Crash Flux 1: Welcome To The Machine (11 page)

Irule screamed, “Raydin, no!”  He flexed his line, bringing the wire across in a spiral of light.  The torsos of the three men surrounding him fell apart in a bloody mess and the rest scattered out of the way.

Raydin made his way to the door and his crew backed towards the exit slowly.  The thugs surrounded them from all sides, falling behind Burk’s needler pistol.  A voice said, “They can’t take us all!”  A straggler flanked them, pulling his switchblade from his pocket.  Burk caught the glint of the light reflecting off the blade.  The needler sent a loud crack through the air as the ceramic needle broke the sound barrier and buried itself in his antagonist’s stomach.  The man drew his bloody hand up from his gut, and charged.  Burk shot him again in the chest, slowing him for an instant.  He resumed his charge and Burk fired his last shot into the man’s forehead.  Burk waved the pistol at the remaining thugs, who hung back as he backed out the door with his friends.

Four of the thugs followed him out the door, one of them carrying a pool cue.  The thug placed the pool cue in between the door handles as they exited.  They back into an alleyway, only to find another pack of jackals waiting for them.  Caught between two gangs of thugs, the only other exit was a drop off the edge of the fencing.  One of the thugs from the bar approached Burk.  He said, “I know that type of needler.  Probably built it out of a mail order kit, right?  Every piece custom made at a different machine shop, using fake invoices, so they can’t track it. Ceramic parts, spring loaded so it won’t set off metal detectors.  I even know the model.  I can read it off the side of your barrel.  You only got three shots in that pistol, boy.”

Burk said, “You willing to bet your life on that?”

The biggest of them towered over Burk.  They were all wearing ragged leathers with lengths of cable across their chest.  The largest lunged at Burk in a feint.  Burk flinched and pulled the trigger, producing nothing but an empty tock.  The thug smiled and his gang started moving towards them. 

Raydin placed himself in between them and Burk.  He said, “Back up.”

The thug started reaching into his jacket.  Raydin activated the implant in his right arm.  The Snake hurled towards the man in front of him, looping round his neck, phase wire suspended in mid-air.  The thug looked at the dart at his throat nervously.  Raydin said, “Don’t.”

The thug looked to his skinny partner, to his right.  

“I said, don’t.”  Raydin tried to keep his voice level.  “I’ll pass the line through your neck right now...”  He tensed the line a little closer.  The thugs’ eyes were scared, but unconvinced.  

The thug said, “You’re going to kill us anyway…”

Raydin picked up the line and moved the noose a few inches above his crown, freeing his neck and pulling the line wide, giving it some slack.  He  said, “Just walk away…”

The thug signaled his partner again, and he reached into his jacket.  Raydin saw the other thug's hand move, and his nerve wires kicked in.  Adrenal boosters surged inside his body, circuits in his brain connected to his nervous system flared.  Raydin activated his other implant, bending back his other  wrist and firing his holdout laser, burning an arc through his opponent’s heart.  The second thug fell down as the first’s head hit the floor fencing.

Raydin turned his attention to the other two thugs, one of whom was shaking visibly.  Raydin thought for a second, and said, “Take off your clothes.”

A few moments later, they were running away from the bar, dressed in ill-fitting leathers.  Raydin eyed the burnt hole in the jacket.  A police fly wing approached in the distance, spotlighting.  As the spotlight went over them, Raydin yelled, “Act like gangers!” and began making rude gestures at the Guard’s aerial unit.  The rest of the crew joined in, hollering obscenities at the “pigs”.  The fly wing spotlighted them for a moment, then fired a flash canister out of the pod to its side.  It burst in the air above them with a blinding flash of light and a deafening thunder crack.  They stumbled on the fencing, blind and deaf, and Burk fell onto his rear.  When his vision came back, he looked back up only to see the police had already left.  “Motherfuckers…”  Burk laughed and said,  “Hey, who says the pigs don’t have a sense of humor?”

To Be Continued...

This is just the beginning of the Crash Flux series! Here is a sample chapter from the next Crash Flux book,
Tangled Webs
.

The living complex was nothing more than boxes stacked on boxes, bolted to another support column, surrounded by torn fencing and makeshift stairs and ladders.  They climbed to the top, where a man stood waiting on the platform outside.  He motioned them inside.  A dozen people with VR decks were lined up, sitting against a wall, with a few more laying on bunk beds.  Each had tattoos on their face matching those on the exterior of their red neural uplinks.  He looked them up on his C-MAX, each represented a virtue, such as justice, peace, truth, or love.

One of the resident hackers pointed his thumb back behind him, around towards a small area that served as a hydroponics garden as well as a kitchen.  A man stood near a world window, tending to a bonsai tree.  The window displayed a serene landscape of primeval Japan, overlooking a river.  He dropped his clippers and removed his gloves, shaking Adon’s hand.  “You must be the ones from the Hub.”

Adon gave a small, polite bow, and said, “Hello.  My name is Adon Ariston, and these are my associates.  We have come to book passage to the Wheel.”

“My name is Hiro.  We are happy to receive you here, but as you can see, we are quite busy.  We have little to offer for your payment save the most basic supplies, and passage through the tunnels above us.  You will need a guide of course, and before you leave, you should eat, and rest.  You will be safe while you stay here.”

Raydin said, “We wouldn’t wish to impose.”

Hiro said, “It is a little thing.  Please, come, eat.”  He rang a small bell in the kitchen, and the kitchen was suddenly packed with people readying their supper.  The entrance room floor was cleared, and a small board was placed across the ground.  Everyone partook of what little they had to offer, it was good, but the meal left its guests hungry.  There was a knock from above, and Hiro climbed up a ladder to the side of the wall, pulling down a latch that connected to the roof.  Two more people crawled into the cramped living space, removing their equipment and breathing filters and putting them into a locker.  One was a man they had never seen before, the other, to Raydin’s surprise, was Xia.  She caught his eyes, and he quickly looked away.

Raydin finished his meal and politely excused himself.  He walked outside, leaning on the railing mounted on the side of the platform, staring at the fence that surrounded the place.  Two children were climbing up the sides when Xia came up behind him.  “I wasn’t expecting to see you here so soon.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I work for the coyotes.”

“You mean you keep tabs on them.”

“No, I mean I work for them.  Dora doesn’t know.”

“You set this up?”

“I had something to do with it.  Adon is good, but he is not that good.  I gave him a good word with our associate here.  He seems to trust him, for now.”

She said, “We should head inside.  We can’t risk having someone here recognizing you.  It would jeopardize what we are doing here.”

“Yeah, sure.  About what happened back there…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No I mean, what happened after you left…”

“What?  What happened?”

“Nothing.  Never mind.  I suppose you will hear about it soon enough.  Just, when you do… we’re not bad people, Xia.  You put anyone in a corner, and they are bound to…”

“I lived half my life in a South American demilitarized zone, just north of Mecca’s colony in what’s left of Brazil.  I doubt anything you have done can be any worse than the things I saw there.  Just keep it to yourself for now.  You can explain later.  We have to get back inside, people around here tend to get suspicious.”

Raydin followed her back inside.  Almost everybody was already in bed, and Burk was already curled up in a ball, sound asleep.  Raydin followed suite, and before long, everyone was asleep, save for Xia and Hiro, who were in the kitchen, talking, and Irule, who kept one eye opened from behind her covers.  Irule crept out of bed, listening to their conversation from behind the wall.  They spoke in hushed tones, forcing Irule to put her ear up against the door.  

“We have to deliver the package by the tenth tock.  If we don’t, we won’t be able to get it back to Lifetree for at least two days.”

“You will leave as soon as our guests have departed.  If they are found here, you must be here, or the dogs will charge us with the same crimes as those we shelter.  Your leverage…”

“My leverage is almost non-existent.  The queen would just as soon feed me to the wolves than give up her position here.”

“None the less, your being here could make all the difference.  I suggest we devise a story to tell them before that happens.”

“It was your idea to keep them here old man!  Not mine!”

“If we behave the same way as our enemies, then we might as well join them!”

“Your idiotic adherence to custom has placed us all in jeopardy!  What is more important, delivering the Lazarus Treatment to millions of people, or preserving our culture?”

“We need not make a choice!”

“Right now, it sits above us, waiting in a poorly hidden compartment for any fool to find it!  If it is lost, millions of lives that could have been saved will be lost!”

Irule bit down on her knuckle, her eyes wet.  The answer to her prayers was sitting a few meters above her, and all she had to do was take it before they knew she was awake.  She climbed the ladder, as quietly as she could, up towards the hatch above her, and made her way to the sewer maintenance shaft above.  There were a couple of crates, with barely enough room to stand.  She searched through them, desperately.  Stumbling through them, she became frantic, until she spotted the panel on the wall.  She wired into the device and ran a Crack program, and the wall behind it gave way, revealing a small pouch.  Inside, there was a spider's web of wires and small nodes, connected to a black case by a small cable.  The case popped open, and a circuit card slid out.  She slid the base of the card back in the slot, closing the case, and pocketed the device.

She found a small, bootlegged game system in another crate and put it inside the pouch.  She closed up all the crates, cleaning up the mess her panic had caused.  She opened up the hatch, while Xia and Hiro finished arguing.  She slid into bed, nearly tripping over someone sleeping on the floor.  She closed her eyes and tried to rest, until her exhaustion finally overcame the pounding in her heart, and she fell asleep.

When they awoke in the morning, the room was already abuzz with activity.  Hiro approached them and said, “You will need to be leaving soon.  This location is no longer safe.  We have armored NBC gear we have stolen from the guardsmen, it will protect you from the many of the dangers in the recycling tunnels.  You will need to inject yourself with immunity boosters every few hours.  It is a self-replicating nano-virus, man-made and inorganic.  It will prevent you from getting sick while inside the system, but its effects only last for six hours at a time.  Four packs with food rations and basic supplies are waiting for you in the maintenance shaft, along with your NBC gear.  We have also procured for you a guide, his name is Goo.  His appearance is somewhat… well, you will see for yourself.  But he is a good guide, and he will lead you where you want to go.”

Adon said, “Thank you.  You have done so much for us.  We do not have access to our accounts as of yet, as we have no identities to speak of, save those we must discard if we are to survive.  We have no means of paying you back…”

Hiro said, “Do not worry so much about that.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  We will settle our accounts another time.”

Distracted, Xia signaled Raydin to hold up for a moment.  “You will not get far without weapons.  Normally, we would send a party to escort you, but as you can see, we are in a hurry to leave.”  She waved behind her as everyone scrambled to pack up everything that wasn’t bolted down.  She handed them a holopad.  On it, there were directions.  “These are directions to the shop of my brother-in-law.  He has the resources to access your accounts and withdraw funds, but he will only do so if you buy something from him.  Do not ask him for any further aid, he will consider it an insult.”

Adon came up behind Raydin, grabbing the holopad out of his hands.  “What does he sell?”

“Weapons, of course.  Some he has stored, but most are manufactured on-site.  You will need a marquee deck, you can borrow one if you do not already have one.  Once you leave here, you must hurry, he is in the middle of a move, trying to keep one step ahead of the Guard.  Mention my name, he owes me a favor.”

Raydin said, “Thank you Xia, for everything.”

He turned around, nodded to the rest of the party, who had gathered below the ladder to the maintenance shaft above.  They all filed up the ladder, until they were alone in the cramped space above the living quarters below them.  Adon sealed the hatch shut, and grabbed the suit from its hook on the wall.  He started suiting up and said, “Where is our guide?”

Raydin grabbed his and said, “He’s late.”

The party suited up.  Their armor was painted dark green across the ceramic plating, with tough, ridged, flexible black polymer joints.  Their eyes were still visible behind the contours of their green tinted faceplates, and they let the filter attachments dangle around their necks and headed out the door. The party stopped cold after opening the door.  

Standing a little over a meter, nose dripping with hardened snot, and tufts of white hair growing wildly in between his bald spots, he was quite possibly the ugliest creature any of them had ever seen.  He hiked his backpack up to his shoulders.  The words seemed to wheeze out of him.

“You asked for Goo?”  He snorted grotesquely, spitting into the sewage.  “You have Goo.”