The Machine Awakes (39 page)

Kodiak nodded. “Point.”

“But no, I didn't.” Avalon stood up from the rail and turned around, leaning back into it. “I wanted to ask you something. Something important.”

Kodiak stared out at the city. “Something so important you had to ask me on a rooftop at four in the morning?”

She nodded. “We're off the surveillance drone flight path for the next twenty minutes. Nobody can see us or hear our conversation.”

“I'm not sure I like the sound of this, Laurel.”

“I'm sure you won't,” she said.

Kodiak smiled. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I need to send you undercover.
Deep
undercover. It's a long mission, one that will require you to make a lot of sacrifices. It's dangerous and difficult. But it's also important.”

Kodiak, still leaning, looked up at the chief. “Why me?”

“Because I think you can do it. Because you're an experienced senior agent. Because you're good at your job. Because I can trust you.”

“Can I get that in writing?”

Avalon smiled. “And because you have no family.”

Kodiak sniffed the night air. Ah, that was it. Sure, he was good at his job. So were a lot of agents. Braben, for instance. The chief said she could trust him, and as flattering as that was, he really hoped she could say that about a lot of agents. But he also had no family and few friends, at least outside the Bureau. So if anyone had to disappear for a while, go somewhere deep, he was the ideal choice.

“Okay,” he said. “How deep we talking?”

Avalon paused before answering. Kodiak watched her eyes glittering in the dark as she spoke, her expression now deadly serious.

“We're going to take down Zenner Helprin.”

Kodiak pursed his lips. “Sorry, for a moment there I thought you said Zenner Helprin.”

Avalon said nothing, just kept her eyes locked on Kodiak's. After a moment more, Kodiak found himself having to look away, back out over the city.

Zenner Helprin? Seriously?

“Helprin runs the biggest crime syndicate in the whole of Fleetspace,” he said.

Avalon nodded. “Exactly. He'll be a big scalp for the Bureau. For the whole Fleet.”

“So how do I do it? You said deep cover, so I guess I'll be joining his little enterprise?”

“Yes,” said the chief. “You'll buy your way in. We've been working on a two-year operational plan.”

Kodiak whistled. “Two years is a long time.”

“It is. But I think you can do it.”

“Helprin has eyes everywhere. He'll know who I am and that I'm from the Bureau.”

Avalon nodded. “We're counting on it.”

Kodiak raised an eyebrow. “Explain?”

“You're going to go rogue. You're going to gain access to an evidence server, lift five billion credits, and hand it right to him.”

Kodiak's jaw flapped as he processed that little piece of information. Five
billion
credits? He began to wonder whether this rooftop meeting was just a fever dream and any second now he'd wake up, damp sheets twisted around his feet, alarm clock a couple of minutes away from heralding another day at the office.

“With a theft that size, you'll immediately become one of the Bureau's most wanted,” Avalon continued. “But you'll be safe. Nobody is going to know where you are, except me.”

“Safe?” Kodiak laughed. “Helprin will shoot me on sight.”

Avalon shook her head. “Helprin's weakness is his greed. That much money, he'll install you into his inner circle almost straight away.”

“I can't just walk in and hand it over,” said Kodiak. “He'll know it's a set-up. It's too obvious.”

“We have a contact waiting for you. He'll give you the intro and will vouch for you.”

“What makes you so sure Helprin will listen to them?”

Avalon smiled in the night. “We've had this informant in Helprin's inner circle for
years,
Von. Helprin listens to him, believe me.”

“Okay, fine.” Kodiak rubbed his cheeks. “And once I'm in, then what?”

“Then you're on your own,” said Avalon. “You find a way to take him down, and you take him down.”

Kodiak drew breath to speak, but the chief held up a hand.

“And we have an exit strategy if something goes wrong.”

Kodiak let his breath out. He shook his head and leaned back on the railing. The cityscape at night sure was a pretty view.

He had the feeling he should soak it in. He might not be seeing it for a while.

Seconds passed, then minutes. Eventually Avalon turned back around and grabbed the rail. Together, the agent and his chief enjoyed the quiet and the solitude. Then Avalon glanced up into the sky.

“Time's up. We'll have company in a couple of minutes.” She turned to face Kodiak. “This is our chance to make a difference. To do something right. You in?”

Kodiak stood and stretched.

Then he nodded. “I'm in.”

God help me, I'm in.

 

PART THREE

879122-JUNO-JUNO

 

41

The Freezer was an
apt description, thought Kodiak as he slowly edged his way down a metal passageway, every surface tinged with frost. Fortunately for him, the shuttle had a full complement of survival suits, because as his breath plumed in front of him in great white clouds, he knew it would have been impossible to walk through the facility for as long as he had wearing just the jumpsuit and vest he'd signed out from the Bureau uniform stores. The icy floor was hellishly slippery, but the thick soles of his boots had kept their grip so far. So long as he didn't move too quickly—

A sound, behind him. Kodiak spun around and slid, but remained upright as he knocked the wall with his shoulder. Staser raised, he looked back the way he came, but there was no one there.

Eight-seven-nine-one-two-two-Juno-Juno—like the JMC refinery—appeared to be an entirely automated facility and, so far, completely deserted. Which suited Kodiak just fine. He'd come here alone, having sent Cait and Glass off in the other shuttle. Just one man venturing into the unknown. The odds were against him. He knew they were. But he also knew he had no alternative. He couldn't call for help, not from within Jupiter's magnetosphere, which the JMC was using as a comms shield to isolate the Spider AI. But he couldn't wait for the Fleet to arrive either.

No. He had to stop Braben. He had to get Tyler back. He had to find out what the hell Caviezel was keeping here, in the secret company facility hidden under the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Kodiak sniffed, the cold air making his sinuses ache, then turned and kept on down the corridor.

The Freezer may have been empty like the refinery, devoid of staff, but unlike the large facility, which was spacious and even
inviting,
the feeling of isolation here was intense. The Freezer was functional, plain. This wasn't a place that entertained high-ranking officials come to renegotiate gas contracts. This place was a secret, and so far nothing but a warren of passageways buried in the crust of the moon.

But he'd found it. Piloting the shuttle from the refinery and up out of the Jovian cloud deck, Kodiak was flying blind, relying on the rapidly fading quantum wake of the JMC orbital relay vehicle Braben had taken. He hadn't known he was heading to Europa; all Kodiak could do was sit back and watch as the shuttle sped toward a sphere of rock and ice as smooth as a cue ball—an appropriate place, Kodiak thought, for a secret facility that Caviezel called the Freezer. Orbiting 670,000 kilometers out from its parent planet, Europa was well within Jupiter's magnetosphere, so most of the shuttle's sensors were fritzed even as the shuttle skimmed the icy surface of the world, beneath which Kodiak knew was a vast ocean of liquid water, kept from freezing thanks to the tidal flexing exerted by Jupiter. But soon enough the shuttle's navcom picked up a short-range, local signal. Another trail of beacons, like the satellites strung out to guide ships in to the JMC refinery. These beacons, in contrast, weren't in orbit around Europa; they were down on the ground, detectable at only very short range.

The homing signal led him to a landing pad that was a square of steel gray in a plain of blue ice. As soon as the shuttle touched down, the platform activated, lowering the ship into a huge subterranean hangar, easily as large as the giant landing pad that sat on the top of the JMC refinery. As the pad elevator came to a halt, the platform rotated ninety degrees and then rolled forward, parking the shuttle next to another craft—another shuttle of some kind, but not one of Fleet design. The sensor readings in Kodiak's ship indicated that the other craft was still emitting alpha particles from its primary drive system and that he should take care.

The JMC orbital relay, still warm after being piloted to the Freezer by Braben.

The radiation warning inspired Kodiak to run a full sensor sweep before venturing down the shuttle's exit ramp, very much aware that he might be walking straight into a trap. But all he learned was that although the artificial atmosphere and gravity were standard, it was very cold outside. Kodiak waited a moment longer, scanning the view outside the shuttle with his own eyes as he flicked the viewscreen to show the rear, the sides, even the view above and below the shuttle. There was no sign of life in the hangar, no movement at all. Braben and Tyler had headed into the complex.

Before he opened the ramp, Kodiak spun the shuttle's comms, seeing if he could pick up the death rattle of the Spiders. The interference was strong, and he heard nothing but a wash of noise. But if the Freezer was the source of the Spider infection, that meant they were here, somewhere. Kodiak had a bad feeling that, as much as he might wish against it, he would be hearing the crackle of the SpiderWeb again very soon.

Outside, Kodiak stood by the front landing gear, breathing in the cold air, looking around him, listening to the steady click of the cooling shuttle echoing around the cavernous underground hangar. He pulled the staser from his holster. There was still plenty of power in the weapon, but what he would have given for something with a little more kick. Something like that Yuri-G Glass had been carrying back on Earth, for example.

The hangar had many doors leading off from it. One was larger than the others, and a trail dragged through the frosted floor led from the orbital relay right to it. Gripping his gun tightly, Kodiak followed.

The facility was eerie, there was no doubt about it. Away from the hangar, the place was clearly in an energy-saving mode, the lighting pulsing brighter as he stepped through corridor sections and fading behind him as he passed onward. It made stealth a little difficult, the automatic lighting announcing his presence as well as his footsteps.

There was no sign of Braben or Tyler, just a trail in the frost. They'd had a good head start on him.

No Spiders either. He wasn't quite sure what he expected to find, but the empty, silent corridors were a surprise somehow. He had no idea how big the facility was—for all he knew, the entire moon might have been hollowed out by the JMC.

Every now and then, Kodiak paused and listened, just in case. There was nothing except a steady oscillation. As he walked on, he realized the sound was getting louder and louder, and it was coming from somewhere below.

He came to an elevator lobby, the trail leading directly to the doors. The LEDs on the panel beside them were bright, but there was no indication of where the elevator had taken Braben and Tyler. Inside, he saw it went down ninety floors. The Caviezel Corporation had buried something
deep
in Europa's crust. Very, very deep.

Kodiak took a guess and hit the bottom button, and the elevator began to descend.

*   *   *

The doors slid open
with a faint tone. Kodiak backed himself into a corner in the elevator car, gun ready, and he held his breath as he counted in his head. He glanced down at the floor of the corridor outside the car and saw the layer of frost was disturbed. He'd guessed right. Braben and Tyler had come to the bottom of the complex.

Kodiak exhaled slowly, trying to minimize the steam of his breath, and stepped out into the new elevator lobby. The oscillation here was very loud, loud enough to hide the sound of his boots crunching on the floor. As it pulsed, a bass note in the peak volume pressed into Kodiak's eardrums, making him feel like he was deep underwater.

This level, at least, was lit uniformly. There was no energy saving going on, and as Kodiak moved onward, he noticed that the floor was starting to get damp where the frost was melting away. His breath no longer plumed in front of his face.

The corridor led to a gallery, which ran around the outside of a space about the same size as the shuttle hangar at the top level of the facility. Kodiak moved to the rail and looked down.

The huge chamber below was flooded with water, the liquid perfectly still and glowing an eerie blue thanks to the light coming from the rows and rows of tall oblong objects submerged a meter or so below the surface.

They were sarcophagi—pods, like the one in Braben's shuttle. Each stood vertically in back-to-back rows, the head-level window on the front of each facing outward. Kodiak looked out over the room, counting at least a hundred of the double rows stretching to the back of the facility and as many going crossways, maybe more. There were at least ten thousand pods submerged in the liquid—which must have been fed in from the Europan ocean.

Kodiak crouched at the gallery rail and peered down at the pods closest. Dark shadowed faces were just visible, lit by the blue light from within each pod. Kodiak sighed in disbelief. He was looking at ten thousand people at least, held in some kind of stasis in the ocean of Europa. Men and women of the Fleet, apparently killed in action and shipped back to the Earth for repatriation, only to have been stolen by the very company responsible for returning them home. The scale of the operation was staggering, Caviezel's treachery nothing short of monstrous. What the hell he wanted them for, Kodiak could scarcely think. But they were all alive—he knew they were. Tyler Smith was proof of that.