running IR scans, at least they’d have to wonder which of the five men now approaching the mansion was me.
The forest ended about thirty meters from the building. I set the nano-clouds to continue moving until they touched it, at which point they’d reconstitute as much of the dirt as possible, with the last operational nano machines vanishing into the soil and permanently turning off when they were far enough from me. I scanned the house through the scope on the trank rifle and found four guards, two sitting on chairs on rooftop observation decks and two leaning against the corners of the building that I could see. I shot the lower guards first, a needle to the neck causing each to fall satisfyingly quickly.
The gun was apleasure touse, the recoil minimal and the sight so strong that at this distance I could tell that the guard to my left should lake better care of his skin. I took out the upper guards next, then waited. The nano- clouds were two thirds of the way to the house, the night was still quiet, and Lobo’s message hadn’t changed to the danger trans mission. All was well.
I sprinted for the house, flattening myself against it as I reached it. I breathed through my nose and strained to hear if anything had changed, but everything was still quiet. Staying close to the wall I made for the back of the house, knelt at the rear corner, and took out another pair of up-and-down guards. I ran to the other side, noting a rear door as I passed it, in case one of the remaining guard pair was more alert than his comrades, but fortunately these two were also paying little attention. After I took them out, I abandoned the rifle and returned to the rear door.
I grabbed some dirt, spit in it, gave the nanomachines instructions, and rubbed the damp soil on the bottom of the door. In a few minutes the nano-machines had decomposed enough of the door to let me slide through the gas rats. I put each inside, thumbed it active, and backed away. The arm-sized canisters sprouted small mechanical legs and end-mounted sensors front and rear, then took off. The house was a decent-size mansion, maybe thirty- five or forty rooms spread across its two floors, but the gas rats were fast and each carried enough colorless, odorless sleep gas to put an entire apartment building to bed. The nanomachines wouldn’t let the gas do more than tickle my nose and throat.
I headed back the way I’d come and then to the front corner of the house, where I waited, admiring the night and keeping an eye on the sleeping guard. Nothing new appeared on my wrist unit.
Lobo’s distress message droned on. Though the bits of light oozing from the house’s front fixtures polluted the evening a bit, the star display was still brilliant. I’d never been in this part of space before, so the sky vista was new, as full of magic potential and promise as the stars over Pinkelponker had felt when I was a boy. I’ve never lost my love of the night.
I gave the rats fifteen minutes, more than enough time to cover the house, drew the pulse pistol, and walked up to the front door. It was locked, but the pistol took out the frame around the lock, and I went inside. True to form, the main office was clearly visible from the reception area; men like Osterlad are never far from work. Its door was open. I approached the office from the side, listening and looking for trouble, but everything was as quiet as it should be.
Inside the office a circuit cube sat in a plexi container on a conference table, and Jalon was slumped over the desk. I took off my pack, put it on the table, and stuck the pistol inside. I added the plexi container, closed the pack, and turned to the door.
Jalon stood and shot me in the left leg.
I went down hard, the pack still on the table, blood oozing from a hole the size of my thumb and pain screaming through my system for a few seconds until the nano-machines cut it off. The fact that the blood was flowing gently and not spraying meant he hadn’t hit an artery, and the ragged hole suggested he’d used a projectile. That was fine by me: more fodder for the nano-machines. They were already working to seal the hole, so I rolled onto the wound to hide the activity from Jalon, who was now standing over me.
“Mr. Osterlad read you correctly,” he said. “You’re soft. No one’s quite clear on how you dealt with those anti-corporate ecoterrorists on Machen, but Slake was sure you had let them live.” He shook his head slowly. “Mr. Osterlad felt you might be dumb enough to try to make the exchange. I should get a nice bonus for figuring you’d try to steal it. We both agreed I should take inoculations for every major non-lethal agent we carry—and if I say so myself, if its in active use, we carry it.”
The hole in my leg was nearly sealed, but I stayed down. I had to get out without showing Jalon the wound, because I didn’t want to explain how it healed. If someone like Osterlad got his hands on me and brought in enough scientists, they’d realize the Aggro experiments hadn’t ended in failure and make more like me. I was sure I wouldn’t survive the process.
“You guys were never going to honor the deal,” I said.
“True enough. The six million you were paying was more than the market value of that control unit, but a Starlon battlewagon with a fully operational complement of weapons is worth much, much more than that. We are in business to make a profit, after all.”
“I can still pay” I said. “You take my money, keep the control unit, and let me go. You make a profit. I walk away. Everyone wins.”
Jalon leaned against the table and laughed. “We’re not negotiating. We’re waiting for the gas to wear off, which probably means I’ll be stuck with you for another few hours, eh?”
I nodded.
“When the staff wakes up, we’ll keep the control unit, interrogate you and take all your money, and in a few days a salvage ship will retrieve the battlewagon.” He went back to the desk and sat, his gun still pointed in my direction but his attention no longer solely on me. “I definitely should get a hefty bonus out of this.”
When the guards rolled me over, Jalon would see the healed wound. I could withstand any interrogation they could create, but that would only make them more curious. My stomach felt like I’d broken in two as I realized I had no options. Killing in combat is bad enough, but at least the stakes are clear and you enter the field knowing what’s coming. Killing like this chips away at you, one of the reasons I’ve kept to myself for so long, one of the reasons, I now had to admit to myself, that I’ve never tried to get back to Pinkelponker to find Jennie.
I stuck the tip of my index finger into the small hole still open in my leg, rubbed the blood on my fingertip into the pool of blood on the floor under me, and gave the nano-machines instructions.
I looked at Jalon and said, “You’re wrong, you know.”
“About what?” he said.
The blood was turning black and rising into a small cloud hovering just above the floor. “I’m not soft,” I said. “I’m just torn. Part of me needs the action, but part of me despises the cost.” The cloud was under his chair, almost to the wall, picking up speed.
“Then we’re doing you a favor,” he said, “because we’re deciding for you. You’re out of it now.”
The cloud floated up the wall until it was higher than Jalon, then spread out over him and gently fell, a nano- dew coating his hair, ears, clothes.
“No,” I said, “I’m not.”
Jalon reached to scratch his ear, then dropped the gun and grabbed his head with both hands.
Blood oozed for a moment from his ears and eyes, then turned to more cloud. His body fell forward, his face hitting the desk as his head began to vanish into an ever-darkening cloud. I turned away, grabbed the pack, and headed out of the room.
Outside, I called Lobo on the wrist unit and sat down to wait for him, trying to lose myself in the stars that now promised no new magic, only more of the same.
“I’ve fire-walled the new unit,” Lobo said, “run every simulation I possess, and it comes up clean. I’m ready to take it live.”
We were in low orbit above Osterlad’s mansion, with an hour still to go before the people in the house should wake. “Do it,” I said.
A few seconds later, weapons displays flashed to life across the gunnery console where I sat.
“Everything’s operational,” he said. “I am completely functional again. Thank you.”
“We need to take out the shuttles to buy ourselves a bit more time, so lets use them for a pulse check. Show me the video.”
“What about the house?”
“Leave it alone,” I said. “There were no witnesses.”
Another display window opened in front of me. On it two shuttles sat side by side on a pad. A few seconds
