I remembered when she said she thought something in Franken had touched her headware. I remembered it wasn’t there when she’d gone back for it. I wondered what the hell sort of shapeshifting bioware the Finns had put in Franken’s skull just so he could get inside this building and let them reach out and touch the enemy’s network.
There were maps springing up on the rest of the screens – troop movements, figures, documents in English and Swedish. Cormoran had put as much of the room as possible between her and Jerome, not that it would have helped.
“I’m getting their plan fed directly into my implants,” she got out, shaking her head frantically. “I’ve no idea how. Nord forces meet US advance at Linkِping, get their asses kicked. Try to hold at Jِnهker, get their asses kicked. Then…” her eyes, white and red, were very wide. “Oh hell.”
“Not another word!” Jerome warned her, advancing around the table with Franken still held aloft.
“Sergeant, they’re going to bring down the government, the Swedish government. It’s all set out, clear as day. They’ll manufacture unrest after Jِnهker, topple the socialists, get a corp puppet regime in place that’ll do exactly what they want.” She was gabbling it out, scuttling crabwise about the table to keep it between them.
Jerome put a stop to that by throwing Franken into the table, which snapped it in half and should have done the same to him.
“And what’s wrong with that?” the Scion demanded. “That’s what we want, isn’t it? A compliant Nordgov that will do what we ask, what the Nord corps ask, whatever’s best for business? Why are you saying this as though it’s a bad thing?”
“Wait, so what was the other one?” I asked, into the silence that followed. “Link-thing and Hanukah and…”
“Bergshammar,” Cormoran pronounced. “Bergshammar is where the Nords throw us back, in this plan. To give confidence to their new government they need a victory over our guys.” It was like she was reading it from an autocue inside her head. “After that, everyone sits down at the peace table and everyone gets what they want. Except for the Nord people I guess. And except for everyone who got stage-managed to death in the fighting.”
“All right, fine,” Jerome said, sounding very calm again. “So let’s change the topic of conversation onto how the fuck you just did that?” And the crazy was right back, the crazy of a man who’s had things his own way since he was born, and suddenly doesn’t. “There are no signals. Our techs have checked. Nothing’s getting out of this room.”
Sturgeon cleared his throat nervously. “You might want to get them to check again.” He was standing at the window, looking out at Stockholm’s swanky business district. All the billboards, all those great big electric adverts, they were showing Jerome. They were showing Jerome’s maps. They were showing, piecemeal but coherent, Jerome’s plan.
Jerome took two steps toward the glass wall. The attitude of the suit was shorn of all humanity, as if it had just been an act he was putting on.
“They made me do it.” The voice, sepulchral, came from the wreckage of the table. Franken sat up, cut and bloody, but still in one piece. “They used me. They’re in my head. They needed me to get here so they could hack your system from inside. They work best when they’re close to things.”
“Our system is locked down,” the Scion spat out, “Nothing is getting out. The moment you got brought in we made sure. Just in… just in case… We killed her connections. We made certain. You were scanned and… scanned…” By then, his voice was almost a whimper.
“I can hear them,” Franken lurched to his feet. “They’re in my head, all the time. I’m in theirs. They work best when they’re close to things. But them and me – even when we’re far away, we’re still close to each other. We’re all together. We’re all equal in the pack.” And then a sudden burst of the old Franken as he turned to me and cried out, “Fuck’s sake, Sarge, they made me into a commie!”
I don’t know whether it was that aggrieved capitalist soul of his or some instinct of the Finnish network that he was plugged into, but he just went for Jerome then. He rammed into him with his full bodyweight, and although the Scion must have weighed half a ton, Franken hit him high up and toppled him toward the windows.
And life’s not the movies, and they build tower blocks pretty damn strong. Jerome hammered into the glass and cracked it a thousand ways, but it didn’t give. He ended up hanging there, actually half out over the street and stuck in the crazed glass like it was a spiderweb.
I knew my cue. “Go!” I yelled.
A couple of the corp security who’d grabbed us were already in the doorway, weapons up. Franken just about used Jerome’s chest as a footplate to spring at them. I saw two holes punched in him – all the way through – and then he had slammed the corp guys down to the ground. He was weeping. He threw them around like they were dolls but he was weeping. His face was knotted up like a fist with self-loathing. Blood streamed from his wounds but it was already thick and clotting. They were flesh wounds, literally: punched through muscle that was already knitting itself together.
I got one gun and Franken got the other and the four of us burst out into the next room, and then the room after, because a lot of people were getting the hell out of Dodge around then. It wasn’t even Franken lighting a fire under their asses – right then the whole building seemed to be in utter chaos.
CHAPTER TEN
MOVIES AGAIN: YOU know, the ones where the hero’s fighting the bad guys in a tower block. You saw that one where they’re fighting all the way down the stairwell, or there’s that one they remade like nine times, where the guy drops bombs down the elevator shaft and they magically know to explode just where the villain’s guys are. Did you once see one of those where the hero got lost? Seriously, if we hadn’t actually seen the fire escape sign we’d be wandering round there still. Nobody stopped to engage us in a complicated martial arts fight. In fact, most of the guys we saw around there didn’t look as though fighting people was why they were on the payroll. They were in suits or shirtsleeves. Some of them were just running around, but a lot of them were at computers very determinedly doing something – Cormoran said they were wiping data, reformatting drives. Others were actually shredding paper documents, like they were having a flashback to two decades before. We saw a lot of LMK letterheads and logos, and I reckoned their stock was probably underperforming on the exchange right about then, because if that crap was on the billboards outside, then it would be all the way around the world by now. There’d be guys in China selling their shares in LMK even as we were trying to get out of the building.
So we found some stairs, and for a moment we stopped there, breathing heavily and listening to the sound of running feet and panicked voices. It wasn’t just the stock market crash these people were worried about. While me and mine were focused on trivialities like just how many good men would die to bring about Jerome’s little plan, I reckoned the Socialist Government of Sweden would be more interested in that whole corporate-assisted regime change thing.
“Franken,” Sturgeon said. “Franken. Bellweather, you all right?”
Franken was crouched down on the steps, holding his head like he was trying to tear it off. “Don’t call me that,” he grated.
“Then give us a sign, man,” Sturgeon insisted. “Come on, what’s up with you?”
“They’re telling me… they’re telling me to do things,” he rasped out.
“Tell them to fuck off,” was my advice.
“I can hear them. They say up, we go up… up, up, up.”
“Can they hear me?” I demanded, and in the absence of a cogent reply I went on, “You listen here, you Finnish bastards. You’ve got what you wanted. You’ve got your spy into this place and ripped open its guts. You can leave him alone now. We don’t need you any more.”
Franken’s head swivelled to look at me, eyes very wide, the pupils like pinpricks. What was wrenched out of his lips wasn’t English. To me it didn’t sound human, but Sturgeo
n had his inner Finnish-human dictionary working overtime and he said, “It – he – Franken says we need to get to the roof. He says to trust… them.”
Not a chance, but Cormoran was already filling in from intel they were feeding her. “Sarge, they’ve got army and police pulling up all around this place. What are they going to think when a bunch of Americans try to push past them.”
“That we’re part of the problem,” I finished for her. “Fine. Okay. But what’s up?”
“Helipad,” Cormoran said flatly.
“We’re short a helicopter.”
“I reckon they’ll be flying one in for the big cheeses.”
I grimaced. “Fine but – Sturgeon, ask Franken – ask whoever’s in there with him if we get him back at the end of this. Ask them if they can make him right.”
“Sarge, I don’t even think they’d understand the question,” Sturgeon said.
Then Franken stood, and that was plainly our cue. We were up those stairs at a solid soldier’s pace, glad for once we’d had to leave our packs behind.
Nobody in the world knew who we were or what part we’d played right then. But everyone knew what had been done. As we were thundering up those stairs – occasionally elbowing aside locals who were far more sensibly heading down – the material the Finns had hacked out of Jerome’s shell and the LMK net was on a thousand websites, broadcast in a hundred countries. Sure, it was pored over by countless emergency gov and corp committees, but that wasn’t the thing, because those people knew the score already. The big deal was that now everyone else got to see how the deals were done. Everyone else, who’d been told about national interest and liberty and freedom and ideals, was being given a chance to wake up and smell that stuff they’d always told us was roses.
And you know what? I know what Sturgeon has to say about the whole deal, but Sturgeon says a lot of things. Me? I don’t get that having the gov types run the show is so great, or the corps either. But when someone has me bent over the table and tells me to smile when I get shafted; when someone has their eye on their shareholder dividend so much that they’re willing to get my people killed for it; that’s going to get even me into politics.
Up the stairs, and I had to catch Cormoran as she stumbled. She had a hand pressed to her face, and my stomach lurched with, Jesus, it’s catching? as if being Finnish was contagious now. But she shook her head quickly. “Gonna have to cover for me, Sergeant,” she said. “I’m... rebooting my headware. Got all kinds of shit streaming past my eyes right now. I’m trying to get a comms channel out past the burnt sectors. Not going to be much good until I’m done.”
I held onto her as we slogged up and up, all the time not knowing what we’d find at the top.
And then we were up, and we were late to the party because the Board of LMK had already turned up for the evac party. There were three of them in the building at that time, or at least that was all who’d made it the roof. Probably I’d have recognized faces from the Jerome tapes currently breaking box office records all over the world, but of course their faces and the rest of them were hidden behind their metal shells. These were all Family men, scions of whatever the Swedish corporate dynasties were.
Crouched at the top of the stairwell I demanded, “So what’s the plan now?” in a hoarse whisper. “Firstly, I don’t see them making room on the chopper for us; secondly, how the hell is LMK even going to fly one in without the Nord flyboys taking it down? I’m willing to bet that they really, really want these guys to answer some questions.”
“No idea about the first,” said Sturgeon, “but for the second: incoming.”
The air, which had been hosting sirens and the occasional gunshot from far, far below, began to thrum with a familiar thunder. It wasn’t the sound of a nice corporate helicopter with all mod cons, not even the heavy lifters the Scions used. It was something bigger. ‘Bigger’ didn’t do it justice, in fact. The only word was Biggest.
A vast shadow was falling over Stockholm as the largest, ugliest combat flier in the world taxied awkwardly over the city center toward LMK’s doomed corporate HQ. The White Russians were bringing their Jodorowsky, still scarred from its run in with the 203rd but no less dangerous for all of that.
One of the Scions stepped forward, waving. Another took that moment to glance back, and obviously spotted us. It turned smartly and began striding toward us.
“Back down the stairs!” I ordered, and Franken promptly bolted out across the roof like a startled rabbit.
I thought he was charging the Scion, but he was cutting a path around it, close to the rooftop’s railing, as if making a desperate break for the helipad. Of course we went after him, but the Scion was already between us, gaining on him despite his burst of speed.
The other two were turning, alerted by their fellow VIP. Beyond them, the Jodorowsky drew closer. I saw something strike fire off it, some Nordgov gunship or ground to air, and it replied with a contemptuous salvo, not even altering its course.
The running Scion had almost caught up with Franken when it tripped. It cracked the concrete when it came down, then lurched up to its knees. At first I couldn’t see what was going on, but there were grey shadows clinging to it, three at least, and there were more coming over the edge of the roof. They climbed like spiders, four hundred feet of glass and steel. They must have been scaling the building since we were brought in. The Finns, of course. They hadn’t been as far away as the voice in Franken’s head had made him think.
I saw one grasped by those metal hands and ripped in two. Even the best bioscience can’t toughen you up to resist the full torsion strength of a well-made Scion. The others were already at work, though. They weren’t trying to get through that immaculate shell; they simply didn’t have the strength. They had an ally, though – a big one: gravity.
Scions weighed most of a ton, but they were made to be as light as possible whilst remaining impregnably strong. Three Finn werewolves could hoist one in the air easily enough, and then it was over the railing with him, because even if the outer armor didn’t crack open, the occupant would be so much jello when it hit the street.
Automatic fire sprayed from another Scion – I saw at least a couple of the Finns go down, injured and writhing. The rest were already on their targets then, driving them away from the helipad and toward the roof’s edge.
They lost more than a few, the Finns, but they fought like… I want to say animals, but that gives the wrong impression. They fought like a pack, perfectly coordinated, each one selfless and totally committed to the cause. They had those metal men off the side of the building faster than you’d believe. All the while we just stood there, Sturgeon and I, and Cormoran crouched at our feet trying to get her head together, muttering to herself.
The Finns vanished over the edge of the roof as quickly as they’d come, job done, skittering down the building’s sides like nightmares. Then it was just us and the Jodorowsky, which had come in to hover impossibly above us, like a meteorite impact about to happen. And then, even as it lurched and shifted for balance in the air, it was us, the Jodorowsky and Jerome Spelman in his metal suit.
He was pissed. I think I can say that for certain. He burst out onto the roof still spiky with glass from the window. He had geared up, too. There were a couple of weapon pods over his shoulders ready to unleash hell in our general direction.
This was the moment for noble speeches, but I had nothing. There are reasons I never made it past Sergeant.
We retreated as far as we could go, but no matter how big the tower, there was still only so much distance we could get on the roof. Jerome took three steps and braced but, because of who he was, because we had really got him riled over and above anyone in his whole life, he let us have the benefit of his opinion first.
“You’ve got them thinking I’m a traitor,” came his amplified voice. “You piece of fucking white trailer trash! I was going to end the war! I’m the patriot here! You’re the traitors! And now I’m going to put you in your fucking
place with a fucking vengeance.”
And the rooftop shuddered and flared with artillery, the whole structure of the building shaking and cracking with the fury of it. I didn’t see much of the result, because I was instantly half-deaf and half-blind, crouching like a sinner at the second coming. The Jodorowsky had opened up on Jerome.
“– the hell?” Sturgeon was shouting, wide-eyed as a kid at a fireworks display. “... do that for?”
“I asked him to!” Cormoran hollered over the thunderous echoes bouncing back and forth between my ears. “I got a channel out! I called the pilot!”
“Why’s he on our side now?” I demanded.
“I promised him my old boss’s bank access codes!”
“Sarge –!”
Sturgeon’s shout dragged my focus round to the slag and rubble that had been the other half of the roof. We could see a fair amount of the building’s twisted skeleton through it, and sure as hell nobody was coming up those stairs again, nor were we leaving that way. What we could also see was Jerome.
He was crouched on all fours, and one of his weapon pods was mangled. His shiny shell was all battered to crap, but he was very much still with us. Even as I saw him, he began launching at the Jodorowsky, and although his shots looked tiny compared to the gunship’s, the vast frame above us rocked and groaned when they struck. The best that money can buy, like I said. I figure that each shot Jerome took was worth a year’s back pay for the whole 203rd.
Cormoran was shouting – in Russian no less – at the pilot, who was presumably trying very hard not to drop down and squish the lot of us.
Franken was already at Jerome.
I hadn’t seen him go. I still don’t know what drove him, whether he was a puppet of the Finns in that moment, or a loyal friend and comrade, or just so tortured by what they’d done to him that he would take any way out.
Jerome was already on shaky footing on the tangled wreckage of the roof, and the recoil from his own ordnance didn’t help. Then Franken slammed into him at top speed, grappling him by the head and the ruined weapons pod.
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