The Machine Awakes (12 page)

Kodiak sighed. Braben and Avalon had run through a lot of groups—Black Five, the South American Congress, the United States Liberation Front—and individuals too. Red Chandler, wanted in the Akcur system for bombing education facilities on three of the four colony planets. William and Hilzer Dazizen, a husband and wife pair who had led public protests against the Fleet's treatment of refugees from South America before killing two Bureau agents in the streets just outside the Capitol Complex and fleeing. John Simon, who liked to hijack unarmed civilian transports out near the Omoto trading belt.

All of them, wanted men and women. Banned organizations.

None of them, Kodiak's gut said, responsible.

He sighed again and re-crossed his legs.

“Okay,” said Braben. “Two more on the Bureau watch list. First up, the Morning Star.”

The holodisplay next to the agent shimmered as a head-to-toe image of a woman appeared. She was dressed in a long white robe with a hood, and beneath the hood she was wearing a red headband.

Braben glanced up at the image as he read the information off his datapad. “The Morning Star claims to be a religious order on a holy mission to seek out their god, which they call Lucifer or the Fallen One, who they believe is lost somewhere out there.”

“What happens when they find him?” asked someone from back in the room. Kodiak craned his neck around. Agent Braffet, a young woman with blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail, was leaning forward on her chair, back straight as she waited for the answer. Kodiak turned back around, his eyes on the image of the woman on the holodisplay. If the Morning Star was a religious group, the woman, whoever she was, certainly looked the part.

Standing at the front, Braben shrugged. “I'm not sure they've thought that far ahead. We don't know much about them, but they're a low priority for us. Their quest has taken them out to the edges of Fleetspace. Last report we have was of one of their leaders”—he pointed to the image with his datapad—“buying a secondhand freighter on Rayner-79 and heading out of Fleetspace with a group of four acolytes.”

Kodiak frowned. “Rayner-79 is a long way out.” He nodded at the image in front of him. “So why are they on our watch list if they're harmless?”

Braben cast his eyes down to his datapad. “A few years ago, they were stirring up anti-Fleet sentiment in the Belec and Ogelo systems. This woman, Samantha Flood, was arrested as a stowaway on a U-Star. When they caught her, she had two sticks of TenTen strapped to her body.”

Kodiak whistled; behind him, a few of the assembled agents murmured to each other. TenTen was an industrial explosive, used for demolition out on the Warworlds. More than enough to down a U-Star.

Next to him, Avalon cocked her head. “So Samantha Flood escaped custody?”

Braben nodded. “Apparently so. No idea how, the report doesn't say. That was five years ago. Next sighting was on Rayner-79 two years later, and that's all we have.” He lowered his datapad and gestured to Avalon. “Chief?”

Avalon nodded and stood, swapping places with Braben.

“Last on our watch list are the Independent Loyalists,” she said, addressing the room. The holodisplay changed to a series of mug shots: six men, two women. Five of the images were official portraits, the people in them in a variety of uniforms that were military in style, but nothing that the Fleet used. Two of the other images were candid shots, personal pictures showing smiling faces. The final image looked like a shot from surveillance of a man half-turned toward the camera in a city street.

“IL are by far the largest and most organized terrorist group on the Bureau watch list. They claim to have several thousand active agents and operate within a military hierarchy. They were formed in the Portia trading belt by the governments of Lehane and Toliman, who illegally declared themselves independent from the Fleet.”

Kodiak sat back as Avalon gave brief profiles of the eight people on display and ran through IL's operations. This group had positioned themselves as a rival power bloc to the Fleet itself, although smaller by several orders of magnitude. But they had something the other groups didn't—ships, including Fleet U-Stars confiscated from the starports on the twin planets and the backing of the two governments that had declared independence.

IL were big, and they were dangerous.

But, as Avalon explained, they had never carried out any attacks on the Earth. They were against the Fleet—had declared war on them, even—but their activities had been confined to the Portia trading belt and neighboring systems.

Well, thought Kodiak, until
now
anyway. Of all the groups, they were the ones who had the most resources, the best organization.

But still, it didn't feel right. The circumstances of the assassination were weird, coinciding as they did with the power games being played by Admiral Zworykin.

Kodiak remained in his seat, considering this as the briefing room emptied, leaving just himself, Braben, and the chief. In one hour the room would be filled again, the briefing repeated.

“Von?”

Kodiak blinked as the commander spoke to him. “Chief?”

“Thoughts?”

“Oh,” said Kodiak. “Lots of those. None of them particularly useful, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?” asked Braben.

Kodiak stood and went to the holodisplay, which was still showing the images of the IL leadership.

“May I?”

Braben nodded, handing him the datapad. Kodiak began flipping through the briefing notes, the holodisplay changing as he cycled through the watch list. IL, the Morning Star, Black Five, the rest.

“The watch list is longer than I remember,” he said. He continued to cycle through, unsure of what he was looking for, all the while aware of the nagging doubt in his gut.

Braben folded his arms and stepped closer to the display, watching it as his partner flipped through images. “A lot of people don't like the Fleet.”

“Including people inside the Fleet itself?” Kodiak lowered the datapad, the holodisplay now showing an empty silhouette, a placeholder for someone known only as “Neubaum.” He looked at the silhouette—they'd discounted Neubaum already, the criminal rumored to be dead, but the blank image seemed an appropriate visual to accompany Kodiak's thoughts, representing the shooter, the assassin. The unknown perpetrator they were trying to catch.

The perp, he suspected, who was working for someone inside the Fleet.

“We'll have full manifest access shortly,” said Avalon. “I put the order through earlier this morning.”

“You really think this is some kind of Fleet conspiracy?” asked Braben.

Kodiak and Avalon exchanged a look, then Kodiak said, “We have to consider it. The manifest is a good place to start looking.”

“If they're using Fleet personnel in the first place,” said Braben. “Even if it was an inside job, they could have used contractors to cover their tracks.”

Braben was right, and Kodiak knew it. The Fleet manifest was a complete record of everything the Fleet owned and where it was currently located, anywhere in Fleetspace. Within the bounds of the Capitol Complex, this would range from every office chair, every coffee cup, computer terminal, every single piece of equipment or asset.

Including
personnel. Every member of the Fleet, past and present, was electronically tagged. Personnel were more valuable than office chairs, so the manifest tag was buried deep, near the medulla oblongata, where it could never be extracted without killing the subject. That was the whole point.

If
the assassination was some kind of inside job—
if
Fleet personnel were involved—then their movements would show up in the manifest. Whether there was anything useful there or not, Kodiak couldn't say. They had to see the data first. Accessing the manifest was standard procedure in a major crime, but not an automatic one. It still required the Bureau Commander to get clearance from the Fleet Command Center, given that the manifest showed the location of everything that belonged to the Fleet. It was sensitive, secure information.

“We have to start somewhere,” said Avalon. Then she checked her wrist computer. “Okay, after the next briefing, Admiral Zworykin wants to see us for an update.”

Kodiak nodded. “Actually, I want to see him too. I have a whole bunch of questions to ask him about what happened on Fleet Day.”

Braben hissed through his teeth. “We gotta tread carefully here. Look, if Zworykin is behind all this, he's going to be looking closely at what we do, make sure we don't get too close to the truth.”

“I agree,” said Avalon.

Kodiak nodded. “Yes,” he said, “but remember, I'm just an analyst now. My job is just to help Mike, at least as far as the Admiral is concerned. So don't worry, I'll handle myself.”

“Okay,” said Braben, but he didn't look happy. Neither did the chief. And who would? thought Kodiak. Things were bad, he knew.

And he also knew that things were potentially going to get much worse.

 

13

Cait's head jerked back,
and she coughed as the black bag was pulled off. She took in her surroundings as she sucked cold, dry air over her teeth.

She was sitting in a chair, her hands bound behind her, in the middle of a cavernous space, so large at first she thought she was still outside. She looked around, unable to see the walls or even the ceiling, but the floor beneath her boots was silvery gray and shiny—polished concrete—and there were a series of large metal cargo containers stacked nearby. She coughed again, noticing how the sound echoed metallically. She was in a warehouse. She had no idea where. Salt City presumably, but one warehouse was the same as another, whether it was in the slum or in New Orem proper. The last thing she remembered was the bag and the sting in her neck. They could have taken her anywhere. She could have been out for minutes, hours, days.

There were four men in the warehouse with her—three in black uniforms and masks, and the man in the pale coat. Two of the men in black were armed with small, compact plasma weapons; the taller man on Cait's left had his pointed at her, while the other let his hang from his loose hand. The third had his arms folded tightly across his chest. Cait tried to focus, to assess her situation, to gather, observe, anything that might be useful. It helped keep her head cool too. She remembered her Academy training: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.

I guess this bit comes under resistance,
she thought.

The man in the pale coat leaned against one of the cargo containers. Next to him, on a stack of smaller packing crates, Cait saw her backpack and the components of the sniper rifle, lined up in a row. The weapon's display was on, the blue glow bright. They'd checked the log, then.

The man with the folded arms—the leader of the group, Cait thought, based on his body language, and, unlike his black-uniformed companions, his holstered weapon—moved toward her. Cait shrank back in the chair as much as she could, scraping the legs across the hard floor. She managed to rock it backwards a little, but then she hit something behind her. Cait pulled at the bindings holding her wrists, ignoring the fact that it was pointless.

And then her hands flew free. Surprised, Cait toppled forward from the chair, her knees hitting the ground, her hands splaying out to stop herself from falling flat on her face. From behind her stepped another uniformed guard, folding a small black blade in one hand.

“Fucking
ow,
” she said, and she looked up. The leader of the group laughed—the voice was muffled by the flat mask, but it was female. Then she pulled the mask off and stepped forward, holding a hand out to Cait.

Cait stared at her. The woman was older than she was, perhaps late thirties, long dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wasn't smiling, not quite, but one eyebrow was arched, the corner of her mouth doing the same.

Cait didn't take the offered hand. Instead, she pushed herself back up onto her haunches and rubbed her wrists.

The woman withdrew her hand and stood back, folding her arms. She looked down at Cait, head cocked like Cait was something small but interesting.

“So who the hell are you?” asked Cait, still rubbing life back into her wrists. Her throat was dry as anything, and she coughed.

“We're sorry about the cloak and dagger treatment,” said the man in the pale coat. “But it was important to get you to safety. You can call me Glass.” He pointed to the others in turn. “Curran, Schwab, Segura.”

The woman standing over Cait tilted her head, but still didn't speak. Glass nodded at her. “And that is Samantha Flood.”

Cait pulled herself back up onto the chair. She leaned forward on her forearms and rolled her neck. It was sore from where they had needled her.

And that wasn't all. A small ball of panic rose in her chest. She splayed out her fingers, curled them, turned her hands over as she rested on her knees.

There was no tingle, no buzz. Nothing. She had no control over her talent, not consciously anyway. But it manifested in times of stress, times of fear.

She was afraid now. No matter how hard she tried to keep her mind clear of such thoughts, she'd been captured, she was in enemy territory. She was afraid.

And she was alone. No voice in her head. No power under her skin.

“What the hell have you done to me?” she asked. “And who the fuck are you people?”

This time Flood spoke. “There's been a slight change of plan,” she said, ignoring the questions. “We have some more work for you to do.”

Cait blinked, her heart rate kicking up a gear. So, this was the group? Her mysterious employers? Her secret contacts? She glanced around them. The uniforms, the weapons. They looked new, or at least well maintained. Only Glass was different, wearing a gray suit under his pale coat. Their undercover man, clearly. The others, they were … organized. They looked like soldiers, were equipped like soldiers.