Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 4, July 2014 (2 page)

Four hours before the run, the Teller's voice rips Emani out of a nightmare. She was walking around a cemetery, weeping. She was looking for Byron and Chris’ graves but couldn't remember where they were buried. She stopped in front of a tombstone. There was no name on it.

"Hello."

She opens her eyes and checks for tubes in her nose, pistons pumping drugs into her chest.

"What?"

"I want the degausser."

"How d—"

"Bring it to me, Emani."

"How do you know about the mission?"

"I can pay you."

"I already have money."

"98% of your income is regularly transferred to the Alliance for Plague Gene Therapy, the Blackwood Foundation, the World Health Organization, and twenty-three others. Four million credits donated in the past year. You want more."

"You’re right."

"I have no money. I have something better."

Video request. Emani accepts. Images materialize, low-res: Chris sitting on a swing in a public park. He jumps out of the seat and runs towards Byron. The camera tracks them as father and son walk out of the play area, hand in hand. Bottom-right corner glyphs: public footage, June 3rd, 2052 A.D. The video fades.

Seventeen years ago.

Public footage. Of course the Teller would have access to it. "My God. How much do you have?" says Emani.

"Total runtime is over six years. I will trade for the device."

"What do you need it for?"

"Would my reasons affect your decision?"

"I'm not sure."

"They would not."

"I'm dead if I do it. You understand what that means?"

"I comprehend. You are dead either way. The only query is time. I know who hired you. Aeon Vargas: independent corp-state, seventy million employee-citizens across the globe. They will come for you, but you will make them dance on their heads. Believe me."

#

One thirty-six P.M. European Central Time. Freshly boosted and over-attuned. Emani wipes her mouth and flushes the toilet. Off to the pick-up bridge and into a jet-cab heading for the nearest private port. The transport awaits, a bus-long bullet ready to rip through the skies. Countdown, blast-off. From Paris to Washington City in less than three hours. Air-space border control scammed by hacked credentials. Washington South is on fire, one hundred and eighteen days of riots and counting. Out, past the slums where desert sand creeps upon steel and cement, Emani meets with her local contact. She transfers credits with a handshake. The contact gives her root access to a ground-van. She drives for a couple of clicks, parks the van by the side of the road, hops in the back. Emani slips into the lightweight chameleon exo-suit. Electrical jolts let her know the suit is pre-booted, unlocked, no need for ID. The black helmet is a
chitinous cover; an overgrown insect's head capsule with real-time data scrolling on the visor. Emani inspects the rest of the gear: a pair five-barrel 15mm pistols, EMP grenades, four-gauge shotgun and flechette packs. If all goes well, she won’t have to use any of it.

Back behind the wheel, Emani taps into the frequency. "ETA twenty-two minutes. All green?"

"Green," reply three voices in unison.

"Green, like the color your husband turned as the gas filled his lungs."

"Shut your mouth."

"But I do not have a mouth."

Derek, over the comm: "What's happening, boss?"

"Nothing."

"He cried for you. So did Chris. They hugged each other and your son moaned for Mommy. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. Last moments. Goodbyes. I have them. Their brain-plants recorded them. Do you even remember your son's smile? What about Byron's scent?"

"Stop. Please. Stop."

"Latin: stuppare. German: stopfen. Old English: forstoppian. Why should I politely stuppare?"

"Video, audio and sensory footage is not the same as remembering, Teller."

"No,"
replies the machine, "
but it is better than having forgotten."

#

Emani is over two klicks away when the operation commences. She taps the right side of her skull with two fingers. "Hackers, report."

"I'm in," says Derek. "Firewall down. Bastion-host down."

"I'm in, too," says Jared. "D, watch for the traffic filter."

"Derek, make it look all clear on official channels," says Emani. "Jared, disable the weapons and lock the troops inside their vehicles."

"Shit, I got pinged," says Derek.

"Jared, handle the lock and then camouflage the data. Derek, you still with us?"

The answer comes in the form of a guttural shriek. Emani pictures Derek in his Tokyo basement, brain oozing out of his nose, eyes black and bulging from brain-rot.

"D?" says Jared.

Emani grips the wheel hard. "Derek is done. Jared, you still incog? Give me status."

"I need ten seconds. They don't know I'm here."

Emani accelerates. "Come on, come on."

"Done," says Jared. "Locks are in, gov surveillance won't sniff anything for at least ten minutes. Can't guarantee more. I left the target door open for you."

"Good job. Derek got any family?"

"No."

"Then I'll add Derek's cut to yours when I make payment. I'm so sorry. Go dark."

"Acknowledged. Gone."

A private jet like a triangle sliced out of a black hole slashes through the clouds and disappears over a hill, leaving behind a trail of fast-spilling oil. The trail reconfigures itself into a burgeoning mass of self-replicating nano-jammers. A programmed
umbral dome blots out the sun.

"Sats and drones shrouded," says Sarah.

"Second pass," replies Emani.

Emani's local radio chatter goes haywire. The convoy uselessly attempts to talk to big bird in orbit.

The jet's back, explodes out of the black skies, drops the hammer, and disappears again. The radio noise stops.

Sarah says, "EMPs detonated, you've got six minutes until they regain juice. I'll circle."

Down the hill, the convoy looms into view. Four exoskeletons like mechanical Kaiju surround the prime mover—an eight-wheel drive all-terrain vehicle armored well enough to shrug off a mini-nuke and ask for more. Four double-barreled tanks lead the convoy, four in the back.

Not a single vehicle moves.

Emani’s van comes screaming around the corner. She coolly stops the ride right by the prime mover. She steps out in full armor, shotgun in hand, and looks up. Two soldiers stare at her from the cockpit of their disabled exoskeleton. They're trapped inside of a sixty-ton, thirteen-meter-high worthless pile of scrap metal. The sky overhead is a pulsating sheet of blackness.

Emani offers the soldiers a polite wave.

She heads for the back of the mover and opens the unlocked doors. Six turrets and blink mines deactivated. Emani picks the cube at the center and gets back into the van.

Pain explodes behind her eyelids, a burst of static so loud her vision flashes white and her head crashes into the driving wheel. Images captured by a chapel's ceiling camera fill her field of view. The lens focuses on her, the joy on her face. She holds baby Chris in her arms.

The minister says, "Do you, Byron Correia, take Emani Liod to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do."

Reality snaps back into place.

"You did it! Congratulations!"

Emani screams, "Stop it. Make it stop, goddammit." She punches the wheel, over and over again.

"Stuppare, yes. Why do you scream? I do not like it. It is all I hear."

Emani wipes drool away with the back of her hand. "Because it hurts."

"Where do you hurt? I detect no injury from your armor ha-ha-ha."

"You know damn well what I mean."

"I only want to help."

"Yes, but not like that. Please."

"Do you believe me when I say I want to help?"

Emani does. She understands that the Teller does not understand. This is not malice but only an inability to grasp the ethereal. "I believe you."

"Friendship. Is it not beautiful?"

#

Emani drives towards the extraction point with her pedal to the floor. She veers off-road, down a dune, and stops in a deserted plain. She checks the time and looks up at the sky. A one-person shuttle drops through the clouds and lands five meters from her. The ride's an egg-shaped bubble with twin jets attached. Emani slips back into civilian clothes, grabs the cube, leaves the rest of the gear behind. She enters the shuttle and the vehicle takes off.

"Sarah," she says.

"Still here."

"Erase it, then go home. Disappear for a few months."

"Payload dropped. On the way. 'Till next time, boss."

As the shuttle climbs towards the clouds, Emani looks back and watches her van explode.

#

The autopilot destination reads PARIS, FRANCE. Emani transfers the money to Derek and Sarah. She taps into the local gov frequency and it's a bedlam of military jargon.
Mayday, mayday, cargo gone Elvis, black van, single man, hacked
. No doubt Aeon Vargas are listening to the same channel and know the mission was a success.

"Teller," says Emani.

"Hello again, friend."

"Can you provide a decent air vehicle? Safe transportation on the way out?"

"It has already been arranged."

"Does the data also include all the things I’ve fed you about my family and me?"

"I am well fed. The world feeds me everything it spits out. I grow fat with noise, and I am not allowed to let any of it go. I do not know silence."

"Answer the question."

"Yes. It does."

"You’ve got yourself a deal."

"I am not surprised."

"What do you need the degausser for? You don't have any enemies."

"We all have enemies. Sometimes they are our friends. Some are forced upon us. Some of us create them."

Emani reconfigures the autopilot, changes the destination to South Africa. "I believe I just did that," she says.

#

The still-smoldering ruins of Johannesburg disfigure the landscape below: toppled-over skyscrapers, the countless carcasses of charred cars resting on melted roads. How many people tried to flee the city before the plague-nuke hit? How many Byrons and Chrises?

Sixty seconds after the scheduled meeting time in Paris, Emani's skull vibrates. She ignores the call.

"Oh, look. Five pretty drones."

No need to ask who they belong to. Emani guesses the drones were dispatched from a nearby carrier as soon as the clock ran out. "How soon until they're in range?"

"Less than four minutes."

Emani grabs the controls and runs through the array of defensive countermeasures available. Infrared flares, blackbody payload. Won't do anything against high-end corp gear. "Teller, can you bring them down? Or intercept their weapons?"

"That is outside of my meager capabilities."

Emani pushes down the yoke and the shuttle loses altitude at alarming speed. Her skull vibrates again. She doesn't pick up but the call goes through anyway.

The cadaverous client’s face appears in the top right corner of her vision. The voice is an aural fingernail scraping the surface of Emani's brain. "It isn't polite to filter your calls."

"It's not polite to glitch my feed."

"I assume our agreement no longer stands?"

"Had a better offer."

The client doesn’t blink. Emani guesses that corporate espionage and betrayal are probably old news to him, an hourly occurrence.

"Disappointing," he says, pursing his lips. "We are in the process of wiping your bank accounts. Your Paris, London and Hong-Kong apartments are being investigated. Five drones are headed your way. You may yet change your mind."

Emani hangs up and reconfigures the comm system, disables video, only allows the Teller and outgoing calls.

"They smell your direction. They know you are coming to my compound. Troops are being dropped here. They are positioning themselves. See the apes with guns?"

Emani frowns, not understanding. "Already? That’s not possible."

"I am ahead. It will happen within ten minutes. They have a low-orbit station."

"Are they trying to shut you down, Teller?"

The Teller lets out a roaring sound, a cavernous approximation of laughter.
"No one is capable of shutting me down, not even I. The ones who believe in me will not let them pass."

Emani considers her options. Other corps won’t touch this mess. None of her contacts would react fast enough—at least not in South Africa. Simplify the problem; boil it down to its essence. Who wants the degausser? Aeon Vargas. The Teller.

And the people who created it, of course.

Understanding comes to her. "Teller, what did you say earlier about creating our own enemies?"

"I want to help you ergo you should help me and thus I need to help you and therefore it is done. I have prepared some numbers for you."

"Patch me in."

"Uploading."

Emani double-taps her temporal bone.

"DARPA, Colonel Tamers. How did you access this line?"

"Colonel, my name is Emani Liod and I'm the woman responsible for stealing your degausser close to the City a few hours ago. I stupidly waved to two soldiers. I drove a black van. Am I speaking to the right person?"

"No, but you've started a big enough shit storm that we've been made aware of the theft."

"Good. You listening?"

"I am listening."

"The hit," Emani says, "was ordered nine days ago by Aeon Vargas. Access my post-orbit bank logs and see the money transfers, although I doubt you'll be able to connect the dots back to them. The prep data is at my Paris apartment. If you send men there, they might cross path with Vargas before they torch the place."

"What do you want?"

"I am being pursued by drones. I'm guessing the plan is to disable my ride and force a landing. Then they'll send bodies to kill me and retrieve the load. Pull up sat data and see if I’m lying. You know that once they get their hands on it, it’s over. You'll never get it back. Furthermore, their drones are an illegal presence over South African-Arab airspace."