Terminal Point (30 page)

Keiko teleported the three of them back to where they started, arriving in Ciari's office back in Toronto. She looked around, realizing that everything in the office but the lights and a single vidscreen showing a map of the world was switched off. The only one to greet them was Jael.

The Strykers CMO's eyes were red. “You're back early.”

“We didn't make it in time,” Jason said, choking on the words.

“I saw.” Jael tilted her head at the vidscreen. “On the monitoring system.”

Keiko sucked in a deep breath and turned around to face Jael. “Where's Ciari?”

“She's gone. Left with Lucas for The Hague.”

“Just now?”

“About an hour ago.” Jael let her attention focus on Jason and Quinton. “Who is Aisling?”

“Fucking hell,” Jason said. “What did they say?”

“Only that this is what Aisling wanted. Ciari's words, not Lucas's.”

“Aisling,” Quinton said, “is who Lucas has been taking his orders from, near as we can tell.”

“Where is she? Can you bring her here?”

Jason and Quinton shared an uncomfortable look. “We've never met her,” Jason said.

“Are you telling me that Lucas has been following orders from someone that you've never seen or spoken to? And you just blindly trusted in Lucas's word for this?”

“No, we don't blindly trust him. But he's been right every single time, and what he wants—” Quinton broke off to take a deep breath. “What Lucas wants is better for everyone in the long run.”

“If I didn't know how many Stryker lives the Serca family has saved for us over the years, I'd be disgusted to know that you believe in their propaganda.”

“We weren't scheduled for retrieval.”

“Not by us,” Jael agreed, a sharp look in her hazel eyes. “I'm thinking Ciari had her own agenda.”

“You think?” Keiko said. “Aren't you in her mind?”

Jael sighed and shook her head. “Ciari ordered me to sever the psi link.”

“What the hell is wrong with her?” Quinton said.

“You know Erik fried her brain,” Keiko said. “She almost died. What you don't know is that the psi surgery went wrong and she lost control of her empathy.”

“She turned off part of her own mind,” Jael said quietly, looking down at her hands. “I told her to. It was the only way to save her.”

The silence that followed that remark was uncomfortable and difficult to fill. Keiko chewed on her bottom lip before asking, “Can we kill the signals in the neurotrackers now that we no longer need to hide our freedom? We don't need the government knowing where we are anymore.”

“There's a way,” Jason said. “I need access to the government's working satellites, though.”

“I can get you that. We should do it now before they try to cut us off.” Keiko waved a hand at Jason and Quinton, beckoning them to follow her out of the office. “We'll be on the command level, Jael.”

The door slid shut behind them, their footsteps fading away. Jael looked around at an office she had wandered in and out of for years. She wondered what the walls remembered of her, if the history embedded in this place would paint her as something other than a desperate woman trying to survive.

“Computer, activate. Chief medical officer override,” Jael said, digging her fingers into her thighs, nails scratching at her uniform. The terminal behind her switched on.

“Receiving,” the disembodied voice said. “Voice identification confirmed. Command required.”

“Pull up the Registry records. Locate the listing for Lucas Serca and backdate.”

“Acknowledged.”

The Registry had been put into effect to support the Fifth Generation Act. Every family listed in the Registry was required to submit an intact genealogy that stretched back to the Border Wars. It was viewable to the public, an issue of transparency the burgeoning World Court back then had required. Truth, in that instant, couldn't be locked away. Jael closed her eyes, hoping she was wrong as the computer began to spit out names, dates of births and deaths, the years spinning backward.

 

THIRTY-FOUR

SEPTEMBER 2379
KRASNOYARSK, KRASNOYARSK KRAI, RUSSIA

Threnody's fingers were cold, even through her heavily shielded and insulated skinsuit, but they still found a handhold along the rock face. She hauled herself up, feet scraping against the rough stone, breathing quickly through her nose. One wrong move, one wrong grip, would mean her death. She wasn't afraid of heights, but this place could make her learn to be.

“You know what? Screw Lucas. He couldn't spare us a damn telekinetic from the rank and file once the Strykers were dosed?” She gasped as she pulled herself over onto the flat ledge of rock. “Or do this himself?”

Kerr, already crouched on the ledge, shook his head and helped her the rest of the way up. “He has other things to worry about.”

“I don't give a fuck.” Threnody moved until she had her back pressed against the rock, careful of her oxygen tank. She was on her second set and they didn't have a third. “He could have at least teleported us up here. I realize he couldn't get us into the holding site, but damn it, we've been trekking through this area for hours.”

“Have you seen the security around this place?” Novak said from where he sat nearby. “Even with the codes Lucas gave me, it's difficult as hell to hack. If he dropped us on their doorstep, we'd have been shot before we took a single step. Trying to hack it from anywhere but the system's perimeter would have triggered an alert, no matter how good my skills are. Maybe Jason could have done it, but he ain't available.”

Threnody felt sweat slide down the back of her neck and face, but she couldn't wipe it away. Squinting up the last curve of the path before them, she sighed heavily. “We're almost to the top. The sooner we leave, the sooner I'll feel like we're not walking over bones anymore.”

“Not like we haven't been doing that since we got dropped off,” Kerr pointed out.

Stretched before them lay a vast, empty vista. Not even nature had fully reclaimed the shattered remains of the ruined city they could see, but the glistening ribbon of the Yenisei River still flowed across the land. Krasnoyarsk was an abandoned city, capital to a deadzone, and a place few in their right mind would venture. Radiation still tainted everything, and while no bones or bodies were left, everywhere they walked seemed to have the black, ashy imprint of the dead.

Mountains rose into the sky in the northwest, ruins to the northeast. No sound but the wind existed as it blew across barren plains and the steep mountainsides. It whistled through the countless fingers of rock that surrounded them, the stone thrust up from the ground like ancient pillars. They had pushed through this forgotten reserve for over half a day already, and the bleakness of the scenery wasn't changing.

Threnody got to her feet, brushing off dirt and tiny bits of rock. “Are we still off the security grid, Novak?”

The hacker glanced down at the tiny datapad hooked into the neuroport on his left wrist. “So far. The loop must be holding because I haven't gotten a blip.”

“Then let's finish this.”

Her sense of time was off and hadn't resettled through four teleports and as many continents. Threnody understood Lucas was delegating more than he liked, that he needed to save his strength for the final push, but she knew he was uneasy giving up control. Regardless, she could have used more people for this mission. Shaking her head, Threnody led the way down a rocky patch to a tiny, lead-lined bunker half-built into rock. They had to pass through a cleared landing area that looked just big enough for a small shuttle to land in.

This was government-owned property, built in the middle of a deadzone to keep watch over a weapon everyone in his or her right mind feared. Novak kept his attention on his hack and the security loop, walking steadily toward the heavy door bolted into rock and metal.

I'm sensing four people inside,
Kerr said into Threnody's mind.
Three are human. One is a Warhound.

Class?

He's a dual psion. Class IV telekinetic and Class VII telepath.

Threnody frowned as she approached the control panel, pulling out the gun on her hip.
Lucas did say that Nathan always had some of his people on duty here along with the government's. We were hoping they'd all be recalled for the launch, but maybe not. It's possible this one has orders like ours. Can you keep him from teleporting out?

Kerr nodded.
Yes, but I'll have to stay behind you. I'll block whatever psi link he has in his mind so he can't get a warning out and then immobilize him. I don't want to make myself a target any more than I need to.

Understood.

Threnody entered code after access code, each one accepted as she went through the entire list Lucas had given her. Since few people knew about this outpost, the codes didn't change that often. He'd stolen this set last spring, and she breathed more easily after the last code processed and the thick, heavy doors slid open.

She went in shooting, feeling the recoil in her wrist as she picked out her targets and kept her finger on the trigger. The first room in the bunker seemed to be the common area, and two men were sitting at a table playing cards. Both were halfway out of their seats when they each took a bullet to the chest, blood spraying out over the scattered cards and credit chips. They fell to the floor, twitching and gasping for breath as they drowned in their own blood. Threnody stepped closer and put a bullet in each of their heads.

She chanced a look through the inner door that led to a short hallway, not seeing anyone. Behind her Kerr came inside the bunker. The heavily shielded door slid closed on his heels. He nodded at her, gaze distant, and she trusted in Kerr to handle the Warhound, which meant the only one left to deal with was human. Moving down the hallway, Threnody reached another door, this one closed and locked. She took up position beside it.

“Here,” Novak said as he edged around her, carrying his own gun. “Took a security card from one of the others.”

The security card was bloody, but the lock scanned it just fine. The door slid open and Threnody immediately went to her knees as shots were fired chaotically through the open doorway. Novak hit the ground at the same time she did.

“Amateurs,” he muttered. “I hate them more than crack shots.”

Threnody nodded, shifting her weight and angling her body so she could shoot into the room when the bullets stopped. It was a risk to put herself out in the open like that, but necessary. She saw a woman frantically trying to reload her gun, shaking hands making it impossible to slide the magazine home. A man was sprawled at her feet, blood leaking from his nose and the corners of his half-opened eyes. He wasn't breathing.

Threnody aimed, fired again, and put a bullet into the woman's chest, straight through the lungs. Her second shot missed, but the third clipped the woman in the arm. Threnody took in a steadying breath, aimed one more time, and hit the woman's gut. She collapsed to the floor and didn't move. Threnody got to her feet, approached the bodies, and put a bullet through their brains just to be sure.

Clear,
Threnody said through the psi link to Kerr.

He met them at the far end of the main hallway, at a door that looked stronger and heavier than all the rest. “Door is sealed up front,” Kerr said as he undid the hard helmet locked around his throat. He pulled it free of his skinsuit. “Air's clean. The environmental system here is built along the lines of a city tower. Place is tightly sealed, filters are working, and my tank is running low.”

“Mine, too,” Threnody admitted, unlocking her own helmet and pulling it off.

Novak removed his as well. With Lucas's codes having reached their limit of usefulness, Novak began a hack on the door. An hour later found them walking into a high-tech laboratory built around a single object. Sitting behind a thick partition of lead, metal walls, and specially treated plasglass, and perched on top of a work terminal whose base was drilled into rock, was a single weapon. When Novak finally got a good look at it, all the blood drained out of his face. The tattoos inked into the skin of his skull stood out sharply.

“That's—,” he choked out hoarsely.

“Yes,” Threnody said as she approached the secured casement of something that could, and had, caused so much destruction. “Lucas said Nathan probably wouldn't have removed it yet, or even planned to. What use would he have for something like this on Mars Colony?”

“This is crazy.”

Threnody shrugged. “This is our mission. The access codes change every week and Lucas said he was months behind the cycles.”

Novak's hands shook as he smoothed them over his face and the curve of his sweaty, tattooed head. “You couldn't just pull the codes out of their minds before you killed them?”

“The scientists didn't know the removal codes,” Kerr said. “I pulled that from the Warhound's mind. Only high-ranking government officials have the ability to unlock this system.”

“Novak.” Threnody tilted her head in the direction of the intricate terminal with its complicated-looking control panel. “You need to get us in.”

“What? No. This is anathema to the very way we
live,
” Novak said, eyes wide and frantic in his face. “You can't be serious.”

“This made the way we live,” Threnody said fiercely, glaring at him. “And we suffer for it endlessly. I may not like it or agree with Lucas's methods, but this is the only way we're going to secure our safety.”

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Novak pointed at the terminal, eyes wide with terror. “That's a
nuclear bomb
in there.”

“Novak,” Kerr said, his telepathy pressing down hard on the other man's static human mind. “You don't have a choice. Neither do we. Now get started.”