Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  “I’ll do that.” I stood to leave but stopped and looked around the lab. Blood stained the floor near the door, and six bodies were stacked neatly against the wall. “Thomas, you’re not alone here, are you? What if there’s another attack before you get the node out of here?”

  “Just because you can’t see my defenses doesn’t mean I don’t have them. They caught me napping last time, but that won’t happen again.”

  He didn’t elaborate, but he sounded confident. I took it at face value and went back out into the hall. A broken proxy was slumped against the wall. Half of its head was missing, and beneath the shattered polymer faceplate I could see the metal latticework of its skull. I knelt and tilted its chin up with my knuckle. Only one of its seven eyes still had a lens in the socket. It reflected a dim red glow where the light hit it at just the right angle.

  I called Andrea on my dataspike.

  “Tycho.” She sounded relieved. “Thank you for helping my mother. She’s alive, thanks to you.” It was the only time I heard her refer to Samara Markov that way.

  “Of course. I’m just sorry Katerina got away from me.”

  “That can’t be helped now. The mistake was mine for underestimating her.”

  “Did Thomas tell you about her dead drop?”

  “Yes, and that’s one of the reasons we’re abandoning this facility. There’s no way to know what else she installed here. Anyway, give me your sitrep. What do we need to clean up topside?”

  “Well, I spotted Katerina in the hotel lobby and gave chase. We entered the street and she veered into the road. StateSec intervened and tried to arrest me.”

  “You didn’t kill any officers, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t have a gun. I just—”

  “You went after Katerina without a weapon?”

  “No, I had a pipe.”

  “Do you realize you’re mortal? How many officers were on scene?”

  “Not too many. Sixteen or so.”

  “Oh, only sixteen?”

  “Yeah. They tried to arrest me, and that’s when Katerina got away.”

  “Alright. You need to get out of Bruges sooner than later. We’ll get any warrants closed, but you’ll need to avoid public travel. They’ll be watching for you everywhere.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Lambda site, but I want you to make your way out of Bruges tonight. Pack a five-day bag and take a car from upstairs. Understood?”

  “Copy. I have one more question, though. Did we take any casualties?”

  “Nine of our support staff, yes, but you mean the field team? No, no one from the field team. We wiped out the attacking force to the last man, but the Eleven won’t give up. For all we know, they may have another unit in place already or assets within law enforcement, so don’t get stopped on your way out of Bruges.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Tycho?”

  “Yes?”

  “Destroy this dataspike. I’ll contact you again at the rendezvous.”

  21

  Lambda Site was the designation for the port of Dunkirk, on the northern coast of France. Despite the dark, I kept the viewscreens inside the car on streetview during the entire drive, watching for StateSec or any signs of a tail. For the most part, I was alone on the road, and the car sped through the night passing only the occasional late-night traveler.

  I entered Dunkirk an hour after leaving Bruges. I rerouted the car when it neared the port, directing it to take me a kilometer down the road to park in a charging station. The fuel cells were barely drained, but if anyone checked the tags, a vehicle registered in a city some distance away wouldn’t seem out of place there.

  I walked the rest of the way to Lambda Site. The early-morning air carried the bite of approaching winter, and I turned up my collar against the chill wind. Dunkirk was a fairly typical port city, active at all hours of the day to process the endless flow of goods from the north. As I approached the port, I saw dozens of crews operating articulated loaders and towering androids processing shipment inspections. Drones gilded silently overhead, feeding data to dockmasters in the control tower. Autonomous vehicles of all sizes weaved around and through shipping containers and dockworkers to retrieve or deliver payloads of shipments and supplies.

  Though it meant more eyes to see me—both human and synthetic—the chaos would serve my purposes well. I was just another figure among the many.

  I entered Warehouse 03 and approached the service kiosk. It presented a spartan interface with just two fields—one for a company name and one for a tracking code. The company was always the same for terrestrial caches like this. I pulled off a glove and typed PYRPHOROS INC. then the twenty-eight-digit ID. It’d been a struggle to commit that to memory, but thankfully my tired mind hadn’t made a mistake and the kiosk beeped with a message to Please Wait.

  A mechanized arm suspended from a system of rails along the ceiling descended a few moments later, placing a shipping case less than a foot wide in any dimension on the floor in front of me. It was sealed, the tamper indicator across the seams still whole. I took the box and walked back outside, deciding it would be best to check the contents somewhere busy than not. Obfuscation through visibility, as it was explained to me.

  An android lumbered past as I walked to one side of the warehouse. Close up, I was able to truly appreciate the size of the thing. It was six meters tall, spindly, and carrying two shipping containers on its shoulders as though they were nothing. Its footfalls barely made a sound. Though there wasn’t any reason to, I waited until the thing was a good distance away before opening the case in my hands.

  Inside was a metal cylinder and a flat rectangular card with a faint seam running across the short length of its face. Looking closer at the card, it appeared to be wax, but the seam struck me as odd. I gave it a tentative flex, and the wax broke away to reveal a thin polymer chit with numbered instructions printed on it. I brushed away the remnants of the wax and ran through the list.

  1) Destroy all electronic devices. Remove all identifiable clothing and pocket litter.

  2) Board ship in Berth 9.

  3) Proceed to 65°45'00"N 1°42'08"E. Activate beacon on arrival.

  4) Dive to 30m upon clearance.

  It stood to reason the metal cylinder was the beacon it mentioned. One end was rounded, and the other flat. I could make out small ridges around the flat end and a fine, hairline seam all the way around. I placed the card and beacon in my coat pocket, latched the case shut, and walked back to my car.

  The coordinates were in the middle of the Norwegian Sea. That was likely why Dunkirk was designated as Lambda Site in the first place; there was no shortage of seafaring craft. I left the box in the car and set it to return to Bruges. I watched the car pull away and disappear into the city, then walked to the marina in search of Berth 9.

  There was a reasonably modest yacht waiting for me. On board, I found two android crewmen packed in long-term stasis in the mid cabin. They were lying in what I supposed would be a fetal position for a human, but much more compact and angular. If not for the bright paint and reflective metal, they could almost be mistaken for supply cases. I activated one and, after it’d unfurled itself and completed a self-diagnostic, ordered it to launch the ship. Amusingly enough, it activated the other android to help complete the task. I left them to it and took a seat above deck. Ten minutes later, we were sailing into the English Channel.

  The ship had enough provisions to last a crew of three two weeks. The galley was stocked with Peacekeeper combat rations and bags of distilled water. I’d never eaten a military ration before, but I tried one and convinced myself I could live with it for the two days the voyage would take me.

  The sunny weather through the North Sea ensured the ship’s fuel cells never dropped below half capacity the first day. The weather turned further north, and I spent most of the second day below deck to escape the frigid spray of the swelling waves. By the time I entered the Norwegian Sea, the sky and water we
re equal shades of dark gray. Only the frothing waves gave me any sense of space.

  I slipped into a drysuit and strapped on the rebreather once I reached the coordinates for rendezvous. I twisted the flat cap of the beacon, and it came free to expose a small contact plate and an LED. I pressed on the plate. The LED blinked twice and then held steady red. It was fairly anticlimactic. I checked the card again to make sure I hadn’t missed a step. One of the androids returned from above deck and folded itself into a corner of the space to recharge. It was soaked, and water seeped through the gaps in its fascia even fully collapsed.

  The light on the beacon turned green. I assumed that had to be the clearance I was waiting for. I pulled my mask down over my face and checked the airflow. Satisfied, I stepped out onto the deck and was greeted by the sea as wave after wave battered the ship. I was relieved to feel nothing beneath the drysuit. The seas even this far north didn’t ice, but the waters here were nothing close to warm.

  Timing my entry between swells, I exhaled then jumped from the ship. Slipping below the water, I realized how loud the surface had been by the contrast; it was suddenly calm and quiet, without even a heartbeat to break the silence. The light from above, weak as it was, fell away to nothing as I rapidly descended. I knew my augments were heavy, but watching the depth increase so quickly brought the abstract notion into crystal clarity. I was sinking like a stone. Like the Augmen that had once tried to kill me.

  Below, I could see a green light within a massive silhouette of dark gray. So that was my target, a submarine. I’d expected an offshore facility or artificial island, but a sub made a certain kind of sense. The mobility gave it defensibility and a clandestine quality that couldn’t otherwise be achieved. It was the same rationale that drove the Arbiter Force to use small teams based on patrolling ships.

  A few minutes later, I was standing in the airlock with water streaming down my body. The inner door opened as I pulled off my diving mask, and Raven Sommer was standing there with Andrew Jones.

  “Tycho Barrett!” Raven beamed. “What took you so long?”

  I unclipped the rebreather. “I thought I made good time. Nine hundred nautical miles in two days is slow?”

  “You took a boat the whole way here?” asked Andrew.

  I answered with a question. “How did you two get here?”

  “We took a flight to Oslo,” said Raven.

  I immediately understood. “Well, that wasn’t an option for me. I had an issue with StateSec after the attack, so there was no way I was going to get through port security.”

  Andrew laughed, and Raven shook her head. “Well, I’m happy to see you in one piece,” she said. “Follow us. We’ve got a briefing with Andrea. I’ll show you where you can stow the dive gear.”

  I shrugged off the rebreather and stepped out of the drysuit. The sub had more open space than I would have expected. There was room to stand, but equipment covered every bit of available space around us. There were placards and readouts in Chinese, with the occasional annotation in Cyrillic.

  “What is this submarine,” I asked. “Peacekeeper fleet?”

  Andrew answered over his shoulder, sidestepping a passing android crewman. “It is Federation, but no, not part of the terran fleet. It was a gift courtesy of the Russo-Sino Territories sixty years ago. Changed hands a few times before that. Now it’s a signals post for Sol Federation Intelligence.”

  That seemed wasteful. “This ship looked massive from the outside, but you’re telling me it’s just a listening station?”

  “Section 6 convinced the world this ship was decommissioned for parts ages ago. If anyone knew the Federation had a Kusanagi-class warship still in operation, they’d probably take offense. Maybe even want to start the arms race all over again, right?”

  That was more in line with Sol Federation policy as I understood it. Offer the olive branch while clutching the knife. “Fair point,” I said.

  We passed multiple bulkheads and went down a short flight of stairs, and we finally stopped at a rectangular room with a long, narrow table in the center. Thomas and Vincenzo were already seated. Andrea was leaning with her back against the wall. She wasted no time when she saw us, launching straight into the briefing. Raven closed the door behind us.

  “Right.” Andrea stood up, took a deep breath, and looked at each of us. “We’ve just taken a serious hit. Our primary terran headquarters is burnt and off-limits from this point on to everyone on the field team. Over the next few weeks our support staff will sanitize the site, but there’s no going back. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we survived, and the Operator is working to cap the fallout as we speak.”

  She turned to me. “Tycho, it won’t be hard to get the case against you closed in Bruges, but avoid going there at all for the next six months unless absolutely necessary.”

  I nodded to show her I understood. Whether there were formal charges against me or not, it’s never a good thing to be known by StateSec. I was only too happy to stay away from Bruges.

  “Before we go on, let’s run through what happened after the armory so we’re all clear. Raven and Vincenzo?”

  “We got pinned down.” Raven’s voice was troubled, like it bothered her on a personal level to have been in that position. “The team we were fighting brought up a squad assault weapon, and we weren’t able to get a line of fire on them. They had adhesive grenades, but those were useless for the positioning.”

  Vincenzo continued the story. “It was a stalemate, and it remained that way for a long time. If they had standard fragmentaries, they could have bounced around our cover, but instead they were trapped just like us.”

  Andrea was pacing slowly as they talked, a sign of how much nervous energy was still coursing through her body. “I had a hell of a time clearing them out of the nest they’d established. Andrew and Thomas?”

  Andrew replied, “We were guarding the Warwick node. But that’s a fairly fragile piece of equipment, so they couldn’t use anything heavy when they came for us. Just small-arms fire, mostly. Still, they threw a lot of guys against us. Our proxies were pretty much wiped out by the end of it. I think we had maybe two left by the time you got to us.”

  Andrea confirmed. “I came in cloaked and took them by surprise, but by that point there were only three of them left alive. Tycho, bring them up to speed on what happened after we split up.”

  “I took Dr. Markov down to Holding, but Katerina attacked us. She had escaped her cell and was trying to leave the building. I held her off for a while, but she injured the doctor. After stabilizing her, I went after Katerina and caught up in the lobby of the hotel. She ran into the city, and I was on her tail until StateSec intervened.”

  Andrea nodded. “So, that brings us to now. There are a few conclusions we can draw. One is that the Eleven have managed to compromise the Jovian military, although it’s likely they had no idea who they were really fighting. Conclusion two is David Kote’s affiliation. We’ve considered the possibility that he is one of the Eleven, but his life history is too well-established, and the expectation is that one of the Eleven would have a vague early history.”

  Vincenzo spoke up. “So, if he’s not one of the Eleven, who is he to them?”

  “My guess is that he’s working on the behalf of one or more of the Eleven. The only problem with that is we can’t do anything with it. So far there’s been no intelligence leading back from Kote toward any of them. None of his known affiliations are strong candidates to be one of the Eleven. It’s possible that not even Kote has direct contact with them.”

  “So, what would that mean?” asked Andrew. “They’re communicating with him by proxy?”

  “That seems plausible, though it’s still just an educated guess. But yes, he could be taking his orders from a cutout intended to shield the Eleven from potential exposure.”

  “What about Katerina?” I suggested. “She was piloting Kote’s ship. She could even be the one who first contacted Kote on their behalf.”

/>   “It’s just as possible that he was the one who originally contacted her,” Thomas pointed out. “The fact is, we just don’t know how the circuitry works on this.”

  I could see what he was saying, but only Thomas would have used circuitry as a metaphor for a network of relationships between human beings.

  Raven had been staring at her feet for the past few minutes, listening to what everyone else was saying. Now she looked up. “The one thing we do know is that Katerina is at the heart of it.”

  “That’s an excellent point,” said Andrea. “She is at the heart of it. She must have been the one who transferred the Warwick node from wherever it previously was to Llyr Station. And even if those special forces troops were there to retrieve the node, they provided an excellent distraction for her to pull off her escape.”

  Vincenzo smiled ruefully. “I used to love her escape stories, but being on the other end is not so pleasant.”

  “You can say that again.” Andrea stopped pacing and looked around the room. “I owe you all an apology. I underestimated the amount of security that would have been needed to effectively hold her.”

  “I don’t think anything short of killing her would have been enough,” Vincenzo replied grimly. “Who can say how many other secret mechanisms and backdoors she had?”

  Andrea’s jaw clenched in anger. “That demonstrates how shitty of a person she always was. Loyalty meant nothing to her. Family meant nothing to her.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Katerina was an unusual person. Given her personality, she could have installed those systems purely as an intellectual exercise—however useful they eventually turned out to be.

  Andrea continued. “The strongest lead we have is still Katerina, and recapturing her is our highest priority. That’s our next mission.”

  “That reminds me,” said Veraldi. “Tycho, you’re officially cleared for field duty.”

  I chuckled quietly, thinking about how upset I’d been just a few days before when I’d been told the opposite. After everything we’d just been through, I was no longer quite so focused on getting back in the action.