Regenesis

by C. J. Cherryh

  They’d had schematics of ReseuneSec. Knew exactly where the emergency-exits were, and whore they led. They knew where the switches were. If there was any doubt, Marco and Wes ran ops from Alpha Wing, with the schematic in front of them, and the eye-screen Rafael had on a contact lens showed him where he was in a completely schematic view, a kind of split-level awareness Florian likewise had, and Catlin, so they knew where their people were.

  Standard. Florian had said, before they left the apartment, that ReseuneSec was supposed to have some stuff to try to scramble that, but it wasn’t going to work without Base Two.

  “Live capture, beta target,” came over the com stream, and Ari let go a long, long breath, but she didn’t let up watching and listening. They’d just arrested Hicks, meaning his office door was open by now. A second later they heard, “Exit A! Coming your way!”

  A mass of people flooded into the corridor she could see—Ari wasn’t ready for it. Florian flattened her to the carpet, made her hit her head so stars exploded in her eyes and things went black for a second; and fire banged out, and the hiss-thump of non-lethals simultaneous with it, right over their heads. Florian’s weight went off her as if he’d levitated, and she twisted around to see Catlin come over the desk and two others of her men hurl themselves at a man who was already through the door, but down and not fighting. One of hers was on the floor, trying to hold the man down, with blood pouring down his own arm.

  “Easy!” Florian yelled, falling on the now inert target, and was after something in his sleeve-pocket. Florian used something with a stab downward, ‘after which the man convulsed, twitching uncontrollably, and Catlin got a bracelet on him, nasty thing. He convulsed a second time. Tried to get up. Catlin flattened him with a second pulse from the bracelet.

  Ari supposed it was safe then. She sat up where she was. Florian had gotten up off the man, then diverted himself to get their own wounded flat onto the floor, and to get at another item in his jacket pocket. “Get Jay,” she heard as Florian applied a tourniquet. “Bad one.”

  Things were quieting elsewhere, however. Quiet prevailed in the hall. Jay came running down the hall toward them with his kit, and relieved Florian of his job of keeping blood in the wounded man. Jay’s moves were sure and involved things in a kit he had, quickly applied. And Florian sat against the wall with his knees drawn up, breathing through his mouth, and sweating a little, while Catlin, who hadn’t raised a sweat, slowly got up and let two others sit on their prisoner.

  “Suicide by non-lethals.” Catlin’s voice came simultaneously from her and from the com in Ari’s ear. “Rarely works. We got Kyle AK, Alpha Leader. We need a team to wrap him up and keep him from going null on us. We won’t leave sera. We need some help here.”

  It was no time for her to be sitting on the floor watching, Ari decided. She ignored her headache and swung a knee around, got it under her and got up, using the reception desk for leverage.

  She sucked in a breath, went around the desk to the console, and found the switch-set for A, B, C, and Master. A maze of switches. Blinked. Her eyes were hazing, blurring and watering.

  Hell with that. She took out her mini, keyed Voice, and said, “Base One, access: Admin One: access: public address. On. This is Ariane Emory.” She heard her voice echo through the halls beyond, as it would everywhere else in Reseune. “Alpha Leader, I confirm Catlin’s order, at your immediate convenience.” Damn, her head hurt. It wasn’t quite the way she’d planned to take over. But it was better than the alternative. “ReseuneSec personnel, wherever you are, Adam Hicks has been relieved of command. I am in charge of ReseuneSec and I am acting Director of Reseune. All ReseuneSec personnel, continue ordinary duties. Citizens and azi, wherever located, you are safe. Certain services have been temporarily disrupted. None of these disruptions jeopardizes environmental integrity. Services will be restored, I hope within the hour. Will an ambulance please come to the Admin Wing? We need ambulance service—”

  Florian got eye contact and held up four fingers.

  “We have four casualties in need of ambulance transport,” she said.

  Catlin was talking on the com, and it made a jumble in her hearing. Catlin was requesting something of Marco and Wes, but it was coded and she didn’t follow it.

  “All Wings except Admin, Wing One, and Alpha Wing may proceed about routine business,” she said. “ReseuneSec requests all persons currently in Admin, One, and Alpha remain where you are and do not make private calls. We estimate this condition will remain for about an hour. Wait for an all-clear before venturing into the halls. Thank you.”

  BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter viii

  JULY 26, 2424

  1201H

  “She’s done it,” Justin said to Grant. They’d gone to the dining room of their apartment to have a cup of coffee and do a little work on the manual…but they hadn’t gotten any work done. The minder had had the communication stream from Ari’s apartment, which carried the background of what was going on in Admin, and the last announcement had come over the minder loud and clear—probably in every minder and every PA outlet and the vid channels. That general warning system, intended for major storms or an environmental breach, hadn’t cut on since…

  …Since Ari had taken Denys out.

  “She’s done it,” Grant said quietly. “And four people are going to hospital. No word about the dead.”

  “Not so bad a casualty list for a revolution, though, as revolutions go,” Justin said, feeling shaky. He was thinking about Jordan, hoping he was all right. But Ari had said not to use communications for a while. So he had another sip of coffee and a bite of buttered toast.

  “Worried?” Grant asked him.

  “Worried that it’s not just Reseune she’s taking. That it’s Yanni’s job at stake. That this takeover in ReseuneSec means trouble that goes under all sorts of doors, just—everywhere. Everything. Including questions as to how a candidate for a Council seat just happens to drop dead.”

  “Not just happens,” Grant said. “It’s on the news, now. Definitely assassination. High tech assassination.”

  “I’ll bet Khalid had rather it wasn’t on the news.” Justin said. So Ari that suddenly, after what she’d said on election night—good God, just last night—had risen up this morning, taken out Hicks, and taken over ReseuneSec.

  And the sum total of everything set tottering sent a little cold chill wafting across his nerves. It wasn’t that he mourned the fall of the current administration of ReseuneSec, which had slammed him into more than one wall and shot him full of drugs…he didn’t exactly mourn for Hicks’ fate, whatever it was, since Hicks had been Giraud’s aide in those days, and Hicks’ orders had been at least at fault in the incident in recent memory. ReseuneSec had always had an uneasy feeling about its workings, and he wasn’t sorry.

  He was, however, upset about Ari’s involvement in it…for one thing, he didn’t want his Ari involved in killing people. Denys—that had been a case of self-defense, and her guard had done it. He wasn’t sure what this was, or how many cold-blooded decisions would need to be made, how many extra-legal ones, and he’d have wished, if it was going to be done, that Yanni had. He wasn’t sure whether the fact that Ari had moved in Yanni’s stead was cold-blooded policy choice, or that Hicks was just too dangerous a man to Ari’s interests, and might oppose her takeover…and she hadn’t included Yanni in the action because, who knew? maybe she didn’t trust him.

  If that was so, Yanni might not have too much time left to hold power.

  He and Grant were nominally in charge of Alpha Wing, her base of operations. They were trusted. They were also a target, if young sera made a misstep. And trust could shift in a heartbeat.

  She’d talked about going to Novgorod. About sending Amy ahead of her. Exposing herself to the same kind of hazard that had already taken out a newly elected Councillor of Defense. She’d be risking everything, and she hadn’t been able to trust ReseuneSec, who was currently protecting Yanni, and protecting everyone and e
verything else Reseune called secure, in the solar system, in distant star-stations. Did she still intend to fly down to the capital?

  And do what? Get Lynch, of Science, to appoint her Proxy Councillor, when she was barely old enough to vote?

  Get in front of the media and start another war of words with Vladislaw Khalid—who probably had just had his rival assassinated?

  What did she have for assets? Her bodyguard, two of them eighteen and the other two, thank God, at least senior security, former instructors, but it was the eighteen-year-olds who ran things. Besides that she had a handful of teenagers, a household staff and thirty ReseuneSec agents, not one of whom was much over teen-aged themselves.

  What had she said at the party? That there was almost nobody to remember the history, nobody alive who knew how it had been, and why things had happened, and why choices had gone the way they had? Everybody else but Yanni and them—and Jordan—and a handful of the old hands—everybody else from high up in the old regime was dead, except a handful at the Wing Director level, who didn’t know the darker secrets. She’d reached the new age and the old structures weren’t there for her to lay hands on. Just Yanni, of all the old power-holders, that she had to rely on.

  Flaw in the first Ari’s plan. Or its brilliance. From his position, storing his own share of the old knowledge, he didn’t know which.

  Damned sure her enemies in the wider world were going to notice that something had changed inside Reseune. Give them a few hours, and they’d notice. Orders were going to go out to ReseuneSec units around the world and in near and far orbit and outbound on starships.

  New director. New voice. New policy.

  God, he hoped she’d thought of the smaller details.

  BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter ix

  JULY 26, 2424

  1208H

  Couldn’t get the daily reports out of Chloe. Couldn’t communicate. Yanni had even tried the airport, and Frank—at the moment Frank couldn’t be found, because Frank had gone downstairs to check on a ReseuneSec glitchup and now they couldn’t communicate. The com had lost its codes, or they weren’t working.

  That was downright worrisome. It was so worrisome Yanni had taken out the briefcase that accompanied him everywhere, opened it up, and found it was dead, not a single light showing.

  That tore it. He’d tried the ordinary room phone, in the failure of every single high-end piece of electronics he owned, equipment that should have been able to call in armed intervention, and now couldn’t. He was down to trying to remember his own office phone number.

  And when he was sure he had, that call didn’t go through. There was just a stupid robot informing him, as if he couldn’t guess, that the call had failed.

  There were several things that could explain it. One was that Reseune had fallen off the face of the planet.

  The other was that an eighteen-year-old with the opinion she could run things had taken it into her head to try and just nuked everything that depended on Base Two and Three: the list of what specifically it would nuke was extensive.

  He tried the general Reseune phone system, and when that failed, he tried the last useful number he remembered, from the fact he had a boat and occasionally, before the world had gone crazy, had taken a few days off and used it. The number got the general river port operator.

  “This is Yanni Schwartz,” he said to the man on duty. “This is Director Yanni Schwartz calling from Novgorod. Is Reseune experiencing a communications problem?”

  “Admin’s all shut down, ser. Wing One, Admin, Alpha Wing. All shut down.”

  Damn.

  “Can you find anybody to run up the hill—physically, can somebody just take a ear up there and find out what’s going on?”

  It was embarrassing. It was downright fucking embarrassing. He was exposed as hell: any casual monitoring by the hotel staff, let alone Defense experts, could pick up the call he was making, and he had finally, just before things had gone to hell, tracked down Councillor Jacques. Jacques hadn’t been answering any of his calls, though at least his office had been answering the phone…and consistently saying Jacques was out of the office, and no, they had no word yet when he would return. Could they know the nature of the business so the Councillor might call back?

  “Ser, I’m working a barge in at the moment.” Port ops was automated to the hilt. There were numbers for every craft on the river these days, and there weren’t an outstanding lot of personnel down there. The port operator just contacted barges on the river to tell them which channel to use, and relayed calls if they wanted to phone someone. It wasn’t likely any barge was going to ground itself on a bar in the next ten minutes.

  “Just tell the barge to hold position or go round again, and you go get somebody to run up there. What’s your name?”

  “Anthony GA-219, ser.”

  Azi. He hadn’t been sure; but he was instantly more comfortable, knowing exactly the way to communicate. “Anthony. This is the Director of Reseune speaking, and I will remember when I get back to Reseune. Do it. You’re perfectly within your duty to do this: go find someone to check up the hill and report back. Their phones are out. I’ll keep the line open.”

  That took eleven agonizing minutes. Meanwhile Frank came in safe and sound with the astonishing news that no, he couldn’t fix the ReseuneSec glitch and that now, yes, indeed, their own communications weren’t working.

  “I think we’re possibly out of a job,” Yanni told Frank calmly. “But I want to be sure she’s all right, the backstabbing little rat.”

  “Are we angry about it?” Frank asked solemnly.

  “About being hung out to dry publicly, yes, we’re angry. I really don’t want to have to explain this to the evening news.” He had the receiver in hand. He heard Anthony OA come back on. “Yes?”

  “Patrick GP has gone up the hill on your errand, ser. But they’re saying he won’t get in. There’s been an announcement that everybody but Wing One and Alpha Wing and Admin should go about their business. Sera Ariane Emory says she’s the Director of Reseune Security, and she’s acting Director of Reseune. Is that right, ser?”

  He drew a deep breath. “Thank you, Anthony GA. It’s locally right. Will you personally try to get a message to the Director of Reseune Security that Yanni Schwartz wants to talk to her on an urgent basis? Thank you. Thank you very much.” He hung up and muttered, “Could have lucking told me that in the first place. So why hasn’t she—”

  His phone went off. He grabbed it.

  “Uncle Yanni?”

  “Well?” he snapped.

  “Sorry about that,” Ari said. “I couldn’t warn you. I had a little trouble with Hicks. Is Frank with you right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hicks’s azi Kyle? Defense Bureau. He’s a Defense Bureau plant, is that the right word? It’s possible he messed with Abban and Seely, a long time ago. I’m kind of sure Frank’s all right. I think you have real reason to know he is. Are you sure of him?”

  Damn the brat!

  “I know. Yes, I’m damned sure! And I’m absolutely sure you’ve had your fingers into my computer, where I’d rather you stayed out of, young lady.”

  “I checked just to be sure you were safe, inside. But there’s really good reason to think you could be in danger from outside, Uncle Yanni. I’d really like you to just come home. Fast. Defense is going to find out what I just did real soon, if they don’t already know. I’m sure they’re going to be monitoring as close as Moreyville, and they’ll know.”

  “Well, that’s fine. I’ve finally gotten hold of Jacques and we’re just about scheduled to talk—I’m not about to come home.”

  “Yanni—”

  “No, I’m telling you. And don’t you contemplate coming down here. I know there’s a risk, I have that figured out for myself, young lady; just don’t pile another one on top of it by your coming down here.”

  “Then don’t you go anywhere outside the hotel. You make Jacques come to you. I think your security’s all
right. I ran a fast check on everybody you’ve got. You know about the B-28’s.”

  “I left Raul home, thank you.”

  “Good. That’s good. You understand what I’m worried about.”

  “I understand. I understand a lot of things, and I can be trusted with a little advance warning. Do you mind turning my access back on, voting lady?”

  “I’m terribly sorry about that. It’s back on now. It’s how I’m talking to you. We just had to be sure we didn’t have anybody loose in the network that we couldn’t lay hands on.”

  “All agents accounted for?”

  “All accounted for. I have Hicks and Kyle AK both in custody. We’re just going to ask some questions. Particularly of Kyle.”

  “I’ve got a question. Am I going back to lab work, am I going for a long vacation in your new township, or am I somehow supposed to finish my job down here without any further interruption?”

  “I’m just acting Director, here in the labs. You’re still Director. Besides, you’re still Proxy Councillor. I can’t change that. Only Lynch can. But I’m just really worried that their blowing up the tower—”

  “Yes?”

  “Catlin thinks it could have been a signal to anybody inside Reseune to take certain measures. Maybe I just took care of that when I got Kyle. And I haven’t been easy to get at, where I’m living. Maybe I didn’t, though. Just take care of yourself.”

  “Do me a favor. Go a little easy on Hicks.”

  “Because he’s a friend of yours? Or because you think he’s innocent?”

  “If he’s not innocent he’s not a friend of mine. You can tell him that. Tell him I said cooperate with you or I’ll break his neck.”