The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

None of the Neurobics Crew got stung. But. The Armament got one old dear for illegal arms trading. Really. She and her son on the outside were dealing in illicit ordnance. That lady had the biggest, highest, roundest widow’s hump I’d ever seen, and I swear she was even more out of it than Jazza. It’s kind of sad and sick and funny at the same time.

Mandy has no time for sympathy. “We’re next.”

Gus is reading the paper and suddenly he drops it and says. “Holy shit. Have you seen this?”

He lays the paper out on the table. “It’s another job,” Gus says.

AGE RAGE ATTACK. VAOs use VAO again.

The CCTV rerun shows the whole thing. The little label says:

Chase Manhattan Bank NYC, 1:00 am this morning.

You’re looking at the inside of a vault and suddenly this iron door starts to rip. You see this claw widen the gap and then nip off some of the raggedy bits, and then they duck inside. This time my jaw drops.

This time they’re wearing firemen’s suits.

Walking exoskeletons that respond to movement pressure from the guys inside them. With training you can wear those things and walk through fire. You can lift up automobiles or concrete girders. You wear those things, you’re Superman for a day.

The old codgers don’t lurch anymore. Those suits weigh tons, but they dance. They duck and dive and ripple and flow. They shimmy, they hop, they look like giant trained fleas.

I’m saying over and over. “It’s brilliant. It’s fucking brilliant.”

I worked on those things. You see, you can’t send in rescue workers carrying hydrocarbon fuel or nuclear power on their backs and even those suits can’t carry enough ordinary batteries. So you beam the power at them. You beam microwaves. All you do if there is a disaster is you turn on your VAO, and the microwaves fuel the suits.

About the only people my software is programmed never to zap are rescue workers in exoskeletons.

Carte Blanche. We’ve given them Carte fucking Blanche and her sister Sadie too.

All four of them move like fingers playing piano. They scamper up to rows of strong boxes and just haul them out of the wall.

The suits already have these huge blue tubs on their backs. Nobody likes to say, but they’re for the body bags. The crew just dumps everything into them-heirloom jewellery and bearer bonds and old passports for new identities. Bullion or rare stamps. For the suits, it all just weighs a feather.

I say. “They’re not going for virtual. They’re going for atoms.”

Mandy turns and looks at me like I’m a lizard. “Well duh! That’s why they call it burglary.”

Just then the bank’s security guards come running in. They’re covered head to toe in foil, so they can’t be area-denied. They start shooting.

You’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the movement in those mechanical arms. The old guys inside don’t have to do a thing. The arms just weave magic carpets in the air. And they go ping ping ping like harps as the bullets hit off them, and they flash like fireworks.

Then the suits coil and spring, and one of them grabs a guard by his head and throws him three yards straight into the wall. The guard kinda hangs there for a second and starts to slide down it. Through the back of the silver suit, blood gets sprayed in a pattern like a butterfly. The guard hits the ground stays sitting, his head dumped forward. He looks like the bridegroom after a stag party.

I don’t see what happened to other guards, but it looked messier. He’s nothing but a shape in the corner.

And then these beautiful suits turn to the cameras and wave like astronauts. They put a hand on each other’s shoulders. And they dance off in line, like Dorothy and her tin men.

And Jazza is still staring at the strip lights.

I say, “This is one problem we gotta own.”

Mandy barks a laugh. “Hell, I was thinking of running off and joining them. That looked like a lotta fun.”

“Those guards got kids,” says Gus. From the look on his face, I don’t think he likes Mandy much right now.

“We gotta get information and we gotta get it to the cops.” I tell them. “We all got to start hacking. I can get into SecureIT.”

Gus is still in pain. He can’t get the guards out of his head. “You reckon the company that sold that video will use any of the money to help their families?”

Thug says. “What do we hack?”

I got this one sussed. “They either bought those suits or they stole them. Either way they’ll be a transaction or a report. The manufacturers are called…”

Great, I draw a blank. I hate this, I really hate this. Just before despair comes, I remember the name. “XOsafe. XOsafe Ltd. They’re in Portland.”

Mandy cuts in. “The first thing I’m doing is take care of my own business so I have some money. That’ll take a while.” Suddenly she looks down and says in lower voice. “Then maybe I can look at who the guys in the crews are, OK?”

It’s probably as close to an apology as Mandy can get. Since nobody ever apologised to her.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she tells me and goes off.

I go and give Bessie a call. “How ya doing, babe?”