Boss King and the Blade

Wednesday

Police Auxiliary Headquarters, Spitfield

Trixie

Trixie rode up in the elevator with two Guard Units, a Jack and a Jiil, along with a dimunitive human Police Auxiliary Officer. Like the other Guards, Trixie towered over the petite female officer, a new recruit by the look of her who steadfastly faced the front doors of the elevator car, unwilling to meet the flesh and machine eyes of the other occupants.

It was a situation Trixie was sadly familiar with, the large size and emotionless expressions of the male and female Guard clones terrifying to many citizens of the Zone. Trixie examined her reflection in the mirrored sides of the elevator car, pondering how she looked to someone who had never seen her before.

She was tall, six foot in the Northern Block measurement system, with a solidly framed body. Trixie considered herself to be muscular but still feminine looking, with lean curves and bumps in the right places for a woman. Her face, a mirror image of every other cloned Jill in the Guard, was meant to be beautiful, yet hers was marred by the metal and Ceramiglass eye fitted in her right socket.

Nearly all the Guard Units had artificial right eyes, in her case an advanced Sniper model that gave her incredible magnification and low-light vision capabilities. As useful an enhancement as it was, she knew it made her appearance unsettling to most civilians.

Her outfit today was a standard blue Guard uniform without any armour and a basic cap to cover her short cropped black hair. She wore the uniform to blend in with the other Guards, even though her clone brothers and sisters no longer considered her one of their fraternity.

The elevator stopped, sliding open the doors to let the relieved human Officer stumble hurriedly into the maze of tiny offices and departments that filled this level. With almost mechanical precision the two Guard Units marched out in her wake, heading in a different direction.

“Have a nice day” Trixie called out to the departing trio. The human didn’t hear Trixie and the Guard clones pointedly ignored her. The doors slid shut and Trixie rode alone to her intended floor.

=====

“Guard Unit B-Zero-Three reporting for auditing, Officer Jackson” Trixie announced to the Police Auxiliary Officer manning the desk. She was at the Records Section of the Headquarters building, using her spare time to conduct a private investigation.

The officer was Marv Jackson, an Officer in name only as he hadn’t served anywhere other than behind this desk since he completed his basic training.

“Morning, B-Three” he answered her cheerily. “Glad to see you again. The vault is already unlocked so you can head on through”

She walked past the middle-aged Officer, giving her hips a sexy wiggle as she strode into the otherwise vacant halls. Trixie felt his hungry eyes on her as she passed, letting a faint smile lift the corners of her mouth. The Jills, as the female Guard clones were called, were designed to be beautiful and deadly, but most people were too terrified about the deadly part to appreciate the beauty.

For all his faults as a human being and Police Auxiliary Officer, Trixie was glad that someone appreciated her toned figure. A soft whistle came from the officer and Trixie paused, tilting her head over her right shoulder and fixing him with a glare from her cybernetic sniper eye.

“Officer Jackson, that constitutes sexual harassment of a serving Guard Unit” she intoned in a flat voice. “If I were to report you, there could be severe disciplinary actions taken”

“What?” he gulped and look suitably embarrassed. “I’m sorry, B-Three” he apologised. “It won’t happen again!”

“Then the incident can be our little secret, Officer Jackson” Trixie continued smoothly.

“Thanks, B-Three” he babbled in relief. “I’m sorry if I upset you”

“I am a Guard clone, Officer Jackson” she reminded him. “I can’t get upset”

She gave him a sly wink, the synthetic eye closing and opening again with machine precision. Jackson looked at her with stunned disbelief until she turned away, sauntering out of sight into the depths of the Records Hall, wiggling her hips until she nearly burst out laughing.

As soon as she was in the clear, she leaned against a shelving unit and snorted loudly, vainly holding in her laughter. A solitary cleaning mechanical rolled over to her on near silent rubber wheels, the sensor head peering at her with artificial concern.

“Do you require medical assistance, Guard Unit?” it enquired in its robotic voice.

She forced down her chuckles and restored the blank faced expression of her fellow Guard Units.

“Thank you, but I have never felt better” she replied, then moved off as quickly as she could before she lost control again. Trixie didn’t look back and walked normally for a Guard clone, with no sexy wiggles and no winking. Regardless, she was certain the curious mechanical watched her until she was out of its sight too.

=====

Not many people knew it, but Trixie was not really a Guard Unit anymore. Some years previously she had been declared Defective and scheduled for Early Retirement, which sounded almost pleasant until you found out what it really meant.

A Defective clone was one who was exhibiting unauthorised behaviours, like emotional responses such as fear, or anger, perhaps despair or even love. Such human reactions were not permitted to the Guard clones, with their extensive mental conditioning and emotional suppressants in the food keeping them under strict control.

When a Guard Unit was sent to the Recycling Centre, it was a death sentence. The Guard would be painlessly euthanised and their body stripped of the valuable components like the Quantum Processor, cybernetic implants and any useful materials. Their organic memories were lost in the cremation furnace and the stored memories in the processor were erased.

A new Guard clone would be grown using the processor, maybe a Jill or a Jack this time depending on the needs of the Archimedes Network. In a few months, a new Guard Unit would walk out of the Recycling Centre, replacing the defective unit. They would look and sound the same, yet the living mind that had entered was gone, never to return.

Trixie had been spared that fate, rescued at the last minute by the Avatar known as Jericho-Three. He had chosen to recycle her in his own fashion, disconnecting her mind from the Archimedes Network and making her one of his secret agents.

=====

Trixie was digging through the stored data crystals that filled this section of the Records Hall, hunting for the records of a certain day and a specific mission.

Everyone assumed that all the data collected by Archimedes and the thousands upon thousands of Dumb and Limited AIs that ran Pan City and the Zone would be kept inside his massive brain.

In reality that wasn’t possible, as even a machine brain as powerful as a true Artificial Intelligence could not store every piece of information within itself. That was where the data crystals came in. They were manufactured in their thousands from nearly indestructible Ceramiglass and used to store chunks of data every single day.

The data streamed into Records Halls like this one in Spitfield, being coded into the crystals that were then stored in large holding trays. Whenever a certain piece of information was needed, a vast ledger indicated which crystal held the required data. It was automatically loaded into a reading device which then transmitted the details to wherever it was wanted.

Her mission to track down a young child and her mother, two years before, had broken the Guard clone’s heart. It had given her the will to break the restrictions that bound her heart and mind, letting her make her own decisions.

She had refused to kill the fleeing couple, yet Archimedes had taken direct control of her body and fired her rifle. Her rebellion at the crime he had made her body commit had condemned her to Retirement, a fate she had seen no way to escape. Yet when Jericho-Three had saved her, she never forgot the young girl she had killed.

Trixie had taken her new name to honour the girl, but it still nagged at her why such an atrocity had been committed. Thus it was she used her considerable skills to hunt down the truth hidden somewhere in these crystals.

She would discover why the girl and mother had to die on the orders of Archimedes. And if those orders were not justified, she would make great Archimedes pay for his crime.

=====

Her mission had been completed in June 2044, more than two years ago. In theory the data crystal that stored the records of her targets would have been kept here, in the Records Hall, in data stack D-Fifty-Three.

It hadn’t been and it had taken Trixie almost two solid years of investigation to locate where the elusive data crystal had been hidden. She had other work to complete and missions to undertake for her Boss, Jericho-Three, yet every spare day had been spent tracing the missing crystal.

From almost the very beginning she knew the information she sought had been hidden from sight. The accessible records via the Network had been amended or deleted completely, leaving only the missing data crystal as proof of what had happened.

Her organic brain was augmented by a powerful Quantum Processor, a device that could function as a Limited Artificial Intelligence in its own right. Using the problem solving power of her own mind and the machine brain, she had finally unravelled the complex code that Archimedes used to hide the data crystal she sought.

Today she walked to Hall Q, following the towering stacks of data crystals until she reached her target. Data Stack Q-Ninety-Six, the hiding place of the events of that fateful day so many months in the past. She passed a young Police Auxiliary Officer coming in the other direction, the woman’s cap pulled down low as she strode past. With eager steps, Trixie arrived at her goal.

Broken glass littered the floor, catching Trixie’s eye. It had to be freshly spilled, since the cleaning robots had not even found it yet. She lifted her gaze to stack Q-Ninety-Six and saw the shattered tray that held the crystals. They all looked to be there except for one, the very data crystal she had been searching for.

Trixie spun on the spot and ran, her powerful legs driving like pistons as she raced into the main corridor. She caught a glimpse of blue as the young Officer walked rapidly into the elevator lobby, nodding briefly at Officer Jackson on his chair.

“Jackson!” Trixie yelled at the top of her lungs. “Stop that Officer!”

To give him credit, Officer Marv Jackson leaped off his butt and charged after the female Officer almost without thinking. He drew the Stun Baton from his waist belt as he ran, yelling at the woman.

“Hold it, Officer” he called out. “I don’t remember signing you into the Records Hall”

Trixie was thirty meters away and closing rapidly when the slender woman turned towards Officer Jackson. Something long and black shimmered in her hand as it extended, a sword blade made from oily darkness. It slashed sideways in a flickering arc and the woman continued on her way, the blade coiling itself back out of sight.

Jackson staggered for a moment, as if he had forgotten why he was chasing the young Officer, then his head rolled off his neck and thudded wetly to the floor. His knees buckled and like a falling tree his body collapsed in a spray of red fluid.

Trixie jumped the dead man, her heart seething in anger at how callously he had been cut down. The bogus Officer vanished into the emergency stairwell that was next to the bank of elevators, letting the door slam closed behind her.

Rather than rush into the confined space, Trixie slammed into the wall with her back, drawing the standard Guard issue pistol from a holster at her waist. It was loaded with Civilian Suppression rounds, low velocity rubber bullets intended to stun and knock down a target instead of killing them.

She thought for only a second, then moved to the desk that Officer Jackson had sat behind. Her fingers reached under the top and found the Emergency button, pressing it firmly. Alarms blared and red emergency lights flashed into action, letting every Officer and Guard in the building know there was an alert.

The intercom on Jackson’s desk buzzed and Trixie answered it, her face grim as she looked across the floor and saw the blood still pooling around the fallen Officer.

“Jackson, what’s happening up there?” demanded the Duty Sergeant on the ground floor.

“This is Guard Unit B-Zero-Three” Trixie said, trying to keep the emotions from her voice. “Officer Jackson has been killed by an intruder disguised as a female Officer. She is heading to the upper floors and is highly dangerous. Approach her with extreme caution”

“Copy that” the Sergeant replied. “I’ll lock down the building and send back-up to your position”

Trixie released the intercom button and moved to where Jackson’s head lay, some distance from his body. The eyes were still open, showing his surprise at being killed in action while guarding a desk. She took his jacket from the back of the chair and laid it over his head gently.

“Thanks for talking to me, Marv” she whispered. “Most people won’t even look at me some days”

She straightened up, checked the magazine in her pistol, then strode purposefully to the stairs. There was no way the intruder would be able to leave the Police Headquarters, and no way that Trixie was letting her escape alive.