“
Yeah, damn,”
Dan echoed. “And let’s not forget the portal ride is dicey.” He
stopped, turned, and looked at Simon. “What are
you
going to do?”
“
What do you
mean?” he asked, suspicious that Dan was giving him the chance to
pull out.
“
Slime, you
have a lot to live for. I don’t. It’s okay that I’m risking my life
to save Jen – it’s my fault she’s there in the first place. But you
don’t have to. In fact, I don’t think you should.” Then he mumbled,
more to himself than anybody else, “It’s bloody
suicide.”
“
Are you
trying to insult me?”
“
No, I’m
serious. It’s something you have to think about.”
“
Well I have,
damn it. And I told you to call me, didn’t I?” He waited for Dan to
nod before saying, “So stop this nonsense. I’m in. Okay? All the
way.” Simon remembered the times Dan had risked his life in order
to save him. Back then, Dan had had plenty to live for, but it
hadn’t stopped him from sticking his neck out – twice. Simon had
been waiting five years to return the favour, and here was his
chance. He certainly didn’t intend to shirk the opportunity to
repay the debt.
“
Okay.” Dan
gulped a deep breath. “Then we’re going back to
Holland.”
“
Hang on.”
Simon reeled him back with a hand on his shoulder. “Adrian had
access to this place, right?”
Oh fuck… how
am I going to explain this?
Dan nodded,
delaying the inevitable.
“
Then you got
his chip, right?” It curdled Simon’s blood to think about it, but
the most sensible thing would’ve been for Dan to rip Adrian’s spine
from his body.
“
Actually, no.
I sent him through the portal.”
“
Where
to?”
“
To the
Guild.” It sounded stupid now. Saving Adrian’s chip would’ve spared
Simon the five percent risk of a collision when travelling through
Hans’s portal.
“
What?” Simon
asked incredulously.
“
Well, I was
angry,” Dan said hesitantly, trying to explain something he didn’t
understand himself. “So I stripped off his shirt and wrote ‘you’re
next’ on his chest before sending him through.”
“
Have I ever
said you’re insane?”
“
A couple of
times, yes.”
“
Well I’ll do
it again – you’re fucking crazy Dan. Now they know we’re
coming!”
“
No, they
know
I’m
coming.
They think I’m alone. Besides, they knew I was coming already and
now they can account for Adrian’s chip. If they thought he was dead
but couldn’t find it they’d be even more alert.”
Simon snorted. “That
doesn’t change the fact that you’re nuts.”
“
Good,” Dan
said, marching for the portals. “Because we’ve gotta be nuts to do
this.”
*
Saturday
, September
1
8
, 2066
UniForce
Headquarters
1
4
:2
5
San
Francisco, USA
Esteban
slapped a hand on his desk.
Of
course!
He pounced on his keyboard.
If Dan was in the building then I should be able
to…
He accessed PortaNet’s database,
lamenting the fact that Adrian’s back door would soon collapse.
PortaNet would seal it as soon as they examined Adrian’s computer
and discovered what he’d done.
And that
means things’ll get harder.
He sighed in
frustration.
Back to the old fashioned
way.
Tracking somebody was so much easier
when you could see where he or she was zapping through the
portals.
His search
didn’t take long.
There!
Only one Tedman Kennedy had
portaled into UniForce headquarters that day.
Now I know which one you are… you’re
fucked.
He reworked the grip on his pistol
and fed the identity back through PortaNet’s database, intent on
turning the hunt around. He was tired of waiting for Sutherland to
turn up, plucking off his team one by one. Esteban wanted to hunt
too. According to PortaNet, he was in Sydney.
Parramatta to be exact.
But while
Esteban watched, Tedman Kennedy portaled to the Sydney
International terminal.
Where’re you going
now, Sutherland?
He slouched
into his chair, getting comfortable for the wait. He wasn’t going
to budge until he was sure where Sutherland was heading.
At least I have a clear advantage
again.
The tension slowly drained from his
body and he relaxed for the first time since discovering Sutherland
had switched identities.
Chapter
11
The empire is
global. There is nowhere to go to escape its corrosive
barrenness.
John Zerzan
Saturday
, September
1
8
, 2066
23
:
42
Groningen, The
Netherlands
Dan knocked harder. “God,
we’re going to wake the neighbourhood.”
“
Maybe they
found him? He could be dead…” Simon preferred to suggest the worst.
That way, things frequently turned out better than he
expected.
“
Don’t even
joke,” Dan said sternly. If that were true, he’d lost his chance to
free Jen forever. He’d been relying on Hans’s portal.
Maybe that was a mistake? Oh, bugger! I should’ve
taken Adrian’s flamin’ chip.
But Han’s put him out of
his misery when he opened the door and said, “What do you do here
this time of night?”
“
Sorry,” Simon
mumbled.
“
Yeah, me
too,” Dan echoed. “It’s morning in Australia and afternoon in
America.” It was just unfortunate for Hans that it couldn’t be
daytime everywhere. Portals made things such as sleep inconvenient
when someone was trying to co-ordinate affairs across several time
zones. “We have that code you needed.”
Hans was wearing pyjamas
and had to hold his trousers up lest the faded elastic slip from
his bony waist. They were chequered brown and blue flannelette,
perfect for the approaching winter. “What… now?”
“
I have a
friend waiting for me,” Dan explained. “Can we come in?”
Hans looked reluctant but
admitted them anyway, and then excused himself to pull on some
tracksuit pants.
When he returned, Dan
handed him the slip of paper. “That’s the code, he called it a
SAT.”
“
It looks
valid,” Hans said in his Dutch accent. He plonked it on his
workbench in the second bedroom while Dan and Simon huddled at the
door. “Who is this friend of yours?”
“
Her name’s
Jen,” Dan replied, wondering whether she was still alive. He hoped
his message hadn’t spooked Esteban into killing her. “She’s a
prisoner.”
Hans stopped what he was
doing and scowled. “You mean… this is a gaol break?”
“
No, no.” Dan
shook his head. “She’s been kidnapped.”
“
Oh, that is
okay then.” Hans kept working. “Who kidnapped her?”
“
The same
person who killed my wife.” Speaking with an emotionless voice was
Dan’s best defence against the anguish that bubbled just below the
surface.
“
Wow.” Hans
sadly shook his head. “Somebody really does not like you.” He was
busy tapping the SAT into his computer. Several ribbon-cables
snaked from its open case to the portal. They could see where Hans
had prised the portal’s cover away and inside they glimpsed the
smouldering remains of the anti-tamper circuit. Dan hoped Hans knew
what he was doing; folding space sounded dangerous – several
million g’s would squash every cell in his body if anything went
wrong. The room smelled like burnt silicon and solder resin. And it
was a mess. Open textbooks and loose papers with diagrams were
strewn about the floor, the product of a cluttered mind.
Kat chose that moment to
enter the room, annoyed that visitors had disturbed one of her
favourite naps. She usually slept in bed with Hans, who didn’t have
the heart to toss her out. She virtually had free rein of the
house. Hans had only scolded her twice: once when she made a mess
in the kitchen, and once when she protested her overflowing kitty
litter by pooping on the couch. She affectionately rubbed Simon’s
leg, earning herself a scowl.
“
You don’t
like cats?” Dan asked, sensing his friend’s discomfort.
“
I’m a dog
person,” Simon explained. He hated felines – they revolted him.
Their fur tickled his nose. He made a special effort to be polite
in front of their host, but couldn’t help adding, “I’ll restrain
myself as long as she doesn’t spew on my shoes.”
“
Do not listen
to him Kat,” Hans toned soothingly. “He is just mean.” He was
concentrating hard on entering the details accurately. One mistake
could result in sending them to Siberia, Indonesia, or PortaNet’s
lunar colony. “Now, you are sure this is accurate?” He tapped a
finger to the paper.
“
Yes.” But Dan
secretly wished he’d confirmed it again. He’d checked it twice but
it was 40 digits long and he couldn’t be too careful. “I’m sure.”
But his tone wasn’t reassuring.
“
Well good.”
Hans lifted his head after rescanning the SAT. “Because if one of
these is wrong you will be flattened as a pancake.” He gave them
access to the monitor. “You read it. I am tired and not good with
your handwriting.”
Dan and Simon both
confirmed the number before declaring it correct. “Now
what?”
Hans waved at the portal.
“Whenever you are ready. Who goes first?”
“
I will,” Dan
said, stepping onto the portal platform and carefully ensuring he
was inside the white circle. Other portals would refuse to operate
if somebody left an elbow or a hand outside, but Dan was wary of
Hans’s contraption. There was no telling which circuits he’d
accidentally fried. He gripped his Colt. One benefit of Adrian’s
death was the opportunity it’d given him to confirm the Colt’s
sights. “I’ll secure the area immediately around the portal.” Dan
winked. “See you on the other side.” He had ample ammunition to
cater for several dozen hostiles.
Hans started
pressing buttons and some equipment shoved into the corner began to
hum.
Isn’t something supposed to happen
now?
Dan wondered sardonically as the
seconds crawled by. He was just about to ask when the portal folded
space and his vision shifted. A tickle in his lungs begged for a
cough but he fought the urge and backed up to a wall. The lighting
was dim and his eyes scoured the shadows for potential threats. A
long corridor led away from the portal chamber and he ducked to his
left to avoid detection. The blue light from the portals was the
most powerful illumination in the room, everything else was dim by
comparison.
Why, I
wonder?
Dan didn’t know what he’d expected,
but this wasn’t it.
Simon appeared next to
him a few seconds later and whispered, “At least we’re not
pancakes.”
Dan just hoped they were
in the right place. He signalled for Simon to guard the five
portals while he inched along the corridor. They’d agreed to use
search and destroy rules – shoot unfriendlies on sight. But that
begged the question how they’d tell the difference between friend
and foe. Dan hoped instinct would answer.
The grip of
his modified Colt felt good in his hands and the back of his neck
was tingling, partly due to the stimulants he’d swallowed and
partly due to adrenaline. His senses had amplified his
awareness.
Jen’s in here
somewhere.
He patted his pocket, reassured
to feel her microchip selector.
He crept
forward –
Empty –
and waved Simon on, indicating the first segment was secure.
They’d agreed to take things slowly, cautiously. It’d be insane to
rush around shooting everything that moved, and equally insane to
split up.
The corridor
was short and it emptied into a lounge room. It was large and
luxurious, the antithesis of Dan’s expectation for a prison.
But it’s not just a prison… it’s a
club.
It reminded him of the exclusive
waiting area for World Bank where pretty women pampered rich
customers until bank executives could tend to their financial
whims. Here the lights were brighter, as if someone lived there. He
sniffed the air.
Cigar
smoke?
It was stale in his nostrils, but it
was unmistakable. Someone had squashed the chewed stub of a cigar
on a plate that rested on the lamp table between couches.
That’s disgusting.
Dan
swept the room carefully, prepared to shoot anything non-female
that moved. He was jumpy, his nerves pulled tighter than ever. It
made him dangerous for the captive women and he hammered into his
mind repeatedly to be careful – accidentally shooting Jen would
pound the final nail into his coffin.
“
Where is
everyone?” Simon whispered when he caught up.