PRECOGNITION: Part 53
Rat glared at the walls of the ‘waiting room.’ Stewing in her anger. Every once in a while she’d get up and kick at the door until her foot hurt and she had to sit down again. Nothing she did seemed to matter. She got screwed regardless of what she did or who she was working for.
She checked her phone one more time. No signal, no way of getting in touch with the outside world. She was out of the loop, separated from Karen, locked up for hours without anyone to talk to.
It drove her up the wall. There was no more terrible punishment for a hacker than to be cut off from the supply of information.
Eventually she exhausted herself. She fell asleep on the room’s only concession to furniture, a crude plastic bench bolted to the wall. Tossing and turning fitfully until the sound of the door startled her awake. She staggered to her feet and, dazed as she was, prepared for a fight.
The moment a man walked in, she leaped at him without hesitation. He caught her in his arms and hugged her right back.
“Tell me it’s really you,” she whispered. Moisture prickling at the corners of her eyes.
“In the flesh,” Jock said softly. He pulled back and looked at her over the rims of his glasses, his coffee-coloured cheeks dimpled in a smile. “Did you miss me?”
“Bastard. You utter bastard. I’ve been worried sick about you, and that’s the first thing you say?”
“You don’t waste any time jumping down my throat, huh, Lex?” He chuckled, nuzzling her hair. “I’ve been looking all over for you, you know. You were ghosting for days, and I can’t really leave Cloud City with the situation down there. People know I’m close to Hideo. I’m liable to get snatched or killed in the Goddamn street.”
Rat frowned. She didn’t think things were that bad . . . And something about Jock seemed off. Not entirely at ease. Every now and again, a tiny muscle twitched under his left eye, like he were trying and failing to wink.
“So you’ve been here the whole time?” she asked. Searching his eyes for something. Anything. She could read the stress in his body language, the tension in his shoulders. He should’ve said something about it by now, she thought. He should’ve complained.
Nodding, Jock took her hand and led her out into the hall. They were the only ones there. Blank, pastel-coloured walls stretched out on both sides. Rat shuddered. It was eerily reminiscent of the Fed building in Hong Kong, and Jock’s blasé attitude didn’t make it feel any more welcoming.
He said, “Hideo needs his friends now more than ever. I don’t think he has many left.”
“Really? After he had them all shot?”
“Look, Lex, you don’t know Hideo like I do. He’s not a murderer.”
She gave a cynical, contemptuous snort. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think, Jockster. I just saw him give the order to paint a room in Banshee-brains. An unarmed prisoner. Blammo.” She mimed firing a gun under her chin. Jock tried to respond, but she continued right over him. “Don’t say it ain’t the same as pulling the trigger, and don’t ever tell me I don’t understand. Got that?”
Jock looked at her for a long time. Maybe deciding whether or not she was telling the truth. Finally he took a deep breath, and tapped his pocket. For a brief instant, the lights in the hallway dimmed, flickering like a damaged fluorescent tube. He’d done something, and now he was grabbing Rat’s shoulders, looking serious. He took her through a side door, which turned out to contain an emergency stairwell.
“I believe you,” he said softly. “But he’s still my friend, and this is still the middle of Cloud City, okay? It isn’t safe. Take the fucking hint already.”
She glanced around, looking for cameras and listening devices, even though she already knew they’d be invisible to the naked eye. Jock squeezed her shoulders tighter. “Okay! Okay, Jock, I get it. I’ll be as subtle as a really subtle thing.”
She noticed the lights flicker again. A feeling of unseen attention washed over her, as if some predator were stalking her from a set of imaginary bushes. Exactly what human sense was ringing those alarm bells, she didn’t know. Just that it was something old, primal, and more than a little creepy.
“So what’s the game plan?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“Walk with me. I’ll fill you in along the way.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see when we get there. Don’t worry, you’ll like it.”
The grin on Jock’s face was not at all reassuring. Rat listened and mentally prepared herself for . . . pretty much anything.
“Welcome to casa Jock,” he said. Where exactly they were in the King’s castle, Rat couldn’t tell, but after a brisk walk and a long ride on the elevator, the place had begun to look less like a prison. The carpets returned, the nice sandstone and other medieval trappings, along with subtle hints of modern convenience woven into the whole.
Now she was looking at the Cloud City equivalent of a bachelor pad. None of the stylish furniture saw much use. The sumptuous black leather, the polished glass, none of it had a speck of dust and the kitchen even less so. The only item which showed any sign of wear or tear was the giant VR rig taking up most of the far wall. The air blowing from the heat exchanger shimmered like a desert mirage.
“So this is where you’ve been these past few weeks,” she said. A tiny note of bitterness might have crept into her voice just then, remembering all the times she’d been manhandled, drugged, threatened, shot at, and more.
“Working, yeah. Trying to save us all from the impending info-pocalypse. You may recall.” He took a VR crown out of its cradle and handed it to her. “In the minutes when I wasn’t scouring the entire city for a certain somebody.”
She felt a smile creep up on her despite herself. “I’ve been around. Guess you weren’t doing a very good job.”
“You are such a bitch.”
They fell into each other’s arms, flowing from embrace to kiss and back again. Rat found herself breathing quietly into his shoulder, eyes shut tight, happier than she would ever admit. Wires dangling down her hands and back. Jock was a jackass, but he was her jackass.
“Alright,” she murmured as she started to fit her crown into place, “tell me the game plan.”
The goggles slipped over her eyes, transporting her to the virtual wonderland of Main Street in the time it took her to blink. She materialised as her usual computer-self. The avatar was stored in an implanted data chip and travelled everywhere with her. She took a moment to orient herself, to let her brain acclimatise to the visual chaos and flashing colour. Buildings and people made of every substance real or imagined, into every shape the mind could process — and even a few that only made sense to computers.
Jock appeared next to her as some trench-coated tough guy she didn’t even recognise. He gave her a sideways glance, sunglasses on, and started a casual walk down the middle of the street. Rat kept pace beside him. With a gesture, Jock conjured up a repulsion field which made everyone else within a certain distance simply disappear. It offered them a little more privacy as he sucked in a deep breath and prepared to talk.
“The game plan is to ride things out. We’ve been working on a local countermeasure against Gabriel’s bots, and I think we’re almost there. We can shield Laputa from the worst of it. It’ll buy us valuable time, enough to get the political situation back to some form of sanity.”
Stopping in mid-movement, Rat did a double-take. “Ride it out?” she quoted. Searching his eyes for some sign of levity. There was none. “My God, you’re actually serious. Are you fucking stupid?”
“I love it when we fight,” he replied, rich with sarcasm.
“No, Jock, I’m not fucking around. Gabriel ain’t some comic book villain who’s gonna take his time after he flips the switch. If we let him do this, that’s it. Game over. He wins.”
“Lex . . . We can’t stop it.” He sighed, sunglasses staring at the floor. “The Fifteen are broken up. Half the Nations still don’t have a proper government, and the few that aren’t in chaos wouldn’t trust us to wipe their noses. Nobody trusts anybody anymore. We simply can’t rally the manpower to fight this thing head-on.”
“So your alternative is to just let it happen?”
“I don’t see what else we can do.”
Rat felt her fists clench of their own accord. Anger roiled in the pit of her stomach, and she grabbed the front of Jock’s coat, dragging him into an alley. Running a little program to encrypt everything she said to him. She shoved him up against the wall and held him there.
“Wake up, Jockey boy!” she shouted at him. “Stop being such a damp squib and actually think! Ever since we found out about this mess with Gabriel, things have been going from bad to worse. Somebody is doing their damnedest to make sure the Nations won’t be putting up a united front. And with every passing day, who’s the only one that appears to be profiting from the situation? Your dear old friend Hideo.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s trying his best to put everything back together!”
“You just said it yourself, Jock. We’re divided. Nobody trusts anybody. I think that’s the way he wants it, until the big bomb goes off and old Kensei wanders onto the stage as our gracious fucking saviour. They’re in this together somehow. I just know it.”
He brushed her hands off and fixed his coat. “Lex, I’m not blind. Hideo is a little out of control, sure. But without him we wouldn’t even have known about the botnet. How do you explain that?”
“He needed a reason, didn’t he?” she shot back. “He had to get the Fifteen together in Laputa. Remember what happened to them.”
“You . . .” Jock’s face went through a range of uncomfortable expressions. His Adam’s apple bobbed, swallowing. “Jesus. What if you were right, Lex? What would we do?”
“If I’m right, we’re gonna need evidence. We–“
The words died on her lips when another avatar sprang into being next to them. She immediately recognised Kensei’s armoured knight, opening his visor to greet them.
“It’s good to see you two reunited at last,” he murmured. “You can thank me later. David, I need a progress report on the countermeasures. We don’t have time to dilly-dally. Can you walk me through it right now?”
Jock nodded stiffly. “Um. Sure. I’ll get us back to the local network.”
Rat remained quiet, but she followed along and watched closely. Ranking or no ranking, the big picture was finally coming into focus, and she didn’t like it one bit. She was tired of making deals with the devil. She still had a conscience somewhere. It wouldn’t stay silent, and — she knew — neither would she.
The countermeasure wasn’t much to write home about. Just a crude hack which would divert the zombies into a virtual machine, letting them shut down fake systems while the real ones stayed up and running. The challenge, and the most time-consuming part of the job, was getting the hack to work on the thousands of different machines in Laputa. Every possible configuration had to be catered for. Every permutation of parts and software.
No wonder Jock couldn’t make it work worldwide. That’d take an army.
Rat kept her eyes on Hideo for the whole tour. He was all smiles, like old buddies and business partners. She remembered the cracks appearing in his facade, down in the belly of that data vault, but here he was the ultimate politician. If he was upset about the loss of a large chunk of the Laputan economy, you couldn’t tell by looking at him.
“Good work, David,” he said at the end. “Get Alex to help you. You should be able to cover all essential systems in Laputa, if you don’t spend too much time on . . . recreation.”
There was a moment of awkward silence while Jock tried to decide whether he wanted to get offended or not, and Rat bit her tongue on an immediate surge of anger. She might’ve spoken up, but she couldn’t find the words to express how upset she was. Then Hideo laughed and slapped his old friend on the shoulder. Dispelling the uncomfortable atmosphere with a smile.
“Lighten up! It was a joke!” He glanced over his shoulder at Rat, just for a moment. Her avatar’s face was blank and expressionless. If he could’ve seen her actual state of mind, he’d probably throw her right back into a cell. “I have full confidence in you. Both of you.”
“Then let us work, alright?” said Jock. “The sooner I can get Lex up to speed, the better. There’s other things you could be micromanaging.”
“Always the impatient one. You really haven’t changed a bit, have you, David?” Hideo chuckled, then waved away the question. “I’ll keep you updated. I’d appreciate if you did the same.”
The shiny suit of armour faded out of existence. Rat flicked a glance at her system monitor, to make sure he had really left, and wasn’t just hiding to spy on them. Astonishingly, it seemed like there was nothing up his sleeve this time.
Maybe she was paranoid. Maybe everyone ought to be.
Jock let himself fall backwards. A chair popped into existence to catch him, and he landed with an unhappy oof. The strain was starting to show even on his avatar. He looked . . . different. Older than she remembered him. There were lines in his face she didn’t recognise. He’d always been a skinny little fuck, but Rat could tell he’d lost weight.
“Sorry it couldn’t be a happier reunion, Lex,” he said.
“Forget about that! We’re together, right? We can do this.”
“Do what?” he shot back. A flash of irritation came over him. “What the fuck do you expect me to do? Turn on my best friend? Bring down the only government we have left? Even if that sounded like a good idea, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
She frowned. “Are you sure about that? ‘Cause I heard the resistance has been getting help from an anonymous insider, and I’m starting to wonder who it might be.”
“Great. You worked it out. Give yourself a Goddamn medal,” he grumped. “What good has it done? I gave them all the intel I could, and now Banshee’s dead, and Kohler doesn’t stand a chance by herself. That leaves . . . Who, exactly? Simon and his dysfunctional friends? Give me a break. I’m through with that maniac bossing me around when we’ve got our own solution right here.”
Stepping forward, Rat straightened her fingers and brought her open palm across Jock’s face. The movement was simulated, but the pain was real, beamed into his brain by the VR crown. As was the disorientation when his head whipped to the side. He nearly fell out of his imaginary chair.
“If no one else’ll do it, then it’s up to us,” she decreed. “We’re in the middle of Cloud City, Jock! If we can’t find any proof here, it doesn’t exist, and you can clear him of suspicion once and for all. But if it does . . . We can blow this whole thing wide open.”
He touched his cheek, then turned to look at her from under half-closed lids. “You really are crazy.”
“That’s right, and you can’t talk me out of it. With or without you, Jock. Your choice.”
Little gears ground away in Jock’s mind, still pretending to weigh his options. As if he could say no. By now she knew him better than he knew himself, and he responded to leadership. A certain dominant touch, giving him a job to focus on, giving him purpose. Not that he’d ever admit it. He was still a product of hacker culture.
“You are a bad influence on me, Lex,” he sighed. “Tell me your plan.”
Rat smiled and leaned in to kiss him. “First,” she murmured softly against his lips, “we code.”
The rush of it never went away. To stitch together blocks and modules at the speed of light, even write whole streams of information by hand, and then shave off every byte of unnecessary weight until the application was honed to a razor edge. She moved like she had a purpose.
In that moment, her body dancing next to Jock’s in the VR rig, she knew beyond doubt what she wanted — needed — in this world. First, to be a hacker. Second, her boy at her side. Third, to feel like she was doing some good in the world. Maybe make up for some past mistakes. That kind of thing.
She finished off another application and threw it into her personal data folder. Another soldier in her digital army. So far it was mainly decoys, things to distract Cloud City’s electronic security and the people manning it. She was especially proud of the little utility that’d turn a local group of fire alarms on and off at random. Spoofing flame-like graphics on the camera feeds. Jock didn’t seem convinced, but Rat knew it was going to be fun.
“You give these guys too much credit,” she told him. “By the time they figure out it’s not a real emergency, we’ll have been in and out of Hideo’s little ‘throne room’. No sweat.”
“I’m with you, Lex, but do you really think Kensei is the type to leave incriminating evidence just lying around?”
 ”If he’s as dirty as I think he is, he can’t hide everything. Besides, he’s Japanese. He’ll have a running record of everything up to and including his daily bowel movements.”
“You’re an awful, awful racist, you know that?”
“Yeah? Suck it up, sweet cheeks.”
“You know you still haven’t told me what my role’s supposed to be in this adventure.”
“It’ll be easy. You just make your way into Hideo’s office and snoop around.”
That summation didn’t go over well. Jock nearly had kittens, especially because she kept smiling at him. She cut him off by grabbing a handful of his balls.
“Shut up and think. If they find you there, it’s the King’s best friend dropping in to discuss important business. If they find me, I get the chop for treason. If they find both of us, maybe we can get executed together!”
He gave a grudging nod, beads of sweat forming on his forehead at being caught in such an intimate grip. He put a hand on her elbow but she didn’t let go. He moaned, “Alright, I see your point, but I’m no good at being the action guy. That was always Simon. Not me.”
“I know. It’s not like I’ve ever run support before.” She gave him another little squeeze before letting go. His physical feedback was set to full, and she liked making him grunt. “I can handle it if you can.”
“I . . . I can do it. But I want a promise from you,” he insisted. “Promise me that if we don’t find anything, you’ll leave him alone, and we can get on with things. That’s all I want.”
Rat searched his eyes, surprised by the question. “Okay, Jock. Okay.”
There was real fear and worry in his eyes, but he put a brave face on it as his avatar faded out of existence. Logging off. Probably aiming to work himself up for his big performance.
She followed suit, blinked as the real world assaulted her eyes, and hung up her VR crown. The sudden need for attention was overwhelming. Something to take her mind off the pressure. She ran after Jock and pounced on him, dragged him to the bed, pushed him down. She started to peel away her clothes. Nudging the bra straps off her shoulders. Letting her panties show through the undone fly of her jeans. He eventually got the message.
“We’ll be okay,” she assured him, smiling as she gyrated. “We’ll win, and everything’s gonna be fine.”
PRECOGNITION: Part 52
“You know, I’m really sick of AIs,” said Gina. “Get us the Hell out of here, Major.”
Lunging for the hatch, Hawthorn shoved his rifle in the gap before it could close. The motors whined and, grinding against the obstruction, died a fiery death. Smoke poured from the maintenance panel as bits blew out one by one. Hawthorn wrenched the rifle out again and ran to the other hatch, but couldn’t reach it in time. He slammed his fist against it in frustration.
“Gonna be a little difficult now, Gina,” he growled. “Every security measure on board will be active, intelligent and after our asses!”
“That’s something of an overstatement. My orders are very clear regarding the safety of Miss Gina while she’s detained. However, Master Gabriel was less specific about you.” There was a tiny hesitation in its speech, as if distracted by some background process. “Speaking of people with limited lifespans, where is Dusther?”
Hawthorn frowned. “You’re expecting an honest answer? I thought you said ‘artificial intelligence’ doesn’t mean ‘gullible.'”
“Fair point. In a few minutes it won’t matter anyway.”
A deep, metallic thud echoed from the stern of the ship. The deck began to move beneath their feet. A few things slid off the secretary’s desk from the hard, listing turn.
“Just so you know,” the Sword went on, “all our lifeboats will be sealed this time.”
Gina and Hawthorn exchanged a look. She steadied herself against the bulkhead and said, “Was that what I think it is?”
“We’re undocking,” he swore under his breath. They both knew that soon the ship would be too far off the ground for any kind of escape. He bashed his rifle butt against the hatch out of sheer frustration. No amount of violence would get them through there. “Damnit, where are you taking us?!”
The Sword made a noise somewhere between laughter and complete indifference. It didn’t have to answer, and made that fact perfectly obvious with a deafening silence.
The airship yawed slowly in a half-circle, started to rise out of the big plastic lattice of the airship dock. Gina pressed her forehead against the porthole behind the secretary’s desk and watched Laputa fall away below her. The idea of getting captured again, of being at the whims of Gabriel and his stupid pet computer, began to burn like a lump of hot coal in her chest. Somebody was always trying to lock her up in a tower somewhere. As usual, nothing would ever change unless she changed it.
“We’re getting out of here,” she said. “And I’m gonna crash Gabe’s little party whether he likes it or not.”
She pushed Hawthorn aside and reached out to probe the unyielding hatch door. Her fingers and her mind glided over the smooth metal, exploring, studying its tiniest cracks. She could see now. Not just people, but objects, the way her ripples bounced off them and left a clear outline in her mind.
It was nothing like the old days, staggering around in a Spice-induced haze as if her brain were wrapped in plastic. She felt so far beyond that now. Like, after years of stumbling around in darkness, emerging into the open air for the very first time.
Spreading her search outward, she sounded every inch of the thick bulkheads. High quality, nanomesh-reinforced steel. Hard enough to take a missile strike without buckling. This was the airship equivalent of an armoured car. However, Gina was betting there’d be a cubbyhole somewhere. A secret way out in case the ship got boarded. If there was, she would find it.
After the bulkheads didn’t offer anything, she made her way around the secretary’s desk and placed her fingers on the smooth, polished deck. It didn’t take her long to penetrate the thinner plates. Jackpot, she thought.
A hidden crawlspace ran below the floor and disappeared into the bowels of the airship. A route Hawthorn clearly didn’t know about. It wouldn’t be in the official floor plan, probably hidden from mechanical scanners. Gina felt really proud of herself for a second. Only . . . she couldn’t tell how to open it. There was no obvious line between the desk and the tunnel. If it worked on some kind of disguised switch or computer command, they might never find it.
“Fuck it,” she said. She reached into her bag and took out Bomber’s laser gun. Aimed it at the floor, pulled the trigger.
The invisible beam touched metal. It heated up instantly, hissing and spitting smoke in little blue clouds. The cleverly-disguised hinge melted and burned away with repeated lashings of the beam, and finally gave way with a pop. Gina wormed her fingers into the gap — the part of it that was cool enough to touch — and lifted the floor panel away. The cramped space underneath bristled with dangerous-looking wires and fluid lines, but it looked big enough to crawl through.
This time, when she held out a hand to Hawthorn, there was no fear or revulsion in his eyes. He gazed open-mouthed like a newly-minted worshipper at his Messiah.
“We need some parachutes and an exit, Major,” she murmured. “Wanna go find them?”
He nodded slowly, and went first into the tunnel as her bodyguard, rifle in hand. They weren’t out of the woods yet.
“I can see you,” the Angel’s Sword pointed out. Its voice echoed in from somewhere, distant but around. It had taken on a wheedling, persuasive note. “I also know exactly where all the ducts lead out. On the other hand, if you surrender, I promise no one will be hurt.”
Ignoring that voice was harder than Gina would’ve imagined. Its pitch and resonance played on you, immaculately tuned to affect the human brain. It was the sound of perfect physical and psychological science. Hawthorn’s military training helped him get through it, but Gina only had her own willpower to defend herself.
They reached an intersection, and Hawthorn aimed his rifle down them at random. Looking for targets. “Which way?” he asked.
“Up. You’re sitting on the controls.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Gina pushed him out of the way and studied the little panel recessed in the floor. It operated the hatch leading below, but Sword had obviously gotten to it first. The screen blinked on and off with some kind of critical error. It didn’t respond to her touch at all.
Time for more vandalism then. She put the muzzle of her laser against it and pulled the trigger.
The beam bored through the plastic screen. The gel inside burst outward like popping corn, then ablated away to nasty, yellow smoke. Gina didn’t have Rat’s experience or delicate touch, so she had to dig around, turning the beam this way and that to find the lock’s electronic heart. Eventually it made a loud clunk and opened access to the emergency mechanism. A wheel and a ratchet. High-tech stuff.
Hawthorn took the wheel and wrestled it to the unlocked position, then worked the ratchet until sweat dripped from his eyebrows, opening the hatch a few millimetres with each stroke. The Major’s eyebrows raised when he realised just how thick the steel was. It looked like it could withstand repeated atom bombs.
“Where does this go?”
She answered his question with a devious smile. “Engine room.”
“Like it. I’ll follow you.”
She swung her legs over the edge, let herself slide down the curving shaft. The walls closed in even tighter, so she tied her bag to her ankle and crawled on. The exit wasn’t far.
Suddenly, a string of explosions echoed from behind her like a pack of firecrackers going off. Gunfire. Several short bursts, interspersed with more mad ratcheting. She had to clamp her hands over her aching ears to protect them as she kneed and elbowed her way to the last hatch. She wedged her back against the wall, wrapped her fingers around the laser’s grip, and reached out again.
She flowed out through the walls. Sensed the shape of the tunnel, the vast space of the engine room and its spinning turbines. Sharp edges of two security robots lying in ambush. Predictable, but not the only thing Sword had planned. To her right, down the tunnel, Hawthorn shimmied his way towards her. Moving backwards, guarding their rear.
“I don’t think our artificial friend wants us here,” he called over his shoulder. “One less robot to worry about, though.”
“Just stay close. He’ll take pot shots at you, but he won’t risk me getting hurt by a stray bullet.”
“Are you sure you wanna second-guess an AI?”
“I’m not. I’m second-guessing Gabriel, and I know exactly what goes on in his head.”
The laser lashed out again, drilling into the controls. The weight of it felt reassuring in her hand, the way her Mk5 used to. Only this time she had a lot more power to work with. Little wisps of steam began to rise as she held down the trigger. The cooling fins on the laser’s side glowed a faint red. Even the grip was getting uncomfortably hot.
Swearing, she finally had to let go. She tossed the gun from hand to hand until it cooled down enough to hold again, blew on her singed knuckles, and went to work on the burnt controls with her boot heel. They gave out after a few solid kicks, unlocking another wheel and ratchet.
Glancing at Hawthorn, she said, “Give me a grenade. You brought grenades, right?”
“Silly question.” He pulled two of the little black spheres from the carabiner on his belt. They had blue streaks down the side, and a big red button under a clear flip-top cover. “Variable fuse EMP, should fry everything in the room. The timer is however long you hold down the button.”
“Got it.”
As soon as the Major started ratcheting, she forced the grenades through the gap, throwing them in amongst the rapidly-retreating bots. They couldn’t get away fast enough. A brief thump, a crackle like arcing electricity, and a metal crash as eight pairs of spidery legs failed at once. Gina glanced through the gap and found one still active, but unable to lift itself off the catwalk floor. It couldn’t turn its guns to fire at anybody. She helped to crank the hatch the rest of the way and slipped through.
The engine room was a long, wide space crammed in underneath the habitable sections. An oblong bowl shape full of spinning turbines, drive-shafts and other oily mechanical bits. Metal catwalks ran between them to give access to all the machinery. Most of the electronic controls lay in ruins from the EMP blast, bits of burnt wire and melted circuit boards leaking out between the seams.
Hawthorn jumped out of the duct and stopped to sniff the air. “Smells like burnt plastic, smoke, and knockout gas. I’d put a mask on.”
Gina quickly dug around in her bag for a breath protector and goggles. They fit awkwardly over her holomask, pressing the needles harder into her skin, but there wasn’t time to take it off. The Major had already done the same.
“Alright, so you’ve seen through most of the simple tricks,” Sword’s voice flowed out of the intercom speakers. “Let me just point out one thing. Even if you manage to disable the engines, this isn’t an aeroplane. You’ll still be stuck in the middle of the sky. You could technically pop the balloon . . . But then we’d be coming down a little bit faster than you’d like. Your options are surrender or suicide.”
Smiling, Gina took two more of the little grenades from Hawthorn’s belt. These were a little different, with red and yellow streaks all over them. It didn’t take a genius to guess what they would do.
“Surrender isn’t an option,” she said. “Not ever.”
She flipped open the covers, pressed the buttons, and threw them both into the primary turbine.
A sharp, awful rattle assaulted Gina’s ears as the grenades were sucked inside. Rapidly-spinning blades ripped themselves to bits against the hard outer shell. Then the fuses lit off, and the turbine interior changed into hot shrapnel.
She’d already hit the deck, and Hawthorn joined her just in time. The turbine housing bulged outward from the expanding force inside, then burst into a million pieces. Sharp metal scattered in every direction, ricocheted off the walls and tumbled madly through the air. The floor heaved, a tremor rolling through the whole ship, and Gina took delight in it. She did this. It gave her a rush of power and control, changing the world around her on a whim.
“I’ll figure something out. At least this way he can’t take us out of Laputa. There’s a lot of things I’d rather do than go swimming in the West Pacific.” She paused and glanced through the cracked glass of the control room. “There should be a switch for balloon pressure around here, right?”
“Not one that works, now. Even if it did, that damn AI would have its bits all over it. But we might be able to reach the manual valves from here.”
He picked his way across the buckling catwalk, avoided all the sharp chunks of turbine blade sticking out or littering the floor, and waved Gina to follow him around the corner. A narrow hatch was hidden there between some storage containers. With the power out, the manual controls didn’t need any persuasion. They opened automatically.
He gave Gina an impatient look as she tiptoed through the debris. “Come on! This leads to the balloon supports. We can open up the gas pumps and let some air in.”
Again, Sword’s voice flowed from a distant speaker somewhere, a hollow sound trapped between plastic walls. “Not to try and dissuade you,” it said dryly, “but if you improperly deflate the balloon, everyone aboard will die. Not just yourselves. The innocent staff, and probably a number of civilians on the ground. Thought you might be interested.”
“Too bad,” said Gina. She followed Hawthorn up the long ladder and came out into the balloon substructure. Looking around with a sense of wonder.
It was like being in the rafters of some futuristic cathedral.
The space was at least two stories high, slightly bigger around than the gondola, supported by beams and arches of nanotube-reinforced aluminium. Colourful pipework and electrical wires followed the contours of the ceiling. A few of the lines merged into the balloon’s gas compartments, but Gina couldn’t begin to guess where some of the others went.
Hawthorn looked around for the controls, and pointed toward the stern. All the pipes came together in a forest of valves and motors. He was there before Gina even reached the top of the ladder. “Bingo! Just have to figure out which one is the–“
The rush of feeling was immediate, intense. Six lines of heat and pain pierced her chest. Then it all vanished into numbness, shock, gonging through her. Fingers instinctively went to touch the bullet holes, to keep in the warm red blood. Or rather, the places where the holes should be. She hadn’t been shot.
“Hawk,” she whispered. Then, as a wave of panic restarted her heart, “Hawk!”
She practically vaulted onto the deck, scrambled towards the prone body of Major Hawthorn. Blood pooling beneath him. A security droid appeared from its ambush spot next to the manual controls, crawling out to finish the job. Barrels tracking while it emerged from the pipework.
Gina’s laser caught it just below the camera cluster. Black smoke billowed everywhere the beam touched. The robot jerked back, but there was no room for it to dodge; she ran straight at it, scorching black furrows in its armour. Backing it into a corner. Then, suddenly, its weapon arm twitched and snapped two taser prongs into place under the barrel. Gina’s eyes went wide. She dropped just in time to watch thousands of volts of electricity arc through the air above her.
She took aim again, but too late. The droid bunched its spidery legs under its body and jumped up onto the ceiling, dangling like a bug, and skittered away through the supports. Gina screamed in frustration and held the trigger down. Sweeping the beam across the underside of the balloon until the whole space was dark with smoke.
Finally she threw the useless, overheating thing down and rushed to Hawthorn’s side. His eyes were open but glazed over, breath coming in shallow gasps. Gina bit her lip. Her hands hovered over the holes in his chest, but she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Hang in there, you bastard,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare die on me now!”
“Can’t tell me . . . what to do,” he coughed. A bloodstained grin on his face. “Not–Not in the chain of command.”
He managed to raise one arm, indicating the rightmost valve on the control panel. She grabbed his trembling hand and shook her head in violent denial. “No! I’m in charge here. Bomber would never forgive me if I didn’t bring you back.”
“I believe this is where I come in,” echoed Sword. Warbling from a little speaker on the damaged security droid. “We have an infirmary on board. Controlled properly, the autodoc could save the good Major’s life. But only if you leave that pressure valve well enough alone.”
The tiny lifeline made Gina’s heart skip and her mind race. Doubt and fear sat like a lump of ice in her chest. “Why the fuck would I trust you?” she demanded, looking over her shoulder.
“Because otherwise the world will have to do without Andrew Horatio Hawthorn, Major, Geneva cell of the United States Armed Resistance. My orders are to keep you here. If that requires fixing him up, so be it.”
She looked down at the expiring spark in front of her. Black, soft death slowly smoothing out its ripples in the firmament. Biting her lip, she made her decision.
“You’d better fucking appreciate this, Hawk,” said Gina as she manhandled the Major onto an operating table. He convulsed, coughing up blood, and it took all her remaining strength to strap his limbs down one at a time. Sweat dripped from her forehead. Her clothes clung to her skin but she barely even felt them.
The infirmary was a mass of shiny, padded plastic. Pastel walls, blue ceiling, white everything else. There wasn’t a sharp corner or hard edge in sight except for the tightly-folded metal flower suspended from the ceiling.
Gina had never seen an autodoc like this before. It looked only half-finished, as if someone built it in a garden shed, rough and unpainted. Many of its robotic arms ended in weird tools that no hospital should ever need. All of them showed signs of frequent use.
She ran her fingers through her hair and whispered, “What on Earth does he do in here?”
“Research,” Sword answered curtly. “Illegal nanotech is a cutting-edge business, you know. Stand back.”
A pithy reply died on her lips. She moved away from the table and watched the evil-looking thing descend on Hawthorn’s body. It took her a while to realise she was covered up to her elbows in blood. Smears of it on her face, in her hair. Dull surprise throbbed behind her eyes as she held up red-stained fingers. Waggled and studied them.
Flashback of being pressed into service as Bomber’s triage nurse, working in a detached haze to patch a single bullet hole. The same feeling of warm, sticky ooze drying on her fingers.
She swallowed, queasy and uncomfortable, and tried to shift her attention back to Hawthorn. Bad idea. His chest had been folded open like a blooming pink flower, poked and prodded by several of the delicate arms. They injected gobs of silvery paste deep into each bullet track. Millions of crawling nanorobots, moving with a mind of their own, knitting things back together at the smallest scale. When Hawthorn spat up another mouthful of blood, it was flecked with tiny metal dots.
“Are– Are those Hephaestus?” Gina asked. Not sure she wanted to know the answer.
“One of many derivative designs. We don’t have a working original. That, you might say, is what the problem has been all along.”
Gina couldn’t feel any more shock than she was already under. She took a few trembling steps to the sink in the corner and tidied herself a little. Red water rushing down the shiny white drain. Doing her very best not to hear the soft, wet sounds behind her.
“So that’s why you were after Colonel Obrin?” she ventured. “He was convinced you had them, so you’re shit out of luck there. Got to love the irony.”
“That wasn’t the goal. We were never expecting to find the originals. However, somewhere in the good Colonel’s head is every blueprint, every project meeting, every internal memo. Things which can’t be learned from a few dead shells. He’s well-trained, but he can’t keep secrets forever.”
“Why?”
“I . . .” The AI actually paused. “I’ve spent a lot of spare cycles on that question.”
“Don’t tell me Gabriel never let you in on it.”
“He’s used to keeping secrets from everybody. He is very good at it.” The robotic arms folded Hawthorn’s chest shut and sprayed a thick layer of skin-bond over the incisions. “There, stable enough for purpose. Just add rest.”
To the naked eye, there was no sign that Hawthorn had just undergone major surgery. Gina looked at him resting peacefully minus shirt and jacket. An impulse to touch welled up inside her. Gingerly, she put her fingertips against his wrist. His skin was warm, and she could feel the faint throb of a heartbeat underneath.
“When will he wake up?”
“A few hours after I stop giving him sedatives. He has several implants that will help to speed up recovery. I wouldn’t try moving him, though. The nano-sutures could rip if his organs start shifting.”
“Subtle. I get it, you know. I can’t exactly carry his carcass out of here by myself.” Gina grabbed a stool to sit by Hawthorn’s side. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a deck of cards anywhere.”
“It’s not on the manifest.”
“Figures. Some peace and quiet will do.”
She took Hawthorn’s hand and settled in to wait. Sighing. For the moment she was out of ideas, tired of running and fighting. Besides, her plans had a habit of not working out.
She thought about Gabriel, the amount of trouble he went to just to keep her away, after spending so long trying to catch her. The irony almost made her laugh. She could tell he hadn’t reached his goal yet, but by the time she managed to escape, it’d be too late.
Unless . . .
PRECOGNITION: Part 51
An unmarked helicopter delivered Rat back to the surface of Laputa. She looked but didn’t find a single trace of bugs, listening devices or any kind of duplicity on Hideo’s part. Nothing to enforce her loyalty. No physical evidence of the meeting. Just his words ringing in her ears.
Under ordinary circumstances, she’d be furious. No way would she have given in to anybody’s demands. She would plan the unfortunate sap’s demise, confident of her ultimate victory.
But this was Kensei. Kensei played for keeps.
He hadn’t said as much, but there could easily be another double agent in the ranks, keeping tabs on her. If she confessed to Harmony . . . She didn’t know what might happen. Jock and Hideo were supposed to be friends, but politics had a way of changing the landscape. The phrase, ‘You’ll never see him again,’ had so many possible meanings, and all of them were bad.
The only thing she refused to believe was that Jock could already be dead. He was alive. Nothing short of seeing his body would convince her otherwise, and even that might not be enough.
She made her way down through the arcology, to the dark tunnels underneath. She imagined Guards watching her from every secret vantage point along the way. Not that they needed to hide. There were so many uniforms on the streets, keeping the peace, that she was never out of sight more than a moment. Where did Hideo get them all?
One thing kept nagging at her, though, all the way to the hideout. Hideo never mentioned Harmony. For a second he’d acted surprised, as if Banshee were his only target. The instructions he gave her only mentioned Banshee by name.
Could he really not know? Rat asked the walls. Harmony had kept her operations as black as anything, so maybe it was possible he hadn’t heard about her return to Laputa. Or maybe he was playing Rat for the long con. Either way, with Lucy in hand, he’d know everything soon enough. There might be an angry phone call later about all the stuff Rat failed to mention. Rat looked forward to it. She’d smile and say, “You never asked.”
Yeah. That was a nice fantasy. She was in his pocket now, whether she liked it or not. The only bit of solace was that she and Hideo shared the same enemy. She wouldn’t lose any sleep over getting Banshee arrested and locked away.
Rat knocked on the trap-door, and a minute later Karen’s face appeared through the little window. She unbolted the lock and helped Rat into the cellar. She sealed it again right after, looking both sour and relieved at the same time.
“You’re way overdue,” Karen said. “We were getting worried.”
Rat shot back, “I’m overwhelmed.”
“Have you got the map?”
“No. I didn’t get a chance to finish.”
And there it was. The point of no return. She took a deep breath to steel herself, because from now on she’d be lying to everyone, against everyone. Not for the first time, she wished Gina were there to help, but she could never look Gina in the eye again. It was probably for the best.
“Lucy Hong asked me to give you a message,” Rat went on. “‘Our benefactor is in Laputa.’ She said you’d know what it meant.”
Karen froze. She actually seemed a little shaken. “Where is she now?”
“By my estimate,” Rat glanced at her watch, “I’d say a solitary holding cell aboard Cloud City. Guards almost nabbed me too.” Then she started to get curious. She asked, “What does it mean? I didn’t know we had a benefactor.”
“He’s a mystery man. Or woman, more likely.” Karen shrugged. “Some hacker or insider with a grudge against the government. She feeds us sensitive files and backdoors into official systems. That’s where half our intel’s been coming from the last few weeks, and it’s all spot-on accurate.”
“And she’s in Laputa?”
“According to Lucy. Too bad she didn’t say for how long,” she grumped. “Whoever she is, she’s too good to be caught through the ‘Net. That’s why we got Lucy to investigate the old-fashioned way.”
Well, isn’t that interesting? thought Rat. She remembered Banshee’s conversation yesterday. It would be too much of a coincidence for it to be the same guy, wouldn’t it? Which meant it probably was, and not a coincidence at all.
Tapping Rat on the shoulder, Karen gestured her head toward the door. “Leave this with me. Get some rest, you’ve earned it.”
She had to think about that before she realised she was tired. A bad nap in a chair didn’t really count as rest; it only pushed back her exhaustion a few hours. Since then she’d been running mostly on anger, adrenaline, and a few hits of cheap coffee.
She nodded and went to find somewhere private enough to crash.
She woke up hours later, drenched in sweat, sheets coiled around her ankles. She clapped her hands to turn on the light. Yesterday had gotten awful blurry, but the unpleasant highlights slowly came back to her. Hideo’s instructions were clear. She had to make damn sure she was on the next mission, call a special number as they were leaving, and then stick to Banshee like glue.
It wouldn’t take any effort at all. Just like he’d said.
Her clothes were in a pile on the floor. She dragged them closer, fished out her old hoodie and wrapped it around herself for comfort. That pile of clothes was all she had here. Thank God they were self-cleaning.
Climbing out from the cramped bunk, she heard hurried footsteps thumping through the hall. Several people went the length of it and disappeared downstairs. Something was up. Rat shook herself awake, jumped into her trousers, and ran after them.
There was a milling crowd at the bottom of the stairs where two of Karen’s girls were blocking the way. When Rat shoved to the front, one caught her by the shoulder and said, “Essential people only.”
“I’m fucking essential,” she snapped and ducked through.
No one else tried to stop her as she joined Harmony’s group. They were arranged along the end of the holo-table, across from Banshee, who frowned as he spun a wireframe map in every direction.
“Alright,” he said at length. “I’ll let you call the shots on this one, Blade. If your plan works.”
Harmony reached out and clenched her fist, zooming the map out to a pinpoint. Her smile was sweet as poisoned honey. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Ryan. Don’t you trust me?”
Chuckling, Banshee held her gaze for a moment, then walked away. Letting his eyes linger on Rat for a hair longer than necessary. His group left the room by ones and twos, except for the permanent garrison keeping an eye on their guests.
Only Harmony’s inner circle stayed behind to study the wireframe. Relaxing fingers brought the view back to where it was. A door masquerading as a service entrance into one of Laputa’s arcologies. In reality it led to a small elevator shaft plunging deep into the earth. Looking down, the data vault complex sprawled below the arcology’s immense foundations, room upon room of drives and servers containing the secrets of the world.
Rat’s breath caught in her throat. She knew the place. She’d been there before.
“Brute force won’t work,” said Harmony, as if repeating something she’d said before. “Kensei knows we’re after the vaults. If we tip our hand now, he’ll cut it right off.” Then she took a deep breath. “You’re not supposed to be here, Alex.”
Rat took the sudden topic shift in stride. She coughed, “Just thought I’d invite myself to the party. You don’t have to thank me.”
“It’s not a joke. I don’t have time for–“
“Someone with a knack for getting into places she’s not supposed to?” Rat offered, finishing the sentence for her.
A long pause fell between them. Nobody in the group dared to speak until Harmony came away from the table, lips curled faintly upward. “It’s harder to keep you out than in, huh?” she mused. “Alright. Stick around if you think you can pull your weight. Maybe you’ll get to use your talents.”
Rat beamed with pride — at least until she remembered what she was supposed to do. She joined the ranks a little more subdued. Her only comfort was that, when the dust settled, they’d be rid of Banshee. That was a good cause in itself.
“Get your gear sorted out,” Karen ordered the team, projecting all the command of a drill instructor. “This government isn’t gonna topple itself, so kindly move yourselves to doing what you’re supposed to do!”
Without any gear to sort out, Rat stayed behind, alone with Harmony. They stared at the map together and thought.
“I hope Ryan’s right,” whispered Harmony. “It’s exactly the kind of scandal we need to bring Kensei down. If we can really prove he’s involved in the European attacks . . . Well, the Feds’ll be out for blood. I wouldn’t give him five minutes once it hit the news.”
Rat swallowed, her mouth dry as bone. “Or it could be a trap.”
“Nothing ventured, Alex.” She smiled, and her eyes glimmered like emerald fire as she drank in that data vault. “Fortes fortuna adiuvat. Fortune favours the bold!”
There was a sick feeling in Rat’s stomach as she dialled the number. It started to ring, silently, and she thrust the phone back into her pocket before anyone saw her. What happened to the call after that was of no concern. Hideo ought to be happy with all he got.
“You’d better appreciate this, Jock,” she muttered under her breath. “If you don’t, I’ll fucking kill you.”
She looked up at the sound of Karen and Harmony arguing. They kept their voices low, their eyebrows almost touching, but it wasn’t hard to pick up the whispered shouts.
“You shouldn’t do this,” Karen insisted.
“I know.”
“Look, Harm, I know you like to lead from the front, but if this mission goes south–“
“I know! Kerry, we’re not saying anything we haven’t said before. I can’t let Ryan go without going myself. Exactly who else can rein him in for me?”
Karen said obstinately, “I could.”
“And one of you would end up with a hole in your head.” Harmony smiled despite herself. “It’s not up for more discussion. I’ll see you when I get back, okay?”
Their eyes locked until Karen gave in with a sigh. The two hugged each other briefly, went their separate ways. Karen climbed back to the pub while Harmony joined the other members of the expedition by the trap-door. Banshee, one of his lackeys, and Rat’s own self. They were all that would fit in the vault elevator.
“We’re burning daylight,” said Banshee. “I don’t want to give Kensei any more time than we already have.”
“Always in a rush. This won’t be your usual smash-and-grab style, Ryan, so you be patient and follow my lead. ‘Kay?”
She didn’t wait. Grabbing the ladder, she slid down into the tunnels and got a tram started while the others caught up.
Rat gripped a handrail for the whole ride, tense as a bowstring. Nothing could relax her. Fear, worry and guilt just piled up on top of each other as time went on, warring in her stomach. She was pale and nauseous by the time they pulled up to a platform. Her hands came away shaking. It was a good thing nobody looked at her, or she might’ve given the whole plan away.
The rust-eaten door took some persuading, but eventually Banshee managed to kick it open. From there it was a short climb to the basement level of Turin Tower.
It was different from York, the public areas all painted like sandstone and terracotta, decorated with little arches to mimic old Italy. Creamy faux-marble pillars flanked the walkways like a Roman colonnade.
Another wave of vertigo started to creep over Rat. Then somebody grabbed her and pulled her along, turning her mind to other things. She was running through a narrow passage into daylight.
The harsh sun blinded her, brought tears to her eyes. She put up an arm to shield against the glare. Slowly, Four-Alpha arcology swam into focus like the boot-heel of God.
“Why is everything in this place so Goddamn big?” she panted, hitting the pavement at a dead run. They wanted to be safe and hidden between the arcology’s immense concrete plinths. Sunlight reflected from the lenses of security cameras. Independently solar-powered, hack-proof, and — on this shift — watched by a card-carrying member of Harmony’s movement. No alarms would be going off from there.
The door was flat, grey, labelled with a yellow warning triangle. It wouldn’t move when Banshee tried the handle. When he bothered to look, he found an old-fashioned mechanical keyhole underneath, and tapped his lackey on the shoulder. “Andy, see what you can do.”
“Allow me,” Rat cut in. She shouldered her way past the big Irishman and dug one of her emergency lockpicks out of her belt. “I walked out of a Federal dungeon once. This won’t be a problem.”
It slipped smoothly into the keyhole. She worked the tumblers with delicate movements, applying pressure here, lasering through an obstacle there. Her heart beat in her throat, an echo of the thrill she felt hacking into a virgin system. Same idea, just not as satisfying. The little glow in her heart when the lock ticked open wouldn’t last. It was like spending your whole life in training for a bronze medal. For second or third best.
Harmony patted her on the shoulder and entered first. There was something held up between her fingers. An unmarked, white plastic card.
Rat gasped when she saw it. She almost ran her mouth, but managed to stop herself before she said anything stupid. Anything revealing.
Grudging respect in his voice, Banshee remarked, “So that’s how you get around so easy.”
“Kensei isn’t the only king in Laputa.” She grinned over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
They piled into the elevator, shut the doors, and started their descent.
Her anxiety levels rose with each ticking second. The elevator fell deeper and deeper into the earth, and every inch of altitude added to the pressure in Rat’s chest. She didn’t know what was going to happen. What would be waiting for her at the bottom of this shaft, or what might happen while she was here, or what could jump her on the way out. Who would still be alive in an hour or two. It was torture.
“Please stop tapping your foot,” said Harmony. Rat jerked back to attention, blushed sheepishly when she found her leg bobbing up and down.
“Um. Sorry.”
The rest of the descent was silent except for their breathing. Rat swallowed. She had to concentrate to stop herself panting, her lungs trying to keep up with her racing heart.
Still, she believed she and Jock would get out of it okay. She had to.
The carriage slid to a halt. The doors opened. Harmony stepped out without fear or hesitation, holding up the card. One by one the automated turrets and patrol robots disarmed themselves. Unfired rounds clicked back into their magazines, and the gun-toting machines went about their business.
That made the two human staffers very upset behind their bomb-proof window. They remained very still, with the one in the background leaning slightly to the left. Reaching for a silent alarm.
“Stand down!” Harmony shouted. “I have Royal authorisation to inspect this facility.”
The nearest guard’s mouth moved, and his voice came through via speakers in the ceiling. “Maybe you do, but we have standing orders to deny and report all unannounced entries.”
Banshee was prepared. He whipped some kind of weapon out from under his coat, like a sawed-off shotgun with half an electronics shop attached to it. The man at the back dropped, screaming and clawing at his skin.
“I really think you should reconsider,” said Harmony, sweet as honey. The man looked over his shoulder and went pale. He nodded, moving his hands where everyone could see them, down to the button that unlocked the doors.
“What the fuck is that?” Rat had to ask, gesturing at Banshee’s improvised gun.
“Microwave projector. Police used to use ’em to disperse riots. Then we learned how to make them ourselves.” He grinned like a death’s head. The promise he had made hung thick in the air between them. “Banned under Fed law, but if you can get the parts . . .”
Oh, right. Terrorist. Rat suppressed a shudder and made herself move on.
The boys went about restraining the two guards, while Rat helped Harmony with the keypad on the input/output room. They couldn’t rely on any code the guards gave them, it would only trigger the silent alarm, so they had to be creative. She unscrewed the panel and — careful not to touch anything else — inserted a thin prong between the arms of the processing chip. It was a metal fork thinner than a piece of paper, widening to a tiny plug socket. A flat wire connected it to Harmony’s hand-held transmitter, and from there to the big computer back in the pub. It would brute-force its way to the right combination while the prong kept any alarm signals from getting out.
“Let’s hope we don’t have to wait long.” Harmony frowned at the little electric-ink readout on the prong. It would flash up when it found the right code, but there was no hint as to when that might be.
Rat’s fingers ached as she put the panel cover to one side. Stiff and numb all over. She tried to rub some life back into them, blowing into her fists, and realised her breath was coming out in clouds of steam. Cold rolled in from the window overlooking the storage servers, opaque with condensation. The room was climate-controlled to the best possible temperature.
Had it felt this cold the last time she was here? She couldn’t remember.
Her foot started tapping again. She pressed it down on the floor to make it stop, but ended up vibrating in place. Even when the panel lit up there was no relief. She carried all her tension with her into the input room.
“So far so good,” Banshee said. “I should borrow that card from you sometime, Blade.”
She laughed sharply and pressed it into his hand. “You can have it. After today it’ll be useless.”
They worked out the strategy in a moment. As the better hacker, Harmony would be the one in the full contact rig. Rat served as her backup, and Banshee took the third crown to supervise. The one he called Andy stood guard with the microwave gun.
Banshee gave her that awful grin again before he fastened the electrodes against his skull and jacked in. She scowled. Every time she looked at Banshee she felt a little more justified. Helping to take him out of the picture was practically a moral obligation, not just for her own safety, but for the sake of Laputa and Harmony’s conscience.
The VR system switched on, and she launched into the vault’s file system. It was familiar enough she could’ve gone right to work. Again, she had to hold back to maintain her cover.
“Ryan, connect your drive and start pulling everything,” said Harmony. “Alex and I are gonna take a look at the internals while we’ve got the chance.”
Rat’s avatar nodded. A mental hand-wave opened the list of system commands. She requested an overview of all data chunks and their owners. Privately, hidden from everyone else, she also did a search for the tags she placed weeks ago. Just to check.
She couldn’t believe her eyes when the search blinked green, expanding to show the outlines of the Irish simulation in code as well as the physical location of the data, spread out across the vault’s servers. She stifled a squeak. How could anybody be that careless? She shut the window and reassured herself. There was no way to trace the tags back to her. At least, there shouldn’t be. Deleting them now would certainly look worse.
Just play it cool, Rat, she thought. Act like it’s news to you.
Harmony made a curious noise. “That’s funny. Alex, take a look at this.” Her avatar, a blank white silhouette, threw a window at Rat. She caught it and opened it up. “It’s a usage log. Somebody accessed this vault recently. Two days before the attack on the Fifteen, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That . . . smells a little suspicious.”
“Give that girl a prize for understatement,” Banshee interjected. “This might be the jackpot. Find out as much as you can, transfer’s at six percent.”
Gathering up her nerve, Rat took a deep breath. “Here’s something really weird. Some of the data is tagged, four chunks owned by Eire Informatics. Most of it looks like a contiguous program.”
Harmony was already one step ahead, flicking the frozen simulation into being around them. Black nothingness shimmered and shaped into a rocky emerald-green island. The mound entrance stretched out behind them, and in front was the last faerie stopped in its death throes.
“Interesting,” said Banshee. He took a copy of the window when Rat offered it, enlarged it to fill his view. Picked at specific bits and pieces. “Very interesting.”
“Is that all you’ve got, Ryan?” murmured Harmony. “After all, you used to own EI until very recently . . . You ought to be giving us a pretty good explanation.”
“If I had one, it’d be a state secret.”
“Of a state you don’t rule anymore. Somebody’s already replaced you, Ryan. Just like Kensei.”
There was no answer to that. He retreated into stubborn silence, and she was already absorbed in the technical details of the simulation.
“Whatever it was supposed to be, this sim’s been altered since it arrived,” she said. The silhouette’s fingers darted through reams of underlying code. “There’s lots of missing bits and pieces. Corrupted and overwritten with garbage. They must’ve hit the pause button to prevent more damage. Now why would Kensei do that to his own software, Ryan?”
“Any number of reasons. Say, diverting more suspicion onto me.”
Her avatar flashed a smile, black teeth outlined against its white mouth. “He did a good job.”
“You’re being awfully catty today, Blade. Stop. It doesn’t suit you.”
A faint noise in the background distracted Rat from the bickering. She reached up to pull her earplugs out, to let her listen. Nothing. She wondered if she’d imagined it, but then it started again, louder and sharper. Like a blunt hacksaw grinding against steel.
Her ears popped. The lights died a heartbeat later, leaving only a red emergency bulb. A backup generator rumbled to life in the distance and stopped again with a loud crunch. Every screen and gadget in the room went black one by one. The doors groaned, pried open by big metal hands.
The boy called Andy stopped halfway to raising his gun. He sat down and toppled backwards, his chest a pincushion of tranquiliser darts.
Two Laputan battlesuits forced into the narrow room. One grabbed Banshee and pinned him down against the floor. The other held his gun trained on Rat. Until a well-manicured human hand reached out and pushed it away.
“Stand down, Sergeant. She won’t give us any trouble,” said the hand’s owner. The King of Laputa came into view with a smug expression plastered across his face. “Seems we’re in famous company. Not one, but two illustrious heroes of the resistance movement. It’s been a long time, Blade.”
Rat’s eyes wouldn’t leave the floor. Guilty teardrops gathered inside her goggles, one by one, until she couldn’t see anything anymore.
Tension crackled in the air between them. Harmony took off the VR rigging strap by strap. Banshee squirmed around on the floor, hissing curses at the Guards. Rat couldn’t even open her mouth if she wanted to. She never wanted it to go like this. Some part of her had been hoping to maybe slip Harmony out in the confusion, or at least engineer circumstances that’d make her look less like a complete traitor.
“Kensei,” said Harmony. A frosty greeting while she pulled off her goggles, hung them back on their little hook. Her eyes never left his. “You look terribly smug about something.”
Hideo leaned one shoulder against the wall, casual-like, and made a dismissive gesture. “I never pursued you, you know. Not beyond a token effort to keep up appearances. I allowed you to get away, hoping you’d be smart enough to let it go and start over somewhere else.”
“Aren’t you the fucking spirit of generosity,” she shot back.
“Suit yourself. You always were a stubborn bitch, even in bed.” There was a sharp hiss, an indrawn breath of shock. It took a moment for Rat to realise she was the one who made it. “You just can’t leave well enough alone. To stand back and let progress happen.”
“And let you run the Nations as some pathetic boys’ club for another decade? More? It’s guys like you that plunged our dream back into the Goddamn Dark Ages.”
Sighing, Hideo mimed washing his hands of the whole affair. “I’ve had some space prepared for you. You’ll be my guests aboard Cloud City until the situation calms down enough to put you on trial. I suggest you come quietly.”
Harmony held up one hand for patience, while the other reached into her pocket. “Actually, I’ve got something you should read first. Here.”
It was a letter. Written in pen and ink. The paper crackled as Hideo unfolded it.
“Dear Hideo,” he read aloud. “You always were a clever boy. It won’t surprise you to know I’m back in the game. Knowing you, you probably figured it out a while ago. Since you’re reading this letter, you were even prepared for today’s surprise. No, there wasn’t much I could ever do to catch you off-balance.
“There’s just one thing I want to ask you. What time is it?” He glanced down at his watch. Twelve minutes past three. “I ask because your vault software runs back-ups at random times and dates, communicated with the best encryption in the world. The vaults themselves open their outside lines for just ten minutes before the whole mess is physically disconnected. The encryption is unbreakable. There are no vulnerabilities in the system. You know this because you designed it. So I’ll let you wonder how I found out today’s back-ups run at three o’clock . . .”
As he trailed off, his jaw slowly dropping, the woman with Harmony’s face turned off her holomask. The little needles slipped out of her skin one by one, revealing Karen’s sharp cheekbones and ice-blue eyes. Her lips were curled into a frosty smile.
“Surprise. Do you like my haircut?” she asked deadpan. She straightened from a hunch that had been invisible under her clothes, gaining more than an inch in height. She began to recite the rest of the letter from memory.
“I kindly asked my associate to take my place and, while connected, dump the contents of your vault directly to GlobeNet. I’ve released Ryan’s captured data in the same way. Maybe you could smooth over losing one of your precious vaults, but two? I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if every corp in the world is knocking on your door in the next few hours, pulling their contracts.”
The paper crunched in Hideo’s balled fists. They trembled, knuckles white. Fear crept up Rat’s spine as she watched him. This was something new to her, a side beyond the calm, restrained Hideo Kagehisa she’d seen before.
He tapped the radio in his wristwatch. “Kensei to Forward Team. SitRep.”
“Situation negative, Sir,” came the reply. “The pub’s empty. No one here, no traces. Any equipment has been removed or destroyed.”
“I see,” he said, teeth clenched tight. “If she was out to make me angry, she succeeded.”
Banshee chuckled bitterly. “She got you good, Kenny. She really played us all.”
“I don’t think you fully understand the situation. Any of you. Perhaps we need a demonstration as to what making me angry really means. Sergeant!”
The Guardsman at Hideo’s shoulder stepped forward, servos whining. The cannon in its arm thrust forward. It fit neatly under Banshee’s chin. The Irishman struggled, but his expression held only defiance, not fear.
He growled, “You wouldn’t. I’m a member of the Fifteen!”
“Were a member of the Fifteen. Now a wanted terrorist.”
“He’s bluffing,” Banshee insisted with a glance at Karen and Rat. “He wants us alive. Whatever he tells you, don’t give in.”
Hideo smiled and tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Oh? And what makes you think I want anything from you?”
“You gave it away by using non-lethal weapons!”
“And you’re arrogant enough to think you are the reason why. How quaint. Sergeant, standard rounds, please.” A menacing click sounded deep inside the suit. The barrel under Banshee’s chin trembled faintly. “Thank you. Fire.”
The shot thundered into the confined space, exploding off the walls like a jackhammer. It damn near blew Rat’s eardrums. She clamped her hands over her ears in agony. The immense sound died away slowly, and even then the only thing she could hear was the ringing in her brain. She watched Banshee fall to the floor in perfect silence.
Empty eyes stared out of a pale, surprised expression. Blood oozed from the fist-sized hole in his throat.
She wanted to scream, to let out her fear and revulsion, but she clamped down inside and locked those emotions away. She told herself she was harder than that. She’d seen bodies before. The world didn’t need Ryan O’Doherty, was better off without him. He no longer existed.
It was just that she never expected to be present at his execution.
“I hope you’re listening to this, Kohler,” Hideo shouted at the ceiling, his voice full of focussed rage. “I will not let you jeopardise my Nations. Not Laputa, not any of them. Read it loud and clear! You can walk away or you can join your Irish friend, but I’ll be damned if I let you take away everything I’ve worked for.”
Karen sneered. Unfazed by the body. “You mean everything you stole.”
“You don’t know a damn thing. Sergeant, prep the transport! We’ve got prisoners!” He swept away as if to leave, but turned back at the door, grinning. A cruel, vindictive flash of teeth. “Maybe along the way I’ll tell you how I found you. It’s quite an interesting little story of love and betrayal . . .”
“Leave her alone!” a voice echoed off the walls. Rat’s voice. Shock and horror had turned into anger, a boiling fury like she hadn’t felt in ages. There were so many things to be angry about and she couldn’t contain them all any longer. She was already on her feet and in his face. “Who are you to threaten and murder people because you’re mad things didn’t go your way?! I thought you were supposed to be a king, someone refined, but you’re not! You’re just a Goddamn bully!”
He stared at her for a long time. Then he began to laugh, quietly, softly. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve figured out what royalty is.”
The Guards moved in and took her by the shoulders. She shouted, kicked, screamed, and fought, but it was no use. What was done was done.
