“Mars, China, it’s all the same to me,” said Steiner, mockingly. “I’m a trained warrior, hungry for war and I’ll go wherever there’s a war for me.”
“Shit,” said Johnson. “Mars is so goddamned far away. We’re not gonna get no R&R on Mars.”
“I don’t know,” said Foley. “I joined the Army because I wanted to travel, so I guess I can’t argue with it.”
Steiner grinned. “That’s right, travel the world, meet interesting people and kill them. That’s what I signed up for, too.”
“You think we’ll be in the same company?” said Johnson.
“Sure,” said Steiner. “We’ve been selected for our veteran status, so they’ll want people who they’ll know can work together. Don’t worry, we’ll have your back.”
“That’s right,” said Foley. “We’ll carry you just like we did last time.”
“You didn’t carry nothing, fool!” Johnson shouted, but he was secretly glad he would be with his old comrades.
They entered the hall of IVRs and spoke briefly with the sergeant in charge. He pointed down the left-hand side and Steiner, Johnston and Foley walked down to their pods.
“Let’s hope the diplomats don’t screw this up for us,” said Steiner as he climbed up the ladder. “If I’m training for three months I want to be kicking some Martian ass at the end of it.”
“Prepare for peace but pray for war,” said Foley, as he slid into his IVR and closed the hatch. Johnson just grunted and shook his head.
Once he was inside the IVR Steiner put his headset on then slid his arms into the full-arm joysticks in front of him. He issued the command ‘compress suit’ and felt his body become engulfed by the IVR. He spoke into the com, “Commander Foley, Commander Johnson, do you read?”
Foley came back, “I read you, Commander Steiner.”
There was a delay and some quiet cursing before Johnson came over the com. “Reading you here, Commander Steiner.”
Steiner spoke to his sim. “Give me a Martian scenario,” he said.
The sim replied, “I’m sorry, we currently have no Martian scenarios.”
Steiner frowned. “Okay, give me a scenario in Devon Island, Canada, do you have maps for that?”
“I do,” the com replied.
“I want a medium-sized town, well defended with AA guns and guided missile towers. Patch Commanders Johnson and Foley into the sim. Set the temperature to -80°C.”
“Setting temperature,” said the sim.
“Are you ready, boys?” said Steiner.
“Ready, Commander.”
“Ready, Commander.”
“Set us down eight klicks southwest of the ville.”
“Eight kilometres southwest of the ville,” the sim echoed.
“Prepare to begin simulation,” Steiner said, and then he remembered. “One more thing, simulation, please?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Set the gravity to 0.38.”
“Yes, Commander. Please be aware that a gravity setting of 0.38 is outside the bounds of a realistic simulation.”
“I know that,” said Steiner. “Can you please save these mission parameters to a new template?”
“Certainly, Commander. What would you like to call the template?”
Steiner did not give it a moment’s thought. “Martian,” he said.
Foley was lying on his bunk in the early evening when a call came through on his comdev. Steiner and Johnson, and most of the others, were off somewhere catching up and putting the world to rights but Foley was just lying there, awake and enjoying his own company. He reached into his pocket, grabbed the comdev and held it up to his ear. “Hello,” he said.
“Commander Foley?” said the voice on the other end.
“Who is this?”
“I’m calling on behalf of a very powerful client. We have a job we’d like to offer you.”
“I have a job,” said Foley. “I’m a Marine Commander.”
“We’re aware of your résumé, Mr Foley, which is why we’re interested in you for the job.”
“Who did you say you were again?”
“We’re a private military contractor, a PMC. We work for the most exclusive clients, and we have a job for which you have been highly recommended.”
“Recommended by who?”
“It’s a very sensitive job. If you choose to accept my client will be extremely grateful.”
Foley thought it might be a test. He wasn’t going to play ball.
“Listen pal, I ain’t interested, okay?” he said.
“The pay is very good,” the voice said, putting a huge stress on ‘very.’ “If you decide you want in just send an email in the next two days.”
“Send an email? Who to?”
“Anyone. We’ll pick it up.” The voice was gone.
Foley looked at his comdev. He had an application on it called OutHide. It traced all coms, video, audio or data to their sources. Flicking through some screens he found it and pressed on a big red button marked ‘Trace’. Some text and numbers shot up the screen, too fast to read, with larger text laid over the top that read ‘Analysing . . .’ The results screen appeared: Last Incoming Call 16:18, Steiner, Hayden. That had been a call from Steiner in the afternoon. The time now was 19:09. The caller had left no trace.
Foley rolled over on the bunk and pushed the comdev back into his pocket. He was intrigued by the call, but it seemed way too suspect to take at face value. He wondered if anyone had called Johnson or Steiner. Maybe he would ask them.
Rodney Sherman’s eyes were small and close together. He didn’t speak much and he moved in such a way as he never drew attention to himself. He lived in the background. He could circulate as easily amongst cons and gangsters as he could amongst senators and captains of industry. He could talk a lot without saying much when he needed to, or he could speak volumes with a single word. He possessed a quiet control which often seemed like contempt. But he got things done, and that was what Gerard White liked about him. He could fix things when they needed fixing and he didn’t mind - in fact he seemed to positively enjoy - getting his hands dirty.
Sherman was sat in a booth at the back of an upmarket burger joint. It was midafternoon and relatively quiet. He had ordered a burger and a cola but had only taken a couple of bites from the burger, and had not touched the cola at all. He looked at his watch. It was 15:15. He disliked it intensely when people were late for meetings. He was considering leaving when White entered via the kitchen and strode quickly over to the booth. He’d managed to ditch his security detail and had an understanding with the burger joint’s owner.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “Had trouble getting out of a budget meeting. Have you eaten?”
“I’m not really hungry,” said Sherman.
“I’m starving,” said White, “but I don’t really have time to eat.”
Sherman pushed the burger across the table. “I’ve had a bite, that’s all,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Really?” said White. “Thank you, I haven’t had chance to get a bite all day.” He picked up the burger and bit into it. “Oh boy,” he said, “this tastes so good.”
As he bit and chewed Sherman studied him. Through a mouthful White said, “Is it done? Did you manage to get someone?”
Sherman waited a little. He felt powerful in that moment. “We have someone inside,” he said.
“That’s great,” said White. “And he’s contactable at all times?”
Sherman nodded. “He or she is contactable, yes.”
“Good.”
“How do you want to proceed?”
White chewed and swallowed another bite of burger. “For now, we don’t need to do anything. This is a precaution against what might go down in future. If things start to get out of hand we need a way to stop it from the inside.” He chewed more burger. “But I doubt it will ever get to that. Always good to have a fallback position, though, so I thank you for that. We get reports back if we need them,
right?”
“If we need them. Every communication is a risk, though. I thought you wanted a sleeper, just in case, not a spy.”
“Of course, of course. Let’s leave it at that for now. As long as we have someone in place, in case we need them, I’d consider this a job well done. Thank you, Rodney.” He held out a hand across the table.
Sherman couldn’t help noticing the mustard and ketchup on one of the fingers but, despite himself, he took the hand and shook it. “Is there anything else?” he said.
“If anything comes up I’ll let you know immediately,” said White. “There’s a lot of stuff going on at the moment. I think that mad bastard is getting crazier by the day. If there aren’t elections by the end of the year I’m going to start getting seriously worried. But what can I do? I’m only the VP.”
“If you need my help with anything, Mr Vice President, just ask.”
“Of course,” replied White. He felt uncomfortable as he often did in Sherman’s presence. Sherman always liked to give the impression he was connected to everyone and everything, but the idea that he could help the vice president rein in the president seemed to go too far. Disturbingly, it carried a sliver of plausibility.
White dabbed his mouth with a napkin and stood up. “Thanks again, Rodney,” he said. “I’ll be in touch soon. This thing is moving way too fast and I appreciate all the help I get.”
“No problem,” said Sherman. He lifted a hand in gesture of salute at White, who was already heading for the exit.
C H A P T E R 9
Moving Target
Twenty-third century media communications were chaotic. Every business, organisation, group and individual had their own media stream. They streamed video, audio and text, as much and as often as they wanted. Almost any information required was freely available. The issue for media consumers was finding a way to wade through the deluge of information to find that which was pertinent to them. Most people had an aggregator on their comdev or terminal. Via deliberately programmed preferences and highly tuned heuristic algorithms the aggregators would sift through vast oceans of information to provide individuals with news and information tailored to their interests. The newsgathering behemoths of old had become redundant two centuries earlier. Newsgathering now was scattered amongst the entire population. Every person was a potential journalist. Every person had a camera, a connection and a point of view. Whenever anything happened, from a war to a minor celebrity inadvertently exposing some underwear, there were plenty of ‘journalists’ there to record the event, comment on it, and send it around the world before it had even finished happening.
In a world where everyone was a journalist it didn’t follow that everyone was a good journalist. A certain type of person loved the celebrity and attention they got from reporting and posting on events happening in the digital sphere around them. They would learn to develop sharp digital elbows to try to force their way to the top of the pack. They didn’t even necessarily need to be where the action was. It was possible to follow the right feeds, have aggregators looking in the right places and have databases on hand to look up everything and anything necessary to embellish a story. When an event happened it could be quickly republished with additional comments and a sheen of the journalist’s signature brand of zaniness, or seriousness, or sarcasm, or cynicism, in the hope that people would view the event through their feed rather than anyone else’s. In this way it was possible become a minor celebrity in one’s own right. Followers would bring in advertising revenue, so with a big enough audience it was possible to make a living from it. It wasn’t journalism in the traditional sense. It was more like being the town gossip, but it was called journalism and it appealed to a certain type of person.
Elspeth J Ross was not that type of person. She was eighteen years old and had, she was often told, a very sensible head on her shoulders. Unlike the majority of her peers she wasn’t particularly interested in the video, music and sports celebrities that were the bread-and-butter of most budding journalists. She was more interested in actual things. The way the world worked fascinated her. She could see the video, music and sports stars gliding across the surface of the world, having no actual impact on it. It seemed to Elspeth that the world was shaped by occult forces working far beneath the visible surface. That fascinated her and intrigued her. She wanted everyone else to find it as interesting as she did, and it was that that attracted her to the world of journalism.
She had studied economics, politics and the sciences at school. She had been one of the outsider kids. It made her slightly sad that the packs of kids at her school had rejected her simply because she had not been as shallow and foolish as they were. On one hand she wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with such vacuous people. On the other, the rejection stung.
Happily, that period of her life was over now. She had finished school six months earlier and her plan, as far as she had one, was to become a successful journalist. Her streams had a few hundred followers, next to nothing she knew, but she was determined to battle on and build on that number.
Elspeth had been brought up by her mother. She was an only child. Her father had died before she ever knew him. Her mother worked for Hjälp Teknik in one of their production plants. They had lived in one of Venkdt’s housing projects in Eastside. It had been a happy childhood, apart from the difficulties at school, and her mother had always been supportive. Elspeth was a shy child, but always inquisitive. She found it difficult to talk to people and she felt uncomfortable in unfamiliar situations. But she had a gritty determination that, tied to her inquisitiveness, drove her to overcome her inhibitions. She didn’t like speaking to strangers but she knew that if she wanted to find out that little titbit of information she wanted to know she would have to ask.
Her proudest moment at school had been a journalistic presentation about Hjälp Teknik. She had interviewed her mother, some of her mother’s co-workers and a media relations person at Hjälp Teknik and had made a potted history of the company. The presentation was fluid and polished. It held the attention of the viewer and also imparted some useful and interesting information. Her classmates had laughed at it but the teacher was full of effusive praise, and Elspeth knew it was good. That feeling touched something in her and she knew then that that was what she wanted to do.
In a game where your competition is more or less the entire world (strictly speaking, the entire worlds) it makes sense to have an angle, something unique to make you stand out from the pack. Elspeth thought she had it. She would make news. She wasn’t going to throw old ladies under the bus and post videos of it - nothing as crude as that, though there was probably someone somewhere who was mulling over such a scheme. Elspeth’s idea was far more subtle and sophisticated. She’d noticed it in the Hjälp Teknik presentation she did at school. The Hjälp Teknik PR person presented the company in a different light to the workers who worked there. By juxtaposing these two points of view Elspeth had created something new, interesting and worth hearing. She had created news by combining two separate elements. It was almost like chemistry. That, she thought, would be her angle. She would study the streams and make the connections that other people missed. She could dig out information, combine two apparently disparate elements and create a third thing, unique to her and worthwhile.
She had tried this a number of times so far, but with little success. She followed the streams diligently and had made some interesting connections, spinning new stories from them, but these had failed to set the world alight. The trouble was, so it seemed to Elspeth, that though the stories were interesting and of some minor import, they would never reach a large audience because what the large audience wanted to see was a cat falling off a hammock or a minor celebrity leaving another minor celebrity’s apartment in the middle of the night. Elspeth wanted to do serious news. She also wanted a serious sized audience. The two things seemed exclusive until one day she hit on a big idea.
Bobby Karjalainen.
It was a perfect plan. If sh
e could interview Bobby Karjalainen she would have a major news story. Not only that but she could use her alchemy to spin it even bigger. Bobby Karjalainen would be the perfect interview subject. He was a very minor celebrity in his own right, what with his book and war hero status. He looked good, so just a picture of him would attract interest. And unlike most minor celebrities he had actually done something interesting and significant. Elspeth thought she could sell the interview like this: come for the beefcake, stay for the harrowing war stories. There was another bit of magic she could add to the mix; Elspeth knew that Jack Karjalainen was dying. None of the celeb journalists would have given this a moment’s thought. As an old man, a captain of industry and not in the least bit photogenic, who cared about Jack Karjalainen? Elspeth did. She followed the business streams. She had read Bobby’s book and she knew that Bobby had a very strained relationship with his father. His father was now dying and Bobby had returned to Mars.
Why?
It seemed very likely to her that Bobby was seeking reconciliation with his father and that could be human interest dynamite. The celeb-junkie audience might not give a stuff who Jack Karjalainen was, but a story about a good-looking, semi-famous war hero tearfully reuniting with his dying father could be a blockbuster. It even had that sheen of seriousness that appealed so much to the shallow-minded. All she needed to do now was track Bobby down and arrange an interview.
There were two possible stumbling blocks. She might not be able to get hold of him, and if she did he might decline the offer of an interview with an eighteen-year-old girl who had no track record whatsoever. Elspeth figured if she was going to let things like that put her off she was in the wrong game. And she knew she wasn’t in the wrong game.
Elspeth J Ross, journalist, was going to interview Bobby Karjalainen.
Elspeth thought that Bobby Karjalainen, the semi-famous war hero and one-time author, would be an easy person to track down, but it was not so. In the twenty-third century even minor celebrity was big enough that those afflicted with it took measures to avoid contact with the people who took such a prurient interest in their lives.
Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Page 13