The Covert Academy

by Peter Laurent

  ‘They were unarmed, maybe they went back to the ship,’ Sarah answered.

  She took up a protective position at Joshua’s side, holding her sword in a battle-ready stance. But Joshua saw her arms sag. She was more worn out than she would admit to his face. She wouldn’t last another round across the plateau. Dozens more of the crazed men bore down on their position.

  ‘We’ve got to go back!’ he ordered. Even as he said it, he knew it was hopeless. Sarah shook her head and put a hand on his shoulder, gripping her sword one-handed.

  ‘They made their own choice,’ she said.

  The tension melted out of Joshua’s shoulders and he nodded. He fired indiscriminately into the mass, flinging bodies any which way. He and Sarah walked backwards up the ramp, barely holding their ground against the tide of deranged madmen. Kayla, Will and Elayne dropped off their wards and hurried back to the top of the ramp, adding their firepower where they could.

  Still the dropship didn’t budge.

  ‘Why aren’t we moving?’ Sarah yelled over the chaos. She wasn’t bothering with mere kneecaps any more, but she could barely raise her blade to meet the onslaught. Some reserve force of energy kept them on their feet as the disabled bodies piled up before their defence.

  Joshua frantically examined the dropship. Everything was set, they should be taking off to join up with the others. Several metres away he saw another dropship. Its fuel intake closed itself, then the ramp sealed up and the gigantic aircraft lifted off the ground. Joshua whipped around to their ship’s own fuel intake cover. It had been ripped off, probably when the maintenance man working on it had spotted them and attacked. The dropship’s take-off sequence was stuck.

  There was a sea of enemies swarming them by now. They’d never be able to push through them to get to the intake.

  They were going to be overwhelmed.

  A figure appeared at the top of the ridge. The silhouette was backlit from the setting sun, and cast rays of light through the deepening haze.

  ‘It’s Eddie!’ Kayla whooped. Everyone scanned the horizon as he began to lumber slowly down toward them.

  ‘What is that he’s carrying?’ Sarah wondered aloud. An inhuman whirring sound came over the noise of the mob.

  Joshua’s eyes widened. ‘Get down!’ he yelled, and pulled Sarah to the deck after him.

  The next instant, gunfire erupted all around the area, tearing up the landscape. Refuelling tanks and the few remaining dropships disintegrated when broad holes punctured them. Maintenance men exploded in showers of human components.

  Eddie closed in on them like a cavalry charge of old. He sprayed the MS-26 Minigun down the hill, clearing a path to the dropship.

  The cutting edge weapon was derived from the US military’s M134 variant, but the lab boys in the Academy had integrated the floating shield tech Joshua had swiped from the Confederacy. This vastly cut back on the weight issue that had plagued soldiers for decades. Even so, Eddie had his jumpsuit overloaded on strength mode, and his muscles strained. The sheer quantity of ammunition he was emptying onto the plateau was staggering.

  Joshua peeked up from the deck of the dropship and pointed at the fuel intake.

  ‘Get the fuel cover and fix it back on!’ he shouted.

  If Eddie heard, he couldn’t make any indication with the weight dragging him down. But he did shamble in the direction Joshua was pointing. He made a wide circle, slicing through bone and tissue mercilessly.

  Then he ran out of ammo.

  ‘The cover! The cover! The cover!’ Joshua cried himself hoarse.

  Eddie had his back to the side of the ship and had bought himself a few moments with the minigun. He spotted the fuel cover on the ground and snatched it up. The intake was directly adjacent. The mob sensed the opportunity and rushed him. Eddie slammed the cover down onto the intake and it clamped down on the edges automatically. Right on cue, the dropship ramp raised itself up. The kids inside tumbled down into the depths of the ship.

  Joshua held vainly onto the side of the ramp as it closed up on him. He could do nothing but watch as Eddie flicked him a sharp salute and a sad smile, then he was lost under the roiling maul of bodies.

  Chapter 34

  The room was pitch-black, Joshua couldn’t see a thing. He wasn’t sure he could keep going anyway. Eddie had died fixing Joshua’s mistakes. He choked up as he stumbled around the metal passageway. The dropship lurched suddenly under his feet as it took flight.

  ‘Ow! Watch it,’ Kayla whispered. He’d tripped over her where she sat on her haunches. ‘Are you okay?’ she added. ‘You look like you’re drunk.’

  Joshua couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a drink. Even on the occasion when he found an unopened bottle in a Chicago dumpster, he had usually just stuck to water with those air-dried rat dinners...

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘You can see me?’

  ‘Sure! Oh I forgot you don’t have an iPC,’ Kayla said. ‘You should, they’re really great you know, it’s as clear as day in here for me.’

  ‘Yeah well, those men back there thought their iPCs were great too.’

  ‘Oh-’ Kayla sobbed, thinking of Eddie being torn to pieces by men driven insane from their iPCs.

  Joshua stared into the darkness where he thought she was.

  ‘Come on, give me a hand and let’s find the others.’

  They didn’t have to go far. Alara had been placed against a bulkhead not far from the ramp. Her breathing was shallow but her suit was keeping her alive for now. Kayla led Joshua deeper into the dropship.

  Will and Elayne were waiting in front of a wide gateway, closed but for a smaller door cut into one side.

  ‘Marcas floated through there when we launched,’ Will said, his boyish voice breaking when he spoke his friend’s name.

  ‘Sarah said to wait here,’ Elayne added sheepishly, her eyes cast down in shame. If she had been dancing a jig, Joshua still couldn’t have seen anything.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ he said.

  ‘Eddie... did he?’

  Joshua shook his head.

  Will and Elayne hugged and choked back sobs for Eddie. Joshua fumbled forward and brushed past the two kids. They needed a private moment. Kayla directed him toward the small door and he passed blindly into the next room.

  Someone must have seen him coming, because a small flare lit up in the room, piercing his dilated pupils. It reminded him of the drones’ flares. Like the ones that drone, back on the rooftop in Chicago, had used to search for Sarah.

  These dropships were carrying hundreds of drones, Joshua thought in alarm. Were they-

  ‘It’s okay,’ Sarah called out as if reading his thoughts. ‘They’re deactivated.’

  She positioned her sword over a drone and punched down, spearing its guts. In the flickering light of the single flare, it looked like some gruesome ritual. She pulled back on the blade and levered the drone open, then snaked one of her long hands inside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kayla whispered fiercely, as if the drones would wake up at the noise.

  ‘He needs the light,’ Sarah said, not looking up from the drone. Kayla was about to ask “who?” when Joshua wandered off and crashed into a pile of tools left behind by the maintenance men.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, understanding.

  Sarah pulled out a handful more flares and struck their ends on the inside of the drones compartment. They burst into flame and she tossed the fiery sticks around the dropship. The eerie glow from the first flare was expanded and multiplied until the majority of the room was bright enough for Joshua to see clearly.

  Kayla and Sarah’s iPCs tracked the location of each one and adjusted their night-vision on the fly as they examined the room.

  There were hundreds of drones, hanging from dozens of racks. They were completely surrounded. They may have been deactivated for now, but Joshua had never felt so exposed.

  Luckily there were none of the drudges they had run into in the Colonnade. At least in th
is dropship. Those things had permanent motion trackers built in, alerting them to enemies even when the drudges themselves appeared shut down. Joshua had learned that the hard way.

  Sarah put a hand to her ear and tried raising the Academy on the comm again. All she got was static.

  ‘I hope the message got out,’ Kayla said.

  ‘Casey can handle it,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, I found Marcas way over there.’

  Joshua could make her out through the gloom now. He wanted to say how relieved that made him feel, but he restrained himself.

  ‘Lead the way,’ he said instead. Sarah saved a couple of flares and handed them to Joshua. He nodded in thanks. He would need them without an iPC. Together they headed off in the direction Sarah pointed out. They got to the edge of the circle of flares.

  ‘He floated off right through here,’ Sarah said.

  It was inky black beyond. Sarah and Kayla marched off, their iPCs making them right at home in the darkness.

  ‘Sheesh don’t wait up,’ Joshua muttered. He flicked one of the flares and it blazed to life. He crept after the girls, holding the flare out in front of him as if he was exploring a dungeon with a flaming torch. The darkness was oppressive, he couldn’t see more than ten metres in any direction. The air was thick with oil and grease. The silence was stifling.

  Just when he thought he had to shout, he bumped into Sarah from behind. He would have enjoyed that at any other time.

  Marcas was there. He had almost reached the ground. His rate of descent was so slow Joshua couldn’t even tell he was still falling. He wondered what would happen when Marcas eventually hit the ground. Would he wake up as if nothing had happened? He had no idea what the long-term effects of the Dangler gun were, if any.

  Marcas had floated next to a terminal of some kind. It stood just over one and a half metres off the ground. There were no input/output boards on it, just a couple of monitors and keyboards embedded into the frame. It had to have been intended for human operation.

  Joshua reached out a hand to one of the keyboards.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Kayla asked.

  He snapped his hand back. ‘You may be able to see in here now, but we’re flying blind. So if you know of a better way to pilot this tin can...?’

  ‘We can’t just push buttons at random,’ Sarah rejoined. She turned to Kayla. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Will is a whizz with computers,’ Kayla said. ‘I’ll get him.’ She ran off before Sarah or Joshua could argue.

  Joshua glanced at Sarah. ‘Isn’t Will a bit young to trust with this?’

  ‘He’s twelve.’

  ‘Kids these days...’ Joshua sighed and shook his head. Sarah looked at him. He looked right back at her, and they both burst out laughing.

  Will rushed up with the unbridled enthusiasm of a child about to show off to the grown-ups. Kayla and Elayne brought up the rear with Alara held between them. They lowered her gently to the floor while Will looked over the terminal’s controls and opened an access hatch to ogle its insides.

  ‘Whoa this is some hardcore dropship computer!’ He could barely contain himself. ‘Must be an icosa-core 0.3 THz processor, 8192 EB of MRAM...’ Joshua rolled his eyes at Sarah while Will babbled tech jargon.

  ‘You still gotta use the keyboard right?’ he asked.

  Will snorted. ‘Yeah tell me about it. It’s like they want to hamstring the user’s input speed.’

  Joshua smiled and nodded, though he had no idea what Will was on about. ‘Can you control the ship, find out where we are or where we’re going? Maybe get a message out?’

  Will shook his head. ‘This is a local machine. No network connections,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure it can even pilot the ship.’

  ‘That might be running on an automated remote script,’ Sarah said.

  Joshua looked blankly at her.

  ‘Controlled from another location,’ she clarified.

  He nodded. ‘Well try anyway. What can you do with this terminal?’ he asked Will.

  ‘Wor-king...’ Will said in a fretful singsong tone. He punched buttons on several of the keyboards. Nothing happened. He ran around the back of the terminal on his little legs. The others heard several clicks, punches and a gonging kick to the base of the computer, then a “whoa” from Will’s girlish voice.

  ‘Whoa what?’ Joshua asked, pressing in. Will ran back to the front and flicked one more switch. The monitors glowed to life as the machine booted up in seconds.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, as though he’d forgotten the question already. ‘Check out the sweet rig behind the terminal.’

  Joshua followed after the girls, cautiously walking around the back of the computer. Kayla and Elayne gave a shrug, but Sarah gasped. Without their iPCs’ night vision, Joshua had to throw a flare to be able to see the giant device shaped like a jet engine, tapering down to a precision laser on one end.

  ‘I’ve seen this before,’ Joshua said.

  ‘Above the pit in the Colonnade,’ Sarah added. ‘Above all those people.’

  Will barely heard them. He was in his element on one of the world’s most powerful computers, as he typed away furiously on the keyboard. He brought up a graphic display on the monitors, showing a cross-section of a person. It had various markers indicating body parts and the links of neurotransmitters back to the brain.

  Will focused the image on one link in particular. It was a new growth. Something foreign. It ran alongside the optic nerve at first. But instead of connecting the eye to the optic chiasm, then continuing as axons carrying electrical impulses from neurons to the visual cortex part of the brain, this one was attached directly to the motor cortex.

  It was sending a signal.

  ‘Hey check this out,’ Will said, pointing at the screen. Joshua and Sarah turned back to him.

  At that moment, Marcas hit the floor and the paralysing effect of the Dangler gun finally wore off. He untangled himself and awkwardly stood up. His eye still glowed an unnatural red. In the flickery light of the orange flares, he could have been a demon.

  Elayne screamed as Marcas charged at Joshua from behind.

  Will frantically hit buttons on the keyboard at random.

  Marcas froze mid-stride, like a puppet on a string.

  ‘Tell me that was you,’ Joshua said, keeping the panic out of his voice.

  Will glanced at the computer monitor. It had several command windows opened in a jumble. He shook his head.

  Marcas blinked, and his lips tried to move. Then he managed to form words, slowly at first, with increasing proficiency.

  But it wasn’t Marcas’ voice that came out.

  ‘Ah I see you’ve found one of my new bio-ID devices. Not as elegant as the General’s to be sure. But it served my purpose. Those maintenance men couldn’t help but play with it. Did you have fun with them?’

  That voice chilled Joshua to the bone. He knew exactly who it was. He walked up to Marcas’ motionless body.

  ‘Simeon Warner.’

  Chapter 35

  Marcas was helpless. Simeon allowed him to blink and breathe, but otherwise he kept complete control over his every action.

  There were far too many people under the effect of the bio-ID for Simeon to control by himself, so he kept them on a preprogrammed script depending on the tasks required of them. Most were free to wander where they willed, as long as they remained on the digital leash. He enjoyed messing with random people when they least suspected it. He would jump in and out of other people’s consciousness like a possessive spirit. His favourite was to jump in during the most private and intimate moments. He could live a thousand lives from the safety and comfort of his office at the top of the Tower.

  When he assumed direct control over a subject, a curious side effect of the electrical signal transmitted between the iPCs’ link tried to mirror Simeon’s actions. This caused Marcas’ vocal folds to stretch and distort, which changed the frequency and pitch.

  The resulting effect was that when Simeon spok
e, his voice seemed to echo out of Marcas’ mouth.

  ‘I was wondering when I would see you again,’ Simeon said. ‘You can’t imagine my surprise when you of all people picked up General Withers’ iPC.’

  Through the banks of monitors on the office wall in the Tower above the Colonnade, Simeon watched Joshua jump out of his skin.

  ‘What’s so special about me?’ Joshua demanded. ‘You have been watching me? Since when? How?’

  Marcas’ throat made a hideous gargling sound, in a constricted imitation of Simeon’s gleeful laugh.

  Ah well close enough, thought Simeon. It still had the desired effect on the group of kids. They looked horrified at the sound. One of them, the youngest sitting at the computer, turned away and threw up.

  ‘You don’t honestly think I’d let control of the bio-ID slip out of my grasp that easily do you?’ Simeon taunted them. He was enjoying this. ‘Sweet naïve Joshua. Surely you remember the General’s iPC scanning you when you pulled it from his head?’

  Simeon watched through Marcas’ eyes as understanding finally dawned on Joshua and his mouth dropped open in shock. Simeon grinned, but Joshua recovered and stormed up to Marcas until he stood nose to nose with him. Simeon felt a trifling bit uncomfortable with the boy’s face now filling his office walls.

  ‘So you had control of the bio-ID the entire time,’ Joshua snarled. ‘Why haven’t you turned me into one these things?’

  Simeon sighed. This had been fun, but he was getting tired of the exchange. He had an invasion to manage after all.

  ‘Think it through, boy,’ he snapped.

  In the dropship, one of Joshua’s flares snuffed out. He reached for another to light, but stopped. He couldn’t see in the dark without-

  ‘I don’t have an iPC,’ Joshua said.

  ‘Bingo genius!’ Simeon jeered.

  ‘So you couldn’t control me, you just watched through the General’s iPC...’