One Last Mission

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha
22 / 04 / 2120 of the Fourth Age, cont'd

The green light on the router was on. The satellite link was up, even though it was the middle of the day. Shire AgriCorp only pushed updates during the night. I stated the obvious.

"We've been hacked."

Azzie and Bebe stared at me as I took the dustcover off of my neural port and sat before the house's comm hub. The smaller, male Orc held Búrzi in his arms, and the cat let him stroke her fur. You'd never have guessed that minutes before he'd been pinned down and about to be violated by an Orc raider.

"You shouldn't do this," Azzie said. The Uruk was tense, ears splayed wide. "Let me!"

"Precious, we don't know who this is or what they're capable of. But they contacted me in the Pathfinder, and I'm the only one here legally. So maybe they don't know you or Bebe are here yet. If that's the case, I want to keep it that way," I said as I pulled the jack out of its sconce and guided it to the back of my skull. "If I start to convulse or anything, unplug me. I'd rather have an unplugged hangover than meat damage."

"Come back to me," Azzie said, her tone of voice so like my old sergeant sending us out on a mission for a moment that my heart almost stopped. Then she lifted her shirt, as if I was about to drive down to Bursar's. The great green globes looked even better close up. I could see the little bumps on her areola, the subtle shading as the bottom of her breasts, which got less sun, were more yellow than green.

Then the metal jack slid into place and locked. Awareness of my body vanished as my consciousness was propelled into that virtual space, defined my math and language. I appeared in the home system. A recreation of an office space where I could monitor the different functions of the house. Except I wasn't alone.

Someone hovered there. For a moment, I thought it was a generic avatar, like my own, Man-nish in shape, with brown hair, brown eyes, and off-white skin, clothing little more than a coat of paint on the generic humanoid body, though higher resolution, with more detail—then I noticed some of those details. There weren't any joints. Elbows, shoulders, knees, hips, the limbs just ended smoothly, the joints themselves perfect spheres. The more I looked, the more I realized how much work had gone into the avatar; the joints went down to the level of fingers and toes, and the clothes weren't just matte colors, but textured images. It represented dozens of hours of work and coding.

"This conversation is secure," the hacker said. "If anyone is looking, it looks like you're downloading a vast amount of Orc porn. Which you technically are."

She pointed to a flow of Elven script from the doorway that represented the satellite link to a folder on the virtual desktop.

"Thanks, I guess. Also for the warning," I said. "I'm Rowana Rowethasdottir. How long have you been spying on me?"

The hacker's head tilted. One eye winked.

"Call me Looseleaf. A few weeks," the voice was modulated, impossible to determine gender. "You came to my attention when you uploaded the data from the ground-penetrating radar. The structure you found, the forge, triggered a search subroutine. Someone had set it in case anyone found something in roughly the area you happened to settle on for your pipe-weed farm. I happened to be in the Shire AgriCorp system at the time, interrupted the search subroutine before it could report back. Thought maybe there was some info I could sell, so I've been...researching your situation."

The voice was synthesized, but not annoyingly so. If anything, it probably sounded more natural than mine.

"So why are you here now? Why the warning?" I asked.

Looseleaf seemed to hesitate. Deciding how much to tell me. She'd basically admitted to illegal system intrusion already.

"I started monitoring your situation. I know you saved the Orc from the slavers. I watched you kill the four men who came to take her back, through the house cameras. They were associated with the Crown Players, a Moon City gang, the ones who were supposed to receive the shipment."

"Azzie," I butted in. "Her name is Azzie."

"I started digging into Azzie. The people who made her..."

"Drake Industries," I said, then bit my virtual tongue, realizing I was maybe giving too much away.

"You know?" Looseleaf seemed taken aback.

"Azzie told me. Uruk-Hai. Vatgrown. Bred and born to be sex slaves for some rich assholes in the White City," I said. Didn't even try to hide my anger. It felt weird, talking about this out loud with someone else.

"More than that," Looseleaf said. "That code tattooed on her? That tracks to Drake Industries' military technology wing. She's a bio-weapon. A super-soldier. Grown using Saruman's original notes."

"Saruman?" I said, and this time it was my turn for surprise. I couldn't have been more shocked than if she had told me Azzie had been cloned from the first Orc from Utumno, or if her tits were spliced in from Troll DNA. "Super-soldier? I mean, she's strong, and a good shot, but she's four-foot-nothing and has tits like a pair of ripe melons and an ass that eats underwear. She showed me her memories; they built and trained her entire creche for sex."

"Saw her—you jacked straight across!?" Looseleaf's voice was aghast. "Do you want to fry your frontal lobes? Didn't they teach you better than that in Ranger school?"

"Yes! They did!" I bared my teeth, not that my avatar could show that. "It was stupid! I'm in love, okay!?"

That, in a way, thawed the ice between us better than global warming.

"Okay, not my business, it's just—whatever you saw, I think there's more to her than that. And if she managed to show you something coherent while jacked straight across, then there's definitely more to her than meets the eye. Most people can't do that. It's all random images, the mental equivalent of hormone-driven frantic groping in the dark."

Which, in a way, reminded me of when Azzie jjacked straight across that first time. The way she'd plundered my memories to learn Westron. I'd never heard of anyone doing that before.

Looseleaf continued on: "The White Hands have sets from Rivendell to Far Harad. They handle sex trafficking across Mordor. The Crown Players who ambushed you? They didn't deal with Drake Industries directly. They dealt with the White Hands; the Orcs have some sort of deal with the dragon. Now they all want to get your fuckbuddy back. When I saw that connection, I became more...invested. I have my own history with the White Hands."

That piqued my interest. "What kind of history?"

"One of the White Hand sets trafficked me. ****, addicted, abused. Sold me out, used me as a punching bag and cum rag. Filled my veins with poison and my holes with jizz and when I was used up they left me for dead in a dumpster with four necrotic limbs," Looseleaf said.

There was something about the tone of their voice that made me believe them. The worst part was, I could believe it. I had seen things in Harad. It was a hard life in some of the high villages, in the camps of the Dark Tree. Men, women, trans, they were all used up fast. Life was cheap enough out there; I couldn't imagine what it might be like in the major sprawls to the North.

"Fuck. I'm...sorry to hear that," I said, and tried to make it sound like I meant it.

"Thanks. So I've been keeping an eye on your house. Checking the traffic. Noticed the White Hands headed your way, during the day, locked and loaded—and I reached out," Looseleaf said. They paused to let that sink in. "Because I couldn't stand by and see somebody go through what I did. That's why I contacted you. But it's not over."

"They'll try again," I said. A statement, not a question. "More, next time."

"Probably," Looseleaf said.

"How does the forge we found tie into this?" I asked. She hadn't mentioned the ring, so neither did I.

"I don't know," Looseleaf admitted. "I'm not even sure it does. Could be a coincidence. The White Hands were probably just trying to recover your green girlfriend. Reclaim the dragon's property."

"Azzie is nobody's property," I said. Then added: "And...the White Hands might know about the forge. One of their scouts died trying to break into it. At first, I thought it was just a thief. They sent someone to check on him, Azzie talked to them. They left, peaceably. Then they came back with more bodies, more guns. When I was away."

For the first time, I wondered if they knew about the ring. That seemed impossible. Nobody who had seen one of us wear it had lived to tell the tale. But if they were looking for the forge, then...I didn't know.

"More than enough for one Uruk-Hai super-soldier," Looseleaf said, as they thought aloud. "Maybe there is a connection. But if that's the case, there's only one way to find out. Maybe get out of this mess."

"I'm listening," I said.

Looseleaf spread her hands. A three-dimensional image appeared in a blue-tinted sphere between her spread palms.

"This is Drake Industries' Black Labs complex. It's on the far side of the Mordor Plateau. Where your girlfriend was made," the hacker paused again. "I've got a contact, another hacker. They've been working on Drake Industries for a while. But the Black Labs system is isolated, disconnected from the Matrix. A digital realm of its own. We can't crack it from the outside..."

"...so you need somebody on the inside," I finished the thought. "You want me to infiltrate a top secret, secure megacorporate facility?"

"There's another wrinkle. My contact, they want somebody inside broken out. Someone Drake Industries took prisoner and is holding there. If we pool our resources, coordinate together...we might have a shot," Looseleaf said.

"And if we don't," I said. "Then Drake Industries or the White Hands or whomever tries again. More people, more firepower. We can't hold the farm forever. We could run, try to hide."

"That would be the smart play," Looseleaf said. The hacker's head shifted as she checked the battery reading. "Shit. Satlink is eating up too much of your electricity. Look, think it over. If you're in, contact me tomorrow."

Looseleaf handed me a calling card, and a little script wrote the contact info into my address book. Then they stepped through the Elven code-door back to the Matrix...and I shut the satlink off behind her, and logged out.

My eyes blinked rapidly, readjusted as I unplugged. Azzie and Bebe had left Búrzi curled in my lap. I unplugged the jack and saw that they'd removed the bodies from the house. Looked down at the silent feline on my thighs, who stared back at me.

"Well," I whispered to her. "One last mission."