Division Zero: Thrall (64 page)

Kirsten’s head snapped up. She set the tea down and jumped up, shedding the robe on the way to the autoshower. “Where is the bastard?”

“Paramount City. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

She punched the fast-wash option. “Thanks for not making me beg to be there.”

Nina laughed. “I half-expected I’d have to drag you onto the shuttle.”

Sitting in the passenger seat was strange. Kirsten glanced over at Nina. Not seeing Nicole driving was even more so. She balanced her NetMini in both hands, waiting for the spinning dots to align.

“Damn, how fast are we going? It’s having a problem connecting.”

“Only 418.”

“Wow, it doesn’t feel like it. Where’s all the fancy super-secret government stuff? This looks like a civvie car with a police nav console added on.”

Nina smiled and tapped the wire coming out of the back of her neck. “Need one of these to even know it’s here.”

Kirsten shivered.

Evan’s face blurred in, red-eyed and sniffling. “Mom!”

Nila Assad squeezed into frame. “Dammit, Kirsten, what the hell did you do? The boy’s been going completely batshit for hours.”

Guilt hit her heavy. “Took a couple of bullets, saved someone, killed some demons. You know, my usual Tuesday night.”

“Mommy…” Evan sniffled, unable to say more.

“Is it over? Did you get the bastard?” Nila tried to comfort him.

“The good news is he is not going after Evan, or you, or Shani. You can go home.”

Nila breathed a gasp of relief. Shani’s hand invaded the image from below, waving. She tried to jump up into frame.

“The bad news is he’s got Dorian, and he’s on the damn Moon. I’m going there now.”

Evan glared at her for an instant, but his face softened. Kirsten felt the pang of need even over a VidPhone link.

“I’m sorry, Ev. There’s no time. I gotta stop him before he hurts Dorian.”
Dorian could already be gone. Could already just be energy.
“I…” She swallowed the lump. “Have to…”

He wiped his face. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m scared, but I trust you.” His attempt at confidence still leaked tears.

Kirsten glanced sideways at the creak of the control sticks in Nina’s hands. The woman had not looked in her direction since the boy appeared. “I’ll get back as fast as I can. Be good to Nila.”

“I will.”

The call ended. Nina’s silence hung heavy in the driver’s seat.

Kirsten sat for a moment before she spoke at her lap. “I adopted him… or… about to adopt him. You could―”

“We’re almost at the starport. You ever fly on a DS4?”

“Sorry. No. Just a DS2.”

“The fours give a better ride. They’re about quadruple the size and can jump. Largest deep-space vessel that can breach atmosphere.”

“Seems like overkill for a Moon hop.” Kirsten stuffed her NetMini back in a pocket.

“Fastest way up there.”

They drifted forward in their seats as the hovercar bled off speed. Kirsten grabbed the ‘oh-shit’ handle and held on for dear life as Nina whipped through a series of turns no human had the reaction time to cope with. Kirsten did not open her eyes until she heard the whine of ground wheels deploying.

The car landed on the pad, twenty yards away from a vessel the size of a three-story building. About fifty yards nose to tail, it had a shape akin to a fighter jet that went on a sumo diet. The front end extended out over a belly-door with a ramp leading into a space capable of holding two DS2s or about a dozen armored vehicles.

Kirsten followed Nina up the ramp, boots clanking, to a narrow metal ladder on the side of the otherwise empty vehicle bay. A short climb through a narrow vertical shaft led to a hallway on the top floor. Staterooms and bunks were to the right, a small ready room to the left, beyond which the cockpit was visible.

Nina moved to the lounge, past a few personal weapon lockers, and flopped in a seat between two Marines. Kirsten shivered at the sight of them, though these men and women seemed many degrees more welcoming than Gerard’s team. Kirsten forced a pleasant smile as she found a place to sit. Noticing a food reassembler on a small counter, she pointed as the room vibrated.

“Does that thing make coffee?”

aramount City struck Kirsten as underwhelming. Unadorned plastisteel structures clustered together under a massive dome, hiding from the blackness of space. Some appeared like buildings, while most had a look halfway between crashed spaceship and ancient drop pod. She sat next to Nina in the rear row of a six-wheeled open-top transport. A dozen Marines filled the rest of the spaces. She looked around at the squalor. Rag-clad people near the starport, ranging in age from six to sixty, begged tourists for help, food, and money.

A distant gleaming sliver of jade divided the city in half, as tall as the center of the dome. The Senate Chambers, and approximately six square miles of ‘upper class’ living around it, stood in harsh contrast to the outer rim. It seemed the farther away from the center you lived, the poorer you were.

She looked up, past the heavy laser cannon barrel hovering over the passengers. The Earth hung amid the darkness, a striated blue-white marble far larger than anything Kirsten had ever seen in the ‘sky.’ Bleakness spread out before her; the city housing the UCF Senate had the mood of a grey zone, without all the broken buildings.

“Why are there little kids begging at the starport?”

“Their parents refuse to sign on for habitat reassignment,” said one of the Marines.

“You want to force them to move to colonies? Why doesn’t the government at least take care of the kids like on Earth?”

“No one sees them up here,” said Nina, her tone flat. “They look and act in worse shape than they are. The whole thing is a propaganda campaign put on by the MLF.”

Kirsten squinted. “Why would the Martian Liberation Front act on the Moon?”

The Marines shifted, keen on what Nina would say next.

“Their goal is to divest Mars from Earth government. The UCF is part of Earth government. They would like to foment discontent within the UCF to weaken our resolve on Mars.”

With a belabored electronic moan, the rover slowed and pulled into a parking space. The building seemed unremarkable, five stories of tiny, narrow windows that could have been either an apartment or an office.

“I need a few minutes to coordinate with the local infrastructure,” said Nina, as she vaulted out of the rover. “Wait here.”

Kirsten climbed down over a tire that came up to her chin. Just as she let go of the boarding ladder, a fourteen-inch silver orb bot floated up to her. The iris within a glass dome whirred open, letting more green light out. The words “NewsNet: Lunar Edition” circled along the metal around the clear lens.

She held a hand up to shield her eyes from the light, and the orb backed up. The silhouette of a short-haired woman darted around the end of the military rover as the NewsNet’s Lunar correspondent ran up on her, as if trying to figure out where the bot had gone off to. A narrow audio pick up emerged from the top of the orb and angled to point at her.

“Amy Gordon, NewsNet. Can you tell me anything about why a member of the shadowy psionic police corps is on the Moon?”

“Shadowy?” Kirsten blinked, still squinting. “Where do you get that from? I’m assisting in the apprehension of a fugitive, just like any other cop.”

The Marines jumped down, moving to grab the reporter. Her hazel eyes narrowed, daring them to try it.

“Before the government censors the media, what do you have to say about reports psionics are taking over the government?”

Kirsten raised a hand at the Marines, who―much to her surprise―paused. “Look, first of all, psionics are not some kind of evil Devil-sent cult. We are people just like anyone else, with a few extra bells and whistles. Secondly, my organization is not ‘shadowy.’ There are too many closed-minded idiots out there looking for any excuse to lump everyone with mental abilities in the same bucket and label us all dangerous.”

Amy’s face shone with anticipation. Her lack of shrinking away from a psionic’s advance created a twinge of unease in Kirsten and took the defensive tone out of her voice. The vid-bot drifted in a slow panning circle. Its lights were harsh enough to make her squint.

“Are there bad psionics? Of course, they are human. There are bad humans, right? My department is here to deal with them. Ordinary criminals have guns, so society has other people with guns to stand between the nuts and the citizens. We’re no different. Being psionic does not make a person bad, no more than having a weapon immediately turns a person into a crazed murderer.”

The orb drifted closer, close to jabbing Kirsten in the head with the microphone. Ms. Gordon swatted at the orb, causing it to back off. “Paul, back off.”

Kirsten blinked. “You… named your camera bot, ‘Paul?’”

Amy shrugged. “It’s kind of got a personality… seemed like a good name for a little hyperactive bot that keeps generating more work for me. I had no idea you were here until he zoomed off.”

The bot waved at Amy with the mic boom. A little midair wobble came as close as it could get to radiating happiness.

“So are you, right now, doing something to my brain to make me like and trust psionics?”

Kirsten pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I’m psionic, not religious. I don’t think less of people who disagree with me.”

“Is it true psionics have influenced the Senate?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

The reporter raised an eyebrow. “Division Zero does not have a large presence on the Moon, how can you be so certain?”

“Due to Senatorial security protocols, Lunar citizens are required to undergo psionic testing. Anyone with even mild scores is denied access to the government building.”

Amy tilted her head. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“Name a single minority group in human history that was ever happy about being the victim of stereotypes.”

“That’s not quite a fair comparison, Agent Wren. Historic minorities could not, by virtue of what they were, infiltrate the minds of others or force them to do things.”

“Miss Gordon,” said Nina, swooping around the back end of the rover amid a fluttering coat. “I’m afraid I must end this interview now.”

“The government can’t keep the citizens in the dark forever… whoever you are.”