So we were very clever. We were ingenious, even. For three grunts and a computer nerd we MacGyvered the fuck out of that part of the plan. We had every right to be proud of ourselves.
When we got out of the van, in a parking lot in the outskirts of Stockholm, Freya was there. She’d obviously been feeling lonely, because there were a dozen guys and girls with her who weren’t in uniform, unless you count the fact that they all went to the same tailor for their suits. I guess individually they might not have drawn attention, but with that many of them together, it did kind of scream Secret Government Agency. They all had machine pistols, indicating that they’d already broken a few restraint barriers. I should remind you, we’d left most of our stuff behind to travel in civvies – no rifles, no helmets, just pistols and the underlayer of our body armor making us sweat under our shirts. Only now it wasn’t the only thing making us sweat.
I thought the driver had sold us out, but Freya’s people scared the crap out of him. He was on his knees with his hands behind his head the moment he saw them. A little star-and-stripe-painted part of me said, That’s what you get from a socialist government, but then again it wasn’t as though it didn’t happen everywhere, gov or corp; so much for ideology.
We adopted the position too, and they disarmed us quite competently and took Cormoran’s case.
“How’d you find us?” I asked. I felt it was expected of me.
“Not being complete idiots,” said the translator in my ear, sounding as though he was enjoying it. Freya knelt down beside me, face to face, her gun pressed to my side.
“I don’t think you’re a bad man, Sergeant Regan.” Now she was speaking English, crisp and unaccented. “But I don’t know why you’re here in my city – maybe you don’t even know yourself. I don’t trust anything that comes out of the US lines right now. So I can’t just give you the run of Stockholm, no matter what the Finns say. Because I don’t trust them, either.”
“So what now?” I was wondering if I could grab her, hold her hostage. Problem was that the Nords had more hostages than I could realistically hold on to, and there was nothing to stop them putting a bullet in the back of Sturgeon’s head to show me how serious they were.
“You come back to our place and we ask you some questions. Politely, the first time. But I think you know the drill.”
One of them took the van man off. Another shoved us in the back of an armored car painted up in the blue and neon yellow of the local law and order. We were cuffed to the interior, with a couple guys to watch over us and another couple in the cab. The rest of the Men In Black got into other vehicles with prominent government plates. Apparently inner Stockholm is a no-car zone unless you’re gov or corp or very rich, which I guess really hampers your ability to cruise about in unmarked cars being sinister and anonymous.
There wasn’t much conversation in the back of the prison wagon, mostly because our guards shouted at anyone who spoke. Sturgeon looked philosophical and Cormoran was fretting about her case, I thought.
Franken looked… not good. His jaw was clenched and one of his eyes was half-closed. He looked like a man with toothache. When I caught his gaze, he winced and looked away. There was sweat on his forehead, as though he was running a fever.
I was about to make something of it – everyone’s seen the movie where the prisoner’s sick, so the guards suddenly abandon all pretense at security. But then we stopped – and quite suddenly – and things obviously went south outside because there was shooting.
Our captors didn’t know what to do. They tried for orders, but got nothing from their radios. We saw through the grill that the two guys in the cab got out – and then one of them fell right back in, only deader than when he’d left. There was a quick meeting of minds in the back of the car, which we were not invited to attend, and then our two guys kicked the back door open and went out guns first.
They put them away sharpish, because there were a bunch of guys outside in full urban ops gear with assault rifles, waiting for them. It was the slickest work I ever saw, how they bundled the gov types away and then cut us loose and got us out. We were in the middle of the city, some old part where all the buildings looked like someone had repurposed Disneyland for offices – I saw skewed vans ahead where they’d blocked off the leading gov cars. I heard sirens, but they were going to be too late. Freya’s remaining people were keeping their heads well down.
So the lot of us got bundled into more cars with gov plates – either they were stolen or faked, or there were just more govs in Nordland that I’d been led to believe. I saw Freya and some of her survivors sent off that way, and then it was our turn. Nobody was explaining what was going on, and none of the super-stealthy black ops uniforms had handy badges to tell us who these new guys were. Except better equipped and more ruthless than our original captors, which suggested to me they must be corp types of some description.
They frisked us over for bugs. They even zapped something in Cormoran’s headware because they thought it would let her call out. It obviously hurt like hell when they did it – moving some sort of gadget up to her temples and letting fly. One of her eyes was bloodshot, after that, and I had the horrible thought that they’d fried some of her actual brain rather than just the tech. When she’d got over the shock of it, though, she found a moment to meet my gaze and wink that red eye. Apparently she had a trick up her cybernetic sleeve even then.
We ended up somewhere in central Stockholm, that’s all I knew. We got head-bagged after a while, and we were moved between vehicles and made to bumble along on foot. We went underground for a bit, from the echoes, and we went in lifts and on moving floorways. If we’d come out of it in some secret volcano lair, I wouldn’t have been much surprised.
And then the bags came off, and the cuffs came off, and we were all four of us in a board room overlooking the commercial district from somewhere high up.
CHAPTER NINE
STOCKHOLM’S ONE OF those Euro cities where most of it looks like – well, like Euro cities are supposed to, if you’re from the States – all old, old stuff as though any moment a bunch of people in wigs and enormous dresses are going to pour out and start doing one of those old-timey dances.
There’s a few bits in the middle, though, where the last century’s caught up to it. There’s one part that Sturgeon tells me is called something like ‘The Wall of Glass’ now – they had one big skyscraper there, and then another and another, all crammed in because other parts of the city were just too damn historical to knock down, until it was like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude around there, just a great big bank of glass and steel. And all solar-collectors, of course, because this is the Nords we’re talking about.
Anyway, that’s where we were, and the serious-looking men who’d put us there were leaving, ceding the room to us. We had a whole-wall window onto that part of the city, all bright and lit up and advertising weird-ass Nord products on its big eyesore video billboards. Another wall was all screens, as though someone was going to ask us to make a presentation any minute.
“Everyone OK?” I asked first. Sturgeon nodded, but Cormoran was frowning. She indicated her head and then a wave of her fingers at the room around us. No connectivity, apparently.
“Franken,” I pressed, because he hadn’t answered.
“Fine,” he grunted. He didn’t look fine. His hands were fists, and I could see the muscles of his neck twitch and tic. Cued by me, the other two stared at him as well and he rounded on us angrily. “I’m fine, OK? Get off my back, for Chrissake!”
Sturgeon was going to say something at the uncharacteristic cussing, but Franken loomed at him and snapped, “I’m allowed, all right?”
I put a hand on his shoulder, and although he shrugged it off angrily, he stood still while I said, quiet as I could, “Tell me.”
There was real fear in his eyes, deep down where only I could see. “I can hear… it’s like there’s voices, right at the edge of everything. It’s like there’s a radio inside my head,
with the volume turned real low.”
Then Sturgeon said, “Someone’s coming,” but he didn’t need to. We all knew it because, despite the reinforced floors that corp towers had these days, you could still feel it through your feet when a Scion was on the way. And no wonder they’d left us alone with our thoughts, because it wasn’t as though we could do much against one of them.
The seven foot chrome exoskeleton that walked in was stepping lightly, for what it was. It paused in the door, regarding the four of us. Its barrel torso was broad enough around that I guessed the rich kid was sitting down in there, and the limbs were pure mech – it could go either way, with those shells. The head atop it was bland and faceless: purely decorative, or maybe full of guns.
I came halfway to standing to attention, all three of us army types did. It was what you did with Scions, when they weren’t actively trying to kill you.
“Sergeant First Class Theodore Patrick Regan,” a pleasant male voice named me, well spoken and American. “Specialist Soloman Sturgeon; Specialist Daniel Belweather Franken, all of the United States 203rd Infantry Division.” There was a snicker from Sturgeon because that was the first any of us had heard of Franken’s middle name, which sure as hell wasn’t on any of his ID. That there was no answering snarl worried me more than I could say.
“And Miss Helena Cormoran,” the Scion went on, “formerly with the Special Corporate Services Division of Huesson International Technology and Logistics Incorporated.” The faceless metal head made a show of scanning the room. “What happened to the other one?”
“Lead poisoning,” I answered.
The Scion made an amused sound, nodding philosophically as if the head was real. It took up a position at the head of the board table, as though about to chair a meeting or call up a pie chart on the screens behind it. “I understand you’ve come a long way to find me.”
I gave that gleaming face a long, hard stare. “Nice try.”
But then it was splitting open, just peeling back, and the chest and shoulders as well, the metal hinging, folding and flexing, until the body was half-open. It wasn’t something any of us had seen before; the whole point of being a Scion was that you were in your own little impregnable world. You didn’t open up where us lowlifes might throw a punch. But this one did. In that office tower on the far side of Nordland, we got to see how the other half live when they go to war.
Or at least the head and shoulders of it, anyway, it didn’t unzip all the way and spill him out. It was cosy in there, I can confirm, and he was cushioned by all sorts of direct interface gear – to give him instant living control of the shell, and to keep his body fit and suppress its complaining for as long as he needed to stay inside. Tell the truth, I wasn’t really looking. I was looking at his face instead. Within the steel was Cousin Jerome, in the flesh, with a grin that was pure rich boy mischief.
“That’s right, Sergeant.”
“But your shell,” I got out. “We saw it, with…”
“Yes, you did crash our friends from LMK, didn’t you? Who aren’t exactly happy about that, by the way. I had to leave my shell there, Sergeant. They’re just too easy to track. But we made sure I had a pristine new suit of clothes waiting at this end, as part of the deal.” And then it all went in reverse, and we were face to face with that shiny façade again, except now his face got projected onto it, like Rich Ted’s had been. There was more than one way to show a family resemblance.
“What deal?” Franken said, sounding strained. When I glanced at him, he looked in pain, one hand pressed to his jaw. His other twitched out and touched the shell of the Scion. I’d seen it done, before a battle: the superstitious seeking some metal benediction, as if having had all that money’s worth of titanium and steel under your hand would rub off, somehow. I wondered if he was praying, if he wanted the sheer concentrated wealth to drive the Finnish right out of him like an exorcism.
Jerome Speling’s visage frowned and flickered. “Is your man ill?” His light-built features adopted an expression of concern.
“He got shot,” I said shortly. “And what deal? We were told to rescue you. We were told the Nords got you, that they had some sort of super-weapon that switched off your suit. But you’re saying that you…”
“Switched it off myself? I did, yes.” The hand he lifted could have crushed iron girders. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m no traitor. I came here to arrange the end of the war.”
“The end…?” And suddenly it made sense. Of course he did. His corporation – that big multinational where the board and shareholders all had his nose and his chin – wouldn’t want a drawn-out expensive war after all, even if the US gov was footing most of the bill. And the Nords must have seen already that their tech wasn’t as good as ours. Of course we’d send someone, quiet and covert, to negotiate their surrender. It all fell into place.
Except for the pieces that just kept falling, like us. I was working my way to saying it when Cormoran broke in.
“When the US government wants to talk terms, they send a diplomat,” she pointed out quietly. “And they don’t need to go all hush hush because that’s what diplomats do: they go to other countries and talk at our enemies. I’m guess you weren’t sent by the White House, Mr Speling.”
“There are those with considerably more at stake here than the government, after all,” he agreed equably. “Come on, now, I’m sure none of you are quite that naïve.”
“Wars start and stop for corporate interest,” Sturgeon agreed darkly, and I shot him a warning look. This really wasn’t the place for his polemic.
There was a weird thing then, because the screens behind the Scion flickered, and one of them began to play a movie, only it was a movie of Cousin Jerome talking to some other guys. Open Scion shells were behind the others, like they’d all decided to show how much they trusted each other by stepping out. What was behind Jerome was the camera, so we were mostly seeing the back of his head unless he looked left or right.
I assumed the point of this would become relevant later, so I didn’t say anything about it. None of us did.
“Well, quite.” It really was quite amazing how natural and human the body language of that man-shaped vehicle was, with its idle gestures, waving away Sturgeon’s words. “The old nationalist way of waging war was ruinous, after all. Easier just to know from the start that it’s about protecting business interests. What is our great country, after all, without its industry? And so, when it’s about money from the start, then it ends when both sides know they’re not going to get any richer by letting it carry on.”
“Linkِping,” said Franken. It sounded like he was trying to clear something from his throat. The weirdest thing was that the image of Jerome on the screen kind of lip-synced with the word.
Jerome – the real Jerome – might or might not have heard him, but Cormoran grabbed at his attention as soon as he’d finished speaking.
“That still doesn’t make sense,” she objected. “Did your cousin not know about this deal? Because if he did, it must have slipped his mind when he was giving us our orders. We’re supposed to be getting you back behind the lines…” but her voice tailed off as she said it, and she glanced at me helplessly. “Or…”
Jerome let the pause become awkward before speaking to fill it. “Unfortunately, a high-ranking Scion such as myself can’t just step off the radar, Miss Cormoran.”
“Ms,” she corrected flatly. “So, while I can’t say I had any illusions, how about you explain to the Sergeant exactly what that means, Mr Speling.”
I didn’t need the explanation. “We weren’t supposed to succeed,” I said hollowly. “The world was meant to think you’d been got. Which meant the world would expect someone to be sent after you. Which meant us, because we were supposed to have fuck all chance of actually getting this far. And, Cormoran, I’m sorry, because you’ve pretty much been telling me this from the start.”
“Pretty much,” she agreed.
“Jِnهker,” said Franke
n, more clearly this time, and it was weird, because he didn’t speak a word of Nord, but he was saying it with just those sort of weird stresses and sounds the locals gave words.
And this time Jerome had heard him. The metal suit went very still and he demanded, “What did he say?”
“Hanukah, I think.” Sturgeon looked only baffled.
But Cousin Jerome suddenly had a bee in his metal bonnet, and he came stomping around to tower over Franken. “You say that again!”
Franken lifted his head, and his face was agony, pale and sweat-sheened. “They say Linkِping. They say Jِnهker. The battles you planned.” Suddenly he leapt back with his hands to his head. “Get out!” he screamed. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to tell them! Linkِping! Jِnهker! Bergshammar!”
“What the hell?” was my contribution.
“Places, Nord places.” Cormoran must have had some maps stored in her headware. “Drawing a line from our advance to Stockholm.” And half the rest of the screens all lit up showing Jeromev – different meetings, different people: rich men sitting together to plan the fate of the rest of the world. Some of it was from building security cams, but most wasn’t footage that anyone would have wanted recorded for posterity. But Jerome’s new shell had been kept running, in case things went south and he needed to bail into it. It had recorded everything its master had done.
Then Jerome lunged forward and caught up Franken, one hand clenching on the man’s arm, one at his throat, hoisting him bodily. The questions erupting out of his shell were the only things keeping Franken alive. The projected face had frozen in mid-smile, like the man inside had died.
“Tell me how you know that!” he demanded. “You can’t know that. You were checked; you’ve got nothing that can cut into our data. You couldn’t change the channels on a TV with the ’ware we left you.”
“Fuck!” Cormoran leapt up from where she’d been sitting. “Oh you son of a bitch!” Whatever she was looking at was not in the room.
Ironclads Page 10
