The Far Shores (The Central Series)

by Rawlins, Zachary

  Gaul ignored the irrelevant portions of her statement. He had found that to be the most effective method of communicating with Alice Gallow.

  “What about the local cartel? Kiev Oblast, I believe?”

  “Still alive, amazingly enough.” Alice said, sitting back with a sigh. “I expected to find a compound full of corpses. They’ve been filing regular reports on all the weird shit in town for the past couple years, but Alistair routed them straight to the archives, so it never came to your attention. They don’t have the numbers or the balls to do anything on their own, and apparently Anastasia isn’t too keen on them, because the Black Sun hasn’t done much to help either.”

  “As far as I can tell, the Black Sun is very much involved with their own difficulties, of late.”

  “Yeah, I hear that, too.” Alice grimaced. “Courtesy of your friends in the Thule Cartel, right? That’s a fine mess you dumped in my lap inviting them back, Gaul. Once this thing is dealt with, me and you are going to have a long chat about that one.”

  “Doubtless. In the meantime, what did you learn from your prisoner?”

  “Witches are built tough, I’ll give ’em that. Took us all night working on the bitch before she gave it up. Fortunately, I had some free time, and Mark is a determined bastard. He cracked her like an egg.”

  “And?”

  Alice gave him an evil, self-satisfied grin.

  “The info that Witch gave Mitzi checks out. Kiev is the core of whatever the Anathema are up to. The Witch we captured was part of a security net they spread across the entire city to take care of curious parties before they could get too close. She didn’t know that much about what they were actually doing – they seem to be using them more or less as cannon fodder – but Mark took some interesting images from her head.”

  “Expensive and irreplaceable cannon fodder,” Gaul mused. “The Anathema have invested an unthinkable amount of resources in whatever they are doing. What kind of images did you find?”

  “Tech. Machinery mated with crystalline structures, like what we found in China, but on a much bigger scale.”

  “Apport shielding? Signature scramblers?”

  “Who knows?” Alice shrugged, reached for her coffee, and then thought better of it. “The Witch didn’t. Probably all that and more. If you want my guess…”

  “I do.”

  “…then it’s transport. Has to be. All those kids the Anathema were harvesting, we have to assume they moved the ones we didn’t catch to the Outer Dark. We know from your sources that performing an apport to the Outer Dark is extremely challenging – well out of range for the average technician. The Anathema aren’t capable of moving all those kids to the Outer Dark, not to mention the personnel and machinery we’ve seen at the installations we raided. It couldn’t all have been produced on site, or terrestrially sourced, or we would have turned up more of their sources by now. Whatever they are doing, it involves moving large amounts of material and groups of people across the Ether.” Alice laughed. “Who knows, boss. Maybe it’s like those nutcases at the Far Shores say, and I’ve just been made obsolete.”

  “We should be so lucky to live in a world that kind. What else?”

  “This facility was centralized to avoid discovery. That’s a change in tactic for the Anathema. Previously, they have distributed operations globally to limit potential losses, even to the point of duplicating effort. In contrast, this whole operation is being run out of a single fortified location, concealed about as well as anything we’ve encountered before. I’ve had the remote viewers pouring over the city for hours, and we don’t have anything better than a general idea.”

  Gaul nodded to himself.

  “Interesting. Anything else?”

  “Couple little points. One,” Alice said, holding up her index finger, the nail coated with chipped black polish, “it’s above ground.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The images,” Alice said, her grin widening. “There are windows in the background.”

  “And?”

  “Two,” Alice said, adding her middle finger, “whatever they have planned, it’s going to happen soon. Very. As in the next few days.”

  Gaul looked disturbed, pushing his glasses back in consternation.

  “That soon,” he muttered. “Much quicker than I had imagined.”

  “Time to level, boss,” Alice said, leaning forward with glimmering eyes. “I need to know whatever you’ve been playing close to the vest. I appreciate the need for operational secrecy as much as the next girl, but you hold out any longer and I might not make it in time to save the day.”

  Gaul nodded reluctantly, mentally reaching for his Etheric uplink to review the records of the interrogation, confirming his suspicions.

  “You are correct.”

  “’Course. What you got?”

  “As you suspect, I have someone on the inside,” Gaul said, standing abruptly and striding across the room to the window, which was curtained to spare Alice the disorientation of full daylight when her system was insisting on night. “Not part of their inner council, but close. The intelligence I have received dovetails perfectly with what you have discovered.”

  “Confirmation is nice,” Alice said sourly. “Got anything I can use?”

  “Just this – the Anathema are running this project personally. Opposition this time won’t be limited to renegade Operators and Weir – you should expect to encounter the Anathema directly.” Gaul pointlessly shuffled the paperwork in front of him, neatening piles and aligning edges. “Including your predecessor. Alistair.”

  “That is interesting.” Alice stood up and reached for her jacket. “I still get the feeling that you aren’t being totally forthcoming, but I’ll let it slide for now. I wanna try to get a couple hours of sleep and a shower before I settle that particularly account.”

  Gaul watched Alice head for the door, torn between the potential futures that hung in the balance, mutable possibilities waiting to crystallize depending on his decision to speak, or to hold his peace.

  “Alice.”

  She stopped at the door and glanced back at him, her smile wavering when she saw the strain on his face.

  “Yeah?”

  “Realistically, the worst may happen,” Gaul admitted, his expression pained. “You may wish to prepare yourself accordingly. Should you be forced to make a judgment call in the field, I would suggest that you take the shot.”

  Alice cocked an eyebrow.

  “You want to be a little more specific, boss?”

  “Yes,” Gaul admitted. “But I can’t.” He held his breath for a moment, then when he spoke again, he lied to his Chief Auditor for the first time. “You know as much as I do, I’m afraid.” He swallowed hard, then returned to the truth. “Precognition is not an exact science.”

  “Neither is killing, but you don’t hear me complain.” Alice frowned at him, then shrugged and opened the door. “I’m off. You decide you wanna play ball, you know where to find me.”

  Gaul watched her leave, slamming the door behind her. Then he exhaled all of the air in his lungs in a rush, removed his glasses, and buried his head in his hands.

  The future he had chosen was set in motion. All that remained was to live with it.

  ***

  Eerie arrived at the fourth floor of Processing late and out of breath, her laptop beneath her arm, a knit cap sitting on top of wet hair, and a lollipop clenched between her teeth.

  “Sorry I’m late, Adel,” she sang out to the cubicles surrounding her own. “I just got the email.”

  She came to a sudden halt when she saw the two men waiting for her, one on either side of the entrance to her cubicle, both wearing the distinctive white coats of the Far Shores over their conservative suits. The tall one wore sunglasses, while his friend had warm, open brown eyes.

  “Not at all, Miss.” The shorter of the two smiled and extended a hand in greeting. “We just arrived ourselves.”

  Eerie looked uncertainly from o
ne to the other, taking a small step back toward the elevator.

  “What is this? Who are you?”

  “Didn’t Mr. El-Nadi tell you about us?” The shorter man’s smile didn’t waver as he let his hand drop back to his side. “He did have to leave in something of a hurry, so perhaps he forgot to mention. We need to escort you to the Far Shores. We are having difficulties with our connection to the Etheric Network. Your supervisor, Adel El-Nadi, is already on site, but he requested that we stay and collect you, so that you could provide assistance.”

  She glanced across the cubicles at Adel’s office, but the lights were out, and all of the desks in the bullpen around her were empty. Given the hour, that was a significant deviation from operating procedures, so the network disruption must have been severe, to merit such a response. The situation sounded serious to Eerie, but also outside of her area of expertise, as her talents lay in programming rather the emergency technical support.

  “I’m not – I didn’t, um,” Eerie stammered, setting her laptop down on the table beside her. “What do you need me for?”

  “Nothing serious,” the man assured her. “Some routine debugging. It shouldn’t take too much of your time, as I understand it.”

  “Oh.” Eerie was flustered, removing the lollipop from her mouth and powering up her laptop. “Well, let me just check Adel’s email and make sure I have everything I need before we go…”

  “Of course,” the man agreed. “Take your time.”

  The solid-state drive booted in seconds, and then Eerie was looking at the icons on the desktop of her custom-built operating system. She launched her mail client, her fingers coming to rest on the keyboard automatically.

  The larger man was very quiet. He must have apported, because he was right behind her, standing between her and the elevator. Eerie didn’t have a chance to turn around before he pressed the stun gun to the base of her spine and activated it. There was a loud snap and a moment of severe and transitory pain, and then she fell. The last thing she saw before succumbing to unconsciousness was her own reflection, distorted by the curvature of sunglass lenses worn by the man who dragged her roughly across the carpet.

  ***

  When Alex got out of the shower, a field medic waited by his cot. The medic gave Alex a cursory examination, dabbed the wound on his forehead with something that stung and gave off a strong chemical odor, and then changed his bandages for fresh ones. Alex refused the offer of drugs for pain, and made his way downstairs to the ad hoc mess hall. There was very little conversation during their brief breakfast. Alex ate some scrambled eggs out of habit rather than hunger, and forced himself to drink a cup of instant coffee, to try and shake off the cobwebs of the previous night’s painkillers. He felt a great deal better, though his neck and jaw ached.

  When he finished eating, Michael told them to assemble in the conference room for a briefing. Katya approached Alex as they bussed their tables, dumping the remains of uneaten breakfasts and dirty dishes into a grey plastic tub.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “Fine, more or less,” Alex responded, feeling slightly embarrassed when he recalled their hazy confrontation with Michael. Between the drugs and the previous day’s usage of his Black Protocol, the night’s sleep had been heavy and dreamless. “You ready for this?”

  “It’s just another job,” Katya said, shrugging. “Nothing changes except the targets.”

  “I wish I was as confident as you,” Alex admitted, following her down the hallway. “I’m nervous.”

  “Benefit of experience. Don’t worry. You’ll get there.” Katya shot him a grin. “You’re doing better than Haley, anyway. She’s been in the bathroom puking since the sun came up.”

  “You did not need to share that,” Haley objected from the doorway of the communications room. Alex noticed that she was indeed looking a bit ill and unsteady behind her habitually sunny demeanor.

  “So sorry,” Katya said, offering Haley a smile as she breezed past and took a seat beside Min-jun at the otherwise empty table.

  “Why do I doubt that?”

  Haley sighed and sat down opposite Katya. Alex took a vacant seat two chairs over from her.

  “Be nice, Katya,” Min-jun scolded. “We’ve all been there. This is Haley’s first big operation. It’s natural to be nervous.”

  “I’m fine,” Haley insisted, not particularly believably. “What about you, Alex?”

  He hesitated, uncertain of how to answer.

  “It’s not exactly my first time. But I’ve never gotten the chance to think about it in advance before this,” he admitted. “I’m a little edgy, I guess.”

  “At least you haven’t thrown up,” Katya observed sweetly. “Yet.”

  “I’m not going to ask what you kids were talking about, so don’t tell me.”

  Alice grinned as if she had said something funny while she walked to the head of the table. Michael held the door for her, and Mitsuru as well, who entered without a word. Karim and Chike followed shortly after, chatting in what Alex could identify as Swahili, but could not begin to understand. Xia was the last to arrive, and did not sit. He stood instead in the corner to Alice’s right, features hidden as usual behind goggles and a mask.

  “Okay, let’s get started. Mitsuru, if you don’t mind?”

  Mitsuru closed her eyes and reached for the Etheric network.

  “Mission parameters accessed,” Mitsuru recited woodenly, her mind filled with operational details, maps, and background data. “Stand by for telepathic implantation.”

  Alex screwed his eyes shut and clutched the arms of his chair. While receiving information via telepathy didn’t hurt, exactly, he found the experience profoundly disturbing – there was a distinct sensation of swelling, as if his cranium were being flooded with foreign thoughts that threatened to displace his basic identity. It was bad enough knowing that his thoughts in Central could never truly be considered secret. Consenting to the violation only made it worse. Of course, he had no choice in the matter. He dropped the mental shields that Rebecca had taught him to craft and held his breath.

  For a moment, there was nothing. Then there was a sudden influx of analytics and data. Briefly, he knew nothing but what had been implanted. There was more information than his mind could make sense of, so his awareness seemed to pick and choose, informing him of salient details while shelving the rest for the off-chance that it would become important. He was uncertain how some of the information was given priority over the rest, though he assumed that it must have been processed and tagged by Analytics before he received the download.

  Instantly, he became aware of a number of things he had never known before.

  The city of Kiev abruptly existed in his mind as if he had spent his childhood wandering the streets, an indelible map imprinted on his brain that would allow him to navigate by instinct. He became fluent in a selection of four different languages, and gained a basic grasp of another four. The dizzying perspective of a remote viewer was grafted to his own perceptions, giving him a thorough and comprehensive view of the terrain they were to encounter, both physical and psychic.

  His previous ignorance of the political and social workings of Ukrainian society was replaced with a detailed understanding of the current upheaval, recent national history, and enough well-informed opinions to ingratiate or infuriate the adherents of any faction in play. Not that such niceties were likely to be required, as the industrial suburb they were operating in was within a heavily industrial area, and would likely be deserted.

  He knew the workings of the weapons he would be carrying – a carbine variant of the AR-15 optimized for urban combat and the ubiquitous Glock 17 – as well as techniques for adjusting the holographic sights, clearing potential jams, and even performing field maintenance. He was aware of ten different locations where other weapons, armor, and first-aid equipment were stashed around the operational area; three different safe houses and an equal number of emergency rendezvous and extraction points; and a smal
l body of coded gestures and signals that could be employed in a variety of dire situations. He possessed a working knowledge of his comrades’ assignments and protocols, and the routes they would follow during the course of the operation.

  Floating in his subconscious, Alex knew, was more sinister knowledge – the implanted routines that would shut down his nervous system in the event of capture and torture, and an auto-suicide routine that he could activate if those were overridden. Their very existence gave him the chills.

  Most of all, however, Alex knew what they would be doing that day, and felt a strong sense of dismay at the knowledge.

  “Okay, good to go.” Alice Gallow shook her head to clear it, then looked at each of them in turn. “Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, rubbing the bandage on his forehead gingerly. “Isn’t this the same fucking plan as last time?”

  “You noticed?” Alice turned the full force of her crazed grin on him. “Pretty much.”

  “And I’m the bait again?”

  “You are.” Alice nodded. “Anything else?”

  “No,” Alex answered miserably. “Not a thing.”

  ***

  “Close,” Alistair said, watching as the engineers continued to struggle with the array of capacitors that had been plaguing them since the first attempt to power up the machinery the night before. “This is all going to be rather…close.”

  “I don’t like it.” Song Li’s attempt to frown was thwarted by the unfamiliarity of the recently deceased body that she occupied – the slack muscles of the corpse were incapable of anything more than a dull grimace. The necessity of jumping from one nanite-infused corpse to another made Song Li’s existence both precarious and repugnant, since Alice Gallow had destroyed her original body. “We don’t understand the technology on which we rely. Nor can we trust our benefactors.”

  “That has occurred to me as well.” Alistair’s gaze was drawn to the enormous crystalline growth suspended above the dormant machinery; the color of smoky quartz permeated with an indefinable light, branching and fragmenting based on the pressure of arcane forces, sustained by a forged breach into the Ether that the Yaojing had personally engineered. “Of course, it seems likely that our allies would lose all they seek to gain in the process. What do you think, Samantha?”