by Mark Walden
He stepped forward placing his hands on the cool metal skin of the hub and closed his eyes. The flow of data through the system was like a fast-moving river and Otto allowed himself to be swept along by the current and carried to whatever destination it chose. He needed to get to the root of the network before he could begin to properly search for the information he needed and this was the quickest way to get there.
Nero watched as Otto stood completely immobile, the only sign of life was the slight movement of his closed eyelids, like a sleeper caught in a vivid dream. There was no doubt that he had a unique ability, but ever since he had discovered the truth of Otto’s origins Nero had worried about where those gifts may one day lead the boy. The last thing he wanted was for Otto Malpense to follow in his ‘father’s’ footsteps.
‘We have company,’ Wing said quietly from outside the hub-room door. Nero moved quickly to where Wing was watching the rest of the floor through the glass partitions that separated the various executives’ offices. Several dark shapes could be seen moving along the corridor on the other side of the floor, directly between the three of them and the lifts. Nero glanced back at Otto, who was still standing like a statue with one hand on the hub. They needed to buy more time. He gestured for Wing to follow him and crept up the corridor towards the nearest junction. There were two concrete pillars here, one on either side of the junction, and as Nero pressed himself flat against one, Wing followed suit on the other side of the gap. Moments later they heard the sound of someone speaking quietly coming from the adjoining corridor.
‘They gotta be here somewhere,’ the voice said. ‘The lift stopped on this floor.’
‘Stay sharp,’ another whispered voice replied. ‘Just ’cos we ain’t found ’em yet doesn’t mean they ain’t here.’
Nero glanced over at Wing, who gave a small nod. He tensed as the footsteps got nearer, waiting for the perfect moment. Just as the pistol in the outstretched hands of the first guard came into view, he struck, delivering an open-palmed chop to the man’s wrist. The gun dropped from the startled man’s now numb hand and he yelped in pain as Wing grabbed his wrist and pulled. Wing stepped past the guard as he staggered towards him and wrapped his bent arm around the man’s neck. Wing pushed the back of the guard’s head with his other hand, closing the choke hold and compressing the carotid arteries on each side of his neck, severing the flow of oxygenated blood to the man’s brain. The second guard raised his pistol, trying to draw a bead on Wing, who was now standing behind the man’s colleague, giving him no clear shot. He barely even registered Nero’s presence behind him before a sharp blow to the base of his skull sent him collapsing to the ground. The man that Wing was holding struggled for a few moments before he too succumbed to unconsciousness. The fight, if that was what it could be called, had lasted a matter of seconds.
Nero quickly pulled a pair of handcuffs from the guard’s belt and snapped them closed on the unconscious man’s wrists. Wing did the same to the other guard and they dragged the disabled men into one of the nearby offices.
‘Good work,’ Nero said as he closed the door. Wing had moved with the speed and skill that Nero would have expected from a student who had been personally tutored by Raven.
‘They were poorly trained,’ Wing said calmly. ‘Let us hope the rest of the building’s security team is too.’
Wing and Nero hurried back to the hub room. Nero knew it was only a matter of time now before somebody noticed that the security guards sent to check on this floor had not reported in. Otto had better find what they needed soon.
Inside the building’s network, Otto searched desperately for any information that might give him a clue to the location of the Dreadnought’s construction facility. Swarms of data surrounded him, covering everything from the blueprints of black-budget military research projects to the details of the stock levels in the vending machines throughout the building. The problem was that he was searching for something that wasn’t actually there; he was looking for the hole in the records that the secret project had left. Suddenly something distracted Otto; once again he felt another presence there with him. He spun around searching for any sign of this phantom companion but could see nothing other than the whirling vortex of information that surrounded him on all sides.
‘Let me help you,’ a calm, reassuring voice whispered in his ear.
Otto felt a sudden surge of power. The apparently random threads of data that surrounded him seemed to coalesce into meaningful patterns. He could see their structure, sense their shapes and more than that he could see where pieces were missing: a deleted purchase order, an altered shipping manifest, payments to front companies, all of it pointing to one location. He had what he needed, he had to go, but something stopped him from disconnecting.
‘Who are you?’ Otto said to the empty space around him.
‘A friend,’ came the whispered response.
There was only one explanation that Otto could think of, something he had not dared to allow himself to believe.
‘H.I.V.E.mind . . . is that you?’ Otto said quietly. He waited for a reply but there was none and the unusual feeling of another presence being alongside him had vanished too.
Back in the hub room Nero frowned as he saw Otto’s body tense and his eyes fly open. There was nothing behind the boy’s eyes; he looked like he was staring at something invisible hanging in the air. Then with an explosive gasp Otto was back, blinking rapidly as he placed his other hand against the wall to steady himself.
‘I’ve got it,’ Otto said. ‘Drake’s facility is somewhere in Nevada. I can try to get a more precise location but it’s going to take more time.’
‘Time is the one thing we don’t have,’ Nero said. ‘We have all that we’re going to get today, gentlemen. I suggest we leave before we outstay our welcome.’
The three of them headed back down the corridor between the glass-walled offices, making for the stairs. Suddenly, Otto caught a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of his eye. A mechanical black shape rose up into the air outside the building and Otto just had time to make out the twin turbine pods on either side of the hovering machine before the object was obscured by a pair of bright muzzle flashes and the glass all around them exploded. Nero and Wing dived for cover as the heavy-machine-gun rounds tore through the side of the building and shattered the glass walls all around them in a blizzard of crystal shards. Office furniture was shredded and desktop monitors exploded as the bullets tore through the offices. Otto pressed himself against one of the concrete support pillars that were positioned regularly throughout the floor as the machine-gun fire suddenly stopped. Wing and Nero ducked and ran for the cover of another, larger support column further down the corridor. Suddenly the sounds of sirens and people shouting on the street far below were much clearer, but above those noises Otto could also hear the high-pitched whine of the machine’s turbines as it manoeuvred around outside the building, looking for a better angle on its targets.
‘Otto!’ Wing yelled to get his friend’s attention and pointed at something on the opposite side of the floor.
Otto looked in the direction Wing was pointing and saw another drone hovering in the air on the other side of the building, as if waiting for its partner to flush its targets that way. The columns they were hiding behind would not provide cover for long if they were attacked from both directions. Otto’s mind raced. There was no way they could get to the stairs while those things were waiting for them, but every moment they stayed where they were brought the security teams that were doubtless converging on their position closer. They had to move and they had to move now. He closed his eyes and reached out with his abilities to see if he could exert any measure of control over the deadly machines, but they were either too far away or too well shielded against electromagnetic interference and he could sense nothing but the faintest shadow of their on-board systems, nowhere near enough for him to get a grip on and try to control them. They were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way
. Otto pulled the pack off his back and unzipped it.
‘Wing! I need you to get that thing’s attention,’ Otto shouted to his friend as he found what he’d been looking for. Wing nodded and sprinted from the column he had been taking cover behind towards the next column thirty metres or so further down the corridor. The drone’s twin heavy machine guns roared into life once more, shattering more of the glass walls and tearing up the floor at Wing’s heels. Wing reached the cover of the pillar but the drone did not stop firing; instead it just tore away at the column, blowing off huge chunks of the concrete, revealing the steel reinforcing rods inside.
Otto stepped out from behind his own column and fired the grappler unit that he now had strapped to his wrist. The bolt shot across the gap between Otto and the drone, trailing mono-filament wire. It struck the drone and pierced its metal outer casing, locking in place. Otto sprinted across the floor towards the shattered remains of the floor-to-ceiling glass that had once formed the outer skin of the building and without hesitation threw himself out into the void.
For a few sickening moments he fell, just able to hear the screams from the crowd that had gathered below above the noise of the wind rushing past his head. Then the line attaching him to the drone went taut and he swung out under the machine as it tipped crazily. The whine from the drone’s turbines rose to a screech as the machine fought to stay airborne with this extra burden. Otto had no idea if the thing would be able to stay in the air with the addition of his weight but it was a chance he had had to take.
He hit the control to retract the grappler cable and raced upwards towards the stricken drone, grabbing at the metal framework that supported the guns beneath it as he released the grappler bolt. The drone spun, trying to shake him loose, but Otto clung on for dear life. He could see a pair of cameras mounted between the machine guns and realised that destroying them would blind the machine. He kicked at the cameras, smashing them with his foot as the drone pitched crazily. Otto tried not to think of the lethal drop beneath him as he fought to maintain his hold on the wildly bucking machine.
Suddenly he noticed a louder whine of turbines above the ailing engine noise of the drone he was hanging from. A second drone rounded the far corner of the building, trained its guns on Otto’s dangling body and opened fire. Otto pulled himself upwards, hooking his feet around the body of the drone as the bullets ripped through the air where his waist had been just a moment before. The second drone drew closer, the guns tracking upwards, and Otto closed his eyes.
Nero opened fire through one of the building’s shattered windows, a pistol from one of the downed security guards in each hand. The bullets hammered into the second drone’s engine cowlings in a shower of sparks and flame as Nero kept firing. The drone tried to right itself, attempting to bring its own guns to bear on its attacker before it exploded in a black and orange ball of smoke and fire. Debris from the explosion smashed into the drone that Otto was hanging from and there was a terminal-sounding crunch as shrapnel was sucked into one of the machine’s engines and it began to belch thick black smoke. The drone lurched sickeningly, almost breaking Otto’s weakening grip as it spun out of control. Otto could hear the one remaining good engine screaming as it fought to compensate for the loss of its twin and he knew that he had just seconds. He pointed his arm towards the Drake building and fired the grappler, letting go of the drone almost simultaneously. The grappler bolt penetrated one of the steel beams that criss-crossed the outside of the building just above the shattered windows of the executive floor and Otto swung towards it, hitting the mirrored glass with a crunch as the drone he had been hanging from just a moment before spiralled out of control into the building across the street and exploded. Otto hit the control to reel in the cable and the grappler hauled him upwards towards the gaping hole that the machine guns had carved in the side of the building. As he reached the executive floor, Wing and Nero pulled him inside and gently lowered him to the ground.
‘Can you walk?’ Nero asked.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Otto said, wincing as the flow of adrenalin slowed and his battered body began to let him know that it really didn’t appreciate being treated like that.
‘Good,’ Nero said. ‘We have to get moving now before the authorities completely seal off the area.’
‘I owe you one,’ Wing said quickly, placing a hand on Otto’s shoulder. ‘You saved my life.’
‘Forget it,’ Otto said with a grin. ‘Besides, who’s even keeping count any more?’
Inside the black truck, several kilometres away, the commander of the hunter drone team paced back and forth along the length of the disguised control centre. He did not want to be the one who had to report to Jason Drake that the targets had escaped.
‘They must still be inside the building,’ reasoned one of the men at the consoles that lined the narrow room. ‘The police have it completely locked down.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Has the retrieval team arrived on site yet?’
‘Yes, sir, but they can’t get through the perimeter that the police have set up. They can’t help as long as the targets are inside the cordon.’
The commander stopped pacing for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. This operation was proving to be more difficult than he had hoped. He let out a long sigh and turned to one of his men.
‘Launch the last two hunter drones,’ he ordered, ‘and have Overwatch scan the entire area surrounding the headquarters building for any sign of them. They haven’t gotten away yet.’
.
Chapter Six
‘I seem to recall saying that I wasn’t going to do this,’ Nero said with a sigh, shining the torch ahead of them. He, Otto and Wing trudged through the fetid sewer leading away from the Drake Industries building. Otto had overridden the lock that had been put on the tower’s elevator system and had got them down into the sub-basement of the building. From there it had been relatively easy to find a hatch leading into the sewers. The fact that it had been easy did not, however, make it pleasant.
‘So what were those things up there?’ Otto asked Nero as they walked slowly and carefully along the narrow tunnel. You did not want to trip and fall over here.
‘More of Drake’s toys, I suspect,’ Nero said angrily. ‘He has always been keen on using machines to do his dirty work for him.’
‘Surely it will arouse suspicion that his own hardware attacked the building?’ Wing said.
‘I fear those drones were developed originally for G.L.O.V.E.’s use,’ Nero replied. ‘It’s highly unlikely that anyone working for the security services will be able to connect them to Drake Industries in any way.’
They reached the end of the tunnel and walked out on to a metal gantry bolted to the wall surrounding a water-filled chamber.
‘We appear to have run out of sewer,’ Nero said with a sigh. The only way out was to climb up the ladder leading from the gantry to a manhole cover above. It was either that or go swimming in the murky brown water below, and they weren’t quite that desperate yet.
‘How far from the building are we?’ Otto asked.
‘Perhaps three hundred metres,’ Wing replied, ‘which, with luck, should be far enough to put us outside any police perimeter.’
‘Very well,’ Nero said, looking up at the thin beams of light coming through the tiny holes in the manhole cover, ‘follow me.’
Nero climbed carefully up the rusty ladder with Otto and Wing close behind. As he reached the top he lifted the cover just a centimetre or so and peeked through the gap. After a few seconds Nero pushed the cover up further and slid it to one side. The three of them climbed out into a deserted alley between two tall office buildings. At the far end of the alley they could see the flashing red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles that now filled the plaza outside the Drake Industries building. At the other end of the alley sat a police car that was presumably maintaining the cordon that had been thrown up around the incident site. In front of the patrol car, two cops stood d
rinking coffee and watching the crowd of curious onlookers that had gathered.
‘We’ll have to head back towards the plaza,’ Nero said with a frown. ‘The police may not be specifically looking for us yet, but strolling out of a secure area right in front of them is not a chance we can afford to take.’
They started walking, checking the doors into the buildings on either side of them as they went, but they were all firmly locked. The only way out was the plaza end of the alley. As they got nearer they could see that there was a fire truck parked across the opening which would at least keep them hidden from view for the moment. Nero stopped, studying the big red emergency vehicle.
‘I think I’ve got an idea,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘Wait here.’
He walked to the end of the alley and then to the front of the truck, signalling Otto and Wing to join him. They had to move fast before their narrow window of opportunity disappeared. Nero strolled calmly to the cab door of the fire truck, looked both ways to check they weren’t being watched and pulled it open.
‘Get in,’ he instructed. Otto and Wing paused for a moment, unsure whether or not he was serious. The irritated frown that appeared on his face suggested that he was and they obediently climbed up into the cab.
‘Pass me those,’ Nero said, pointing to a spare fireman’s coat and helmet that lay in the equipment area at the back of the cab. He took the uniform and quickly put it on, zipping the coat right up to his chin and pulling the helmet down low over his eyes, then climbed up into the truck. Nero looked around before ducking down under the dashboard and pulling a bundle of wires out from behind the steering column. He sorted through the brightly coloured wires until he found the two he needed and twisted together the exposed copper at their ends. A couple of seconds later the fire truck’s massive engine rumbled into life.
