ABC - The Confession

My name is Luisa Maria Alvarez. I am a serving Street Detective in the Spitfield City Police Auxiliary, based at the Washima District Offices.

I have committed acts of Treason against the Pan Oceanic Special Zone. I have stolen proscribed goods from the Guard under which I serve. I killed my fellow Detective Peter Andrews in cold blood.

This is my confession.

November 12th V26 (2046 AD)

Washima Factory District

It began like any other day in the Auxiliary. It was a Monday night, still a few hours shy of midnight and the end of my shift. God almighty, but I hate Mondays.

I was running down a filthy alley in the Wash, chasing a perp. The little bastard was fast on his feet, I had to give him credit for that. Going flat out in my running shoes I reckon I could have caught him easily. Weighed down with my vest, gun and belt and wearing my tightly laced and oh-so-heavy tactical boots, he had the edge on me.

There was no choice, I had to set my hounds loose on him.

“He’s all yours, Bingo” I said into the throat mike to one of my two partners. Like a blue clad Amazon she surged past me, six feet of muscle and cybernetic enhancements. Bingo was a female Guard clone, one of the “Jills” as everyone but me called them. Her official designation was FV23-D-Zero-Twenty, optimised for Civilian Engagement and Surveillance.

In the barracks her Squad name was simply D-Twenty, but I was damned if I could call my partner that. So I had given her the nickname of Bingo. I have no idea why, it just came to me in a flash of half-hearted inspiration. She seemed to like it and it stuck, even if it was only me and my other partner who called her that name.

As our feet slammed down onto the rain soaked asphalt, Bingo caught up to our man. He must have sensed her coming and dodged her first grab for his collar, jinking to her left while she flew past. With balletic grace, she skidded her boots across the cracked alley tarmac, sending up a shower of muddy water, and changed direction.

The perp had slid into a narrow gap between two buildings, warehouses of some kind, his small body vanishing into the darkness. Bingo went in after him, her larger frame making it a tight fit so she had to move crablike in the narrow gap.

I reached the opening seconds after and with the low-light enhancement on the Smart-Goggles I wore could see my partner scrabbling along.

“Clancy!” I said into my throat mike, “Bingo is behind the perp. Have you got her location?”

“Copy that” came the response from Clancy, my other partner. “I am moving on an intercept now” he affirmed.

“Good boy” I replied and started squeezing myself into the gap, following the retreating bulk of Bingo. The gap was barely wide enough for my own shoulders to squeeze through and I am way shorter than Bingo. In fact I am barely tall enough to be in the Police Auxiliary, just squeaking past the height requirements at five foot six and a quarter inches. I always count that extra quarter inch, as it legitimately makes me over five and a half feet tall.

My boots stomped over trash, a few dead rats that were rotting peacefully in the dark, and the odd hypo-injector. Why the users would take their hits in such a cramped space I had no idea, but those things could be found discarded all over the Spit.

I burst into the open space of a service road, birthed from the concrete lips of the warehouse walls like a newborn. Bingo was already some distance ahead, hot on the heels of her prey.

“Clancy” I signalled, “How close are you?”

“In position now” he responded in my ear piece.

I set off after Bingo, calling up a street map overlay on my smart goggles. Bingo and Clancy showed up as green dots, with myself as a central blue dot. The green dots were converging nicely, my two partners synching their actions perfectly as expected.

Bingo was right behind our guy, holding back now, making sure he kept moving in the direction she wanted. I smiled to myself, knowing she was just toying with the poor schmuck. In the open, over a straight course, she could beat an old-world Olympic sprinter. That included wearing her own vest, gun and belt like I was. I bet she wasn’t even breathing hard, her big clone body moving effortlessly.

The pair of them, hunter and prey, reached the corner. In my display, the two green dots merged. Appearing around the corner, directly in the path of our guy, was Clancy, heavy duty ballistic shield held forwards and braced for impact.

With a wet thud I could feel back here, the runner hit the immovable object that was Clancy. My clone partner barely rocked on his feet at the collision, which sent the other man flying back into the waiting arms of Bingo.

“Nice catch” I told her as I came jogging up. Bingo beamed with pleasure at my praise, her face half hidden under the peaked cap and Smart Goggles that matched my own.

Clancy just watched on impassively as he always did, his face concealed under his armoured helmet. He was a Jack, a male clone soldier in the Guard and in many ways genetically identical to Bingo. His official designation was MV24-D-Zero-Ten but like my other partner there was no way I could call him D-Zero-Ten. His name was another whim of mine but he bore it with stoic grace.

Jacks were a bit taller than the Jills, with Clancy topping out at six foot three in his bare feet. In his armour and boots he was closer to six foot seven and built like a brick out house. He could run too, not as fast as Bingo, but that was not his role. He was my heavy hitter, wearing full Tactical Armour, lugging a tall ballistic shield with him and carrying his Guard standard 5mm Caseless Automatic Rifle.

Our perp was stuck between the two of them, looking like a small child caught out by his parents. Bingo had already cuffed him, arms behind his back, before he had recovered from colliding with Clancy’s shield.

“Clancy, run an Ident check on his face please” I asked as I checked the pockets of our captive. He was unresisting, a wise choice with Bingo holding his arms from behind and Clancy standing menacingly a few meters away, the rifle held barrel downwards in his right hand, shield still gripped in his left.

“Facial Recog files record no matches” Clancy announced after a few seconds.

“No matches, hey?” I wondered. I examined a wallet found in my man’s pocket, with an Ident card inside. “Clancy, cross check this Ident please” and held up the card to his right eye, hidden behind his armoured visor. The prisoner just slumped in Bingo’s grip, breathing heavily still from his run but otherwise silent.

Like most Street Jacks in the Guard, Clancy had a cybernetic right eye. It linked to his weapons via palm implants to assist in accurate shooting, but it was more valuable as a scanner for his internal quantum processor. The processor is what made the Guard so effective, linking via instantaneous quantum field interactions with all the other processors made at the same time.

Every Guard had such a processor in their skulls, augmenting their organic brains and overseeing the cybernetic implants in their bodies. It allowed them instant communications to any other Guard with an active processor, and to the Archimedes Network. This gave them unrivalled access to all Guard files and the civilian network as well.

“Ident is for Samuel Thane, resident of Spitfield City, age 37” Clancy announced. “Facial Ident does not match City records”

I looked at Thane, if that was really his name, and lifted his face up to meet my eyes. It was fairly well lit on this street, light spilling from overhead street lamps and the odd building security spotlights. His eyes were natural and there was no sign of an induction port on his skull that I could see. That meant he was unlikely to be Enhanced.

“You are not a net diver” I mused, “No obvious implants, nothing but a standard phone in your pocket”

He grinned at me, his teeth remarkably white in the shadow of his face

”Maybe I am just talented” he laughed and my Smart Goggles fritzed and went opaque. I heard Bingo and Clancy grunt too and felt Thane push past me as he broke free of our group.

Bastard was a Scanner!

I pulled my goggles off one handed and drew my pistol with my right. Dropping the goggles, letting them dangle from the induction cable, I swung my gaze in an arc. Thane was already a good fifteen meters away, running towards the nearest building, hands still cuffed at his back.

“You kids Okay?” I called out to my partners. Bingo and Clancy had been stunned only for a few seconds by the low level EMP burst but it had been enough for Thane to escape. They chorused they were back online and followed me as I started running after our escapee.

Scanners have many abilities, including reading electronic signals the way you and I can read a book. An extra nasty ability they have is to generate a short range Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that knocks out most electronics. The Guard clones can’t be taken out by an EMP burst, yet for a few precious seconds their systems need to reboot.

I could shoot Thane in the back as he ran, which was a really tempting thought. Knowing my luck though I would kill him and I needed to ask him some questions.

“Stop or I will shoot!” I yelled to his retreating back. Little sod just ran faster, so I guess he got his second wind while we had interrogated him. I fired once over his head and then he scampered around the building corner.

“Bingo, get your Remotes in the air!” I shouted over my shoulder as I ran to catch up with Thane. As I got there, two whining drones about a palm width across buzzed past me, remotely piloted by Bingo even as she ran. She carried them in a specialised back pack and had their data streamed directly into her processor.

“Luisa, get down!” Bingo yelled out so I threw myself low as I came around the building edge. A metallic fist slammed over my head into the concrete wall as I tumbled to the side. Three Sentinels, painted in yellow and black construction markings, were waiting for me. Thane was already past his mechanical servants and stopped, puffing, to see how they were faring.

In unison the robotic soldiers stomped towards me. I rolled out of range of their kicks and scrambled to my feet. Luckily these three were not carrying the heavy assault rifles they would have originally been equipped with. Somewhere in the past weeks since they had gone rogue the guns had been lost. However, they could still tear me apart with their mechanical arms and kick me into Christmas with their metal clawed feet.

I stepped out into the street to give me room to fight. My pistol went back into its holster as my bullets had no chance of piercing the Ceramite armour plating on these things. Bingo had appeared at the corner along with Clancy, both taking aim with their weapons.

“Bingo, keep your remotes on Thane. Clancy, get ready to back me up if this goes bad” I told my partners. I could tell they were not happy about standing back, but I was really feeling punchy about now. I clenched my fists and adopted a fighting stance from my time in the ring.

The first Sentinel came in fast, swinging high with his right arm and delivering a straight body punch with his left. Damn things are basically ambidextrous and have pretty good close combat fight routines in their programming. I blocked the left fist with my right, ducking under the right handed swing of the robot. Then I punched it right in the chest, hard.

With a crack like thunder the chest armour shattered and my fist exited the back of its synthetic spinal column. It folded in half over my blow, the lights of its sensor head fading as the power pack was ripped clear of the central core.

Did I mention I am also a Kinetic Enhancer, rated as Grade Two, possibly Grade Three?

The second Sentinel closed in from my left as I was shaking the remains of number one off my arm. It slammed me hard, my vest solidifying under the impact, driving me sideways a couple of meters. Lucky for me I had my feet braced wide so I did not fall over, which would have been bad news indeed.

I threw a fast punch to the sensor head, rocking it back and busting a couple of the lenses. It had rolled with the blow so I didn’t tear its head off like I intended to. A couple of solid strikes came into my stomach, the vest taking the worst of it but I felt like retching.

“Bastard mechanical!” I spat out and hit it with a right handed uppercut to the groin plate. The pelvic mounts holding the legs on broke apart and the thing toppled to one side. I jumped clear of its flailing arms and focussed my Ability into my right foot.

I slammed it down on the head and crushed it flat with a satisfying crunch and a shower of fat blue sparks. It stopped thrashing and lay there, inert and lifeless as God intended.

The third Sentinel nearly got me, I was so engrossed in stomping the shit out of number two. There was a flash of a yellow painted arm swinging for me, then Clancy’s big shield parried the blow solidly. He unloaded his assault rifle into the thing’s head at point blank range, the armour piercing shells ripping the metal skull apart. It collapsed in a smoking pile of arms and legs at his feet and he kicked it away from us both.

“Thanks, Clancy” I said, breathing hard. He nodded at me implacably from within his armour, about as emotional as my boy gets.

“Luisa, we have a problem with my remotes” Bingo advised me in her calm monotone. She pointed to where Thane had been standing only moments before, watched by her tiny drones.

He was gone, the drones drifting aimlessly in circles after he had fried their circuits.

“Christ Almighty, I hate Scanners” I muttered darkly and sat down in the middle of the road. Bingo and Clancy just stood there and looked at me, waiting for new orders. I loved them dearly but they could be so very literal at times.

“Okay kids, let’s report this in and get a recovery team out here for the Sentinels” I told them. While Bingo called it in and Clancy stood sentry over me, I laid back on the wet tarmac and looked up at the cloudy night sky. The light spill from the city meant I could only see the brightest of stars but it was enough.

I lay like that, counting stars in my head until the six-wheeled Guard carrier turned up to take the busted Sentinels away.

I really hate Mondays.

=====

Washima Guard Station, Washima District

“Hey, Punchy” said Detective Andrews as I came into the office. “Heard you lost your guy tonight”

“Fuck you and your dog” I greeted him in reply. I walked stiffly to my cubicle in the open plan office and sat down slowly. My side was killing me from where the Sentinel had got his punches in but I was damned if I would show any weakness to this prick.

“Alvarez, you know you can’t bring them in here” Andrews responded, pointing with his coffee cup at Bingo and Clancy. My two clone partners had followed me into the office, just like they always did. It was against regulations, but at this time of night we only had the Graveyard shift operating so the station was mostly empty.

“I like keeping them close” I told him. “They help me stay calm in the face of overwhelming stupidity like yours”

“You know I could report these infractions to the Captain” said Andrews, deliberately trying to needle me. Bingo and Clancy watched him impassively from where they stood behind my chair, my ever watchful and loyal partners in justice. In the corner of my eye I could see Clancy’s index finger was laid on the trigger of his assault rifle.

“Down boy” I whispered to him. He was very protective of me, in his silent but menacing way.

“Just give it a rest tonight, Andrews” I called out over the low partitions of our cubicles. “Don’t make me get up out of this chair and hurt you bad”

Andrews looked at me over the lip of his cup as he drank some of the awful station coffee. He was a freckle shy of six feet, solidly built and handsome enough if you like chauvinist pigs. His hair was buzz cut short like mine yet on him it just showed his male pattern baldness.

“Sure, Punchy” he said and got back to whatever porn site he was looking at. Or maybe he was doing some actual work. I really didn’t care right now.

I downloaded the image logs from Clancy’s cybernetic eye once he sent them to me and attached them to my file for the night. Normally the stream from Bingo’s and my smart goggles would also be added, but the EMP burst from Thane had scrambled those.

It took another hour to get all the notes compiled and send out an arrest alert for Samuel Thane. There was little hope that we could catch a Scanner this way but it needed to be done.

With a yawn I closed off my data pad and stretched my arms over my head. It felt like a rib popped so I lowered them quickly with a grimace. I glanced at my two partners, still standing easily in the same place as when they arrived.

“Hey kids, fancy a kebab?” I asked them. “You did good tonight, all things considered” Bingo gave me a tentative smile and Clancy just nodded imperceptibly inside his helmet. “I’ll take that as a yes”

I changed out of my uniform and into my street clothes while Bingo and Clancy waited in the changerooms with me. Another potential infraction but we were the only ones in there. Andrews claimed I got my kicks out of stripping down in front of my partners, yet the truth was they did not mind and I certainly didn’t.

How did I know whether they minded or not seeing me in my underwear? I asked them about it the first time it happened. Most Police Auxiliary treat their Guard Units as nothing more than unfeeling machines. That is not my style and never will be.

Once I was changed, with my service pistol tucked into a shoulder holster under my bike jacket, the three of us went to the sign in desk. Normal protocol was that once my shift ended, I signed my Guard Units back into the station. From there they would go to their barracks, to take off their equipment and basically go to sleep.

I logged them out for another hour with me as “Unspecified Duties”, a wonderful catch-all phrase that covered so many of my sins. We trooped out of the station and headed to my favourite all night restaurant, a place optimistically named ‘The Good Food Dude’.

The kids were eager I could tell, with Bingo ranging ahead of myself and Clancy. She always wanted to be the first at everything, from a foot race to finishing her meal. It varied sometimes, but my partners were always partial to a good and greasy kebab. That is probably due to my influence, since I introduced them to this particular delight back when we were first assigned together as a team. It was my usual treat to reward them for a good shift on the streets.

“Morning, Officer Alvarez” said the Dude himself as we pushed open the screen door to his eating area. I say we, when of course it was Bingo who entered first. “Morning to you as well, Bingo and Clancy” he added.

The Dude was originally of Greek descent and lived far down south in Melbourne, part of the Australian nation. He had moved to the Zone not long after it was officially ceded from Australia and became the Pan Oceanic Special Zone. I guess he was in his fifties now and had been serving his old style mystery meat in a wrap for as long as I had been in the Spit.

“Three of the usual please” I asked the Dude and we sat at our regular table, the one at the back of the restaurant. Bingo sat beside me, facing the door, and Clancy sat to the side. We were the only ones in here at this hour which suited us all just fine.

Clancy took off his helmet and laid it on the table next to him. His oriental features were as handsome and stoic as ever, his right eye gleaming in the overhead lights. Bingo took off her peaked cap and smart goggles and laid them on the table too.

While the kebabs were being heated, the Dude brought us our drinks. A generic bottle of light beer for me, Panic Cola for Clancy and a Screaming Red Soda for Bingo. I had tried them on beer once and once only. They have remarkably durable stomachs and what have you but these two got way too excitable after a single bottle each. Now I just dose them up on their favourite sugary sodas and send them home before the sugar rush kicks in.

“Luisa, I am sorry for letting the suspect get away tonight” Bingo said to me, her eyes downcast. She was certainly the more interactive of the pair and definitely the most talkative.

“Shit happens, Bingo” I consoled her. “Scanners are always hard to handle and that guy was probably a Grade Three at least. He was never going to be traceable using the remotes, I was just being optimistic”

In reality I knew it was all my fault, wanting to take out some of my anger on those Sentinels. I should have let Clancy take them down with his rifle while Bingo and I gave him support. Too late to cry over spilt milk now.

Our kebabs arrived and I said a quick prayer of thanks before we tucked in. Before he started I smacked Clancy on the hand and made him take off his armoured gauntlets. He scowled briefly then did as I commanded. For all his silent strength he can be a real baby at times.

We finished up our repast with about five minutes to spare. I hustled my kids to get their gear back on and got them to the sign in desk right on the dot. The officer in charge knew me and smiled indulgently as we got them tagged back into the system as being off duty.

“Alright, I’ll see you guys at start of shift tomorrow” I told them both and waved as I walked off. Bingo waved back like she always did and Clancy just watched me go.

I made my way down to the parking lot beneath the station and went to my electric sports motorbike. After a quick check over I unhooked the power charger and climbed atop my scuffed black and chrome beast.

It started smoothly and since I didn’t die in a fireball I assumed Andrews had not booby trapped it. His hatred was one of the reasons I checked my bike every time before starting it up. My helmet was locked to the handlebars so I released it and strapped it on, synching my phone to the internal speakers and mike. The augmented display lit up on the inside of my visor and I gunned the engine. We were good to launch, Mission Control, I told myself.

With a whine of electric motors I raced up the ramp and squealed the tires loudly as I made the turn onto the street. It was raining lightly again, the smell of water mixing with street trash wafting past my helmet filters. Probably time to change them again I reminded myself.

I was a couple of fast blocks away from the station when my phone rang. Heads up display on my visor said it was from Jan. As in Janet Andrews, wife to my one-time street partner Peter Andrews.

“Hey Jan, what’s up” I answered into my microphone. “Bit late to be calling me. Or is it too early?” I added.

“Hi Luisa, I am glad you are still awake” she said in her soft spoken way. “I was wondering if Peter was still working at the Station right now?”

“He was still there when I signed off” I told her. “Not sure if he is still there now. Is there a problem?”

She was silent for a moment. I wished I had a visual display for these calls but I could not afford that good a phone. It worried me when she called me like this.

“Can you stop by our apartment?” she finally asked me. “Peter will be at least another hour I reckon. He said he was going to the bar with Wilcox”

So she already knew he had finished his shift and was out drinking. With Wilcox of all people, an asshole in the same mould as Andrews. I slowed my bike and pulled over to the kerb, putting the engine into idle.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea Jan” I said into the phone. My bike was under a street lamp, the harsh lights glinting off the water puddled on the tarmac. It was probably just fatigue but my eyes were getting a little blurry, so I lifted my visor and wiped my gloves across them. They came away wet.

“I would really like to see you, Luisa” she persisted. “You could see Amy too while you are here”

That was playing dirty and we both knew it. Amy was Jan and Peter’s daughter, four years old and cute as a button.

“She’ll be asleep” I responded evenly. “Don’t go waking her up just to entice me over”

“I won’t. But you could still come over and see us both”

I sighed and knew how this was going to end. Why am I such a sucker for a damsel in distress?

“I’ll be there in five minutes” I told Jan. “I’ll park out the back as usual”

“Thanks, Luisa. See you soon” she said and ended the call.

The engine whined as I steered the bike back into the sparse middle of the night traffic and headed for Jan’s apartment.