Chapter 14
The sun was just rising over the back hills as Jack came into Oberon. He was riding at a reasonable speed, not overly fast, but not slow enough to arouse unwanted attention. The sign on the roadside announced the town’s sincere welcome, and advised him the 500 people residing there couldn’t wait to make his stay relaxing and energising. Somehow he thought they would probably miss the mark with him.
He passed a large re-vegetation project. There were quite a few scattered around now. They looked like an Oasis, full of plant livery, birds and flowing water. The water was bored up from deep underground, all run by a new technology that mimicked osmosis and had zero net energy consumption. It was a quaint idea, but after driving through miles of desert, it would take another few hundred years to turn things around.
The GPS showed the property being two streets up and three across. Jack figured the bike and helmet would make his arrival well known to anyone the Wing’Tan had made available to knock him off. He decided to ride around the back of the local superette and stash the bike. As he went around the block he could see the perfect spot. It was only one block over the back of the neighbouring fence, and the location would appear on Sat to look like he was going into the shop. As long as they weren’t on live camera now, he’d have five to ten minutes to get to the house, check it out and get the hell out of the town, if necessary.
He walked into the shop and bought a throw-away phone, calling Sin back while in the shop. The phone rang for two seconds again. “Yo, Sin, it’s me, Jack, listen and do what I ask as fast as you can.”
“Got your message Jack, what do you need?”
“I’m in Oberon, you home?”
“Yeah, that’s ten minutes from here if I don’t mess around.”
“Stop messing around then. I have a bike and helmet with Biotronics systems, I need them blocked up harder than a dick at a strip club or my brain will be fried in twenty minutes. Location is where this phone is.”
“Got you Jack, I’m en route now. I have Angel scanning the orbiting Sats to see who’s on you, live feed coming through. Wait. You have one un-registered Xenon-class satellite locked onto your gear. It’s got heavy freq jammers, even photon jammers blocking anything within a thousand kilometres of it in orbit. I found it because of that, who are these dumb pricks?”
“Wing’Tan.”
“Jesus Christ Jack, what the hell have you got yourself into now?”
“A little bit of deep crap, but I’m going to go sort it out now. I’m going to a safe house, probably getting killed, but assuming Lady Luck has one last roll for me, I’ll need that bike clean in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Honey, you are the best. See you soon.”
Jack bought a couple of nano-lite bars and scoffed them on the way to the counter. He’d probably need all the energy he could get in the next half hour, natural or not. Paying at the counter, he checked his watch and ran his hand over his bio-pager. He had almost forgot he had it, the events of the last few days made the last few years of his life seem like a distant memory. He walked out of the store, and went through the plan in his head.
As Jack walked down to the corner of the street, he saw a heavily modified Ferrari Destino decelerating hard and pulling in behind the superette. There were no windows and no plates. Sin had style for sure, but incognito didn’t seem to fit her modus operandi.
The property looked ordinary enough. There was a low, white picket fence, mown front lawn (by auto laser-cutters by the look of the two chrome units at each corner of the lawn), and a single storey concrete house with minimal windows and no letterbox. He guessed the owners didn’t want a lot of mail.
There were no cars on either side of the street, but there was a man walking his way about half a block down, and a lady watering the garden across the road. She looked up as Jack waved and appeared to take no care to his presence.
He walked up the driveway as though he were meant to be there, there was no point looking suspicious now, whoever was watching him had eyes on him the moment he turned the corner.
Approaching the door there was no movement in or around the house. He stepped onto the porch and looked at the opening. There was no door handle, just a palm-scanner. He pressed his palm to it, and a soft female voice welcomed him by name and suggested he enter. The door clicked open, and he pushed it all the way in. So far, so good; Jack took a step inside, and no gunshots. Maybe he was just being paranoid.
As he walked in he could see the décor was fairly muted. Polished concrete floors, white-stained timber wall lining with the occasional fabric drape, and bio-lighting throughout. He slipped the bio-taser out of the pack into his left hand.
Walking down the corridor he paused as he passed each doorway and glanced in. The house was impeccably clean and had a fresh smell to it. Certainly not what he expected from your average safe house. Well, what he thought an average safe house was from the movies of the 1990s he’d grown to love.
He turned into the kitchen near the rear of the house. It had a door opening onto a back porch, which he could see backed onto a neighbouring fence, and the neon sign of the superette beyond that.
There was a coffee percolator on the bench. Of all the tech they had these days, Jack could never work out how the hell the bubble-heads never worked out how to make coffee as good as a machine from the previous century.
“Don’t move Jack, keep your hands right where I can see them.”
Turning with his hands up, Jack could see a woman holding a Pulse gun towards his head. She was about five foot ten, tall, with dark, short cropped hair, and dressed in a tactical suit. No matter how many women he saw, he just had a thing for women in uniform. The gun vanished for a moment as he visually undressed her.
“And who the hell are you?”
“Winter Summers, National Defence Bureau, I’m taking you in for attempted murder of a US senator.”
“Winter Summers? What the hell! Your parents hated you, didn’t they?”
“OK smartarse, I’ve copped that for the last thirty years of my life, I’m a little wired, and would just as soon like to shoot you as take you in, so please be the next pig to mock me.” She gave her gun a slight wave to remind him of the situation he was in.
“Hey, my mama told me never to mock a lady with a big, nasty gun pointed at you.”
“Smart lady.”
“Not really, some bugger with a gun shot her while on parole. Some bugger you arseholes should have dealt with, so excuse me if I dispense with the pleasantries.”
“I’m not a counsellor sweetheart, but there are plenty of them at the detention facility you’re going to.”
“Would it help if I told you I was set up, and I’m innocent? That the Wing’Tan were behind it, and they’ve framed me.”
“Funny, we had a call from them telling us they had proof you were a loose cannon, and that you had gone after the senator after cutting one of their staff into pieces, before blowing up the senators property.”
“Well, honey, believe what you will, but this whole fiasco is much bigger than you know. You’re walking into a world of trouble.”
Just as the agent was reaching for her retaining clips, the coffee machine beeped it was ready. The agent glimpsed at it for a second, which was more time than Jack needed. He flicked his hand around and fired the bio-taser at her.
The agent immediately threw her hand up and vomited hard across the room, while falling in a heap on the floor. She was shaking uncontrollably, curled into the foetal position, appearing unable to move. Jack didn’t wait another second to move, he ran for the back door, scaled the fence and bolted for the parking lot.
As he ran for the bike he heard two voices shouting from behind him. He didn’t stop to hear them, just ran past the bike, grabbed the helmet and shoved it on. He had assumed that the people behind him also had Pulse guns, and so Jack ran through the next sequence of e
vents in his head.
TLM had picked up on his commands as soon as the helmet came on, the EMP pulse ignited disabling the assailant’s guns. As they also passed the bike the dart auto targeting system engaged, Jack slid to the ground as Betty fired and took both of the men out.
Jack was still sliding as he looked back and saw both men pierced through the chest and torso at least half a dozen times each in less than a second. Jack got up off the ground and quickly checked both of the men for identification. There was none, these guys weren’t Government. Judging by the tattoos on their necks, he was picking Aleutians. What the hell were they doing here? He wasn’t about to muck around and see if they had any more mates, this day was already going to crap without more party crashers.
As he pulled out onto the main road, Jack saw Cindy sitting in a lay-by. Pulling out in front of him, she accelerated fast. He followed through the twisty country road, which was really little more than a track. The road was lined with pine trees, all trimmed for harvesting. Looking around, he noticed a lack of side roads or driveways, not good if he had to make a quick escape.
As they neared the end of the road, Cindy pulled off the road onto an unmarked path, which Jack may have missed had he not seen her go down there. They were now weaving between the trees on a narrow sealed road covered in pine needles obscuring most of the asphalt.
Cindy stopped in the middle of the path, and a scanner swept past both vehicles. She got out, and Jack shut down Betty and took off his helmet.
Walking up to him, Sin gave him a big hug and whispered in his ear, “Sorry, I had no choice.”
Jack pushed her away and turned for his bike, but it was too late, there was a man in a dark suit standing beside the bike with a Colt Special pointed directly at him. “Take it easy Jack, I don’t want to shoot you, but I will without hesitation if you take another step.”
“Who the hell are you? I saw you the other day with some other nugget stalking me.”
“Special Agent Blake Corten. We need to talk. I’m going to put my gun away, but believe me, if you try and run or take me out, it will be the last thing you do.”
The sincerity in his voice was not lost on Jack, and the subtle shake of Sin’s head when he looked her way was enough to know he wasn’t messing around. “What the hell is going on Sin?”
“Sorry Jack, this guy was at your bike when I arrived, he identified me straight away, and it was talk to you, or go away forever.”
“So you sold me out?”
“No, he’s not on official business, he’s been after Wing’Tan, and knew you were tangled with them.”
“So, Sonny,” Jack said looking at Blake, “You’re not here as a cop, then what the hell are you here for?”
As Blake began to speak, Jack tried to get the upper hand and spun to his right to get Blake off guard. As soon as he began to move, Blake countered the other way. Jack started to swing his right arm to hit him with a sharp cross, but before he even got past his shoulder his arm seared with pain as it was connected by a flying knee that came out of nowhere. As he bent down he felt a sharp pain between his shoulders, then nothing.
As he came to, Jack realised he wasn’t in the forest anymore, he was on a couch looking out over a cliff with nothing but scrub and forest as far as he could see. His vision was still a bit blurry, but his hearing was back, there were two voices behind him, Cindy and Blake talking. He decided to play possum for a minute and see what they were on about.
“When did they start this?” Cindy was talking softly but still quite audible.
“We don’t know. What we do know is that Wing’Tan have used Autohacking as a vehicle to recruit greater risk takers. The fees for their jobs buy the best hackers, techies and gear heads that can’t get legitimate jobs. We know they use runners as decoys to hide their other enterprises, but think they also use them as hit men. Your friend, for example.”
“No way, Jack wouldn’t willingly be with these people.”
“Are you sure Cindy? He fits the profile, ex-military, problems with authority, no family ties.”
“Say what you want, but I know him.” Cindy’s voice was starting to get agitated.
“It’s true Sin, I’m in with them, but not by choice.”
Jack got up off the couch and walked over to the table. He was a little wonky in his walking and almost passed out as he was sitting. Cindy grabbed his arm and helped him to the chair.
“What the hell, Jack. What’s wrong with you?”
“They saved me. This pack of buggers tried to ambush me, no idea why, I was all but killed. Wing’Tan intercepted and grabbed me before they could, and fixed me up good as new.”
Jack looked over at Blake and scowled. Looking back to Cindy, his face softened again. She looked better than he remembered. “So why stay, why not get the hell out of there?”
“Because I needed them to get what I was after. To get the hellers that set me up, and get my life back.” He turned back to Blake, ready to jump the table if necessary. He could feel his pulse rising just being near a Fed.
“Well Jack,” said Blake with a subtle condescending tone, “it looks like you already had your targets right in front of you.”
“Until you nearly took my damned head off!”
“No, before that. I’m afraid the Wing’Tan have played you. We never set up a sting, we were going to stop you just before the drop, a half hour after they hit you. By the time we realised the incident was you, they were well gone, and there was a hell of a mess to tidy up. The truth is, it was Wing’Tan that staged the whole scenario. It seems they needed you for something, and simply asking wasn’t going to cut it.”
Jack tried to absorb what he was being told, then turned to Cindy who gave a slow nod. “Those dirty buggers, now it makes sense. Dammit, how stupid can I be?”
“What is it Jack?”
“My last job was to take out a piece of tech they said a senator had confiscated during a bungled trade with one of their runners. It seemed excessive, but I had to go in and destroy a bike in front of them, they said to balance the scales of negotiation.”
“I guess you’re talking about Senator John Mac,” replied Blake.
It was a rhetorical question, but Jack answered. “Yeah, I figured you guys were onto it. Seemed like a hell of a response you guys made.”
“Well when we get tipped off that a Senator is being assassinated, we kind of respond to that.”
“What the hell. No, I didn’t kill him.” Jack was absolutely stunned by the revelation. When he left, it was little more than a minor pyrotechnics display and some pissed off yobbos.
“Well someone knocked him off, and right now you’re Public Enemy number one.” Blake sat back in his chair; there was a silence between the three of them. Each was absorbing the information that had been shared, trying to work out if they were all telling the truth. It was hard for any of them to believe, as this action, if true, was far above the normal reach of a gang.
“Stuff it, this is all Wing’Tan, they’ve got something going on, I know it. I’m going back to the cities to find out.” Jack was about to get out of his seat, but decided to sit down again, his head was throbbing.
“You may be right, Jack. But, if we are going to find out what and put an end to them, you have to stay well under the radar for the meantime.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
“Cindy has agreed to help me take them down, and you’re the one we need to pull this together.”
“No Sin, stay out of this!” Jack looked over at Cindy with a hard stare as he stood up, his head felt clearer suddenly.
“Screw you Jack, I was in this when you came into my life and then left again. Besides, I owe Agent Corten, he kept me out of Staton-damned-Penn when you left me. Everything you see around me wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t accepted his help.”
“Oh, so you two got something going then?” Jack’s indignant tone matched the
red colouring now in his face as he hissed between his teeth.
“Don’t be a child, Jack. We have a business arrangement, pure and simple.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“I get him the intel and contacts that he can’t get from the regular channels. We’re even-cards after this deal, and you can think whatever the hell you want, but that’s the way it is.”
The three of them were all standing; the tension in the air was so elevated if anyone lit a match the roof would have been blown off the house. Jack didn’t like the way things were going, and he certainly didn’t like Sin being this angry at him, she was the one person he had held on to as a rock in his life, whether he had seen her in the last decade or not.
“OK, so Blake, why are you here? Why not just go to the Feds with your info and get a team together?”
“I have a team, I have resources, what I don’t have is a leak-proof team, or clean resources. Someone in the building is messing with the case, tipping people off, messing with gear. Obviously Wing’Tan has someone in there, and I don’t have time to mess around finding out who it is.”
“So what’s the plan then, and how the hell did you get to be so damn fast?”
“Last question first, I got nano based DNA enhancement. It was a gift from my father, a friend of his was working on new technology.”
“Sounds like something my dad would do. Don’t suppose you know Doctor Xavier Lee?”
“Lee?” said Cindy with a slanted look at him.
“I took my mother’s maiden name.”
Blake looked at Jack, apparently trying to figure out if he was being played. “Doctor Lee was my father’s associate professor. They worked together on many projects over the years.”
“Well ain’t that something”, Jack said with a comical voice to his statement, “Two professors as fathers, one kid a cop, the other a filthy crook!”
“You’re being too hard on yourself honey,” said Cindy, walking over and putting her hand on his shoulder. “You’re one of the cleanest crooks I know.” She gave him a peck on the cheek before going to the kitchen bench.
For the next hour they thrashed out the roughest plan any of them could remember concocting. It was a hack job, but they didn’t have time to stuff around. They had three things going for them, a tech genius, a Fed agent, and the slickest pilot to hit two wheels. Well, that was the humorous edge they tried to put on it anyway. Anything to avoid the tension, of what was, in all likelihood, a waltz into a nightmare.