Code Breakers: Delta

by Colin F. Barnes

  He turned to face the others. “Ready?”

  Before they could reply, a shot fired out and a blast of energy struck one of the bikes, exploding it on impact and throwing the chassis a dozen metres into the air. Gerry and the others scattered, avoiding the falling shrapnel and sparks. They headed for the cover of the trees, but Gerry screamed over the ringing of his ears, “Spread out and prepare to run to the dome!”

  He took a knee and brought his rifle scope up to his eyes and scanned the area in front of him, trying to remember the direction of the shot. It took a few seconds, but he saw a shape behind one of the cloudy panels shift. With no hesitation he fired off an arc of twenty rounds, emptying the magazine.

  The panel splintered and shattered, and a dark body slumped out before falling down to the ground in a hump. Gerry quickly zoomed in with the scope and saw the body twitch before becoming still. It wasn’t human—it looked like a version of the tracker ’borgs back at the settlement.

  “We’ve got resistance in the form of ’borgs,” Gerry said while he slapped in another magazine, leaving him five more in his pack. “Go, go, go!”

  Holly, Petal and Jachz spread out wide to present a splintered target. Gerry followed up behind at a slower pace. He tracked through the scope, watching the dome.

  Another dark shape stopped in front of a panel near the top and to the left side. He raised his rifle and was about to fire when he heard two shots ring out. The panel shattered, and the figure behind slumped back inside.

  Jachz had spotted them first.

  “Good shooting,” Gerry called and raced after them.

  They reached the edge of the dome before they were shot at again.

  “Cover me. I’m going into the system,” Gerry said. He dropped his rifle and rested his back against the dome. Holly, Petal and Jachz surrounded him and aimed their weapons in all directions.

  Using the credentials he’d taken from the user database back at the pyramid, Gerry logged into the system and started scanning the log files for recent access. Of course, he found one from twenty minutes ago. The viroborg had logged in with a root user account—no doubt supplied by the Nolan and Amma clones from the Mars facility.

  Gerry traced it through the system to see what it had done.

  At first glance he couldn’t find anything. The damn thing had set a virus to destroy its tracks. Thinking about the nukes, Gerry stretched his mind further into the old dome’s servers, trying to find the program that handled the launch, but everything seemed blank.

  The main storage areas were full of junk data.

  Individual nodes were empty when he scanned them.

  He found no application or subroutine with which to control the dome’s weapons. So what was the viroborg doing here?

  Gerry even tried to access the video or audio feeds and found nothing. He’d never been into a system that was as barren as this. Even the files for the operation system were missing. He pulled back out of the system and tried to log on as a regular user: nothing, no interface, no software at all.

  He tried to go back to the log files; they too were gone.

  Damn it!

  The entire thing was being erased. But why? And why take Jess if there was no server or network that needed to be communicated with? Frustrated, Gerry collapsed his connection and withdrew from the network.

  “What’s the situation?” Petal asked.

  “Dire, the entire system’s gone, as in it doesn’t exist anymore. The hardware’s in place, but there’s no data, no software, nothing.”

  “It’s the ’borg’s virus,” Jachz said. “It must be.”

  “Clearly,” Holly said. “So why don’t we just go in there and find the fucker the old-fashioned way?”

  “Wait, you feel that?” Petal said, her hand pressed against the ground.

  Gerry put his hand to the ground. “Yeah, the rumbling.”

  “Um, nukes much?” Holly said.

  “But how?” Gerry asked, mostly to himself. “Unless…”

  “What is it?” Petal asked.

  “Of course,” Gerry said. “That makes sense, that must be what those codes are for—the server responsible for the nukes isn’t on the network, hence having the need to send the ’borg to do it manually; otherwise they could have just done it remotely. I know where it’ll be. Their silos are just south of here. There’s a tunnel access to them inside the dome.”

  “Lead the way,” Jachz said. “I fear we’re running out of time.”

  “Thanks for that insight, Captain Obvious,” Holly said as she spun round to face the jungle and fired three rounds.

  Gerry grabbed his rifle and hit the deck as a volley of return fire came crashing into the panels above his head.

  Walking out of the jungle, rifles held by their waists, four ’borgs closed in on their position. Petal and Jachz fell to their chests and fired off a couple of shots, taking out two of them before they scattered and hit the ground.

  Gerry didn’t like this one bit.

  “You guys focus fire on those.”

  “Where you going?” Petal shouted over the gunfire.

  Gerry didn’t hang around to answer. Using the others’ covering fire, Gerry dashed around the perimeter of the dome anticlockwise in a crouching run, avoiding the fire coming his way until he had travelled far enough around the dome to be out of sight.

  He reached out into the local network, unsuppressed, and found six more nodes: the ’borgs were communicating via radio. Gerry hated the thought of cutting his VPN with Petal, but after triangulating the ’borgs’ locations and plotting their positions on an image of the dome and the outlying area’s infrastructure, he sent Petal a message:

  — Cutting network between us, will explain shortly.

  Without waiting for a response, he found the microwave transceiver and connected to it as the root user. All he needed to do was remove the patch he’d installed earlier to switch their suppressing effects off.

  Once he rebooted the routers, he confirmed that wireless network traffic was indeed being suppressed. That would stop the ’borgs from communicating their position to each other, at least.

  He removed his mind from the connection and blinked as he returned to the real world. A dark shape moved out of his peripheral vision. He spun to the right, raising his rifle, his finger about to pull the trigger.

  “Gerry!” called Jachz.

  Holly and Petal joined the AI.

  “Jesus, man, you nearly shot us,” Holly said.

  “I’m sorry, I just came out of the network and… listen, we’ve got to get to the silos. The system’s offline from the main network, and I can’t do anything here. There’s four more ’borgs…” Gerry focused on the image on his HUD for a brief moment, orienting their likely position. “… north of here.”

  “Then let’s not go north,” Holly said. “We only just took those others out. I nearly took a bullet to the face. I’d rather avoid that.”

  “Come on,” Gerry said, pointing to the entrance of the dome. “We’ll find the access tunnel in here.”

  Once inside the structure, Gerry realised that on the surface it was a great deal different from Libertas. Here there were no parks or green spaces. Any structures had long since collapsed or been pulled down, creating great static waves of concrete and debris, making it look like a grey dune. The air was stale and fetid. Green mould and fungus grew on the inside of the panels, lending the entire place an eerie, almost alien atmosphere.

  “Jesus, this place is fucked up,” Holly said, sweeping her rifle in a wide arc covering their right flank. Jachz covered the left while Petal brought up the rear. Gerry followed the HUD image but was having a few problems properly orienting the direction on the flat map.

  The crumbled buildings had rid the place of any recognisable streets. They were coming in through the east entrance, meaning that if this were Libertas, they would be coming in via the downtown area.

  Beyond the first main wave of rubble, there should be the fin
ancial and business square and, just north-west of that, the landing pad and Cemprom building. Further west, and they would be in the area of residential subdivisions and the engineering quarter.

  As they were making their way toward the Cemprom part of the city, Gerry had a terrible thought that this was Libertas and somehow he’d woken up in the future, surveilling the damage done by the nukes.

  Pushing that thought aside, he continued forward, clambering over increasingly larger piles of rubble and trying his best to picture where they were on the map. Without the microwave transceivers active, he couldn’t use them to triangulate his position and had to go on gut feeling, hoping that the Family who built this kept it identical to Libertas.

  “We’ve got movement to our left,” Jachz said.

  They stopped and huddled behind a tumbled-down wall. Gerry peered through a gap. Jachz was right. Fifty or so metres away, he saw two mutant-clones scavenging through piles of debris covered in lichen and moss.

  One of them lifted a skull, sniffed it, and tossed it aside. The other took a knife and scraped off the moss and placed it in a tote made from woven twigs. They grunted at each other and scampered off in the distance where some vegetation had started to grow, creating a sickly copse of brown and dark green trees.

  “Nice place,” Holly said. “Skull and moss for breakfast, just lovely.”

  “Let’s keep going,” Gerry said. “Keep an eye out for the ’borgs. I don’t think the locals will bother us too much.”

  “That’s what they all say,” Holly said. “And the next thing you know, you need me to save your arse from cannibals.”

  “Fine,” Gerry said. “Watch the locals too.”

  When he was satisfied the way was clear, Gerry stepped out from their cover and continued on to the centre of the dome in the hopes of finding the entrance to the silo tunnel. Sweat dripped down his back and face. He found a torn piece of fabric on the ground and tied it around his head to protect his eyes from stinging sweat.

  The oppressive air in the dome made every breath difficult. Without the air-conditioning and recycling systems active, it acted like a great humid greenhouse.

  “We’re close,” Petal said as they descended a wave of broken buildings. She pointed to a pile of glass atop an ornate doorframe. “That’s the same as the front of the presidential building. The Cemprom building should be just over there.” Petal pointed north and a little to the north-west.

  She was right, of course.

  Gerry had walked that journey, only in reverse, every lunch hour during his days working at Cemprom. He pulled out a water bottle from his pack, ready to quench his thirst, but stopped as it dawned on him that all of that happened literally a few lifetimes ago. He didn’t even know that Gerry anymore. Other than his DNA and certain aspects of his mind, he and his former self had little in common.

  “Come on, man, keep going,” Holly urged him on. “I want to be home for dinner.”

  Gerry finished one of the water bottles and took a heavy breath before patting Holly on the back and continuing on.

  As they got closer, Gerry saw the opening. “It’s here,” he said, pointing between two crests of bricks and mortar and twisted rebar. A dark aperture embedded into the side of a damaged wall.

  At Cemprom, it’d be the elevator shaft down to the central server room, but he knew from the schematics that this would lead down a shaft to the silo’s access tunnel. He motioned them onwards and stepped forward.

  Before they could reach the opening, to their right they heard stone and rocks tumble down. Gerry swung round, arcing his rifle with his movement. Two shots hit the ground by his feet, making him leap out of the way.

  “The ’borgs,” Holly shouted, diving for cover behind a thick chunk of Polymar sidewalk. Petal landed next to Gerry, swinging her rifle up as she rose to her feet. She fired off a three-round burst.

  “Go,” Holly yelled at Gerry. “Get to the shaft. You lot go; I’ll hold them off.” Holly squeezed the trigger and fired a focused series of four rounds, emptying her magazine. She ducked down below her cover and fished another magazine out of her pack. “Seriously, you three go.”

  “We can’t leave you,” Petal said.

  “Fuck that noise, sister,” Holly said. “I’ll lead these machines on a merry little trek, get them off your back. You three go do what you do best.”

  “Holly, no, come with us,” Gerry said.

  “She’s right,” Jachz said. “We need to take this opportunity.”

  Gerry hesitated.

  “Sorry, Gerry, I’m staying here being the fucking hero, now piss off and go stop them damned nukes.” She gave them a wink and a smile and returned to her firing position.

  Two blasts from the ’borgs impacted just centimetres from Gerry’s head, making him duck and run. He dragged Petal with him. “Thanks, Holly. We’ll be back for you. Stay safe!”

  Holly gave him a thumbs-up and turned and sprinted across the debris in the opposite direction, leading the ’borgs away.

  Taking the opportunity, Gerry, Jachz, and Petal sprinted across the open ground and tumbled into the darkness.

  Chapter 24

  A flash of blue exploded in the small dark server room, illuminating the space like a lightning strike.

  In that split-second burst, Gerry saw a black figure in the open doorway. A replica of Cemprom’s main server stood in the middle on a plinth, reminding him of the showdown with Jasper.

  Another explosion bellowed out, bringing back the ringing in his ears. The figure in the doorway flew back and landed on its front. One of the ’borgs had followed them in, but had paid the ultimate price.

  Something hot and wet covered Gerry’s thigh. At first he thought it was his blood. He reached for his flashlight on his belt and shined it on his leg.

  Not blood. Oil.

  The twitching form of Jachz lay beside Gerry, his rifle beside him, the barrel still smoking. Petal was crouched opposite, her face pale and taut with stress.

  “Jachz,” Gerry said, leaning down and placing his hand on the AI’s chest. “Speak to me.” A gaping wound in his left side was leaking oil, exposing his titanium skeleton and biomechanic musculature system.

  Jachz’s left eye fluttered open. “I’m experiencing pain,” he said matter-of-factly. “This is not a pleasant feeling.”

  “I know, just hold on, we’ll get you fixed up.”

  Jachz grabbed Gerry by the wrist and focused his eye on him. “No,” the AI said. “You have to. The missiles will soon be in position. You have to stop them. Leave me. Come back for me later if you must, but go on.”

  “He’s right,” Petal said. “We’ll upload his mind to a new body later; we can’t hang around any longer.”

  Gerry hesitated for a moment, having seen his group split in half. Holly was out there somewhere, running for her life amid the cacophony of blasts and counterblasts. But as Jachz continued to leak his oil over Gerry, he knew that he did indeed have to continue.

  “I’m sorry,” Gerry said. “I’ll be back for you, I promise.”

  “Just go,” Jachz said. He pointed his arm out in the direction of the shaft.

  Gerry moved his flashlight in the same direction and saw the escape ladder descend down into the depths of the under city.

  Petal grabbed her rifle and aimed it out of the doorway. “Go, I’ll cover. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Taking one last look at Jachz, Gerry sprinted to the ladder, half-expecting a shot in the back at any moment. But he reminded himself that Petal was on guard and Holly was distracting the others outside, and he reached the ladder safely.

  Hooking one arm around the upright, he turned round and pointed his rifle to the entrance, covering Petal as she spun round and sprinted towards the ladder.

  “Go, Gez, let’s get down there,” she said as she leapt up onto a rung just above him.

  Before they descended, Gerry saw two figures dash into the opening. He fired off a burst, but missed. His flashlight was on t
he floor, and through the cone of light, he saw Jachz’s body disappear, two ’borgs dragging him out by his feet. By the time he re-aimed, they were gone.

  “Damn, they’ve got Jachz,” Gerry said.

  “We’ll find him, but get your ass down there. We don’t have time now.”

  Gerry slung his rifle over his shoulder, wedging it beneath his backpack. He grabbed the flashlight, reattaching it to his belt, and loosened his grip on the sides of the ladder. Gravity did its thing and pulled him quickly down the level until he finally hit the ground, the jolt creating a bloom of sharp pain in his knees when he didn’t react quick enough.

  Descending at a slower, more controlled pace, Petal joined him.

  “You okay?” she asked as he hobbled away from the ladder in the darkness.

  “Just a heavy fall. I’ll walk it off; it’s not bad. You?”

  “Yeah, still all in one piece. Let’s see where we are, shall we?” Petal switched on her flashlight. A corridor led off away from the ladder. The overhead OLED strip lights were without power, but toward the very end, Gerry was sure he could see a glowing red light.

  “Do you see that red glow down there, or is it just an artefact of my vision?” Gerry asked.

  Petal switched off the flashlight and waited for a moment. “Yeah, I see it. Must be coming from the silo control room, right? Was there anything else that this access tunnel led to?”

  Gerry checked his HUD image, zooming in for more detail. It appeared there was another room beyond. Perhaps the final control room. It made sense, given the distance. He grabbed the rifle and stepped forward. “We approach in darkness and quietly,” he whispered.

  They moved on, making slow but cautious progress. Gerry fought the urge to sprint down there, throwing all caution to the wind, but couldn’t risk running right into a trap or a ’borg waiting for him to reach the end of the corridor.

  When they got halfway, Petal stopped and grabbed Gerry’s arm. “You hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Silence, the rumbling’s stopped. The missiles must be in position.”