Callsign Cerberus

by Mark Ellis

  She wasn’t foolish enough to voice her growing scepticism of the accepted dogma. She realized something more was there. But archivists were always watched, probably more than anyone else working in the other divisions. She had worked hard at perfecting a poker face. She wondered if some of the material handed to her was a test to gauge her reaction. Because of that suspicion, she had gained a reputation of cool calm, unflappable and immutable.

  The only time that composure nearly cracked was one morning a year before, at the beginning of her shift. She had inserted a computer disk into her machine and opened it up. She selected the disk at random, and so the message flashing onto the monitor screen stunned her into momentary immobility. In that numbed moment, she read:

  Greetings, fellow scholar. We are the Preservationists. You have distinguished yourself as a seeker and collector of knowledge. Only those deemed most worthy of preserving the hidden history of humanity are selected to join us. We will contact you again very soon.

  Then the message faded from the screen, as if it had a programmed time limit.

  Brigid never mentioned the message. She was terrified by it, yet enthralled at the same time. Weeks passed before she was contacted a second time, and she supposed the gap between communiqués had been deliberate, a way of finding out if she would report the incident.

  She also suspected a trap, something devised by the Magistrates. Only someone in her own division could have planted the disk. God only knew how long it had been on her desk before she had chosen to open it up.

  The second message was just as brief, promising to contact her again in the near future. In the weeks that followed, more messages appeared on her screen. She slowly understood that the Preservationists were archivists like herself, scattered throughout the baronies. They were devoted to preserving past knowledge, to piecing together the unrevised history of not only the preNuke, but also the post Nukeday world.

  Whoever the Preservationists were, they had anticipated her initial scepticism and apprehension. To show their good faith, she found an unfamiliar disk in her work area one morning. When she opened it, the message said simply, “Read only in private.”

  Shortly thereafter, she found, retrieved and repaired the cast-off DDC. Though her curiosity was almost an agony, she kept it in check until the computer was operational. Then she slid in the disk and read the data it contained. Brigid was never the same again, even though she still sometimes suspected she was the victim of an intricate hoax.

  On the disk was the journal of a scientist, born in the twentieth century, recruited to work for Conception Infinitis, placed in stasis a few years after Nukeday and revived nearly 150 years later.

  Although the journal contained recollections of the preNuke worlds, it dealt in the main with observations, speculations and theories about the environmental conditions of the postNukeday world—with hints the author knew more about how it came to pass than he cared to share. The term Archon Directive was mentioned several times.

  Brigid hadn’t known how much of the so-called Archon Codex to believe. Worse, she hadn’t known how much to disbelieve, or who her mysterious contact might be. But the Codex began her secret association with the Preservationists. Her assignment was to memorize any documents at variance with baronial doctrine, put them in cogent form and use the trash hatch where she had found the DDC as a dead drop. She cooperated with the instructions, only to learn more.

  The computer warmed up, and Brigid began tapping the keys. Her machine at the division was voice activated, and a manual keyboard seemed slow and clumsy. She entered the data she had glimpsed on a Department of Défense document, bearing the date of April 30, 1994.

  Since she had merely glanced at it, no one would suspect her memory retained almost every word and punctuation mark. She did not input the document verbatim, since the Preservationists encouraged extrapolation.

  Possible Origin of Magistrate Division Source DoD Document, Dated 4/30/94

  The concept of a one-world government was known in preNuke vernacular as the “New World Order.” The globalist view was opposed by many American citizens as a conspiracy to remove legal and civil rights granted to them by the Constitution (re. file 01405). The conspiracy theories were given a degree of plausibility by the so-called Black Helicopter Phenomenon, circa 1970 through 1997. Black and silent, these helicopters were unmarked and therefore unidentifiable. At first reported in remote areas, the aircraft seemed to be engaged in clandestine missions. They were repeatedly seen in conjunction with what was known as Unidentified Flying Objects (Re. file 65391). Contemporaneous with these sightings of both black helicopters and UFOs was the mystery of mutilated farm animals and, occasionally, human beings.

  Self-proclaimed UFO investigators speculated that the helicopters were part of a covert military force, working in tandem with extra-terrestrials. The extra-terrestrials allegedly required animal tissue and blood for sustenance, or for the genetic process of creating alien-human hybrids (re. file 89003).

  Though the DoD document does not directly address this possibility, it does refer to the Archon Directive as the project overseeing the animal mutilations

  Brigid took a breath and raised her arms above her head, arching her back to work out the kinks in her shoulder muscles. She tried to keep her mind empty, visualizing nothing but the rest of the document.

  The bedroom door swung open, and her head swivelled toward it so quickly she felt a twinge of tendon pain. Immediately, almost instinctively, she swept her hand across the keyboard, hitting the Escape button, clearing the screen of its data.

  She stared at a dark-haired, clean-shaven man in a long black overcoat. Though she couldn’t see it, she almost felt the bore of the Sin Eater trained on her naked body.

  Nothing had been true. It had all been a trap after all.

  The Magistrates had found her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FOR THE SECOND time that night, Kane wasn’t quite sure of what he was looking at. This time, at least, despite his alcohol-impaired reactions, he was able to quickly identify and catalogue what his vision transmitted to his brain.

  He looked at the figure leaping to her feet, and he recognized a truly beautiful woman. Her hair was wild and wavy and thick, falling artlessly over her bare shoulders. Her features were delicate, striking. A blush crept from the base of her slim neck and moved up across her face, finally becoming lost in her red-gold mane. Her complexion, fair and lightly dusted with freckles across her nose and cheeks, was left a rosy pink in its wake. Her bespectacled eyes weren’t just green; they were a deep, clear emerald, glittering now in sudden fright.

  The woman put her back to the wall of the little cubicle and stared at him unblinkingly.

  Kane could think of only one thing to say, so he asked, “Are you Baptist?”

  Some of the terror dimmed in the woman’s eyes. “Are you asking me my name or my religion?” Her voice was melodically husky.

  Kane swallowed the hard lump that swelled in his throat, and he felt a sudden sharp sense of embarrassment. “What?”

  “The way things are,” the woman continued, her tone growing more confident with every word, “I presume you’re asking my name. It’s pronounced Bap -teest . Brigid Baptiste. Why didn’t you knock?”

  “I’m Magistrate Kane—”

  “And Magistrate Kane doesn’t have to knock?”

  Embarrassment slowly gave way to ego-induced irritation. “That’s right, Baptiste. Magistrate Kane doesn’t have to knock.”

  The woman squinted at him carefully over the rims of her glasses. She seemed infuriatingly at ease with her state of undress. Her nose wrinkled slightly.

  “Magistrate Kane doesn’t have to be sober, either. Right?”

  The absurdity of the situation finally penetrated Kane’s befogged mind, and he surprised the woman and himself. He laughed.

  “Magistrates do have to
be sober,” he said, “and I’m guessing archivists do have to wear clothes. At least when they’re on duty.”

  A bit of the tense wariness left Brigid Baptiste’s posture. “This isn’t an official visit?”

  “No,” Kane answered. “Yes. Hell, I don’t know. Why don’t you put something on? I’m distracted enough as it is.”

  Brigid obligingly turned her back and took a robe hanging from a clothes hook on the wall of her improvised office. Kane watched her slip it on and tie the sash, aware of a strange yearning growing within him. It wasn’t lust. It felt like melancholy, as if he had glimpsed something wonderful he’d never see again. He knew Brigid Baptiste was afraid of him, but she controlled it admirably. No, correction—she wasn’t afraid of him as a person, but of the office he represented. He experienced a flash of irrational resentment and anger at his Magistrate persona.

  Brigid stepped in front of the desktop console, as if trying to shield it from his view. Calmly she said, “If this isn’t an official visit, you should have knocked or trans-commed me.”

  He waved away her comment. “We’re beyond my bad manners, Baptiste. However, if it will make you feel better, I’ll apologize. “He paused, and then added, “I am sorry.”

  A faint smile touched her full lips. Kane thought, she probably had never expected to hear a Magistrate apologize for anything. For that matter, I never expected it, either.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked crisply, sitting down before the computer console.

  Kane had almost forgotten the disk in his pocket. Making a wordless utterance of self-annoyance, he fished it out of his coat pocket and extended the gleaming circle toward her. She didn’t take it. Instead, she eyed it as though he were trying to hand her a venomous snake.

  “What is it?”

  “Exactly what it looks like,” he answered. “I want you to try to open the encryption lock so I can read it. I see you have a computer here.”

  “Why me?” she asked suspiciously. “Your Intel section has comps, doesn’t it?”

  “Humour me, Baptiste.”

  She didn’t move. “Is this some kind of a trap, to get my prints on that so you can charge me with a crime?”

  Kane smiled ruefully. “If I wanted to charge you with a crime, I don’t need to go to all this trouble.”

  She returned the smile, though wanly, and took the disk from his outstretched hand. As she slid it into the port, Kane commented, “An old manual DDC model. Thought most of them had been retired.”

  “Yes,” she stated matter-of-factly as she worked the keyboard. “Found it in a trash hatch. The housing is a little beat-up—see the fine cracks on the left of the screen? But that’s just a small external flaw. I reconditioned it, but it’s not tied into a data feed from the mainframes, of course.”

  “Of course.” Kane realized he should have lectured her about appropriating division property, even that slated for disposal, but it didn’t seem pertinent. He knew that some archivists were permitted to bend the rules, just like some Magistrates.

  The maddeningly persistent red triangle symbol flashed on the screen and the glowing message beneath it.

  “It’s locked,” she announced.

  “I know that.”

  “Why don’t you run it through the Syne?”

  “I did. Didn’t take.”

  She cast him a surprised over-the-shoulder glance. “Really?”

  “Really. I was told the disk was specifically designed to circumvent the Syne.”

  She tapped her chin contemplatively. “That’s unusual.”

  “Unprecedented,” Kane declared. He managed to turn a hiccup into a throat-clearing sound.

  “That, too. Where did it come from?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Brigid shot him a sharp, narrow-eyed glare. “I have a Q clearance, you know.”

  “And I have a Q Ultra. For all I know, the data on the disk may require a Zed-12 clearance.”

  “Which neither of us have,” she argued. “And if you take it to someone who does, you’ll be asked the same question. Where did it come from?”

  “I found it in a smuggler’s den, a slaghole out in a hellzone. He had a DDC system, too. A current one.”

  Her emerald eyes widened. “In a slaghole? Where’d he get it?”

  “That,” Kane replied grimly, “is something I intend to find out. And the only clue is that damn disk.”

  Nodding, Brigid said cryptically, “If you read it, it may contain something you’ll wish you’d never laid your eyes on.”

  Kane considered that for a silent moment. “Maybe,” he admitted. “But I’m willing to take the chance.”

  Brigid’s mouth twitched in a wry smile, and she returned her attention to the console. “That symbol rings a faint bell. Something very old. I’ll try some random pass codes.”

  Her fingers played over the keyboard. Looking over her shoulder, Kane saw she had typed USAF.

  The Access Denied message continued to glow, unchanged, so she kept trying again and again. Kane stood beside her, hands in his pockets. Her fingers flew over the keys, making a constant clatter. She punctuated each failure with under-the-breath mutters and groans. Some of the key codes she input were unfamiliar and strange, words like Conception Infinitis., Cerberus and Archon.

  “Where are you coming up with those words?” he asked. “They’re pretty obscure.”

  “That’s why I’m the archivist and you’re the Magistrate who doesn’t have to knock.”

  As Kane stood by and watched, he realized with a start that he was enjoying himself immensely. He wasn’t sure why, except he felt curiously comfortable with Brigid Baptiste, at ease with her. He found her intelligence, her apparent professionalism and the way she had refused to be intimidated by him bizarrely entertaining. Perhaps it was the shared act of flouting authority, like a pair of naughty children, that forged the bond. He felt rebellious, and he liked it. He knew Brigid did, too.

  It was crazy, he argued with himself. The woman was a total stranger, and for all he knew, she was pretending to cooperate because she was scared, or she was part of a complex sting set up by Salvo, and he had walked right into it. Hell, as soon as he left, she could call Salvo and report everything he said or did.

  Then he realized something else.

  He really didn’t give a shit.

  Suddenly Brigid uttered an exclamation of triumph. Kane bent down to peer at the screen. Instead of the Access Denied message, two words glowed against the dark background. The words were Dulce and Archuleta.

  “Dulce?” he muttered. “What the hell is a Dulce?”

  “Not a what,” she replied. “A where. A town in preNuke New Mexico. Not even that, exactly...an old military testing facility, where a lot of preNuke scientific experiments were conducted—”

  She clamped her lips tight, biting back her words. Her shoulders stiffened in fear. Kane said, “It’s okay, Baptiste. You’re a Q-clearance archivist. You’d have access to that sort of information.”

  The soothing, reassuring tone of his voice surprised even him.

  She threw him a grateful smile and said, “That triangle symbol was the insignia of the Dulce-base personnel.”

  Poking a key, she declared, “Let’s see what we have here.”

  Words and numbers scrolled down and across the screen with a dizzying rapidity. Brigid gazed at them unblinkingly, occasionally moving her lips.

  “How can you read anything at that speed?” Kane demanded.

  “Well, this is an old system,” she replied distractedly. “I never got around to upgrading the access and scroll time.”

  It took a moment for the meaning of Brigid’s response to register with Kane. When it did, he opened his mouth to ask if she expected him to believe she actually absorbed the speeding jumble of characters. Before he could, she broug
ht the data stream to an abrupt halt.

  Tapping the screen with a forefinger, she said, “This appears to be a recent file of bills of lading and transfer of goods. The last scheduled delivery is listed as today. However, there isn’t an entry of the receipt of the goods.”

  Kane leaned closer, squinting at the words and numbers. “Dulce delivery,” he read aloud. “Eighteen units.”

  “Units of what?”

  Kane did a quick mental calculation. Though he couldn’t be certain, he recollected at least that many people in the Mesa Verde holding cell.

  “Units of what?” repeated Brigid.

  Kane let out his breath in a slow sigh, and saw the woman avert her face as alcohol fumes washed over her. “People. Sort of. Outrunners.”

  Her brow furrowed. “A smuggler, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t they usually smuggle outrunners into baronies?”

  “Usually.”

  “There are no baronies in New Mexico. That would be under the jurisdiction of Baron Cobalt, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unless,” she continued, “something is going on in Dulce that requires outrunners for cheap labour. Where was the slaghole?”

  “Mesa Verde canyon. He had it in the Cliff Palace.” Kane smiled mirthlessly. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It was a black op, a deep penetration.”

  “And you don’t know why.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Brigid glanced up at him. “You wouldn’t be so curious if you knew why the op was black coded. You just went along with the order. You want to know how the smuggler was delivering his units to Dulce. That’s a long journey overland, even in an armoured vehicle.”

  “It gets worse,” Kane replied. “How did Reeth—that was the slagger’s name—bring baronial tech into a hellzone?”