The Coming Storm_A Pax Aeterna Novel Read online

  “Welcome to the subbasement.”

  Cassius turned to the abrasive voice of a man in his mid-thirties. He had never seen him before, and he wondered how that could be. Francis was already shaking his hand as if they had already met. Cassius took one step back and put his hands in his pockets.

  The stranger nodded and said, “Follow me.”

  He led them through the maze, passing by people who didn’t acknowledge them. Cassius found curiosity overcoming the dread that dwelled in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to know what all the toys were for. He recognized the generic computers and the guns, but everything else was a mystery that he just had to solve.

  Subbasement guy stopped at a door at the very back, punching a code on a number pad. It hissed as it swung open, suggesting climate control. Sure enough, as he stepped in, a shiver ran over Cassius’ arms, making his t-shirt seem like nothing. Endless drawers lined the walls in the soft, yellow light.

  Cassius couldn’t help but wonder if they were in a morgue. Whatever it was, it was more organized than he expected. At the end of the hall that seemed to go on forever were a set of ornate double doors. They weren’t locked, but they still made the hydraulic hiss as they were opened.

  Subbasement guy ushered them in.

  The sound of the door closing was ominous, and Cassius’ anxiety rose up to his throat. There were no gadgets in this room, and it was twenty degrees warmer. Instead, there was a sleek polyiron desk, complete with claws for feet.

  Sitting behind the desk was a young woman who flashed a wide smile. Her bright red hair was in a tight bun. She wore a business suit and a pair of glasses. Even with her get-up, she looked around Cassius’ age.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, bouncing out of the chair. “My name is Pashense, and I will be your facilitator this evening.” She gestured to the smaller chairs.

  Speechless, Cassius and Francis eased into the chairs and wondered if this was a joke.

  Pashense giggled a bit before going back to her seat. “My father is too busy for these things. I’m in charge of recruitment,” she said.

  Cassius glanced at his brother and noticed the star-struck expression on his face. An inward groan almost passed his lips, so he bit his cheek to control himself.

  “You two are just what we’re looking for,” Pashense continued.

  “Desperate?” Cassius blurted out. The cheek biting didn’t work. Francis smacked him on the arm.

  Pashense just smiled and said, “Precisely.”

  At least she was honest. Cassius wasn’t snowed by her looks and bubbly demeanor the way Francis was. One slip up meant harsh punishment, and she had no qualms about doling it out.

  “Think of this as your probation period. Deliver these to the addresses I’ll be giving you. Do well, and we’ll talk promotion.”

  She handed them some instruction sheets, but no packages.

  After the brief encounter with Pashense, subbasement guy led them out.

  “My name is Adan, and I’ll be your handler,” he said as the double doors sucked themselves into place. “Your instructions are on your sheets. Read ‘em carefully if you don’t wanna mess this up. Now…it’s time for toys.”

  Adan took them back the way they came, stopping in front of an illuminated table with a hinged glass top. On it were electronics the size of a thumbnail lined up perfectly until they covered the entire table. Adan punched in a code on the number pad, and the glass unlocked. He opened the lid and grabbed a handful of the electronics, distributing them evenly to the two brothers.

  “These are flash bombs. They can be hidden pretty much anywhere—oh, and they’re waterproof.”

  “Why haven’t we seen any of this?” Cassius gestured to the entire room.

  “We don’t screw around. Watch.” Adan held one of the gadgets in the palm of his hand and pressed a hidden button on the back.

  The small electronic device disintegrated into ash.

  “Whoa,” Francis whispered. Cassius could only nod.

  “The projectiles and blades aren’t as fun, but they’re useful,” Adan said.

  “I don’t see those, either,” Cassius said as he looked around the room.

  “Does anyone out there mess with us?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have no reason to see them. If the cops catch you, they’re untraceable and you’re on your own,” Adan said, closing the lid and nodding towards the elevator. “Just follow your instructions exactly—and we’ll handle the rest.”

  Place a black rock in the mail slot of 1657 Furlaugh Street. What kind of order is this? Cassius could only assume it was significant to the recipient, and did as he was asked under the cover of night.

  Francis waited up for him at home, surprising him as he crept in just before dawn. He handed him a cup of real soup—and it was fabulously hot.

  “Mom and dad are asleep. Mom’s worse.”

  Cassius nodded solemnly. It was to be expected.

  “Hey, I know what the stones are for,” Francis said as he watched Cassius drink down the soup.

  Cassius drained the cup and replied, “Yeah?” He was only mildly curious, but the excitement in his brother’s voice was almost cute.

  “Black is for a meeting, and white is a warning. Both means that if you don’t show…” he made a slicing gesture across his throat.

  “Fantastic,” Cassius said, frowning. He had to deliver a white stone to one of the wealthier homes in town. Not equator rich, but influential enough to be infamous to the working class.

  Darkness did no good when there was a security light installed in the spot Cassius was to deliver the next stone. It clicked on just as he set the stone on the railing, blinding him for a moment. Sirens wailed just a few feet away, telling him that the Espositos had been expecting a visit from the Rolands. He couldn’t help but wonder if the Rolands knew and set him up as a test.

  He reached into his pocket and realized with dismay that he had forgotten the flash bomb. He had put his share away for safekeeping, intending to carry only one at a time.

  Improvising, he stumbled around like a drunk until he tripped over a garbage bin on the side of the house. Inspired, he stuck his arms in it up to the elbows, making sure to fling some when two cops spun him around.

  “Evenin’ officers,” he said, licking a finger. “Want some dinner?”

  “Ugh! Fucking street urchins,” one of them said. “You’re under arrest for vagrancy.” He slapped handcuffs on Cassius, cinching them as tightly as possible, and threw him in the cruiser.

  Glancing back at the house, Cassius saw Karla Esposito's face peering at him through a drawn curtain. It flowed back down as soon as she spied him.

  Francis bailed him out with a smug look on his face the entire time.

  “Mom and dad know?” Cassius asked as soon as they were out of the building.

  “Nah.”

  “Where’d you get the money?”

  “Pashense asked me to offer an envelope to the Deputy Chief, and here you are,” he explained.

  “Uh-huh,” Cassius heard the tone of his voice and wasn’t fooled.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Francis replied, arching his brow.

  “It means you’re screwing the boss lady.”

  It was no surprise that the Deputy Chief could be bribed, but Cassius always wondered what women saw in his brother. He was obnoxious and had a habit of finding a new girlfriend before losing the last one.

  Francis feigned shock, but it transformed into a toothy grin. “Well, yeah,” he said.

  “Careful. Cheating on her will get you killed,” Cassius replied as he shook his head.

  “I don’t plan on it,” Francis replied as he dug a small envelope out of his back pocket and handed it over to Cassius. “Here. This is for you,”

  “What’s this?” He thumbed through the cash inside.

  “What does it look like?”

  Cassius shot Francis a glare and said, “Don’t be a smartass. It’
s from Roland himself—for keeping your mouth shut.”

  Of course, his real name wasn’t Roland. Over the years, it had become a title, and one had to go through hell and back to earn it. Cassius thumbed through the money more carefully.

  It was enough to score some antibiotics.

  Chapter 3

  Cassius

  There were times, Cassius had to admit, when Francis’ native intelligence shone through his increasingly hardened gangster exterior.

  One night, while the brothers were listening to Going Round in Circles, a series about the travails of an equator-based family on a faulty radio they managed to pick up along the garbage bins, Francis had poked Cassius in the ribs.

  “That robot of theirs is always breaking down,” he said.

  “So?” Cassius rubbed his side; Francis had sharp elbows.

  Wet coughs came from their parents’ room. Shandie was responding well to the antibiotics, but Daniel was still failing. His decline had slowed down, but Cassius knew that the old man’s illness was already terminal. He tried not to think about it, burying himself in escapist crap like Going Round in Circles.

  Francis sighed as if Cassius was the dumbest human being ever. “Well, they cost a bundle to fix, right?”

  “What of it, weasel-dick?” Cassius replied, a little annoyed.

  “Well, it gives me an idea, that’s what.”

  Apparently, the Rolands appreciated out-of-the-box thinking. Francis went to them with his pitch, and they approved of it on a trial basis.

  And so, a week later, wearing the uniforms of a local robot repair company, the brothers drove twin red scooters, emblazoned with the company logo along the streets of an upscale neighborhood. It formed a buffer between their home in the slums of the ironically named Mansionland section and the truly wealthy gated communities ringing Fairdale.

  Their connections with the Rolands had made it easy to acquire the gear at a minimum expense to the gang—who found the idea amusing and potentially lucrative. By posing as repairmen, Francis had convinced his handler, Adan, that he and Cassius would be able to purloin high-end robots that could be either chopped or resold in the black market.

  Cassius’ original leeriness about dealing with the Rolands had all but vanished in the past few months. The fact that Shandie’s feet had stopped bleeding and her overall health had improved to the point where she could take on additional babysitting gigs brought him relief.

  The association the Ojun brothers were developing with the Rolands had leaked out into the neighborhood. It came with an unexpected side effect of bringing the Cormak kids into line, so that they no longer tormented Shandie nearly as much as they had been doing.

  It had been easy to find out which homes owned expensive robots—all they had to do was check through the sales receipts available in the databases of nearby stores dealing in such robots, a simple job for the Rolands’ IT people.

  Then, it was merely a matter of bribing the guard at the gate.

  I know it’s after hours, chum, but we got an emergency call about a virus infection in someone’s C57-D, they would tell the guard.

  They cruised the neighborhoods on their scooters until they could pinpoint a home equipped with a C57-D that also had sub-par security.

  As they tooled along with the scooter, playing the company’s cheerful theme song as much to let the neighborhood know they were harmless and officially sanctioned as to advertise the business, Cassius couldn’t help but feel a stab of resentment. These people all had jobs. No one here got sick from subpulmonarypathosis—wetlung, in the common parlance—and there were no gangs running things behind the scenes.

  Not obviously, anyway. After several months as a gang associate, Cassius knew that there were few pies the Rolands didn’t have their fingers in. He no longer cared. The money had convinced him otherwise.

  Then there was his pride, too. He’d found something he was good at doing, and that couldn’t help but make a fellow feel better about himself. In addition, his success reflected well on Francis, who was rising in the gang structure.

  One of the examples of that was the robot thefts. Francis had a genius idea for these little gigs that were designed to skim goods and services off the top tier of society. Best of all, no one had to get hurt.

  Where the Cassius of last year might have been disgusted, the Cassius of today had developed a more cynical attitude.

  These people could afford a new robot. Hell, the fact that they could afford a household automaton at all told a great deal about their financial situation.

  Cassius caught the glint of streetlight off of a metal, and over his helmet phone he said, “We’re in luck. There’s one out walking the family dog.”

  “Saves us the trouble of having to talk our way in to someone’s house.”

  “You got that right.”

  The brothers pulled their scooters over to the curb and approached the robot, which was a standard MyBot Systems model C57-D, walking a small mop-like dog.

  At least, Cassius assumed it was a dog.

  From his research, he knew that the C57 series had a backdoor in their software interface that allowed a maintenance supervisor access to its command structure. Most MyBots didn’t have that weakness, but the C57s hadn’t been updated yet.

  While Francis kept watch, Cassius approached the bot. Its top module swiveled toward him. “Good evening, citizen,” it said.

  “Hello,” he replied. “Open mode B, please.”

  “Complying,” said the robot in its ‘safe status’ voice.

  In like Flynn, Cassius thought, grinning. He untied the leash from its manipulator and fastened it to a lamppost. The dog made a growling noise but didn’t start barking.

  Somebody’ll pick this little mutt up at some point.

  The robot was now programmed to obey Cassius’ commands. The brothers got back on their scooters, and with the robot docilely wheeling along after them, headed for the main gate.

  “Got to take this one back to the shop,” Francis said to the guard.

  The man, a short black guy with a shaved head, frowned. “I obviously can’t let you remove any personal property from the community,” he said.

  Cassius sighed and said, “Listen, this thing is infected with the Greengrass virus. Any contact with other household devices can spread it. I can call my supervisor and let him explain it to you if you like.”

  The guard gave him a hard look. “Just show me your IDs,” he said.

  Cassius and Francis handed him their forged data cards. They waited while he took them inside to scan them.

  “I don’t know if they’ll hold up,” Francis whispered.

  “Now you tell me,” Cassius said, clenching his jaw. “Are we gonna have to leave this thing here?”

  “Hell, I dunno,” Francis replied as he shrugged and looked away.

  Cassius swore to himself. He thought hard of how they could fix the whole dilemma, and then he remembered that the robot was now programmed to follow him.

  Cassius nodded at himself and gave the robot some quick muttered instructions.

  “Will comply,” the robot said.

  “Hey, what’s the hold-up?” Francis called to the guard inside his post.

  “Shut up, twaad,” the guard spat.

  “This isn’t going to fly,” Francis muttered.

  “That’s what I was thinking. Okay, let me deal with it,” Cassius said.

  “What?” Francis asked, confused.

  The guard came out of his hut, holding the cards. He handed them back to the brothers. “These things are expired,” he said. “You want to get out of here or you want me to call the cops?”

  “Okay, okay, we’re going,” Francis said, starting his scooter. “We’ll come back for that thing tomorrow after we get updated IDs. Can you just keep it here until then?”

  The guard shrugged and said, “I guess so. Park it over there.” He pointed to the bed of wildflowers planted beside his hut.

  “Well, that was a
fuckin’ waste of time,” Francis groused as they putted away on the shiny red scooters.

  “Not really. If shit-for-brains leaves that gate open another thirty seconds, we’ll be good.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just watch,” Cassius replied with eagerness in his voice.

  They drove down the block, passed the outer wall of the community, and Cassius pulled over to the curb.

  “What’s the deal?” Francis asked.

  “Wait.”

  After a minute, the C57-D came trundling along the macadam, its lights blinking in the darkness. It had just followed Cassius’ order earlier.

  “Well, I’ll be dipped,” Francis said in honest admiration. “How do you know to do all these stuff?”

  “I believe in doing my homework, is all. You wouldn’t steal an aircar unless you knew how to fly one, right?”

  “Yeah...I guess.”

  Adan was appreciative as well when they delivered the robot. “This’ll fetch a nice bit of coin on the market,” he said. “Good work, boys.”

  Praise was in short supply in the Ojun household, and Cassius couldn’t help but take satisfaction at Adan’s words.

  “You’re good at getting your ass out of a crack, aren’t you,” Adan noted after Francis gave a glowing account of Cassius’ cleverness.

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Cassius, tightening his chest to avoid showing his pleasure. He didn’t like to be seen smiling. He had noticed that the higher levels of the Rolands hierarchy, from Adan upward, smiled very rarely, if at all.

  Now Adan was giving him a calculating look. “I think we ought to keep you boys paired up,” he said. “There seems to be some, what do ya call it...”

  “Um, synergy?” Cassius said.

  Adan snapped his fingers. “Yeah, symmetry. Or whatever. Anyway, I’m gonna put in a good word for you two.”

  On their way home later that night, the brothers laughed and shouted until their voices echoed off the facades of the Mansionland tenements, not caring who heard, enjoying the sight of passersby crossing the street to avoid them.