Dyson’s Angel (draft) — Part 2
Moira continues her assault on the gang base where her target is believed to be hiding.
The following is a continuation of the first draft for a scifi novel I’m writing. Moira is a scientist and soldier who, accompanied by a sentient alien spaceship… which also holds the mind of her dead lover, has turned to bounty hunting to survive in the underbelly of the Shell. Readers should be aware that this is significantly darker than my Oliver Lucas novels, as my goal with this novel is to attempt a tone somewhere between Ian M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, and Quentin Tarantino. This is a first draft. Much will change before the final version, but feel free to leave comments about what seems to work or not.
Dyson’s Angel (draft) — Part 2.
The airlock cycled and Moira stepped out into the blasted street. A hot wind whipped around her, carrying a fine dust that scoured across her face and lodged in the corners of her eyes. She pulled up her rebreather and fixed it over her mouth and nose, snapping the elastic strap over her ears, then shaking her head so her short, bobbed hair fell over it. She hefted the rifle, then ran crouched and ran down the street towards the gang hideout.
As Miora jogged, Zau/Heraxo piped an annotated model of the city into an overlay, causing the image to appear as an isometric projection, floating in the near distance. The ship tagged known locations of gang members in red on the map, throwing anticipated cones of vision out around them in every direction not blocked by a solid wall. After a moment, additional marks appeared on the map, tagged in yellow.
“What are those?” Moira asked the ship, her lips moving silently as she subvocalized the question.
“Possible noncombatants. We have located at least five registered prostitutes, two drug synthesists, and an experiential emcee who operates under the sobriquet B0gZ.”
“Here?”
“That is what the facial matches tell us. Not that we need computers to identify the emcee. He’s got a {in-world mild-ish curse} huge banner hanging over his deck.”
“I thought you said that the gang was getting agitated.” “Agitated. Excited. Moving about vigorously.” Moira set her jaw and told herself not to swear at Zau/Heraxo. If she aggravated it now she risked it being even less forthcoming with data, and the last thing she needed in the middle of an operation was a pissed off mind composite. “Can you be sure they are unarmed?” “No.” “Keep them tagged in yellow for me, but tell the micros to include them in the takedown. I’m not taking nay risks in this.” “This is an expensive mission, Moira. Would it not be best to…” “It would be best to come out of it alive. Just hold off on the takedown until we’re sure if we need it.” “As we intended from the beginning.” Moira ignored the implied insult and continued towards the decrepit department store that served as home base for the Azi Zoo. One of the more vicious gangs to pop up on the outskirts of Covington in recent years, The Azi Zoo had pulled off a string of heists, both physical and virtual, which had inevitably brought them to the attention of Covington Domestic Security. Lacking the forces to pursue the entire gang, and unable to secure the political will for a tactical strike, CDS had instead posted an escalating bounty for known members of the gang.
She slowed, placing her feet carefully to minimize noise as she approached the intersection of two streets. The isometric projection showed two red human shapes outlined against the wall of the department store just around the corner. Moira leaned against the cracked bricks of the corner pharmacy and subvocalized, “Can you get me a visual on those two?”
A flat panel appeared over the map, showing a grainy image of two armed guards standing, one on either side of the rotating door that led into the apartment store.
The shattered glass from the display windows on either side of the door had been swept into piles in the middle of the street and the openings had been covered over in sloppily applied sheets of corrugated metal. Both guards wore stuttering active camouflage, which continually flashed with random patterns and distorted, over saturated images of their surroundings. Worthless as cover, but still highly illegal for civilians to posses in Covington proper. Moira guessed they had stolen it from whatever CDS guards had been unfortunate enough to pull duty on a convoy that the Azi Zoo had hit.
“Those the only guards?”
“Situational analysis suggests a ninety-five percent probability that no other individuals are watching these doors,” Zau/Heraxo replied. “And before you ask, there is no bounty on either of those individuals. They are too low in the organization.”
“Take those two. I’ll hide the bodies.” “Done.” Above the rooftop of the building across the street from the department store, a micro drone darted up over the parapet and fired a dart each into the necks of the guards. Both men had only the time to open their mouths and twitch their hands upwards before the powerful benzodiazepine derivative ripped through their GABA receptors and dropped them both to the sidewalk.
“You’ll want to get them both out of sight. We can’t guarantee one of the partygoers won’t come wandering out.”
“On it,” Moira said.
She crouched low and stalked along the sidewalk, placing each quick, light step carefully to avoid broken glass as she held her rifle at the ready. Reaching the doorway, Moira slung her rifle over her back and grabbed the first guard under his arms, then stood and swung him over her shoulder. He was lighter than she had expected, but that shouldn’t have surprised her. Out here, beyond even the fringes of Covington, it was entirely possible for someone to die of starvation. If they didn’t have the right contacts. Might be the gang didn’t even have a synthesizer, at least not one that was not tied up producing drugs.
“We have moved the drone to street level and can now see into the former department store,” Zau/Heraxo said.
Moira shoved the limp guard through the blasted out window of the pharmacy and turned to retrieve the second body before he even hit the floor inside. “Any threats?”
“You might be best served taking a more tactful approach.” “You mean?” “That human is about your size.” Moira scowled and glance through the rotating door. Within the ruined department store, only a few shafts of sunlight reached through the shuttered windows and skylights. Shadows dominated, pierced occasionally by competing flashes of strobe, laser, and holographic light that leaked around the corners of the retail displays. “{in-world mild curse},” Moira breathed. “Where is the party? Can’t I just go around them?”
She darted across the doorway and lifted the second guard, then carried him quickly back to the corner pharmacy. As she moved, Zau/Heraxo rotated the isometric map to show each possible entrance to the department store. It said, “The micros have located additional ingress points on the roof and at the rear of the store. Unfortunately, there is something of a crowd at the loading dock and the gang has removed all external access ladders to the roof. Security, you understand.”
“{in-world mild curse}. Fine.” Moira dumped the guard on the sidewalk and began stripping the baggy active camouflage from him. The damaged material stuttered and swirled with patterns that vaguely resembled the charred brick beneath the guard, but were rendered in wildly inappropriate colors. “This feels like a bad idea.”
“Hiding in plain sight, darling.” “I prefer to hide in the shadows.” “Not a lot of them, we’re afraid. Not anymore.” Moira glanced at the projected map, confirming that none of the gang members were about to come up on her, then stepped into the baggy legs of the active suit. She pulled it up to her waist, held it there with one hand while she tightened the leg closures around her boots, then shrugged the stiff material over her shoulders, covering the rifle on her back. Pulling the hood over her head, Moira zipped the face closed, only to find the word in front of her transformed into a psychedelic landscape of neon lines and twisted shades that dived into stomach churning fractals. Clearly the suit’s entire distributed image processing system was damaged, maybe infected with a cyber virus. There would be no covering her face.
“Leave the face open and keep the hood down. Put some swagger in your step and you’ll blend in with the crowd within the unregistered occupancy space.”
“Swagger,” Moira muttered, shaking her head. She unzipped the face of the suit and pulled the hood down so the top of the opening hung just above her eyes. Zau/Heraxo projected an image from one of the micros into her vision and Moira allowed the damned machine a little credit. If she slouched her shoulders and walked with a rolling gait she might look like she belonged in the Azi Zoo hideout.
Assuming that she did not run into anyone who knew the owner of the suit.
She helped herself to the unconscious guard’s sidearm, a battered flechette thrower with maybe seven cartridges remaining the magazine, then dumped his body in the burned pharmacy. The weapon she slipped into a baggy utility pocket on the outside of the suit.
“Walk in the front like you own the place. Perhaps the pitifully enhanced humans within mistake you for their homie, from a distance at least.”
“I still think I should have just snuck in, but we’ll do it your way,” Moira muttered, louder than was strictly necessary for the subvocalization implant to pick up her words.
She pushed through the rotating door at the front of the department store and found herself standing in a dimly lit, cavernous space. All of the merchandise had long since been looted and the various mobile walls, display cases, and racks had been pushed about to form a low-walled maze of sorts on the ground floor. Or perhaps it was intended as a series of barricades behind which gang members could hide if ever a firefight broke out in their hideaway. The walls, barricades, and even the floor were nearly covered in a brightly colored, intertwining and overlapping array of spray painted art, some of which glowed faintly in the dim light. At the center of the space a pair of crossed escalators rose up to the second level. A wispy fog of artificial smoke rolled down both escalators, shot through with stuttering lines of laser light and occasionally flashing to opaque as strobes blasted white light down the escalators.
To Moira’s left, a micro flitted past her shoulder, shot up to the ceiling, and skimmed across the space just below the level of the battered, sagging composite tiles. An instant later three new tags appeared on the projected map.
“Three potentially hostile humans are on this level. One is relieving herself in the back left corner, where rudimentary toilet facilities have been established. I’m surprised they don’t at least have a composting toilet, but one can not always account for all of the variables in human behavior.”
“You said three?”
“Two more are closer to your present location.” The map pulled in on two tagged outlines, seemingly laying side by side on the floor beside the elevators, their shaved scalps joined by tangles of glowing white wire. “We believe them to be asleep, likely in a a shared dream state, probably under the influence of one or ore of the drugs being synthesized at this location.”
“Target?”
“Still on the second floor. In a private room now, just off from the main space where experiential emcee is performing. We have a micro in place monitoring events.” — -
If you’re enjoying this story, you can read much more of the first draft, see snippets of deleted scenes, outlines, and more over at my Patreon project, patreon.com/andrewlinke. Learn more about all my writing at my website, alinke.com.
Post photo from Stefan Ray on Flickr.
(https://flic.kr/p/4YwrRE)
