Noble Conflict (26 page)

Kaspar wasn’t really sure what that was and he wasn’t keen on displaying his ignorance. ‘It’s another camouflaged data node like the one on Wissant Avenue?’

‘Yep!’

‘Why are we going there?’

‘Because it turns out that you and Mackenzie are geniuses. I knew she was, but you’re a surprise!’

‘Sir?’

‘My two tame nerds finished their analysis of your analysis and their conclusion is that you and Mac were both spot on. They reckon that the chances of Senior Commander Tilkian being one of the good guys are about one in a billion. They expanded on your work and found so many anomalies in Tilkian’s deployments that their computer had a nervous breakdown from counting them.’

Kaspar was stunned. Part of him had hoped that he was wrong, that this was all just some huge misunderstanding, that the bots had been misprogrammed or that Tilkian was doing some undercover work for the Council. But to know his suspicions were accurate  . . .

‘Turns out that Mac’s approach to information mining is real cutting-edge thinking. It could revolutionize data analysis. I should be proud as I recommended her for the job, but you and her have been gigantic pains in my battle-hardened buttocks. And it seems that you in particular have a real talent for working the bots. Must be all the practice you’ve had.’ Voss’s pointed look made Kaspar’s face grow warm. ‘When this is over, the geek squad want to work with both of you on a series of projects in all kinds of areas – history, physics, meteorology. Who’d have thought it, from melon farmer to data-mining superstar?’

Kaspar’s face grew warmer. ‘So why are we going to  . . . wherever it is you said we were going?’

‘Because we got a tip-off.’

‘From who?’

‘From the lady in black who gave you such a kicking in
the desert or, if you prefer, the lady in white who gave you such a kicking in the massage parlour.’

‘It was a gym.’ Kaspar was really starting to miss the Voss who screamed and shouted. This new jovial one was winding him right up. ‘You got a tip-off? From a ninja? No way.’

‘Well, not directly. Through you. It seems the problem with touch-empaths is that once they’ve established physical contact with you, their emotions can sort of leak out. You’ve been exceptionally receptive to the one who’s been handing you your butt.’

Kaspar chose to ignore that.

‘I did wonder, because of the dreams I’ve been having,’ he said. He decided to keep the well at his uncle’s farm to himself, not wanting to get his uncle into trouble. ‘But wouldn’t it be fairly stupid for a touch-empath to work as a masseuse then?’ he said.

‘Maybe not. Don’t forget we use chemicals in the water to suppress that ability, so none of the Alliance are supposed to be receptive to that kind of mental connection. Maybe the leaking only happens when the true empaths get emotional, lose control. You met her when you were both – let’s say – “excited”. First time, she’d just killed your buddy and you’d just killed hers. Emotions were definitely running high. Second time, you strolled into her place of business, blew her cover wide open and said, “Hello, I’m a Guardian!” Must’ve spooked the hell out of her.’

‘OK, but how did that turn into a tip-off?’

‘Because the nerds took all the images that they got out of you under the hypnotics and ran the world’s biggest bot-search on them. If you said you saw a tree they built a database of trees. If you said croissant  . . .’

‘They built a database of croissants?’

‘Yep. Then they did something called Recursive Symbolic  . . . Signifier Deconstruction-ism  . . . or something equally obscure. Basically they cross-referenced everything. And I mean everything. One cohort of bots actually worked out the address of the massage parlour without being told.’

‘Gym.’

‘Whatever. Anyway, it turns out that your pal from the “gym” had something on her mind. Something to do with power, and blackouts and tunnels.’

‘I don’t understand. You think that they’re going to hit this Power Grid Statistical place tonight? Why is this particular one special? They’re blowing up power installations all over. Power plants, cable distribution nodes  . . .’

‘Because according to the geeks she spent ages studying this place. And besides, it isn’t an active node. It doesn’t control anything. You can’t hurt the grid from there. So this isn’t just a quick bomb-and-run mission. No, she’s going to be there, doing that ninja computer shit. Only this time we’re going to be there too. Except that after we zap her, we’re not handing her over to Tilkian’s mob so that they can lobotomize her and stick her in a filing cabinet to cover their tracks. We are going to do some interrogating of our own.’

Kaspar’s thoughts swung all over the place on hearing that. Rhea captured and interrogated  . . . How was he meant to feel about that? She’d saved his life. But it was thanks to her and her partner that his best mate Dillon was dead. He owed her nothing.

Except that she’d stayed with him through the night when he’d needed someone desperately. But she’d probably only visited him in the first place to mess with his head and to obtain intel from him. Right and wrong were never meant to be this confusing, this contradictory.

‘Sir, about Rhea  . . .’

‘Yes?’ Already a frown had produced a line between Voss’s eyebrows as he regarded Kaspar.

‘Nothing, sir.’

Though Kaspar might not like it, Voss was right. Rhea could provide vital information about the Insurgents and their ultimate objective, and she’d also be able to shed light on Tilkian’s involvement with the Insurgency, if any. That was the top priority now. Lives were at stake. If Tilkian wasn’t involved with the real Insurgents – and Kaspar was now convinced that he wasn’t – then it would prove once and for all that he and the others in the SSG were the real phantoms. Every time an Insurgent got caught, the results of their interrogation were faked and they were silenced for ever and put in cold storage. Or maybe they weren’t even interrogated at all? Tonight might be the first time that anyone actually asked an Insurgent meaningful questions and was truly interested in getting meaningful answers.

‘So what does this node do if it doesn’t actually help run the grid?’ asked Kaspar after a lengthy silence.

‘Apparently, it’s the backup of a backup for a utility that analyses demand for electrical power. It produces charts and histograms that allow better load-balancing and future planning for power stations. It is the world’s most boring computer node. It’s a nerdy lump of statistics of no importance.’

‘Then why is Rhea interested in it?’ frowned Kaspar.

Voss raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t go all civilian on me, Wilding. You ask that like you think I should know the answer.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Kaspar. ‘I don’t get it, though. Why expend all that time and energy on statistics?’

‘Tell you what, once we fry her arse I’ll be sure to put that at the top of my list of questions.’

‘Won’t she have the usual support team?’ said Kaspar. ‘There’s just the two of us.’

‘I don’t think she will. This place is way down everyone’s list of priorities. It doesn’t even make it onto our list of secondary targets. And because I’m a careful man, I’ve already got a unit responding to a substation alert just across the river. We do a target recce. If she’s alone – we go in. If she has support – we can whistle up reinforcements in under two minutes.’

Kaspar nodded. Finally this was coming together. He checked the emitter on his rifle, popped the power pack, wiped the terminals and slammed the battery back home,
waiting for the maximum charge to build. Then he did the same for Voss’s weapon.

‘Time for answers,’ said Voss. ‘It’s payback time.’

Kaspar nodded grimly.

The rock in the pit of his stomach told him that tonight was going to change the course of the rest of his life.

Voss stopped the hovercar in a side street about two hundred metres away from the node and both men put on their tactical helmets, adjusting their multi-function goggles and respirators. Desperate Insurgents had been known to launch knock-out gas attacks, and occasionally worse, when cornered. Rhea was a formidable enemy – it would be incredibly foolish to underestimate her. Kaspar needed to stay sharp and focused. But his major concern wasn’t so much Rhea as Tilkian and the rest of his murdering crew. If they had got wind of what Rhea was up to, they might feel it was an ideal opportunity to cause more devastation and blame it on the Insurgents.

Kaspar and his commander stepped out into the evening chill. Kaspar inhaled deeply, welcoming a last lungful of cool night-time air into his lungs before snapping on the respirator. In the distance he could see the blue and yellow lights of the skyscrapers at the centre of Capital City. Round the corner, South Herdjis Lane was totally deserted.

Both men advanced slowly up the street, covering each other. At any moment Kaspar expected to come across
an Insurgent lurking behind a bush, but there was no one. They both bypassed the bungalow and checked as far as the next junction, but there was no sign of an Insurgency support team. No vehicles, no signs, no noises, no infrared signatures, nothing. Kaspar wondered how Rhea had arrived without a vehicle, but she could have parked two clicks away and run in. Or she might not be there at all. The two Guardians stealthily retraced their steps until they reached the node.

Voss held up his hand and they stopped, one either side of the front door. Voss pointed at himself and then sliced the air with his hand at neck height indicating that he would go in high, then he pointed at Kaspar and made another slice at hip level, telling Kaspar to go low. Kaspar nodded. The street was so quiet. All Kaspar could hear was the faint whine of his rifle in his headset and the sound of his own breathing into the respirator.

Voss signalled – GO!

Kaspar leaned in and unlatched the door, Voss kicked it wide open and fired a wide-focus stun beam into the hall just in case there was anyone standing there – but there wasn’t. Kaspar stayed in a crouch, covering Voss, who stepped past him and advanced as far as the door that led into the main area where the computers were housed. As soon as he reached it, Voss fired another wide beam into the computer hall. His rifle hadn’t built to full charge yet – but then he didn’t want full charge. He didn’t need it, nor did he want the electro-magnetic pulse to fry the computer equipment. The shot was just to get anyone’s
head down while Kaspar followed by lobbing in three rapid-dispersal gas grenades. They exploded together and the room was instantly filled with a dense cloud of luxothane-G gas that would incapacitate anyone for a couple of hours.

Once in the room, Kaspar headed left, while Voss turned right. They both had their goggles set to infrared mode so that they would be able see any heat signatures, but there was nothing. The tall cabinets that housed the computers partitioned the large room into half a dozen narrow aisles that would have to be checked one by one. Kaspar worked his way to the end, sweeping each aisle. Nothing. When he turned, he saw that Voss had found nothing either. As they both started to move back towards the door, the powerful computer-room air conditioning had already started to disperse the gas.

A warning tone in Kaspar’s headset and a small light in the peripheral zone of his goggles indicated that the room was now bright enough to see without infrared filters.

‘Go white,’ Voss ordered into his throat microphone.

Kaspar clicked off infra-red mode. Looking left, up the alleyway between two cabinets, Kaspar noticed something that he hadn’t seen in IR mode. Lying on the floor, in the centre of one of the big floor tiles, was a vacuum-lifter, a handle with two big suckers attached. When applied to a floor tile, the vacuum-lifter stuck like glue and allowed the attached tile to be lifted out so as to allow access to the underfloor cabling. A valve on the handle let air back into the suckers to break the seal. It was standard equipment in
a computer installation, but this one had just been left in the middle of the floor. The maintenance guys were usually really anal about tidying stuff away. This looked like someone was still working.

Voss opened his mouth to speak, but Kaspar put his fingers to his lips to stop him, then signalled that Voss should look at the floor. Voss nodded and a few more silent signals were all it took to make their plan.

‘I told you this was a stupid idea,’ Voss shouted. ‘There are bombs going off all over and we’ve just wasted our time on a fool’s errand. Let’s get out of here and do some proper work instead of investigating your psychic hunches.’

The guy should have been an actor.

‘Sorry, sir,’ replied Kaspar. He pulled off his headset and throat mike and placed them on a nearby computer cabinet.

The two Guardians stomped noisily out of the computer room, leaving the door open, and headed along the hall. Voss opened the front door, before slamming it shut again. Both men then crept as stealthily as possible back to the computer room. With his headset off, Kaspar could hear nothing but the throb of the air conditioning, but Voss listened intently, his head cocked to one side and his finger pressing the earpiece deeper into his ear.

For a couple of moments there was nothing and Kaspar started to have doubts. Then Voss looked up at Kaspar and gave a quick thumbs-up. Both men slipped back in, rifles raised and ready, and started creeping back to where they knew they would find her emerging from the floor. Voss
had the lead, and was nearly there when Kaspar heard a noise behind him.

Shit, he thought. She
does
have help. How did we miss that?

Now they were sandwiched, and he couldn’t alert Voss because he had no headset. Kaspar turned round to face the door and cover their rear. There was a commotion behind him, and he knew that things weren’t good.

There should have been a crack and a single flash of blue light as Voss stunned the unsuspecting ninja.

Instead?

Damn it! He was surrounded. Nobody had appeared at the door yet, so he risked turning away for a second. He whirled round just in time to see Voss kick the dagger from Rhea’s hand; then a secondary kick had her flying backwards up the aisle. He was trying to get enough distance between them so that he could bring his rifle to bear again, but she closed the gap between them with lightning speed. She twisted her upper body and her left leg spun out behind her, impossibly long, incredibly fast, looping around in a great arc. Her heel struck Voss on his left temple and he went down hard.