Charles Stross - Halting State

Liz, and you’ve got to give her credit for keeping a level head, is having none of it. “Then you’d better tell me precisely who you are and what the hell you think you’re doing here. Because right now you are on my patch, and you are breaking the speed limit, violating at least three different firearms regulations, and if you don’t pull over on my request, I’ll have to add kidnapping two police officers to the charge sheet.”

You carefully move your left hand to your belt and make sure there’s nothing in the way of your wee tinny of whooping gas. Because if the skipper puts it like that…

“You have nothing to worry about,” says the spook. “My credentials.” He pulls out a passport with a white cover, then a fancy ID badge. Liz takes them.

“You know damn well I can’t verify these while I’m off-line,” she snaps. “The name’s right, but how do you expect me to confirm you’re the real thing? Tell me, Kemal , assuming that’s your real name, where are you taking us?”

The man in the back finishes screwing the stock onto his weapon—it looks like a cross between a sawn-off shotgun and a paintball gun—and puts it down on the case.

“It relates to your current case, unfortunately. We’re going to visit a warehouse in Leith,” says the head spook. “My colleagues have already instructed your SO6 to seal off the area while we raid it. You are here to witness and act as local liaison because you are already familiar with this case. My colleagues in the next car”—he nods at the vehicle immediately behind you—“are going to proceed to a collocation centre in the Gyle in order to shut down the main backbone between here and the south. The fourth car is going to visit the emergency control centre and serve a crisis note. Their job is to shut down all communications in the target area. Finally—”

“You’re going to what ?” Liz explodes.

“Finally, the Royal Danish Air Force have kindly consented to let us use one of their E7C aircraft, assigned to ERRF for infowar duties and counter-terrorism support. In case the target is defended.”

By this point your jaw’s hanging open; you’ve just about forgotten the can of Mace, or your indignation about being more or less kidnapped. “What’s in the warehouse?” you ask.

Kemal—if that’s his name—leans back. Now he’s the one who looks like he’s had a sleepless night. “Your investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Nigel MacDonald, and the report of your findings in his apartment, attracted our attention. Have you identified the body in your ongoing murder investigation from the graveyard on Constitution Street yet?”

“No.” Liz looks grim. “If you know something—”

“I am sorry I cannot identify the body for you, but I can definitely assure you that it does not belong to Mr. MacDonald. And your speculation about a blacknet, possibly owned by the Moscow mafiya , has been noted.”

“You’d better explain.”

“The equipment you discovered in Mr. MacDonald’s apartment was cloned by your ICE officers. When they logged the details of what they found on NCIS, we were alerted. We cannot tell you what the equipment was for, but two similar installations have been recovered in Prague and Warsaw in the past four months. The installation appears to be operated by a non-state actor for illegal purposes—”

“Are you talking terrorism here?” Liz interrupts.

Kemal’s expression is stony. “Life would be a lot simpler if we were dealing with a cell of simple-minded religious obsessives with a grudge against the modern world. I’m afraid it may be something much worse—”

“Because this is my city you’re talking about, and I happen to have a duty to protect its inhabitants and uphold the law. Is public safety at stake? I need to know!”

“Not”—Kemal pauses as the car speeds up, hurtling uphill to merge with the morning traffic heading for the city by-pass—“hmm. That question is difficult to answer. I think it’s safe to say that there is no immediate threat, and there are no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons involved; but failure to isolate the warehouse and impose a total communications blockade will, at the very least, allow some extremely dangerous information to escape. There is also some uncertainty as to whether the warehouse is occupied, and if so, whether the people inside it are armed. Our worst-case scenario is that we are facing a foreign Special Forces unit with emplaced defences and demolition charges—but if that’s the case, we’re fucked anyway.”

“Who’s fucked? Us? Your department?”

“No, Inspector: the European Union.”

Either the car’s air-conditioning is fierce, or your skin’s crawling. “Why are you dragging us into this, then?” you demand, your voice rising. “We’re the Polis, not Mission bloody Impossible!”

“You’re already involved, and we want to keep this as quiet as possible,” Kemal explains. “You will need these phones and glasses, please put them on immediately.”

“Why—”

“Your CopSpace has been compromised. So has your TETRA network, but at least you can dispatch backup by voice control. Please? This has already been arranged for. We need you tied into our grid before the operation commences.”

He passes you a pair of heavy, black-rimmed military spectacles and a ruggedized phone. You make eye contact with Liz, in the mirror, and she nods, minutely: You put the glasses on and boot them. There’s a brief flicker as they check your irises against their preloaded biometrics, then the world outside the BMW is drenched in unfamiliar information all the way to the horizon. You glance to your left, out to the north, where a green diamond is orbiting above the Kingdom of Fife. A quick zoom shows you that it’s real, a lumbering wide-body airliner in military grey, the knobbly outlines of high-bandwidth antennae studding its flanks like barnacles on a whale. Or at least, these goggles have been programmed to think it’s real. Once you accept someone else’s augmented reality, there’s really no telling, is there? For all you and Liz can tell until you’re plugged back into the comforting panopticon of CopSpace, this might just be some kind of elaborate live-action role-playing game.

The convoy is past the gyratory and heading towards Queensferry Road way too fast, probably racking up speeding tickets at a rate best measured in euros per second. All the traffic lights are switching to green in front of you as the steering wheel twitches from side to side: Red info bubbles above anonymous grey roadside boxes inform you that they’ve been 0wnZ0red by the Royal Danish Air Force. You rest your hand on the wheel, and it shivers like a live animal. “What do you expect to find?” asks Liz. “And who is the adversary?”

“Hopefully, just a warehouse full of servers. Maybe a satellite dish or two.” Kemal is soothing. “I’d like nothing more than for this to be a false alert. In which case, we shall make our apologies, pay our speeding fines, and be on our way without further ado.”

Liz snorts. “That’ll be the day.” She reaches for her phone: “Now I’ve got to call the chief—”

“Not until we arrive. As I said, your terrestrial trunked radio network has been penetrated.”

Despite the late-night chase through the darkened streets of the New Town, you sleep like a log and awake refreshed and ready to face a new day. You spend a brisk half-hour in the health suite, then shower and hit the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. Chris and the others have cut and run back to the big smoke already: Well, tough. You’ve got Jack and his magic code to give you some leads, and you’ve got access to Hayek’s offices, which is enough to be getting on with.