Code Breakers: Beta (9 page)

“That was incredible! You saved us.”

Gerry pushed him away. “Calm down. There’s still a war going on, and we have people to find. Is your shuttle serviceable?”

Malik shook his head. “Engine system completely destroyed.” He pointed to the rear of the vehicle. The engine compartment was badly twisted and half hanging off the main fuselage.

“Halt!” A thick Russian accent blared out from a PA system. “Turn around slowly.”

God dammit! Give me a break!

Gerry exhaled, complied with the order. Malik followed.

Two ATVs pulled out from behind the downed Jaguar. They had their cannons trained on the pair. Eager, wide-eyed women held the controls, seemingly bursting to pull the triggers.

The partners of the pilots got out of the cars, held their shotguns up, and approached with electromagnetic cuffs. “Put on,” they said, throwing them over to Gerry and Malik.

Even if Gerry got into the vehicle’s computer, the shotguns would finish him before he could do anything. He gritted his teeth, put on the cuffs, and waited for an opportunity to disarm the two robed, blonde women carrying the guns.

That opportunity never arrived.

Something sharp, like prongs, jabbed into his neck. A bolt of electricity arced through his spinal column and into his brain, tensing his muscles, killing his internal systems, and taking Mags offline. He fell to the ground. His limbs jerked uncontrollably with the electrical discharge of the device in his neck.

Chapter 12

T
hose strange pins penetrated Gerry’s neck and paralysed him. Tough webbing strapped him tight to the bench seat in the truck. The vibrations of the wheels transferred to the bench and combined with the oscillating buzzing from within his head. The bolts of electricity silenced his internal systems, and blocked access to his AIA, slowing his brain.

Every few seconds he’d feel a jolt as if someone had attached a battery to his brain stem. His wrists, too, were disabled. The metal cuffs sent consistent tiny shivers of electro-stimulation through his nerves. He could barely lift his arms off his lap.

At first his speech wouldn’t come. The will to move was like wading through the Sludge. Eventually he managed to lift his head and open his eyes. Enna and Malik sat opposite, restrained in similar cuffs. The latter’s face split down the right cheek, exposing red flesh.

“What’s going on?” Gerry said, easing the words from his mouth with considerable effort.

Enna lifted her head. She looked so old since the last time he saw her. “They’ve got Old Grey and Bilanko. We tried to stop them.”

Five other GeoCity-1 citizens slumped together, bleeding and defeated. But they weren’t soldiers or fighters. Just survivors. Gerry knew Old Grey was special for its ability to house AIs. Was that why this group had taken it? Did they want the data inside?

“What do you know of this group?” The device jolted his brain again. He closed his eyes, waited for the pain to subside. “And what the hell is this in my neck?”

Enna shook her head slowly, “I don’t know what they are. The group, however, call themselves the Red Widows. I’ve been…” Enna trailed off, turned to Malik, and eyed him suspiciously. “We can’t talk here.”

“Tell me,” Gerry said, leaning forward as much as the restraining straps allowed. “You said Petal was alive. Is she okay? Where is she?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t say. Not here.”

The truck lurched, came to a stop. The rear doors opened. A group of three Red Widow members, aiming their weapons, stood at the opening. Moonlight gave the Widows a peculiar bluish silver tone to their grey and light brown robes. With heir faces held mostly in shadow, their wide, staring eyes appeared watery with the way they reflected the light.

One by one the fanatics led out their human cargo.

For the brief few seconds they were in the open air, Gerry recognised the tall, half-destroyed buildings, the smell of foul roasted meat, cooked by the desperate denizens within the garbage-strewn streets. They were in a district of Darkhan. Steep banks of dried grass lined either side of the truck creating a tunnel. A pair of Widows ushered their cargo into a line and led them to a five-meter-wide steel door.

Gerry knew he’d been here before. He knew it was Seca’s compound.

The Widows waited at the door, communicated with someone. A motor whined. The door slid into a slot in the ground. Inside, sporadically placed LED lamps created small pockets of light down the length of a long corridor.

With each footstep, each echo that reverberated through the tunnel, he felt like he was right back there again: the palpable fear, the sense of defeat, and worst of all: the thought that Petal was dead. Even though Enna assured him she was safe, being back at the compound, he wasn’t sure. Enna clearly had more to say.

He wanted to talk with her, get more information, but three other people stood between them. Malik shuffled right behind him, however. He whispered into Gerry’s ear as they ambled along the dark grey corridor, heading always downwards, led by the two fanatics.

“Are they going to kill us?” Malik said, his voice taking on a pained vibrato quality.

“I don’t know,” Gerry said. He wanted to try and say something to ease the man’s fear. This was a rude awakening to life outside of the Dome, far beyond what he’d experienced, but the words wouldn’t come. The device continued to over-stimulate his nerves, scrambling his thoughts.

One of the robe-wearers with short brunette hair and a permanent sneer turned to them and yelled, “Halt!” She stopped the group outside a narrow, iron door. Gerry knew it led into the cells. He had a flashback of being strapped to the metal table, Seca torturing him, cutting out his eye. He couldn’t tell if he was shaking from that memory and the fear of what could come, or the electro shocks from the prongs in his neck.

One by one they were taken from the line, through the door and thrown into a cell.

Gerry slumped onto the bench seat in the three-metre-square grey box. Before they closed the door, he noticed they put Enna in the room opposite his.

Throughout this process, not one of them attempted to talk with him, explain the reason for their internment. Gerry knew it wasn’t just for being involved in that skirmish, otherwise they wouldn’t have had this device to block his abilities, which meant they had insider information.
Could it be Enna
? he wondered. She had lured him to GeoCity-1 with her message and promise of more information about Petal. Would she really sell him out?

Then there was the issue of taking Bilanko and Old Grey. And the fact they were here in Seca’s facility, none of it was coincidence. These people seemed to have a great deal of interest in information and securing it. Had they also recovered the other server that Len and his followers were protecting?

And that made him wonder, too, about Len’s setup. Jasper’s men killed the poor guy while he defended Gerry and petal. Had that got back to his people? Were they still out there on the surface beyond the Sludge protecting that old server?

And then he remembered: not far from Darkhan was the outpost controlled by a group of Upsiders and The Blighty, the pub run by the curious landlady, Molly, who had helped him deliver Len’s virus to take out Seca’s security system on a storage unit containing much-needed vaccines.

He slumped forward, rested his wrists on his knees, and tried to control the feelings of frustration at the lack of his mental abilities. Without his brain he was nothing but a useless meat-bag.

Another jolt of electricity, clearly on a timed schedule, travelled through his brain, making him screw his eyes shut and hold his breath. When it had passed he exhaled and waited for something—inspiration, a clear head, anything.

Gerry dozed in and out of sleep while lying on his side on the hard bed. His dreams came and went like diaphanous spectres, all meaning and sense offered and taken away by some unknown source, always at the edge of understanding. Names and ideas bubbled up from his subconscious, but nothing would stick. His thoughts out of reach beyond an invisible barrier.

From the void a face started to form, dark and shadowed by a deep hood. An accented voice came from within the folds, “Hey! Get up, man.”

Gerry felt something push into his ribs. He opened his eyes to a shadow covering him.

“Ain’t got no holy brew this time, man,” the voice said. The man pulled Gerry’s shoulder until he sat up. “But I got ya some water. Drink up.”

The figure pushed a cup to Gerry’s lips. Despite himself, he sipped the cool liquid. In a mad rush, myriad memories came rushing forward.

“Gabe! That you?”

The figure stood back, unblocked the overhead light. Gerry knew it was Gabe. And knew he wanted to kill him.

Chapter 13

T
he time on Sasha’s slate read 21:05. The Family’s satellite would be overhead in two hours. She had a plan, but knew Jimmy wouldn’t go for it. She’d show him the video feeds from the UAVs first. See if that would persuade him.

She tapped her foot against the surface of her console desk, beating out a hidden rhythm, created by her anxiety.

Jimmy’s footsteps clacked into her room. The smell of stale coffee came from his breath, announcing his presence. It always reminded her of the first day he activated her. From within her tank, floating on the surface, she watched as he leaned over, asked if she was okay. Before her motor functions and full cognition were operational the smell of his coffee breath, and those kind grey eyes of his were the very first things she experienced.

“Sasha, dear, what is the status of the drones and the Red Widow Jaguar? Was it as we suspected?”

“Patching the video feeds now. It’s quite interesting really. Well, exciting, I think.” She played the video stream from the UAVs she sent up earlier.

The recording showed the Jaguar flying at almost full speed on a direct trajectory to the island. Within the cabin, a robe wearing Red Widow member sat at the controls. “See, it’s one of them. So I blasted ‘em from the sky.”

The recording showed the Jaguar tear apart under the assault and crash into the sea.

“Why would they have become so brazen?” Jimmy said, more to himself than anything. He always did that, Sasha noticed. It was difficult to tell when he wanted an answer or was pondering some rhetorical argument.

“Dunno, but that was just one drone’s feed. Wanna see the other?”

Before he had a chance to answer Sasha had already loaded and started the file. The feed came from the UAV on the opposite side, and although it, too, showed the Jaguar crashing into the sea, it also panned out showing the robed girl in the ejector seat fall to the sea.

Before she hit the surface, the parachute fluttered behind her. She struggled to remove herself from the seat. It crashed into the water with a plume of white spray.

“Hmmm, interesting,” Jimmy said. “But is that it?”

“Nah, this is the really interesting bit.” She forwarded it a few more minutes. Nothing showed after the splash. “Looks like they’ve drowned, don’t it?”

He nodded. “I would assume as much.”

“And that’d make an ass out of you and me,” she said with a wink. “Look.”

She pulled up the data analysis record for the UAV whose video they were looking at.

“See those spikes in radio transmission? That’s minutes after she went under the water; she’s alive! The seats on the Jaguars sense vital signs and transmit with their distress signal after ejection.”

“Indeed they do.” Jimmy’s face twisted into a kind of half-smile half-grimace, as though he couldn’t decide if he was happy or worried. “Have the drones returned?”

“Yeah, I brought them back in before I realised the signals were still transmitting. Doc, let me take the sub out. Please? We’ve got enough time before the satellite is overhead. Oh, and hey, it’d be a great way to test your new stealth tech, huh?”

“Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. You don’t know anything about this person at this stage. For all we know, that could be a decoy to something else. With the General and his men due back within the hour, you’ll be needed to help them with their kit. Or are you forgetting that you are a member of this team?”

“But, Doc, did you really make me just to cart about some kit? Isn’t that a waste of my abilities? Hell, you have warehouses full of androids that could do those kinds of duties.”

The shadow came down on Jimmy’s face then, “I said no, and that’s final. Leave and go and meet the General. I want you to be there ready to help them as soon as they arrive. Maybe that’ll make up for last time.”

“Oh, come on, Doc. I’m going out of my mind with boredom here. Why program me to do all these great things and then have me busy with mundane jobs and stuck underground? I’m sick of this place.”

Jimmy Robertson grabbed her by the collar of her leather coat and dragged her from the room. He pushed her into the corridor that led to the surface doors. “You’re to say here, be ready to help General Vickers and his team with their maintenance equipment.”

Jimmy referred to the gear they used on the various relay stations, transmitters, and drone control nodes hidden about the island, away from prying Family satellites.

“It’s not fair!” Sasha screamed at Jimmy as he turned his back on her and headed for his lab.

“Play by the rules, and perhaps you’ll find life here fairer,” he called back as turned out of the passage.

Sasha waited a minute to ensure he had completely left. When she was sure, she snuck off down the corridor.
The General can lift his own damn stuff
, she thought as she headed for the submersible compound.

***

Sasha sprinted down the various corridors and levels until she arrived at the unit housing the subs. It featured a water tank that fed into the ocean. It was also the location of Criborg’s team of oceanographers: a team of twenty-five scientists who worked with Jimmy Robertson to develop submarines and other sea-based technology.

There were the standard observational models, which the oceanographers used to monitor sea life and the effect of radiation since the Cataclysm, and then there were combat models, using Robertson’s new stealth tech.

He’d had the idea to use a layer of nano-cells on the sub’s surface so that when The Family’s satellites flew over during their monitoring process, their signals would be scrambled, analysed and repackaged by the nano cells. When the satellite received back the photons, it’d seem as if nothing was there. That was the plan. It hadn’t been tested out in the depths yet. It worked fine in their water lab within the compound, but as usual, Jimmy remained reluctant to test it, just like he remained reluctant to test the warehouses full of androids. They could do all the heavy lifting and mundane jobs around the compound, not to mention the maintenance on the surface. It seemed stupid sending soldiers to do basic tasks.

He’d often say that the androids were left-overs from the war, and when the Anglo-American owners were wiped out leaving a few hundred people back at Wake Island in Criborg’s care, that they weren’t field tested or trustworthy.

So what if one of them went crazy and killed someone? It was a temporary software problem that could be easily fixed if old Robertson would just loosen up and allow them to at least test them in a controlled environment.

She’d often sneak into one of the pods that stored the androids. Designed to be drop-shipped into strategic battlefield locations, each pod held fifty ‘droids. With over a hundred pods, that made five thousand android combat units, still new as the day they were made.

The possibilities were huge, she thought. If they could just sort out the software, they could go to the surface, re-establish a proper community with farming, industry, defences against those damned Family drones, which she hated to admit were far superior to their own.

Chatter from the scientists and their assistants buzzed out rom the mess hall as Petal walked by. They were all excited about some new chemical report from kelp or something. It never ceased to amaze her what those eggheads would get excited over when there were more incredible things mothballed in storage.

It didn’t matter though. The more distracted they were the better.

She opened the door to the wet lab and descended the metal steps until she stood on a gantry and looked down at the black, sleek combat sub. It reached ten metres long and three wide, shaped like a dart with a raised middle section. Big enough to seat three: a navigator, and front and rear weapons operators, it had a pair of side torpedo pontoons, currently empty. The missiles and arms were kept elsewhere. General Vickers, and Jimmy Robertson, didn’t trust anyone, even the eggheads.

Still, what she had planned meant she didn’t need weapons.
She
was the weapon in this case—if it would even come down to that, which she doubted.

Up on the right side of the gantry, looking down over the entire complex loomed a glassed-off observation lab where Salty Mack, the skipper and manager of the sub complex, would often be found. But even he was with his colleagues in the mess hall.

Doing a quick observation check to make sure no one was around, Sasha suited up in an augmented silvery-black wet suit. It had a series of sensors and control units woven into the fabric, making it smart and adaptive to the user’s core temperature. The mask and helmet it came with fit tight around her face. A small port on the mouthpiece attached to an air supply within the sub. Once outside she’d have a hundred metres of line with which to explore. But even without the air, it didn’t matter to Sasha. She didn’t strictly need air to survive. To perform optimally? Yes. To survive? Not really.

She pulled up the transmitted location of the ejector seat’s signal on her slate, plotted it into her internal navigation system. Her implant gave her a direct connection to the slate, the sub’s systems, and to the network within the compound itself, all on their own secure encrypted microwave network. However, she disconnected herself from the compound’s wider system so they couldn’t tell what she was doing. She created a program that would ping the network with her ID from her observation room and from the main doors so it appeared to anyone, probably Jimmy, who wanted to check on her that she was doing her expected duties.

When she got back from her mission, they’d be so impressed with her ingenuity, skills, and what she found that maybe then they’d stop treating her like a child, and more like the capable war machine she actually was.