B-spine Read online

  “Jude, it’s been a pleasure talking to you,” he said.

  “Thanks for the ride, Rooster,” said Hemblen. “The Union owes you big bucks for this.”

  “I appreciate the cash but the company was better,” said Rooster. “And before you go, one last question. You seem a nice guy. Why make a living doing something as dumb as getting shot for someone else’s cause? No offense intended.”

  “None taken,” said Hemblen. “It’s just how I fit into the scheme of things. Look at your rig here – it’s a pre-Hub, pre-livedrive, gas guzzler. The government might have crushed everyone’s cars as they rehoused them in the Hubs but they couldn’t waste vehicles this useful, could they? So instead, they converted them to burn old cooking oil and kept them for a vital job, right?”

  “Tell my wife about it. She says I smell of fried chicken.”

  “Well then, President Vandernecker’s got a steady stream of conscripts rotating out of the war down South. That’s a lot of training and motivation. With nothing to do, we’d be robbing banks and forming conspiracies against him all the time. As crazy as it seems, mercwar’s a way to recycle one more valuable asset. After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

  Rooster smiled and patted his shoulder fondly. “Got an answer for everything, ain’t you, son?”

  “Pretty much,” nodded Hemblen. “You take care of yourself now.” And with that, he jumped down, landing in a sleet-filled puddle on wobbly, cramped-up legs.

  The rest of the trip he barely remembered, dozing under his combat jacket as the passenger carriage got shunted around various freight trains pushing him ever closer to the Toronto Hub. After the Amtrak, the Tramtrax – the Hub’s internal rail system that ran through identical District after identical District as he slept.

  Finally, weary and dirty, he stood outside Crash The Pad’s base. Four solid stories of defensible, blast-deflecting concrete bordered on all sides by sixty meters of featureless open space. Hard laser light scanned him as he walked across the killzone to a door overlooked by steel-shuttered firing ports. Behind the door a guard in full body armor. “Hey Hemblen,” he said, his voice muffled by a face shield clipped onto his helmet. Behind the guard, gray concrete corridors. At the end was a single mass of color. Monty Cox in a Hawaiian shirt. Looking more than a little happy.

  “Straight off the street, a woman brought me this suitcase,” said Monty. No hellos, no how are yous. “You know what was in it? Two million – cash. That was just the down payment. I tell you, Crash The Pad finally caught the big one.”

  Meat4 Power, the biggest livedrive producer north of Niagara Falls. The largest single employer in the Toronto Hub. The company with its national base, the Citadel, sitting behind concrete walls and gun towers on the shores of Lake Ontario. No wonder Monty was grinning.

  Hemblen swayed in the corridor, weighed down by his stinking rucksack and days of travel. “Who are we hitting?”

  “Company called Bostov Cryonics.”

  He shrugged. “Never heard of them.”

  “Me neither,” said Monty. “Apparently, they started off in the Seattle Hub and have been relocating eastwards for eight years. Now that they’re reached Toronto, Meat4 Power think they’re fair game. They want us to tear them into little pieces.”

  Hemblen blinked and his lids scraped against his eyes. “That seems a little excessive,” he said, “even for Meat4 Power.”

  “You want to hear the crazy part of it?” asked Monty. “Win, lose or draw, they’re paying us a flat fee. All we have to do is engage Bostov continually for three weeks.”

  “That makes no sense at all.”

  “Well, it does and it doesn’t,” said Monty, taking him by the arm and leading him to his office. “The plan is that everyone will spend so long wondering why we’re hitting Bostov that Meat4 Power can get on with the main event.”

  “Which is?”

  “Product launch,” said Monty.

  “What kind of product?”

  ”Who cares?” said Monty. “Got to be something big if they’re throwing this much money at it. They were first to B-spine wetware so I’m thinking…”

  “…C-spining?” said Hemblen? “I heard that was physically impossible. Something to do with leg length or wetware muscle bulk.”

  “C-spining, improved foodfuel, fresh wetware products… Whatever.” smiled Monty. “We’re not doing this because it’s the right thing to do. We’re doing it because the price is right. Right? And if you do it right, we all get paid and no one need get hurt.”

  Hemblen rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Someone always gets hurt. You know that. You know what, Monty? I think I could do with a shower. Maybe a little sleep too.”

  “Time for sleep later, Jude. For now, we drink coffee and we plan. You ready for war?”

  Jude dropped into a leather chair and thought fond thoughts about the quiet, snug snow-covered comms bunker he’d left behind. “Sure boss,” he sighed. “Let’s go to war…”

  Tuesday 11 March

  02.05 am

  KIRSTY CYCLES FAST down empty streets before shuffling pedestrians in cheap padded leather jackets emerge to jam Tramtrax stops, their steaming body heat and breath wrapping clouds around dim street lights. Hub conservancy measures minimize road traffic and maximise Tramtrax efficiency round the clock, even if that means factory shifts starting round the clock too.

  As she stops at a red light and a packed Tramtrax passes, she rubs her frozen cheeks and looks up at Arclights, still a mile away. In a District where buildings are functional, flat or blocky, Arclights is the exception – a twenty story cone sliced through before the point to form an elegant, sloped roof that’s ringed in strobes to ward off air traffic. This concession to aesthetic architecture, this deviation from purely practical design is part of the Hub’s planning, of course. District 44, ten miles to the west, doesn’t have a nightclub but does have a playdium on the same space within its grid. District 46 to the east has a boating lake and public gardens. The littlest things give residents a sense of belonging in whatever ten mile by ten mile District they’ve been born into.

  She leaves the street lighting behind and rolls past a half dozen blocks lit only by the dull yellow reflection of the greater Hub on low clouds, Arclights’ strobes and her bike.

  She brakes a block short, locking her bike to a sidewalk post. Kirsty doesn’t like arriving by bike, she thinks it diminishes her credibility as a Federal officer. She prefers to arrive looking cool, in control and on foot. She also gets to watch the flood-lit gates to the Arclights compound from the security of the side street.

  She takes off her helmet, sweeps back her hair and is straightening her fallball cap when the buzzing engine of an airship – a small four-seater – rises steeply over the nightclub. As she’s watching it ascend, the gates swing open and three utivans pull out, accelerating away from her towards the trans-District tollroad, the vehicles’ livedrive pods trailing clouds of moist breath from side vents. she’s hopelessly trying to catch their registration tags when when two PD utivans come the other way past them and turn into the club’s access road.

  She frowns, she chews her lip. She pulls Slate from her ruck and re-runs the emergency service searches. There’s still no PD or FD activity logged just as there isn’t any local air traffic. Officially at least. She thinks about what Phil the janitor just said to her and makes her mind up. “If it ain’t my business, it ain’t my business,” she murmurs.

  She turns away and nearly yelps as bang – center-stage in the million candlepower beam. The cops must have rolled down the street behind her, lights off, livedrives barely grunting. Instinctively, she turns her head to shade her face as the utivan cruiser stops in the street and the cop with the light, just a shape on the passenger side, leans out for a better look. “You there,” he says, “this is a restricted area. Get outta here.”

  It throws her, being pinned in the white beam, being told what to do so suddenly. “I’m…” she stutter. “I’m, ahh…”


  “You’re in the wrong place, lady.” says the cop. “You’re still here when I circle the block, you’re in the back of the van.” The light snaps off and she’s pretty sure she hears someone laugh as the tires rasp over ground frost.

  Kirsty stands and shakes. She bunches her fists. She clenches her teeth enough to hurt her neck. The spotlight’s beam plays spots across her eyes as she blinks back tears and even though the air’s no more than twenty degrees, her face flushes hot.

  No one tells her what to do, that was the deal. She’d stayed out of the local gangs as a teenager and stayed in school to keep her record clean enough for a federal job. She’d worked under some patronizing waiting-to-retire wetvet for a year to get her dead-man’s shoes posting. She puts up with the rotating shifts and scale pay and all the other crap because she needs her Federal Environmental contacts and because no one can tell her what to do. She’s a federal officer. Above local politics, above local PD, unstoppable.

  Never mind that FedNet doesn’t have a job for her to attend. She pulls Slate and calls up the system preferences, toggling the uplink connection from continuous to on-request only. Until she turns it back or FedNet queries her connection status, she’s on her own time. Her jaw’s so tight, she’s giving herself a headache.

  She opens the previous work log and scales the window down until it’s just the Federal Environmental logo and blocks of text. She opens a note window and types in Arclight’s address, the time twenty minutes ago and number strings that look like a case log. For emphasis, she calls up a street map and puts a pointer of the nightclub. Time to see how far she can get by on a uniform and willpower…

  “So the Canadians must have finally invaded,” She tries to keep the tremor out of her voice, striding from the unlit side of the street towards two PD manning the main gate. One of them turns, startled, and puts his hand on his holstered pistol. The other holds an insulated coffee mug and squints into the gloom.

  “Stop right there, ma’am,” says the one going for the gun. Says it firmly, politely.

  “Police business,” says the other. “This area’s off-limits.”

  “I mean,” she continues, closing the distance fast, “I’ve counted three PD cruisers driving past and seen two more go inside. I’ve never seen so many cops in my neighborhood, not ever. Add the impressive air show and I’m figuring the Canadian army’s seized our nightclub and you’re containing them, right?”

  She gets close and sees them stare at her cap. In white embroidery it reads ’Federal’ on one line, ’Environmental’ on the other. “Ahh, come on,” she says, switching off her stern look and immediately flashing her widest smile. “I’m just joking with you guys. People see a Fed and they get all uptight. Sometimes, I just like messing with that, you know?”

  The pair shift uncomfortably. The ice hasn’t been broken.

  “So anyhow,” she continues. “I logged an alarm call. Priority one.”

  She pulls Slate and holds it low, pointing it at one cop then the other so fast that neither get to read it, although the gun cop squints hard. She hopes they can’t see her heart pounding. If they read the log, they can turn her away at the gate but instead, the coffee cop says “That call was cancelled, miss,” and the nervous one, the sharper one, turns and glares at him angrily.

  “It’s ’Officer’ to you, patrolman,” she says, back in control. “If I take a call, I get to follow it up.”

  “I’m not sure you’re allowed to go inside,” says the coffee cop, looking young and nervous, like the 19-year-old he is who signed up to protect and serve neighborhoods too poor to afford Urban Pacification Force subscriptions.

  “That’s funny,” she says, as sweet as she can, “because I’m not sure you can stop me.” She forces another smile even though it all feels so bad. PD are supposed to roll whenever Feds are on the scene.

  The coffee cop swallows and blinks. The other turns his back to her and mumbles briefly into his comms.

  “It’s a crowd-control matter,” says the coffee cop, seriously agitated. “As far as I know, there’s nothing wetware-related for you to deal with.”

  “As far as you know?” she says. “Maybe that’s why you’re on the gate and I’m answering a FedNet call. Why else would they send for me?”

  The other cop holds a gloved finger against his earpiece. “I repeat,” he says, “Federal Environmental at the front gate.” There’s a long pause then he says “She says there was a wetware alarm.”

  He listens to the comms for maybe a minute, nodding occasionally. Then he turns and says “Okay, do you want to go inside now, Officer?” Kirsty’s sure it sounds like a challenge rather than a question.

  “Sure,” she says. The cop hits the release button and the gates swing open to reveal so many emergency service vehicles outside Arclights that Kirsty starts to think that showing PD who’s boss isn’t such a good idea any more.

  “File name – Arclights. Evidence: Police Department.” she’s by a bank of ticket booths and cloakrooms at the front of Arclights’ lobby, facing the senior PD officer on-site. The forecourt showed blood spatters and drag marks but no one pointed them out to her.

  “This is federal testimony,” she tells him, because even though it isn’t and even though she’s no reason to be there, it’s what he expects to hear. “What you say now is evidence. Be clear, be unambiguous.” The cop nods so she holds Slate out, bubble lens towards him, screen towards her. His pudgy face fills the screen and her thumb wavers over the record button because what she records onto Slate can’t ever be erased. He looks at her expectantly and she’s no other option but to press it and nod to him.

  “To exposit the scenario,” he says with that cute cop-show patter all PD favor. “A fire in the kitchen sublevel flashed over and burned intensely before being contained by the halon extinguishers. Fatally scorched, the service elevator livedrive fled the flames vertically and exited into the bar area.”

  He talks, they walk, Slate hard-etches audio and visual of the scene as they move into the club. The cop draws no attention to bloody drag marks on the floor or red hand smears down the walls. He doesn’t mention PD teams in surgical masks and paper suits picking used MedAssist disposables off the dancefloor.

  “The service elevator livedrive was a big unit, a Meat4 Power BigBov, I think. Something that large kicking around the bar could have caused a terrible loss of life, terrible. Thankfully, although its death throes caused multiple injuries, major loss of life was obviated when its random displacement led it to the top of that stairwell.”

  “Random displacement?” queries Kirsty, shooting over his shoulder towards the wrecked bar.

  “I mean it kicked around a lot,” says the cop. “It bust out of the service elevator, thrashed around then tumbled down the stairs back to the kitchen level, where it finally expired from fluid loss and burn trauma.”

  She shoots footage of the bar. There’s blood running down the front face. “Multiple injuries,” she prompts, “but no deaths?”

  “No deaths,” he confirms. “I’ve been to a lot of crime scenes so let me tell you, this blood looks worse than it is. It’s spread out because of all the hard surfaces. If this had been carpeted, you’d barely notice it. There’d be nothing but patches.”

  Kirsty says nothing and nods. She attended a crash on the trans-District tollroad once when a tractor-trailer had flipped en-route to a livedrive canning plant. Three dozen wetware units thrown about inside and there’d been less blood than this.

  “Did you notice that the blood’s run to the center of the dance floor?” says Kirsty, shooting the trail from the bar to the middle of the club. There’s a puddle there, cherry red in the middle, crimson black at the edges.

  “I saw that,” says the PD. “I’d imagine that when they laid the acrylic, they didn’t do it so good.”

  “I’m here dancing whenever I can afford it,” she muses. “I never noticed that the floor dips.”

  The cop walks her straight down the sta
irwell to where he says the livedrive died. It isn’t there now. There’s no pooling of blood, no tissue or hair on the stairs, no smearing down either wall.

  “FD hauled the livedrive out because it was blocking access,” he explains.

  “My primary evidence?” she says. “I needed to see it in place. Failing that, I need to see it anyhow.”

  The cop shrugs. “Take it up with them. They dumped it out back, I think.”

  Then on into the kitchen, shiny steel surfaces dulled to a uniform soot black. Kirsty’s been to fires before and recognizes the overriding smell – meaty and greasy and sweet.

  The cop holds a sleeve to his nose and refers to a notebook. “Cooks Jan Kussman, Lanny Lauritzen and Arly Fife. Broiler man Shane Pinkert. Dish washers Kenny Sossamon and Vinny Featherstone.”

  “Should I interview them?” asks Kirsty.

  “You’re smelling them,” he says. “They fried when the livedrive blocked this exit and the fire in the back blocked the other.”

  She walks over to the seat of the fire and shoots the blackened elevator hatch off to one side. She puts Slate inside the shaft and shoots down at where the livedrive used to be. It’s empty now, the mechanical linkages torn and burned, charred flesh melted to the metal sides. She points up and shoots the blackened aluminum elevator shaft and the top hatch, battered out and shredded.

  “That’s quite a climb,” she says. “Hard to imagine eight hundred pound of wetware getting up and out.”

  “It’s hard to imagine a burning cow smashing up a whole bar,” says the cop, “but that’s what happened. I tell you, the things I’ve seen on the job…”

  She puts Slate aside and pulls a latex glove out of a jacket pocket and is reaching out to take tissue from the elevator when the cop stops her – physically grabs hold of her wrist. It’s all she can do to not backfist him in the face. Instead, she stares at his hand.