Noble Conflict (8 page)

There had to be a rhyme and reason to what they were doing, at least in their heads. So what was it? Why weren’t the High Councillors actively seeking answers on that front? The Guardians certainly didn’t question the motives behind the Insurgents’ actions; that wasn’t their job. But Kaspar was troubled. He needed to make sense of his enemy, to convince himself that what he was doing was right.

‘Thanks for your help, Mac.’ He stood up. ‘I really do appreciate it, but I’m no further forward.’

‘Give it time. Give yourself a chance to mull over what we’ve just learned,’ Mac replied. ‘You can’t expect to find all the answers you wanted in one evening.’

But that was the problem, because Kaspar had hoped for some insight, some inkling as to the Insurgents’ motives.

‘I think I just wasted your time and my evening,’ Kaspar sighed.

‘So you’re going to give up then?’ said Mac. ‘Already?’

‘No. I’m not.’ Kaspar’s lips set into an obstinate line.

‘Good!’ smiled Mac. ‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Guardian.’

After the War to End All Wars, the will of the people decreed that twenty-one High Councillors should be elected to serve for all time the needs of the Alliance. Those who would be High Councillors were subjected to rigorous physical and psychological testing. In a process which took not just months but years, finally twenty-one High Councillors were chosen. Consensus decreed that the High Councillors would pass their role on to their children and their children’s children, thus there would never be the battles for power we in the Alliance had seen throughout our history.

But how to keep the High Councillors safe from those so-called Crusaders who would seek their destruction?

There was only one solution. The High Councillors must never all be in the same place at the same time. This edict was pronounced, not just to protect the High Councillors, but for the very survival of the Alliance. We in the High Council were – and are – deemed to be the new guiding hand, leading those who follow us to a new beginning, a brighter future and a promise that the interests of the Alliance will always be protected.

Extract taken from ‘Towards a New Morality’ by Sister Madeleine

If Kaspar was depressed at the outcome of his search, things got markedly worse at 0700 hours the next morning. He was just sitting down to breakfast with Dillon and Janna when he got paged on his CommLink.

M
Y OFFICE
. N
OW
. V
OSS
.

‘Oh, hell!’ said Kaspar.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Janna.

‘Why would Voss want to see me?’ Kaspar frowned.

Dillon gave Kaspar a speculative look. ‘Voss never sees anyone before his fifth cup of morning coffee and he’s probably only on his second or third, so whatever the reason I’ll bet it’s not good.’

‘Thanks for that.’ Kaspar stood up and glared at his friend. As if he wasn’t anxious enough.

‘Any time,’ Dillon grinned.

Janna shook her head at Kaspar pityingly. ‘What’ve you been up to now?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing,’ Kaspar replied. ‘I’d better go. Voss doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

Minutes later, a quick knock on Voss’s door and the
subsequent barked ‘Come in’ did nothing to quieten Kaspar’s sense of unease.

He entered his boss’s office, closing the door behind him before coming to attention. A cup of coffee in his hand, Voss glared at him before getting straight to the point.

‘Imagine my early morning surprise when I got to my office to be informed by Central Audit that one of my off-duty Guardians launched a priority, broad-spectrum net-trawl from an unsecured terminal in Library Services.’

Kaspar stared. One little search and it’d been reported back to his boss? Bizarre, or what?

‘At the peak, you had, let’s see’ – Voss flicked through a couple of holo-screens to get the figures – ‘nearly thirteen billion bots searching everywhere from sewage reclamation pump control to classified Guardian and Justice Directorate archives and using twenty-four per cent of available net resources. You want the exact number of bots?’

‘No, sir,’ mumbled Kaspar.

Thirteen billion!

‘Well?’ prompted Voss. ‘Explain yourself.’

‘I was just curious about something and Mac is cleared to access secure material,’ Kaspar offered weakly.

Mistake.

‘I don’t care if she’s got “Top Secret” laser-etched on both earlobes,’ ranted Voss. ‘She’s a librarian, not a Guardian. And you
are
a Guardian, at least for now. Your job is to stun bad guys, not to waste the time of purple-headed librarians. Stay away from her from now
on. You hear me? Don’t use semi-public datalinks. Don’t use your Guardian clearance for freelance fishing expeditions in other people’s lakes. Don’t clog up the network with loosely constrained searches. And do
not
play intelligence analyst or psychologist or any other amateur twatting about that you aren’t trained for. If you pull a stunt like this again, I’ll transfer you to a desk job that is so bum-numbingly tedious it’ll make you wistful for your stint in Public Relations. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get out.’

Kaspar left the room and sagged the moment he closed the door behind him. Talk about being verbally flayed to within a centimetre of his life! He certainly didn’t much feel like finishing breakfast after that. Instead, he went across to Library Services. He had a horrible feeling that Voss’s anger may well have spilled over in Mac’s direction. As he entered, she saw him and waved. Damn, but she really was pretty.

‘Morning,’ she said brightly. ‘You don’t sleep much. Back for more research?’

‘Hi, Mac. Actually, no. I came to apologize for getting you in trouble.’

Mac’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Am I in trouble?’

‘I thought maybe someone would have had a word about last night? Apparently we  . . . I  . . . used a horrendous amount of computer power.’

‘Nobody said a word to me.’ Mac frowned. ‘You got in trouble?’

‘Oh, yeah. Big time. I got told in no uncertain terms that using the entire datanet for pursuing my hobbies is not a great career move.’

‘Oh dear. I’m sorry. That’s my fault. I assumed you were working on official Guardian business, so I didn’t put an activity constraint on the bots. How many got spawned?’

‘Close to thirteen billion apparently. I didn’t realize I could screw up everybody else by doing what I did. My boss says I was hogging a quarter of all net resources.’

‘Not really. Voss was being a bit dramatic.’

‘I don’t think he’s the type to make stuff like that up. He read me the stats.’

‘You know what they say – there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Look, we were running overnight. At that time, a lot of computers are not working on serious business, they’re doing background tasks, like planning how much geothermal energy usage will increase in the next five years, or searching for radio signals from extra-terrestrials. If our bot usage had really been having a negative impact, we would have got an automatic warning.’

‘Voss made it sound like civilization was ending because I’d hijacked most of the bots in the system.’ Kaspar heaved a sigh of relief.

‘He would!’ Mac laughed. ‘The system is much more robust and adaptable than that.’

Just then, Kaspar’s datalink and Mac’s monitor bleeped simultaneously. Kaspar keyed the ‘Accept’ switch on his link and an automated message began playing through
his head-up display or HUD. It was a message directing him to log onto a computer.

‘Mac, I just got a—’

‘Message to go online? Yeah, I know. I just got the notification too ’cause this is the node that launched the search. Some of your bots are still active from last night.’

Kaspar’s heart, not to mention his stomach, plummeted. ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’ He saw his career evaporating like dry ice on a hotplate. ‘Stop them. Now. Please. If I use one more processor cycle Voss will murder me.’

‘You have to log in and do it as you initiated the search,’ said Mac. ‘If I use my code to stop them, it’ll be automatically reported.’

Kaspar practically shoved Mac to one side in his effort to get to the screen to key in his Guardian passcode. An alert message flashed up but he was too panicked to read it properly.

‘What are they doing? No, don’t tell me. I don’t care what they’re doing. Just stop them.’

Mac quickly scanned the report. Her eyes narrowed. ‘One of the things you asked about last night was odd patterns of computer usage.’

‘Oh, hell! Did we just report ourselves?’

‘No, not us. The bots have uncovered an unauthorized computer access.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘It’s happening right now. This is a real-time report. That’s what the alert we just got was about.’

‘Really? Where’s this going down?’ frowned Kaspar.

Mac pointed at the screen. ‘Terminal one, level one, Sluice Control, Kehone A?’

Kaspar leaned in closer and read the summary. ‘It says that place is fully automated and it isn’t scheduled to have a regular maintenance inspection for  . . . another three weeks.’

‘Maybe there was a problem?’ offered Mac.

‘No, look. Operational effectiveness is at one hundred per cent and no alarms have been flagged since  . . . two years ago.’ An icy chill crept along Kaspar’s back.

‘Kehone A? Where have I heard that name before?’ said Mac.

Kaspar was already running for the door. If he didn’t do something – and fast – there would be a major catastrophe. He shouted back over his shoulder to Mac as he ran, ‘Kehone Reservoir is where all our drinking water comes from!’

Kaspar ran like he’d never run before.

‘4518 Wilding to Central. Send units to level one of Kehone A Sluice Control. We have an unauthorized computer access in progress.’

‘Roger that, 4518.’

Kaspar wasn’t quite sure how he wanted this to turn out. If he was right, then there was a potentially devastating terrorist attack in progress on a hugely important target. Sabotage of the sluice gates could cause both droughts and flooding to a wide area. Worse than that, if terrorists were to introduce some bio-toxic agent into the water supply, there would be casualties on a massive scale.

On the other hand, if he was wrong  . . . What would Voss do to him if he’d sparked a major alert for no reason? Kaspar shook his head. He couldn’t worry about that now. How would he feel if something terrible happened because he’d been too cowardly to do anything about it? Besides, he was positive he was right. Almost positive. There
was
unauthorized activity happening at the reservoir, he’d seen that much for himself. So what else
could it be but a group of Insurgents, no doubt carrying out some deadly mission?

‘Kaspar, you’re doing the right thing,’ he told himself as Guardians came on the Link, reporting their proximity to Kehone.

‘361 Tilkian to Central. Responding to Kehone A. I’m less than five minutes out.’ Wow! Guardian Tilkian himself was responding. Now there was a Guardian whose reputation preceded him. Guardian Tilkian was head of the Special Support Group – elite Guardians whose responsibilities included acting as bodyguards to the High Council – what they liked to call ‘close personal protection’. Kaspar’s heart sank. If he was wrong, then with Tilkian present the High Council would inevitably hear about it. His hands suddenly felt clammy and beads of sweat were breaking out all over his forehead and his armpits.

‘3944 Clendenning to Central. ETA to Kehone, seven minutes.’

Five and seven minutes would mean the same as five or seven hours if they got there too late to stop the terrorists from poisoning the water. Uncle Jeff was the only farmer in the whole of the Alliance who had his own water supply, at least that Kaspar knew about. If the terrorists succeeded  . . . well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Kaspar arrived at the vehicle park at the same time as Dillon.

‘Why couldn’t you start a major security shitstorm after breakfast?’ grumbled Dillon as he headed for a ground vehicle.

‘No, not that one,’ said Kaspar. ‘If we take a hovercar we can cut straight across the lake and save time.’

Both men jumped into a hovercar and Kaspar spun it hard towards the lake. The manual said that transitions from ground to water were meant to be handled smoothly, but Kaspar just slammed open the throttle and slewed sideways off the manicured grass bank so hard that a wave came over the side and splashed across their laps.

‘You mad bastard. It’s a hovercar, not a bloody sub marine,’ Dillon shouted above the whine of the fans.

Kaspar gritted his teeth and shot off across the water, heading north. ‘Sorry. You can kill me later, if Voss doesn’t get me first.’

Dillon glared at him, and then slowly smiled at the prospect of Voss’s wrath as he reported their IDs to Central. Behind them, Kaspar could see another hovercar following, but he couldn’t make out who was in it until over the link he heard, ‘4515 Toth and 4517 Weavis approaching Kehone from the South. ETA ten minutes.’

‘Mariska and Mikey are on their way too,’ said Kaspar.

‘Yeah, but they’re probably dry,’ Dillon retorted. ‘Do you want to tell me what all this is about now?’

‘There might be a terrorist taking over the sluice controls at the reservoir as we speak.’

‘And you’re thinking  . . . ?’

‘Nothing good.’

By the time they had crossed the narrow North Cross Causeway that separated the lake from the reservoir and
crossed the last click to Kehone A station, there were forty-six other Guardians already there.

‘And with us and Mariska and Mikey, that makes a nice round fifty,’ said Dillon as he checked the settings of his stun rifle.

Kaspar felt sick before he even brought the hovercar ashore. The Guardians weren’t deploying; they weren’t fanning out to surround the station. There was no urgency, no verbal traffic on the link tactical channel. There was just a massive group of Guardians standing around chatting. If it weren’t for the weapons, it could have been the Growers’ Association annual wine and cheese party.

For everyone else, it was a massive anti-climax. For Kaspar, there was a momentary sense of relief followed by a pit-of-his-stomach feeling of impending doom.