State of Emergency (25 page)

Stepping out into the corridor leading back to Room B63,
Josh tried his comms again, but the silence down the line
was oppressive. It was almost as though E-Force had ceased to
exist. Mai looked at him but he shook his head. 'Nothing.'

They ran along the corridor heading south towards the
main passage. As they turned into it, Mai glimpsed a figure
in the distance. A fraction of a second later it was gone. Mai
sped up and turned the next corner. She saw the person
again, a tall man in a ripped white shirt and dark pants.
Then he disappeared into the smoke.

'Hey! Stop!' she called, but the man had vanished.

'What is it?' Josh asked, stopping beside her, breathing
heavily.

'Thought I saw someone.'

'What did they look like?'

'Tall, fit-looking, wearing dark pants and the remains of
a shirt.'

'Could be Foreman.'

They walked along the corridor, stopping at each roller-door
and listening intently. Their cochlear implants could
detect the faintest of sounds, and the cybersuit computers
filtered out any extraneous noise.

They reached the end of the corridor and turned right.
Stopping at the first roller-door, they heard the sound of
dripping water but nothing else. At the next door they stopped
abruptly. Josh leaned in and immediately heard voices.

Kyle Foreman was leaning against the wall, trying to get his
breath back, when he, Dave and Marty heard a rapping on
the roller-door. They froze and looked at each other, fear
etched into their features. Foreman lifted the Magnum and
walked towards the door.

'Who is it?'

'Senator Foreman? Is that you?'

'Who is this?'

'My name's Josh Thompson. I'm from an organisation
called E-Force. I'm here with my colleague, Maiko Buchanan.
We've been searching for you. Can we come in?'

'Let me speak to your colleague.'

Maiko stepped up to the door. 'Hello, sir,' she said. 'This
is Maiko Buchanan.'

Foreman glanced around at Dave and Marty. They nodded
and he bent to unlock the door. A moment later Josh and
Mai ducked down and entered the room.

Foreman stared sceptically at the two E-Force members.
'So, what's this all about?'

'We're –' Josh stopped talking suddenly and Mai dashed
forward as Marty's legs crumpled under him. She was too
late to break the old man's fall and he landed heavily on
his side.

'Marty,' Dave yelled. He was at Marty's side instantly,
lifting his head.

Mai knelt beside the old man and swung her med-kit off
her shoulder. She leaned forward and checked his breathing,
then felt for a pulse. She looked up at Foreman and Josh.
'He's alive.'

Foreman stepped to the back of the room and returned
with an armful of tablecloths. He rolled up a couple and
placed them under Marty's head. Standing beside Josh, he
watched as Mai placed a circular piece of plastic over Marty's
mouth. There was a tiny tube attached to its side. The plastic
clamped to Marty's face like a sucker.

'Oxygen,' she said to the others, without looking up. Then
she pulled out an object the size and shape of a pen, with
a disc about two inches in diameter at one end. She ripped
open Marty's tattered shirt and placed the device vertically
on his chest, moving it around slowly. It beeped and then
produced a strange whirring sound.

Mai looked at her wrist. The screen was lit up, but only
she could make out what was on it. She studied it in silence,
then slowed the movement of the device over Marty's skin.
Returning the device to the med-kit, she quickly pulled out
another cylindrical object. It looked like a hypodermic but
without a needle. She pressed it against Marty's neck and
pushed a button on the side.

Dave pulled himself up. 'What's that?' he asked, darting
a frightened look at Josh.

'She knows what she's doing,' Josh responded, crouching
down. 'Heart attack?' he asked Mai.

'Looks like it. I wish Steph was here. There's not much I can
do. I've given him a mixture of nitroglycerin and morphine
to assist his blood flow. We need to get him aboard the Big
Mac.' Mai tapped her comms control. 'Mark? Steph? Come
in, please. Tom?'

Nothing.

Mai and Josh looked up as Dave started talking. 'Will he
live?' he asked, his voice edged with panic.

'If we get him out of here quickly,' Josh replied.

Dave got to his feet and was shaking his head. 'I don't get
this. What the fuck is going on? Who are you?' He looked
as though he was about to lose it.

Mai stood up. Gripping the boy's shoulders, she looked
him in the eyes. 'What's your name?'

'Dave Golding.'

'Dave, take deep breaths. We're here to help you. We'll get
Marty to our ship as soon –'

'Your ship? What the fuck?'

'Look, it doesn't matter –' Josh began, but Mai stopped
him with a stern look.

'Dave – listen, we're not from Alpha Centauri. We're just
a rescue organisation.'

'But that shit . . .' he said, pointing at the plastic
over Marty's face and the strange devices in the opened
med-kit.

'We have some cool stuff, but we're human. Hit me, if
you like!'

Dave was too far gone to even smile. He swallowed hard
and slumped against the wall, then he began to rifle through
his bag.

'Sir,' Josh said, turning to Kyle Foreman. 'We have to get
out of here ASAP.'

Foreman nodded. 'Just point the way.'

'We have a problem. We came in through a drain that
runs close to the building, but that explosion a few minutes
ago brought the roof down.'

'Okay.'

'And we've lost contact with our base.'

Mai was trying her comms again. The screen was dead,
but suddenly a voice came out of the receiver. Through the
distortion, she could just make out Mark's rich baritone.
'Mai?'

'Mark!'

'It's good to hear your voice, Mark,' Josh said.

'We had a drop-out on the sat link,' Mark replied. 'I . . .'
The line went dead again for a second. '. . . the Big Mac with
Steph. W . . . happening?'

Twice more the connection cut out for a few seconds
before settling down. Mai managed to bring Mark up to
speed.

'So you've reached them? Good work. Put the senator
on.'

'Hello?'

'Hello, Senator Foreman. This is Mark Harrison. What's
your condition?'

'I've been better.'

'Sure, but you're fit enough to force your way out
somehow?'

'I am. Dave is. But Marty's very bad.'

'Look, we're going to get you all out somehow. Josh, Mai?
The blockage in the tunnel is at least 30 feet thick, but we're
searching for a way through.'

'What about from the other direction?' Mai asked. 'Northeast
of the CCC? Aren't there any other exits?'

'Negative. Tom's studied the drain right back to where it
starts. There are pipes but none bigger than a foot wide.'

'Great!'

'We need to attack the problem from two directions.
I'm going to take the second Mole down to the tunnel
and try to break through to your side. Pete's still in the
other Mole and is coming down from B3. I'm going to send
in a couple of Hunters. They can feed info back to Pete.
Senator? How clear is the route down to B6? I assume you
took the ramps?'

'Yes, we did, but the smoke was getting real bad.'

'That's no problem. The biggest difficulty will be if the
recent explosion has blocked the way. It'll slow us down.'

'Mark, I'll go out to the main area of B6 to assess the
situation,' Josh said. 'If we can meet Pete halfway –'

'There's something you should know,' Kyle Foreman
interrupted. Josh and Mai turned to him as he spoke to
the air, his voice carrying 1500 miles to Tintara. 'There's an
assassin out there. Calls himself the Dragon. He almost had
me just before the explosion. He was hit by some debris. I
tied him up and took his weapon.'

There was a long silence over the line. 'I see,' Mark said
at last.

War was still in a sullen mood. He had moved from the deck
of the
Rosebud
and was slouched in a leather chair behind
his desk, his eyes glued to a 60-inch flat-screen monitor on
the wall of his office. He gave the other three a sour look.

Death spoke first. 'I'm growing concerned. My people tell
me they haven't heard from the Dragon and can't reach
him.'

'That
is
out of character,' Pestilence intoned, lowering his
gin and tonic to the armrest of his chair aboard his Hawker,
which was now 30,000 feet above Newfoundland.

'There is apparently a lot of interference on the ground.
Residuals from the blasts, and radio traffic from the fucking
emergency services.'

War giggled, finally snapping out of his bad mood. Death
glared at him and he poked out his tongue. 'So what now?'
he said.

'Have you learned anything more about this rescue
organisation?' Conquest asked, directing his question
towards War.

'I thought Little Miss Cyberspace was onto that.'

'It's going to take time.'

'Time is something we don't have in abundance,' Death
said, fixing the other three on his screen.

'So, I ask again,' War said through a toothy grin, his lips
hardly moving, 'what now?'

'The Dragon knows what to do if there's no contact after
two call-in periods.'

'That's rather drastic, isn't it?' Death said, half to himself.

The other three looked at him, their expressions hard.

'Oh, I think it will be hysterical,' War said and giggled.
'But we are, of course, assuming the man is still alive.'

'Oh, he's alive,' Conquest retorted. 'I'd bet my last billion
dollars on it.'

Tom was on the balcony above Cyber Control. The doors
had opened automatically as he approached in his motorised
wheelchair and rolled out into the balmy night. He
needed to get away from the hubbub at the workstations
down there. He needed some clarity. His laptop was still
linked to the mainframe, though, so he had full access to
Sybil and comms. Overhead, the sky was filled with stars,
the slipstream of the Milky Way a ribbon of a billion lights
set against the black velvet night.

He felt disturbed. The closest he could describe it to
anyone – other than a fellow cybergeek – was that he felt
like someone was looking over his shoulder. Not in the 'real'
world, but in cyberspace. His primary job these past few
months had been to develop Sybil further than the E-Force
engineers who had designed it. His specialty was hacking,
and that's what he had concentrated on – building defence
systems into the mainframe, as well as systems to detect
cyber-intruders.

His comms sounded and the interior of the Big Mac
appeared on his holoscreen. It was Mark and Stephanie.

'I've spoken to Josh and Mai,' Mark began. 'They're in
trouble. The cave-in has trapped them with Foreman and
two others, a young guy called Dave Golding and an elderly
man, Marty Gardiner. Gardiner's in a bad way.'

Tom nodded. 'Pete was in touch a few minutes ago. He's
not finding it easy either, even in the Mole. The structural
integrity of the building is badly compromised and he's
worried he'll kill survivors if he goes charging in. I've been
trying to map the stress regions, but there's just too much
interference. At least, that's what I think it is.'

'Okay. I've instructed Josh to find a way to get up from
B6, try and meet Pete coming down. Meanwhile, I'm going
to tackle the blockage in the tunnel.' He paused for a beat.
'There's another problem. Foreman was attacked.'

'Attacked?'

Mark told him about the assassin who called himself the
Dragon.

'This is just getting worse,' Tom sighed. 'How's Steph?'

She came into view. 'Good, Tom.' She sent him a couple
of images.

'These are the two goons who were filming the inside
of the Big Mac. I'm really pissed off about it. I should have
been more careful. The funny thing is, they seemed to know
what they wanted, and where they were going.'

Tom looked puzzled but said nothing.

'Tom,' Mark butted in. 'I want anything you can get on
these guys. Looks like they're genuine marines, but we need
a lot more. Who they're working for is the number-one
question.'

'Sure.'

'Keep us in the loop. Out.'

Tom took a deep breath. He called up the file on Major
Larry Simpson. Text flowed down the holoscreen and he
extracted the essentials.

Major Larry Harold Simpson

Age: 32

Joined the Marine Corps in 2008

Fast-track promotion; impeccable record

Decorations: Distinguished Service Metal, Bronze Star

Served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Special training for presidential bodyguard
duties

Sergeant Vincent George Paolomo

Age: 25

Joined the Marines in 2004

Father is General Anthony Paolomo, presently Senior Advisor to the
National Security Council

Tom raised an eyebrow at this last piece of information.
He typed in an encrypted alphanumeric sequence, and a
series of prompts flashed across his holoscreen. He responded
to the prompts and in a few seconds he was into the US
Marines database at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
He typed in Vincent Paolomo's serial number. A few seconds
passed before a message came up. 'File
Unavailable
.'

Tom felt a tingle of excitement shoot through him. 'Well,
isn't that just dandy?' he said to the warm night air. 'Right.
Let's take a look at the good major, shall we?'

He returned to the database and ran his fingers rapidly
over the keys, inserting Simpson's serial number. The display
turned black. Then, to Tom's horror, a skull and crossbones
appeared in the centre of the holoscreen. It flashed red and
black. The computer was under attack.

'No!' Tom exclaimed. His fingers darted over the keys
in a blur. With lightning speed, he keyed in a personalised
firewall. It appeared as a set of interlocking chainmail
fences in front of the skull and crossbones. The skull on
the holoscreen smiled menacingly and appeared to move
towards him. The chainmail shattered, its metal links flying
apart.

Tom broke out in a sweat, his palms suddenly clammy. He
kept typing, his fingers moving with phenomenal speed, his
eyes darting across the holoscreen. 'Sybil, help!' he shouted.
But there was no response. His mind in a whirl, he hit more
strings of numbers and letters, then stabbed 'Enter'.

The skull and crossbones stopped moving. The smile
faded. An old-fashioned cannon appeared on the screen. It
fired a cannonball, and the skull and crossbones smashed
into a thousand pieces. The screen went blue.

Tom was shaking, his mind racing.
That attack happened
too quickly
, he thought.
Far too quickly
. Suppressing his panic,
he typed in an alphanumeric code only he knew, a sequence
he kept in his head. For several long, anxiety-filled moments
nothing happened. Then out of nowhere a small figure
appeared on the screen. It was a cartoon of Tom himself,
except he was standing on two legs – athletic, powerful legs.
It was his avatar, Tommy Boy, and he was armed to the
teeth. He had a fuck-off assault rifle in his right hand, and
at his waist hung a pistol with a massive barrel.

Tom took a deep breath. Now his avatar was on screen he
knew he had stabilised the system – that he had a fighting
chance. But he also knew the comms breakdown earlier
that evening had been nothing to do with a failure of the
E-Force network. Someone had broken into the computer
system and gotten through his carefully constructed defence
systems.

Tom's mind was racing, threads of half-formed thoughts
coming together. He remembered what Mark had said.
How had the assassin known where Kyle Foreman was? How
had he got to him so easily? How did he even know the
senator was still alive? And Steph had said that Simpson and
Paolomo seemed to
know
what they wanted and where they
were going aboard the Big Mac. There had definitely been a
security breach. Someone, somewhere had been monitoring
every move E-Force had made. They had been tracking every
communication since the team had arrived at the CCC.

Tom was about to instruct his avatar when Sybil's voice
broke through the silence of the night. It reverberated around
Base One, poured from every speaker at every computer
workstation. But it wasn't the voice everyone on the base
knew as Sybil's. It was androgynous, oddly weak and high-pitched.

Tom felt a fear he had never known before. It was
paralysing, and filled his mind with dread, with a draining,
cloying sense of hopelessness. Looking at the holoscreen,
he felt a cold shiver pass through him as though fingers of
ice were pulling at his heart. Another avatar had appeared
and was walking towards Tommy Boy. It was a slim young
woman in her twenties. She was wearing a frumpy tweed
skirt, a turtleneck sweater and a string of pearls, her hair up
in a bun. She looked like a librarian.

'You!' Tom exclaimed.