by Rick Partlow
“Burn it down, tovarisch.” A pained gasp for air and the man’s brow wrinkled with effort to focus and think. “If they don’t want our people in their world, then they need that world destroyed for them.”
* * *
Caitlyn Carr sat back in her chair and rubbed her hands over her eyes, wishing she could rub away what she’d seen, wishing that it would prove to be an illusion. But when she looked back at the readout that floated before her in the holographic projection, the data was still there, like a twisted, mangled corpse that she couldn’t look away from. She ran a hand through her hair and looked around the room carefully. There was no one else in the research datacenter and she knew that this was a very secure area in the most secure and insulated part of Fleet Headquarters. Jason McKay and Shannon Stark were a bit on the paranoid side…and not without reason, apparently.
What the hell am I going to do with this?
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to make her brain work. This wasn’t just something that could get her fired…hell, this wasn’t just something that could get her arrested. Something like this could get her killed, and not by some street thug with a home-made gun. She pulled open a supply drawer and found a secure dataspike, then pushed it into place in the slot on the console. A swipe of her hand through the data on the screen guided it to the spike, and once it was all downloaded, she erased the search. Then she went further into the system and erased all evidence that she’d ever made the search request. She wished to hell she hadn’t.
It had all started with an innocent call to Jean-Paulo Assange. She knew he’d been assigned to the Data Fraud Division before he’d become a field agent in Fairbanks, so she thought he might have some connections that could help her track down whoever was spoofing the shuttle registrations.
She almost hadn’t recognized him when he’d answered the call. He looked a thousand years older than the last time she’d seen him. It wasn’t a physical thing; it was a deadness in his eyes, as if the life had been drained out of him. What had he seen there in Fairbanks, she wondered, after they’d left him?
“Caitlyn,” he’d said with a nod, his voice neutral, his face expressionless.
“I’m glad to see you’re okay, Jean-Paulo,” she’d told him, trying to keep her shock at his appearance off her face. “I was worried about you, when we had to leave.”
“I’m fine,” he’d said flatly, numbly. “Is that why you called?”
“There was something else, Jean-Paulo,” she’d admitted, feeling like she’d be better off getting right to business. “I’m investigating the shuttle that was used in the attack on the Danube Corridor. Its registration was spoofed from a shuttle that was in drydock for repairs, but near as we’ve been able to figure out from security footage, it looks like it was the cargo shuttle for an intersystem freightliner called the Amastra that was reported missing two years ago in the Belt. I know you still have some connections in the Data Fraud office, so I wondered if you could look into it for me.”
“Okay, I’ll get back to you.”
He’d cut the connection and she honestly hadn’t expected to hear back from him.
That had been two days ago. She’d woken from her last sleep period to find a message waiting from Jean-Paulo on her ‘link. When she’d tried to open it, she’d found that it was biometrically encrypted to her; she wasn’t sure if she’d been more surprised by the encryption or by the fact that he still had her biometrics on file.
When she’d opened the message, it had been two lines of text.
Project Asatru, it had said, and:
Don’t contact me again.
Then she’d made her second mistake: she’d looked up Project Asatru.
She pulled the dataspike out of the connector and held it in the palm of her hand, just looking at it. She was still looking at it ten minutes later when she got the call from Franks on her ‘link.
“Caitlyn,” he said, his voice strained, “meet us in the Situation Room ASAP. There’s been another transmission from Antonov.”
“Your government believes that they have achieved something by destroying my shuttle before it could fully deliver its payload to the ugly, capitalist center you call the Danube Corridor. They think it was a victory for their exploitative regime, a sign they have things under control. They are fools, and I pray that you, the people, are not so foolish as to believe this.”
Watching the faded, 2D image of Sergei Antonov, Shannon Stark was struck by the madness in the man’s eyes. She’d met him face to face once…well, she’d met one of him face to face once, one of the many duplicates of the man made with the alien technology on Novoye Rodina, and even then she’d been able to tell he was insane. But he’d been insanely brilliant as well, devious and methodical with a mind full of twists and turns and prepared for anything.
This version had none of the genius and twice the madness.
“The purpose of our strike on the Danube Corridor,” Antonov went on, “was to test the defenses of your cities. True, several of our brave, selfless soldiers gave their lives in this mission, but such is the way in any war. Do not be so stupid as to believe that your government can stop us. We will find a way to strike at the very heart of this corrupt, doomed state. It will fall and those not courageous enough to help us overthrow it will be smashed in its wreckage. Consider this your last warning.”
The transmission ended and the projection went dark.
“Short,” Abshay Patel commented from where he leaned against the Situation Room wall. “Shorter this time than the other messages he’s sent. And the quality’s not as good.”
“They’re probably hold up somewhere remote,” Tanya Manning said, frowning as she stood with arms folded. “Is there any possible way to trace where this was recorded?”
“Not a chance,” Shannon informed her, sitting down on the edge of the smart table. She almost snapped at the woman before she reminded herself that Manning was a Special Ops NCO and not an Intelligence officer. “That’s why they recorded it in 2D and on an older model camera. A modern holographic video camera or even a ‘link recorder would contain a satellite signature. We have to concentrate on trying to determine what we can about their next target.”
“What are you thinking, ma’am?” Abshay asked her.
Shannon considered that for a moment, still feeling a bit of discomfort at the absolute trust the younger officer had in her---which everyone in her command seemed to---even after many years in her position.
“He’s always been a stubborn bastard,” she mused. “Look at how many times he attacked Capital City. We stopped his attack on the Danube Corridor and I think it stung him. If I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s going to try to hit the Corridor again.”
“Respectfully, ma’am, I disagree,” Franks said, surprising her. He stepped forward, and the set of his jaw, the way he stood, reminded her very much of Jason McKay. “If Antonov were in charge, you’d probably be right…but I’m getting a sense that he’s not. I think Yuri is the one running this. One of the ones anyway.”
“What makes you say that, Captain Franks?” she asked, fighting back a slight irritation. Having competent junior officers who weren’t afraid to disagree with you was an important part of leadership.
“This whole thing, Colonel,” he waved a hand demonstrably. “It’s been too…piecemeal, if you know what I mean. Think about what happened last time we dealt with Antonov: every part of his plan supported every other part. It was genius, if overly intricate and complicated, which was why it ended up failing.” He scowled. “Barely. But this…this has been a patchwork, and most of its ends seem political more than military. And not the kind of politics that Antonov was known for.”
“He was always attacking Capital City,” Patel said, nodding agreement. “Every time…from the beginning. Even the biomech army was headed for Capital City. But not once this time. It’s been all over the place.”
Shannon found herself nodding as well. “He attacked the seat of power, wh
at he considered illegitimate power.”
“He said in his first broadcast,” Manning pointed out, “that he was going to do things differently…”
“And we believed that why?” Franks asked her. “Because something that looks like Antonov told us so? We know it’s not the original Antonov, right? How do we know if he’s controlling them or they’re controlling him?” He looked to each of the others in the room, locking eyes with them one at a time. “Who the hell benefits from this, anyway?”
Shannon felt a cold tingle along her spine as she realized that she knew exactly who benefited by it. But she couldn’t yet bring herself to say it aloud. Instead, she asked: “Well, then, Captain Franks…where do you think the strike will come?”
Franks glanced at Patel, then back at her. “Lt. Patel and I were looking over what the netdivers found about Arellano. His two most recent scheduled visits to the Lunar biomech facility were the one just before the shipment to Houston…and another, not long after. That one happened just before the last shipment to the Trans Angeles Public Works Department.”
Shannon’s eyes widened as she thought about Jason McKay’s parents. “You think they’re going to hit Trans Angeles?”
“If I had to bet, ma’am,” Franks replied, “I’d say it’s going to happen very soon, if it hasn’t started already.”
Shannon didn’t waste time debating.
“I want all of you geared up and in the shuttle in twenty minutes,” she said. “Manning, your team needs to be on the bird, too.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Manning said with a nod, tapping her ear bud and stepping away to call Sgt. Miller.
“Should I contact the Trans Angeles Police, Colonel?” Franks asked her as he, Patel and Carr headed for the door.
“I’ll call them from here and set things up,” she told him. “You can stay in touch with them en route.” She motioned to the door. “You’ve got a shuttle to catch.”
She watched them hurry out of the room, then waited a moment for the doors to close before she activated the room’s secure communication link, tapped in an address and sat at the smart table as she waited for it to connect. It took a few moments, and when the hologram formed above the table, it showed a haggard and disheveled Rajiv Mandila rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn.
“Colonel Stark?” he asked, appearing a bit confused.
“Dr. Mandila, sorry to wake you,” she said, “but this is urgent.”
“What can I do for you, Colonel?” the researcher said, trying to smooth down a tuft of hair sticking up behind his ear.
“It’s about the nano-virus,” she told him. “I need to know, how high of a temperature would it take to destroy it?”
“Oh, um, yes…hold on a moment.” Dr. Mandila picked up his ‘link and typed something into it, then waited a few seconds before he nodded to himself. He looked back into the video pickup. “They’re extremely tough, I’m afraid: it would take in excess of 10,000 degrees.”
“10,000 degrees…” Shannon mused, fingers tapping thoughtfully on the table. “Thanks, Doc. Go back to sleep.” She cut the connection, then called up the station’s docking bay.
“Commander Childe here,” the bay’s duty officer answered immediately. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”
“I need an assault shuttle prepped for immediate launch, Commander,” she told him, overpowering the sinking feeling in her stomach with a grim certainty. “And I need it armed.”
Chapter Twenty Five
“What the hell are we doing here, anyway?” Officer Eddie Suarez asked as he clambered out the side of the police flitter, reaching back inside to pull his CAWS out of its locking rack. “And why do we have to bring these things?”
The Close Assault Weapons System was a dual-magazine-fed, selective-fire “super shotgun” that could fire anything from nonlethal electroshock darts to rocket-assisted rounds that could take down a grizzly bear. It was also big and awkward and Suarez had never fired one outside the police range.
Sgt. Lester Raines sighed as he touched the control on his side of the flitter to close the gull wing doors. “I already told you, Eddie,” he said, his voice full of strained patience, “we had a tip about a possible terrorist attack.”
“At the Public Works Department?” Suarez asked skeptically, gesturing toward the imitation stone façade of the government building ahead of them. “What the hell are they gonna’ do here, stop up our toilets? And if there’s a terrorist attack, why’d they just send the two of us?”
“Because they already checked the area with the surveillance drones,” Raines explained, “and didn’t see anything. We’re just following up. Shut up and keep your eyes open…and remember, there’s supposed to be something screwy with the biomechs.”
“I never liked those damn, creepy things,” Suarez muttered, resting his CAWS against his shoulder as they headed for the entrance, his visor darkening automatically as it caught the glare of the late afternoon sun.
“Keep your eyes open,” the Sergeant had said, but there wasn’t anything here he hadn’t seen before. The Public Works facility was a square, plain-looking warehouse-style building with a broad loading zone off to the right of it, where squat cargo trucks picked up pallets stacked with plumbing and air treatment equipment and drove them to the various air and water treatment plants around the city.
The other thing that was stored here besides spare parts was the city’s supply of biomech workers. He could see them on the loading docks even from here, pushing pallet jacks out onto the flatbeds of the trucks, or loading individual parts onto pallets. They stood out from the humans who were driving the trucks or operating other machinery because of their size, their skin color and the bright orange jumpsuits they wore, but even more by the way they moved. It wasn’t exactly stiff or mechanical, but it was just different somehow, in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
He’d never seen it in person, but Suarez had audited news footage of the biomech barracks: long rows of plain, white plastic benches, each with a cluster of hoses that mated to connections that protruded obscenely from the lab-grown flesh on their stomachs, carrying in nutrients and carrying away wastes. He shuddered as he thought about it, and looked away from the biomech workers and back towards the public entrance on the front of the building.
The doors were open, as they always were: except for a few parks and several open courtyards like the one they’d flown into to reach this place, most of Trans Angeles was covered over and climate controlled, keeping it a constant 72 degrees and adding a bit of moisture to the desert air. Suarez had heard that other cities like Houston were mostly open to the air outside the buildings and he couldn’t imagine dealing with that heat every time he stepped out of his apartment block. Although when you came right down to it, a lot of people never left their apartment block…
Sgt. Raines stepped past Suarez as they came up to the service desk. If this had been a private business, Suarez thought, the desk would have been “manned” by an interactive hologram. Since this was a government building, a real person was sitting there, wasting his time and taxpayer money. The young man and the two cops were the only people in the large and somewhat bare reception area.
“Can I help you, Officer?” the receptionist asked, looking at their formidable super-shotguns with a bit of trepidation.
“Yeah, we need to take a look around,” Raines told him. “Specifically, we have to check out your biomech storage areas.” He checked the display on his wrist. “I need to see the last batch that came in from Luna.”
“Oh, umm…” the receptionist dithered, obviously confused. “Let me call the shift supervisor, he can take you back there.”
Raines leaned heavily on the counter and waited while the kid punched a code into his ‘link and called his superior. Suarez knew the body armor got a little heavy, but he thought the Sergeant spent too little time in the gym and too much time sitting on his ass at home, hooked up to the Virtual Reality sex lines.
&
nbsp; Suarez chuckled quietly to himself. Maybe if his face looked like a bad buildfoam pour like Raines’ did, he might spend all his time pretending he was a two meter tall movie star, too. He sometimes thought Raines had become a cop so he could wear a visored helmet half the time to hide his face.
Suarez frowned as he saw the alert system scrolling an announcement through the Heads-Up Display.
“Sarge,” he said to Raines, “are you seeing this?”
“Huh?” Raines grunted and Suarez knew he’d had his eyes closed. “What the fuck…”
He knew that the man had seen the same thing he had: a report from the Sunset District of biomech workers attacking someone in the street. But that made no sense at all; biomechs couldn’t attack anyone! That’s what they’d always been told…
“That’s gotta’ be a mistake,” Raines mumbled. “Someone’s makin’ false reports…”
Then another report streamed across Suarez’ visor…and then a third…
“Listen kid!” Raines shouted at the receptionist. “We need to see your shift supervisor now!”
“They gotta’ have some way of shutting these things down, right?” Suarez said, shifting his CAWS around nervously, wishing he had something to point it at…
“Mr. Lin!” the receptionist shouted into his ‘link’s pickup. “Mr. Lin, please answer, the police need to speak with you!” The kid looked back at Raines and Suarez, shaking his head helplessly. “He’s not answering.” He checked the display on his ‘link. “His locator says he’s back in the biomech storage area, but he’s not answering.”
“Show us the way there, kid,” Raines growled. “And hurry.”
The young employee came out from behind the desk and led them to a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only,” opening it with a touch of his palm to the identification plate. They followed him through a long hallway decorated by “employee of the month” plaques and looped safety briefings, then out another secured door to a shorter hallway opening up into a warehouse. Spare parts, major components and office supplies filled the plastic bins stacked high on aisle after aisle of shelves reaching ten meters to the ceiling. Against the far wall, a large-scale industrial fabricator sat unused, with stacks of raw materials in containers around it.
