Ophelia smiled at us graciously. “Have you gentlemen eaten? I can’t heat the soup, but it should still help you keep your energy up.”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” said Gabriel. I wandered over to the bookshelf to examine the titles. It’s a good way to find out about the person who’s house you’re in, although in this case there were no surprises. Franklin Emmett liked books on military history, with an emphasis on the early days of Earth’s expansion throughout the solar system. Frank walked up behind me. “Nothing in there about Arbitration except in passing, but if you’re curious anyway go ahead and look. Not that you’ll have much time for reading, I imagine.”
I turned and glanced out the window, trying to get a sense of the situation outside. “You’re right about that. We’re here to get the lights back on.”
Frank shook his head. “Not sure how you’re going to do that. In case you’ve forgotten, you were running away from a few dozen Nightwatch officers about fifteen minutes ago.”
I scowled a little. We had no choice, but running from anyone didn’t sit well with me.
“Speaking of which,” said Gabriel, “what the hell is going on out there? It looks like a civil war.”
Frank shrugged. “Not really a war yet, but it’s getting close. The Nightwatch has split, and the different factions control different areas. The residential zone on this level is Defector territory, but the hub is Loyalist.”
“So it was the Loyalists who were chasing us?” asked Gabe.
“You got it. Loyal to August Marcenn, the Nightwatch Commander. Damned if I can say why, though.”
Gabriel nodded. “We saw a video clip. He seemed… irrational.”
In their tiny kitchen, Ophelia was ladling out bowls of soup. She didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard because their apartment was so tiny. “That’s exactly how I would describe it. He’s become irrational.”
Franklin frowned. “Ophelia is a kind woman. She sometimes gives people too much credit. Is he crazy? Sure. But that doesn’t explain what he’s done to this Tower. And it sure as hell doesn’t account for why so many people are willing to help him do it.”
“Chain of command?” I asked.
He shook his head emphatically. “That’s not how it works. You get an illegal order, you’re supposed to refuse it. Something this extreme, they should have arrested the guy who gave the order. There’s something else going on here, something I don’t understand.”
“We don’t understand it either,” said Gabriel. “In fact, we were hoping you could help us understand it. Why don’t you take it from the top? Tell us everything that happened since the crisis started.”
Frank sat down in one of the easy chairs. “I’ll let Ophelia handle it. She’s more… objective. I’ll just interrupt occasionally when she plays it too soft.”
Ophelia came in with a tray of soup bowls. “Sit down where you like, please. I have your lunch.”
I sat on the couch, and Gabe sat next to me. I had to eat with my left hand. Now that the adrenaline of combat had passed, I wasn’t sure I could hold a spoon with that metal splinter sticking out of my right arm. My hand shook a little, but I managed to get it in my mouth. The soup was perfectly seasoned, but like all synthetic food it had an unpleasantly slimy texture when cold. I ate it gratefully anyway, knowing it was the best she had to offer. Ophelia sat down in the chair across from us. “So, Franklin wants me to tell the story?”
“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I get too mad. If I could I’d strangle this guy with my own two hands…”
“I don’t mind at all, though it’s an unpleasant topic. Things have been strange here, and I have the feeling they’re only going to get stranger. I’m not quite sure where to start.”
Gabriel was sweating, and he kept swallowing like he might be sick. He fought to get the words out. “Tell us… tell us about August Marcenn.”
Frank gave him a sharp look. “What’s wrong with your friend here?”
I didn’t feel too great either, now that I think about it. The room felt hot, and the soup seemed to stick in my throat. “He took a hit in the left shoulder. I took a little shrapnel, too, now that I think about it.”
Frank was aghast—and possibly impressed. “And you just thought you’d wait till after lunch to say anything about it? That’s taking politeness a bit too far.”
Ophelia was up and rummaging around in the bathroom. “We have a med-kit. Get your armor off and I’ll have a look.”
Gabriel wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “August Marcenn?”
Opehlia’s voice was firm. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll talk while I work, but you’re not going to tell me you don’t need medical attention.”
“She used to be a nurse,” said Frank. “That’s how we met.”
“We… we appreciate the help.” Gabriel leaned back and closed his eyes, and I helped him remove his shoulder guard. The wound was wet, but his initial assessment had been correct. It wasn’t too bad. A bullet had fragmented when it hit his armor, and one of the fragments had shot off at a funny angle, slipped between the armor plates, and buried itself in his shoulder. I could see it poking halfway out.
“You too, Mr. Barrett,” said Ophelia. “I’ll deal with his wound first, but you need it too.”
I worked the release with my left hand and managed to get a section of my armor removed so she could work on my arm. Once I saw what my wound looked like, I realized I was probably hurt worse than Gabriel. The splinter was huge, and the stench of blood was so overwhelming I almost threw up into my soup bowl.
Franklin had a look. “That’s a nasty wound there, soldier.”
I closed my eyes, fighting down a wave of nausea. Now that I thought about it, it was probably not such a great idea to eat slime soup with a sharp piece of metal jutting out of my arm. Still, I managed to force the words out. “I’m not a soldier. I’m an Arbiter.”
“You may not be a soldier, but you are one hard-as-nails son of a bitch, and I don’t mind saying so.”
Ophelia was working on Gabriel’s wound, but she glanced over. “Franklin’s right, that is not something you want in your arm. But don’t worry, Mr. Barrett. I have everything I need here to patch you up.”
She pulled the bullet fragment out of Gabriel’s shoulder, sealed the wound with a heat-wand, and gave him an injection. “This should control the pain, but it won’t make it go away completely. I could give you something that would, but I assume you want to be able to fight.”
Gabriel clenched his teeth. “You assume correctly. Thanks for the patch-up, but I really need to hear about August Marcenn as soon as possible.”
Ophelia’s voice was unruffled. “Of course, of course.”
She turned to me, and I closed my eyes again so I wouldn’t have to see what she was doing about the metal fragment. As she examined it, she started talking. “Two days ago, Nightwatch Commander August Marcenn ordered the execution of everyone in Tower 7 at or above Level 250. That includes all of us.”
This statement was so bizarre that I sat up in surprise, but then I almost screamed. The act of trying to sit up while she was examining the splinter had sent a lightning bolt of pain through my arm.
“I really do need you to sit still. I know it’s shocking, but that’s what happened. He made an official announcement—anyone found at Level 250 or above beyond a certain hour would be subject to immediate execution.”
“That sounds like a quarantine situation.” Gabe sounded thoughtful, as if this might make sense of it all. “Was there any kind of medical research going on up there?”
Frank the history buff sounded intrigued. “You mean like Antarctica, 2672?”
In 2672, an accident at a research facility had released a weaponized antibiotic-resistant strain of pneumonic plague into a totally unprepared civilian population. 50,000 people had died as a result, but the death toll would have been a lot higher if Antarctica’s governor had not declared a quarantine and imposed it with lethal
force.
“It’s a possibility,” said Gabe.
Ophelia pulled out the splinter, but for some reason it didn’t hurt at all. My nausea was fading, although my eyelids felt heavy.
“I don’t know of any such research in this Tower,” she said. “All I know is this: Commander Marcenn cleared the upper levels. 50 levels in all. God knows how many people died up there, although some did make it out. The Nightwatch seized control of the central hub on all the floors between here and there, preventing anyone from getting away. And then he shut off the electricity, including the life support. We’d all be baked alive before too long…”
Frank interrupted. “Except we won’t, because the oxygen will run out first. In about 30 or so hours.”
Ophelia patted my wound with a wet cloth. “You can open your eyes now. I’ve removed the splinter and patched you up. It looked like you hardly felt it, to tell you the truth.”
She was right about that. After that surge of pain when I tried to sit up, my arm had gone completely numb.
“So, who are the Defectors?” asked Gabe.
Frank replied, “They’re just ordinary Nightwatch, but they’ve refused to comply with the emergency orders. According to them, the guys that are helping Marcenn are as normal as they are. No sign of trouble at all until the orders came down, and then some did what they were told… and some did not. The ones who did not have taken up positions in the residential areas, holding the line against Marcenn’s Loyalists.”
That made me curious. “With the numbers we’re seeing down here, they can’t have that many people on the upper levels.”
Frank nodded in agreement. “They’ve committed the bulk of their forces to the defense of the hub. I’d say their main objective is to keep anyone from getting out. But that doesn’t mean the upper levels are safe now. Far from it. The streets down here are dangerous, but the floors above this level are patrolled by android proxy units. They’re totally lethal, and there’s never any doubt about their loyalty. You’re talking about a 50-floor buffer zone against any attempt on August Marcenn. And Level 250 is just a massive tomb.”
Ophelia bit her lip. “I just don’t understand it. Why would anyone want to do what these people are doing?”
Frank shook his head. “I know you think they’re just crazy, but it doesn’t add up. I’ve heard of folly adoo…”
Folie à deux was what he meant—when two people share the same psychosis. I’d read about it in my Criminal Psychology class at the Arbiter Academy, but this was nothing like folie à deux. “I’ve never heard of this many people sharing the same delusion at the same time. Frank is right, it doesn’t add up. Unless something is making them crazy, but then how does it work? They’re all working together; they don’t act like a bunch of random lunatics. No, this is more like a criminal conspiracy.”
Gabe nodded. “Terrorism?”
“Or cult activity,” I suggested. “Like murder-suicide. We’ve seen it before.”
Not on anything like this scale, but in principle it was not unheard of. Cult murder-suicides went back several hundred years, and there were still cases sometimes on remote outer colonies. Some weird little religion would take hold among the colonists, and the next thing you know they’d be turning off their life-support and waiting for the angels to take them.
“Maybe you guys have,” said Frank, “but I still don’t know. If they were part of a cult, they should never have passed the personality screening for the Nightwatch. And someone would have said something. There’s always a leak. No way can something like this be kept completely secret long enough to set it up.”
“Not important,” said Gabriel. “Or at least not relevant. We don’t really need to find out why, we just need to stop it. The investigators who come in after us can figure out what happened, and the writers can write books about it. Our job is simpler.”
Frank clapped his hands together once. “I like how you think. But how are we going to do that?”
Gabe stood up from the couch and walked over to the window. On the streets below us, there was hardly a hint of movement. Only a single old lady, walking by on some errand she couldn’t put off—or else just wandering around in a daze. Everyone else was staying inside, and I couldn’t blame them.
I could tell Gabe was thinking, trying to work out a plan of attack. “Do any of the Defectors have network access? Do any of them specialize in cyberwarfare?”
Frank shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. Hack into the system and override the controls, then turn the juice back on whether he likes it or not. Yeah, I know a guy with that expertise. But he can’t get in. Turns out Marcenn has it locked down tight. He’s the only one with the network authority to turn things on or off.”
“How did that even happen?” asked Gabe. “That’s a basic error—to leave one person in charge of the whole network. It leaves you vulnerable to an insider attack.”
“No kidding. It didn’t used to be that way at all. There are access terminals located all over the place for the technicians and engineers. No one has the necessary permissions anymore except Marcenn himself—he even disabled all the backdoors. Don’t ask me how. Anyone who would have been involved in the decision was in the upper levels, and everyone up there…”
“Is already dead.” Gabriel nodded. “They may not have given him control because they wanted to. With a killer android pointing a cannon at you, how long do you think you’d hold out before you shared your half of the network key? Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. There’s only one thing we can do.”
I looked up at Gabe. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Only if you’re thinking of doing something really stupid.”
When we’d first breached the tower, we were thinking in terms of a rogue Nightwatch commander protected by a deluded handful of unthinking supporters. That would have been simple. Enter the Tower, contact the Nightwatch, find out how many of their people were involved in the conspiracy, then coordinate with the rest of them to make the arrest. We had discussed the possibility that Marcenn had substantial armed support, but we had also dismissed it as being unrealistic. It was unrealistic. But it was also the case, even if we couldn’t figure out why that would be.
We had also discussed the possibility that something had caused everyone in Tower 7 to become dangerously unstable at the same time. That didn’t seem to be the case, but it didn’t seem to be too far off from reality either. Something was certainly affecting at least half of the Nightwatch, maybe even more than half. The only problem with that was that it ought to have been impossible, but what’s the use of that word when you’re looking the thing right in the face?
An impossible situation requires an impossible solution. “How’s this?” I held up one finger. “If Marcenn’s the only one with the network permissions, then they’re stored in his dataspike.” I held up a second finger. “Marcenn’s probably on Level 300 or close to it, with fifty levels of battle androids between him and us.” I held up a third finger. “The only way up there is through the elevator shafts, and we can’t get to those except by going back the way we just came.” I closed all my fingers. “Conclusion: we sneak past everyone and everything that wants to kill us, shoot any random bad guys who get in the way, grab the dataspike off August Marcenn, and get Tower 7 turned back on before anyone does anything to stop us. Oh, and we redirect all the androids before they shoot us a few thousand times each.”
Gabriel grinned, but his eyes had a wild and hopeless look in them. “It’s like I thought. You’re thinking of doing something really, really stupid.”
I grinned back, guessing my eyes looked as wild as his did. We had a plan, of sorts.
“I’m coming with you,” said Frank.
Ophelia’s eyes flashed a hint of anger. “Franklin Emmet, you’re doing no such thing! How young do you think you are?”
He scowled and punched the arm of his chair. “Well, I’m not waiting here! Damn it, Ophelia, it’s time I did something!�
�
“You’ve done plenty. Let the young men do this one.”
I could see that Frank didn’t like this, especially the part about the “the young men.” The fact that we were Arbiters probably had something to do with it too. Even if he had decided that he liked us personally, he didn’t want to let us have all the glory. Still, he would only have slowed us down for a few brief minutes, after which he would have been shot and killed. This wasn’t his fight. His fight was here protecting his home, whether he liked it or not.
“I need you to do something else for me,” said Gabriel, reading the situation and deciding that the man just needed a job to do.
Frank glared at everyone in the room. “What’s that?”
“Make contact with this cyberwarfare guy you know. When we get back here with the dataspike, we’ll need his help to make use of it.”
He sighed and clenched his fist, probably fighting the urge to tell us all to go to hell. Then Ophelia put a hand on his shoulder, and he straightened up. “Okay, young guys. You win this one. But come back alive, or I’m coming after you all by myself.”
“You got it, Franklin.” Gabe stuck out his hand, and the older man shook it. Ophelia gave us a grateful look. Gabe turned to me. “It’s a good thing we got this coilgun. We’re going dark all the way.”
That was the only possible option, though it did seem a bit far-fetched. The coilgun was nearly silent, but none of my weapons were quiet except my knife. Then I got what he was saying. I raised one eyebrow. “Spear and arrow pattern?” The spear is a close-range weapon and the arrow is long-range. One guy covers with the arrow and the other one creeps in with the spear.
Gabriel nodded. “Spear and arrow.”
“It’s been a while,” I pointed out.
He grinned. “If you’ve ever done this outside of a training exercise, I’ll eat my helmet. But you remember how to do it?”
“Oh, I remember how to do it. I just thought it was strictly hypothetical.”
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 5