Trail of Evil - eARC

by Travis S. Taylor

  Candis, hit me with some stims again, I’m getting a little tired.

  Roger that. The AIC triggered a release of chemicals through the organogel layer of the suit that would time release stimulants and calories into his system. In the new suits a soldier could go for days without sleep and never lose alertness. Without eating though, the stomach still would feel empty. There were drugs for that feeling too, but there was also food. He preferred food.

  Jack popped his visor for some fresh night air and then fumbled through his chest pouch for some rations. He found a very dense energy bar and decided to chew on that for a bit. The peanut butter and chocolate flavor was actually inviting even if the damned thing was as chewy as glue. He looked up at the night sky as he chewed. The moon of the planet wasn’t much smaller than Luna back home. The surface of this entire moon, however, was covered with lit-up structures. It looked very much alive.

  Jack continued to carefully position himself to watch and catalog movement of the people and vehicles. His suit’s sensors logged any motion detectable, including aircraft. All of the information might prove useful to the analysts in the “looney bin” when they returned. After another five or so hours of bouncing from rooftop to rooftop he decided it was time to take a break. He found a rooftop that had a mechanical maintenance alcove on top of it and backed himself into the shadows of the structural gridwork.

  Jack adjusted his position within the structural members of the alcove near the precipice of the building. He estimated where he was to be about fifty stories high. There were taller buildings further to the north, but he would be able to learn a lot about the city from where he was. He could see entrances for the subways and private vehicles. What he didn’t see were no billboards, magazines, or movie theaters. It unnerved Jack because there was something not, well, not human about it.

  He sat down and then propped himself up against one of the girders on the building top that jutted upward to something that might have been a water tank, but Jack wasn’t sure. He made certain his sensors and his visor would be pointed in such a way as to give him maximum field of view. Then he closed his visor and then closed his eyes.

  Candis, I’m going to take a nap. Keep me posted if anything happens. He thought.

  Roger that, Jack. From the motion on the blue force tracker and through AIC affirmation most of the recon team is sacked out too. Candis said.

  How long to sunrise?

  About three hours.

  If nothing happens, wait til then to wake me up.

  Aye sir.

  “DeathRay, this is Apple One.” Jack opened his eyes. It took him a few seconds to orient his mind as to where he was. His stomach growled as well. Jack could tell the yellow sun was on the verge of breaking across the horizon. The sky to the east was bright and turning pink and blue.

  I was about to wake you anyway, sir, Candis said into his mind.

  Right. Time to earn our pay. He reached into his chest pack for some breakfast.

  “Go ahead, Dee.”

  “I’m on the north side of the largest spire a bit west of you. You can see in the DTM. I think there’s something here you ought to see.”

  “What have you got?” DeathRay said.

  “My AIC and Amari have been scanning the QM bands for large noise floor or any evidence for a signal. They’ve found what we think is similar to the background noise created when Copernicus hacks other AICs, but it is a much much larger noise background. Nancy’s AIC agrees with us.”

  “I can confirm that, sir,” Amari’s voice came in through the tac-net open channel. “Using data from every known encounter with Copernicus over the last eighteen months I can correlate the present background with a ninety nine point nine eight seven percent certainty. It is definitely Copernicus, but on a very large scale, sir.”

  “Okay, so what?” DeathRay asked. “Copernicus is hacking a bunch of people at once?”

  “No sir,” Dee said. “I think it is something bigger than just hacking. The problem is that I don’t know what.”

  “Okay, anything else?”

  “Well, yes,” Amari added. “I’ve been using data from all your suits and Major Moore and Mrs. Penzington have been moving around in directions I needed them to go to better triangulate the multi-path noise signals. Then I linked into the Archangels and generated an algorithm to track the peak noise level. Major Moore is there now.”

  “I’m right on top of it. I think it’s some sort of communications nexus.” Dee said. “I’m not so sure that these clones aren’t just humans slaved by an AIC. They’re all run by a Copernicus or perhaps one central Copernicus, if that is possible. And I think this is the factory that’s creating, distributing, and controlling the Copernicus computers or transceivers or whatever they are.”

  “Hold on, Dee. Let’s hold off on the speculation until we have more data. We’re going to converge on you. Hold your position, and stay out of sight.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Okay, team, you heard the lady. We’re converging on Apple Ones’s location, and everybody, stay calm, cool, collected, and out of sight.”

  Jack tuned over the comm to a private channel to Nancy Penzington. He wanted to tell his wife good morning anyway.

  “Good morning, gorgeous. What’s up over there?”

  “I’m pretty sure that Dee’s right about this, but there’s something about it that doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I just saw a hundred and fourth face. Alison has confirmed it.”

  “What? A hundred-and-fourth face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean there’s another clone? Maybe we just haven’t seen that one yet. It could be from another continent or something that doesn’t make here often.” Jack asked.

  “Well, that is possible. But, I don’t think so, Jack, because I’ve only seen the one face the one time. As busy as this city is, we’ve seen thousands, maybe millions, of people in the last twenty or so hours. Nobody has catalogued this face. Allison has verified this. I even hacked into a security camera net that I found on the streets. Allison has been running facial recognition codes for hours and nothing but one hundred and three faces. This face is significant and different.”

  “Track it, Nancy, track it!” Jack said. “This is anomalous and I agree, it must mean something.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Stay with it and keep us posted.”

  “Roger that. Nancy out.”

  A hundred-and-fourth face. That’s strange, Jack thought.

  Well, maybe not, Jack, Candis, responded to his mind. It’s possible that she just hasn’t seen the other clones and that’s it is not the only one.

  It’s possible. But Nancy’s so damn thorough, I wouldn’t see her making a mistake like that. And I wouldn’t see her calling something in like that, if she’s not researched it a little bit deeper. It makes me nervous that she hacked the security cameras without asking first, but she doesn’t need my permission.

  I just said it was possible, Jack. I didn’t say I believed it.

  Jack just grunted to himself.

  Jack stayed close to the building walls along the alleyways and carefully moved toward Dee’s position. He hoped that, once he got there, what he would find was a reason for this system and how its population had managed to get so large so quickly.

  “Rackman,” Nancy opened a channel to the SEAL who had been shadowing her for the past hour or so as they had bounced on rooftops keeping themselves a good kilometer from the target and each other. Even though they were jamming most sensors, a key part of recon was staying out of sight of the bad guys. “I want you to cover my backside and spot for me.”

  “Roger that,” the SEAL replied. “I’ll take a vantage point as high up as I can and keep you in my long range sensor view. Rifle is at the ready if you need me.”

  “Good. If you can, help me keep an eye on our target.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Nancy saw
the humanoid with the hundred-and-fourth face casually mixing through the crowd, and at no time did the crowd seem to pay him any attention. Nancy, on the other hand, was certainly an outsider and would draw attention to herself in her powered armor. She stayed on top of the higher buildings when she could using the recon sensors of her suit to keep track of her target. Occasionally, she and Rackman would have to leapfrog each other to find vantage points giving them a solid view of the target while still staying out of sight. This made tracking the individual much more difficult. Nancy had done plenty of stealth missions in the past and she knew how to stay out of sight. The SEAL seemed pretty good at it as well. But there was something almost too easy about their mission. They had yet to even have a close call.

  In order to maintain her track she had to use all the street cameras she could hack. It also meant she had to go from rooftop to rooftop, alleyway to alleyway, and even underground on three different occasions. But it wasn’t anything that Nancy hadn’t done before. Having Rackman keeping an eye out on the topside actually made it easier than it could have been without him.

  Allison, you got a track on him?

  I’ve got him, Nancy. But if you can’t stay any closer, we’re going to have to go active with the sensors. Or look into other low tier security systems we can hack.

  Negative, Nancy thought. As soon as we go active with sensors, Copernicus will know we’re here. It’s already a risk hacking local systems.

  Who says he doesn’t already, and he’s just playing with us? How do we know that hundred-and-fourth face isn’t Copernicus? Allison thought into Nancy’s mind.

  I’m not so sure, Allison. Copernicus would hide himself. He would want to look just like everybody else. That’s the way he’s operated, with staying behind the curtain. This is something else. This is someone else.

  Perhaps you were right the first time, Nancy, Allison thought. Perhaps it’s something else. For now, I’m only hacking individual standalone systems. Our hack would appear nothing more than another standalone transceiver. I hope.

  The target might be something else. That is unsettling isn’t it? That gave Nancy pause. That was what made her nervous—”something else” was an unknown. Nancy didn’t like unknowns. Boland was rubbing off on her.

  Chapter 32

  December 3, 2406 AD

  61 Ursae Majoris

  31 Light-years from the Sol System

  Saturday, 8:04 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

  Nancy followed the track in the opposite direction of the rest of the team. The target had stopped for coffee at a local shop. He ate what appeared to be a bagel and washed it down with a large cup of black coffee. The face that the guy made as he ate and drank was one of sheer delight, as though it was a major treat. Nancy wasn’t sure what was more weird to her, the fact that the guy acted like having coffee and a bagel was exciting or the fact that she was on a planet thirty-one light-years from Earth and it looked and felt as much like Earth as Earth did. However, the construction and implacement of this city had been accomplished, from human standards it would have taken centuries. Humanity just hadn’t been out this far long enough to build such a city. To top that off, the entire planet was densly populated. The planet’s moon appeared to be the same as well. And there were two other planets in the system that were inhabited. The system could easily hold twenty or thirty billion people.

  If they were people.

  At one point the man took a subway train and Nancy almost lost him. She had lost Rackman in the process. The SEAL had been too far back to jump on a train with her. He eventually caught up once she figured out where she was going.

  Allison spread her search as far as her low-level sensors would reach while she ran at top speeds and as best out of sight as she could to catch up with the train. At two different points she managed to jump on trains headed in what she hoped was the same general direction as the train her target had taken. After about five minutes Allison regained track on the target through security cameras. Soon after that Nancy managed to catch back up to within spitting distance.

  Looks like he might be at his destination, Allison said to her.

  Good, where are we relative to the continent, the team, and the shuttle? All of the information popped up in her DTM view. Nancy spent a few seconds zooming in and out of the data getting her bearings. Okay, now get me zoomed in good on this guy.

  Roger that, Allison said.

  “Rackman? You about caught up with me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve got my crosshairs on the back of your head right now,” Rackman said.

  “Uh, good, but what do you say we keep the crosshairs on our target’s head, huh?”

  “Roger that, Pensginton,” Rackman laughed.

  After multiple train hops and fast runs with jumpboots firing they had managed to follow their target to a large estate house. The estate house was surrounded by a fence and its architecture looked like a cross between the Federalist architecture of Washington, D.C. with a mix of New Tharsis architecture on Ares where Elle Ahmi had made her Separatist Capitol during the war. In fact, there was something very Separatist about the estate. If this planet had a White House, this had to be it.

  The target spent a second outside the guard gate discussing something with the guards. He stood straight and unmoving for several moments until the gate was opened and he was escorted through.

  Shit. We need to find a way inside there. Allison, find me a sewer, low fence, service entrance or something.

  Got it, Nancy. Allison replied almost as if she had anticipated what Nancy would ask. South entrance is not currently being guarded and it is locked down. The gate is only six meters or so tall. Piece of cake.

  While this “White House” had been built with security in mind, it was clear that whoever built it wasn’t really concerned that a person in a powered armored suit would be trying to get in. Certainly, they weren’t expecting a suit that was jamming every sensor in view with a Buckley-Freeman switch that was reverse engineered from Elle Ahmi’s or Copernicus’ own handiwork.

  The mansion was surrounded by the city, much like the White House. Nancy bounced over several rooftops to make it to the south entrance. From that vantage point she could see into the backyard of the building. While the architecture was similar to the White House of Earth, the building was more than ten stories high, which was more like Ahmi’s mansion penthouse on Ares. There were buildings around that were about as tall and maybe slightly taller, but none were skyscrapers like those seen further north where the rest of the team was currently.

  Nancy positioned herself on the highest vantage point nearby. In order to get there she had climbed up exterior fire escapes and even clawed her way up the side of a hotel. The sun was just barely peeking above the horizon and it was a bit of an overcast day. It was very early and she hoped nobody was paying her any attention. Either she had done a good job hiding herself and the Buckley-Freeman switch was working, or she had been seen and nobody cared.

  Nancy looked out at the top of the “White House” building. It was more than fifty meters away across a wide street and about five meters below her current position. Nancy didn’t think she could make it from one rooftop to the other in one leap, but she did think if she timed it right with traffic and passersby that she could bounce once just outside the gate, up and over, and then land against the wall of the building. From there Allison had already identified a service entrance. Nancy would have to get out of the suit to go any further than that.

  She waited as a few vehicles purred down the street. The sounds of the electric engines were about the only source of ambient noise other than birds and squirrels and the wind.

  Go now! Allison shouted in her mind.

  Nancy bounced in a long sweeping arc from the rooftop all the way across the street and to the ground just outside the south gate. Almost as instantly as she hit the ground she bounced again up and over the wall to the ground twenty meters on the other side. She bounced once more and closed
the gap to the service entrance.

  Nancy stayed low and had her suit is digital camouflage blending in with the paint colors and other surroundings. She clanked up to the service entrance and hid behind a dumpster alcove.

  Can you get me in, Allison?

  I’m cycling through the lock codes now, the super spy’s AIC replied. A few seconds later and the lock clicked. Nancy quickly rushed to the door and slipped inside.

  She looked around and could only see a long corridor stretching out in front of her with multiple hallways extending out to the left and right along the length of it. The corridor and the hallways were all large enough for a supply vehicle to drive through and the walls and floor were painted in nondescript dull gray but clean and well-maintained. There were yellow and black stripes on the floor showing forklift lanes and pedestrian walkways. Nancy followed the corridor to a service elevator and had Allison bring it down to her level.

  Have you still got a visual on the target? She thought.

  Negative, Nancy. All of the cameras in this building are on their own internal circuit. I am afraid if I hack into them I will alert someone to our presence. However, I got his voice pattern from the coffee shop and the front gate here. And there is an intercom system that isn’t connected to the security network so I am tracking his voice through it. He is on the tenth penthouse level. Now that I have a few voice pattern samples I can use ambient data transmission multi-path noise to pull his voice out of the background. I can track him anywhere in this building now. He is entering the penthouse office suite now.