Vienna Station (5 page)

“Well, L.A. is special.”

He looks at me. “This is where you were born?”

“I grew up less than a mile from here.”

Four quick gunshots sound in the distance. Mozart shivers. “Interesting neighborhood.”

“Yeah, well, we’re here. What now?”

“My privacy imperative will last for a few more hours. After that, Station security will discover we’re gone. We need to find your cousin quickly.”

I nod. “Let’s cut through here. We’re supposed to meet Luis near Lago Park.”

We enter the alley. A large man steps out of shadows to our right. He extends his right arm. Silver gleams in his hand. Light from the street behind us reveals a short, wide blade.

I chuckle. “You’re holding us up with a knife?”

The mugger steps further into the light. His face is battered and wild. Un-insulated wires are woven into his long, greasy hair. He grins, revealing his ravished teeth, and says, “I’m old school.”

I take a step back. “I thought starbursts were popular with muggers?”

He steps closer. “Mini-grenades? Nah! Too messy, too noisy, too expensive. Let’s keep this simple.”

I spread my hands. “We don’t want trouble.”

His eyes bulge with that boiled egg look of the true synth junkie. “I’m sure you don’t. You’re pink cake, babe. Pink cake. Let’s get rid of the boyfriend first.”

Mozart says, “Can’t we get along?”

The mugger laughs. “Heard that before.” He waggles the knife. “Hey, boyfriend, where do want this?”

Mozart takes a step back. “I beg your pardon?”

The mugger hoots, “I beg your pardon! That’s rich!” Holding the knife low, he leaps at Mozart, slashes upward toward his groin, but the knife rips only air. The mugger staggers forward off balance. Mozart, unperturbed, stands several feet to his left.

Mozart spreads his hands. “Please go now. No one has been harmed.”

The mugger growls, “You’re about to be harmed!” He lunges again, tries for a gut rip. Mozart steps in behind the stroke. His right hand touches the mugger’s elbow. The man catapults across the alley, crashes headfirst on slimy concrete, takes a shuddering breath and groans. Two garbage cans topple wearily onto his feet.

Mozart says, “Please, no more.”

The mugger stares stupidly at his knife, now buried hilt deep in his left thigh. He extends an experimental finger toward the hilt, touches it. Blood wells up around the steel. “Shit!”

I touch Mozart’s arm. “Let’s go.”

He looks at me. “What shall we do?”

“Get out of here now!”

He looks back at the wounded mugger. “What about his leg?”

“He’s too high to feel much pain. He’ll be all right. Or he won’t. It’s not our business.” I tug his arm. “Come on!”

We run down the mugger’s alley and cross several streets. We slow to a walk as we reach Lomita and turn left. I’m panting. Mozart’s not even breathing hard. After several minutes, I say, “No more stupid mistakes!”

Mozart walks in silence for several more steps. At last he says, “I’ve never hurt a person before.”

I shrug. “You did it very well.”

He looks at me. “Part of the maturation process was physical training. I learned judo. Also, my reflexes are 80% faster than human average. It was hardly a fair fight.”

I snort. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard anyone say. There aren’t any fair fights, only losers and winners.”

Mozart looks down.

I touch his arm. “Don’t worry about it. He would have cut us both into sushi slices if you hadn’t thrown him.”

Two men dressed in black step from a building’s shadow in front of us. We stop. I look back. Two more men stand blocking the street and sidewalk behind us. I look to our front. A fifth man, squat and powerful, steps from the shadows and approaches us. The man says, “Good evening.”

“Luis?”

He smiles. “You have grown careless.”

“Luis, thank God it’s you!” I rush to him.

“Ah, Prima!” He engulfs me in a rib-cracking hug. “It is good that my homies and me have found you.”

It will seem a deranged act, no more.

You’re sure?

“Absolutely. It is doubtful that anyone will discover our method of delivering the virus to Earth. If someone does, then the asteroid attack on the stations will serve as cover.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Besides, the perpetrator of the atrocities will be dead.”

“The self destruct?”

“It has been activated.”

Luis approaches us carrying glasses and a bottle of tequila. He thumps the glasses down on the battered table in front of Mozart and me. He pours a shot for both of us and then one for himself. He gulps his, sighs with satisfaction and sits down across from me. He pours himself another.

Tipping his glass toward me, he asks, “So, Prima, what is it?”

I sip tequila, liquid sunlight. I nod toward Mozart. “He wants your help.”

Luis’s glass stops on its way to his lips. The big muscles in his arm twitch and his tattoos leap in response. He looks at Mozart. “You want my help?”

Mozart nods and takes a sip of tequila. He gasps, chokes and clutches his throat. Luis grins.

I smile, “I guess I should have warned him.”

Mozart takes a couple of strangled breaths and at last croaks, “No, no, it’s good.”

Luis nods. “Very good.”

Tears in his eyes, Mozart speaks in a rush. “I need to enter a place near here and work undetected for several hours.”

Luis shrugs. “What place?”

“The Genuflect compound.”

Luis looks at his nearly empty glass. “That’s a corporation compound over on PCH.”

Mozart nods. “Yes, the Google map shows that.”

Luis looks at him. “You know what you’re getting into?”

“Breaking and entering? Burglary? I don’t want to damage or steal anything, just use their equipment.”

Luis finishes his tequila. “Genuflect is a multi-corp. It’s a special crime if we get caught inside.”

I ask, “A special crime?”

Luis looks at me. “Modified due process—you know, enhanced interrogation, suspended Bill of Rights, no jury. The penalties start at ten years of confinement and twenty years of personality suppression. Kiss your life good-bye.”

We say nothing. Luis continues, “What makes you think we can get in there? And out again?”

Mozart puts his glass down. “I’ve got access codes.”

“All of them?”

“I can disable the perimeter alarms. I can get us into the building I need to visit.”

Luis insists, “All of them?”

Mozart nods. “All of them.”

Luis looks at him. “You’ll pay?”

“Would fifty thousand in advance be adequate?”

Luis grins. “Yes, adequate.”

Mozart smiles. “Do you have a phone?”

Luis hands him an ancient I-phone. “Here.”

“I’ll arrange for a transfer of funds now. There will be a bonus if we succeed. Another fifty thousand?”

Luis shrugs. “How about a hundred thousand?”

Mozart nods. “Done.”

“Launch codes are entered, Admiral. The board is green.”

Admiral Voigt leans back in his command chair, rubs his chin for a moment and at last murmurs, “Proceed.”

Defense systems Commander Patel says, “On my mark, three, two, one, fire.” Six green lights on the board in front of her turn red one after another. She turns to the admiral. “All fired, sir. That should do it.”

Voigt nods, “Let’s hope so.”

Patel continues, “It’s a good plan, sir. Combining the nukes with our kinetic penetrators should work. The nukes will deploy two kilometers behind the kinetics after the acceleration phase. When they reach the rogue asteroid fragments, they’ll detonate in the craters created by the penetrators and shatter them, or throw them off course.”

“I understand the theory, Commander.”

Patel studies her screens. “Yes, sir. It’s fortunate that Bin Laden had those contraband nukes.”

Executive officer Sharma snorts, “Fortunate, my ass! They violated every compact we have up here. There will be an arms race between the stations when this mess is over.”

Admiral Voigt smiles. “Now, now, Captain. Redundancy is a human survival trait, even sneaky, underhanded, jihadist redundancy. Let’s hope their illicit nukes will save us all.”

I touch Mozart’s left hand. “You look good in black.”

He grimaces. “So do you, what I can see of you.”

I turn back toward the fence in front of us. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

He raises a night vision glass and studies the distant buildings. “Google says it’s the Genuflect compound.”

I shift. “This ground is cold.” I shift again. “And hard.”

“We’ll effect entry when Luis gets back. He lowers the glass. “He seems most competent.”

“He is.”

“His tattoos…” Mozart hesitates… “are most unusal.”

I shrug. “Not for around here.”

“What do you mean?”

I sigh. “I’m not sure what I should try to explain. The gangs here are hereditary. Luis was born into the Sepulveda Crippas. That’s the rose under his left eye.”

“The skull on his left arm?

“He’s killed.”

“The daggers beneath it?”

“Six times.”

Mozart stiffens. “Six times!”

“The government, the police, the copters, they’re for this.” I nod toward the Genuflect compound. “They’re for protecting property and the people who own it. Those people have given up on Torrance. There are lots of places along Sepulveda that haven’t seen a cop, a fireman, or an ambulance in years. That’s where the gangs come in. They fill a vacuum. It’s perverted, but they are the government.”

“How can that be?”

“Whose fault is it? The corporations? The gangs? The thugs in both? I don’t know, but that mugger last night, if he’d gotten us Luis would have taken him down.”

Mozart looks at me. “You grew up in this place?”

“I got out as soon as I could. Music got me out. There was a Sistema program after school and there were teachers who helped me. They couldn’t help everybody.”

Mozart nods to himself. “Music is underestimated as a force for good. I hope to change that. I hope to change that down here.”

I take a deep breath. “Smell that? It’s the sea and the offshore farms. Those farms are where the only jobs are, one job for every fifteen gang members. They don’t have a chance.”

Mozart shakes his head. “There must be a different way.”

I look at him. “Don’t get me wrong. The gangs are bad, but the people in them aren’t all bad. Also, they do some useful things in their own neighborhoods.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Plenty of SS men were probably nice to their mothers. And the trains ran on time.”

Mozart looks down. “I didn’t mean to be judgmental.”

I pat his hand again. “You weren’t. It’s just more complicated than it seems. Also, there are deals. Gangs and government have blended at some level. They often work together both on exploitation of ordinary people and control. I can’t imagine when it will end, or how.”

A dark figure stalks along the fence to our right, approaches us. It is Luis. He is dressed in black and wears a black bandana. He slides to the ground next to Mozart and breathes heavily for a moment.

I lean close. “What’s up, Luis?”

Luis takes another deep breath. “Very tough. Dober-bots, falls, zap patches and the fence.” He glances at Mozart. “You got that stuff to take out the sensors?”

Mozart nods. “Yes. I’ll go to work. You have the cutters?”

Luis rummages in a bag on the ground and pulls out heavy-duty bolt cutters. He holds them up. “Let’s go.”

They rise and trot to the boundary fence. I trail behind them. They kneel. Mozart extracts a small tablet computer from his backpack, connects it to the chain links with thin fiber-optic wires. He brings up a program and adjusts it with rapid finger taps. He then gets out what looks like a miniature microwave dish. He nods to Luis.

Luis quickly cuts a neat, man-sized hole in the fence. He pulls the cut piece carefully toward him and discards it to the side. Mozart touches the dish’s base. A red light comes on and the device beeps.

Luis glances at it. “What’s that for?”

Mozart adjusts the dish. “Motion sensors on the building. This will feed them a signal to make them happy.” He places the dish inside the fence to the left side of the entrance hole. He looks at Luis. “Ready.”

Luis rises and darts through the hole first. Mozart and I follow. We walk over flat, bare ground. Reflected light from the floodlit buildings seventy meters ahead creates twilight around us. Luis stops.

“There’s a holo-disguised deadfall just ahead.”

I look past him and see nothing.

“It’s at least four meters deep. Step to your right and follow me. We do. Only thirty meters separate us from the first building. Luis slows, stops.

He whispers, “There’s stuff we haven’t run into yet, mobile systems, independent. Get your bat ready, Prima. I have a funny feeling.”

A pit suddenly gapes ten meters in front of us. A whining noise breaks the silence and four red eyes gleam from the darkness. Snarls rip across the whining noise. Two chromium machines, tracks spinning, lurch from the pit. Cantaloupe-sized heads swivel on meter long, flexible necks. The red eyes acquire us. Stainless steel jaws open. Stainless steel fangs gleam.

Luis shouts, “Dober-bots!”

The dober-bots snarl and accelerate toward us. One picks Luis. The other comes for me. Its chrome head snakes toward my ankle. I golf my bat into its head, but the blow is a glancing one. The neck loops impossibly fast. The jaws grip my bat, rip it from my grasp. I scream.

There’s a crack, a hum and blue electricity flashes. White fire dances across the dober-bot’s head and it freezes with its neck extended toward me. I glance over my shoulder. Mozart lowers what looks like a toy ray gun. He smiles.

I manage to croak, “What’s that?”

His smile widens. “It’s a kind of super-taser.”

“Help Luis!”

We turn. Luis doesn’t need help. His dober-bot’s head is dangling from a few wires as it spins in circles. Mozart fires again anyway. The second machine freezes.

Luis steps forward, flexing his muscles. He takes one more full swing at the motionless dober-bot. There’s a clang and a snap as the head finally parts company from the body. Luis shakes his bat and laughs out loud.