The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (194 page)

“Damnit.”

Lying there moping wasn’t an option. That was too much like defeat, which he wasn’t going to admit. Not yet.

He unzipped his sleeping bag, and stretched lazily before shivering. All he was wearing were shorts and his last decent T-shirt. His hand felt around on the floor for his cord pants that he shoved his legs into. When he pulled on his check shirt there was a tearing sound as stitches popped along the sleeve.

“Not again!” When he examined the sleeve the split didn’t seem too bad.

He slipped into his old dark gray woolen fleece to keep the chill out while he put his boots on. Toes stuck out through the holes in the end of his socks. Today really was going to have to be sewing day. He gave his toes a closer look. The bruising had gone down. In fact, it had disappeared altogether. He couldn’t remember putting any salve on after giving the serial number pillar that very satisfactory kicking.

Outside the little shelter, Orion had already rekindled the fire from yesterday’s embers. Two metal mugs were balanced on a slatelike shard of polyp above the flames, heating some water.

Orion looked up and gave Ozzie a welcome smile. “Five teacubes left. Two chocolate. Which do you want?”

“Oh, what the hell, let’s live—What?”

“Tea or chocolate?”

“I thought we finished the chocolate yesterday.”

Orion rummaged through the various packets he’d spread out around him and held up the cubes in a palm. They were all foil-wrapped: five silver, two gold with green stripes. “No. Bourneville Rich, with double cream. Your favorite.”

“Right. Sorry. Yeah, man, chocolate is good.” Ozzie sat on the polyp bump. He winced as he straightened his leg.

“How’s the knee?” Orion asked.

No fucking way!
“Still stiff,” he said slowly. “Where’s Tochee?”

“Gone to get some water. It was scouting around last night, seeing if it could find any sign of the machinery that works this place.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean? You said we should try and track down the gravity generator.”

“But we know there’s no electrical activity on the reef. Not that we can detect.”

“We haven’t looked that hard. Besides, you told Tochee to use its sensor gadget while it was in the jungle.”

“Yeah. Two days ago. But there’s not a whole lot of point now, is there? I mean, if there wasn’t anything at the serial number, then there certainly isn’t going to be anything in the middle of the trees.”

Orion stopped unwrapping the second chocolate cube. “Serial number?”

“Yeah,” Ozzie said sarcastically. “Big black pillar in the clearing. Me in a bad mood. Coming back to you now?”

“Ozzie, what are you talking about?”

“Yesterday. The pillar.”

“Ozzie, we walked to the spire at the end of the reef yesterday.”

“No no, man, that was the day before. We found the serial number yesterday.”

“On the spire? You didn’t say.”

“No, goddamnit. Yesterday. The pillar in the clearing. What’s the matter with you?”

Orion gave him a sulky look, pouting his lips. “I went to the spire yesterday. I don’t know where you went.”

Ozzie took a moment; the boy didn’t normally fool around like this, and he certainly sounded sincere enough.

Tochee emerged from the jungle, its manipulator flesh coiled around various containers it had filled with water. “Good morning to you, friend Ozzie,” it said through the handheld array.

“You didn’t find anything, did you?” Ozzie said. “Your equipment didn’t find any electrical activity. And you’ve traveled about five kilometers in that direction.” Ozzie pointed.

“That is correct, friend Ozzie. How did you know?”

“Good guess.” Ozzie told his e-butler to pull up yesterday’s files. The list that came up in his virtual vision were the visual and sensor recordings of their trip out to the reef’s end spire. “Show all files recorded in the last five days,” he told the e-butler. There was nothing relating to the serial number pillar. “Goddamn.” He unlaced his boot and pulled it off, then began squeezing his toes where the bruise ought to be. There wasn’t even a twinge. “Let me get this straight,” he said carefully. “Neither of you two remember walking to the middle of the reef?”

“No,” Tochee said. “I have not been there, though I believe that if we go, we might have some success in finding an access tunnel to the machinery that lies at the core of this reef. It would be the shortest distance.”

“Dead right, man. So let’s go, shall we?” He shoved his boot back on and stood up.

Orion held out his battered metal mug. “Don’t you want your chocolate?”

“Sure. Hey, have you been having any unusual dreams since we arrived here?”

“Nah. Just the usual dreams.” Orion pulled a morose expression. “Girls and such.”

Ozzie led the way at a fast pace. He followed the route that his handheld array’s navigation function produced, guiding him to the middle of the reef. As before, the trees were taller as they approached the area his virtual vision displayed. Today there were no beams of sunlight sliding horizontally past the thick ancient trunks. “It’s got to be here somewhere,” he said out loud as they began their third sweep of the central area.

“What has?” Orion asked. The boy had been watching him with some concern ever since they set out.

“There’s a clearing right in the middle.”

“How do you know?”

Because I was here yesterday, and so were you.
“I saw it on the approach.” He stopped and told his e-butler to display all the visual files from the last couple of hours before the
Pathfinder
landed on the reef. When he checked through them, the jungle at the middle of the reef was unbroken. There was no central glade.

Ozzie stood motionless at the base of a rubbery globe tree, leaning against its elasticated branches. Not that they bent much anymore, they were so old and wizened.
Okay, either I’m hallucinating or someone has done a superb hack job on the handheld array. No, Orion and Tochee don’t remember. So it was a hallucination. Or a vision. But why would I be led here?

He took a good look around the gloomy jungle floor with its cracked polyp and dusty soil. There were no tracks in the thin dirt. Nothing moved, nothing lived here. He activated every sensor he had, and turned a complete circle. Nothing registered in any spectrum.

“I don’t get this,” he said out loud. Almost, he expected some bass voice to answer from the treetops.

“Friend Ozzie, I cannot see a clearing.”

“No, me neither. The files must have been jumbled up when we landed. The array took quite a few knocks.”

“Can we go back now?” Orion asked. “I don’t like it here, it’s all dismal and dead.”

“Sure thing.” He was a lot more cheerful than he had any right to be.
Something’s happening. I just wish I could figure out what.

It was a miserable duty, but then Lucius Lee was used to that by now. He’d been granted the rank of probationary detective three months ago in the city’s NorthHarbor precinct, and all he’d done since then was sort out a whole load of data files and reports for the two senior detectives he’d been assigned to for his probationary year. When the three of them ever did venture out of the office he was the one who had to do all the boring stuff like cataloguing crime scenes, directing forensic bots, and interviewing low-grade witnesses; he also got the night shift in stakeouts. Like this one: Sitting in a beat-up old Ford Feisha in an underground garage below the Chantex building at twenty past four in the morning, looking out across a concrete cavern illuminated by green-tined polyphoto strips that should have been replaced years ago. There were fifteen other cars parked on the same level; he knew them intimately by now.

Why the hell they couldn’t use a decent covert sensor for this he didn’t know. Marhol, the detective sergeant who was his official mentor, said it was “good experience.” Which was such bullshit.

The real problem was ancient enough to be laughable. A punk gang had been carjacking luxury models out of NorthHarbor and—big mistake—one belonged to the rich girlfriend of a councillor’s son. City Hall wanted a Result. Automated systems couldn’t do that, not quickly. So here he was waiting on a tip from one of Marhol’s dubious informers, who were actually more like drinking buddies.

Marhol had taken Lucius along to the bar for the meeting, presumably so he could witness the expense claim. So he had to sit there while this zero of an informant who couldn’t have been over twenty and had big dependency problems claimed the cars were actually being ripped off by the Stuhawk gang out of SouthCentral. He should know, he was running with the JiKs, who like
owned
NorthHarbor, and they weren’t doing it. The Stuhawks had stupidly got themselves into big debt with a professional syndicate who’d simply given them a mechanic and a list. They did the scout, and provided muscle. But they scouted cars around NorthHarbor, not their own district. It was a turf war.

For such crap the Tridelta City taxpayer had to reimburse Marhol’s beer tab for a week.

Four twenty-one. The lift doors opened. A man emerged. He was smaller than usual, for an age when rejuvenation could add inches to anyone’s frame for almost no additional cost. Skinny, too; his shirt had short sleeves showing arms that were mostly bone. His hands were out of proportion, big and covered in grime. First impression was a first-lifer in his fifties. But then Lucius started to pay attention. The guy had confidence, strutting across the concrete as if he were a Dynasty chief walking into his harem. He was wide awake, too; not someone who’d been working a late shift upstairs.

Lucius started to breathe faster. There was no way this guy was part of some punk gang. In fact, Lucius was pretty sure he wasn’t a first-life at all; that cool self-assurance didn’t belong to anyone under a hundred. Maybe the informant had been right. The Stuhawks were muscle for a syndicate. Lucius was suddenly very interested.

The mechanic walked over to a midnight-black Mercedes FX 3000p, a brand-new Hi-range saloon, with a list price of over a hundred thousand Earth dollars. That price included a superb security system; the drive array program was virtually an RI in its own right. It wouldn’t let anyone take control without the owner’s approval.

Lucius was waiting until the man tried to break the car open. That was when he would make the arrest; and he was quietly thankful there were no Stuhawks with him. An arrest swiftly followed by a successful interrogation would be the kind of proactive police work that the councillor wanted to see. Not that Lucius would get any credit; it would no doubt be filed as Marhol’s arrest.

The mechanic made a slow circle of the gleaming vehicle, regarding it with respectful approval. Lucius was amazed at the mechanic’s audacity; he wasn’t really thinking of taking the Merc, was he? Then Lucius remembered some Commonwealth-wide alert for a grade-A mechanic coming into the precinct a while back. This man was certainly A-grade, for arrogance if nothing else. He told his e-butler to find the file.

The mechanic was about to put his hand on the Merc’s front door i-spot when he froze. Lucius held his own breath. The mechanic looked around the near-empty garage until his gaze found the Ford Feisha. His lips moved up in a dry smile, and he started to walk over.

“Ohshit,” Lucius muttered. There was no way anyone could see through the Ford’s secure glass no matter how good their retinal inserts were, but somehow the mechanic had become aware of him. He drew his ion pistol and flipped the safety. It was then he realized he’d probably revealed himself by using the unisphere. Even with the police-secure encryption there had been an electronic emission from the car. In a deserted garage. In the small hours. “Oh, brilliant, Lucius,” he told himself bitterly. “Just brilliant.”

To compound the error, his e-butler delivered the requested file for him. Navy intelligence wanted to question Robin Beard, a known criminal specializing in car crime. A lot of biographical data ran across Lucius’s virtual vision. Several pictures accompanied it. With a few easy differences, they matched the man who was now three meters from the hood.

So far, Beard hadn’t drawn any kind of weapon. Lucius gripped his pistol tighter.

Beard smiled at the nonreflective black glass windshield, and put his hand on the Ford’s i-spot. His whole forearm glowed red and green as OCtattoos turned active.

Lucius jumped as a nasty
clunk
reverberated around the car’s interior. The locks had all engaged. Three red lights started flashing on the dashboard. There was a nasty burning smell.

“If I were you,” Beard said, “I’d be very careful what you touch in there. Your car’s superconductor batteries are malfunctioning; they’re feeding their power directly into the body frame. So don’t lay a hand on anything metallic. Oh, and anything that ionizes the air will also act as a conductor. To take an example at random: an ion pistol shot fired through the window. Whoever was holding that pistol would be fried in the discharge. Ever see somebody struck by lightning? They say their eyeballs boil and burst while their tongue chars to black meat.”

The ion pistol dropped out of Lucius’s startled fingers, clattering onto the floor. He flinched.