Metak Fatigue Part 20

Further up the hallway, the door to the command centre opened.

Stedman/Cati smiled and opened his arms.

the original Cati c.o.c.ked his head, as though tu something, and the lights went out entire ly. ression of moveFit., received a momentary imp the camera's microphones, followed by Of a single gun-shot. Then the feed from [email protected]@'s House ceased. His link with PolNet failed at moment.

ly to the real world - stuck out- '13V returned abrupt nded by rustli ng trees and dark- '4 house, surrou Distant shouts echoed from the RUSAMC camp as -gloomy foyer a, 44C stirred. RSD officers in the now around the doors.

the laptop, Roads leapt to stopping to hide an anches whipped at him as d started to run. Br PTI through the trees and around the building fourteen.

The same officers who had stopped him alerted by confused messages coming from with- 61;@ building, had taken position by the door- 'He raised the pa.s.s as he approached, but they him anyway.

19 "I'm sorry, sir," said ne. "No-one in or out. "But I have to get in there'

" Roads pleaded. "Until the simation is contained began the other, Im was stopped by the sound of breaking gla.s.s.'

Roads turned away from the door and ran back the building. The floodlights that had once the grounds had been extinguished along the security systeml but his implants easily supplemented the lack of visual light.

Running across the lawn was one large figure, extremely bright in infra-red.

Without even stopping to think about what he was doing, Roads sprinted after it. The glowing figure darted through the ring of trees in the direction of the nearest fence. The RSD patrol that should have been waiting forit had been halted further along the fence, confused by the sudden radio silence. The shape climbed over un.o.bstructed and loped onto the street.

Roads followed a second later, cursing the lapse in security. Shinning over the fence with a grunt, he continued the chase across the street and into the dark city centre. The glowing figure led him along a main road and around a corner. The distance between them gradually widened, despite Roads' best efforts. By the time he turned the corner, the figure had disappeared. , Then, two storeys up, on the southern side of the street, he saw a broad, red-skinned figure with the same infra-red pattern as the one he had been chasing. Ma.s.sive shoulders flexed as it lifted itself up and onto the rooftop.

Barely had Roads caught sight of it than it was gone. "s.h.i.t!" He stumbled to a halt, breathing heavily through his mouth. Glancing around him, he oriented himself. He could think of only once place Cati might be heading, and that was a long shot.

Running again, he took the nearest corner left, and stared along the street.

If he wasn't too late ...

One hundred metres down, barely within range of his implants under such poor light, a figure leapt from roof to roof across the road, and vanished again.

Heading roughly south-west. Roads ran back the way he had come and found Mayor's House in complete confusion. No-one checked his pa.s.s as he ran through the rear gates and jogged to the carpark. Only when he started the engine of an unlocked car did someone come to see what was going on. And even then, the officers who had spoken w him twice already that night let him go. Panic made Barney's heartbeat race as the lights went out: in darkness, stripped of all the trappings of 338.

she felt like a child again, waiting for the to come. "WMMMI I M-1 by shouting people all trying to make iv* heard over the racket, she finally twisted free C'Dell's hand and lunged forward through the bodies. Ahead of her, someone screamed - a A single shot, fired in panic, made her ears ring.

cursed the darkness. Who could have known d need night-specs inside the building?

1he sound of shattering gla.s.s came to her from the of the hallway. She wrestled free of the crowd to .4itz-ot, the noise. As she pa.s.sed the entrance to the 0 *i Suite, she collided heavily with a person running the opposite direction. Whoever it was didn't stop.

viwitfg her footing, she continued on her way past command centre and around the corner. A single broken window opened into the night air at 0-- end of the hallway. Leaning through the frame, she down. Cati was gone. All she saw - and then only briefly - %*[email protected] a long, sleek shape slipping rapidly through the skirting the lawn around Mayor's House. The timber wolf. Then a hand, touched her on the back and she spun, ready t o- strike. "It's me," said O'Dell, backing away a step. Muted moonlight painted his face in silver. "You okay?"

"No. I'm not okay," Barney snapped. "What the f.u.c.k did you think you were doing back there?" "Stopping you from getting too close, of course." He tilted his head to one side. "You saw what happened. Do you think you could have helped?" "No, but -" She wanted to throttle him, to lash out. Instead she pushed angrily past him. "You'd better have a good explanation for this, Martin."

339"Oh, we have, Barney," O'Dell called after her. "Better than anything you could have imagined!" She ran back around the corner and into the growing crowd. Most of the. people from the command centre - including David Goss and Roger Wiggs - had arrived, bringing torches with them. The scene was lit by strobes of light that illuminated patches for an instant - the hole in the wall, the twisted remains of the grill, spots of blood slowly darkening on the carpet, startled faces everywhere - then moved rapidly on.

The Mayor had struggled to his feet and was being led amid m.u.f.fled protests to an emergency stairwell. "What the h.e.l.l's wrong with the lights?" Barney asked Goss. "Power's gone," he said, his voice low and dangerous. His enormous frame loomed heavily in the gloom. "Someone's killed the entire network - along with security, RSD communications and "How?" she interrupted. "By using the proper codes. And we can't switch any of it back on until we find out what they were."

t1you don't know the codes? Who does?" "About half a dozen people, I'd guess."

"That narrows down the suspects, at least." "If we could find Margaret, we'd be up and running before you knew it. She programmed the codes herself." Goss'

eyes roamed the chaos. His thoughts were obvious: how to find the Director of RSD when it was hard enough talking face-to-face.

A RUSAMC soldier stepped forward. "Word from below. The building is sealed."

"Too late," said Barney. "Cati's gone. He left via the window back there. @ "He - it - went past me," said the woman who had screamed after the lights went out. She rubbed her 'Pr;; as she spoke. "It pus hed me out of the way, going.

AMC officer glanced from Barney to the T-10, "Then we'll nee some sort of search party." V;, could be halfway across the city by now,"

said. "You're better off trying to get the power 97 on.

01;@- Officer hesitated, obviously reluctant to take no to) & at all. "Who's in charge here? @A ersiz* glanced around him again, looking for authority ,@41 o' I finding none. "I guess I am, for the moment. Tell 'nlf Farquhar on the desk to round up as many people T;i can. We have to seal and quarter the grounds. I'll down as soon as I can to sort things out here."

41'"Yes sir " said the officer, and relayed the orders s- his throat mike.

7 "It' Barney turned away, feeling worse than useless. No- 4)1- a h d been hurt, but that didn't a.s.suage her bitterness. [email protected]@ [email protected] had followed her instincts, she might have the attack. Instead, she had let Phil down. Belatedly remembering the cyberlink, she called for Roads. "Phil? I hope you saw all of that, MWEV'@,i., you'll never believe me if you didn't."

7 Sh waited a moment, then repeated: "Phil? Phil, are you there?"

No answer. PolNet must have crashed along with RSD and the house security. She hoped he had made it into the building. G.o.d only knew, she needed his help to make sense of everything that had happened.

Can had obviously been in the vents, as she had first thought. But security had told them not to worry about the dead zone in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Security had therefore been wrong - or deliberately misleading. And the more she thought about it, the more the latter seemed probable.

IAIShe and Roads had already ascertained that Cati's controller had to be someone high up in RSD - or exceptionally skilled with the city's datapool - in order to gain access to archived data. Furthermore, that same someone must have arranged for the crates to be brought into the building, eavesdropped on RUSAMC information to tell Cati where to wait for the General's appearance, and then used the override codes to kill the power when escape was called for.

If security had lied to prevent Cati from being detected, then that meant ...

Cati's controller had been in the command centre during the attack.

The crowd had thinned slightly, but the sense of chaos remained. Barney threaded her way through to Roger Wiggs, who stood near where the air-conditioning vent had fallen. "I still can't believe it," he said when he saw her. "Right under our noses -" "Neither can I," she agreed, although she didn't have time for sympathy. "Listen, about half an hour ago, a call came from one of Stedman's cronies to ask about the air-conditioning in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Do you remember who took that call - or at least who answered the question?"

Wiggs frowned. "I don't remember. We were busy." "Think - it's important!" "I don't know, okay?" Wiggs glared at her, and turned away. "s.h.i.t." Barney went to find Goss, but caught sight of the imitation General Stedman instead.

Restored to its original shape, the latter stood motionless, frozen like a statue to one side of the hallway. Occasional pools of light darted across its immobile features.

One of the RUSAMC officers had her hand buried up to the wrist in its side.

Barney backed away as its face began to change again, becoming blank, neutral - a 'template of a man. Then the image dissolved into -lived pillar of snow, and five b.a.l.l.s hung in its floating unsupported in the air. Each was silver, ly a hand-span across and buzzed softly. h my G.o.d," she said, all thoughts of Cati's oller suddenly evaporating. Again she called for and again she received only silence in reply. cat, isn't it?" said O'Dell, suddenly at her side. rney spun to face him. "You sonofab.i.t.c.h," she ed. "You knew all along!" ,No. Not until Blindeye. But you still didn't tell us?" Anger made the words e in her throat. couldn't. What use is a defence like this when ryone knows about it?" O'Dell waved at where the ue of Stedman had once stood. "They will now, of urse - but it worked once, and that's the main thing. ti's controller won't try again. I think we've demonated the pointlessness of resisting us any longer, don't u?" Barney shook her head, speechless. O'Dell's grin cked her ignorance, her lack of sophistication - ocked all of Kennedy Polis with her. For one timeless mornent she hated him more than she had hated anyone 0 ,Jn her entire life.

Then: "Has anyone seen Antoni or Margaret?" asked Goss, .,'shouldering his way through the crowd toward them. "They have the codes. We need either of them to restore some sort of order to the system." "I saw DeKurzak heading downstairs earlier," said O'Dell. "He said he was going to check the foyer. I'll have someone try to track him down, if you like." "f.u.c.k DeKurzak," Barney whispered, feeling her grip on the situation slipping entirely. "Where the h.e.l.l is Pbil?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

11:05 p.m.

Roads took the freeway at sixty-five kilometres per hour - the fastest he could squeeze from the RSD vehicle's small electric engine.

He had no clear idea of what he would do if he came face-to-face with Cati. He needed backup, a weapon, some sort of advantage. Yet, with PolNet down, he had no way to talk to anyone. Even the radio standard to all RSD vehicles was silent. The communications network had obviously been silenced from within.

Until it was brought back on-line, the city was effectively dumb.

And he was on his own. Instead of cursing fate, however, he used the time to consider the five small 'glitches' at the heart of the subst.i.tute Stedman.

That it was a technological product, not magical or biological, was obvious.

The degree of sophistication it displayed was more advanced than anything Roads had ever seen - both before and after the War - but that didn't make it impossible. The RUSA had openly demonstrated a working knowledge of field-effects, which alone would account for the 'levitation' of the b.a.l.l.s, the apparent solidity of the image and possibly even its knack of becoming invisible. The image itself was probably nothing more than an extremely high- lution hologram, similar to that employed by both Head and the RUSAMC's flag-bearing jeep. pact batteries could power the whole arrangement, rhaps even EPA44210s like the ones Morrow had dden in his stockpile on Old North Street. Roads mentally sketched the design of the machine: least two b.a.l.l.s to generate the hologram; perhaps other two for the field-effects; and one to collect nsory data of its immediate environment. The last ight also contain transmitters and receivers to relay ta and instructions. That left no b.a.l.l.s remaining for its 'brain', but Roads idn't for a moment contemplate that the RUSA ,scientists had managed to squeeze an entire Al into the spheres. He guessed that the artificial Stedman had received its instructions from the control van; the :General and his a.s.sistants had probably directed the thing remotely, never leaving it to its own devices. Certainly it would have been easier to relay Stedman's voice in real time rather than generate it artificially; that way, the stand-in's responses would appear genuine on every level.

The device was ingenious. Expensive, obviously, and clearly a breakthrough in miniaturisation alone. Roads would have had nothing but admiration for it, had it not been for one thing: there was more than one in the city.

The similarity between the Mole and the Stedmansubst.i.tute was too close to be coincidence. The Mole had imitated Roads with uncanny accuracy, could become practically invisible and change its shape,.and had demonstrated the familiar five,-point arrangement on at least two occasions. The theft of the EPA44210s was explained by its need for power; the strange delay between locating them in Morrow's inventories and actually stealing them, likewise: the Mole wouldn't take 345the batteries until it was actually running low. And the lack of an obvious command centre didn't necessarily refute his theory, for the "brain" could be hidden anywhere in the city and communicate with the "body" by means of a little-used radio frequency.

When he fields were collapsed, the ball arrangement made it far more manoeuvrable than any human. This led to the conclusion that the Mole had indeed gained entrance to the KCU library via the sewers. Pursuing ,hat thought, Roads called up a scale plan of the KCU grounds from his...o...b..ard memory. The nearest drain to the library opened in the small clump of trees where the timber wolf had vanished on the night of Blindeye. That made the wolf a mobile shape the Mole could a.s.sume when a less human appearance was more appropri; and the intermediate stage, the were ate, wolf form that had startled Roads in the library, a Possible self-defen mechanism, designed to frighten p ce than draw them into a confrontation lople away rather So the Mole was, in a sense, a -werewolf. And belonged to the RUSAMC.

it But what was it for? Several Possibilities sprang to mind - covert surveillance being the most obvious - but Roads could come to no firm conclusions without more data.. All he could do was speculate about the Moles motives - and those of the RUSA. He found himself in the unfortunate situation of now knowing what the Mole was and who had built it, but not knowing WhY it did what it did.

And until he knew the why exactly, he was unable to decide what he should do in response.

He turned off the southern arterial freeway and headed into the older suburbs.

Fifteen minutes had pa.s.sed since the attack on General Stedman. Even allowing for Cati's superhuman pace and his own 346.

relatively slow progress, Roads felt safe that he would arrive in time.

Old North Street was darker than the rest of the city: no parties here, no lingering merriment. The whirring of the car's electric engine echoed from forbidding sto ne facades as he pulled to a halt outside 116. The familiar building stared mutely back at him.

Climbing out of the car, he jogged across the road n up a d the stairs. The building was silent, ominously so.

ven maximum @J'E with his artificial cochleae at their sensitivity, he could hear no-one. Only the sighing of the breeze disturbed the stillness.

He nudged the door and it swung easily open. Tthhee ck had been broken. Moving swiftly, he crossed loarrow halfway to the stairwell. The only footprints on the dusty steps were his and Katiya's - yet he couldn't shake the feeling that somebody else had been here, and recently. All of his modified senses itched.

His right hand ached for a pistol, anything.

At the entrance to the apartment Katiya and Cati shared, he stopped. The door was slightly a*jar. Taking a deep breath, he pushed it open.

The room was dark. Furniture lay in ruins, torn to splinters. The sofa had been hurled against the wall. Roads could see a blotch of fading warmth where someone had recently sat, and a deeper patch in- another corner. Stepping gingerly over the rubble, he bent to examine the latter, and found a pool of blood.

Moving rapidly from room to room, he found destruction everywhere. Someone had turned the apartment into a junk-heap. Every item in the small cupboards had been tossed to the floor; clothes lay torn beneath broken boxes. In the hallway, Roads almost slipped on a pile of scattered paper: Cati's wordless 'diary', strewn at random.In the bedroom, the mattress had been torn in half. Foam and ripped sheets covered every flat surface, most thickly in the corners. Scrabbling through one such pile, he finally came across something warm: a bare, human arm.

Grabbing it with both hands, he pulled Katiya's body out of the wreckage and examined her. A deep bruise blackened her right temple. Roads bent lower over her face to check her eyes. She was alive, but concussed. The blood trickling from her left ear was still wet.

He grimaced, both with distaste and the ramifications of that observation.

Katiya must have been knocked out only minutes ago. There was a fair chance that the responsible party was still nearby. "Katiya?" he whispered. "Can you hear me?"

The woman didn't respond at first, and he tried again, a little louder: "Katiya!"

She stirred, scrabbled weakly at the air. He sat her up and swung her into the moonlight coming through the window. "Can you hear me?"

She opened her eyes and stared wildly, her gaze blank and unfocused. "It's okay, you're safe." He brushed her hair back from her face, trying to soothe her by touch. "Can you tell me what happened?"

When her eyes finally met his, her entire body stiffened and she opened her mouth to scream.

He smothered the cry with one hand while making desperate shushing sounds.

"Hey - it's okay, it's okay. Whoever did this, they've gone!" "No!" she hissed through his fingers, writhing under his touch. With one hand flat on his chest, she pushed herself away and crawled back into the corner. "Leave me alone! Go away!"

"Katiya, it's me. Officer Roads from RSD, remember?" ,ilie tried to smile rea.s.suringly, and held out his hands, @tmpty. "I'm trying to help you."

"Liar!" Her eyes regarded him from the corner. One pinching shut as the bruise on her temple spread. n I already told you: I don't know where Cati is!" "But I do. He's on his way here." "He is?" Katiya regarded him suspiciously. He was heading this way last time I saw him. He's Wounded and in a lot of trouble. He needs your help."

Her eyes flashed. "When he sees what you've done, '@@,he's not going to be happy." "What I've done ... ?" Roads stared around hi in, realisation suddenly dawning.

The Mole had beaten him there. Before he could protest his innocence, the window burst inward. Shards of gla.s.s showered through the room, and Roads flinched away, bringing up one arm to protect his eyes. The heavy crunch of feet on the fragments coincided with Katiya's gasp: "Cati!"

Roads rolled away to the far side of the room.

Through the glittering starlight he saw the killer silhouetted against the broken window. He 'was even larger in real life than Roads had guessed, topping his modest height by at least forty centimetres. Despite his wounded arm, roughly bandaged with sc.r.a.ps of cloth, and his otherwise naked body, Cati looked like every soldier's nightmare brought to life: a demon made flesh, unstoppable and indefatigable.

just the sight of him made Roads feel defenceless.

Katiya still crouched in the corner, only slowly coming to her feet. As Cati looked around at,the ruined bedroom and his wide, grey-black eyes took in the damage, his expression changed to one of intense fury."Cati, listen," Roads began, "she's safe, we're all safe - don't - !"

The killer crossed the room in a single, leaping step, his arms outstretched.

Roads lunged aside and tried to scramble away. Before he had travelled a metre, two mighty hands grabbed his neck and belt and lifted him off the floor. With an incredible surge of strength, Cati threw him bodily through the bedroom doorway.

Roads struck the ground, skidded across the hallway and thudded heavily into a wall. His newly-healed ribs sang; his skull rang like a bell. He might have blacked out then, had it not been for the sight of Cati approaching.

Roads rolled aside, managing to gain his footing at the entrance to the lounge room. He ducked a whistling blow aimed for his neck, struck Cati in the stomach, and ducked again as the killer drove both fists down, aiming for his spine. A kick to Cati's left knee had no effect except to send Roads himself off-balance. Before he could recover, a glancing blow to his right cheek sent him spinning back to the floor.

Cati loomed over him. One ma.s.sive, bare foot descended to stamp on Roads'

face, but he slid away in time, blinking blood from his eyes. His hands found a plank of wood that had once been part of the lounge. He swung it at the killer's head. Cati used one hand to knock it aside, giving Roads a brief opening. A solid kick to the chest made the killer stumble back a step. Then Cati's guard was up again, and Roads backed away.

The trickle of blood from Roads' cheek met his lips, and he tasted copper.

Fighting the urge to gag, he circled the room, looking for another weapon before the killer resumed his attack. Or for a chance to escape ...

Cati noted his glance at the doorway, and lunged. Roads sidestepped, grabbed Cati's ma.s.sive forearm and twisted with all his strength. On an ordinary man the would have dislocated a shoulder, but all it did to iwas make him stumble.

Flexing his biceps, he Roads aside, sending him into the ruins of the Roads slid a metre down the wall before recoverA fist smashed into the plaster beside his head. He away and pushed backward with both feet. Even with all his weight behind the thrust, he only managed to overbalance the killer. They fell to the II(616y among the fragments of furniture. For the first time, Roads heard Cati grunt with surprise. It wasn't much, but it was encouraging.