Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (4 page)

She thought for a moment, pursing her thin lips.  “They’ve got a Fermonist?  Is that what you’re hinting at?”

“Uh-huh,” was all he said.

That explains a lot
, thought Flavia.  She sent another command to her ‘Swarm and the processing nanites instantly began to execute her search.

A Fermonist was specialized sort of Celeste, a sort of super-tracker, but not in the usual sense.  A Fermonist doesn’t use scent as would any other creature following the unique smell of
a given quarry.  Rather, he hunts by some sort of mental triangulation that homes in on a given person’s genetic markers.  All he (or she) would need was to have smelt his prey in person, once.  After that, the genetic markers were hard-wired into its brain.  The Fermonist would never forget it.  This gives the Fermonist a huge advantage, because no amount of masking or shielding, even distance in some cases, can foil this Mutation once it has homed in.  They can track for years, if need be, and that was what Estefan was beginning to suspect was tracking them now.  There was no other way their pursuers could’ve foiled
all
of their attempts to dislodge them.

How did a fucking Fermonist get a whiff of my ass?
wondered Estefan testily.

The Keeper’s ‘Swar
m screen began to bleep, but its’ display didn’t change.  It was merely a signal.  “Ok, Flavy, slow down, and let’s make for the South Bay Artery, our decoys are a mile out,” he said, killing the beeping on his screen with a flick of a finger.

She nodded, slowing them back to the velocity of the traffic around them.  “What shuffle maneuver are we doin
g, so I’m on the same page as the other drivers?”

He told her and she nodded.

They drove on for another thirty seconds when four box-like vehicles pull onto the freeway and quickly surrounded them.  From whatever side was facing them came a flimsy looking radio dish, though it was much more than a mere dish.  Appearing more like flowers than anything mechanical, each of them began to flex and pulse, quivering in all manner of direction.  For nearly ten seconds nothing happened, then – all of a sudden – the boxy Glide-cars began to change.  They were pulled and reformed, a glowing sort of clay, unlike anything on the freeway.  Until, they slowly began to take on the attributes of the Glide-car Flavia and Estefan were riding within.  It began with color, then texture, then overall shape and last the details were replicated.  In less than a minute, there were five of them, hurtling down the Grav-road, so alike they could’ve been manufactured one after the other on an assembly line.

T
hey began to weave and swerve around one another slow at first, but gaining in speed as time progressed and each driver acclimated to the others.  Before long they were changing position so fast, even Estefan was having a hard time keeping track, and he was
in
one of the Glide-cars.

Just as quickly they stopped.

Flavia counted to ten, and they all repeated the act again when nothing happened.

Then, she saw it – the sedan, coming on fast, its driver obviously pushing the Grav-lifts as fast as they could go.  It’s’
occupants must’ve seen them, because it suddenly slowed, swerving across three lanes – the very same the five duplicate cars were traveling.

“Do the last shuffle right before the connecting bridges to the South Bay Artery.  I want a wide dispersal.  I want to be certain there’s a Fermonist back there and not some lucky bastard,” said the Keeper in firm tones, speaking through the high-frequency GUARD channel that existed only within Synod vehicles.

Ahead the monstrosity that was the South Bay Artery loomed.  It was by far the largest throughway in Angel Free Town, towering an incredible thirty-six levels on each of the fifteen levels of the city.  And… every single one was twelve lanes wide, traveling in either direction.  At the ground, it was the only highway with on- and off-ramps reaching directly up and out to the four lower levels of the city.  It connected traffic on a whole different scale than all the other highways.

Estefan smiled tightly as he gazed upon the megalith, remembering when it had been called the 405 freeway.  Even way back in his youth, the 405 Freeway had been titled the busiest freeway in the world.

If only they could see it now…
, he thought, as second before he sent the “go” warble over the GUARD channel.  Like dancers in a ballet, the five Glide-cars weaved around one another four more times, and then rocketed away from one another.  Each used a short burst of the afterburner to attain maximum speed within seconds.  Their car could’ve gone faster, but Flavia didn’t want to make things easy for their pursuers.  Flavia knew this without being told and made sure they went no faster than the others as each driver took a different connecting bridge to the South Bay Artery, one even got off the highway system altogether.

Estefan used his Neuro-Nanoswarm screen to feed him the live shot from dire
ctly behind their vehicle.  He watched, waiting for the curvature of the bridge to terminate, so he could see if the dark sedan was still following them.

Flavia reduced their speed to match the traffic she was merging into and tucked into the flow of vehicles on the lowest level of the Artery.

Just before they wedged in between a Transport skiff and a gaudy looking street racer, Estefan saw the extra-long Glide-car.  It rounded the last curving section of the connecting bridge in plain view.

“It’s a Fermonist alright,” said the Keeper.  “The cocksuckers are still on our ass.”

“Crap!” cursed the woman in black.

“And the mobile Null-unit, where is it?” asked Estefan through pinched lips.

Flavia’s eyes followed something on her ‘Swarm screen he couldn’t see, her brow creased at first, but then seemed to go wide with surprise.

“What is it?” asked her one-time step-brother.

“You’re not going to believe this, but it’s parked in the VIP section of parking bay 167 at the spaceport.”

“What the fuck it is doing there?” demanded Estefan.

She shrugged.  “How the hell am I supposed to know, those things run completely autonomous, complete with hard-coded programming.  Their sub-routines are localized remember?” she lectured.  “I seem to recall it was you who wanted them built that way, am I wrong?”

“No, you’re not wrong, god damn it!  But the fucking VIP section, do we even have access to it?”

She turned to stare at him directly.

He wished she’d keep her eyes on the damned road.  Then, he held up a hand
to forestall.  “I know, I know, stupid question.”  He shook his head, disgusted with himself.  “Is it a quiet place, right?”

“Should be, it’s freakin’ VIP parking, what the hell do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think right now, Flavy.”  He rubbed his bald head with his hand.  “I’m getting too old for all of this madness.”

“Oh, bullshit, stop acting like a baby,” admonished
Flavia.  “Come one we got work to do.”

At her side, the Keeper sighed.  “Make for the Null-unit; hopefully we can make the transition from the car to the unit without everyone in a two-block radius getting shot to pieces.”

“You never know, the night is still young, my dear.”

“Ppsssh!” hissed Estefan through his lips.  It still didn’t stop him from running a quick inventory of the weapons they had with them.

One didn’t get to the ripe old age of three hundred and eighty-four by acting like an idiot.

He didn’t have more than half a second before he caught
sight of the first contrail at the corner of his eye. 
Contrail?
he had time to ask himself when a second missile erupted from the extra-long Grav-car. 
Who the fuck used missiles anymore?

Neither Flavia nor he moved, though.  They didn’t have to.  Their vehicle acted for them.

“Threat Ten!  Threat Ten!  Modified Stinger Block Nine SAM inbound,” chimed the –car.

He was only half-listening.  His fingers were flying across the virtual keys only he could see.

Technology as outdated as “seeking” missiles of any sort could easily be thwarted by the pervasive use of gravity.  The latter half of the twenty-fourth century was a time thoroughly entrenched by the manipulation of that force in every sense of the word.

At the rear of their Grav-car, a small, circular,
hole snapped open and a spindly, four-inch appendage shot forth.  It’s’ tip was nothing more than a super-condensed version of the Grav-lifts keeping them floating above the surface of the highway.  Once arrayed, it went from dull gray to a brilliant cerulean.

To either the driver or the passenger in the car, there was nothing to be seen.  To the missiles though, the effect was immediate.  As if grabbed by an invisible giant, both streaking projectiles stopped in mid-air.  Their twin-rocket engines screamed in protest.  So loud, Estefan could just
make out the sound through the atmospheric insulation of their Grav-car.

The missiles only remained static for a short moment in time.  Before he could follow, the gravity-well
, holding them in place, flipped.  And then, just as suddenly, evaporated, sending the non-ballistic darts hurtling back the way they’d come.

The driver of the other car must’ve anticipated this, because he was swerving and braking the instant the missiles had been caught.  Both rockets flew past it.  One smashed into a Grav-hauler
, pulling four containers, the other flying off into the night.  The blast from the first sent the entire –hauler molten in a hundredth of a second, debris and shrapnel exploded every which way.  Estefan watched through a thickening brow as scores of vehicles were unceremoniously tossed aside, dozens of secondary and tertiary blasts rocked the massive superstructure of the Artery.

“Sonofabitch!”

“We making much too big of an impression in Angel Free Town, Effy,” remarked Flavia.

He grunted, then squinted slightly when the second missile detonated five miles out over the farms, its’ proximity fuse having gone off.  For some reason, their enemies hadn’t removed the safety measures on the missiles before launching. 
Why?  They weren’t conscientious bad buys if they were content to blow up the entire goddamned highway.  Who were these guys, fucking amateurs?

He received his answer a second later.

The front quarter-panels of the Grav-car unfolded abruptly.  Two sets of weapons racks emerged, bristling with dozens of dark and very modern looking pointed cylinders.  The Stingers had been a diversion.  These guys were well-funded professionals.

Estefan felt his stomach tighten.  “Flavia!” he called.

“I see them!”  She waved her hand over yet another sensor, putting their vehicle into full-auto, maximum defense/evasion-mode – all at once.  She spun out of her adaptive seat.  Faster than the Keeper could follow, she dove for the backseat, a Command Stick firmly gripped in the palm of her right hand.  Command Sticks created state-of-the-art Weapon Modules out of thin air, in just about any space, provided there was three cubic feet of it.

“You’re gonna have to move your ass, girlie!  We got bad news coming.”

“You don’t think I know that!” yelled Flavia as she held the Stick before her, lightly touching both sides with her pinky fingers.

“Threat One!  Threat One!  TARP launch!  TARP launch!” wailed their Grav-car, a high-pitched warble that gave them the impression the conveyance, itself, was frightened.

Well, it should be…

“Fuck,” groaned the Keeper aloud.

TARP’s (or Triangulated Replicant-Grav Projectiles) were the absolute worst.  They were designed to specifically penetrate all gravity-related defenses.  They had made such countermeasures obsolete the moment they’d been deployed by one of the Aegis Synod’s most voracious competitors in the field of armaments.  It had been a triumphant day for Milandry Enterprises.  After many years, the Synod’s own weapon’s division had been “one-upped”.  TARP’s had sent thousands of engineers, scientists and specialists employed by the Keeper scrambling to keep up.

Any gravity-well used against a TARP was instantaneously nullified by sensors on the weapon itself.  These sensors were programmed to apply a similar “well” in response, only this one would be in direct opposition to the one being used upon it – “cancelling out” the defensive measure.  Propelled at hyper-sonic velocities, there was only one mechanism capable of safeguarding against a TARP and, even then, it wasn’t one hundred percent reliable.

“D-Shields deployed!” screamed their Grav-car’s ‘Swarm.

“This better work,” urged Estefan.

Flavia was too busy to respond.

D-Shields were “genius level”, self-duplicating preventative measures.  They were the only technology that could hope to stop a TARP.  Actually, they didn’t stop them in the true sense of the word.  Rather, they deflected them until they were
contained
.

Truly remarkable, and manufactured solely by the Aegis Synod, D-Shields were forged of next-generation, smart Diatainium.  This was a neat way of saying the ‘Swarms programmed into the Shields were so mighty, they were borderline, self-aware.  Their probability matrices were so fast, they fired nearly as fast as the Neurons of a Human brain.