Rising Sun (3 page)

“Roger that,” Vienne says with an icy edge, then cuts her eyes at me. “I’m very good at babysitting.”

“What was that all about?” Malinche asks, after I roll the crate inside the lift and the doors close. She inserts a key and holds the down button. The hydraulics engage, and we start to drop. “Vienne’s crack about babysitting?”

“Just a running joke,” I say. “When I joined my first davos, our chief assigned Vienne to babysit me till I earned my keep. She’s never let me forget it.”

“For a joke,” Malinche says, “it’s not very funny.”

“Vienne doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.” The lift stops. “But she does have an itchy trigger finger, so I hope for his sake that clerk stays unconscious.”

The door opens on a high-tech lab. From floor to ceiling, it’s all multinets. Most of the monitors are connected to lab equipment—robotics, centrifuges, laser bores, cryogenics boxes, and a metric ton of gear too advanced for my pay grade. It’s all coated in thick dust, uncovered, as if it had been abandoned in a hurry.

“Would you like me to tell you the function of the equipment?” Mimi says. “I can cross-reference it with the catalogs—”

“No thanks,” I tell her. For some reason, I don’t want to know any more about this place than I have to.

“Walk this way,” Malinche says, and leads me to a small lab.

This lab is anything but official. There’s no sign on the door, no mark identifying the place, except for four small letters stenciled to the transom:
MUSE
.

“What is this lab?” I ask as we step inside. “It sure isn’t the one I visited before.”

“It’s your father’s secret lair.”

“Ha ha, very funny. Vienne is starting to rub off on you.” I roll the crate to the middle of the room, and Malinche pushes off the lid. “Seriously, what is this? I spent my childhood in this library, and I didn’t know it had a basement.”

“That’s no surprise.” She starts loading the box with scientific equipment. “Because it really
was
your father’s secret lair. All hush-hush. We worked on all sorts of classified R&D projects that CEO Stringfellow didn’t want the public to know about, even his own board of directors.”

And apparently, his own son. My father, the secret keeper. I watch her load a centrifuge and a steel bending rig into the box. “Didn’t we come for symbiarmor?”

“We did,” Malinche says, moving with deliberate motion. “But I’m not leaving without my toys.” She raises the legs of her brown uniform, revealing flesh-colored prosthetic legs. “Give a cripple a hand, will you?”

“Sure,” I say, starting. “Sorry, you move so well, I forget about your artificial . . . you know.”

“Artificial legs? No sweat. Overlooking my disability is the effect I was going for.” She wipes perspiration from her face. “But once I get settled, upgrading my prosthetics is tops on my list.”

I can’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be stupid, so I grab the gear she points out and work in silence. We finish loading her equipment, then I secure the lid. “That should hold it.”

“Now for
your
toys.” She goes to a cabinet. Opens it with the key card and pulls out a suit of symbiarmor. “Voilà!”

The suit is shimmering, the fabric rippling with light even though it’s actually black. Like all symbiarmor, it’s not much thicker than a sheet of electrostat and it’s almost indestructible, but this suit looks different than my old one.

“That’s not mine,” I say. “I’ve never seen that suit before. In fact, I’ve never seen any symbiarmor like that before.”

“Oh, it’s yours,” she says, bringing it to me. “It’s an upgrade. A present from your father. Pity he got thrown in the gulag before he could give it to you.”

I strip down to my skivvies and pull on the suit. It slides like synsilk over my skin. I put on the gloves and flex my hands. The material feels rubbery for a second, then, with a shimmer, like second skin. I rub my fingers together and can’t tell that there’s fabric covering them “Wow.”

“Make sure the neckpiece is snug. That’s where the nanobots interface with the bioadaptive cloth,” Malinche says. “So it’s extremely vulnerable, as you well know.”

I think of the thick purple scar running down my neck but resist the urge to touch it. “If the spot is vulnerable,” I ask, “why not put a piece of steel plate or something over the spot?”

She shakes her head and hands me a helmet. “Think you’re the first genius to consider that? Try it. See what happens.”

“Bad stuff?”

“Very bad,” she says. “Like psychotic breaks from brain damage along with crippling neuropathy. The bots have got to breathe.” She fiddles with the settings, injects my arm with a syringe, and uses a charge of static electricity to power up the suit.
“That’s all the juice you need. Give the nanobots time to interface with the armor’s circuitry, and you’ll be all set to go off tilting at windmills or whatever you heroes do.”

Her voice fades away. My body turns cold and rigid, an effect of the nanobots attaching to my cortex and central nervous system.

“Nanobot acquisition protocol initiated,” Mimi says.

My teeth start to chatter. “You’re programmed to talk to the nanobots?”

“Not specifically,” she replies. “But it appears to be within my capacity to control them. I will now test motor and cognitive function.”

My body herks and jerks.

“Motor function responding at one hundred percent efficiency.”

My tongue bobs in and out, and I shout, “Moo! Neigh!”

“Cognitive function responding at eighty-five percent efficiency,” Mimi says. “I will recompile systems to execute adaptive command code.”

“Baa! Baa!” I bleat as Malinche watches with a big shite-eating grin on her face. “Baad. That was baaad. I mean, bad. Very, very bad.”

“Cognitive function responding at hundred percent efficiency,” Mimi says.

I twitch. My right eye twitches and widens. I can hear it click.

“Bionic prosthetic linked to neuronano cortex,” Mimi says. “Synchronizing with optic nerve for optimum function. Internal check-sum routing is now complete.”

“Whoa!” I yell as my body relaxes.

“I love this part,” Malinche says, covering her mouth to hide her snickers.
“But I’ve never seen symbiarmor cause that reaction.”

“What reaction?”

“The whole barnyard routine?” She knits her brow, worried. “Maybe we should run some tests. Take the suit off.”

“Negative!” Mimi says in my ear.

“No!” I yell, then get ahold of myself. “I mean, no thanks. I always go a wee bit gonzo when I get a new suit. My nervous system is—”

“Operating at ninety-nine percent capacity,” Mimi says.

“—twitchy,” I say. Then I decide to be nonchalant, which even I realize makes me look like a fossiker. “So, we’re all loaded up. Need a hand hauling the box back up the lift?”

Malinche eyes me oddly but lets it go. “Not yet.” She unlocks a second cabinet and pulls out an automatic weapon. It’s new and unpolished, the default barrel, bolt carrier, and magazine in place, with no attachments. Yet. The armalite is as adaptive as the shooter carrying it. Vienne’s is set up for sniping. Mine will be modified for close-range attacks.

“This is my armalite?” I ask.

“It is now. Records showed that the last one was destroyed in your battle with that Big Daddy. You’re due a replacement.” Malinche tosses it to me. “Put your right finger on the trigger.”

I eye it—and her—warily. “Won’t it explode?”

“Not until you encode it with your nanosignature.”

I put a finger on the trigger. For five seconds, nothing. Then there’s a high-pitched whine.

“Now it’s armed,” she says. “Anyone else touches it, and they lose a body part.”

I field strip the rifle, taking it apart and pushing it back together in less than a minute. There’s nothing fancy about this weapon, unlike my armor. It’s standard issue, the same style I’ve used since I entered Battle School.

“Reckon it’ll do in a pinch,” I say.

“Showoff,” Malinche says.

“It’s in my blood.” I sling the weapon over my shoulder. “So, what’s next?”

“Next?” she says, turning me to face the lift. “You’re doing the stupid thing by tilting at windmills, and I’m doing the smart thing by going into hiding.” She presses the lift call button, then stands on tiptoes and gives me a peck on the cheek. “If you ever find yourself lost in the wilderness, give me a shout, huh? And when you do, dispense with the formal Battle School crap. My name’s Rosa Lynn, not Malinche.”

“Will do,” I say. “Thanks, Rosa Lynn. I owe you one.”

“I’m the one still in your debt,” she says, then pushes me onto the lift.
“Go. Your girlfriend’s waiting for you.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I protest.

“Oh, yeah?
I’ve met susies like her,” she calls as the doors close. “They all like scars.”

I rub the purple scar on my temple and wonder if it’s true. Is Vienne waiting for me? Does she really like scars? “Hope Rosa Lynn can manage that crate alone.”

“Would you like me to calculate the probability of a successful completion of her plan?” Mimi asks.

“You’re programmed to do that?”

“My initial programming allowed for the calculations of variables to indicate the success rate of military tactics,” Mimi says. “It is a simple permutation to change the formula to calculate non-military variables.”

“Righteous,” I say. “Sure, go ahead. Let me know when you’re done.”

“The calculation is already complete. The entity known as Rosa Lynn Malinche has a ninety-four percent chance of successfully completing her plan.”

“That was fast.”

“I previously calculated the variables, in anticipation of your agreement.”

“So you guessed that I’d agree?”

“I am incapable of guessing,” she says. “I store information as data and then perform calculations based on the data at hand. In time, I will be able to forecast your responses with a high success rate.”

“You’re saying that you’ll be able to read my mind?”

Mimi says, “By any definition, I am your mind.”

“
What?
”

Bing.

The door opens.

“Wait one carking min—” I say, then stop short.

Where there was one clerk, there are now three, all of them unconscious, bound hand and foot with zip ties and gagged. Vienne stands with one foot on their hindquarters, armalite resting on her hip.

I whistle. “You’ve added to your collection.”

“Two more workers showed up,” Vienne says. “And you took longer than ten minutes.”

“Ros—Malinche was liberating her lab equipment.” I check the clerks’ pulses. They are alive. Lucky for them. Vienne isn’t known for being merciful.

“It is unnecessary for you to examine their heart rates,” Mimi says. “I can monitor the vital signs of any organic entity within the immediate proximity.”

“You can do that?”

“Affirmative, Cowboy,” she says. “By using the nanobots to control the telemetry functions in your symbiarmor.”

“And Rosa Lynn thought she had the best toys,” I say. “While you’re at it, can you do something about these hunger pangs? My stomach is gnawing on me like an industrial ripsaw.”

“Negative,” Mimi says. “Your body needs nourishment. Quelling your desire for food will have a deleterious effect on your system function. The hunger will just have to gnaw at you.”

“Ahem.” Vienne clears her throat. “Before I took the last clerk out, he set off a silent alarm. The Rangers will be here really, really soon. As in, less than one minute soon.”

“Lead on, MacDuff,” I say, and bow.

“More precisely,” Mimi says. “The line is ‘Lay on, MacDuff.’”

“Lay off my duff,” I say, and take off after Vienne.

She runs to the dock and jumps down. “Nice armor, by the way,” Vienne says. “You look very pretty.”

Pretty? Not handsome? Crud. “You know,” I say to Vienne when we reach the deliver the lorry, “busting me out and then breaking into a CorpCom facility, those are felonies. You’re going to be a fugitive like me.”

“I’m a Regulator. I follow the Tenets, not stupid CorpCom laws.” She tosses me the keys. “Let’s go. There’s a long drive ahead, and our client will be getting antsy.”

I catch the keys. “You’re letting me drive?”

“There’ll be Rangers patrolling the highway,” she says. “A jackrabbit like me will attract too much attention.”

I start the engine and back up. Then hit the brakes. “Wait a minute. If you’re the jackrabbit, what’s that make me, the turtle?”

“If the combat boot fits . . .”

“To hell with that. I’m nobody’s carking turtle.”

“Turtle,” she says. “It fits you.”

“How about you call me by my name?”

“Stringfellow? Not a good idea, all things considered.”

“No, by that name Mimi gave me—Durango.”

She shakes her head. “You never struck me as a Durango.”

I start forward and sideswipe the dock as I muscle the steering wheel through the turn. The lorry lurches forward, sputters, and then dies, as the sound of sirens begins to fill the air.

“Yeah,” she says, smirking as I restart the engine, “you’re definitely more turtle than cowboy.”

Chapter 2

Ares Pub
Jaisalmer District, New Eden
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 2. 3. 13:18

The sun has set and risen again by the time Vienne and I reach our destination, the old town area of Jaisalmer District in New Eden. There are more dangerous and disgusting places than this on Mars, but they all are surrounded by razor wire and security fences.

We dump the Noriker near a Ranger station and continue on foot through the city. We stop when we reach a prefab metal building. A sign bolted to the wall reads
ARES PUB
in faded script.

This is the real New Eden, a fetid swamp of decaying buildings, rotting infrastructure, and atrophied people. Crime is a way of life here, and the only people you won’t find are constables and Rangers, who let New Eden police itself.

Vienne and I ease between the patrons sitting at wrought-iron tables on the patio, wearing only our symbiarmor and toting armalites. All eyes are on us. The whispers start.
Dalit
,
dalit
,
dalit
.
Filthy. Nasty. Unclean.
Their insults sting me, and I fight the urge to lash out, but Vienne walks through them like she owns the place.