The Machine Awakes (19 page)

“And,” said Braben, “Caitlin's absence from the Academy was noted March eighth. About a week after her brother was apparently killed in a Spider skirmish on Warworld 4114.”

Kodiak said nothing, but he raised his eyebrows. The two agents locked eyes for a while, Kodiak's mind racing, no doubt Braben's as well. Two psi-abled siblings, one a marine sent into battle, one still at the Academy. One killed in action. The other missing, presumed dead.

Yeah, right, thought Kodiak. His gut told him something different. So did the Fleet manifest—Caitlin's tag was lost. And yet Tyler's had shown up briefly at the shootings before vanishing again.

It was time to throw out everything they knew about how the tags worked. They were clearly hackable, controllable.

Which meant Tyler Smith was alive. And, chances were, his sister as well. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise, especially given the timings.

Kodiak sipped his coffee as he looked over the table display. “Says she was inducted into the Psi-Marine Corps accelerated program. Class of Alpha One.”

Braben nodded. “Just like her brother. Apparently his psi score was so high they leap-frogged him to sergeant and sent him into combat as soon as they could.”

“Where he was killed,” said Kodiak. “Officially.”

Braben cocked his head. “Except now he's back, apparently.”

“If that is him and not someone using his ID.” Kodiak drained his drink, the hot, bitter liquid and the buzz of caffeine helping him clear his thought processes. “And where did his sister go?”

“That's assuming she's alive too.”

Kodiak shrugged. “It's looking more likely, isn't it? There's a conspiracy going on, and these two might be at the heart of it.” He looked at Braben again. “I think we have two targets to find.”

There was a chime from the planning room's door. The two agents turned at the sound, Braben moving over the control panel on the wall to unlock the door. Commander Avalon nodded a greeting and stepped in. As she walked over to the table, she pulled the silver square Bureau badge from her lapel, then, looking down at the data display, pressed the badge to the tabletop.

“Finally got a security override,” she said. “We have official access to the live manifest.”

Kodiak shook his head. Hands on hips, he moved to stand next to the chief, looking down at the table as her Bureau badge was read by the computer and the display changed to show current feed from the manifest, showing the Fleet Capitol Complex and environs.

“About time,” he said. “What the hell was going on?”

“I don't know,” said the chief, lifting her badge and reattaching it to her uniform. “Nobody down at the command center could trace where the security block had come from.”

Braben gave a low whistle. “Gotta be someone high up, right?”

Avalon glanced up. She just nodded.

“Okay then, let's see what we can see,” said Kodiak, leaning over the table. He began tapping at a keyboard at the bottom of the main manifest display. The schematic of the Fleet Capitol Complex and the crawl of tags all over it zoomed out until they were looking down at a map of New Orem itself. While he worked, Braben explained to the chief about Tyler's sister, Caitlin.

“Okay,” she said, when Braben was done. She moved closer to Kodiak, leaning over the table as well, her eyes scanning the display. Kodiak finished keying the tag data, then stood back, his arms folded.

He sighed.

Nothing had happened. The map of New Orem was barely recognizable, an undulating square of tiny moving icons—the tags of every member of the Fleet in the city. He'd set the manifest to pick out the IDs of Tyler and Caitlin Smith. There were no results.

But, what had he expected? Tyler's ID came and went—hidden, somehow—and Caitlin's had been inactive for three months. So the plan was not to find them immediately, but to watch and wait. In the meantime, they could direct the ground search a little better. At least they had two specific targets to look for.

If they were still in New Orem in the first place.

“They could have taken them off world,” said Braben. “They might not be in the city anymore.”

Kodiak shrugged. “That's possible. But we have the live manifest now, we can track them across all of Fleetspace.”

“That's going to take a lot of time, and—”

There was an alert from the table. Kodiak winced at the sound, too loud in the confines of the planning room.

“Look!” said Avalon. She pulled at the map display with her hands, moving the city schematic around, focusing in on a green icon floating among the infinite sea of red.

Kodiak's heart kicked into gear. Tyler Smith, making his third appearance. He was going to kill again. They needed to get to that location, fast. They also needed to get any high-ranking Fleet personnel out of there. He reached for the comm on his collar, ready to make the order.

“It's not him,” said Avalon. She brought up a text panel and began scrolling through the readout. Then she looked up at Kodiak. “It's Caitlin Smith. Her tag is active.”

Kodiak's eyes widened. He looked at the chief, looked at his partner. Braben gave a nod. “I'll get a drop team ready. Let's roll.”

“Go,” said Avalon. “I'll call ahead. You need to pick her up,
now.
”

Kodiak nodded and headed to the door, Braben on his heels, as the chief began relaying orders into her comm.

 

20

They flew in over
the slums of Salt City, two thousand meters high, following the path of the two surveillance drones that had been sent out ahead. Kodiak was strapped in the transport compartment next to Braben and ten other agents, the simple box plugged onto the back of the one-man hot seat where the pilot sat. The transport, like every vehicle in the Fleet, whether designed for space travel or atmospheric flight, was modular. The hot seat was the basic structure, a wedge-shaped block that was essentially a one-man flying machine, little more than a cockpit and basic propulsive unit. Anything and everything could be attached to it from the Fleet's catalogue of parts, creating anything from a small, agile fighter to a heavy assault vehicle, to this, a transport craft.

Kodiak hadn't needed to change from his borrowed combat uniform, just adding a light helmet and gauntlets to the outfit. Braben had swapped his suit for gear identical to Kodiak's, except his armored jacket had sleeves. The eight other agents were more heavily protected, as they were the ones going in first, all dressed in combat fatigues and helmets that made them look more like Fleet marines, each with a short plasma rifle clipped to the front of his flak jacket. Both Kodiak and Braben had the same weapon, but were wearing them on their backs. For maximum mobility, they would instead rely mostly on their stasers, stowed within easy reach on a thigh holster.

The object of the mission was to find and capture Caitlin Smith. Nothing more, nothing less. A precise, surgical operation. As soon as her ID had reappeared on the Fleet manifest, unmoving in a warehouse on the outskirts of Salt City, Kodiak had ordered surveillance drones in first to get a real-time picture of the area, and it looked quiet. The target hadn't moved for hours. So either she was alive, with no idea they were coming, or somehow the dead manifest tag had been reactivated. It was more than possible they were going in to recover her corpse.

The transport banked sharply. Through the open side of their compartment, Kodiak watched the lights of New Orem sweep around below them as they changed course. The Fleet capital was blazing white, with the Fleet Capitol Complex itself a cluster of the tallest, the sleekest, the brightest buildings in the heart. The aerial view was a familiar site to many, Kodiak included, but he still felt awed at the size of both the Fleet's headquarters and New Orem itself. This was the largest city in Fleetspace, the heart of the empire.

Kodiak frowned behind his visor. From above, the city and the Capitol Complex looked just the same as they always did, but he knew that was deceptive. Down there in the Complex itself, and across the streets of the city, Fleet personnel swarmed to control the situation.

Kodiak glanced at the others packed into the transport compartment. The comm in his ear was silent, the raiding party still aside from the buffeting of the carrier as they were airlifted to the drop zone. Even Braben, strapped in next to Kodiak, so close Kodiak could feel the hard plates of their armored jackets rubbing together, was quiet, focusing his gaze somewhere on the floor of the compartment.

Caitlin Smith. How the hell had her manifest tag suddenly come back online? She was missing, presumed dead, the only possible reason she couldn't be located by the Fleet's systems. And yet, her tag had shown up, appearing on the manifest almost in front of Kodiak's eyes. The fact that she was showing up and Tyler
wasn't
was a mystery, but it was too much of a coincidence. There had to be a connection, which made Caitlin Smith—the prime suspect's only surviving family—their first solid lead.

Kodiak's comm chimed as the pilot updated them on their position. As Kodiak acknowledged, Braben tapped him on the arm and pointed to the view outside.

The bright lights of New Orem stopped suddenly, cutting a long, jagged border against what appeared to be impenetrable darkness. As the edge of the city moved out of view underneath the carrier, Kodiak's eyes adjusted, and he could now see they were still over a built-up area, but one populated by low buildings, crosshatched with narrow streets lit with a dim, flickering orange-yellow.

Salt City. They were getting close.

“You'd never find anyone down there,” said Braben, his voice loud and clear over Kodiak's comm. “It's the perfect hiding place.”

Kodiak nodded. “Only if you aren't tagged by the Fleet.”

“Amen to that.”

His partner was right. Salt City was not only a huge, sprawling conurbation of buildings both makeshift and permanent, a mix of a thousand architectures and building techniques brought with the influx of refugees from the Southern Hemisphere, but it was largely ignored by the Fleet. That wasn't to say it wasn't well-known—the slum was mapped, the skies patrolled by surveillance drones sent over from New Orem proper—but whatever went on in its crooked streets, whatever crimes and vices and villainy, so long as it stayed within the bounds of Salt City, the Fleet simply didn't care.

“We're five minutes away,” said Braben. In the HUD inside Kodiak's short visor, a small red indicator appeared, hovering over a location in the middle distance. A line drew itself from the edge of the visor to the point indicated, and a counter began to wind down the closing distance between them and their target.

“Roger that,” said Kodiak. Then with just a thought he flicked the comms to the public channel, allowing not only the members of the raiding team seated around him but Avalon and the other agents back in the Bureau bullpen to listen in.

“Okay,” said Kodiak. “Listen up. We're going in a few minutes. The drones have been over the area, so you've all seen the layout, and you know what to expect. You also know what we're looking for. This is an extraction. Nothing more. We are running on the assumption that the target is
alive.
Which means, if they've somehow been hiding, they won't be too happy to see us. But we do not engage unless they engage us first. As far as we know, the target is on their own down there, but it's possible they have company. We need this to be smooth, and we need this to be quick—in and out before they even know it. That's the whole plan. Understood?”

The agents each indicated their acknowledgment.

Kodiak nodded. Then, for the benefit of those back at the bullpen, he ordered the team to link comms. Inside Kodiak's HUD, a new indicator appeared on the left of his vision: ten green icons. The raiding team.
His
raiding team.

The transport's engine thrummed, and the view outside changed again as the vehicle came to a stop and spun about its axis, then descended gracefully to a height of two hundred meters. There was a double chime in Kodiak's ear, indicating they had arrived, the pilot ready and waiting for orders. The carrier was stealthy, with baffled engines and no external lights—at this altitude they were not invisible, but unless someone looked directly up, they were hard to see. The secrecy of their arrival would be gone as soon as the agents rappelled from the side of the carrier and hit the ground, but they were right on top of the target location, and the team was primed, ready for a lightning strike.

Another tone in Kodiak's ear and in his HUD—and everyone else's—a green icon flashed as the destination counter hit zero.

Showtime.

Kodiak and Braben looked at each other; Kodiak gave a thumbs up, and at once the team slid out of their harnesses and, in a well-drilled routine, lined up along the open side of the compartment, the first four reaching up and clipping the end of their rappel cables to the frame that ran along the edge of the opening as, behind them, the remaining agents held their cable clips at the ready.

“Tac One and Two going in,” said Kodiak. At this, the first four agents dropped over the edge of the carrier and vanished from view; then the next batch clipped their cables to the rail and followed. Last to leave were Kodiak and Braben. In perfect synchronization, the pair reached over their shoulders and yanked their own cables out from the reel secreted in their packs. Clipping them to the rail, they paused on the threshold, Kodiak's booted foot hanging over the edge. With one hand on the cable, he drew his staser with the other and turned to his partner. The upper half of Braben's face was hidden by the visor of his light helmet, but his teeth were brilliant white against his dark skin as he grinned at Kodiak.

Braben lifted his staser pistol. “Let's go!”

Braben jumped first, Kodiak close behind. The ground approached at a surprisingly fast rate, but aside from the whirr of the cable reel, it was quiet outside of the carrier. Looking down, Kodiak saw the eight armored agents on the ground scoot forward, guns raised. Then he hit the ground with a bump and the cable pack detached automatically from his back and began reeling itself back up to the carrier.