Cat and Mouse
Mariem found a pub a few corridors away that was relatively quiet and grabbed a booth in the back. It was a rough area but not much scared Mariem—she could hold her own. Nobody was gonna mess with an Ice Giant, but the ginger bartender in the green turban eyed her suspiciously. She hadn’t ordered a drink. She asked for a Scotch. The bartender sneered.
She propped up her smartcomm on the table and unfolded the screen into a larger display. A green laser drew a keyboard onto the table, firing in femtosecond pulses that simulated pressure against her fingertips. It wasn’t quite like snuggling up to a warm workstation with a clickety-clack, spring-keyed keyboard, but it worked in a pinch. Mariem wasn’t a hacker by any means, but she knew her way around—basic coding came in handy when recruiting.
First, she pulled up the detail on Simonee’s all-points-bulletin: Grand larceny of Ledas family, attempted assault, may be armed and dangerous.
“Holy shit.” NO BANDIDOS!
Mariem shook her head, and gulped her Scotch, regretting it immediately. Peaty was a word she might use if that meant they dried the barley over a burning tire after malting it in raw sewage.
But it did the trick. She switched to the station chat relays.
Fringe-hackers were basically criminals with a market vertical, so they couldn’t simply advertise their services on station-run bulletin boards. You had to get their attention in other ways. Signing into the relay network as guest user LaRelampaga1337, Mariem posted a short message with a variety of popular fringe hashtags.
LaRelampaga1337: 70371 - I can help #IAmTheLizardKing #HackersDoItWithTheirDigits #BlackBirdSinginInTheDeadOfNight #HanShotFirst #42IsOnlyTheAnswer.
Most hackers let autonomous agents monitor relay traffic for word-of-mouth keywords that signaled a potential client. Mariem just needed to find the right keyword and hope Simonee got the message. 70371 was how Mariem knew her back then; she just hoped it was enough to bait the hook.
Time ticked by, and her Scotch grew tepid. She downed it—gagged—and tried another post, this time with a few popular tags containing illicit innuendo. The minutes crawled. Was Simonee even watching? Did Mariem want her to be?
Her frustration battled with her gorge over a Scotch refill. Her gorge won, and she reached for the display to put away her smartcomm, but a ding froze her hand. A direct message: she tapped the notification badge.
GreenEyedGurl6969: Who?
Mariem sweated over the green laser keyboard, her palms practically dripping.
NO BANDIDOS! “Shut up!” She hissed.
Her brow cinched as she tapped out a message to the girl she’d abandoned. Not again.
LaRelampaga1337: A friend. You’ll know me when you see me.
GreenEyedGurl6969: Where?
LaRelampaga1337: Corp B, lift access 1.
GreenEyedGurl6969: Okay. I am an autonomous agent operating on behalf of this user. I’ll let her know right away.
Great, a bot.
LaRelampaga1337: Thanks.
GreenEyedGurl6969: Don’t mention it!
What was she doing? She just committed to wait indefinitely on the slim chance Simonee would get that message. What if she went off grid? What if she didn’t?
Twenty minutes later, Mariem settled into a bench in the lobby of lift access 1 on Corp B. She stared at the screen of her smartcomm for the next half hour wondering what it was she really expected. This was a very public place and Simonee wouldn’t put herself out in the open like that. But Mariem didn’t know anywhere else that was close enough to the Fénix that they could make a run for it. She scrolled the live-feed to kill the time, and Simonee’s alert was the talk of the station. There were Simonee sightings all over the station. Probably fake—these days if the pics didn’t come with a certificate of authenticity and spectrographic signatures, it didn’t happen.
Whole threads were dedicated to a conspiracy involving deep state operatives that want you to believe this was a simple burglary when really it’s a coup to take control of the station by a long lost heir of the Ledas Family, which only sounds silly because that’s what they want you to think.
Now an hour. Carlos was going to beat her back to the ship, if he hadn’t already. He’d wonder where she’d been. Any minute now her phone would buzz with a message asking, “Where u at?”
She’d tell him she was recruiting, but then what? Carlos didn’t doomscroll the live feeds as much as most, but that alert was anything but subtle, and Carlos had an ear for gossip. He was going to find out eventually. NO BANNNNDEEEEDOOOES!
Mariem growled and pounded the bench. A passing man jumped and she glared at him as he veered away. She’d sit here all day if she had to for this girl. She felt responsible, but that’s the price of saving a life—once you snatch up a loose thread, you’re kind of stuck with it. She’d bundled up Simonee’s thread, and thrown it out the door.
Mariem thought of that day: 70371 stood there looking like a child in those oversized coveralls with a blonde wig hiding her bandaged eye. She practically was a child. They were both crying, but Simonee smiled and told her it was the only way. Mariem wondered if it really was. She never stopped wondering—the guilt hanging off her neck like a lead weight.
Her hands vibrated, breaking her reverie. A message notification blinked on the screen. Was Carlos back already?
She tapped it: not Carlos. A photo showed herself sitting on the bench and staring at her smartcomm. It was strange seeing herself frozen in a thought she was just thinking. It was from an Anonymous sender with a null device address, so she couldn’t reply. If Simonee was as good as her dossier, then she could have gotten Mariem’s device address from the chat-bot and hacked into the network messaging system.
The picture was taken from the right. She looked there where a small queen-palm drooped over the edge of a steel planter next to the entrance. Mariem stood, walked casually to the archway and peered out into the corridor. No one. Her smartcomm buzzed again with a new image: Mariem standing in the archway looking around like an idiot. I hate the way I look in photos.
The corridor lead out into the main thoroughfare: the central channel of the ring where people rushed through a canyon of flashing signs, advertisements, and screens in motion. Five stories it rose, sporting restaurants, shops, and corporate offices for the major players this side of Jupiter. Plants and water-features dotted the long medians in exhibitions of wealth. Bright plasma lamps lit the cavernous mall with near-natural light.
Mariem stepped out into the bustle and searched for her mystery photographer. Another buzz—another image: the top of Mariem’s head from a dozen meters up. How did she get up there that fast?
Mariem followed a chain of escalators up four stories. When she leaned over the rail to where she’d been standing, her device buzzed again. Damn, is my butt really that big?
She aligned the image to a set of swinging doors beside a sandwich shop that promised fresh baked starch, green vegetation and hefty slices of protein—provenance unknown. The doors opened into a service corridor.
This game of cat and mouse continued into a junction of corridors behind the shops and restaurants where deliveries were accepted and garbage disposed. The air reeked of refuse and chlorine. Buzz—there she was peering down one of the corridors with a dumb look on her face.
The point-of-view was high looking down, and close, but from where? She’d gotten turned around and each corridor looked the same at that angle. She scanned the ceiling in a circle—nothing at first, but the slightest motion caught her eye, like a circling fly. Drawing near, she saw a tiny drone with six buzzing rotors and a pair of glossy lenses. When she was close enough to grab it, it flashed green zipped down the corridor.
Mariem jogged to keep up, and almost missed it diving through a vent in a door labeled, Maintenance.