Third Transmission (6 page)

‘Anyway,' Six said, ignoring their archaic terms, ‘at the time of the mission, Allich had only built one port.
In each of her experiments, she scanned the cargo, dematerialised it, and then tried to duplicate it in the same location. She probably thought transmitting the information was the simplest part of the process, so there was no point building a second port until the scanning, dematerialising and duplicating stages were perfected. Which, at the time, they weren't.'

‘What were the flaws?' the QS asked.

‘You'd have to ask the Diamonds for a complete list,' Six said, ‘but most notably, the machine consumed too much matter and energy duplicating the cargo. There would be no point transmitting guns, for instance, or food – it'd be easier to make them from scratch at the other end. Plus, the machine couldn't transmit anything with significant iron content. An exposed MRI is used in the scanning, and the magnetic field would rip the object apart. You can't send anything over 500 kilograms, which rules out most vehicles. Another problem is, the machine can't transmit people. The pain of getting assembled at Port B sends them into shock 68 per cent of the time, immediate cardiac arrest 31 per cent. None of her test subjects survived.'

The QS looked disappointed. ‘So essentially, Allich almost invented a useless piece of technology.'

‘No,' Six said. ‘There's a difference between “not a threat” and “useless”. If she ever got it working – which she may have done since my recon mission – one-of-a-kind objects could be instantly transmitted from one end of the City to the other. Signed contracts, valuable
paintings, human remains, plant life …' He shrugged. ‘The machine has applications. Just none we need to worry about.'

‘Enough about Allich, for now,' King said. ‘Tell us about Straje Sammers.' He pronounced it
Strah-yay.

Six felt a chill wriggle up his spine.
Straje Sammers
. A name he hadn't heard for a long time – and would be glad never to hear again.

‘I don't see the connection,' he faltered.

‘Just tell us what you remember,' King said.

Six nodded grimly. ‘Two years, four months and nineteen days ago,' he began, ‘Sammers and a twelve-man squadron of soldiers broke into a top-secret ChaoSonic facility and killed everyone inside. They cracked the vault, and they stole …' he hesitated, not wanting to relive the nightmare, ‘… its contents.'

‘Which were?' the QS demanded.

‘The last nuclear warhead in existence,' Six said softly.

Her eyes widened. ‘Impossible. They were all dismantled and destroyed before Takeover.'

‘Officially, that's true,' King said. ‘And the old governments did destroy most of them. They even destroyed all the designs, in the hope that no-one else would ever wield the power of nuclear weaponry. But one remained.'

‘How did they miss it?'

‘It was assembled by rogue operatives,' Six said. ‘No country sponsored it. So the governments missed it because they never knew it existed in the first place. ChaoSonic
found it, and instead of destroying it, they kept it in a bunker.' Because, Six thought, they don't learn lessons.

‘And then Sammers stole it,' the QS said. ‘What did he do with it?'

‘He took it to a building a few kliks from the Seawall,' Six said. ‘ChaoVision Headquarters – CVHQ. He set it up on the top floor and tried to detonate it, believing that the blast would kill some, the fallout would kill others, and when the Seawall collapsed it would flood the City and take care of the rest.'

‘Why?'

‘If I recall his ranting correctly,' Six said darkly, ‘he believed the City was filled with sin. He said the solution was to introduce all its citizens to God in person.'

‘Wait,' the QS said. ‘You were there? In the building?'

‘Yes – but he also announced his intentions to the public via webcam.'

The growling voice of Straje Sammers echoed through Six's mind.
You are powerless, boy. There is nothing you can do to thwart the divine plan.

‘Sammers' father was the leader of a doomsday cult,' King told the QS. ‘When he died, Sammers took over the congregation and decided doomsday wasn't coming fast enough.'

‘So what happened?'

‘My mission,' Six said, ‘was to infiltrate the building, neutralise Sammers and his men, disarm the nuke, and get out with enough pieces of it to ensure it could never be detonated.'

He took a deep breath. ‘I failed. I got in okay, and managed to take out all the disciples. But the nuke was already gone. And the soldiers had turned on one another; three of them were already dead when I got there …'

‘Could Sammers have taken the nuke somewhere else?' the QS asked.

‘No,' Six said. ‘He died.'

‘How?'

Sammers' righteous grin flashed through Six's mind. ‘He … exploded. Right in front of me.'

The QS raised her eyebrows. ‘Exploded?'

‘There was a small explosive charge in his backpack,' Six said. ‘I don't know who put it there. The official theory is that one of his disciples was working for ChaoSonic. But that doesn't make much sense, because –'

‘Tell us what happened next, Six,' King said.

‘ChaoSonic troops landed on the roof of CVHQ,' Six said. ‘They couldn't find the nuke, so they ordered that the area be sealed off. Roadblocks went up at a three-klik radius. The didn't let anybody in or out.'

‘And then what?' the QS asked.

‘They bombed the place,' Six said, teeth clenched.

She stared at him. ‘Wouldn't blowing up the nuke, well … blow up the nuke?'

‘No. Plutonium isn't like gunpowder. The warhead would have needed the right electrical signals to detonate. So ChaoSonic dropped bombs on the area and then went in to sift through the wreckage. Most of the
buildings were flattened, including CVHQ, although it has since been rebuilt. The few that remained standing were inspected thoroughly. The warhead wasn't there. It had been destroyed in the raid.' He paused. ‘I hid in the basement car park of the Northmoon Shopping Centre, on the outskirts of the blast radius. Then I managed to blend in with some of the survivors –'

‘The bird-flu strike!' The QS drew in a startled breath. ‘That's what you're talking about, right?'

‘Yes,' Six said. ‘ChaoSonic told the public that the air strike was to suppress an outbreak of avian influenza, and that they evacuated everyone they could. In reality, they killed almost the entire population of the area to make absolutely certain that no-one got out with the warhead.'

‘Ironic,' the QS said. She was smiling. ‘Earlier today they put up roadblocks around almost exactly the same area, and tried to release a dangerous virus for real. And then they couldn't, because it was stolen too!'

‘The irony is probably lost on the thousands of people who were vaporised on that day,' Six said, glaring at her. ‘Not to mention the ones still being oppressed by ChaoSonic.'

His anger faded. Something she'd said was troubling him.
Roadblocks around almost exactly the same area.

Yes, CVHQ was inside the zone ChaoSonic had quarantined this morning, when they were preparing to release SARS into the population. But that wasn't all.

So was Allich's facility. The Tower. It was very close.

That's the connection, Six thought. No way. He looked at King, who nodded severely.

‘You think Allich
did
build a Port B,' Six said. ‘Somewhere else in the City. You think whoever stole the warhead took it to the Tower and used her machine to teleport it out of the sealed zone before the air strike.' He felt goosebumps ripple up his arms. ‘You think the nuke is still out there.'

‘Sit down, Six,' King said. ‘Your next mission is lined up.'

INVITATION

‘Okay.' King rested his palms flat on his desk. ‘We have no way of knowing who has the warhead. The City's too big to start a random search. So our first step is finding Allich's Port B.'

‘But the nuke went through more than two years ago,' Six interjected. ‘The trail's ice-cold. What are we supposed to do once we find Port B?'

‘I'll get to that,' King said. ‘Allich's guarded around the clock by ChaoSonic agents – three in uniform and who knows how many in plainclothes. Taking her in for interrogation isn't an option.'

‘An employee?' the QS suggested. ‘Someone else working in the Tower?'

King shook his head. ‘All the staff we know about work only at Port A. We've been watching them. They go from their homes to the Tower and back again. Nowhere else. It's likely they don't even know where Port B is. So our best chance of getting the information we need is to break into the Tower and steal the latest experiment data.'

‘Wrong,' Six said. ‘That's our
worst
chance of getting what we need.'

‘Insubordination, Agent Six,' the QS said.

King ignored her. ‘Because?'

‘Because according to the most recent surveillance report, they've redone security,' Six said. ‘Now there's only one door, and it's protected twenty-four hour a day by twenty-seven soldiers doing shifts in nine-person teams. There are no ground-floor windows. No air vents. You can't come in from above – the roof is solid iron, able to withstand 1000 kilograms of pressure per square inch. And even if you could break through it somehow, it's two kilometres up and has radar with an uninterruptible power supply. As for coming in from below, the Tower doesn't stop at the ground. It runs so deep we don't even know for sure how many floors it has.' He looked at King. ‘It's a fortress.'

Why is he even suggesting this? he wondered. He must know it's impossible. Is he manipulating the QS somehow?

The Queen of Spades was staring at Six. ‘Last time you were there,' she said, ‘did you make them mad?'

‘The excessive security might be my fault, yeah,' Six admitted.

‘You won't have to break in.' King took a manila folder out of a drawer in his desk. ‘Allich is having a party at the Tower tonight. It's described on the invitations as “a launch for an exciting new technology”.'

Six frowned. ‘She invented the WMTD years ago, and if we're right about the warhead, she perfected it soon after. Isn't it a little late for a launch party?'

‘We don't think it's for the machine you saw, Six,' King said. ‘We don't know what technology she's launching, but it doesn't really matter. The point is, it's a chance to get into the Tower without raising much suspicion. There'll be lots of people there, most of whom won't know one another.'

‘You want me to search for some more test results, see if they give away the location the machine has been transmitting to?'

‘No,' King said. ‘Allich won't have them lying around, and in any case, they probably wouldn't help. Instead, Jack is going to give you a chameleonic beacon. It's only slightly larger than a match head, and sticky, so it will adhere to any surface. It changes colour to match anything it touches as well. I want you to –'

‘Plant it inside Port A,' Six finished. ‘So the next time they use the machine, the beacon will be teleported to Port B, and then we can follow the signal to find it. Very clever.'

King smiled smugly. ‘I thought so too.'

The QS interrupted. ‘How will you find the warhead once you've found Port B?'

‘Jack also has a very sensitive Geiger counter,' King said. ‘Unless Port B turns out to be next door to a nuclear power station, the warhead will have been the most radioactive thing in the area for at least fifty years. He assures me that we will be able to trace its path quite easily.'

‘How do I get into the party?' Six asked.

King passed him the manila folder. Inside, Six found pictures of a young man with thick spectacles and hair that was soot-black, and swept sideways as though a bomb had exploded near his head.

‘This is Ciull Yu,' King said. ‘You're going to steal his invitation.'

‘Why him?'

‘He has the fewest bodyguards.'

‘How many?'

‘Just one – his driver.'

‘I don't look anything like him,' Six pointed out.

‘Doesn't matter,' King said. ‘The door guards won't know what he looks like, and you'll have his fingerprints for their scanner. Once you're inside you'd be well advised to use a different name, just in case you meet someone who actually knows Ciull Yu.'

Six nodded. ‘How do I take him out?'

‘However you think is best. I have the time he's scheduled to arrive and the route he'll be taking.'

‘Okay.' Six was already working on possible methods in his head.

‘One more thing,' King said. ‘Yu's RSVP said him plus one guest. You'll have to take another agent with you.'

Six grimaced.

‘Relax,' King said. ‘It's a party, not a siege. You won't have to worry about jumping in front of bullets for your partner. And trust me, the guards and the other guests will be much less suspicious if there's someone accompanying you. You can choose who you want to take.'

Six wanted to tell King about the commando on the CNS
Gomorrah
– the one who'd pinned him to the wall. But he didn't want to do it in front of the QS, and she seemed to have no intention of leaving.

‘Okay. Is there anything else?' he said finally.

‘No,' King said. ‘Jack's expecting you. Good luck.'

Six nodded and turned to the door. He could feel the QS's eyes on him as he left.