This Alien Shore

  “And what would you want for that?”

  “More data.”

  “Like what?”

  It was now or never, he thought. How much would she tell him?

  “Who’s after you?”

  A faint smile, sad and frustrated, twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t know. Sorry.”

  “Do you know why they want you?”

  She shook her head. There was no way to know if she was telling the truth or not. The latter would be no surprise; he was pretty much a stranger to her now. Hell, as far as she knew, he could be part of whatever high-tech gang was on her tail. He was surprised she’d trusted him this far.

  She has no choice, that inner voice whispered. No money, can’t touch her own resources, and God knows what other traps are out there, waiting for her... she needs you, or someone like you, and she knows it.

  What if it was something in her head they wanted? Jesus. That didn’t even bear thinking about. He caught that flash of inner concentration again and wondered at its source. So subtle, so fast; he doubted any deadhead would notice it. Was there really something strange going on inside her, or was she just accessing some internal program? Hell, for all he knew, her wellseeker was urging her to go get lunch, and she was telling it to fuck itself.

  MODDIE? he sent to Nuke.

  DON’T THINK SO, came his answer.

  OTHER BRIGHT IDEAS?

  Nuke shrugged ever so slightly. He was clearly in the dark himself on this one.

  It was dangerous stuff, for a moddie to be screwing with security like that. Doubly dangerous when he didn’t know what he was doing, or why. The last time Phoenix had seen a program that nasty, it was after him. It had nearly gotten him, too. He still had nightmares about that one.

  But if she had some kind of high-tech mystery inside her head, there was only one way to find out about it. Which meant there was never really any question about what he’d do.

  MIND IF I TAKE THIS ONE OVER? he asked Nuke

  A yellow face with a sad expression filled his field of vision. HELL, I FIGURED YOU WOULD. YOU’RE PREDICTABLE AS SHIT, MAN. The face disappeared, replaced by a fisted hand with its thumb pointing upwards. GO FOR IT.

  He turned his attention to the girl again. “Going to be hard for me to work like that.”

  She shrugged, and seemed genuinely regretful about the whole thing. “Sorry. I really don’t know anything about this.” Then that vulnerability came into her eyes again—it seemed to come and go without warning, like someone was flicking a switch on and off in her brain—and she asked, very softly, “Can you help me?”

  REALLY THAT NASTY? Nuke asked him.

  SHIT, YEAH. Phoenix sent. NASTIER.

  IF YOU TAKE THIS OVER, I EXPECT TO KNOW EVERYTHING.

  OF COURSE.

  “She promised me five thousand,” Nuke said aloud.

  The girl looked at Phoenix. It was a question.

  “If we get the money,” he said, smiling slightly, “you’re in for five.” Those words were for the girl’s benefit, so that she wouldn’t guess how much more was going on here than a simple financial transaction. Nuke was as capable as he was of lifting that much cash if he needed it; it was lesson one in the moddie’s handbook. Then again, Nuke could be pretty lazy sometimes. Maybe he’d like to have that much money just fall into his lap, so he could spend his time doing other things. Nuke took pride in his ability to dodge the Pol—they all did—but he didn’t go out of his way to egg them on. He didn’t actively enjoy the risk, that knife-edged dividing line between trouble and triumph.

  Phoenix did. Phoenix loved it. Dodging the Pol was great sport, and if something even nastier than the Pol had come to Paradise, and if it was focused on this girl ... that was too much of a challenge to resist.

  Nuke knew that about him. Probably that’s why he’d called him in the first place. Certainly that’s why he was willing to turn the girl over to him now, and settle for secondhand reports on what was going on. Maybe it wasn’t as much fun as doing the job himself, but when three Paradise hackers had already gone to the reprocessor in the past few E-months, safety looked pretty good, too.

  Not to Phoenix. There was a reason he’d chosen the name he did, in memory of an Earth-bird that plunged down into the fire of its own destruction, only to rise up anew from the ashes. This girl’s story tasted of that fire. He wanted to see just what was burning.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked her.

  As soon as he said the words, he realized what the answer was, of course. And also why she looked so physically drained. That was one fucking stupid question, Phoenix. Still, he waited to see how she’d handle the moment.

  To his surprise, she smiled faintly. “Well, I haven’t got a place yet ... but if you’d like to recommend a hotel that doesn’t require any money, I guess I can take a room.”

  That was when he decided that he liked her. No: more accurately, that was when he realized that she was a real person, rather than just a programming problem to be solved. It was a pretty large leap for his moddie mentality, and not one he made very often. Generally he didn’t acknowledge anyone as human whose brain wasn’t wired directly to their headset.

  “I’ve got a spare room,” he told her. “Chaos used to—” He took a deep breath, trying to swallow back on the sudden knot of pain that had just formed in his throat. “A friend. Used to stay with me a lot. Kind of cluttered,” he warned her.

  “That’s all right.” Again that faint smile.

  “Nuke?”

  “Fine with me.”

  TAKIN’ ALL THE PRETTY ONES?

  He blushed. He actually blushed. It was by far one of the weirdest things he’d ever done, and he was someone who thrived on weirdness. Where the hell had that reaction come from? When the hell had it ever mattered to him whether a client was pretty or not?

  That will not happen again, he told his wellseeker, in a personal patois of symbols and abbreviated English. Ever You see to it.

  “Thank you,” she said to them. Her voice so gentle, so sweet. So perfectly appreciative. What was her secret? What was the name of the fire that burned within her, toward which his electronic wings were even now carrying him? Her voice and bearing offered no hint of it, but that hadn’t stopped him before. “Thank you so much.”

  I won’t get burned, Phoenix promised himself. I’ll be careful this time.

  He didn’t flash that thought to Nuke. The guy would only laugh, and remind him of what had happened on Hellsgate. And Lampada IV And ... well, a lot of other trouble spots on his resume, places he’d rather forget. There wasn’t exactly a college course in hacking, a guy had to learn from his failures.

  Hey. Shit happens, you know?

  Each new technology will bring with it new forms of crime, demanding innovative security. That is the dynamic which drives our modern progress: not dreams, not ideals, but the simple desire on the part of criminals to take what is not theirs by law, and the determination of others to keep them from doing so.

  DR. AMY LAN, Brave New Battles

  REIJIK NODE INSHIP: WAYWARD

  MAYDAY ... MAYDAY...

  The much dreaded icon of safespace emergency flashed red and bright in all their heads. The captain of the Wayward adjusted the contrast on his message so he could call up details without being blinded.

  Medical emergency ... med programs down ... assistance needed... emergency ...

  “Transport vessel,” his pilot told him. “Class six private. I’ve got the ID if you want it.”

  “Not now.” The scarlet demand throbbed in his field of vision. Damn it, why did this have to happen now? They had too much work to do to stop for something like this. He had a full packet of high security data to skip, and he didn’t like to stop for anything.

  But you didn’t leave someone stranded in space like that. Not ever. If the stationmaster didn’t break your head for it, the Guild was likely to dump you in the ainniq without a space suit, and that overbore any considerations of time
or security.

  “Hail them,” he ordered.

  The mayday icon flashed twice more, then subsided. Its afterimage glowed with ghostly fire as the message was sent. Several seconds passed, then the pilot told him, “They say a data glitch in med programs fried the brainware of an officer, and enough basic programs that they can’t stabilize the damage. They’re asking for access to our med programs, long enough to put him into stasis.”

  The captain bit his lower lip, considering. Giving aid to a stranger was one thing. Letting that stranger onto their ship—and allowing him to hook up to the ship’s innernet—was a risk he didn’t like. He had enough high-security data tucked away in that system that he’d just as soon keep strangers away from it.

  Shit. It wasn’t like they had a choice.

  “All right,” he said. Not liking it a bit. “Arrange for rendezvous. Tell them we’ll take the patient on board and one other, that’s all. Limited med access. Frank, you get on this and close off all our other programs; I want a seal so tight that Hell’s own hackers couldn’t break through.” Frank started to protest, but he waved him to silence. “Yeah, I know, but pretend it’s possible, okay? Jesus.”

  He really didn’t need this now.

  The pilot turned them around, away from their target course, toward the distant distress signal. He flashed up figures on the distance and grunted. Damn, they’d lose time for this. He hadn’t earned his data security clearance by taking deadlines lightly, and the thought that they’d show up late at the skip station was less than pleasant. But what could you do? Civilization had its rules. You couldn’t leave people stranded out here, could you?

  Well, maybe you could, but the Guild would get you for it.

  He looked over the ship’s ID and found it unexceptional. Private transport licensed. for outspace business, probably some dayrunner doing courier work for the big boys. Plenty of them around. Sometimes those guys operated on a shoe-string budget, which meant they couldn’t afford the kind of backup programs he himself carried. Fair enough. Frank would get the med programs isolated and they’d let these guys connect to it, and then when they were gone he’d sweep the whole ship’s processor five times over to make sure nothing had been left behind. The captain of the Wayward might be compassionate—or at least dutiful—but he wasn’t stupid.

  Coordinates flashed in his field of vision, not long enough for him to read them, just a quick confirmation from his pilot. He nodded, then glanced at the ceiling where electronic nodes shunted the signal from his brain to the ship’s innernet, and back. Have to shut those down, too, he reflected. Couldn’t let an outsider have access to their system. Damn, this was going to be a pain.

  The ship wasn’t all that far away, which was one good thing, anyway. Standard air lock and docking mechanism; it took a little over ten minutes to get the two ships sealed together, once contact was made. Not long for him, but he wondered how the injured man was taking it.

  Then the portal hissed open and a null-grav stretcher wheeled itself into the ship. On it was a small humanoid, hairless, who twitched and pulled against the restraining straps in the grips of some kind of seizure. They should have sedated him, the captain thought. Or maybe they did, and this was the best they could do. Two more figures came through the door together, one diminutive in stature and one pretty Earth standard in form, though brilliant blue lines were streaked across his face. He opened his mouth to protest, but the blue guy spoke first, offering his hand for a ritual clasp as he said, “Allonzo Porsha, captain. I’m so grateful for your assistance.” Then the hand was quickly withdrawn and the stretcher whirred impatiently. “Where should we take him?”

  From somewhere the captain found his voice. “I said only two people. Including the injured.”

  Maybe it was what he said, or maybe it was just timing. But at that moment the other visitor, a short Variant as bald as the one on the stretcher, moaned in what seemed like agony and threw himself over the body on the stretcher. And damned if they didn’t match. That, and their height and hairlessness, gave him his first clue.

  “They’re Belial,” Porsha said.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t like it, but he knew outspace custom well enough. The two matching Variants were supposed to be one guy, though how they managed that was beyond him. He started to tell them he didn’t give a damn—then stopped, feeling somewhat foolish. Arguing fine points of Belial twindom was like buying a suit of clothing on the mall station and arguing about whether the price chip said it had one, two, or three pieces. He wasn’t going to win.

  “Okay. Okay. Come with me.”

  He waited long enough to see that the portal was sealed shut once more and locked—no sense in taking chances—and waved for Frank to lead the way to the med console in the back of the ship. He himself would watch the strangers from behind. Was he being paranoid? Pirates were few and far between, but he knew a guy once who’d been nailed by some, and this was how they’d gotten him. Once they were on board, there wasn’t much you could do.

  A warning icon flashed in his field of vision, and the tiny indicator in the comer of his eye blinked, indicating loss of innernet connection. Okay, so his crew was on top of things. That was good. Whatever these two wanted—these three-they weren’t going to be able to rifle through his ship’s files on the way there.

  But it looked like the little guy was genuinely hurt. Either that or he was one hell of a good actor. Frank helped Porsha plug him into the console with a realwire connection that should override any damaged parts of his headset, then watched like a wary hawk while the blue-faced man made various adjustments. Frank nodded; he was watching it all, and no doubt recording it as well; if there was anything amiss about the process, any attempt on the part of these three to break through from the med complex to the ship’s other systems, they’d know it before any damage could be done.

  Suddenly, with a cry, the Belial on the stretcher began to convulse. His twin ran forward to help him, but Porsha thrust him aside. Somewhat belligerently, the captain thought. It was as if he’d been losing patience with the healthy twin for some time, but if that was the case, why had he let him come on board, where he’d only get in the way? Then he remembered the details of that particular Variation and nodded to himself in grim understanding. You couldn’t separate Belial twins, not forcibly. You shouldn’t even try. If they chose to split up that was one thing, some did and some didn’t, but if they wanted to be together and you tried to separate them, it was like ... well, like asking a man to send one hand and a leg of his out of the room, and keep functioning. Or so it had been explained to him in grade school. Truth is, humankind had so many Variations he could barely keep track of them.

  Finally the injured twin settled down into the stretcher, seemingly asleep. His double was whimpering in the far corner, where Porsha was clearly happy to ignore him. He and Frank were both silent as they manipulated the innernet to heal the injured man—Porsha doing the work, Frank watching his every cybermove like a hawk. At last Porsha nodded, and took off his headset. The captain had seen no change take place in the patient that he could put his finger on, but now that he really looked at him, his color did seem marginally better.

  All right. So this whole thing was legit. And it hadn’t taken all that long. Maybe he’d be lucky, and they’d get through the rest of the day without interruptions.

  “Listen,” the blue-faced man said, “I can’t thank you enough—”

  “Just simple courtesy,” the captain said gruffly. Required courtesy. “I’m glad we were able to help him.”

  “No really, I owe you—”

  “Forget it,” he said. And then, when it didn’t seem like that was going to be enough for the man, he said it more emphatically. “Forget it. ”

  That ended the attempt to establish further conversation, anyway. Good thing. The captain might acknowledge his responsibility to help a traveler in need, but he had no responsibility to stand around shooting the breeze with a total stranger when there was work c
alling to him. He’d be polite, but that was it ... and even the politeness had a limit. They saw the strangers to the air lock, opened it, and let them pass through. His people were ready for trouble, he saw, weapons hidden behind them as they flanked the three strangers. But there was no trouble. It looked like the visit was purely legitimate, just some guy who’d needed the aid

  of a passing ship to clean out his head. But just to be sure

  “Check it,” he told Frank. “Check it all. I want the gateways to the med system probed inside and out. If there was an attempt to break in, even one test against the password system, then you tell me and we’ll start going over it bit by bit, until we know for sure it’s all clean.”

  He wasn’t going to tolerate some yahoo’s virus on his ship, that was for sure. Or overlook any attempt to copy the data he was carrying. Probably their visit was nothing, just what it seemed ... but in his business you couldn’t be too careful.

  It was an old pirate’s superstition, not to count your loot until you were well out of earshot. Of course, the whole concept of earshot was irrelevant in space, so God alone knew how the custom had gotten started, but it was still considered traditional to put good distance between you and your victim before you exulted over his stupidity.

  Which in this case had been massive.

  “Tam?”

  “No problem,” the Belial told him. “Right where I was standing during the med stuff, under the console. No one was even looking at me, so I got a good placement. They won’t find it by accident, that’s for sure.”

  “Excellent.” They’d stay a safe distance from the Wayward, but not so close that low-strength transmissions couldn’t bridge the gap between them. In a few hours Calia would send out the codes that would bring their hidden transmitter to life, and Tam could bounce a signal off that right into the Wayward’s innemet. Which he could then hack into at his leisure, long after anyone aboard had stopped watching for such interference.