Erebus

by Ralph Kern

  “Thanks, boss. We’re going to go get him.” I turned to Dev, the real world bleeding back into my awareness. “The wheels are in motion, my friend. You up for this?”

  Dev looked through the VTOLs window at the smoldering wreckage of the hospital. “Damn right I am.”

  CHAPTER 2

  ER RAHAD

  Captain Phillips had brought with her a team of enhanced soldiers from the Australian 2nd Commando, a hardened bunch who had fought in every major conflict from the three Gulf Wars through the Second Korean and onto the Siberian Crisis. They were not a bunch to be messed with. They had a lot of skills, counter insurgency, high-tech operations, and the like, but there were still only nine of them, including the captain herself.

  To make up numbers, we had met up with another contingent from the international peacekeeping force. These were from the Congolese Defense Force and were led by a Captain Otanga, a bear of a man who had a voice with a deep rumbling resonance that was felt as much as heard.

  The CDF unit had a technical support element attached to it. They didn’t exactly have cutting-edge equipment, but more than enough to do this job. We were packed into the company’s armored command carrier, sweat pouring off us even though dusk was falling. They seriously needed to top up the air con on this thing.

  I watched the main screen as one of Otanga’s men deftly controlled a mosquito, a tiny recon drone made up to look like its namesake. It was an odd experience; everyone and everything seemed massive on the screen. Doors were monolithic moving buildings, and the odd person still on the street, a gargantuan giant.

  Flying in through an open window of the building, we saw that we were in some kind of dingy hotel bar, although, like everything in this war-torn country, that name was generous. It was a dive, low lights, lots of ugly chaps lounging around with prostitutes draped over them. Some of them were not even waiting to go somewhere private to earn their keep.

  “There he is,” Otanga said, pointing at the screen. Sure enough, Mohawk was reclining in a seat, feeling the need to wear sunglasses even in the dark room. He cut an imposing figure, a vest top showing off heavily muscled arms, a bullet dangling from a necklace, and lots of scars. Back home, he’d be a total fashion victim. In a place like this, where intimidation was the main currency, he was a rich man. The mosquito settled down next to him just as a gaunt drug-ravaged woman sat up from under the table, wiping her mouth.

  “He’s a classy bastard,” I muttered as he threw the hooker’s money on the floor. She scrambled to pick it up as he swiftly knocked back whatever he was drinking in a single gulp. Standing, he zipped himself up and made his way to the stairs.

  “Follow him.” The mosquito lifted off and tracked Mohawk as he trudged up the steps and walked down the filthy corridor to a door. The mosquito managed to dart inside with him just before he slammed it shut.

  The room was as squalid as the rest of the place: stained sheets, piles of dirty clothes, and just to complete the look, a rifle leaning against the wall, an AK-86S. The damn thing was probably a hundred years old, but they were cheap, and you could buy them almost anywhere.

  Mohawk stretched his arms out and gave a gaping yawn before turning and looking straight at the mosquito. With a speed that belied his steroidal size, he slapped it out of the air. The drone spiraled to the floor, the room spinning dizzyingly on the screen before it hit the deck.

  The corporal controlling the mosquito tried to get it flying again. He managed to hop it around till it was looking at Mohawk who was staring at his hand in confusion. He seemed to have realized that what he had hit was not the soft body of an insect, but something more solid. A massive knee planted itself down in front of the camera and again the view twisted sickeningly as he lifted it up between his finger and thumb. We were treated to a close-up of a bloodshot eye dilated from some kind of narcotic. Seconds later, the mosquito was under his boot heel.

  We’d been made.

  CHAPTER 3

  ER RAHAD

  We pulled our tactical helmets on. My HUD interfaced with the opaque visor, which allowed me to see the world through the solid battle steel. Dev slid the carrier door open and jumped out. As I followed close behind, I sensed that Phillips was on our heels. Just as we jogged into view of the hotel, I saw a figure crash out of a window onto a neighboring rooftop.

  “Get more mosquitos up,” I shouted into the com as we began running along the street parallel to where Mohawk was parkouring. The guy was fast and had scant regard for his own safety as he ran across the shanty-building rooftops. Phillips, behind me, was wearing military-grade battle armor and wasn’t as quick as Dev and me in our peacekeeper scout suits, which were Hague standard issue for deployment. It was still protective; it just didn’t come with all the bells and whistles that Phillips’s did.

  I drew my sidearm, a Viking 20 Dual, and set it to incapacitation rounds, or incaps. I sighted toward Mohawk as he ran, my eye implants automatically interfacing with the gun. I led him with my aim and squeezed the trigger just as he vaulted over a low rooftop wall out of site. A blue flash sparked on the wall. “Damn,” I muttered; a clean miss.

  My HUD tactical map showed an alley where Mohawk must have landed. Dev sprinted ahead of me to its mouth between two decrepit buildings. I heard trash bins being knocked over as I got to the dark entrance. A stream of bullets hissed by. I slammed against the wall, taking cover. Dev did the same on the other side.

  “You okay?” I called to my partner.

  “Yeah,” he answered, his own sidearm out and pointed down.

  Swapping my gun to my left hand, I eased it round the corner and used my HUD to interface with the camera on the barrel. Mohawk was climbing over a fence at the end of the alley. “Otanga, where are your men? We were supposed to have this place locked down.”

  “It’s a rabbit warren,” his voice came over my link. “I’m sending my men to head him off. The mosquito is heading for you.”

  I looked back and saw Phillips running up the street, still some distance behind. Her suit was more like a personal tank than our own more agile kit.

  “Let’s go,” Dev said, setting off down the alleyway. I dashed after him. Dev vaulted the fence like an Olympic athlete; I hauled myself over and crashed down on the other side. A snarling dog turned from snapping at my partner’s heels and charged at me. I scrambled back. The beast reached the end of its chain and was yanked back, barking and drooling in fury. Christ, I hate dogs. Idiot! I thought as I remembered that I was wearing scout armor. Let the bloody mutt break his teeth on my leg if it wants to. Still, I skirted it a little wider than I had to.

  By the time I started running after Dev, Mohawk had charged out of the alley and turned right. Dev was hot on his heels. I heard an almighty crash behind me, and I glanced back. Phillips had decided to take the less subtle approach of charging through the fence, an easy task for someone in servo-assisted battle armor. Even the dog knew better than to give her any grief; it backed away, whimpering.

  As I rounded the corner after Mohawk, he turned and gave a wild burst of gunfire at us. He hit potluck; a round smashed into my chest, knocking me on my arse. It had no chance of penetrating my peacekeeper armor, but still, it felt like someone had slammed a sledge hammer into my chest. Picking myself up, I grabbed my gun from where it had fallen and aimed it again. Too late; he had turned another corner. Dev jumped out from behind the cover of a car and sprinted after him. Wincing from the shot, I set off again.

  I heard a buzz and saw the blip of a mosquito on my HUD as it raced past me. The tiny drone was equipped with a tranquilizer “bite.” As long as the operator got it to him, he should be able to take Mohawk down.

  Mohawk ran up the street just as one of Otanga’s military carriers screeched to a halt in front of him. The sound of shouting came from it as soldiers began to pour out of it. Mohawk skidded to a stop and looked around. Dev stopped, bringing his gun up. Mohawk dashed for another alley, and Dev abandoned the shot. Too many troops were in the line
of fire. Mohawk dashed into a dark alley. Dev and I raced after him.

  As I entered the alley, I could see Dev ahead. My eye implants tried to gain a fix on where Mohawk was but drew a blank. There was a lot of crap in the alleyway—bins, crates, piles of rubbish, and the stink of stale piss. My nose twitched, and I gave a mental command, amping up the filtration system on my helmet. The wall at the other end looked too high to easily get over. We had him cornered. The mosquito hovered, its own limited sensors probing the hiding places.

  “Got him?” I called.

  “No. He’s in here somewhere, though,” Dev panted back.

  “Fine, let’s withdraw, cover the entrances, and wait for the cav—”

  A light blared in the sky, washing the darkness from the alleyway, creating a burning contrast. A loud crackle came over my link implant and my vision skewed crazily as my retinal implants fired spurious signals straight into my visual cortex. A cascade of random images and letters appeared in my vision. The outside world went black as the visor completely shut down, blinding me as it turned opaque. I ripped the helmet off my head, still dazzled by my malfunctioning HUD. I closed my eyes, trying to find the mental command to reboot my implants.

  “What the fuck?” I heard Dev cry out.

  Finally I managed to switch my HUD off, leaving my visual spectrum naked. It was the first time I’d seen the world without my HUD in years. It was surprising, shocking, and ironically unnatural. I had no constant feed of extra information washing into my brain, no communication windows, not even the damn clock hovering unobtrusively in the corner of my vision—nothing.

  The light died…and then I saw him—Mohawk, standing by Dev, a vicious machete glinting in his right hand. And my partner was still on one knee, shaking his head, trying to clear his implants, his own helmet on the floor next to him.

  Mohawk must have been a Natural; he wasn’t debilitated by the blast of light. To him, it would be no more than a flare.

  Mohawk raised the machete. Dev looked up. I heard him say—not shout, not plead, just say—“No.”

  Where the hell was my gun? I’d dropped it in my confusion. I reached into my harness and grabbed my extendable baton, flicking it out to full length. I took a shaky step forward…too slow…

  I saw the machete swinging down in an arc of unstoppable force. I saw Dev on his knees, a man about to be executed. I saw the look on his face as he stared up to meet his fate.

  The blade cleaved into my partners head with a sickening thud. Mohawk planted his foot on Dev’s shoulder and pushed, pulling his blade free with a sucking noise. The body fell to the ground.

  Mohawk charged at me, crossing the distance quickly, and the bloody machete arced toward my own head. By luck, judgment, or instinct, I put the baton up. The blade sparked against it with a crackle of electricity. Mohawk dropped the machete with an agonized cry.

  He clutched his stunned hand and looked at me with his bloodshot eyes, his pupils dilated and full of rage. He knew it was over. I pressed the tip of the baton into his chest. Every muscle in his body locked up as the smell of ozone infused the air. He fell to the dusty ground, rigid.

  Instinct and training definitely took over. All I wanted to do was go to Dev, but I kicked the machete away, rolled Mohawk onto his front, and pulled his arms into a pair of flexicuffs.

  Dev’s body was slumped into the dirt in a fetal position. I ran to him and knelt down beside him. The wound was horrendous, his head brutally cleaved. I doubted his implants could have helped with an injury of that magnitude even had they been functional. With them offline…not a chance.

  Against all rational hope, I checked for a pulse. Nothing. He was gone. I saw Dev’s gun lying next to him where he had dropped it. Picking it up, I regarded it for a moment. I flicked the switch from the blue dot indicating incap rounds to the red of lethal and looked over to Mohawk, lying unconscious on the floor. A deep rage filled me. I stood and walked toward him.

  “Trent.” I glanced back, but only for a moment. Phillips was in the mouth of the alley. She stood there in a black one-piece underlay suit, rifle in hand. Her armor was a splayed open statue behind her. She’d abandoned it; probably the more advanced systems were just as disabled as our implants. Even her glowing blue eyes were dulled; her HUD was off.

  Those eyes flicked between Mohawk, Dev’s body, and the gun in my hand. She cocked her head, slightly.

  “Layton, don’t,” she said simply. “We need him.”

  Mohawk gave a groan on the floor. I wanted to kill him for what he’d just done. For what he did at the hospital. For all the other crimes he had undoubtedly committed.

  I clicked the selector switch on my gun to green and lowered my arm. We had a job to do. I was a cop, not an executioner, and Phillips was right. We did need him.

  ***

  The barbed-wire-topped blast walls and rugged but tired old buildings made the local UN base look more like a sprawling medieval castle than the military base it was. I guess that was kind of fortunate as it was called “the Keep” by the contingent running it.

  I was watching Mohawk—or Beda Kumba, as it turned out he was actually called—through the observation glass. He sat in one of the interview rooms, still cuffed. One of the peacekeepers had tried to take them off earlier, but Kumba had given them such a fight, he had gotten himself stunned again for his trouble.

  The holotank in the corner had CNN playing. The well-coiffured news anchor had an image of Jupiter on the screen behind him. “…It appears to have come from the Jupiter system. Two-way communication will take two hours. At the moment, we have no information as to what has caused the flare; however, it appears to have put out a substantial electro-magnetic pulse. The EM pulse is what caused the temporary disruption to services and implants. The full extent of the damage is still being assessed. Most space and aircraft are now back online and in contact, and reported casualties, for the moment, are light…”

  Not light enough, I thought. The event couldn’t have come at a worse time for Dev. Even now, the young officer’s body was downstairs, preserved in cold storage in the Keep’s morgue along with the other corpses from the Karen Cole Hospital.

  The last few days had been a whirlwind—losing contact with the hospital, a reconnaissance flight, the burning wreckage, getting bounced to Sahelia from The Hague, the casualties, the events of the last few hours.

  And Dev…

  It had only taken a couple of minutes for my HUD to reset, and I had full functionality back. On the VTOL back to the Keep, I had been in touch with a confused Giselle. She had no more information on the event than what was on the news. She had blanched when I had told what had happened to Dev. She knew him as well as I did; she’d recruited him from her old team in Paris, after all.

  For now, though, we still had a job to do.

  “Judge Thompsen approved the ERP,” Giselle said.

  “Thompsen?” I raised an eyebrow. He was notorious among investigators for being overly diligent and tough in granting authority to use intrusive questioning techniques like event response potential mapping.

  Giselle nodded. “To be honest, I don’t think he read the request with his usual thoroughness with what’s going on in space.” Her voice became softer. “I must ask, Layton. Do you want off this job?”

  “Not a bloody chance.” I looked again at Kumba in the observation room.

  “Protocol says you should be. Look, someone has to bring Dev home.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But this is quick time, now. When the rest of Kumba’s group realize he’s missing, they’ll move. We need to get their location out of him and go in fast.”

  “Very well.” Giselle’s voice was uncharacteristically uncertain. “Do it. You know the procedure. You have to give him one more chance to answer on his own.”

  “Fine.” I opened the heavy metal door and stepped into the interview room. My fists clenched to bottle down the sheer hatred I felt for the man.

  “Where are your friends?” I said to
him. I almost impressed myself with the calm in my voice. “You know, the ones who murdered fifteen people on a humanitarian mission.”

  “Fuck you!” The ball of phlegm that he launched at me in reply only narrowly missed.

  I turned and went back into the observation room, letting the door slam shut behind me. “I asked him.”

  “And?” Giselle prompted.

  “He declined to answer my question.” There, protocol served.

  “Okay, I’m sending the warrant through now.”

  I saw an envelope icon ping into existence on the corner of my visual field, showing I’d received a HUDmail. I looked over at the tech in the observation room and forwarded it onto her. “This is the warrant to ERP Kumba, if you’d be so kind as to look at it.”

  She nodded and paused, probably scanning through the document before linking to The Hague to confirm the authenticator code on it.

  Before long, Kumba was pinned down and having a cocktail of drugs, scopolamine, barbiturates, and various other things I couldn’t even pronounce pumped into his system. It chilled him out—a lot.

  The problem with truth drugs was that, to be blunt, they were useless. Depending on the person and the cocktail, some subjects resisted the drugs outright while others became too eager to please, in which case they simply said what you wanted to hear or, frankly, just talked gibberish. None of those were of any use to us. The beauty of ERPing was that it reduced resistance while raising electrical activity in the brain. That electrical activity was what we were really interested in.

  Phillips, Otanga, and I stood in the observation booth watching the tech work. When the drugs had taken hold fully, the tech clamped Kumba’s head into the boxy sensor helmet and began asking control questions. As she worked, she glanced at a monitor showing his brain activity and occasionally nodded in satisfaction.