01 Cycops, Joyjockies, Assassins and Senators Read online

  Cycops, Joyjockies, Assassins and Senators

  By

  Angela Knight

  Radm threaded through the nocturnal crowd that jostled along the walk. Faces ringed him, ghostly in phosphorescent makeup, gliding over bodies in strobing glow-fabrics keyed to reflect the patterns around them. Color shifted over the crowd in syncopated waves, from neon red to a vibrating cold violet, the pattern broken here and there by the shadow shapes of those, like himself, not so fashionably dressed. Fashion on Kagni, like the drunken voices of the fashionable, tended to be a little shrill.

  He pushed on, ignoring the smells of alcohol and anonymous burning drugs, until he saw the fat bulge of the Dome. Reaching the building took a certain amount of rude shoving, but finally its double doors skidded out of his path. He entered with a deliberately casual swagger.

  An armored merc eyed him narrowly from a vertical tube by the door -- a security station, shielded, equipped with sensors and nasty weaponry. Security had been beefed up here since those two IBCI agents had gotten caught trying to infiltrate. They'd probably died right where Radm was standing.

  If his sensor shield failed, if the mercenary picked up the m-suit he wore under his clothes, or the array of weapons that clung to it ... He cocked his wrist in the loose shirtsleeve, readying the bayonet on the forearm of his glove for a quick drop and toss.

  But the shield held, and the Dome's sensors missed the suit. Muscles slowly relaxing, Radm turned to scan the central lobby. Huge, he thought, big enough to hold a grounded shuttle. Business must be good. Vaulting ceiling, long panels and squared columns united in a pleasingly clean architecture -- vandalized by the red and gold decor. Sort of neo-classical bordello, he reflected, shuttering his eyes to an amused squint.

  He dropped his gaze into the dense crowd, took a deep breath and grimaced at the smell of sex and too many kinds of perfume. Music pumped in the air with a grinding erotic beat, almost loud enough to hurt, as the joyjockey clientele circulated among men and women clad in bits of lace, leather or plasti. Here and there, one of the customers spotted someone he liked and staked a claim by grabbing some piece of bare anatomy. A moment later the couple would wind toward the lift to do heated business elsewhere.

  From out of the crush, a Dome girl approached Radm, brushing around him like a cat. He could almost smell desperation drifting after her. Probably looking to feed her addiction. If she got him upstairs, her employers would reward her with a Steel Trap skinpatch that would blunt its vicious gnaw.

  Temporarily.

  Unlike the usual run of recreational drugs, Steel Trap induced no hallucination or jangling pleasure buzz. In fact, it did absolutely nothing. Nothing but instantly addict anyone who let a patch of it touch his skin. Nothing but give the addict a driving hunger he'd do anything to feed. No one ever took Steel Trap of his own free will, which was why it was one of the few drugs the Coalition had outlawed. It was solely a weapon of coercion.

  Radm turned away from the girl's famished and degraded eyes, imagining the day he'd see the Dome razed.

  As he looked off across the press, he saw a woman standing nearby, gymnast's body veiled in thin lace. Her shoulders were a bit wider than her curving hips, breasts high and small, legs a long seductive sweep. There was severity in the way she wore her hair in a boyish black pelt; in the cool, delicate angles of her features, but her large eyes were warm amber, and there was a potential sensuality in her full mouth. Now, though, that mouth was stretched to a grim line, her arms folded, wiry muscles bunched in tension. Her eyes were fixed on the long column that held the lift.

  Valcyr was worried. They'd been gone for fifteen minutes, long enough for Tec to begin doing whatever she intended. "Call Tanaka, Pirate," she thought.

  Instantly the icon appeared in the center of her vision, a five-centimeter-tall buccaneer in a loose shirt, red velvet pants and black boots. Valcyr had first seen him in an ancient flat movie, something with a ridiculous name. "He's not answering my hails," he said.

  "Is he okay?"

  Pirate shook his misty bandanna'd head. "Impossible to say. He may simply want privacy." "With Desron Tec? Keep trying. See if you can at least contact Samurai."

  Like Tanaka's Samurai, Pirate was a biocomp. He wound through Valcyr's brain, a kilometer-long strand of genetically engineered virus that formed both a powerful microcomputer and a second nervous system to augment her own. She'd programmed him to generate the buccaneer icon in her mind; she'd rather talk to it than a disembodied voice.

  "I really don't like this," Valcyr thought. "I don't care how badly hurt Tanaka is, Samurai should answer our hails."

  "Unless he was ordered not to."

  "Why would Tanaka do a stupid thing like that?"

  "To keep you from taking action," Pirate said, "and risking the mission."

  Valcyr ground her teeth. "Yeah, that sounds like him. Stupid quixotic ..." She wished she could pace away some of her explosive tension without revealing herself.

  A pair of gloved hands grabbed her hips and dragged her back into the grinding pressure of someone's pelvis. As she fought the impulse to drive a bone-breaking kick into her attacker's thigh, she heard a voice purr, "Let's go somewhere private."

  She twisted her head to look at Radm and smiled, sugar and heat. "Certainly."

  Then she ordered Pirate to open a complink and thought into it, "Though after a week playing joyjockey in every Dome on Kagni, I'm astonished you have the strength." The comp obediently transmitted the comment to Radm's Matta Hari, which simulated it in his mind.

  "The day you can't get a rise out of me, darling," he broadcasted back, "check my pulse." He leered elaborately.

  Though she was as tall as most men, Radm was a head taller than that, a length of hard muscle honed to agility and strength. His face was long, with sharp Nordic lines, eyes a cool green, hair the color of wheat swept back from a center part. A lock of it dangled eternally in front of his eyes, despite his frequent swiping efforts to keep it in place. He was a good man in an investigation, a fight or a bed, and something of a pain in the ass

  everywhere else.

  "You know," Radm said, "that's a pretty piece of lace you've got on. Wonder what it wants to be when it grows up?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Sweetheart, this is Dome haute couture. The well-dressed whore is wearing goose bumps this season."

  "They go so well with welts and bruises. You look pretty healthy though -- I'm surprised the 'jocks have been able to resist the temptation."

  "They haven't. You should have seen me this morning; there was this really charming little Romeo with a nasty uppercut. Thank God for regeneration. Five minutes under the box and you're as good as new." She paused and blew a worried gust between her teeth. "Though I've got a feeling Tanaka isn't going to be so lucky. Twenty minutes ago, Desron Tec walked up to him, leered sweetly and dragged him out."

  Radm's expression didn't change from its facade of cheerful lust, but his eyes narrowed. "You think she knows?"

  "No, it looked more like standard Tec fun and games -- but having seen the last body they carried out of there, I wish Tanaka could have attracted a nicer playmate. Like a black widow spider."

  "Tan can handle anything our esteemed Senator pimp throws at him." He stopped, directing a look over her shoulder. "The merc by the door is staring. Let's perfect our cover." He reached out and dragged her in close, burying his face under her jaw. She allowed his nibbling teeth to distract her.

  "Look," the merc said, looming in dark armor, blocky and lethal, "is she giving you any trouble?" In one hand was a long, thin bar with a neon orange handle, and he swu
ng it with a deceptively lazy rotation of a thick wrist.

  Radm lifted his head and gave the merc a drunken grin. "Actually, I was just explaining to her how I'm going to take her upstairs and ..." He proceeded to go into lewd detail.

  The guard grinned behind his helmet faceplate. "Sounds like you've got the right idea. Wear the bitch out." He swaggered back to his station.

  "Remind me to dice that slug when we come back through," Valcyr sent. "If you'd said I wasn't cooperating, he'd have hit me with that neural prod again. He's already burned me four times, and I'm starting to develop a grudge."

  Radm's arms tightened around her. "Really? Y'know, I'm beginning to feel a certain resentment myself. Maybe I should have a private talk with him after he gets off his shift. Nothing elaborate, just break a kneecap or two, maybe shatter a few ribs, round the whole thing out with a nice skull fracture." He displayed his teeth.

  "That one's mine, Radm -- don't poach." She trailed a fingernail along the line of his jaw for the benefit of anyone else who might be watching, then paused suddenly, frowning. "By the way, aren't we scheduled to hit the Dome computer now?"

  "Ummhmm. Be a good time, too. Our friend with the prod seems to be wondering why I'm not forcing you into sex crimes."

  The merc was staring at them, his mouth a hard slash under his helmet. Valcyr curled her lip in his direction. "Yep. Definitely a good time. But if Tanaka isn't back down by the time we're done, I vote we subject Tec to some coitus interruptus."

  A stream bounced atonal music over its pebbled bed as Tanaka sat meditating on one low, grassy bank. Dappled shadow swayed with the delicate cherry tree that shaded him, leaves whispering in an early autumn breeze. A falling leaf waltzed by through air that smelled of damp earth, and the sky overhead was a blue vivid enough to make the eyes ache. It was, Tanaka decided, one of those utterly perfect days when summer was just breaking into fall, a last shard of warmth.

  In his hand was the cool weight of a stone. Worn perfectly smooth, soothing to the fingers, it was blindingly white, yet hidden in its depths were striations of gray and black that formed subtle patterns. There was something pleasing, too, in its casual asymmetry. Though erosion had relentlessly pared its angles into curves, its shape and nature remained, immutable. A warrior's ideal.

  Tanaka thought about that as the stone grew warm in his fingers, his mind drifting in idle currents. Sunlight beat his shoulders, hot contrast to the cool breeze that feathered over his lightly sweating skin. He closed his eyes. In the distance, he could hear a sound, oddly rhythmic, a muffled thudding. And something like a groan ...

  ... Ripping agony, flesh shredding over his shoulders with each slice of fire across his back, searing a scream in his throat ... Vision crisping to black at the edges... his face pressed against chill metal, the taste of blood flooding his mouth, sharp copper bite wet on his tongue ...

  Hastily, Tanaka concentrated until he sat again on the bank. Far away from his body's suffering.

  When Ragoczy walked through the Dome's double doors, heads turned within a ten meter radius. He smiled. He'd worked for that look they were giving him, the mass astonished gape. Being extravagantly conspicuous had its advantages. And when it didn't, he could be invisible.

  He was big, very big, over two meters tall, dressed in a long black overcoat that emphasized his bulk and belled with every stride, trailing the musk of leather. Buckles glinted at both thick shoulders, and the coat's standing collar framed his squared-off blond head. His broad jaw was furred in pale beard stubble, and deep lines slashed around his eyes. Something in his expression suggested a sort of unpleasant amusement, as if he were privately enjoying a rather cruel joke.

  Steel flashed in the corner of Ragoczy's vision, and his head automatically swiveled to track it. There, at one end of the lobby, a teenage boy with a knife menaced three Dome women, apparently trying to decide which of them he wanted to kill. Drawn to the violence, Ragoczy moved closer. The killer was grinning, his eyes cold and inhuman in the smooth round face. Feeding on the whores' terror. He evidently hadn't noticed the fatalism that lay under it, the sense that, if he didn't get them, someone else would.

  Ragoczy knew that would have spoiled his enjoyment: a killer wants to be unique to his victim, a singular and memorable presence, even if death is only temporary.

  On lazy impulse, Ragoczy stepped forward and snagged the blade out of his hand, plunged it into the boy's chest and dragged it down to the snap of breaking ribs. Effortlessly, he jerked it out with a flying crimson splatter. The would-be killer looked up at him in blank amazement, then collapsed like a bundle of sticks.

  "When you decide to kill someone," Ragoczy told the dying eyes, "it's good taste to do it quickly."

  Behind him, from the whores, he heard a hysterical giggle.

  Radm followed Valcyr out of the lift, into the subbasement three floors beneath the lobby. The decor was different down here, the lush red and gold vulgarity of the upper floor yielding to cold whites and grays. Valcyr, long body thinly veiled in black lace, made a startling contrast against the frigid sterility around her. For an instant, he allowed himself to watch her hips roll under the silk. When she stopped, he almost ran into her.

  She turned and gave him a strange look.

  "What?" he asked, defensive.

  "Radm, throttle your libido for a minute. We're there." She gestured at the neon orange blast doors in front of her; the computer room. "Got a lock pick?"

  He reached under his shirt, raking up his side until he found a computer card. He pulled it out and stuck it in the slot by the door. In a moment, the card had discovered the magnetic pattern that would unlock the doors, and they hissed open. Valcyr and Radm slipped between them.

  He had a brief impression of a long white room, obviously a security center, one wall taken up by a floor-to-ceiling monitor with a guard sitting in front of it. Assorted weapons and body armor were racked along the other walls, and a security cannon hung from the ceiling, its long muzzle pointing into one corner. Radm noted its location, logging it into his comp. A muted power hum purred under the sound of low voices from the monitor, and the room smelled of plasti and ozone.

  The mercenary had just realized he had unauthorized company; he was rising out of his chair, twisting toward them as he drew his blazer. "What in the hell are ..."

  Valcyr whirled toward Radm and shoved him with both hands. Startled, he took a half step back. "Now look," she hissed at him, "there are some things I just will not do, and anything involving snakes is high on the list."

  Catching on, he roared back, "For what I paid, if I tell you to French kiss a cobra, you'd better by God pucker!"

  "You know you're not authorized to be down here," said the merc, irritated. He wasn't wearing his helmet, and thin strands of red hair covered his balding head. His blazer was trained on Radm. "Blow off before I ..."

  Valcyr pivoted, going onto one leg, cocking the other up, then snapping the knee out straight into a high, hard kick. Her instep sent the blazer wheeling in a long arc, then cocked back again for a second kick that spun the merc around and dropped him.

  Simultaneously, Radm went for the cannon that was tracking toward them as the Dome's central computer reacted to the attack. With a mental command, he killed the field that held the bayonet on his forearm. It dropped into his hand. He flicked it, guided unerringly by his comp, into the gaping black muzzle. The mainframe couldn't fire with his blade lodged there; the shrapnel from the blast was as likely to damage the computer as kill the two

  invaders.

  Valcyr was already across the room, jerking out an access panel to the main memory core as he pulled a cyberleech off his suit. Running to kneel beside her, he pressed the spidery device onto the shimmering surface of the memory unit. With a straining pop, the cyberleech sunk its legs deep, interrupting the computer's alert call to the mercs in the upper floors and replacing it with an error message. Hopefully, they'd dismiss it as a system glitch. A instant later, the lights of the
entire console went dark as the leech cut the mainframe's power. There was an abrupt and hollow quiet.

  Valcyr broke it. "Let's do the comp and get out before the merc's relief comes. Do you want to crack it, or shall I?"

  "I'll do it. Take care of him, will you?" He pulled out a sleeper and tossed it to her. She snatched the little button out of the air and went to slap it against the man's forehead. It instantly adhered to his skin, generating a weak electric pulse at just the frequency to induce the encephalic patterns of sleep. An added benefit was that it also tended to repress long term memory retention; by the time he woke up, the merc wouldn't remember the encounter at all.

  Valcyr straightened and came back to lean a hip on the console. "Think it'll be much trouble?" "Nah. This system's no better than fourth level AI." He grinned. "An easy lay."

  To his computer, Radm thought, "Ready?"

  Hari, its icon, appeared as a foggy dancing girl in thin silk. "Hmmm. Hold on. Let me give it partial power so I can start loading. Okay. Here we go..."

  And the room began to fade around Radm, his consciousness attenuating into interface with the Dome's computer.

  There is a vast difference between the speed of human thought and that of an artificial intelligence. Any interface between the two is a rough thing, best conducted, not in the cold processes of logical thought, but in the instantaneous world of intuition, of impulse. That part of the mind interprets the dizzying input of a computer link as a shifting series of images: Cyberdream.

  Suddenly he was hungry. Very hungry. Hunger gnawed at him, feeling much bigger than the five-year-old's belly that contained it. He'd had nothing to eat since the can of peas he'd split with his sister yesterday. The last can in the cabinet.

  And Mom was gone again. Disappeared the day before yesterday with the latest guy, and there was no way of telling when she'd be back. Mom did the best she could, he knew, it was just that sometimes she forgot things, like buying food. Not skinpatches, she never forgot that ... but he knew she needed them. She'd explained it to him, how sick she got, how hungry.