ABC - Penance

Ghost and I rode into the night, with me leading this time. My partner wasn’t going to let anyone sneak up on us again.

We passed a dark painted vehicle overturned a few klicks up from my crash. The smell of spilled oil and blood was thick in the air as we went past, wafting across the road. Ghost made no comment but I was sure I saw a pale arm dangling out of the driver’s side window.

I accelerated my bike, eager to put the incident behind us and pushed my speed up to one hundred klicks an hour. My partner did the same and soon we were entering winding switchbacks that led to the central highlands.

The heavy forest began to show signs of cultivation and soon we were passing broad hectares of wheat and corn crops. These were the heavily modified strains that yielded up to three bumper harvests each year, tended by automated farm machinery with a skeleton crew of human overseers.

At this time of night the fields lay dark and restful, gentle breezes swaying the stalks in long waves. Giant machines sat dormant at the ends of the fields, waiting for the dawn to commence work.

An occasional farm house or automated barn showed lights, proving there were at least some people living around here. A sedan raced past in the opposite direction at one point, oblivious to the pistol Ghost kept trained on it until it had receded into the distance, the red tail-lights vanishing around a bend.

As we rode higher, wisps of thin fog began to drift across the road, hanging low and heavy over the wide fields on either side. I glanced upwards and saw the stars being gradually obscured under the pervasive cloud cover that frequently obscured the highlands. It wasn’t thick enough to hinder our riding so I kept up my speed, the bikes sending the thin tendrils reeling away from our passage in long looping spirals.

Eventually our route intercepted a major highway, the intersection lit by tall bright yellow lights. Trucks could be seen rushing in both directions, ferrying cargoes and raw materials to the Camps and back to the big cities. They all appeared to be remotely operated, the driving cabs low and streamlined with no allowance for a human occupant. The fog was thicker here, lying low and dense in the drainage gullies that flanked the wide laneways.

Ghost and I waited for some long, articulated trucks to pass then accelerated onto the multi-laned highway. From here on we would be monitored by traffic cameras and the limited AI that oversaw the route. We stuck to the speed limits as we rode, bypassing some of the slower moving Road Trains with their multiple trailers in tow.

In less than an hour we took the interchange for Camp One and its associated town of Unity. It was another fifteen minutes on this road, surrounded by more fields of genetically modified wheat and corn before we crested the peak on the highlands and saw the Labour Camp laid out before us in a broad valley. The misty fog lay over the whole valley, thicker at the forested ends and thinner over the camp and town, the streetlights gleaming through the white vapour.

All of the Labour Camps followed a similar design, though Camp One had been the first so maybe they just copied the plan. From up here we could see it all, so I pulled off the road into a service bay. Ghost followed me in and we sat on our bikes to check out the view, me using my Smart Goggles to enhance the image and my partner using his cybernetic eye.

The camp itself was a brightly lit rectangle of low buildings, only two and three storeys high, surrounded by a mesh wall that was five meters high. Solid towers were set every thirty meters or so, some manned and others housing the automatic gun turrets. You could tell which ones those were by the domed covers on top that concealed the heavy weapons beneath.

That inner rectangle was a good two by three kilometres across. Set about two hundred meters around that was a double series of fences, one of heavy duty mesh topped with razor wire and an inner one that was electrified. According to official records the open ground between the two major fence lines was laced with sensors and anti-personnel mines, overflown regularly by surveillance drones. It had a low layer of fog drifting across the open expanse, the trail of a drone cutting like a ship through the sea as it flew a patrol.

There was only one way in or out, barring the landing pad on the Warden’s building. That was a four lane road, surrounded by its own fences, that ran from the outer gates to the inner gates of the central camp. Heavily guarded sentry posts protected both the inner and outer gates, with anti-vehicle traps and mines ready to be deployed if anyone was foolish enough to try and drive through the gates.

“That’s a tough nut to crack” I commented to my partner. “The air assault that Tubbs spoke about would be impossible without disabling the gun towers”

“True” Ghost grunted in assent, as economical as ever with the spoken word. “But a morning raid by air would be hidden from satellite imagery” he added thoughtfully. “The flights in and out would be hard to track from air or space”

I directed my gaze to the townsite that began a scant hundred meters from the outer gates of the Camp. It had a central main street that was the continuation of the access road into the Camp, which intersected the broad highway that linked the town to the rest of the Zone. The crossroads they formed was lined with neon-fronted buildings, a mix of bars, brothels and diners it looked like from here.

Further back from the crossroads were other businesses, closed at this time of night, offering the usual food and other retail needs of the town’s inhabitants. On parallel roads were long, multi-storeyed apartment buildings. These would be the accommodations for the Warden Corps and support personnel, with a couple of motels mixed in for out-of-towners.

Nobody came to the Camp Towns as a tourist, but some inmates were granted visitation privileges. That meant there was a small number of outsiders to be expected at the towns and we would blend into that group for now.

Once we headed into Unity, there would be cameras and drones everywhere along the main streets to watch over the population. However, camera coverage in the back roads of the town was patchy at best. So long as we stayed off the central strip we should remain undetected.

That was the theory anyway.

I took my Smart Goggles off and packed them away in my side pannier. While my helmet was off I ran my hands through my hair, wiping away some of the accumulated sweat and moisture from the air and drying them on my pants. My eyes fell on the route markers that told us we were approaching Camp Town – Unity, which were abbreviated as CT-UN.

Naturally some local wag had spray-painted over this with their own abbreviation for the town.

“Welcome to C*NT” I read aloud and laughed.

This sounded like my kind of town!

=====

Unity Townsite, Labour Camp One

January 17th V27 (2047AD)

The motel was optimistically named The Restful Kingdom, a two storey affair with twenty rooms for rent, ten on each floor. It boasted free Network access, an automated laundromat in the ground floor and covered parking bays.

Ghost had booked us a room each on the ground floor, him in Room Six and me in Room Eight. Checking in had been easy, with the tiny reception office run by a Dumb AI. It had taken our cash without comment and run a perfunctory scan of our Idents.

I had been a little concerned at that but my partner assured me they were only stored in the Motel’s hard drive. The data wasn’t shared with the Camp AI unless it was demanded, usually only if we had committed an infraction of the town rules.

So long as we stayed out of trouble, no-one would know we had been there.

I left Ghost to his own devices and dumped my gear into the room. It was a decent size for a motel room, with a double bed, small table and chair and a bar sized refrigerator tucked into the space. I hung my jacket and uniform in the closet then made use of the tiny bathroom that was attached to the room.

For once I was glad of my diminutive stature as I manoeuvred myself in the cramped en-suite. The toilet was hard up against the shower cubicle, an enclosed affair I reckoned Ghost would struggle to get into, let alone turn around or scrub his back.

On that thought, I went back into the bedroom and stripped off my clothes and bundled them on the bed. Then I had a good, long shower to soothe my tired body and wash the last of the sweat and road dust from my skin and hair.

Suitably refreshed, I messaged Ghost to tell him I was taking a few hours to sleep. There was not going to be much to see in the town until later in the day so we could both relax for now.

I dragged a clean t-shirt over my head and clambered into the bed. The covers smelt freshly laundered, despite being a bit worn and frayed at the edges. Kind of like me I thought and let myself drift off into oblivion.

My last conscious thought was of Jan and I dragged the spare pillow against my chest, thinking of her as I faded out.

=====

I was woken by the insistent buzzing of my phone on the nightstand and a rhythmic pounding on the door. My pistol was next to the phone so I grabbed that first and staggered to the door, laying the barrel against the plastic skinned surface while I peered at the display from the external camera.

A fully dressed Ghost was waiting outside, lifting his hand to rattle my thin door once again. I stepped back and wrenched the door open, catching the clone halfway through banging his fist.

“What?” I demanded angrily, brandishing my pistol in his face.

“It’s noon, Alvarez” he said calmly. “Time to scout the town” His eyes drifted down to the hemline of my T-shirt. “And to put some pants on”

I followed his eyeline and brushed crimson, then slammed the door in his face.

“I’ll be waiting at the bikes” he called out through the door.

Five minutes later I flung the door open again, this time wearing all of my clothes but minus the pistol. I left that securely locked in my bags, with only my slender shock wand snugged into the top of my black boots. I didn’t expect to need my gun today and being caught with it would force me to reveal my identity.

Ghost was leaning on his bike, chewing methodically through the last piece of a protein bar. He gave me a guilty glance and scrunched the wrapper in his palm, refusing to let me see what type of bar it was.

“Is that your lunch?” I asked casually. He nodded silent agreement so I directed my gaze towards the end of the road, where I had spotted some diners and take-out places earlier. “Okay, I am going to do a little recon on foot. You can follow me from cover and watch me with the drones”

“Copy that” Ghost confirmed. He was dressed in a light coverall patterned with grey and green tones, perfect camouflage for urban environments. Two small palm drones, identical to the ones my previous partner Bingo used to fly, rested on the bike seat next to him. He had a small control unit strapped to his right forearm, with a slim induction cable running to a magnetic cap on his forehead.

Like all the Guard clones, he had a concealed Induction port under the skin, situated above his right eye. It allowed them to link to external devices the same way any other Enhanced could without needing to connect via the Quantum Network. In Ghost’s case this was the only way he could connect to external devices like the drones, since his Network connection was intermittent at best.

I set off, pulling a black cap down low over my hair. A pair of dark glasses covered my eyes and my face was largely hidden by a filter mask. The masks weren’t as common out in the boondocks compared to the Spit, but I was not going to stand out much. With the bulk of my head and face covered it should be hard for any cameras to match me using Facial Recog.

It was a brisk hundred meters or so to the main road, my breath puffing in and out of the mask by the time I reached the end. I glanced back once and Ghost had already vanished, with a single palm drone visible to my left about thirty meters back. It was skimming low over the buildings that flanked the road, moving with precision. I couldn’t see the other drone and I stopped trying to find it.

No point in making it obvious that they were in the air by having me look straight at them.

The main road was the one we had ridden in from the east and to my right, a couple of blocks away was the north-south road that led to the Camp entrance. I turned towards the right and headed to the cross-roads, idly watching the vehicles and people along this stretch.

Like the big highway that ran along the spine of the Zone, this road had mostly automated trucks driving down it. The majority turned at the crossroads, heading towards the Camp entrance. A few others turned right, presumably taking deliveries to the businesses along the street.

The trucks were labelled with their respective companies and I spotted some Brackenridge Transportation vehicles along with Lucas Consortium trucks. By far the majority of trucks sported the SAND logo, identical in appearance to the ones I had seen at their warehouses in Washima.

I continued walking along the pavement, nodding politely to a couple of other folks who passed me. One of them had a filter mask covering their mouth as well, which made me feel less conspicuous than before.

Two diners were on this side of the road, both fairly bland looking from the outside. Patrons were dotted around the interior of each as I peered in the front windows, eating burgers and bowls of noodles. Odours of fried meat and garlic called to my nostrils yet none set my hungry stomach growling.

I had one block left to the crossroads when I saw the sign. It was a narrow looking place, squeezed on the other side of the road between a noisy sounding bar and a bland fried chicken outlet. The name caught my imagination and I was already crossing the busy street, dodging a honking auto-truck and a bright yellow sedan.

The place was called “Eat, My Pussy” and the unlit sign above the door showed a black cat eating from a bowl using chopsticks.

What can I say? I walked right in with the biggest grin on my face and my stomach growling like a leopard.