Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (3 page)

Only food from the sea could be garnered from earth, because conditions in the oceans of earth were nearly impossible to recreate en masse.  People had long since stopped trying to construct bio-systems of that sort, resorting to tanks instead.  There were too many variables when trying to build an ocean able to produce seafood fit for consumption.  Most of the time, what came out of them was poisonous to Humans – Celeste and Being alike.

The one true exception was Europa, but that moon had been off-limits to the outside worlds for centuries…

“Do you think Dr. Ahmed and his people have good reason to fear for the Shadow Spark?” queried Flavia, once
she maneuvered to the fast lane and accelerated the Glide-car past 300kph.

“That too needs to be investigated before a suitable answer can be applied to your question,” grumbled the Keeper, preferring to continue with his musings on plants and beasts and things of the waters
, then to deal with the issue at hand.

Flavia chanced a glance his way.  “Hypothetically speaking then, Effy, would his people have reason to fear an outsider trying to get a hold of it?”

Estefan considered her query, scratching at his bald head, traveling at such high speed always made his scalp itch.  “If what he says is true, then it is possible many entities – government and private alike – would have a huge interest in garnering something as potent as the ‘Spark.”  He paused to look directly at her.  “But then again, if we decided to go after it, they’d have reason to be frightened just the same. We both know, they couldn’t hold out long against the Synod.”

She nodded, and then her face bunched.  “What about us, could we stop this so called Destro-Mancer the good doctor was speaking about?”

He bounced with ironic mirth.  “That would be bloody as hell,
if
everything he says about this creature is true.  If not, then we’d crush him - or her - like a bug.”

“Yeah, I figured the same, but what are we going to do about it?”

He clicked the roof of his mouth again. 
She wasn’t going to give up, was she?
  “We’ll do nothing, for now.  We will send out our teams to investigate these claims regarding the creature, while, at the same time, we consult the archives in order to attempt to learn more about the Shadow Spark.  We need to see if the damned thing exists in the first place.  We’ll go from there.”

“It would be incredible and fearsome at the same time
, if the Shadow Spark were real,” she ruminated.

“Yeah, anything that can manipulate Celestial Mutations would be an awesome weapon…”  He fell silent, a new
thought stopping him for a moment.  “Have we heard anything unusual coming out of Haumea?”

She shook her head in the negative.

“That’s another thing bothering me about this whole thing.  We have eyes and ears everywhere, why haven’t we caught so much as a whisper about this Destro-Mancer?  If it is, in fact, conquering the dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, why hasn’t word gotten back to us?”

Now, she shook her head with indecision, a gesture identical to the earlier one, but Estefan could tell the difference.  Three hundred and fifty years together did such things.

“And another thing,” began Estefan, waving his hand, “why come to us and not the Integrated Corporate Board of Directors?  I mean, they have a military, they have security, and they have trillions and trillions of exchange units to burn on a mission such as this, why come to us when they could’ve gone to the government?

“I don’t like this at all, Flavia.”  He was nodding emphatically.

Her answer was simple.  “Secrecy, my dear, the government lacks the ability to keep things quiet, whereas, we… well; we’re specialists at making things disappear.”

“Oh, I’m sure the Board has its secrets,” countered Estefan. 
They did… this he knew, because a good majority of them were involved the Synod itself.  Flavia knew better than to be so naïve.  Their children had infiltrated the governing body of the Sixteen Worlds ages ago.

She changed lanes quickly, sliding around slower moving traffic, calm, collected, though they were hurtling down the highway.  They had nearly reached the agricultural center of the city where the old Metro District of Los Angeles, the Staples Center, LA Live and so much more had once stood.  All of that was now three thousand feet above their heads, carefully reconstructed, brick by proverbial brick – on the second tier of the megalopolis.  Only six or seven minutes had passed.  The trip would’ve taken them just under an
hour back when he was kid growing up in Southern California.  Already he could see the humungous processing plants and the forest of twenty-five hundred foot silos that seemed to make the mountains surrounding the Great Basin small, almost hill-ish.

“They’d want to mass produce the Shadow Spark, Eff, and that would be playing directly into the hands of those who’d stop at nothing to get ahold of such technology, especially this Destro-dude Dr. Ahmed was talking about.”

He raised his eyebrows. 
No one ever said Flavia was stupid
, he thought. 
Only Celestes would want to keep something that manipulated their Mutations out of mainstream society.  The people Dr. Ahmed Carlos Ball represented knew this…

Well, at least something in this whole fucked up mess made sense.

He saw it then, a sleek, dark colored Glide-car, keeping pace with them, about one hundred and fifty meters back, two lanes to their right.  It was one of those extra-long jobs, the sort concealing…

…Ah crap, heavy weapons!

“We have a tail,” he announced gravely.

“Saw it already,” replied Flavia, “Running its’ signature through the city grid.  Seeing that it’s technically still our grid, we find out who these bastards are.”

Estefan glanced around, noticing night was fast approaching.  Already the light about them had diminished considerably, only the running lights demarking the lane boundaries and the lights of the other Glide-cars, -trucks and -transports illuminated their way.  The giant fields of produce and grain were disappearing before his eyes.

“Cut our lights, override the safety protocols in the highway and get us the fuck up to the top level of the highway,” commanded Estefan.

Beside him, Flavia blinked rapidly, her vision switching to thermal as she catapulted the vehicle upward, pushing passed 350kph.  They were gone as if they had never existed in the first place.

Access to the grid they had built proved
vital once again, especially since they’d come to Angel Free Town alone.  Their usual, multi-layered security cordon they’d left on the surface of the Moon.
ow How

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Earth Summer – 2385)

The Fermonist

They had just reached level twelve, snaking between a huge flatbed-Glider and a municipal Glide-bus, when Flavia said: “Negative on the signature.  The damned car isn’t registered in Ang
el Free Town.  It’s here without proper I-Dent.”  The fact she could pay attention to her Neuro-Nanoswarm and not cause an accident was the stuff of a master-driver.

“Interesting,” muttered the Heavy.  “Well, at least we lost them.”

“Who do you think it was?” wondered Flavia offhandedly, slowing the Glide-car back down to a speed congruent to the traffic around them.

The twelfth level of the highway was busier than the one on ground level.  Commuters chose the broad vistas and pseudo-open air over the massive pylons supporting the structure and the rather mundane, if not monotonous,
view of the thousands of farms they were passing.  Traffic was still moving over 275kph, but all nine northbound lanes were full.  When he glanced to his left, Estefan could see the southbound lanes were full just the same.

Not much different than rush hour in 2020…

“It could’ve been anybody really,” he answered, glazing over his shoulder and through the curved plane of Diatainium reinforced plexi-glass at the back of the Glide-car.  Much of his view was obscured by the hulking Glide-bus, but from what he could see, he saw no sign of the extra-long sedan.  “There may be many parties interested in what Dr. Ahmed had to tell us, including the
other
members of the
Board, those not employed by us.  The clans, the Burhka’s, even the Yaku Alliance and the Trû-Knights, have the tech capable of cracking Optic-mail security protocol.  That shit has as many holes as a hundred-year-old whore.  It seems only natural someone could’ve ousted
his
security measures and found out about our little rendezvous.”  The Keeper’s emphasis on the good doctor’s mode of communication belied his unshakable belief in their own.  They had, after all, invoked the highest degree of countermeasures for this meeting.  Maybe their contact hadn’t been as thorough?  Actually, he knew so.  None could firewall information better than the Synod.

She half-smiled at nothing.  “You don’t think it might have come from our end?”

It was like she was reading his mind.  “No,” he retorted, his voice clipped.  “Jake would’ve detected any intrusion onto our webs.  Before the software or the security bots, he would’ve known.  You know how anal his is about that shit.” 
Stop being such a brat, Flavia!

“Sonofabitch,” said Flavia under her breath, but it was loud enough for him to hear.

“What?” he asked anxiously, because his one-time step-sister never cussed unless she had good cause.

She pointed, at 3 o’
clock.  He followed her long, narrow finger.  His eyes bulged in their sockets as the same sleek, dark colored Glide-car pulled onto the same level as them, using one of the many onramps.  It was streaking down the wide thoroughfare, nearly double their speed.

“How in the hell could
they’ve followed us?” asked Flavia, incredulity and anger filling her tones.  She didn’t like being outwitted, especially if it involved Estefan.  His wellbeing was her foremost directive.

“It doesn’t matter.  They haven’t spotted us yet… just do like Han Solo told Chewbacca – drive casual,” was Estefan’s reply.  Being flippant seemed to focus them when they needed it most.

At his side, the long-legged vixen sniggered, following suit.  “He told him to fly casual, Eff, not drive, you wanker.”

“Whatever…”

“Jeez, one visit to Disneyscapes and you’re already quoting the ancient movie lexicon,” remarked Flavia, the playfulness back in her voice.

Beside her, Estefan
leaned forward.  She turned a part of her attention toward the extra-long Glide-car.

“Is it slowing down?” she asked.

His mouth hung slack. 
How in the fuck…?

“Yeah, they’re slowing,” concluded Estefan, reactivating his Neuro-Nanoswarm, his fingers typing complete words atop a keyboard that existed only for him.  “I’m gonna shut down this section of the highway and allow you to drop us as many levels as you deemed necessary to lose these assholes.  But the moment we do, I want you to put the car in stealth mode.  You got it?”

“Just give me the countdown,” was all she said, her pretty brow furling with concentration.

“Ok,” went on Estefan, “now remember, a system shutdown, even a partial one, is going to raise a lot of attention
, so be the fuck ready to do what you have to do to get us free and clear.”

She smirked with ire.  “Estefan, I wasn’t born yesterday.  We’ve done this shit before.”

He ignored her snide comment.  His eyes were locked on the dark sedan, as it continued to cut its’ forward momentum, easing it’s’ way ever closer to them.  It was changing lanes every twenty seconds or so.  Their pursuers were definitely searching for them now.

He waited.

She waited.

The extra-long Glide-car made to change lanes yet again, and for a moment was blocked from view by a construction-Lift, a bulky contraption used to lift heavy objects from one place to the next.

It’s a fucking crane
, thought Estefan angrily.

“Now!” he shouted, tapping a holographic “execute” key just as Flavia waved her hand over a small sensor above her head.

Three things happened at once.  The highway Grav-accelerators stopped functioning.  Their Glide-cars’ micro-scales shifted to full-reflective mode.  They fell like a stone.

Along a twenty-mile stretch of highway, the twelfth level came to an instantaneous halt, so severe, so abrupt; anyone who wasn
’t properly secured in their seat straps was dashed to a pulp upon the windshields of their given vehicles.  This wasn’t the day and age when people were thrown from cars or buses upon impact with another object.  Materials used to manufacture vehicles didn’t fail anymore.  Anyone coming into violent contact with a command consul or a wind-shield was usually dead within seconds of impact.

In the same moments following, Flavia let their Glide-car plummet to the fourth level, somehow managing to find her way through traffic without collision.  This was made all the more problematic, because no one could actually see them.  They were in full stealth mode.  To those driving around them, they did not exist.  Estefan knew he could never have done what she had just done.  She was the driving genius, not him.

Before he could even formulate a thought, his one-time step-sister turned the wheel of the Glide-car hard over and they rocketed across lanes, taking the nearest off-ramp.  She was heading to the third level, in the opposite direction, using a series of twists and turns.  She dialed the accelerator hard over, pushing their speed over 380kph.

“Take the old 91 freeway,” directed Estefan.  “We can head toward the coast and the spaceport using the South Bay Artery, heading north.  Contact
our people at the Synod Hangar at the port and have them prep a Skycar for us as soon as humanly possible.”

Flavia didn
’t respond, but did as she was bid, entirely focused on her ‘Swarm, while avoiding the traffic that kept swerving into their lane.  The Glide-car was still invisible to everyone around them.

They drove in silence for a few minutes as Flavia edged them toward the right-hand side of the highway, slowing their rate of speed, preparing to take the connecting bridge to the old 91 freeway.  It was called thus by the people of the city, because much of its original concrete foundations remained intact and the massive pylons that held up the multi-level highway were built direct on top of them.  The thoroughfare itself wasn’t old, it was state of the art, but the fact a portion of the structure was indeed old- it was called “the old 91 freeway”.

“We’re good to go at the spaceport,” informed Flavia within minutes.

They had just exited the 5 and were snaking their way through the throng of connection bridges when Flavia pointed toward one, lower than their position, but routing traffic the same way they were going.
  It was the same long Glide-car, keeping pace with them, though there was no way possible they could see Estefan and his one-time step-sister.

“This is getting ridiculous,” mumbled Flavia, real anger making her enunciation harsher.

“Something’s wrong,” the Keeper said.  From his Neuro-Nanoswarm, Estefan opened an encrypted line of communication.  He used their private channel – one they had imbedded within Angel Free Town’s CommNet years ago.  Only they could access it.  What should’ve been an ultra-high definition transmission was fuzzy with white noise and warped periodically.  This was normal.  This back-channel line was so heavily shielded; there was little else they could’ve done when they had installed it back when he’d been the King of Angel Free Town.

“This is technician #768971, how may I route your communiqué?”

Before he said a word, Estefan entered the tech’s Badge Number into another database on the screen before him.  A small grin developed over the fact the number was only six digits long. 
He’s been with us for a while,
mused the Heavy.  Most of the Badge’s he saw these days had seven numerals.  The newest ones had incorporated a letter at the end as well. 
Probably an Old-Timer from back in the day…

The tech’s information checked out.  He was Michael Walkins-Rollins, born August 19, 2205; currently residing in Ang
el Free Town… etc., etc.

An Old-Timer indeed!

Through it all the technician hadn’t said a word, which was a secondary measure.  I real employee of the Synod would know whoever was calling on this channel could only be a big-shot within the organization.  They would assume whoever was calling would be verifying everything before moving forward.  It was standard Synod procedure.

“Initiate Alpha-Omega 1, Priority Delta, Serial Number 01.  This is not a test.  I repeat this is
not
a test,” said Estefan, his voice monotone.

The technician on the other end of the line paused, his eyes going wide for a split second, realizing his was talking with the Keeper himself.

“H-how may I be of a-assistance, M-m’Lord?” stuttered the tech, fear creeping into his visage.

“I feel like four scrambled eggs,” he replied, an odd request, but the technician didn’t give any outwa
rd indication otherwise, as though he expected it.  “Have them routed to my position by back-tracing this transmission.  Do not use the regular protocols.  Our Comms might be compromised.  Do you understand?”

Michael nodded and began typing furiously onto a keyboard Estefan couldn’t see.  Half a minute later, “Done, Sir, do you require anything else?”

The Keeper shook his head.  “No, I’m switching this signal to passive, have them follow accordingly.”

“Ro
ger.”

Estefan twirled a finger in a counter-clockwise motion and the distorted display of the technician shrunk and then disapp
eared altogether on his screen.  Only a single pixel continued to blink – a tiny indicator the signal was still open, but barely so.

He glanced over at Flavia.  “Disengage stealth mode, we’re gonna try some good old fashion deductive reasoning instead.”

There was a gleam in the woman’s eye.  She loved it when Estefan was being mischievous.  It turned her on.  She didn’t speak, but waved two fingers over the correct sensor and the Glide-car returned to its normal ebon color, startling the drivers of the vehicles around it.  Some of them swerved back and forth a few times, before regaining control.  It wasn’t everyday one saw a whole car pop into existence, out of thin air.

They merged onto the fourth level of the Old 91.  The extra-long seda
n did so from a lower ramp.  Its’ driver gunned the Grav-lifts and the vehicle shot forward like a cannonball, closing the distance between the two Glide-cars swiftly.

“If they can find us in stealth mode, then let’s resort to speed and see if they can keep up,” urged Estefan, raising and lowering his eyebrows in rapid succession.

“Afterburner?” asked the long-legged beauty.

“Why not?”

He hadn’t even finished speaking, when the adaptive seat curled about his heavy form even more and the Glide-car rocketed down the freeway, leaving their larger, more ponderous pursuer behind.

“You gonna use the auto-avoidance measures?”
wondered Estefan, a little nervous his one-time step-sister was driving without aid at such tremendous speed for a mere highway. Sure Skycars flew as fast, even faster when their Grav-scrams kicked in, but dodging through traffic in excess of 1,100kph was downright crazy.

“You gonna pee your pants?” kidded Flavia, a wide grin etching her narrow face.  She didn’t engage the avoidance computer, and continued to drive manually.

“You never know…,” he replied in kind, peering about for the decoys he had requested.  “Where’s the nearest mobile Null-Unit?” he asked on a hunch.

“Null-Unit, why would we need one of those?” she queried, her brows knitting.

He stared over at her, reducing the size of his ‘Swarm screen.  “Because if the decoys don’t work, then I have a good feeling what’s following us in that fucking car.”