by Andy Remic
‘So you’re temporarily cut free from your duties?’
Langan sighed, scratching the back of his neck. ‘It would appear that way, my friend. About LA: I can’t take you to the city, it’s a fucking nightmare there now - especially after the wars. It’s so busy, there are LAPD choppers everywhere, military presence on the streets, you name it.’
‘A little like London, then?’ Carter smiled grimly.
‘A little,’ conceded Langan. ‘Except amateur terrorists didn’t accidentally detonate a fucking micro-nuke in London. Look, I could probably creep up over Mexico, shunt you over the border, let you find your way from there ...’
‘Great,’ said Carter. He sipped the coffee, then held the mug out for more sugar.
‘Carter?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Sounds like a trap to me,’ said Langan.
‘Yeah, yeah. I know. Just what I need, guidance from another bloody advice merchant.’
‘Just trying to be helpful.’
‘Just get us out of this furnace alive!’
‘I’m going to need to refuel.’
‘Any more good news for me, Langan?’
‘It’ll probably have to be in Egypt.’
Carter muttered something nasty into his coffee.
The Comanche was built to accommodate two people, in relative comfort, for prolonged periods of warfare; with Jessica added to the numbers the situation was a little insane.
Carter had decided that she could be of use; after all, Spiral was linked closely with the QIII, and she happened to have the processor schematics in her rucksack - something which Carter acknowledged could probably come in quite handy.
As the Comanche buzzed low over the northern plains of Rub al’Khali, Langan focused and working hard to keep them out of trouble, it also occurred to Carter that maybe Gol was alive and had been captured by the Nex. If he had been tortured, blackmailed, whatever, then maybe the QIII schematics could be used in an exchange situation.
‘Jessica?’
‘Yes, Carter?’
Her nose was four inches from his own, her bottom planted firmly on his knee. He could feel her supple limbs through the thin cloth of her pyjamas, smell the curls that bobbed in his face. He tried hard not to get an erection.
‘You know the QIII?’
‘I helped build it and program it; you could say I know it...’
‘Don’t be flippant or you can find your own way out of Rub al’Khali.’
‘I concede - you are saving my life, even though it looked, from where I was standing, as though you were saying that you should leave me behind and take the QIII schematics at gunpoint. I’m just saying that it looked a little to me like it was Natasha arguing my case and therefore Natasha’s influential vote that has ended up with me hunched here on a pervert’s knee.’
‘Pervert?’
Jessica coughed. She wriggled a little.
Natasha laughed. It was not a laugh of support.
Carter flushed red.
‘Like sitting on a fence post. I really wish you middle-aged men could control yourselves ... I thought you lot needed Viagra or something, anyway? You know, to get it up?’
‘Middle-aged?’ Carter sounded aghast. ‘Do you really think I look that old? Jesus, I knew we should have left you in the desert...’
‘Carter, do you have a question for the poor girl or what?’
‘Yeah. If we could get to this QIII - would it have information on Spiral? And people like Feuchter and Durell? Or even the Nex, for that matter?’
Jessica shook her head in a shower of curls. ‘It’s a processor, Carter, not a database. But get me the right equipment connected to the QIII and the little bitch will hack and crack anything ...’ Natasha’s eyes lit up at that. Jessica continued: ‘Point it at Spiral’s mainframe and it’ll worm its way through the code in under a second. There’s not a computer system worldwide that the QIII will not crack; right down from world banks to the FBI, Wall Street, Parliament, Scotland Yard, the New IRA. That’s why it’s such a scary piece of hardware ... nothing is untouchable; nothing is hidden from it.’
‘What operating systems will it run with?’
Jessica shrugged. ‘Anything, everything; fully compliant with OSs from UNIX-IX and WIN512, through Def76 and Stable05 - it will decode anything from BaseZ88 and 681270 to way beyond the current 256 and 512 Gigabit architectures. You see, it doesn’t work like that, but if it did it would be comparable to a 256 million-bit processor... it is so incredibly fast, it’s hard to describe...’
‘I get the picture,’ said Natasha.
‘I don’t,’ grumbled Carter. ‘Make it clear for me ...’
‘The QIII is that powerful it can decode and encode DNA in millionths of a second; it would take a conventional computer hundreds of hours. It is also loaded with what is called WorldCode - an incredible variety of statistics and equations that, supposedly, make the QIII able to predict the future ...’
‘Really? You mean it actually works?’
‘It uses probability math; equations; it comes out with the most probable outcome of any given event or situation; we’d got it about 93% perfect, but it was getting better by the day when ...’ Jessica trailed off. She coughed, gazing out at the passing scrubland and marsh areas. ‘We had practically finished our work at Spiral_Q, the processor was practically fully operational. It worked, it worked well - it was just being run through its testing stages.’
‘So it was feasible to destroy Spiral_Q? Because you had finished?’
‘Yeah,’ nodded Jessica. ‘But I don’t understand why. There was never supposed to be just one processor, surely? What a massive waste of technology!’
‘Unless you wanted the only one,’ said Carter. ‘Stop anybody else making one, and bingo, you’re in a position for world domination if it tickles your fancy. A machine that can take over any other machine? A machine that can predict the future? A fucking machine that can control world finances, space exploration, nuclear weapons - armies, countries, the whole fucking lot. You could have the whole world at your fingertips—’
‘A curse,’ said Natasha softly.
‘So the QIII could tell us what the Nex and Feuchter are up to?’
‘Probably, if you could get your hands on it and feed it enough data.’
‘I can guess if you feed me enough fucking data,’ said Carter wearily.
‘Yeah, but can you search all the world databases in a few minutes? Can you get into protected and encrypted archives in the blink of an eye or the time it takes to sneeze?’
‘And this thing is capable of world domination?’
‘You would need the right key codes... which means you would need to understand how the QIII worked, really know how to operate the processor to its fullest,’ said Jessica.
‘And, of course, Spiral would have the right key codes, and Feuchter and this man Durell also know how to operate the QIII seeing as they helped to fucking build it,’ snapped Carter.
‘Durell,’ said Natasha softly.
Their gazes met; it sounded fantastic, but then, sometimes fantastic, improbable, impossible could happen. Take a man; a nobody; working on an incredibly ground-breaking new processor. He realises that he could be rich; control the world; cause the next world war; whatever. And he understands his own insignificance, his own mortality and decides to take a slice from the Fame Pie. To further his own ends. To play at being God ...
‘This is beginning to sound like a megalomaniac’s wet dream,’ said Natasha sourly. ‘I don’t think the world is ready for it.’
‘You’re probably right,’ said Carter.
‘Maybe that’s why they pulled the plug on the Rub al’Khali HQ?’ said Jessica.
‘No. Destroying its own bases isn’t Spiral’s style; it would have dismantled it, not blown it to Kingdom Come,’ said Carter. ‘But I’m sure that when we come face to face with Gol once more - then he’ll have some answers for us.’
The Comanche spun glittering
across the mountains, twin LHTec engines humming with reined-in torque and power; it banked east, heading for the northern corner of Iran, then on into China, Mongolia, the northern tip of Japan and the Pacific Ocean beyond ... and then, of course, on to the West Coast of the United States of America ...
And the devastation of a city recently torn apart by a pocket nuclear device.
CHAPTER 21
LA
The Comanche flitted across the sky, a softly humming falcon, a predator - quiet, dangerous, deadly. It came in low across the Pacific and touched down briefly in a cloud of swirling, eddying sand. It was on the ground for precisely four minutes ...
‘I’ll head south into Mexico - there are a couple of illegal refuelling dumps I can utilise.’ Langan spat a mouthful of dust into the ground and rubbed at his tired eyes.
Carter nodded. ‘If I need you, if it’s a dire emergency I’ll patch through on the ECube. The signal will probably be intercepted by the enemy but hell, if that’s the case they’ll probably be just around the corner anyway.’
Langan nodded wearily. ‘Just make sure you give me enough time for a decent sleep before you need me to come swooping in from the heavens to rescue you - you hear?’
‘I hear.’
‘Carter,’ grinned Langan, ‘you are the definitive pain in the arse.’
‘I try to be.’ Carter patted Langan’s HIDSS, and disappeared into the gloom.
Langan secured the cockpit; within ten seconds the rotors had spun up and the Comanche jumped into the sky, spun low in a semicircle overhead, and headed back out over the Pacific.
The night was hot and humid. Distant sounds of a party echoed across the bay, followed by several shotgun blasts and loud screams. A disco yacht filled with corpses bobbed on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and the searchlights of a naval vessel that had just riddled it with heavy-calibre machine-gun bullets probed the surrounding darkness.
The wide highways were quiet in the early hours of the morning. Phosphorescent gleams shone from the sand-blown concrete. A deep rumble penetrated the shadows thrown by the false sentinel lights as a V12 Corvette cruised along, tyres humming gently, the reined-in motor barely turning over at such low speeds. Light reflected dimly from the battered body panels, and in the once-plush interior Natasha leaned forward, gazing to her right over the lapping dark waters at the edge of the gently sloping beach.
‘I always dreamed I would visit California.’
‘We’re not here for a holiday,’ said Carter softly.
After the nuclear explosion, the city had been sprayed for weeks by aircraft pumping out radiation-dampening chemicals: a human crop-spray that had saved the city’s basic habitability but could do nothing to save the thousands of buildings - shops, houses, civic buildings - all washed away in a sea of fire. LA was busy rebuilding, but the city was constantly on the verge of anarchy. The LAPD and the military could do little to serve and protect millions of people destined for a future of miserable hardship and radiation poisoning.
Dawn was breaking as Carter pulled the Corvette into a roadside motel. He paid for a room and came back with keys. The motel room was basic and clean, and Carter stared into the bathroom and sighed. ‘A shower. A shave. And ... a proper toilet. Heaven. Valhalla. Fucking bliss.’
Natasha squeezed past him. ‘I’m first,’ she said, slamming the door in his face.
Carter grinned back at Jessica. ‘Something I said?’
‘Hmm.’ Jessica slumped back onto the wide bed, her hair fanning out behind her, her stained and tattered pyjamas doing nothing to diminish her natural beauty.
‘I’m just popping out,’ said Carter suddenly, moving towards the door.
‘I thought you said you needed a shave and a shower?’
‘Time for that later. I have errands to run; like I said, I have some friends in LA.’
‘Carter?’
‘Yes, Jessica?’
‘Could you possibly get me something to wear? I left Rub al’Khali in a bit of a hurry.’
‘See what I can do.’ He closed the door, and a few seconds later the Corvette rumbled away in a huge cloud of nauseating fumes.
Jessica lay back, weariness overcoming her. She pulled the rucksack towards her, her gaze falling on her own hands, their shroud of filth, the dirt lodged under her nails. She smiled gently. Once, that would never have happened: dirt would have been an impossibility. But things had changed—
Jessica removed the QIII schematics from the rucksack and stared at the silver disk in her hands.
‘I hope you’re worth all the trouble,’ she muttered, resting her head back against the pillows. They felt soft and luxurious - a complete antithesis to the last day ...
God, had it only been that long?
Since Spiral_Q?
Since Feuchter and the Nex?
Since the murders—
She shuddered, then closed her eyes and was able - for the first time in days - to relax.
Her breathing deepened and she licked her dry lips. The bed was so comfortable that it made her want to cry with gratitude. Oh, to curl up and sleep for a million years; to curl up in a ball and forget...
Images flashed through her mind—
The Nex.
The Nex, with their menacing guns.
Feuchter, watching limp trailing bodies being loaded into the trucks.
The QIII speaking to her on her terminal; warning her.
Had it really been the QIII itself? Or some deviant hacker? Or had she been warned by somebody at Spiral_Q? Or was she going slowly and certifiably insane?
Jessica rubbed at her weary eyes as she toyed with the possibility...
They could have warned her. Spiral could have warned her - it was feasible ... improbable but feasible... But then, why her? Why just her? Why not the others? Adams and Johansen? Skelter? Oliver? Ralph?
She closed her eyes again, picturing Feuchter and finding some gratification in the fact that he had perished in the explosion. By the time Natasha emerged from the bathroom wearing a towel and rubbing her fingers through her clean hair in well-earned ecstasy, Jessica was snoring softly in the embrace of a deep, deep, welcome sleep.
Carter returned just after lunch, as Jessica and Natasha were sitting down to cheeseburgers and fries. He carried several bags, and was wearing a tired but happy smile.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Shopping.’
‘With what?’
Carter winked. ‘Generous friends. Now, I have a few presents for you two femme fatales and I desperately need to use the toilet. Any objections? Thought not... and get on the phone, order me some of that food. Looks too good to miss.’ The sarcasm in his voice was painful.
‘You seem very upbeat,’ said Natasha softly.
Carter winked. ‘Got a few surprises up my sleeve.’
Carter stood in the shower, the hot water cleansing him of sweat, sand, blood and oil. He placed his hands against the tiles and allowed the water to run over the back of his head for a few long luxurious minutes, revelling in the feeling of cleanliness that was creeping over him and through him ...
And to heighten the experience, his mind was clear.
Perfectly clear.
Not poisoned by the presence, the cancer, the tumour. The tumour of Kade ...
He towelled himself dry, his gaze catching the ten small metal globes arranged neatly around the sink. Ten fully functioning, fully armed and extremely dangerous HPGs - high-pressure grenades that had no traditional explosive charge, working instead by a mixture of chemicals that created a huge build-up of pressure and an almost silent explosion. Now they were ready to use. And abuse.
As he left the bathroom, rubbing at his smooth and somewhat pinkly raw freshly shaved face, it was to see Natasha and Jessica modelling the new clothes he had brought them. Plain trousers and jumpers, and low-heeled boots.
‘Very functional,’ said Natasha.
‘We won’t be winning any fashion parades,’ yawned Jessica.
> ‘But then, we’re not here to party,’ said Carter. He grabbed a cheeseburger, and taking a bite, emptied another bag onto the bed. Ammunition magazines and bullets clattered free in a large pile.
‘Fuck me,’ said Natasha.
‘Get busy, ladies, if you please.’
‘Where’d you get all this?’
‘You forget,’ said Carter softly. ‘I used to be a Spiral operative; I worked the DemolSquads for seven years; I know where many of the worldwide stashes are and I’ve got a few contacts in LA.’
‘I don’t think I can go through with this,’ said Jessica, her face having paled at the sight of the bullets and the weapon mags. Her eyes lifted, met Carter’s dark stare. ‘I am not a soldier, I am a programmer. I’m not a fighter, I’m not a warrior. I’m in this shit way too deep ...’
Carter smiled at the young woman, nodding and yawning himself. ‘You are right - you have played your part,’ he said. ‘The best thing to do now is hand over the QIII schematics to me ... I will make sure somebody gets a good slapping for what happened in Saudi Arabia.’
‘Do you think Gol can really help you?’
‘If the meet is genuine, then yes. If it is a set-up ...’ Carter shrugged. ‘How about we rendezvous - I’ll go in alone and meet Gol, then bring him out to meet you two if this thing isn’t a trap? That way you’re not in the firing line - you just play the waiting game.’
Natasha shook her head. ‘I can’t let you go in alone.’
‘You have to,’ said Carter. ‘This thing screams of bad news; you can’t expect me to put Jessica in such a dangerous situation - and as for yourself? Well, Nats, you know - and I fucking mean know - that I work better alone. If it really is your father, if he is alive, then so be it, we are on our way to recovering the QIII and stopping Feuchter and Durell’s plans; if he has been captured, then I will do everything in my power to rescue him and I’ll fucking get him out of there alive... and then we can move on to locating Durell...’
Natasha sighed. ‘OK. You’re right. When is the meet?’