Fade to Black

by Nyx Smith

  The highway carried them across the Passaic River and onto the Kearny Peninsula, one of the most heavily industrialized areas in the plex. Rail yards, factories, storage tanks, and warehouses, all constructed on a mammoth scale, slid past on either side of the highway. The warning lights of factory stacks and the flame-stroked steeples of chemical plants rose high into the orange-phosphorous glow of the night.

  Another bridge and the Hackensack River, then into Secaucus, another industrial zone, this one sprawling up the backbone of Jersey and Union Cities, and on up the Hudson to well beyond the G.W. Bridge.

  The backside of Union City was far enough.

  Shank turned the stepvan down the ramp to Paterson Plank Road, then up West Side Avenue.

  North of the sewage plant, the road became a broad boulevard. It was a kind of Executive Row, like a little slice of Manhattan tucked in between chemical and food processing plants and the compacted, decaying streets of Union City's Zone 2, West New York. Broad plazas glowed with light. Fountains glittered and sparkled. Shining towers rose like polished chrome from the halos about their foundations to dominate the skyline.

  Just past Sixty-ninth Street, Shank slowed the stepvan, flipped on the amber warning blinkers, and swung the vehicle across the boulevard. He drove the truck, one wheel at a time, up over the curb and onto the gold-lit plaza set in front of the imposing headquarters of Shiawase Compudyne, a division of the Shiawase Corporation of Kyoto, Japan. There was one very important feature of Compudyne's North American operations. Rico stepped from the stepvan to find it right there beside the truck. Set amid the golden tiles of the plaza was the round black insert of a manhole cover.

  Shank tugged the cover up and dragged it aside. Dok and Filly began setting up the requisite safety-orange guardrail to surround the open hole and then pulled out the orange-and-red-striped compressor that would pump fresh air into the hole. Rico opened a Sony palmtop computer marked for New Jersey C. L. & P., paused to glance around the plaza, then began tapping the palmtop's keys.

  Five minutes passed. Shank climbed down the hole and into the utility passage under the plaza. Dok and Filly passed several duffel bags of gear down to him, then began setting up the air compressor. Rico was still tapping the palmtop's keypad when some slag came out of the Shiawase headquarters building to investigate.

  The slag wore a suit and a plastic-laminated ID marked for Shiawase Compudyne security. Rico kept tapping keys on the palmtop till the man stepped up beside him.

  "What's tox?" the security officer asked. "There a problem?"

  Rico paused to look the slag up and down, then went on tapping the palmtop's keys. "Central office says we got a trickle discharge on a Kay-seven quad feeder. Probably just rats, but we gotta scan it. Might take a couple of hours."

  "You got a work order or something?"

  "That's top secret," Rico replied. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to waste you."

  The guard looked at him sharply. "What?"

  No sense of humor. Frowning, Rico looked at the slag again, and said, "Yeah, I got an order. What's it to you?"

  "Just doing my job, chummer."

  "What job?"

  "Shiawase security." The slag pointed at the ED slung from his lapel. "Maybe you're really eco-freaks planning to terror-bomb the place. Gotta scope it out. You scan?"

  Rico grinned sarcastically and shook his head. "You freaking guys are all alike." He tapped some keys on the palmtop. "You wanna see my order? Here's my order. You can call that number there if you wanna scan it deep."

  "Thanks." The slag looked at the palmtop's display, then pulled an ultrathin cellfone out of his jacket pocket "This'll just take a sec, chummer."

  "Null sheen. I get paid working or talking."

  The line rang twice.

  "Thank you for calling the repair bureau of New Jersey Consolidated Light and Power. All our customer service representatives are busy. Please hold the line and the next available representative-"

  "Repair operations. Jane speaking. May I help you?"

  "Yeah, hoi, my name's Mike Kosaka. I'm with the security department of Shiawase Compudyne. I've got one of your crews on my premises. I'd like to verify what they're doing here."

  "Whenever repair crews are dispatched, sir, they are issued a work order code. Please ask the crew supervisor for that code."

  "Uhh ... hang a sec ... That'd be gee as in gulf, two-four-nine-oh-seven-five."

  "One moment, sir."

  "Sure."

  "... That is a valid work order code, sir. Repair supervisor Ramos and his crew have been dispatched to your location to investigate a suspected line malfunction. This should not involve any interruption of service to your facility. Estimated time for completion is approximately four hours. Have you any other questions, sir?"

  "Ah, nope. That'll do it. Thanks."

  "Thank you for calling New Jersey Consolidated Light and Power."

  "You happy now?" Rico said.

  The security officer smiled and nodded. "Thanks for your time."

  "I get paid for working or talking," Rico said. The security officer nodded again and turned to go. Rico looked to Dok and Filly, and said, "Let's get that air line going."

  Filly plugged the orange-and-red-striped air compressor's power line into the socket on the side of the van, and the compressor sputtered to life.

  A smartframe handled the telecom call-a program construct requiring only a modest amount of active memory. The moment the call was complete, the frame switched itself off.

  By then, Piper was streaming down the datalines of the Secaucus Local Telecommunications Grid.

  The planar geography of the matrix here reflected the real-world terrain. System constructs like giant factories and massive towers rose toward the starry dark and the distant nebula of access nodes to the regional grid. Piper noted the hexadecimal addresses passing around her, then cut a hard left to the matrix equivalent of Executive Row.

  Constructs like office towers and mansions soared up around her. The one she wanted looked like a small castle crowned with a decahedral globe, the insignia of Kuze Nihon, a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo. The castle itself and the computer systems it represented belonged to Maas Intertech, headquartered off West End Avenue in Secaucus.

  Piper drove straight at it They wouldn't see her coming.

  Once the slag in the suit departed, a pair of guards in crisp blue uniforms appeared in front of the paired doors of the main entrance of Shiawase Compudyne. The obvious implication was that Shiawase had decided, for whatever reason, to tighten up security a little, or at least put on a nice show. The guards stood there like soldiers on parade. They didn't bother Rico one bit.

  Time to start breaking some laws. Rico didn't care much about the law, because the law worked for the corps and the people who wrote the laws, the ones with money and power. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Any man with morals knew what was right and what was wrong, and, with a little thought, could figure what had to be done about it. Sometimes it took a few busted laws to get things set the way they should be.

  Whether the law agreed or disagreed was something for leeches like lawyers to argue about Bandit followed the last of the bags of gear into the hole. Dok, meanwhile, had dropped the big orange-and red-striped hose from the air compressor into the hole, then joined Filly in feeding a line like a heavy-duty extension cord into the hole. The air line and power cord were just stage dressing, making things look right, no less than Rico getting into and out of the stepvan numerous times and tapping the keys of the palmtop.

  Five minutes more and Rico put his genuine C. L. & P. hardhat on again and climbed down the metal rungs of the access shaft to the utility passage below.

  The passage was almost three meters high, but little more than a meter across. That was just the available space. Cables, pipes, and conduits ran up one wall and down the other, making the ceiling maybe a half-meter lower than it otherwise would have been. Small lighting fixtures ran
down the right-hand wall at intervals of about ten meters. These were lit.

  At Rico's feet lay several black duffels. He picked up the one marked with a big numeral one and started up the tunnel. Even with the bag of gear, walking was no problem. Trying to run through a space this narrow would be another story, but Rico wasn't planning to do any running.

  About a hundred and fifty meters up the tunnel, Shank had hung an IR blackout sheet from the ceiling.

  No one looking up the tunnel would see beyond that sheet, regardless of vision enhancements. Rico checked while approaching, shifting his Jikku eyes to IR. The sheet's only purpose was to prevent anyone who came down the manhole from immediately detecting what was happening beyond the sheet.

  Another hundred meters further on, a second tunnel led off to the left at ninety degrees. Shank waited there at the corner, suited up and ready for action: ballistic mask, flak vest, Colt M22A2 assault rifle slung from his shoulder, Wallacher combat axe and other gear slung from belts and crossed bandoliers.

  "Status," Rico said.

  "Don't ask me," Shank grumbled. "All he's done is stand there like that."

  Dressed in his black trench coat and wearing his sword, Bandit stood about five meters into the side passage. Maybe an arm's length in front of his face the tunnel ended in a brick wall. The pipes and conduits lining the tunnel passed right through the brick barrier.

  The plan called for Bandit to use his shaman abilities to scan ahead into the tunnel beyond the brick barrier. Just as a precaution. Once sure the tunnel was clear, they would take down the brick barrier. Rico watched Bandit and wondered. The problem was being able to tell when the shaman was actually doing magic, when he was out of body, and when he was just staring, thinking, maybe working out some problem.

  If there was a problem, Rico wanted to know about it now. "Bandit," he said.

  Abruptly, Bandit shook his staff. The elaborately decorated head of the staff briefly rattled, then Bandit murmured something soft and low, his voice rising and falling like a song. The song descended into silence. Bandit stood stock-still for several moments, then swung his staff to the horizontal, and held it pointing at the brick barrier.

  Nothing much seemed to happen. Rico waited till Bandit turned back and looked at him, then said,

  "Ready?" Bandit replied.

  "When you are."

  * * *

  The System Access Node had the look of a spacious lobby, enormously broad, fronted by transparent panes, and outlined in computer-simulated representations of sizzling neon.

  Across the front of the SAN lobby, a hundred transparent doors slid open and shut as datapaks and message units in the form of green-uniformed messenger icons arrived via the rounded conduits of a hundred datalines.

  Inside the lobby, the messenger icons waited on violet-shaded lines pulsing through the floor, leading to the service desk subprocessing unit at the head of the node lobby. White-uniformed control modules slaved to the SPU directing the messenger icons to the chrome-mirrored walls at the left and right of the lobby.

  The messenger icons moved briskly up the lines, then across the front of the service desk to the sides of the lobby, where they vanished into the mirrored walls.

  All very orderly and precise.

  Piper stepped forward, following the pulsing violet line in the floor. To the messenger icon directly ahead of her, she said, "Excuse me, please."

  The messenger icon looked back over its shoulder, then stepped briskly put of her way, shunting to the violet line to their immediate right. The message icons there adjusted position so as to maintain then: proper intervals. Piper advanced. The other messenger icons ahead of her in line looked back and shunted out of her way as well, permitting her to walk directly to the service desk SPU at the head of the node. One of the white-uniformed control modules there watched her approaching and bowed.

  Bowing in return, Piper announced, "Priority user requesting interface with Facility Engineering subprocessing unit."

  A window framed in gleaming orange opened directly in front of her face. The enormous floating eyeball of a Watcher 7K access IC gazed directly at her. Standard U.M.S. iconology for Intrusion Countermeasures programs, as expected. Her own masking utility was already on-line. She wore the elaborate costume of a traditional Japanese geisha: makeup, hair, kimono, and sandals. Her kimono, a brilliant white, was decorated all over with the decahedral logo of Maas Intertech's parent unit, Kuze Nihon.

  The giant eyeball of the Watcher IC retreated into its window. The window closed and vanished.

  "Circuit twenty-two oh-five," said the white-uniformed control module behind the service counter, pointing left.

  Piper turned and followed another gleaming violet line to the wall of mirrors, then stepped straight into the wall. Firing herself down another dataline and out across the amber-gridded night of the Maas Intertech computer network.

  The run was on.

  11

  Rico motioned at the brick barrier.

  Shank stepped forward, edged past Bandit, and attacked the brick with his Wallacher combat axe. The brick and mortar split and crumbled like an old plaster wall in some derelict tenement. After the first few blows, Shank began using his free hand to tug chunks out of the barrier, the pieces bursting into dust between his fingers. The noise level was minimal. Rico gave Bandit an approving nod, but the shaman didn't seem to notice.

  Dok and Filly came hurrying along the main passage as Rico was suiting up. Kevlar mask with integral headset, commando-style harness, flak jacket. Predator 2 heavy auto, Ingrain 20T submachine gun, both with integral smartlinks.

  For tonight's special work, he and the rest of the team also carried Ares Special Service automatics, medium autos with silencers and extended fourteen-round clips. The clips held Armamax gel-stun rounds loaded with special chemical agents. If the impact of the round didn't disable the target, the chem agents would, absorbed directly into the bloodstream through armor, clothing, skin, and damn near anything else.

  Unconsciousness would result in about three seconds. Sometimes less. People with a dozen armor-piercing slugs in their meat sometimes went on shooting for longer than that, so the delay wasn't really an issue. No more than with any other bullet.

  And the mortality issue took precedence, in any event. The Armamax slugs disabled without killing.

  Rico wasn't into wetwork, murder by another name. He and the rest of the team would switch to hard ammo if and when they had no other choice. When it became kill or be killed.

  But only if it came to that.

  The objective was to get in and out before anyone even knew they were there. Smooth as a teflon slide, painless as a razor's slice. Surgically precise. Leave the heavy bang-bang warfare scag to the amateurs out in the streets.

  By the time Dok and Filly had their gear set and ready to go, Shank had dug a hole through the brick barrier almost big enough for a troll.

  Rico fingered his headset. "Time check."

  Piper replied, "Zero-one-zero-three hours."

  "Right," Rico said, glancing around at the team. "Lock and load. Namecodes only. Stay alert."

  Slides snapped and clicked. Spring-fed ammo clicked into firing chambers. Rico slipped past Bandit and motioned Shank into lead position. They advanced past the ruined barrier, keeping to intervals of about three meters, weapons at ready. Dok and Filly would handle rear-guard. That put Bandit right in the middle, right where he belonged.

  This passage was just like the main one, but with one crucial difference. It led directly to the principal utility and engineering building of the Maas Intertech facility. The walls were seeded with vibration and motion sensors. Taking them out was part of Piper's job. She should be in the Maas Intertech computer nexus by now, doing her thing.

  If she wasn't, the five of them in this tunnel were meat.

  Every system cluster, like every individual system, had weaknesses, and those could be exploited.

  Piper's map showed that the interconnected m
ainframes that composed the Maas Intertech computer cluster had one serious flaw. R & D mainframes were the most vigorously protected, rated at Security Code Red-4. Intrusion Countermeasures guarding the access nodes to these systems would be black, as vicious as IC ever got. The corp knew where its most important assets were located and spared no expense in defending them. The primary security mainframe, however, was merely Code Orange, tough but by no means impenetrable. And the main engineering system, which monitored and controlled the facility's physical devices such as water, light, and heat, was only moderately defended by Code Green security. And that was the cluster's flaw.

  Besides controlling heat and light, elevators, automatic doors, and the like, the primary engineering mainframe was also responsible for such operations as supplying power to security monitors and related devices. The flaw that Piper would exploit.

  The sculpted interior of the engineering CPU had the look of a power station control room or maybe the bridge of a trideo starship. The heart of the node took the form of a chief engineer icon seated at an immense, semicircular control console. An array of huge display screens ranged across the walls facing this console. Data blazing like electric neon streamed continuously across the wall displays and the main console displays. From millisecond to millisecond, the chief engineer icon would reach out with a stark white hand to adjust some console control or to enter a brief series of commands via the console keyboard.

  As Piper crossed the threshold of the CPU node, a window outlined in brilliant green opened directly in front of her face. The enormous eye of another Watcher IC access program faced her squarely. Her masking utility had already changed her iconic appearance. She now wore the dark gray zipsuit of a Maas Intertech exec. The identity card clipped to the lapel of her jacket read, in big bold print, PRIORITY USER, CLEARANCE AA. The window closed, the Watcher vanished. Piper stepped up behind the chief engineer icon. This icon ignored her. Representing the most crucial decision-making circuits at the core of the CPU, it relied on Intrusion Countermeasures to defend it from harm. It lacked both the ability to identify unauthorized intruders into the node and the capability to do anything about them.