DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (24 page)

He smiled, and sagged down onto his cot.

Vorpal wasn’t so pleased. “Both jumps?”

“Yes. No other way to do it.” Not one that didn’t risk paradox, conflict with the Color Guard, or trouble of an unforeseen nature.

“Hm. I hope we do not need them later.” Vorpal shook her head. “But dead friends are a good reason, I suppose.”

“She outside?” Martin asked.

“No. In a safe place. If we die or are captured in the assault, then she won’t face any repercussions.”

I'd burnt up a time machine and a priceless favor to save her. Be damned if she got dragged into this mess with us and got squished by a kaiju or whatever.

“That’ll do.” Martin said. “Aight. So what’s the plan?”

I grinned, as I ascended the staircase. “Give her a few hours with the supercomputer, and we should be ready to go.”

CHAPTER 14: INFILTRATION

“Life is difficult when your power has no defensive application. You must worry about things that luckier heroes and villains do not care about. Any person with a gun has a chance to kill you, if you are slow.”

--Quote attributed to Vorpal, independent mercenary and supervillain.

It was muggy and hot as hell inside the power station. July’s heat had reached full swing, and what had been a reasonably safe haven last night showed its problems in the high heat of noon. This added a bit of incentive to set up the supercomputer... after I got it up and running, and the coolant sinks activated, they cooled the room a good ten degrees. Martin sighed in relief, and curled up next to one as I worked.

“Just like a dog or a cat,” Vorpal snickered.

“Shut up,” Martin grumbled without malice. “Not my fault I’m bigger than you. I sweat more.”

“I know. The stench has been inescapable.” She’d been rather sweaty and ripe herself, but I held my tongue, unwilling to risk their ire turning upon me. I had more important things to do, anyway. Now that I’d used the Universal remote to subvert the local camera networks and edit us out of them, it was time to get hacking.

It didn’t take long to reconfigure my wave ports, and set up a new profile for the supercomputer’s Grid access, and then shield it behind a wall of misdirection and ECM. After that, the minutes slid away like water down a drain as I tapped my fingers in air, using the AR interface to direct my prowl through Morgenstern Incorporated’s network. The reachable parts of it, anyway.

Martin and Vorpal watched for a while, before they got bored. Real hacking was nothing like the movies, and without my boosted comprehension, they had no chance of reading the words that made up the codes and protocols that scrolled by at incredible speed. Vorpal wandered outside to get some air, and Martin lay back against the concrete, playing a game on his phone.

After perhaps twenty minutes I grunted and stood up, stretched the kink out of my back. “Well. Good news and bad.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got our way in, but there’s no way we’ll remain undetected for long. Go get Vorpal please, and Dire will step you both through the plan...”

Two hours later, we were driving the van through Grand Avenue in the heart of Downtown, navigating the early morning traffic. A trip to All-Mart for a few supplies, and a quick stop at a no-tell motel for a shower had given us all the preparation we needed. Well, no, that wasn’t quite accurate. It had gotten us all the preparation that we could afford. This was still going to be dicey.

“Ready for your meeting, Fräulein Müller?” I asked Vorpal.

She just grinned. The bulk of our loose money had gone toward the business suit she was wearing; off the rack, but still good quality.

“Yah. Ninety percent of most marketing is bullshit. I should be able to fake it until we’re ready to move.” I’d found a conference room that was a day behind on their security patching, and exploited the hell out of the weakness, riding it all the way to about ten assorted minor executive gridmail accounts. By the end of my hackfest I’d rescheduled a European affiliate’s meeting from two weeks later to today, here and now. The deception wouldn’t last long, but it wouldn’t need to do so. All it had to do was get her in the building, a floor above the main security office.

For my own part, I was wearing a simple brown pair of coveralls. I had my contacts in, the subvocal rig tucked under my hair, and the universal remote in one pocket. The taser was concealed at the small of my back, but I had nothing else as far as gadgets went. I did have my phone, but that really didn’t count. The other toys were stored in the armor, which occupied one corner of the van.

My mask was set into the armor. For the first time in a very long while, I wouldn’t have it on or with me. I was a little nervous about that.

“Aight, here’s the dropoff,” Martin said, pulling to a stop. We couldn’t drop Fräulein Müller off at the front door. Going by her profile she was more of a limo person than someone who’d show up in a van.

“Wish me luck, hm?” Her smile hid nervousness, and I smiled back.

“You’ve got this.”

“Of course I do, you’ve got the hard part.”

I shrugged. “From what Dire’s seen, there aren’t many easy parts in this business.”

She slipped out the door and was gone into the crowd, heading towards our objective.

“Ten bucks says she tries to kiss you when we’re done.” Martin said, smirking.

“You think so?” It would fit the romantic comedy tropes that I’d observed.

“Not too hot on the idea?” He started the van back up, drove to the next dropoff point.

“Honestly not sure. Would be a bad idea to get involved with her either way until we are no longer business partners. Most things Dire’s read on that matter seem to indicate that romancing people you work with causes major problems.”

“Ah.” He started to say something, shook his head.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Forget it. Let’s just get the job done, yeah? Get paid.”

I didn’t have time to pry it out of him, so I shrugged. “All right. Let her off here.”

After the van pulled away, I was left on the curb alone to mingle with the morning’s pedestrian traffic, staring up at Morgenstern’s corporate headquarters. Forty stories tall, one of Icon’s most major employers. Towards the top, private airship docks studded the building, a few with aircars ready and waiting for their owners to be done with the day’s business. Morgenstern was one of the city’s big tech firms, one that had survived the nineties boom and bubble, and come out stronger for it with the consumption of several rivals.

And like any huge business, while the main part of it was pretty well secured, there was far too much work in the day-to-day business to protect everything that went on in that building. Case in point: the janitorial staff. They went with the lowest-bid contract, a low-rated freelance company called Bud’s Scrubbers. Bud didn’t even provide his employees with uniforms. Instead he set a dress code, and made his people pay for the uniforms out of their own pockets.

After today I rather thought he might change that policy.

I entered through a service door, flashing my false ID at the checkpoint. The guard looked it over, compared the picture of “Shaundi Saint” to my smiling face. I’d added Shaundi to the work roster for today’s shift, transferring her in from one of Bud’s more remote contracts.

“New hire, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Good luck,” the guard said, buzzing me through.

“Thanks.” He didn’t respond, already turning his attention back to the monitors.

Ten minutes later I was signing out my first janitorial cart, with an overweight, balding supervisor who chuckled as he scribbled down one lousy job after another on my clipboard. His name tag said Curtis, and he was a dick.

“Okay, that should do it, Shaundi. So on to the afternoon stuff. After you get done with the restrooms on Floor Eight, then we’ve got a work order to re-grease the elevator cables on number five, so you’ll need to check out a climbing belt for that one. Here’s a pamphlet on how to wear the things.”

I took the instructions in silence, which he felt the need to fill with more blathering. “Nothing major, just hold the flashlight for the technician until he okays them, then slather a few buckets on them with the brush. Oh, and don’t breathe in that stuff too much, it’s carcinogenic. Also it doesn’t come out if you stain your uniform so you’ll have to buy a new one if you’re not careful. Figure you’ll be off by eight if you’re quick. I’m out the door at four so don’t call me with anything after that. Got it?”

“It’s kind of complicated.” I lied. “You sure that’s all doable for a first day trainee?”

“Well, if you think it’s too much for you honey, I guess I could lighten the load a bit.” He grinned. “Slide me a twenty and I’ll cut it by half. Twenty more and I’ll even toss you a good first-day evaluation.”

I glared at him, snatched the clipboard from his hands. “Go to hell.”

His good cheer disappeared, and his smile turned ugly. “Then get going, bitch. We don’t pay you to stand around.”

“No. You don’t.” I hauled the cart out of the room, wrestled it down the corridor. I felt his confused eyes on my back as I went, and smiled my own cold smile. One of the small advantages of being a supervillain was that you could ensure that horrible people got what they deserved. Curtis had made the list, and I would assign him some karmic justice later.

Putting up with the man had paid off, though. I’d gotten a basic janitorial badge, and access to a bit over half the building. Nothing vital, of course; the research and financial floors took care of their own cleaning. So in a sense I couldn’t fault the company for having lousy security for their lowest-tier janitorial staff, it wasn’t like they were risking much by having poor procedures here. Anyone trying to infiltrate by this method wouldn’t get far.

Of course, most people trying to infiltrate with this method didn’t have access to my technical skills, or a universal remote.

I started in with my work orders. It was amazingly dull work, but nobody looked twice at me. I took the opportunity to study the place.

Cubes of cloth and metal stretched across wide rooms, with evenly-set, reinforced windows. Hundreds of suited men and women moved through and chattered with each other, bearing documents, cups of coffee, and tablet computers on their inscrutable, mundane errands. Others sat and focused on their workstations, tapping in reports or gridmails or memos or the other things that people do in offices.

It was very much artificial to me. An air of stress ran through the entire place, and many of the employees seemed to be running on short sleep and caffeine. Was the pay truly so good to put up with this? Trapped day after day in a box designed to hold and pacify them, shackled to machines that instantly transmitted the whims of those who cared little for their well-being?

It seemed to me a form of living death. Perhaps made more tolerable by internet access, but still a fate to be avoided at all costs. I was mollified a bit by the fact that most of those here had doubtlessly chosen this fate. Morgenstern Inc. was near the top of the business chain in the area, and could afford good pay and benefits. They hadn’t bought into the downsizing fad that had ripped through similar businesses over the last few years.

That was what the business articles I’d studied in preparation for this run told me, anyway. I hadn’t conducted a full analysis of the market and their specialties within the field. But I’d worried about that for nothing, seemingly. I was pretty much invisible to the business folk living their cubicle lives.

My phone beeped, and I checked it. A text from Vorpal.

BEING SHOWN AROUND NOW READY WHEN YOU ARE

My return text was one short word.

BIDE.

At the first opportunity, I maneuvered into the floor’s janitorial closet, pulled out the universal remote, and began my hunt. The networks in here were still too tight to risk taking control of any local electronics— I’d surely alert their security if I tried that. Instead, I poked up and down through the nearby floors, looking for a place that I couldn’t get a read on. My reasoning there was that any network shielded against my remote was likely to have the data I wanted.

After a cursory scan and a quick hop and down the elevators, I growled in frustration at my findings. There were four possible locations. One in the third sublevel, a second one in the middle of the building, a fourth on the thirtieth floor, which should be the security room if the information I had turned up was correct, and a fourth spot in the uppermost floor.

Four places to check. Well, Vorpal had the responsibility for one of those. The key to the rest of them, if matters worked out.

Top down or bottom up? That was the choice. After mulling it over, I decided to start at the bottom, and work my way up. That was the best approach for my exit strategy, and Vorpal’s efforts would pull security to the floors above.

I took the elevator down to Sub-level One, the farthest down that my janitorial badge would get me, and took up a stance by the stairwell down. Pulling out my phone, I typed out a single message to Vorpal.

GO TIME.

Then I settled back against the wall to wait, mop in my hands, pretending to work. 

I didn’t have long to wait.

Within a minute, emergency lights starting flickering on and off, and sirens started to wail. The programmers and tech-types who seemed to inhabit this section of the building muttered, and stood up, peering over their cubicle walls.

“The hell?”

“I didn’t think we were due for an exercise.”

“Uh, guys? I don’t think this is a drill.”

“Fuck me running, this is gonna set back the release.”

“Bob, watch the language.”

“Easy for you to say Greg, it’s not your ass on the line here!”

A short woman walked around, glared into Bob’s cube. “Bob. You’ve been warned. And besides, we’ve got a guest.” She turned to me, and I blinked at the attention. “Sorry about that, dear. Bob’s got a bit of a mouth.”