The Cardinal Rule

by Cate Dermody

  “In a real-life situation it would always do that,” Brandon said with a nod. “It’s a matter of turning it over to the AI. Here.” He brushed his finger over the pad, indicating the sequence Alisha should put in. She echoed the actions, then sent the command, watching the droid break off from its original eastern path and simply flow back toward the platform in an almost straight line. Its only deviations were to avoid the landmines that cropped up on its sensors, which Alisha watched on the screen she held. When it encountered a half-circle of mines directly in front of it, it paused, scooping up stones to throw, and moments later swarmed through the smoke and rubble unharmed.

  “Have you tested it against living targets yet?”

  “Only in extremely controlled situations,” Rafe said. There was still a note of discomfort in his voice, as if he was still distressed by the drone’s malfunction earlier. As well he should be, Alisha thought. “We’ve arranged for a demonstration in the morning. Will that suit?”

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll have time to make a written assessment of the drone’s capabilities as I’ve seen them so far for my employers.” The clinical answer covered her real thoughts: that more importantly, she’d have time to do some snooping and search the base’s computers.

  The drone glided up, dropping the white flag onto the platform before hunching back down to its hobbit-height to await further orders. Alisha crouched to pick the flag up, smiling over her shoulder at the two scientists. “A truce,” she said lightly. “In the name of scientific exploration.”

  “Why, Ms. Moon.” Brandon gave her a crooked smile. “We’re not on opposite sides.”

  “Of course not.” She put her hand up, letting him take it and help her to her feet. Of course not.

  Chapter 6

  The downward trill of the Mission: Impossible theme song played in the back of Alisha’s mind, making her grin even as she concentrated. Not every job gave a girl the chance to play along to that music and actually have good reason to. She’d trained herself out of mouthing the sounds as she edged along; it’d taken longer to break the habit of shifting her shoulders in abrupt isolations at the sharp beats in the music. But both those practices had been abandoned a long time ago now, even if the thoughts that provoked them were ingrained, part and parcel.

  The ventilation shafts in the building had been built to cut off any outside circulation in the event of nuclear war. Generators beneath the building, according to fifty-year-old blueprints, would keep the bunker’s air fresh and provide heat to anyone lucky enough to survive the anticipated war.

  The ducts’ narrowness had a secondary objective, not necessarily one that had been considered in the architecture of the building: to prevent exactly the sort of thing she was doing now. Few men—at least few men in a military organization that had height and weight requirements—would have fit through the cool narrow tunnels. There were places where even Alisha regretted the filling dinner she’d eaten.

  She’d met with Hashikov, the base’s general, over dinner, the two of them flanked by Brandon, Rafe and others of Brandon’s research team. Hashikov hated the idea of the drone: that much had been clear from the tone of his voice. He thought war was best left to men, an opinion that laid heavily over the conversation even if it went unspoken. There was no glory in sending a robot out to fight battles. Even so, he grudgingly admitted that the prototype might have its uses as a front-line combatant and scout.

  Alisha saw more potential for the drones than the general did. Its movement capability was considerably superior to the current robot warriors in use; they functioned on track treads, like a tank, but lacked the weight of a tank that allowed those vehicles to inexorably crush almost anything in their path. Brandon’s prototype could actually scale walls without reducing them to rubble first, making it dangerous not just on a ground level, but even up into buildings. Individuals could be sought out and destroyed by the artificially intelligent drone in a way that current robotic soldiers couldn’t match.

  And there were too many places in the world that such technology might be put to use immediately. The Balkans, the Middle East; between India and Pakistan. Even Northern Ireland; anywhere that old hatred ran deep and peace was fragile. Alisha had no personal understanding of whether the mission to obtain the drone schematics and Brandon Parker was critical for a military movement headed by the United States, or if it was simply a preemptive move.

  Yours is not to wonder why singsonged through her mind. Yours is but to do or die. She preferred to know, of course, what the ultimate goal of her missions were, but in the end she followed her orders in the trust that her superiors were making the best choices.

  Like any paramilitary organization, she thought. She’d taken Brandon’s warning to heart, that Hashikov didn’t like outsiders intruding on his own military organization. It disrupted the schedule and brought questions to mind; men and women in a chain of command preferred that orders be followed and questions set aside. It was a pity, she thought, because the general might well have been easily seduced—in mind, through open adoration, if not physically—by a fragile-seeming female.

  Might have been. The flip side was that he might be outraged at a woman trying to invade his domain.

  So she would simply invade it the old-fashioned way. Alisha grinned again, rolling onto her back as she reached a ninety-degree upright connection in the ventilation tunnels. There was no room to stand, but thin grooves in the shaft walls—grooves that would rotate and fold closed in case of nuclear war—gave her enough purchase to slowly pull herself up through the walls. Her fingers trembled and ached with the effort, shivers of stress working down through her arms and into her shoulders. She took deep, deliberate breaths, making certain to get enough oxygen to the overworked muscles. The air tasted faintly of metal and dust, as if it had been tainted by long years of lingering in the ventilation shafts. It lay in the back of her throat, a sweet tangy taste like blood. There was barely enough room to pull in those cloying breaths, and each expansion of her ribs made her feel as if she couldn’t quite draw in enough air. Her toes—clad in rip-stop nylon with tiny rubber pebbles on the soles, as were her palms—dug into the grooves, barely earning her any more purchase. There wasn’t nearly enough room to draw her legs up so she could wedge herself in the ventilation ducts.

  Brandon’s research lab had to be in the bunkers beneath the old base. Not that it was impossible that his lab would be elsewhere, but the bunkers were by far the safest location in the base. Anyone funding his research would want to be certain their investment was well protected.

  And that was a question worth pursuing. She would have to ask Greg if he knew who was funding the presumably considerable cost of Brandon’s development work. Anyone with that kind of money and the taste for building mechanical warriors was an inherent danger to the security of the United States and the world at large.

  The vents went a long way toward making certain whoever’d put his money up wasn’t in danger of losing the research he paid for. They were built to make it all but impossible for anyone to slip in that way. Twenty feet of upright metal to climb through before another right angle and finally a third would lead her straight down, as dangerous in its way as the upward climb. One slip and she would fall four stories. A broken bone in the shafts would finish her.

  Alisha’s nostrils flared as she pushed the thought away. There was never time for that sort of whatiffing. At best it was frivolous and at worst it would get her killed. Besides, she had the backup she needed for the descent. Filament line trailed behind her, anchored just inside the ventilation grate she’d opened in the room she’d been given.

  The camera in her room—she’d expected nothing less—had a ninety percent visible range, one small area left unexposed, “For your modesty,” Brandon had said. She’d crawled into bed, stuffing pillows under the covers with her as a crude facsimile of her sleeping body, and rolled under the bed itself when the camera swept away from her. Opening the grate had been slow going, and th
e scramble into it nerve-wracking, but she’d pulled it closed behind her without anyone being the wiser.

  She hoped.

  “Concentrate.” Alisha mouthed the word to herself, inching higher. If she’d been discovered, she’d deal with it later.

  She inhaled sharply as open space gave behind her head. A glance upward ascertained the shaft ended above her. Alisha let go the breath again, squirming backward into the new shaft. For a moment the metal just above her face seemed to press down on her, squeezing the air from her lungs. Alisha closed her eyes, envisioning the space around her as larger, then squirmed backward into the claustrophobic tunnel. From there on out, it was a cake-walk.

  Even as she thought it, Alisha shook her head minutely, scolding herself. Getting overconfident was the best way to make mistakes. Still, it was a matter of minutes to drop the filament line, clip a pulley ratchet to it, and slide headfirst into the ventilation ducts leading down to the base’s underground laboratories. She landed fingertips first, edging her way forward into the boxy shafts toward dim emergency lights that glowed in the room beyond.

  The tinks as the screws from the grate hit the floor sounded to her ears like a doomsday bell tolling, blaring an announcement of her presence to anyone with a care to hear. Alisha slid down the wall, still headfirst, then reversed herself, landing on the balls of her feet. The rubber nodes on her soles felt odd, wriggling slightly with the pressure of her weight against them. She collected the screws, fixing the grate closed so that it would pass a perfunctory inspection. The filament line remained coiled behind it, the lifeline she would need to return to her room. She closed her eyes briefly, pulling up the blueprints in her mind’s eye, graying lines against grayer paper.

  There was a central control room overlooking a cavernous hub room, what would have been the eye of activity if nuclear war had broken out and the base evacuated to the below-ground bunkers. It should be two corridors to her right, on the same level. Alisha nodded, tight motion to herself, and ran silently on her toes through the bunkers.

  The walls were unadorned concrete, floors unmarred by the passage of feet, but also well cared for: there was no dust to betray her trail, nor, for several doors, any locks to inhibit her. Ancient surveillance cameras creaked in the corners, their sweep of the hallways so slow that she counted out the long seconds before darting to the next camera’s blind spot.

  The last door was locked, a modern keypad set into the wall beside it. Alisha curled her lip, mouthing a curse rather than risking it aloud, and shot a glance at the lugubrious camera at the end of the hall. Nine seconds. She slid a penlight out of the belt at her waistband, flicking it on. Ultraviolet brightened the keypad, illuminating fingerprints left on the keys. Seven seconds. Five keys were smudged: 1 2 8 9 0. Cold lifted the hairs on Alisha’s arms as she stared at the numbers, grasping for a meaningful sequence. Three seconds.

  My life, she thought, is an endless countdown of numbers. The sequence popped into her mind and she punched it in without hesitating, 2101890. The door slid open and she stepped through, taking in the layout of the control room with a single glance. A surveillance camera clicked and began its rotation back toward her. She darted forward, folding herself into the space beneath a desk, making sure the chair obscured her. Only then did she exhale through pursed lips, as near a whistle as she dared make, and drop her head against her forearms for a moment.

  Two ten eighteen ninety. Groucho Marx’s birthday, written European style: 2 October, 1890. Thank God for the shared humor between father and son. Alisha’s heart slammed against her ribs, excited relief threatening to bubble into laughter. She allowed herself a fierce grin against her arms, then dislodged the chair a few inches, studying the room more closely from her hiding spot.

  There was only the one visible camera from where she sat, but a second had been in the opposite corner. There was something off about the angles. Alisha closed her eyes, again visualizing, this time the sweep of the cameras. A few seconds passed before she grinned again, lifting her eyes to study the nearest computers.

  The cameras couldn’t see their screens. There were distinct blind spots in the room; it was merely a question of navigating to them. Alisha sent up a silent, delighted blessing to whatever saint ensured the paranoia of great programmers, and skittered from one blind spot to another until she sat crouched behind one of the terminals, hidden entirely from the video cameras.

  Objective one: get the schematics. Green letters on a black screen blinked at her as she punched out commands, listing the files and directories on the mainframe. It was too much, far too much, to hope to download it all. Not unexpected, she reassured herself. The integral pieces were all she needed, enough to reverse engineer the prototype. The screens to her left and right hummed on, various stages of the prototype’s development flashing by as she scanned through the files. There were half a dozen that seemed promising, then stalled out. Alisha gnawed her lower lip, resisting the urge to bounce with impatience. Too much movement would put her in the cameras’ line of sight, and for all the dimness of the room, she didn’t want to risk being seen.

  There. A schematic flashed up and held, blue-white lines against the screen catching her attention. The drone she’d seen in action that afternoon, Prototype Alpha-10-Gamma. Alisha clenched her fists in triumph and fished a small CD out of her belt, reflective chartreuse surface glittering in the lab’s faint light. She dropped the disc into the drive, opening a file transfer protocol from the mainframe directly to the disc, and found herself baring her teeth as she did so, as if threatening the computer itself into behaving.

  Or proving to the computer that she was brave enough to face it. Accessing the mainframe was dangerous, too easily trackable. If anyone was watching, they’d see the spike that indicated her subterfuge.

  Second objective: destroy the schematics. Alisha took one rough breath that filled her with more confidence and turned to another computer tower. A second disc went into that tray, and she reversed the transfer protocol, now uploading a new file to the servers. A seventy-two hour Trojan; once set, it would lurk in the mainframe, silent for three days before a simple command—accessing one of the text editors on the mainframe—would set it loose. All data on the servers would be destroyed before anyone had a chance to react. And it would happen days after she was gone, more than enough time for her to disappear completely. Brandon might be forced to suspect her, as one of the few outsiders the base ever saw, but the development servers were strictly off-limits: no one except authorized personnel should have access. Alisha flashed a tight grin at the screens, watching percentages of uploads and downloads scroll by. It was a tidy job, and she was already proud of it.

  File transfer complete. Alisha tightened her fingers again, the gesture less wasteful and time-consuming than the full-fledged fists she’d allowed herself to make a moment earlier. She reached for the first disc, the one with the newly downloaded schematics. Excitement shivered over her again, the almost sexual pleasure of another move in the spy game well done.

  “I don’t like making contact when there are strangers in the base.” Brandon’s voice came through the door, muffled.

  Alisha had time to think, “Oh, fuck,” before the door slid open.

  Chapter 7

  Nowhere in her job description was it written that when in trouble, a refrain of, “Fuckity fuck fuck,” more or less to the tune of “Here Comes Santa Claus” should play in her head. Alisha doubted anyone else had ever come near that particular idiosyncrasy, and it wasn’t the sort of query she’d ever wanted to put to anyone. She found herself promising she would at least ask Greg if he’d ever done such a thing, if she got out of the base unscathed.

  She slid under the desk, stomach muscles bunched with contained nausea and excitement. The lights were still off, and her black suit would help hide her, but there was no way out without betraying herself. A shadow passed beside her hand, Brandon’s footsteps sounding flat against the concrete floor as he walked between the desks.r />
  “I’m losing you. I’ll put the broadband phone through in a second.” He sat down, a chair creaking. Alisha closed her eyes, a hot shudder of relief making her shoulders sag momentarily. She snaked her fingertips out, reaching for the nearest CD-ROM drive, then hesitated. If the virus hadn’t finished uploading yet—Alisha bit her lower lip, withdrawing her hand. The second drive was too far to be reached from beneath the desk. The computer beeped, making her flinch, and she snaked her hand out again, trusting the sound had been the file finishing its transfer. The drive whirred open, sounding as loud as a helicopter to her ears. She fished the golden disk into her palm and pushed the drive closed with a fingertip. Brandon’s chair creaked as he turned, but he didn’t move.

  “Security system’s on a loop,” he said a moment later. Alisha almost laughed despite the danger. The scientist had spoken to his contact, whomever it was, even out in the hall. The security system had to have been looped for at least a few minutes. Her dramatic sneak across the computer lab had been for her own benefit. Ah well, she thought: there was no way she could have known.

  “We’re clear,” Brandon added. Alisha squirmed beneath the desk, searching for a crack that might allow her to see him as he spoke.

  “How did the demonstration go?” The new voice came through one of the computer’s speakers, mechanically distorted so Alisha couldn’t tell if it was male or female. A thin line of space at the desk’s corner allowed her to watch the conversation, Brandon’s shoulder turned toward her. He lifted it slightly, a shrug that betrayed faint tension.

  “A hitch or two. The protocols were still set to live targets. Rafe covered it. Otherwise, not bad. Tomorrow we’ve got another demo, this time with appropriately live targets.”

  Alisha turned her palm up, staring at the golden-green disk in her hand. Its dim reflection of light danced on the bottom side of the desk she hid under, swimming in her gaze as she assimilated Brandon’s words. Still set to live targets. Who had the targets been? Alisha set her teeth together, racing through possibilities in her mind. The words implied either tests run with live targets—the more innocuous choice—or that the drone had actually been used already in real-world scenarios. If the latter was true, there was more urgency to her mission than she’d known. Maybe even more urgency than Greg or Director Boyer had known. Alisha mouthed a curse and turned away from the crack, eyeing the second computer tower.