Code Breakers: Beta (23 page)

Chapter 32

Petal made sure she and Xian were strapped into the flight seats. With Gerry’s help, she managed to repair the software bugs within the system. Now she just hoped the mechanical side would hold up. Xian had worked on it for years, he assured her.

“Well, I guess it’s time to test this old bird out.” Petal hovered her hand over the holoscreen controls. “Are you ready, Xian?”

Despite everything, his grin stretched wide on his repulsive face. “We go!”

“Yeah, let’s hope ‘go’ means fly and not ‘burn up in a fiery ball of death’.”

She took a deep breath. Her hand trembled ever so slightly before she pressed her index finger against the cracked glass of the control screen.

The H-core engines whined up... then died. The craft shook for a few brief moments before dying out. She tried again—same result.

“The engines aren’t getting enough power on start up.”

“Xian can fix. You wait.”

He unclipped his harness and clambered into the back of the craft, opening the metal door that separated the storage area from the engine maintenance access panel. Taking a hammer from the toolkit, he struck a titanium-skinned tank.

Petal snapped her head round. “What the fuck, Xian? That’s the fuel tank!”

“It stuck!” he said. “Xian clear fuel lines.” He hammered again. Petal cringed, clenching her jaw, expecting the hydrogen gas to explode at any moment, but the crazy fool seemed not to care. Done with hammering it, he thrust his hand around the silver cylinder and gripped a series of wires. He yanked them, sparks flying.

“Seriously, man! Are you trying to kill us? What the hell are you doing?”

Ignoring her, Xian continued to pull parts from the engine bay. Wires went flying; relays crashed to the floor. Finally, he gripped a small black box and tossed it casually over his shoulder. He replaced the tools and closed the door.

“Try now?”

“Sure. Now that you’ve ripped out everything, of course it’ll work? Fuck, Xian, have you completely lost the plot?”

He wore that stupid, sickly grin still.

“Okay, fine, get your ass harnessed, and I’ll try again.”

To her surprise, when she activated the ignition procedure, the engines fired up and stayed running. The control panel indicated full power available. The craft still shook like it’d fall apart, but against all logic, the damn thing was running.

“What the hell?” Petal shook her head.

“Pesky relays,” Xian said with a casual shrug. “Design fault.”

“I hope you never start practicing medicine.”

An image of Xian ripping out faulty organs came to her then. He’d probably eat them.

“Xian go city now?”

“Yeah, Xian can go to the fucking city now.”

She plotted a course to Libertas into the craft’s navigation computer—which, of course, didn’t work properly: no satellites, or at least no access to one. She’d just have to pilot by eye. She hoped the Dome still had its lights on; otherwise, they’d fly right past it.

“Let’s get this rusty-ass bird in the air. Hold on to your balls, Xian.”

She increased power to the VTOL engines. As she did, a storm of sand flew all around her. At first the Jaguar struggled to move, but as she eased the power up, it began to rise, shedding the burden of sand and plant growth that for years had conspired to hold it to the earth.

Eventually, they were free and ascended into the night sky.

A vibration came from the left engine, but the thing held together, somehow. Petal knew from flying the other Jaguars that this one had a number of issues. The others didn’t suffer from the same worrying noises. This one flew with myriad bothersome rattles and vibrations, and a whistling sound came from the engine bay. She hoped it was just the air being sucked through the holes in the fuselage.

When she’d reached an altitude of four hundred metres, she pointed the craft southwest and increased the engines to seventy percent capacity. Despite the loud whistle and vibration, they shot forward at a decent rate. They’d reach the city within the hour.

If the damned thing holds together, she thought.

Chapter 33

James kneeled behind the Upsider and stared out into the darkness. He thought he saw movement, but couldn’t make it out.

“What can you see?” James whispered.

“Libertas security,” Ghanus said, looking through his night-vision scope.

The squeaking of rodents and sloshing in the water around their ankles made it difficult to hear. But James followed Ghanus’ eye-line until he, too, saw the definite shape of a woman moving around about twenty metres away at the far end of the basement.

She was clearly scouting for something—or someone—shining the flashlight into the dark corners with one hand, and a pistol in the other. In one of the sweeps, James caught a brief glimpse of her face. He recognised her as one of the officers who used to stand guard outside Rosario’s room. Her name wouldn’t come to him, but the recognition only made the betrayal that more pained.

“Hold,” Ghanus whispered as he adjusted his scopes.

The Upsider tracked her movements as she walked down between various racks of shelves. When she reappeared just five metres away and swung her light to illuminate them huddled there together, Ghanus pulled the trigger, and a near-silent bullet struck its target.

At first it seemed like nothing happened. She stood still, her eyes wide and her mouth open, half-forming a word. The flashlight dropped, and she fell back.

Perfect head shot.

She hit the water with a splash. When the group got closer to her, the rats had already claimed her body, ripping through her uniform and crawling over her face. James checked her arm. She wasn’t wearing a ronin-chip.

James couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. She was young. Early twenties. She’d always been pleasant to him. Just how much did she know about this situation?

No way to tell now.

Enna gripped his elbow, encouraging him forward. “I understand it’s tough,” she whispered to him. “None of this is ever easy. But we’ve got to carry on. For Sasha, Vickers, and all the others.”

“I know.” James trudged onwards to the open door where the girl had come through. His hand went to the pistol. He fully expected one of the ’droids to emerge and gun them all down—or Samir. Was she stalking them now?

Ghanus and Elaine split off, flanking the door and indicating the others to take cover behind the nearest rack of shelves. They waited for a minute, or a decade; James couldn’t tell which, the tension was too much. While the Upsiders ensured the way was clear, James found his gaze drifting over the spines of old books on the shelves.

They were barely more than mulch now, held together by the spirit of the words once legible inside. Just how much knowledge had been destroyed since the Cataclysm?

The disaster at the library of Alexandria had nothing on the current situation.

Aside from the mortal cost, there was a definitive epistemological loss that, when he thought about it, had to have exacerbated humanity’s struggle to ensure peace and community. There were too many gaps in knowledge, and too many corrupt individuals willing to exploit an opportunity to exert power over the masses.

“We’re good to go,” Elaine said as she and Ghanus headed into the tunnel. James, Enna, and Liza-Marie followed up, the latter guarding their rear.

James gulped down the fresh air as they finally left the damp basements behind. The sound of gunfire split the air louder outside, affording them a degree of aural cover. Speaking freely, Enna pointed out the short tunnel that would take them up to street level.

When they reached the end of the tunnel, made from an arch of old cobblestones carpeted with a thick layer of moss and lichens, Ghanus held his hand up and went to his knee. Elaine followed, and they both brought their weapons to their shoulders. James leaned over them and looked out of the tunnel. They were beyond a cordon a hundred metres to their left.

A group of five combat ’droids patrolled the area, occasionally sweeping their glowing green eyes down the street. Above them, three UAV drones flew in a circuit.

“If we’re lucky,” Elaine said, her voice hidden by the firefight, “we’ll have a fifteen-second window to get across to the old metro station. The drones are on what looks like an automated cycle. We’ll just have to hope the ’droids’ attentions will be on the nearest apartment building and that we’re too far away to be spotted easily.”

As it was the poorer, abandoned end of the city, their path was clear of streetlights: OLED strips embedded into the Polymar sidewalks. Likewise the huge media screens projecting Fuentes’ likeness. The darkness would give them an advantage.

James thought back to seeing Samir dissolve into the alley between the two apartment buildings. That alley was visible from their current location. Was she still there, lurking like a spider, ready to strike?

“On my mark,” Elaine said.

James readied himself. He was no physical marvel, but he knew now was the time to run like hell. An undecorated and unadorned station stood about two hundred metres down the street opposite. An electronically secured door leading down into the metro system awaited them.

He checked his pockets to make sure he had his slate. He did. He also had the pistol.

Despite himself, he took it out, kept it in his right hand—just in case.

“When I say go, we’ll run in single file, keeping to the shadows. Understand?”

James nodded, assuming she was talking to him seeing as the others were more used to this kind of activity. Just looking at their faces, he could tell they were in control of their emotions, whereas his roiled around inside like a feuding nest of snakes.

Liza-Marie and Ghanus took the server between them.

Elaine watched as the drones completed their current circuit and disappeared over the roofs of other buildings. James glanced to his left, saw the ’droids firing from behind their cover. He couldn’t see if any were looking his way.

“Go,” Elaine said as she and Ghanus sprinted away.

Within seconds James was losing sight of them as he hurried out and ran as fast as his slow, heavy legs would carry him. Liza-Marie and Ghanus seemed to become shadow. Elaine kept up with them, occasionally looking back to urge James and Enna on.

Even she ran like a top athlete compared to him, and he knew that she was holding back in order not to leave him completely behind. He got across the street in one piece.

For now it seemed they were in the clear. He followed Enna, running with his right shoulder close to the buildings, benefiting from the shrouding shadows that they cast.

He watched above him, concerned one of the UAVs would change its flight pattern and catch them out in the open, but they were halfway there and so far unseen.

His chest burned with the effort, and a stitch stabbed at his side. His legs felt heavier with each stride, but he continued on, letting the fear push him beyond his natural capabilities.

“Here,” Elaine said, grabbing him by the arm. He nearly ran past their position.

The door to the station stood beneath a canopy with an old sign on its front, giving them cover from the sky. They all huddled close together, giving James a protective barrier. “Get to work, Doc,” Ghanus said. “Get us in ASAP.”

Spots appeared in his vision as he struggled to get his breathing under control. Sweat had broken out, soaking his shirt, making his hands slippery. He dropped the gun as he tried to put it back into his holster.

“Fuck, man, get a grip,” Liza-Marie said. “Literally.”

“I’m... trying... my... best... here.”

He picked the gun up and successfully holstered it and then took the slate from inside his jacket pocket. The electronic lock on the metro station’s door had already been vandalised, its facia prised open at some prior time. The circuitry hung out of a metal box. One by one, he tracked the myriad wires, constructing a circuit in his head and imagining how the system worked.

A minute passed with him just standing there thinking. Elaine fidgeted with each burst of gunfire coming from the other side of the buildings. The sound of the UAVs’ engines—a low, persistent whine—grew louder.

“Come on, man. They’re getting closer. We need to get in. Now,” Ghanus said, urgently looking above him to see if the UAVs were closing in on them.

“If you keep hurrying me, it’ll take longer.” He shook his head and gathered his thoughts.

Fishing around inside his jacket for a connector cable, he bit off the plastic end while plugging the intact part to the slate. He reached inside the mass of wires from the lock and pulled two free, twisting them around the bare wires of his connecting cable. The slate chirped, and he disconnected the wires. “I’m getting there,” he said, knowing if he just got... that one.

Twisting a different wire to the connector, he got another chirp from his slate, this time a confirmation notification. “I’m in,” he said with a sense of victory. He used a program on his slate to reroute the power through the circuit.

The system used an old, out-dated encryption method, and he bypassed the instruction set that dictated when the lock was activated. He drag-and-dropped a series of code fragments and ran the program. He hoped to cause a flow of electricity to a chip within the system that controlled the servo-assisted locking mechanism. “Won’t be long now, I just need to...” He gestured across his slate to activate his hack and held his breath.

A buzzing noise came from the door. It seemed extremely loud, and he worried it’d alert the ’droids to their position, but as soon as it came, it finished. Nothing happened. “Shit, it should—”

A UAV seemed to hover overhead, and they all huddled as close to the door as possible to use the canopy to shield them. They’d be okay if the drone didn’t fly too far over and see into the shadows. But it did move—just as an old, stuck servo groaned from within the door.

James pushed against the door, trying to help the mechanism. With a clunk, the lock opened.

The door burst open, sending them crashing through into a dry, dust-filled empty station. James fell hard onto the tiled floor, pulling the slate from the wires of the lock.

Liza-Marie shifted the server inside before closing the door. She stood with her back to it and held her breath.

“I think I’m going to die of a heart attack before we get to Cemprom,” James said, clutching his burning chest and trying to breathe without choking on the dust of a building that hadn’t been disturbed for nearly a hundred years.

His voice echoed around the place. It felt like some kind of mausoleum.

Ghanus switched on his lamp. The room was utterly gutted. The tiled floor was covered with a centimetre of dust and cobwebs. The booths where people would have bought their passes stood empty. Between the two booths, a single staircase led down to the metro tunnel.

“We should move,” Ghanus said, already moving to the stairs and hefting Omega onto his back. Enna and Liza-Marie were next, leaving James to bring up the rear. They crossed the open space, leaving tracks in the thick dust like intrepid explorers. The others had approached and started to descend the stairs when James heard what he thought was a whisper.

He stopped, looking around. The hairs on his arms tingled as though he had just walked through a ghost. He was at the booths and couldn’t but help look inside. He laughed to himself for being spooked by a draft. He turned to catch up with the others when a hand wrapped around his mouth and a blade pushed against his throat. He froze.

A pair of lips brushed against his ear. Hot breath tickled the small hairs. And then a voice, barely audible, whispered close. “I dreamed of you. Did you know that, James? I dreamed, in an endless loop, of the day you put me to sleep.”