PRECOGNITION: Part 47
The idea of taking Banshee out of the picture obsessed Rat for hours. Her mind wandered every time she had to wait for another dull round of decryption, running over all the possible scenarios. So far they had more in common with idle fantasy than planning, since all her ideas depended on a lot of random chance and convenience, but they helped her figure out a few things. Chiefly, she needed three things to pull off the job. Line of sight, seclusion, and an escape route. When she had all those things, she’d recognise her opportunity. In an ideal situation nobody would ever know it was Rat who did the deed.
For now, though, all she could do was sit, wait, and run through endless lists of data until her brain felt like so much porridge, just lumpy goo ready to leak out of her ears.
“It’s not here,” she said at last, rubbing her eyes. They stung from staring at holograms too long. She closed the interface with a downward wave and stood up defiantly. “This whole drive is worthless.”
The room went quiet. Banshee’s new right-hand man, whose name Rat hadn’t bothered to remember, was nominally in charge of this shift, and he tried to control the situation with an immediate rebuke. “We haven’t analysed all of it yet. We could be looking for documents in the megabyte range, there’s plenty of formats that small.”
“Yeah, speaking of which, wouldn’t it be nice if you told us what the Hell we’re looking for?” A rumble of support went around the table. Many of the hackers, even the Irish ones, looked as fed-up as she did. “All we know is that after all this work we haven’t found a single byte of it.”
The great irony was that Rat knew what they were looking for even if nobody else did, and she didn’t trust the reasons for the search. If Banshee wanted those faeries for no other reason than to prove his innocence, she’d eat her metaphorical hat. It gave her some satisfaction to know he wouldn’t get them from this mess of irrelevant corporate bullshit. Neither the island simulation nor agent software were here.
She remembered her time in that sim with a shudder. If it hadn’t been for Kensei, she’d be blind now. She might’ve wasted her entire life trying to pay for a new set of optic nerves. And he never actually broke his promise to sponsor her. He just got distracted, caught up in this shitty situation. Maybe he would’ve honoured it, after things calmed down.
And . . . And she missed Jock more than she wanted to admit. Having him around to talk to and sort things out with. When did she start caring this much?
Banshee’s man bared his teeth at her in something almost like a smile, and he crossed the table to put a forceful hand on her shoulder. “Maybe you need to take a break,” he said, walking her to the kitchen door. “Do whatever. I don’t want to see you back here until you’ve had an attitude adjustment. Got that?”
He jabbed a finger into her chest, then went back to the table, leaving the door swinging on its hinges behind him. Rat watched it fall shut. Alone and unguarded.
A sudden smile curved her lips as she thought about it, and her hands found the gun tucked into the back of her trousers. Could it really be happening like this? Could it be so easy? She didn’t have a plan, but thinking ahead never was her strong suit. She could improvise with the best of them, and when she got this chance handed to her on a silver platter, how could she let it go?
She looked around the kitchen for her next flash of inspiration. It was small, but everything anyone could need in a pub kitchen was there: a counter, a microwave and a really big fridge. It even had a little dumbwaiter to haul food and drink to the upper floors. Rat counted two exits, but the back door was locked and she didn’t have her toolkit. She went up on tiptoes to peer through the little window in the taproom door, only to find more disappointment. No way could she reach the stairs without being spotted.
Then she stopped and took another look at the dumbwaiter. No built-in security. The shelves came out easy, made to be detachable. The controls were on the outside, but everything went automatically once you hit the right button. The sixty kilo weight limit would stop most people, but the designers clearly hadn’t counted on a skinny teenage girl with bad intentions.
Rat folded her short, sinewy body into the carriage. It was a tight fit even for her, but she made it work through sheer determination. Then she tapped the ‘deliver’ button and hugged her knees to her ears, letting the doors shut her into darkness. Electric motors whined. Slowly, with a nasty grinding noise and a faint smell of smoke, they lifted her to the upstairs restaurant.
It took a minute to get out of her cramped position, wedged in like she was, but eventually she stretched her legs and took a look around. Seemed like the same themes continued throughout the pub, lots of fake wood and soft lighting, big tables in cosy little booths. She found herself next to a long bar which dominated the room, all polished wood and brass taps, but dusty enough to suggest the place had been closed to customers for a while. The shelves behind the bar sparkled with hundreds of massive beer glasses, and more varieties of booze than Rat knew existed.
Voices echoed from a room towards the back. Sounded like Banshee wasn’t alone. She crept towards the noise, silent as a mouse, and pulled the pistol from her waistband. The magazine fit into it with a soft click.
Excitement throbbed in her chest, and her mind raced. It seemed like the moment of truth was edging closer and closer. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jock. He’d probably try to talk her out of this. He’d yell at her, spew out some moralistic bullshit about what being a hacker really meant, and how nobody gets hurt in VR. He’d treat her like a kid, like she wasn’t old enough to understand.
She did understand though. She’d never had a real enemy before, but she knew she could handle it. She’d killed plenty of people in VR games. It couldn’t be that different.
The noise came from the manager’s office, around the corner from the bar. She found the door ajar. Peering through the crack, she could make out Banshee’s back as he straddled a chair in front of a table or desk, but there was no sign of his conversation partner.
“I don’t get what more you want,” he said, his voice tight and restrained. “It’s like you thought, she’s here and under control, and I got the drive. Nothing else is going to happen until we find what we’re looking for.”
A low, distorted sound answered him, words filtered through a voice changer, inflection tuned to feel curt and threatening. “Don’t play games with me, Ryan. You never would’ve found that vault if I hadn’t held your hand. You won’t find the others.”
“We’re not cracking piggy banks here. If you’ve got a problem with my methods, maybe you should’ve asked someone else. Want Razorblade’s number?”
“This is not a discussion, Ryan. You’re in far too deep to end this partnership now. Either you work with me, or I hand your location and your entire battle plan over to Kensei quicker than you can scream.” The voice paused. “Out of time. I’ll have more instructions for you at next contact. Be ready.”
There was a flickering noise and a fresh silence, signalling the end of the call. Banshee didn’t move from his spot. He fished a cigarette from a pack somewhere, lit it, and stared at the wall with a brooding kind of slump to his shoulders. Even from behind he radiated anger.
“You’d better pray I never find you,” he spat, “because if I do, I’ll feed you your own guts on a platter.”
From anyone else, that line might’ve sounded like bad comedy, hollow and overblown. From Banshee, it was a promise. Rat fought a cold shiver and quietly pressed the barrel of her gun into the crack between door and frame. Her finger stroked the trigger. They were alone, no one else around. She’d never get a better chance. One squeeze, one pop, and that would be all she wrote for Ryan O’Doherty.
She licked her lips and sighted down the barrel. Lined it up with Banshee’s head, held the target in her trembling hands. The weight of a real firearm in her hands felt strange when her mind was trying hard to pretend this was another VR game.
Angrily, she told herself to focus. She just had to finish the job. Hold gun, squeeze trigger. Nothing could be easier.
She closed her eyes and held her breath.
She could see it happening in her mind. The gun would kick and spit fire, one bullet spinning through the air, sonic boom ringing in her ears. The steel slug would disappear cleanly into Banshee’s head. He would slump forward, then stop moving altogether, and she would stand there watching the life leave his body. He’d be gone for good, just a bag of meat and liquids, no longer a person. He’d never bother her or anyone else again.
The barrel began to weave, her whole body shaking as she tried to make herself do it. She tried to remember the way he threatened her, summoned up all her hate and anger to overcome the numbness in her hands, the thought of two empty eyes staring at her from a puddle of blood on the table. She sucked in another much-needed breath while her heart battered at the inside of her ribcage.
Maybe she always expected someone, something, to step in at the last minute and stop her. Nobody and nothing did. No incredible dodge from Banshee, no Harmony to gently talk her down from the ledge, no telephone call with Jock’s reassuring voice in her ear. Just Rat and her decision.
A moan escaped her as she started to tighten her ice-cold fingers. The trigger moved smoothly against her skin, part of a well-oiled mechanism, and she awaited the bang with gritted teeth. Every muscle in her body tensed to resist the recoil. Her heart skipped several beats in a row.
There was a faint tick. Her fingers stopped, the trigger jammed halfway to the handle. With her breath caught in her throat, horror twisting at the very core of her being, she suddenly knew. She’d left the safety on. One tiny switch had stopped her from gunning a man down in cold blood.
Her arms dropped, too heavy to support their own weight. The sheer enormity of what she’d almost done pressed on her shoulders like a lead weight. She couldn’t look up from her toes, feeling like the tiniest thing in the world.
The Chrome Rat turned away, put the gun on the bar, and left it there. She crawled back into the dumbwaiter and shut the door behind her.
She had no idea how many hours slipped away in that darkness. Not quite sleeping, not quite awake, she stayed there and didn’t think. Her head and heart were empty.
The door clunked open. She jerked, surprised at the sudden intrusion on her self-imposed exile. The light outside was so blinding that she couldn’t make out a face, just a silhouette of a figure steadying itself against the wall. She heard a sigh of intense relief before the woman put a phone to her ear.
“Cancel the search,” came Harmony’s voice. “We found her.” The next moment her arm was around Rat’s shoulder, helping her out of the dumbwaiter, chattering like a mother hen. “Goddamn you, Alex. You just love creating problems for me, don’t you? What were you thinking, pulling some kind of vanishing act in the middle of Banshee’s hideout?”
“S-Sorry,” was all Rat could think to say. Probably all her bone-dry throat could handle. She leaned on Harmony because her cramped legs refused to bend.
“You ought to be! We’ve been looking for you on the sly for hours, trying not to let the Irish find out you were missing!” Harmony helped her to a stool at the bar, then ran around looking for some water. She discovered one in an old fridge and pressed it into Rat’s hands. “Karen found your gun. We didn’t know what to think.”
Rat sipped the water at first, barely able to swallow. After a few seconds though she managed to clear her throat, although she still couldn’t think of anything to say. “I . . . I just . . .”
“Look, Alex, we’re in a delicate situation right now. We can’t afford shit like this. Imagine if one of them found your gun abandoned like that! You could’ve gotten us all killed.”
“Killed?” echoed Rat. The word sent a funny feeling through her gut, a cold tickle that almost made her retch the water back up. For a second she wished she’d never come to Laputa in the first place.
How had it come to this?
Glancing at the time, then down the hall, Harmony touched Rat’s arm and gestured for her to come along. “We’re using a room down the hall, it’s not much, but it’s safe. You can stay until you feel better.”
Rat nodded, climbed down onto shaky limbs, and took a few tentative steps with Harmony to lean on. It felt weird having somebody to help her, to care and comfort her. She’d been an orphan so long, relying on nobody but herself. The last person who went out of her way for Rat without expecting anything in return was . . .
“You okay?” Harmony asked gently. “You’re crying.”
“I’m fine,” she said angrily and wiped a sleeve across her face. She’s not your mother, came the voice in her mind, so loud she couldn’t hear or think anything else. Not Gina and not Harmony. She doesn’t know you, she’s got no idea what you really are. A liar, a spy, and a failed murderer. She’s just another stranger who can’t be trusted.
With each laboured step, another piece of her armour fell back into place, until she felt nothing at all.
Two of Harmony’s other girls worked from the room, glued to mobile terminals and Fed-style PDAs, juggling data in ways Rat didn’t quite understand. They had some kind of report waiting for Harmony when she walked in, and Harmony didn’t waste any time scanning the text. She slipped back into the role of revolutionary leader without missing a beat.
Rat found herself a chair to lean on, to stop her legs from swaying. Things seemed almost serene here, nothing around but a few people doing their jobs in harmonious silence. It made her feel strangely guilty being the only one not working. Apart from sifting through more worthless data, she didn’t have a job as such, or any idea what to do.
“What the Hell am I doing here, Harm?” she sighed. “I’m not a fighter, I get freaked out by the sight of blood, I don’t even know how to use a gun. Why in God’s name did you bring me along?”
Harmony smiled crookedly and tore one eye away from her paperwork. “Because I trust you to watch my back. I can count on you to be there when I need you, and I know that when the chips are down, you’ll make the right choices.” She thumbed back and forth between two of the report’s pages and added, “Have a little more faith, Alex. We’re all in this together.”
“Faith. Yeah. I’ll get right on that.”
“You know,” Harmony dropped her sheet back on the table, maybe losing her patience a little tiny bit, “I get the feeling you’d be happier getting out more. Some recon work, maybe. Karen could always use another pair of eyes.”
Even with Karen involved, it sounded like a good offer. She wanted to put as much distance between Banshee and herself as possible. “If it gets me away from working on that Goddamn drive, sure. Whatever he’s looking for, it ain’t on there.”
“Mm, I didn’t think so. Luckily that’s not why we’re here.” She lifted herself to sit on the table, her lips curled into a slight smile. “Banshee’s chasing after a pipe dream. He doesn’t have a clue about the real value of that drive. How much it’ll hurt Kensei when we start releasing data, show everyone he can’t even keep his vaults secure. Even if Banshee finds something that clears him of half the shit that’s gone down these past few weeks, it won’t make a damn bit of difference.” She tapped the report beside her with a fingernail, explaining, “There’s been a civil war in Ireland. The big man wasn’t as popular back home as he thought. This other fellow, Argon, seized power and threw Banshee’s supporters out on their collective ass. Funny, Argon’d be a shoo-in for the Fifteen if we still had a Fifteen.”
Rat listened, open-mouthed, and blurted, “Does Banshee know?”
“Probably. He must have had some inkling or he would’ve shot us all on sight. I’m his only hope of getting back on the throne now.” Harmony broke into a laugh as she finished that sentence. “I saw it once, you know. The actual gold-plated armchair at the back of the big room in Ireland. He’s welcome to it, as long as he’s willing to play by my rules. The name Banshee still carries weight. Having him on my side will help keep the rest of the opportunistic fuckwits in line.”
“You’re a pretty shrewd lady, Harm.” Rat smiled, and Harmony bowed her head to accept the compliment. “There’s just one thing I gotta wonder. How on Earth are you gonna bump Kensei out of his armchair?”
“That,” she said, “doesn’t go beyond me and my close advisors. Politics is a dirty business, Alex. Don’t climb into the cesspool if you can avoid it. Now, I’d better get going, and you need to report to the basement.”
Without further preamble, Harmony patted Rat on the arm as a quick goodbye and bustled out the door. Rat watched her go. Then she took a deep breath, put her hood up, and left the same way.
The basement was two short hallways and a flight of stairs away. Rat dragged her feet for as long as possible. The thought of seeing Karen again did not bring her any joy. She just hoped they could get this over with quickly, like mature adults, and send Rat on her merry way.
Karen’s eyes found Rat the moment she walked in. The growing, mutual dislike simmered in the air between them, all but striking sparks. Rat clenched her fists in her pockets as she approached.
“Oh, I see,” Karen said, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Should’ve known something was up when Harm didn’t tell me your name.”
“I’m here for the job, not the abuse.”
“You haven’t earned the right to mouth off like that. Next time you fuck up, little girl, Harmony won’t be there to pick up the pieces. It’s just gonna be you and me.” She shoved an electric torch into Rat’s stomach, hard. “In the meantime, welcome to the exciting world of GPS mapping. We don’t know how far these tunnels go and where they lead, so we want a survey of the whole circuit, exits and entrances. Anything that isn’t blocked off. All you have to do is go there, we’ll rip the GPS data from your phone when you’re back. Even you should be able to handle that, huh?”
All the breath knocked out of her, there wasn’t much Rat could do or say to argue while Karen ‘helped’ her through the trap-door. Rat’s furious look was answered by a smug, serene smile.
“Have fun,” Karen said brightly and dropped the hatch shut with a bang.
PRECOGNITION: Part 46
Sipping cold coffee and stretching the kinks out of her back, Gina tried to enjoy the break she’d imposed, for Bomber’s sake as well as her own. She felt the strain of a long session tugging at the base of her skull, which meant he felt twice as bad. Still he kept it all hidden and pushed down deep.
He was driving himself too hard. Nobody could convince him of it, though, least of all the people who cared about him. Gina sighed and put her cup back down.
Yep, she said to herself, he’s still looking at me.
She tried a smile. “You remember what I said about relaxing, right?”
“This is takin’ forever,” he said. “Can’t you fast-forward it or something?”
“Baby, how can I put this delicately . . . Don’t be such a fucking tool. We’re not playing home videos in your living room. Think of me as a brain surgeon, and you as my very conscious patient.”
That seemed to have the desired effect. He made a grumpy noise, but shut his mouth and his eyes, grudgingly hunting for balance.
She didn’t expect any different. Bomber was a bit like a heat-seeking missile. Once you fired him, he’d keep going and going until he hit his target. All she could do was adjust his course a little.
“Alright,” she said. “Here we go.”
It wasn’t exactly claustrophobia he felt, wandering through the base’s long underground halls. All sorts of precautions kept him and the other troops from going stir-crazy. Sun-lamps and tanning booths against light deficiency, hologram rooms to create the illusion of space, and hours of mandatory exercise every day to offset the VR training. There were doctors, psychologists and nutritionists messing with the air, the water, the food, just to put everyone at ease. They wanted to create ultimate calm and relaxation outside of the training area. They wanted healthy, balanced soldiers who could handle combat with dispassionate efficiency.
No, it wasn’t claustrophobia. But something. An uneasiness, a yearning, maybe. He wasn’t sure it had a name. It just made him very, very aware how long it had been since he last stood alone under the sky, or felt a real breeze on his face.
For a simple Mississippi boy who used to spend most of his time outdoors, life sure took its twists and turns.
These nightly walks had become a feature in his life since making sergeant. The nine o’clock curfew no longer applied to him, another privilege of rank, and he valued the alone time. Command was exciting, but sometimes he missed being a grunt. He used to be one of the team. He even had a few burgeoning friendships, but now he was expected to lead. Protocol demanded a certain emotional distance from your soldiers. Fraternisation wasn’t appropriate, and everyone in the unit knew they were being monitored, all the time.
The only people he could still talk to were his corporals. There were the other sergeants too, but he didn’t see enough of them outside the simulator. For all intents and purposes, Mary Sweeney and Iwetel Fahlan were his only friends in the world.
He decided he could live with it. He liked command. Ambition never used to be one of his traits, but now that he actually achieved something, he discovered he wanted more. Something Fahlan once said stuck in his memory. “Somebody’ll get upped to lieutenant soon.”
On his way past MedLab, he stopped and did a double take. The control pad beside the lab door glowed with soft green letters. It said, ‘IN USE’. The security camera on the other side of the corridor sat motionless on its arm mount, deactivated.
It didn’t take long to draw his conclusions. “Red alert,” he whispered to himself. His pistol slid smoothly out of its holster. He inched closer, then stopped again when he heard voices, leaning to peek into the room.
“My hands are tied,” finished the deep, male voice, as Jacob took in the scene.
Colonel Obrin stood next to the diagnosis table, silhouetted against the big screen that occupied one wall of the MedLab. It showed aimless white clouds drifting above a bright, tropical sea. Next to him was the white-coated shape of Chief Medical Officer Dr. Whittaker. She kept her hands clasped behind her back, staring at the floor with her handsome face locked in a deep frown.
Obrin looked out over the endless ocean, and his shoulders slumped. He looked beaten. Broken. His voice was flat and dead. “They’ve cut the project, Sam. Hephaestus will never see the light of day. I’m lucky they left me in command.”
“But, Sir . . . What about the men?”
“They didn’t say, but they don’t have to. As far as they’re concerned we’re nothing but meat,” he said. Bitter anger filled every word that came out of his mouth. “A failed prototype, just far enough along that they can’t justify simply mothballing us. So they’ll use us up. Throw us at whatever’s bothering them until we’re all crippled or dead. Of no further tactical application.”
It was a long time before Dr. Whittaker spoke again. At last she whispered, “What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know, Sam. Not yet. I . . . I’ll figure something out.”
“I understand.” She reached out gingerly, touched him on the shoulder. “For what it’s worth, Sir, I think they’re dead wrong. You can count on my support. Whatever happens.”
A soft beep announced a new message on the Colonel’s phone. He quickly absorbed the text, then thrust the phone back where it came from and turned to Whittaker. “Sorry, Doctor, I think I’ve wasted enough of your time. Thank you for the company. I’ll keep you posted.” He bent down to kiss the back of her hand, and strode towards the door.
Jacob recognised his cue to leave. He turned in silence, then hurried off in the direction of the barracks, trying to make it look like he hadn’t been eavesdropping.
Until the Colonel called out to him.
“Sergeant Dusther!” he boomed, coming up behind. He caught Jacob by the shoulder and grinned as if he were putting a lot of effort into an appearance of cheerfulness. “Out on one of your walks again?”
“Clears my head, Sir.” He made himself smile back and willed his racing pulse to slow down.
“That’s good. You need habits like that when you’re in command. I’ll tell you what else will clear your head, though — a bottle of thirty year old Glenfiddich single malt. I was just on my way to open one, and I could use someone to help finish the old soldier.”
For a moment Jacob didn’t know what to say. All sorts of wild thoughts ricocheted through his head, wondering if it could be some kind of trap. Maybe the Colonel realised he’d been listening in and wanted to dispose of him, away from prying eyes. It was certainly against protocol for the commanding officer of the base, a lieutenant colonel, to just invite an acting sergeant for a night of hard drinking.
When he searched Obrin’s eyes, though, he didn’t find any kind of malice. Just a tortured man who needed a drink and a friend to share it with.
“Sounds like my kind of evening, Sir,” he announced, and protocol be damned.
The rest of the night with Colonel Obrin passed quickly to Jacob, full of casual talk that never went anywhere, and Gina instead went to work on the crumbling edges of the memory block.
That was a long story of frustration. It kept impeding her, but she couldn’t just bash it down. She had to treat it with kid gloves to keep it from blowing itself up and taking Bomber’s psyche with it. She didn’t know exactly how sensitive it was to electrical activity inside its protected chunk of memory, or to changes in Bomber’s brain chemistry. The only thing she could do was quietly pull things out from under, to bleed his memories into her own mind and share them from there. It took a long time that way, but when she realised she’d found the next link in the story, she laughed and dove into it in a moment of sweet victory.
Jacob wandered slowly along the outer line of defences, where Lieutenant Cornell’s blue helmets were spraying memcrete into the shape of little one-man bunkers. Those bunkers — glorified foxholes, really — would guard the main entrances to the reactor complex. Meanwhile, Jacob’s team were fortifying the storage vault any way they could. The reactors, while dangerous, were a secondary concern. The enemy wasn’t here to blow shit up. They wanted the fuel intact, so they’d have to breach the vault.
“Give it another two hours, maybe less,” came Corporal Sweeney’s voice, buzzing through his helmet. “We’ll have this place sewed up as tight as we can get it. Which, as you know, isn’t very tight.”
“I know, Mary. Just keep doin’ what you can.”
“Wilco, Sarge. And after that we can pray to holy Hell it’ll be enough.”
Giving an easy chuckle, Corporal Fahlan’s voice broke in, “God, you’re a cheerful soul, Corporal! You make it sound like we might as well climb into our caskets and stay there.”
“When we die and I see you again in the hot place, I get to say I told you so, Corporal,” Sweeney retorted.
The banter made Jacob smile. His suit computer beeped as it finished running one tactical simulation and started another. Based on sim results, they should do well against quite a lot of nastiness. If only they knew what to expect.
He clacked his tongue to get their attention. “Enough chatter, boys and girls. Iwetel’s right. They wouldn’t have sent us if they didn’t think we could do the job. How are the blue hats holdin’ up?”
“Morale’s high,” said Fahlan. “They’re willing enough. I think they’re excited at the prospect of some real action, but all the piss and vinegar in the world is no substitute for months of spec ops training.”
“Nobody’s expecting ’em to be one-man armies. We’ll try to keep them alive if we can.”
“That doesn’t sound like Marine talk, Sarge. Objective one is winning. Keeping people alive ranks two or three at best. Sweeney out.”
That woman had a nihilistic streak a mile wide, Jacob thought with affection, shaking his head. How did she ever get promoted beyond grunt?
Dismissing Fahlan, Jacob headed inward to check the second line of defence. Two of his people were ensconced in sniper nests at different ends of the complex, along with a handful of marksmen from the UN detachment, watching the horizon through scanners and scopes for any sign of the enemy.
It was quiet work. Everybody tried not to let their tension show, but you could tell by the absence of easy banter, or the sharp intakes of breath before every radio transmission. They all wanted things to be over with, for better or worse. When Jacob shut his eyes he could imagine he heard the sound of teeth grinding together.
Even Cornell looked impatient. The Lieutenant threw a silent wave as he walked by, on his way down to the vault. Jacob nodded in reply. It was all he could think to do. He went back to pacing around the complex, wondering if there was anything he’d missed.
He never played the waiting game very well.
A notification beeped on the command link. One of the snipers, Frost, transmitting an urgent message. Bomber patched into it right away, but decided not to announce himself. It never hurt to observe his junior officers in action.
“Hey, Corp . . . Sorry to buzz you, but that maglev track is getting awful hot.”
“It’s what?” said Sweeney.
“It’s hot. Every time I look at the track on infrared it’s glowing warmer.”
“Say again, Frost. You mean it’s powering up?”
“No idea, Corp, I’m no engineer. I can’t see any magnetic readings, just . . . heat. Lots of it. I don’t think it’s designed to handle that kind of load.”
“Scope down the track, make sure it’s all clear. Can you see anything?”
“Nothing in range, Corp.”
“Dietrich and Harper are supposed to be in control of the track, they should’ve called in any irregularity.” Sweeney flicked through her communications panel, rapidly cutting people in and out of the circuit. “Crowe, when was their last transmission?”
“Four minutes twenty seconds ago, Corp. Calling them now, no response.”
“Shit. Dietrich, Harper, this is Sweeney. Come in, Dietrich, Harper. SitRep. Damnit, sound off!”
“Magnetic spike,” Frost shouted suddenly. “Major EM activity all along the track! There’s fuses blowing out of the pylons!”
Turning to look, Jacob saw showers of electrical sparks bursting from the maglev pylons. Components exploded into blue and green flame, flinging chunks of hot concrete into the brush. His helmet’s magnification gave him a perfect view. Something or somebody was overloading the track a hundred times beyond what it could take, but why would anyone want to–
He stopped to ask himself a schoolboy physics question. What did you get when you combined a high-speed train carriage and a mag track with all the safeties removed?
Answer: A large-projectile railgun.
Shock numbed his body. His heart seemed to pump ice-cold sludge through his veins instead of blood. His muscles moved in awful slow-motion as he let loose a shout, switching his radio to emergency broadcast, blasting out to everyone on all frequencies at once.
“Everybody get down!” he roared, half a second before the world went mad.
As he watched the hammer of God bearing down on him, Jacob had a split second to remember everything he knew about magnetic accelerator physics. Next to nothing. He had no talent for theory; he passed his classes by the skin of his teeth, and forgot it all the moment exams were over.
He didn’t have the knowledge to make sense what his eyes were seeing.
The maglev carriage travelled down from the horizon in the same time it took Jacob to drop to his knees. Everything moved so fast that even his boosted senses couldn’t process it all. The train station simply vanished before his eyes in a cloud of white-hot fire. Walls of reinforced concrete flashed away to rubble, to shrapnel, chunks of molten stone and metal catapulted in every direction at once like the world’s biggest shotgun.
Jacob’s armour did its best, but it wasn’t enough.
One piece took him in the shoulder. It hissed as it melted the joint to black slag, bones and all, spewing out a cloud of smoke that smelled like a barbecue grill. Another slammed through his abdomen, in one end and out the other. It left a clean-cauterised hole behind it.
The third piece spalled off the front of his helmet and knocked him flat. Somehow there was no pain. He lay there, watching the sky in a daze, while tracer rounds and bright-flaring rockets flashed across his vision. Muzzle flashes sparked left and right. He even saw a suit of camouflaged battle armour sneak past his prone body, stopping only to loose a long burst of fire into one of the sniper nests.
Vague shreds of speech danced across the top of his brain. “Sarge!” he heard, several times, with increasing desperation. He was just aware enough to wonder why that word should mean something to him.
“Secure . . . vault . . . fall back . . . hold this ground! Whatever you do, you hold this Goddamn ground!”
Funny. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Fahlan swear before. Something must have made him very upset. Mind and body were both numb, but some deep-buried part of Jacob knew this was wrong. A sense of urgent dread welled up inside him. He had to get up now, or he might never get up again.
He rolled onto his left side and got his elbow under him. The world spun before his eyes, and it took all of his training to choke down the urge to be sick. His right arm hung rigid and immobile in its armoured sleeve. Useless, but protected. Checking his helmet display, he absorbed a full briefing on his useless limb, perforated bowels, and concussion. The computer rated his combat effectiveness at forty-two percent.
You gotta get up, he thought, stumbling, fighting for every inch of altitude. You gotta. They need you. Your squad needs you.
And then he was up. Reeling, swaying in the smoke-filled breeze, but on his feet. Alive and able to hold a weapon.
His rifle lay next to him, now a puddle of formless steel and plastic. Not the tool for the job. The bodies around him weren’t much help either. Almost all of them were UN peacekeepers, their weapons scaled for ordinary human hands, not armoured gauntlets. Several had been shot in the back while trying to run away.
Jacob saw only two exceptions. Bitter cold twisted his insides as he stood over them.
Private Frost still clutched his sniper rifle even with his helmet torn halfway off his shoulders. His arms and legs were twisted at odd angles, making him look like a broken wind-up toy. Flesh, bone and brain matter mixed together on the concrete floor, and Jacob turned away to investigate what might be Frost’s killer.
Its camouflage functions had shut down after death, leaving only a blank grey suit, unmarked and totally devoid of identity. It could’ve been a robot if not for the big red hole through its chest. Underneath all the armour, these terrorists were as human as anyone. He — or she — had dropped an old-style grenade launcher with a big revolving drum for a magazine.
Jacob spun the drum and counted the remaining shells. Eight shots. Eight could be enough.
The cylinder snapped into place with a smooth, well-oiled click. The grenadier had taken good care of his weapon. Nice armour, too. High-tech materiel meant for front line use. Not the kind of thing any bunch of terrorist ought to have access to.
Several short, sharp explosions rumbled through the ground. They echoed out of the big concrete mouth of the vault bunker. Jacob stared at it for a second, then started his body moving, one muscle at a time. He weaved and staggered across the concrete, single-minded and unstoppable.
Time to see what forty-two percent of Jacob Dusther could do.
The memory slipped and swam, like Jacob’s mental state. Gina couldn’t hold on to it. Exhaustion throbbed behind her eyeballs and tugged her back to the real world, where she slumped forward, just catching herself on the floor. Bomber reached forward to help her but ended up toppling over on his side. He blinked dizzily at the wall.
“Jesus,” he said. “And I thought last time was bad.”
Gina coughed through the dryness in her throat. It was like waking up from a deep sleep, hesitantly, so that your dreams bled through into reality. She willed her limbs to move, but they took a long time to respond. Sounds seemed to echo through her as if her skull was a hollow box.
She sputtered, “Y-Your brain still thinks it’s got a c-concussion. It’ll wear off.”
“Not just that. I . . . I can hear people. I can feel them all the way downstairs.” He raised his head, but his eyes were still glassy and unfocussed, staring at something very far away. Gina knew that look much too well. Then, suddenly, he snapped back like an elastic band and collapsed with his arms wrapped around his head. “Ohh, fuck. It’s the . . . It’s the damn Spice, isn’t it? Did you go through this?”
“The come-down’s a real bitch,” she said, and ran through her mental checklist, the little routine that dragged her through a hundred rough patches. She tested every part of herself, exercised them individually until they all responded the way they ought to. Reacquainting herself with her own body. It helped more than anything else she ever tried. “Rough memories just make it worse.”
Shoving some more cushions under Bomber, Gina tried to make him comfortable as best she could, and held his hand tight. He squeezed back, moaning in helpless agony. It was almost funny, seeing a guy who thought nothing of gunshots brought to his knees by a little white pill.
But Gina understood. She’d been where he was now. A long time ago, Onounu had found a young redhead lying face-down in an alley, curled up like a newborn in the rain. All her money was gone. Uncontrollable spasms ran down her body, and she’d bit deep into her tongue, coughing out blood onto the wet pavement. She would’ve died there, alone. Only someone took pity on her and sat with her under the pouring grey sky.
They were both laid up with pneumonia for weeks after that. It gave them time to talk. Though she didn’t appreciate it at the time, it was probably one of the happiest summers of her life.
She bit her lip and blinked away the prickling moisture in her eyes. No time to think about that. The only way to keep from missing Onounu, to stop herself spiralling down the trail of past regrets, was to keep throwing herself into the present.
The shakes in Bomber’s hand subsided. She squeezed it, and he rolled over onto his back, looking up at her.
“Why would anyone do this to themselves?” he asked, baffled.
She sent him a tiny smile. “Ask yourself, babe. Everybody thinks they’ve got a good enough reason. Some don’t need any reason at all.”
Gina trailed off, biting her lip. The ironic comparisons were so many that she wouldn’t know where to start. After all, nothing could stop Bomber from getting what he wanted, even if it meant destroying himself in the process.
And she’d be by his side every step of the way. Whatever it took to keep him safe.
Suddenly the door swung open. Major Hawthorn showed his face, and he almost managed to get a word out before Gina cut him off. She snapped, “Didn’t I tell you not to barge in here?”
“Look, I wouldn’t have bothered if it wasn’t important. Your friend Stoney sent word. Things are happening sooner than we thought, we need to be ready in an hour.”
The news seemed to recharge Bomber like a bolt of lightning. He sat up too quickly, then dragged himself up the wall to a standing position. “I expected that,” he said. “We’re good to go.”
Gina snapped her fingers to get his attention back. “No, we’re not,” she declared, her head tilted to the side, her lips curled in a half-smile. “You put me through this, the least you can do is make it worth my while for one hour.”
A moment of confusion flashed across his face. Then her full meaning dawned on him, and his eagerness to go after Gabriel paused, like pushing the off button on a holoprojector. As single-minded as he was, Bomber still had a libido. At least when it came to Gina Hart.
He took Hawthorn by the shoulder and escorted him back through the door, despite his protests. “You heard the lady. See you in an hour, Hawk.”
The door shut after the Major, locked tight with a click, and didn’t open again for some time.
PRECOGNITION: Part 45
Hurrying to keep up with the others, Rat scrambled down a set of slippery metal rungs deep into the bowels of Two-Gamma Arcology. Fear-sweat made her palms even slicker. She pressed on with a white-knuckled grip, cursing and brushing spider-webs off her arms once she finally touched solid ground again.
She’d frozen up once on a ladder like this, unable to move up or down. She might still have been there if Gina hadn’t come back to rescue her. She saved her life. Heights never scared her quite as much after that.
She only had a moment to think and centre herself before she had to run after Banshee and Harmony again. She needed to know what was going on. Assassination was one thing, but talking to Banshee could be more dangerous still.
To his credit, Banshee gave no outward sign of familiarity. His eyes slid over her as if she were part of the furniture. Deliberate, of course. He didn’t strike her as the forgetful type. No, Banshee had his own reasons for not saying anything, and that raised Rat’s suspicions even more.
“So is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Blade?” he said to Harmony, just on the edge of Rat’s hearing. “After all these years?”
“An alliance, if you play your cards right.” Her tone put any attempt at familiarity in the deep-freeze. “You’ve got goals, and so do I. They could be made to fit together. You already proved that I can’t have you running around unchecked.”
Rat still couldn’t believe her ears. Letting Banshee live shocked her enough, but this . . . This was fast getting out of hand.
They ducked under a sign which suggested these tunnels were some kind of maintenance access to the sewage system. From the thick layers of dust on every surface, this place hadn’t seen a technician since it was dug. It probably never needed one. They built Laputa to last, to maintain its own services without any human attention. There were sensors and security cameras, but Banshee’s people had taken appropriate care to subvert each one.
Rat had to wonder how the Irishman packed so much meaning into one syllable when he said, simply, “Why?”
“Because you’re a psychopath!” Harmony rounded on him, her self-control slipping to betray a red flush on her cheeks, teeth clenched together in a rage. “You really don’t get the concept of a bloodless coup, do you, Ryan? You never let civilians get in the way of a good job.”
Banshee showed as much empathy as an ice cube. “Collateral damage. Live with it.”
“And there’s your answer,” Harmony sighed, deflating. She suddenly looked tired and alone. “I either join forces with you or I have to take you out, and I just don’t have the manpower. I’m basing this offer on the hope that you are the lesser of two evils.”
“That’s presuming I say yes.”
“It’s not presumption. It’s fact.”
“You really think I’ll agree? Go along with you and your little emancipation scheme?”
“I know you don’t give a rat’s ass about emancipation either way, Ryan. And that’s why you’ll accept. With half the Nations’ leadership dead, there’s gonna be a big power vacuum to fill, and you can have your fucking slice. You can have Europe as far as I’m concerned. As long as we get our reforms.”
Europe? Rat said to herself, staring at the older hackers in shock. Except they weren’t hackers right now. They were politicians, working out a back-room deal.
“My dear Blade,” Banshee said with an unfriendly chuckle, an unhinged sound that made Rat’s skin crawl, “you’re starting to sound like you think I’m responsible for that shooting.”
She never replied. The tunnel opened out into a small underground tramway, designed to haul equipment and spare parts. Banshee invited everyone aboard a waiting cart. When he pressed his hand against the console, the wheels began to grind forward. Slowly but surely they rolled out from under Two-Gamma, through glass-roofed corridors and waystations which hadn’t seen a living thing in more than a decade. It seemed like each new part of the tunnel was even blacker and deeper down than the one they came from.
Again, Banshee was the one to break the silence. “Alright. Alright, Blade, you got yourself a deal. I always fancied the idea of being an emperor.”
Harmony stared into the dark and said nothing.
They had to be halfway across Laputa before Banshee slowed the tram to an awful, groaning halt. Dust billowed up in clouds so thick that no light could penetrate them. Rat’s eyes ached, and she coughed uncontrollably, only able to move when someone pulled her by the shoulder. It was a long, blind stumble until they reached a small pool of light — another hatchway, like the one to Harmony’s compound.
She crawled up the ladder, tears slipping down her cheeks, and blinked against the blue glare of a single energy-saving bulb. More dust swirled in the air until a harsh electric tick signalled an air conditioning unit coming to life. It made the whole space reek of ozone and recycled air while Rat took her first look around.
“A wine cellar?” she asked, running her fingers along some ancient-looking steel casks. A few of them bore labels which looked like complete gibberish to her. About the only thing she could read was a retro-style painted sign on the wall, bearing the name ‘Finnegan’s Wake’.
“Not just wine,” said Banshee, shaking the dust out of his blonde mop of hair. “Beer, spirits, whiskey. All the good vices.”
Karen scoffed as she poked her head above ground. “A pub. We should’ve known.”
“Are you serious? Their hideout is a bar?”
“There’s Irish pubs in strategic locations across every city in the world,” Banshee explained, again with that mad little laugh. “We can go to ground anywhere, anytime, and always have a place to hide when the shit gets neck-deep. Wait here, I’ll kill the security.”
He flipped open a metal panel next to the door and punched several codes into a small keypad. There was no way to observe the code, but Rat kept her mobile phone hidden in the palm of her hand anyway, filming Banshee’s every move. The footage might come in handy.
Also, she just plain didn’t like him. She’d probably be happier if Harmony really had killed him.
Banshee stripped down to an off-white tank top which showed all the rippling muscles of his wrestler physique. The kind of body that made you wonder if the owner hadn’t installed a few boosts along the way. “Since this is my home for the time being, however humble,” he announced, gesturing at one of his guys, “I’ll ask you nicely to unload your weapons and stow magazines. Patrick here will be keeping an eye out to make sure the rules are followed and there’re no unfortunate accidents. Savvy?”
Harmony nodded. “Let’s all be on our best behaviour.”
It took Rat a moment to figure out how to get the magazine out of her new pistol, and she could only feel relieved once it was out. The mag fitted snugly in her pocket. Meanwhile, Karen unloaded and inspected her assault rifle with well-oiled precision, muttering to Harmony out the corner of her mouth, “You sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s diplomacy. He might hate me, but he’s smart. The plan is still good.”
“What plan?” hissed Rat, but Karen silenced her with a contemptuous glance. That hadn’t been meant for her ears. She looked down, submitting, but inside she seethed with resentment. She deserved to know what was going on. If they wanted to play that game, she’d just have to employ her talent for overhearing conversations wherever she wasn’t wanted.
Banshee opened the door and, as a gesture, went in first. Harmony followed him. Everyone else joined in single file, except Rat, who got into a staring contest with a ginger-haired Irish boy for last place. He was some skinny apprentice, only a year or two older, but he glowered at her like he thought having testicles made him something special. He refused to surrender until everybody else was up the stairs. Even then he watched her over his shoulder and insisted on shutting the door after her.
“Don’t try anything,” he snarled. She looked him over, then spat on the ground at his feet. His impotent rage amused her.
“–so I’m sure you have questions,” Banshee’s voice rolled over them. Rat hurried to join the conversation. Banshee gathered everybody around an old pool table at the heart of the pub, with rickety faux-wooden chairs for the guests, though nobody sat down.
All eyes were on Harmony, even among the small group of Irish, who smoked and watched the affair in stoic silence. She leaned her hands on the table and said, “The vault.”
Banshee grinned. “So you knew.”
“What were you doing there?”
“In the spirit of honesty and brotherhood,” he murmured, “I’ll show you.”
His hand went to a hidden control at the corner of the table. A hologram sputtered to life above the green felt, a magnified overview of several dissected nanobots. The bots were an odd shape, bulbous, with large heavy arms that looked out of place on such a tiny device. It didn’t mean anything to Rat, and Harmony seemed no more enlightened.
Banshee continued, “Think back to that big cyber-attack a few weeks ago in Europe. Nasty semi-intelligent virus. Ireland scored most of the cleanup contract for it.”
“I remember.”
“Well, we did more than clean up the mess. We made an interesting discovery we chose not to share with the other contractors.” The hologram skipped to a close-up of one of the arms. It had a core of communications-grade quantum wire leading straight into the oversized memory unit, and some kind of spike on the other end. And suddenly things started to click into place in Rat’s brain. “You see, this virus, it’s not just software. That’s what makes it so powerful. That’s why nobody could figure out how it got into so many fortified machines. It’s a zombie program with a hardware delivery system.”
“These nanites?” asked Karen.
“That’s right. That’s how it gets in. Somebody introduces these mobbos into the environment in a sneaky way, they head towards any EM emissions they can find, and make their way into every electronic system they can reach, completely bypassing the security suite by jacking the hardware directly. No muss, no fuss, nothing to stop them except full-scale nanoscreening. Only the Feds can afford that kind of security.”
Harmony paled a little as she digested the information. “That’s why you were so quiet at the Fifteen. You knew.”
“I figured Kensei was going to pin the tail on me. My past’s public knowledge nowadays, so who better to frame than old Banshee, eh?”
“Then what did you find in the vault, Ryan?”
“This.” He produced a small black box, a perfect cube, with a selection of different dataports on one side. Rat boggled at it. She knew what it was; a Fed-tech quantum storage drive, big enough to take the entire vault’s contents and put it into the palm of Banshee’s hand. “Evidence, we hope. It’s got to be Kensei. I don’t know how, or why, but he’s behind it. That means the source code is somewhere in Laputa. Most likely tucked away safe in one of his precious data vaults. Maybe not this one, maybe not the next, but I’m gonna find it.”
Raising an eyebrow, Harmony said skeptically, “You think Kensei could afford to nanodust the whole of western Europe? I’ve had his job, it doesn’t pay that well.”
“Who else could it be, Blade? You got a name for us? Anyone?”
Silence. Nobody had an answer to that question, or at least, nobody liable to tell. Rat clenched her jaw tight and kept her secrets.
It had been a long time since she slept. When the meeting turned into data analysis, going through the stolen drive and all its top-secret contents, Rat started to lose her concentration. It was all much less exciting than it sounded. Breaking the encryption, matching up chunks of scattered, broken-up information, and only then figuring out if the data was remotely valuable. Long spells of waiting followed by hours more of simple grunt work.
Of course, being on Harmony’s team meant Rat had to pitch in. The job didn’t require VR rigs or complicated hardware. A dozen people just sat around the pool table waving their hands, using the big holoprojector as an interface. So Rat sifted through zettabytes of useless, irrelevant rubbish, corporate customer lists and half-finished software, bored out of her skull. Eventually she backed away from the table, folded herself up in a chair and drifted into a fitful doze.
The sound of footsteps jarred her awake. She blinked and rubbed her puffy eyes, stared blearily at the person in front of her, then jerked to her feet. She didn’t know what was going on but it seemed like a good idea to face Banshee O’Doherty standing up.
He took a glance around the room to make sure nobody was paying undue attention. Then he said to her, smiling faintly, “You get around, kid.”
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Even sleepy, she could tell she didn’t like his tone, and her defences started to engage. “I got a lot going on,” she huffed.
“Find yourself a cause, did you?”
Crossing her arms, she stood her ground and glared up at him. She’d had years of practice at putting on a tough front, although it would help a lot if her knees would stop shaking. “That’s my business. Don’t see how it’s any of yours.”
“Mm. Just a word of advice, little girl.” He leaned in close, his huge body blotting out the rest of the room, and his voice dropped to a silky whisper. “You’ll want to figure out where your loyalties lie while you got the chance. We’re not fond of spies, you see. We don’t treat them very well at all, unless they make themselves . . . useful. You think about that.”
He turned and swept away before Rat could think of a response. She was left to stare at his retreating body, her mouth open, her arms uncrossing to hang limp at her side. Tiny beads of sweat prickled her brow, and her heart sank down into the pit of her stomach.
If there was anyone in this world who she did not want threatening her, he was it. You needed more than wisecracks and attitude against a mass-murderer.
“What was that all about?” came Karen’s voice, not far from her ear, and Rat almost jumped. She hadn’t noticed her approach.
“I– I don’t think he likes me,” Rat stammered.
“Ah.” Karen afforded him a momentary glance. “Ryan was always unstable. Peacetime kept him calm for a while, but I think he’s missed having a war to fight.”
“Unstable? He has totally lost the plot!”
“Maybe. Harm is right, though. At least this way we can control him, use him to our advantage.”
“You really think you can control that guy?” scoffed Rat. “Where’s Harmony? I wanna talk to her.”
Karen eyes were hard as glass as they rolled down to look at Rat. She almost but didn’t quite smile in contempt. “She’s a little busy, Alex. Harm is not your mother, she hasn’t got time to put all your fears to bed whenever you get spooked. We’re fighting a war for your emancipation. Try acting like a soldier.”
Something sharp and cold twisted in Rat’s heart, hearing those words. Then Karen got called away and left her to brood. Just as well. She didn’t feel like talking anymore, now that she knew exactly how much her opinion really mattered. She found a shady corner to lean against instead, and watched the world from under a deep scowl.
Banshee’s promise spun round and round in her head, gathering awful momentum from every dark corner and primal instinct. Seemed like she was always spying on somebody for somebody else. She thought things had changed when she joined up with Harmony. That she found a more honest kind of life, where she’d be treated with a little bit of respect. Now things had come full circle, and she was back in the same shitty position where she started.
Banshee scared her, even through the twin shields of anger and pride. She didn’t want to tangle with a homicidal lunatic. On the other hand, the Chrome Rat did not just fade in the face of simple threats of violence. Becoming the Irish bastard’s lapdog was not an option. She wasn’t a fighter, she got freaked out by the sight of blood, and she barely knew which end of a gun to hold, but you could only push someone so far before they started to push back.
When she opened her mouth again her voice sounded different. Harder, more grown-up somehow, so much that it made her shiver.
“The only advantage you’re gonna get out of Banshee is by putting a bullet in his brain,” she said, softly, so that nobody else would hear. Her fingers reached into her pocket and fiddled with the spring-loaded shapes of bullets in her pistol magazine. “And if you won’t do it, maybe I will.”
