Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5) Page 12

  Niflhel, 22nd January.

  ‘Vali?’ Kit called out as she walked up the slope from the fjord to his farmstead. ‘You called and, like the genie from the bottle, I appear.’ There was no immediate answer, so Kit continued on into the house.

  Vali walked through from the kitchen holding a scroll, which likely meant he had some information to impart. ‘Sorry. I heard you, but I had to get this. I’ll design you a genie outfit. We haven’t tried role-playing yet. That might be amusing.’

  Kit giggled. ‘Considering that it plays an integral part in many of the Niflhel virons, I believe we have been remiss in not doing so. I can think of many interesting scenarios. You could be the rough Viking warrior deflowering an innocent slave girl. Or perhaps a knight being rewarded for his valour in rescuing the princess from a dragon. Um, while she’s tied to a post, obviously. Or a space pirate taking his just rewards from the captured passenger of–’

  ‘First of all, have you been reading a lot of trashy romance novels?’

  ‘I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as romance…’

  ‘And, second, how about a barbarian warrior-princess in a chainmail bikini forcing herself on a captured prisoner?’

  ‘The bikini sounds uncomfortable and I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way. I’ll do some more reading, um, research. What was it you wanted aside, as Fox said, from my avatar in a compromising position?’

  Vali blushed, presumably at the thought of Fox discussing his love life. Kit figured he would have been more embarrassed to know who else had been present for the exchange. ‘Maybe you can reward me with another visit if this pans out,’ he said, handing over the scroll. ‘While your network guys were fending off that attack, I was working on tracking Minotaur down. You’ve got the likely location there and the reasoning behind it.’

  Kit unrolled the scroll and looked at it. Technically she did not read it since the data flowed into her program without her eyes being involved, but it came to the same thing. ‘I should avoid asking how you came by some of this information, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘That way I won’t have to lie to you, yes.’

  Kit nodded. ‘I have come into possession of some valuable information from an anonymous source then. Did any of this come from your anonymous source?’

  ‘Not this time. All my own work. I have something of a dislike for people who think that hacking a high-class infomorph is acceptable practice. Catch him, Kit. We can celebrate later.’

  New York Metro.

  It took almost four hours to persuade NAPA to raid Minotaur’s supposed lair and then arrange the raid. It gave Fox time to get back to New York, but she could have done it two or three times by then and it was four in the morning by the time she was standing outside what looked a lot like a disused apartment building from the last century just north of the true Sprawl.

  ‘You’re sure this place is where your hacker is?’ Sergeant Iain Stutter was the guy in charge of SWAT at precinct 16 which had the unfortunate job of covering the Brooklyn Sprawl. ‘Place doesn’t look occupied.’

  Fox was about to answer when one of the other guys in black police SWAT armour spoke up. ‘Infrared says that the place is far too hot to be empty, sir. Someone’s burning a lot of power in there. Or it’s on fire and we can’t see the smoke.’

  ‘Huh,’ Stutter said. ‘All right. We don’t know what’s in there. He’s a hacker, but he could have physical defences set up if he’s that way inclined. We do this by the book. Everyone keeps their eyes open for traps. Stick with your buddy. Meridian, you’re with me and Brown. Watch where you’re pointing that hand-cannon of yours. I don’t want anyone getting shot by accident.’

  ‘Mine’s loaded with baton rounds, Sergeant,’ Fox replied. ‘What do you have in your mags?’

  Stutter looked down at the double-barrelled assault weapon he was carrying, basically a sub-machine gun mounted over a semi-automatic shotgun. ‘Baton rounds in the shotgun.’

  ‘Just remember which trigger to pull. I’m ex-military, ex-NAPA, and this isn’t my first rodeo.’

  ‘I know your record. You shot a cop.’

  ‘Sandoval? I didn’t shoot him by accident. I meant every bullet. He was trying to shoot me. Shall we get on with this?’

  The front door of the building had an old-fashioned barrel lock on it. Stutter said, ‘Brown, you’re up,’ and Brown advanced on the door, removing a pistol-like device from her belt. Manual locks had gone largely out of fashion because you needed a physical key to get through them and those with a computerised lockpick could bypass them in seconds. On the other hand…

  ‘That’s new,’ Fox said. ‘Less than a decade anyway. This area hasn’t seen much use in that time and I doubt anyone’s changed the locks since the thirties.’

  ‘She’s right, sir,’ Brown said. ‘This is a speciality item. They didn’t make these a decade ago. They designed them to counter lock-guns, and the lock-guns just got better.’ There was a click as the lock disengaged. ‘Like that.’ Brown was not that tall and a little on the slight side. Fox had no idea what she looked like under the armour. She handled tech stuff for the eight-man team, and she also handled herself like someone who knew how to use her rifle.

  ‘Let’s do this,’ Stutter said, waving the rest of the team forward. Fox stepped clear of the door to let them do their job. She was in a MarTech combat suit and helmet, and probably better armoured than the cops, but it was their show.

  Brown shifted to stand beside Fox, raising her rifle to a ready position, as the other members of the team began bursting through the open door in a standard cross entry pattern. ‘Where do I get a suit like that?’ Brown asked quietly. ‘Looks a Hell of a lot better than these ones.’

  ‘MarTech Defense Technologies,’ Fox replied. ‘Comes with active camo.’

  ‘Lucky bitch.’ Brown swept forward, turning rapidly right as she entered. Stutter had gone left.

  Fox followed through at a saunter. There had been no indication of anything worrying to the first six men through the door and she suspected quite strongly that the first floor was going to be a blind. It was certainly dark and very quiet; a hallway with stairs rising up from it and a couple of doors off to the right were being checked by the team.

  ‘Any wireless activity?’ Fox asked silently.

  ‘Nothing from this building,’ Kit replied. ‘The electronic detection system in your suit is quite extensive and is still picking up nothing.’

  Fox looked up the stairs, which Brown was covering with her weapon. ‘My guess is we’ll get nothing until the top floor.’

  ‘It does seem a reasonable assertion,’ Kit agreed.

  They took it slowly and by the numbers anyway. Stutter wanted every floor cleared before moving to the next. All they found were empty, disused apartments, and considering the potential for squatting in the area, that was an indication of something odd in itself.

  On the third floor, Brown once again covered the staircase up to the fourth with Fox standing behind her. ‘Now that’s interesting,’ Brown commented.

  Fox nodded. The staircase had been sealed over with heavy boards of some kind and those had been painted black. There was an electronic lock keypad set into the wall about halfway up with a red light glowing in one corner. ‘Got the gear to bypass that?’

  ‘Should have.’

  ‘Do it,’ Stutter said. ‘Meridian can cover you while we check the other apartments.’

  Fox raised her pistol. ‘Go to work, Officer Brown. I’ve got you.’

  It took Brown a good deal longer to persuade the digital lock to give up. ‘He’s custom-built this thing,’ she said as she worked. ‘It’s got some wiring in it I’ve never seen before. Added modules. Probably designed to stop it being tampered with.’

  ‘Nothing explosive?’ Fox asked.

  ‘Nothing I can see, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have some sort of booby trap.’

  ‘Be careful. Stutter might shoot me if you get hurt on my watch.’

/>   ‘He probably would, yeah.’

  ‘Then you should be careful of the small blue box in the upper right corner, Officer Brown,’ Kit said, appearing behind Brown.

  Blinking, Brown looked around at the avatar. ‘Uh, you recognise it?’

  ‘I have a number of product catalogues in my files. That is a detonator produced by MarTech Defense Technologies. The chances of it killing you are slim, but it could do significant damage to your hands.’

  ‘Right. Thanks, uh…’

  ‘Kit, Officer Brown. I am Miss Meridian’s PA.’

  ‘Right. You see anything else in here that you recognise?’

  ‘Yes, but all the other components appear to come from standard electronic parts catalogues. I believe the detonator is the only dangerous component.’

  ‘Huh. You can come on jobs like this more often.’

  It took another minute or so before Brown had the hatch above them open. It lifted under its own power, revealing the corridor above, lit up with bright lights for as far as Fox could see, and a metal cage door. ‘Faraday cage,’ Brown said. ‘He’s got a Faraday cage around most of the floor.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Fox said. ‘Blocks electronic signals from inside. Keeps him under the radar.’ She pointed to a large red button mounted on the wall. ‘I figure that opens it. Probably interrupts any wireless devices he has inside while the cage is open. When we hit it, he’s going to know we’re here, if he doesn’t already.’

  Stutter moved up behind her. ‘You hit the button, we’ll rush the place, and you can come in behind us.’ Fox gave him a nod and stepped back, her hand hovering over the large plunger. The team lined up at the gate, ready. ‘Hit it.’ Fox slammed her hand down on the plunger, there was a loud buzz from various locations on the floor, and the gate unlatched. Stutter’s team was pushing through and charging down the single corridor as fast as they could go.

  Fox followed behind them, her pistol held up and ready for the first time. She covered the corridor and the doors the team had vanished through, but not for long. One pair after another sounded off with ‘clear.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Stutter said over the radios. ‘He was here, probably, but he’s gone. Meridian, you’ll want to come down to the last room.’

  Holstering her pistol, Fox walked down the brightly lit corridor into a brightly lit room. All the windows had been sealed over and the Faraday cage built within them. And inside the cage were racks of computers. Most of the computers seemed to be okay, but several racks looked like someone had run molten metal through them. Minotaur had destroyed the bulk storage units before leaving.

  ‘Down here,’ Stutter said from the far end of the room.

  Down here was a terminal area, though that hardly did justice to it. Minotaur had eight large monitors set up in front of three manual keyboards. Fox assumed that he used a virtual terminal on top of the physical ones. He meant business between this rig and all the servers. But what Stutter was standing in front of was a large whiteboard with photographs stuck to it. Lots of photographs, mostly of Nishi Sakura, but Fox saw Charlie Iberson there, Brett Palomino the manager, and…

  ‘You and Helen are on there,’ Kit said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Fox replied. ‘I assume he’s collecting target images. The woman he wants, and the people he thinks he may need to get rid of to get to her. That’s not what bothers me. Look at the images, all of them. The angles are weird. You’d expect a long lens, but these are mostly close range, or at weird, high angles.’

  ‘Security cameras,’ Brown said. ‘Looks to me like they’re from security cameras and cambots.’

  Fox nodded. ‘I don’t think Minotaur leaves the house much. And what’s with all this light? He’s got all these monitors under artificial light. And who runs out of a place like this and leaves the lights on?’

  ‘I have not seen a light switch anywhere you have looked, Fox,’ Kit said. ‘I believe the answer to your question is “a scotophobe.”’

  ‘For those of us without a psychology database?’ Stutter asked.

  ‘Fear of the dark, Sergeant Stutter. Minotaur is, I suspect, mortally afraid of darkness. His shut-in lifestyle suggests agoraphobia as well. That’s–’

  ‘Fear of open spaces. That one I know. My cousin suffers from it, and it does fit with this place. He’s going to be pissed as Hell that he had to quit this place. When he calms down anyway.’

  Fox gave a grunt of displeasure and lifted her helmet off. ‘Palladium Security Solutions would like to extend their services to NAPA to attempt to cull anything useful from this pile of ashes, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’ll talk to my captain. Can’t see him objecting because I doubt you’re going to get anything.’

  ‘I think he used thermite,’ Brown said. ‘Lots of heat, and it pours molten metal through the cabinets. Not much is getting out of that intact.’

  ‘We can hope,’ Fox said, not feeling hopeful.

  Part Three: Insult, Meet Injury

  Luna City, the Moon, 23rd January 2061.

  ‘Damn it, Terri, this better be world-shattering. Do you have any idea what’s going on back home?’ It was not, perhaps, the best greeting ever, but Fox had been fuming ever since the urgent summons to the Moon had been delivered.

  ‘No,’ Terri replied, ‘I don’t. I’ve been at Jenner with my nose buried in world-shattering stuff.’

  ‘Minotaur skipped town, and we don’t know where to. So he’s still a threat. And another body matching the Grant killings has turned up in Central Park and NAPA are locking me out of the investigation. I need to be down there, doing stuff.’

  ‘You need to be up here, analysing this. And I’m not saying anything else about it until we’re in a secure location.’

  Ryan Jarvis, following in Fox’s angry wake with the weary look of one who has heard a tirade one too many times, sighed. ‘If this needs us to look at, I’m just glad you decided to tell us before it went out as a media release.’

  ‘Oh, we won’t be telling anyone else about this for a while. Come on, the shuttle’s ready and waiting. We get to Jenner and then I’ll brief you both.’ Terri turned on her heel and marched off through the main terminal.

  Frowning and grumbling under her breath, Fox followed.

  ~~~

  ‘It certainly isn’t impossible,’ Terri said. ‘If Grant wanted his AI to interact with humans, which he did, obviously, he would have had to get it passed as safe, but it’s been recognised that there were ways to fool the system since… a couple of years after the tests were devised. There have been a number of papers published. None of them give details of exactly how to do it, but a good enough programmer could work it out.’

  ‘So Hannah could be the kind of sociopathic gynoid to be happy going on with Grant’s mission in life?’ Fox asked.

  ‘I think that’s a given. However he did it, she’s clearly not following the standard rules. If you started torturing people for your own amusement and Kit knew, she would report the crimes. Her intrinsic nature would not allow her to remain silent. Hannah said nothing for years.’

  ‘Important note then,’ Jarvis said. ‘If you turn serial killer, Fox, keep Kit out of the loop.’

  ‘I do not believe Fox will become a serial killer, Mister Jarvis,’ Kit responded immediately.

  ‘Thank you, Kit,’ Fox said.

  ‘She has many other legal recourses for violence and would not need the additional outlet.’

  Fox looked at Terri in the shuttle seat beside her. ‘Is it murder if I strangle my PA?’

  ‘No, but I’d be upset. Also, it’s impossible. I suppose you could do it in VR, but she’d just pop back up again.’

  ‘Better and better. I can strangle her over and over again.’

  ‘I know you only say that because you love me,’ Kit said with a bright grin and a cute tilt of her head.

  ‘Terri, did you program her to be evil?’

  ‘No,’ Terri said. ‘I blame her upbringing.’

  ‘Are you accusing
me of bringing up our child badly?’

  ‘Well, it’s not my fault.’

  ‘I want a divorce.’

  Terri grinned. ‘At least your humour’s improved.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. The Grant thing has me on edge. Minotaur may have been set back by having his home base taken out, but I’m willing to bet it’s not the last we’ve seen of him. It’s piling up.’

  ‘Understandable,’ Jarvis said, ‘and I agree about Minotaur. I’m glad you’ve decided to cheer up though.’

  ‘It is never pleasant to see one’s parents squabbling,’ Kit said.

  ‘That’s it,’ Fox said, ‘you’re grounded. For a month.’

  Kit executed a precise stamp of her foot, which would have launched her toward the ceiling if she had been solid, and then proceeded to deadpan, ‘That’s not fair. You don’t understand me. You’re mean and I hate you. Also, other teenage stuff.’

  ‘She got her sense of humour from you too,’ Terri commented.

  Fox shrugged. ‘Well, I had to do something right.’

  Jenner Research Station.

  MarTech’s Jenner Station was just as isolated and isolating as ever. Out on the far side of the Moon and largely buried deep under the lunar surface to avoid radiation, it was the most secure facility MarTech had. Kit described the network defence systems as ‘scary.’

  ‘Now that you’re here,’ Terri said as they made their way, somewhat crabwise in the low gravity, off the shuttle, ‘you’re both going to take at least a few hours to acclimatise before I hit you with the situation report.’

  ‘You know how I hate that placebo acclimatisation crap, Terri,’ Fox said.

  ‘It’s company regulations and you’re straight off ten hours of travelling. Don’t you at least want a rest?’

  ‘I do,’ Jarvis said. ‘A rest, a drink, and a meal that doesn’t taste like plastic.’

  ‘We can do two out of three. I’m not sure about the food.’

  ‘Valid point, but I’ll take it anyway.’

  Fox grumbled something inaudible and then added, ‘Can I go see what Whitwallace has cooking? I’ll sit down and drink coffee while he shows me his new toys.’