Connor Rix Chronicles 1: Rules of Force (14 page)

"We're not
the same as him, Big. Whenever there is a big technological breakthrough,
someone, somewhere will abuse it. That doesn't mean the breakthrough itself is
bad. What's happening now is too important — we can't let it all be
derailed because some mob boss wants to control it all by himself, or even
because some government wants the monopoly on Modifications. For once in the
history of the human race we aren't at the complete mercy of nature. We have
the chance to wipe out a whole sorry list of human frailties. Last century they
used technology to defeat polio, smallpox and a hundred other common diseases
that used to cripple mankind. Now we're finding new ways to overcome weaknesses
and engineer
much
better lives. We can
control our own destiny in ways that earlier generations could never have
imagined. All I'm asking is the freedom to act; guys like Cunha, or organizations
like the ASA, want to control the process from beginning to end, passing out
whatever crumbs they see fit.
I'm not going to let that happen."

The slightest
hint of a smile passed across Big Fella's face. "Well, I guess it's coming
clearer now. You act like some old-time private investigator bringing in
superhumans gone bad, but this is kind of a crusade for you, ain't it?"

"Call it
what you want."

"So how
does Caroline fit into that fine speech you just made?"

"Oh, now
she's
a true freak of nature."

Big Fella let
loose a booming laugh.

"But
honestly, Big, I'm not sure of the proper way to transport an eight-foot,
bio-engineered rattlesnake. Any ideas?"

"Oh, let's
definitely ask the women."

17

Vinicius Cunha
jogged down the steps of the small jet and strode across the tarmac to the
waiting car. He opened the door to the rear seat, then stood for a minute
before entering, scanning his surroundings, looking out beyond the airport to
the mesquite and cedar trees beyond the fence.

Texas. I am
ready to be done with this place.

 
They had landed at the Uvalde airport,
west of New San Antonio, which they had found to be the easiest path of entry
for all his men. They had let it be known they were wealthy hunters, come to
shoot the exotic game at some of the local ranches.

He smiled grimly
at the thought as he slid into the back of the car.

Yes, Texans
like hunters. And indeed, we will be hunting. Well, there will be shooting
anyway.

He sat in the car
while his men unloaded his bags and some of the more conventional weapons, and
placed them in the trunk. He had not brought much, however. He intended to
settle this matter and return to his home in Brazil as quickly as possible.

He was confident
he had brought the right men for the task. There was Eurico, who had been his
"green" man during the Open Sky raid, Marcelo, who had been darkened
to black on that same raid, and one of his Fightin' Mad red men. The others
were lower-level Modifieds, but he had judged them sufficient.

He stretched out
across the entire back seat and closed his eyes, already thinking about what he
would do to his opponents, and how he would celebrate back home.

****

Marie sat
brooding.

She dreaded what
was coming next, but there was no avoiding it. She stared into the mirror, eyes
dull. She hadn't moved in nearly ten minutes. She could hear the others
downstairs, busy with preparations for the coming task.

Slowly,
deliberately, she reached for her E-Thing. She forced herself to compose the
letter, each word agony. Her hands trembled as her fingers clumsily tapped out
the words.

She stopped once
to wipe tears from her eyes, and then paused another time when the discomfort
in her stomach became too much to bear. She stood and paced around the room to
calm her nerves. After a few minutes she returned to her letter and continued
working, word by painful word, until it was completed.

With a trembling
sigh she saved the letter and tossed the E-Thing into her pack.

****

The first of
Vinicius' men reported back shortly before dark. He found the man's report
infuriatingly unsatisfactory. And then the second man returned and reported the
same thing.

And then the
third.

It made no sense.
Nobody in New San Antonio had any idea who this Travis Burnet was. Nobody
admitted to buying anything from him, nobody recalled selling him anything, and
there were no tales of him putting down competitors in the way such things are
normally handled.

Except for me.
He chooses to start his business by personally insulting me. By stealing from
me. By inconveniencing me.

It was a shame he
could not locate the people who had sent out feelers to Vinicius' local
organization, the people from the gym. Surely they could be made to talk. But
they had disappeared, and he didn't have all week to deal with this. It all
needed to be handled immediately.

He barely
listened as his men drifted in and out, giving reports. One of them worked
solely on his E-Thing, trying to track down leads through the local net.

Tension ran
through his body. He needed —
needed
— to act. Vinicius hated inactivity. Hated waiting. It seemed sinful to
be idle when circumstances cried out for action. A predator should always be in
motion.

He stood up
abruptly, and the heads of all his men swiveled to look at him.

"We will now
let our enemies know that they are the prey, and they will never be safe
again," he said. "This gym — no, this whole block of buildings
— burn it all."

He watched as his
men scrambled to obey.

What a great
shame the gym is empty. The fire would make much more of a statement with a few
bodies mixed in the ashes.

But he smiled
anyway. It was action, and the chase was now beginning.

****

Marie watched,
from her vantage point on the roof of an old apartment building two blocks
away, as the growing flame licked the side of the structure that housed Empire
Gym, then leaped into the night sky. The orange glow cast shadows up and down
the street. A car that had been left in the parking lot of the gym suddenly
burst into flame, exploding shortly thereafter.

She had been
sitting, unmoving, back against the cold metal of a ventilation duct, stealth
fabrics pulled tightly about her. She could clearly see everything unfolding
below with the aid of the active goggles that had been part of the Open Sky
arsenal. She zoomed in on the figures at the perimeter of the light cast by the
fire.

She thumbed her
E-Thing to life, screen set to minimal glow. She held up the device, aimed it
at the flames, and shot a few second of video, which she relayed to Rix. She
then tapped in his access number. He responded instantly.
 

"It's just
as you sketched out, Connor," she said in a whisper. "They've been
using this place as a meeting area, coming and going for over an hour now. I
guess they finally ran out of patience."

"Looks that
way. I'll bet you can feel the flames from there."

"As a
matter of fact, I can."

"Any
problem with the next step?"

"No, I'm
heading out now. I'll update when I'm done."

She slipped the
E-Thing into her pocket, slowly stood up, and made her way to the edge of the
building opposite the gym. She had tied her rope to a pipe earlier, and now
tossed the coil over the side. She grabbed the rope and quickly rappelled down
the wall. A grim smile passed across her face as she realized that she would
never have had the strength or courage to do such a thing before meeting Rix.
Together they truly had vanquished the weaknesses she had felt. If nothing
else, for the rest of her life, she would no longer feel powerless, or
vulnerable. No soldier or agent would ever catch her unprepared, and no loved
one would ever be forcibly taken from her again. She felt strong and capable.

It made what had
to be done later feel even worse.

She dropped to
the ground and unshouldered the special tool she had brought with her. Another
of Open Sky's amazing toys, it looked like a rifle with an extremely long and
thin barrel — which it was, in a sense, although it fired no bullets.

She silently
made her way across the street and hid in some shrubs across the street from
the burning building. She could feel the waves of heat. Sirens wailed in the
distance.

Marie watched as
the men made their way to cars parked not far from the circle of light given
off by the flame. She reached up to the side of the goggles and pressed the
switch to sync the eyeset with the targeting laser. She watched Vinicius as he
walked back to one of the large cars, stopping to look one last time before
getting in, smiling.

After the other
men got in the car and closed the doors, she slid the barrel of the rifle
through the shrubs and centered the laser on the rear of the car. She slowly
squeezed the nub of an electrical switch that sent the projectile on its way.
There was no kickback, only a soft bark
indicating
the device had worked.

She triggered
the zoom on her goggles until she could see — just barely — the
thin, round membrane, the size of a nickel, that had attached itself to the
car. She pulled out her E-Thing and called up the commands that activated the
tracking device, and synced the signal throughout the team's communication
links. She called up Rix.

"Ok, the
pig is tagged."

"Excellent,
Marie. We can see his movements already."

"Will it
really allow you to break in on their communications and speak to them
directly?"

"That's
what Rohm tells me. They've thoroughly corrupted the E-Thing systems, and that
little tracker should amplify any signal from me. He'll hear me whether he
likes it or not."

"Shame we
won't have video to see his face."

"Yeah,
right. Ok, Marie, we'll see you back home later."

She hesitated
for a moment before speaking.

"I love you
Connor."

"Love you
too, babe."

She closed the
link. It was her last part in this operation. The others had acted like it was
a crucial step in the plan, and it was, she supposed, but she also knew they
wanted to keep her out of the worst of the fighting. Marie was Modified, sure,
but there are levels of Modification, and they all knew, not least herself,
that she was not quite rigged for a stand-up brawl with these vicious giants.

So it was all
over.

She sat unmoving
behind the hedge for a while, lost in thought. She looked up at the sky, and
watched the few stars that could pierce the city's lights. She sighed, and
awoke her E-Thing.

She hesitated
only a moment, then set up the letter she had composed earlier for a time
delayed delivery. Three hours should do, she decided.

She stood up
slowly and walked back to her car, shoulders shaking.

18

Rohm blinked the
Livescreen to life as soon as the message alert flashed across his vision. It
was the dedicated link to Rix.

An image of the
younger man's face resolved an apparent three feet in front of him. He looked
calm, but also eager somehow.

"Mister
Rix. What news?"

"We have
the man you're looking for within our sight, Mister Rohm."

He opened the
video Rix had sent in parallel, and saw Vinicius Cunha half in shadow, his face
lit by… fire?

"He is in
the Texas Republic?"

"Yes. We
baited him, he took it."

"What are
your plans?"

"Punching,
kicking, biting, then wrapping him up and sending him to you. Please have some,
ah, suitable transportation on standby in New SA."

"The tried
and true methods," Rohm said. "I see you are a man who respects the
classics." He let his eyes wander to call up other information from the
input center on his optics.

"Mr. Rix,
you don't have any of your people in Brazil, do you?"

Rohm almost
smiled at the surprised look on Connor Rix's face.

"No, the
team is all assembled here."

"Good.
Because I have something planned that may work as a distraction for you before
you commence with your, er, fisticuffs."

Rix was silent
for a moment. When he spoke it was apparent he was trying very hard to keep his
voice level. "You knew it was this guy all along, didn't you?"

"Not 'all
along,' but yes, I deduced Mr. Cunha was the man behind these troubles."

"And you
didn't think to share that information earlier?"

"I had
every confidence that you would be able to complete the task for which you were
hired. And well compensated."

Rohm very nearly
did laugh this time at the strangled expression on Rix's face. "I
see," he said at last. "Any other information you can share that
might smooth this operation along?"

"Yes. I am
about to deliver a very personal message to Mister Cunha, directly to Brazil. I
think even from so far away, this message will make itself known almost
instantly. A clever man such as yourself, Mister Rix, will no doubt find a way
to use this to his advantage."

Rix nodded, and
his image dissolved. Rohm immediately called up the screens that tracked and
controlled his prototype satellite, positioned in a perilously low orbit over
Brazil. As far as the world knew, it was like all his other satellites, using
lasers to zap small orbital debris, part of his fleet of devices cleaning the
accumulated trash from low-earth-orbit. And it did that, true enough, but this
one had also been equipped with a more powerful beam, one designed more for
drilling into an asteroid during mining operations than merely vaporizing
decades-old paint chips shed from earlier spacecraft. It also had the latest
imaging equipment for ground surveillance.

Rohm had not had
a specific mission in mind when he launched this unique satellite last year,
beyond supplementing his orbital clean-up fleet. But in a volatile world it
pays to have some hidden options. You just never know.

As the latest
images from the ground in Brazil flashed in front of him, he was relieved to
see the situation had not changed from the last round of surveillance. Cunha's
wife and children were still away from the compound. In fact, the entire
household seemed empty. No doubt Cunha had brought along with him most of his
underlings, and the family members were off doing whatever such families did
when the head thug was out conducting his thievery and extortions.

He fed a new
series of commands to the satellite, commands he had already prepared days
before. But he hesitated a moment before giving the final approval. Small,
nagging doubts had crept in on the edges of his mind, surprising him. Rohm had
thought all the decisions had been made to his satisfaction, all the
ramifications calculated. It was unlike him to second-guess his own
machinations.

His resolve
wavered for a minute.

And then his
anger started to build, which frustrated him even more. A man of his abilities
should be able to
control
his emotions,
harness his passions. It felt to him like a sickening display of human
weakness. It was shameful. His people had relied upon him for security, his
great friend Allen Venway had volunteered to help him when the trouble started,
and they were all
dead
. And now
he, with all his abilities, hesitated to do what was necessary to bring justice
to the victims.

No! I will
not falter. I will ride this out to the end. Whatever the cost. The people I've
lost deserve no less.

Rohm gave the
satellite the command he had carefully prepared.

And Vinicius
Cunha's home ceased to exist.

****

Mr. Blue parked
his car in the "stable" at the back of the property, and stepped out
of the vehicle. Vinicius owned no horses, but the stable was home to all manner
of exotic cars and motorcycles. He looked around at the collection of machines,
all curves and dramatic angles, gleaming under the soft lights.

The man does
enjoy his money, I'll give him that.

Mr. Blue's own
non-descript Ford looked like a taxicab situated among Cunha's expensive sports
cars. Mr. Blue could afford better, of course, but for most situations he
preferred a lower profile vehicle. Tonight, for instance. As he made the rounds
throughout the city checking on Cunha's local Modifications empire, he found
that the surprise that followed when he stepped out of his common car worked to
his advantage. So many people in their business had come to expect a big boss
arriving in a hulking black Mercedes or Audi. He broke the pattern, in this and
other small ways.

He touched the
switch to close the garage, and ducked underneath as the wood and metal door
began its lumbering descent.

He stepped out
onto the long, lighted path leading to Cunha's main house, where he was due to
conduct his final supervision of the organization for the night, and leave the
payments he had collected in Cunha's safe. He shifted the satchel from his
right hand to his left —

Searing
light.

Impossible
noise.

He was thrown
off his feet and tossed backward as if he were a discarded piece of paper in a
typhoon. He rolled up against the side of the barn, dazed, vision a
kaleidoscope of dancing white blobs.

The rush of wind
sucked in from behind him, above him, all around. He dropped his face to the
dirt, hands crawling up to cover his head. The flash of heat was unlike
anything he had encountered before, like a thing alive.

After some time
— he could not tell how much — dim letters scrolled across his
vision. Fighting his way through the mental fog, he realized that it was his
optical implants rebooting. Slowly, he pieced together that the great light had
overloaded his optics, and they had shut down in self-preservation mode. They
were now coming back online.

And realizing
that, he understood he was, indeed, alive. And that there was a fire very, very
close.

He pushed
himself to his feet and stumbled away from the flames. He staggered down the
hill that led to the northwest corner of the property. Mr. Blue stopped running
as it occurred to him that he may be running to his death, trapped behind
Cunha's stone walls. But he spotted two areas where the fence had crumbled from
the blast, and he scrambled over the broken rubble to the freedom beyond. He
ran another hundred yards then stopped to catch his breath.

He leaned
against a tree and watched what had been Vinicius Cunha's palatial compound
burn. He tried to piece together what had just happened but could not be
sure.
 
Rocket attack? An air
strike? Who would do such a thing? Who
could
do such a thing?

His attention
drifted back to the readout running across his vision from his optical
implants, brief sentences requesting the commands for a reboot. He had trouble
commanding his eyes to the proper focus to activate the sequence, and his
blinking felt clumsy and spastic.

And then he
remembered the auto-record cache, a subroutine within his optical implant that
continuously stored the last thirty seconds of whatever he happened to be
seeing, a constant loop of briefly saved and discarded information. The feature
was designed for exactly this situation, a surprise encounter that might need
to be studied after-the-fact.

He forced his
eyes to make the necessary commands to restart his optics. The familiar
readouts returned to the corners of his vision. He was both relieved and scared
to find that the auto-record cache had indeed functioned and the information
from the last thirty seconds before the blast had knocked the unit offline had
survived. He froze the auto-record feature and saved the cached file to a
separate tier.

Then, with a
fresh sheen of sweat on his forehead, he called up the images and watched the
brief half-minute of confusion.

He saw the
gently lit path in front of him again, as it had been. The satchel he had been
carrying swung into and out of his field of vision as his arms moved in tandem
with his stride. His gaze moved upward toward the house…

An intensely
bright light struck the house, so shocking it made him take a step back even in
replay mode. It was like a bolt of lightning, but not jagged and wild like a
natural phenomenon. The beam was straight and precise and the color of it was
unlike any lightning that had ever traveled between earth and sky.

It was clearly a
man-made beam of energy.

Mr. Blue
replayed the recording two more times at a slower speed and then stood thinking
for several minutes.

Oh, Vinicius.
You've made some powerful enemies. More powerful than I would have suspected,
but I shouldn't be surprised.
 
You
have become far too reckless, my friend. I think it's time we parted ways.

He took a deep
breath, decision made. Only one last thing to do. Mr. Blue owed him that much,
anyway. But he also owed it to the other men.

He commanded his
optics to relay the video directly to the organization's common information
link, with a highest priority tag. It would show instantly in every optical
implant, every pair of enhanced goggles, every E-Thing, throughout Cunha's
organization.

Then he turned
into the night and, legs still shaking, walked alone toward the city.