people could buy off-the-shelf software and be ly happy. Most people weren't Net Force's top VR Smokin' Jay Gridley. If he couldn't do it right, a't want to do it.
captain finished his directions. The team started i the building, dragging a stiff and heavy pressurized c. The power was out, so they switched on helmet and i-carried lanterns. The sounds they made were loud in i darkness, and the roar of the fire a couple of stories > muted but audible, the building vibrating as it was eaten alive by the orange monster. A lot of fire- anthropomorphized fire, Jay knew that much. r talked about it as if it were some kind of malevolent rather than what was essentially a real fast ver- . of rust-oxidation and combustion ... ck at Net Force HQ, Jay and his team were working computers, trying to find the source of the problem Jlue Whale-and they weren't alone-but hi this see- he was about to take a turn up a dark hallway by elf to get closer to the source of the fire. Not some
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thing any sane fireman would do, and certainly not alone, he knew at least that much.
As the team moved to the location where it was supposed to deploy its hose, Jay slipped into the stairway and started climbing. The smell of burning material and the hint of smoke in the stairwell was a nice touch, he thought, congratulating himself.
As he climbed to the second floor landing, then past it, he suddenly thought about Saji. Despite her life-is-about- suffering Buddhist thing, she was very excited about their upcoming wedding. And while the idea of being without her and back like he'd been before they had met was as bleak a scenario as Jay could imagine, he had to confess to himself that he'd had some second thoughts. Getting married had never really been in Jay's life plan. Oh, sure, he had figured there'd be women in his life, maybe even children someday, but the reality of it was different than the vague imaginings he'd had. That he would marry a Buddhist he'd met on-line while recovering from an induced-stroke-a woman whose net persona had been that of an old Tibetan lama-had never figured into his fastasies. And now that the actual date had been set and the plans were being carefully laid, the idea that he was going to be married to somebody had begun to hit home.
One woman, for the rest of his life. Day in, day out, always around... v
Yeah, the sex was great, and yeah, he loved her, couldn't really imagine being alone, no Saji around; still, there was this ... finality about the idea of saying "I do" and signing a lifelong contract that had never really occurred to him until it was actually staring him in the face...
He got to the third floor. Took off his right glove, pressed it against the door. The door was cool to the touch. He took a couple of deep breaths of the stale- tasting compressed air from his bottle, then reached for the doorknob. Worry about getting married later. Right now, he had a job to do. Some guys were screwing with
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fe web, and he was the guy who was going to track them i and stop them.
obviously didn't know who they were messing
ttfce Bon Chance
fire scenario was okay, but overblown. Jay had al- been too gaudy about such things, spending too time on how good something looked when he have been concentrating on how well it worked. : and not substance.
ill, as Keller stood there in his fireman's gear, watch; Jay work, he had to give him credit. He was sniffing i right direction.
waited until Jay went past, heading for the i of the "fire." Maybe he could figure something out, ; not, but he wasn't going to get the chance. Keller 1 Jay up the stairwell, being careful to stay out of , tracking him by the sound of his boots on the steps. Jay was on the right floor, Keller moved in. It i dark, smoky, hot, all in all, a pretty good represen- a, as such things went. Jay was always big on details. : that was the curse of a small picture man, wasn't it? I't see the forest for the trees hi the way. No longi vision.
m a cabinet near the door, Keller pulled a thermite shaped like a bowling ball. He triggered the timer ten seconds, then rolled it across the floor toward the i Jay Gridley. Heard Jay stop and listen. 1 you later, Jay. You lose this round. ', bomb went off in a flare that destroyed the scenario (< Keller dropped out of VR and back into his cabin on (Bon Chance. He pulled off the sensory gear, laughing, i never had an opponent like me, Jay. I know all your moves. You don't have a prayer."
11
Oh the Bon Chance
An old man, maybe seventy-five or so, sat in a recliner in a low-rent room, pointing a remote at a battered television set, pushing buttons, but getting only scrambled, frantic pixels whirling on his screen.
A deep, masculine voice said, 'Tired of losing your net service? Unable to log onto the web because your server can't get its act together?"
Hie old man clicked the remote a couple more times, men shook his head and tossed the control onto a scratched table next to the worn and scuffed leather recliner.
A big, happy-looking German shepherd padded over to the old man. In his mouth, the dog held another remote, a silvery, glittering, truncated cone-shaped device. The old man looked at the dog, who dropped the device into his lap and gave him a dog smile.
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t's this, boy?" the old man said, dog gave one sharp bark, old man picked up the remote. i opening notes for Strauss's "Thus Spake Zarathu- began playing quietly in the background, deep voice said, "We at CyberNation understand frustration. And we have a guarantee-if you are kept off the net for more than an hour on a rNation server, we'll not only give you your money for that entire month, we'll give you your next of service absolutely free." music grew louder. Boom-boomboom-boomn-boom...
' old man looked at the dog and raised one eyebrow stion. The dog barked once, and it was obvious : he was saying. "Go for it!" to CyberNation, we are always here for you, twenty hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, i have our word on that, and we put our money where Imouth is."
old man pointed the remote at his television set. music's volume increased so that it rumbled over i old man and dog as if a full symphony orchestra was next room.
set morphed, changed into a giant window that nded to cover the entire wall. People stepped out and the shabby living room. There was an Indian holy in a turban and long flowing white robe; a black i in a grass skirt, bare from the waist up; a cowboy; | Arctic explorer; a big-game hunter. In addition, a rhino, i ostrich, and a small dinosaur stepped from the window the suddenly expanded living room. All of them
to get along famously.
; music reached its peak, thundering Strauss, horns ng their dramatic sting. "Anywhere, anytime, anybody you want to be- rNation can take you there. Come along. Join the lions of satisfied citizens of the net in mankind's
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greatest experiment. The future is waiting for you." The old man and dog both smiled as the music faded.
"What do you think?" Chance said.
Roberta said, "An old man and a dog?"
"Not everybody goes for the sex ads," she said. "Dogs are always good. You know the old story about the book title?"
'Berto shook his head.
"Well, the theory is, people like dogs. They also like Abraham Lincoln and they like their doctors, for the most part. So a book title that would guarantee instant sales would be Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog."
'Berto smiled.
"It's all about demographics. We catch a lot of the young male computer geeks with the sex come-ons. But we also have specific ads tailored for generation Xers, aging baby boomers turning into AARPers, young mothers, as many large groups as we can identify and niche- market to. Net, TV, radio, print ads, movie trailers, billboards, bus benches, sports sponsorships-everything from T-shirts to signs on racing cars-high school cable ed, you name it. Since the Blue Whale scramble, we've picked up eighty-eight thousand new subscribers on the U.S. West Coast alone."
"That's good, right?"
"Not as good as we'd hoped. The Net Force ops got in and patched things up faster than we exp
ected. We should have gotten twice that many new linkers."
He shrugged again. "So?"
'Truth is, things aren't moving along as quickly as we want. We are falling short of our projections. It looks as if we are going to have to ... step things up."
"More ads? More software scrambles?"
She looked at him. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "Don't pull my chain, Roberta."
He chuckled. "You have a new piercing you haven't told me about, Missy?"
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"Screw you."
"I'm ready when you are."
She smiled. Well. He had his charms, even when he
ayed at being duller than he was ...
t Force HQ tico, Virginia
in Net Force sweats and cross-trainers, John award stood under one of the chinning bars at the oh- cle course, rotating his head slowly to stretch the mus- i of his neck. Physical training was another thing he'd eked off on during his short-lived retirement. Not that e'd stopped completely-he'd kept up morning calis- , and he still hit the weights down in the basement couple times a week, plus he jogged most days for a miles; still, he hadn't run the course in almost a nth, and normally he'd do it at least twice a week. Probably he'd lost a couple of steps, but not that much. He jumped up, caught the steel bar, palms forward and titly wider than his shoulders, and started doing chins, knew after the first couple that his usual twelve or en routine was out of the question. By the fifth one, was straining, and it was all he could do to gut out Hen.
He was glad Julio Femandez was not here to see this. pf he had been, Howard would have had to find three or four more reps somewhere, and like as not, he'd have | pulled a muscle doing 'em.
He let himself hang for a few seconds after the tenth rep, to stretch out his lats, then dropped to the ground, ^disgusted with himself. Who was it-Gertrude Stein?- i who'd said that after you hit forty it's all patch, patch, (patch?
Didn't matter who said it, it was sure true. On the one hand, he still felt like a kid of nineteen. Yeah, his hairline
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showed a little more face than it used to and there were little tufts of gray at the temples. But there weren't too many wrinkles, and his general shape and weight wasn't that different from twenty, twenty-five years ago. If anything, he'd put on some muscle since his first hitch in the regular army. But the days of partying all night and then working a full day were gone. The occasional strain or bruise took longer to heal, and if he didn't stretch and warm up before he started working out hard, he got a lot more strains and bruises than he had as a kid. He thought he'd come to terms with getting older and slowing down, but he realized that didn't mean he could slack off. He wasn't going to get any younger or stronger, but if he didn't stay on top of things, he was going to get older and weaker a lot sooner. A layoff like this just pointed out what he knew was so-you might not be able to win in the end, but you were going to get there quicker if you didn't resist it every step of the way.
He took several deep breaths and looked at the obstacle course. He had his stopwatch, an old mechanical sweep- hand job he'd picked up from a Russian surplus place. Like that shotgun he'd given the commander, the Russians still did a lot of stuff the old-fashioned way. Not necessarily because of any desire for quality, but because they didn't have the technology to do it on the cheap. You could get a windup pocket- or stopwatch with an eighteen- jeweled movement for less than fifty bucks; a shotgun that was sturdy and well-made for maybe three, four hundred. Try that in the U.S. If you could even find such things, they'd cost an awful lot more.
He decided to skip the stopwatch and just run the course. He didn't really want to know how much he'd slowed down. He'd be happy just to get through without breaking something.
He set himself, and got ready to go. He was a religious man, he believed in God, and he'd been right with Jesus for a long time. He believed he would be admitted to the Kingdom of Heaven if he led a righteous life and he
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at it. But like the old joke his father used to tell, sn't ready to go now. He had a teenaged son and a wife, and he wanted to stick around long enough le at his grandchildren. Retiring had been part of but he realized as he gathered himself to hit the that sitting back in a rocker on the porch and liing the world go by might not be the solution. You 1 get hit by a runaway bus sitting on the porch-that [.happened to some guy in D.C. only a couple months k-instead of being shot by some psycho while you : leading a Net Force military team. God had His plan, : Howard's number was gonna be up on a certain day, i a certain hour, no matter where he was or what he was I. He'd thought that he'd been tempting fate, but after bus had left the road and squashed a guy younger he was who'd been sitting in a porch swing, he'd iized that death could come from anywhere at any time. , John, and worry about the meaning of life later- won't get you through the obstacle course, all this
ing.
He grinned. That was true. There was a time to think a time to move. Right now, moving was the order of moment. He took a final deep breath and began his sprint.
chaels looked up from his desk to see Toni, dressed in
siness clothes, standing in front of him.
"Hey, babe."
"Commander," she said with a short nod.
"Uh..."
She smiled. "If I'm going to be working here, even
ararily, we need to keep it businesslike." "What, I can't grope you in the hall?" "Not unless you want a sexual harassment suit" They both smiled. "Okay," he said. "So, what's the situation?" "Better than we'd hoped. Jay and the gang managed to
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find the problem with the server pretty quick. They had help from InfraGuard and the NIPC out of the CWG."
"And how are the National InfraGuard Protection Center and Crime Working Group?"
"Same as always. If they could make a wish, you and I and all of Net Force would disappear in a reeking puff of sulfur and red smoke."
Toni chuckled.
"Anyway, give them credit, they pitched in and helped Jay."
"How'd the terrorists get in?"
"Passwords. They had them up to the highest level."
"Social engineering," she said. "They bribed somebody."
He shook his head. "Maybe not. The VP in charge of Blue Whale's security was killed a few days ago, along with a couple of ex-FBI bodyguards. At the time, it looked like a simple traffic accident-car ran off a cliff, no signs of anything hinky. That seems awfully coincidental."
"Yes." She started to say something, then noticed the shotgun in its case, propped in the corner. "What's that?"
"A shotgun," he said. "John Howard got it for me."
"For what?"
He took a breath. 'To keep at home."
He wasn't sure exactly what he expected, but with her being a new mother and all, he was halfway thinking she'd be against the idea. Instead, she said, "Good idea. We need a gun in the house."
His expression must have shown his surprise. She said, "What, you thought because I like knives I have something against guns?"
"Well..."
"Silat teaches you to use the proper tool for the job. There are times when a gun is necessary."
He nodded. "How is Guru?"
"She's fine. Looks great, no slurring of her speech, seems to move like usual."
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"You aren't worried that the baby will be too much for
Toni grinned. "He woke, up from his nap squalling, n't want a bottle or his binky, wasn't wet, no poop, yelling his head off. Guru took him from me and he up as if she'd turned off a switch. Clickl just like and he was cooing and grinning. I couldn't believe I looked at him, said, 'Who are you? What have you
with my baby!""
Michaels laughed. "Get her to teach you that trick, it's worth a fortune."
"You're telling me. Okay. So what do you want me to r"?"
; "Same thing you used to do. I've talked to the director, doesn't have a problem with you being here instead 'there. You'll be a consultant, so we can pay you. This ost recent attack on the net/web is surely the responsijibility of the same group who hit it before. And if they polled the VP to get the security codes, then they've raised ^ the stakes. If they are willing to murder, this is going to i get uglier before it gets prettier." Toni nodded. "I hear you." "So let's get to it. Your old office is yours again. It's good to have you back; Ms. Fiorella."
"It's good to be back, Commander Honey." He laughed.
12
Quantico, Virginia
Any amusement the FBI recruits might have felt on seeing Net Force's Commander in a sarong over his sweatpants left at least several of those minds after Michaels slammed their owners onto the gym's mats hard enough so they bounced. He enjoyed this way more than he should. He'd seen the grins when he and Toni walked in, heard a few chuckles from the recruits on seeing his clothes.
They weren't laughing now, were they?
Toni had shown some simple self-defense moves, using Michaels as the dummy, and he'd dusted the mats pretty good himself. Then she called for volunteers and had him demonstrate the techniques so she could point out what he was doing and why.
He had earned the right to toss these guys, he figured, aside from the sarong-inspired amusement. He'd paid his share of dues. A couple months ago, when Toni had been working with him on his sparring, she'd put on a pair of boxing gloves and had danced in and out, throwing fast punches. He'd gone after her during one attack, trying to
Clancy,Tom - Net Force - Cybernation.txt Page 9
