After that, we were handed necklaces.
“These identify you as visitors and coordinate with Safety Personnel. Please wear them at all times when not in lodging. If you don’t, the security systems will alert an officer to identify you. This can delay your activities.”
We politely agreed, looped them over our necks and left.
I was glad they were necklaces. They’d used rings for a few weeks, until one had trouble coming off for a mugger. He’d hacked the finger off to get it. Silly, because they killed it at once and it screamed for pickup. They arrested him, did something or other and released him in a couple of months, and the victim had to get regenerative surgery.
They actually hadn’t asked about our purpose, so all the creative evasions I’d come up with were wasted. Really, I don’t know why they bother with this stuff. It’s not cheap to travel between stars, and almost no one does so with criminal intent. Those of us who do aren’t deterred by their procedures.
We’d agreed before debarking to go straight to lodging. He might be here. He might have hopped cross-system. He might be groundside. We didn’t want to jump until we knew.
To our advantage, maybe, were the cameras everywhere. If Silver could find a way into them, we’d have shots from the entire station, all angles. We had the pictures from NovRos and could work a recognition algorithm. It might work, but we should move fast.
The Starlight Habitat at Earth’s Jump Point Four was an inflated planetoid with centrifugal G. It was one of the oldest, of course, and roomy, well-worn and well-occupied. It was quite a city, and had most of what travelers, ships, merchants and businesses would need, at reasonable rates. Stuff came in on every ship.
Priorus Hotels had a franchise here, and even though this habitat was theoretically held to higher standards than the Freehold jump point rocks, I prefer nicer places for safety and security. The staff are honest, and far more willing to ignore nonviolent activity than cheap places.
We signed in, arms around each other, a kiss and bubbly comments about the Smithsonian and Hermitage. I’m told they’re both wonderful. I’ll never be able to see them.
We made it to the room, opened the luggage and got to work. I never use hotel drawers, but I did appreciate the two office chairs.
Silver started swearing.
“Those fuckers,” she said. She didn’t curse often.
“Yes?”
“They took some of my circuit cards. Nothing we could get arrested for, I hope, and I’d deny them now, but good pieces.”
“Petty theft thinking they were valuable?”
“Possibly. I need a comm store.”
“Can you get what you need discreetly? And will it work?”
“I’m eighty percent sure. We trained on Earth systems.”
“Go,” I said.
She left. I kept occupied by scanning the news. That was unremarkable enough. I looked for events, people, potential target for Randall.
I wrote down several possibles, and some were quite high profile. I didn’t think that was a bar anymore. He needed cash, he’d broken from the ungrateful goz and could charge more, and liked a challenge. Sooner or later this was going to end in a mess. My job now was to make sure it was sooner.
Silver came back, knock-coded and opened the door, and smiled.
“Luck?” I asked.
“Yes, quite a bit of stuff is available. They deal with travelers from outsystem. All I had to do was sign a screen saying I wouldn’t use it for espionage.”
I said, “You have got to be fucking joking.” I could tell she wasn’t, though.
“Our intent is to find one of ours. That’s not espionage. I signed.”
“Good girl.” It was a technicality, but if ever questioned, we had a truth we could stick to.
There wasn’t much I could do while she built the gear, so I did some calisthenics, then researched places I could shop for groceries. It was also time to change soap and deodorant again. Anything to change chemistry.
With the advantages of modern nanocircuitry she was able to put together a replacement device to spoof credentials. The software was more important. While I don’t know the details, the summary goes as follows: Her device quietly listens in on as much traffic from the security network as possible. They had a choice of hard wires that could be tapped and would need constant observation, or wireless that could have encryption changed regularly. The latter was easier. Her gear lurks and pulls enough data to determine the algorithms used.
With background on protocols she could instruct the device to send the router a false route to the authentication server. Then our unit requests authentication, and the terminal responds with the correct key. Then it calls another node, logs in with that password and connects the two.
The terminal queries the ID. The network tries to confirm with the server. Her gear insists it is the server, and validates our ID. Once she had access she could draw information from the terminals to keep updated—they had to offer authentication to her.
With that information, we could then both hack into their network and acquire intel, or spoof the network when queried. That’s how we could have false official ID on Caledonia. When it queried the net, it was querying the one in Silver’s shoulder bag, which was spoofing the official one. Of course it validated us. If I’d had that with me when I got picked up, I might have walked.
My concern with the Earth network was that they’d toughened it up since the War, and were very aggressive against intrusion.
“We’re in,” she said, and I heaved a sigh.
She turned and smiled. “Worried?”
“Yes, I was,” I admitted.
“No serious trouble,” she said. “It flagged us as an advertising hack on the second query, but I set it to present differently and it went through again. We’re one of fifty portable units the station police use. As long as we’re not on at the same time as Number Forty-Eight, we’re fine. If so, it’ll disconnect and try to log as Forty-Two, Twenty-One or Twelve. However, we can observe only. I have no access to the controls and I’m not sure about ID readers.”
“That’s fine. We can be ourselves for now, or at least the selves they think we are.”
She said, “Assuming they don’t have audio built into these tourist chips.”
I rippled in shock. Ohshit. That was simple, possible and a threat.
She saw my expression and said, “That was my thought, too, once I figured it out. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of visitors at any time. Even if they do so, they’re likely using an AI to listen for patterns. Mine’s under the pillow.”
I had mine off in a second, and felt like an idiot.
She said, “Okay, I’m going to bring up screens and throw images. This is a little easier since we have description and photo to work from. Ready?”
“Yes,” I said, taking a seat next to her. It was well-padded and very comfortable. One of the advantages of a decent hotel.
I hoped to find something fast. I needed to know which way to move. I’d also rather it was out of this system, where they hadn’t quite gotten around to cameras in the toilets yet, but would any day. It was a dehumanizing, outrageous environment, one that contributed to my mental state, and coming back was not healthy. I was running on adrenaline for no reason at all.
“Found his entry,” she said.
“Right at the gate?”
“Yes, as he debarked. Is that him?”
I looked over.
“Yes. Absolutely him.” Older, but not changed a lot. A little more mass, mostly upper body. Decent shape. He’d styled hair and beard and changed clothes, but I’d lived with him for over a year. It was him.
“Refining,” she said. “I think I can follow him.”
This was exciting, tense, twitchy. This was it. We were twenty-six Earth hours behind and closing.
“Following,” she said. “He was on foot, took slideway, off at a stop here. That’s on the other side of the Habitat. He went for Budge
t Stay. Scrolling. Also slugging info to you.”
I started from right now and worked back on departures. Insystem were every hour or so. There’d been three interstellar. I scanned from departure time back on each.
I watched the time tick on her screens. Assuming he came back out, we were now twenty-two hours apart.
“He’s back out of the hotel.”
“Understood,” I said. I ran from my end. Another hour.
“He walked into the industrial and service areas.”
“Really,” I said. “Interesting.”
“Hiding? Or shopping for weapons?” she asked.
“Either.”
I ruled out two more flights. Nineteen hours.
She said, “I have his chip code. Stand by.”
She tapped and pointed and scrolled, and said, “He did not leave using that code.”
“I’ll keep looking,” I said. “He might have faked one. Also scrolling back from right now.”
We had location and time narrowed down. Then I got past the most recent starship, and the cross-system transfers.
“He’s insystem,” I said.
“Confirmed,” she said. “I think he’s still on station, too.”
“Still running shuttle docks,” I replied.
Twelve hours. We were close.
I kept running back, she ran forward. We crossed.
Simultaneously, we said, “Still here.”
I said, “Try to find any departure he’s got scheduled or reserved.”
“Yeah, kinda obvious, already have,” she said with a high level of snip.
“Sorry. Excitable loner.”
“Understood.”
“Okay, he’s still here, and in the maintenance areas. I think I need to go take a look. I’ll grab a disposable phone—”
“Bought four,” she said, and pointed.
“I’ll take one of them,” I said, snagging it and letting her copy the code. “I’ll call if I need to.”
“Be safe. You know what he can do.”
“Yes. He doesn’t know what I can do,” I said. I threw on a dull blue shirt and found my notepad. I grabbed my chip and walked out.
It wasn’t hard to get into the maintenance areas. I just walked. My concern was that I was tracked by this stupid necklace and someone might notice. What I recalled from my last mission here was that not all were tracked all the time; only specific events triggered even an AI monitor, and very rarely a human one. As most of the people here would be transients, and the cops would be busy with drunken Mtalis who left their chips in lodging, I should be okay.
No one stopped me at once. The corridors were paneled except where they met the outer rock hull. Gravity here was .63.
It was a familiar environment. This was the works of the station: power conduits, service corridors, safety hatches, controls. The environment units, attitude jets and power plants were secure, with redundant checks and gates. That was reassuring. I wouldn’t want him taking out the station. I recalled they’d been fairly well equipped during the War, which is one of the reasons most of our attacks were on the surface.
I got a message buzz and looked. Silver said, “Departure confirmed for 1500 Station time.”
So, now I knew the stupid dogfucker really was headed groundside on Earth.
Unless, of course, he either held over for the next flight, headed for another ship, or had some business here.
This area handled maintenance shipments. They were rolled in here from the dock near the passenger gate where we’d debarked. Here they were opened, accounted, sorted, separated, packed and sent around this station, the jump point control post, and other support elements. Had he arranged to send himself something? Like another chameleon, explosives, comm gear?
It was actually rather quiet, this being third shift, and I tried to skulk while looking semi-official. I wanted to be unseen if possible, discreet if not.
I peered around crates, pallets, shelves, belts. I walked past two offices, nodding and waving the notepad at the occupants of one. They nodded in return and went back to their games or nodes or actual work.
Some stuff I identified by smell—industrial machinery, solvents, food—all came through here and then moved out in the quiet hours. There were limited service corridors in the main station, so lots of stuff had to be broken up small.
Nothing. If he was here, he was doing a good job of hiding from me, and from the internal, separate security net here, run by the contracting companies.
I took the search up one of the other corridors, which led to the rear of several businesses. Up this way were cheaper lodging, some restaurants that catered to the staff, and some light industry such as packaging, gas transfer and tool maintenance.
It also housed a few homeless people.
That’s one thing our stations in the Freehold get a lot of. People manage to scrape up a transit fee or stow away, or jump off a ship at the stations, hoping to wangle transit in-system. There’s no government interested in helping them, so if they don’t have a marketable skill, their odds are zero. Our safety officers round them up occasionally and ship them on any national carrier we can match them to. Otherwise they’re disposed of when they die. Ugly, but unavoidable.
Here, there are far fewer people, often retired from jobs in the station and wanting to hang out for some weird reason. Otherwise it’s people looking for adventure and trying to get out of Earth and end up stuck. There are kitchens and clinics they can use, and the weather in a station is nominal, so they stick around. Not as many, because they can always get a ride insystem and welfare, but a few.
I saw a couple in an alcove, one sitting on the edge of a dock, and one under a platform in a cubby. Farther ahead, it became a spaceside alley, behind establishments of marginal quality. There were strict loitering laws, but I suspect most of the homeless paid off the inspectors. This was hardly a choice assignment for any government employees. The math was easy.
Between here and there, though, was an unlit and darkened section. It offered visual separation between the businesses and the grunge, though I suspected it wasn’t intentional. I looked and saw where some light rods were missing.
Then I saw the walking figure along one side. I recognized the walk before I saw any features. He took a moment longer to react.
He was facing me. Had he been back to me, I’d’ve killed him and been done with it. But he saw me and slipped into a good fighting stance, so I decided some address was in order.
“Hello, Kimbo. How are you doing? You were supposed to be discreet.” I Boosted.
The expression on his face was priceless. He’d known I was still around, but coming face-to-face with me was something else. And, I was always in adequate shape, now back in good shape. He’d aged a bit, too, and hadn’t quite kept up on it. Not fat, but no longer a warrior athlete.
I could see him consider running, and realize he couldn’t turn or back fast enough to avoid me. He almost went for it, then realized that would leave him unguarded for a moment. Each of these was a bare twitch, but I could read them.
He was not a confrontational person. He was a lurker.
Still, he had a good block up, and was slightly younger than me and a little taller. I didn’t want to rush in. If he made a move, I’d take him down, otherwise I’d psych him out and wait for an opening. We had a loading alcove next to us, and he tried to slip into it.
He didn’t panic. He was steady, but I managed to maneuver him into the box and he tried for a feint and a rush. I let him come, twisted around his punch, leapt above the foot sweep easily in the light G, and wrenched.
Then I had a grip on his wrist. This fight was about to be over. I reached out and dislocated his elbow.
I saw his other hand flash back behind him, then come forward. He wasn’t going to dislodge me like that, and I started to twist his damaged arm as he shrieked. My options from there were to strike his rear, force him to his knees and down, break his neck or just shatter his wrist, shoulder and elb
ow and step back.
Heated pain and wetness splashed over my knuckles. I assumed it was acid, or maybe he had a self-heating vial of something. It was a fast but clumsy reaction on his part, but I wasn’t going to let go.
Except I was. He was twisting free and I couldn’t get a good enough grip. I clenched, but he slipped free. Whatever was over my hand was slick. Hot oil?
Blood. I caught a glimpse of it. Lots of blood. It might be either his or mine, but it wasn’t important right now; he was turning. I followed his hand with mine to keep some semblance of control and shifted to kick his ankles, hopefully shattering one. All I had to do was slow him down.
This kid was fast. He didn’t have a CNS bioplant, and he was almost keeping up with me. I couldn’t have slowed down that much over the years, and he was only a couple of years younger himself. Okay, five. Still, he wasn’t young.
He came back at me with that left hand, and I saw a flash of something dark. Then the nerves in my arm stopped sending signals. Then they sent lots of signals. Pain, heat, cold, electricity. Massive trauma has a sameness to it, though every particular type has its own subtle spice. But I’d been injured and he was disengaging like a pro. I threw a foot out as a trip or strike, and he kicked me, making me yelp and causing my calf to seize up with cramps. Shit, that hurt. Then he was running as I tried to limp upright. I forced through the pain ripping through my ankle and right arm and pumped my legs after him.
There was too much blood. As we clattered along a depressing gray corridor, it all coalesced. He’d opened me up with a korambit. It’s an old Filipino and Indonesian weapon, consisting of a ring for the finger, a short grip and a double-edged sickle blade. It cuts coming and going. And it’s even under the eight centemeters legal limit for personal possession here. He’d sliced it across my knuckles, which was how he could get free—I had no tendons there anymore. Then he’d ringed my forearm just below the elbow, severing veins, muscles, tendons and nerves. Three quick cuts and that was that. Two outside curves, one inside, and Ken Chinran is crippled and leaking like a hydraulic press with ruptured seals.