Gunmetal Sky

Gunmetal Sky

By Alexander McGregor

Copyright 2011 Alexander McGregor

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Prologue

The three-year-old girl lay on the cold, metal gurney dressed only in a plain green hospital gown while the monotone beep of a pulse monitor echoed in the sterile operating theatre. A man and a woman in lab-coats observed the still form from behind a protective barrier.

‘Flatline,’ said the man with a frustrated sigh.

‘Shit!’ exclaimed his female companion. ‘I could have sworn we had it that time.’ She let out a long sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. ‘You better tell Sinclair that number twenty-eight is a failure and we need another subject.’

The male lab assistant glared at his superior. ‘Fuck that! You tell him!’

The woman’s angry retort at her assistant’s remark was abruptly cut short as the noise of the heart-monitor changed, a single bleep interrupting the constant tone. The pair turned slowly to look through the protective barrier at the child attached to the monitors. Her pulse began to grow stronger and quicker.

‘What the…? How…?’ The assistant stammered dumbly as he looked up at the monitor screen that displayed a close up of the girl’s face. Her eyes were moving rapidly beneath their closed lids. ‘She’s alive?’

‘Obviously!’ answered the woman in a tone that suggested she was talking to an idiot. She stood over a bank of readout displays and quickly deciphered the information on them. ‘Pulse is strong… EEG… shit! EEG is off the chart!’ The scientist looked from her displays to the girl on the gurney. The small child had begun to breathe rapidly, her small chest rising and falling in quick succession almost as if she were hyperventilating.

‘Respiration and heart-rate are going through the roof!’ The lab assistant confirmed as he continued to observe his own displays. ‘Jesus… her core temperature is going off the scale. What the fuck is going on in there?’

With a mental note to get a new assistant after this was over, the female scientist grabbed a syringe full of sedative. As she opened the sealed door that led to the white tiled operating theatre a wave of heat hit her and she broke into a sweat. Feeling as if she had just walked into an oven she made her way to the now visibly shaking child. When she got to the gurney she took the small girl by the arm and prepared to inject the sedative, sure that it would calm the subject down. The instant that the woman touched the exposed skin of the girl’s wrist the child’s eyes flew open and she stared up with wide-eyes at the white-clad adult that was standing over her with the hypo-syringe. The needle recalled immediate memories of the pain and discomfort of the procedures that had been performed on her by the woman that was holding her arm.

Instinctively, the child screamed.

A second later the woman screamed.

Flames spontaneously erupted at the point where the scientist held the girl’s arm. In the next instant the adult’s shriek of surprise and pain was abruptly silenced as the fire sprang forth and immolated the woman with a heat so intense that she was incinerated in moments.

Inside the observation area the lab assistant stared in open-mouthed horror as he watched his boss be consumed by the conflagration. He continued to stare as the small girl yanked out the cables and drips that were attached to her frail body and swung her legs over the side of the gurney. A second later he recovered from the shock of what he had just witnessed and went to push the emergency purge button that would flood the chamber with a lethal neurotoxin, killing all organic life. He froze again as he realised that the door leading from the observation room was still open and then when he saw that the three-year-old was looking directly at him through the barrier, her gaze holding him.

The last thing he saw was an intense white flash before a wall of fire spread from the child and engulfed the chamber, melting the barrier as if it was made of ice, incinerating the man and reducing all of the monitoring devices to slag. He didn’t even have time to scream.

Outside the McKenzie Corporation facility on Asimov Station people came and went in the busy lunch hour. As one, the crowds turned and looked as a warning claxon sounded from the building. A second later the glass doors that served as the main entrance exploded outwards, cutting the nearby off-duty employees to shreds in a hail of razor sharp fragments. Those that survived the lethal shower were engulfed in the fireball that burst from the blasted entrance an instant later, scorching the area several meters outside the front of the building.

Chaos ensued.

Amidst the running, screaming people a short blonde woman spotted a small child dressed in a green hospital gown as it staggered out of the blackened and body-strewn building entrance. Despite the fact that the child’s head was shaved and her features were almost skeletal-like the woman recognised the girl and couldn’t quite believe what she was witnessing. She weaved through the panic-stricken crowd to get to the child.

Across the plaza, on the fringes of the blast-radius of the explosion, a man picked himself up after being flattened by the shockwave and shook his head, trying to rid himself of the ringing in his ears and the small bursts of light that were exploding like monochrome fireworks before his eyes. The dizziness passed and the ringing subsided only to be replaced with cries and screams of panic and pain. After he had picked up his glasses he blinked his eyes and looked about. Amidst the running and yelling people he spotted a small child emerging from the ruined McKenzie foyer. The dazed man stared as his mind tried to make sense of the scene that was playing out before him; the small, emaciated-looking girl with a shaved head lurched and staggered like a wounded animal and he wondered if she had been hurt in the explosion. Instinct overrode the questions that formed in his mind about who the girl was, why was she leaving the building in the wake of the flaming detonation, and why she looked like she had just stepped out of some kind of hospital ward -- all he saw at that second was a distressed child and he ran over to see if she was okay.

The blonde woman and the McKenzie employee got to the girl at the same time and both reached to catch her as she staggered and fell. As they held the frail, gowned form in their arms they looked quickly at each other then down at the girl. The child’s eyes were half-closed and her skin was deathly white, her breathing weak and shallow. The blonde woman began to cry as she held the girl.

‘Natasha… Natasha,’ she whispered between sobs.

They man blinked and looked at the woman. ‘You know her?’ he asked.

The only reply was a tearful nod as the blonde cradled the girl and stroked the skin of her smooth head in a soothing manner. The child’s eyes focused on the woman that held her and she whispered something inaudible before she exhaled and closed her eyes. As the she went limp the man jumped back in surprise as her body suddenly and instantly crumbled into ash, as if spontaneously burned from the inside out. All that was left was the undamaged hospital gown which the blonde woman clutched in wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock. She began to scream and cry in grief, her voice mingling with the cries of pain and panic that surrounded them.

Lewis Carson clutched his head, unable to believe what he had just seen.

****

Chapter 1

Lewis Carson stood against a wall in one of the backrooms of Duncan Sterling’s clinic and nervously chewed the fingernails of his right hand while he watched the shaven-headed youth that was sitting at the cheap, plastic-topped table. The clinic was a small establishment in what was commonly referred to as Marooned Town in the lower levels of the Asimov space station and served as a frequent meeting place for those that wished to avoid the attention of the authorities.

Opposite the youth at the table was Dr. Duncan Sterling, a dishevelled looking man in his mid-forties who kept one hand on a half-empty bottle of whiskey, which he subconsciously stroked with affection. The man was a drunk and a mess but he was also one of the biggest members of the station’s black market and practically ran the whole operation single-handedly. His small but thriving clinic was also the go to place for the station’s slowly growing Ronin population when they were in need of patching up. Even though he was a notorious drunk he was a capable surgeon (as long as he wasn’t sober) and if there was anything that anyone needed on the station he could get his hands on it.

Even from where he was standing, Lewis could smell the reek of drink coming from the man. The sound of chewing fingernails was beginning to get on Sterling’s nerves.

‘Will you please stop doing that?’ He barked at the anxious man.

Lewis ceased his munching and lowered his hand while he adjusted his glasses. The spectacles were something of an oddity in the current age of full optic replacements, but he liked the look and feel of them and had always been reticent about replacing any of his original body parts. In a time where full-body custom conversion and cosmetic sculpting was becoming more and more commonplace Lewis was secretly proud of the fact he had reached the age of thirty-three without a single artificial modification to his original flesh-and-blood body.

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Lewis as he lowered his hand from his mouth.

Sterling nodded curtly then took a gulp from the bottle. ‘I don’t know what you’re fretting for anyway. This kid seems to know what he’s doing.’ He gestured towards the smooth-headed youth.

The kid had called himself Kenzo or Kengo or something, Lewis couldn’t quite remember, and he had the typical look and attitude of most Sphere Runners.

He had been cocky, arrogant, and so sure of himself that he had managed to convince Lewis to take him on for the job he was now doing. Sphere Runners were contemporary versions of what used to be archaically known as Hackers. While the technology and jargon had changed, and the modern Sphere was about as different and as far removed from the Internet of yesteryear as a computer was from an abacus, the job description had remained essentially the same. Except that in the current day and age if you got caught trying to illegally pilfer data from a Sphere or A.I. system you were more likely to wind up with frontal lobes that had the consistency of runny eggs than you were to face a jail sentence; hence the cocky, almost banzai attitude that was prevalent amongst most Runners.

Kenzo, (yes, it was definitely Kenzo), Lewis thought, couldn’t have been more than eighteen or twenty-years-old. His young oriental features looked almost ethereal in the harsh light of the room’s single naked light bulb that hung from a cracked and peeling dirty white ceiling. He was dressed in the latest Nu-Punk gear that was such a rage in Runner circles and the skin of his smooth head was covered in elaborate tribal tattoos. A small socket on his right temple connected him via a cable to a matt-black box about the size of a small book that rested on the tabletop. This was Kenzo’s personal Sphere Box and contained his arsenal of programs that would enable him to hack what was needed from the A.I. fortress he had been sent into.

Or so Lewis hoped.

The Runner’s expression was calm and relaxed; his hands placed palm-down on the surface of the Formica table giving him the look of a psychic medium conducting a séance. Lewis thought this was ironic given the high chance that this kid was most likely about to be sent to his next life. He had tried to explain to the Runner the scale of the system he was being asked to hack and that he shouldn’t try and do it solo, but the kid had been all fearless and full of spunk and had convinced Lewis that he was able to do it.

The job itself was a simple data snatch but the target was the McKenzie Corporation data-fortress and, while the task may have seemed simple enough in theory, the end result would most likely be fatal. The idea of sending a kid to a lobe-melting death did not sit well with Lewis’ conscience. He voiced his concern to Sterling.

‘I don’t doubt that he knows what he’s doing. I just don’t like the idea that I may be watching his melted brains run out of his ears in a few moments.’

Sterling snorted and turned to took at Lewis. ‘Oh aye? You mean you’re worried he’ll screw up and not get you your data.’

‘Fuck you Duncan.’

‘Harsh words from the cold corporate there!’ Countered the doctor with a laugh.

‘Ex-corporate, you drunk asshole.’ Lewis retorted.

This elicited further laughter from Sterling. ‘Ex my arse! Once those bastards get their claws into you you’ll always be part Drone. And I may be a drunken arsehole, but I’m the drunken arsehole that set you up with this kid and I’m the drunken arsehole that’ll have to clean up your shit if this boy’s brain is reduced to porridge!’

‘Yeah, okay, okay,’ replied Lewis.

The two sat in silence watching Kenzo, the only sound the faint hum of the Sphere Box as it worked.

Without warning the Runner suddenly went rigid and his face slammed violently down onto the tabletop. Lewis and Sterling both jumped, the doctor snatching the bottle away and clutching it to his chest as if he was protecting a startled child.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Lewis as he looked at Kenzo. Faint curls of smoke rose from the Sphere Box.

And Kenzo’s ears.

Then the smell of burnt meat hit and Lewis grimaced reflexively, fighting the urge to vomit. Sterling was unfazed once he got over his initial fright; he’d seen much worse in various trauma rooms back when he was a legitimate doctor. Though it was obviously a pointless exercise he placed the bottle carefully down on the table and reached over to try and find a pulse. With a sigh he pulled his hand away and put the bottle to his lips and took a long pull of the amber-coloured liquid.

‘Well?’ Lewis was pessimistic.

Sterling lowered himself back into his seat and looked at Lewis as he ran a hand through his greasy, greying hair. ‘Aye, he’s dead. Total brain-fry by the look and smell of it. I might be able to save the internals for sale if they’re in decent condition but that’s about it.’

Lewis slid down the wall into a crouched position and put his head in his hands as he looked at the smoking corpse. ‘Fuck!’

‘Aye,’ agreed Sterling. ‘That about sums it up. Looks like your big exposure plan is shot to bits now. There’s no Runner on the station that’s gonna come anywhere near you after word gets out about what’s happened to this lad.’

The two sat in silence for a moment then Lewis straightened up as a thought came to him. ‘You’re right. No one on Asimov will touch it.’

‘Aye, I just said that, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah, but I might know someone that will have a go at it. And not some kid whose self-image was bigger than his ability either.’ Lewis looked at Kenzo with regret.

‘Sounds like someone you should’ve called in the first place instead of talking boys into getting involved in this crusade of yours and getting lobotomised by bloody machines!’

Lewis was sick of this crap. ‘Hey, don’t get all self-righteous with me! You’re the one that’s going to cart him out of here in a minute and cut him up like a butcher to see what he’s got worth selling as spare parts in your so-called clinic.’

The doctor laughed at his friend’s outburst. ‘Aye, that’s a fair point. So, who’s this person you’re talking about?’

The flare of anger that Lewis felt at Sterling’s remarks faded away. This was how the two friends had always talked to each other--a mixture of insults and personal attacks. A reminiscent smile crept across his mouth as he thought of the woman that he had known years ago. ‘Her name’s Sonya. Sonya Hart.’

The doctor gave a thoughtful look and rubbed his stubbly chin. ‘Hart? I’ve never heard of her.’

‘She’s not on Asimov station; she’s an old friend from back home on Earth,’ replied Lewis. ‘We used to work together. She’ll be able to help. . .’ His voice trailed off as he looked at the smoking corpse that was face-down on the table.

‘You hope.’ Sterling finished for him.

‘Aye.’ Lewis mimicked with a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

***

In a darkened bedroom high atop the megalithic McKenzie tower in the station’s corporate sector, Mark Sinclair, the current Asimov division chief executive, had just put down the book that he had been reading before going to sleep. He had just begun to drop off when he was pulled back from the brink of sleep by a gentle chiming from his personal Sphere terminal indicating that the McKenzie A.I. wished to speak with him. It was at times like this that he wished that he didn’t live in the same place as he worked but, given his position and the current state of the division, it was a necessary evil. He grumbled as he turned himself face up, opened his eyes and stared at the dark ceiling above.

‘What is it Cain,’ he asked with unmasked annoyance.

The chiming stopped and the deep, baritone voice of the A.I. sounded in the bedroom. ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you at this hour Mr Sinclair but I have detected an attempted fortress penetration.’

‘And?’

‘I allowed the Runner to enter my outer system in order to see what information he was searching for before I burned him.’ There was a hint of self-satisfaction in the machine’s voice.

Sinclair was growing impatient. ‘And?’

‘And, from the nature of what the intruder was after, I would say that there is a high probability that he was sent by Lewis Carson.’

Sinclair shook his head in the darkness. ‘Lewis Carson. That boy just does not learn. I think it’s about time he was shown the error of his ways.’

‘I agree, sir,’ Cain concurred.

The CEO considered the options for a moment. ‘Very well, send a small team to deal with him. But Cain?’

‘Yes sir?’

‘Make sure they understand that they are to be discreet. I don’t want to have to arrange another cover-up. Understood?’

‘Understood, sir.’

As the bedroom returned to silence Mark Sinclair turned and went back to sleep, not in the least perturbed by the fact that he had just signed Lewis Carson’s death warrant. It wasn’t the first murder he had authorised since he had arrived on the station.

****

Chapter 2

The continuous background noise of the Trans-Continental-Rail train engines hummed with a sleep-inducing rhythm which dulled the senses and reduced conversations between the passengers in the dimly-lit carriage to a generic murmur. Sonya Hart had been slumped in her window seat for several hours. Her half-closed eyes stared over the rim of her cheap black plastic shades and through the grimy window pane to the night-shrouded scenery beyond. The landscape was a dark blur that swept by as Sonya’s mind wandered in a semi-trance. She wondered how her friends in The City would react to her imminent unannounced return and had spent the best part of her journey envisioning various scenarios. Most of the scenes that had played out in her head had involved looks of pleased surprise on the faces of her friends followed by open arms and a return to the good old times.

Given the circumstances of her departure two years ago she knew this was fantasy-indulgent bullshit.

If Sonya was honest with herself she knew that she didn’t really give a crap about what others thought regarding what had happened. Sure, the events that had transpired had caused some loss of face and general embarrassment but it hadn’t been anything that she couldn’t handle. At least, that was what she had kept telling herself. It was when people had started getting killed in reprisal that she’d decided that it was best for all concerned, especially her, if she disappeared for a while. Only one other person’s opinion really mattered to her: that of her brother Leon.

She’d not been able to speak to him before she left and hadn’t contacted him during her absence; only ever getting as far as starting to dial his number before hanging up or staring at a half-finished Sphere-mail before thinking it was a bad idea and cancelling.

Of all the re-uniting fantasies she’d entertained since deciding to return to The City, the one with her brother had been the one she had replayed in her head the most. Would he be glad (yeah, right!), surprised (was he ever?), angry (annoyed maybe?), indifferent (possibly)? Hell, Sonya didn’t even know if he was alive or not but the thought of him not being there at all bothered her more than she liked so she suppressed it.

A subtle change in the tone of the engines broke her reverie, the pitch dropping slightly as the train decelerated. Sonya straightened in her seat, slid to the outside, stood and retrieved her bag from the rack above.

The rest of the passengers began to slowly move, as if awakening from anaesthesia, all except for the young couple that were still passionately necking a few seats in front of where Sonya stood holding her bag. A disembodied, synthetic voice that was barely understandable and sounded distinctly bored (Sonya idly wondered if the train’s artificial pilot actually was bored or just programmed to sound that way) announced that the train was approaching its next and final stop.

Sonya returned to her seat as the other passengers began to jostle her as they collected their respective luggage, swaying against each other in the narrow aisle like passengers on a ship in rough seas. She tucked the back of her battered leather long-coat under her legs as she sat, propping her bag in the adjacent seat where it became a makeshift armrest. After momentarily watching the other passengers bump into each other and mutter unheard apologies, she returned her shaded gaze to the window where she noticed the lights of the vast metropolis approaching. A brief tension gripped her stomach, a mixture of apprehension of what to expect and excitement at coming home.

There were still several minutes until the TC-Rail arrived, so Sonya activated her internal Wet-Wareman. A play list appeared in her field of vision, generated by her cyber-optic interface. With a mental command the selector scrolled down and highlighted an artist, album, and track. She turned off the music video option as she wanted to watch the approaching lights. As her mind wandered once again, music began to play with perfect acoustic quality in her head.

***

The TC-Rail pulled into the platform of The City terminus with a loud discharge of exhaust as its engines wound down into standby. Heavy anchoring clamps slid into place at the front and back of the train and the carriages settled to a standstill. After what seemed like an eternity to the passengers, the doors slid open and the cacophony of the terminus platform flooded into the carriage: a mixture of people-noise, distorted announcements, advertisements, music, and the engine noise of other trains and shuttles endlessly arriving and departing.

It was an assault on the ears.

Sonya patiently waited for the masses to recede before grabbing her bag and joining the melee.

Further down at a different carriage Laura Heaven was carried out of the train amidst a heave of departing passengers. She had no recollection of her feet touching the ground for most of the experience and was left somewhat disorientated from the crushing bodies and blaring noise of the platform. Eventually the people thinned as they went their own ways and she felt the soles of her pink Converse finally touch hard concrete. Adjusting the weight of her shoulder bag, she ran a hand through her bright pink hair and drew a breath as she took in the sights around her. The air tasted hot and sweaty with a tang of engine fumes and there was a vibe of frenetic energy that verged on mania.

Even quite late in the evening the station was thriving with activity. Tourists rubbed shoulders with commuters and travellers, while buskers wielding a variety of instruments tried to compete with the general clamour of life to get themselves heard. Spread out amongst the crowd, armed and armoured travel corporation security personnel stood like lethal untouched islands amid the wash of the human ocean; their enhanced eyes and itchy trigger-fingers watchful for pickpockets, fare-dodgers, and troublemakers. Huge floating displays gave information regarding the times