“I see you spending more time off Earth than on-planet in the immediate future,” Alina admitted. “And I understand what you’re saying. Personnel is something else I’ve been working on, but I didn’t want to bother you about it until I had someone concrete. For obvious reasons, it’s not like I can just call up a staffing company and tell them to send candidates. Even the companies that work with the government and have candidates with security clearances aren’t necessarily people we can use in this particular situation.”
Jia frowned, her gaze turning hostile. “This isn’t an illegal operation, is it? I get that we’re not cops anymore, but I don’t want to end up having to defend myself against treason charges.”
Erik wasn’t sure he cared, as long as it ended with the heads of the conspiracy dead or facing execution for their own treason charges. Despite that, he remained silent, curious about Alina’s response. Whatever she said, he doubted he’d change his mind, but it would change how he approached the new job.
Alina stopped smiling. “On a sliding scale from totally aboveboard operations to deep-black ops, your work will be much more toward the latter side. I’m not going to lie about that. I’ll have some ability to help you out, but if things get too hot, the Directorate is willing to burn you to save themselves.”
“You didn’t even try to lie.” Jia let out a dark snicker. “I’m impressed.”
“What we’re doing here is unusual, even for my line of work.” Alina gestured toward a long window. “You’ll work more closely with me than most of our freelance operatives. Not only that, but the enemy isn’t some small-time terrorist group or insurrectionists. They’ve already demonstrated a thorough infiltration of the government. That’s why you’ve both agreed to this. You know you can’t stop them as cops. Sometimes if you can’t see the man in the shadows, you need to move closer.”
“I don’t care,” Erik admitted. “But I’m glad to know where we stand.”
Jia’s jaw tightened. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out through her nose, her face softening with the exhalation. “I’m still on board, and thank you for not trying to lie.”
Alina scoffed. “At this point, I have no problem keeping information from you that you don’t need, but I’m never going to actively lie to you. You two will end up figuring it out, and that’ll cause unnecessary trouble for me.”
Jia leaned in and lowered her voice despite the anti-spying tech enforcing the silence around them and keeping their voices inside its bubble. “There’s been no movement with Talos?”
“None. Not since the prison incident.” Alina’s face twitched. “I think they screwed up. I think they expected everyone to end up dead onboard that station. They might have even had plans to encourage remote destruction, but things have been silent these last couple of weeks. We’re also still trying to determine who Hadrian Conners actually was.”
Erik grunted in frustration. “Managing to pull off a true deep-fake identity might be easy on the frontier, but I’m surprised he could pull it off on Earth.”
“If they’re being quiet, that’s not a bad thing,” Jia concluded.
“It’s not like they’ve given up because of one failed op.” Erik frowned.
“It gives us time to regroup.” Jia shrugged. “It also gives Alina time to further prep for us.”
Alina stared past Jia, a distant look in her eyes. “It also gives them time. They’re patient, and there’s little worse than dangerous people with patience.”
Chapter Ten
Twenty minutes later, after more naan and minor detail discussions, Erik and Jia lifted off in the MX 60, zooming out of the parking garage and away from the commerce tower holding the restaurant.
The conversation didn’t weigh on Jia as much as she had expected, despite the grim warning about potential betrayal by the ID in the future.
Part of her longed to help Erik find the peace he deserved, but her involvement had never been solely about him. She’d lived her entire life thinking of Earth as a perfect place and the UTC as the ultimate chance for creating a better humanity. The idea that people with resources and power were subverting humanity’s chance at unity instead of supporting it disgusted her. If others could not stop them, why not her?
It was even worse when she thought about all the aliens surrounding humanity. She didn’t believe war was inevitable, but at least human beings had basic biological similarities. Peace wasn’t assured, either. Now more than ever, humanity needed to stand together until the galaxy had moved past the dangerous stage of early contact.
“I want to destroy them all,” Jia muttered.
“The conspiracy?” Erik asked. He looked her way, having ceded control of the MX 60 to the unusually quiet Emma.
“You know how I used to be.” Jia shook her head in disgust. “And it’s people like them and other cowards who don’t want to face the truth who help them do what they want. It’s not like we can negotiate with them.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll track them down. This doesn’t end with anyone getting away until we’re dead.” Erik grinned. “Interesting that you said that.”
Jia shook a finger at him. The look on his face told her everything she needed to know about what he was about to say. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” His grin grew.
“Don’t say anything about me not even being able to fire at someone when we first met,” she warned.
Erik laughed. “I didn’t say anything, but you just did. It’s not a bad thing to change.”
“Sure.” Jia rolled her eyes, her cheeks heating. “Sometimes when I think about how naïve I used to be, I’m so embarrassed I could throw up. Or punch someone.” She eyed him. “Maybe someone close.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t do either of those things.”
“Detectives,” Emma interrupted, “Dispatch is requesting units head to a factory level on a nearby industrial tower. The emergency call suggests out-of-control bots and multiple workers trapped inside. Amusing as fleshbags losing to lesser machines might be, I assume you want to do something about it.”
“Hacker?” Jia guessed.
“That information isn’t available at this time.” Emma hit the lights and spun the MX 60 almost ninety degrees. “It’s a good possibility. Other units are en route, but the officers on-scene have only stun weaponry and no EMPs available. You’re the closest. Based on emergency calls, a decent number of employees are trapped inside due to door failure. Some are seriously wounded. Emergency overrides have failed.”
Erik yawned and cracked his knuckles. “Tomorrow, I’m eating a much bigger dinner, so I’m not as hungry when something like this happens. It’s like the Lady decided to triple down on punishing me.”
Jia reached under her seat to access the storage panel. “We’ll need to enter hard the minute we get there.” She slowly drew the TR-7 from its hiding place. “Now I wonder if Talos isn’t trying something. Even if they didn’t know about our meeting, they could track this vehicle. Hacking a factory wouldn’t be hard for them.”
“Nah. Plenty of scheming bastards to go around, and that’s assuming it’s anything like that.” Erik took the rifle from Jia. “Not every machine is as reliable as Emma.”
“Nor every human,” the AI replied.
“True enough.” Erik smiled. “I wouldn’t have done this so late at night, but if you think about it, the factory’s doing us a favor.”
“A favor?” Jia’s brow wrinkled in confusion.
“Yeah. We’re about to destroy a lot of out-of-control bots, and we don’t even have to pay for the privilege. It’s like free tac training without having to go to the Shadow Zone.”
She thought for a moment. “That’s certainly one way to look at it.”
Erik stuffed magazines containing armor-piercing bullets into his duster pockets as Jia handed them to him. “Emma, the minute we get there, you start hacking the system. The sooner we stop those things, the better. People aren’t going to ask many questions in an emer
gency situation like this, and the bots don’t have angry lawyers trying to sue us.”
Jia fished an assault rifle out of the storage compartment, along with magazines for her. “How many EMPs do you have?”
“Not enough to stop a whole factory. Remind me, first thing I need to do when we finish at the 1-2-2 is install a directional EMP in this thing.” Erik slapped a magazine into his TR-7. “Let’s go save some lives.”
Erik and Jia leapt out of the flitter while it still floated a meter above the sprawling parking platform extending from the industrial level. Both detectives wore their tactical vests and carried EMPs, but Jia planned to rely on her AP rounds.
There wasn’t any moral ambiguity or concern. They weren’t dealing with people, not even criminals, just berserk machines threatening living people.
Three parked police flitters formed a rough wedge between a line of cargo flitters near the front of the factory. A sealed monster of a door blocked access to the main warehouse, and a smaller door to the side was also sealed. Uniform officers crouched behind their flitters, their stun pistols out. A crowd of people cowered behind them, some bloodied. Officers inspected their wounds and applied medpatches.
The detectives didn’t stop to check in with the officers already present. Emma had already announced their arrival to Dispatch. Relief flooded the faces of the officers, and they nodded to Erik and Jia when they arrived at the smaller sealed door. Industrial-grade bots wouldn’t be very vulnerable to stun pistols, but assault rifles with AP ammo would do the trick.
“We need cops with us to escort people out,” Erik announced. He motioned toward the door. “We’ll take out the bots. You just follow.”
Several cops rushed from behind the cars, more confident now with Erik and Jia present. They clustered around them, leaving a few officers to help with the crowd and tend to the wounded.
“I’d prefer not to get the rocket launcher out in public,” Erik muttered, nodding at the sealed door. “Get us in there, Emma.”
“Working on it,” Emma replied. “There don’t seem to be any extraordinary defenses other than what you’d expect on mid-level systems, although the interfaces are acting strangely. The system is obviously compromised.”
“If you can prioritize, get the doors open,” Erik ordered. “Fire at anything that isn’t human,” he shouted to the cops. “Who knows? You might get lucky.”
The officers puffed out their chests and gave firm nods. Uncertainty melted off their faces. They lacked the necessary gear, not the bravery, to defeat the bots.
The door slid open, revealing a wide hall and a wild-eyed man, blood running down the side of his face. The worker darted out of the building and past the police line, heading toward the crowd.
Erik nodded at the man. “Somebody make sure he’s taken care of.”
An officer broke off from the pack and hurried after the worker. The others returned their attention to the factory. Smoke filled the hallway. Security bots lay on the ground, twitching and sparking. A trail of blood spots led up the corridor.
Jia moved to Erik’s side, sweeping the hall with her rifle. She pointed it at the twitching bots and fired two quick shots through their primary CPUs. They sparked and stopped moving.
“Careful is spelled ‘two bullets to the CPU,’” she explained.
Erik shrugged. “Not complaining. The company can take it up with their insurance company later.”
“There appears to be a sophisticated virus infecting several systems,” Emma reported. “I was able to bypass some of the underlying systems to activate the doors. I don’t have camera access, but I can route the positions of the workers via their emergency PNIU signals.”
“Send them. We need to get this shit done.” Erik flipped to single-barrel mode and advanced into the hall as white augmented reality arrows popped up. A holographic map appeared, projected from his PNIU.
The workers appeared to be clustered into three distinct groups, with a few individuals spread out. One group hid in the main fabrication room. Another was in the back offices. The last group was already fleeing out the now-unlocked side doors near a large storage room.
Jia narrowed her eyes and pointed at the map. “The others aren’t leaving. They must be pinned by bots.”
“They might be pinned, but they also might be exposed to bots if I open the other doors,” Emma explained. “I only opened that door because I verified there were no bots inside. I suspect the only thing keeping people from severe injury is the presence of the locked doors. I’ll unlock them as you advance.”
“Makes sense.” Jia looked at Erik. “What do you want, fab room or offices?”
“I’m more of a building person. Fab room.”
Jia gestured down the hallway. “Half of you with me, the other half with Detective Blackwell. Maintain situational awareness. If you see something, tell us so we can blow it away.”
The uniformed officers didn’t request clarification or say anything. They sorted themselves into two groups and fell in between their respective rifle-wielding detectives. Training could pay off with appropriate leadership.
“We’ve got people working the system,” Jia announced. “If everything goes well, they’ll be able to shut down the bots soon. If not, we’ve also got reinforcements. Until then, we need to move.” She strode around a corner. “We’ve got innocent people to save.”
Chapter Eleven
Jia sprinted down the hall, concentrating on the navigational indicators pointing toward the workers. Emma provided the occasional course suggestion, allowing Jia’s makeshift squad to approach with maximum efficiency.
Without camera access, they lacked exact intelligence on the locations of rogue bots. Horrible scraping and buzzing noises and thuds announced they were far from alone in the factory.
“How are we doing on the cameras?” she asked, not bothering to be quiet.
“I suspect you’ll be finished with this before I can get access,” Emma admitted. “This virus is surprisingly targeted and sophisticated.”
“You’re saying this wasn’t an accident? Not just somebody connecting the wrong system to the net?”
“I doubt that. The virus was customized for this factory. It looks like a different program set was downloaded to all the bots before the primary control system was disabled. I’d kill the power, but the loss of primary lighting would exacerbate the current situation, and the bots wouldn’t run out of power in a timely manner.”
Jia slowed as the several small security bots scuttled into the hall, all with a stun rods protruding from the front. They were followed by a four-legged monstrosity the size of a horse, but with four bladed arms.
“What is that?” Jia asked, wonder in her tone.
“A cutter,” Emma explained.
Jia rolled her eyes. “I can tell that.”
“No, that’s what it’s called. They cut things. Those blades are nanite-sharpened molecular blades.”
“Huh. It’s disappointing that they have such an unimpressive name.”
Emma snorted. “Would Glorious Sharp Killing Machine suit it better?”
“A little,” she admitted.
The security bots and their bladed friend lumbered toward the police officers. Normally agile, the six-legged security bots shuffled and lurched, barely moving at a decent walking pace.
There were no clever tactics or attempts to crawl on the wall or lower their shot profile. Jia fired three times in rapid succession, downing security bots. Bright blasts of energy slammed into the bots as the officers opened fire. The shots defused across the surface of the bots, doing nothing to slow them.
Jia yanked two tactical EMPs from her pocket, primed the small black orbs, and quickly hurled them toward the advancing bot army. High-pitch whining resulted, hurting her ears. Most of the bots collapsed to the ground, but the cutter continued its advance. Bolt after bolt struck it, to no effect.
“That’s…inconvenient,” Jia muttered.
The officers began back
ing away. Jia held her position and switched to automatic. She’d extensively studied security bots’ weaknesses, but her education on industrial bots was far more limited. It didn’t matter. She’d come around to Erik’s way of thinking.
Most problems could be solved with stupidly egregious amounts of gunfire.
Jia held the trigger down and swept back and forth. Her AP rounds ripped through the bot, and sparks and smoke emerged. The assault rifle went dry, but the cutter fell to one side, landing with a loud boom. Momentum scraped the machine across the floor before it came to rest in front of Jia. She ejected her magazine and loaded a fresh one.
“We’re almost there.” She jogged past the smoking wreck of the cutter, grateful there were no signs of blood on its blade.
Other than the initial workers who had fled when they opened the door and bloodstains along the way, they had not run into any bodies.
Even if they were wounded, as long as they were safe from the bots, prompt medical care would save them, and ambulances were already on the way. The heavy footsteps of the police echoed around them. The distinct if muffled crack of the TR-7 sounded in the distance.
Erik had encountered his own fun.
Jia continued moving toward the sheltered group of workers. When she pivoted around a corner, she ran into another mixed group of security bots clustered around a door. They crawled over each other, scratching at the door. This time, no nightmarish cutters stood with the group. Instead, four-legged bots with wide fronts formed the back of the force. A silver tank was attached to their bottom, a nozzle on a flexible hose twitching like some metal yaoguai. It sprayed a thick, viscous liquid that sizzled on contact with the door, leaving irregular gouges. Some of the liquid dripped on a security bot, eating away its body.
“Is that called a ‘sprayer?’” Jia guessed.
“Indeed.” Emma sounded proud. “Please be warned that it could have a variety of chemicals dangerous to fleshbags.”
Maelstrom of Treason Page 8