Omega point rak-2
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Richards shook his head. "Sorry. This place must have been built on the remains of one of the wrecked Reality Realms, and they were keyed into human minds. AI and near-AI within were run strictly as bubble simulations, consciousnesses as separate from them as humans are from the mathematics of the Real. That's what's happened to me here. I've been walled in. No wonder I can't make myself a new hat." He sniffed his coat. "Or do my laundry. You got any people back at your HQ with higher access rights?"
"Yep," said the bear. "A couple."
"I should speak to this boss of yours," Richards said. "Maybe he can sort me out with a hat."
"Right you are, sunshine, because that's where you're going. Now," said the bear. He swung his head from side to side, looking out over the plain. He peered into the distance and righted his helmet decisively. "This way. If there's still a this way left." He pointed his muzzle out across the plain. "Here," he said hopefully. "You got any fags?"
Richards shrugged his shoulders. "Don't smoke. Who does? It's bad for you."
The bear gave him a disdainful look. "Oh, puh-lease," he said.
Out on the plains, thunder rumbled.
CHAPTER 5
Kolosev
Kolosev's mother didn't know where her son was, but the servers delivering her mail did. Veronique cracked the old lady's Grid profile quickly, Kolosev's cryptography a little less so, but by 3.30 she had him.
"South," Valdaire said over a glass of black tea. Kolosev's mother was handing out cake, as eager to find her darling son as they were. Always the way, thought Otto. Every time Oleg went underground, Otto and Richards came to see his dear old mama. She was as helpful as she was the last time.
"Here." Valdaire pointed to Chloe's screen, at a locator point flaring on a map.
"He is a mummy's boy," said Otto quietly to Valdaire as Mrs Kolosev flirted with an uncomfortable-looking Chures. "All his super hacker crap. He still needs his socks washing, this is how we find him every time."
Otto, Veronique, Lehmann and Chures left Kiev that evening. They travelled along the E95 in a rented groundcar, Kiev being a city where Richards amp; Klein had no garage. Systems cracked by Valdaire, the car proved suitably anonymous. Otto debated taking an aircar, but ground vehicles drew less attention, especially so far east. As was his habit, Otto drove himself, not trusting the vehicle's automated systems against outside interference. He turned down Lehmann's offer of help. He said he wanted to think, but in reality he didn't want to sleep, he could do without the temptation of the mentaug's dreams.
The forests of the north turned to steppe as they headed south, fertile plains tilled by enormous, automated harvesters. The highway was eight lanes wide, full of slaved cars in tight road trains, as busy as any in Europe, but once they turned off the highway AI guidance cut out, and traffic dwindled until they were the only car, sharing the road with robot grain trucks shuttling ceaselessly between the fields and rail depots and heavy lifter stations, busy with the second harvest.
Valdaire sat up front with Otto for a day, watching the plains roll by. She talked a little about her early childhood in Cote d'Ivoire, about her life with Chloe before the country had exploded into violence and her family had fled. She was speaking more to herself than Otto. She seemed content talking levelly this way, staring out of the window as she made sense of her life to herself. She probably does this a lot, thought Otto, I may as well not be here. He was willing to let her continue, until she looked at him and asked suddenly, "Have you ever been married, Klein?"
"Once," he said reluctantly.
She waited for more. He didn't offer any. "You don't talk much about yourself, Klein," she said.
"Read my files," he said, even though that's what Richards always said to him. He wished she'd leave him be. He didn't mind listening to Valdaire. It helped some people; the last sixty years or so had been such that half the people on the planet had some kind of horror story to tell, but he preferred to keep his pain to himself.
"I have. Not the personal stuff," she added hurriedly. "I feel like I'm prying."
"You are."
"Sorry."
Otto grunted through a half-smile at that. "You'd make a poor security consultant."
"Maybe that's why I'm not one," she said.
"There is not much to tell," said Otto.
Valdaire looked as if she didn't believe him.
"I work. That's all," he said and kept his silence. Lehmann swapped over with her at the next stop. At least he knew how to keep quiet.
They passed the grassed-over sites of collective farms and abandoned towns, by low arcologies, through freshly cut fields being tilled for winter wheat, through a million-hectare rewilded patch of steppe teeming with Saiga, Przewalski's horse and gengineered megafauna. Through sleeping villages little changed in centuries, past the neat rows of a Han agri-engineering dormitory town. Night deepened, and lightened into day, and came once more. They stopped twice in nowhere towns grey with sad histories, and were gone quickly.
The second morning. Otto steered on to an unmetalled road, nothing but crops of all kinds around them, low rumble of the auto-harvesters at work carrying over the rolling vastness of the country, trails of dust marking their progress.
They approached an abandoned farm complex, mid-twentieth century, most of its concrete crumbled to ivy-choked grit. Weedy mounds of stone to one side of the road marked the remains of the village it had sprung from, windowless brick walls on the other the Soviet failure it had become. Ancient and newer parts were as ruinous as each other. They arrived at a square before a dilapidated office block. A few barns from the early twenty-first century tottered round its edges. A camouflaged satellite dish sat inside one barn with no sides, pointed through a hole in the roof, cables snaking across the dusty ground.
"We are here," said Otto, setting the car to park itself.
"What is this place?" said Chures.
"Ancient village turned Soviet collective farm, abandoned eighty years ago," said Otto.
"What, one of your ancestors burn it down?" said Chures.
"Don't start on the Nazi shit, SudAmigo, that was near two hundred years ago," said Lehmann.
"This place was hit hard by the Christmas Flu," said Otto. "A fifth of villages inhabited a century ago are like this. It is still endemic; there was another outbreak last year. That's why you see so many biofilters on faces out here." Otto looked around. "Kolosev has worked out of here before. He's short on imagination."
"Kind of desolate, even for a criminal," murmured Valdaire.
"He is useful," said Otto. "Let us approach him gently. He is prone to nervousness, and he will have seen us approach. We go in too hard, he'll wipe it all. Lucky for us he's curious; he'll want to know what we want. This barn — " he pointed to one less damaged than the rest "- it has a high EM field, plenty of equipment working. The rest of this place is inactive, as dead as it looks."
"Veev!" piped Chloe. "That is incorrect, there is minor activity detectable in the office building also."
"More there in the barn though, yes?" said Otto.
"Yes," said Chloe.
"Then we check the barn first. Lehmann, activate squad interface."
Otto's iHUD flickered on; squad icons, years unused, came on, but most blinked off, leaving Lehmann's signifier alone in his mind. A squad of two, he thought, better than no squad at all.
"Shouldn't we be more cautious?" asked Valdaire, snagging Chloe from the backseat. Lehmann unfolded his body from the car, groaning as joints sounded an unnerving percussion of pops. He swung his arms round a few times. Valdaire found herself entranced by the unnatural shapes his artificial muscles made.
"This is Kolosev," said Otto.
Lehmann grinned, went round to the boot and pulled out three components that he snapped together into a long rifle.
"I'll check out the offices," said Lehmann. "Better to be safe. I'll take up position on the roof, cover you all."
" Stimmt," said Otto. Lehmann jogged off.
"Kolosev. Lazy. He should have set up in the office. His cables probably aren't long enough to reach his satellite dish, and he could not take the time to move his fat arse and buy more." Otto looked around. "He's still in here."
Chures drew his gun. "What about the offices?"
"Not bedtime yet," said Otto. "Little hackers are allergic to the sun. He's probably just finishing up for the night."
"This is normal, to hang around when you're coming to visit?" said Valdaire.
"He doesn't have anywhere to go," said Otto, "and a rat's maze like this, he'll see it is a good place to hide. It's either that, or booby-traps and a remote camera to catch us all being blown up. Gloaters, lurkers, runners — your three kinds of reluctant informant, so Richards says. Kolosev is a little of each."
"Great," said Valdaire.
"Kolosev won't blow us up. I know him, this is all he owns, all he's ever likely to own, because no matter how well he does he always loses it all because he can't bear to be parted from his mama. No," said Otto, "he's still in here." A coffee mug sat on Kolosev's desk, cooling in Otto's IR capable eyesight from yellow to green. He walked over to it, touched the back of his hand to it. "Still warm, so is the chair." He pulled out his gun. "Amateur."
"Kolosev!" called out Chures. "This is the VIA, come out now!"
" Genau, if he's not already shitting himself, he is now," said Otto. "Go easy on the threats, Chures, there's nothing these little hackers fear more than a visit from the VIA, and your agency's busted him a lot of times. He didn't much like his last stretch in the freezer. You will make him run."
"I was about to say we are only here to talk, Klein."
"It will not make any difference." Otto indicated upwards with his eyes.
"What?" mouthed Valdaire.
Otto pointed to Chloe. I can hear him. Otto sent the message via his MT to Chloe, his thoughts writing themselves across her screen. Breathing. Otto pointed his chin to a roof crux, flaking steel butted by a makeshift half-floor. A creak, audible enough for the others to hear. "Come down, Kolosev! Uncle Otto has come to say hello!"
Kolosev wasn't hanging around. There was a series of rapid scuffs followed by a crash as he flung himself out of one of the barn's filthy windows. Otto ran to the door to see Kolosev bounding through the wheat at close on fifty klicks an hour, high atop a pair of 'roo springers. "And there we are," said Otto, and tore off after the hacker.
Chures put up his gun. "Klein can handle that, let's crack the pendejo's system and see what he's got."
"I could do with some help." Valdaire grimaced, sweeping aside the sticky detritus of food, joints' butts and crusty tissues cluttering Kolosev's desk. She placed Chloe down on the cleanest part.
"You'll get it, in a moment," said Chures. "Klein was right about one thing. I need to sweep this place for booby traps."
Otto engaged his full suite of cybernetic and biophysical enhancements as he hit the man-high corn, pushing his body well past human norms. His secondary heart drove doctored blood hard through his body, assisted lungs wringing the air of oxygen. His adapted adrenal glands issued synthetically optimised ephinephrine, feeding his muscles with energy at an accelerated rate. Otto's enhanced biochemistry was not intended to make him stronger, although it did, but to enable his body to keep pace with his secondary polymer musculature. These muscles, contracting to carefully timed impulses drawn off his rewired nervous system, were what provided him with his inhuman strength, driving his limbs like pistons as he hurtled across the field. Without boosting, his organic muscles would be ripped to pieces by the actions of the polymer bundles.
Wheat stalks whipped at his hands and face as he ran. Kolosev was ahead of him still. Kolosev had aged badly, fatter, pastier than his mugshots. Passing into middle age, he dressed like a child in stained Gridkid gear, tight luminous pants and puffsleeved shirt. On the 'roo springers he ran like a cheetah, a simple mechanism of levers and springs known for a hundred years lengthening his legs, mimicking the efficiency of a kangaroo's limbs. Under Kolosev's own power, the rig would have sped him, but like Otto's limbs the springer was heavy with polymer muscle bunches, lending the fugitive speed that Otto could not match. He tore through the wheat like the wind, rig bouncing over the summer-dried earth in bounding strides. Past harvest and ploughing, it would have been different, for Kolosev's rig would surely have foundered in the sticky black chernozem. Right now Otto could never catch him.
"Oleg!" Otto shouted. "Stop, or I'll have to shoot you! Oleg!"
The fleeing hacker kept his face forward. Kolosev leapt high as he cleared some obstacle, and Otto lost him to a wrinkle in the steppe. Otto let out a long string of hard German expletives and ran on. His shoulder hurt, and his stomach burned with acid reflux. He could keep a pace of thirty kilometres an hour for a couple of hours, even at his age, but this speed was draining his resources fast.
Otto burst into the open, stubble beneath his feet. A hundred and fifty metres to his left the staggered wall of giant harvesters droned forward slowly. Staple-shaped front ends terminating in multiple wheel units, flails on a wide drum between them, cutting and winnowing. Long hoppers ran behind the main bodies, raised high off the ground, rears supported on pillars with their own wheel units at the base — from the air they looked like insectile letter Ts crawling across the earth. Chaff escaping from secondary pods harvesting waste for biofuel blew in a constant stream toward Otto, obscuring his view in showers of shivered straw and grit.
Otto stopped to get his bearings. A glimpse of movement, quicker than the harvesters; Kolosev was well ahead of him, nearing the wall of machines and its shroud of dust.
"Oleg! Stop!" The Ukrainian carried on running, each step a high leap.
Otto levelled his caseless automatic two-handed at the fleeing hacker. His adjutant ran his ocular magnification up to the absolute maximum. The Ukrainian bounced around in his vision like a fly trapped in a jar, close to the furthest effective range of Otto's pistol, and he wished he'd brought a bigger gun.
If I hit him, it's his own fault for running, he told himself, and fired.
The bullet missed.
Otto squinted down the barrel of his pistol for another shot, and lowered it. Kolosev was too far away.
" Scheisse."
His MT lit up. Lehmann. Don't worry, Leutnant, I have him.
A gun fired, way back behind him. A second later Kolosev staggered. Lehmann's shot took the 'roo springer's left heel assembly out, the sound of the shot following the bullet. The springer's damaged leg dragged. Otto accelerated. Panic showed on Kolosev's bearded face as he undid the springer's straps, hammering at the quick release until his legs popped out of the rig. He fell free and made a hopping run toward the nearest harvester. He was up the ladder on the left wheel pod pillar as Otto reached the vehicle. Otto was on to the ladder as Kolosev scrambled round the harvester's machine cabin.
Otto followed hard behind.
Kolosev stood in the middle of the catwalk that spanned the width of the harvester, looking wildly from side to side, shirt stained with sweat.
"Kolosev, stop. You've nowhere to run, and I'm getting indigestion."
Kolosev stared at the hopper full of wheat kernels, as if he were thinking of jumping in, and thought better of it. "You're getting old, Klein," h
e panted. He stepped back as Otto holstered his gun. Kolosev was unmodded: the real Grid experts never wore hardwired mentaugs. Kolosev was free of cybernetics, not even base-level healthtech; they knew how it could be used against them.
"Look at yourself, Oleg, you're out of shape. Don't run like that again, you'll have a heart attack."
"You come in here with the VIA? What was I supposed to do? After all I've done for you in the past, you bring them here! I've been busted out of every place I've ever been by them. Ten years' cold storage they've cost me. Why you think I ran?" Kolosev spoke in terse Grid English, truncated and peppered with invogue leetspeak, smeared over with a thick Slavic accent.
"I'm not with them, Kolosev, they're with me. We're not here to bust you. I only need some information, the usual."
"Yeah?" Kolosev's fat face pulled an unconvincing hardman sneer. "Your kind 'ways does. You loot me, Klein, it upset me."
"I am looking for Waldo, Oleg."
Kolosev snorted and slapped the railings of the catwalk. "You know he and I do no see eye to eye no more. I no run with him, I work free."
"Solo?" said Otto.
"I never said that."
"But you're alone now."
Kolosev glared, trapped. "Yeah, I'm alone now," he said, his English losing its posture, wandering closer to standard.
"I'll pay," said Otto. "I'll pay a lot."
"How much?" said Kolosev.
"A million, Euro."
"You need him bad, huh? Two million. And you broke my springer, you can buy me a new one. I want that as extra."
"I'll buy you an aircar if that's what you want."