Freedom Incorporated (83 page)

Nobody else understood
the joke.

“
Well, you
see,” he began explaining unbidden. “I honestly didn’t think she
had any brains. This comes as a surprise.” The sight of so much
blood turned him on. That corner of his sexual drive disgusted him,
but didn’t stop him from wanting to rape Jen.

Dan couldn’t say the
deaths had saddened him, but he felt sick from Esteban’s total
disregard for the associated emotions that Dan bore so heavily.
He’d never intended to kill Michele, and hadn’t known what to do
with Jackie. Blackmailing her into allowing Jen, Cookie and
Samantha to live in peace would’ve been a utopian if impractical
option.

“
And after you
stormed in and murdered Jackie and Michele, I came to the rescue
and killed you.” Esteban turned the gun on Dan. “It’s a pity
UniForce lost its top two bounty hunters.”

“
Two?”

“
The Raven bit
the dust about ten minutes ago. Slain by an assassin would you
believe?” Esteban choked on a laugh. “Serves the son of a bitch
right. How fucked up do you have to be to kill your public
CEO?”

“
I’m surprised
you care.” Dan didn’t think Esteban was the sort of person to
lament the death of one, two or a hundred bounty
hunters.

“
Oh, but I do.
You see, now that they’re dead” – he jerked a thumb to where Jackie
and Michele had slumped – “it’s open slather for running the
company. And you probably also see I’m closest to the top, so I’ll
be calling the shots. And losing good bounty hunters is bad for
business.” Esteban was in a fantastic mood; he felt better than if
he’d just won the sweepstakes. And best of all, he was going to
kill Dan. “And you, Sutherland, have the honour of being first to
die – Jackie and that bimbo didn’t count.” He levelled the weapon
at Dan’s chest and said with relish, “I win.”

The gun fired.

And Dan
recoiled, expecting more pain than he actually felt. It felt as
if…
As if I haven’t been shot at
all.
His brain was still processing data
while he staggered backward. He thought it somewhat strange that
Esteban was falling too. It didn’t quite make sense. Instincts and
reflexes made him move his feet and, rather than toppling in a
puddle of blood, he stepped back.

That’s when he saw the
gun in Jen’s hands. She pulled the trigger a second, third and
fourth time, continuing until the weapon was empty and thoroughly
riddling Esteban’s body with bullets, watching as his clothes
turned burgundy in ragged but fast spreading blotches.

Dan encased her in his
arms. She was shaking like a brittle leaf and her eyes were wide,
absorbing the carnage she’d created.

Simon was the first to
speak. “Good shot, girl.”

“
Yeah,” Dan
cooed, mirroring the sentiment. “You did great.”

Jen made a sound, a cross
between a sob and a giddy laugh. In the end, Esteban’s
over-inflated male ego had been his undoing. It’d never occurred to
him that a woman would carry a weapon – a silly mistake considering
he’d only just discovered his best assassin was female.

She was trembling and Dan
tried to soothe her. “It’s over, you’re safe.”

“
Over?” Jen
grunted indelicately. “How do you figure that? Everyone’s dead! How
do you expect we’ll get away with this? They’ll read the logs, find
our signatures, and hunt us down even more ferociously than
before.”

“
Hmm… she has
a point.” Simon scratched his chin.

“
Then we’ll
just have to take over ourselves,” Dan proposed
resolutely.

“
Huh?” Simon
didn’t follow. Neither did Jen.

“
Well, like
Esteban said, it’s open slather for the top job. Why can’t we take
over? If we step in, we’ll be holding all the cards. If we step
aside, they’ll hunt us down. It doesn’t look like we have much
choice.”

Simon’s phone vibrated
once and then stopped. He checked the display and saw a number he
didn’t recognise. It buzzed again and he answered, “Yes?” Then,
after a short pause, he handed it to Jen. “It’s for
you.”

“
What?” She
hesitantly accepted the mobile. “Hello?”

“
Jen, it’s
me.”

“
Samantha?
Where are you?”

“
Would you
believe we’re in San Francisco?”

“
No
way!”

“
Yeah
way.”

“
How? Why?”
Everything was happening too fast. She wanted to put life on pause
so she could sort through the mess.

“
The Raven was
tracking us in Sydney,” Samantha explained briefly. “We didn’t know
where to go or what to do, but we knew you guys were here so this
is where we came.”

“
You don’t
have to worry about the Raven anymore,” Jen said quietly. “I think
he’s dead.”

Samantha was silent for a
time before speaking in a cautious tone. “Are you okay?”

“
Yeah, we’re
fine.” She huffed. “Except that everyone’s dead.”

“
Uh, should
you be saying that?” Samantha warned. “You know…
it
might be
listening.”

“
I wouldn’t
worry about that either.” Jen surveyed the splatter of blood and
smear of brains, which were congealing on the walls in Jackie’s
office. “Nobody’s here to do anything about it. Echelon can listen
all it likes.”

Samantha still guarded
her words carefully. “Where are you? Can you direct me?”

“
Sure.”

They walked into Jackie’s
gore-filled office ten minutes later. Cookie’s jaw went slack and
the scene sucked the air from Samantha’s lungs. “Did you do
this?”

“
We had help.”
Jen waved at Esteban’s body. “He did most of it.” Then she turned
to Dan and suggested, “Why don’t you share your idea?”

“
I think we
should take control of the company,” Dan said with casual aplomb.
“I guess you could call it a hostile takeover.”

Cookie squinted through
his confusion. “And how do you suppose we do that?”

“
I don’t know.
But what else can we do? What do you think they’ll do if we
run?”

“
The same
thing they’ll do if we stay!” Samantha predicted glumly.

And her uncharacteristic
pessimism sparked a violent storm of squabbling and intense debate
during which nobody was honestly listening to anybody
else.

Jen stood
apart from the fracas. She was staring out the window, mesmerised
by the San Francisco skyline. It was pretty from above and she
enjoyed looking down over the city as it slept on a lazy Sunday.
She was warming to Dan’s absurd idea.
It
could just work…
It would certainly be the
ultimate win for freedom of speech. “Hey listen!” Jen said, slicing
through their bickering with two words. “There are two points we
should consider. First, we have no choice. Dan’s right. If we leave
now, they’ll hunt us to the end of our days. Echelon will
always
be listening for
our voices and we’ll
always
be top priority terrorist targets.”

Samantha was about to say
something caustic but clamped her jaw shut to hear what else Jen
had to say.

“
If we stay,
we can control Echelon. We can tame it, make it work the way I’d
like to believe it was always intended.” Jen’s motivations were
askew from Dan’s but the result was the same. They both saw the
sense in controlling UniForce. None of the upper management team
was alive, and that produced the perfect opportunity to steal the
kitty.

“
Okay,”
Samantha yielded. “That sounds nice, but you still haven’t answered
how.”

“
Who knew
Jackie was running things? Nobody! As far as the shareholders were
concerned, she was searching for a replacement for Paul
Savage.”

“
So?” Cookie
asked, not seeing her point.

“
All we need
to do is order a shareholder meeting, propose a new CEO –
our
CEO – and get them to
vote for it. Then it’s as good as done,” Jen said in a tumble of
words, getting excited by the idea.

“
What about
UniForce employees?” Samantha asked. “Surely they won’t let us tell
them what to do.”

“
They will if
the shareholders vote for it; they won’t have a choice. Besides,
nobody questions those things… shareholders vote, a company gets a
new CEO – no big change for the employees.”

“
What about
the system administrators?” Cookie asked, thinking about his
nemesis.

“
No
different.” Jen was convinced. “They’ll follow orders the same as
everyone else.”

“
Okay, so who
wants the job?” Cookie asked abruptly. “You?”

Jen vehemently shook her
head. “Not a chance. Besides, the shareholders wouldn’t vote for a
26-year-old girl. They want someone with experience.”

“
Then who?”
Dan couldn’t think of anyone.

Oh
dear…
Jen’s eyes frosted over. “I know
someone.”

They waited, but it was
in vain. Jen remained silent, lost in a private world of
thought.

Eventually Samantha
cracked. “Who?”

“
You’ll see.”
She stabbed Cookie with an urgent look. “You need to program our
chips into the security database. Can you do it?”

Cookie looked offended.
“Of course I can. I just need to find the IT department.” He was
secretly itching to get his hands on Echelon; even a small peek
would be enough. He needed to see what grade of machine powered the
world’s most influential system.

“
I’ll come,”
Dan suggested. “You don’t want to walk around here
alone.”

“
When you’re
finished, find security and tell them Esteban went berserk because
Jackie told him he wasn’t getting a promotion.”

“
I see what
you’re doing,” Dan said appreciatively. He liked the way Jen’s mind
worked. “Then we locate someone who knows how to call an urgent
shareholder meeting.”

“
Right.” Jen
was already heading for the door. “And I’ll find us a CEO.” Then
she added with a roguish smile, “I’ll try not to take too
long.”

*

Monday
, September
20
, 2066

04
:
03
Coffs Harbour, Australia

J
en felt guilty for waking him in the
middle of the night. She felt even worse for scaring him half to
death.

“
Do you want
to give me a heart attack or something?” John Cameron held a hand
over his chest to calm his thumping heart.

“
I said I was
sorry.” Jen didn’t know how else to say it. “Do you want me to say
it again?”

“
Yeah.” He
mocked anger. “It might help.”

“
Dad, I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to nearly give you a heart attack.” But Jen
couldn’t contain her smile. It was good to see him again. While
trapped in the guild, she’d feared she’d seen the last of him. She
was hiding the piano-wire scars on her wrists by keeping the cuffs
of her long sleeved shirt buttoned.

“
Something’s
wrong,” John Cameron’s instincts warned him. “What is
it?”

“
I’m in a spot
of trouble,” Jen started, understating the truth to ease him into
the bad news.

“
It’s your
activism, isn’t it?” he whispered as if there were unwelcome ears
in his house – electronic ears attached to a world of surveillance
that waited patiently for people to incriminate themselves. Many
people falling under ‘reasonable’ suspicion had bugs in their
houses.

Jen shook her
head; though she was obviously hiding something. “No, it’s not
that.”
Uh… stretching the truth a little
aren’t we?
“Not exactly anyway.”

John, although
frustrated and boiling with anger that she hadn’t listened to him
earlier, couldn’t turn his back on his daughter. He
had
to help her. “What can
I do?”

“
Have you ever
considered a career change?” Jen smiled sweetly.

“
What are you
getting at?” He didn’t like it when Jen was deliberately being
obscure. He preferred to hear precisely what she was
thinking.

“
There’s a job
opening at UniForce and I was hoping you’d apply.”

“
UniForce?”
John blurted in surprise. He could scarcely believe what he was
hearing.
Is this my daughter? Or an
impostor?
“Are you serious? Don’t they
defile everything you stand for?”

She nodded. “But I was
hoping you’d change that.”

“
Me?” John’s
bushy eyebrows shot up. “What could I possibly do?”

“
The opening
is for CEO.”

*

Sunday
, September 1
9
, 2066

UniForce
Headquarters

10
:
07
San Francisco, USA