Gaea

Chapter 4

by Baybelletrist

Mars City Meridian Hotel

7/29/2098, 0857

"How's she doing, Gooseman?" Zach asked quietly.

"She's resting," the younger man answered in a low voice. "You and Doc get our stuff settled in the other room?"

Zach nodded, staring at his handheld screen. The delicate face of a young woman stared back at him: dark brown hair, pale skin, eyes the dark green of holly leaves.

From the connecting door Doc's voiced floated through into the suite's work area. "Yeah, my Goose man, and we gave you the rollaway."

"The what?"

"Nicole Galloway," Zach read. "A janitorial worker. Emigrated from Earth two years ago. Her papers say she's twenty, but if she's much older than my son I'll eat Doc's CDU."

"Hey!"

"Nobody home at her apartment, and I don't feel much of a need to stake it out ourselves right now." Zachary checked his chronometer. "Well, I'm up for a shower, right after I call the kids. It's past time we got something to eat, too."

Goose thumbed over his shoulder in the general direction of the street below. "I noticed a noodle shop down the block. Think I'll head down there for some udon. Can I pick up anything for you?"

Zach shook his head. "Doc and I thought we'd get takeout, maybe some curry. Sure you'd rather go by yourself?"

"Got some thinking to do," Goose said with a shrug. "Something about this case just bugs me. I'll be back in a bit."

Zach, a thoughtful look on his face, watched the youngest member of his team stride out the door, and then he picked up the phone.

Goose settled into a seat at the counter and breathed in the scents of steam, broth, and oil. The slight, young Asian man behind the counter set a heavy cup filled with fragrant tea before him and waited. Goose caught the flash of the man's brown eyes, watching cautiously from under straight, thick lashes.

Goose glanced up at the menu board. "Udon," he said. "With wakame, please. And an order of tsukemono on the side."

The man bowed slightly and stepped into the kitchen.

Sipping his tea, Goose took the chance to glance around him. He was one of a bare handful of customers in the tiny noodle shop, though he'd noticed on his way past that the coffee shop two doors down was bustling with patrons. He'd threaded his way through the rush-hour foot traffic on his way down the block from the hotel, barely noticing the wary glances and averted faces.

He sighed. Hell. This case reeks. A young woman runs out of a burning building unscathed, notices a guy filming her from three stories up, blinds him, and runs off. Before she even leaves the building she rips loose a hundred-fifty-kilo metal box that was bolted to the wall and throws it across the room.

Who the hell else but a Supertrooper can do all these things?

But then why don't I know her?

He gritted his teeth, remembering Niko's terse report as Lieutenant Ridley maneuvered his van through the streets to their hotel. Her face, starkly pale against the upholstery, was strained and exhausted, her eyes surrounded by dark smudges.

"The woman was in the basement," Niko said, voice drained of energy and quiet over the purr of the engine. "Three men shot at her—I don't think she saw them coming. She dodged. One of the blasts hit the coolant conduit for the air conditioning unit and started a leak. And then she panicked and pulled the network trunk off the wall. The bolts sheared all the way through. She threw it at them, Zach. She threw it all the way across the room. The sparks from the cables she tore apart ignited the coolant and started the fire."

"Threw it?" Zach asked. "You mean she grabbed hold of it?"

Niko shook her head, letting her eyes close for a moment.

"She's an esper, a very powerful one. She used psychokinesis. Zach, I'm not sure I could do what she did without help from you three. We're dealing with a very dangerous person... and she's afraid. Terribly, terribly afraid."

Goose ran a hand over his eyes as the waiter silently set a plate of pickled vegetables in front of him and refilled his teacup. Absently Goose picked up his chopsticks and took a bite of pickled eggplant. It squeaked faintly between his teeth as he chewed, staring into space.

"I'm not sure I could do what she did... She's afraid," Niko had said.

She's a Supertrooper, she has to be. But why don't I know her?

Memories flashed through his mind.

"Come on, Doc, I need your help. I'm sick of secrets."

"Are you kidding, Gooseman? They'd shoot both of us."

"They'll never catch me if you help me."

"We never had this conversation, my Goose man."

But in memory Goose watched again as Doc danced through the networks of BETA Mountain, winnowing out secrets just to know he had them, and Goose, being Goose, himself learned to dance. Not like Doc; never like Doc. But at last, on a night when Zachary was away at Jessie's school, Doc was laughing in the lounge at the Tri-Dee Midnight Movie with three or four other Rangers, and Niko was offplanet on an archaeological dig, Goose slipped on padded feet into a back corridor of BETA Mountain.

The data-entry station he had chosen sat in a seldom-used maintenance locker, and so he made his way there, blending into the shadows. He locked the door, booted up the workstation using a fake ID he'd built with Doc's help, and opened a trouble ticket for a sticky mechanism on a door he had himself kicked out of and back into its track.

From within the maintenance program he opened another session and stole cautiously out onto the network. He worked carefully through the back doors he'd watched Doc using, taking few chances and watching always for security AIs and other users. It took less than two minutes to set up the program he needed in an inactive user directory. His mouth quirked at the corners in a tight, vicious smile: the directory belonged to a minor staffer, on sabbatical for six months, who reported to Senator Wheiner. Goose watched his program execute and open a new back door before wiping itself out of existence, and then he accessed the files he needed and copied them onto the encoded storage chip he carried.

Finished, he removed his chip, closed out the secondary session, routed the trouble ticket, and wiped down the hardware before shutting down and leaving the room. He checked his chrono as he ghosted through the dim corridors. The entire job had taken just over six minutes. He smiled again, baring his teeth in an unconscious snarl.

I'm sick of secrets.

Doors opened, and a new player danced out onto the network that was BETA. Goose accessed the net from two-bit service providers, net cafés, abandoned accounts at impoverished colleges. Painstakingly he built a randomizer to choose his entry point and reduce the chances that some security AI or bored administrator would notice him.

Slowly, cautiously, Goose gathered bits and pieces of knowledge: names, dates, acquisitions forms. Records of deals that made him want to break things. Reports, correspondence, proposals for projects he prayed no one would ever pursue. Lists of numbers and dates, some with names attached—some, awfully, with names he knew—and some followed only by the cryptic and sickening notations Nonviable, destroyed; Unacceptable, culled; Viable, culled; and, perhaps most horrifying, Undesirable, culled. And slowly his anger, his pain and disgust grew, until some days it was all he could do to smile and do his job and never betray the rage that ate away at him from inside. Doc noticed, he knew; Goose caught sidelong, worried glances and knew to the hour when Doc spoke to Zach, who was so honest and who could never keep a secret in his life.

Niko noticed, and her pain ate at him too. She tried to talk to him, catching him alone at odd moments, leaving him handwritten notes, faintly fragrant with the delicate scent of her skin—and so, to protect her from his rage and his guilt, to protect himself from her sadness, he began to avoid her whenever they were not on missions. He saw her wounded expression, quickly masked, when he left rooms as she entered them, and tried not to think about it for fear the pain would swallow him. She cornered him once, asking gently, persistently: What was troubling him? Would he not let her help? Was she not his friend?

No, he answered, avoiding her beautiful mild eyes; no, it was nothing, he couldn't talk about it, please let it alone...

But she pressed him. Pressed him and kept pressing, until finally his control snapped and he shouted at her: Leave me alone!

It was not until one graceful, slender hand drifted upward to press against her forehead, until he met her gaze at last and saw the shock and distress there, that he realized he had hurt her.

He fled then, to lock himself in his room and stare out the window and pace. Several minutes later his wrist comm began to beep. He ignored it. The high-pitched pinging continued. He gritted his teeth at the noise, which hurt his ears, and glared down at the silver band on his wrist. It kept up its insistent, maddening tone, until at last he growled and swung his arm toward the wall.

The comm went silent with a very satisfactory crunch.

A few minutes later, the comm station began to chime. Goose snarled, vision going hazy with rage. The station proved more resilient than his wrist unit; he had to hit it several times with his fists before he silenced it. He whirled as the red anger crept over him and slammed his right fist into the wall.

It felt right.

Several hours later Commander Walsh came, using his clearance to bypass the door locks, to stand stern-faced over Shane where he sat hunched on the bed in his blood-spattered uniform. The midday heat filtered in through the shattered window.

"Get off your gengineered ass and do your job," Walsh said curtly, turned crisply on one heel, and strode from the room, boots crunching over chunks of glass.

It was on the flight to Mars that Niko finally trapped him. He sat in the Nav Bay cleaning his pistols, engrossed in the fine play of metals and circuitry, when he heard the door hiss open behind him. The faint scent of Niko drifted to his nostrils. He stiffened, knowing what was coming, dreading it. The door closed behind her, and he heard a soft footfall on the smooth floor.

"Shane, what's wrong? What's eating at you so? Have I done something wrong that you won't even talk to me?" He flinched at the hurt in her voice and refused to meet her eyes as she stepped forward to stand by his elbow.

"Please, Niko," he whispered at last. "I can't tell you." He glanced sharply up at the catch in her breath and heard himself make a muffled, wordless sound at the sight of tears on her cheeks.

"What's hurting you so, Shane?" she asked softly. "You— I— Shane, please let me help." She knelt by his seat, resting one gentle hand on his arm. "I can't keep from hearing you any more. Please let me help you."

His eyes closed at the anguish in her voice. He let the pistol he had been cleaning drop into his lap and opened his eyes to meet hers.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry. Niko, I'm sorry." Useless goddamn words, they don't fix anything—

Tears welled again in her eyes, spilled onto her cheeks. He raised one gloved hand to wipe them away, eyes fixed on hers—and suddenly her face was cradled in his hands and he was kissing her and hells, hells, nothing in his life had felt so right as the bitter salt of Niko's tears on his tongue and the soft warmth of her mouth on his, the weight and flow of her hair like water over the backs of his hands, the little jump of her body as she stiffened in surprise and then relaxed against him, eager and responsive, and then only the scent and the taste and the heat of her...

A tiny sound escaped her throat and he released her with a gasp, hearing her heart hammering as fast as his, his eyes fixed on hers, both of them equally dazed. What—what did I just do? She stumbled to her feet, graceful Niko who never set a foot wrong, and stared at him from mazed, dilated eyes.

He smelled her suddenly, and the smell did things to him that he had no names for.

"I—have to go," she whispered, and fled.

Shane bowed his head into his hands and sat without moving until Doc came to tell him they were approaching Mars.

The udon bowl clacked on the counter in front of him. Goose jumped and met the waiter's dark eyes, faintly surprised at the pity he saw there. He cleared his throat.

"Thanks," he said, and picked up his chopsticks again. A passage from a proposal he'd found deep in a secure directory rose into his mind.

"While the Supertrooper Project is a worthwhile investment of time and resources, I believe that a separate but similar project, one with the objective of producing viable and stable psionic abilities in its subjects, will best serve Earth's needs for future data gathering and covert operations."

Espionage, blackmail, wetworks... Walsh and Nagata rejected it, but what if— someone else didn't?

Is this why I don't know her?

Niko's voice sounded again in Goose's memory, weary and thin: "She's terribly, terribly afraid."

And Goose remembered how, there in Ridley's van, Zach had looked soberly at her and answered, his voice quiet and very serious, "She's not the only one."

Gaea - Chapter 04

From Betamountain.org

Gaea

Chapter 4

by Baybelletrist