Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (97 page)

“I’ll let Malik know the plan,” Elaine said, rushing up the stairs to his position.

While James waited on her return, he kneeled down so he could look Jess in the eye. “Malik and the others will take care of you. It’s too dangerous for you to come with us. You understand?”

“Yes, but watch out for Elliot.”

“Of course. We’ll be careful.”

Enna ruffled the girl’s hair before handing her a scrap of paper and saying, “If things... don’t go well here, or we don’t come back, follow these directions. It’s one of the maintenance tunnels leading out of here. It’ll take you to the edge of the Dome. From there you’ll find an old well. The Bachians used to use it to syphon water from the city. I’ll send word to Bachia to have someone scout the area. If you need to escape, it won’t be long before someone friendly finds you.”

Jess took the paper without speaking. Enna knew she’d be okay. The girl was a pure survivor. Ever since her parents had abandoned her, she managed to stay alive in the brutal environment of Darkhan. She’d probably outlast the lot of them.
 

“Thank you,” Jess finally said. “I will see you all again.”

I hope so, James thought, realising the odds weren’t in their favour. But then this was a city steeped in lotteries and gambles.
 

Elaine returned, and they assigned weapons. Enna and Elaine had an assault rifle each; Ghanus and Liza-Marie wielded their familiar sniper rifles and a pistol.
 

“Take this,” Elaine said, passing James a handgun.

It felt heavy in his hands. He was a scientist, not a weapons specialist. He left all that to Vickers and his men. He grimaced at the thought of having to use it. Elaine gave him a holster that clipped to his belt beneath his grey, tailored suit jacket. Despite the grime and dust encrusted on its surface, it still looked good. “If I’m going to have kill someone, I might as well be well-dressed,” he said as he placed the gun in the holster, grimacing as it pushed against the grazes and cuts on his hip.
 

“Just remember to switch off the safety before shooting,” Elaine said. “It’s semi-auto and fires in four-round bursts. The magazine holds sixteen rounds. Don’t go spraying randomly. Emergencies only. Let us handle the shooting wherever possible.”

He placed his palm on the handle of the stun-baton. “There’s no worry about that.” He’d rather use the baton if it came to it. He pictured Samir stalking him in the dark. He doubted he would get a chance, but if he did, he’d prefer to stun her rather than kill her outright. There was also a chance he could still...

No, that’s crazy thinking. He chided himself. Now was not the time to think about saving his creation. He had to kill or be killed. This situation was far bigger than his wishes now. He owed Sasha.
 

“Okay, here’s the route out,” Enna said as they huddled around her slate. She traced a line through the interconnecting basements of the building. “There’s a fire exit at the far end. It leads out into a small tunnel that opens up in the middle of a street. Across from there is an old metro line. We’ll have to risk being exposed for a minute or so while we locate an entrance and force our way in. That’s when we’ll need cover—so we can hack the security on the metro entry. Everyone clear?”

“Let’s do it,” Ghanus said. “I’ll take point.”

“We can’t use radios because of Elliot’s suppression,” Elaine said, “and the last time we shared a message direct to each other, the signal was intercepted. We’re going off-the-grid for this. Communicate with hand signals, and keep your voices down. Which means sticking close together as much as possible. Understand?”

“Got it,” James said. It was times like this he wished he had internal transceivers like Petal and Gabe. But even then, with Elliot controlling the networks in the city, any signal was likely to be intercepted. And given how quickly Fuentes had discovered their location, it was obvious their communications were being tracked. That ruled out direct messaging to slates.

With that, they headed back down the stairs into the basement, but instead of going back down the tunnel, where Ghanus had barred the grate and secured the door, they turned into an archway. The smell of mould permeated the dark space. Stone steps led down into a basement filled with water that came up to their calves.
 

Ghanus shined an OLED headlamp, lighting their way.
 

Enna and Liza-Marie carried Omega between them while Elaine took up the rear.

They passed through the dirty basements. James had to duck beneath the joists and beams. Water soaked their feet and ankles, and he was sure he felt something scuttle by him. Rats. He shivered at the thought, but focussed on sloshing forward to the exit. His shoulders tightened at each muffled shot coming from above ground. A persistent rumble echoed down from the street as the ’droids sought to make their way into the building. Small explosions told him that Malik and the rest of Elaine’s squad were doing a fine job of holding them at bay.
 

It wouldn’t be long before they swarmed the building and breached their way in. Perhaps they’d even find their way down here. At the same time James had that thought, Ghanus suddenly switched off his lamp and indicated that they stop. He fell to his knees and brought the rifle to his shoulder, scoping out movement ahead of them.
 

“What is it?” James whispered behind him.
 

“Someone’s here,” Ghanus said. “Up there with a flashlight.”

Chapter 32

Petal made sure she and Xian were strapped into the flight seats. With Gerry’s help, she managed to repair the software bugs within the system. Now she just hoped the mechanical side would hold up. Xian had worked on it for years, he assured her.
 

“Well, I guess it’s time to test this old bird out.” Petal hovered her hand over the holoscreen controls. “Are you ready, Xian?”

Despite everything, his grin stretched wide on his repulsive face. “We go!”

“Yeah, let’s hope ‘go’ means fly and not ‘burn up in a fiery ball of death’.”

She took a deep breath. Her hand trembled ever so slightly before she pressed her index finger against the cracked glass of the control screen.
 

The H-core engines whined up... then died. The craft shook for a few brief moments before dying out. She tried again—same result.
 

“The engines aren’t getting enough power on start up.”
 

“Xian can fix. You wait.”

He unclipped his harness and clambered into the back of the craft, opening the metal door that separated the storage area from the engine maintenance access panel. Taking a hammer from the toolkit, he struck a titanium-skinned tank.
 

Petal snapped her head round. “What the fuck, Xian? That’s the fuel tank!”

“It stuck!” he said. “Xian clear fuel lines.” He hammered again. Petal cringed, clenching her jaw, expecting the hydrogen gas to explode at any moment, but the crazy fool seemed not to care. Done with hammering it, he thrust his hand around the silver cylinder and gripped a series of wires. He yanked them, sparks flying.

“Seriously, man! Are you trying to kill us? What the hell are you doing?”

Ignoring her, Xian continued to pull parts from the engine bay. Wires went flying; relays crashed to the floor. Finally, he gripped a small black box and tossed it casually over his shoulder. He replaced the tools and closed the door.

“Try now?”

“Sure. Now that you’ve ripped out everything, of course it’ll work? Fuck, Xian, have you completely lost the plot?”

He wore that stupid, sickly grin still.
 

“Okay, fine, get your ass harnessed, and I’ll try again.”

To her surprise, when she activated the ignition procedure, the engines fired up and stayed running. The control panel indicated full power available. The craft still shook like it’d fall apart, but against all logic, the damn thing was running.

“What the hell?” Petal shook her head.

“Pesky relays,” Xian said with a casual shrug. “Design fault.”

“I hope you never start practicing medicine.”

An image of Xian ripping out faulty organs came to her then. He’d probably eat them.
 

“Xian go city now?”

“Yeah, Xian can go to the fucking city now.”

She plotted a course to Libertas into the craft’s navigation computer—which, of course, didn’t work properly: no satellites, or at least no access to one. She’d just have to pilot by eye. She hoped the Dome still had its lights on; otherwise, they’d fly right past it.
 

“Let’s get this rusty-ass bird in the air. Hold on to your balls, Xian.”

She increased power to the VTOL engines. As she did, a storm of sand flew all around her. At first the Jaguar struggled to move, but as she eased the power up, it began to rise, shedding the burden of sand and plant growth that for years had conspired to hold it to the earth.
 

Eventually, they were free and ascended into the night sky.
 

A vibration came from the left engine, but the thing held together, somehow. Petal knew from flying the other Jaguars that this one had a number of issues. The others didn’t suffer from the same worrying noises. This one flew with myriad bothersome rattles and vibrations, and a whistling sound came from the engine bay. She hoped it was just the air being sucked through the holes in the fuselage.
 

When she’d reached an altitude of four hundred metres, she pointed the craft southwest and increased the engines to seventy percent capacity. Despite the loud whistle and vibration, they shot forward at a decent rate. They’d reach the city within the hour.
 

If the damned thing holds together, she thought.

Chapter 33

James kneeled behind the Upsider and stared out into the darkness. He thought he saw movement, but couldn’t make it out.
 

“What can you see?” James whispered.

“Libertas security,” Ghanus said, looking through his night-vision scope.
 

The squeaking of rodents and sloshing in the water around their ankles made it difficult to hear. But James followed Ghanus’ eye-line until he, too, saw the definite shape of a woman moving around about twenty metres away at the far end of the basement.

She was clearly scouting for something—or someone—shining the flashlight into the dark corners with one hand, and a pistol in the other. In one of the sweeps, James caught a brief glimpse of her face. He recognised her as one of the officers who used to stand guard outside Rosario’s room. Her name wouldn’t come to him, but the recognition only made the betrayal that more pained.

“Hold,” Ghanus whispered as he adjusted his scopes.
 

The Upsider tracked her movements as she walked down between various racks of shelves. When she reappeared just five metres away and swung her light to illuminate them huddled there together, Ghanus pulled the trigger, and a near-silent bullet struck its target.

At first it seemed like nothing happened. She stood still, her eyes wide and her mouth open, half-forming a word. The flashlight dropped, and she fell back.
 

Perfect head shot.
 

She hit the water with a splash. When the group got closer to her, the rats had already claimed her body, ripping through her uniform and crawling over her face. James checked her arm. She wasn’t wearing a ronin-chip.

James couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. She was young. Early twenties. She’d always been pleasant to him. Just how much did she know about this situation?

No way to tell now.
 

Enna gripped his elbow, encouraging him forward. “I understand it’s tough,” she whispered to him. “None of this is ever easy. But we’ve got to carry on. For Sasha, Vickers, and all the others.”

“I know.” James trudged onwards to the open door where the girl had come through. His hand went to the pistol. He fully expected one of the ’droids to emerge and gun them all down—or Samir. Was she stalking them now?
 

Ghanus and Elaine split off, flanking the door and indicating the others to take cover behind the nearest rack of shelves. They waited for a minute, or a decade; James couldn’t tell which, the tension was too much. While the Upsiders ensured the way was clear, James found his gaze drifting over the spines of old books on the shelves.
 

They were barely more than mulch now, held together by the spirit of the words once legible inside. Just how much knowledge had been destroyed since the Cataclysm?
 

The disaster at the library of Alexandria had nothing on the current situation.
 

Aside from the mortal cost, there was a definitive epistemological loss that, when he thought about it, had to have exacerbated humanity’s struggle to ensure peace and community. There were too many gaps in knowledge, and too many corrupt individuals willing to exploit an opportunity to exert power over the masses.

“We’re good to go,” Elaine said as she and Ghanus headed into the tunnel. James, Enna, and Liza-Marie followed up, the latter guarding their rear.