Cates 04 - The Terminal State (3 page)

“What are you smiling at? ”

I turned away from the darkness and the wind and focused on the trooper. I still hadn’t gotten used to the
dark
. There wasn’t a light anywhere, and no moon in the sky, and the whole world was just wind and the creaking, shaking truck bed, just a single uniform so white it seemed to glow with its own energy and fourteen other assholes who hadn’t been fast enough. The truck was ancient, a rust bucket being driven by a Droid on a programmed course. Distantly, I could see other trucks streaming across the desert, just bouncing headlights.

The trooper was a fucking kid, but everyone was a fucking kid these days. His face was dirty, but he sat with the shredder on his knees like a man who wasn’t afraid of fifteen shitkickers who hated him and wished him dead, even if the shredding rifle bucked like a wild hog and took three seconds to warm up from cold metal—a crowd-control weapon only an asshole would use. Three seconds was a long time in my world. Or the world that used to be mine.

I inched the smile up a notch. “In a couple of minutes I’m going to break both your thumbs, and I’m looking forward to it.”

He studied me for a moment, his face blank. Then he smiled, ten years dropping from his face just like that. “Talk to me again and I’ll hook you to the back and drag you to the Recruit Center.”

I laughed, nodding, and looked back at the desert, replaying my favorite memory: me on the ground, watching a hover rise into the air with a sudden jerk, Marlena’s face peering over the edge down at me. Sometimes I saw Michaleen’s face leering down instead of Marlena, cackling.
Mocking
me.

I turned back to the interior of the truck bed for a moment. No one was looking our way, afraid to be associated with me, except Remy, who was still staring at me like I might pull Nutrition Tabs out of my ears. We were all just biological resources—the army needed manpower. They weren’t too picky about the quality of it—they had augments to make you stronger, faster, sharper—so they just went around scooping up every asshole who couldn’t run fast enough, pushed them into the grinder, and out came shock troops on the other end. It was a beautiful system.

At least the army had resources to tap. The System Pigs, under the reins of Director of Internal Affairs Dick Marin—the King Worm, as he used to be known when he was just the top cop in the System—had converted every cop in the world, practically, into avatars. Droid bodies with digital brains. The avatars were expensive and required rarefied materials, and under the strain of a civil war, they’d lost their last avatar factory and were suffering severe manpower shortages as a result.

The wind was exhiliratingly cold, and I was, against all odds, still alive. Feeling strangely cheerful, I looked back at the trooper. “Fuck you,” I said, still smiling.

He thought about it, but after a moment he smirked and looked away. It would have been good if I’d gotten him up, off-balance, and pissed-off, but the kid had more on the ball than that. So I took a moment and went over my resources. Since I had a whole moment, I did it twice.

Our silicon bracelets had been put on sloppy; I’d been out of mine for half an hour. That was one. I looked around the truck as the wind tore my hair—longer than I’d ever had it before—and considered my fellow presses. It was pretty much the entire population of Englewood who had survived the raid. Gerry, our unelected mayor, sat on the opposite side of the truck, up toward the cab, slumped over with her head down. Bixon, bleeding from his scalp and looking pale, stared straight ahead and moved with gelatinous ease every time the truck hit a bump, vacant. Remy, staring at me. Our eyes met and he blinked once, deliberately, and looked down at his lap and then back at me. I moved my eyes down, and he spread his hands slightly, flashing me his bare wrists. When I looked back at the kid’s face, he was smiling at me. I gave him a little smile back. Fucking Remy. He’d been following me around for months, telling the other kids he was my
deputy
, a word I’d never heard before. I liked the kid.

So, I had me and a fourteen-year-old kid who’d grown up with a Droid nanny wiping his ass. I looked back at our guard. Soldiers were humans; they weren’t avatars with control chips like the cops, so you could negotiate with them, sometimes. I’d had some success bribing army grunts in the past—escaping from Chengara Penitentiary, I’d paid out millions of yen for a pair of parachutes and the right to jump out of a hover—but I didn’t think my yen was worth enough anymore, and I’d seen the grunt taking his marching orders from his commanding officer right before we’d pushed off. He might not be impressed with
me
, but he was scared shitless of the tall, skinny colonel with the white hair and perma-tan skin. Both of the colonel’s eyes had glowed softly, the left iris a cold silver and the right a warm orange. He didn’t smile. I had an instant impression that he had never smiled, that he might in fact lack the necessary muscles.

“Cheer up, citizen,” he’d bellowed. “You gonna remember this day as the happiest day of your life, the day you joined the System of Federated Nations Army, an’ rejoiced.”

Thinking of Chengara made me think of Michaleen. The Little Man was unfinished business, and here I was being kidnapped into the System of Federated Nations Army. I didn’t have time for it. I had people to kill. If I’d gotten moving three days ago like I’d intended, I wouldn’t have been scooped up with the rest of Englewood’s ridiculous population.

I looked back at the kid and nodded. We had some pretty reliable sign language; the kid had attached himself to me and followed me everywhere, my fucking valet, and I’d taught him a few things. He nodded back, and I turned to study the guard, still sitting there at the back, shredder across his knees, looking about as fearsome as a daydream. The SFNA soldiers were fast, filled with augments that made them faster and stronger than nature had intended, with a host of extra little abilities like night-vision and such—one-on-one, they probably weren’t a match for the cop avatars they were waging this civil war against, but they still had bad motherfucker as a
baseline
. Me, I felt pretty good. A few months of eating steadily and taking it easy, with just an occasional head to crack, and I felt better than since before the Plague. My leg still ached and I wasn’t as fast as I’d once been, but I was in decent shape.

I didn’t think I’d be able to handle the trooper on a level playing field, but I didn’t intend to play fair.

There was nothing good about getting pressed, from what I’d heard. Aside from the fact that most of the people being pressed were going to be shock troops without much value to throw against entrenched positions or other suicidal missions, rumor had it that a lot of the officers sold people out of the army if someone wanted you badly enough—or sometimes wholesale, in big groups to anyone who had the cash. I could think of a few folks who might not mind getting their hands on me, and I didn’t want to find out if any of them were still interested.

I signaled the kid, and he nodded again. He let the bracelets drop silently to the floor of the truck, stared at his feet for a few seconds as we bounced along, and then stood up.

“I want to go home!” he shouted, putting some screech into it.

The guard was already on his feet, shredder in his hands—fast. But he didn’t toggle the shredder into life. He held it on Remy as he balanced on the balls of his feet, but he didn’t regard the kid as a threat.

“Sit the fuck down,” he ordered. “You make me say it again and I’ll smack you.”

“I want to go home!” Remy shouted again. I kept my eyes on the guard, watching, and when his jaw locked and his weight shifted, I leaped up and jumped at him, putting my hands on the shredder and smacking it up into his face, breaking his nose easily. I launched myself into him and let gravity take us down, cracking his back over the tailgate and pinning him there with my weight. I smacked the shredder into his face one more time because it felt good, and then I pushed it down onto his throat, hard enough to choke him a little but not hard enough to do any real damage.

“About those thumbs—”

He surged beneath me and I was thrown backward—the kid was
strong
. I kept my grip on the shredder and tore it from his grasp as I staggered back, crashing into the crowd. They shoved me away like they were afraid I might get some balls on them, so I popped back up in time for the grunt to bury his head in my stomach, knocking my breath and what felt like my kidneys out of me and shoving me back into the crowd. There were a couple of high-pitched screams and hands were on us, pushing us away frantically, all of them too terrified to see twenty seconds into the future, which was us scattering into the desert, free. Most of them had come from comfort, from money, some even from power—old power, power that wasn’t there anymore. None of them truly believed they were fucked. They still thought an angel was going to swoop down and collect them, apologize for the inconvenience, and make it all go away. Including me, who’d been keeping them
alive
for the past six months.

The grunt put his face in mine, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing with excruciating, surprising force, making my ribs bark and trapping the shredder between us. Blood had spilled out over his mouth and chin, making him look suddenly older, more dangerous.

“Still got the thumbs, old man,” he panted at me. “You gonna break ’em with your mind? ”

I liked this guy. I liked the troops better than the cops—the cops were all fucking attitude, dandies in their rich suits, even before they’d all been forcibly turned into avatars, Droids with digital brains. They had more metal in their brains than I liked, sure, but we all had faults. I tended to kill everyone I met, more or less by accident.

Before I could tell him about my growing affection toward him, Remy rose up in the air and attached himself to the back of the soldier, his skinny arms locking around the grunt’s neck. Before I could even blink, he’d leaned in close like a fucking lover and bit the grunt’s ear, a savage, tearing bite.

The guard screamed. It was a high-pitched, boyish scream. He staggered off me, his arms slapping up at Remy, and I smiled, thinking,
That’s my boy
.

I straightened up and spun the shredder before me, feeling good. I kept my balance as the truck swayed and bounced under me. The gun’s ammo readout glowed red and plump, a full clip. But I didn’t want to turn the guard into a fine red mist, even if Remy got clear; he was just doing his job. Swallowing the ice ball of nausea and pain in my belly, I flipped the rifle around and grasped it by the barrel with both hands. It was top heavy, but I didn’t need it to be a
good
weapon. I just needed to knock him off the truck, leave him behind in the night.

Remy wasn’t giving up easy. The grunt had both hands on the kid’s head, trying to tear him off, but Remy wasn’t going. I took three steps forward, swinging the shredder back behind me. Just as I got within range, the guard got a grip and tore Remy off of him, throwing the kid down onto the bed, where he skidded along the slick metal floor, crashing softly into the cab.

I swung the rifle, but the guard’s arm flashed up faster than I thought possible and intercepted it, like smacking into an iron bar. He wrenched it violently and I let him have it, diving forward and using his own trick, putting my hands on his throat and pinning the gun between us. This time, I squeezed for all I was worth.

“Sorry, chum,” I panted, winded suddenly. “The army just doesn’t suit me.”

He grinned at me, and I fell in love with the bastard. “Fuck, man, I don’t blame you. If I’d been bought out by Wa Belling, I’d get the fuck off this truck too.”

I froze. “What? ”

The grunt nodded. “The CO told me. You set a fuckin’ record on the price. If a fuckin’ Gunner like Belling wanted
me
, I’d lie, cheat, and steal to get away, too. I heard stories about him—he’s all over our watch lists. Got a standing 909 order—if we press him, we shoot him.”

For a moment, I was outraged. Wa Belling. He’d been a founding member of the Dúnmharú, sure, one of the original hardcases. He’d been a personal fucking failing of mine, though. He’d fucked with me in London on the Squalor case, first pretending to be Canny Orel, the most famous Gunner in history. He’d killed people when I’d ordered him not to. Then he’d pretended to be my ally in New York, killing cops because I thought it made a difference. He’d sold me out during the Plague, though, when a madman had unleashed a trillion nanobots on the world, with me as Patient Zero with Belling’s help.

I hadn’t see him since then. I’d cooled my heels in Chengara getting fucked over by his boss, Canny Orel—aka Michaleen Garda, my bestest pal in prison, who’d lied to me and used me and left me for fucking dead after fucking me over. I’d spent the last six months contemplating revenge against Michaleen, but Belling—Belling would be a fine way to start. Wa Belling had played me for a fool for fucking
years
. Why not?

“If he’s got a standing kill order,” I said, “how can he do business with you? ”

The guard snarled. “The CO deals with anyone who can pay the price,” he spat. “Dick Marin could make him an offer and he’d make the fucking arrangements. Anners is a fucking pig.”

His outrage was touching—a true believer. There were more of them in the System than I’d have imagined. I eased back from the guard. We stared at each other, him frowning suddenly. I held out the shredder.

“Here,” I said. “Let’s call it a wash.”

The soldier stared at me, the bottom of his face a mask of blood. His hands were slack on the shredder for a moment and then firmed up as he straightened up. He studied me for a moment, and then smiled. I almost thought he understood. Or maybe he was just relieved to bring in the full head count he’d been entrusted with.

“Take your fucking seat then,” he said warily, watching me and finally toggling the rifle on. The squeamish hum was torn away by the wind and barely seemed to be there.