by Nyx Smith
Machiko signals. A silent assault is not viable. Two of her team throw stun grenades. She and the remaining three open up with SCK M-100 submachine guns. The lobby area echoes with the relentless stammering of autofire. Three seconds later the enemy combatants lay sprawled on the floor, dead or unconscious. Machiko feels a dull ache where a stray round struck the armored fabric covering her right shoulder, but such pain is easily dismissed.
A solitary figure waits by the doorway at the rear of the lobby area. It is Gamma again. Machiko advances into the open, moving toward him. "Surrender and you will not be harmed."
Gamma's features seem contorted with rage. "Manipulator!" he exclaims. "Defiler! "
An enormous hound with the red-glaring eyes of a paranatural emerges from the doorway at Gamma's right and charges. Machiko slips the blade of her katana between the beast's flashing jaws. The creature impales itself on her steel. The carcass falls to her side. She flicks the blade clean and returns it to its sheath. "Do not force me to hurt you."
Gamma sneers. "Be damned."
He lifts a hand and the air around Machiko thickens. It becomes difficult to breathe, even more difficult to move forward, more and more difficult when the floor beneath Machiko's feet suddenly becomes as slippery as ice.
She hears one of her team grunt as with surprise, glimpses another slipping, sliding, almost falling.
"Now you will die," Gamma says in a voice hideous with menace and hate. "Die like the dogs that you are! Tools of the corporate defilers! Traitors of the earth!"
But it is not so simple. The mage's power is great, but Machiko's spirit is resolute. Smash one's boots to the earth and pass through a wall of iron. Machiko thrusts her feet to the floor, drives them to the shattered tiles and blackened concrete as if to smash two holes direct to the core of the planet. Forcing herself forward. Forcing body ahead and feet securely to the floor with a spirit that does not admit to even the possibility of failure.
Gamma looks to her sharply. "What—?"
One word slips from Gamma's mouth and then Machiko reaches out. By force of will alone, she bridges the distance between them—a measure in meters far beyond the reach of mere flesh and blood limbs. She seizes Gamma's right wrist. She pressures certain nerves and twists. She watches as Gamma's arm suddenly swings out to his side, and his body arches backward, and his feet, stumbling, desperately seek for balance.
"NO!" Gamma shouts.
The left arm gestures and abruptly a barrier arises, like a gleaming wall of water. The right wrist slips from Machiko's control. Gamma regains his balance. He raises both arms in the manner of spellcasting. Machiko, struggling forward—straining forward with every last scintilla of will—draws three star shuriken from her left vambrace and gives them flight.
It is a last desperate attempt. The mages with the SDF force will not arrive in time to counter Gamma's spells. Machiko must hope that Gamma is not so powerful a mage that he can know every conceivable spell, that there is some limit to the sheer number of spells he can sustain at any one time. She must hope that the barrier he uses to guard himself against her attempt at manipulation is a creation of the purest mana, useful against spells, against all forms of magic, but not against purely mundane physical objects.
She watches her flight of three shuriken. Gamma seems to anticipate the attack and begins moving a step aside while again lifting both arms. He is an instant too slow. He sways as two of the whirling stars strike him across the chest. He staggers back against the rear lobby wall and seems about to succumb to the soporific drug coating the shuriken when the unexpected occurs.
Evanescent flashes of red like fleeting tongues of fire appear and disappear, circling Gamma's head, arms, and body. As moment passes into moment the flashes grow stronger and brighter and circle faster. Gamma shouts. He begins screaming. And Machiko realizes she is watching magic go wrong, a spell misfiring, backfiring. Turning back on the mage himself.
In another moment the flashes evolve into a whirlwind of fire. Gamma's screams rise into a peal of agony and terror. And Machiko can imagine only one course of action.
The warrior must not consider victory or defeat or even her own personal survival. She plunges recklessly toward an irrational death.
She hurls herself forward, intent on smothering the flames.
As the first flash of heat strokes across her chest, she feels an impact like the fist of a leviathan, and then hears a crash like a deafening blast of thunder, and then her feet leave the floor.
She seems to glide through empty space—without body or form—a ghost buoyed aloft on the winds of the etheric.
Everything grows silent and still.
37
The world assumes shades of gray, then shape and texture, blurry at first, and then sound, voices, footsteps, clattering equipment, and then scents, a scent like smoke, like burnt fabric. Machiko realizes she must be alive when she feels the stinging in the vicinity of her eyebrows and the dull ache working throughout her chest and back. It seems good that she is alive. She marvels at the number of times she has come near to death in just the last several days, five days, since the assassin's initial attacks. Now here she is again.
She opens her eyes and finds the five GSG of her team crouching around her. An SDF medic kneeling beside her holds some form of scanner just beneath her chin. She presses the medic back, out of the way. "Where is Gamma?" A brother of the Guard shows the way with a glance. Machiko lifts her head to look down beyond her feet. A small crowd of SDF troopers and a team of medics are formed into a crouching, kneeling group just a few meters away. "Gamma's down," says one GSG. "Unconscious. Badly burned. Unknown whether he'll make it."
Machiko suffers a wave of dismay. After all this, all the death and bloodshed, has she failed? The medic at her side waves his scanner right in front of Machiko's face. She pushes him back. She spends a moment finding her center, settling her spirit, gathering resolve, then climbs first to her knees and then to her feet. "Machiko-san, please!" the medic exclaims. "You're injured!"
Tired. Very tired. Full of minor aches and pains. But now is not a time for fatigue or for pain. Machiko glances around. The doors at the front of the lobby area have all been smashed inward. The SDF Citymaster command vehicle sits just beyond the empty door frames. Nearby stands the major in command of the SDF force, along with the troopers of his headquarters echelon.
As Machiko steps up, the major lowers his commlink, snaps off a brisk salute, and commences to give a succinct status report. The sweep of the region continues. There are many buildings in the vicinity and every one will be searched. The nearest buildings appear abandoned. Friendly casualties are light.
"What prisoners have you taken?"
"Only three thus far, Machiko-san. Two combatants and one decker."
The major's adjutant shows Machiko to the room where the decker waits. A trooper stands guard at the room's only door. Machiko pauses on the threshold. What she sees inside the room strikes her as very curious.
The decker is a norm female. Her skin is quite dark, but her facial features otherwise suggest a Caucasian. She has the usual datajack at her temple and slashcut hair and synth-leather and studs and everything else, including a cyberdeck, couched in a gray-platinum case and clutched to her chest. The detail that catches Machiko's eyes, and that which seems so curious, has nothing to do with any of this. It is unrelated to the torn plastic-upholstered couch the decker sits on or the drab green telecom positioned nearby. Rather, it has to do with the decker's ankles. Steel manacles ring both her ankles. The chain that joins them is secured to a large metal bolt that appears to have been recently driven into the filthy tile and concrete of the floor.
There is one other thing Machiko notes. The decker does not sit. She cowers, cringing, in the corner of the couch most distant from the door. She is wide-eyed, apparently with terror.
"Frag, oh frag . . ." she quavers.
Machiko moves one step further into the room and swings the door shut. The decker
seems only to grow more afraid. Machiko can well imagine why. She can see herself as this decker must see her: clothes singed and smeared with soot, heavily armed, and calm, very calm, like an executioner.
The decker snivels. "Don't—!"
"What is your name?"
The reply appears to prove difficult, as though it does not wish to emerge from the decker's mouth. "Nnn-nee . . . Nnnneee-yoooo . . ." She gasps. "Nnn-nee-yooo-naaa . . ."
"Neona."
The decker nods her head.
"You are an associate of Gamma?"
Neona-san. appears to struggle to answer. She grunts and snivels and gasps. No recognizable words actually emerge. Momentarily, Neona-san shakes her head. She shakes it vehemently, looks to Machiko and then shakes it again.
"You are under some compulsion of the mage?"
"Wha . . . Wha-what?"
"A spell that Gamma cast on you."
This appears to give Neona-san even more difficulty than the previous question. She grunts and snivels and makes other noises, straining forward as if to thrust an answer forcibly through her lips. She moves her head about, up and down and around, as if giving a nod and a shake of the head all in one gesture.
Still, it is an answer of sorts, and the manacles and chain make a strong statement. Neona-san does not appear to have been a willing servant of the enemy.
She begins making more noises, struggling to speak. Some moments pass before Machiko realizes what she intends. She motions with her chin directly at Machiko, but, with her eyes, gestures toward the reams of hardcopy lying in heaps along the left wall of the room. Machiko turns to have a look. The very first page she examines gives a mild shock.
On the page is a diagram of the Nagato Commercial Park in Melville, where the ceremonies for the dead were so recently conducted. Machiko looks about and finds other pages with other diagrams, portions of the grounds and various buildings at the Commercial Park. Certain diagrams are highly detailed. Aside from entrances and exits and security checkpoints, they show such items as water conduits and ventilation ducts, and these bring to mind a collection of squat metallic cylinders partly loaded onto a Roadmaster cargo vehicle marked for Nagato Corporation.
"What is Sero-Ebola-D?"
Neona-san grunts and stammers. She seems to grow almost frantic to force language through her lips, but manages only to blurt, "Smogger . . . Flatline . . ."
Poison gas? Machiko supposes that the specific details do not matter. Gamma's intent is apparent. To kill. To destroy. Perhaps to poison every living being at the Nagato Commercial Park. Perhaps even more. Amid the heaps of paper, Machiko finds diagrams of the Chairman's personal estate and Nagato Tower as well.
"Where does this data come from?"
Neona-san stammers a response. "Ma-matrix. . . . gypsy, gypsy la-la-la-lady . . . Snagged me .... Trrrrryyiing . . . Trying to crack . . . Crack Nnn-naa, Nnnn-naa-gaa-too nnn-nnn-network . . . G-gave me p-pay-data . . . Ev-everything . . . Everything about everyyy thinggg . . . Ssss-scheds. . . . Sss-sched-ules . . . P-plans . . . Floor floor plans . . ."
"Who is this gypsy lady?"
"D-decker . . . i-icon . . ."
A decker using the icon of a gypsy lady caught Neona-san breaking into the Nagato network. This same individual passed Neona-san whole reams of proprietary info regarding Nagato Corp. Could this be anyone but a traitor, the very traitor who has apparently manipulated the Nagato computer network?
Machiko keys her commlink. She will need expert assistance to further question Neona-san and to scrutinize the decker's cyberdeck. But before her call connects, she receives a priority signal from Nagato operations.
Maeda Komachi, Director of Network Administration.
"Machiko-san, a violation of network protocol has just occurred. I thought you should be informed."
"What sort of violation?" Machiko asks.
"We have detected a penetration of a database belonging to the Nagato Corp transport division. Our initial analysis indicates that an attempt has been made to add a new vehicle to the transport division registry."
Does this have some significance? "What vehicle?" Machiko asks.
"A Roadmaster cargo vehicle."
One of the most common forms of cargo vehicles to be found anywhere in North America. However, Machiko recalls the Roadmaster she passed on her way into the building around her, a Roadmaster partly loaded with cylinders containing some toxic substance. Mere coincidence? Machiko strides to the rear of the building and steps outside. She reads off the numbers painted on the sides of the Roadmaster and imprinted on the vehicle's registration tags. Maeda-san confirms that these very numbers are the numbers used in the false entries introduced to the transport division database.
In a moment, perhaps two, the point of this becomes apparent. A vehicle falsely identified as a Nagato vehicle, perhaps driven by an individual falsely identified as a Nagato Corp employee, might easily gain entrance to Nagato facilities. Perhaps false entries were made to Nagato personnel rosters, security personnel rosters, to expedite the entry of a van marked for Fuchi IE onto the property of the Chrysanthemum Palace Hotel.
All such registries must be checked and verified. Machiko informs Maeda-san of the need, and then says, "Can you tell me who attempted to add this Roadmaster vehicle to the transport division registry?"
"I believe that I can, Machiko-san. Fortunately, I have had the entire network on alert since you came to my office. I have now initiated a Level Chi alert. In effect, Machiko-san, I have shut down the network, prohibiting traffic in and out of the network, as well as between the various systems of the network."
Maeda-san goes on to explain that the violation originated from within the Nagato network, and that the violation was detected and traced because every node on the network, in effect the entire network, was being monitored in ways both subtle and overt for any illicit activity.
The source Maeda-san identifies as responsible for the violation is as unsettling as it is chilling.
"Are you certain of this?"
"The chance that we are wrong is very, very slight," Maeda-san says. "Given the extent of the network alert, the resources we committed to monitoring network activity, I would say that the chance of an error is negligible."
Machiko sees no point in continuing the discussion.
She places a priority call via commlink to Chairman Honjowara. Before the connection is made, she gives instructions as to the disposition of the detainees, including Gamma, and the decker Neona-san, and summons an SDF helo to the rear of the building. The helo is carrying her swiftly up through the ground-haze and into the night when Honjowara-sama's image appears on the small screen on her left vambrace.
"I believe that I have identified the traitors," Machiko says. "I am moving now to place them . . . place them under restraint."
Honjowara-sama listens to the entirety of her explanation. She cannot yet say whether or not Gamma was the power behind all that has happened. For the moment, it is enough that the mage has been stopped and the traitors to Nagato Corp identified.
"Your discussion with Sashi—"
For the first and only time in her life, Machiko interrupts the Chairman of Nagato Combine, shaking her head, and saying, saying sharply, "Please! Please excuse me ... "
She can say nothing more. The affront she commits with just four words twists as savagely at her insides as all that Honjowara-sama recalls to her mind. She has interrupted, she feels too chagrined to continue speaking. She has learned too much from Sashi-san, too much of an intensely personal and intimate nature, too much that conflicts with her most basic assumptions, to consider such things now, now in the face of this man who is said to be her genetic father.
"Machiko," says Honjowara-sama, in a tone that seems unusually subdued, "you have my full authority to proceed. The senior executives will be advised to expect you."
She nods. "Understood, Chairman-sama."
And he, not she, breaks the link.
For this, here and no
w, Machiko feels only gratitude and relief.
38
The Neurocomp building is low and broad, just three stories tall, located in the nearby Nagato Commercial Park, just a few hundred meters from the Amida Buddhist Temple where the funeral rites for Mitsuharu and Jiksumi were performed. That the investigation into the cause for those two deaths should bring her so near the temple affects Machiko with a cruel sense of irony.
There is much about the last five days that affect her in this way. It is not a sense she finds pleasing.
The SDF helo settles onto the aeropad near the rear entrance to the Neurocomp building. Machiko disembarks and strides up the concrete walk to the entrance. There she meets just two executives, the deputy VP for research and the director for the special GCP project. They are accompanied by two guards, uniformed members of the Nagato Security Service.
All four bow as Machiko approaches. The depth of their bows indicates clearly that the Chairman's words have preceded her here. "I must speak with the computer specialists of the GCP special project," Machiko says.
The deputy VP bows, but the director for the GCP project looks uncertainly at Machiko, and says, "Do you mean the specialists who are themselves the subjects of the project?"
"I will begin with them, yes."
No further questions are asked. The deputy VP shows Machiko the way to the GCP project center. The trip takes several minutes, for they must pass through a pair of security checkpoints requiring retina scans, voice print, and palm print verification. Also, Machiko is issued a temporary identity card. Any person moving beyond the entranceway without such a card would instigate an immediate security alert.
Machiko's weapons add to the delay at the checkpoints, instigating a pair of automated alerts, which are then canceled by the onsite Security Service guards. Weapon pods in the ceiling and along certain stretches of hallway snap open and immediately snap shut.