What I’m Reading

Started on Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer. I loved her story ‘Cat Pictures Please‘ and this is set in the same universe, I think.

Novella

I think I have a concept that could be a novella, but still having a huge problem getting my word count up. And plotting. And characterization. So, basically all of it except the basic plot seed.

Friday Art

http://www.eshiu.com/

I’m a very visual person. Books become movies in my head. Art is very inspiring to me in my writing, so I’m always on the lookout for some cool artists to keep tabs on.

Emmanuel Shiu

Jack 1

“I hear you’re a jack,” said the man in his uptower accent as he squeezed himself against the table into the seat opposite me. He grunted, the table grunted, the taped-up seat grunted. His cheap pants grunted and creaked, but somehow survived the gyrations. 

His tag halo said he was broke so I didn’t look up from my recon eggs topped with tua duang. Instead, I squirted more of Mama Cahn’s homemade sauce across my plate.

“I said–” the man started, then stopped when I looked up at him.

“My time costs,” I said, as I swirled the fat split larva in the thick sauce. The eggs are for shit, thick blocks of gene-carved soy, but Mama’s home-farmed tua duang was to die for. I speared one, popped it my mouth, chewed, while I held his piggy black eyes with my yellow gaze. Sauce and grease made for a pleasant burn all the way down. 

He didn’t blink at the mods. Okay, points for him. A second later, two hundred in mixed high-end corporate and polity scrip hit my network. Immediately spendable, no expire date. Piggy Eyes’s tags were a better liar than he was. I paid my rent while I waited for him to catch up.

“For your time,” the man said. I chewed slower and he got the point. “I represent the–”

I tuned him out while I took pix and sent them on to my concierge about the time I felt the first feather-touches of Piggy’s digital fingers in my own pie. While he talked nonsense, he rifled around in my public data, then set his hounds on the few threads I had hanging out for people like him to track down, so they could report back to their masters that they’d actually done something resembling work. That made them happy, and happy people paid more. 

Piggy found the cop career and traced that back to the military career, both of which had cast me aside when the money train derailed and took everything down with it. That usually satisfied most people that I knew my way around town, and so it was with Piggy. 

Meanwhile, I was doing the same (But a little better, I like to think). My dogs came back with a cluster of rotating aliases leading to shell companies and double-blinds, some of which I’d run into often enough to recognize. Enough that I could say ‘forensic talent scout’. ‘George’, his current name of choice, blathered while I nodded. 

Both of us watched multiple reflections of the other, smeared across hundreds of devices. I was armed. So was he. 

The Wolfe Marches 6 and partial

He pulled up menus from her internal control systems and ran diagnostics to make sure she wasn’t going to go mad or suffer any permanent physical damage from his attack. Even now, her internals were fighting to block off the flashing lights and blaring music the market ran all-shifts. He locked down some of her more aggressive counter measures, then began to dismantle her [something that takes awhile to do]..

A cold hard touch at the back of his neck, right over his plug constellation. 

Oh, yeah. Her partner. The one we thought was gone.

“Disengage and stand up, slowly,” came the soft command. Male. Desperate.

Kean wobbled as he got to his feet. He raised his arms and splayed his fingers, showing he had no physical weapons. Twice he tried to turn his head, but a grunted cough stopped him each time, each hack cut from sickness and surety.

“You sound as bad as your sis,” Kean said to the empty air. “I could help, you give me a chance.”

The cold spot came back, lower down, angled to blow out his heart as well as his spine. 

“We knew we were not long for this world when we took the shots. Nobody up and made us. Just our own selves.” His dry voice rustled, each word dragged up from the sharp dust and nailed there. His body, Kean thought, eating itself.

Vasquez was a dead man, but enough of him remained to pull Kean down the long slide into darkness. His eyes glittered feral-bright when Kean manage to turn his head enough to get a glimpse of the now-dessicated face, collapsing inwards with each breath. 

“Still, I can help.”

“Help us over the edge, you mean. Help us to die.”

“If it takes that, but the ship has suspense pods. Take just a little tweak to make ‘em keep you and your sister alive ‘til they can get that stuff outta you.”

There was a pause, and the spot wandered. Finally: “Truth?”

“As much as can be, this far from a regen center. Maybe yes, maybe no. Most people would be dead long ago, so maybe yes for you two. I like your odds.” I looked out the corner of one eye. Then from the perspective of a drone – the small ones from the Avaent were making their appearance at last. Diego Ovalo was a scarecrow, the hypermuscle having eaten him down to skin and bone, and past that into a kind of walking starvation.

He saw the drones swarm towards us, and he looked at me. Then he removed the gun and slumped to his knees, tired and unwilling to fight. I unslung my medical bag, such as it was, and brushed his neck with hypos.

**

[Mercado get his merch back and could let it go but he can’t, he just can’t. He has to push for that little extra pound of flesh or something else. Something horrible. Up until then, Lasher is mostly in his corner, even if she doesn’t much like the taste of it. But this Terrible Thing pushes her over the edge. She walks away from the job with her people, but vengeance is coming. Later. Cold as the Big Black itself.]

[I think I have to redo this in first person]

She walked us out of that lion’s den with a roll in her walk and a glint in her eye, but I knew she had marked Mercado. He had gone that extra mile, alright, done what he felt he needed to do to secure his place and his people, and more. 

I knew there would be a reckoning. 

Sure as shootin’. 

**

The infirmary was cold and dark, full of the stink that old meat and sterilfoam(™) makes when you put them together. Two of our four suspend chambers were in supine position; they looked like massive caplets, the grey medical foam concealing the ruined bodies inside. It made the normally crowded room even closer. 

I stood inside the medical holo field created by the nanofoam, watching my bosses be taken apart. The highlighted and color-coded animations made the devastating injuries look almost cartoonish. Inside the opaque capsules, hair-thin probes formed from the foam slowly sought out and realigned splintered bone and flaps of flesh. Several critical ounces lay splashed on various surfaces back at the dive bar where she and Taylor had been ambushed. Cloned replacements were being fast-grown somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Blood and fluids were synthesized. More than one account spun towards zero.

In some corner of her consciousness, I was sure Captain Bede Lasher railed and spat at the sheer cost of resurrecting herself.

I gestured. The field responded, and showed me greatly-enlarged scans of current work being done; an optic nerve re-attach in Lasher and a torn artery in Taylor. More gestures. The medical dashboard showed me all the work that needed to be done, ranked in terms of time and cost. Neither were our friends in this case, not here. We’d come to New Cyprus to do a simple delivery, nothing to do with the Avaent’s normal business. It had found us, anyway.

[You need sleep] sent LCY. I saw it as text in the ships augmented reality layer. [You are beginning to make mistakes.]

I shook my head. “Not yet, Lucy.”

[I have logged nine minor errors in judgement over the last two hundred minutes. None regarding the patients. So far.]

LCY was capable of knocking me out on my feet if it came to that, just by overriding my own internal wares, and she’d do it, too, if my behavior fell into that broad and vague swath called ‘endangering the ship and/or crew’. I took a deep breath and tried to focus. “Yeah, well, maybe the Captain should have sprung for an actual doctor,” I said as I checked Taylor’s dashboard. “I’ll get some sleep right after I handle a few minor things.”

Technically, Taylor was not as bad off. No head shot. His lungs would need to be completely rebuilt, though, and that takes longer than you might think. This was not the first or even third major trauma for either of them, but it was one of the worst according to the ship’s records. 

I kept busy. I checked and rechecked various stores and levels of things we’d need, projecting out worst-case scenarios in case this batch of tissue failed to thrive or that part failed to take hold. Some of them were grim indeed. The bottom-line worst one involved me selling one of the engine cores to cover costs.

I factored in the transport fee I’d need to give myself a good running start if it came to that, even as I knew it would not be enough. Between them, Lasher and Taylor are the best bounty hunters this side of the Coal Sack. Skip-tracing a rabbiting engineer cum nursemaid would be no trouble, sure as shootin’.

I talked to the Avaent, let her know things would be quiet for some time, but there were still things to be done even sitting still in dock. Normally LCY would handle the mundane tasks but for now she was handling the med bay functions as well as aiding and shepherding the medical intelligences I’d rented. I’d learned enough to patch the occasional gunshot, but Lasher’d hired me as an engineer, not a doctor.

That left me running oversight for the dumb machines, and Lord knows they needed looking after. I double- and triple-checked everything they did to make sure they didn’t make a bad situation worse. The cargo handlers had a tendency to wander. The comm systems liked to chatter. Lasher’s headware normally held them in tight check, but all her surviving systems were either offline or aiding in her repair. I have my own internals but naturally they were oriented towards, say, monitoring the power plant or coolant levels. Under the emergency protocols, I had almost full control right now, admin rights to everything but the self-destruct charges. 

I had been running on stims for the past twenty hours, ever since they were brought in, and only now was I entertaining the thought of actual sleep. The latest dose was wearing off but I still had to make sure the bioprinter filters were clean, and check the latest Port news, and…

[Visitors] said one of the security subsystems into my increasingly fuzzy headspace. I changed course and headed for the main door that opened off the cargo bay. I’d already dealt with the Port authorities… yesterday? Maybe? Video feed from the door showed me three lean hard-bodied men and women in close black going-to-a-funeral suits. All three aped the look of former soldiers.

Aw, come on! Government types? Here? This place was barely big enough for a government, much less a government that could afford people to harass innocent shipholders. 

I keyed the cargo lock and stepped over the descending doors. “Look, I have no idea—”

Quicker than a snake, the nearest woman reached out and stroked my temple with her middle three fingers.

I was asleep before I hit the deck.

The Wolfe Marches 5

“She’s not your contract. Mercado—”

“Mercado can go twist himself. He wouldn’t let us do what needed to be done.” 

Kean stood rock-steady, even as he sent out test-probes from his headware. Nothing. He was cut off. How did she do that? How? He licked his lips and decided to try a different tact. “We have an infirmary on the Avaent. I might be able to blunt the hypernuscle reaction.”

Pain exploded across his jaw and he stumbled back against a tent, then slid to the ground. She’d backhanded him across the jaw with her pistol so fast he didn’t see her move. At least it’s not my nose, again.

 He sat on the cracked former roadway, panting as she stood over him. He felt the gun stroke the top of his head. 

“Where is Marta Lasher?” Maria said. “You’re part of her crew.”

“Let me talk to her; I’ll get her to meet me here. I won’t say anything else.” Kean said, trying to put a desperate whimper into his voice. 

The gun didn’t move. “Done,” Maria said.

[LCY, can you hear me?] Kean sent. [I need you to gen up something to remotely ramp up her perception filter software, ASAP]

“Kean, checking in,” Kean said on Marta’s channel. 

“Morn, you better have something for me. We’re not finding shit.”

“Sorry, boss. I’m in the market. This beondegi stand has that sauce you love. Like five feet from where I am now.” 

There was a pause. “Got it. We’re not having any luck finding Ovalo. Might as well get some lunch.”

She cut the connection, and Kean felt the gun move. 

“Good boy. Now, we—”

In the aug, a green flag popped up as s file dropped into his personal space. Kean opened it immediately, even as he pitched himself to the side. There was a blazing pain in his shoulder followed a heartbeat later by the soft pop of Maria’s gun. Then she was down, screaming, clawing at the ground. He took a deep breath, then shot her twice with the tranq gun.

Kean snatched up her gun and stowed it. Then he concentrated. It was dangerous to do , but more dangerous not to at this point: he damped down the pain response around his wound to a dull throb. The relief went through him like a shiver, even if he knew it was just a fiction. 

He looked back to Maria. She was laid out full-length on the ground, clutching at the gutter with her long fingers.  Kean straddled her, then slid his fingers around her hairline. A few centimeters from where her temple was, he found a cluster of concealed ports. This wasn’t on her mil history; she must have had it done after she left.

Filaments from his finger strengthened into a full hardwired connection, then he delved down into her physical as well as  internal systems. 

“The hell did you do to her?” Lasher said over the voice com. “We’re still ten minutes out, at least.”

“Had LCY create a little update file for her headware. She’d been messing around with it herself, but… poorly. So I figured I had a chance to get through all the encryption and protections to fiddle with the same bit of software. The perception filter keeps you from being overwhelmed by the net content. I figured in her boosted state, she had to drop that filter in order to not die of boredom waiting on queries and the like. You sometimes hear about students or office jocks doing this; it usually ends badly for them. So I set hers all the way up, to where nothing was getting in. She’d become addicted to the constant rush of stimulation – this was like jerking the rug out from under her. Kept her stunned long enough to dart her. We’re behind the fried dough-ball tent.”

The Wolfe Marches 4

[I’ve got a hit], Kean said on their private net, as he tried to slip through the crowd. 

[I have a possible match] LCY said, her voice calm and neutral. Kean always heard it as female, where Lasher and 47 said they heard a male voice. 

[Tag it,] Kean said, and a yellow arrow appeared over the crowd. He made for the arrow. 

[Do not engage, Kean. These are extremely dangerous individuals. They’re both juiced,[ 47 sent back.

Kean let himself be carried along with the flow of human traffic. [Holy crap. You’re not just poking the new guy, are you?] He looked at the photos they shared, then beyond into the crowd. Bodies pressed against him, some in work clothes, the others in casuales, as he slowly made his way ahead. The yellow arrow bobbed several feet ahead. 

Finally the crowd thinned naturally, and he pushed his way past a group of laughing teen girls. The yellow arrow bobbed over a stick-skinny figure slipping between booths into the ‘backstage’ area of the market. Kean slipped into the same space two booths before his quarry.

For the seconds he was between booths, he drew his shoulder-holsterred gun and let his hand drop down. The pistol felt heavy. It needed to be, to partially absorb the recoil. He couldn’t take chances with anyone juiced if he could at all help it. 

He caught up to the arrow and slowed, keeping at least a couple of booth-length between it and him. Owners or their servants frowned at him as he loped past, the second intruder in their day. A few who saw the gun backed away and drew the curtains or slammed doors. 

[Positional information estimation only] LCY said suddenly. [The density of active sensors I can acquire has dropped below 80% confidence.] 

Kean cursed under his breath. The market had the most cameras of any place in Bradbury. If their quarry left this area… he picked up the pace, then pressed against the back wall of a food tent. His quarry was right around the corner.

Slowly, he edged his head towards the corner of the tent. He was so intent it took him a second when he fetl a gun barrel pressed gently against his temple. 

“Stanup,” the shaodw figure said, and kaen obeyed, letting his gun fall to the ground before he stood. He turned and as he did so, felt the barrel trace over his cheeck and nose, then raise until it sat betwwen his eyes.

Kean could see in a second it was Maria de la Cruz, but it took his aug connec to the ship’s net over ten seconds to return the same answer. Kean saw the woman suffered from a sever facial tic around her mouth, a jerk and shudder that lasted for several seconds. 

As he felt himself sweat, he realized she was speaking. His translation program began to dole out her words, which were still arriving. 

[I’m sure you’re modded enough to understand me,] Maria said. [Tell your pereption filte to compensate.]

Kean gaped and then tried to do what said, but a second into the preocess Maria rowled. [I’ll do it…]

” …Myself:” her voice cracked. 

Kean blinked. He hadn’t even felt his headware being hacked. No errors or displays. This was seriously bad. 

“Now, we’re goint to have a little round-table here. Marta Lasher killed Haven’s boy and there needs to be some paynback for that, however much of a little shit he was.”

“He was beaten to death in his prison cell by his cellmate,” Kean said, still tripping over his own tongue. “Maria had nothing to dso with that.”

“She was the reason – the whole and complete reson – that he was in that cell in the first place. For that. She will die.”

The Wolfe Marches 3

He then brought up the screens for the Avaent’s drone bay. They had several grades of space-going drone – useful for checking out potential salvage for ambushes and other surprises – but only a handful of atmospheric ones. He had a thin amount of data coming in from Lasher – just flat pics of the two missing executioners scraped from their rare social media shares – but it would have to do. He repurposed two head-sized drones, put them on wheeled chassis,  and sent them to casually canvassing Bradbury’s ruined outer works looking like Viet food delivery drones.

Bradbury was a dying city. One of the planet’s original settlements, it was built underground to escape the punishing surface radiation. It started small and cramped. Fast forward a hundred years and it was big and cramped. The economy shifted, the original investors lost their shirts, then involuntarily committed seppuku. The resulting crash drove people to the newer settlements, and Bradbury became a factory town mostly run by bots and bions. The people that stayed tended to be the sorts that didn’t much like other people, so they made themselves as hard to find as possible. It made the place the perfect port for those looking to do business without much paperwork.

While most other settlements Bradbury’s size sported a sea of cameras, Bradbury was almost barren in that regard. The average lifetime of a surveillance camera had reliably been measured in single-digit minutes. Normally. Kean would surf the various camera feeds, piggybacked into the city grid, to look for a bounty. Sometime they got lucky or their quarry got a little stupid at the wrong time. Not so here.

While the disguised drones hunted for faces along the city edge, Kean ate and showered. Afterwards, he changed out of the ubiquitous (and identifiable) shipsuit and had the materials printer run off a set of cheap durable clothing, the type that many of the Bradbury workers wore day-to-day. Huge steel-toed boots reinforced with ceramic inserts, a pants-and-tool-belt combo thick and durable as old-style leather, and a loose multi-pocketed workshirt. A ragged neckerchief and a stowed pair of work gloves completed things. Their tweaked template included wear-and-tear, faded colors, and a bare minimum of concealed carbon-weave body armor. 

No bird-popper this time. Kean took a concealable SAOP 522-S, a mid-range gun designed for close-up and personal. In a shoulder holster he put a high-caliber Ruger Raptor2. Extra magazines for each went into concealed pouches and into the boot compartments. The tool belt also featured a collapsible truncheon.

LCY came back with a handful of possible hits. Most centered on a stretch of cheap bars and other entertainments that stretched in a rough crescent cupping the westen reservoir, so Kean put that first on his places to check.

Instead of exiting from the cargo bay, he used a maintenance accessway in the back. That way his departure was wholly covered by the port’s fuel umbilical assembly. He slipped down into the now cool and quiescent fuel transport housing, then took an access ladder down into the depths of Bradbury’s hidden maintenance world. Five levels later, he casually joined with a group of contract workers in a transport going out to the western water purifiers. 

From there it was a simple matter to just walk away into the flickering neon light shows.

**

[see, here is a reason for at least one more character – Kean needs someone to talk to here]

Kean got a short bottle of beer to nurse as he walked along among the food carts and stalls that accumulated in a stretch between two large casinos. The air was thick with spices and grease. Massive kettles bubbled, surging up as cultured squid by  the pound was scraped from prep boards. 

He stopped to watch a tiny woman put on a show at her grill, squirting spices and oils, then chopping and tossing ingredients to briefly paint pictures with cubed brassicas and carrots.

Near a crossroads created by two tunnels and a transport shaft, he got a twisted paper cone filled to overflowing with marinated mealworms mixed with rice, peppers, and cucumbers. As he walked along eating, he kept to the crowds. He gawked and gaped like a total newcomer, just in from the vast plantations and given an afternoon to wander in the Big City. He’d been in this area of Bradbury only once or twice before, so It excused his questions and his rubbernecking.

Actually, his glasses were scanning the crowds, running quick face matches. Backed with LCY’s processing power, he had results in real time, a series of faces blocked off in red. He followed up on the occasional yellow hit until a closer look turned them red.

He kept checking but none of the more permanent businesses around maintained any cameras or, indeed, seemed concerned with security at all. 

He avoided a roving group of pickpockets, which forced him to the edge of the impromptu marketplace. That’s where he got his first green hit.

**

Lasher would never admit it, but she felt uncomfortable at times around 47. For a long time she’d felt vaguely ashamed of that as well, until someone told her why. 

There were two reasons: one, as a second-tier bion, 47 triggered the uncanny valley effect in humans. It’s face was blandly handsome and perfectly symmetrical in a way no unmodded organic face ever could be. On an unconscious level, humans reacted poorly to them but could rarely if ever explain why. 

Two, 47 lacked human micro-expressions. As a concession to human psychology, most human-form bions blinked, but it generally ended there. Most people picked up on the obvious differences: they did not smile unexpectedly as a passing dog triggered happy childhood memories, they did not um or ah, they did not trip over their own feet or mis-speak themselves. But humans also give off a whole panoply of non-verbal behaviors and cues to each other that were absent from bions. No tics, no shifting of feet, no clearing throats or head titls. Nothing. An inactive bion might as well be a piece of furniture for all the life it displayed. 

That was what was currently making Captain Lasher quietly freak out. Beside her in the car, 47 might as well have been a corpse. No, a corpse could be counted on to eventually do something hideous, like outgas. The quiet ten minute trip to the Clarkesville government center felt like ten hours.

She wasn’t one given to nervous chatter, but she felt almost compelled to make some conversation. She opened her mouth, but 47 suddenly spoke up. No preamble, no throat-clearing, just silence to speech. It was unnerving!

“I’ve been reviewing the search hits. Kean has uncovered an interesting connection.” He gestured, and the car’s dashboard was suddenly a video board. He gestured, and pictures appeared. “Diego Ovalo and Maria de la Cruz, our two missing shooters,” it indicated, gesturing again to group a set of twenty pictures. With more gestures, they separated into three groups.

“You see the connection?” 47 said.

The first group, the largest, showed both of them together in social situations. A key right there – they had a pre-existing significant relationship before they were recruited, and that persisted through their professional life. From the tats, she would say former Marines. Diego was a trim narrow-shouldered young man who looked more like an extra in a toothpaste ad than a seasoned killer. Maria was rail-thin and vaguely unhealthy looking; Diego shared the same dark hollow-eyed look. Both had a look in their eyes that was chilling, but… Lasher’s lips thinned as she made the connection. They were both bonded with hypermuscle.

Once hailed as a revolution of the combat arts, the treatment regimen that went under the blanket term ‘hyperrmuscle’ had been quietly dropped when the side effects began to emerge in the public press, leading to desertion, suicide, and depressed recruitment numbers for a generation. 

Of course it had leaked into the underworld. It led to numerous physical and mental problems later in life, but most people who used it probably were not planning their retirement anyway. 

It sped up human reactions, making a person inhumanly fast and accurate. Combined with dubious drug cocktails, it could make a person into a one-man kill team. Using it is like using a muscle, though; the more you use it, the stronger it got. Five years or so after the initial treatments, most people bonded with hypermuscle were on a smorgasbord of expensive and debilitating drugs just to keep their metabolisms from killing them. From the look of it, both de la Cruz and Ovalo were just entering the first stages of degradation. Like as not they used to be independent killers but now required minders. 

“That’s likely why they were kept back. They were reserve in case things went south. Likely they were positioned down one of the back tunnels to pick us off if we made the main team and bolted,” Lasher mused. “Or, the rest of the group doesn’t want much to do with them.”

47 enlarged two of the latest photos. “Degradation starts roughly five years after inception. If they each follow the standard curve, right now they are paying almost 100 credits a day for the drugs to keep their hearts from exploding. Within the year, that will almost double as their bodies resistance increases, and double again each eighteen to twenty months afterwards. 86% of recipients that lived more than nine years after inception die of an overdose or from dose mismanagement.” 

Lasher tapped her chin. “Mercado has to know this already, and likely he has their estimated shelf life on his calendar. He’ll cut them loose the second they become a liability; until then, their skills are just too valuable.” 

“From the other photos, I’d say that Chavez was their minder.”

“I have a thought,” Lasher said.

The Wolfe Marches 2

Benny died clawing at a desk drawer where, presumably, he’d kept a gun. His body wobbled, then fell across Kean’s legs. Kean had slid behind the heavy office desk before Benny’s door hit the opposite wall, gun in hand. Now, though, he was trapped under better than 200 pounds of dead club owner. He had seconds to tap his com to OPEN and hide his gun.

Unfriendly folk looked over the desk at him. Guns were pointed. Hands were raised.

“Guess you took out Benny,” Kean said. “He was a right son of a bitch. Cheated all of us, too.”

“No concern of ours,” said one of the gunmen, who leaned over to eclipse the swinging office light. His skull was mostly matte-black metal, his eyes set in burn-shiny flesh. “You’re one of the sonbitches who took down my brother.”

Kean swallowed. “We take down a lot of people. You’ll need to be–”

Shots rang out behind the group as Kean ducked his head. Hot splashes of blood fell on him as the gunmen fell. 

“People talkin’ when they should be shootin’,” Marta Lasher said as she checked on the dead, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe it.

Kean got to his feet as Lasher and 47 went through the dead men’s pockets for cash and anything else of worth. His clothing was already ridding itself of the blood.

“Benny okay?” 47 said in its almost monotone voice. Their sound systems had been damaged in a breakout months ago, and they still had not had them repaired. 

Kean shook his head. “Na. Sorry.” He inched his way around the desk as Lasher gave the desk a quick once-over. “These guys were looking for us. They knew me, at least, which means they probably have paid someone decent for intel.”

“Looking for us how?” Lasher said as she tested drawers. When she came to it, she pocketed Benny’s gun and a couple ammo magazines. 

“My guess? Someone at the port. I haven’t gotten any alerts our net has been peeped. I doubt Benny sold us out to this dude.”

“Benny would sell water to his mother in the desert, Kean. If there was cash in it, he’d have done it, no matter what kind of relationship you thought was goin’ on.” She wiped her brow, leaving it blood-streaked against her dark skin. She tossed the ID’s she’d stripped from the gumen to Kean. “Run these, see what you can come up with.”

Kean dropped the slivers in a pocket, then joined 47 at the door. Nothing stirred in the dark accesway. Sloping corridors led off to kitchen and stores, the back door, and back out into the bar area. 

“I have to settle up something here,” Lasher said and waved them out. Kean paused to pick up one of the hunter’s guns. As he held it, his palm extruded filaments into the gun’s ports, spoofing the smart-link systems and giving him access. Suddenly the gun was hot in his hand, and targeting reticles flickered in his modded vision. After it was imprinted to him, he slipped the gun under his jacket as he followed 47 back into the bar.

With the noise and music, no-one out here had heard the commotion though RJ the bartender gave both of them hard looks as they walked closer. He must have been on a private channel or network with Benny.

47 looked at him, flat colorless eyes barely visible behind his visor, then nodded as he broke away. “I need to finish up Lasher’s business,” he said, then slipped through the dancing crowd like an eel. 

Kean continued on towards the bar, and shook his head at RJ’s inquiring look. “Sorry, RJ, couldn’t stop them,” he said quietly as he leaned in. He took the beer RJ passed to him, an ice-cold Island Stream, and he cracked and drank down half of it. 

RJ wiped his brow and gave a slight smile. “You’re not a shooter, Key. Shit. I guess I just inherited a bar.” He looked around the dark place with narrowed eyes, then back to Kean. 

Kean took another pull from the bottle, then fished out the ID sliver he’d taken from Black Skull. He slipped the thumbnail-sized chip into one of his slots, cloned it, and handed RJ the fresh chip. “This was the dude that killed him. Said we pinched his brother, but didn’t say when or give names. Might be something good to know.”

RJ made the chip disappear, then handed Kean another Island Stream. “Might be. See you later,” he added, looking up and past Kean.

Kean turned to see 47 and Lasher near the door. He upended and drank down the last of the beer. “Might be some time before we come back this way,” Kean said as he walked away to join the others.

**

They made their way to a depot and caught a train headed back towards the port. Once they were underway again, Kean slotted the ID chips into his onboards, cleaned up the mess of malware surrounding them, then began to craft queries around them. Most were masked as emergency medical inquiry, as if from an EMT; others were more subtle.

[More stuff on shooters, little backstory for crew]

“OK, our guys were an enforcer team for Los Scorpiones, but were acting on their own. The guy with the metal skull, Hector Chavez, is brother to Emil Chavez. The money launderer you guys  pinched in one of the Saturn habs, ‘bought fifteen months ago. Before my time.” 

Lasher shook her head slightly. “Which is probably why they didn’t automatically shoot you. I remember him. Kept raving on about how his ‘Family’ would take us all out, our hours were numbered, etcetera.”

“They move slow for such close family,” 47 observed.

“Los Scorpiones. There’s no way we can make this right,” Kean said. “They are going to kill us all.” 

“Well, we’d better not move slow. Los Scorpiones boss for this zone is Alonso Mercado, over in Clarkesburg. He’ll be expecting an explanation for four dead shooters. Best not to keep him waiting,” Lasher said, the tiny beads in her hair rustling as she shook her head. “Kean, you go back to the Avaent and make her ready to get the hell out of Dodge.”

**

The Avaent sat back in it’s bay, probes and umbilicals connecting it to fuel, recharging, life support, and data among many other things. The manta-ray-shapedl cargo vessel was designed to be a tough independent ship that could roam at will for months at a time, seeking out new markets. It showed. Paint was scored right down the the metal in many places, and there were several spots where less friendly atmospheres had left their own kind of mark. The power plant and lightfold drive were relics best left to collectors and museums. 

There were advantages, though. It was missing several of the required safety interlocks now required on all Commerce Guild craft. It had none of the new style transponders that had way too many polity-level back doors to suit Lasher. As in, they existed at all. The fuel scoops and purification plant were frontier rated, meaning they could slurp up swamp water and turn it into pristine fuel without giving gimmicky new-fangled filters a headache.

Right now, many of the cargo bays sat open and waiting for modular freight containers to roll up and lock on,or were abuzz with drone and mover ‘bots shifting and weighing cargo. 

As per their main sideline, though, the back half of Deck C was given over to cells and secure suspend tubes for transporting a different kind of freight. Space was precious on a ship, so the area also served multiple duty: it was also the infirmary. It was Kean’s first stop when he came aboard through the back cargo bay.

The circular med bay had two tables, both currently stowed in the floor panels. Bright omnidirectional light made sure nothing could be overlooked. There were no prisoners in the cells, but below in the suspend well, two lucrative bounties slumbered away their time between stars, until they could be delivered to the proper authorities. Kean checked life signs, and adjusted their calorie intake. For this, he had to depend on LCY, the ship’s Mind, and the limited medical education they’d been able to install in her. As a medic went, he was a talented amateur. Considering that, he checked in on her data access. She’d been able to test on certs for blood work and trauma engineering in the short time they’d been here. They were cheaper, low-level certs but might count for something when they needed it. 

As he walked through the main bay, he let the ship systems come to the forefront of his mind. The engine dashboard, life support, fuel, power and fluid systems, the state of the shipnet; all this flooded into him and was dealt with in priority order. Fortunately, for once, there were only seven or eight minor problems to deal with. Docking fees were paid and tallied, cargo – what there was of it – was now shut tight and all the bots firmly in their charging cradles. At a command from Kean, the docking bay itself came to life as bots pulled coolant lines and power cables free. 

At last there was a heavy rumbling thunk throughout the shp as the massive fuel umbilicals disengaged. Minutes later, the lights flickered as they went from external to internal power. The air went from the musty smoky Bradbury mix to strained and filtered air, dry and cool. 

Twenty minutes later, as the Captain and 47 were entering the Clarkesburg outskirts, he sent the ready signal. “All clear for departure,” he sent. 

“Roger that,” Captain Lasher said as they exited the depot and caught a groundcar to take them to Hell.

**

Marta Lasher didn’t speak to 47 for the twenty minute car ride out to the Mercado compound. It was a good sign that the man was seeing them in his home. She told herself that made it somewhat less likely that he would simply kill them out of hand. 

The small autocar took them out of the city into dry ranch land, Flat plains stretched to the horizon, dotted with various food and product animals of various types, from various stars. The Mercado compound ambushed them from one side, a fold in the land concealing it until the last second from direct view from the roadway. The car slowed as it turned down the driveway. There were no gates or walls topped with razor wire and broken glass. Just a small guardpost with a single security bot that waved them through.

It was an impressive display that made Lasher’s tailbone want to climb up inside her body and hide. Mercado had no need of such things. His power on this world was so secure it was said he didn’t even bother with bodyguards when he went into town.

A woman, an actual human servant, met them at the driveway and walked them inside where she announced them. Lasher could see a quick distant look in the young woman’s eyes, an almost imperceptible nod as they passed a discrete security gate. This was one of the few times she wished she was as modded as Kean. Sometimes the kid seemed more machine than man, whereas all she had was the most basic of headware and a couple of control interfaces any ship captain would have. 

After a slight pause, the woman gestured. “Senor Mercado will see you now,” she said. “Please follow me.” She walked the length of the main house, towards an office in the back.

[An impressive security setup,] 47 sent over their personal network. [They are more than reasonable secure, as you might imagine, but I can get snippets here and there. Some of the security personnel don’t shut off their comdots. The place is on alert. We’ve already passed three checkpoints. Power usage and hotspots in the walls indicate this entire corridor is a kill zone.]

[Happy days,] sent Lasher as they followed quickly behind. As they walked, Lasher picked up the faint strains of Intiago’s Silver Summer Nights Opus II coming from the upper floors. She allowed herself a tight little smile. There hadn’t been a gangster born yet that didn’t somehow think that old music and dark wood somehow translated into respectability.

At the office door, a bion took their weapons. Mercado might not like the idea of putting his human staff at risk. Something to think about, Lasher said to herself. 47 and she handed over their guns, stunners, and knives. Then they were shown in.

Mercado hadn’t met them alone, but he wasn’t boxed in by security like some bosses Lasher had seen. He was a man of moderate age, in that zone where it’s impossible to tell 40 from 90, but reports she considered reliable put him at only about 53. Young, to be a planetary (and, it was rumored, soon to be sector-wide) boss. He had the blended neo-cauc coloring and features that confirmed rumors he was from Terran colonial stock. He stood behind a shallow desk, itself more like a raised bench with (she could see as they got closer) recessed physical data screens. 

Lasher decided she was going to take it as a good omen that the man seemed to be as un-enhanced as she herself. 

At least he looks like he’s in a good mood, Lasher thought as 47 and she stopped a few feet in, then remained standing even though Mercado gestured towards seats closer to his desk.

Two women in understated dark suits stood discreetly behind Mercado, modded eyes like black slits in their calm pale faces. The muscle, Lasher figured. 

“Captain Marta Lasher of the Avaent, just in from New ChristChurch. I hear from Bradbury that we have business, you and I,” Mercado said after a few seconds spent perusing the screens. “Unexpected business. An associate of yours was injured by my team?”

[go back, injure Kaen, note his self-healing ability at least in that area]

“Overstated,” Lasher said. “He’s fine. Water under the bridge.”

A flicker of a smile on Mercado’s thin lips. “I’m gratified to hear it. However, three persons of a five man enforcer team are dead, at your hand.”

Shit, we did miss some, Lasher growled to herself. No matter what happens here, they’ll still be out for blood. More shit on a different day.

The large airy rooms suddenly seemed closer, and Lasher shifted on her feet. A slight tic of sound from behind Mercado, and Lasher saw the woman had shifted position as well, by inches. Readied, in case she tried something. 

He’s goading me, seeing if I’ll flinch. Well, fuck him. 

“How do you propose we proceed from this point?”

Lasher let her shoulders shift, as if she were feeling the weight of Mercado’s presence. “Five man team takes a lot of training and gear, and we don’t have either. Sure you’ve checked out the ship by now, you can see how close to the waterline we are. Supping that with bounties seems a good way to make money, and we ain’t doing so bad we can’t afford to pass over some jobs. This month.” She paused. “Look at the pistols your bion took at the door.”

Mercado’s expression darkened slightly, then he motioned towards the door. The bion came in, and laid the pistols on the desk. 

“Not your standard issue to your teams. Means they were coming on a personal vendetta, not in your name. They’d know not to use your iron.”

Mercado turned the pistols over in his big hands, pulled out the clips, otherwise inspected them. Finally he shrugged and called over his bion. “Inspect the smart ports. Who are the last people to use these?”

The bion extruded connectors into the ports on each pistol, and ran it’s diagnostics. “Match for Hector Chavez, Donald Ingia, and Paolo Martinez. Each have been fired within the last hour. All three indicate cessation of life signs while attached. Sudden drops in blood pressure and major organ disruption.”

Mercado looked less than pleased, but then he smiled. “Well. It is good then, that we have no problems. You’ve done the right thing, coming here personally. It shows respect. Still, the loss of a five man team is no small expense, regardless. But… we also have the case of the two who have not reported back to me. I would know the reason for this and, well, now I have two bounty hunters in my parlor. Find them, bring them to me alive, and I wipe your debt.”

Lasher started forward but a gentle brush on her hand from 47 stopped her. She took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly through her nose on a ten-count. She gave Mercado her best smile.

“I believe we are in business, then.” 

**
Kean was finishing the last engine tests when Lasher called. “We’re stayin’, much as it galls me. We’re working for Mercado, at least for now.”

“How—”

“Offer, couldn’t resist,” 47 said.

“Oh,” said Kean as he began the process to return the ship to dormancy. “Okay, then. What’s the deal?” He winced as Lasher went into detail.

“Well, cap’n, I can poke at the local net while you’re in transit. Someone in Bradbury gave up our location. How many people both knew we were in town and that Chavez would be interested in our whereabouts? Can’t be many.”

“Good deal,” Lasher said tersely, and clicked off.

Kean laid out the problem to LCY and set her to crawl through various public databases. It still amazed him how often people who were supposed to be laying low would post on public forums, let themselves be caught on friend’s public feeds, and more. Then again, if more smart people got into crime, they’d be eating Soyslush Plus for every meal.

The Wolfe Marches 1

NANOWRIMO

BRADBURY 

INDUSTRIAL ZONE 4

Fifth shift local time 

The bar had no name, save perhaps the flickering videopaint signage that said ‘DELIVE’ across truck-sized garage doors that had not opened in twenty years. It squatted between a robotic factory that disgorged a mobile pallet-train of tool parts every 10 hours, and a long-abandoned molecular font that lent the neighborhood air a characteristic tang. The font was the bar’s reason for being in the place it was; the residual discharge confused bull drones that drifted in Bradbury City’s pale night sky, sniffing for sin.

The only way in was through a maze of tunnels. The comparison to rats was lost on no-one.

Captain Marta Lasher of the Avaent, her engineer Kean Morn, and the security bion 47 found their way blocked by a seven-foot-tall Labor as the tunnel narrowed, just outside the bar’s entrance. 

The Labor, going through the motions of checking various valve sensors on pipes that lined the tunnel wall, looked down at them with dull unblinking grey eyes. Massive nostrils flared, taking in their scent – sandalwood from the captain, cleaning fluid from the engine jack, and nothing at all from the other bion. It knew these scents, but hesitated. There were orders about them, but from months or years ago. It wasn’t sure. Slowly it oriented on Kean.

Seconds passed. Kean let his hand drift casually towards his firearm, though the bird-popper he carried in town probably wasn’t powerful enough to scratch the massive Labor. It wasn’t like they had left here on the best of terms, last time. If ‘running gun battle with security’ counted as bad terms in this part of Bradbury. He was pretty sure that was the one he’d shot in the face. Kean’s stomach did a slow roll as the re-tasked bion looked him over, but he stood his ground. 

47 had their standing orders. They waited, patient as a stone, for the other bion to make a move.

Lasher stepped forward and frowned. She canted her head towards the roll-aside hatchway. “There’s not a problem, is there?” she said, her voice a hoarse rasp against the silence. The bion’s mask-like face betrayed nothing until it nodded and stepped aside.

The nod was all they needed. He turned away and pushed through a hatchway that opened onto lights and music. Two steps in was Benny, the owner. Human, mostly.

“Benny, I got a guy that can tweak the facial recognition on those things. Takes longer every time,” Kean said. 

Benny adjusted his tie and jacket, his cold eyes cutting to the door and back. “Stop getting your nose broken might help.”

Kean smiled tightly. Any other way caused his recently re-set nose to send lancing shocks through his head. “Adds character to my callow features,” he said. 

Which was true. Aside from that and a couple of scars, he was identical to at least three others in the bar, members of the same decommissioned clone line. They had washed up here, same as him.

Benny looked to Lasher, and gestured back to Kean.“I might have some work for your boy. Got two more Labors to replace the one what got cut up last week. They need a re-imprint. Might as well refresh the others at the same time.”

Lasher glanced back and Kean nodded. The Captain had business elsewhere tonight, but a little extra cash in the ship’s kitty never hurt. Never turn down work, he could hear from his father. Lasher and 47 continued on past the circular bar, back into the shadowy recesses where work was done and deals were made.

Kean decided to fish for some info. “You had someone slice up your help? Who?”

Benny gestured for Kean to follow as he walked back to his office. “Bad enough I had to put him down. Damn shame. He’d been with me since the start. Just starting to be worth something, too. ‘Cycler didn’t give me shit for him.”

Benny’s office was small enough that Kean had to sit at the man’s desk to do his job. He rolled up his right sleeve and put his arm down near the terminal. He smiled a little as Benny turned away when hair-fine lines slithered from the ‘skin’ of his wrist towards the terminals’ port layout, formed connectors, and seated themselves into the desk unit. Codes flashed in his virtual vision as the connect adjusted to the foriegn system. Good handshake, and he was in.

He set one part of his mind to cleaning up the bion imprint files. Benny had acquired an array of cheap combat routines, probably repurposed militia files, and actually paid for a basic labor/maintenance package. Benny, or most likely his assistant Patrice, had tried various things to cobble together other routine systems for the six Labors he employed as basic guards. All Benny had done was blur the imprints. Labors were purposefully designed without much upstairs. Clear attainable objectives worked best for them. 

The other part of his mind was spent fending off Benny’s own info-fishing. Thinking he was distracted, Benny pumped him for info. Where had they been? How was Lasher doing? Were they looking for work?

They were always looking for work. “You need to talk to the captain about that,” was the pat phrase Adian always gave. 

Benny had the decency for once to look uncomfortable. “You go talk to Steeple. I hear he has something you might be interested in.” 

Kean considered, as he re-organized Benny’s imprint files. Steeple ran what Lasher called an  ‘import-extort’ business: his crews recovered salvage, then he ransomed pieces back to their original owners at ten times the price. 

He didn’t even hold out for a finder’s fee. Might be something hot. He dropped the recorded convo in the captain’s box on their internal network. She’d look at it soon as she could. He wasn’t getting any bug-out orders and telemetry from the two crewmates were still green. Things must be going better than usual.

That was when someone kicked Benny’s steel office door off its hinges.

1004 words