The process was similar to entry, and holding my arms up to be scanned hurt like hell even in low G, but I didn’t dare admit it. Once again, they didn’t recognize my face structure by scan. They were bored, busy and let me through, probably assuming tourists meant money.
Luckily, it’s common for passengers to take tranks or sedatives to relax or sleep on the trip insystem. I mixed a cocktail that gave me long days, short, deep sleep periods with my senses semi-accessible while I slept behind a locked and barricaded stateroom door with a notepad in hand for use as a club, blissfully, icy calm and wired sensitive all at once. In six days I was three kilos lighter and rather nauseated, but I hadn’t been apprehended.
We were a day from Earth when a news load reported that Ministry of State Undersecretary Boulain had been killed in front of her house, in front of her children. Someone had burned her down to a smoking greasy spot with a linear energy release gun. Nothing like a concentrated beam of superhot radiation to make a hit with the kids.
The gun had been recovered at scene. Investigators were working on it. That to me meant he’d left nothing they could trace and didn’t care about the gun. I was curious as to how he’d gotten that on Earth. Those were largely in test phase and not available. Had he looted a lab?
So what next?
From Peace Station over the Americas I took another AtmoSurf down to North America, landing in Virginia. I was very glad for the trank. This is where it had all started ten years, sixteen Earth years before.
Silver had left a message for me. I got my bag, took a slideway to another to a train station, from the train to an autocar to one of the megascrapers they’d rebuilt, to a slideway, an elevator, a level. The light gravity was helpful, but the polluted, thick air was not. I managed on medication over the nausea, pain and quivering panic I felt.
At the level nineteen plaza, she met me. She didn’t acknowledge, just paced me for a while, and moved in closer as I followed her directions. One hall became hotel, and the door ahead opened for her.
“Well, hi,” she said, coming alongside.
“Hello,” I returned smoothly. We assembled as a friendly pair, and proceeded to the room. She clicked the door, we went in, and I sat carefully on the bed. It was a smallish room, a bit stale, adequately clean and with sterile polymer furniture. It would do fine.
I was in pain from the exertion of walking, though somewhat improved. I wondered how his dislocated elbow felt. I’d hit it pretty hard. Still, he’d cut me thoroughly.
She said, “I got down about three hours ago. Are you okay?”
“Pain. Weakness. Nausea.” The room spun, and the air didn’t help. I appreciated the extra O2 Earth has, but the pressure and humidity were thick and irritating. It reminded me of last time. I’d started in a cheaper, but similar room.
“Rest a bit. I’m running news searches, but there are so many people there are so many targets.” She looked dejected.
“Just plan on tracking him when he does. It’s harder to get resources here. We spent a year building and developing. He’s got days and has only had hours.”
“I remember the report, but I welcome any first hand intel,” she agreed.
The planet is different from the outer system. Space dwellers everywhere have a streak of independence and self-reliance. It comes with the nonnatural environment. Earth’s isn’t natural either, but is very carefully built to fit every human want.
So it felt different from the station. That had been bureaucratic and annoying. This was outright hostile. The propaganda machine of the news never stopped.
The word on Earth now was that the Freehold had collapsed, and was dependent on UN charity. So much for free markets, ha ha, look at the stupid peasants.
It pissed me off.
It wasn’t that it was untrue. It was propaganda. By definition it was untrue. It’s that they could have used that story from the word go, and we’d never have fought. It’s not as if anyone on Grainne really gives a crap what Earth thinks; as far as the Halo, as long as the bank drafts clear, they don’t care what anyone thinks. But ego and moral outrage on the part of Earth’s overlords had dictated we be a scapegoat.
The other pisser was that it was dangerously close to, “Look what you made me do!” I’ve never liked that argument. It’s a cop out. Earth’s billions of casualties were because my commander and I had decided they were a target in total war. My government had eventually concurred, and I was told to be the most vicious bastard in history. I had done so. I had done so well. They didn’t make us do it, we chose to do it as an object lesson, for right or wrong.
Nothing about this situation made me feel better.
Then it took a turn for the worse. My phone buzzed.
We both stared at it. I assumed a wrong code or a marketing call, and answered.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Dan. I have your phone code.”
Well, that was exciting. I pointed at Silver, pointed at the phone, and she went to work trying to get a trace. He was probably doing the same. Who had the better gear and training?
“You have one of my phone codes,” I said laconically. “I’m very impressed. You shall get a first mark on Electronic Intel Basic.”
“You seem to be popular on Earth now,” he said.
“Yeah, I spent all day getting photographed and tagging people,” I said. “I never really thought of myself as a war hero.”
“Hero,” he snorted. “You’re the one who ran away before we got hit, remember?”
“I was busy doing something that was mission critical at the time.”
“So, you left the three of them to die?”
“I’d hoped you’d take care of things in my absence. I wasn’t able to find any evidence that you did. It seems you were busy running in fear.”
He snapped back, “What do you care? You didn’t even touch your daughter. You just left her.”
He didn’t know I recovered her. Well, good. That was one less threat to me, for now. I was greatly relieved, and needed to not draw attention to it. So I said, “You wouldn’t understand the mission.”
That definitely triggered him. “You and your fucking mission. You killed two billion innocent people to prove a point. For the same casualties, we could have wiped out their military and been done.”
“They would have rebuilt.”
He didn’t like it when I stayed calm. Good.
He said, “Screw the politics. I only kill a few people, I charge enough to weed out vendettas, and I make sure they deserve to die.”
“So, are you Allah or Jehovah? I’ve never met a god before. I expected a deity to have a bigger bank account, actually.” I was conversational, cheerful, derisive. The more seriously someone takes themselves, the more mockery will anger them. Was that his only account, though? It hurt him regardless.
He fairly exploded. “Hey, fuck you, asshole.” Clearly, this was not going the way he wanted.
“Me? I’m not deciding people’s fates based on perceptions.” I paced around the room, though there was nowhere to take more than a couple of steps.
“No, you just kill at random.”
“Not any more. I kill specifically. I’m here to kill you.”
“You have to catch me first.”
“I have caught you.”
“Not enough. I beat you last time.”
I snickered and shook my head. “You hurt me slightly last time. It’s not the first time I’ve been cut.” I wasn’t going to admit to it. I’d used that in combat before I met him. Never let them see you bleed. Be dispassionate and unkillable. “How’s your elbow?”
“Elbow’s fine,” he said, but didn’t sound sure. “You were hurt enough. You’re not so tough.”
That was a handy opening. “So says the guy who never actually went through Operative training.”
“I qualified for everything. You ran it yourself.”
“Yeah, but it was rushed and second rate. You never had the stress the rest of us did.”
“The mission was that.”
“Just keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll believe it. I figured to lose all you accessories in the process. That’s how I had you filed mentally. Accessories. You were brought along to die regardless. If it saved one real Operative, it was worth it.”
“I think I proved my point. I survived.”
“Not for much longer. I’m sure you can figure out the ending, if you think hard enough.”
I wanted to probe him into thinking I had all the cards. Extreme paranoia leads to mistakes, which I’d exploit.
“Ending?”
“How you’re going to die. You waste a lot of time on graphic finales. It’s like you’re some kind of artist who craves recognition. Whereas, I want your death to be silent and unnoticed. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
I disconnected.
He didn’t call back, though I’d hoped he would.
I’d hurt him. He’d brought up my daughter. I’d not taken the bait. He couldn’t know if she was dead or raised somewhere on Earth. He’d been a good man, helping with delivery, paying attention to Chelsea, acting daddylike in a lot of ways. He thought me utterly inhuman. Good. He didn’t know she existed, so he couldn’t rush in to save her, or use her against me. Good.
“Nothing concrete,” Silver said. “The signal was broken and resent from several sources. But I’m pretty sure he’s in this city.”
“That’s good. It narrows it down. He’s scared and going to get clumsy. It’s very important that we not.”
“I understand,” she said, with a firm nod. Then she trembled.
“I can’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“I can’t hack an unknown phone within divs, hours.”
“He’s had a lot of experience.”
“He’s better than me, and I don’t know how to avoid it. He scrambled his own signal in a couple of hours.”
“He’s got resources already set. We’re making it up as we go. I suspect he cultivated friends of Timurhin. In fact, Timurhin may not even know this is happening.”
“I know, but—”
I cut her off. “Silver, I have every confidence in you.” I didn’t, actually. I’d rather have had Kimbo, but he was the target and the loon, she was all I had, and she was probably second best. And of course, this is what she needed to hear. “I’m not worried about what he comes up with. He’s desperate. Just keep me going.”
She nodded and got the quivers under control.
I said, “I trained him. I trained them all, with a lot of personal attention. I managed while we all shared knowledge. He needs to prove he’s better than me. At the same time, he’s scared of me. No one else could have stuck with him this long. We’re going to keep dialing up the tension until he slips. There’s no sportingship here. If I get a shot at his back, I’ll take it. If you do, you take it. If we can mine something to blow him up, we do it, even if takes some collaterals. If we can get him beaten to death in custody, we do that, too, though it’s not something to plan on because it’s not effective. If they half beat him to death, I’ll walk up and gap him as he’s released in a powered chair. He knows this, too, and will try to flee if he can, kill us if he can’t.”
She nodded, looking young and scared and with the tremble again.
“Endgame,” I said.
Then I pulled power and circuit from the phone.
“Scratch that one,” I said. “Also, be ready to bolt in a hurry.”
“I am,” she said. “This place is creepy. It’s like a prison.”
“Very much, and worse since the War, it looks.”
She suddenly turned back to her system. “Silly,” she said.
“What?”
“The comm system and my sensors can’t backtrack the phone, but the provider can.”
“Careful,” I advised.
“I’ve got a customer code, and now to request account . . . and slam it . . . and there. Request log, reverse for incoming, and I’ve got it. Disconnecting.”
“You’ve got it?”
“He’s two buildings over. Would he be doing something there?”
“Let’s look, and let’s get out of here. We’ll find transient space. Pull all phones and comm unless we’re using them.”
She disabled the spares, but left the console unit up while we both went through news, event listings and schedules.
The problem with the megascrapers is they’re huge. Four hundred meters square by five hundred tall huge, some to a thousand. Since we’d blown several tens of them into crematoria during the War, through sabotage, they had very, very tight security on the technical areas. They’d shoot kids and then claim terrorist intent. But that wouldn’t stop us; the military attack included nukes, kinetic energy weapons and destructive star drive points detonated overhead, but they were terrified, and played on, the threat of infiltrators.
She said, “Three conferences over there. One medical, one materials science, one software.”
“What about the software?”
“Marketing.”
“What’s the medical?” I was wondering if someone had failed to save a life and relatives were petty or frazzled enough to want revenge, but that didn’t sound like something he’d take. Materials science. Had a building collapsed? That would be possible. I said so.
“Looking,” she said. “This is going to take time, though and he knows where we are.”
“He’s also got to make money. I’m secondary, and dangerous. I need to know where to get him.”
“I can take one show, you the other, I call when I see anything?”
“Not enough response time.”
I’d been down less than half a div, barely over an Earth hour, and we were this close that fast. Something would go wrong. Something had to.
She said, “I’m not finding any reason to kill a materials scientist or professor. It would have to be personal. No major deaths in medical. Is it just a building resident?”
“Possible, but few people very high profile live in these. Box Proles low down, Box Tops up high, middle class managers, engineers, et cetera. The management are resident and similar to a city council.”
“Guests?”
“No idea, and hard to tell. What’s the marketing convention?”
“Node-based Broadcast Direct Marketing Strategies.”
“There!” I almost shouted.
“Yeah, everyone hates those fuckers.”
“Organizer? Lead speaker?”
“Organizer’s been in the news a lot. He’s milking the notoriety and getting more business from it. He’s found loopholes in Earth’s laws and several regions.”
“Him.”
I was up and moving.
“How are you getting in?”
“They’re spammers. They won’t exactly close off access to potential customers. You lead. I’ll follow.”
She grabbed a handful of things, stuffed them into pockets and tossed my chip and a new phone at me.
“Look the part,” she said.
I remembered now, and it still applied. Earthies are in constant chat with friends and relatives. For a while they’d even kept video running, until it became both a security and a safety issue. Audio, though, ran pretty much nonstop except in government buildings and there were courtesy areas and terminals there as well. The entire planet, was so urbanized that being held incommunicado was considered worse than actual violence, and considered “brutality.”
As tourists, that wasn’t as much of an issue, but we’d be noticeable if we didn’t seem to be connected. With earbuds in and constantly chattering about stupid crap, no one would see us.
Just before we popped the door, she asked, “Could this be a setup?”
“Yes, but we have to try,” I said. I was sure I could handle any public attack, and I’d try not to get private if it was avoidable.
I have no idea how people live in those boxes. We walked out of the hotel, stepped onto a slideway, and then
followed it past several clubs, as it escalated down a level, around one side and past shops and a playground, then stepped off and took a lateral between blocks.
It was pretty much impossible to draw a mental map, but I snapped images with my phone at each change so I’d be able to retrace. I also tapped in exits and slides for getaway. I was likely to need them.
The convention was two hundred meters up, fifty levels approximately, though “level” varies greatly inside these rat mazes. It was in a hall taking up three verticals, spread along corridors and with other events in between. We got in a line meters long and waited for admission while scanning the area for threats. The registrars and desk rolled along past us, with program loads and passes.
The guy ahead of Silver joked, “What if I spoof the pass?”
The registrar was probably a hired model and stared as if the man were stupid. “We expect that in this crowd. There’ll be enough compensation in downloads.” I’m sure she’d heard the same joke ten times already.
Silver swiped a cash card for both of us, took two passes, and thanked her. She moved on.
Events were well under way, and there were a lot of people here. We walked down the corridor, into the main hall, and there were a hundred displays or more for various methods and approaches to massaging information from people, accessing their comms “with consent” to pimp stuff to them, or worse, use them as distribution nodes to promote to their friends. Everything here was technically legal even under the restrictive laws of Earth, and just proved that supply and demand will survive any idealistic attempt to manage people. Signs insisted that no illicit access would be tolerated, subject to removal of pass and ejection, legal action, etc. They were probably honest about that, for liability reasons, but I had no reason to believe the clients would abide by it more than they had to.
Silver had DNA gear out. We just might succeed in locating him in this crush, and if so, I was confident of my ability to get in close and go for a bare-handed kill.
She said, “Minor trace, all over.”
“Schedule?” I asked.
“Principal is speaking in thirty minutes.”
“IDs?”