A small icon appears in my glasses, access to the local cloud, and I tap it open in a quarantined subsection. The three dimensional representation of a building appears, featureless walls extending up in a two-story rectangle, similar buildings appearing as shadowed masses on either side. Barbed wire fence surrounds each one, a two-meter gap between metal mesh and concrete wall, deviating only where an access road splits off from the main expressway, leading into a wide loading bay with space for multiple heavy lifters. A truck slowly pulls away from one of the loading docks, sensor dome on the roof of its forward motor unit spinning into position to automatically guide it to its destination. The truck passes through a metal barricade, gates quickly swinging open and shut, then merges seamlessly with the thronging hordes of automatic vehicles filling the streets outside. Trash blows in heavy drifts, stooped figures occasionally stumbling through it like ancient Arctic explorers.
“Realtime feed?”
“Yes. We shifted one of our surveillance sats from the Han border. Also pulled the building’s grid data for the last three months.”
“Bodies?”
“Infdrones, low profile. Functionally identical to Clancery facet scouts in your ‘Game.’ You’re all rated master-class on them. I checked. Our inputs might be slightly more… intense than what you’re used to, though.”
“Hate riding scouts,” Wind mutters. “Stupid things always run out of ammo when the shit hits the rotor, and the shit always hits the rotor.”
I shush her, trying not to think about the implications of Game assets that are copies of mil-spec drones in the real, and what Sawyer means by “intense.” I’ll have to think about it later, but not now. There’s an encounter to defeat. I feel myself dropping even deeper into strat mode. Several finger twitches open submenus, overlaying the building with its electrical grid, network configuration, and current floorplan.
“Latency?”
“Low fifties. We have a fib-optic repeater nearby to anchor the carrier.”
“Loadout?”
“Standard interface tools. Limited combat capabilities. You’ll have ten projectile rounds—twenty-two caliber—three shockdarts, and slightly augmented close quarters. Try not to get into a shootout.”
“A shootout with ten deuces? Fuck you, Sawyer. What are we running against?”
“Visual sensor lattice outside. Three roaming platforms inside. Cheap models—they only cover visual spectrum on a one-twenty field of vision. Sensors and platforms are coordinated at a command node on the south side of the building, auto turrets throughout the building trigger off their input. Two corp personnel in the room at all times, cycling every eight hours. They’re mainly there to fix any breakdowns in the assemblers. Mostly they hump each other or sleep.”
A room on the rotating building in my glasses lights up, the infdrone specs settling into place on the right side of my vision. Orange lines trace the guard drones’ semi-random patrol pattern through the interior and exterior, a tangled mess of twists and turns. The majority of the building is taken up by a large open section—the main production floor, filled with the squid-like shapes of the assembler bots, conveyer belts stretching between them. Small ancillary rooms dot the edges, most the same size as the closet I call home.
“What’s our target?”
Another room lights up in the northeast portion, orange spaghetti patrol routes coiling tightly around it.
“Shipping records. We need to know which parts of Golgbank are involved in manufacturing these things. That should allow us to pierce the corporate veil. The infdrones have a fifty-terabyte capacity for data storage, and appropriate transfer protocols.”
“Hack Golgbank,” Slend suggests, her eyes narrowed.
“We’ve tried,” Sawyer’s disembodied voice responds. “Still trying, for that matter. They’re a major subsidiary of one of the Big Three. They didn’t survive by being careless with infosec, and they’re too big for us to do a blanket infiltration op.”
“Yet you think shipping manifests are going to be in this shitty warehouse in Industan?” I shake my head.
“There’s a difference between infosec and a megacorp’s lawyers covering its ass,” he replies drily. “Records are the lifeblood of any institution. They’ll be there. Then we can build a trail.”
“If you say so. What’s our deniability?”
“None.” Sawyer’s tone is deadly. “There can be no evidence left behind that we were involved. If you lose a drone, if you leave even a lingering fart, your bodies will be dropped with appropriate silkie gear nearby, and you’ll be written off as operators from a rival corp.”
“Seems extreme.”
“So are atomics. Industan is not on the best of terms with us right now.”
Wind’s face turns bleak, and my anger rises again.
“I wonder why. Maybe you shouldn’t let rioters kill people because of a book.”
“Not my department. I take care of external threats. Internal policies are up to the Theocrophant.”
“Fuck the Theocrophant.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t just hear you say that.”
“Whatever. It’s not like we can say no, is it?”
“No. You’ve got your team, you’ve got your price. This isn’t a game anymore, Ashley.”
“It never was, Sawyer. Just ask Mom.”
The hidden voice falls silent. I turn to Wind and Slend.
“You two okay with this? I’ve gotta do it, but I can find someone else if you want.”
“Idiot,” Slend says. “Already blackbagged. Only way out is forward.”
“Yeah, Slend’s right,” Wind replies slowly. “We’re in it for real now. Besides, we owe it to Brand. Whoever’s behind this needs to be stopped.” She pauses, face falling once more. “And not just for Brand. If those hoods go off, it’s gonna provoke more riots. You know it will. You know who they’ll blame. Who they always blame.”
I want to tell her it’ll be fine, that her family will be okay, but I can’t lie to one of my few remaining friends. Instead, I clasp her hand, our gloved fingers intertwining.
“Then we need to make sure they don’t go off. It’s not like we haven’t dealt with permadeath encounters before,” I add, trying to draw her back to her usual jubilant self. “Remember Lovecraftia?”
Wind grimaces, but gradually it turns into a smile.
“Pretty sure I’d rather take the eldritch horrors, to be honest. What’s the strat, boss?”
I let my hand fall away, fingers twitching open a planning schematic. Wind and Slend both trigger their own glasses, sharing my feed, and I highlight the electrical grid.
“I’m thinking safety dance. They’ve got one drone at that room all the time, except when the power goes. Check out this junction here.…”
12
[Frogging]
“Go.”
My voice is quiet, even though the only people who can hear me are Wind and Slend on the commlink. Oh, and Sawyer, of course. No way he’s not going to babysit this op, but I made it clear I don’t want to hear him—no matter what. We’ll live or die on our own skills, and I don’t need him second-guessing in my ear in real time. It’s going to be hard enough focusing on ghosting the scout.
Scouts aren’t particularly complex hapdrones, meter-long low-profile eggs with six segmented legs that can traverse most terrains. Two small domes on the front house the sensor suite and uplink channel, and a thin tube juts slightly out between them—an acoustic-dampened projectile launcher, currently armed with minimal weaponry. Always thought of scouts as a mix between a retro sci-fi spaceship and a cockroach.
Learning how to manipulate a scout through the hapchamber was a complete pain in the ass, though. Turns out recalibrating normal motor functions to operate a nonhuman skin feels kind of like learning to play the piano with one foot and your nose, but it was part of mastering the Game, so I considered it time well spent. Unbidden, my thoughts drift back to the encounter with Hammer, his lethal control of the dragon. What would it be like to wear one of those as a skin? What kind of practice did that take?