Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The group gathered in the atrium, sorting gear into three piles: essential, possible, and abandon-in-place. Anton kept moving things out of the first two piles onto the third. They wouldn’t need food, or sleeping sacks, or entertainments. Just weapons, tools, and medical supplies. Solana kept her eye on Jaka, wondering what she would try.

Pera contacted Yanai on the group channel. “We’re getting out now. There’s a combat mech on the loose in the hab, probably with some serious cognitive bugs. Time to leave.”

“I agree. Never mind about the salvage. I’ll send out some bots to bring you up with the hoist,” said Yanai. “It can probably manage two at—” Her voice was cut off by a burst of static, followed by silence.

“Yanai? Yanai!”

A second later a distant rumble echoed through the hab ring.

“That doesn’t sound encouraging,” said Daslakh.

“Can anyone hear Yanai on comms? Yanai, are you there?” asked Pera.

“Could she have undocked? Maybe that was her drive firing,” said Jaka.

“I cannot make myself believe that good Yanai would leave us here in peril of our lives,” said Atmin.

“Any eyes up there?” asked Sabbath.

“I’ve got one. Tapped into one of her bots,” said Daslakh, and shared the feed with the others.

It was jumpy slow video, but it was horrifying enough. Yanai’s massive frame was completely severed, just behind the crew compartment. Her drive section floated free, tumbling and banging into the walls of the docking hub. Twinkling fragments looked like a heavy snowfall in the image. The tug powerful enough to move an entire hab was now just wreckage herself.

“Is this your combat mech at work? Could it have blasted poor Yanai? How can we fight against a foe like that, with weapons that can wreck a ship?”

“Kamaitachi didn’t have any heavy weapons,” said Sabbath.

“I know who did,” said Pera, glaring at Jaka. “You’re the one with the mine aimed at Yanai’s processor section.”

For just a moment Jaka’s mask of perfect mastery slipped, and she looked on the verge of panic. “No! I didn’t order—” She stopped and suddenly she wasn’t just on the verge anymore. “It fired but I didn’t do it! I swear! It said proximity alert and then it went off before I could do anything! It’s not my fault—something got too close and it fired. It wasn’t me!”

They all watched Jaka. Nobody said anything until she ran down. By the time she was done she was crouched on the floor, looking wildly from one face to another.

“Well, I guess we’re stuck,” said Daslakh. “I figure you guys have about six months before equipment failure and starvation get you. Forgive me if I don’t watch. I’ll find a place to hide in low-power mode for the next few decades. Nice knowing you.”

Suicide, Solana thought. A quick death before we start to get sick and starve. Before we have to decide who to eat. She wondered idly if Jaka had actually triggered the mine on purpose, just to enjoy the experience of killing something as vast and strong as Yanai.

“Shuttle,” said Adelmar. “The mine was aimed up, not down. Might be okay.”

“If it wasn’t crushed by the wreck I assume Kamaitachi is in the process of stealing it as we speak. It’s the logical thing to do,” said Daslakh. “Get out, get to someplace civilized.”

“Ah, but you forget: it wants to kill us,” said Sabbath. “One by one, just as it killed the population of Safdaghar. It will save the shuttle for afterward, when there’s no one left to hunt.”

“Not us,” said Pera, gesturing at Jaka. “Her. She’s the one who killed Utsuro. She’s the one it wants. I say stake her out on the deck outside and leave her. Maybe the rest of us can get away.”

“A plan I will endorse, so let us act without delay,” said Atmin.

Jaka still crouched on the floor, but her expression of panic had vanished and now she looked positively feral. “I’m still in charge here, not any of you. Adelmar! Show this cocky lizard who’s boss.”

The chimp didn’t move. “Got to save ammo. Might need it.”

“Very sensible,” said Sabbath.

“Solana! Tanaca! Protect me! Anton, get the weapons.”

Tanaca moved hesitantly toward Jaka, apparently uncertain as to what she was supposed to do. Solana positioned herself between Jaka and the rest. Anton stood immobile, then twitched as his implant sent a jolt of agony directly to the pain center of his brain. The only limit to the pain it could inflict was his ability to feel it. But he had felt a lot of pain in his life.

When he still didn’t move, Jaka increased the intensity. He dropped to his hands and knees but made no movement toward the closet where his laser backpack and Tanaca’s plasma breacher were stashed.

“You’ll regret this,” said Jaka. A moment later Anton’s implant took over control of his limbs. He stood and began to walk jerkily toward the closet.

Meanwhile Sabbath strolled calmly toward Jaka. “Let him go,” he said.

Solana knew she had to stop him. Protecting Jaka was very important. She flung herself into his path, trying to block him like a Gendakhel goalie. Sabbath stopped and merely looked deeply into her eyes. In a calm, confident voice he said, “Solana, go sit down. This is no place for you. That’s an order.”

She smiled at him and walked away.

Jaka realized what was happening and scrambled away from Sabbath but with a swift lunge he caught her by the arm. Tanaca punched his shoulder but he ignored her.

“Stop it!” he shouted, finally showing a crack in his calm self-assurance. “You’re not going to win and you’re wasting everyone’s time!”

Jaka writhed and struggled, twisting herself around to kick Sabbath in the face. But the suit he wore absorbed the blow as if she were kicking a stone statue. He frowned slightly and then smoothly shifted his grip, holding her in a modified half-nelson with her feet off the floor. She kicked helplessly and flailed with her free hand. Tanaca stood nearby.

Anton’s body turned around, moving toward Sabbath with arms outstretched. Nobody else did anything.

“Stop it,” Sabbath repeated, and kicked Jaka in the ass. Since the blow didn’t shatter her pelvis he must have been using his own muscles, not the suit’s strength. “There’s no reason for anyone to keep you alive. Do you understand? None.” He kicked her again, and then a third time. “Now behave yourself. Stop it!”

Anton reached Sabbath and his hands grabbed the man’s suited arm. Sabbath glanced at him, shook his head, and tossed Anton into the nearest couch. Then he sighed and touched one finger to the back of Jaka’s neck. Her eyes unfocused and then she went limp, hanging like an empty suit in his grip.

For a moment nobody said anything, then Daslakh asked, “Why didn’t you just tranq her right away?”

“I wanted to kick her first.” Sabbath turned to face the group and raised his voice. “All right, time to get out of here. We need to get to the hub and there’s a covert-ops mech trying to stop us. What’s our ammunition status?”

“I’ve got four hundred and thirty-four seconds of laser power left,” said Pera. “And a four-shot gas pistol loaded with shaped-charge rounds.”

“Eight micromissiles, all explosive,” said Adelmar. “Jaka’s got two paralyzer missiles left.”

“The laser backpack has only a hundred seconds of power,” said Anton.

“Don’t forget the plasma breacher. One shot, but it’s a good one,” said Pera. “Almost as much juice as that mine.”

“What about you?” asked Daslakh.

“Me?” said Sabbath. “Oh, I’ve got a couple of stored megajoules I can use in various ways, and some darts. I won’t bore you with details. Now: let us collect all the tools and supplies we have on hand, and decide what we absolutely can’t leave behind. No time to waste!”

While he spoke Anton moved to stand near Solana. “Now,” he whispered to her. “This may be our only chance.”

“I still need my goggles,” she said.

“Here.” He unsealed his coverall at the ankle and pulled her goggles out, pressing them into her hand. “Don’t put them on until we’re out of sight. Upstairs bathroom. You go first.”

As the others started moving around the medical center, Solana went briskly up the stairs. In the bathroom she put on her goggles and activated the visual filter.

Once again she lived in a safe world of shapes and objects. No faces. No desire to serve. She could be selfish again. It felt good—though there was always that vague regret. Could she be unselfish without her genetic programming?

Anton slipped inside and locked the door.

“How did you get them?” she asked, tapping her goggles.

“I didn’t. Daslakh did. I wrote on its shell. This thing”—he tapped his forehead—“can hear what I say and see what I see, but it can’t tell what my hands are doing behind my back.”

“What does Daslakh want in return?”

He smiled. “When it gave them to me it said, ‘Keep them on her face from now on.’” When she still looked suspicious his smile turned sad. “Not everything has a price attached.”

“There’s always a price. Sometimes you just can’t see it until it’s too late.”

“If you don’t help me I expect the price will be at least a couple of fingers when Jaka wakes up.”

He lay down on the floor and they improvised a brace to raise and immobilize his head. Solana got her tool settings ready, and laid out her sparse medical equipment: wipes, tape, medical foam, a fistful of random drug patches. And then she knelt over him…and hesitated. “I have to turn off the visual filter again,” she said.

“Are you afraid I’ll go back on my word? Of course, you could do the same. Instead of deactivating the implant you could reset it, key it to yourself. I’m sure you’ve considered it.”

“Yes,” she said after a long pause.

“Well,” he said, “I leave it to you. I’m going to concentrate on keeping my head very still and not thinking about the fact that you’re poking around inside my skull.”

She shut off the filter and then zoomed in on the top of his head between the ridge of his forehead and the crest of his skull. The pitted, hairy moonscape was nothing her brain recognized as a face.

Cutting a slit in the skin was messy but not hard. Like all scalp wounds it bled like mad. Solana had to swab and swab just to clear away blood as she cauterized the tissue with the hot tip of her tool.

“I don’t mean to bother you,” said Anton, “but my eyes are filling up with blood. Can I wipe them?”

Solana zoomed back out and nearly gagged. Anton looked as though he’d been murdered. The little one-centimeter slit in his skull had somehow generated enough blood to completely cover the upper part of his face. She rummaged in her pocket and found a sterile wipe. “Here, use this.”

He got the worst of it out of his eyes. “I’ll keep the scar as a souvenir, to remind me to keep my mouth shut.”

She put a strip of tape across his eyes. “You may lose your eyebrows but this should keep the blood out. And now you really have to hold still,” she said. “I’ve never worked on an implant before. I’ll try not to damage you.”

“If you do, I probably won’t care,” he said, and smiled. She zoomed in again and his face became nothing but a work site once more.

She made her tool into a drill and bored through his skull, going carefully, a micron at a time, and then pausing to check if she was through. Underneath the bone layer was the dura mater, a membrane thin enough to just poke her tool through, avoiding the blood vessels which showed up bright on infrared.

Inside the dura mater Solana switched to the eye in the tool tip itself, controlling it through her own implant instead of with her hands. At that scale the blood vessels in the pia mater layer hugging the brain looked like drain pipes. She was able to maneuver the tool tip around most of them but there wasn’t much she could do about the blood getting into Anton’s brain from his scalp. Either it would harm him or it wouldn’t.

The tip of the tool extended deeper into his head, pushing gently between his brain hemispheres. And there it was: his compliance implant, nestled between them like a little gray millipede snug in a pink bed. Fibers led from it to his optic and auditory nerves, and down to the brain stem.

Her plan was to locate the implant’s own tiny brain and disable it, leaving the comm interface intact. She switched the tool to ultrasound mode and fed the image to her goggles. Now she could see the implant’s innards. The power tap extended down between Anton’s frontal hemispheres to the top of his sinuses, generating a trickle of electricity from the temperature difference between the center of the brain and the nasal passages. Best to leave that alone. The comm used that same tiny gold fiber as an antenna.

She could make out three separate processors. One of them was obviously the basic implant device that nearly all humans had inside their heads after infancy. It had bundles of fibers extending to the visual, speech, and aural cortexes of Anton’s brain, all leading to a conversion processor which turned electronic signals into nerve impulses Anton’s brain could understand, and vice versa. That one could stay.

The other two were connected, and had fibers extending down into Anton’s brain stem and thalamus. One of them was probably his bio monitor, providing information about the state of his body more useful than evolution’s crude “I feel ouchy” signals. The other was the compliance device, the spy in his head. But they used the same basic electronics. She had no way to tell them apart.

The whole image trembled, and she realized Anton was speaking. “She’s talking to me,” he whispered.

All three tiny processors were active. Solana could see shifting patterns of heat and electrical impulses. “Try to stall her,” she said.

Lots of activity, and then everything shook as Anton’s whole body jerked. Solana lost her grip on the tool for a moment, and the only reason it didn’t slip and tear into Anton’s brain was the implant itself, anchoring the tip in place.

“Can’t—make—me,” Anton grunted. He tensed up again. This time Solana tried to pin him down, putting her entire weight on his chest. But as he jerked in pain she could see a little heat pulse from the active processor in the implant. The snitch.

She maneuvered the tool’s micron tendril toward the traitorous processor, but she could see it sending impulses into Anton’s brain stem. Something touched her back and she realized it was his hand. The hand bumped her, and then it hit her, hard. And again, and again. With Anton’s eyes shut and no tactile sense, Jaka couldn’t tell what the arm was hitting, but she could make it swing as hard as Anton’s muscles could manage.

He wasn’t a big man, but he had spent a lot of time doing physical drudge work and had grown up full of testosterone. He could hit hard. The blows were random, striking Solana’s side and back, nearly knocking her off him. She got her knee onto his arm and put all her weight on it. The arm continued to jerk under her, and she simply wasn’t big enough to hold it down.

Trying to ignore the commotion around her body, Solana concentrated on the image coming from inside Anton’s head. His movements had shifted the tip of the tool nearly a centimeter from the implant, and getting it back to the device seemed to take forever.

“Stupid Jaka,” he said through clenched teeth. “Ugly and—” His words became a groan and his whole body stiffened as the implant tormented him again. Solana realized he was doing it on purpose, goading Jaka into causing him pain to buy her time to work.

The quicker the better, then. The tiny tip of the variable tool found the implant again, and she directed it to the active processor. No time for subtlety; she cut the device’s carapace open and plunged the hardened point into the layers of membrane-thin diamond wafers housing the processor.

Anton spasmed even harder underneath her, and Solana felt a stab of terror in her own mind. Had she killed him? All his muscles relaxed and he went limp.

He was still breathing, and she could feel his heartbeat. She quickly cut through all the snitch processor’s connections, isolating it—inputs, outputs, power, everything. It would be inert matter inside his brain. When she couldn’t find any other fibers to cut, Solana sealed up the implant’s shell again with the broken processors inside it. Having bits of diamond floating loose in Anton’s brain seemed like a bad idea.

She withdrew the tool and switched back to her goggles to look at Anton. Body temperature looked okay, but he was still unconscious. Had the implant done that? Or Jaka? Or had Solana damaged something and left him as good as dead?

She found the little canister of medical foam and filled the incision, just squirting it in as though she was caulking a leak. It was crude and sloppy but it would protect him against infection and stop him from leaking blood and cerebral fluid. Another strip of tape covered the wound, and then she peeled off the eye covering.

His eyes twitched back and forth under closed lids. Was that good? Solana didn’t know. With mixed hope and dread she shook him. “Hey. Anton, wake up. Anton!”

The eyes opened, staring out unfocused, and her heart sank. Then they moved, found her goggles, and she could see his attention lock on to her. The dried blood and gunk around his eyes cracked and flaked as he smiled.

“She’s gone,” he said hoarsely. “No comm, either.”

“I must have cut something,” said Solana. “I’m sorry. You can get it fixed.”

“It’s okay. Quiet in here. I like it.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

She helped him to his feet. They both were covered in blood and foam. “You look terrible. How do you feel?”

He concentrated. “Bio monitor still works. It says I’m alive. I really need to wash my face,” he said, and hit the sink icon on the bathroom wall. The sink extruded itself and he used about a liter of warm water to wash the blood off his face. Solana gave him a sterile wipe to dry off with, and when he was done he looked at her and grinned.

When they went back downstairs there was no need for any embarrassed explanations. “New hole in your head?” Daslakh asked Anton.

“I needed it.”

“Fuel up now,” said Sabbath. “We’re moving out.”

“Where’s Jaka?” asked Anton.

For a moment nobody said anything. Solana looked around, her goggles sliding up and down the spectrum. “Not in here. Tanaca’s gone, too.”

“And the chimp,” said Daslakh.

“The shuttle,” said Sabbath. “No time to lose.”

“They can go faster,” said Pera. “No dead weight.”

“Now, now,” said Sabbath. “Don’t be defeatist. Can Jaka even fly a shuttle? Maybe we can bargain.”

“You’re assuming she’s thinking rationally. That’s unwise,” said Daslakh. “She’s quite capable of persuading herself she’s an ace pilot, and wrecking the shuttle before she can even get out of the docking hub. Still leaves us without any way home.”

“Best get moving, then. If anybody’s hungry you can eat while we walk.”


Pera’s size and horizontal posture created a tricky problem when it came time to help her walk. Her arms simply weren’t strong enough to take the place of her missing leg, and they were in the wrong place, to boot. Even with stout aluminum poles in both hands she couldn’t keep her pelvis from tilting sideways, and after just a few hobbling steps the strain meant she had to stop.

Sabbath tried to support her, with one of her arms draped over his shoulders, but she could only move forward in tiny hops, just a few centimeters at a time.

“This pace is like a glacier grinding over Pluto’s plains,” said Atmin.

“All right,” said Sabbath with a sigh. “There’s one other thing we can try.”

He got Anton and Solana to brace Pera upright while he crept under her abdomen, legs and back bent. He got his back under her center of mass and then with a grunt lifted Pera off the ground. “How’s this?”

“I feel like you’re going to drop me,” said Pera.

“Best I can do,” Sabbath grunted.

With him—or, more accurately, his strength-amplifying smart-matter suit—carrying Pera the group could move at something like a normal walking pace. Atmin took the lead in his travel sphere, watching for traps ahead. Daslakh and Solana followed, using their augmented vision to look for hidden tripwires or triggers. To be doubly careful, Solana used one of Pera’s discarded metal poles to prod the ground.

They went down the middle of the street, though Daslakh complained. “We’re very exposed out here.”

“Kamaitachi can hear us coming,” Sabbath grunted.

“What’s to stop it sniping at us from long range? We’d be safer with some cover.”

“I don’t think it has any projectile weapons still working,” said Sabbath. “All its attacks have been with blades or traps.”

“What about Ulan? It shot him with a tranq dart before killing him.”

“Oh, that was me,” said Sabbath. “The dart. I didn’t mention it because I thought you’d figure it out once I revealed myself.”

“We’ve been a bit distracted,” said Daslakh. “So…did you cut him up, too?”

“I thought about it, but I didn’t. Kamaitachi must have been somewhere nearby.”

For a moment nobody said anything, then Solana spoke up. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

They covered another couple of blocks in silence, and were more than halfway to the spoke when Daslakh made a discovery. It had gone off to one side to investigate something, and suddenly turned bright hazard red in the darkness. “Hey! There’s blood on the ground here. Lots of it. Still warm. And I just found a finger.”

Atmin’s sphere gained altitude and he scanned the area with his searchlight. The rest of them hurried toward Daslakh.

“Whose finger is it?” asked Anton.

“The chimp’s. Definitely.”

They found the mech standing at the edge of a great red splatter ten meters across. It had a bloody finger in one hand, held away from its body so as not to get dripped on. Solana’s goggles showed her a leg, the halves of Adelmar’s split helmet, and a lump of organs, still hot. She fought a surge of panic.

“There’s his head,” said Anton, tonelessly. Someone or something had set it atop the leafless trunk of a potted shrub, looking at them with a look of dignified sadness.

“What about the other two?” asked Sabbath. “Anybody see anything?”

“Footprints,” said Solana. She pointed. To her the tracks were obvious—still warm, traces of blood that looked black in ultraviolet—but the others peered uncertainly. Except Daslakh, of course, who scuttled over and took a closer look.

“Two sets of footprints. They went this way.” The little mech pointed down a side street.

They all looked that way, but nobody followed.

“Keep moving,” said Pera. “No time to search.”

“Agreed,” said Sabbath from underneath her torso.

“They may be dead, or hiding from the killer mech. Or perhaps could climb up to the hub and leave us here with no hope of escape,” said Atmin. “We must away, no matter what.”

“We could try comms,” said Solana. “I mean, we can’t just leave them here.”

“I think we can,” said Atmin.

“Look, I’ve got as much reason to hate Jaka as anyone, but she’s had a pretty rough life. She doesn’t deserve to die here.”

“What rough life?” asked Daslakh.

“She said she lost her family, grew up in a half-wrecked hab full of gangs, had to do some pretty awful things to survive…”

“That’s all a bunch of hot dust. I sent out some clever little queries after we left Scapino. Always a good idea to find out who you’re flying with. Her real name’s Ersi Duxtar, and she’s from an utterly safe and comfortable Main Swarm hab called Ebuthuntu. Family sent her to Ceres for a high-status education but she ditched it after two years. Moved to a cycler on the Mars-Jupiter run, got herself kicked off at Juren for fraud. Grifted her way through the Jovian system to the Retro Ring and her own gang of pirates. She’s no victim. Jaka put a lot of time and effort into becoming what she is.”

Solana said nothing more and they quickened their pace.


As they approached the plaza around the spoke, Pera cautioned, “Go slow, check everything, eyes open. Prime spot for traps or ambush.”

Daslakh examined the pavement and Solana kept her own eyes ahead, scanning in IR. She did keep tapping the ground with her pole. Ahead she could see the spoke, just like her last attempt to get away. But this time her goggles showed no human body heat around it. Jaka wasn’t waiting to drag her back to the camp.

“Something moving left of us, between the café and the flower shop!” Atmin announced.

Sabbath pivoted so that Pera could point her laser at the contact. Anton did the same, and the emitter peeking over his shoulder locked in on some target in the darkness. Solana crouched by instinct as much as any tactical sense, but Atmin zoomed toward the little passage and illuminated it with his spotlight.

Two suited figures crouched in the mouth of the alley. Then Jaka stood, and without even hearing her Solana could see her bravado return, just from her posture.

“Hey,” she said. Despite her air of confidence Solana thought she could detect a shakiness to Jaka’s voice—and genuine relief.

“In truth we thought you both were dead. What happened? How is it that you remain alive while Adelmar, a bloody wreck, lies cooling in the dark?” asked Atmin.

“It caught us in the open and Adelmar decided to fight. We got away.”

“You ran away and left him to die, in other words,” said Anton.

“Shut up,” she said.

“I don’t have to listen to you anymore,” said Anton.

“Hey, I didn’t put that implant in your head. It was those totalitarian jerks in Fratecea. I’m the one who took you in and gave you an important job in my crew. You should thank me.”

“Nice to chat but we’ve got to get moving,” said Pera.

“You’re not leaving us behind. That’s my shuttle, remember.”

“We’re not leaving anyone behind,” said Sabbath.

“Why not?” asked Daslakh. “More to the point: why aren’t you just leaving by yourself? Kamaitachi will make sure none of us reveal any of the secrets you’re trying to hide, and in thirty years your boss can send a message out to the buyers to let them know that oh by the way there’s an insane assassin mech in that wrecked hab on its way out. Might want to be careful, and all that. What’s in this for you?”

“I made my choice to screw up the mission when I stuck that bandage on Pera’s leg. My boss will be furious but I haven’t changed my mind.” He gave a wry half smile. “I admit that I did have some second thoughts while Jaka had me stuck to a wall for three days with my own piss running down my legs. You might want to remember that,” he said to her, the smile gone.

“I’ve got Adelmar’s missile pods,” she said. “He never wasted his time with tranq or tangle rounds. Maybe your suit could protect you, but I guarantee I can blow any of these others to bits with a thought. So I’m coming with you, or nobody is. End of discussion.”

“Make yourself useful, then. I have to help Pera up the stairs. Daslakh’s too small to carry much. That leaves you, Anton, Solana, and Tanaca to carry everything. We need weapons, tools, medical supplies, and water, in that order. Nothing else.”

“We’re going up the stairs?”

“We have to. Pera can’t climb with only one leg.”

“Seems like this would be a lot easier if we just left her behind.”

“She knows more than any of us about spotting and disabling booby traps—and every minute we spend squabbling about this gives Kamaitachi more time to plant them.” He turned and began laboriously lumbering along the street again. Except that instead of walking toward the center of the plaza where the spoke rose toward the hub, Sabbath followed the curving edge of the space, aiming for the opposite side.

“Where are you going?” asked Solana.

“This way,” said Sabbath, pointing with his free arm down the main road to antispinward. “To the next spoke. Come on.”

“That’s another half a kilometer!” said Jaka, sounding almost on the verge of tears.

“Yes, and my guess is that Kamaitachi has concentrated its trap-setting efforts on this stairway. It’s had weeks to prepare. The next one is likely to be safer.”

“Makes sense,” said Pera. “Fall in, everybody. We’ve got a longer walk than we expected.”


Back | Next
Framed