Dark Sky (Keiko) (30 page)

Kuai felt his gut clench, and glanced sideways at the Captain. ‘
Did you just see her?
’

Drift didn’t look at him. ‘
No. No, I didn’t. And neither did either of you.
’

‘
YOU ARE CERTAIN
that they cannot see what we are doing?’ Tanja asked for the third time. Jenna did her best to suppress a sigh.

‘No, I’m not
certain
,’ she replied with studied patience, ‘but we’ve blocked all output on the surveillance feeds that the security stations on this level had access to. I’m not saying that some big cheese up on Level One doesn’t have some sort of private, hidden feed that his subordinates down here can’t see, but …’ She shrugged. ‘You can’t plan for everything.’

Tanja huffed. ‘Well, that will have to do. And there is nothing you can do to make our comms more secure?’

Jenna winced. ‘On the equipment you’ve got here? I’ve done
some
audio encryption before, but that was hard enough to set up for a one-to-one deal on systems I’m familiar with, and even then it was only to avoid casual eavesdropping. Trying to program a secure commsnet for multiple users when you’d have government-level operatives trying to decode it—’

‘A “no” would have sufficed, Miss McIlroy.’ Jenna’s irritation must have showed on her face, because the Uragan rebel immediately held up one hand in a conciliatory gesture. ‘My apologies, I intended no offence. I meant that I do not require you to explain yourself to me. You have been of great assistance to the revolution, and if you tell me you cannot do something then I will believe you.’

‘Well, okay then,’ Jenna nodded, somewhat mollified. ‘Umm … good luck, I guess.’

‘I fear we shall need it,’ Tanja said, her expression grim as she turned to survey the scene behind her. ‘This will be neither easy nor bloodless.’

They weren’t far from Vehicle Gate 2, one of three main routes up into Level Four. The huge, reinforced slabs of steel had been closed off, of course, with their hydraulics locked down. On the other side there were certainly armed security personnel waiting in case of a breach. However, on
this
side was a mass of humanity all the way down the ramp back into Level Five, wearing and waving the colours of the Free Systems.

Tanja was no fool; she was well aware that taking the
politsiya
by surprise wouldn’t work the same way twice. A headlong charge by lightly armed and largely unarmoured men and women into the teeth of waiting guns would be a slaughter, and not in their favour. Even if they overwhelmed the waiting troops with sheer weight of numbers, the death toll might be simply too high for people to maintain faith in the revolution.

Besides which, Tanja and her fellows didn’t want to smash the systems which ran Uragan City, they simply wanted control of them. Some of the
politsiya
had already decided to join the revolution, either due to previously hidden personal political beliefs or simple awareness of which way the tide was turning. If the rest could be persuaded to follow suit with no more fatalities, so much the better. What was needed was an overwhelming demonstration of how organised and comprehensive the revolution was, and how standing in its way was simply delaying the inevitable.

For all that Rourke had maintained that this wasn’t her revolution, Jenna couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen the older woman more vital than when she’d been plotting out the next bit of strategy with Tanja and Inzhu. Jenna herself was starting to wilt after what must be coming up to nearly twenty-four hours awake, and she briefly wondered how she’d managed to stay up all night when she’d been doing her degree.
Half a dozen cans of Caffeine Kick and no adrenaline dump from nearly being killed, most likely.
Rourke seemed to be having no such trouble, however, and Jenna’s admiration for her had gone up another notch.

Tanja looked at her chrono. ‘Five a.m. Time for stage one.’ She opened a channel on her comm and began speaking rapidly into it in Russian. Jenna hadn’t sat in on all the planning meetings, but she knew well enough what was going to happen. Or at least, what was
supposed
to happen.

From the communications hub on Level Five, the crew who had accepted the revolution would begin transmitting another broadcast which, thanks to their location in Uragan City, could reach every other habitation on the planet. Unlike the previous pro-revolution propaganda disguised as unbiased news reporting, this was a personal message from Tanja Mironova herself. In it she named herself as the Interim Head of the People’s Council of the Free State of Uragan until such time as an appropriate election could be held to make the offices permanent. She also addressed Governor Drugov directly, demanding the immediate and unconditional surrender of power to the People’s Council forthwith and guaranteeing the safety of his person should he do so.

It was no coincidence that this broadcast began at exactly the same time as mining charges placed at Vehicle Gate 1 went off, breaching the defences and opening hostilities. The idea was to put immediate pressure on the governor, but not to actually force entry. The magnitude of explosion necessary to destroy enough of the gates to allow easy pedestrian and vehicular access would risk bringing the entire roof down, and the miners in the revolution knew their tools well. The explosions which had – hopefully – just gone off would have blasted holes, certainly, but left enough cover for a firefight. That was an attention-grabber, something to start panicked messages flying across the
politsiya
’s comm systems.

‘Into position if you please, Miss McIlroy,’ Tanja said, her tone of voice one notch down from making it a direct order. Jenna swallowed and began to thread her way through the crowd of revolutionaries, accompanied by a trio of Uragan guards in
politsiya
armour adorned with hastily created Free Systems logos. The sheer energy of humanity around her was astounding, but she couldn’t help wondering how many of these people might make a stupid decision due to sheer overtiredness. She bit back a laugh: wouldn’t it have been far more convenient to wait until everyone was well rested for the revolution to begin?

She found her way to a wall terminal, not far from the main gate. This was one of the places she least wanted to be, but Rourke had made it clear that at the moment they had to play along as well as they could to ensure their own safety. Jenna couldn’t quite see how standing next to what amounted to an invasion force really ensured
her
safety, but given Rourke had infiltrated the communication hub on her own she guessed she couldn’t really complain.

She hooked her wrist-mounted terminal up to the one on the wall and checked her chrono. Two minutes and forty seconds gone since the broadcast began …

+
Everything ready?
+ Tanja’s voice asked in her ear.

‘Accessing now,’ Jenna replied, her fingers skating over the interface. The controls on the gates were laughably simple to access if you knew what you were doing, especially if you had access to the main terminal. Normally this would be guarded by
politsiya
of course, but they were long gone. ‘Okay, we’re ready to roll.’

+
On my mark. And … mark.
+

Jenna hit the override and the hydraulics on Vehicle Gate 2 swung smoothly into action. One panel began to retreat into the ceiling while the other started to sink into the floor. Another quick instruction activated a preprogrammed spiralling access algorithm: anyone trying to close the gates from the other side would suddenly find that their command codes no longer worked.

What was more, the exact same thing was happening at the exact same time at Vehicle Gate 3, assuming the tech Jenna had recruited from the communication hub had half a clue what she was doing.

Rourke’s plan had been twofold. In the first instance, the phoney assault at Gate 1 would attract attention and, just possibly, divert
politsiya
resources away from the other two gates. In the second instance, the brute-force-and-ignorance method would suggest that this was all the revolution had to work with: in the three minutes after those charges went off, the defenders would be able to wrap their heads around the notion that any incursion from below was going to begin with an almighty noise and commotion, and would by necessity be piecemeal.

Therefore, when the other two gates opened smoothly to disgorge a horde of heavy-duty haulage vehicles intent on ramming their way through any form of security cordon, the impact would not just be physical but psychological.

Jenna flattened herself against the wall as the engines coughed into life around her with basso roars. An answering shout went up from the assembled revolutionaries, who scrambled up onto their makeshift transports or crowded alongside them in the tunnel, eager to push forwards as soon as the lower plate had disappeared. It all looked horrifically confused to Jenna, and she winced as a haulage lorry jerked forwards ahead of time and nearly squashed four people between it and the truck in front. One of them shouted abuse in Portuguese at the driver’s cab, and she recognised Moutinho’s men. The
Jacare
’s captain saw her and flashed a leering grin, then ostentatiously checked the action of the gun he’d been given after he and his three crew had volunteered to take part in the assault. Of the other three, Skanda looked nervous, Jack looked impatient and the youth called Achilles just looked like he’d taken a battering. Which would be about right, given he’d been kicked twice by Apirana in the last twelve hours.

Her attention was dragged back to the vehicle gate as she caught a glimpse of black uniforms on the other side running around, and moments later there was the
spanging
noises of bullets ricocheting off metal. However, the front line of the revolutionaries’ convoy was made up of ore trucks with huge hydraulic scoops for lifting and dumping loose rock, and gunfire spattered off them like rain off the
Jonah
’s viewports. A moment later and the gate had fully opened, and the invasion force lurched into somewhat erratically driven action.

Jenna was no student of warfare, but she was fairly sure the initial charge of the People’s Council’s motorised militia wouldn’t go down in any history documents as an example of slick manoeuvring. It was, however, undeniably effective. The dozen or so drivers simply gunned their engines and headed as fast as they could for the greatest concentration of security personnel and vehicles, at which point the discrepancy in sheer power between a rugged urban police vehicle and an industrial digger became painfully obvious.

Politsiya
transports were hoisted partially off the ground and propelled backwards at some speed, with the more unfortunate ones being toppled onto their sides or even their roofs in the process. Revolutionaries on foot flooded through the branching streets in the wake of these trailblazers, waving flags and weapons and shouting slogans as they did so. Some gas grenades were fired in an attempt to slow the charge, but the revolution had learned from earlier clashes and Marya had ordered rebreathers brought up from the mining levels, where hitting subterranean toxic gas pockets was always a risk. Jenna watched in slightly terrified awe as Level Four’s official resistance to the Free State of Uragan, consisting of nearly 300 black-clad officers, crumpled in slightly under a minute.

+
Marya reports overwhelming success at Gate 3,
+ Tanja’s voice crackled over her comm. +
Well done, Miss McIlroy: your programming worked like a charm.
+

She heard a faint crackle in her ear, a signal that Rourke had switched to the scrambled channel Jenna had prepared for the two of them and Apirana, without telling Tanja. +
Jenna, are you still at the gate?
+

‘Still here,’ she confirmed.

+
Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be with you shortly.
+

In fairness, there wasn’t really anywhere Jenna could go, as the revolution’s bodies continued to surge past. The lower levels of Uragan City were mainly the mine workers and other menial labourers, and the revolution’s promises of better wages and a fair share of their planet’s riches had quickly found eager listeners even among those who hadn’t been party to it before it erupted. The upper levels were generally more affluent, however, and potentially much less welcoming. Inzhu had been adamant that as much visible support as possible should be shunted upwards to ‘persuade’ the rest of the population not to thwart the will of the people, and so the mines stood still and everyone who could be roused from their beds and given a flag or a sash was sent on their way.

Even allowing for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t get involved, Tanja’s best guess still put that at slightly more than 50,000 people pouring through the three gates and bellowing slogans.

A jeep rolled to a halt next to her, and Jenna nearly jumped in until she realised that it was Tanja in the passenger seat and not Rourke. The Uragan leaned over towards her and raised her voice over the engine noise. ‘Do you need a lift?’

‘You go on ahead!’ Jenna shouted back, gesturing at the terminal behind her. ‘I just want to make sure that there are no problems with the security algorithm I’ve installed!’