by Paul Collins
Anneke finished her cup-heated coffee, wondering at Sasume’s agenda. That the woman hated Brown and wanted revenge was obvious, but Anneke did not kid herself that the Myotan CEO was as charming and benign as she appeared to be. Very likely, Sasume wanted the lost coordinates for herself so she could restore full power and privileges to Myoto.
Anneke would have to tread carefully. A lot of people were trying to place her under one kind of obligation or another.
Anneke paid for her coffee and left by the rear entrance, startling the cooks and coffee makers. She then took a circuitous route through the city, doubling back, losing herself in crowds, and using classified RIM cleansers.
When she finally felt it was safe to do so, she made her way to Enigma, a highly shielded ‘lost’ location beneath Lykis. She desperately needed to talk with Josh and to hear how the code breaking on the first set of coordinates was coming along.
But the face-to-face chat would be a long time commg.
As soon as she stepped into the underground chamber where the main core of Enigma resided, she knew something was wrong. She could smell blood.
Lots of blood.
Instinctively she crouched, which saved her life. An auto-pulse blew a smoking hole in the door near where her head had been. She blasted the device into its component atoms, ran a sensor sweep, located two more booby-traps and disabled them.
And then she found the bodies. Grim and silent, and fighting back tears, she checked each of them for signs of life. All were dead.
She found Josh under a desk, weeping, a bag of botchi burgers and booze clutched in his lap. He had a terrible shoulder wound. Before he passed out, he looked up at her.
‘I went out,’ he said. ‘We were gonna celebrate. You know, we cracked it. The code. I came back and I thought they were playing and then - and then -’
But his chest heaved and he started crying again, and then mercifully he passed out. Anneke guessed that an automatic device on one of the ‘back doors’ had caught him.
She called for an ambulance and applied first aid. That’s when she noticed that every computer in the place had been torn open and the quantum storage units removed.
THE youth was dying. Worse, he was dying without confessing his sins against Maximus Black.
Just tell me what I want to know,’ said Black to the terrified, panting youth strapped to the table, ‘and all this will end. No more pain. I promise.’
The youth was breathing so hard and fast it sounded like sobbing and his eyes were white, like a panic-stricken animal’s. Black did not like this look; it reminded him of long ago. He turned to the Envoy irritably.
‘Well? What do you think?’
‘I think the subject has told us all he knows.’
‘But he knows nothing! He’s told us nothing! Where is the second set of coordinates hidden? How do we find it?’
The Envoy did not shrug, but he made a gesture Black had come to read as one.
‘Maybe,’ snarled Black, ‘if you hadn’t been so zealous in eliminating everybody you found there, we might have more than one survivor!’
‘I followed your orders. In any case, why do you assume there are no more survivors?’
‘What?’ Black slapped his forehead. What a fool he was. And he called himself a genius? He turned back to the youth on the table.
‘Is there anyone who knows the location of the second coordinates?’
‘We didn’t contact anyone else,’ the youth groaned through a miasma of pain.
‘I’m well aware that your logs prove that no messages went in or out in the three hours prior to our visit, but that isn’t what I asked.’ Black touched a button. Excruciating pain shocked through the youth’s limbs. He howled, his body arching. Black tried to ignore the sound of bones cracking. ‘Care to revise your statement?’ josh.Josh knows.’
‘And where isjosh? Please don’t tell me he’s dead.’
‘No, no. He went out. For food.’
‘Ah. Somebody we missed. Thank you. You may die now.’ He touched another button and the youth slumped, silently. Black eyed the Envoy. ‘Go back and find this josh. Make sure he still has a pulse when you get him back here. In the meantime, I will have my people rip the QSUs apart.’
‘The Enigma encryption is complex.’
‘Let me worry about that.’
The Envoy left. Black strode back through the underground complex, pausing in the viral lab to check the latest readings on the Kilroy mutation. It was interesting. Kilroy showed crude signs of rationality, which meant he could respond to limited commands. It was a poor kind of controllability, but would have its uses.
‘Keep up the good work, Kilroy,’ Black said over the intercom system. The transmogrified human on the other side of the glass lifted its head at the sound of Black’s voice and looked at him. Black could not read its face, or the look in its feverish eyes. Something in him didn’t want to.
In analysis, Mika, Karl and Jeera were already at work on the Enigma QSUs, downloading their encrypted contents - millions of gigabytes of data - into Black’s mainframe. It was an AI Hub containing some of the most powerful decryption algorithms ever devised.
Despite this, the task would be enormous. If encryption was a science then decryption was an art form, and there were few ‘artists’ of this particular calling who were equal to Black himself So he poured himself a double dose of Ruvian coffee, rolled up his sleeves, straddled a workstation alongside the other three, and set to work. The secret, Black knew, would be to think like the encryptor. Fine in theory, but how did an emotionally stunted computer geek think?
Some hours later, the Envoy reported in.
‘We found a secret back entry. The booby-traps there were destroyed. Blood spatter suggests one scored a hit.’
‘That would be Josh.’
‘I have identified the individual. His biometrics indicate he is 1.9 metres in height. The blood spatter is consistent with a shoulder hit of an individual of this height. A man with a similar wound was admitted into surgery at Paxan Heights Hospital three hours ago.’
‘Then what are you waiting for?’
‘The man was admitted by his sister. Her description fits -’
‘Anneke Longshadow’s. Naturally. So Anneke must know where the lost coordinates are.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I infiltrated the hospital’s records. Given Josh’s condition it is unlikely that he would have been coherent enough to convey any rational information.’
‘What’s to stop him talking as soon as he wakes?’
‘He is in a medically induced coma. He will not awaken for at least seventy-two hours.’
‘So I have a head start. Lucky me. Okay. Let me give this some thought. We can’t assume Anneke doesn’t already have the information or soon will. Either way, we need to stop her - or anybody else - acting on that information.’
‘What shall I do?’
Black thought quickly. ‘There’s no point removing Josh from the hospital until he is well enough to be moved - or tortured. Let’s just make sure nobody else moves him either.’
‘As you wish.’
Anneke Longshadow again. Every way he turned, he ran into Anneke Longshadow. How many times had he ‘killed’ her only to discover she had miraculously survived? How many times had she thwarted him? Back in her training at RIM Academy she was said to have the nine lives of a cat. Black had to concede the truth of this, though it galled him to do so.
Well, he would stop her this time. Or at least cramp her style. And he had the glimmering of an idea of just how to do that.
Then something else occurred to him. He didn’t have to find Anneke Longshadow. He could let her find him. Hadn’t he just annihilated another part of her fuzzy friendly ‘family’? Would she not be howling for his bl
ood? Perhaps he should simply allow her to get to him.
That meant providing an opportunity. Interestingly, one such opportunity would occur in three days. He would be hosting the first general meeting of the Combine Cartel, now more or less openly identified as the Mqforis Corporata.
Despite being illegal, RIM - under Rench - had decided not to act against the rogue body, sensing that the time was not right. At present, the MC was massively popular. It had struck boldly and effectively against an appalling act of barbarity and did so when RIM had feared to act. It had restored law and order and thus represented authority. The unsettledness of the last few months made this appealing to the many star systems that craved stability more than they craved legal niceties.
Anneke would know about the meeting. It would present her with a golden opportunity, one he doubted she could miss.
He must think how he could turn this to his advantage. Unfortunately, Anneke Longshadow was a secondary concern right now. The real reason for calling the meeting was to establish his own control over the sprawling Majoris Corporata.
Taking over the chairmanship was one thing; becoming the Military Capo of the organisation was another. He would need great luck and finesse to bring it off And the Envoy was no help. He simply referred to Black’s Kadros - his destiny - as if things would take care of themselves.
Fat chance. Whatever that meant.
Black spent the next twenty-four hours working on the Enigma encryption. He did not sleep, hardly ate, nor did he feel the need for either. He was solving a complex puzzle, tracking a path through a multi dimensional maze. His intellect was challenged. That did not stop other parts of his brain from computing thousands of different scenarios aimed to solve the twin problems of Anneke Longshadow (and the coordinates) on the one hand and gaining absolute military control of the MC on the other.
Before the twenty-four hours were up, he had a solution for preventing Anneke from going after the coordinates. He would cripple her from travelling. With this in mind, he launched plans to accomplish this end.
Only then did he go to bed.
When he woke the next morning, he was smiling. He never remembered his dreams, but figured that whatever his sleeping mind had entertained itself with in the night, it must have been good.
And what was good for Maximus had to be bad for Anneke.
The morning of the general meeting was cold and overcast. Winter storms hung on the horizon to the north of Lykis, held back by the local planetary fields deployed by Weather Control. Only some would be let through, those that would cause little property damage, but which might prove stimulating to the jaded city dwellers. Hammering hail and rain in the cities were things of the past.
Black rose early, dressing carefully, choosing a sedate traditional cut to his tunic and trousers. He needed to send specific signals today: authority, yes, but also steadfastness and reliability, loyalty and competence, all with a touch of boldness and ruthless strength, the ability to do what was necessary. Strong leadership always counted for more than integrity with humans, whose needs as a political species were closer to that of Earth’s sheep than any other lifeforms. Naturally, he was presenting as his alter ego, Nathaniel Brown.
Black took a ground car to the meeting. Another symbol of boldness, yet one that paid homage to the old ways of doing things.
He entered the lobby of the Coliseum, moving openly in public, with not even one bodyguard accompanying him. As he passed through, he caught snippets of conversation: ‘He must be crazy’ and ‘Now that’s sheer goddamn brass for you - whatever that means.’
Of course, he had plants all over the place; professional sociometricians, they called themselves. The spin doctors called the shots and the metricians amped it up at street level.
By the time Black reached his temporary council chambers, preparatory to taking the main stage in the middle of the Coliseum floor - a superb target for any would-be assassin or madman - he knew the entire place was talking about him.
The head of his PR section, Dr Oresta, gave him the figures when he sat down. He perused them as he sipped a lime juice cocktail.
Then it was time.
He readied himself, nodded at his fellow Quesadan councilmen and women, and walked out onto the floor of the huge Coliseum. A moving walkway took him to the dais in double time. He mounted it like one carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders. When he stopped, he was facing an array of infinitesimal cameras and microphones, and a massive protective wall of deflector shields, with his face portrayed in vast holographic displays around the great circle. Then the dais rose thirty metres into the mr, m a shining column of light.
Impressive.
A hush descended on the crowd, which comprised major executives of Company and Clan, numerous ordinary Quesadan, Imperial Standard and Ekud stockholders, and various Combine Cartel members.
Black, in his role as Nathaniel Brown, addressed them all.
‘Isn’t this a great day? Isn’t this a day to be great?’ he said. His voice rampaged around the Coliseum like a flood, like the Voice of God. It was packed, of course, with subtle and not so subtle voice amplifiers, actuating tones and key words. The crowd responded with a roar. Most had seen their stocks skyrocket in recent days, and at Black’s suggestions substantial dividends had been paid out.
So these people have something to roar about, thought Black. Let’s hope they fiel that wqy when I finish.
‘Times are good. And they’re going to get a whole lot better.’ No chance of that, if Black had his way.
A year from now, the sector-wide stock market would crash and most of these cheering people would be bankrupt. ‘But times are also precarious and to make sure things go our way, we need to consolidate. We need steady, bold leadership. The Majoris Corporata has shown the way. Strong, decisive action.’ Another hush fell when he mentioned the MC, as if people were afraid someone would spring up to arrest them.
Black allayed their fears and wondered if Anneke was out there somewhere, if even now she was taking aim at his heart. ‘The old days are gone,’ he said.
‘RIM is all but gone. The Sentinels do not interfere. Our future is in our own hands for the first time in a thousand years. And we must not lose our grip ever again!’
His voice rose to a shout and the crowd roared back its approval.
‘In these unsteady times, we need a military leader to steer our course true, not a mere chairperson to worry about our investments.’
Vokler from the Ekud Clan stood up. ‘I propose Nathaniel Brown as Military Capo!’
‘I second that,’ shouted a woman from Merkator Mining. Black had chosen his lackeys well.
Of course, the board members protested, as Black knew they would. And theirs were the crucial votes, after all. They each voted enormous shares, deeded to them from smaller companies, clans, individuals and trusts.
If Black did not win their hearts and minds he would win nothing.
But this was not the arena for it. The closed meeting that would follow would bear the fruit of his day’s work. Black continued in the same vein for a while than handed over the dais to other speakers.
An hour later he was in the closed meeting. Some members were not happy that he had launched a pre-emptive attack on the military leadership of the MC.
‘It is not the time for such foolishness,’ insisted Bodanis from Imperial Standard.
‘I agree,’ said a sallow-faced woman from a smaller clan.
Black held up his hand for silence and got it. ‘If not now, when? And if not me, who?’ He paused dramatically. ‘We are on a cusp, ladies and gentlemen. And we are riding the flood. History is with us. You heard them out there.’ He waved an arm theatrically, taking in the vast Coliseum they could see through the floor-to-ceiling windows. ‘They feel it, too. It is the time of the little man and woman. The time to do great things . . .’
‘
Spare us the histrionics, Brown,’ said Bodanis.
‘Becoming Military Capo would give you emergency powers such that you could order us about according to your whims. I for one am not happy at such an eventuality.’
‘Was it not my idea to fake the raid on Heliopolis? To put Rench into power and lead him down the road of passive avoidance? Have I not shown my dedication to this organisation already? Have I not done more in a few months than all of you put together have done in fifty years?’ He saw heads nodding, minds weighing his words. What he said was patently true. ‘And yet you treat me like an interloper, like someone who does not have the right.’ Bodanis wasn’t impressed. ‘Let’s talk practicalities, Brown. There has been no military leadership of the Combine Cartel in over one hundred years. Why should we have one now?’
Black couldn’t believe the old man was so blind. Or was he more perceptive than Black supposed?
‘The Combine Cartel has never before been so prominently placed in galactic affairs. And in any case, we are discussing the future of the Majoris Corporata. We are talking about a military destiny, not an economic one. I must admit I too believed that we could not dare show our hand until we stood at the helm of a fleet of dreadnoughts, but circumstances have propelled us to the front of a great tidal wave of history. Not to seize our chance would not only be foolish, it would be criminal.’
‘Fine words,’ said the sallow-faced woman. Black searched his memory, found a name. Ziisik. ‘But we have already declared ourselves, Brown. RIM has already shown its spinelessness. Why risk more until we do have the dreadnoughts? We are still weak. Still exposed. The tide could turn.’
‘Well said,’ said Black. ‘But a great poet also once said, the tide waits for no man. And if we are to form a new galactic empire, then we must act. I call for a vote.’
That brought an uproar of talk and mutterings. It was a daring move. Did Black have the numbers to carry the day? He genuinely did not know.
Vokler seconded the move and the vote was taken. Such votes, by tradition, were open, a raising of hands. Each voter looked Black in the eyes as he or she raised a hand, or refused to raise it. He memorised his enemies for later, and his friends.