Absolute Knowledge Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Drew Cordell

  The transmission cut out, and we were left waiting for the cable to drop. Another hour or so passed before the line finally dropped into the surface of the water. Moving as quickly as we could, we latched our carabiners to the cable and attached a six-foot safety tether between each person in case one of our carabiners broke. After an hour and multiple breaks along the way, we were back at the top of the vent, but there wasn’t anyone waiting for us.

  “They must have had something come up.” Caeldra pulled out her weapon and flicked on its light.

  “Probably. Let’s get back to the Guild Hall,” Mary said.

  We raced back to the Guild Hall and were cleared for entry by the guards on the outside. We twisted off our helmets, but it didn’t look like we’d get to remove the clunky suits right away. With the helmets off, the stench of the EPX suits was overwhelming from the acrid waters in the Depths. Despite the smell, it was comforting to breathe non-pressurized air. Hours of wearing the helmet and the unavoidable sense of enclosure had taken their toll on me, and it looked like the others shared my relief.

  Justicar Schaff flagged us down and motioned for us to walk with her toward the Council Hall. She frowned when she noticed Bailey wasn’t with us. “What happened to Bailey?”

  “Flooding. She didn’t make it,” Caeldra said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Chloe responded. “We’ll find a replacement for your squad as soon as possible.”

  Caeldra nodded, but her face looked absent.

  Marwin jogged over from further down the hall when he saw us enter. “Find anything?” he asked.

  I pulled the small box from my backpack, concealing the larger case I held. I entered the code and popped open the smaller box, giving Marwin the data card we had recovered.

  “We’ll update you once we’ve deciphered it and the Council has adjourned,” he said. Mary frowned.

  “Seriously? Bailey died to get this information and you won’t let us sit in on the session?” Adam asked, his voice cold.

  “Adam,” Caeldra said quietly, trying to calm him. He had been close with Bailey, and it looked like he was breaking.

  “I’m sorry about Bailey, Adam, but you know regulations,” Marwin said.

  Leroy put a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Come on, man. Let’s go grab a drink and calm down.”

  For a moment I thought Adam was going to tell Marwin about the box that was still in my backpack, but he didn’t. He walked off with Leroy toward the elevator in the back of the Guild Hall.

  “We’ll do your squad debriefing once we’re done with the Council session,” Marwin said, taking the data card and walking into the Council Hall.

  “Let’s go take these suits off,” Caeldra said, starting toward the elevator. Mary and I followed her, and we arrived at Leroy’s storefront. Leroy and Adam were almost out of their EPX suits, and the rest of us helped each other out of the armor. Despite the environmental controls inside the suits, I felt free and unconstrained with the armor off.

  I walked over to the Quartermaster and checked in the box I had recovered under personal assets after packing it in an old backpack. While the guild wasn’t working on a currency basis, the Quartermaster was happy to store it for me with no questions asked. If I returned to Olympus, I would take it with me, but I couldn’t allow it to fall into the hands of the Omniscience Engine or anyone else. After getting my acquisition scrip, I returned to sit with the others while they waited for Leroy. Leroy walked into the back room and called for us to follow. He disappeared in the warehouse section and returned with a six pack of beer.

  “I may have lied when I said we were out of beer,” he said, giving us a halfhearted smile. It still didn’t seem like Bailey was gone. Despite the hardships of the past three years, I hadn’t gotten used to losing people. Death was always so foreign, and it took time for it to sink in.

  Leroy passed out the bottles of beer, giving two to Adam and one to everyone else. He passed around a bottle opener, and we cracked open the beers.

  “To Bailey. She was a great squad mate and a wonderful person. Her death won’t be in vain, and we’ll use the information we recovered to push our cause forward. We honor her and await the day when we see her again,” Caeldra said, raising her beer in the air. We all toasted to Bailey, and the tears started flowing.

  I took a deep drink from my bottle, enjoying the familiar taste. “Thanks, Leroy, I’ve missed this,” I said.

  “I’ve got another six-pack saved, but after that, we’re out. I don’t think the Scavenger Guild is brewing anymore either,” Leroy said. “We’ll crack open the other pack another time; we have to save it and make it count.”

  “What do you think they’ll find on the card?” Adam asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  “Hopefully a way to end all of this,” Caeldra said. “No way to know until they decide to tell us—if they decide to tell us anything at all.”

  “The Council doesn’t seem to be keeping many secrets anymore,” I offered.

  “They have been more open than usual, but I still don’t feel like we have the whole story,” Caeldra said before taking a sip of her beer. “All of this idling has to come to an end though; we’re not getting anywhere while the Omniscience Engine is doing God knows what without any resistance.”

  “We’re fighting an impossible war,” Adam said. “We’re dying for nothing.”

  “That I don’t believe,” I said, glancing at him.

  Adam had tears pooling in his eyes. “Do you realize how many people we’ve lost in the past three years? And what have we accomplished because of it? We’re just scraping by while the Omniscience Engine continues to thrive. Look how far we’ve drifted from our cause.”

  “Adam, I know you’re upset, but you can’t be talking like that,” Caeldra said.

  “My point exactly. I shouldn’t be saying these things in the first place, but somehow, I’m saying what’s on everyone’s hearts and minds.”

  Adam was right, and it was scary. Hope seemed to be fading, especially with the tensions with the Scavenger Guild. If we couldn’t get past this and work together, then we wouldn’t have a chance against the Omniscience Engine.

  Caeldra looked at Adam. “I understand how you’re feeling, but you need to stop talking like that,” she said.

  “Got it,” he mumbled. “I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “I can’t either. I’m sorry there was nothing we could do.”

  Adam downed his beer, handing the other unopened bottle back to Leroy. “I’m going to take a walk. Ping me on comms if you hear anything.” He stood and walked toward the door.

  Leroy tried to stop Adam, but Caeldra grabbed his arm. “Let him go. He needs time.”

  “I hope he’ll be all right,” Mary said.

  “We just have to hope we can end all of this soon. We’ve lost too many people in this war, and we’ll probably lose more,” Caeldra said.

  “Caeldra?” A voice crackled through her wrist link.

  “Yeah?” she responded.

  “We’re sending a report to you. Read it over and share it with the rest of Knight Squad,” the voice said.

  “Understood.” Caeldra pressed the screen and sent the data packet to the rest of us.

  “Should I go get Adam?” Mary asked.

  “No, let him walk. He needs to cool off,” Caeldra responded, shifting through the data. “My God. We found a weapon. It’s the plans to build an electromagnetic bomb that will fry anything running on the Omniscience Engine frequency.”

  “Will it work?” I asked.

  “Martinez is developing a smaller version of the bomb to test. The data they ran through our mainframe suggests it will shut down the reactors. If that’s the case, then we’ll be left in the dark. The reactors in the Undercity are a lot older than the ones in the Mids and Olympus, which means they can be manually rebooted and run offline. If we get teams to each of the reactors when we detonate the bomb, then we can get them running before they overheat.�
��

  “The bomb would be detonated in Olympus?” Leroy asked.

  “It looks like it, right in the compound housing most of the project’s infrastructure.”

  I thumbed through the data, looking for the payload and expected damage. My heart sunk when I found it. The bomb would level Olympus, and the resulting electromagnetic pulse from the blast would cripple the remaining infrastructure in the Mids. With those levels offline, small teams could detonate smaller charges in target areas in the Slums—including the Rail, and shut down the Omniscience Engine for good.

  “They know about all the people being held in the Mids, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they know. If this is going to happen, then I’m sure we’ll be on standby to get those people out,” Caeldra said.

  “What about the fallout of the blast from the bomb?” I asked.

  “It’s a clean burn, fusion based so the fallout will be minimal. I’m sure Martinez can explain it a lot better, but it looks like the fusion reaction is just designed to facilitate the electromagnetic wave—which is the real weapon. The explosion isn’t that significant, but the resulting EMP is,” Caeldra said.

  “I just want to be sure we get those people in the Mids out before all this goes down, if they’re even still there. I realize it’s been three years since we heard anything from them, but we have to be sure.”

  “Did any of you actually see the internment camp or the Enforcer guards Emily and Nick were talking about?” Caeldra asked.

  “No, but we didn’t see Enforcers, and we didn’t see bodies on the streets. From what Nick and Emily told us, a lot of people died, but they were hauling the corpses on a daily basis. Everything we’re going to do is based on assumptions. We don’t even know if Olympus is still there, either. For all we know, we could be the last survivors in New York.”

  Caeldra grimaced. “You’re right. We’ll do our best to put in the word on the people in the Mids if Marwin hasn’t already, but from what we know about Mindshift, I’m not sure we’ll like what we find. As for the box from your father, our lips are sealed, but you may have a difficult decision in front of you. Do you really think you’ll go back and live in Olympus?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea, but I can’t risk everything, especially when the data card we recovered has a weapon we can use against the Omniscience Engine.”

  “How could that robot know? How does any of this make sense?” Mary asked.

  “Nothing makes sense, but I have to believe the robot knew something we don’t. It could be our only shot later down the line, and if opening those envelopes could kill everyone, then it’s not a risk I’m willing to take right now. Not yet at least.”

  “Like I said Jake, you need to be prepared to make a difficult decision,” Caeldra said, finishing her beer and setting the bottle down on the metal table behind her.

  I nodded.

  Mary set her bottle down too. “If the data card had the schematics for a weapon, why was it dependent on the Omniscience Engine framework to decrypt in the first place?”

  “Probably just to prove it would work with the code we already have—maybe a safety measure,” Caeldra said.

  “Maybe it didn’t want anyone but us to have access to the weapon—a security measure. If that’s the case, that means the robot knew we’d recover the Omniscience Engine data drives in the first place.”

  Caeldra raised a finger. “Slow down there, Jake. There’s no way the robot knew we’d have that data. From what you told me, your burglary run in Olympus was a last-minute decision. Also, if we had the data, then the robot wouldn’t have access to it at the same point in time, meaning there would be differences in the code that would invalidate it.”

  Leroy frowned. “I don’t know how hard it was for them to access what was on the data card, but Martinez did it. Maybe the dependencies in the code were the same, or maybe they changed and he had to exercise some brain power. Regardless, that’s a little too speculative for my taste. The implications that the robot predicted the future are discomforting.”

  “He’s right. Marwin said those drives were plugged into the system; they were updated on a regular basis. There’s no way the code directories matched, especially since the data card had been down in the Depths for over three years,” Mary said.

  “We don’t know that. Someone or something could have planted it. The Omniscience Engine could have planted it. This weapon design could be a trap; it could kill us all if we’re not careful,” Caeldra said.

  Leroy spoke up. “Martinez is the best engineer we have, and if there’s something suspicious in the design, he’s going to test it. From the data they sent, it looks like we’re building a miniature test version of the weapon before the Guild commits to building the real thing. There’s no way to test the weapon without triggering it in the range of something running off the Omniscience Engine frequency, though.”

  “We were alone in the Depths. I’ve never been somewhere so empty and lifeless before. I don’t know how anything planted that data card with all the flooding. It was probably the robot, but we don’t know how or when it was actually placed. The data we recovered claims to be eight years old, but on unencrypted data, that’s easy to spoof,” Mary said.

  Caeldra’s wrist link buzzed, and she answered it on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Caeldra, I need you to bring Knight Squad to the Council Hall.” It was Marwin.

  “Are we mobilizing to River’s Port or the Docks? You mentioned unusual activity there, but there was nothing about it in the report that was just sent out,” she responded.

  “We’ll talk about that in a few minutes. Bring Knight Squad up to the Council Hall. We have to talk about what happened in the Depths.”

  “Adam went on a walk; he’s upset about Bailey. Should we get him for this?” Caeldra asked.

  “It’s your call, but decide quickly then get everyone else up here. Marwin out,” he said, breaking the connection.

  “We’ll let Adam cool off. Let’s get topside and talk with the Council and figure out what the hell is going on at the Docks,” Caeldra said.

  Reluctantly, I downed the rest of my beer I’d been savoring and set the bottle on the table. I couldn’t shake my nervousness as we walked toward the Council Hall. Something was happening at the Docks, and I had a bad feeling about it.

  22 THE DOCKS

  Caeldra finished our debriefing, and me and the rest of Knight Squad answered questions as they came up. Satisfied with our report, the Council moved on to the current situation, calling Martinez forward to explain the contents of the data card we’d recovered. Martinez more or less had a permanent seat on the Council at this point. He loaded code into the console and projected it on the holo displays on the desk we were sitting behind.

  “Okay, so the data card you recovered was dependent on an old branch of code from the Omniscience Engine data we recovered. The code hasn’t changed in over a hundred years, so that’s why I think it was chosen as a dependency. We’ve decided not to speculate on the origins of robot or how it acquired the code in the first place, but thanks to Knight Squad, we have a shot at building a weapon that can win this war. My team and I are already working on a smaller prototype version of the weapon and should have it ready within the next few days.”

  Alex started talking. “That brings us to the issue at hand. Since Knight Squad was responsible for the recovery of the weapon schematics, we wanted you to be the first to know what’s going on and the current situation of the Guild. We’ve detected a large train on the Rail heading toward the Docks. It’s a few hundred miles out, but we have no idea where it’s from or what’s on it. For all we know, it could be a nuke designed to level the city completely. There’s no way to tell, but we need to have everyone on standby for when it arrives.”

  I fought the urge to burst into conversation with Mary and Caeldra.

  Marwin stood and projected the images of the train to our screens. The train was gray and bulky. It towered impossibly hi
gh on the track and looked relatively featureless.

  “We’re trying to scan it, but our long-range sensor set up at the Docks isn’t reading anything other than the train itself. As far as we know, this particular train hasn’t ever been in New York, which means we have no idea what to expect. We haven’t had contact with the outside world for over one hundred years. The train isn’t moving fast—it won’t be here for a few days.”

  “You think this has something to do with the Omniscience Engine?” I asked.

  “I don’t see how it wouldn’t,” Edgar said, his voice grim. “There could be an army of Enforcers on the train coming to wipe us all out. If that’s the case, we’re going to have the perfect opportunity to test the weapon Martinez is working on.”

  “As a precaution, we’ve evacuated our teams in the Docks and told the Scavenger Guild to do the same. We had our teams rig up several buildings in the Docks with high explosive compounds to clear it out if we perceive danger when the train arrives. Until then, we’re going to keep everyone underground just in case. Thankfully, we’re quite safe from bombs detonated on the surface of New York, but if it’s nuclear, then we’d lose hope of ever leaving the Undercity again—the war would be over.”

  “If the Omniscience Engine still hasn’t achieved its goal, then I don’t think it can afford to level the country,” Caeldra said.

  “That’s assuming it doesn’t have the data stored somewhere else,” Alex countered.

  It was a fair point. If the data was somewhere else, why not wipe out the Slums and be done with everything? One bomb detonated on the surface of the Slums would effectively shut down the Champions.

  “If it’s a biological weapon, the Omniscience Engine wouldn’t care,” Leroy suggested.