His mind raced.
Then the security light came on, almost blinding him. He looked away back into the room.
Tap, tap, tap.
The human knocked on the door. He looked back and gave his eyes a second to adjust to the brightness. He could make out more details now. Though her form looked human, her skin color was definitely Estarian blue. It was a strange combination that confused him even more.
“Greetings of the day,” he called politely through the door so as not to be conspicuous in case this event was purely random.
“Greetings,” the human-looking Estarian called back. “You don’t know us, but we’ve just been talking to Director Bates. We’re working on the holoconnection issue, but we need to talk to your colleague in there.”
“It’s just me here,” Joshua lied, trying to assess the situation.
“Your witness rather,” the girl insisted.
Joshua paused. Director Bates may have been talking to them, but he had no way of knowing. The last communication that he had had from her had been earlier that day, and he had even been able to get a message back out to her. His strategy up until this point had been to wait for his partner to come and relieve him at the pre-appointed time.
“We’re also meant to be meeting Alisha here,” the girl added, instantly bolstering her credibility.
He paused, and then after a few seconds of mental analysis, Joshua moved to unlock the door. Cautiously he opened it, and then beckoned the two inside. Keeping his weapon low, he notably didn’t put it away. “Okay, so you seem to know a little bit about what’s going on here, but who the hell are you?”
“I’m Paige,” the human-looking one explained, “and this is Maya. We work closely with Molly and the Sanguine Squadron.”
Joshua felt himself relaxing the moment he realized they were friendly. Then as soon as it sunk in that he was talking to people he’d heard stories about since he was at Molly’s grad school, a different type of anxiety set in. “Oh, well of course, do come in… Please.” He put his gun away hurriedly and set about feebly tidying the place up a little bit.
“Please take a seat, make yourself comfortable. I must say I wasn’t expecting… Well, anyone. We’ve been in holo blackout most of the day.”
“We know,” Maya told him. “We’re working to try and restore connection planet-wide. But we could do with understanding a little bit more about what’s happened.” She glanced at Goran sitting quietly on the sofa. “But we thought that Mr. Suedermann might be of assistance in that regard.”
Goran pressed his index finger at his chest. “Me? How can I help? They’re just network outages.”
“Well,” Maya continued, “how much do you know about why you’re here?”
Goran shrugged. “Only what these guys told me…” he replied, thumbing at Joshua as the representative of the Task Force who had taken his freedom from him “for his own good.”
“Which is?” Maya pressed.
“That because of my position in the government, someone wanted me dead. Probably for access, for my successor.”
Paige looked up at Joshua, who seemed mesmerized by the conversation in front of him. “We’re going to need to tell him a little bit more,” she explained. “If we are right, he’s the only one who’s going to be able to help us undo this mess.”
Joshua waved her on.
Paige sat on the sofa next to Goran and started explaining everything that they knew. Meanwhile Maya took Joshua into the kitchen to fill him in on the bigger picture while he made some mocha for all of them.
“So you spoke to Director Bates then?” he asked.
“Yes, less than an hour ago,” Maya confirmed. “She gave us your location, but also said she was sending Alisha over to talk to Jennifer Etang.”
“Etang? Why would Alisha be going to see her?”
“Well, this is kind of the point,” Maya explained slowly. “We think that this holo blackout is a result of a Trojan horse that’s been sitting waiting to be activated in order to further the interests of the Northern Clan. If you look at the circumstances: the fleet, the vote, and so on, it all makes sense. And they got what they wanted… Martial Law.”
Joshua’s normally bright blue complexion was looking particularly pasty as the blood drained from his face. “You mean this is an all-out conspiracy?”
“Well, yeah. The point is, Etang might have information about the virus. The construction, how it deploys, who built it. Something… We’re hoping.”
Joshua pumped his fist in a half movement. “I knew it!” he declared. “Alisha and I were right! Suck it, Bates!” Then, noticing Maya’s reaction as she stood watching him, he quickly regained his composure and handed her the first mocha that was ready. “Well if there’s anything to discover, Alisha will find it. In the meantime I guess we just need to hang tight and wait for her.”
Maya cocked her head, smiling enigmatically. “Well not entirely. We need to see what Suedermann knows, and we have one of our guys working on a fix as we speak, so we will make some progress before she gets here.”
Joshua’s expression brightened. “Oh, well then.” He grinned. “Let’s get this second mocha into Paige’s hands and you guys can carry on.”
Maya grinned as she followed him back through to the living room where Paige and Goran were talking.
“We don’t have all of the details of this case, because of the blackout,” Paige was explaining to Suedermann. “Would you mind telling us what you did at the Division of Holo Crimes?”
Suedermann leaned forward and nudged his teacup further onto the table before sitting back and exhaling with a small sigh. “Well, it’s been a while now, but I was overseeing the network security. Some of it was to do with scams, but a lot of it was chasing down malware for the most part.”
“So it was more like stopping viruses from proliferating?”
“Yes, that was a big part of it.”
Paige looked pointedly at Maya. “Well that would explain why someone would want you out of the way before this kicked in,” Paige commented.
Maya stepped further into the room and handed Paige the mocha that Joshua just made for her. “Yes, but what I don’t understand is why him. He’s just one person who would be replaced… Who has been replaced, right?”
She looked over at Joshua.
Joshua handed her the mocha that he’d made for her. “Yes, we thought of that. There was someone who would probably have succeeded him had he been assassinated, and we assumed that that person was… compromised.”
“Tell me that person is not standing in for him now!”
“Well we had to put up a fight,” Joshua explained. “But no. We have someone else performing that role while Suedermann is here.”
“But,” Suedermann interjected, “what he’s not telling you is the difference in skill. This other compromised person was the only one who had the same level of skill and experience to do the job. Effectively, the person that they have now is merely a figurehead, with very little practical experience in how to handle a crisis like this… It’s probably why we are still having blackouts.”
Maya suddenly became more curious. “So they wanted you out of the way so you couldn’t fix this problem,” she deduced, her expression becoming more animated.
“Well, I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything, but I’d say yes.”
Paige put her mocha cup on the table in front of them. “Well in that case, you’re exactly the person we need to talk to,” she said, pulling up a holoconnection.
“Bourne? Are you there?” she called out to her holo.
“Yes, I’m here,” he responded in her earpiece.
“Okay, I’m gonna put you on speaker,” Paige told him. “We’ve located someone who can probably help us solve this problem, and I think you two need to talk.”
Joshua, a touch overwhelmed by the sudden change of pace of things in the safe house, headed back into the kitchen to make
himself a mocha. Something told him that this was going to be a long night.
* * *
Several mocha refills after the initial brews that Joshua had brought through, Maya, Paige, Bourne, and Goran were still deep in conversation.
“It looks like this could be an elegant solution,” Bourne was saying.
Goran agreed. “Yes, and it’s much faster than the brute force hack you were having to perform in the first place.”
“Well, it wasn’t entirely brute force,” Bourne protested defensively.
Paige smiled and rolled her eyes, communicating to Joshua her opinions on Bourne’s ego and sensitivity. “It looks like we’ve got a fix in any case. Bourne, any idea on how long it’s going to take to run this fix network-wide?”
“I’ve no idea. The planet’s network is humongous, and some of the networks in the further regions away from the cities are going to run slower. Personal holos probably need specific adaptations to the fix because they are running older protocols.”
“But you can start with Spire for instance,” Maya interjected.
“Yes,” Bourne agreed. “I can do that. And then go to the next cities, and move out from there.”
“So how long until Spire is back online?” Paige asked, seemingly remembering why they were trying to solve this problem in the first place.
“It depends.”
It was Goran’s turn to roll his eyes this time. “Developers!” he mouthed to the others, assuming that it was an organic they’d been communicating with all this time.
Paige screwed up her face and started massaging around her eyes with her hands. “What about us being able to get some messages through to people in the blackout? So rather than just restoring full service, can we at least get messages through, kind of like what you’re doing with us now?”
There was pause on the line. “Yes, and it will only take a tiny amount of processing power away from solving the bigger issue, comparatively speaking.”
“Maybe that’s a way forward then,” Paige suggested, looking at Maya for her agreement. Maya nodded.
“Okay great,” Paige confirmed. “Let’s do it. Maya will put together a message, something short. Then Bourne, you can send it out first perhaps.”
“Alrighty then,” Goran declared, slapping his hands to his knees and then getting up off the uncomfortable sofa. “If you’d be more comfortable, we could move through to the office...”
Paige and Maya got up. “Okay, yes. It would be easier to work at a desk,” Paige agreed.
“Hey, you know, Alisha should probably be back by now,” Joshua told them, checking the time as they moved their holoscreens through to the next room.
Paige thought for a moment. “Hey Bourne, can you make sure that Joshua can get a connection through, so he can check in with the task force, and with Alisha?”
“Yes, one second. Okay, there you go, Joshua. You should be able to get through to the network now.”
Joshua’s face lit up as he checked his holo and saw that everything was working perfectly. “Great, thank you, Bourne. I’ll give her a call now.”
Chapter 10
Safe House, Undisclosed Location, Estaria
Joshua looked up from his partially functioning wrist holo as the main door opened and Alisha breezed through. The door slid closed again immediately, and the complicated lock clicked a few times as it reengaged. Alisha sagged back against the door, letting her head thump back against it. She looked like she was putting some serious thought into just sliding down it and sitting down right there on the floor.
“Long day?” he asked wryly. She poked the tip of her tongue out at him.
“I just got finished with that Etang woman, from Communications.” She sighed, pushing herself away from the door with a visible effort. “Our hopes that she was just playing dumb have been dashed,” she added. “She didn’t know a thing. Less than nothing, in fact. I had to fill her in on everything that’s been going on in the world.”
Joshua whistled low. “An astounding level of ‘out of the loop,’ to be sure.”
“She almost seemed like she was impressed by everything that’s been going on,” Alisha grumbled. “And honestly, I’m not sure if her being a clueless biddy makes me feel better or worse. I mean, really, who just decides ‘oh, sure, I’ll do exactly what this guy says with no idea of what I’m actually doing?’ In what world is that a normal thing?”
“In the world of Jennifer Etang, apparently,” Joshua replied reasonably, and he ducked to the side to avoid the swat that Alisha aimed at his ear. “You asked!” he protested, laughing. He only laughed harder when she scowled at him, her nose scrunching and her eyebrows drawing downwards.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she grumbled, before she heaved a sigh and slumped backwards. She was practically lying on the table by then, propping herself up on her elbows. “But I guess it wasn’t a complete bust.” She sighed, letting her head fall back weightlessly.
“She confirmed some things we already suspected, though, so it’s something, at least,” she continued. “She was in the Northern Clan’s pocket, which is large and seemingly never ending. Apparently we’ll never find everyone working for them, blah blah blah, all your bases belong to us, you know how it goes.”
“Spooky,” Joshua deadpanned, propping his chin up in one hand. With a wistful sigh, he mused, “Maybe all the secrecy is because there are actually only like ten of them. Maybe we could actually take all of them out with one well-placed grenade.”
“Their numbers multiply every time you say that,” Alisha stated blandly, and she had to fight a grin when he flicked the side of her knee.
They lapsed into silence after that, but the quiet only lasted for a minute at most.
“Dammit!”
Another voice came from the next room. Alisha looked expectantly towards the door that led into the office. The door was still open, and Paige did not sound the least bit pleased with whatever was going on in there.
“Exciting things?” Alisha asked mildly, hauling herself up from the sofa to head into the kitchen instead.
“Paige and Maya are in there with Suedermann,” Joshua replied, tipping his head back enough that he could just barely get an upside-down look at her as she filled the electric kettle. “They’re trying to get back onto the holo network. See if they can at least get some of the basics back up and running.”
“I thought the network was completely down,” Alisha replied as she turned the mocha machine on and started puttering around the kitchen.
“Kind of,” Joshua replied, and then he wrinkled his nose once he realized how phenomenally unhelpful that was. “Less that the network’s entirely down, and more that it’s kind of…blocked. They’re trying to unblock it. I mean, undoing everything without being able to see the code of the initial upload would be a miracle, but if everyone just gets messaging back, then at least we won’t have entire districts panicking because they don’t even know what’s going on.”
Alisha hummed a low note in acknowledgment and there was a clunk of mugs as she got them out of the cupboard. “People were already doing that even before the blackout,” she pointed out, more to herself than to Joshua.
“Sounds like it’s not going very well,” she observed blandly as she poured chocolate into a mug, while some more slightly incoherent profanity poured out of the office. She kept pouring until the amount of syrup gathered in the bottom of the mug was likely enough to rot her teeth upon contact, and then she added just a little bit more.
“That’s why I’m in here,” Joshua replied sagely. “Well out of the line of fire should anyone start throwing anything.”
“Don’t tempt me!” Paige shouted from the other room.
“You’re not leaving this room,” Suedermann informed her flatly, putting an end to that argument before it could even begin.
Alisha snorted out a laugh as she started pouring mocha over the chocolate. “Well,” she mused
after a moment, “at least we still have electricity.” She took a sip of her mocha. “It could be worse.”
“Don’t jinx anything!” Joshua warned her.
As Alisha headed towards the next room, she knocked her knuckles against the table as she passed, nonchalantly offering, “Bad luck canceled,” over her shoulder.
Commander Ekks’s Office, Spire, Estaria
The room was quiet.
Almost too quiet.
Ekks half expected someone to come barging into his office to interrupt him, to tell him that what he was about to do was too much. But he supposed he knew that wasn’t going to happen; he had handled that issue already.
Instead, he was just waiting for one person to arrive.
It didn’t take long before his secretary informed him over his communicator, “Commander, General Yarrow has arrived.”
“Let her in,” Ekks instructed, and he sat taller and straightened his uniform. The door to his office opened just a moment later.
Yarrow was no-nonsense when she entered. Stiff-backed and purposeful, she strode towards the desk. She was holding the black box in her hands: nondescript but with three separate locks on the front of it. She nodded once to Ekks, but otherwise offered him no greeting as she placed the box down.
She keyed in seven digits for the number lock, and a small pad slid out. She pressed a fingertip to it, letting it scan her fingerprint and check her body temperature. Finally, once it made a high-pitched beep, Yarrow rattled off her identification number followed by her authorization code.
The box clicked open.
Yarrow kept one hand on the box, looking at Ekks critically from across the desk. “Commander Ekks,” she began seriously, “the use of this console means you will be authorizing the entire fleet for the use of deadly force, as the fleet commanders see fit. Are you aware of everything this entails?”
The Ascension Myth Box Set Page 239