Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

by J. M. Kaukola

  Firenze's eyes glued to those last toys, government code represented by antique mason-jars, seething with spiders. Despite himself, he let out a low whistle, and asked, "Why not throw the whole nine layers at it?"

  "Tried. Old spec. Not up for this." Kendrix closed the case, severed the shimmering light within, and slid the box towards Firenze. "It's a gift. Copy freely. I just want to know what's in the lockbox."

  Firenze plucked the case from the table, ran a scan across it. Clean. Even the spiders had their traces purged. This had cost some pretty credit or nasty favors. Kendrix was good, but these tools were better. Something between apprehension and anticipation fluttered in Firenze's gut.

  Kendrix had stumbled onto this lockbox on a deep run, tried for weeks to pry it open. That's how he was: equal parts paranoid and curious. He couldn't leave this alone, but he couldn't crack it, so he'd brought it to Firenze.

  At first, Firenze had wanted nothing to do with it. This wasn't his problem. Worse, the lockbox probably held a bunch of data only useful to specific people he'd never met. Worst, it might contain something truly nasty. Those were all great reasons to walk away.

  The longer he stared at that box, though, the more he'd started to wonder. The lock was a slick piece of work, constructed from adaptive code, stacked full of ICE, with a full suite of scanners and sharks designed to trace intrusions and sever the net, all so tightly wound he couldn't attack one without exposing himself to others. The encryption alone was so dense that if he'd gone at it with the university's block-frame, it would have taken seven lifetimes of the universe to crack. No one sealed something that tight unless its contents were juicy. He couldn't help it. He found himself lying awake, wondering just what could be that valuable.

  He started with what he knew it couldn't be and worked in. The ICE wasn't government. State ICE wasn't designed to be impregnable. It was built to dissuade amateurs and bog down the rest in a digital mire, to waste your time until seekers pinpointed your location and the police kicked in your door. This was a different philosophy of data protection, vicious and confident. It would have taken the best crackers years to pry open.

  It took Firenze a week.

  "Whatever's inside? It's going to be ugly." Firenze stated. He'd peeled up the outer shell, but the internal data vault was untouched.

  "Secrets are rarely pretty." Kendrix agreed. "That's why they're secrets."

  "Data wants to be free." Firenze countered.

  "Information abhors a vacuum." Kendrix echoed. That was part of the runner's mantra, 'Nothing belongs to no one. Information abhors a vacuum. You can't hold the wind.' They were beautiful phrases, and Firenze agreed with the sentiment, but Neland had just opened a door for him, and his personal policy had always been, 'don't be stupid'. He couldn't afford to dig into this. He'd only skim the data. Just a peek and nothing more.

  "Thanks for the kit." He said. "Give me a couple hours, and I'll see if I can tunnel it open for you."

  "You're the man." Kendrix agreed. "I couldn't get shit out of this thing. Not even a peel."

  "Yeah, well, I've got the rig for it."

  Kendrix shuddered. "My man, you need to wipe that thing."

  "She's a partner."

  "Look, I've got some top-tier rec-sims. Spot-on personality matrices, whatever your bent. I'll give them to you, gratis. Just wipe your damn mask." Kendrix almost sounded worried.

  Before Firenze could respond, Lauren had dropped into the sim. She stood between them and addressed Kendrix with a cold, "Nice to see you, too."

  Kendrix froze, his eyes flicking towards Firenze with a desperate 'get it away' look. He begged, "Call it off, man. Shit's creepy."

  Lauren stated, "Says the man with eight petabytes of-"

  "Stay the hell out of there!" Kendrix snapped, his hand flashing into his coat.

  Firenze interposed himself and shut down the confrontation before it got ugly. "Lauren, he's our guest. K, be polite, or I'll torch the link."

  Both stared at him, unsatisfied.

  He added, "Lauren's the best there is. With her help, we'll get the box open in no time."

  "Her?" Kendrix demanded. "Did you just call it 'her'? Look, I get it. Masks are cool! Mine's hilarious! But it's not a fucking 'her'!" He trailed off, shaking his head and looking for the door. In a mumble, he added, "You even fucking named it." He froze, whirled back, the color drained from his face. He demanded, "'Lauren'?!" You named it 'Lauren'? Is that what she looked like? Didja fucking model it on her? Hell, man, that was years-"

  Kendrix's mouth kept moving but produced no sound. Lauren pressed her forefinger and thumb, and his audio was gone. She stated, "I named myself."

  Kendrix blinked, and his mouth slapped shut.

  She continued, "I chose a name with familiarity, positive connotations, and an acoustic profile I enjoyed. I claimed it as my own. If you have an issue with this, I suggest you file it in my official complaint folder." She paused, smiled, and added, "There is no complaint folder."

  Firenze sighed.

  Kendrix struggled against the mute.

  "Let him." Firenze said.

  Lauren scowled but opened her hand.

  Kendrix excused, "You two... just... do what you do. I'll be back. Call me when it's open." With that, he vanished.

  "Dick." Lauren stated.

  Firenze whirled to face her. Exasperated, he demanded, "Yes! Yes, he is! But you cracked his data vault! I'd be pissed, too!"

  "What was I supposed to do? Loiter in stealth mode? Again?" She shifted, arms crossed, and said, "I anticipated a high probability of him being both a jackass and a pervert. I was right." She paused again and shuddered. "Creepy stuff in there. There's not a delete function strong enough."

  Firenze replied, "Look, I know you don't like him. I don't like him! But there are rules for dealing with people. You have to follow them, or shit goes south."

  She stood unconvinced.

  Firenze sighed.

  "I'll try." She allowed.

  "Thank you!" He exclaimed. Not wanting to dwell, he changed the topic. "My question is: are you as excited as I am to play with the new toys?" He tapped the briefcase for emphasis.

  Lauren broke into a broad smile, all argument dropped, and she exclaimed, "Let's crack a black box!"

  Firenze took one step towards the door-

  -and stood in a safe room, its sterile-white walls laced with grids and flush-screens. In the center of the fullbright cage, a silver cube hovered and spun, flowing through itself like mercury. Firenze extended his arm, and workbenches unfurled, toolboxes blossoming to reveal arrays of macros and crackers, with Kendrix's gifts now resting in pride of place.

  Firenze spun his hand, and the room's locks snapped into place, sealed this chamber from core systems with a clank-click-hiss. Firenze turned towards the hypercube. It twisted, white-gold code streaming over its deep-silver surface. "Where were we?" He asked, absently, as he dug through his selection of probes.

  Lauren stepped up to the opposite side of the not-quite-black box and answered, "It's an extremely dangerous secured folder, designed by an unknown entity, containing at least forty exabytes of data, compressed. Outer security layers included top-end hunter-seeker algorithms, active and reactive ICE, and an armada of counterhack bots. The configuration of core defenses indicates a high probability of burner viruses, and it is unknown if they will target mask or user. After the last session, you declared, 'fuck this, erase it'."

  Firenze replied, "I see you didn't." He pushed a jewelers' glass onto his nose to initiate deep scans, then pulled on heavy rubber gloves to isolate his neural processes.

  Lauren shrugged. "I weighed the request against the high likelihood that you would regret that decision, and so stored the data in a slashbin and retained it for one week. I do not appear to have been mistaken."

  Firenze snorted. He admitted, "I was pretty sure you'd do that."

  "High accuracy mutually predictive models are a key benefit of longterm co-development." She sai
d.

  "Thanks, I trust you, too."

  It was her turn to snort.

  Firenze picked up his torch, sparked it until white-blue flame roared. Across from him, Lauren placed her hands beside the cube and stretched, expanding it to the size of an inflatable pool ball. More of the subtle lines grew visible, and a chime filled the air.

  Firenze held the torch ready as the cube spun before him. He raised his hand, froze it in mid-rotation. The circuitry on its surface sparkled under the light. The chiming swelled, and he commented, "I really want to know who designed this thing." He circled about the artifact, inspected its finely-articulated sides. "Ominous Corp? Evil Co? The Legion of Doom?" He flicked his torch, and the silver gleamed under flaring plasma. "Recommendations?" He asked.

  Lauren circled opposite him, in counterpoint. She drew close to the segmented lattice of the cube and its ever-flowing surface. "Objectively?" She asked. She flicked her fingers and held a scalpel, which she lowered towards the mercurial object. "You should walk away. There is an exceedingly high probability that Kendrix obtained this from a disreputable source and that there are more security measures enclosed. Once we crack the shell, we may be operating in realtime against all manner of ICE. The rational, reasonable decision is to abandon this course of action." Behind her, a wall of charts and graphs unfurled, all showing, highlighted in blood-red, the words 'YOU LOSE'.

  Firenze countered, "It's not government. It doesn't follow State netsec theory."

  "Who else could produce this?" She asked.

  "Zeta?" Firenze hazarded. "Or another of the champion corporations."

  "Effectively still State actors, but perhaps even less ethically constrained due to their relatively precarious positions."

  "Do you want to stop?" He asked. His torch hovered just over the surface.

  "Well..." she trailed off. She snapped a surgical mask over her face and said, "We're just taking peek."

  Firenze nodded and pressed the torch home. The cutting flame arced and sputtered across the liquid lattice, flaring between gaps in the fluid. A spark burst from deep within, lashed across his flared gloves with a lightning-crack.

  "Counter-hack." Firenze stated, reflexively.

  Lauren reported, "Bastion three-point-one-point-two. Standard corporate security suite, activated by a grade three limited AI from a remote site." She blinked. "Link cut, feedback loop engaged. The Bastion is neutralized."

  Firenze doused the torch and said, "Corporate security. Can we trace?"

  "Altess City. Zeta EnProCo North African and Mediterranean regional headquarters." She confirmed.

  "Mother-loving Zeta." Firenze echoed. Of all the State-backed champion corporations, it was undoubtedly the most powerful. The Zeta Energy Processing Corporation sat atop every dimension of the energy business, from mining through refining, transmission all the way to the batteries on the shelf. It built engines and widgets, it sold 'managerial paradigms', and it was welded to the Authority's teat.

  Lauren's scalpel had vanished, and she wrung her hands. Another tic. She advised, "Altess is the control station for the Arclight Bore. There is a high probability that this data is related to strand harvesting."

  The bottom of his stomach felt like it had fallen out. Arclight was Zeta's big damned hole-in-the-sky. It was the largest terrestrial bore, a testament to engineering and ingenuity, and an extinction event waiting to happen. Ice-water adrenaline thundered in his veins, and he repeated the name, "Arclight."

  The cube hung before him, its edges peeled back from his probes, the light catching and twisting on its silver planes. Whatever this secret was, it came from the borehole, the negative-mass tear in reality, where the Authority ripped out the insulation-lining of the universe. Zeta's source of power. The spookiest place on earth. Any secrets there would be worth killing for. His fingers tingled, every nerve alight with the competing urges to tear this box open or run screaming.

  Lauren stood silent. She watched him watch the box.

  He began to spin theories, work out nervous energy through conjecture, "Okay, so this is, what? Ops data from the bore? Secret projects? Maybe it's safety violations. What if Arclight isn't as stable as they say? What if the Greens are right?"

  She replied, "Any aberration at the bore would send the Authority into seek-and-destroy mode, and even Zeta can't risk that kind of exposure. The relationship is symbiotic, but not equal. The probability of lethal countermeasures has increased."

  "Do we proceed?" He asked. The question echoed through the room.

  "That is your decision." She deferred. Her words were ambivalent, but her hungry gaze fixed upon the cracked cube.

  He already knew his answer. "Let's do it."

  Firenze stepped up to the box, once more, raised one of his hands, hovered just above the crack his torch had carved. He moved his fingers like a puppeteer with invisible strings. Preset cracking configurations executed, and a chunk of the lattice fell away. Another blast-arc of white heat lashed over his gloves with a rising chime. Lauren sealed the breach, isolated the counter-hack. Firenze twisted his hands, spun the cube, and carved away the next layer of defenses.

  Kendrix's toys were working wonders. The spiders wormed through the gridwork, illuminated every flaw and weakness. The crackers, torches, and jaws ripped into every exposure. Firenze spun the cube, like wet clay on a lathe, bathed the drain-slit floor with raining silver. With every turn, the chiming grew towards a deafening crescendo.

  What remained was a sphere of liquid light, a perfect radiance that overwhelmed the fullbright of the room. It washed over him in waves, sought every corner and cranny, but the seals held. He stepped forward, raised a probe, and the sphere detonated.

  It blew out like a balloon, expanded to five times its size, forced Firenze to scramble back. The light faded, the chime dwindled, and the globe loomed over them, near-translucent and swelled with pulsing light.

  "What are you?" He asked in wonder.

  Lauren stood beside him again. "This is an unknown artifact. I have no data." Concern dominated her voice.

  "We're secure, right?" He asked. He already knew the answer, but nerves made him ask.

  "Yes. Security seals are holding, and we're rotating servers and rolling crypto. I am adapting some of this blackbox's own security protocols, as they were quite proficient. It would take weeks to track us, and weeks more to crack this room."

  "I did it in one." He argued.

  "You are the best." She replied. "But this file is curious. It has no handles, and it does not respond to passive probes." She executed an automated diagnostic, ran data over a parser, then frowned. "No response."

  The sphere hung, boiling.

  Firenze carved a hole in the air, conjured a raw feed, and split his view between render and code. He talked himself through it, "Looks like all there is, is this. No handles, no prompts, no interface. This data is dead weight, so why build it? Why lock it so tight?" He glanced up at the churning ball. There was no purpose to this artifact, it existed but did not interact. Nothing about it made sense.

  He stepped closer, raised his hand to run an active probe, a quick brush from the Jaws of Strife. His code-window cut-out flickered, a burst of data flashing across the link. "Hold." He said.

  Lauren parsed the output. "It reacted to the probe. No transmission, just a handshake. I'm going to inject a query." She summoned a key, fed it into the sphere. Nothing. She frowned and reported, "No response."

  Firenze pulled out another junk data key and tapped it against the surface.

  The entire body rippled, spines blooming over its surface, then settled.

  "It likes me, but not you." Firenze stated. "Why?" A tingle went down his spine, a half-formed hunch he dared not voice. He asked, "Lauren? I want you to pull up a record of the probe test I ran for Professor Singh, and emulate it against the artifact."

  She tilted her head, puzzled. "That was a standard ping, without hardjack emulation. It will not return any useful data."

 
"I know. Run it."

  A phantom record of Firenze appeared and inserted a key into the sphere. There was no response.

  Firenze felt his throat close, his suspicion taking form. He said, "Pass me the test. I'm gonna run it with an active probe." The key appeared in his hand, and Firenze stepped closer to the sphere. The surface rippled as he approached, pulled away as if to welcome him. He reached towards the silver, and it pulled away, exposed ever-deeper realms. "Are you reading this?" He asked.

  "Yes." She said. He felt her hand grab his shoulder, squeeze for reassurance. Another tic. She asked, "Why would Zeta design a lock which required a hardjack? The hardware is rare and restricted, and it could endanger their contracts. This is illogical."

  The peeled-open surface grew brighter. The chime had returned, swelling slowly through the room. Firenze answered her question, but his gaze was locked onto the ever-shrinking space between his key and the retreating surface, "You know they have toys they don't like to share." The key struck the surface, and silver splashed over his glove. A data spike erupted in his code-view. He observed, "It appears to change when I attempt to interact, but it drops the handshake. I think this requires direct connection to get further."

  "That will expose us to a trace."

  "I'll need you to keep the link scrambled."

  "This is not advisable."

  "I know. I know. But we're only going to get one crack at this. We either go in now or walk away." He glanced at her, the silver light-ripples washing over her face. In the swirling radiance, she almost looked frightened. He asked, "Can it be done?"

  She stepped closer, and the fear-hint vanished, replaced by absolute confidence. "Of course." She replied. "But we'll need full integration. Are you ready?"

  He pulled in a final breath, both in this world and the other, braced himself against the storm. "Yes." He breathed.

  She pressed against him, fingers entwined, a weight on his mind like he was pushing through a drunken haze. He smelled perfume, felt her heat against his chest. He clutched her-

  The world unfurled. He became more. Blood thundered through his veins, every one a unique sensation, total and realized. Code pulsed in time to his heart. The assist box kicked into high gear, its myriad processors chained to his will. A whim, and thought executed. He could see himself, feel himself, slumped on his filthy mattress, the dig of every misshapen foam blister clear. He could see himself, standing before the sphere, radiant and unified with the mask. Old math and chemical commands entwined in harmony. Man and mask moved as one.