Point twenty seven. As Kyle drives cautiously and obeys all the road markings, Harmony stands in the cramped cargo bay of the utivan and rakes a cattle prod across the cages. The gloom’s lit by showering blue sparks and the Lockdogs yelp as current flows through the bars into their feet. The Lockdogs were mad even before they were bundled into cages. Now they’re pissed off too. “Sixty seconds to the gate,” says Kyle.
“Three packs to three snacks? It’s a bet.” Suzie spits the gum she’s been chewing all morning and squishes it to the corner of another screen. “I’m with pooch number three.”
Point twenty eight. Harmony straps into the bucket seat bolted to the utivan floor, four cages stacked on top of each other against her left shoulder, four to her right. She stares at the rear doors with the cage control box in one hand and a one-shot emergency flare in the other. “Get ready, babe,” says Kyle, winding the speed up as they approach the target building.
“You are recording this, aren’t you?” asks Suzie. “Kyle swore he’d cut your head off if he missed the action.”
“Sure am,” says Dan. “This drive cuts the disk we send to Bostov. This one’s our copy. Hope it’s crazy action.”
“Here we go” shouts Kyle and Harmony hits the first button on the cage control. Point twenty nine, two milligrams isuprel injected from a harness-mounted syringe. Without the previous dose of adrenaline, the isuprel would most likely cause each livedrive to instantly arrest. With it, their circulatory systems stops beating and start pounding with a fury. A billion heartbeats per livedrive per life and the Lockdogs start burning theirs like rocket boosters. One barks hard enough to burst blood vessels in its eyes as all howl to the drumming pressure of unbearable headaches. The Lockdogs go insane in the knowledge that unless they start running right now, their hearts will blow apart.
Kyle swings the heavy utivan in a perfect handbrake turn that stops inches from the main gate barrier in a cloud of burnt tires. Point thirty – Harmony shuts her eyes and presses the second cage control button and the hinge charges blow, popping the rear doors off and springing the cage doors in a staccato series of firecracker pops.
The Lockdogs need no further encouragement. They’re through the smoke and out of the utivan and running on all six legs in an instant. Harmony opens her eyes and raises the flare, squinting down the stubby tube to get a bead on the front door before squeezing the handle. It booms and recoils and sends a smoking trail over the Lockdogs’ heads towards a startled door guard who’s already raising his assault rifle.
“Dogs gone, flare out!” she shrieks. “Punch it Kyle. Go, go, go!” The Lockdogs head for the flare and tear into the guard as Kyle sends the utivan squealing down the street and the last moment Harmony can see the pack, one of them is hurling itself through a glass panel.
Screen one, dog one. Dan and Suzie sit safely in their tractor trailer container and lean towards the screens as the door guard ducks the fizzing flare then struggle to raise his rifle. The minicam view springs at his throat and blood splashes the lens, the violence diminished by the lack of audio.
Screen four, dog four. Inside the building, the view twitches as it pauses to sniff the air before shredding an air vent with steel-tipped claws and crawling inside. Then it’s just tunnel vision as it claws along pressed aluminum box-section.
Screen two, dog two. The dog looks round at a mass of shocked faces in the cafeteria and the minicam’s frame rate stutters while the face-recognition utility struggles to process them all. “Is he there?” asks Suzie, as the dog pads over to the lock scent source and sits quietly, just as it was trained to. Dan fixates on a side screen that dances with the image-grabbed faces.
“No visual lock,” he says as the Lockdog flinches, lurching to one side then lying still as the minicam view keels over with it.
Dogs six and eight run side by side, both screens showing a guard dropping to one knee to raise his weapon. The muzzle blasts wink as tracers flash by and then both visual feeds go to white and static as an underslung white phosphorus anti-tamper charge is holed and starts burning with unimaginable fury.
Dog four sees light at the end of the tunnel and jumps lightly from the air vent. It looks around an empty office, pads over to the lock scent source and lies down, good as gold. “This isn’t working,” says Suzie, gnawing her nails. “He’s not in the meeting room and he’s not in the cafe. So where is this guy?”
Dog seven stops running and walks, then crawls. Finally, it bleeds out and lies there, raising its head weakly as a guard pushes a pistol to its head. The image recognition grabs his face, then rejects him. He’s not the target.
“Not good at all,” says Dan. “What’s the success percentage for ops like this?”
“What do you mean ops like this?” says Suzie. “Far as I know, this is a first…”
Dog five chews up a bunch of guards who’ve blocked its path and now wish they hadn’t. As it tears into them, the image is too shaky for Dan to see any faces. Dog three rolls out of control down a stairwell then lies still, gunned down from behind. “That’s my bet off,” says Suzie, pulling her gum off the screen and popping it back in her mouth.
Only dog one’s still moving, the minicam lens splashed with blood as it pads along a darkened corridor before turning off into a dimly-lit control room of some kind. Manned work stations line the walls, computers screens and angle poise lamps. Everyone swivels on their chairs, staring at the dog, making it simple for Dan’s face-recognition software to go to work.
“Game over,” grins Dan. “There’s the match.”
“That’s him?” asks Suzie. “That’s definitely him?” Dog one’s panting and still.
“No doubt,” says Dan, pointing to his side screen. “Here’s the target shot taken yesterday and here’s the minicam shot. That’s our man front and center with the pistol. You owe me three Twinkies, Suzie.”
“Then do it,” she says and just as Harmony and Kyle step out of the utivan outside, Dan transmits the coded pulse that blinks out all the Lockdog visuals and replaces them with static. Harmony and Kyle flinch as the sound catches them unaware, then turn to look back across the Hub as secondary explosions rip apart the compound and a fireball rises fifty, a hundred, two hundred feet into the leaden morning sky.
Tuesday 11 March
03:32 am
EVEN HIGH UP, even with tired eyes dazzled by the PD’s flashing lights strobing the chaos below, Bishop could still make out Professor Jeffrey Chang, his lab coat glowing in the airship’s halogen spots, his clear safety glasses still propped uselessly on the top of his head.
The airship bumped its nose wheel on concrete streaked by bloody drag marks and Bishop and Martha jumped out. They crouched on the ground as it powered its fans back up, scattering MedAssist disposables to rise into a holding pattern high above Arclights’ tower. Bishop looked around, nervous to be out of the Citadel, mindful that he’d taken the fight to Bostov and, right now, was being observed by any number of unknowns. He glanced around a perimeter marked out by PD tensapole barriers. He saw anxious moms from the mallsprawl waiting for their kids. He saw bored utivan drivers waiting to shuttle rich sons and daughters back to the safety of the Claves. Everyone looked as if they wanted to be there about as much as he did.
Bishop took Chang’s arm and pulled him towards cover, away from prying eyes, past double doors propped open with piles of discarded bags and smeared with bloody hand prints. “You’re testing Reboot in a fucking nightclub?” he hissed. “Why not pick somewhere more public next time? That way, when it kills people, we’ll have even more witnesses.”
“Reboot requires FDA approval and that requires examples of real-world application,” said Chang. “This club’s in a safe, Meat4 Power-controlled area and the bars and kitchens are perfect for simulating accelerated domestic usage. If wetware works here with no problems, it’ll work anywhere.”
They passed walking wounded. Sobbing girls in tight tops and streaked mascara holding bloodied gauze dressings to the
ir faces. “Only it didn’t work with no problems did it?” said Bishop.
“That’s what I thought until I got here,” said Chang. “But now I’ve had a chance to look around.”
They reached the circular dance floor, PD holding sullen clubbers at one side, MedAssist bagging bodies on the other. “Well Chang, I’ve had a chance to look around too. You still think Reboot will be FDA approved if this is what it does to livedrives?”
“This wasn’t the livedrives,” said Chang.
“No?” said Bishop.
“I was here fourteen days ago to administer Reboot to all the livedrives,” said Chang. “Since all of them will have converted to Reboot tissue type by now, I assumed that this incident was caused by a converted unit. But all the wetware’s still in place. I checked.”
It took Bishop a while to fight against sleep deprivation and cope with this new situation. “But something did kill these people right? And something did burst out of that service hatch?” Chang nodded curtly to both questions. “So what was it?”
Chang shrugged. “Not the livedrives.”
“Then step into my office,” said Bishop, pushing Chang into a booth at the dance floor’s edge and sitting opposite him.
“Why am I here, Chang? Why are you here? Talk to me.”
“I acted on available information,” said Chang nervously. “I thought the elevator wetware had kicked itself free and gone out the service hatch and naturally, I was concerned that it might be a Reboot failure. But the elevator unit is burned and dead and pinned inside its casing at the base of the elevator shaft. Whatever came out must have been fast and powerful but it wasn’t Rebooted Meat4 Power product.”
Bishop looked into Chang’s sweaty face and realized there was nothing to gain by intimidating him. He’d done the right thing. He was on Bishop’s side. He rubbed his eyes as his vision swam out of focus.
“So does Reboot have anything to do with this? Or is it another Bostov bioweapon strike like those damn bomb bunnies? Because if it is and they’ve got eyes on this area, I’m a dead man.”
Chang shrugged again. “At this stage? I just don’t know.”
“Okay,” sighed Bishop, “here’s what we do. I don’t accept coincidences so we’ve got to assume the worst and treat this as a Bostov probe because we already know they hit the gene store and the Reboot production plant. Wipe Reboot from this site, you hear? Pull the livedrives, pull the security visuals, clean everything out, yes?”
Chang nodded. “Understood.”
“I want M4P staff to do this, not PD. Martha said the local manager is on site? Dinsdale, Danton…”
“Danford. John Danford,” said Chang. “I spoke to him briefly when I arrived. He seems quite upset by all of this.”
“Like I care. Tell Danford to supply staff and vehicles. I want Reboot gone. I want a clean team spraying tissue-dissolving solvents to sanitize the whole site. Brief him, let him make his calls, then bring him to me. Now go.”
Chang hurried off and Bishop leaned back on the plush leather seating. The booth was dark, the seat comfortable. He felt his head swaying as the sounds of the club wavered and softened. He gratefully accepted sleep…
“This is John Danford,” said Martha, slamming a mug of coffee on the table. Bishop jolted upright and felt dislocated from time, as though he’d slept for hours when it had probably been minutes. Across from him where Chang had been sitting was a typical corporate suit, mid-forties, clean-shaven and with a face capable of beaming game show sincerity. Not tonight though, not with his tie pulled open and the acrid whiff of vomit on his breath. Danford looked like a troubled man, staring wild-eyed as MedAssist crews wheeled another lumpy bag past on a gurney.
“Danford, there’s a lot going on tonight and I need to know that…” The suit was tracking the gurney all the way out of the club. “Danford!” Bishop snapped his fingers in the man’s face. He looked back, alarmed.
“You’re from the Citadel aren’t you? Regulated Security Consultancy? Thank god you’re here to sort out this mess.”
“That’s overstating the case, Danford. There’s just me here and I’m not here for long.”
Danford’s eyes glistened wetly. “But there’ll be more won’t there? More RESC? To deal with this?”
“No there won’t. This is your District. You have the manpower and local knowledge. You sort it out.”
“But… but you’re RESC.” Fat tears ran down his face. “This is what you do.”
“What I do, Mr Danford, is use my resources to deal with events across a national arena. Right now, that means fighting a war against Bostov… maybe you’ve seen it on the newsfeeds? What do you think is more important, that or some petty fuckup in an out of the way nightclub?”
Danford sniffled and gulped. “Then what… how do I cope with this?”
“Keep on keeping a lid on it, that’s all. Do what Martha here tells you to do. Liaise with local PD. Let civilians leave only after they’ve signed non-disclosures. Extend medical treatment on the same terms. Stress that everyone will be compensated. Think you can do that?”
John Danford wiped his nose on a sleeve and nodded.
“Then get out of here. Go…”
Bishop exchanged glances with Martha as Danford hurried off. “I told you he was panicky, didn’t I?” she said.
“Company men,” sneered Bishop. “Those fucking people act tough behind a desk but get them in the real world…” he shook his head. “So Martha, you got me here. Is there anything else to do?”
She hesitated. “I think we all might have over-reacted,” she admitted. “I think the situation is contained.”
“Then bring the airship down. Call me when it’s inbound.” He crossed his arms on the table, put his face into his arms, and closed his eyes…
“Sir… sir…” Martha shook his shoulder again and he looked down at drool pooling on the table. The coffee he’d drank earlier gnawed at his empty stomach. He ached all over when he sat up.
“What is it Martha?” His eyes were gummy and dry. His head hurt.
“Local PD just gave me the heads up,” she said. “We’ve got a Fed at the perimeter.”
“Fuck.” He was wide awake now. Chang and Danford and a PD uniform lined up behind Martha as he rubbed his face. “FDA? FBI?”
“Federal Environmental,” said Martha. “She’s just talked her way in.”
“A wetvet?” said Bishop. “What’s she even doing here?”
“We don’t know,” said the PD uniform behind Martha. “So far as we can tell, she’s just responding to all the traffic in the area.”
“So tell her it’s under control.”
“We already did,” said the cop. “She still wants in.”
“Fuck,” said Bishop, his heart racing from the coffee. “Okay, Chang. We’ve got a busted service elevator, a fire and casualties. Spin me the simplest story that explains this all away without mentioning Reboot.”
“Bioweapon attack,” said Chang. “Our war with Bostov’s on the newsfeeds already. Blame them.”
“Simple, streamlined, straightforward. You’re a genius, Chang. Let’s go with that.”
“But a bioweapon attack killing civilians would prompt further federal investigation,” said Martha. “That means ongoing media interest and it also won’t explain why we’re paying off witnesses.”
“Fuck,” said Bishop. “She’s right. Chang, there needs to be M4P culpability. What about your initial take on the situation? That the elevator livedrive burst out?”
Chang looked doubtful. “I don’t think a wetvet would buy it. Cows can’t climb and that’s all the wetware is, more or less.”
“Go with me on this,” said Bishop. “This one was on fire, right? Fight or flight reflex engaged, pain-induced hyper-mobility. It might happen under extreme circumstances, right?”
Chang didn’t look like he thought so.
“So it’s patchy,” admitted Bishop, “but it’s all we’ve got. Bring her in and let’s see how i
t plays…”
Bishop hung back, watching PD smoothly blank the female Fed at every turn. He though she looked too young to wield federal power, too cocky. He followed them into the charred kitchen and peered at her from under the brim of a borrowed cap. She clearly didn’t like being railroaded but she put up with it and for that, Bishop was thankful. He felt more confident as she talked to the fire chief before walking up to the club manager’s office and coming down looking deflated and pissed off. He let her stand unattended for as long as he dared before finally sending Martha over and eventually stepping up.
The wetvet asked “Who are you?”
“I’m Bishop,” he said.
“First name? Initial?” The girl struggled to maintain authority, even though she’d already agreed with Martha to not record the interview.
“Just Bishop,” he told her.
It took time but she folded. The more he talked to her, the more Bishop knew that he could contain even this curveball. For all her cocky attitude, this wetvet wanted to be left alone and play things safe. He made her worried and then threw her a safety line and she clung onto it willingly…
When he woke again, it was to the drone of engines, the sway of the airship, the red lights of the cabin. Chang was asleep opposite him while Martha, attentive as ever, sat with pad and pen ready.
“What do you want to do with her?” she asked.
“Who?” His mouth was dry and he struggled to recall getting in the airship. Did he walk? He couldn’t recall.
“The wetvet,” said Martha. “You promised her a lot of things. How should I go about arranging them?”
“Haven’t you got enough to do already?”
“The mercwar’s over,” she said. “A few more days clearing paperwork and then I’ll be twiddling my thumbs. So what should I do?”
“Do nothing, Martha. She knows she shouldn’t have been there and I made sure she knows we know. Tomorrow morning, she’ll wake up, curse her stupidity and try to forget the whole thing.”
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