Superego (7 page)

So I sat at the café, and while my eyes and hands pretended to read the news, my ears and perception were concentrating on the voices around me. No one was saying much worth spying on, but it was really just practice anyway. In fact, the news did finally get my attention with its repeated references to Zaldia. This included pictures of the carnage and what looked like a crying child among dead bodies—though I wasn't familiar enough with the species to say for sure. This sort of thing was horrific to most people.

I briefly considered actually reading one of the stories but decided to just let Dip summarize anything interesting for me later. Instead, I went back to listening and pretending to read. I now heard some people mention Zaldia, and the expectation that the big conference was going to lead to something being done about the occupation. So it wasn't too much of a mystery why the syndicate would be interested in the goings on here; I just didn't know what their intentions were.

I had to stop listening to sip my tea. Pretending to read the news, listening around me, and sipping tea was a bit much for me. With some practice, though, it seemed I could get it down. Appearing to be absorbed in something while actually listening intently to everything around me really was a skilled illusion. But I made one mistake that revealed my abnormality.

When the café exploded and men ran toward us screaming and firing guns into the crowd, I neatly set down the reader on my table instead of dropping it in surprise. I don't think anyone was paying attention to me at that point, though.

CHAPTER 7

Five sentients were firing energy weapons with crazed zeal, screaming something about a mechanized god. People around me fell, dead or wounded. I was right at the center of a terrorist attack. What were the chances?

Not very high is the answer. But that was not my main concern at the moment.

I was familiar with this group. They called themselves the Calabrai. Knowledge of the existence of other sentient species has been a problem for many religions, as most were formed before people even considered the possibility of life on other worlds (or knew that there were other worlds). Thus each religion is mostly confined to the particular species and home world of its origin, and adaptation to the new reality was hard. The Calabrai basically took religions from many different species—one “true” religion from each—and considered them all as having been based on the same true god. This one true god supposedly took form as a gigantic city-leveling robot called Calab. Calab is hidden on some unknown planet (though he is rumored to have been destroyed), and he keeps sending out commands to his followers to kill unbelievers.

There are a lot of obvious problems with giving this kind of robot artificial intelligence, but you can hardly blame people for failing to consider that it might become the basis for a violent new cult. And the Calabrai do follow its commands, though their efforts to kill the unbelievers never seem to amount to much more than huge annoyances to the targeted planets, as they aren't a sophisticated enough force to topple governments. It made sense that they'd be interested in the expansion of powers of the Galactic Alliance and would attack Nar Valdum now, as one of the initial reasons most civilizations exist is to keep kill-happy barbarians at bay.

I try to avoid religious disputes. Well, I try to avoid people most of the time, but I especially have no interest in debating religion. One can point out that religion is just a bunch of superstitious, irrational beliefs; but is that any different from the beliefs of atheists? Everyone likes to think they're logical and reasonable, but I find all people to be equally absurd and irrational. The main difference is that the religious tend to be a bit more organized in their irrationality.

Now, a lot of people consider thinking a giant killer robot is a god to be laughably ridiculous, and I get that. I just don't get how it may be socially acceptable for me to laugh at the Calabrai and their poorly examined beliefs, but wrong for me to laugh at how people mindlessly go to their jobs every day and provide for their families with no real introspection as to why and to what end. It's all nonsense, but at least the Calabrai are acting with some real purpose.

That purpose right now was to kill me. I didn't take it personally; they would kill just about anybody, and I simply happened to be there. It's like when people get killed in the crossfire when I'm on a job—nothing personal there either. That's just how things are. And I really did kind of admire their zeal. I kill people because it's something to do. They feel they're doing something right and good, the way others might when helping poor people, but with fun killing instead. And I don't have any concept of what that's like. I don't know how you just choose to believe something like that. But it does seem like it might make life easier.

Life was not easy at the moment. For about half a second, I sat there in the open contemplating what to do—a very dangerous use of time. These people had nothing to do with my assignment, and it's a pretty drilled-in rule that I don't kill outside the job, so it took me a moment to realize I was going to have to kill them. This was most definitely a kill-or-be-killed situation, so it was clearly an exception to the rule. And while that might appear to mean that I would simply draw my guns and shoot the five assassins until they stopped moving, I still had my mission to consider. If I killed them expertly, it'd be obvious that I'm a trained killer. The mission would be ruined, and I'd be forced to flee…and I'd probably fail at that because of the tight security lockdown. Big mess. Lots of people dead—including me.

Luckily I had planned for a similar situation: being discovered with guns before a hit was carried out. My story would be that I'm a cop on vacation, and I always bring my guns out of habit. It was believable, at least. Cops can be arrogant (just like me—though I would argue that I have more justification). Killing five attackers should be a feat for a cop who capably uses a gun but doesn't kill people every week like I do, so I would have to make this look a bit lucky—I could be skilled but not
too
skilled.

Which takes a tremendous amount of skill, incidentally.

I drew one gun with my right hand and fired twice at one terrorist, missing the first shot on purpose and burning him with the second, the lizard-like creature devoting a dying shriek to his robotic master. I shot him again to make sure he was dead. I really don't like these weaker guns that can't destroy a whole torso. One shot per kill makes things much easier.

I fired three more shots as I went for cover (a cop would use only inanimate objects and not other people as a shield, so I had to watch myself). Two of the three shots struck a human terrorist, and the remaining three now focused on me, the only armed resistance the Calabrai were facing (“civilized” people do nothing but panic and scream in these situations, which would seem to be the opposite of civilized). We were in a pretty open area, so I could only find partial cover behind a lamppost.

I reminded myself not to smile. I tend to smile when I shoot people, because it's challenging and fun. But that freaks people out—which usually is an advantage, but not in this situation.

It was odd killing people in a socially acceptable manner; it felt like trying to walk around on my hands. Still, the terrorists' aim was pathetic, and I probably got a bit cocky. I fired two more close but missing shots before killing a third. And then my luck ran out.

It felt like a hot poker jammed through my calf muscle. My leg would no longer support my weight, and I fell over. Adrenaline shot through me, and instinct took over. I pulled out my second blaster and unloaded two guns into the head of the thing that shot me until his face caught fire. Or maybe it was just his beard. Whatever it was, it was pretty awesome. There was no time to watch, though, as there was still one terrorist left, and I was unable to get up. He had a bead on me, so I just unloaded on him as he tried to shoot back. I don't even know how many times I shot him, but the important thing was his not shooting me.

Anger had probably taken some control over me—not a good thing—but my leg
really
hurt.

I looked around the fire of the former café to see if there were any “bad guys” left to shoot, but I saw only panic, the injured crying in pain, and the permanently quiet. Safe for at least a moment, I set down my guns and began bandaging my leg with a cloth napkin from a nearby table.

“You saved us!” gasped a middle-age woman clutching a child.

In my condition, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to people—especially in a situation like this where they would be even more irrational and useless than usual. Still, I had to commit to character if I wanted to get through this. I went with false modesty—that seemed to be a societal norm for this sort of thing. “I was just saving myself.” That was completely true; frankly I would have preferred that everyone else had died so they wouldn't be bothering me at the moment.

I wondered if I would be in the news for this. That would not be helpful.

“Can I help you with—”

“I'm fine,” I interrupted the woman as I tightened my bandage. “Look after your son.” Others were gathered around me now, as I was apparently the closest thing to an authority figure there. “Look for the wounded so you can help the authorities when they get here,” I commanded calmly. If you act like you're in charge, most people will just assume you are and do as you say. “Don't worry about me; I can handle myself.”

The role-playing required a lot of concentration, but what I really wanted to be contemplating right now was why I had been told to meet my contacts at this café and ended up in the middle of a terrorist attack. I couldn't even begin to think what that meant.

“I am hearing in police chatter that there was violence at the café you were going to,” Dip said. “And now I detect that you are injured. Do you need me to activate the emergency protocol?”

I heard sirens as emergency vehicles descended upon us, and reflexively I glanced at the guns lying at my side. I had two options: Shoot my way out of this, or surrender my guns and remove that option. There was nothing worse to me than a situation where shooting my way out wasn't even a fallback. But giving up my weapons was the smarter choice right now and the only one that might give me an opportunity to complete my job.

“That would be an overreaction at this juncture. I want you to get in contact with Vito, tell him what happened when I tried to meet my contacts, and get him to find out what the hell is going on.”

It was good that a normal person would be stressed and angry in this situation, because now I would be very convincing. And being convincingly normal was all that was going to save me.

CHAPTER 8

Unarmed, wounded, lying in a hospital bed, and about to be questioned by the police—not the best start for a mission. The only defense I had left was my wits. And Dip.

“I contacted Vito. He was surprised to hear you were in a terrorist attack, and he will look into what happened with the person you were supposed to meet.”

I had surrendered my guns to the authorities, but the internal communicator connecting me to Dip is pretty much undetectable and hard to disable even if found. “He'd better not be his usual useless self this time. I was told this mission is very important, and—not knowing what it is—it looks like it's ruined.”

“This certainly is a very unusual circumstance for you, Rico. Usually the violence you commit is reflected negatively in the press, but I notice little negative commentary in the reporting today.”

“I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I've killed people that the general public was happy to be rid of.”

“Still, your violence has always been seen as criminal. This act of violence is being referred to as ‘heroic.'”

“I killed five murderers—preventing the deaths of others—and took a bolt through my leg in the process. Would you call that ‘heroic'?”

That took him a second. “I would assume you had ulterior motives, Rico.”

That made me laugh. But I was alone in my hospital room so no one looked at me funny. “Keep monitoring the news. I need to know if my face is made public.”

“Will that cause you to abandon the mission?”

“It's just worth knowing if it happens. How goes the extraction plan?”

“I have a new plan to extract you from Nar Valdum's capital, which I rate as having a twenty percent chance of success.”

“That's a nice round number.”

“There are many unknowns, so I went with inexact figures.”

“Whatever. I need a better number than twenty percent.”

Dip was silent again. “When calculating the chance of success, I could give greater weight to the ship's maneuverability, which would…”

“I don't mean fudge the numbers. I mean come up with a better plan.” Hopefully I wouldn't need it too soon. “I don't know what's going on with my contact here, so right now you're my only way out. Get to work.”

Patching my leg was a simple enough procedure. They held it still in a regenerator, and I just had to wait an hour or so. After that, I'd be back to (my) normal and ready for killing (that is, if I could get back to my hotel room to rearm). I had a video monitor in the hospital room and nothing to do while I waited, so I found a nature show to watch.

“The delping waits in the river, its gray coloration helping it to blend in with the rocks. When prey is close enough, it strikes by kicking forward with its strong rear legs and expelling all the air in its lungs from two reverse-facing nostrils on the sides of its heads. Using this jet propulsion, with blinding speed it snatches the…”

“Not watching the news?” Walking into my hospital room was a blonde thirty-something—apparently a plainclothes detective who had come to question me. No ring.

Hello, human female.