Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  ‘Plus, if Muradov finds out about Jenna then we’re screwed,’ Kuai grunted.

  ‘So maybe don’t go throwing their names about?’ Jia hissed at him in Mandarin.

  ‘Most of these don’t speak English as well as us,’ Kuai retorted, although he glanced about to see if any of the officers had looked around at the mention of their chief. It seemed not. ‘They’ll speak Mandarin though, you think of—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Drift snapped. Kuai sometimes thought ‘Bì zuĭ’ was the only Mandarin the Captain knew. ‘I’m not in the mood for you two to start squabbling. Tamara thinks we should try to get to the Jonah and wait for them there; she seemed to think that the revolution’s going to push upwards and that maybe they’ll be able to reach us.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ Kuai admitted, ‘they’ve done alright so far.’

  ‘Yeah, but they won’t be taking the government by surprise any more,’ Jia argued.

  ‘Oh, and you’re some sort of exper—’ Kuai cut himself off as Drift’s natural eye narrowed in his direction. He settled for downing the last of his coffee in a gulp, then grimaced as he registered how cold it was. ‘Whatever. It still seems like the best chance we’ve got. Plus, at least we’ll actually be on the shuttle in case something goes wrong.’

  ‘Something has gone wrong,’ Drift pointed out.

  ‘You know what I mean.’ Kuai shrugged. ‘The three of us: we’re a pilot, a mechanic and a captain with the access codes. Say the others can’t get to us, or … y’know … something goes wrong.’

  The Captain’s face had become a blank mask. ‘You mean, if they get killed.’

  ‘If something goes wrong,’ Kuai repeated, shifting a little uncomfortably in the stare of that metal eye. Damn it, why did everyone always try to make him feel guilty for being realistic? ‘I’m just saying that if we needed to, if there was no point in staying, we could take off and fly away. That’s all.’

  The Captain held his gaze for a moment longer, then deliberately looked away and up at the holoscreen. ‘Just keep an eye on Moutinho’s pair. And the Shirokovs, for that matter.’

  ‘You still thinking to give them a ride out?’ Jia asked, astonished.

  ‘I’m thinking that this entire venture is neck-deep in shit and I’ll take what recompense I can,’ Drift snapped, with enough heat to cause a couple of nearby officers to look around momentarily at the tone of his voice, even if they hadn’t made out the words. He waved a hand irritably. ‘Never mind. I just—’

  He cut off in mid-sentence at exactly the same time as Kuai saw something he recognised on the holoscreen. The revolution’s newscast, still transmitting in spite of what Kuai assumed must be frantic efforts on the part of the government to shut it down, had just shown a panning shot of the plaza outside the guest house they’d been intending to stay at. Yellow-and-black Free Systems banners had been draped across building fronts and people were celebrating in the square with apparent genuine delight, despite the fact that Kuai was pretty sure he’d heard about people being killed there only a few hours ago. And there, in the corner of the shot and seen only for a second in the far background, was a familiar wide-brimmed hat and flowing coat. The wearer was talking to someone else and pointing, apparently oblivious to the camera directed at them, and both the tiny hand emerging from the coat sleeve and the smudge of face visible between collar and hat were dark enough to mark them out from the vast majority of Uragans in shot. The person also appeared to have a rifle slung over one shoulder.

  Kuai felt his gut clench, and glanced sideways at the Captain. ‘Did you just see her?’

  Drift didn’t look at him. ‘No. No, I didn’t. And neither did either of you.’

  CRY HAVOC

  ‘YOU ARE CERTAIN that they cannot see what we are doing?’ Tanja asked for the third time. Jenna did her best to suppress a sigh.

  ‘No, I’m not certain,’ she replied with studied patience, ‘but we’ve blocked all output on the surveillance feeds that the security stations on this level had access to. I’m not saying that some big cheese up on Level One doesn’t have some sort of private, hidden feed that his subordinates down here can’t see, but …’ She shrugged. ‘You can’t plan for everything.’

  Tanja huffed. ‘Well, that will have to do. And there is nothing you can do to make our comms more secure?’

  Jenna winced. ‘On the equipment you’ve got here? I’ve done some audio encryption before, but that was hard enough to set up for a one-to-one deal on systems I’m familiar with, and even then it was only to avoid casual eavesdropping. Trying to program a secure commsnet for multiple users when you’d have government-level operatives trying to decode it—’

  ‘A “no” would have sufficed, Miss McIlroy.’ Jenna’s irritation must have showed on her face, because the Uragan rebel immediately held up one hand in a conciliatory gesture. ‘My apologies, I intended no offence. I meant that I do not require you to explain yourself to me. You have been of great assistance to the revolution, and if you tell me you cannot do something then I will believe you.’

  ‘Well, okay then,’ Jenna nodded, somewhat mollified. ‘Umm … good luck, I guess.’

  ‘I fear we shall need it,’ Tanja said, her expression grim as she turned to survey the scene behind her. ‘This will be neither easy nor bloodless.’

  They weren’t far from Vehicle Gate 2, one of three main routes up into Level Four. The huge, reinforced slabs of steel had been closed off, of course, with their hydraulics locked down. On the other side there were certainly armed security personnel waiting in case of a breach. However, on this side was a mass of humanity all the way down the ramp back into Level Five, wearing and waving the colours of the Free Systems.

  Tanja was no fool; she was well aware that taking the politsiya by surprise wouldn’t work the same way twice. A headlong charge by lightly armed and largely unarmoured men and women into the teeth of waiting guns would be a slaughter, and not in their favour. Even if they overwhelmed the waiting troops with sheer weight of numbers, the death toll might be simply too high for people to maintain faith in the revolution.

  Besides which, Tanja and her fellows didn’t want to smash the systems which ran Uragan City, they simply wanted control of them. Some of the politsiya had already decided to join the revolution, either due to previously hidden personal political beliefs or simple awareness of which way the tide was turning. If the rest could be persuaded to follow suit with no more fatalities, so much the better. What was needed was an overwhelming demonstration of how organised and comprehensive the revolution was, and how standing in its way was simply delaying the inevitable.

  For all that Rourke had maintained that this wasn’t her revolution, Jenna couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen the older woman more vital than when she’d been plotting out the next bit of strategy with Tanja and Inzhu. Jenna herself was starting to wilt after what must be coming up to nearly twenty-four hours awake, and she briefly wondered how she’d managed to stay up all night when she’d been doing her degree. Half a dozen cans of Caffeine Kick and no adrenaline dump from nearly being killed, most likely. Rourke seemed to be having no such trouble, however, and Jenna’s admiration for her had gone up another notch.

  Tanja looked at her chrono. ‘Five a.m. Time for stage one.’ She opened a channel on her comm and began speaking rapidly into it in Russian. Jenna hadn’t sat in on all the planning meetings, but she knew well enough what was going to happen. Or at least, what was supposed to happen.

  From the communications hub on Level Five, the crew who had accepted the revolution would begin transmitting another broadcast which, thanks to their location in Uragan City, could reach every other habitation on the planet. Unlike the previous pro-revolution propaganda disguised as unbiased news reporting, this was a personal message from Tanja Mironova herself. In it she named herself as the Interim Head of the People’s Council of the Free State of Uragan until such time as an appropriate election could be held to make the offices permanent. She
also addressed Governor Drugov directly, demanding the immediate and unconditional surrender of power to the People’s Council forthwith and guaranteeing the safety of his person should he do so.

  It was no coincidence that this broadcast began at exactly the same time as mining charges placed at Vehicle Gate 1 went off, breaching the defences and opening hostilities. The idea was to put immediate pressure on the governor, but not to actually force entry. The magnitude of explosion necessary to destroy enough of the gates to allow easy pedestrian and vehicular access would risk bringing the entire roof down, and the miners in the revolution knew their tools well. The explosions which had – hopefully – just gone off would have blasted holes, certainly, but left enough cover for a firefight. That was an attention-grabber, something to start panicked messages flying across the politsiya’s comm systems.

  ‘Into position if you please, Miss McIlroy,’ Tanja said, her tone of voice one notch down from making it a direct order. Jenna swallowed and began to thread her way through the crowd of revolutionaries, accompanied by a trio of Uragan guards in politsiya armour adorned with hastily created Free Systems logos. The sheer energy of humanity around her was astounding, but she couldn’t help wondering how many of these people might make a stupid decision due to sheer overtiredness. She bit back a laugh: wouldn’t it have been far more convenient to wait until everyone was well rested for the revolution to begin?

  She found her way to a wall terminal, not far from the main gate. This was one of the places she least wanted to be, but Rourke had made it clear that at the moment they had to play along as well as they could to ensure their own safety. Jenna couldn’t quite see how standing next to what amounted to an invasion force really ensured her safety, but given Rourke had infiltrated the communication hub on her own she guessed she couldn’t really complain.

  She hooked her wrist-mounted terminal up to the one on the wall and checked her chrono. Two minutes and forty seconds gone since the broadcast began …

  +Everything ready?+ Tanja’s voice asked in her ear.

  ‘Accessing now,’ Jenna replied, her fingers skating over the interface. The controls on the gates were laughably simple to access if you knew what you were doing, especially if you had access to the main terminal. Normally this would be guarded by politsiya of course, but they were long gone. ‘Okay, we’re ready to roll.’

  +On my mark. And … mark.+

  Jenna hit the override and the hydraulics on Vehicle Gate 2 swung smoothly into action. One panel began to retreat into the ceiling while the other started to sink into the floor. Another quick instruction activated a preprogrammed spiralling access algorithm: anyone trying to close the gates from the other side would suddenly find that their command codes no longer worked.

  What was more, the exact same thing was happening at the exact same time at Vehicle Gate 3, assuming the tech Jenna had recruited from the communication hub had half a clue what she was doing.

  Rourke’s plan had been twofold. In the first instance, the phoney assault at Gate 1 would attract attention and, just possibly, divert politsiya resources away from the other two gates. In the second instance, the brute-force-and-ignorance method would suggest that this was all the revolution had to work with: in the three minutes after those charges went off, the defenders would be able to wrap their heads around the notion that any incursion from below was going to begin with an almighty noise and commotion, and would by necessity be piecemeal.

  Therefore, when the other two gates opened smoothly to disgorge a horde of heavy-duty haulage vehicles intent on ramming their way through any form of security cordon, the impact would not just be physical but psychological.

  Jenna flattened herself against the wall as the engines coughed into life around her with basso roars. An answering shout went up from the assembled revolutionaries, who scrambled up onto their makeshift transports or crowded alongside them in the tunnel, eager to push forwards as soon as the lower plate had disappeared. It all looked horrifically confused to Jenna, and she winced as a haulage lorry jerked forwards ahead of time and nearly squashed four people between it and the truck in front. One of them shouted abuse in Portuguese at the driver’s cab, and she recognised Moutinho’s men. The Jacare’s captain saw her and flashed a leering grin, then ostentatiously checked the action of the gun he’d been given after he and his three crew had volunteered to take part in the assault. Of the other three, Skanda looked nervous, Jack looked impatient and the youth called Achilles just looked like he’d taken a battering. Which would be about right, given he’d been kicked twice by Apirana in the last twelve hours.

  Her attention was dragged back to the vehicle gate as she caught a glimpse of black uniforms on the other side running around, and moments later there was the spanging noises of bullets ricocheting off metal. However, the front line of the revolutionaries’ convoy was made up of ore trucks with huge hydraulic scoops for lifting and dumping loose rock, and gunfire spattered off them like rain off the Jonah’s viewports. A moment later and the gate had fully opened, and the invasion force lurched into somewhat erratically driven action.

  Jenna was no student of warfare, but she was fairly sure the initial charge of the People’s Council’s motorised militia wouldn’t go down in any history documents as an example of slick manoeuvring. It was, however, undeniably effective. The dozen or so drivers simply gunned their engines and headed as fast as they could for the greatest concentration of security personnel and vehicles, at which point the discrepancy in sheer power between a rugged urban police vehicle and an industrial digger became painfully obvious.

  Politsiya transports were hoisted partially off the ground and propelled backwards at some speed, with the more unfortunate ones being toppled onto their sides or even their roofs in the process. Revolutionaries on foot flooded through the branching streets in the wake of these trailblazers, waving flags and weapons and shouting slogans as they did so. Some gas grenades were fired in an attempt to slow the charge, but the revolution had learned from earlier clashes and Marya had ordered rebreathers brought up from the mining levels, where hitting subterranean toxic gas pockets was always a risk. Jenna watched in slightly terrified awe as Level Four’s official resistance to the Free State of Uragan, consisting of nearly 300 black-clad officers, crumpled in slightly under a minute.

  +Marya reports overwhelming success at Gate 3,+ Tanja’s voice crackled over her comm. +Well done, Miss McIlroy: your programming worked like a charm.+

  She heard a faint crackle in her ear, a signal that Rourke had switched to the scrambled channel Jenna had prepared for the two of them and Apirana, without telling Tanja. +Jenna, are you still at the gate?+

  ‘Still here,’ she confirmed.

  +Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be with you shortly.+

  In fairness, there wasn’t really anywhere Jenna could go, as the revolution’s bodies continued to surge past. The lower levels of Uragan City were mainly the mine workers and other menial labourers, and the revolution’s promises of better wages and a fair share of their planet’s riches had quickly found eager listeners even among those who hadn’t been party to it before it erupted. The upper levels were generally more affluent, however, and potentially much less welcoming. Inzhu had been adamant that as much visible support as possible should be shunted upwards to ‘persuade’ the rest of the population not to thwart the will of the people, and so the mines stood still and everyone who could be roused from their beds and given a flag or a sash was sent on their way.

  Even allowing for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t get involved, Tanja’s best guess still put that at slightly more than 50,000 people pouring through the three gates and bellowing slogans.

  A jeep rolled to a halt next to her, and Jenna nearly jumped in until she realised that it was Tanja in the passenger seat and not Rourke. The Uragan leaned over towards her and raised her voice over the engine noise. ‘Do you need a lift?’

  ‘You go on ahead!’ Jenna shouted back, gesturing at the terminal behi
nd her. ‘I just want to make sure that there are no problems with the security algorithm I’ve installed!’

  Tanja frowned, but nodded. ‘Fair enough. Make sure you come and find me when you have finished, though.’ She tapped her comm meaningfully, then said something to the jeep’s driver and the vehicle rolled onwards.

  Jenna huffed out a breath and turned to fiddle with the terminal on the wall. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her programming of course, nor would she have cared even if there was given that she had no intention of returning through this gate once she’d gone past it, but she needed to be out of Tanja’s way for a while. She busied herself for a minute or two doing pointless things on her wrist console until a horn sounded and she looked around to see Apirana’s tattooed face peering out of the window of a bulky flatbed truck.

  ‘All aboard who’s comin’ aboard!’ the big Maori boomed. He looked at Jenna’s three guards. ‘You boys still babysittin’ our girl here? We can look after her, no trouble.’

  ‘We have orders,’ one responded, his English broken but intelligible. ‘Must guard McIlroy, take back to Councillor Mironova.’

  Rourke’s head, complete with wide-brimmed hat, rose up above the truck’s cab on the driver’s side. ‘That’s where we’re going anyway, so jump on the back if you want. Jenna, there’s room for you in the front if you don’t mind squeezing between A. and me.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Jenna replied, disconnecting her wrist console, ‘I’m done here anyway.’ She headed around to the far side of the vehicle where Rourke momentarily disembarked to allow her to scoot across the bench-like front seat, while her three guards climbed onto the flatbed at the back. She was careful not to knock Apirana’s braced ankle with her feet: luckily, there was enough space for her between the big man’s bulk and Rourke’s diminutive figure to avoid her being uncomfortably crushed up against anyone.

  ‘We still goin’ through with this?’ Apirana murmured, looking straight ahead and barely moving his lips as Rourke put the truck into gear.