ABC - Penance

Bobbi’s residence, Unity Townsite

The Sentinel wouldn’t fit inside of Bobbi’s truck no matter how far back we moved the front seats. In the end it had climbed into the open topped tray at the back and lay down flat, then I had thrown a tarpaulin over the mechanical.

Bobbi had driven us home, watching the roads alertly until we pulled into the covered garage at her house. There had been no other vehicles on the road and only a few pedestrians, scurrying like rats from one piece of shelter to another. A single helijet had roared overhead high up in the pale blue sky, showing Warden markings and heading to the west.

It felt like we were waiting for a storm to break, the air heavy with menace. We were getting Unit Three out of the truck when we heard the dull thuds in the distance. Bobbi immediately jumped from the bonnet of her truck to the carport roof and thence to the upper roof of the house.

She stood there, scanning the horizon with her meat arm shading her eyes until the sounds faded.

“Was it the old Camp?” I shouted to her from the driveway. The rest of the house occupants had come outside to see what the commotion was, filling the driveway. Only Ghost noticed the silent mechanical sitting upright in the truck, the pair of them watching the other.

“Yeah, looks like it” the woman yelled down to us. “I reckon they set charges in the buildings and used missiles to finish the job”

She climbed down a lot more quickly than she had gone up, her face clouded with worry. When she reached the ground, she drew me aside to speak privately.

“The Warden is cleaning up all the evidence” she said. “That probably includes you and your partner. It could be very risky going into the Camp”

“You and your crew are evidence too, Bobbi” I reminded her. “If they want me gone they probably want you to vanish as well”

She looked at Nigel and Catherine, standing uneasily under the bare sky. Mabel was thoughtful too and she approached us, voicing the same thoughts I was having.

“They know you live here with your crew, Bobbi. We could have a kill squad or just a plain old missile dropping on our heads at any time. We need to get things moving now, before it is too late”

“Okay” Bobbi assented. “Let’s get everyone inside” She glanced over to her truck, where Unit Three and Ghost were indulging in a staring contest. “You too, assholes”

“She meant you, mechanical” I heard Ghost tell the machine then strode over to join me as we walked inside the house. There was a loud creaking from the truck’s springs then Unit Three clanked in behind us, his flat topped head barely making it under the door frame.

We gathered in the kitchen around the long table, Bobbi once again at the head. Nigel had grabbed a portable holo-projector from his room and had it flickering to life by the time we all settled into chairs. Mabel stayed in the kitchen side of the room, watching from behind the counter and Unit Three stood silently against one wall, head scraping the low ceiling.

“Right, Nigel, bring up the Camp schematics” Bobbi asked and a moment later Nigel had summoned the required plans. A three dimensional view of the entire Camp floated above the table, all of us regarding it intently.

“How in hell do you have such a detailed map of the interiors?” I demanded. “This stuff should be highly restricted”

“It is” Bobbi replied off-handedly and offered no further explanation. “Nigel, zoom in on the Camp HQ building. That’s going to be the toughest nut to crack”

Nigel obliged, tapping commands into his wrist mounted controller. The holographic image expanded out, showing the multiple levels of the Headquarters building that housed the Head Wardens office at the top and the Computer Stacks in the basement.

“We should be able to get into the reception lobby without access cards from the front entrance” Bobbi said. “But to get to the stacks we’ll need high grade access. We have cards issued to us for visiting purposes but they won’t let us down into the basement”

“I might be able to run a bypass using one of our cards” Nigel declared thoughtfully. “If the Camp AI was operating I’d have no chance, but with the Hoffman Bridge in force I reckon I can do it”

“If you have a magnetic induction cable to connect to the card decryption device, I can bypass the security” Ghost announced. I looked at him in stunned amazement, not because I doubted his ability but because that had to be the longest sentence I ever heard him say!

“What?” he demanded, seeing my expression. “It’s a standard technique for Infiltration models like me”

“Yeah, I know” I replied with a smile. “Just happy to have your contribution”

“Okay, if Ghost can get us to the stacks, who can remove the Bridge from the AI?” Bobbi asked. She glanced at Ghost and I but we shrugged our shoulders.

“If it’s a physical device I can punch it” I offered.

“It will be a device connected to the stacks, but breaking it won’t be enough to remove the limiter” Nigel explained. “There will have to be a shut-down code inserted from the interface, then we can disconnect the device”

“And where are we going to get the shut-down code?” Catherine asked brightly. “Will I need to persuade someone to give it up?” She lifted her right hand, letting intense flames flicker across her fingertips, the fire giving her face a sinister crimson cast.

“We’ll be taking the code in with us” I told them. “One of us already has the data stored, don’t you?” I lifted my eyes to Unit Three, who regarded me with his red lenses for a moment, then nodded his head in agreement.

“The fuck you say?” Bobbi queried. “That faulty unit has been wandering the streets for weeks now. Everyone knows its memory core got damaged in the raid, so why do you think it has the shut-down codes?”

“When the raid on the Camp occurred, they came in hard with an AI strike first” I said evenly. “Charlie, the Limited AI that ran the Camp, had only seconds to formulate a defence plan I reckon. He’d know he had no chance of defeating a full AI, the best he could do was send out a call for help and hide what data he had where no one would look for it”

I stood and walked over to Unit Three and laid my hand on its arm.

“You only had seconds, didn’t you Charlie?” I said to the mechanical. Its head tilted to regard me, those red lensed eyes seeming so much more intense than I remembered. “Unit Three was in the charging station at the Post that morning, wasn’t it? Those stations allow high speed data transmission directly into the Sentinels, for updates and orders”

I had everyone’s attention, even Mabel looking with interest between me and the towering mechanical.

“You extracted all the data you carried and sent it in a compressed burst to Unit Three’s memory core, right?” I continued. “Charlie cloned himself, leaving one version in the stacks to fight to the end, and another into Unit Three”

“That sounds fine until you remember that the processor in a Sentinel can’t run a Limited AI” Nigel interjected. “There just isn’t enough capacity without a Quantum Processor”

“I know that Nigel” I chided him gently. “That’s why Unit Three, or should I say Charlie, has been so strange since the attack. It’s been like his head has been filled with the contents of an entire town, the pressure inside his memory core must be intense”

“That’s why the vocoder doesn’t work” Ghost added. “The stress of speaking out loud is overloading the mechanism”

Charlie nodded his metal head in mute acknowledgement, the metal hands lifting to lay on both my shoulders as if to say thank you. Or to commence strangling me, since my interactions with most people go either of those two ways.

“So why did he keep hanging around the crossroads every day?” Catherine asked.

“He was waiting for help to arrive” Mabel spoke up. “He had sent out his pleas for help, but he had no way of knowing if they had been heard”

“So when do you think this help will arrive in Unity?” Bobbi asked. Mabel looked squarely at me and smiled that beautiful smile of hers.

“It already has”

=====

We got dressed for combat, with Ghost given free rein to use as much of Wade’s gear as he wanted. I borrowed a light armour vest from Catherine, strapping it underneath my uniform shirt. For some reason Bobbi seemed disappointed when I took off the girlish outfit and makeup, reverting to my plain old self.

“You know that look wasn’t the real me” I told her as we loaded equipment into her truck. Bobbi paused, a heavy bag of guns and ammo barely making her arms strain.

“Yeah, but you were still cute as hell” she affirmed with a grin. “I envy that woman, Jan, back in Spitfield. I hope she knows what a catch you are”

“I’m not a catch, Bobbi” I replied with my own smile. “More of a booby prize”

The pair of us finished stowing the gear, then took a moment to lean against the dented side of her truck. We had known each other for barely a few days, yet I felt some kind of kinship with this woman from the Northern Block.

“Hey Bobbi, what’s the deal with Mabel?” I asked her. “Is she really some kind of Witch?”

“What?” the woman snorted. “Hell no! Mabel is a Taoist Magician, although she calls herself a Sorceror. That kind of info is really private for her, so don’t go spreading it around”

“You really believe she can do magic?” I replied sceptically. “There have been stories about so-called spellcasters back in Spitfield, but they turned out to be Awakened of one type or another. My guess is she is a Teleporter, which is super rare anyway so I could see why she wants to keep it hidden”

Bobbi laughed at my naivety, shaking her head so that the long braid of hair bounced back and forth like a cat’s tail.

“We obviously worked in very different circles here in the Zone” the Freelancer said. “Some of the teams that tried to extract prisoners used Adepts, dangerous people for us mere mortals to come up against. Those times were the only occasions when we failed to recover our targets”

“Adepts?” I asked. “Is that what they are called?”

“Uh-huh” Bobbi agreed. “That’s what Mabel is, a type of Adept. She’s one of the good ones so you can trust her. But the others, they are bad news Luisa. If you come up against an Adept, run like fuck in the opposite direction”

“Even ones like Merlin or Gandalf?” I said in jest, my disbelief in the whole idea evident.

“Fine, have it your way Luisa” she sighed and went inside the house, yelling at her crew to get their asses into the truck. I stood with my back against the metal body of her truck, thinking about what she had said. I still doubted the existence of magic, having scoffed at such reports even from fellow Officers at the Washima District, yet I had remembered an interesting fact.

The Police Auxiliary had a special team of Detectives, based in Pan City, that were officially designated as Division X. Everyone just called them the Odd Squad, since any case that was deemed far too odd for regular Officers got assigned to them. The cases that they investigated nearly always seemed to be ones that involved magic or the paranormal, or what witnesses had interpreted as such.

If the Board of Governors believed in magic, then maybe it did exist after all.

=====

Labour Camp One

We couldn’t all fit in the cab of Bobbi’s truck, so I sat beside the big woman up front with Catherine and Nigel in the rear seats. Ghost and Unit Three filled the open topped tray in back, the pair of them giving me stink-eye in spades when I told them they couldn’t sit up front.

Mabel had waved us off from the driveway, her face hiding her emotions behind a bland façade.

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?” I had called to her, Bobbi idling the big vehicle on the road after reversing out. “There is space on the back seat for you”

“I can’t get involved, Luisa” she had told me for the umpteenth time. “If I break the Covenant they will come looking for me. I’m not ready to restart that part of my life”

She looked genuinely crestfallen after those words, meeting my eyes with honest concern.

“Okay, Mabel” I relented. “I can’t say I understand all of this, but I accept your decision”

“Thank you, Luisa” Mabel replied. She stepped up close to my open side window, looking at me from the pavement. “Before you go, I want to tell you my real name in case you ever need to call upon me. I am Sin Mah Bel, Sorceror of the Crimson Serpent Clan and I count you as my friend”

“In that case, I am Luisa Maria Alvarez and I am glad to be your friend too” I responded. “If you ever come to Spitfield, look me up. I know a great coffee place”

Mabel smiled at me and stepped back, Bobbi gunned the engine and we rolled off down the street. I watched Mabel in the side mirror, keeping her in sight until we turned the corner and she was gone.

“We’ll see her again after this mission is done” Bobbi assured me, driving with one hand on the wheel and her arm resting on the open window. “With your crew and mine working together, we can’t fail”

Never let the Universe hear your plans I always say, because it likes to fuck with you.

I should have known that, but Bobbi was so confident she just swept us along for the ride.