CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Defender-Prime should be back within the hour.” Susan joined Isaac at a round table in the server tower’s executive food court. “They need to cross about halfway over to SysGov. At that distance, Pathfinder-Prime can receive their telegraph. They’ll message Pérez, let him know about the bomb threat, then come back here.”
“Sounds good,” Isaac said, nodding.
“You sure we shouldn’t all head back to SysGov?”
“Not yet,” Isaac said. “We may still learn who brought the bomb over, assuming our theory is correct. We can leave the bomb search to Pérez, but we have our own job to do here.”
“Okay. Makes sense.”
Isaac’s stomach growled audibly.
“Want me to grab you something?” Susan asked.
“Yes, please. Any recommendations?”
“Well.” Susan twisted around in her seat and scanned the room. A long row of food printers took up one whole wall, but the lines were short. Abstract signs blinked over the printers at the far end, and one of the signs read TURBO!!
“Most of the printers are generics, but they’ve got a Turbo franchise.”
“Turbo?”
“Technically it’s Turbo!!” She spoke the name with enthusiasm. “They put two exclamation points at the end.”
“Any good?”
“I think so. It’s the Admin equivalent of the Meal Spigot. Fast and scrumptious.”
Isaac’s eyes perked up.
“How about I pick out something for you?” Susan said, rising.
“Sure.”
“All right. Be back in a few.”
The line for Turbo!! was the longest but moved with rapid efficiency due to the speed of the franchise’s printers. She transmitted her order while waiting in line and grabbed her food-laden tray less than a minute later.
“I’m not sure I’m this hungry,” Isaac said when she set the tray down between them.
“It’s not all for you.” She served him his plate. “Here. The gyro platter is yours. The chocolate chip milkshake and chocolate fudge ice cream are for me.”
“Isn’t that a lot of food for you?” he asked, eyeing the supersized desserts. “Not that it has any effect on you, but you normally just peck during meals.”
“It’s been that sort of case.” She tilted the milkshake toward him. “Want some? I printed an extra straw.”
“Let me try the gyro first. Thanks, though.”
“Sure thing.” She sucked on her straw, then stopped and frowned when nothing came out.
“Something wrong?” Isaac asked, the gyro almost to his mouth.
“A chip got stuck in the straw.” She sighed and drank from the edge of the milkshake. It left a frothy mustache over her lips. “What’s next for us? Head after Victor Massi?”
“Ideally, yes. Though I’m not sure how we go about that. The trail’s a month old and very cold. We’d struggle to follow it under the best of circumstances, but if Cephalie’s right—and I’m inclined to agree with her—then Massi has gone into hiding, along with everyone else on Slater’s list.” He took a bite from his gyro. “Wow. This is good. Is this tzatziki sauce?”
“Tzatziki Turbo. It’s their own special recipe.” Susan took another sip from her milkshake, expanding her froth mustache.
“Susan? You might want to…” He mimed wiping under his nose.
“What? Oh!” She cleaned her mouth with a napkin. “That just means it’s a good milkshake.”
“I’ll bet.” He took another bite of his gyro, chewed, and swallowed. “Let’s assume for the moment everything we learned from Jende is true.”
“Which seems likely.”
“Agreed. Having Pérez search for the bomb is a solid step in the right direction, but we’re dealing with people who know how to hide these things. Any additional information we can learn could prove critical to finding it. That’s what we need to accomplish over here, but I’m not sure how to get it done.”
“Why don’t we grab the fake Sako?”
“Susan.” Isaac sighed at her. “If it was that easy, we’d already be doing it.”
“No, I’m not talking now. I mean back when she met Slater.”
“But she’s not with Slater anymore.”
“Yeah, but she was a month ago.”
“She—” Isaac paused and blinked. “Wait a second. Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“You mean go back in time and snag ourselves a copy of the perp for interrogation?”
“But…can we?”
“Sure. We know exactly where Fake-Sako’s going to be. Or was, I should say.” She smiled at Isaac. “Verb tenses and time travel still give me fits. Anyway, we can pick a spot along her route to Slater’s hobo hole, set up an ambush, and nab her. Simple. I spent years of my life doing similar ops for DTI Suppression.”
“Yes,” Isaac agreed, clearly struggling with her train of thought. “But can we?”
“Look at it this way. You’re a DTI investigator, at least temporarily, and we already have the chronoport. We can finish a leisurely meal, and when the ship returns, we share the plan with the others and head into the past. Negative-one month transit is nothing for a Pioneer-class. We can cross that in half a minute, absolute.”
“You say this like it’s such an ordinary thing.”
“In the DTI, it is. Gordian Division may have clamped down on all unnecessary time travel, but over here we do things differently. Time travel has been a routine part of our investigations for well over a decade. I mean, they even put it in the name. Department of Temporal Investigation.”
“I suppose you do have a point there.”
“What do you say, then? Shall we give it a try?”
“Hmm.” Isaac stared off to the side, then he looked back to her and smiled. “Sure. Why not?”
* * *
Defender-Prime phased out at negative-one month back from the True Present. It hovered high above Tycho Crater City’s Block F9, its belly an indistinct blob of wavering darkness, shrouded by the photonic mimicry of its variskin armor.
“Phase out complete,” the ship’s temporal navigator reported.
“Position confirmed,” the realspace navigator added. “Variskin active, and altitude stable.”
Nina leaned over to Isaac in the next seat.
“Is this really the past?” she whispered to him.
“So they say. Why?”
“Because it looks the same as the present.” She gestured to the external camera view of Block F9.
“We’re only one month back.”
“I know, but shouldn’t it be different somehow? Shouldn’t it look different? Shouldn’t it feel different?”
“Let’s not get carried away.” He released his harness and headed down the central corridor back to the ship’s maintenance bay.
An armored Noxon sat in a jump seat next to Susan, while Susan’s combat frame stood beside her. The combat frame was a sleek humanoid machine covered in weapons and maneuvering boosters with its variskin set to Peacekeeper blue with white racing stripes.
“Which one are you in, Susan?” Isaac asked.
“Over here.” The combat frame raised a hand then tapped her lifelike synthoid on the head. “It’s empty now.”
“I see now why you suggested this plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“You just wanted to get back in that thing.”
“It is one of the perks of this idea.”
Susan-the-combat-frame finished harnessing her inert synthoid to the jump seat.
“You ready for this?” Isaac asked.
“Of course.” She gave him a thumbs-up. “All I have to do is apprehend one young woman. How hard could it be?”
“What’s the rifle for?” He pointed to the heavy rail-rifle attached to her arm.
“Just in case.”
“And the shoulder-mounted grenade launcher?”
“Just in extra case.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m leaving the incinerator behind,” she said, as if it were a huge concession.
“That’s…” He let out a slow sigh. “That’s good. It’s healthy to show restraint.”
“You know I like to be prepared. Besides, if I blow up the perp accidentally”—she shrugged—“or on purpose, we can perform a microjump and try again.”
“It’s one of the benefits of time travel,” Noxon added. “We can always make another attempt, because the past will still be there, right where we left it.”
“Any risk of something bad happening to the timeline?” Isaac asked.
“About as close to zero as it gets,” Noxon said. “The True Present is the most stable point in a universe’s timeline, and the DTI has performed hundreds of similar operations without ever branching the timeline. This one will be no different.”
“We’ll take care of things, Isaac. Agent Noxon and I are professionals.”
“I know. Just thought I’d ask.” He glanced over Noxon’s body armor. “You don’t plan to join her in your own frame?”
“I would,” Noxon said with a frown, “but it’s back in SysGov.”
“See?” Susan said. “This is why I insist on taking it everywhere. You never know when it’ll come in handy.”
“Hard to argue with you now. Be safe out there.”
“I will.”
* * *
“Shall we, sir?” Susan asked Noxon.
“Let’s.” He sealed his helmet in place, then led the way over and down into the Cutlass. The craft was empty except for the pair of Wolverines in their charging alcoves. Susan sealed the top hatch and depressurized the cabin. The vacuum wouldn’t bother her combat frame. It could damage Noxon’s cosmetic layer, which was one reason for him to wear the armor.
“The target should arrive in a few minutes,” Noxon said over her abstract hearing.
“I’ll be ready.” She split open the rear hatch and stared down upon Tycho Crater City. The blocks were an organized grid of white pillars beneath her. She switched on her variskin and walked off the edge.
She plummeted through the vacuum, soundlessly, airlessly, the towers below rushing toward her. She fired a short burst of thrust from her shoulder and feet boosters, adjusting her course to align with the edge of Block F9’s roof.
Lunar gravity might be roughly one sixth as strong as Earth’s, but a long, frictionless descent piled on the meters per second, and she fired her boosters again, this time in a sustained burn that decelerated her until her feet touched down with delicate lightness.
She switched her boosters off and crouched on the roof, an indistinct blur against the white surface.
“In position.”
“Target shuttle inbound,” Noxon reported over the encoded radio channel. “Tagging now.”
A circular reticle appeared over a glinting shape in the distance that rapidly resolved into a boxy, fat-fronted outline of a craft never meant for use in an atmosphere. It slowed to a hover above one of the many open docks and began its descent.
Susan hurried to the dock and slipped over the edge as the craft touched down. She dropped to a low crouch, her systems and weapons ready for anything. The ceiling irised closed, and the dock shuddered loose from the roof while atmosphere poured in. The dock traveled down and then sideways until it connected with the port atrium, and the abstract outline over the door switched from red to green.
A side hatch on the shuttle swung up, and Elly Sako—or someone who looked just like her—paced toward the exit. She swept her gaze back and forth over the dock.
Susan knew variskin had its limits, which was why she stayed perfectly still. The technology didn’t allow photons to flow around her like the more advanced metamaterials used by SysGov. Instead, the variskin produced an active camouflage image designed to mimic her surroundings, but it was far from perfect, especially on a system as small and geometrically complex as her combat frame. Still, she could only be seen from one angle, and that allowed the system to operate at peak effectiveness.
It should have been enough to keep her hidden.
Sako’s gaze passed over Susan’s position, and a flicker of recognition widened her eyes. She spun on her heel and kicked off the ground, flying back toward the shuttle.
Shit! Susan thought. She fired her shoulder boosters, her variskin struggling to keep up. She grabbed the lip of the shuttle hatch with one arm to bring her to a halt, and blocked off Sako’s retreat with her body.
“Elly Sako, you are under—”
Sako twirled in the air. She slammed the combat frame’s torso with a roundhouse kick, and Susan knew instantly she wasn’t fighting an organic woman or even a civilian synthoid. The force of the impact warped malmetal plates out of alignment and lit up yellow warning indicators in her mind. Her fingers sparked, stripping paint and metal off the shuttle hatch.
Fake-Sako touched the ground and leapt past the off-balance combat frame.
“Oh no you don’t!” Susan grabbed Fake-Sako’s foot. She yanked her back out with the intent of tossing her into the open, but Fake-Sako thumped Susan’s head with another powerful kick. Her optics blurred, and she fell onto her side, the woman’s ankle still in her grasp.
The impact crashed her variskin execution, and her skin reverted to blue with white racing stripes.
“A STAND!” Fake-Sako exclaimed.
A third kick pounded into Susan’s neck, bringing with it enough force for Fake-Sako to pull free, even while Susan’s fingers cut through cloth. Strips of synthoid cosmetic flesh tore loose, revealing the gray artificial musculature underneath.
Susan anchored one foot with the dynamic friction pad on the sole and fired her shoulder boosters, levering herself up into a standing position. She cut off her thrust and used the momentum to throw herself forward, arms spread to tackle the synthoid, but Fake-Sako twisted out of the way, dropping to a crouch and swinging into Susan with an uppercut.
The punch sent a shock rippling through Susan’s artificial body, and more warnings flared in her mind. She swung her rail-rifle around and aimed it at the synthoid’s head.
“Freeze!” she commanded. “Don’t make me shoot you!”
Fake-Sako grabbed the end of the barrel with one hand and shoved Susan’s aim aside. The two grappled with each other, locked at close range. Fake-Sako headbutted Susan, blurring her optics again, but Susan headbutted the synthoid back, tearing loose a flap of cosmetic skin over one eye.
“My head’s harder!” Susan growled.
Fake-Sako snarled at her then shoved her into the side of the shuttle, denting the thin paneling.
“What the fuck is going on out there!” The shuttle pilot peeked his head out.
“Keep your head down!” Susan snapped, lighting her shoulder boosters but not firing them at full power. Hot air scorched the pilot’s face, and he scrambled back toward the cockpit, which was exactly what Susan wanted him to do.
She switched to full thrust and forced Fake-Sako back toward the dock wall, but the synthoid twisted in her grip again and grabbed the base of one of her shoulder nozzles. She forced the ball joint out of alignment, and the exhaust propelled Susan into the floor face-first. Sparks flew as she slid across the ground, losing her grip on the synthoid.
Fake-Sako scrambled to her feet and hurried toward the dock exit.
“Stop right there!” Susan raised her rifle from her prone position.
Fake-Sako palmed the door open.
Susan fired a warning shot that struck above the door. The pilot squealed in fear, but Fake-Sako ignored the discharge and disappeared through the opening.
“Shit!” Susan rose to her feet. “Target on the move! Pursuing!”
“Do you require assistance?”
“No!” Susan fired her boosters and shot into the atrium, scanning above and below her. She spotted Fake-Sako midair two levels down. The synthoid landed with a brief stumble, then righted herself and sprinted across a connecting bridge on her way to the elevators.
They were the only two people in the atrium.
Good, Susan thought with icy calm.
She locked onto one end of the bridge with her grenade launcher and fired while Fake-Sako was only halfway across. The projectile detonated half a meter over the bridge in a bright ball of fire that stripped the bridge’s sheet metal flooring.
Fake-Sako leaped over the gap and passed through the expanding fireball. Shrapnel cut across her, tearing away more cloth and skin, baring more of the synthoid underneath. She landed on the far end, kicked off the floor, and rushed toward the elevators.
Susan leaped down, fired her boosters to quicken her descent, and landed with a thump, only to see Fake-Sako disappear behind a closing elevator door.
“Like that’ll stop me.”
Susan reached the doors and forced her fingers into the seam, then ripped the doors open and leaped into the dark shaft. She fired her boosters, lighting the shaft and accelerating her descent until she slammed into the top of the elevator car, knocking it partially out of alignment. Emergency brakes engaged, and the car ground to a halt.
Susan peeled a ceiling panel back and pointed her rifle at the synthoid.
“You’ve got nowhere to run. Surrender, or I’ll be forced to—”
Fake-Sako leaped up through the hole and tackled Susan. The two of them smacked into the side of the shaft, and Susan kicked off. She tried to steady herself, but her foot slipped on the loosened ceiling panels, and they both fell into the elevator car. Fake-Sako used the opportunity to roll over and straddle the combat frame. She put both of her fists together, raised them over her head, and brought them crashing down onto the combat frame’s chest armor.
Armor bowed.
She struck a second time, but Susan caught the third blow and clenched down on the rogue synthoid’s fist. She forced the Fake-Sako’s arm back, squeezing down on her digits like a vice. Fake-Sako bared her teeth and tried to pull free, but Susan’s grip was too firm. She crushed down even more, contorting the hand into an unnatural shape until—with a sudden jerk—she ripped the synthoid’s ruined hand off.
Susan grabbed Fake-Sako’s neck and threw her back. The synthoid crunched against the wall, undeterred, defiance burning in her eyes. She pushed off the wall and charged Susan, swinging with her good arm.
Susan caught that blow as well, then grabbed the synthoid’s bicep with her free hand and began to tear the two pieces apart. The cloth sleeve ripped, and cosmetic flesh split open.
Fake-Sako kicked her, denting her shin armor, but Susan wouldn’t let go. Fake-Sako smashed the shattered wrist of her damaged arm into the combat frame, but Susan twisted the two halves of the arm she held, then tore the arm apart.
Strands of artificial muscle whipped through the air, and Susan tossed the severed forearm aside. Fake-Sako tried to throw another kick, but Susan grabbed her by the throat first, lifting her up before she slammed her foot into the synthoid’s flailing leg. The force of the blow crumpled the synthoid’s knee mechanisms, folding the lower leg in the wrong direction.
Susan tossed the synthoid onto the ground and loomed over her.
“Had enough yet?”
Fake-Sako used her one good leg to put her back to the wall, then pushed off the floor to stand again. She raised her arms into a fighting stance, though the form lacked some of its menace given the missing ends of her arms.
Susan pointed her rifle at the synthoid’s center of mass.
“Put your hands—” She paused and reconsidered her words. “Put your arms up.”
The synthoid didn’t move, only glared at Susan with hate in her eyes.
Susan didn’t know whose connectome was in this body, but their fight had revealed much to her. Fake-Sako had recognized her hidden combat frame, even through the variskin illusion, and she’d done so almost instantly. Whoever this was had experience with variskin, either working with it or trying to detect enemies through it. Perhaps both.
Fake-Sako hadn’t known she was up against a combat frame at first. Perhaps she’d guessed the hidden Peacekeeper was a flesh-and-blood operator in variskin armor, and if she’d been right she would have won, likely killing whoever tried to bring her in.
On top of that, she was both a skilled combatant and familiar with STAND combat frames. Knowledgeable enough to know she could redirect one of Susan’s booster nozzles with her hands and enough force.
Finally, Susan knew it was only the advantages of her hardware that had allowed her to prevail. She would have lost if they’d been on equal footing.
She raised her rifle meaningfully.
“I’m not going to ask again.”
The synthoid spat at her.
“Suit yourself.”
She fired four shots in rapid succession, one into the base of each limb.
The synthoid collapsed to the ground.
Susan reached down and grabbed it by a headful of hair from its tattered scalp.
“Target subdued,” she radioed to Defender-Prime. “Heading back.”
She fired her boosters and rocketed up the shaft.