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Judicator Chronicles: The Tranquil Sea

By Psion

All Rights Reserved

Jumping on the first shuttle bound for Luna once he was sure he lost Palemen in the crowd on the Neil Armstrong Memorial Station, Mason Smith settled in for what he hoped was a quiet trip to the moon after the trouble he had just riding the space elevator connecting the NAMS to the planet below. Sinking into the padded passenger seat and exhaling softly, the athletic man let himself relax. After everything he'd been through, all he wanted was a couple hours to himself with nothing bad happening. Just a few hours of peace before he arrived at the Elysium Domes, the resort colony on the Sea of Tranquility, was all he wanted. Just a few hours before he had to figure out whether to try and make his way to either Ceres or Mars before his money ran out. The further away he got from Earth and the incorporated colonies on the moon before his funds went dry, the better he'd be.

The shuttle was surprisingly quiet for having a passenger cabin that was almost full, two dozen tourists and business travelers seated in a long tube arranged like a small atmospheric jet. Wonderfully small synthetic diamond view ports mercifully reinforced with a barely noticeable titanium lattice gave travelers a breathtaking view of the Earth from high orbit, a comforting far cry from the elevator bay window that turned into a structural weak point. Chairs and family-sized couches were lined up in two rows with an aisle down the middle for stewards and disembarking passengers, the leather seats were all heavily cushioned as much for the passengers comfort as for the Newtonian forces experienced when flying in space. Either way Mason looked at them, they were like sitting in a soft cloud. The perfect thing for falling right asleep…

The instant he closed his eyes, a maelstrom of memories he had been keeping suppressed with a combination of adrenaline and self-induced insomnia. In that moment, anger, fear, hatred all bubbled up as his mind swirled with recollections he would have given anything to forget. So much hypocrisy, everything about Arcadia was a rotten lie.... Even just recalling the events that lead up to where he sat now filled him with a bubbling red rage and a feeling of bristling resentment at it all. He did everything right, filled out the right forms, had the right paperwork; there should have been no problems. The drugs were Class-2's; there was a clear medical need for them, and he jumped through all those hoops so he could administer them on behalf of a family member. All that and still… perhaps one small upside to Arcadia's secret program was that he was able to take that one wrong and put it to right in the end. It may not give him food or a place to sleep but the final pained cries of that damn smug judge in particular went a long way towards giving him peace of mind. The arrogant bastard earned every last broken finger before he got both of his eyes stabbed out…

Opening his eyes and gasping for breath with a start, the tired traveler looked around at the warm, inviting colors of the passenger cabin just as the pilot announced over the intercom that they were arriving at the Elysium Domes in ten minutes and all passengers were to start preparing to disembark soon. Mason was forced to abandon most of his possessions when those two Judicators saved him from the doomed elevator car but that didn't matter too much, the only things he truly needed were kept on his person at all times… or installed beneath his skin. Disembarking would be as quick as leaving his chair and walking towards the door. One of the most expensive places in the colonized solar system to be and he was arriving with next to nothing to his name… fitting as he didn't really have a name anymore either.

The Judicator shuttle Freedom's Star sailed silently against the endless night sky as the two female agents continued flying to Watchtower Luna. The only difference after their brief stopover at the Neil Armstrong Memorial Station was that they now had a passenger.

“Thank you for taking me with you." Jonathan Paleman began with a grateful nod.

“It's alright Librarian Paleman, we were going in the same direction anyway. Though why your sudden interest in the lunar colonies? I thought you were heading back to the Prometheus library on Ceres?" Artifice replied, still in her custom ZGE suit but with her helmet off and safely tucked away behind the pilot's seat.

Paleman was silent for a moment. “There was an unexpected event on NAMS, I encountered a young man I mentored once. I believe the moon is his next destination."

“That's very nice Mr. Pencil Neck but you didn't still answer the question." Vulpine Fury replied mockingly, looking up from a fashion magazine she bought on the orbital station.

Paleman snorted and rolled his eyes. “Your new partner is as charismatic as always Artifice, you must miss Valkryie terribly already. But to answer her question, the man in question is supposed to be dead. Suicide by hanging, almost two years ago to the day."

Both females looked at each other briefly before asking the apparent question. “Well, that's obviously cause for concern but did he tell you what really happened at all before disappearing on the first shuttle to the moon?"

The bookish scholar sighed and told them how Mason Smith told him most of the story without much prodding then disappeared into the crowd on NAMS. About how Arcadia planned on sparking a war between Earth and the frontier colonies and was creating an army of super soldiers to do it.

The two women looked at each other a second time. “Okay… you sure your friend didn't get whacked in the head a few times while he was in prison?" Vulpine Fury asked after a few minutes. “I mean sure it would be easy enough, just rile up a few cells of the Red Fang Brotherhood out in the Belt or the Techno-Militants on Mars. Either of those assholes alone would be enough to get Earth to declare war on the frontier colonies. Or they could just let a Cult of the Singularity science project get loose on the moon and that would also do the job. But still, Arcadia Enterprise's solution to their money woes is to get the megacorps to declare war on the frontier and create an army of specially augmented transhumans for the other corps to rent out? Don't they realize that the Diamond Devils already beat them to the whole 'space rangers' thing?"

Paleman shook his head and looked at Artifice, the armored heroine was also clearly not convinced. “Why was he in prison?" She asked politely.

“He was one of the people sentenced by Judge O'Connor, supposedly on multiple counts of trafficking Id-x… oh God." The scholar's face froze in horror as he realized what must have happened.

“The judge accused of corruption and recently murdered back on Earth? What's Id-x anyway?"

“It's a mental stimulant, supercharges the neurons in the brain to increase the ability to process information. Addictive, illegal, and popular in the cyber-athletics leagues, it was completely illegal until we discovered it had some promising applications in Alzheimer's therapy. Smith was supposed to be authorized to possess and administer small amounts of it for his father… he WAS authorized." Paleman explained definitively.

“How can you be so sure?"

“Because I'm the one that helped him file the paperwork. Authorization for legal Id-x possession in Arcadia requires a sheaf of forms bigger then your head, all filled out in hard copy and filed in triplicate."

“Well, whether he's telling the truth or not, I suppose we better make sure finding him is on our to-do list once we dock with Watchtower Luna." The armored engineer replied diplomatically.

“You don't believe either of us do you?"

“I believe that there is the possibility that he's telling the truth, no offense Palemen but your former employer has always been scummy. If he is, then we need to find him to get as much information from him as we can. If he isn't, then we have a convicted felon running around the moon trying to jump on the first ship bound to Ceres where he'll do who knows what once he gets there." Artifice replied as she brought the shuttle in for a landing with the lunar Watchtower.

“Are you sure he'll go to Ceres?"

“It's either Ceres, Mars, or the Phobos colony and currently Mars and its moons are on the other side of the sun. If I was on the run and had to make every credit count, I'd go to Ceres or one of the other Belt colonies currently on the same side of the sun as Earth is. Which… say Vee, where is New Pittsburgh relative to the Ceres colony again?"

“Less then a few thousand kilometers. You think he'd go there?"

“Maybe, it depends. Do you know what Smith's opinion on furries is Paleman?"

“Only that he has none… at the moment at least. I'm sure those Red Fang cultists or that slave cartel would change his opinions very quickly though." The studious gentleman replied, casting a glaring eye at the vixen as he brought up two of New Pittsburgh's lingering sins.

Vulpine Fury looked like she was about to say something to rebut Paleman's comment but at that moment the Freedom's Star finished docking with the lunar Watchtower and Artifice wasted no time grabbing her helmet and disembarking. While the two continued to snipe at each other, she was going to check in with the rest of the Watchtower staff and tell what she had learned so far. Maybe then Vulpine Fury would have stopped antagonizing Jonathan long enough for Artifice to finally ask what Mason Smith looked like. Valkryie couldn't get discharged from the hospital infirmary on Deimos soon enough…

Walking out of the shuttle hanger after finally getting through customs, Mason Smith turned around and took in his first look at the Elysium Domes as he waited for the elevator that would take him from the shuttle hanger down to the crater floor. Almost immediately he could see why this was the most popular vacation spot in the inner solar system. While the hanger was built into the side of the crater, the rest of the colony was built under a series of massive domes made of hexagon panels of transparent aluminum. A sprawling hotel complex sat under a main dome and several tunnels built partially underground were spun off of the main dome to connect it to three smaller domes on the crater's surface. The smaller domes each housed a different attraction; one contrasted the bright grays of the lunar soil with the lush greens of a golf course. Another was a sprawling swimming pool complex, Mason couldn't even imagine the expense of bringing that much water onto the moon, complete with a massive tidal pool. And the third appeared to be some kind of amusement park awash with bright colors and odd shapes. If he weren't running for his life and nearly broke, he'd be tempted to hang around and see just what a week's vacation on the lunar colonies entailed.

Just as the elevator arrived at the scenic overlook connecting the hanger to the rest of the colony, Mason noted one last thing. Adjacent to the colony complex, connected to it but clearly added after the original colony's construction, was a tall glistening monolith of sturdy alloys. With a fifty-foot Judicator insignia emblazoned on the side, he didn't need to guess what that building was; Watchtower Luna, the organization's base on the moon and the most stupidly obvious listening post in the history of covert warfare. Within its sleek metal walls lived and worked anywhere from two to ten Judicators monitoring the antics of Mother Earth and providing emergency response services to the lunar colonies. But with the megacorps of Earth providing their own rapid response teams, particularly thanks to the Diamond Dogs, the amount of actual hero work the costumed troublemakers had to do was drastically cut down. Subsequently it was rumored that the base was one of the least desirable postings in the organization, whoever was stationed there had nothing to do but try to not look like they were blatantly spying on Earth and the comings and goings of people on the lunar colonies.

Mason shook his head and got on the elevator with a flood of tourists in front of him. All the more reason to keep moving; there were rumors that while enemies of the corporate states of Earth, the Judicators were also more then willing to track down wanted fugitives from the mother world. The corporations tricked those costume-wearing idiots into hunting down more then one political dissident on the run that way. Definitely an obstacle to be mindful of if he ended up stuck on the moon for any length of time. There was no doubt Arcadia had put out a notice for his arrest by this point, the only question was how far ahead of the manhunt was he. Lost in thought planning his next move and pretending to be a tourist, Smith didn't notice the short transhuman following behind him. A genemodded New Pittsburgh denizen injected with biomodifications that made her resemble a blond-furred mouse, the individual watching Mason as they both rode the transparent elevator down had made a career out of being unnoticed. Even Earth, where transhumans were virtually nonexistent, was no challenge to her infiltration abilities…

Vulpine Fury had quickly gotten settled into her quarters at Watchtower Luna so while Artifice and Paleman discussed the librarian's mysterious friend with Insight, the Judicator currently in charge of the watchtower, the vixen transhuman decided to go and make the most of her new posting.

Dressed in an emerald green two-piece bikini and lazily reclining in a lounge chair by the pool, Fury's triangular ears flattened against her head as she tried to tune out the noise and get caught up on her reading. With a cold drink in one hand and her PDA in the other, the vulpine brawler from New Pittsburgh decided to finish up an e-book novel she started back on Mars while occasionally looking up to scan the crowd. The pool dome was lightly crowded; it was the middle of the day but at the end of the tourist season. Situated around a raised heated pool overlooking the main pool, Vulpine Fury watched the water polo game going on in the main pool and tried to occasionally scan the crowd while getting a couple more pages through her book. At least until Artifice messaged her on her PDA's communicator function, ruining the mood.

“Where are you?" Came the armored human's voice through the data assistant's speaker.

“Down by the pools, enjoying the few sights on this rock that aren't slathered in advertising." The vixen replied as she put the device's speaker relatively close to her ear as she watched the water polo game in greater earnest. Now that she had time to think about it and watch them in earnest, one of the unmodded Earth-born looked kind of cute…

Artifice sucked in her breath and sounded like she was holding back the urge to curse out her partner. Vulpine Fury shook her head, that Latino fatass needed a boyfriend or at least to learn to relax. “Vee, Techno's back from her trip to Earth." The brawling vixen's partner continued.

“And?" Vulpine Fury asked, hoping this wouldn't entail getting up. Her book was just finally starting to get good.

“And I'm not going to go into detail over a wireless connection with someone currently sitting on her lazy ass in a public place. Suffice to say… we need to find Mason Smith right now." The armored techie replied.

“Right now?" Vulpine Fury asked, annoyance creeping into her voice.

“Right now. Insight is talking with Paleman to try and put together a profile on Mason that will help narrow down where we have to look." Her partner replied with growing annoyance and something else the vixen didn't recognize at first… fear.

The dark-haired female grumbled as she picked up her folded clothes and walked back to the nearest changing station and got back into her jumpsuit. Once inside the small privacy booth and putting her jumpsuit back on, she resumed talking. “Any idea where to start? The Elysium Domes are a big place after all. Do we even have a picture of this guy?"

“Actually we have better then that, he was one of the tourists we rescued from 1313. Remember the lanky Caucasian with the rose-colored sunglasses? That's our target; I'm sending you the mug shot Techno lifted off of Arcadia's judicial computers if that wasn't enough. As for where we can start looking; right or wrong, he's still a fugitive as far as Earth is concerned. He needs to find more money and passage to the asteroid belt in that order if he wants to stay ahead of Mommy Earth."

“And Elysium is a resort town. So if he wants anything other then an overpriced souvenir he's going to be somewhere in the old sublevels. I'll meet you down there." Vulpine Fury finished. This Mason fellow better be worth the trouble of getting up.

Crossing over from the main levels of the resort to the sublevels where no tourist ever set foot was a jarring transition as Mason Smith finally found the correct stairway down and went through the right door to the bottom of the underground pyramid buried deep within the lunar rock. On the surface was the resort with all of its glitz and opulence, below that were the clean and orderly residential areas for the resort staff, and at the bottom, where he stood now, was the simply named “sublevels" dating back to the colony's original construction roughly a decade ago. Here dwelled a depressingly large population of displaced humans, mostly construction workers brought in to build the resort but didn't have enough money to make it back home. The rest of the disenfranchised were various outcasts and wanderers trying to function in their own little corner of the inner solar system away from corporate control.

The smell hit him like a brick wall, being in a controlled environment somehow made the stench of too many people crammed in too little space with inadequate sanitation even worse then it would have been back on Earth. A claustrophobic metal maze of corridors running every which way, the grimy hallways crammed with people. Stalls hammered out of scrap metal sold everything from rotgut brewed in the moon's low gravity to vegetables grown in haphazard hydroponic gardens.

“It looks like the bastard child of the Brown Sector from Babylon 5 and a Southeast Asian marketplace down here." Mason muttered under his breath as he threaded his way through the crowd, painfully aware that he stuck out like a sore thumb. Keeping his hands in his pockets and an eye open for muggers and pickpockets tailing him thinking they found an easy mark, he threaded his way through the throng of people going about their business. Street peddlers hawked their wares, drunks and barflies watched him from the shelter of dingy cantinas, and a few of the truly desperate sat on the corners and begged for a few hard credits. Smith relaxed as he tried to remember where the Arcadian supply cache was. As part of their master plan, the megacorp had set up small supply caches hidden on every colony where there was a significant Judicator presence. While there was a distinct possibility that the cache would be empty or he would have to fight one of the loyal Arcadian agents for control of the locked-up supply box, these stashes contained equipment, weapons, and consumables he was going to need eventually. The risk was great but unfortunately necessary as well. Now if only he could just remember where it was, all these tunnels and shantytown construction was messing with his mental map. Just had to follow these corridors leading away from the main population of vagrants, turn left at the intersection lined with defaced propaganda posters, and then go through the double doors and… as soon as he saw the crowd of transhumans gathered inside the old empty storeroom, he knew he had made a mistake. A very, very big mistake.

Mason Smith was silent as the Red Fang cultists surrounded him, a mob of moronic transhumans modified to resemble a menagerie of “petting zoo people" not completely unlike Vulpine Fury, forming a circle around him. Dressed in simply red robes and armed with a variety of small blades and improvised weapons, the cultists whooped and shouted a few choice war cries. Shouts of “Down with the furless!" and “Death to the human warmongers!" echoed in the lower levels of the lunar colony. Smith remained quiet and visibly unimpressed as he quickly scanned his surroundings. The particular selection of weapons was to be expected, guns were relatively rare in space for a number of reasons that weren't particularly relevant at this exact second, the way his opponents surrounded him like a bunch of disposable bad guys in a bad martial arts movie was laughably adorable, and the only thing that made him nervous was the obvious explosive placed on the ceiling. The lost tourist did some quick calculations, they were currently directly below the primary dining hall for the main resort hotel. And with it almost time for the mealtime rush to reach its peak; that meant a couple hundred people were about to have the floor literally blown out from under them. If the explosion didn't kill them, the fall definitely would.

And all of this shouldn't have been Mason's problem; he shouldn't have to worry about this beyond getting out of here with his skin intact. Just had to worry about fighting through this horde of dipshits that had no idea what a can of worms they were about to open…

The first cultist, a gray-furred raccoon wielding a piece of pipe like a club, broke the circle and charged Mason. The brown-haired man began to effortlessly slide out of the way of the attack, grabbed his opponent by the weapon arm, and delivered a strong knee bash to the crotch before slamming the bushy tailed miscreant into the concrete floor with his arm bent behind his back and his pipe now being twirled in Mason's hand. “What's the matter, are Hitler's little fuzzies reconsidering their life choices?" He laughed.

That was enough to close the circle; the remaining Red Fangs raised their weapons and started their attack. Parrying a fox striking with a utility knife before smacking him across the face with his pipe, Mason abandoned the weapon and spun around to kick another Fang squarely in the chest. Bones cracked and combatants cried in pain as Smith weaved his way through the mass of Fangs trying to tear him apart. One kick here, an uppercut there, one artful dodge to cause two attackers to collide into each other over there. Claws and blades briefly found purchase on him, slicing into his clothes and drawing fluid as scarlet as the cult's name, while blunt weapons painted his pale skin a dark purple. Still, he fought on. Augmented endurance and martial arts training pushing him through as he went through the motions even though his body felt like it was on fire. And then just like that, the fight was over. Fangs lay all over the floor, bodies battered and broken, with only Mason and the cell leader left standing. Looking disappointed in his followers, the big bear rose to his feet.

“Oh really? Now? You decide to jump in now when it's just you and me." Mason cracked as an angry scowl formed on his face. He had just about enough of this B-movie martial arts stupidity…

“You cannot win, we are stronger and the world is ruled by the strongest, these are the rules of nature." The Fang agent shouted dogmatically with a brisk wave of his heavily muscled arm.

“Really? I thought they were a catchy video game tune." Smith replied flatly, it took the bear a moment to realize the human was trying to be funny.

“You dare mock me?" The ursine cultist snarled.

“Oh, no-no-no-no-no…" The fugitive supersoldier began before choking back a laugh. “Yes." He smiled, scooping up a fallen knife and throwing it at the Fang.

The bear dodged effortlessly, the blade clattering harmlessly against the moon rock wall, but he had taken his eyes off of Mason long enough for the other fighter to race up and land a solid roundhouse kick to his face. Boot and face collided in a display of blood, saliva, and compressed flesh as the cultist was knocked to the floor with a mighty crash, knocked out but not dead. The battle was over, now to just take care of two annoying little loose ends and get out of here before…

“Hold it right there!" A familiar female voice called out.

Mason resisted the urge to groan as he slowly turned around. This was only the first time this happened like it did in the comics and already he was sick of it. There, standing at the double doors that marked the only way out of this room, was Vulpine Fury dressed in that same form-fitting police blue jumpsuit of hers. Even battered like he just had been, the lanky young man felt his body instinctively tense up. Despite looking like some Cyberweb nerd's idea of a pinup, Vulpine Fury had previously taken on as many guys as he did just now by herself. She was as heavily augmented as he was and presently had more experience working with her enhanced abilities then he did. This was not a fight he looked forward to.

The vixen regarded the brutality surrounding both of them with a casual glance before focusing her attention squarely on the other fighter. “Did you do this Mason?" She asked with a hint of intrigued jealousy in her voice. Apparently the crazy space-furry couldn't decide if she liked the idea of a man who could throw down as well as she could or was irked by the idea of staring at her replacement.

“What? No comicbook morality rubbish? Though yeah, yeah this was all me." Smith began. “But if I were you I'd be more worried about that thing up there." He gestured up towards the ceiling where the remotely detonated bomb still lay inactive.

Sufficiently distracted to Mason's satisfaction, Vulpine Fury leapt up and bounced herself off a wall with a practiced display of agility the fugitive had only previously seen performed by circus acrobats. Straddling the rafter and quickly calling up Artifice, she engrossed herself in disarming the bomb. As the last wire was safely cut, Vulpine looked down and realized what had to have been Mason's plan all along, her original target had slipped away while she was justifiably distracted.

Okay, so it was a RIGHT at the intersection with all the defaced corporate propaganda posters, Mason thought to himself as he discreetly backtracked and went down the other corridor. Adjusting his clothes, he managed to hide most of his injuries from casual inspection though anyone that looked at him for any real length of time would notice he was favoring one leg over the other. Hopefully he should be able hide his injuries long enough for the medical nanites implanted in his body to do their job, Mason thought to himself as he continued to walk along. Lining the walls were all sorts of old promotional posters for Arcadia's investment in the Elysium Domes, encouraging workers to “Build The Future" only to be covered over with messages like “Not Our Future" in bright red ink. It was a shame in a way, most of these posters were otherwise perfectly preserved and part of a very short-lived run printed by Arcadia's Ministry of Public Information, making them worth a lot of money to collectors.

Not having time to dwell on forgotten history, Mason opened the storage closet with the Arcadian trefoil spray painted over the door and shut it behind him. There, tucked away on the bottom shelf of an otherwise empty storage closet was a battered military-grade strongbox with a keypad lock. The strongbox clearly bore signs of several attempts at forced entry, chipped and crushed points on the lip of the box where someone attempted to force the lock with a crowbar.

Looking over his shoulder and taking a deep breath, he quickly entered the access code he recovered during his escape from New Alcatraz and flipped the heavy polymer lid open. A thin smile crossed his worn face as he peered inside and examined the contents. Eight ration bars, each containing a day's worth of calories and nutrients, a folded tourist's backpack, a simple gray overcoat, a multi-functional Multi-Fastener, a couple spare power cells, about a thousand in hard credit chits, and one weapon that showed that even Arcadia Enterprises had to currently accept the simple realities of warfare in space. Mason held the hilt of the folding short sword in his hand and gave it a good squeeze. In a flash, the blade extended outward and self-assembled into a thin sword resembling a Japanese tanto. One quick twist of the locking mechanism later, the blade collapsed back into the hilt and Mason was able to tuck back into his pocket before slipping on the overcoat. Throwing the rest of the contents of the supply cache into the backpack and slinging the pack over his shoulder, he shut the empty crate and reactivated the locking mechanism before leaving the storage closet and shutting the door behind him. None of the items looked like they had been bugged with a tracking device and if there was nanite dust transmitting that the objects had been moved… well, the dust could easily be removed with a quick wash in ordinary water. Besides, with the Judicators having a fairly high-tech presence and a proactive stance on finding trouble before it could make trouble, it wouldn't do to have suspicious signals broadcasting from the bottom of a colony.

Finding a place to hide long enough that he could regenerate his wounds safely was a little harder then finding the supply cache. Sleeping on the floor in a corner wasn't the best idea, particularly if he wanted to avoid losing his stuff to pickpockets or get stabbed in the ribs. Or worse, was the black-market organ trade a thing out here or did the hospitals of New Pittsburgh finally put an end to that foul business? Slowly walking along the surprisingly empty corridors of the far end of the sub levels, Mason found a spot where the tunnel roof opened up. There was just enough space between the walls of lunar rock and the metal supports for him to climb up and crawl in out of sight. It was hardly comfortable but it afforded him the few hours peace he needed to ignore the intense itching sensation caused by his medical nanites disinfecting cuts and closing up wounds. Whoever thought accelerated healing wouldn't be uncomfortable clearly never looked up the process of how the body repaired itself. After an hour or two to heal and catch his breath, he climbed out of his hole and rejoined the crowd in the main corridors. At least now he didn't look like he lost a fight with a cutlery drawer.

The thronging mass of the disaffected remained oblivious to the fact that they had been well within the blast radius of a homemade explosive powerful enough to demolish several stories… perhaps ignorance truly was bliss, Mason concluded with a sigh. Exhaling and disappearing back into the crowd, he kept a hand on his wallet and an eye open for something, anything; that looked like it could be a lead to the next leg of his journey. Shame he had no idea what he was looking for.

Mason continued to wander along somewhat aimlessly, becoming aware of something happening he couldn't quite see on the other side of a mass of human bodies. Men stopped mid-stride to turn and look at something outside of his line of sight while women previously content to just panhandle and watch the world go by suddenly found the energy to get up and move with great haste. A few of the street women even went so far as to cross themselves or otherwise say a little prayer. The fugitive penal soldier found his hand instinctively reaching for the folding sword in his pocket…

The pimp from New Pittsburgh walked with a stride that positively oozed power and control as he strode down the corridor with one hand around an ornate cane and the other holding the ends of six leather leashes. The squirrel transhuman, with rust red fur as bright as the Martian soil, walked along dressed in an expertly black tailored suit and regarded the crowd with an unreadable gaze from behind a black pair of sunglasses. Walking front of him were six transhuman women modified to look like various anthropomorphic creatures, all of them nude except for a leather collar around their necks and none of them looked even remotely pleased to be in their current situation. The growing urge to kill the squirrel out of principle aside, Mason had to admit he was impressed; behaving this openly so close to the incorporated territories with no visible sign of a bodyguard? Squirrel boy had huge balls, figuratively at least. Which meant he almost certainly wasn't a solo act…

Those that remained regarded the well-dressed stranger with either a look of disgust in their eyes or a wistful longing for forbidden pleasures they couldn't even begin to afford. The nude females continued to slowly trot ahead of their master; Mason's careful eye took each of them in with a glance. One rabbit, the rest were various wolf and bear morphs. All of them exceptionally busty and modified with thick, soft fur pelts. Pelts so thick and soft-looking that one could easily miss the bruises hidden by the shaggy fur. Smith turned his gaze back to the pimp who was now regarding him with the coy smile of a merchant thinking he had a potential sale.

“Good day sir, I see you have a taste for the finer things in life. I'm sure you'll find my fees most agreeable." The squirrel pitched in an eloquent, refined voice. Hardly the kind of demeanor Mason expected for a fleshpeddler but then it took a certain degree of undeserved pride to think themselves above other people.

Mason choked back his initial urge to draw his sword and decapitate the other male. The ladies and him, they weren't unalike, broken down to nothing for someone else's pleasure and profit. But he needed to maintain a low profile, especially after that snafu less then an hour ago, and that required he walk away from things that he shouldn't. “No, I'm busy right now." He replied calmly, keeping the pain in his chest hidden.

“Oh well if you're still interested once you have some free time, here is my card." The flesh merchant smiled and handed him an old-fashioned business card made on actual cardstock before continuing on with his “merchandise" kept close at hand, Mason couldn't say he saw an actual business card before; most business men had switched over to digital cards several decades ago. At first he considered trashing it without a second thought but stopped himself and slipped the card into his pocket. If nothing else the freak was a potential source of information even if he did make the man's skin crawl. In the meantime, back to looking for other contacts and hoping his medical nanites didn't take too much longer to finish putting him back together. Doing his best to keep his face expressionless, he shook his head and continued on. There had to be someone here that could take him to either Mars or the Asteroid Belt…

At least an hour later, finding transportation to the frontier colonies had turned into a demonstration of the old cliché of a guy who knew a guy who had a friend that might know something. From a shopkeeper selling recreational narcotics to a black-market book vendor peddling seditious material, Mason was finally directed to a man relaxing in a small bar with scrap metal furnishing and selling rotgut brewed from something the fugitive man was better off not thinking about.

The pilot Smith was directed to was a lean, humorless unmodified human wearing a well-used space suit, the kind favored by those who spent more time in a cargo shuttle then out of it. Sitting at the bar sipping rotgut from a shot glass, the pilot didn't look up at the other man until he sat down next to him. “Can I help you?" The free trader asked casually.

“Depends, people tell me you can get me to the frontier." Mason replied, maintaining the relaxed air the conversation started off with.

“Depends, where in the frontier do you want to go?"

“I hear Mars and Ceres are the best places to go for someone looking to start over." The man from Earth answered conversationally.

“That they are but Mars is currently on the wrong side of the sun to be cheap and is going to stay that way for about another month. So it looks like Ceres might be your best bet, why are you so eager to move out onto the frontier anyway? Why not stay on Earth where it's safer? At least there you don't have to deal with pirates, lunatics, and cultists."

Mason thought about it for a second then decided to give the other man a simple non-answer. “Same reason most people leave for Mars and the Belt I suppose, get away from the corps and Earth. Security and stability isn't worth being told where to work, where to spend your time off, and not owning even the clothes on your back." He explained, currently oblivious to the fact that he was being watched.

“I found him Insight. He's talking to the gun runner War Dog." Artifice reported over her suit's built-in communicator. The armored heroine was doing her best to remain inconspicuous in the sublevels below the Elysium Domes, a task that was virtually impossible as her armored engineering suit stood out against the crowd of unarmored pedestrians and the suited woman was attracting more then the occasional stare from passers-by as she watched Mason converse with a known smuggler. Her helmet visor was set to a thermal view, allowing her to see through the roughly hammered sheet metal walls by watching the heat signatures of the two men sitting at the bar. Audio sensors in her helmet filtered out the background noise to pick up enough of their conversation to get the general flow of what they were saying.

“As expected, the moon is a stopover. His real destination is the asteroid colonies around Ceres." Insight replied, his cultured British accent explained academically in the dirty-blond woman's ear.

“Do we have any watchtowers out there?"

“Only the station at New Pittsburgh unfortunately."

“Unfortunately? We practically gave you that space on the station for free!" Vulpine Fury argued abruptly over the comm.

That started a bit of back and forth between Vulpine Fury and Insight but Artifice had stopped listening, turning her attention towards a strange figure that caught her eye. While the vagrants down at the bottom of the Elysium Domes wore a variety of colorful fashions due to scrounging whatever they could from the castoffs of the resort above, full body armor was another matter entirely. The masked stranger stood out like a sore thumb, whether it was the androgynous black armored suit or the wearer's own natural height that allowed them to stand almost a foot taller then everyone else. Whoever they were, they weren't concerned about being subtle that was for sure. Midnight black armor plating with touches of a dark blue for contrast, menacing needle-like claws, and an opaque visor that was almost entirely featureless except for a bright yellow and black smiley face painted where the wearer's face would be.

People started to give the armored newcomer a wide berth or turn around and start walking the other way. No one seemed to know who they were, only that they looked like trouble with a capital T. A threat assessment Artifice found she couldn't disagree with. Especially once the stranger started talking and laughing in that creepy digitized voice of theirs. “Dawww, I was so hoping that Vulpine Fury would be my first fight. Guess I'll have to settle for Artifice instead." The stranger cackled and extended their needle-like claws. Somewhere a woman screamed and what started as a gradual exodus turned into a panicked run as the crowd tried to flee from the impending confrontation….

Mason rose to his feet and ran towards the entryway to the ratty cantina then promptly took several steps back as he saw the two armored figures clashing in the cavernous metal corridor outside. On one side was Artifice… the Judicators were looking for him already it seems, it was the only reason why they would come down here. On the other… Arcadia sent Smiley to the moon? Smiley? Were they deliberately trying to make this plan backfire on them?

Mason was quite familiar with Smiley. The two of them had shared the same cellblock at New Alcatraz and the rogue operative was grateful it wasn't any closer then that. The armored sociopath had a penchant for violence and a cruel intelligence that always unsettled the brown-haired man. Reminded Mason of one of those old comicbook villains Paleman let him read about, the purple clown that was always harassing that guy dressed like a rat or something. And judging by the Inquisitor-class armor Smiley currently wore; he had made Stage Two of the conversion process. Only heaven knew how much of the man that was Smiley remained and Mason wasn't particularly in the mood to find out. Looking out into the street for the best way to make his exit, he heard something that made his blood run cold. “Fancy meeting you here Mason! I think you'll be a much better fight then gadget girl here."

Looks like getting off of the moon just got that much harder….