Masada's Gate

by Chris Pourteau

  “About her—” he began.

  “Yes, I know,” Cassandra said, raising a hand. “By your hand, when the time comes.”

  “When the time comes,” he repeated, his tenor deepening. This was Cassandra he was talking to, not Braxton, but the burning anger inside him was the same. A universe waited to find its balance again by levying justice. Waited impatiently.

  “By your hand, I promise it, Kwazi. But first, I need you to do something for me.”

  Ah, there it was, he thought. The polite portion of the conversation was over.

  “Yes?”

  She leaned forward into the shot. “You’re in Braxton’s squad again, as you were when liberating the Herald. And for the same reason.”

  Kwazi pursed his lips, sensing the trap in front of him.

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means,” Cassandra began, a smile forming, “that you’re a natural on camera. You represent everything we’re doing, Kwazi. You’re a moral man who’s been forced to endure immorality at the hands of Tony Taulke and the Qinlao Faction and Helena Telemachus, most of all. You’re the Everyman of the billions of citizen-workers across the system. You’re the face of our cause.”

  “The face of your cause,” he repeated.

  “Our cause.” Her smile dimmed a fraction with the reminder.

  “Of course. But … I have a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you just use my autobiographer?”

  Cassandra turned her head. She had the detached look of a computer attempting to compute. Then, “The video avatar?”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  She stared at Kwazi from a projection onto his own retina. It was a strange feeling, having her literally inside his head.

  “He was … adequate for the purposes of the vid,” she said. “You have no idea how many refinement algorithms we had to go through to perfect your human affectations.”

  “My human affectations,” he repeated. Saying it made Kwazi proud for some reason.

  Cassandra’s smile bloomed again. “Nothing beats the real thing,” she said. “We’re working on it, though. It won’t be long till your avatar can do the hard work. No public appearances, of course. We still need you for that.”

  She seemed taken with her own sense of humor. And the way she said we still need you for that made his skin crawl.

  “Will you be the face of our cause, Kwazi? Will you inspire the billions who, just like you, have lived in servitude to SynCorp all their lives?”

  Go be an icon, Mr. Jabari. Go be a fucking Viking hero.

  Adriana Rabh’s words stepped forward from the dark corner of his memory.

  “I get to kill Telemachus,” he said. There was a hissing sound to his voice. A hunger in it. “You promise.”

  Cassandra waved a finger. The camerabot moved back. The sagging, sallow skin of her mother’s head reappeared.

  “You have my word,” she said.

  Kwazi nodded. “Then sure. I’ll be your trademark.”

  I’ll be you’re fucking Viking hero.

  Cassandra’s eyes narrowed briefly, but she took the win.

  “Excellent. Take the time you have left before the assault, Mr. Jabari. Enjoy yourself.”

  Her image faded.

  Kwazi’s eye scanned to the capital-D in the lower-right quadrant of his sceye, but he paused before attempting to launch the program again. He was now quite sure Dreamscape would work. He was also quite sure it had been Cassandra who’d prevented it working before.

  And he knew something else, too. A grim certainty delivered from the back-channel of his brain. He’d only ever been a patsy for Braxton. The SSR had accepted Kwazi so easily, with a modicum of questioning to make it look good, because there was no risk in taking him into their confidence. They would use him until they didn’t need him anymore.

  When would that be? Once his avatar had been perfected, maybe?

  Until then, he’d be the symbol of the Soldiers of the Solar Revolution. Their icon on camera reassuring all those frightened citizen-workers in the system that the change that was coming was change they could embrace. Should embrace.

  Then, from somewhere that wasn’t quite memory and wasn’t quite conscience, a deep, tinny sound emerged, as if marching toward him from far away. It became throaty as it came nearer, then took on the tenor of a cackling, madwoman witch. Kwazi recognized the timber of her voice, full of irony and self-satisfaction. He recognized the pure, joyous laughter of Helena Telemachus.

  • • •

  “Two hull breaches, sir!” said the shuttle pilot.

  “Acknowledged.” Braxton’s voice crackled through Kwazi’s helmet comms.

  An hour earlier, the first assault shuttle had delivered troops to the Engineering Level of Rabh Regency Station, where resistance was reported as fierce. The second breach by a sacrificial ramming shuttle was the signal for a second shuttle full of SSR troops to launch from the Freedom’s Herald, its mission to secure Adriana Rabh’s offices. Elinda Kisaan herself led that boarding action. Securing and then publicly executing Rabh to demoralize the enemy was her primary mission.

  The troops on Kwazi’s shuttle were nicknamed the glamor squad. Armed and able to fight, but with the sole mission of protecting Kwazi while camerabots shot the taking of Rabh Regency Station for The Real Story. A victory on video, Kisaan had called it. The real fighting would be elsewhere, but the citizen-workers of Sol wouldn’t know that. An SSR victory here, Kisaan said, would inspire uprisings all over the system.

  “Spinning up the drive,” the pilot said.

  “Hold your water,” Braxton told her. “We’re not there yet.”

  The pilot’s enthusiasm was infectious. Kwazi’s heart hammered in his chest. The heat and smell of sweat inside his vac-suit made it difficult to breathe. He watched the monitor as the SSR threw mining shuttle after mining shuttle at Rabh’s stronghold. They’d adapted the Herald’s own to ferry troops to the station, but those luxury craft weren’t armed. They’d been designed to carry dignitaries to Tony Taulke’s flagship in comfort, not land assault troops on a space station.

  “That was genius,” Marcus Beecham said. He stood beside Kwazi, fascinated by the fireworks display on the monitor. The station’s point defense cannons sprayed tracer slugs in a lightning arc. Another ramming shuttle exploded into flames, short lived in the vacuum of space.

  “What was?” Kwazi asked. He was getting irritated with Monk Beecham, his squad buddy and personal protector—irritated with Beecham’s physical closeness in the tight quarters of their shuttle, and with his constant need to talk over the squad channel. Kwazi’s sole focus was taking Adriana Rabh’s station, a required precursor to meting out justice on Helena Telemachus’s bodymorphed head. Beecham’s jabbering was an unwelcome distraction.

  “Weaponizing Rabh’s mining shuttle fleet and using it against the old bitch,” the man said. Then, despite his bulky vac-suit, Beecham jumped, jostling Kwazi. “Yes!”

  Similar celebrations overwhelmed comms. Another mining shuttle had slipped past the station’s point-defense cannons and rammed full speed into the loading bay. The station seemed to shudder in its position-holding orbit over Callisto. Atmosphere blew outward from the point of impact, feeding the combustion of fuel reserves from the shuttle. The resulting expulsion of burning O2 appeared, if only for a moment, like dragon fire erupting into space. Then the bulkheads closed, sealing off the inner station, and the fire began to sputter and die out. In the last of the orange light, Kwazi could see tiny figures spinning away from the station.

  Bodies, he thought. Those are bodies.

  Chapter 19

  Rebekah Franklin • Masada Station, Orbiting Titan

  Despite her fatigue, it hadn’t been easy for Bekah to find sleep. The relentless cyberattacks on the Labyrinth had unnerved her, despite their being key to the success of Gregor Erkennen’s plan. Her conversation over coffee with Fischer had grounded her some, but sleep had still
proven coy and flirty, disappearing around corners whenever it seemed close enough to touch.

  For a long time she floated in a twilight state of semi-awareness, knowing she was prisoner in a waking dream she couldn’t control. A glass of water sat on a table in the gym after a shift. Bekah would pick it up and chug it, her goal to empty the glass for some unknown reason, though the water would always refill. She was starting to feel waterlogged in her own dream. The semi-aware part of her worried she’d wake up soaking in her own urine.

  Empty of other people, the gym was semi-lit by Gregor’s camouflage protocol, casting the far corners of the room in angular darkness. An icy kind of aloneness prickled her skin. Not loneliness exactly, but a sense of being alone, on her own in the universe. Bekah’s only companion was the magically refilling water glass and her own, driven desire to see it empty.

  Clunk!

  A heavy, thudding sound when she set the glass down. Then the hollow sound transforming into a spine-cringing crash of metal on metal. It reverberated around the gym, and before the echo of it died, there was another.

  Clunk!

  And another.

  Clunk!

  Dream-Bekah turned to find a man working the overhead press. His back was to her. He’d push up the machine’s handlebars, then let the weights crash down.

  Clunk!

  It took a moment for her to realize he was seated, naked, at the machine.

  “Stop that,” she said, emotionless. “You’ll damage the weights.” Didn’t he see the sign on the wall?

  The man pushed the handlebars up again, then released them to fall.

  Clunk!

  “I said, stop that! Stop it!”

  The man released the handlebars. He stood up and turned around. It was Daniel Tripp. Why hadn’t she recognized him from the bald spot on the back of his head?

  Daniel advanced across the gym. He was smiling. Bekah kept her eyes up, on his, red embarrassment at his nudity creeping up her neck. There was something strange about his eyes. They were almost radiant.

  “Could you maybe put on a towel?” she said, trying to make it a joke. They’d worked together a long time. They were family. But some family you should never see naked.

  He continued walking casually toward her. He didn’t seem to care about his state of undress. Bekah’s heart beat with a distinct, deliberate rhythm. Not excited. Plodding, in fact.

  “No, really,” Bekah said. Curiosity won out, and her eyes darted down, then back up. “Please, Daniel—a towel. Something.”

  His eyes shone, though not the normal brown of Daniel Tripp’s irises. They were golden. Like Cassandra’s eyes.

  “I’m the future,” Daniel said, advancing across the gym. “Embrace me.”

  Bekah attempted to rise from the table, to get away. Her dream-body betrayed her. She sat paralyzed, unable to move. The full glass in front of her demanded she drain it dry. It was all she could do not to pick it up again.

  “I’m the future,” Daniel repeated, arms spread wide as he drew closer. “Embrace me.”

  The weights were dropping again, making the ringing sound. The press lifted and dropped on its own. Like it was haunted. Or afflicted by a poltergeist.

  Clunk!

  Daniel stood over her, arms still open. She somehow knew he planned to absorb her wholly, physically, into his own body. His eyes shifted from golden to red.

  Clunk!

  Dream-Bekah stood suddenly, the steely screech of her chair scoring the floor. The version of herself watching from twilight consciousness shouted a warning. Unable or unwilling to hear, her dream-self opened her arms to receive Daniel.

  Clunk!

  “I’m the future,” he said. His lips parted in a smile. Her feet edged forward, anxious to partake in what felt like victory, even if it was someone else’s—Daniel’s victory, or Cassandra’s. His red eyes flared. “Embrace me.”

  • • •

  Bekah bolted upright in her pitch black quarters. The chilled air blowing from the ventilation system teased the sheen of sweat on her skin, drawing a shiver through her like an electric current.

  The station alarm. Her ears identified the plodding, metrical noise. The reason for the alarm finally registered. Something had tripped the security protocol she’d set to monitor communications. Someone must have opened a comm port from the station.

  “Shit! Lights!”

  Bekah jumped out of bed to her computer console and ran a quick report from the alarm log. The message had been short. Only three picoseconds. Long enough to compromise the camouflage of Masada Station, if anyone was listening. Long enough to open a back door, if anyone was trying.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  First things first—Bekah verified that the port used to send the message had already been buttoned up behind the station’s firewall again. It’d been opened, the message sent, and the port closed again. Three picoseconds. A lifetime to a programmer. A canyon of opportunity that could allow an army of bad actor code access to the mainframe. She ran a second diagnostic on all traffic since the breach. There was no evidence of incoming data packets being received. In theory, that meant no virus had been inserted into the local network.

  Unless the delivery payload wiped the log as part of its programming.

  Bekah ran a second security program that she and Carrin Bohannon had just perfected together. It reviewed all incoming data through a strainer algorithm to compare random pieces of extant programming in the mainframe to ferret out aberrant code.

  The program finished. No anomalies found.

  Bekah hailed the War Room.

  “Richter.”

  Bekah opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  “Where’s Carrin?” she asked.

  “Bohannon is busy,” Richter answered in his clipped German accent.

  “Okay,” she said. “Put Maya on, then.”

  Richter cleared his throat. “She is busy too,” he said. Then, “Is something wrong, Ms. Franklin?”

  “No, it’s just … well, yes,” Bekah said. “Someone opened a potential security breach a few minutes ago. I ran a check and I don’t think there’s any damage, but I want to talk to one of my team down there. I want to know exactly who it was and ream them a new … wait, what do you mean busy?”

  There was a pause from Richter. “Something about an increase in cyberattacks against the Labyrinth?” He laughed in a way that sounded rehearsed. “Too much tech talk for me.”

  The attacks on the Labyrinth had increased? At the same time there’d been a security breach on Masada Station?

  “I’m coming down there,” Bekah said. “And as soon as one of them comes up for air, I want a full report on—”

  “No, you stay there,” Richter said. She could hear him moving. “I’ll come to you. You shouldn’t be walking around the station alone.”

  “I can call Fischer,” she said, grabbing her personal access data device. Her jumpsuit felt glued to her skin. She hadn’t changed since the previous shift. Oily fingerprints dotted her PADD’s display. She wondered if she smelled.

  No time for a shower.

  “No, it’s my shift,” Richter said. “Let the old man sleep. I’ll come up and escort you down. Stay where you are.” He switched off the comms.

  Her mouth was open to answer, but Bekah closed it again. Something was happening. She tried to calm her hitching, anxious breathing. But she couldn’t just sit here, waiting for Richter. She needed to be doing something.

  Bekah re-opened the channel to the War Room.

  “Richter?”

  There was only silence.

  “Hey, anyone? Can someone get a message to Bruno Richter for me? Trying to save him a trip. Hello?” She checked the channel. It seemed to be open.

  What the hell? Bekah was ready to kick some serious team ass…

  Bekah grabbed her PADD. When she slid into the corridor, the half lighting snapped on. She headed for the vator, then pulled up short. The nearest lift was near the gym. She
knew Daniel worked out before going to bed, and her sceye showed only a couple of hours had passed since they’d parted company. If Daniel was as restless as she’d been, she might run into him.

  The thought made her blush.

  Don’t be an idiot. It was only a dream.

  Sure, yeah. That’s all it was. Still…

  Turning and retracing her steps, Bekah opted for a slightly longer, less direct way to reach the War Room. She quickened her steps, like that would make up for the decision, the corridor lights blinking on and off as she passed between sections. Distracted while reviewing data on the PADD, she almost flattened her nose when the southside vator’s doors failed to open.

  “What the hell? Is everything fucking broken on this station now?”

  The control panel was dark. Inactive.

  Maybe the breach had done damage after all. Maybe there was a worm in the system their cleaner code hadn’t caught.

  The mainframe. A chill bloomed behind her breastbone.

  At least the mainframe was on a separate, isolated network. The only way Masada’s mainframe could be compromised was if—

  —someone opened a port directly to it.

  Three picoseconds would do it.

  The corridor went dark, and Bekah stood for a moment in the blackness. First the vator control, now the lights?

  “Lights,” she said, deliberately calm. The blackness remained. And the air—was it starting to get cooler? Maybe the worm that shut down the lifts and lights had also compromised life support…

  “Shit!”

  Bekah tried to clear her head and think. There was a maintenance tube around here somewhere, near the vator shaft. Feeling along the chilly wall, she quickly found the raised wrench-inside-a-triangle icon identifying maintenance access. The tube had a ladder allowing repairs between station levels. She’d have to be careful in the dark, but she could feel her way down. The War Room was only two levels below.