Tag - A Technothriller (12 page)

Already fully clothed in his uniform as Director of Operations of the Political and Corporate Security Unit of United Nation Police, and Head of UNPOL, Sir Thomas examined his image in the full length screen, zooming in on his face to check for the debris of sleep. None seen, he took over the conversation from his facs.

“Agent Cochran, no apology required. What do you have to report?”

“Jonah has gone missing on Far Side, sir.” Agent Cochran, like the Director, looked the same at 1:22am in the morning as she did at 8:30am in the morning, or indeed at any time of the day or night in public. Unwrinkled, neat, professional and calm, her blonde hair cut in an attractive but subtle bob, she looked directly into the Dev and waited patiently for the Director to issue his commands.

“Exactly when and where did he go missing?”

“Exiting the Lev port at Shackleton base is the last image we have of him, Sir, and that was at 9:05pm.”

Sir Thomas glanced at the time set in the lower right corner of his Devscreen, 1:23am, Friday 13 December 2109.

“Are you a suspicious person, Agent Cochran?” he asked without expression. “Do you believe in omens, good and bad luck?”

“No, sir, I believe we are the masters of our own circumstance,” replied Agent Cochran who seemed to straighten up as she said it.

“Ah the valor and ignorance of youth,” said Sir Thomas in a voice halfway between a whisper and a sigh.

Cochran’s face flushed slightly along the edges of her angular cheekbones and her jaw muscle tightened considerably. She did not like being played with like this, but knew better than to respond. Everything is a test and you either pass or you fail. She didn’t fail.

Sir Thomas, his face set again in an inscrutable shield that forbade discernment, smiled inwardly, the image of a puppet dancing on a string coming to mind. “You did well to interrupt me, Agent Cochran,” and he allowed the smile onto his face. “What actions have you taken over the past four hours?”

“Communications with Far Side have been cut off, Sir Thomas. Peary’s comms unit says that solar flare activity on the Far Side may have disrupted the Commsat network. Unable to contact Shackleton directly, I ordered a plainciv unit from Peary to Shackleton. They investigated the area outside of the Lev port and that was the last recorded position of Jonah’s Devstick. Other Devsticks in the area appeared to be in a similar situation and again the comms unit says this is probably connected to the network problem on Far Side. We dispatched a forensic team with sniffers to see if we could track, and so far they have tracked him to an area of approximately three square kiloms – but they cannot yet narrow that down further. All of Shackleton’s primary exit points have been manned, sir.”

“You have made an excellent contribution, Agent Cochran, thorough with rapid, accurate assessment of circumstances, and efficiently and beautifully executed.” the Director smiled again. “However, I am sure that there is nothing to worry about. As you say, Devs in the area are acting strangely and Jonah informed me he was taking self-time and traveling to the Moon. Even so, it is better to be cautious about these things, especially given the sensitivities of these times.”

Praise from Sir Thomas was as rare as rain in the desert and Cochran glowed inwardly, being careful not to show her pleasure.

“Keep me updated about the situation as and when you see fit. Thank you, Agent Cochran,” he said, and with a last very small, very quick twist upwards of the corners of this mouth – something that was communicated to Sharon Cochran as a very scary smile – Sir Thomas cut the feed.

Cochran took a deep breath in and out to release the tension she felt. She didn’t know why Sir Thomas made her feel so inadequate, and often wondered about that. With everyone else, including herself, she was supremely confident. She knew that she was in the top one percent of female humans her age in the known universe. Top in intelligence score, muscle to body fat, optimum height to weight ratio, and, as she’d been told by more than one person, in her looks, but Sir Thomas could take all that away with a word or a glance.

Shaking her head softly as if to rid it of the negative thoughts, she turned from her comms Dev and looked around her work area. There was nothing personal here that signified this was her workspace. Everything she needed to exist in this space was in her head. It was time to make her way back to her Env. A glance at the Dev showed her she was alone in the section complex.

“Turn off all the light between me and the Lev door,” Sharon told the Dev. The subdued optimum lights in her space shut off. She smiled in the total darkness, and turning ninety degrees to her right, took two long steps forward. She stopped, turned again ninety degrees to her left, and then taking six strides forward ordered the Dev to open the door. Without hesitating, she walked through for two strides, halting and again turning ninety degrees left, started striding towards the Lev door for her section.

Eighty five measured strides later, she stopped. The Lev said, “Where do you wish to go, Agent Cochran?”

Not in a talkative mood, Sharon tapped the car icon on her Devstick and the door to the Lev slid open, flooding the corridor with a soft blue light. She didn’t sit; the trip would be a short one as her Bulgari T8 was parked right outside the Lev port on level one. Exiting the Lev, a few contemplative moments later, she emerged from the Lev port as the matt black gull-wing door on her T8 rose to the three-quarter position.

Sliding into the custom seat, she tapped manual on the steering wheel. Jurong Island to the southern tip of Sentosa was twenty kiloms. The Travway at this time of night would not be as busy as during the day. For some reason, people still preferred to drive in daylight, but even so, this was New Singapore, and the lion always roared. Her best time was five minutes flat, her new target was four point eight minutes. The barrier light changed and the barrier went up, her foot stamped on the throttle and the T8’s twin turbines sent her airborne as she raced up the ramp, but only for a millisec as the car’s aerodymics came into play, and she was glued to the rubberized surface of the Travway.

Her focus absolute, she allowed herself the luxury of a small smile of satisfaction as the slumbering Devs controlling the norms in their Toyota autopiloted EVs came alive with the computational reality of her velocity among them.

On the other side of New Singapore, fifty kiloms away from where Cochran was weaving through the early morning traffic, a recently promoted level two officer of the Trav Control Center turned to his colleague in alarm. The screen in front of him had swooped from the placid traffic on the Travway on Marina South and focused on the West Coast Travway. The screen flipped image Devs as a vehicle went through their ranges in secs.

“It’s OK lah, it’s just her. She does it nearly every night, and hasn’t hit anyone yet,” his colleague said and turning off the tracker on the vehicle, sat back in his Biosense to watch and marvel at the performance on the screen in front of him.

Sharon glanced at the speedometer and the timer. Speed two hundred and eighty kilos, time at four minutes exactly. She navigated the off-ramp before rapidly decelerating to a hundred and ten kilos for the S-turn that took her into the final half kilo stretch. The ‘Private Road - No Entance’ sign marked her finish line. Four minutes nine secs. A flash of annoyance; it was the S-turn, she could have gone a bit faster there.

Her body massaged by the G-forces exerted during the run from her contribution space, Sharon slowed the T8 to a sturdy prowl as she entered the driveway of her partner’s complex. The Ent residence of the Pres of SingCom was as opulent as one would expect, but Sharon paid little attention to the finely manicured gardens along the driveway nor to the marble fountain she parked behind.

I wonder if Sunita’s awake, she thought. I need her advice.

Sunita Shido had been her lover and mentor since the age of twelve. She hadn’t actually made physical love to her until she was legal, despite Sharon wanting her to, but then Sunita was nothing if not perfectly correct. It had been sixteen years since they had first been introduced.

With a soft metallic click, the gull-wing door shut behind her as she went up the steps, and the Dev, recognizing her, opened the house door without instruction. Never breaking her stride, she marched straight up the steps inside the reception area and at the first landing turned right to walk down the corridor to the master bedroom. Reaching it, the door opened and she walked in.

“You made it so quickly....” Sunita said, smiling and rising naked from the Siteazy; the image of the West Coast Travway on the screen behind her. Her hand snaked around Sharon’s neck and her lips brought the taste of an alky. “I don’t like it when you trav that fast,” she murmured, nuzzling Sharon’s ear.

“It turns me on,” whispered Sharon in a little girl voice, as reaching up with her left hand she found the release strip for her tailored UNPOL outers, just as her right found Sunita’s breast.

Chapter 14

We could talk forever, talking on the Moon

Titanium Mine Shaft, Shackleton Moonbase, The Moon

Friday, 13 December 2109 1:45am

“Jonah, Jonah, wake up.” I felt a hand lightly shaking and squeezing my shoulder. Turning my head away from the wall, I saw Gabriel sitting on the edge of the sleeper I was in. I pushed myself up and lay back resting my weight on my elbows.

“What time is it?”

“It’s 1:45am New Singapore time. You’ve slept for four hours. Here take this, it’ll get you back on your feet.” He handed me a cup, warm on the outside. “We have until 6am. Then we have to get you visible again. Comms are down across the sector but we can only hold that for another four hours, and then we have to put you in a hot tub in the Nineveh,” with this last softly spoken comment Gabriel smiled and patted me on my knee. He crossed the room to a small table in its center.

I looked around the concrete-walled room. It was Spartan: two sleepers lengthwise against each wall, polymer storage racks, black rubberized flooring and next to the small table in the center of the room was a mobile Devcockpit. There must have been at least fifty Devscreens arrayed in a semi circle in front of a Siteazy. It was the largest I had ever seen. In contrast to the setting it was in, it looked singularly out of place. Like a shiny high cred luxury unpacked from a drab package.

Gabriel turned to me, and indicating the Siteazy next to the Devcockpit, said, “Come over here and take a seat. I’ve calculated that it would take me eighteen days, and about forty-six minutes to tell you of all that has happened in the time that we have been separated from each other. Unfortunately we don’t have that kind of time on our hands, so I’m going to have to stick to the problem we have and how we think you can resolve it.”

“Eighteen days, I asked. “Has that much happened since last week?”

Gabriel smiled, his hand resting on the head rest of the Siteazy, but he looked sad to me. “No, I meant since we were parted thirty-four years, fifty-three days, and three hours ago. You were twenty-eight days old, and I was twelve. I’ll tell you what I can in any time we have left over, if we can come up with a solution to our problem.”

I got out of the sleeper and went and sat in the Siteazy. Gabriel sat on the Biosense in the middle of the Devcockpit but turning to the opening of the cockpit put his feet up on the Dev’s manual entry panel, his hands folded into his lap.

I said, “Just do me a favor, OK?”

“Name it.”

“Just speak to me with your voice, OK? No getting into my mind stuff.”

Gabriel laughed loudly and slapped his hand on his thigh.

“OK, we won’t do that.” His face turning serious, he looked me in the eye and said, “But I will have to give you some mental training on how to survive the Truth Treatment and avoid scrutiny from Cochran.”

“Good,” I said, and smiled at him. “Now can you please tell me about this conspiracy, and how I am supposed to save the universe?”

Gabriel grinned a little sheepishly, “Well I might have been just a bit over-dramatic with that one, but then again it depends how you look it, and from where I’m sitting, it’s not far from the truth.”

The screen of the Dev was split into a multitude of past and present images, text and sounds, arranged in a two hundred and seventy degree arc extending upwards at about a forty-five degree angle. I couldn’t see the side nearest me, but on the wall behind Gabriel I could see images of UNPOL units on the Moon.

“We’re safe,” said Gabriel, noticing my look and glancing at the screen. “We could stay here for another decade and they wouldn’t find us, but we have to get you back and in position if we’re going to stop the carnage that Sir Thomas is planning. That is if you will help? I don’t think I’ve ever formally asked. I apologize, of course, but I just assumed.”

“I’m glad you assumed – please don’t apologize. You were right to. Go ahead and tell me what he’s planning.”

“Sit back, relax and put those on,” said Gabriel, nodding at a set of earphones on the arm of my Siteazy and reaching for his own on the panel next to his feet. I laid back in the chair, put the earphones on, and a screen appeared over my waist, while the sound of Gabriel talking filled my ears.

“Sir Thomas is part of a select group of individuals who regard themselves as the elite of the universe. This is in fact true, if you accept the concept of elitism. By definition entry criteria for this group defines it as elite: you must be of the highest Intelligence Score - over one hundred and forty five - and have the most accumulated wealth and position of influence to gain entry. You also need to be totally ruthless, coldly logical, and entirely selfish. We call them the Hawks, they call us Doves.

“The term ‘WarHawk’ was first used in 1812 to describe a group of congressman in the twelth Congress of the United States who advocated war against the empire of Great Britain in 1812. It wasn’t until the early 1900s, however, that the current confederation of Hawks was born, in a small farmhouse in Brittany, France. The ten men and two women who attended that meeting came together as a consequence of the first peace conference held during the previous year and the resulting Hague Convention.