Horseplay Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Cam Daly

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a book of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Daly, Cam. Labworld Earth Book One: Horseplay. Kindle Edition.

  For Jill and the boys

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  Keryapt stared down into the shadows of the cliff, trying to find the bombs. She held the surfboard over her head, shielding her eyes from the glare of the red dwarf star. Even a comparatively small sun could be plenty bright when you were this close to it.

  “Control, where are the effects packages?”

  “Oh - we had the remotes move them last night. We thought it would make your reactions more authentic during the ride. Is that a problem?”

  She stifled the urge to call them idiots. For now.

  “Control, you hid enough radial explosive down there to launch me into orbit. If it makes me wreck your precious Sundiver, it won’t look good for either of us.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Nothing else. A pause while they debated, or checked with their superiors?

  A quick addition to her visual feed showed where the bombs had been yesterday. She could see divots in the gray rock where a few of them had been, but the other locations were too far down the run. The low gravity here meant that the channel had to be steep and long.

  The communication channel opened again. “The demolition charges on the crater lip haven’t been moved, but all the effects packages were. Do you want the new coordinates? Your people told us that you could handle it.”

  Unconsciously, Keryapt glanced at the lava seething behind her. The planetoid’s eccentric orbit close to its star caused nearly constant eruptions, and the volcanic crater was filled to the brim. Her handful of remote cameras floated over it, awaiting the start of events.

  Aside from them, she was completely alone here.

  “Keryapt, we didn’t get your response - do you want the updated locations?”

  She turned back to the rocky course below and switched her optics to what a human scientist would call infrared. She had never met a human, and wouldn’t think much of their science, but physics were universal. A warmer patch revealed where something had been buried very recently.

  “Control, negative on the locations. I don’t need them.”

  With her sensors tuned this way, she would be able to see last night’s work before she got to it. The bombs would be given away by their heat signatures.

  “That’s the legendary Keryapt Zess we know! We’re ready to go when you are.”

  She sighed at their word choice.

  Legendary.

  That’s all she was to them, a legend for hire. A famous name to demonstrate their newest product in spectacular fashion.

  After everything she had gone through to keep her home safe, all of the terrible things she had done, she was just as alien to her people as those she had fought against. She was just a marketing prop, a stand-in for “survivability” or “resiliency” or something like that.

  Kery lowered the chromalloy board, letting the heat from the star and volcano wash over her, and stared at her reflection in it. Automatic systems interpreted her gaze as a diagnostic request, revealing the labyrinth of thermal pumps and conductive channels. The body she was wearing might be theirs, but she had designed the board herself for this event. She hadn’t trusted anyone else enough to do it.

  “Control, stand by for start.”

  She triggered the final system check. The cutaway view of the board faded, leaving its gleaming silver and gold face to show her Sundiver body again. A query popped up - Reset Visual Systems to Default?

  With the current sensor settings, she would be able to see the bombs before she got to them. With the sensors back in their default mode, she would have no clue where they were. They weren’t supposed to detonate when she was nearby, but maybe that had been changed last night as well? She told herself to do it the most exciting way possible, for her fans.

  Kery spun the board on its tail, catching it deftly after a single rotation.

  Did it again.

  Stopped herself before doing it a third time.

  She reset the systems to default, causing the infrared overlay and lidar mapping to disappear. It would all be a surprise.

  For the fans? Deep down she knew that wasn’t the real reason she wanted it to be more dangerous.

  “Control, I’m ready.”

  “Acknowledged, Keryapt. We are green across the board.”

  Kery raised the detonator wand overhead, a pointless prop given her body’s innate communications features, but one which pulled attention to the correct moment. The quartet of camera remotes sprang into action, zipping around to get the best angles for the event. Everything was ready.

  She pushed the button.

  Even in the planetoid’s thin atmosphere, the sigh of the demolition charges became a roar almost instantly. The curtain of rock below and to her side disintegrated and was replaced by a cascade of brilliant orange lava. She threw away the wand, lifted her board and started to run.

  The hidden radial explosive packages positioned down the run armed themselves and waited for her arrival.

  #

  Ten light years away, pain exploded through Mezerello Aarstop’s shoulder, sending her stumbling over the form at her feet. She had paused for less than a second to study the downed enemy, certain that she was alone. The next shot stitched the rooftop heat exchanger where her head had just been, but her training had already sent her back into motion.

  “Keep moving! No straight lines!”

  Mez didn’t waste time cursing at her Shadow for the late advice. The pain faded to a dull reminder and time seemed to slow. The rain changed from streaks to individual beads, cluttering the air around her as she accelerated.

  Two red trails appeared in the night air to her right, showing the path of the sniper’s bullets. “Target locked.” Mez fired her autocannon towards the intersection of the lines, fifty meters away.

  The raindrops exploded like tiny glistening bombs as she streaked through them to the next patch of cover. She was moving and thinking five times faster than she had been when she was shot.

  “Shadow, use Striker 2 to verify hits. That location was checked clear five minutes ago. How did we overlook it?”

  The S-2 remote went flitting towards the side of the building. “I’m not sure. That humanoid mech you took out was the only one patrolling the roofs on this side of the target building, and we didn’t detect any transmissions before or after your shot.”

  Mez twisted her head around at an inhuman angle to glance at her wound. A fan of metal and ceramic shrapnel had torn through her matte black combat suit, ripping synthetic skin away from an area the size of her palm. Orange warning glyphs showed her where the dermal armor and shoulder actuators were damaged.

  “S-2 confirms target hit.”

  Mez smiled to herself as she hid behind the next rooftop air cond
itioner unit. “I figured that, since it stopped shooting. What was it?”

  “Same model as the first one. Looks like a human design, with a conventional weapon. It was positioned in the farthest corner of the room with a very limited range of vision, pretty much only able to see its fellow mech. What next?”

  “The damage isn’t serious. I’m pissed that I damaged this Intruder body the first time I took it into a fight, though. No more strapless dresses for a while.”

  “I’m glad you’re able to joke, Mez, but these are bleeding edge designs for the humans. The liquid polymer battery pack alone is worth more than a house, even in this city. They wouldn’t deploy these units here unless they expected someone to approach this way.”

  Mez looked across the checkerboard of rooftops to the target building, two hundred meters away. It was a windowless warehouse, one of many in this industrial area. She didn’t give away her position by using her active scanners, but there was no sign of further defense. Human or other.

  “You think it’s a trap? For me?”

  “Maybe not you, specifically. But someone like you. Someone who would get close to a downed combat mech.”

  “It was weird positioning, but neither unit was a major threat. And now we know their capabilities.”

  “Mez, no one will fault you if you decide not to try this. But if you do, give the Strikers a head start.” The three remotes were nowhere near as fast or well armed as she was. “If our targets didn’t know you were coming…”

  “They do now. Send them in.”

  The three suitcase-sized remotes buzzed past her and forward. She waited an extra second, then Mezerello vaulted into motion, landing on the next roof at twenty meters per second. Lightning flashed from the west, sending her shadow racing even faster ahead for a moment. The path to her target seemed clear. By the time the thunder arrived, she would be almost there.

  #

  Keryapt carved a serpentine path down a river of lava, exhilarated as much by the danger as the satisfaction that her simulations had been so accurate. Molten beads of magma flared dramatically with each turn she made, coating the walls of the rocky channel in wide fans of glowing reds and golds.

  The surface sizzled and burped as it flowed and fell, pockets of air emerging as bubbles the size of her head. In some sections boulders partially blocked the channel and she had to ride the flow up and over them, agonizing each time she scraped the bottom of the board. Landings were the hardest part - she had to make sure the superheated rock didn’t flow on the top of the board or it would harden and sink her. Her Sundiver body could survive a short immersion but without any anti-gravity system it would be almost impossible to get out before some component failed and her brain was destroyed.

  She had just landed an especially nice jump when the first special effects package detonated. It was an explosive charge on the side of the fissure and it sent a hail of rock flying up in the low gravity to harmlessly fall behind her.

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  She sent camera remote three to position itself farther downstream. If the packages were going to be this mild, she could make them seem a little more dangerous by getting the camera closer.

  The second package was quite a bit more powerful than the first. It blew small chunks upward but also pushed a few boulders down into the lava flow. She had to swerve abruptly and a few small goblets of red lava struck her legs. The Sundiver transmitted the impacts as warm taps, which she knew meant they weren’t hot enough to inflict real damage, but it disturbed her.

  “Hey! You can do whatever you want ahead of me, but don’t blow anything so close again. You don’t want to see your new product’s legs melt off, do you?” She swerved back to the middle of the flow.

  There were a few seconds of quiet before the reply from the control team at Survival Dynamics. Checking the data, or deciding how sensational it would be if she was killed during the stunt? She wasn’t sure which was more likely, but they wouldn’t want to make the Sundiver look bad in its first public demonstration.

  “You’re going faster than we anticipated - we won’t do anything that close again. You look great! And the audience is growing. Only another minute to the end. Give them a great show. We’ll help out from our side.”

  “Help out? What do you mean-“

  A dozen blasts flared down the length of the rest of the course. She sent camera three higher to see what “help” he had wrought.

  This was why she preferred to operate alone.

  #

  Shadow floated in the center of her interface console, surrounded on all six sides by the rest of her support team. Some of the veteran technicians had decades more experience in their fields than she had in hers, but she was responsible for helping the Active on the scene make decisions. At the moment she was focused on the thermal data from Mezerello’s Intruder-class body.

  “The rain is helping your cranial temp stay low while you run. You should be able to maintain a five times multiplier all the way in. How does it feel?”

  “Refreshing. If I need to go to ten, how long will I have?”

  “Indoors, only a few seconds.” Shadow switched to the infrared view from the Striker 3 remote. “Your hair is already above ambient, so anyone who sees you will know you aren’t human.”

  With enough energy coursing through her altered brain to process five times faster than normal, and the synthetic musculature to match that speed, the tar and gravel surface of the rooftop would feel to Mez like running on loose sand. In reality, she was moving faster than cars on the nearby streets. Each step sent a cloud of pellets backwards fast enough to dent metal and break glass a block away.

  Mezerello had been in this body for years, so she was not distracted by the experience. “Push S-3 up to overwatch. Have S-2 breach the target.”

  “Breaching in five second. S-1 cannon recharged in two seconds.”

  “Five seconds?” Mezerello slowed her pace. “On the next model, let’s give them gravitic drives. And beam weapons.”

  “The rain is slowing it down. And the last thing we want is for the humans to find a downed remote with a propulsion system that violates their understanding of the laws of physics. Or advanced weaponry.”

  “Actually, those are the second and third to ‘last things’ I want. The first would be me being blown to pieces.”

  “Point taken.”

  The chime of updated imaging data brought her back from her moment of distraction. Mezerello received the same notice. “Entry plan one, still. I’m going through the third story wall.”

  “Still no thermal variation. Hard to tell if, or where, anyone might be inside.” Trucks had delivered shipments over the past few days but there had been no workers or staff entering or leaving on a regular basis. “Bay side is quiet. No human pedestrians in vicinity. S-2 breaching in two seconds.”

  Striker 2 was twenty meters in front of Mezerello, angling towards the three story target. A blue outline showed where Striker 1 approached the vehicle entrance on the far side of the building. Each was about to use its single shot grenade launcher to blast an opening.

  Striker 3 exploded almost directly over Mezerello’s head. She hunched at the blast, then glanced upwards to see where the pieces would come down. “Who-“

  Shadow clamped down the sudden wave of fear as the combat control system showed her the new attackers. “More mechs behind you. Get to cover.” Six more humanoid units were now on the rooftops, their arrival perfectly coordinated. “S-2 breaching target now then will turn and defend you.”

  Mez continued her sprint towards the target building as missiles launched from the new threat. The hole just blasted by Striker 2 was directly ahead. “Shadow - should I jump down to the street or head inside?”

  “Predicting the missiles…”

  “Down or in!”

  “In!”

  Mezerello leapt towards the gaping hole in the side of the target building, a perilous half second away.

  Sha
dow triggered her own missile launch.

  One kilometer south, the tarp covering the back of a nondescript pickup truck seemed to slide off of its own accord. From a rack in the bed of the truck a half dozen squat cylinders squirted upwards on compressed air, fanned out over the vacant lot and ignited rocket engines. They roared towards the battle.

  #

  “Down.” Keryapt fell twice her height towards the lava. The board splashed into the viscous surface, sending out a sheet of liquid rock. The molten river was coursing down the mountainside in the fissure she had selected. She leaned back to raise the nose of the board over the next group of submerged boulders.

  “Up.” No one could hear her but the repeated words formed a rhythm to match her movements. Thirty seconds ahead was the smooth volcanic plain where the lava was already starting to spread out and cool down. Her shuttle was on a small rise in the center.

  “And…over.” She left the surface as she caromed over the boulders. In the moment of free fall she looked farther down the course. Flying debris from the effects packages obscured most of the view, and she hoped the camera remotes were still getting good footage of her. If she had still been allowed to run her mind faster than normal, she would have checked for herself. But she wasn’t an Active any more.

  “Down.” She started the cadence again as she landed, splashing more lava up and around. The golden chromalloy of her Sundiver body was marred in spots where it had struck her. She unconsciously brushed off the bits before they cooled completely, entirely focused on surfing. She was lost in the moment.

  “Up.” She went over the next lip. This section was like a staircase covered by molten lava falls. Each stair was two to three times her height, the distance carefully evaluated and simulated to make sure that she would not gain so much speed that the board would go under when landing.

  “And….” The rhythm was thrown off as she swerved to avoid lava splattering off the wall of the fissure. Except it wasn’t just a splatter. The lava was coming out of a gash she hadn’t spotted a few seconds ago. Perhaps a side vent set loose by the effects packages?