Provenance I - Flee The Bonds (10 page)

A Prefect rose from the stairwell.

Fidgeting increased, eyes widened, glossy lips quivered in pallid faces. For many it would be their first encounter with a Prefect, but everyone remembered the playground stories. Prefects were the bogeymen. If you misbehaved, they would come for you in the night. They never forgot, or forgave.

The Prefect ascended three metres above the floor, its hum reverberating in the brittle silence. It pivoted, sweeping the petrified with its gelid eye. A red light on its indicator panel stopped blinking.

Instinctively the crowd parted as the Prefect glided overhead to where Paul had fallen. It hovered over the body for a few seconds before gliding back and taking position next to two CONSEC Blue Defenders.

One of the Defenders raised his hand. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the party’s over for this evening, please leave in an orderly manner.’

The Prefect’s indicator panel resumed its blinking.

Steve shuffled with the crowd towards the Defenders. In his periphery, the stub of a plasma cannon glinted from the Prefect’s weapons port — its Controller had expected to find someone. Through air tainted with a metallic twang, he followed the procession down. At the bottom, the anxious crowd propelled him out onto the pavement and quickly dispersed.

He stood still and drew cool night air deep into his lungs. Then it was time to leave.

From inside the transit stop shelter, Steve watched Mitzy’s neon sign fizzle out. In the light of the doorway, the Defenders faced the blue-suited doormen. A shadow passed over them; the Prefect hadn’t left either.

Steve climbed aboard the bus and flopped into a seat. Paul’s contorted face remained wedged in his mind. The subconjunctival haemorrhaging, bleeding nose and dark blotches were all symptoms of acute nanossasin poisoning. Millions of biomechanical nanobytes coursed through the blood stream, their absorbable outer case dissolved and a biochemical reaction produced the nano-explosion. Only SIS Prosecutors used it, only Prosecutors would want to.
But why Paul?

Stepping off at Paddington, he counted ten paces before spinning around to face the woman in the red duffle coat, her frizzy blonde hair framing a proud Gallic nose. He walked towards her, holding up the shimmering ID card in his left hand and the BRD activated MCD in his right. He thought her smile incongruous considering the circumstances.

‘Why are you following me?’ Steve sniffed, and tensed.

‘I do not follow you.’ She tilted her head. ‘Perhaps it is you who follow me?’

A few minutes later, Steve watched her walk away. She’d authenticated. Martine Soucy from Boussac-Chezel. No CPF, no interest from CONSEC. She’d been visiting friends in Wiltshire and was in London shopping. Not that that mattered, what mattered was she had a human biofield
and
she was an AH. Steve could smell them.

23:19 SUN 22:10:2119

Intra Zone, Gironde, France, Sector 2

Francois’s day-night helmet visor amplified the dimmed headlamp and the blur of trees lining the forest road. He glanced down, ‘145 KPH’. Beneath him, the sound and vibration from the super bike’s hybrid engine had harmonised to a whine. His sleek black Lightspeed, was not French, but the fuel injectors carried the double-T stamp of
Thibeauchet Technologie,
and family ties were as ever, an unbreakable bond.

He thought back to the lunch meeting. Steve must have known that T-T owned Research Site 26. He had said it was not a test; perhaps it was more subtle than that. Francois smiled,
pas important.
There were levers he could pull in an emergency, such as the location of all Resistance members in his Sector, and that included Steve’s girlfriend.

An alert bleeped in his earpiece.

Francois turned down a narrow track, parked his bike under cover, and with his micro earpiece relaying directions entered the maze of slender trunks.

He made slow progress, conscious that the only sounds intruding into the cool mouldy silence were his footfalls creaking on a mat of dry pine needles and decomposing cones.

After two kilometres, he lay down and belly-crawled to the tree line, wary of the light piercing the labyrinth of black trees.

His binoculars adjusted to the blazing gantry above the main gates. He already knew the security measures employed throughout the foursquare kilometres of RS 26, Triple-Ring, the same for all Class A sites. Separated by a five-metre-high outer fence, the unmanned concrete towers loomed twenty metres apart, bristling with cameras, detectors, and plasma pulse cannons.

Beyond the gates, rectangular buildings lined the road that led to a giant metal doughnut lying on a football field of concrete. The justification for Triple-Ring security, a hyperlonic fuel test pad.

Muted voices and the hum of a Prefect wafted towards him.

Two Defenders stopped by the gates and huddled in conversation, their breath visible in the gantry’s citrine glare. Above them, a Prefect weaved its patrol pattern. It followed its programming, never questioning, never deviating. As Francois watched it glide through an elongated figure of eight, the chrysalis of an idea formed.

He crawled back and rested against a tree.
Is this too risqué?
Jason Valenbrotti had exposed one of his
espions
. Colette’s identity had been compromised, his artificial’s reserve of identities reduced. He stood and brushed off the pine needles. No, it could not wait. He needed the information from MP 14 — and he needed to give the tenacious Steve Arrowsbury something other than the Resistance to think about.

Two hours later, he reached the northeast corner and took position in the tree line, opposite the dimly lit accommodation blocks. The hum of an anti-gravity engine cut through the background murmur and a yellow shell floated into the blaze of a security lamp. When the Prefect stopped, Francois began the count. ‘
 . . .neuf, dix.
’ It pivoted and glided east.

Six minutes passed before the distinctive hum returned. Francois pointed his MCD and tapped the screen. The Prefect hovered, a glowing white dot blinked on its indicator panel.

To assist him in protecting Steve, SIS had given Francois an Identity Masking Kit
and
a Prefect override signature. The Prefect wouldn’t know to whom the signature belonged; only that it had to be obeyed. Francois had read the file of Lieutenant Deon ‘Dee’ Brandleson. His allegiance to CONSEC would make it impossible to recruit him, but his death would serve the Resistance equally as well.

07:15 MON 23:10:2119

Intra Zone, Wiltshire, England, Sector 2

The Aegis sped through the winding lanes of south Wiltshire, its ice-white headlamps tunnelling through unkempt hedgerows that arched over the road. Steve tapped the centre console to activate the proximity radar. Despite the hot shower, he still felt sluggish. Anger and perplexity had stolen his sleep. Paul’s inexplicable assassination had taken away his only lead and the AH following him had a human biofield. Both conundrums reeked of SIS.

The dashboard updated. He’d arrive at TF 16 in twenty-seven minutes.

Hedgerows gave way to uncultivated fields dotted with cumbersome oaks, the once lush meadows smothered beneath pandemic weeds. As daylight peeked through low cloud, he pushed down with his right foot and accelerated through another deserted hamlet; there was no danger of hitting anyone.

At 07:43 the Aegis’s beams flitted across the ramshackle buildings. Everyone referred to CONSEC Training Facilities as farms; however, TF 16 really was a farm. Located in the New Forest, it was the perfect location for the RS 26 PreOps training.

A large thatched farmhouse looked wearily out over a cobbled courtyard, its periphery marked by an assortment of dilapidated stables supporting a wavy sea of terracotta roofs.

The Aegis rumbled over the cobbles and parked next to a black
Lightspeed
superbike. Steve recognised Dee’s car, but not the bike or the cherry-red Jupiter coupé. He pressed the boot release button and climbed out. Silence.

Steve unclipped his holster and lifted his MPS. Before he could tap the screen, the farmhouse door opened.

‘Whoa, man!’ Dee’s packing-case frame blocked the doorway and polar white teeth split his bulletproof jaw.

Steve returned the smile and lowered the Cogent. ‘Visitors?’

‘All friendly, well apart from B-O-danke.’

‘Whose bike?’

‘Francois’s, had it shipped over; style eh?’

‘He sure has.’

Dee stepped out of the doorway and gripped Steve’s arm. ‘Sorry about Jas, man.’

‘Me too. Good job upstairs by the way, Jas would have been proud.’

‘Thanks, Steve.’

He followed Dee into the kitchen. Four of the farmhouse table’s ten chairs had occupants. Francois and Bo sat opposite an elegant bronzed woman with long blonde hair and a pale faced man with jet-black hair and matching stubble on his angular jaw.

Dee made the introductions, ‘Steve, this is Lieutenant Kacee Merblayn and Lieutenant Morton Hipparcho. Kacee is, unfortunately, a PSYOPS Evaluator, and Morton a Gold Agent cleared for attachment.’

Kacee glided up and smoothed a fitted black trouser suit. She was tall, athletic and curvaceous. Large brown eyes sparkled beneath a cascade of champagne hair as her glossy pink lips formed a perfect smile. ‘Hi, Steve.’

Steve couldn’t see anything unfortunate about her at all.

‘Hi, Kacee. Southern state?’

He noticed a slight droop in her smile. ‘You’re very perceptive, yeah, Louisiana.’

Empathy suggested a lie. ‘I only noticed because I once knew someone from New Orleans.’
Time to steer away.
‘I didn’t realise this was being evaluated?’

She broke eye contact. ‘Command thought after — after recent events, it would be appropriate’

‘Fine. You’ve met Dee and Bo?’

She directed her resurgent smile at Dee. ‘Yes, they’ve been looking after me just fine.’

‘I bet. Is your room okay?’

‘Lots of roly-polys, otherwise fine.’

Steve shot a quizzical look at Dee.

‘Wood lice.’

Steve smiled. ‘Oh yes, plenty to eat around here.’ He turned and extended his hand to the pale-faced CONSEC Agent with dark eyes and bristling black hair. Morton jumped up and shook vigorously.

Steve released the overly powerful grip and flexed his fingers, ‘Pleased to meet you, Morton. Are you up for Advocate selection?’

‘No, sir. My superiors thought it would be useful for me to observe an Advocate exercise. We don’t see much action upstairs.’

‘You can drop the sir.’ Morton’s fixed smile gave nothing away, which probably meant he was the SIS agent. Steve sniffed. What worried him more was that Morton was an AH. Something new.

He extended his hand once more. ‘Good to see you again, Francois. How’d it go?’

Francois held up his MCD. ‘
Parfait.
’

‘Well done. Upload it to the Quad bin please.’ Steve glanced around the table. ‘Let’s all move next door.’

The lounge’s two cocoa leather settees sat on a reddish threadbare rug and were separated by a low wooden table supporting a jug of coffee. Its aromatic steam failing to mask the mustiness of damp flagstones and tangy soot.

Steve sat next to Francois. Opposite, Bo squeezed in between Kacee and Morton. The room darkened.

Resting on the fireplace mantel was a fully extended MCD displaying a monochrome square plan speckled with red dots. As Dee pointed at each dot, the corresponding reconnaissance photo appeared.

‘RS 26 has typical triple-A, CS and Pree’s backed by CT’s, a three-metre patrol track, and twenty-metre dead-zone.’

Steve raised his hand. ‘Better elaborate on that for Kacee and Morton.’

‘Sure. Okay, category one research sites and manufacturing plants use triple-A security. That’s a triple defence ring. For RS 26 that means we’ve got CONSEC, CS, lots of ‘em. They’re backed by Prefects, Pree’s, and Cannon Towers, CTs. The dead-zone’s got buried sensors, motion, heat, vibration. Get across that and you run into a five-metre high fence and the three metre wide patrol track — where the bogeymen wait.’ Dee moved the pointer to the gated entrance. ‘The obvious weak point is the entrance, but it ain’t. Get past that and you walk straight into a defensive corridor of Defenders, Prefects and Observation Towers.’ Dee’s eyebrows rose. ‘Lights out.’

Steve rested his elbow on the scuffed armrest. ‘Thanks, Dee. Right, who wants to go first?’

‘MT eighty-nine heavy, take out the towers.’ Bo punched his palm. ‘And smash through.’

Steve rubbed his temple, ‘It’s a bang and burn, not a prelude to war. Morton?’

‘Whisper fly in, rope down, take out the Pree’s, the CT’s can’t fire into the RS, I think.’

Steve’s gaze narrowed. ‘I thought that intel required Level Twelve clearance — anyway, we’re simulating an infiltration by the Resistance, who thankfully don’t have tech weaponry.’ He glanced at Bo. ‘Including tanks. Carry on, Dee.’

Dee moved his finger in the air and a plan view of the outer security fence appeared with two red triangles extending from each tower. ‘RS 26 has a weak spot on the corners. Every tower has two cameras covering a ninety-degree arc, marked here in red. That leaves a sixty centimetre blind corridor in each corner.’

Bo extended his arms across the back of the settee. ‘Still have dead-zone and Pree’s.’

Dee picked up something and tossed it. Bo plucked the object from the air and studied a square of plastic honeycomb sandwiched between rubberised matting. ‘What is this?’

‘Styrelam, Provenance’s primary hull liner. The Council’s work program meant the Drones were still making it years after hull completion.’

Bo passed the liner to Morton and nodded at the screen. ‘So we roll it out into blind corridor?’

Dee’s head bobbed. ‘Top marks, man. Yep, two ten metre strips laid in line with the vertex. Francois recommends the northwest corner, it’s poorly lit, and we’ll have a five minute window between each Pree pass.’

Steve stood up. ‘Thanks, Dee. All the data’s on your MCDs, so take time to study it. Dee and I are going to recce the sim RS. Mission brief will be at eighteen hundred, dinner an hour later.’ He widened his eyes at Bo. ‘Don’t be late for either.’