Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

by J. M. Kaukola

The colonel said, "I'll take it. To be clear: your training will be hell. For whatever strengths your mind has, your body is unprepared. We will drain that weakness from you. You may mistake our mercy for cruelty because lives now ride on your shoulders. You will learn in months what should take years. You will succeed because your wetware and intellect make you uniquely able. You will triumph because you must.

  "There are rules you will follow. You will not contact the outside world. You will not access the open net. Our mission is secret, and we are under a blackout. The enemy has spies all through the net, and hundreds will die if they learn of our plans. You will not contact anyone outside this facility, nor access any system. Do you understand?"

  "Yes." Firenze agreed. "What about internal networks? Can I keep my box?"

  "Absolutely. That's part of your selling point. But keep it off the net. Remember, lives will be lost if you violate this order."

  "I understand."

  "Good. As we proceed, you will learn more about the target and mission. Before we depart, you have all the information you could possibly want and know it more thoroughly than you ever desired. This data will be presented as required by the mission, and you will not dig for more."

  "I thought you said I could ask questions?"

  "You're not a soldier, but this is a soldier's mission. I'll let you grow back your hair, I'll let you keep your room as a civilian dormitory, I'll let you stay away from salutes and dress, but you will follow basic directives. While you are on a military mission, you will remain within the strictures of military conduct. This is not a game.

  "Finally, and this is critical..." the colonel glanced towards the door. For the first time, Firenze saw worry cross the man's face. Halstead continued, "There is another asset on this mission. He is an Agency contractor, providing services to the State. He is an intelligence resource on the opposition, but you must be wary of him. He has done terrible things, he is a master manipulator, and he will still have his own agenda. You will avoid him. You will not contact him. If he attempts to speak with you without my officers present, you will immediately disengage and report it. No matter what he says, threatens, or promises, the worst choice would be to keep his confidence. Always tell us of anything he says or tries to trick you into doing. Do you understand?"

  Impossibly, the ice in Firenze's stomach grew thicker. There was something in the colonel's voice, something close to absolute dread, that scared him more than the silver trap that dragged him here. Firenze tried to push it away and asked, "How bad could he be?"

  Halstead's hollow glare gave all the answers Firenze could want, but the colonel replied, "He is the possibly the vilest actor I have ever encountered. He has the blood of uncounted innocents on his hands. He is no soldier, but a killer, without remorse or scruples. Once this is over, he will answer for his crimes, and he knows this. He will play angles to escape it. He will use you, hurt you, hurt those near you, just to gain leverage. You cannot anticipate the depravity he will stoop to. If you see him, you run - don't walk, run - away."

  Firenze wanted to brush the speech away, dismiss it as the rant against an enemy, but the colonel's words rang true. The old man had been honest about the loyalty worm, so why would he lie about this?

  Firenze asked, "Then why are we working with him?"

  "Because soldiers don't get that choice. If we're going to save lives, he's a necessary risk."

  "What's his name?"

  "He calls himself 'Berenson' now. His name changes, but he's always the same." Halstead spoke as though naming the devil.

  Firenze tried to sound tougher than he felt, and quipped, "Okay, so: don't go outside, don't talk to strangers, and stay away from this dude. Got it. Easy."

  The colonel smiled, patted Firenze's shoulder. He said, "Good. Your spirit's back. That mean's the fire's still burning. Get your fluids up, eat solid food, and get some rest. Tomorrow, you'll start with Mister Donegan. He's our chief EWO, best in his field. Learn from him.

  "This will not be easy, but I've seen your file, and it says you thrive on a challenge. You will adapt, you will overcome, and you will triumph. Prove the Agency wrong, and become the man they think you can't. And remember: today is always the hardest day."

  Dead Men

  The acrid stench of gunfire clawed at Firenze's nostrils. The echoes of the final shots resounded from the stone and glass-box walls of the Kessinwey assembly plant, long after the 'cease-fire' calls had ended. Firenze toppled to his knees, hands pressed against the cold cement floor. His sweat plunged like a rainstorm and shattered on the gray slab-tile. He gasped for breath, gulped down acrid air between racking coughs, and he desperately wished to be anywhere else.

  Sergeant Clausen's voice shattered the post-gunfire rining. "You're dead! You are all dead!" The giant man held his timer up for all to see, giant red zeros frozen on its face. He called down from his observation post, "Too slow! Mission failed! Can someone tell me what just happened?!"

  Firenze stared, head turned to the side, still doubled over on the floor. The sergeant stood flanked by two smaller men - Lieutenant Poole and Chief Donegan - both of them intently swapping notes and muttering with lowered heads. Clausen, though, had climbed atop a shipping crate to command a view of the training ground. Below him, the rat-maze Firenze now ran, lay a labyrinth of boxes, old plant machinery, plasterboard, and holographic projection mashed into a makeshift airship. From his crate-top perch, Clausen glared down at the 'dead men', his expression halfway between glower and puzzlement, and he waited for his answer.

  "I'll tell you what happened, Sarn't." That was Rutman's voice. Firenze couldn't turn to look, couldn't even raise his head. He heard Rutman say, in his slow-easy-slur, "FNG's too slow."

  FNG. 'Fucking New Guy'. Firenze knew that meant him. He tried to rise, tried to stand, but his arms gave out, and he crashed to the concrete. His muscles shook from exhaustion. His core ached from exertion and the battery of concussion grenades.

  He couldn't see. Sweat stained his glasses, blinded him like a snowstorm, and dissolved his laser-HUD into color-washed chaos. His heart thundered against his chest like Foundation Day fireworks, and a distant ringing sounded deep in his ears. All of this, from training blanks and a VR augsim. Tension, exertion, and the remains of anxiety bled into dread as he considered the impossible: if this was training, what would the real thing bring?

  For the dozenth time today, he wished he'd had the good sense to tell Kendrix to fuck off when he'd had the chance. He wasn't a soldier; he was a grad student. And he was going to die.

  Worse, he was going to get everyone killed.

  They were dead because he couldn't crack the netsec while sprinting down a hallway. If they could stop, let him work for just a minute... he didn't finish the thought. There was no point protesting the impossible. They all knew he wasn't good enough. Rutman was just the one who'd said it.

  Firenze heard heavy boots thump into the concrete, caught the 'whoof' of air forced from lungs. Clausen had jumped down. Firenze choked on his nerves as the shadow fell over him. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to will away to the world.

  Clausen asked, "Alright. Why?"

  Silence answered.

  Dread came upon Firenze with the dawning realization that that question hadn't been aimed at the team. It was asked only to him. He opened his eyes, turned, and found Clausen standing over him. Worse, the sergeant didn't look angry or disgusted. He looked worried.

  Firenze wanted to curl up and die.

  He didn't have an answer, only excuses. He pleaded, "Sir, I'm not- we're going too fast. I need- it's a delicate system and all the shooting and running-"

  Clausen didn't answer. Donegan took that honor. The chief called down from his platform, "This isn't school, princess! You don't have time to sanitize your code! Set your box, prep for ICE, and hammer down! Good enough is good enough because perfect gets you dead!" The words cut all the deeper for their truth. Firenze had hoped for an ally in the 'netboss', but he'd found a nemesi
s, instead.

  Donegan was an ass. He was arrogant, snide - the kind of too-smart-professor who asked 'impossible' questions on the first day of class to assert dominance over the classroom. Firenze had faced profs like this before, and he'd answered those questions, every time. Semester after semester, he'd endured the hazing that followed, proved himself, and then walked away with a four-point-oh and a 'fuck you' handshake.

  But here?

  For every mistake, miscalculation, or lousy call, Donegan was there to tell him exactly where he'd screwed up. It was one thing to be called by someone because they resented you. It was quite another when they were also right. The truth was evident: Firenze wasn't good enough.

  He'd failed.

  Firenze felt a tree-trunk arm loop under his shoulder, and he tried to protest, but Clause hauled him to his feet. The sergeant looked him dead in the eyes and said, "Once more."

  "I can't-"

  "I don't know those words." Clausen punched him on the shoulder just hard enough to hurt. "Step up."

  All around them, the team waited. Some leaned on posts, others sat on prefab consoles, all of them filthy and drenched with sweat. Devallo chugged from a water bottle while Jennings sat beside him and scrubbed out his goggles. Kawalski and Hill shared a tersely-animated exchange about 'base of fire', mobility, and a split hallway. But all of them were watching. Rutman was obvious about it, glaring lasers while he chewed on a fist-sized chunk of dip. The others were more surreptitious, with aside glances and peripheral stares, but they watched, all the same.

  Clausen whispered, "Ignore them. Focus on me. You can do this."

  Firenze shook his head. Without thinking, without meaning, the traitorous truth slipped his lips, "I'm not good enough."

  "Bullshit." Clausen replied. Even as a whisper, his voice was commanding enough he could have convinced Firenze that red was blue. "You're the best there is. You just can't get out of your own way. The chief's right. Forget perfect. Get it done."

  Firenze wanted to scream back, 'You don't know anything about this!' but he was too honest for that. He admitted, "I'm a failure."

  "No, you're failing." Clausen corrected. "Big difference. But we're gonna run this until you pass. So fix it, or we're gonna get real sick of this room."

  All the eyes were on him, from the team pretending not to watch to Donegan's EWO's, plugged into the TACNET feed. The weight of it crushed him. Every breath was a struggle, a desperate battle against the urge to scream, run, or curl up - anything to avoid those judging eyes.

  He whispered, "They hate me."

  "Wrong." Clausen answered, in that implacable voice. "They're disappointed. They'll hate you if you quit."

  "I can't-"

  "Not an option. Run. It. Again."

  Firenze wanted to cry. Not the 'cute' sorrow-tears from a holovid, but the ugly, desperate, I'm-fucked-and-I-can't-stop-it sob. He wanted to tunnel back in time and stab himself for prying open that damned box. Why had he been so damned stupid? Why did he 'have to know'?

  In any other place or time, he would have run. He would have tucked inside the bosom of the net and washed away the horror of this world with his curated, digital revision. He would have closed his eyes and escaped the nightmare.

  But this wasn't any other place. This wasn't any other time.

  Clausen shoved a water bottle into his hands, and he grabbed it. The green plastic crumpled under his fingers, cold and slick. He drank on instinct. The icy spike pushed through him, washed out his screaming muscles and anxious mind.

  He had no choice. It had to be done.

  He wiped the last of the water from his lips and passed back the bottle. Clausen gave him a nod, just a slight tip of the head, part instruction and part approval of the unspoken decision. Firenze picked up his kit.

  Clausen called out, "Alright, people! Stack up! We go on mark!"

  When Firenze got back into starting position, Kawalski was waiting, her green eyes stabbing out from under a garrison cap. "You ready, Princess?" She asked. Her voice was rough, like she'd gargled gin from the age of seven, but there was genuine earnestness beneath. She wanted him to succeed.

  He almost crumbled, the fear threatening to bubble over, once more.

  She snapped, "Hey! You with me?"

  The world seemed to hang, frozen. Donegan and Poole whispered on the balcony, Kawalski waited for his answer, and across the room, Clausen gave him another of those assured nods. At that moment, it dawned on him, ugly truth revealed by the light of day. There was no running, there was no hiding, and he had no choice. In some perverse way, that was liberating. With understanding came tranquility, focus, and the peace of the damned. He had only one way out.

  He almost wanted to laugh, if only in defiance of tears.

  Time un-froze, and he gave a curt nod. He forced enthusiasm up from his gut, pretended he meant it, and said, "Yeah. I'm good. Let's do this."

  Kawalski flashed a shark-tooth grin in reply. She clapped his shoulder and declared, "Fucking A, Princess! Let's hit this bitch running."

  He took up his position, lined up behind the breach-team, and braced for the buzzer. What was it the colonel had told him? It had to get easier. It had to get better. He just had to remember: today was the hardest day.

  The Hardest Day

  Hours became days, days became weeks, and then weeks ceased to have meaning.

  Life was a blur of gunfire and code. Morning came with 'PT', runs through warehouses that Firenze couldn't avoid, pull-ups and jumps and weights and crunches that left him dead tired before he was awake. He puked up his guts a dozen times. Day after day, he'd dry heave in the abandoned silo while everyone ran circles around him rather than leave him behind. He'd escape to breakfast and attempt to eat alone, so no one would have to deal with the FNG that kept getting them killed. Each day, he'd hope for thirty minutes without the stares, without Rutman and Hill and the jokes about "Princess this" and "Princess that" and the crossed wires in his brain, but it never worked.

  He'd sit down, crack open his muffin, and stare at the freeze-dried berries inside, but before he could convince himself to swallow the thing, he'd be flanked by macho assholes who called each other ludicrous names like "Scooch", "Tuber", "Dag", and the ever-confounding "Bugtuck".

  There was no escape.

  They ran simulations, died over and over, in new hallways and junctions, tried to save surprise hostages, cut through concealed enemies, and escape ambush "kill boxes". He wrestled with networks and attempted to dodge bullets. He cracked an AI while someone dragged him down a hallway by the 'buddy-handle' below his collar. He popped pressure doors and bulkheads while dodging the scalding dust from Hill's machinegun.

  Lunch came as a relief, but right after was back into the mix. He had a scant few minutes to update his kit, prep better programs, build new defenses, and come up with spam screens against the torches. Every millisecond was critical, every line of code precious. Skip a line, alter a function, and it would shave clock cycles. Move forward to the next node, hardlink, and he'd cut transmission time. He'd learned the vicious tricks from Donegan, how to blow disused relays with physical charges to force the reroutes on enemy netsec, or close doors to alter enemy defenses. He slammed his head against the ever-increasing tempo, the creed of the netboss: alter the net from the physical, change the physical from the net. Everything hinged on everything else. It wasn't hacking, it was madness.

  Donegan was better than he was. The man was an ass, his code crude and brutish, and he treated his mask like a leashed dog. But Donegan possessed a wicked toolbox and had the skills to use it. He was less a surgeon and more a butcher. He flipped between TACNET defense and offensive pressure without losing ground. He could push entire rings of counter-hackers off-balance, manipulate the battlespace, and still pop off shots between runs. It was a terrifying juggling act, keeping only the most catastrophic balls in the air, avoiding and neutralizing the maximum risks while he maneuvering the team into an advantageous position. Donegan didn't
try to hold the whole system. He would give ground, sacrifice for peak moments, and physically wreck the hardware he couldn't control. He called it, 'digital triage', and it was unlike anything at university. Firenze could only watch, take notes, and imitate.

  The only area where Firenze shined was countering the Phalanx AI. Donegan's dance was effective against predictable computers and fallible humans. Against a high-end limited AI, the unsubtle nature of his shortcuts and brute-force cracks became a liability, and his speed was laughably inadequate. In contrast, Firenze's expertise and mask synchronization let him outflank the Phalanx and code around textbook executables. Where Donegan had to start from the edges and race the AI to the center, Firenze could load a poison-pill and blast the admin right off the net. The problem there was that he needed to be jacked in, which meant unconscious and stationary on a battlefield. Every time he loaded up, he exposed his team to flanking, encirclement, and overrun; these were terms he'd rapidly come to understand as "death, death, and more death".

  He spent his afternoons with the EWOs. They brainstormed, ran sims, consulted plans and diagrams of the Airship networks - hardware and software - and picked over every piece of the puzzle. Did the Sentro Suite have a problem with buffer flow? Was the L566 chipset particularly prone to overheating? How did the Phalanx Security Intelligence prioritize multiple threats in a particular configuration, when lacking access to three local cores?

  Dinner was solitary. He'd try and alleviate his pounding headache, sit in his bunk, and fiddle with his assist box. Lauren understood, at least. She'd try and defrag his head, perk him up with comments about "Hey, you're faster than Chief Jerkface in a run against the Phalanx, right?" or "Hey, you didn't puke today! That's three in a row!" He'd agree and thank her, but then go back to staring at the security maps. They'd sit and cut up the day's sims, plan out a quicker (always quicker) route for the evening, and then agree that this time it should work.

  Evening runs would expose new flaws, more deaths, and the occasional lucky break. They'd pound at a scenario until they cleared it like clockwork, then they'd run another, just to fail and get something to think about during dark hours.