One Jump Ahead-ARC Read online

  I stayed standing. "Slake no doubt told you I own a rather special weapon."

  "Of course. A Predator-class assault vehicle, full complement of pulse and projectile weapons, state-of-the-art reinforced hull, able to run in any environment from deep space to water. Nice piece of work those yokels on Macken should never have sold you. What'd you do, by the way, to get them to sell it to you?" When I said nothing, he chuckled and continued. "Of course. Are you in the market to move it?"

  "No. I want to buy something for it."

  "We do weapons augmentation, naturally, but for a vehicle of that class you're talking a lot of specialized skills and serious money."

  "No new weapons. What I need is expensive, but I can install it myself: a new central weapons control complex."

  Osterlad leaned back and laughed, the first time I thought he might not have been controlling himself completely. "They sold you a eunuch!" He clearly understood exactly how powerless Lobo was without the complex. "That's hysterical."

  "Not quite," I said, fighting to tamp down the anger rising in me in reaction to the swipe. "Some weapons work, but not all. I need a new control complex to replace the broken bits in the controlling codes." I leaned forward. "I know those complexes are tightly controlled government property, so if you can't get one and I should go elsewhere, say so."

  The laughter stopped as quickly as it had started. "I shouldn't have insulted you with that eunuch remark," he said, "but you definitely should not insult me. Understood?"

  "Yes," I said, "and I apologize." I had no desire to push up the price any more than I already had. "Let me rephrase. What would you charge me for a new complex?"

  "That account you showed me will do for the down payment, which you obviously can make while you're here on Lankin." He paused for a minute, no doubt getting input from one of his staff monitoring the meeting. "I'll need that much again in two days, after you confirm the goods at the pickup, which will be at one of my remote centers. Trent Johns here," he nodded to the man behind him, "will meet you there and make the trade. I don't keep anything like what you're seeking in this facility, and I never handle the products myself. Acceptable?"

  The account I had allowed him to see had a little under a million in it. Over the years I had accumulated multiple accounts like it, but no two were under the same name or in the same location. Paying this much would hurt me, but thanks to Slake's payment, I could manage it. "Yes."

  He nodded, and Johns quickly scribbled on a sheet of paper—real paper, a consumable and thus another way Osterlad could show off—and handed the note to me.

  "The coordinates are for a house I own on Floordin, a barely colonized but safe planet with a single jump aperture. There's only one settlement on it, and one of my retreat homes is on the other side of the globe from that settlement, so finding the location shouldn't be hard. You'll transfer the down payment at one of our smaller business offices upstairs." He stood. "When the unit is fully operational, will it—and you—be available for hire? Though I deal strictly in matériel, I have many acquaintances who could use the services of a competent man with a fully functioning PCAV."

  "No," I said. "I don't plan to work."

  He nodded and kept smiling, but it was clear he didn't believe me. "Fair enough. Are we done?"

  I pretended to study the standard-format coordinates for a moment, buying time. I looked up and carefully said, "One thing."

  "What?" Impatience rang in the word, and his smile vanished.

  "I try to keep a low profile, and I rarely jump anywhere directly. I also have to retrieve the weapon. Consequently, I need a window of two weeks, starting two days from now. I'll pick up the control complex sometime during that time. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's a necessary part of my lifestyle, as I'm sure you can understand."

  The smile came back. "Of course. Johns won't mind waiting for however much of that period you choose to take. Will you, Johns?"

  The man shook his head slightly but glared at me, clearly annoyed at the prospect of having to waste his time dealing with me.

  "Thank you for your business," Osterlad said. He turned his back on me and faced Johns.

  The attendant who had led me in took my elbow and guided me out.

  As the attendant was walking me past the beverage dispenser, I paused and asked, "Do you mind if I have a quick drink?"

  "Of course not," he/she said, pointing at the door between us and the elevator. "I'll be outside as soon as you're ready."

  "Thank you."

  I grabbed a fresh cup—the one I had used was, of course, no longer in sight—and selected a different melano beverage. As the liquid filled the cup, I said to the dispenser, "Thanks for the drinks and the conversation."

  "Both were my pleasure," it replied.

  "I expect I'll get to talk to you again," I said, "because after this deal goes well, I'm likely to be back for more."

  After a long pause, the dispenser replied, "I'd like that, but I won't count on it."

  "Oh, I'm sure Mr. Osterlad has what I need."

  "I'm sure he does," the dispenser said, "and I'm sure he'll have it ready for you. I'm not sure, though, that we'll get to talk another time."

  You have to love appliances. I'd feared the appeal of a weapon like Lobo would be too much for Osterlad to resist, but I'd hoped I was wrong. The dispenser had just settled the issue, and this deal had gotten more complicated—which was unfortunate, but not a surprise. With the pickup window I'd specified, I had time to prepare.

  "Thanks again," I said to the dispenser, "for everything."

  Chapter 8

  The first wave of squidlettes hit Lobo's hull a little less than a minute after we touched down on Floordin, a commendably quick response given that we were in a clearing a full two klicks from Osterlad's mansion and had come in as hard and as fast as we could manage. Of course, the speed of the attack meant they were on us before we'd accomplished much. Lobo had fired four corner anchor bolts into the freshly scorched ground, opened his center floor hatch, and sprayed the dirt with coolant. I was out of the crash couch and had led the stealthie into position. It was beginning to burrow down, sucking dirt through its digging tentacles and onto Lobo's floor, and then they hit.

  "Let's see how it looks," I said.

  Lobo patched the feeds from the ring of sensors we'd planted a few seconds before impact, and a corresponding ring of video popped onto the cool gray walls opposite where I was watching the stealthie make its way into the ground.

  "Audio," I said.

  "You could have asked for the whole feed in the first place," he grumbled. A moment later, the sounds of the attack crashed from his hidden speakers.

  I'd learned to tolerate the emotive programming Lobo's customization team had built into him. I also put up with more than I might have otherwise because he's a veteran, but there were times, such as this one, when I could really do without the sarcasm.

  On the displays a couple dozen squidlettes crawled over Lobo's smooth surface, each probing the reinforced metal for the hair-thin lines that even the best hatches inevitably leave. Squidlettes are hybrids of meat tentacles coupled to metal exoskeletons, a variety of acid and gas nozzles, and a small cluster of comm and sensor circuits. Each arrived as a round missile, opened a few seconds before impact, used the gas jets to slow enough that its tentacles had time to unfurl, and then stuck to whatever it hit. Normally each would carry an explosive payload in addition to the acid and detonate when sensors, comm signals, or timers gave the command, but I knew Osterlad wouldn't risk damaging Lobo more than he could possibly avoid; the whole point would be to capture the PCAV so he could sell it or use it. Some of the acid was for forcing open the hatches; the rest was for removing me.

  Another round of squidlettes popped onto Lobo's hull. So many of the weapons were crawling on his exterior that I couldn't get a clear count. The normally faint, slow slurping noise they made as their tentacles dragged them along the hull made it sound through the speakers lik
e we were being digested by some shambling creature large enough to swallow Lobo whole. Even though I knew half a meter of armor separated the crew area where I stood from the squidlettes outside, I still tasted the tang of adrenaline, and the hairs on my arms tingled with nervous energy.

  "Can you feel them, Lobo?"

  "Not the way you feel, Jon, not as best I understand humans. But I have enough hull sensors to detect the motion, and once they find the few hatch seams on my exterior the acid will start affecting my internal circuits."

  "Give 'em a jolt," I said. "A hard one."

  "You understand it probably will not destroy them," Lobo said.

  "Yes, but if we don't try to fight back Osterlad's men will know something's up, and besides, we have to use some power now so they'll believe you're running out of it later."

  Lobo didn't bother to answer. The displays and speakers illustrated his response: The air popped with electricity, streaks of blue arced all over his hull, and almost all the squidlettes slid off onto the clearing around us.

  I checked the stealthie's progress. Its top was about twenty centimeters below ground level, and it was spraying dirt around its flank. It was almost as low as it would go without me.

  The squidlettes resumed their climb up Lobo. A few weren't moving, which made me happy; those things were expensive, even for a dealer like Osterlad. Most, though, were on the move again, which meant he was true to his reputation and carried good stuff. These meat/mech combos were engineered to handle strong current and a great many other forms of attack. The shock Lobo gave them would've reduced any off-market squidlettes to metal and fried meat, or at the very least caused them to lose some function.

  The outlines of two squidlettes flashed yellow in the displays, Lobo's sign that their paths would take them to seams.

  "My new friend, the Frontier Coalition weather satellite for this section of Floordin, has warned me of major new heat signatures not far from Osterlad's home," Lobo said. "These suggest his men will launch interceptor ships in a moment. Once they achieve medium orbit, I will not be able to outrun them."

  The stealthie had stopped digging and opened its lid, beckoning me.

  I looked at the large, pale brown metal lozenge and shook my head. "You owe me for this, Lobo," I said.

  "What can I owe you? You already own me."

  I sighed. When I want a little emotive programming, I get facts. "It's only an expression. I hate this plan."

  "It is your plan."

  "That doesn't make it any better," I said. "The fact that it's the best plan I can come up with doesn't mean I have to like it."

  "We could have simply landed on the building's pad," Lobo said, "and you could have removed them all—as I suggested."

  "I told you before: They would have attacked, I would have been forced to fight back to protect both of us, and I would have ended up killing a lot of them. I want to avoid killing whenever I can."

  "So you are buying me new weapon controls so I can kill for you?"

  The problem with emotive programming is that you sometimes can't tell sarcasm from genuine confusion. "No. I'm fixing your weapons systems because you're broken, incomplete, without them." I thought about the course of my life and the types of jobs I always seem to end up taking, and I realized there was no point in lying to Lobo, or to myself. "And so your weapons are ready when we find ourselves in situations where we have to fight."

  Lobo superimposed hatch lines on the displays showing the two flashing yellow squidlettes; they were drawing close.

  "I get the point," I said.

  I climbed into the stealthie and stretched out. A little bigger than a coffin on the inside, when closed it afforded me only enough room to stretch out my legs or draw my knees to my chest, roll over, and prop myself on my elbows. I'd already loaded it with food and a few special supplies; everything else I'd need was standard equipment.

  "As soon as I close up, shove the dirt back over me and take off. Hit this area hard with thrusters to fuse the ground, and head out to the pause point as fast as you can; you need to burn off all the squidlettes."

  "Thanks for the reminders, Jon. Perhaps I should remind you that I am not capable of forgetting the plan."

  Spending hours alone in the stealthie was looking better.

  "I'll contact you when I need pickup," I said. Before he could tell me he knew that, too, I added, "Signing off," and pushed one button to close the stealthie's hatch and another to bathe the tiny chamber in a soft, blue-white light.

  Now came the hard part: waiting and hoping that both machines, Lobo and the stealthie, succeeded at their jobs.

  The plan should work. As I lay inside it, the stealthie was burrowing deeper into the earth, sucking dirt from beneath it and forcing that same dirt back over it, digging as quickly as it could now that I was aboard. It would not stop until it was over two meters down, coolant in its hull and tentacles keeping it from generating any kind of noticeable heat signature. Layers of metal and deadening circuitry combined to give it equally inert radio and radar signatures. Orbital-based x-ray probes could penetrate a meter or at most a meter and a half into the soil, so they wouldn't spot me, either. Only a serious local x-ray sweep had a chance of finding me, and my bet was that the combination of Lobo's launch, the scorched ground it left, and the decoy distress signal he'd eventually send would be enough to convince Osterlad's team that I was still inside Lobo, stuck with him in deep orbit, stranded beyond the range of Osterlad's local ships. All I had to do was lie in this container, believe in the plan, and wait.

  Yeah, that was all. I forced myself to breathe deeply and slowly. I felt the vibrations of Lobo's takeoff and relaxed a little more; so far, so good. One of the stealthie's displays estimated we were over a meter down and descending. Lobo's thrusters should have left the ground hot enough to more than cover any of the stealthie's underground activity. Lobo should be able to beat Osterlad's ships to deep space, and then he would join me in waiting.

  I punched on an overhead timer to count down the ten hours I figured I'd need to spend in the stealthie. The depth meter showed almost two meters; we were nearly done descending. The stealthie was working well. The air smelled fresh. I sucked a bit of water from the tube on the right wall near my head; it was cool and pure, just as it should be. I rolled to face the display on the opposite wall, which gave me access to a substantial library I'd chosen for the wait, but I couldn't relax enough to watch, read, or listen to anything. I called up the map and recon photos of Floordin and zoomed in on the forest between the landing zone and Osterlad's mansion. I reviewed the setup yet again, then went over the plan one more time in my head. We were only one day into my window, early enough, I hoped, that Osterlad wouldn't wonder for another few days about when I would be coming. Everything was going well. I was doing well, too, I thought, handling the wait easily, no difficulties. Ten hours would be no problem.

  I glanced at the countdown timer.

  Three minutes had passed.

  Ten hours might be a little harder than I'd thought.

  I normally avoid drugs. For one thing, unless I remember to instruct them to do otherwise, my nanomachines treat any known drug as an attacker and consume it before it can take effect. I can be caught off-guard, in which case the drugs will work. If I even consider making the nanomachines let the drugs do their jobs, however, I run into my other concern, the real issue: I don't like drugs. Even though I'm arguably the most artificially enhanced person in a universe crawling with genetically engineered, surgically enhanced, and medically rebuilt human bodies, deep down I cling to the hick attitude of the once-retarded boy who lugged hay on a fifth-rate Pinkelponker island almost a hundred and fifty years ago: I ought to be able to do it all myself.