by John Conroe
“Ya think?” she asked, hands on her hips. “Of course it won’t work for bunches of people. Any large movement of any kind of organism is going to trip their switches. This will likely only work for one or maybe two people,” she said. “They notice animals even if they don’t react to them, you know. But you better believe that they track them. Part of their threat assessment programming. So the Spider will know that a dog, or dogs, are moving about its territory.”
“So I’d have to behave just like a feral dog,” I said, thinking about it.
I’d seen way more than my share of dogs in the Zone. I’ve been hunted by them, watched them from hides, tracked individuals and packs, and even culled them. In the beginning, they ran in big packs, but as the years went by and the massive amount of food the drones had created for them had been consumed, the packs became much smaller. Nowadays, the biggest groups that I came across were three or four dogs at one time. Mostly it was pairs, but individuals weren’t uncommon.
The older dogs had learned to leave me right the hell alone. The younger generations always had to lose a few before they too avoided my scent. Nothing ruined a recovery faster than young dogs. I hated to shoot them, but it was a clear choice, them or me. And when that happened, the birds would come in—seagulls, crows, ravens, and turkey vultures, which, of course, alerted every drone in the neighborhood.
“I’ll have to move in the same patterns that they do. Kind of an energy-efficient sweep of an area, not in a straight line but in a twisting kind of path that gives them the widest exposure to scents and sounds,” I said.
She raised one eyebrow like no duh, dummy.
“I’m just thinking out loud. Feel free to chime in, oh font-of-all-knowledge,” I said.
“No, you probably know more about them. I kept way away from dogs. Which is easier if you travel those areas that are almost completely devoid of food. The dogs and rats hang nearer to the parks and the areas with lots of vegetation, where deer, rabbits, and squirrels browse,” she said.
I knew this as well, but it helped to hear it. My mind was already formulating a plan, even working up a path to follow. We would be a pair of dogs, Rikki and me, perhaps driven from the better hunting grounds by a bigger pack, now looking for mice and rats.
All of the parks, big and small, were pretty wild now, full of deer and small game. If we inserted in the dark again, maybe the east side, and then worked our way across the island toward or through a park, it would give us a trail that matched the little backstory I was creating in my head.
It was also a little dangerous because the dogs hunted the darkness like wolves would. If we had to shoot a bunch, it would ruin the run. Maybe I should use skunk scent instead of fox, to make us a little less enticing to any night hunters.
“Jeez, I can smell the smoke pouring out your ears,” she said, grinning, watching me.
“Sorry. The details are sort of just lining themselves up in my head.”
“You can do that stuff later. Right now, we need to figure out how you actually hunt whichever Spider is lurking at 60 Hudson. It’ll be wicked on guard after all the shooting yesterday.”
“But probably accessing the cables to send instructions to any more infiltrators. Also, we’ve wiped out quite a few of its resources lately. If it were me, I’d be trying to build new ones.”
“I’m not sure anyone could ever think like a Spider. They’re just too alien. But what you’re talking about is standard for warfare. When you lose or use up weapons, you have to replace them. Now… where would a Spider set up shop to build these things?”
“Anywhere it wanted. The mothership drones only need a source of printable material. They were designed to improvise. Powdered metals, nylon stock, polycarbonate, so they could work anywhere, as long as other drones brought the materials. They would just need power.”
“Which means sunshine. So the motherships are on roofs, and if the Spider is staying close to internet access, then you need to be up high, watching the open roof areas on 60 Hudson,” she said.
“So… this will be a traditional sniping mission.”
“That’s what I’m hearing—right in your wheelhouse, right?”
It was. I hadn’t gone full-on sniper mode in a while now. But it made full sense. Old school, but with a new trick—doggy sound disguise. It also broke my latest sets of behavior, throwing off the patterns that the Spiders tracked.
“How do we make the two of us sound like dogs?” I asked.
She turned to my drone. “Rikki, do you have archival sound recordings of canines inside the Zone?”
“Affirmative. The data is not extensive, as unneeded sensory recordings are deleted to conserve memory space,” Rikki reported.
“How many recordings do you have? And how much time?” Harper asked.
“Three recordings. Two canines in one, four in the second, and two in last. Forty-seven seconds, eighteen seconds, and twenty-one seconds.”
“Okay, we’ll have to splice some stuff together and do some looping. Try to make it sound unique, but unfortunately, if you stay in one spot too long or trigger multiple sensors in row, the Spider will crunch that data and spot it repeating.”
“How about a couple of sound packets? One for two dogs and one for one. Rikki can leave to recon at times and I’ll switch to just the single dog sounds. When he swings back, we’ll use the the double one.”
“No can do, genius. Rikki is your sound projector. If he leaves your side, you become a human sounding packet of squishy meat,” she said.
“Well, that’s… true. Damn. Not ideal. Rikki’s recons are standard procedure. Hey! What if I used your neuro-prosthesis thingy to project the sound myself?”
She frowned. “You can’t just throw it on and go running off into the Zone! It takes a long time to learn to use it. You have to get used to it, and it has to get used to you. Then you have to learn how to even begin to meld with any kind of computer, let alone an autonomous hunter-killer AI. No, that would only work if I went with you,” she said, shaking her head and waving the idea away with one hand.
Hmm. I thought about that for a moment. She was very good in the Zone—in some ways better than me. The prosthesis gave her the ability to do a kind of mind meld thing with Zone drones, letting her convince them that she wasn’t even there, as well as detect them from pretty good distances. And I’d been teaching her to shoot. She wasn’t a bad shot, and she was much more fit now than when we had first met.
“What’s that look? I don’t like that look, Ajaya! Oh—no, no, no. I’m not going back in there,” she said. “No way.”
I stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, it was just a passing idea. You got that computer ninja thing and with all your fitness stuff, I figured you’d be able to keep up, but you’re right.”
She pulled back and studied me. “I am?”
“Yeah. You may have grown up in there, but what I do is different and difficult. You only ever moved short little distances. And I’m going up against at least one Spider. You even said that you and your mom avoided them like the plague. I’ll be going right into the lair of one,” I said, shaking my head to dismiss the idea.
“Don’t do that, you asshole! Don’t try that psych bullshit by insulting my skills!” she said.
I held up both hands. “I’m not. You have awesome skills and lived right underneath them for years. But I travel big distances. You guys never did that. Admit it: That’s why you were so out of shape.”
“Listen shack head, I traveled all over the place by myself, without a fancy drone to protect me. I could leave you in the dust in there.”
“Never mind, Harper. No need to get all bent outta shape. It was a bad idea.”
“Bullshit! It was a great idea. I would make an awesome spotter and I’m better at getting by drones than you’ll ever be. I just don’t want to go in is all.”
I held up both hands. “Peace. Not asking you to. You’ve done enough in there. You’ve lost enough in there. I got th
is.”
“Do you? Because now that I think about it, you got real lucky with Lotus.”
“Wow, you really got all torqued up over just a few comments. No need to get insulting. Did I get lucky? Yes. Do I depend on luck to get in and out? No. I plan and execute very carefully. I move with stealth and attack them from ambush.”
“Yeah? Well what are you going to do if the building you chose to set up shop in has those stripped-down Wasp remote sensors? I wouldn’t even need a fake sound packet. I’d just convince the sensor that it was wrong. Admit it… you need me in there.”
“Are you telling me that you want to go in? Because I’d say yes to that,” I said.
She pulled back, a confused look on her face. I waited. She grimaced and cursed. “Shit,” she said, looking me in the eye. “Shit, shit, shit.” Lots was going on inside that skull, and I just about saw the moment she made her decision. Or maybe it was the moment that she realized she’d already made the decision.
“Yeah, I guess I am. But I’m gonna need gear,” she said, leaning back with a look of almost disbelief on her face. “But yes, I’m going back in.”
Chapter 30
Gear wasn’t a problem. I was in charge of training stealth infiltrators, which gave me access to cutting-edge gear. I had the latest stealth suits in female sizes and shaped for the female form. I had suppressed firearms like the sweet little .300 ACC Blackout carbine that she had already fired at the range where I taught her, plus all the best ammo for it that Uncle Sam could provide.
What I didn’t have was clearance for her to go in. That part was my job—getting her clearance and gear. Harper was working on a hundred other details that we had come up with when we brainstormed our plan and its consequences. And there would be consequences even if we failed, but especially if we didn’t. So I had to get Harper into the Zone. But I knew someone who could get her clearance… or at least fudge it.
“Hey Maya, how’s it going?”
“Oh, Ajaya,” she said, caught off guard in the lab, bent over the metal body of an infiltrator. “It’s, ah, been, ah, a bit crazy actually. Studying these things, trying to figure out where else they might be, how many of them there could be, things like that.”
“Oh? Isn’t finding them up to that Weber guy?”
“Well, ostensibly. The NSA is supposed to be the lead on finding them, but frankly they’re using our algorithms to do it, so… you know.”
“Don’t be modest—they’re using your algorithms, aren’t they? The ones you personally wrote?” I asked.
“Yeah, true. But, hey… what’s up with you? Aren’t you supposed to be figuring out how to hunt the Spiders?”
“Actually, I kind of have… figured it out,” I said. “It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
A suspicious look replaced the slight bewilderment she’d worn a moment ago. “Why don’t I think I’m going to like whatever you’ve come up with?”
“Whoa, nothing bad, really. It’s just I need to go back in and hunt them. Me and Rikki… and one other.”
She frowned. “One other what? Person? Just one? Who?”
“Well, you don’t know this person. And that’s kind of the thing. See, I need to get access on the system for this person and, well, aren’t you the administrator for Zone access network?”
Maya might be shy and a little awkward, but she wasn’t anyone’s dummy. Alarm flared in her eyes. “The major doesn’t know this person, does he? Have they ever even been in the Zone before?”
“Yeah. More than me. Listen, Major Yoshida told me that my mission is to find and kill the Spiders. That’s what I’m going to do. Sneak in and snipe the bastards. But with those new sensor remotes, I need a way to get by them. My… partner can do that. Has done that. But she doesn’t have current access.”
“She?” Maya asked, really alarmed.
Shit. I’d been so careful to not use feminine pronouns right up until I did.
“Yeah. You don’t know her. No one here does.”
“Astrid?” she guessed.
“No, not Astrid. She knows everything there is to know about running an LTV into the Zone, but not this.”
“Wait… you hooked up the Zone War people with someone who could harden their camera drones against hacking and interference, didn’t you?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“Please. You introduced us to Ms. Flottercot a while ago, remember? She’s been trying to hire any one or all three of us ever since. But we can’t break our government contracts. However, the last time I spoke to her, she said not to worry about it. Said she could wait till our contracts were up because you’d introduced a drone expert to her who could work wonders. A female expert.”
I was really tempted to lie my way out of it. In fact, my mouth was opening to do just that, but suddenly, different words came out. “Yes. She’s really good with drones, better than me, and if she goes in with me, I think we can nail a Spider CThree. But it’s dangerous for her to come to the attention of… certain people. So I need a blank access for her. And really, Maya, it is within my directive to bring outside experts in with me if I need them.”
“But the major doesn’t know her. Oh! You don’t want him to know her, do you? You think he’d what? Hurt her?”
“I don’t know. It’s like how we all had to be careful when Agents Black and White came in and took Lotus. Like the major said… there are different factions within the government and even within the military. I know for a fact that some of them would be dangerous to her. I wouldn’t even bring her in, but she’s insisting and frankly, Maya, I need her if I’m going to live through this one. Would you at least think about it? And not say a word to anyone no matter what you decide?”
“Because if I say anything, I could put this girl in danger. Thanks a lot, Ajaya, for putting me in this position!”
“Yeah, I didn’t want you to know who she was, but you figured it out. But I wouldn’t have even approached you if it wasn’t super important and if I couldn’t trust you.”
She frowned at me, clearly unhappy. But Maya was the best of the three and she was always nice to me. Eric was the major’s bitch and Aaron would throw anyone under a bus to get ahead. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t endanger Harper, but I was really unhappy that I’d messed up and let the cat out of the bag.
She studied me for a bit. Then nodded. “I’ll think about it. And I won’t say anything. But I’m still not happy about how you went about that.”
Chapter 31
She agreed—eventually. Took a few days, but I think that was in my favor because the hunt for infiltrator bots got more urgent as time went on, not less.
Turns out that besides the crew of the cargo jet, seven other people died in and around the city over the last seventy-two hours, all in events that were likely caused by the Spiders’ spy bots. Six died at LaGuardia the day after the crash at JFK. They were killed when an automated fuel truck suddenly diverted course and crashed into a hangar, spraying jet fuel everywhere. It happened while Yoshida and company were sweeping the place, a last-ditch attack by a bot that they found and neutralized twenty-three minutes later.
The seventh person died back at JFK when a cargo loader, also automated, dropped a crate on him. The science squad found a program buried in its code, one that activated exactly twelve hours after the JFK spy bot was ended.
All of this sent Zone Defense into a frenzy, searching for spy bots everywhere and anywhere they could think of. But the root cause was the pair of seven-legged horrors controlling the Zone. Yoshida sent me emails and left messages, pushing me for an answer to the problem of the Spiders. Everyone on the team knew he was almost frantic about it.