White Fire

by Laurie Bell

  Mate: Yes, Boss.

  Toni kept her walk brisk and her head straight, reaching the wall unseen. She made her way quickly down the stairs, hoping to be mistaken for a guard on a mission. Her luck held until she hit the last door.

  A fresh-faced young man in the same uniform as the one she’d stolen stopped her at the gate. “Madam, did you hear the train rail popped a holding bolt and exploded?”

  “What? Kheghing hell,” she replied. “Look, I’m sorry, kid. I really need to get through.”

  “But, Miss, they said to hold the doors.”

  “Of course they did, but my orders were given to me before whatever happened out there happened.” She stood ramrod straight and glared at the young man. He looked uncertain. She could use that. Moving into his personal space, she growled directly into his face, “Now, soldier.”

  “Orders, Miss?”

  “Are from Him. Are you stopping me on His order?” There was always a Him people were scared of.

  “No, no, Miss.” The young guard shuffled back and held the door open for her.

  She nodded sharply. “Thank you.”

  *

  Mate tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there were over four hundred soldiers on that train.” Toni slumped further down on her little metal chair. The shadow of the café’s outside wall chilled the air around their corner table. With great pleasure, Toni had stripped out of the guard’s uniform, leaving her in her decidedly wrinkled shirt and trousers. The hot manna juice she’d ordered was doing nothing to calm her nerves.

  “Soldiers?”

  “Uniformed.”

  “Local army?” Mate sat close to her leg. He rested his head against her knee so they could talk quietly.

  She scratched his ear and stared blankly at the digital reader she held to maintain her cover as a woman enjoying leisure time. Zach, still active on her glasses display, grumbled nonsensical text bubbles, but had yet to add anything of value to their discussion, so she ignored him. She glanced up into the overcast magenta-colored sky. It was going to rain. She could smell it in the air.

  “The big boss said to destroy all the shipments we find,” Mate reminded her.

  “Not a chance. There were too many. Did I mention they were an army?”

  At last, Zach cut into their chatter.

  Zach: I’ve broken into the freighter company’s communication server. There’s a conference center in Ganick City booked for a company’s retreat. It’s described as military boot camp exercises. That’s where they’re going to strike from.

  “Company training?” Toni’s mouth dropped open. She hurriedly took a sip from her mug to cover her lapse, staring blankly into the distance. Chatter from the café’s patrons formed a wall of noise around them. Training exercises? They think that’s going to work? She considered the paperwork required to get that many people into a city as large as Ganick. It explained why they were in uniform. She figured training was as good an excuse as any. Problem was, she couldn’t deal with those sorts of numbers alone. Handling this would require a full scale STCT deployment. She needed to contact Zaambuka. If this was happening in each of the locations they’d identified, a uniformed response was required to combat it. A war, either way. What a mess. How had things reached this stage already? The waitress dropped a tray with several mugs on it. The clatter drove Toni’s head up. Her heart thudded loudly at the sudden sound.

  “So we are not going to try?”

  “What?” She looked down at the C-bot.

  “We were ordered to destroy the shipments. We have just found a big shipment.”

  “One that’s going to be split over half the kheghing planet after it reaches Ganick City. Do you have a plan for that?” she asked.

  Zach: Um, actually, Boss. I do.

  Toni made eye contact with Mate. “Shenghi,” she whispered.

  *

  The explosions were glorious, though Toni and Mate didn’t get to see them.

  Zach’s plan, as he described it, was not all that complicated—for the Computer Intelligence Interface at any rate. First, he hacked the train network. This took some doing, as the security levels on the coordination servers were quite stringent. When he gained access, he initiated a series of emergency drills to remove any “live eyes” watching the system. This evacuated three city control centers and removed any on-site monitoring of the real-time data.

  He also needed to remove any technical support; that was a simple matter of slipping the Deathknell Trojan in through their firewall and setting it to flood the network with self-replicating viruses.

  He didn’t tell Toni where he got the viruses and she didn’t ask.

  With the IT teams busy trying to isolate and flush the various systems, Zach spoofed the live data on the three freight lines. In all the technical chaos, he only made a few minor tweaks.

  It was at this point that the important work began.

  The changes wouldn’t raise any alerts and, with luck, as he explained it to Toni, when the kheghing thing went haywire, the viruses would be blamed for the incorrect track signals.

  Zach told her he altered the running instructions for the three trains. He flipped a few intersect points to red when they should have been green, and reversed the green ones back to red. Then he wiped his intrusion from the network. In fifty-eight minutes and twelve seconds, he was out and reporting his success.

  Zach: Line M, Line Y, and Line E left the Mountain Sevger station at twenty-five past the standard. At the junction where line M should have deviated right, oh dear, look at that, it switched to the left track. That won’t end well. The faster moving Line Y’s change looks to have gone unnoticed as well. What awfully unobservant train masters they have working today. And here we are, slow little Line E, moving at a bit of a limp, it seems, has finally crossed the track where it should have turned left. Dear, oh dear.

  “Zach, really?” Toni grumbled.

  Zach: Wait for it …

  The CII sounded almost gleeful—if a CII could feel glee.

  “Zach.”

  Zach: All three trains have collided, and, oh …

  “What, Zach?” Toni demanded.

  “Zach?” Mate questioned.

  Zach: It appears your experiment with exploding the mag-rifles on Uxt was not so much an experiment as it was the way these weapons usually react to fire.

  “Big boom?” Toni asked, her voice low.

  Zach: Yes.

  An army couldn’t fight without weapons. Zach had neutralized one battleground, but the fight was far from over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Are we close to the Hideaway?” Toni asked. She rocked back in her seat, unable to sit still. Her skin still itched from the mission on Telber. She scratched her arm, avoiding the red marks that indicated how long she’d been uncomfortable.

  Zach popped up on the screen at her elbow and shot her a quizzical look. “Ah, Boss?”

  “I know I’m not meant to know about it. I’m not asking where it is. I’m asking are we close?”

  She glared at the two tablets on the table. Having spent several fruitless hours trying to decipher the data, she was close to throwing the damned things. It was all coded. She’d been able to decipher eleven of the seventeen locations but had no idea about the rest. One word she did translate was Quarter. A word she knew from her own secret communications with Jas. It was used to describe the Cross.

  Her first thought was to call Colten to help break the rest of the code. She had a nasty argument with Zach over it. When she finally convinced him to place the call, she bit her lip, praying he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t. She didn’t leave a message.

  The only option now was to contact her best friend.

  From early in their relationship, they’d established an unbreakable rule that Toni would never use Jas’s job against her.

  That promise was about to be broken.

  Jas, because her location was a closely guarded secret, never received calls
, only placed them. Usually, Toni would have Zach send out an alert and Jas would call her back. Toni had never attempted to discover Jasmine’s hidden base. Until now.

  Given the importance of these shipments and the possibility of galaxy-wide acts of terrorism, she was willing to break that rule. Zach had his doubts.

  “I can send a signal. Ask her to call.”

  “Are we close?”

  “Boss, I can’t—”

  “Who are you loyal to, Zach?” Mate demanded from the floor.

  “It’s not that.” The CII glared at them both. “I made a promise.”

  Toni debated altering Zach’s programming to force him to tell her the coordinates. It was only a brief thought, gone quicker than she could blink. It would be tantamount to betrayal, a version of mind control. She’d never do that to him. “Okay, send the message.”

  Zach looked relieved. In moments, it was done.

  “Call coming in,” he announced.

  So they were close. “Connect it.”

  The CII’s face disappeared, only to pop up on a smaller screen behind Toni. Jas appeared and demanded, “Is the game back on?”

  Toni grinned. Jas had a one-track mind. “No, actually I’m calling because I need your help.” She explained about the Resonators, the shipments and the train full of soldiers. Then she told her friend about the green tablet.

  “You think he hired smugglers?” Jas’s ears flicked back and her hand fidgeted where it rested on the desktop. Toni recognized the tell. She’d seen it before. The other woman was worried about something, or someone.

  “I know Stiev contacted you, Jas. I recognized the Cross codeword.”

  “Are you asking if I’m helping to start a war?” Jas’s wide-eyed stare contained a hint of hurt. Her ears lay back against her head.

  Toni was quick to reassure her. “Xendia, no. I just want your help to break the rest of the code. The trigger point is in less than five days.”

  Her friend didn’t move. Toni narrowed her eyes.

  “I swear it, Jas.”

  The screen went black. Toni spun around in her seat. “What happened, Zach? Did we lose the connection?”

  “She cut us off.”

  “What will we do now?” Mate rose up onto all fours. He shuffled closer and pressed his body against Toni’s leg. Absently, she ran her hand over his furry head.

  “Call Zaambuka. If he can prepare the teams, they can be on-site as soon as an attack is launched.”

  “We cannot afford to wait for the attacks to happen, Boss. People will die.”

  Toni’s stomach turned cartwheels. “We have eleven of the locations and we shut down Telber, but—”

  “Call coming in,” Zach announced.

  “Put it up.”

  Jas reappeared. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. Zach?” The display split in two as Zach joined the call. “Bring the Blackflame here.”

  “Are you sure, Jas?” While she was excited to finally see her friend’s secret base, she didn’t want Jas to second-guess or regret her decision later.

  “Yup. I need to see the tablet. The actual tablet. There will be more in it than you can read. Zach?”

  “The course has been plotted. I will ensure the Boss does not see the coordinates.”

  “Oh, Zach,” Toni grumbled to the sound of Jas laughing in the background.

  *

  Zach commandeered the Blackflame’s controls and kept every internal screen black during the descent. Severe turbulence was one thing, not being able to see the landing was another. Toni peeled her fingers from her seat arms and shot the CII a nasty look when they touched down.

  He ignored it.

  Her body quivered, a reaction to the loss of control. She sucked in a deep breath and stood on wobbly legs.

  Stepping from the Blackflame with Mate at her heels, she stared around in wonder. “Where in Xendia’s name are we?”

  Mate shook his head. She couldn’t spy the source of the dim light. Pulling off her shades, she examined the rough-cut rock walls enclosing them on all sides, and … Are they stalactites? The rocky spikes looked sharp. It was like the best kind of magic trick. But there was no smell of water or damp dirt. No echo either. A façade?

  Jas waited at the base of the Blackflame’s ramp. Her caramel skin shone where it was exposed by a pink flowered dress flowing over her body. “Surprise!”

  “You can say that again. Here.” Toni handed her friend the problematic tablet. Toni wasn’t the sort to hug, but it was good to see her friend again. It had been too long.

  Jas scanned through it. “Yeah, here it is, just as I suspected. Come on.”

  The two agents followed the smuggler down a short corridor into a room covered in screens. “Wow,” Toni mumbled.

  “It’s something, right?”

  “It’s something.” Had Jas seduced Zach to her side by promising him retirement in her systems? The room was a terminal geek’s nirvana. The buzz and vibration from the spinning discs and flashing lights was mesmerizing. Giant servers filled every available floor space and massive air conditioning vents poked out of the ceiling like rodent holes. Toni only wished she’d brought her jacket. Her nose began to drip from the cold as soon as they stepped inside. She tugged her sleeves down over her hands. Jas had to have installed a ship CII—who else would be able to keep track of all the data?

  When she asked, the other woman smiled. “It’s a secret,” was all she said. Her ears were pricked up. It only made Toni more curious.

  “Stay here. I’ll be back shortly.” Jas took the tablet and disappeared, leaving Toni and Mate to wander the room. Minutes later, the woman returned with the tablet and a small slip of paper. On it were six names.

  “You’re not going to tell me how you did that, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Secrets?”

  “Something like that. Listen, do me a favor? Go to Kyth-tact first.”

  Toni stared at the names in her hand. “It’s not the closest planet. Why Kyth-tact?”

  Jas shook her head. Her ponytail flicked back and forth like a whip. “I can’t tell you why. But I’d really like you to go to Kyth-tact first.”

  Toni had a choice. Take her friend at her word—she’d never lied as far as Toni knew—or not, and risk losing the valued friendship. Something had Jas worried. “All right.”

  At Toni’s agreement, the tension dropped away from Jas’s body. Her ears twitched. Yes, she was definitely worried about someone. All of the blacked-out screens burst to life, scaring the bejeezus out of Toni. The servers lit up like celebration fireworks had gone off and the noise in the room became almost unbearable. A digital face appeared and bared his teeth.

  “Cos, no,” Jas snapped.

  “Emergency call.”

  Jas pushed Toni toward the doorway. Many of the screens filled with static and then cleared. The whine and pops of laser fire came through clearly, bursting through the speakers at a high enough volume the place vibrated. A male voice screamed. Toni’s heart leapt into her throat at the horrendous sound. Eyes wide, Jas raced back to the central chair and grabbed her headset. She shouted into the attached microphone. “Charls? Charls??”

  A face appeared. It was a young man streaked with blood, the whites of his eyes shining, pinpoint pupils darting in every direction. His breathing was short, his voice high-pitched and tense. “We’re under attack.”

  “Get to safety,” Jas ordered. Clipping the headset over her ears, her hands flew over the panels, typing quickly. A number of screens dissolved into streams of digital coding. It looked like Jas was running a trace.

  “We can’t,” he shouted. “The whole world is under attack. There’s no way off.”

  Toni and Mate stayed out of view, but listened as the young man began to shout a long list of names. Jas switched on her headset and the speakers shut off so abruptly Toni was stunned at the sudden silence left behind. Her chest felt unbearably tight. What the khegh? Moments later the screens dissolved into static. />
  “Cos, get him back.” Jas threw the headset off. Her ears rested flat against her skull.

  “Negative.”

  “What—”

  “No signal.”

  Jas turned horrified eyes on Toni. All the agent could do was shake her head and ask in a soft voice, “Where was he calling from?” She kept the quiver from her voice, barely. How many people were on that planet?

  “Could be any one of three planets. All border worlds.”

  “He didn’t tell you? What was that list he gave you?”

  “I can’t—”

  “Say,” Toni finished for her, frustrated. “Jas, I’m just trying to help.” You need it. Tell me!

  “You can help by going to Kyth-tact.”

  Toni could recognize a lost cause for what it was. Reluctantly, she nodded.

  Jas gave Toni a quick hug. It startled her enough that she didn’t move to return it. Jas backed off. “Be careful out there, huh?”

  The agents returned to the Blackflame in a solemn silence. Toni held the last of the locations in her hand. She had to get them to Zaambuka, but it felt wrong to just leave after what they’d witnessed. She clenched her fists.

  Zach told her they would be unable to make any calls until they were clear of the Hideaway. The take-off was as harrowing as the landing. Toni clenched her eyes shut and held on tightly, but couldn’t get that young man’s face, or that scream, out of her mind.

  Back in space, Zach jumped from one screen to another, almost as if he’d had too many stimulants. He didn’t seem to notice Toni and Mate’s silence.

  “Boss,” Mate said. “We cannot just act as though we did not see that.”

  “I know,” she said, staring into the distance. “But what can we do? If she won’t give us the—”

  “Quick question. Did you meet him?” Zach interrupted, bouncing into her line of sight.

  “What? Who?” All Toni could hear were the sounds of explosions and that hideous scream. She bit her bottom lip, crossing her arms tight over her chest.