Kitty kitty, p.14
KITTY KITTY, page 14
The Maiden faced him before whispering: “The Guild always ensured complete confidentiality of the data. Unfortunately, their analysis was crucial in this instance.”
“Crucial?”
Darwin! I leaped in to save Ali, and suddenly I’m drowning in the middle of a spy novel!
“You’re running out of time. I helped you out,” the Maiden explained. “We wouldn’t be here today, otherwise. Believe me, what’s in that bracelet is worth it. High risks, high rewards.”
“It had better be, Zéphyr.” Lao got up. “Even with all the Techno-nodes crawling with probes and your mighty AI wisdom, you and the jokers of the Guild do not have a clue about what is at stake!”
The data thief immediately grabbed him by the sleeve of his suit, bringing him back on his chair. “I know damn well what’s at stake, Linus.”
Lao disengaged. His cyber-eye shone. He finally left us, utterly livid. His goon followed.
I whispered to my sidekick to break the awkward silence which settled shortly afterwards: “Ali and I met Linus Lao on Deimos, you know? He’s rather the dangerous type. You don’t want him to kung fu your bottom!”
“He interferes. The Guild doesn’t work that way.”
“What’s he after? He said something about the Danaë. What does a Jovian cruise ship casino heist have to do with stealing a Soviet bracelet on Ceres?”
“The Danaë’s job granted me a backdoor to Camp MacArthur. One thing leading to another, I found a rogue MIA operative on Mars with interesting intel. Today’s theft is a smoke screen. I will retrieve the data the operative hid in it for Lao. And he will be remunerated through the bracelet’s insurance.”
“Clever.”
“The ornament is worth its weight in iridium. That’s my extra-share added to the Emporium’s payment—the Venusian Yuan reaching new lows lately with the new Techno-tariffs on sight.”
A sharp line of thinking, fitting for a Cronian bounty hunter. I was starting to see why I was drawn to this thief more and more. But then reality hit—my job was to take people like her down. Life’s never as simple as it seems, is it?
The meteoritic iron bracelet was finally displayed after a series of classical antics. Most of them were stolen from the Communists at the end of the wrongly called World War Last. The Maiden bid on a cheap trinket to ensure the continuation of the plan and she won some Soviet garbage for C$70,000. Subsequently, different buyers from the moons of the middle planets competed fiercely until a gynoid envoy scored the precious bracelet for C$950,000.
“It’s silly not to do this on the intraweb,” I remarked. “We’re living in the data age, aren’t we?”
“Yes. But it’s just way more fun to show off your wallet with a canapé in your hand,” the cyborg confided to me. “Most of the payments are still processed through the web. I wouldn’t do it, though. This place’s firewall is a joke. A kid from Sheba with a TRS-80 would find a path around the ICE.”
“Can you spot some webrunners?”
“Like ghosts roaming in the data forest…”
The thief proceeded towards the offstage salerooms to recover her bid. Meanwhile, the transport assistant in charge of the bracelet, an egg-headed character with a hooked nose and improbable sideburns, left the podium and paraded in front of us on his way to the back rooms as well. As for the buyer, she was dragging her circuits right behind us.
“It’s up to you now!” I murmured while the Maiden was making room for the robot with woman features after the last checkpoint.
I let myself gently fall to the ground and followed her to where the transaction would happen: a sales office covered with faux wood paneling and as narrow as a broom closet. There, a second clerk welcomed this robotic buyer with a fake smile. His security puppet, which looked like a frightening mantis, immediately scanned the latter’s identification plate. As I stood silently under the injected plastic table, the bracelet assistant entered the room to hand the object to his colleague who examined it with his wired glasses when the egghead left.
“Another one who uses bots for his bidding,” grumbled the auctioneer. Ironic. He was the only human here.
All the remaining participants leaned in their respective armchairs. The third phase of the plan was set in motion. Alea iacta est. It was my time to shine. “Chicka-chick-ah!”
I startled the human with the wired glasses, and he immediately checked under the desk. “What is this?” The effort made his cheeks turn pink, and I recognized the man who had brought me F.A.B. at Germaine’s restaurant. What a coincidence! “Well, look at that!” he smiled as he struggled to reach me with his hairy hand. “Do I know you, tiny guy?” Too bad for him, it didn’t change anything. I scratched his chin and bit his ear, and he started yelling like a little child: “Harami!”
On high alert, the security robot, yet trapped behind its master’s chair, tried to catch me. Reaching for my tail, it stuck its arm-blades in the ceiling tiles as the assistant with the sideburns burst in to help.
“Sanjay! Throw that whirling mop out!” the auctioneer hollered while fumbling over the bracelet as it was raining foam and asbestos.
The confusion was overwhelming, but before I could make sense of anything, I was unceremoniously shoved out of the room. Dr. Eggman yanked me up by the scruff and hurried towards the nearest fire exit, brushing past the security teams without a second glance. Only when we were well out of sight did he drop me to the ground. Then he burst out laughing: “I love it when a plan comes together!”
His three-piece suit vanished into thin air, and a blue outfit of an interweb repair woman appeared. The holosuit continued its transformation to reveal the Maiden’s true face at the last moment.
“Were you able to exchange the bracelet with the copy during that little show?” I asked.
The pennyweighter half-opened the Velcro closure of her glitchy uniform to let me catch sight of the iron jewelry against the skin of her hip. A hot wave blinded me. If her epidermis hadn’t been metal, she would have melted under the intense heat.
“Excellent! We got to motor, now!”
As planned, a taxicab was waiting for us at the end of the driveway, and we withdrew from the premises. A detachment of police vehicles soared over our heads. The whole city was on Defcon 5. Braun was about to crush the auction hall’s security with his bare hands.
“Damn! News travels fast!” the Maiden laughed as we passed a toll booth between two purification towers. “This MP needs to chill up!”
“Glad tidings,” I remarked. “You’ll be able to impersonate him at the police station without any risk…”
The bracelet in a safe place in an abandoned Holosex box, it was time to rescue Ali in the final stage of the plan I had concocted. An operation irretrievably redacted by the Data Maiden.
“I’ve already told you no…” she cut me off as I had tried again to convince her that the explosion of the Blue’s tanks was a perfect diversion to cover our escape. “Blowing things up is a weird obsession of yours!”
“Do your Braun impersonation,” I grunted. Sometimes, I could be as grouchy as Ali.
The cyborg disappeared. The few images of the Soviet on the net had allowed us to code a basic but suitable holographic costume. “My name is Braun Rasputin and when I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.”
Excellent! She had captured that melodious harmony of condescension and authority that characterized the MP.
Once inside the police station half an hour later, there were no obstacles to the jail, as the offices looked more like a battleground. Everyone was running around in all directions through the thick cigarette smoke. Dial phones were loudly ringing without anyone taking the time to answer. Apparently, Braun had threatened to send whoever didn’t join the hunt for Zéphyr—presently roaming the high-security area—to some remote orbital colonies. The guards were so afraid of the irritable Marine that, as expected, no one checked the cyborg’s ghost FID.
“Should be here, Sir!” an obedient officer assured us after leading the Maiden and me through the high-security floor.
“Appreciated!” answered the cyber-thief. “Dismiss.”
Behind the bars of her cell, Ali was doing a headstand with the little movement that the handcuffs allowed her. At her side, on a metal stool, Hemingwest was on the point of a nervous breakdown; biting his fingernails until they bled. When he saw fake-Braun, a glimmer of hope lit up his eyes: “Oh my god! Did you catch—”
“Hold your tongue, Nigel! Ali can come out. You stay here,” the Maiden coughed.
Hemingwest still savored this half victory. He was rid of my human.
“You’re now free, Agent Freckles,” I said.
Finally, released from their shackles thanks to the master thief’s talents, Ali took me in her arms. “Thank you, Agent Whiskers,” she replied. “But why is Rasputin helping us again?”
Alas, the relief was short-lived! As soon as the Maiden shut the door to lock it, the real Braun—face as red as the Kremlin’s Wall—stormed in at the far end of the corridor.
“Oh, geez… I’m still high on Quaalude…” Ali whined before rubbing her eyes.
All the other humans cursed one after the other—like a perfect symphony.
“Just run, girl!” then yelled the thief, still disguised as the Soviet despite the accumulating glitches. “We’ll explain later!”
The cyborg brutally reopened the gate, bending the bars. The door leaf instantly barricaded the way to the actual Braun. But this allowed Hemingwest, who had understood the situation, to escape as well.
“Hurry!” I panicked.
We bolted down the prison stairs to the ground tarmac. There, we vanished into a cloud of papers raised by a Techno-Police convoy. The federal forces were returning from the auction house. Very bad timing!
“This way!” shouted Ali as she chose the direction of the coolant tanks.
The Maiden had disappeared and, alone in the middle of the airstrip, Hemingwest decided to follow us. “Your buddy the borg ran off, and we have all the cops of the district on our arses because of you!” yelled the execrable individual.
“Nobody asked you to come!” I said.
The feds were storming the place. Several shots rang as we reached the edge of the landing zone where the tarmac overlooked the street by a high gradient. Unable to reverse my momentum, I almost fell off the cliff. Ali saved me at the last second by grabbing my tail.
“I’m going to be crucified after that! You’ve given me no choice, haven’t you?” Hemingwest kept grousing after we took cover behind a tank of Blue.
“That or you’re after the Data Maiden and her C$800,000 bounty!”
“Shut up! Both of you!” my partner roared.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Come!” she answered as she threw herself into the void and disappeared.
“She’s insane. I raised a maniac!”
Meanwhile, seeing the shielded robots and a Freak-rabbit officer approaching, Hemingwest demolished the cover of the tank control terminal. “Bunch of wazzocks! You have to do everything yourself, here!” he swore. Tapping away on the coarse plastic buttons, it caused the pump to overheat. Under pressure, the steel hoses inflated like balloons. With the small, squared CRT screen of the console broken, Hemingwest had obtained the spark that would ignite the liquid.
“Scoundrel! The explosion was my idea!” I shouted as I jumped with him. Behind us, the tank mushroomed.
We hit the ground, crashing into a heap of orange trash bags, and made our way to meet my partner in a dead-end alley, hidden from the drones by a mess of tangled neon wires. Once, it might’ve been a scavenger’s hideout—now it was a graveyard of rusted body implants, empty booze bottles, and red biohazard waste bins, all abandoned and left to rot.
“I think I twisted something,” Ali admitted after failing to get back on her feet. Sitting on a hollow beer barrel after pushing down a mummified disemboweled rib cage, she was massaging her sore ankle. The bandage around her left thigh started bleeding again.
Hemingwest approached her to examine her wound but soon revealed his true purpose. With a shard of glass in his hand, he had pinned my human against the garbage heap. “My family will have to fiddle with some undesirable connections to make people forget about these goings-on,” he said. “Between the feds and Yggdrasil, I’m getting tired of you, lassie!” He then squeezed Ali’s neck tighter between his fingers; his glass blade a few centimeters from my copilot’s throat.
Yet he quickly stopped—a look of surprise on his face. My partner’s body disappeared beneath swirls of pink smoke that blinded the bounty hunter before the Maiden emerged under the holographic features.
“What a plot twist!” I yelped as my friend pushed back the aggressor who fell on the ground.
The Data Maiden stepped over the auxiliary who had tried to murder her, feet on either side of his head. Picking up the shard of glass, she then sat on his torso with the full weight of her heavy metal reinforcements. “Looks like I’m fully paying my debt to the Kitty today,” she concluded.
And Nigel Hemingwest would never be a problem again.
We later found the authentic Ali at the entrance of the lot where we had parked the Kitty. After apparently blasting a vending machine to steal some soda cans, she was vegging out on the top of a broken intraweb public terminal reading an old Fashion&Gunz, as phlegmatic as ever under the false yellow sun.
Until she saw the Maiden.
“For real, Lee? You teamed up with fuckin’ Angel Face?” she exploded, crushing her can of New Coke with her hand.
My partner jumped off the stall. With her gun and badge still at the police station and her clothes lost when she was arrested, she wore some dirty rags, and a pair of flashy cowhand boots she probably found in a dumpster. She smelled terrible.
“I almost died,” I answered, thinking about the wet market. “He saved me. Rescued you. Therefore, she’s a hero and a boon companion.”
She laughed sardonically. “Big deal, hairball! I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’d best start explainin’ real quick! Pigs are everywhere!”
Indeed. The shielded robots and Braun’s crew were patrolling the area, preventing us from accessing the Swallow. Following the Data Maiden, we hid among the shelves of the closest liquor store.
“How about a sleepover at my place?” the cyborg suggested.
My partner tossed a brick of Scotch at her face. “You can go fu—”
“I can order pizza, you know…” she interrupted her.
I could hear Ali’s brain rebooting. The cyborg had said the magic word, and moments later we were in her suite, without proper transition but enough soda to throw a majestic party.
“I feel naked without my rod,” my human managed to grumble while cleaning the tomato sauce stain on her right cheek. I heard her exaggeratedly sigh as she lay on the giant satin bedding. She snatched the bracelet from one of the rescued raccoons on the nightstand.
“I’m sure the police will get it back to you within a week,” I reassured her. “They’re not going to alienate the Alliance for a few tanks of Blue. I don’t know what Super Soviet Boy was thinking. We’re private contractors from the Rings! This is a diplomatic incident that can spark a war.”
“You forget your little burglary session, Arsène Lupin!”
“Nobody will ever learn about this…”
Ali pouted while I turned on the stereo in the glass cabinet to celebrate her release with some music.
“This crappy bracelet isn’t even rad,” she complained, the glowing jewel around her wrist. “Why all the fuss? Lady Diana wore it or something? It looks tacky. I hate it.”
Previously busy taking off her costume, the Maiden reacted once back in the room: “It contains an encrypted microfilm. It’s both very expensive and the probable last part of a puzzle.” Freed from her holosuit, she stored it in the tub. From the cloud of steam escaping from the bathroom, I saw that despite her artificial body, the poor androgynous cyborg was boiling in such an outfit.
“Get outta here! A treasure hunt?” my human said. Stars sparkled in her eyes. “Like in The Goonies? With gold coins and pirate ships? I’m not falling for that!” She then grabbed a Pepsi brick and almost drank it down in one go.
The Maiden laughed before adding: “It’s the truth, sure. But it’s more like the Ark of the Covenant. The kind of relic that could melt Nazis—if you know how to use it right.”
I greeted the reference with a nod. “I can see you’re a cyborg of culture. But how could it be so dangerous? What’s Linus Lao up to?”
The Maiden paused, clearly considering. My question had been rather impertinent, yet she gave me an answer. An answer I hadn’t anticipated. “Have you ever heard of Monsutā Corp?”
Ali choked on her third sugary drink.
“Vaguely,” I lied.
The Maiden bought it. At least in appearance. “Monsutā Corp was the largest post-Second World War tech-zaibatsu. Scientifically, they touched everything from genetics to robotics… with absolutely zero ethics and basically no limits.”
“You’re describing an average megacorp from WarTech to Disney,” I chuckled nervously.
“Not quite. Monsutā designed horrifying bioweapons. The parent umbrella company became so big the Technos ceremonially disbanded it twenty years ago using purposely tailored antitrust statutes. Monsutā’s most dangerous labs were closed. Their patent burned. The tech destroyed…” The Maiden huffed. “That was the official statement. Most of their scientists were actually slaughtered in the crossfire between Venus, the Martian government, Jovian corpo-kingdomlands, Cronian terrorist groups, Belter cartels and Muscovites pirates praying on their forbidden knowledge. The last decade was an ugly corpo-war, I tell you. The Guild made a lot of money. And when the dust settled… nothing of value remained.”
“But the Emporium of Steel believes otherwise…” I spoke. I remembered Ms. Neill. Poppendick. Also, probably Kai-fun’s octo-arms on Deimos. Hence Lao’s involvement in all this. Big Bad M’s spawn just keeps showing up, again and again.
The Maiden nodded. “That’s what they’re paying me for. Hunting the remnants of the Dark Sun of M. Sort of.”
