Originator (37 page)

“There's been about fifty,” said Amirah, remembering something she'd read when researching her new home. “Most of them self-inflicted by idiots messing with traffic central. About five actual accidents, in seventy years.”

They had the radio on the car's dash, one of those antiquated functions all vehicles were required to have in case of network emergency. It came through all garbled, auto-tune flicking from one to the next on some automated function—keywords and sender addresses, Amirah guessed. But the gist of it was clear. . . .

“. . .
full-scale network assault! I repeat, Tanusha has experienced a full-scale network assault, no telling yet if this is work of the League, or some other entity
. . . .” “. . .
recommend to everyone to put their uplinks into full autistic, or better yet disable them entirely
. . . .” “. . .
got net expert Shanti Singh here, says it looks like an automated VR matrix that is putting people into VR involuntarily
. . . .” “. . .
equivalent
to a network weapon of mass destruction, make no mistake if this was some foreign entity, this thing is an act of war
. . . .”

“It went nuts about an hour ago,” said Rhian, steering them carefully through some malfunctioning traffic lights, a few concerned locals waving at traffic to warn them—Rhian waved back, acknowledging. “If the Talee are doing the same shit we saw Cai do on Antibe Station out at Pantala, there's just too many contradictions to pull that off here. We think the independents' pirate nets started picking it first, the VR matrix went after them and started putting them and their operators under . . . and of course those guys are all so paranoid they've a million counter-systems to fight that shit, and so . . .”

She indicated to the mess around them. Here ahead were a couple of police cars, lights flashing, attending to some commotion along a shopping walk. The Tanushan underground were legendary Federation-wide for being paranoid, at times criminal, ideologically libertarian-to-anarchist, and often more high-tech than the authorities charged with keeping them in line. Even Talee tech, surely, trying to suppress that many fragmented and ferociously autonomous systems, must have had a nervous breakdown trying to track all the spiralling trillions of permutations as each system fought back on its own accord.

“Well, you see this is the problem with fucking around with aliens,” said Amirah, bundling her hair back, as Poole woke the GI beside her. “They're unpredictable. Looks like they underestimated how complicated we are.” Poole moved to the last GI on the rear seat, as the near one rubbed his eyes and looked around. “How are you doing that?”

“Something Cai gave us,” said Poole. “You've just been upgraded to Talee tech. Or something that interacts with it. Blocks them out, he says—makes you invisible on their matrix.”

“Cai's with us?”

“Yep. Killed a couple of his own to do it.”

“Really.”

Poole glanced at her. “What?”

“Talee,” said Amirah, making a face. “Speaking of unpredictable aliens. Wonder what's actually going on with them. Just because they wiped themselves out several times, doesn't mean they're all peaceful with each other now.”

“Sandy always said this ‘First Contact' romanticism was shit,” said Rhian
from the front seat. “'Cause you don't know what strategic balance the aliens have amongst themselves. Like if the Talee had first talked to the League during the war, they'd have made enemies of the Federation, and vice versa. We make friends with Cai, who's to say we haven't immediately pissed off all
his
enemies back home?”

“Cai made friends with us,” said Poole. “That's different.”

“Not to his enemies it isn't.”

“So where are we going?” Amirah asked. They passed a turnoff to a major business hub. Down the road Amirah could see blocked streets, crowds of people milling, talking, gesticulating. As though the entire city had stopped work and come out onto the streets. Network “weapon of mass destruction” indeed. People were wondering if they were awake or not.

“Somewhere to fight back. Cai says he can upgrade GIs enough that we can't get hacked again, or not easily. Then we use big, powerful servers to attack their matrix with Cai's matrix, force them to come after us at the source. Where we kill them.”

Amirah nodded. “Sounds like a plan. So it's just GIs?”

“That's right,” said Poole. “Saving the Federation's ass again. But still they won't support emancipation.”

“Now you sound like Kiet,” said Rhian.

“Maybe it's time we all did,” Poole retorted. “'Cause you might have noticed—the more crises we get into, the more we end up running the place anyway.”

Raylee roared her car up the access road to Sadar Institute of Technology, dodging through malfunctioning road signals, then crashed the feeble access barrier, wincing at the damage it did to the bodywork. The car was a gift from Ari, the only truly expensive thing he'd ever bought her. He knew she didn't like being “his girl” in that way, the pretty thing the wealthy former-underground player kept happy by buying nice things for. But she loved to drive, and loved it still even after last year's crash that cost her an arm. Her driving up to that point was now legend in some circles, amongst FSA and CSA guys who knew what she'd been trying to do, and Ari had thought it fitting she had a car to match her ability. With traffic central down, it had certainly gotten them here faster.

She glanced again at Ari as she raced into the complex. He lay slumped in the passenger seat, eyelids twitching, mouth open. She wanted to check his vitals again, but the network wouldn't allow it. Last time she'd uplinked to anything, she'd awoken twenty minutes later face-down on the floor of Ari's apartment. Even as she thought it, another burst of nausea hit her, and her vision flickered like a display screen on the blink. She slowed past the sides of gleaming, high-glass building atriums and a green-grass campus with gardens and walking paths—she'd never been here before, but SIT was one of numerous Tanushan legends, one of the institutes that had helped make Tanusha the technology powerhouse it was today. All empty today; the crisis seemed to be keeping everyone at home.

She took a turnoff into the underground carpark beneath the major central building, headlights coming on to illuminate the space before her . . . and screeched to a halt, confronted by a man and a woman in combat armour, rifles levelled at her head with precision that just screamed “GI.”

She popped the door and climbed out, hands raised. “Hey! I'm Detective Raylee Sinta, that's Agent Ari Ruben in the car, he's having a bad reaction to this fucking net virus or whatever it is. . . .”

But the GIs were already moving, one rushing to the passenger door to pull Ari out and dumping him over her shoulder. The woman led them on, talking on what Raylee guessed was a radio link, “Rhian? Yeah, Sinta and Ruben just turned up, he's having a bad reaction to the invader matrix. . . .”

“
Ray?
” Raylee could hear Rhian's voice on the GI's headphones . . . and now suddenly louder as the GI flipped them onto her speakers as they strode to the carpark elevator. “
Ray, I don't think this is the safest place to bring him
. . . .”

“Rhian, his heart's nearly stopped twice.” She couldn't keep the quaver of panic from her voice, as they reached the elevator, and the other GI propped Ari against a wall to examine him, taking his pulse. “Ari said you'd be coming here, he woke up briefly, said he could help you, but you had to get him here. . . .”

“
Yeah . . . I don't know if we can stabilise straights against this matrix, Ray, you might notice we're all GIs here . . . wait, how are
you
still awake? You're close to Ari, they should have knocked you out first
.”

“I think it's because I got high-level uplinks late. It's . . . it had me for a while, but when I came to it's left me pretty much alone since. . . .”

The elevator opened, but Ari was beginning to convulse once more. “Rhian!” Raylee yelled, trying to grab him, as the GI tried to lift him once more. “No! No, you can't move him like this, he's going to need CPR again!”

And immediately footsteps were running, as Ari was laid on the floor before the elevator doors, Raylee turning him onto his side in case of an airways blockage. A Chinese-featured man skidded on the polished hallway floor on his knees and put an insert cord into the back of Ari's head. . . .

“Are you Cai?” Raylee demanded. “Cai, right?”

Cai paid her no attention, eyes momentarily closed. Ari stopped convulsing. Cai looked up. “Now you.”

“Me? Oh no . . . what are you . . . hey!” As one of the GIs grabbed and twisted her arm, forcing her forward, where her hair was pulled aside to reveal the little insert that she still hated to use. . . . “No!”

And she awoke in a teacher's chair in an institute classroom, with a view across the wide sweep of river. No disorientation, no dizziness and looking around to
wonder where she was. Somehow she just knew this was classroom H15 in E Block. She even knew the SIT layout now, an arc of buildings along the inner bank of a loop in the river, each one facing onto a central, inner building, connected with walkways and separated by gardens. This building was at the very tip of the arc, the center of the five riverside structures.

And here in the middle of the room, using the holographics, was Ari. He stood with Rhian, hands flying across the hovering icons, pointing things out to her.

“Hi, Ray,” he said without looking at her. How did he know she was awake? “How do you feel?”

“I'm . . .” She got slowly to her feet, careful of moving too suddenly. But she felt fine. Except that . . . “Wow.” She could see cyberspace overlaid on her vision. That was usually hard for her and would bring on a bout of nausea. Now, nothing. Her head seemed to be buzzing with awareness. “I can see stuff. Lots of stuff . . . is this the institute schematics?”

“Schematics, networks, mainframes, everything.” He turned, looking at icons, and she could seem him grinning. “We've been upgraded. Talee tech. Fucking amazing.”

They left the stream with five hundred meters to go to the river branch that Sandy's internal-memory map told her was up ahead. The stream joined with the river farther along, but only after a wide bend that took it very close to where tacnet was now telling them a ground party of four was approaching. The flyer had come down that way fifteen minutes ago and hovered above the trees, while tacnet showed single figures jumping from the back. Farther upriver, more Talee-GIs were down, another four with tacnet uncertain of two more behind. The tactic was obvious—squash them up against the riverbank and force them to cross.

Sandy pushed low through the undergrowth now at the bank, ankle-deep in mud. The river here was only fifty meters wide, and bendy, overgrown by thick forest on all sides. Infrared showed her little coloured dots of animals and birds in places, but a concealed GI would give a similar signature. There was movement everywhere, wind brushing the leaves, insects buzzing, small animals leaping from branch to branch. She had to consciously dial down her visual sensitivity—GIs were urban combat
specialists, and out here, data became cluttered. But the GIs hunting them would have similar trouble.

Danya pushed up behind, more like knee-deep, holding a mangrove branch aside so it wouldn't snap back in his face. He was sweaty, tired, and muddy, but seemed to be holding up. Behind him, Svetlana helped Kiril, both exhausted.

“We have to cross,” Danya whispered. Without uplinks, he couldn't see the threat that now moved to surround them, but Sandy had described it to him, and Danya could visualise a tactical situation as well as most grunts. “They'll trap us.”

“If you get caught halfway across, you're dead,” Sandy replied. Flyers had been passing near, on a search pattern. Her personal tacnet didn't have the range to see them unless they came close, so she had no idea how many. Perhaps no more than two, she thought. But if one passed overhead when the kids were halfway across the river . . . “GIs don't miss, Danya. It's not like exposing yourself to fire against straights. That's a risk. This is just dead, automatic.”

Jane pushed up past Svetlana and Kiril, as Svetlana helped Kiril drink from their dwindling supply of water. “Cross or fight,” Jane murmured, without preamble.

“Fifty meters, it takes too long,” said Sandy. “If they've any suspicion we're tracking them, they could have someone transmission-blanked on the far side, they could have ambush spots along the far bank, waiting for someone to cross. It's what I'd do.”

“They may not have that many people,” Jane replied, her lean face deadly calm beneath the brim of her cap. “If Cai's plan's working by now, he'll be causing trouble elsewhere, that will divert some of them. . . .”

“They might just hack some heavy weapons and level Sadar Institute,” Sandy retorted.

“Won't kill the mainframes,” Jane disagreed, “they're under ground, and I don't think Talee want to cause
that
big an issue, flattening an entire facility.”

“You don't think a mass VR attack is big? Jane, this thing's the network equivalent of WMD, we can't count on them holding back for anything, which means we have to assume Cai's intervention won't work. . . .”

“Sandy!” Danya hissed impatiently. “You're being too defensive! You're thinking only about defending us!” With a jerk of his head back to Kiril and
Svetlana. “You're a Hunter/Killer! You're built for attack! If you just defend, against these guys, it isn't going to work!”

Sandy gritted her teeth. It nearly hurt to hear him speak of her like that, but combat reflex blocked most of it. Besides, she was becoming accustomed to hearing tactical common sense from Danya, and in situations like this he was more an asset than a liability. Except of course that he couldn't fight against these opponents, and she wasn't prepared to countenance any risk to him whatsoever. And now he was telling her that she had to countenance exactly that, or they were all dead. The worst part was that she knew he was right but still didn't want to accept it.