2 Change in Management

by RJ Johnson

  Meade and Emeline looked on in shock, as Sarah slowly holstered her pistol. She stuck her hand out to Kansas to help him up. Kansas looked at her for a moment before taking it and heaving himself back up.

  The tears fell from her eyes, hot, wet and thick. She wiped her eyes and looked down at the MP she was covering. She slammed the butt of her rifle in his face and knocked the man out. “Fuck you,” she said to the moaning man on the ground.

  She wound back and started to kick the man mercilessly while fat hot tears fell from her eyes. She lifted her gauss rifle up above her head sighting his head. Kansas grabbed her by the arm and stopped her from pulling the trigger.

  “That’s enough,” Kansas said gently. “It’s time to go.”

  Sarah struggled for a moment against the large man’s strength, but stopped when she realized it was fruitless against Kansas’ iron grip.

  “Let’s go,” Meade said, feeling the victory become hollow. They moved towards their Aerocycles and got on, starting them up.

  A team of Coalition MPs burst out of the hallway where they had just emerged from. They spotted Sarah, Emeline Kansas and Meade and immediately began firing at them. Meade kept his head down, and throttled up his Aerocycle.

  Kansas was about to take off when a stray shot from the Coalition MPs managed to hit his ion engine, killing the Aerocycle’s momentum. Kansas ducked behind his Aerocycle and began to fire at the Coalition team coming after him. They laid down covering fire as they tried to flank Kansas hoping to take him alive.

  “Cover me while I grab Kansas!” Meade shouted. Sarah and Emeline immediately took off and circled around their heads firing down on the Coalition MPs. Their vantage point made it like they were shooting fish in a barrel as MP after MP fell to the ground.

  Meade took off and looped back towards Kansas who had recovered his gauss rifle and began to fire back at them. Meade reached down as Kansas reached up with his arm and they grabbed each other as he flew by on the Aerocycle.

  Meade felt his arm nearly wrench itself out of its socket, but somehow he continued to hold on while Kansas fired back at the MPs who were still hot on their tail. Meade grimaced and banked the Aerocycle to the side. The momentum of the Aerocycle helped pull Kansas up and on behind him.

  Sarah and Emeline continued to fire and they moved quickly towards the main New Plymouth thoroughfare. Dozens of drones spat out of the walls of the Coalition Federal building and began to give chase.

  Kansas reached into his coat and pulled out a large EMP grenade. He twisted the top and tossed it out behind them. The grenade exploded in the thick of the drones that were chasing them and all of their electronics were instantly fried, and they crashed to the ground, falling around the pursuing MPs destroying their Aerocycles.

  They sailed through the traffic and up into the sky leaving the Coalition drones behind as Meade became the first man to ever escape Enzeli prison.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Thanks to Kansas’s EMP grenade, they didn’t have to worry about the Coalition catching up to them. They sped out of the city as quickly as possible, reaching the MiM’s camp within a few hours.

  “Thanks for the pickup guys,” Meade said. He’d never been so happy to feel red dirt under his boots in his life. They all dismounted their Aerocycles and circled Meade.

  “No problem,” Kansas said with a twinkle in his eye. “Always fun to bloody the Coalition’s nose a bit.”

  “Plus I promised Kansas you’d help him out with a favor to be named in the future,” Emeline said, getting off her Aerocycle and approaching them.

  Meade turned to Sarah and embraced her as she walked up. He pulled a strand of her blonde hair out of her face and looked down ashamed, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for your father.”

  She drew in a breath sharply and shook her head, “You did everything you could I imagine.”

  “Almost everything,” Meade said softly.

  “What does that mean?” Emeline asked suspiciously. She knew that look on Meade’s face and there was only trouble on the other end of it.

  “It means that this whole thing ain’t over by a long shot.”

  “What are you talking about Meade?” Emeline asked frustrated, “We’ve barely escaped with our lives twice now. My bar’s under Coalition lock and key and I guarantee you I ain’t getting that back,” she kept ticking off the rest of the problems they were facing on her fingers. “Not to mention that you’re now considered all the more dangerous because you’ve managed to escape the inescapable prison. And let’s not forget that this Blue Bell over here didn’t make any friends back there,” Emeline jerked her thumb over at Sarah.

  “Watch it!” Sarah shouted. She approached Emeline her jaw out, and temper high. Kansas stepped between them before anything could break out between them. Emeline ignored Sarah and continued to stab her finger at Meade accentuating every point she was trying to make.

  “I know you’re hip on this whole save the world thing right now, but we didn’t break you out so you could go and get yourself along with the rest of us put back in there. Why don’t we just alert the authorities and let them sort it all out?”

  “Who exactly can we alert that’ll believe us?” Meade asked softly. “It’s pretty clear that Corcoran’s got the Coalition MPs locked down. She controls the drones, the skies, the media, and if we don’t do anything about it, soon enough she’ll be able to control everything about you.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Emeline challenged, her eyes narrowing.

  “Imagine,” Meade said looking around, “You want to make a better life for yourself, but the Coalition needs you right where you are. Imagine never being able to escape to be better than where you started. Imagine being trapped forever in your role as a Mole, office drone, or hell, even if you’re a Runabout, or thief. Imagine being denied every chance you take to try and improve your lot in life.”

  “You taking lessons on how to be vague? Cause that didn’t answer shit,” Emeline spat back at him. She was pissed, and on some level he couldn’t blame her. But still, he was angry, why couldn’t she understand how important this was for them, for everyone?

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning,” Kansas said gently, his voice rumbling. “Give us the rundown and explain why we shouldn’t light a shuck for the nearest dogtown outside Coalition control. Tell us why we need to stop this Cassandra person.”

  “Cassandra isn’t a person,” Meade began, “it’s a computer program that the Ambassador is using along with that predictive algorithm we found. That’s why they require every Coalition citizen to install a SecureCard. They monitor everyone’s activities on Mars, from what they say, what they do, where they go...”

  Kansas shrugged, “That’s nothing new, they’d been doing that since before I was born.”

  “Yeah, but now they’ve figured out how to use all that data for their benefit.” Meade briefly laid out everything that the Ambassador was doing to the group. How she tracked everyone, how the Coalition used Cassandra to listen in on everyone’s communications, even analyze their most private moments in order for the program to build a scarily accurate forecast of the future.

  They listened impassively as he described how the Ambassador calmly narrated the proposal, life and death of the couple at the café. Their jaws on the ground by the time he finished; they were smart enough to understand the kind of power Cassandra meant for the Coalition and more importantly to Ambassador Corcoran herself.

  “So she’s using this…” Emeline paused, as if unsure she could believe it, “Cassandra to predict what everyone’s doing?”

  “Just those with SecureCards from what I gathered,” Meade said.

  Kansas exhaled his eyes wide, “Fuck me.”

  “Pretty much my reaction,” Meade agreed. “That kind of power doesn’t belong to anyone like Corcoran. This shit has got to stop before it gets out of hand. Something like this could trigger the Last War all over again.”

  Emeline
averted her eyes and looked down at the floor while Meade spoke.

  “Spare me the doomsday talk,” Emeline said softly, looking back up at him. “I know you’re not used to giving a good goddam whether you live or die, but whether you know it or not, people do care about you dammit, and they just risked everything to save your life. I’m hoping that you’re not as rude to throw that second chance away to try and defeat an enemy we can’t possibly stand a chance of beating.”

  “I know,” Meade said softly. “But I don’t wanna live in the kind of future that Corcoran’s got in mind. Besides,” he added, “if it’s not Corcoran controlling Cassandra, it’ll be someone else. It’s up to us to stop this now, before it becomes bigger than anything we can handle.”

  “How do we stop it?”

  This came from Sarah who hadn’t said a word since she learned her father was brain dead and likely never coming back. Meade didn’t want to push her into anything, since she was likely emotionally fragile, but he’d been wrong before.

  “My guess, the ambassador didn’t plan on me escaping from Enzeli. She kept calling me a variable, which I took to mean that I was the only thing outside her control. Because I’ve remained outside the system, she can’t predict my actions beyond what she’s already seen. That made me dangerous and that’s why she was so desperate to keep me locked away in Enzeli. I’m the only one who can keep her from achieving total control over New Plymouth.”

  “So what’s the point?” Sarah asked. He couldn’t help but detect a note of hostility in her voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what’s the point?” Sarah asked sharply. “She knows we’re coming, she knows what we’re already going to do before we do it. After what you told us, this Cassandra thing doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that we’re gonna be able to outsmart it. I’ve seen AIs in action.”

  “Trust me,” Meade said firmly, “if there’s a way to ruin Corcoran’s day, I’ll find it.”

  “He will,” Emeline piped up, “I’ve seen him in action, it’s his specialty.”

  Sarah snorted at this, but she looked up at him and Meade saw what he thought was hope for the first time.

  “What’s your plan?” she asked.

  Meade smiled and patted her on her shoulder. He knew she’d come around. She was too much the good Coalition officer not to. Duty over emotions - that was the Coalition way.

  “Best I can tell is that she’s using Cassandra to consolidate her power over the Warlords while also expunging the traitors within her organization.”

  “Like Hugh,” Kansas added.

  “Exactly,” Meade nodded. “In a single stroke, she eliminates her competition and those who aren’t loyal.”

  “And she happily continues to use Cassandra to further consolidate her power on the planet,” Sarah said sucking the air through her teeth.

  “I get the feeling that control over the Red Planet isn’t enough for Corcoran,” Meade said.

  “So, what do we do?” Sarah asked.

  “We do exactly what she expects to happen, only with a few slight adjustments,” Meade said and let a slow smile spread across his face.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  They flew low and quick through the New Plymouth markets, hoping that their rapid movement and hidden faces would stymy even the most advanced Coalition surveillance cameras searching for them. They darted through the deserted streets as it was still early in the morning, long before most people were awake and moving about.

  “Here,” Meade called over his ArmBar comm link to everyone. They landed in an alleyway next to a series of warehouses in E-Block where Michael Palmetto kept the majority of his holdings. Meade knew that if he was going to take on the whole Coalition, it was time for the man who hired him to find out what was going on to pitch in some help.

  Palmetto might extract a promise out of Meade to do him a favor or two in the future, but that wasn’t his main concern at the moment. They needed backup and support, and the warlord in charge of the Noctis, Palmetto was the only one left in the city who was in any position to give them any.

  Meade got off his Aerocycle and waited for Sarah, Emeline and Kansas to approach. He watched the front entrance of Palmetto’s office and waited, seeing if there was anyone from the Coalition that had eyes on the local Warlord.

  “What are we doing here?” Sarah asked without preamble. Meade had noticed a definite change in her attitude ever since she learned her father was for all intents and purposes dead. It was as if everything that made her shine from the inside was turned off for now. She was nothing but business, adopting the cool professional attitude that likely served her well during her long duty tours.

  Meade didn’t want to push it, he knew that Sarah had to be putting off some heavy duty grieving in favor of helping him keep the Ambassador from reaching her goal of total control over the New Plymouth population.

  “Stay here,” Meade ordered. “We’re gonna need some help and Palmetto owes me a favor.”

  “What does he have that Kansas can’t get us?” Emeline demanded. She was not a fan of Palmetto’s.

  “The hardware Kansas got us will only get us halfway towards our goal. As it happens, Palmetto’s got access to something that the MiMs just can’t get their hands on,” he looked apologetically at Kansas, “No offense.”

  Kansas shrugged casually, “Can’t win ‘em all.”

  Meade continued, “What we need from Palmetto is his connections. He’s gonna have the kinda pull we need to get us four passes to the Zero-G fight tonight.”

  Emeline’s eyebrow was raised in skepticism, “The Zero-G fight?”

  “Yep,” Meade nodded. “If I got Corcoran’s plan figured right, and I think I do, the fight tonight is at the crux of her plan. That’s where Laszlo plans on trying to assassinate her.”

  “What good is that to us?” Emeline asked. “Isn’t the attempt on her life the whole point? She already knows Laszlo’s coming after her, she’ll be ready for him and Hugh in a million different ways.”

  “From what the Ambassador was telling me earlier, she needs Laszlo to take his shot so she can expose him and Hugh as conspirators. Once that’s done, she’ll have the kind of political capital she’ll need to push through the kind of reforms that would make her power over Cassandra permanent,” Meade said. “She’d make it so that there’d be no way for anyone to remove her or Cassandra from the system. She WOULD be the system. No, what we need to do is intercept Laszlo before his man takes the shot, and let the assassination attempt fail. We stop the fight, we stop Corcoran.”

  Sarah nodded, “I follow the logic, but how exactly do you plan on making everything go wrong, especially when it sounds like everyone’s got their own plan?”

  Meade grinned, this was the fun part, “Here’s what I’m thinking. Kansas, you’ll be up in the rafters with a rifle looking for the sniper if he takes his shot. You’ll take him out before he can take his shot.”

  “How will I know where the bastard will be?” Kansas asked.

  “That’s Emmy’s task, she’ll be in the media center,” Meade said, pointing to Emeline.

  “Doing what?” Emeline asked, looking skeptical.

  “Your part is twofold. First, I’ll need you to hack into their system.”

  “Oh is that all?” she sounded exasperated with him, but Meade couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t like he was giving her a lot to go on.

  “Can you do it?”

  She sighed and waved for him to go on, “It’d be a lot easier to say yes if I knew what exactly you wanted me to do once I’m in.”

  “I’ve got two things in mind for you, but the first and most important is for you to help Kansas search out who the gunman is.”

  “Right, and just how the hell do you expect me to figure out who our mysterious assassin is?” she demanded.

  “Should be a fairly easy proposition,” Meade said confident. “Laszlo was awfully concerned that Chau wouldn’t keep his medical team on board
for the championship fight. My bet is that’s how Laszlo plans to get the assassin into the arena for the hit. We watch Chau’s posse, and whoever leaves during the fight has got to be our guy.”

  Sarah nodded, “Makes sense. He’d have the access and ability to bring in whatever he needed with little to no inspection by the security teams. Especially if Laszlo’s greased a few palms along the way.”

  “Which knowing him, we can be sure of that,” Meade said.

  “You sound a whole lot more confident than this plan deserves,” Emeline added, breaking the tension. “What are you gonna be doing the whole time?”

  Meade breathed deep, this was the part of the plan they weren’t gonna like.

  “I’m going to pass the message along to Chau that he’s being used and setup. If I can convince him to throw the fight, or put it off, or hell,” Meade rubbed his face, “whatever I need to do. I’ll stop that fight. No fight means no assassination attempt. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to buy ourselves some time so Emeline can stop Cassandra before the Ambassador turns it into a real threat.”

  Emeline looked at him shocked, “Wait, how the hell am I supposed to expose Cassandra?”

  He knew she was just worried about him and their plan, but sometimes, Emeline could be a real pain in the ass.

  “That’s why Sarah is the most important part of the plan,” Meade said turning to Sarah. “You get to steal a copy of the data on Cassandra off of the Ambassador’s ArmBar and transfer it to Emeline so she can broadcast the evidence over the Arena’s monitors. That should create such a public outcry that the Coalition will be forced to destroy Cassandra publically.”

  “What?” Sarah exploded. “How the hell do you even expect me to pull that off? Not only do they know who I am, how the hell do you expect me to hack the Ambassador’s ArmBar so that she doesn’t notice?”

  “Very carefully,” Meade said without a trace of irony. “That program you loaned me worked like a charm on Laszlo’s ArmBar. There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work on Corcoran’s.”