Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2) Read online

  The computer specialist shut his eyes and pretended he didn’t understand what Reywin was going on about. It didn’t work. He couldn’t believe his life had dwindled down to this thin layer of madness so quickly. “Please tell me you activated all the jammers.”

  “Is that important?” Reywin rocked onto her haunches.

  “Is that … fuck, you’d better be kidding, Rey.” Bolo shot to his feet and ran over to the still warm Quantum receiver. “Nobody can decrypt a Q-call, but if they’re looking for one, they can sure as shit track our location.”

  “Bolobo.”

  Bolo stopped and turned around, fully expecting a shot in the head. Reywin was completely over the edge now, thanks in no small part to the amount of stimulants she was wolfing down to stay awake. Having to kill her girlfriend probably hadn’t been very much fun, either.

  Reywin tilted her head to one side, then the other, then stared madly at her partner. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Of course, I used the jammers. Moron.”

  “Well that’s a relief.” They’d been on the run a full day, narrowly avoiding capture by The Palazzo security teams twice already. It seemed they weren’t willing to let the fact that their guest was no longer under surveillance slide and they were really really good at their jobs. Whoever Sa Ute was, the man trained his teams to perfection.

  If Bolo managed to get away without dying –sadly, he included being offed by a crazed partner as a requirement for survival- he was going look into getting a job at The Palazzo. Next to the professionals in the Ministry of Defense, the squads working that hotel were spookily good at their jobs. Plus, working in the private sector undoubtedly meant better pay and benefits to boot. They might even spring to have his injuries fixed; he was easily better than any of the hackers The Palazzo had on staff.

  Bolo cleared his throat and shook his head clear of cobwebs. “You say the Big Bad Man is coming? The assassin sent by our … by the person …”

  “By Jordan Bishop.” Rey flashed her conversation with Chadsik al-Taryin over. “Our ‘guest’ is not pleased that he’s being rerouted to a converted military landing strip for processing, Bolo. Garth is a crafty one. I don’t know how he learned about our side deal with Bishop or the assassin, but it’s obvious to me he blew up the spaceport to make our jobs harder.”

  Bolo didn’t take the bait, even though he seriously wanted to; Reywin wasn’t ever going to give up on her theory that Garth was the mastermind behind the whole thing, going so far as to pointedly ignore all the corroborating physical evidence pointing no further than Ashok Guillfoyle in order to support her ever-increasingly insane theories. This latest bit of madness she wanted to attribute to Garth gave the man the ability to manipulate people through psychic powers as well as flawless future-telling.

  He didn’t point out the stupidity of her claims for a simple reason. Their last argument on a side street had drawn the attention of a police cruiser, and it was very hard to hide the bodies of police officers in Central. The city was notoriously lacking in acceptable areas for corpse disposal. Sooner or later, those two bluecoats were going to be found and local authorities would begin the hunt for cop killers, something they did very well. “This is a big problem.”

  “While you were sleeping,” Reywin continued, disdaining Bolobo’s ridiculous understatement with a sneer, “I came up with the only possible way we’re going to be able to assist Chadsik al-Taryin.”

  Bolo was no slouch when it came to thinking like Reywin. They’d been working together for six and half years, and his superior officer was the sort of woman who wasn’t afraid to take risks. Big risks. He groaned. “It won’t work, Rey.”

  Reywin arched an eyebrow. “You can’t hack the cow?”

  “Of course I can hack Ministry of Offense, Reywin, that’s not the issue.” He gestured angrily to their diminished pile of hardware. “I hacked the cow when I was a fucking teenager, but I had the right fucking gear! Military servers are weighted down with more security protocols and semi-sentient avatars than Defense or Investigations combined, Reywin. With the crap we’ve got here, I don’t think I could hack my way into my own fucking prote. I’d need to … no. No. No way is that going to work. You’ve lost your shit.” He shook his head and stalked away from her, suddenly afraid that madness was a thing you could catch through prolonged exposure.

  Reywin flashed her plan to Bolo, knowing he’d be unable to resist. “Penzengraaf Military Base has been reactivated and is currently operating as a temporary spaceport for industrial shipments; its sister base, Densen Aerial Support Unit, thirty miles to the east of Penzengraaf, has been detailed to handle commercial and tourism. At the moment, they’re both running off the same netLINK trunks. Obviously, of the two, Densen is far less secure, which means two things for us. One, Chadsik al-Taryin is obviously going to be rerouted to PMB for processing because his vessel is, well, a ‘concern’ to planetary safety, to say the least.”

  “And two,” Bolobo interrupted, admiring the plan even as he hated it, “Densen ASU will have way less military personnel wandering around getting in our faces. If I can find an unsecure terminal, it’d be the work of half an hour for me to generate false identification codes sufficient enough for us to get onto Penzengraaf and take charge of processing al-Taryin.”

  Reywin popped another stim and started chewing rapidly. It was the only proper way to eat them; chew too slow and the taste made you gag and her stomach was already a vicious sea of chemicals. “I just knew you were smart enough to see the Big Plan, Sa Bolo. We need to get started right away.”

  Bolo stalled. He really needed more time to recover. At least a solid hour of sleep. It wasn’t too much to ask. “When is Chadsik slotted to arrive?”

  Reywin started packing up. “Not for four days or so. But …”

  “But what?” Bolobo was tired right through to his bones. No amount of money was worth the pain and suffering he was experiencing.

  “You didn’t think we’d be able to just waltz in day of and have everyone believe us, proper authorization or not, did you? We need to see and be seen, sa. We need everyone there to believe we belong there. Can’t do that by strolling in when an obvious assassin shows up.”

  “How obvious is obvious?” Bolo knew a few assassins. They looked like regular folk except they had the long stare and pretty much everything else you’d expect a murderer to have. That was the point. If you were an assassin and you looked like one, you could –should- expect to be a dead assassin fairly quickly in your career. Being obvious was the last thing you wanted.

  Reywin handed Bolo a pack. “Leave the rest of the gear. Won’t need it. As for obvious? Chadsik will be, well, shall we say … larger than life, even here.”

  Bolo -wondering quietly to himself and with the minimal amount of energy just in case Reywin had developed the ability to read minds along with her other psychoses- wanted to know why the guy with the wound in his arm was the one carrying an eighty kilo sack of weapons. He shuddered when Rey turned around slowly, arms on hips, tapping her fingers impatiently.

  She was mad as a hatter.

  When Spin Doctors Attack

  Every night before going to bed, Chairwoman Doans did one of two things: if schedules permitted, she and Vasily spent some stolen moments of privacy before crawling off to sleep, exhausted and satisfied. If Vasily was too busy –the OverCommander was dealing with Penzengraaf and Densen this evening, much to her chagrin- Alyssa preoccupied herself with going over the next morning’s itinerary. Much of the time a Chairperson’s itinerary from day to day was terribly predictable. Occasionally though –and especially with her introduction of a few Trinity-based governmental procedures- fallout from her decisions held repercussions for the entire system, provoking hotheads and revolutionary minded politicians to presume upon their standings to squeeze a thirty-second meeting out of her to plead their case.

  Today there had been no such drastic policy changes. Therefore, no brutally irritating meetings were scheduled.

&
nbsp; A boon, that; it was an irony that no one but her and Vasily saw that Latelyspace -a dictatorship strengthened by thousands of years of military control- was succumbing to the influence of democracy and no one seemed to notice, least of all the politicians. Those officials -who loathed her even as they missed the point of her dealings with Trinity - wasted precious time trying to trick or cajole her into changing her mind, never once realizing that the effort they spent doing so actually strengthened her position. In the old Regime, her underlings would have never put up with ‘scheduled meetings’. They’d’ve rushed her office en masse, a bloody coup before days end.

  It was an unpleasant fact that she appeared to be working feverishly to put an end to her political career, but Alyssa didn’t care. It was a carefully cultivated fallacy and would remain in play until it was no longer maintainable; she was loyal to the people regardless of their own particular loyalties, and if allowing her charges to believe she was a traitor ensured victory at the end, then so be it.

  Inevitably, they’d be shown how wrong they’d been, and every action she’d undertaken, every … belittling moment with those damnable representatives would be revealed as a part of something so grand, so wondrous their tiny little minds would burn. Then she’d be content. And smug. So very, very smug.

  Alyssa turned her mind back to the task at hand. Her chores over the next few days were the same as they’d been since the Port Disaster had collapsed on top of them all; meeting with the families of victims, explaining the legal procedures, and pointing out to the keener minded just how things had gone so terribly wrong. With the balance of a tightrope walker, Alyssa had thus far managed to keep Garth Nickels out of those discussions, though she knew from their haunted eyes that the surviving members were well aware that Garth Nickels had done what none other could. Many of them already had bank accounts full of money from the man’s donations, and she couldn’t help but feel that half the people she met with were going through the motions, satisfying some bizarre impulse to sit across from the most powerful woman in the solar system. Of those few, they’d left her offices with a grim cast to their faces, forcing home how dangerous Garth Nickels was; with a simple act of charity, he’d masterfully undermined the glorious Chair and it’s power.

  Satisfied that she had a comprehensive enough overview of her day’s schedule to spend some time in the morning eating breakfast instead of being harangued by staffers, Alyssa made to turn the lights off when a late entry to her docket slid itself neatly into place.

  The Chairwoman read the text with a growing sense of alarm. According to the one-line bulletin, she, the Chairwoman, was required to meet with the press concerning her relationship with Garth Nickels. Not only that, there was the expectation she address mounting concerns that she was after his money!

  There was only one person in the entire Universe with the courage, no, the audacity –not to mention the intelligence to manipulate the system this way- to log something like that.

  “Get me Alix. Now.” Alyssa snapped into her prote. Thirteen seconds later, Alixia van derTuppen answered her call.

  “Alyssa.” Alix purred, smiling broadly, cigarette dangling from her lip. “How are you, dear sister? I see you’re ready for bed.” Cattily, she pretended to look over her sister’s shoulder. “Where is your love slave tonight, I wonder? Working steadfastly at the spaceport, perhaps, or has he just gone out for ice cream?”

  Alyssa Doans and Alixia ‘van derTuppen’ did not get along well. If it weren’t for the fact that they were both supremely skilled at keeping secrets, their hatred would be the stuff of legend. Their aversion to another, blossomed in the soil of deceit, lies, and their dear, dear mother’s ruthlessness, bore darker and darker fruit with each passing year. “What is this horseshit, Alix? You know bloody well I have no intention of meeting the press over Garth Nickels. And how dare you threaten to sic News4You on me!”

  Alix laughed throatily. “I could say the same for you, sister mine. Implying to my client that Conglomerating would spare him the indignity of being followed day in and day out constitutes a gross breach of the truth. You and I both know that the man is pathologically incapable of staying out of trouble, and I’ve only just met him. He’s radioactive. And insufferably magnetic.”

  “What are you implying, Alix?”

  “I never imply anything, Alyssa.” Alix bared her teeth. “I only ever tell the truth. I don’t cover things up, I don’t dissuade people from looking too far under the covers, and I certainly don’t let people think the wrong thing.”

  Alyssa snorted. Where had their dear mother gone wrong with Alixia? The woman was pathological when it came to the truth. “It’s a wonder you have a career at all, with that attitude, dear sister. Get to the point.”

  Alix shrugged. “As you command, oh mighty Chairwoman. Sa Garth might be too blind to see it, but your suggestion that he Conglomerate is a money grab. He hasn’t got a clue about all the tiny little rules and regulations that exist in this system and the man he’s got working for him, while smart, isn’t smart enough to catch them all. My boy Garth will wind up being fined every minute of every day, with the money funneling directly into your pockets. You know it, I know it, and if you don’t arrange for the press to fall back a little to give the man some room, he’ll know it. And that, dear sister, you will regret. Immensely.”

  “How dare you…”

  Alix cut her sister off with a savage word. “I dare because we were raised by the same woman, Alyssa. The basic principle hammered into our head was always about the bottom line. I don’t care if you intend to maneuver Nickels out of his money. He has more than everyone else in the system combined and even you aren’t talented enough to get it all. Beyond that, the man has such a pathetic concept of money it’s a constant shock to me that he’s not wearing underwear on his head. What I do care about is his career. And you should, too, if you think about it. For now, his popularity quotient rivals The Game, and if I want, I can make him more popular than The Box itself. Right now, people are in love with him. If this system sees him in a negative light, it will be devastating. Push this man into a corner and I won’t be able to control him, and the last thing either of us wants is Garth Nickels going off the reservation.”

  “Where are you getting your information from?” Alyssa’s mind involuntarily turned back to the looks she received from some of the petitioners. She could practically hear them thinking how wonderful Garth was. Why’d he have to come to Latelyspace now, of all times? Alyssa pursed her lips. She was going to have to find some way of punishing Terrance. The man’s colossal foul-up in letting Nickels into the system was unconscionable.

  “The man himself, sister. He’s a babe in the political woods. All he knows is warfare. And that is almost certainly where he’ll draw his responses from if he’s pushed too far too quickly. Now, I’ve got a full press kit from him and I plan on getting him coverage on the Big Channels over the next week or so. That should calm the public down enough to let him rest easy for a while, which will have the nice side effect of putting Game viewership back on track.” Alix waggled a finger. “Knowing you, you’ve already informed all the heavy hitters where their number one target is. Re-exert your power. Tell them to relax and take it easy.”

  “Why should I? Assuming I’ve even done something of the sort.” Alyssa hated her sister with a passion, but she had to admit Alix was the perfect opponent. The only weakness Alix had was in her all-consuming adherence to truth without misrepresentation, which was why she wasn’t Chairwoman.

  As a celebrity wrangler, Alix was a woman of devastating efficiency and expert entertainment warfare. Just this once, though, Alix’s comments fell short of the mark; the plan was to leak Garth’s temporary address to the Big Channels a few days after he Conglomerated, not before. Garth Nickels might be a naïf when it came to handling his sudden popularity –as her sister intimated- but he’d figure out where that particular bit of chicanery came from almost immediately. An ex-Trinity citizen Conglomer
ating would be massive news, quadruply so when they found out that man was none other than Garth Nickels. The … paparazzi … would flood the streets in search of him. Hence a leak after the fact.

  Alix pretended not to hear the question. “Please do as I ask, sister. Garth Nickels could be a very good thing for this system. He could be more of a benefit to your long-term goals of building up a love affair with Trinityspace than as a limited source of funds. Nailing him after he’s Conglomerated will guarantee you a few billion credits and that’s it. Scandals just don’t damage a person as much as they used to and this kid has enough money to bribe everyone in the Universe to look the other way. Just look at that Sahari girl. She’ll fuck anything that walks –and some that don’t, and sometimes in full view of a highly appreciative audience- and most people still think she’s faithful to her boyfriend. We see what we want to see, and while you’re idly picking his pockets for Breach of Conglomerate Ordinances, they’ll herald him as the new coming. They’ll hate you a thousandfold for vilifying him and they’ll accept and even encourage any vicious reprisal he unleashes if they think you’re picking on him. The system has never seen a fame like his, sister mine. He’s creating demographics that shouldn’t exist and even your positive responses to his presence might go sideways if viewed with the wrong mindset. Notice I’m not asking you to refrain from picking him clean and leaving him to the vultures altogether. Give him time to acclimatize. That’s all I need. Break him now and more than he will break. Surely you can see that. It’s in your best interests to work with me on this, Alyssa, it really is.”

  “I’ll … I’ll give this some serious thought.” Alyssa detested it when Alix was right, and the Chairwoman couldn’t recall a time when her sister had been more correct than at that moment. Turning Garth over to the press when he was bound to make a gaff in public right now would only serve to make him overreact. Any punishment he suffered would be seen to come from her, and a domino effect could very well rile any already unruly public further. Giving him time to adjust to his new role, allowing him the opportunity to become acclimatized to Latelyspace properly … it might just work. “I promising nothing, nor am I admitting that I’ve done or even contemplated any of the scenarios you laid out.”