System Shock Part 1

SYSTEM SHOCK.

by Justin Richards.

To Alison and Julian without whom things might have been simpler, but much less fun!

IF . . .

The energy jolt nearly took his head off. Sancrest ducked and all but dragged the equinian into the room, wrestling with the pack animal and shouting to Arkroll to get the door shut behind them. Macket struggled to turn the locking control, his claws skidding on the polished metal surface. Another series of energy jolts rattled into the metal of the door, but the structure remained intact.

'So, this is it.' Arkroll looked round the large room. He had heard descriptions but they hardly matched up to the reality.

The chamber was huge, an antiseptically white metal drum reaching up to the heavens, though it flashed red with the emergency lighting in time to the alarm klaxons. Data banks and processing systems lined the walls as they stretched up the entire height of the building. He could see walkways and gantries high above him, steel bridges between the direct access storage devices for technicians the system no longer wanted or needed. They looked increasingly fragile and ineffective the higher he looked, a web of strings connecting the sides of the chamber in a symmetrical spiral. It made Arkroll feel giddy to look too high. He shook his head and turned back to the others.

Macket was already checking the systems. 'I've locked off all the bulkheads along the corridor, but it won't keep them out for long.'

'Doesn't matter.' Sancrest was already releasing the straps round the device. 'This won't take long.' He took the weight on his shoulder and started to lower it to the floor, balancing it against the flank of the animal as it slid down. 'Don't stand there gawping, Arkroll, give me a hand.'

Arkroll helped him take the weight and together they stood the device upright and opened the inspection hatch. Released 1 from its burden, the equinian snorted and wandered off to the far side of the room. It nuzzled against a control console, looking for somewhere good to graze on the metal plated flooring.

Sancrest peered inside the cover of the device. 'How do you prime this thing?'

Macket knelt down beside them, gesturing for the others to give him some s.p.a.ce. 'It's your standard fifty-year-old thermonuclear device. So it's completely dumb.'

'That's why we brought it,' Arkroll reminded him.

'I know.' Macket gestured round the chamber. 'I was here when we started this.' He returned his attention to the inspection hatch. 'Now let's finish it.'

The pounding on the door was getting louder. The metal was discolouring with the concentrated heat by the time Macket looked up. His face was grim, his head swaying gently from side to side with apprehension.

'What is it?'

'There's a crude timer and a manual over-ride. Both quite simple.'

'So what's the problem?' Arkroll could see Macket was worried. Macket opened another small hatch on the other side of the bomb, shaking his head slightly as he examined the innards.

'The timer has a control circuit.'

They were silent for a moment.

'Is it active?' Sancrest asked. 'Can it be bypa.s.sed?'

'The manual over-ride seems simple enough. But it may use the timer as a relay. If it goes through a control chip ...' Macket did not need to complete the thought they all knew the danger.

'Let's give it a try,' Arkroll shrugged. 'After all we're dead either way.'

Macket reached inside the main hatch, grasping for the control key. 'Could one of you turn the key in the other hatch counter-clockwise when I give the word?'

Arkroll reached into the other hatch and felt for the key.

After a moment's groping around he found it, gripped it firmly between his claws, and nodded to Macket.

2.Macket drew a deep breath.

'Wait.'

Macket and Arkroll both looked up in surprise.

'What if this doesn't doesn't work?' Sancrest hissed. 'What if the circuit is already corrupted and the relay is routed through it? I know we're dead, but there are wider issues.' work?' Sancrest hissed. 'What if the circuit is already corrupted and the relay is routed through it? I know we're dead, but there are wider issues.'

'I don't know,' Macket told him.

Behind them the door exploded in a ball of flame and smoke, molten metal storming down around them.

'If anything occurs to you, Macket,' Sancrest shouted above the noise of the blast, 'send me a memo.'

They were still laughing when the first of the kill-units emerged through the smoking doorway. They scanned the room in a moment, discounted the equinian as no threat, and targeted the three rebels in the far corner.

Now!' screamed Macket.

3.

THEN ...

4.

00.Begin Program

He had pressed the b.u.t.ton for the second floor. But the lift had already pa.s.sed it and was still going down. His brain was already changing gear to what he would cook himself when he got home. With a head full of lamb with fennel and sweet pepper probably to the accompaniment of Mahler, or maybe Strindberg depending on how he felt it took a moment for him to register the problem.

He cursed quietly, then again more loudly as the lift lurched to a halt. No lights on the panel he was stuck between floors.

Typical. So much for technology, he thought.

He had been stuck in the lift before with a girl from Communications. For the whole of the forty minutes it had taken for the engineer to free the mechanism and open the doors, she had not said a word. But this time he had a lonely feeling of resignation as he pushed the little b.u.t.ton comfortingly marked with a stylized bell.

Nothing happened.

He could feel a little panic beginning to break through as he stabbed at the alarm b.u.t.ton again and again. Still nothing. He hammered on the door with his fist in frustration and humiliation. He was building up to having to shout for help.

Then with a stomach-curving jolt the floor dropped away beneath him.

He was still taking deep breaths of relief when the door slid open to reveal the half-light of the bas.e.m.e.nt car park. Two people were standing immediately outside the doors. One was a man smart suit, short back and sides; the other was a woman dark hair in a bob, but with the ends curled under her ears so they jutted forward sharply. Strangely, she was 5 carrying an aerosol can. They were standing too close to the door for him to get past them.

'I wouldn't risk the lift,' he told them, as much to let them know he was there and wanted to get out as to warn them.

Neither of the figures moved. Further down the bas.e.m.e.nt he could hear an engine starting deep and finely tuned, a large vehicle. After a moment a maroon Toyota van emerged from the gloom, headlights flaring as it crested a speed b.u.mp. The two figures in front of him ignored it, even as it drew up behind them and the driver jumped out.

He tried again: It seems to have a problem.' He gestured vaguely to show he was still talking about the lift.

The woman smiled, her eyes glinting and her hair moving like a single ent.i.ty as she tilted her head slightly to one side. It made her smile seem almost sinister, almost mocking.

'No problem,' she said as she raised the aerosol.

He heard the hiss of escaping gas, but it seemed miles away.

He was trained to move fast to avoid it. But he was distracted. Distracted by the woman's smile, by the driver opening the rear doors, and by the stretcher and intravenous drip being unloaded from the back of the Toyota.

When he woke, he could see the bag holding the drip-fluid, and the plastic pipe leading down from the bag high above him. Although he couldn't move his braced head, he knew the drip was feeding into his arm.

He did not recognize his surroundings the pale plain walls and the double swing doors each with a porthole window glazed with semi-opaque gla.s.s. A ma.s.sive bright light angled in above his near-supine head.

Nor did he recognize the man who leaned over him - the man in the surgical gown; the man wearing skin-tight, skin-coloured plastic gloves; the man holding the scalpel.

It was the cracked headlight that killed her. Veronica Halliwell heard it break on the way to work just as a maroon Toyota van overtook her on the Great North Road. At first she thought the windscreen was going, she had never got used to the bullet-proof gla.s.s. She drove smoothly into her reserved 6 s.p.a.ce outside the office, lifted her briefcase off the back seat, and listened to the satisfying thunk thunk of the central locking as she set the alarm. of the central locking as she set the alarm.

Then she saw the light. It was cracked right across, a hole the size of her little fingernail in the centre, the crack splitting through it.

'Everything all right, ma'am?' Sharp was beside her. He must have noticed her pause and left his post by the main doors to investigate.

'Oh it's nothing headlight's sprung a leak.'

Sharp leaned forward and tapped the broken gla.s.s cover.

'Must have been a stone. Shame they don't cover the lights with the same stuff they use in the windows.'

Halliwell balanced her briefcase on one arm and opened it.

She rummaged inside for a moment looking for her security badge. 'More ha.s.sle,' she said. 'Just what I need right now.'

'Oh don't worry, ma'am. It's easily fixed. I'll get them to send someone over.'

'Would you?' She smiled. 'Thanks a lot, Sharp. You're a treasure.' She handed him her car keys.

He stood aside and Veronica Halliwell, Director General of MI5, entered the foyer of the unremarkable office block in central London and pressed the lift-call b.u.t.ton.

The mechanic from the car leasing company arrived mid-afternoon. He dusted his thin, gloved hands on his spotless overalls, scratched his head thoughtfully, and commented that he was glad the light wasn't attached to his own car. After walking three times round Halliwell's Rover and kicking various tyres, he asked Sharp for the keys, opened the driver's door, and started to examine the dashboard display.

By early evening the mechanic had dismantled the electrical circuits and taken great glee in replacing the central processor.

'They're pretty sensitive, anything goes wrong with the electrics and you need a new chip.' He cradled the small gla.s.s case carefully in the palm of his gloved hand, and lovingly removed the tiny square of metal-etched silicon.

The last thing he did was to replace the gla.s.s shutter over the near-side headlight.

7.By the end of the day she had forgotten the minor troubles of the morning. It was only as the lift delivered her back into the foyer that Halliwell remembered her car and wondered if the light had been fixed.

Sharp greeted her in the foyer with a discreet whisper: 'Car's sorted, ma'am. Needed a new chip for the Car-Net system.'

She hardly registered the details, was still preoccupied with the problems of the day with the aftermath of a major drugs-bust; with the new equipment requisitions for GCHQ. She thanked Sharp for sorting things, took her car keys from his hand, and returned his smile.

As a matter of courtesy as much as interest, she glanced at the headlights and noted that they were intact. She waited for Sharp to catch her up and push his long-handled mirror under the car, checking a.s.siduously despite the fact it had not been out of his sight all day. After a minute he pulled the mirror out again and nodded to her. The keys and the alarm b.u.t.ton were still in her hand, and the lights flashed rea.s.suringly as she deactivated the alarm and the doors unlocked. Halliwell opened the rear door and tossed her briefcase on to the seat.

Then she climbed into the front of the car and pushed the key into the ignition.

She always felt a slight twinge of apprehension before she turned the key a deeper intake of breath. Then she started the car, the engine catching first time, and let out the breath she had been holding. They could check and double-check but, in odd unguarded moments, the fear was still there. Just for a second.

It was as she changed up from first to second gear as she pulled out on to the empty street, that things started to go wrong. She braked slightly before she accelerated into the road, glancing over her shoulder to double-check nothing was coming. But nothing happened the car did not slow at all. If anything, it seemed to speed up as she pushed harder on the brake.

'Needed a new chip ...' Sharp had said. She could hear his words echoing in her brain as the car kept going in a uniform direction. It was ignoring the steering wheel just as it was 8 ignoring the brakes. She could doubt it no longer the car was gathering speed, despite her foot firmly on the brake pedal. In a panic she pulled at the handbrake and wrenched the steering wheel to the left towards the kerb. The wheel responded with the usual ease of power steering. But the car ignored it.

She knew her best course of action was to get out of the car before it gathered any more speed. It was already up to twenty miles per hour, and the way the road bent meant it was heading at increasing speed into the brick wall on the corner of the crescent.

Then the door locked. Just as she grasped the door handle, as soon as she applied pressure, the central locking gave a worrying thunk thunk. The door handle clicked inwards, into the locked position.

She pulled hard at the handle. She took her left hand off the useless steering wheel and pulled with both hands. But the handle would not yield. And the car continued to gain speed.

And the wall was approaching ever faster.

Just as she threw up her hands to protect her face she heard a sound like a camera shutter clicking. In fact it was two distinct events. The first was the fuel injection system forcing a stream of petrol vapour direct from the tank into the s.p.a.ce under the bonnet. The second was a spark from the battery igniting the vapour.

She might perhaps have heard the hiss of the flame traversing the vapour trail back into the fuel tank, were it not for the fact that she was already deafened by the sound of the resulting explosion. The bonnet erupted in front of her in a sheet of flame and the fire started licking its way through the dashboard. For a few seconds she hammered on the bullet-proof, heat-r.e.t.a.r.ding window. Then the flesh boiled from her hands, and she slumped lifelessly back into the plush, burning upholstery.

Sharp watched with a mixture of horror and disbelief. He was standing, mouth half-open, when he heard the door behind him. The noise was enough to shake him back to reality, and he turned briefly to send Anderson back to phone for an ambulance and the fire brigade.

9.As he returned his shocked gaze to the burning wreckage, he caught sight of another figure standing, watching. He was on the other side of the road, partly obscured by the T-junction into Calthorpe Street. It was the mechanic who had worked on the car. He watched for a moment longer, then nodded slowly and turned away.

Sharp looked round, but n.o.body was within earshot. Several people were grouped round the burning car trying to get close to it to try to help, but beaten away by the intensity of the heat. He could see Anderson at the front desk talking urgently into the phone, the flames reflected in the gla.s.s between them.

The man was now almost out of sight.

Sharp caught up with him halfway down Calthorpe Street just as the road bent out of sight of the burning car. 'Excuse me a moment, sir.' He was surprised at how calm he sounded. Too calm perhaps the man did not stop.

'I said "Excuse me!" ' Sharp grabbed the mechanic's shoulder and spun him round, surprised at how solid the thin man's shoulder was. The mechanic stared at him, eyes cold and dead, face impa.s.sive and slack. It unnerved Sharp, and he reached for his gun.