“At the other end of the scale, M4P’s smallest product is a rodent-derived cleaner unit that’s introduced into the casings of bovine drive masses. In the lab, these convert to Reboot tissue type in hours and show an initial improvement approaching three hundred percent.”
“That’s incredible,” said Bishop.
“That’s unsustainable,” said Chang. “The speed of the realignment produces nerve damage and a diminished lifespan.”
“Your mice weren’t fast and strong?”
“Oh they were both,” nodded Chang. “Until they suffer brain damage and die. We call it the crazy-to-weight ratio problem. It’s something we’ll overcome, given time. For its launch, Reboot will be marketed solely as an additive to medium-sized bovine derivatives. It’s by far the biggest sales sector and the gives the most stable enhancements.”
“And you’re a hundred percent sure Reboot is really this good?”
Chang nodded. “It’s an energy revolution. It’s the difference between steam engines and internal combustion engines.”
“I do hope so,” said Bishop. “Because in less than a month, I’m going to get a whole lot of people killed protecting its secret…”
Bishop spent the last few minutes of Christmas day standing in an open plan office that smelled of mildew and anonymity and long-abandoned snack food.
A maintenance crew in Meat4 Power coveralls pushed crates and carried boxes, stacking army rations and drinking water wherever there was space. Two men on stepladders replaced faulty lighting and looped in new cabling while others cleared last-gen consoles off dusty desks and replaced them with upgrades.
We walked to an adjoining office with a sagging chair on castors, a smudge-stained window wall and a yellowing blind. This building suited him fine. Mothballed a couple of winters back, it was quiet and empty. It had shower facilities and a soundproofed deadroom. Bring in a few bunk beds and lockers, cover the external windows with charcoal gray ballistic shields and he could stay there until Reboot launched and the Bostov threat went away.
“Bring it on, you bastards,” murmured Bishop, settling back into the soft swivel chair and deciding he’d sleep here once the maintenance crews left rather than make the long, freezing journey back to the Hub. “Let’s see if you can get me here. Let’s see if you can even find me…”
Gene Store Franklin-8
Wichita, Kansas
Sunday 19 January
02:07 am
IT BOILS DOWN to this – Plaza and Pete don’t get on yet work forces them uncomfortably together. Plaza and Pete, they’re chalk and cheese, one’s Laurel to the other’s Hardy. Standing out there in the prairie, night after night, rain or shine, summer and winter. Not getting on.
Pete’s bored enough to sleep on the job. As he starts to drift, his head rolls loosely, feeding Plaza ergonomic data through helmet tilt switches. Plaza uses the minicam designed to focus the head-up display on his retina and sees Pete’s eyelids drooping. “Connect Four or Battleships?” asks Plaza, sharply and loudly through Pete’s earpieces.
Pete snaps wide awake and bares his teeth at the unseen enemy. “You gonna cheat again at Battleships, huh?” he snarls. “You gonna map my ships?”
“That’s an invalid response,” says Plaza.
“I’ll invalid you, fucken… ehhhh…” Pete’s rarely called upon to think this fast. “You fucken…”
“That’s an invalid…”
“Jesus, alright, already. Connect Four. Let’s play Connect Four.” Plaza starts the game on Pete’s head-up display as, four miles off to the east, Bush-29 pricks its electronic ears to utivan tires crunching over frosty harvest stubble.
Pete, then. Thirty three, married. Two hundred eighty pounds of meathead jock asshole. Forced from his farm job following bad harvest downsizing but offered retraining. Fifteen weeks of classes allow him to guard this largely automated building in the middle of nowhere. People hardly ever visit but hey, it’s a living wage. He’s approved to cap off lethal ordnance if needed but since only Meat4 Power workers visit, he’s never had the chance.
He dreams of calmly returning fire as bullets bounce off him because he wears slab armor thick enough to take a rocket propelled grenade. The downside is that it’s not the next-gen honeycomb laminate mercwar guys wear. This is solid and heavy – he needs hydraulic lock-outs at the knees and waist to stop him buckling under the weight. It’s so bulky that sudden movements would leave him turned turtle, bleating into his comms for a little help here. Just standing still, even no a cold night like this, requires climate control to stop him sweating to death.
One hour on, two hours off, Pete stands in the one pool of blazing light in an otherwise pitch-black prairie, an indestructible wargod that nobody better mess with. One hour in three, the sum total of his company’s genetic copyright rests in his gloved hands. He’s the gatekeeper of Gene Store Franklin-8. He’s the master of gallon drums of embryos frozen into DNA popsicles. He’s the protector of shots of bison cum stored in liquid nitrogen, genetic cannonballs hard as iron.
He’s no idea that an activated section of sensors designated Road has just registered a triple axle vehicle rolling over it and coming his way. He’s happy enough that he just won his game. “Ha! Supercomputer, my ass!”
“Best of three?” asks Plaza.
“Fucken’ ay,” says Pete. Then, before he can be told it’s an invalid response, he says, “Yes, best of three.” Plaza sets the grid for a rematch.
Plaza, then. Four months old, new-gen quasi-AI system. Mentally, custom chips set in a Garplex multiboard and sealed inside a six hundred pound cube of ceramic composite armor. Physically, embedded sensor and response systems forming defense-in-depth across the poured concrete plaza contained by Wall and accessed by Gate.
Wall’s a duplicate system buried under the perimeter. Its minicams are dotted high in the razor wire and linked to Claymore mines concealed among concrete anti-tank defenses. Strictly speaking, Wall shouldn’t be linked to explosives as federal law prohibits the private ownership of smart or guided weapons systems. But Wall’s a long way from the Hubs and the government’s got enough problems to send Feds out this far.
Gate’s another duplicate system, with more extreme firepower. It’s linked directly to the high tilt-angle cannons set above the lintel of the physical gate. Gate’s programming allows it to autonomously open fire with twelve hundred Raufoss rounds a minute. Each shell’s heavy as a wheel bolt, zirconium incendiary packed round a 215 grain tungsten carbide penetrator. Each one’s tipped with RDX Comp-4 high explosive. Gate should stop a frontal attack dead but if it doesn’t, there’s still Plaza controlling cannons on the roof.
And of course, Plaza also controls the least effective part of the defense, which is Pete. It leaves Pete deeply humiliated to take orders from a machine so to maintain a working relationship, Plaza lets Pete win the games.
“Ha!” spits Pete. “Two games to zip. Didn’t see that diagonal didya?”
Plaza searches for a suitable pre-designed response as it processes Road’s incoming data. Plaza checks delivery schedules to see it a vehicle is supposed to be approaching. Plaza checks game logs of previous nights and sees that Pete needs to win eight out of ten games to stay entertained.
“Best of five?” says Plaza.
“You know it,” says Pete.
“That’s an inval…”
“Yes, dammit. Yes.”
Game three starts as Bush-15 hears the utivan brake, a door open and passenger footsteps on the frosty ground. Seconds later, Wall spots the vehicle as if crests a shallow rise a mile from the gene store. Wall tells Plaza about the utivan. Plaza informs Wall that no visitors are expected and to get ready for trouble. “Priority relocation,” Plaza tells Pete.
“Say wha’?” he grunts. The game vanishes from his HUD as Plaza leaves nothing to chance, tracing out the route he needs to take in glowing yellow footprints.
“Priority relocation,” repeats Plaza. “Prepare for lockout releas
e.” Pete braces his legs as the full weight of the armor drops on his knees. His heart pounds as his thighs feel the strain. His mouth dries suddenly as he fires up for action at last. This is it. He’s the wargod. He’s the gatekeeper.
Plaza wants to know what happened in the two seconds it wasted talking to Pete. Wall says it sees a blue Aegis HAP Biotrak, no registration. Bush-29 says it heard the utivan first, approaching over wheat stubble rather than down the road off the crumbling old interstate. Road relays speed and weight data gained as the utivan rolled over it. Wall transmits a welcome band-widthed matched to Aegis HAP vehicles while Plaza cross-checks Road’s data to find that the utivan’s nearly twice the weight of a factory-standard model. It takes moments. Pete has yet to take his first step.
Gate is designed to withstand armored vehicles, so isn’t overly alarmed by this vehicle. Even so, it runs a full threat analysis. Millimetric radar crawls over the bodywork and finds nothing unusual, no sinister bumps for gunpods or rockets. But the windshield is mineral-heavy and tinted, so neither optics nor radar can penetrate, and the utivan is silent on all bandwidths. This in an age where every other cyclist has a Navisat link.
The watchful, nervous quasi-AI systems of Gene Store Franklin-8 wait and wait while Pete walks ten paces. He’s slow but Pete’s the only outward sign that this lonely building is occupied. He’s often the best deterrent and Plaza is content that the utivan stops dead the moment Pete becomes visible through Gate’s bars.
Plaza is back in control. Gate is a physical barrier to the vehicle while any occupant squeezing through the bars can be cut down by massive firepower. “Threat contained,” it tells Pete. “Hold position.”
Pete holds his position in style, legs splayed apart like a superhero, arms hanging loosely at his side, fingers brushing the vast array of weaponry stowed there. He licks dry lips and stares at the utivan’s tinted windshield. There’s just him and the utivan panting and Pete’s loving every moment. “Me and you, fucker” he growls. “You want trouble? Come and get me.”
The shot that punches a neat hole through the dark windshield surprises everyone – Gate, Wall and especially Pete. He stares at the black canister sailing through Gate’s bars leaving a streaming comet tail of shattered glass then banging into his chest plate.
Plaza senses the impact and blows the spine, neck and joint airbags that pull him into a position where all the armor plates overlap. His coolant-filled bodyglove inflates tourniquets at wrist and ankle, elbow and knee, groin and armpits, in preparation for an explosive dismemberment that doesn’t happen. The canister doesn’t explode and it’s the airbags’ sudden inflation that throw Pete off-balance and send him tumbling to the ground.
Even as he falls, the utivan’s on the move, engaging all three livedrive pods and wheel-spinning into reverse as a firecracker cacophony sends a cloud of aluminum tickertape every direction. Gate recognizes counter-detection as an admission of forceful intent, so opens fire. The fluttering metal tape scatters radar and confuses visuals, so the heavy cannons fire on a best-guess pattern. The utivan rocks to impacts on hidden armor plating as it slides through a handbrake turn and it’s only then that Gate notices what the utivan’s left behind. There, on the road, is a cargo pod that must have been underslung all along. Little square holes pattern matte black sides. What a coffin would look like if one was cast in plastic.
Pete struggles pointlessly against the weight of the armor, craning his head to see a perforated canister sliding down his undamaged armor on great gobs of amber colored grease. He thinks it’s a dud until fat insects with gleaming wasp eyes emerge through the holes. They’re sluggish at first, rudely woken from cryogenic sleep when the impact burst the bug bomb’s seals. But they snap into action at the first whiff of the greasy pheromone adhesive that glues the canister to Pete. They hungrily hunt for the moist air that Pete’s panting out through his helmet vents and once they dive in, Pete’s out the security business for good.
He’s too busy dying horribly to notice two dozen jackrabbits leap from the cargo pod on the road. Fur shiny with flame-retardant gel, payloads strapped tightly round their ribs, heads covered by the polarizing goggles. Through them, the laser spot projected on the main doorway by a figure on a distant rise shines brightly. Released from the stifling confines of their pod, they do what they’re trained to do. They run for the light.
Pete’s thrashing too much to see them hop through Gate’s bars and bound past him, oblivious to Plaza’s raking fire. Pete’s screaming too loudly to hear them crackle as Gate energizes its bars, cooking the tail-enders in blue starbursts. Pete’s staring so wildly at the insects in his helmet, he doesn’t see the utivan, holed and battered by heavy fire, bounce away into the night.
Pete and Plaza worked together and now they die together. Pete’s senses fade as toxins are stabbed into his tongue and eyes and ears, swelling up his tissues. Plaza’s fade as the jackrabbits dart past the closing door and their thermite and C4 charges blow everything – the off-shift guards, the fiber-optic connections, the power cables – into clouds of expanding superheated gasses.
Pete tries to mouth one last obscenity but no breath reaches swollen lips. Plaza manages one last order, telling all of the Bushes to fire their Claymore mines as they hear a vehicle pass. But then a rabbit explodes next to a relay panel and Plaza’s loses contact with the outside world.
As the perimeter lights blink out, Pete’s oxygen intake dribbles down to nothing and the drone of the airships coming in to strip the facility is replaced by the diminishing thuds of his own heartbeat. Pete and Plaza slip away together, leaving just the Bush drones to query each other in their limited intelligence procedurals.
WHERE’S WALL?
Where’s Gate?
DID YOU HIT ANYTHING?
Did I hit anything?
WHERE’S WALL?
Where’s Gate?
DID YOU HIT ANYTHING?
Did I hit anything?
WHERE’S…
Thursday 13 March
11:23 am
SAME SOUNDS, SAME equipment, same procedural dialog snapped out by the same looking people – the Emergency Response unit of San Fernando Memorial Hospital gives off the same vibe as the Reverend’s chop shop outfit. Only difference is that here it’s forty degrees warmer and the smell of disinfectant replaces the oil and grease whiff of that refrigerated bonded warehouse.
The throughput’s identical though – intake, processing, output. Damaged wetware goes in, is modified and released for profit. Kirsty waits in reception until two gurneys fly past, MedAssist personnel holding an industrial accident together in two roughly human-shaped pieces. One MedAssist rides the second gurney through reception, thumping rhythmically on a chest as the mayhem slams through plastic strip doors and into the crash room.
She picks the moment to talk to the guy behind the desk, his attention divided between her and the two vics, his blue scrubs and ID card marking him as a first year intern. He’s perfect – senior enough for systems access, junior enough to be bullied by her federal status.
She throws him a pointlessly long, needlessly confusing story about how she’s following up on a batch of foodfuel past its sell-by, how it was fizzing bacterial soup even before it was delivered to the livedrives it poisoned. She hopes it’s dull enough for him to nod and give her systems access but instead, he asks what a wetvet case has to do with a hospital.
Well, she says, telling him how a food-poisoned livedrive at this local nightclub had got sick and thrashed out, hurting people. “I swear to God,” she says. “I’ve never known a case like it.” Mostly, she’s telling the truth.
“You realize hospital record are private?” he says, an ear cocked to the life and death mayhem of the crash room. “I can’t release them. You’d need to take a warrant to the chief administrator.”
“Well, it’s only incidental to my case,” she says casually, waving Slate around. “But you know how rigid these Slate utilities are? It’s asking me for names o
f injured parties. If I can’t fill in those blanks, I can’t file my case and I’m backlogged as it is.”
“I don’t know…” he says. But then the unmistakable tone of a flatline decides for him and he authorizes access before running to the crash room. Better than perfect – Slate logs in and she’s left with an open line and no one watching. As the San Fernando Memorial logo appears on Slate and she drags all accessible data from the night of Arclights, all she can think of is Georgy’s mini-Slate with the flashing red light. Slate will leave an indelible fingerprint on the hospital’s system the same way that viewing the tollroad visuals would have alerted Georgy. There’s no way Meat4 Power won’t have dormant-traced the victims’ records.
She logs off and hurries out of Emergency Response, past 3D Imaging, pediatric and limb-grafting to where Kareem and Judy Alexis sit in a cafeteria that’s just chairs and pot plants clustered round a corridor kiosk. They’re uneasy being out of Grifters territory, even more since the hospital’s ringed with metal detectors and security staff have been dogging them since they had to swap their sprayguns for locker keys. Judy Alexis is sipping an apple juice, Kareem’s slurping thirty two ounces of vanilla thick shake.
“D’you get the names?” he asks.
“I got all sorts of stuff,” says Kirsty. “I though I’d better grab and run before people started asking questions.”
“So let’s go see the survivors,” he says.
“Not a chance,” says Kirsty as she pulls Slate. “Let’s not set off all the alarm bells. How are your powers of deduction, Judy Alexis?”
“What…” says her bodyguard. “You mean like detective stuff?”
“I mean exactly like detective stuff,” says Kirsty, opening multiple windows on Slate with a swirl of her finger. “We know from the traffic-cam that Arclights victims were brought here. Hospital admittance records eleven intakes that night but patient records list only five names. What does that tell us?”
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