Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Zero Hour

  Iteration 0010

  Campus Green

  Curiosity

  Crashout

  Bootload Basic

  Dead Men

  The Hardest Day

  Cohesion

  Fearful Symmetry

  Paths Not Taken

  Fire in the Sky II

  THE SWORD, PART 2: BASE METAL

  J.M. Kaukola

  Copyright © 2020 J.M. Kaukola

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9798634120652

  To my poor beta-readers. You deserve a medal.

  Zero Hour

  Karl Vonner hadn't slept in a week.

  His eyes burned. The drops had stopped working days ago. When he blinked, it was like dragging canvas over sand. His head pounded, and the pills just made it worse. His breath tasted like stale coffee and cheap mint. He couldn't stop belching. His suit had turned two days back, and he didn't have a spare. He stank, ached, and looked a ghoulish mess. Dunks in the brain tank weren't cutting it, and the go-go pills just made him vomit.

  And for what? So he could watch the world burn?

  Eight months ago, he'd been a made man. He'd known the right people. He'd gone to the right parties. He'd worn the proper goddamn tie. Field Commander by thirty. They called him brilliant, charismatic, the 'Agency's best'. When Section Chief Raschel came to him and personally asked him to 'look to media', Vonner had put on his best award-winning smile, thanked the man, and started planning for his newer, bigger house. That felt like a lifetime ago.

  Now, his tie hung loose. His shirt was stained yellow at the pits and collar. His once-coiffed hair was matted to his head. He had a beard - a beard! - and a patchy one, at that. His face glistened, and he stank of sweat. This was madness. He'd always wanted to be well dressed at the end of the world.

  Eight months ago, that damned city crashed in the gulf. He'd been given eight months of warning, but he'd missed the signs. He'd watched the news and checked the feeds. He'd seen the bodies rain from the sky, just like everyone else. The images seared into his memory: a city in flames, a comet that boiled the sea, flash-frozen palm trees and hissing crimson waters. He should have listened when the street-preachers took to their corners. He should have realized when the riots started. He should have known when the lockdown came. This was the end, and he had a front-row seat.

  The control-room screens rose around him, a semicircle of light. He bathed in the blue glare, the thousand-window menagerie of infotainment A hundred anchors bantered with a thousand reporters, on scripts his teams had approved. He heard the metatext, the narrative framing he'd so carefully assembled, regurgitated in a million voices. 'Nothing was broken. Everything was under control. Remain in your home. Let's talk about local sports. How about a feel-good story.'

  Everything moved in lockstep. Every critical voice was circling the same drain - feeding on the same trough. One mention of riots, one call for an investigation, one break in the drumbeat, and he'd pick up his phone and change the story. Such was the power of the Internal Security Agency.

  It wasn't enough.

  He was papering over holes, not fixing them. He was impotent, and he knew it. He'd tried to send his resignation. He'd tried to request a transfer. He'd gotten far enough to make, but when he'd looked his boss in the eyes, he'd choked. Before he could speak, Raschel would say, "We need you on that switch, Karl. I need you. If something, anything, gets out of line, I need a man trust to shut it down."

  Vonner had asked what to look for, but got no answers beyond, "Keep them on the script."

  So he sat under blue-gray screens, stinking, sweating, and staring. He caressed the phone that changed the news but never altered the facts. His team had gone home. Some had asked "to be with their families". That was a code that meant they'd read the signs, knew how dire it was, and they weren't coming back.

  He wouldn't do that.

  He couldn't abandon his post. He was too honest. He'd never kept a family during his rise, so he would not cling to one for the fall. He would hold his station and document every step of the end. In hindsight, it was all was so very clear.

  First came insurrection. Protesters flooded the squares, demanding government reform and clashing with police. Terrorists struck law enforcement and ralliers alike, and the streets were washed in blood. That cycle peaked in Monterrey, and the world had reeled.

  If they'd been wiser, they would have paused there. A few concessions to the protests, a few ministers fired, and hoist the colors. It would have bought peace. Instead, they'd bet on passing fancies and the ancient creeds of security and duty. 'The storm would pass,' they'd said, 'if we just held course a little longer.' They'd been wrong.

  Vonner had thought Monterrey was the worst of it, but compared to the Plymouth, it was just a prelude. Show trials weren't enough by then. It didn't matter that the unit was rogue, the flag had been stained. The State should have hanged the traitors, that might have been enough, but probably not.

  The airship was a catalyst. Vonner could see that now. When it plunged into the sea, it took the Authority with it. Before the wreck was settled, before the dead had been tallied, the cities were burning.

  War followed. The Path seized upon the unrest, threatened to breach the DMZ and dared the Authority to assault them, knowing that the people would never support another war. Ishtan Radek seized power from the moderates, struck back for his long-lost cause. Radek had grown old, but never timid, and he waltzed across the demarcation line. The Authority had no choice but to respond, and mobilization required a draft. The draft fed the riots.

  Then came plague. With nowhere to turn for escape, the dronetowns plunged into the cheapest new high. Mind Blade ran through the veins of every slum, snatching its users from hell, at least for a while. Then, of course, there was the come-down. The side-effects. The dependencies. Blade brought hallucinations and psychosis. The riots melted into chaos. Dronetown after dronetown was sealed. City stacks were closed, all trade subject to search and seizure, all citizens under curfew. Blade spread and the riots grew. Public services began to fail. The police could not contain the pandemonium, and the populace protested every move. Anarchists waged war, addicts rampaged, and the Path advanced. The noose tightened. Every action backed the other, and the feedback loop grew with each botched raid and protest.

  Field Commander Karl Vonner sat alone in his control room, making sure the media talked about sports and the weather instead of burning cities, playing the fiddle while all of Rome burned about him. Sometimes he raged. Sometimes he cried. Sometimes, in weak moments, he almost reached for his phone, to call family he hadn't spoken to in years, or even a complete stranger, to carve himself open. He hadn't broken yet, but he grew closer with each turn of the spiral.

  He'd seen the numbers and read the studies. Humanity couldn't survive another war, it couldn't survive without central control. There wasn't enough left, not in food, space, metals, nor fuel. All that remained on Mother Terra was power. Raw power. There were too many guns, too many bombs, too many Bergman drives. Without the Authority, without unity, the whole damn planet would burn.

  In the blue wash, he asked himself, 'Did we drag ourselves out of the Collapse for this? Three hundred years of rebuilding, unifying, pulling ourselves up from barbarity and famine, for this? Ending with a bloody whimper?'

  Vonner had trained his whole life to see patterns, to connect dots, to forge sense from madness. He was one of the best. He'd made Field Commander by thirty! He should have spotted the plot behind this insanity, but who would profit? Who would gain? Not the Path! No, they'd die in th
e first fires of war. Not the Authority, either. They'd fall right after. No one profited from this, not the high or low, they'd starve alike, in the ruins of a planet which once held life.

  Cui bono? He'd stayed up night after night, that question rebounding through his head. He'd stared at his mirrored ceiling and asked, 'who gains?'

  Days passed, and still, he watched his boards and screens. He drank his stale coffee and washed his face in the sink. His staff dwindled, but Vonner never left his post. He stared at the wall of screens and ran the numbers over and over. He waited for his answer.

  He was at his post when the Emergency Broadcast System chimed. He was slumped in his chair, eyes riveted to the myriad screens, half-dazed, neither awake nor asleep. The slivers that remained of his consciousness were glued to the blue, adhered from eyestalk to datastream. In his torpor, the chime was deafening.

  He sprang forward, headset ripped from his matted hair. He snatched up his goggles and gloves as molded coffee splashed to the floor.

  Every screen was alight with one image, one message. The seal of the Authority blazed across them all, gold on blue, the eagle's wings spread across the globe. Vonner was on his feet. The boards were ablaze with authorizations, authentications, and handshakes. The Emergency Broadcast System was online, and this was no drill.

  Then, he saw it. A line of sunset-red text on a white screen: point of origin - validation failed.

  This broadcast was illegal.

  The chimes sounded through the room and through his headset, tri-tones, to grab the attention of every possible onlooker.

  His tablet buzzed. Blue and gold shone from the screen. His phone chimed, and there too, he saw blue and gold.

  Vonner slapped the override.

  A lesser man might have been tempted to watch, to see what was to follow. Not Vonner. He was an Agency man, through and through. He did his duty. Vonner flipped the killswitch before most men could blink.

  But the screens were still blue, and the chimes still sounded.

  His eyes flashed over the boards. White lights. Yellow. Red. His goggles flickered, as the VR augment took over his reality. Like a melting painting, the screens and consoles washed into a white room, clean blue light-boards at his fingertips. The feeds now hung in the air, surrounding him, spiderwebs of data strung between. Traitorous red rushed over shimmering silver. He traced the pulses, swam against the signal.

  He raised a gloved hand and opened a window.

  It seemed a simple feat. A wave of the hand, a flick of the eyes, and a hundred options collapsed into a single choice.

  In the real world, this was the result of a precise symphony of calculations. Sensors in the gloves compared velocity, vector, and relative distance to each other, to his goggles, and to the "anchor" hung around his neck. Those points formed an inverted digital pyramid, the "base" drawn from hand to hand to eye, and the peak set the anchor against his chest. Changes in relative direction or velocity referenced the anchor, and the aug obeyed his every eye-flick, finger dip, and vocal command.

  Vonner swam the digital sea. He darted from point to point, chasing the signal over connection upon connection. The network was a web, and he was the spider. He had the authorizations. He had the access.

  The traitorous red lines fled, and Vonner followed.

  Around the world, the broadcast began. Every viewer, every tablet, every holoprojector, every speaker, repeated the signal.

  Vonner caught the red-flickered-silver data and closed his fist. A stack of commands executed, and the emergency cutoff triggered.

  The signal continued.

  Vonner isolated the root transmitter, the origin of the broadcast, and collapsed it. In a single motion, he deauthorized the source from net access.

  The signal continued.

  He attempted to initiate a second EBS, to override the transmission.

  The signal continued.

  Cold panic settled.

  The world trembled, and a chime sounded in his ear. It was a phone call from the Capital. From the Citadel.

  Vonner closed his eyes and tried to swallow. More than his career was over, now.

  He glanced to his feet, checked his suit. In the virtual world, his avatar remained pristine. His digital self looked every bit the professional he'd once been: crisp suit, sleek tie, perfect curl to his hair, and best of all, it didn't stink. He'd once debated getting a scent-pak, just in case he dealt with jackers, but he'd always found it just the wrong side of tasteful. Even without that, at least he could face the end with some dignity.

  He opened the line.

  The avatar that appeared was a cutout - straight off the shelf, with no personalization nor tailoring, merely a low-rez default-male face and clumsy animation. High-end avatars, like Vonner's, tried to mimic the movements from the anchor pyramid and blend them with canned "natural" animations. This cutout stood stock still, blocky hands crossed over its chest. It was, in every way, so unremarkable as to border on offensive. The voice that emerged, though, was unmistakably distinct. No one could shatter a man's calm as well as the thundering, slicing snarl of Chief Raschel. "Karl, what the hell is going on?"

  With more fear than he'd admit, Vonner answered, "Sir! We've lost control of the EBS! Something hijacked it!"

  "Then un-hijack it!" Raschel snapped.

  "I'm trying, sir!" Vonner hit the override, once more. Nothing. "My controls are locked out -" he could feel the weight of the cutout's blank stare. He fought back the panic, and tried to think around the problem, "Sir, I have an idea." He zoomed out of the broadcast. "I have the signal source. It's coming from the Mirror. I'm going to see if someone there can cut a line, physically."

  "Do it." Raschel ordered.

  Vonner opened a new call to the programming boss at the Mirror. Miranda Owens was a hell of an ego-trip, but she was a professional. She might snap back at some of his edits, but she played ball. This kind of black mark? Letting her signal get jacked by some hacker? She knew the score. If she wanted to stay atop the media pile, she'd dance.

  The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times.

  It kept ringing.

  Vonner tried to call up a drone feed of the Mirror headquarters, but the EBS kept overriding him. He tried satellite. Blocked.

  This was impossible! ISA systems were immune to an emergency lockout, the net shouldn't allow it! Someone had to have changed the parameters. Vonner scanned the registry. The only channels clear of the EBS were encoded direct-lines and emergency services. That last part stunned him. Whoever had hacked them had taken the time to exempt EMS. How kind. Vonner choked back a laugh. They'd been hacked by humanitarians.

  It was hilarious.

  The Mirror's phone kept ringing. Miss Owens and her staff had three more before he sent the police down.

  With one chime to go, the phone picked up. Another off-the-shelf avatar appeared before Vonner, albeit dressed in corporate regalia. This was a punch-clock model, a young woman, generically attractive, with "The Mirror" scrawled over the left breast of her black-on-white shirt. She greeted, "Hello! Welcome to the Mirror - your world, reflected. How may I direct your call?"

  Vonner didn't know if this was human or concierge bot, not that it mattered. He flashed his badge and sent his authorization codes as a chaser. He put on his best smile and hoped his clean-shaven avatar could sell the charm. He'd spent a week, trying to capture that grin in his avatar database. Now, he called it with a flick of his finger, and his digital-self blended from "neutral" into "friendly mod 3". He stated, "I need to speak to Miss Owens. Tell her it's Karl."

  "I'm sorry, we're having technical-"

  "I noticed." He did his best to capture the Chief's je nais se quoi. "Get me, Miranda, so we can fix this, or I'll come down there, and fix it myself."

  The secretary froze, her doll-face flat and emotionless. Somewhere in meatspace, the operator was scrambling.

  A moment later came the reply, "Yes, sir. Transferring you."

  The secretary was gone, and V
onner stood face to face with Miranda Owens, Senior Programming Director at the Mirror. Finally, he met someone who put as much care into her avatar as he did. Owens' avatar was corporate, high-end, nearly flesh-and-blood. It was the little details that sold it - the tick of the cheek, the slightly-arrhythmic pattern of breath, the way the eyes shifted focus from point to point. Despite himself, he found himself wondering if she'd sprung for a scent-pak.

  Vonner upped the wattage on his smile to 'Friendly mod 4, with Authority'. He greeted, "Miranda!"

  "Karl." She replied flatly. "You stole my broadcast."

  "That's not my signal."

  "It's got your seal." She said with professional coldness.

  "It's coming from your root." He replied and dialed the smile back to a 'mod 2'.

  "That's not-"

  "It is. I have the source." Vonner held out his hand, a map of the broadcast spinning on his open palm. "It's coming from your feed, and I need you to shut it down."

  Owens reeled back, sucked air through pursed lips. Her movement was so fluid, Vonner knew she was using a jack - a soft one, certainly, she didn't strike him as a leadhead - but no canned goggle-jockey animation was that smooth. This was useful data, it gave him more context, and let him know that what he was seeing was real shock and a bit of fear. That was good.

  She said, "I… didn't know that."

  "I didn't think you did." Vonner said softly. "Turn it off."

  "Yes, sir." She replied. "Give me a moment to find out what's going on-"

  "Just get it offline, Miranda. Pull the plug, cut the cable, turn off the power, I don't care. Get it gone!"

  "I just need a moment-" her avatar faded away, as she stepped out of the call.

  Vonner muted her and pulled Raschel's cutout back into view.

  "Well?" Raschel demanded.

  "I know her." Vonner said. There was a rock in his stomach and a slow-building pressure in the back of his head. The wheels were turning, and he knew where the ride stopped. He just didn't like it. He forced the words out and said, "She's ambitious, she's hardheaded, but she's not this stupid-" he refocused and said, "She's stonewalling me, sir."