April (2 page)

All of them were shamelessly bare legged, in shorts with sticky footies. They all had expensive spex on, even though they were little kids. Letting kids wear expensive stuff in public was just begging for them to be robbed or worse. At least it was down below. Only one of them had gloves on, while they were out touching every grubby call button and take hold in the public areas as if they were safe in their own homes. There was not a mask, knee pad, elbow pad, or head protection of any sort to be seen on any of them, while they were out running wild in the public corridor.

Not only were they completely unescorted by an adult and half naked for any perv or terrorist out prowling around to snatch, but the one in the lead didn't have any sort of shirt on at all. The reason for that was obviously to show off the colorful dragon drawn curled across his belly, under his left arm, up the back and looped over the shoulder, with its snarling head staring at him with boggled eyes and open jaws.

When they passed the one in front with the dragon spun around in mid leap to take a look back at him, his face was very Oriental, with strong epicanthal folds on the eyelids. The motion threw out long braided pigtails, startling Art. A bare breasted boy was bad enough, but surely they wouldn't let a little girl go out in public with no top on! Unless they allowed long braided hair on a boy…He couldn't decide which would be worse. The thought was so shocking he gasped at the audacity of it, either was indecent and the tattoo! That was beyond the pall.

He certainly hoped that was a fake. He couldn't imagine a child having a real tattoo. At least he hoped it was just body markers and would fade out in a week or so. Earthside you might let your boys swim topless if you had your own very private pool some folks would mind their own business if they found out. But if you tried that in public, even if they were escorted, Family Services would have them in custody in a heartbeat for endangerment and you'd be on trial for neglect. Lately, public sentiment was such, that even short sleeved shirts were frowned on in really conservative areas. Some restaurants would refuse you service in shorts or short sleeves, adult or child.

The middle children ignored him in passing, but the last child in line seeing the front runner look back kicked off the deck like a ballerina en Pointe, making a lazy turn in the half G, examining Art with the tactless stare children use. It was hard to tell, but this one also appeared to be a girl, although the hair was shorter and she was strikingly Caucasian with corn silk blond hair and bright blue eyes.

She threw her arms out to slow her spin enough, to look Art over better. On her forehead, the shiny cabochon of a Public Eye lens on a headband looked him over too. That was not-something-he-wanted, to be on a video archive somewhere. Maybe her folks made her wear it for her protection, even if they were crazy enough to let her out of the house alone. In that was the case, he could hope the vid would scroll off private storage in a few days.

She pulled her arms in to spin faster,  landing just in time to join hands with her friend to the front, as the lead kid grabbed a take hold bar, swinging the whole line of his friends around the corner. The arched line of them swung around the corner in a crack the whip maneuver that Art would not have believed possible if he hadn't seen it. The end girl curled up and hung on double handed against the snap, by stretching back out to ease it. So comfortable with the gymnastics that she took time to look over her shoulder at him, like he was the strange one here. Somewhere on the other side of the corner, she must have found a take hold, then the line disappeared from his view the same way – swapping ends.

By the time he eased around the intersection they were gone from sight and just their voices echoed down the empty corridor. They looked like a bunch of savages, he thought. Even the kids in the Arabic Protectorate weren't as bold when he'd done patrol there. These kids looked at you without a trace of fear on their faces. He found that really offensive.

Down a level on the elevator and along the corridor at a new rhythm brought him to his target's door. Not only was there not a visible camera on the residence hallways, there was no real security system on the door either, just a taste and code lock. It never occurred to him that cameras were deliberately visible, only for the intimidation factor.

Naval Intelligence had used a government inserted back door to get him the entry codes off the habitat's computers. He could have cracked such an easy entry himself, but he had learned early to not display too many skills, or his instructors asked where he had acquired them. His small hobby of burglary as a teenager had never been discovered, or he'd have never been accepted into the service for anything but scut duty.

The same caution, had kept him from asking the experienced fellows about the prospects of liberating souvenirs on missions. All he needed was one self righteous straight arrow blabbing, to ruin the game he had planned.

Art pulled his pad off his belt and ran it around the hatch edges checking for hidden security systems, with his military plug-ins. If he somehow alerted the station security, he had a set of get out of jail free documents in his pouch. That wouldn't be the way to impress his superiors on his first solo though, to need bailed out. His briefing had emphasized – if you can't achieve your objectives, withdraw without making our activities known. In other words -
don't screw up.
If they wanted to draw public attention to the investigation, they'd just walk in with warrants, not send in an operative.

He pushed the call button, just to be sure there was nobody inside. If it was linked to somebody's phone he'd ask for the wrong name. After a pause he punched the stolen numerical code in and the door opened without a hitch. He stepped through into the dark, closing the door and pulled a small light out. There didn't seem to be any manual light switch near the door, so he took another chance and said aloud, "Lights up." They came on full without any alarm, even at a strange voice, so he was encouraged. Even in a walled and gated community Earthside, this place would have never lasted a week without being robbed by somebody, maybe a grade school kid. It was hard to believe that anything of value could be in such an insecure place.

He took a deep breath happy to find he still got that deep thrill of being in a forbidden place he'd had as a teenager, even if he did have government sanction now. The place was ridiculously small for the home of a well paid and important worker. Everything he'd heard on Earth was these people were all rich, yet this nano-electronic engineer was living in an apartment the size of his parents garage. He was starting to doubt he'd find anything worth boosting for himself while he was here.

A quick walk through was in order. The house com console was an unlikely place to keep anything really sensitive. Most of its memory resided in the network and it could never be made sufficiently secure. Of the two tiny bedrooms the first obviously belonged to the teenage son, with very casual clothing and a mess of study papers and printouts on the desk. The kid was a pack-rat with boxes of junk and electronic parts piled in the corner and bottom of the closet. Some sports equipment was piled on the unmade bed and a mound of visibly dirty footies and grimy socks was piled by the desk.

The father's room looked like the jackpot, with an actual stand alone computer. He cut all data feeds in and out and sealed the ventilation as he'd been trained. There was still no alarm, so the environmental controls depended on positive reporting, not fail safes. The shoe box size computer unit was optical fibered to the wall screen, instead of wireless, with no network connection at all. That was damn suspicious for a computer able to do some complex modeling. Who monitored his usage if it was off line?

His briefing had not told him explicitly what he was seeking. He was to bring any and all technical materials and computer memory out with him for somebody else evaluate it. The computer looked like the target, but first he did a general toss of the room. He took his general purpose tool out and used the pliers to get a grip on the carpet in the corner, systematically pulling it all up. He pad-scanned the mattress and pillows, but used his knife to slit them open just to be sure. There were some old fashioned hard print codex books, all of which he riffled looking for loose papers. All he got was a few personal photos and old receipts, that might have simply been bookmarks. They were all commercially published so not anything he'd want, even if technical.

There was little clothing but he pulled each piece off the hangers. The ones with pockets he either searched or simply squeezed the pocket to feel for anything. There was a hard copy file with some legal papers and some currency with writing in a language he didn't know. It was all non-target material, but in the bottom there were three small gold coins. This was just the sort of personal bonus he'd hoped would be common when he applied for training. He carefully sealed them in a pocket, somewhat satisfied.

He wanted to be able to exit immediately once he dealt with the computer, so he took a moment to relieve himself. He used the toilet, returned to the bedroom and made a simple line drawing of a laughing seal, with a globe of the world balanced on its nose and the barest simple outline of the Americas on the sphere. No point in having this much fun and not intimating who tossed their place. It was always good to sow a little fear.

It didn't directly violate his orders, he reasoned, since they had to infer that the seal was meant to be a SEAL. He wasn't going to draw any anchors around the globe, or anything blatant. He drew it right on the big thin screen on the wall, ruining the plastic surface with the vacuum marker, ignoring the little voice in his head that said this was a bad idea.

He was finally ready to do the computer and get out of here. A quick check with the pad showed no outgassing from any explosives and no signal was being sent over the power cord. It shouldn't have an alarm or be booby trapped. He took the multi-tool and snipped the optic fiber. If disconnecting the power raised some sort of alarm, he would immediately trot out the door with the whole box under his arm. It was a normal push and twist plug at the wall, but no connector at the case, so he unplugged it and then immediately cut the cord almost flush with the case. Still no alarms, so he relaxed another small increment and pulled a chair up to crack the box open for the memory.

The case was a little taller than wide. He used his multi-tool to take the fasteners out of the two top corners. Then he tipped it on its side, to raise the bottom corner where it was easy to get at. There was a sort of boiling sound he could feel through the case and he immediately felt heat on his face. He jumped up in a panic, so hard he left the deck in the low G, knocking the chair over behind him and whipped the box back upright, but it was too late.

There was a plum size ball of white hot molten steel already melted through the side of the case before he could tip it back. It was far too hot to look at, so he had purple flash blobbies floating before his eyes before he could look away. Art had heard of thermite before in training, but never seen what it really looked like first hand. The composite counter top was holding up better than the metal computer case had, but it was sizzling, melting a crater and giving off lots of smoke.

The horrible plastic fumes were already making his flash shocked eyes water. There was a plastic waste basket under the desk and he grabbed it running for the shower in the tiny bathroom, desperately muttering, "Shit, shit, shit," all the way. The flow was good and he had an almost full waste basket in seconds.

Rushing back in the ball was visibly lower in the counter top. He tried not to look directly at the glare of it. It was not through yet, the low G was helping him there and he sloshed a big splash of water across it. The steam that flashed back with a loud hiss rolled up the wall, to join the layer of gray smoke fanning out across the overhead and burning his hand holding the rim of the basket, badly enough to make him jump back.

There was a drawer underneath the shelf the molten metal was eating through and he yanked it open and hastily dumped the rest of the water in it on top of the pencils and pens and things and slammed it shut. The steam that had flashed up condensed on the cool bulkhead immediately, where it ran back down, cutting clean streaks through the soot and pooling like ink on top of the counter. He ran back to the shower, coughing at the burnt plastic smell to fill his improvised bucket again. Behind him he heard the sudden hiss, as the white hot mass fell in the drawer with a layer of water in the bottom. By the time he ran back in it had melted through the pens and such, then the bottom of the drawer, before he could get the waste basket under it. It was only yellow hot now. The water in the drawer poured out slowly in the low G, right on top of the diminished but still soft ball.

That was a lucky accident he hadn't foreseen, but it helped a lot that all the water was directed right where he needed it. He slowly poured the new pail of water on it too, forcing himself not to pull back when the steam billowed up, even though it made him gasp and cough. It quickly dropped to red heat and then a dull grey. At last it was simply making a sizzling boiling sound, instead of the breathy sound of steam flashing.

When he'd dribbled the last of the water out he stepped back and tossed the empty waste basket on the bed. He hands were shaking from the realization he'd barely stopped it before it melted through the deck into the next apartment. As it was the metal decking slumped around the dull lump, so it was a close thing. He poked it with his toe, but it was welded tight to the metal deck. It was still hot enough it boiled off an expanding dry circle around itself as he watched, water fizzing on the edge of the expanding circle between wet and dry.

He glanced up at the seal and globe he'd drawn. Maybe that hadn't been the very best idea, but it was too late now. He certainly wasn't going to try to roll up the big thing and take it with him. He stumbled back to the bath again, pulling the bedroom door shut behind him, to close off as much of the stink as he could. He turned the shower on dead cold and very low flow, adjusting it to a fine mist. He stripped his glove and held his burnt hand in that cold spray as long as he dare. At least no skin had come off with the glove. He stepped back and stripped as quickly as he could, the burnt hand slowing him.