Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire (50 page)

In fact, their hand signals as they crept through an abandoned downstairs laundromat were remarkably close to the military language she’d known forever, save for a few intriguing variations. Pausing to look back from a corridor, she made a few of her own signals to them, and was instantly understood.

There were no lights in these buildings at all, and the central corridors were so dark the kids must have been nearly blind . . . but the way was straight and predictable, and they walked fast enough with fingertips trailing along the walls. And as they neared the front lobby, things brightened fast. There was a lot of city light outside, coming from somewhere ahead. That was Chancelry Quarter, on the other side of the barrier, where buildings loomed tall and life was good.

The kids ducked left instead of moving through the lobby, and Sandy saw its windows were shattered and its walls peppered with shrapnel marks. Whether it was recent or crash-damage, she couldn’t tell.

Danya led them up stairs to the third story, then indicated they should wait in the corridor outside an apartment. Sandy was having none of it and followed him in. Within was a regular apartment, stripped of everything valuable. A rope was tied firmly to a kitchen fitting beneath the sink. Another slim line, like fishing line, made a connection from the apartment balcony to the neighbouring building. Two lines, Sandy saw, like a little pulley system. Danya set about securing the rope end to the pulley . . . it would take the rope across to the other side. Leaving the rope there permanently would show up on some bot’s scan, but fishing line would probably not. And where the hell did they get fishing line on Droze? With no nearby oceans or fish?

Sandy indicated a negative to Danya. He frowned at her, and pointed across to the neighbouring building. Walking streets was too dangerous, obviously—they were easy to monitor, and even if you didn’t die immediately, the monitors would know you were there. Sandy nodded her understanding, then pointed to herself, pointed to him, and mimed a throw to the neighbouring building. Danya looked at her as though she was nuts.

Svetlana came into the room with a questioning expression. Sandy repeated her throwing mime. Svetlana jumped up and down with enthusiasm, and pointed to herself. Sandy grinned. Danya stepped forward sternly to indicate that however nuts, he’d go first. Svetlana made a face at him.

It wasn’t a long throw, just four meters, but further than a kid could jump with no run-up. Sandy lobbed Danya neatly over the opposing balcony rail, then did the same for Svetlana. Then she jumped herself and left Gunter to deal with the other straights.

This time it was down to the basement, Sandy now insisting on leading the way, pistol in hand, checking back on Danya for instructions. In the basement there was no light at all. Danya pulled a flashlight and led past dead pumps and heaters to a service room. Inside, Sandy found a hole in the wall, leading to a service tunnel for power and com cables. Within was enough space for a kid to crawl comfortably, and an adult uncomfortably.

Sandy definitely went first this time, beneath the opposing road. Surely Chancelry knew about these access tunnels, and would guard or booby-trap them. But then, the corporations had never been interested in the population beyond their walls, had ignored it and been disinterested in their doings. Did they even have detailed planning schematics of the non-corporate city beyond their walls? No one here had had to gain planning approval before building anything.

At the other end, another hole was covered by a metal sheet, opening into another basement-adjoining room. Sandy cleared it and the basement beyond before clearing Danya and Svetlana to come through. Modeg stayed to guard the basement, as Zhao had remained to guard the balcony crossing . . . Danya signalled to her that he wasn’t happy leaving people behind, it only increased the chances of discovery. Sandy could see his point, but Home Guard weren’t incapable, bots were pretty stupid, and a random sector search that discovered their trail could be neutralised before it transmitted back. Bots were not in constant communication with HQ because HQ blocked all outside transmissions, fearing subversion. Which was why they were having to sneak inside the kill zone to begin with . . . but it did mean bots could be taken out without HQ’s immediate knowledge, provided it was done fast.

And leaving people behind to guard the trail meant they wouldn’t be ambushed on the way back. Though probably Danya knew several other ways.

The next crossing was six stories up, this time a hidden plank bridging three meters between close balconies. Or it would have done, if the kids hadn’t had Sandy. They’d barely gotten over and inside when Sandy heard a whining sound, and ushered them quickly into the back of the apartment. A hover UAV went over, lift fans whirring. Sandy wasn’t so worried about them. There was no way to make them silent; she could hear them coming a long way off. But Danya indicated the spot he knew was just one building over, so they left Duage at the balcony, meaning now it was just them and Gunter.

They took stairs down, then a fast door past a corridor and into the deserted kitchen of what had once been a ground floor restaurant. Sandy took guard by the kitchen doorway and peered out. The restaurant beyond was a wreck, destroyed by weapons fire long ago. Danya indicated out and to the side, and after a full scan, Sandy silently did that. The side door was missing, and the wreck of a crashed aircar had come down right alongside, between buildings, providing cover.

Then Sandy heard it coming—tires up the road—and gestured Danya quickly back into the doorway. Danya in turn gestured to Svetlana, who darted across to join him. None of them looked when the bot passed—most recon bots had complete 360-degree vision, and if you could see them, odds were they could see you. Best to hide, and listen. Sandy recalled old tales of Jason fighting Medusa, duelling with a foe he wasn’t able to look at without turning to stone. She reckoned this one had just the four wheels, weighed perhaps half a ton. Probably had more firepower than she felt like dealing with if she could avoid it.

They left Gunter to guard that crossing, moved quickly into the neighbouring building, then took the stairs. Two floors from the top, Danya took them into a corridor, then finally to an apartment doorway. Sandy opened it quietly and cleared the room as best she could, crawling low behind the bed. The room was bright with light from nearby towers. She lay on the floor behind the bed, wondering if she should roll across to the bathroom to check it was clear. She decided against it—any one of those towers could have AI-analysed telescopes trained on these buildings, and the windows were clear to see through. Any movement could conceivably launch a high explosive round in here within a matter of seconds.

So. She took off her small backpack and began setting up the unit the Home Guard had lent her. It was a military issue encrypted radio, an ancient thing at least a century old, but in good working order and suitable for her purposes. This apartment, Danya had assured her, was the only one he knew with a view of a Chancelry com tower, and within a hundred meters. That was within the boundary of Chancelry’s own chatter, and if she set the frequency right, should get confused amidst all the other signals; a lot of them were automated along the barrier, plus all those civvie signals . . . even if the location triangulation did get set onto her, it probably couldn’t place her with certainty outside the barrier. She hoped.

She placed the little transmission dish against the pillow—no automated scan was sensitive enough to see that through all this light contrast—and began listening. Danya and Svetlana joined her, backs to the bed, one on either side and watching with curiosity. Sandy put the unit in her lap, then plugged the cord into her head, not wanting to leak even the smallest local transmission.

With the control panels up, she received for a moment. Lots of traffic; a genuine cacophony. Excellent. She sent her own signal to join them, modulating it to resemble them as much as possible. That took some work, but she was somewhat designed for this, too—one of those reflexive programs that just happened when she thought about it. Home Guard had provided her with thousands of local pass keys and identities, and after a little while of listening she was able to determine which ones seemed most likely to work. She tried one. A com tower asked for a pass key, which she saw as a 3-D graphic on internals, and 3-D graphics asking for pass keys was her bread and butter.

She gave the kids a thumbs-up to indicate she was in. Svetlana pulled out a little portable screen and pointed to it questioningly, wondering if she could be allowed to see what was going on. Sandy shook her head . . . they lacked the right cord. Svetlana rolled her eyes and looked immediately bored. Sandy smiled. Kids.

But the network . . . this was more like it. This was a very big network, but nothing compared to Tanusha. Lots of it looked automated, but that just made it predictable, and she flew down gleaming visual highways, looking for branch-offs and offshoots. How to find a single GI in this network? Narrow it down and keep narrowing. Experimental GIs wouldn’t be allowed to just roam. Somewhere heavily shielded, then. Chancelry HQ, someplace very hard to get into.

It wasn’t hard to find, but it was heavily shielded. On internals it looked like what medieval knights must have seen staring up at the walls of impenetrable castles, huge barriers designed to keep everything out. But unlike castles, network barriers had to be penetrable; if there was no communication with the outside, there was no point putting it on a network at all. She just had to find a way to fool it into thinking she was an insider. And that, with her skills in a League-software environment, was just a matter of time.

“You’d do more good staying on station and working on the problem up here,” Cai told the three Feddie agents as they sat on his bare-boards floor and contemplated a shared station graphic.

“No,” Rhian said firmly, cleaning one of her pistols. “I came to help Sandy and our other GI friends. We can’t do that if we’re not on the planet.”

“Getting down to the planet’s going to be very hard without ISO help,” said Ari. “Forging IDs for a downworld berth wouldn’t be hard without them, but now they’re working with League again, and League’s at least paying friendly visits to New Torah, we can’t assume ISO hasn’t told everyone that we’ve arrived.”

Cai’s apartment was in a deserted quarter of the station. It was directly beside a heating vent, or it would have been freezing instead of merely cold. Big windows overlooked the docks, covered now by a big tarpaulin. It must have been quite an upmarket joint when the station was fully occupied and buzzing. Now, stripped of all fittings, it echoed.

“Look,” said Cai. “League resumed contact with New Torah at least two years ago. I’ve been doing recon in these parts for a while, and I know this for a fact. I suspect it has something to do with whatever Chancelry is up to with their GIs. Chancelry is doing all kinds of experiments on GI technology . . .”

“Why?” asked Ari.

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, League wants a part of it.”

“Chancelry’s a heavy arms manufacturer,” Ari muttered, rubbing his forehead. “What do they even want with GIs?” He glanced at Cai. Cai said nothing. Ari’s eyes narrowed. “You know something, don’t you? Who do you work for, some private League corporation? Maybe Mohindi Group, worried Chancelry’s stealing a lead on you?”

“You can ask all you want,” said Cai, “but I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

“Hang on,” said Vanessa. “ISO’s entire premise for this operation was that League didn’t want anything to do with New Torah. That they had no interest in intervening here, didn’t want to admit New Torah was a problem, and would start a war with the Federation if the Federation tried it instead. Now you’re saying League’s actually been here talking to New Torah for two years?”

“At least,” said Cai. “So if the ISO were upset at their own government for something, it wasn’t that.”

“Maybe . . .” Ari’s eyes widened a little. “Maybe ISO weren’t upset League wanted nothing to do with New Torah. Maybe they were upset League had too much to do with them.”

Everyone looked at him.

“Okay, okay,” he said, “think about this. League Gov gets involved with New Torah, the last place in the known universe they’re actually welcome. I mean, they’d be more welcome on Callay.”

“’Specially amongst your friends,” remarked Vanessa.

“Suddenly Chancelry Corporation, New Torah’s biggest surviving heavy arms manufacturer, starts making GIs. Heavily experimental ones. No media out here, no human rights observers . . .”

“Few enough even back League-side,” Rhian said drily.

“Damn sight more than here,” Ari retorted. “Anyway, we don’t know what the hell they’re up to with GIs. But that’s the point, neither do the ISO. And ISO have senior high-des GIs like Mustafa, who take this stuff very seriously. They want to know what their own government is up to, but their own government won’t tell ISO because they know ISO will get pissed.”

“Oh, fuck,” said Vanessa, blinking. “Oh, they fucking suckered us right in, didn’t they?”