Insidious. Part 4

A green line overlaid a debarking lane, leading her straight ahead. Aldriena ignored it and moved off to the far right lane. Inside the mask, she gave herself a small smile. One of life's little pleasures.

She came to a station and threw her cases down on the countertop. It looked like wood but took a good hit. The wall robot didn't move. It had to start up since she'd picked another lane than the one the station had booted for her.

"I'm heeeeeeere," she said. The wall checker bot came to life. It had two long, thin arms with spherical joints and delicate three-fingered hands. A fist-sized sensor suite mounted on a tentacle slid out to get a look at the luggage.

She paced the room as the machine pored over her personal case, keeping everything aside in the large box. Then the screener opened the cargo case and viewed the s.h.i.+ny bars.

"These items. Identify," it said.

"That's the loot," she said.

"Is this synonymous with the entry 'platinum bars,' which is on the cargo manifest of the vessel Silvado?"

"Yes."

"The s.h.i.+pment has been logged. Your blue status is confirmed despite a long absence."

"Thanks so much, I'd hate to have to fall all the way back to indigo," she said sarcastically. Despite a deep compet.i.tive streak, she'd only managed to work her way up to blue so far, since she spent most of her time away from the deep s.p.a.ce stations. She ground her teeth.

Aldriena waited until the robot started to point out her sidearm.

"There appears to be-"

Aldriena slapped the weapon onto the counter. She'd scratch the d.a.m.n faux wood yet. The gun looked like a retro-styled stunner trying to imitate an old auto pistol. The robot's voice skipped, abandoning its request.

"This item. Identify," it said.

"One-shot stunner," Aldriena lied. She didn't mention its function as a Circle Four blinder. She had given it the uninspired name C4B. Circle Fours were overbuilt and tough from top to bottom, but where there was money, there was a way. Her sonic weapon would break the audio pickups of security robots, and she knew it could shatter the camera lenses of a Circle Four right through their protective plastic bubbles. She believed it capable of doing the same to most other security models.

The gun was expensive, but Black Core had enough money to give its operatives good weapons. Especially ones a.s.signed to Project Insidious.

The slender-armed robot dropped the weapon into her small box as it always did.

"You are cleared. Welcome to Thermopylae."

Welcome to wacko world, Aldriena echoed to herself.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up C4B and holstered it in her gear by dropping it into a webbed holder affixed to the inside of the armor. Her own curves left plenty of a gap for it to fit comfortably behind the flat torso plate.

She examined the countertop for signs of her abuse but found none.

"This counter is all scratched up," she said anyway.

"I'll schedule a repair," replied the machine.

"Good. Because I expected better."

"Your complaint has been logged."

She walked into an atrium beyond the checking lanes. The floor looked like marble, but she thought it must be a plastic several times lighter than real marble. At least the plants nestled in every corner were real. Each giant pot held a large exotic plant growing from a dense knot of airscrub gra.s.s at its base. Every station had the oxygen-producing gra.s.s, although they all chose to place it in their own way.

She saw two other people moving through corridors exiting the atrium but ignored them. She found a comfortable sling chair placed between two stubby palm trees and she threw herself down. She closed her eyes, sighed, and linked up to the common environ.

She opened her eyes and found herself in her virtual Thermopylae home chamber. She checked the chronometer and made a few vain changes to her avatar until she caught herself.

You're wasting your time.

Thermopylae's infuriating shared environ included a layer that obfuscated everyone's real ident.i.ty by showing a different avatar to other observers. Any changes she made would be for her benefit alone. Aldriena stopped preening.

Technically, inhabitants weren't supposed to be able to tell anyone's s.e.x whether they were incarnate or in the virtual setting, but Aldriena had learned where the limits were. She knew how to drop the right hints so that most people would identify her s.e.x. She noticed a definite s.h.i.+ft in the kind of attention she received once a male had recognized her as female in her gear. They liked to push the crazy rules almost as much as she did, and it made it easier for her to collect her data if they were observing her in the enhanced light of idle s.e.xual interest.

She checked the environ people finder and found the majority of station inhabitants a.s.sembled for a public challenge. She sent a command and instantly transferred her avatar into the arena.

The other avatars were milling around the arena talking about an upcoming event. She knew there were more than five hundred souls on the station at any given time. That wasn't many for a station this size, but it was expensive to support life this far from Earth. Expensive even for a huge corporation that commanded immense wealth.

Her finder said that two thirds of the station inhabitants were a.s.sembled here in this node of the virtual environ.

"What's the attraction?" Aldriena asked the nearest idle citizen.

The masked face turned toward her and answered.

"Johnson is taking on Red."

"Why the big turnout?"

This time the mask didn't turn away from the field below. "Why? Johnson's the highest ranked ... y'know. Our best one. Maybe he can beat Red. If we could beat it just once ..."

Fat chance, thought Aldriena. They're amazingly smart.

"So Red always wins? Isn't it dangerous if the robots are too smart? You have heard of the Ma.r.s.eilles Purge?" It was a rhetorical question. Everyone had heard of the incident when an AI core had attempted to take over Europe, forcing the humans to use a limited nuclear strike to keep from losing their planet. The same thing had happened in controlled conditions in off-planet research centers, each time resulting in destruction.

The person shrugged. "They know what they're doing. Look, I'm not allowed to talk about that." The avatar faded into thin air. Whoever it was probably blocked Aldriena out to avoid further conversation.

Down below, she saw the avatars starting to quiet down. Messages started coming through the whole channel on broadcast.

Johnson challenges Shakolfar.

Aldriena had learned no one called him Shakolfar in conversation. To the inhabitants of Thermopylae, his name was Red. One of the citizens stepped forward toward the center of the environ. Orange highlights on the clothing of the man's avatar showed his ranking-fairly high.

The stake is five percent increase in bandwidth rights to Xanadu.

Seemed reasonable enough. Xanadu was the flags.h.i.+p deep s.p.a.ce station of Bentra's European ally, Gauss Systems.

Aldriena spotted Red. The mechanoid spun forward. Its avatar looked identical to its incarnate form. The body was a sphere emblazoned with a large red spot, its eight legs so thin as to look vestigial. As the machine moved, it didn't bob. It floated. It tilted so the legs spun as it progressed. One leg always remained directly below it for an instant before replaced by the next. Aldriena smiled. The way Red held a leg beneath it reminded her of a flamingo. Albeit a spinning, featherless, eight-legged flamingo.

Shakolfar accepts the challenge.

Red and Johnson flew out into the clear blue s.p.a.ce of the arena. Dozens of spectators switched their avatars transparent and floated out to watch from the field. Aldriena left herself visible, but she pushed off and flew high into the air, preferring to watch from above.

Down below, Red and Johnson stood on the green expanse of gra.s.s facing each other about two hundred meters distant. Two huge collections of oblong objects appeared between them, hundreds of white objects on one side and black objects on the other. The things were each the size of a small dog. They s.h.i.+fted rapidly, changing orientations, and interacting with each other in confusing patterns.

Aldriena wasn't familiar with this contest. She didn't have time to travel back and forth between the deep s.p.a.ce bases and still learn all the challenges. This one appeared to be an abstract of two armies facing one another on a flat field of battle.

The objects transformed into more understandable shapes. Red's army formed into two groups, a large group of black spider-legged machines that hung back by Red, and a smaller line of perhaps ten or fifteen motley creatures of all shapes that began to march forward.

Johnson's white army formed up into two lines in front of him. The front line looked squat and crablike, menacing, and the second line looked more like robotic giraffes with long thin heads like tank barrels. Aldriena wondered why they didn't start shooting right away. Perhaps their range had been limited for the game? The challenges tended to be complex; she supposed there were many variables she couldn't see. Perhaps they each had different armor and sensing capabilities as well.

Red's forward screen met Johnson's army. The black soldiers died in a crisscross flurry of projectiles emitted from the claws of the white crabs and the heads of the giraffes. The crabs' fired quickly but only at close range, and the giraffes seemed to have long range but a low rate of fire. They didn't kill many of Johnson's army in return, and this brought up a cheer from the observers.

Red's army disa.s.sembled. Each of his units fell back to its components and they shuffled themselves in a blur. Aldriena supposed that they would reform to take advantage of what the doomed vanguard of Red's forces had discovered.

Johnson had no discernable reaction to the rearrangement of the other army. Aldriena realized that the two players couldn't see the entire field as the observers could. Johnson hadn't seen the change in his opponent's forces. The white army crept forward keeping its double line.

The black pieces had finished their transformation. It appeared the black army now had crabs and giraffes as well. The giraffes moved forward in a line while the black crabs moved into large cl.u.s.ters on either side.

Aldriena figured that Johnson believed he pressed an advantage, but actually, he moved toward a trap. Still, she thought at least he had a numerical advantage.

The white crabs came within the long range of the black giraffes. The crabs started taking damage and couldn't fire back, so they rushed forward attempting to close with the enemy. The black giraffes were barely faster. Red's vanguard had observed their enemies carefully. They managed to keep the crabs in range without exposing themselves to counter fire.

How did the giraffes manage both superior speed and range? Aldriena supposed that their strengths were balanced by a low rate of fire. She saw a crab take a round and survive, so she supposed the crabs might be tougher as well.

Johnson reacted to the snipers that were hitting his front line. He took too long to realize the crabs were too slow to catch the black giraffes. Then he slowed his front line and let the second line catch up. Meanwhile, the black crabs closed in from either side. They clashed violently with the white crabs, but black had concentrated the crabs on either flank. White collapsed toward the middle. Johnson panicked and pulled back, trying to save his advantage and ma.s.s his own counterattack.

The black giraffes followed the retreat, picking away at the white crabs. The white army couldn't move any faster than the black one, so his retreat didn't earn him any respite. Once the white army clumped together and protected itself with ma.s.sed fire, black retreated. White stayed back, reforming its ranks.

The black army stopped at a fair distance in a dense line. Once again, the black army transformed. The two armies looked to be about the same size now.

The white army made changes as well. Johnson disa.s.sembled his remaining crabs and turned them all into the giraffes. Then the army moved forward again, keeping itself in a dense arc of units that could cover one another.

The black units had formed long-legged tripeds. The units dashed forward with surprising speed in a wide line. White caught sight of them and fired, but the giraffes were slow to reload. They got one volley in before the black machines were among them. Then the black army reconfigured again. The white giraffes finally fired again, causing still more black losses. Once again, Aldriena thought there were more white fighters than black ones. But the black units were turning into the rapid-firing crabs inside the white army. They sprayed fire into the white giraffes. The giraffes tried to back away while shooting, but the quick black tripeds had spread out all around the white army. They were all turning into crabs. White was losing now, giraffes dropping everywhere. A few white units were changing into crabs themselves but none of them made it. The white army withered away.

The black crabs circled the remains of their opposing army for a moment, and then started to march toward Johnson. His avatar stood its ground for a moment, but then as he saw the crabs rus.h.i.+ng for him, he jumped, trying to fly away. Something prevented him from escape. He floated back down into the waiting arms of the nearest crabs.

He screamed.

The black crabs surrounded him, firing continuously. Johnson writhed, screaming even louder as the flurry of bolts sunk into his avatar.

Around Aldriena, people stared in obvious disgust. Yet few looked away. Finally, after about a half minute of the torture, Johnson's cries grew ragged and weak. The crab's a.s.sault slowed and then stopped.

Johnson is demoted one unit, intoned a link message on the challenge's channel.

Johnson rolled weakly and tried to get up, and then he fell back. His face was pinched, his mouth a rictus of pain. Aldriena wondered what had driven him to attempt the challenge. Was this a super-compet.i.tive executive who rose to anything? Or was there more riding on the challenges than Aldriena understood?

Red had sacrificed some units to see Johnson's plan. Then after convincing Johnson that his crabs were a detriment due to lack of range, Red correctly guessed that Johnson would get rid of them. Another critical part of it had been that Red's army transformed more readily than Johnson's had. Was Red really smarter or just faster?

The avatars evaporated from the arena. Within a few seconds, ninety percent of them were gone. Aldriena withdrew from the environ and brought her senses back to the atrium. She sighed. It had been a long while since she'd slept. She always held off until her body threatened to collapse. She pried herself out of the comfortable chair and looked up her a.s.signed room with her link.

It took her a few minutes to work her way to her quarters. Aldriena took her time, letting fatigue dictate her pace. Everywhere she wandered, she saw the same gray marble floors and pots of exotic plants. The inhabitants trod around the station trapped in their gear as if they'd all been lost to one another.

I'm not the only slow one. They're all moving slowly. Just wandering. She observed the lethargic movements of people walking by her, obscured as they were through the thick plastic plates of their mandatory attire. Are they tired? Lonely? Or have they given up hope for release from these stifling rules?

Finally, her Cascavel indicated she had arrived at her door. She entered the quarters. Her first glance confirmed her room looked the same as usual. Clean. Opulent. Peaceful.

A servant entered the main room and bowed. He looked ready to attend to her orders. She could tell he was Chinese, as was her last room servant. She threw him dagger eyes, a firm frown on her face. He did not react to her expression.

"Welcome." The man kept his eyes lowered. "I'm here to see to your wishes."

Aldriena strode past him and into the bedroom. She sat on the bed and unzipped her boots. She started to get out of the heavy gear. The servant appeared quickly and picked up the pieces as fast as she discarded them.

That left her back in her undersheers, but she found the attention she usually enjoyed for her state of undress wasn't something she wanted now. Not from one of them. She told herself his heritage didn't matter, because nationality didn't define the person. But it didn't work. All she could feel was what her father had taught her to feel. She turned away from him.

"You look tense." His hands found her shoulders.

She slapped his hands away.

"Vai se foder," she snapped, and then switched from Portuguese obscenity to an English warning. "Keep your distance."

"Yes, ma'am." The man bowed and walked out.

Her family had fled the crus.h.i.+ng power of the Chinese bloc shortly before it seized control of j.a.pan. Despite the lack of open war, many in power there had not escaped execution. Only Aldriena and her father had made it out alive. At the time, she was seven years old.

Her father later remarried. Aldriena grew up in Brazil, taken half a Brazilian name, and even spoke Portuguese. In fact, she thought sadly, her j.a.panese was worse than her English was. But she had a part of j.a.pan in her face and in her heart.

She knew the man in her quarters was only doing his job, but she couldn't shake the hatred her father had instilled for the Chinese bloc. The current political climate suited her bias since Chinese remained the enemy of both her ancestral homeland and her adopted one. She told herself she had softened somewhat. Her father would have throttled the man if he'd seen him touch her.

A broadcast link message interrupted her inner turmoil.

This is the United Nations s.p.a.ce Force. We are conducting a surprise inspection of this facility. Report to your personal quarters immediately and remain there or face possible severe injury or death.

"Merda!" Aldriena spat. The message repeated itself.

Aldriena tried to get the Cascavel to reconnect but its authorization had timed out. She used another of the one-time codes. She hadn't planned to push her luck, but something was obviously up and she wanted to know what.

She picked up enough in a couple of seconds to know that the s.p.a.ce force was preparing to board Thermopylae in numbers. This wasn't a perfunctory visit of a couple of officials from the corporate pocket. Several police cruisers had somehow surprised the base and were dispatching military forces into the deep s.p.a.ce enclave.

Aldriena knew that Bentra kept a small army of Circle Fours on the base. Then there was Red. Did the UNSF know about the special ones? Aldriena didn't think so. Black Core had gone to great lengths to make sure they didn't leak it, and of course, Bentra, Gauss, VG, and the others didn't want anyone Earthside to have any clue. Still, if Black Core had managed to find out the secret, could the s.p.a.ce force have learned of it?

Her gear went back on in record time. She wasted a few more valuable seconds thinking things through. What would the UNSF have brought to neutralize the Circle Fours? Other robots, of course.

If she was going to run for it, she needed to do it now. Once citizens got to their quarters, she'd be too conspicuous. She hurried out into the main room where she saw her servant standing uncertainly. She pulled out C4B and enjoyed the moment of terror on his face.

"I'm out of here," she said through her mask and ran for the door. It flicked open just in time to emit her into the corridor outside. She saw a couple of citizens scampering for their own quarters. Aldriena's Cascavel flipped up an escape route for her to follow. She broke into a sprint and followed the green-lit route.

She ran past several doors and then darted to her left, going through some kind of physician's waiting room. A reception wall robot called after her as she bolted past. She raced through a back hall with routine evaluation equipment and then into a surgical prep area.

The Cascavel directed her through another door and into a large white room with a clear observation wall on one side. A large medical scanner or repair machine dominated one wall.

Startled by Aldriena's sudden entrance, a nude woman jumped off an examination table next to the scanner. She made no move to cover herself but took a step or two backward. She had long black hair like Aldriena.