Chương 96: KK3 - #21 THE GREAT MASQUERADE (1/3)

#21 THE GREAT MASQUERADE F ollowing the events on Mars, the Kitty throttled across the Inner System for several months secretly tracking down the Awen's allies in the shadows. Still wanted for the murder of a Techno-Senator, but with new FIDs, Ali and I were working alongside Nora for the DIA. That day, it was on the fringes of the space highway that we awaited our next mission's instructions.

But above all, it was Sunday—the best night of the Venusian week because we had received our monthly groceries and a fresh batch of Betamax by probe. My partner and I could satisfy our two most voracious appetites: carbohydrates and movies.

"There you go!" Ali exclaimed, wearing her green, white and red striped apron along her chef's hat.

"Let's munch while it's 'Billy Zane' hot!" The regular microwavable nutrigel boxes ordered on the web contained everything we'd been dreaming of for months: cream buckwheat lasagna from Martian fields, gnocchi with faux bacon and melted cheese on top, calzone pizza with printed anchovies and thermos-molded tagliatelle with reconstituted salmon. Believe it or not, the spy's life was awesome! These dishes' flavors shut down my brain and I lost consciousness into the lasagna for a solid minute.

My partner would have let me drown if her fork hadn't inadvertently poked my ear.

"Lee! You're scattering hair everywhere!" she hurled abuse before rolling half a tagliatelle-spread pizza like you would do with a cigarette, to slide it better down her ostrich gullet with a lethal amount of OK Soda as a lubricant.

"God Darwin!" I cried, turning to Nora to avoid this inhuman performance.

"Your sister's a churl!" Preferring focusing on my own meal, I then removed each of the anchovies from my slice of pizza before taking my first bite. But when the dough was within reach of my lips, it was no longer time to chomp. Rutger Hauer was about to recite his monologue. The monologue. But, alas, it was covered by an alert coming from the cockpit.

"Who dares?" I exploded, smashing the pause button on the greasy remote as Nora flew towards the radio.

"Butchering Blade Runner is an outrage!"

"It's from the Major!" Nora shouted from the cabin.

"Needless to say!" I shouted.

"The message is rather short. I feel like the noose is tightening around Graves," Nora remarked as Ali and I climbed the stairs.

"From what I understand, we need to retrieve an encryption key used by the Awen."

"A key?" Ali asked.

"Yes!" her sister went on, once again reading the missive on her computer unfolding from her left forearm.

"The key has been stolen by a bounty hunter who hustled for the Moon. He wants to get rid of it. We need to retrieve it at a station called Down Terminal."

"A bounty hunter working for the Gods?" I asked.

"What's his name?"

"Ludwig Oppenheim," Nora read.

"Apparently, he's in trouble. He killed the wrong bloke in the execution of a contract. Our help against the key."

"Ludwig? That was Doc's name? Right?" Ali inquired. Her sister checked his profile on her files.

"Doc? The Japanese cripple you guys hung out with?"

"No, Doc was the one always sick," I intervened as our friend's holo-picture slowly appeared in front of Nora from one of her temporal diodes.

"We all thought he was dead. That's funny." The lack of gravity tipped Ali down. Her long hair rippled with the entropic fluctuations.

"What's funny is that we need to give a hand to a hunter with the biggest bounty in Solaris over our heads!" Hell… I had almost forgotten about that… The space station called Down Terminal was one of the last tolerable stops between the Middle System and the Planets of Hell. Its configuration was similar to a twisted nail with its rotary head—a huge maintenance center coupled with a motel of medium quality, and its tail—a Blue filtration facility and an atomic waste processing plant for old post-nuclear reactors.

In other words, Down Terminal was a fancy cargo stop paired with a highly radioactive landfill.

"First Ijiraq, now this! Are you sure you want to land here?" I asked Ali as we approached a makeshift platform at the base of the station.

"I'm getting tired of garbage dumps!"

"You heard the control tower. All the top hangars are full of all those freight ships heading to the factories. Besides, our finances and fugitive status prevent us for negotiating." Before my partner could think of another objection, Nora displayed the fruit of her research concerning Oppenheim as we arrived at the destination: "Doc needs help on a confusing contract about monitoring the local union. In reality, the megacorp wants to get rid of a strange terrorist sabotaging the station for months."

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. During our career, Ali and I received many similar proposals. The local branches of the Alliance had learned to turn a blind eye as long as they were taking bribes. Because, in fact, Doc's contract was an assassination in disguise. The sacrosanct Technocratic laws, devised by a few cockamamy lobbyists, could turn a man's life into a nightmare for a simple corporatist thought.

"Back in the day, Ludwig was a trigger-happy space cowboy but damn…" Ali said, checking the news on the side monitor.

"He nailed this guy right in the face." The tabloids didn't redact the headless corpse. On the police report Nora had dug up on the web, our friend had defended a curious version of events: according to him, he shot the person he saw tampering with the security consoles on the surveillance videos. But a quick FID check said otherwise. Doc had gruesomely executed a rather high-ranking engineer in front of his congregation. And the Down Terminal's disgruntled officials had failed to cover it up. Ali cocked her.

50 caliber and hid it under her new black leather jacket. Then, because of the high level of radiation, Nora gave her an ARV jab in the shoulder before poking me too.

"Note where we parked the ship, because now it's painted in green, we might not recognize it," my partner said.

"Our name better be cleared quickly after this affair," I grunted before her sister opened the creaking airlock.

"Because the Kitty without its coral dress isn't the Kitty!" I glanced outdoors. The working-class areas of Down Terminal didn't inspire confidence. Shielded vaults that held the plant's radioactive waste were aligned on the tail's surface from each side of the road leading to the rotary top. In front of them, underpaid laborers clumsily maintained miserable concrete rabbit cages to house their families. The smell was unbearable as the filth stagnated in this artificial atmosphere.

Yet this last one had to be constantly renewed by the immense ventilators which dotted the transparent membrane; an aging yellowish wrapping that still miraculously separated the steel column from the void.

"First step: finding Doc!" I proclaimed while jumping in the weightlessness.

"Let's fly towards the top!"

"Do you want to be sucked by a fan, little hamster? Stay on the ground," said a man who had just finished climbing the staircases of the platform. Ludwig "Doc" Oppenheim was a tall, thin gentleman with an emaciated face and a tired look. His scattered, scraggly locks fell to his cheeks. He spoke so softly that it was tough to understand him over the noise of the giant fans and through his oxygen mask. His icy tone made it hard to believe that he was happy to see us.

"Shouldn't you be in jail?" Ali joked.

"Everybody deserves a second chance, right?" Ludwig answered.

"It's nice of you to give me a hand. Did you forget about the Doc?" I clamped myself on my partner's shoulders before following Ludwig. A group of children were climbing on the perpendicular stairs leading to the precarious docks housing our ship. They were all very dirty and quarreling in the middle of floating mechanical carcasses.

"What suffering…" commented Ali, throwing them her last bag of Nerds.

"It reminds me of Titan…"

"Speaking of misery, I don't see what's left to sabotage in this station!" I ranted, definitely reluctant to put a pad down.

"The radiation will be eating everything away before the next decade." As we walked down the stairs, a stifling heat enveloped us. Starting where the base met the head, blue coolant hoses zigzagged across the floor and walls. Most of them had blown up, however, and the flammable fluid was forming bubbles out as if the station were oozing from the inside. As we left the stairs, an implant dealer came out of his stall.

He dumped his household waste into the nearest suction pipe, drenching with grime and Blue a homeless man sitting next to it.

"I mean… we're one spark away from a supernova!"

"Don't panic. This fluid is so old it's just colored water…" Ludwig reassured me, lighting a cigar and slipping it into a gap in his mask before throwing the match towards the scared hobo.

"Only the one in the filtration plant above is perfectly functional." At the sight of the bounty hunter, the shopkeeper quickly returned to close his store's door. The vagabond took off, and some passers-by followed him. By the time we reached the first slum, the vertical street had emptied.

"Do you have what we're looking for?" Nora firmly asked, wiping a bubble of Blue from her neck engravings.

"Easy there, brown sugar…" Doc marked a pause and coughed. After hawking up a phlegm, he resumed: "You're here for the saboteur first…" Coughing again, he pointed vaguely at our feet as we walked towards the top of the station.

"His actions take place all along the radioactive waste processing line whose residue is piled up here. But you—""Hey! Fuck-hole!" In the shadow of a makeshift aqueduct, a young woman stepped upon us. Your grandmother's drape as a miniskirt and a Bichon Frise stapled on her scalp, the prostitute grabbed Ludwig by the collar of his shirt: "What do you think you're doing? Wandering this street like you own it, union buster!" She had a cigarette breath that failed to hide another, more organic smell.

As Oppenheim remained silent and walked around the young woman. Head down, she spit at his feet a brown gob that never reached the floor. She then pointed a shaking finger at us: "And you! Have you come to help out this scum? There's nothing for you in the underbelly of Terminal, mercenaries! They've already taken everything from us." As she started screaming, a few passers-by reappeared; as well as heads in the windows of the only fast-food chain present in the neighborhood: a pitiful Hook'n'Tacos.

Quickly, the onlookers became more and more numerous.

"Don't bother with that…" whispered Ludwig, who had turned around.

"We won't get anything out of it. And things can escalate if they get wind of your... value." Oppenheim then waved his hand, inviting us to hurry up before telling us more about the station: "Initially, Down Terminal worked with robots and the company in charge had brought hundreds of engineers and technicians to maintain them. Many bots quickly broke down with the radiation, and humans ended up taking over directly.

Financial crises and new Baltimore engines eventually put a damper on the processing plant and filtration center. Since the last recession, it has been running with a few unfortunate people who often have to be replaced…"

"It's a strange time we live in when human labor has become cheaper than robots…"

"The supply of natural flesh has never been so high. Pile them up in misery and they'll lay more for you…" the bounty hunter grumbled.

"They're multiplying faster than the factories on Mercury can provide androids. It's disgusting. This whole place is fucked."

"Why did you take a job here, Doc?" asked Ali. Doc chuckled.

"The warm air is good for my lungs."