The Silent Army (30 page)

“Hold her,” he said.

The jacks grabbed me from behind. One held my arms and another one held my head. I tried to move, but they had me pinned. It felt like my neck was going to break.

“What are you doing?” Buckster snapped.

“Don’t struggle,” a voice said in my ear.

“She’s not one of them!” the old man said. “She doesn’t want to be—”

One of the men bashed Buckster behind the ear with the grip of his gun, and he went down onto his knees. He leaned over, and dots of blood started to cover the floor in front of him.

“We don’t need him anymore,” someone said, and the guy that hit him aimed the gun at the back of his head.

“Wait!” I yelled, but never even got the word out before the shot went off. The old man jerked once and went facedown. Blood started to pool around his head.

“Hold her still,” one of the other men said.

The guy jabbed the needle into my neck, and I saw him push the plunger.

“I said hold her still!”

I had only one shot. I brute-forced my way through one of the M8s behind me and dropped in a virus that shunted the command hooks over to me. One, two, and three, they all came up in my HUD. I pulled up their specs, vitals, and visual feeds, then took control of them.

The gun went off behind me, and the guy with the syringe jerked as the back of his head blew out. The case fell out of his hand, and the needle spun across the floor as his body fell in a heap. The other two raised their guns, but they were too late; the jacks shot them to pieces.

With the command spokes in place, I had full control of all three. In the feeds they streamed over, I could see what they saw and hear what they heard. It was like being back in the grind.

Orders?

“Get me off this b—” I started to say, when a sharp pain stabbed me in the gut. It hurt like hell, and my link to the revivors almost cut when the JZI’s power dropped.

What the hell was that?

I pulled inventory from the jacks; they each had a sidearm, extra ammo, and three grenades. They were all strapped with enough C4 to sink the ship. I used another virus to turn off their inhibitors.

Orders?

“Get me the fuck off this boat now—”

The room spun, and I felt like I’d been drugged again. I set off a stim to cut through it as warnings flew past. My heart rate had dropped, but as the chemicals spread through my bloodstream, it spiked back up.

The pain hit again, worse this time. It felt like a hot coal in my gut.

“What the fuck did they stick me with?”

I ran a check on my systems and saw that something in there was drawing power. Whatever it was, it wasn’t tied into the JZI’s control system. There was something inside me that didn’t belong there.

Orders?

Give me a layout of this place.

A map blinked on in front of me. There was a helicopter I couldn’t fly up top, and a small ship-to-shore craft down below. I set a route to it.

There,
I told them.
We’re getting off this boat.

10

Fate

Nico Wachalowski—Alto Do Mundo

The Alto Do Mundo was the second-largest skyscraper in the city, and its base covered almost an entire block. It had its own underground rail station beneath it, and contained shops and restaurants the likes of me could never afford. I had to flash my badge twice just to get through the gate and into the parking area, where a well-dressed valet quickly moved my car out of sight. I had to present it again to the automated security system at the main entrance, and wait for my identity to be verified before I was allowed in.

The foyer was like the inside of a palace, with enough wealth on display to spark a revolt. Just inside, two uniformed doormen stood at attention. They had a military stance, and each one had a gun under his coat. I flashed my badge at them as I passed, and I saw the orange flicker in their eyes as each one scanned it. One blew air through his nose, and followed me out of the corner of his eye, but neither one moved to stop me.

I headed through the huge foyer and up to the security desk, where another clean-cut, military type sat. Time in the grind had a way of bridging class gaps, but he still kept a close eye on me as I approached.

“Good evening, Agent Wachalowski. How can I help you?”

“I’m here to visit one of your residents, Zoe Ott.”

“Are you here in an official capacity?”

“No.”

“Sign here, please.”

He swiveled an electronic tablet around, and I penned my signature. The tablet disappeared back behind the desk.

“Go on up.”

The elevator was decked out in bronze, glass, and marble. I’d never actually been inside Alto Do Mundo before, and it was hard not to be impressed. Like Suehiro 9, it was the kind of place people associated with first tiers, but I was first tier and it was way out of my pay scale. Zoe may have had an ace in the hole, but her citizenship was third tier. Ai and her people were giving her the royal treatment. A deal that good was usually a devil’s deal.

At her door, I rang the bell, but no one answered. I turned the knob and stuck my head in.

“Zoe?”

“Back here!” she called from down the hall.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. The place was a complete mess, but even so, it was incredible. The living area was huge, and full of top-of-the-line furniture and electronics. Hardwood flooring gave way to stone tile in a vast kitchen area. Looking around, I saw a gas fireplace, a huge flat-screen television, a half bar, and even a balcony. Next to the door, pizza boxes and other trash sat in a pile—Zoe’s signature. Her clothes were lying on the furniture and the floor. It smelled like fast food and body odor.

Heading down the hallway, I heard a low, bubbling sound. Steam was drifting through an open door, and I heard a splash, then two women laughing.

“Zoe?” I moved into the doorway.

Zoe and Penny were sitting on opposite sides of a big hot tub, the surface bubbling around them. Penny wore a black bathing suit and Zoe wore a white one. Bottles were racked up along the edge of the tub, and they were both blind drunk. A huge flat-screen television was mounted on the wall across from them, and on it men in military gear were scrambling across a helipad toward a waiting chopper.

“Hey, look who decided to show up,” Penny said, pointing. Zoe smiled.

“This thing is awesome,” she said. It was the first time I’d seen her look that happy in a long time.

“Hop in. Join the party,” Penny said, making Zoe blush.

“Cut the bullshit,” I said. “We found the ship. Now where’s Calliope?”

“No,
we
found the ship,” she said, using the remote to shut off the TV. “The situation is under control. You can call off the MSST.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t get to just decide that. It’s not part of the deal.”

“There is no deal.”

“Sure there is. Ai still wants to see you, by the way.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

“Did she hit the Healing Hands Clinic?”

“Hit it? Hey, they blew those clinics themselves.”

“But she had them raided?”

“Sure, but no one made Fawkes blow them up. What is this, our fault now?”

“If she has the resources to track those sites down, then why get me involved?”

She shrugged. “Because you kill Fawkes. She told you that. You’re part of it. Ai saw all this. All I know is that the destruction of the ship is tied to you, and that’s what we really care about. You verified the location when you found your friend’s message.”

“You’ve known all of this?”

“We knew they bombed Concrete Falls to steal something from Heinlein; someone on the inside confirmed that. They ran a search on their own, but they never tracked it down. Whatever it was, it has them real nervous. Nervous enough to talk to you.”

She took a pull off a long-necked bottle sitting on the edge of the hot tub. The clear liquid inside sloshed as she put it back down.

“You’re going to meet with Ai and tell her what you talked about when you were over there. If you know anything about what was taken from Concrete Falls, you’re going to tell her that too. Forget about your little trip to the boat.”

“You—”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You were totally right about Buckster. We knew he’d take Flax, but we didn’t know what the connection to you was until near the end.”

“Take her where? What do you mean, take her?”

“She gets taken,” she said. “That was seen—not as a certainty, but a high probability. We were sure he’d hand her over to Fawkes like the other hobos. We just didn’t know you’d hand her to him.”

I started to say something, but stopped. I wanted say it wasn’t true, but it was. Cal thought she knew what she was getting into, but she didn’t.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “Because we knew you’d pull her out of there.”

“I could have gone in.”

“That’s not how it happens. She goes. She was the last of the five—that’s why I got assigned to her. Thanks to you, she bumped back into Zoe here.”

“I made her forget me back then. . . .” Zoe said.

“. . . and I made her remember when she got back,” Penny continued.“So you arrest Buckster and put Zoe on him. Zoe gets into Buckster’s head. Calliope and Buckster compare notes. Buckster decides to take her right to ground zero, right to the ship. Game, set, match.”

“How?”

“She doesn’t know it, but she’s been busy since she got back. She’s going to take care of them for us.”

The room in her apartment, the one hidden behind the hanging flag, it had nothing to do with Buckster. It had nothing to do with Fawkes.

“You were set up in her place,” I said. “What did you do to her?”

“Forget about her, Nico. It’s a done deal.”

“No.”

“Look, it’s an honor,” she said. “Destroying that ship will be the most significant thing a slum rat like her could ever do. She’s going to change history.”

“Destroy the . . .”

It hit me then. The case, with its twelve small pay-loads, each designed to be small enough to smuggle even inside the body of a revivor. Eleven had been stolen, but one of them had been taken away by Takanawa. Takanawa worked for Ai. Ai believed that Calliope would be taken by Buckster and processed along with the others. Her body would be taken and placed with the rest of the revivor army he was building. She was going to use Calliope to destroy the others.

“The nuke,” I said. The medical equipment, the lingering radiation signature . . . they planted it inside her. Takanawa was a test run. Cal was going to carry the payload. Penny smiled.

“It’s done,” she said. “Come on, Ai’s looking for you. She wants to know what you found out at Heinlein.”

“Leave Calliope alone, and I’ll tell her what she wants to know.”

“You don’t want to play that game with her. The ship goes down; that wasn’t a certainty until just recently, but it is now. The ship goes down.”

“I—”

“The ship goes down,” she said again, raising her voice a little. “The ship goes down, and she is on it, and you are not, and that’s how it happens. You don’t make it to the ship.”

“It’s true,” Zoe said.

“You knew about this?”

“Just what they told—”

“You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?”

“Hey, I’m not your little lapdog, okay?” she slurred, glaring up through the steam.

“She’s going to die, Zoe!”

“So she dies,” she said. “She dies, Karen dies, Ted dies . . . everybody dies . . . I didn’t know you knew her. You can’t do anything about it anyway.”

“Wait. Karen is dead?” I hadn’t known that, but from the look on her face, I could tell it was true.

“Just never mind,” she said. “It’s not your problem.”

Karen was a lifeline for Zoe. If she was dead . . .

“Zoe, something’s not right here. These people want you for something.”

“They accept me, Nico. They accept me and they like me, which is more than I can say for you. I don’t need your help anymore or your little jobs at the FBI or any of it.”

“People don’t offer this kind of incentive unless they want something, Zoe. Ask yourself why they’re doing it.”

“They’re doing it because I’m one of them! They’re doing it because they like me!”

Penny hung back, one arm draped over the edge of the tub. She didn’t chime in. She just looked at me smugly and smiled from behind Zoe’s back.

“That boat is going down no matter who’s on it,” Penny said. “Fawkes’s little army is going to the bottom of the ocean, and he’ll be switched off any minute.”

“If she’s dead—”

“She is dead.”

Alice, this is Wachalowski. How long until MSST can mobilize?

Twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes. I could still make it.

“I’m going,” I said. “When I get back—”

Someone grabbed me from behind. His arms were like a vise around my rib cage, pinning my arms to my sides. Penny grinned.

“I told you. You don’t make it to the ship.”

There wasn’t time to mess around. I fired one of the stims and the adrenaline surged through my body. I stomped my right heel down onto one of the boots behind me and a voice yelled out in my ear. When the arms loosened, I slipped down through and fired one elbow back into his crotch.

I turned to see a guy in uniform stagger back, his face dark and twisted in pain. There were two others with him.

Before the first one could recover, I smashed his nose under the heel of my shoe. Blood squirted out in a gob as he went down on his back and into the wall. Zoe screamed. By then one of the remaining two was on me. He ducked my punch and landed a mean hook into my ribs. Pain shot up my side and the breath went out of me.

If it hadn’t been for the stim, it might have knocked me down for good. I fell into the side of the hot tub and grabbed the first bottle I could reach. I swung it by the neck, but he got his forearm up in time. The glass smashed against it, and blood began to bloom through the sleeve.

He attacked again, spraying drops of blood from the ends of his fingers. When he came in close, I grabbed his head and slammed my knee into the side of his face. Pain shot down my leg as a piece of tooth spun through the air. The other guy crashed into me and knocked me back. As we staggered, I grabbed his belt and swung him around, broken glass squealing on the hardwood floor under my shoes.

I slipped and went down with him on top of me. The other one was back up, moving toward us. Zoe was screaming, while Penny barked orders at the men. My window to get to the boat—and Calliope—was closing.

I put my hand in my jacket and pulled out my gun. I fired, and knocked the guy’s leg out from under him. He went down as the one on top of me reached for his own weapon.

“No guns!” Penny yelled.

I lunged and hit the bridge of his nose with my forehead. Blood spattered down my cheek and into one eye as he pulled away. Before he could recover, I stuck the gun in his face.

“Don’t,” I said. He stood, bent over, with one hand still in his coat. Blood ran in steady drops from one of his nostrils.

“Let him go,” Penny said. Zoe was staring, her face white and her eyes wide. She looked afraid but also excited.

“Throw it in the tub,” I said to the guy. Penny smirked as he drew his pistol, then tossed it into the water. It disappeared with a splash beneath the bubbles.

“You won’t make it,” she said.

“We’ll see.”

“I could still fish that gun out and shoot you, you know.”

“Then do it.”

I wiped blood from my mouth and stepped over the man I’d shot. Blood was pooling around his leg.

“It’s better this way,” Penny called after me. “You know what happens if they make it to shore.”

I left the two sitting in the hot tub, and as I headed down the hall I heard the television come back on. Soldiers chattered over a radio while helicopter rotors wound up for flight. In the hallway, I began to run.

Alice, change of plan with the MSST.

What do you mean?

The team can’t go in. I need them to get me on the boat, then wait for the extraction.

Why?

Just do it.

Faye Dasalia—KM
Senopati Nusantara

Primary systems initializing.
It was the first thing I saw in the darkness. Information scrolled at my peripheries, and I watched as feeling began to return. They listed the fallout from the failure of my assassination attempt.

Bone repair/replacement.
Armored plating replacement.
Complete transfusion.
Spinal repair.
Organ replacement.

Any one of those items was expensive. I was surprised that Fawkes had ordered them done, when surely a new revivor was cheaper.

With consciousness, my field of memories returned.They coalesced into their well-known clusters, reforming the shield between me and the void. While not technically alive, I was not lost. I didn’t really care why.