Red Shift: The Odds (Censored version)

  Chapter 24

  Viper could see the house through the trees. She had been lucky to find it, the tracer Loach had put on Ping was a very low emission device, five hundred metres either way and she wouldn’t have picked it. She pulled her comm device from her sleeve to advise Tyrol of the location, but the signal was being jammed. She decided to proceed instead of going back to advise him, there were only one or two of them to take out, and she could call in Tyrol’s lot to clean up and clear the place afterwards.

  She made a full circumnavigation of the house to see what sensors were active and what activity was going on. Her probes were giving back false readings, she expected as much, but had her own counter measures to at least hide her own presence. The house was surrounded by heavy tree and foliage on three sides which was good, but the ground was slightly elevated, and there was a clearing around a good part of the house, not good for cover. The remaining side was cantilevered over a river and not far from a cliff. She decided that was the best entry area, there was likely to be ventilation ducting under there to make the most of the air flow around the river.

  Ping and Cindy were inside taking a break from the Wildebeest. Ping had just got off the comm with Blake. “Sin, Blake and Jack have been in contact.”

  “Good news?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Blake met with the head of Osiris, and he was pretty pissed.”

  “I would be too.”

  “Yeah, well he thinks he may have gotten through to him. No guarantees, but he let him leave, which probably says something in itself.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, he mentioned a Peiter Solice, but didn’t give any other info about him. I’m going to have a snoop and see what I can find. Jack is on his way back. He said Betty was playing up a bit so we’ll have to run a diagnostic when she gets back.”

  “The way he treats that bike, I’m surprised it still goes.”

  “Believe me, Betty can take more than any human can throw at her.”

  Viper could hear two muffled voices from above. She checked her signal jammers and infrared cloak were active, the only thing that could see her now was a pair of eyes. She skipped across the rocks along the river edge, looking for an entry point. As she peered around a corner she hit the jackpot. There was an open window at about waist height. As she moved under it there was a strong chemical smell, it had obviously been left open as the small extract vent beside it was doing overtime and couldn’t have been clearing the odour fast enough.

  Using a micro-bot, she activated the sensors and checked for anyone in the room, Tyrol really did have some next level toys to play with. There was no movement, but a detection of biological activity. It wasn’t human, and wasn’t moving. She peered in ever so slightly looking for a dog, but looking around she saw nothing but machinery, storage boxes, and the ugliest vehicle she had seen in a while. The signal was coming from a machine in the corner of the room, it must have been the equipment Tyrol mentioned recently.

  She kept close to the walls and moved from cover-point to cover-point. There were cameras, but they were fixed position and easy to get around. Obviously this person didn’t expect anyone with half decent skills to be snooping around the house. Her seismic locator picked movement to the top left corner, same location she heard the voices, nothing else going on.

  Moving slowly, she stopped often to check for sound or other movement. It took about ten minutes to get to the end of the hallway that seemed to open out into a large open-plan living space. When her local sensors confirmed there were only two people in the room, she walked straight in and saw the two of them sitting at a dining table covered in computer and electronic equipment.

  “Sorry to intrude.” Viper let her presence be known with a flat and almost apologetic tone.

  Ping and Cindy spun to the sound, startled and taking a few moments to register what was going on; Cindy immediately reached for a pistol across the table.

  “Try it, bitch,” Viper said before firing a shot in the gap between Cindy’s hand and the pistol, making her recoil and nearly jump out of her seat.

  “What do you want?” asked Ping in a steady voice.

  “Well, long term I want fame, fortune and a yacht, but right now I’m going to settle for killing the two of you.”

  “Figured as much, you look familiar, you do hits for Alphas don’t you?”

  Viper took a half step back and looked at him quizzically. “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, I know an Alpha who is looking for something we have. It’s only a matter of time before he sent someone. I’m honoured that it is you Viper, you’re not cheap.”

  She gave a slight grin and trained her gun on his head. “Any other insights before you die?”

  “Just one. I assume it’s Tyrol?” She nodded. If she was surprised by his knowledge of this she didn’t let on. “The bit I can’t understand is why he would leave it to a borderline psychopath to do the job?”

  She became visibly enraged by the comment. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, arsehole!”

  There was a dull ‘thud, thud’, and Viper fell to the ground. Jack was standing at the end of the hall behind her.

  “Took your damned time, Jack. I thought that bitch was going to shoot me.”

  “Lucky she didn’t see you flick on the open comm, or you both would have been dead.”

  Jack walked over to Viper and kicked her onto her back. He went through her pouches and pockets removing all of the electronic devices and put them on the table. “Go through this lot and make sure there are no devices transmitting signals. Then we better get Blake here and have a debrief on what’s gone on.”

  “I’m surprised at how fast Viper managed to find us,” Ping added.

  “Yeah, we better go over her tracks and make sure there are no ‘care packages’ or tell-tales for anyone following.”

  “And I better sort out this security.” Cindy sounded a little depressed about the idea. “There goes another half-mil.”

  “Don’t worry about it Sin, I’ve got codes to a bunch of Wing’Tan accounts. I think it’s about time we went on a little raid. In the name of retribution, of course!” Ping rubbed his fingers together and smiled at the thought of some freed up money for more toys.

  “Right Ping, you get onto that, I’ve got a few contacts to track down to see where this tech came from that our little visitor was carrying.”

  Jack sat at the table and shaped his hands in a triangle, contemplating. “Guys, there is no way Viper found this place by chance. There has to be something either someone isn’t saying, or a tracer on one of us.”

  “Damned Loach!” Ping jumped out of his seat. The other two were startled by the excitement in his voice.

  “What about him?”

  “He was damned about with a low energy personal tracking device. It was a nano-fluid you could tip into a drink or put in a capsule. I bet the prick put one in either you or me, or both of us to test it.” He looked at Jack.

  “So how do we find it?”

  “It’s in our bloodstream, but only lasts a month. Still, that’s plenty of time to have another couple of dozen assassins sent out. It operates on a specific ultra-high frequency that is not normally used. It helps for being hard to pin down, but severely limits the range.”

  “So can we eliminate it or block it?”

  “We should be able to block it if I can find the general range of the emitting frequency.”

  “I’ve got some micro-jammers in the workshop.” Cindy got out of her chair about to head for the hall. ”Find that frequency Ping and I’ll calibrate them.”

  The phone Jack had been given by Tyrol started to ring. Everyone was quickly moving around the table; Jack put his finger to his lips to stop their talking.

  “Tyrol?”

  “Afternoon Jack. Everything well?”

  “Peachy Tyrol. Had a little pest problem earlier, bloody s
nake in the house. Got the little bugger though. Hard to kill some of them though, know what I mean, squirmed a bit.”

  “So sad innocent animals have to die when they stray off course.” Tyrol hid his anger well, or so he thought.

  “Yeah, but screw it, if it’s them or me I’m not going to lay down and take it, know what I mean?”

  “Indeed. So, Jack, I have a little job I want you to do for me. It’s a witness to your assassination actually. He is intending to give evidence upon your arrest.”

  “And why do you care about me getting arrested?”

  “Come now Jack, you are a resourceful man, and I need resourceful men more than you might expect. You have shown your worth on the Wing’Tan HQ hit, now is the time to make some money with your skills.”

  “What did this guy do to piss you off?”

  “Let’s just say he’s a competitor in a venture I’ve started up. He’s looking for some early development assets, and I really don’t want him to get them.

  “So I help you, to help me?” Jack’s tone was as sarcastic as he could make it, but sounded clumsier than anything, which pissed him off.

  “Precisely. You remove this man, the case against you is on the brink of collapse, you make three hundred grand in the process, and I have a nuisance of a competitor out of the way. Deal?”

  “Deal. Send me the details.”

  Jack disconnected the call, and looked up to see the others all looking at him. “So, it looks like we’re hit men for the Alphas now.”

  “Rubbish,” Ping was visibly agitated, “you better have a rock solid plan.”

  “Well, it appears that Tyrol has some competition, I’m guessing for finding the Biotronics gear we have. This guy is apparently also the key witness to my assassination set-up. I take him out we both win.”

  “But you won’t,” said Cindy. Jack wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

  “Of course not. We’re going to lift him, find out what he knows, package him up, and send him to South America or somewhere like that to get him out of the way for a bit. It will give us a little more time to work out how we’re going to tackle this Tyrol character.”

  “OK, sounds good,” Cindy sounded relieved. “We’ve got some work to do on the Wildebeest and these locators; we should get to work.”

  They heard a vehicle approach the house. Cindy looked up on a monitor on the wall. “It’s Blake, better give him a heads-up on what’s going on. And someone get this bitch out of here.” She kicked Viper as she walked past.

  Ping looked at Jack and shrugged his shoulders. “Female rivalry,” he suggested before following Cindy to the basement.

  Blake entered the house to see Jack wrapping the dead body in a blanket. “Been busy I see. What went on here then?”

  “Little visitor courtesy of our friend Tyrol I believe.”

  “I take it she wasn’t here to give you a way out?”

  “Kind of,” Jack nodded over to the bench with her surveillance kit and weapons.

  “Damn, she wasn’t messing about huh?”

  “Well, we got off lucky, this time. I think we need to sort out security and defences here, and also scatter our entry points to the property to reduce the amount of sign.”

  “Good idea. So care to enlighten me on the last few hours?”

  Jack went to the fridge and grabbed two beers, passed one to Blake, and sat at the table. He recapped the recent events, how they knew it was Autohacking runners that hit them at the pub, and that it was a high-end assassin that tried to hit the house. It was all pointing to Alphas, and Tyrol was number one on their list so far. Jack was sure now that Tyrol knew that they held the Biotronics, and a techie that knew how to use it. The question was, would he leave it to them to play the game at their pace?

  They now had three leads they had to follow. First, Senator Mac was taken out for some reason. Second, Tyrol was getting them to run errands for him, obviously trying to tie up his loose ends, but was his end game only getting hold of Biotronics tech. Third, Peiter Solice was named by Oricks. Was he linked to Tyrol, or some other party trying to get to the tech, or just a concerned international negotiator and trouble shooter?

  The two of them went to the basement to see how the progress was going with the Wildebeest. It was starting to come together. It looked like half of the chassis had been covered in a dark green shrink-wrap, which Ping advised was a platform for the biotronics circuits. He was laying thin strands all over the shrink-wrap, then spraying over what looked like liquid mask, which it apparently was. Once it cured it was half the strength of steel, could withstand temperatures between -50°C and +250°C.

  “So how does it all work Ping, I mean, do you plug it in? Maybe solder it together?” Jack made a hand gesture as though he were soldering, which got odd looks all-round.

  “No, nothing like that. The end-points, whether they are motors, sensors, displays, or anything else you can think of, have an interface that the sequencer formulates. That’s why we needed it. The translation allows signals within the membrane to be interpreted and used for either input or output.”

  “And all those strands there are like electrical wires?”

  “Kind of, but more like neural pathways. They’re not actually linked to anything yet, once the system is complete, we ‘jump start’ it by inducing an electric current.”

  “Like a defibrillator?” added Blake.

  “Yeah, that gets a current moving, and the pathways start making node connections like neurons in a brain. The beauty is, just like the brain, if one pathway is broken, there is always another one there.”

  “So basically I’m going to be driving a big-arse brain, covered in heavy armour, and enough weapons to level a small town?”

  “Yep, you gettin’ hard yet?”

  “Kind of, yeah.” Everyone had a good laugh, before Cindy reminded them of their timeframe. She was right, of course, so they got back to work.

  While Cindy and Ping were finalising the install of the vehicle systems, Blake completed the cladding and cowling sections. They were then coated in the skin that Cindy had sourced and plasma-welded into place. They all stepped back and looked at the completed vehicle. The Agency’s GTX armoured assault vehicle was now a vague remnant of its former self. The basic shape was there, but the cab was now pushed to the front, and the deck area behind the rear screen was extended to allow for the armaments.

  The top of the Hellcat plasma tubes were just visible above the side cowling on the deck. When they rotated into position they would be outside the chassis on each flank. There were projectile launchers on the front and rear panels, all high velocity with explosive tips. But the main function of the Wildebeest was providing physical mass. Although they had stripped most of the guts of the frame, it had been retro-fitted with strengthening to the main sections, and now weighed twice that of an average vehicle.

  “Well,” said Ping in his best effort at a bright voice, “If the intention was to intimidate, I think we nailed it!”

  “Yeah, we managed to make it look as ugly as Blake, and the size of his mamma,” Jack added without pause.

  “You’re such a child, Jack.”

  “Call me Peter Pan, geek-boy. So, we have everything together now. I suggest we get some rest; this evening is going to be eventful I think.”

  “Good idea, Jack. God knows I could use a few z’s.” Cindy walked out of the room, with six eyes following her arse up the stairwell. They all looked at each other and shook their heads before following upstairs. Ping checked the diagnostic systems on the way out to make sure the self-testing and initialisation programmes were running.

  As soon as Jack’s head hit the pillow he started drifting off. Even though his thoughts were tearing around at a million miles per hour, he somehow fell asleep. What seemed like moments later a draft woke him. Sitting up in his bed, he saw someone at the door.

  “Who is it?”

  The
vision of the person walking through the door paralysed him. It was his old commanding officer. “What are you doing soldier? You useless sack of snot!”

  “What the hell are you doing here? How the heck did you find me?” Jack tried to get up, but couldn’t move.

  “Don’t tell me you’re doing this to prove something to your wife. She’s moved on soldier, to a better life. Or maybe you still fell responsible for the death of your daughter?”

  “Screw you!” Jack shouted at the top of his lungs and opened his eyes to see an empty room. A dream. Dammit.

  Cindy heard the noise from across the hall. She had been dreaming too, for the first time in a while. As her thoughts gathered those few seconds after waking, she realised she had been dreaming about Jack. It brought back memories she had long buried, of how she found him drunk and wandering in the middle of nowhere. She still wasn’t sure why she ever took him in. Perhaps she felt a necessity to help wounded animals.

  She crossed the hall and stood at the door. He was all but dripping with sweat. “You OK there cowboy?”

  “Ah, yeah. Just a bad dream. You know.”

  “Yeah Jack, I know. Need a beer?”

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  They both walked down to the dining room. Cindy got two beers from the fridge and passed one to Jack before sitting at the table. “So, bad dreams?”

  “You don’t want to know. Just old stuff.”

  “Can’t be that old if you’re still dreaming about it. You know, Jack, there is no way you could have stopped your daughters’ death. I looked into the county file, it was just an accident. A miserable messed up accident.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I had been there to pick her up. Instead I was being a selfish mess, drowning my sorrows.”

  “Some would say with just cause. It’s not every day you walk in on your boss kissing your wife.”

  “Yeah, but I let that piece of trash get in the way of my life with my daughter. A life she lost. If I was there, she wouldn’t have walked onto the street, and the truck wouldn’t have hit her.”

  “If that slut of an ex wasn’t messing with your boss, none of that would have happened either Jack. You’re a good person and didn’t deserve any of the crap you copped.”

  “Amen to that.” He reached his beer across the table and tapped Cindy’s bottle. “And hey, I would never have met you, or been on this wonderful adventure!” He let out a laugh, two parts denial, one part exhaustion.

  “So anyway, the security is almost complete now. We’ve got signal interceptors that any Government would be proud of, anything I’ve tagged, such as our comm devices can operate fine, anything else will be screwed. There are fixed proximity sensors around the house, and I’ve got a dozen Dragonfly Drones buzzing around out there.”

  “Nice work. But why the hell didn’t you have that running before?”

  “I guess after being out here on my own for years, with hardly anyone around, I just became complacent. Kind of thought the world had moved on and left me behind.”

  “Damn, that sounds almost as tragic as my story!”

  “Almost.”