by K. M. Ruiz
“Is HQ uplinked?” she asked.
Nathan glanced at the vidscreen. “Uplinked and hacking. You’re clear, Victoria.”
She took a step back. “Then he’s all yours when they finish.”
Bioware nets were a unique form of technology that the Sercas had invented, sold to the World Court generations ago, and subsequently learned to work around over the years. The device was the sole reason why no Serca had ever risked joining the World Court. Too many people had too much access to the servers and networks that monitored the baselines that the bioware nets produced. Better to work outside of that system than to risk it all collapsing due to recorded psionic interference.
Getting around the security system of a bioware net required a strong uplink, a back door in the system, hackers at an off-site location—and the human. Transferring the bioware net signal into Nathan’s computer, where the hackers embedded it and kept the signal alive, took less than an hour. Making sure Elion’s new baseline readings would copy over the old ones took a little more time, as it involved hacking the Registry through a separate back door that the Serca Syndicate had built into that particular system. The Registry was just one of their many creations, and they never completely gave up what they believed to be rightfully theirs.
Only when they had confirmation that the signal was set in the system did Nathan put aside his datapad and lean back in his chair. Closing his eyes, Nathan reached out with his telepathy for the static human mind before him. He wrapped his power through those muted, limited thoughts and twisted Elion into what Nathan needed. Mindwipes, at least ones that didn’t leave humans obviously damaged, were always such a delicate, devious psi surgery.
Elion had walked into Nathan’s office with a mind of his own and the ability to choose his own future, as limited as his choices were. Hours later, when he left The Hague—cleaned up and in one piece—he left under Nathan’s control, the changes in his personality and mind so subtle that no one would ever notice. His changed opinions, however, would suit Nathan’s needs now and forever. With his baseline readings globally replaced in the Registry and through all viable systems that humans used, Elion’s conversion was complete.
It left Nathan with a throbbing headache and an ache in his chest, by his heart, small reminders that he was well past the age that a psion was supposed to die.
Nathan turned his attention to the information at his fingertips, gathering up a half dozen datapads from across his desk. Victoria was already long gone and on her way back to London, the mess she had made cleaned up.
“Is my shuttle ready, Jin Li?”
“Ready and waiting, sir.”
“Good.” Nathan stood up. “I’ve a schedule to keep.”
Jin Li nodded as he followed Nathan to the door. “What have you got planned for the cartels?”
“Nothing they’re expecting.”
[TWENTY-ONE]
AUGUST 2379
BUFFALO, USA
Jason didn’t know what the plan was, all he knew was that it sucked.
“If I had a functioning uplink, this might work,” he argued with Novak. “If I had a working jack-in system, we might get further than Canada. This? This will crash us into the Great Lakes if we’re lucky.”
Novak chewed on his bit of tobacco and just grinned. “Luck ain’t got nothing to do with it, Stryker. I did what I could, on top of everyone else finishing what they could before dying. Quit your bitching and figure out where we start.”
Jason glared at Novak from where he sat in the pilot’s seat of the largest shuttle in the underground hangar. “We might need better code than what we’ve got in this system to support the electronic countermeasures if we’re going anywhere near government airspace and not detouring through deadzones.”
“So write it.”
“I can’t go in and rewrite code for every separate program in this damn shuttle. We’ve been working on upgrading the firmware for the hive connection for days already and we’re running out of time.” Jason leaned forward and stabbed his finger at the hologrid stretched over the wide flight-deck windshield, showing new data that had been downloaded just that morning. “See that? That fucking storm is going to eat us alive and you’re crazy if you think we can launch through it safely.”
Novak spit black saliva onto the metal flight deck of the shuttle, pieces of synthetic tobacco stuck in his teeth. “Lucas says we will.”
Jason groaned loudly and pressed his hands over his eyes, hard. “Fucking hell. We’re taking orders from a man who listens to a goddamn child. We’re all going to die.”
“Shut up, Jason,” Lucas said as he stepped into the flight deck of the shuttle, sounding annoyed. He looked paler than usual, with bruises pressed heavily beneath his dark blue eyes. “Tell me the hive connection is ready?”
“I want to say yes.” Jason dropped his hands away from his face and leaned forward. “I do. If I had a system up to the grade I’m used to dealing with, possibly. If I had another week, I could be absolutely sure.”
“You have two days to finalize everything.”
“Two—” Jason choked on his next words and simply resorted to swearing. Novak seemed impressed with his repertoire.
“Two days,” Lucas repeated. “More than likely less, so see about doing it in one. The Warhounds are going to start arriving here in Buffalo in force, which will definitely bring in the Strykers. They’ll make a nice distraction. The storm is going to hit anywhere between twenty-eight and thirty-six hours from now. Depending on the winds, it could hit earlier.”
“You want these shuttles ready for stealth against military jets in one day?” Jason shook his head. “That’s impossible. You’re going to get us all killed if we don’t have time to do a dry run on everything.”
Lucas walked up to Jason, wrapped his hand around the telekinetic’s throat and slammed him face-first down against the flight-control panel. Lucas held him there more by the strength in his arm than by the power in his head.
“Would you fucking be careful with that?” Novak shouted, pointing at the panel. “You break it, we don’t got extra!”
“Listen to me, you annoying piece of shit,” Lucas said as he leaned in low to whisper into Jason’s ear. “The only reason why I haven’t broken open your mind yet is because I need a little more power than I’ve got available. That doesn’t mean I’m not figuring out the most painful way to turn you into someone else. We need these shuttles to be flight-ready. Everything about them is solid except the hive connection. Your job is to fix that.”
“With three shuttles? I need more time,” Jason spit out, still trying to breathe.
“Try three dozen.” Lucas’s grip didn’t lessen any as he leaned his weight against the other man. “This isn’t the only underground hangar with long-haul shuttles. I’m not stupid enough to pin everything on such a low number. The hive connection will be installed into all the others once you’re done here. Novak should have told you that by now.”
Jason’s gaze cut over to the human hacker. “He hasn’t told me shit.”
There was the sound of a body hitting a bulkhead and the harsh gasps of someone choking on his own blood. “Novak,” Lucas said easily enough. “You know what’s at stake. Remember that I can replace you. If you want to keep breathing, play by my rules, or I will feed you to the Warhounds when they arrive. I’m expecting them soon.”
Jason glared up at Lucas from where he was pinned to the control console, face pressed against the sensors. “You fucking bastard. You led them here on purpose, didn’t you? I thought you wanted to get the fuck out of here unnoticed?”
Lucas tilted his head, dark blue eyes expressionless. “Try to understand something, Jason. This mission isn’t just to piss off your side or my side. It’s about saving everyone the World Court wants to leave behind. That should be easy for you to understand as a former Stryker. Now get the job done.”
Lucas let him go with a hard shove and stepped back. Jason, gasping for air, reached up to touch
his throat. His skin was hot and bruised where Lucas’s fingers had held him.
“You only showed us three shuttles,” Jason rasped. “What the hell am I supposed to think if you keep lying to us?”
Lucas crossed his arms over his chest, watching impassively as Jason got to his feet. “What you perfect here will be applied to the rest, which is why I need you to finish this sooner rather than later. We’re minimizing the risk by containing it to the first three shuttles.”
“You just made my fucking job harder.”
The telekinetic didn’t seem to care that he was pissing off one of the most powerful men in the world as he got in Lucas’s face. His anger was driving his reactions quicker and faster than logic. Lucas wondered if he had the time to spare to change that.
“Stop it. Both of you.”
Jason’s gaze jerked away from Lucas in an instant, some of the anger leaving his face as he caught sight of the figure stepping over Novak’s unconscious body and coming into the flight deck. Kerr looked as if he’d been dealing with psi shock for the better part of a month, not the handful of days he’d been lying unconscious in that borrowed room. It wasn’t a good look for him.
Jason shoved past Lucas, reaching Kerr and putting his shoulder beneath the other man’s arm. Kerr nodded his thanks for the support, even as he leaned most of his weight against the bulkhead. As bad as Kerr looked, his mind was stable. His shields were a solid barrier that weren’t going to skid out from under his control anytime soon. Lucas eyed him, satisfied to see that the trick he had taught Kerr in reading as human on the mental grid was working.
“You’re finally awake,” Lucas said.
“I puked on the floor between our beds,” Kerr said evenly. “Matron said you get to clean it up.”
With Kerr’s shields solidly raised, Lucas couldn’t tell if he was lying. It was progress. “Your mess, your problem. I’ll take another room. Not like we’ll be here long enough for me to need it.”
Kerr wasn’t impressed. “I think it’s time you give us a full briefing, Lucas. You owe us that much.”
“I owe you nothing.”
“Please.”
Jason heard the need in Kerr’s voice and didn’t like it, his mouth twisting in anger. But he kept quiet. It would be years before Jason stopped thinking of Kerr as the one in charge of their two-person team, if he ever did.
“Get the others,” Lucas finally said as he reached out and nudged Novak into solid wakefulness with his boot and his telepathy. “Matron is in the weapons room. Bring her here. She hates when I ’port her around without warning.”
“Do it yourself,” Novak groaned. “You’re the damn psion.”
Lucas simply stared at him until the other man quickly looked away. It took two tries for Novak to get to his feet, but the hacker finally managed it. He stumbled out of the shuttle on shaky legs, Jason watching him go while Kerr focused on some distant point that only he could see as he tapped into his telepathy.
“They’re coming,” Kerr announced, blinking solid awareness back into his eyes.
“Good,” Lucas said as he walked past them, telekinetically stealing a few cigarettes and the lighter from Jason’s pocket. He left the shuttle with quick strides, going to sit on the open cargo ramp beneath the bright lights of the underground hangar.
Above him, the launch silo was dark. It wouldn’t come online, the blast doors wouldn’t open, until they were ready to fly the hell out of here. Lucas figured that time couldn’t come soon enough.
Thirty minutes later, everyone started to trickle into the hangar. He was almost done with his second cigarette when Matron, Everett, and Novak finally got there, the last to arrive. They made a ragtag little group, these five psions and three humans, every single one with a part to play. Lucas wondered, yet again, what Marcheline was thinking years ago before she died when she had convinced him to go along with this craziness. Her expectations had been impossible to ignore. So were Aisling’s orders.
“Your boy here,” Matron said as she pointed at Quinton, “I like the way he shoots.”
“He’s a crack shot,” Lucas said as he stubbed out his cigarette on the cargo ramp he was sitting on. “Of course you would.”
“I need a replacement for the one you got killed.”
“You can’t have me,” Quinton said irritably.
“Stop arguing,” Threnody said, giving Quinton a sharp glance and a silent warning not to start a fight. “What do you want, Lucas?”
“It’s not what he wants.” Jason gestured among them all. “It’s what we need to know. Did he tell you that these aren’t the only shuttles?”
Quinton’s expression became stony. Threnody didn’t look surprised, and Jason narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you know?”
“I guessed.” Threnody shrugged. “We had a talk the other day after he was finished working on Kerr. I needed confirmation on something Matron had told us.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets an awful lot lately,” Quinton said, unable to keep anger out of his voice.
“I’m sorry.” Only she wasn’t. Lucas could read that in her mind, if not in her face, in her voice. Threnody stared at him. “Jason’s right, though. We need to know the full extent of your plans, Lucas. We need access to our powers again if you want us to actually help you.”
“Four against one,” Jason muttered.
“It wouldn’t be enough,” Kerr said. “And I won’t fight him.”
Jason’s expression was one of betrayed surprise. “What?”
“Neither will I,” Threnody agreed quietly.
Quinton stared at her, a tight, wounded expression on his face. Jason caught his eye when he looked away. “You and I, Quinton. We’re the only sane people in this group.”
Threnody rolled her eyes. “It’s not about sanity, Jason. It never was. It’s about doing what’s right.”
“How is joining forces with Lucas Serca, right?” Quinton demanded.
“Because he’s the only one willing to save the human race. Mars isn’t the answer. We can’t just pick up and leave like none of this ever happened, like we didn’t ruin this planet. Maybe everyone who launched the bombs all those years ago knew that as well.” Threnody lifted her chin a little, squaring her shoulders like the soldier she wasn’t supposed to be anymore. “Tell them what’s in the Arctic, Lucas. Tell them what you told me.”
Lucas looked at the expectant faces of the Strykers, the bored stances of Matron, Everett, and Novak. Getting to his feet, Lucas stepped off the cargo ramp and onto the launchpad.
“Threnody’s right about the shuttles. Don’t blame her because she’s smarter than all of you combined,” Lucas said. “There’s an island in the Arctic that holds a seed bank that survived the Border Wars. The World Court knows of it—hell, they’ve used it. How do you think we got the SkyFarms to feed everyone after the fact? The world was too polluted, too dead, to grow anything in the aftermath of the Border Wars. The World Court is going to take all of that with them when they leave Earth—every last seed, every last frozen embryo of all the species we drove to extinction over the centuries, and all the ones we lost in the Border Wars. They’ll take it with them and leave us with nothing.
“They’re only taking registered humans to try and stop the spread of psions. They’re taking with them everything that lets us survive on this planet and leaving us behind to die.” Lucas shook his head, his accustomed expression of sarcastic amusement and disdain slipping away. “What they want isn’t going to fix their lives how they think it will. We destroyed the future we should have had with the Border Wars. This is the one we have to survive in. This is all we’ve got. We owe it to the next generation to build a better world.”
“Thought that was supposed to be Mars,” Novak said.
Everett smacked him upside the head. “Shut up.”
“If Mars was meant to be livable, it would have stayed habitable,” Lucas said. “It died out long before humans walked on this planet.”
“That
doesn’t explain the Warhounds,” Jason said in a frustrated voice. “Or why you’re purposefully bringing them here.”
“They’ve got someone in their ranks who can break through your shields. We need what’s in your head, Jason. More than you realize.”
“You can’t do it yourself?” Jason’s mouth curled into a sneer. “I thought triad psions were capable of anything.”
“Just because I’m a Class I doesn’t mean I’m always going to be the right person for the job or that I will have the required strength. Why do you think I brought all of you together? I had to wait for the Strykers to demote Threnody and Quinton, had to wait for them to be paired up with you. It’s going to take all of us to make sure those left behind survive.”
“Wait,” Quinton said. “You mean you don’t want to stop the launch? I thought that was the whole point of us working with you?”
“Let them go to Mars. We’ll keep Earth. We just need half of what they’re going to take with them. Half the seeds. Half the embryos. Half the people. Half the psions, once we ensure the Strykers’ survival. We can build something new with all of that.”
Lucas was staring at Threnody as he said it, seeing steely agreement in her eyes.
“The government is gonna fry all your brains before they launch into space,” Matron said. “Even I know that.”
“There’s a way to reprogram the neurotrackers,” Lucas said. “How do you think the Warhounds managed to keep all the defected Strykers alive long enough to remove the bioware?”
“There’s twelve hundred of us in the Strykers Syndicate,” Kerr said. “How are you going to stop the kill sequence for that many psions?”
Again, Lucas looked at Jason. The telekinetic just frowned. “I’m not that good of a hacker.”
Lucas shook his head. “It’s not your hacking skills we’ll need.”