The Unincorporated Woman (65 page)

“Sir,” said Porfirio, interrupting Hektor’s brief reverie. “The orbat defenses of Earth–Luna will shred that fleet before they can so much as spit. He’s done this before. He comes and raids a few slow-moving transports and outlying satellites, then gets the hell out. It’s mostly to harass us and make for good headlines back in the Alliance.”

“Fuck him, then.” Hektor made the holographic fleet disappear. “Let Legless make his pathetic gesture. What’s the worst he can do?”

21 Betty Lou

Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves.…

Genesis, Chapter 11

“I received confirmation,” Marilynn said with obvious pride. Once again, the normally loud revelry of the officers’ club had been rendered mute by Omad’s device. “My agents are now in position.”

Omad eyed her suspiciously. “But we deployed them only a few weeks ago.”

“Kudos goes to the enemy, then. They have speedy transports positively everywhere.”

“Normally I’d be happier if their transports were destroyed instead of transporting, but if it lets us fly right in and blow the crap out of them from Earth orbit”—Omad raised his glass—“well, I’m all for it.”

A few moments hung on Omad’s toast. Marilynn’s face showed obvious concern. “Who said anything about flying in and blowing stuff up from Earth’s orbit?”

“This is
a raid,
Commodore. Blowing shit up is traditionally what we do on raids.”

“I’m sorry. Of course you do. If I may be so bold, what was it you were planning on blowing the shit out of?”

Though they were in a secured space Omad leaned over and whispered into her ear. Marilynn’s brows shot up immediately. She then shook her head vigorously.

“I’ll need the orbats down if I’m to succeed.”

Again, Marilynn shook her head. “No way.”

“Are you telling me you
can’t
disable the UHF orbat net around Earth–Luna?”

“Oh, we can disable ’em, all right, but fuck all if we will.”

“Why the hell not?” demanded Omad, as confused as he was angry. “What’s the use of having a crack team this deep into UHF territory if we can’t use ’em? I assume most are trained in some kind of network disruption.”

Marilynn smiled ruefully. “Like you wouldn’t believe, Omad.”

“So, then?”

“It’s a limited ability that we have mostly because both our enemies don’t know we have it. But what do you think will happen if their orbat net goes down just as an Alliance task force comes calling?”

Omad remained silent, mulling over something Marilynn had just said. “What do you mean by
both
our enemies?”

Marilynn chided herself for the slip up. “Admiral,” she said, recovering, “do you really want to go there? Especially given what’s on your plate already?”

Omad’s teeth flashed through a wide smile. “I can’t get at my plate, Commodore, so I may as well know everything.”

Marilynn bit her lower lip as the fingers of her right hand tapped softly on the table. Omad knew she’d been given orders to bring him in, but only if Marilynn had no other options. Well, he’d called her bluff, and to protect him and her secret she’d have to give a little.

“Admiral, what if I could offer you a way to get you your opening attack without compromising our new abilities?”

Omad regarded her with a healthy dose of skepticism as he leaned back in the chair grasping his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You really don’t want to tell me, do you?”

“No, sir, I do not.”

At Omad’s boisterous laugh, Marilynn began laying out her new plan. After a time, Omad nodded slowly and then finally, his eyes sparkled in excitement. The plan was so devious and underhanded that he almost forgot about the “enemies” Marilynn had mentioned earlier; almost.

Earth–Luna outer orbits, AWS
Spartacus

Normally jumpy and sometimes even sexually aroused prior to a raid, Omad was now surprisingly calm—taciturn, even. His breathing was measured and his heart rate was normal. They were approaching the world he once thought of as home. He toggled his communication switch.

“How’s the
Otter
holding up, Suchitra?”

“She’ll do the job, sir, but we’re taking the bigger risk here.” Suchitra was referring to their target, Armstrong Station, the farthest orbiting space platform from Earth. Though it would be at an extreme range for both sides of the upcoming battle, it still meant that the Alliance fleet would be up against the considerable might of the Earth–Luna orbats.

“We’d need a miracle to do any real damage, sir.”

Omad thought of Marilynn and her seemingly inexorable power. “A miracle, indeed.”

*   *   *

“Admiral, enemy is firing at long range.”

Omad had to work not to smile when his ship’s automatic interceptor fire did not trigger. Interceptor fire was left to computer control because it was almost impossible for a human to fire accurately at all the shots that could be coming in from multiple vectors.

“Lieutenant,” asked Omad with his best game face on, “why didn’t our interceptor fire activate?”

“Admiral, it didn’t activate because they uh—” The lieutenant looked up from his display panel at Omad. “—
missed
, sir.”

“Helm,” barked Omad, “were we using evasive maneuvers? ’Cause I sure as hell didn’t feel it.”

“No, Admiral,” said the helmswoman, equally confused. “At this range, it’s easier to just shoot them down before they get too close.”

The ensign manning communications spoke up. “Admiral, all the ships in the flotilla report that the enemy shots missed as well.”

“All of them?” asked Omad in mock disbelief. “I know the UHF is not anywhere up to our standards, but how could
all
their shots have gone astray?”

“Dunno, sir,” the tactical officer broke in, “but according to my readings, all the shots were off by exactly .003 percent
at origin
.”

“All shots fired by the orbat closest to us, correct?”

“No sir,
all
the orbats,” the tactical officer said, excitement building in his voice. “They have a bug in their system, sir.”

“Analysis,” ordered Omad.

“My guess? They’ve never fired these guns in actual combat, probably just in simulations. It’s gotta be some glitch they didn’t account for.”

“Well, then,” said Omad with a panther’s grin, “we had better take advantage of this opportunity before they figure out what the problem is. I say, let’s make ’em howl.” The command sphere crew broke out into a chorus of whooping and cheering. Omad then opened communications with the whole flotilla. “Okay, boy and girls, the gods of war have given us a gift that we’d be rude to refuse. Flotilla, prepare for atomic acceleration and set course for the Beanstalk on my mark.”

At first, the crew in the command sphere stood mute. However, a moment later, a fresh round of applause and cheering broke out. This was not going to be a typical hit-and-run raid. This was going to be vengeance.

Beanstalk Neuro

Marilynn was amazed at how different the Core Neuro was from the one she’d trained in at Ceres. First of all, it was huge. There was more cyberspace in this single Beanstalk than there was in all of Ceres. But it was so empty. The various Neuros in Alliance space were filled to the brim and rationed to the point of being cubicle laden. But even the Beanstalk was nothing compared to what she experienced when she and her unit entered Al’s domain.

It was desolate.

Though it didn’t take long for them to be attacked. Within seconds of their popping into the vast wasteland, they encountered a data wraith. Marilynn’s team stared momentarily in awe as the creature formed and grew ever larger, coiling like a serpent before an attack.

“Michaels! Lin!” shouted the unit’s captain, bravely turning her back on the data wraith. “Get that disrupter working, or that
thing
”—the captain pointed over her shoulder, thumb sticking out—“will be the least of your worries.” It may have seemed a hollow threat, but the unit’s captain, Leora Sullef, was not someone an avatar—or human, for that matter—would ever want to anger. She’d been fighting on the front lines since the beginning of the war and had managed the by now rare feat of not having been killed and replaced by a stored copy. It was one of the reasons she’d been chosen to work with the insertion team. It was also why she’d been chosen to lead it.

Spell broken, the hundred avatars started acting like a cohesive unit. Marilynn was unceremoniously shoved to the rear while the team spread out wide, causing the data wraith to hesitate as it now had a bunch of small targets to chow on versus one large one. That was all the time needed for Michaels and Lin to remove and assemble a wand, then attach it by cord to one of their backpacks. Michaels quickly ran about twenty feet, extending the cord between himself and Lin. Once activated, the cord emitted a band of energy that fooled the wraith into believing it to be the choicest target in terms of pure data to consume. When the wraith attacked, intersecting with the band, it simply faded from view like fog exposed to sunshine.

“Merlin!” shouted Captain Sullef, using the term avatars had taken to calling the humans who’d joined them. “Back door!”

Marilynn scanned the area. Nothing. She scanned again. Still nothing. Though she knew to be patient and relax her eyes in order to focus, the tension she was feeling made her more jumpy than usual. This was real, as the data wraith that just attacked them attested to.
Breathe, Marilynn,
she told herself.
There are untold numbers of back doors here, and for all you know, you might be standing on one
. Marilynn scanned once more.
Nothing!
Just as she was beginning to think they’d have to find another location, a faint image appeared, almost as if she’d conjured it. She knew it would be either an out-of-place object, say an apple on an orange tree or an object whose luminescent purple color would be readily apparent—as with the book Sandra had found on her visit to the library.

Marilynn found the object first. It was a dark blue, old-fashioned British police phone booth with the words,
POLICE PUBLIC USAGE CALL BOX
painted across the top in white lettering.
Gotcha!

“Over there,” she cried, pointing to where the object was now resting—unseen, unused, even undreamt of for centuries until she showed up.

It wasn’t until Marilynn indicated the booth that the avatars were able to see it. They seemed happy enough to transport out, although Marilynn’s look was slightly offputting.

“Problem?” asked Sullef. There was no concern in her voice. The question had been delivered in such a way—as in, either it was an issue, or it wasn’t. She seemed to be demanding the Merlin let her know if a recalculation needed to be made.

“No, it just never ceases to amaze me what visuals the old programmers used as their BDDs,” laughed Marilynn with a bland smile, using the common acronym for “backdoor device.”

Sullef had stopped listening as soon as Marilynn said no and, in fact, had already signaled the other avatars to grab their gear and head for the box. Meanwhile she busily checked her scanner. “High probability that it’s a prop from an old play about time travel. Says it’s supposedly bigger on the inside than the outside, almost indestructible and can go just about anywhere.” Sullef tucked the scanner away, grabbed her gear and then, over her shoulder said, “That works for me.”

“Me too,” said Marilynn, grabbing her own gear and walking alongside the unit commander. “But just be aware that it does not have accurate placement controls, and once it’s noticed by the enemy, will no longer remain invisible. Not exactly good for a covert team. Not to mention there is only one way in or out—and only a human can open the door—so you can forget rapid deployments. I would’ve been happier with the staff,” finished Marilynn, referring to the propitious numbers of “magic” staffs found in the Cerean Neuro. With the staffs—clearly some of the early programmers had a Tolkien fetish—humans had the power to appear and disappear as a group, making combat insertions far more rapid. They were also more accurate—something the box was notorious for not being, she noted as she called up its info on her own scanner. The staffs could take the teams almost anywhere they wanted as long as the part of the Neuro they wanted to get to was not shielded.

Leora laughed. “Leave it to Merlin to want a magic staff.”

They approached the box from the side, and the first thing Marilynn did was begin running her fingers along the top ledge.

“What are you doin’?” asked Sullef.

“The description of the play said the box can be opened only with a key.” Marilynn started feeling the sides of the box now, pressing in at certain locations, looking for a compartment.

“Door,” said Sullef flatly.

“I know,” Marilynn replied irritably. “But we won’t get in it if—”

Sullef grabbed Marilynn under her armpit and quickly spun her to the front of the police box. To Marilynn’s embarrassment, she now stood in front of the door where the key was attached to a chain and already
in
the lock. The rest of the unit snickered with a few even patting her on the back. Marilynn could feel the blood rushing to her face, but with good cheer she reached for the key, turned it, and the rest of the unit filed in.

“Any chance of living this down?” she asked to no one in particular.

“Not in this century,” came Sullef’s quick reply, followed by a chorus of laughter.

The interior was that of a large circular room with a few corridor entrances attached to it. Centrally located was a large bulbous machine, strewn with an odd assortment of knobs and buttons. Emerging from the center of this machine was a large, glowing, cylindrical tube that reached all the way up to the ceiling. Marilynn stood in front of the unit, having no idea what to do. But as soon as she would focus on it, a single knob glowed brightly. She pushed it down. Then another knob glowed. She pulled it up. Then two knobs, seemingly out of reach, glowed simultaneously, forcing her to pull one down while using her leg to activate the other. In short order, Marilynn was racing around the circular control panel, pushing, pumping, and pulling the odd assortment of input devices, looking more like a deranged marionette than a professional soldier.
As if the key incident wasn’t bad enough,
thought Marilynn, breaking a sweat with all her maniacal perambulations.
Why couldn’t it have been the staff?