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  Digital Chimera Copyright © 2020 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2020 by JN Chaney

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Digital Chimera

  Book 3 in the Sol Arbiter Series

  J.N. Chaney

  Jia Shen

  Book Description

  In 2854, Section 9 operative Tycho Barrett must exfiltrate a key witness from the Martian city-state of Hellas.

  Framed for the murder of an influential leader, Section 9 is left scattered and exposed deep within hostile territory.

  Tycho and Section 9 must now cross the eastern half of the divided city to reach the safety of the west. Along the way, enemies of all kind will hunt them, including corporate enforcers, syndicate bounty hunters, and a specialized unit of monstrous technological chimera.

  With enemies on all sides, Tycho has little hope of survival.

  But Arbiter are made to defy death, and Tycho is no exception.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Stay Up To Date

  About J.N. Chaney

  1

  Are you on him, Tycho?

  The message was from Andrea Capanelli, my old friend from Sol Federation Intelligence Section 9 and now my commanding officer. She wasn’t far, no more than a few meters, but in the crush and chaos of a Martian street it was easier to communicate by text. Her message showed up in front of my eyes in glowing green letters, a personal augmented reality view courtesy of my dataspike. Using the subvocalization-to-text feature, I sent my reply.

  Yeah, I see him. He’s up there in front of that noodle shop.

  On either side of him were his Martian bodyguards, lithe and arrogant but as alert as they were supposed to be. Dressed in head-to-toe black, with their faces masked against the dust, they looked like hungry panthers. Syndicate gunmen on the steps of a nearby bank were watching them closely, vaguely offended by their existence but not yet motivated to do anything about it.

  East Hellas was a dangerous place. Separated from West Hellas by the cynically misnamed Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart, the eastern city is not only a closed world, but a cluster of closed worlds nested inside each other like Matryoshka dolls.

  Don’t lose sight of him, we’re almost at the station.

  I’m on him, Andrea.

  There was a long pause. Chain of command, Barrett.

  Ignoring the fact that she had just called me by my first name, “Tycho,” a few short seconds ago, I responded properly with my commanding officer’s surname. Sorry, Capanelli.

  According to our intelligence, Sasha Ivanovich was heading for the train station on his way to work at the Ares Terrestrial Medical Labs. The best spot to take him would be at the station, where crowds funneling through the tight spaces would make it all but impossible for his bodyguards to keep people from getting near. The whole plan depended on me being much closer to him than I currently was before he reached the station, but that wasn’t going to be easy.

  The brutalist architecture of apartment buildings loomed down from either side of me–floor after floor after floor of Martian families crowded close together, countless windows offering a clear vantage of the neighborhood. Peering through many of those windows would be informants, people who watched the streets for the local syndicate. Anything out of place, anything suspicious, and the gunmen lounging around on the streets below would get a call on their dataspikes. When that happened, they would drop the pretense of casual laziness and converge on me like predators moving in on a wounded animal at a watering hole.

  In that event, hope for getting to safety would rest on Vincenzo Veraldi and Jonathan Bray, the two Section 9 agents assigned to act as overwatch on this particular mission. Veraldi and Bray were monitoring our progress from vantage points somewhere on the block, ready to bring more trouble than the locals could handle if it came to that, but it was my job to make sure it didn’t. A mistake on my part at this critical point would blow Section 9’s cover and cause us no end of problems.

  I sped up the pace and slipped as discreetly as possible around a small knot of arguing locals, avoiding a street musician with hauntingly traumatized eyes and a stringed instrument that made an uncanny warbling sound, and finally taking advantage of a delay caused by an overturned cart of cumin and turmeric. I successfully caught up with Sasha and his bodyguards without drawing attention. Pleased with my spycraft, I sent a message to Andrea.

  In range.

  Our mission was to assassinate Ivanovich as he boarded the train. In my right hand, I held a single-shot splinter gun, the tiny dart of which was tipped with a slow-acting nanite poison. This was my first official kill order from Section 9, so I was “making my bones” as a new member—although that was a bit of a misnomer, as I had assassinated August Marcenn on Venus before Section 9 ever got the chance to. As impressed as they had all seemed then, none of them seemed to think it counted. Neither did my successful assassination of the cyborg that had murdered Sophie Anderson. As a Section 9 agent, I was still “dry,” and I would remain so until I became “wet” by completing this mission.

  The assassination had to appear as if any of the local syndicates could have carried it out. Section 9 needed to avoid exposure at all costs, thus the use of poison rather than more conventional tools. I’d close in on the man when he was delayed at the turnstiles or in some other convenient spot and put the splinter in him without being seen. Ivanovich probably wouldn’t even feel it, but if he did, he wouldn’t know what it was. He’d succumb to the effects of the poison shortly after disembarking, at which point we would already be well on our way across the wall and back in West Hellas.

  That was the plan anyway, but whether it would really turn out like that was anyone’s guess. Andrea knew I was in range and could give the kill order if she wanted to, but I thought she would probably hold off and I was right.

  Wait for the Jason.<
br />
  She meant “wait for the station”—subvocalization to text is an inexact process, sometimes embarrassingly so.

  Understood.

  I could see the station now. The glowing sign read UNDERBELT 2. It was one of thousands in the city, and one of three for the different levels of the Underbelt neighborhood. Hellas was sectioned like a honeycomb to safeguard against catastrophic depressurization, and no personal vehicles of any kind were permitted. The only way to get around was by train or on foot, likely the main cause of the city’s stifling tribalism. Despite the tendency of Hellans to define themselves solely by birth section and the syndicate controlling it, people still had to get around. The train station was always crowded.

  Near the platform, I saw two armored StateSec officers. Having recently been a wanted fugitive, I tensed up a little when I saw them but then I relaxed, knowing that Section 9 had cleared all my charges anyway. I shouldn’t have worried in the first place; StateSec funding in East Hellas is provided entirely by Ares Terrestrial. They were hardly interested in keeping order anywhere except in the few areas the company directly controlled, such as the public transit stations. They wouldn’t waste two seconds of paperwork on a warrant from Earth.

  Of course, I was planning to commit a murder right under their noses within the next few minutes, but one thing at a time.

  Despite the StateSec presence, Sasha’s bodyguards became noticeably more aggressive and arrogant when they stepped out of syndicate territory and into the station. They shoved people aggressively aside, knocking one man to the floor. They made a big point of waving their guns around, looking in all directions for a potential threat—and not taking any notice of me when they did so.

  At first, I interpreted all of this as a sign of the company’s weakness. They had lost control of East Hellas, and the corporate totalitarianism they had attempted to create had devolved instead into gangster feudalism. Since they’d cut the security budget to maintain their profit margin, they no longer had the resources available to challenge the syndicates for control of the city. Charismatic preachers like Bensouda Hafidi could wave the torch all they wanted, but if Ares Terrestrial couldn’t even control public transit then what could they hope to do about the syndicates?

  I soon realized it was worse than that. Sasha Ivanovich was an Ares Terrestrial VIP, in charge of a major research project, yet his bodyguards were back-alley gunmen rather than suited corporate security. As contractors for a company bigwig, they outranked the StateSec officers on the platform, and that’s why they could get away with acting so arrogant. The StateSec guys just looked away, knowing that they had no enforceable authority in this situation.

  This planet is fucked, I commented over text.

  Andrea responded immediately. Focus!

  Amazed at the fact that they still hadn’t spotted me as a potential threat, I took the opportunity to get a few feet closer as the first of the guards went through the turnstile and onto the train platform. That left Sasha and the other guard on my side of the turnstile. The rear guard was scanning the room left and right, making a big show of his professionalism. I wasn’t too close, from his perspective—but I was close enough to use the splinter gun. All I needed him to do was to look away for a single second, just as Sasha was using his pass-card.

  The card reader stopped working. Sasha smacked it, and the rear guard turned to face him. “What is it, boss?”

  Sasha’s voice was gravelly. “It’s this fucking card reader. It won’t let me through!”

  I bent my elbow and slowly raised the splinter gun to shoot from the hip, aiming at the back of Sasha’s neck. I would have taken him right then, if not for the green letters flashing in front of my eyes.

  ABORT ABORT ABORT.

  I lowered the splinter gun, though not entirely without being noticed.

  The guard on the other side of the platform saw me lowering my arm and pointed me out to his companion on my side of the turnstile. “Tell that asshole to back off!”

  The other guard spun around and stuck his gun under my nose. “Give us three feet, fuckwit!”

  I put my hands up and stepped back as far as the crowd would let me. It wasn’t nearly three feet, but it turned out to be enough to satisfy them. The card reader suddenly started working again, and Sasha Ivanovich stepped through onto the train platform. I followed after him, but the bodyguards were now alert to me. As the train pulled in, one of them turned his head in my direction.

  “Take a different car. Or die in this one.” His voice was cold, although it did sound a bit like he practiced his tough-guy act in front of the mirror.

  I did as he said and boarded the next car down. There was nothing more to be done until I had new orders. Sasha Ivanovich wouldn’t die today.

  The ride to the hotel took almost two hours, due solely to the necessity of maintaining mission security. We were on the 250-H, which could have reached our hotel with a single transfer to the 250-V. As a spy, things are rarely allowed to be that simple. If you’re noticed at all on a job like this one, standard protocol is a minimum of four transfers, including one complete change of direction. So I took the 250-H to the 253-H, then the 253-H over to the 253-V, then the 253-V up to the 157-H, then back to the 250-H on the 157-H, then the 250-V to the hotel. By the time I was done, I was ready for a hot shower and a cool Old Fashioned. Instead, I had to listen to a patronizing lecture from my colleague Andrew Jones.

  “Don’t worry about being spotted, Tycho. For a dry guy like you, I can’t really say you did too bad. The training’s starting to show.”

  Andrew was my first contact with Section 9, back when I was on Tower 7 during the 2/77 Incident on Venus. When I sought him out, I was acting under the impression that he was a cybersecurity expert. He did have a few skills in that department, but his real specialty was infiltration. This made no sense to me and never had, because the man was so irritating I couldn’t imagine him doing anything at all without being noticed and remembered.

  “I did manage to kill August Marcenn.” I pointed out, walking right past Andrew to stand at the window of our hotel suite. As the infiltration expert, he had come to Hellas before anyone else and established a base here. His chosen location was the Aphrodite Arms, a hotel of more than questionable reputation. From our window on the fifth floor, I looked down on the tangled streets of the Overbelt section.

  Andrew somehow managed to sound genuinely confused. “August Marcenn? Did we ever assign you to kill August Marcenn?”

  A few meters away, the huge, muscular frame of Jonathan Bray appeared in one of the bedroom doorways. “Jones, are you ever going to get sick of yanking Tycho’s chain?”

  “Tycho could use a tighter chain in my opinion.” This was Vincenzo Veraldi, the outfit’s knife-fighting expert and second in command. He was also by far our most stylish member, with his tailored three-piece suit, perpetual stubble, and shoulder-length brown hair.

  I turned in his direction. “A tighter chain? I would have gotten the job done. Andrea aborted it.”

  “She probably aborted it because you’d been spotted.” Andrew’s voice was mournful, like it made him personally sad that I had fucked up the mission. The first time I met the guy, I wanted to punch him. When we were back on Earth during the Huxley case and he wasn’t there, I had actually asked after him. I don’t know why. Now I was back to wanting to punch him again.

  “I was spotted after the abort, not before.”

  Veraldi frowned. “I wonder what’s up, then. She ought to be back by now.”

  “I am.” Andrea dropped out of thermoptic camouflage, which made her seem to materialize right in front of us. She must have slipped in behind me. “I doubled back to make sure Tycho wasn’t followed. Is everyone here?”

  Bray gestured back into the room behind him. “Thomas is fucking around with the computers.”

  Andrea nodded. “Call him out here.”

  An attractive and commanding woman with curly blonde hair and four prosthetic limbs, Andrea wa
s in charge of the whole crew. She liked to use her thermoptic gear to make dramatic entrances, especially when she could listen in for a few minutes first.

  “I knew you were here,” said Andrew. It was technically possible, since active camouflage leaves a visible distortion if you know what to look for.

  Andrea didn’t bother to challenge him on it. Instead she turned to me. “You weren’t quite as focused as you should have been out there.”

  “Like the man says, I’m still dry.” Of course, when it suited them, they could choose to decide that I wasn’t.

  “Hardly,” Andrea replied. “An experienced operator like you knows better than to joke around while you’re stalking someone.”

  Veraldi nodded. “A shorter chain. So, you pulled out because they spotted him?”

  “No, it’s like Tycho said. They only spotted him after I’d already given the abort command. He would have completed the mission.”

  Thomas Young came out of the bedroom and pushed his way past Jonathan Bray as if the big man wasn’t even there. It wasn’t because Thomas was bigger. He was just that rude, or socially clueless if you prefer. Our in-house tech expert, Thomas was not so expert when it came to human beings.