Xenoform, page 27
‘Whistler? You know, your boss, the lifelong gang member turned corporate thug. You guys are body-snatchers for HGR, right?’ He turned to the woman and they shared a little laugh. ‘At least, you used to be.’
‘Used to be?’
‘They ended your contract. I guess your services weren’t worth paying for any more. I understand the bodymod industry is suffering something of a stock crash at the moment.’ And he laughed again – a rich sound seemingly borne of genuine amusement. It made Spider wonder if they were going to kill him.
‘Aren’t you people supposed to notify us of contract termination? Some fair period of grace? I want a lawyer.’ Spider could feel the gentle rumbling of the disc’s bearings beneath his back. He wondered how many victims of RPC had been strapped to it before.
‘Actually, we aren’t obliged to do any such thing. It’s a courtesy that we sometimes extend, but your team isn’t exactly easy to get hold of. And then our first contact with you is when you are apprehended kneeling beside the body of a murdered Resperi officer with an illegal weapon beside you. Was it you or your deceased friend who killed the officer in the pod?’
‘Pod?’ Spider said, wondering if he sounded as irritatingly stupid as he hoped.
‘He had a son, you know. Two years old.’
‘Yeah? And we had a contract. All things come to pass, man.’ Spider was down by Ramone’s feet again and when he saw one of those feet twitch he thought maybe Ramone would kick him in the head. He was sure it crossed the man’s mind, but it didn’t happen.
‘Where are your maggot friends, Spider?’ This was the woman, looking disdainfully down at him. ‘Long story short – tell us and we won’t give you to the Freak. You’ll even get a trial.’
‘The Freak?’
‘Mm-hm,’ said Ramone. ‘Tell him who the Freak is, Officer Blake.’
‘The Freak is a brain-diver.’
‘A what?’ Spider was up at the level of her piggy face now. She really was impressively ugly.
‘A machine-human symbiont, designed to read much deeper into your head than a simple DNI reader. She can actually scan the meat of your brain, divulge all your dirty secrets. Not strictly allowed under the terms of the Fair Legal Process Act but still used in extreme cases. Oh, and the process is very invasive, as you’d imagine. Often fatally so. And very unpleasant.’
‘I see,’ said Spider as nonchalantly as he could.
‘No,’ said Blake. ‘But you will if you don’t tell us what we want to know.’
‘You say you were going home, when you happened to murder two of our officers. Home is your group’s base, no doubt. Were you near to it? Maybe it’s in the industrial sector, some old warehouse. There are certainly enough of them lying empty there. It really is better if you just tell us.’
Ramone was surprisingly good, Spider grudgingly admitted to himself. The bastard was essentially right about everything so far, although there was no need to let him know that.
‘If you read my DNI like you say you did you’ll know that’s wrong,’ said Spider.
‘Thing is, we couldn’t get much from your DNI, Spider. It seems to be pretty well protected. Not unusual for a career criminal, but annoying. It just gave us name, rank and serial number stuff. But then, as you installed the protective firmware you already know that.’
It was true – Spider’s DNI, like those of all the harvesting team, was well-shielded from both remote and wired probing, for just this sort of scenario. The firmware had been very expensive but HGR had footed the bill. At least they hadn’t revoked that, if only because they couldn’t. Was it true that the contract had been terminated? Maybe, judging by the chaos that reigned in the city, it was a simple computer error. If so, though, there would be no convincing the RPC officers. They were pissed. Even if he suggested that they may wrong, they’d probably still take the opportunity to execute him illegally and then go on to raid the base if they had the resources to do so. With their force undoubtedly stretched to breaking point, how much time would they devote to him before just giving up and killing him? Or giving him to this Freak of theirs, which sounded like it might amount to the same thing? Not long, he thought. And when that happened, his butchered brain would give them Whistler and the others anyway. He could see no way out.
‘I’m not going to do your fucking job for you, officers. You’d better introduce me to this Freak, because frankly I’m getting bored.’
‘Oh,’ said Ramone with mock disappointment. ‘Oh never mind. We hadn’t expected you to help us, to be honest. But don’t worry – we’ll find your friends.’
‘In the end, we always get our way,’ confided Blake.
‘We’ll see,’ said Spider. ‘But you’d better make sure you keep me well-restrained.’
‘Really,’ said Blake disinterestedly.
‘Really.’ Spider tried to look her in the eye as he rotated towards upside-down again. ‘Because one slip, one momentary lapse in your guard, and I will kill you.’ He nodded at Blake, as much as his bonds would allow. ‘And you.’ He nodded also at Ramone. ‘And you can spend eternity in that great police retirement centre in the sky comparing notes on me and my team with your dead pig friends. One mistake is all I need.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Ramone, cracking his knuckles loudly. ‘There won’t be one.’
‘Give me to this brain-diver, then,’ said Spider. ‘Your conversational skills amount to shit. I’ve had enough.’
‘First thing’s first,’ said Ramone softly as Spider rotated to face him again. He was holding a short police truncheon in one big hand. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, Spider reflected. ‘First thing’s first.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Right,’ said Whistler emerging from her room with a small torch. ‘Do we have that old gennie still?’
‘Yeah,’ said Tec. ‘We have it, but its glory days are long gone. Also, I dunno how much fuel we have for it.’
‘Get on it. Get the power on – without it we’re in serious trouble. The base is defenceless until it’s sorted, not to mention that Debian’s attempts to find Spider and Roberts are on hold.’
‘I’m on it,’ answered Tec curtly, his head blazing a determined shade of amber. He rushed off down the corridor, illuminated only by the glow of his own skull.
‘Sofi,’ said Whistler pointing a clawed finger at her. ‘I want you on the roof with some heavy equipment. With the cameras and motion sensors off-line we need a lookout. Any problem – and I mean any problem – and you shout. I’ll help Tec with the gennie.’ She considered this briefly, concluding that any contribution she could make would probably be counter-productive to Tec’s efforts despite her best intentions. ‘Scratch that, actually. I’ll watch the car park.’
‘Okay, boss,’ said Sofi, her features sharp and shadowed in the torchlight. She turned and felt her way down the corridor.
Whistler pointed the torch at Debian, who shielded his eyes. ‘Maybe you had better help Tec.’
‘Look, I’m not really practical in that way. I mean, computers I can do, but engines...I assume this generator is a diesel or gas burner?’
‘I think you might still be more help than I would. Unless you’d rather guard the bottom door in my stead?’ Smiling, she held out her smartgun to him, grip first.
Debian recoiled from the weapon as if it were a live snake. ‘No,’ he said emphatically. ‘I’ll help with the generator, on second thoughts.’
‘Good man,’ said Whistler with a cheerfulness she didn’t really feel. Debian turned to go and she called him back. She dug a crumpled chocolate bar from one pocket and threw it to him. It was unpleasantly squishy and warm. Debian dropped it and picked it up again from the floor. ‘You said you were hungry,’ she said and pushed past him towards the empty hangar and the exit to the car park.
‘Thanks,’ he said to her retreating back.
Tec dug the battered generator out of crap alley by the application of back-breaking effort and heartfelt swearing in equal measures. Looking it over he concluded that the infernal machine had never seen any glory days at all. It had been here when the gang had moved in, but apart from testing it and changing the oil they had never had a use for it, despite Tec’s passing interest in it as a mechanical device.
Working by the dim glow of four tea lights he cleaned it up enough to actually see what he was doing and pulled the cord. The echoing volume of the big room reverberated to the sound of the clattering machine as it caught and ran, choppily at first. Tec bent over it with a screwdriver and tweaked the mixture by a tiny increment. The gennie began to run more steadily, although it stank to high heaven and began to fill the big room with choking clouds of smoke that looked eerily blue in the darkness. He shut it off and began to search for some ducting to use for the exhaust.
He hunted through the piles of junk, holding a tea light aloft in an ashtray, launching disappointingly useless items further into the depths of the heap. He reflected as he searched on how, in this world where you could get your cancer treated with nanotechnology (if you were rich enough) their power requirements had come down to four cylinders of exploding fuel vapour. How quickly things could devolve.
Somebody coughed behind him, making him start and drop a bunch of unspooled magnetic tape. He turned around to see Debian watching him sheepishly. ‘Whistler sent me to help you,’ said the young hacker. ‘I’m not sure how much help I can be, but I found this.’ He flicked on an LED torch and threw it to Tec.
‘Thanks.’ Tec gratefully put the tea light aside on a rusty filing cabinet. ‘You can help me find some ducting for the gennie’s exhaust.’
‘Okay, sure. Any specific sort?’
‘Needs to fit on a fifty mil outlet, ideally, but anything at this stage.’
‘Long enough to reach outside, right?’
‘Right. I know it’s a bit fucking hard to see in here, but do your best.’
Debian looked around at the towering shadows of crap alley. ‘Won’t it screw with the back-pressure?’
‘I’m not too worried about that at this stage. We’ll put an impeller in-line if we have to, but let’s just get it connected for now.’
‘Why not just put the gennie on the roof?’
‘We don’t like the place to look too occupied. A ’copter would spot the heat sig.’
‘Judging by what’s going on out there I don’t think they’ll care too much.’
‘You went out there?’
‘Just stuck my head out, really. You should take a look.’
‘I don’t think I want to. I prefer to occupy my mind with matters I can actually deal with.’
‘I don’t think there’ll be any avoiding this one,’ said Debian as he moved off warily into the junk heap.
‘Is the fire still burning?’
‘I think it’s going out. Sofi’s up there with what looks like enough firepower for a small- to medium-sized war. She says it was worse before – she thinks they’re dropping powder bombs on it. There’s a lot of shooting going on, though. Not really my scene. Will this do?’ he asked, holding up one end of a long coil of hose.
Tec craned to see. ‘Plastic?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, it’s quite sturdy-looking, though, and there’s loads of it. About fifty mil diameter, too, I’d say.’
‘As long as it doesn’t melt. One way to find out, I guess.’
‘Depends on what kind of plastic it is, right? We could always use a metal tube for the outlet itself, join this on further up. Based on the assumption that you must have a metal tube somewhere in this lot.’ Debian began to coil the hose around his neck.
‘And you didn’t think you’d be any help.’
‘Well, one can but try. Give me a hand, Tec, there really is miles of this.’
‘You think you can find Spider and Roberts if we can get the link going?’
Although Tec asked the question lightly Debian sensed the great import behind the words. He stopped his work and looked into Tec’s face, seeing the fear beneath the surface. ‘One can but try,’ he repeated softly.
Without another word Tec picked his way over and began to help, holding the LED torch in his mouth. Despite his small stature Debian noticed how strong the man was. He shifted large items aside seemingly without effort, freeing the coils of hose so Debian could collect them. They worked in silence for a time, until they were heavily encumbered by loops and loops of hose. Together they dragged the remainder out onto a clear swathe of floor and inspected it again by torchlight.
‘Yeah, looks about right,’ said Tec. He turned and darted off into the shadows of the junk heap. There was a metallic clanging noise and the sound of muffled cursing. Tec returned sucking on a skinned knuckle, the torch beam slicing across the room. In his other hand he held about half a metre of steel pipe. ‘Ha!’ he said triumphantly.
‘Looks good enough,’ said Debian. ‘How much fuel is there? Diesel, is it?’
‘Yeah, diesel. I’m not sure how much we have. There are a couple of large plastic barrels back there somewhere.’ He waved an arm towards the exterior wall, which was safely barricaded behind mountains of miscellaneous objects. ‘Big blue barrels – maybe you could take this torch and dig them out.’ He passed the torch back to Debian and picked up a tea light.
‘Okay, I’ll have a look.’
Debian waded through the heap as Tec dragged the hose back towards the generator. Debian found the barrels quite quickly even in the gloom. They were almost as tall as he was, though when he tipped them to gauge their fullness the contents sloshed quite a bit. Both about half full, he reckoned. He was no expert on internal combustion engines but he suspected that the barrels still constituted enough fuel to run the generator for quite some time. Maybe eighty litres each. He tipped one and began to roll it on its edge back into the clear alley, moving objects out of his path. A few days ago he could never have imagined being here, doing this. When he reached the gennie with the first barrel Tec was not there but the metal pipe and hose had been clamped onto the gennie’s exhaust outlet. The hose twined across the floor and disappeared up the stairs into darkness.
Debian wiped the sweat from his brow and caught his breath. He bent over the machine and looked at the plug plate on it. There was only a single outlet but luckily it was of a standard design and rated to thirty amps. He had no idea how much current a rooftop-mounted rocket launcher drew, but it would run the computers, and that was what mattered to him.
He began to follow the hose up the stairs. Tec had worked quickly, splicing a break in the hose with a piece of the metal pipe on the upstairs landing. The hose disappeared out of the slightly-ajar door that led to the roof. Debian pushed the door open and stepped out.
At first he couldn’t see Tec, or Sofi, who should also have been up there. He scanned the rooftop for them. The other towers of the complex loomed in the darkness like standing stones. The city crackled with dark and ominous life. There wasn’t a light visible for several blocks in any direction.
And then he spotted them behind a curved ventilation outlet near the edge, crouched in a patch of deep shadow. Tec was looking straight at him, making a repeated chopping gesture with one hand. Debian stared dumbly for a moment before Tec’s meaning became clear: Kill the light. He fumbled with the button on the torch and ducked down low like them, stowing it in his pocket. Sofi was beckoning him over. She looked like a pink-crested insect in the dark, all slender limbs and sharp angles. The end of the hose had simply been left lying on the roof off to Debian’s right, its installation unfinished.
A little confused, as well as alarmed, he ran across to them in a crouch, feeling a subdued twinge from the gunshot injury to his leg, a souvenir of his defunct career. He reached the others and dropped to the roof beside them, enveloped by the shadow of the vent. ‘What is it?’ he whispered. ‘Something wrong?’ He was annoyed to hear the fear in his own voice.
‘I think you could say that,’ admitted Sofi. ‘Take a look.’
Debian, puzzled, leaned out around the vent to peep over the edge and down. The lurching shape of a drunk was slowly ricocheting from wall to wall as he weaved his way down the street. Something squarish with a small light on – maybe a malfunctioning domestic robot – was trundling slowly down the centre of the road seemingly ownerless and without purpose.
‘Over there, by the pawn shop,’ hissed Tec. ‘On the wall of that warehouse. About four metres up, maybe. Look!’
Debian scanned the scene below, trying to find the spot Tec spoke of. Catching the vibe of surreptitiousness, he was careful not to be too visible from below. And then he saw it. ‘What is that...?’ he asked, afraid but also fascinated.
‘You fuckin’ tell us,’ suggested Sofi. ‘Cos we have no idea.’
The creature was attached to the wall of the warehouse across the road like a gecko, apparently adhering by its hands and feet. It did look humanoid, but something in its posture was strange and unsettling, as if its joints were not in quite the usual configuration. Its colour was either black or dark green, but it was hard to tell in the low light.
‘There’s something coming out of it,’ said Tec. ‘Look!’
Debian could see that Tec was right – there was some sort of fluid coming from the creature. It poured from some unseen orifice on the thing to run sluggishly down the building, pooling on a low windowsill and then dripping into the street below. It oozed from the kerb and into the gutter where the trickle from the thing on the wall seemed to join a larger stream. Whatever the dark fluid was, the gutter was running with it.
‘Is that a bodymod?’ asked Debian.
‘Dunno,’ said Tec, his face appearing next to Debian’s. ‘Bit extreme if it is, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I guess...’
‘And it also wouldn’t explain that,’ said Sofi, pointing into the shadows of an old fuel station forecourt.
