CHAPTER 3
New Eden, Pangea, Mars
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 7. 06:41
“No!” I shout, as water fills the hole the girl’s body made. Behind me, Postule laughs as he tries to run, his prodigious belly bouncing. There’s no way to stop his escape. Vienne is still down, but I can’t worry about her now—the girl comes first.
I sprint to the platform edge. “Mimi,” I say. “Delay the transport.”
“Beat you to it.”
I rip off my boots. Then dive straight into the murk. Momentum carries me a few meters, but I know the weight of the shackles will drag the girl straight to the bottom of the cesspool. If I’m a lucky blighter, the bottom won’t be very far. I swim down, down, down.
No girl. No bottom. Nothing. I am not a lucky blighter.
How many meters to the bottom? Five? Ten? The early Mars cities like New Eden were built by slave labor with no consistent planning, so the sewer system could be open or closed. Shallow or as deep as a black hole.
“A little help here, Mimi.” I kick hard to propel myself deeper. “Where is the girl?”
“Indeterminable.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“Yes, you have told me that—”
“A thousand times.”
“Eight hundred forty-three times, to be precise. But who’s counting?”
“You are! Eight hundred forty-three times!”
“Well, someone has to remember these things.”
My lungs burn. I’ve been below the surface maybe thirty seconds now. Visibility’s zero. My only hope of saving the girl is to find the bottom fast.
“Vienne is trying to make contact,” Mimi says. “Would you like me to display her feed on your aural vid?”
“I’m busy!”
“I will take that as a no.”
I kick again, propelled by frustration. When I reach out for the next stroke, my fingers hit concrete and the thick layer of slime that covers it. The gunk burns my skin, even in the water. I blow the remaining air out of my lungs. Bubbles shoot past my face, and I immediately feel the sting of the absence of oxygen. A few more seconds of this, and I won’t even be able to save myself. Where is she?
“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “I am sensing an unusual frequency.”
“What kind of—”
Then I hear it. A low, deep hum. To the right. My head snaps toward the noise. My hands comb through the slime, reaching, recoiling, searching and finding nothing, nothing, nothing. Golden spots dance before my eyes. Sound crackles in my ears. In a matter of seconds, the world is going to turn black, and my life is going to end in a massive tub of recycled excrement—it’s not what Regulators would call a beautiful death.
Wait! My hand brushes something solid. The chain!
Reflexively, I grab a handful of links. Pull until the shackles are firmly in my grasp. The girl is thin, and underwater, her weight is minimal. In the murk, I can see nothing. Her limbs feel limp. I hope she’s only unconscious.
“Mimi,” I say, “scan her vitals.”
“No heartbeat or respiration,” Mimi replies. “She has expired.”
Not on my watch. I slip my head between her arms. Her body drapes over my back like a human cape. The extra weight pushes us to the mucky floor, where I bend at the knees and launch upward.
Air! We break the surface, and I suck in a long breath of stinky-sweet, canned Martian air. Then flip to a side-stroke, holding the girl’s head above the surface. There! A couple meters away—a ladder within reach. I grab a rung. Her weight increases as I pull her from the water. When I finally half crawl onto the platform, I lay her gently onto the concrete.
Her face is caked in crap, and her lips have a scary blue tinge. Greenish liquid pools under her body. Her black hair is matted to her face. I push it back and notice that hers is not a child’s face. The girl is older—maybe two years older—than her mother claimed. Which means she’s of age, not a kid. I’ve been lied to. Why?
“Mimi,” I say, still short on breath, “scan for vitals.”
“None detected,” she replies after a few seconds.
“Don’t even think of dying now, girl.” I wipe her face clean. Clear her airway. Begin to resuscitate. The first chest compressions push only a jigger of water out of her lungs, and I switch to mouth-to-mouth. Her skin is cold. Lifeless. The only breath in her lungs is mine.
“Mimi?”
“Nothing yet, cowboy.”
“Am I doing this right?” I ask.
“According to the available data, yes.”
“Come on. Breathe!” I switch to CPR and count off the compressions. My shoulders ache, and my forearms burn. But I’m not going to stop. “Give me something. A pulse, a blip. Something!”
“It’s been two minutes,” Mimi says after my arms are numb from effort and I’m almost hyperventilating. “I still have not detected any vital signs.”
“I am not. Giving up.” The girl’s skin is colder than ever. I count off chest compressions and scan the perimeter. Postule is long gone. So is the ransom. The whole job is fragged. I’ve failed this girl and my davos. Even my father.
“Mimi,” I ask reluctantly because I don’t want to hear the truth—CPR isn’t going to work. “Anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Chief,” Vienne says, coming up behind me. “May I assist?” She kneels to check the girl’s pulse.
“Save your breath,” I say, knowing we’re defeated. “She’s sucked in too much liquid.”
“How much is too much?”
“A few ounces.”
“That’s not enough to kill her.” Vienne pulls off her helmet. Runs a hand through her blond hair. “Something’s not right, chief. Her color is wrong for a drowning, and her mouth smells metallic. She’s been drugged.”
“Drugged?” I say aloud. Then say, “Mimi?”
“The sensors in your symbiarmor aren’t capable of medical diagnosis.” She adds with a sniff, “I’m not a medibot.”
“There’s no way to tell,” I say to Vienne. “Let’s give her a dose of epinephrine to kick-start her heart.” I unzip a pouch on my belt. I press the tube syringe against the girl’s chest. Fire a button. “Five, four, three—”
“Heewack!” the girl shouts. Her eyes fly open, and she swings with both shackled hands, a punch that connects with my chin.
I land on my butt. Try to scramble to my feet, but the girl is on me too quickly. She straddles my back and swings a thin forearm across my neck. It’s obvious she intends to crush my trachea.
“Geroff meh,” I gasp, my face reddening. “I hepping…you.”
The girl’s answer is to squeeze tighter. Her technique is textbook. Straight out of battle school training. This is no little society girl—she’s a soldier. Her mother has got a lot of explaining to do.
Vienne draws her armalite from its holster. “We’re the rescue party, Miss Bramimonde. That Regulator is my chief, and he just risked his life to save yours.”
She grunts. Keeps squeezing. My mouth opens like a fish that’s jumped from its holding tank. “Hep…nee.”
Vienne puts the barrel to the girl’s head. “This gun is loaded with explosive bullets that leave big, nasty, infectious holes, not little pinpricks like a needle cannon. Stand down, soldier.”
Something clicks. “Oh,” the girl says. After untangling herself from my neck, she stands. Salutes me. “Regulator Odori-Ebi reporting for duty.”
Then her knees buckle, and her eyes roll back into her head. When she pitches forward, I catch her in the crook of arm.
“Excellent grab, chief,” Vienne says as I lay the girl down on the platform once again.
I’d like to think the catch is due to my prodigious strength, but it’s probably because she hasn’t eaten much during her weeks of captivity. “I notice you weren’t in any hurry to pull her off me.”
“You know the adage—what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
Gingerly I touch my neck, where a bruise is already rising. “Funny, I don’t feel stronger.”
“That’s because,” Vienne says, patting my shoulder, her touch causing me to twitch spontaneously, “she wasn’t that close to killing you.”
I carry a second epi syringe to the boy and then ask Mimi to call in the transport. “Would you happen to have a fix on the fat man?”
“Postule’s signature is no longer within range.”
I’m not surprised. I kneel down over the boy, who has wispy black hair and a pixie face turned bluish by the pharmies. How the mighty have fallen, I think. At least we’ve been able to salvage something from the job. We’ll take the boy and Ebi home to their mother, collect our fee, and finally get something to eat.
How old is he? An age-five? An age-six if he’s petite like his sister. An age-six would be old enough to be conscripted into the CorpCom military. But this is a child of privilege. His fate will take him Offworld to a private school on the Rings, where he’ll train to become management. The same fate would have awaited me. If I hadn’t been trained from the day I was born to become the lord and sovereign of Mars.
“Wake up, kid,” I say, and push the button on the syringe. “Destiny is waiting for you.”