Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition

by Michael Compton

  “How do you know?” Desmond asked. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be blown to bits either.”

  Lani nodded her agreement. “Maybe he doesn’t even know about the bomb.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he knows, and doesn’t care. He’s got us trapped on board without those lifeboats. Or maybe he’s got other arrangements.”

  Victoria broke in on the speculation. “What’s the other problem?”

  Wolf nodded at the screen. “That ain’t no pipe bomb. We get to it, we probably can’t disarm it.”

  Angel pointed at a fuzzy area of the timing mechanism. “That looks like a radio receiver right there.”

  Sands looked close. “Yeah. Maybe a fail-safe? To Oleg, he said, “What have you got on the Psych Ward?”

  “The only surveillance on Deck Seven covers the outer ring of cells, where you were this morning.” Oleg pulled up a schematic on one of the screens. “The Psych Ward itself makes up the center of the deck, and it’s a totally dark area. There’s the Arena, too, but the lights and cameras are always dark except when a Battle is scheduled. We can’t access them from here.”

  “So what’s the theory? Who’s in charge?”

  The Drones did their routine of exchanging silent looks again, but this time Sands knew what they were thinking.

  “Einstein.”

  Victoria asked, “Einstein?”

  “That’s what the Dregs call him.” Sands turned to the Drones. “You guys must know his real name.”

  Shrugs and shaking heads.

  “So who is he?”

  Bao went to his console, tapping keys. “He’s not crew and he’s not inmate. We can’t find him anywhere in the manifest. The only time we ever see him is during Battle. He watches the fight from an observation deck over the Arena. They say he runs the Psycho Ward.”

  He pulled up an image that looked like it might have been captured from a video feed. “Everybody calls him Einstein, even the crew.”

  Seeing the image, Victoria gasped.

  “You know. Because of the hair.”

  Sands looked at Victoria. The expression on her face had nothing to do with Einstein’s hair. “What is it?”

  “I know him.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  “One of my father’s old partners. A friend of the family. His name’s Buddy Henderson.”

  “Buddy Henderson?” Sands turned the name over in his mind. “Why do I know that name?”

  Lani said, “Isn’t that the Tastes Like Mom’s guy?”

  “Holy shit! He used to do those commercials with his mother.” Bao laughed. “They were funny.”

  Sands nodded, the scattered pieces of memory fitting back together. “The inventor of Process.”

  -15-

  Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection—they have many friends and few enemies.

  —Wendell Phillips

  Sands grabbed Victoria again by the wrist and dragged her out of the Vestibule, away from electronic eyes. Once they were out of sight she snatched her arm away.

  “I’m not used to being manhandled.”

  “So start talking.”

  “Don’t do it again. You might not like what happens next.”

  Tough talk for a former student government nerd, Sands thought, but he could see she was serious. “Fair enough.”

  If she wanted an apology, she didn’t get one. This wasn’t the Sands she used to know, the one she could embarrass with a flirty look back at Stanford.

  “I don’t know where to begin…”

  “Start with Einstein.”

  She smiled thinly. “Uncle Buddy. That’s what we used to call him, even my father. Whenever he visited the house he’d bring Todd and me some crazy treat he’d cooked up in his laboratory—licorice flavored spaghetti, bananas that tasted like ice cream.”

  “So the Doctor was interested in that kind of stuff?”

  “Not really. Not at first, anyway. But Uncle Buddy had a way of taking the most outlandish ideas and making them real. Like, you might think an exploding walnut is a stupid idea, but they make perfect little grenades. Imagine a terrorist carrying a bagful of them through airport security right onto a plane.”

  “I’d rather imagine how you’re telling me stuff I need to know.”

  “The point is, Father saw how useful Uncle Buddy could be. He loved to feed him ideas, just to see what he would do with them. But Father could never control him. The trick was always to let him do his work without risking him going freelance.”

  “So Dr. Brzinski locks him away here, but gives him free reign over his own Frankenstein’s laboratory.”

  “My father’s insane. You saw what he tried to do to me.”

  “Come on, what could daddy’s little girl possibly do to get him to turn on you like that?”

  “Please. My father suffered me for two reasons only. He respected my intelligence and he thought he could use me to lure you into the fold.” Victoria’s face reddened. “I only played along because…” She looked away.

  Sands had never seen Victoria vulnerable before—at least not when she had full possession of her faculties. She had always been so calculated in her emotional displays, he wondered if he could trust it.

  “Why? Why did your father want me?”

  “Because you’re everything Todd is not. Everything my Father is not, for that matter. My father worships strength. He wanted Thor for a son, but what he got was Loki. When you betrayed him—”

  “I never did.”

  “In his eyes, you did. Anyway, I’d say you broke his heart, if I thought he had a heart.”

  “So what did you do? To break his heart?”

  “There was a plot against his life.”

  “You knew about it? And you didn’t tell him?”

  “I was part of it.”

  Sands chewed on that. He wondered what could make a child turn against her own father. To want him dead. Even a father like Henry Brzinski.

  “You were supposed to be sent to the Psych Ward, weren’t you? Ahmer picked up on that. But somebody interfered.”

  “We have friends on the inside.”

  Sands took her wrist—gently this time, and turned it up. “Is that what this is? The guy we raided in Bashkiristan—he had one too.”

  Victoria shook her head. She took out a pen-size UV light and clicked it. The smudge came to life, projecting the complex, three-dimensional geometric figure that Ahmer had shown him in the cell.

  “The 600 Cell. You might remember my father had a mock-up of one on his desk.”

  “I do remember. I noticed it the first time he asked me into his study. I saw it in Bashkiristan, too, but it didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “And on the ship.”

  “Yeah, now that you mention it.”

  “It’s the emblem of a secret organization that’s infiltrated the world’s major powers, a global shadow government.”

  “And your father—he pulls the strings?”

  Victoria snapped off the pen light. The sparkling emblem vanished.

  “Not alone, not yet, but he’s been positioning himself for years for a complete takeover. Karga was the bank.”

  “But Karga started to get ideas.”

  “Father loves ideas—except when other people have them. The 600 Cell was never designed to be ruled by one individual, but with the U.S. government under Father’s control, nobody will be able to stand against him. The New Freedom Party was an important step. Instead of ruling behind the scenes, he wants his hands on the controls.”

  “And Force—is that part of it? Me, Catfish, G.K., the whole thing?”

  Victoria put a hand on his arm. “Don’t take it too hard. Half the people working for The 600 are just patriotic grunts doing their duty.”

  Sands knew she didn’t mean to be unkind, but the words stung nevertheless.

  “Back to Uncle Buddy. What does all this have to do with Inferno?”

  Victoria chewe
d her lip as she mulled over the ill-fitting pieces of the puzzle. “I think maybe Process is the key.”

  “Process? You’re kidding. It’s just another way to make money by getting people to eat crap.”

  “Sure, but think about it. On one level, Process is just what they say it is—a way to recycle organic waste into cheap, high-protein food. But it’s chemicals. They can manipulate them any way they want.”

  Sands wasn’t getting it.

  “Look, the real breakthrough with Process is that it doesn’t contain any flavoring. It bypasses the flavor receptors to work directly on the brain. It’s a drug.”

  “So we’re guinea pigs. A controlled experiment.”

  “That’s part of what the different decks are about, I think. Each level gets a different chemical configuration.”

  “But why? What’s the 600 Cell care about getting people to buy more junk food?”

  “Think about it, Sands. The 600 Cell wants world domination. And if they can control people’s minds through the food they eat, you can bet they’re not going to settle for making people think sawdust tastes like meatloaf.”

  ***

  The blind spot Sands had found for his private talk with Victoria wasn’t as private as he thought. Einstein was able to watch them from a camera on the other side of the deck, although it was too far away to hear what was being said. He tried zooming in close enough to lip read—one of the many odd skills he had picked up over the years—but it was too far away for that, too. No matter—he felt confident that anything they cooked up he would be able to handle.

  It did irk him, though, to see them so blatantly plotting against him, so sure of themselves that he couldn’t overhear. He watched as the one called Sands strode back to the Vestibule to retrieve one of the Drones. Which one? He checked his roster—the one called Ahmer. The names of his subjects were of no real consequence, but Einstein was obsessive about details, and he always liked to know the names of his adversaries. Enemies without names were so much less satisfying to kill.

  After an animated discussion that ended with emphatic nodding from the Drone, the three of them marched back to the Vestibule. Einstein had dozens of eyes there, and he waited with much interest to see what they would do.

  Once in the Vestibule, though, it was all whisper and mime, passing whatever plan they had devised from Drone to Drone. After a moment, the Drones were all rummaging through tool boxes and supply cabinets. What was it they were gathering? Tape. Electrical tape, masking tape, duct tape. Einstein couldn’t imagine what they were going to do with it, but once everyone in the Vestibule had a roll, they all set about their work.

  Einstein quickly realized they were covering up the cameras and yanking out the microphone jacks, rendering him blind and deaf. One by one he watched each camera go dark. He wouldn’t have believed they could get them all, but the Drones were clever little techies, and somehow they managed to ferret out every one. Every mic went dead, too, and he watched glumly as the Drone called Ahmer approached the final camera, duct tape in hand, as if he meant to slap it right across Einstein’s face. All was black.

  Cerberus gave out with a belligerent bark, as if he could sense his master’s mood. Einstein reached down to find an ear and scratched it, contemplating his next move.

  ***

  “Okay,” Sands began, once everyone had gathered around. “Now that we’ve got some privacy, we can talk.”

  Sands repeated what he and Victoria had discussed, emphasizing that their top priority was to disarm the bomb. “But frankly, I don’t think there’s any way Einstein, or whoever is pulling the strings from the Psycho Ward, is going to let us get near that device. We’ll have to take him out first.”

  Catfish nodded his agreement. “If he lets all the Psychs loose, though, we’re going to need more weapons.”

  “And explosives,” Wolf added. “If Einstein hunkers down in some hidey-hole, they might come in handy.”

  Sands smiled wide. “Boys, we got all the bang-bang your little hearts could ever desire.”

  “What I’m still not getting,” Angel said, “is why they wanna blow up the ship. What’s that get them?”

  “That might be the good news,” Sands replied. “It shows The 600 aren’t confident they can pull this off—not if they’re exposed.”

  Seeing the doubtful looks, Victoria elaborated. “There are seven black rafts—six, now that the one in the Sea of Japan has been taken out. Until now, they’ve just been a Justice International conspiracy theory. But it’s not easy to keep that kind of thing covered up, and this nuclear outbreak has shaken The 600’s grip. The people may have been all for the prison ships when it came to actual criminals and terrorists, but the black rafts are run for profit. Supply and demand. They need bodies to fill those cells, but if you scoop up too many innocent neighbors and family members, people start to notice.”

  “So what?” Oleg said. “If The 600 are so powerful, what do they care what people think?”

  Sands and Victoria had the same thought, both recalling lessons from Dr. Brzinski. Sands gave it voice. “‘There is no despot so powerful that he does not govern by the consent of his people.’”

  “What’s that,” Angel asked. “Philosophy?”

  “‘No. Observable fact.’” Victoria smiled wryly. “We’re quoting my father. Just like old school days, huh, Sands?”

  Oleg wasn’t having it. “Bullshit, people agree to dictators. I lived under a dictator. You think I wanted to?”

  “North Korea is the most militarized nation in modern history,” Sands answered, citing one of the Doctor’s favorite examples. “But its military only makes up one-twentieth of the total population. Even if you count everyone in the reserves, the police, and the secret police, civilians outnumber government forces four, maybe five to one. You think they couldn’t toss Kim out on his ear if they really wanted to?”

  Oleg thought about it. “I still say bullshit.”

  “Okay,” Catfish put in. “So the ships are a political embarrassment. But they’re worth billions. You tellin’ me they’re just gonna flush all that money down the toilet?”

  Victoria shrugged. “These are privately owned ships, financed and insured by government debt. If we happen to hit an iceberg, so what? Everybody gets paid.”

  “And the taxpayer foots the bill,” Catfish concluded.

  Angel spread his hands. “Sounds like the American way to me.”

  “Is class over now?” Wolf asked. “It ain’t politics that’s gonna blow up the ship. It’s the bomb. And the clock’s ticking.”

  -16-

  God how the dead men

  Grin by the wall,

  Watching the fun of the Victory Ball.

  —Alfred Noyes

  After a quick trip back to the magazine for more armaments, Sands and his three Force compadres returned to find that the Drones had worked out a plan. They had hung sheets off the cots from the ceiling, closing off one end of the Vestibule, and projected the schematics for Inferno on a blank wall. Everyone crammed into the little area, finding seats on scavenged chairs, boxes, or whatever space they could find on the floor. Ahmer stood beside the impromptu projection screen, a self-conscious presenter holding forth with a shaky laser pointer.

  “The problem we have is, even if we can make our plans secret from Einstein, when we step outside the Vestibule he can see every move we make.”

  He pointed out the elevator shaft. “The elevators are under surveillance. Cameras inside, cameras outside the doors on every deck.”

  “So we knock out the cameras,” Angel suggested.

  “There are too many. Even here in the Vestibule we cannot be sure we have blocked every camera.”

  “That’s why we’re under cover,” Bao explained. “We’d need a week to scan the whole Vestibule for eyes and ears, but this storage area should be secure.”

  “Even if we knock out the cameras in the elevators,” Ahmer continued, “Einstein still can track their operation. He knows w
hen we use them, or what deck we go to. But if we don’t use the elevators—if we use the shafts—he can’t track us so easy.”

  “Shafts?” Victoria asked. “You mean the elevator shafts?”

  “Yes.”

  Sands nodded appreciatively. “Not bad, kid.”

  “Wait,” Bao said. “There’s more.”

  Ahmer held up a key. “This key overrides the elevators’ automatic controls. The only way Einstein can stop us to use it is to shut off the power. If he does that, the elevators return to maintenance positions, below decks.”

  Catfish raised his hand, as if he were at a formal briefing. Ahmer seemed surprised by the gesture, but he managed what Sands thought was a very professorial nod.

  “That’s where we want to go anyway, isn’t it? I mean, that’s where the bomb is.”

  “Yes, elevator maintenance is one deck below the engine room. But if Einstein could seal the hatch of the maintenance well, anyone on the elevators would be trapped.”

  Wolf flipped a packet of C-4 in the air and caught it with a flourish. “So we blow the hatch.”

  “That would not be advisable in such confined space,” Ahmer answered, bringing up an image of the well.

  Wolf shrugged. “I’ll use thermite, then.”

  “Yes, but if we trick Einstein into shutting the power, he thinks we are trapped. This gives us an advantage.”

  ***

  From his spider’s nest on Deck Seven, Einstein watched with keen interest as Sands, Catfish, Angel, and Wolf came bursting out of the Vestibule, bristling with arms and sheathed in body armor. They double-timed it to the elevator, where Sands punched the call button as two others stood guard, guns ready for whatever may come. The fourth man, Einstein was amused to see, took out a can of spray paint scavenged from stores and blotted out the camera.

  Blind to their movements for only a second, he picked them up again as they entered the elevator. As the one called Angel shook his can of spray paint, Einstein caught a glimpse of Sands flashing a metal key and inserting it into the control panel. Too slow by an instant, Angel sprayed the camera lens, and the interior image went fuzzy and dark. Einstein smiled and shook his head.