The Complete Intrepid Saga: Books 1 - 4: Aeon 14 Novels Read online

  Despite that, the main sweep could still take your breath away. It was nearly a kilometer wide and ran the entire circumference of the ring. If you followed it around the ring you’d find yourself in some very nice neighborhoods from time to time, but most would prompt you to keep a hand on your weapon of choice.

  Trist tried to contact Jesse on the Link, but received no response. That could mean anything from complete and utter drunkenness to simply not caring enough to answer, or a host of possibilities in between.

  She visited Pikes Pub, followed by a few of her friend’s other favorite haunts eventually catching wind that Jesse was on her way to the SouRing commons to return a faulty IF unit. The commons were nine-thousand kilometers up-spin and Trist caught a high-velocity maglev that made the trip in less than an hour.

  Sue kept an eye out while Trist caught a bit of sleep. The effort to steal those plas sheets had kept her from sleep for more than a day and even the several minutes she managed to snatch on the train felt great.

  The train’s closest stop to the SouRing commons was the sort of place that made even people with death wishes deploy protective nano; Sue let out a veritable cloud.

  Trist commented.

  Sue replied.

  Trist waited for the crush in the station to lessen before she ventured out and then down a broad thoroughfare to the commons.

  The SouRing commons were placed at a location where the main sweep was wider than normal and contained veritable city of shops, services, and bazaars. The merchants on the commons sold everything to everyone—every single walk of life and caste was represented. Tucked amongst the semi-legal stalls and shops was the best black market in the bottom twenty rings, something that brought in a lot of highnums and offringers.

  It wasn’t hard to spot the foreigners either. They were the ones with the furtive glances and anxious twitches. Normally Trist would find a few likely ones and follow them to a good place to do a little recreational appropriation of their goods, but not now. She needed to find Jesse and get moving.

  Threading through a group of brain cases—Trist could never understand anyone’s desire to leave their body—she worked her way toward the shop she was pretty certain Jesse had gone to with her ‘faulty’ IF unit. On the way she decided that her flamboyant outfit might make her look a bit too much like a tourist and altered her silsuit to approximate black leather pants, boots, a tight grey shirt and a long jacket—a more serious and less approachable outfit.

  Sue commented.

  Trist’s question didn’t receive a response.

  As she threaded the crowd, a telltale blue mohawk caught her eye. It wasn’t a totally uncommon hairstyle at the moment, but this one stood out as the spikes were metal, and each was topped with a small decorative skull. Yunnan did have a tendency to show up when Trist least expected it; usually quite interested in her paying him the credit she owed.

  She was betting that he was past the ‘want money now’ stage and into the ‘retribution and pain’ stage. Cutting behind a series of vendors peddling sensory experiences from cloud divers on Saturn, she made certain to place a lot of space between herself and her debtor. No reason to have an unfortunate encounter with him botch the opportunity to do a job with Jesse.

  After that and a few other near misses with people she really didn’t want to meet today—or ever if she could help it—Trist finally found her friend.

  Jesse was where Trist thought she would be, though she hadn’t expected the scene she encountered. Her friend was standing on a shop’s counter screaming at the proprietor. Trist stopped and reconsidered her friend’s past behavior. The real question was why she hadn’t expected a scene like this. Theatrics were like food and power to Jesse. Trist approached quietly, interested in what this particular altercation was about.

  The scene was accented by the fact that Jesse’s body was covered in a skin-tight sheath that gave off waves of silver and gold light. Her hair was silver and waving as though it was blowing in a soft breeze. It was intended to be intimidating, though the store owner didn’t seem fazed.

  “I don’t care what you say, Drew. This IF set you sold me yesterday is a dud, it was DOA! Don’t you try and give me the song and dance about how I screwed it up, I was doing IF jobs when you were still a single cell in stasis!”

  “Right, Jesse. You’ve never cooked a single circuit in your life, just like I’ve never stubbed my toe. How’s about you get off my counter and buy a new IF like anyone else who cooks a unit. Or is your little hissy fit an indicator of your skill?”

  Trist smirked. Despite her friend’s claims, Trist had witnessed Jesse cook an IF unit on more than one occasion. That didn’t mean that Drew’s units were always perfect either. In this part of the ring the odds were often in favor of the vendor selling junk. Especially this vendor. Jesse was testing him to see if he would assume he had accidentally sold her a broken unit.

  “Don’t push her, Drew.” Trist glided up to the counter. “You know she’ll contact ChoSec and have them investigate where you get your supply from.”

  Drew cast one of his many cybernetic eyes her way. “Nice to see you, Trist. I highly doubt it. If they investigate me, they may just decide to make sure everyone I have been selling to has a valid license to do IF work. I imagine that your fake credentials can stand up to the p-auth system’s checks, but it wouldn’t take too much double-checking to expose them for some very illegal forgeries.”

  Jesse hopped down off the counter and managed to look contrite. “Now Drew, neither of us wants to go and do anything crazy like that. We were all just talking hypothetically.”

  Drew sat down on a stool behind his counter. “Right. Hypothetical. Now what say you hypothetically buy a new unit or get out of my shop.”

  Jesse’s face turned dark. “That’s how it’s gonna be? No deal, no haggling, not even the slightest of implied warranties?”

  Drew didn’t say anything as he stared at the two girls.

  “Damn you!” Jesse spat. “That’s the last cred I’m dropping in your shithole. I’m taking my business to Blaine. At least he knows what the word quality means.”

  “You do that.” Drew scowled.

  No one moved for several moments. Drew and Jesse stared at one another while Trist did her best not to burst into laughter.

  “Oh fuck it,” Jesse said as her eyes flicked up to the left. “There, the creds are transferred, gimme a new goddamn unit.”

  Drew unlocked a door behind the counter and pulled out an interface unit. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

  “I’m sure it is.” She turned and left, Trist following behind, hiding a smile with her hand. Once they were on the street she turned to Trist. “Why didn’t you help me in there?”

  “Cause I saw you cook that unit last night. I could even see the scorch marks on it in that poorly lit hole of Drew’s.”

  “What? You’re the honest thief now? How’s that work?”

  “I’ve done my evil deed for the day. I got a hold of a sweet manifest. I have transit times, dates, crate numbers, the whole shebang.”

  “So what, there are manifests everywhere.”

  “Yeah, but this one has shown me a bit of a security hole, and I plan to slip into that hole and slip out with some sweet shit heading for the GSS Intrepid.”

  “That colony ship they’re building out at Mars that nearly got blown up awhile back?”

  “Yeah, there’s some serious high-end neuro conduit and supplemental processors in the shipment; stuff that if we found the right buyer we could retire on.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Would I joke about something like that?”

  Jesse stopped and peered intently at her friend. “Hank, is she lying?”

  r her. No twitching, she’s not biting her cheek. Either she’s managed to control all of her tells or she’s being truthful.> Jesse’s AI spoke on an open Link between the two girls.

  “So when do we leave?”

  CHAPTER 19

  STELLAR DATE: 3227242 / 10.16.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: District 9B2, Ring 14, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)

  REGION: Jovian Combine, Sol Space Federation

  “Status on disabling the biosensors?” Jesse asked.

  “Almost there,” Trist whispered in response. “I just need to finish the loopback so the secage doesn’t notice a drop in signal strength.”

  “I doubt that the secage monitoring this place would even notice.” Jesse cast a disdainful eye down the corridor they were in. “Looks like even ChoSec forgot this place existed decades ago.”

  “People may forget, but the AI doesn’t. If I don’t cover our asses we’re gonna find some guard’s stun gun up them.”

  “That may not be so bad if he’s any good with it.”

  “Ugh.”

  Trist finished with her rewiring of the circuitry and slipped her tools back into their case. Jesse picked up the cover for the section of conduit they had exposed and held it in place while Trist fastened it.

  “We good to go then?” Jesse said as they stood.

  “As far as every surveillance circuit is concerned, we’re totally invisible.”

  “Just what I like to hear.”

  The two women slipped down the corridor toward their goal, the large double seal of the Norcon Warehouse A2-34-B. Their silsuits set to their standard thieving camouflage.

  They reached the seal and Jesse slapped a wireless hack pad over the section of wallplate they knew the door control conduit ran behind. “Little bit of this, little bit of that and”—the door chirped and opened—“we’re in just like we work here.”

  Sue spoke into both their minds.

  Hank asked.

 

 

 

  “Why do they always bicker when we are in tense situations?” Trist asked.

  “’Cause they like to up the odds. We’re getting too good at this, not as much of a rush for them.”

  “I don’t know how much I like the idea of my AI putting me at risk for a rush.”

  Sue said.

  Sue had a point, AI tended to police their ranks with far more severity than humans did. No human fully understood their laws, but the petabytes of data regarding punishments were enough to daunt anyone, flesh or silicon.

  Throughout the conversation the two women took stock of the warehouse. It wasn’t too large, only about a half kilometer across with direct access to the west docks on the far end. The pallets destined for the GSS Intrepid were in section A1-4 of the warehouse, several rows over. They strode past the towers of cargo until they came to the items they were looking for.

  Crates from STR Con were stacked in orderly piles and they pulled the topmost down and checked its ID. This one contained some high-end self-organizing circuits. SOCs were very useful when a small component needed to be extremely diverse and even change its own function based on need. They also weren’t cheap. Popping the crate open Jesse slipped several packages into her duffle.

  “Next.”

  They opened several more crates and pulled odds and ends that would sell well and not result in too many questions. Both women would have loved to take everything they laid eyes on, but there was no way they could sneak several tons of equipment out of the warehouse.

  “Look at that,” Trist said. “Silbio.”

  “No way.” Jesse checked the ID on the crate. “I didn’t know they had perfected that stuff well enough to start shipping it willy-nilly around the Sol system.”

  “I guess they did. Too bad it’s in those big tubs, we’d be able to retire off what that stuff is worth.” Trist broke the seal on one of the tubs and peered inside at the dull blue of the silbio mixture.

  “Don’t get carried away,” Jesse said.

  “Said the thruster calling the rocket hot.”

  Hank commented.

  “It’s an adaptation?” Trist asked.

  “What was that sound?” Jesse held up her hand and looked around.

  Sue informed them.

 

  Trist and Jesse stuffed several more items into their duffels and turned to slip out the far end of the warehouse. They stepped around a tower of plas products to find themselves face to face with the muzzle of a projectile weapon.

  “You two ladies had best step back into the aisle there.” The man waved the gun and the two women slowly backed up. To their left the five visitors Hank had identified came into view.

  Trist asked Sue.

 

 

  The group of five reached the two women. They consisted of four women and a lanky man in the front. He grinned and Trist decided it was one of the least appealing smiles she had ever seen.

  “You two ladies are messing with things you shouldn’t be,” he drawled. Behind him, his four female associates spread out to better cover Trist and Jesse with their weapons.

  “You don’t look much like the security detail yourself,” Jesse said. “I’m sure we can just live and let live.”

  “See, I don’t think that’s how it’s going to work.”

  “Why’s that?” Jesse asked.

  “Well, you’re here for a reason, and so are we. You’re here because we let you get the manifest for this shipment, and we’re here to make a fucking mess of it and you. Then we stage it to look like you two fought and killed each other.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Trist said. “I busted my ass getting that manifest. No one ‘let’ me get it.”

  “You’re hot shit, but not that hot,,” a girl holding a very large rifle sneered.

  “She’s right,” the lanky man said. “You’ve been had. See there are people, people we are associated with, who don’t want this stuff to get to its destination. Law forbids blocking the sale when a buyer is willing to pay full price, so our employers are required to fulfill the order. It sorta irks them to have to do it, so we’re going to fix things up so they don’t have to.”

  “I don’t get that at all…STR doesn’t want to sell its stuff?” Jesse asked.

  “I think they don’t want it to get to the Intrepid,” Trist said.

  “Oh, you are bright,” the man with the projectile weapon said.

  “’Nuff talk,” the lanky man shouted. “Let’s just finish this and get out of here.” He leveled his blaster at Jesse and fired a round directly into her face. Brain matter and metal from her AI sprayed out the back of her head.

  Trist screamed incoherently and lunged at the man. Three shots from the girl with the rifle caught her in the torso before she took her second step. The scream died in a long gurgle as she clutched her chest and stumbled backward. One of the other girls fired a few more shots into Trist, causing her to topple over into the open tub of silbio.

  “Nice shooting, Kris,” the lanky man observed. “Set a det and let’s get out of here.”

  One of the girls knelt down to set a charge; moments later they were gone.

  I
NTERLUDE

  STELLAR DATE: 3227278 / 11.21.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)

  REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation

  “About time this shipment from STR showed up.” Jens looked the pallets over as they were unloaded from the freight transport to Mars Outer Shipyards dock T5-7A.

  “They had some excuse about a break-in at a subcontractor’s warehouse,” Petrov mumbled, examining the shipping manifest. “Looks like everything made it though. Manifest does say that they had to repack some things and reseal one of the silbio tubs.”

  “Are you serious?” Jens said. “You can’t just unseal and reseal those tubs. If a single milligram of that stuff is contaminated there’s gonna be one hell of a suit on STR.”

  Petrov nodded and grabbed a scanner to get a reading on the resealed tub. He scowled at the display and shook the device before getting another reading. “I think something’s wrong with my scanner.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Jens said.

  “I read massive bio signals in here.”

  “Massive? How’s that happen?”

  “Uh…Jens…I think there’s a body in here.”

  Jens couldn’t speak for a moment. Lieutenant Collins would be all over his ass, the major would want a full investigation and the rest of his day would be shot.

  “How could that slip by on the other end?”

  “You gotta calibrate properly for silbio. The whole mess is technically organic, so it would just read as ‘alive’ to any regular scanner.”

  Jens sighed and got on the Link to call in a medic team to take possession of the tub. The body was probably dead, and that was going to generate a mess of paperwork.