Freedom Incorporated (39 page)

It was eerie to delve so
intimately into another man’s mind. James knew he would find things
he didn’t wish to see. But business was business and he shoved
those concerns aside for the sake of seeing his daughter before her
next birthday.

He wove a
decoding application around the problem and fed it with as much
processing power
as
he could safely divert from network servers.
How did civilisation survive without
multithreading?
He set an alarm to alert him
the second it discovered a pattern in the data-spaghetti and then
returned his focus to the trace. A sour expression twisted his lips
and he popped another two stimulants into his mouth, squirted in
some water, and swallowed. Five minutes later the drugs had taken
the edge off his throbbing headache and cleared his
thinking.
It’s only a matter of time
arsehole.
He dug deeper, rummaging through
code that might yield answers to the two most important questions:
Where is the hacker? What is he up to?

Esteban
watched, frustrated that he couldn’t do more than wait. He whittled
away the time by stripping his Peacemaker nine-millimetre
semiautomatic and lightly oiling every surface – not too much or it
would attract grit and jam at an inconvenient moment. When he was
finished, he reassembled it and checked the slide mechanism before
easing a cartridge into the chamber and loading a full clip.
Thirteen rounds.
Twelve in
the clip and one ready to go.
Nowhere near
enough.
Esteban’s days of stealth were over.
Brute force suited him now and for what he had in mind he needed to
invite some friends.

*

Friday, September 17,
2066

12:59 Andamooka, South
Australia

Cookie smiled
ruefully and thought,
If only I
hadn’t gone
back.
He’d done the digital equivalent of tripping a
snare wire that the UniForce administrators had laid for him. He’d
twisted and turned and broken free of the trap, but he’d come
perilously close to being pinned down. And if that happened, they’d
trace his location. He’d been careful. He’d relayed his signal
through seven anonymisers and strung it around the globe five
times, but still he was vulnerable. It could take them a minute,
but once they’d locked onto the heartbeat of his signal, they’d
trace it to Andamooka. Cookie was glad his custom applications were
monitoring for a trace and would alert him if one began. Depending
on the skills of his opponents, he’d have somewhere between 30 and
60 seconds to terminate the connection.

He gingerly
sensed his way along Echelon’s central nervous system, mesmerised
by the flood of data from which it fed. Echelon intercepted and
scanned every data transaction in the world and Cookie could only
think of one word to describe the sheer scale of the endeavour
–
Astonishing
.
Every wire, every segment of nano-net, every videophone
conversation, every telephone call… Echelon listened to everything.
It scanned every skerrick of data for illegal activity, known
criminals, and potential ‘terrorist’ threats. Cookie had a
momentary pang of doubt.
If we burn it
all, what might erupt from the ashes?
He
wondered whether the seedier side of humanity would morph the world
into a smouldering cesspool. But then he remembered Echelon was
firmly stomping on freedom of speech and his determination flared
again.

He probed
deeper, digitally fingering Echelon’s nervous tissue and wondering
how to disable it. The UniForce administrators weren’t dumb; they’d
protected Echelon from conventional attack.
What about a virus?
He frowned and
shook his head. He’d have to think of something for the virus to do
and that would require in-depth knowledge of Echelon’s
construction. There was precious little information about Echelon
on the ‘net, Cookie had already checked. The governments that had
started the project
hadn’t
published how-to manuals for
anarchists.

Samantha startled him by
gently brushing the nape of his neck.

“
Oh, hi.
Couldn’t you sleep?”

“
A little.”
She yawned. “More of a snooze. What’re you doin’?”

“
Aside from
avoiding the myriad of traps they’ve set, I’m trying to slay a
digital monster.”

Samantha nodded
approvingly. “Great,” she said, yawning again. “Where’s
Jen?”

Cookie
shrugged and lovingly squeezed her hand. “With Sutherland I think.
Haven’t seen them for a while.” His pulse fluttered when he
narrowly avoided another snare.
They must
have planted them thick around their prize.
At least it gave him somewhere to start his analysis – the
densest patch of snares would lead him to Echelon’s greatest
vulnerability. And that’s where he would begin his
attack.

*

Friday, September 17,
2066

07:45 Leningrad,
Russia

Natasha
Glinski padded barefoot to the ground floor of her Leningrad
mansion. She hesitated at the junction between the kitchen and the
study, an inner conflict raging between hunger and curiosity.
Breakfast was tempting, especially for someone with no fat to shed.
If she skipped a meal she’d weaken her muscles and she’d worked
hard to get them the way they were. She wasn’t tall, only five foot
six inches – or one 168 centimetres as she preferred to think about
it. Her thick, unruly brown hair cascad
ed
around her shoulders and she was
clad only in a white bathrobe. She preferred to sleep nude. Her
brown eyes darted between computer and kitchen, a girlish grin
mischievously playing on her lips.

Breakfast.
The hunger won.

She collected her
slippers from where she’d abandoned them at midnight. Without them,
the kitchen tiles would numb her toes, especially in mid-September.
She half expected to see frost on the ground but when she peered
from the kitchen window she saw only a swirl of colourful
leaves.

Natasha fixed a
nourishing breakfast, reheating the soup she’d enjoyed so much the
night before. It was thick, hearty, and dark red thanks to the
beetroot she’d added – perfect for a cold autumn morning. She’d
been experimenting with food recently. It soothed her, reminding
her of when she was a girl and she’d helped her mother in the
kitchen. Now 31, she didn’t look a day older than 22 and people
still occasionally mistook her for 18. She used to curse her
girlish looks but had come to realise that they were an asset. She
owed her magnificent dwelling to those looks, at least in part, so
she guarded them with a ferocity that most women her age had given
up on. She put the steaming bowl of soup on a tray, carried it into
her study, and bumped her mouse to jolt the computer to
life.

She’d invested in a small
counter that always displayed how many messages she had waiting.
There were two colours: green and red. Green designated normal
mail, which arrived at her local message box. Usually it was her
friends and family inviting her to a function or party. Sometimes
she got spam but it’d been a while since a ‘$$$$ YOUR INVESTMENT
OPPORTUNITY AWAITS’ e-mail had slipped through her
filters.

Red designated
business and today the counter rested on one. She ignored her local
mailbox and hurried to the Shadow’s pigeonhole on the UniForce
network. She used her disposable key and opened the box to find an
assassination contract.
Finally.
Natasha Glinski switched to
business mode, erasing every trace of girlishness from her face.
She carefully read the contract while slurping her stew-like soup.
Nothing appeared amiss.
Five million N.A.
Credits,
her mind whispered as if just
thinking it would bring the tax-squad tapping on her windows and
probing her financial affairs. She had cover businesses to explain
her financial success but the neighbours were still suspicious. She
often lavished her family and friends with a shower of gifts to
remove the excess from her accounts but it still left an electronic
trail that led to her.
Thank God UniForce
payments are untraceable,
she thought. But
five million Credits would push her beyond the brink of safety and
firmly into the realm of taxation peril.

Maybe it’s
time?
She wondered about that at the
beginning of every assignment but this time it rang with a truth
she couldn’t deny. If she accepted the contract, she’d have to
leave Russia for a country that wasn’t so nosy when it came to
one’s fiscal success. The world had changed since her grandmother’s
day when everyone had been corrupt and she could’ve purchased some
leeway and ma
d
e the
tax beavers look aside.

She eagerly
followed the link to the target’s file.
The Raven, huh? Known only by call sign.
She read the thicket of information.
A bounty hunter?
That intrigued her;
she’d never had a contract for eliminating a professional. She
specialised in irritating government officials and business feuds.
She skimmed the remainder of the Raven’s file. If she accepted the
contract she’d make herself intimately familiar with every word,
but for now, a quick sweep was enough to paint a mental
picture.
Hmm, sounds
charming.
She wondered whether her set of
skills was in tune with the requirements for assassinating a
cyborg. Sometimes she lamented that she’d chosen ‘Shadow’ as her
persona because upon careful consideration she thought ‘Spider’
seemed more appropriate.
Or perhaps
Venus.
She felt like a cross between a
venomous spider, lacing her web for the victim to blunder into, and
a
Dionaea muscipula
, a Venus flytrap. She presented beautiful petals that lured
the victim close. He or she, but usually he, would be searching for
nectar while unwittingly touching the trigger hairs. That’s when
the gaping jaws of her trap would spring shut, entombing him
forever. But Natasha didn’t savour the image of slowly digesting
the men she’d assassinated – that was where the analogy fell
apart.

Men were
intrinsically flawed. There was something wrong with their
assembly. Married or not, they all heeded the trumpet of their
animalistic urges when she flirted. Natasha was endowed – or cursed
as she sometimes though – with the type of body men dreamed of. It
made them slow-witted and careless in her presence, which was why
she’d proven such a success in her field. Nobody suspected such a
stunningly gorgeous woman could harbour evil intent. She didn’t
think UniForce knew she was a woman, which was just as well.
How many female assassins do they
employ?
She often asked herself that
question, usually at inconvenient moments such as when she was
visiting her parents or when she went club hopping with her
dwindling pool of unhitched friends.

And that
brought her thoughts full circle.
Do I
want to live an assassin’s life? Or keep the one I still
have?
Her life was rapidly approaching an
impasse – she couldn’t have both. The issue nagged at her while she
showered and changed. It wasn’t until she looked in the mirror and
saw that she’d subconsciously dressed in work clothes that she knew
the answer. Assassins didn’t wear black leather suits as the movie
makers portrayed. She wore a seductive, low-cut dress that showed
ample breast and left just enough to the imagination to make her
alluring.

She twirled,
giggling
girlishly.

Always the
adrenaline junkie, she chose the excitement of a rocketing
assassination career over the prefabricated life her parents had
aspired for her – and that her friends were now
miserabl
e
living.

*

Friday, September 17,
2066

20:42 Andamooka, South
Australia

The aches were setting
in.

Dan knew that
meant he’d under-budgeted for sleep, but he ignored the warning. He
felt content for the first time in…
How
long?
He didn’t know. His mind was
pessimistically trying to warn him it was the lull in the storm but
he shoved the thought aside and permitted himself to enjoy the
feeling. It felt strange, contentment. He wasn’t happy. He could
never be happy again. That slice of reality grated on a raw nerve;
he wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of a joyless life.
But you have to play with the cards the dealer
gives you.
It was his father’s voice,
repeating one of his favourite sayings. Yet despite everything, the
usual ache was absent. It felt like someone had scythed a great
weight from his chest. He smiled – not the cold smile of recent
times, a
real
smile, one that warmed the room and radiated…
contentment.

It’s an
improvement.
H
alf of
Dan’s mind was thankful for the reprieve.
But it won’t last,
the other
half warned. He didn’t want to grow
accustomed to contentment. He was wise enough to
understand the consequences of withdrawal and subsequent
magnification of his former misery.