Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (18 page)

“Guard it with your life,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Jase replied,
turning to Sarat. “Now that we’re done, where are my guns?”

Sarat hesitated, wondering if
Jase was about to take his revenge for Hades City.

“Purely to guard the Codex,” I
said quickly. “Right Jase?” More a command than a question.

“Yeah,” Jase said reluctantly,
“If you say so, Skipper.”

I gave Sarat a reassuring nod,
then he motioned to a nearby guard, who hurried away.

“The shuttle is waiting on the
landing pad below,” Sarat said, “to take you back to the spaceport.”

“This’ll be a fun flight back,” Marie
said, “with Vargis ready to skin you alive.”

“We’ll make sure it’s where he
can see it,” I said, “But no touching.” Especially not by me!

Two guards approached carrying an
engineering diagnostic scanner similar to what Izin used to examine sealed
components during maintenance cycles. They set the rectangular machine down in
front of Sarat who picked up the Irzaen transport device that had guarded the
Codex and placed it in the scan compartment. The guards locked the scanner,
then initiated a full diagnostic cycle.

“Your Irzaen friends may not take
kindly to you stealing their technology,” I said.

“They’ll never know,” Sarat said.
“This maintenance scanner isn’t designed to reverse engineer alien-tech, but you’d
be surprised what some companies will pay for even partial scans of non-human
technology.”

A guard appeared carrying a large
tray displaying an assortment of weapons and my confiscated communicator. Marie
pocketed her two small, but lethal, needle guns and a close range bolt-stunner,
then Jase and I retrieved our sidearms.

“You’re carrying three guns now?”
I asked, surprised as I pocketed my communicator.

“I always did,” She replied,
amused that it had taken me this long to penetrate one of her many little
secrets. “And you’re still lugging around that hand cannon. Isn’t it time you got
something a little less . . . brutish?”

“I like brutish!” I said, feigning
defensiveness as I tested the weight of the Magnetically Accelerated Kinetic Precision-50.
The hard hitting heavy pistol fired the full range of smart hypersonic projectiles,
making it a versatile problem solver. My top of the line P-50 was bulkier than
the standard MAKs, but its range and accuracy enhancements ideally suited my
ultra-reflexed senses.

“Or you might just have an issue
with the size of your . . . gun?” She taunted.

Jase chuckled. She looked
meaningfully at his identical pair of
frag
-guns. “Why
are you laughing, blondie? His weapon’s obviously bigger than yours! Is that
why you need two to compensate?”

Jase winced at her sharp tongue.
He rested his free hand on one of the short range, gunfighter weapons now
secure in its hip holster. “I thought a woman like you would know using both
hands requires more skill.”

“Really? Did you learn that all
by yourself, late at night?”

I grinned as Jase realized he
should quit while he was behind. “I’m not saving you,” I said as I holstered my
P-50.

One of the guards approached and
whispered to Sarat briefly, who then turned to us. “Unfortunately, the storm
has grounded the shuttle. You’ll have to stay here one more night.”

“Can’t it fly above the storm?” Jase
asked.

“Yes, but it can’t land or take
off in this wind. The moment it left the pad, it would be pushed into the
cliff. It’s happened before. The shuttle pilots won’t fly in these conditions.”

“I’ll fly it,” Jase said. “I’ll show
them how it’s done.”

“They won’t allow that. The storm
will ease by morning. You can fly back to Tundratown then.”

That gave Sarat time to discover
I’d cheated the auction, but unless Jase and I hijacked the shuttle, we had no
choice but to stay.

“In that case, I hope you’ve
still got some of that Merayan red left,” Marie said, giving me a look
promising a long and eventful night.

“I’m sure we do,” Sarat replied,
“courtesy of the Irzaen trade mission.”

* * * *

Jase positioned the Codex on the table in
front of him like a trophy during dinner, toasting it occasionally and resting
his glass on it in a way that clearly irritated Vargis. Bo sipped his green tea
impassively hiding his amusement at Vargis’ irritation, while Marie and I made
a heroic effort to empty our Irzaen’s host’s wine stocks. The meal had barely
finished when Vargis rose and without a word withdrew to his room to escape Jase’s
exuberant celebrations. Eventually Bo and Sarat departed, while we finished the
last bottle.

“You’ll be a rich man once Jie
Kang Li rewards you for swindling the Consortium out of the Codex,” Marie said.

“Here’s to Jie Kang Li,” I said
toasting my cover story. I emptied the glass and poured another, thinking once
Bo told Jie Kang Li I’d pretended to represent him, there’d be a price on my
head.

“To Mukul Sarat, may he rot in
hell!” Jase said venomously. He drank directly from the bottle, then slapped it
down heavily on the Codex and flopped into his chair, staring blankly ahead. “I
don’t even remember their names,” he said bitterly, recalling the two girls
Sarat had had killed in Hades City.

Marie watched Jase, shaking her
head. “The key to untold riches, and he’s resting his drink on it!”

“It survived seven million years
adrift in space,” I said, “and can withstand a fusion explosion – I think it’s
safe to assume it’s waterproof.”

We emptied our glasses, then I
whispered to Marie, “Another bottle or . . . ?”

“Or?” she asked, feigning
innocence. We exchanged unspoken thoughts, then she smiled and stood up,
helping Jase to his feet. “OK hot shot, time for bed.”

While Jase stumbled to his feet,
I scooped the Codex up one handed, forgetting in my intoxicated state my
earlier encounter with it. Marie gave Jase a gentle nudge towards the hall leading
to our quarters, then we followed arm in arm.

“So, will you trust me enough
next time to tell me what you’re up to?” I asked.

“I trust you, Sirius, just not
with my money.”

I became vaguely aware of a
tingling in my hand. I realized it was the Codex, trying to link with me again.
The alcohol dulled my instincts, letting me wonder if my earlier wariness had
been unwarranted. I decided to watch the Codex as it worked its way up my arm’s
bionetic filaments towards my shoulder. When it found one of my scapula storage
nodes, it began downloading masses of data, as much as it could push through my
threading. It seemed to be simply a benign data transfer, then something else shot
through the bionetic filaments in my arm. It passed the data storage area in my
shoulder blade and rapidly spread through my body. By the time we reached the
hallway, the download had consumed fourteen percent of my threaded memory capacity
and the searching presence had begun to tap my sensory core. My vision blurred,
the sound of the wind outside distorted and I began to lose my balance. A
threading security alert flashed into my mind, warning that the autonomous
command center in my collar bone was under attack. The threaded inputs in my
mind’s eye went haywire, distorting into scrambled gibberish, as whatever the Codex
had spawned into me shattered my threading’s innermost defenses.

Adrenalin suddenly overpowered
the numbing alcohol, giving me a moment’s clarity. I triggered the one thought psionicly
embedded into the consciousness of every threaded EIS agent. It was the one
safeguard that ensured if we were ever captured, if alien-tech ever tore us
open the way the Codex was ripping me apart, we would reveal none of the
secrets we carried.

EMERGENCY PURGE AND WIPE!
I thought,
unlocking the last ditch rescue protocol, the threaded equivalent of a bullet
to my bionetic brain.

“Here! Hold the key to riches,” I
said, pushing the Codex into Marie’s hands.

“You know I love riches!” she
said with a smile, taking the Codex.

White spots flashed before my
eyes as the emergency protocol erased everything my threading knew – everything
Lena had uploaded into me – and tried to crush whatever the Codex had infected
me with. My ears were assaulted by high pitched tones, a thousand unknown odors
battered my sense of smell, bitter and sweet flavors tormented my sense of
taste, all of it imagined. I stumbled and fell, no longer in control of my arms
and legs, unable to breathe.

Marie tried to grab me, but I was
too heavy and it happened so fast. I crumpled to the rock floor, limp as a
fresh corpse, heart no longer beating. When threading failed, it took the
entire nervous system with it. It was bionetic technology’s Achilles heel.

“Sirius, are you OK?” Marie
asked, kneeling beside me confused and concerned.

It wasn’t the first time I’d
initiated a purge and wipe – I’d done it in training, but never in the field. And
never like this! It took longer than in the simulator, because the protocol
sensed an alien influence and scrubbed me clean with ruthless precision. To the
emergency protocol, whether I lived or died was irrelevant. All that mattered
was the destruction of the alien force and the deletion of everything stored in
my artificial memory. When it came to bionetics, agent survival was secondary
to secrecy.

A simple thought appeared in my
fading mind: CLEAR.

The rescue protocol released
control of my body, giving me one chance to revive before physical death.

RESET BIONETICS
, I thought, ordering a
full system restart.

Sensation returned to my body. My
heart began beating again and with a gasp, my lungs filled with air. I took
several quick breaths while Marie leaned over me, unaware how close to death
I’d been. My threading’s sensory capabilities came flooding back, but my
bionetic memory was empty, wiped clean. All the security codes and clearances
that allowed me to identify myself to other EIS agents, to the navy, to every human
and many local alien governments were gone. If I needed help now, I couldn’t
call for it. I was completely on my own.

“You OK, Skipper?” Jase asked, as
he turned on wobbly legs and looked back towards me.

I gave him a reassuring nod. “Just
too much Merayan wine, I guess,” I mumbled as I sat up, no longer inebriated.
The purge had wiped all trace of alcohol from my system, reading it as a poison
to be destroyed. I relaxed, feigning mild drunkenness.

Marie relaxed and whispered meaningfully,
“Not too much, I hope. Your night is far from over!”

I gave her an appreciative look,
knowing with the alcohol gone from my system, she would be surprised how
unimpaired my performance would be!

When we reached my door, Jase eyed
us both curiously.

Before I could say anything, Marie
said, “My room is second on the left.”

Jase nodded, resigned to his
banishment. “I know.”

“And don’t go through my things,”
she added. “I’ll know if you do.”

Jase gave her a wounded look,
then headed towards her room to sleep while I let us into my quarters.

“Where should I put this?” she
asked, holding up the Codex.

“On the dresser.” I had decided I
couldn’t risk touching it again. Whatever its universally adaptive interface
was, it was a menace to my threading.

She placed the alien device on
the table, then approached me slowly, in that feline predatory way of hers that
I adored. We locked arms, then lips, then I forgot all about the Antaran Codex
for a few hours.

* * * *

An explosion shattered the night, then the sporadic
crackle of magnetic accelerated gunfire reverberated through the darkness with
increasing intensity. I sat up, listening to the cacophony of battle and the
confused shouts of men echoing through stone walled corridors.

“What’s going on?” Marie asked
sleepily.

“Sounds like war’s been declared.”
I jumped out of bed, dressed quickly and was just strapping on my P-50 when Jase
burst into the room, one fragger in hand, the other holstered.

“There’s something out there!” he
declared. “It’s tearing Sarat’s guards apart.”

“What do you mean ‘it’?” Marie
asked, pulling the covers up to conceal her nakedness.

“I saw a blur in the dark!” Jase
said. “It’s big! And fast!”

I switched on my P-50. It was
loaded with anti-personnel slugs; nasty against flesh, weak against armor.
“Stay here.”

“No way, Skipper!”

“Guard that!” I said pointing at
the Codex sitting on the dresser. When I passed him, I added in a lower voice, “And
Marie.”

“I don’t need guarding!” she
declared, throwing off the sheets and running naked to where her clothes were.
Instead of dressing, she checked her guns.

“Fine! You guard him!” They could
look after each other, but only I was threaded and ultra-reflexed, giving me an
edge neither of them could match. I turned to Jase. “Whoever’s out there is
after the Codex. Make sure they don’t get it!”