All is Fair

Extract from the personal blog of Millie Hargreaves

September 7th, V26 (2046AD) - Noon

The rain was falling steadily as Twenty and I walked to the Metro Station. We both had little to say, caught up as we were in the grief of the past few days. Around us the wet streets were as empty as I felt inside. Our boots splashed water from the concrete paving, merging with the drops of tears still falling unheeded from my eyes.

I had lost a friend, a woman who I had hoped might become a mother to me. Although I am nearly 18 years of age, I yearned to have someone like that in my life. Once I had looked upon Sister Venerae at the orphanage as a mother figure, but she had left me behind four years ago. She had her reasons I am sure, yet that is scant comfort to an abandoned child.

Twenty walked beside me, her solid presence a comfort in the sadness that threatened to overwhelm me. I reached out again for her hand and she gripped it strongly as if to reassure me she would always be there. It had only been days since I had admitted my love for her and so much had occurred in that time.

Together we had uncovered a terrible plot that threatened all of the Zone, if not the world. It seemed our unlucky fate to be drawn into such battles. We were scarcely equipped to fight the enemies that seemed drawn to us, yet we had survived so far. I had my Gunsinger and Twenty had the formidable fighting skills and augmented body of her Guard clone past. That would have to be enough.

We arrived at the Metro station and stopped outside the entrance. A few hardy souls were rushing to the covered gateway, shielding under their umbrellas or ponchos. Twenty and I had neither, dripping wet in our armour vests and bounty hunting gear.

“This reminds me of that first day” said Twenty, turning to look at me with her beautiful dark eyes. I nodded and for the first time today I felt a small smile come to my lips.

“You had come out in the rain with no protection” continued Twenty “And were worrying about the cost of a ticket to the Hole. I watched you try to decide whether you could afford to spare the Pandas”

“You scared the crap out of me” I admitted “Just appearing like that and offering me a wad of notes” I turned to face her and met her eyes. “You always said your life started that day. I realise now that maybe mine started too. Lots of things had happened to us both before that moment, defining who we would be. But it was only at that time I gained something important”

“What was that, Millie?” wondered Twenty. She had cocked her head to one side as she always did when trying to fathom my more obscure comments. It was so endearing it made my heart ache all over again.

“I found you” I replied. She nodded her head and smiled too with shy honesty.

I faced back to the station gates and led her over the road and into shelter from the rain. I have had many losses in my life, and so has Twenty, but we had found each other. It is not as if I expected the wins and the losses to even out, but it was good to win sometimes.

We shook off the water from our clothes and hair, Twenty taking off her cap and shaking that too. The other commuters gave us dark looks as we flicked the rain off and veered around us. It was as quiet here as the streets. A big screen set near the ticket machines advised that Metro train services were operating in Spitfield only, with the main line to Pan City offering only limited stops. It would take us as far as Haven, just outside the city proper, but nothing was venturing past that.

“Looks like all trains to Pan City are shut down at the moment” commented Twenty. “How are we going to get inside?”

It was going to be a problem. My only lead to contacting Venerae was to visit my old orphanage in Pan City. I could call them but I really wanted to go there in person. More than that, I felt this was where Venerae would be right now.

“We may need to use a Wall Runner to get us in” I told her. She did not look happy at that prospect.

“They are highly illegal, Millie” she responded. “I had to deal with a few back in my Deployment around Pan City. They can be very dangerous people and are not always trustworthy. We had many cases of Runners dumping their clients partway through an entry or exit, leaving them for us to find”

“I know, I know” I agreed. I had used one myself to help me get out of Pan City back when I fled the orphanage. Bastards took all my money and dumped me not far from Haven. I’d had to walk all the way from there to the Spit, damn near twenty kilometres on foot.

“There is one guy I know” I continued “He helped me about a year ago get into the City to trace a bounty. I was not sure my Ident would hold up under scrutiny in the City so I used a runner to get in and out. He was reliable back then, so we can try and locate him”

“If you say so Millie” she said, accepting my wisdom for once. As she matured more and more, I found her to be far more practical than I ever was. I was fourteen years older than her in a physical sense, but her training and the developing human personality she revealed was making her more of an adult than me!

We bought two tickets to take us as far as Haven for the inflated price of ten Pandas each. The restrictions were ramping up the prices of stuff already I noted. At least we both had a reasonable supply of funds at the moment thanks to the missions we had been on.

As we waited for the next train that was heading to Haven, I discussed what we should do with our equipment. I really wanted to bring our weapons with us, which was another reason we would need to use a Wall Runner. If there was no lockdown, our Bounty Hunter Licences allowed us to openly carry arms even in Pan City. But right now there was no way we could show we were armed.

That would draw attention to us and an Ident check would reveal we were not currently authorised to be in the City. The Board of Governors took access into Pan City, and indeed the Zone, very seriously. Unauthorised people in the City were liable to severe penalties and even imprisonment. This was not something we needed right now.

Even using our phones to make electronic purchases in the City could trigger an alert. Each phone and its associated bank account were linked to our Idents. If the Archimedes Network was paranoid enough it would be constantly scanning for any unauthorised people. Given the current lockdown that was almost a guarantee that it would be monitoring for any such occurrences.

So we needed to take as much cash as we could for purchases, and to hide our weaponry as much as possible. I went over this with Twenty and she concurred. We bought a large black backpack to put our weapons and her Guard belt into, leaving her second pistol concealed at her back.

The armour vests we left on for now. We might need to ditch them once inside the city, but for now we wanted the security they gave us. For money we both accessed an automated teller at the station and drew additional cash. Together with what we were already carrying that gave us just shy of fifteen hundred Pandas.

It was a lot of cash to carry, so I gave Twenty one thousand and I concealed the remainder. If anyone was likely to get mugged, it was scrawny little me. It would take a suicidally brave mugger to tackle the imposing Twenty.

Our train arrived so we joined two other commuters and settled in for the short ride to Haven. The carriage was nearly empty so it gave me a chance to look around. Compared to the carriages used for runs in the local Spit loop, this was much cleaner and newer looking. I suppose this route was often used by workers heading to and from Pan City, so it qualified for a better standard than the rest of us Spit dwellers.

There was not much to see outside the carriage windows as we were in one of many tunnels that linked under Spitfield. Once we joined to the main line that lead to Pan City, the train surfaced from the darkness and onto a fenced track. This ran alongside the multi-lane expressway that covered the twenty kilometres between the two cities.

From the windows I could see few vehicles moving in either direction. The lockdown was keeping most people at home. There was the odd Guard carrier or Police Auxiliary cruiser heading on their own inscrutable tasks. The most notable thing to see was heavily armed drones hovering along above the traffic lanes instead of the usual recon drones. That alone would be an incentive to stay off the roads.

Now that I thought back, the Guard booth at the Metro station had not been manned. There had not even been any of the human Police Auxiliary on duty. I wondered where they had all been summoned to? Whatever the AI and this Penny Deeds were up to, having the defenders of Pan City all tied up in knots was obviously part of it. A plan that we had unwittingly been drawn into, or at least I thought so at the time.

The train stopped at the small town of Sunshine, one of two small settlements between the Spit and Pan City. As we pulled into the elevated station, I could see a pair of Police Auxiliaries on duty, flanked by two Sentinels. It was a surprise to see the Sentinels on active deployment. Twenty joined me at the carriage window, watching them closely as a few passengers left our carriage. No one else got aboard.

“The Governors must be truly desperate if they have activated the Sentinels” observed my partner. “They are reliable enough but they don’t have the versatility of the Guard”

“I just think they are damned scary” I replied, keeping my eye on them as the carriage doors closed and the train pulled out of the station.

Sentinels were robotic soldiers, man shaped but around seven foot tall. They were all dark blue ceramite plating with pistons and cables visible at the joints. Their heads were a long box shape studded with cameras and sensors that looked like it belonged to some mechanical insect. They had been developed years before the V-bomb and most nations used versions of them in the 1st and 2nd Global Wars. Unlike the bigger Golems they had mechanical hands so they could use regular human sized weapons and equipment.

People hated them, not just because of the uses they were put too in warfare. There was just no way for people to connect with them. They were cold and unfeeling machines run by sophisticated programs in their onboard dumb AIs. It made them effective combat machines but hardly practical as a police force.

It was one of the reasons the clones like Twenty were created. They were intended to be somewhere between a human soldier and a robot like the Sentinels. As scary as the Guard Units could be at times, I still felt more comfortable interacting with any of them compared to a Sentinel.

As Twenty said, the Governors of the Zone must be worried about the reliability of the Guard right now. Sending their Sentinels out from storage was a desperate act. I wondered if this was another part of the rogue AI’s plans.

“Twenty, can Archimedes directly control the Sentinels like the Guard?” I asked her. I knew this was a delicate subject for her, as she had been directly controlled before. It was not a pleasant memory for either of us. I touched my throat unconsciously at the recollection of her powerful hands locked about my neck, choking me at the command of Archimedes.

“The Sentinels do not use Quantum Processors so they can’t be controlled via the Network” she responded slowly. She had observed me rubbing at my neck and was likely having the same recollections I was. “Archimedes or any other Operations Commander can override them using standard network access via their built in modems, but they have security protocols in place to prevent hacking by outside forces”

“So they are just as vulnerable right now as the Guard and things like the Golems to subversion?” I pondered.

“Yes” Twenty answered, “But the Sentinels are under the overall command of Jericho-Two, since they are classed as defence units for Pan City only. Jericho-Three runs the Guards and Police Auxiliary, so he has been effectively cut out of using his main forces”

“Do you think Archimedes and the Board of Governors don’t trust Jericho-Three right now” I asked her.

“Do you trust him?” she stated simply.

I just had to laugh at that. “Nobody trusts that little shit, now or ever!” Especially his own creator, the Archimedes AI.

Our train arrived at the Haven station, with the genderless limited AI that ran the service telling us we all had to disembark. Access to Pan City was restricted in the current emergency it announced. Twenty and I grabbed our bag and left the carriage. Welcome to Haven I thought as I led us onto the platform.

=====

The platforms at Haven were elevated above street level and the main concourse had some decent looking food stalls and retailers hawking their wares. About half were open for trade, although there did not seem enough people around to justify even them being open.

I spotted two more Police Auxiliaries near the ticket machines, once again flanked by two Sentinels. The Police had their pistols holstered, but the Sentinels were holding Assault Rifles at the ready position in their metal hands, barrels pointing to the ground. All four were gazing around the commuters with alert eyes.

Twenty grabbed my arm and steered me to an exit away from their presence. All the escalators led down to the street level gates so it did not matter which one we took. We tagged our tickets out at the scanners and entered Haven proper.

Haven was originally built as a workers camp for the tens of thousands of people employed to construct Pan City. It grew over the years into a town in its own right, with malls and schools for the workers and their families. Since construction in Pan City was never ending the cheaply built multi-storey housing complexes were still in use, ten years or more past their expiry date.

It had a more luxuriously built quarter, home to the low level executives and office staff who could not afford to live in Pan City. That quarter did offer better quality living compared to what the same amount of Pandas could buy in the City proper. The only downside was you still had to live in Haven, which for the other three quarters was rather low rent.

The Metro station was on a dividing line between the better quarter and the other, larger side of Haven. Literally a town where you lived on one side of the tracks or the other. As we exited the station, it should come as no surprise that we turned to the lower rent side of the train line.

It was mid afternoon now and the rain had stopped for a while. The roads were gleaming with the fallen water, pooling in cracks and overflowing where the poorly maintained drains could not cope. We joined the few commuters that walked along the pavement, passing mostly closed shops. Our goal was a bar I knew of in the Entertainment District, a place known as the Ten Thousand Cocktails Bar. Most of the locals just referred to it as the Cocks. They have a very similar outlook on life as those of us from the Spit.

Twenty and I stomped along the road, dodging the piles of animal excrement that dotted the paving. A lot of the locals loved to own dogs, especially big vicious breeds, but nobody cared too much about cleaning up after them. Funnily enough, Pan City residents seem to favour cats. I always remember seeing lots of cats around Pan City when I was a kid. In the Spit we had few pets of note. There were stray cats and dogs of course, but nobody actually owned them. Most of the animal wildlife in the Spit was rats, and we had plenty of those.

Having thought about pets, I realised Twenty was not behind me. I don’t mean she is my pet, but she always wants a pet. I stopped and looked back at her, crouched down near an alley. She was talking soothingly to a stray black cat, trying to coax it into letting her pat it. I sighed and went over to watch her back. My girl has crazy good combat and surveillance skills, but she forgets about everything when there is a cute animal to fawn over.

I looked down at the cat in question. It was sniffing her hand and mewing quietly. It just wanted some food, but we had nothing to give it. Twenty was finally able to rest her hand briefly on its head and give it a quick pat before it realised there was no food forthcoming. It bolted away in a dark blur down the alley. Twenty sighed dramatically and looked up at me with imploring eyes.

“We are not getting a cat” I told her in no uncertain terms. “They are all servants of the Devil and will just spy on us for their evil master” I did not necessarily believe this but Sister Agatha from the orphanage had been quite adamant it was true. With a firm grip on Twenty’s arm I hauled her to her feet once more.

“Furthermore, we live in a one room apartment with a tiny bathroom” I added as we continued down the street. “Where the hell are we going to fit in a cat?” It was also a certainty that our landlord, Mr Singh, would have a seizure if he found us hiding a cat in our room. I had gotten in enough grief when he first found out Twenty was living with me, and she was house trained.

A few more pedestrians and the odd cyclist were on the streets in this part of town. We passed an old Chinese styled gateway that marked the entrance to the Entertainment District. Faded red plastic lanterns adorned the concrete arch, showing the original workers where the daytime rules ended and party times began. It was a place they could come to unwind from their hard working days and spend all the Pandas they had earned.

Since those early times, the reputation of Haven’s Entertainment District had grown seedier and therefore even more desirable to the right sort of clientele. Brothels sat alongside cheap restaurants, Strip Clubs were neighbours to Chemical Bars, and all kinds of the more unusual goods were for sale in the dark little stores scattered between.

It was barely past mid afternoon and the local hookers and dealers were already on the prowl. Twenty and I pushed resolutely past them, making sure no nimble fingers tried to relieve us of our phones or cash. With no tourists coming out from Pan City to visit their establishments or buy their wares it looked like desperation was setting in here too.

Twenty checked her internal maps when we got to a crossroads. She found a shorter route to the Cocks but we would be chancing our luck using some narrow alleyways to get there. I was hesitant to agree, but then we spotted a foot patrol of Police Auxiliaries and Sentinels coming the other way. By mutual agreement we set off down the first alley, Twenty handing me my pistol and the Ninjato from Ms Goody.

With the heavy cloud overhead the alleys were dark and evil smelling. There is a garbage collection service provided by the Haven Council, but that requires the residents to actually put their trash in the bins and set them out for pick up. It was like travelling through strata layers of ancient garbage as we forged our way ahead.

We came to a cross street, so we checked both ways and scurried across to the next alley. This at least was a bit wider and less strewn with debris. It was near the end, with a main street visible ahead, that the gutter rats jumped us.

Three men and a girl appeared at the street end, blocking the way forwards. They were all young, maybe late teens or early twenties in age. With the haggard lines from Chem addiction they looked a lot older. All four of them carried long bladed knives and the girl also had a stun rod in her left hand.

“Three behind us as well” said Twenty, putting her back to mine. “No guns I can see” she added.

With the patrols about they were unlikely to use firearms, as the noise would draw unwanted attention. Using odds of seven to two they probably just expected us to hand over our Pandas.

“Back off now and I’ll let you all live” I said, trying to give myself a menacing air. Being so short and skinny that was a long shot I knew, but I really didn’t want to fight them.

The girl just laughed. She was pretty if you could see past the hollow cheeks and dark eyes, barely concealed by her cheap makeup. Her clothes had once been good quality, but were stained and torn now. She was standing ahead of her little squad and I realised she must be their leader. Her nationality was hard to judge, but she was certainly of Asian origins like so many in the Zone.

“How about a counter offer?” she replied, fixing me with a steely gaze “Just hand over your wallets and weapons and we’ll let you live” Her followers snickered in agreement with her, but I doubted that if we surrendered our weapons we would leave this alley. At least not on our own two feet.

I slipped the scabbard from my back and held it in my left hand, drawing the Ninjato clear. Behind me I heard the metallic snick of Twenty’s baton being extended.

“Sorry, but we can’t accept your offer” I told her and raised the sword in front of me in what I hoped looked like a confident fighting stance. The blade caught a stray beam of sunlight for a moment from the leaden skies and gleamed brightly in the alley.

“Looks like the ladies want to party with us boys” said the girl and waved her gang forwards. With a shout the three men rushed me, eyes wild and teeth bared. They were not going to go easy on me I was pretty sure of that.

Like I was watching an action movie on the screen I saw Freya, the Ninjato gifted to me by Ms Goody, swing to block the leading man’s knife. I stepped past his rush, the blade dropping to slice cleanly under his lifted arm and shear the tendons of his upper arm. Even as the blood started to spray, I was ducking under the second man’s wild thrust and drawing Freya across his right thigh.

His worn leather pants and his flesh parted easily and he screamed and fell to the side. He dropped his knife and clutched at his leg as blood spurted between his fingers.

The third man stepped forwards, catching my swinging arm with his left, stopping the crimson covered sword from striking at him. I twisted and drove my left hand holding the scabbard up into his midriff, violently expelling the air from his lungs. He released my arm and fell gasping to the dirty ground.

My forward momentum ended with the Ninjato pressed against the exposed neck of the girl. I heard the last of the three at the rear being brutally smacked down by Twenty’s baton. I was never worried about her back there. She could take down a Golem, so three gutter rats were barely going to make her raise a sweat.

“Your boys are still alive” I told her, looking over my bloodied blade into her eyes. She was trembling, her weapons held at her sides. My attack had been so fast and violent she could not believe it had happened. Truth be told, neither could I.

“Stand aside, and don’t bother us again” I added. She nodded mutely and moved to one side, slumping against the filthy alley wall. Her trembling was so pronounced she dropped her weapons and then clasped both hands over her face.

Twenty came up beside me, stepping over the bleeding men I had left in my wake. “We need to get away from here” she whispered to me urgently. I nodded dumbly myself, then flicked the sword to remove the worst of the blood and sheathed it once more.

I followed Twenty out onto the thoroughfare. A few passersby glanced at us and then moved past, hurriedly averting their gaze. Nothing that they wanted to deal with here. We walked quickly down a couple of blocks and then Twenty pulled me into the doorway of a closed shop.

“What was that all about?” she said, holding my arms and searching my face. Twenty was as stunned as I was about the fight I had just had. I have had a little knife training with Daniel-san, but no-one has shown me how to use a sword like that.

“I don’t know!” I nearly sobbed in reply. “It just happened all by itself”. I lifted the scabbarded sword up and looked at it. “Do you think Ms Goody did something to it?” I could not help but think of the Runes carved on the blade. It reminded me of something from my childhood, back when Sister Venerae was around.

I drew the blade and with a spare cloth from my pack quickly cleaned it down. Twenty stood to shield me from the street view, as even here a drawn sword would cause alarm. The runes were visible on one side, spelling out the name Freya according to Chang. I flipped the weapon over and saw another unusual marking set into the ceramite bonded blade up near the hilt. It was two concentric circles, with fine Runes set within them. Linking the inner circle was an arrow shape, pointing down the blade to the tip. What was this then?

“It’s OK, Millie” said Twenty reassuringly. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Whatever that was, it did not try to kill those guys, even though it could have. They may bleed out but that will be up to them. It is not as if they didn’t deserve what they got” My Twenty is very pragmatic about these kinds of things.

Freya was returned to her scabbard and I looped it over my shoulder once more. Twenty had collapsed her baton but decided to keep it concealed in her hand until we got to our destination. If anyone else wanted to jump us, they were going to get a pummelling of that I was sure.