Code Breakers: Beta

by Colin F. Barnes

  A bullet struck the ground in front of them. Cheska pulled Gerry further back into the passage. Her olive skin shined beneath a thick layer of blood and gore. She looked as though she had been dipped in paint.

  “Holy crap! We thought you were dead!” Cheska said.

  “Yeah, I get that a lot. Who are these people?”

  “They call themselves the Red Widows. Mad-as-hell fanatics. They came on us all at once, we couldn’t cope.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Gerry said. “Where’s Enna?”

  Cheska’s fierce expression sunk. She dropped her chin. “Taken.” She pointed to the Red Widow fighters. “They took her, and Bilanko, and Old Grey. They took them, and all of our tech. They’re slaughtering us one by one.”

  “I thought I saw Bilanko. I didn’t realise they’d got Enna too. Why are they doing this?”

  “Dunno, Gerry. It’s something about the servers. They want them for some plan. They’re crazy. They’re gonna kill us all. I tried to stop them taking Bilanko. They dragged us all from the Spider’s Byte. I tried, Gerry, I really tried to stop ‘em, but there were too many.”

  Gerry pushed Cheska away from him, knocking into the opposite wall of the alley.

  A laser beam shot between the gap. The heat warmed his face as it crashed into a dwelling across the town. One of the ATVs had eased round the buildings. A wide-eyed brunette with a now-familiar red scarf wrapped around her mouth and neck sat inside the cockpit.

  Before the woman could get another round off, Gerry had dashed like a blur until he was just a few meters away and fired the last round of the shotgun towards the cockpit of the vehicle.

  The driver took a portion of the blast, and fell forwards onto the dashboard.

  Taking advantage of the confusion, Gerry vaulted onto the open-topped vehicle, reached down and took the sickle from the woman’s back and struck it hard and true into the back of her neck, killing her instantly. The act made him want to vomit, but he choked it back and took action.

  He kicked the Red Widow out of the car and set about hacking into their network. Despite it being in Russian, when he stretched his mind into the system, bits were bits, and assembly code was king.

  He manipulated the flow of traffic across the communications channel to and from the ATV. He organised the flow of traffic, analysed the data. It was all so much easier and quicker than before his upgrades. Or maybe it was the experience and knowledge of what he was and what he could do. He passed a bunch of tasks to his AIA while he focused on encrypting the peer-to-peer protocol connecting the vehicle to the rest of the Red Widow’s forces.

  “Gerry!” Cheska shouted.

  He instinctively ducked and watched a particle bolt take a massive hunk of masonry off the two low buildings sheltering him and Cheska. She ran towards him and jumped into the empty seat. She took the controls for the hood-mounted gun.

  “Turn this boat around!” she screamed.

  Gerry did as she requested, all the while his cracking programs tore away the layers of the Red Widow’s encryption and rewrote the assembly code for the ATV’s central processor.

  A Jaguar hove into view, tipped its front, and spun up its machine guns.

  Shoving the vehicle into reverse, Gerry snaked it left to right to avoid the spluttering gouts of shells before spinning a hundred-and-eighty degrees and gaining cover from the last building on the side of the city compound. They sped down beside the high perimeter city wall and across the battlefield.

  The Jaguar took up a higher altitude position to get a fix on them, but Gerry was too quick, strafed the vehicle into the melee, knocking down two Red Widow fighters as he went. When he was in the middle of the dust, he flipped it around so it faced the city gates. The Jaguar hovered above them, its downdraft creating a vortex of the dust.

  “Fire!” he screamed.

  Cheska fired off two laser pulses. The first missed the Jaguar but the second hit its left rotor, sending it into a lopsided death-spin.

  A cheer went up from the Bachians. They trained their machine guns on an approaching Jaguar. It crashed down before it could get enough altitude. The tide had turned.

  Gerry brought the ATV to rest by the front gates. As he scanned for cover, the final layer of encryption tore away leaving their network completely open to him, exposing their entire communications topography and command structure. A node icon represented each vehicle, and every fighter had a VPN to and from the nodes, meaning they could all give and take orders as well as exchange data as the battle unfolded.

  “Cover me!” Gerry said. “I’ve gotta save someone.” He jumped from the vehicle and climbed the gate. The thing was a mess of various pieces of metal, girders and sheets all welded together haphazardly. It was ugly and crude, but strong.

  A third Jaguar swung round from the left side of the city and hovered in front of Gerry as he ascended to the top and straddled the gate. Before Cheska could fire a shot, an explosive round smashed into the gates, sending Gerry crashing ten meters to the ground. He fell to the side of Malik’s downed and burning shuttle.

  He hit the ground hard, probably breaking some bones along the way, but the combat mode had pain suppressors running, so he picked himself up, dashed across to the smoking shuttle and dragged Malik from underneath the wreckage. He threw Malik up onto his shoulders, ran past the gate, away from the Jaguar, and headed for cover around the other side of the city wall. He got fifty metres before the Red Widow pilot caught his movement and manoeuvred the craft to hover over his head. It tipped its nose and aimed its weapons.

  Crap!

  Gerry jumped his mind into the network and saw a traffic stream from the nearest node, which he assumed belonged to the Jaguar. At the speed of thought he rerouted the instructions from the control board to the weapon’s system. He opened his eyes. Still alive.

  Malik said something, but Gerry’s mind stretched out into the system. He found the CPU and its main instruction set. Using a Helix++ translation layer to convert his thoughts to assembly code, he created a package made of terabytes of junk data. Thoughts and elements of his subconscious could quickly spiral into colossal amounts of random data made up of images, video, and audio. He dumped it into the system to overload the processors. He programmed a loop into its boot sequence and rebooted it. Although normally a complex task, he managed this in a fraction of a second, the upgrades installed and calibrated by Jachz working perfectly.

  Something shook his arm. The sensation pulled him out of the network and disconnected his connection.

  “Holy mother! Would you look at that?” Malik jumped about, his hands on his head. He pointed at the craft, laughing, shock clearly affecting him.

  The Jaguar’s engines stopped. It fell from the air, crashed to the ground, and exploded into a ball of fire, fuelled by its damaged hydrogen tank. The heat wave rushed forward, slamming Gerry and Malik to the ground. Its eager need for fuel sucked the oxygen from the air. Gerry’s lungs burned with the effort to breathe.

  Malik dragged Gerry’s body away from the flames. Once the initial explosion had died down, he could take a breath again. His head buzzed as if it were full of wasps. A wet patch behind his neck made him reach round. Warm blood trickled from a cut down into his back. It was just a small wound. He’d take that as payment. Better than getting blasted by a laser.

  Malik turned to Gerry, grabbed him by the shoulders before hugging him.

  “That was incredible! You saved us.”

  Gerry pushed him away. “Calm down. There’s still a war going on, and we have people to find. Is your shuttle serviceable?”

  Malik shook his head. “Engine system completely destroyed.” He pointed to the rear of the vehicle. The engine compartment was badly twisted and half hanging off the main fuselage.

  “Halt!” A thick Russian accent blared out from a PA system. “Turn around slowly.”

  God dammit! Give me a break!

  Gerry exhaled, complied with the order. Malik followed.

  Two
ATVs pulled out from behind the downed Jaguar. They had their cannons trained on the pair. Eager, wide-eyed women held the controls, seemingly bursting to pull the triggers.

  The partners of the pilots got out of the cars, held their shotguns up, and approached with electromagnetic cuffs. “Put on,” they said, throwing them over to Gerry and Malik.

  Even if Gerry got into the vehicle’s computer, the shotguns would finish him before he could do anything. He gritted his teeth, put on the cuffs, and waited for an opportunity to disarm the two robed, blonde women carrying the guns.

  That opportunity never arrived.

  Something sharp, like prongs, jabbed into his neck. A bolt of electricity arced through his spinal column and into his brain, tensing his muscles, killing his internal systems, and taking Mags offline. He fell to the ground. His limbs jerked uncontrollably with the electrical discharge of the device in his neck.

  Chapter 12

  Those strange pins penetrated Gerry’s neck and paralysed him. Tough webbing strapped him tight to the bench seat in the truck. The vibrations of the wheels transferred to the bench and combined with the oscillating buzzing from within his head. The bolts of electricity silenced his internal systems, and blocked access to his AIA, slowing his brain.

  Every few seconds he’d feel a jolt as if someone had attached a battery to his brain stem. His wrists, too, were disabled. The metal cuffs sent consistent tiny shivers of electro-stimulation through his nerves. He could barely lift his arms off his lap.

  At first his speech wouldn’t come. The will to move was like wading through the Sludge. Eventually he managed to lift his head and open his eyes. Enna and Malik sat opposite, restrained in similar cuffs. The latter’s face split down the right cheek, exposing red flesh.

  “What’s going on?” Gerry said, easing the words from his mouth with considerable effort.

  Enna lifted her head. She looked so old since the last time he saw her. “They’ve got Old Grey and Bilanko. We tried to stop them.”

  Five other GeoCity-1 citizens slumped together, bleeding and defeated. But they weren’t soldiers or fighters. Just survivors. Gerry knew Old Grey was special for its ability to house AIs. Was that why this group had taken it? Did they want the data inside?

  “What do you know of this group?” The device jolted his brain again. He closed his eyes, waited for the pain to subside. “And what the hell is this in my neck?”

  Enna shook her head slowly, “I don’t know what they are. The group, however, call themselves the Red Widows. I’ve been…” Enna trailed off, turned to Malik, and eyed him suspiciously. “We can’t talk here.”

  “Tell me,” Gerry said, leaning forward as much as the restraining straps allowed. “You said Petal was alive. Is she okay? Where is she?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t say. Not here.”

  The truck lurched, came to a stop. The rear doors opened. A group of three Red Widow members, aiming their weapons, stood at the opening. Moonlight gave the Widows a peculiar bluish silver tone to their grey and light brown robes. With heir faces held mostly in shadow, their wide, staring eyes appeared watery with the way they reflected the light.

  One by one the fanatics led out their human cargo.

  For the brief few seconds they were in the open air, Gerry recognised the tall, half-destroyed buildings, the smell of foul roasted meat, cooked by the desperate denizens within the garbage-strewn streets. They were in a district of Darkhan. Steep banks of dried grass lined either side of the truck creating a tunnel. A pair of Widows ushered their cargo into a line and led them to a five-meter-wide steel door.

  Gerry knew he’d been here before. He knew it was Seca’s compound.

  The Widows waited at the door, communicated with someone. A motor whined. The door slid into a slot in the ground. Inside, sporadically placed LED lamps created small pockets of light down the length of a long corridor.

  With each footstep, each echo that reverberated through the tunnel, he felt like he was right back there again: the palpable fear, the sense of defeat, and worst of all: the thought that Petal was dead. Even though Enna assured him she was safe, being back at the compound, he wasn’t sure. Enna clearly had more to say.

  He wanted to talk with her, get more information, but three other people stood between them. Malik shuffled right behind him, however. He whispered into Gerry’s ear as they ambled along the dark grey corridor, heading always downwards, led by the two fanatics.

  “Are they going to kill us?” Malik said, his voice taking on a pained vibrato quality.

  “I don’t know,” Gerry said. He wanted to try and say something to ease the man’s fear. This was a rude awakening to life outside of the Dome, far beyond what he’d experienced, but the words wouldn’t come. The device continued to over-stimulate his nerves, scrambling his thoughts.

  One of the robe-wearers with short brunette hair and a permanent sneer turned to them and yelled, “Halt!” She stopped the group outside a narrow, iron door. Gerry knew it led into the cells. He had a flashback of being strapped to the metal table, Seca torturing him, cutting out his eye. He couldn’t tell if he was shaking from that memory and the fear of what could come, or the electro shocks from the prongs in his neck.

  One by one they were taken from the line, through the door and thrown into a cell.

  Gerry slumped onto the bench seat in the three-metre-square grey box. Before they closed the door, he noticed they put Enna in the room opposite his.

  Throughout this process, not one of them attempted to talk with him, explain the reason for their internment. Gerry knew it wasn’t just for being involved in that skirmish, otherwise they wouldn’t have had this device to block his abilities, which meant they had insider information. Could it be Enna? he wondered. She had lured him to GeoCity-1 with her message and promise of more information about Petal. Would she really sell him out?

  Then there was the issue of taking Bilanko and Old Grey. And the fact they were here in Seca’s facility, none of it was coincidence. These people seemed to have a great deal of interest in information and securing it. Had they also recovered the other server that Len and his followers were protecting?

  And that made him wonder, too, about Len’s setup. Jasper’s men killed the poor guy while he defended Gerry and petal. Had that got back to his people? Were they still out there on the surface beyond the Sludge protecting that old server?

  And then he remembered: not far from Darkhan was the outpost controlled by a group of Upsiders and The Blighty, the pub run by the curious landlady, Molly, who had helped him deliver Len’s virus to take out Seca’s security system on a storage unit containing much-needed vaccines.

  He slumped forward, rested his wrists on his knees, and tried to control the feelings of frustration at the lack of his mental abilities. Without his brain he was nothing but a useless meat-bag.

  Another jolt of electricity, clearly on a timed schedule, travelled through his brain, making him screw his eyes shut and hold his breath. When it had passed he exhaled and waited for something—inspiration, a clear head, anything.

  Gerry dozed in and out of sleep while lying on his side on the hard bed. His dreams came and went like diaphanous spectres, all meaning and sense offered and taken away by some unknown source, always at the edge of understanding. Names and ideas bubbled up from his subconscious, but nothing would stick. His thoughts out of reach beyond an invisible barrier.

  From the void a face started to form, dark and shadowed by a deep hood. An accented voice came from within the folds, “Hey! Get up, man.”

  Gerry felt something push into his ribs. He opened his eyes to a shadow covering him.

  “Ain’t got no holy brew this time, man,” the voice said. The man pulled Gerry’s shoulder until he sat up. “But I got ya some water. Drink up.”

  The figure pushed a cup to Gerry’s lips. Despite himself, he sipped the cool liquid. In a mad rush, myriad memories came rushing forward.

  “Gabe! That you?”

&nb
sp; The figure stood back, unblocked the overhead light. Gerry knew it was Gabe. And knew he wanted to kill him.

  Chapter 13

  The time on Sasha’s slate read 21:05. The Family’s satellite would be overhead in two hours. She had a plan, but knew Jimmy wouldn’t go for it. She’d show him the video feeds from the UAVs first. See if that would persuade him.

  She tapped her foot against the surface of her console desk, beating out a hidden rhythm, created by her anxiety.

  Jimmy’s footsteps clacked into her room. The smell of stale coffee came from his breath, announcing his presence. It always reminded her of the first day he activated her. From within her tank, floating on the surface, she watched as he leaned over, asked if she was okay. Before her motor functions and full cognition were operational the smell of his coffee breath, and those kind grey eyes of his were the very first things she experienced.

  “Sasha, dear, what is the status of the drones and the Red Widow Jaguar? Was it as we suspected?”

  “Patching the video feeds now. It’s quite interesting really. Well, exciting, I think.” She played the video stream from the UAVs she sent up earlier.

  The recording showed the Jaguar flying at almost full speed on a direct trajectory to the island. Within the cabin, a robe wearing Red Widow member sat at the controls. “See, it’s one of them. So I blasted ‘em from the sky.”

  The recording showed the Jaguar tear apart under the assault and crash into the sea.

  “Why would they have become so brazen?” Jimmy said, more to himself than anything. He always did that, Sasha noticed. It was difficult to tell when he wanted an answer or was pondering some rhetorical argument.

  “Dunno, but that was just one drone’s feed. Wanna see the other?”

  Before he had a chance to answer Sasha had already loaded and started the file. The feed came from the UAV on the opposite side, and although it, too, showed the Jaguar crashing into the sea, it also panned out showing the robed girl in the ejector seat fall to the sea.

  Before she hit the surface, the parachute fluttered behind her. She struggled to remove herself from the seat. It crashed into the water with a plume of white spray.