The Machine Awakes (16 page)

“Holy
shit,
” whispered Braben, his hands on the gallery railing as he took in the scene before him.

Kodiak nodded. The vast chamber was an impressive sight, that was for sure. “Welcome to mission control.” He leaned over the rail on his elbows. From the floor of the Fleet's master command center the hum of the hundreds of staff below at work drifted up.

“I've never actually seen it before,” said Braben, his voice low, like they were standing in some kind of holy place. Perhaps they were, thought Kodiak. This was a cathedral of war.

“Neither have I,” he said, looking around. “Big, isn't it?”

Braben turned away from the rail. “And we are here because?”

Kodiak shook his head and pointed farther down the curving gallery, toward another door. “Call this a shortcut,” he said. “What we're looking for is underneath this. Come on. We need to find some stairs.”

*   *   *

The two agents stood
outside a nondescript door in an empty gray corridor. The corridor was narrow and dim, somehow fitting given they were in the bowels of the Capitol Complex.

The door had a standard Fleet barcode on it and a string of numbers, nothing that indicated what was behind it. Kodiak checked his wrist computer, the icon indicating his location flashing in the middle of a gray nothingness. According to his best guess, this was it. And it made sense too, if he'd guessed the layout and organization of the Capitol Complex correctly. As an agent of twenty years standing, he'd worked both on Earth and off-world, including U-Stars and other platforms. Nearly everything the Fleet built, whether it moved or not, whether it was a temporary command post or a permanent structure like the Capitol Complex itself, followed the same design.

Braben tapped his foot impatiently as he looked up and down the corridor.

“Keep it cool, Agent,” said Kodiak.

“You really need to tell me what we're looking for, Von.”

Kodiak pointed at the barcode on the door. He was right. It was time to talk. “This is an auxiliary control room,” he said. “The Capitol Complex is built like a U-Star, which means that below the bridge—which is mission control, upstairs—there is a secondary center of operations.”

“I'm going to regret coming with you, aren't I?” said Braben. “Because we really shouldn't be here.”

Kodiak sighed, but he couldn't blame Braben for his cautious approach. He knew he would be the same if he were in his partner's shoes. “But that's the whole point, Mike. Someone doesn't want us to have access to the Fleet manifest. Which means they're hiding something. Which means we need to get access ourselves.”

Braben closed his eyes and put his hands on his hips, body language Kodiak recognized all too well. The agent was annoyed … and again, Kodiak couldn't blame him. But this was important. Surely his partner realized that? They had two assassinations to solve. The Fleet was in serious trouble.

And someone was withholding vital data from them.

Braben opened his eyes and sighed again. He nodded at the door. “Someone upstairs is going to notice me keying this door. We're not going to have much time before we're caught. How long do you think it will take to look through the manifest?”

“We'll be gone before they know it,” said Kodiak. “We're going to take the manifest with us.”

Braben shook his head, but he reached forward and activated the door panel with his palm. The lock indicator went from red to green, and the door opened. Braben waved at it. “After you, buddy.”

As Kodiak stepped through, he felt a deep sense of relief. As he had predicted, behind the door was a computer room—smaller by an order of magnitude than the vast control center above them, more the size of the Bureau bullpen. But like the main mission control, it housed rows of curved consoles, each with their own holographic displays, all arranged to face the large display that occupied the far wall. The main display was dark, but the holographic monitors above each station were on, a faint blue three-dimensional Fleet logo lazily rotating above each. The control room was inactive, but the stations were asleep, not powered down. That would help speed things up at least, Kodiak thought.

He pulled out the nearest chair and tapped the terminal in front of him to life. The Fleet logo disappeared, replaced with a terminal window. Kodiak flexed his fingers and began typing. He logged in as Nico Amell without any difficulty, then began to navigate through the system until he found what he was looking for.

They were still locked out of the manifest application itself—that required special clearance even for the Bureau Chief, Commander Avalon, clearance that was mysteriously
not
forthcoming, despite the gravity of the situation—but from the auxiliary control room Kodiak had access to the same data feeds as mission control above. Data feeds that included the manifest streams themselves, even though there was no way to view the information.

“Got it,” he said. He pulled a data stick out of a pocket and laid it on the console, the device glowing blue as it paired with the computer. Braben moved in beside him and leaned over the console to watch.

“I hope this is a good idea.”

“We need this data, Mike,” said Kodiak. That was true. What was also true was that accessing the data stream without clearance was a serious offence, if not treasonous.

But it was the right thing to do. Carte blanche. The cover ID.
This
was exactly the kind of thing all that was for. What they were afraid they might
have
to do, if their theory that the assassinations were part of an internal Fleet conspiracy proved true.

Kodiak watched as the manifest data from the time period around the two shootings was copied off onto the data stick, his eyes fixed on the progress bar. There was something buried in there that someone didn't want them to see. He really hoped it was the information they needed to blow this case wide open.

Beside him, Braben checked his wrist computer. “We need to get out of here. How much longer?”

Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

Kodiak spun his chair around. Next to him, Braben already had his staser in his hand.

A machine had entered the room. It was humanoid, bipedal, but clunky and awkward. It had no face, just a blank metal curve with two small but bright lights, one green, one blue, on the left-hand side. It had two arms and two legs, but they were bare metalwork, a series of frames that seemed to fold into each other as the machine took another step forward.

Kodiak's heart raced. It was a servitor, clearly, but he'd never seen one like it in the Fleet. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

“Systems servitor,” said Braben. “The Fleet is running a trial program on more human-like systems. A co-op with private enterprise.”

Kodiak caught his breath. The machine hadn't moved again. He thought back to his stint on Helprin's Gambit. “What, for maintenance or something?”

“No,” said Braben. “Combat.”

The machine stood still near the door. It beeped again, the blue and green lights flashing in time with alternating tones.

A combat servitor? That was new, thought Kodiak. The Fleet had kept as much AI tech off the battlefield as possible, unsure if the Spiders would have some way of taking them over at close proximity.

But more pressing was the fact that a
combat servitor
was in the control room with them. With the city lockdown stretching resources, Kodiak guessed they'd unboxed some of the units for back-up.

Before Kodiak could ask his partner another question, Braben lifted his gun and shot the servitor. The machine was enveloped in crackling white arcs of energy; then it toppled forward onto the floor.

Kodiak looked at his partner, his eyes wide.

Braben holstered his gun. “Stasers on stun are great for scrambling electronics,” he said. “With any luck they'll just think it was an internal failure.”

Kodiak turned back to the console and swept up the data stick. Then he stood and approached the fallen servitor. It was an impressive piece of machinery—clearly designed for function over aesthetics, but there was a certain beauty in that, he thought. “Here's hoping it wasn't reporting to base.”

Braben joined him. “Your plan works and we ID the shooter, none of this will matter. In fact, they'll give us the goddamn Fleet medal for this.”

Kodiak frowned. “Maybe they will,” he said. He went to the open door and ducked his head out. The corridor was still empty. “Let's go before we get more company.”

 

18

Cait screamed. She couldn't
move, couldn't see. There was nothing but darkness and pain. She screamed again, and the world resolved around her.

Glass was there. He held a damp cloth in one hand, and he mopped her brow. Cait stared at him, wide-eyed in terror.

She couldn't feel the cloth against her skin. Couldn't feel the water as Glass gently squeezed it out of the cloth, the look on his face one of kind, gentle concern. The signal-to-noise ratio of her senses was too low. Everything—her, the world, the universe,
everything
—was pure pain, an infinite cycle of hot and cold, electric sharpness, and a dull wooden ache.

And she couldn't move. She screamed again.

“She's alive, then.” A voice from somewhere in the room. Flood. Cait clenched her teeth and ground them. Yes, she was alive. Despite the pain, the horror of it, she was one up.

She was still alive.

“I don't like her reaction,” said Glass. “I've reduced the dose of suppressant to see if that helps. It's a risk, though. It might be … dangerous.” He glanced sideways as Flood moved into view. The High Priestess of the Morning Star, still clad in her black combat uniform like she was a front-line soldier in the very war she wanted to derail, just sniffed and whipped a stray line of hair behind one ear.

“She survived the procedure,” she said. “That's all that matters.” Then came her smile, cold and cruel. “Well done, Glass. You have proved your usefulness admirably.” And then her face was gone.

Damn, she's cold.

Cait laughed weakly as her brother whispered his thoughts to her. Her laugh turned into a choke, her choke into a cough. Glass pulled the damp cloth away as Cait wrenched her head to the side, letting a mouth full of sour bile spill to the floor. She turned her head back and blinked away the tears. The pain was fading already. Glass nodded at her.

“Side effect of the anesthesia, I'm afraid,” he said.

Cait closed her eyes. Flexed her toes, her fingers. The feeling was coming back, warmth spreading out across her body like she was being lowered into a blood-warm bath.

That's it, sis. Keep going.

Her brother's voice echoed in her mind. Maybe that was a side effect of the anesthesia too.

Nope.

Oh.

Or maybe it is, and you're dreaming all this.

Yeah.

Like you dreamed my dream. Dreamed about the war—my war. My death. That was all just a side effect too, right?

Cait smiled. Glass frowned and peered down at her, so Cait closed her eyes. She preferred the darkness to her current situation; at least while her head was clearing, the pain continued to subside. Without thinking she flexed an arm, lifted her hand—and realized there was no strap holding it down. She opened her eyes again, raising her head up to see.

She was in a bed, not on a table. There was black plastic padding underneath her, a silver survival blanket crinkling on top.

We need to leave soon.

“Okay,” she said aloud. Then she glanced up at Glass. He was still frowning as he sat on a stool next to the bed.

“Try not to move too much,” he said.

Flood reappeared at his side, her expression dark. She looked at Glass, and Glass sighed.

“She'll be fine. Stop worrying. I did my job—something nobody in your organization could do, remember.”

Cait let her head drop back down. Your organization? So, that was interesting. She'd been right. Glass didn't look or act like the others, because he wasn't part of the Morning Star.

Flood ignored him and walked around to the top of the bed to look down at Cait. Cait decided the High Priestess didn't look any better upside down.

“How long?” Flood asked.

“Three hours and we can get moving,” Glass replied.

Flood said nothing more. She just walked off. Cait listened to her footsteps as they left the room and echoed dully until they were out of earshot.

Cait closed her eyes again, waiting for her brother's voice, but it didn't come again. She licked her lips.

“So where are we going?” she asked.

She heard Glass shift on the stool. “I'm sorry we had to do what we did, Ms. Smith, really I am. But I had no choice. It had to be done,” he said.

Cait frowned. “What did you do to me?”

Glass appeared in her vision, leaning over her face. He smiled.

And then she winced. The feeling was returning to her body … and she became aware of a dull ache in the back of her neck. It seemed to pulse with her heartbeat, each crescendo becoming sharper and sharper.

Glass seemed to notice her increasing distress. He moved away from her eye line, and a moment later there was the familiar metal-on-metal clatter as he got something from a nearby surgical trolley.

Cait tried to shake her head as he reappeared, a hypodermic wand in his hand, but when she moved her head the back of her neck erupted in a blaze of exquisite fire. She cried out and remembered the way the operating table had been flipped over, allowing surgical access to her spinal column.

“What did you do to me?”

The pain was almost too much. The world began to dissolve again.

“It'll pass,” said Glass. “I'm truly sorry.”