Rath's Gambit (The Janus Group Book 2) (3 page)

Rath’s brow wrinkled. “Why would you want to?”

“They’ve made us into gods. Contractors can go anywhere, and kill anyone.”

Rath fumbled, frowning. “No, they won’t. It doesn’t work like that. But if you help me, we can stop them. We can get our money—”

“I don’t care about the money,” 700 interrupted, laughing. “I appreciate the warning, but I’m not interested in your little rebellion. I
am
interested to see what they do to you, now that they caught you again, though. Remember the video they showed us? After training was over?”

Rath nodded.

“How long do you think they tortured him for, before they finally let him die?”

A shiver of fear ran through Rath. His eyes flicked across the lab bench and the floor near him, searching for something, anything to use against the other contractor. A slow smile spread across 700’s face.

“No, my friend, no more tricks … it’s over. Your last grenade ran out while we were chatting, by the way – we have your feed again. Disable him, please, Headquarters.”

Rath doubled over, instinctively bracing for the wave of pain, but he felt nothing.

The hemobots are out!

He groaned out loud, pretending to be in pain, and fell to his knees, temporarily disappearing from view behind the lab bench. Still moaning convincingly, he yanked a small propane canister out of the cabinet under the bench, and grabbed a flint-and-steel striker along with it. He stood quickly, twisting the tank’s valve fully open and swinging the striker up into the stream of compressed gas. 700’s eyes went wide, but Rath squeezed the striker and a shower of sparks lit the gas, turning the canister into a makeshift flamethrower. Blue fire blossomed across the room, fully engulfing 700, who screamed in pain. A split second later, the canister rocketed back out of Rath’s arms, crashing into the wall behind him, singeing his hands as it flew.

700 was still screaming, heavy flames wreathed around his head and upper body. Rath ignored him, and, wincing at the pain in his burned hands, grabbed the tools Stam had laid out for surgery. His bandolier of spare EMP grenades had been caught in the blast from the flamethrower, and they looked damaged. Rath tried to activate one, but it merely sparked.

Leave them – cops will be here soon. Get out!

Rath glanced over at 700: the contractor had collapsed and now lay motionless on the floor, fire still licking across his upper body.

If he’s not dead, he’s in shock or unconscious … and in a lot of pain. I could put him out of his misery.

Rath scanned the ruined lab for a weapon. He paused when his eyes fell on the two contractors he had already killed.

No. That’s enough killing for one night.

He shouldered his Forge and jogged toward the building’s exit.

Outside, the night air was cool – there was a crisp breeze rustling the leaves of the trees lining the parking lot. In the far distance, his enhanced hearing picked up the sound of approaching sirens, but Rath stopped for a second, breathing deep.

Almost free.

Rath jogged over to the bike, tucked the surgical kit into a pocket on his Forge, and pulled on his helmet. The bike kicked into gear with a throaty roar, and he rocketed out of the lot, staying low on side streets for nearly a mile before risking some altitude. At several thousand feet, he punched in directions to the spaceport and throttled up, the wind whipping past him. He glanced back over his shoulder, but saw no sign of police pursuit.

But Group Headquarters is still watching my feed. And I bet they’re pissed as hell right now.

2

The hoverbike’s gentle vibrations sputtered to a stop, and Rath pushed out the kick-stand, gingerly slipping his injured leg over the seat as he dismounted. He glanced up and down the short term lot, and, leaving his helmet on, selected a non-descript cover identity, transforming his face and hair. He pulled the helmet off, laid it on the bike’s seat, and picked up his Forge.

Let’s hope the travel embargo has been lifted.

In the terminal, the police were out in force, heavily armed and looking surly. But they were merely guarding the spaceport – flight operations had resumed, Rath saw, letting his breath out in a rush. The Group was still monitoring his location, so Rath kept his distance from the police he saw, on the off chance they decided to report him as a means of catching him, but none of the patrolmen moved to stop him.

He searched through flight options in his neural interface, conscious that the techs back at Group Headquarters were undoubtedly watching him as he made his selection.

Something cheap, in the next hour. At least a couple days’ flight, but not too long – don’t want to give them too much time to set up a reception committee for me.

He found a likely flight and bought his ticket, applying nearly half of the balance remaining on his pre-paid card. Fifteen minutes later his shuttle docked at the orbital transfer station, and ten minutes after that, he boarded his flight. The cabin door slid closed and he dropped the Forge on the desk, sitting heavily on the edge of the bunk.

Christ, I’m tired. Thirty-four hours since I last slept? And that for only about two hours.

He lay back and closed his eyes.

* * *

Rath showered when he woke, but refrained from eating anything, despite a gnawing hunger.

Better to do surgery on an empty stomach.

He had slept for close to thirteen hours, and though his dreams had been as disturbing as ever, he had only woken twice. The ship had launched to FTL travel while he slept, but was still more than a day away from its destination. Rath laid the surgical kit that Stam had hastily assembled out on the desk, and then looked over the schematic the researcher had printed. Next he built a spare mirror and some adhesive using his Forge, and rigged it up across from the mirror in his bathroom, so that he could see the back of his neck. Finally, Rath had the Forge build a small syringe of topical anesthetic, which he injected into the scar at the base of his neck.

Here goes nothing.

He hadn’t waited long enough for the anesthetic to take effect, so the first cut hurt. Rath sucked air in, cursing. He waited a minute, holding toilet paper to the cut, then started again. The hardest part proved to be estimating the right depth – nothing in Stam’s directions mentioned how deep the chip would be, and Rath was surprised to find it several inches deep, within the muscle tissue. His eye implants allowed him to zoom in on the cut and see it in close detail, but the fluorescent bathroom light was not nearly bright enough. Rath took a break, building a small flashlight and mounting it over the mirror. That accomplished, he cut again, and this time the scalpel scraped on something hard.

Is that the neural chip, or my spine?

Rath took the scalpel out for a closer look.

Chip. Phew.

He looked at the schematics once again and realized he was looking at the switches. Stam had circled the leftmost one. Rath picked up the micro-tool, slid it into the cut, fiddled for a second, and then felt the tool grip the switch. He depressed it.

He vision went dark – even his heads-up display disappeared – and the background noises of the room around him were abruptly muted. He had spent the last eleven years relying on those enhanced senses, and he felt their sudden absence keenly. The high-pitched whine of the lights, water flowing through the plumbing in the walls, the bass rumble of the ship’s engines – they all disappeared. He couldn’t even smell the antiseptic cleaner the spaceline had used to sanitize the bathroom during the ship’s last stop.

Rath took a deep breath, shifting his grip on the micro-tool. Easy. This is no time to drop that tool. He flipped the switch back up, and – a long, heart-stopping second later – his senses returned. A message popped up on his interface:

Rath selected
No
. He squirted the wound with antiseptic then used several skingraft stitches to close it. He showered again, quickly, rinsing the blood off his back and hands, and then dressed.

Okay; now I’m truly on my own. I just need to figure out how to get off this ship. But first, breakfast.

* * *

“We’ll have two contractors on station before he lands,” the supervisor reported, pulling up their profiles on the boardroom viewscreen.

“Just two?” the director asked sharply.

“He took a short flight, and all of our assets close to that region were already on Alberon, trying to capture him there.”

She grunted. “Trying, but not succeeding.”

“No,” the supervisor admitted. He decided to change the subject. “I’ll have two more contractors on the ground within twelve hours.”

“Once he’s off that ship, our chances of reacquiring him drop substantially,” she pointed out. “He’ll break contact, change identities, and disappear. It has to be at the docking gate.”

“That’s our plan,” the supervisor agreed. He tapped the viewscreen, and a blueprint schematic appeared. “The two contractors will pose as official security personnel, and they’ll set up a spot-check scanning station right at the gate. Everyone goes through as they exit – call it a new security protocol, random screenings type-of-thing. We’re placing a bribe with the head of security at that station, so he’ll look the other way when they set up, and keep his personnel off our backs. Passengers go through the scanner, and it picks up anyone with implants. Once we see someone with all the right implants, they stun him immediately, and take him to the private passenger facility. We have a ship on standby waiting.”

“I want to include a failsafe protocol,” the director said. “If he manages to kill both of them, I want that to trigger … I don’t know, an explosive device. Build it into the scanner, I suppose. And give yourself remote control, so as you’re monitoring the operation, if it looks like 621 might escape, blow it, even if the other contractors are still alive. As much as I want him alive, he’s better dead than free.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

The man and woman finished installing the security scanner a scant ten minutes before the ship exited FTL travel. The spaceline gate crew had watched them with interest at first, but soon tired of the distraction, and became preoccupied as passengers for the next flight arrived in the gate area. The pair put their tools away, stashing them next to two mid-sized duffle bags bearing the security corporation’s logo.

The man walked through the gate once, experimentally, and the woman checked her heads-up display – a list of his implants appeared a second later. She nodded at him.

“Checkpoint’s ready,” the woman reported, seemingly speaking to herself.

The man made a slight adjustment to his uniform, and each surreptitiously checked their weapons, before taking up positions next to the gate, out of the view of exiting passengers. Then they waited.

Several minutes passed, and then one of the gate agents made an announcement over the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience – the arriving craft is dealing with a maintenance issue, so we’ll be a few minutes late in starting the boarding process. Again, we apologize for the delay.”

The man and woman traded a look. She walked briskly over to the service counter. “What’s the maintenance issue?”

The gate agent covered the microphone on her headset and leaned forward conspiratorially. “They’re telling me the ship ejected an escape pod shortly after it arrived in orbit.”

“Was anyone on board the pod?”

The agent shrugged. “That’s all they’re telling me, sorry.”

The woman in the security uniform swore, and moved back over to the gate. “HQ, you monitor that?”

“Roger,” the supervisor responded.

“Pods don’t move too fast,” the woman noted. “A shuttle might beat it down, if we hurry.”

“Go,” the supervisor ordered. “We’ll monitor the security gate – you two get planetside and find that pod. We’ll send you location info as soon as we get it from law enforcement sources.”

“Grab your gear: we need to catch a shuttle,” she told the other contractor.

They were on the ground less than twenty minutes later.

“You want me to do what?” the woman asked, listening to instructions from Headquarters on her internal audio. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“IP is already tracking the pod,” the supervisor told her, annoyed. “And we have an agent at the airport – it’s the fastest way to get there.”

“This is fucked,” she observed. She led the way outside, to find a police cruiser idling by the curb, lights spinning. An IP officer was leaning against the hood.

“You two looking for a runaway pod?”

“Seems that way,” the woman replied, hesitating.

“Look, I don’t like playing taxi for you two, any more than you’ll like sitting in the back of my cruiser, I’m sure. So let’s get it over with, and then we can all forget this ever happened.”

When they had taken their seats, the policeman turned the sirens on full blast, and jumped his car straight up, pouring on power as they rose over the spaceport.

“Pod’s in the lower atmosphere now, touchdown in about three minutes,” he told them. “We’ll get there about the same time, but there are other first responders on scene already – an ambulance and two other police cars. Do not try to pull anything at the scene – I will shoot you myself. Just let them take the guy into custody. Chances are he’ll be let out on a misdemeanor a day or two from now, so just bide your time, we’ll all keep a close eye on him, and you can nab him when he gets out.”

“Thanks,” the woman said.

“Don’t fucking thank me,” the cop spat. “This is way outside of what I agreed to do for your bosses. Just tell them there better be some real money in my account when this is over.”

They saw the pod a minute later, drifting down on three large parachutes, looking strangely out of place amidst the skyscrapers of the city center. Ahead, the waiting police cars and ambulance had cordoned off a wide section of the street, creating a makeshift landing zone. They parked just as the pod touched down, tilting onto one side, the parachutes collapsing gracefully around it.