System Seven (49 page)

“You okay?” Johan
asked.

“Hit in the vest. Did
you stop it?”

Johan didn’t look up.
“Yes. Working on the other sites. Keep them back. I’m almost done.”

The alarm switched to
a high pitch and was drowned out by the high pressure discharge of carbon
dioxide. He raised the 9mm and readied his finger on the trigger.

Johan glanced up.
“Away from the wall!”

Shots sounded. Puffs
of white dust erupted as rounds passed through the wall. Austin darted across
the room.

Johan dropped to his
knees and shouted, “
Down!
”

A blast tore through
the wall and knocked Austin down. A ringing in his ears stung and a wave of
dizziness made the room spin. Blood flowed from his nose. He sat up to face the
gaping hole. Smoke and dust billowed in the ship’s beam, blocking his view. He
fired three rounds blindly. A clank sounded and a grenade hit the ground, rolling
to touch his right knee. He sent it back through the hole where it flashed. A concussion
wave punched him in the face and sent more debris into the room. He coughed on
blood streaming down his throat. The urge to breathe increased, courtesy of the
carbon dioxide spilling in. Focus faltered, his eyes burned, and the ringing in
his ears grew painful. There were more soldiers and they would throw more
grenades.

He reached out.
Geo... Anki...

He imagined the ship
firing lasers at the troops, beating them back until he and Johan could climb
back in.

The hatch closed.

“No! Don’t leave!”

The craft spun in
place then stopped. Sudden screams sounded from the other side of the wall.

Affirmation came, as
if to say,
done
. The smoke from the
server room wafted against an invisible wall. The ship’s field had extended
into the room to protect them from the smoke and CO
²
.

Energy beam. Organs boiled in their own fluids.
You can thank Anki.

He looked to Johan.
The hacker worked the keyboard with one hand while holding a bloodied side of
his head with the other. He said something but the ringing in his ears was too
much.

“What?”

It’s done. They can’t set off the nukes. Not
the twenty-three.
He stood.
Grab the laptop. We have more to do.

“Did you find anything
on my dad?” Austin shouted.

Are you kidding? I had no time.

The ship burrowed back
the way it had come, displacing earth in bucket brigade fashion using a
wrinkled kinetic energy field. It re-emerged on the far side of the hill behind
InterGen and shot to the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Austin helped wrap a
torn shirt around Johan’s head.

“You need a doctor,”
Anki said.

He shook his head.
“Not yet. Did you reach Geo?” he asked Austin.

“No. Nothing. Why?
What’s next?”

“There are four old
nukes we need to reach before they’re detonated manually.”

The list of J86 sites
made its debut electronically using the Underground’s framework, reinforced
where possible in the dreams of the Confrere. For those who endured the vivid
imagery, sudden waking brought irresistible compulsion to seek out confirmation
of the list and threats.

In zombies around the
world, dead drop scripts activated to retrieve the message and recipient list.
Emails went out. Files appeared in private folders. Hijacked VoIP systems
called cell phones and after keyword authentication, played back recordings.
All were delivered with impunity using Soldado’s injected protocols, their
existence forcibly omitted from Totem’s OpAIs intercept processing.

The messages provided
locations of the J86 sites and any notes available for each. Korda-aligned
officials of the countries with devices in their cities were urged to intervene
and facilitate control of the sites. Although the ignition computers had been
blown, the threat of recovery was high. In the case of four older nukes, the
threat of detonation was absolute as they were not part of the Comannda
network.

“Identify Montevideo,
Uruguay,” Austin instructed the ship’s navigation system.

The overlay marked the
city with crosshairs.

Austin pointed the
ship in that direction. “If we could just extract the AI from this ship, we
could be rich. It’s incredible.”

“Yeah, until it phones
home.” Johan sat on the bunk behind them with eyes closed. “Second site is
Florida. Miami, near the coast,” he said.

“How about Montevideo?
Where exactly is it?”

“Northeast of the bay.
Don’t worry, I’ll guide you in.”

Arrival at the coast
of Uruguay revealed an unnatural cloud formation. As they neared, what Austin
thought were city lights instead resolved to a field of fire beneath a massive
plume.

He blinked furiously.
“No...”

“What?” Johan asked,
climbing from the bunk. “Oh God.”

When Austin zoomed in,
the damage was clear.

“No, no, nooo....” He
stared, lost in the gaping hole of life burning on the surface. He imagined
three more just like it, at the heart of cities. The sick feeling in his gut
spread to encompass his whole being. He sat back and let himself begin to
slide.

Anki grabbed his arm.
“Austin, no–”

“What are you doing?”
Johan asked.

He fell away from his
body and pushed towards the fires, aware of the bràthair responding in alarm at
his presence. The druids moved to shield him but he shunted them in the grid
and fixated on the clamor below. He wanted to
feel
it, to feel what he’d caused. No filters.

Bending and folding to
avoid detection, he arrived in the chaos of thousands of souls in the process
of dying. Untrained and orphaned, the raw meta thrashed without comprehension,
battling the slow withdrawal into Saoghal and the return to their core
metabody. What should have been a familiar and safe retreat was instead much
like their physical existence – a prolonged and confused journey without
understanding, filled with doubt and fear. False premises proved poor footing
as reality shifted to its basic, natural state. He felt for them, knew their
suffering, but took refuge in Johan’s description of the light that would soon
gather them.

For the burned and
stricken survivors there could be no consolation. He’d never known agony could
have so many manifestations. It extended and joined with others, forming a wave
of pain and misery that became its own character, a group-mind with a biting
outflow of feeling. He followed it and found the reverberations joined with
three others of its kind to impact the higher layers of Raon, coloring a
hierarchy of group minds with pain, empathy, and fear. From a distance, he felt
the weight of the world growing as news spread.

He retreated to the
cover of the ship, dashed from the herculean experience of pain and suffering.
Even anger felt useless in the moment. The glow of fires twinkled in silence.
Tears welled. So many lives lost, so many still suffering. He’d been given the
ultimate tools and still had failed to save them.

Javier’s voice echoed
in his mind.
Dying’s part of what we’re
buying. Deal with it
.

He let go and began to
sob.

And nothing to look backwards to with pride, and nothing to
look forward to with hope.
- Robert Frost, 1875-1963, American Poet

Four bombs, manually
detonated. In each case, massive explosions obliterated ground zero and sent
radioactive plumes into the sky. Each yielded no more than eight kilotons
thanks to the aged plutonium isotopes – in two cases destruction was further
limited due to placement.

In Montevideo,
Uruguay, in a hidden sub-basement of an old Neo-Manueline-style residence, the
hydraulic mechanism designed to lift the device through the second story
malfunctioned, reducing the effective yield.

Similarly in Istanbul,
G3 operatives failed to raise the device from its subterranean storage chamber
beneath Gülhane Park. A gun battle with Turkish secret police in tunnels
leading from the Archeological Museum forced an early discharge. Among the
priceless casualties of the blast was the Kadesh tablet, the world’s oldest
peace treaty... and nearly a thousand lives.

In Johannesburg, a
device detonated in the third floor attic of the main library flattened the
surrounding banking district’s high rises. The noon day sun dimmed under the
dirty shroud and fires spewed smoke across the kill zone.

Florida’s devastation
was the worst. In the predawn darkness, a gardener’s truck pulled into the
driveway of a gated residence in south Miami. The driver disappeared into the
backyard, a half-acre of lush grass with a pool facing north Biscayne Bay.
Beyond the pool, a narrow, tiled water feature suddenly drained as a four foot
section dropped and slid from view. From a hole beneath, a turbine howl rose
and gathered loudness until lights came on in nearby homes. A deafening thump
sounded and a black barrel-sized object shot out of the hole and arced out over
the city. The blast succeeded in laying waste to fourteen square blocks of
mostly residential homes and plastered radioactive residue over a four-mile
radius. The resulting fire storm lit the night and swept through neighborhoods
like a new virus. By dawn’s first light, mortalities had risen above ten
thousand. Radiation poisoning would kill thousands more.

In the ensuing hours,
some form of martial law went into effect in major cities across the globe.
Militaries deployed, police forces patrolled, and news organizations delivered
reports from all corners of the world.

The media settled onto
theories by experts pointing to the radical Islamic elements already claiming
responsibility for the attacks. Heralding their success as a sign from Allah,
the radicals warned all world states supporting the Zionist infidels that more
destruction would come unless drastic policy changes were implemented
immediately.

The United Nations
Security Council met in emergency session to assess the crisis and to insure
every nuclear-equipped country was in communication. No misunderstandings or
further attacks could be allowed to trigger an inadvertent war. Reports that
more bombs had been located and seized in other cities could not be confirmed
except in the case of the defense communications tower in Ichigaya, Tokyo.
Allegations of American military involvement there prior to the attacks raised
suspicions that the U.S. had withheld intelligence that might have saved lives
elsewhere. The Iranian ambassador went so far as to suggest the U.S. might be
behind the attacks.

Via secure satellite
link, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, David Boles, joined the commander of PACCOM
in denying the allegations and to confirm that a nighttime training sortie
attacked by terrorists had triggered the rumors in Japan. According to Japan’s
UN representative, the bomb’s discovery was solely the work of attentive
computer technicians tracking hidden cabling found during an infrastructure
survey. Speculation that the find may have triggered the other attacks could
also not be substantiated but appeared a possibility. An investigation was
already underway to determine how the bomb had been placed in the tower.

An exhausted Cathbad
listened to the monitor relaying the UN session. No mention of secret
governments or of the J86 list. The Confrere had done their job. The veil of
secrecy held, at least in the moment. The korjé hunted the collaborators,
trying to identify those behind interventions at the bomb sites. Protecting
them was the main focus of the families.

He rubbed his temple.
The Comannda had been desperate, incredibly so, to use the nuclear option. What
they might attempt next was the greatest concern.

Sean sat with eyes
closed, following the flow of events as they unfolded.

“Global markets have
suspended trading until further notice. Russia and China both restricted
international flights. A Lufthansa airliner just blew up over Africa. They are
putting everything into play at once, seems like.”

Cathbad nodded.
“Closing their fist.”

Sean opened his eyes.
“Austin and Johan are safe. However, Austin is insisting on seeing Kaiya. Johan
strongly backs the idea and won’t leave him.”

Cathbad weighed the
risk. “Give him half an hour. And tell Johan I want a meeting with him.”

“We should leave for
Rome now. There’s–” Sean stopped. The monitor of the UN had gone black. The
familiar gravelly voice of Padrig of the Borcelli family broke in.

“Comannda’s made
contact. Their message is to abandon the prophecy and hand over the Change and
the craft or the worst is yet to come. Cathbad, your new children are breaking
up the world and all without a plan. This we cannot abide. Take the proper
corrective action now or bear the split.”

Cathbad responded
sternly. “The Concords, Padrig. You know without unity every family will fall,
either to their end or to the will of the Comannda. You
know
this. We all do. The ship and the Change are our greatest
assets! Have you no grasp of what this means for–”

“No grasp? Lord of the
Wood, I have grasp. What have you? By all appearances the ship is not
ours
, it is the Change’s and they are
doing what they will with it. Barreling around on their own. Cathbad, the time
is nigh for you to step aside. You’ve allowed prophecy to drive us towards
ruin. The families will not survive this path. Make good or let the Concords
break upon your conscience.” The screen flicked back to a view of the UN.

Sean cursed. “They’ve lost their minds. Padrig
has it wrong – it is a
split
no
family will survive.”

“Agreed. We cannot
stop nor break ranks. It is a measure of Padrig that he even considers it.”

Sean frowned. “He is a
fool.”

“He is behaving like
one.” Cathbad slowly rose to his feet. “Though in one thing Padrig is right:
it’s time to focus the Change.”

• • •

The path followed a
gully through thick palm forest. Morning sun lanced warmth in thin rays. Wild
birds went silent as Austin made his way downhill, their senses tuned to his
passage. Thirty minutes tops and he’d already burned two just getting to the
road. He touched his face, grateful to feel the biocats finally settle in their
assigned positions. His old face, but not exactly. Kaiya would notice the
difference. Kaiya, sharing a body with a stranger.

He reached the narrow
rock and cement road as it bent and crossed a gully. Fifty yards along it ended
at a gate, open as promised. Several multi-story condo buildings stood overlooking
the azure waters of Banderas Bay at Puerto Vallarta’s southernmost tip. From a
set of stairs a woman bounded down and ran to Austin. She looked nothing like Kaiya,
yet...

She called out,
“Babe!”

They embraced and
instantly Kaiya came through, dissolving a gulf that felt a hundred years old.
With every touch, every breath, she was more there. All he could do was
apologize, over and over. He’d never meant all the trouble he’d caused, or all
the people to die. Pent up guilt overflowed like a swollen river and tears
spilled.

“Babe, babe,” she
whispered. “It’s alright, it’s not your fault. You didn’t mean for it to
happen. I know that. Everyone knows that.” She wiped the tears from his cheeks
and eyes. “It’s so good to see you. C’mon!”

She led him back up the
stairs, eyes darting to windows, eager to get him inside out of view. They
undressed to shower, something he hadn’t done in days. The woman’s body was
beautiful, fuller in areas Kaiya’s was not.

She tended him,
cleaning him. Hot water splayed as they pressed into one another.

“Touch me, Austin.
Baby, take me, please. Love me.”

The world had gone
strange, the notion of normal a fading memory, yet some things couldn’t be
changed. Wouldn’t be.

“I love you, babe.”

Together they opened
the way, amplifying everything good and right in the moment. They climbed the
heights of their love, abandoning completely the bittersweet knowledge that
their stay at the top would soon be over.