BZRK Reloaded

by Michael Grant

  By God, Pia thought, the man needs a cutlass.

  They burst onto the bridge. Captain Gepfner raised his pistol and was shot a dozen times before he could so much as twitch. He was dead when he hit the deck.

  The other officers raised their hands and yelled, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  Pia found herself panting, heart pounding, face-to-face with something …someone …unlike anything she had ever seen before. The body was too wide, the number of legs all wrong, and the head, that two-faced head . . .

  “No reason to shoot,” Charles Armstrong said.

  “I’ve talked to the surviving Morgenstein twin,” Pia said, panting. “There’s every reason to shoot.”

  “We are not armed. We are in your power,” Charles said, placating.

  “Who is in charge on this bridge?” Domville demanded.

  “I suppose I am.” The second mate actually raised his hand, like a schoolboy.

  “Then get this ship headed away from land, back into international waters,” Domville ordered him.

  “I can’t sir. The helm is not responding.”

  “What? Nonsense. Put this ship about this instant!” “Sir, the helm is locked out. All controls are locked out. The captain did it, sir. It’s all computer-controlled. He locked it out when he realized we wouldn’t be able to stop you.”

  Every eye looked toward the bow. Off to the left there was a very strange sight: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle rising in spotlights peeked up from Disneyland Hong Kong. All around the ship was a series of small green islands like lumps of bread dough waiting to rise. Directly ahead, what looked to be waterfront warehouses and blocks of residential skyscrapers. Ahead and to the right a veritable wall of skyscrapers, twinkling now, some limned in neon, loomed over swarms of cargo ships, tankers, cruise liners and smaller craft cutting phosphorescing wakes in the water.

  Already the small craft were scattering as the Doll Ship plowed on at a relentless fourteen knots.

  There were now two Hong Kong Police vessels racing to intercept, but both were relatively small patrol boats. A larger Chinese ship kept its distance, but Domville saw them unlimbering a deck gun.

  “All engines stop!”

  “Sir, as I said, we are locked out!”

  “Then we’ll go to engineering. Sergeant, you’ll stay here with Ms Valquist. You two, and you, mister,” he said, indicating the baffled and increasingly worried second mate, “you are with me and if you hesitate in the slightest I will have you shot.”

  They ran from the room.

  “It looks as if we’ll run straight into the harbor,” Benjamin said. “I wonder what happens to the natural gas tanks when that happens.”

  “Do you have a way to stop this ship?” Pia demanded.

  “The only one who could seems to be dead.” Charles waved an arm at the dead Captain Gepfner.

  “The admiral will find a way,” Valquist said, projecting confidence she didn’t feel.

  “I devoutly hope so,” Charles said.

  “There will be quite an international contest to see who gets to try you two first. I hope the Chinese win. Unlike my country, or Britain, they still have a death penalty.”

  To her amazement, Charles laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re mere passengers aboard this vessel. You’ll find nothing proving that we own this ship or hire its crew.”

  “You think your lawyers and your money will protect you? You’ll be tried for a thousand different felonies. Kidnapping, torture, murder. You’re monsters.”

  “Don’t call us that,” Benjamin said, twisting his mouth into a brutal snarl.

  “None of the people on this ship will testify in your courts,” Charles said smugly. “You’ll find they are absolutely loyal. They are happy, and we are the source of their happiness. We’ll produce a hundred witnesses to every one of yours.”

  Pia felt rather than heard an explosion down deep within the ship. Suddenly the whole ship careened sharply, turning radically to starboard.

  Pia staggered, slammed into the captain’s chair, saw the Twins fall over onto their back.

  The small Asian woman, Ling, lurched into the remaining marine.

  Pia heard a strangled sound, dismissed it, then realized too late what it was. A knife was buried to the hilt in the marine’s throat.

  The remaining crew bolted en masse.

  Pia turned her pistol on Ling, fired, missed, and suddenly the smaller woman was on her, delivering sharp blows to Pia’s midsection, head and throat.

  The blow to her throat stopped her breathing. It was like sucking air through a collapsed straw. She fired again and Ling spun and dropped.

  Pia fell to her knees, dropped the gun and tried to squeeze her throat open, digging desperate fingers into her windpipe, but now blood was filling her mouth.

  Min, shot but not dead, got up, whipped off her belt, stepped behind Pia, wrapped it around her throat and twisted.

  Pia thought how unnecessary it was to strangle her when she was already choking.

  That was not her last thought.

  Her last thought, her very last thought, was that she hoped someone would take care of her cat back in Stockholm.

  (ARTIFACT)

  Council on Foreign Relations

  Liquefied Natural Gas: A Potential Terrorist Target? an expanding “pool fire.” A 2004 study by the Sandia National Laboratory, a division of the Department of Energy, suggests that such a fire would be hot enough to melt steel at distances of 1,200 feet, and could result in second-degree burns on exposed skin a mile away.

  Natural gas is at least 90 percent methane, which is combustible. Though in its liquid state natural gas is not explosive, spilled LNG will quickly evaporate, forming a vapor cloud, which if ignited can be very dangerous. Yet the likelihood of this happening is somewhat remote: in order for a vapor cloud to combust, the gas-to-air mixture must be within the narrow window of 5 percent to 15 percent. Furthermore, the vapor is lighter than air, and in the absence of an ignition source it will simply rise and dissipate. Under windy conditions, which frequently exist on the waters where LNG tankers sail, the likelihood of such a cloud forming is further lessened.

  Nevertheless, should one of these vapor clouds catch fire, the results could be catastrophic, says James Fay, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Describing one scenario, he says that a hole in an LNG tanker could result in liquid leaking out of the storage vessel faster than it would burn off, resulting in

  The most attractive terrorist targets are the boats: 1,000-foot tankers with double hulls and specially constructed storage tanks that keep the LNG cold. A report, put out by Good Harbor Consulting, assessing the risk of a proposed LNG terminal in Providence, Rhode Island, concluded that a successful terrorist attack on a tanker could result in as many as 8,000 deaths and upward of 20,000 injuries.

  It is important to keep in mind that this is the worst-case scenario.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Admiral Edward Domville found the Swedish spy, Pia Valquist, dead. He had no time to mourn. Over the ship’s loudspeaker he said, “Attention. This is Admiral Domville, Royal Navy. This ship is sinking. Abandon ship. Abandon ship. There is no time to launch lifeboats, abandon ship immediately.”

  Finally, he keyed the radio and called out to the Hong Kong Police, who were calling frantically for the ship to stop all engines immediately, “This is the Gemini. The rudder is blown. I’ve ordered the scuttles opened but I fear the ship won’t go down quickly enough. I’m ordering everyone over the port side. You must sink this ship. Repeat, this is Royal Navy Admiral Edward Domville in temporary command of this vessel. You must sink this ship if you are able.”

  The Doll Ship was turning in a long, steep arc into Victoria Harbor, the heart of Hong Kong.

  Domville had an informed layman’s understanding of the effects of an LNG leak and the likely results. The wind was dampened here, closer to land, which was unfortunate. Wind would be good.

  The sim
ple fact was that if the Chinese could not sink the ship, it would hit land, very densely populated land. The LNG might not escape. Then again it might, and if it did it would expand through the streets and alleyways of Hong Kong until it was ignited.

  The better alternative would be to ignite the gas at the source of the leak. The result would be a blowtorch, but that was better than an explosion.

  Domville sighed. He reached inside his jacket to the buttoned inner pocket. He drew out a six-inch-long, pale yellow tube bearing the red logo of Montecristo cigars. He twisted off the red plastic cap and tapped the cigar into his hand.

  “Pia,” he said, looking down at his friend, “if you’re in heaven this is good-bye. If you’re in hell, I’ll be seeing you shortly.”

  He cut and lit the cigar, and strolled out onto the deck.

  The president’s limo was a tank in all but appearance. You could shoot bullets at it all day. You could hit it with a rocket-propelled grenade and it would roll right on.

  The limo had secure communications, its own oxygen supply, and a stock of the president’s own blood for an emergency transfusion.

  The driver was a former navy SEAL with more medals than even he could keep track of. There were Secret Service in the front seat, in the backseat, in an SUV in front and a second SUV behind. Every one of them would take a bullet for the POTUS.

  There was no person on Earth better protected.

  And yet . . .

  Ginny Gastrell was worried, very worried, about her boss.

  Gastrell was fifty-six years old, six feet tall, a former forward on the women’s basketball team at Duke University, and looked a bit like Camilla Parker Bowles. She had been married three times, divorced three times, and had no children or hobbies. She was loyal to the president, even more loyal to her party, and most loyal to herself.

  Helen Falkenhym Morales had a paper script on her lap. In the end the White House speech writers had had to write something for her. All she had produced herself was ranting nonsense.

  Ronald Reagan had shown the early signs of Alzheimer’s while still in office.

  Woodrow Wilson was completely incapacitated after suffering a stroke that was covered up by his wife.

  Even Lincoln was known to suffer from depression.

  But this was different. This was very different. Something was wrong with the president. And now Ginny Gastrell was playing the role once played by Mrs. Wilson and to a lesser extent by Mrs. Reagan. Gastrell was deliberately shielding the president from exposure.

  That video, that goddamned video from those Anonymous creeps. That had been the straw that somehow broke Morales’s back. Helen Falkenhym Morales—Mother Titanium, some pundit had tagged her. Tough. Fearless. Determined. Brilliant.

  Look at her now. Look at her now.

  The president was crunching the papers slowly in her fist. Crunch and release. Crunch and release.

  It would be better once MoMo was good and buried. That was it, that was the thing that had derailed the president.

  All she had to do was sit there in the front pew at the National Cathedral. Listen to the various speakers. Nod along. Then give one speech, the eulogy.

  Then things would go back to normal.

  No, they won’t, a voice in Gastrell’s head whispered. The boss is crazy. The boss has lost it. You should be briefing the vice president. Agnelli was a spineless idiot, but he was better than a crazy person.

  One lousy church service.

  One lousy speech.

  “Come on, boss,” Gastrell whispered under her breath. “One hour and we’re home free.”

  As she glanced out of the window she saw the crowd lining the street to see the president drive by. And she saw the sign: we know you did it.

  Vincent endured the assault by water. It was not the first time he’d been on the receiving end of a desperate attempt to dislodge him. And he had never been beaten.

  He grabbed onto the fine hairs on Bug Man’s chin.

  That name, Bug Man, how had it come to him? The gloomy creatures in his alternate universe? Had he heard it from them?

  Bug Man. It meant something to him, but he couldn’t quite place it. He just knew that this Bug Man was the game space, he was the terrain, and he was the opponent as well.

  The razor was an opportunity, not a threat. As the horizon-wide blades descended he raced his biots to the end, to the plastic framing, and leapt aboard.

  The razor swept down and down but then rose dizzyingly through the air before touching down again. This touchdown left Vincent able to jump free higher up Bug Man’s face, up above the water storm.

  From there he was equidistant between eye and ear. There would be enemy forces in the eye, but his opponent couldn’t twitch as long as he was showering. This, too, Vincent knew. He had played this game before and he had won.

  He had beaten a guy named …What was his name? The first one? He had beaten . . .

  And then, up against Sailor099. No, wait, that was a different game. Not this game, that one had swords.

  But he had won. And then …another.

  He shook off the mental confusion. Play the game. Focus.

  Vincent’s instincts told him that if he could get past Bug Man’s outer perimeter of nanobots he would have a free walk most of the way down the optic nerve. Unlike biots, nanobots were not always alert. They were machines, and when they were not being controlled or running on some program, they were as inert as toasters.

  He could picture them clearly. Nanobots. No problem. Nanobots could not kill him; he was invincible.

  Vincent found three nanobots waiting but off-line at the back of Bug Man’s eye. He crippled them without any effort.

  A faraway voice said, “I’m going down the shower drain!” but it meant nothing to Vincent.

  Neither did a male voice yelling “Sadie! Grab onto something, anything!”

  Vincent knew these sounds meant something important and in some vague, distant way he even understood the words. But he did not care. That was another world. He was back in the game, down where he belonged, down where he was alive. He was a wolf, alert, nose sniffing, ears twitching, looking for prey, craving prey.

  “The water stopped,” the distant voice said. “I’m—one of mine is in the drain. Aaaaarrrrggh! Damnit! I don’t know how far down I am. My other two are still okay, but one is way down south. Long walk back.”

  “Get out of the drain, just make it out of there,” the male voice soothed. “This is over for you. Let Vincent handle it.”

  Vincent recognized that word, that name: Vincent. He nodded, yes, let Vincent do it.

  “I can do it,” Plath said.

  In the macro Vincent frowned. But his attention was on the vital intersection ahead, the optic chiasm where the optic nerve connections crossed over to their opposite hemispheres. That’s where an enemy would lie in wait, the crossroads. Yeah, how often had he battled here? Hah!

  Left eye, right eye, it didn’t matter, if you were headed for the deep brain you came this way. And whoever you were, whatever you were, however good you thought you were, Vincent was better.

  Bring it.

  And there they were, just where they should be, clinging upside down hoping to drop unexpected from above. Yes, of course, because a novice twitcher would be thinking in terms of up and down and imagining that the surface beneath his biot’s legs was the “floor” and might not see them “up” there like bats on a cave ceiling.

  Vincent heard a laugh and thought it might have come from him.

  The nanobots were inert, off-line. Twelve of them, each with Bug Man’s exploding head logo. Vincent felt disappointed: he wanted the game, not a cold-blooded job of destruction.

  If he just kept moving he could pass by leaving no trace and be deep into wiring possibly without ever being seen. He hesitated. What was the object of the game? To destroy nanobots or to take over control of the brain?

  The question confused him. That he didn’t know the answer meant something was
wrong with him. He remembered game, he remembered the desire, he remembered tactics and even strategies, but things were missing, too.

  There was a sound, fist pounding. Frustration. Why didn’t he remember the object of the game? He had played the game many times and always won, so he must have known the object of the game.

  It was as if he could reach toward something with his hands but when his hands were close enough to touch it disappeared. It was present only as an absence. It was like something that always moved out of sight no matter how you turned your head to see it.

  His biots froze in place.

  He blinked his eyes and focused on a tense, drawn face in front of him. It was not a biot face; it was in that other place, one of those slow, gloomy creatures.

  “I think he’s seeing me,” the face said.

  “What did you do to me?” Vincent asked Plath.

  “Pay attention to Bug Man,” Wilkes said, very agitated, “Dammit, don’t let him get you.”

  Vincent held his breath. He had heard her and understood and all at once he was completely up in that shadow world, disoriented.

  “Tell him,” Keats said.

  “He may —” Wilkes said, but stopped herself. “Nah. Blue eyes is right. Tell him.”

  “Vincent, we cauterized a part of your brain,” Plath said. “I feel it. I feel something missing.”

  “Daisy …Daisy . . .” Wilkes sang in a low voice and laughed her heh-heh-heh laugh.

  “You were damaged,” Plath said. “We …We did our best to fix you. We need you.”

  “You burned a hole in my brain.”

  “Yes,” Anya Violet said. He recognized her, knew her, suddenly knew the taste of her lips and the smell of her hair. “Because they’re the good guys and they needed to win.”

  Vincent did not hear the sarcasm. “To win the game?”

  Plath nodded, and now there were tears spilling from her eyes. He knew her, too. “Yes, Vincent. To win the game. We had to try and save you. We needed you. We need you now. To win the game, to wire Bug Man.”

  Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Wiring is the win?”

  Plath shot a desperate look at Keats, who looked for a moment as if he might be sick, but then clenched his jaw, nodded once, and said, “That’s right, Vincent. The wire is the win. But we’re going to need to send Wilkes and Plath in, too, for a complete wiring, and we can’t do that unless Bug Man’s forces are destroyed. So for you the ‘win’ is disarming him.”