Tyger Bright Read online

  “What difference would that make? I’m strapped in and can’t go anywhere.”

  Her mother unsecured the straps, freeing both wrists and ankles. San stretched. Her muscles ached from being pinned to one position for so long and the webbing had chafed so that she had to rub them for a few moments, urging the pain to subside. She hugged her mother, who felt so frail that San imagined a strong embrace might crush her.

  Eventually she pushed San away. “Go. Get to that shuttle. If it’s there and you got the details right, then take it. Head to Ganymede while station security is too confused to react. If your vision was wrong or it’s not there, come with me to Mars. Come home.”

  “What? You’re not going to argue with me anymore and just let me go? What if Fleet finds out you’re responsible for my escape?”

  Her mother smiled and then hugged her again. “You’re not a prisoner, San. And there’s much you need to learn, but I can’t tell you. If you feel so strongly about this that you’re willing to risk everything, then what you’re hearing . . . it might be real.” Her mother then shrugged. “Besides. I will tell them I was asleep and have no idea how you freed yourself. Don’t trust everyone in Fleet—only in God. He will watch over you. Whatever you do, do not trust Zhelnikov. He created something awful, which neither I nor your father wanted you to face.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “You don’t know yet what we’re up against, what your father and I were working on for all these years. There are competing weapons research programs, empires and fortunes of power. When you learn more about why we’re preparing for a war, one most don’t even know is coming, you’ll understand.” She kissed San on the cheek and then pushed her away. “Go. Find the path you must take. I will be gone the next time you reach Mars so know this: I love you. Soon, I and your father will be watching while you make us proud.”

  San struggled to hold back tears and did her best to remember the smell and feel of her mother, not knowing what the future held. Tears blinded her. By the time she blinked them away, minutes had passed but the corridor ahead remained empty. She crept forward and gripped the guide rail to keep from spinning head over foot, stopping a few meters away at a computer terminal. After a few taps, a web of green lines and dots popped up. Her mind struggled to concentrate through the pain, and she dug into the data that Fleet had fed into her gray matter during all those years of instruction, cable connected into semi-awares and simulation tanks. Soon she’d accessed the scout ship’s logs: specifications, navigation data, and Phobos Station docking details; they all matched what she had seen earlier. San pieced together the start of a plan, and then traced the lines on the terminal’s map to the point where she found the maintenance shops. She headed deeper into the center of Mars’ moon, where the clanking sounds got even louder and a roar of air handling enveloped her.

  A group of men laughed. The sound echoed through the narrow shaft and recycled air carried with it a tinge of ozone mixed with oil, almost making San cough. Ahead of her a thick pressure hatch rested in the open position and bright blue light spilled into an access shaft, which otherwise was lit by dim LEDs placed to show handholds carved into the rock. San took a deep breath. Her heart pounded and threatened to shake her chest into pieces but she ignored the sensation and pulled her way to the hatch, slipping into the small compartment beyond.

  “I need help. Do any of you have a set of torx drivers and needle-nose pliers I can borrow? Or a spare fix-all?”

  The men said nothing. Then one of them pulled on an e-cig and puffed a cloud of vapor into the air, which drifted across and between them, eventually sucked into an air intake. Three maintenance personnel sat strapped onto makeshift chairs around an empty cable spool bolted to the rock to form a table, upon which they had been playing cards. The cards were magnetized. One of the men slapped his hand to rest on the metal table and stood, placing his other hand against the low ceiling to keep from bouncing upward.

  “What they do to you, tiny?” he asked. He and the others were long and thin, crammed into the space—native Martians, the opposite of San in appearance.

  “You mean why am I so short?”

  “You aren’t just short,” another one said. “You remind me of a cube of that old stuff people used to eat. Spam. They took meat and poured it into a block-mold.”

  San’s face went hot with embarrassment. “Yeah, funny. Look, do you have tools I can borrow or not?”

  The first one nodded and grabbed a belt from a wall locker. “What you need fixed? I’ll do it.”

  “My mother and I are waiting for the next transport and her oxygen generator is acting up. I know how to use a fix-all.”

  All three laughed, confusing San; she hadn’t made a joke. She’d been gone for a month but already Mars was a foreign land, the men’s accents out of place, and if this was no longer home where was it?

  The man yanked a fix-all from his belt and pushed so the tool flew across to San.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “It’s not right what they’re doing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You. The others they engineered. It’s not natural and they’ve started re-assigning normal people—real humans—to crap jobs. We used to be flight officers. Navigators and weapons techs. Fleet has us fixing low grav toilets and soon you won’t be able to enlist with Fleet unless you turn yourself into an ugly little brick of Spam. Give me my tool back in ten minutes or I’ll come find you.”

  San reversed out of the room. The three men glared and the hair on the back of her neck stood up so that she didn’t feel safe, even after she’d reached the access shaft outside.

  The main panel indicator light blinked red, indicating that the airlock had been sealed and San entertained the idea of a software hack. The idea faded; it was always easier to hot wire security doors. But her hands shook as she brought the fix-all closer to the panel because as soon as she began unscrewing the main plate, an alarm would alert Phobos Station security of unauthorized access to station systems. At best she’d have five minutes—a few more if the guards weren’t paying attention to their status terminals. Even then bots would alert if the guards failed to respond, giving her ten minutes at the most.

  San grabbed a nearby handhold and brought the fix-all close to the panel before activating it. It hummed to life. The square black chunk of metal dangled via a thick wire attached to a handheld terminal, and she began punching one finger on the pad, entering commands. Almost immediately, the black metal transformed. Microbots released from the chunk and swarmed over the screws, which spun then flew away, until finally the panel drifted from the wall at the end of a tangle of multicolored wires and fiber optic cables. When San heard shouting in the distance, her hands trembled again.

  “Come on!”

  She continued punching at the keyboard, ignoring the fact that she floated in the corridor, her head bumping against the ceiling. The microbots swarmed again. Now they climbed over the panel’s wires and began severing connections, then glowed as they fused new ones until the red panel light turned green. The airlock door clunked open. Its servos chugged as they swung the giant metal square away from San, who dove through the gap and into the airlock.

  San hit the main panel on her side of the door and waited for it to inch closed. Someone shouted from outside. She urged the door to speed up and heard the scrape of boots and metal against rock as someone moved, headed straight for her. The airlock shut with a clang. San pounded on the locking button and then activated the fix-all again, keying in instructions for the microbots to seal the door permanently. She grinned and pushed off for the scout ship’s door.

  Get to Ganymede . . .

  “I am getting to Ganymede!” San yelled.

  A voice crackled over a speaker inside the airlock. “San Kyarr, you’re under arrest; stop what you’re doing and open the inner airlock door.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m normally not a thief. But you’ll get your ship back.”

&nbs
p; The ship’s outer door had no security activated so all San had to do was palm the open button, allowing a slab to disengage and disappear into a wide slot. She pulled her way in. There, she snaked herself through narrow shafts that ran between engine and fuel compartments, barely hearing it when the ship’s airlock doors shut behind her and San focused on making her way to the pilot’s compartment—a cramped space near the triangular nose of the ship. She strapped into the command couch. Controls swung from the wall and encapsulated her in a confined pod so that instrument readouts and switches surrounded on all sides, the ship encircling her in a protective embrace. This was her natural habitat; San’s hands danced across the panels, forcing the docking locks to disengage with a clank, the noise invoking an overwhelming wave of relief.

  “I’ll get to Ganymede,” San whispered. “I’ll make you both proud.”

  Her mother’s warning still rang through San’s mind: Do not trust Zhelnikov . . .

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Win wriggled into his straps. The servo harness encased him from head to toe in a carapace of polymer and ceramic armor, shaped for a slim frame but with a head-piece large enough to accommodate his new skull. The suit hummed as he took careful steps, suspended six feet off the ground from the middle of a metallic power pod, off of which four spiderlike articulated legs extended. The legs moved with jerks, pounding on the transport’s metal grate floor as he moved down the ramp. Win wished he could scratch his head; the new jack skin was taking hold, merging with his nerves, and the itching threatened to drive him insane.

  Hong Kong resembled an ocean of destruction. No buildings remained and suit sensors pulsed data across Win’s heads up display: the war had sent to the city multiple nuclear weapons followed by saturation with conventional munitions. Despite the years of peace, it was as if the blasts had occurred yesterday and in the distance a few spires remained in tattered form, like the bones of fingers reaching out of Earth. A mist formed around them, raised by wind. Almost instantly the computer identified it as the breakdown products of old Allied nerve agent, safe as long as the ocean breeze continued blowing at Win’s back. The immediate area in front of the transport had been cleared down to bare concrete; there, thousands of troops stood, their green combat suits lending a kind of forest appearance. As soon as Zhelnikov and Win stepped off the ramp, they snapped to attention.

  I disgust them, Win thought.

  He zoomed on the closest one, the man’s helmet clasped in the crook of his left arm; Win tracked his forehead muscle movements and the soldier’s gaze darted toward him, gawking in combined expressions of horror and fascination. This is what revulsion looks like. They can’t see me, but whatever the servo harness contains, they know it isn’t human.

  “So we have re-conquered Hong Kong,” Zhelnikov said, chuckling at his own joke. “It wasn’t easy to assemble the forces needed in such a short amount of time, but luckily a Marine Expeditionary Force was already running exercises with our Korean allies. It was just as you said: a small group, maybe ten thousand Chinese hold outs who were trying to rebuild. They’re all dead.”

  Win shook his head. “Not all of them.”

  He gritted his teeth at a wave of pain that coursed up his spine and into his brain. It took all Win had to stifle a scream. When it had passed he reduced the flow of standard masker, stored in pods along the side of his carapace, necking it down to a drip, the pale green fluid travelling through a narrow tube that passed into a port affixed to Win’s skull.

  “What do you mean, ‘not all’?” Zhelnikov asked. “General Scheuer assures me that Hong Kong has been secured. He lost five thousand dead and eight thousand wounded, Win.”

  The General stepped forward from behind them. His face looked polished and as if peeling layers of an onion, Win imagined the man’s appearance after stripping layered pseudo-plastic jack skin treatments that cost a small fortune to keep him looking young. The General’s hair had been combed into an immaculate coif.

  “I assure you: my Marines got them all.”

  “No.”

  “Son, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Win spun to face the General, extending the spider-legs so that he looked down on the man. The General stepped back.

  “You chase young men. Boys. I’ve seen this. There are thousands of children, still alive and being monitored and stored in a makeshift camp near the amphibious landing area. You plan on using them for pleasure and sale.”

  “I . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The General’s face went bright red and he pointed a finger at Zhelnikov. “If this is some kind of scheme, Zhelnikov, I swear to God I’ll destroy you . . .”

  “Not one of mine.” When Zhelnikov glanced sideways, Win recognized the old man’s expression of concern; Zhelnikov was signaling: this General had connections.

  “I see truth and lies,” said Win. He lowered himself and turned back to the troops. “Nobody here is scheming except you. You’re visible to me—everything. On the way in I spent the time working with multiple semi-awares to scan for patterns in your behavior and purchasing, who you’ve bribed, identifying trusted brokers and cutouts for the human trafficking ring you’ve established. But I needn’t have taken that route. Your voice and face tell the story.” The General spun to walk away, but stopped when Win continued. “One more step and I report everything. You’ll spend the rest of your days cleaning radioactive waste off the streets of Pyongyang. I’d hate to see all that jack skin go bad.”

  “What the hell is this, Zhelnikov?”

  “He had nothing to do with this,” said Win. “I don’t need Zhelnikov. Not for seeing. You are so obvious that it amazes me someone hasn’t killed you slowly.”

  “You son of a bitch,” the General growled. “What do you want?”

  “I want them dead. The children.”

  Zhelnikov shook his head. “Impossible. Those children were leftovers from their research programs. Rejects that are fully formed humans—not engineered for merging with machines. With care, they can be turned into relatively normal people, Win.”

  “Normal is not in our modern vocabulary. And it’s not me that demands their death, it’s the Sommen.” Win extended one leg to point at the troops and then turned his head to look at the General. “Kill all the children. And I want to inspect the Chinese production nests. When I’m finished, we will lace the tunnels with nuclear warheads and make this island disappear. As long as you perform, there’s no need for me to speak to anyone about your . . . proclivities. I don’t give a damn what you do with your time off.”

  The General gazed at Win briefly, before spinning on a heel and striding off the ramp; the troop formation melted. Win’s vision began to shift and he had trouble concentrating on the data feed so that the green troops morphed into a sea of algae, dispersing with the tide and currents to leave only concrete. I am seeing again, he thought. And if I see I will hear; I will hear the children and their slaughter.

  “Win . . .” Zhelnikov started.

  “I know what you’re thinking. That we will hang for killing these children because it’s against the rules of war. Against the laws of men.”

  “I’m thinking that because it’s true. What’s happening with you? You can’t just make these decisions and then bark orders as if you’re in charge. You’re not; I am.”

  “Do you feel in charge?”

  Zhelnikov shook his head. “Damn it, Win. I’m stopping this.”

  “No. If you do that, the Sommen will return and you will have doomed all of us to extinction. Why? Because of children. These children are already prepared to permanently merge with semi-awares and they must die to show the Sommen we understand. To fail in this would be an act of war, a violation of the treaty; tell your masters this and they will understand.”

  Win glared at Zhelnikov and for a moment his vision returned to normal, at least to the point where Zhelnikov’s face and body were clear except at the edges, vibrating and shifting colors. The old man reached for a p
ocket. He lit a cigar and Win saw the stressors of decision force Zhelnikov to stoop just a bit lower. The creaking and popping of bones was almost audible. One more slaughter on the pile of Zhelnikov’s already sizeable heap had added weight and Win wondered if he was too old for war.

  “You’re changing quickly, Win. This isn’t what I anticipated.”

  “Relax, Zhelnikov; I’m not yet Sommen, and will likely be something different altogether. Come.” Win moved, his metallic legs stuttering across the concrete in clicks. “I have to inspect the Chinese nest soon; those idiot Marines could destroy the very things I need to see.”

  “Wait. I have something.”

  The old man lifted his suit helmet and spoke into its mouthpiece before lowering it again, attaching it to hang from his belt. Win heard marching. From the other side of the transport a long line of soldiers emerged, each of them dressed in black battle dress, thin armored plates so matte they almost sucked light from the sky. Safety never came from the minds and ideas of even the most genius of men. War is the way. Safety is a byproduct, a temporary condition resulting from the death of one’s current enemies and the creation of fear in those who will emerge in the future. Earth’s historic generals even had a name for it: deterrence.

  “These men are for you,” said Zhelnikov.

  “I recognize them. These boys.”

  “How? I had them made in secret, hidden even from you. These are the top candidates sourced from infants taken out of brothel orphanages, culled and sifted using over a thousand variables, all of which center on combat. On killing. These men are more deadly than any you’ve ever seen and they answer to you and me alone.”

  These men will disappear, Win thought. I will not remain on Earth for long, and nothing will protect me from what is coming. And Zhelnikov had done something to them; something to their faces . . .

  “Why do you think I need boys encased in ceramic? And you’ve replaced their eyes with something I’ve never seen. Something new.”