“What’s up with the silly face?” Ali asked as she settled in her copilot chair next to me, and noisily sipped her third ice-cold Jolt Cola of the evening.
“Nothing,” I lied before redirecting the conversation to a more trivial subject: “The traffic in the lower atmosphere is densifying, I’ll take over the autopilot.” But in the windshield’s reflection, I saw her just as pensive as I was. “Still brooding over the cancellation of the Nintendo Championship on Phobos?” I asked, swiveling my custom seat to face her.
“I’ll get over it,” she belched. “I ain’t no kid anymore.”
“The Sega CD you spent the weekend on says otherwise.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” my sapiens defended herself. I laughed loudly but I knew that Ali’s jests were just covering her anxiety. “Do you think she’s really here?” she asked after finishing her acid drink. “I mean…”
“Mancéphalius refined Selena’s results. Not only do we know Nora’s on Mars, but she apparently roams around the Black Haven.”
The Black Haven. An enigmatic name for a place with a particular aura. Before Earth turned into a nuclear wasteland, most of humankind fled on the terraformed Mars. During the following Hard Reset, the rusty world had become the new Blue Planet, and an unprecedented universal government was set up with the ambition to conquer the solar system under a single banner. Thus, from the ashes of the United Nations emerged the all-powerful Technocracy. Its headquarters, the Black Haven, consisted of an immense dark pyramid with a heptagonal base which grouped together all the necessary judicial, legislative and executive bodies.
“It’s too easy to be true…” Ali sighed, clipping on her safety harness as I began the rapid descent to the surface.
“Easy? The seat of the central government is a labyrinthine fortress and I doubt we can simply ask for Nora on the intercom given the trouble she’s taken to stay hidden all these years!”
Clearly visible, the political epicenter of the system embraced the summit of the historically called Mount Olympus and its artificial lake.
The white avenues of Mega-Angouleme were sprawling, displaying an environment rather different from the dark megalopolises like Neo-Babylon. We first flew over the curious circular suburbs that had swallowed the neighboring colonial towns, once a hundred kilometers afar. The identical limestone houses with zinc roofs quickly gave way to neoclassical condominiums and boulevards lined with real trees trimmed to the millimeter. The wonderfully maintained arterial roads widened and complemented a major metro and streetcar systems leading to the first megablocks. On the slopes, these towers of white concrete and pink steel with golden reflections were cities in their own right, including housing, schools, supermarkets and entertainment complex. A sapiens could spend his whole life in these dungeons without ever leaving the precinct.
“This is insane…” my partner reacted as the electronic switch, organized by the fleet of municipal drones, brought us to one of the main highways. The multimodal terrestrial grid was indeed the anemic little brother of the dozens of aerial corridors crisscrossing the azure overhanging the capital where the electric motors made this twisted utopia perfectly silent.
As we reached the end of the first Radius, the outskirts were already out of sight, and the megablocks, each housing a quarter of a million people, could only pale in comparison to the business center of Mega-Angouleme. Surrounding the Black Haven on its mountain top like an army under siege, the dark glass columns of the megacorporations were lost beyond the bluish clouds of Mars. Only the Techno-Tower and its mesh of chrome-plated steel stood above them in the troposphere.
Fortunately, the ominous business district wasn’t our destination as the Kitty set sailed towards Lafayette Park, on the Tharsis Montes.
“We’re almost there,” I announced as darkness began to fall. “I will clamp the Swallow in the Imperial Ritz parking lot at the Marine’s expense.”
Lafayette Park appeared to be charmer than the urban sprawl. The peaked roofs of the Haussmannian mansions and breweries quickly appeared through the pink haze wafting from the smokestacks. Illuminated, the Night District was secluded from the rest of the city by pastoral meadows and housed the egg-shaped Palais de Piaf, the largest opera in the system—as well as the most improbable bars, theaters and cabarets.
I saw Ali’s eyes light up and it was my duty to refocus my partner on the mission: “Before we land in this place of debauchery and frivolity far too organic to remain hygienic, you will do me the pleasure of reciting the plan. Besides discretion, Rasputin insisted heavily during the briefing on the T.M.S. Africa that we maintain a shred of accountability this time.”
“Alright…” She puffed out her cheeks like a pouty child. “According to the intelligence obtained by the DIA on Cronus, Techno-Senator Edouard Balladur possessed some information about the war on Saturn and knows some shit about probable corruption at the technocratic level. Apparently, the Technos and some shady corporations orchestrated the war, playing both sides for profit. Braun, presumed dead by the Marine, needs to talk to him without making waves before the guy heads back home to Pompadour Hills.”
“Braun wants Balladur. And I came up with a super plan. Which is?”
“First, we have to dismiss his personal bodyguard, Mike Frazier. He goes by the name of Bartomiej Kowalewicz and he’s wanted for C$100,000 on Vesta. For murder—and unpronounceable sobriquet. Once Frazier is gone, abducting Balladur will be a piece of cake.”
“Very well. But particularly. What are we really interested in?”
“Kowalewicz’s security badge. Once recovered and hacked, its incorporated entry pass will allow us to sneak into the Black Haven and find data on Nora—inside the building or in its highly secured data-bank thanks to Bismuth Ball’s daemons.”
“Excellent, Madame! We need Kowalewicz’s badge specifically because Balladur’s may be even more protected. One more question and you’ll earn one of my favorite baseball cards. How do we do this?”
Ali stood up from her chair as we had just landed at the underground hangar of the Ritz. “We’ll jack him up in a martial arts tournament! Where he’s unarmed and less dangerous!”
The Imperial Ritz IV, a seventy-story Baroque hotel, housed one of the most sought-after venues east of Mega-Angouleme. This night—like every Friday—it hosted a series of boxing matches. Bartomiej Kowalewicz, under his fake name, appeared to be the undefeated champion.
“Do you see anything?” my sapiens asked as I was on a look out the room perched on her head.
“The Techno-Senator Balladur is gloating over a libertine in De Gaulle’s presidential box so his gorilla must already be in the locker room! But above all, watch the scoreboard, because—”
“Boring. Check this out! That’s fresh!” Ali cut me off before rushing towards the crowd. “A buffet!”
My hopeless sapiens could only think with her belly or the adjacent organs. Only her hungry nose could smell snacks through the stench of human sweat and cigarettes filling the place. I did, however, welcome her ill-timed initiative as my stomach was screaming for food. The Marine survival rations we’d been eating since we left the belt weren’t Nutrigel, but clumped dust bunnies.
“Ah mais qui voilà!” suddenly shouted a voice behind us that made Ali—hitherto busy devouring some curry with her mouth and nose simultaneously—jump. I emerged from the fruit salad as a thin man with a pencil mustache stood in front of us, hands on hips. He groaned again in a thick French accent: “Aren’t you ashamed to be so late, Madame! Go to the locker room and get ready immédiatement!” The Martian didn’t want to deal further with my diabetic troglodyte and immediately pushed her inside the dressing rooms.
“By the way,” I said as I barely made it to her before the rude steward slammed the wooden door. “Your first fight will be the last one, because you’ll conveniently run into Bartomiej Kowalewicz! And—” At the mention of the champion’s name, several wrestlers in the middle of their warm-up looked upon us. Each of them appeared to be strong enough to bench our Swallow.
“Damn it, Lee! What have we gotten ourselves into? Can’t we just tag Balladur by surprise?” whispered my copilot, undressing and eating at the same time. “These dudes’ been cast for Conan the Barbarian!”
“I reckon they’re ripped and cyber-augmented—is this guy André the Giant?”
“Are you shitting me?” Ali squealed, turning around.
“Forget it. It was probably just a regular giant,” I joshed. “To answer your question, we’re not in Neo-Babylon. Abductions have to be done with professionalism! We can’t engage in a firefight over a Techno-Senator on De Funès Avenue!”
“I’m going to get killed.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” I concluded before receiving a blow on my snout.
