Dawn of the Courtezan: Phase 01 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Read online

  Fhelps blinked and scanned the remaining data. All Gaeveinn land use permits… in order. Criminal background(s) and known associations… clear and cross-referenced. Water draw… below allocation. The Gaeveinns ran an efficient, zero impact marijuana farm. Aside from the gyno-birth plans, they were painfully normal.

  The land, however…

  Fhelps wiggled his toes, hunting the elastic chasms of his mind. The early winter wind was as cold as the situation was vexing. Somewhere in this sector was a subterranean still!

  Buried on the farmer’s property without his knowledge?

  The answer lay in the water. Only a fusion based system could reprocess and jet pump 12,000 liters in such a short period of time. The nearest purification factory was 326 km west, in Colby. That purifier provided two thirds of Kansas with clean drinking water, along with a portion of southwest Nebraska and eastern Colorado.

  Examining the flurry of details made the migraine return, rage not far behind, he knew. He could feel the pulsing behind his eyes.

  Has it gotten colder?

  He thought about weather and his HUD automatically displayed the current forecast. Temperature had dropped three degrees. Sun, 132 minutes from setting. They would have to conclude this hunt within the hour. Despite a life in the gym, Fhelps’ quadriceps ached from stepping over four kilometers of mud.

  He puffed his cheeks and sneered at the wind. Every CNED agent worth a digicent had busted a closet solar still. But only thirteen fusion stills had ever been discovered. They were massive operations, with power cores the size of beach balls at their center. They were the stuff of legend. And Fhelps wasn’t going to find one. At least not today. He had been so certain when Bao-Yu was preparing them breakfast.

  It’s a shame. Saxon and I checked out some of the division’s priciest gear.

  Their holoflage suits were calibrated to confirm subterranean fusion at 800 meters. The tree line was only a kilometer away now.

  Perhaps we will uncover something there.

  All he needed was a sliver of exposed BioPex moving unregistered water and he could ping a squadron of drones.

  Or electrical broadcasts from a camouflaged solar array. Mighty Sky Dog, just give me…

  Ahead, Saxon suddenly paused, “Sir! You get that? Motion there… no, there! The base of the hill!” Saxon had leveled his gun along a firing vector. “Can I release a case of micros?” he asked excitedly.

  “Calm down, not yet.”

  Fhelps stopped walking. The treed hill in the distance was half-obscured by low hanging clouds. He scanned up, back down, goggles moving over the rows of jagged farmland.

  Satisfied, he quipped, “What exactly do you think you’re seeing, child?”

  Saxon said, “I think there’s…”

  Fhelps jumped as his own kinesis klaxon cut the stream. A female deer had emerged from the tree line and bolted across the field. The animal was running for its life straight at them!

  Why did our IR scanners not detect her?

  There was nothing but open ground all around, no predator in sight. Fhelps magnified and expanded scans across all composite frequencies. Nothing! If a duck hunter had been camouflaged in a blind…

  We would have picked up the citizen’s Ipv7 two kilometers back.

  The deer continued its panicked dash across the open field. Before Fhelps could stop him, Saxon had knelt and taken aim.

  The boy fired. A round of jade-toned particle energy spat down field and popped the fleeing doe like an overfed tick. Only the spindly legs remained. The shattered stalks galloped two more halting steps before collapsing in a slosh pile of guts and scorched fur.

  Fhelps yelled at his foster son hysterically, “Sax! You’re off range, non-emergency! Why shoot a deer? There’s a reason we got holoflage on! Child? You listening to me?”

  Saxon grimaced and turned down his com. The number of times the man had spoken those same words, Child? You listening to me? He could not bear it.

  I’m not your child.

  Pretending his false dad did not exist was the best way to ignore his utter lameness.

  Saxon re-centered his HUD’s tracking matrix. There was something else out there, he could sense it. The feelings were coming more often now.

  He shook off the sensation and raised his fist in the universal hold sign, breath rapid but steady, “Sir, I’m telling you, I gotta light on the seismic. Just for a second. It wasn’t the deer. Can I release the birds?”

  Fhelps sighed. Best to let the boy have his fun.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sweet!”

  Saxon reached into a pocket and withdrew a black case containing four hunting assist drones. Each was the size of a gray ping pong ball. He dumped the drones into the palm of his hand and tapped his combud. They instantly illuminated, red first, then green, and Saxon threw them into the air. He smiled as the drones spun in a coherent orbit, established antigrav, then flew towards the location where the doe had emerged from the line of hickories.

  “We should begin receiving telemetry in three, two, one… shit!”

  “Watch your mouth!” snapped Fhelps, glowering, “What is it?”

  He watched the tiny drones, not yet fifty meters away, suddenly go black and drop from the sky, plopping into the mud one by one.

  “Saxon! That’s CNED tech!”

  “It’s not me!” cried the boy. “They just died! I think we got hacked!”

  No one is fast enough to hack a moving drone.

  Despite his underlying desire to run over and beat the boy with his rifle, Fhelps knew it wasn’t Saxon’s fault. The kid was a code whiz. He could pilot an autodrone at three years old, so the situation was odd. Fhelps despised oddness. Oddness bred unpredictable things, and unpredictability was a gateway to unacceptable outcomes.

  “Child, you’re giving me the nerves. What are your stats on…”

  An articulated BOOM shook the air. They both ducked. Looking up, the engines of a transorbital passenger jet turned from red to violet, pushing the plane across the sound barrier on its way to a standard mach 3 cruise. The jet left a vertical halo in its contrail at the point where it went supersonic before slipping into the clouds.

  Fhelps exhaled with relief and re-moistened his lips, speaking in a pesky timbre, “You got me jumping at airplanes, Sax! How do you think that makes me feel? Go retrieve your dead drones! First lower that particle rifle, and repeat stats!”

  Saxon lowered the barrel of his Mantis.

  His breath was still hurried, “I apologize, sir. But I really think…”

  “Just shut your mouth,” snipped Fhelps. “Numbers.”

  The boy was more than 100 meters ahead. It was unlikely, but possible his sensors were picking up something else.

  Saxon swallowed nervously.

  Those drones didn’t just fall out of the sky.

  The day’s light appeared to be growing brighter though the sun stayed hidden. It wasn’t just the premonitions. Something was changing with his eyes also.

  A bead of cold sweat ran down Saxon’s forehead, “Okay, okay. I see .02 kinetic ripples, non-linear sequencing.”

  Fhelps had instructed Saxon to never trust his gut, to let computers do the thinking.

  He spoke with confidence, “Sax, windy day, that readout could be yawn and tug on tree roots. It could be a deer fawn. That doe was probably trying to distract us before you blasted her.” He tried to deepen his voice, “I want you to advance, all right then? Gather those drones, and don’t you dare fire that gun without my permission!”

  They would go as far as the base of the hill, drop a couple new centibots, call it a day. It was going to be a long hike back to the Lexus.

  Saxon turned back and glared at his foster father as they again began marching.

  I hate you. More than you will ever know.

  The bald, old man was always trying to school him. He enjoyed telling Saxon things like, Throughout history, the smallest pieces of data have exposed the greatest of criminals�
�� Sax. Crap, all crap. The nickname, Sax was crap. The CNED Youth Initiative was crap!

  Saxon brushed a strand of blonde hair from his eyes as he continued, unable to ignore what he knew to be true, “Sir, I’m telling you.”

  “Trees and wind, Sax,” said Fhelps. “Trees and wind.”

  “It wasn’t geo yawn and tug! I’m not stupid. We’re a kilometer away! Something big moved in that dirt.”

  Fhelps smiled pompously and checked his own array, “First of all, watch your tone. Second of all, what are your stats now?”

  Saxon loved rolling his eyes, “My sensors are flat line. It was just a feeling.”

  “The world doesn’t run on feelings, child. It runs on…”

  “Numbers, I know, sir, Jeezus, numbers! Can we get this over with? I’m starving.”

  Saxon trudged ahead faster, boots splashing mud between the rows of dead hemp. He made it eleven meters before his combud klaxoned again, this time louder. He was 114.26 meters ahead of Fhelps.

  Saxon’s heart jumped, “2.1 verified ripples, 38.7 x 97.8. Something has to be spooling, and it’s no baby deer! I mean, 2.1, that’s fusion, right?”

  Fhelps was seeing similar readings, “Hold position, com silent.”

  Fhelps knelt to the ground and activated the binocular stabilizers on his HUD, magnifying a view of the tree line. He could see rusted barbed wire nailed into the hickories, one trunk after the next. Lumpy warts of scarred bark showed where the trees had absorbed the strands of metal fencing. He scanned carefully, pretending it was a hidden image puzzle like at the bottom of the Sunday holocomics. Fhelps flipped his HUD to standard. Nothing. He returned it to a 5,000 mm digital magnification.

  There.

  A baby deer rustling in the underbrush?

  This was ridiculous! He was too far out to get the same gravotemp readings the boy was. Nonetheless, 2.1 verified ripples was enough to make Fhelps boot his own lightning cannon.

  Per regulations outlined in the 2086 CNED Field Operations Manual, much of which Fhelps himself had authored, now was the time to ping a security drone for backup.

  Protocol.

  There was no reason. Not yet. Sax was right. They were onto something. The automated defenses around a fusion still? If so, their holoflage suits would make them invisible to standard motion scanners. Mega stills were automated. Warehouse bots did the heavy lifting. They oft had skeleton crews. Or so he had read. If he could surprise the shiners and bring them down alone, he would be…

  Fhelps said the word salaciously, “Famous,” letting it drift from the tip of his tongue.

  He didn’t realize it then, but his toes had stopped itching.

  “Sax, I want you to retreat to my left flank, twenty meters parallel. I’m holding position until you’re back here. Activating hypersense array now.”

  The suit’s array could scan at full spectrum for fifteen seconds, but a four second sweep would pick up any micro-wormhole activity. If there was anything in those trees larger than a rabbit running on fusion power, he would find it instantly.

  His voice trembled lightly, “Activate hypersense, authorization Fhelps 29.”

  A small green diode on the suit’s shoulder pack illuminated. There was a momentary vibration.

  Just like sim.

  He felt good as he waited.

  Readings will be negative.

  He steadied his breath, one second, two, three… his combud gave a truncated chirp.

  Fhelps looked at the information and blinked. He read the holocast twice. Then he read it a third time. A dry ball of terror formed in his throat.

  He whispered slowly, “Computer, encrypted stream.”

  His combud responded smoothly, “Encrypted stream initiated.”

  “Cross reference and verify onscreen data.”

  Saxon’s voice cut in, tinged with fear, “Sir, something dark is out here.”

  Fhelps flipped streams, scowling, “Shut up and retreat like I say, child!”

  He switched off the open stream, “Computer, verify HUD data.”

  The Human Biosync Processing Drive surgically implanted beneath his left temple reiterated the information succinctly in a computerized female voice only he could hear, “Verification complete. Dual independent wormholes maintaining stabilized orbit at 916.4 meters distance on a south by southwest trajectory. Targets are 2.32 meters beneath the soil surface, 2.02 meters, 1.76 meters.”

  Fhelps felt goosebumps rise. He heard the sound coming from the tree line. It really was just like a training sim. His suit’s directional microphones began transmitting a low, pulsing hum through his combud. The decibel meter indicated the hum was growing stronger, originating at the base of the hill. It was auto-streamed to both holoflage suits.

  “Sir, are you hearing that!?” asked Saxon.

  Fhelps’ head swirled. The audio sounded like a hovsemi spooling, levfan rotors spinning faster and faster. Visual alerts blinked rapidly across their HUD’s as the suits’ auto-alert klaxons began to chime.

  The computerized female voice was bright but devoid of emotion, “Detecting 47.8 harmonic ripples, 67.9 harmonic ripples, 113.0 harmonic ripples. Alert threshold achieved. Please cross verify any known gravotemporal sources. Civilian auto-alert in twenty seconds, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…”

  Saxon was running as fast as he could away from the trees. His boots slogged laboriously.

  “Believe me now, dad?!” I told you there was something else out there! Shit!” the boy was shouting as he ran.

  Suddenly, in a fit of panic, Saxon turned and knelt. He aimed and fired a second particle round. An enormous hickory tree at the base of the hill exploded. Yellow, late autumn leaves and splintered branches fluttered down like snowflakes as the huge tree toppled.

  Saxon was out of ammo.

  “Noooo!” Fhelps yelled so loudly his combud squealed, “You’ll alert them to our position!”

  “I think they’ve been alerted. I can hear…”

  “Just run, you ridiculous child!” cut Fhelps. “Run!”

  “But sir!” protested Saxon as he turned and again began to flee.

  “What is it, child?! I swear! Now is not the t…”

  “No, sir… Frank, dad! They just told me what you did!” yelled Saxon between breaths. “I won’t forget.”

  Fhelps scowled with a fresh rush of paranoia, “What are you speakin’…” A piercing klaxon vibrated his inner ear. “Just run, boy!” Fhelps snipped, “and no more of your foolish babble! Move!”

  He muted the klaxon with a blink and restabilized his magnified view of the hickory stand.

  “Great Dog in the Sky…” he whispered.

  Two large mounds of fresh dug soil dusted with leaves began collapsing in. Something was rising from the Earth. Fhelps tried to speak, but his throat was parched. His mind raced, normally ordered thoughts turning frantically back to the Bedouin.

  It’s not my fault the boy died! I took a bribe, your honor! I never wanted the sniveling brat in the first place… it was that man in the hood!

  Fhelps slapped his own cheek, needing the pain.

  Pull it together! What uses fusion? Power grid. Auto-turrets? Cyborgs?

  The closest military base was Fort Riley. They had cyborgs.

  Stream DEA! Why haven’t CNED drones confirmed our auto-ping?

  A DEA com driver would know how to shut down these robotic perimeter guns. Or whatever was spooling.

  He swallowed to wet his throat and squeaked, “Com, patch CNED control / cc DEA Gencom: Agent 29 authorization – Amend 21, repeat Amend 21! Reporting unregistered fusion activity, sector nine, quadrant four, Saline County, Kansas. Experiencing com irregularities. Manually streaming our pin!”

  He glanced at the mag view and bit his tongue. Before the barbed wire fence, a four-pronged, mechanical paw the size of a basketball broke the surface. Each toe on the robotic paw bore a twelve cm metal claw. Fhelps’ eyelids began to flutter.

  War cyborgs.

  A trickle of un
noticed tongue blood made its way over his lip. His back was damp with sweat. Fingers of winter wind cut through his holoflage suit.

  He dialed back the magnification 5%. Two robotic paws had broken the surface, pulling the full torso of a cybernetic DOGS unit into view. The huge, silver-toned automaton shook side to side, ridding itself of clinging dirt and leaves. Fhelps had only seen these creatures in war museums or in the holoflix. Such monsters had also been reported at the battle for the Lawrence Pumpkin Still.

  But those are urban myths!

  Following the first, a second DOGS unit began emerging from the Earth. The trunk of the hickory tree Saxon had felled lay on top of this one’s resting place. Once on all fours, obviously irritated by the obstruction, the creature seized the hickory in its jaws and hurled the tree into the open field. The beast again stood still.

  Beads of disbelief stung Fhelps’ eyes. From what he knew, the big ones with no BIOSKIN© had been outlawed to all except the highest echelons of the military.

  If they’re military, they’re on my side.

  Fhelps felt an illogical sense of relief.

  I just have to send over our Ipv7’s and the driver operating these borgs will see we’re CNED!

  Now out of the ground, the identical DOGS units were each the size of a hovlimo. They had elevated themselves from their hiding place under two meters of wet soil with the ease of birds preparing for flight. Their red eyes glowed as they swung their massive, silver and black titanalum heads back and forth, scanning. Fhelps could see their fortified joint gears spinning, making micro adjustments to their limbs. Their mechanical bodies were covered with armored scales arranged in complex geometric patterns, but they moved… like biologicals! Fhelps understood enough fusion 101 to know that the cyborgs had been laying dormant to evade detection. Their reactors were still spooling. In the afternoon’s waning gloom, a faint blue light emanated visibly from the independent cores mounted in their chest cavities.

  Two of them! Impossible!

  Fhelps tapped his combud, desperate for a response to his outgoing pings.

  The Govcloud’s default female voice was secretarial and prim, “Hello, Agent Fhelps, we are experiencing network difficulty. Your communications to…” the computer hesitated while it processed the message recipient, “CNED Control and DEA General cannot be broadcast at this time. We are experiencing network difficulty. Please try again later.”