Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel (v1.1) (16 page)

"Amateurs," Sandy told her. Vanessa stared at her. Sandy continued to scan calmly through her links, observing the new vid-feeds coming in from the explosion site, and racing through the surrounding infrastructure for telltales.

"Oh Christ," Vanessa said, breathlessly, "don't tell me that's not serious! "

"No, they were serious. They were just stupid ... that was basic plastique, backyard stuff, big fireball and no real shockwave, it's mostly flammable chemicals and doesn't generate much punch. You see any crater? No heavy debris in the explosion cloud either." As she spoke, calmly reasoning, shouts and cries for assistance and support were howling over the frequencies, and about fifty media outlets were simultaneously screaming for information on the broader net. "Looks like they took out some of the boat's windows, but those fires are mostly chemical, they won't catch."

The boat was big, perhaps a one hundred capacity. On one vidfeed, there were people in the water, amid patches of flame. A splash, as another jumped, and another. Panicking, thinking the boat would sink. She shook her head in disbelief, scanning further, seeing a bridge overpass with a wrecked car, and more flames. That looked more serious. By the riverside, some trees were blazing like matches. A nearby building was missing some windows, and the gardens were smouldering. She hoped no one had been walking along the riverside when it went off. But the people in the boat should be fine. If the fools didn't drown.

But where did a couple of amateur pyrotechnicians hide when setting off a device that size? Where would they be if, as it seemed, they had been reading the instructions from the side of a box?

In the driver's seat, Vanessa was engaged in a desperate conversation with someone on a frequency. Sandy recalled Ruben's sleeper code, wove it into her most advanced scanner function, and went hunting.

She found a trace almost immediately, in a nearby com relay. She followed it, noting the mutations as it went, allowing her software to adjust for it, tracing the patterns ... racing through massive, multitudinous relays and network branches, a staggering, sprawling complexity that baffled any visual scan and tried to split the brain into a million different directions at once. She unfocused slightly, allowing the programs to do their job, monitoring on automatic as Vanessa continued shouting something into her voicelink ... They banked about another towerside, the drifting plume of smoke now clear ahead, flames burning at a broad bend in the river, aircars coming to hover in close proximity-a confusion of multi-coloured, flashing emergency lights, flaring off building windows already alive with chemical fires.

"Back off," Sandy said, eyes half-focused on the chaos in front. "Keep us out of the mess. I think I've got something in Lagosso."

A pause as Vanessa broke off her conversation ... "You think? Lagosso's fifteen klicks in the other direction."

"Just hold off a second ..." Internally focused as the patterns converged, racing through the mass of network chaos, chasing the thin, repetitive strain of data-trails. A throb of engines declining as Vanessa bled off their velocity, and the navcomp blinked a query ... Civilian traffic being quickly rerouted, emergency programs overriding to keep the onlookers away, and their airspace was rapidly clearing of company. Another query from navcomp.

"Dammit, Sandy," Vanessa exclaimed, "what d'you want? If we go in now we might get something on the ground."

"There's nothing on the ground," Sandy murmured. "It'll be crawling with suits in a few minutes, anyway ..." Ahead, an emergency flyer had arrived in a howling downdraft of multiple engines, the fire scene erupted with foaming spray. It smothered crowding civil ians on the boat's foredeck, a sea of fending arms submerged by carpeting foam ...

"Oh good lord," Vanessa muttered. Someone had undoubtedly hacked a surveillance camera by now-illegal, of course. News media would have this footage. "Oh Jesus."

More people were jumping, more frightened of the foam now than the fire. Vanessa stared through the windscreen, jaw open, hands fastened unthinkingly to the control grips. Aircars were landing, foam blowing every which way from the flyer's downdraft, struggling civilians in the water now whipped with flying spray and rippling chemical fires still alight. Personnel sprinted from landed aircars, leaping headfirst into the water after the swimmers. Nearby pleasure craft were manoeuvring closer in to help. Someone was nearly run over. Another slipped and fell from an assisting hand, awkwardly. The flyer lifted away, perhaps warned of the havoc it was creating, and huge billows of greasy smoke blasted all and sundry with lung-choking mouthfuls.

"Oh no." Vanessa's hand had gone to her mouth, her voice weak. Tanushan emergency services. With no real idea of how to handle an emergency. It did, Sandy thought with tired irony, sum the place up rather well. And then she found what she was looking for.

"Vanessa, Lagosso, right now."

Vanessa raised no word of protest, merely set in the coordinates and let the emergency navprogram assign them the fastest course. The cruiser banked steeply as it accelerated once more, up and away from the carnage of entangled, converging police, CSA and emergency units. Still the smoke billowed from riverside fires. Sandy hoped someone would attend to the wrecked car on the bridge.

She cast a sideways glance at Vanessa. Vanessa looked in shock. Her hands were tight on the moulded control grips, turning instinctively to stay within the low-level lane navcomp had prescribed. Their velocity hit six hundred, legal maximum for any trans-Tanushan air traffic, even emergency services. At fifty metres altitude, the tree-cov ered suburbs were flashing past below at an impressive rate, blurring glimpses of brief, lighted neighbourhoods and traffic.

"I don't think we'll call any backup for this one," Sandy remarked after a moment, over the unaccustomedly powerful multi-toned whine of the engines. A slight bank pressed her forcibly into the seat, towers and speeding horizon leaning sideways. "Do you?"

"Shit no," Vanessa muttered. "They'll crash into each other and level a suburban block." She looked pale, in the wash of speeding, swinging light from beyond the windows, a tower rushing by. Levelled out of the slight turn, and the downward pressure eased.

"Hey," Sandy offered, "if it makes you feel any better, I'm not very surprised. They don't exactly get a lot of business here."

"Oh God, I don't want to talk about it." She sounded decidedly shaken. "I was under the impression that I was working within a system that was actually capable of responding to emergencies without turning them into catastrophes. I'm suddenly terrified that this entire city is just one more stupid mistake away from wiping itself out."

Sandy shrugged, observing their high-velocity perspective with interest. Air traffic was about them again, mostly above. Some were heading in the same direction they were, quickly overtaken and left behind at speed, a brief flash of motion to their sides and above.

"It's a big city," she replied finally.

"All the more reason for terror," Vanessa muttered. Glancing at the navscreen. Lagosso was approaching. Fifty seconds. Towers fled past the windows. Faint patches of rain came and went, lit yellow by streetlight. The cruiser's com-link beeped, and Vanessa hit receive.

"Snowcat," she snapped.

"Snowcat, what are you doing?" asked Ruben's curious voice.

Vanessa looked at Sandy. And Sandy realised that she couldn't exactly lie to a direct inquiry.

"I think I might have found a trace of that sleeper code over in Lagosso," she said reluctantly. "It might be nothing."

"Um ... well that's funny," Ruben replied, "because I think I might have found something similar. We'll compare notes later ... would you like some backup?"

"That depends."

To her surprise, Ruben gave a snort of nervous, tense laughter. "Oh God," he sighed, "it's a bloody nightmare, isn't it? Um ... well, fair warning, Sandy, I've already got some people onto it, but there's no CSA available unfortunately. They're all at the bombing or off elsewhere ... who knows. " He sounded, Sandy thought, as if the whole thing would be quite darkly entertaining if it weren't so serious. She knew how he felt. She wasn't certain Vanessa did.

"Who'd you get?" she asked, with trepidation.

"SIB," Ruben replied shortly. Sandy swore, lightly, surprising herself. It was a very civilian thing to do. "Please don't hurt me, they were all that's available. "

"What are you doing on Ops, anyway, Ari?" she asked him, somewhat testily. "Don't you have something boring and meaningless you should be attending to?"

"Look, don't pick on me, Sandy, I'm just on work experience ... hey, I gotta go and mop some floors. Be careful ... "

Sandy outright grinned, as the connection clicked off. And gave a snort of laughter, shaking her head.

"Since when did he start calling you Sandy?" Vanessa asked tersely.

"I don't care," Sandy sighed. "He's a pain, but he's cute. And he might just be my only chance to get laid, now everyone knows what I am."

"Maybe he's gay," Vanessa muttered unhelpfully.

The cruiser was slowing, bleeding velocity amid a brief, buffeting turbulence.

"I'll convert him."

"That'll be a task."

"I can do it. I'm a sex goddess, didn't I tell you? Turn a gay man straight ... long and hard in five quick, easy steps ... Fifty bucks, full refund if unsatisfied."

"Oh God," Vanessa murmured, scanning the way ahead, "you're in a mood again. Bad things happen when you're in this mood."

Sandy turned an appraising blue gaze upon her friend and blinked in mild affront. "I beg your pardon, my dear?"

"That's exactly what I mean. Behave yourself, we're in a civilised place."

"My behaviour has been impeccable of late."

"Tell that to the SIB."

"I did."

Vanessa swore to choke off a treacherous smile, and held her grim demeanour in place with effort.

"Where you wanna go?" she drawled, as the cruiser climbed slightly into a regular skylane, banking low across the Lagosso skyline. The major river bend that was the central Shoban itself, broad and mirrored with gleaming reflections. Another few automatic sorts came clear, and the options narrowed further. And again. "Sandy?"

"Just a second." Eyes unsighted as the cruiser swung above the river bend, violating regular skylanes on emergency privilege as Sandy let her functions run down, flashing through electronic mountains of digital data, recent transmissions. Seeking patterns or variations on that sleeper code ...

"Sandy," Vanessa warned, eyeing the navscreen, trajectories headed out from Lagosso as the Shoban swung away beneath them. "Sandy, I'm running out of airspace here, even emergency privilege doesn't like me below fifty metres anywhere up here. There's too much highrise ..." as mid-level towers loomed ahead, around a bend where the Shoban curved back upon itself, luxury apartments overlooking the gleaming waters ...

"Got it," Sandy said as it came clear, and Vanessa blinked, her navscreen abruptly reconfiguring to a new trajectory, sending instructions to central control, clearing them for a new course.

"Jesus, Sandy," she muttered, swinging them about. "That's spooky, you've got an interface like a damn Al."

"Get used to it. See the building?"

"Yeah, I've got it," Vanessa said, with a narrow-eyed glance through the windscreen, past the faint green lines of holographic HUD. The cruiser levelled out once more, humming at barely forty metres as it headed back along the riverside. Bridges spanned the width, glistening stretches of light across the mirror surface. Sandy fixed her eyes on the building, two blocks in from the riverside up ahead. Lower mid-level residential, just twelve storeys, balconies and broad glass. Inexpensive, relatively ... for Tanusha. Her mind found the barriers-basic security that gave with barely a nudge-and she was in. Found the room in question, clear traces of code, coming back to a single operational terminal on the left wall by the sliding window to the balcony, ten storeys up ...

Vanessa banked them in over the riverside, losing velocity as they drew near.

"Tenth floor," Sandy told her, "this one here, overlooking the river ... Pointing at the apartment.

"This one?" Bringing them gliding close, and dropping level, engines throbbing on hover pulse, a deep, shifting vibration.

Sandy flash-zoomed beyond the window reflection ... The room looked empty, unlit, untidy, with plants that hadn't been watered on the balcony and an empty deckchair.

"Got anything?"

"Nothing, looks like they're gone ..." Scanning further down the links, but beside the single terminal, nothing else registered. "Door please."

Clack-whine, and the door heaved open, panel lights blinking a red indication of safety restraints overridden ... A breeze blew in, and the abrupt, loud throbbing of the engines, echoing off the building side here at the tenth-storey level, buzzing the balcony glass. The cruiser performed a gentle sideways slide as Vanessa's hands moved on the controls. Sandy unfastened her belt, checked her pistol, grabbed the door rim with both hands and performed a careful, controlled leap. Landed smoothly on the balcony between deckchair and potplants, a controlled impact with the glass door to stop her. The door was locked-mechanical lock, nothing electronic that could be hacked. She grabbed with both hands, and gave it a sharp yank. Crack! as the mechanism broke, and the door leapt back on its runners.

The apartment room beyond was indeed empty. Her vision tracked through multiple spectrums about the bare walls, a made bed in the right corner, a dresser alongside with a small interface terminal in the wall ... She walked over, and stared at it. Strained her eyes to the most sensitive extreme, squinting slightly. There was a faint rectangular mark on the dresser bench, near the terminal. Like someone had used a portable here. Nothing special in that ... under other circumstances.

She turned around. A cool breeze billowed the curtains, alight with the blinking flare of running lights from the cruiser, a great angular shape hovering just beyond the balcony ledge. The engine whine was nearly deafening, and she tuned her hearing into differing frequencies, taking the edge off it. And saw a clear mark on a wall. A handprint, quite recent, red with residual heat. But there was nothing to indicate the apartment had been lived in. It was small, empty, and mostly undisturbed.