Gestapo Mars (13 page)

“This is Agent Carter Sloan. If you’re getting this, you know who I am and where I am and what my mission is. Except there isn’t a mission anymore. Planetary civilization has fallen. I’m stranded and alone. If the Coriandon have overrun the home system, there might not be anyone left to hear this.”

I paused to think about that, to wonder why I was even sending the message. Because I was alone. Because maybe the sound of my own voice was the only conversation I was going to get from now on.

“If there’s anyone who can hear me, know this. I’m cancelling the mission—or maybe it cancelled itself. Maybe all of humanity is cancelled. Hell, I don’t know.” I was babbling. “But I’m finished. This is Agent Carter Sloan, signing off.”

I took off the headset and tossed it onto the desk next to the radio.

That was as official a resignation as I could manage, under the circumstances. Having done it, I thought I’d feel something—lighter, maybe, or relieved or righteous. I didn’t feel a thing. The absolute silence of the abandoned building settled around me like thick wooly fog.

The sudden crack of static almost startled me out of my skin.

“Gestapo coded transmission 66-alpha. Carter Sloan, acknowledge with identification code.”

I grabbed the headphones, put them on again.

“I’m here. Hold on. I’m punching in the code now.” I typed it into the computer, held my breath.

“Stand by to receive stored message.”

“Oh, fuck you.” I’d thought I was about to talk to a live person, but I’d tapped into the equivalent of orbiting voicemail. The time stamp said the message was ten days old.

“Carter Sloan, this is Agent Armand,” the message began. “The situation has changed dramatically. No matter what happens, the daughter of the Brass Dragon must be kept alive. Repeat: find her and keep her safe at all costs. I will be in contact again, if possible, but the situation back on Mars is dire. We’re putting down uprisings all over the place, and the Coriandon are expected to invade any minute. I’ll try to arrange some help for you, if I can. Remember the code word SHATTERSTORM. Good luck, Sloan.”

The radio coughed static again, and that was all.

I left the police station, heading back out into the lonely rubble of the ruined city.

A
fter the first day, I didn’t really notice the bodies. Some had been the victims of violence, stabbed or shot amid the spasms of a dying civilization. Others looked like they’d simply given up, had dropped where they stood in the street or on the sidewalk to lie down and wait to die.

Now they all might as well have been piles of laundry dumped at my feet, shaggy heaps to be stepped over and around. I was too concerned with finding food to care about them. I checked every market and restaurant I passed, but they’d all been thoroughly looted.

Clothing had been hard to find too. I didn’t seem to be in a part of the city that had a lot of clothiers. No residences to scavenge either. The neighborhood was lousy with bistros and coffee shops, places that catered to the after-work and weekend crowds.

Finally, in an ice cream parlor, I found something to wear. I’d entered desperate to find food, but my eyes had landed on a pair of mannequins arranged in a quaint tableau. One was a woman in flowing dress, the style centuries old, an open parasol resting on her shoulder. She beamed a coquettish smile at a man, also in period clothing. The male mannequin wore a three-buttoned jacket with wide lapels, wide alternating stripes of red and white. White trousers. Saddle shoes. Red bow tie. The hat was the clincher. An old straw boater with a red band.

I hated myself even as I began to unbutton the jacket, but I didn’t have a shirt on under the pressure suit, and it chaffed my nipples something fierce.

The clothes were clean and dry and fit me perfectly. Style be damned. I was garish and bright and clean, relatively speaking.

The ice cream man cometh.

N
ext up was some sort of financial district—stocks, bonds, industry. Skyscrapers reaching a hundred stories high. They were a joke now.

I ate a pigeon. Pigeon futures. I’ll take a hundred shares. It wasn’t really a pigeon. This planet’s equivalent. Red feathers. Chewy. Then I found a warm, dry place to sleep, hung up my ice cream suit. The idea that it could get wrinkled or stained was absurdly disturbing to me. I kept the trousers white. I used a rag to shine the shoes each night.

Maybe I should have mentioned the drugs.

Sometimes I heard gunshots in the distance. Always I moved away from the sounds, quietly and quickly. But after two weeks of rat and pigeon and sucking ketchup packets from abandoned fast-food joints, I almost wanted to move
toward
the sounds. Toward people. Toward salvation or damnation. Toward life or death.

My training was the best of its time. Survival wasn’t a problem. I could live. Yet there was nothing in my training to make me understand
why
I might want to live.

I spotted the pharmacy on a corner at the edge of the financial district. It wasn’t as empty as I thought it would be, and I found what I wanted. Some nights I wanted to sleep, but couldn’t. Other nights I needed to stay awake, keep moving, avoid the gunfire. Up. Down. Popping different pills each night. It wasn’t unusual for an agent in the field to take drugs and prolong his usefulness. Nevertheless, I was getting frayed, nearing the end.

My body couldn’t take much more.

* * *

I sat on a bench in what was some kind of theater district. The marquee advertised shows like
Fatherland Follies
and
Nation’s Pride
. As the sun went down, I popped a pill to stay awake. I was looking at something specific, and wanted to keep looking.

The gigantic electronic sign down the side of the building was mesmerizing. For starters, it had to have its own power source, because it blazed like nothing I’d seen in days. That’s why I wanted to wait for sunset, to see the square lit up. I sat awash in red light, staring at the words D
RINK
B
LITZ
C
OLA
three stories high. Then the time. Then the temperature. Then the cola advertisement again. The drugs buzzed through my veins and the sign started to sizzle around the edges.

I grinned.

It was hypnotic.

A public service announcement for a concert in the park. Another for a food drive for the homeless. The cola ad again. The light from the sign bled into the rest of the world, became the world. There was only garish light and meaningless messages screaming out to nobody.

I laughed out loud. The sound was strange in my ears.

Blitz Cola. Time and temperature. A message for Agent Carter Sloan. They may as well have not been words, just blinking designs, hieroglyphics to aliens who might come a thousand years from now, pretty lights to delight a child and—

Wait… what the fuck?

It had to be the drugs.

I sat forward on the bench, rubbed my eyes. I willed the narcotics into the background of my consciousness. I was only partly successful, so my head was swimming, though the delight of the lights and colors completely vanished.

The messages cycled through again, and I’d almost convinced myself I’d been hallucinating when there it was in giant glowing letters.

This is a message for Agent Carter Sloan.
Elimination order reinstated.
Radio ASAP for further details.

I blinked. I sat perfectly still, waiting for the messages to cycle through one more time, and there it was again.
Elimination order reinstated
.

“You motherfuckers.”

* * *

The walk back to the police station was uneventful. I keyed in my code and received another stored message:

“Agent Sloan, this is Colonel Blake Gideon. Agent Armand is dead. He was killed putting down the rebel uprising here on Mars. First, I wish to assure you that everything is completely in hand here at Gestapo headquarters. Rebel forces have been driven to the outskirts of the city, and order is currently being restored to every zone.”

Gideon sounded nervous and was explaining just a little too much. My guess was that things weren’t as much “in hand” as he was letting on.

Not that it mattered to me.

“It is more important than ever you eliminate the daughter of the Brass Dragon,” Gideon continued. “She abides in the heavily fortified naturalist compound on a remote island. The island is self-sufficient, and we believe it has survived the global collapse of New Elba’s society. I’ve attached a map with coordinates.”

The printer next to the radio spat out a color map.

“Proceed immediately to the island and carry out your mission,” Gideon said. “The Reich is depending on you. This transmission is concluded.”

I keyed in my code and put the headset on, spoke directly and clearly into the microphone.

“Listen, Gideon, it might help to know exactly why this woman is so fucking important. Also, please note I’m not going to be near a radio anymore, so it might be difficult to communicate. Sloan out.”

That didn’t explicitly say that I was back on the job. Let the bastards think whatever they wanted.

Suddenly I felt an urge to violence, and even though I knew it was the drugs putting me on edge, I couldn’t control the outburst. I pulled my pistol and blasted the radio three times. It sparked and smoked, pieces flying all over the room. No more messages from the Reich. Fuck ’em.

I slouched back out to the street, pistol still in hand.

“Where are you?” I shouted. “Come get me! Come get the Nazi, you cowardly shits!”

Not a peep. Not even a hint of breeze.

The planet was as still and as quiet as a tomb.

Or a cryo-stasis chamber.

I turned south and walked toward the ocean.

I
could smell the salt air and the vague odor of rotting fish. I was getting close.

Funny, but I didn’t really consider myself to be working for the Reich any longer, and yet there I was heading for the shore, thinking I might need a boat, the map folded neatly in the pocket of my striped jacket. It was the training. There was no turning it off.

But it was more than that. I had to find this woman—not to kill her, maybe not to save her, either. Simply because I had to know. What was it that made her the focus of the Reich’s attention? She was just a woman like any other, wasn’t she?

I had to know.

Also, I was starving.

I chased a rat down the sidewalk for five minutes before realizing it was an enormous dust bunny tumbling in the breeze.

I popped another pill. They kept me going, but I could feel my body buzzing with the narcotics, burning itself up. I couldn’t keep going this way forever. I needed real food. Real rest, too.

Don’t dwell on it
, I told myself.
Keep going. Find the sea. Find
her
. Don’t ask why. Just do it.

A dog barked.

I turned, blinked, not sure if I’d heard what I thought I heard. It came around the corner, tongue lolling and tail wagging. It was one of those little, yapping ankle-biters, some kind of terrier maybe. It looked a little thin and scruffy, but not especially malnourished. So far the dog was weathering the fall of civilization better than I was.

It sat in front of me, cocked its head to one side.

“Agent Sloan, I presume,” it said. I understood the words, but the voice had a low growling quality.

“Holy shit, a talking dog.” I pulled my pistol, pointed at its face. “Explain yourself, mutt.”

The drugs.
It has to be the drugs.

“I’m a Reich A.I. infiltration parasite sent via fast drone from Mars,” the dog said.

“No,” I replied. “You’re a hallucination, and I’m going to shoot you.”

“Please refrain,” the dog said. “Here, take a look.”

The dog spun around, and I saw a little silver disk the size of a coin attached to the base of its skull. A little nub of an antenna.

“You’d indicated you might be out of radio contact,” the dog said. “Sending another agent would take too long. A fast drone through the nearest wormhole was the only way to send word in time.”

I shook the gun at him. “But why are you attached to a fucking dog?”

“I’ve been programmed with your smell signature,” the dog said. “I am hooked into the dog’s spinal column. Powerful microcomputers interpret the scent trail which led me to you. I’m also able to use adjusted voice signals to use the dog’s larynx for speech.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I am not programmed to comment on that eventuality.”

“Okay, you found me. What now?”

“The kill order has been rescinded,” the dog said. “The daughter of the Brass Dragon must not be harmed.”

What the fuck?

“You Gestapo shitheads are driving me insane!” I screamed.

“This is not the intent.”

I went to one knee and put the pistol directly against the dog’s forehead, right between the eyes. “I think I
will
shoot you.” Hate surged in my veins. I felt hot and dizzy. “And then I’ll build a fire and cook you. The last thing I want you to know is that you’re going to be delicious.”

“Please refrain until I transmit our reply to the satellite.”

“My reply is
fuck you
.”

“That reply is not relevant to the situation,” the dog said. “A Reich battle frigate with a team of shock troops is on its way. Their objective is to extract you and the daughter of the Brass Dragon, once you’ve secured her. Her safety is top priority.”

“Why?” I screamed. “Why why whywhywhy? What is she to the Reich? What is she to
anybody
?”

“Computer models reveal that she is the crux of some sort of societal zeitgeist,” the dog said. “A complex analysis of political and social commentary, the flow of online conversation, the underground chatter of the subversive class, pop cultural references—all carry the undercurrent that the daughter of the Brass Dragon is… something.”

“
Something
?” I replied. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It’s called the Kardashian effect,” the dog said. “The term was coined centuries ago to describe a person who is important or popular or interesting, but nobody knows why.”