Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (124 page)

“Not even your friend Kabuki?” Gerry asked. During the flight, he had questioned Jachz about the AI. And to be fair to Jachz, there were no signs of subterfuge. But then Gerry had to remember he was dealing with a sentient AI—something that hadn’t happened before. He could be as skilled at withholding the truth as any of those bastards in the Family.
 

Still, what he had said about her developing from the copy of Elliot did make sense to Gerry. During his time with the latter, he had seen how that could be possible. Even Jachz’s own development didn’t come as a huge surprise.
 

The combination of biology and intelligence was the key, after all. For whatever reason, when they had uploaded Jachz after his mortal death on the planet’s surface, something changed when he awoke in his new body.
 

Perhaps he and Gerry weren’t so different after all.

“No,” Jachz said, “Kabuki was sandboxed. Whether she knows about this place now is immaterial. I have no contact with her. I can only go on the information Enna has provided and the little I already knew about the viroborgs.”

“Are we still getting a signal?” Petal asked.
 

“Yes,” Jachz replied, gesturing across the shuttle’s slate. A circular map, like radar, displayed on the OLED surface, overlaying the image of the jungle below. Two blips flashed: Jess’s signal and the shuttle’s position. According to the scale on the radar, they were about a hundred miles apart. It wouldn’t take long to—

The shuttle rocked violently to the side, and alarms flashed on the OLED screen. Petal fell out of her seat, crashing to the deck. Smoke filled the cabin as another crash hit the shuttle somewhere behind them.
 

Gerry reached out with his AIA and briefly detected a network presence.
 

It could have been the viroborg or something else, but he was soon crashed out of the connection with a blast of white noise and junk data.
 

He reached down and helped Petal back to her seat.
 

The shuttle’s nose dipped, and the broken image of the jungle on the screen grew larger, but not through any kind of magnification.
 

They were losing altitude.
 

Fast.
 

Jachz frantically wrestled with the manual controls, but little was working.
 

“Shit, Jachz, bring her up, we’re gonna crash,” Petal said.

“I’m trying,” he said. “I’m locked out of the system.”

Holly reached over and pulled the control slate round. The screen was dead. “Damn it, it’s on autopilot.”

They kept falling.
 

Flames burst through the gaps in the door behind them, the engine on fire.
 

Gerry and the others coughed with the smoke.
 

“We’ve got to do something quick, before we choke,” Petal said.

They were just a few hundred meters from the tops of the trees. He scanned the internal network and found the pilot control node.

Calming his mind, Gerry connected to the shuttle and shut down the emergency autopilot procedures, unlocking full access. He switched the power over to manual control and rerouted all power to the auxiliary H-core motors used for VTOL landing.
 

It wouldn’t be enough to slow them greatly, but it was something.
 

“You’ve got control, Jachz,” Gerry said through a series of coughs and holding onto Petal with one hand and his seat with the other.
 

Jachz’s face sharpened and his eyes focused as he gripped the manual control sticks. His hands made micro-movements, adjusting their descent.
 

The nose came up and the shuttle descended under control.
 

Noises of branches and power cables scraping against the hull echoed throughout the cabin, drowning out the sounds of the powder jets extinguishing the fire in the engine compartment.
 

A few seconds later the shuttle jolted heavily, hitting the ground with a clang and a thud.

The momentum of the shuttle pushed it through the dense forest, smashing trees aside. Gerry thought a branch would come crashing through the screen at any moment and tensed his body to react. Petal gripped his arm and closed her eyes.
 

Everyone became quite as they waited for the inevitable crash.
 

But it didn’t come.
 

The shuttle, pushing through the jungle, eventually ran out of momentum against the thick brush and came to a stop with a screeching, rending yell of defiance.
 

No one moved for a moment, scared that any minor movement would set off some catastrophic event. The section behind the cabin clicked and hissed with the dying fire, the metal stretching and cooling under the extinguishing foam.
 

The stench of smoke hung heavily in the air.
 

A long minute passed and Gerry spoke. “I think we’re okay. Good job, Jachz. You handled that well.”

“I’m used to it, I guess,” he said with a wry smile, showing more humanity in that moment than in all the time Gerry had known him. “First the crash of my ship and now this,” Jachz said. “Is twice a coincidence or a trend?”
 

Gerry noticed a slight tremble in Jachz’s hands as he let go of the control sticks.
 

He does feel after all, then.
Gerry had considered that it was all a ruse, but if it was, then he was being extremely authentic. The truth was, Gerry suspected, that Jachz wasn’t withholding anything and he was what he said he was.
 

Either way, Gerry would keep an eye on him.
 

He hadn’t survived this long by trusting the Family.
 

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Petal said. “But I’m sick of flying. Almost every damn time it ends badly. I’m losing count of how many times I’ve been shot out of the sky or crash-landed. It’s ground vehicles only for me now.”

“I know what you mean,” Gerry said, smiling even as he brought back the memories of crashing into Bachia during the battle with the Red Widows. If it wasn’t someone shooting you down, it was malfunctioning equipment.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Holly said, unbuckling from her seat. “I feel like a target stuck in here.”

“I concur,” Petal said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here and find whatever it was that tried to kill us. I feel a little revenge coming on.”

Gerry grabbed the slate that displayed Jess’s location and placed it in the webbing around his chest. He and the others had changed into combat fatigues. They’d no doubt need them now they were looking at a trek through the jungle.
 

Each wore a knife and a pistol on their belts. The rest of the gear was in the back of the shuttle, probably now useless after the fire. “Okay, everyone ready? Draw your weapons, we don’t know if there’s something, or someone, waiting for us out there.”

“Okay then,” Petal said, grabbing her pistol with one hand and the lever to open the shuttle’s side door with the other. “Let’s go get us some jungle fun.”

Petal pulled the door to the side and made to step out, but her foot dangled over air. Gerry dashed forward and grabbed her arms, pulling her back.
 

She dropped the pistol.
 

They stood at the edge and watched it fall down into a great pit.
 

The shuttle rocked on the edge and threatened to tip into the hole.
 

“Holy fuck,” Petal said, scrambling back inside.
 

“What the hell?” Holly said, joining them cautiously. She looked over Petal’s shoulders and down into the pit. “Oh no… that’s, oh god, no…”

Gerry turned away when he saw the contents of the pit.
 

The pistol made no noise when it struck the bottom. The pit was at least thirty meters wide and fifty deep. At the bottom, lit up by the evening sun, were bones. Thousands or perhaps millions of bones all piled up together. Among ribs and femurs and skulls were the rotting fabrics of flags from various nations.
 

They were rocking on the edge of a mass grave.
 

Gerry staggered back and fought to hold back the bile rising in his throat.
 

Petal turned away, her face pale.
 

“Head to the back,” Holly said, her voice shaking as she stepped through the cabin and approached the bulkhead door that led to the rear section of the shuttle. Jachz made to move toward the side door, but Petal shook her head and pushed him toward Holly.
 

“You don’t want to see that, Jachz. You shouldn’t see it,” Petal said.
 

Jachz simply nodded and followed Holly through to the rear of the craft.
 

Petal and Gerry joined them, moving slowly so as not to disturb the balance and send them crashing nose first into the bone pit.
 

“Are you okay?” Gerry asked as he held the door open for Petal.
 

She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Nothing should be a surprise anymore given all the things we’ve seen, right?”

“I hope not, but that… well, that’s all kinds of fucked up. I worry what else we’re going to find out here.”

“Let’s not think about it,” Petal said. “Just concentrate on finding that ’borg and Jess.”

“Yeah, go on; let's get out of here.”

They made their way through the middle section of the shuttle. The side exit thankfully led to solid ground. Gerry poked through their supplies. Their water and food were unspoiled, protected by the crates they were stored in. Their rifles were also undamaged apart from some visible scuffing.
 

The worst of the fire was in the rearmost section, destroying the engine beyond repair. Gerry knew it was done on purpose. This was no random shooting. Two shots were all it took to ruin their engine, meaning they had no choice but to go on foot.
 

The pit looked much larger from outside of the shuttle. It was like a great energy beam shot it out from above. All the trees and vines and thick brush simply ceased to exist around its perimeter, leaving it open to the air.
 

The bodies were probably picked apart by numerous scavengers before ultimately rotting away, leaving just the bones. He saw flags from all the major nations and alliances, pieces of uniforms, soldiers and civilians alike.
 

Gerry turned away from the sight and hoped he would eventually forget the image. He stepped back toward the shuttle to join the others and listened to the sounds of the jungle. In the trees he heard movement, small scurrying movement. Animals… real ones. It’d been so long since he saw any.
 

A shape caught his attention above the pit: a bird.
 

The sun shone down from a low westerly position, bathing the place in a golden glow, casting long shadows. The smell of dirt and smoke filled the thick, humid air. Sweat was already beading on his forehead. He wiped it away and surveyed the wreckage of the shuttle.
 

Trees and bushes were snapped aside and flattened, creating a tunnel a few hundred meters long back through the jungle. Pieces of grey and white metal debris littered the place.
 

Gerry felt a tinge of sadness that this wild place was now tarnished by the damaged craft. The jungle must have stood undisturbed for decades, and a few minutes into their journey they had already spoiled it—but then it was not a patch on the pit.

“It was an energy weapon,” Jachz said from the rear of the shuttle. He bent low to survey the damage.
 

Gerry stepped closer and kneeled down next to him. Two puncture wounds in the hull confirmed Jachz’s assessment. “This isn’t the work of an individual,” Gerry said. “Something that large must have come from a weapon platform.”

“Which means we’re not alone,” Holly added, holding her rifle out, pointing the barrel towards the line of dark trees surrounding them.
 

“Not necessarily,” Petal added. “It could be an automated system. Like from that over there.” She pointed to the south. Above the trees poked a small dome atop a triangular metal structure, much like the ones Gerry had spotted earlier. Blue lines of electricity crackled around its surface before disappearing into the structure.
 

“Of course,” Gerry said. “That’s what the fence and towers are: a perimeter defence system. It makes sense if this was the Family’s main territory.”

“I hate the sound of that,” Petal said. “With the pit and the towers—what else is waiting for us? Anyone else think this is turning into a suicide mission?”

“No,” Gerry said, placing the rifle in a sling over his back. “We’re going to be fine. We’ll figure this out. Trust me. If everyone’s got their supplies, I suggest we move out. By the looks of Jess’s signals, she and the ’borg are on foot too. That evens things up a little.”

“I agree,” Jachz said, pulling his backpack straps over his shoulders and removing the large, curved knife from his belt scabbard. “We carry on. I’ll take point.”

“Petal and I will follow. Holly, you want to take the rear?”

She mock-saluted Gerry and smiled. “Got it, boss. My pleasure.”

“Okay, let’s move out.”
 

They followed Jachz around the perimeter of the pit until they reached the other side. The ex-Family member hacked at the vines and branches, cutting a way through for them. Gerry and Petal stepped forward aside him and helped with clearing a trail. Holly remained on guard, covering their rear.
 

They kept on like that for an hour, cutting, trekking, staying on guard.
 

All the while Gerry kept an eye on the slate as it registered Jess’s pings. They were slowly closing in. But they were still just over ninety miles away.

As they continued on into the heart of the jungle’s dark interior, Gerry had the sense that they were being watched or followed. It wasn’t just the sound of whatever creatures lived here, but a real presence. At times he thought he saw the gloom shift just outside of his vision. Other times he thought he could feel the gaze of someone upon him.