Clay slowly sat up and picked up the case to inspect it. The neuro-seal had been removed, as had his tracking device. He wiped the wet snow from his face and fumbled for the transmitter to tell Ness he was okay. It sat just out of arm’s reach, crushed into small, useless pieces. Retirement was looking better and better every time he woke up. He had almost no information to go on. His surveillance target had been killed in front of him, his mission objective had been effortlessly taken away from him by a ninja, and a 55-kilo drug addict had just knocked him cold for trying to be nice to her.
An aircar slid around the corner and stopped in front of him. The side hatch opened, and he saw Ness in the driver’s position, looking down at him, eyebrows arched in amazement. “Seriously, Clay?”
Clay struggled to his feet and fell into the aircar. The hatch silently closed, and Ness sped off toward the financial district. He allowed a few moments to go by before finally speaking. “Well, she did give me the case I asked for,” he said, opening it for the first time. It revealed only an insulating cushion with a distinctly recognizable cylindrical indentation in the middle, approximately twelve centimeters long and two centimeters in diameter.
“Looks like it was a datarod,” Ness said, nodding. “So Keraunos is just data. That’s not a huge surprise.”
“Locke risked his life, hand-carrying something he could have simply transmitted? I don’t buy it.”
“Well, regardless, I sent Division a status update while you were dancing with your new girlfriend there. You have new orders: Retrieve Keraunos, eliminate anyone with knowledge of the project, and return to Pilatus Base.”
Clay froze. “Seriously?”
“Yes. You don’t have a problem with this, do you? I thought you were a professional.”
Clay stared at the empty case. “I am a professional. I have a problem with the fact that they’ve obviously learned something about Keraunos, something significant enough to change mission parameters and order the deaths of foreign nationals, but they won’t tell me what it is.”
“What?”
“I think they know what it is,” Clay muttered, then sat up. “Division started suspecting Locke after the factory on Titan blew up. They found the money trail suggesting it was a front operation. Then Locke starts traveling to visit competitors on a dozen non-Directorate worlds and finally ends up here.”
“I’m not following, Clay.”
“We assumed he’s trying to build an empire and is running around recruiting people to partner with him, killing everyone who won’t sign on. What if it’s the opposite? What if he was running, and trying to use Keraunos as trade for protection? What if someone was killing everyone who offered to protect him? He thought it was Sol Directorate. He seemed genuinely surprised I was trying to save him that night. What if the goal was to get him here, on Notosia all along?”
Ness nodded slowly. “So, we just need to figure out who hired Hei Gezi.”
“For that we need the girl. At least we know what we’re dealing with. A datarod. That datarod could contain anything from a simple formula to a diagram to an entire synthetic intelligence matrix. If we had any idea what was on it, we might be able to narrow down suspects with that.”
“Well, the tracker is in a suite on the 89th floor of the Hotel Fontaine. Not the safest place for someone running from every criminal and terrorist organization on the planet to go.”
“Why not?”
“The hotel is well-known as a front for Tachibana’s Shadow. They run gambling, prostitution, drugs, and some of the darker stuff. They mostly stay out of the government and other organizations’ business, but happily cater to their vices and take their money. Because of that, the Hotel is considered neutral territory. Probably every faction will have some presence there at any time, even if it’s a low-level lackey. The only rule of the house is that no business be transacted on-premise, but I doubt anyone would bat an eye if either one of you were gunned down on the front steps.”
“Conversely, Tachibana’s Shadow would be just the type of well-connected people who would pay a premium for Keraunos.”
Ness shook her head. “She probably just slipped the tracker in the pocket of some businessman to get us off her back.”
“She could have killed me in that alley or her ninja friend could have snapped my neck in Locke’s office last night with far less effort. No, she wants me there for some reason. Maybe she’s taking me up on my offer, after all.” Clay fumbled with the case, looking for a hidden compartment, false bottom, or other clue. Pulling out the insulation cushion, he found a small square of thin metal with a Locke Industries logo embossed on one side. On a hunch, he flipped on the scanner in his optical implant and studied it. “Oh, there we go,” he whispered, holding the square up for Ness to see.
“What’s that?”
“I have no idea. It was hidden under the insulation. It looks normal enough, but under scan, it’s tagged with all kinds of symbols and images magnetically and in multiple inks that don’t register on the visible spectrum.”
“What kinds of symbols?”
“Diagrams, pictographs, lots of random letters and numbers in a dozen languages. Completely random stuff.” He turned it over in his hands several times. “Doesn’t seem to be enough here to be significant information, though there may be molecular-level coding that I can’t detect with this implant. If I had to guess, I’d say at least part of it is a one-way activation key or cipher.”
“So, it can decrypt the datarod?”
Clay nodded. “Yes, it’s probably required to access it at all.”
“That means what they have is completely worthless without it.”
“They had the case for an entire night. They found the tracker. They wouldn’t have missed this.” Clay thought for a moment. “She wants me to have this. She’s got a plan.”
“Pity we don’t,” Ness said. “So, she delivers the case, they can’t access the data as it is, and they can’t kill her until they learn where the cipher is. So, you’re … what? … a life insurance policy?”
“How would that work? She goes up there, waits for me to arrive, then points me out and makes a fast getaway.” Clay fumbled to put the insulation layer back in the case and closed it, then extracted the locking interface and connected it to the neural jack behind his ear. He cleared his mind for a moment and then thought of the one mental image that would unlock the case as he activated the scan button. The case chimed, confirming the seal had reactivated. “Well, at least they can’t kill me. I need to be alive to unlock the case, and they can’t force or drill it without destroying the cipher.”
“How did she and Hei Gezi get it open then?”
“Locke was bleeding out, but he wasn’t dead yet. Maybe Hei Gezi tricked him into thinking the unlock image, or persuaded him to open it willingly.”
“Or maybe there’s some ninja trick for hacking these things you’ll learn as they’re slowly bleeding you to death. You have so much fun to look forward to.” Ness said as she set the car down in front of the main entrance to the Hotel Fontaine.
Clay slid the case under the seat and opened the door to the car. “Keep circling the area. I have a feeling I may be in a hurry when I get back.”
“Listen to me, you are about to walk into the lion’s den with raw meat hanging out of your pockets. Are you seriously going to play her game right now?”
“That’s not my Plan-A, no.”
“I’m more worried about her Plan-A.”
“Listen. My orders are to get Keraunos and eliminate the people who know about it. That means a) I either need to know where Keraunos is, and b) I need to know who hired Hei Gezi to retrieve it. Either way, she has both answers, and she’s telling me exactly where she is right now.”
“Yes, that’s the black and white Terran spy playbook. I keep telling you though, this is Notosia. You’ve got to unlearn a few things.” Ness rolled her eyes. Clay exited the car and walked up to the hotel’s main entrance.
© 2024 Darrin Snider. All Rights Reserved.
