Red Shift: The Odds (Censored version) Read online

  Chapter 11

  “We’ve got a situation Jack.” Seek spoke with care, as though he was processing every word he said before he spoke it. “It seems that one of our runners gaffed a job and got into an incident.” Looking at Trina, he slowly nodded.

  “So what went down, and what does it have to do with me?”

  Trina looked Jack straight in the eyes, almost looking right through him. “Jack, you have an idea of what the Clan is about, and what our aspirations are. The runner has attacked a diplomat, and he panicked while trying to get away from a property he was collecting goods from.”

  “Why would he do that? Why did he panic?”

  “We’re going to find that out when he gets back, and discipline him. In the meantime, he has left an item behind that ties him to the scene and to Wing’Tan. We need that taken care of urgently or our plans to move into deeper politics will be put back years, if not permanently.”

  “So where am I going?”

  “Senator John Macs’ residence,” said Seek with a little concern in his voice. “The diplomat is staying with him.”

  “You mean Johnny Legless? As in any bugger dumb enough to cross him gets their legs removed? Christ, no wonder the runner crapped himself, I’m surprised he got out in one piece.”

  “Yes, well, the senator doesn’t go by that name anymore, but believe me, he’s no more compassionate now, and he wants us. He’s trying to blackmail us with this item, and we just can’t afford to mess around.”

  “So why not send in your assassins. I’m pretty sure that rumour about the Clan is accurate.”

  “Quite,” said Trina. “But we don’t want the senator dead, we want him on our side, we just don’t want him to hold the balance of power. Which is why we must act now.”

  “So what do I need to collect?”

  “You’re not collecting anything, you’re destroying it. It’s the prototype of the bike you have. Not as advanced, but still plenty enough for the government scientists to cream over for a while. We want you to go in, destroy it and get out.”

  “Again, why not the assassins?”

  “Because we’re not killing anyone, Jack. The senator wants to barter, you’re going in under that guise, when you get close to the bike, you’re to attach a plasma grenade, then get out without being captured yourself.”

  “No need to tell me about the last bit. How am I getting in, just rocking up to the main gate and saying ‘hi’?”

  “That’s it. John is a business man first and foremost, he thinks you’re taking documents detailing the new Lynx DNA mimicking analyser the Asians are supposedly developing. He wants to sell them on, but truth is it’s all rumour, there is no tech. We started that off two years ago, among other little treats, to get word into the market in case we needed bargaining for a day like today.” Trina stood with a satisfied smile on her face.

  “OK. In, boom, out. Load up the co-ords and update me on the way, Ping.”

  Before anyone could say anything Jack was on the bike and heading up the ramp. Coming out onto the road, Ping sent through the location. It was just over 200 kilometres inland.

  Quiet roads, should be well under an hour, Jack thought to himself.

  As he headed out of the settlement the night sky was clear. The stars were getting brighter as he headed into the countryside. He was riding on HALO alone again. He made a mental note to tell Ping and the crew to replace the front lights with something useful.

  Winding along the big sweeping roads, he started thinking about how the hell he got here in the first place. The last few days had been such a blur of activity, he had hardly thought about the situation.

  It had occurred to him that it was odd for the government to have ambushed him. I mean, sure, he had a few warrants out, but nothing two dozen other runners didn’t have. Maybe it was his military past that made him an easier target to track. Maybe it was that they were hoping to get him for themselves again. They sure were fond of his unique physical attributes, but they had told him they managed to clone the tech he had, even though his father assured him that wasn’t possible.

  Dad. For a crazy old bastard he wasn’t half bad. After years in government service himself, he had gone out and started his own tech company. Primarily set up to make enhancements to help disabled, he had often come up with unexpected uses for his technology, such as Jack’s eyes.

  He had said to Jack one day, not long after implementing the procedure, “Son, if you’re going to put your life on the line for this country, I’m going to make sure you’re as far ahead of the eight-ball as I can have you.”

  He died a few weeks after that conversation, and a few years later, Jack was stitched up by the very buggers he had been defending. Damned government …

  His thoughts were interrupted by Ping. “Yo, Jack, wake the hell up, you blew past the turn. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Crap, I zoned-out. Don’t stress, I’m heading back around.”

  “Get your game face on or this may be your last ride. Feel me?”

  “Uh-huh, I hope you have this puppy jazzed up for me.”

  “All ready to rock. The darts are loaded, the PG’s are in the compartment by your right thigh. Also, I forgot to tell you, you have a short-range EMP charge equipped on the bike, you select it through the menu system manually, or through TLM.”

  “Won’t that ruin the bike’s systems?”

  “Still catching on aren’t we monkey-boy. All of your systems are Biotronics, which as you may guess by my superior wit and subtle sarcasm, don’t get affected by EMP. The “E” bit of EMP is electro.”

  “Thanks for the education and piss-take, always appreciated.”

  “Anytime, sunshine.”

  “Wait a minute, won’t the scanners at the property—I’m assuming they have them—pick up my weapons?”

  “No-siree, one welcome side effect of the Biotronics is that it masks any sensor equipment that may be scanning around it. The scanners will just show up benign material.”

  “Nice work. Going on radio silence, talk soon.”

  As Jack neared the entry, there was an automated checkpoint. Crunch time, he thought as the scanners passed forward and back. The electro-charged posts slid into the ground leaving a clear path. Jack moved forward, about to release the hatch on the PG compartment when he saw another checkpoint. Can never take enough care I guess.

  Two guards had their pulse guns pointed right at Jack as one signalled him off the bike. One guard used his spare hand to wave a detector around the bike, the other patted Jack down and gave him a retina scan. There was no discussion, but as he flicked his weapon toward the bike, Jack took it as a pass.

  The final driveway was a long sweeping bend, lined both sides with old Redwoods, and a scattering of bushes among manicured lawns. As he rose over the brow, he could see an open plaza with six armed men, two cars and two bikes, one of them with the same looking skin as Betty. He slowly slid his right hand down, released the catch and slipped a plasma grenade the size of a cigarette packet into his hand.

  He kept his speed slow, but constant, and manoeuvred as though he was about to park. He was near the end of the plaza, there were actually seven men present; the last, holding no gun, looked to be Senator Johnny Legless.

  Guiding around parallel with the house Jack put his right leg out as though he were about to stop. When he was about six metres away from the target bike, he quickly flicked the PG at the bike, and swung the tail of the Panigale around and accelerated hard.

  The instant smoke from the acceleration masked him slightly, but he still heard shouting from the men as they all ran from the bike. Two seconds later the bike exploded, the flash appearing in the periphery of Jack’s vision. His lights were off, HALO only, but he still had two guards and the electro-charged posts to deal with.

  As he sped down the drive, he thought about the EMP; ‘EMP charged’ flashed up on his visor. He engaged it just as
the guards came into view. They had him in their targets, but as they fired, their electronic weapons did nothing, they were useless.

  Jack flew past with a vortex of dust and leaves swirling behind him. He neared the main entry. “This EMP better have enough range, or this will be a very short ride,” he said to no one in particular. He skimmed between the posts, clipping one with his left fairing. No discharge, he was out.

  “Ping, I’m out, what’s happening?”

  “The EMP smoked everything at the main property, but there are already feds alerted, the blast must have been recognised as EMP. There are two birds up heading to the property. They are coming from both ways following the road, so keep your eyes open. They will own all of the main roads for ten kilometres around you in three minutes; in ten minutes you’ll have all roads in a twenty kilometre radius closed.”

  “Any bad news?”

  “Ha ha, you’re one crazy bastard, I’ll give you that. The bad news is the Clan don’t want to be identified as relating to this, so you need to head east for a day or two, stay out of the way, and stay off comms.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, you have to go into the city and grab a tech file that marked you. It’s being passed from another Clan, you’re going to intercept.”

  “The city? I thought I was supposed to be staying away from built up areas.”

  “Last second change. Co-ords coming for pick up, and safe house.”

  “Roger, comms out, I’m gone.”

  As the road opened out, Jack wound Betty up and saw the vista in front of him blend into various shades of a blue hue. By his estimate he’d be coming on the drone in about thirty seconds, and assuming he could get rid of it fast, be home free by the time the feds got themselves together.

  He saw the drone light up blue in front of him about 800 metres ahead. Although he wasn’t emitting electrical signals, the drone would physically see him in about four seconds. Jack engaged the darts and hoped they had a good range. He locked the target through his visor and fired. The drone swerved, but the bike’s AI was way ahead and moved its targeting system just in front of the drone’s estimated trajectory. Half a second later Jack’s blue flash was now an orange fireball.

  He knew they would be triangulating his position right now, based on the lost comms with the drone, but he had already planned for that. He quickly hit the brakes hard, turned mid-road, and headed back in the direction he came. Half a minute later he turned down an adjacent road that cut through the back country for fifty kilometres before linking with the main road he was looking for. It was a risk as the road was not as open and would slow him, but he knew that they would be scanning the main roads. This would put him well outside their cordon before they had any idea where he was.

  Jack opened a line to an old friend who was not far past the town where the safe house was located. He knew the call would be tracked, but also knew Sin was a smooth operator. She would not only have his incoming line scrambled, but would also be smart enough to read deep between the lines.

  After a few short rings, there was an answer. “Southern Shipping and Freight, Cindy speaking.”

  “Hey Sin, it’s Jack, how you doin’?”

  “Jack, how are you? It’s been a while, I thought you were out of business. Still Running, or have you smartened up and decided to take my offer as security detail?”

  “Ahhh, you know me Sin, I’m a lone ranger these days.”

  “Such a shame, you’re a wasted talent mucking around with that low-rent glorified courier service.”

  “Wow Sin, that cut deep.” Jack tried his hardest to sound insulted by her slight.

  “Yeah right, screw you. Now my dear, for what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

  “Well I may have a Grade-A package to move in the near future.”

  ‘Grade A’ was a term they used to joke about as Jack’s description, not because of his quality, but the opposite in fact, being he never got above a C grade in school.

  “Well, well, the little man is moving up in the world. Hope you’re not messing with those dodgy card sharks.”

  The card sharks was another code phrase on account of the Wing’Tan being known for backing most of the black-market gambling, including domination of the Autohacking scene.

  “Well, you know what they say about choosing company, stick with what you know.”

  “Ha ha, well you’d fit right in with a bunch of hustlers.”

  “You flatter me. Well, I’ll be in touch soon.”

  “Stay safe, hun.” The phone clicked dead.

  At least Jack knew he still had someone around who may be able to help him. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure the Wing’Tan were that keen on keeping him around to get in the way of their repatriation discussions with Johnny. It seemed to him it was far easier for them just to dig a big ole hole and throw him in the bottom of it.