Hardwired (23 page)

Pony Express
can see the intruder on infrared and night cameras both, the images overlapping, red and chrome white, a hard-edged shadow silhouetted against the juke’s brilliance.

It’s Warren, Cowboy sees, moving slowly and cautiously with a carbine in his hand. Cowboy had triggered some of his electronics simply by driving here, and Warren’s come to investigate. He’s still alive, Cowboy thinks. Maybe things aren’t so bad.

Cowboy triggers a belly light, and now a red revolving strobe rockets along the walls, keeping time to Smokey Dacus’s drums. Warren pauses while he looks along the row of deltas, then moves toward
Pony Express
, keeping in the shadow of its wings. Cowboy turns on his Santistevan nerve boosters and leans his head out of the cockpit. “I figured they might be watching your house. ”

Warren looks up from beneath the brim of his cap. “Hi, C’boy.” He lowers the carbine and grins with stumpy teeth. “Some people have been here looking for you.”

“What did they have in mind?”

“They didn’t say. Though in my personal opinion, I think most of them wanted to kill you.” He puts the carbine on the ground and climbs the wheeled ladder to the cockpit. “Arkady came in person. He’s offering twenty-two hundred common shares of Tempel for your body.”

Amusement trickles into Cowboy’s mind. “I wonder how he came by that figure?”

“One of Arkady’s people came by just last week, just to snoop around. Chapel. You know, the lizardbrain. Delivered the warning again, made the offer for the reward again. What you’d expect. I told him I was trying to stay out of it. Maybe it satisfied him.”

Cowboy snaps off the sensors and the belly light. “Chapel,” he says. “Okay. Who else does Arkady have working for him?”

“It’s mostly a battle between thirdmen at the moment. The independent panzerboys are trying to stay clear. As far as the thirdmen go, Pancho and the Sandman have joined Arkady. Georgi and Saavedra got assassinated right at the start. Faceman, Haystack, and Dmitri the Arrow are fighting Arkady right now, but they’re not doing so good. Most of their panzerboys are loyal, at least right now. And the Dodger’s boys are hopping mad.”

Cowboy feels a shiver of tension running along his arms at the mention of the Dodger’s name. He takes a careful breath. “How is he?” he asks.

Warren looks at him. “He’ll be all right. He’s at his mountain place now, with Flash Force guards and electronics. Arkady won’t get near him, not unless he decides to come out.”

Cowboy feels the tension dissipate. “I’ve got to see him.”

“It can be arranged.”

Cowboy pulls off his helmet and reluctantly unfaces from the delta’s systems. Red monitors fade from his mind’s eye.

Warren watches him with a frown. “Not all my visits were from Arkady’s people,” he says. “Jimi Gutierrez came by a couple times. He seemed to think I’d know where to find you, acted like he didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t. He says he wants to join you, and asked me to pass the message on.”

“Okay. It’s passed.”

Warren seems amused. “Jimi’s okay. Pretty crazed, though.”

Cowboy looks at Warren carefully, feeling the touch of anticipation on his neck. “Warren,” he says, “I’ve got to know if you’re willing to help me in this.”

Warren looks at the floor. “I got a family,” he says.

Cowboy feels sadness settling in his spine. He frowns at the bank of instruments in front of him. “That’s okay. I understand.”

Warren glares at him, his eyes glittering on either side of his beaky nose. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Just meant it was a consideration.” His mouth tightens to an angry line. “Jutz said you called to say the Orbitals were involved.”

“Tempel is, anyway. Arkady’s fronting for them.”

Warren makes a contemptuous noise at the back of his throat. “So that’s where he got his stock offer. Cheap bastard.”

A laugh rises from Cowboy’s heart. He grins at Warren and raises a fist, bashing the canopy frame in triumph. “You don’t want to miss this,” he says. “We can take care of the family, Warren. Hide them till it’s over.”

Warren’s mouth twists with amusement. “How many years do you figure that’s gonna be, C’boy?”

“Not long. Not with the Orbitals involved. They’ve got too many resources, and they’ll win if the war goes on too long.”

“Yep. That’s how it looks. You got a way to keep it short?”

Cowboy looks up at Warren. “I need a couple things right away. I’ve got to get a crystal jockey to free up some of my funds. Then a talk with the Dodger. And you, Warren.” He watches as the older man rubs his stubble. “I want you to stay out of it for the moment. Let Chapel and Arkady think you’re keeping clear. But I’d like you up here, working on the deltas. Making sure
Pony Express
is ready to ride.”

Cowboy sees the shock running through Warren’s face. “The deltas?” Warren asks. “Are you going to fly the Line again?”

“Maybe.” Cowboy settles back in his seat, feeling the delta as a matte-black extension of his body, ready to soar. “Arkady likes to supervise his runs from a plane,” he says. “Flying out over Colorado and Wyoming.”

He sees the comprehension grow in Warren’s eyes. It dawns slow and pretty as a sunrise.

WAREHOUSE FIRE IN ORLANDO

SEVERAL LIVES BELIEVED LOST

Police Deny Reports of Firefight

Marc Mahomed whispers from concealed speakers, his voice a subaudible message amid the subtle cries and rhythms of hob. Maurice looks expressionlessly at the photographs on the wall, as absorbed as if they were a vidscreen. His metal eyes turn toward Sarah as she enters, and a slight smile crosses his face. “Rum and lime?” he asks.

Sarah nods, feeling the cool conditioned air of the bar chilling the sweat on her brow.

She smiles gratefully at the Blue Silk, its familiarity easing the tension in her.

She looks around the bar, seeing only a pair of customers she’s seen before, two sad-eyed Russian women who, to judge by the names that punctuate their conversation–– Lenin, Stukalin, Bunin, Trotsky–– are engaged in the usual discussion of where the Soviet Union went wrong in its mission to civilize the rest of the world. The old argument, Sarah knows, being fought by the Russian exiles all over the world. She ignores it and takes a frosted glass from Maurice.

“Have one yourself. On me,” she says.

Maurice nods and reaches for the White Horse with the slow, precise grace of a mime defining an unseen object. “Haven’t seen you lately, miss,” he says.

Sarah sips her drink. “I’ve been out of town. Business. And I’ve been trying to stay away from some people.”

“That Orbital gentleman?”

She gives a shrug that means yes. “Don’t like those people. They don’t seem to know when to let a person alone.”

“They look for you here. That Cunningham fella. I tell him to get the hell out.”

Sarah gives him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Maurice.”

“Every so often I see someone who might work for him, but I can’t be sure.” He shakes his head. “Haven’t seen anyone funny in weeks, Sarah. I think Cunningham’s gone home.”

“I hope so. But I doubt it.”

One of the Russians raises a hand for blue vodka, and Maurice pours it into frosted glasses and delivers it to their table. Sarah feels the rum gently warm her throat. The door opens behind her with a blast of September heat and she casts a swift glance over her shoulder, seeing a wheelchair holding a middle-aged white man with metal eyes, his legs a pair of padded stumps shorn off above the knee. One of Maurice’s old service friends, someone she’s seen before. Sarah thinks his name is James. She stares into her glass, hearing them exchange soft-voiced greetings.

Maurice makes James a drink and puts it on his table, refusing payment over his protests.

Sarah has the impression they’ve been through this before. Marc Mahomed chants a lament for missed chances, the loss of love, of meaning. James maneuvers his wheelchair toward the rest rooms in the back. Maurice returns to the bar, to his endless, unblinking stare at the photos on the wall, his drink untasted in his hand. Sarah finishes her White Horse. She signals for another.

“Maurice,” she says, “you live upstairs here, right?”

“That’s correct, miss.”

“Do you have a spare room?”

The featureless Zeiss eyes rise to meet hers. “Why do you ask?”

“I’d like a place in Tampa,” she says. “Where Cunningham and those friends of his won’t be able to find me. I’ll pay you rent, Maurice. In advance.”

Maurice looks at Sarah evenly, while she wonders if she’s pressed his buttons, if the mention of the Orbitals will swing it. “No dealing in my place,” he says. “Nothing against the law, no people I don’t know. Don’t want no trouble. ”

“No trouble, Maurice. I only want a place to sleep.”

He puts her drink on the bar. “Okay, then,” he says. “One week. Then we’ll see.”

Sarah feels relief easing her limbs. She raises the drink and gives Maurice a faint smile. “Thank you, Maurice. You’re a friend.”

The rest-room door opens and James threads his chair between the tables to his place. Maurice looks at him meditatively. “A good man, once, the captain. Crazy for years, ’cause he can’t fly.”

Sarah looks at James over her shoulder, feeling the sadness that is the touch of memory.

“Yeah,” she says. “I know someone like that.”

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT IN CASPER

MAYOR ANDREIEVICH ESCAPES WITH MINOR INJURIES

Claims, “I have no enemies in the state of Wyoming.”

Police Baffled.

The Dodger’s house occupies a minor mountain on the east face of the Sangre de Cristos, looking down on the eastern plains for a hundred miles, and not coincidentally sitting in a nice military position, with a view of everything that happens below and a near-unassailable ridge behind. Strangers have never been welcome in this part of the world, and any watchers would not go unmarked by the locals.

Cowboy rides the face south, the Heckler & Koch resting in his lap as he pushes the Packard to its limits on the high road, where the sky seems close enough to touch. Dawn graces the long eastern plains. Pine rises tall around him, young trees planted after a wholesale harvest a few years before, their growth boosted courtesy of Orbital chemicals.

The Packard glides along the interface between mind and eye, sky and earth, dawn and the last cool touch of twilight. Cowboy’s eyes flicker to the windows of the rare cars and trucks, looking for familiar faces, surprised looks, cunning glances. Nothing but the faces of families heading to early mass in town.

The Dodger’s gate features a pair of guards standing in camouflaged military armor, wearing bulky night vision and infra scanners over their eyes that give the same advantages as Cowboy’s implants. With his infrared sight Cowboy thinks he can see a pair of figures in a camouflaged trench nearby, with what looks from its profile to be a shoulder-fired rocket. Cowboy moves the machine pistol from his lap to the seat next to him.

He parks in front of the gate and turns off the turbine. In the quiet of the dawn, the electric whine of his descending window seems loud. Cowboy looks into the protruding scanners of the approaching man.

“I’d like to see the Dodger. Tell him it’s his old friend Tom Mix, from the Portales Rodeo.”

“I’ll need that piece first.”

“Just take care of it. I like the feel of the thing.” He hands out the Heckler & Koch, and the man tucks it under his elbow. Cowboy looks at the Flash Force patch over the man’s pocket, marking him as one of the best and most incorruptible mercenaries in the business. The merc reports Cowboy’s message through a throat mic and presses his helmet over his left ear to hear the answer. He looks at Cowboy and shakes his head. “You must be an Angel of the Lord, man,” he says. “I’m even supposed to give your gun back.”

“Thank you kindly.”

The turbine whimpers into life as the guard signals for the gate to rise. The Packard spits gravel, climbing the switchback ruts. There are some patrols he sees on infrared, but he’s not supposed to notice them, so he doesn’t. When he parks in front of the long log-walled house, he leaves the machine pistol in the front seat and tosses his wig on top of it.

Jutz steps out of the door with a grin turned ruddy by the sunrise, then yowls and jumps forward, wrapping her arms and legs around Cowboy as he stands with a slow smile on the cindered path. “Bastard,” she says, ruffling his short fair hair. “We missed the hell out of you.” She peers at him with her lined blue eyes. “You been fed right? You look okay.”

“I’m just fine. Had to walk across most of the country, but I had a bodyguard the whole time.”

She drops to the ground and hooks a thumb in her concho belt. Cowboy puts an arm around her as they walk to the door. “How’s the Dodger?” Cowboy asks.

“Getting better. He’s asleep right now, so let’s get you some siege posole and talk trash till he gets up.” They pass under the scanning lintel and no red lights blink, no hard tracking-laser voices command them to halt. This is the Dodger’s vacation place, not his working ranch: the place has the look of a building that is taking a lot more traffic than it’s used to.

There’s a twenty-gallon pot of posole on the stove in the kitchen, available at any time for any of the Dodger’s people who are living on an irregular schedule, and a pile of foil-wrapped tortillas sitting in the warming oven. Cowboy collects some of each and plugs some quarters into the jukebox he’d bought Jutz and the Dodger for Christmas a couple years ago. The juke’s bubble tubes cycle in time to western lightjack as Jutz brings him up to date.

Cowboy mops up the last of the posole with his tortilla. It sounds as if the troops are being worn away. The thirdmen need money to fight the war and so they’re shipping more product, and the northeasterners are stockpiling. The price is dropping in the Northeast at the same time as it’s rising in the West due to increased demand. Panzers are making the runs so frequently they’re beginning to show signs of wear: breakdowns, decoy panzers missing runs because they’re sitting in police impoundment. One of the Dodger’s people had to sit with his broken, shot-up panzer in a barn in Missouri for six days before his machine could be fixed and his escape run set up.