One Jump Ahead-ARC Read online

  "Okay," I said, "I'm going to stop transmitting and focus on them. Keep tracking me, but don't talk unless you see something I can't know. I need to focus. Okay?"

  "I understand. It is not like this is my first supporting role in a fight."

  First a joke, now pouting. Great. I was beginning to question the wisdom of my choices when I heard footsteps join the jungle noises.

  "Sorry. Signing off."

  I sat on the bottom of the pit in a spot bathed in starlight, spread my arms, palms up, stared at the lip of the hole closest to the sound, and waited.

  The first head appeared over the side a moment later, glanced down, and pulled back quickly. After a bit of hushed chatter, three heads peeked over the edge at the same time and then vanished from my view.

  I kept looking up.

  A voice came from just beyond the edge of the pit. "So you're the one Slake hired to get the girl back. What's your plan now?"

  Barnes had been as good as his word; however he leaked the news to the Gardeners, it had reached them in time. "No real plan," I said, "other than to ask you to give her to me."

  Several of the men laughed before the voice returned. "I don't think that's going to happen. We need her, and you have nothing to offer us."

  "Sure I do," I said. "Your lives and your safety. Six of you are ringing this hole now. You're lightly armed."

  Lobo spoke in my ear. "Actually, only five are around the pit. One has stepped into the trees and is watering the bushes." Great: They'd taught him slang as well. Lobo was not helping me focus.

  "Correct that," I said. "One of you six is urinating. Twelve more of you, along with a recorder and a pair of old beverage machines, are waiting back at your camp with the girl. None of you has any weaponry worth mentioning."

  The voices murmured. I couldn't make out the words, but I didn't need to; their reaction was predictable and rational.

  I pressed on. "I'm telling you all this so you understand your situation. Imagine the kind of weaponry that's standard equipment on the machines I have monitoring you, and I think you'll see my offer has teeth. I don't care at all about you, because you're not my job; I was hired to get back the girl. Give her to me, and we'll let you walk away."

  I paused a moment, then took them the last step down the path. "Nothing you can do will change the fact that Kelco will have exclusive commercial rights to Macken and the new aperture." More murmurs. "Yeah, it's a done deal. You can give me the girl, or Kelco security goons will start jumping here tomorrow morning. The first squad should make the evening shuttle planetside, though if they're in a hurry they'll use a Kelco ship and get here sooner. Take me back to your camp so whoever runs your group can give me the girl, or you can face Kelco's troops no later than tomorrow night."

  "What if we kill you now?" asked a different voice.

  When the posturing starts, you have only three viable alternatives. You can surrender to the bullying, but that wouldn't get me the girl and so wasn't an option now. You can verbally spar with them and hope to win, but anyone dumb enough to talk to a captive in a pit instead of first lobbing a gas or concussion grenade into the hole wasn't smart enough to trust to understand clever repartee.

  That leaves option three: Show them you're serious. I hate tapping the various forms of ugliness inside me, but sometimes it's necessary. The stupidity of these men was angering me, and I didn't want to yield to the anger. I kept to my resolve not to hurt them if I could possibly avoid it. I concentrated instead on giving them a simple but, I hoped, persuasive demonstration.

  I spit in my hands, gathered some dirt, and molded it into a ball roughly the size of my fist. I focused, and the nanomachines in my spit and skin oil responded. In a few seconds they had transformed the dirt into a barely visible gray cloud swirling in front of me. About a meter high and half a meter wide, maybe ten centimeters thick, it resembled a small bit of mist still clinging to the moist predawn air. I don't know what combination of Jennie's changes and the experiments on Aggro make it possible for me to let out and control the nanomachines, but I long ago stopped caring. I thought my instructions at the cloud, and a moment later it floated quietly upward, a sheet of darker air moving in the deep gray of the starlit night.

  The screams started three seconds after it reached the top of the pit.

  Lobo broke in. "What did you do? Three had drawn guns, but the guns vanished."

  "Later," I murmured. I'd instructed the cloud to find and absorb all the metal within a ten-meter radius, then disassemble and drop. In the darkness the Gardeners would know only that their guns and knives—and belt buckles and anything else metal—had dissolved before their eyes. Anyone in a group this naïve was likely to be a Macken native and consequently be unfamiliar with the latest in corporate weaponry. They'd have no clue if a satellite laser or a sniper zapped them, or how the zapping even worked, so the attack would be all the more terrifying for being inexplicable.

  The screams had mostly stopped, though one or two Gardeners couldn't seem to shut up. "You're okay," I yelled. "For now. We dissolved only your weapons. This time."

  I paused until they were quiet.

  "Two are running back to their camp," Lobo said in my ear.

  I stood and spoke clearly and slowly, but not loudly. "Why don't you four toss a rope in here and pull me up? We can settle this back at your camp, and no one will get hurt."

  In less than ten seconds, the end of a rope came over the side and bounced against the wall across from me, less than a meter off the ground and easy to grab.

  I pulled to test it, and the rope gave a bit. "Hold tight," I said. "You wouldn't want to drop me. I might get upset." I tested the rope again. Much better. I grabbed it with both hands and quickly crabbed up the wall into the open air.

  All four were holding the rope. As soon as I was standing on my own, they dropped it and backed away until they were all leaning against a tree about three meters in front of me. The jungle was quieter than it had been earlier, almost still save for the heavy breathing and other sounds we intruders emitted. The stars still shined brightly, the flowers still gleamed, and I almost wished these men could relax enough to enjoy the evening. Almost.

  "Nice night for a walk. Why don't we head to your camp and finish this? We don't want to miss my morning deadline." No one moved. "Really," I said. "It's time to go."

  The man farthest to my right nodded and motioned for me to follow. Without a word, he took off, the others behind him. I trailed the group; no point in letting any stragglers slip behind me.

  We walked in silence to their camp. Though we had to cover only a couple of klicks, even in the relatively sparse undergrowth of the rain forest the walk was slow going. They made it slower, not wanting to show up without their weapons and with me walking freely. I couldn't blame them, so I didn't push them.

  When we were close enough that I could hear voices from the camp and see some of its lights, the leader stopped and said, "Wait here, okay?"

  "Sure," I said. Scared and calm would be easier to handle than scared and angry.

  As I stood there, I murmured an update request to Lobo. He answered promptly.

  "They're all in the camp now, and there is a great deal of activity. The recorder is excited by all the people gathering; it thinks it might get to work. The humans are huddling. Some are carrying weapons that are either entirely mechanical or not interested in talking to the other machines."

  "The girl?"

  "As I explained earlier," Lobo said, "all the information I have is from the IR scan. I believe she is in a tent on the far edge of the camp. I assume they are discussing what to do with you." He paused. "Such amateurs. They should either surrender or take a chance at killing you quickly. It is too late to be holding a meeting."

  He was right, and I couldn't afford to let them shoot at me. The odds were low that they could hit something the nanomachines couldn't quickly fix, but I still saw no reason to take the chance. I also didn't want to risk giving them enough data that s
omeone might later figure out what I was. I had to take control of the situation before anyone did something stupid. I needed them to feel completely out of their depth.

  "Are they still all in a group?" I asked Lobo.

  "Yes."

  "And the girl remains separate from them?"

  "As best I can tell," he said, "yes. I have warned you that I cannot be one hundred percent positive."

  "Your best estimate will have to do," I said. "Does your surveillance drone have a spotlight?"

  "Of course," Lobo said. "That is standard issue for conflict monitoring."

  "Can you get the drone to hover under the canopy over the camp and hit its light—on my command?"

  "What do you think? Doing that, however, will expose the drone to their fire."

  I could see this was going to be the start of a really annoying relationship. "You'll have to take that chance," I said. "Please have the drone move into position and then wait for my command to turn on its spotlight."

  I stepped behind a tree, grabbed more soil, and summoned another cloud, this one easily twice the size of the other. I spread it thinner and thinner, until it was a gossamer grayness rippling gently in the light breeze. I focused instructions on it, then sent it to the camp.

  As it moved forward, a barely visible sheet floating in the air, I ran to the right and circled to the other side of the camp. When I could see the cloud enter the camp, I said to Lobo, "Have the drone hit the light."

  Bright white burst onto the camp. The nanomachine cloud broke into small clumps, each the size of a child's head. Each clump headed for a weapon. Most of the men froze for a moment, then ran for cover. The clouds reached them, and their weapons began to dissolve. Some of the men screamed. Now they all ran, the clouds in pursuit of those whose guns were still intact. I saw only men; the girl wasn't in sight. In less than a minute, the camp appeared empty.

  "Is the girl still in the tent?" I said.

  "As best I can tell, yes," Lobo answered.

  "Are any of the Gardeners heading back here?"

  "They have re-formed into two groups, but both are heading away from you."

  Satisfied, I went to the tent. A girl, her hands and feet bound with plastic restraints, was sleeping inside.

  "Time to go home," I said.

  She didn't react. I rolled her over. She was prettier than her pictures, with almond-shaped eyes set in perfect corporate skin, delicate bones, and a mane of night-black hair that was fanned out around her head. I checked her breathing; it was shallow but consistent. I opened one eye, but she never focused. Drugged. Great.

  My knife cut the restraints easily enough. I picked her up, took her out of the tent, and looked around. Not far from the fire sat a small wheeled cart full of wood. I put her down, emptied the cart, loaded her carefully onto it, and headed back to Glen's Garden.

  As we neared the edge of town she woke up for a moment and looked around in terror. When she realized where she was, she sat up quickly, then fell as the drugs carried the moment, her eyes open but confused.

  "You're okay, Jasmine," I said. "I'm taking you back to Slake"—I chided myself for my poor bedside manner—"to your father."

  "Thank you," she said, relaxing and closing her eyes.

  Her eyes snapped open again, and she shook her head, the fear of the kidnapping apparently coming back. "My father . . ." Her voice trailed off as she passed out once more.

  The terror in her eyes lingered with me, and for a moment I wished I'd let myself get angry and punished the Gardeners more. I pushed away that thought and focused instead on how glad I was that I'd decided to take this assignment. Most of the jobs I do these days amount to protecting some thing or some person as we move from one place to another. This time I'd actually done some good.

  I picked up my pace so I could get her home sooner.

  Chapter 4

  Kelco had definitely paid more to rent Slake's house than I had spent on mine. The glass and wood building squatted in the middle of a huge lot ringed on the non-ocean sides by tall native trees. To the left as I approached the front, partially hidden by a thin barrier of trees, a heavily armed corporate transport squatted on a large private landing area big enough to easily accommodate six or eight ships of Lobo's size. If Kelco hadn't installed the landing facilities, the house's owners had to be optimists hoping to attract the serious corporate crowd. The building reflected the same level of ambition: three stories tall, with porches facing the ocean on every level, it was big enough that you could comfortably fit mine in the corner of a single floor. Either Slake had a large staff living with him, or he was the type who always chose the most expensive accommodations available so everyone would be acutely aware of how much money he had. I concluded that his motivation included a bit of both factors, because when he opened the door he didn't even take the time to greet me before four men, three clearly built for trouble, took the still-unconscious girl away from me and carried her upstairs.

  "I want a doctor to check her out immediately," he said. My curiosity about the goons must have shown, because he added, "And I won't let her be without bodyguards again." He motioned me through a pair of open doors on the right into a large front room with a lovely view of the ocean.

  I sat in a chair that let me enjoy the sight of the waves breaking, poured some water from a pitcher on a side table, and waited.

  Slake closed the room's doors behind him, then asked, "How is she?"

  "As near as I can tell, she's drugged but otherwise okay."

  "Did she say if they hurt her?"

  "She was in no shape to talk," I said. "She was unconscious when I found her. She woke up once, thanked me, started to say something about you, and passed out again. That's all."

  He relaxed a little. "If she didn't say anything bad had happened," he said, "then nothing probably did."

  Only someone who's never experienced anything truly terrible could possibly believe that, but I saw no point in correcting him. If that belief helped him cope with his daughter's kidnapping, I'd let him cling to it.

  "Thank you," he said. "I apologize for not saying that immediately."

  "No problem."

  "Out of curiosity," he said, "how'd you do it?"

  I stood. "That's not part of the deal. I brought her back. I'm done. Now, hold up your end." I stepped so close to him that we were almost touching. Our eyes were nearly level, and I didn't look away. I doubt he often experienced anyone invading his personal space so directly. "We have an agreement. The fact that Jasmine is home tells you everything about me you ever need to know." I flushed with anger; I take my deals very, very seriously. I fought for control as I said, "Do your part, and I'll get out of your hair and off this planet."

  He stepped back. "Of course, of course." He walked over to a desk in the room's corner and a display leapt to life above it. "Please forgive my behavior. Chalk it up to a father's natural curiosity and protectiveness." He turned to the display, which appeared as a thin blue line from my angle, and said, "Pay Mr. Moore what we agreed."

  A few seconds later, a low voice from the area of the display said something I couldn't quite make out. Slake clearly understood it and nodded his head.

  Turning back to me, he said, "It's done."

  I took out my wallet, thumbed it active, and checked the alerts I'd set. His bank draft had cleared locally and was now encrypted in my wallet. I was a million richer, and the jump slot he had promised was indeed mine.

  "Thank you," I said. "And the rest of it?"

  He sat and shook his head. "That part cost me more than your fee and jump clearance, but it's done. Kelco won't send any more staff on site or even sign the contract for thirty days. Our corporate counsel has already informed the Frontier Coalition regional headquarters on Lankin—and Mayor Barnes—of all of this, as you asked." He stood again and looked at me. "You do understand, don't you, that for all the trouble this month of delay cost me, it will end up meaning nothing? Kelco will still have exclusive rights to Macken and
the new aperture. We'll still develop this planet; we'll just start a month from now instead of tomorrow or the next day. And, when the aperture is ready, we'll explore it first."