System Seven (48 page)

“Yeah I’m sure they
do.”

Mistrust leaked like
ruddy water. There was no escaping the resentment towards Sean for grossly
understating the threat of the antigravity ships. He’d almost died as a result.
He wondered what else they were holding back or what other danger they would
put him in.

Johan picked up on it.
Maybe you need more time to get used to
this ship, eh? Before you turn it over to them. Come pick me up. I’ll be at the
Milltown cemetery in Belfast in about two hours. See what more you can learn
from your Geo and don’t get yourself caught. And don’t be late.

“But the bombs–”

Exactly. I’ve got an idea.

“Shit...”

Relax. You’ll like it.

• • •

Two floors up from
Desmond’s Bar and one up from the restaurant, a small bedroom served as storage
and occasional crash pad for those regulars too drunk or too unhappy with their
mates to go home. Cardboard boxes stood ceiling-high, partially blocking a window.
In a wooden chair at the window sat a big brute of man, dozing chin to chest. A
narrow gap between the boxes and the window led maze-like to a hidden space
against the far wall. Just three feet wide, an army cot filled most of it.

Lying on the cot, Johan
stirred and opened his eyes to find himself wedged between a wall and a
mountain of boxes – plastic cups and napkins, by the printing. The urge to piss
was overwhelming. Hunger made waves, too – and someone was cooking. He went to
sit up but stopped with a throbbing head. “Fuck.” Being back felt marvelous, to
just
be
without having to worry about
form, function, or vibe... a solid, unchanging body. He just felt badly hung
over.

A head popped around
the box wall, with a beard and a wool cap.

“Ah, grand. I was
gettin’ worried for ya.” The fellow finished side-stepping the gap into the
hideaway. “I’m Brogan. Been yer lookout.”

A scan revealed he was
contracted help, not Korda. It seemed they’d put some distance between them.

“Thanks. Eh, I
really
need a go at the loo. Could ya
point me proper?” With Brogan’s help he clambered to his feet.

“Yer name’s Killian
Casey of Chapelstown, by the way.” Brogan shuffled the gap and led the way to
the door. “Yer a photographer. School pictures and such, travelin’ on holiday.
Low budget, Killian.” He produced a wallet and handed it to Johan.

“Right. Look, I need
you to call your handler and have them bring me two Kevlar vests. Within the
hour.” A hall with low ceilings led to a small bathroom. The smell of food was
stronger at the narrow stairs leading down. “And I need some food.”

“Kitchen’s still open.
Beef, bird, an’ a bottle of Bud for ten quid.” Brogan said. “I’ll make the
call.”

“Thanks.” Just before
his bladder burst he squeezed into the cramped privy and managed the best piss
of his life. Eyes closed, he shifted briefly up to the edge of Saoghal and
peered out...

All too near, the
korjé probed patterns he’d used previously. Anki’s thread was strong as she was
in route to meet him. The thin line to Kaiya felt worried; poor girl, she’d
just have to wait. A quick check with Ryota’s covering team confirmed the
Comannda had allowed the boy to be recovered, though only to his father’s care.
Guards remained. Retrieval would no doubt be risky.

He pulled all the way
back, finished up, and made for the stairs. He suppressed a mental image of da
Vinci’s Last Supper, a sign of worry about being tracked.
Don’t doubt yourself... that’ll jack you up, invite them in.
He
thought of Tom and wondered if he’d made it away from Sakuma’s dream that day.
If he had, he owed him a drink.

Desmond’s chicken was
delicious, marinated and spicy. The beef was on the dry side and the beer icy,
the way Johan liked it. He could’ve done without the karaoke blaring up from
the first floor bar, but happy drunks and good food beat all the gloomy
alternatives. Brogan’s role as guard kept conversation safely mundane. The TV
over the cash register streamed images of the helicopter crashes in Tokyo.
Terrorists with handheld surface to air missiles were blamed, supported by
grainy CCTV video showing a launch. The Comannda knew how to heal the system
alright. He savored the simple act of looking away as much as he did eating the
food. At least here he had a choice.

A waitress brought the
check. Atop it was a note.

“Hmm,” the Irishman
grunted after looking it over. “Room’s doubled up to a hundred eighty euro.
Takin’ ‘vantage, they are.”

A woman came up the
stairs. The dark hair and face were unfamiliar, but the taut lines of her jeans
and her energy made him smile from ear to ear. He stood so she spotted him.

“Mind if I join ya?”
The lilt of her voice could raise stones.

“Jenny! By all means,
do. I was just thinkin’ a gal would make the evenin’ finer still.” He caught
her by the waist and they embraced fully. “Will you ever forgive me?” he
whispered in her ear.

“Take me upstairs and
we’ll see.”

Johan lay on the cot
with Anki, spent and drifting with her in the twilight of shared thought and
feelings.

With Steffan’s help,
she’d begun the slow and cautious reunion with a mother she didn’t know. The
greatest shock was learning that instead of having lived thirty years in some
kind of psychic cocoon, her mother had discovered how to observe with clarity
Anki’s experiences. For the last eight years, she’d been a passenger to most of
her thoughts, emotions, and even dreams. All the intimacies, petty moments –
all the highs and lows. Not all the time, but most.

At first Anki felt
both violated and guilty but then she grew angry. The intense empathy she’d
suffered was likely enhanced by her mother’s presence. Steffan helped her
understand that it wasn’t Clare’s intention or fault. Without that sharing of
the outside world, madness would have taken hold for good, a state her mother already
endured the long years prior. Learning to reach and observe Anki’s reality had
saved her. Together they revisited memories and Clare revealed where she had
tried to help, gently guiding her thoughts at the most difficult and lonely of
times. She had been there for her, trying to do all that a mother would have
done for her.

Johan checked the
time. Quarter to midnight. He signaled and they edged their way out of their
nook and headed for the hallway. Brogan appeared at the top of the stairs
carrying a box.

“Bring it with you,”
Johan said as he passed him.

She nudged Brogan.
“Time for a walk. Across the street to the cemetery.”

“Um, right.” He turned
to follow. “Anything special I should know?” Despite the guard’s tough
exterior, he hid a deep-rooted fear of cemeteries at night.

Anki shared a knowing
glance with Johan. “Nah. Just keep an eye out.”

They slipped out the
bar’s side door and made their way across the street to the cemetery. After
scaling a wall, they hiked a quarter mile through a sea of graves, stone
columns, and headstones seen by the half-light of the city’s glow. Johan slowed
in the midst of a poorer section where plots lay flat and edge to edge. The
cemetery grounds ended at a nearby line of trees with marshlands beyond. The
stillness focused Brogan’s fear until he couldn’t help but break it.

“What’re we out here
fer again?”

“I’ll take that,”
Johan said, relieving him of the box with the Kevlar vests. He sliced it open
and handed a vest to Anki.

“Fer reals, what kind
o’ meeting would ya have out here?”

Johan checked the time
again. “Most secret, as you can imagine. I need your eyes, now. Scan that
quarter and tell me if you see even a shadow. Should be two of ‘em, no more than three. Jenny, you look
thataway and I’ll scan this way. I don’t like surprises.”

“You an’ me both.”
Brogan hunkered down in his jacket and kept watch. A police chopper circled a
mile or so off with its spotlight working the avenues.

“Brogan.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you believe in
vampires?”

He turned as predicted
for a quick glance.

“Aren’t you the gas?”
He turned back, worried they might have sensed his fear of the graveyard.
“Yeah, vampires and werewolves and fairies, too. I’m all ‘bout them. In fact,
my ex-wife was a vampire. Oy, damn straight she was.” Suddenly, every hair on
his body stood up. He knuckled down to make sense of it but the feeling passed
after a bit. A bloody freaky place to be out on a bloody crazy night doing
bloody weird things. He shrugged his coat tighter. “What time was ya supposed
to meet again? Cause I’d say they were late.”

When no answer came he
turned, then spun around in terror. The bloke and his gal had up and vanished.
“No farggin’ way....” His pistol fairly leapt to his hand. He scanned the
closest headstones a dozen meters off, trying to catch the gag. When he
couldn’t, it was enough.

He walked the first
few steps, then broke into a full run muttering every bloomin’ curse he knew.

To win you have to risk loss.
- Jean-Claude Killy

The elevator settled
at the basement. Doors slid open and Austin stepped into a familiar foyer. He
loosened the 9mm in the hip holster at his side. Under his shirt he wore the
Kevlar vest.

He jogged up the ramp
to the security doors and peered through the glass. InterGen’s server farms and
central networking core lay just beyond. Rows upon rows of servers glowed in
the darkened aisles.

It was no surprise
InterGen would be tapped as a gateway. Their bandwidth was as fat as it got,
with as much fiber feeding the campus as most small cities had. The perfect
place to up and down convert the volume of traffic the Comannda needed.

Again he scraped two
security cameras from the ceiling before flexing the grid to shear the bolts of
the locks. He pushed through and proceeded left towards The Door.

Since his first days
at InterGen, The Door had given rise to many jokes and not a few conspiracy
stories. Murray wouldn’t speak of what was behind the door at the back of the
server room, saying only that it was subleased space. None of the master keys worked
for it and only Murray had ever been seen entering the darkened space beyond.
To think of what he could tell Matt and the guys now... the truth was more
strange than all their stories combined.

He approached The Door
and with a swipe took out the camera pointed at it. He sat, closed his eyes,
breathed, then stepped from his body. He tried passing through the door and couldn’t,
confirming what Johan had already detected.

“Blocked. They’re
jamming meta in there. Gonna be messy. It’s plan B.” He stood and faced The Door.

Understood.

Potential surged and
the door opened with a loud clack as the locks broke. Austin pushed left into a
hallway and strode to a glowing biometric panel at a steel door. Another big
shove slammed the door open.

A dark room lay
beyond. He flipped on a flashlight. A ceiling-mount security camera peered from
the corner. With a thought, the camera sheared from its mooring and bounced
across the floor with its wiring dangling.

Night guard called it in. So far not moving.

“Okay.”

Five thick fiber optic
bundles rose from the floor and terminated in an array of switches. Two long
rack rows held high-end Rocom equipment, all solid with activity. Every port
taken, every fiber patch full, just as Sean predicted. No consoles, just
networking gear and fiber.

“Four foot clearance.”

Acknowledged.

The room’s raised
floors vibrated. Seconds later, the concrete block wall split open and broken
chunks and dirt spilled onto the floor. The edge of the ship protruded into the
room. The hatch opened and Johan emerged with a laptop bag while Anki stayed
ready at the controls.

“No lights?”

“None that I could
find.”

Anki kicked on a beam
from the ship.

Johan surveyed the
gear. “Main fiber cores.” He touched the insulated fiber. “Black box here.
Would love to know what it’s doing.” He withdrew a fiber intrusion kit from the
bag and started work. “Keep watch at the outer door. It may get ugly and quick.
Keep them back, I’m going to need some quiet time.”

“If you can, look for
anything on my dad,” Austin said.

• • •

Overseer registered
the anomalies occurring at site NA16.

On watch status due to
incident 901, the junction at InterGen Folsom had not been estimated as a high
probability site for further activity. Analysis of available visual data
suggested the estimates had been incorrect.

SUPOPS and CoreOps
were notified of the intruder while OpAIs were engaged to review every security
camera stream in the building.

• • •

“Fiber tap is in.
Booty interface on screen. CAP is up and running. Recommended J block traffic
filter enabled. I’m seeing the purple stuff. Yes, I already launched Booty2.”

Linked via bràthair,
Johan coordinated with Soldado on the infiltration. Booty2 was a variant of the
original worm with a program stack designed to stealthily explore and learn
more about the systems running on the network. If it could do so safely, it
would eventually send reports back.

The contextual
analysis program, or CAP, would help uncover location data for the nukes. Based
on the assumption that a ‘ready state’ implied control streams that would carry
status, the CAP would seek out, analyze, and follow key J block streams to try
to learn where they went.

“Yes, I see them.
They’re tagged now. All J86.”

At The Door, Austin
heard only half of the conversation. The 9mm felt good in his hand though it
would probably be the last thing he used. The mass of potential flowing in and
around him was so great it seemed like it might activate itself. Once again
something big loomed and it turned his stomach not knowing what. Johan’s rushed
plans seemed to have little in the way of predictability.

“You’re right, four
just popped up. Sending tracers out now. Damn you’re good, Soldado. I take back
everything I said about your mother and her mutated DNA.”

To hear Johan laugh
felt good though it did little to ease the feeling of dread growing in his gut.

• • •

The glass dividers
between control rooms darkened to black. At the sight, Director Tomov stood up and faced forward so as to not lay
eyes on the visitors. All hopes of keeping his cool were shot to hell.
Footsteps sounded on the floor. He was sure it was–

“Mr. Tomov,” Bastion
called out as he made his way forward. “Status!”

“Sir–” He fumbled for
words like they were muddy footballs. “Sir, Black ops are en route to InterGen,
ETA two minutes. Panels are blind to the junction room which suggests Austin
may be–”

“What does video show
of the ship?”

“Sir, a ship isn’t
seen anywhere on video now or prior to the breakin. We don’t know of–”

Bastion shouted, “What
do
you know, director?”

He almost fell
forward. “Sir, we assume the ship is in use at the junction–”

“Shut up!”

The director’s heart
went still in his chest, long enough to feel the empty dread of impending death.
It pumped once, then began beating wildly as linkage to his nervous system
resumed. He stood, his face ashen with fear. To his left, someone came
alongside his chair, neutral and silent. It had to be Maria de Oro. He wanted
to bury his head in her calmness.

“Oscar,” Bastion
began, “prepare San Francisco for J86 execution.”

Oscar answered
according to protocol. “
Immediate J86 execution at San Francisco will result in the loss of
two-hundred fifty-nine Group Three personnel, four Group Two personnel, and nineteen
facilities related to primary control. Civilian deaths will exceed one point
six million. Economic impact factor registers four at a minimum.
” It paused. “
Voice approval by three Executives is required
for single-site execution
.”

Maria cringed. The
original plans called for evacuation of staff and incidental relocation of
vital persons of political and commercial value. Then there was the city
itself, a favorite.

“Bastion, InterGen is
well outside the kill zone. This won’t touch him.”

“I am aware, Maria. We
will not stand by while they hack our defenses. There must be immediate
consequences. There
will
be.”

She requested Overseer
provide status on the systems at the InterGen junction.

“
No recognized threats
detected as yet. Analysis continues
.”

“See? They have no
idea what they are doing. Nothing has been heard in channels. Things are still
secure. G3 will have them in moments. And if you must blow the city, then at
least pull out the G2. There is time with the AGTs.”

Bastion surveyed Maria
with a stare that could strip paint. “Oscar, I approve J86 execution for San
Francisco.”

From behind Maria,
Ganzai echoed his approval.

Bastion cocked an
eyebrow at her delay. “Do we need to call on another to replace you?”

She felt the implied
permanence of such replacement. The others in the control room masked their
discomfort out of respect.

“Oscar,” she began.
“I... approve J86 execution for San Francisco.”

“
Single-site execution
of J86 approved for target San Francisco, California. Commencing necessary
sequences for final execution order.
”

“Give me a wide shot
of the Bay! Move!” Bastion ordered, coming around to the raised dais. Director
Tomov stepped forward out of the way. “I want to
see
the lesson the priests will never forget.” He sat heavily.
“These Words will never fade.”

A satellite view
revealed the luminous grids of city and suburbia. Streams of vehicles flowed
along freeways and avenues. Homes and businesses glowed against the dark night.
Almost a million people – working, playing, or resting after the long day. A
long, ordinary day.

“
Sequences achieved.
Awaiting final order.
”

“Final order given.
Execute J86 for San Francisco now, Oscar.”

“J86 execution for San
Francisco has commenced. Fail safe measures disengaged and placed to standby.
Option to re-engage fail safe requires two voice approvals. Estimated
detonation in one minute.”

The already silent
control room fell morbidly still.

• • •

“Execution order for
Chevron Tower!”

“That’s San
Francisco!” Austin yelled back. He thought to run down the hall to join him
when movement at the left end of the racks caught his eye. The flash and crack
from an automatic rifle startled him so bad he struck without thinking. The end
server cabinet slammed into a dark clad figure. Bullets sprayed around,
striking the door jam and walls. In a panic, he crammed a fist-sized wad of
force directly into the gunman’s torso. Blood sprayed out against the wall and
exploded from his skull.

From the right end of
the row another figure appeared just as one popped up again on the left. Two
grid punches to the head dropped them both. A grenade flew over the racks. He
slapped it back and heard scrambling and shouts before the explosion tore into
the cabinets.

From further back in
the room someone said,
“Go go go!”

Feeling the numbers
approaching, he pulled deep and sent a wave outward that slapped the nearest
row, toppling the burning cabinets and uprooting floor tiles. On the right,
more gunmen appeared. He let loose a focused blast to knock them backwards into
their team. The big feeling wavered, as if he’d stepped into it, defining its
nature, its outcome.

“Get. The fuck.
Back!
” Another push toppled the next row
of server racks. Electrical fires flashed and black smoke billowed. Vaguely he
realized he was destroying the very servers he’d once installed. A sudden and
distinct alarm went off.

The CO
²
fire suppression system.

In an adjacent room
nicknamed the missile room, fifty canisters of carbon dioxide stood at the
ready. Thirty seconds and the system would discharge. He yelled to Johan to see
if he was done.

Not yet. I’m about to blow charges at the site.
Keep them back.

At his confusion,
Johan added,
self-destruct charges
attached to the ignition computer. Chevron Tower. Firing it remotely
.

More black-clad troops
appeared, firing freely as they cleared the racks. Shielding himself, he sent
balls of kinetic killing across the server room. Blood and tissue splattered
the walls. Six bodies fell in the aisle before they stopped coming.

A headache bloomed and
the first fingers of exhaustion raked his core. Maybe fifteen seconds left
before the suppression system fired. The smoke grew so thick he had to force
air to clear a view. More energy gone. Seconds passed. The alarm kept blaring.
The big feeling waned but did not disappear. He would shut the door and let the
CO
²
system rob them of oxygen. Ten seconds? He backed up and held
the edge of the door ready.

They came then – six
grenades, thrown from different angles. He sent an arc up to meet them, batting
them back. The punch of a bullet against his chest knocked him off balance and stole
his wind. A gunner crouched low and to the left with a pistol in his hand.

Fuck!
Anger fused with intention to create a tight and unforgiving response.
The gunman exploded in blood and bared bones.

His head felt like it,
too, exploded. He shouted in pain and closed the door. Spots dotted his vision.
His breathing became short and labored.

He retreated down the
hall to the inner steel door to take cover behind it. The grenades hadn’t
exploded so the pins hadn’t been pulled. Just a distraction for the sniper.