by M. R. Forbes
“You can’t run an entire factory completely hush-hush. There are too many moving parts to manage quietly, even if it’s all been anonymized or misdirected to throw off the scent. There might not be specific information moving through Tridium’s office, but there will be a number of pieces that we could try to tie together.”
“Except?” Pik said.
“Except that will be too slow. The point is, someone in Tridium knows about the factory. Maybe they even know what Thraven’s building out there, but I doubt it. It won’t be one of the executives, that’ll be too damn obvious. Someone lower down on the food chain who has enough access to the network to make those types of transactions look innocuous.”
“Systems Admin?” Benhil said.
“Could be. Or an accountant. Or Individual Resources.”
“Well, that narrows it down.”
“Not enough. That’s where individual nature comes in.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re secretly in control of one of the Nephilim’s most important projects and you know the war has just started, how do you think you might be feeling right about now?”
“That would depend on the status of the project,” Jequn said. “If everything was going well, I would be feeling very proud of myself.”
“And if it weren't, I would be nervous as hell,” Benhil said.
“What about the other Tridium employees who don’t know frag all about any of it?” Abbey asked.
“Business as usual,” Benhil said. “Smart thinking.”
“I learned to think that way in Breaker training. I didn’t come prepackaged.”
“Queenie-in-a-box,” Pik said. “That could come in handy.”
“You’ll have to settle for Queenie out of the box,” Abbey said.
Pik laughed. “Even better.”
15
“What made you decide to become a Breaker anyway, Queenie?” Benhil asked.
They were sitting together at a table outside of a restaurant across from the Tridium building. They had a spread of dishes across the table, ranging from simple Terran delicacies like curry to more exotic fare, including Atmosian Silbrach. Nobody who saw them would take them for residents of the planet, not with their long overcoats and pants, but that didn’t make them stand out. There were plenty of other traders around, many in uniforms that included heavy formal jackets, and the establishment had weak shields surrounding the patio to keep their conditioned air from escaping.
“I was bored,” Abbey replied.
She had her eyes on the lobby of the offices, tracking every individual that came and went, surveying their body language for signs of stress or elation the way she had been taught. Being a Breaker was about more than hacking networks. It was about getting into things you weren’t supposed to get into, whether it was a locked terminal, a locked door, or a locked head. It was about finding a way past any security measures that stood in the way. Sometimes that also meant hacking people. Social engineering.
Sometimes that also meant killing them.
“That’s it?” Jequn said. “You were bored?”
“Why do any of us decide to do anything?” Pik said. “I joined the RAS to get away from my girlfriend.”
“You did not,” Benhil said.
“I did. She was a brute, that one. It’s tradition on Tro for the mother of the son to choose the spouse. Mainly because no Trover male would take a Trover female any other way.” He laughed. “I was ready to join Planetary Defense, get paired, have a few little Trovers. But the choice? Ugh.”
“What makes Trover women so bad?” Jequn asked.
“Have you ever met one?” Pik asked.
“No.”
“Well, there you go.”
“I’m still not accepting that you were just bored,” Benhil said. “There has to be more to the story than that.”
“Not really,” Abbey replied. “My parents were regular blue-collars. They owned a small clothing store on Earth, in Chicago. My sister Liv and I had a pretty normal life. Nothing outside of the usual childhood drama. Except Liv was satisfied to stay and settle down, and I wanted to be challenged. Mentally. Physically. I have a strong competitive streak.”
“No shit?” Pik said sarcastically.
“I figured the armed services would be the challenge I was looking for. When I heard about the Breaker program, I was all in.”
“I heard you have a kid,” Benhil said. “HSOCs don’t usually have time to have kids.”
“I was young and still a little immature. He was older and really good looking. To be honest, we didn’t really fit. I should have seen then that it was never going to work long-term, but love is blind. We made the distance work, and in some ways, it made things better. When we got together, things were incredible. He told me he was off prevention when Hayley was conceived. I didn’t care. I thought the odds of getting pregnant from one time weren’t that high, right? It was stupid. The best kind of stupid.”
She could feel the emotions flooding in, threatening to distract her. She had to swallow them. To force them back. They were eating and talking to keep their cover while they waited. She was still working.
“Liv has been more of a mother to Hayley than I have. She’s been there when I couldn’t. The amazing thing is, for all of that, Hayley still wants to be just like me. She tells me I make a difference in individual’s lives, even if they’ll probably never know it. That the work I do has a value that goes way beyond me. There was a time when my motivations were selfish. I wanted to be the best for me. Then I wanted to be the best for her. Now? I want to be the best for everyone. Somebody has to.”
“I think you’re the best, Queenie,” Pik said. “With or without the Gift.”
“Sounds like a great kid, DQ,” Benhil said. “I hope we get to meet her when all of this shit is over.”
“Me, too,” Abbey replied.
They fell into a momentary silence. Abbey continued watching the individuals moving in and out of the building. Somebody in there knew about the factory, and about the Gate. She hoped they would make an appearance soon. Every minute they wasted on Avalon was another minute Thraven was spending tearing her galaxy apart.
“I joined the RAS to get away from my parents,” Benhil said. “My old man was addicted to Lrug Flower.”
“Your father was rich?” Pik said.
“Too rich for his own damn good,” Benhil replied. “He spent six out of eight days hallucinating, and when he came back to reality, he would get belligerent as hell for having to do a couple of days work to pay for his habit. He took it out on me, from the time I was eight years old until I made it to seventeen and joined up.”
“What about your mother?” Jequn asked.
“She would disappear when he would get enraged. She seemed to know hours ahead of time when he would be in a mood. The bitch used me as a shield and let me get beat instead. Thanks, mom.” He shook his head. “It’s ancient history now. I haven’t seen them since I left, and if I ever see them again, it’ll be too soon.”
“You’ve got a better family now,” Pik said.
“You mean you assholes?” Benhil said. “Marginally.” He smiled.
“Queenie.” Bastion’s voice cut into Abbey’s ear.
“Imp,” she whispered. “What’s up?”
“It may be nothing, but I’ve been watching the traffic around here for the last two hours. An old jumper detached from the ring station and is headed down to the surface.”
“So?”
“Ships dock at the station to avoid the surface, not because they have better brothels. Mostly. Why would a jumper suddenly decide to come down? Like I said, it may be nothing, but you wanted me to keep an eye out.”
“Right. Keep tracking it. Gant.”
“Yes, Queenie?” Gant said.
“Scout whoever comes out of it when it lands. If they look suspicious, follow them.”
“Roger.”
Abbey glanced over at the others. The interruptio
n from Bastion had silenced them again.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” she said.
“Right,” Benhil agreed. “As I was saying, I joined up, made it into HSOC training, and angled for work as far away from home as I could get it. That’s what got me into the Outworlds. In the meantime, I…”
Benhil’s voice trailed off when he noticed Abbey’s eyes had locked onto someone.
“I think we’ve got him,” Abbey said, slowly getting to her feet.
“Which one?” Pik asked.
“Just follow me, but not too close.”
“Okay.”
Abbey left the table, pushing through the shields and into the humid air. She kept her eyes on the target, an older man in simple pants and a stylish blue shirt who looked just a little too pleased with himself. He was wearing an ear-to-ear smirk, as though he knew the punchline to the galaxy’s funniest joke.
And maybe he did.
She stayed across the street, walking parallel as he headed away from the building on foot. She could tell by the tension in his jaw that he was fighting to control his emotions and stay at least somewhat reserved. Who was he, and what did he know?
She was going to find out.
Was there a chance she had the wrong individual? Of course. But her experience told her this was the mark, and she had to trust in her training.
“Queenie,” Bastion said. “The jumper just touched down.”
“I’m headed out to meet it,” Gant said.
“Roger. I’m tailing our idiot. Maintain comm silence unless it’s an emergency.”
“Roger,” Gant said.
Abbey continued trailing the man, crossing the street and increasing her pace as he descended into one of the city’s many transport hubs. If Abbey lost him in the endless maze of computer-controlled tunnels and pods that ran beneath the city, she would never locate him again.
She picked up the pace as she lost sight of him, slipping between other individuals as they rode the belt down. “Excuse me,” she said, ducking under a Plixian and easing her way around a Terran woman.
“Watch where you’re going,” the woman said.
“Sorry,” Abbey replied. She looked at the bottom of the belt. The mark was off already, closing in on the queue. Only a few individuals were waiting for a pod.
She was too far behind. Damn it. A Trover was on the belt in front of her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Can I get past.”
“What’s your rush?” the Trover asked, turning his head and looking down at her. “It’ll get there.”
“I’m late for an appointment,” she said.
“Not my problem,” he replied.
Abbey considered shoving him out of the way but didn’t. It wouldn’t help to draw that kind of attention. She leaned over to see past him. The target was third in line for a pod.
The belt reached the bottom, and the Trover stepped off.
“Asshole,” Abbey said as she finally got by, walking briskly toward the queue.
He was next up, and a pod was already incoming, running along the track to meet him. She started reaching out with the Gift, ready to use it to disable the pod. Too much attention. What if the mark knew about the Gift? What if he was a Venerant or an Evolent?
The pod came to a stop, the door sliding open. Abbey didn’t get on the line. She walked past it, running alongside to the edge of the track. The pod door closed and it accelerated into the tunnel. She got a look at its identifier as it did.
“Queenie, where are you?” Benhil asked.
“Pod station,” she replied. “He got away.”
“Are we fragged?”
“Not yet.”
16
“I have the pod ID,” Abbey said. “I’m queuing up. I’ll contact you once I have an updated position.”
“How are you going to find him? There are at least a thousand tunnels down there.”
“Why do seem to keep forgetting that I was a Breaker before I went to Hell?”
“It’s the hair, I guess. What are you going to do?”
“All of the pods have to communicate with one another, so they don’t crash in the interchanges. I just need to break into the onboard system of one of them and track the identifier. I should be able to get its destination.”
“Piece of cake,” Benhil said.
“Try to stay somewhat inconspicuous while I do all the work,” Abbey said.
“Haha. It’s good to be the Queen, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s fragging great.”
It didn’t take long for her to move to the front of the queue. She hopped into a pod, leaning back into one of the three seats in the small sled.
“Destination?” a synth voice asked.
“Spaceport,” Abbey replied.
The pod began to move forward, quickly gaining speed. She didn’t need to go to the spaceport, but it was a two-minute ride away; a fairly long trip relative to the other stations in the system.
She leaned forward, putting her hand on the dashboard and reaching out with the Gift. She could feel a gossamer thread stretch out from the shardsuit, sinking through the material to the electronics hidden behind it and connecting like a built-in extender. She waited a few seconds for the secured terminal to appear behind her eyes, open for instructions.
There was no need to tap a keypad or wiggle her fingers. She thought the commands and the naniates captured them, passing them along to the pod’s computer.
She ran through a basic password cracking algorithm first, increasing the complexity as her efforts at gaining entry failed. She ran through her top three algorithms, amazed at how quickly the naniates processed the instructions and executed them against the pod. She was aware of every second that passed as she did. Once the pod reached its destination, she would have to disembark and re-queue for another one, losing whatever gains she made and starting from scratch. She had to stay focused.
She closed her eyes, removing the distraction of her peripheral vision as she dug deeper into her memory banks for the more advanced programming filters. Code spewed out onto the pod’s terminal, appearing almost instantly in full as it escaped her mind. Nearly a minute had passed. She was halfway there and still hadn’t gotten in.
“Damn it,” she whispered, starting to feel the pressure.
She had to remind herself of the same thing she reminded Benhil. She was a fragging Breaker. Cool and confident. She spit out another algorithm, trying a vulnerability that she had skipped, figuring it would have been patched already.
It wasn’t. The terminal unlocked, giving her open access to the pod controls and read-only access to the entire transport system. She looked up the identifier of the target’s pod, saving the coordinates. Then she entered the new destination. She was jostled as the transport came to a jarring halt, beeping loudly. The lights went off, leaving her stranded in the dark. Had she crashed the system?
She opened her eyes and looked out at the black. A few seconds passed in absolute stillness. The tunnel was small, and there was no easy way out of the pod. She could break the forward viewport if she had to but then what? Walk all the way back?
“Joker, can you hear me?” She waited a few seconds. “Joker?”
Nothing. The fragging comm signals could reach from space, but not through a damned tunnel. She knew better than that. Different tech. It was still frustrating.
She leaned forward, putting her hands on the viewport, ready to push it out. At the same time, the lights turned back on in the tunnel and the pod, and a soft hum indicated the system was coming back to life. Her alterations had forced it to reboot and recalibrate, nothing more.
The pod started moving again, reversing course and adjusting for the thousands of other pods moving around it simultaneously. A minute later, she was at the transfer station, exiting the pod and ascending back to the surface. The individuals she passed were all whispering about how odd it was for the transport system to go offline like that, but there was little sense of panic. Maybe i
t wasn’t as odd an occurrence as she might have guessed? At least she was out of there.
She reached the surface, involuntarily raising an eyebrow when she did. It was as though she had been transported to another planet, not just another place in the city. The suns were almost down, the daylight fading. Everything around her was lit up in bright patterns and colors. Everything, including a large portion of the individuals wandering the area. It was the only thing consistent about their clothing. Some wore cloaks. Some wore skinsuits, some wore almost nothing at all, reducing to skimpy bikinis and thongs that were lined with lights that flashed and vibrated in a rhythm all their own. She had never seen anything like it, and she turned her head, watching in fascination for a moment before regaining her focus.
The target was here somewhere. Now she just had to find him.
“Queenie, do you copy?” Joker said.
“Affirmative,” she replied.
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. Everything is covered in lights.”
Benhil laughed. “Oh, man. I’ve always wanted to check out Brighton.”
“Brighton?”
“What do you think they’d call a neighborhood like that? Light City? Bulby Place? Laser Street?”
“Shut up and make your way over here.”
“Sure thing, Queenie, but we’re going to need to do a little shopping if we’re going to fit in over there.”
“Did someone say shopping?” Pik said.
She couldn’t argue. The others who didn’t have illuminated outfits drew the wrong kind of attention. She looked down at herself and smiled. She didn’t need to do any shopping.
She reached out to the Gift that composed the shardsuit at the same time she let her overcoat hang open. The naniates flared with light, sending waves of alternating color patterns running along her entire body.
“Better,” she said.
“What’s better?” Benhil asked.
“That is fragging awesome,” a passing woman said, eyes watching her shardsuit. “You should head over to Taggers. You’ll win the Lightshow for sure.”
“Thanks. Where’s Taggers?”
