Chapter 3
Jackson grunted in pain and struck at the hornet, but the device had sent the hooked tips of its six legs through his pants and latched onto his skin.
Hornets were made smooth as silk to resist removal. Jackson clutched at the thing, but it slipped between his fingers. All the while it was burrowing its legs into his flesh and injecting whatever chemicals this security system used. A circle around the spot where it had struck was burning and rapidly moving outward. It really hurt. And then ground zero of the hornet sting went totally numb.
That was bad.
As long as the hornet was attached, it would continue to poison him, and they’d be able to track it, but he couldn’t grab its exoskeleton, which was as slick as wet, soapy glass. He engaged the magnetics on his gloves, but the hornet’s shell must have been made out of some kind of composite.
Luckily Jane was on it. Fifi dropped out of Jackson’s pocket and landed on the hornet. There was a buzz and shake. And suddenly the hornet released its hold on his skin, fell to the ground, and lay there like a dead animal.
Fifi sprang back up to Jackson’s shirt and climbed onto his shoulder.
“Keep moving,” Jane said.
“I think I have a crush on Fifi,” Jackson said as he yanked the door open. Inside, the diners were shielding their eyes against the light and trying to figure out what was happening on the street. He shuffled toward the back, the burning and numbness in his leg spreading at an alarming rate. It was now halfway up his thigh.
There was an emergency anti-tox pad in his pocket, about half the size of a deck of cards with a mounding lump in the middle where all the chems and counteragents were stored. Jackson pulled it out, removed the covering on the adhesive side, then reached down his pants and slapped the pad onto his leg just above the burn. It immediately latched onto his skin, sampled his blood, and started analyzing how to respond.
The diners continued to shield their eyes and peer out at the street. He took another step, and his calf suddenly stopped working. He fell over a table, spilling a few plates and disturbing someone’s lunch. The street behind him was still sparkling and blinding. Inside the patrons were murmuring and making small cries of dismay. But the Shine wouldn’t last forever. He limped for the back of the room and what he assumed was the kitchen. There was a farmer’s hat woven from grass on a table. He stole it, hobbled a few paces farther, and stole a tall drink in a bright pink, disposable cup.
The expanding burning circle in his leg and the numbness that followed it continued to spread. And suddenly his leg stopped working entirely, and he stumbled against the wall.
“My leg is nonresponsive.”
“Keep going,” Jane urged. “There’s an alley behind the restaurant.”
Easy for her to say. He grabbed an empty chair and schlepped along using it as a crutch. He pushed open the swinging half doors at the back of the dining area and found the kitchen. The light from the street cast weird shadows here, but the staff hadn’t been blinded. He saw cooking machines, an operator, and a waiter, along with plates, utensils, and food preparation knives. It smelled very strongly of curry.
“What’s that racket?” the operator was dressed in a white chef’s shirt.
“The street’s a madhouse,” Jackson said.
“You can’t come back here!”
“I twisted my ankle trying to get away from whatever that is!” He tried to sound afraid, which wasn’t a stretch at all. “I’m going out that emergency exit or I’m gonna sue!”
It wasn’t much of a story, but the cook was more concerned about what was going on out front than weird customers blundering through his kitchen. The Shine cloud was beginning to disperse, and Jackson needed to make himself scarce before it did.
He hopped to the back door, traded his hat for the freshly stolen one, and stepped into a service alley that ran behind all the shops on this street. This was where deliveries were accepted and garbage picked up. Before the door closed behind him, he snagged one of the server’s aprons from a peg on the wall.
On his head, Jackson wore the grass hat. In his hand he still held the tall, pink cup. People frequently saw what they wanted to see. And no kind of fugitive Jackson knew paraded around with an apron and a pink cup. But just in case it wasn’t enough, he changed his shirt color to white, removed his nose augment, and pulled another bigger type of moustache out of his pocket and slapped it on his face. A moustache might be simple, but the truth was that moustaches worked. At least when dealing with those who didn’t know you.
The burning in his leg had stopped climbing, but it was still moving down. Right now, his foot was on fire, and he knew very soon it would be numb.
“ID?” he asked Jane.
“Bless me, Father Patrick, for I have sinned.”
“That sounds interesting. You can tell me all about it when I get back.” He was now Father Patrick Mullane, who liked butterflies. Other facts about the father scrolled up his display. He pushed aside the bio and pulled up a map of the town. Jane had marked each security asset searching for him with an x. There were a bunch of them.
“Okay. Captain’s here too. He wants to know if you can make it to the taco bar?” That was their code word for the accelerator where the Citadel was waiting to be launched into space.
“This leg is not going to get me to the bar.”
“Did you apply your tox patch?”
“Yes. It’s not doing much yet. Can I get a ride out of here?”
“Maybe you should pray for one, Father.”
“You can be sure I’ll be offering sacrifices to Fifi if I get out of this. Please tell me you’ve got somebody nearby who can pick me up. Where’s Tui and his skull crackers?”
“I haven’t been able to reach him yet. They might be on a shuttle back up here so they could be ready to snag the package in transit.”
Jackson swore under his breath. Of course. Their mission had been to gain access to the accelerator and rig his ride while he’d been tailing Dwight.
“You’re on your own, Jackson, sorry.”
“Okay,” Jackson said. And then he hobbled down the back alley toward a cross street. Above the buildings, hornets and sirens sounded. Here and there wisps of shining brightness rose into the sky.
“Warning. Bogey approaching.” And there was indeed an x heading this way on the map. Jackson looked around. There wasn’t any place to hide. Not one he could get to with his leg in its current state, anyway. So he hopped to the side and took a seat on a loading dock, looking in the direction of the commotion. Like he worked here, was taking his break, and trying to figure out what was going on.
A moment later the big defender appeared at the end of the alley, with a cop riding the chariot platform. Jackson pretended not to know they were there. He just sat with the big grass hat on his head and the big pink cup in his hand and stretched out a leg. He took a sip on the straw, found out that he’d stolen a salty vegetable drink of some type, then glanced casually down the alley like he’d just noticed the cop. He scooted back as a good citizen should, making room, trying his best to hide that fact that his leg was lame and his toes felt as if they were on fire.
Thankfully over the course of his life Jackson had gotten a lot of practice at looking nonchalant even while breaking the law. The cop waited just long enough for the defender’s facial scan to say he was someone other than Mufasa Gray before he clomped past. Luckily he didn’t bother to look at the record it pulled up long enough to wonder why a priest was hanging out on a loading dock, but like the captain said, too much automation made people sloppy in their critical thinking…a weakness he loved to exploit.
A security bot appeared in the sky above the buildings at one end of this alley. It paused a moment, lights flashing on its underbelly. Jackson knew he had to get moving. It was only a matter of time before one of them saw through his disguise.
But there was no way he was going to make it to the accelerator with his leg. “Jane, you’ve got to get me a ride.”
“I’m working on it.”
Another security bot flew over the roofs. Jackson knew the next one was going to fly down the street and come get a good look at him. And that would not do. Once their quick search failed to find Mufasa Gray, they’d go old-school police, check the images and do a BOLO for every Caucasian male, early twenties. The AI would know he was approximately 172 centimeters tall and weighed in at 70 kilograms.
On Gloss where he’d grown up, a little gunfire in the streets wasn’t even noteworthy. You pretty much needed an orbital bombardment for anyone to care enough to call the cops…not that they had cops anymore. But Nivaas was an orderly place—in the cities at least—where all the crime was done politely between politicians and megacorps who could afford war mechs. They didn’t have any patience for thuggish shenanigans here. On the bright side, hopefully that meant they’d already arrested Jeet Prunkard.
There was a whine as a smaller drone zipped down the alley. This flier was small, dark, and didn’t look at all like the local government ones he’d seen so far. The privately owned drone paused, hovering a few feet above him.
“Buzz off,” he muttered.
But instead it suddenly dropped to about waist level, so it could get a picture of his face. Jackson looked away, but then it flew off.
“Jane, you said Prunkard’s crew had a specter too?”
“Yeah. And he’s surprisingly good. Not as good as me, obviously. But he’s got skills.”
So like Jane, Prunkard would probably have a lot of extra eyes flying around, and would know all the usual bag of tricks of how runners avoided them. “I just got sniffed by someone.” Jackson looked around and spotted a faded sign on a wall with the icon for a public restroom and an arrow pointing that way. “I’m going to a place that’s a little quieter.”
He found that shorter strides made it easier to schlep his leg, so he quick-schlepped it in that direction. Once they found the hornet Fifi had killed, they’d see that it had stung someone, and he couldn’t let any of the drones see him limping suspiciously. Luckily his destination was just around the corner.
Nivaas had the sort of orderly society that allowed for things like shared public restrooms. There were three sinks and five stalls and it was remarkably clean. Probably because of the same little city worker spiders like the one he’d broken earlier. Nobody else was inside. He selected the stall at the very end, then locked himself in. Thankfully they were western-style toilets, so he’d at least have a place to sit while the tox pack did its job. If the cops or Prunkard’s men came in here, he’d be cornered like an idiot rabbit. He gave an exasperated sigh as he pulled his legs up so they couldn’t be seen beneath the stall if anybody wandered in.
“I’ve got to warn you,” Jane said in his ear. “Grandma is really mad at you right now. She was just yelling about how your ‘antics’ are going to cost us this job. You might be safer down there with Prunkard.”
“Ride?” Jackson prompted.
“Ooh, yes. I think that will do nicely.” But it sounded like Jane was talking to someone else.
“What have you got?” He figured it would be something innocuous. Maybe a little cart for invalids. A scooter maybe. But sometimes Jane surprised. It could be a car.
“Expect—going dark.”
And then she was gone.
“Jane?”
But Jane was offline. Probably someone was getting close to tracking their signal. So Jackson waited. A minute went by. Then two. The burning began to fade, but his leg was still mostly numb. The tox pack was working, but depending on the strength of the concoction, it could take time to counteract the agent.
Another few seconds ticked by, and then the bathroom door opened and someone walked in. The footsteps were loud. Large. A man, Jackson thought.
Jackson slowly pulled the tiny illegal throwaway pistol from his belt. If it was the cops, he’d have to hope the gun and the stolen medallion were small enough to flush. Then he’d surrender, plead his innocence, and hope the penalty for resisting arrest, fake identities, and punching spider bots wasn’t too insane. If it was Prunkard’s crew, he’d gladly shoot those guys dead. Except there was no way he was going to be able to hide a body or bodies on one leg in the middle of a city. What was the Nivaasian sentence for murder? Probably something like a hundred years hard labor in their mines. He’d rather not find out.
The individual walked slowly down the line of stalls, but rather than picking one, he hesitated, listening.
Bang. Jackson flinched as the first door was kicked open.
Cops would have announced themselves before searching the place…Probably.
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then the stranger kicked in the second door. Bang.
It was definitely a man. Jackson could see boots underneath the door now. They were big and sturdy with thick, mag-lockable soles. Spacer’s boots.
Third door. Bang. Fourth. Bang.
Jackson said nothing, just trained his gun for where he figured the pirate’s center of mass would be and got ready to shoot. But the door kicker paused. Someone else was talking. Apparently, he had a partner who had been left to block the entrance.
“Sorry,” the man at the entrance said. “You can’t come in here. We’re doing a little maintenance.”
Except the potential witness to Prunkard’s maintenance work wasn’t turned away that easy. Jackson couldn’t really hear them, but Prunkard’s goon replied, “Well too bad, pal, the restroom’s closed. So beat—ooof.”
Jackson couldn’t see, but from the noise it sounded like somebody had just gotten kicked in the chest and launched across the restroom hard enough to bounce off a sink.
The boots in front of Jackson’s stall turned to face the new threat, and he didn’t have to wait long, because a heartbeat later the newcomer closed on him. Now two pairs of big spacers’ boots were crashing back and forth. The room shook as Prunkard’s man was slammed into the wall, followed by the distinctive cry of someone who’d just gotten an arm put into a joint lock. Then Jackson’s door flew open.
There stood a giant Samoan, holding a pirate whose face had just been used as a battering ram. The pirate didn’t look so good. The giant, on the other hand, looked like he’d just been served up a big dish of ice cream.
“Hey, Jackson,” he said as he twisted the bad guy into a pretzel. “Hope I didn’t interrupt any business.”
“About time, Tui.”
Tuitama Abinadi Fuamatu was one big Samoan, and chief of Tar Heel security team—which was usually more of a raiding party. His hair was braided in small, tight cornrows. He had a pe’a—warrior’s tattoo—from his waist to knees. When exposed, it looked like a pair of permanent crazy pants. One half of his torso was tattooed as well, from pec to powerful shoulder to wrist. A full sleeve plus some. The tats were supposedly loaded with symbolic meanings, protections, and blessings.
He effortlessly flipped Prunkard’s goon over one hip to smash him against the tile wall. The move knocked the wind and the sense right out of the poor fool.
“Bro,” Tui said with a grin. “You’re all squashed up like a rat. Come out of there.”
“A hornet stung my leg.”
“Can you walk?”
“Sorta.”
Tui held out a hand to help him up. Jackson took the hand and tried to resist Tui’s crushing grip. He was no wimp, but Tui had cybernetic augments and military gene mods, so that was basically impossible. Tui liked to joke that the army doctors had unlocked the old dormant chimp genes, but whatever upgrades Earth Block had really given him, he was freakishly strong.
From the two handguns Tui had just stuffed in his waistband, he’d managed to disarm both goons in the three seconds the fight had taken. It was a good thing Tui was so damned friendly, because otherwise he’d be terrifying.
The pirate who had manned the door was lying on the floor, struggling to breathe. Neither one of them was Prunkard, which meant that piece of nasty work was still out there somewhere.
“Nice,” Jackson said as he stashed his gun away. “But I could have taken them.”
“Sure you would have, Junior,” Tui said as he helped Jackson toward the door. “Now let’s see about getting out of here without getting arrested…Jane, I’ve recovered Jackson.”
“Great. Do you still have the medallion?”
“I do,” Jackson said, patting his pocket to make sure. “Maybe Tui should hold onto it in case I get rolled up. Worst-case scenario I can try to talk my way out of some lesser charges while Tui gets it back to the ship. The cops are looking for someone half his size and half his age—”
“Hey now. I’m not that old.”
“Well, that’s gonna be a problem.” The voice in his ear was no longer the dulcet tone of Jane, but rather Captain Holloway’s drawl. “Change of plans, boys. We just got word. This security alert made Splendid Ventures nervous. Since it was so close, they probably thought it was the evicted settlers taking a shot at their pilot, because they just sent a priority request to the taco bar to bump them up. They want their Citadel back on their company ship, ASAP.”
That was not good. The plan had been to wait for the shipping container carrying the Citadel to be accelerated along the thousand-kilometer launch track and shot toward heaven. Once in orbit, Jane would create a blind spot, and the good folks of the Tar Heel would make a quiet swap away from the many eyes in space. By the time SVC realized they’d been robbed, the Tar Heel would be through the gate. But for all that to work, the security medallion needed to be there, three feet away from the Citadel, to override its security. Otherwise, that fine piece of engineering would set off all sorts of alarms when it deviated from its course.
“How much did they move the schedule up by?”
“They’re going to launch within the hour. Turns out there’s some perks to being a giant megacorporation.”
Tui and Jackson shared a glance. There was absolutely no way they could get to the port, catch a shuttle, and get the medallion into orbit in time to make any kind of swap. And once the Citadel was aboard the SVC ship, they could kiss that prize goodbye forever.
“So have Jane stall them.”
“She’s trying, but it’s not looking good.”
“That’s a whole lot of money to just let float away.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I was thinking, son. But all is not lost. There’s one surefire way to make sure that medallion is in the right place at the right time.”
Jackson thought it over for a second…He checked the map in his eye display. The Citadel’s container was only a short drive away…parked at the launch track’s hub. They were close enough to get there before the container was accelerated to escape velocity and hurled into space.
“You can’t be serious.”
“That depends on how badly you still want to get paid, Mr. Rook.”