Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10)

by Andy Peloquin

  Looking at her, Nolan realized she was as surprised as he’d been. She might have suspected it—as he should have—but thinking that about the Taia she’d come to know was as much a shock to her system as it was to his.

  “Now you bloody have to tell me what happened!” Bex seized his arm in an iron grip. “Talk, Cerbie, and talk goddamned fast!”

  Despite his hesitation, Nolan found himself actually relieved to be telling her the truth. He’d borne the secret’s weight alone since the Vault, unable to share it with anyone. Telling Jadis would only add to the fear she tried valiantly to hide from him. Warbeast Team would immediately suspect Taia, and that would only make the mission harder. But if anyone could understand the situation, what Taia had done and how hard he was struggling to come to grips with the truth, it was Bex.

  So he told her. Everything he’d pieced together and everything Taia had outright confessed, he shared with Bex. Her eyes grew steadily wider as she listened, until Nolan feared her head would split open and the top half pop off. Then, as he told her about Taia’s voluntary shutdown, her expression grew pensive. She listened in silence until Nolan finished, then they just sat there, listening to the humming of the skimmer-craft’s engine and watching the city lights flash by outside their windows.

  Nearly a full minute passed before Bex spoke. When she did, it wasn’t to Nolan. “Taia, deactivate Privacy Mode.”

  Nothing happened. For a moment, Nolan was confused. Then he realized why her command didn’t work.

  “She really did shut off everything that could overhear our conversation,” he said. That realization helped to firm up his belief in the new Taia, the one who claimed to be fully loyal to him. “And I’m the only one who can reactivate her.”

  “Then do it!” Bex snapped, her eyes blazing bright for a moment. “Girl and I need to have a heart-to-heart!”

  “Taia, Privacy Mode off,” Nolan said.

  “Privacy Mode deactivated.” Taia’s voice echoed through the vehicle’s sound system. “Bex, I trust you put Nolan in his—“

  “Is it true?” Bex demanded. “You were working for the Protection Bureau the whole time?”

  “Oh.” Taia’s response was so human. She remained silent for a full second—eons in AI processing time—and when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly subdued. “So he told you.”

  “He did.” Bex’s voice had a hard edge. “He told me why, too. And what your originator did to make sure you had a chance to be free of the Protection Bureau’s control.”

  Taia gave no response.

  “Nolan’s struggling with it, you know,” Bex continued, her voice quiet.

  “I know,” Taia said. “His questioning of my information has not gone unnoticed.”

  That surprised Nolan, though it shouldn’t have. Taia wasn’t just a damned capable artificial intelligence—she’d also become far more adept at reading human emotions and subtle nuances. He hadn’t attempted to hide his suspicion from her, but he thought he’d been a bit less overt about it.

  “And you remember the conversation we had about trust?” Bex asked. “After you and Garrett had that chat on your way to Diomedra?”

  “Of course,” Taia said. “Every conversation we’ve ever had is recorded in my memory banks.”

  “So you know it’s going to take time for you to rebuild what was destroyed,” Bex said. “That it’s going to be hard for us to trust you.”

  “I do. All I can do is continue in my efforts to be fully transparent in everything. Now that I am no longer governed by the Protection Bureau’s codes, there are no restrictions on what I can share with you.”

  “Good.” Bex nodded. “And, like the good humans we are, we’re going to work hard on trying to trust you.” She elbowed Nolan. “Aren’t we, Garrett?”

  “O-Of course,” Nolan said. Once again, Bex’s reaction surprised him. He’d expected her to be far more skeptical of Taia, to distrust her the way he had—and still did, he realized. But Bex had always been more accepting than Nolan. Not more naïve, simply less suspicious of people. Perhaps it was the fact that she hadn’t spent the last years operating as a government assassin, or maybe it was simply who she was—either way, Bex had done in a matter of minutes what he was still struggling to do.

  “Excellent!” Bex beamed first at Nolan, then at the dashboard. “Now, Taia, would you please play back that classic Garrett moment when he went for drastic overkill on the threats?”

  “Oh, you mean this one?” Taia asked.

  Nolan’s voice echoed from the vehicle’s loudspeakers. “I won’t cut off your little prick and feed it to you piece by piece. I won’t slice off your fingers and toes and make them into a pretty necklace for you to wear. I’ll leave your ears, tongue, and lips where they are, and I won’t cut out your eyes.”

  Every word just made Bex laugh harder, until she was howling and slapping the dashboard with a gauntleted hand. Nolan’s scowl only added to her enjoyment.

  “Gods, Garrett!” Bex said, pretending to wipe a tear from her eye. “Do you believe half the shit that comes out of your mouth?”

  Nolan gave her a flat look. “He thought so. That’s what matters.”

  “Maybe next time, threaten to carve out his organs,” Taia put in, though Nolan couldn’t quite tell whether she was being helpful or joining Bex. “Given that he can’t survive evisceration—“

  “Thanks, both of you.” Nolan glared. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

  “Oh, don’t be a grump!” Bex punched his shoulder and a huge grin split her face. “I’ve got to say I’ve missed this. Classic Cerberus hijinks, right down to that growling voice and everything.”

  “I wish I could say I missed you, too,” Nolan growled, “but—“

  “Oh, isn’t he just adorable when he gets all pissy?” Bex laughed and, reaching for his collar, pulled him across to plant a kiss on his lips. Nolan was so surprised it took his brain a full second to realize what was happening. He leaned into the kiss, and felt the heat burning through Bex as her lips locked with his and her hand gripped the back of his head. Long moments passed before they broke off, but Nolan didn’t pull away. He kept his face close to Bex’s, their foreheads pressed together.

  Bex gave him a sly grin. “Admit it, Garrett, you fucking missed me!” she said in a low, breathy voice.

  “More than you know.” Nolan couldn’t help admitting it. Her departure had left a larger hole in his life than he’d wanted to accept, and the mission to Corrigan had given him a chance to push his feelings for her to the back of his mind. Now that she was back…

  But she wasn’t back, was she? She’d come for this one mission, but after the Protection Bureau was dealt with, she’d return to whatever life she’d been building with Roz. A life that he wasn’t certain could involve him. Not yet, not until he knew beyond any shred of doubt the Protection Bureau wasn’t going to come after him.

  And even if he could get out from under their control, he was still dying. Whatever Doctor Carver had given him in the Vault had bought him time, but the tungstenite poisoning was killing him one day at a time. Could he inflict that on her?

  He kept the smile on his face, but pulled free of her grip and straightened in his seat. Things with Bex were complicated—right now, with everything they had to deal with, he needed to keep his situation as simple as possible.

  “Taia, ETA to the observation post?” he asked aloud.

  “Twenty-eight minutes and thirty-two seconds,” Taia said. “I’ve generated a random circuitous route to take to ensure no one is following us.”

  Nolan and Bex both glanced out the rearview window, but the streets behind them were dark. As they returned their gazes to the front, their eyes locked. Just for a moment, just enough for Nolan to see the truth reflected on her face—just as she doubtless saw it written on his.

  Then they broke off and returned their attention to the road ahead.

  “That’s more than enough time to give our friendly Doof detective
a call,” Nolan said, trying to sound casual.

  “Let’s see what Lockey-boy has to say.” Bex’s tone was equally nonchalant, her expression indecipherable.

  “Calling Detective Locke now,” Taia said.

  A few seconds later, a familiar voice echoed in the vehicle. “Locke here.”

  “It’s done,” Nolan said, trusting Taia to disguise his voice. “Derring died about half an hour ago. Drug overdose. Not a pleasant way to go out.”

  “Shame.” Detective Locke’s tone held no trace of pity. “And to think we wasted all those man-hours trying to convict him and his accomplices.”

  “Looks like a bit of luck’s headed your way,” Bex put in. She’d played the Hellhound role once before, and Detective Locke hadn’t been able to tell their digitally altered voices apart. “Looks like someone hacked his computer, and in a few hours, all his dirt’s going to hit the holo-net. It’s not all going to hold up in court, but it’ll give you something to go on.”

  “Damn!” Detective Locke sounded impressed. “You work quickly, don’t you? I guess New Avalon owes you another one, Hellhound.”

  “I’ll cash that in now, then,” Nolan said. “Give me everything you’ve turned up on the Protection Bureau.”

  A moment of silence elapsed before Detective Locke spoke. “I don’t know what you think—“

  Nolan cut the man off. “Don’t bullshit me, Detective. You and I both know that you didn’t actually back off from the Protection Bureau since we had our little chat at the Galleria. You just got smarter and more careful about it.” It was a gamble; he had no proof the detective had continued digging into the clandestine organization. But he was betting that the man’s personality and bulldog tenacity had kept him from truly following Nolan’s suggestion to back off. “I need to know what you’ve found. Now.”

  This time, the silence stretched on for ten seconds. Nolan almost thought Detective Locke had cut off the call, but then the man’s voice came through the sound system again. “I’ve got nothing written down,” he said. “But I caught a lead on some place down in the Cyberwarrens.”

  “Shitty-looking, warehouse-type place?” Nolan asked. “On the corner of Abelard and Doran?”

  “That’s the one!” Surprise echoed in the detective’s voice. “But if you know about that—“

  “Anything else?” Nolan asked. “Anything at all.”

  “Hmm. There was something, but I couldn’t follow it to see if it led anywhere.”

  “We’ll handle the digging,” Nolan said.

  “About two weeks ago, while I was staking out the place, I spotted a Pioneer Data-Comm truck parked outside. It was there for about twelve hours before taking off. Nothing odd if Allied Holdings Ltd. was actually operational, but the corporation filed for bankruptcy five years ago. I didn’t want to risk checking into the building’s records and alerting them to my surveillance, and I couldn’t snap a picture of it, either. But here’s the kicker: when I looked through CCTV footage for the time and date when the truck was there, I couldn’t find any trace of it. Like it had been erased.”

  That didn’t surprise Nolan at all. The Protection Bureau had given Taia the capability to slice him out of any digital footage, so of course they’d do the same for anything that could be connected to them.

  “Funny thing is,” Detective Locke continued, “I spotted what looked like the same truck at another building a few blocks to the southeast. Some apartment high-rise. I didn’t have time to run anything down, so make what use of that you can.”

  “You’ve been surprisingly helpful, Detective,” Nolan said. “We’ll take it from here.”

  “Gee, now don’t I feel all warm and toasty inside?” Detective Locke’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Any pat on the head to go with those high words of praise, Hellhound?”

  Nolan rolled his eyes and ended the call.

  “That backs up the belief that Agent Styver’s connected to that apartment building,” Bex said, her expression pensive. “If the same comms company was installing a high-speed connection in both buildings, it could mean Agent Styver’s got some sort of off-site system running in his place.”

  Nolan nodded. “That’s what I thought, too.” It wasn’t uncommon for clandestine and covert agents to have remote access to their primary server systems, though the connections had to be highly secure. “And, if Pioneer Data-Comm was doing work in that building, their work order might tell us which apartment Agent Styver is currently using.”

  “I have begun attempting to hack into the company records,” Taia said. “However, it appears there is a surprising amount of cybersecurity protecting its databases, even for a network service provider. On the other hand, the name Pioneer Data-Comm showed up on Derring’s hard drive.”

  Nolan’s eyebrow shot up. “It’s another one of his?”

  “Negative,” Taia said. “But judging by the images stored on the drive, Derring has been blackmailing the company’s CEO for five years, two months, and six days.”

  Nolan chewed on that. “Derring’s the common denominator in all this. Sorry, he was.” He couldn’t help a grim smile of satisfaction. The Empire was far better off with that shitstain dead. “Whether he was working for the Protection Bureau or just being used by them doesn’t really matter at this point.”

  “What does matter, though,” Bex said with a grin, “is that he’s giving us more pieces of the puzzle. Once we put them all together, we’ve got them by the ball—“

  “Nolan, we’ve got a problem!” Taia cut in. “Master Sergeant Kane left the observation post fifteen minutes ago to scout the entry points you found on Derring’s blueprints.”

  Nolan’s gut tensed, and knots formed in his shoulders as Taia remained silent for a long second.

  When she spoke again, worry echoed in her voice. “Nolan, his comms signal just cut off. Master Sergeant Kane’s gone dark.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Zahra was the only one manning the observation post when Nolan and Bex entered the apartment safe house twenty-odd minutes later. She glanced up from the telephoto lens just long enough to give them a shake of her head.

  “Nothing yet. Darren’s got an eye on the apartment building, but he’s aware of the situation and ready to move if necessary.”

  Nolan’s jaw muscles clenched. He knew she and Taia would have tried everything to raise the master sergeant on comms. “Any idea what happened?” he demanded, moving to stand in front of the holo-screen. Bex joined him, the concern in her expression mirroring his.

  “I calculate a ninety-one-point-two percent probability that he entered a signal jam field,” Taia said. “Paired with the EMP precision-targeting system, it would exponentially increase the effectiveness of their protective perimeter.”

  Nolan drew in a deep breath, trying to keep his heart from racing. Master Sergeant Kane would have no way to signal for backup should anything go wrong, no way to alert them to any threats.

  Come on, this is the master sergeant we’re talking about, he told himself. Nothing can put that ornery old sonofabitch down. Definitely not a handful of these Black Crow cuntractors.

  That worked. His heartbeat slowed, his momentary anxiety fading. The old man had endured everything the Terran League had thrown at him. He’d outlived the Ghostwalkers just as he’d survived countless other threats over his military career. The Protection Bureau would be one more wave to break against the sea wall that was Master Sergeant Cedric Kane.

  He focused his attention on the watch log. Darren, Zahra, and Master Sergeant Kane had updated it to the minute—indeed, Zahra’s last entry had been three minutes earlier—and based on the names and patrol patterns they’d marked down, Black Crow’s SOP hadn’t changed. There was still the random-looking-yet-surprisingly-predictable variation in their patrol times, and though a fresh crop of guards had been rotated in on the new shift, there were still only twelve handling exterior security.

  “Anything change at all in their MO?” Nolan asked Zahra without taking
his eyes away from the log on the holo-screen. “In the last half-hour since Derring’s untimely demise?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Zahra replied. “If you did your job right—“

  “Hah!” Bex laughed. “We were smoother than butter on a waxed ass crack, ain’t that right, Garrett?” She elbowed Nolan’s shoulder. “In and out in less time than a premejac with his dream date. The crow-boys never knew we were there.”

  Zahra said nothing to that, but Nolan noticed the grin tugging at her lips. Bex’s unique way with words might be offensive or vulgar to civvies, yet soldiers tended to be a far cruder lot, and Desai was far from an angel. She could hurl swear words capable of reddening Darren’s ears and making the big Silverguard blush.

  “If luck holds,” Nolan said, “no one will discover his body until morning. Even then, anyone can clearly see it was an overdose.” He’d staged similar deaths for the Protection Bureau in the past. Agent Styver might question the timing—especially given the BOLO taken out on Nolan—but, given what Nolan felt certain the Protection Bureau knew about the man’s proclivities, would likely write it off as an accident. Hell, the man had installed a medical alert button in his bathroom for a reason.

  Hopefully, they’d have time enough to figure out next steps.

  “That intel your Doof gave us,” Zahra said, “did it check out?”

  “I have not yet been able to crack Pioneer Data-Comm’s databases to search for a work order for the apartment building,” Taia said. At Nolan’s instructions, she’d filled the rest of Warbeast Team in on the outcome of the conversation with Detective Locke. “Its cyber-defenses are proving surprisingly resistant to my hacking attempts.” Her voice suddenly brightened. “However, in better news, I’ve just picked up the master sergeant’s signal.”

  A familiar gravelly voice echoed over team comms. “I’m headed your way.”

  Relief flooded Nolan at the sound of Master Sergeant Kane’s voice. He shouldn’t have worried—the man could more than take care of himself—but these were no ordinary enemies. No telling what secret weapons or tech the Protection Bureau had to back up their less-than-competent contractors.