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  THE COMPLETE SERIAL

  JAKE ELWOOD

  This is a work of fiction. A serial. Totally made up. Any similarity to actual persons, places, interstellar burglars or bounty hunters is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 Jake Elwood

  All rights reserved.

  Episode One

  Heist on Hesperus

  CHAPTER 1

  They called it the Planet of Bureaucrats. It was the perfect place for a heist.

  Cassandra Marx rode a sliding sidewalk a couple of hundred meters in the air across a slim steel strand between a pair of glittering towers. The view was spectacular, a panorama of towers and domes and swirling vehicles, but she was the only one who seemed to notice.

  Around her were executives in power suits murmuring into throat mics, eyes covered by immersion goggles, office workers staring blankly at data feeds on retinal projectors, and a handful of caterers, couriers, and robots, united by the dull blankness of their faces.

  If there was a cop among them she was already doomed, so she ignored everyone and watched the city slide past. In her dark business suit she blended right in. Only the urgent beating of her heart marked her as anything but one more bureaucrat. That, and the fact that she actually turned her head to look out at the shining forest of towers.

  The whole planet wasn't actually covered in offices and data warehouses, of course. It just seemed that way. Vanatel had breathable air and a crossroads location and very little else to recommend it, so it had become a business hub. Shining towers and sprawling corporate campuses stretched for thousands of kilometers in one vast metropolis dedicated to shuffling data and money back and forth. The planet had an awkwardly long day, but it hardly mattered. The lights were never off on Vanatel. The city never slept.

  The sidewalk carried her into Essential Harmony Tower, and the sunlight gave way to artificial lighting. If anyone around her noticed, Cassie couldn’t tell. Passengers drifted off of the sidewalk to the left and right, vanishing into the depths of the building. Cassie rode until the sidewalk ended, then stepped off and onto a floor of dark tiles.

  She was in an atrium, a lovely little garden with stone benches and burbling fountains, surrounded by plants from all over the galaxy. It was beautiful, but once again she was the only person who noticed. The other sidewalk passengers headed off in different directions as Cassie took a seat on a low bench.

  Her nerves were tightening, but she made herself take a moment to enjoy the atrium. She would function better if she was calm, and if she was about to be arrested, she wanted one last memory of tranquil beauty to take with her.

  An amber light glowed on her retinal display. She was not under surveillance, at least not anything that her various accessories could detect. She slid a fashionable silk bag from her shoulder and set it by her feet, then nudged it, tipping the bag on its side. She resolutely didn't look down as fifteen tiny robots crawled from the bag and dispersed into the foliage around her.

  After a couple of minutes she picked the bag up, stood, and replaced it on her shoulder. Doing her best to look nonchalant, she followed a blinking arrow on her retinal display and strolled into a corridor leading deeper into the tower.

  When she neared the bounce tubes a red flash on her retina told her she was being scanned. She wore hashing implants, tiny, quite complex devices that would scramble the signal to anything but the most sophisticated or the most simple of scanners. Her face would be blurred by static, and the rest of her body would flicker just enough to interfere with gait-recognition or body-matching software.

  Hashing implants weren't common, but they weren't unheard-of, either. She would look like a privacy nut, not a criminal.

  She hoped.

  The first alarm went off as she stepped out of the bounce tube onto the fifteenth floor. There were a dozen people in sight, and half of them had that stiff, distant look that meant they were receiving an audio message. Cassie smothered a grin and walked into the main reception area for Rednaxela Incorporated.

  Another red flash on her retina told her there was more scanning going on. That was no surprise. The boutique insurance company had to be a magnet for data slicers, and the only real way to slice a well-protected network was to show up in person.

  The reception counter had several AI screens and a live receptionist, a young man in a pricy suit. Two gates with little security bars blocking the path gave access to the inner office area.

  Somewhere in the depths of the building Cassie's little crawling robots were cutting into cables, dislodging data crystals, and releasing bogus packets into a variety of data streams. They wouldn't be able to reach any really critical data, but they would wreak havoc with softer targets. Secure doors would be sliding open all over the corporate headquarters. Other doors would be locking themselves. Fire and gas alarms would be ringing, and video feeds would be turning to static. None of it would last long, but for now, chaos reigned.

  A fat man rushed in from the hallway outside, tried to pass through the security gate, and swore when the bars wouldn't open. A woman came from the far side of the counter, tried to leave, and lurched comically against the bars. The receptionist hurried over, tapping a screen on the side of the gate. The fat man moved aside, then clambered awkwardly over the counter, grunting with effort. He rushed deeper into the office.

  Cassie looked left and right, then put a hand on the counter and hopped over. No one paid her the slightest attention as she crossed the back of the reception area and walked calmly into the corridor beyond.

  An alcove on the side of the corridor lit up in blue, the color superimposed on her retinal display. The bulk of a document parsing machine filled most of the alcove. Cassie stepped behind the machine and dropped to a crouch, taking a stylus from her pocket. She was mostly hidden, and she only needed a moment.

  The stylus had a hidden laser built in, and she used it to burn open a panel set into the wall at knee height. A flat metal box was inside, surrounded by cables and glass and steel components. She pried the cover off the box to expose a fist-sized data crystal. Redundancy and modularity were the watchwords of modern information technology. This node, like a hundred others scattered throughout the twenty or so floors owned by Rednaxela Corporation, contained as much as twenty percent of the company's stored data, and it had direct access to the rest.

  Cassie pulled a flat metal disk from her pocket and slapped it against the side of the crystal. That was all she needed. She straightened, leaving the stylus lying on the floor, and followed a flashing dot on her retina toward the internal bounce tubes.

  She emerged on the fifth floor, the lowest floor controlled by Rednaxela. An open lobby filled much of the floor, with glass doors opening onto an outside plaza. Red lights glowed above several of the doors, indicating that they were locked. Men in dark uniforms were gathering around the remaining doors, stopping people from exiting.

  Rednaxela was regaining control. They knew that a thief was in their midst.

  She headed for the nearest unprotected door, fighting a rising dismay. She'd hoped the company would take longer to react. She could hear employees arguing with security officers at several of the unlocked doors. There were fifteen exits in total. Four of them were now locked, with guards blocking five more. A few people were submitting to scans from the guards before being allowed to leave. The rest, a dozen or so office workers, were streaming toward the last six exits.

  As she watched, two more doors locked themselves. A pair of guards left a locked door and moved across to stop a young man from leaving through one of the unprotected exits.

  Cassie queued up behind an exasperated-looking older man who was muttering a stream of complaints into the empty air. He had to be address
ing someone over the network by implanted mic. He described the chaos, the guards, and demanded to know who would explain to his three o'clock why he was late.

  Her hopes rose as he reached the doorway, but he paused, staring back into the lobby as he described the lineups forming behind him. Cassie gritted her teeth, fighting a scream, as she debated ramming him with her shoulder and bursting outside. Instead she tried to look bored as the next doorway over clicked shut and locked itself, the light overhead turning red.

  "I'll show you the vid later," the man said, then scowled at Cassie. "That is, if certain people's hashers haven't wrecked the whole thing."

  She gave him her sweetest smile, and he turned away.

  The light above the door turned red.

  The man stepped outside, and the door started to swing shut. Cassie pushed forward, planting a shoulder against the glass. There was a mechanical whine from the door as it fought her, and an authoritative voice behind her said, "Hey!"

  Then the door slid back a reluctant few centimeters and Cassie slid through the gap. The door clicked shut behind her.

  She was out.

  "Ma'am. Excuse me, ma'am."

  She ignored the voice coming from right behind her and walked briskly across the plaza, her eyes scanning. An electronic voice in her ear said, "I see you, Cass. Bear a bit to the left and you'll see the public bounce tubes to ground level. I'm moving the car up."

  "Right," she murmured. Roger was the AI in her ship, the Raffles. He was coordinating her getaway.

  "Hold it, lady. Yes, you in the dark suit. Stop." She could hear the slap of shoe leather on concrete behind her. "I said, stop!"

  A hand landed on her shoulder, and she reversed direction, spinning and bringing her elbow up. By the sound of his voice she knew he was taller than she was. Her head turned as she spun, and she saw he was even taller than she'd guessed, a lean man of thirty or so in a dark uniform and black racer cap. She adjusted the trajectory of her elbow, not wanting to crush his throat, and connected with the side of his jaw. The impact numbed her arm from shoulder to fingertips, his eyes went wide, and she turned back, resuming her walk.

  Voices rose behind her, an excited babble that she ignored. She wanted to know if the man was down, but turning her head would be foolish. By the pain starting to throb in her elbow, she'd hit him hard enough to knock him on his backside.

  A dozen quick strides took her to the bounce tubes. She stepped into the down tube, felt air rush past her face as she plummeted, and stepped out at ground level.

  A battered little yellow ground car flashed green for an instant, and she hurried to it. The driver's door clicked open and she slid behind the control panel. The car was moving before she had the door closed. She sat back and let Roger drive.

  "You've got pursuit," his voice said from the dash. "I suggest the cable route."

  "Pity," she said, "we'll lose another deposit. I hope it was worth it."

  "The spyke broadcast for just over eight seconds before they shut it down," Roger told her. "I haven't analyzed all the data yet."

  Eight seconds. That was very good security. She'd have expected thirty seconds at least. Still, eight seconds was an eternity in the world of data theft. It was probably five seconds more than they needed. "That'll do," she said. "How long until – never mind, I see it."

  Ahead of her, the road curved sharply around a vast support pillar that held up a section of the elevated traffic grid. Horizontal bars supported magnetically-elevated cars a dozen meters above street level. A second set of bars supported another river of traffic a dozen meters above that.

  The car swerved to the right, and for a moment the pillar hid them from any pursuers coming up from behind. The car slowed for a moment, the right-side door popped open, and Cassie threw herself out. She scooted backward, pressing her back against the base of the pillar, and watched as the car raced away, the door sliding shut.

  A ridiculously small two-seater ground car raced past, a stylized shield on the door identifying it as corporate security. A flying security robot followed close behind, and Cassie held her breath. Live cops wouldn’t notice her, but the robot might.

  Both machines kept going, though, following the yellow car around the base of Archimedes Tower and vanishing from sight.

  Cassie stood, running a hand along the support pillar, looking for the thread-thin cable she'd left hanging earlier that day. Her fingers touched the cable, and she tugged on it, lifting the tiny handle that hung suspended from the bottom end. She extended the handle, took a firm grip on both sides, and hit the button in the center.

  With a whir the spool at the center of the handle spun, winding in the cable and lifting Cassie off the ground. She put her feet against the side of the pillar and ran upward. When she reached the level of the first mag bar she let herself hang limp, taking up less horizontal space as she passed through a narrow gap between the pillar and a steady stream of racing traffic. She could feel the rush of air as a car flashed past, the driver oblivious.

  Still higher she rose, until she was just below the second level of the mag track. A second bar branched off, giving cars a chance to slow down before curving around and down, moving from the top track to the lower track. She hung there, her forearms starting to ache, until a dark blue open-top mag car with no driver took the exit track. It slowed, curved around, and came to a halt a meter below her feet and a meter or so to one side.

  Cassie braced a foot on the tower beside her, kicked off, and let go of the handles. She dropped into the car, and it immediately sped away.

  "They've caught the ground car," Roger reported from the dash speakers. "They sound annoyed."

  "Good." She crawled over the front seat and slid behind the controls. She much preferred to drive, but Roger would do a better job of navigating the car, and there was no time to screw around. "Is the ship warmed up?"

  "Of course."

  The car dropped her at a third-story parking lot in front of the Nakatomi complex. She hopped out, not looking back, and headed for the bounce tubes that lined the outside of the main tower. There was a small landing field on the roof, and she found the Raffles where she had left it, parked in a big yellow circle near the northwest corner. It was a small ship, with no more than the basic creature comforts she needed to keep sane on a long flight, but it was fast and it was hard to scan.

  The main hatch slid open as she approached, and it slid shut as she entered the ship. Roger was already lifting off as she lowered herself into the pilot's seat. She watched bright lines of aerial traffic go by on either side, tensing in expectation of a challenge from planetary traffic control. The sky was a soft blue-green, and it darkened as they rose until she could see stars. It didn't mean they were free and clear, though.

  A massive satellite station orbited Vanatel, directly above the megalopolis. She could make out safety lights flashing on the microfiber tether that connected the satellite to the planet, and the occasional blur of motion as an elevator shot up or down. Roger kept them well back from the tether, following the instructions of traffic control computers on the satellite.

  For a dozen maddening minutes they floated motionless in the void, fifty kilometers over from the satellite, waiting for their turn to leave Vanatel space. The volume of traffic around the planet was astonishing. Spacecraft poured past in a steady stream, ships of every size and description, only the traffic control software preventing a thousand collisions.

  When their turn came, Roger flew them out along a carefully-set path that would keep them out of the way of traffic rushing back and forth to the big satellite, one of fifty or more other major satellites, or the surface of the planet.

  They were half a million kilometers from Vanatel before Roger was allowed to veer off and make the transition to N-Space. When the view through the cockpit windows turned milky gray Cassie finally allowed herself to relax. She stretched in her seat, tensing and relaxing muscles one at a time, willing the stress to fade away.

  "That was
closer than I like," she said. "Add Vanatel to the burn list."

  The list of planets she would find it imprudent to return to was growing long. There was every chance that no one on Vanatel had a clear record of her face, her biometrics, or her DNA. With a thousand settled systems out there, though, it was stupid to take chances.

  "The Pax Humanitas has its headquarters on Vanatel," Roger pointed out. "As does the League of Worlds."

  There were a dozen or more interstellar organizations trying to form themselves into true pan-galactic governments. The Pax Humanitas had nearly a hundred member systems. The League of Worlds had no more than a dozen, many overlapping with the Pax Humanitas, but League membership involved a more strict set of rules. A major crime on a League world would mean avoiding the entire League.

  "The Pax won't care," she said. "They only share information when it suits them. I think we'll be fine with the rest of the League, too. It was data theft and a bit of vandalism. Okay, a lot of vandalism. And a bruised jaw. I don't think my picture will get passed around."

  "Very well," Roger said.

  "Just the same, let's not visit any League systems for a while."

  "Very well."

  She sighed. "This better be worth it. What did this mission cost us? No, never mind." She got out of her seat and headed for the galley. "I'm getting a cup of tea. Tell me about the data. Did we get what we need?"

  "We did," said Roger. "The safe in question is a Hammersmith and Quan 9064. An expensive model, and a tough one, but the key is on the market."

  "Oh, good. Marshall Station first, then. After that, Hesperus."

  She made tea, doing it the old-fashioned way, dunking a sachet into a cup of boiling water. There were more efficient ways, but the ritual soothed her. She folded down a seat on one wall of the tiny galley, sat down, and braced her feet against the opposite wall. Vanatel had gotten messy, but it was over now.