More holo-ads filled the air around these, although none contained the leaping cat from the Major’s glitch. The chill that made the other people on the street pull their coats tight didn’t reach her as she threaded out of the habitat blocks and down through the narrow passages that led into the alley markets. A light rain was falling. A lot of people had umbrellas protecting their heads, but some either couldn’t afford such luxuries or, like the Major, would rather get wet than not have their hands free.
She had a motorbike in the underground vehicle dock that could have taken her in across the loops and curves of the city’s elevated highways, but something about the encounter in the Maciej the night before made her want to walk the distance to clear her mind. It wasn’t an impulse she could have articulated, just a vague need to draw herself out of her own head, to move through the city and get lost for a little while in the ebb and flow of ordinary humanity.
The concrete canyons of the alleys extended away in every direction for kilometers, ribbons of asphalt barely wider than a subway carriage but all of them crammed with teeming swarms of humanity, along with quite a few synthetics. Her old MA-1 repro flight jacket simply helped her blend in; many people who weren’t in the military liked to wear the clothing, in the hopes that it made them look tougher, less vulnerable.
Even at this early hour, with the sun just starting to climb over the peaks of the tallest habitat towers, the district was already busy. Vendors hawked all kinds of wares from every angle, some of them selling from inside makeshift bubble-tents or the gutted shells of cargo containers, fans of solar cells reaching up above them to provide power to lights or heater plates. Others worked out of their backpacks, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a blanket with a halo of goods spread out around them. The oldest and best-established pitches would actually have a veranda or maybe tables and chairs. The hot, greasy cooking smells of roasting meat and boiling noodles wafted up along the passages, mingling with the acrid tang of ozone and stale human sweat. The voices swirled around in a cacophony of languages, mostly Japanese, but enough others to make it sound like the whole world had gathered here to barter. The Major could credit neither her superior training nor unparalleled programming for her ability to ignore the clamor. Anyone who wanted to get anywhere on time in the city had learned to tune out distractions in order to arrive at their destination unhindered.
She joined the river of people moving westward, drifting with them at a walking pace. Many of the citizens passing by her were moving through worlds of their own, insulated from reality under digital hoods that fed them music or active video feeds, the enhanced media modules plugged directly into neural ports behind their ears. The more expensive modules provided not only sound and vision, but also a sensory component. It was possible to purchase high-end tech that would mask the real world with a virtual environment, so that if one preferred to walk through an art gallery or along a sunlit beach rather than down New Port City’s choked streets, it was easy to do so.
The Major felt a prickle on her skin—intellectually, she knew that was not physically possible, because her dermal layer was precisely, uniformly controlled from her mech-core’s central processor unit—but the psychosomatic response from her all-too-human brain made it feel real. She paid enough attention to the glowing yellow grids in the road to avoid being hit by traffic, but she also listened to her instinct, warily scanning the faces around her.
The Major reached the entrance to the National Security Force building that housed the Department of Defense Section Nine headquarters. There was nothing outside the building that indicated Section Nine was within. In fact, it would be hard to find Section Nine on any organizational chart of the city’s law enforcement hierarchy. Existing on a semi-covert level, the unit’s grant of an exclusive counter-terrorist mandate meant that its operations often took place outside the public eye, with oversight only from the highest levels of government. Section Nine’s corner of the public security arena went far beyond the remit of the more common crimes the police department dealt with, and they were situated above—figuratively and literally, in terms of floor placement—the special weapons and tactics divisions. In the articles of investiture that had allowed Section Nine to be created, there was vague language about “extraordinary threats” to the city’s security and public welfare, and provisions for “extreme response” to “unseen dangers.”
What that came down to in day-to-day operations was the use of a team of talented and diverse individuals—soldiers like the Major or Batou, former intelligence officers like Aramaki, or ex-cops like Togusa—to neutralize enhanced criminal and next-level terror threats.
It was a mission that made the Major feel like she was making a difference, and these days that was all that drove her onward.
Even on the primary floor entirely occupied by Section Nine, nothing about the place spoke to the unit’s elite nature. A small staff of admin bioroids and technicians did most of the office chores while the core team concentrated on investigation and arrests. Off the grid from the city’s other police units, they had no obvious precinct house for a potential enemy to target, and little footprint to leave them vulnerable to infiltration. If it wasn’t for the ornamental shield on the wall, the entire floor could have been mistaken for some small-scale corporate data farm.
The Major glanced at the shield as she passed it. Section Nine—Cyber Terror Response Division. Quite what the ministry thought of their near-clandestine unit wasn’t something that the Major or her team spent much time dwelling on. There was always another operation coming down the line, always another threat on the horizon.
The others were already in the building and followed the Major into the conference room. It was expansive and mostly bare. Couches ringed the walls, but the space was otherwise unfurnished. The evidence the team studied was mainly in the form of three-dimensional holograms; it would have been foolish to clutter up the central viewing area with a table and chairs.
As the team filed in, the Major sensed a familiar crackle of tension in the air—the same cocktail of anticipation and unspent energy she had experienced a hundred times before, on missions and out on the battlefield. Each member of the unit had been recruited because of a skill set that fitted Section Nine’s remit, each one of them in the top percentile of their capabilities. Of course, that also meant that their personalities didn’t quite always mesh, but in the field that never seemed to be a problem. Whatever their quirks or differences were outside of operations, all of them were professional enough to put them aside when the guns came out.
Batou, big and bearded, self-consciously ran a hand through his bleached hair and managed a wan smile at the Major. He looked troubled, but then he almost always did. Batou was her strong right arm out in the world, thanks to a firm partnership between them that had formed out of an unconscious acceptance that they worked well together. Before Section Nine, Batou had been a member of the Swedish Army’s Special Operations Group, and he took orders without question.
Togusa was the newest member of the team. The guy was pure police through and through. He retained the formality of his old detective unit, wearing a suit and tie on the job even in Section Nine. He was also a rarity in the city, a near-untouched natural human with no more than the most basic enhancement implants in his body—and still he had been putting away crooks bristling with cyber-tech at a rate that had earned him a bunch of commendations. The Major had warmed to the guy from the start; Togusa was honest and showed himself willing to get right into the thick of things.