James Swallow - Icarus Effect

Something was happening; Janus's images were moving in synchrony with the digital processors built into her artificial eyes. It was like a switch flipping inside her mind; and she saw – the skyline of a city made of tiers, fires raging, and weapons discharges sparkling in the twilight, chaos, and disorder rising like a tide – crowds of panicked people desperately trying to flee hordes of crazed rioters, all of them augmented, all of them mad with wild fury – a wall of video screens filled with a storm of screaming, hissing static, and before them an enhancile woman collapsing to her knees, tearing at herself in crazed agony – orbiting above the Earth, a communications satellite shutting down, lights dimming, dish antenna retracting. Then video screens, holograms, advertising billboards, cell phones, televisions, computer monitors, all of them showing the same message in bright red letters – NO SIGNAL NO SIGNAL NO SIGNAL – a field of crosses, made from machine parts and cybernetic limbs, behind a sunrise over barren grassland. In the distance, a string of fallen power lines- -a ghost town of fallen buildings and empty streets-a dead future

It ended as quickly as it had started, and Anna stumbled, suddenly robbed of her balance. Her eyes throbbed and her skull ached. The woman rubbed at the skin of her face and it was hot to the touch. She glared up at the screen, which had returned to its neutral aspect.

"What the hell… did you do to me?" Kelso was familiar with strobe-effect crowd-control systems, and she wondered if Janus had used something similar on her, the pulse-image stream casting some kind of soporific effect through her optics. She felt weak and nauseated.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disorient you," came the reply. "But the data is only sketchy. It is only the impression of a possibility. It's difficult to comprehend in a more linear fashion. Try to breathe deeply. Normalize your heartbeat. You're not injured, believe me."

Anna glared at the screen. "You're lucky you're not standing right here in front of me…" She trailed off, her stomach tightening.

"I'm sorry " Janus repeated. "But do you understand now? Did you see?" She took a shuddering breath. "I'm starting to, I think."

There was movement behind her, and she turned to see Lebedev enter the tent. He had a curious look on his face, as if he realized he had intruded on something private. "Is everything all right?"

"Fine," Anna bit out. "Are you looking for me?"

He nodded, sparing Janus's screen a quick look. "We have a problem. D-Bar and my people have gone through the contents of the flash drive you brought to us. There's a lot of material there, but what we really want exists in a subpartition that we cannot access. The key to the Killing

Floor is inside that thing, if only we can crack it open. But it is protected with multiple-layer firewalls and a kill-switch. If we try to brute-force it, the drive will erase itself."

Anna folded her arms. "I can't help you with that. Ron Temple was the only one who knew the codes for his subnet, and the Tyrants killed him right in front of me." She turned to the screen. "Can't you do something? I thought Juggernaut's hackers were the best of the best?"

"Even we have our limits " admitted Janus. "I've been watching D-Bar's attempts to crack the device. He won't be successful. To penetrate the subpartition, we need a connection to an active Tyrant computer server. It is as if the first lock nestles inside a second. Without both, it won't open."

"Then we're no better off than we were a day ago…" Lebedev said, his expression turning stormy.

"There has to be some way!" Anna retorted. "After everything I went through for those damn files, we can't just write this off!"

The ghost-image in the screen shifted slightly. "There's another solution " said the hacker, after a few long moments of silence.

"Explain," said Lebedev.

"It will be here within the hour."

They waited at the dockside, and Kelso scanned the surface of the shipping channel. The water was murky, patched with rainbows of fuel oil and slicks of floating trash. Out in the middle of the vast canal, huge robot cargo ships without conning towers or portholes sailed silently toward the docks, icebergs of steel emblazoned with the names of the corporations that owned them.

Beneath the turgid waters, something stirred, coming closer, making ripples into waves as it rose up from the gloom.

"There!" Powell called out, pointing with a slender cyberarm. He was one of the New Sons, and from what Anna had been able to gather from watching him interact with Lebedev, the man had some degree of authority in the group. He carried himself with a swagger, and she saw prison tattoos peeking out from under the collar of his body armor. His men came quickly to the quay and took up firing positions; they were armed with an assortment of rifles, everything from twenty-year-old Heckler amp; Koch assault weapons, through to the modern MAO submachine guns that had supplanted the old AK-47 as the signature firearm of rebellions the world over.

Lebedev frowned at the river as the water churned and a shape broke the surface. Anna saw a steel spine and plates of anechoic polymer as the vessel rose into the sunlight.

D-Bar craned his neck to get a better look. "It's an autonomous trawler sub… Like, the little brother of the big computer-controlled cargo barges." Fleets of similar unmanned ships, deployed from carriers in the Atlantic, plumbed the depths for shoals of fish driven from the higher waters by the effects of pollution. "Our buddy Janus must have reprogrammed this one, split it off, and sent it here."

A hatch opened on the dorsal hull, the plates retracting backward, and the stink of wet, rotting fish billowed out to assail them.

Powell nodded to one of his men. "Check it."

Gingerly, the man dropped from the concrete dock onto the top of the bobbing trawler and approached the opening. It was dark inside, and

Anna couldn't make out anything. Powell's man snapped on a flashlight clipped beneath the barrel of his rifle and aimed it inside. "What am I looking for?" He stepped into the open hatch, grimacing at the smell. "I don't-"

Without a moment to cry out, the man suddenly vanished, pulled from sight by something inside the trawler. Anna heard a rattling thud from within, and a moment later, Powell's man was thrown back out of the open hatch, arms pinwheeling as he fell into the dirty water. D-Bar swore and backed away from the canal's edge.

The upper torso of a stocky, muscular figure emerged from the hatch, aiming the rifle back at the dock. Anna caught a glimpse of a grimy, weary face glaring down the weapon's iron sights.

Powell and the others all immediately took aim. Lebedev shook his head. "No, no!" he cried. "Put your guns down! Put them down!"

Anna could see that Powell wasn't convinced, but he lowered his assault rifle and his men did the same; still, they kept their fingers close to the triggers, ready to snap back to a firing stance in a heartbeat.

"Where is this?" called the man on the trawler. His accent was rough, British.

"Port of Baltimore," Lebedev replied. "We were told to expect you. We have a mutual friend."

"Let me guess, a ghost named Janus, yeah?" He let the rifle's muzzle fall a little. "Hell of a thing."

That was when Anna got her first good look at the man, and she gasped. "I know him! He's one of them, a Tyrant! I saw him at Temple's house

– "

Suddenly the guns were coming back up. "What is this?" Powell demanded.

"Stop!" Lebedev took a step forward. "We were told-"

"You might sign a lot of checks for us, but I have the military authority," Powell snapped, cutting him off. "Pardon me if I don't take the promises of a phantom hacker as gospel. This smells like a setup."