Steel Rain (38 page)
As Machiko steps up, the major lowers his commlink, snaps off a brisk salute, and commences to give a succinct status report. The sweep of the region continues. There are many buildings in the vicinity and every one will be searched. The nearest buildings appear abandoned. Friendly casualties are light.
"What prisoners have you taken?"
"Only three thus far, Machiko-san. Two combatants and one decker."
The major's adjutant shows Machiko to the room where the decker waits. A trooper stands guard at the room's only door. Machiko pauses on the threshold. What she sees inside the room strikes her as very curious.
The decker is a norm female. Her skin is quite dark, but her facial features otherwise suggest a Caucasian. She has the usual datajack at her temple and slashcut hair and synth-leather and studs and everything else, including a cyberdeck, couched in a gray-platinum case and clutched to her chest. The detail that catches Machiko's eyes, and that which seems so curious, has nothing to do with any of this. It is unrelated to the torn plastic-upholstered couch the decker sits on or the drab green telecom positioned nearby. Rather, it has to do with the decker's ankles. Steel manacles ring both her ankles. The chain that joins them is secured to a large metal bolt that appears to have been recently driven into the filthy tile and concrete of the floor.
There is one other thing Machiko notes. The decker does not sit. She cowers, cringing, in the corner of the couch most distant from the door. She is wide-eyed, apparently with terror.
"Frag, oh frag . . ." she quavers.
Machiko moves one step further into the room and swings the door shut. The decker seems only to grow more afraid. Machiko can well imagine why. She can see herself as this decker must see her: clothes singed and smeared with soot, heavily armed, and calm, very calm, like an executioner.
The decker snivels. "Don't—!"
"What is your name?"
The reply appears to prove difficult, as though it does not wish to emerge from the decker's mouth. "Nnn-nee . . . Nnnneee-yoooo . . ." She gasps. "Nnn-nee-yooo-naaa . . ."
"Neona."
The decker nods her head.
"You are an associate of Gamma?"
Neona-san. appears to struggle to answer. She grunts and snivels and gasps. No recognizable words actually emerge. Momentarily, Neona-san shakes her head. She shakes it vehemently, looks to Machiko and then shakes it again.
"You are under some compulsion of the mage?"
"Wha . . . Wha-what?"
"A spell that Gamma cast on you."
This appears to give Neona-san even more difficulty than the previous question. She grunts and snivels and makes other noises, straining forward as if to thrust an answer forcibly through her lips. She moves her head about, up and down and around, as if giving a nod and a shake of the head all in one gesture.
Still, it is an answer of sorts, and the manacles and chain make a strong statement. Neona-san does not appear to have been a willing servant of the enemy.
She begins making more noises, struggling to speak. Some moments pass before Machiko realizes what she intends. She motions with her chin directly at Machiko, but, with her eyes, gestures toward the reams of hardcopy lying in heaps along the left wall of the room. Machiko turns to have a look. The very first page she examines gives a mild shock.
On the page is a diagram of the Nagato Commercial Park in Melville, where the ceremonies for the dead were so recently conducted. Machiko looks about and finds other pages with other diagrams, portions of the grounds and various buildings at the Commercial Park. Certain diagrams are highly detailed. Aside from entrances and exits and security checkpoints, they show such items as water conduits and ventilation ducts, and these bring to mind a collection of squat metallic cylinders partly loaded onto a Roadmaster cargo vehicle marked for Nagato Corporation.
Neona-san grunts and stammers. She seems to grow almost frantic to force language through her lips, but manages only to blurt, "Smogger . . . Flatline . . ."
Poison gas? Machiko supposes that the specific details do not matter. Gamma's intent is apparent. To kill. To destroy. Perhaps to poison every living being at the Nagato Commercial Park. Perhaps even more. Amid the heaps of paper, Machiko finds diagrams of the Chairman's personal estate and Nagato Tower as well.
"Where does this data come from?"
Neona-san stammers a response. "Ma-matrix. . . . gypsy, gypsy la-la-la-lady . . . Snagged me .... Trrrrryyiing . . . Trying to crack . . . Crack Nnn-naa, Nnnn-naa-gaa-too nnn-nnn-network . . . G-gave me p-pay-data . . . Ev-everything . . . Everything about everyyy thinggg . . . Ssss-scheds. . . . Sss-sched-ules . . . P-plans . . . Floor floor plans . . ."
"Who is this gypsy lady?"
"D-decker . . . i-icon . . ."
A decker using the icon of a gypsy lady caught Neona-san breaking into the Nagato network. This same individual passed Neona-san whole reams of proprietary info regarding Nagato Corp. Could this be anyone but a traitor, the very traitor who has apparently manipulated the Nagato computer network?
Machiko keys her commlink. She will need expert assistance to further question Neona-san and to scrutinize the decker's cyberdeck. But before her call connects, she receives a priority signal from Nagato operations.
Maeda Komachi, Director of Network Administration.
"Machiko-san, a violation of network protocol has just occurred. I thought you should be informed."
"What sort of violation?" Machiko asks.
"We have detected a penetration of a database belonging to the Nagato Corp transport division. Our initial analysis indicates that an attempt has been made to add a new vehicle to the transport division registry."
Does this have some significance? "What vehicle?" Machiko asks.
"A Roadmaster cargo vehicle."
One of the most common forms of cargo vehicles to be found anywhere in North America. However, Machiko recalls the Roadmaster she passed on her way into the building around her, a Roadmaster partly loaded with cylinders containing some toxic substance. Mere coincidence? Machiko strides to the rear of the building and steps outside. She reads off the numbers painted on the sides of the Roadmaster and imprinted on the vehicle's registration tags. Maeda-san confirms that these very numbers are the numbers used in the false entries introduced to the transport division database.
In a moment, perhaps two, the point of this becomes apparent. A vehicle falsely identified as a Nagato vehicle, perhaps driven by an individual falsely identified as a Nagato Corp employee, might easily gain entrance to Nagato facilities. Perhaps false entries were made to Nagato personnel rosters, security personnel rosters, to expedite the entry of a van marked for Fuchi IE onto the property of the Chrysanthemum Palace Hotel.
All such registries must be checked and verified. Machiko informs Maeda-san of the need, and then says, "Can you tell me who attempted to add this Roadmaster vehicle to the transport division registry?"
"I believe that I can, Machiko-san. Fortunately, I have had the entire network on alert since you came to my office. I have now initiated a Level Chi alert. In effect, Machiko-san, I have shut down the network, prohibiting traffic in and out of the network, as well as between the various systems of the network."
Maeda-san goes on to explain that the violation originated from within the Nagato network, and that the violation was detected and traced because every node on the network, in effect the entire network, was being monitored in ways both subtle and overt for any illicit activity.
The source Maeda-san identifies as responsible for the violation is as unsettling as it is chilling.
"Are you certain of this?"
"The chance that we are wrong is very, very slight," Maeda-san says. "Given the extent of the network alert, the resources we committed to monitoring network activity, I would say that the chance of an error is negligible."
Machiko sees no point in continuing the discussion.
She places a priority call via commlink to Chairman Honjowara. Before the connection is made, she gives instructions as to the disposition of the detainees, including Gamma, and the decker Neona-san, and summons an SDF helo to the rear of the building. The helo is carrying her swiftly up through the ground-haze and into the night when Honjowara
-sama's
image appears on the small screen on her left vambrace.
"I believe that I have identified the traitors," Machiko says. "I am moving now to place them . . . place them under restraint."
Honjowara
-sama
listens to the entirety of her explanation. She cannot yet say whether or not Gamma was the power behind all that has happened. For the moment, it is enough that the mage has been stopped and the traitors to Nagato Corp identified.
"Your discussion with Sashi—"
For the first and only time in her life, Machiko interrupts the Chairman of Nagato Combine, shaking her head, and saying, saying sharply, "
Please!
Please
excuse
me
... "
She can say nothing more. The affront she commits with just four words twists as savagely at her insides as all that Honjowara
-sama
recalls to her mind. She has interrupted, she feels too chagrined to continue speaking. She has learned too much from Sashi-san, too much of an intensely personal and intimate nature, too much that conflicts with her most basic assumptions, to consider such things now, now in the face of this man who is said to be her genetic father.
"Machiko," says Honjowara
-sama
, in a tone that seems unusually subdued, "you have my full authority to proceed. The senior executives will be advised to expect you."
She nods. "Understood, Chairman
-sama
."
And he, not she, breaks the link.
For this, here and now, Machiko feels only gratitude and relief.
The Neurocomp building is low and broad, just three stories tall, located in the nearby Nagato Commercial Park, just a few hundred meters from the Amida Buddhist Temple where the funeral rites for Mitsuharu and Jiksumi were performed. That the investigation into the cause for those two deaths should bring her so near the temple affects Machiko with a cruel sense of irony.
There is much about the last five days that affect her in this way. It is not a sense she finds pleasing.
The SDF helo settles onto the aeropad near the rear entrance to the Neurocomp building. Machiko disembarks and strides up the concrete walk to the entrance. There she meets just two executives, the deputy VP for research and the director for the special GCP project. They are accompanied by two guards, uniformed members of the Nagato Security Service.
All four bow as Machiko approaches. The depth of their bows indicates clearly that the Chairman's words have preceded her here. "I must speak with the computer specialists of the GCP special project," Machiko says.
The deputy VP bows, but the director for the GCP project looks uncertainly at Machiko, and says, "Do you mean the specialists who are themselves the subjects of the project?"
"I will begin with them, yes."
No further questions are asked. The deputy VP shows Machiko the way to the GCP project center. The trip takes several minutes, for they must pass through a pair of security checkpoints requiring retina scans, voice print, and palm print verification. Also, Machiko is issued a temporary identity card. Any person moving beyond the entranceway without such a card would instigate an immediate security alert.
Machiko's weapons add to the delay at the checkpoints, instigating a pair of automated alerts, which are then canceled by the onsite Security Service guards. Weapon pods in the ceiling and along certain stretches of hallway snap open and immediately snap shut.
They come to a room with several rows of computer consoles. Beside the consoles is a wall of windows that look down onto the floor of the GCP project laboratory. The lab itself, to Machiko's eyes, appears like a tangled mass of electronic equipment, tended by several individuals swathed in white clothing that leaves only their eyes uncovered. All that really stands out are the three vats or "tanks" located at the center of the lab floor. Each tank is filled with a hazy blue fluid. Within each sea of blue hangs a vague form like a human, possibly norms, motionless.
"Those are the three subjects of the experiment," the deputy VP informs, with a brief gesture toward the tanks.
"Voluntary subjects?" Machiko asks.
The deputy VP reacts as if startled. "Most definitely," he says at once. "There were more than a dozen volunteers, Machiko-san. Each underwent a lengthy evaluation process."
Machiko nods understanding. "How may I communicate with them?"
The deputy VP directs her attention to the large display screen that nearly fills the wall at the head of the room. At the touch of a console key, the screen divides into three virtual windows. Momentarily, an image appears in each window, images of three faces, norm faces, two males and one female. All are depicted in pulsing neochromatic colors.
Beneath each window appears a word, names apparently: Rad238, NodeBoy, SmoKe. Machiko supposes that these must be the informal appellations commonly adopted by eccentric deckers.
