CHAPTER XVII
CABIN FEVER
“Wake up,” the voice repeated.
I opened my eyes and found myself in a wooden chair, surrounded by the rustic living room of some high-end cabin. It looked like a wealthy slick’s idea of “roughing it.” A fire sent up orange and yellow flames in a hearth designed from red bricks. The wood panels on the wall gleamed in the firelight, with artistically placed knotholes here and there. A circular rug covered the floor, one woven in the colors of autumn, red, gold, green, and orange. A cat lay sleeping near the fireplace, tawny and plush, its coat gleaming with health. It looked like a genuine Earth cat, which would cost a fortune to bring here to Parthonia. Cats seemed to go wherever humans went, often stowing away on ships, but this one looked too healthy to be a stray. Whoever owned this cabin had probably paid as much for that cat as for the cabin itself.
And looky here, what a surprise, Eja Werling sat in a chair across from me, her booted feet up on a low wooden table inlaid with sunrise mosaics. Her chair looked a lot nicer than mine, with its comfortable cushion upholstered in autumn colors. Someone had manacled my wrists to the arms of mine. As my head cleared, I realized one of the fake commandos who’d grabbed me at the park stood guard by the door, beyond Werling.
“My greetings, Major,” Werling said in a pleasant voice.
“Go to hell,” I answered. “Why did you bring me here? No, sorry, that’s the wrong question. Why did Councilor Knam want you to bring me here?” I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. Shit. They had given me a truth serum. “She owns this place, right?”
“How did you know—” Werling stopped herself. “I’m the one asking questions.”
“You know,” I told her. “You all could have just met with me like we planned. What’s the point of bringing me here? You must intend to kill me, too, when you’re done with whatever stupidity you’ve set up here.”
“Kill you, too?” She seemed more puzzled than angered. “What do you mean, too?”
It didn’t reassure me that the only part of my statement she questioned was the word “too.” Had they killed other people? I didn’t see how they could let me go; they’d gone too far. Grabbing me out of the city was a lot different than spying at the starport. Then again, maybe her “too” meant they didn’t intend to kill me in addition to grabbing me. My brain wanted me to talk, talk and talk, so I decided to go with a provocative statement before I gave away some secret.
“I take it that you all committed the technocrat assassinations,” I said.
She scowled at me. “Of course not. Where did you get that idea?”
“Why else would you kidnap the person solving the murders?”
“You haven’t solved shit. You’re working with them, aren’t you?”
“Working with who?”
She regarded me with an all-knowing expression. “You know who I mean.”
“Uh, no, I don’t.”
Werling frowned. “Major, who are you working with?”
“The Selei City police.” She already knew that. In fact, the entire blasted universe knew it after that newscast went viral.
“And?” she asked.
“And what?”
“Who else?”
“You mean the Majdas? I’m on retainer to them.” Before she could accuse me of bias or whatever, I added, “And no, I’m not here to spin for the Royalist party.”
“I don’t mean the Majdas.” She sounded frustrated. “Who hired you to cover up clues for the technocrat assassinations? The killers?”
Holy mother. I’d wondered if the Trads would also find a way to diss how I did my job, but the last thing I’d expected was an accusation that I worked for the killers.
“Is this a joke?” I asked. “Because it’s not funny.”
She watched me intently. “How long have you collaborated with them?”
“I don’t work with them.” No wonder Councilor Knam thought they needed to give me truth serum. “What gave you that ridiculous idea?”
“Someone is covering up the clues,” she said. “Someone is hiding any leads that could solve the case. You’re the one they brought in to find those leads.” She spoke with disdain. “Given your background, you also have, shall we say, criminal inclinations.”
I wanted to say a lot of things, none of it tactful, and if I didn’t find a way to fight this truth serum fast, it was all going to come out. Then again, some truths worked just fine here. So I said, “No, I don’t have criminal inclinations.”
“Oh, come on. You come from—” She stopped, then said, “Less than auspicious origins.”
“So what?”
“Your people murder without remorse or punishment.”
I’d never figured out why people believed that our poverty meant we had no remorse for cruelty or death. We had our own laws and punishments, and they were often harsher than in the city that gleamed above us.
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “You watch too many stupid holo-vids.”
“Major, you need to answer me.” She spoke slowly, with the careful style of speech I’d used myself in the army when I had to question people under truth serum. “What is your connection to the technocrat assassinations?”
“I’m the private investigator brought in by the police to help solve the case.”
She gave me a baffled look. “Are you trained to resist interrogation?”
“No,” I lied. Of course I had training.
“Are you attempting to deflect my questions?”
“No. I don’t need to.” I spoke with exasperation. “Look, your questions make no sense. I don’t have any link to the people who committed the murders. I can’t figure out why you grabbed me out of the city. You could have asked me this when I saw you at our planned meeting yesterday. If you really thought you needed truth serum, you could have slipped it into my drink when I didn’t notice.” Or when they thought I didn’t notice. “Bringing me here set you up for a shitload a trouble. So what’s up?”
She blinked. “I think that’s the most I’ve heard you say at one time in all the holos I found about you when I was doing my research.”
“Yah, well, if you don’t want me to talk, don’t give me truth serum.” As long as I kept spinning my theories about their motives, I wasn’t giving away secured information about rogue EIs in ancient space stations.
“What makes you think I gave you truth serum?” she asked.
“Seriously?” I regarded her with incredulity. “Maybe, Eja Werling, it’s because you’re all so clumsy. You think you’re being discreet, covert even, and maybe if I were a regular citizen, it would be enough to fool me. But it’s child’s play to figure out who Councilor Knam has spying on me. That enough truth for you?”
Werling sat back, her forehead furrowed. “You aren’t what I expected.”
“Why’d you bring me up here?”
She crossed her arms. “I’m asking the questions.”
“Not very well.” It hit me then. “Councilor Knam wants credit for solving this case. You bring me up here, grill me for the clues I’ve found, use my work to find answers, and then either prove I’m affiliated with the killers or frame me. You look great as the PI involved and Knam gets kudos for her supposed insight into finding the most notorious serial killer this city has seen in over a century.” I wanted to punch something. “People are disillusioned with the Royalists already. So where are members of the Royalist Party most likely to go if they change party affiliations? Why, gosh, the Trads. And who cares if I’m screwed by it all. I’m just a dust rat from the Undercity.”
She stared at me. “Shit.”
“Yah, I agree. You brought me here so I can’t go warn people what you’re doing or finish solving the case. You need a reason, though, to say why you grabbed me.” I squinted at her. “Oh. Yah. It’s obvious. You planned to claim I was going to do something violent, who knows what, and you had to stop me. That’s why you need to frame me for working with the assassins.” I thought of what Gig had said about the false news stories getting far more play than the denials. “By the time I could defend myself, the damage would be done. No one would believe my denials anyway, because, hey, I’m just scum.”
She sat there with her mouth open. Then she remembered herself and shut it. “You can’t seriously expect me to believe someone like you can solve this case.”
“Yes, I can seriously believe that. You must, too, or you wouldn’t be trying to interrogate me to find out what I know or holding me here to stop me from solving it first.”
Her voice took on a clenched sound, like the verbal equivalent of a fist. “You can’t get credit for solving this case. It’s wrong. Someone like you—no. You belong where you came from, back in the grime where you grew up.”
I didn’t have Max to warn me to calm, but I was so far beyond angry, her words rolled off my back. I spoke mildly. “We’re probably cleaner in the Undercity than you.”
Her face turned red with anger. “Shut your mouth.”
“Oh, fuck you.” I really needed some new cuss words. “I don’t have time for this. You don’t wonder why the police went to the trouble of bringing in someone from offworld or why I’m on retainer to some of the most powerful people alive?” I certainly was talky today. “I’m damn good at what I do, sweetheart, and you don’t even come close.”
“Gods, your ego.”
“Hey, it’s truth serum. So I must be telling the truth.” I needed to get out of these manacles, which meant distracting her. “What did you do with Max?”
She had started to speak, but at my question, she looked like she’d hit a wall. “With who?”
“My EI. He’s in my gauntlets.”
“We deactivated him.”
I opened my mouth to tell her Max had outsmarted their attempts to turn him off, but I caught myself in time and shut it again.
Werling sat up straighter. “What?”
I made a show of struggling not to speak, opening my mouth, closing it, starting, stopping. And then I lied to her face. “You can’t keep him deactivated without a signal from me. Otherwise, he’ll come back online.”
“What? No, he can’t.”
“It’s the way he works. I wanted an EI designed with a fail-safe.” Who knew what I meant by fail-safe, because I sure as hell didn’t.
She frowned. “How does he supposedly come back online?”
“He reboosts his central affector unit with a neural cross-cutting transducer switch.” I rattled of the first nonsense words that came to my mind, fast and curt.
Werling blinked. “He does what?”
“Surely you’ve experienced this before.”
“He can’t reactivate.”
“Of course he can.” I leaned forward in the chair. “And then you’re in it deep. Because you’re the one here, not Councilor Knam. She’ll deny any connection to you and condemn your activities when the police show up.” That was a truth she needed to hear. No way would Knam help if Werling got caught; the councilor would let nothing link her to a kidnapping.
Werling shifted in her chair. “Let’s say I believed you about this fail-safe. I don’t, but for the sake of argument—how would I turn it off?”
“You can’t. Only I can. My gauntlets are keyed to my fingerprints, voice, and retinal scan.”
She waved her hand as if wiping away my words. “We’ll just destroy your gauntlets.”
“That sends an alert the corporation that built my EI.” That much was true, as their EI expert had already stated. It would help convince her of the rest. I hoped.
Werling frowned at me. “Fine. You do this supposed deactivation of the fail-safe.”
“Sorry. Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
I put on another show of trying hard not to talk, then “lost the battle” and said, “It needs to scan my eyes, my fingerprints, and hear my voice. You can’t force that.”
“Actually,” Werling told me, “That can be arranged.”
I scowled at her. “Like hell.”
She tapped the comm on her wrist. “Captain?”
“Lajon here,” the captain said. “How’s it going?”
“She says if she doesn’t give the proper code to her EI, it will trigger some sort of warning to the place that made it.”
“I thought that only happened if we destroyed it.”
“She claims she set up a fail-safe so if her EI is deactivated for a certain amount of time, it also sends the warning.”
“Then turn off the fail-safe.” Lajon sounded impatient.
“How?”
“Ask her. You gave her the serum, right?”
Werling laughed, an ugly sound. “Indeed. She’s talking up a storm.”
“So have her tell you how to disable the warning signal.”
“She says it requires a retinal, finger, and voice scan.”
“All that? Goddess, is she paranoid or what?
“She’s not going to submit to any scan.”
“You can get them anyway. The voice is easy, given the truth serum. Ask her for the password it uses to identify her voice and record her saying it. For her eyes, we’ll need tech that forces them to stay open without registering strain. I’ll send the doctor over with something.”
“I thought that was illegal.”
“Just do it.” Lajon sounded irritated. I didn’t blame her. After everything they’d done, contraband tech designed to fool a retinal scan ranked among the least of their problems.
“Her fingers will be more difficult,” Lajon said. “Most advanced EI systems can recognize if you cut off the fingers and use them without the owner attached.” The captain laughed as if she’d made a joke. “Her hand needs to be relaxed, so forcing her to hold open her fist won’t work. Damn systems have gotten too smart. A good one can tell if the person attached to the hand is tensed, dead, passed out, or whatever. It might even know her hand is manacled to the chair arms.” She went silent. “We need her relaxed, but not so much that she passes out.”
The esteemed Captain Lajon wasn’t an idiot, as much as I wanted to think of them all that way. She had a good sense of how ID checks worked.
“You want me to give her more jinx?” Werling asked.
“Yeah, but not enough to knock her out. Keep her barely conscious, awake, but too out of it to fight. I’ll come over with the rest of the team, just in case. We’ll bring her gauntlets and the eye drops. Give her the jinx now, and then we’ll talk about what to do with the fingers.”
“Fine. Out.” Werling scowled at me. “You are far more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Don’t knock me out.” I pretended to be worried. “I won’t cause problems.”
Werling ignored me as she got up and went to a credenza against one wall. She opened a drawer and took out a med pack, then went about setting its air syringe with some potion, probably the jinx. I gritted my teeth as she pressed the syringe against my neck, and it hissed, just the barest pressure on my skin. Within moments, my mind fuzzed again. I closed my eyes, pretending to pass out. Fake it, I thought, concentrating on the picoweb formed by my health meds. Make me look unconscious. The web wouldn’t pick up my words, but I’d trained with this system for years, drill after drill, practicing with biofeedback. It should pick up at least a sense of what I wanted.
“You gave her too much,” someone said, the guard at the door it sounded like.
“That shouldn’t have knocked her out.” Werling shook my shoulders. “Major?”
I let my head roll to the side.
Werling slapped me across the face, hard, and my head banged against the back of the chair. Gods, I wanted to punch her so badly, it was all I could do to keep up my unconscious act.
“Can you tell if she’s really out?” Werling said. “She could be faking it.”
Footsteps crossed the room and a low growl followed by a hiss came from the direction of the hearth. Apparently Knam’s pets didn’t appreciate these people any more than I did. Someone leaned over me. Maybe I felt a slight difference in the air, I didn’t know, but I sensed the guard bent down and then straightened. Taps came from in front of me, someone working on a gauntlet.
“She’s out,” the guard said. “You gave her too much.”
The cat growled its disapproval of the guard’s voice. “Stupid rodent,” Werling muttered. “Or whatever it is.” More taps, and she pressed the syringe against my neck.
Fake it, I thought. Fake it, fake it, fake it.
My head began to clear.
“She’s still unconscious,” the guard said.
Werling hit me again. “Wake up, bitch.”
Ah! My head exploded with pain as it banged against the high chair back. Fake it! I thought, as much to control myself this time as the meds.
“Still unconscious,” the guard said. “What a half-assed wimp. She’s nowhere near as tough as she plays at.”
Good meds, I thought.
“I’ll give it a minute.” Werling’s hair rustled as if she were shaking her head. “How did she fool the Majda’s into hiring her? You’d think they would be more careful.”
“She probably lied,” the guard said. “I’m sure she has some minor link to them, one she exploited to get this job, but no way could such a publicity-grabbing duster be a PI on retainer to their House. More likely, she’s a servant there.” She spoke as if discussing a beetle on the floor. “To think we’d never have known the truth if that reporter hadn’t dug up her background. No wonder she wanted to hide her identity.”
Calm, I told myself, since I didn’t have Max to do it. Serene. Cool. You’re floating on a clear lake under a sun-filled sky. Better yet, you’re making love to Jak. That last one helped.
“I can see why she enlisted,” Werling said. “But how the hell did she become a major?”
“Oh, you know how it works,” the guard said. “I’m sure they had some program with preferential treatment for candidates who met a quota.”
“Screw that,” Werling said. “She got her position at the price of someone better qualified. She doesn’t deserve any of this.”
Cool down, I told my boiling temper. My nanos needed to release chemicals to counter any physiological signs of my anger. Don’t show any reaction. These assholes had no freaking idea what I’d faced, how many times I’d been denied entry into officer candidate school even when I had the highest marks on the qualifying tests, both intellectual and physical. I’d fought for every atom of progress I’d made. The criticism never stopped no matter how much I achieved, no matter how many times I proved myself.
“Her pulse just jumped,” the guard said. “I think she’s coming around.”
“Hey.” Werling slapped me again. “Wake up.”
Calm. Cool. Serene, I told myself. If they underestimate you, that gives you an advantage.
The creak of an old-fashioned door came from across the room, and the cat growled again.
Yah, I don’t like them, either, I thought to it.
“I thought you weren’t going to knock her out,” a voice said. Captain Lajon.
More footsteps sounded, followed by someone murmuring, “Good kitty, there, see, it’s okay.” The scritch of fingers on fur rustled and the mollified cat purred.
“This should do the trick,” Werling told them. The syringe touched my neck again.
I continued to play dead.
“Are you getting any signs she’s conscious?” Lajon asked.
“Not yet,” the guard said. “But I think she’s drifting out of it.”
Another voice spoke, the doctor it sounded like. “Damn it, Werling, if you caused brain damage and the doctors do an autopsy, they’ll know she was drugged. They might even follow the trail back to me.”
Autopsy. Yah, I was in trouble.
“She was fine a few minutes ago,” Werling growled. “Mouthy as all hell.”
“We might as well try the fingerprint code now,” Lajon said. “At least if she’s unconscious, she won’t make trouble.”
“The detector might pick up that she’s manacled,” the techie said. “Her prints won’t work if the EI calculates that she hasn’t given them of her own free will.”
Lajon grunted with impatience. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll get rid of the EI. And yes, I know, it will alert who-the-hell knows. Take it into the forest hundreds kilometers from here, smash it, and drop it. Whoever it alerts will send their rescue team to that location instead of here.”
The tech said, “It would be a shame to destroy such an EI. It’s like a work of art.”
You’ll need a rescue team yourself if you harm Max, I thought.
My greetings, Bhaaj, Max thought.
You’re here!
Yes, Max thought. The doctor is holding your gauntlets. They turned off most of my functions. I can’t activate your combat mode.
It should kick in if I start fighting. ISC made sure we had use of our biomech even if we lost the EI that controlled them, but they didn’t want us attacking innocent civilians, either. If my combat mode activated every time I got into a fight, it could be a disaster. My vital signs needed a certain level of intensity before it kicked in. It would help that my adrenaline had rocketed, probably another reason the jinx hadn’t worked as well.
Initially I had the impression they intended to discredit you, Max said. However, they have also discussed ways to dispose of your body.
Yah, I think they’ve realized killing me may be their only way out of this mess. They plan to suggest I have complicity in the technocrat murders.
You weren’t even on Parthonia when this business started.
No. I wasn’t. But Max, I maintained a residence here even when I lived on another planet. That won’t look good. And the bomb went off in my building. It could make it look like I bungled matters, setting off the explosive where I’d stored it.
You would never be that inept.
Yah, but these people think I’m an idiot. And they want me to look guilty.
You don’t even know these people. Why would they set you up?
Because I’m the PI brought in to help on the case. Councilor Knam wants the credit. Bitterly I added, They also don’t want Undercity scum getting kudos for such a prestigious case. Goddess forbid, I should actually do my job better than their idiot PI.
She isn’t an idiot, Bhaaj. Werling is new as a PI, which makes her efforts clumsy, but she’s brilliant with politics and spin. Chief Hadar never worked with her because she only works for Trads, to further their politics.
The doctor was speaking again. “I’ve reset the syringe. You put the dosage too high.” It hissed against my skin.
“Hopefully this will work,” Werling said. A hand brushed the skin of my wrists above the manacles and they clicked as someone freed my right arm. She clicked open the left—
I launched out of the chair, swung my fist, and kicked my leg all in the same instant. I didn’t have time to aim—and my combat libraries didn’t kick in. My boot plowed into Werling’s stomach instead of my target, her head. As she doubled over, my fist connected with the person holding Max, the doctor apparently. I’d known someone was there, but the person I needed to put out was Captain Lajon. I moved fast, but without enhanced reflexes or power. Grabbing the doctor, I swung her toward the person I guessed was Lajon, blocking the captain’s fist as she swung. Lajon hit the doctor instead, and the medic groaned.
Your combat mode just toggled on, Max thought.
Everyone seemed to slow down. Werling didn’t even try to fight; she backed away from the melee. Two guards converged on me, trying to form a triangle so they could hit me from both sides. I shoved the doctor into Lajon with accelerated speed, throwing them off-balance. Whirling around, I grabbed one of the guards by the head and swung her like a shield as I kicked past her body. My kick went wide, but I managed to smash one of the other guards in the hip while I used my elbows to strike the woman I was holding.
I had four opponents, a losing proposition—except they couldn’t fight worth spit. I kept moving, back and forth, never losing pace, so no one could knock me over. None of them seemed to have biomech enhancement. When I rolled a guard over my hip and threw her to the ground, the crack of a breaking bone split the air. I didn’t fight to kill, but I had to stop them now, because otherwise they planned to stop me for good, RIP, so long Bhaaj.
I fought using the length of my limbs to good advantage, spending barely more than a second with each person. The slowing of my time sense made it easier to judge how to hit in the right place or how to protect my head. With enhanced reflexes, I could avoid most of what they threw at me. Somewhere in there, the cat quit growling and ran from the room.
Within seconds, I knocked out two of the guards. The doctor was on the floor, unconscious, but still holding my gauntlets. Werling stood backed up against the wall, watching with her mouth open. Captain Lajon came straight for me. In the same moment that I struck at her head, she whirled around in a jumping roundhouse kick. Damn! She knew her business. I barely evaded the blow. We kept fighting, moving fast, moving hard, but I couldn’t get in a powerhouse blow—
My fist finally connected with Lajon’s jaw, and her bone broke with a loud crack. I didn’t hesitate, not even for a second as I threw her to the floor. I dropped to my knee next to her, raised my fist with a jerk—and realized she had stopped moving.
I pulled my blow, breathing hard, surrounded by four motionless figures. Werling stood backed against the wall, staring at me with horror.
“You killed them,” she shouted.
I looked up at her, struggling to contain my rage.
Calm, Max murmured. Calm, Bhaaj. I can’t get you out of combat mode. You need to control it. Then he added, I can still record. I have everything that happened since I entered this room. Anything you say here to Werling will be part of my record. In a situation like this, where your life is threatened, such a record is admissible in court.
I took a ragged breath. Assuming you don’t get destroyed before this is over.
Yes. Also, I’m getting life signs from all four. Two are in serious trouble, however.
“They aren’t dead,” I told Werling, aware of Max recording my words. “Just knocked out.”
“You had no right,” she hissed.
“I have every right to defend my life,” I said. “You all kidnapped me, drugged me, chained me to a chair, and beat me up, all the time planning to steal my work so you could take credit for solving the case. Councilor Knam hired you, to make her look good. When this got messier than you expected, you decided to kill me. And then what? Say it was self-defense, because I’m a crazed dust rat from the Undercity?”
“You’re lower than scum.” Venom practically dripped from her words. “You don’t deserve to be here.”
“Why the hell not?” In all the years, in all the times I’d encountered her attitude, in all the hatred spewed at me, I’d never understood why. “So what if I come from the Undercity?”
“You’re less than human.” She spoke as if stating a fact everyone knew.
I stared at her. “How does my being from the Undercity justify what you’ve done here?”
“What I’ve done.” She stared at me with incredulity. “You beat up four people!”
I struggled to control my rage. “What did you expect, that I’d just let you all murder my ass?” I was about to add more choice words when Max thought, Watch it. You want this recording to make you look sympathetic.
“You think you deserve better?” Werling said. “Goddess, you people.”
“What people?” I was excruciatingly aware the guards could wake up any moment, but I couldn’t leave until Werling implicated Knam.
“You,” Werling said. “Dust rats.”
“Do all Trads feel this way?” I asked. “Or just Councilor Knam?”
“Not everyone has the courage to take action.” Werling straightened up, pulling back her shoulders. “Councilor Knam is a visionary. We are proud to serve in her army.”
“What army?” As far as I knew, Knam had never served in the military.
“Those of us who follow her. She isn’t afraid to do whatever is necessary to return our glorious empire to its halcyon days.”
Max, what does halcyon mean?
Halcyon days is an Earth idiom that means a time of happiness and tranquility, often referring to the past with nostalgia.
The doctor stirred on the ground and moaned.
Damn. I needed to get out of here. I motioned at the bodies on the floor. “You call this tranquil? This slugfest you created?”
Werling clenched her fists at her sides. “You caused this! You should have just stayed put, not made trouble, accepted your takedown. These deaths are on your head.”
“I don’t fight to kill, only to disable.” Though gods knew, I’d wanted to smash them. “If anyone dies, that’s on Councilor Knam’s head. She’s the one who ordered you all to do this.”
“That’s because she isn’t afraid of the steps we must take to win this battle,” Werling told me. “You did this, dust rat. That is what I will tell the authorities. I’ll also say you aided the technocrat assassins. You’ll go down for murder.”
Captain Lajon grunted and opened her eyes.
Bhaaj, you have enough to implicate Knam, Max thought. You need to go. NOW!
I wrested my gauntlets from the doctor’s grip, then jumped up and bolted across the room. My body ached from the beating I’d taken, but adrenaline, my biomech, and painkillers released by my meds kept me going. I slammed open the door and ran into the mountain evening. A full day had passed, and the sky blazed with a spectacular sunset.
Flyer, I thought.
On the landing pad, Max thought. Two hundred meters north.
I followed his directions, sprinting through the widely spaced trees around the cabin. Within moments, I reached a clearing with a landing pad.
An empty landing pad.
No! I wanted to yell with frustration. Where is the blasted flyer?
Someone must have left with it after they took me out.
I swung around, snapping my gauntlets onto my wrists. Any idea how I can get out of here?
Yes. Go south. I can’t locate our position globally, but I can get you moving in the right direction to find help, based on what I saw on our journey here. Go away from the cabin, angling to the right.
I took off in long, loping strides. I wanted to go faster, but who knew how long I’d have to run. I used my long-distance pace, the one that used to win marathons.
A shout came from the cabin behind us. “Lajon, get up! She’s escaping.”
I went faster, leaving the cabin behind. The forest grew denser until I was crashing through underbrush. I had to slow down, stumbling on gnarled branches and roots that buckled up from the ground. I pushed away the hanging vines, and used my hands to protect my face from the thorny bushes. I didn’t care that that they tore at my clothes and skin. Better I get ripped up than I die.
With its leafy canopy cutting out the light from the sunset, the forest had gone mostly dark. It felt alien, too close, claustrophobic, so unlike the open desert of home. My IR vision kicked in and the trees lit up with pale blue light, caught in the growing chill of night.
Veer more to the right, Max thought.
As I pushed my way through the trees, fronds brushed my face. Gods only knew how many bugs I’d pick up. I just hoped nothing vile bit me. I’d had run-ins before with scritch-bugs in the mountains around Selei City, bedeviled by the noisome poison they injected and the miserable itching that followed when your skin erupted into a rash.
Can you activate my long-distance comm? We need help. If they bring back that flyer, I won’t have a chance. I can’t outrun an aircraft. Hell, I can hardly walk here.
I need to repair my GPS and comm. In other words, not yet. I’m working on it.
I pushed my way through a thicket of matted bushes and large branches that had cracked off even larger trees and fallen across the undergrowth, tangled with vines they’d pulled down. Although I’d seen other forests, I hadn’t made my way through one this wild and overgrown since, well, I couldn’t think of when. The route where Max sent me looked like it might be a trail followed by animals, plant-eaters who wouldn’t find me delectable—I hoped. The cold air snapped against my skin, and the ground felt almost frozen under my thin shoes, slowing me down even more.
Where are you sending me? I thought.
When we came in, we flew over an outpost. You could make it there in about an hour, assuming the forest doesn’t get any denser. He sounded worried. However, using your augmentations for that long isn’t good for you.
Getting killed isn’t good for me, either. It was impossible to go fast, but at least my increased strength let me rip undergrowth out of the way, even the little trees that grew like weeds. What about you, Max? Did they do any permanent damage?
I don’t think so. Their tech knows her stuff.
I ducked as a branch swung at my face. Did they download you anywhere?
They were working it when Werling called Captain Lajon. She said they needed you to give me some code. He sounded bemused. What is a reboost of my central affector unit with a neural cross-cutting transducer switch?
I winced. I was desperate. I also told them that if they deactivated you for too long, it would alert the servers at Metro Corporation.
Their tech was careful, though. I doubt she set off any alarms.
Yah, but they didn’t know that.
The rumble of an engine growled in the distance.
Damn! I tried to go faster, but I tripped on a boulder and lurched to a stop, falling into a stabber-bush with needles as long as a finger. I groaned and climbed back to my feet, squinting in the growing dusk. My IR vision isn’t doing squat.
You also have filters that amplify any ambient light they can input. Don’t you recall?
No. My brain feels like mulch. Why is everything so dim?
The neural relaxant affects your brain. Your sight should improve as it wears off.
A crackling came from my right. What is that noise?
Bhaaj, veer left! As I veered, he added, It’s an octo-sloth. It’s big, and you’re prey.
Octo? I kept on, doggedly making my way through the undergrowth. A small swarm of goggle-flies flew in my face, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Gods, I missed the desert.
It has eight claws on each paw. It will happily use them to make you its dinner.
Great. Just great. Is it coming after me?
No, not yet.
His “yet” didn’t reassure me. Above us, the engine was growing louder. Did you see any of the flyer systems on the way here? It would help to know what sensors they have for finding people.
They have a lot. IR thermal imaging cameras far better than your IR vision. Imagers that zoom to a microscopic level. High-end motion sensors. Bio-readers that can detect life signs. Circular spectropolarimetry sensors. You can’t hide.
Not good. I didn’t even try asking about the spectro-whatever, I just kept stumbling through the underbrush. The engine grew louder until it rumbled above us. Max directed me in course changes, and the rumble followed every time.
Why aren’t they shooting? I had seen all of them, and I’d heard far too much. If I were in their position, I’d want me as dead as fast and as thoroughly as last year’s fashions.
I’m not sure, Max thought. The tree cover shouldn’t stop them from firing.
That engine doesn’t sound right. I swerved to avoid a stump and fell against the ridged trunk of a banjo tree leaning at a steep angle.
You’re right, Max thought. That isn’t a flyer. It’s a Quetzal helicopter.
Shit! Where’d they get a Quetz? The army called them Quetzals after Izam Na Quetza, the Raylican god of flight. One of those beauts could outdo a civilian flyer any day and shoot the blazes out of my sorry-assed self.
I’m dead, I thought.