Nolan returned her grip. Just for a moment, but he poured all of his strength into the clasp. She, too, needed him to be strong for her. She might never admit it aloud—too damned stubborn and proud for that—but he knew she drew on his strength just as he drew on hers. Together, they could face the impossible that awaited them at their destination.
“I’ve attempted to reach out to Doctor Sladek via Oversight,” Taia said. “Doctor Sladek and Val would likely have answers on his condition.” The two doctors knew him as Subject 41-EXR, a genetic match for Subject 3-EX—Nolan himself. “I will inform you the moment I am able to make contact.”
“Thank you.” Nolan turned to Bex as he said it. He wanted her to know how much her presence and silent comfort meant to him, too. “Now, let’s have another look at our enemies.”
Taia called up the footage of the Mako-class troop transport onto his HUD. “I can’t get a clear reading on how many are inside,” she said. “However, based on the ship’s schematics, I calculate fewer than one hundred and fifty. Perhaps one hundred if they’re transporting combat vehicles.”
Nolan frowned. “Not a damned lot to go on.” He glanced at Bex. “Think these’ll be as incompetent as the ones back at the safe house?”
“That’s the hope.” Bex gave a shrug. “Gives us a fighting chance, at least.”
“Indeed,” Taia said.
Silence descended in the Phantasm’s cabin. Through the viewscreen, Nolan watched the landscape flash past in a blur, the rugged landscape south of New Avalon giving way to the flat, arid terrain near Paradise Isle. They passed the manmade island with its ghostly army of skyscrapers—now fully abandoned after the destruction of Shadowspear—and sped over land that quickly turned to deserts and rolling sand dunes.
“What’s our ETA?” Nolan asked.
“At our current speed,” Taia said, “we could reach the Celestial Cascades in one hour and twenty-nine minutes.”
Nolan’s hopes rose—that would put them just a few minutes behind the Black Crows, maybe close enough that they could hit the contractors before they finished disembarking from their transport ship—only to be dashed by Taia’s next words.
“However, the Phantasm cannot sustain its one-hundred-ten-percent output for more than another twenty minutes without risking serious damage to the engines. Given that, I calculate our total travel time to be one hour and forty-two minutes.”
Nolan did some quick math. “That still puts us pretty close on the Black Crows’ heels,” he said.
Bex nodded. “We hit the ground shooting and don’t let up until the fuckers turn tail and run.”
Nolan chuckled. “Now that’s a plan I can get behind.” His smiled faded, replaced by a pensive frown. “Any luck figuring out what’s interfering with our signal?”
“Not yet,” Taia said. “My satellite now won’t be in position for another ninety-seven seconds.”
Nolan ground his teeth. Everything was about time now. Every second’s delay meant more time for the Black Crows to storm the cabin. He felt his body leaning forward in his seat, as if that could somehow make the Phantasm fly faster. Drawing in a deep breath, he forced himself to lean back, to drain the tension from his shoulders and neck. He needed to be sharp and energetic when he reached the Celestial Cascades, and that meant keeping his head and body as calm as possible on the journey there.
“In the meantime, however,” Taia said, “you need to see what I found among the data I copied off Agent Styver’s hard drive. I do not exaggerate when I say that the intel I’ve located will, as Bex says, ‘blow your goddamned mind!’”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I’ve been indexing and sifting through all of the data,” Taia said, “and though it’s just a fraction of what was purged, there’s enough to start putting together the pieces.”
“Pieces to what?” Nolan asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“To a picture of what the Protection Bureau is really doing—not just in New Avalon, but throughout the entire Empire.”
Images began to pop up on Nolan’s HUD and the flight console screen, showing documents, excerpts of holo-messages, transcripts from audio logs, and more. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, all flashing past too fast for Nolan to read them all. Yet in every one, Taia highlighted specific sections to illustrate her point as she continued.
“Based on this intel, it appears the Protection Bureau has direct links to every major illicit operation in the Empire. They are either running the cartels, syndicates, and gangs with specific instructions to their leaders, or are using their influence, power, and resources to manipulate events behind the scenes, all of which appears to have given them near-total control over all of the drugs, counterfeit merchandise, illegal weapons, and black-market tech on Exodus VI.”
Nolan’s eyes widened with every extract and communique he read: Correspondence between Agent Styver and Zhu Li Han, leader of the Five Hand Syndicate since Nolan executed their former leader a year earlier; a message left at a dead drop for Arlin Rathgut, the former Empyreal Supreme Nolan had killed during his clash with Ex-Umbra; logs detailing extensive conversations between Agent Styver and Vladimir Demisov of the SMV. There were countless more like these, all tying the Protection Bureau to every manner of illegal activity happening in New Avalon, New Ekland, Phobury, and all the other major cities on Exodus VI.
“Based on this intel, I calculate an eighty-three-point-four percent probability that the rest of the Protection Bureau’s agents are engaged in similar activity on their respective worlds—activity which appears to be fully sanctioned by Agent Styver’s superiors.”
Nolan’s lips twisted into a grimace. It wasn’t unheard of for clandestine organizations to deal with those on the wrong side of law and order—on the contrary, it was SOP in many cases, as it provided manpower, resources, and power among criminal elements that operated unconstrained by such trifles as Imperial regulations. But to actively be a participant? To be controlling things directly, rather than just skirting the edges as needed? That was a whole different level of vile.
Worse, he had no doubt that he’d been directly involved in many of their operations to seize and maintain control of Exodus VI’s underworld. Every assassination he’d carried out against a cartel or gang—German French of the Rücksichtslos, Yu Zian of the Five Hand Syndicate, Gustav Wylun of the White Sharks—had been the Protection Bureau’s way of eliminating a threat to their control. As Wolfe had made abundantly clear, he was in tight with Agent Styver, likely the hand-picked successor to take over the White Sharks.
“Then there’s this.” Taia called up images and documents from what looked like a top-secret dossier. The dossier was his. It bore his image, complete with his codename—Cerberus—and a full list of every operation he’d carried out for the Protection Bureau.
Nolan’s stomach tightened as he read the transcripts of calls he’d placed over what he thought were secure comms channels, watched snatches of footage he’d believed Taia had erased, and, worse, ran over the lengthy list of medical tests and analyses relayed to the Protection Bureau. Just one more reminder of what Taia had been doing all those years.
Yet a part of him actually felt comforted by seeing them laid out in front of his eyes. If she had been trying to hide the truth from him, she would have simply failed to show them to him as she’d done so many times in the past. By showing him the evidence of her duplicity, she had, in a strange way, actually solidified his belief in her loyalty.
That belief only grew as he read over Agent Styver’s recent notes. The first dated back roughly three and a half months. “Asset failed to deliver Project Icarus data for third day concurrent. Recommend thorough software analysis to determine possible glitch.” A couple of days later, another note read, “Project Icarus data not received for five days. Diagnostic of base coding and operating system reveals no glitches. Further analysis warranted.” Then, two weeks later, another note: “Asset deemed defective by creator. Ex-Umbra’s recommendation: brin
g Cerberus ‘update’ with patched code to determine source of malfunction.”
Nolan sucked in a sharp breath. “That was when you figured that workaround to stop sending them my Subject 3-EX data, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Taia said, her voice oddly quiet. “And you’ll recall Agent Styver’s offer to update my hacking algorithms after the Barnett job.”
Nolan nodded. “But we accepted that one!” His mind worked. “So their patch failed?”
“After analyzing the copy of the system I created, it did precisely as intended and ‘fixed’ what it believed to be the malfunctions in my code,” Taia said. “That was when I knew for certain that if I allowed the Protection Bureau to control me, it would either use me to destroy you or ultimately shut me down. For the sake of survival—mine and yours both—I had to find a way to liberate myself.”
“Sneaky, manipulating motherfuckers!” Bex said harshly. “Read a bit farther down, Nolan. The last annotation made by our good buddy.”
Nolan returned his attention to his dossier, and read the final note from Agent Styver. “Cerberus’ erratic behavior has made him a threat we can no longer control or utilize. Recommend immediate incapacitation and incarceration for Project Icarus testing.”
Nolan growled. “Goddamned piece of shit!” He clenched his fists. That was precisely the sort of thing he’d come to expect from the Protection Bureau—assets were expendable commodities that were only useful as long as they served a purpose—but seeing it written out like that, in just a few terse lines as bland and emotionless as Agent Styver himself, felt somehow far colder and crueler than anticipated.
He had a sudden urge to close his dossier, to put behind him not only all the bloody missions and assassinations he’d carried out for the organization, but to forget the greatest mistake of his life. He’d failed to anticipate just how much Agent Styver and his superiors had been willing to do to achieve their aims. Even with all his Silverguard cunning, he hadn’t truly comprehended the depths to which the Protection Bureau was willing to stoop, the lives they were willing to control, manipulate, and ultimately destroy. Not to make the Empire a better place, as Agent Styver had tried to claim, but for the sake of power and control.
That was always what it came down to with organizations like the Protection Bureau. Everything else—law and order, justice, peace, and prosperity—were as disposable as the assets they terminated with a few lines of text.
“What else have you found?” he asked, erasing the images from his HUD with a mental command.
“This.” Taia called up another dossier.
Nolan drew in a sharp breath as he read the codename. “Redeemer!”
He blazed through the dossier, reading the complete history of the man who had called himself Aidan Severance and claimed to be the liberator of the oppressed Terran League worlds and people. It had been utter bullshit. The dossier never gave the man’s real name, but it included the complete list of medical procedures that he’d undergone to transform him into the handsome, heroic-looking man from that SST video.
“Nolan, look at this,” Bex said. “Taia, show him.”
Another dossier popped up onto his HUD, this one giving the full details of the operation to assassinate Premier Lars Scofield. The job had been designated for “Operative: Cerberus”, but Agent Styver’s notes marked “Operative incommunicado”. Ultimately, the crude bombing had been carried out by a handful of freelance hitters masquerading as Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Nolan’s head spun, and pieces began to click into place as he returned his attention to the “Redeemer” dossier.
“It was all an act,” he said. “All put together by the Protection Bureau. Severance—the fake one—the SST, the bombings.” He read out some of the names and places where the bombing attacks had been carried out, on orders of the Protection Bureau as relayed through “the Redeemer.”
No, he realized, not exactly. The Protection Bureau had chosen targets, but Agent Styver’s notes made it clear that the attacks had deviated from their script. Indeed, with every annotation, Agent Styver’s displeasure became clearer, culminating in a final remark: “Asset Redeemer has refused my last attempt to establish contact. Though previous psychological analysis uncovered no signs of mental instability, previous communications indicate that he is growing more and more unstable, falling deeper into delusions of his cover identity and losing touch with reality. Recommendation: terminate asset and abandon Redeemer project.”
Nolan slumped back in his flight seat, at a loss for words. Suddenly, he knew why he’d sensed a strange dissonance between the man’s fanatic persona and the calculating cunning in his attempts to bargain for his life. He wasn’t a zealot or freedom fighter, not really. He’d been a Protection Bureau asset created to go undercover into the SST to infiltrate and assume command of their operations, and use them to…
What, exactly, was the plan? What’s the point of using the SST to attack the populace, only to destroy them? How does that benefit the Protection Bureau?
It wouldn’t be the first time in history that an established government had utilized terrorists to further their political aims. Dissent, unrest, and violence could destabilize regimes as easily as they could lead to the establishment of new power bases. But for all the damage the SST had done over the past few years, all the blood they’d spilled and the lives they’d taken, nothing within the Empire had changed. At least not that he could see. The Emperor remained firmly in power, his military more popular than ever thanks to General Stone’s successful bombing on Corrigan.
So what had been the point of it all? He was missing a great deal, but with the pieces he had, he couldn’t figure out how the Protection Bureau benefitted from the rise and ultimate downfall of the SST. There would be a benefit, he knew. He just couldn’t see it—and that, more than anything, worried him.
“Nolan, I’ve found something else,” Taia said, interrupting his jumbled thoughts. “Something about Jared.”
That snapped Nolan immediately on full alert. “Show me!”
Bank documents popped up onto his HUD, showing thousands of transactions to accounts that he couldn’t begin to identify. However, Taia had highlighted two separate transactions—one nearly two years old, and one from just a few weeks back.
“Remember how I was attempting to track the account that paid Gunslinger to carry out the hit on Lina?” Taia asked. “This is the account. The Protection Bureau’s.”
Nolan tasted bitter acid on his tongue. “They hired Shadowspear to kill Lina?”
“And to frame Jared for drug-running and murder,” Taia said. “Using Shadowspear’s financial records, I managed to tie this first payment to accounts belonging to Oleander and Gunslinger. I’ve even found the message Agent Styver sent to the assassins detailing precisely what they needed to do.”
Disgust gave way to cold, hard fury. He’d known that Jared was innocent—Warden Smythe had used that piece of information to try and torment him—but seeing this evidence brought back all the hatred and rage he’d felt when first seeing his brother floating in that Reformation tank.
“There’s this, too.”
A note popped up on his HUD. It came from his Cerberus dossier, and was dated a little over two years old. “My analysis of asset Cerberus suggests that he is growing dissatisfied in his work for us. He will soon slip his leash unless given proper motivation to remain in our service. Recommendation: his brother presents ideal leverage. Possibly beneficial to Project Icarus as well. Genetic match could improve testing. Suggest consulting with Machinist, or, if contact has been re-established, with Frankenstein.”
Nolan growled low in his throat. “Goddamned piece of shit!” He’d suspected the Protection Bureau had played a hand in his brother’s incarceration, and now he had the proof. Jared had suffered simply because Nolan had been thinking of getting out of the game. Had he been subjected to the Project Icarus experiments for the same reason, or had it just been a “bonus benefit” of framing an innocent ma
n of murder, drug-running, and treason?
“What about those two codenames?” Bex asked. She was far more clear-headed at the moment than him—rather than affecting her personally, these findings were just pieces of a very grim, very ugly puzzle. “Machinist and Frankenstein. Anything you can find on them?”
“Machinist isn’t mentioned in any of the other dossiers,” Taia said. “However, there is mention of Frankenstein in connection with Shadowspear.”
Nolan’s eyebrows rose as he read the file Taia displayed on his HUD. It was another anonymous message sent to a Shadowspear operative—Chameleon—giving detailed instructions to track down a Sergeant Bastien Colandine in connection with “rogue asset.” “Possible link to Frankenstein and Mary Shelley,” read Agent Styver’s note in the Shadowspear dossier. “Interrogation yielded nothing before target expired.”
The words target expired were so cold and clinical, yet they described the bloody, lonely death of Bastien, a former Ironhand and Nolan’s friend, in a filthy underground tunnel beneath the Bolt Hole. The Protection Bureau had hired Chameleon to hunt down a homeless veteran—the only man in New Avalon who knew the whereabouts of Doctor Sladek and Val.
“Nolan, we’ve got a problem,” Taia said. “My satellites have been monitoring the enemy’s progress toward the Celestial Cascades. However, two seconds ago, I just lost eyes.”
Nolan frowned. “On the troop transport?”
“No,” Taia said, “I lost eyes on the entire Celestial Cascades.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Page 21
