Chapter 2
Jackson sprinted down the alley. Then turned into another, and another, trying to shake his pursuers. On the bright side, in this gravity he could run all day and feel like an Olympian. On the downside, when he looked back, it appeared so could the goons who were chasing him.
“Bad news,” Jane told him. “Prunkard’s guys are right behind you. Their chasing you looked suspicious enough it triggered the security algorithms. Cops have been asked to check it out.”
That was the problem with these law-and-order towns.
Above him on one wall, a group of maintenance spider bots clung to the side of a building, cleaning and repairing a patch where some weird Nivaasian fungus had grown. The bots were pale and about a foot across. He ran underneath them, hoping they weren’t connected to Sharmala’s security system.
None jumped, and he sighed a bit in relief, having dodged at least that bullet. And then one flung itself off the wall, sailed smoothly over his head, and landed a number of paces in front of him. It reared up on its hind legs and spoke.
“Mufasa Gray, halt and wait for the authorities.” Its voice was surprisingly tinny. “I have been authorized to interdict you.”
He looked back just as Prunkard’s goons entered the alley. They saw him.
Next to Jackson was a little four-wheeled bot snugged up against the side of the alley. It held the supplies the maintenance bots used to do their work. It probably weighed twenty kilos. Jackson picked it up and hurled it at the spider bot, which easily leapt out of the way and up onto the wall of the building. The supply bot crashed to the pavement and splashed water and cleaning agents all over.
“Mufasa Gray,” the spider bot said. “Destruction of property will not be tolerated.”
“Jane,” Jackson said. “They’ve pegged my ID. I need to go dark.” If he didn’t, everything tied to the city’s security grid would be looking for him.
“Working on it, Jackson.”
“Mufasa Gray!” the spider said.
Jackson kicked it out of the way.
The other spiders didn’t like that, because they all increased their volume and began blinking lights. “Mufasa Gray! Halt!”
Jackson did not halt.
A spider bot leapt at him.
There’s nothing quite like having a large metal spider fly right at your face. Jackson was wearing gloves. Nice gloves that could pack an extra punch. He activated the iron fist feature, hardening the outside, and struck the bot in midflight.
He was rewarded with a satisfying crunch, but the spider wrapped its legs around his fist and gripped his forearm, refusing to let go. He could hear the footfalls of Prunkard’s goons, but Jackson stopped long enough to punch the spider into the wall of the building. It crunched. He punched it again. The bot sprayed out a stream of green fluid that splashed Jackson up the side of his face. Jackson punched it a third time. This time the spider bot cracked right down the middle and fell to the ground.
“Mufasa Gray!” the broken thing said. “Halt.”
“You’re dead, thief!” shouted the bigger goon. They had nearly caught up. Jackson took off. When the remaining cleaning spiders told Prunkard’s men to stop and wait for the authorities, there were gunshots. He didn’t dare look back as the pirates blasted the maintenance bots.
Every sensor in the city would pick up the gunfire. Now the cops would be really interested.
“Jane,” he said urgently as he ran down the alley, dodging trash piles and scaring stray cats.
“You are about to become Father Patrick Mullane. An Irish-Catholic priest who is known for his love of butterflies. The picture I have has him surrounded by a cloud of blue ones.”
Where did she come up with these stolen IDs? But it didn’t matter—priest, pope, or mullah, as long as he wasn’t Mufasa Gray. “Just tell me when you’re switching.” He reached the end of the alley and glanced behind to see the goons freeing themselves from the meddling bots.
“Hold still one sec.”
But the short goon was pointing a handgun at him. There was a crack. The projectile made a loud slap as it hit the bricks next to him. Bullet or tranq, he couldn’t tell, but either was bad. Jackson dashed out into the street to avoid getting shot. It was nearly as crowded as the market, and it must have had cameras too, because as soon as he was in the open an alarm sounded.
“Anytime now,” he said to Jane.
“You need to get to a blind spot. If I switch your ID in the open it won’t fool the AI.”
“Where do I go?”
“Turn right. Hurry.”
He ran past a tall man smoking some kind of pipe, past four women with bright headscarves sitting at a table, past a rack of three public scooters. He briefly thought about taking one, but then discarded the idea because with the alarms, they’d be shut down. All along the street people were obediently moving to the sides of the streets to make way for the police.
“Uh-oh. Bad news, Jackson. Prunkard’s got his own specter. Nivaas security just received a flag that Mufasa Gray is an alias for a wanted criminal. I should have thought of that.”
“Can you do anything?”
“Working on it.”
A cop appeared at the far end of the street riding on a defender, a small mech that was capable of detaining people, other bots, and vehicles. It had a little platform that hung down from its backside, just big enough for two humans to stand abreast like a modern-day chariot. A defender usually housed more bots that could be used for everything from forensics to tracking by smell. So much for that direction.
At least the goons hadn’t followed him out of the alley. They must have heard the sirens. Even Prunkard’s crew weren’t cocky enough to get into a shoot-out with the police.
He looked up to see another hornet’s nest, its activation light blinking.
Hornets had a few modes. Sometimes they followed a target silently, acting as quiet little surveillance eyes in the sky. Other times they shot after their prey with a shrieking buzz, loaded for bear. The sound was on purpose, designed to inspire fear, designed to convince you to stop and raise your hands before the screaming hordes of hell descended upon you with their vicious stingers.
The coverings popped open, and dozens of robotic hornets—each as big as his pinky—spilled out.
“Shanks.”
The first hornet shot out of the nest. It circled up high above the street. Another one followed.
“Mufasa Gray,” numerous speakers broadcast up and down the street. “Halt and lie facedown on the ground.”
Jackson stopped. This was a lot of firepower for one destruction of cleaning bot charge. What had Prunkard told them? That he kidnapped and ate children? Whatever it was, Jackson didn’t have much time. A few more seconds and he would be boxed in.
The people of Sharmala were getting out of the way, happy that they weren’t the ones being screamed at. Law enforcement had a reputation for being heavy handed in this settlement and they didn’t want to get caught in the cross fire.
“Jane!”
“You’ll have to make your own blind spot. Are you ready?”
“I was ready yesterday.” He spotted the front door to a restaurant and decided that would be it. But he didn’t run for the door. Instead, he ran for the service bot standing like a statue on the sidewalk, holding a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade. He reached into the pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out a canister of Shine. “Say when.”
“Prepare to be sedated,” the speakers declared. Then the first hornet began to shriek and then a swarm exploded out of the nest. The noise was deafening, aggressive, and downright terrifying. The psyops of this security system really was top-notch. It was enough to scare the soup out of anyone.
Many of the people on the street shouted in alarm and ducked for cover. The worker bot with the pitcher of lemonade in its hand held perfectly still in the middle of the road. At least it didn’t try to tackle him.
Above Jackson, the hell swarm dived.
“Now!”
Jackson pressed the button on the canister, tossed it high into the air, and darkened his eye film to max as he looked away.
The canister detonated in a searing cloud of light. The spreading cloud of tiny particles reflected and amplified the sun, emitting thousands of lumens. The fog of light temporarily blinded every eye on the street, but it also emitted a pulse of jamming radio waves on all but Jane’s selected frequency. The effect should have been enough to mask his signature from all but the most powerful top-of-the-line sensors.
“You are void,” Jane said as she cut the transmission of his personal ID chip. For the security systems, one moment they’d have Mufasa Gray in their sights, then a burst of static, and then Mufasa Gray had vanished.
Shrouded in blinding, celestial light, Jackson pivoted away from the lemonade bot and sprinted for the restaurant door. Because the hornets were built to use GPS coordinates, calculate speed and direction, and adjust their flight accordingly, they streaked through the blinding cloud to clang off the plastic body of innocent Mr. Lemonade.
Jackson reached the restaurant door. Even with his eyes shaded enough to safely use a welder, the brilliance of the Shine off the glass made it nearly impossible to see. They’d gotten this batch of Shine from a Triad mafia group who had promised high quality, and it appeared they’d delivered. These were not your ordinary unicorn sparkles.
As he grabbed the door handle, Jackson heard the wicked, unmistakable buzzing shriek of a lone hornet. It came out of the light, a black bullet, streaking fast and low to strike him in the leg. It seared him with a hot, thin stab, as its stinger injected a burning cocktail of drugs.