Authors: Marc D. Giller
Tags: #Adventure, #Science Fiction, #Military, #Fiction, #General, #Thrillers, #Suspense Fiction, #High Tech, #Conspiracies, #Business intelligence, #Supercomputers
Hammerjack
Contents
Part One
THE THOUSAND-YEAR FLOOD
For Three Generations:
Daniel and Ursula Giller,
who gave me life
Ildi Giller,
who showed me love
Alexandra and Christian Giller,
who taught me what life is about
Aspiring writers have a vivid fantasy life, a lot of which doesn’t end up on paper. Much of it revolves around the Lucky Break: that day you finally get the call that your book sold, and your life changes forever. For me, that day came less than a week after my son was born. I’d spent the morning mowing the lawn, and was just getting out of the shower when my agent called with the news. Dripping wet, I tore through the house in my boxers to tell my wife what happened, while my daughter looked on like I was nuts. Not exactly the magic moment I’d always pictured—but fate has a sense of humor, and rarely delivers what you’d expect.
Case in point: I recently found myself at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston, standing in front of a bunch of people who were asking
me
how to get a novel published. It felt strange giving advice on the subject, as I had spent more than a few years trying to cross that finish line myself. I started thinking about all the people who had helped me during that time—the friends and family who patiently read my stuff, offering advice and honesty; the teachers and professors who showed me how (and sometimes how not) to write; and those brave few literary professionals who actually listened, giving me just enough encouragement to keep working at it. Without them, this book would have never seen the light of day.
To Kimberley Cameron, my agent and miracle worker: it can’t be easy to turn a wannabe into a professional writer, but somehow you made it all happen. Your enthusiasm and faith in this project never wavered, and for that I owe you a tremendous debt. Thanks for all the hard work and inspiration—and for making the dream a reality.
To Juliet Ulman, the hardest-working woman in the publishing business: you’re everything I could have hoped for in an editor—sharp, literate, with a keen eye for what works and what doesn’t (and an impressive knowledge of 1970s low-budget cinema). Thanks for plucking my manuscript from the pile and turning it into a real novel, and me into a real author.
Also, props go out to Todd Keithley, who helped coax this novel from its infancy (he’s now studying to be a lawyer, but don’t hold that against him); Adam Marsh, whose line-editing skills are second to none; Payne Harrison, fellow author and fellow Aggie, who shared his wisdom and experience; Steve Fennell and John Kerwin, who read the first draft and provided me the sage counsel that only science-fiction fanboys can provide; Jeff Bell, for being a friend and not showing anyone my old vampire novel (although he’s threatened to eBay the manuscript someday); Don Atkinson, J. D. Bondy, Barry Carmody, Mark Dye, Valerie Fennell, Joe Kucewicz, and Mary Helen Uusimaki, for reading my earlier work with compassion and interest; Zala and Linnea Forizs, who believed in me enough to let me marry their daughter; Claudia Atkinson, who inspired me to write when we were kids by starting a novel of her own; Mary Jo Edwards and Jane Pruitt, who nurtured that creative spark at the beginning; the late Charles Gordone, for all the weird and wacky times in playwriting; and to Bill Linkenhoker, Simon Morgan, and Curtis Pope, for your friendship and poker-playing skills.
It’s been a wild ride so far. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
Marc D. Giller
Tampa, Florida
Seven minutes had passed since the disturbance began, but by the time Caleb got word over the fiber link it was already old news. It was no secret that police communications were far from secure: hammerjacks had seen to that, carving so many holes in the backbone that anybody with a homemade face kit could plug in and listen to whatever he damn well pleased. Not that it mattered. Being a cop wasn’t that kind of job anymore—nor had it ever been in Caleb’s lifetime.
Still, there were things that the Corporate Special Services wouldn’t touch—and the illusion of a civilian police department had its advantages. So over the course of the six months, when the party had started spilling out of the rave clubs of Chelsea and into the streets of Manhattan, the job of cleaning up the mess fell on Caleb’s desk. At first he had thought it was just another phase in the tec culture—some mass hallucinatory trip fueled by synthesized adrenal-opiates, maybe some new thing smuggled in from the Zone that nobody knew about. But Caleb knew his streets, and his instincts—obsolete or not—soon told him that there was something
else
at work here. He could see it in their pasty faces and rapturous eyes: the way they all seemed to know when to come together. The word moved through the dark undercurrent that ran beneath the city, a hard link wired into each and every one of their heads.
What it all meant was the thing Caleb didn’t know. Reliable snitches were hard to find in the subculture, and the intel brokers didn’t come cheap enough for the department to buy them. The only information Caleb had was what he had seen for himself—and that, he didn’t begin to understand.
It wasn’t the street species; Caleb had been on the job long enough to recognize them all—the Crowleys, the Teslas, the Urban Goths—Zone rangers so wasted they wandered around like zombies, eating and fucking out of pure reflex. He recognized the order that existed between them, the barriers they put between themselves. So long as that balance was maintained, he never worried. But when they were around each other and there wasn’t a fight, Caleb became concerned. It felt too much like prophecy—too much like the end of the world.
Maybe it’s true. If the end doesn’t come soon, people might get tired of waiting.
Caleb allowed the notion to hover in front of him for a few moments, until it dissipated into the cloud of cigarette smoke that swirled around his head. It was a small cabin, and the pilot of the hovercraft made no attempt to conceal his disgust at the acrid intrusion. Caleb didn’t care. He knew the smell was horrible, but at least it was real tobacco, with all of the old stimulants and carcinogens added for just the right kick. It was his one expensive habit, an unusual one in an age when most designer drugs were genetically engineered and readily accessible—not to mention legal. He smoked it down to the last possible ember, taking one last mournful drag off the wasted stick before stubbing the remains out on the floor.
“How much longer?” he asked.
“Coming up to the starboard,” the pilot replied. “You know about this place?”
Caleb grunted affirmatively as he slid over to the other side of the cabin. He wiped the fog from the glass and peered through a light mist at the passing city outside. A hundred meters below was Church Street, while on both sides the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan rose another two thousand meters to punch a hole in the night. The structures were so massive they could be seen from low orbit—but from his vantage point, Caleb also saw the people inside, scurrying past the windows and conducting their business. Even at this hour deals were being closed—a never-ending tide of commerce, the pulse that made the city come alive.
The pilot carved out a glide path that took them in a tight arc around the Volksgott Tower. Caleb kept his eyes fixed on the huge, glowing letters that marked the eight-hundred-floor building, trying to fight off the inevitable sensation of vertigo. Slowly at first, then accelerating, the letters peeled away from his sight, opening up the vastness of the plaza beneath him. The effect was dramatic—not for the architectural marvel that the Collective had dedicated to itself, but for the audience that had gathered there to watch the show.
Caleb sensed his pilot growing anxious as they prepared to set down.
“They ever done this before?”