Captain Warrae stared into the scanner’s viewfinder with the intensity of a predator. Which he supposed he was, and right now, he was on the trail of dangerous prey.
A slow sigh escaped through his teeth as he toggled relentlessly through the layers of Guelph Station. He panned through all the layers of ducts, maintenance hatches, and service lines that were the lifeblood of this place. They also served as amazing nooks and crannies for synthetics to hide. The crisscross of electrical signals, however, made it difficult for his scanners to penetrate. The station’s own systems were better at that.
“Anything, sir?” His second, Sergeant Homolka, usually knew better than to interrupt this, his favorite part of the process.
Warrae raised his head enough to give him a hard stare. Two of the station’s communication officers stood at Homolka’s back. Small beads of sweat formed on the foreheads of the Combine’s employees as they shared a glance.
The Extraktors lived within a strange juncture between the UPP and the Combine. The unit wasn’t military, though the captain organized it similarly. Yet they possessed the power to gain access to the station, since they were part of the Combine. Personally, Warrae enjoyed living in that in-between zone. It gave him autonomy to run the Extraktors as he wished.
He ensured his workers kept their charcoal-gray uniforms as crisp as any unit of the SOF. They wore insignia and saluted, too. The Combine gave him the power necessary to conduct these hunts because he brought in the results. An entire unit was ready to reverse-engineer the data he brought back from Guelph.
He turned back to the scanner. “I don’t see any synthetics in the walls, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. They could have heard we were inbound.”
They’d received reliable intel that Guelph became a station on the underground synthetic network. When he’d mentioned it to those higher in the company, they’d once again reminded him they didn’t believe such an organization existed.
Warrae looked forward to the moment when he’d prove them wrong. One thing the captain hated was not being taken seriously.
“Yes, sir.” Homolka, at least, understood his superior’s focus on that underground network.
The Extraktors were tasked with locating rogue synthetics and breaking into their proprietary software. The Combine gained valuable information by reverse-engineering other companies’ synthetic units.
Not one of Warrae’s Extraktors doubted him. They took in his every word like it was oxygen. He’d drilled into them that a synthetic uprising was coming and their mission was to stop it before it happened.
After finding nothing like what he was hoping for, the captain straightened. “We’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, Homolka.”
The younger man nodded. “The unit is ready, Captain.”
“Go assemble them. We’ll start scanning in the galleria.”
Homolka saluted and, spinning on his heel, left his commander alone with the Guelph staff. The older woman—Mattox, by the name stitched into her overalls—pressed her lips together. Her younger male counterpart focused on the floor, his leg bouncing nervously. Warrae immediately determined that he would not be a problem. The woman, though, she didn’t want to roll over immediately.
“The chief won’t like you interrogating the citizens about their own property. He okayed this deep scan, but the rest…” She shook her head, clearly trying to look like she had no choice but to obey her higher-ups.
Warrae wasn’t fooled. Stations like this were full of incompetence. Those who couldn’t make it in the UPP military ended up working jobs at the edge of importance. They specialized in appearing to do work, but in reality, doing nothing at all. People seldom welcomed his unit.
He tapped his fingers on the desk and smiled thinly back at her. They were about the same age, he guessed, but while her job was a meaningless button-pushing position, he made the world safer. No way would he allow someone like her to get in his way.
“I think you will find that section fifty-six of the Guelph charter gives me the power to search every nook, cranny, and underwear drawer on this shit-pile of a station.”
Mattox straightened at that, so perhaps against all odds, she possessed a smidgen of pride in her work. She started to answer, but the other engineer nudged her. Warrae knew the UPP’s charter system better than he knew his own family. He lived and died under the power of section fifty-six.
“I thought so.” He cleared his throat. “You can relay all this to your station chief if you like, but I’ll be putting it in my report to Combine management.” Warrae smiled and showed all his teeth. “All of this. You understand.”
Mattox gave a deep sigh and sat back down at her station. “I’ll inform the chief. Good hunting.”
With that unnecessary standoff won, Warrae left them to it. He took the elevator to the galleria deck.
Guelph Station was a mining outpost. Here, company and freelance trawlers brought in whatever they could find out in the nearby system. The company would haul the station itself to another system once the planets and asteroid belts were tapped out.
Glancing around the galleria, it was immediately apparent that the station was not exactly prospering, and near the point of moving on. Shops stood boarded up that, in more affluent outposts, would be bustling with commerce. The survivors, such as a chicken shop, were extremely dirty. Warrae made a mental note to only eat the rations carried by the Extraktors.
Guelph might not look like much to any other unit, but to him, it was fertile ground. Corruption and black-market transactions flourished in these types of hard scrabble locations. Even with no sign of the underground network he firmly believed existed, there were bound to be illicit automaton chop shops and traders. They often sold and smuggled in units with mineral and ice shipments heading to other, better-paying markets.
He’d bet there were multitudes of Weyland or Seegson synthetics on this station. UPP would pay top dollar to get their hands on some of the latest technology from that kind of contraband.
If Warrae smelled anything here, it was corruption. The synthetic black market went along with that.
He raised his head and touched his augment. When he got his first enhancements, the scrolling numbers in the corner of his eye were distracting. Now it came as naturally to him as blinking.
He read the names of those residing on the station with previous arrests for smuggling and tampering with a synthetic trademark. The Combine cracked down hard on that, and most did some length of time on a company prison planet. Still, you crushed one cockroach and a hundred more rushed to fill its place.
The list gave him a good place to start. Warrae hoped that one name that scrolled past might be involved in underground activity. If he kept poking around enough, he might get lucky.
Homolka lined up the rest of the unit in front of the window, looking out over the planet. All of them were enhanced in some way, mostly physically. Bringing in rogue synthetics often involved getting rough, and to go toe-to-toe with a Mr. Brown or even a combat synth was dangerous. Homolka could easily pass for a standard human, but under his slate-gray uniform all his limbs were replaced. His android arms contained almost the same tensile strength as a body created for the military. It’d come in handy in several dangerous situations.
However, most humans did not go as far as Captain Warrae. His brain implants might’ve been a little too extreme for most seeking enhancement. Something about messing with the soft cells that made up your personality put people off. He’d never understood that. As soon as the Combine offered him the chance to get an implant that would allow him to hack systems and think faster, he’d taken the opportunity.
He noticed no changes in his own temperament. Warrae was always a tough son of a bitch even before any company surgeon cut into him.
“Wrist-pds,” he snapped.
The six men in the unit raised their arms and waited. He dropped the list from the Combine onto their units, divided amongst two-man teams. “I want full take-down on these scumbags. I don’t care how many doors you kick in or family meals you interrupt. We’re on a Combine station, so it’s time we reminded people of that.”
They snapped to attention. “Sir, yes, sir.”
“Get to it, then.”
They unbuttoned the holsters of their sidearms and split up, heading in different directions. Warrae anticipated this was going to make some noise and eventually reach the station chief. He didn’t care. They might bitch and moan, but he was above their pay grade in every sense.
“What are your orders for me, sir?” The gleam in Homolka’s eye suggested he knew they were about to get even dirtier.
Warrae flicked across one more name, but this one went only to his sergeant’s pad.
“Anna Mortise?” Homolka grinned. “Shit, sir. Haven’t heard that name in a while. I thought she died.”
Warrae stared out the window, indulging in a little nostalgia. “She tried to make it look that way. Hooked up with a mining family and managed to scrub her records for a time. But she pissed the commune off, and they kicked her out. She’s back to hacking synths right here on Guelph.”
Homolka unbuckled his sidearm. “I appreciate you sharing that with me, sir. That bitch took a piece out of me, five years back.”
“I remember.” Warrae jerked his head, and Homolka fell into step beside him. They shared no small talk as they left the galleria.
There, four of Warrae’s enforcers waited. These were his most expendable foot soldiers. He got first choice of the failures; those humans who’d gone a step over the line of enhancement. These men wanted more than their bodies could handle. They’d tampered with their brains and fried every synapse in their head, to the point where they were barely better than the synths Warrae hunted. Still, they were fit for purpose.
They didn’t even have names. He’d named them HB-01, 02, 03, and 04. Now they were nothing more than equipment. The unit fell into step behind them and took the elevator down to the sub-levels with Warrae and Homolka.
It was an area they were both familiar with, even though neither of them visited Guelph previously. Every station possessed its own underbelly. The designers even provided them. These kinds of operations needed an underclass to feed on; warm bodies with nothing to lose.
They took the worst jobs for the least pay, and more often than not, subsidized it with a bit of illegal activity. This cycle kept families in the down-below, generation after generation. Some could escape like Warrae, but most got chewed up by the Combine in various ways.
Homolka stepped off the elevator first and immediately checked to the sides to ensure that no bastards waited for them. That was an old but successful trick: mug anyone coming from the upper levels.
This time no one was waiting, but it was early for the down-below to be awake. That was what Warrae counted on. Private Raytheon took point as they followed the warren of corridors to their destination. He stood at over two meters tall, and every centimeter of it was pure muscle. Thinking might not be Raytheon’s strong suit, but he got the job done.
The rest of the unit fanned out on either side of Homolka. In the early days, the underbelly was used for equipment storage. Then, once the station was in place, they deployed the equipment to its proper place. It made room for the underclass of humans, but it was never comfortable.
Most rooms didn’t have any windows. The air conditioning remained mediocre. The sparse hygiene facilities were retrofitted. Warrae remembered the stench well. Despite his augmentation, he retained one memory he’d never been able to get out of his head.
When they reached the apartment that Mortise was supposed to occupy, they took up positions on either side of the door. Warrae raised his hand as he hacked the door lock with his augment.
He’d grown overconfident in his own abilities. The moment his code tried to infiltrate the lock, he understood that their prey had learned from their last encounter.
The lock jammed tight and then wailed at an earsplitting decibel. Homolka staggered back, clasping the sides of his head. Warrae simply turned down his inputs. Already, people from the surrounding apartments popped their heads out. They stuck together in the down-below.
Homolka, desperate for the alarm to stop, shot the whole lock out. The klaxon wound down like a child’s toy, but they were already in real trouble. He jerked his head, and unit HG-04 stepped forward. His augments were all physical. It’d taken a toll on his mental capacity, but in Warrae’s opinion, not everyone needed to think. These times required strength and toughness.
Luckily, 04 possessed plenty of that. Swaying back, he raised one of his android legs and kicked the door. The metal hinges let out a scream nearly as loud as the klaxon. The door wasn’t as well made as the lock; it collapsed inward and kicked up a cloud of dust as it hit the floor.
Warrae and Homolka stepped in first. The only light inside came from their head mounts. Playing the beam over the walls, Warrae knew immediately they’d come to the right place. For once, they’d got ahead of the Artificial Intelligence Compliance Unit.
They kicked in more doors and cared less about paperwork than the AICU. The Combine gave Warrae’s unit everything it needed to get ahold of other companies’ synthetics. He scanned the room. Against the far wall stood a rack of lockers, and next to them a workbench.
He strode over to it. “Homolka, open those lockers up.”
While his second hustled to do that, Warrae examined the tools scattered on the bench. In a rat’s nest like this, one wouldn’t expect tools as high-end as these. Their owner already removed and altered several input chips. It lined up with Anna Mortise’s MO.
“Captain.”
Warrae spun around. Synthetic armatures and several torsos lined the first three lockers. None of these parts were of any use to the Extraktors. The important proprietary information was all housed in the central processing core.
“Seems like quite a collection.” Warrae nudged open the last locker. A flicker of light served as the only warning before a synthetic lurched out. He jumped back as the half-finished creation dragged itself out by its fingertips.
“Ac-activate. Ac-acession. Ac-cidentallllyyyyy,” the android ground out as it wriggled and crawled forward. It glanced up at the two human officers, even as it stuttered over the words. Its eyes struggled to focus on them.
Homolka let out a grunt of disgust and raised the butt of his rifle, ready to smash the synthetic to pieces. His expression was as if a rat clung to his shoe.
The synthetic tracked the motion, and it held up its hand as if to defend itself. It must have learned that gesture was one which usually stirred pity in humans. It didn’t at this moment.
The sergeant did not hold any pity for this machine. He brought the butt down repeatedly until the light left the synthetic’s eyes and it collapsed back onto the floor.
Warrae kicked it twice. He would have rebuked Homolka for his destruction of it before they could analyze its core, but by the looks of it, this wasn’t anything special.
“Odd reaction,” he muttered to himself. His attention returned to the locker and he switched to infrared on his optics. The cool interior still reflected the warmth of the damaged synthetic systems, but the shape didn’t quite match.
He flipped out a crowbar from his pack and poked around the edge of the metallic bottom. It took only a moment to find the switch. One quick smash, and it slid open.
The angry, dirt-smeared face of Anna Mortise glared up at him. She’d made herself a bolt hole, like any other vermin.
Warrae jerked his head at her. “Out. Unless you’d prefer us to pull you from there in pieces.”
The hacker pulled herself out of the enclosure and through the locker to stand in front of her old adversaries. She was a short woman, dark hair in a blunt cut, wearing overalls stuffed with tools. She wasn’t pretty, but Warrae was happy to see her.
She glanced down at the synthetic they’d smashed to pieces. “See you’re just as empathetic as last time, Warrae.”
Homolka clocked her on the side of the head, knocking her back into the locker. She rocked back on her heels but didn’t make a sound, merely rubbed the blood from her mouth.
“You’ve violated Article 36.3 of the Jùtóu Charter, bitch. It’ll be ten years in a Combine labor camp. Hope you enjoy calibrating data cards with your bare fingers.”
Mortise looked up at Homolka and shook her head. “How did humanity produce something as beautiful as a synthetic soul, and spit you out at the same time?” Her eyes swam with genuine confusion, before she snatched up a nearby screwdriver and rammed it into Homolka’s knee. She knew him and all his prostheses, so she targeted the perfect joint in his body.
The power conduit snapped under the assault, buckling the junction. However, as she scrambled to get away, Homolka still shot her. His targeting system was top-notch, so he hit her directly in the back of the head. She dropped to the floor like a bag of spare parts.
Warrae stared down and then up at his sergeant in frustration. “Homolka, I know you two have history, but I would have liked to question her. Unlike a synthetic, she’s got no chipset to probe.” He nudged her body with his boot.
Homolka actually blushed. “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t think.”
Warrae didn’t bother to reply. He ran his gaze over Mortise’s projects scattered around; Weyland-Yutani and Seegson models were common, but they’d need to check the codes on them. The synthetic Homolka had smashed with his weapon seemed bespoke, so there might be value there.
The small computer tucked away in the corner of the workspace caught his eye. “Make it up to me by hacking that device. She must have been here for a reason. Find out what under-the-table synth hacking she’s done on Guelph.”
Homolka swallowed hard and limped over to the desk while his superior gestured for the HB-enforcers to drag Mortise’s body away. Warrae wasn’t interested in flesh and bone. In fact, it disgusted him. She’d spent all her time seeking to improve synthetics, and never once thought to improve herself. He hoped that was her last thought before Homolka’s bullet hit her.
Now, using her contacts, perhaps he could get to the center of the conspiracy at Guelph Station. He’d pull everything apart, like the spider’s web it was.