Technobabel (25 page)
"There are at least another dozen guards in the facility. Our target is in a room one level down. There are elevators and stairwell access, but security is between us and them. We’ve got to clear through them to get to the lab. The good news is I didn’t detect any of my associates with them. No significant magical defenses."
Hammer nodded and motioned to Tojo and Sloane. "All right, then. Let’s get through security, grab our boy, and blow this firetrap."
* * *
Lanier reacted immediately to the sounding of the security alarm in the complex. He turned away from Babel and Dr. Ferrera and crossed over to the intercom panel on the wall of the interrogation room. He pressed his fingertips against the panel to activate it.
"Security, report."
Nothing but static came from the speaker.
Lanier turned back to the young man strapped into the chair in the center of the room.
"Are you responsible for this?" he said with a dangerous edge to his voice.
Babel
shook his head. "I was only trying to break your illusions," he said with a slight smile. "Perhaps I broke more than that."
Lanier turned to Ferrera.
"Doctor?"
She was still working on the terminal near Babel’s head. "I don’t know. It could be some kind of malfunction of the security grid because of the computer failure, but I don’t think so. The system is on alert, which could mean an intrusion. Of course, that could be the computer’s way of interpreting what our young friend did when he crashed the datastore." She shook her head in frustration. "I just can’t tell from here."
Lanier turned toward the smoked transpex panel in the wall and touched another control on the comm panel. The window shifted to translucent, and he could see the technical crew inside the control room.
"Get the copies of our data together," he ordered, "and get in here. Saunders, go and get some security down here.
Move!"
The technicians jumped to follow Lanier’s orders even as he moved back toward Ferrera and Babel. He reached under his tailored suit jacket and withdrew a slim 9mm pistol from its concealed shoulder holster. Ferrera spotted the gun and paled slightly beneath her tan complexion.
"Mr. Lanier!" she started to say, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.
"Now is not the time to become squeamish, Doctor." He pressed the barrel of the gun under Babel’s chin and spoke in an even, icy tone. "All right, my friend, we’re going to be leaving now. If you’re wise, you won’t give me any reason to use this. One wrong move, one attempt at escape, and I’ll kill you. Understand?"
Babel
met Lanier’s eyes and nodded slightly, as much as he could against the pressure of the gun barrel. Lanier jerked his head toward Dr. Ferrera. "Release him."
The other two technicians entered the room, one of them carrying a black plastic case containing the chips with recordings of Babel’s interrogation and all of the other information gathered by Dr. Ferrera’s instruments. He handed it to Lanier, who slipped the case into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, never taking the gun off Babel as Ferrera manually released the straps holding him to the chair.
Babel
slid slowly out of the chair and to his feet, wavering slightly as his cramped muscles protested movement after sitting still for so long. He had no idea how long Lanier and his people had held and interrogated him. He gently rubbed his sore wrists and silently willed the aches and fatigue away.
It’s
only
meat,
he told himself.
It’s
the
mind
that’s
important
.
"All right," Lanier said with a wave of the pistol. "Let’s move." The two technicians went out the door first, followed by Babel, with Lanier and Dr. Ferrera coming behind. Lanier’s gun was trained on Babel’s back. The corridor outside the interrogation room was plain and unadorned, with pale gray walls broken by the occasional door along its length. Red emergency lights filled the corridor and gave everything a hellish cast as the alarm continued to sound throughout the building. The two technicians began moving toward the right, but Lanier’s barked order stopped them in their tracks.
"This way," he said, standing in the doorway. "The elevators can’t be trusted if the computer system has been compromised. We’ll take the stairs." As the small group began moving down the hall toward the stairway, Babel considered his options. Of the four people with him, Lanier appeared to be the only one who was armed. Babel had to assume they knew about his concealed body-blade, but it was still an effective weapon, provided they hadn’t found some way to disable it. But Lanier had a gun, and even the small pistol would have enough stopping power to put Babel down if he was shot. Nor did he know the layout of the building well enough to escape even if he did manage to get away from Lanier and his people. There apparently was security elsewhere in the building, from what Lanier told the technicians.
Reluctantly, Babel decided there was no means of escaping that wouldn’t put his mission in jeopardy. He had to survive long enough to get back to Renraku to complete the mission that had sent him into the Rox, or more lives would be in danger. For now, that meant going along with Lanier and seeing where that took him. An opportunity to escape would present itself sooner or later. He just had to be on the alert for it so that when it came he could act.
* * *
As the black-armored samurai stalked closer, Ariel triggered her combat utilities. Shining silvery armor covered in Celtic knot designs materialized to cover her icon’s body, and a slender silver sword appeared in her hand. The samurai warrior came in fast, with a speed born of optical co-processors and combat algorithms.
Ariel met the attack with her own blade, her deck’s systems fighting the invasion of the foreign code as the ice sought a weakness, a chink in her armor it could exploit to get at the woman behind the electron image. Ariel thrust back at the ice, and it countered, clashing blades ringing in the hallucinatory world of the Matrix, a metaphor for a very real conflict going on between her cyberdeck and the computer system.
Ariel was glad she’d been able to warn Hammer and the rest of the team about the alert before the ice jumped her, but she needed to deal with the samurai program as quickly as possible so she could be on hand to help out the team if they needed it. She also needed to get her hands on any data on their target still in the system.
The samurai came in for another attack, shuffling forward with its sword held high, coming down in an overhead chop. Ariel jinked to the side and swung her blade. Sparks flew as the silver sword slashed across the samurai’s armor.
First
blood
! Ariel thought as the ice program fell back a bit before renewing its attack. It was no time to celebrate, however. Responding to the damage it had
taken,
the ice redoubled its attack and made a flurry of sword blows, looking to overwhelm the decker’s defenses. Ariel managed to avoid them, but only barely.
She couldn’t keep this pace up for much longer, while the ice, tireless and inhuman, could keep going all day as long as the processing power was available to it. Ariel had to end this fight quickly, or it would be ended for her when a lethal charge of electricity fried her forebrain.
Dodging to the left she set the ice up for another attack. It was risky, but the ice seemed to be focusing more of its effort on attacking her and less on defending itself. It didn’t have the same instincts as a living being to protect its own existence. It could only follow its programming to destroy intruders. The ice operated within the parameters of the samurai warrior it appeared to be. Whoever the programmer was, he had obviously been a stickler for realism. So the samurai ice attacked much the way a real samurai would. Ariel thought she could use that.
The ice saw the opening and went for it. It shuffled forward, sword raised high above its helmeted head, the edge of the blade gleaming in the reddish light inside the system. Ariel waited until the last moment and lunged forward, driving her silver sword into the chest of the ice construct to the hilt.
A real sword would have been blunted by the samurai’s armor, but Ariel’s electron blade was not constrained by the rules of the physical world. Here in the Matrix it was like a magical sword, and it cut through the armor with ease. The samurai started to bring its razored blade down in a killing strike, but it froze in place, transfixed by the sword through its torso.
The image hung there for a moment, frozen in time, then it de-rezzed, breaking up into the individual pixels that made it up and vanishing into nothingness in a shower of static, leaving no trace of its presence behind. Ariel breathed a sigh of relief and keyed her commlink to the rest of the Hammermen.
"Yo, boss, you there?"
"Glad to have you back, Trouble," Hammer’s voice surged back across the link. "What’s your status?"
"The immediate problem is handled for now. I’m going to try and get access to the security systems and our target data."
"Good work. Lock out the elevators and all of the access from the floor our target is on. It looks like our birds are trying to fly the coop. We’re on our way."
"Copy that, Hammer."
Ariel closed the channel and turned back on the swirling chaos that was the datastore. It didn’t look like there was much to salvage from it.
What
the
frag
were
they
doing
here
to
have
created
a
mess
like
this?
she
thought. It looked like the datastore had been taken apart by some kind of virus, but not one like anything Ariel had ever seen.
Whatever
it
is,
it
can
do
a
lot
of
damage
to
high-security
data
systems
quickly
and
efficiently
.
The
ice
tried
to
stop
me,
but
it
didn’t
stand
much
of
a
chance
against
this
.
If
Fuchi’s
working
on
it,
they
just
might
have
another
crash
virus
on
their
hands
.
Let
us
eat
and
drink;
for
tomorrow
we
shall
die
.
—Isaiah 22:13
Hammer flattened against the wall as the second burst of autofire cut through the air and ricocheted off the walls. The damned security guards had moved faster than he figured, blocking off both the passage to the stairwell and the elevator.
Sloane had taken a couple of slugs and was leaning up against the wall near Hammer’s feet. His armor kept the bullets from penetrating, but he probably had some cracked ribs at least. Geist crouched beside him, quietly chanting and laying his hands on Sloane’s arm and chest, healing the injuries.
Tootall stood across the hall, just out of sight of the security men around the corner, with Tojo hugging the wall not far behind him. Hammer looked over at the big troll and gave the nod. Tootall ducked around the corner and began laying down a hail of fire from his AK-97 assault rifle, forcing the corporate guards to duck for cover. Hammer knew his team couldn’t hold out for very long before the corpers decided to rush them. They had to break through the guards or fall back to avoid getting caught in a crossfire, which meant they needed to end this quick.
Hammer turned to Geist, who leaned back from Sloane with a sigh. Hammer hoped the healing spell hadn’t taken too much out of the mage. Sloane rose slowly to his feet and acknowledged Geist’s help with a nod.
"We need to get past these fraggers now. Do you think you can take them?"
Geist gave Hammer a look that left no doubt he thought he could handle any mundane threat. "I can, but I need to see them if I’m going to hit them, and I need a distraction to give me time to act."
Hammer nodded and turned to Tootall. He spoke quietly into his mike, and the troll’s headset picked it up across the hallway.
"We need to give those corpers something to think about for a few seconds so Geist can take ’em out. Hold for my mark."
Tootall grinned and nodded, reaching for a pouch on his web-belt.
Geist remained crouched at the base of the wall. He settled his back against the wall, his eyes closing and muscles relaxing as he went into a trance. A faint shimmer appeared in the air in front of the mage, slightly blurring his features, like heat rising from summer asphalt. Hammer knew Geist was calling on the aid of one of his servitor spirits. He had seen the telltale signs with Geist and many other magic-workers before. The mage was calling in the big guns.
When the shimmering appeared, Hammer turned to Tootall and nodded. The troll yelled "Banzai!" and let fly a small, flat silver object from his belt pouch. A second later, the stun grenade went off with a loud bang and a bright flash. There were shouts from the corridor, followed by more cries of confusion from the security guards.