Net-techs wandering the neighborhood, looking for the source of the trouble.” Another pause.
“Shay,” I said, glancing around the street, “I’m kind of standing out in the open here. All it takes is one bored Martian looking out the screen and wondering what a stranger is doing standing around in the street. Can we maybe move it along?”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” she muttered. “I am moving it along, Carter. I can talk and work, you know. And sometimes it helps to talk through the problem. In this case, the answer to the problem is a bubble.”
“A what, now?”
“A bubble. We take the Ingles house offline, but we spoof every single connection point, hardwired or wireless, to think that it’s still there.”
The magnitude of that notion stunned me. “There’s got to be a hundred different signals going into or out of that house, Shay. Is that even possible?”
“Two hundred and forty-seven, to be exact,” Chan replied. “Not counting Ingles’ personal agent, but we don’t have to spoof that one—just keep it from carrying on any of the other signals. Native range is too short without some sort of booster. And it’s not just possible, Carter. It’s done.” There was a grim satisfaction in her voice as she said, “Now go get us some answers.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
* * *
There are three main ways to break into a place: deception, stealth, and brute force. Deception was the conman’s game, convincing the mark to let you walk through the door. I’d had to do a lot of that back in my repo days, but I’d never been very good at it. Stealth… well, it had its merits. But it was hard to pull off in the middle of the Martian day. So, I opted for quick, brutal, and messy. It was more fun that way, anyway.
The door to the Ingles house was standard composite prefab, just like the rest of the house. Built to go up quick and last, but not exactly designed with high security in mind. I barely slowed as I walked up the three stairs to the porch, raised my leg, and kicked out with all of the strength my new, much more heavily muscled coil had to offer. The boot of the VaccTech suit landed just beside the knob, and the door exploded inward. I was inside, with my Gauss pistol in hand before the door had time to hit the wall and rebound.
I swept the pistol around the room, every sense alert, expecting to see a surprised and alarmed Fredrick Ingles. What I didn’t expect was to see a man, his back turned toward me, calmly preparing a drink from a wet bar at the far side of the living room in which I was now standing. “Let me see your hands!” I barked, keeping the weapon trained squarely on his center mass. I used my heel to hook the door and push it closed. It wouldn’t latch, but at the very least it would provide a sight barrier to anyone curious about the sudden bang of the door being kicked in.
“That really isn’t necessary,” the man, presumably Fredrick Ingles said as he turned—slowly.
It seemed a hell of a lot more necessary when Ingles turned. In his left hand, he held a glass tumbler filled with a rich brown liquid. In his right, he held a pistol, muzzle held low and pointed at the ground. I didn’t recognize the model, but it looked like a heavy-duty slug thrower, the kind powered by chemical burn. I had no doubt that it could punch holes right through me if he managed to bring it to bear. “Drop the weapon! Now!”
The man—Ingles—gave me a tired smile. His features were worn and haggard, flushed with drink despite the early hour. He was heavy-set, a rarity given that the combination of the modern Net and the implanted agents effectively allowed you to exercise your body while still working or playing at other things and that every coil had nanites tailored to help control too many excess calories, and it looked as if it had been days since he’d last had a shower. He wore a suit that, I was sure, cost more than our fare to Pallah. But it looked like he had been sleeping in it. For days. Mr. Ingles was not at all what I was expecting, but he did have a weapon. “I said, drop it!”
“Or what?” he asked. There was a slight slur to his words, not pronounced, but