Are you C-Branch? ACC?”

Risa stopped hard, bare feet squeaking on the gloss white tiles. “He’s missing?” No, no, no, no. All I wanted was to come back to him and… Tears came unbidden, though her expression remained stoic. “What do you know?”

“Two days ago, a man broke into my apartment around the time I usually drag my ass out of bed. He must’ve been like you―speedware out the ass. He was on me before I could get a hand on my weapon and… next thing I know, I’m cuffed and gagged on the floor, dizzy as hell from some kinda chem. I about shit myself, expecting… well, you know.”

Risa’s fear and anger stepped back a tick. “Yeah.”

“My sergeant’s voice comes outta the Vidphone, so I look up to see the guy that ambushed me, wearing my bathrobe as well as my head… fucking hologram mask. He called me out sick, and left me there. I drifted in and out for―I dunno―a couple hours from whatever drug he gave me. When I came to, I got the tape off my mouth and started screaming, but the fucker smashed my apartment’s term. I had to wait for Juno and Ronas to kick my door in fourteen hours later when I didn’t show up for role call. You wanna talk about awkward? People you work with every day finding you in hogtied in your underwear with your own binders… They’ll be ridin’ me about that for the rest of my life.”

“What about Pavo?”

Officer Imari grumbled, clenching her hands into fists. “Apparently, I picked him up as usual. Cams outside his apartment showed him getting into a car with me driving it. We haven’t seen him since.”

“No…” Risa stopped pacing and fell seated on the edge of the bed. “No…”

“I suspected some kind of intelligence operation. Whoever they were, they got in and out of the MDF network like ghosts. They had the codes to my apartment, and nothing showed up on cam near my place. It’s like they wanted people to see him getting in the car with me, even though I was drugged to hell and back at the time.” The woman looked her in the eye. “I know you’re connected somehow. All I want to do is find him.”

Risa narrowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t hurt him. I…” She lost the battle of wills, and bawled.

Officer Imari put a hand on her shoulder. “Ain’t like that girl. Just partners. Men aren’t my thing. I’m worried about him like he’s my little bro.”

“Off the record?” What the hell am I doing? “Right?” Nothing matters but Pavo.

“I promise.” Light from inside the woman’s helmet went out. “Everything’s off.”

You’re an idiot, Risa. “I’m not C-Branch… Martian Liberation Front. So is Pavo. He’s Pueri Verum Martis.”

“Oh.” She let her arm fall. “Is that all?”

Risa looked up. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“No. You may be the only link I have to find him. Besides, the MLF is a puppet show anyway.”

“What?” Risa blinked. “Puppet show?”

Officer Imari leaned back, blowing air through fluttering lips. “Well, maybe it’s just a rumor, but I keep hearing something about C-Branch setting it up for plausible deniability. You know, so they can blow shit up and blame someone else… course, might be conspiracy wonks rattling their empty brains.”

Risa’s mind raced. All the close calls she’d had went by one after the other. How could the MLF have smoothed things over legally for her? How could they get half the intel they get when they seemed like a bunch of ragged malcontents living in the sewers. Is that why Maris gets so testy about his ‘rank?’ No… it couldn’t be. C-Branch wanted to blow up Arden to blame us. If the MLF was a C-Branch sham, they’d have just sent me to blow it up.

She squeaked, covering her mouth with both hands and gazed at the ceiling.

They did…

Divergent Fate #64

(Start at the beginning)

Flying fifteen meters above the surface of Mars would have been nerve-wracking if not for the overwhelming urge to pass out. An endless stream of green lines highlighting rocks scrolled by on the Lava Wasp’s primary display, its terrain-following radar gave a thirty-second preview of any obstacles ahead that required a course correction. Risa’s head popped up as she fought off yet another near miss of sleep. She didn’t remember much of the four-legged walker clearing debris away from her stolen aircraft. She couldn’t recall how she went from slumped in a heap on the ground to being airborne. A vague memory of the girl wishing her luck and rushing off to extricate a couple of men trapped in a garage flickered in and out.

The console erupted in loud beeping alarms.

“Gah!” She screamed, flailing about as she realized she had indeed passed out for close to a minute. “Shit!”

Sensors in the cockpit had alerted the flight control system to an unconscious pilot. A monotone female voice said, “Wake up” over and over.

Now alert, she clenched the sticks in a grip that drew creaks from the plastic. A few seconds later, the voice ceased its nagging. Light-headed, she poked at the Navcon to check her route.

Secundus City was the closest destination offering both a reasonable chance at medical care, access back to civilization, while still being far enough removed from her usual haunts to hinder the military back-tracing her. She thought about how far a walk her body would tolerate, and where to ditch the ship.

Seconds after she debated this, a small screen to her left filled with text. Risa blinked at it, astounded and confused as the meaning of the words filtered through her tattered consciousness. An official flight plan and landing assignment―again listed as a training operation―directed her to a small aboveground facility near the entrance to Secundus proper. A note at the bottom in red stood out from the rest:

This is how C-Branch usually sets it up when they ‘borrow’ military hardware for covert ops. Set down, and walk away like you belong there. No one will question your lack of uniform.

“Raziel,” she whispered.

The image of his blazing silhouette unfurled its wings in her mind. She froze the scene in her mind where his a broadsword made of light stuck through the chest of the special operations soldier who almost killed her. The chest that had not a mark on it. Risa traced her fingertips down the screen over the flight plan. How could an angel, a creature of another realm, influence her world so much? Why didn’t he stop the bombs himself? How could he let them destroy Arden?

“Scout one-three, come about zero-four-four degrees and slow to 30 knots, copy.”

A woman’s voice filled her head.

Risa swallowed blood and spit, and another gulp of exhaustion. “Copy.”

“You’re clear for approach, one-three. Set down on pad nine.”

“Copy,” said Risa.

The pilot’s ghost inside her head seemed to know what all of that meant. She felt like a spectator in her own body as her arms and fingers moved with automatic motions. Within minutes, the Lava Wasp glided over one of twelve rectangular metal platforms arranged in a horseshoe around an area full of six-wheeled vehicles, missile trucks, and hoses. Larger dropships sat on the end pads, craft large enough to ferry a pair of personnel carriers inside their holds from ground to orbit.

Loose brick-red soil swirled away in gusts as the Lava Wasp settled in over a bare plastisteel surface emblazoned with a massive numeral 9. She pulled back on the stick to flare the nose, deployed the landing pads, and eased the vertical controls down until the craft’s weight settled into the springs. Anyone on the outside would’ve thought she knew what she was doing.

Dozens of men and women in Mars camo moved about the assorted vehicles, carts, and cargo in the central area. A few glanced at her in passing. Risa’s chest constricted.

“Like I own the place…” She winced as a rib reminded her it was broken.

It took her a moment to find the canopy release. Small, square pads folded out of the side of the Lava Wasp, forming a ladder between the pilot seat and the ground. Risa held back the urge to scream as she forced herself to stand, threw a leg over the sidewall and climbed the precarious ‘stairway.’

She summoned her best ‘why the hell are you looking at me’ glare while walking off the landing pad. One man checked a holo-panel floating over his left arm, looked at her ship, looked at her, and turned pale. Being thought of as C-Branch was as reassuring as it was nauseating. Her stumble took her away from the military area, over bare dirt, to a cluster of civilian buildings housing air purifiers, water pumps, and the electrical uplink to the solar energy fields a quarter or so mile away.

A gleaming silver track ran from a huge platform elevator to a civilian shuttle terminal a mile east of the city. She trudged over to an attached stairway and climbed up to a grated walkway, the only pedestrian outside. Wind from a passing capsule-shaped tram full of commuters knocked her into the fence. For a few seconds, she clung to it wearing a grimace. Every bruise echoed in her muscles. When the pain subsided enough to allow conscious thought to return, she staggered the last fifty meters to a bank of elevators along the side of the shaft where tramcars emerged.

Secundus City, as its name implies, was the second attempt at UCF colonization of Mars. Built in the days before atmospheric domes had the trust of the people, the bulk of its population resided a quarter mile under the surface. Risa leaned against the back corner of the elevator on the way down; energy melted out of her muscles, leaving her sliding into a half squat/sit. She stared at the open door for a minute before realizing she was supposed to get up and walk out.

The trip from the visitor center at the bottom to a tourist-trap hotel four blocks away passed in a blur. She blinked at the little room around her, feeling as though she’d teleported from the street. A few fumbling pokes at her NetMini ordered a plain long-sleeved top, loose pants, and basic shoes.

She couldn’t go to a med center armed and armored―that would raise too many questions.

Risa shrugged off her weapons harness, letting it hit the Comforgel pad behind her. Sitting on the bed might have been a mistake, but she didn’t care. She pinched the top of the collar where the ballistic stealth armor met her jawline and pulled the fastener down to her hip. The thick, rubbery material peeled away from sweaty skin, white as snow. She felt a little bad about putting on new clothes without a shower, but a shower would bring sleep.

No longer feeling the need to hold back, she gasped, wailed and cried out with every motion as she peeled herself out of the armor. A buzz at the door signaled the arrival of her order. She forced herself upright, trudging naked across the room until the sight of her reflection in the window, blotched with purple bruises, made her pause. She dismissed it with a grunt and opened the door. After collecting her order from the flying delivery bot, she got dressed where she stood.

A few passersby in the hotel concourse stared. One man rushed over.

“Hey kid, you okay?”

Risa pulled down on the shirt; her head emerged, hidden in a tangle of unkempt raven hair. She tried to focus on the man who was obviously not a native of Mars. His skin was as dark as Osebi’s, and his black shirt had a cartoony drawing of Mars over the chest. The sort of thing that people buy at shuttleports when they’ve been on-planet for less than an hour. He grasped her shoulders in a gentle, steadying grip, and looked her in the eye.

“I’ve had better days.” She half-smiled. “Kid? I’m like… twenty… fuck.”

His kind eyes blurred into a smear of colored light. Coarse cloth brushed across her cheek, and arms grabbed on to her. The next thing Risa knew, she stared up at bright, round lights. The vague sense of being in a bed reached her mind.

Fuck it.

When next she opened her eyes, the same lights glared overhead. Warm Comforgel squished under her. A clingy, white smock with a high neck covered her arms to above the elbows and midway down her thighs. Soreness pervaded every muscle fiber, though the sharp agony of a broken rib was absent.

Risa looked around at what could only be a hospital room, based on the white walls and Spartan décor. The new clothes she’d ordered upon arrival lay folded on a table to the right of her bed, and the weak fruity scent of dried breathable gel clung to her hair. A thin plastic bracelet around her wrist identified her as “Jane Doe.” She covered her face with both hands, trying to rub feeling into her cheeks again.

Worry and relief got into a duel in her head; at least no one recognized her. Disorientation of a windowless room and perhaps oversleeping left her clueless as to how much time had passed or even what day it was.

“Miss?” said a deep, but concerned sounding female voice. “Do you have a minute?”

Risa pulled her hands down; her heart raced at the unmistakable silhouette standing in the room’s only doorway: Mars Defense Force armor.

The police.

Shit.

Book Signings

 

Upcoming book signing events in NJ:

Friday November 21, Menlo Park Mall in Edison from 7pm to 9pm.

Saturday November 22nd, Freehold NJ B&N, from 12pm to 2pm.

Divergent Fate #63

(Start at the Beginning)

Beeping, slow and distant, pierced the lightless silence in which Risa floated. Lumps jabbed in her back and legs; a blunted point pressed into her left breast. The flavor of metal and dirt filled her mouth; she tried to moan, but spat a spray of soil and rock chips. The beeping, a sound once far away as if on the other side of a long tube, seemed to get closer and faster. Irritating, like an alarm clock just out of reach, the noise made lying there intolerable. Risa fought a wave of panic when she couldn’t open her eyes. Seconds later, she realized they already were―the world was pitch black.

Her left arm lay pinned to her side under the weight of broken concrete. As if caught in the blocky teeth of a stone giant, her body twisted through hunks of debris. Risa coughed and spat Martian regolith, and kept choking. She’d had enough close calls to know the air was too thin. A growling cry slipped from her mouth―a failed scream―as she realized the only possible explanation.

The black ops team had destroyed Arden’s dome.

I’m trapped under tons of rubble, suffocating. She closed her eyes. I suppose that’s it then.

Time passed in silence as she thought back through her life. Images of every bomb she’d ever planted thundered through her mind. The sensation of warm blood on her hands from everyone she’d killed. She preferred stealth to killing, but sometimes there was no other way. Finding the people who killed her father had been more important than her soul. Finding the truth had drained it. The last bomb ticked down to two seconds; her half-conscious dream-self slumped with relief and sighed. Kree looked up at her, smiling.

I almost killed those kids. Her eyes shot open. Pavo… No, I can’t give up. I have to get back to him.

She thrashed and squirmed, pulling on her right arm with as much strength as she could summon. Risa rocked her body back and forth; minutes and millimeters passed. Eventually, she got her hand loose enough to reach up and brush silt from her face. After a few long breaths to stop her head from spinning, she grabbed the rough shard of stone jabbing her in the chest and shoved. The stone went left as she slid her body out from under it, winding up on her side. Her motion triggered a chain reaction in the debris, and more scraped and clattered overhead.

Raziel, if you’re still with me, I could really use a guardian angel right about now.

With both arms over her face, she curled as much into a ball as the space would allow. When the rumble and clattering stopped, everything was still black. She tried nightvision, but the cavern around her was perfect dark, not even a tiny pinhole of daylight crept in. The spatial sensor created wispy grey wraiths whenever a bit of debris bounced past overhead. That her cyberware could ‘see’ motion gave her hope; it meant freedom was only a few feet away.

Pain throbbed through her bones; between the C-Branch agent beating her senseless and getting crushed by rubble, the thought of curling up and letting herself go was too appealing. Her head sagged as fatigue and lack of oxygen threatened to drag her into permanent sleep. She grunted, focusing on a mental image of Pavo holding Kree in the doorway of their future home to keep going. Hoarse grunts and moans escaped as she struggled to her knees and braced both hands on a slab overhead. Straining got her nowhere but tired, and brought on a dangerous bit of dizziness. She slumped back, sitting on her heels with a hand over her mouth. The incessant beeping poked at her brain like some manner of torture. Trapped in the dark with an alarm clock she couldn’t see and couldn’t stop, she tried to scream again, but managed only a gagging wheeze.

Faint thuds in the ground made her wonder if her heart had crawled up into her skull. The sound grew louder, and rumbled through the dirt. Her mind raced; if something was moving around out there, it had to be more of the C-Branch assassins or perhaps military forces coming to mop up. Risa slumped over, playing dead. Mechanical whirring accompanied the scrape of metal on stone. Upon the blackness of her closed eyes, she watched grey shapes move, overhead. Distinct swaths of brightness took on the outlines of thick slabs, even down to the detail of the mangled reinforcing spars sticking out of the edge. Another piece of stone dragged past, dropping a wave of dust on top of her.

A blast of wind hit her face. The ground trembled with a deep thud, accompanied by the higher-pitched clatter of a huge rock sliding through chips. Seconds later, the machine noises ceased. A feminine grunt came from above, followed by the sound of boots on gravel. Wraith-like shadows defined a human figure approaching through the black. The form stooped and reached for her; a warm hand brushed grit from her cheek.

“Aww, fuck,” said a young voice amid the whoosh-click of a rebreather mask. “That sucks.”

That girl.

Risa opened her eyes, staring up at the naked sky. Strands of medium blue swirled through a starfield rendered in indigo and black. From where she lay, the entire dome appeared gone. She sat up, making the thirteen-year-old kneeling over her scream. The girl had added a facemask to her dingy orange jumpsuit. Her four-legged walker loomed behind her, front end lowered in an ungainly stooping bow. It seemed quite a bit larger from the ground.

“What’s that damn beeping?” asked Risa.

“Holy shit, you’re alive!”

She accepted the girl’s offered hand, and wobbled upright. “You too. I was expecting a massacre.”

“Atmo-alarms went off about three minutes before the dome took a shit.” The girl gestured up. “My dad thinks it was some kinda missile from the outside.”

Risa swooned to her knees.

“Shit, you aint got a reeber.” The girl grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Try an’ hold your breath, I’ll get you to the hut.”

“Beeping?” Risa’s voice sounded as if someone next to her was talking.

“Over there,” said the girl pointing. She dragged Risa a few paces left. “Under this.”

“Make it stop.” Risa kicked a six-foot triangular slab of semitransparent plastisteel―a piece of the dome.

“Keep your panties on,” said the girl, jogging back to her walker.

“I…” Risa blushed. “Uhh, nevermind. I’m gonna hear that fucking beeping in my dreams for years.”

She knelt, dizzy and choking, as the girl scrambled up a thin ladder and swung herself into the dangling chair stuck to the front end of the machine. The kid plugged her boots into sockets, grabbed a pair of joysticks, and pulled the behemoth upright. It took a step sideways as a pair of four-elbowed arms folded down from either side of the pilot’s seat. The machine moved the debris as easily as if it were chunks of foam.

There, on the ground, lay the C-Branch man who had almost killed her. His eyes swelled from their sockets, a bit of optic nerve visible in the hollow space behind them. Blood leaked around them, as well as out of his nose and mouth. His metal right hand still tried to close tighter around his own throat.

Risa stared at his chest―his unbroken, unmarred chest. The spot where Raziel’s glowing broadsword had pierced had avoided even a scratch from the debris.

“I’m delirious.” Risa shook her head and looked again―still no wound.

The beeping came from a utility pouch on his belt, containing a rebreather mask. An alarm warning him the atmosphere was gone. An alarm he would never hear.

She fell on him, all but tearing the case off his belt to get to the mask. As soon as she opened it, the horrible sound stopped. Risa fumbled to unpack the mask and pressed it over her face, sucking in great breaths until she felt lightheaded. The weak taste of rubber and chemicals displaced the flavor of dirt. After dizziness faded, she pulled an elastic strap over her head and re-examined the body.

It appeared he’d committed suicide by crushing his own throat with a cybernetic arm. The knife he had been about to jam into Risa’s chest stuck out of his right thigh.

What the fuck is wrong with me now? She shuddered from the agony rippling through her body. Maybe I am Cat-6 after all. Maybe I’m already dead and this is the other side.

“Hey, Risa?” yelled the girl.

She looked up, the bottom of the kid’s boots dangled six feet overhead. How the hell―

“Your friend said you should get outta here before the army shows up. Oh, hey, you found a reeber.”

“My friend?” She pressed both hands into the small of her back and took a few tentative steps. “What friend?”

The girl leaned forward, her mask-covered face glowing green in the light from the armor-encased screen attached to the front of her seat. “He said he was your guardian angel. That’s like a callsign or some shit, right? Guess you can’t use your real names or something.”

Risa looked up into the stars. You somehow made their alarms go off early, didn’t you? She coughed into the rebreather mask, patting herself on the chest. The sensation of grit flying around in her lungs seemed more real than her imagination.

The girl smiled. The walker’s right work-arm mimicked her salute. “Thanks for trying to save us.”

“How…” Risa’s ‘mission mind’ had returned. She held on to stoicism. Hours or perhaps a day or two from now, she’d find a dark place and let out her guilt. Sobbing over the dead right here, right now, would do no one any good. “How many died?”

“Uhh.” The walker leaned up and back, swiveling in place. “Weber and Carlson got hit by falling dome. Died on impact. Couple of the mechanics are on ArdenChat bitching about bein’ trapped in the garage. Maybe ten or so of the upsecs got pasted.”

Risa blinked. This is a child? “You don’t sound too upset.”

The girl lifted her rebreather mask to spit to the side. “Damn asshats in the biolab think they’re better than us grunt workers. Always talk down to us like we’re some less ‘an human specie. Guess coz I don’t got a double PHD and have to fuckin’ work, they get to shove me down stairs because they’re ‘late for a meeting.’ They treat us like shit. Good for them.”

“Can you give me a hand with that?” Risa pointed at where the tailfins of the Lava Wasp protruded from dome fragments. “I need to get outta here. Damn, I hope that thing still works.”

“Sure.”

A large gripper claw pinched her weapons harness, right between the shoulder blades, and picked her off the ground like a battered, bruised, and despondent kitten. Risa swallowed the urge to scream. All her weight hanging on her armpits reawakened her broken rib, and many fist-shaped purple spots under her armor. Teeth gritted, eyes closed, she reached up and held on as the motion of the walker caused her to sway side to side.

Oh, fuck, this hurts. Hurts is good. I’m alive. Pain means I lived.

“Haro and Gill can wait a few more minutes,” said the kid. “The garage isn’t gonna collapse. So what’s this ‘guardian angel’ guy look like? Is he cute? He sounds hot.”

Raziel’s blazing, winged silhouette flashed through her mind. “Yeah… he is.”

Divergent Fate #62

(Start from the beginning)

Viscous fluid dripped from the underside of the flying bot as it carried Risa across the hydroponic field. She gritted her teeth and suppressed the instinct to wipe at her hair. It smelled like a mixture of soil and methane, likely the same syrup in the hundred-meter long grow tanks racing past thirty feet below.

A four-legged walker, painted yellow and striped black, halted astride one of the rows. Its flat main body tilted up towards her. At the front end, suspended on a precarious seat with legs dangling free, a young teenage girl leaned forward to gaze up at her as she passed overhead. For a second they made eye contact; the dirt-smeared girl couldn’t have been much more than thirteen. Risa lifted her knees to her chest to clear a narrow horizontal pipe, letting herself dangle again on the other side. Her fingers almost slipped off the narrow struts, now slick with hydroponic nutrient fluid. She growled, holding on in defiance of the pain in her hands. Hopefully, the last bomb wouldn’t require flying.

Her unorthodox transport dropped her off on the roof of a brick-shaped plastisteel building, two stories tall. Slippery grime coated every inch of it, sweeping her boots out from under her as she landed. She closed and opened her hands, trying to chase the numbness away. A nest of cube-shaped machine housings clustered on the left half of the power station, thrumming with activity. She scrambled upright, slipping in the grease as she rushed among the waist-high devices, searching for another bomb.

Knowing she stood on top of eight twenty-foot-tall fusion reactor cores didn’t do a whole lot for her nerves.

A minute later, she found the device wedged between two of the ventilation housings on the same row, leaving only three inches of clearance on the face with the M3 jack.

“Shit.”

She squeezed herself into a crouch and grabbed the corner, trying to pull it out of the narrow channel.

Don’t.

That time, Raziel’s voice had its usual energy, paralyzing her.

Risa shuddered, hands balled to fists against her breast. She clenched her jaw and whined.

When his presence released her muscles, she sagged limp against the foul-smelling metal. “Okay, that was stupid.” She panted and gasped at the fire in her muscles. “I suppose I deserved that. This thing’s gotta have a motion trigger.” It still bothered her how easily she had defeated the detonator program in the first bomb. Her skill in Cyberspace was not much higher than that of a spectator; and she didn’t have a deck turning her thoughts and desires into attack and defense programs.

She readied the wire, holding the prong between two fingers as she forced her hand in the space between the bomb and the next chamber.

Wonder how much radiation I’m absorbing here.

The plug scraped around the socket, threatening to slip out of her grip. Risa bit her lip and clenched her already-deadened fingers tight. Seconds later, it snapped in. A jolt in the back of her head sent a spasm down her body; the world went black.

After a sense of falling, she landed upon a stamped metal floor on all fours. The single, doorless room looked the same as the one before. A large holographic tactical map showed an army of red tanks advancing towards an army of blue ones. A man in a general’s uniform whirled to face her, staring through the display. Risa didn’t give it the time to yell at her. She leapt through the war map, shattering it into thousands of glowing fragments, and fell with outstretched claws. Frozen in place, the General stood with his mouth agape as the little blades tore gleaming swaths of light through his chest. She slashed at the program until the virtual body was nothing more than a scattering of silver shards.

Raziel did not need to prod her further; she shredded the consoles next. When she had done enough damage to the system, the node failed. She awoke draped over the bomb, feeling as though she’d been stabbed in the head by a red-hot knife.

“Ngh.” She rubbed her forehead.

It took her a moment to find the willpower to move. Burning, as though a lit ember of charcoal rested upon her brain stem, kept her eyes closed.

The pain is regrettable, whispered Raziel into her mind. You endure for the lives of a thousand innocents.

“Where is it?” She grabbed the machinery and forced herself up, more weight borne by her arms than legs. “Please tell me I don’t have to fly there.”

Follow the light.

He muted his presence sufficient to cause only a shiver. A crackle of pain washed over her head as though a dozen mosquitoes plunged their needles into her brain at once. A hallucination of Pavo appeared at the end of the roof, holding Kree. The little girl waved at her.

Risa put a hand to her head. “This is going to kill me.”

She eyed the Lava Wasp, perched on the landing pad so far away it looked no bigger than its namesake. Why am I here? Tightness gathered in her throat. The thought of how Pavo would react to news of her death made fleeing seem like the best thing to do, and she hadn’t even considered anyone telling Kree.

The walker thudded by, the young pilot still squinting up at her. “Who’re you? Upta no good?”

“Aren’t you a little young to work?” asked Risa.

“My dad’s hurt an’ can’t work. Damn Cydonian crab got him, nipped his leg off at the thigh.” She wiped her face with a cloth, which only re-distributed the grime. “Company won’t pay for a new leg coz’ they said he hasn’t filled out some form.” The girl shrugged. “Either I work this tender or we lose our pod.” She shook her head. “I ain’t gonna take no job workin’ outside.”

“Bastards. I thought this was the UCF.”

“It is, but there ain’t no NewsNet bots out here, so no one gives a cydo’s ass.”

Risa stood, moving to the end of the reactor building. “I’m here to stop some people trying to plant bombs. Your pod, is it sealed?”

“It can be. Hatches an’ shit are all open.”

“You might wanna get inside. Just in case I fuck this up.” She let guilt pull her to the edge of the roof where Pavo’s image had appeared.

That girl was someone’s daughter. They didn’t deserve to lose her.

“Follow what light?”

No sooner had she asked, than a wispy light appeared before her. A gossamer thread traced out into the air as though a pixie had left a trail of glowing dust. It led from the reactor building, across the grow field, to where five massive metal boxes sat in a row by the dome wall. The size of cargo-truck trailers, she knew they were power capacitors, the interface between the reactor and everything in Arden that used electricity.

She climbed to the ground, evading the curious teen, and sprinted into the speckles of pixie dust flying past her face. A bit over two hundred meters away, the line swerved between the third and fourth units, leading her to an opening between the capacitor boxes and the wall. The third explosive had been placed on the end of unit four.

Risa fished the wire out of her harness as she walked up to it. She lined up the asterisk-shaped prong and plugged in. With a soft click that echoed as thunder in her mind, the real world faded away. She pounced on the same general she had killed twice already, sinking a handful of claws into his throat and tearing him open from neck to crotch. White light spilled out instead of blood, and the false man screamed.

She swiped again, across his chest, expecting the body to disintegrate into shards as the others had. This time, the room turned white, and her skull burned.

When the blinding radiance faded, she found herself lying on her back. A warm trickle of liquid seeped down the side of her neck. Right away, she knew she bled from the M3 port. The sight of her wire hanging from the bomb fifteen feet away scared her more.

A boot crunched in the gravel. She flipped over, as if doing a push up, and sprang to her feet. A muscular male figure, covered head to toe in a clingy black suit, stood with his arms folded. The rubbery material enshrouded his face as well, save for a pair of dark round lenses. Rigid patches over his chest, knees, and elbows looked like armor. A heavy filter mask obscured the contours of his mouth and nose.

Oh, shit. Risa took a step away. One of the C-Branch operators came back.

“I’m not here to kill anyone,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt. “No one has to die.”

“I’m not going to ask how you found out about this op.” He chuckled. “Get out of here while you still can.”

“This is senseless. These people are UCF citizens. What the fuck are you doing?”

The man gestured as if scratching his head. “Hold on a moment, aren’t you with the Front? You know, terrorists and bombers? Since when do you care about the populous?”

Risa seethed. “That’s not true. We’re fighting to free Mars from the kind of government that murders its own people for a political side show.”

He shook his head, gazing at the ground. “Pity those people will believe the Front destroyed Arden.”

Risa kicked on her speedware, as high as it would go. She leapt, claws bursting from her fingers, a droplet of blood flying from each tip. The man seemed to freeze for a fraction of a second, after which he moved at the same speed. Both of them seemed normal as the rest of the world stopped, as though neither defied the laws of time. He caught her wrists and kicked her feet out from under her, dumping her on her back.

She somersaulted away and lunged again. This time with one hand swiping low for a knee. He caught her arm again, twisting it up behind her back and swinging her flat against the wall-facing side of capacitor unit two. Risa stood on tiptoe to take some of the pain out of her right elbow; her left hand’s claws scraped through metal as she tried to hold on.

Distant mechanical noises announced the approach of the four-legged walker.

Damn, that girl is going to get herself killed. What are you doing? Go away. These bastards don’t like witnesses.

Risa struggled to push off the capacitor unit, but he was too strong―boosted. She might as well have been trapped between metal plates.

“Not bad. I didn’t think your people had access to military grade speedware. Black market Chinese?”

“Why?”

He flung her away, tossing her again to the ground. “The Senate has lost sight of the situation on Mars. They need to be reminded how much of a threat the Liberation Front really is.”

She cradled her sore elbow, not liking the sarcasm in his tone. “You don’t sound convinced we are.”

“A couple of dirty refugees hiding in the tunnels? Hardly. If we really wanted you gone, you’d be gone.” He crossed his arms again. “Your people are useful, and your existence feeds money into Mars Ops.”

Risa sat up. “This has to stop. Innocent people are dying, and it’s all over bullshit.”

He laughed.

With a snarl, she attacked again. He blocked her claws four times, leaned back once as she swiped past his face, and drove his fist into her sternum hard enough to knock her over. She crashed flat on her back, all the air forced from her lungs.

The four-legged walker stopped, rotated, and hurried away as fast as the frame could move.

“What happened to you? You were once classified as useful.” He shook his head. “They should’ve trained you how to fight. Just another speedware kiddie coasting on the hardware. Think there’s nothing more to fighting than sharp blades and fast reflexes.”

She wheezed, unable to breathe or speak. He stepped over her on his way to the bomb, and plugged her wire into a small device strapped to his arm. Risa’s fingers dug into the dirt; she coughed, cried, and gagged.

“No!” she screamed, finding the strength to fling herself onto his back.

He caught her right wrist, but couldn’t get his left arm up in time. She speared four claws into the device. Nano blades pierced the armored material as if it were no tougher than dense rubber, causing an eruption of sparks and smoke. The man growled, overpowering her. He flung her off like a coat, slamming her into the capacitor again, her shoulder blades striking the bomb. She bounced away, staggering into a spinning backhand strike that knocked blood and spit from her mouth. Risa stumbled, managing to avoid falling, and whirled to face him again.

“What happened to you, Risa? You used to be an asset. What’s with all this bleeding heart ‘oh you shouldn’t kill people’ whining. Did you forget SO391?”

Risa glared. “That wasn’t our fault.”

“Seventy two families, Risa.”

He wanted to make her cry, he wanted to dredge up the worst mistake she’d ever made. How could it be her fault? All the intelligence said it was a military installation working on a biological weapon capable of reducing a population to barely-functional drones.

“That’s a cover story the ACC put out after the fact. There were no civilians there.”

“You saw the images. All of Mars did.”

“Only a moron would believe anything on the Newsnet.”

“You had to know, didn’t you.” He had to be grinning under that mask as he leaned away from another claw strike. “You went back.”

Her next attempt to slash him ended with a hand on the back of her head shoving her face into the wall. She stumbled back, snarling. “They could’ve moved the bodies in later.”

“Now who’s bending believability to suit their own purposes?”

She faked a claw strike, instead kicking for his balls. He took the hit, but caught her leg. Risa leapt over herself, twisting into a kick across his face before landing on her hands. The hit didn’t seem to do much but stun him for a moment, but it gave her a chance to get her ankle out of his grip.

“I suppose I’m being too critical.” He adjusted the fit of his facemask. “You’re actually not that bad, but I’ve had eighteen years of Special Forces combat training. You really don’t have a chance.”

“So why am I still alive?” She couldn’t quite stand upright, too tired and sore.

“Call me a chauvinist. I don’t want to kill a pretty little girl. Especially since you’re crying like one.”

He glanced at the bomb, and grumbled. “Okay, I’m impressed. How did you jam our comms?”

The fading mechanical ka-chunka-chunka noise of the fleeing walker made her think of a thirteen-year-old who was about to die because the military wanted more money. Flame spread through her limbs from overheating speedware. She leapt, scoring a superficial slash across his back as he twisted away. He continued the spin, driving a knee into her gut. She vomited on impact. His fist came down between her shoulders, drilling her face into the puddle of bile over rough gravel. He stepped on her neck, holding her down. Stone points bit into her cheek.

“You’re making this rather difficult for me. I should break both of your arms so you sit still like a good little girl and stop trying to kill yourself.”

“Fuck you.” Dirt and puke seeped into her mouth.

“However, you are still too useful.” He lifted her off the ground by a handful of hair and shoved her into the wall next to the bomb with a knife under her chin. “Since you fried my command module, you’re going to re-arm the device. I ain’t going in with you here, and I’d lose a whole two hours of sleep over having to kill such a pretty little thing.”

“I can’t.”

He pulled the knife away only long enough to punch her in the stomach. She raised her head away from the point, cold metal at the back of her skull.

“Don’t give me that moral high road crap. Do it or I’ll end you right here.”

“I don’t know how,” she whispered, blood leaking through her teeth. “I just clawed the program and it died.”

“What kind of slack-ass moron do you take me for? You disarmed the fucking thing, you can re-arm it.”

“Please don’t do this. There are children here; innocent people who you’re going to kill just for money? How can you call us terrorists?”

“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you aren’t so useful anymore.”

“Go ahead, kill me.” I’m sorry Kree… Tears rolled out her eyes as they closed. “I can’t arm that bomb. I don’t know how. It’s way beyond any device I’ve ever planted.”

He jerked his arm back, fast enough to make her expect the feeling―however brief it would be―of a knife piercing her heart. She opened her eyes, pleading. His movements slowed, as if the air around him solidified to thick gelatin.

A shimmer of light, like a northern star, winked into being behind his head, exploding into a seven-foot-tall energy form with immense, feathered wings. The entire apparition of Raziel manifested as a blazing outline of light. Risa felt her legs weaken; if not for the hand at her throat pinning her to the capacitor, she’d have fallen to her knees.

The length of a broadsword extended from Raziel’s hand, thrusting through the C-Branch operator from behind, piercing his heart, and stalling the knife that slid towards hers. The man convulsed and gurgled, though no blood appeared. A sound like bones breaking inside his muscles crackled through the silence.

He slumped to the side. Risa collapsed, staring up at the dome. Raziel vanished.

Boom.

Sirens rang out in the distance, lost amid a rumble of collapse. Her eyes snapped open; her placid calm shattered. A second distant explosion roared overhead.

Risa tried to sit up, managing to get one arm in front of her face before debris fell all around her.

Everything went black.

Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween all

This is a little twisted nursery rhyme from my upcoming MG Fantasy. Imagine it spoken in the whispery voice of a little girl.

Divergent Fate #61

(Start from the beginning)

Flying the LSV-18 “Lava Wasp” by virtue of a skill chip was perhaps the strangest thing Risa had yet done. Her body moved as if on instinct, responding to random popup windows from the flight control system and making adjustments without knowing exactly why or what she was doing. The entire process ran on some subconscious autonomic level as though someone else possessed her body.

Arden Settlement appeared on the horizon as a dark spot, which grew into massive grey dome as she closed distance. Sunlight gleamed from silvery, triangular panels of semitransparent material. Pipes led from the main dome to a cluster of drop-box pods around a large platform containing two eighty-ton cargo transport trucks. Her want to get a better look sent her finger to a control panel on its own. Workers in sealed e-suits appeared in a picture-in-picture view on the canopy, piloting exoskeleton loaders capable of carrying half-ton cargo boxes full of food.

It’s a massive greenhouse.

A little black box popped up on screen, containing text:

Lieutenant Alisha Hayes.

Training mission.

Out and back.

Need to top off on Cryomil.

Risa scratched her head until a comm channel beeped. “Damn, Didn’t I turn that off?”

She reached to kill the communication system, but doubt prickled at the back of her mind. Her finger went the other way and pushed the button to answer.

A dark-skinned girl in a brick red military jumpsuit appeared in hologram over the controls. She looked a day shy of eighteen and had the wide eyes of a newbie. “Incoming LSV-18, this is Arden Settlement. Please identify.”

For no particular reason, Risa put on a bubbly voice. “Hi! Lieutenant Alisha Hayes, UCF Marine Corps. Sorry for not comming in, this is my first solo flight, still making sure I don’t crash.” She giggled. “I’d rather fail to hit procedure than succeed in hitting a rock.”

The woman relaxed. “Welcome to Arden, ma’am. What do you need?”

“Low on Cryo. Wouldn’t mind stretching my legs and hitting the head either, been flying for hours.”

“Roger that. Come in bearing 080 degrees at fifteen knots. Egress collar is a little shifty, watch your yaw.”

What the fuck does that mean? Before Risa could ask, her body reacted under the control of the chip. She changed course, slowed, and guided the aircraft towards a large door near the top of the dome, which parted down the center. Plastisteel slabs the size of Gee-ball arenas slid apart, creating a gap for her to fly through.

“Thanks, Arden Control.”

The comm signal dropped.

Risa’s joke about needing to hit the bathroom proved truer than she thought as the little aircraft got closer and closer to the opening. One twitch at the wrong time would bump the edge of the giant doors and send her tumbling to Mars in a fireball. She wanted to scream, feeling like a spectator in her own body as the Lava Wasp slipped through the entrance. Down below, a settlement of thirty square miles opened up, mostly rows of hydroponic grow tanks. A few beds of transplanted Earth soil bore more natural plants, exotics for the wealthy. At the edge of the dome to her left, a cluster of drop-box buildings stood with their doors, awnings and hatches open.

In truth, the gap she’d just flown through would’ve taken a ship much larger than the one she’d stolen, but to her inexperienced consciousness, it was as scary as flying through the eye of a needle. It took her a moment to recover her nerve, but when she spotted a landing pad on the ground with a few other aircraft perched upon it, she headed for it.

Her conscious mind took a backseat as the ghost inside her guided the aircraft over an open berth. She hit one button that made the wings grow wider and droop, and another that vibrated the frame with a whirring sound she assumed meant the landing pads extended. The nose pulled up as she throttled back and set the ship down like a practiced aviator. An A-B trip wasn’t anything to brag about, but the echo of a pilot in the back of her mind said any flight you can walk away from was worth celebrating.

Two men appeared at the top of a ramp at the front end of the berth, riding a refueling cart consisting of a large tank, six tiny wheels, and a pair of seats bolted onto the front. Their animated discussion faded from blurry sound to a clear argument as the canopy opened.

“…utter bullshit. Karl up and disappeared, so I got stuck covering sixteen hour shifts all damn week.”

“No kidding man. I heard that one electrician who never talks to nobody and that hot piece of ass in Operations vanished too. Damn, I was so close.”

“Only thing you were close to is a slap in the face or a mark-up from HR.”

Risa hopped out, earning odd looks. She assumed their confusion stemmed from her lack of a military uniform. Her skin-tight ballistic stealth suit guided their bewilderment into placid contentment to stare at her. This wasn’t her usual job. She had not come here to kill anyone in the name of Martian Liberation. Quite the contrary. Risa swallowed her instinctual nausea at being seen in the open, and jogged right over to them.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re right, I’m not a military pilot. This is going to sound crazy, but bear with me. I’m with C-Branch. Military intelligence. We have rogue operatives here planning to detonate several explosive devices and destroy Arden. They want to blame the MLF.”

“What’s that?” Asked the pudgy one with the goatee.

“Martian Liberation Front?” Risa fought the urge to scowl. I’ve almost died for these slobs’ freedom how many times and they don’t even know who we are.

“That is kinda crazy,” said the shorter man on the left―to her breasts.

His co-worker focused an intense stare into her eyes, as if terrified she’d catch him looking anywhere else.

“I don’t have time to argue or people are going to die. Where’s the Cryomil tank?”

The short man made eye contact at last. “What if you’re the one what’s gonna bomb it?”

“You’ve been staring at my ass long enough; do you think I could hide bombs in this outfit?”

“Uhh, spose not.” He turned to point in the direction of a large ovoid tank at the far end of the landing pads. “That’s it.”

“Thanks.” She jogged two paces before she glanced back at them. “Keep quiet. If you raise the alarm, the people planting the bombs will panic and might set them off early.”

“What if you’re lying?” Asked the taller one.

“Wait here then.” She gestured at the aircraft. “If I’m lying, you can make sure I don’t leave.”

Not lingering to see what they did, she sprinted along a metal grating path connecting the landing pads to the main platform. The Cryomil tank dwarfed the one from the ACC science outpost. By the time she stopped in its shadow, she was sure it towered four stories over the pads.

If that thing goes…

She looked it over, clueless where to start.

On top, where no one would see it.

Raziel’s whisper weakened her legs and rode a static crackle down her spine.

Risa brushed a hand on it. Cold, smooth, unclimbable. “How the hell am I going to get up there? It’s like an enormous metal tit.”

Whirring behind her grew close. She whirled, a half-second away from popping claws. One of the drone robots used to tend the hydroponics glided over. It resembled a chrome horsefly with a seven-foot wingspan and an army of tiny utility extensions on bug legs.

“Oh, fuck. Damn.” How does Raziel influence machines like this?

It confirmed her suspicions when hovered over her. She reached up into its body, grabbing onto struts between the inner workings and the curved outer hull.

“Okay.”

The bot floated straight up, lifting her to the top of the dome where a round platform sat inside a meager retaining railing. A safe place to stand without sliding down the precarious curve. In the center, an armored hatch allowed cargo shuttles to refill. Risa smirked at the protruding metal at the top.

It does look like a big boob.

She dropped onto the circular grating around the opening. Nothing looked out of place.

“Let me guess, it’s inside.”

As if in answer to her question, the hatch beeped. Before it could open, she sucked in a huge breath and held it. The seal broke with a loud hiss and a six-inch thick disc rose into the air on a hinge, revealing a cylindrical shaft six feet deep to another armored door. A mass of glowing cyan fog lingered around the inner door. Fumes forced their way into her lungs and brought tears from her eyes. Her nose ran like a faucet, and she gagged on phlegm gathering in the back of her throat.

A shoebox-sized brick of dull Mars-red clung to the underside of the door flap. It had no displays, buttons, or controls. Its only feature was an M3 plug hidden a protective rubber flap. Risa leaned away from the opening, threw up, and gagged more.

“What the fuck is that?” She fell to her knees, arm over the railing around the little island, and forced snot out of her nose. “Raziel… I’m no deck jockey, I―”

Plug in. Have faith. All you need to do is destroy the timer construct and the bomb will not function.

She dragged herself back to the hatch and took a coil of wire from her harness. One end went into the interface port behind her right ear, the other into the bomb. The vertigo of connection probably made her puke again, though she wasn’t in the real world to experience it.

Risa landed on all fours in a room that looked like a military operations and control center, complete with a holographic war map in the middle. A lone human figure, carved from obsidian with bright lime-green lines highlighting every curve paced around with his hands clasped behind his back. His military uniform looked like something from centuries ago, and bore the rank of General.

“You look unauthorized,” barked the figure. “Stand to and provide your credentials immediately.”

Heat raced up the back of her neck; the M3 socket in her skull throbbed. Net combat wasn’t anything she had ever done before; her first instinct was to activate speedware and claws. Much to her surprise, both seemed to work. Time froze. She leapt through the soldier, tearing him in half through the chest as though she’d slashed up a moving paper target. The now-two-dimensional general screamed threats at her from the ground as he broke apart into shimmering flakes of silver, which degenerated into wireframe lumps and melted into the floor.

Risa looked at her hands, covered in glowing white blood. This shouldn’t be this easy.

“Slash up the controls,” said Raziel, sounding as though he stood right behind her.

She whirled around, but was alone. “Raziel?” Risa spun the other way. “Why do you sound like you’re next to me?”

“I am always with you, Risa. Please, you must hurry.”

Risa did her impression of ‘bad kitty’ on the controls. Anything that resembled a dial, screen, button, or lever, she scratched into oblivion. Once all was dark, her consciousness flew back into her body hard enough to knock her over on her back. She sat up, finding her chest covered in bile.

“Fuck. I hate Cryomil. I’m probably going to get cancer from this.”

Be quick, unless you want to climb down the tube.

Risa hit her speedware at the mere suggestion of having to descend into the tank. No sooner did the world plunge into slow motion than the bomb detached from the door, its magnet dead. She leapt at it, tackling the ten-pound bundle to the other side. Faced with a choice of sliding down the side of the tank with the bomb, or grabbing the railing, she released it and hooked her arms through the railing post. The bomb slid down the side with a horrible scraping, fell out of sight, and landed with a thud.

Leave it for now, said Raziel in her head. The second demolition charge is in the power station.

“Great.” Risa struggled upright, dry heaving from the fumes as she reached for the waiting metal fly. “I love fusion reactors.”

Divergent Fate #60

(Start from the Beginning)

Cyan light saturated the interior of a twelve by sixteen foot hollow at the far end of Opportunity Alley, a little cyberware outlet that went by the name Augury. Rows of tiny shops lined both sides of a narrow passageway on the fourth level below the surface of Elysium City. The place had stagnant air laced with the reek of street meat, booze, and vomit. Risa brushed through the crowd, careful to avoid being mistaken for, or victimized by, a pickpocket. People stared at her from crowd and shadow; she counted five but guessed at least eight.

Opportunity my ass. More like opportunistic.

Anger kept her hands in fists. Kree’s shout kept replaying itself in her mind.

“You’re not my mommy.”

She knew the girl didn’t mean it like it sounded. It was the girl’s way of wishing she wouldn’t die―or so Risa hoped. Her rage wasn’t directed at the child for screaming, at Garrison for doing nothing at all, or at Maris for being an asshole.

Her anger had an unexpected target: Raziel.

Why did he have to choose her? She had never before questioned the motivations of enigmatic denizens of other planes. Then again, she had never before had anything worth losing. Risa ducked a swinging metal arm connected to a black-trench coated man on his way out of Augury. He stumbled with the gait of someone with his mind far away in chem land―not a wonderful combination with an augmented limb. Inside the cramped cyberware shop, the fragrance of electronics and burned flesh lingered in the stagnant air.

Why did Raziel have to make her do this? He knew she’d have refused planting another bomb, or even spying. Risa had made up her mind. She wanted Pavo, not the MLF. For all the bad she’d done in her life, the least she could do was give Kree a home.

The angel had other plans.

Of course, he had to use guilt. A thousand people. Six hundred some odd families. How could she put her own life above the importance of that? She couldn’t, and Raziel knew it. Did murder count as murder when an angel told you to do it? Damn, listen to me… I really do sound like I’m Cat-6. Maybe I am hallucinating. She frowned. Hallucinations don’t send email with sixty three terabytes of intelligence data.

A starved thin man wearing shiny black pants so tight the resembled glass leaned on the counter. Gleaming charcoal-hued steel bands traced the outline of his ribs at the sides of his bare chest, each lined with tiny green lights. Hair exploded like a burst of ebon from his scalp. A line of two-inch plastisteel spikes grafted into his skull ran from the base of his neck up and over his head to the tip of his nose. His eyes glowed like ember coals, deep within shadowed recesses of eyeliner. One hand crept towards a cut-down rifle hidden in the counter.

“Murder in violet and black,” he said.

“Rory.” Her speedware made time draw to a standstill. She reached forward, leaning her weight down on his hand as it grasped the gun. Time resumed. “You don’t look happy to see me.”

A faint squeak was the breathing skeleton’s only reaction to her sudden motion.

Risa traced her thumb over a caduceus tattooed on his forearm, the snake’s fangs drawn as if biting his wrist. “Nice ink. New?”

“Two weeks.” He stood up straight, tapping black-painted fingernails on the armored glass. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I won’t stay long.”

“Got any cat ears?” asked a distracted-sounding teen.

Risa leaned on her elbow near the rifle as Rory pointed the girl at a holo-terminal where she could customize a set of replacement ears. He returned, leaving his customer swaying and mesmerized by the flashing lights.

“Flowerbasket?” Risa smirked.

“Naa, the bitch is on Zoom. Who the hell knows what she’s seeing in that pixel cloud.” He glared at the weapon she kept from him and snarled. “You get seen here again it’s gonna be my ass.”

“You don’t have an ass.” She gestured at the cabinet behind him. “I need a chip. Pilot with military add-ons.”

He loomed over a battered terminal screen; the pallid skin of his chest shining bright blue. “Forty grand.”

“Forty? I didn’t hit you that hard. Eighteen at the most. No loyalty to a frequent customer?”

“Not with the kinda trouble that follows you.” His upper lip curled into a snarl.

Behind him, a white cyberarm hanging on the wall by a curtained archway caught her eye. Ornate and petite, the glossy replacement limb had the size and contours of a petite woman. She wondered if its former owner was still in the ‘operating suite’ on the other side of the curtain.

“I didn’t know you were desperate enough to do rip jobs. MDF might be interested in that arm.”

Rory glared. “You? Call the police? Dustblow. You think I got mash for brains?”

“Things have changed. You can say I’m in bed with them pretty deep now. Ten thousand and I’ll call it borrowed.”

He leaned at her, eyes wide. “And wot if you feckin’ die?”

“Call it an investment in never seeing me again.” Risa resisted the urge to gag. “What the hell is on your breath?”

“Pear.” He tapped a Nicohaler lying on the counter.

“Either that was made by someone who has no idea what the hell a pear is, or you’ve got a rotting body in the back room.”

“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin, tapped it, and narrowed his eyes at her as he backed up to a locked case. A swipe of his hand by the door caused it to beep, and the door whirred open on mechanical struts. Intense cobalt blue light flickered on, permeating the transparent plastic holding rows upon rows of tiny black boxes in slots. He ran a finger across a row, counting, and extracted the fourteenth one. “That’s my bitch.”

A mental command activated a miniscule motor, which extended a thin slab of transparent plastic out of her skull behind her left ear. The whirring roared through her skull. “What’s the cognitive sync time for this one?”

Rory held the box between thumb and forefinger, staring over it at her. Pointy metal teeth showed through his grin as he squeezed, causing the little box to open down the middle. Inside, a tiny platform bore a silver square two millimeters across. “About twenty minutes.”

“That’s fine.”

She pressed a finger to the speck, lifting it from its case and setting it on the sliding tray. It flickered with blue light and slid back through the concealed quarter-inch slit in her skin. As soon as it clicked and went silent, an eruption of information flooded her mind. Random facts about military aircraft leapt to the forefront of her thoughts, interwoven with fleeting glimpses of how it felt to be a pilot. All of it taken from the recorded cortical imprint of someone who sold their memories.

“How’s it look?” Rory eased his weight on the counter, his voice sounded murky and far off.

Cat-ear girl grabbed at nothing, raking her hands through the still-blank holo panel trying to grab an object only existing to her.

Risa took out her NetMini. “Like a pilot. Ten and you get it back when I return?”

“Sixteen and you don’t bother comin’ back here or tellin’ anyone where you got it.”

“Skill chips aren’t illegal.”

“The fuck cares about legal. I care about gettin’ tenderized again. Be glad I didn’t slip you a mindhack soft and puppeteer your pretty little ass right to ‘em.”

The focus of her vision darted to the top right corner, opening a command menu. She navigated to the diagnostic function of her Neural Interface Unit, and pulled up the ‘about’ data on the new chip. It appeared with a flowing yellow ribbon under it bearing NEW in all capital letters. Her system detected it as a Grade 3 skill soft. No trace of a tracker or any unexpected software.

Yeah, sixteen k is fair.

She swiped the mini over the reader. “Done.”

*   *   *

Elysium city had a small aboveground presence, most of which was military property. Years ago, the line between Martian Defense Force, the police, and combat military troops had been only the color of their armor. These days, the MDF had grown more independent and in some cases territorial. In a way, it resembled what the Front saw happening in the people. They had to believe the people of Mars cried out for independence.

It was the only way sane men and women could do the things they had done.

Risa slipped out of a ventilation shaft into the shadows below an elevated landing pad. A scarcity of light made it into the tangle of hoses and wires from small hatches around the waiting aircraft. The reek of Cryomil burned like an alcohol fire inside her nostrils. Boots clanked overhead, but no one could see her. Getting to the surface had taken fifteen minutes. Wooziness from the skill chip assimilation hadn’t yet subsided. Safe in the dark, she curled up to wait out the last of the shivering caused by her overworked brain, and pondered the foolishness of stealing a military aircraft.

Even with Raziel’s influence keeping her out of their sensor visibility, it felt like a horrible idea.

My fault for wasting so much time. She scowled. No, I didn’t waste it.

Kree had run off after her declaration of non-mommyness. A moment passed where Risa almost felt like leaving the lives of a thousand people to the hands of fate, angel be damned. She chased the girl into the safehouse. When the girl decided to hide in Risa’s bedroom, it took some of the sting off her angry scream.

After an hour, begrudgingly accepted her reason for leaving. She had to stop something bad from happening to a whole settlement full of people. Risa promised she’d come home. Each time she repeated it, worry that she wouldn’t grew. Kree wouldn’t have reacted well to her showing fear, so she held it in. For a minute, Risa shivered and fought back tears remembering how the girl begged and begged her to stay a little longer. Lost time, and a too-brief nap, left ground transportation to Arden out of the question.

She wiped her eyes and concentrated on being angry again. Hold it together, Risa. You’re going to save lives this time.

Once her brain settled down, she crawled to a three-foot high ladder leading to an open trapdoor and peered out. A modest-sized MDF scout craft sat above her, balanced on three pads. Risa had never seen one this close, but recognized it as LSV-18 “Lava Wasp.” Stats someone else had learned jumped into her mind. She knew it had a level flight speed a hair over Mach 11, but had boosters capable of putting it into orbit. It also had a nasty habit of bouncing back into the air when landing. Too much engine, not enough airframe.

Now, Risa.

She didn’t ask why Raziel chose that instant to speak, but obeyed anyway. Risa sprang from the hatch, speedware flaring hairline strands of fire through her limbs. In the span of a second and change, she sprinted towards the open canopy and hopped in. Her hands flew over the controls as if she’d done this a thousand times. Close the windscreen, power up main engines, flight console online, navigation system online, refueling port closed, transponder… off. She bypassed the weapons checks―all she needed was a ride.

Everything felt routine until she leaned back in the seat and grasped both side-mounted flight sticks. She was in an aircraft, in the pilot’s seat, and had the stunned faces of three Marines gaping at her.

What the fuck am I doing?

One of them reached for his sidearm. His mouth moved as though he yelled, but she couldn’t hear him in the sealed cockpit. Without another thought, she pulled back on the left stick and shot straight up. A few clanks echoed in the hull, sounding like they threw rocks. Risa pushed forward on the right stick, and the nose tilted down as the aircraft lurched forward. She stared at the climbing airspeed and at the M3 interface port in the center of the instrument cluster. Plugging in would make it easier to control, but she needed to be able to ditch fast―and didn’t have a military breakaway cable.

No one trusted wireless control for military vehicles―especially not the military.

When the LSV-18 reached two hundred miles per hour, she hit the button to change the flight characteristics. The wings extended and canted down; a burst of acceleration pinned her into the seat. The Lava Wasp handled more like a jet fighter than a helicopter. She pushed the throttle stick forward, grinning at the racing numbers. Comm indicators beeped. She ignored them, flying supersonic and as low as her nerve allowed.

Do they think I’m going to turn around because they ask nicely?

Brick red Martian wasteland raced below; the powerful thrum of the craft’s engines vibrated through the seat. The LVS-18 was designed for speed and maneuverability, not firepower or armor. Risa punched in the coordinates to Arden Settlement on the Navcon. She smiled at the little white numbers at the bottom right.

Estimated arrival: Two hours and six minutes.

Plenty of time to spare.

Quotes – Division Zero