From How It Is by Gordon
Twenty years in the ES regulars had left Cheryl with a jaundiced view of human nature and an almost supernatural recognition of potential shitstorms. When she saw the huge figure standing amongst the rows of vines, she did not shout a greeting nor ask that figure its business. She immediately ducked down, accessed her aug, and sent out a recall to the pickers. A two-and-a-half- metre-tall metal-skin would not come to the crop house to enquire about the passionfruit business, nor to purchase juice for one of the wine makers. Cheryl kept utterly still and hoped that the android had not heard her, and she felt some relief when the first of the pickers came along the rows.
These pickers were something to make the skin crawl on anyone who had not been born on Viridian. They were made so that they could scuttle through the vines without causing too much damage as they selected fruits of the required ripeness. Upon finding such a fruit, they did not actually pick it, but they would grip it in their mandibles and suck it dry; and once their sacklike bodies were full, they would go to empty themselves at one of the juicing stations. The AI that had designed them had taken their template from an Earth lifeform perfectly suited to this task. That lifeform was good at both scuttling and sucking things dry. Each picker, as a result, was a black plastic spider with a body the size of a football.
The android flicked its head from side to side as the spiders moved past it. Cheryl set a loop in their programs so they would keep searching the rows in that same area, then very carefully backed away. Now, with any luck, the android would not hear her: the scuttling in the growths might cover the sounds of her breathing and her heartbeat. When she had put four rows between herself and potential trouble, she crouched down by the small silo of a juicing station and put a call, through her aug, to the authorities in the capital. She was unsurprised to find her signal blocked. Just as she was unsurprised to see a man, another two rows across, walking towards the crop house. This man was dressed in plain businesswear, had black hair, and a black sun-band across his eyes. The giveaway was the Drescon assault rifle he had hanging from a shoulder strap.
Cheryl very carefully moved in the opposite direction from him. His attention was firmly fixed on the crop house and he was speaking into a comunit. So, there were others. Cheryl was very glad of the habit of dress she had acquired during those twenty years, a habit reinforced by the tendency of some Viridian inhabitants to sneak in and empty juicing stations in order to make a shilling or two with the wine makers. Her ES battle fatigues were chameleon cloth. Had they not been she felt sure she would be dead by now.
Five small thuds came in quick succession from her right. Not from the man she had already spotted. She froze and felt a sudden surge of fear. Until the moment she heard the horrible mosquito whining that followed immediately upon the shots, this had almost been like a training exercise. Seeker bullets! Whoever these people were, they were using seeker bullets. The sound of smashing glass leavened her fear. The shots had been fired at the crop house. Had she been inside, the bullets would have found her by now, homing in on her body heat to detonate at her skin in a blast of micro-shrapnel. A couple of small explosions then came from the house. The bullets had probably decided on hitting the most likely heat sources. That meant the central heating in the house would be gone.
Cheryl reached round to the back of her head and undid the neck pocket of her fatigues. She pulled the hood over and fixed the mask across. Now she could take the risk of standing and having a look. Three men walked out from between the vines and into the yard of the crop house. They were talking and gesturing. The android just stood there with a briefcase clutched in its brass hand. It gave her the creeps. She auged up a visual intensifier program, and got XI0. Now she could study these intruders more closely. Two of the men looked the typical suited thugs that some organizations recruited. The third man, in his mesh shirt and baggy fatigue trousers, seemed to be in charge. There also seemed to be something wrong with him. She downloaded what she was seeing as a visual file, then slowly dropped back down. The face of the man she enclosed in a frame, and had the aug tidy up, was a mess. He had some sort of optical link that did not seem to have taken so well, and his face was haggard and scabby. She stood again to see what they would do next, and now set her aug to record everything she was seeing and hearing.
One of the suits crossed the yard to the transporter: an AGC that was simply an open-backed truck with a framework able to carry juicing stations. The other suit walked around to the back of the house, and soon returned driving Cheryl's personal AGC. So that was what this was all about: they just wanted transport. Good. Once they secured it and went on their way, whatever blocker they had would go with them. She watched while the android tore the framework from the back of the transporter and tossed it aside before taking its place there. Foamed steel frame: it had to be strong to take the weight of the juicing stations. Cheryl swallowed dryly. She had definitely made the right move. The other suit got into her AGC - she would have liked to have known how they broke the security lock - and the leader sat at the controls of the transporter. Soon they were up in the sky and roaring overhead, all turbines opened at full. Cheryl waited until they were out of sight before heading back into the crop house. She had almost reached the door when a hand caught her shoulder.
Cheryl reacted. She caught the hand, pulled on it, and drove her elbow back as hard as she could. No pulling punches; this was life or death. Her blow elicited a grunt. The next thing she knew there was a grip on the back of her fatigues, on her arm, and she was airborne. She hit the ground flat on her back, spun her legs to give her momentum, and then nipped up into a fighting crouch. The man standing before her was heavily built, had cropped ginger hair, and seemed to have been in the wars. As she pulled her pathetic chainglass pruning knife, just one thought went through her mind. Fuck: boosted.
'I could have let you go in,' said John Stanton, holding his hand to his torso and looking ill. Cheryl paused at that. If she ran, she would probably get it in the back. 'What do you mean?' she asked.
'They stole a personal AGC. So they'd have known someone was here.'
'So?'
'You army?'
'I was.'
'Then you should know about seeker bullets. Programmed levels of targeting. Five shots and two explosions. What does that mean, soldier?'
Cheryl got a sudden cold shudder when she realized what he was saying. 'You're not with them?' she asked.
'Not now,' said Stanton. 'And I suggest we put a bit of distance between us and this house.'
Cheryl put her pruning knife back in her belt and stood upright. She nodded and walked back to the edge of the vine field. The man walked along with her, and she noted how gingerly he was moving and that there was a drug patch on his neck. She wondered if he had not replied to her attack with a killing blow simply because it would hurt him too much at present. After a moment she took her attention away from him and directed it towards the field.