Crusade For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 2) (29 page)

“If I can scan in all of our dimensions, I can blank us from any recordings once I’m in the system.”

“If Button was here,” Olivia joked.  “He would say something about ‘we’re’ meant to be the elite troops.”  To reduce any emissions that would give them away, their short range coms were line of sight only.

“Give it to her,” Jessica told Olivia.  “Keep the scan as low powered as possible, Hanna, and an eye on the green circle on your HUD.  If it goes all amber, shut it down.  Understood?”  Since they left the water, the threat display had gone all green as the active scans protecting the island reduced to almost zero.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Hanna replied and she took the sensor wand from Olivia.

“I’m not an officer, just call me Corp.”

“Yes, Corp,” Hanna said contritely.  Plugging the wand in, she swiftly scanned the three of them in and entered the data into the worms dedicated to surveillance. 

A triple tap on the permacrete wall above, warned of Chao and Kozelek’s return.  The two men waved for the women to follow them.

“Wester, you go first and then haul Hanna up.”  Jessica ordered and Olivia nodded in reply.

Not wasting any time, Olivia leapt the three metre distance up to the top of the wall easily, the suits servo’s giving her a much assisted boost.  Chao was there ready and grabbed the back of her suit to pull her over.  Hanna guessed Olivia was just as capable as the two men were, but with Chao’s help she was over quicker.

Turning around immediately, Olivia hung her arm down over the wall.  While Hanna’s suit included the same servo assistance, with no training she couldn’t get it to work much more than the default settings.  All the computer could do, was compensate for its own extra weight and bulk.  Crouching all the way down, Hanna leapt up and her years of robbing houses in the dead of night, allowed her to grab Olivia on the first go.

With one easy pull, Hanna was dragged over onto thick grass.  Jessica jumped up right behind.  Chao waved them all to head round to the west of the house.  Swiftly, Hanna scanned the last two in.  With Shadow Company’s stealth suits continuing to blend them into the background, the team moved off quietly.

Chao led them through landscaped grounds of perfectly flat grass, shaped bushes, bright flowers and overhanging trees.  Stepping through an opening, they entered the pool area.  The pool itself stretched for fifty metres.  At one end was the main building.  At the other a low dwelling, and Hanna recognised it as the pool house.  Many of the houses she visited in Inferno, while the owners were either away or asleep, had very similar places, if not as large as this one.

The team moved in an elongated diamond formation, Chao at the lead point, Hanna in the centre with Olivia and Jessica either side and Kozelek bringing up the rear.  Arriving at the pool house first, Chao looked in the windows for what Hanna presumed was a second time.

He crouched by the door and waved Hanna forward, pointing at the lock.  She nodded and dashed over with Olivia and Jessica right behind her.  It was a simple electronic lock, made by a company she knew well.  Slipping the thumb sized interface from her datapad, she attached it to the lock and let the Quartz do the work.  In a blink of an eye, the door clicked and slid open.

Chao was through it almost as fast as Valerie would have been, Jessica breezed past as well.  Hanna started to rise to follow, but a strong hand stopped her.  Olivia shook her head, without looking away from the area she was watching, and Hanna waited.

“Building clear,” Jessica reported from inside and Olivia tapped Hanna’s leg, giving her the sign to go in.  Jessica stood in the main living room and she pointed to a terminal in the central table.  Chao was at one of the rear windows looking out.  The rest of the team copied his example.  They spread out around the room and house.  Every approach was covered in one smooth motion, without any orders needed from Jessica.

Swimming deep under water and creeping onto a heavily fortified island, that had already swallowed her very capable friend, may not be in Hanna’s comfort zone but this was.  Laying her datapad on the table, she unlocked the suit’s gloves and put them to one side.  She also wanted to take her helmet off.  That didn’t seem such a good idea.  The gloves were much easier and quicker to get back on if they needed to leave in a hurry.

A short cable plugged the Quartz into the port and Hanna activated her virtual keyboard.  A quick command reset it to her preferred shape and she got to work.  This port had a simple handshake acceptance, in theory it would only work for those wristcomps and datapads it recognised.  Hanna was through in under five seconds. Flicking a finger, she sent the queued programs charging into the islands datanet.

“Oh, that’s stupid,” Hanna said in a low voice.

“What is?”  Jessica asked, a little alarmed.

“Oh.  Sorry.  I tend to talk to myself when I’m Hacking, it helps me think.”

“That can’t be good for a thief.” Chao chuckled.

“If I’m somewhere I can’t talk, then I don’t,” Hanna replied with a shrug, her fingers never paused in their fluid, graceful motion.

“So what’s stupid, then?” repeated Jessica.

“Whoever’s in charge of Ison Island relies far too much on being separated from the main datanet.  To be fair, it’s why we’re here.  The stupid thing is they have their own internal datanet here, to save bandwidth over the island, they‘ve used it to support everything.  Including the security systems.  You were right earlier, the protocols to get into that system should be hard to get through, but not the way they have it set up.  It’s all over the place.  Every camera, sensor and even the guards themselves, are single entities connected via the local datanet.  They all need separate handshakes to pass information.

“To Blaze with the Protocols.  I’m in!  My ignore worms are in place and we’re now, for all intents and purposes, invisible to every electronic eye and sensor on the island.”

“If we weren’t switching sides, I’d be handing her over to L.I,” Olivia said.

“How long to find what we need?” Jessica asked seriously.

“Depends on how big their database is.  I’m not going after the main files.  If they’ve got half a brain, they would have been cleared or hard-walled on a backup drive.  I’m searching all the locally connected datapads and wristcomps.  Someone on this island would have seen and recorded what happened.  I’m data mining it all.”

“You have enough processing power to do that on a Quartz?” Kozelek asked incredulously.

“It’s a Quartz 5.0, well it was.  A friend of mine back on Blaze upgraded it a bit, but even this baby doesn’t have enough to do it all.  I’ve piggybacked the islands central computer.  It’s a beauty, only runs at about thirty percent capacity by the look of it.  That includes running the fusion plant they have buried under here.  I’ve only burrowed five percent of what they’re not using and its crunching through everything.  I’d estimate three more minutes.”

“Do security have anything on us?” Jessica asked.

“Not a peep,” Hanna told her.  “Not a single flag since well before we left the sub.”

“I vote we take her on all our future missions,” Olivia said.  “I hate to say it, Guggenheim, but she makes you look like you’re fresh out of Data Ops.”

“Data Ops?” Hanna asked.

“Program and Data Assault Operations,” Chao explained.  “Basically, the Legion’s Hacking school.  Every Devil fire team has at least one member who has been through the advanced course.”

“Oh,” the blush came back.  “Erm.  Sorry.”  It explained why he had been a bit disbelieving in what she could do.  It was his job to do it and she showed him up.

“Don’t sweat it.” Kozelek said grudgingly. “Wester’s right, kid.  You’ve burned through their systems in a quarter of the speed I could do it.”

Hanna shrugged, she was not entirely sure how to handle praise from these people.  Looking at her screen, she saw her programs had infiltrated all the accessible devices on the island and linked them with the central computer.

“I’ve got a firm time for you.  Sixty seconds to complete the search and download.  I’ll then need another couple of minutes to wipe out any footprints I’ve left behind.”

“After that we can just walk out of here?” Kozelek asked.

“As long as no one physically sees us.  Yes.”

“Good.  Guggenheim, you’re on point,” Jessica ordered.  “Get back over to those trees and let us know if the way is clear.”

“Yes, Corp.”  Kozelek moved from his position.  After a quick double check through the door, he was out and gone.

“Button, you’re rear guard.  Make sure you sweep this building.  We leave it as we found it.”

“On it, Corp.”

“Wester, take up the position by the door.  When Hanna’s with you and it’s clear, you get moving.”  With a quick nod, Olivia got into place.

“Hanna, when you’re finished pack up and tap Wester on the shoulder.  We’ll begin moving with you so take your time and make sure you do it right.”

“Erm, yes, Corp.”  Hanna answered, her fingers blurring away as she made minute adjustments and changes to the worms and viruses infiltrating Ison Islands datanet.  It was a little disconcerting to have this very efficient team waiting for her say-so before moving.  On the other hand, it really wasn’t that different from when she was directing Valerie or co-ordinating the Crew on a Heist.  There was a lot less random chatter than the Crew, but more than when it was just Valerie, Deni and herself.

“There we go.”  Hanna said.  “Last data is in and the system is clean, Corp.”  Unplugging her Quartz, Hanna slipped it back into her pouch, cleared the data port and reattached the suit’s gloves.  Five steps brought her to Olivia’s side and she tapped her on the shoulder.  After a half-dozen heartbeats, Olivia was out the door and Hanna was right with her.

Sitting back, Hanna rubbed her eyes and yawned widely.  In the last forty hours she managed to catch less than six hours sleep.  Mostly naps here and there, while her Rig ran through various search algorithms she programmed.  The coffee at her elbow was strong with plenty of sugar.  She enjoyed the bitter/sweet taste that went with the heaps of caffeine.  Deni came by with the drink a few minutes ago and insisted she needed it.  As usual her friend was right and Hanna ignored her built in reluctance.

It would have been nice to have someone else to help her go through all the data she pulled from Ison Island a couple of days before.  Of the gang, only Deni, Hopwood and Hayley knew the truth and they were all busy, running the Workshop and the territory respectively.  None of the Shadow Company people were able to do it.  They couldn’t spend too much time away from base.

It all came down to Hanna and there was only so much the computers could do.  Her algorithms highlighted the holovids and pics with Valerie in them or related to her.  What they couldn’t do, is pick out exactly what she was looking for.  Mainly because she didn’t really know until she saw it.  Now she had something.  She was on her third run through in case she missed anything in her haste and exhausted state.

The beep of her com was a welcome distraction.

“Hey, Deni,” she answered.  To keep the interruptions to a minimum, she set her com so only her friend could get through.  Any other calls were routed to Deni.

“Our friends are back,” Deni told her.  By the way she said ‘friends’, it meant Shadow Company.

“OK,” Hanna stifled a yawn.  “Send them up.  I’ll unlock the doors.”

“On their way.”

Hitting the override, which Valerie never knew about, on the double security doors, Hanna took another swig of coffee and tried to get her thoughts in order.  She had already given Deni a short update so she didn’t need to come and hear this.

“Shit!  Is that Carter’s armour!”  A voice Hanna didn’t recognise exclaimed in the hallway.

“Oops,” Hanna said to herself and stood as Shannon and a man Hanna didn’t know entered.  “I forgot about that.”

The look Shannon gave her was hard, before the Major sighed and shrugged.  “I really shouldn’t be surprised.  Does anyone down there know you have what equates to a scout mech sitting up here?”

“Only Deni.  I err...  I’ll close the doors I think.”  After hitting the button to reseal this section of the building, Hanna held out her hand to the man.  “Hi, I’m Hanna.  Hopefully Shannon has told you good things about me.”

The man looked a little disconcerted and glanced at Shannon who only rolled her eyes.

“Err, yes.  Pavel Vobruba, Captain,” he gripped her hand firmly as he shook it.  “Yes, the Major has told me about you and so did Corporal Richings.  She was most impressed with what you did on Ison Island.”

“Nice to meet you, Pavel, and thank you for coming, Shannon.”

“It’s Major Forlani, Miss...?”  Shannon said somewhat sternly.

“Just Hanna,” she smiled.  “As I said last time we met, I’m a guttersnipe from the streets of Inferno.  I became a Thief and then a Hacker.  I’m now the interim Boss of this gang and there are over four hundred people directly answerable to me.  It could be argued that I’m responsible for everyone in my territory.  That comes to the best part of fifty thousand people.”

“Oh come on, you’re in charge of a Ghetto gang.  You think that means you run this part of town and you’re our equal!”  It was clear from Pavel’s tone he thought she had an ego the size of the planet.  Shannon didn’t say anything, so Hanna directed her answer to him.

“Why not?  Who else looks after these people?  The Government?  The hospital is a joke and the schools are antiquated and run down.  People are lucky they know how to multiply five by five and can read by the time they leave.  The only thing they get to learn is the on-job-skills at the factories or in the Legion, if they’re very lucky.  Do you know one of the first things Valerie told me do down here, was to program a teaching assistant for the street kids?  Deni and I suggested giving them a safe place to sleep, but it was Valerie’s idea to start teaching them.

“Now, that building next door, the one you aimed your rifles from last week,” Hanna pointed through the wall behind her, “has a floor dedicated to teaching and it’s not just kids who turn up.  Adults come as well trying to learn things.  Gangs are criminals, I get that, believe me, I get that.  We sell drugs, steal what isn’t nailed down, run whores and extort.  We know that without the people around here, we can’t operate.  So we look after them.

“We’re the police, judges and executioners.  We run illegal clinics with real doctors and we teach our people.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have anybody worthwhile to recruit, so you take your high and mighty attitude and remember what you’ve agreed to do.  You’ve crossed a line to the Rebellion and that means you’ve come to help my people!”

Hanna was breathing heavily as she finished.  She wasn’t even sure where it all came from.  She’d only meant to say, she wasn’t part of the military and didn’t really care about all their ranks.  She’d called people by their names or nicknames her entire life, she wasn’t going to start using these titles.  Now everything she thought about for years came spilling out.

Pavel looked shocked and quite taken aback at her verbal assault.  Both of these people came from the Privileged, and although they probably saw more of what was outside those gleaming towers than most, they were still here because of their loyalty to Valerie.  Mentally, she shook her head.  It didn’t matter, this was the fight they would ultimate be part of and so would she. 
After
they rescued Valerie.

Shannon didn’t look quite as affected by her rant as Pavel and was looking at Hanna consideringly.  It seemed she was getting a lot of that from Valerie’s old Company.

“OK, Hanna.  Understood.”

“Major...?” Pavel began.

“No, Captain.  She’s right.  She’s young, and hasn’t had the training we have, but she’s proved herself in her own way.  We need to learn more about what is really happening in the Ghettos if we want to help the Manuals.”  Pavel nodded, though he didn’t look too happy about it.  They all had some adjusting to do.

“Thank you, Shannon.  Now let me show you what I found.”  Hanna sat back at her desk and initiated the holocube.  It hung in the air in front of them.  “As I’d hoped, there was a lot of footage of Valerie’s infiltration of the island.  Though to be honest, it looked like it went from infiltration to full-on assault when she got to the sections people actually live.  From my best guess, it took people time to wake up and realise a battle was going on outside.  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how fast Valerie can move, we’re quite a way in before we start to see anything worthwhile.  Let me show you this.”

A frozen frame came up in the cube.  The back of several three storey buildings in a row could be seen.  It looked like whoever recorded it, were peeking out of their window.  Half of the shot was of the frame and wall surrounding it.  One of the buildings on the left was on fire, with thick smoke billowing out of the windows.  To the right of the shot, a stream of Blaster fire was in the process of tearing apart a corner of one of the buildings.

“Watch carefully,” a woman ducked out from the corner and under the stream of energy.  She hit the ground and rolled, both pistols firing in unison.  The Blaster fire swung in her direction and shut off just as it reached her.  She rolled one of her legs away in reflex.  Pulse blasts scattered around her.  The pistols fired three more times and suddenly there was no more energy being exchanged.  The woman climbed to her feet with difficulty and hobbled out of shot.

“That’s Major Carter, alright.”  Pavel confirmed.  “I don’t need to see a close up to recognise that move.”

“Can you give us one anyway, Hanna?”  Shannon asked.  “I’d like to be sure.”

“No problem.  I did the same.”  A command brought the woman’s face into sharp focus at the point she stood up.  It was Valerie and no mistake.  The physical pain of her recent injury was there, but nothing else.  She was the cold killing machine Hanna recognised all too well from Inferno.

The silence from her guests was deafening.  “When Button said she was alive, I tried to imagine how she was dealing with the deaths of her family.  You said it affected her badly, but I never thought I would see this.  She looks so closed off from everything.”

“I hate to say it, Shannon, but that isn’t the worst I’ve seen.  One of the times she saved my life, she killed a man in a fist fight.  His name was Gaunt and he had a very well-known reputation as a fighter.  He would start arguments in bars, with the sole intention of killing the other person with his bare hands.  Valerie took him apart as though he was nothing.  She snapped his bones and pulverised his organs with less emotion than she’s showing here.  In Inferno, she was feared by just about everyone because when she looked at them, they knew she would kill them in the blink of an eye and not think twice about it.”

“But, you didn’t fear her.”

“No,” Hanna sighed.  “Maybe it’s because the first time I set eyes on her, was right after she killed the man who was about to beat me to death.  Not Gaunt, that came later.  She had no idea who I was and yet, she stopped me from dying in some random, dirty alleyway.  I could never see her being any danger to me.”

Shaking herself to clear those thoughts away, Hanna tapped a new command in and Valerie’s face switched to a much wider shot.  “I’ve moved the view point on this one so we can see everything, hence the blank spots where the wristcomp’s sensor couldn’t see.”

Valerie was a small figure at the entrance of an alleyway, a bandage wrapped around one of her thighs.  A Blaster rifle was in her hands and pointing into the sky.  By following the angle you could just about see the aircar.  Hanna dropped a red cube around it, to highlight it, and created a separate box on the top corner of the cube showing an enlarged image of the aircar.

Setting the recording running, Hanna watched for the tenth time as Blaster fire ripped up from Valerie and into the aircar.  The engine exploded and it careened off to come crashing down.  Long before it hit the ground, Valerie turned towards the alley.  A Pulse hit her in the back and sent her to the ground.  Her reactions were astounding.  She rolled out of the line of fire before more Pulses could hit her.

After she re-ran it a couple of times for the other two to concentrate on Valerie’s escape into the alley, Hanna paused the holovid and turned to Shannon and Pavel.

“That’s the last confirmed sighting I have of her.  None of the recordings show what actually happened in the alleyway.  I do have a couple of audio files from this wristcomp and one other.  Here I’ll play this one first.  I’ve already cleaned it up and taken out as much background noise as I can.  Listen.”

The file played in the small room, feeling all the smaller amongst the screams of the dying.  At the end, all Shannon said was “Play it again.”  After the second time she asked for a third.

“Can you replay the last thirty seconds?”  Hanna raised her eyebrows, but did as she was asked.  She didn’t know what they were listening for.

“Did you hear that?”  Shannon asked Pavel.

“Yeah, I think I did, Major.”

“Hanna, can you search for a neural disrupter?”

“Err. I don’t know what one of those is.”

“It’s a weapon and can shut down a person’s nervous system,” Shannon explained.  “Very nasty, very painful and you need to be very close to use one.”

“I don’t have it in my system.  Hang on let me get a pattern from the datanet.”

“That’ll be difficult, Hanna,” Pavel said.  “Neural disrupters are rare.  The short range makes them almost useless.”  He turned to Shannon.  “Major, if I call the base, I can get a pattern sent to me from Central.  It’ll be in our database.”

“OK, tell them you’ve been reading the latest Lancaster briefing.  It included a report of Disrupters being used out that way in the Boundary.”

“Don’t worry, I got it,” Hanna interrupted.

“Where did you get it from?” Pavel asked.

“Your Central database, where else?”

As Pavel stood there with his mouth open, Shannon laughed out loud.

“Are you trying to make us all look incompetent or do you just like showing off?”

“Sorry, you were trying to make up a cover story and I thought it best to just pull it without asking.”

“That’s not possible.”  Pavel shook his head in disbelief.  “Alright you’re good, but no one can Hack the Legion that fast!”

“I didn’t.” Hanna shrugged.  “I Hacked it months ago.  When you said it was in the database, I just knew where to look.”

“Never mind, Pavel.  I think it’s a good idea we’re switching sides.  With Hanna against us, we’d be in real trouble,” Shannon chuckled.  “Can you run the comparison?”

“Running now and yes, ninety-five percent match.  She’s alive.”  Hanna couldn’t contain the grin if she tried.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  It just means a neural disrupter was used.  If they used it on Valerie, it doesn’t mean they didn’t shoot her in the head afterward.”

“That’s where my last bit of footage comes in.”  Hanna pointed out, cleared the holocube and inserted a single still image.  “This was recovered from some deleted footage.  It’s degraded and I can’t improve it more than it already is.  This was also the only frame I was able to save.”