The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2)

by Crawford Kilian

  On the main floor the lobby was in darkness, but someone called out as Pierce opened the door without showing himself.

  “Who’s there?”

  Pierce pulled Jaz forward. “Jasmin Jones, for God’s sake. Who’s that?”

  “Mike Tordahl, Ms. Jones.” The voice came from a comer of the main floor lobby where, Pierce recalled, a waist-high wall provided cover against an armed assault through the front door.

  “Go talk to him,” Pierce murmured. She nodded, smiled faintly, and walked out into the dark lobby.

  “I’m looking for the interrogation,” she said.

  “Uh, you want to step out of the light, Ms. Jones? I recognize you all right. If anybody’s out there, we don’t want to give ’em a target.”

  She stepped into the darkness. “Mike — the interrogation?”

  “Afraid I can’t help you, ma’am. They dragged me down here to keep an eye on the door, with all this shit going on outside. Uh, how’d you get in here, anyway? I didn’t see the gate show an opening.”

  “Are you kidding? It opened like a charm. You must have a bum circuit.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. We go on emergency power, everything goes all to hell. What’s it like outside?”

  “Just like here, gone all to hell. Listen, are you sure you don’t know where the interrogation is? It’s really important. Jonathan Clement’s involved, I think.”

  “Oh, sure. Third floor. I know they went up there, but I thought it was just a meeting, not an interrogation. Who they interrogating?”

  “You don’t want to know, Mike. See you later.” She turned back to the stairwell door.

  “Yeah, I guess not. Hey, why don’t you take the elevator?”

  “I’m scared it’ll stall if the generator conks out.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Well, it’s third floor for Dr. Clement.”

  Back in the stairwell, she grinned nervously at Pierce. “I feel like Mata Hari or somebody.”

  “You did beautifully. Now I want you to stay behind for a while.”

  “What? Where, here on the stairs? What if someone comes?”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll just be for a minute. I’ll call you when the coast is clear.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Get out of the building. Mike’ll let you go.”

  “I’m supposed to go out in a blackout, with everything going crazy?”

  “It’ll be safer than being caught in here with no good alibi.”

  “My God. A couple of hours ago I was washing my hair.”

  He smiled at her. “See you in a minute.”

  Pierce went upstairs slowly, the Streetsweeper slung over his shoulder and his Mallory.15 in his hand. The stairwell was silent; when he looked down the shaft he could see Jaz’s hand resting on the railing. He reached the second floor landing, then the third. Even as he opened the door, he was unsure what he would do.

  The door opened into a hallway. Pierce came through the door casually, saw the guard thirty feet down the hall, and raised his empty left hand in a friendly wave. The guard, a red-faced young man in camouflage fatigues, brought his shotgun up to present arms.

  “I’m late for the interrogation,” Pierce called. “This the right floor?”

  “Identify yourself,” the guard said.

  “T-Colonel Gerald Pierce.” He was closing the distance, casually shifting the Mallory to his left hand. In an undertone he added: “Come to attention when I address you, son.”

  The guard snapped to attention, lowered the butt of his shotgun to his left heel, and swept his right hand across his waist to touch the shotgun’s barrel. Pierce raised the muzzle of the Mallory.15, set at low impact, and shot the guard in the solar plexus. The young man’s face went pale; his eyes rolled up and he slumped against the wall. Pierce caught the shotgun before it fell, then eased the guard’s slump to the floor.

  The doors along the corridor revealed nothing. Pierce tried one and found it locked. So was the next. The third was not.

  Feeling a little foolish with two shotguns and a pistol, Pierce opened the door.

  The first thing he saw was the Dali print, then Wigner in the dentist’s chair and the three men facing him. Pierce recognized Jonathan Clement and the two interrogators. Wigner looked up, startled.

  “My God — Jerry!” Wigner glanced at the three men, then back at Pierce. Pierce saw the surprise in Wigner’s eyes, and a moment of what seemed like inward calculation. Then Wigner nodded contemptuously at the men. “Kill them!”

  Phelan was already reaching for his black bag. Pierce brought up the Streetsweeper he had taken from the guard, and fired.

  It sounded like a door slamming three times. The panelling and the print of Christos Hypercubus were shredded and streaked with blood. The impact of the shots flung the men back into their chairs and then bounced them onto the floor.

  “Get me out of this,” Wigner said. His voice was shaky. “Are they dead, old son? Are you sure?”

  “They’re dead.” Pierce’s voice was flat. He undid the straps holding Wigner to the dentist’s chair, his eyes scanning the room and the doorway. He noticed the computer monitor and its green hexagons. “So it was the virus.”

  “Yes. Yes. My God. Messy business.” Wigner looked away from the dead men. “We’ve got to get out of here. Back to the office.”

  “I know. Come on.” He guided Wigner through the doorway and into the corridor. The guard lay sprawled against the wall.

  “Are you sure they’re dead?” Wigner insisted.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  The door to the stairwell suddenly opened, and Jaz looked through it. Pierce lowered his shotgun.

  “You scared hell out of — ”

  "Behind you!”

  Pierce dropped, spinning, and saw the two guards in camouflage fatigues entering the hallway through a door at the far end. He fired and saw them double over before falling. The sound of the shot echoed down the stairwell. An alarm went off with an insistent, repetitive buzz.

  Wigner had also flung himself flat. Pierce pulled him upright and shoved him into the doorway. Jaz was still standing there, looking down the hallway. The two men lay writhing in their blood. One of them gasped, hands pressed to his face as blood ran between his fingers.

  “Come on,” Pierce commanded. Shuddering, Jaz obeyed.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Near the main floor landing, Pierce stopped and reached into one of the pockets of Jaz’s duffel coat. She looked at him with huge, frightened eyes; he smiled at her and went down to the landing. The grenade was small, with a pop-off cap. Pierce pushed the door open, tossed the grenade out into the lobby, and stepped back as the door swung shut. He smiled again at Wigner and Jaz, who stood a couple of steps farther up. The detonation was a sharp crack; air shrieked briefly around the edges of the door.

  “Stay put,” said Pierce, and went through the door in a sudden roll. Nothing happened for almost thirty seconds; the only sound in the stairwell was the distant ringing of the alarm. “Now,” Pierce called, and Jaz pulled Wigner after her.

  The darkened lobby was full of smoke; shards of glass glittered faintly on the floor. The front doors had been blown open, and the lights of New Jersey were just visible through the trees across Riverside Drive. Someone groaned in the darkness. Jaz hoped it was Mike Tordahl, that he wasn’t seriously hurt. Somehow she was certain that others were around her in the darkness, dead men who had been alive seconds before.

  “Fast,” said Pierce, guiding them over the debris. Glass broke musically under their feet.

  On the sidewalk, four or five people stood with shopping bags full of loot and watched them leave the building. They said nothing, did nothing but watch. Inside, the alarm was still ringing faintly. Pierce and Wigner looked up and saw that a few windows on the residential floors were still lit, though most had blackout curtains drawn.

  “What do we do now?” Jaz asked.

  “Walk. How are you feelin
g, Eric?”

  “All right. Feeling better all the time. We’ve got to get to the office, old son.”

  “What office?” said Jaz.

  “A little place on West 38th,” Pierce answered. “It’s got most of our records and a computer link.”

  “I know that place.” Jaz giggled. “That’s where I ran into that damn defence program.”

  “I know,” said Wigner.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fujii’s program locks onto probes and follows them home. That’s how we’re going to catch a lot of Wabbies tonight.” He glanced at his wrist. “Hell, they took my watch. What time is it?”

  “A quarter past one,” said Pierce.

  “We’ve got a long walk.”

  “Probably a useless one,” Pierce said quietly. “The office on 38th doesn’t have a backup generator, and our computers don’t have batteries. Even if the power comes back on, if the phone lines are out we won’t be able to link up with the wailing wall or anyone else.”

  “Good God.” Wigner looked horrified. “It never even crossed my mind. Good God.”

  “Does this mean we’ve killed people for no reason?” Jaz asked quietly.

  “Not necessarily,” Pierce answered. “The power grid’s out because the computers are dead. If they can uncouple the computers, the power will be back. Same for the phones. But no one may figure that out for a while.”

  Wigner drew a deep breath and let it out. He put a hand on Pierce’s shoulder, as if seeking support or offering comfort, and then shivered.

  “Damn cold, and me with no jacket. Well, let’s get on with it.”

  They were soon on Broadway, which was jammed with abandoned cars. Off to the east, toward Central Park, gunfire was still popping away; but here the sidewalks were empty except for an occasional looter rummaging through a shattered storefront window. At 80th and Broadway a teenaged boy in a ragged blue sweater lay dead in the street, his knees pulled up under his chest. Jaz swept the flashlight beam over him and then clicked it off.

  “Don’t use it again,” Pierce told her. “Someone might squeeze off a round at you just for fun.”

  They walked steadily south down Broadway, Pierce carrying his shotguns openly slung over his shoulder. A couple of National Guardsmen, nervously guarding the stairs to the subway, watched them pass but did not challenge them.

  The city in darkness was still but not silent. Gunfire still sounded, and now and then a siren hooted. Music, both live and from battery-powered radios, drifted out of lightless windows: Chuck Berry, Monteverdi, a cello improvisation. On some front stoops on the side streets, people sat drinking and smoking, laughing now and then.

  “Is this supposed to be a revolution?” Jaz asked. “No barricades, no one making speeches. Just smoking dope and listening to music. And dying in the middle of the street.”

  “The revolutions are always in the brain cells,” said Wigner. “You could be brain dead for years and your liver wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “Do brain cells use shotguns?”

  “Jerry’s did and a good thing, too.”

  Pierce said nothing. Neither did Jaz.

  Lights came on suddenly as they crossed Columbus Circle. Signs flashed: street lights glowed orange-pink. In the apartment buildings facing Central Park, lights glowed and then went out again: it was late, and people wanted to go back to sleep.

  “That’s the best stroke of luck we’ve had all night,” said Pierce.

  Wigner was too cold and miserable to answer. Pierce passed him his anorak. He wore a striped shirt under it, and the Mallory.15 in a shoulder holster.

  “Between that and your shotguns, you look damn suspicious, old son.”

  “I am damn suspicious.”

  “Just the same, take off the holster and Jasmin can put it under her coat.”

  The midtown streets were more populated. Fires burned on street comers, squatters in the old automobile showrooms were cooking whatever they’d looted, and hookers were working Times Square. Someone seemed to be huddled in every doorway. National Guard patrols were out on foot, jumpy young men in flak jackets and carrying ancient M-16s. They looked at Pierce’s shotgun but kept their distance.

  The office building on West 38th was dark and locked, but Pierce had a key. They let themselves into the lobby and then walked up two flights of stairs to the office.

  “This is it?” asked Jaz.

  “This is it,” Wigner said.

  It was a two-room suite whose plastered walls were cracked and yellowed. The lighting fixtures dated from the sixties and the furniture consisted of a couple of Sally Ann couches, some filing cabinets, a photocopier, and two small desks. On each stood a Polymath XCB hooked to a modem. A hot plate stood on a card table in the second room of the suite.

  “Let’s start with a nice cup of tea,” Wigner said. “God, I’m cold after that walk. Then we’ll get to work.”

  “Boot, Polly,” Pierce commanded. The screens of the two computers came to life, with the cartoon figures of identical little girls in the lower right comers.

  “Booted, Jerry,” the little girls chorused.

  “Polly One,” said Pierce. “Link with wailing wall.”

  “Sure, Jerry.”

  Jaz sank onto one of the couches and watched Pierce’s flickerscreen. “My God, you run it fast.”

  “Lots to do.”

  Irrelevantly, she said: “No houseplants. Eric always has houseplants.”

  “We aren’t here often enough to look after them. But he tried.”

  By the time Wigner had brought in mugs of tea, the wailing-wall network was alerted. The screen flickered with demands: Where have you guys been? What’s happening? Can we go after the Wabbies?

  Wigner sipped his tea as he settled before the computer.

  “Here we go.”

  Blackouts still covered many parts of the United States and Canada, but all through the night the power came back and more members of the wailing wall reported in. Wigner kept information flowing in both directions while Pierce handled the Wabbies’ computer net.

  “Every time the power comes on, somebody else checks in,” Pierce said to Jaz. “The Wabbies figured on the blackouts. Very organized. Now they think their computers are the only ones still working. They aren’t even bothering with codes.”

  “Why doesn’t the virus knock out their own computers?” Jaz asked.

  “The virus program has an immune system, so it can’t take over their own machines.”

  “What they don’t know,” said Wigner, “is that we built a couple of little flaws into that immune system, so we can eavesdrop on them.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jaz. “When I tried to probe this machine, I could tell I was up against a first-rate shield. Won’t the Wabbies realize something’s up?”

  “If they’re looking for it,” said Pierce. “But they’re not. They’re just probing enough of the government net to make sure it’s completely crashed. If they did probe one of our machines by accident, they’d figure it was a glitch of some kind. Besides, they’re too busy talking to each other now.”

  Jaz and Pierce skipped from one Wabbie computer to another, monitoring dozens of communications. Some were pure logistics: moving cars or people or fuel from one place to another. Pierce saw that his old informant Wes McCullough had been ordered to bring a gasoline reserve from his ranch to a rendezvous just outside Mountain Home. Others were marching orders, sending teams of gunmen or technicians to specific targets: bureaucrats’ homes, radio and TV stations, highway interchanges, airports, and railyards. Before long they slipped into a routine, with Jaz

  watching the flickerscreen while Pierce notified T-Colonels, police forces, and army units about the Wabbie plans she monitored. Despite the lack of immediate warning, the wailing wall and its allies had moved quickly. In many cases they were already the local arms of government, so the paralysis in Washington was unimportant. In other cases they moved into the vacuum left by the virus attack
, with the support of local authorities grateful to have any kind of computer net.

  “Hit team identified heading for Washington,” Pierce said from his keyboard as he transferred the data to a window on Wigner’s screen. “Three men in an’86 Cherokee with Kentucky plates, just passed through a roadblock in Arlington.”

  Wigner nodded and murmured into his Polymath’s microphone, alerting Senator Cooledge’s staff and then a riot-control unit stationed in Georgetown.

  “The Wabbies are slow," Wigner gloated. “The dumb bastards didn’t realize how successful they were going to be. They should’ve had their teams in place before they made their move.”

  “Congress is convening,” Pierce reported a little later. “Cooledge kept her quorum.” He patched the Congressional Record into windows on both computers, and occasionally glanced at the words that formed painfully slowly as the House of Representatives and the Senate debated Bill 402. Wigner alerted the T-Colonel of District 11, Pennsylvania, about an assassination team in Harrisburg.

  By four in the morning, the Wabbie computers were beginning to fall silent. Link after link was broken without warning. Not until almost 4:30 did a Wabbie hacker manage to send a Mayday before going off. Wigner noted six computers that suddenly jacked out of the net, and alerted the nearest T-Colonels; all six hackers were captured without incident before 5:00.

  By then the interrogations were coining in, too many of them to be simultaneously monitored. First tens, then scores of prisoners were undergoing deep questioning. The whole Wabbie underground was revealed, vaster than anyone but Wigner and Pierce had imagined.

  By sunrise the casualty reports were on the screens: fifteen dead and eight wounded in a raid outside Memphis; one dead, three wounded in Thickee; twelve dead, forty-one wounded or incapacitated in St. Louis. A group in Los Angeles, besieged in a house full of munitions, had blown themselves up. Two city blocks were demolished and in flames, with hundreds believed dead.

  Wigner stood up and stretched.

  “My lord, what a morning.” He grinned wearily at Pierce. “Jerry, I do believe the worst is over.”

  “Let’s get the Emergency repealed.”