I had my oysters. I had my quiet time, to recover from the interrogation. The waitress was bubbly, but not too typpie intrusive. She had a lot of diners to deal with, so she kept the conversation at a minimum.
She’s cute, a sexual node said. She’s typpie, a strategic node added. Most people are typpie, the cost-benefit node sighed, that’s what neurotypical means.
That was a waste of energy, I told them.
I dropped the cash and a generous tip without waiting for the check. One less social engagement to drain my resources. One fewer, my stickler linguistic node sneered in the voice of a particularly acidic pre-war drama character I’d once identified with.
I had parked the hover outside an old cemetery, seriously pre-war. A lot of graves from when Europeans were newcomers to North America. Long before the monkeys and lions and elephants. I was tempted to go explore. An arel library to study. I had another arel library to study, my new cred. I told my shelving nodes to remind me to come back to the graveyard one day. I also told the descon to mark it. I could also use the visit to check up on the Type II waiter.
Enough procrastination. Futter. I really did not want to deal with Sidewinder and Highlighter again.
I told the descon to take me to the hover garage. My nodes set to wondering if Sidewinder and Tran would already be there, or whether I’d be dealing with this Marina alone.
∈•∋
The hover garage was an old warehouse in a grove of palmettos, a pre-war building repurposed as an Accord govvie storage and recharging site. I didn’t need to show a code image to get in. The hover alone was signal enough that I was official and the local cop just waved me inside. Not sure how I felt about that. Most hovers were govvie, but not all. The Secondaries had them.
A single personal hover, clearly the one missing from the black site when I had left, was parked in the corner. My hover pulled in beside it and shut down.
A massive flight drone was the most imposing machine in the space. That surprised me. Flight drones were rare, maybe fifty in the entire Accord, credded only for the most critical missions. International incidents, cracker militia uprisings, pirate suppression. The idea that local Beaufort police were trusted to garage a war machine that lethal sent my nodes into a frenzy. The fact that I was let in without a code image? Madness. This one flight drone could destroy Beaufort and fly off to Bermuda or the Bahamas before the GA could respond.
A woman stepped out of one of the three team hovers parked next to the flight drone. She was dark-haired, muscular arms extending from her vest armor. She noted my green hover and walked toward her hover with a military confidence. She was moving her stuff, I realized.
I scooped up my minipad and car library, and stepped out of the hover. She did not make eye contact as she passed. She seemed annoyed. Ugh. Confident, disciplined, and annoyed.
I left the hover door open and walked to the team hover. Inside, I saw several bags piled beside the first starboard bunk in the sleep corridor. She’d marked her territory. My social nodes (meaning my anti-social nodes) pressed me to pick the far port bunk. Give her space. An inquisitive node reminded me that she was one of the lacunae I needed to explore.
Fighting the stress, I picked the port bunk opposite hers and dumped the minipad and books on the mattress.
She’s going to think you’re flirting, an anti-social node warned. She probably knows you’re Type II, the tactical node countered.
I walked out of the team hover as she was shouldering a gun bag from her hover. She’s a specialist, a node told me. Not a team lead like Sidewinder. Not a tech op like Tran. That was interesting.
She stopped dead. I stopped dead. We were just standing there, at the base of the hover ramp.
“Scuttle,” she said.
“Marina,” I said.
“That fuck got the Champions desanctioned in the Meg.”
That was new information. The Megalopolis wasn’t even involved in the Browns Island incident, but Highlighter’s fumbling was still apparently creating an international dust-up. Highlighter’s fumbling that my involvement had shone a bright light on. Yet, Marina didn’t blame me.
“I did not know that,” I said blankly.
“He embarrassed Tidewater, too. And we have to paint over that for some reason.”
My nodes were scrambling to pinpoint where she figured my role into that. My wiping the guards certainly made Highlighter look like an idiot. My uncovering the Secondary scheme with Varta made the whole thing a bigger international problem. I had been right about Varta, but I had also cleared her relatives, which led to the Diplomatic Office foisting them onto our mission. That put everything spinning out of control.
“You don’t like the hostages coming along,” I said.
She ground her teeth.
“That part is fucking ridiculous. We could round up Highlighter ourselves and bring him to them. But, I’m mostly pissed about how this whole thing is spinning out of control.”
She’d used the same phrase I’d said in my head, even if she meant it less specifically than I had. I stifled a smile, which she might misinterpret as amusement at her frustration.
“You’re a combat specialist,” I said, on a hunch. “A sniper maybe? You impose control.”
She blinked and looked at my face. That was uncomfortable. My lips pursed involuntarily. I glanced at her eyes. They were dark and intense.
“You’re nodular,” she said. That was abrupt and reciprocal. Complementary. I liked that. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and looked into the hover, over my shoulder. “You also impose control. I don’t get how you guys work, but you at least understand how this could go completed fucked.”
I shook my head.
“It’s already completely fucked.”
She nodded and sighed. She appreciated brutal honesty. She might be high-spectrum Type I.
“But,” I said, “I’m not going to let the DiplO’s bullshit, or anything else, get in the way of unfucking it.”
“Can I be honest?” If she knew I was Type II, she knew that I knew that was a rhetorical question.
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m less worried about the family, who are going to follow our lead, than I am about my—” She struggled with the words. “My teammates.”
“Sidewinder and Tran don’t like me.”
“You don’t like them, either.”
“I don’t—” It was my turn to struggle over words. Respect them? Trust them? “I don’t like them coming along, either.”
She smiled. It was strong and charming.
“I took the bunk next to yours,” I blurted, under an impulse from the volition node. The other nodes exploded in discontent.
She smiled harder.
“Thank God. You won’t try to talk to me while I’m trying to sleep.”
I laughed. She laughed. She walked past me into the team hover. I went back to my hover to collect the rest of my things while several nodes debated whether it was a mistake to tell her something she would soon know anyway.
∈•∋
Sidewinder and Tran showed up, carrying the hostages in the backs of their personal hovers. Sidewinder insisted that he and Tran take the forward bunks, forcing Marina and I to move, but she stared him down.
I was beginning to like her.
As the others carried their stuff into the team hover, Marina and I sat at the common table tapping at our minipads. Ben Gallus had enabled me a top-access link to one of the geostationary minisats remaining from the years immediately after the war, which would let me into the Accord’s intranet even over open water and in the Bahamas. This was likely a Fuck You to the Diplomatic Office, since I had kicked off the dust-up they were so wound up about.
I didn’t care about the reason, really. I was in Type II heaven. I tried to restrain myself to mission issues, but the temptation was too much. I started downloading books and research papers at a speed my minipad had never experienced. Sure, I had some stuff about Bahamas politics and culture in there, but also some stuff about the environmental impact of cleaner bots, the intersocial dynamics of phenotypically similar species like birds and monkeys, and the influence of hierarchies of competence in the natural selection of human organizations.
A tech prof at the Augusta University School of Cyber Engineering had recently published a paper on the threat of an internet malware collapse, similar to the one that had kicked off the war, in the absence of Hardware Interface Links between regional intranets. HILs were essentially screens and cameras aimed at each other, exchanging terminal info without the underlying computer language, intended to keep malware from spreading. It enabled financial, academic, and intelligence transactions without the danger of sharing malicious code.
Sure, it was an Accord-sponsored paper intended to nudge the debate in the congress about the Hardware Interface Act. But, it was still fascinating.
Sidewinder took command of the team hover as the hostages settled into preparing dinner. Tran reluctantly took the co-pilot seat after Marina grunted at him. That told me something new: Tran thought she was a better pilot.
I didn’t even bother looking out the windows as the hover maneuvered through the straits and sounds to the open sea. I was busy reading about birds and monkeys interacting across species. I identified with it. Typpies looked like me, but interacted like a completely different kind of animal.
“Background on the Secondaries?” Marina said. I was suddenly embarrassed by my indulgences. She had stayed on mission.
“I was expanding my knowledge of the intranet,” I deflected.
“Let me send you something.” She tapped at her minipad.
I got the ping and tapped it. Further research into the history of the Secondaries after they were declared disruptive. They had ideological partners around the world, playing on reg grievances against their local governments. Pressing to reestablish the internet and a global hegemony. They were pushing direct intranet connections over HIL, particularly in eastern Asia where they were successfully breaking up countries into smaller and smaller polities. I saw an opportunity to redeem myself. I sent Marina the paper on HIL.
She tapped the ping and squinted at her minipad. After a few seconds, she started nodding. She looked at me and smiled.
“When we get to Nassau,” Sidewinder said over his shoulder, “follow my lead in locating Highlighter.”
Marina scowled.
“Who’s our first contact, then?”
He shook his head.
“The local SecO, obviously.”
Marina huffed. One of my nodes saw Sidewinder’s shoulders slump.
“Highlighter isn’t going to announce his presence with the Bahamas Security Office.”
That sat in the air. The hostages had gone still in their cooking. I sniffed for the smell of the food. There was pork and onions in it.
“The local SecO will have noticed him,” Sidewinder said.
“I have contacts in Nassau,” Marina said. She swiped at her minipad as if the whole thing were over. “Low-key operatives who will know all the comings and goings. Certainly an unknown hover that just showed up without explanation.”
Sidewinder shook his head again. He really did not like his authority usurped and his judgement questioned.
“We have four ops,” he said. “That’s enough for both approaches.”
My nodes cheered at that. I wanted to carve that in stone.
“You and Tran go the official route and I go with Marina.”
“Fine,” Sidewinder said. He was probably happy to be rid of me.
“Where do we go?” Roger asked, holding a plate of grilled meat.
Sidewinder looked back. His face was red.
“You stay in the hover until someone needs you.”
After Sidewinder turned back to the rolling sea ahead, Marina caught Roger’s eye. She winked, and Roger nodded.
It was decided. I liked her.
∈•∋
As we pulled into the harbor between Nassau and Hog Island, there was a row of hovers parked on ramps near the Old Town. They were beaten-up but ruggedly seaworthy. Locals. I saw one that looked out-of-place, better maintained, with a triangular groove on the hood, but it was a personal hover. Those ramps were too small for the Champions’ team hover. Or ours.
I glanced at Marina. My movement was so sudden, it surprised her into looking up at me.
“Does your action group have a name?”
She chuckled at that. “Gamma Alpha Alpha Gamma Tack One Three.”
“GAAG-13?” I grimaced. “That’s awful.”
The small ramps lined up along the shore gave way to larger ramps for team-sized hovers. All I could see were local, sea-weathered machines that looked like they were held together with goatsilk.
I said, “I always just thought of you as Sidewinder’s Group.”
She leaned in and whispered: “That’s worse.”
It was my turn to chuckle. “This new little group of ours doesn’t have a—” One of my shelving nodes started pinging me frantically.
“There,” Tran said. I cut off the pinging node and looked over. He was pointing toward a row of team hover ramps. Most were local, but a buff-colored one stood out. “That’s Highlighter’s.”
Sidewinder braked the hover and turned it onto a ramp five slots down from the Champions’ hover. That is too close, one of my tactical nodes said. That was the hover on the bridge, the shelving node insisted. What?
“We should talk to the harbor authority,” Sidewinder said, “before heading to the SecO.”
Marina winked at me. That would give us more time. I nodded at her and shook my head.
“The hover on the bridge?” I accidentally whispered out loud to the shelving node.
Marina looked at me quizzically. I tapped my head. That didn’t help her.
The node shunted me a memory of the North River Bridge. The hover in the other lane that exploded my reverie of the sailboats. My eyes were blinking. I knew that would make Marina nervous, but it didn’t last long. The odd personal hover parked among the Nassau locals. It had been the same hover that passed me on the bridge.
Or had it? That triangular groove was a common model. Personal Hover Four … something. PH-45, PH-46. The shelving node obsessed on the rear view mirror on the North Bridge. That hover had a plate that ended in 1A. The hover parked in Nassau had plate U70-P1A.
“Are you two coming?” Sidewinder said. “Or going? Wherever you’re going.”
Marina waved him off and looked at me, concerned. Sidewinder huffed, shrugged, and gestured Tran out the open hover door. The hostages had finished cleaning up from the meal we had eaten over the Gulf Stream and were just staring at me. Uncomfortable. I tapped at my minipad until I saw Sidewinder and Tran jog up the ramp and talk to a local, who pointed east down the wharf. The two ops nodded and set off in that direction.
I turned to Marina. “There was an odd PH parked among the locals.”
She nodded. “I didn’t see it, but go on.”
“It passed me on the North River Bridge,” I said, “headed toward Marshallberg. I only just now put it together.”
“Are you sure?”
I slid the minipad across the table. She spun it around and looked at it.
“The plate is the same. And, it’s a fake plate. No confirmation anywhere on the planet.” One thing countries were good about sharing was their hover, weapon, and server registration data. I’d found zero pings on U70-P1A or anything like it.
“Fuck,” Marina said.
“What does that mean?” Roger said. Agla and Loliola gathered at his shoulders.
“That means company.” She turned to me. “I’ll gear up, for real, and you get side-arms from the armory for the hosta— the family.”
“We’re going with you?” asked Loliola. She didn’t seem okay with the idea.
“That’s why you volunteered, isn’t it?” Marina stomped past them toward her bunk. They moved aside in a cluster.
I stood and nodded at the family. “Let’s go.” I waved them after Marina, back toward the armory.
∈•∋
The wharf of Nassau was bustling, hot, and full of smells. Some bad, mostly good. The haunting scent of of the food would have sent me into hunter mode if I hadn’t just eaten. Thank the family for that.
My social proximity node had to be warned against constant pinging. It’s a crowd, I said, brushing and touching is just how it works. A tactical node countered: Pickpockets. I responded: My pockets are zipped, so zip it.
“Selna!” Marina called out. The family and I scanned the dockside crowd to see who she was shouting at. A dark-skinned girl with a halo of black curls turned toward us. That’s her, one of my nodes said. You hundered?, I responded sarcastically.
Selna moved through the crowd to close the distance. She was smiling. She liked Marina.
“Wafu grrpa-la-ye hye ing-Nassau de’?” the girl said in Isco.
“I’m with these people from PNW,” Marina said in Global English, letting the girl know that they wouldn’t understand a post-war dialect that cropped up on the eastern side of North America as the legacy politics there fell apart.
“Oh yeah?” the girl nodded. “That’s a long way. Must be super-fun. What’s your sitch?”
Marina shook her head. “What you need, first?”
Selna leaned back with her hands on her hips. “I need for nothing, gal. Maybe just you and me get together sometime and be friend-like again?”
“So sorry, girl,” Marina said. “GA keeping me busy. Star deal, though. I promise, afa di’ aldung. We just looking for the man who park the sand-colored team hover here, mebi di-mone, mebi yasida-naa.”
“Oh, erbadi know that man. He hide away up the Stair.”
I knew from my reading that she probably mean the Queen’s Stair, an ancient ruin in Nassau carved out of the rock next to a waterfall.
“Everybody?” Marina asked. “Even the SecO?”
Selna laughed. “They nera see nada.”
That was good. It meant we had a jump on Sidewinder.
“Ye kina-catro Nassau,” the girl said. You can’t control Nassau. And that meant the SecO, too. It was a post-war Bahamas battle cry, from when they were resisting the Georgia and Cubano Accords. Their raiders still blasted that motto from hind-tech bullhorns when they assaulted ships sailing past Florida or oversea toward Bermuda. “We a pirate city, from oltai.”
“But, you heard where this man went,” Marina said. “Mebi ye-hrr zakri wei?”
“Mebi,” Selna said. “Aa-tii he with the Donjas. They traders back-and-forth to Tidewater.”
My nodes pinged concurrence. That made perfect sense. Highlighter must have made overseas friends at the Tidewater port of Poquoson, the Champions’ headquarters. He was hiding out with them until the dust-up blew over.
“We get the loc?” I asked her.
She grinned at me and winked. “Oli if-ye come with Marina wen-ii come back.”
I struggled to smile back, but her forwardness was alarming.
∈•∋
The Donja hideout was not impressive. It was essentially a pre-war mansion surrounded by a crude hedge. There were rifle-armed guards sitting on wooden chairs at the four corners of the main house, but no dogs, no patrols, no surveillance tech.
“This is ridiculous,” Marina said. We were all stooping behind a rock, peering through the leaves of the hedge. She and I had just returned from a circuit of that hedge, which was riddled with gaps where bushes had withered and died.
“They’re traders,” I said, feeding her the analysis of my nodes. “Clearly not pirates or city gangs. They’re probably paying tribute to half a dozen gangs and don’t feel they need much muscle.”
“It’s still ridiculous. If they’re housing an international refugee…” She left it hanging.
“Star luck for us,” I said.
Roger nodded at that. Loliola and Agla just looked terrified.
“Maybe they,” I nudged my elbow at Roger’s relatives, “should stay here until we call the all-clear.”
He nodded again and the two women squatted lower to signal their agreement.
Marina was screwing a long barrel onto her side-arm. She wanted to snipe first. My nodes and I couldn’t have agreed more. We—meaning my nodes and I first then Marina, Roger, and I—had decided not to negotiate for Highlighter’s surrender. Announcing ourselves would give the Donjas, with their greater numbers, the upper hand. And, they’d likely just tell us to fuck off and increase their guard. Better just to take him by surprise and by force.
Marina gestured with her chin for me to round the hedge to the other side of the house. I patted Roger on the shoulder and we set off around the hedge.
We barely made it to the other side when Marina’s first shot rang out.
“Fuck,” Roger said and shoved through the bushes. I followed in the gap he’d made.
The guards on our side had stood up and were peering around the house. That was dumb. Roger raised his pistol toward the one on the right, so my guy was on the left. Marina’s second shot kept them distracted. Roger was hardly ten meters away from his man when he put a bullet in the back of the man’s head. That was my cue.
My motor-sensory nodes pushed me aside. That always felt weird, but I had learned to trust them. The world went grayscale as the motor-sensory nodes swallowed most of my eyes’ input. Everything slowed to a crawl. I felt the metal edges of the trigger on my finger as it squeezed. The pistol shoved itself against my palm. Black spattered from my target’s shoulder. A second pulse against my palm and the man’s head exploded. He fell against the corner of the house.
I was diving and rolling to my left. When I settled onto my knees, I saw a man with a rifle running toward me from the back door of the house. He fell forward with black spraying from his chest. Roger had gotten him. I got to my feet and followed Roger into the house.
Inside was an architectural puzzle. Two guards fell bleeding in the forward doorway to the first room. There were two other doorways to either side. Roger went right again, I went left. I found a windowed side hall with a stairway on the inner side. Audial nodes registered more shots from Marina from the front of the house. She and Roger were sweeping the first floor. My feet thrust my body up the stairs.
Sidewinder is going to have a lot of explaining to do with the local SecO, a social node said.
Shut up, I said. The hallway at the top of the stairs was empty.
We just complicated the international dust-up, it added.
Shut the fuck up, I said.
My executive node didn’t notice a man stepping through a doorway until his neck was blown apart by a shot from my hand. I was leaning against the wall near the door before I knew what I was doing.
Roger appeared at the other end of the hallway. My eyes were blinking as my social nodes registered him as an ally. Marina climbed up the stairs behind him. He glanced at her over his shoulder and she nodded him toward the doorway. Her face was bronze, her cheeks reddened by exertion. I could see colors again. I was dropping out of crisis mode.
“We send him out,” a man’s voice shouted from inside the room.
“No,” came Highlighter’s voice. “Who’s out there?”
“It’s Scuttle,” I shouted. “We’re not here to kill you. Just take you back to the GA.”
“Fuck,” he hissed. “Okay. I thought you were Secondaries.”
“You wish,” Marina said. I grinned at that. I felt amazing. Adrenaline high.
“You’ve got a lot of fucking explaining to do,” Roger said.
“Fuck,” Highlighter said.
∈•∋
Our weapons tucked into our clothes again, we led Highlighter down the Stair toward the wharf. Roger kept his hand in his jacket, wrapped around his pistol. He was glaring at Highlighter.
“What do you know about Varta?” Roger snapped. Several well-dressed locals climbing the stairs turned to look at him.
“This can wait until we get back to the hover,” Marina said.
“All to hell with that,” Roger said. “This bastard could’ve told us what was going on long ago.”
“We wouldn’t have come,” said Agla.
My social nodes, the anti-social nodes, were tense in the family drama.
“Marina’s right,” I said. “Let’s just step off until we get clear of Nassau.”
“Mom,” said Loliola. Highlighter’s shoulders sank.
Marina glanced at me. She was as unhappy as I was. I shrugged to say, Bringing them was your idea.
“I’m so sorry, Lo,” Highlighter said. “Catter didn’t want to come. She was worried about you.”
My social nodes groaned at that. What a stupid thing to say. He just made it the daughter’s fault.
Loliola started crying as we left the Stair behind. We were drawing way too much attention from the locals passing by.
“This can wait,” Marina hissed.
“I didn’t—” Loliola sobbed.
“You didn’t do this,” I said. “This was your cousin’s doing. And your uncle’s.” I glared at Highlighter.
He sneered at me. “Just get me the hell out of here.”
“Worried about uninvited guests?” Marina said.
“Are you keeping Varta safe?” he said.
Roger shoved him. “You suddenly worried about her?”
Highlighter looked back at him and shook his head. Then, he looked at me.
“I had time to think it through.”
“Think what through?” I said.
“Varta’s scheme,” he said. “The trigger I had was the release button.”
My nodes debated that for a second. Considering that the whole abduction was a ruse to earn Varta cred in the GA, which I hadn’t known at the time, he was probably right. I hated conceding that point, but I forced myself to nod.
“It’s all irrelevant now,” I said.
But, the larger role of the abduction wasn’t irrelevant. How deep was the Secondary plot to embed ops into GA politics, and the politics of other countries, to push their hegemonic goals? Was Varta the only plant in the Accord? I felt the need to go to Augusta and help Ben Gallus work out the larger issues. My cred was just to retrieve Highlighter, which was nearly complete, but I wanted to leave that cred with a big-picture analysis the SecO could unwrap.
“Where should we take him?” I asked Marina.
“Now?” she said. Then she shook her head and sighed. “To Augusta, for the SecO to process.”
That worked for me.
“Who has Varta?” Highlighter said.
We were well into the main city of Nassau by then. I could see the harbor and Hog Island beyond. We’d have to message Sidewinder to come back to the hover. That would be super-fun. I could imagine Marina would enjoy his resentment as much as I would.
“Groupers,” Marina said. “That’s all you need to know.”
My nodes were pinging to remind me of the odd hover at the wharf. The one from the North River Bridge. The one that had followed Highlighter to Nassau.
“You think Varta’s in danger?”
Highlighter glanced at me, then turned back to the street ahead. Roger nudged him with a shoulder.
“Why do you think I was hiding here?” Highlighter shook his head. “Commander Oldfield doesn’t want all of this coming out.”
Marina turned to me. Oldfield was a notorious Secondary officer, known for executing subordinates who didn’t perform as expected. Most analysts thought he had been killed when the Secondaries were deprecated.
When I say thought I should say hoped.
“You think he’s planning to have Varta assassinated,” Marina said, voicing my suspicions.
Highlighter shook his head in annoyance, looking around at the buildings and passers-by.
“You know as well as I do that Oldfield doesn’t—”
Highlighter’s head exploded in a flower of bone and blood.
Everyone stooped. Side-arms were suddenly pointed in all directions. The locals were fleeing and squealing.
“From the right,” Marina barked.
Roger and I turned our pistols in that direction. Agla and Loliola rushed behind a stone wall. The rest of us joined them.
“Quick,” Marina said. “Stay low, toward the hover.”
“What about—” Agla said, looking at Highlighter’s splayed body.
Marina growled and set off down the street. Roger grabbed his relatives’ arms and we followed Marina.
∈•∋
Marina sent a message to Sidewinder on her minipad as we slunk down Nassau toward the team hover. My nodes debated what the message contained, which was absurd.
As the family retreated to their bunks, Marina fired up the hover.
“Sidewinder needs to hurry his ass up,” she said.
“Did he respond?” I asked, looking at the hover screens in futility. She had it covered. I decided to be helpful. I turned to nod Roger toward the armory. We might need more than side-arms.
“He did not,” Marina said.
Roger returned from with an armful of rifles and shoved one at me. I took it and and we nodded at each other in what struck some of my nodes as a silly way.
“What the fuck,” Sidewinder said as he stepped through the hover doorway.
“Get in and close the door,” Marina barked as the hover rose on its blowers. I steadied myself on the back on the co-pilot’s chair.
Tran followed Sidewinder in and just looked baffled. “What happened?”
“Take a seat,” Marina said.
“What happened?” Sidewinder insisted.
“Highlighter’s dead,” Roger snarled at him.
Sidewinder threw his side-arm on the common area table. “Give me the helm.”
Marina stood and raise her hands. Sidewinder shouldered past her and sat. He turned to Tran, who was shoving the lever to raise the entry ramp and close the door.
“Close the door,” Sidewinder said, too late.
“Jesus,” Marina said and leaned on the table.
“Wait,” I said to Tran. “Raise the ramp, but leave the door open.”
“Close the door,” Sidewinder growled, yanking at the controls. The hover lurched backward and we all reset our feet.
“Leave the door open,” I said. “There’s an assassin’s hover on the wharf.”
Marina grabbed a rifle from Roger. Tran nodded at me, shoved a lever to keep the door open, and took a rifle from Roger. Roger had one rifle left for himself. He counted right, a tactical node said.
“Whatever,” Sidewinder said and backed the hover into a position to exit the harbor.
Marina, Roger, Tran, and I took positions in the open doorway, rifles aimed toward the wharf. The team hovers passed by, and a neat row of ramshackle personal hovers came into view.
“Try not to hit the locals,” Marina said. I grinned but I noted Tran’s annoyed snarl.
“That’s it,” I said as the plate came into view. That was unnecessary. The assassin’s clean hover stood out like a gem among the rough locals.
As we passed, the PH rose on its blowers and backed fast off the ramp.
Four rifles burst in automatic fire, bits of metal and plastic flying from the PH. Locals along the wharf fled in all directions. The fake plate fell into the water at the base of the parking ramp. It spun on the water behind us. Heavy guns rotated out of the forward fenders.
“Shit,” Marina said. “It’s armed!”
“Go!” Tran shouted, but Sidewinder was already pushing the team hover forward.
I fell against Marina, and she gently pushed me back to standing. I stood there for a moment, blinking, as she and Tran leaned out the starboard door with their rifles. I rushed across the common area and slammed my free palm against the port door lever. With an agonizingly slow cranking, the door rose.
“Sit!” Roger shouted at Agla and Loliola as he leaned against my shoulder. I tried not to shrink away from the contact.
There was a hiss and a crack. The team hover shook. Marina and Tran sprayed rifle fire into the pursuing hover.
As the door clanked open, Roger and I leaned out of the hover. A mini-missile buzzed a meter from my face and exploded in the water ahead.
“Get us the fuck out of here!” Marina shouted.
“Full accel!” Sidewinder barked.
I fell to one knee and lay my rifle as close to the water as I dared. With a squeeze of a finger, I sent bullets into the pursuing hover’s skirt at a low angle. Smoke and fragments of blower burst into its spray and the hover leaned into the water, listing to starboard. Two mini-missiles hissed from its guns to burst against the open waters of the harbor.
“He’s falling off,” Tran said.
I turned back. Marina was smiling at me. Roger’s hand was patting my shoulder.
I stood and slammed the door lever. Tran did the same on the other side. The doors cranked downward with a pleasant sound. Slowly, the noise of the hover’s spray was silenced.
Tran rushed to the rear of the hover. Damage assessment, one of my nodes said. No shit, I replied.
“Nice move,” Marina said to me, tossing her rifle on her bunk.
“That was the guy who got Highlighter?” asked Sidewinder.
“That was Collective,” Marina said. “I got a look at his face.”
Collective was an infamous Secondary assassin. I’d never met him, which partially explained why I was still alive. I found myself sitting at the table, tapping my minipad for intel on him. I shunted the fake plate U70-P1A to the SecO via a secure app, just in case he used it again.
“Collective,” Sidewinder repeated in a not-happy voice. There was history there.
“Minimal damage,” Tran shouted from the back. “Some body damage.”
Roger and Marina sat at the common table beside Agla and Loliola, who were breathing hard and shaking.
“Where are we going?” Sidewinder said. “Since I have no idea what the hell is going on?”
“Augusta,” Marina and I said in unison. Out the windows, Hog Island vanished to starboard.
Sidewinder looked back and shook his head. “Of course. Take the other chair, Tran.”