The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time) (2 page)

“You ever going to try and kill anyone again?”

“What?”

“I said –”

“I heard you. Are you serious? Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t?”

The humor drained from Trent’s features. Trent took a step closer to Clearmountain, and Clearmountain had to raise his head to look up and meet the man’s clear gray eyes. It happened right in front of him, but Charles Pierce Clearmountain could not have described the process had his life depended on it. The smile vanished and a stillness descended upon the man, a fierceness and a radiant severity that struck Charles Clearmountain like the bullets he had fired at the man: the person in front of him
became
Trent the Uncatchable, the Unification’s deadliest enemy, the greatest Player of the age, the man who had ten years ago walked through a wall with a dozen Peaceforcers watching him –

– and said, “So long as you live, will you ever try and kill anyone again?”

Clearmountain could not take his eyes off the man, and he had never meant anything more in his life when he said, “Never. I never will, God, I swear it, I swear it on my children.”

Trent relaxed slightly and the brig suddenly seemed twice as large. “Okay. We’ll send you back to Earth, then.”

“You ...” Clearmountain stumbled over it. “You’re not –”

“Going to make you suck death pressure?” Trent grinned at the man. “Nah. Killing is wrong. I do try to avoid it.”

THEY BORROWED A pressure suit for Trent from the
Vatsayama
; Trent had no intention of risking death pressure again in the scalesuit Charles Clearmountain had shot twice. It was fortunate that Reverend Andy didn’t need a loan; he was the tallest player in the history of the World Football League, 220 centimeters, taller than most loonies, tall enough that he had, for two years early in his career, played both professional football and professional dropball. Pressure suits of his height were not totally uncommon; p-suits that would fit a man of his height and bulk had to be custom ordered.

Captain Bittan came down to the lock to see them off. “You don’t really want me to send this son of a bitch back to Earth?”

Trent winced as he sealed the p-suit up around his cracked ribs. “I do. You’re headed for Vesta this run anyway; put him on an Earthbound Trans-Planet ship when you get there. He won’t be a problem, Sid. I promise.”

Trent owned her ship; Bittan obviously didn’t want to do what Trent was asking of her, but couldn’t think of a way to say no. “All right,” she said finally. “But I have just one thing to say to you: that was the
worst
Bad Cop/Antichrist routine I ever saw.”

Trent shrugged. “Well, the important thing is that we enjoyed ourselves.”

Reverend Andy frowned. “No, the important thing is that we got the truth out of that boy.”

Trent thought about it. “Well – that’s important, sure. But it’s more important that we had a good time while we were doing it, without having to hurt him. In the long run,” Trent said to Captain Bittan, “there’s only two reasons to ever do anything: to enjoy yourself, and to help other people enjoy themselves.” He lifted his helmet into place and sealed it shut while Sid Bittan was still shaking her head.

“That man is crazy,” she said to Reverend Andy.

The huge black man said gently, “No, he’s just a holy man – a bodhisattva,” he added; Bittan was a Buddhist. “They can be hard to deal with if you haven’t known one before.”

Sid Bittan snorted; she’d never met a bodhisattva before, but she knew Trent wasn’t one.

Trent clicked his outspeakers on. “Don’t talk about people in front of their p-suits. It’s very impolite.”

“I was saying nice things about you,” Reverend Andy protested.

“Only because they’re true,” Trent said. “Only because they’re true.”

2

TRENT AND REVEREND Andy took an unpressurized Chandler HuskySled back to Ceres CityState. It had been an hour’s trip over to the
Vatsayama
, and was an hour back; to conserve fuel, most of it was not under boost.

The Milky Way glowed directly in front of Trent as they approached Ceres, a field of diamonds so bright they had color, blue and white and red and yellow spread across infinite black, covering Trent’s field of vision end to end. Ceres ballooned as they approached, from a small, pitted gray rock to a landscape some 760 klicks in diameter that blotted out space. Trent, piloting with his mind on other things, performed the maneuver automatically, going in nose-first, braking rockets lit.

An encoded message was transmitted to Trent’s inskin when they were less than eighty meters from Gandhi CityState’s Downlot 104. Ceres’ gravity is negligible; for practical purposes it was a free fall approach. Trent disconnected a portion of his attention from the approach and went Inside.

A simulation came alight: Captain Sidney Bittan, sitting in her chair on the bridge of the
Vatsayama
, staring into the holo cameras. She fought to speak against acceleration so fierce it pulled her cheeks back. “Trent!”

A decade previously the nerve net in Trent’s skull had been programmed with the personality of Trent’s Image, Johnny Johnny; today Trent had integrated the remains of that personality. But the Image code Johnny Johnny had once used remained to him; it was a trivial matter for Trent to assemble an Image of himself and beam it back to the
Vatsayama
. “Yes?”

Her voice was blurry from gee force. “After he decided we were really going to let him live, ’Sieur Clearmountain remembered something else he wanted to share with us –”

It could have been any of a dozen bad things; Trent did not let himself leap to conclusions. “And?”

“He beamcast a message to the Unification Embassy at Vesta saying that he’d found you at Gandhi CityState –”

Okay,
thought Trent,
that’s pretty bad.

“– and they beamed back to him that they would send a pickup squad to take you off the Temple of ’Toons after he shot you –”

And that’s worse –

“– a pickup squad of four PKF Elite.”

–
and that’s about as bad as it gets.

Bittan glanced aside at something, moving her head with exaggerated caution, not lifting her skull from its headrest. She looked back to the holocam and said simply, “We’re en route.”

Trent killed the Image he’d been beaming back to the
Vatsayama
and said aloud, “Might as well have jumped to conclusions.”

Reverend Andy said, “What?”

Trent’s thoughts moved along at a quick calm clip as he brought the sled down onto the surface of Ceres, nudging the craft down onto the parking lot on the asteroid’s surface, aiming for the red zone next to the airlock. There was another sled there already; he would have to double-park.

The Elite would have watched them sled over to the
Vatsayama
; would be watching them sled back, right now. Unless they had brought something larger than a troop transport with them they wouldn’t want to try and take Trent and Reverend Andy out here on the surface; better to get them inside, into enclosed, pressurized areas, where the Elite’s unnatural advantages of strength and speed would be maximized.

Trent said, “Nothing important, Ben. Let’s get inside.”

He couldn’t tell Reverend Andy; the scalesuit Chuck Clearmountain had shot had secure communications gear on it, but the loaner from the
Vatsayama
had only the general bands, which the Elite were surely monitoring. He risked a quick glance up at the sky while undoing his seat belt – and oh, Jesus and Harry, there it was, maybe a hundred and forty meters out, a pressurized troop transport with the glowpaint tuned black and running lights off, coming in fast. Reverend Andy followed his look, realized what was going on, and scrambled out of his seat belt.

Trent double parked in the red zone near the airlock and kicked over to the airlock, Reverend Andy right behind him, crawling over the sled parked in between them and the airlock, as the PKF troop transport came to a hard landing forty meters away, sending chips of asteroidal stone flying from the impact; one of the chips hit the back of Trent’s helmet. Trent glanced back in his helmet’s rear-view mirror, and it was more Bad News: the Elite weren’t inside the transport; they clung to the transport’s exterior, wearing black combat scalesuits, and let themselves loose as the transport came down. They hit the asteroid’s surface hard –

– and were up again. Trent dove through the airlock’s open door and palmed the pressure pad the moment Reverend Andy was fully inside, as the four Elite bounded toward them over the surface of the asteroid. The airlock door slid shut with maddening slowness; one of the Elite brought a variable laser around on them, got off a shot, through the frames of the two sleds, as the airlock door slid shut and locked –

Trent’s p-suit lost pressure. He glanced down and saw a clean laser score across his abdomen; he’d felt nothing, but it had breached the suit. His suit reacted as it had been designed, minimizing the exposure to death pressure: the suit clamped tight around Trent’s waist and chest, exposing his midriff to vacuum. Trent could feel the skin on his stomach prickling as the hard vacuum tugged at it.

Trent had never noticed before how long it took for the airlock to pressurize. The inner airlock door would not open until the airlock chamber was at a full atmosphere; if the Elite managed to burn through the outer airlock door first, the inner door would not open at all.

The ground beneath Trent’s feet vibrated. He could imagine the scene outside, the improbably strong Elite swatting aside the sleds as they lined up to shoot at the door –

A red spot appeared on the outer airlock door. A second spot. A third. They converged on each other –

The inner airlock door began to slide open; Trent squeezed through once it was wide enough for him, with Reverend Andy behind him. The outer airlock door glowed white, and then the glowing metal bowed outward with the enormous pressure of the air, and abruptly gave way, spraying the PKF Elite on the surface outside with molten metal.

Downsiders
, thought Trent as the sirens went off. The inner airlock door slammed shut with a huge clang: if someone had been caught in the way, even an Elite, the door would have punched through them. Design decisions: better one person die, or lose a limb, than an entire corridor full.

On outspeakers throughout Ceres, and across all radio channels, the message blared out: “ALERT! AIRLOCK BREACH AT DOWNLOT 104! AIRLOCK BREACH AT DOWNLOT 104! DEATH PRESSURE BREACH AT DOWNLOT 104!”

The corridor was deserted; it was just after midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, on Tuesday, January 20, 2080: four hours since Chuck Clearmountain had asked Trent if he was Trent. The asteroid’s eighty thousand Hare Krishnas, forty thousand Buddhists, and three thousand Hindus were all sleeping. Trent turned and kicked off down the raw stone corridor, pulling his helmet off as Reverend Andy followed him. He came to a public systerm and punched
Emergency, Broadcast
, and his voice boomed out across all of Gandhi CityState:

“THIS IS TRENT THE UNCATCHABLE, THE MAN WHO’S BEEN LIVING AMONG YOU AS THE PILGRIM AUGUSTUS ALLEN. A SQUAD OF ELITE CYBORGS ARE CUTTING THROUGH THE LOCK AT DOWNLOT 104 AS I SPEAK. STAY IN YOUR QUARTERS AND THE ELITE WON’T HARM YOU; THEY’RE AFTER ME. THIS IS TRENT THE UNCATCHABLE: STAY IN YOUR QUARTERS!”

Reverend Andy had his helmet cracked open when Trent turned around; he started to speak and Trent overrode him. “Call
Vatsayama
let them know Elite are here and then go to Downlot 16. I’m going to get my simulations I can’t let them fall into PKF hands, if I don’t make it to Down-16 in fifteen minutes
go
, I’ll see you at the Board meeting on Mars,” and as Reverend Andy opened his mouth again Trent raised his voice, “You are a fifty-six year old preacher and the Elite will kill you!” Trent yelled into his face, “Go now!”

He did not wait to see if Reverend Andy was listening to him: he turned and kicked off down the corridor, heading for the nearest drop shaft that led to the lower levels.

THIRTY SECONDS AFTER Trent’s broadcast announcement, it seemed as though half the people in Gandhi CityState were floating around in the corridors, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Trent wished he had a gun, just something to wave and point at them: as it was everyone who recognized him, a fair number, seemed to think that they were entitled to an explanation or a quick chat or something. It was slowing him down and Trent knew that the PKF Elite would not get the same reception. They’d come ghosting down the corridors in their armored black combat p-suits, and the Krishnas would just melt out of the way, and the ones who didn’t would die quick. Trent pulled his destroyed p-suit off as he flew down the corridors, wriggling out of the lower half of the suit, unsealing the upper half and throwing it away, lips curling in pain as his broken ribs ground together.

Trent’s quarters hung off the CityState’s main drop shaft, on the third level; the cross-corridor he was in, leading away from Downlot 104, passed through two pressure seals and then fed directly into the drop shaft. Trent flew out into the drop shaft, and twenty stories of empty space opened up “beneath” him. Trent grabbed at a handhold at the edge of the drop shaft –

If Trent had ever been afraid of heights, ten and a half years in space would have cured him of it. The drop shaft stretched over sixty meters in diameter, cut from the raw stone of Ceres, with entryways to each of Gandhi CityState’s twenty levels opening up onto it. Trent heard screaming from somewhere behind him, the unmistakable sizzle of energy weapons on flesh, and the muffled boom of a repeating autoshot: he got his legs coiled underneath him, oriented himself on the entrance he needed, three stories below and all the way across the diameter of the drop shaft, and leaped.

The paint in the drop shaft was darkened after midnight, not to blackness, but to a dim glow far gentler than during the day; Trent could not see the entryway he needed clearly, and his jump was half guesswork. He tumbled in mid-air, broken ribs grinding together, like an acrobat, like a SpaceFarer, like a Belter, and touched the soft landing pad at the Third Level entryway feet first, absorbing the energy of his jump perfectly.

It was only the fifth or sixth time in the two years he’d lived there that he’d gotten that leap right.

He glanced back and up and all four PKF Elite flew out of the First Level entryway, out into the drop shaft, in their ebony combat suits, weapons at ready. Trent did not know if they’d seen him; he grabbed the edge of the Third Level entryway and pulled himself through, manually dogging the emergency airlock behind him.

Third Level, Corridor C: Corridor C
belonged
to Trent.

He’d purchased it from the CityState, made it home, and now he had a chance. There was a limit to what Gandhi CityState was willing to tolerate from “Gus Allen” – even with pressure from the SpaceFarers’ Collective, which provided Gandhi CityState with military protection from the Unification – but with the Collective’s help Trent had pushed them to that limit. For most of the last decade, Trent’s bounty had been the highest in the System; it had climbed from five thousand Credits in August of 2069 to ten million Credits today, in January of 2080. And in all that time, only a few bounty hunters had even gotten close to Trent. Trent had learned not merely to take precautions, but
levels
of precautions –

– most of them directed at the Peace Keeping Force’s Elite cyborgs. The Elite were stronger and faster and much tougher than ordinary humans, with senses that spanned the electromagnetic spectrum. Their eyes were lenses, their ears mechanisms. In early Elite the skin had been toughened into a rigid mask; in later models, their skin, though superficially the skin of a normal human, still would not burn beneath a cutting laser. Direct vacuum would
hurt
; but it would not kill an Elite if the Elite could reach air again before suffocating. Transform viruses sped their neural reactions by a factor of three, up from a mere forty percent improvement in earlier Elite. Early models of PKF Elite had required that their power sources be replaced every six months; modern Elite were good for up to five years. Carbon-ceramic filaments were woven throughout their bodies, around the joints and ligaments, supporting the internal organs, the heart and lungs and organs of the abdominal cavity, allowing PKF Elite to withstand acceleration that would kill an ordinary human, or even a genie such as Trent.

They boasted an optical secondary nerve network that was thousands of times faster than the clumsy neuro-chemical nerve nets humans were born with, controlled by a combat computer implanted at the base of the Elite’s skull. Their index fingers sported small-weapons-caliber lasers – the ultimate in point-and-shoot.

One flaw in Elite design had gone unnoticed for over thirty years until the TriCentennial rebellion. All PKF Elite, through 2076, had been produced with a superconducting mesh buried immediately beneath the skin. Given the caliber of energy weapons available in the 2040s, when the Elite were designed, the decision had made sense. Shooting an Elite with an energy weapon, a laser or maser, might make him warm, as the superconducting mesh spread the heat across the surface of the Elite’s body, but was unlikely to kill him –

In 2076, during the rebellion in Occupied America, three hundred and forty-seven PKF Elite had died beneath the beams of rebel x-lasers, slightly detuned so that the lasers would not cut well, and pumped up to burn the rifle’s power supply out in four or five shots. The superconducting meshes had done their jobs, distributing the huge blasts of heat across the body of the Elite; the rebels had fried Elite like bacon.

FOR MOST OF the last two years Trent had lived the life of an ascetic – in a four-room suite at the end of an expansion corridor he had purchased. Trent lived in the Krishna end of town, and the Krishnas, accustomed to holy men who fasted and starved themselves, found it something to comment on – that one holy man could require so much space in which to renounce worldliness.