Shepherd (10 page)

“Not today.”

“No.” He shifted the view to a large mound of concrete rubble. A faint stream of sunlight escaped beyond New Delphi’s city platform near the ruins. The foreign illumination in Down Below indicated the ruins were close to the city’s perimeter.

Esme squinted at the oddly symmetrical lines buried beneath the cracks and debris. No doorway showed, but there was definitely an outline of a boarded-up window partially visible behind uneven wooden planks.

He gave her a quick look over his shoulder, and her annoyance deepened. Clearly, he couldn’t decide whether to leave her alone, in his fortress, with his network. “Haven’t I earned at least one or two credits of trust yet?”

A small twitch jerked the corner of his mouth. His metallic patch whirred open and shut so fast she couldn’t tell the color of his eye. Without a response, he keyed in several sequences on his keypad, turned, and grabbed an ion laser cannon from the shelf at the edge of his console. “Don’t leave. Don’t touch anything.” He reached the end of the hallway near the exit, weapon lashed to his forearm beneath his black fiber weave coat, before she had a chance to question him. The heavy clang of the outer door vibrated beneath her feet as a red signal flashed in the corner of the security grid. The door lock registered active.

“Aye aye, Captain,” she muttered as she took his cockpit seat at the console, the recycled plastic still warm from his body. She tucked her bare feet beneath her and scanned through the images now spread in an arc around her.

In spite of his last-minute security commands, she could hack her way through his system, disable the locks to the front door, and be gone before he returned. However, if she had wanted to leave, she would have bailed after he let her out of the containment room. Pulling a mesh of wires from beneath her shirt, she carefully slid her fingers into the matrix. Tiny thermo-sensitive pads graced each finger. A slight pressure adhered them tight enough to register her pulse. The additional circuitry aligned to mimic Clay’s specific heat register and pressure. With a tentative touch on his console, she flexed her fingers, allowing the open-weave glove of fibers and signals to adjust to her body’s rhythm. Then she increased their range to transmit Clay’s speed at the console and his electronic security signature. Each person’s was as distinctive to a knowledgeable tracker as his target’s fingerprint.

The past several screens flew past. Yeah, she was still good.

She squinted at the rubble and pressed her thumb to the security pad. The mesh would reinforce the last access—being Clay’s. Fortunately, he hadn’t bothered with a retinal lock. Several reverse navigation commands and a few strategic guesses later, the security access to the network turned green, and his remote camera administration panel blinked at her from a new angle.

Not quite the full assortment of options she would have chosen, but hackers couldn’t be choosy.

Vibrations of Clay’s signature in the network cloud echoed along the nerves in her hand. The intensity and heat thrummed along her skin, like memories of his earlier touches. She shivered and gritted her teeth. Focusing on the new sensations he’d elicited wasn’t going to help her or him.

Following his echo along the network, she moved her virtual signal forward and back, scoping each pathway. She paused at the intersection of the New Delphi transmission networks, where the physical relay towers and signal amplifiers resided. Finally, resources she could use. She assessed this hour’s mapping of Clay’s cyber pathways—his messages surfed in encrypted layers beneath the New Delphi public-broadcast-system bandwidth. Those pathways would most likely change several times before the day’s end, acknowledging access and updates only to those who Clay designated.

Her target wasn’t his list, only the physical touch points of the pathway. Chewing at her lower lip, she downloaded drivers and versions for each bit of hardware. Then, selecting the ones she wanted, she rerouted services and node interfaces, constructing a covert virtual agent to work with the cameras.

A tool for now, to watch Clay, and later, to service the mission. The virtual agent construct with the sewer map and cameras’ signal would drive the keg in the sewer system and initiate the explosion at the connection point. While he would be pissed she had hacked his system, she doubted Clay would have time later to test and rework her schema to ensure the remote detonation worked seamlessly. This was her chance to prototype in relative safety. He was good; she was better—at least when it came to her designs.

Satisfied with her construction, she shoved away the admin screen and sat back with a smile. Three radiant images beamed in scarlet overlay on the rubble screen. Clay also showed up in the bottom corner of the screen as a fourth image. A sub screen reflected the visual before him from what must be another receiver on his clothes, or perhaps on his body?

One minute he was visible on the large screen, and then he was a phantom.

With a snort, Esme turned back to the other screens, not prepared to waste time waiting for him. Her fingers sped over the console as she assigned temporary security access to her virtual servers for each one of the cameras sweeping Down Below. The process allowed her more options than just visibility. Her breath caught as two of the screens displayed large clusters of heat signatures. Several people filled each screen; the additional orange signature of their ion weapons flagged them as Regent military squads, not inoculation teams.

Damn. He probably suspected their approach and was sticking his shiny white ass out in the breeze to get somebody out of harm’s way. Whether he would receive help from others remained to be seen. He hadn’t launched any messages. Esme glanced toward the shelf from which he’d retrieved his weapon. His hand communicator was still there.

Then again, maybe he had another way to send and receive information.

A third group of heat signatures flickered to life on a fourth screen—Clay, his rescue targets, and three screens of Regent squads.

Esme leaned closer, brought up a message screen, her fingers hovering over the keypad.

“Countdown, 49.5 hours.”

She frowned at the synthesized feminine voice, wondering briefly who he’d patterned it after. She gave a quick shake of her head. It didn’t matter. Right now all that mattered was for Clay to make it back, or the mission would fail and so would she.

***

Clay’s run brought him to the collapsed apartment buildings that constituted Badger’s temporary home.

Rasmond’s stall was the first to open each morning in the Down Below market. For over fifty years, the surrounding homesteaders had taken their cues from the quick, snapping calculation of the old woman and her monster-size son. Clay had witnessed only five of those years, but each day ran with the same dependable efficiency as the one before. If Rasmond opened for business, so did everyone else. If she signaled a threat, the marketplace vacated in seconds. Today she hadn’t even shown up. Neither had her son.

The most likely reason for Badger’s absence was the birth of his newest child. As virile as he was huge, Badge had managed to give his wife eight children. The Regent scouts had seized three; two of his baby girls had been recovered alive and returned home. Stalwart and stoic, the family never gave up. Not on profit, deals, or growing their small herd.

Birth and death didn’t stop Rasmond’s business. Only the squads on the move would produce that result. Meaning Rasmond was in hiding, and Badger’s family was at risk for detection and abduction of their newest addition. Each rumor, or betrayal, of a new birth resulted in response from the Regent squads. The never-ending search for new fodder for the Regent transplant harvests would explain the two squads he’d already seen.

Ratter?

Clay initiated the message commands from a frequency generated by his cyber units. It wasn’t ideal to communicate this way because it stole resources from surveillance, but he hadn’t bothered with his comm device.

Ratter: Active

Movement Down Below—need action

Ratter: Understood—give me 20 count

At a rustle to his left, Clay shrank into the shadows and held his breath. Two scouts passed within a handspan of his position. Shit, he didn’t have twenty minutes to wait for a distraction. Neither did Badger.

Badger?

Nothing. Born with the name Igor, possibly from some twisted sense of Rasmond’s humor, Badger was one of the few people to use his code name among friends.

Badger: Active

@ your Front Door—give 5 me count

No response flickered through the pulse between Clay’s eye and ear, but seconds later, a laser cannon pointed through the opening two feet above his head.

“How many?”

“Squad west, another north of the market, and word of another one heading in.” Clay hesitated a second, listening across the network channels for any new guard broadcasts. “You’ve got maybe five minutes.”

A small squeal resounded from the open window. Badger nodded and disappeared. Two feet broke through the opening first, before the man passed his six-year-old son to Clay.

“Go through the tunnel to Nana. Stay until I show up,” ordered the boy’s father.

The child gave a brief nod, squatted to remove debris from a one-foot-diameter pipe near Clay’s feet, and scrambled inside.

Clay shoved dirt and debris into the pipe, building a cover, and turned back to Badger as he reappeared with a large bundle in his arms. Leaning most of the way out of the window, he lowered the blanket-wrapped woman into Clay’s hold.

Pale but with a surprisingly resolute expression, Badger’s wife gestured for Clay to lower her feet. He steadied her and then pulled her close at the sounds of laser shots several dozen yards away. She froze, her eyes wide. The noise caught Badger halfway in his exit from the window, a tiny bundle cradled in his arms.

Clay gingerly accepted the swaddled baby and faltered as it made a garbled noise. Badger’s wife grabbed her child and, without hesitation, pulled the blanket away from her naked body and planted the infant to her breast. Quiet reigned again.

They waited for a second in stillness. Certain the coast was still clear, Clay signaled. Badger landed beside him with more grace and stealth than he would have credited to a man of such size. With a touch to his ear, Clay gestured toward the opposite direction. Badger nodded once, pulled his wife to his side, and quickly moved them across the only litter-free trail.

Clay waited for a count of thirty and headed in the opposite direction. A shout came from a squad up ahead. He was heading in the squad’s direction, and with luck, he’d lead them far enough away from Badger’s family to allow them to escape. With a little more luck, he wouldn’t end up on the wrong end of a squad laser either.

After three minutes of running, he halted before the sweep of squad lights up ahead caught him in their sights. Pivoting on his heel, he headed right.

Karma: Shepherd. Now 3 squads @ your N., E., & W.

What the hell? His eye registered the message, and he clenched his weapon, trying to gauge his next move and not get distracted. Bad enough Esme had hacked his system. Now she was transmitting a global broadcast. Every member of the underground teams would get this message. One inch and the woman took whole miles worth of ground.

Karma: Back up. Now.

He stepped back into the darkness and spun to retreat, his ocular sensor panning before him in a heat-signature sweep.

Karma: Stop—full team in front—one behind.

Radar: Interrupter in progress—only buys U 3 minutes.

Ghost: Sequence interrupter2—add 2 minutes for U.

Great, they were buying him time. For what? The darkness beside the support pillar would keep him covered only until the squad rounded the corner. He glanced up at the underbelly of the New Delphi grid. Miles of pipes for city maintenance and communication conduits wove beneath the girders. Nothing of help. It wasn’t as if he could just rise in the air anyway. What the fuck was he supposed to do?

His visual relay doubled, his ocular receptor splitting an image into two with a view above him. What the hell? Was she feeding him back his own projection?

Karma: Squad 2 minutes away

Ratter: 1 count—Shepherd down!

Clay barely had time to crouch into a ball on the ground and cover his head with his hands as he recognized the mechanized sound above him. Tons of plastic, aluminum, and paper showered over his body. The stench of week-old rotten kelp cartons and food regeneration receptacles permeated his nasal passages as fresh air disappeared. A flicker of light, and then black covered him. The weight pressed in around him as the New Delphi trash release continued its dump. His legs were strong enough to handle the weight, and his scratched skin would regenerate as long as he still had air to breathe.

The crisp, high-pitched whine of heat-seeking bots cut through the thud and tumble of the trash heap mountaining over him.

“Perimeter scan. Target evacuated.”

Clay held his breath. The Regent squad had found Badger’s home, but they were safe—for now. He held his pose, hoping not to shift the refuse and give away his location.