Man Behind the Wheel (The Next Half Century Book 1)

by Steve Rzasa

  Rome held his breath. Time to find out if the alterations worked.

  Green lights returned on the wristband. “All right, checks out.” The weapon shifted in the soldier’s hands. He didn’t budge from the side of the car. “Didn’t hear about any inspection, sir.”

  Rome fixed him in his best glare. “Take it you missed the part about surprise, soldier. Are you going to wave us through or should I contact your commanding officer? I’m sure he’d love to be slapped with a perfunctory violation of Code One Twelve, Article Three Three. I’ve got his signal ready to transmit.”

  The young corporal’s swallowed. “No, sir.”

  “Good. I’m going to seal this window and signal if we’re not through your barricade in the next thirty seconds.”

  Jocelyn had it right—their Halcyon blended perfectly with the base’s motor pool. The falsified DOD registration number passed the scanners unmolested.

  “What’s our target?” Rome said as they walked a paved pathway to the main admin building.

  Aldo shook his wrist implant. A tiny map appeared in 2-D on its face. “Okay, so, if this thing is laid out like all bases constructed in the last twenty years—and it’s a Bravo Modular, so it should be—the offline data backups are in this central room.”

  “Two entrances.”

  “Yep. One guard at each. A pair of Pikes. They’ll be military grade, probably not as dumb as the models we’re used to. Don’t worry, our implants are good.”

  “Never said I was worried. You’re the one sweating.”

  Aldo wiped perspiration from his face.

  “Stay alert. It’s possible FTZ’s contacted the base about our warrants.”

  Aldo frowned. “Not likely. That’s outside their jurisdiction.”

  “I’m not willing to dismiss the possibility.”

  They entered the building as if they owned it. A female warrant officer even waited at the door, allowing them to go in first. Rome stood in the doorway, blocking the activation sensors so she could enter too.

  The base walls were pale gray and white. Brown double lines demarcated the corridor every 16 feet. Doors were spaced at intervals twice that distance. The entire building certainly hinted its modularity to Rome. He felt if he found the right access panel, he could break apart the entire complex and rearrange it with construction bots at will.

  He was also thankful for Aldo’s map. After a couple turns he was already disoriented by the sameness of the corridors. It wasn’t all clones, however—a scuff mark here, a ding in the wall panel there. Rome catalogued the slight differences as best he could. Like Hansel and Gretel’s trail, or like tracking Aldo through a building when he was in snacking mode.

  An officer in his thirties came around a bend. He was tall with bulky muscles that pressed against green fatigues that shifted with the light as he strode toward them. His hair was blond, sharp eyes the color of ice chips, and had a long, straight nose. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  Rome presented his ID. The holo emitted the credentials from his implant in a welcoming splash of color. “DOD Inspector Hastent. We’re here to access your security records, per inspection protocol.”

  The man’s nametag read “Bolduc” in stamped white letters, and his rank insignia was a lieutenant’s bars. He nodded. “I need to confirm that with my CO.”

  “Won’t be necessary. This is a surprise review, Lieutenant.”

  Bolduc’s face creased with a frown. “We’ve never undergone one. Sir.”

  “My department’s hardly going to announce something of this nature. Step aside. I don’t want to have to write you up in my report.”

  Two enlisted men walked down the hall behind him. They fixed both the lieutenant and the visitors with a quizzical look. Rome kept his expression neutral, but his pulse quickened. He and Aldo drew too much attention. He could take three men, but not without alerting base security. And in this hall, trying to backtrack to an escape route—

  “Have it your way, Lieutenant,” Aldo said. “We’ll go see your CO if you’ll kindly stop interfering with federal business. Your colonel is down this hall. Two rights, is he not?”

  Bolduc seemed surprised. “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. This way, Inspector Hastent.” Aldo crooked his fingers without looking at Rome and walked around Bolduc. He ignored both the lieutenant and the approaching enlisted men, the latter of whom parted so the inspectors could pass. Aldo’s curt nod to them drew no further inquiry.

  When he and Rome took the next corner, Rome glimpsed them speaking with Bolduc. “Nice work.”

  “Thanks.” Aldo wiped sweat from around his mouth. “Man, I tell you, way easier on a face when a beard isn’t mopping up every bit of moisture.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re staying baby-faced forever.”

  “Um, no! First chance I get, I’m growing it down to my chest.”

  Rome was more concerned about the compact spazzer tucked in a concealed pocket of his jacket. Jocelyn’s specially tailored coats had done their job of hiding it from sensors, and it seemed none of the personnel they’d encountered noticed. If Aldo’s plan worked, he shouldn’t need it at all.

  They found one of the two Pike series guardbots standing by a sealed door of black metal. The bot was painted the same tan as the cars and its body was leaner than the ones Rome saw at FTZ West. It had three optic ports on its “head,” and the outline of several compartments along its flanks. The door itself bore no numbers or letters to denote its purpose. Only a flat access panel of clear plastic hinted admittance to the room beyond.

  [Halt.] The guardbot’s tones were hard and deep. It trundled forward. A panel on its right side popped open. Two weapons extended—a spazzer, its muzzle crackling with energy ready to discharge, and a gun whose caliber Rome guessed at .50.

  “Nice to see you too,” Aldo muttered.

  Rome triggered his ID and Aldo did likewise. Instead of scanning them, the guardbot’s topmost optic port rotated, presumably focusing on them. [You are not base personnel or members of the United States Armed Forces. Your presence is not authorized by Colonel Tacazon.]

  Colonel Tacazon. Must be the base CO. Something tickled the depths of Rome’s memories… “Department of Defense inspectors Hastent and Stewart. Acknowledge our ID.”

  The guardbot scanned their implants in the same way the bot at FTZ West had. Green lights eased some of Rome’s tension, but the robot didn’t budge. [Identity confirmed. Anomalies detected in implant programming. Tampering likelihood 15 percent. Do you consent to investigation by base personnel?]

  Aldo swiped through screens on his implant with a flurry of fingers.

  “We do not consent,” Rome said, trying to keep the bot focused on him and not on whatever Aldo was doing. “Our authority overrides any need for investigation. If there are anomalies, I’m sure my partner here can clear them up with our technicians.”

  [Unacceptable. Access to this room is not granted. Consent to investigation by base personnel required.]

  Rome unlatched his jacket and let it fall open. If he were to draw, he’d have a split second to do it before the robot shot him. They couldn’t let it contact anyone on base, though Rome was perplexed why it hadn’t already.

  The guardbot’s appendages twitched. Both weapons withdrew into their compartments. The optical ports dimmed one by one, and it sank down onto its base. [Commencing diagnostics.]

  The hum of its power core diminished. A couple seconds later, it sat as quiet as a demonstration model at a store.

  “That was impressive.” Rome let go of his spazzer.

  Aldo exhaled. “Thanks. I’ve got it locked into a diagnostic subroutine. Won’t take it forever to figure out the command wasn’t from the base’s main computer network, though.”

  “Needs to be long enough to get us in and out.” Rome slapped a round, rubbery patch to the access panel. It was transparent, not unlike a jellyfish, though without the wet texture. Amber lights swirled, reminding Rome of leaves on the surface
of the Erie canal. The panel emitted a chirp and the black door slid open.

  “Nice.” Aldo poked the patch. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Had it stashed away for a rainy day.” Rome dug his fingers under the bottom edge and peeled the patch off the access panel. It shrank down into a slab smaller than his palm and as hard as a plastic comp panel. “I used a similar one a few years back to break the door lock on a mod shop operating out of a town’s hydroponics center.”

  “You’re gonna let me take it apart later, right?”

  “Put one on your Christmas list.”

  The room beyond the door was pitch black, except for a glowing blue ring set in the center of the floor. A twin ring shone from the ceiling, which Rome guessed was only a foot overhead. The data terminal was in the middle, lit up in the same pale blue, a thin column with a plastic sheath. Lines of lights trickled down every quarter of the column.

  “Wow. Just… wow.” Aldo took a lap around the blue circle, stepping as gingerly as when Rome visited an abandoned church one time. His feet didn’t make a sound. “That, Rome, is a Maxx Twelve. Computing power makes Marcy seem like a puppy dog more interested in eating its own crap than driving a car.”

  “Didn’t need that visual.” Rome approached the column, but took his cue from Aldo and stayed well outside its boundary. “Get on with the next step.”

  “Yeah, that’s the trick.”

  Aldo rummaged in his jacket pocket. He sprayed a fine mist from a tiny, round bottle. The spray caught blue light and reflected it, revealing the outer shell of the ring. The column was four times as big and extended from the floor to the ceiling.

  Rome scowled. He’d thought the rings signified a sensor barrier. Aldo’s trick confirmed it. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try sticking an arm through that thing.”

  “No way. It’s got to be calibrated to detect something—but not particles like these.” Aldo wafted his hand through the mist, dissipating the remnants just outside the beams. “See? They go right through. It isn’t any kind of force barrier.”

  “Good to know. What next? You have a really long toothpick?”

  “Relax.” Aldo grabbed another object from his jacket, this time a brass tube. Its ends were capped in black. It blinked with green lights. “That’s why I borrowed these from Jocelyn.”

  Rome’s skin crawled as if the contents of the container had been dumped loose already and were doing who-knew-what to his cellular structure. “You’d better not be thinking about dumping nanites.”

  “You know anything else smaller?” Aldo triggered the top. It popped open.

  Rome pushed the tube away and sealed it. Did anything get out? The lights were still red. “Aldo! We’re desperate, but I’m not that desperate. You could get us all killed! I, for one, don’t want my DNA unraveled until I’m a puddle of biological goop on this base’s floors!”

  “Puddle of… oh, come on, Rome!” Aldo hissed the words between his teeth. He whispered like they were in an elder care hostel and the nurses with their bots would sweep in, chastising them for waking the residents. “These aren’t disassemblers. You got any idea how many permits and security protocols I’d need to even get in the same room as those? There’s a reason they only use those on the space habitats, or for building the Mars complex. These are breakers.”

  “Not even close to reassuring.”

  “It’s just a nickname.” Aldo took the tube back. He opened it again. It took a couple seconds for the lights on top to disappear. The entire cap pulsed red. “They’re specialized for shutting down any security system before it has a chance to realize something’s gone seriously screwy. Limited window of use—you get three and a half minutes, tops.”

  Rome tapped his implant.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Setting up a timer.”

  “Oh. Good idea.”

  “Focus. When the blue lights are down—”

  “Then I go in.” Aldo closed the tube and stuck it back in his jacket. He flexed his implant wrist as if he readied for hand-to-hand sparring.

  “What happens after three and a half minutes?”

  “The breakers destruct. Fzzzzt. Itty bitty sparks, and then they’re gone,” Aldo grinned. “No mess for anyone to find.”

  “You borrowed this from Jocelyn?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How much did it cost me?”

  “Not a coin.” The blue lights vanished. “Aaand showtime!”

  Rome started the timer. Aldo swept his arm in, implant glowing. It exchanged signals with the column, their pulses pinging back and forth with a hypnotic rhythm. Whatever Aldo did while his fingers triggered new command lines, it didn’t set of any alarms. Rome kept a hand on the comforting stock of the spazzer inside his jacket.

  “Encryption’s light,” Aldo said. “Not surprising. With the barrier, there’s no way a casual interloper could access sensitive data.”

  “No problems, I take it.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “I’m sure. Have you isolated any information from the truck’s theft?” Time was ticking.

  “Ah… hang on. This could be something. Nope, never mind. Shipping manifest.” Aldo squinted at his display. “Tracking back through the time stamps.”

  “You could deploy the holo emitter, assuming the data bank has one.”

  “No such luck. It’s meant as a repository. You know, tuck the data here until you need to review it, then you transfer it to a device or network that makes it more user friendly. The way it’s packed in here, behind layers of—whoa! Bingo.”

  “Bingo’s good. Get out of there.”

  “Hold up. I have to transfer the entire packet.”

  “Hurry, Aldo.” Thirty seconds remained. How long would the Pike sentry remain in standby? He had no idea.

  “Going, going, going…” Aldo pulled his arm back. “Gone!”

  The blue lights on the ceiling and floor flickered, blinked twice, and then sprang to full luminosity. Rome scooted back, even though he was pretty sure he was far enough away from the scanner. His timer flashed.

  “That’s the whole thing.” Aldo ran a hand through his hair. Sweaty as his palms must be, his combed mop was transformed into an unruly tangle.

  “Let me see it. And clean up. You don’t look like a DOD inspector.”

  “Huh?” Aldo touched his head gingerly. “Oh, right. Here goes.”

  A holo vid leapt from Aldo’s implant. At first, Rome saw nothing but static, electric snow. For a second, he thought this whole exercise in subterfuge had been futile, but then it cleared. Through the haze, he saw two men in a large room. They were tiny compared with the towering walls and the bulky vehicles that framed them. Rome recognized them as four of the same stealth trucks they’d encountered, minus the docking collar.

  One of the men was a short, thickset blond with well-groomed hair. “Robert Brand.”

  “Who?”

  “One of Sara’s crew. The one who went face surfing on the road.”

  Aldo winced. “Nasty. Who’s the other guy?”

  “Can’t see his face. Dark hair. Fatigues. Magnify.”

  Aldo paused the playback. The image zoomed large enough Rome made out rank insignia. He smiled when he saw the shine of twin silver eagles. “Has to be the CO, Colonel Tacazon.”

  The miniature men in the image held up their wrists. Rome recognized the gesture. “Transfer of payment.”

  “Yeah. Bet it’s way more high stakes than our blackjack games.”

  “Can you trace the payments?”

  “Not through this.”

  “No, dumbass, I meant through the colonel’s implant.”

  “Well, yeah. Probably. You gonna get me the implant?”

  “If I have to. Come on.”

  Rome headed for the other door, but before he took a couple steps, light flooded the room from the opposite end.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in here?” An officer stood framed in the doorway, ha
nds on his hips. “This room is off-limits to all but senior personnel.”

  “Malcolm Stewart, DOD Inspector.” Aldo flashed his ID far too fast for the human eye to make any sense out of the blur of imagery. “Your security is abysmal, sir, and we’re going to have to give you poor marks on that part of our report.”

  “There’s no inspection slated for this month. I’ve seen the bulletins from Department of Defense.” The officer’s insignia gleamed in the blue light a second before his face was illuminated. Twin birds.

  Colonel Tacazon.

  He stared at them, eyebrows knit together. Tacazon’s uniform was immaculate—pressed to perfect creases. His hair was shorn around the ears and back of his head to neat black stubble, and where it was longer on top, he’d styled it into an impermeable helmet. His eyes were dark, his skin sallow in the blue light of the column’s circular security field. The scowl on his lips, though, was what startled Rome the most.

  He’d seen it before.

  Before Rome could react to his realization, Tacazon’s eyes went wide. “You! It can’t be. They were supposed to have you locked up by now!”

  His fingers smacked the implant on his left wrist. “Get me an MP! We have intruders in the data archives—fugitives from the Free Travel Zone authorities! Signal to—”

  Rome drew his spazzer and sighted, but before he could fire, Aldo threw himself at Tacazon. Rome cursed. Without a clear shot he could stun both men, and dragging Aldo’s twitching body out of here would not facilitate escape.

  The struggle was short-lived. Aldo swung a wild punch at Tacazon, which the colonel easily blocked. He was a stout man, shorter than Aldo, but the moves he employed emphasized his fitness. He had Aldo in a hold, arm across his neck, with Aldo’s implant arm bent at a painful angle behind him.

  Aldo was now a human shield.

  “If you think I’m coming with you, Jasko, you’re crazier than I thought. My men will be here any moment.”

  “Let him go.” If Aldo could get free for even a second—

  Tacazon shoved Aldo forward and sprinted through the open door.