Shooting the Rift - eARC (32 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

In which I go for a shower, and change my clothes.

Despite a growing sense of urgency with every passing minute, I forced myself to take my time. I was only going to get one shot at this, and if I screwed it up every trooper in the base was going to get a shot at me instead, so a bit of careful planning seemed in order. Not to mention the fact that the longer I stayed put, the more it would appear that I’d simply given up, and was on the verge of accepting Jas’s offer to skip off together into a rosy future as a citizen of the League. Which, if I’m honest, I couldn’t help seriously considering, especially as my body kept sparking with the tactile memory of hers
pressed against it; which, in turn, wasn’t exactly an aid to concentration.

After studying the map carefully, my first thought was to head for the riftcom at the heart of the base, and try to get a message to Aunt Jenny that way. I’d even plotted out a route, before the obvious flaws in that idea began to occur to me. For one thing, I had no idea how to encode a message for transmission, and for another, even if I somehow managed to figure it out or coerce an operator to do the job for me, the message would only get as far as Iceball before someone at the other end realized what it was and reported it, instead of sending it on. The only riftcom network any good to me would be the Guild one, and to access that I’d have to get to Clio. In theory, as my Guild advocate, she’d be visiting me in my cell at some point, but I was sure Wymes or one of his minions would be stalling her as long as possible, in the hope of getting me to crack before she could intervene.

Which meant I’d have to go to her.

That, of course, raised a whole new set of problems, not the least of which would be having to admit to her that Remington had been right. I couldn’t be entirely sure how she’d react to that, but I strongly suspected it wouldn’t be with a merry laugh at how easily I’d fooled her. She’d probably give up any idea of getting me readmitted to the Guild, and refuse to take the message, before calling the guards and getting me dragged back here to meet the interrogators Jas had warned me about.

But I couldn’t see any other way of getting the message out, so I’d just have to take the chance.

After biding my time for several hours, I hoped I’d been quiet enough for any guards in the vicinity to have written me off as harmless, taking the edge off their vigilance. I’d certainly done all I could to foster that impression, accepting the meal I’d been given with a quiet word of thanks, and doing my best to look subdued and apprehensive—which, given what I was about to do, required less acting than you might think.

I’d paid careful attention to my surroundings when I arrived here with Wymes, so I was pretty confident I could find my way out again even without the aid of the map I’d purloined from the node I’d cracked, and I was able to visualize the corridor outside without too much difficulty. My cell was about halfway along a relatively narrow passage, lined with identical doors, and sealed at both ends by other, thicker ones. The one we’d come in by had a guard station on the other side of it, and beyond that was a lower security area, in which the detainees were able to associate in mess halls and recreation rooms, and do dull but useful jobs to help keep the base ticking over. I hadn’t noticed anyone else in the corridor while I was being led in here; it was possible it had been cleared on purpose, but I hadn’t heard much ambient noise from outside since my arrival, so I’d just have to take the chance that it was generally just as empty.

Unable to put it off any longer, as about half of the twelve hour deadline I’d been given had already expired, I made my final preparations, stripping down to my undershorts, and grabbing a towel from my kitbag. This was probably the single most stupid idea I’d had since deciding to cheat in the Academy entrance exam, but, on the other hand, it was so spectacularly dumb no one could possibly be expecting me to try it. I hoped.

I let Jas’s access code float in my datasphere for a moment, then, holding my breath, melded it with her genetic key and directed it at the door. I’d more than half expected nothing to happen, but the lock clicked obligingly open, and I stepped out into the corridor as if I had every right to be there. To my relief, no one else was around to challenge me, and I closed and locked the cell door again, just in case anyone decided to check. The passageway was being monitored, of course, but, armed with Jas’s security clearance, I was able to mesh with the data recorders through the ceiling-mounted cameras, and replace the live feed with pictures of an empty corridor taken a few minutes before. By the time the delayed footage caught up with me leaving the cell, it would have gone back to the live feed, with no one any the wiser—just so long as no one had been looking at a screen before I managed to switch the images.

So far, so good. Now for the tricky bit. I approached the door barring the end of the corridor, the flow of data through the guard station console bright in the corner of my ‘sphere. This was the make-or-break moment. I sent out a tentative tendril, and meshed with it, rummaging through the files I found there; as I’d expected, my own name popped up almost at once. It didn’t take long for my sneakware to wriggle through the security protocols protecting it, and I snagged a copy, more for my own amusement than anything else. According to the paperwork I was a skilled and dangerous field agent, in possession of highly sensitive information, and only to be seen by a short list of specific individuals, all of whom, apart from Jas, had security clearances so high they were practically in the stratosphere. Even the guards had standing instructions not to engage me in conversation, and to report everything I said. My estimation of Wymes’s level of paranoia rose a couple more notches.

Once I was in there, though, it didn’t take me long to amend the records. I was now a minor felon, one of Ertica’s crew, being segregated from the others for my own protection after agreeing to testify against my former shipmates on the smuggling charge they faced. That done, I skipped to the duty roster, and breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the Lady. As I’d hoped, the shift change had been the same as the one the guards in the cavern had followed, which was why I’d picked now to make my move; none of the ones currently on duty had seen me arrive, or brought me my meal. If they hadn’t done any more than a cursory check of the paperwork after clocking on, I just might just get away with this.

Only one way to find out, though, and waiting wouldn’t make that any easier. I took a deep breath, and tripped the door lock.

“Thanks,” I said, turning my head to address the empty corridor behind me as I stepped through, and closing it as I did so. “See you later.” With any luck the woman at the guard station would assume I was talking to one of her colleagues, who had just opened it for me. And why wouldn’t she? Prisoners didn’t have handhelds, or a genetic code authorizing them to open locks.

“And you are?” Her eyes travelled slowly over my exposed skin, clearly enjoying the trip. I smiled, in a friendly manner, trying to look as though I was returning the complement.

“Si Forrester, from the
Poison 4
. What’s left of it. Transferred in here earlier today on health grounds.”

“Really.” She pulled up the file on her console, and scanned it. I tried to keep the tension from my face. If she was going to smell a rat, now would be the time. She glanced up from the screen. “What are you doing out here?”

“Need a shower,” I said, holding up the towel as evidence. “Next level down, right?”

“Up,” she said, lulled by the deliberate slip, as I’d intended. If you want to get someone to take you at face value, it never hurts to let them feel slightly superior. “Next to the laundry.”

“Up. Right. Thanks.” I leaned in, pretending to take a look at the floor plan on her screen, and tried to look flirtatious. “How soon do you get off?”

“It depends on who I’m with.” She smiled, more in amusement at my effrontery than because she was tempted. “But you’re not my type.”

“My loss I’m sure,” I said, stepping into the elevator, and punching the icon for the next floor up.

The corridor there was crowded, as I’d hoped, and I blended in nicely with the dozen or so other seminude inmates heading for the showers at the far end. A premonitory waft of warmth and steam was seeping out into the passageway, and I found myself tempted to take advantage of the facility for a few minutes after all—but the clock was still ticking, and I couldn’t afford to waste a second. Accordingly I turned left, just before reaching the showers, and found myself in the laundry area.

This was another part of the plan I just had to take on trust—although it was marked on the map I’d got floating in one corner of my datasphere, that hadn’t told me precisely which part of the process went on in that room. I’d been hoping it was storage for the freshly laundered garments, but instead I was met with the unmistakable reek of an unfeasible number of recently worn ones, stuffed into laundry bags, and awaiting cleaning. On the plus side, though, there was no one around to challenge me.

I rummaged through a couple of the bags before anyone could enter, finding a set of fatigues more or less my size, and not too malodorous. I have to admit that my skin crawled a little as I put them on, but I soon got used to the faintly clammy feeling of someone else’s sweat, and I supposed that, on the plus side, looking a little rumpled would help me to blend in a bit more easily.

I walked casually back into the corridor, and regained the elevator, without attracting the notice of anyone. There was, of course, a security lockout on the panel, preventing any unauthorized access to the entrance level, but I cracked that easily enough with Jas’s code, and arrived in a lobby where a couple of armed guards were mooching around looking bored, while a third manned a console a bit bigger and more impressive than the one I’d passed through downstairs.

“Log out, please.” He barely so much as glanced at me, more interested in the images of scantily clad young men being projected by his handheld. He and Carenza would probably have got on like a house on fire.

“Be seeing you,” I said, trying to inject a more nasal, League-sounding twang into my voice, and inputting Jas’s code once again. The system tried to flag it as having already been used to leave, of course, but I was ready for that, and slipped in an error message confirmation which headed it off from tripping the alarm.

Then I was outside, in one of the main transport arteries, watching the sleds hurtle by.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

In which I find transport, and some new allies.

Not wanting to attract undue attention to myself, I didn’t waste any time looking around, but strolled unhurriedly away in a random direction, looking as casual as possible. I wasn’t the only pedestrian in sight, but most of the traffic around me was sled-borne, and I’d need to get hold of one somehow if I was to get to the internment area and talk to Clio before somebody noticed I’d gone and sparked a manhunt.

The trouble was, unlike the sleds I’d hailed so casually on Numarkut, these were all manually controlled, the dim sparks of their onboard AIs concerned only with speed limitation and collision avoidance: another inconvenient consequence of the Leaguers’ irrational prejudice against neuroware. But if I couldn’t get one to come to me, I’d just have to go to where they were parked.

That involved a short hike along a network of service corridors, ducking, in a few cases, through utility conduits, which at least ought to make my trail harder to follow. After some twenty minutes of twisting and turning through the bowels of Kincora Base, during which my confidence rose every time I passed someone who didn’t seem surprised to see me there, I found myself walking into a service bay on the edge of one of the main transport arteries. I’d briefly considered heading for a transport pool and attempting to requisition a sled, but that had struck me as a lot more potentially hazardous: I’d be dealing with professional clerks, who’d probably have PhDs in officious box-ticking, and even the tiniest anomalies in the credentials I’d have to forge were likely to be noticed at once. The mechanics in a place like this, on the other hand, would be more concerned with the vehicles themselves, quite likely overworked, or at least disposed to think of themselves that way, and consequently more casual about the paperwork.

At least that was the theory: time to put it into practice. I took a deep breath, and walked into the clamor of a busy repair shop.

“Yes?” A harassed-looking tech sergeant extracted himself from the bowels of a partially dismantled emitter array, and glanced in my direction, clearly hoping I’d take the hint and piss off.

I waved my arm in an approximation of a perfunctory salute, not entirely sure how it was supposed to go: even in the Commonwealth the different service branches liked to have their own ways of doing things, and though I’d never paid much attention to the interactions of our hosts, I’d got the impression the same thing held true for their counterparts in the League. The sergeant didn’t seem all that bothered, though, simply acknowledging it with a nod, instead of bawling me out for sloppiness as I’d half expected.

“Private Mokole,” I honked, ironically grateful to Wymes for the damage to my nose, which went a long way towards masking my Commonwealth accent., “Here to pick up Ensign Hamst—” quick recovery—“Neville’s sled.”

“Hamish Neville? Never heard of him.” The sergeant shrugged, and poked something inside the emitters, which were clearly far more interesting than me or my problems.

“Wish I hadn’t,” I said, “he’s a complete asshole. And he’ll take it out on me if I go back without at least a progress report.”

“Right.” The sergeant glanced up again, with a scintilla more sympathy. “Grover,” he called. “Officer’s sled. Done yet?”

“Dunno.” Another technician appeared from the recesses of the workshop, and glanced in my direction. “Let me check.” He pulled out a handheld, and inspected it. “Could be.”

“Then show him, and get him to sign for it.” The sergeant went back to work, my existence already forgotten.

“Over here.” Grover led me through an echoing cavern full of disemboweled sleds, some of which were being worked on by preoccupied technicians, and some of which looked as though they’d been abandoned as hopeless cases a long time before. He stopped beside one which looked barely more functional than Aunt Jenny’s, but right about then I was happy to go with whatever I could get. “It’ll run, but you’ll need to get it back here for a proper service some time in the next few weeks. Otherwise you’re going to lose focus on the rear left emitters again. And the cupholder’s still rattling.”

“I can live with that,” I said.

“You won’t if that emitter fails in the middle of a traffic stream,” he said, although even I knew the chances of that happening were pretty remote. Grover, however, was clearly not one of life’s little rays of sunshine. He got out his handheld. “But it’s your funeral. Name?”

“James Mokole,” I said, putting my hand in a pocket as though activating a handheld of my own, “but I usually go by Jas.”

“Whatever.” He opened a clear channel, which I meshed with straight away, using Jas’s identity code again. If Grover double-checked it, and realized I was an X chromosome shy of who I was supposed to be, it would all be over, but, as I’d anticipated, he couldn’t be bothered. The sled was signed for, and no longer his responsibility. He started to turn away, his mind already on more important things, like the job I’d interrupted, or the time remaining to his next tea break. “You can get it out of here on your own?”

“Sure,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t feel. I could drive a sled manually, after a fashion, but I wasn’t exactly an expert at it; I was used to meshing with a neuroware interface for that sort of thing, and had never really felt the urge to master the physical controls. Besides, that sort of thing wasn’t thought of as a suitable skill for an Avalonian gentleman to cultivate, being best left to the artisan classes. I slid into the driver’s seat, and poked the starter.

The power came on with a smooth hum, and I felt a faint lurch in the pit of my stomach as the sled lifted a foot off the floor. I fed a little more power to the emitters, feeling the vehicle steady, and slide forwards, oversteering slightly and almost ramming a roof support before bringing the nose round and heading towards the large double door in the wall of the workshop. Just as I was beginning to panic slightly it began to slide open, triggered by a proximity sensor, and I found myself in the fast-moving traffic stream outside.

My first sensation, I have to admit, was one of alarm. Everything seemed to be moving a lot faster than I was, and I overcorrected wildly a few times in an attempt to avoid a collision, before I began to relax and accept that the AI, limited as it was, could do the job a great deal better than I could. After that my confidence increased, and I cranked up the speed to the maximum it would allow, following the twists and turns of the map in my datasphere with single-minded diligence. It would have been a lot easier if I could simply have fed the destination I wanted to the AI, and let it get on with the trip all by itself, but League sleds were a lot more basic than the ones I was used to, and relied on a human driver to handle the steering, braking, and acceleration.

Eventually, though, I reached the main thoroughfare I wanted without killing myself, and coasted to a halt outside the hatch leading to the cavern in which I’d been interned for so long.

I disembarked, and regarded it cautiously. There were no data hotspots on the other side, which would indicate the presence of troopers carrying handhelds, but that didn’t necessarily mean there was no one around.

There was only one way to find out, and by now I’d got away with so much I was beginning to feel quite blasé about courting risk. I sent an unlocking pulse to the door, only to be met with a complete lack of response. After an initial surge of panic, during which I convinced myself that my escape had been discovered already, and Jas’s security codes purged from the system, I realized it simply hadn’t been locked in the first place, and pulled it open, feeling slightly foolish.

On the positive side, it had been a wake-up call, reminding me I wasn’t untouchable, and could still make mistakes. And as I padded down the corridor towards the internment area, I couldn’t help wondering if I was about to make my most catastrophic one yet.

To my faint surprise, I met no one on the way down the corridor, but then in retrospect I suppose I shouldn’t have found that particularly strange. All the merchant crews who’d been interned here had left the base by now, boosting for Freedom with as much speed as kicking against the gas giant we were orbiting could give them, and no doubt vying to be the first to deliver their long-awaited cargoes. The only people still in residence here would be Clio and the trio of Freebooters, so there wouldn’t be much point in anyone else hanging around.

I expanded my ‘sphere about as far as it would go as I approached the pressure hatch, searching for the telltale glow of handhelds or eyeware beyond it, but I couldn’t detect a thing. Which probably meant the guards had been withdrawn from inside the cavern too, as there was no one left in there worth keep an eye on. I could pick up the distinctive signatures of two neuroware dataspheres, though, so I sent a message to one of them, hoping it would get through.

Clio. Are there any guards inside the cavern with you?

Simon?
Not quite the crisp response I’d been hoping for.
How are you doing this? You should be well out of range.

Long story,
I replied.
Short version, jailbreak. I’m just the other side of the pressure hatch. Are there any guards there?

No she isn’t.
The terse message managed to seem snapped, even though it arrived in my ‘sphere in the same neutral manner as all such communications.
Try the barracks. Or wherever it is Soldier Girls go for fun around here.

I’m here to see you, not Jas.
Perhaps I’d better not mention I’d already spoken to her. And definitely not mention the kiss. It didn’t sound as though there was anyone on the other side of the hatch ready to greet me with a gun butt to the head, however, so I used Jas’s code once again, and stood back expectantly as it slid open, just in case I was wrong.

No one shot at me, or tried to part my hair with a bayonet, so I hurried through, and closed the hatch again, leaving it unlocked in the faint hope that I might be able to make a run for it once my business with Clio was concluded. I tried not to think about where I could run to, or for how long—big as the base was, sooner or later Wymes and his people would catch up with me, and when they did I was pretty certain that the offer Jas had made would no longer be open.

“Simon!” Clio was running towards me, and I had a sudden flash of
déjà vu
, wondering if this was how Deeks had felt just before she felled him. But instead of battering me to the ground, she hugged me, squeezing the breath from my lungs with such enthusiasm I began to fear for the structural integrity of my ribs.

“Good to see you too,” I gasped, as she released her grip just in time to allow some air into me before I passed out.

“What do you mean, ‘jailbreak’? Why are you dressed like that?” She paused delicately. “It’s not exactly fragrant, you know.”

“You should smell it from the inside,” I said. “Have you heard anything from the Guildhall yet?”

“My request’s in the system,” she said. “I’ve asked for a personal meeting with the Grand Mistress to argue your case, which would mean the tossers here would have to let you come with me, but that was a pretty long shot even before you complicated things.” She stared at me in perplexity. “How did you get out, anyway?”

“Cracked the security system with my ‘ware,” I said, deciding part of the truth would be simpler than lying. “Tripped the locks, got hold of the uniform, and walked out like I owned the place.”

“You utter pillock,” she said, which I must admit fell some way short of the awestruck admiration I’d been hoping for. “I’ve gone to all this trouble to be in with a chance of getting you out of here legitimately, and you’ve just blown it open to vacuum. What are you planning to do now, walk home?”

“I hadn’t thought any further ahead than here,” I admitted. “I never really expected to make it this far. But I had to see you.”

“I suppose I ought to feel flattered,” Clio said, eyeing me appraisingly, “but I know you too well for that. What do you want that’s so urgent it’s worth running the risk of getting shot for?”

This,
I sent, dropping the file I’d shown Remington into her ‘sphere.
You’ve got to get it to the Guildhall, and have them transmit it to Avalon.

“Do I hell,” she said coldly, after taking a cursory look at it. “So, John was right about you after all.”

“Sort of,” I admitted. “But that’s not important right now. If this invasion isn’t stopped, people will die. Possibly people I care about.” Which actually did include Mother, though possibly not as much as it should have done.

“Guilders don’t take sides,” Clio said flatly.

“Yes, we do,” I said. “All the time.”

“Only when we’re paid to,” she said.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Then I’ll pay you to deliver the message to my aunt, all right? You’ve just got to get it to the Guildhall riftcom.”

“How much?” she asked, like any Guilder would under the circumstances, although I thought I could detect a hint of other motives for considering the request.

“Whatever the Commonwealth pays for the information,” I said. “It’s all yours.” I thought I saw her wavering, and went in for the clincher. “Enough to get your dad his ship back, probably.”

“Maybe John was right,” she said, considering the matter. “You’ll never be a real Guilder, if you’re willing to give that much away.”

“It’s not like I’ll ever get the chance to spend it,” I pointed out.

“I suppose not.” Clio sighed, with what sounded like genuine regret. “All right, how do you suggest I get the message to the Guildhall?”

“You’re in touch with them,” I said. “Wymes gave you access to the comms system, I heard him. Just transmit the data, and ask them to forward it.”

She actually laughed. “Oh yeah, like that’ll work.” She began to count off points on her fingers. “We’re twenty minutes transmission time from Freedom, so it’s not like we’re having a conversation. I send a few words, and wait an hour before anyone gets back to me. If I’m lucky, and whatever I say doesn’t need too much discussion at the other end first. A datafile this size is going to stick out like a sore thumb on the system logs, and the bastards are bound to take a look at it, Guild privilege or not. Assuming it doesn’t just trip some automatic filter they’ve got in place to pick up any classified data being sent out by someone who shouldn’t even have seen it.”