Xenoform, p.30
Xenoform, page 30
‘Any sniff of danger, bail out,’ said Tec.
‘Will do,’ replied Debian, trying to smile. He felt like a man about to undertake a deep-sea dive. ‘Well...No time like the present.’ And with that, he clicked the hi-flo plug into his head.
He activated the uplink, felt the burst of microwave energy as a physical beam, not originating from the satellite dish on the base’s roof but actually spearing him directly like a butterfly on a pin. His avatars, stored on his own DNI, scrambled into the tangled pathways of the net, scanning, retrieving, relaying, creating the impression of a true, direct interface. The image they produced was bizarre at best.
Debian fell into a twisted and mangled landscape, a parody of the net he knew so well. The wreckage of mutilated sites and servers was a blackened bomb-site through which a weak and pestilent data-stream flowed, incoherent and brackish. The servers were still there, but twisted and strange. He began to launch probes in every direction, the avatars following and tweaking their data-trails as if controlling fly-by-wire missiles, the avatars themselves continually checking back with Debian’s DNI, taking updates of his wishes and priorities. They zipped off brightly enough but didn’t return any useful information. Strange. Only the vaguest humps and malformed outlines of once-familiar servers remained, and it was as if they were behind a wall of foam that could be pushed, probed at, but not broken through. Their ports were deaf and mute, unlit.
He cycled through connection protocols, trying to get the attention of a public server, but it didn’t even return his pings. On one – a university computer – he knew full well that he had left a sleeper sub some months before. He tried to access it but met with no response. The whole fabric of the net, the protocols on which its communications were built, seemed to have broken down. He set multiple avatars on the problem. Finally he got a response from the sub-verter. He tried to access the server behind it, but the sub-verter seemed unable to talk to the server on which it was hosted. He began to rapidly write adaptive interrogation programs on his DNI in a variety of languages and try to use those to access the server. It seemed that there was an underlying language in operation, with a floating base that he couldn’t pin down. He had never seen anything like it before. It was as if every machine on the net was being re-written from the ground up on a continual, rolling basis.
And then he found an algorithm that seemed to work. He cycled the base of the language on the fly, following the pattern suggested by his calculations. It seemed to play out. The sub began to let his avatars retrieve information from the server. Debian suffered a brief moment of doubt. Wasn’t this a little too easy? What were the chances of him stumbling on the correct algorithm so quickly? He was good, he knew he was, and he was beginning to feel infused again with the power he had felt after his brush with the AI. He remembered sending the pod chasing after Hex’s men, remembered the strength he had felt. It was beginning to fill him again. His mind crackled with power, seeming to buzz within his head like some mighty transformer. But even so...It seemed too easy. Why would the AI even base its floating language on a decipherable algorithm? Was he being allowed in? Another trap? A test?
He forcibly shrugged his own concerns aside and attempted to get the university computer to speak to what remained of the wider net. In the circumstances it seemed odd that they had even left the server connected, but he was happy to use their lapse in security for his own ends. Perhaps the people in charge of it were so overrun with real-world problems that the server was nowhere near the top of their priorities. Whatever. Work to do.
From the university computer he sent avatars out into every available channel – into the banks of the server itself, into user mail accounts, from those into every reachable destination, direct from their computer to every scanned server on the net that would return a ping. He picked several wide-pipe governmental and financial machines with good, credible connections to as many places as possible. His avatars assaulted them, laying traps, probing defences, brute-forcing passwords, sidestepping quantum security protocols, sometimes meeting brick walls, sometimes extending their tendrils.
And then he gradually became aware of a feeling of being watched. In his mind’s typical desire to relate the electronic landscape to a physical one it felt as if some vast and brooding presence was looking down from the sky and that he crawled upon the broken earth like an ant beneath its gaze. A worried sub-routine in his head began replicating defensive avatars and fine-tuning his firewalls. He hoped that the enhancements and modifications he had made would be enough. And then it spoke to him:
WELCOME BACK. I HAVE BEEN BUSY SINCE LAST WE MET.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sillick twisted the throttle of his ground bike all the way to the stop, revelling in the rising roar of the antique petrol engine. The wind fluttered the lapels of his leather jacket, stung his eyes, tore his breath from his throat. He swerved around a crashed pod, gaining on Tumbler as they neared the junction. Tumbler braked hard, decking his bike right over, and took a left towards the heart of the Lanes. Sillick followed, closing the gap to shouting-distance, scraps of rubbish flapping in his wake. The others were several blocks behind now, but Tumbler was on a roll, losing himself in the thrill of speed – wild, young and unstoppable.
Sillick pulled alongside him and shouted, ‘Hey, man – shouldn’t we hang back, wait for the gang?’
Tumbler laughed, his green eyes glinting. ‘Live a little, Sill – you worry too fucking much!’ And he swerved into a side street suddenly – Sillick struggled to brake in time to follow him, nearly clipping a lamp post.
They raced along beneath hanging balconies, unlit windows, smashed and looted shop-fronts, the walls to either side passing so close that they could have reached out and touched them. The night was thick with smoke, grey-green and gloomy. Occasional gunshots could be heard in the distance. Shadowy figures bolted into a boarded-up building as the bikers roared past them.
‘I just don’t think we should split up, is all,’ yelled Sillick as the bike jolted hard over a manhole cover. He accelerated out of the near-tankslapper, fully in tune with the machine, adjusting his centre of gravity to retain control, relaxing his body to damp the vibrations. The bike settled down. He felt the tacky grip of its tread upon the road surface, felt its mechanical heart throbbing within as if it were his own.
‘What?’ yelled back Tumbler.
‘I don’t think we should split up! Strength in numbers, right? That’s what you taught me!’
Tumbler shook his head, dismissing his own words of wisdom, grinning widely. ‘This is the revolution, Sill! Free-for-all! The city is ripe for the taking!’
‘You really believe that? The revolution, the great uprising, all that political shit?’
The street narrowed, forcing Sillick to drop behind again. He followed the jittering rear light of his friend’s bike, concentrating intently on every minute scrap of sensory feedback from his own machine. Tumbler swerved around a pothole with incredible agility – his Tsunami-950 was legendarily nimble for a machine of its size, and retro-fitted with carbon fibre aftermarket parts that reduced its weight by almost thirty kilos, it was even more light on its toes than the standard model. Sillick, on his heavier and longer CCR-900V, shadowed him with a little difficulty. They crossed a deserted junction, which would ordinarily have been teeming at this time of night, at over ninety miles per hour, ignoring the traffic signals, Tumbler whooping over the roar of their engines. As they followed the road ahead, which widened into a seedy tumbledown plaza lined with deserted muso-bars, Sillick pulled alongside again.
‘You really think this is the uprising?’
Tumbler shrugged, not taking his eyes from the road. The uprising was an urban legend – the time when some great and nameless, uber-powerful gang which existed entirely behind the normal scenes of the everyday world would send a message, a sign, and all the gangs would rise as one to take the city and divide it between themselves. Nobody really believed in it, of course, but all gang-members wanted to believe it. ‘Probably not,’ he admitted indifferently. ‘But fuck it, Sill, something’s happening. Might as well exploit it, right? Come on! ICB! Wooo!’ And he smoothly dialled up the speed another notch.
Sillick mentally shrugged and dropped back a little, happy to let Tumbler be the first to encounter any obstacles. They took a left into a maze of confined alleyways, heading for the ICB depot, a massive warehouse deep in the Lanes stuffed with an incredible rainbow of chems. Hopefully, like most other places, it had been left unguarded in the chaos that had come to the city. The Blockheads were lightly armed with solid-projectile pistols and knives, but they were experienced street skirmishers and didn’t expect any trouble they couldn’t deal with. Even so...the others must be a long way back by now. Sillick was the only one skilled enough and reckless enough to keep pace with Tumbler when he was on a roll.
And then there was a loud pop! and Tumbler’s bike wriggled under him, the rear wheel bouncing into the air, making the engine briefly redline as the rolling resistance was lost. Sillick braked hard, his own bike squirming beneath him, laying down a fat black line on the road. Tumbler’s bike leant over, sliding out from under him, flipping and sparking off down the road, to crash into a cluster of rubbish bins, sending them bouncing and clanging around the alley. Tumbler himself was rolled over and over as he separated from his mount, his limbs spinning like the blades of a propeller. Sillick narrowly missed his flailing body as he screeched to a halt, leaning back in his seat to avoid going over the bars. He killed the engine, his heart flickering in his throat. Somewhere behind him he could hear the engines of the other Blockheads trying to find them, probably back at the junction. He looked back and saw what had befallen his leader: There was a stinger across the road – its plastic teeth had torn out both tyres of Tumbler’s ground bike, which now lay twisted and idling against a wall, its engine running choppily. Sillick, adhering so exactly to Tumbler’s path, had passed over the bald spot that his leader’s bike had left on the device, saving himself from the same fate. Lucky. But the stinger could mean only one thing.
He jumped down and ran to Tumbler, drawing his wooden-gripped pistol as he went, shouting, ‘Stinger, Tumbler! Stinger!’
For a moment Tumbler didn’t move or respond and Sillick thought he might be dead, but then he sat up, wincing, and looked around himself dazedly. ‘What?’ he asked groggily. Blood was pouring down his handsome face.
And then the alley was filled with the ululating war cry of many voices rising as one, coming from all sides at once. Figures were emerging from the shadows of the alley – slim shapes with bright, spiky hairstyles and ostentatious jewellery glinting in the subdued moonlight.
Silvery splinters pattered off the ground to Sillick’s right – poison ice shards. ‘Brat Pack!’ he cried, grabbing Tumbler by the elbow as an energy weapon discharged somewhere behind him. He felt the sting as it dug a shallow groove in his side, just above the waist. He flinched, spinning, trying to cover all angles at once with his gun. The Brat Pack were famously well-armed – rich kids from High Hab living the gang life for fun and thrills rather than necessity – and were universally hated and feared by the smaller Undercity gangs. They were a long way from their usual hunting grounds here, but the danger they posed was very real. Sillick loosed off a shot at one of the advancing figures, making it duck back behind a corner. He heard a high and girlish laugh behind him as he bodily heaved Tumbler to his feet and took off down the street.
Tumbler was stumbling, leaning on Sillick heavily, holding one leg as he went, his breathing hard and ragged. Another bolt from the energy weapon pierced a hole in the wall to their right as they fled. Tumbler shook his head to clear the blood from his eyes, fumbling his own pistol from his belt as they passed his wrecked bike. And then Sillick was falling, his shoulder on fire, his pistol flying from his hand into the shadows of a doorway. Tumbler staggered too, as his support gave way, and then they were both on the floor.
Knowing that life or death would be decided in these seconds, Sillick rolled and sat up, his knife already in his left hand. His right hung uselessly at his side. The jewelled shapes of Brat Pack fighters were swarming over the bikes now. Others were moving warily towards Sillick and Tumbler, picking their ways from one piece of cover to another. Sillick threw the knife as Tumbler had taught him, holding it by the blade, and it embedded itself cleanly in the silk-clad chest of one of the Brat Pack youths as he emerged over a pile of decaying boxes. An impressive fountain of blood spewed from the Brat Packer’s mouth and he keeled over sideways, out of sight.
Tumbler was on his feet again, shooting from a sideways stance, minimising the target he presented to the better-positioned Brat Pack fighters, his face grim and fearless. Ice shards splintered on the thick leather of his jacket, seeking exposed flesh. One of the enemy gang members dropped, kicking and twitching onto the road, her bright silks torn and bloodied. Sillick lurched painfully to his feet, grabbing Tumbler’s arm, making his shot go wild. A window shattered in one of the buildings above them.
‘We have to go, man! Come on!’
Tumbler turned to him, their eyes locking for an instant. ‘Too–’ he said. And then his body suddenly went rigid as if an electric current had passed through him. The pistol flew from his fingers, his eyes rolled up to the whites and he simply crumpled to the ground. He had been hit with the ice gun and the deadly neuro-toxin had taken immediate effect.
Sillick bolted, his own wounds completely forgotten, the laughter and catcalls of the enemy ringing in his ears as they gave chase, firing on the run. He could hear one of them kick-starting his bike, the bastard, but he wasn’t giving it enough throttle and it just coughed and failed to catch. Rich little shit had probably never used a ground-vehicle before.
Sillick dived without thinking through a low glassless window, feeling something ignite close to his head as energy beams probed for their target. He hit the rubble-strewn floor on the other side hard, driving the wind from him. He forced his stunned body to rise by sheer effort of will, his vision greying around the edges, and took off into the shadows of the derelict building, unarmed and alone.
He dashed beneath a crumbling and partially-fallen concrete floor, ducking under a shattered lintel, jumping brambles that had grown through the floor, splashing though puddles that had formed beneath holes in the roof, his own desperate breathing seeming to fill the world.
The sound of more engines from outside; pistol shots; voices raised in alarm. The other Blockheads – Prezz, Miri and Spacer. Could he double around inside the building, find an exit on the south side and join up with them? A voice was calling from behind him, silky and cultured in its tones: ‘Little vermin, little vermin! Wherefore art thou, thee filthy Undercity scrub?’ He resisted the temptation to taunt his pursuer in return. ‘We took your friend’s head for our trophy wall, little vermin!’ A cold determination filled him as he ran, angling through doorless rooms back towards the street, hands outstretched in the gloom.
He emerged into a large and cave-like room and what he saw there stopped him in his tracks. A shocked squeak escaped his lips. The voice behind him was close now but Sillick no longer heard it.
The room was filled with dark green organic growth. It deformed the rusting outlines of heavy machinery, twined and tangled around steel railings and balustrades, reached all the way up to a metal walkway, blanketing it and hanging from it. Slime dripped from the deep folds and crevices of the lumpy, living ceiling. Sillick stood and stared, momentarily awestruck. Something large and slow was moving up there. An incredibly bad smell, putrid and somehow alive, invaded his senses. Retching, he tried to step back out of the room but he found he couldn’t move his feet. He looked down in horror, his heart racing with animal terror. Tendrils of the plantlike matter had woven themselves around his feet and ankles. He struggled, crying out, all thoughts of stealthy flight forgotten. He looked up again and saw large, sluggish shapes descending on him, half-seen and oddly-articulated, trailing strands of goo. The world was filled with shifting green. And then it filled with darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Spider was jolted from an unsatisfying and uncomfortable doze by the sound of the cell door opening. The light that came from the doorway was a ruddy, rusty red, probably emergency lighting, and against it was silhouetted what looked like a huge robot arm bunched with muscular snarls of cable and piping. He felt a surge of dread go through him. Although the wheel to which he was still bound had stopped turning he felt that things were about to get a lot worse.
The two Resperi officers had worked him over systematically, unemotionally, as if it was all just another day at the office to them. His eyes were rimmed with crusted blood, making it harder to ascertain the nature of the thing that began to ease into the room. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. He wished he hadn’t.
The Freak was a monstrous amalgam of human and machine, a symbiotic system from hell. She was old, very old, and the parts of her face that were still flesh were wrinkled and hag-like. She seemed to consist primarily of a torso melded to a huge, tracked robotic arm, control consoles and monitors arrayed around her like cockpit instruments. Her cranium was of delicate smoked glass and Spider could make out the glowing shapes of computer chips nestled within the meat of her brain like leeches. One side of her face was completely covered in machinery, and the eye there had been replaced by a telescopic lens. Her nose was a metal grill. Her clawed hands fluttered over the controls in front of her, skittish and hideous, bringing her frightening form to a rest before him. Vapour vented suddenly from some unseen aperture in her conveyance. She smiled slowly.
