Running Black (Eshu International Book 1) Page 4

  “Jace,” Tam called through the helmet radio.”This seem easy to you?”

  I was silent for a second. “Ummm… yeah, now that you mention it. Security feels wrong for cutting-edge tech. I mean, the perimeter’s tight, there’s modded guards, even the bio-alarm. But there’re no turrets, not even motion sensors past the big doors. You thinking we’re in the wrong place? Dawson-Hull move it somewhere else?”

  “The intel package said D-H is going public in two weeks. The N3 is here for the shave and tweak stage. They want to work out the kinks for the big debut.”

  “So what’s wrong with this picture?”

  “Dunno yet. But seeing as we’re here…” he said.

  “…we might as see what we can find.” I finished.

  Poet9’s head jerked up. “I have something! Cyber-activity in that room.” The bulky muzzle of his Walther 11 pointed at a set of double doors on the west wall. “In there.”

  Tam brought his Tavor 24 rifle up. “Another security guard?”

  “Not supposed to be,” Poet9 said.

  I yanked the guard to his feet, and with Tam leading the way, the four of us slipped through the doors into an observation room. There were desks full of screens and idling computer equipment, their yellow lights winking at us. A large medical station was tucked into a corner, recessed pin lights focused on its red cross, bright and clear. On the right, a metal staircase led down into the gloom of a lower floor, and directly in front of us a row of large glass panels angled out and away, overlooking the darkened floor below. I hung back, holding the guard as Tam and Poet9 moved forward and peered through the glass.

  “I saw you,” a voice said. It came from the speakers at one of the computer station. All of us froze.

  “You tried to be sneaky, but I saw you,” the speakers sounded again. Poet9 twitched his pistol up. Tam tensed.

  “I saw one of you in the net too. You’re fast, a lot faster than the others around here. I tried to show them how to improve the security, but they wouldn’t listen,” the voice continued.

  Poet9 leaned closer and stared down through the glass. “Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios! Someone’s down there.”

  “I’ll turn on the lights if you want. Here.” The area below suddenly flickered to life.

  Poet9 brought up his magnum, but Tam put a hand on his shoulder. I pushed the guard forward in the chair and looked through the glass myself.

  The room below us was plain, like an army barracks. Tan colored, with a bed in the corner, drawers in one wall, and several items scattered on a faded red rug. In the center of the floor was a large u-shaped desk with a single workstation and three oversize screens. And someone was sitting at it.

  “A kid,” I heard Tam whisper in my helmet. “There’s a kid down there.”

  Poet9 craned his neck, scrutinizing the scene. Tam started down the stairs. My grip locked on the guard’s shoulder and I could feel the Blizzard’s stock digging into my forearm.

  It was a boy. No more than nine, maybe ten, years old, he was dark-skinned with cropped black cut hair and a small round face. He was dressed in khaki coveralls and sitting at the computer looking up at us with clear, green eyes that jumped out at me even from a distance. He swiveled in his seat as Tam came out onto the floor. “What do you want?”

  “Are you the only one here?” Tam asked, as he walked slowly toward the boy.

  “Right now I am. Dr. Evans and Dr. Heinrich are here with their staff in the daytime. Sometimes they stay late and have me do things with the computers, but that’s been less and less lately. I couldn’t sleep though, that’s how come I saw you.”

  “What’s your name?” Tam was halfway across the room.

  “Gibson. Who are you?”

  “That’s not important right now. Gibson, what do you mean ‘you saw us’? When?” Tam was nearly at the desk now.

  “On the security grid. I told you, I was awake, so I logged into the facility intranet to watch through the cameras. That’s when I saw you, sort of. The air was shimmering, so I got curious and followed the shimmers. Now you’re here.” He paused, looked at one of the screens, then back at Tam. “You killed those two men. Why?”

  Poet9 broke in over the radio link. “Hate to interrupt, but we’ve got a job to do. And… only eight minutes to do it in. Does he know where they keep it or not?”

  Tam was at the computer now, his gloved hand on the edge of the desktop. He stood there looking down at the boy.

  Gibson just sat there unafraid and looked up into the stealth suit’s matte black visor. “Look at him,” Tam spoke over the radio. “Look at him, Poet.”

  “What? I see a kid. I want hardware. Just put him to sleep, and let’s vámonos.”

  “No. Look at his head,” Tam said.

  I stepped forward, gripping the guard until he winced, and cranked up the amplification on my visor. There, on the back of the boy’s neck, just at the base, was a vat-tat: a gene series shotcode imprint. The kid was a clone. And right next to it, a single thin black cybernetic jack snaked up from the computer terminal and disappeared behind his left ear.

  “Could you turn off the lights for me, Gibson?” Tam asked.

  “Sure.”

  The lights went out. The room snapped right back to gloom and shadow, but it took another second for the realization to hit me.

  “I think I just found the N3,” Tam said.

  And right then, Cottontail’s voice broke in over the radio channel.

  “We have contact.”

  “What?” Tam said.

  And a whole lot of unpleasantness came crashing in at once.

  ----------------

  Outside on the E.C.I. Facility grounds. 3:45 a.m.

  C.U. 5901 and C.U. 5902 walked along the fence at a brisk, steady pace. C.U. 5905 lagged back in the darkness, shifting twenty left to right to cover their flanks. It was the simplest patrol pattern, one of the first the Triplets had ever learned, but the master/leader had ordered them to impersonate the enemy guards and they always did their best for him. 5901 and 5902 hoped this was close to the perimeter security procedure, sloppy though it was. Back in Africa, anything this careless would have earned a disciplinary beating. A second time and they’d have been shot where they stood. Still, the master/leader ordered it, and eager to please, the Triplets loped on, hoping they looked like security guards on patrol.

  They were halfway back to the labs when the facility’s emergency signal went off. Their suits’ scanners grabbed it from the campus security frequency: a braying alert in their headsets. Someone had tripped the alarm. Nothing visible changed around them, no sounds erupted, no lights started flashing, but something shivered in the air and burst. 01 and 02 froze mid-step and brought their rifles to the ready. C.U. 5905 stopped, looked up and lifted his visor, sniffing the wind. He radioed Tam.

  “We have contact.”

  “What?”

  The assault carrier burst out of the night sky, engines screaming in rage. A massive wall of air and sound and steel rolled over the Triplets. Landing gear and ramps unfolded like giant wasp legs, and it started disgorging figures from a back ramp while it was still in midair. The cyclone haze of heat and matter rose up under the downdraft of the turbines, rendering enhanced vision impossible. Without a word, the three of them knelt and fired into the swirling mass anyway. Unable to distinguish targets, they simply fired, anticipating a standard air/ground assault dispersal pattern, and men started dying.

  The boxy carrier touched ground, bounced twice, and started to lift. In a blur, 5902 whipped the Balor-3 rocket launcher off his back and fired through the open drop ramp. There was a sharp crack, a flash within. The transport flinched, then flipped sideways out of the air onto the concrete plaza and exploded.

  Without a word, the Triplets switched out new magazines, rose up and shifted right, firing with each step. Like breathing, like a heartbeat, a battle pulse coded in every cell of their bodies propelled them, a howling core emergent and savage in its clarity. Fire mo
ve, fire move, fire move, again. The surviving armored troopers ducked and scuttled frantically like black beetles against the white inferno backdrop, one falling with every shot. Fire move, fire move, fire move. Stop.

  There were no more.

  “Contact end. Engagement finished. Orders?” C.U. 5905 breathed out to Tam.

  “Head to the rally point and cover for exfil. We’re coming out.”

  “Acknowledged,” The three clone soldiers turned and ran together back across the plaza, flames towering in the sky behind them, black phantoms loosed fluid and vicious into the night.

  -----------------------

  I hit Ugly at the base of the neck, and he dropped like a sack of rags. Poet9 ran to a terminal and speed-jacked in. “Shitshitshit—we’re busted! Base net just bloomed to full alert. Gimme a second. I’ll dump some Luna-C in their system.” He fished a thumb drive full of custom virals from a pocket and slotted it into the machine, his fingers flying across the keys.

  “No time. No time!” Tam was yelling. He yanked out the boy’s cable, snatched him up like a doll, and took the stairs in three bounds. I span and sighted the double doors behind us, half-expecting a Cerberus ‘bot to shatter through right then.

  I turned back to Poet9. He staggered as he slammed through the net, eyes rolling back to white. His fingers blurred over the deck as he hot-loaded malware into their security grid. Blood trickled from his nose. “I’m opening exterior doors… mimic a breach at their north gate too,” he gurgled.

  He swayed again, his body reeling under the data torrent in his brain. Blood was dripping onto the clean white tile floor now. Tam motioned to me, and I caught Poet9 under my arm.

  “Wish you’d let me… drop those spider mines now. I’m. Almost done. There.” His finger slammed the final key as I pulled his leads and turned, half dragging him toward the door. Suddenly the muffled roar of a massive blast shook through the walls. I dialed up a tactical map on my visor. Three dots for the Triplets were still blinking green and moving fast. A tangle of red ones that weren’t there before were disappearing faster.

  “Surprise, surprise,” I said.

  Tam chuckled. “Shoot and scoot, baby. Shoot and scoot.”

  We ran outside.

  CHAPTER SIX: STARTLED RAVENS

  In the air over the E.C.I Facility, Toulouse. Dawson-Hull Conglomerate Special Deployment Detachment Team Two. 4:01 a.m.

  “Major! Wraith One is down. I repeat: Wraith One is down.”

  Major Jessa Eames turned in the cockpit and snarled, “Down? What do you mean down? How in hell could they be down?”

  The co-pilot swallowed. “Something just plucked ‘em out of the sky. Looked like a portable SAM—a Stinger 3 or Balor. Over there.” He jerked a thumb to his right, and Major Eames bent to look out the starboard view port. The smashed heap of the other assault transport was blazing like a beacon down on the central plaza.

  “How did these bastards get Balors? We don’t even have them.” She savaged the tactical vest tighter around her chest. “You got any targets yet?”

  “Negative,” the co-pilot responded. “We detected three recon drones and dispatched hunters. Scans around Wraith 1 are fragged from the wreck, but we’re sweeping the south quadrant on all frequencies. Wait! Jesus…” he stared at one of his screens. “I… both… both squads from Wraith One are gone too!”

  “What?”

  “ID chips for squads Charlie and Delta are offline. They’re dead, ma’am.”

  “Goddamn it! MacKinnon dumps us neck deep in shit and ties our hands.” She clapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Vector away and approach from the south side. Tell both Fury gunships to stay with us, but they’re to hold fire! Weapons are not cleared hot. Confirm?”

  “Confirmed, Major. Furies in formation—northeast approach. Weapons are not cleared hot at this time,” the pilot drawled back at her.

  “And tell Base Security to wake the hell up!” She ground her teeth as the transport banked, gripping the steel rim on the pilots’ seatbacks to steady herself. Someone is going to pay for this, she fumed.

  -------------

  E.C.I Facility, Toulouse, France. On the ground.

  The four of us slipped through a side door into a wide alley cluttered with crates and oil drums. I was on point, Tam was still carrying the kid under his arm, and Poet9 had recovered enough to be waving his big Walther around again. The crackle and roar of flames rolled through the night, and the mangled heap of a burning assault transport was neatly framed in the far end of the passage. We stopped and stared.

  “Ooooh, Kodak moment,” Poet9 said. “Killer bunnies have been busy.”

  Rifle fire barked out, chased by the rapid crumps of bursting spider mines.

  “Still are,” Tam said.

  I flipped to the drone feed: one was static hiss, another the spastic blur of evasive maneuvers. The third, lacking new orders, apparently defaulted to circling the downed transport, panning for signs of life. I looked at Tam and pointed to the blazing wreck. “I’m sure they weren’t alone. More company’s right behind them… if they aren’t already here. Time to color us gone.”

  “So much for being coy,” Tam said. “Our ride out is a Gaki Swiftship. APAC stashed one three klicks east. We’re supposed to rendezvous on the coast in forty minutes.”

  “Right now, I’ll settle for anywhere but here,” I said.

  “Roger that,” Tam replied. “No matter where we end up, I’m sure Asian Pacific will come for us. For him,” he motioned to the boy. Tam accessed our squad command net. “I’m marking Rally Point Three on everyone’s H.U.D. Triplets are close enough to secure it.”

  I called up the mini map on my visor display and found a yellow square winking near a corner of the east wall. A thin blue line marked the shortest route there. I nodded at Tam and moved into point position. We’d made it three steps before a Cerberus ‘bot heaved around the corner, its hunchback form filling the walkway. The sensor stalks on its wedge-shaped head spun, the lenses extending, dilating, in an accusation of whirrs and clicks. Then they locked rigid, pointing right at us, and shoulder-mounted halogens snapped on with a blinding thunk.

  -------------------

  In the air

  Major Eames turned and faced the transport’s rear compartment. Two full combat teams stretched away in the seat webbing on both sides of its armored bay, straining like dogs on the leash. Emergency lighting bathed everything the color of blood.

  “All right, listen up,” she shouted over the roar of the engines. “Wraith One just got splashed, so this situation is now officially Alpha Mike Foxtrot. Problem is there’s an asset down there that’s tier ultra—high as it gets. The facility’s already been breached, and rumor is someone’s here to snatch him. We’re not sure they have him yet, but he’s the reason we live and breathe. I’ve forwarded his image to your tactical comps. Engrave it in your brains.”

  She paused and swept her gaze over every soldier. “I have no idea who he is, but we put a single bruise on him, we’re hosed. Secretary MacKinnon himself waved me and spelled it out. Our first order of business is to lock the place down fast and find him. If you spot him with hostiles, it’s non-lethal only. I repeat, non-lethal only. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the answer came back.

  She gave a curt nod. “Time to embrace the suck, gentlemen. We drop in five.” Turning back to the co-pilot, she snapped. “Where is Base Security?”

  -------------------------

  On the ground

  “You are in violation. Remain where you are. Security personnel will arrive shortly.”

  This blared out of the Cerberus’ chest speaker in a rapid succession of Anglo, Spanish, and Mandarin. I guess anyone speaking Arabic or Hindi was pretty well screwed. Not that you couldn’t figure out what six gaping barrels of side-mounted rotary chain gun were saying. Or the tangle web sprayer on the steel-fingered mauler arm. Weighing half a ton, and three meters tall, Cerberus security robots were as subtle as a bric
k through your living room window. I fingered an EMP on my belt, but between our suits and Poet9, it was a dumb idea. We were too close. An electromagnetic pulse could snow-blind our Mitsu suits and fry Poet9’s brain box. Not good options.

  “Now would be a really good time for the Triplets, I muttered. Eyestalks swiveled my way. Tam moved one step backward.

  “What are you doing?” Poet hissed.

  The Cerberus turned on Poet9 now, reacting to the sound of his voice. The recording cycled again, and Tam used the opportunity to take another step. The Cerberus seemed to hesitate. “Playing our only card right now,” Tam said. “I deployed with ‘bots in Seoul during Pacification.” His voice came over our helmet radios, sounding low and steady. He was still holding Gibson, and the Cerberus weapon mounts were tracking him.

  “Use of non-lethal restraint is authorized. Remain where you are. Security personnel will arrive shortly.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know.” Tam took two more steps then froze. “This’ll have to do. Poet, Jace… get ready to run. Jace, limpet an EMP on this heap when I say. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Are you muy loco?” Poet grew furious nervous, dancing from side to side. “Fuera de su mente?”

  Tam risked another step to one side. “Ready…” The machine shifted after him, extending its servo-arm into firing position. The mantra sounded again.

  “Okaaaay,” I said.

  “Steady…” Tam was leaning sideways, toward the wall, keeping Gibson in sight, but back and firmly under his arm. Maybe it was because of the boy, but the Cerberus’ programming seemed to have discarded Poet9 and me as low priority targets. The robot was following Tam’s every move. My hand drifted down to my belt and unclipped the charge.