CHAPTER 3
LIVE WIRED
The clock was ticking, so Tam and I moved in fast and low with the Mitsu suits humming full spectrum. We ghosted under camera domes and over several laser trips before we hit the main lobby. Flat steel vault doors in the far wall led to the labs. Bio-ware shows up as a hot spot in a human body, and we’d already switched to thermal-view for a quick ID. The two guards in the lobby read negative so we double tapped, and left them slumped in their chairs cooling to lower temperatures. Then we went prowling for our live wired friend.
We found him in the bathroom, of all places. Another vet, this one scarred ugly from some old toxin burst, but it’s kind of hard to look intimidating with your pants around your ankles. Tam kicked the stall door in, then dragged him out zip cuffed and gagged. He was a die hard though. He kept thrashing, growling, trying to head butt or body slam his way past. After a couple tries, I chopped him hard in both shoulders, then pulled on his head and spoke through my faceplate, “You play nice, you’ll be alive when this is over…” Not that it was much consolation; our run here was definitely not good for his long term career plans, but he quieted down
At least until he spotted the other two guards back in the main lobby, then he threw himself toward the desk panel trying to trip an alarm. I kicked his legs out and sat on him while Tam called Poet9.
“We’re in and we got the wired guy. You sure we have to keep him alive?”
I looked down to see him biting through the gag and bounced his head off the floor. “Just ‘til we’re on our way.” He quieted down again.
Four and a half minutes later, Poet9 dropped in and went to work on their grid. Another 3 minutes and he’d burned through their defense net like a plasma torch, and grunted as the vault doors hissed open. “Stupid execs - always 6 months behind.”
We stepped over the threshold and frog marched the guard down the corridor into the labs. Poet9 ran ahead looking for a security console, that big black Walther bobbing in his outstretched two hand grip. Corporal Ugly was really sweating, his eyes wide now that we’d breeched the labs. Several times I saw the dim notion of bolting or going limp flit behind his eyes, but he knew I wasn‘t in the mood and kept his feet moving.
Another minute found Poet9 at a control terminal, the main lab all sharp white walls, sequencing neon pin lights, glass and chrome. The fuzzy ozone smell of electronics filtered past my faceplate. You could taste the air buzzing, a backwash of bouncing signals.
“This is something, right?
Poet9 unzipped his cables. “Wow, nothing gets by you, hunh? Here - be useful and look for a coldsafe, a minivault, even a stasis canister. It can’t be that big. I‘ll sift their daily protocols.” He slung a Kevlar weave pack off his back, zipping it open as it hit the floor, and kicked it towards Tam. “But don’t touch if you find it. Let me at it first.“
He didn’t wait for our answer; just plugged in his leads, fingers staccato on the deck. His eyes glazed over leaving us behind, so we combed the main room, suit sensors probing every desk, locker, closet and container we could find. I dragged the guard with me, hoping for some kind of reaction as we made a circuit around the room, but he just seethed, all surly and tight. We came back around and I plopped him a stray chair. “Stay.”
“Tam” I called through the microlink, “ this seem easy to you?”
He was silent for a second, then, “Yeah. For earth shattering tech, they seem awful laid-back. I mean, the perimeter is tight, there’s modded guards, even the bio-alarm, but in here there‘s no turrets, trips, even motion sensors. Maybe they already moved it?”
“We’ve only got the tactical brief, but it said there’s less than 2 weeks before D-H goes public. This is the shave & tweak stage. Work out the kinks for the big Board debut. Their source double crossed them? ”
“We’d be dead, or nearly there, if that was the case.”
Poet9 looked up suddenly. “I have something! Motion, cyber activity, in that room.“ The bulky muzzle of his Walther 11 pointed at a set of blue double doors on the west wall. “In there.”
“Don’t think the tech is going to shoot you, Poet.” I jerked the guard to his feet. We all went in.
The four of us passed through the door into an observation room. Four large glass viewing panels angled out and away from bank of equipment screens. On the right, a steel staircase disappeared down into the semi- dark of a lower floor. I hung back, holding the guard, so Tam & Poet9 moved forward and peered out the panels down into what looked like a room.
“I saw you.” a voice suddenly said. It came from speakers on the instrument panel. All of us froze.
“You tried to be sneaky, but I saw you,” it suddenly said again. Poet9 jerked his pistol up, and Tam tensed.
“I saw one of you in the Net too. You’re pretty fast. Faster than the others around here. I tried to show them how to make it better, but they wouldn’t listen.” the voice continued.
Poet9 leaned forward and peered down thru the glass. “Jesus! There’s someone down there.”
“I’ll turn on the lights if you want. Here” And the room below us suddenly flickered to life. Poet9 brought up his magnum, but Tam put a hand on his shoulder. He looked down into the observation area and saw the room. A plain room like a barracks; off -white, a bed, drawers in one wall, and several items scattered on a rug. In the corner was a large u-shaped consol with several workstations and panels under oversize monitors. And someone was sitting at one of the stations.
“A kid,” I heard Tam’s whisper in my helmet. “There’s a kid down there.” I kept a lock on the guard, but Poet9 leaned to look into the room while Tam made his way down the stairs.
It was a boy. Dark skinned, close cut hair, with a round face and clear, green eyes that jumped out at you. No more than 10 or 12 years old, he dressed in a tan coveralls sitting at one of the computers. He paused as Tam came out onto the floor.
“Are you the only one here?” Tam was asking as he slowly walked toward the boy.
“Right now I am. In the daytime Dr. Evans and Dr. Heinrich are here with their staff. Sometimes they stay late and have me do things with the computers. But that’s been less and less lately. They keep telling me I have to get my rest. Couldn’t sleep tonight though. That’s how come I saw you.”
“What’s your name?” Tam was halfway to the consol.
“Gibson. What’s yours?”
“That’s not important right now. Gibson, what do you mean ‘you saw us’? When?” Tam was
nearly at the desk now.
“On the security grid. I told you, I was awake and got bored. So I watched you through the cameras. Well, I mean I could tell where you were. The air sort of shimmered so I just followed the shimmers and watched you come here.” He paused and looked at one of the screens, then back at Tam. “Why did you kill those two men?”
Poet9 broke in over the radio link. “Hate to interrupt, but. We’ve got a job to do. And … only 8 minutes to do it in. Does he know where they keep it or not?”
Tam was at the computers now, hand on the edge of one of the desks, looking down at the boy, who just sat and looked back up into the stealth suit matt black faceplate. “Look at him.” I heard Tam say. “Look at him Poet.”
“What? I see a kid. I want hardware. Just put him to sleep and let’s move.”
“No. Look at his head.” I stepped forward gripping the guard tighter and cranked up the amplification on my visor. On the back of his neck, just at the base, I spied a vat tat: a gene series barcode imprint. The kid was a clone. Right next to it, a single thin black cybernetic jack ran up from the panel to disappear behind the boy’s left ear.
“Could you turn off the lights for me Gibson?” Tam asked.
“Sure” and the lights went out. The room snapped right back to gloom and shadow, but it took a little longer for the realization to hit. Right then, Cottontail’s voice broke in the command channel. - “We have contact.”
And all the unpleasantness came crashing in at once.
OUTSIDE: CONTACT
C.U. 5901 and C.U. 5902 walked along the fence at a brisk, steady march. C.U. 5905 lagged back in the darkness, constantly shifting left to right, covering their flanks. It was the simplest patrol pattern, one of the first they’d ever learned, but the master/leader ordered them to impersonate the enemy guards. 5901 and 5902 hoped this was at least close to their procedure - sloppy though it was. Back in Africa, anything this careless would have earned a disciplinary beating. A second time, and they’d have been shot where they stood. Still, the master/leader ordered it, and they, eager to please, loped on, hoping they looked like rent-a-cops.
They were halfway back to the labs when the alarm went off. Their links grabbed it straight from the Base channel: a braying alert in their headsets. Nothing visible changed, no sound, no lights. but in the air something shivered and burst. 01 & 02 froze in step. C.U. 5905 stopped, looked up sniffing the air, then immediately chirped Tam.
“We have contact.”
“Wha-?”
The assault carrier burst out of the sky, engines screaming in rage, and a massive wall of air and sound and steel rolled over the Three. The landing gear and ramps unfolding like some giant wasp, it started disgorging figures from its belly in mid-air. In night vision, the cyclone haze of heat and matter rose up under the downdraft of the turbines, rendering even enhanced vision almost impossible. The Three knelt and braced, firing into the swirling mass anyway. Unable to actually pick targets, they simply fired in a standard air/ground assault dispersal pattern. Men started dying. The carrier touched ground, bounced twice, then started to lift again. In a blur, 5902 whipped the Balor-3 launcher off his back and fired up the open drop ramp. A sharp crack and brief flare within, and the transport flinched. Then snapped sideways out of the air onto the concrete plaza, and exploded.
As one, they switched out empty mags and shifted right. Fire move, fire move, fire move, again. Like breathing, like a heartbeat, battle pulse deep coded in every cell of their bodies. A wolf howl primal core rising. The remaining armored troopers ducked and scuttled like black beetles against the white inferno backdrop. Every shot dropped another figure. Fire move, fire move, fire move. Stop. There were no more.
“Contact end. Engagement finished. Orders?” C.U. 5905 spoke to Tam.
“Just head to the rally point and cover for exfil. We’re coming out.”
“Acknowledged,” and they turned and ran together back across the plaza, flames towering in the sky behind them, like three wolves loosed, liquid black vicious in the night.
I hit Ugly at the base of the neck, and he dropped like a sack of rags. Poet9 speedjacked in. “shitshitshit - we’re busted. Base net just bloomed to full alert. Gimme a sec. I’ll dump some Luna-C in their drone system.” His fingers flew across the keys.
“No time. No time.” Tam was yelling. He snatched up the kid like a doll and took the stairs in three bounds. I had spun and sighted the double doors behind us, expecting a Cerberus ’bot to shatter through right then. But none did. I looked back to Poet9 to see blood trickle from his nose as he slammed through their Net. He staggered, eyes rolling back, but his fingers blurred over the deck, hot loading custom virals into their Security grid.
“I‘m opening the Lab doors… mimic a breach at their north gate too.” He staggered again under the torrent of data, blood dripping onto the clean white tile. Tam motioned to me and I caught him under my arm.
“Wish you’d let me drop those Spider mines, eh? - I’m. Almost done. There.”
His finger slammed the final key as I yanked his leads. They zipped back up into his headgear and I turned, half dragging him toward the door. Then through the wall we heard muffled roar of a massive blast. I flipped down my tac-map and three dots for the Triplets were still blinking green and moving fast. A tangle of red ones were disappearing faster.
“Surprise, surprise.”
Tam chuckled over the link, “Shoot & scoot, baby, shoot & scoot.”
We ran outside.
The clock was ticking, so Tam and I moved in fast and low with the Mitsu suits humming full spectrum. We ghosted under camera domes and over several laser trips before we hit the main lobby. Flat steel vault doors in the far wall led to the labs. Bio-ware shows up as a hot spot in a human body, and we’d already switched to thermal-view for a quick ID. The two guards in the lobby read negative so we double tapped, and left them slumped in their chairs cooling to lower temperatures. Then we went prowling for our live wired friend.
We found him in the bathroom, of all places. Another vet, this one scarred ugly from some old toxin burst, but it’s kind of hard to look intimidating with your pants around your ankles. Tam kicked the stall door in, then dragged him out zip cuffed and gagged. He was a die hard though. He kept thrashing, growling, trying to head butt or body slam his way past. After a couple tries, I chopped him hard in both shoulders, then pulled on his head and spoke through my faceplate, “You play nice, you’ll be alive when this is over…” Not that it was much consolation; our run here was definitely not good for his long term career plans, but he quieted down
At least until he spotted the other two guards back in the main lobby, then he threw himself toward the desk panel trying to trip an alarm. I kicked his legs out and sat on him while Tam called Poet9.
“We’re in and we got the wired guy. You sure we have to keep him alive?”
I looked down to see him biting through the gag and bounced his head off the floor. “Just ‘til we’re on our way.” He quieted down again.
Four and a half minutes later, Poet9 dropped in and went to work on their grid. Another 3 minutes and he’d burned through their defense net like a plasma torch, and grunted as the vault doors hissed open. “Stupid execs - always 6 months behind.”
We stepped over the threshold and frog marched the guard down the corridor into the labs. Poet9 ran ahead looking for a security console, that big black Walther bobbing in his outstretched two hand grip. Corporal Ugly was really sweating, his eyes wide now that we’d breeched the labs. Several times I saw the dim notion of bolting or going limp flit behind his eyes, but he knew I wasn‘t in the mood and kept his feet moving.
Another minute found Poet9 at a control terminal, the main lab all sharp white walls, sequencing neon pin lights, glass and chrome. The fuzzy ozone smell of electronics filtered past my faceplate. You could taste the air buzzing, a backwash of bouncing signals.
“This is something, right?
Poet9 unzipped his cables. “Wow, nothing gets by you, hunh? Here - be useful and look for a coldsafe, a minivault, even a stasis canister. It can’t be that big. I‘ll sift their daily protocols.” He slung a Kevlar weave pack off his back, zipping it open as it hit the floor, and kicked it towards Tam. “But don’t touch if you find it. Let me at it first.“
He didn’t wait for our answer; just plugged in his leads, fingers staccato on the deck. His eyes glazed over leaving us behind, so we combed the main room, suit sensors probing every desk, locker, closet and container we could find. I dragged the guard with me, hoping for some kind of reaction as we made a circuit around the room, but he just seethed, all surly and tight. We came back around and I plopped him a stray chair. “Stay.”
“Tam” I called through the microlink, “ this seem easy to you?”
He was silent for a second, then, “Yeah. For earth shattering tech, they seem awful laid-back. I mean, the perimeter is tight, there’s modded guards, even the bio-alarm, but in here there‘s no turrets, trips, even motion sensors. Maybe they already moved it?”
“We’ve only got the tactical brief, but it said there’s less than 2 weeks before D-H goes public. This is the shave & tweak stage. Work out the kinks for the big Board debut. Their source double crossed them? ”
“We’d be dead, or nearly there, if that was the case.”
Poet9 looked up suddenly. “I have something! Motion, cyber activity, in that room.“ The bulky muzzle of his Walther 11 pointed at a set of blue double doors on the west wall. “In there.”
“Don’t think the tech is going to shoot you, Poet.” I jerked the guard to his feet. We all went in.
The four of us passed through the door into an observation room. Four large glass viewing panels angled out and away from bank of equipment screens. On the right, a steel staircase disappeared down into the semi- dark of a lower floor. I hung back, holding the guard, so Tam & Poet9 moved forward and peered out the panels down into what looked like a room.
“I saw you.” a voice suddenly said. It came from speakers on the instrument panel. All of us froze.
“You tried to be sneaky, but I saw you,” it suddenly said again. Poet9 jerked his pistol up, and Tam tensed.
“I saw one of you in the Net too. You’re pretty fast. Faster than the others around here. I tried to show them how to make it better, but they wouldn’t listen.” the voice continued.
Poet9 leaned forward and peered down thru the glass. “Jesus! There’s someone down there.”
“I’ll turn on the lights if you want. Here” And the room below us suddenly flickered to life. Poet9 brought up his magnum, but Tam put a hand on his shoulder. He looked down into the observation area and saw the room. A plain room like a barracks; off -white, a bed, drawers in one wall, and several items scattered on a rug. In the corner was a large u-shaped consol with several workstations and panels under oversize monitors. And someone was sitting at one of the stations.
“A kid,” I heard Tam’s whisper in my helmet. “There’s a kid down there.” I kept a lock on the guard, but Poet9 leaned to look into the room while Tam made his way down the stairs.
It was a boy. Dark skinned, close cut hair, with a round face and clear, green eyes that jumped out at you. No more than 10 or 12 years old, he dressed in a tan coveralls sitting at one of the computers. He paused as Tam came out onto the floor.
“Are you the only one here?” Tam was asking as he slowly walked toward the boy.
“Right now I am. In the daytime Dr. Evans and Dr. Heinrich are here with their staff. Sometimes they stay late and have me do things with the computers. But that’s been less and less lately. They keep telling me I have to get my rest. Couldn’t sleep tonight though. That’s how come I saw you.”
“What’s your name?” Tam was halfway to the consol.
“Gibson. What’s yours?”
“That’s not important right now. Gibson, what do you mean ‘you saw us’? When?” Tam was
nearly at the desk now.
“On the security grid. I told you, I was awake and got bored. So I watched you through the cameras. Well, I mean I could tell where you were. The air sort of shimmered so I just followed the shimmers and watched you come here.” He paused and looked at one of the screens, then back at Tam. “Why did you kill those two men?”
Poet9 broke in over the radio link. “Hate to interrupt, but. We’ve got a job to do. And … only 8 minutes to do it in. Does he know where they keep it or not?”
Tam was at the computers now, hand on the edge of one of the desks, looking down at the boy, who just sat and looked back up into the stealth suit matt black faceplate. “Look at him.” I heard Tam say. “Look at him Poet.”
“What? I see a kid. I want hardware. Just put him to sleep and let’s move.”
“No. Look at his head.” I stepped forward gripping the guard tighter and cranked up the amplification on my visor. On the back of his neck, just at the base, I spied a vat tat: a gene series barcode imprint. The kid was a clone. Right next to it, a single thin black cybernetic jack ran up from the panel to disappear behind the boy’s left ear.
“Could you turn off the lights for me Gibson?” Tam asked.
“Sure” and the lights went out. The room snapped right back to gloom and shadow, but it took a little longer for the realization to hit. Right then, Cottontail’s voice broke in the command channel. - “We have contact.”
And all the unpleasantness came crashing in at once.
OUTSIDE: CONTACT
C.U. 5901 and C.U. 5902 walked along the fence at a brisk, steady march. C.U. 5905 lagged back in the darkness, constantly shifting left to right, covering their flanks. It was the simplest patrol pattern, one of the first they’d ever learned, but the master/leader ordered them to impersonate the enemy guards. 5901 and 5902 hoped this was at least close to their procedure - sloppy though it was. Back in Africa, anything this careless would have earned a disciplinary beating. A second time, and they’d have been shot where they stood. Still, the master/leader ordered it, and they, eager to please, loped on, hoping they looked like rent-a-cops.
They were halfway back to the labs when the alarm went off. Their links grabbed it straight from the Base channel: a braying alert in their headsets. Nothing visible changed, no sound, no lights. but in the air something shivered and burst. 01 & 02 froze in step. C.U. 5905 stopped, looked up sniffing the air, then immediately chirped Tam.
“We have contact.”
“Wha-?”
The assault carrier burst out of the sky, engines screaming in rage, and a massive wall of air and sound and steel rolled over the Three. The landing gear and ramps unfolding like some giant wasp, it started disgorging figures from its belly in mid-air. In night vision, the cyclone haze of heat and matter rose up under the downdraft of the turbines, rendering even enhanced vision almost impossible. The Three knelt and braced, firing into the swirling mass anyway. Unable to actually pick targets, they simply fired in a standard air/ground assault dispersal pattern. Men started dying. The carrier touched ground, bounced twice, then started to lift again. In a blur, 5902 whipped the Balor-3 launcher off his back and fired up the open drop ramp. A sharp crack and brief flare within, and the transport flinched. Then snapped sideways out of the air onto the concrete plaza, and exploded.
As one, they switched out empty mags and shifted right. Fire move, fire move, fire move, again. Like breathing, like a heartbeat, battle pulse deep coded in every cell of their bodies. A wolf howl primal core rising. The remaining armored troopers ducked and scuttled like black beetles against the white inferno backdrop. Every shot dropped another figure. Fire move, fire move, fire move. Stop. There were no more.
“Contact end. Engagement finished. Orders?” C.U. 5905 spoke to Tam.
“Just head to the rally point and cover for exfil. We’re coming out.”
“Acknowledged,” and they turned and ran together back across the plaza, flames towering in the sky behind them, like three wolves loosed, liquid black vicious in the night.
I hit Ugly at the base of the neck, and he dropped like a sack of rags. Poet9 speedjacked in. “shitshitshit - we’re busted. Base net just bloomed to full alert. Gimme a sec. I’ll dump some Luna-C in their drone system.” His fingers flew across the keys.
“No time. No time.” Tam was yelling. He snatched up the kid like a doll and took the stairs in three bounds. I had spun and sighted the double doors behind us, expecting a Cerberus ’bot to shatter through right then. But none did. I looked back to Poet9 to see blood trickle from his nose as he slammed through their Net. He staggered, eyes rolling back, but his fingers blurred over the deck, hot loading custom virals into their Security grid.
“I‘m opening the Lab doors… mimic a breach at their north gate too.” He staggered again under the torrent of data, blood dripping onto the clean white tile. Tam motioned to me and I caught him under my arm.
“Wish you’d let me drop those Spider mines, eh? - I’m. Almost done. There.”
His finger slammed the final key as I yanked his leads. They zipped back up into his headgear and I turned, half dragging him toward the door. Then through the wall we heard muffled roar of a massive blast. I flipped down my tac-map and three dots for the Triplets were still blinking green and moving fast. A tangle of red ones were disappearing faster.
“Surprise, surprise.”
Tam chuckled over the link, “Shoot & scoot, baby, shoot & scoot.”
We ran outside.
