by Rick Partlow
“Well, I got good news and bad news, boss,” Drew Franks announced about six hours later, sitting back in his chair at the workstation that the HPD had provided for them. He didn’t look much different than he had as a young lieutenant, Jason reflected. The red hair was cut a bit shorter, perhaps the freckles a bit less pronounced, but his face still had that boyish quality that let people underestimate him.
“Hit me,” McKay invited, leaning back against the flimsy wall in the Emergency Services trailer and rubbing at his eyes. He’d been up for thirty hours straight thanks to the time difference between Fleet HQ, Capital City and Houston and it was starting to take its toll. Shannon was still in a meeting with the HPD and Director Stone, but he’d broken away when Franks had called with results from the computer forensics team.
“The good news is,” Franks continued, “we know exactly who did it.” He hit a control and a hologram sprang to life in a tank in the corner of the trailer. It was a four-way split projection, each part showing a separate section of the apartment block, each in a key, load-bearing junction.
In each of the scenes, a single figure stood with their back against the wall, looking almost directly into the video pickup, each of them carrying a compact tablet in their hands. They were, from what Jason could tell, the normal flex-tablets that anyone could pick up free at any entertainment hub, less complex version of the one folded in his pocket. Then, almost simultaneously, the view from the security videos went blue.
“The blast was less than thirty seconds after the scanners went dark,” Franks said. “We did biometric recognition to double-check the ID scanners and it confirmed that our four perps were these guys.” He touched another control and four full body shots appeared in the holoprojection: arrest shots, he recognized.
Three of the four were male, the last female. Their clothes were the sort of cheap and gaudy flash that one would expect from the free fabricators that the apartment blocks supported, and they all sported multicolored hair worn in dreadlocks. None were over thirty, from the data feed that hovered near their heads in the holotank, and they all had arrest records for disturbing the peace, simple assault and vandalism.
“Jami and Tanner Wild, brother and sister,” Franks indicated, “and their close friends Eduardo Esperanza and Antonio Guerrero. They were known members of the Houston chapter of the Friends of Mallarme.”
“Who the hell is Mallarme,” McKay asked, sighing, “and do we have an APB out on him yet?”
Franks laughed quietly. “Etienne Mallarme was a 19th Century French poet. He’s a favorite among the anarchist factions here and in Europe. He’s famous for saying ‘the book is the bomb.’ In this case of course,” Franks shrugged, “the bomb was the bomb. And that’s the bad news, boss.”
“I’m hungry and tired, Franks,” McKay admitted. “I’ve spent the day talking to politicians and looking at dead bodies and listening to politicians talk about dead bodies. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that a bunch of losers from southeast Texas are worshipping a 19th Century French poet, so please cut to the chase.”
“The bombs, sir,” Franks elaborated. “We haven’t seen a sign of them on any of the video records or security scanners and we’ve gone back weeks.” He shook his head. “There’s no indication that the scanners were sabotaged either. We know who did it, but we still have no idea how.”
“Has the HPD rounded up the known associates of those four yet?” McKay wanted to know.
“As far as we can tell,” Franks said, “most all of their known associates were right there in the building when it collapsed.”
“Jesus.” McKay’s eyes widened. “That’s kind of taking the whole anarchy thing to the extreme, isn’t it?” He pulled a chair out from the station next to Franks and sat down heavily. “Computer forensics?”
“Still working on it,” Franks said. “That’s all upstairs,” he jabbed a finger upward, indicating that the work was being done by the military netdivers at Fleet HQ, nestled in the L-4 LaGrangian point between the Earth and the Moon. “They’ve been sending down periodic updates while you’ve been in your meetings, though, and one thing that stands out is that this fella’,” he brought up an image of Tanner Wild, “was sending a hell of a lot of messages through the Instell comsats.”
“To who?” McKay asked, sitting up and leaning forward, his weariness forgotten.
“He was posting to a discussion forum called ‘Foucault’s Tea Room,’ an avatar-based system that for the last two years has been interstellar.” Franks brought up the site and McKay watched computer-animated avatars in the form of animals---real and imaginary---historical figures, famous fictional characters and many still-living people, including himself, debating politics and philosophy. In French.
After less than ten minutes, McKay’s eyes began to glaze over and he reached over Franks’ shoulder to switch off the projection. “Okay, we’re going to have to get someone with a much higher boredom threshold than me to go through all that. But I guess the upshot is, they could have been passing information or instructions back and forth using some kind of code.” He shook his head. “But who the hell are they talking to?”
“Boss, it could be anyone,” Franks said with a hopeless sigh. “Anyone with a credit account can access those boards via the ComSats, from any system that has one, and that’s every system that has a wormhole jumpgate. We’re going to have to try to backtrace every single user that’s gone on this site for the last year and that’s going to take days, if not weeks. Hell, we might not be able to track them all---some could have come from ships en route and most of them in the new systems don’t even register flight plans.”
“Yeah, especially raider ships,” McKay muttered, brows furling in thought.
“What?” Franks blurted in surprise, then corrected himself. “I mean, sir? You think there’s some connection between this and the raider attacks?”
“I’m not a big believer in coincidences, Franks,” McKay told him, absently tapping the table with his right forefinger as he stared at the holotank. “These terrorist attacks and the raids on the shipping lanes started right around the same time and they’ve both been escalating.”
“Okay, sir,” Franks acknowledged with a shrug. “But why? If the same someone is behind them…” He shrugged, raising a hand in concession as he saw McKay’s look. “If the Protectorate is behind them, what could they hope to gain from it? They aren’t getting enough from the raids---the ones where they actually took something---to make it a viable strategy for getting raw materials. They aren’t hitting military or government targets with either the raids or the terror attacks. So why?”
“Franks, I’ve fought those bastards twice,” McKay said, “and neither time did I have a clear idea of what they were up to until it was almost too late. All I can say for certain is that, if they are behind this, there is a reason.” He shook his head slightly. “Antonov may be insane, but he never does anything without a long term plan, and a couple contingency plans behind that one.” He snorted. “Hell, if he didn’t fuck around with so many backup plans, he might have actually won that first time.”
“Great,” Captain Franks said. “So not only do we have to figure out what his plan is, we also have to take into account that the plan might be totally insane.”
“You wanted to be a field agent,” McKay reminded him, chuckling darkly. “What? Did you think it would be all heroic battles and Medals of Valor?”
“Well, I dunno, Boss,” he laughed, patting the decoration sewn into the left breast of his black Intelligence uniform. “I think I got room for one more on my pocket…”
“Okay,” McKay said, getting back to business, “we have no known associates left alive, and it’s going to take forever to track down the online contacts, so what I want you to do is have the netdivers backtrack these four for the last six months on any and all available surveillance scanners. They had to physically take delivery of the explosives at some point and we are going to find out when
and where.”
“Yes, sir,” Franks said, already drafting a message to his crew back on Fleet HQ. “That’s going to take days,” he added.
“It takes as long as it takes,” McKay said, standing and moving toward the door. “Now we just do the legwork and hope for a break.”
Franks watched him leave the room and muttered to himself: “Or a miracle.”
Chapter Three
Colonel D’mitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin grunted with effort as he lifted the plastic carton from the pallet and turned to carry it through the open door of the old house. Everything there was old, from the knotted wood of the centuries-old cabin to the thirty year old electric cargo truck that had unloaded the pallet of raw material for the fabricators.
Even the fabricators were old, he thought as he set the container down with the rest in the corner next to the machines. They were first generation and buggy as hell and he’d spent a good portion of the last four years repairing them over and over. He gave the fabricators a baleful glare then headed back out the door.
And I am just as old, he thought, not without some bitterness.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window glass just outside the door, noticing things he used to take for granted: the deep lines etched in his narrow face, the way his dark eyes seemed sunken in his skull like a skeleton’s, the age spots on his bald head. He’d never noticed them in 150 years on Novoye Rodina because old men were common there. The alien technology the Protectorate had discovered on that world had allowed them to extend life, but did little to restore youth, particularly to those who’d already lost it.
After the Protectorate’s first attempted invasion, when he’d been captured by the Republic and pumped for intelligence, he’d been settled on Loki, a remote colony world where life had been rough and dangerous. People there had lived life close to the edge and weathered faces were the norm. But here…
He let his gaze drift over the trackless forests and mountains that surrounded the small valley, then back to the single dirt road that was the only vehicular access into it. Then he looked sourly at the driver of the truck, a solidly-built, jovial woman dressed in plain working clothes and a knit cap pulled over her short, brown hair. He happened to know she was seventy years old and had lived here in the backcountry of the Alaskan interior her whole life. Yet she looked no older than a woman of thirty might have on Novoye Rodina, or perhaps one of forty on Loki. Even here, in one of the most remote outposts of civilization in the Western Hemisphere, they had access to the science of extended vitality. But not for him.
“When is Yuri going to come back?” Podbyrin asked plaintively, hesitating beside the last container on the pallet. “He told me last time he was here that he was going to bring a doctor.”
“Why?” the woman asked, smirking slightly. “Are you sick?”
He restrained his temper with an effort of will. If he irritated or angered her, she would simply drive off and it would be another month before he saw anyone from the outside.
“I am old, Anya,” he admitted, mouth twisting with distaste. “I need treatment.”
Anya shrugged, lack of concern evident in her eyes. “I will speak with him when I see him,” she said. And he could believe that as much as he wished, he knew. “Don’t fret, D’mitry,” she said, her mouth curling sardonically. “Events are proceeding while we all wait here. And you have made it all possible. Get the last container unloaded,” she ordered him. “I have other deliveries to make.”
He closed his mouth and did as he was told, feeling a twinge in his back as he pulled the last plastic tub off the back of the truck. He’d barely cleared the tailgate when she revved the engine and pulled away with a spray of dirt that spattered against the pant legs of his overalls.
“Suka,” he muttered, watching the truck speed down the rugged dirt road, suspension creaking as it lurched from one bump to another.
It was Russian for “bitch.” Four years ago, when his life pod had landed here after he’d ejected from the doomed Republic cruiser Sheridan, he’d been gratified that he had wound up among fellow Russians once more. Alaska was one of the few places on Earth where exiles from the former Russian Protectorate had congregated after the Sino-Russian War that had nearly destroyed the world. There had been a sizable Russian immigrant population before the war and it had grown exponentially afterward, with much of the Rodina a radioactive wasteland.
Even when he’d found out that his “rescuers” were in the bratva, the remnants of the Russian mafia, he’d still thought himself lucky. Then they’d drugged him, interrogated him and, when they were done with him, stuck him out in this valley in a compound with a cluster of ancient cabins and a few dozen itinerant workers, none of whom spoke Russian or English.
Oh, and the guards. How could he forget the damned guards? He tried not to see them, tried not to notice them as they stalked the perimeter of the compound tirelessly. He tried not to look up into their inhuman-yet-too-human faces or notice the blue cast to their unnatural skin. He especially tried to avoid looking into their dead, black shark-eyes that seemed to follow you wherever you went.
He couldn’t help but notice the guns, though. They were as old as he was---well, at least the design was that old. They were AKL99 assault rifles, a Russian design from just before the war: stamped-metal bullpups with curved magazines and a simple optical sight. They were newly-manufactured though, made right there in the fabricators he so grudgingly kept in repair. Those and hundreds more, made and hauled out every month by Anya even as she dropped off the raw materials for more. He didn’t ask where they were shipped or for what purpose.
He also didn’t ask who or what controlled the biomech guards, even though he knew they weren’t autonomous enough to be left on their own. He was fairly sure that there was a sophisticated surveillance system setup here, but he hadn’t been able to spot it. The biomechs were quartered in a sealed barracks that was keyed to their control chips---it was the only modern building in the whole compound. He’d never been allowed inside, but he assumed it was similar to such installations that he’d seen back on Novoye Rodina years before, with rows of benches where the biomechs would rest while hooked up to feeding and waste tubes.
They never got bored, never questioned their existence, and never contemplated how much better things could be for them. He’d grown to envy them.
Podbyrin set the last container with the rest, then shut the doors and walked slowly and stiffly back to his own cabin, hand going to his lower back. He ached constantly and there wasn’t as much as a pain-killer to be had in this place unless Anya or Yuri brought it with them when they visited.
A spindly, short Vietnamese woman with a smooth, ageless look to her face passed him on the path and smiled, nodding pleasantly.
“Chao buoi sang,” she told him in a scratchy voice, and he repeated it back to her. It meant “good morning.”
He tried to keep walking, but she halted him with a hand on his arm and unleashed a torrent of Vietnamese that wafted around him like an incomprehensible cloud. He waved at her to slow down and gradually, using the little he’d picked up of her language, he parsed her meaning: she and her sons wanted him to come to their place for dinner tonight.
“Cam on ban,” he thanked her, accepting.
Podbyrin realized as she walked away that, after three years in the same small compound with her, he still had no idea how she or her family had wound up here. And he knew her about as well as he knew anyone else in the valley. He shook his head and pushed open the door to his cabin. There was no point in keeping it locked, since he owned nothing personal in nature and everything else could be reproduced at need by the fabricators. No one would bother to steal anything when they could walk a hundred yards and have it made to order.
The interior of the cabin was dim, the windows covered by shutters. He could have opened them, but instead he switched on the lights and closed the door behind him. The furniture was simple, the frames hand-made from wood while t
he cushioning and upholstery was fab’ed. The carpeting was fab’ed, the actual cardboard-and-paper books on a shelf mounted to the wall were fab’ed, the clock on his nightstand was fab’ed and the solar collectors that powered the lights and everything else were fab’ed.
Everything they had could be fab’ed, but not everything they wanted. The fabricators were programmed not to allow any electronics to be produced, to keep the…inmates, he decided was the correct word…in the valley from communicating with anyone. Of course, letting the inmates repair the machines had its risks…
Podbyrin slid a locking bar across the door, grabbed a sheath knife from the stand next to his bed, then went to a corner of the little two-room cabin and pulled up the carpet. He put a knee on the carpet to keep it secured, then unsheathed the fab’ed knife and sank its point into the seam of the wooden plank floor, working at the corner plank until he had pried it up a few inches. He grabbed it with his other hand and pulled it up further, straining to hold it up far enough to reach what was beneath. He dropped the knife on the carpet and reached inside with his right hand, feeling around in the moist dirt until he came across a plastic bag.
He had, he believed, developed arthritis in his knuckles. This made grasping and pulling the bag out of the dirt difficult and painful, but he gritted his teeth and did it. The bag came free of the covering dirt slowly, but he finally pulled it out of the floor and let the plank sink back into place, then stood and let the carpet fall as well.
He stepped over to his table and set the bag down, smoothing it out till he saw the seal, then pulling it open and yanking from the bag a cobbled-together collection of circuit boards and battery packs. Working methodically but quickly, he pulled the leads from two wires out of a recess in the side of the device and stretched them out to a metal pipe that led from the outer wall into his small bathroom. He wrapped the leads around the pipe, hoping that the jury-rigged antennae that he had secretly constructed under the eaves of the cabin roof would work.
