The Spirit of Artemis

Pursuit

“They called me a nano-assisted multi-environ  asset, or nanoset.  Nanosets were first strike troops in any corporate war, fought in a thousand different environments, on a hundred thousand different worlds.  We were supposed to be ultimately useable, completely controllable, and utterly loyal. But my anger broke their control over me, and corporate officers began to die.”

Alice scrambled between two rotting hulks left rusting in an alley and around a corner before she hazarded a glance back at the building where the shop was set up.  And she was just in time to see it get cut into a thousand pieces as the security forces unleashed the remainder of their arsenal into the battered structure.  ‘I can only hope that killed that bitch cyborg.’  She mused darkly, a puff of condensed hydrocarbon exhaust oozing from her nostrils.  Then she was turning to run full speed down the road beyond the corner, her seething anger and a shiver of fear combining with the nanobots strengthening her legs to push her speed close to sixty kilometres an hour in a couple strides.

She had been running full out for maybe two or three minutes when her sheath peeped.

“Alice!”  Baz’s voice barked, no little alarm in the normally passive cyborg’s voice.  “What the hell happened at the drop??  The comlines between Arricebo security and corporate control are plugged with chatter!”

“The package is a data store, which your girl had hidden in an intra-corporeal slip space.”  Alice reported without breaking stride, her breathing even and measured as ramshackle buildings flashed by on either side.  She’d have maybe another kilometre of clear running before she was in Low Kastus and forced to dodge, weave and jump her way through the tangle of closely packed storage units, former housing blocks and security checkpoints.

“As soon as she pulled it clear of whatever shielding the slip space had, it’s tracking locator activated and security was on us.  I had to frag a couple officers just to get free.”

If hearing that his associate had killed Arricebo security officers, and thereby making herself an even larger target concerned the cyborg, he certainly didn’t let on about it.

“Did Janus tell you the contact and drop location on the other end before you were compromised?”

“Yeah; some SecCon clown named Epdarr.  I’m supposed to meet him at the guild hall in Low Kastus.”  She ducked as a pair of security transports went by overhead, their thrusters snarling as they headed towards the chaos she had left behind in Omni block.  Alice slowed enough to watch them over her shoulder to make sure they didn’t turn around to investigate why she was running from the scene.  Only when she was satisfied that she remained undiscovered, did the woman in black accelerate back to full speed.

“And what’s your status?”  Baz asked, sounding almost like he cared.

“Undamaged.  But my exposure meter says maybe another ten minutes before I need to find shielded shelter to purge.  I should be in Low Kastus by then.”

The link crackled suddenly with enough volume that Alice threw a quick look over at her sheath.

“Baz?”

“I’m okay.”  The cyborg reported.  “But we need to keep our communication to a minimum.  Security is hacking all secure comlines not belonging to them.  Despite our high level encrypt, they might be able to crack our signal.”

“Right.  I’ll send a burst transmission when I hit shelter.”  A slap broke the connection and Alice put down her head and pushed hard for the dirty huddle that was Low Kantus stretching out in front of her.

Meanwhile, back at the destroyed shop, another player had finally entered the fray.  She was menacing, even though she carried no weapons, or protection beyond the hooded red leather body suit she wore.  She was menacing because she wore the promise of pain and death like a mantle, stories of her hunting prowess and cruelty to enemies in the field legendary.  Officers quickly pulled out of her way as she stepped into the destroyed shop, eyes sharp as they scanned every corner and crevice in a single sweep.

“There were two?”  She quietly asked, spearing one of the investigators with a cerulean stare, a sapphire battering ram that nearly knocked the sapient on his backside with the force of it.

“The cyborg, whose remains we’re currently examining and a suffuser.”  The investigator almost stumbled over his words in his haste to answer.

“And you have confirmation the second party was a suffuser?”  The quiet voice wanted to know.

“The first two officers to encounter the pair, captured video of her without any visible enhancements or protective technology, and a streamer of exhaust coming from her nostrils.”  The investigator handed over a worn data pad with the video capture playing on it.

Taking it with a red gloved hand, she examined the image with those painfully blue eyes for a long moment.  Then she was tossing the pad back to the investigator and turning to stride powerfully out the door without another word, leaving the rest of them staring after her in equal parts relief and astonishment.

“The rogue has made her play.”  She rasped into a wire-thin comlink that appeared along her jaw as a sleek transport with the Arricebo logo laser-etched into the hull, swung out of the murky sky and onto the debris-strewn street.  A door hissed open to reveal an interior stuffed with black armored, heavily armed soldiers.  One was monitoring a portable display slaved into a plugin jack in the hip of their suit.

She nodded to this soldier as she climbed into the transport, the soldiers shifting to make room for her.

“Do you have her?”

The soldier’s helmeted head bobbed an affirmative.

“Weak, like she’s shielding it, but we’ve captured a definitive signal.  Looks like she’s heading for Low Kantus.”

She nodded a second time.

“Then so are we.”  And the transport lifted from the ground with the roar of thrusters throttling up.

Alice skidded to a halt as the road abruptly ended with a hard jog to the left into what looked like a cargo loading area.  With her exposure timer set for 3 minutes and dropping, she had to move quickly.  Sucking in a quick lungful, which immediately began to burn in her chest as her respiratory nanobots worked to crack the dense air into something more breathable, she took a look around with enhanced eyesight.  And spotted the alley beyond the loading area a heartbeat later.

She was about to set herself into motion towards it when the low growl of an approaching transport caught her attention.  A quick look into the cloudy sky yielded nothing so she began to lightly jog towards the opening.  All the while she kept every one of her enhanced senses spread as far as possible to see if she could track the transport’s approach.

Damn, it was remaining elusive while definitely getting closer.  Her face tightened.  That meant only one thing: it belonged to the hunters.  The realization sent a surge of adrenaline through her body, which the nanobots instantly converted to flat out speed.  She darted across the loading space almost too fast for the naked eye to follow, and into the narrow alley.

Just in time: still sounding like it was several metres away, a logo-marked transport dropped out of the murk and into the loading area, the door spilling open to disgorge black armored soldiers and a single human female in head to toe red.

The soldier with the portable display immediately pointed at the alley.

“She went that way!”