Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  However, if you are constantly unpredictable, then you cause confusion and distrust in your opponent. They preferred knowing what was happening with their troops and when they can’t understand what you are doing they slowed down. Just a little. That may be all you need. Breathing space. Still points. They also expect you to send strength against weakness – and who would want to do it any other way –, but you could use those as a feint and draw them out to you. All warfare is hard to judge and hitting hard and repeatedly was a good tactic, but as my father used to say, “There are more ways of forking peas than you can imagine, Jack.”

  That’s what this Invasion would end up as. It would be like forking peas and getting as much on the tongs as I could before I pulled out. So, enough of the memories.

  “Sansan, what time is it?”

  “Two fifty-seven p.m., Jack.”

  “What time is sundown?”

  “Nine p.m. Jack.”

  “We’ll go in at sundown, then. I need some proper food, some sleep and we’ll have to prepare an insertion force. Recharge of all batteries will begin in say fifty minutes.”

  “Acknowledged. Battery recharge in fifty minutes.”

  But first, a little snooze, a drop of booze and fight your hardest, but forget to lose.

  Chapter 15

  I won’t bore you with the dreams that flooded my mind while I slept, curled up in the chair like a foetus. Whether I cried out in terror I would ever know unless I asked Sansan and then she had instructions not to allow me to pry. I remember staring eyes though.

  Sansan had interrupted my dreams by rousing me with a cup of coffee. “We are at the weather station, Jack,” she said.

  I wiped sleep out of my eyes and rolled my head on my shoulders. The team gave me feed on the previous requests and GaZe updated the Heads-up with a schematic of the building. It towered like a misplaced lighthouse thirty meters above the plantation, surrounded by an ocean of eucalyptus. The light cone at the top housed various weather instruments and an array of scientific instruments. I had no need to know about them, so I didn’t read the details on what was there, though I knew Gamma ray and spectral analysis units fed information from here through to a manned station in Adelaide. A small hydroelectricity unit powered by a water wheel kept the equipment in the station running on automatic. Naturally there would be security systems and locking devices. I cut another window and sent Bleeder out to gain us access.

  The Drussland booth was on the lower floor. Being a single person unit that took up little room, it was tucked into one corner beneath the circular stairs that went all the way to the top of the tower.

  “Sansan, is there any covered entrance?”

  “Negative, Jack.”

  I hadn’t expected there to be one, even though I was hoping for some cover against satellite downlook. While I sipped away at the coffee, I checked the activity of the military units at Haven and was pleased to see the area was now besieged by firefighting units. They gave us some anonymity at least, especially since the fire bombers were filling their buckets from downstream. Sansan set Kimbo the task of insinuating us into the comings and goings of them and when he gave me the twitch, I guided the life-raft out of the water and up onto the bank. We dropped camouflage markings over her and tucked her under the trees. I left her door open so I could make a quick departure if I had to and stood in the shadows breathing the dusty air of the new forests. They’ve only been replanting for twenty years, but combined with the cut to greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature has dropped down below the thirties most of the time. It was almost pleasant. Crickets…or something like crickets…were chirruping in the darkness and frogs were going for all their glory near the river. It was good to hear frog song again. They had almost been wiped out in the first decades of the century.

  Bleeder gave me the twitch and I walked calmly toward the main door of the station. A security camera was tracking me, but GaZe had done his research and I wore the face and source coding of the regular maintenance person. The door clicked open and swung out to meet me. I didn’t hesitate, went through the lifeless security point just inside the doors without stopping and made straight for the Druss. It looked like an arcade game module, or a half-sitting version of an Egyptian mummy, including all the hieroglyphics. I keyed it open, dropped into its seat, then pulled the cover back over me. Interior lights hummed awake. I strapped my legs into the interior suit, shifted the reverse-gee controls and dragged the gloves down over my hands. The stick slid into my palm and the firing button felt like an old nail resting under my trigger finger. The holoface fitted snugly into the helmet and it powered up the virtual scape for me as the interior lights dimmed.

  Bleeder came on-line. “Security commands bypassed, Jack.”

  That was a pleasing development. I had expected a delay while we cut through the security walls, but Bleeder had sorted that out already. Using the Druss – a military unit – might allow me to get in many restricted places, but it could also bring swift reprisals. I backed up, just in case.

  “Listen up. Mission statement: we are going in to Bell to take out their hoard and while we are at it, we’ll find out what we can. Search parameters: Grendel Corporation take-over, clones, DNA coding, Jack Dayzen.”

  Sansan acknowledged.

  “Representation, Jack?” Sansan asked.

  “Personal choice. You can bet they have configured the terrain to look like a desert keep of some sort and if Kren is going by his usual MO, he’ll have lots of pretty pictures to keep us entertained. Look all you want, but keep our formation nice and tight. Use of OTHER authorised. Watch the footsteps. Here we go.”

  The world spun upside down and dropped thirty thousand meters away from me in the blink of an eye. As I had predicted, the Cloud around the Bell International’s stronghold was desert form, sand blowing over ripples and hot torn cacti. Patchy dust clouds wove like ghosts of fish between the ground and us and I could see Bell’s stronghold filling the horizon, ringed by a maze of walls. Shuttles were parked outside the main entrance and defence lasers tracked everything in sight, including us. I knew they’d not lock-on until we were ground-based and within five hundred meters.

  I kicked into freefall, spread my arms to hold me up while I panned through the inventory and selected a parachute. When the blue and white chute finally opened, I glided through a long looping drop, which brought me to earth well outside their perimeter. Four other parachutists dropped with me onto the sand, followed by a hawk-shaped missile that hovered at shoulder height, which I knew to be Charlie.

  The air snarled across the ground, ripping sand along with it like a blast along a coastline. I crouched down beside a boulder to protect my face from the cutting wind and as the others touched down I looked them over to confirm their appearances.

  Sansan had configured her avatar as a tall elegant woman dressed in complete battledress and webbing and she looked like the type of lean high-spirited woman who could cut out your heart while you were complimenting her on her choice of face paint. She gave me a wink, then thumbed up a neutral holoface to cover her stark blue eyes and wide Germanic jaw line. Even then traces of her blond hair wisped from beneath the face. At least she hadn’t worn the chain mail body suit she usually wore. She was taking things very seriously.

  GaZe was less military in what he wore. He stood off to one side, in the lee of a tall rock, wearing a dark red three-piece suit and gold tie. The lower part of his face was protected by men gu, Japanese face armour from the late Muromachi period; though the one he wore was more a men no shita ho, which covered the lower half of his face. His red hair blazed around the lacquered black mask and his dazzling green eyes were almost luminous against the darkness of the mask. He held a small pistol – a Tokarev TT33 from mid-last century, I think. He looked at ease with the situation. Hovering at his shoulder was the hawk shape of Charlie;, which made GaZe look like a modern Japanese falconer. GaZe gave me a nod and I returned it, then looked at the other two who stood beside him.r />
  Medusa hadn’t bothered to wear a complex costume and her only concession to modesty was a complete bodysuit of navy blue over her perfect feminine figure. Her face was the elongated oval of Eurasian beauty, wide almond eyes and high-arched eyebrows, dark hair pulled back off her face and forehead and held in a tight tail by a red ribbon. If anything, she had the look of a Geisha about her, though around her waist was an assortment of weaponry. She carried a slug thrower of high calibre and was glaring out over the surroundings, already planning escape routes.

  Bleeder, crouching behind and to the right of me, was the tallest of them all; his thin muscular frame dressed in night camo, black on black. His weapons were almost surgical in their array and they hung off his belt like implements on a butcher’s wall. His head was shaven and he had streaked his bony face with long trails of soot. He gave me a nod of greeting, I noticed he carried a SLR. Hit-and-run was written all over him. I wondered if he was going in under Inflated Ego and whether I should suppress some of his parameters, but when he saw me looking and snapped a salute, which could’ve cut a bomb shelter in two, I decided to leave him as he was. He was going to be moving quickly through Bell’s network and I needed him to be able to make tactical judgements quickly. For that he’d need to go in free from dampeners.

  It was time to get things rolling. I tried to anticipate what Kren would have instigated in the way of defence. “Team up. Here’s the lay. Buddy system. Sansan with me. Medusa with Bleeder. Gaze, you and Charlie: you’re bo-peep and free to roam at will. Watch each other’s backs. Known security includes dual Cameo gatekeepers, AI WM – possibly dragon form – and a basic triple firewall. They’re sure to throw Gliders at us, so I want heavy artillery watching our back at every turn. Clone them and leave them every few gig. Modifications to their defences will be in place and they’ll have specific programmes to track me. Watch for those, but let them run in safety mode until we see what is coming at us. Any OTHER emergence noted, to be isolated and dissected if possible. No duplication of Cameos permitted. Nil response to system identification. That’s about it. You’ve trained in this arena so any home ground advantage to them will be negated. Internal terrain will be dungeon based, full virtual, with auto-mapping, if I don’t miss my guess. We’ll go in Pack formation till we’re inside. Any questions?”

  Sansan raised a hand. “Needle performance?”

  “Go only on cold block. Have it stored inside the life-raft. If we bug out I want backup lay to the life-raft and duplicated to a secure bunker somewhere. If it gets too dangerous I want shutdown and ejection.” Cold block would blow the power grid that controlled Bell’s plant. The brief pause before the backup systems kicked in would allow us to return to the Druss, but it would mean two or three hours of disorientation, which the Needle would work us through like a pressure chamber worked a deep-sea diver back to the surface. The Needle would get us into the life-raft and send it into orbit until I was fully functional. “Which reminds me, Medusa: give me perimeter of the life-raft and weather station at all times. One kilometre ground, five hundred meters airborne.”

  “Acknowledged, Jack.”

  “All right.” I tightened the joint of the chin mount and flexed my legs. The holoface gave me dials for temperature and time line, including a Directory map so I could pace what terrain I passed over as I went. When we hit the dungeon, the Automap would keep me tracking toward our goal. “Let’s go dancing, gang. Medusa, Bleeder, take point.”

  We moved out without further word, stalking from one rock outcrop to another, closing the distance to the main entrance like a pack of wolves closing in on a caribou herd. The wind was filled with sand now, obscuring the vehicles around the entrance and some of the distant towers with a beige swirl. I knew, even with the sand clotting up the OTHER readings, the gatekeepers would have registered our movements. It wasn’t something to worry about. The readings would only show minor changes to Cameo proximity, not full Scan briefing.

  At five hundred meters out, the lock-on warning pinged in my ears. I waved the team forward, tapped for close-up on the main doorway and gave Sansan the twitch. As we shuffled forward she reached into a thigh pocket and pulled out an ancient transistor radio. She began tuning it to the nearest radio station. Lock-on would not activate strike until we were proven hostile. The radio would provide a little interference, would sound like ground echo.

  Medusa and Bleeder were racing ahead of us, still mindful of every small detail of their surroundings, but closing the distance to the vehicles in the parking bays. Behind me, HaRf had lifted into the air and was circling like a vulture while GaZe moved in orderly fashion with eyes scanning through the rear 270 degrees.

  Sansan’s voice whispered in my ear, “I have received request for UPN and have declined.” The defences were asking us to identify ourselves–Universal PAN Numbers. It wouldn’t be a problem just yet–they’d suspect Spam Raiders more than a strike.

  “Keep them at bay, Sansan.” I tapped up aerial tracking, grouped the team into a single unit and targeted the entrance. Everyone on the ground moved in that direction.

  We were two hundred meters out when Medusa and Bleeder reached the closest shuttles. Bleeder gave me a wave and lifted off into the air, his flight path taking him up and over the nearest shuttle. He sent through a reading, another ribbon split along the base of my holoface and his feed came through on that.

  Medusa took the long way around, weaving through the shuttles toward the open ground just in front of a short entrance ramp. When they regrouped, they checked our position, waited till we had covered half the distance then headed out. We followed them, a hundred meters further back and watched them cross the open ground before the door.

  The Cameo gatekeepers were a pair of uniformed officers. When I zoomed in on their features, I saw both were oriental; one similar to Ho who had guarded the Steel Hand, but the other had the same features and stance as the martial artist Bruce Lee. Bleeder waited at the end of the ramp, Medusa climbed it to stand in front of the pair.

  “Evening officers,” she said, bowing slightly. Both replied with a bow of their own. While maintaining the bow, she said, “I bear a message for the WM.”

  “Let’s see it,” Ho said. He took one step forward.

  Medusa lifted from the bow slowly, then fished for a scroll case from her waist, opened it and handed it to him. He took it while his offsider watched carefully. Ho read what was written, then bowed and asked Medusa to wait while he received orders from the tower guard. We moved closer. Bruce Lee had taken a few steps sideways and was watching us. A small alpha symbol floated above his head and I knew he was taking feed from some security programme. We had thirty seconds to get through the doorway before time-out closed us off.

  Ho stood like a porcelain statue and waited for some response from inside. Bleeder moved slowly up the ramp to join Medusa, his weapons slowly rising to cover the pair before him. I fired him a command to stay still – the scroll had contained a password encryption and if I knew Kren as well as I thought I did, it would break down whatever he had in place. Everyone else was watching the skies.

  Bleeder sent back a preliminary dialog of what he had detected. “Dovetailed mazes, Jack. Mirror sites in both hemispheres. AI central nervous system is sluggish. The lag is excessive for users.”

  I clicked the mike twice to acknowledge, keeping chat to a minimum.

  Ho had finally made a move. He bowed to Medusa and motioned her inside. Seeing her wave us forward was a relief, but also an indication of how Kren had set up his troops within the maze. I knew it wouldn’t be long before we came face to face with them because within the encryption I’d used the latest Bell ID number I had. If he had researched Boris Stromlo, he’d know I was on my way.

  We moved through the wide double doors into a hallway lined with statues carved from marble: gigantic horses towing chariots of fire. The drivers appear Sumerian, but I didn’t want to open another window to check on the details. We walked down the corridor toward a
large opening four hundred meters ahead. Painted frescoes depicting the Hundred Year War blanketed the ceiling, with knights in armour charging massed pikemen. Very bloody yet beautifully produced, reds and golds and silver in a riot of diagonal strips. I wondered if Kren had detailed the terrain, or whether the AI thought it was warding off demons with the graphics. If it was Kren then his taste in fine art had improved, possibly because he was living with Shahn. If it was the AI, then it had been given a pleasant sense of beauty. Mind you, the graphics wouldn’t ward off demons…though we were not quite demons either.

  The reading from Bleeder showed a large octagonal courtyard ahead of us, with a multitude of doors to depart through. Medusa and Bleeder reached the room and disappeared into it to secure the area. I heard a rapid rush of wings at my shoulder, spun around expecting an ambush, but it was Charlie who had morphed into the shape of a small hummingbird to better negotiate the corridors ahead. He backed away a little, flipped upside down and then righted himself. It would be his way of apologising. Trundling along behind him, a little distance further and walking backward, was GaZe.

  We kept moving through the doorway to the courtyard and found ourselves in a room filled with fountains. In the centre was a reception desk beneath the canopy of an elm tree. A female Cameo Guide stood there holding a wad of pamphlets. My skin prickled from a refreshing breeze, which blew in through each of the forty doors lining the octagon, including the one we had just emerged from and I realised there had been no breeze flowing at our backs when we had walked along. When in battle you check for clues like this.

  Before taking another step, I checked the dials in the ribbon. Nothing appeared different. “Bleeder, confirm location.”

  His response was immediate. “Confirmed first courtyard beyond main entrance.”