“That’s pretty weird, isn’t it? What does it mean?”
Johan didn’t respond. A moment later, Austin realized it was because he’d left and come back, this time with a harsh vibe.
Very big problem to deal with.
“What?”
Johan shared news of the bomb in the defense ministry communications tower at Ichigaya, as well as the knowledge that other cities were similarly laden and now activated. Twenty-three, if Soldado’s intercept was correct.
“Twenty-three? Ah fuck no. Where? How many in the U.S.?”
Not sure. They’re working on finding them. By the way, they want a look at this ship. Real bad.
“Yeah I’m sure they do.”
Mistrust leaked like ruddy water. There was no escaping the resentment towards Sean for grossly understating the threat of the antigravity ships. He’d almost died as a result. He wondered what else they were holding back or what other danger they would put him in.
Johan picked up on it. Maybe you need more time to get used to this ship, eh? Before you turn it over to them. Come pick me up. I’ll be at the Milltown cemetery in Belfast in about two hours. See what more you can learn from your Geo and don’t get yourself caught. And don’t be late.
“But the bombs–”
Exactly. I’ve got an idea.
“Shit...”
Relax. You’ll like it.
• • •
Two floors up from Desmond’s Bar and one up from the restaurant, a small bedroom served as storage and occasional crash pad for those regulars too drunk or too unhappy with their mates to go home. Cardboard boxes stood ceiling-high, partially blocking a window. In a wooden chair at the window sat a big brute of man, dozing chin to chest. A narrow gap between the boxes and the window led maze-like to a hidden space against the far wall. Just three feet wide, an army cot filled most of it.
Lying on the cot, Johan stirred and opened his eyes to find himself wedged between a wall and a mountain of boxes – plastic cups and napkins, by the printing. The urge to piss was overwhelming. Hunger made waves, too – and someone was cooking. He went to sit up but stopped with a throbbing head. “Fuck.” Being back felt marvelous, to just be without having to worry about form, function, or vibe... a solid, unchanging body. He just felt badly hung over.
A head popped around the box wall, with a beard and a wool cap.
“Ah, grand. I was gettin’ worried for ya.” The fellow finished side-stepping the gap into the hideaway. “I’m Brogan. Been yer lookout.”
A scan revealed he was contracted help, not Korda. It seemed they’d put some distance between them.
“Thanks. Eh, I really need a go at the loo. Could ya point me proper?” With Brogan’s help he clambered to his feet.
“Yer name’s Killian Casey of Chapelstown, by the way.” Brogan shuffled the gap and led the way to the door. “Yer a photographer. School pictures and such, travelin’ on holiday. Low budget, Killian.” He produced a wallet and handed it to Johan.
“Right. Look, I need you to call your handler and have them bring me two Kevlar vests. Within the hour.” A hall with low ceilings led to a small bathroom. The smell of food was stronger at the narrow stairs leading down. “And I need some food.”
“Kitchen’s still open. Beef, bird, an’ a bottle of Bud for ten quid.” Brogan said. “I’ll make the call.”
“Thanks.” Just before his bladder burst he squeezed into the cramped privy and managed the best piss of his life. Eyes closed, he shifted briefly up to the edge of Saoghal and peered out...
All too near, the korjé probed patterns he’d used previously. Anki’s thread was strong as she was in route to meet him. The thin line to Kaiya felt worried; poor girl, she’d just have to wait. A quick check with Ryota’s covering team confirmed the Comannda had allowed the boy to be recovered, though only to his father’s care. Guards remained. Retrieval would no doubt be risky.
He pulled all the way back, finished up, and made for the stairs. He suppressed a mental image of da Vinci’s Last Supper, a sign of worry about being tracked. Don’t doubt yourself... that’ll jack you up, invite them in. He thought of Tom and wondered if he’d made it away from Sakuma’s dream that day. If he had, he owed him a drink.
Desmond’s chicken was delicious, marinated and spicy. The beef was on the dry side and the beer icy, the way Johan liked it. He could’ve done without the karaoke blaring up from the first floor bar, but happy drunks and good food beat all the gloomy alternatives. Brogan’s role as guard kept conversation safely mundane. The TV over the cash register streamed images of the helicopter crashes in Tokyo. Terrorists with handheld surface to air missiles were blamed, supported by grainy CCTV video showing a launch. The Comannda knew how to heal the system alright. He savored the simple act of looking away as much as he did eating the food. At least here he had a choice.
A waitress brought the check. Atop it was a note.
“Hmm,” the Irishman grunted after looking it over. “Room’s doubled up to a hundred eighty euro. Takin’ ‘vantage, they are.”
A woman came up the stairs. The dark hair and face were unfamiliar, but the taut lines of her jeans and her energy made him smile from ear to ear. He stood so she spotted him.
“Mind if I join ya?” The lilt of her voice could raise stones.
“Jenny! By all means, do. I was just thinkin’ a gal would make the evenin’ finer still.” He caught her by the waist and they embraced fully. “Will you ever forgive me?” he whispered in her ear.
“Take me upstairs and we’ll see.”
Johan lay on the cot with Anki, spent and drifting with her in the twilight of shared thought and feelings.
With Steffan’s help, she’d begun the slow and cautious reunion with a mother she didn’t know. The greatest shock was learning that instead of having lived thirty years in some kind of psychic cocoon, her mother had discovered how to observe with clarity Anki’s experiences. For the last eight years, she’d been a passenger to most of her thoughts, emotions, and even dreams. All the intimacies, petty moments – all the highs and lows. Not all the time, but most.
At first Anki felt both violated and guilty but then she grew angry. The intense empathy she’d suffered was likely enhanced by her mother’s presence. Steffan helped her understand that it wasn’t Clare’s intention or fault. Without that sharing of the outside world, madness would have taken hold for good, a state her mother already endured the long years prior. Learning to reach and observe Anki’s reality had saved her. Together they revisited memories and Clare revealed where she had tried to help, gently guiding her thoughts at the most difficult and lonely of times. She had been there for her, trying to do all that a mother would have done for her.
Johan checked the time. Quarter to midnight. He signaled and they edged their way out of their nook and headed for the hallway. Brogan appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a box.
“Bring it with you,” Johan said as he passed him.
She nudged Brogan. “Time for a walk. Across the street to the cemetery.”
“Um, right.” He turned to follow. “Anything special I should know?” Despite the guard’s tough exterior, he hid a deep-rooted fear of cemeteries at night.
Anki shared a knowing glance with Johan. “Nah. Just keep an eye out.”
They slipped out the bar’s side door and made their way across the street to the cemetery. After scaling a wall, they hiked a quarter mile through a sea of graves, stone columns, and headstones seen by the half-light of the city’s glow. Johan slowed in the midst of a poorer section where plots lay flat and edge to edge. The cemetery grounds ended at a nearby line of trees with marshlands beyond. The stillness focused Brogan’s fear until he couldn’t help but break it.
“What’re we out here fer again?”
“I’ll take that,” Johan said, relieving him of the box with the Kevlar vests. He sliced it open and handed a vest to Anki.
“Fer reals, what kind o’ meeting would ya have out here?�
��
Johan checked the time again. “Most secret, as you can imagine. I need your eyes, now. Scan that quarter and tell me if you see even a shadow. Should be two of ‘em, no more than three. Jenny, you look thataway and I’ll scan this way. I don’t like surprises.”
“You an’ me both.” Brogan hunkered down in his jacket and kept watch. A police chopper circled a mile or so off with its spotlight working the avenues.
“Brogan.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you believe in vampires?”
He turned as predicted for a quick glance.
“Aren’t you the gas?” He turned back, worried they might have sensed his fear of the graveyard. “Yeah, vampires and werewolves and fairies, too. I’m all ‘bout them. In fact, my ex-wife was a vampire. Oy, damn straight she was.” Suddenly, every hair on his body stood up. He knuckled down to make sense of it but the feeling passed after a bit. A bloody freaky place to be out on a bloody crazy night doing bloody weird things. He shrugged his coat tighter. “What time was ya supposed to meet again? Cause I’d say they were late.”
When no answer came he turned, then spun around in terror. The bloke and his gal had up and vanished. “No farggin’ way....” His pistol fairly leapt to his hand. He scanned the closest headstones a dozen meters off, trying to catch the gag. When he couldn’t, it was enough.
He walked the first few steps, then broke into a full run muttering every bloomin’ curse he knew.
Chapter 23
To win you have to risk loss.
- Jean-Claude Killy
The elevator settled at the basement. Doors slid open and Austin stepped into a familiar foyer. He loosened the 9mm in the hip holster at his side. Under his shirt he wore the Kevlar vest.
He jogged up the ramp to the security doors and peered through the glass. InterGen’s server farms and central networking core lay just beyond. Rows upon rows of servers glowed in the darkened aisles.
It was no surprise InterGen would be tapped as a gateway. Their bandwidth was as fat as it got, with as much fiber feeding the campus as most small cities had. The perfect place to up and down convert the volume of traffic the Comannda needed.
Again he scraped two security cameras from the ceiling before flexing the grid to shear the bolts of the locks. He pushed through and proceeded left towards The Door.
Since his first days at InterGen, The Door had given rise to many jokes and not a few conspiracy stories. Murray wouldn’t speak of what was behind the door at the back of the server room, saying only that it was subleased space. None of the master keys worked for it and only Murray had ever been seen entering the darkened space beyond. To think of what he could tell Matt and the guys now... the truth was more strange than all their stories combined.
He approached The Door and with a swipe took out the camera pointed at it. He sat, closed his eyes, breathed, then stepped from his body. He tried passing through the door and couldn’t, confirming what Johan had already detected.
“Blocked. They’re jamming meta in there. Gonna be messy. It’s plan B.” He stood and faced The Door.
Understood.
Potential surged and the door opened with a loud clack as the locks broke. Austin pushed left into a hallway and strode to a glowing biometric panel at a steel door. Another big shove slammed the door open.
A dark room lay beyond. He flipped on a flashlight. A ceiling-mount security camera peered from the corner. With a thought, the camera sheared from its mooring and bounced across the floor with its wiring dangling.
Night guard called it in. So far not moving.
“Okay.”
Five thick fiber optic bundles rose from the floor and terminated in an array of switches. Two long rack rows held high-end Rocom equipment, all solid with activity. Every port taken, every fiber patch full, just as Sean predicted. No consoles, just networking gear and fiber.
“Four foot clearance.”
Acknowledged.
The room’s raised floors vibrated. Seconds later, the concrete block wall split open and broken chunks and dirt spilled onto the floor. The edge of the ship protruded into the room. The hatch opened and Johan emerged with a laptop bag while Anki stayed ready at the controls.
“No lights?”
“None that I could find.”
Anki kicked on a beam from the ship.
Johan surveyed the gear. “Main fiber cores.” He touched the insulated fiber. “Black box here. Would love to know what it’s doing.” He withdrew a fiber intrusion kit from the bag and started work. “Keep watch at the outer door. It may get ugly and quick. Keep them back, I’m going to need some quiet time.”
“If you can, look for anything on my dad,” Austin said.
• • •
Overseer registered the anomalies occurring at site NA16.
On watch status due to incident 901, the junction at InterGen Folsom had not been estimated as a high probability site for further activity. Analysis of available visual data suggested the estimates had been incorrect.
SUPOPS and CoreOps were notified of the intruder while OpAIs were engaged to review every security camera stream in the building.
• • •
“Fiber tap is in. Booty interface on screen. CAP is up and running. Recommended J block traffic filter enabled. I’m seeing the purple stuff. Yes, I already launched Booty2.”
Linked via bràthair, Johan coordinated with Soldado on the infiltration. Booty2 was a variant of the original worm with a program stack designed to stealthily explore and learn more about the systems running on the network. If it could do so safely, it would eventually send reports back.
The contextual analysis program, or CAP, would help uncover location data for the nukes. Based on the assumption that a ‘ready state’ implied control streams that would carry status, the CAP would seek out, analyze, and follow key J block streams to try to learn where they went.
“Yes, I see them. They’re tagged now. All J86.”
At The Door, Austin heard only half of the conversation. The 9mm felt good in his hand though it would probably be the last thing he used. The mass of potential flowing in and around him was so great it seemed like it might activate itself. Once again something big loomed and it turned his stomach not knowing what. Johan’s rushed plans seemed to have little in the way of predictability.
“You’re right, four just popped up. Sending tracers out now. Damn you’re good, Soldado. I take back everything I said about your mother and her mutated DNA.”
To hear Johan laugh felt good though it did little to ease the feeling of dread growing in his gut.
• • •
The glass dividers between control rooms darkened to black. At the sight, Director Tomov stood up and faced forward so as to not lay eyes on the visitors. All hopes of keeping his cool were shot to hell. Footsteps sounded on the floor. He was sure it was–
“Mr. Tomov,” Bastion called out as he made his way forward. “Status!”
“Sir–” He fumbled for words like they were muddy footballs. “Sir, Black ops are en route to InterGen, ETA two minutes. Panels are blind to the junction room which suggests Austin may be–”
“What does video show of the ship?”
“Sir, a ship isn’t seen anywhere on video now or prior to the breakin. We don’t know of–”
Bastion shouted, “What do you know, director?”
He almost fell forward. “Sir, we assume the ship is in use at the junction–”
“Shut up!”
The director’s heart went still in his chest, long enough to feel the empty dread of impending death. It pumped once, then began beating wildly as linkage to his nervous system resumed. He stood, his face ashen with fear. To his left, someone came alongside his chair, neutral and silent. It had to be Maria de Oro. He wanted to bury his head in her calmness.
“Oscar,” Bastion began, “prepare San Francisco for J86 execution.”
Oscar answered according to protocol. “Immediate J86 execution at Sa
n Francisco will result in the loss of two-hundred fifty-nine Group Three personnel, four Group Two personnel, and nineteen facilities related to primary control. Civilian deaths will exceed one point six million. Economic impact factor registers four at a minimum.” It paused. “Voice approval by three Executives is required for single-site execution.”
Maria cringed. The original plans called for evacuation of staff and incidental relocation of vital persons of political and commercial value. Then there was the city itself, a favorite.
“Bastion, InterGen is well outside the kill zone. This won’t touch him.”
“I am aware, Maria. We will not stand by while they hack our defenses. There must be immediate consequences. There will be.”
She requested Overseer provide status on the systems at the InterGen junction.
“No recognized threats detected as yet. Analysis continues.”
“See? They have no idea what they are doing. Nothing has been heard in channels. Things are still secure. G3 will have them in moments. And if you must blow the city, then at least pull out the G2. There is time with the AGTs.”
Bastion surveyed Maria with a stare that could strip paint. “Oscar, I approve J86 execution for San Francisco.”
From behind Maria, Ganzai echoed his approval.
Bastion cocked an eyebrow at her delay. “Do we need to call on another to replace you?”
She felt the implied permanence of such replacement. The others in the control room masked their discomfort out of respect.
“Oscar,” she began. “I... approve J86 execution for San Francisco.”
“Single-site execution of J86 approved for target San Francisco, California. Commencing necessary sequences for final execution order.”
“Give me a wide shot of the Bay! Move!” Bastion ordered, coming around to the raised dais. Director Tomov stepped forward out of the way. “I want to see the lesson the priests will never forget.” He sat heavily. “These Words will never fade.”
A satellite view revealed the luminous grids of city and suburbia. Streams of vehicles flowed along freeways and avenues. Homes and businesses glowed against the dark night. Almost a million people – working, playing, or resting after the long day. A long, ordinary day.
System Seven Page 40