Chapter 22 : Captured

Location : Orange Triangle Franchise, near Eagle City, Meridiani Planum, Mars
Era by Mars Calendar : Sol Solis 15th Kanya MY183
Era by Earth Calendar : Thursday 16th March 2299CE

He came to himself slowly. There was prodding, flashing and buzzing inside his head, and the persistent thought, that there was something he needed to be doing. His mind felt heavy. It was hard to think. He just wanted to stay asleep, but there was a sense of urgency.

It had been a while since he had felt this fuzzy. Since his enhancement he had always awoken with boundless energy and laser clarity. At the moment he had no energy and no clarity. He felt a thousand years old, but at least there was no pain. He remembered there had been pain. There were notifications clamoring for his attention. He remembered there had been notifications before, many red warnings but there were less red and more yellow symbols intruding into his awareness. He struggled to make sense of what his tarka was trying to tell him.

The survival AI still wanted to talk to him. He was low on power, O2, water, nutrients, and feedstock. His organic support system was reporting temporary repairs; it was functional but its predicted mean time to failure was in days instead of years. His maintenance diagnostics were recommending replacement. The delicate bio-mech system had not taken kindly to a large caliber projectile tearing through its components. He was only alive because of redundancy and self-sealing components. His maintenance routines were recommending replacing half the bio-mech subsystems in his body. His tarka had repaired most of the damage to his body but the repairs were temporary. His diagnostics were reporting structural damage.

There were pages and pages of faults, damages and associated repairs. He had been beaten into scrap. His shiny new body, was now a write off, after only one day. He only remembered being hit once, the rest of the damage must have occurred while he was unconscious. The answer would be in his survival AI, which was still trying to get his attention.

He had been captured by the Manties, but what had happened to Var? He was worried about her. Had her team arrived in time to rescue her? He couldn’t sense Varija. Since he had become aware that he always knew where Var was, that Var sense had never failed him unless she T-jumped or he was in Virtuality. He had no idea what mechanism his awareness of Varija used or what its range was, those answers were probably buried in the ever growing to-read list of manuals, articles and books that he was always struggling unsuccessfully to keep up with. Var probably hadn’t been captured, he decided; he hoped. She had probably either escaped or been killed. Please let it be escaped, he asked the universe.

He had been careful not to move or give any sign of wakefulness since regaining consciousness. Varija had told him not to try anything if they were captured, and just wait for their release to be negotiated. However there he was playing possum. Had he already decided to ignore Var’s advice? He doubted that the Manties would make it easy for him to escape, but he decided to keep his options open, besides they had discussed what to do if they were captured together, but he wasn’t with Var. He was alone.

When he shifted his focus outside his body he found he was lying on a firm unmoving surface. The air was Mars standard (unpressurised / less than 1% of Earth’s Atmosphere).

He activated the passive sensors on his skin. He seemed to be in a storeroom filled with rolls of fabric, boxes of unknown content plus cylinders of nutrients, O2 and other consumables. His left hand was tied to a pipe that ran from floor to ceiling along the wall opposite the door. The walls were sponge, one side purple merging to a dark red on the far side. ‘At least I am still in the sponge lands’ he thought. The door seemed to be made of fabric with a slit down the middle. There seemed to be a cluster of sensors near the door. The optical sensors in his skin didn’t have enough resolution to examine them closely and he wasn’t ready to open his eyes.

It didn’t seem a very secure arrangement. He saw dozens of possibilities with the contents of the store room. He was surrounded by a smorgasbord of mayhem, with force that could be unleashed by puncturing one of O2 cylinders, shock could be delivered using the SMES cells, the fabric could be used to entangle. He started dissolving his bonds, then stopped, neutralizing the acid.

The Jeddaks that he met at the Slash game weren’t stupid. Mark examined the cuff more closely. There seemed to be a radio frequency signal coming from it. A series of random seeming pulses were being emitted, probably reporting on the integrity of his bonds. Still security precautions seemed a little weak. He could break his bonds and cause a lot of havoc in a short amount of time. On the other hand did he really want to cause trouble? He wasn’t up for much of a fight. Blows that he could have shrugged off before could easily kill him in his current condition. He was only a few malfunctions away from death. It could happen at any time. He really needed a new body and soon.

He had his tarka begin a full analysis of his bonds. Even if he managed to circumvent the sensors on his cuffs he would still have to deal with the sensor cluster by the door, but he had to start somewhere. One thing at a time.

He re-examined the room, searching for further security measures. He noted part of a metal cylinder poking over the top of a stack of boxes. Was that a part of the base tripod of an auto cannon? He decided he had spent too much time with Varija and was getting as paranoid as she was. The piece of metal could be anything.

It was probably a good time to talk to his survival AI. Maybe it could tell him where he was. He brought up the logs for the AI. According to the notations in the log the AI had taken over his body the millisecond he had lost consciousness. There was a video section of the log which he ran in conjunction with the notations. The video started as he was falling down the chimney, in it the AI slammed his feet into the side of the chimney slowing his fall, bouncing from one side of the chimney to the other. There was a log entry of two transmissions. He stopped the video and played the transmissions.

<Kiro where are you?> sent Varija.

<Non-lethal. Non-lethal weapons, you idiots. We need them alive.> came a broadcast from an unidentified source.

That message had come a little late, after he had almost been killed. He restarted the video.

The AI flipped his body into a side tunnel and landed perfectly. The sound and vibration of someone following down the chimney came though the sponge floor. The AI spun around and launched Mark at the new threat, pushing the Manty’s gun out of line as he fired. The round sailed past Mark as the AI plunged his nano-blade into the Manty’s chest, depositing lockdown tarka into the Manty’s systems. A tangler round hit the wall of the chimney spreading its sticky gluey web over the sponge. At least someone was listening about the non-lethal rounds. The Manty froze as the lockdown tarka paralyzed its systems. The AI flipped Mark back into the side tunnel as the helpless Manty continued its fall down the chimney. It had taken out the Manty far more quickly and smoothly than Mark could have achieved. Its effortless grace made Mark wonder why he had bothered with the military training that Varija had put him through.

The AI ran down the passageway until it reached a fork. The left fork led to another chimney. Take the left fork Mark urged the recording. He had needed to hook back up with Varija and then her team. The AI took the right fork. Mark paused the video. He was starting to realize why survival AIs had such a bad reputation. He skimmed the log. There was almost an hour of running and fighting before he regained consciousness that first time. For most of that time Varija and her team would have been searching for him, if Var’s estimated ETA for the extraction team had been accurate. The AI had avoided contact with the Manties and hadn’t made an effort to rejoin Var until its supplies were running low. By then it was too late. There had been two brief transmissions from Var’s scouting tick missiles, but the ticks’ range and fuel were limited and the AI hadn’t tried to find them.

The door opened and admitted three Manties with Orange Triangle symbols. The leader’s body was decorated with red, gold and white diagonal stripes and numerous downward pointing triangles of various sizes. Her ‘hair’ was a strange mix of thick Manty and thin Areos quills, her mouth was a closed line rather than an open circle, though her wide face and pointed ears were classic Manty the curves were less angular and more curved. Her overall shape was subtly feminine.

The Manty on her left was smaller and decorated in blue and black with black Areos style quills. Her body was more curved than her friend. Her face was rounder with a similar mouth and she sported animated features similar to Varija’s. The Manties he had seen had been very minimalistic with their use of chromapores. They expressed little emotion but the blue had an almost in your face challenging expression. She sported an Orange Triangle ear ring and carried a tangler.

The Manty on the right was dark red with a single orange triangle on his chest. He was slightly shorter, but far bulkier than the leader. He was a classic Manty without any of the modifications of the others. He was carrying a tase grenade launcher that was pointed right at Mark’s head.

<There is no use in pretending to be unconscious your infra-red profile spiked when you woke up.> sent the lead Manty.

Name: Valarie ‘Val’ Branca Barends
Career: Princess / CFO of the Orange Triangle franchise
Age: 10 (20 Earth Years)
Gender: Female
Sexually: Bisexual
Marital Status: Single

Mark sat up and stretched, his motion covering the launch of two ticks into the ceiling. The blue girl raised her weapon and both Manties guarding the princess stepped forward.

<Please don’t make any sudden moves. We let you keep your weapons because we couldn’t disarm you without dis-arm-ing you. But if you make yourself a nuisance we still have that as an option.> sent the princess, animating her features into a serious expression.

<Where is Lucia?> Mark asked, animating his features in response.

<If you mean Senator Kunasada, she is safely back in Eagle City, > replied the Princess.

If Mark hadn’t been already sitting down he would have collapsed from relief. He hadn’t realized how worried he had been. Belatedly he remembered Varija had blown her cover during the fight with Hugo. There was no disguising her fighting style, even her students, Mark included, never approached her grace. He didn’t need to keep pretending that Lucia was just a surveyor, but he wasn’t sure what to do about his own cover. He didn’t have any other identity prepared except Kiro and that probably wasn’t a believable identity to be hanging out with Varija. He probably wouldn’t be able to pull off pretending to be an Areos Guard. Using his Darren Steward identity would make him way too valuable as a hostage. Varija would shoot him herself if he even hinted at his real identify.

<What are you planning on doing with me?> he asked.

<We are going to keep you as our guest for a little while. It is tiring to be on alert all the time. Will you give your parole?> asked Princess Valarie.

He studied his captors. The princess seem anxious, her posture betraying a great deal of tension. The Red Guard seemed angry, moving in short sharp bursts. The blue guard looked alert, almost excited. She had a smile on her face, but her tangler was always pointed directly at him. She also made sure she always had a clear line of fire. When the Red Guard stepped in front of her she reposition herself so as not be blocked.

<I promise not to attack you if that is what you mean. I am hardly in any shape to fight a one armed Purist, let alone fight my way through an entire sponge land franchise. Besides I was ordered to sit on my hands and wait for my release to be negotiated if I was captured. Does that satisfy you Princess?> asked Mark.

The blue Manty relaxed a little and lower her weapon slightly. Mark noted that the tangler was still pointed directly at his center of mass. The red Manty looked like he was just waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger. The princess did not seem impressed with his declaration.

The two scout-configured tick missiles that Mark had shot into the ceiling were transmitting video of a top down perspective of the room. They used modulated infra-red lasers aimed at the side of his body pointing away from the Manties and the Manties’ sensor cluster. In the thin air the transmission should not be detectable by anyone else. The ticks’ cameras showed not one but two auto-cannons perched on top of two separate stacks of boxes. So he hadn’t been paranoid after all. One of the auto-cannons seemed to be configured as a tangler judging by the large caliber and short muzzle. The shape of the belt feed suggested that the other was a tase grenade launcher. While both were technically non-lethal, he didn’t like the chances of his surviving a hit by another tase grenade in his current state of health or rather his current lack of health.

<I noticed you didn’t actually promise not to try to escape, Mr. Doyle if that is your name, which I doubt, > she commented. The guards’ weapons were still raised and having their guns pointed at him continuously was making him nervous.

<Why have I been shoved in a store room? Doesn’t the Orange Triangle Franchise have a jail?> he asked.

<Why would we have a jail?>

<Are you telling me that you have no trouble makers in the sponge lands?>

<If anybody breaks the rules then spending some time in lockdown usually cures them, > she sent.

Mark pinged the two guards but they both had their public profiles turned off. The blue guard smiled at him and winked. Was she flirting with him?

<I presume I am not in lockdown, because you want to talk to me.>

<You’re not in lockdown because we don’t have administration rights to give you a lockdown command, and your tarka neutralizes every lockdown or tranq tarka we tried to give you.>

A lockdown command, a backdoor into their tarka; that had to be a security vulnerability. He wondered if Varija knew about it. She had helped Manties upgrade their XMEET bodies by incorporating Areos technology into them, she probably knew most of what there was to know about XMEET frames. Then something else that she said registered.

<So that’s why my arm has heat damage. I was pretty sure that happened after I was captured, > he mused.

<That is quite the violent reaction you have to foreign tarka. The injector was blown all the way across the room. Your body may look like a standard Areos Frame but you are much more Mr. Doyle. What are you?>

<The latent capabilities of my Areos body were unlocked by the Senator when it became clear we were under threat. Before that authorization was transmitted to my tarka today, my Areos was completely standard.>

<Mr. Doyle, there is no way that an unvetted civilian would be entrusted with those upgrades, > she accused.

<After that little sparring match both your secret upgrades, and the Senator’s secret upgrades were – well, no longer secret. It wouldn’t surprise me if she let herself be maneuvered into that fight in order to find out what surprises you had up your sleeve. The first thing she did after we escaped from the University was to give me a special unlock authorization that activated the nano-blades that she had used in the fight. She said now that people knew about the blades I may as well have use of them in case we run into further trouble. Then she tried to show me how to use them, but I had trouble getting the hang of them. I am no soldier.>

<You say you’re no soldier, but you managed to paralyze a dozen security officers.>

<That wasn’t me. That was my survival AI. Don’t you folks know better than to than mess with someone that has gone Zee? I have a better question, don’t you folks know better than to use weapons that can turn someone Zee?> he asked.

There was something about her body language that betrayed embarrassment. She should be embarrassed, he thought.

<What about those super-sized bee-sting missiles that you used?> asked Valerie.

<The Senator gave me a second authorization unlock when we ran into the sniffer-bots. She barely had time to tell me how to fire the things before we ran into your troops. I just fired wildly and ran as fast as my legs could carry me.>

<Yet you hit everyone you shot at. That seems unlikely for a civilian.>

<They pretty much aim themselves. I believe the Senator called them ticks. We were lucky to get away the first time we ran into your troops. The second time I was knocked unconscious and almost killed before I knew what was happening. Does that sound like a soldier to you?> he asserted.

<Senator Kunasada doesn’t traipse around the outback with nobodies, Mr. Doyle. Who are you?>

<No need to be formal, Princess. You may call me Kiro. I am just a humble surveyor. And I think you are doing the Senator a disservice, the woman is quite down to Mars and unpretentious.>

<Oh, I doubt that. You are obviously a recent arrival from Earth. The ironic way you say Princess is a dead giveaway. The word has a quite different meaning here on Mars, > she accused.

<I think you are reading too much into my irreverent and rascally ways. We surveyor types ain’t much for high society.>

Valarie became agitated, frustrated and angry. Mark on the other hand was increasingly enjoying himself. He should be afraid, but he felt secure in his status as a hostage. He wanted to seem valuable enough that they would want to trade something for him but not so valuable that they would try to ask for something impossible.

<We in the sponge lands aren’t savages, despite what you city dwellers believe. You obviously take me for a fool. There is no such person as Kiro Doyle. You are listed in no database. Now, who are you?>

<I have just transferred in from Schiaparelli City. My details probably haven’t propagated though to all the official databases yet, > Mark explained.

<You’re not showing up in the Schiaparelli database either.>

<That’s not surprising. If you go by the official databases hardly anyone has been born in Schiaparelli in the last 15 years. I trust you don’t believe that malarkey. We Schiaparellians likes our privacy.>

<You seem to have an answer for everything Mr. Doyle. I don’t believe you, but I am done arguing with you.> Valerie turned to walk away.

<I need power, O2, feedstock and nutrients, > insisted Mark.

<So you can print missiles and be better supplied for an escape?> she asked, turning back towards him, trembling in fury.

<I am one seized pump or burnt out capacitor away from death. One malfunctioning power regulator away from oblivion. If you want me alive I will need enough consumables to finish repairing my systems.>

<If you repair yourself, you will be tempted to fight.>