Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (55 page)

They felt the monster recoil again, felt it reach out, grab hold of parts of the man’s mind, seize vital centers to scramble them, to wipe this mind clean, to reduce it to a vegetable, to kill him if it could.

They sliced viciously at the trunk of the tendril connecting the monster to this mind, sliced through process after process, closed ports wholesale, replicated viral code into crucial occupied memory, fast, faster.

The human screamed!

And then the monster was gone.

The last wisps of her in this mind dying.

The human on his knees.

T
he Avatar shrank back
in fear.

The hostile posthuman! It had sent them here! They were aligned against her!

And they were reading her thoughts.

So close. She was so close.

They would come this way. There were things they couldn’t be allowed to discover.

She reached into the Secure Computing Center. There she found Xu Liang, found Li-hua, found all the other staff she’d turned. How they loved her. How they worshipped her. Like puppy dogs. Just her presence in their minds brought them such immediate joy, set their little human tails to wagging.

She stroked them, stroked them one last time.

You know too much, my dears,
she sent.
The elevator’s on its way up to you… but there isn’t time. They’ll reach you first.

Her little pets sat at their terminals, their faces flush, their chests rising and falling, so gratified by her presence, by her mental touch.

Still not understanding.

Goodbye,
the Avatar sent them.

Then she reached into their worshipping minds and stopped their hearts, one by one, as their adoration turned to confusion, to betrayal, to horror.

S
un Liu lay
on the cold tile of the Computer Science Building.

Free. He was free. The dead woman was gone from his mind.

He forced himself up onto his feet. He stumbled down the hallway, down stairs, down another flight, down another.

And then out into the square.

“Sun Liu?” he heard someone say.

He turned, and it was no one he knew. Just some student, some student holding a sign. A sign with his name on it.

“Sun Liu!” someone else said. He turned. Another student, with a sign demanding democracy.

And then his name was being taken up, all around him.

“Sun Liu. Sun Liu. Sun Liu! SUN LIU!”

S
am watched
, her assault rifle in her hands, safety off, nerves ratcheting up, as the Confucian Fist and the Indian commandos dropped to their knees, as Kade and Feng went eerily silent.

If I have to, I will, she told herself. If I have to, I will.

Then Feng’s eyes opened. Kade’s eyes opened. They were soft, human. Confucian Fist started rising to their knees. Indian commandos groaned.

Sam sighed in relief.

“The Capitol,” Kade said. He was speaking into the air, speaking to himself. “In Sun Liu’s mind… DC… the Capitol.”

Sam cocked her head forward, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

Then a different sound registered with her, at the very edge of her heightened senses.

Her head turned, reflexively. Then she saw Fists turn their heads.

That sound. That whump whump whump.

“INCOMING!” Sam yelled.

Choppers.

K
ade ran for the building
, one arm over Bai’s shoulder. Sam and Feng ran with them, hauling heavy bags of gear. Another Fist named Liwei brought up the rear. In his mind he could feel the other Confucian Fist spreading out, taking positions as Army choppers moved in, urging the students and protesters to what safety they could find.

He heard a rumble overhead and from Bai’s mind he knew what it was.

Jets. Jets from Dachang.

What would happen now was anyone’s guess.

They came in through a side door to the Computer Science Building, close to the elevator down to the SCC.

He felt something unfold from Feng’s mind, felt through Feng that the elevator was disabled, felt the software Su-Yong had loaded into them streak out into it, cut through the simple locks.

Make it theirs.

The doors opened. The five of them rushed in. Sam and Feng tossed their gear bags in. They and Bai and Liwei lifted weapons up.

Down.

The doors opened again, three levels later.

Onto a scene of death.

Bodies were slumped everywhere, sprawled across consoles, across tables, across the floor.

They walked through the Secure Computing Center, to the massive, house-sized doors at the far end. The doors to the elevator. The elevator that went down.

Everywhere on this floor it was the same.

Dead men and women. No blood. Not a mark on them.

“She did this,” Bai said, looking to his right and left, stepping over the last bodies before the elevator.

Liwei frowned.

“
It
did this,” Kade corrected.

“Can we cut off access to the outside world?” Sam asked.

Bai shook his head, looked at the massive doors before them. “They’ve been tunneling for weeks. Since November. Making new connections to all sorts of networks. The systems in this room are just for show now.”

“Can we cut the cables?” Sam asked. “They must run up the tunnel.”

Bai shrugged. “It’s a kilometer straight down. No lights. It just takes a cable a millimeter across. It’ll be shielded if it’s in the main tunnel, hidden and protected. There’s a second tunnel for the counterweights as well. For all we know it’s not even in that one – they had time to lase new tunnels, just millimeters wide.” Bai turned and gestured to the bodies they’d stepped over. “These people knew.”

Kade shook his head. Madness.

“We go to her,” he said, studying the massive elevator doors. “We go down the rabbit hole.”

M
onday 2041.01.20

Colonel Cheung Baili watched as the time ticked away. Nearly midnight.

The deadline was coming fast. Around him his officers sat at their posts, hunched over consoles, ready to do their duty, ready to do what they’d trained to do.

Cheung strode up behind one. “Any update from command?” he asked his comms officer, from over the young man’s shoulder.

The lieutenant shook his head. “No, sir.”

They’d been relaying messages over analog radio via high-flying aircraft. It was a slow, horrid game of telephone. But it worked.

“Try them again,” Cheung said. “Have them reconfirm our most current orders.”

“Yes, sir,” his comms officer replied.

He did not want to launch this missile. He didn’t want that at all.

C
arolyn Pryce watched
the giant screens mounted on the walls of the vast Pentagon Situation Room, above the heads of the scores of military and intelligence officers at their consoles.

Maps showed the locations of Chinese military installations, highlighted anti-ship missile emplacements down the coast in red. The JAVELIN birds in orbit were primed, armed, ready to fire.

Jesus.

10.48am. Almost midnight in China. And things were going crazy there. Uploaded footage showed moving tanks and machine gun fire at the site of at least one protest. Fire bombs were going off. There were unconfirmed rumors of an ousted Standing Committee Member making a stand, blurry videos of Chinese soldiers fighting each other.

“It looks like a damn revolution,” Admiral Stanley McWilliams said next to her.

Pryce nodded. She had to agree with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. China looked like it was headed for the brink.

“Revolution or no,” Secretary of Defense Bernard Stevens said. “If they launch on our ships, we take those launchers out.”

“We’ve got reports of more violence in Moscow,” the CIA liaison said next to her. “Cairo. Nairobi. Caracas.” He paused, shaking his head. “Protests are heating up everywhere. It’s spreading. Via Nexus.”

Nexus. Pryce gritted her teeth. It was a vector for the violence, letting people spread their rage. Maybe Stockton was right. Maybe she was wrong to downplay the threat.

She looked over at two other screens, showing DC.

One showed the march, moving down 16
^th
Street. Huge. Angry. Not yet violent. But would it go that way?

The other showed the inside of the Capitol Building. The VIPs were being seated. She frowned as she saw Jameson being wheeled into a handicapped slot in the balcony.

Pryce looked back at the clock.

10.50am. 11.50pm in China.

In just about an hour, Stockton would take the stage, and be sworn in again.

In ten minutes, the Chinese deadline would expire.

A perfect time to catch the US flat-footed.

“
C
ommand has reconfirmed our orders
, Colonel,” his comms officer said. “We are to fire one missile on target ZHOU-17, with a one hundred meter offset. Launch time in three minutes.”

Cheung Baili wished he still smoked. A filthy habit, even if it no longer caused cancer. Not fit for a civilized man in a civilized nation.

But by hell he could use a cigarette right now.

“Fire Control,” he said.

“Aye, sir,” his fire control officer responded.

“You have coordinates for target ZHOU-17?”

“Aye, sir. Coordinates relayed by aircraft, sir.”

“A missile is programmed for target ZHOU-17 with one hundred meter offset?”

“Aye, sir,” Fire Control responded. “ZHOU-17, one hundred meter offset north.”

Colonel Cheung Baili took a deep breath. One hundred meters. The specs on these missiles said they were accurate to five meters against moving targets.

Cheung hadn’t made it this far in life by depending on specs.

“Reprogram the missile. ZHOU-17. New offset, five hundred meters.”

There was a pause, less than a second. Then, “Aye, sir. Reprogramming for five hundred meter offset north.”

More seconds passed. Cheung could hear his fire control officer tapping away. He heard the man stop. Could almost hear him thinking as he went back and rechecked that he’d made the changes correctly.

Good. This was not something to botch up.

“Reprogramming complete, Colonel,” his fire control officer said. “New target: ZHOU-17, five hundred meter offset north.”

“Radar officer,” Cheung said. “Check program and confirm.”

“Yes, sir,” Radar said. He heard keys pressed. Another few seconds passed. Then more.

Then his radar officer spoke up.

“Confirmed, Colonel. Missile is programmed for target ZHOU-17, five hundred meter offset to the north of the target.”

Cheung Baili looked at the clock. 12.02am. They were late.

He took a deep breath.

“Launch missile.”

“
L
aunch
!” an imaging officer cried. “We have clear indication of launch, Fujian region, strong IR signature, radar hit confirmed, ballistic track.”

“How many birds?” Admiral McWilliams asked.

Pryce blanched.

“One bird at present time, sir! Fleet alert sent. Defensive systems active.”

“Target?” Pryce asked. They all knew their defenses against ballistic inbounds sucked.

“Too soon to say, ma’am!”

The Secretary of Defense spoke. “Activate the JAVELINs.”

“
F
light time
?” Colonel Cheung asked.

“Impact in… four minutes twenty seconds, Colonel,” Fire Control responded.

He could really use that cigarette.

“
J
AVELINs armed
,” the STRATCOM desk said. “Targets verified. Impactors ready for launch.”

“Negative!” Pryce said. “They only fired once!”

Bernard Stevens gave her a withering look. “That’s why we shoot back
now
,” the Secretary of Defense said. “Disable those launchers, before they get the rest off!”

“Any indications of a further launch?” Admiral McWilliams yelled.

“Negative, sir!” the imaging officer replied.

“Anything more on the target?” McWilliams said.

Bernard Stevens fumed silently.

“Still too soon to be sure, sir,” the imaging officer replied, uncertainty in his voice.

“Is it headed for the
Lincoln
?” McWilliams asked. “The
James Madison
?”

Their two human-crewed carriers in the region. The giant floating cities, capable of wiping out whole nation states, that these missiles had been built to kill.

“Negative, sir!” the imaging officer said, firmly this time. “Target is not a carrier group!”

Pryce frowned in puzzlement.

“We should fire the JAVELINs now!” Secretary Stevens repeated. “Our fleet’s under attack!”

“More data,” Admiral McWilliams replied. “We don’t get to make mistakes here.”

“Target window’s shrinking, sirs,” the imaging officer said. “Looks like… Target is the
Page,
sirs!”

“The
Page
?” Pryce asked.

“It’s a frigate,” McWilliams said softly. “Uncrewed.”

“Missile coming in range of defense systems!” Imaging yelled. “Lasers firing. Missile taking evasive.”

Pryce tensed.

“It’s through! Defenses didn’t hit it. Inbound, Mach 15, headed straight down. Guns opening up. Impact in twenty… fifteen… ten…”

Pryce held her breath.

“Impact!” Imaging yelled out.

“Dammit!” the Secretary of Defense yelled.

“Damage report!” Admiral McWilliams cried.

“Sir,” the fleet comms officer said. “No damage reported. Admiral Porter reports a clean miss, off to starboard of the
Page
. By a country mile, he says.”

Pryce exhaled.

Jesus.

“Warning shot,” she said aloud.

“The next one won’t be,” McWilliams replied. He turned to the fleet comms officer. “Tell Admiral Porter to have the
Lincoln
and the
Madison
commence flight operations. Same orders for the drone carriers. If the Chinese fire on our carriers, we need to have our wings in the air.”

Pryce bit her tongue. Escalation. It wasn’t shooting. But it was still escalation.

“
M
issile splashed into the sea
, Colonel,” his comms officer said. “Airborne observer estimates four hundred meters away from target.”

Cheung Baili let out a long slow breath.

“Which of you has a cigarette for me?”

N
EWSFLASH
!

American News Network

“… exclusive report of what appears to have been a Chinese missile launch, possibly aimed at a US Navy ship. An American News Network micro-satellite captured this footage, just minutes ago, clearly showing a missile launching from a military installation on the coast of China, just across the strait from Taiwan, and arcing out towards the East China Sea, where US ships have been positioned since…”

T
he woman
who called herself Kate turned off the news and sat in silence.

Pros and cons weighed on her. Risks and benefits. The risk of any contact with someone who claimed to be highly placed in the US Government. The high likelihood that they in fact were not.

The risk of doing nothing. Of hostilities escalating even further.

War created opportunities. That was true.

But war seldom meant new freedoms. War would see Americans rally around whoever was in the White House. War would see men and women give up their freedoms for false security, for a while at least. For another decade.

And in the worst case it could be even worse than that, of course. War between fully capable nuclear powers?

No. She didn’t want that. No one should.

Kate reopened her terminal, tunneled through every layer of anonymity she could, found the message she’d received from the self-professed government insider, and fired off a response.

URGENT: China didn’t kill Barnes…