Authors: Charles Stross
Jennifer Morgue (40 page)
15: SCUTTLE TO COVER
AN HOUR LATER, HAVING DONE EVERYTHING I CAN via the Media Center PC, I pocket my phone and open the door to my room. There's a lot you can do in an hour with a PC on a supposedly secure but in reality penetrated-to-Hell-and-back network, especially if you've got a USB flash drive full of hacking tools. Unfortunately there's rather less you can do on such a network without making it blindingly and immediately obvious that it's been 0wnZor3d. But on the third hand, by this point I don't give a shit. I mean, I thoroughly expect what I've done to the PC to be exposed within a matter of hours, but worrying about it is taking second place right now to worrying whether I'll still be alive by then. There's a time when you've got to look at any asset and think, Use it or lose it, baby, and that time is definitely up when you're counting down the minutes in the last hour before the men in black come for you. So, what the hell.
To start with, I disable all the system logging mechanisms, so they won't be able to figure out what's going on in a hurry. I set the remote login ports to shut down an hour hence and scramble the password databases they're so quaintly relying on, and whip up a shell script that'll fry the distributed relational database behind the surveillance management system by randomly reversioning everything and then subtly corrupting the backups.
But that's just a five-fingered warm-up exercise. Billington's empire is based on the premise that you buy commercial, off-the-shelf gear, customize it to meet a MILSPEC requirement, and sell it back to the government at a 2,000 percent markup. An awful lot of his network — all the workstations those cubicle drones from Mumbai have on their desks, basically — run Windows. You'd expect a corporate enterprise rollout of Vista to be locked down and patrolled by rabid system administrators wearing spiked collars, and you'd be right: by ordinary commercial standards, Billington's network is pretty good. The trouble is, the Windows security model has always been inside out and upside down, and they're all running exactly the same service pack release. It's a classic corporate monoculture, and I've got exactly the right herbicide stuffed up one end of my bow tie, thanks to the Laundry's network security tiger team. Eileen's mission-critical surveillance operation may be running on horribly expensive blade servers with a securely locked-down NSAapproved UNIX operating system, but the workstations are ... well, the technical term for what they'll be when I get through with them is toast. And by the time I get through with them Eileen is going to have a whole lot of the wrong kind of zombies on her hands.
The Laundry carped over giving me a decent car, even though I can prove that Aston Martins depreciate more slowly and cost less in running repairs than a Smart (after all, half the Aston Martins ever built are still on the road, and they've been in business for three-quarters of a century). But they didn't even blink over giving me a key drive stuffed full of malware that must have cost CESG about, oh, two million to develop, and which I am about to expend in the next halfhour, and which will subsequently leak out into the general public domain, whereupon it will give vendors of virus scanners spontaneous multiple orgasms and cause the authors to be cursed from one pole of the planet to the other. It's a classic case of misplaced accounting priorities, valuing depreciable capital assets a thousand times more highly than the fruits of actual labor — but that's the nature of the government organization. Let's just say that if what I'm about to unleash on the Billingtons' little empire doesn't take several hundred sysadmin-years and at least a week of wall-clock time to clean up, my middle names aren't Oliver and Francis.
My work done, I glance at my phone. The display is showing a cute little animated icon of a baby-blue Smart car, dust bunnies scudding beneath its tires, and a progress bar captioned 62Km/74% Complete. I stick it back in my pocket, then pick up the dress shoes Pinky and Brains issued to me.
Grimacing, I tie the shoe laces. Then I reach down and trench the left heel round. Instantly, the shadows in my cabin darken and deepen, taking on an ominous hue. The Tillinghast resonator is running: in this confined space it should give me just enough warning to shit myself before I die, if Billington's entrusted his operational security to daemons, but in the open ... well, it adds a whole new meaning to take to your heels.
The corridor outside my door is dark and there's an odd, musty smell in the air. I pause, skulking just inside the doorway as I wait for my eyes to adjust. Ellis Billington and his cronies are aboard the Explorer, but there's no telling who's still here, is there? I can make myself useful while I wait for Mo by finding out what's going on aboard the Mabuse. Ellis isn't so stupid he won't have some kind of getaway plan in mind, in case things go pear-shaped — and backup plans "C"
and "D" behind plan "B," for multiple redundancy — but if find out what they are ...
Oops. The door at the end of the corridor opens. "You.
What are you doing outside your room? Go back at once!" The black beret draws his pistol.
My mind blanks for a moment, and there's a big hollow feeling. I feel a doubled heartbeat: ''Is that you, Ramona?''
''What are you — '' "There's a problem with my faucet?" I hear my mouthy saying. "Can you take a look at it?" And I'm opening the door and stepping backwards to make room.
''Let me handle this, monkey-boy.'' I can taste seawater in my sinuses.
''What are you doing? Has McMurray lost it — ''
''No, but Ellis has, he ordered Eileen off the Mabuse ten minutes ago and there are scuttling charges due to blow as soon as she's clear. Something about contagious corruption in his oneiromantic matrix; he figures someone's sabotaged the ship and he's not in the mood for half-measures — '' Shit. That would be me, wouldn't it? The goon steps close and I can see green shadows behind his mirrorshades, green writhing worms twitching and squirming in rotting cadaverous eye sockets as he steps closer and raises the pistol in both hands — '' — Glock 17,'' says Ramona.
And she takes over.
I jackknife forwards from the opposite side of the narrow room and bring my left hand down on the pistol, grabbing the slide and pushing it back, as my right hand comes up, curling uncomfortably to punch at his left eye. Glass shatters as he pushes up with the gun, not knowing to pull it back out of reach, and I twist it sideways. It goes off, and the noise is so loud in the confined space that it's like someone's slammed my head in a door. It feels like I've torn half the skin off my right hand but I somehow keep turning while maintaining my grip, and kick and twist away from his follow-on punch, with a searing pain in my side, like I've pulled a muscle — then I'm facing the half-rotted zombie with a gun barrel in my left hand. I grab the butt with my right, which is dripping blood, and I pull the trigger, bang, and pull it again because somehow I managed to miss at a range of about half a meter — bang — and there's blood all over the inside of the door and a faint distant tinkling of cartridges rattling as they bounce off the screen of the PC.
I gasp for breath and gag at the stench. The thing on the floor — at least, what the Tillinghast resonator is showing me — has been dead for weeks. ''What just happened again?'' I ask Ramona.
''Billington.'' She opens her eyes and I push myself into her head. She's still underwater, but she's not sitting in the control chair on board the submersible grab anymore: she's free-swimming in near-total darkness, stroking upwards alongside the drill string, and I can feel the exhaustion as a tight band across the tops of her thighs. ''It's a doublecross.'' I can taste her fear.
''Talk to me!'' I force myself to bend over and go through the corpse's pockets. There's another magazine for the pistol, and a badge: some species of RFID tag. I take it and glance around the cabin. My right hand is still bleeding but it doesn't look as bad as it feels. (Memo to self: do not make a habit of gripping the slide of an automatic pistol while it is being fired.) ''How long have I got? Where are you?''
''The grab — I was halfway home when one of the docking splines engaged, and the control deck disconnected and stayed stuck on the pipe string while the payload kept going up. It's got to be intentional. He was planning on leaving me down there all along!'' I can feel the panic, ugly and personal and selfish and pitiful.
''Hang in there,'' I tell her. ''If you can make it to the surface we can pick you up — ''
''You don't understand! If I stay down here too long I'll begin the change — it's hereditary! I've put it off this long by staying on land most of the time, but I'm an adult and if I spend too long in the deeps I begin to adapt, irreversibly. And if I do that, my daemon will decide I'm trying to escape ...''
''Ramona.'' I find I'm breathing fast and shallow.
''Listen to me — ''
''Billington knows! He must know! That's why he sent the guard to kill you! He'll have McMurray under arrest or dead or worse!''
''Ramona. Listen.'' I take a deep breath and try to focus on air and dry land. ''Listen to me. Feel through my skin.
Breathe through my lungs. Remember where you come from.'' I stand over a cadaver and force myself to think of lush green landscapes. ''You were able to let me share youi metabolism when I nearly drowned. Let's try doing it the, other way.'' Breathe. Keep breathing for two people, lest one of them start sprouting tentacles and scales. It's not as easy as it sounds: you should try it one day.
''You've got to get off the ship!''
''How do you know what Ellis is doing?'' I ask. I step over the body and into the corridor. It's even less welcoming, stinking of the grave, of soil and darkness and blind burrowing things. First door on the right, up the stairs, left, corridor — ''Pat and I have a back channel.'' Ramona concentrates on swimming, letting the calming repetitive motions occupy her mind. (Is it my imagination, or is it beginning to get slightly less dark?) ''Last time he checked in he warned me about the scuttling charge. He figured Billington would have you taken off the ship, along with Eileen. Next thing, he drops the block between us. That's all I know, I swear!''
''Uh-huh.'' The stairs feel as if they're on the edge of crumbling beneath my shoes, maggot-riddled boards creaking warnings to one another. The air is turning clammy. Keep breathing, I remind myself. ''You haven't been entirely honest with me, have you? You and Pat. You've been using that block of his to keep me from dumpster-diving your head for intelligence. Playing me like an instrument:''
''Hey, you're a fine one to talk!'' Too late: I realize she's glimpsed my memory of Mo's briefing. Secure the geas generator.
''You guys want it, too.''
''No,'' I say grimly, ''we want to stop anyone from getting it. Because if you think through the political implications of a human power suddenly starting to play with chthonian tech, you need to ask yourself whether BLUE HADES would view it — '' Creepy violin music in the back of my head raises the hair on the nape of my neck, just as I round the corner at the top of the stairs and come face to face with another zombie in a black uniform. He's got an MP-5 in a tactical sling at the ready, but I've got adrenalin and surprise on my side — I'm so jittery that I pull the trigger three times before I can make myself stop.
'' — as a Benthic Treaty violation,'' I finish, then draw a deep breath and try to stop my hands shaking. ''What's with all the zombies? Is Billington killing his optioned employees as a tax dodge or something?''
''I don't know.'' She takes out her frustration on the water. ''Will you move it? You've got maybe six minutes to get off that ship!'' Secure the geas generator. The corridor seems to pulse, contracting and dilating around me like a warm fleshy tube — a disturbingly esophageal experience. The smell of decay is getting stronger. I pick up the MP-5, managing not to lose my non-existent breakfast as the zombie's neck disintegrates.
I brush rotting debris off the sling, stick the pistol in my pocket, and let Ramona take over my hands to check the burst selector on the machine pistol. I duck-walk down the passage and then there's a crossway and another door opposite me. I open the door to the owner's lounge — I've got company. "Well, if it isn't the easily underestimated Mr. Howard!"
She smiles like a snake. "Better not squeeze that trigger, all the carbines are loaded with banishment rounds in case the Black Chamber tries something — you'll fry the generator if you shoot. And you wouldn't want to do that, would you"
It's Johanna Todt, McMurray's thugette. It's funny how she's nothing like as glamorous when I'm sharing my eyeballs with Ramona: or maybe it's something to do with the combat fatigues, life preserver, and smudged make-up, not to mention the stench of ancient death she drags around like a favorite toy she can't bear to let go of. She's standing behind the diorama at the center of the geas generator grid, holding a hammer about ten centimeters above the Bond-mannequin's head. Whoops. I'm still trying to think of something to say when Ramona takes the initiative: "Fancy meeting you here, dear.
Did Pat deep-six you or did you decide you needed a bit more bargaining power"
"Ramona?" She cocks her head to one side. "Ah, I should have guessed. Three's a crowd: Why don't you butt out, bitch"
I manage to temporarily regain control of my larynx: "She stays," I say. Remember to breathe deeply, I tell myself. My doubled vision is beginning to annoy me: the light around Ramona is definitely brightening towards a predawn twilight.
I try to keep the MP-5 pointing in Johanna's general direction, but she's right — if I start shooting, I'm as likely to take out the geas generator as hit her. "What are you doing here"
"Unlike some, I know who I'm loyal to. I figured I'd help myself to the leftovers at the rich man's buffet, seeing I've just armed the scuttling charges. And aren't you just the dish? I think you'll do for starters." Johanna's grin widens, carnivorously: I catch a whiff of breath that's not so much stale as cadaverous, reeking of the crypt. "I can disentangle you, 'Mona, did you know that? I can even unlock your binding without killing McMurray. I stole his tokens while I was helping him consider the error of his ways down in the brig."
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