Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (77 page)

A bullet struck the metal frame of the carriage, making her dart back, pulling Malik away with her. A second shot rang out, this time whizzing just past the elevator.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Malik said. “Why can’t we catch a break, just for once?”
 

Sasha saw a dancing laser beam jitter across the grated floor. She traced its movements until it climbed up Malik’s leg to rest on his chest.
 

“Oh fuck.”

Chapter 9

Gabe blinked and felt something pressing against his chin. Something cold and hard like steel. All he could see was a dark shadow covering him. He was lying down. He tried to stand but received a blow against the side of his face by the cold steel.
 

“You two are either fucking stupid or insane to come back here.”

A mad rush of images, sounds, and smells assailed Gabe’s mind. He remembered everything with a blast of colour and panic: the falling, the ejection, and Shelley holding a shotgun, approaching him as he tried to unclip the straps on the seat.
 

He pushed himself back and rested up on his elbows. The sight before him confirmed it, as did the throbbing bump on his head. He didn’t know whether that was the result of the crash or Shelley taking out some early revenge.
 

Where was Petal? Frantic, he twisted his head to the right, then the left, the dark mustiness of the place telling him he was back in the converted fuselage that Shelley had made her home. He had been here once before, with Petal. The place was exactly the same, decked out with shelving units and filled to the brim with old parts, both mechanical and electrical.
 

Beyond a curtain divider to his left would be her workshop. A place dominated by a workbench covered in tools, soldering equipment, and electrical analysis devices. Further down the fuselage from the workshop was a sleeping area. That’s where Shelley had once revived Petal after she took a shock from the electrified perimeter fence.

“Where’s Petal?” he asked, suddenly afraid of what Shelley might have done with her.

“I’m here, Gabe,” Petal said. Her voice came not from the sleeping area, but rather to the right, where the cockpit and the first-class area would have been before Shelley gutted and converted the place.
 

“I’m okay,” Petal added.
 

He still couldn’t see her. Her voice wasn’t far off. She must be just beyond the doorway, inside the first-class compartment. He noticed that he was lying on some kind of table. He had a sudden image of being a corpse, and Shelley with her knives and other devices standing over him, deciding how best to skin him.
 

“Now we’re all fucking reacquainted, let’s get down to business, shall we?” Shelley lifted the gun, standing back and to the side. The bright afternoon light filtered through the dust-covered windows, lending the place a reddish glow. Gabe tried to stand; his legs felt weak. Had he been drugged? To his right and through the open door was the shocking pink of Petal’s hair.
 

She was strapped to a chair. She didn’t appear to be too badly injured—at least not on the outside.
 

“What do you want?” Shelley said then, leaning against the curved wall of the plane’s interior, the gun casually held across her arms.
 

She looked even more deranged than the last time he and Petal were there. Shelley’s hair was matted into thick clumps, entwined with wires and circuitry. It made her look like a technological gorgon.
 

“Well,” Gabe said, rubbing his head, trying to clear the throbbing, “we’ve got a deal for ya, something to make up for last time.”

“You think I’ve forgiven you for that? You stole my shit and fucked me over.”

“Not quite,” Petal said. “I think in terms of fucking-over, we were all quite equal in that. Besides, we can’t change the past now, can we? It wasn’t even us that shot you, remember?”

“No, but I can certainly make up for it. I always did like your skin. You’d make a fine coat, you two. A nice two-tone affair. A little coffee and cream to keep me warm in winter.”

Shelley smiled at them; her teeth were just black stumps now, and her gums were no more than purple and green festering sores. Along with her predilection for skinning people, she bolstered her food supply with long pig. Given her reputation, however, it was unlikely she’d get many stumbling upon her compound now.
 

“When’s the last time ya had a proper meal, eh?” Gabe noticed how her collarbones jutted out and how her cheeks were sunken and gaunt.
 

“I get by.”
 

“And I bet ya missing company these days too. Not many come this way anymore, do they?”

She shrugged. “What’s your point, Coffee?”

Ignoring the racial slur, Gabe presented his opening offer. “If ya do a job for us, we’ll give ya a year’s supply of food.”

Shelley looked him up and down. “With the two of you, I could make you last a good while. Food ain’t all that important to me.”

“What is, then? Must get real lonely out here in the desert on your own. No one to talk to, keep ya company. No one to share a tender, intimate moment. You must have... needs.”

“You offering to stay behind and be a fuck-buddy, are you?” Shelley raised an eyebrow.
 

Gabe could see that appealed to her. He smiled, shaking his head. “Nah, not me. I wouldn’t touch you with someone else’s pole.”

Shelley gripped her gun tighter, clenching her jaw at the insult.
 

“But I might have a solution.”

“What is it you two want? I ain’t got all day to stay around here jawing. You’re starting to piss me off.”

“A server,” Petal said, squirming beneath her restraints. “Old tech that needs fixing. We thought you might be able to do the job.”
 

Gabe hoped the promise of the task would appeal to her curiosity. She lived for this stuff. Although she wasn’t able to get one of the EMP-destroyed planes back in the air—partly due to Gabe and Petal not delivering on their previous arrangement—she was known for cobbling together all kinds of tech. She had one of the first working computers and created a limited network to a machine in Baicheng.
 

“What’s wrong with it?” Shelley said, her face relaxing.
 

“Burnt motherboard, overclocked processor. Memory’s intact, though. We need it fixed.”

“Just dump the memory into something else,” Shelley said.

“Not that simple,” Gabe said. “This thing’s unique, real old. We need it in its current state. Memory, motherboard, and processor.”

“And it’s with you?” Shelley asked. “In the wreckage?”

Gabe was going to spin a lie, but realised there was no real point. She would find out anyway. “Yeah.”

“Well then, there ain’t nothin’ stopping me from just taking it, the wreckage, and the food, and killing you pair of tits, is there?”

Gabe shrugged his shoulders. “I guess not. But you won’t.”

“And why’s that?”
 

“Because we know where ya live, which means other people know too, other people with bigger and better weapons, other people that if they don’t hear from us within the next hour will be on the way to shred ya into ribbons. So I suggest, if you wanna continue your miserable little life, ya’ll take the offer on the table and be grateful.”

Gabe stood now and stepped closer to her.
 

But he didn’t intimidate her. She wasn’t intimidated by anything. She laughed at him. “You’re right about one thing, Coffee.”

“What’s that?”

“I do miss having company. You’re an idiot, a clown. You make me laugh.”

“I’m glad ya’re entertained, but right now my head is throbbing, I’m tired, and fed up with your bullshit. If ya wanted to kill us, you’d have done by now. I know damn well ya want this deal. Hell, look at ya. Ya’re nothing but a bag of bones. Y’all be dead within weeks. Ya need this food. And besides, ya ain’t seen the company part of the deal.”

“Well, you big ugly, know-it-all bastard, I suppose you better show me, right? Lead the way.”

Gabe looked back to Petal. She just nodded back at him.

“Fine, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with what we’ve got to offer ya.”

Gabe pushed through the broken metal of the Jaguar’s wreckage until he got to the storage area behind the rear seats. Stuck within the webbing was the server, thankfully still nestled in its storage case, undamaged, along with the transcendent. The latter hung awkwardly from the straps, bent over at the waist.
 

“What’s this, then?” Shelley said, poking it with her shotgun. “A dead body? If I wanted one of them, I’d just kill you and that precious little bitch back there.”

“It ain’t dead,” Gabe said. “You know anything about transcendents?”

“What you talking about? What the hell is it? Some kind of robot?”

“Yeah, not far off. Think of it as a meat robot. One that has its own personality: an advanced type of AI downloaded into a computer-controlled body.”

“Quantum processing?” Shelley asked.
 

“Yeah.”

“Interesting.” She pointed a clawed hand at the server. “And this is what you want fixing? This old piece of junk? You know that shit hasn’t been made for, like, fifty-odd years?”

“I know. It’s what makes it special.”

“I tell you what,” Shelley said, fixated on the transcendent. “I’ll take you up on the offer, but I can’t promise I can fix the server.”

“No fix, no deal,” Gabe said. “Just because ya’ve a shotgun on ya, don’t make ya invincible. Ya ain’t dealing with some amateurs. Remember that. Remember last time.”

Shelley considered it for a moment and lifted up the transcendent’s head, staring at its face. “Quite handsome, really. What’s the personality on it? Will it do what I want?”

“Absolutely. It’ll do whatever ya want. It’ll be yours to control.”

“And it don’t need food or whatever or anything?”

“Nah, just regular maintenance for the joints and a fuel source, which we’re prepared to supply. It’ll be good for ten years at least. I dare say far longer than you.” Gabe couldn’t tell how old she was, such was her condition. She could be anywhere from forty to ninety.

“If I can fix this server for you, I want something else on top.”

“Really? A freakin’ manservant and a year’s supply of food ain’t enough? All we want is a bit of soldering and repair work. We ain’t asking you to build a space station or anything.”

“You need my services more than I need your fuck-bot.”

Gabe sighed. “What is it?”

She tapped her shotgun against the metal of the wreckage. “This. I want this.”

Enna would lose her shit. He could just see Enna’s face redden, her lips tighten, and the inevitable explosion of fury if he gave away her Jaguar. It was bad enough that it had crashed, but to just give it away with all the tech on-board would drive her mad. But still, it was important to get the server fixed. Everything hinged on it. Petal hinged on it.

He’d just have to take her anger on the chin.
 

“Fine.”

“How do I activate the fuck-bot?”

“Ya don’t,” Gabe said. “I’ll do that once ya’ve fixed the server. Until then it’s just a useless piece of genetic computing. You won’t even be able to use the parts as they’re DNA-linked.”

It was Shelley’s turn to sigh. She spat on the ground. “I hated you the moment I saw you.”
 

“Likewise, you freak.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

She slapped his hand away and turned her back. “Deal,” she said over her shoulder as she hobbled back to her home.

Gabe smiled. It went better than he expected. But then he wasn’t fully expecting to get this far alive. Now all he needed to do was find a way of contacting Enna and arrange for transport. His internal communications weren’t picking up any radio signal above a constant hum of static, and without Omega running, there was no Meshwork to rely on.
 

He figured Shelley would have some means of communication. Unstrapping the server, he lifted it over his shoulder and headed after her.

Chapter 10

As they continued to descend in the elevator, Sasha traced the laser beam away from the point on Malik’s chest, out through the cage, and across to a flat-roofed building. She saw the glint of metal and the end of the laser scope. She saw a brief flash of light reflect from the scope. With a shove, she moved Malik roughly to one side, rocking the elevator car with the force.
 

A bullet clanged against the metal cage. The laser beam traced a new path. This time, aiming for her. Like before, she traced it back, knowing where her shooter was. She raised the laser pistol she took from the guards back in the tunnel, held her breath, closed one eye, and focussed. She took into consideration the rate at which the elevator was falling, adjusted her aim, and fired through a gap in the cage.
 

A small scream sounded, and the targeting laser scattered up the rear of the elevator before coming to rest on the exterior of the chimney.