The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1)

by Sicoe, Veronica

  Time accelerates and his senses catch up with the rest of him. Flash blindness and tinnitus give way to a blaring hell.

  "Down! Get down!" Vik screams.

  Thunder cracks overhead and the ceiling drops like a guillotine right next to Bray. He jumps and skids, sliding for the door. Vik grapples his sleeve and jerks him along, barreling down the emergency stairs two and three at a time, bouncing off the walls and through another door.

  "Franks!" Bray yells, peering through the smoke and dust. "Where the fuck is he? And Preston?"

  Vik jerks him to the left. "This way."

  They're out into the street. The city has fallen into darkness, street lighting no longer active. Smoke fills the air, and the roar of the choking Rebreathers merges with the shriek of sirens, the whistle of missiles, and a torrent of screams and cries.

  "Fall back to the Spoke," Preston yells from behind.

  Bray turns his head, still chasing after Vik, but can't see Preston among the dozens of panicked people gaining on them. They're all running toward the Spoke now, coughing and stumbling over pieces of buildings and shuttles, ducking away from incoming debris.

  Preston catches up as they turn into another street. Bray grabs his arm, jerks him to a stop. "There were civilians down there! You had me kill innocent people!"

  "Let go of me!"

  "Watch out," Vik calls.

  A sharp descending hiss—and another building cracks open in a geyser of debris and fire. Bray's fingers dig into Preston's arm, his teeth clenching tight.

  Preston glares back at him. "What do you want to hear, Bray? That only the bad die in war?"

  "They were civilians, for fuck's sake!" Bray's voice breaks in his throat.

  "It's a fucking war, Bray. Things blow up, people die. And we need to keep moving."

  "But, we— We killed—"

  "No, Bray," Preston says sharply. "You did."

  Then he's off with Vik toward the next mark.

  Alone, in the middle of a blistering hell, Bray finally caves in—a ruin among ruins—as the city comes apart around him.

  36

  Commander Kempton dons his jacket and runs down the corridor. News of explosions all over Erano—ripping eleven hubs to shreds, forty-three towers and three large ammo storage units—yanked Kempton out of his morning shower into a full-on hurricane.

  Bosco and three others are already waiting for him in the command center. They assault him with bad news and questions, speaking over each other. Kempton storms past them straight toward his tactical desk. He brings up a live 3D feed from Erano's Rebreather stations, and wipes the back of his neck where residual water and fresh sweat have mixed into a tingling mess.

  The whole of the projected city glows with alerts and emergency codes, throbbing like a diseased beast. A dying beast. Kempton draws a deep breath and clasps the edge of the desk, knuckles whitening as he leans forward.

  "Sir, we have to send down the troops," a Sub-Commander says, his own hair still wet from an unfinished shower.

  "Twenty Falcons and two Milvus warships are in standby already," a Major adds.

  "I've ordered the lasers online as well," Bosco says, leaning over to look Kempton in the eye. "They'll be ready in five minutes."

  "Sir, what are your orders?" the Sub-Commander asks, brows knocked together.

  Kempton stares at the map, trying to recognize a pattern in the bombings but finding none.

  "Sir," the Sub-Commander insists. "Orders?"

  Kempton exhales, and snaps back to awareness. "Hold the lasers on my order. I don't want the dome or any life-sustaining facilities to be damaged."

  "Send in the warships, then?" Bosco asks.

  Kempton shakes his head. "Not yet."

  "The troops?" the Major asks.

  "No."

  "But sir—"

  "No!" Kempton bellows.

  Everyone is looking at him. For a second, Kempton is tempted to walk out on them, get aboard a ship, and leave the system. But he knows his duty. "Lock down all city exits." He finally lets go of his desk, and drops his gaze back to the map. "Deploy the Razers."

  Bosco clears his throat. The other two exchange puzzled glances.

  "Have them patrol all districts. Shoot any armed non-TMC personnel on sight. No prisoners. Except for Preston," he stresses. "If they find and identify him, he's to be taken alive."

  "Are you sure it'll be enough?" Bosco asks. "The Syndicate may have automated facilities, AIs inserted into our systems—"

  "The Razers will do for now. I don't want to cause more damage to the city than necessary, or start a war."

  "We're already at war!" the Sub-Commander blurts.

  Kempton remains resolute. "Deploy the Razers. And keep the warships in standby."

  "Yes, sir," the Sub-Commander concedes.

  "Dismissed."

  The Major turns on his heels and leaves the room. The Sub-Commander throws a last glance at the blinking map before leaving too.

  Bosco lingers.

  "What?" Kempton snaps at him.

  "Nothing, sir. It's just..."

  "Spit it out."

  "I'm worried you're not setting the right priorities."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I'm afraid your concern with the long-term political impact of your choices makes you forget your immediate duties. Your military duties, Commander."

  "I'm also a governor," Kempton says.

  "Ad interim."

  "Not if I do this right."

  "But sir— Edric—"

  "That will be all, Lieutenant Commander."

  Bosco salutes stiffly and leaves, every step as precise and deliberate as if on parade.

  Kempton stares at the map rotating before him, covered in red sores. Sweat runs down his back as he plugs in his nacom and calls General Hurst. The General greets him with his usual disdain. Kempton reports on the latest events and the course of action he's taken.

  "Is that it?" Hurst asks, leaning back in his chair.

  Kempton nods, stomach tighter than a navy knot. "Yes, sir."

  "It might interest you, Commander, that I already know of all this." Hurst tugs at his goatee.

  Kempton isn't surprised. He feared one of his subordinates had likely betrayed him by now. Given the way things are going it might even be Bosco. How bitter their friendship should end this way.

  Hurst smiles, driving a chill up Kempton's back. "I also know several other things, Commander—interesting things which you quite conveniently omitted in your reports."

  "Sir?"

  "I'm willing to let them slide on the condition that you get me that woman."

  Kempton feels numb. His voice becomes quiet. "What woman, sir?"

  "The one with alien RNA. Get her for me and I'll ignore the fact that you lied to a superior officer, and allowed terrorists to start a guerrilla war under your nose." Hurst leans in, growing ominously on Kempton's projector. "If you don't, I'll court martial you faster than you can spell your daddy's name. Are we clear?"

  Kempton nods, a trickle of sweat running down the side of his cheek.

  "Good. You have seventy-six hours to apprehend that woman and eradicate the Syndicate. That's how long it'll take me to reach Hades. Don't try to be creative, Commander. Just get it done."

  "Yes, sir." Kempton salutes stiffly as the projection winks off.

  The room spins around him. He swallows the bile burning his throat, and walks around the tactical desk to the window overlooking the port. He stares past the warships at San Gabriel's crescent rising in the darkness, and chews his lower lip until he tastes blood.

  -

  Hurst picks up his Nexus and connects to the Hades Emergency Management AI, which Bosco activated the moment the bombings started. The HEM AI has taken over San Gabriel's security systems remotely, and is preparing for total lockdown. It allows Hurst a time-boxed read-only access, a sort of dry courtesy to his high function.

  The HEM AI paints a concise picture of the ongoing attacks, overwhelming him w
ith data despite the limited access. Hurst struggles with the input, wrestling an overwhelming migraine, his time ticking away. On the brink of losing consciousness, he finally succeeds to verify Kempton's actions—see how he's handled the Syndicate's attacks and what he's really doing to stop them.

  There are no significant troop or surveillance upgrades, no serious improvements to the city's defenses whatsoever. He's deployed the Razers, but much too late. They could have been effective if Kempton had deployed them from the start, when Hurst ordered him to—before the Syndicate got hold of heavy weapons.

  Hurst has only two minutes until the HEM AI cuts his access, and Erano falls into Kempton's hands. He must do something.

  The HEM AI has locked off the city, and maxed up the dome. Its plasma net could slice an armored warship now, if anyone were stupid enough to try and fly through it. All city gates and cargo tubes are sealed as well. On lockdown, Erano is a self-contained, unbreakable bubble. Hurst likes the HEM AI's ruthless efficiency. If AIs alone, instead of untrustworthy pricks, would handle security issues, there'd be no room for mistakes. And no fertile ground for terrorists.

  In addition to the HEM AI, located on Hades and fully under TMC control, Hurst finds another fail-safe located on Erano: the Colonial Immune System, designed solely to prevent dome overrides from inside or out. Once the CIS is activated, Erano will be completely cut off from the Confederacy.

  Thirty-eight seconds left until the HEM AI cuts his connection, and activates the CIS.

  Hurst addresses the AI directly and relays his emergency code several times, identifying himself by neuronal pattern on three different levels. Eventually he gains access to a little hidden Trojan he long ago spread among the Confederacy worlds, to prevent things like the Ceti fiasco from ever happening again. If things really turn to shit down there and Kempton loses the colony, he'll at least make sure the colony never falls into alien hands.

  He successfully activates the Trojan seconds before the HEM AI cuts him off.

  37

  The noise on the streets is uncannily familiar to me. Explosions, screams, alarms and whistling projectiles, crumbling buildings and bursting debris, footsteps hammering and tires squealing. I sprint down the boulevard, smoke stinging in my throat.

  A chorus of shells explodes to my left. I duck instinctively and turn right, run past the Research Tower and head for the Spoke without looking back. A hiss overhead, and I veer into the cover of an alley just as a shower of debris comes pelting down. The building next to me bursts into flames, spewing molten plexiglass shards down into the street.

  Someone screams behind me. People are injured; too many to count.

  Another building comes crumbling down with a cascading squeal of metal. Waves of dust and smoke crawl over the shaking ground like ghosts fleeing the blast.

  I run deeper into the alley then come to an abrupt stop. A boy, no older than ten, lies against a dumpster, face a smear of flensed flesh, body bent in pain.

  I step back in horror, gasping for air.

  This can't be happening. How can I stop it?

  I back out of the alley and try to find another way toward the Spoke. It's my best bet to find Preston, and make him stop the attacks—any way I can. I'll break into the Spoke and hack into the city's network. I'll chase that fucking bastard down through his communications and stop this.

  Sirens wail in the distance, ominous and dizzying. I stumble around in the smoke-filled darkness, lit only by fires and the search lights of security shuttles above, and eventually see the tall black wall of the Spoke at the end of a street. I pick up the pace, dodging debris flying down around me, heart throbbing in my throat.

  Two hundred meters ahead, a missile hits an overhung parking platform. A private shuttle tumbles down in a smoldering pile of synthetics and metal. It hits the Spoke with a shrieking, tearing sound, slicing through its sheathing as it falls. Another whistle, and I scramble for cover. The missile hits the Rebreather, five hundred meters away. Fire rains down from the groaning monstrosity, blazing in the night.

  I crawl around a truck abandoned in the street, gaze darting left and right, chasing the screams of people and blasts roaring around me. I reach the Spoke and assess the damage. The crashed shuttle smolders, crackling and spewing sparks, half buried in the torn wall. Molten cables roll out of the wounded Spoke, a broken cooling pipe hissing fiercely inside.

  I cough in the acrid smoke, and look up at the dome. I ball my fists. It's now or never.

  I crawl into the Spoke past the crushed remains of the shuttle, squeezing in through a jagged opening. I cut my hands and knees, feeling my way through the wreckage. The deeper I crawl the darker it gets, and the noxious vapors sear my throat.

  I lean against a duct, coughing fitfully. The ground vibrates beneath me, carrying the dying throes of the burning Rebreather. My head spins and my hands sting painfully, as if a million fire ants were marching through my nerves. I have to keep moving, no time to waste.

  The sound of equipment humming and coolant whooshing through pipes draws me in deeper. I listen for certain vibrations, for the whirr of server coolers or the hum of processing units. Wedged in between pipes and plastic tubes, I finally find a bundle of red cables. I focus, desperately hoping, and start to see the electrons shooting through them in rivers of light.

  I trace the cables down to a relay node, then further to a set of three connected servers, lodged in between the many ducts and pipes and tubes filling the Spoke. I grin in the darkness.

  I wipe the sweat from my forehead and crouch in front of the servers, back pressed against a throbbing cooling duct. I run my fingers over the casings, under and around them, looking for latches or panels I can pry off.

  Before I realize what's happening, I'm already speeding through the wires. Racing through billions of terabytes at impossible speed, struggling not to broadcast anything that would give me away.

  Preston. I have to find Preston. But so many other things draw my attention that it's impossible to stay focused. I drown in hundreds of thousands of code lines and numbers, and circled by dozens of frantic AIs, like sharks gone mad in blood-infested waters. I get tangled in the labyrinthine scripts they generate, and pushed into connections I don't want to make, chased down lines I don't want to travel, unable to stop.

  I crash against the impervious bulk of a self-encrypted, adaptively firewalled AI complex, guarded by tens of smaller, vicious code dogs. I try to back out and evade their reach, erasing my tracks as well as I can. But it's too late. I realize with a start that I've drawn the attention of the Colonial Immune System.

  The CIS is active—that means the dome is locked down, out of the Confederacy's reach—and that means the Ticks are fighting back. We're officially at war.

  I chase down maze after maze of code and information, fleeing from the many guard dogs, looking for even the tiniest backdoor through the CIS blockage. There's none.

  My head bursts with pain and my nerves are glowing hot. Should I give up? Surrender? Not a chance. I dig harder, investing every bit of energy I've got.

  A shard of code draws my attention—a strange little thing I've never seen before. It makes unusual choices, follows atypical paths, as if it were a foreign cell traveling through a huge, overloaded organism. It's incredibly fast, too. I glimpse it for a microsecond, then it's gone. I hunt it down, trying to see what it's doing. It leaves only minute traces behind, tiny modifications of the city's routines, snippets of code attached to various programs, small anchors dropped in maintenance systems, waiting to be activated.

  I know what it is, now: a meta-virus, digging its way through the city's metabolism one vital system at a time. It notices me and tries to read me. I fall back quickly and it gives chase.

  This virus is different from anything I've ever seen. It's more like a special operations script, or an emergency program. Very high end. I fight to escape its aggressive pursuit as it tries to trace me back to a physical source and deactivate me. I must disconnect. No
w.

  It tries to interfere with my programming, to infect me and take me apart—except I'm not a program. It tries harder, faster, getting more violent and resourceful with every attempt. I can hardly think in the downpour of data trying to scramble my mind. I jerk away from the server, snatching my hands back, and bump my head against the cooling duct.

  I sit there panting in the bitter air, holding my head and sifting through the avalanche of information I just escaped from. What the hell was that thing? What was it doing?

  I replay the encounter in my mind, again and again, trying to make sense of it. Bits of code, glimpsed here and there as the virus tried to corrupt me, start coming together, assuming a terrible shape. My heart goes into overdrive. I fight for each dizzying gasp of air, hyperventilating, gripped by sudden panic.

  Everything will be lost if that program runs its course. Everyone will die.

  I replay the remembered commands—unable to accept them.

  "Executive orders by FH67895432.GEN2:

  To all ground-based TMC synthetics: end operations on August the 2nd, 2456, at 31 p.m. local time. Retreat via emergency tunnels, and enter open space operation mode.

  To program V23DLN: override command of all Razer units. Cut power to Erano's life support systems on August 3rd, 2456, at 00:00 a.m. local time, and collapse the filament net.

  To all Razer units: perform a class three Sweep of the Erano colony and all adjacent constructions. Notify FH67895432.GEN2 upon Sweep completion and deactivate."

  I swallow hard and sit up, shuddering from head to toe. Slowly get a grip of my senses.

  In less than 20 hours the power to Erano's Heaters and Rebreathers will be cut and the dome's filament net will fall. Everything in the city will be shredded to pieces, and every single human inside—civilian or not—will die. The Razers will make certain there are no survivors, however unlikely. A class three Sweep means the termination of all life-forms and the destruction of all digital information they possess.