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CHAPTER XX

HighWAY RUN

The wind rushed past as we sped down the highway. The sun had risen higher, it rays fresh with the morning. I ran in long, distance-devouring strides, reveling in the speed. Kav whirred next to me, serene in his cycle mode. Ruzik sat astride the back of the cycle, holding onto bars at his side, with a handspan of distance between himself and Kav. The guardian drone kept pace above us, monitoring the area.

It felt good. We ran in the Undercity every day of our lives, almost from the day we took our first step. You rarely saw motorized transportation. We lacked the ability to purchase or make vehicles, besides which they could damage our home, what we called the “aqueducts,” the tunnels, caves, and dry canals that networked the desert below the ground. Those ancient ruins still stood after millennia, and we wanted them to stay that way. In part, though, we just liked to run.

In the army, my coaches told me that along with my exceptional muscle density, my body had an excellent “VO2” rate. The oxygen content in the atmosphere on Raylicon was lower than on most human-settled worlds, so our bodies adapted. They thought the Undercity gene pool also favored those of us who could run well because it helped us survive. Well, maybe. I figured it happened because we ran every day, sometimes for hours. We took it for granted.

When I was a new army recruit, the head coach for the track team came down to watch the latest prospects. We were warming up on the Red Sands field of the planet Diesha where they shipped us for training. Rumor claimed he stared at me and said, “Gods almighty, are those her normal legs?” Well, yah. I have long legs. Really long, apparently. Another Undercity trait.

They told us to run ten kilometers, so I did. It was the first thing I understood in the deluge of newness I faced after I left home. I ran for the sheer joy of doing what I loved. I had no clue that I left behind the entire field of other runners within seconds, that I blasted around the track in record time for a recruit. People told me later that the coach went nuts. All I knew was that a few minutes after I finished my run, this dude was striding across the field, determined and focused. He walked up and asked me to join the track team. He told me how it offered a good way to meet other recruits, it would let me travel, keep me in shape, give me an outlet, talky, talky, talky. I understood less than half of what he said; I didn’t speak Flag so well in those days.

It didn’t matter. He had me within the first moments after he opened his mouth. As soon as he said I could compete against other runners, I was in. That defined our lives as dust gangs in the Undercity. We challenged other gangs for territory, resources, food, and filtered water. We rumbled, we ran, we built dust sculptures to claim our territory and knocked down those of our rivals. If we allied with another gang, we practiced together; if we challenged a gang, we sought to destroy them. We didn’t fight or run to kill, but given the overwhelming mortality rate in the Undercity, it happened. And then we fought vengeance matches.

I told the coach none of that. I said one word: yah. And he understood, even if he’d never heard an Undercity accent before. That was the day I met Dayv Dansk. He changed my life. Most everywhere else I turned, I stumbled into resistance, dismissal, even outright hatred. No one wanted a dust rat corrupting their existence. Dayv didn’t care where I came from. He got me. Over the years, he became a mentor, one of the few I’d known. I ran for the team in several events, more often distance than sprints, but my forte was the marathon.

I didn’t care where we competed. The world, the atmosphere, the gravity, they all changed when we traveled, so our workouts changed, but I didn’t think about it. I just ran. My best times were on worlds with a higher concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere and just barely lower gravity than the human standard, enough to make us lighter without losing our traction or sailing too high in the air. My peers on the team talked about the strain of high-profile competitions, and I saw the toll it took on them. I felt only grateful. After living in poverty my entire childhood, literally running to survive, competitions seemed like a party. I did them as a grunt, as an officer candidate, as a lieutenant—

And then the army implanted my biomech web.

I’ve never regretted the biomech in my body. It has saved my life so many times, I’ve lost count. Just a few hours ago, it kept Captain Lajon and her team from murdering me. But I’d never stop regretting that it ended my athletic career. After I became an officer, the army waited longer than usual to implant my biomech so I could have one shot at the Olympics. I qualified for the Dieshan team, came here to Parthonia where they held it that year, won a couple of medals, made the army look good, had one of the best times of my life—and then gave up that path forever.

Of course we couldn’t compete in amateur athletics with augmentation to our bodies. Where would it stop? I’d seen Jagernauts, the elite star fighter pilots of ISC, run marathons in under fifty minutes. It was surreal, like watching a drone. In recent years, a new type of league had formed that allowed enhanced humans to participate if they let the officials deactivate their biomech during the competition, but I’d never paid much attention. I couldn’t imagine going back to those heady days of my youth when I’d discovered for the first time how it felt to be admired instead of spat on. I’d needed those medals, needed Dayv’s belief in me, needed to believe I had worth, a value beyond my ability to die for ISC. Now, decades later, I didn’t feel the pressure to compete. Besides, all those kids, so young and fresh, would wipe the track with me.

Not many people knew about my medals. Hell, I often forgot. Nothing much remained in the public record about that year except the debate over the name “Olympics” from Earth. Both we and the Traders liked its neutrality, as opposed to calling our largest interstellar sports tournament the “Imperialate Games” or “Eubian Games.” The Allieds hesitated because we expected people of all sexes to compete together, but in the end they agreed to let us do it as we wished.

We were about halfway to the army base when a glitch in Kav’s cycle interrupted my parade of memories. The rumble of his engine changed. It reset to its usual hum almost immediately, but I saw his frown.

“Was that normal?” I asked. I didn’t like talking when I was running this fast, but I liked even less the prospect that one of us might malfunction.

“No.” He tapped at the forward controls on his cycle. “Everything looks okay.”

We kept going—and Kav’s cycle glitched again. This time it didn’t recover, but ground to a halt with a grating protest. I slowed down and jogged back to him. He was tapping his fingers over his controls like a maestro working his instrument. The engine rumbled—and died again. He swore and kept working.

Although I could still run to the base, I didn’t want to leave him alone here. The highway stretched away behind and in front of us, curving in the distance, a flat stretch of spring-asphalt wide enough for several vehicles to ride abreast. It matched the color of a dirt path so it fit in with the surrounding meadows. Camouflage road. It was also an empty road. In all the time we’d been traveling, only two vehicles had passed us.

“Do you know what’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s odd.” Kav squinted at a display floating above his controls. “I don’t see any problems.”

Ruzik slid off the cycle and stretched his arms. He looked relieved to stand up.

Max spoke. “If you connect me to your system, I may be able to find the problem.”

Kav turned to Ruzik with a jerk. “You work on cyber systems?”

“Talky not me,” Ruzik said. “Max speak.”

Kav looked around at the empty highway and rippling meadows. “Who is Max?”

“My EI,” I said. “If you let him access to your cycle mesh, he can run a check on its code.”

Kav considered me for a long moment. I endeavored to look trustworthy, and finally he said, “Limited access only.”

“Understood,” Max said.

Kav tapped in some codes on his controls. “Okay, try now.”

“I’m accessing the outer shell of your system.” Max sounded appreciative. “You have an impressive set of cybernetics, both the tech-mech and the code that controls it.”

“Yes.” Kav rolled his shoulders, looking uneasy. His cycle was part of him, so by giving Max access to the mesh for his vehicle, he was also giving Max partial access to control his body.

“I found the problem,” Max said. “It’s me.”

“You?” I asked. “How can it be you?”

“Someone tried to deactivate me. My systems fought off the attack, so it deflected to Kav’s cycle. Bhaaj, try moving away from him.”

I backed into the field behind us. Fronds of feather-grass, soft and green, brushed my knees. I didn’t see anyone else. Most people only came out to the countryside when they wanted “to be one with nature,” whatever that meant. Did they want to turn into a plant? Regardless, they usually chose more parklike areas. No one came out to an overgrown field like this one.

Kav’s cycle growled into life again. He waved, then called across the distance separating us. “Do you want me to take Ruzik to the army base?”

“We should discuss strategy first,” Max said, just to me.

I waved back to Kav and called out, “Just a sec.”

Kav nodded and waited, his cycle humming like a pleased Earth cat.

“Who tried to deactivate you?” I asked Max.

“I didn’t recognize the signal. Not Captain Lajon’s people, I don’t think.”

“Is it like the first time we went to Greyjan’s or that time the red beetle put you to sleep?”

“I can only guess.” Max sounded frustrated. “That first night at Greyjan’s, a mesh code blocked me from accessing whatever used to be in the basement. I suspect the dust was plentiful then, enough for its particles to form a full picoweb and comm node. It probably erased the memory of your drones and rewrote your mirror code to act against Red, and I’d bet it caused the campaign of misinformation on the meshes. However, I don’t think it created the VR sim. That was the child EI trying to communicate with us.”

His “guess” made a lot of sense. “What about this latest attempt to turn you off?”

“I’m not sure. It came and went too fast to trace. Also, we’re nowhere near Greyjan’s.”

“Maybe someone moved the dust, or it floated here.” That didn’t sound right, though. It would take a long time for the dust to float this far unless it was big enough to carry a propulsion system, which I doubted it could hide with city dust floating everywhere. “Anyway, why use dust?”

“It’s easy to overlook. It can be anywhere.”

“Yah, but it’s not easy to make. The army has worked on smart dust for decades. They’ve made good progress on the type we use in space, the ‘big dust.’ Also the simpler floating dust they use to monitor stuff. But grit on the floor? What does it do that the invisible dust can’t do better? If it’s weaponized for space combat, it needs to be larger, like the little drones used by the army. For planetary use, you have to design it so it affects only the people you’re working against and not you.” I paused. “You stopped this dust, though. Nothing gets past you.”

“I wish that were true. I didn’t even notice the attempt to tamper with my systems until it deflected to Kav’s cycle.” Max paused. “We don’t want our protections to injure our allies.”

“If Kav is an ally.”

“You don’t trust him?”

Good question. “I’m not sure what to think. Does his story check out?”

“I don’t know. I still can’t do a full search. Also, the first time I looked for him, his data vanished even as I dug it up. By now, it’s probably completely gone.”

“I’ll bet the baby EI child deleted the data.”

“Yet it sent Kav to Greyjan’s. To meet us?”

“I can’t figure what this EI wants. It’s changing so fast.” At least when human children grew up, it happened slow enough that you had time to adjust. Sort of. “I get that it wanted to hide. So it hid Kav, too. But now we know about Kav. What does it want?” I wished it would just tell us.

“I see several possibilities,” Max mused. “It wanted Kav to provide us with backup. It wanted Kav to spy on us. It wanted to weaponize Kav or his cybernetics.”

That of course was the giant stink worm we all pretended we didn’t notice. Did Kav realize how much control he gave up when he agreed to the cybernetic procedures? I had no doubt the EI could take over his systems if it wished, making Kav into a formidable weapon. Then again, Kav probably had no idea that his benefactor wasn’t human.

I thought through the possibilities. “If Kav is helping us, then we’re putting him in danger, and he should go to the army base with Ruzik. If he’s spying on us or he’s weaponized, the last place he’d want to go is a military base. They aren’t going to let him on site until they do a thorough scan of his cybernetics, and if he’s a weapon or a covert agent, they’ll figure it out.”

“I agree. That he offered to go to the base suggests he means to help.”

“Maybe.” I banged my fist against my thigh in frustration. “Or maybe he’s just misleading us. If we separate from him, he might find a way to nullify Ruzik on his own.”

“Nullify Ruzik how?” Max sounded much calmer than I felt. “Ruzik is more agile and experienced than Kav, especially when Kav is in cycle mode. If Kav stranded him somewhere, Ruzik would just run back to the city.” He spoke quietly. “Trust your instincts, Bhaaj.”

What did I feel when I talked to Kav? He seemed a reasonable sort, a nice fellow who almost had his life destroyed. I got no sense of deception, malice, or manipulation from him.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s take him up on his offer.”


“Nahya,” Ruzik repeated. “Not leave. I defend.”

“I defend myself,” I said. “You go.”

“Not go.” He faced off with me, huge and immovable, his arms crossed, the tats vivid on his sculpted muscles.

Okay, this wasn’t going to work. If Ruzik refused to board the cycle, I couldn’t force him. If he came with me, though, I’d have to slow down. Sure he ran well, but only for someone with no augmentation. I needed another approach. “Try this. I follow cycle. You stay far enough ahead, wheels work. But close enough, you see me. Yah?”

He considered that. “You go first. We follow. Then I not need turn to see you.”

“Yah, good.” That sounded fair. “Max, can you reach Angel?”

“One moment.” After the requisite moment, Max said, “I can’t get anything from the other gauntlet. The recycling center isn’t that far. I should at least pick up part of a signal.”

Ruzik visibly tensed, his fingers gripping the muscular biceps of his crossed arms.

“Keep looking,” I told Max. “Also, can you reach Chief Hadar? He needs an update.”

“Working.” Max paused. “I’m still having trouble with wireless links over longer distances, and the police station is far away. You can drop your shield and comm him.”

“Yah. I could,” I said. “I could also paint a target on my back and say ‘Here! Shoot me!’”

“Understood. Should I prioritize finding Angel or getting the report to Hadar?”

The chief needed to know what was going on, but Angel’s mission was probably more urgent. We needed more of that dust. Hadar might be able to help Angel if he knew, though. I spoke to Kav. “Can you send a message to the police station?” I didn’t like giving him secured information, but it was better than nothing.

He tapped at his controls. “Yes, it should be easy—no, wait. My signal is blocked.”

“Goddess,” I muttered. “These people are too effective.”

Kav kept working at his comm. Finally he looked at me. “I’m sorry. I can’t get anything.”

You think he’s lying? I asked.

He doesn’t show any of the signs. I’m not getting a signal out here, either. I suspect they’ve blocked your comm, too. We should move on.

That may be why you can’t reach Angel. I doubted she was lost. If she couldn’t find the recycling center, she’d use her ultra-high-tech method of asking someone for directions. If they realized she came from the Undercity or otherwise didn’t trust her, then sure, they might call the cops, but if Hadar’s people picked her up, that solved the problem of our difficulty reaching him.

“Max, find Angel,” I said. “If you can reach the police, see if they can help her. If Hadar wants a full report, tell him Lavinda Majda can send it.”

“By the time he gets clearance for their army report,” Max said, “I could probably send him ten updated reports, even with extra delays in finding Angel.”

He had a point. “Work on both, but prioritize Angel. Is my red beetle still with us?” I’d last seen it hiding at the tavern.

“Here,” Max said.

Red hummed down out of the air and settled on my arm just above my gauntlet.

“Good little beetle,” I said. “Go find Angel.”

“Dispatched,” Max said. The beetle rose into the air and arrowed toward the city.

Ruzik nodded to me, and I nodded back, accepting his thanks for prioritizing Angel. As he turned back to the cycle, preparing to board, I said, “Wait. It’s not ready.”

“My cycle is good,” Kav said. “So are the backups.”

“Something doesn’t feel right.” I couldn’t figure out what, though. “Kav, the first time we met, you looked different. You were female and had visible cybernetics. It made a good disguise.”

“That was the idea.” He shrugged. “I don’t actually change sexes, the cybernetics just change the contours of my face. I’m still male.” He hesitated, then added, “They asked when they rebuilt me if I wanted to be male, female, or neither. I told them I wasn’t sure. My benefactor says I ever want to change my sex, they will cover those procedures, too.”

Could an EI show kindness? It seemed so, that he would give Kav that option, but perhaps it saw no reason not to make the offer. I doubted an EI cared about sex. “If you needed to disguise yourself now, could you do it?”

He tapped a compartment in the back of the cycle. “I brought everything.”

“I think you should. I don’t want to make Kav Dalken a target.” Remembering Max’s futile searches to identify him, I added, “Also, it helps keep you off-grid if no one can recognize you.”

“All right.” He tapped open the compartment and pulled out the implants for his face.

Ruzik squinted at him, watching as Kav touched his face—and removed part of his cheek.

“Eh!” Ruzik stared at him, then at me.

“Is normal,” I said.

While Kav transformed into the cybernaut I’d met in the forest, I dropped my shroud and tried to reach Lavinda. Ruzik watched it all with an impassive face, but I knew his tells. He couldn’t decide whether to be fascinated or baffled by Kav’s disguise. When Kav finished, and motioned for Ruzik to board the cycle, Ruzik turned to me.

“Go sit,” I said.

Ruzik regarded me as if I had suggested he squawk like a desert duck. “Not ken, Bhaaj.”

I nodded toward Kav. “For her, is right.”

“Her, him, who?”

“Her,” Kav said. “And she. For now.”

Ruzik squinted at Kav, then nodded and boarded the cycle, gripping the handles by his side.

I was having no luck with Lavinda, so I raised my shroud and headed out again. When I was far enough away that Kav could start, he rumbled into action. I glanced back and waved as they followed me along the highway.

“Bhaaj, I’ve got a signal,” Max said. “Someone from the PARS base is trying to reach you. Shall I drop your shroud?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

My comm buzzed. Tapping it, I said, “Bhaaj, here.”

“Where the blazes are you?” Lavinda said.

“It’s good to hear you, too,” I answered. “I’m about halfway to the base. Someone tried to hack Max.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s getting better. Do you have my beetles?”

“Do you mean the blue and green drones? Yes, we recovered them.”

“Can you send them to me?” They wouldn’t know how to find me, though, if Max couldn’t reach them. “If they get close enough, Max can guide them to our location. Send them down the highway that circles the city. They should start out going southeast.”

“I see.” Lavinda cleared her throat. “We might have a delay.”

I knew that tone. “You better not be messing with my drones.”

“We’re trying to download their recordings of what happened during the past few days.” Dryly, she said, “Trying being the operative word. You have good security on those bots.”

“I don’t like people prying at them.” Technically, the army techs were breaking privacy laws by trying to read my drones without my permission. I had no intention of pushing it, but I wished they’d ask me before they poked and prodded my trusty little beetles.

“Bhaaj?” Lavinda asked. “You still there?”

“I’m busy being pissed off.”

“Ah.” She sounded awkward.

“Listen, you can download everything in those drones. I’ll have Max give you the security codes when we get close enough for him to transmit. But it has to wait. I need them.”

“Did the guardian drone reach you?”

I looked up into the air, where the orb hummed above us. Round and silvery, with the circles of two gun ports on its side, it was about ten times the size of my beetles. “Yah, it’s here. But I’d like to have my drones, too, the blue one especially.”

“We can’t, unfortunately.” She cleared her throat. “The techs, ah, took them apart.”

What?” I wanted to throttle the techs. “If they damage them, I’ll sue their asses.”

Lavinda spoke mildly. “The drones are fine. And you can’t sue the army for taking steps to protect interstellar security. As you well know.”

“When did this become interstellar?” I grumbled. Of course I couldn’t sue them, no matter how much I wanted those techs to suffer vile punishments for messing with my beetles.

“Bhaaj, you weaponized that blue drone,” Lavinda said. “That’s not legal for a civilian.”

“I have a license for it. Blue can’t hurt anyone. It just shoots little darts that make a person sleepy. And it can only carry two.”

“Yes, well, your license doesn’t cover its ability to damage mesh systems by overloading them with static or whatever garbage it throws over comm lines.”

I scowled. “That garbage helped save us from the flyer that attacked us over the forest.”

“I wondered if that was why that flyer kept glitching.” She exhaled. “Look, I’m sorry. We’ll get them back to you ASAP. However, we’ll need their full records. Don’t erase any of it.”

“I won’t.” I couldn’t leave the records on the drone; it took up too much of their limited memory. Max, when we get them back, download their records to Highcloud.

Will do. I’m trying to reach the townhouse. I almost got a link a few minutes ago.

Are your wireless activities hidden by the shroud Lavinda lent me?

Yes, it mostly works. I’m fine as long as the person trying to find me isn’t too close. Then he added, Which means whoever forced that glitch on Kav is too close.

My thought, too. To Lavinda, I said, “I didn’t comm you just about the drones. Do you know if the police found any grit around Marza Rajindia’s lab at the university?”

“A small amount, yes. They’ve evacuated her to a safe house.”

“Good.” That eased one of my worries. I turned to the next. “You told me earlier that you suspected the Mods were coming after me. Do you have more details?”

“Their rep didn’t know much.” Her voice faded as she talked to someone in the background. Then she came back. “According to Manuel Portjanson, one of his aides caught wind in a mesh chat about a dark op against you. She followed the trail, going deeper into the shadow mesh. Portjanson was debriefing her when we arrived at his office. He claims he intended to notify the police.” Lavinda paused. “I haven’t decided whether or not I believe him.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all red herrings.”

“Red hearing? What does that mean?”

“Herrings. They’re fish.” Realizing what she’d say to that, I added, “Never mind, it’s an Earth idiom. It means a clue meant to mislead. I doubt that on their own, these Mods would ever go after me. I’ll bet someone left that trail for his aide to find.”

“You keep saying that.” Lavinda sounded frustrated. “We’ve looked. No evidence exists that any of these latest leads are faked.”

“Because they aren’t fake!” Captain Lajon and her people beating me up felt about as real as it got. “They’re meant to distract, muddy the case, lead us along the wrong path. Sure, a group of Mods got together with the Trads to complain. But someone deliberately got them riled up.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re safe,” Lavinda told me. “Yes, we have the city on high alert, and the protected perimeter extends outside the limits. But we can’t keep one of our most vital cities under lockdown for long. It’s affecting jobs, families, businesses, finances, schools. If we keep making people submit to security searches, they’ll march in protest. The tourism bureau had a fit when we stopped city flyovers. The more constraints we put on the political parties, the angrier they get. Everyone is blaming everyone else, and with so many conflicting stories, it’s impossible to follow. If this goes on much longer, the parties will tear each other apart.”

“I’ll bet you anything this case had nothing to do with politics,” I said. “That just offers the best diversion you can get, especially when everyone starts spinning their theories about everyone else’s nefarious motives. Even sports don’t get people worked up so fast or so hot.”

“Fine,” she said. “What does the case have to do with?”

“I keep coming back to how the killers carried out the murders or planted that bomb. That required extensive security breaks, yet we can’t find any trace of a break, a sniper or a bomber.”

“You have a talent for stating the obvious.”

“Not really. What’s obvious is that no sniper or bomber exists.”

Silence.

“Lavinda?”

“What do you mean, they don’t exist?”

“I mean no person committed those murders or set the bomb.”

“Then what did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bhaaj, for flaming sake, I need more than that.”

I ran on through the morning sunlight, pondering the question. “We use drones for everything. The tech is always improving. Even just a few years ago, I couldn’t have purchased a beetle that shoots sleep darts.”

“Darts didn’t commit the technocrat murders. A sniper did. The forensics team has no doubt. Maybe a drone planted the bomb, but no one has found any trace at any time anywhere near the explosion that shows any drone capable of placing such a bomb.”

“Then the bullet or the bomb itself is the drone.” I thought of my conversation with Hadar. “If you give your bullet a propulsion system and an AI brain, it could change course. That would make it difficult to trace where the bullet came from.” Before she could object, I added, “I know the bullets weren’t large enough to carry that tech. So maybe a drone shot the bullet.”

“Bhaaj, you’re not making sense. You know that neither the police nor the military has found evidence of any such drone. To carry the tech-mech for what you’re suggesting, the drone would show up on all sorts of city monitors.”

“Yah, I know.” I was missing something here. “What about the dust at Greyjan’s tavern?”

“What about it?”

“I’ve dealt with weaponized dust before, but this is different.” I tried to define what I meant. “Think of nanobots, the type you’d find in the hull of a space station or as part of a building. They do minor repairs, fix hairline breaks, heal microscopic pits, even assemble small parts that need replacement. That grit we found—maybe it can assemble into a bullet. That’s why the bullet needed to be so small, because not much of the dust is available and it needs to hide.”

“Without a gun to shoot your grit bullet, I don’t see what that gets you.”

“Suppose it formed both a bullet and a propulsion system, fired itself, hit the target, and then decomposed back into dust.”

I expected her to say something like sure, and maybe I could form into a bullet, shoot someone, and reform into Lavinda. Instead, silence.

“You there?” I asked.

“It seems unlikely. What you describe is essentially 3D printing without the printer.” She spoke thoughtfully. “Let’s say, hypothetically, ISC wanted to use 3D printing to restock army units. A unit in trouble might not have access to a printer, certainly not one sophisticated enough to produce high-powered weaponry. So yes, it would be an advantage to create dust that troops could take anywhere, bots that could form a printer when needed and then disperse. Except that’s a damn difficult proposition. It’s not something our research labs can currently make work. Even if we could, the remains of the dust should be detectable.” Then she added, “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

Hypothetical indeed. It didn’t surprise me that they’d so far found it intractable. A nanobot molecule had no intelligence. The branches and rings of its chemical structure operated like arms and wheels. It might carry a picochip, and if you put enough of them together, it could form an AI. Using them to build anything significant, however, required a template. You put it in solution where bots ferried in atoms and deposited them on the frame. The process required an engineer to direct the work or send their template via a 3D printer. To form a bullet and its propulsion device with no direction, template, solution or blueprint—that level of complexity lay beyond our current capability. And that was just to shoot a bullet. It also needed trajectory data and energy for launch.

“It may be hypothetical,” I said. “But we’ll get there.” I took a breath, giving my body a chance to recover from all this talking while I ran. “That doesn’t mean no one has done it. And think about this; using dust like that is one of the few ways to disable the invisible dust that floats around the city. You wouldn’t need much; the invading grit only needs to neutralize the city dust in a small area for a few seconds during the murders or bombing. If it dissolves afterward, and has already deactivated the city dust, we’d probably find no hint of it. The process would limit what the dust can do if it falls apart that thoroughly, but that fits with the way we haven’t found much of it.”

“So you think the Trader military is ahead of us on this? We’ve checked every lead to the Traders. So far, they go nowhere.” She exhaled. “We aren’t giving up, however. I’ll forward your ideas to our team and the police.”

“Good.” I plunged ahead. “But Lavinda, the Traders aren’t the only military. The security access needed to carry out the murders and the bombing suggests the assassins have high-level links here. What if it’s the same authorities involved in the case?”

She spoke coldly. “Are you suggesting someone in ISC planned those murders?”

Well, yah, it was exactly what I was suggesting. I said only, “Or the police.”

“Based on what evidence?”

“I don’t have any. I’m just saying it’s possible. So far, all the leads, political, financial, Trader, or just plain crazy—they go nowhere.” I forged onward. “Maybe the army really is planning a coup to put the Pharaoh in power.”

Silence. I kept running, headed for the PARS base, though now I wondered if a certain colonel would tell them not to let me in. I doubted it; she wouldn’t have sent me here if she wanted someone who just said things she liked to hear. I may have pushed too far this time, though.

“You certainly don’t pull your punches,” Lavinda said.

“Sorry.” I even meant it. But I didn’t backpedal. Many people wanted to see the Pharaoh on the Ruby Throne, at least metaphorically, since that ancient chair with red gems no longer existed. Hell, even I thought she’d make a good leader for the Imperialate, and I generally preferred an elected government.”

Lavinda exhaled. “I’m not saying I don’t see your point. I’m aware certain elements within the Royalist Party might support the idea of an armed coup. But if the army wanted to put the Pharaoh on the throne, they would just do it, not kill tech-mech geniuses.”

“It’s a stretch, I agree. But this case is helping destabilize the current government—” I stopped as a crack came off to my right. Max, what was that?

The PAC drone, I think. I can’t link with it.

“Bhaaj?” Lavinda asked.

I kept running. “That guardian drone—I think it just shot something.”

She swore under her breath. “You better turn your shroud back on.”

“Yah. First, though, can you find out why the drone fired? Max can’t reach it.”

“Just a second.” She started tapping. “I’m connecting to the PAC mesh . . . all right, I’m in. It fired at a target in the meadow by the highway.” She paused. “Huh. This speed can’t be right.”

I glanced at the pale orb whirring a few meters above me. “It’s keeping my pace.”

“I meant your speed. According to this monitor, you are on foot but have been moving at speeds ranging from forty to seventy kilometers per hour.”

“I’m running with my biomech activated.”

“Even so, that speed would challenge anyone. You only sound a little winded. Don’t overuse your biomech. You already pushed it too far earlier today.”

“I’ll be careful. Why did the drone fire?” I looked around the meadows as I passed them, but nothing showed in the streaming sunlight except orange and pink flowers, with a few red trumpets nodding in the bright day. Farther back from the road, an old forest of trees draped with vines stood like sentinels. “I don’t see anything except grass and trees.”

“I’m not getting more on the link here. Did Max pick up anything?”

“Nothing in the areas we’re currently passing,” Max said. “I’m too far away from the area where the drone fired to get much.” He paused. “I’m getting more data over wireless systems as I continue making repairs, but my reception is patchy and signals also aren’t as strong out here. Nothing looks like a body or a damaged object, but I can’t be sure.”

I slowed to a halt and turned to look down the highway where I’d been running. It stretched into the distance, curving to surround the city it held within its great circle. Kav and Ruzik were back a ways, rapidly catching up to me.

“I need to investigate,” I told Lavinda.

“If Max can link with the base out here, I can give him access to the guardian drone.”

“My reach is improving,” Max said. “I can hit the base intermittently. You’ve a lot of security there, though. Every time I lose my connection, I have to verify again that it’s me to get back onto your network. That takes time.”

“Yah, I see. The mesh has already dropped your link twice.” Lavinda tapped at her console more, then said, “I can’t give you automatic access. It could compromise base security.”

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll contact you again when we get closer. Out for now.”

“Out,” Lavinda said and cut the connection.

As I reactivated the shroud, Kav’s cycle made a scratching sound and rolled to a halt about a hundred paces away. I headed toward them, aware of the wind ruffling my hair and insects chirping.

I stopped at the cycle. “It glitched again?”

Kav regarded me uneasily. “Yah. Apparently you’re causing the problems.”

Ruzik slid off the cycle. “Not Bhaaj.”

“It’s still me,” Max said. “If I had better control, I could stop it from hitting you. I’m sorry.”

Kav squinted at me. “I’ve never had an EI apologize to me before.”

“Max is exceptional,” I said. “I think I should get away from you, though. Max, have you found who’s trying to hack you?”

“Nothing yet. It’s only when the signal gets deflected to Kav that I’m even aware of it.”

“Do you think the sender knows you’re deflecting it?” Kav asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Max admitted. “I can’t trace the signal.”

Ruzik walked over to me. “Why you stop?”

I indicated the drone hovering above us. “Shot at grass. Find why. You come, yah?”

Ruzik nodded. “I come with.”

I spoke to Kav. “I don’t want to endanger you. When we accepted this job, we accepted the risk. You never did. Go back. Go home. Be safe.”

He met my gaze. “My benefactor sent me to the tavern today. I’ve no idea how they knew you would come, or if that’s even why they wanted me there, but it makes sense. You are the only person they’ve ever asked me to contact. For doing almost nothing, they gave me a gift so great, I can hardly believe it’s real. I owe them, Major. I’m here to help.”

“They never asked you to risk your life.”

“They gave me my life. And it looks like they are trying to stop more people from getting killed.” He met my gaze as if challenging me to protest. “If I can help, I will.”

Ruzik nodded to me. “Bargain, eh? Fair.”

Well, yah. I didn’t like it, but I saw his point. “All right,” I said to Kav. “Can you go to the South Center dump to look for Angel?” The longer Max went without reaching her, the more I worried. “See if she needs help.”

“Sure, I can do that.” He motioned at the highway. “You’re going back, yes?”

“That’s right.” I needed to know why the drone had fired.

“As soon as you’re far enough out of range for me to start, I’ll head to the South Center.” He lifted his hand to us. “Good luck.”

Ruzik nodded to him, an Undercity gesture of respect. With that, we headed down the highway to find what the drone had shot.

I just hoped it hadn’t killed anyone.


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Framed