Teleport This (16 page)

“Other than being held against our will,” began Ellie, “getting our brains probed and threatened to have our arms cut off, we’re doing great. Who the hell are you?”

“A friend.”

“Really?” said Ellie. “Because I know what all my friends look like and I don’t see any resemblance.”

“Let’s just say I’m more of a friend than those guys,” he said, nodding towards the unconscious guards.

“Well, that’s not too hard,” said Ellie. “I did mention that they wanted to cut off our arms.”

“My name is Tomas, Agent Tomas. I’ve been in contact with your brother and keeping Macnair under surveillance for the better part of the past year. I followed him here thinking that Monti had somehow gotten his hands on Jon and was turning him in for the bounty. I let myself in and headed in this direction since this is where the highest concentration of guards were located. I overheard them mention Nurridium so if you want out, you better tell me what’s going on.”

Ellie didn’t know whether or not to trust Agent Tomas, for all they knew he could be someone that worked for Macnair using this ploy as a means to see if they had given them a straight story earlier. If that was the case then there was no harm in telling him everything that Macnair already knew, which they did including the location of the rock. As they began talking, Tomas began undoing their restraints.

“A big chunk of Nurridium, eh?” said Tomas. “You should have turned it in right away. For something like that, a guy like Macnair would kill you without even thinking about it just to cover his tracks.”

“We didn’t want to get involved with Macnair,” said Ellie. “We wanted Monti to negotiate a bigger finder’s fee with the Feds for us. We just wanted our fair share. Do you think I want to keep hauling freight and dealing with lowlifes for the next hundred years?”

“Hey,” said Franco and Holt.

“I meant the customers!” said Ellie.

“How big of a chunk are we talking about?” asked Tomas.

“Head size.”

“That would do it,” said Tomas. “With something like that, Macnair could get all the other bosses to knuckle under as well as most governments. I’m heading to the teleport so I can get out of here and call this in. There’s still a chance we can catch them picking up the Nurridium, then we can add that to the charges against Macnair. ”

Talia and Holt had already picked up the guard’s weapons and nodded to Tomas, indicating they were ready to go. They collected a few more weapons along the way to the teleport.

“That hallway leads to the patio and then your shuttle is further on. Shouldn’t be too difficult to get to it. Here, take this,” Tomas handed Talia a small device. “It will blanket your movements from the surveillance system.” Agent Tomas stepped onto the teleport and turned towards Ellie. “We’ll talk later,” he said before disappearing.

Talia walked over to Gilbert. “Ever fire a weapon before?” she asked.

“Only paintball guns,” he replied. “It’s a war game, the guns shoot wax balls that explode and leave colored marks on your clothes.”

“Time for the real thing.” said Talia. “Think you can follow me without your gun accidentally going off?”

“I think I can handle it,” Gilbert said, half offended, half hoping he doesn’t trip and shoot one of his friends in the foot.

“Gil, you get behind me. Ellie and Franco, you’re in the middle. Holt, make sure no one comes up behind us. Let’s go.”

They followed the hallway to the patio without incident. Talia peeked around the corner and was able to see the shuttle. “Two guards,” she whispered over her shoulder. They used the side terrace as cover as they moved closer to the ship.

“I’ll take the one on the right,” said Talia. “Holt, you take the one on the left. Ellie and Gil, spread out and provide cover fire. Franco, watch the rear.”

Once the others were in position, Talia and Holt opened fire on the guards. As soon as they heard the first shots fired, Ellie and Gilbert began firing as well. It was all over in twenty seconds and in less than a minute after that, the shuttle was ascending into the atmosphere.

Everyone was happy to see that the nasty looking spaceship had gone, but then felt a bit depressed when they realized it most likely went to retrieve their Nurridium.

“Let’s get the hell out of this sector and make a wide berth around wherever it was you dumped that rock,” was Ellie’s first command. Once the ship was well on its way and they were sure they weren’t being followed, Ellie called everyone to the ship’s galley.

“I just wanted to get together,” said Ellie, “and say that even though the deal didn’t work out for us, at least we survived with all our arms intact. And I learned a valuable lesson. Next time something like this happens, I’m just dumping everything into the nearest star and filing an insurance claim.”

“And Gil,” said Talia, “even though your program didn’t stop those guys from getting the information from us, it did save our ass down there.”

“I thought it was pretty good stuff,” said Franco. “I thought it would do the trick.”

“Not me,” said Holt. “Nothing against you two, but I knew that whatever you guys put together someone, somewhere would be able to pull it apart.”

“Oh really,” said Gilbert. “Then why didn’t you do something about it?”

“I did,” said Holt. “Sorry, Captain, but instead of putting that Nurridium back in the rock like you ordered me to, I shoved it in the bottom of storage locker 8-12.”

19.

Lyn and Simon traveled to the Dahana space station ahead of Jon so they could secure a suite of connecting rooms close to the teleport station. While they were doing that, Ellie2 was setting up a security grid to mask their coming and going from the station’s surveillance system and then Jon would follow in exactly one hour.

Jon was still a very hot and sought after commodity and if the price Macnair had put on his head wasn’t enough, Alicia’s father had plastered his face all over the media, accompanied by a reward for any information pertaining to either his or Alicia’s whereabouts. Macnair had the entire underworld network of snitches, informants and bounty hunters looking for him and now the followers of entertainment television were on his heels as well. Things were definitely not going as he had hoped and paying a visit to Dahana could make matters worse. The space station had resident bounty hunters that lived there year round following the premise that it was easier to wait for your prey to come to you than chase after it. There are always people on the run and sooner or later most of them come through the space station and a certain percentage either don’t pay off the right people or they’re identified by someone’s facial recognition system and they’re picked up and carted away, usually without the need of frozen carbonite.

Jon’s goal for the day was not to be caught, so he wore clothes that hid all his prominent features. You think this would make him stick out in the crowd, but at least one third of the people in the space station didn't want to be found and were similarly dressed.

Jon met Simon and Lyn at the teleport station and the three of them proceeded to their rooms. The space station is a twenty-four-by-seven affair since almost everyone there is on a different timetable and it doesn’t have a predictable slow period. The only people that operate on a fixed schedule are the residents that work there. A few centuries ago, a group of scientists got together and developed a universal system for measuring hours and days in hopes of putting everyone in the universe on the same timeframe, but it ended up like the metric system in the United States; everybody is aware it exists, but nobody really uses it unless they have to.

“Okay, step one complete, we’re all here,” said Jon, glancing about the suite. “Just couldn’t wait, could you,” he said noticing the ruffled blankets in one of the bedrooms.

“We had 20 minutes to kill while we were waiting for you to come through,” said Simon.

“What did you do for the other 18?” asked Jon.

“Very funny. Besides, we didn’t know how to turn on the TV,” said Simon.

“TV on,” said Jon and one side of the room became a live action theater. “Just say what you want and the room will do it.”

“But you spoke English,” said Simon, “and there’s no way that the room understands English.”

“I did not speak English,” said Jon. “It’s just your brain hearing English. That’s how the implant works, it tricks your brain into seeing and hearing things a bit differently than they really are. You’re hearing English and if you watch my mouth you’d swear it was forming English words, but it’s not. You can even put your hands on my mouth and it would feel as though it’s moving in accordance with the word coming out, but it’s all the implant controlling a very small part of your brain making you see and hear everything in English. It’s like watching one of your movies with computer generated dinosaurs in it and the implant is like the guys in the special effects department tricking your brain into seeing a T-Rex.”

“So when I was checking-in downstairs,” said Simon, “I wasn’t speaking English with the clerk’s implant translating for him, I was actually speaking an alien language and my implant made everything seem like English to me, even what I was saying?”

“Now you’ve got it,” said Jon. “If it didn’t work like that then everything would look like the American version of a Chinese martial arts movie with the voice and lips out of sync.”

“Amazing,” said Lyn. “TV off.”

“Now I want you two to go back to that lounge where you overheard those two guys talking and see if either returns. I’m going to do some snooping.” Jon took out his device and placed it on the table. “Full access mode, please.”

A screen and control panel appeared in front of Jon. They weren’t substantial, meaning that they weren’t made out of solid matter, but three-dimensional projections similar to the hotel TV.

“Show me the layout of the entire station.” His device complied. “Give me another screen with a correlated list of hotels, residences, businesses, etc. Add a third screen with names and ID photos. Pull up the images you have of our two suspects.” More screens appeared. “Do you think you can recognize these two if you see them again?”

“Of course,” said Lyn.

“Then off you go,” said Jon. “And make sure they don’t get into any trouble.”

“I will,” replied Ellie2.

“And nurse those drinks, we’re working tonight.”

Lyn and Simon left the room and proceeded to ground level.

“Let’s take the long way,” said Lyn. “I want to get a better feel for this place, in case we need to duck in somewhere.”

“Great idea,” said Simon. “I want to check out some of these stores and get a feel for this universe in general. The level of technology is staggering.”

“Okay, but just a few stops,” agreed Lyn and they proceeded along until Lyn noticed a clothing store. “Let’s stop in here for a second. I want to see what super high-tech clothes shopping is like.”

They entered the store and immediately noticed that like its earthly counterparts, it had various garments laid out on tables or on hangers. The first difference they saw was that the displays didn’t use mannequins, instead they employed three-dimensional projections.

“I don’t see any mirrors,” began Lyn, “and there aren’t any different sizes or colors. No dressing rooms either.” Lyn picked up a hat from a table. Immediately a full size 3D projection of Lyn appeared in front of her wearing the hat. She put down the hat and took a short jacket off a nearby rack. The projection changed and her image was now wearing the jacket. After a few seconds, the color of the jacket changed and after that, the hat was added.

“Look at this,” said Simon as he indicated a small pad in the display. It had buttons labeled Purchase and Next. He put his finger on the Next button and the image of Lyn was now wearing a different jacket.

“I could get used to this,” said Lyn. “Did someone say we had an unlimited credit card?”

“We’ll come back later, if there’s time,” said Simon. “We’re supposed to be looking for Gilbert.”

“He might be inside one of these hats, we should look.”

“Come on. Let’s go.”

“Hold this for a second,” Lyn said handing Simon a short skirt.

“Very funny,” said Simon as an image of him in the skirt appeared.

“You could pull that off, you’ve got the legs for it.”

“Now isn’t that just what every man wants to hear.”

They left the store and continued on their way, but they didn’t get very far before Simon stopped. “We’ve got to go in here,” he said charging into a nearby store. Lyn followed, shaking her head. Bound to happen, she thought as they entered an electronic gadget shop.

“Look at this,” said Simon. “They have a whole section for implants. And over there’s a weapons counter.” Simon began going up and down each aisle like a kid in a candy shop.

Lyn tagged along for a few minutes and then said, “I know what you’re looking for.”

“I’m not looking for anything in particular,” said Simon.

“Really?” said Lyn. “You’re not trying to find a real laser sword or ray gun?”

“Not especially, but if they got one, I might be interested. You didn’t see one, did you?”