Molehunt

by Paul Collins

  A huge cat’s eye appeared on the screen. As Maximus’s jaw began to drop open, the pixelated eye slowly winked at him.

  Very funny, ha ha.

  Well, he had a joke or two of his own. For one, he had tied a subtle launcher to the deactivation cycle of the tracker. Whenever the tracker was neutralised, a self-randomising algorithm was immediately launched. This algorithm would fragment the already encrypted data. A clever and sustained effort to decrypt the e-pad’s data might still throw up random fragments.

  Touché, Ms Longshadow.

  Yet there was no way to know which fragments. She was clever, and she had proved that she was into sustained efforts. He slammed his fist down on the desktop. He had to be more careful.

  His next e-pad would feature a thermal charge keyed to his own neuro-EM signature. If the pad left his person for five minutes it would turn itself into a molten blob of uselessness. Yes, that was it … but he might go through a lot of e-pads.

  Still, it was incentive to be careful.

  The next day Maximus learned that Anneke had been summoned to appear before the Ethics and Standards Committee regarding the rather drastic retirement of Commander Viktus. Young Captain Arvakur was conducting the criminal investigation.

  Maximus glowed with triumph. He was also tempted to activate the ‘bomb’ on Se’atma Minor, but counselled himself to have patience. All good things come to those who wait.

  Next he received a coded message from his Quesadan handler. When Maximus read it he flushed in anger. It was a demand.

  The Quesada Corporation wanted the latest defence readouts for the quadrant that buffered the Cygnus Sector from RIM Delta Sector. It was one of a dozen RIM-controlled sectors, a buffer region known as the Non-Aligned Zone. It was a free-fire zone, covering an area of several cubic light years, and jamming technologies interfered with information flow between RIM-dominated stars.

  Drown them in pig shit, Maximus thought. I’m not ready.

  It was definitely not a request. He deciphered more of the code string. Comply or risk talima, he read. Talima. Not good.

  Talima was the complete ex-communication of someone from life itself. Not just a declaration of open season or fat’wa on that person for anyone who wanted to earn fast and serious money, but a quasi-legal termination of their rights as a human being. It was a throwback to an almost medieval system of rites, challenges, honour and obligation. In this deadly social pressure cooker, the existence of each citizen had been assigned a very simple and negotiable market value. They could be bought and sold.

  Maximus knew that he could survive a talima, but it would be highly inconvenient. He disliked the prospect of unwelcome attention and scrutiny even more than the danger. Besides, the deal would also be off, and right now he needed it.

  He contacted Kilroy and told him to monitor the Anneke Longshadow hearings and shadow her. He could deal with her in his next spare minute.

  He was pondering how he should go about stealing the highly secure top-secret defence readouts, when the answer walked past him. Young Esprin Harbage was back from his leave, and he looked disgruntled.

  ‘Why the long face?’ Maximus asked.

  Esprin, eager for someone to complain to, scowled dramatically. ‘The bloody idiots! They think I’m a penetration agent. Me! Five generations of Rimmers, that’s what my family has produced. Five! Bloody idiots, I say.’

  ‘It’ll blow over,’ said Maximus, with all the sympathy of a counsellor.

  Esprin shook his head. ‘Maybe. But until then I’m on light duties with restricted access. How can I do my job?’

  Maximus came around his desk and laid a hand on Esprin’s shoulder. ‘Look, maybe I can help.’

  Esprin looked up. ‘You? What could you do?’

  ‘It could be simple. Chances are you’ve already been cleared and the paperwork is log jammed.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Bound to be.’

  Esprin brightened. ‘If there’s anything you could do … I’d owe you big time.’

  ‘Probably big-time for me but small-time for you,’ said Maximus, making a joke of it.

  Two days later Esprin was back at work in Counter Intelligence, his security rating fully restored. Five days after that, he was standing in a dark corridor at two in the morning, sweating with terror.

  It had all started twenty-four hours earlier. Esprin had invited Maximus to his apartment to thank him for getting his rating restored and clearing him of suspicion. He broke open a bottle of sixty-year-old lissa, a beverage similar to Terran whisky. They had toasted Esprin’s success, and talked about the current galactic situation.

  At the end of the evening Maximus had gotten up to go. As they shook hands Esprin had thanked Maximus again, and assured him that if there was anything he could do for him, he had only to ask.

  ‘Actually there is, now that you mention it,’ Maximus had replied.

  ‘Anything,’ said Esprin exuberantly. ‘Name it, and it’s yours.’

  ‘How about a copy of the defence readouts from the Non-Aligned Zone?’

  Esprin stared at him a moment then burst out laughing. Maximus laughed too.

  ‘No problem,’ said Esprin. ‘I’ll just walk into a heavily-secured site in RIM, download the data onto a cube, and stroll out.’

  They both laughed again. Maximus removed something from his pocket. It was a wrist-comm unit, the type worn by people who lacked neural jacks in their necks. It resembled an old-style wristwatch.

  Now Esprin frowned.

  ‘Download the data to your terminal. Use a one gig per millisecond-compression rate and make sure this comm unit is within eight centimetres of your screen. It’ll do the rest. When you’re finished go to the toilet, press this metal needle into the cavity on the side of the comm unit and wait till you hear a soft click. When you do, remove the needle carefully. On the end of it there will be a tiny sphere. Swallow it.’

  Esprin stared at Maximus, bewilderment spreading across his face.

  ‘After you swallow it, Esprin, work late. Whatever you do, do not pee! Got that? If you pee, I’ll kill you. The data capsule will end up in your bladder and will exit your body in your urine. So let me say this again. Do not pee. Go before you swallow the capsule. You’ll be in the toilet anyway..Have you got all that?’

  Esprin was waiting for the punch line. Maximus sighed and removed a needler from inside his tunic. Esprin’s eyes went wide at the sight of the illegal – almost mythical – weapon.

  ‘Good, you already know that these things really hurt. Now listen carefully, your life will depend on it. Earlier tonight I placed an undetectable colloid in your lissa. By now it has spread through your bloodstream.’

  Esprin gasped softly. ‘I don’t understand, Maximus. What are you saying?’

  ‘I’ve poisoned you, and I have the only antidote. The poison will remain in your system till I give you the neutraliser. Until then, you will need to take the antidote daily or you will die in agony, and pretty messily as well. Here is a sample of the colloid. You can get it checked discreetly almost anywhere in the Draco Quarter. You may want to take a sample of the lissa in your glass as well.’

  Esprin was sober by now. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘Deadly serious.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Maximus sighed – then slapped Esprin, hard. The youth gasped then backed away, whimpering.

  ‘Esprin, Esprin, learn to listen. I want the complete defence strategic readouts of the non-aligned quadrant. You have instructions for getting them.

  You know what will happen if you do not. Do you hear me now?’

  Esprin nodded.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I thought you were my friend,’ muttered Esprin.

  ‘Lots of people think I am their friend,’ said Maximus.

  Esprin leaned against a wall, submerged in shadow and fear. He had done everything Maximus had asked him to do, including the analysis of the poison. The chemist
confirmed the nature of the colloid and even volunteered its effects, which were as disgusting as Maximus had promised. Or worse.

  ‘Why’d you want to know?’ the chemist called as Esprin left. ‘Didn’t swallow some, did you?’

  ‘Yeah, I did and I’m dead, can’t you see?’ Esprin called back.

  Esprin started at a noise, then realised it was his teeth chattering. He clenched his jaw and made his way back to his desk. It was late, already past two in the morning. There was no one else around but the guards. He had already been vetted by two of them, but he was clean. Besides, it was not unusual for cadets to work late, especially the ambitious ones.

  Esprin’s only ambition now was to stay alive.

  He got to his desk, which sat in a lonely pool of light in a large darkened room. He sat down, crossing his legs tightly. He had forgotten to pee, and now he was busting.

  It was all such a nightmare. Two weeks ago he had been on vacation and chatting to the beautiful Anneke. Now his life was hanging by his bladder muscles.

  Maximus had been adamant about not pissing; yet he needed to wait two hours before trying to leave. Any earlier and there was a chance the exit detectors would pick up the presence of the capsule in his system.

  Esprin had asked Maximus why he didn’t use a worm.

  Maximus had laughed. ‘Use your head, Esprin. What e-m worm could hold tens of thousands of gigabytes of data?’

  Esprin felt the sting of Maximus’s contempt. He watched the clock on his computer tick away the minutes. Time was moving with agonising slowness and his bladder seemed filled with razor blades.

  He tried to work, but his fingers moved clumsily over the holoboard, moving the wrong projections of letters and symbols. It was hard to work with death looking over his shoulder.

  Esprin cruised the internal net, logging onto sites at random. Suddenly the screen cleared and a face stared out at him.

  ‘What are you doing, Cadet?’ The speaker was a handsome young man in his early twenties. He had jet-black hair and piercing eyes that frightened Esprin. The insignia on his tunic indicated he was with the Investigation Branch.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m Captain Arvakur. Our sweep shows you’ve been sitting at your computer for the last twenty minutes doing nothing. Are you ill? You certainly look it.’

  Esprin swallowed. What should he do? He cursed himself that he could never think quickly on his feet.

  ‘Yes sir, I’m not feeling well.’

  ‘Then go to your quarters or report to the infirmary.’

  ‘But I’ve got all this work to do.’

  Arvakur peered at him. ‘What work? You’ve just returned to duty, Cadet. Your file says so. You haven’t yet been assigned a full slate.’ Arvakur leaned closer to his pickup. ‘You wait right there. I’m coming over.’

  The screen went dead.

  Esprin panicked. He grabbed a flask from his drawer and ran to the toilet. Fumbling, he removed the lid from the flask and peed into it, being very careful not to spill even one drop. Then he resealed it, tied the wrist comm to the flask’s field webbing, and flushed the entire thing down the toilet.

  Then he stood back. And smiled proudly. He had done something really clever. The kind of thing real spies did when they got themselves into a tight spot.

  He took a deep breath and hurried back to his desk. He was still shaking and clammy, but the awful fear of discovery had been lifted from him.

  The only fear he had now was that he would die horribly. Somehow, that seemed the lesser of the two evils.

  Maximus could not believe his ears. ‘You did what?”

  ‘I flushed it.’

  ‘You flushed it?’

  ‘With the comm unit. That way you can –’

  ‘Track it. Good one, Esprin. Smart.’ Maximus’s sarcasm went right over Esprin’s head. ‘So what did this Arvakur do?’

  ‘He took me to the infirmary. He said I looked awful.’

  Maximus shook his head. ‘If I don’t recover that flask, you really will look awful.’

  All day he trawled through the city, using his tracker to follow the flask as it slowly wound its way through the sewerage system. Near midnight, the tracker led him to a treatment plant south of the city. Security was not tight at the plant, but the complex was vast, covering two square kilometres. The smell was disgusting. A thermal converter with a dozen tanks and bunched piping turned sewage, carbon, rubber, grease and scraps into oil.

  Before Maximus went into the plant he screwed in nose filters and pulled on a backpack containing a waterproof suit and breathing apparatus. He hoped he wouldn’t be needing it.

  Using another sticky field unit he climbed up the side of the main building and cautiously crossed the roof to a stairwell. His tracker told him the flask was directly below him, though it didn’t give him a depth reading.

  He vaporised the lock on the stairwell and padded down the stairs. The security cameras were easily neutralised and he didn’t encounter any guards.

  As he had feared, the flask was in a deep tank that oxygenated the effluent. He donned his suit and breather and reluctantly lowered himself into the muck. Luckily the flask’s shape was easily distinguishable amongst the tank’s sewage. Maximus saw it clearly through his multi-spectrum goggles.

  Whereas retrieving the flask was easy, he ran into a problem when he surfaced. Three sanitary workers had congregated on the walkway above. Apparently he had triggered an alarm in the sewerage system, probably designed to detect large objects that could gum up the works.

  Maximus remained below the surface; his goggles allowed him to make out the workers and pick up their conversation. One of them recommended they run the ‘masher’.

  ‘That’ll grind it up and we can get back to the game.’

  A second man agreed with him.

  Finally, the third shrugged, giving in. ‘There’ll be hell to pay in the morning if this goes wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, so what? Who else’d take this job?’

  They all laughed. The first man went off to start the masher. Maximus knew he had only a few moments before he would be ground into tiny bits.

  ‘Well, nothing like the bold approach,’ he said to himself, as he climbed out of the tank in full view of the two remaining men. They took one look at him, gasped, and ran off, shouting at the top of their lungs. By the time they returned with armed security, he was gone.

  Maximus returned to his safe house and processed the data from the capsule Esprin had stolen. A small portion of data had been corrupted by its journey, but on the whole it was an overwhelming success. Esprin might just be allowed to live; with his pedigree, he had a lot to offer.

  No silver lining was ever without a cloud, however. Kilroy ee’ed on a secure line that Anneke Long-shadow had dropped out of sight.

  The investigation into Viktus’s murder had turned up odd bits of data and just a day earlier Maximus had activated the ‘bomb’ on Se’atma. It had gone off with a pleasant explosion in the local media, duly reporting that a teenager named Anneke Longshadow had been involved in illicit neurodrug trafficking, and killed her supplier in a drug dispute.

  The discrediting of Anneke had begun. Good.

  But now she had vanished off the radar. Bad.

  Maximus didn’t like it. He put a substantial reward out on the streets for any information relating to Anneke. Later that day he heard the Committee wanted to interview her again and that the zealous Arvakur had left for Se’atma Minor.

  The noose was tightening around Anneke’s neck.

  ANNEKE straightened her tunic and went in. The Committee for Ethics and Standards was composed of eight men and women seated around a horseshoe-shaped table. Another man, young and handsome and with the insignia of the Investigations Branch on his tunic, sat in the observer’s chair in the corner. Anneke was told to sit down in the single chair that faced the committee.

  A grey-haired man cleared his throat, formally opened the proceedings, and informed Anneke she
could request counsel at any time.

  ‘Am I on trial?’ she asked.

  The committeeman shook his head. ‘This is a fact-finding meeting, Cadet Longshadow. However, the information you provide will be recorded and can, if deemed appropriate, be used against you in a court-martial.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Anneke.

  ‘Good. Then proceedings will begin. Our task is to evaluate whether a breach of RIM code has occurred. A matter relevant to this is the recent demise of your uncle, Commander Viktus. Captain Arvakur will be observing on behalf of Investigations.’

  The handsome man in the corner nodded and he and Anneke locked eyes for a moment.

  ‘Now, Cadet Longshadow, information has reached this committee that suggests you had reason to wish your uncle dead …’

  The proceedings lasted all that day. Anneke answered questions as best she could, sometimes hotly denying their suggestions. At one point she fought back tears, calling the rumours disgusting, part of a campaign to discredit her. When questioned further she pointed out that she had come close to unmasking a mole inside RIM command and that they should authenticate her claim.

  At this point a man who till then had said nothing asked her pointedly, ‘Cadet Longshadow, if the suggestions raised by this committee were true would it not be to your advantage to create just this kind of smokescreen?’

  Anneke eyed the man for a moment, long enough to make him aware that he now registered on her personal radar. ‘Except that the information I passed on about the mole occurred some weeks ago.’

  The man snorted. ‘Well, doesn’t that make it all the more premeditated?’

  ‘If I am being accused . . !’ she began but the moderator raised his hands for calm.

  Anneke bit off her next words, simmering in silence. Her inquisitor sat back, as if he had pronounced sentence.

  As the questioning continued Anneke consoled herself that the day was not a complete waste. Earlier that morning she had visited a little-known company called Enigma where she dropped off the mole’s e-pad to a group of maverick code-breakers she had once worked with and whom her uncle trusted. One of the members was an Oracle robot that knew everything there was to know about code breaking and encryption. The robot was able to operate because the servo-sensor-relay that was in its metallic skull was within a few kilometres of the huge three-storey ‘brain’.