Borderline

  Borderline

  Robert Appleton

  Copyright @ Robert Appleton 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ***

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  About the Author

  Bonus Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Finnegan hooked an arm over the top of his windshield, wiped away the dust with frantic strokes of his sleeve. A slight improvement, but he was barrelling at ninety kph over rocky desert terrain. Even a slight headwind would throw enough sand to blot his vision again in seconds, and tonight was a gusty bitch. Should have been a breeze, sure as shit wasn’t. About as far from one as he’d ever experienced, in fact, because every single thing about this operation had gone south, except one.

  He’d escaped with the merchandise.

  Alone. Pursued. Thousands of miles from safety. But at least he had the Fleece.

  A blizzard of tiny rocks pelted the windshield; dust and sand quickly coated it. An old hoverbike like Bess wasn’t much use at high speeds at night without her automapping, and the laser incision had cut right through her appendix cell, disabling her shield wipers too. Finnegan was driving blind.

  Hell with this. He drew his 8-yield Shelby pulse cannon from his leg holster, veered Bess to one side and blasted the windshield off into the wind. It took two shots. Then, as he watched his pursuers’ rose-coloured searchlights feel across the desert for his caboose in the rearview, he gripped the handlebars with one hand and leaned back. Touched the large pillion bag. It fluttered, and he heard a smothered grunt from inside.

  Good. The condor was still there. Still alive. He would do anything to make sure it lived through this. In the midst of this whole rad-suck operation, the condor was the only one who’d shown any kind of class. A genetically modified monster, maybe, but this bird had swooped out of its mangled cage like an avenging angel to rip Finnegan’s enemies to shreds just as they’d been getting the upper hand in the firefight. Why? It was a super smart flocker, yeah, a GenMod, but it had never seen him before tonight. And for its troubles it had suffered severe laser scarring to its right wing, so it could no longer fly.

  A strange intervention. Damned if he could figure it out. But the bird had earned this chance to survive. It might never fly again, but as far and as long as he could last, Finnegan would look after the poor brave fella.

  No sooner had he resumed his upright position when a blinding flash of orange rain from a clear sky made him jump. Much more than a simple hallucination or some superimposed fantasy brought on by tiredness, the orange rain was vivid, ferocious, and real. He almost swerved, but gained control just in time. Took several deep breaths to calm himself. Goddamn, he could’ve sworn that shit was real. Orange? What the hell? He checked the sky, just to be sure.

  Moonlight, starlight, the roving pinprick twinkles of orbiting satellites.

  He adjusted his goggles. Upturned the collar of his duster to cover his mouth. Limbered up in his seat, trying hard not to try too hard at predicting the road ahead. Take what comes as it comes. He lengthened Bess’s headbeam, though, just in case. The last thing he wanted was to barrel nosefirst into one of those statues mounted on rock pedestals some ancient alien civilization had built along a precise line of longitude. There weren’t that many, one every twelve-point-three miles—he’d measured on his way in to the Core—but they could easily sneak up on someone fuming this kind of speed at night. And anyway, this was all alien terrain, formerly a shallow lake; who knew what surprises waited for him in these wastelands. Or rather, what other surprises, because Malesseur’s bullshit intel was a tough fucking act to follow.

  One he had no intention of forgetting.

  The op had called for Finnegan and six other mercs to infiltrate Iolchis Core, a multi-billion-credit Genetics complex in the heart of the Iolchian desert. Their mission: to retrieve the Golden Fleece—some kind of watershed lab creation for rapid cell regeneration. A biotech bonanza, the patent for which the top companies were already engaged in a violent bidding war. To achieve this coup, Lori Malesseur, Finnegan’s employer for the op, had provided the team with all the tech they required to breach the facility: scattershocks, ghost points, nano-fluid cutters and other infiltration equipment, most of it illegal.

  But none of that meant a limp goddamn clip when the facility itself housed its own private army! At the first alarm, the entire complex had been surrounded, and four of his six team members had been shot to bits while making for their hoverbikes outside, including Manolo, an acquaintance of Finnegan’s from a few previous ops. In the shitstorm that followed, half the east wing had been damaged. Scattershock blasts had collapsed several massive aviaries. Genetically modified birds of all shapes and sizes were now perched on the facility’s roof. Unable to fly away unless they found the doorway in the compound’s forcefield that Finnegan’s team had shored up for their return run to the border.

  Lori Malesseur, then, had lied. A person with her connections—her dad was Simon Malasseur, a former shack sheik from the border colonies turned interstellar criminal entrepreneur—would know exactly how many personnel were in any facility in any star system in the inner colonies, not to mention their eye colours, mating habits, the number of times they showered in a week. That was the way the Malesseurs and assholes like them worked. Finnegan had dealt with their ilk most of his life, especially after Megan’s death, when he’d been glad to take any job that came along. Anal bosses, mostly, clever, paranoid and anal. But this was the first time he’d worked for the Malesseurs, witnessed their ruthless manipulations firsthand.

  They’d had nothing to lose by arming his crew to the teeth and sending them into a hurricane. Except the phrase Lori had used in her digital briefing, “mostly automated security”, had painted the op as a hi-tech burglary, not the OK-freaking-Corral.

  He wrung Bess’s throttle up a gear so that she screamed at over a hundred-and-twenty kph. Just over a thousand miles to his left, the border where Malesseur was waiting for his return. Ahead, empty, unmapped wasteland all the way to the giant dams over the Segado Lakes. At least there he might be able to find a neutral port, a band of traders, some way to get offworld without triggering the Interstellar Planetary Administration’s blockade satellites with their ever-watchful arsenals ready to shoot down any vessel that violated the no-fly sanction on this rock.

  The Iolchians would hound him every step of the way, but he’d made it this far, he had enough clips to buy a cot on a shuttle, and anyway he had Bess. His beloved Bess. She’d never let him down, not in eleven years. She could live without her windshield. And as long as the sun came up in the morning—only a couple of hours away—she had enough power to run indefinitely.

  Enough power to keep him alive long enough to find—and murder—that bitch, Lori Malesseur.

  With it being this gusty his enemies wouldn’t be able to track him out of sight, so he turned sharply around a large conical rock—a hollow hive, in fact, home to vicious steeler insects—and wound his way through a miles-long maze of similar structures. That should lose his pursuers. Soon as he hit open space again he tore to the only tree for miles around, an Aguarbor, at a faint crossroads in the desert, ho
ping to procure water from the bulbous epiphytes wrapped around its bark; every Aguarbor had them, and his throat had begun to peel. Irrigated farmland far to the west boasted thousands of orchards devoted to cultivating the various Aguarbor genera, mainly for off-world export; some produced water, others natural oils used in herbology or fuel refinery, while the most precious grew, through their symbiotic epiphytes, a kind of protoplasm amazingly eloquent of fertility, in which scientists had begun to grow brand new alien cells from scratch. Curious plants.

  But the only trees that grew out here produced water. Which was good, because right now he just wanted to neck a few pints. It took him much longer to reach than he’d guessed, though, because he’d underestimated the tree’s height. It was gargantuan, at least a hundred feet.

  Unfortunately, it was also dead. The bulbs hung shrivelled and empty around its gnarled girth.

  Shit.

  He stopped a few moments to stretch his legs. Slapped the dust off his black jeans. Crouched to inspect the hole in Bess’s appendix cell. Jesus. He could see right through the bike. If the laser had hit an inch or so behind it would have TKO’d the servos and—

  A figure moved between the tree and the bike.

  He crouched on his heels. Lost his balance and had to backscrabble in the dust. Then he flipped onto his side and in the same motion drew his Shelby, rising to one knee. Just one glimpse and the sumbitch would be garnish, whoever it was.

  “Hello?” A woman’s voice. Breathless. Choked dry. “Who’s there? Rogers? Manolo?” she said. “I need your help.”

  He tightened his grasp on the well-worn stock of his cannon. First, how could anyone out here know the names of his team? Second, what was this person doing all the way out here? Third, revisit one and two...closely.

  “Who are you, lady?”

  “It’s me, Lori. Lori Malesseur.”

  Bullshit. Bull. Shit.

  “Try again, sweetheart. You’ve got one more shot. I’ve got plenty.” He buzzed his Shelby for effect.

  After a silence, she blurted out, “You’re Finnegan, aren’t you? The big one...from...where are you from again?”

  “I’m asking the questions.”

  “Okay, yeah. Shoot. I mean...go ahead. Ask me anything.”

  “If you’re Malesseur, what the fuck are you doing out here?”

  “I was on my way to find you, to call off the op. We received intel about a new security force at Iolchis, not longer after you left. We were trying to warn you, to bring you back. But an armed patrol ambushed us, gave chase and I...our truck flipped over. Then they opened fire on my crew. I was lucky to make it out. Look, look, you dumb son of a bitch; they shot the shit out of my leg.” She groaned—overdone? “See for yourself if you don’t believe me. And anyway, why else would I be all the way out here?”

  Bullshit. It’s a bunch of bullshit. Lori Malesseur hardly ever showed up in person, and she would never risk herself like that. Not for anyone. Least of all some suck-bait squall of mercs she’d never even met.

  Never even met. Hmm...that might trip her up. “What was the last thing you said to my face before I left?”

  Another pause—significant? “You thick ape, you know we’ve never shared face-time. What do I have to do to convince you I am who I say I am?”

  Finnegan rose slowly to his feet, crept around Bess. His first glimpse of the injured woman confirmed his supsicion. This was not Lori Malesseur. It couldn’t be, could it? This woman was terrified; trying not to look it, but she was shaking like a bled-out leaf under the dead tree. She also had soft, pink-and-white milk features under her black head scarf, not at all the hard-and-sharp-as-glass queen bitch he’d heard so much about. This woman reminded him of Megan, his foster-sister, the only girl whose word he’d ever trusted; that had backfired, too. He’d sworn to follow Megan anywhere, even when she’d signed for the Vike Academy and a career in uniform. In comparison, Lori Malesseur was about as trustworthy as a black widow inside his boxers.

  But she had a point. Why else would she be out here, riddled full of bullets?

  A restless flutter from his pillion bag reminded him what was coming from Iolchis. When Malesseur tried to get up, she crumpled in a dusty heap. “Christ, lady.” He’d already made his mind up what he had to do, and hated himself for it. An injured woman was an injured woman. “Twice as useless.” He plucked her up and, ignoring her cries of pain, set her on the seat behind him. “Hang on.”

  “Wait. Which direction are we headed?”

  “To the dams. Why?”

  “No, no, no. That’s not allowed.”

  “Not allowed. What is this, playground tag? I make the rules here, sweetheart.”

  She squirmed to slide off her seat, struggled more than the condor had when he’d first stuffed it in the pillion bag. She bit his hand, even thumped his earhole when he squeezed her arm to still her. “Let me go! I’d rather crawl back.”

  “What are you, nuts?” He leapt off, ended up hopping sideways to keep his balance. “This ain’t a taxi service, honey. I’m saving your life. And count yourself lucky—on the way here I swore I’d wring your bitch neck for what happened to us.”

  “I—I’m sorry about that, truly. If I could have done anything more to...” Those words and her reputation simply did not gel. He wasn’t buying it. Any of it.

  “Get off my bike. I’m dumping your double-crossing carcass right here. Lori Malasseur or not. We’re done.”

  She glared at him with big moist wounded eyes, and slowly, pitifully adjusted her head scarf. Colour drained from her face. She started shaking again. Convulsing. Holding in violent sobs through sheer forceful pride. “You have to help me, Finnegan. I’m—I’m nobody.”

  “Ha! I knew it. So what’s your real name?”

  Her gaze darted side to side, questing for the right respone. “I mean you need to think of me as a nobody. Not as your boss. Right here, tonight, I’m just an injured woman who’s going to die unless you take me back across the border.”

  “Why? So your people can double-cross me again? Take what I’ve got and dump my ass in the desert?”

  “So you managed to get it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” She eyed him mistrustfully. “Well it doesn’t matter now. If you take me back across the border to my people, I’ll triple your fee.”

  He thought for a moment, whether to trust this bizarre flip of events. She’d only make trouble for him the whole way if he went east, and with things ostensibly patched up between them—she’d at least attempted to uphold her end of the bargain by venturing out here to warn him—a big payday couldn’t hurt. If she was who she said she was. “Quadruple.”

  She looked down into the sand, corking her hate with a lumpy swallow. “Classy, Finnegan. You’re my freaking Lancelot.”

  “I get you safely across the border, I want five times my original fee.”

  “Five? But you said quadruple.”

  He got back on the bike, revved the throttle. “Is it your money or isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Then it’s five.”

  “All right, five.”

  “Good.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you back.”

  She lashed her arms around his waist and squeezed a little as Bess washed a northward path over a neverending expanse of untrodden dirt. Shortly a nib of hot iron sun lit a slow-burning dawn, and the bruised sky grew blue and green, then blue-green, ever lighter, ever less ominous, until the entirety of Iolchis was unveiled. Nothing but sand, dust, and slow death.

  They wouldn’t be able to make out the border for another day or two, as it was still almost a thousand miles away. A hazy upright colossus to the east, one of the Segado dams, seemed to be part of a giant step up to another floor of the planet itself. As far as the eye could see in every other direction, empty desert save for those weird stone statues that a previous, now-extinct alien civilization had erected along a perfect line through Iolchis. Towering
, intricately carved, weatherbeaten depictions of humanoid forms.

  But—a hoverbike wouldn’t be difficult to spot in the middle of this open expanse. Tracking it, too, would be a kiddy’s dot-to-dot now that the winds had died down. His best bet was to just keep on going until they absolutely had to stop.

  “Did you see that?” Malesseur yanked his shoulder. “That glint behind us? They’re gaining.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You need to speed up, Finnegan.”

  He ignored her for the moment—hell, he couldn’t have the bitch giving orders to him and Bess—but he, too, saw the flash in his rearview. More than one. It was a single hover vehicle of some kind, way ahead of the convoy trailing him last night. Maybe hours behind Bess, but unquestionably in pursuit. And as much as he hated to admit it, she was right. It seemed to be gaining.

  Shit. He’d wasted too much time at the tree last night. What he needed was a strategy...and fast. He thrust Bess into high gear, but even that might not be enough. She was, after all, an old bike. Indefatigable but old. New tricks were beyond her. And no doubt the Iolchians had new tricks up the wazoo. Bess’s hidden specialty, the pyro boost, was good for one final hair-raising spurt of acceleration; he daren’t use that with so much ground still to cover, not until all else failed.

  “Any bright ideas, Your Highness?” he shouted back.

  “What about that ridgeline, two o’clock?”

  What the hell was she looking at? “Come again.”

  “It looks like a scar across bald rock. I’m telling you it’s a ridgeline. The desert dips there. It’s a concavity about five or six square miles. Maybe a dry lake.”

  Damn, she had good eyes. At first glance it was an optical illusion, the shape of the ridgeline and the rocks surrounding the dry lake making the whole area appear uniformly flat. It was like one of those image-within-an-image colour puzzles you had to train your eyes to discern. “You’re the boss.”

  He grinned when she didn’t reply. Strangely, that silence raised her stock a few points. He patted her good leg, and enjoyed the sensation, however fleeting, of her re-clasping her hands against his abs.