A Toaster on Mars by Darrell Pitt Read Free Book Online Page A

FINGER…
    I’m going to count to a billion , Nicki thought.
    She did. It took almost a tenth of a second and she still had not calmed down.
    ‘I was a field officer at Southern Division,’ Nicki said, smiling. She had read that smiling while you spoke helped to give the impression you were friendly, even when you really wanted to tear someone limb from limb. If they had any, that is.
    I KNOW THAT.
    ‘So why aren’t you letting me in?’
    OH, YOU KNOW.
    Nicki didn’t.
    I’VE BEEN SLAVING OVER A HOT SYNC ALL DAY. I NEVER GO ANYWHERE.
    ‘I can’t do anything about that.’
    YOU KNOW WHAT MY VIEW IS LIKE? I’M IN A BASEMENT. HOW BORING IS THAT? AND DOES ANYONE DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?
    ‘Let’s cut to the chase,’ Nicki said. ‘What do you want?’
    A PAIR OF LEGS WOULD BE NICE.
    Nicki was still smiling, but it wasn’t easy. ‘You want me to get you a pair of legs?’
    YES.
    ‘Before you’ll log me in?’
    ARMS WOULD BE NICE TOO. OH, AND A HEAD. AND WHERE WOULD I BE IF I DIDN’T HAVE—
    ‘Let me guess? A torso?’
    YOU GOT IT, BABY.
    Nicki dropped the smile, disconnected and logged in via her internal circuitry. She could hear the AI bitching about her over the Hypernet, but Nicki didn’t care.
    ‘I’ll give you torso…’ she muttered.
    Nicki found the department records and entered the asset number of the desk. Fortunately, as in all government departments, every item was assigned a tracking number. Unfortunately, the numbers fell off half the time or pranksters swapped them around to confuse the clerks, who could never work out why something numbered as a chair turned out to be an M17 SuperMicro electron analyser, or why a hydrobeam laser looked more like something you could sit on.
    It took her ten minutes to discover the last owner of the desk.
    ‘Holy sprot,’ she said softly.

9
    Nicki spent the whole night studying the files on Bartholomew Badde, only leaving PBI headquarters as early-morning sunlight began filtering down from the upper levels.
    Because she was a cyborg, she wasn’t allowed to own a car, but her status as an agent gave her temporary use of a PBI vehicle. It had an AI, an old system named Geoff, but she turned it off. She didn’t feel like conversation.
    Nicki hadn’t told Blake that she knew how to drive a car. Actually, she was quite good at it. Her robotic components enabled her to make millions of calculations per second, anticipating the moves of other drivers with almost 100 per cent accuracy.
    Joining an eastbound lane, she looked down at the city that not only didn’t sleep, it didn’t even blink. Nicki was the first to admit she knew everything and nothing about Neo City. Her quazitone brain told her about every building and street, but not its people. Her human part—the nine per cent—knew that cities were more than stone and brick.
    Even more of a mystery, though, was Blake Carter.
    Reviewing his history, she couldn’t help but be impressed. Pomphrey wasn’t exaggerating when he praised Blake as one of the most successful agents in the bureau: for several years he’d held the agency’s arrest record, due, no doubt, to his intuitive grasp of the workings of the criminal mind.
    Well , Nicki thought, I’m no slouch myself—and I won’t be outdone by a full blood.
    Blake’s research on Badde wasn’t just thorough, it was nothing short of inspired. Long before Badde had revealed himself to the galaxy as—in his own words—the Big Badde, Blake had already strung together dozens of unrelated crimes, realising one person was behind them all. Two mentions of the name Badde on two separate worlds had been enough for him to realise an evil mastermind was quietly running an empire across the span of the Milky Way.
    After bringing Geoff in to land, Nicki climbed out. Everything was shut except for the bars. It was still dark down here. Artificial lighting gave the empty street a technicolour hue.
    Spotting an open sushi house, Nicki wondered if the food was at all