by Alex Lamb
He held out a hand and an icon appeared. It shimmered and juddered in a way that icons weren’t supposed to. Whatever it was, it was lousy with the dubious alien software that Will ran on.
‘Here are some security enhancements for you, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’
Mark waved the offer away. ‘Thanks, but I don’t need them. I’m going straight to my room anyway.’
‘Mark,’ said Will, ‘do you think it was a coincidence that this shitty little sect scion happened to descend on you like that? You’re being watched. This was someone’s best attempt to take you out of the mission without tipping their hand. I’ll lay you any money that the social profile you saw for that guy is about an inch deep. And that crappy hooch you were drinking – they were doubles, I notice, on special. Ever stop to wonder why the price was so low? Did it never occur to you that someone might have actually wanted you to get drunk? Someone doesn’t want you to fly, Mark, and chances are they’re coming with you on that ship.’
Mark realised with a sinking feeling that Will might be right. The man moved in a world where paranoia took on a life of its own. He’d forgotten what it was like.
‘If you want to keep the job, please accept this,’ said Will. ‘The Fleet will be all over you tomorrow, insisting on upgrades, and they’ll want to see recent memory logs. This will save you time and make sure that this episode never sees the light of day.’
‘Fine,’ said Mark.
He snatched up the icon and tossed it back like a piece of cake. He could feel the program crawling through his memory stacks like a spider, delicately inserting itself. He shuddered, but could tell Will was relieved.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Will. ‘Please don’t leave the suite until the robots show.’
‘Of course not,’ said Mark sharply.
Will winked out.
Mark returned to his physical body and slumped against the wall. He felt like a teenager again and hated it as much as he hated the fact that Will’s assessment was undoubtedly right. The straitjacket angst of being locked in a former version of himself was one thing. The growing sense that this entire decision had been a huge, horrible mistake was quite another.
3.4: WILL
As Will slid back into his body, a sense of quiet victory hummed in his veins. His luck finally appeared to be turning. The mission had come together despite the political and logistical obstacles that everyone had been so keen to throw in front of it. And now he had Mark on board, too.
He opened his eyes in his private lounge at the other end of Delany Station. Pari and Nelson were still sitting there, watching him intently. Nelson stared with earnest concern while Pari regarded him with barely concealed anticipation. The mission plans from the meeting they’d been having before Mark’s call had all been cleared away. As he took in the looks on their faces, Will’s sense of achievement began to fade.
‘You’re back,’ said Pari. ‘What happened? Where did you go?’
‘Two thugs came after Mark,’ said Will. ‘It was a set-up. Someone wanted him to look violent and unreliable just before the mission. It didn’t pan out that way. I’ve got two unconscious bullies to clean up but other than that, we’re in the clear.’
He dumped a summary of the experience into the room’s blackboard space for them to pore over.
Nelson shook his head as the data scrolled up in his contacts.
‘This is bad news,’ he said. ‘We’re incredibly lucky this didn’t go public. If he hadn’t called you when he did—’
‘I know,’ said Will. ‘It would have made for a very effective smear. As it is, we’re golden.’
Pari lurched to her feet and started pacing. ‘Golden, my ass. This isn’t a near miss,’ she said. ‘It’s the tip of the iceberg.’
Nelson crooked an eyebrow. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘If the sects are resorting to mission sabotage at this late stage, we’re already in trouble. Specifically, Mark is in trouble – he’s clearly the target. I know you didn’t mean to put him at risk, Will, but that’s what you’re doing. Do you honestly believe that Yunus wasn’t aware of this? And by this time tomorrow, that bastard will have full control over the Gulliver, and Mark along with it. That could be a death sentence. And a screwed-up mission to boot.’
‘Are we completely wedded to the idea of Mark as captain at this point?’ said Nelson. ‘Couldn’t we just make him sub and slide him out of the hot seat before something worse happens?’
‘Don’t even go there,’ said Pari. ‘Will and I have had this conversation. Will isn’t keen on compromise.’
‘You’re dead right I’m not keen,’ said Will, his anger bubbling back up. ‘And we can drop that line of reasoning right now.’
Pari shot him a hurt look. ‘Excuse me, Will,’ she said, ‘but did you just issue me with an order? I’d rather you didn’t treat me like an adversary or a minion, please. I find it hurtful.’
‘Sorry,’ said Will. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’ Still, his mood refused to settle.
‘We’re not here because we’re your groupies, Will,’ she said. ‘Please remember that. We’re peers, and we’re all trying to solve the same problem. Do I need to remind you who’s been looking after your agenda for the last two years?’
Will shook his head. ‘You don’t.’
‘Had it not been for me, there’d be no research ships mapping the Depleted Zone,’ she said. ‘There’d be no Omega Oversight Programme keeping all your little roboteers safe. Do you think it’s easy to make money from the IPSO budget disappear to cover all that? You haven’t so much as looked at that stuff in years. Do you think I take on that work just for fun?’
Will knew she was right, even if it didn’t sit well with him. After Rachel’s ship had been lost in the Zone, he’d stopped managing his own side-projects. He’d just given up and delegated almost everything to his friends to give himself room to grieve. Somehow he’d never got around to picking up the reins of leadership afterwards. There’d always been too much to do.
‘And what about Nelson?’ she said, gesturing. ‘Who do you think has been looking after your bloody ship while you attended all those charity dinners? Who do you call up every time you have another damned war nightmare?’
‘Please,’ said Nelson. ‘I’m not sure that’s strictly relevant. I suspect Will is just trying to clear out some of his familial guilt issues and this mission will run more smoothly if he does. I think Mark’s involvement is a terrific idea, even if it does complicate matters.’
Will rubbed his temples. ‘Look, I appreciate everything you’ve both done, more than I can say. I’d have come apart by now if I didn’t have you two. But the flip side of that is that I’ve been running on rails for far too long and letting you both cover for me. Now I’m fixing that. I need to.’
Pari snorted. ‘You chose a fine time to do your fixing.’
‘I chose the one opportunity I had,’ Will snapped. ‘I’ve had no chance to do anything better, stuck in bullshit meetings every goddamn day. The reason why I put Mark in the captain’s seat is because he’s a better fucking pilot than any of the alternatives. What would be the point of sitting him in there as a sub? Decoration?’
Pari’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you think those meetings are, Will? Bullshit? Have you any idea what would happen to your credibility and your precious political balance if I hadn’t been packing your calendar with friendly faces for all those months? You’d be a joke already if it wasn’t for me. Or more of a joke, at any rate.’ She threw up her hands. ‘I’m done for tonight,’ she said and strode for the door. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Will, because out there I won’t be around to wipe your ass for you.’
The door leapt open at her approach and crept shut afterwards as if anxious at her departure.
‘Well,’ said Nelson, slapping his knees, ‘that was interes
ting.’ He stood and offered Will a warm, amused smile. ‘Something tells me we’re not going to get a great deal more useful planning done this evening. I propose that we all reconvene in the morning before the mission briefing when everyone has cooled down a little. How does that sound?’
Will stood. ‘Fine.’
He felt more embarrassed than he wanted to let Nelson see. Giving Mark a ship had been his last great attempt to clear his moral decks, but it felt as if he was simply sliding closer to failure yet again. With every step he seemed to alienate someone he needed.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m being a fool,’ he said.
‘You’re taking risks,’ said Nelson, ‘but you’re also taking control and being proactive. It’s an appropriate reaction under the circumstances. Not the one everyone would take, I admit, but appropriate, so don’t worry about it.’ He nodded to Will from the doorway. ‘Goodnight, Boss. See you on the morrow.’
Will waved as the door slid shut. As soon as they left, he fell back into the couch, covering his face with his hands. Guilt and embarrassment slurped around inside him – a storm in own his personal teacup. Yet as he sat there, he found a smile inexorably drawing itself across his face.
Mark had looked as uncomfortable as ever. Trouble still followed him like a shadow and Will knew he should have guessed something like this might happen. Mark’s software had been way out of date despite the nanny SAP he carried. He’d never have been so easily targeted otherwise. He probably hadn’t touched his interface code since moving to Earth. Will felt a little guilt for having not predicted that, either.
It shocked him, too, how naive Mark still appeared to be. Will saw now, with hindsight, the foolishness of trying to shield his protégé from the risks his life entailed. He probably shouldn’t even have tried. Nevertheless, he felt a certain perverse satisfaction in resolving this new problem quickly and quietly. He hadn’t told the others about the software patch he’d rigged. He doubted they’d have approved.
Nelson would have said that by intervening, Will had exposed himself. That he was acting out his need for personal contact and jeopardising the very relationship he wished to foster. Will lacked the energy to talk it through. He called up a submind and sent it off to tweak the Fleet agenda for the following day – removing certain checks and tests from Mark’s list so that nobody would find out what had happened.
With that done, he looked back over the web of security bypasses woven around the habitat ring that housed the privacy suites. It was a remarkably thorough job for some sect baron to have cooked up on short notice. So thorough, in fact, that it made no sense.
Will paged through visualisations of the data till he found one that worked for him. The messaging protocol for the suites took on the form of a landscape of networked nodes, and the security alterations became spiderlike structures straddling it. Presented that way, the truth stood out: there hadn’t been one set of security alterations but two. One set had been designed to unlock and broadcast content when triggered. Had that happened, Mark’s actions would have wound up fully documented and in the hands of the receiving party – almost certainly the same people who’d arranged his fight.
A different set of alterations had been imposed over the top, seemingly without knowledge of the edits already in play. While far less intrusive than the first, they’d successfully prevented the first set from releasing their message payload.
That the House representatives who wanted Mark ejected from the mission had cooked up a scandal came as no surprise. That there were conflicting security objectives layered over the same site worried him deeply. Deeper forces might be at work than he’d surmised.
Security had been a big concern for Will ever since the war. Repeatedly being shot, burned and poisoned in assassination attempts had taught him to pay much closer attention to the intentions of others than he’d ever dreamed would be necessary. That in turn had led him to keep Mark’s genetic heritage secret from everyone, including Mark.
All the children from the Omega Programme he and Rachel had launched so disastrously contained the same set of genetic mods he’d received himself. Only one of them, though, contained genetic material from her. He could see her in Mark every time he looked. Mark had the same compact, muscular build, the same dark, brooding complexion. They’d tried to prevent all those children from becoming political targets, but Mark first and foremost.
Pari had a point. If Will really wanted Mark safe, he couldn’t be too careful. Maybe he’d be able to find someone on the mission to help cover that base. But in the meantime, he shouldn’t leave things to chance.
He opened up a channel to the new software in Mark’s interface and tightened the security a little more, adding a self-aware routine to watch for trouble. Mark didn’t even need to know it was there. Yunus wouldn’t be able to touch him now. Will sprawled, satisfied with himself and feeling childish for it. However it panned out, tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.
4: DEPARTURE
4.1: ANN
It was two in the morning when Ann received an unexpected second message from the fixer. She sat up in bed and fumbled around for a touchboard to make sure her security filters were still in place, then tapped the icon with trepidation.
My men are half-dead. Meet me in the back room at Poseidon’s in one hour to renegotiate. Otherwise I will go public about Fleet operatives hiring criminals for cash.
Ann stared at the message and didn’t breathe. She thought back through the steps she’d taken and the software fail-safes she’d put in place to cover her tracks. At no time had there been any evidence that the FiveClan fixer had seen through her cover. His checks on her phoney sect status had all been perfectly managed. There’d been no evidence of a trace from the memory bead, either. So where did the accusation of Fleet involvement come from?
She desperately wished she could contact Sam, but that’d be the last thing he’d want. In the League, once something screwed up, agents dealt with their problems independently unless they absolutely needed backup. That way, the screw-ups didn’t spread.
Ann thought over her options. The one that leapt out as the most responsible was also the one she liked least. She had to find out just how compromised the League had become and take action accordingly. She composed a status report for Sam and put it in a time-locked address in the Fleet’s database. If she got back before the lock opened, the message would disappear and Sam would never have to know what had happened. If she didn’t, everything he needed to take the next steps would be delivered to him via one of the League’s secure pipes.
Ann started her preparation by testing the waters. She composed a short reply to the fixer and sent it.
WTF? Is that really you? You said no more contact!
She rebuilt the security shield she’d need to cover her actions in the field while she waited to see if he’d ping again. His next reply came swiftly. It contained just two words.
One hour.
Below that, he’d included a snippet of an error statement from a broken piece of SAP code. Fleet headers were all over it, along with all manner of time and address stamps that made it clear whose security software had been running on the privacy ring around the time when Ruiz was supposed to be intercepted by the FiveClan heavies.
Ann couldn’t have asked for a more incriminating log file. She hadn’t been told – and hadn’t asked – how word of Mark’s behaviour was supposed to get back to the Fleet after the fight. As it was, she could now make a pretty good guess. Sam had chosen that particular fixer because he’d already sold the guy a compromised security-blackout kit. In other words, the tools for a possible covert op on Triton had been carefully deployed by Sam months ago. She updated her status report, finished her security shield and headed down to the undercover desk as fast as she could.
Fifty minutes later, Ann was back in disguise and pushing her way through the drunken throng at the
entrance to Poseidon’s Bar on the lo-gee level of Ring Nine. Between all the shouting and the endless slamming beat of the kiddicore they were playing, she could barely hear herself think. The syrupy blue illumination kept surging on and off.
As she squeezed towards the bar, someone elbowed her in the ribs. A minute later, another clod accidentally tipped half their drink down the back of her barely adequate dress. Ann buffered up her claustrophobia and pressed it into a sense of purpose. This was all just part of the day’s work. A badly botched, frightening day, for sure, but just a day.
She forced her way to the bar and pinged the room’s SAP for some human attention. When a cocktail-bot tried to take her drink order, she waved it angrily away. Eventually, a woman in a skintight blue bodysuit decorated with mermaid scales came grudgingly through a door and slouched towards her. She didn’t bother trying to talk over the din, just subvoked a message straight to Ann over the public channel. The text appeared in her view.
‘Can I help you?’
She didn’t need to sound bored. Ann could see it in her eyes. Bars on Triton required a live human attendant in case of emergency. That didn’t mean they liked being disturbed.
Ann replied in kind. ‘Someone’s waiting for me in the back room.’
The woman rolled her eyes. ‘We don’t have a back room.’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Ann. Using a silent command, she pulled up the message the fixer had asked her to use as ident on their first meeting and briefly pasted it back into her public persona.
‘Oh – that back room,’ said the woman, her eyes suddenly alight with attention. ‘Follow me.’
She led Ann around the side of the bar and down a corridor where the music was a little less deafening. Other than a few couples making out, the place was empty. The woman took her to a blank plastic wall panel at the far end decorated with animations of cavorting sea-sprites. It slid aside at their approach. As soon as Ann was through, it slid back into place.
