The Silent Army (25 page)

“I can take you out of here. They won’t be looking for me.”

“Cal . . .”

“I’m not being tracked. I owe you.”

He thought about that. His hands moved to his hips. His right one was close to the gun.

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Shoot me?”

His hand didn’t move. He stayed like that too long for my liking, though.

“Wait here,” he said. “I got to make a call.”

He went into the next room and shut the door partway. On the other side, I could hear him rooting around for something. I didn’t hear him talking, but I picked him up on the JZI. I turned the backscatter onto the bathroom door up close and saw the revivor in there. It had a gun in its hand.

Through the walls I could see pipes and wiring. He paced in the next room, then went to a big safe. It was too thick to scan through. I lost him behind it.

I gave him a minute, but he stayed out of sight. The safe was big enough that he could have used it to cover his ass while he went out a window or something.

“Chief?” He didn’t answer.

I stepped up to the door, ready to shove it when he opened it and came out.

“I said to wait,” Buckster said. He had a metal briefcase in one hand.

“Sorry.”

“You want answers?” he said. “Let’s go.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Grab what you need.”

He held up the metal case.

“I got all I need,” he said. “Let’s go.”

8

Fathom

Nico Wachalowski—Empire Apartments, Apartment #213

I didn’t doubt who planted the monitoring device, but as soon as I passed through the perimeter and my JZI came back online, a message was waiting that confirmed it.

Ai wants to see you.

I still couldn’t reach Calliope; her JZI was showing a status of blocked, meaning it wasn’t taking calls. There was any number of reasons she might do that, but the last time we spoke, she was with Buckster. I’d feel better when she responded.

You worry about me?

I did, a little.

The truth was, I’d worried about her more than I let on. I wasn’t sure why. I hadn’t known her well at all, but somehow she’d gotten under my skin. When we started writing back and forth, I caught myself getting concerned when she stayed quiet too long. It was my first experience being home and waiting for someone to finish their tour.

Was that how Faye had felt? If so, it must have been worse, because back then when I stopped writing, I never started again. I didn’t even look her up when I came back. I never got a chance to make that right.

I shouldn’t have sent her. Calliope was tough. She knew what she was getting into, and she could take care of herself, but sometimes things went outside your control. She didn’t need to put herself in trouble to get me on her side. I didn’t need her to get to Fawkes.

JZI Status: BLOCKED.

I shut the front door behind me and locked it. I hung my coat on the rack and moved into the living room, removing from my pocket the object Bhadra had slipped me. The small electronic device fit in my palm. It was the shape of a capsule, with a smooth outer shell and several built-in data ports.

I slipped a probe into the port and gave it a gentle twist. Right away a flood of messages scrolled by in front of me, before the HUD cleared and a set of indicators began to appear.

Init version 0.3

Detecting . . .

Initializing . . .

Property of Heinlein Industries, Inc.

A series of specs, nondisclosure statements, and legal warnings scrolled by, then cleared away as a connection opened to what I recognized as a revivor network. It was empty.

Interesting. It was some kind of freestanding revivor communications port. It provided a tunnel onto an existing revivor network band.

Searching . . .

A grid appeared, filling my field of vision, and one by one, nodes began to appear on it. It happened slowly at first, but they quickly filled the screen. I zoomed in until the points began to spread apart. They weren’t connected in the traditional hub-and-spoke configuration; they were all separate, free-floating.

Searching . . .

Something’s wrong . . .

The total node count kept increasing, but none of them was tagged as active. They were in some kind of standby state. When the count was finished, it numbered more than six hundred.

Six hundred. The number was like a weight on my chest. Once, during my tour, I saw close to 150 of them let loose on a suburb. Not a shantytown or slum, but a developed region with brick homes and locked doors. It took us two hours to reach them from the nearest base, and by the time we got there, the carnage was visible from the air. Bodies lay torn apart in the streets, where blood baked in the sun. The old, the young, children, and babies were all pulled to pieces, and the revivors were rooting through the remains. We airlifted out fifty or so people from two rooftops. Then command declared the site lost, and it was razed.

They had to be on the tanker. There was no way that many revivors could be stored inside the city limits and not attract attention. Not even Heinlein kept a stockpile like that.

I started to try to trace them, when another process took over and opened a window over the grid. The image of a man’s face appeared in it, part of a digital recording, embedded in the unit’s software. I recognized him; it was the man Heinlein had designated as their liaison back during the first crisis.

MacReady.

Bob MacReady had met me at the Heinlein labs to discuss the case initially. Later he contacted me after I’d secured Faye’s body to provide information on Samuel Fawkes. I had never been able to determine whether he had done that with or without Heinlein’s knowledge.

“Hello, Agent Wachalowski. Listen carefully; this message will not repeat itself and will decay after playback. You have just connected to an experimental component designed to interface with the technology code named Huma. It has all the basic capabilities of the new revivor model. The link you’ve established will place you directly onto any existing Huma network that exists. This version of the revivor communications band is not backwards-compatible with the old one, which is very similar to your JZ interface. Be prepared to gather your information quickly, as we believe the node count is growing and could overwhelm your JZI.”

Huma. It sounded like a new revivor prototype. Was this what I’d seen in the clinic?

MacReady manipulated the computer terminal in front of him, and a second window appeared in a frame next to him. It displayed a schematic of the new node.

“The main reasons for the incompatibility are greater throughput, and a new layered mesh model. The hub-and-spoke configuration, where many revivors are controlled via a single command node, will still exist, but the revivors themselves use a full-mesh configuration. This makes them significantly more effective in the field. It allows large-scale, coordinated operations to remain fluid. Units quickly become aware if an existing directive has become undesirable or invalid. They can quickly relay that information back to the command node.”

The schematic in the window disappeared and was replaced by the Huma logo, followed by several bullet points:

• Field deployable

• Field revivification

• Enhanced control

• Enhanced intelligence network

“All of this is accomplished using the next generation of nanotechnology.” The bullet “Field deployable” moved into the foreground.

“You may recall we discussed this possibility during our meeting two years ago. The traditional model of getting wired for revivification will be replaced with a simple injection. The nodes are constructed inside the body using the material contained in the injection payload. Long-term preservation will still require a blood transfusion, but this new model is extremely desirable in situations where longevity is not an issue.”

That was most of them. At least half the revivors uncrated in the field didn’t last a month. The bullet “Field revivification” moved to the foreground.

“The new revivor model can also be made field ready without a trip back to the Heinlein labs, another improvement that will greatly enhance their effectiveness.”

It had been talked about for years. They’d finally managed it, then. If it was true, a soldier who was wired could theoretically revive right there on the battlefield.

“What I’m about to tell you is not something Heinlein wants getting out, but the situation is out of control and someone has to intervene. You’re the only one I believe I can trust fully. Recently, Heinlein detected a network of these revivors coming online. Whoever took the prototypes has deployed them. I’ve sent out feelers, and learned that your agency is currently looking for a large revivor force; I believe this is the source of them.”

I had no idea the technology was so far along, but it would explain a lot. Fawkes wouldn’t have to smuggle in revivors from overseas. With something like this in his hands, he could create them on the fly.

“Heinlein Industries had reached the phase of human trials, Agent. That was never going to be officially sanctioned in the current climate. They conducted it in secret, at the Concrete Falls facility, where they processed the new recruits. They mixed the injections in among the standard inoculants battery given before deployment overseas. They monitored progress during routine checkups once the subjects were safely out of the country, with the military’s cooperation. It works, Agent, and it’s highly effective.”

In the feed, MacReady shook his head.

“Officially, the company will deny any existence of the prototype,” he finished. “This device was never given to you. A series of enzymes will destroy it in less than twenty hours. Any longer than that, and Heinlein will trace it back to you and me. Find them before then.”

The recording cut out and, as promised, it immediately wiped itself from memory.

Link established.

A flood of data came pouring over the connection so quickly it actually managed to begin to fill the JZI’s buffer, something that had never happened before. As it struggled to sort and distribute the information, it started grabbing chunks of memory from other applications. Modules I kept running, like the optical-filter array, translation software, and listening ports, started dropping off. I lost the interface to my internal chemical packs; then even the diagnostic packages shut down.

Shit . . .

MacReady had underestimated either the total node count or my implant’s ability to field the circuits. The JZI tried to route the information, but it was having trouble classifying a lot of it. Routines began to thrash. The last time I’d felt anything remotely like it was when it had been deliberately hacked. I lost my balance and groped behind me for the sofa as my standard visuals began to fail. The lens in one eye widened to its maximum zoom capacity, causing the room to spin around me before both flickered and started losing frames. The light began to strobe as I fell back onto the couch.

I tried to shut down the connection, but nothing was responding. The conduits that dealt with text and audio filled up, causing a constant stream of unintelligible chatter to fill my head while a random character stream filled up the HUD. What little I could see was blotted out.

What the hell is this?

The streams were coming in from the remote nodes, but they weren’t directed at me specifically. If I could get off the network, I thought it would stop the flow. . . .

The longer it came in, though, the more it began to take some kind of shape. I sensed it was legitimate information; it was just streaming in from too many sources. It was as though hundreds of people were streaming consciousness, rambling randomly, all about different things.

Where?
I thought. I didn’t care about the rest.
Where is the ship now?

I began to get flashes, images from the remote nodes. Some were darkness, almost like thoughts or dreams, but some were of places and things. I caught a glimpse of a sink with running water, and another of characters appearing on a computer terminal. I saw hallways, rooms and doors from different places, but I couldn’t identify them. I couldn’t put together a complete picture, but a realization had begun to sink in.

That’s not the interior of a ship.
Was I wrong?

The input became a field of static. It felt like I was floating in a void. I could still feel the fabric of the couch underneath my fingers, but it was like the sensation was coming from far away.

If I could get the influx under control, I might be able to trace a single connection and find out where it was originating from. If I could—

Link broken.

The JZI shut down and recycled. The buffers were flushed, and, after a pause, it began to reinitialize. The white noise stopped. My vision cut out completely for a few seconds, then returned.

They’re not on the ship,
I thought.
Not all of them. They’re already here.

That’s what MacReady was trying to tell me. Field deployment and field reanimation; they weren’t dead. Maybe some, enough to do Fawkes’s legwork, but the rest were just injected. That’s why no one could find them. They wouldn’t appear on the streets until Fawkes was ready.

My JZI systems finished initializing. Immediately, a connection opened.

Hello, Agent. Why do I keep finding you on my private network?

Who is this?

This is Samuel Fawkes.

I sat up, looking around. According to the JZI’s chronometer, I’d lost a good ten minutes. The probe was still plugged into the strange device, but the signal had been cut off.

Where are you?

I don’t know that for sure, Agent. I told you that last time we spoke.

Where’s Calliope?

The one you had shadowing Buckster? Maybe he recruited her. Wasn’t that the same woman that helped you storm my factory?

Where is she, Fawkes?

Lying in the bed you helped her make, I imagine.

I checked the status of the revivor scrub. Less than two percent of the remaining units were left to be decommissioned.

Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to happen. They’re closing in on you.

Then I guess we’d better hurry.

There is no ‘we,’ Fawkes.

The last of the diagnostics ran, the output scrolling by in the corner of my eye. Nothing was damaged.

That will be up to you. This is your last chance to accept the offer I’ve made you. Kill Motoko Ai. And her top people. Do this, and you have my word I won’t use the nuclear devices that you know I have.

I can’t just kill them, Fawkes.

You’ve killed many people, Agent Wachalowski. Many people. You can’t convince me you don’t have the stomach for it. Is it that you place more value on the lives of those three people than you do on the lives of thousands?

I made a fist. If it was in my power and I had to choose, he knew I’d have to save as many lives as I could. He’d seen my war records. He knew, or thought he knew, how I would react in a situation like this, but I wasn’t a soldier anymore and I wasn’t ready to concede. Not yet.