“I’m not ready,” Elsa said as the pod sped along toward the Ageless auditorium at the heart of Methuselah’s entertainment district. Usually, it was the venue of choice for off-world bands and comedians making a stop on Lazarus along a multi-planet tour. Tonight, however, it would play host to thousands of Ageless shareholders, employees, contractors, Methuselah citizens, and interplanetary media for the company’s third-quarter stakeholder’s meeting.
“You’ve already presented to the board,” Tyson chided. “Was that so bad?”
“That was six holograms, not six thousand live bodies. I live in labs, Tyson. I don’t know if I’ve been in a room with that many people in my life. Much less with all of them looking at me.”
“With the stage lights, you won’t be able to see past the second or third row anyway.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“Really? Always helped me in the beginning.”
“Back when you still worried about what people thought about you?”
“Well, yeah.” Tyson rubbed his chin. “I guess that was quite a while ago.”
“Ugh. I swear if you weren’t funding my research, I’d slap the arrogant off your face.”
“It would need to be a very hard slap. Any word on our … other project?”
“You mean trapping Beckham?” Tyson nodded. Elsa’s face brightened conspiratorially. “I sent out feelers through some of my former classmates from grad school like you suggested and got a callback, complete with a new electronic routing address to Ceres, of all places.”
“I thought he was on Mars?”
“I suspect he has a ghost account and maybe even a love nest set up on Ceres. He’s going around a lot of backs to keep himself entertained, including his husband’s.”
“Our playboy professor is married?”
“His only visible means of support since losing tenure. Get a divorce and people will start asking questions about how he can afford his bubbler lifestyle, I imagine. Anyway, my old friend was an early conquest of his among our class, but she broke it off quick once she saw through his games. He’s been intermittently dogging her ever since.”
“She must have been memorable.”
“She’s a goddess. I’m straight and I’d have a hard time turning down a chance to fuck her.” Elsa stopped, realizing what she’d said. Her cheeks flushed red, and she cleared her throat. “Anyway, she was only too happy to forward me the link address he uses to harass her, and I put it to good use.”
“He replied to your offer?”
Elsa shook her head. “Not yet, but with the coms delay, the very soonest I could’ve heard from him was the day before yesterday. And that’s assuming he has realtime access to it from wherever he is right now. If it’s a local net dropbox account, he may not see it until he’s back on Ceres. So I’m not really sweating it yet. Might not for a few weeks, really.”
Tyson grimaced at the potential delay, but he knew she was right. There was no way to rush some things. In many ways, mankind had pushed out into the stars only to become reacquainted with old problems. Communication delays measured in weeks, bottlenecks, it was like they’d been uprooted from the Information Age and dropped right back into the age of sail.
“Hey,” Elsa snapped her fingers. “Still with me?”
“Yes, sorry.”
“Where did you go, just now?”
“Nowhere, it’s just…” Tyson tugged at a lapel. “I’ve gotten some bad news recently, and I really need a win. Figuring out who’s behind the Teegarden attack would go a long way toward mitigating the damage coming down the pipe.”
“You mean there’s more than just the pandemic and the Xre incursion?”
“Oh yeah, a lot more.”
“Like what?”
“You can’t know, because technically, I can’t know for another few hours.”
“And you’re not going to talk about it at the stakeholder presentation?”
Tyson snorted. “Absolutely not. I may as well shoot myself onstage.”
“So you’re going to lie to us?”
“Us?”
Elsa crossed her arms over her chest. “I have a couple thousand shares, thank you very much. I may be presenting, but I’m a member of the audience, too. Should I be on my tablet selling them right now?”
“That would technically be insider trading using privileged information, and quite illegal. The trade would be invalidated, you’d lose the money anyway, and you would be placed on an indentured contract for five to ten years.”
“C’mon, they don’t actually enforce those laws, do they?”
“Some transtellars don’t.” Tyson’s eyes narrowed. “But, mine does.”
Elsa put up her hands. “Okay, okay. I get it. So my best bet at a comfortable retirement is to lie convincingly for you.”
“I’ll never ask you to lie. I may be required, on occasion, to ask you to keep certain things confidential.”
“You asked me to lie to Beckham.”
“Yes, but that’s different. You want to lie to Beckham.”
Elsa pursed her lips in consideration. “Yeah, I really do.”
“Good, glad we could settle that. Ah, here we are.”
The pod slid to a stop at the service entrance of the Civil Auditorium, an enormous double-clamshell structure in the model of the Sydney Opera House on Earth, but with a Lazarus flair in size, and a small update in tech. While technically an open-air auditorium, the atmosphere within the volume made by the overhang was kept sequestered from the “outside” through a very clever system of ionic flow manipulators that allowed the building’s air conditioners to keep everyone cool, and only very occasionally interacted poorly with certain older models of artificial hearts. That had been an unpleasant surprise, but it had been more than a century ago and anyone with one of those old clunkers in their chest cavity had been dead for decades anyway. The docs printed clone replacements from scratch these days.
A small gaggle of media and their attending camera drones had snuck past the ropes and barriers to the receiving area, as they usually did. Tyson didn’t see any of the INN talking heads among them. These were from the gossip rags, little better than paparazzi.
“Tyson! Hey, Tyson. Who’s your lady friend?” one of them shouted.
“She’s a doctor, and we’re just colleagues,” Tyson answered, dismissively shooing away the drone that swooped inside their personal space.
“Who is she wearing?” demanded another.
“Clearance rack.” Elsa shot back. “My colleague pays his scientists like shit.”
This was met with approving laughter by the assembled vultures, and threw them off the scent long enough for the two of them to get inside the building.
“You know that line will be a meme in about ten seconds, right?” Tyson admonished.
“Sorry, it was the first thing that popped into my head.”
“No, no. It was good. Self-deprecating and passive-aggressive all at the same time. Plays into the out-of-touch CEO stereotype perfectly. They’ll focus on me being a stingy jerk instead of asking questions about you.”
“So … you’re not mad?”
“Why would I be? I’m paying you exactly what you asked for.”
“God dammit.”
Tyson smirked. “Keep that spark alive. You’ll need it shortly.”
Elsa looked back through the glass doors to the vultures waiting outside to swoop back in once they left. “Is it like this every day for you?”
“Not every day.” Tyson paused. “But enough days. C’mon, let’s get you to the green room. I’m going up in a few minutes, I’ll probably drone on for about twenty minutes giving the rah-rah dog and pony show, then I’ll introduce you. Paris?”
“I’m here.” Paris’s holographic avatar, her old one, coalesced in the hallway from a series of projectors hidden in the ceiling. Tyson briefly wondered why she hadn’t updated her avatar to reflect her new carapace, but filed the thought away.
“Can you escort Dr. Spaulding to the green room, please? I have to get into makeup.”
“Of course.”
“Makeup?” Elsa giggled. “Like you’re playing King Lear.”
“‘All the world’s a stage,’ my dear. Go with Paris, she’ll get you settled in.”
Tyson watched them go, then found his own way to the changing room and the stylists waiting to attend to him. He sat in the adjustable chair in front of a huge illuminated mirror.
“What do you think, Julia?” he asked the woman standing by with a foundation pad and eyeliner pen. “Jacket or no jacket tonight?”
“On a Tuesday night?” she asked as she went to work on Tyson’s cheeks and forehead. “The crowd is still in workweek mode. No jacket would come off too casual and unserious. Ditch the tie, though, and undo your top shirt button.”
Tyson looked down at the cerulean, fractal-patterned fabric hanging limply from his neck. “But it was a Christmas present from my niece.”
“It shows.” She snapped her fingers and an assistant yanked the tie free without Julia breaking eye contact with Tyson’s crow’s-feet. “We can just laser these off, you know.”
“I feel like I’ve earned them.”
She snorted. “A luxury men miraculously still have.” She caked on a bit more foundation around the corners of his eyes, then punched up the contrast of his face with highlighting tones on his cheekbones, nose, and forehead. A little subtle shadowing around his eyes and the effect was complete.
“All right, off you go,” the artist said as she shooed him out of her chair.
“Thank you, Julia. Lovely to see you as always.”
“Break a leg.”
Tyson found his way to backstage and made his presence known to the stage director, then settled in behind the curtains. Music penetrated even the heavy red velvet fabric of the curtains. A local revisionist rock group had won the right to warm up his crowd in a battle-of-the-bands competition two months earlier. From the sounds of it, they were approaching the zenith of the final song in their set.
As much as Tyson loathed his frequent meetings with his board, and as private as he usually kept himself, he had to admit, there was something energizing, even intoxicating about taking the stage in front of so many people gathered to hang on his every word. It was a strange thing for an introvert to have come to enjoy, even relish, but here he was. He’d prepared a speech, but like most previous addresses, he’d only memorized the outline and planned on keeping it light, casual, and freewheeling. A conversation between friends, if a bit one-sided.
“Thirty seconds to curtain,” the director said from just behind Tyson’s shoulder as he attached a remote mic epaulet to his jacket lapel.
“Test mic three.” He clapped his hands three times. “Okay, you’re green, Mr. Abington. It will go live to the PA system as soon as you step through the curtains.”
“Thank you.”
“Ten seconds. Five, four, three…” The director moved to a silent countdown with his fingers. When he reached “one,” he pointed to the stage. Ignoring the flutters in his stomach, Tyson strode toward it with purpose and confidence as the crushed red velvet parted at his approach like he was being reborn into a new and different world.
To his left, the band’s lead singer leaned into his old-school corded mic stand and threw a hand in Tyson’s direction even as their mobile stage retreated to the side and out of sight with the rest of the band and all their equipment.
“And now for tonight’s real rock star, the man we’ve all been waiting to hear, CEO of Ageless Corporation, Governor of Lazarus, our host, and number one in our hearts, Mister Tysoooooon Abiiiingtooooon!”
The crowd surged to their feet in applause that was two-thirds genuine, and maybe a third sucking up to the boss as if he could pick out individuals to show favor through the blinding stage lights.
Tyson let the wave of adulation crash over him and echo through the shell for maybe a beat longer than was strictly necessary. Fuck it, he didn’t get these moments very often and he’d had a rough couple days. He would forgive himself for a few seconds of self-indulgence.
Before the spectacle became obscene, Tyson raised his arms and fluttered his hands toward the floor, asking for everyone to bring it down to a dull roar. The crowd obeyed.
“Thank you, associates, stockholders, citizens, and our friends in the media for coming tonight. Let’s have a round of applause for our opening band, The Lemon Potemkins! Make them feel good, they earned their time on this stage tonight.” The crowd obliged. “Excellent, excellent. This is what Methuselah is all about, building each other up, providing opportunities. That’s what brought us here to this little ochre dirtball. Well, not us, we’re all too young.” The crowd laughed appropriately. “But our ancestors, yours and mine. Because they shared a vision of an oasis in the desert, and to make it bloom.”
Tyson was in his groove now. It was a familiar story, one he’d told in one form or another at most of these gatherings for going on seven years now. Everybody loved origin stories.
He was so busy going through the familiar beats that it took him a few stanzas to notice the change spread through the crowd. It was subtle at first, isolated people reaching to check their tablets or wrist displays, or getting the thousand-meter stare of someone watching something in their AR environment. He mistook it for the sort of casual, inattentive rudeness one saw in almost any public gathering these days. But soon, the isolated people were elbowing the attendees next to them and pointing at their screens. Groups appeared and grew until they merged like water droplets running down a window, gaining size and momentum. With shocking speed, it seemed no one was paying attention to him.
“Get out of there,” Paris said into his internal com.
“I’m in the middle of a speech, Paris.”
“Trust me, you just finished. Pretend your mic stopped working. Just. Get. Off. The. Stage.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“When you’re in the pod getting the hell out of here.”
“Dr. Spaulding—”
“Is already moving. Go.”
Shaken, Tyson’s gaze returned to the crowd, which had stopped staring silently and had started shouting and waving their tablets or wrist displays. He couldn’t make out the individual barbs, but he didn’t need to. Their tone and body language told the story.
He apologetically pointed at his radio mic and made a “giving up” gesture with his hands, then turned and walked back off the stage to a rising chorus of boos. The stage director jumped out from behind the curtain holding a replacement mic.
“I’m so sorry. I checked the charge on it myself.”
Tyson held up a hand. “The address has been canceled.”
“It has?”
“Yes.” He kept moving forward without an explanation. “Jesus, Paris. What is going on?”
“Somebody leaked the Grendel news. Everyone in there just read about NeoSun pulling out of the partnership. And the Xre incursion!”
“What?!” Tyson shouted into his head and out loud. “That’s not possible. I was the only person in the room.”
“There are probably at least four people in the chain of custody for that file to get it here from New Vladivostok,” Paris said.
As he started to jog down the hallway, he knew she was right. He wasn’t the only one with a spy problem. Valeria had a mole. Just ahead, Tyson saw Paris’s holo standing in the hallway next to Elsa ready to make the handoff.
“What’s going on?” Elsa asked, but Tyson didn’t have time and grabbed her under the arm a little harder than he intended to.
“Talk and move.”
“Let go of me!” She wrenched her arm away from him and almost looked like she was setting it up for a return trip to his face, but stared instead.
Tyson stopped and took a breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But something really bad just happened and the address has been canceled. We have to get out of here quickly before things turn uglier.”
“Fine, just tell me that. I’m not your kid to drag around.”
“You’re right. Will you please follow me?”
They made a quick retreat to the rear service exit. Ji-eun Park stood dead-center of the sliding doors as they parted.
“Tyson!” she shouted over the din of paparazzi as her camera drone dropped lower. “Would you care to comment on tonight’s revelations?”
“I have no knowledge of any revelations.”
“Come on, Tyson. You just canceled your quarterly address.”
“I left the iron on. You’re hanging out back here with the vultures now, Ms. Park? That’s a big step down for you.”
“I go where the story is.”
“Come now, Ji-eun. You of all people should know you can’t believe everything you read.” Tyson pushed a tabloid reporter out of the way with a dismissive shove, then helped Elsa inside the waiting car before stooping to enter himself.
“Immortal Tower. Emergency limiter suspension,” he said. The pod took off like a spurned quarter horse, pushing them both back into their seats.
“Holy shit,” Elsa said. “I didn’t know they went this fast.”
“They can go two hundred kph, but it has a bad habit of turning pedestrians into pudding.”
With all the lights and crosswalks on their route between the auditorium and the tower locked to red, and the pod pushing its maximum speed, the trip was a short one. But not short enough to escape the board.
Nakamura buzzed in first as his hologram appeared inside the windshield glass of the pod.
“We need to talk.”
“Not now, Takeshi.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, does another time work better for you, Tyson?”
The rest of the board buzzed in one by one until, ready or not, they were having a full-blown meeting.
“I’m not alone in here.” Tyson nodded in Elsa’s direction. “It’s not secure.”
“What the hell is secure at this point, Tyson?” Durant chirped back. “All of our most damaging secrets of the last two weeks have already been blasted across the net like a celebrity sex holo.”
“This really can’t wait, Tyson,” Meadows said calmly, but firmly. “Myself and I think the rest of the board are comfortable with Dr. Spaulding sitting in as long as she signs an NDA. Is that all right with you, Doctor?”
“I mean, sure?”
“Like it matters,” Nakamura muttered. “It’s just going to be pillow talk for them anyway.”
“Waaay out of line, Takeshi,” Tyson snapped. “If we’re bringing this trash fire to order, you’re starting with an apology to the good doctor.”
Nakamura straightened in his chair. “Yes, you’re right. I am sorry for questioning your professionalism, Dr. Spaulding. You’ve worked diligently these last weeks to see the company through this crisis and the board applauds your efforts. I spoke out of turn merely from frustration.”
“I accept your apology,” Elsa said coolly.
“Good,” Durant said. “Now that’s out of the way, can we get down to what the fuck just happened?”
“Obviously our spy got the better of our IT security again and decided to spread a little mayhem,” Tyson said.
“Spy? Or an internal leaker?”
“Our investigation has not uncovered any—”
“Your investigation, Tyson,” Nakamura cut him off. “And in a month, your investigation has only uncovered half a dead girl.”
“I assure you, no one has greater motivation to unravel this mystery than I.”
“It’s not your motivation we’re questioning, Tyson. It’s your competency.”
Tyson’s face went hard as marble. “I beg your pardon?”
“What Takeshi is saying in his indelicate fashion,” Meadows injected diplomatically, “is the rest of the board believes these overlapping crises are too big for any one of us to tackle in a vacuum. You’re taking on too much, Tyson. Let us help.”
“And none of your typical micromanaging,” Durant added. “We need full access to your sources and methods for once. No more of this off-the-books shit. Leave that to Navy Intel, their black budget eats up enough of our profit margins as is.”
“Our stakeholders expect results,” Nakamura said. “All they’ve seen for the last month is a transtellar freefalling toward a singularity.”
“Most of the damage that’s been done is because things we preferred kept in the shadows were dragged into the light before we were ready. If we start airing all our dirty laundry ourselves, it’ll not only exacerbate the problem, but signal to whoever’s behind the espionage that their plans are paying dividends.”
“I agree,” Meadows began, “with Takeshi. No matter what’s been happening behind the scenes, publicly we’re coming off as entirely reactive. Our stakeholders need to believe we’re getting out ahead of these issues forcefully and with a plan. I’m sorry, Tyson. You can put it to a formal vote if you want, but the rest of us have already spoken about this privately and we’re in unanimous agreement.”
“Tell him the rest, Foz,” Durant said.
“And…” Meadows hesitated. “And if things don’t turn around soon, we may have to entertain merger offers. At least on a preliminary basis.”
Tyson went completely rigid, as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a wild horse. It took him a full three seconds to return to himself and respond. “You would abandon two centuries of this company’s bedrock independence over a hiccup!”
“This isn’t a hiccup, Tyson,” Nakamura said. “The union bigwigs are already making rumblings about a general strike. The fuse is already burning. Unless you want to be the CEO of a cinder, we need to act fast and decisively.”
So it had come down to this. Conspired against from the outside by his enemies, and from the inside by his own board. Tyson couldn’t believe he’d been so completely outmaneuvered. What had Sokolov’s message said? Not everyone on his board had his best interests in mind?
One of them was part of this. Only someone in his very innermost circle had the access necessary to leak what had escaped. But which one? The answer would have to wait. For now, he had to play along, lest the traitor begin to suspect their cover was blown. As the pod slowed on its approach to the Immortal Tower, he made his next move.
“Then decisively we will act, as one. The vote is unanimous. Send a proposal to Paris. I’m ready to provide the rest of you with whatever you feel you need to see us through these rough seas.”
Two minutes later, they were in Tyson’s penthouse office.
“Privacy mode,” he shouted at the ceiling. The clear aluminum glass went opaque as quickly as the electricity passed through it, cutting off what little of the setting sun’s light remained.
Paris walked up to them from a corner in her new physical body, a sight Tyson was still getting used to. She’d traded her plastic shrink-wrap clothing for a maroon strapless dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any of the young women doubtlessly partying in Kryptonite Klub many dozens of stories below.
“I’m glad you’re both safe.”
“Oh, hello,” Elsa said. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”
“Yes, you have,” Tyson said. “This is Paris. Well, Paris’s android carapace.”
Elsa’s eyes went wide as she looked Paris up and down. “That’s an android? Did you write a really nice letter to Santa, Tyson?”
“She bought it for herself.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true.” Paris ran a hand down Tyson’s chest. “I was intending to share it.”
Elsa put her hands up. “Okay, look. I don’t know what’s going on here, and frankly I don’t fucking care. You two are obviously busy, so since I’m not getting any answers, I’m going.”
“Elsa, wait—” Tyson said, but she silenced him with an upheld finger and a furious countenance. “I assume the elevator isn’t going to shoot me if I leave by myself? Because that would be unlawful detainment.”
“No, of course not.” Tyson moved to his desk and punched in a code. “I’ve disabled the security protocols. You may leave without worry.”
“Good.” She stormed into the lift car. “Thanks for a lovely evening, Tyson,” she spat before the doors closed and the car sank into the floor.
Livid almost beyond reason, Tyson spun around to face Paris and absolutely lay into her. But before he could get so much as a syllable out, she had closed the distance and planted her lips on his. Reflexively, he tried to back away, but she wrapped an arm around the back of his head and held him fast in the kiss. She was strong, inhumanly so. Something in the most primitive parts of his brain shifted. All the anger and frustration he felt bubbled up and mixed with the loneliness of years spent at the top of his profession. He was enraged, and rapidly engorging under the relentless kiss of the most perfect woman he’d ever held. Well, she wanted it? He was going to give it to her.
Paris sensed his intentions change as his hands went to her waist and rewarded him with her hot, probing tongue on his lips. Her free hand dropped down and ripped at his belt buckle while he fumbled for the zipper on her back. It had been a while since he’d last helped a woman out of her dress, and it showed.
She beat him to the prize as his belt was pulled free of its loops. A quick flick of his silk slacks’ fastener and zipper and they fell down around his ankles. Paris leaned back out of the kiss, holding his belt by the buckle in one hand, grinning mischievously. Then, all in one fast, fluid motion Tyson had no chance of countering, she whipped it out and around his neck, grabbed the other end with her free hand, twisted around herself to face away from him, and effortlessly leaned over to flip him over her back and send him crashing to the floor with a thud.
He tried to cough as the wind was knocked out of his lungs from the brutal impact, but her turn had put a twist in the belt that constricted it around his neck like a tourniquet. He couldn’t cough, couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t believe he’d been played so easily.
The entire story came into focus even as his vision blurred. It had always been Paris. She was the mole in his organization. She was the only one in a position to leak the truth about the Teegarden outbreak to the press, and he’d assigned her to find the real culprit. She knew about Cassidy, maybe even had her killed. And she was the only one who Tyson had told about the message from Sokolov.
She’d even gotten him to pay for the body she was now using to kill him, the clever bitch. She could say anything, that their BDSM lovemaking session had gone too far, that he’d hung himself with his own belt after the embarrassment he’d suffered at the auditorium. Whatever would fit the narrative she wanted to create. And no one would question an AI’s honesty.
It was a perfectly wrapped gift for whomever had corrupted her.
As the oxygen starvation began to take hold, Tyson almost found himself appreciating the mind that had crafted such a setup. In the next few seconds, his family’s centuries-long control of Ageless Corporation would come to an abrupt end, and no one would ever know the truth.
His head slacked to one side as the color drained out of the world and his field of vision shrank into a tunnel. It had almost closed entirely when the lift car once more emerged from the floor.
“Forgot my purse,” Elsa said as Tyson’s eyes failed completely. “Wow, that’s some kinky shit you’re into.”
Tyson couldn’t speak, but he tried to turn his head in the direction of the sound of Elsa’s voice and mouthed the word “HELP.”
“Holy shit,” Elsa swore. The pressure around Tyson’s neck eased a fraction, then dropped away entirely as his frantically pumping heart shoved fresh blood into his starving brain.
“Put it down and you will not be harmed,” Paris’s normally comforting voice said in a completely flat, emotionless tone.
“Back off, bitch!” Elsa shouted. Color and light returned as Tyson’s eyes started to make sense of his surroundings again. He focused on Elsa’s outline. She was holding something out directly at Paris even as the android advanced on her. “One more step and I cook you like a soy burger.”
A Taser, Elsa was holding a civilian-model Taser. “Shoot her!” Tyson shouted with a gasping, raspy voice that sounded nothing like his own. “Shoot her!”
Elsa choked up on the grip of her Taser and pushed the firing stud even as Paris’s carapace lunged forward with impossible speed. But the compressed gas behind the electrode darts was faster still. Two perfect coils of wire snaked out from the unit as the barbs covered the distance between them and made contact with Paris’s left cheek and right breast, followed a millisecond later by a hundred thousand volts of electricity pulsing at sixty cycles per second.
Now, on a human body, a Taser was enough to overwhelm the nerve impulses from the brain and cause temporary paralysis and muscle spasms. But on an android carapace that hadn’t been properly combat shielded against the threat, the shorts created by that much electrical discharge running through its servos and circuits was absolutely devastating.
Apparently, Paris hadn’t ticked off that particular manufacturer’s option when ordering her new sex kitten body. She fell unceremoniously to the ground in a mangled lump without so much as a scream.
Tyson scrambled unsteadily to his feet and pulled up his pants. Elsa ran over to help brace him.
“We have to go.”
“But she’s dead.”
Tyson shook his head. “No, her body is. She is rebooting in the tower’s computer system. Let’s go.” They passed by Paris’s crumpled body. Elsa gave her a contemptuous little kick to the head.
“Why did she attack you? Not that I don’t understand the impulse, mind you.”
Tyson ignored the jab as they entered the lift. “We have our answer from whoever is employing Beckham. They hacked her, I don’t know how long ago.” A horrible thought went through Tyson’s mind as the doors closed. “Wait. Is that outfit from the tailor I sent to you?”
“No, it didn’t come in time.”
“Oh fuck.” Tyson threw her to the floor without warning, then dropped on top of her.
“What the hell are you doing!?” she shouted, but Tyson was too busy pulling up his collar and throwing a concealed hood over his head. He positioned his arms and legs to cover Elsa’s own just as pop-out doors flipped open and gunfire erupted from the ceiling. The bullets slammed into Tyson’s back and shoulders with ferocious impact, one after the other, dozens a second like hundreds of tiny sledgehammers.
“I thought you said the security was disabled!” Elsa shouted, clearly on the verge of panic.
“It was,” he yelled back. “Paris is an AI, remember? You really think I can keep her out of a computer network for long?”
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“Because my suit is bullet-resistant.”
“Then why are you wincing?”
“Because it still bloody fucking hurts!”
After a few seconds of the maelstrom, the shooting ceased as the automatic guns ran dry of ammo.
“I really wanted to do this the easy way, Tyson.” The once-familiar voice had taken on a malicious, detached tone. “It would have been so much cleaner if you’d just let me do my job in the penthouse.”
“Paris, sweetie, you’ve been hacked. Someone reprogrammed you. Run a deep diagnostic scan,” Tyson pleaded.
The voice ignored him entirely. “But now there will be regrettable collateral damage, and I’ll have to come up with a very creative explanation for the mess.”
“Why doesn’t she just stop the elevator?” Elsa whispered.
“Because she’s taking us exactly where she wants us to go.”
“Where?”
“The lobby.”
“But that’s where we want to go.”
“Not anymore it isn’t. Right now, she’s infiltrating the operating system of the marine sentry mecha hidden in the lobby.”
“You have one of those walking tanks in your building?”
“It’s for vehicle-based terrorist attacks. Almost every corporate HQ has one.”
“And now it’s going to turn us into jelly. You people are paranoid lunatics.”
“We can’t stay in here or we’ll be liquified with the first shot. Our only chance is to run the millisecond these doors open. You go left, I’ll go right. It’ll have trouble tracking both of us at once.”
“Hope you don’t mind if I’m praying a little bit it goes for you first.”
“A scientist, praying?”
Elsa removed her heels. “Figure of speech.”
The elevator chimed as they reached the lobby, which it didn’t usually do. Doubtlessly Paris trying to unnerve him further. The doors rolled open, and right on cue, the two of them sprang out of the lift like jackrabbits and ran in opposite directions. On the far side of the lobby, the three-meter-tall, faceted silhouette of the mecha had indeed emerged from its cubbyhole and turned to face them, much faster than Tyson had expected for such a large machine. Nor did it seem to have any trouble tracking two targets independently. He hadn’t made it three steps before the shoulder-mounted rocket pod snapped around to face him, while the anti-material cannon on its right arm tracked Elsa. There was a tremendous Whoosh and a flash of light.
The explosion wasn’t like in the holos. There was no billowing orange fireball or black, sooty mushroom cloud. It didn’t blow them theatrically off their feet, carrying them through the lobby and depositing them ten meters away. It was too fast for any of that. Instead, it was like a lightning strike and a thunderclap, over in a split second. And instead of being thrown, the concussion was like being punched in the stomach, chest, and face simultaneously.
Tyson fell to the ground, his hearing ringing violently as if he’d been boxed in the ears. The taste of copper leaked onto his tongue. He came up to one knee to try and reorient himself, shocked and confused as to why he was still alive.
The repurposed military mecha that had threatened to turn them into a fine puree only a moment ago lay on its side with a significant, smoking hole missing from its torso as if someone had bored through it with a drill bit as thick as his calf. Elsa lay crumpled in a pile behind him and to the left, swearing gently to herself. Tyson sympathized.
A hand reached in front of his face and offered to help him up. Tyson looked up to see—
“Reggie?”
“Are you okay, sir?” his longtime doorman asked.
“I’m a little rattled. What the hell just happened?” That was when Tyson noticed the hollow, telescoping cylinder still clutched in Reggie’s left hand. It took a moment for his brain to accept what he was seeing.
“Reggie, why are you holding a disposable antiarmor rocket tube?”
“To break the scary death machine.” He pointed at the smoldering wreck. “Never cared for that pile of spares. It kept looking at me funny whenever it was out for maintenance.”
“You mean to tell me that thing you’ve been hiding in your top right drawer was a fucking RPG?”
“ManPAD, actually, and don’t act like you didn’t watch me smuggle it in.”
“I thought it was booze!”
“Sir, don’t be ridiculous,” Reggie said. “I keep the booze in the bottom right drawer.”
“Does everyone around me have hidden weapons?”
“Was that hard enough?” Elsa asked.
Tyson turned around to help her to her feet. “What?”
“Was that slap hard enough to knock the arrogance out of you?”
Tyson smiled. “Jury’s still out. Are you all right?”
“My ears are ringing.”
“Mine too, it will pass.” In a few days, Tyson thought but did not say. “C’mon, we have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Off-world. We have your answer from Beckham’s bosses. They went for Option B. We have to be gone before they try again.”
“But it was your AI that attacked us!”
“She was hacked. I don’t know how, but they got into her core programming. I don’t know when. She may have been compromised for days, maybe since the beginning of this. Reggie, I hate to ask, but I need your airpod.”
“Doors are already unlocked, sir.”
“But I was going home.”
“Too late for that, dear. You’re a witness now. You saw Paris try to kill me, you’re just as much a target as I am. So are you for that matter, Reg.”
“I can handle myself, young pup.” He held up the spent rocket tube. “This isn’t the only souvenir I kept from the Marine Corps. Get the good doctor to safety. I’ll keep them off you as long as I can from down here.”
Tyson took two long steps to his doorman, grabbed behind his head, and leaned in until their foreheads touched. “Still protecting this stupid kid after all these years?”
“Promised your mum.”
Tyson kissed the wrinkles below Reggie’s hairline, then pushed back. “You stay alive, old man. The company doesn’t pay out funeral benefits for idiots who get themselves killed.”
“I expect my toys to be replaced.”
“Done. Elsa, c’mon.”
“They’re not all strictly legal!” Reggie announced to their retreating backs.
“No shit!” Tyson yelled over his shoulder as they took the stairs to the basement garage and, after a brief search, located Reggie’s blazing-green airpod. It was, like the man himself, old, but powerful and in impeccable condition.
“Damn,” Elsa said, looking at the classic. “Reggie likes expensive toys.”
“He got a generous settlement. Hop in, at least the ride’ll be fun.”
Once the doors were closed, Tyson fired up the countergrav and the single turbofan engine that ran down the centerline of the airpod and accounted for at least half of its mass. A genuine gas-burner. Tyson had no idea where Reggie got fuel for the damned thing.
“Who’s doing this?” Elsa asked as they pulled out of the parking garage and angled for open sky.
“I have no idea. A competitor. An investor sick of dynastic control. Ambitious board member. I have no idea who to trust. Which is why I can’t protect us here. We’ve got to get off this planet and far away.”
“To where?”
“Grendel.”
“Why there?”
“Because I think a war is about to break out there.”
Elsa stared at him silently for a long moment. “You know that sounds crazy to anyone not living in your head, right?”
“Which is why it’s the last place anyone will expect us to go. Your inquiries about Beckham were uncovered, that’s why we were attacked, probably ahead of whatever schedule they had laid out because we’re getting too close. So we can’t go to Ceres, or anywhere in the Sol system for that matter. We’d be spotted and killed before we could get off the transfer stations. I have it on good authority that Grendel is about to be a pretty lonely place, so there won’t be a lot of people around to come after us. And whatever is going on, Grendel is the flashpoint. I’m sure of it. Our answers are there.”
“But how are we going to get there without whoever is responsible knowing?”
“Simple. We’re going to see a smuggler.”
“Oh, yes. Naturally.”
Tyson firewalled the throttle, and the overpowered little suicide machine made the acceleration of the transit pod feel like a halfhearted spin on a merry-go-round.