About "Jupiter Symphony"

It was the eve of the 22nd century, and mankind was resting atop a pedestal of technology. With advances in medicine, biology, and cybernetics, incredible new fields of opportunity were being discovered, propelling the species towards the singularity of self-directed evolution.

Then the bombs fell.

The EMP attack brought utter devastation not just to the United States, but to the entire world. Society was transformed overnight, leading to mass starvation, insurrection, and genocide on an unprecedented scale. It was called "The Long Night," and its repercussions would be felt for decades to come.

Now, in the year 2120, the government of post-apocalyptic America has all but collapsed, the military primarily operates as nothing more than a mercenary unit, massive, globe-spanning corporations have sovereignty over vast swaths of land, and millions of American citizens live either in roving nomad tribes or on the streets of the few surviving cities.

This is the underworld in which "Jupiter Symphony" takes place, where a lone nomad, named Ash, finds himself drawn into a conflict that begins as an ember but becomes an all consuming conflagration that leads to a second American Revolution. In an environmentally desecrated southwest, Ash and his allies must face off against innumerable dangers, including a rogue military unit, shadowy corporations, and a secret military weapon of terrible purpose, one which hangs in the heavens above while waiting to deal down merciless destruction.

With his partner Vasily, a cybernetic Russian pilot, and a growing cast of engaging comrades in arms, Ash sets out to right the wrongs of the past, setting in motion the wheels of the future.

Filled with tense, violent action, slick technology, guerrilla warfare, growling muscle cars and a bizarre Russian aircraft, "Jupiter Symphony" pulls no punches when delivering its challenging social commentary, making the reader sit up and take notice of what may already be happening throughout the United States and the world. After all, the future will be here before you know it. Why not read about it ahead of time?

Buy now! Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords!

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Free 50+ Page Preview of "Jupiter Symphony," by A.C. Harrison

Chapter One

            The lenses of the goggles were compound, like those of an insect, tinted a shade of golden yellow like a drop of amber with sunlight frozen through it. The frames were of an advanced carbon composite, the delicate lattice deceptive, hiding the amazing strength of the eyewear that wrapped around the face of the man who found himself puzzling over something. Reflected in those insectoid lenses, distorted by their curvature and stretching out into an amorphous blob, was a single droplet of water, suspended from the end of the faucet on a sink. The drop hung precariously, defying gravity. A miniature inverted version of the world was encapsulated within, shivering under the weight, before the drop finally broke free, plummeting to the bowl of the sink below and landing with a wet plink that was startlingly loud in the otherwise deathly silent home. The man behind the goggles, a desert drifter named Ash, had never actually seen a working faucet out in the wastes, though he had long heard stories from the nomad militia he had been raised in.

            As the stories were told, there once was a time when anyone could simply walk to a sink in their house, turn on the faucet, and water would come out. It wouldn’t just come out as one shot of brown slop and then stop, but keep coming out clean for just pennies, back when there still were pennies and no hyperinflation. Sure, there are still places where one can get tap water—Fortress Washington, for instance—but unless you are in the headquarters of a megacorp or part of the Fed, it wasn’t likely to happen without a ridiculously exorbitant cost. But if water were still cheap and considered to be as common as dirt, then Ash wouldn’t have a job, and then what would he do? He wasn’t a hired killer and he certainly wasn’t a suit. He was nothing more than a dirt sucking desert rat nomad, and his one great skill was sniffing out water for harvest. Most of his past jobs were dangerous and difficult, though this one had been nothing more than a stupid-lucky break. Out for a wandering walk one night, Ash had stopped to take a leak. Lo and behold, there were the remains of an old housing development stuck in mid-construction ever since the economy self-destructed so long ago. One of the many so-called “ghost developments” that littered the land. There existed a multitude of cheap, poorly constructed, planned neighborhoods that were suddenly interrupted in mid-build by the cataclysmic cave in of world trade and terrorist attacks. The poor rows of frames and partially finished structures had never had a chance to grow up to be among the many other rows of identical houses that were too large and too foolishly financed. At this abandoned site, they hadn’t even bothered to come pick up the equipment left behind when the workers quit or were killed, and so there were several water trucks that remained with the seals on their bulbous tanks intact. Sure, there was probably some mineral contamination inside from the time they had been sitting, but the filters on Vulture would fix that in a hurry.

            Upon making his find, Ash had called in the coordinates to his partner Vasily back aboard the Vulture, and then decided to wait out the night in one of the houses until pickup could be made at first light. Vulture could, in fact, be flown at night, but it really wasn’t worth the risk of beaching the thing on a rock formation when you could just wait for a little sunlight. Besides, Ash would be there to guard the treasure. Walking through the neighborhood, he found the house that seemed to be most complete and let himself in. It wasn’t very difficult; there was no front door. Looking around the inside, he saw most of the interior walls were nothing more than open framing. There wasn't even any wiring yet, so there was to be no luck on any extra metal salvage. The nomad made his way upstairs and found that the rooms at the top were much further along. Finding the master bedroom too open, he holed up in one of the secondary bedrooms that was more defensible and which gave multiple options for escape.

            With a tired grunt, he took off his dirty pack and set his weathered, heavy caliber rifle against the wall near the back. Electing to keep his autoloading pistol on him for safety, he proceeded to peel off his gloves, but left on his goggles. The skin of his hands was several shades lighter than the grimey filth that coated the rest of him and his ancient fatigues, which were made up of a primarily desert pattern, broken up by repair patches matched somewhat decently to the rest of his kit. From out of his pack he extracted a surplus MRE: Meal, Ready to Eat. It was a cold, formless gelatin of hardly digestible slop, but the prepackaged meal contained enough calories, fat, vitamins and minerals to fuel a soldier on the go for an entire day, or a nomad who spent most of his daylight hours scrounging for water. Ash gulped the food down, ignoring the flavor when possible and sipping precious H2O from his hydration carrier whenever the taste became too much or too thick. True, some MREs were moderately tasty, but those had been hoarded or used long ago. Now, private contractors, as Ash liked to fancy himself, had to make do with the leftovers from previous wars fought decades ago. He pondered if he should get a cybernetic stomach to process the garbage he was sometimes forced to eat out in the wastes, but ultimately elected to stay human.

            The desert heat continued to bleed out of the surrounding terrain, carrying Ash deeper into the night. Outside, the sand shifted over all that was left of the once bright hope that people had carried with them to make a home in the desert, before financial ruin and environmental desolation had set in. The despair was an all-consuming serpent that slithered along with the march of time, but Ash just couldn't relate to those that felt the pain of loss. He had always been a nomad, born into a nomad tribe after the Long Night. Not knowing what had come before him, of the terrorist attack and EMP that had crippled the country, he could only look into the grim and dark future. Such speculation made him weary, and soon the sandman slipped in through the window, urging him to slumber. Curling up in the corner, he finally removed his goggles and shut his eyes, looking forward to the payday tomorrow would bring.

            He had not been long asleep, however, before rumblings and murmurs crowded their way into his tired, addled mind. Finally realizing that the noises were real and weren't just going to go away, Ash cracked one bleary eye open. It was still dark outside, so he quietly reached for his goggles and brought them down over his head. Instantly, the world was transformed into brightness as the optical processors inside the goggles gathered up information from various wavelengths and compiled an image in front of the nomad's eyes, after which his human organs decoded the images once again inside his brain so that he could see. It was a tedious and inefficient process. With a glance, he switched the goggles over to thermal only, allowing him to notice thin wisps of heat moving at ground level out behind the house. Without enough of a signature to designate the items as human, the signals seemed more like heat radiating off of a roadway, or perhaps a group of small animals skittering about in the night. It was more noise than actual, hard data worth using. Slowly, he slipped on his headphones, though rather than music they streamed in amplified audio, simultaneously functioning as hearing protection for the rare occasions that required him to forcefully negotiate. He was greeted with the sound of what seemed like mechanical squirrels. The sounds, though muffled, were certainly of machinery, but not a kind he had ever heard. There was a certain urgent, organic quality to the noises that reached his ears.

            Curious and cautious, he crept to the corner where his rifle was leaning and secured it, press checking the chamber in the process. With a desert camo coated stock on a black receiver, the firearm looked similar to the kind that had been produced for hundreds of years, and at its basic mechanical level it was extremely similar. On top, however, was an optic that departed markedly from previous iterations. Aside from the various electronic bells and whistles that included range finding, wind speed compensation, bullet drop, etc., there was a toggle recessed into the base of the scope, which Ash now activated. Instantly, the goggle lens over his primary eye—his right—added an additional picture in picture image to the already crowded view. With a quick hand toggle he maximized the rifle’s point of view and maneuvered the compensated, carbon wrapped barrel of the weapon to the lip of the windowsill. Seeing the activity below, the nomads eyes widened.

            “Fuck me,” the profanity slipped his lips quietly before he stopped, forcing himself to stay quiet.

            Looking out at the lunar landscape, Ash saw huge, menacing individuals that were in full body armor over dark fatigues. The men were positioning some kind of large machine in an open area behind the housing development, a couple hundred meters from Ash. Even though they were some distance away, Ash could clearly make them out through his optic. The object they were handling was a large cylinder, about the size of a passenger car standing on its end, the exterior of which seemed to be some kind of polymer casing. At the base were four large feet, and Ash could see that there was space beneath the device, a gap just large enough that a man could slink through on his belly. The entire unit was painted a dull, featureless gray, and the individual panels that made up the device were difficult to distinguish, blurring into one another with small seams. About the only features that could be seen were the bulky power and data cables that projected from one open panel, slithering through the desert sand, an inky serpent that traced its way further back to a tiltrotor craft that sat idle, the blades of each engine lazily spinning in standby.

            A perimeter of armed guards could be seen around the equipment, but most disconcerting (disconcerning?) of all was something that Ash had only heard whisperings and drunken legends about, but didn’t believe was real. There, standing taller than the surrounding men and holding position directly in front of the strange device, was a sentinel demigod in matte armored layers and carbon nanotubes: a suit of military power armor. The head of the unit, if you could call it that, slowly swept over the area, monitoring progress and seeking out any potential threats. Ash felt reluctant to even breathe, knowing that as good as his sensors and skills were at seeking out men and machines, the augmented soldier inside the titanium chassis would be more effective by an entire order of magnitude. Ash didn’t know how he hadn’t been found out, but wasn’t going to question his luck. Perhaps, having arrived before the military and leaving no real signature while dozing off, his temperature had blended in with the rest of the structure, masking his presence. Now, however, he faced a conundrum: should he remain quiet and hope the men in black simply upped and left, or would it be best to try and sneak away? He could certainly escape a lone militia patrol, and even trained soldiers were doable with the right kind of ambush, but this was a whole different ball game. Everything about what he was seeing screamed special forces, from the gear to the posture and tactics, and that was without even mentioning the mechanical nightmare that stood front and center.

            Mulling over his decision, Ash also grappled with his feelings towards seeing soldiers out in areas of the desert where they normally didn’t venture. His anger was at odds with his fear. For years he had heard tales of martial law and government abuse by his nomad brothers, and they still sounded warning bells in his brain. His few previous run-ins with soldiers had always ended poorly, but he had never dealt with this kind of situation, with shit this heavy and thick. His brain felt like it was cooking inside his skull as he ran through all the possible outcomes of his decisions. Why again were these armored thugs out in his territory?

            Before Ash could act, his decision was made for him. Without warning, the unidentifiable machinery sprang to life, a dull glow visible from the base of the object before the optical feed from Ash’s rifle abruptly cut out, along with his audio and video inputs. He felt a low hum, felt it fill his bones and tissue. It was as if every single molecule of atmosphere was vibrating, every particle shifting, a torrent of elemental activity that couldn’t have carried on for more than a minute, but seemed to last an eternity. A huge shock wave passed through the ground, radiating out with the device as its epicenter, violently shaking the house Ash was in and causing dust to fall down from the exposed beams where a ceiling would normally be.

            As quickly as it began, it stopped, and Ash’s electronics groggily came back online. Once again peering over the window through the rifle scope, the lone nomad saw the men begin to gather up pieces of equipment. The power armor suit, which previously seemed rooted to the ground, turned around and casually lifted the central piece of machinery. Ash was unable to even vaguely guess how much the device weighed, but the size implied great mass. The armored suit carried the piece over to the tiltrotor, the combined ground pressure of the armor and cargo driving the big feet deep into the sand. Setting the equipment on a pallet at the back of the aircraft, men scurried to secure the load while the perimeter guard fell back and began to board the transport as the rotors came up to speed. In the next moment, they were gone, leaving Ash with a series of questions burning inside his head as he listened to the sound of rotors fading into the darkness. Ash breathed a heavy sigh of relief, glad this wouldn’t be the night he would have to die like a dog in the desert.

            “That better have been a once in a lifetime experience,” he muttered to himself.

            No longer able to sleep, he spent the rest of the night finding the deepest and darkest hole to hide in until sunlight, praying away the tiltrotor and its deadly cargo.


Chapter Two


            “ETA is one-eight-zero seconds. Will do a threat scan on flyby and then ground. Ensure beacon is set to channel six,” a voice chattered through the bones inside Ash’s skull via his headphones.

            With the new day had come new confidence in Ash, who was trying to shake the shivers he still had from the previous night. Even though he had a job to do, he was nervous and knew he’d be in a bit of a rush to get it done and get moving. He was now in a wide clearing, several hundred meters from the neighborhood where the water trucks were located. The ground here was open and barren, save for a few small, scrappy bushes that persevered against the dry, cracked earth and scorching sun. As instructed, the nomad pulled out what appeared to be a metal stake from his pack, the top of which had a numbered dial and a small antenna sticking up from the top. He turned the dial to ‘6’ and drove the spike into the ground. A red LED at the top of the unit indicated it was broadcasting, helping Vasily zero in on Ash’s position through a narrowband signal. Though he had done a sweep of the area earlier, Ash couldn’t shake the feeling that the military was still hanging around. The fact that he and Vasily were openly chatting on radios only made him feel more paranoid. The sooner Vulture showed up for the cargo, the sooner he could get the hell out of here.

            As he continued to mull over the activity from last night, a distant drone began to fill the air, growing into a booming, roaring howl and approaching fast. Turning to the south, Ash finally saw Vulture crest a low hill, a massive cloud of billowing dust being kicked up by the eight engines mounted at the fore of the gigantic vessel, a real subtle vehicle to have out in such open and exposed territory.

            Vulture was an airplane in the same way a turkey was a bird. The old Soviet ekranoplan was technically a ground effect vehicle, meaning that it was designed to operate at low altitudes where the interaction between the ground and the wings created enough lift to generate flight in an otherwise flightless craft. The prow of the aircraft looked more like it came off a naval vessel, but immediately aft of the cockpit were eight massive jet engines, four per side, that most certainly would make the pilot deaf in a day. About halfway down the vessel, stubby wings seemed to erupt randomly at right angles to the fuselage, while the top of the airframe had what appeared to be six missile tubes in three rows of two. These were originally designed to carry nuclear capable warheads, but on Vulture they were repurposed as water storage tanks. At the back of the craft, a massive tail stretched up several stories, featuring swept back horizontal stabilizers nearly as wide as the actual wings. A bulbous series of radar domes protruded from the front and back of the vertical stabilizer, adding to the strange collection of shapes that made up the craft. When the entire package was taken in, it was bizarre, alien, and ugly. Seeing it in flight made one question Newtonian physics in a way that seriously argued for a parallel universe.

            Ash quickly pulled his shemagh up over his mouth as Vulture passed by low overhead, the dust cloud instantly turning day into night. His headphones dropped the ear piercing screech to a tolerable level, while his goggles automatically sealed to his skin, keeping any dust from entering. Vulture lazily banked over the desert, drifting over the landing site in a huge ellipse as Vasily cut back on the throttles and began his final approach. The Lun class vessel was originally designed to land in water, the fuselage being too massive to function on land. Vasily had spent a long time modifying and upgrading the chassis and engines, which was why the Lun now sported multiple sets of massive, composite skis on the underside that were slowly swinging down into position beneath the plane. As Vulture touched down on the sand, Vasily applied the flaps and reversed the thrust on the turbines, bringing the huge bird to a short stop, the fine sand doing its part in helping as well. For all intents and purposes, it looked like someone had just dropped a steel sperm whale out of orbit which just so happened to slap onto the desert floor.

            After a few moments of nothing but dry desert wind clearing the dust, the front hatch on Vulture opened with a mechanical clanking, the cacophony ending when the door swung free and promptly slammed to a stop on its hinges. Standing in the hatchway was a younger man, sturdy, with a wide face and dusty brown hair that was cropped short, exposing a cybernetic device implanted at the base of his neck, consisting of a vanity plate and several I/O ports. His build suggested he would be portly later in life, but for now he had a healthy weight and handsome features. Ash crossed over to Vasily and exchanged a handshake before getting down to the business of moving valuable water. Tons and tons of it.

            The two men spent the remainder of the morning unwinding water hoses and connecting them to pumps located in Vulture’s main cargo hold. The lines were then connected to the water trucks in order to fill the tanks on Vulture. By the end, the entire project was a mess of hoses, wires and ropes, resembling a cyborg octopus from hell. Half the hoses had been patched a number of times, and the other half needed to be patched, small leaks trickling water out onto the sand. Still, when the switch was thrown, the old Russian pumps reliable (reliably?) and noisily kicked on with faithful reliability, using Vulture’s batteries for power, and began the arduous task of relocating thousands of gallons of water for transport. While the pumps did their work, Ash and Vasily went further inside Vulture in order to converse away from the racket. The interior of the ekranoplan was cramped and gray, in that special way that only old Soviet hardware could be. The accent color seemed to be a sort of baby shit green, splashed liberally over any surface one’s gaze might risk lingering on. All in all, it made one focus on the job at hand, since eyes to the front was the safest bet.

            Ash stood in the narrow passage leading up to the cockpit, one arm of his slender frame slung over a rung of the ladder leading to the dorsal machine gun turret. Vasily chose to sit in the old, now defunct radio operator’s chair. Since Vasily had chosen to refit the aircraft with an MMI, a Machine/Man Interface, what was once handled by a crew of twelve could mostly be handled by a crew of one. In order to fly the vessel, Vasily directly plugged his brain and spine into the controls, linking him to the plane’s upgraded avionics. Of course, saying the link was direct was a bit of a misnomer, since there were a bunch of hardware adapters necessary to achieve a connection; doubly so since the flight computer was Chinese and Vasily's plugs were Russian, adding a whole new set of pieces to the scavenged-tech puzzle.

            Ash was itching to pick Vasily's brain on the events of last night, hoping his comrade had heard or seen something in the past 24 hours that could hint at what was going on, but knew his friend would want to steer clear of any sign of trouble.

            “God damn, if these aren’t the slowest pumps this side of the Sonoran,” Ash started in, trying to get his friend warmed up.

            “I thought maybe you would want break after spending too much time in desert sun. Brain probably is fried,” Vasily fired back with his typical wry wit.

            Ash looked up the ladder he was dangling from.

            “Not so fried that I don’t notice interesting activity in the middle of the night,” he said.

            “I cannot be blamed for your choice of women,” Vasily countered.

            “If only. Look, Vasily,” Ash now looked down at the deck, unable to make direct eye contact with his friend, “last night some Feds, some Spec Ops kind of guys, they showed up in their tiltrotor gunship and did some weird shit.”

            “I fail to see how this affects our water,” Vasily replied, crossing his arms.

            Ash finally looked at Vasily directly. “They had some nasty power armor with them.”

            “Good for them!” Vasily made as if to go back down to the pumps, but Ash stuck his leg out to cut him off, the desert camo of his pants heavily weathered, dirt falling off his boot onto the decking.

            “Dammit, Vasily, this is important. The Federals are up to something on our turf and I want to know what it is. I need to know what I saw,” Ash confessed.

            “I don’t care what you saw, tovarish. I do not want involvement with Federals,” his friend said.

            “Yes, but...”

            Vasily cut him off with a wave. “Look, long ago you said ‘Vasily, you have a plane, I have a rifle. We work together and be friends.’ And I said, ‘Okay, we are friends, but only move water, no American hero bullshit.’ I’m not even a citizen.”

            Ash kept looking at Vasily intently, not moving. Finally relenting, his gaze fell and he dropped his boot encased foot back down to the metal floor. The big Russian shouldered past without comment.

            Ash sat in quiet as Vasily got out of earshot.

            “Nobody is anymore,” he muttered.

            Refusing to dwell on his setback, Ash gathered himself up and went off to find work around the plane, of which there was always some that needed to be done.


            After several hours, the ekranoplan’s dorsal mounted tanks were full to the bursting point, and Ash and Vasily were working together reeling in the hoses and storing them with the pumps. Because they were such a small team, Ash had to simultaneously move gear while also keeping a lookout for any hostile raiders, Federals, or even feral, starved animals. All the cities of the American desert had mostly collapsed, and plenty of dangerous creatures had now expanded back to pre-human population levels, including large packs of coyotes, mountain lions, and feral hogs. Ash’s goggles were in a scanning mode that relied on the picture in picture setup. His direct view was unimpaired, but also overlaid was a scanning system that captured and directed him to radio waves, magnetic disturbances, thermal signatures, and other signals of interest. The inputs appeared as a ghostly image over his normal vision unless he directly switched over to the new signal. The last of the equipment was stowed and latched without incident, allowing Vasily to make his way to the cockpit as Ash secured the many hatches of the vessel.

            As the heavy steel hinges swung closed, creaking all the way, Ash heard the old bird start to come to life. From above and a little aft, a low whine slowly increased in pitch as the eight engines spun up. Vibrations filled the capacious chamber while the lights flickered and dimmed before suddenly kicking up to full blast as the generators fired and started producing their own electricity. Ash climbed up from the bay, continuing up past the command deck and proceeding to the upper level where a forward facing turret allowed him to look out through armored slits that were placed four stories high. As he was climbing, he heard flaps being tested, whining and groaning as if a great creature was shrugging off a mythical slumber. Since the Russian pilot was now plugged directly into the flight computer, this was literally Vasily stretching out, preparing for flight. Ash lacked any kind of linking cybernetics, and could only imagine what it must be like to suddenly occupy a different body, to have your senses altered and dimensions shifted to accommodate the new home of your conscience. If someone could plug their brain into a machine, could the soul follow?

            Realizing he wasn’t brave enough to find out, Ash shook his head and realized that Vasily might be right, that he might have been out in the sun for too long. With the pre-flight checks complete, Ash was suddenly thrown back in his seat as Vasily fed full power to the turbines in a single, great push. The original configuration of the Lun-class weighted 286 tons unloaded, and produced 28,600 pounds of thrust, coming out to 100 pounds of thrust per ton. In comparison, high performance fighter craft of just over 100 years ago often produced over 1,000 pounds of thrust per ton. The Lun was a fat turkey that Vasily had put on a diet, but even with the new engines the ratio was still only about 200 pounds of thrust per ton when factoring in the pumping equipment and cargo. Vulture was by no means a high-speed, low-drag machine, but at least she could take off under her own power and operate at moderate altitude. By contrast, and with a laughable sense of Soviet logic, the original aircraft of yesteryear could only operate on water and had to take off into the wind or it would fail to gain altitude, leaving it to flounder in the Black Sea as nothing more than a glorified, nuke toting, power boat.

            The massive craft continued to gain speed until the skis, layered with an ultrafine, self-lubricating coating of titanium nitride, finally lifted off the ground and then tucked in under the vehicle, reducing drag to an extent, but still remaining exposed to the elements. Vasily continued to climb, though in keeping with tradition he leveled off at around 500 feet and stayed there, barring any cliffs or steep hills. Ash didn’t need to look behind to know that a gigantic dust cloud, their signature calling card, was trailing in their wake. Nor could he, as the turret he had positioned himself in was only forward facing and, in what must have been the most nerve wracking seat of the Soviet Union, directly under the most forward pair of nuclear capable missile launch tubes. Having reached cruising altitude and airspeed, Ash turned to one of the computer terminals Vasily had installed throughout the craft. It was a basic GUI, devoid of any fancy deep diving gear, but it was significant in that the terminal was network capable. The new sensor suite installed on Vulture made the old massive radar domes obsolete, so Vasily had repurposed them to be long range broadcast/receive antennae for accessing the remnants of the global data network that had once been the internet. By the mid-21st century, satellite and ground based infrastructure had made the W3 almost completely ubiquitous. After the Long Night, the nuclear generated EMP attack on the United States had caused relays and access points to be destroyed or disabled, and areas like the drought filled desert had fallen into disrepair. Still, enough coverage was available, if you had a radar dome the size of a compact family sedan broadcasting at nearly 3000 MHz.

            Ash quickly connected and logged in to one of the local BBSes that several nomad tribes used for long distance communication. While Vulture cruised at five hundred miles per hour over the scrub brush filled desert below, Ash searched for messages from tribal leaders looking to buy or trade for water. He lined up several high priority (read: not destitute) contacts and then strung them together based on location and demand, allowing Vulture to make a single twisting path of efficient water delivery, minimizing fuel consumption and exposure, while getting them back to water searching as quickly as possible.

            “Damn, I’m good,” Ash said as he kept at his work.

            For security reasons, none of the nomads posted their exact location; instead, everyone operated on a set of code words and passphrases, which Ash read without difficulty or hesitation. Ash forwarded the information to Vasily in a format the Russian would understand, then shifted his focus to what he deemed more important: reports of military activity in the area. He was sure that such a distinct task force would have been noticed by someone else in the wastes, but no matter how hard he searched he couldn’t seem to locate any information on the group he had witnessed the night before.

            Rubbing his hands over his bristly face, he let out a sigh of frustration. He didn’t have the patience of a hacker to sift through mountains of information for a tiny detail. He was very much more on the “monkey do” level of data mining and research. Still, he was too worried by what he had seen to let it rest. Expanding his search to encompass more than just nomad ramblings, he tried to ferret out whatever information he could, but still to no avail. Frustrated, he realized that he might have to outsource this one. Resigned to his fate and aware that he had barely slept the night before, Ash got up and headed to his bunk so he could recharge both his equipment and his brain.

            On his way down the ladder he yelled to Vasily over the engines, “Spokoĭnoĭ nochi, or goodnight, or whatever, tovarish.”

Vasily didn’t respond, so Ash shrugged and moved on.

The nomad’s head hit his tiny pillow as he killed the lights inside his diminutive bunk. Outside, the angry yellow orb above them started its fall from heaven, glaring off the eggshell hull as Vasily flew to the east.

           
            Ash came out of his slumber just as Vasily began to bring Vulture in for the first landing along their route, early morning rays barely glinting over the horizon. The nomad felt the deceleration and change in pitch, along with the telltale drop in turbine RPM. With nothing to do while in the air, Ash made his way to the cockpit to watch the approach. Stepping over the threshold, he took in the bizarre sight with fascination. Vasily’s interface with the plane never ceased to intrigue Ash. Possibly for aesthetics, possibly because it didn’t matter, the original Russian consoles for the pilot and copilot remained unaltered, the Cyrillic writing that was far beyond Ash’s understanding still splattered liberally under every switch and dial. Both pilot’s seats had been removed, though, and in their place was Vasily’s harness web: a modern composite shell seat with adaptive gel padding and dynamic shock absorption, through which a series of ballistic nylon straps retained not only Vasily’s torso, but also his arms, legs, and head, as his central nervous system was temporarily functioning as the flight control system for Vulture. What used to be the station of the flight engineer had been ripped out, and in its place were banks of consoles and adapters which were used as the junction between Vasily’s brain stem outputs and the various inputs from the sensors and cameras mounted throughout the fuselage. The most absorbing and disturbing piece of equipment was the large primary cable which ran up the back of the command chair and then connecting to a series of jacks on the back of Vasily’s neck . Laypeople liked to believe that this was where metal met flesh, but that would be a recipe for disaster by exposing internal tissue to a disease ridden environment. In truth, the plugs connected to a sterilized housing inside the body, beyond which the actual nerve connections were made through a protective membrane.

            Looking out the forward glass, Ash could see the landscape had been transformed overnight from scrub brush to high desert. A multitude of rocky washes splayed out in zigzag patterns, dead veins which once carried the waters of life, now instead cutting lines into the massive desert that had formed after the Texas drought had expanded and settled into a permanent state. Coming in low over a particularly deep wash, Vulture buzzed the rocky outcrops before pulling up and banking away to the right. Looking out the starboard side, Ash saw a sequence of flashes coming from the ground: a signal mirror flagging them down. Vasily dipped the starboard wings in a signal response and then banked away to land in a clearing a few miles to the north. Not soon thereafter, the ekranoplan skidded to a dusty halt atop a plateau, the sound of the dying engines rolling across the open space as waves of sand washed over the aircraft.

            Now on the ground, Ash finally had a job to do, and so he moved to secure the area as Vasily brought the aircraft down to standby and before he began rigging up one of the gravity feeds used to distribute water from the dorsal tanks. From the south came the ancient sound of internal combustion engines. The noise was primarily made up of diesel clatter, rocks perpetually falling in a tumbler, but also including punctuations from gasoline engines which growled and barked through open and illegal exhaust systems. Enforcement just didn’t exist in the desert. Triggering a transmitter on his goggles, Ash switched his PIP viewpoint over a channel to the camera mounted to Vulture’s rear dorsal gun. From the two-story high vantage point, Ash could see a small dust cloud approaching, the rising dirt swirling and mixing with the massive haze that the ekranoplan had already generated. At the fore of the cloud, the tip of a iron spearhead, was an ancient muscle car from a bygone era. The blacked out grille sported a dashing pony, pitted, weathered and worn. Flanking the car on either side was a collection of dirt bikes—scouting units which fanned out around the perimeter. Further behind the vanguard, obscured in the dust, were motorhomes and station wagons, all in various states of disrepair, but somehow still running on duct tape, cable ties, and good intentions.

            As the procession drew up behind Ash and Vasily, the convoy abruptly came to a halt. It was only the old muscle car that came forward, the pace not unlike a wary horse coming to drink. Ash stepped forward, his slung rifle dangling in front of his narrow chest. Reaching out with his right hand, he made a series of signs that collaborated with the current date and time, as well the primary atmospheric conditions. It was an encrypted “all clear, stand down” message, designed to let the nomad troop know that they were safe. Ash had been taught it years ago in the tribe he grew up in, when even as a young boy he had to do his part and pull his weight so that those less fortunate could live.

            The signals completed, the door to the Mustang’s darkened interior opened with a pop and a creak, rusty hinges protesting as the door swung open, sagging under its own weight. A stout, mustachioed man with leathery skin climbed out to stand before Ash. The man had tattoos visible on his arms and neck, while the rest of his body was covered by a worn flannel shirt and jeans. His name was Antonio Calderon, but people just called him Pancho, and he was the leader of the Black Raven nomads. Part Native American tribe, part biker gang, part eternal RV-based family vacation, the nomads came into existence after the Long Night when the federal government, already reeling from the brutal terrorist attacks and economic uncertainty, withdrew from the public purview and left the dying middle and lower classes to fend for themselves. Without the centralized direction everyone had become so dependent on, chaos flooded into the power vacuum. Many in the American Southwest found themselves wandering into reservation land, turning to the people they had once marginalized and left forgotten. The Native Americans, who could have cast aside the hungry and desperate, instead chose to welcome in their new sisters and brothers, teaching them how to fight and how to survive in a world they no longer owned.

            Not everyone had fled to the wilderness, though. Filling the power void in the surviving urban centers were corporate entities, ones with money and resources. They quickly bought out, parlayed with, or otherwise removed local government, carving out their own medieval fiefdoms, their skyscraper castles standing in contrast to the wandering nomads. The large urban centers—Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and several others—were transformed into corporate dominated regions which lorded over a massive lower class. As survivors began to pour into the cities in droves, the corporations feared they would lose control and be overwhelmed by the refugees, so they made a pact to lock down the cities and execute any nomads that tried to get in. By the time the federal government returned from self-imposed exile, the corporations were too entrenched in their respective urban centers to be brought back to heel. Wisely, the Feds chose to grant the corporations limited sovereignty, and so everything from health services to police forces were privatized. The corporate rich became a minute population percentage, and everyone below floundered and gasped in abject poverty. The Fed turned outward and used the military as a mercenary army to remain fiscally liquid, but quickly became tied down in several wars of attrition. Almost overnight, the world had changed dramatically, millions having suffered and died in search of a new way of life.

            Now the survivors carried on, getting by on jobs like growing fuel or trading water, as Ash was now doing. The water trader took a few steps towards the car, then stopped at a safe distance, waiting while Pancho came around the front to greet him. The scorching sunlight from above accentuated the deep eyes and high cheeks of the nomad tribal leader, dark pupils under a squinting brow of tanned skin that was shaded by a classic cowboy hat. Ash, as usual, kept his goggles on, not that anyone who knew him expected otherwise. The number of desert survivors that knew what his eyes looked like dwindled with each passing day.

            “Rain Man,” Antonio called out, using his nickname for Ash.

            “Pancho,” Ash answered. “You put in a call for water?”

            The older man looked back towards his waiting people.

            “Normally we are able to sustain ourselves, but it’s been getting harder and harder to survive. This land is dying,” Pancho shook his head. “No matter what we do, we can’t turn back what has been done. Every time we think it can’t dry up more, it does.”

            “Well, we’ve got a solution to that,” Ash said. “What do you have in trade?”

            Antonio frowned. “All business, as usual. Some sympathy would benefit my dying people.”

            Ash remain stoic, his face not betraying his actual grief at what he saw happening to the nomad survivors.

            Shrugging at the lack of response, Antonio continued. “I have MREs, ammunition, and some morphine. That’s about it.”

            “Any aluminum?” Ash asked.

            “Not that I could afford to give up,” Pancho said.

            “Damn,” Ash cursed. “Alright, we’ll take the MREs and the morphine at the normal rate of exchange. Tell your transports it’s safe to come up and we’ll bring down the tubes.”

            Without waiting for a response, Ash turned and started walking back towards Vulture. Still keeping watch from the turret above, he had an early warning to hit the dirt when the shadow of a scout quadrotor, a type of short range government UAV, made its first attack run on the two parties. A horrible, fearsome tearing sound filled the air as dozens of rounds of explosive, armor piercing ammunition raked the convoy, spat out by the turret mounted LMG slung underneath the chassis of the drone. A split second later the aircraft had already blown past by hundreds of feet and was banking hard to come around for another pass. In that time, Ash was already up and sprinting towards Vulture as Vasily was yelling into his radio.

            “What the fuck is happening?”

            “Federal drone! Get us moving!” Ash’s voice was ragged as he charged over the terrain as quickly as he could, trying not to tumble in the deep sand.

            “Why is Fed drone attacking? What did you do? I told you not to meddle!” Vasily shouted accusingly.

            “Get! Us! Moving!” Ash ordered.

            Ash dove into the open hatch as the drone made another pass, the nomad crashing hard on the metal deck plate. Dust and gun smoke filled the air as quickly as the screams of several nomads. Rolling onto his back and looking down past his boots, Ash saw that several small trailers were now perforated husks, flames licking at the bullet holes as if they were the open wounds of pack animals. Several bodies littered the ground, the high velocity rounds making short work of anything that wasn’t reinforced with armor, something the nomads didn’t have in any great supply.

            Though the nomads had been shocked and scattered by the sudden attack, they were by no means defenseless, and they certainly didn’t survive in the wasted desert without their own firepower. As families quickly started their engines and got rolling, the scout bikes started guiding them to rock outcroppings for shelter. Several trucks and SUVs moved to the center of the formation as swarthy looking bearded individuals loaded belts of ammunition into ancient lead slingers. They didn’t have the sophisticated targeting apparatus of the drone, nor did they have the special caseless, electronically ignited ammunition, but they did have a rolling museum of seized and rebuilt firepower. All things being equal, a .50 BMG round travelling at nearly 3,000 feet per second was not something to argue against. Several hundred of these rounds now filled the air, arcing over the chattering machine guns. The volley of fire, coming as it was from a multitude of moving targets, seemed to give the drone a digital aneurysm as it tried to narrow down which target was the highest priority. Before it could make up its mind, several dozen rounds smashed through its polycarbonate wings and rotor housings. It hung in the air momentarily, then plunged towards the earth, its flight computer throwing up its hands in surrender at the lack of lift being provided. Moments before it struck earth, the unit’s self-destruct system ignited and a shock wave erupted, carrying with it hundreds of pieces of shrapnel which decorated several nearby nomad trucks with razor sharp souvenirs.

            By this time, Vulture was already speeding towards the end of its takeoff cycle, and Vasily was nearly ready to lift off.

            “Clear, clear, clear!” Ash radioed in, the hatch still open and giving him a view of the chaos.

            “Too late, no room,” Vasily advised him.

            The nose came up and they left the ground while Ash looked through his turret cam, checking for any other incoming threats, half expecting to see an armored column following in on the work the drone had started. Instead, the surrounding sky and ground seemed calm and clear, though the nomads on the ground didn’t look all too pleased with the chain of events that had just transpired.

            “Vasily, circle around and bring us back down, but be careful. I think they want to blame us for what happened,” Ash radioed his friend.

            “Then better idea is to keep going. Many other buyers,” the Russian argued.

            “No, not this tribe. They’re good people, and they’ve been dying of dehydration, stuck as they are in one of the most arid regions. Just...keep your eyes open this time.”

            Silence. Then, “Affirmative.”

            Vasily brought the big bird in low and slow, once again touching down on the sand. This time, the nomads took no chances, forming up in two columns on either side of the plane, their guns pointing inward. Ash and Vasily were completely surrounded.

            As soon as they came to a stop, Ash jumped down from the open hatch, putting his hands up and walking carefully forward. Antonio stayed back this time, choosing to shout.

            “Rain Man! What have you done? How much did they pay you?”

            “It’s not like that,” Ash said, cursing himself. “We didn’t know we were being followed. We saw some—”

            Antonio cut in. “It’s not hard when your aircraft makes a cloud miles high. Can’t you be a little quieter?”

            Ash grit his teeth. “Look, we saw some Fed activity recently, but that was hundreds of miles away, so why the hell would we worry? As far as we could tell, they didn’t realize we were aware of them.”

            Antonio listened, his facial expression skeptical as he let Ash run his mouth, seeing if he would hang himself with his own words.

            “What do you want me to say?” Ash asked, frustration creeping into his voice. “It’s not like I have an obligation to tell you when we see Feds doing weird shit in the desert. You understand that my partner isn’t too keen on getting involved until he has his green card.”

            Antonio lowered his voice. “What kind of ‘weird shit?’”

            “Huh?” Ash asked.

            “You said they were doing weird shit. I suggest you elaborate,” Antonio said menacingly.

            “Looked like they were surveying or digging. Something like that. It was at night, so it’s hard to say. Seemed pretty random, but they had some real exotic looking equipment,” Ash explained.

            “Digging,” Antonio repeated, repeating the word a few times and letting it roll around in his mouth under his thick mustache.

            Finally he turned around and yelled back towards the RVs. “Bring him here!”

            A few confused moments passed before a ragged looking boy was brought forth. His hair was in matted tangles, his clothes mostly shreds. A deep gash ran across his forehead, blood still trickling down from the open wound. Ash did his best not to look, the sight sickening to him.

            “What the hell did you do to him?” Ash asked accusingly.

            “We didn’t do anything, Rain Man. We found him like this after he broke into our food stores in the middle of the night. After that, he kept crying about drones killing his nomad tribe,” Pancho said.

            “You’ve seen this before,” Ash said, realizing his counterpart had more to say.

            “Why should I trust you?”

            “If you don’t then shoot me,” Ash said, tossing his hands wide. Nobody obliged. “Yeah, like I was saying.”

            “Yes, we’ve seen it before,” Pancho nodded. “Not often, but more and more frequently.”

            “When did you find the boy?” Ash asked.

            “Three nights ago. I’m worried about his cut. It hasn’t stopped bleeding and we don’t have the supplies to handle something that deep,” Pancho admitted, his stance relaxing. “I know it’s a strange request, but would you take him? All we can offer him is death, and not even a very comfortable one.”

            Ash wrinkled his brow in thought as the sun beat down on the two men.

            “Yes,” he answered. “Hurry up and bring him over, then get your water. The Feds will probably be by soon for their lost drone.”

            “One more thing,” Pancho said.

            “Yes?”

            The Rain Man opened up one of the myriad pockets on the front of his vest, extracting a small memory card, no bigger than a thumbnail.

            “You should watch this.”

            Ash stepped forward, taking the card and stashing it in one of the open drives in his goggles.

            “I will,” he promised.

            With the situation defused, the nomads quickly filled their water tanks and moved on, heading off into the afternoon, waves of heat dancing over the horizon as they faded away, becoming dark and ghostly figures in the distance.

            Ash and Vasily packed up the last of the hoses, then Ash strapped the wounded child into a chair in the cockpit, making sure he was secure. With everything stashed, the nomad sealed the hatches while Vasily brought the engines up to speed. Soon they were airborne, once again catching sight of the nomad convoy as it quickly dispersing into the wilderness, finding cover to avoid potential Federal patrols. Why the Feds were openly attacking nomads was a question Ash couldn’t figure out, and the problem stewed in his brain as they flew, mixing with his earlier run in with the special forces unit. There was no love lost between the two factions, certainly, but nomads were nothing more than a hassle that was out of sight, out of mind. For Federals to shoot on sight meant they were in a no witnesses mood, and that agitated Ash. He fingered the memory card in its slot, praying it would shed some light on the situation. Soaring along, the sun finally slipped below the horizon as Vulture left clouds in her wake.


Chapter Three


            Colonel James Edward Matthews sat in his field office, the swirling dust outside constantly blowing, causing the semi-rigid flaps of the prefabricated structure to wrinkle and fold, wind noise seeping in through numerous gaps. A small data display was perched on his knee, upon which the lean man was intently focused, his dark eyes reflecting the images flashing on the screen. The unit was playing back data collected by a scouting drone that had been operating a few hundred miles to the north-east, just one of many such drones he had patrolling the area, keeping an eye out for potential problems. This one had found more than just a potential problem, it had located a very large snag.

            The snag was displayed before him in a particular portion of the feed, a thirty second segment that he had looped for his analysis, allowing him to become intimately familiar with the important details. The drone, set incorrectly to its aggressive patrol mode, had detected electromagnetic and radar signatures just off its route, and so it had proceeded to investigate. As the drone descended to a lower altitude, it switched to the visual spectrum, displaying a desert plateau covered in scrub brush and bushy trees. In the middle of its view was a modest clearing where a collection of vehicles, a nomad tribe, had gathered around what had to be one of the strangest vessels Colonel Matthews had ever set eyes on. At this point the drone, being too far to transmit a request for orders, made a judgment based on the supposed capabilities of the nomads below, determining that a close strafing run was in order. Unfortunately, the drone failed to detect the obscene number of concealed machine guns below, and soon the video cut out as the drone self-destructed, having been sliced to ribbons by lead knives.

            Before that point, however, Matthews was able to dissect the close pass frame by frame, allowing him to take in tiny, important details. The high quality optics gave a crystal clear image of the chaos, but Matthews stopped on a particular frame to have a closer look. What he saw was a nomad of a different variety, one outfitted with attire and attitude that suggested he was a survivor of one of the now extinct, large militias that had been stamped out years ago by a combined effort of the corporations and the government. The man was a survivor, trained by the families of discharged military members that had banded together for protection after the Long Night. Colonel Matthews had spent a lifetime sizing up the opposition, and his instincts were setting off warning alarms over this one. Worse, the man was mobile, possessing a military aircraft, even if it was a bizarre relic. Looking at the data again, he saw that hidden underneath the dilapidated skin of the strange plane were sophisticated electronics and communications equipment, implying some level of technical competence, along with the an increase in the likelihood that soon that word would soon be out about the recent is attacks that had been carried out against the area nomad tribes.

            Matthews leaned back in thought, scratching the stubble on his chin. He had worked extremely hard to hide his activities out in the desert, not just from the natives, but from outside eyes as well. This new factor could destroy him and his plans. Even nomads knew Feds couldn’t just poach tribes for fun nowadays, and with their mobility and communications, it was even possible the nomads would reach out for help through a government, corporation, or PMC. The irony that Matthews himself now lacked those same supports, mobility and communications, was not lost on him. He closed his eyes tightly, his lips turning down in a dour expression. Behind his eyelids, he saw the goggled face looking back, and it made him angry. His eyes suddenly flew open and he slapped his tablet down on his desk, the thin polycarbonate device skittering across the flat, plastic surface and falling off the far end. Standing, he stormed out of his office and into the late afternoon, squinting in the dying light and swirling dust.

            The military camp was a hodgepodge of temporary structures, with equipment interspersed between sets of flimsy walls, the plastic containers washed out from sun exposure. It was a controlled chaos, with everything in its proper place and easily identifiable, yet somehow always in someone’s way. There were five structures in total, all layered over top with special camo netting, a chameleon coat that absorbed the surrounding light rays and then shifted color to match, giving the whole encampment a mottled, brown and green shade that adjusted throughout the day as the lighting conditions changed.

            Matthews picked his way through the obstacles, vectoring in on the command tent like a guided missile, and equipped with similar destructive force. He pulled the heavy flap aside and stepped in, the look on his face causing everyone to snap to attention, work hanging frozen, breathing suddenly more difficult.

            “Anderson!” Matthews barked, calling out the name of his captain in charge of field operations, not bothering to let anyone stand at ease.

            Anderson scurried over, the man shrinking with each step, causing Matthews’ frown to grow even more twisted. He hated when people cowered, especially his people. If they couldn’t handle him, what would they do when the bullets were flying? Matthews sighed as the desk jockey stood before him and saluted.

            “Anderson, stand up straight. You’re an officer, dammit,” Matthews ordered, the man’s back turning to rigid steel. “Explain to me what happened with the patrol in sector 15.”

            “Colonel, sir, the drone on patrol was not configured correctly and the operator was not at his post when the drone encountered contacts, sir,” Anderson managed to say without choking.

            “And where was the operator?” Matthews asked, drawing out the interrogative.

            “He, uh, was in the head, Colonel, sir.”

            “You mean to tell me the secrecy of this entire op might be blown because someone had to take a shit?” Matthews asked, his voice lowering to a hiss.

            “Sir, I don’t know the details, sir,” Anderson answered, eyes straight ahead.

            Matthews looked around the room, then turned back to Anderson.

            “Who’s the operator?” he asked.

            “Lieutenant Wake, sir,” Anderson squeaked.

            “Have him taken under guard and set up a court martial for dereliction of duty,” Matthews spoke loudly enough for the entire tent to hear.

            “Sir, yes, sir,” Anderson said with relief, turning to go.

            “I didn’t say you were dismissed, Captain,” Matthews said, freezing Anderson in his tracks. “Lucky for the rest of you the info we got off that drone may be more valuable than what ultimately played out. Have someone reliable get info on the aircraft seen in that drone footage, and find out who they are and where they are going.”

            “Yes, colonel, sir.”

            Matthews stood there a moment, letting the seconds tick by as everyone remained frozen, still at attention in the dimly lit tent. Only the movement on the various holodisplays and flatscreens proved that time was still in motion.

            Finally, Matthews spoke. “Dismissed.”

            Anderson exhaled as he stepped away, moving fast to carry out his orders. Matthews turned on his heel and walked out of the command post, heading for the barracks. Forced to walk into the low, setting sun, he squinted as he moved forward, crossing the distance in ten easy strides, unperturbed by the rough terrain. Having reached the large, rectangular prefab, he stepped through to the interior, his eyes adjusting to the neutral light, the long room dimmer than the light outside, but a far cry from the darkness in the command center. The room was lined from end to end with two rows of bunks, housing his main contingent of war fighters, marines, formerly of USSOCOM. Matthews came here whenever he needed intelligent conversation with real men that he could relate to. A grim and toothless smile crossed his face as he saw just the man he was looking for. The person in question caught sight of Matthews and set his field-stripped rifle down on his bunk, standing to salute as the major came over.

            “At ease, Captain Bayer,” Matthews said. “Has Syndergaard returned yet?”

            The man relaxed as he replied, looking directly at Matthews, “No, sir, not yet. Last I heard they had a few more locations to scout.”

            “The technowarriors really screwed the pooch this time,” Matthews mused.

            “How so, sir?”

            “Let a drone get too close to some nomads, so they shot it down. They know we’re in the area, now,” Matthews said.

            Bayer shook his head. “Was going to happen sooner or later, but I’d rather have later.”

            “Here’s the interesting part,” Matthews began. “More than just a pack of lowlifes, the drone also found an old Soviet aircraft and a genuine operator to boot.”

            “Sounds like one of the old militia. Think he’s going to be trouble?” Bayer asked, raising a thick eyebrow.

            “I think we’re already in trouble,” Matthews said, running a hand over his face. “I didn’t expect the search to take this long. Here I am with the keys to a weapon that makes the hydrogen bomb look like an academy science project, and I’m now forced to divert resources to hunt down a water scrounger.”

            “Say the word, colonel, and we’ll take care of him,” Bayer said.

            “No, I need you here for when things get even more serious,” Matthews said. “There are other people I can reach out to for this. I need to cast a net and then turn it into a noose.”

            Matthews looked over to Bayer’s rifle.

            “Thank you, captain. You’ve proven your worth as usual,” he said.

            “You’re welcome, sir.”

            “I’ll let you get back to your duties. Let me know when Syndergaard gets in. I know he’ll sneak in here first and skip reporting to Ops, though I can hardly blame him,” Matthews said, turning to leave.

            By the time Matthews had made it back outside, the sun had dipped below the rocky outcroppings that surround their camp. Long, jagged shadows slipped over the squat military lodgings, the chameleon tarps already starting to bleed into purple and blue hues to compliment the night. The colonel reentered his private tent, snagging his bottle of coveted Irish whisky and pouring two fingers of the 30-year aged drink into a plastic mug of standard issue. He sat down and leaned back in his chair, the worn out synthetic padding jabbing him through his uniform. He shifted around until he got comfortable, then reached for the locked drawer mounted under his desk. The biomonitor read his hand print as he keyed his combination, after which a click sounded and the drawer floated open on magnetic rails. He reached in and extracted a small black container, roughly the size of a ring box, and opened the lid, allowing his eyes to rest on the treasure that was inside.

            “A curse,” he whispered to himself, “but a necessary one.”

            Looking back up at him was a device no larger than his broad thumb, the highly polished, black surface glimmering in the glow of his desk monitor, an obsidian finish capped by a miniature LED display, across which danced red numerals. The digits scrolled endlessly, marking the current encryption sequence of the device, which would ultimately be inserted into a targeting computer and synchronized, becoming the firing pin on a weapon of immense power. It was the last key of its kind, and many men had perished to get it to him. That it was the last he was certain, for he had ensured that the other ones had been destroyed before fleeing Fortress Washington for the desert in order to seek out the counterpart to the key, joining the two to unlock the future. His future.

            Closing the box, he set it back in the drawer and secured it, ensuring it was locked up tightly so that it could not be tampered with. Looking over his desk, he reached for a datapad and pulled up a VOIP client, engaging a secured channel and reaching out to a California directory.

            “Yes, get me the LAPD,” he said.

            It was time to cast his net.


Chapter Four


            Several hundred miles to the northwest, Ash was laying in his bunk, arms behind his head, unable to sleep. Too many events had amped up his system, and he didn’t like to use sleep drugs as he feared they would take his edge off in combat. If he could afford military grade pharmaceuticals he would be fine, but that, along with a long list of items, was not something he could expect anytime soon. Instead, he took the memory card he had been given and inserted it into one of the available ports at his computer console. He had the data scanned and then encrypted before wirelessly connecting through his goggles. The memory card came out clean and contained only one file: a video recording. Ash selected the file for playback, and after a few moments of shuffling video codecs, the images started flowing. Ash instantly realized the footage as being from an old, hand held video recorder, the kind used decades ago by private citizens all over the country to catalog birthdays, anniversaries, and other things which he would never know or experience. The image quality itself wasn’t bad, the optics average, but the lack of light amplification made for a dark film, given that the filming had been done at night. Ash could make out voices and movement, but the camera was shaking too much, preventing him from even telling which way was up. Then, as if a shade had been lifted from his eyes, the camera operator was able to set the unit on top a low rock outcropping and zoom in on whatever it was that had caught his interest.

            The scene before Ash was eerily familiar. The same special forces unit, the same strange mechanical device embedded in the sand, the same dark sentinel of power armor keeping close guard. Unlike Ash, however, the camera operator didn’t have the good fortune of remaining unnoticed, the camera itself perhaps giving away the concealed position. As the image zoomed in further, the power armor suddenly came to life. The head swiveled to look directly at the camera at the same time the right arm came up. Held in the hand of the armored suit was a squad automatic weapon, if the squad was made up entirely of giants, and here this beast was hoisting the weapon one handed. The muzzle flashed brightly, the air filling with the miniature thunderclaps of caseless, 14.5 mm, armor piercing rounds that shredded the area all around the camera, completely blowing through the rock formation and knocking the recorder to the ground. As it fell it spun around, landing in the dirt and facing the opposite direction, now only filming the dust and rock bits that rained down from above. The gruesome dead body of the cameraman lay crumpled in a ventilated heap, his body dismembered from the onslaught of a weapon designed to fight hardened targets, not poor nomads.

            The air was terribly still, even the bugs ceasing their incessant noises in the presence of the mechanical demon. Then, from behind the dead and mangled corpse, a small child crawled. Ash recognized him immediately as the same child that was currently under his care. The nasty gash across his head was bleeding profusely. It appeared a fragment of debris, either from the rock or from one of the actual munitions, had splintered off under the onslaught and been sent flying on a tangent, slicing across the boy's flesh clear down to the skull itself, possibly even cracking the cranium. The child grabbed the camera and pulled it back behind the body before another spray of bullets impacted, the power armor pilot sending another burst for good measure, the sound of shouting and heavy footfalls growing closer as the Marines spread out to search for survivors. The footage became shaky again as the boy slid down the hill and rolled into a ditch before crawling into a burrow in the ground. The burrow was blessedly deep, and so the boy kept crawling, somehow managing to remain conscious despite his injuries. Reaching the end of the hollow, the boy stopped and set the camera down. The recording then ended abruptly as the boy yanked the memory card from the camera.

            Ash sat in silence, though he knew not for how long. The immense weight of what he had seen rested upon him, preventing him from getting up. A palpable frustration filled the room as he came to realize nothing could be done while he was in the air, leaving him to fester and boil. Finally, he turned off his goggles—the room lights already having been off—and then turned off his mind, choosing ignorance over admittance.

            Up in the cockpit, tied into his harness, Vasily’s body was a similarly immobile sculpture, though for different reasons. An intimidating black mask covered his face, providing water and oxygen while simultaneously mitigating primary stimulus sources such as ocular and olfactory inputs. No dream of flying could compare to Vasily’s experience, because he was, in actuality, soaring over the desert, looking forward from outside the airframe, feeling the wind rush over his aluminum and carbon wings, stretching out and flexing his rudders and ailerons to alter course. No matter how many times Vasily had plugged in, the sheer ecstasy of flight always preserved its magic and luster. Being able to look down from above on the world below was liberating; the pithy lives of the dirt dwellers was so far removed, their problems unable to reach him high among the clouds. This made it all the more crushing when he crested a hill and instead of finding the hidden medical sanctuary he had been heading for, he was instead presented with the bleak reality of death. He could see that the entire compound had been burned to the ground, bodies laying scattered about, already half buried in sand.

            Vasily circled the area a few times, looking at the damage from a multitude of cameras. As far as he could tell, the culprits had left long ago, leaving only smoldering embers and charred bodies as evidence of their passing. Vasily didn’t know all the details, but from what Ash had told him in the past, he knew that after the corporations gained sovereignty and persecuted the nomads, a group of medical professionals, disgusted with the turn of events, had chosen to flee the cities at their own peril. They formed a medical cadre in the desert, where they used their connections and resources to establish a respected and fairly well equipped hospital, hidden in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and offering their services to the denizens who made their harsh living in the American Southwest. Seeing the brutal carnage, Vasily hesitated for some time, eventually working up the nerve to open a radio channel to Ash. His friend had to be told.

            “Tovarish,” Vasily said.

            “Vasily?” Ash sounded confused and distant, like he had been sleeping awake.

            “Tovarish, you need to come up here and see this. I’m sorry,” Vasily spoke past the lump in his throat.

            “Sorry for what?”

            Vasily closed the channel, unable to reply. Tied as he was into the harness, he couldn’t hang his head or slump, but in that star filled night, Vulture seemed to slowly drift over the burned wreckage with weighted sadness.


            Ash’s boots sunk into the dirt and gravel as a breeze blew by the still glowing embers of the medical facility, tossing orange specks into the air and letting them drift down slowly, settling on the blackened earth before quickly dimming to nothingness. Ash felt that each dimming light was representative of a soul trying to escape this earth, only to flicker and die. The destruction of the facility was complete and merciless. The structure, never a very solid piece to begin with, had been first hit by rockets and mortars, given away by the craters dotting the landscape. After the rocket attack, the power armor suit had been sent in, the heavy footfalls still visible in the charred earth. Several bodies were still lying in their hospital beds, their throats efficiently cut by a mammoth blade, faces frozen in expressions of bewilderment, shock, and terror. Doctors lay in lab coats and scrubs, shot in the back as they had tried to run, the wounds gaping and egregious. When Ash came to the maternity ward, he suddenly found himself on the ground vomiting, his fists clenched in trembling rage.

            Staring at the mixture of cinders and bile, Ash knew in his heart who was responsible for the massacre. There was only one group with the firepower to completely obliterate an area, and only one group with the requisite demon souls to carry out an act against a pacifistic medical facility. With heaving sobs, he opened his hand and scooped up a handful of ashes and dirt, letting the granules slowly slip between his gloved fingers. Ash found himself with a million questions ricocheting around in his head. Where does one draw the line? When does something go from being tolerated to being totalitarian? How do you know when it’s finally time to oppose something, and will the feelings of others resonate with yours so that they join the battle with vigor and righteousness?

            “I don’t know,” Ash whispered to himself, and he didn’t.

            Such thoughts were only going to clog up his mind, distracting him from what needed to be done. To him, the course was simple—the ones responsible must die. Ash knew he would never stop the Federal Government, nor would he stop the military, but he did know that at some point, either today, a year from today, or even a decade from today, he would succeed in at least killing the ones directly responsible for what had happened here. The world was spinning and his nostrils were flaring, his mouth breathing fire. Only the crackling static of his radio pulled him back to the horror he was kneeling in.

            “TovarishComrade,” Vasily’s voice crackled.

            Ash cleared the fog from his head.

            “What is it?”

            “It is the boy. He is doing much worse. I think maybe infection and blood loss. Probably thoroughly concussed,” Vasily said.

            Ash gritted his teeth, the molars grinding together. He took a deep breath.

            “Get us ready to fly to LA.”

            “Are you crazy? LA? Do you want to die that badly?” Vasily said.

            “No. I want that boy to live. I need him to live,” Ash said. “He needs medical attention, and we’re going to get it for him. We’ll come in low and land outside the city, then secure transport in. Besides, I need to get information on who’s the master of this butchery.”

            “LA is death trap. We lose just one boy if we stay,” Vasily replied, his English degrading in his frustration. “I don’t think we’ll make it in time for him anyway. I think we should—”

            Ash cut in. “Vasily, I’m walking towards Vulture right now. If those engines aren’t spun up by the time I get there, so help me God I will personally...”

            “Alright, alright. LA it is,” Vasily sighed, knowing it was impossible to dissuade Ash when he was in such a mood.


Chapter Five


            Vasily would have preferred to approach the city under the cover of night, but Ash felt that the boy didn’t have that kind of time, so it was a late California afternoon when Vulture snuck through a hole in the LA air defense grid and landed, as God and Stalin originally intended, in the coastal waters to the south of the city, near what used to be Oceanside. The city was now just a burned out hovel occupied by unattended teenagers out looking for danger, the block housing nearest the coast partially submerged by the elevated water level brought on by global warming. By this point, the boy was passed out in Vulture’s medical bay, his breathing shallow and unsteady, his skin terrifyingly pale. It was all Ash could do to look away from him and keep focused on the task at hand. He had called in a few favors on their way in, and so there was a light truck in bland, nonthreatening gray waiting for them on the beach, its security system already disabled. With Vulture bobbing on the waves behind them, Vasily and Ash waded to shore and loaded the boy into the back of the extended cab, laying him down inside a plastic container on the hard bench seat, the fabric made of a mercifully stain resistant, rubberized compound that reeked of outgassing. They shut the container, hiding the boy from sight, then close the rear door.

            Vasily turned to Ash. “I will be listening on your frequency,” the Russian said. “Let me know when you need to get out. I will hide until you contact me.”

            “Vasily, I know this is risky, and I know you’re sacrificing a lot for this,” Ash said by way of apology.

            “Don’t remind me,” Vasily grunted. “I don’t like this at all, but I know you long enough to respect you. Hurry, or I will change my mind.”

            With that, Ash climbed into the truck and powered up its electric motor as Vasily turned away and waded back into the cold surf. Ash was left to wonder if he would ever see his only friend again.

            Turning his attention back to the present, Ash got down to the business of driving, coaxing the tiny truck up from the beach and onto the road, navigating towards Los Angeles.

            The ride into the city seemed to pass by in slow motion. Ash felt as if the entire world had been submerged in water to an extent that was greater than reality, and he was forced to slowly push his way through the fluid, which resisted his every move. Sensations seemed to come to his brain from far, far away, transmitted through a murky haze. The sun was igniting the horizon to his left as he drove north up the coast over long abandoned surface streets, all the lights on his vehicle turned off, using just his goggles to navigate. The roads were government owned, so they were in complete disrepair, more a collection of potholes with linking strips of asphalt than an actual paved surface. Corporate roads were clean and smooth, but corporate roads also had tolls and were heavily patrolled for violators. The various corporate security firms and internal police divisions relished any opportunity they could find to gang up on and harass a motorist.

            Ash was grateful the truck was all electric, allowing him to move silently past the abandoned homes and businesses, with only the sound of pebbles and chunks of road grinding under the tires audible above the soft whine of the vehicle. The growth and potential that once thrived along the coast had long since come crashing down. California was one of the hardest hit areas when the economy collapsed, and one of the first ones to fall under corporate control. The state government had become insolvent more than a hundred years ago, spending far too much time and effort trying to directly run the lives of everyone in the state, explaining what they could eat, what they could drink, where they could live, what they could say, what they could own. It was an attempt at enslaved utopia, and it failed miserably. Only those with massive wealth could live as they pleased, buying their way around the law while everyone else, despite following the rules and working honest hours, found themselves stripped of their rights and at the mercy of violent criminals who were released from a defunct and overcrowded prison system. Even worse was the fact that petty criminals had been carelessly tossed in with the hardened offenders, and ended up leaving prison either in a body bag or as a new member of the violence community, being forced to join a gang by way of survival. The state essentially bred more aggressive thugs and turned them loose on the populace, giving them reduced terms as the prison overcrowding became inhumane. The farce of communal safety that was pushed onto the middle-class families only lasted so long before reality came crashing through the front door, looking for the jewels and the cash. The stunned residents could only sit and stare, having become so dependent on the state that they could no longer could function independently. These people had long ago demonstrated that they were incapable of defending their rights; how could they expect to defend their homes?

            With a bit of light still contaminating the gray haze of the city, Ash had to balance his desire for the cover of darkness with the need to treat the critical condition of the boy. The ever present march of time was unbearable, ticking away in his mind. He picked up speed as the sunlight finally faded away and only the glow of tire fires and belching industrial complexes remained. On the horizon, he could see the intense glow of the corporate sector, the commercial hub of downtown Los Angeles that operated without respite. Ash was coming into some traffic now as moved past massed pipes and transformers, the power producing outskirts of the city. In the shadows, alongside dingy buildings, he could make out human forms, many in poses only possible to those strung out on a cornucopia of illegal drugs. All drugs were illegal in Los Angeles. Punishment for possession was merciless, and occupied a huge portion of the time and resources of those organizations that tried to enforce the laws, a movement that traced its origins back to pre-collapse California. Outside of narcotics, however, designer pharmaceuticals were perfectly legit and even recommended for the hard working middle manager. These narcotics were tailored to a person’s specific genetic code; they had all the benefits of recreational drugs with none of the dependency. They were heavily regulated and extremely expensive to purchase outright. Most corporations gave them out like party favors to their employees. It supposedly helped with morale.

            Keeping aware of his surroundings, Ash saw that he was now in the thick of it, with all the municipal roads funneling down to a single highway access point that led into the heart of the city. A multitude of clandestine access points existed, but Ash didn’t have the time or the money to ferret one out. He had to cross his fingers that his old fabricated ID card would hold up one last time. He pulled up to the checkpoint, barbed wire on either side of his vehicle and heavy machine guns mounted along the walls overhead. Two robotic Kilo-9 units were on his flanks, while a single officer approached the driver’s window of the vehicle from the front. He wore black armor of high impact plastic and ballistic nylon, while his helmet was a monolithic and featureless darkened faceplate. On his back rested an automatic rifle with an underslung grenade launcher. His belt held more grenades, a pistol, two knives, a stun gun, and a collapsible baton. Ash thought he may have glimpsed a pair of handcuffs somewhere towards the back, but he couldn’t be sure. The cop was lightly armed in comparison to some of the corporate outfits and PMCs. Despite the failure of the government, the state still preserved the LAPD and was unwilling to give up border control, seeing it as too great a revenue source, as well as a useful filter for keeping out destitute undesirables. People like Ash, essentially. The nomad knew that once inside the city, he would have to content with a menagerie of both corporate sector police and thinly spread LAPD, but if luck was with him he wouldn’t have to go that far into the city to get the help he needed.

            Creaking as it moved, the weaponized shadow arrived at Ash’s door and knocked on the window, the armored gloves making a hard rap on the glass. Ash rolled the window partway down, his goggled eyes peeking just over the rim. A modulated voice emitted from a hidden speaker mounted on the officer’s armor, making gender impossible to determine.

            “Identification and travel papers,” the voice droned.

            Ash slipped the officer the required information without saying anything. The officer stepped away and held the ID card up to an RFID scanner. On the first try, the card failed to read. The obsidian faceplate turned to look back at Ash and paused. In the lane next to Ash, officers were dragging a screaming man out of his car, clubbing him while a robotic Kilo-9 smashed open the trunk of the vehicle. Ash realized he had stopped breathing and couldn’t start again. The officer attending to him ran the card again. This time a green LED illuminated on the console. The officer unfolded Ash’s papers and gave them a focused stare, or so Ash assumed. If Ash hadn’t been so on the edge with tension, he might have thought that the official had fallen asleep inside his helmet. After what seemed an eternity, the officer folded up the paper, tucked the ID card in, and handed it all back to Ash.

            “Any cargo?” inquired the mask.

            “Just another organ donor,” Ash tried to casually point to the back of the truck with his trembling thumb. Looking over Ash’s shoulder, the officer saw an impact resistant plastic case that had been labeled “Recyclable Biomass,” inside of which the boy was bundled. With practiced ease, the officer drew a laser scanner off his belt and shot the QR code that was plastered on each side of the box. The scanner beeped and came back green, after which the officer stepped back from the vehicle. Without a word, the heavy metal gate opened and Ash was allowed through, moving into the guts of Los Angeles. He eventually inhaled, but only after having gone about a quarter mile further down the road. It looked like his hacker had come through.


Chapter Six


            Viewed from a distance, she looked as if she were sleeping. Reclined in her chair with her lithe arms at her sides, her chest continued to rise and fall steadily with each breath. Closer, one might think she was having a vivid dream. Her eyelids were tightly shut, the muscles underneath clearly moving at a rapid pace. Her fingers twitching sporadically, some muscle signals bleeding through the filter that constrained her nervous system. Her silky blonde hair was bound back by some mechanical, spider like device, the fibers pulled tight like the strings of a violin. She swore she could always feel loose strands on her face when she was diving, and it was one thing she hated with a passion. She would cut it short, but that would ruin her image, spoil her advertising. Though she had a Christian name, those that knew of her called her Goldilocks, and she was a damn fine hacker.

            She was, perhaps, not the very best, but most likely was the most consistent. In a world of burn outs, stoners, slackers, and mouth breathing, neck bearded man-children, she had a damn business to run, and run it she did. It was nice to take care of clients and not post frivolous cat holograms online, even if it was a celebrated tradition dating to before interface changes. It had been realized, even during the relative infancy of the Net, that there was an upper limit to the types of interfaces being used. A mouse and keyboard, though simple and accessible, really wasn’t the fastest way to I/O with a terminal. The touch screens and hand gestures which were all the rage on ancient devices presented one avenue forward, but gesticulating all over the place turned out to be tiresome, tedious, and inaccurate. No, to really fly on the Net, to dive deep, you needed to go direct. Unlike the relatively basic Machine/Man Interfaces used by pilots, drivers, and other operators, which only used surface nervous system signals and kept basic brain functions intact, a Net diver had to be able to immerse the entire mind into the digital world, essentially cutting off the rest of the body at the base of the brainstem. This wasn’t without problems. Cardiovascular functions, a minor concern in day to day life, suddenly became much more pressing when forced paralysis was induced. What was ultimately developed was a cybernetic interface of the most minute, atomic detail. Individual neurons were mapped out and tied to a network mesh terminal—NMT—inside the skull, tucked under the occipital lobe. The unit was actually constructed inside the individual by nanomachines injected into the body, which followed their programming faithfully, using the host’s own resources for the build. In about two weeks’ time, the user would have a fully constructed network mesh inside their head, and only two small ports had to be drilled and finished in order to plug in the I/O terminals. It was an out-patient procedure. Some people even got wireless plugs for remote diving.

            Before the Long Night, all of this was common technology, with many office employees, government workers, and even homemakers enjoying the benefits of inexpensive, efficient, and effective nanotech. After the EMP attack, however, most of the facilities capable of manufacturing the nanomachines were destroyed or disabled. A large portion of the population with NMTs installed perished in the ensuing chaos. At present, except for those high up the corporate ladder, low rent hackers, fixers, and other dissidents went shopping the used market. Though the flesh may be dead, parts were still parts, and plenty of people had NMTs that they wouldn’t be using anytime soon. That was the desperate way out, though; it still took crude microsurgery to have the old NMT tied to a new host, and the results were usually scarring, occasional network connectivity problems, and a pronounced bulge at the base of the skull which some people wore as a badge of honor. Goldilocks wasn’t one of their kind. She intuitively knew her way around systems architecture, and had a fantastic grasp of human emotion, making her one of the rare computer experts that actually had people skills. She started off the old fashioned way, with a mouse and keyboard, and used that to slowly trade, con, and slip her way into securing a rare and expensive dose of brand new nanomachines from a Japanese subsidiary of a prominent American medical device corporation. She then used her new plugs to disappear, erasing any record of having been involved in the operation and leaving several middle managers tearing their hair out over documents they had allegedly approved.

            She noticed a finger twitch bleeding through her filter, dialed down the gain on her signal booster, and immediately toggled back to the security feed she had hijacked in order to watch the progress of her client. Technically she had finished the task she was assigned, but she took a shine to this case, wondering exactly what was going on. It wasn’t everyday a desert rat of a nomad came knocking on a door like hers, especially one with the cash for her services. Her interest piqued, she had tapped into the federal traffic camera network, and was using it to hop from lens to lens, tracking the vehicle through the city. As she expected, it almost immediately got off the main roads and headed for the burned out, risky part of the city, which was basically anything outside the corporate quarter or the high class shopping districts. The truck diverted again, taking it off of federal roads and making it no longer traceable via traffic camera. Undaunted, the hacker located an aerial drone that was supposed to be coming in for maintenance, interrupted its guidance system, then convinced it that the truck in question was where it needed to go for servicing. The drone then dutifully followed along behind the truck, giving Goldilocks continued observance of her target. She aw the truck pull to a stop outside a row of warehouses, then the nomad exited the vehicle, pulling an organ case out of the back. As he opened the top, Goldilocks saw a wounded boy inside, suddenly putting her on edge. Out of the building came two men in scrubs, rushing to help move the boy inside to cover. Goldilocks was preparing to arm the drone and call for reinforcements when she saw the boy stir, the nomad giving a gentle squeeze on the boy’s shoulder before handing him off. The boy wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t being harvested—he was actually being helped. Goldilocks exhaled hard through clenched teeth. Far from needing to stop the nomad, she now felt compelled to help him. Not that he would ever know.

            Unaware that he was being watched, Ash followed along as the stretcher laden boy was pushed through the double doors and into the makeshift surgery. The two doctors, retired physicians, quickly slid the boy onto the surgical steel table and switched on several powerful lights, completely erasing any shadows that may have been lurking in the room. Despite the dingy, dilapidated surroundings of the rest of the building, the operating room was a clean, well maintained area that was heavily guarded from outside prying eyes. Too many people and groups would raid, destroy, or shut down the facility if they knew of its existence. As the physicians started work on the child, an olive skinned man of Chinese ancestry took Ash by the arm and led him out of the room, guiding him to a back office that held a single chair and a broken desk. Ash slumped over in the chair, running his hands back through his dark hair. He let out a long exhale, kicking up a cloud of settled dust from the surface of the metal desk. He had done everything he could. The boy now had to fight on his own in order to survive, as every nomad child learns at an early age. Ash now had to find out what was happening in the desert, and that was something he could only discover in the city proper, where there were a plethora of information sources, but only if you knew where to look. Ash bleakly realized that he might not have much knowledge in that regard, as he came to the city rather infrequently and only then for emergencies. Digging up information on an ex-girlfriend was one thing; digging up a covert military operation was something entirely different.

            Ash wasn’t one to rest on his laurels, though, and so stood up and found the Asian man in the hallway outside the operating room, where he was tinkering with the settings on his cybernetic arm.

            “Do you have a terminal I could use?” Ash asked, realizing he had been so dazed before he hadn’t even noticed the metal appendage.

            The man pointed with his flesh arm, covered in gang tattoos, to a door at the end of the hall. Ash nodded his thanks and made his way down the passage, floating specks of dirt lighting up like fireflies as they drifted past cracks in the wall, reflecting the garish neon lighting of the advertisements that saturated the city night. Above him, the yellowed, plastic light fixtures flickered their mixed CFL and LED Morse code, an SOS to all those who would scramble to survive in this day and age, in this urban nightmare. Anybody who thought things were easier at the top didn’t have a clue that the vicious dog fight of survival never ended, no matter where it was you went. The universal law of economic scarcity made sure of that.

            After briefly fighting the handle, Ash triumphed and opened the door to step inside. A computer terminal was set up along the back wall, set on a wooden desk. A torn leather chair, the kind that was clearly stolen out of a nicer part of town, stood as a silent sentry over the white computer monitor, a dated LCD unit. Ash slid into the seat and opened a browser window. He wasn’t a hacker, but he knew that this location would at least have some security against outside detection, which was why he was puzzled when someone was able to remotely access his desktop and open an instant messenger client. Ash took his hands off the keyboard as the words “Your security is pitiful,” appeared on the screen. The user name was “Goldilocks.” Ash’s hands hovered over the keyboard. More text flickered onto the chat client.

            <<Goldilocks: Cat got your tongue?>>

            Finally Ash responded.

            <<Root\terminal: Do I know you? 

            Goldilocks: That’s better. And no, not directly.

            Root\terminal: Who are you?

            Goldilocks: I’m your guardian angel, the one that got you into the city.

            Root\terminal: Why are you contacting me? Our contract is finished.

            Goldilocks: I saw the boy. You really shouldn’t have exposed him until you were inside.

            Root\terminal: I hope you’re not planning on asking for more money.

            Goldilocks: That’s disheartening. Why would I do that?

            Root\terminal: Blackmail. You saw the boy. I warn you, if you call this in, you’ll have a hell of a gunfight                       to watch on the news, because it will go down to the last man.

            Goldilocks: Easy there cowboy. That’s not my goal. I want to help.

            Root\terminal: Why?

            Goldilocks: Not all of us are in it for the money.

            Root\terminal: How can I trust you?

            Goldilocks: You can’t, but you’re going to need me.

            Root\terminal: What makes you say that?

            Goldilocks: Well you aren’t on a terminal to update your relationship status.

            Root\terminal: …

            Goldilocks: So what is it you are searching for?

            Root\terminal: Military information.

            Goldilocks: Oh, glad it’s something easy.

            Root\terminal: You wanted to help.

            Goldilocks: That doesn’t mean I can’t be a sarcastic bitch. What kind of military information?

            Root\terminal: Special operations activities in the Sonoran Desert, mostly night ops, small teams, drones,                 weird equipment, and a brand new suit of power armor. That's what jacked the boy, killed his tribe.

            Goldilocks: I’ll see what I can find.>>

            Before Ash could respond, the window closed and the name disappeared from the contact list. He didn’t know how she would be able to contact him again, but somehow he didn’t think that would be a problem. Just as he was standing up from the terminal, the door swung open abruptly, the Asian man filling the frame. He looked Ash over briefly, then tossed his head in a signal for him to follow. Ash marched down the hallway again, his boots crunching along the broken floor tiles. The man brought him into an ancillary room next to the OR, then left. One of the surgeons was seated, hunched over a holographic display which kept refreshing images from a plethora of medical scanners. From the position of the body, Ash gathered it was information about the wounded child. Ash cleared his throat.

            “What is it?” Ash said.

            The doctor turned to face him, dark rings around his eyes.

            “He’s dying.”

            “From a laceration?” Puzzlement crept into Ash’s voice.

            “It’s more than that,” the doctor said.

            “Doctor, I don’t... Doctor... I never got your...”

            “Robert,” the physician filled in.

            “Doctor Robert. What is it, then?” Ash asked.

            “You mean aside from the hematoma, the cerebral hemorrhaging, and the fractured cervical vertebrae?” Robert snapped. “Whatever round fragmented around him was carrying a radioactive agent. It’s Polonium,” Robert explained.

            “Meaning what?” Ash asked.

            “It means he’s poisoned, and we don’t have a cure,” Robert said.

            Ash sat in silence, clenching and releasing his fists.

            “I’m sorry,” the doctor said quietly, his tone softening.

            Ash whirled and smashed a hole in the wall. Stucco crumbled and fell to the ground in large chunks.

            “Do you mind?” Dr. Robert asked.

            “How long?” Ash snapped back.

            “Difficult to say, especially considering his other injuries. Given his age and weight? Probably not much more than a month,” Doctor Robert said, crossing his arms over his chest at Ash’s behavior.

            “Keep him comfortable. I have work to do,” Ash said, standing to leave.

            Outside again in the humid air, he paused to collect his thoughts. The warehouse district he was currently located in was essentially a single layer in a massive construct. The city was a collection of cancer cells, each ward, or sector, or corporate zone constantly building over, around, or through those surrounding it. People only existed in the spaces between, squeezed into a meager existence, surviving through what was essentially a slave’s life, should they choose to work at all. Many were gang members, criminals, transients, mental patients, drug abusers, and a whole myriad number of other colorful occupations that fell outside the normal system. On top of this compressed mass of humanity, kept under heat and pressure, was a layer of constant advertising via banners, billboards, and airships, all electric, neon, glowing, garish, constantly refreshing images, the wireless cloud updating every nanocycle, displaying glitz and glamor for those with money to burn. Ash was bewildered and dizzied by the frenzy, suffering horrible technoshock. He blinked hard and looked into the oil soaked asphalt at his feet. One step at a time. He would have to do this one step at a time. He picked up one boot, placed it on the ground in front of him. He then picked up the next boot and repeated, starting his movement. He was off to fight the system. Now, if only he knew where the fight was.


Chapter Seven


            Goldilocks was running full tilt. Her mind was working quickly, flashing through images, web pages, discussion boards, news articles, blasting through the information network that linked and absorbed and permeated what was left of society. She screamed through data at a rate that would make some AIs blush. Her brain was burning up. She swore she could feel the heat radiating off her forehead. No time to worry about that now. She had to seek out information. It was the driving force behind her existence. Living on the Net was her fix. Even though she was motivated to help the nomad with the boy, she was mostly excited to be thrown against a military target, even if she was the kind to bitch and moan about it; that was just for show. She relished the opportunity, mostly since she couldn’t justify to herself a need to breach any corporate or military systems without a necessary cause. She had felt the pressure of corporate and government security agents trying to get a lock on hackers and crackers for some time, but it had been getting worse with each passing year. Several of her friends had been pinched. A few had even had their brains burned out or were trapped in exile, their minds stuck in a programming loop while their bodies remained motionless vegetables. Of all the things that could happen, this one terrified her the most. It was made all the worse by the fact that time didn’t pass in the Net the same way it did in real life. There were no references, no segmentation, no natural occurrences to break things up. No days and nights, no seasons, no aging, no births and no deaths. It was immortality. Terrifying immortality.

            For too long, the hacker community had made a bunch of noise about oppression and inequality. They pulled pranks and created a general nuisance, but nobody had the gall, testicular fortitude, or sheer lunacy required to run a hack on a hardened military target. Goldilocks had long separated herself from the crowd through her professionalism, efficiency, and candor. Now it was time to take things further. She realized this was her tipping point, and after this she would be not just a law breaker, but a heavily wanted federal offender. And, strange as it may seem, she was comfortable with that. She was willing to stand up for that which she believed in, to help the nomad and the child, to forge a future where people wouldn’t have to be smuggled into the city from the desert in organ donor boxes to seek clandestine medical treatment for an injury caused by a military strike. She knew that there was a good chance she could be captured or killed by getting involved in this, but hoped that her death rattle would have the volume cranked to 11, and that others would wake up and take notice. It was hard to find the motivation to fight when one is born into a system that rejects that notion from day one. Goldilocks, however, felt she was born in the Net. It was where things made sense to her, where she could move freely, and where she could do the most damage.

            Describing a hacker moving through the Net was akin to explaining to a blind person what looking at a modern cityscape was like. People that used terminals the old fashioned way viewed images through a two-dimensional screen projecting a simulated 3D image using separate frequencies for each eye. Goggles improved the effect, because each lens could have its own input and actually construct images that, as far as the brain was concerned, were actually 3D. Actual diving, however, was entirely different, something which had to be experienced to be understood. Some people had the misconception that when you were plugged in whatever you thought of would appear, but that wasn’t entirely true. Because the interface could still only recognize specific commands, a diver needed to consciously think of specific words or concepts as an output in order to run a search, write an article, or do other constructive things. Image searches and art were much more flexible. If you could picture in your mind the majority of something you saw or had described to you, there was a good chance of finding a match via search engine. Information in various forms could be absorbed much more quickly and without distraction, and media such as movies and animations were projected directly into the mind as if they were real.

            Things became much more interesting in constructs, which were akin to the role playing games and social gathering spaces of the early 21st century. Even if it wasn’t the most efficient way to exchange information, people still gravitated towards these crafted worlds where you could be or do anything you wanted to be within the bounds of the creator’s physics engine. This was very profitable for the sex industry: unlimited fantasy fare and no chance of sexually transmitted diseases, where everything seemed real because as far as your lizard brain deep inside your skull was concerned, it was real. Goldilocks hated constructs. She especially hated hackers that insisted on using constructs modeled after cheesy movies from the 20th century, a current popular fad. Flying around red cubes that were floating in space was possibly the worse way to analyze system architecture. Goldilocks much preferred to use constructs as a sort of God game. She could take a known system, render it in 3D, and then manipulate it with her mind, moving it, shrinking it, attaching it to other systems to see how it fit into the larger puzzle. She could run multiple iterations of certain system attacks and watch them to see how they performed, determining which method would be the most efficient and carry the lowest risk. When it came time to actually do the dirty work, she would ditch the cumbersome construct and go direct, her mind operating as an input to run programs, monitor systems, and handle other tasks, such as debugging code on the fly. When she finally got what she needed and got out quietly, she could then go to a construct to unwind.

            Right now, she was doing a preliminary search, ferreting out whatever public information might be floating around on news sites, message boards, bulletins and blogs about military operations in the desert. She checked a variety of sources to look for second hand evidence of clandestine operations, such as road closures, flight restrictions, power outages, and so on. This information wasn’t going to be easy to retrieve. She would have to resort to every method she knew, and even then there was no guarantee of success. She ran into a multitude of dead ends and false leads. Conspiracy theories, red herrings, falsified reports, and a myriad number of other disappointments bombarded her. She kept flipping her input from searching out information to trying to track Ash as he moved through the city, which was proving rather difficult. She was concerned, however, that if left unsupervised he would get himself into trouble, seeing as he was a nomad, and nomads weren’t always known for their big city sensibilities. He could run into the wrong crowd, tip his hand, or even be arrested and promptly exiled or executed upon discovery of his nomad status. From what Goldi observed, he seemed to stick mostly to the open markets and trade areas, flitting from one back alley store to the next. Goldilocks could almost smell the sweat and grime of the traders and customers who were trying to carve out a slice of survival pie. In the distance, the horizon was blocked by massive superscrapers, dark monoliths, sequestered off from the rabble by private security measures like prized ancient artifacts. Ash seemed to be doing okay for now, so Goldilocks flipped back over to her search, not very confident that anything had turned up in the short time she was away.

            Scanning the new items, she was surprised to find that one of her threads had tied up a result, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at. It was a map of some kind, provided by US Geological Survey, Inc., and it seemed to be detailing seismic and electromagnetic disturbances throughout the Southwestern United States. Most of the anomalies seemed to occur along known faults and fracking sites, but Goldilocks wasn’t a geologist, so she wasn’t willing to bet on that. Why was this map associated with searches of the Sonoran desert and military activity? She checked her search parameters to ensure they were valid. They matched up with the information Ash had provided her. Puzzled, she reviewed the file details and searched for any other servers that were hosting or linking the image. A variety of universities and colleges (corporate owned) were making use of the image, seemingly for the purpose of resource allocation and exploitation. Of the servers linking the image, one in particular stood out: dod.gov.

            “Now that’s interesting,” Goldilocks spoke inside her head.

            There were a myriad number of legitimate and illegitimate reasons for the DOD to want information on seismic and electromagnetic activity, though it seemed a little strange that they wouldn’t have their own survey. She would have to try to find out exactly how much bandwidth was being allocated to link this information, and perhaps even tie a physical location to the receiving end, in order to give Ash a stronger lead to follow. It was at that point Goldilocks toggled back over and realized she had lost Ash, so absorbed had she been with the new data.


Chapter Eight


            Ash needed a weapon. He especially needed one if he wanted to go poking around secure areas like something that went bump in the night. Of course, Los Angeles gun laws made it nearly impossible to purchase a weapon without an extensive background check and three month waiting period, followed by a qualifications course and requisite ammunition tax and home inspection. That’s why everyone bought on the black market. The laws just helped the mid-level managers and stay at home plastic moms feel safe. A vote for gun safety was still a vote for taking away the human right of self-defense. Separated from his rifle, Ash felt naked. More than that, he knew that in the city a weapon of that stature would draw far too much attention. He needed something concealable, but still potent enough in case he had to aggressively negotiate with a cyborg equipped with an armored skull. He wasn’t a street samurai, and he wasn’t a rent-a-cop, something that had mutated into a much more aggressive form as the years had gone by. He knew he would have to pay out the nose for a piece, and Vasily wouldn’t be happy about that. So far Ash wasn’t having much luck, only having found a couple cheap, plastic, Indo-Chinese autoloaders that most certainly would grenade on the first full magazine. He had also come across a plethora of rifles far too big for anyone trying to remain low key, but still hadn’t found exactly what he was looking for.

            He kept picking his way through the back alleys, drifting from shop to shop, navigating over piles of fetid garbage and unconscious humans, the smells and sounds heavy and overwhelming to him. It was as if the city was attempting to force itself down his nose and throat, the sweat and blood filling his head and making it spin. Passing an oil drum filled with a fire that belched black smoke, he ducked into his fifth store, looking around its minimal interior. A high counter with built in acrylic windows displayed various wares, organized in neat rows by category. Most of the goods were legal, with a few borderline items mixed in for good measure. Pistols, knives, and stun guns sat gleaming, their intricate machined parts reflecting the light of the bioluminescent glow strips inset into the top of the case. Looming over the case was a big Samoan man with facial tattoos, a stout gut, and dark, narrow eyes. He glared down his flat nose at the more diminutive Ash, who split his attention between the dealer and a particular pistol he found suitable for his needs.

            Ash and the big man were alone in the shop, the noise of footfalls occasionally audible outside. A security camera mounted in one corner sat silent vigil as the dealer, apparently tiring of Ash’s dithering, spoke up.

            “What do you need?” his voice came out as a deep rumble.

            Ash paused, looking for a suitable response.

            “Information,” he said.

            “Then why are you eyeing that piece?” the Samoan motioned with his meaty paw, seeing through Ash’s unconvincing attempt at misdirection.

            “Because it interests me,” Ash admitted.

            “I don’t sell interest,” the man said, “but you can pay some if you want to borrow. If you like the gun you need to show some cash, then maybe we’ll make a deal.”

            Ash leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest.

            “Do I look like I just came from the desert?”

            “Yes,” the man said.

            “Well... that’s just PermaTan,” Ash lied.

            “Sure, and I’m just big boned,” the Samoan glowered.

            Ash realized he was a little rusty dealing with city people: the fixers, the fencers, the dealers. Too many water trades, not enough conversation with people that weren’t Russian. The ceiling fan above his head lazily spun, each revolution ticking off another second, reminding Ash that he didn’t have much time.

            “Cash is going to be hard to come by and I’m in a bit of a rush,” Ash admitted. “You’re right, though. I am from the desert, and I can offer my services if you’ve got a job that needs doing.”

            The big man rocked back on his heels and looked up towards the ceiling, a long low mumble coming from his pursed lips as he mulled over the offer.

            “It’s not every day I get a nomad in here looking for work,” the big man said. “Come to think of it, there is something I need done. My normal muscle is currently eating through a tube and this job is very time sensitive. It doesn’t hurt that people won’t recognize you.”

            Ash looked up at the man.

            “So what’s the job?”

            The Samoan opened a drawer and fished around inside of it, finally coming up with a piece of scrap polypaper, some chicken scratch scrawled upon it like a hieroglyph. He slid it across the cheap, tabletop of black plastic. Ash reached out cautiously and picked it up.

            “Go to that address. You’ll find a man at an apartment complex, probably hanging out in the back. Cybernetic leg, bad drug shakes,” the man said. “He’ll have more information for you. Maybe then we’ll have a little trust.”

            Ash thought for a moment.

            “How rough is this?” he asked.

            “Take the piece you’re interested in. Think of it as an advance,” the man said.

            He opened the cabinet and extracted a piece of stained wood and blued steel, a sleek number built with power and precision. It was an auto-revolver with all the trimmings: caseless ammunition, low bore-axis, six inch barrel, lightweight trigger job, fiber optic sights, eight-shot detachable cylinder, .357 Magnum. All the damage you wanted, none of the over penetration. Most people went for polymer guns with extended magazines and lighter calibers, but Ash was an excellent shot and put more faith in his ability to place heavy rounds on target. He knew that not everybody on the street was playing fair, so he wanted to walk quietly and carry a big stick. Ash nodded his head to an underarm holster rig hanging on the wall.

            “I can give you cash for that up front,” he said.

            The fixer took down the tanned leather harness and handed it to Ash. Ash unzipped his ballistic jacket and set it aside, then put on the holster, placing the gun under his left arm so that it tucked up against the side of his torso. Under his right arm was a pouch, inside of which he set three additional cylinders of ammunition. He put the jacket back on, the entire rig easily concealing itself underneath, the weight of the rig reassuring.

            The Samoan leaned over and put his face on level with Ash. His nostrils flared and Ash could smell tobacco and alcohol. Narrowing his dark eyes, the fixer searched past the nomad’s goggles for a time, trying to pierce through the ballistic lenses. Ash returned the stare, which was much easier for him. Finally, the big man straightened up.

            “Don’t fuck up,” he said simply.

            Ash walked out.

            Out of the alleys and back on the street, the night hit him like an elemental force. All around were swirling faces and forms, many melding flesh and metal, several crafted to look like animal totems or demigods. Glowing tattoos, color shifting eyes, clothing that seemed to flow and merge with the weather, the entire scene bathed in the neon colors of corporate advertisements. Overhead, thrust-vectoring aircraft, helicopters, and zeppelins drifted between the spaces the superscrapers left untouched, which were few and far between. New corporate freeways existed twenty stories in the air, allowing swift passage for those who could afford an automobile or who were occupying a stolen one. The sound of sirens echoed along the concrete valleys, while in dark corners lighters could be seen heating various narcotic concoctions. Down in the under city, Ash found himself missing the desert and hating what had happened here. He hated the crippled country, he hated what the government had become, he hated that people had laid down their will to fight even before the Long Night, and he hated that he was probably off to commit dirty work for some fixer he didn’t really know.

            But what choice did he have? The same anger and frustration he felt toward the entire situation was the same reason why he knew he had to go forward with his mission. The boy was going to die. Ash held no illusions about that. The poisoning was going to take his life, and even though medicine likely existed that could help him, Ash knew it wouldn’t be available to the lower class. As consumed as he was with his desire to immediately strike back, he was starting to realize that his blind rage would take time to blossom into revenge, and that his first goal should be to find out if there was any way to get hold of something for the child. If the youth was going to die on him, he would like to at least know his name. None of that changed Ash’s need for information and armament, though, so he would still go to the address and do what was needed, but only after a slight detour. So thinking, he turned off the market street and headed down an access path, following signage that featured large, colorful icons of geometric simplicity to direct the illiterate and inebriated. A couple hundred meters later, he was descending a musty staircase, at the bottom of which he found a metro station that seemed to be mostly functional.

            “Now for the easy part,” he said to the empty station.

            Ash walked over to the turnstile that blocked entry to the platform and pulled out the ID badge Goldilocks had provided for him when he picked up the truck for his original trip into Los Angeles. He took a breath and swiped the badge across the face of the turnstile. There was a momentary pause, then a click as the aluminum bars retracted, allowing him to step through. Not more than ten steps later, a public use computer terminal flared to life. Ash veered over to it and smiled. A chat dialogue was open.

            <<Anonymous: Good job.

            Goldilocks: Nice thinking. I was afraid you went off to do something stupid.

            Anonymous: I am, but first I need to shift our priorities a little.

            Goldilocks: I have a lead on the desert operations.

            Anonymous: Good, but make this priority one: I need treatment for polonium poisoning.

            Goldilocks: ???

            Anonymous: It’s the boy. That’s why we can’t treat him. He’s dying. The rounds that glanced off him must                   have been infused with it.

            Goldilocks: Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? We’ve been losing time.

            Anonymous: I got rage distraction. Right now I have to go work off the piece I picked up. I want you to find out             if and how we can treat the boy. How can I contact you?

            Goldilocks: Got any solid state on you?

            Anonymous: I have some space on my goggles.

            Goldilocks: I’m going to give you a program you can run that should open this chat application on any public               terminal. Don’t overuse it; I can’t promise anything security-wise on your end.>>

            Ash uncoiled a thin cable from the side of his goggles and plugged it into a port on the front of the terminal, the cheap public access computer not offering a wireless link.

            <<Anonymous: Send it.

            Goldilocks: Done. Don’t fuck up.

            Anonymous: Why is that the theme tonight?

            Goldilocks has left the chat.>>

            The screen returned to its pitch black, idle state. Ash retracted the cable and turned to head back into the night.

            As he ascended the staircase, his goggles automatically changed filters and cut the glare that hit him from the multiple light sources above him. Dark crevices were made known to him and spotlights were tempered in their ferocity and heat. As he walked, he pulled the crumpled sheet of polypaper from the breast pocket of his ballistic jacket. The rough lettering on the plastic infused sheet was difficult to make out, but Ash had a vague idea of where he was being directed. He headed down the market street, closed to automobiles, and reached the end where traffic rejoined the fray. Turning the corner, he continued down the sidewalk towards the outskirts of town. He should have brought the truck with him, but he hadn’t been sure of the legal status of the vehicle and wanted to save it for emergencies. He continued down the sidewalk, hoping for a taxi to come along, but realized that they were all busy catering to prostitution clients and drinking establishments. Ash was also wondering about Vasily and wished he was around to help. Vasily was always cynical, recalcitrant, and exactly what Ash needed to keep his head on straight instead of running off on a damned fool’s errand. He would have to reach him as soon as this first order of business was done. Goldilocks could probably get hold of him in some way.

            Lost in thought, it wasn’t long before Ash reached several housing projects, the dilapidated structures fading off into the distance on both sides of the road. He knew from the visible building numbers, the ones that weren’t defaced, that he was approaching the address he had been sent to. After a bit more leg work, he finally stood before the building in question. Giving the structure a once over, he saw that what once was a shade of blue had dulled to an ashen gray from the various toxic particles drifting through the air. The majority of windows were broken or boarded up, while a section of wall on the third floor had collapsed entirely. A group of young men ran through the middle of the complex, jumping the far fence and then disappearing as a police drone came soaring down from above, its spotlight seeking out targets for the 12 gauge automatic shotgun mounted to the chassis. Ash stayed low while the drone moved on, flitting from location to location in search of prey. Suddenly, the drone perked up, the black and white painted mini-copter darting away, proceeded after the suspects. As it did so, Ash circled around the back of the building in a crouch, avoiding being seen. There, sitting on a porch, his cybernetic leg detached and leaning up against the wall, was an older black man with teeth that reminded Ash of some of the zombie films of last century. His eyes were bloodshot, with charcoal centers that sucked up the surrounding illumination, reflecting none of it back. His fingernails were like powdered chalk, his lips swollen and bruised. As he sat, his remaining leg twitched badly, jumping and skipping of its own accord, as if a live current ran through it at all times. Ash walked up to him boldly, arms crossed over his chest, the fingers of his right hand caressing the warm, carved wooden grip of his revolver. The addict looked up at him.

            “The fuck do you want?” the man asked gruffly.

            Ash presented the address slip by way of answer. The man looked it over, his eyes narrowing to nearly invisible slits.

            “Pacific sent you?” He shook his head. “Must be desperate. Shit. You drive?”

            Ash didn’t want to tip his hand. Nomads, if anything, could drive. From RVs to ATVs, V8 muscle cars, motorcycles and semi-trucks; if you spent time as a nomad you learned to drive them all, and drive them well, through various terrains and weather conditions. Ash was particularly fond of high horsepower coupes with grunty motors and fat tires, his mouth already watering at the prospect of handling such a beast.

            “Follow me,” the man said.

            He put on his leg and stood up, then hobbled around the building with Ash in tow, arriving at a section of covered parking. The majority of spots had been converted into ramshackle housing, using corrugated tin siding, sheets, tarps, and cardboard as building material. A few open bays had burned out wrecks sitting inside of them, the ground beneath charred black, oil still embedded in the cracks on the surface. Ash then saw that at the very end of the lot was an actual car. Even more amazing was the fact that it was a gasoline burning model, making it special even though it was a rattle can black, four door Dodge Charger. It rode on aftermarket wheels and fat sticky tires, the wheel offset being well chosen with the edges of the tires coming flush with the flared fenders. The car sat lower than factory, the result of a more aggressive suspension. Taking in the exterior, Ash saw that the body itself was not especially appealing. The front grille was removed and the rear spoiler was missing, leaving empty screw holes. A variety of dents and dings lined the sides of the vehicle and a large crack ran vertically down the passenger side of the windshield. The man he was following unlocked the doors manually and got in the passenger seat while Ash climbed into the driver’s position. Inside, he saw that the carpet and trim pieces were all removed, and that the back seat had been changed into nothing more than a flat cargo tray. A roll bar loomed over and behind his head, with additional struts forming a triangulated cage in the back. The driver’s seat was an aftermarket bucket, low and reclined. Someone had swapped out the factory automatic transmission and managed to mate up a stock car-sourced four speed gearbox. The man handed Ash the keys.

            “I’m Terry,” he said.

            “Ash.”

            “Ash, I’m going to tell you where to drive, understand?” Terry said.

            “Yes,” Ash said, realizing the conversation was not going to be deep.

            “Good. Then let’s go,” the man instructed.

            Ash pressed in the clutch pedal, placed the key in the ignition, and turned it over. Instantly the big eight-cylinder block fired to life, the torque of its awakening rocking the car from side to side. Ash gave a few exploratory blips of the throttle, and the motor revved happily, eager to please. It was like owning a snarling, growling, pet grizzly bear. Despite what might lay ahead, Ash could enjoy this part. He put the clutch in and shifted into first gear. Bringing up the revs, he eased his left foot out, found where the clutch engaged, and got the car rolling. He fed the car more throttle and felt a satisfying push as he was compacted into his seat by the torque that accelerated the vehicle. He grabbed second gear, chirped the tires, and they were off.

            Ash followed the directions given by Terry, driving them out of the burned projects and traversing via surface streets onto the freeway. Freeway was a bit of a misnomer; the primary routes were all corporate owned and drivers were to have either a wireless pass or pay at the toll booth in order to avoid incarceration by the controlling company. Ash didn’t know what type of arrangement Terry had, but he got to the onramp and plunged straight ahead, aiming for the small plastic gates that were blocking the entrance to freeway proper. Ash kept his foot steady on the gas, the motor pulling them along in fourth gear, a loping growl sounding in the air. The gates loomed closer, and even though they wouldn’t damage the car, smashing through them would draw more attention than Ash wanted to contend with. He glanced at Terry, who was casually reclined in his chair. Based on the other man’s lackadaisical attitude, Ash forged ahead. As the black sedan slotted through the vertical barriers that divided each lane, the plastic arms popped open, allowing the car to clear them at the last possible moment. The Charger blasted through the opening and finished ascending the ramp, still letting out its extended howl of anger. As they reached the top, Ash shoved in the clutch, blipped the throttle, slotted into third gear, and dropped the hammer hard. The Dodge surged ahead, a monster roar coming from underneath the hood while the tires laid down twin black lines at 50 miles per hour.

            The neck snapping acceleration didn’t let up until the needle of the tachometer was ticking off 7,000 revolutions per minute, the pistons inside a frenzied blur of suck, squish, bang, blow. Ash slammed into fourth gear, the tires chirped again, and his neck was again thrown back as the clutch connected the disparate parts of the drivetrain. They flew down the highway, easily overtaking other vehicles, most of which were operating in automatic mode and driving on the local inductive electric power transmission grid. Next to Ash and his Charger, they were tiny, boring boxes perched precariously on skinny tires, silently marching down the roadway while mulling mechanical suicide. The big Dodge practically blew them off to the side of the road, so vicious was its passage. After several miles of this savage pace, Terry tapped Ash on the shoulder and pointed at the sign that signaled the next exit, not bothering to fight the engine and exhaust noise. Under Ash’s controlled hand, the black beast got off the freeway, the trailing red glow of the taillights an angry parting shot to those brave enough to follow.


Chapter Nine


            Captain Hank Alder of the Los Angeles Police Department was nearly done with his long, exhausting day. He had come in from doing field work and was at his desk, hoping to breeze through his reports, when an email appeared in his inbox. Alder glanced at the file size and winced. This was probably going to derail his hopes of finishing out his day. The sender was a contact in the United States Armed Forces who occasionally coordinated operations with state and city police forces. Coordinated was a generous term, Alder felt. It was more like forced labor, with edicts handed down from federal agencies that trampled over departmental rights and ejected dissidents foolish enough to disagree. The subject line read, “PRIORITY: LOCATE AND DETAIN NOMAD FUGITIVE.” Alder opened the file. Inside, he found information on a person of interest that was believed to be operating in the southwest. Male, Caucasian, nomad, age estimated at late-20s, heavily armed and dangerous. Alder scanned over the information then found the reason for the size of the email: a video file was embedded at the end of the message. Captain Alder watched the video and saw it was a feed apparently taken from a drone. Towards the end of the video, before the drone was blown to pieces, the feed froze on the image of the nomad in question. Alder took a capture of the screen, cropped it down to just the subject in question, and ran it through a database search that would check through images of suspects, prisoners, witnesses, and even security camera feeds from throughout the city. Even with advanced algorithms, the progress of the search ticked by painfully, minutes of the day bleeding away.

            Alder poured himself a cup of coffee and kept an eye on the search, manipulating and updating a few of the parameters to try and help it along. Frustratingly, the main databases had come up with nothing, meaning the man had either never been arrested in Los Angeles, or else had a very expensive lawyer. Captain Alder kept trying, running through more permutations, but still coming up empty handed. He was just about to give up on his errand, figuring the goggles the man wore obscured too much of the face for a match, when a single result miraculously came up. It was an image from a security camera at a checkpoint on the south end of the city, and it was very recent. Disturbingly recent. Realizing that this nomad was in the city right now, Captain Alder gave up on going home and got up from his desk, the urge to shut this guy down as soon as possible putting a fire in his gut.

            He exited his meager office and ambled down the hall, the temperature from the climate control fluctuating wildly in the government funded building. A few doors down from his was a frosted glass window marked “DISPATCH” in a militant font. He opened the door without ceremony, not bothering to announce himself. The interior was perfectly square, about ten meters on each side and with a huge holodisplay occupying the far wall, which served to illuminate the room without any assistance from the sparse overhead lighting. Aside from the primary screen, there was plenty of light radiating from the glowing workstations arranged in neat rows. Each row stepped down slightly lower than the one before it, progressing towards the back of the room as a giant staircase. A ramp cutting straight down the middle allowed access to all the terminal levels.

            The scene appeared no different than any number of digital sweatshops found throughout the corporate world, with row upon row of terminals staffed by diligent workers. Things diverged drastically, however, when one looked closely at the occupants of the room. Instead of a collection of Chinese coders or Indian technical agents, each workstation was staffed by a rather attractive, though oddly nondescript brunette with Asiatic features. Each one was nearly identical to the next, the result of utilizing a singular gene donor in their creation. Body sculpting and cybernetic implants helped to maximize their work efficiency. At the head of the room, next to the door, a similar brunette was seated at a raised terminal, overlooking the scene. She turned to Alder and greeted him in a thin, metallic voice, like a cheap cellphone speaker jacked up to maximum volume.

            “Captain Alder. How may we assist you?”

            “Slow night?” Alder asked.

            “How may we assist you?” the woman repeated.

            Alder hated these damn things. He sighed and handed over a memory stick.

            “I need a citywide APB out on this subject. He needs to be located and detained. If he is found before I reach him, make sure he is kept safe until I can get there and deal with him personally,” Alder explained.

            Dainty hands with perfectly manicured fingernails received the stick before placing it into a multi-card reader at the woman’s side. Instantly, the room exploded into activity. Information on the suspect appeared at the first row of terminals and the women attending to each station moved their hands over their keyboards. Then, it seemed as if their hands spontaneously exploded. Their palms separated into segmented components, and each finger divided into a multitude of fine metal manipulators. These cybernetic limbs then went supersonic over their respective keyboards, inputting keystrokes at rates far exceeding the capabilities of hands bound of flesh. Alder swore he could hear the tiny sonic booms that must have been filling up the room.

            The police department certainly couldn’t afford full cyborgs and direct interfaces, but clone/drone secretaries with cybernetic arms rushing over manual keyboards were more than capable of smashing through information, relaying and coordinating with field officers to rapidly weave a web around a designated target, and then closing the snare before the suspect even realized he was in one. But seeing those hands explode into thousands of moving parts always made Alder feel rather unsettled, and this was coming from a person who had cracked people’s heads open with hollow point rounds at point blank range. He was no stranger to violence, but the cybernetics were different to him, though he couldn’t quite place his finger on why. He had known people that voluntarily or even enthusiastically had cybernetic limbs or organs implanted, but these women before him were mostly vat grown drones or brain dead patients who could once again have a purpose in society. In the past, there were even a few officers who had signed off on their organ donor cards and then died from a brain injury, only to inadvertently find themselves back on the force. Alder doubted any of them expected for all their organs to be used for donation at the same time, but here they sat.

            Looking up at the large screen on the wall, a collection of city maps flashed across in a blur. Locations were marked, movements were displayed. The noose was beginning to tighten. Finally, after a crescendo of flashing images, the screen became startlingly still. Centered on the screen was a beacon marking an exit on the I-5 that dumped people into a burned out section of town caught in the grips of drug violence, far from the corporate regulated areas and littered with prostitutes and mental patients. Next to the map was an image taken at the exit of the freeway where cars were tolled wirelessly based on the distance traveled. The digital photograph displayed two individuals in a black car. Captain Alder didn’t recognize the man in the passenger seat, but the man driving was clearly the one they were looking for, goggles and all. Alder turned to the head desk in the room.

            “Please forward this information to all officers in the area. Let them know I’m coming out myself to ensure this is taken care of without any hiccups,” he said.

            “Certainly, captain.”

            Alder shivered as he left the room. He couldn’t look her in the eye.


            At the same time across the city, Goldilocks was doing some searching of her own. She wished all her assignments were simple research, for they gave her the most time digging in the web, making interesting new discoveries. She had located several archaic medical journals detailing studies on treatment of polonium poisoning, all of which seemed to state that the only potential treatment was a chelation agent, a term she was unfamiliar with. Still, Goldilocks found that the most common type of agent available was dimercaptosuccinic acid, though apparently something called dimercaprol might be an even better treatment for polonium poisoning. Even that was a long shot, though. Dimercaprol was originally used far, far back in World War II to safeguard against the myriad number of fearful chemical weapons that could be used against the global populations, but such an attack never came. The antidote was used to treat other toxic metal diseases, but had otherwise been replaced by more modern agents. That meant finding it would be difficult, and she wasn’t exactly blessed with an excess of time. Goldilocks checked with several of her regular fixers, and of those that even knew what she was talking about, none of them knew where to find what she needed. That left her cracking open pharmacy and hospital databases to try and track down a dosage, but she came back empty handed. Frustrated, Goldilocks knew the only option left was to start sneaking into corporate medical databases, and that would bring larger risks into the equation. The whole situation was wrong and entirely opposite to the way Goldilocks normally operated. She was supposed to be patient, calm, and willing to wait for the right moment to strike. This situation had her ready to brute force attack corporate database passwords in the hopes of coming up lucky. It was the hacker equivalent of a thug’s smash and grab, and it was an excellent way for her to get caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

            Concentrating, she forced herself to slow down and decided she had to think this through carefully or risk landing her and her friend in a world of hurt. She didn’t have time to slip into the network of every major medical corporation. Instead, she would have to research the biggest names and determine which two or three would most likely have a ready supply of something like dimercaprol available. After several hours of work, she had narrowed her options down to two possibilities: the Nipponese firm Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals, and the American company Medical Cybernetic Devices, Inc., or MCD. Sumitomo had offices in the States, but distribution and inventory was mostly in Asia and parts of Europe. Goldilocks hoped that she found something at MCD, or she would be breaking into airline ticketing systems to go to Tokyo. She started her work on MCD by pulling up the company website and clicking through to the link labeled “Careers,” where she found a job opening listed in LA. Looking the job over, she then retrieved a falsified résumé that matched the listed requirements. After that, she fired off an application for the position, then was forced to wait. In that time, she continued to probe the company site and feel around for ways inside. Though she had no luck there, she was able to find a page which listed a large number of vendors that worked with MCD, Inc., and knew from experience that many times a vendor was a source of access to a bigger company. One of the vendors, Logistical Medicine, was listed as a supplier that handled the locating and transportation of rare and sensitive medical treatments and devices.

            Goldilocks had spent some time digging around Logistical Medicine when she finally came across a portal designed to give travelling employees secure access to their email from any remote point. Depending on the security measures undertaken, once you were at a log on screen it was only a matter of time before you were able to break in. She browsed through some news clippings and found that one of the press agents, a Samantha Brokaw, often left her email address as a method of contact at the end of the articles she wrote to promote her company. Goldilocks used this email address as the log in, and then ran the password agent. Crossing her fingers that there wasn’t a limit to the number of failed attempts, she let the application run. Because it was a slow, lumbering, time consuming process, she would continue on through other avenues and check back regularly to see if she had access.

            A few hours later, her other access attempts had failed, but when she viewed the results of the email process she smiled to herself. She was in. She scanned over the contents of the inbox, copying names, email and physical addresses, phone numbers, and other useful pieces of information. She made sure to keep new emails marked as unread, so as not to tip off Ms. Brokaw that someone else may have been in her inbox. Goldilocks found several emails being exchanged with a Mr. Tom Schubert, whose title was “Global Accounts Manager.” Apparently one of his department functions was to track medical shipments to vendors, ensuring they arrived on time and intact. Goldilocks copied the email signature and then composed an imaginary email exchange between Brokaw and Schubert, in which Brokaw initially asks Schubert about information on dimercaprol and its use in charity to help impoverished slave children in South America who had metal poisonings of various flavors due to working in the mines of unscrupulous industrialists. Fictional Schubert then replied, advising her of the scarcity of the drug, how it was not available for sale, and providing instructions for her to contact MCD, Inc., since as the end user of the medicine they would be more familiar with its availability. Having composed this missive, she switched over to the false email she had set up as an applicant to MCD and was pleasantly surprised to find a reply to her inquiry asking her when would be a good time to set up an interview. The person who had contacted her was a mid-level personnel agent, the kind that would have no real power and no real intelligence, but who would lord over day to day workers with their control of something as trivial as vacation hours. Goldilocks took the fake Brokaw/Schubert email exchange she had written and amended it with a statement to the personnel agent, explaining that she had misplaced her MCD, Inc., contact list and if the personnel agent could please forward this to the appropriate party she would be most grateful. With her web intricately woven, Goldilocks now sat back and waited, her mind wandering to the nomad and the trouble he must have already caused.


Chapter Ten


            Ash and Terry came to a stop in a demolished residential neighborhood, positioning the car in an alley strewn with debris. The houses on either side were loose collections of walls and broken dreams, though relatively fresh human garbage testified that they were still functioning as abodes. It seemed as if a war had been fought in this part of town, mostly because there had been. When Los Angeles, New York, and other coastal urban concentrations had decided that their resources couldn’t support wave after wave of nomad immigrants fleeing from starvation and death in middle America, they first sequestered the refugees in neighborhoods such as this one, converting them into ad hoc ghettos while politicians met to decide what could be done to rid their fair cities of such plagues. As time passed, the quarantined individuals became restless and nervous, and rightfully so. It was never officially revealed, but most people understood that after surrounding the ghettos with SWAT teams and National Guard, effectively laying siege to them, the state and city government waited for the first act of aggression from the nomads, using it as a trigger to justify swarming in and exterminating those desperate for food, water, and medicine. It wasn’t long in coming, and the military response was swift and brutal. The thrashed remains of houses and convenience stores were the only headstones for the multitudes of bodies left to rot in the globally warmed sunlight.

            After exiting the car, Ash took out his revolver, opening the cylinder to verify it was loaded with hollow point ammunition. Satisfied, he closed the cylinder and slid the firearm back into the holster under his left arm. Terry led the way, and after several minutes of picking through blasted apart yards and collapsed structures, Ash realized Terry had made him park far back from their target in order to remain hidden, the car being noisy and out of place in the eerie, nearly medieval neighborhood. As they continued deeper into the suburb, Ash started to worry about their ability to get back to the car quickly if things went south. Worse, he still didn’t have a clue as to what they were doing, Terry electing to keep him in the dark. The unknown job fueled his nervousness and made him crazy for answers. Terry was only a few feet ahead of him, moving in a low crouch and coming up to the corner of a brick building, his focus directed towards what was ahead. Ash slid forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

            “You want to tell me what we’re doing?” Ash asked.

            “No,” Terry said curtly.

            Ash nodded his head slowly, then without warning he grabbed Terry by the shoulder, spun him around and pinned him up against the wall, driving his elbow into the older man’s throat. Simultaneously, he drew his revolver and planted it against the dark skinned forehead. Ash cleared his throat.

            “You want to tell me what we’re doing?” Ash asked again.

            “What the fuck, man?!” Terry hissed, squirming in Ash’s grip.

            “I don’t feel like getting shot apart, and you’re dragging us deep into a dangerous area, away from our escape vehicle. You need to explain what’s happening right quick,” Ash said.

            “Or what? You shoot me and draw a bunch of attention? Not to mention what Pacific would do to you,” Terry said.

            “It’s too bad you caught a round when things went south, but accidents do happen,” Ash said.

            “You wouldn’t, you goggled bastard,” Terry growled.

            Ash cocked the hammer of the revolver back into single action, the trigger set for an ultralight pull.

            “I’m a nomad. I’ve left plenty of bodies to rot in the desert because they didn’t stick with the pack. Try me.”

            “Alright, alright. Just be cool,” Terry said, his hands open and arms raised.

            Ash held him for a few moments, then de-cocked the hammer and stepped back.

            Terry took a deep breath. “Look, this job, it’s about my daughter, man.”

            Ash tilted his head to the side, listening.

            “I’m an addict, but it’s, it’s not what you think,” Terry continued. “This lost limb is because of a disease I have. Some mutated form of diabetes. At least, that’s what they tell me at the free clinic. The treatment I take is black market. It’s not like I have health insurance, so I always have to come up with hard cash to pay, or else this shit spreads. The more it spreads, the harder it is to take care of my daughter.”

            He exhaled roughly, seeming to deflate in front of Ash before drawing breath and continuing.

            “So I came up short last time. Not my fault. They jacked the price up without warning. When I couldn’t pay, they took my daughter,” he said. “Pacific’s an old friend. He found out where they were holding her.”

            Ash lowered his gun. “And if you get her, won’t they just come straight for you?”

            “What choice do I have?” Terry said, straightening up. “She’s my daughter, man. Even you should realize it’s the right thing to do.”

            With those words, Ash thought back to the child who was slowly dying on the surgical steel table.

            “Damn it,” Ash shook his head. “Alright, I’m in. Lead the way.”

            Terry looked up at Ash and nodded, then turned to move on. As Terry moved off, Ash whispered quietly to himself.

            “It’s the right thing to do.”


            Captain Alder ducked his head as he jogged towards the waiting police helicopter, which sat hulking on the helipad, its rotor whipping lazily through the air as it powered up. The high performance patrol unit was an aggressive, angular design, which combined traditional helicopter mechanics with vectored thrust for increased velocity and lift. With a turbine mounted on each side of the frame, the excess exhaust not used to power the rotor was routed to four directional nozzles, one located at each corner of the fuselage, allowing for increased maneuverability and speed. Underneath the chin of the helicopter was a sinister machine gun, while below each turbine there sprouted a tiny winglet, an air to ground missile attached to the end of each side.

            Alder got up next to the black aircraft, climbed into the hatch, and slammed it shut behind him, locking it down. The copilot glanced back and Alder flashed a thumbs up, signaling his readiness. Settling back into his bucket seat, the copilot tapped the pilot twice on the shoulder to signal takeoff, as the pilot was strapped in and already tied to the airframe through his cybernetics. The pilot brought up the collective and increased the speed of the turbines, bringing the vehicle off the ground and starting a rapid climb. As they began to clear dizzyingly high building tops, he leaned the cyclic stick forward and angled the thrusters, sending the helicopter forwards and upwards, riding a smoldering hot exhaust trail on the way towards their destination. After strapping himself into a jump seat at the back, Alder put on his radio headset. He queued up the microphone and switched over to the helicopter pilot’s channel.

            “ETA?” Alder asked.

            “Just under ten minutes, captain,” the pilot answered.

            “Thank you.”

            Alder switched channels to the officers on the ground, who had already mobilized.

            “This is Captain Alder. What’s the status of our ground teams?”

            “Captain, we have two units that were already on patrol in the area,” an officer replied, “with six more units approaching from the freeway. They should be exiting in about five minutes.”

            “Get a damn perimeter set up and hold position. Once we get on station we will find him from the air and then surround him,” Alder instructed.

            “Wilco,” the officer responded.

            Alder closed the channel and drew his pistol, then did a press check, ensuring a round was in the chamber. He verified the weapon was on safe, then slid it back into its thigh holster. Out of habit, he then did a quick touch check on each piece of equipment he was wearing, a reflex from the time he spent working hostage rescue for SWAT, back when he was younger and healthier, not that he had slowed much over the years. Satisfied with his gear, he donned his helmet and cinched down the chin strap. He wanted to get this job over with as quickly as possible and with no losses of men or material. Leaning back in his jump seat, he closed his eyes and began making plans for how he would detain the nomad. A kill order would have been so much easier. Trying to arrest someone that the military was after, who was most likely armed, and who presented a multitude of unknown variables, made for messy, dangerous operations. They had no history of dealing with this individual, no way to know what he was capable of, what type of psych profile he had, or even what hidden weapons or cybernetics he might possess. For all they knew the man could be a walking tank wrapped in squishy, human flesh. The thought made Alder shiver, as he recalled some of the highly experimental government cyborgs that had been employed before the Long Night. Men that could kill with a glance and not even break stride, so fast were their internal weapons.

            Roughly ten minutes later, after soaring over the glittering gemstone of the corporate sector, the helicopter slowed to a more reasonable speed and began to lose altitude, approaching a darker and more rubble strewn portion of the city. The copilot got up from his seat and slipped through a passage that allowed him access to the cabin where Alder was seated. As the pilot began to put the aircraft into a wide orbit around the neighborhood where the suspect was supposedly located, the copilot opened a locker directly behind the cockpit. Inside was a tablet, about twelve inches by eight inches, which he handed to Captain Alder. It was an encrypted wireless device that was used to coordinate police operations from a macro perspective, essentially a detuned military C3 system in use by various police and security forces.

            Turning on the device, Alder was prompted with a login screen. To prevent sensitive police information from falling into the wrong hands, the system required a two stage log in. First Alder input his username and password. Thereafter he reached into a pocket on his plate carrier and extracted a small electromagnetic key, which he pressed against a reader built into the base of the wireless unit. The lock flashed a green LED and the system booted up, giving him full access. The thin laser display was dominated by a map which used GPS data to show his location over the city. Beyond that, each police unit also had a GPS transmitter which relayed information to the C3 unit, displaying each squad car or officer on foot as a color coded blip on the map. It looked as if nearly everyone was in position, forming a wide ring around the destroyed neighborhood where the nomad had exited the highway. Running across the bottom of the screen were a series of icons. Alder tapped the one labeled “AUX Cam.” The map screen vanished and in its place came an image that streamed from the set of cameras mounted on the nose of the helothruster, allowing him to see what the pilot and copilot were looking at up in the cockpit. He tapped another icon marked FLIR. Immediately the dark optical camera image was replaced by the gray and white world of infrared, allowing him to see very clearly the objects on the ground below. The helothruster got lower still, running without lights, searching for its prey. The hunt was on.


            At the same time Alder lifted off, Ash and Terry came to a stop in a drainage ditch in the heart of the blasted out neighborhood. It looked like they were approaching the remains of a high school, the large concrete structure surrounded by parking on two sides, sports fields at the back, and a large oval running track along the area where the two men were crouched. Ash pulled one of the cylinder reloads of his revolver out of its pouch under his right arm. He extracted a single .357 magnum round and looked at the printing on the back of the cartridge. Stamped in the back was the caliber and manufacturer, which Ash aimed his goggles at. The microprocessors inside read the head stamping and loaded the ballistics information into memory. He put the cylinder away and reached his hand up to the side of his goggles. Operating by reflex, he rested the fingertips of his right hand on a small directional pad recessed on the side housing. He used the pad to flip through a series of menus, specifying to his goggles that his pistol had a six inch barrel. Backing out of that menu, he then selected a reticle, in this case a one minute of angle (MOA) dot with a five MOA ring around it, and imposed it over his right eye. Switching the system over to “Threat Mode,” he tested it by sighting down his pistol and swinging it from object to object, noting as the rangefinder automatically moved the reticle up or down to compensate for bullet drop depending on the distance to the target. Satisfied, he switched the system back off and turned to Terry.

            “Let me guess: you don’t have a plan?” Ash asked.

            “You place an equal amount of faith in God?” Terry said.

            “What God?”

            “I see. Look, these thugs know me. They know I’m going to come running and begging, because that’s all I can do. They’ll probably rough me up, show me my daughter, then tell me to come back when I have the money, except they’ll demand even more,” Terry explained.

            “Textbook thugs,” Ash said.

            “Right. So, why don’t we keep this simple? They’re going to expect me to come in the front door hollering for my baby girl. If I don’t do that, they’ll think something’s up. So I’ll give them that, and I’ll make such a noise they’ll all have to come looking. While I do that, you come around the back and free my girl. If I’m lucky they’ll toss me out without ever going to get her,” Terry finished.

            “If you aren’t lucky?” Ash raised his eyebrows.
            “Then they find her missing and kill me,” Terry confessed.

            “No choice?” Ash asked.

            “No choice.”

            The man’s eyes were somber, sincere. Darkened orbs that were already accepting of death, as long as it meant freedom for his child. Ash could see his commitment, and he respected the man’s sense of duty.

            “I’ll make sure to get her out,” Ash promised.

            Terry nodded wordlessly, then turned and started a slow march towards the building. Ash continued further down the ditch, working his way parallel to the structure and staying well out of sight. When he thought he had covered enough distance, he came up out of the ditch and made his way across the parking lot, using a row of overgrown hedges as cover. He risked a peek over the top and saw Terry had arrived at the back of what appeared to be the gymnasium. Terry banged loudly on the door and shouted, though it was too far for Ash to make out exactly what he was saying. The door swung up, orange light from inside casting a box around the dark skinned man, trapping him. Silhouettes of angry hands reached out, grabbed his clothes, and yanked him inside. Terry kept shouting the entire time, selling it for all it was worth. Ash picked up the pace and headed towards the building, wondering where they kept the girl. As he drew nearer, he came across some signage that gave him a clue. Painted on a low wall was the stenciled word “SHOWERS.” Ash followed the wall and came to a metal door with the same label, its green paint flecked and peeling. Through the door, Ash heard continued shouting coming from inside, the noise muffled and distorted. He very quietly cracked the door, thankful it was unlocked, and tried to ease it open during one of Terry’s crescendos. The door seemed to be open just wide enough for him to fit, though he still exhaled and compressed his body, feeling like a cockroach slipping between the cracks. He was now in the back room and behind a low row of lockers. Next to the door were several crumpled packs of cigarettes, leading him to believe whoever was watching the captive had unlocked this door to go smoke without permission. Working his way along the edge of the gray, steel cases, he reached the end and peaked around the corner. What he saw was made his heart collapse.

            Terry’s daughter was lashed to a chair, her chin sunken down to her chest. Her clothes and hair were disheveled, with bruised fingerprints on her neck and shoulders. Her right eye was blackened and swollen, her lips cracked and caked in blood. A dried stream of saliva trailed off her chin down to her chest. Despite the abuse, she was still there and she was still breathing, though it seemed to come in irregular spurts. Seated near her, his back to Ash, was a man in gang colors, a bandana in a garish tartan pattern made with superluminous strands wrapped about his head, his jacket and pants done in all black. Though he was leaning back in his chair, each shout from Terry seemed to make him sit up further and take greater notice. Ash waited, each second a painstaking exercise in patience. He struggled to breathe calmly, a tingling working its way up his legs as he remained crouched around the corner. Then Ash heard Terry’s voice grow louder still, moving down the hall towards him, intermixed with other angry voices.

            “Where is she?! Where is she?!”

            “You want to die, asshole? Stop right there or I will put a bullet in your skull!”

            “You can’t take her!”

            “We already have her, and if you keep this up you ain’t gonna see her.”

            “Fuck you!”

            Ash heard struggling in the hallway and several hard thumps. Then he heard a voice call out.

            “Smokey, get the fuck out here. This old man’s lost his fucking mind.”

            Smokey, the apparent identity of the man guarding Terry’s daughter, rose from his chair and walked out to the hallway. As soon as he disappeared from sight, Ash moved low along the ground, reaching the chair in only a few short moments. He pulled out his survival knife from his boot and began to cut her free while the shouting continued, Terry putting on a show so loud and convincing it even made Ash want to shut him up.


            Goldilocks had started to become concerned. She hoped to have heard from the nomad while she sat waiting on the results of the corporate ruse she had deployed, but instead she found herself idle and agitated, something she was not used to. Normally a proactive person, she hated being at the mercy of others, especially others that may wind up dead at any minute. Finally at her wit’s end, she found herself starting to actively search for the nomad, wishing the desert rat had just gotten a damn phone for easy communication. She decided she should start at the extremely bad end and work her way in, so she first gained access to the county coroner’s office, searching for any records that were created since the time she had last talked to the nameless nomad. A few leads came up with similar builds and ages, but after reviewing the grisly photographic evidence, she determined none of them were of the man she was looking for, except for one possible match who had his face removed by an industrial press, which she rightly assumed the nomad had not been near. So, supposedly he wasn’t dead. So far, so good.

            Next she started checking through arrest records, and that’s when things started to get interesting. Not because she found out he had been arrested, but because she noticed a flare up in police activity through both central dispatch and several of the patrol cars. They all seemed to be focused on a particular part of town: a destroyed neighborhood now known to be filled with numerous ne’er-do-wells. She mentally navigated over to a new browser and brought up a police scanning channel. While sound signals started streaming in directly to her brain, bypassing her ears, she swapped screens and once again snuck in the back door she had left cracked open in the system used to coordinate and control police drones. A hijack wasn’t necessary this time, as many drones were already on station over the site in question, having been legitimately diverted there to support whatever operation was going down. She saw the world through the eyes of the aluminum and carbon fiber robot that was orbiting some kind of low concrete building in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Somewhat distracted by the visual, she still was listening in on the police scanner, noting words such as “suspect,” “dangerous,” “detain,” and “nomad.” Pulling up information from the drone system, she saw that about ten units were being used to scan this entire area, looking for specific individuals. As the drone passed over human sized thermal signatures, the IR camera would zoom in, check for a possible match, and then in strong cases flag the coordinates via GPS for police on the ground to check in person.

            At that point, a police helicopter filled her view, dropping down from the heavens and taking its place in the rotation of orbiting aircraft. It seemed like the boss had arrived, here to see that the operation went smoothly. Goldilocks looked over the aircraft and was disturbed, seeing that the helicopter was a directional thrust model, carrying with it a kind of belt fed machinegun in the chin, as well as missiles on the wing stubs. Much less than a tool for seeking out suspects, it was more of an attack helicopter designed to operate with lethal efficiency. Just when Goldilocks figured things couldn’t get any worse, the drone camera she was looking through came in low over the concrete building it was interested in and zoomed in on a crouched figure that was carefully opening a door and gingerly slipping inside. Just before entering the building completely, the figure looked back and the face was captured on camera. If Goldilocks was in control of her body at that moment, she would have put her head in her hands. The man in question was wearing distinct goggles. They had found her nomad for her.


            Inside, Ash had just finished cutting Terry’s daughter free. Loosed from her bonds, she collapsed into his arms like an infant, seemingly more cartilage than bone. It looked like she had been tied up for some time and that her limbs had all fallen asleep. She also appeared severely dehydrated, her tongue swollen in her mouth. It must have been hard enough for these thugs to get water for themselves, much less to keep some to give to a hostage. Ash gently patted her on the cheek, trying to wake her from her stupor. Her eyelids fluttered and then slowly opened, her brown eyes glazed, shifting in and out of focus. Ash could feel the shallow breaths she was taking. Her mouth moved, but nothing more than a quiet rasping came out. Ash took the opportunity to reassure her.

            “I’m here with your father. We’re getting you out of this place,” he whispered.

            She nodded in assent.

            “Can you stand?” Ash asked.

            In response, she pushed off from his body. Quite slowly, and with Ash holding her as she wobbled the whole way, she reached the top. Though she was battered and beaten, she still stood with strong purpose, her inner fire still burning deep. As Ash started to escort her to the back door, more shouting came from the hall.

            “That’s it, Terry! You ain’t never gonna see your daughter. I’m putting you down!”

            Ash had to pull her back as the sound of a pistol slide being racked echoed through the concrete block structure. He pulled his autorevolver from its holster and made ready to storm in and save Terry. In preparation, he leaned Terry’s daughter up against the wall next to the back door.

            “What’s your name?” Ash asked.

            “Angeline,” she whispered.

            “Angeline, I’m Ash. This is the exit. Go quietly and stay low. There’s a ditch across the field, use it to slip away. I’m going to help your father,” he said.

            “No, let me go with you,” she struggled to speak.

            Ash shook his head. In response, she reached out to grab hold of him, knowing she couldn’t move forward quickly, trying to detain him. He easily slipped back, her slender fingertips just brushing his coat.

            “Go. Now,” he ordered.

            Without waiting to see her comply, he turned away and moved to the hall door, hugging the wall and hoping he still had time. There would be no subtlety this time. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out and filled the door frame with his body, casting his shadow down the dim hallway. He saw it fall on four gangsters who had Terry on his knees. One stood behind him with a pistol in his hand, preparing to press it to Terry’s head.

            “Yo, what the f—”

            Ash shot the one carrying the pistol first. The round caught him in the chest, just below his throat and slightly to the left, slamming through the subclavical vein and ripping it from the jugular as the round deformed and the head mushroomed out, blowing out the back of his torso and splattering the floor behind him with a fan of blood, tissue, and bone fragments. The blowback of the round exiting the muzzle forced the cylinder to rotate, locking the next chamber into position and cocking the hammer for the next shot. Before the first man hit the ground, Ash was aiming at the man called Smokey who was to the left of Terry. Along with his other living friend, Smokey was starting to draw a weapon of his own. On the first shot he had taken, Ash wasn’t conscious of the boom coming from his barrel and reverberating off the bare walls. This time, despite his hearing protection, he felt like his ears had collapsed inside his head as the pistol barked again, the barrel ejecting a second piece of supersonic lead which crossed the distance at 1,220 feet each second. The slug connected with Smokey’s left arm at the top of the bicep and smashed through the humerus, turned, and exited out the side of the same arm. Smokey’s face was a mask of pure pain as his mutilated arm went limp. His right hand dropped the autoloader he was pulling from his track pants, reaching across to clutch at his terrible wound. Ash didn’t have time to keep watching, as the last target now had his pistol out from under his shirt and was bringing it to bear. Ash rotated his torso, keeping his hands in the firing position, each degree of movement crawling by at an agonizingly slow pace.

            Ash always though he was pretty quick in combat, right then he felt as if he was swimming through quick setting concrete. His front sight had cleared the right arm of the target, but still he kept turning, the reticle in his goggles now touching the very edge of the target’s torso. Ash dimly recognized that the other man’s pistol was now trained on him. Still, the burning red dot moved, until Ash finally couldn’t take it, his blood crashing, echoing in his skull, his lungs feeling like there was no air in the room. His finger slowly applied pressure to the trigger, the pad of his fingertip resting squarely in the middle. The finger of the man aiming at him was roughly jammed through the trigger guard, and he smashed the trigger to the back as quickly as he could. A blossom of fire emerged from the tip of the thug’s gun barrel and a searing hot lance slid past Ash’s torso on his right side, just below his armpit. Ash’s gun fired. The round pierced the gangster’s heart and exploded it, killing him instantly, his grimy, dirty body crumpling into the ground, a fountain of crimson trailing him to the cold concrete that reached up to embrace his corpse.

            Time snapped back to normal and seconds stopped acting like hours. Smokey lay on the ground groaning, his arm a disfigured mess. The ground was slick with blood and tissue, and every new sound seemed distant and hazy. Terry, whom Ash admitted he had completely forgotten, came up from the ground and grabbed Smokey’s gun. Shouting could be heard down the hall, coming from what Ash assumed was the main gymnasium. It seemed the people in the passage were only a fraction of the gang’s muscle. The rest of the men now hurried to see what all the commotion was. Terry came to his full height and moved towards Ash, the two heading towards the back room where Angeline waited. Ash’s eyes went wide as roughly twenty armed men poured into the hallway, a typhoon of thuggery and violence. The men at the front raised a wall of weapons, the muzzles a constellation of black holes, each one ready to snuff out a life. Ash and Terry had nowhere to go, being perfectly bracketed and exposed. And then, the room exploded.


            Everything was suddenly happening very quickly. Goldilocks was trying to get access to the radio frequency being used by the officers that were coming after the nomad, while simultaneously watching what was occurring through the drone’s camera. She saw the ground vehicles draw up to the building Ash had gone into and officers emerge with weapons drawn. Two of them approached the main entrance, while one circled around the back. The other six moved into position along the side of the building, stacking up on some invisible marker. One of them toggled his radio, his mouth silently moving, probably in conversation with the helicopter from where orders seemed to be originating. Oddly, the six officers returned to the front of the building, then got low and shielded their faces. The helicopter moved into position perpendicular to the building, hovering over the field. Goldilocks could only watch as a missile suddenly went streaming off the right helicopter wing stub, the warhead accelerating much more quickly than she would have imagined. It struck the building dead center, though it seemed the fuse was set to detonate just before impact, blasting a man-sized hole in the side wall. Instantly, the six officers were moving, sprinting over to the newly created entry hole, taking advantage of what must have been utter chaos inside.


             Ash’s hearing slowly filtered back in, turning from muffled confusion to slightly more delineated sounds. He realized he was laying on his back, covered in concrete fragments and dust. The hallway had gone dark, the air full of floating debris and fine grime. His head was pounding incessantly and his vision kept blurring out of focus, taking conscious effort to correct. He knew he was bleeding from several wounds, but upon feeling them he found them to be superficial cuts, none requiring much more than stitches and glue. Realizing the need to get up and get moving, he rolled onto his stomach and tried to gather his knees up under his torso. Though they argued with him awhile, he finally was able to position himself so he could push up off the ground and reach a hunched over altitude. He saw Terry further down the hall, towards the locker room, laying on his side. Blood was streaming down the side of his head and a jagged piece of concrete could be seen on the ground next to him, the point of it covered in red fluid. After collecting and holstering his pistol, Ash made his way over to him, dropping to his knees once he got there, not entirely by choice. He rolled Terry onto his back, but before he could check on his vitals he heard shouting from behind him. Several high powered flashlights were pushing in from the outside, utilizing the hole that until recently had not existed. That would explain the explosion, then, and the pressure wave that had knocked everyone out. Judging by the voices, movement, and equipment, the LAPD had arrived. The gang members at the other end of the hall had apparently recuperated as well, for as the first officer cleared the blast hole, several men fired on him. The officer dropped to a knee and rolled back out of the hallway.

            Ash didn’t wait to see how this was going to play out, realizing that his good fortune of the gang firing on the police would only last for a few moments. He gathered Terry up in a fireman’s carry and proceeded down the hall. Staggering drunkenly into the locker room, he lay Terry down on the ground in the better light as Angeline came to his side.

            “Is he...” her words choked her.

            “Not yet,” Ash said, his speech slow.

            Ash checked Terry’s pulse, which was dull and off tempo. Terry groaned and his eyes opened, revealing dilated pupils. Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, Terry spoke in a low, halting tone.

            “My leg.”

            Ash started to move to Terry’s organic leg, but Terry grabbed his wrist to stop him.

            “No. Other one. Hidden compartment. Back of the calf. Medicine. Stims,” Terry managed to squeeze out the words.

            Ash looked to Angeline. Moving quickly, she detached the leg from its socket, flipped it over, and activated a hidden latch which opened a recessed compartment. Inside was a single emergency treatment kit. Extracting a syringe, Angeline quickly administered it to her father, then reattached the cybernetic limb. Terry seemed to calm almost instantly. Ash doubted the medicine was already in effect, but just the knowledge of it being in his system probably helped. Ash and Angeline helped Terry to stand, taking up positions on either side of him. Based on the volume, the gunfight in the hall was intensifying, several stray rounds finding their way into the locker room and smashing into the rear block wall.

            “Time to go,” Ash said.

            The three of them burst out the back door and right into the waiting arms of the officer left to guard the escape. Ash had been in front, and he and the policeman were now tangled together, falling to the ground in a rather ungraceful heap, limbs heading in all directions. Angeline was able to keep Terry up on his feet, but couldn’t help Ash, the weight of the wounded older man taking all her strength. The toppled officer reacted more quickly than the shell shocked nomad, coming up into a crouch. The officer also revealed that he was no rookie, not moving to draw his pistol, knowing full well he couldn’t get to his sidearm in time, given the space between the two combatants. Instead, he launched himself at Ash, who was still only in a seated position, his legs uselessly extended straight out in front of him.

            Pushing off the ground hard, the cop’s shoulder slammed into Ash’s torso. Though the target had been the nomad’s solar plexus, the shoulder struck a little high and to the side. Even so, the force knocked Ash flat on his back, stunning him. It was all he could do to keep from striking the back of his head on the ground, which would have ended the fight immediately. Keeping his weight on Ash’s torso to prevent him from moving, the officer drove his right knee into Ash’s sternum, pinning him to the floor. With the officer’s body over him, Ash couldn’t bring his right arm across to draw his pistol, nor could his left arm raise up high enough to reach, the angle being impossible. He saw the officer’s right hand go to his holster and start to draw. As the black handgun started to emerge from its polymer case, a blur of dull metal flashed through the air and crashed into the officer’s right forearm, causing him to cry out and roll off to Ash’s right. The nomad wondered if any of the cop’s bones were broken as he rolled to the left and came up on his feet, still woozy. Standing next to him was Terry, balanced on one leg, his cybernetic limb held in his hands at the ankle as an impromptu baseball bat, Angeline behind him holding onto his shirt to stabilize him

            “Nice party trick,” Ash gasped.

            “Thanks. It makes a pretty good bong, too.”

            Angeline quickly helped her father reattach the limb as Ash unholstered his autorevolver and walked over to the officer, not knowing what he could do to incapacitate him that also wasn’t possibly fatal. Before he could reach him, though, the cop toggled the throat microphone attached to his radio.

            “At the back! He’s at the—”

            His cries were cut off as Ash pistol whipped him upside the head, the butt of the gun making a sharp crack as it struck the officer’s left temple, leaving him twitching on the ground. The three escapees could hear that the gunfire inside was dying down and becoming more sporadic. Alerted to the activity at the rear of the building, the police would mop up the gangbangers and quickly be on their way. It was time to escape the school grounds. Ash and Angeline once again teamed up, helping the wounded Terry get walking. However, they hadn’t gone more than a few meters before the sky was filled with a screeching, thumping cacophony of such violence that it seemed to mark the arrival of the four horsemen. Looking up through his goggles, Ash’s mouth went dry as a fully armed police attack helicopter rapidly bled off altitude, its chin mounted gun tracking their movements. Ash’s party came to a halt, the sense of futility pushing their feet into the ground, preventing them from moving. Then, for the second time that night, and two times more than he felt necessary, Ash was caught in an explosion.