Code Breakers: Beta Read online

  Only the numbers and titles painted in thick black paint on the walls gave any indication of her whereabouts. That, and the feeling of having walked a trough through the old concrete with the amount of times she had travelled about the place.

  Regardless of the dullness of the place, she now had something new, shiny, possibly dangerous in her hands. Maybe Jimmy would let her do something more interesting than scanning through A/V footage.

  She arrived at the blast doors to Jimmy’s room. She knocked twice, and the door swung open. As ever, he’d expected her. She wondered if he had the entire place under surveillance.

  He sat inside his workstation: a glass cube with holoscreens on every surface. He hunched over a particularly complicated equation when he glanced up, regarded her with a kind, but impatient expression, his bushy eyebrows doing their little dance. He often said more through those furry slugs than he did orally, which of course led to a great deal of humour during one of the General’s more boring briefings, and by more boring, she meant always boring.

  “Yo, Jimbo. What’s going down?” she said as she hopped onto a desk and swung her legs underneath, innocent as if nothing would melt in her mouth. She wore her dark leggings and black, barefoot shoes, which always made her feel sneaky and fast.

  “Jimbo?” Robertson said, shaking his head with a degree of resignation. “Please. How much further would you butcher my name? Will it soon just been a grunt, or an ‘Oi!’ Let’s maintain at least some standards.”

  “Fair play, Doc. Look, I have something super interesting.”

  “What is it?” He stood from his stool, exited his control cube, and approached Sasha. She held out the slate, pressed play on the audio file.

  The audio stopped. Jimmy Robertson stroked his chin. “Awfully familiar, wouldn’t you say, my dear?”

  She shrugged, “I guess. What do you think of it? Could it be a trap? Those idiot Widows aren’t always blessed with the greatest of strategic minds. They might be dumb enough to try something like this in order to get closer. And recently their ship prowled closer than ever before. I think they’re trying it on.”

  He cringed at her language, replied, “Could be. Have you analysed the data yet? The video from the drone’s camera?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. Going by the coordinates in the UAV’s transmitter, I’d say they’re only about twenty minutes from the island. I thought it best to speak to you right away.”

  “Yes, you did the right thing,” he said, scratching his head, showering his shoulders with dandruff.

  “Shall I send a message back? Or just blast ‘em out of the sky and recover the wreckage?”

  Robertson looked at the time on the slate: 19:10. The General and his men would be out there until 22:00 before heading back. That’s when The Family’s satellites would be overhead.

  “It’s too risky to establish contact. The signatures are definitely coming from a Red Widow Jaguar,” Jimmy said. “With Vickers and his men out there, they’d have little time to find cover. They’re at least twenty-five minutes away from the main doors.”

  Sasha jumped up and down. “Want me to take it down? It’s totally a trap. They’ve even sampled my voice.”

  “How would they have got your voice?” Jimmy asked, moving his hands into the pockets of his grey trousers. Everything was grey.

  “Um, well, I might have left some messages inside the UAV.”

  “Messages? His voice scaled an octave when he became agitated, making Sasha laugh inside. “What kind of messages?”

  “Nothing bad. I just read the UAV’s instructions and added a little something to the Red Widows, a few insults, about their robes. Oh, and I maybe said something about their personal hygiene too, and their heritage. Ha-ha, you’re gonna laugh at this one, I—”

  “You stupid bloody girl!” Jimmy slammed his palm down on the desk, puffed out his cheeks. “You could have compromised us all. Don’t you know how reckless—”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.” Sasha slunk off the desk, dropped her chin.

  Robertson shook his head. “Look. What’s done is done.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Sasha asked, wanting the whole damned episode over and done with. She hated failing Jimmy. It reminded her why they didn’t trust her: because she let her eagerness get the better of her.

  Jimmy walked to her, placed a hand on her shoulder. “We can’t take the risk. Record and send everything to my servers. Send out two UAV drones to get a closer look: this one’s feed looks like it’s dead. There’s nothing but static.”

  “And then what?” she said. “What next?”

  “And then, if it looks like the Red Widows, take them out.”

  “Yes!” Sasha fist-pumped the air, turned on her heels and ran all the way back to the control room singing “I’mma gonna blast ya from the skies, from the skies, I’mma gonna blast ya.”

  Chapter 10

  Over the Sea of Japan

  Petal noticed the increase of traffic to the UAV, having set up an application to monitor its input/output channels. It was clear to her that whoever was at Criborg had got her message and was now making a decision, whatever that might be.

  Land had disappeared behind her an hour ago. All that existed now were the two blues: the dark, rich evening sky and its partner, the sea. Small rippling waves shimmered against the cool white light of the moon.

  The wind blew slow and calm, and she found herself staring out of the cabin window, with the Jaguar set to autopilot, watching various disturbances on the surfaces. She was sure one of the ripples was caused by a family of whales cruising for plankton and other sources of food.

  Wake Island lay a further fifteen minutes away. A deep quiet descended with nothing stirring, chasing, or fighting. The blissful nature of the ‘Stem still kept her relaxed like everything was okay again. No hassles, no stresses, just fly for as long as the hydrogen lasted, and then pop the ejection seat and float on the sea until something happened.

  Of all the dangerous situations she had been in, and of all the times where death presented it self as a possibility this was the most chilled she’d ever been. It was as if death wasn’t such a bad outcome really. For as long as she could remember, she’d been in one scrape or another. Filled to her core with malicious code and bad AIs, all rotting away her humanity, changing her into something else.

  Gabe had often used her as nothing but a tool to further his agenda, and Enna nothing more than a research project and a weapon. She didn’t blame them really, or harbour any hard feelings. They were just doing what they thought right, and in their own way they had cared for her, looked out for her.

  Only Gerry noticed something different within her, and yet even that spark of… no, she couldn’t say it was love, not yet. How would she even know what love was anyway? She was a killer, a hacker, and a weapon. She didn’t love. She maimed, and stole, and destroyed.

  That a chip had been ripped from her with the name Criborg stamped into it didn’t mean she was going home. For all she knew this place was just a chip and weapons producer and someone else had stuck that in her to make her better at killing and hacking.

  It’d be like sending a robot back to the manufacturer of its sensor array.

  And then a nagging thought surfaced as she flew over the blue sea, am I just a robot too? It made sense when she looked at the evidence: no memories before Gabe discovered her wandering the desert; chips and implanted weaponry; the ability to contain and manipulate code and AIs; reflexes and abilities faster than most people she knew.

  Then there was her extraordinary tolerance to NanoStems. The amount they had pumped into her over the last few years would have killed a regular person, but she took it in her stride. Thrived on it.

  She wondered how much of her body was real and how much of it was actually billions of nano-machines all swimming about doing various jobs, keeping her going.

  And yet, despite all that evidence, she still felt.

  Even now, as she
noticed two UAVs, similar in design to the one she found in the Jaguar, drop out from behind a thin wisp of cloud and head towards her. Dread, fear, excitement, and anticipation rose up inside her. Her hands began to sweat and she fidgeted in her seat, fingers poised over the weapon’s controls. She held off, waited. They drew closer, and then split off to flank her.

  Her fingers edged closer to the triggers of the machine guns. The pair of UAVs appeared on her holographic display with a red ring around them. The targeting system had them locked.

  A second passed, then two, three. She eased her hand away, took her eye off the radar, checked the data flow. Traffic spiked. Same signal structure as before. They were definitely from Criborg.

  Two crashes smashed into the Jaguar simultaneously, alerting a rainbow of warning signs and a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Dammit! Guess they’re not friendly, after all.

  Petal wrestled with the controls, but the damned thing locked down and headed for the big drink. Two more blasts sealed the deal. Petal punched the ejector seat.

  The air pressure popped her ears, her guts tried to remove themselves via her feet, and her head swam, even more so than normal with the ‘Stems floating about in there still. She watched almost as if it were happening in slow motion, as the Jaguar broke apart: its stub wings split from the fuselage and all three large pieces headed down into the calm waters below.

  Strangely, she thought of the whales, hoped they would be safe. For years these waters had nothing in them, but as the damage to the climate eased, life had returned. The sea’s biodiversity could come and go as they pleased, but here she was creating yet more mayhem. Everywhere she went, destruction and death followed.

  The ejector seat had small thrust-engines on either side, and she propelled herself forwards, more for the fun of it than anything. She was still going to hit the water and die either from hypothermia or drowning at some point, or perhaps some sea creature would eat her. Maybe the whales were hungry for more than just plankton?

  Eventually she approached the surface of the water. She cut away the parachute and free-fell the last few meters, frantically trying to unclip from the seat, but the mechanism jammed, sending her smashing into the water, and going down and down, the weight of the seat strapped to her dragging her down into the deep like an anchor.

  Bubbles poured from her mouth. She twisted, screamed, yanked at the strappings holding her tight. She looked up; flecks of moonlight dappled the surface only to be taken away by shadow as the dark-green parachute furled across the water.

  Her struggling made the seat tip forward, and she fell down head first into the murky depths. Out from nowhere, seeing it too late, she crashed into a coral reef, striking her head against the rock. The seat wedged itself stuck in a crevice. Her blood used what little oxygen she had within her body as she frantically tried to escape to no avail.

  Energy drained from her limbs to be replaced by pins and needles. The heavy cold made her lungs feel tight in her chest. Against her will she opened her mouth. Salt water flooded her lungs.

  Her arms went limp. She blinked, tried to see past the red and black spots.

  All she could feel was the cold.

  And then, she felt nothing.

  Chapter 11

  — Activating martial protocols. You need to get us out of here, Mags said.

  The martial protocol was one of a suite of instruction sets given to him by The Family. There were limits imposed of course, but as usual with The Family they underestimated him, and he spun reams of Helix++ code to override the restrictions, meaning he could boost his energy, push his muscles and heart farther.

  The limits were designed to keep him operationally efficient. But screw efficiency. He was in a damned war zone and needed to save his ass before he could do anything else.

  Feeling the blood rush to his muscles, and the nano-machines increase his strength by a factor of three, he kicked out a boot with everything he had. The door refused to give, but something cracked within the mechanism. The adrenaline flooded his system now, and he kicked out again, and again, denting the door, pushing it outwards, until finally something popped and the door flung open.

  The sound of gunfire, screams, and some foreign language assailed his ears, while the stench of burning oil, ionised gas, and gunpowder filled his nostrils. He dampened the incoming audio to reduce the reverberation in his head and darted for cover behind the corner of Enna’s building: a square blue-grey box of strengthened alloy and Polymar™. Even with its incredible strength, it had taken a battering. First things first: Gerry had to assess whom the enemy and what the situation was.

  A brief visual sweep of the settlement soon got him up to speed on the battleground.

  There were four Jaguars circling the entire place. They were similar in style to Enna’s but with white and grey camo design and red Russian lettering on the side. The Jaguar aircraft appeared to be directing the flow of the battle, filling in when necessary, and drawing fire to the perimeter.

  In the maelstrom of the battle for GeoCity-1, which was always an ambitious name given it was made up of just ten buildings, Gerry counted six ATV hover cars working their way in and out of the narrow spaces between the buildings. Throughout these gaps and heavily concentrated into the open square in the middle of the city a fiercely fought melee broke out between white and brown robed women with red scarves around their necks, and the wildly dressed Bachians.

  Gerry recognised some of the gang members from the last time he visited.

  To the rear and outside of the city, three heavily armoured trucks using conventional hydrogen fuel engines waited. All of those vehicles he knew didn’t belong to the citizens of GeoCity-1 or the Bachians. Two were sat stationary, water vapour coming from their exhausts. The third had the rear shutter pulled down and locked before moving off. For a brief second, Gerry thought he saw Bilanko, the so-called Queen of GeoCity-1 and her prized server ‘Old Grey’ being bundled to the front of the truck’s hold.

  Of the melee he counted fifty-three Bachian fighters. Eight were manning the machine gun turrets, of which there were five, attempting to keep the Jaguars at bay, but their shells were no match against laser and particle weaponry.

  It was easy to segregate the numbers of insurgents. They all emitted a unique short-range radio signatureobviously their own proprietary communication system. Gerry tagged the IDs and used his AIA to present them on his HUD display. The concentration of the fighting took place in the middle of the town, turning it into a bloodbath. With the narrow streets and the main gates to the front and rear of the city closed and guarded by the Jaguars, there was no way out.

  A stray particle bolt crashed into the compound just above his head, sending a spray of debris down on to him. Using that as cover, he sprinted from the building, and sticking close to the rear city wall, ran across to the other side where the buildings were more tightly packed and offered more cover within the alleyways.

  Over his VPN he heard Malik’s voice.

  “Sir, are you alive?”

  “I’m here, Malik, what’s your status?”

  “Alive, just. I don’t think they’ve seen me yet.”

  “Hold your position and hide. Stay out of the way.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Let’s leave the briefing for later if we make it. Keep your head down and you might live. Out.”

  Gerry cut off his VPN wanting to keep his attention focused on his HUD as the various figures and vehicles moved around the display. If he could get to one of the vehicles he might be able to hack their systems, give the Bachians time to organise their defence.

  The alleyway between the next two buildings appeared empty. Using his stealth protocol he eased round and into the darkness. The buildings were a food store and a residential dwelling. Both shot to hell with various sized holes in the exteriors, but they would act as good enough cover for now.

  In the middle, and amongst the dust, he got a closer look at the attackers: they carried modern-l
ooking shotguns and large single-handed sickles that appeared to be both a cutting and a stun weapon.

  Who the hell were these people? And where did they get all the weapons?

  The Bachians were holding their own in hand-to-hand combat—for now. Gerry recognised a particular dervish in the middle hacking limbs and heads at a frightening pace: Cheska, one of Enna’s transcendents. Gerry was pleased Enna had got her all fixed up, and seemingly upgraded. What a sight she created, and yet the numbers were too many.

  Even someone such as she couldn’t stand up to shotgun blasts. But still, she hacked, moved, slashed, and dodged her way through the fight, leading her group, keeping their enemy on the back foot. A particularly fierce-looking robed attacker pulled away from the central melee and raised her weapon, aimed at Cheska’s back.

  Without thinking, Gerry launched himself into combat mode, sprinted across the battleground like a cheetah, and shoulder-charged the woman holding the shotgun, crashing her to the ground. Before the woman could react, Cheska spun, bent, and grabbed the shotgun. She pulled the trigger, spraying the woman’s skull and brains into the blood stained dirt and dust.

  Gerry stood back-to-back with Cheska as she continued her death-walk, pulling the trigger again and again, clearing a path through the melee. Two robed women ran towards them, screaming some phrase with their sickles held high. Their screams were short lived, punctuated with that short, dull blast of the shotgun.

  While they were free for a second, Gerry spun, grabbed Cheska by the arm, and pulled her to the side of the battle, their backs against the buildings where, via his HUD, he could keep an overview of the attackers and buy precious time.

  “Cheska? It’s me, Gerry. What the hell’s happening? Who are these people?”