It was too late now for them to join the retreat. There was only one way to go and that was dead ahead across the bridge, which would take them to the back of the plaza nearest the main entrance to the Sandelsky building. The bridge was nearly empty except for the strewn bodies of burnt soldiers concentrated at the opposite end. Corrag looked at Kevin. He was unhurried and calm, waiting for the right moment to act. Corrag took heart from his demeanor. The hardest part would be getting across the plaza without taking fire from survivors of the Bograd attack.
"Kevin, follow me."
"Yes, Corrag."
Corrag tucked the gun back into the shoulder holster. She broke into a run and Kevin kept up at her side. Together they reached the other side of the bridge without breaking stride. They dodged the casualties of the Bograd assault, still writhing and smoking where they had fallen. Corrag felt herself flying as they reached the main entrance and pushed through the revolving glass doors. It felt like a moment ago that she had done the same with Beithune upon arriving for the first time in the Repho after her tubid trip from Democravia. Ahead of her were the same blond giant that had greeted them and the Mongolian looking boy, Shulder, that Beithune had successfully fought in a barrier challenge. They were standing amidst a group of armed men and women that comprised the Sandelsky private security arsenal, half of them on emosponders and the other half standing around looking dazed, as if in a state of shock. Corrag swallowed hard and strode forward barehanded. Kevin stepped up beside her silent and stone-faced.
"Howdy, folks. Uhm, who's in charge here?" she asked. The group turned as one and stared at the two of them. "It's us. The reconnaissance unit," she continued confidently. "Ranger Brigades. Operation Street Clean. We need to secure the network center here. Orders from Hinkle."
"How'd you get here?" asked the giant.
"The Navy, man. I didn't call a water cab. Fares too high this time of year." There was suppressed laughter, and Corrag could sense some of the danger dissipate. One of the Sandelsky guards got on his emosponder.
"Look, I don't have time. Tell the people upstairs we need to secure the building against further attacks, and we need to move fast."
"You'll need to do the security scan first. Just procedure," said the giant.
"I have this from General Hinkle," said Corrag, flashing the Sandelsky access card. The giant took it from her and inspected it closely, turning it over several times in his enormous hands.
"We'll accompany you." He motioned with a nod of his head to Shulder, and the boy stepped forward eagerly, feeling for the emosponder strapped to his throat. They followed Shulder over to the elevators. Inside, the low hum of the generators told her the area power grid had been affected by the fighting. She looked at Kevin and he looked back with a slight question on his face. Shulder was making him nervous. But she gave a minimal shake of her head to put Kevin off the idea of any action to take Shulder out. They needed to get to the top of the building, across several layers of security, to the hall where she believed the network's main servers were housed. The elevator was sure to have cameras and motion sensors installed.
After a long journey of vertical, horizontal and then vertical ascents, the elevator stopped at the top floor. Shulder stepped aside and let the door open beside him. Then he stopped and waved them ahead. As Corrag stepped beside him at the door she had her hand on her gun. Without pulling it from its holster, she leaned against Shulder and coldly pulled the trigger. The shock of the gun blast pushed him back against the far wall of the elevator where he slumped to the ground as the doors closed.
Wordlessly, she led Kevin down the darkened hall. At the junction of corridors a team of high-level advisers walked quickly past them. Corrag recognized several young men from the poolroom the previous night. Their well-fed good looks had been replaced by fearful, browbeaten expressions. Corrag saw at close range the effect of the Korazan attack in the faces of the swiftly walking young Gheko administration aides. The orderly structure on which their lives of comfort had been based had been pulled out from under them, leaving a chasm in their hearts that they had never before imagined. Pale-faced, terrorized, they did not even give the two intruders a passing glance. Corrag looked in both directions down the corridors and thought she saw the door she was looking for. It was, she hoped, the entrance to the dream laboratory, where she had been tested in the Memory Sponge. In the door was an eye scan. Corrag put her face to it. Kevin held her arm. In his other hand was his gun, ready to blast his way in.
"No. It’s okay, Kevin. This is what we have to do. We're almost in."
"But you can't have the clearance."
"I'm on the data banks."
"You are?"
"Yes."
As if on cue the door latch made a clicking sound. Corrag pulled it open and they both slipped inside. There was the Memory Sponge, Chagnon's latest toy, and against the far wall the long series of output boards for the cloud server's hard drives, the central nervous system of the Sandelsky dream machine. It now fed the augmentation program of the entire North American grid, Repho and Democravian. Bar graphs alternated with colored flowcharts monitoring minute-by-minute energy and informational throughputs. If she could locate the actual servers there would be nothing standing in the way of her improvised plan to decimate the augment system that Sandelsky was now relying on to install itself in power, via cloud server mind manipulations from coast to coast in a bloodless, anti-democratic coup. Her mind was clear with the resolution to act and a secret joy that she would not be deterred by fear of failure. This was Ben's gaming advantage, what he'd tried to teach her. Any false move she made was sure to bring on a massive response from the company's security apparatus. Once they began, it was most likely they would not end. There would be no way to get out safely; just the slimmest chance that with a successful attack they could leverage any subsequent chaos in the chain of command to mount an escape. Still, she could not look back; only trust herself.
"Okay Kevin. We need to locate the servers."
"Where are they?"
"I don't know. Somewhere in here."
She sat in a swivel chair and the Memory Sponge lit up like a Christmas tree. Kevin sat down opposite.
"Is this it, Corrag?"
"No, Kevin. This isn't it. I'm just thinking." She sounded harsh and impatient. Kevin looked hurt.
"What is this, then?"
"This is the Memory Sponge. To determine unknown links between people. They use it in interrogations."
There was no sense testing their links. It was too far-fetched to think of any way they could have crossed paths back in time before the Korazan training camp. She couldn't believe she was even thinking of something so preposterous. She tried hard to refocus, puting her hands on both sides of her face and staring at the ground between her feet. How to determine where to start? If she thought hard enough, the idea would come. That was the best method. The funny thing, she realized, was that the link between them far outweighed anything the Memory Sponge could pick up.
"Kevin. There's something you need to know. I'm sorry I've been somewhat distant lately."
"What do you mean, Corrag?"
"I mean we have a baby. I'm pregnant."
"What? Corrag. This is ... this means...”
"Don't say anything, Kevin."
"Corrag. It's my child. Our child, I mean. We have to get out to safety."
"There's only one way out. Let's find the servers."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Look for them. Come on."
Kevin began to move around the room, waving his gun nervously, jerking and changing direction. It hurt Corrag and put her in a foul mood.
"Kevin. Stop."
She stood from the Memory Sponge and walked over to the output wall. The graphs never varied their displays of colored bars and lines. It all meant the Sandelsky machine was functioning as normal, regulating the hopes and dreams of half a billion people, the combined subject populations of the Repho and D
emocravian states; issuing the behavioral cues that aligned the population with resource flows and market demands. The display synthesized the internal, secret lives of her countrymen in a neat and reasonable fashion, but Corrag could almost smell the rot represented behind the graphic display: the mind control systems on both sides of the continent that had melded and warped to the interests of the elites sitting on Council Boards, Legislative Advisory Units, Citizen's Desks and other such apparatuses of rule to keep themselves and their cohorts in comfortable, superior, augmented safety.
"I'll shoot it, Corrag. Fuck it." Kevin was crazed, waving his gun at the output wall as if at some demonic force. Corrag had no idea where to go. She walked over to the wall and began to feel her way along with her hands, knocking with her fist, hoping for a soft spot in the synthetic tiles. It was crazy, she had to admit. It had to be here. The servers had to be in this top floor hidden away somewhere.
Then she saw it, a straight vertical line in the pattern of tiles on the next wall. She walked closer and examined the line and saw that it turned perpendicular overhead, a gap just a few microns wide. She pushed all around but felt no give. She pulled her gun and took careful aim at the edge of the frame where a door latch should have been and fired. The gun kicked back in her hands. She looked at the panelled, secret door. It had swung open.
The open door revealed an immensely long warehouse space filled with interminable stacks of six-foot tall, glass-encased brown wafers set on edge and lit by green LEDs. These were the circuit boards. The glass cases were connected by thick strands of multi-colored cables that ran everywhere along the floors. Above the stacks were wide pipes of coolant that came down in J bends and looped around in U bends to form an intricate maze of rigid nanofiber ductwork in the ceiling space. The entire room gave off an almost undetectable background hum that filled Corrag and Kevin with an awesome dread, as if some strange insect life would assume the shape of a swarm and attack. Corrag walked deep into the stacks and shot at the glass casing. Her action had no effect. The casing was bullet proof. She tried tugging at the cables, but the lengths seemed to disappear into the ground. There didn't seem to be an obvious grouping that would power the whole warehouse down; instead there was just an amorphous network of lookalike, thick colored strands as far as she could see. Kevin jumped up to see what was beyond the row they were in. Corrag ran, panicked, down the rows of glass encased circuitry, the innards of a demonic maze. She was running out of time. There was sure to be an alarm sounding somewhere and Repho bot troops rushing in to gun them down.
"The pipes, Kevin. Can we shut them down?"
"How?"
"Lift me up there."
Corrag held herself against the glass and stepped up on Kevin's shoulders and from there into the ceiling space, swinging herself onto the aluminum girders that shelved the pipes. Then she crawled in the darkened roof space along their tops. Some were warm, carrying away the excess heat from the servers. Others were ice cold, filled with seawater pumped from the harbor. She heard stamping boots and saw the helmeted heads of hybrid troops from off the Navy troop carriers. There was a blast of gunfire, and she heard Kevin's gargled scream. A chill of numbing panic ran through her body, threatening her balance. For a few minutes she wavered on the edge of consciousness, lying flat, hugging on the warm pipe with her cheek against it. She was on her own now, but determined to do what it took to sabotage the Sandelsky machine before they brought her down. She went at the rubberized U bend expansion pipes with her combat knife and renewed vigor, hacking into their skins. Then water began to flow, falling in a pressurized hiss onto the floor. She crawled slowly and then faster as she gained confidence to the next section, jumping the space between the rows of pipes along the girders without attracting attention from the bot-men below, as they wordlessly stalked up and down the rows. They had cameras mounted on their helmets, swiveling in all directions under the centralized direction of the human handlers on board the transport ship.
Meanwhile, Corrag's work with the knife was having an effect. The human-bot troops began to slide and fall on the slick floor, and she could see the haze of LED lights from the stacks blinking and changing color. Flashes of red and orange from around the warehouse warned of grid rerouting amid load failure from overheated network branches. She had gotten the hang of slashing through the pipe bends with just a few draws of the serrated knife blade, and the satisfying gush of water was a signal to keep moving. Then a shot rang out near her, and she froze again in fear. She heard a voice call her name. She pushed off with her foot to get away. She slipped.
Floodlights came flashing on, blinding her, as she lay stunned on the ground, expecting at any moment to feel a flood of metal ripping her apart and sundering consciousness from the body that had gotten her so far. She heard her name.
"Corrag. Are you all right? Your father and I have been sick with worry."
She looked up slowly. Silhouetted in the light was the figure of her mother in a long evening dress as if she were about to entertain in the old house on Durkiev Drive.
"Mom? Is that you?"
"Yes. I've come. How could you involve yourself, Corrag? An emissary after all, does not bite the hand that feeds her."
"But Democravia no longer exists, Mother. Or does it?"
"It's the principle of the thing, dear. Who are these people you've been helping? It's going to be all right. You must tell me."
Alana was kneeling. Her copper hair was a little greyer, but her eyes and face looked just the same, the proud cheekbones and thin lips with the slight Hunnewell twist. Corrag stayed where she was, sitting with arms around her knees. The warehouse was silent, just her and Alana talking. She had so many questions for her mother. But the coiled spring inside her, wound tight, ready to fight for her survival, was keeping the words from flowing freely.
"Tell me dear. Where are they?"
"I can't tell you, Mother."
"If you don't there will be repercussions. Your father and I, Corrag...”
"Where is Father?"
"Your father and I have been worried sick, dear. Now tell me where I can find them."
"Who?"
"The Korazan."
"Why, Mother?"
"Your father and I have been worried sick."
"I can't tell you. Get me out of here, Mother."
"Where is the Korazan Brigade?" Her voice went a shade darker suddenly and she stood, backing away.
"Mother!" Corrag screamed as the illusion faded. A pair of arms grabbed her from behind and put her in a chokehold as she fought to escape. They had her down on her stomach, and then were cuffing her wrists together, putting a bag over her head. She couldn't breathe. They let up and stood away and were talking. Lifting her up by the wrists, they lead her away in the total darkness. That hurt, the way they lifted and dragged her. But nothing compared to the pain in her head. She had fallen for it. It had been Alana, but only a hologram. Of all the cheap tricks, that was the worst. A projection to get her to talk. It had fooled her. She felt let down by her own mind, usually her most reliable ally. It had been turned. And now she was a prisoner again. And alone. Corrag weighed her options. If she had a chance she would attack her captors and force their hand. Death was the best escape, her most reliable ally now.
She was strapped into a seat and left alone. Hours later she could hear the pilot speaking the staccato commands associated with flight permissions and routes. The lift off was straight up, then the rotors tilted and the plane accelerated horizontally. After some minutes, Corrag drifted off, sleeping fitfully, resting her head as best she could in her shackled position. But she kept jerking awake, feeling as if she was falling from the overhead pipes in the server warehouse and about to get shot. So she couldn't tell what direction or for how long they'd been flying when someone shook her roughly awake.
Wordlessly, they were pushing her out through the hatch with her hands still shackled and head covered. She went down some rickety stairs into a bitterly cold air. Her skin, whe
re exposed, felt like it would freeze and fall off. There was some sunlight, though. It must have been morning. She heard English spoken on the ground by the airport workers greeting the plane's crew. She had some hope for an acceptable outcome, some civilized answer to the question of where she was and what was to be expected of her. She wasn't sure she would fight when the hood came off, or whether or not an attempt to escape was still the best answer. The hours of darkness and fitful dreaming had acquainted her with a new reality. She was not alone. She had a baby. There was a life inside her. Everything was changed. Before the flight it had been an unreal dream, an idea of a different country that she was bound for with no strict travel schedule. But the enforced sensory deprivation, the surrender to fate of the long flight and the arrival in a new morning, despite her captivity, her status as a conquered prisoner, had opened her to this strange flowering. The timing of her awakening had all the markings of destiny, a destiny she still did not believe in, but now could not argue with. She was in a mess.
Six -- The Nenkaja
The country was long and flat and in the ice floes of the sea there seemed to reside a monumental despair that breathed out mists and inhaled sick laughter. There was very little light to work by, and yet they made the prisoners work long eighteen-hour shifts, lit by halogen lamps powered with the snowmobiles. It was cold, and every night some died before they could get back inside at the end of a shift. They left the bodies to be recovered in the spring when the ground would melt to bury them or burn them in the garbage pits. The food rations, raw whitefish soaked in vinegar served on dinged-up metal plates and occasional breakfast rolls flown in from the Repho in the C-22 Navy transports out of St. John, were doled out according to work rate, so that if you were strong you could get stronger. The weak ones died. There were many that died. In a short time Corrag became hardened and stopped keeping track. She was in the women's camp, and Beithune was surely in the men's camp which was somewhere beyond the long, flat ice and darkness that surrounded them in the Nenkaja.
The Victor's Heritage (The Jonah Trilogy Book 2) Page 20
