Code Breakers: Prequel Read online

  “Did Jericho have a central file server?” Petal asked. “We need to find something.”

  Holly tapped Old Grey again. “All in here.” She motioned to the cable in Petal’s hand. “Wanna go in?”

  Petal looked to Gabe, strains of uncertainty pulling at the muscles in her face. Her eyes were a torrent of activity now. The malicious code inside her wasn’t far from breaking out. He wasn’t sure he could trust Holly after turning on a man she had once loved.

  “Let me go first,” Gabe said.

  “It’s safe,” Holly said. “I’m not trying to trick you or anything.”

  Well, of course she would say that, he thought. “I trust you. I just want to look for the info first. I won’t take long.” He squeezed Petal gently on her arm; she would know he was just being cautious. One time she’d jacked into an unknown server, desperate to dump a particularly nasty AI they had techxorcised from one of their jobs. She nearly lost her mind to it. The server’s system was an anti-hacking machine, designed to overload the minds of those who connected with a neck port to allow direct cortex control of its systems. Petal had luckily managed to disconnect in time before there was any lasting damage. But it scared her witless so that for a while she refused to do anymore jobs. That wasn’t something they could afford again. Their ability to find and destroy dangerous AIs and viruses was the only thing they were willing to trade for food and shelter.

  “I’ll be right back,” Gabe said, plugging the cable into his neck port.

  The sensation of going into a system never failed to shock him, no matter how many times he had done this. The brain, being an electrical organ reacted in strange ways to new, direct, stimulation.

  It always took a minute or so to get over the shock of bypassing one’s regular senses and established a direct neural link.

  This one was different.

  Where a regular connection could sometimes make the brain feel like it was burning, about to burst until the link had formed properly, this one felt like a much more advanced process, smoother and pain free, and yet he felt himself connect much deeper.

  That scared him as much as the thought of his brain being boiled by an anti-hack unit.

  Once inside, the image of the operating system appeared in his mind. He controlled a curser with his thoughts, directing it over a number of icons depicting various programs available.

  In the corner of the image was the text: Old Grey Network Systems—Copyright 2025. So that’s where it got its name. But more impressive was the age. The server was far older than he would have imagined. Over a hundred and twenty-eight years.

  Gabe felt like an old-fashioned archaeologist digging into a perfectly preserved crypt, only here, the finds were bits and bytes as opposed to bones and artefacts, but they were no less valuable.

  Using a file explorer program he ran a number of searches on the information Shelley had wanted: the blueprints to the currently downed planes. Jericho had amassed a trove of information. There were data documents and files on hundreds of old military projects, systems, and vehicles. It took a few minutes but eventually he found what he was looking for and copied it across the connection to his internal memory.

  Before he left the server, he inspected the containment program. Clicking on the icon, a status table appeared, showing various statistics such as: memory used, processor power used, I/O channel bandwidth, and number of concurrent processes—those were the AIs that this system was containing.

  It appeared that this Old Grey system was performing some kind of calculation on the AIs and malicious code. It occurred to Gabe that the system was observing their behaviour. It got a sense of someone, or something, watching him. He felt like he’d been caught stealing, and quickly shut to the containment program down and logging out.

  When he pulled the cable from his neck port, he thought he heard a female voice whisper something over the connection, but put it down to his mind altering back to reality, but it left him with a distinctive feeling that there was more to the server than he, or anyone, could realise.

  Gabe was sweating, the sheen on his skin glossy from the overhead lights.

  “Well, Gabe? This bitch good to go or what, eh?”

  He hesitated, not sure how to explain. It seemed safe. The fact there were AIs and viruses currently safely held within its containment process told him that it should be fine, but how could he put into words that almost spiritual sense of there being someone in there.

  “I’m taking that as a yes,” Petal said, connecting her cable. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Holly said. “This thing’s rock solid.”

  “Aye,” Gabe said distractedly as he scrutinised Petal for any signs of trouble.

  Petal closed her eyes and sat cross-legged in front of the server as if she was sitting in prayer to some deity. Her body jerked, as it usually did when she transferred the malicious code within her. Her face however looked serene. All tension had flowed away to leave an expression of bliss. Even her eyes were draining back to her usual crystal blue colour. A transfer like that had never been so quick, or pain free. Petal usually thrashed or yelled out during such an operation.

  She stayed that way for a further five minutes, the tension in the room growing ever thicker as Gabe and Holly looked at each other, then to the still form of Petal. Eventually Holly broke the revering silence.

  “Well? Is she okay?”

  Gabe could still detect Petal on their private network. The data traffic from her had slowed to a trickle. Everything seemed normal.

  “Yeah,” Gabe said. “I think she is.”

  Holly knelt down in front of Petal, waved her hand in front of her face. Petal didn’t react.

  “That’s freaky,” Holly said. “It’s like she’s looking right at me but can’t see anything.”

  “You’ve never connected in?” Gabe said.

  “Nah, man. I never want anything in me again.”

  Gabe winced a little, thinking back to Jericho and he’d damaged this poor girl. She’d forever go through life a wounded animal now, her views, and motivations shaped around the scar tissue of her psyche. He considered whether he should take her with him and Petal. Try and steer her away from a life of more violence and damage, but then he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t expose her to things worse than this town.

  Petal stirred, a low moan coming from her lips as she closed her eyes and slowly removed the cable from her neck. She slumped forward, rubbed the back of her neck. Holly put her hands on Petal’s shoulders. “Are you okay?” she said.

  Petal raised her face, stared at the girl. “Yeah, Hol, I’m good. You did well bringing us here. Real well.”

  Holly hugged her, nearly knocking Petal to her back. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Petal asked.

  “For trusting me. I just wanted to help.”

  “You did that,” Gabe said. “And we’re thankful—”

  Holly let go, stood, and helped Petal to her feet before looking back at Gabe. “I hear a but coming.”

  “I’m sorry, but we have to go,” Gabe said.

  A hush descended the room. Holly looked up at him expectantly.

  It was Petal who spoke. “You can’t come with us, Hol. We’re bad news. Trouble and violence follows us as surely as we follow it.”

  The girl dropped her chin, idly swung her foot across the floor, kicking at the dust. “I understand,” she said. “I guess I’ll stay here, look after the servers, but I want you to at least do something for me.”

  “What’s that?” Gabe asked.

  “Take Old Grey with you. Take it somewhere safe. It’s seriously special and I don’t think I’ll be able to protect it. One day, it’ll save the world.”

  Part 9 - The Handover II

  Gabe woke with a start. A sound had penetrated his fevered dream-state, dragged him from his past, dropping him cold into the present. The dream was the same as he always had: of entering the shelter, his home, finding the place not
hing more than a ghost town.

  The sound roared again. Gabe pulled himself up from the bed—Jericho’s bed, and stumbled to the window over-looking the town. The place was even worse in the daylight. Half-eaten and rotten bodies littered the place, not just the central square.

  A plume of black smoke caught his attention. Directly below the apartment building, Petal and Holly stood over an old-fashioned motorcycle. It must have been as old the server. It looked like it had more rust on it than actual metal, but despite that, the internal combustion engine spluttered and coughed until it purred.

  Holly twisted the throttle, revved the engine. The exhaust smoke cleared from a thick black to a light grey. Within minutes of her tinkering with it, the bike sounded good. Solid. As inefficient as the old IC engines were, they couldn’t be beaten for raw excitement.

  Gabe had only ridden one motorcycle: a museum piece back in Hong Kong. A Hyabusa. He nearly killed himself on it, the power incredible. You didn’t get that with the sedate electric motors. And with the EMPs having taken out most vehicles, the old mechanical oil-burners were still going—if you could find one that hadn’t ceased completely, and if you could find the fuel.

  Putting his duster jacket on, and collecting the pistol, he made his way out of the building to meet with the girls below. He checked every shadow and nook as he went, convinced some nutter would jump him at any moment.

  “What we got here?” Gabe said, smiling wide as he got neared the bike, felt the roar of the engine. Petal was equally excited, sitting astride it, her arms out-stretched on the once-chrome handlebars. She revved the engine again, looked back at Gabe.

  “Fucking cool, eh?”

  Gabe knelt to the fuel tank, scrubbed at the old badge. He could just make out the name of an old maker from the USA: Harley Davidson. The front tyre had been patched crudely, and the rear suspension springs were welded in various places. It’d be a hard ride, but it beat walking.

  Attached to the rear was a makeshift trailer, on which Holly had firmly strapped Old Grey for transportation. She held a bag in her head. She passed it over to Gabe.

  “What’s this?”

  “A gift from me,” Holly said. “For taking the server, and for saving me. If you didn’t come into the station when you did, the Mayors would have killed me for sure—after doing whatever it is they were going to do to me.”

  “Where are the others?” Gabe asked, wondering where the feral nutters from the previous night had gone. No fires burned in the station and he heard no voices. There was certainly no sign of any occupation when he first came down and passed the building.

  “They go back to their holes during the day—holes beneath the buildings,” Holly said.

  “Why?” Petal asked.

  “Most of them have developed an aversion to UV rays—radiation poisoning. That’s why they fight over the soy crops. Those crops are the only thing around here they can eat that ain’t screwed up.”

  “What about you?” Gabe said, opening the bag.

  “I eat what Jericho provided. There’s enough for a few years yet.”

  Inside the bag, Gabe found a plastic box containing three vials of NanoStems, and a two-litre flask of water.

  “That should get you to your destination, as long as this old jalopy holds up,” Holly said, pointing to the bag.

  “Thanks,” Gabe said, giving her a wide smile. “That’s very kind of ya.”

  She shrugged. “Least I could do.”

  “How are you running this?” Petal asked. “They stopped making petroleum fuels decades ago.”

  “Soy oil. Jericho has a small distillery. He used it to extract the oil, but he mixed it with something else and managed to get a fuel. It’s the last I could find. I don’t know how to make it. I don’t know how far it’ll get you, but if you take it easy it should at least get you to Shelley’s. Personally, I’d suggest you just fucking kill the bitch and keep on ridin’.”

  “Don’t worry, Hol, we’ve got it sorted,” Petal said.

  A gunshot fired overhead, and took out a chunk of concrete from the apartment building.

  “Fuck. Sniper,” Holly said, running for cover. “Get the hell out of here.”

  Petal gunned the throttle as soon as Gabe swung his leg over the seat. She missed the clutch and the bike lurched, making Gabe drop the bag, but it was too late. Holly was running for cover while pointing to them a route through the soy crops and back out into the desolate lands.

  “Thanks for everything!” Gabe shouted back as a metallic screech from another shot split the air, and a piece of siding came away from the station. Petal gunned the engine, a thick black cloud of smoke erupted out of the exhaust pipe as she steered them through the rubble of the crops. Within a minute they were out of range, and heading back to Shelley’s.

  “You okay back there?” Petal sent across their private network, the message popping up in Gabe’s internal display.

  “Yeah, girl, all good, just keep ya eyes on the road.”

  “What road?”

  “Fair point. Crap! Watch out for that—”

  Petal swerved the bike violently, just missing a fissure in the ground. She whooped with delight as Gabe gripped onto her to prevent himself from sliding off.

  She was a worse rider than he was. He just hoped they’d get back to Shelley’s in one piece. He didn’t want to continue the journey on the bike. Not when there was a fully restored Ranger truck ready to go.

  ***

  The chain-linked fence appeared on the horizon. Its shape wobbled and wavered with the morning heat like some kind of mirage. After the hour of torturous riding, Gabe couldn’t wait to arrive, regardless of what was waiting for him. His ass was numb, and his spine felt like he’d been fighting for a week. The thought of easing into the comfy seat of the Ranger was the only thing keeping him going.

  Shelley must have heard them coming, or seen them, for she was waiting just inside the fence, watching them get closer. The engine laboured badly by the time they approached the great aircraft cemetery, the scrapyard of stillborn fighter jets and passenger planes. The smoke trail behind them was enough to be seen for dozens of kilometres, he was sure.

  They pulled up to the entrance. Petal shut the engine off, and, though fun at first, Gabe was thankful to put an end to the din. It felt like his skull had trapped the rumble inside his brain. He wondered if he’d ever experience peace and quiet again.

  Before they even got off the bike, Shelley approached, shotgun in hand, called out, “You get it, then? I see you’re alive and mostly intact, so I’m guessing Jericho has met a sticky end—unless you didn’t do the job.”

  Stepping off the bike, Gabe waited for the blood to reach his muscles so he could walk straight. “Yeah, we got the info. Ya don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Is it in that?” Shelley pointed the barrel of her shotgun towards Old Grey.

  “Nah,” Gabe said. “That’s just a bit of junk I took for another job in another place. I got the info safe. How’d ya wanna do this, then? I don’t want no fucking about. A deal’s a deal as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Follow me.” Shelley turned her back, headed back towards her converted passenger plane, hobbling as she went. She struggled up the steps, disappeared inside the dark opening of the fuselage.

  Gabe stopped just outside. Petal was far behind him. He put out an arm to indicate for her to stop and wait. He felt exposed standing out there in the light. The clattering of metal rang out from within the plane.

  “I don’t like this, Gabe. This ain’t right,” Petal said.

  “It’s okay, girl, she needs the info, she won’t do anything stupid.”

  “It’s rude to talk behind someone’s back,” Shelley said, poking her head out of the gloom with a sarcastic smile on her ridged and weathered face. A set of keys flew out of the gloom and landed at Gabe’s feet.

  “There,” Shelley said. “Keys to the Ranger. She’s all yours. Bring her up to the fence, and when you hand over th
e information I’ll open the fence and you two can fuck off. How’s that sound?”

  Gabe turned to Petal. “You good with that?”

  Petal nodded, eyeing Shelley like she was a tiger waiting to pounce. “Yeah. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Gabe picked up the keys, and keeping his eye on Shelley, headed back through the maze of scrap vehicles to the Ranger. Petal followed close behind, watching their backs. Every sound, smell, and change of wind direction felt like a potential threat. And yet nothing happened. They arrived at the truck safely. Gabe tested the door and it opened. He poked around the interior, expecting some kind of trap, but all seemed okay.

  Petal walked a circuit around the vehicle, checking under the fenders and bumpers before eventually opening the passenger side and sliding in on the seat. “All seems good,” she said.

  “Aye, that it does,” Gabe said, and followed her inside.

  He placed the key in the ignition and pressed the start button, half-expecting the thing to explode, but the engine simply turned once, twice, then fired up to a smooth whine. The H-core engine generated a belch of water vapour from the exhaust as he engaged the reverse gear and reversed across the dry, cracked earth in a circle so that he faced towards the fence.

  Driving carefully, he negotiated his way back through the piles of metal, all the time watching around him for an ambush or some other shenanigans. Nothing happened. He pulled the Ranger out of the tight confines of walls made from decades of dead planes and cards, and stopped just inside the edge of the fence where Shelley was waiting, with her ever-faithful shotgun.

  Petal held a pistol low beneath the window.

  Gabe stopped the Ranger and took his hands from the wheel.

  “You got a slate on ya?” Gabe asked Shelley. “I’ll download the info to it. When you open the fence.”

  With one hand still holding her gun, she reached into the folds of her skin-coat and pulled a slate. She passed it to him. “Transfer the info, then I’ll open the fence.”