Loading Souls by Dalen Buchanan

  Part way into his story, he got a puzzled look on his face, like I wasn’t listening. He glanced at Lalo and Lucho for assurance, but they had their unblinking deadpans on. His story wound down with fading volume. He had noticed the Cocktail number 7. "Memo, you look good. I’m glad they got you fixed so well." I told him, trying to recover. "We need you to get to the simulator and catch up with us. Lucho took one down today like a fat calf." I gestured at Lucho when I said it and he took his cue well, "Two, maybe three seconds to do the tie. You’ll like the training, bro." He said it with a hint of his usual smile. Lucho seemed to have a good accommodation with Cocktail number 7. We walked Memo into the simulator room and I gave him Cocktail number 9. Memo would mesh better with us by tomorrow.

  Father Cervantes and Nuncio arrived in their moving van an hour later, having dropped off forensics reports and filed charges through the Policia for various high crimes. They had to wait for a lab clerk to get back from lunch to turn over evidence and preserve the chain. It was very irritating. Father Cervantes had marched into Capitan Nunez’ walled office and not left until giving the Capitan acute heartburn from his own lunch of Chili Relleno. We should see improvement or tell him otherwise. They grabbed some food and went to their rooms to start developing leads from the forensics.

  I missed Father Luke’s more social style for just a moment. I wanted a few words of encouragement from him for my cousins. Cervantes was less approachable for the little niceties. Then the number 7 kicked in and I felt like a nap. Hang my Skins on a transfuser and slide into the rack kind of tired. My goals became very short term. When the Cocktail starts wearing off, the only way to stay awake is to take more. I self-administered once my Skins were off. By the time I got to the bed, the lethargy had passed a little. I figured I would uplink while I rested and see what was going on.

  Saint Peter was mostly occupied. When I entered the Battlenet, there was a sort of placeholder avatar for his feed. I called it the Librarian. He would only show the past. Father Cervantes was online and gave me a sitrep. Delgado had ordered the abduction because his cat told him to.

  It was some kind of online virtual thing. Saint Peter was running down the details, but got hung up on nasty game protection encryption. Cervantes wasn’t sure how long Saint Peter would be hammering away at this ridiculous motive, but most of our allotment of his consciousness was being used to hack a game world called "Gneflheim."

  I asked the Librarian to show me Gneflheim. It linked me to a busy gamer portal, auto filed an identity and got me inside with a subscription contract. There was a diatribe by an avatar supposed to represent Odin. This place was hell for people that died peacefully. They toiled like robots until someone freed them with violence. There was a community of online Reivers, allowed to vent themselves on daemons and each other. This was a builder world, offering growth within character. The world itself was shrouded in mist. Perpetual night. It was very creepy. I saved the entry game and asked the Librarian for reviews and biographies related to Gneflheim.

  The net was littered with stir on the program. "Top Rate Sim!" and "Big Prizes" the reviewers captioned. "Spawned an antisocial fan base" and "Deranged" cautioned educators. What really caught the eye was a liberal real world reward program for top scorers. A few could just play for a good living. The top of the pyramid paid a lot more. Their winner this year would get Transference to a performance body and a job with Gnefl Corporate. This could be a source of the money smell on the investigation.

  I wished Saint Peter was here enough to chart the money. But I could see why he wanted to get at the decrypted user logs before they were purged. We needed to know all about Delgado’s cat. I ghosted through the filed interrogations to get a better feel for this crew and to hear about the cat from Delgado’s mouth. Somewhere in there would be more info about Sweetie and Chelo. I used a camera view rather than full immersion. The implant would work for that, no need to get up and climb into a simulator. I found full immersion during some versions of Saint Peter’s interrogations to be disturbing anyway. He had bookmarked a few critical statements from each uploaded prisoner and made bare bones summaries, but the full interrogations were incomplete. No doubt he would have more questions when he opened up Gneflheim.

  I went straight to Delgado and hit the first bookmark. He was seated at a table in front of bright lights. Chains held him steady. Pictures of his house interior formed a collage on the table top. A Policia jailer prowled behind him, smacking a sap into his palm to keep Delgado jumpy. To the left, a pair of expensive shoes were visible on some silent observer of the proceedings. The interrogator was a gray haired simulacrum of Capitan Nunez. The rest of the room was shadows.

  "Rozo shows up with these two girls real late," Delgado offered. "He wants to shoot them in the morning, but I told him they looked beat up and I wasn’t going to take no releases from them." The lie graphs, running on his upload and inescapable, showed I could believe the girls went to his house. The rest was convenient fiction.

  "He called them puta the whole time. I never heard any names." Another lie. I jumped ahead to another bookmark.

  Same room, but now a simulacrum of Aroz lies forward in his chains on a chair next to Delgado. The big jailer appears to have just beaten Aroz pretty vigorously. Blood splatter mars Delgado’s cheek. "Aroz had to do what Ogre said. Ogre never took a no answer from anybody he could hurt," Delgado said. "I didn’t want him in my house, but he would burn it down if I said no." Lie graphs thought the first was true but the last statement was a little off. Next bookmark.

  Delgado was in conference with a Notario. They were in one of those little interrogation rooms you see in real time prisons. Even the chairs had layers of grimy paint. The Notario says, "They pulled a lot of computers out of the house. I need to know what they might find on the girls." Delgado sipped a paper cup of coffee and made a face. I had had that coffee before.

  "I uploaded them, that was the deal," he said. "They got copied and then they left." Mostly true. Next bookmark.

  Water sheets off Delgado’s body as the board is tipped up out of the water. He coughs continuously under the soft cloth over his face. The interrogator flips the cloth up and speaks close to Delgado’s ear. "Almost done now. I just need you to tell me where the girls went," he purred. "Then you can go to your cell and I’ll send in la comida." The simulacrum was bald with a transparent visor and rain slicker. He wore a white apron underneath. Delgado sputtered water in an attempt to speak. It was enough for Saint Peter to interpret. He captioned letters over Delgado that said, "They left with Ogre." The graphs said true.

  The next few bookmarks dealt with the cat. It was confirmed in four different interrogations. Delgado and a man with a whip, Delgado kneeling in front of a shallow hole, Delgado raving on a hospital bed. I choose the interview with the least environmental stressors, Delgado being driven by an aged up Aroz. This was the prison release scenario. Delgado was in a nondescript body of about five decades. He had served his time on the revival tour. His original body had died in a prison riot, so he was placed in a Vin Ordinaire zombie for release. All was supposedly forgiven, so he chatted with Aroz about the past. The Aroz simulacrum was a crippled copy of the actual El Rozo so shared history was readily recalled. It would guide conversation based on prompts from Saint Peter. Any discrepancies could be laid at the feet of Father Time. Delgado thought fifteen years had passed.

  "I’ll have to thank Belasco for keeping my Gneflheim Avatar up," he said. "I should have bought into Gnefl. Almost twenty years for a game!" Unless he had some straw alias, those funds would have been confiscated too. "Did he say anything about Edmundo?" Footnotes on the interrogation said Edmundo was the cat. "If he’s still connected, I can get a job."

  The Aroz clone said, "He stopped talking when you went up." Delgado grunted in surprise, "He knows the Avatar isn’t me. That gato was always too smart. I often wished he was smart enough to tell me before the Templars raided." Delgado was quiet for a time, staring at the foothills o
utside the car. "I thought it was an easy job, like the journalists." Footnotes showed clippings of journalists struck by cars or falling down stairs, unsolved mysteries. "It would have paid pretty well though. Enough points to put me in the Seventh Circle." That cryptic statement had no footnotes to guide me. Possibly it was related to the Gneflheim gaming system. Ogre and this new Belasco player were as yet unidentified.

  So I disconnected from the feed and got up. Saint Peter and the Father would need to refine the data before we could track legitimate targets. It was time to give my cousins their Cocktails.

  My cousins were in their rooms and exhibiting the symptoms of number 7 withdrawal, sleepy eyes. I gave them both coffee laced with the cure. And then I talked to them about Ogre and Belasco and Gnefl Corporate. A little vague as sitreps go, but I didn’t have a plan to lead them to. They had never heard of Ogre and Belasco was a fairly common name. Neither had ever heard of Gneflheim, but both thought it was an evil concept. They could see why Sangrons liked it. I complemented them on their work today. Told them it was always boring if you do it right. That made Lucho smile. He said, "I’m glad you sent the putas and gunfights so we wouldn’t get bored out there." Lalo grunted and traded a handslap with his brother. I showed them teeth and eyebrows like a womanizing version of the Templar recruiting avatar. "De nada, primos." We had a little moment to be cousins, before the number 7 took hold. When they grew serious I distracted them with lunch. "Let’s see what Esmeralda has for a snack. You eat when you can on this job."

  "Esmeralda has gone to the Supermercado," said Rafe in the kitchen. He was building a pita wrap out of beef and chili strips. I had never considered using yellow mustard and handfuls of pepper on one and told him so. "You have no proper Dijon. One must improvise." He added a squirt of soy sauce and took a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. "The food must compliment the wine. This red Porto cries out for beef Dijon." I found a wedge of cheese and waved it at him, "How does the wine feel about Queso Fresca?" He sniffed it and said "Feta?"

  "Close to," I told him. "Just try it."

  Rafe was the only one drinking. It was contraindicated on Cocktail number 7. He poured one glass and corked the bottle. We did try his pitas, but my cousins didn’t like them. Rafe ate theirs too.

  He was only fastidious about preparing the food. Meat prices were higher in Jerusalem. The Farm Bloc over-exported agriculture to buy manufacturing. Transitional economic planning was changing diets for longevity rather than comfort. Meanwhile, mi Tio’s larder had a lot of fresh food and old wine for free. Rafe would eat just to avoid any chance of spoilage.

  "Etienne is sleeping with the Saints," he said after a mouthful of wine. The eye contact let me know he was talking about Saint Peter. "He offered to take the late shift if we’re staying in."

  I thought for a moment before replying, "When we get the next lead, we might be moving fast. I’m tempted to grab some sleep myself." Rafe made a snort around a mouthful of beef and mumbled, "Soldiers know how to rack out anytime." He finished his glass of wine and stood, "I will follow my own advice and retire." He bobbed his head at the cousins, "Gentlemen." He jutted his chin out at me, "Chuy." Lucho chuckled as he left, "I think I like that old Cocodrilo."

  "That old crocodile is almost your family and you should count your fingers after sitting at the table with him." I held up my own hand with two fingers folded back. Even Lalo chuckled.

  It was necessary to gloss over references to Saint Peter among the unauthorized. Most assignments involved a war of information. Letting everyone know an AI followed Templars around was giving away too much for free. People knew about the Garda AI’s, they were almost public figures. But even Garda AI’s had their tiers of access, capabilities that the public wasn’t aware of. We had a very small unit without much turnover. Saint Peter had given us an outstanding resolution record but sought none of the credit. Keeping him out of conversation was just good policy. You could find plenty of references to Saint Peter in socioeconomics, but you would have to look under Dottore Fermi, AI. He only went by Saint Peter to the Templars. Papal PR spun him as a multi-threaded renaissance scientist who did the heavy lifting for Christian policy. That he formed many of those policies was less discussed.

  I often wondered how much the AI’s were responsible for the shape of society. We humans could only see our own puzzle piece and no others. What did machines talk about when we weren’t around? You can see how easily conspiracy theories flowed to fill a pool of speculation. Better to treat Saint Peter as Innocent until Otherwise. He had the same rights as me. We would hang together or hang separately, as the old revolutionary Ben Franklin used to say.

  We got a couple hours of siesta before our Saint came marching in. The Battlenet sought us out for a conference. My cousins would continue their rest.

  Saint Peter had a tree of names. Starting at Ogre, who was born Denis Leroy Sanborn. His picture showed the big ghoul who had put me in the street. Known associate was another big ghoul named Alex Tibbet. His picture didn’t trigger any recognition; I didn’t see the other ghoul very well. They were both Texicans with no visible means. Tracking receipts showed they traveled in spurts and spent as much on the bar bill as they did on food. They lived pretty well by some kind of invisible means. Probably iced accounts in the orbital banks converted to cash.

  From there, the tree had a lot of twisted branches and placeholders for missing names. It made a jump to corporate org charts that was hard to follow until I saw "Deni Lee Sanborn" listed as an "Event Coordinator" for a band called "Hotshot." The band was a death metal tour opener that compared its music to a lethal injection, charming boys who probably strangled the family dog before stealing instruments. I could see Ogre working for them and having a great time.

  The band org chart led to Gnefl Corporate through a maze of twisted entertainment venues. They were linked by economic control lines but the actual administration was less clear. If Gnefl was not directly promoting dangerous antisocial behavior, it was certainly providing events for its continued enjoyment. They had franchise operations in many modern urban markets around the world.

  The Gneflheim game world was almost as gray. The graphic looked liked the Illuminati pyramid, lopped off on top with a disconnected eye. Saint Peter narrated our examination of that. "The architecture values low lag rates for gaming, short hop fiber optic to private key quantum gates." He zoomed up detail on the top of the pyramid. "Once the signal hits a gate, it is lost in the quantum network. The actual servers have not been physically located. Protection against game cheaters is the justification."

  The graphic changed, showing blobs of color moving around inside the lower pyramid. "These are player progress scattergrams. I have spawned or enlisted several players into the system to collect signals data. The system will only move at human speed and rejects players with crystalline reflexes." One blob passed a flash of light through the top of the pyramid.

  "High bandwidth communications. All players trickle basic game commands up through the gate, but some at higher levels fire off these dense packets. Samples pulled from Telecom have twenty-year encryption," Meaning that the encryption could resist decoding for a projected twenty years of crypto-analysis. I was seeing how the game protections had thwarted Saint Peter. It was a paranoid architecture with an invisible engine. But I could also see how the system was used as a communication portal to a null network.

  Null networks were disconnected from the nets. They were something like a data vault, securing information from peepers. But they were active networks, processing data and providing fantasy. Casinos and games used them to secure their economic models. Corporate hid their decision making processes in them. Savvy individuals could make their own null network for whatever purpose. They were common in spacer cultures.

  The AI’s identified thousands of law breakers using null networks every year. Data contrary to accepted standards or promoting criminal enterprise. People running illegal copies of other people. Sometimes they foun
d stolen AI kernels. Saint Peter had said that they only catch the ignorant operators. Ones who had some signal leakage or insecure servers. He feared what was happening to uploads in the really cunning networks.

  I remembered Delgado saying he uploaded the girls. Could they have been on one of those beams of light, dragged into hell by a connected Sangron? The thought was not pleasant. But where were their bodies? Why keep the girls if they had what they wanted?

  Saint Peter anticipated my concerns. "I will be pursuing the network, but for the immediate future I am narrowing locations for the girls. They have been held a few days now. We need to recover them before their abductors decide to cut the connection." He showed a shaded circle over an urban aerial. "This new contact is a charge station camera in Midland, Texas. The ring is a probable distance since contact." I saw a grainy clip of Sweety being led to a bathroom by Ogre. Her hands were tied in front. There was a gray van with a side door open. I saw Chelo’s shoes.

  "Alex Tibbet used his charge card for the van. He’s getting a resident rate in Texas." I saw a CDL license scan. It was old and showed an Alex Tibbet who looked like a fat clerk. Not the same guy who tossed Memo around. "He has Transferred since the picture. We have a Legal Transfer Order signed in Dallas two years ago with the new DNA." This picture could be the guy, with enough black dye and pancake makeup. "The lab performing the Transfer also provides Gnefl Corporate with their prize Transfers." He highlighted the lab data. It was in Leiden, the Netherlands. The Center for Molecular Genetics, one of the oldest continuous Transfer labs.

  "Tibbet will need to charge again in a few hours, probably around Abilene." Another graphic mapped the I-20 highway showing reference cities. "I can have a Lifter here within an hour, two hours after that you can be over Abilene." He popped up an inventory list that included the Swat van and a lot of gear. Then he stopped narrating and let us confer.

  Rafe and Etienne gave me lifted eyebrows. They were game. Father Cervantes was not called for immediate deployment, but as follow on tech support. He spread his hands and gave the choice to us. "I would caution that if they go to ground before Abilene, you will have to wait overnight and pick them up tomorrow." He had a point. "Maybe he gets a resident rate at motels?" It had a kind of Texican logic. The Father and I looked at each other and had that realization. "I will look into that Marshal," he told me. "Para Dios agarre el día." Seize the day for God.

  We had an hour to pack and two more to deploy. Etienne and then Rafe met me at the Skin transfusers. Rafe made a rude duck noise with his lips, "I unpack and pack it all back the next day." Eteinne mimed a shotgun at Rafe, "Boom." He patted his belly and added, "That duck is the only thing you didn’t eat, you old glutton." I felt like piling on for a moment, while Rafe was getting into his Skins, "Tio was worried. He is having the pantry sprayed for rats tomorrow." Rafe seemed to be getting tangled in his Skins. He was making a snickering noise. Etienne said as I left, "Unless he scheduled it for Abilene, Rafe should be safe." My sergeants would begin power lifting equipment downstairs. I went to wake my deputies.

  Once they woke and I told them of the deployment, number 7 made them alert. Number 7 helped sleep when off duty, but fought it when on. Like a new switch in your head. I had them both loading duffels and dressed out quickly. Then we grabbed some ammunition boxes and went out to the barn. On the way I told them about Sweetie and Chelo.

  The Lifter came out of the south this time. A blacked out Stealth and Rescue. I couldn’t read the markings when it landed, but the Pilot and Crew Chief were Texican Garda. The Crew Chief acted like the ground was radioactive, wanting to be airborne instantly. He begrudged the time to load and tie down the Swat van but was as fast as Lucho’s vaquero impersonation. We found ourselves airborne before all our gear was tight, chasing duffels while holding handstraps.

  We climbed for almost an hour as air drafts in the back became icy. The web seats didn’t bother me in my Skins, but the cousins looked miserable. Engine whine prevented conversation across the cabin, so I tapped Rafe on the leg and said, "I’m going to check on the boys." He leaned forward and looked past me to them. "Take these, mon ami." He handed me two sickness bags. Leaning his head back in the webbing he muttered, "Suckling lambs." Then he started snoring.

  The boys did look a little green. It had been so long since I had been motion sick, that it didn’t enter my thinking. I couldn’t give them my medical nano and was not sure what the Lifter first aid drugs would do with Cocktail number 7. I wracked my memory for homeopathic remedies in the Field Wiki. The training surfaced slowly, building new pathways to speed learned data.

  "How you doing, primo?" I asked Lucho. Both turned glossy eyes to me.

  "Not used to flying like this," he said. "Stuck on the walls with no windows." Lalo nodded in agreement, then stopped nodding and swallowed hard. I handed them the sickness bags. "Hold on a minute, I have an idea." I went forward to the crew compartment and knocked. The Crew Chief opened up, showing me red lit instruments and a dark windscreen. "Que paso?" he said, giving the impression of a man with little time for nonsense.

  "Perdon Chief, but I have two men with airsickness." He looked past me to the cousins and pursed his lips. "If they foul my aircraft, you will have to clean it up. There is a vacuum in the portside overhead." He pointed to a cubby in the back near Etienne. He almost got the crew hatch closed when I turned to look, but a well placed foot prevented that. "I’m more into prevention than clean up, Chief. Do you have some velocity tape and four marbles or something like that I can have?" He looked confused for a second and then stepped into the cargo compartment, closing the crew hatch behind him.

  Just knowing about velocity tape gets a crew chief’s attention. If you actually have a use for some, the chiefs will want to see it. That works most of the time on unhelpful Garda techs. He opened a bin and handed me velocity tape. It resembled duct tape but was rated to hold things together on the outside of a flying Lifter. He returned to the bin and started showing me bolts and fasteners as a substitute for marbles. I turned them down as not being round enough. He muttered some things under his breathe and then had an idea. He disappeared back into the crew compartment and talked to the pilot. He reappeared with four wrapped candies shaped like round barrels. "The Pilot has donated his root beer candy. Will this work?"

  "Bueno, Chief. My gratitude to your Pilot." I took the supplies back to the cousins and started improvising traveler bands. The Crew Chief crossed his arms and leaned against the crew hatch, watching. I asked him, "How about some agua, Chief? Do you have three bottles?" He bounced up off the hatch and pulled open another bin.

  First, I had Lalo give me his hand palm up. The root beer barrel went against the skin on his wrist, over an acupressure point. A quick wrap with the tape held his shirt cuff on it tight. I repeated quickly and moved to Lucho. "OK primos that should help in a minute." I took a long swig of my bottled water, recapped and velocity taped it to the bulkhead in front of them. "There is your horizon. Fix your eyes on that and you should feel better soon."

  The Crew Chief jutted his lower lip and nodded in approval. "Is that some kind of chino Templar trick? I told him, "Mi yama es Navarro, Chief. I’m the mission Brujo." His eyebrows shot up. He had not expected a Christian Templar to claim status as a Mexican witch. Especially not one who looked Japanese. "No me digas!" he said, covering his ears. Don’t tell me that! He retreated quickly back to the crew compartment. My cousins thought that was a highlight of the whole trip.

  Back in the web with the sergeants, I resynched my implant to the van electronics and entered our mobile Battlenet. We had an hour until arrival, best to work on the deployment plan.

  My sergeants were already in, feigning sleep to cover the link. Father Cervantes and Saint Peter were online, but the Lifter electronics narrowed our available bandwidth. Enabling the quantum link took the graininess out of their avatars. I sifted the logs to catch anything new.

  We had a timeline on Tibbet’s road trip. They had been tra
veling for over eight hours, leaving Chihuahua after the raid on Delgado’s. Two hours after they charged up near Abilene, they would enter urban Dallas and become hard targets. It was unlikely they would stop tonight, the time was nine twenty and these guys favored late hours.

  There was some discussion about better tracking of their van. It featured like a short range family hauler, common in the Texican zone. There were a dozen different manufacturers but most models looked alike and gray from the air at night. Our window for acquisition at a charging station was maybe twenty minutes, smaller cells charging faster. That discussion led to Saint Peter renting a Stalker drone from the Dyess Garda base in Abilene. It would be on station and waiting to strafe the van. The hour we had it for cost a small fortune in Interservice Credits.

  I rejoined the team as they were evaluating insertion sites and ambush locations. They were looking at aerials of Ranger, Texas. Ranger is between Abilene and Fort Worth on the way to Dallas. There are trees and hills on the east side leaving town. Not a lot of civilians in the way. The elaborate interchange with the I-20 highway offered wooded concealment. The Lifter could stealth drop the Swat van right onto the ramp and still perform high guard for the ambush. It looked great to me. We called it plan A and signed off. The Lifter immediately banked right and descended. I dropped off the Battlenet and went to see the crew chief.

  The engine noise had lessened somewhat. It made the cabin ambiance less oppressive. My cousins were both leaning slightly aft when I stepped past, following the horizon in a bottle. I gave them thumbs up and a palm down. "We’re good but wait," universal military hand sign. They gave me distracted waves and watched the bottle. I knocked on the crew hatch. The Chief opened up slowly and the Pilot looked over his shoulder to see my face. Cockpit gossip seemed certain. "You guys have the new location?"

  "Si, just now," said the pilot, "We are on descent and will be wheels down in an hour." "What is your loiter after we get off?" I asked. "Maybe two hours before bingo," he said, "Dyess Base will take me."

  "Buen Piloto," I said, sketching a salute. "Please let me know when we’re ten minutes out, and can I borrow your Crew Chief?" The pilot turned back to his dark windscreen, "Sure, take him. He already ate all my candy."

  I eased my bulk out of the hatchway and made room for the Chief. He looked at my cousins as I led him back toward the van. "Guess that trick worked."

  "Feel free to use it on your next fare." I told him, "They might tip better." That got a little chuckle out of him. Transport humor. Rafe and Etienne still lounged in the webs, but were now watching the Chief. He was going to be an important fellow for our insertion. I spread my hands at the Sergeants and said, "I believe we all met briefly when you helped us shoehorn our armored van into your Lifter’s back door." Eteinne squinted at the Chief from his rearmost web seat, "Is he the loud one with the fast hands?" Rafe turned and said, "The same. Now don’t get excited, he is going to help us pull our van out of his back door."

  "Dieu merci!" exclaimed Etienne, "I was finally getting used to the smell."

  It went on in that vein for a little bit, but ended with a coordinated sequence that would put us in the van and on the road with a touch and go exposure. We all knew how a night drop worked. The touchy feely stuff was to give us an expectation that this Garda Crew Chief would continue being helpful when we deplaned. I could have just phoned in the drop, but the Chief came off as lazy on first meeting. No real stake in the mission. I suggested this hazing to put some lead in his pencil. Maybe Father Luke was rubbing off. Etienne and Rafe certainly had a good time.

  We began watching the Battlenet. The gray van needed to show soon or we were going to be parked in the middle of Texas with no cervezas. Even with the "No joy" clause, the Stalker drone was going to cost a fortune. I would rather finish picking up the girls from the other night. If a Navarro says he will take you home, he tries hard to deliver. We got contact a couple minutes later, Tibbet using his discount. Father Cervantes told me he had researched the resident discounts. "It’s a little key ring fob linked to his license. Texans use it to gouge travelers, just walk up to a vended good and get the low rate. Tibbet may not even be aware he is triggering it." I had always been told the cost of living was higher in Texas. Guess it was, for North Mexicans. That was a pretty Statist and anti-trade trick, but Texas was known for having cunning Bankers. Think globally, act locally. They contributed most to the Texican zone funding, so it made them act a little entitled. "Ten minutes," the pilot said.

  In this case, the discount had been a great way to track residents. Tibbet was on camera and on our net before he got the cable in the van. We had them at a station about a hundred klicks west in a township called Clyde. If we tried to divert, they would probably be mobile before we could deploy. We were hoping to get our credit’s worth from the Stalker. I arranged a countdown clock and Stalker drone feed on my lenses. The little bird was following the highway from Abilene. The feed looked like daylight. There was a background chatter of drone pilot and mission commander. That cryptic, bored tone pilots nurture. I left it on low. If they got excited about something, I would tune in. Right now, my countdown clock told me to get the team in the van.

  I stood up and whistled to the cousins. "El trabajo quiere carne." The job wants meat. It was an old militia cry. Behind me, the Sergeants were opening doors and climbing into the front seats. Rafe would continue driving the van. The Chief stuck his head out of the crew compartment and yelled "Rapido, rapido." He pointed to a rotating red jump light on the bulkhead. When that went green, we would be leaving.

  I strapped my cousins into jump seats in the back, duffels went under the seats. They were unusually inexpressive. The Cocktail was dealing with nerves and strong feelings. It was probably doing the same for me. I was focused on the Battlenet feeds and impatient to get going. "Yellow," shouted Rafe, over the suddenly quieter engines. It felt like the floor dropped out from under me. The Skins helped me pull my butt into a seat and strap in.

  I added the Lifter feed to get a look at the ground. We were dropping like a fat kid doing a belly flop. The nose was up a little, but forward progress had slowed way down. The ground was painted infrared colors. Roadway showed up clearly, among the trees. Headlights were sparse. The falling seemed to go on for a while. We had dropped out of a registered flight path. Once we went black, the pilot wanted us far away from air traffic lanes. Just when I thought it was getting boring, the engines roared and I felt heavy. The van creaked lower on its suspension, the skin on my face started to sag. When my seat started making popping noises, Rafe croaked, "Green in five."

  There was a bang from the Lifter doors. The ramp was lowering. "Four." I felt less heavy. My cousins could lift their heads and look around. "Three." The ramp banged again as it locked in placed. Now the Lifter looked like a fat kid with his tongue hanging out. "Two." Vibration rang in our bones. Thrust was reflecting back on the fuselage. The nose came down. "Green" Rafe shouted.

  We flew backwards out of the bay. The wheel well chocks put a little hop in our motion. By the time the rocking stopped, we were staring into the green lit cargo bay of a rising Lifter. The light turned off, the Lifter disappeared. Rafe eased us off the road and parked, keeping the lights off. A windstorm of blown debris slowly settled outside the van. Within a couple of minutes, lovelorn crickets began their serenade again. My ears still hummed with remembered noise.

  ****