Eternal Return (War Eternal Book 6) Page 3

  The lift shaft shuddered as the detonation started below it, a dozen pucks of densely packed explosives exploding in sequential order. Mitchell put his hand on the side of the lift for balance, using the other to grab Katherine around the waist. Her eyes were fearful yet resolved.

  The lights blinked while the lift car vibrated and squealed in its tracks, a growing roar forming below their feet.

  "Hold on," Mitchell said. "The exhaust is going to give us a little bit of a lift." He hoped the repulsors of this century were as good as the future models. Since the technology was so new, they hadn't had time to get careless with it. He expected they were probably better.

  He felt his stomach lurch as the displaced air traveled up the shaft, pushing against the cab and giving it a little extra jolt. A warning light appeared on the control panel for a moment, clearing a few seconds later as the system recalibrated itself and got them back on track. He could imagine the scene in the building, where the rising dust and smoke had likely blown through any opening it could find in its rush to escape, billowing everywhere. It was the reason he had detonated early. The smoke would give them cover that his p-rat would help him shoot through.

  "Michael, I need a secondary exit," Mitchell said. "Not the alley to the north."

  "Copy that, Colonel. One second." A pause as Kathy interfaced with the Core. "Sorry, Colonel. It's either the loading dock or the front door. The emergency exits are slammed with evacuating employees."

  "Damn. I'll take the loading dock." The lift toned as it came to a stop. The doors opened, revealing a building in a state of total chaos.

  Most of the people were clear, but as expected the explosion had left smoke and dust to fill the air. Flashing red alarm lights bounced off the debris, and the lighting had switched over to emergency diodes that traced a path along the floor.

  Mitchell and Katherine both raised their rifles, moving out onto the floor the way they had in the now defunct underground lab. Thanks to the interface, Mitchell was able to filter out some of the smoke and light, penetrating the gloom and peering beyond. They needed to get away from the building and out of Jakarta, preferably to somewhere quiet where the VTOL could scoop them up.

  "Which way?" Mitchell asked, speaking into the mic.

  "There should be a corridor on your right. Head down it, through the door. Turn right again."

  "Roger. Bulldog, are you still nearby?"

  "Affirmative, Colonel. Hiding in plain sight."

  "Can you get eyes on the loading dock?"

  "I'll do my best, Mitch. Standby."

  "I can't see a thing in here," Katherine whispered beside him.

  "I can. Stay close."

  Mitchell went down the hallway to the right, reaching a door that was hanging open. He moved through it without slowing, scanning ahead for signs of the security detail Trevor had identified. They wouldn't have evacuated the building, and the blast wasn't strong enough up here to hurt them.

  Where were they?

  He flinched as the reports rang out from behind them, bullets cutting through the smoke and smacking into the wall a few feet away, each burst drawing nearer. The guards had spotted them and were firing blind.

  "Get down," Mitchell said, grabbing Katherine and pulling her to the floor, positioning himself over her.

  The bullets chewed up the walls over their heads, tracing past them as the detail moved in.

  "As soon as they stop to reload, make a break for the loading dock."

  "Yes, sir."

  The firing paused a moment later. They would have seconds at best.

  "Go," Mitchell said, shifting his weight.

  She sprinted out from beneath him, while he turned and focused into the distance through the haze. The interface took limited data from his eyes and turned it into a full-on threat display, showing the outline of the squad members fifty meters away. They were under Watson's control, which meant their movements were synchronized. It was one of the AI's biggest weaknesses and the reason they had all run dry at the same moment.

  It was a moment Mitchell didn't waste.

  He squeezed off measured bursts from his rifle. One. Two. Three. He watched as the p-rat scored the hits, dropping the guards in rapid succession.

  He heard gunfire in the other direction. Katherine.

  He let loose another volley, less careful with his aim this time. He sprayed bullets across the distance as he continued back toward the loading dock, keeping his head back to ensure the damage.

  He didn't kill two of the guards, his shots from the hip hitting chest and leg and knocking them down. It was good enough to keep them from following. He ran in a zig-zag as they returned fire wildly, the bullets coming close but not scoring any hits. He reached the wider twin doors to the loading dock and burst through, nearly running right out into the middle of the firefight. He dove to the ground as his p-rat blared out in annoyance at his carelessness.

  Katherine was behind a control pedestal beside him, using it as cover. He scrambled to get behind it as well.

  "They were waiting to ambush us," she said.

  "I guess we should have gone out the front door," he replied. His instincts usually treated him better than this.

  "Yeah, I guess we should have."

  Mitchell leaned back and closed his eyes.

  "What are you doing?" Katherine asked.

  "Shh. The interface will take the sound of the reports and try to build a threat model from it. It isn't accurate enough to shoot from, but it will narrow things down a little."

  He listened passively, letting the computer implanted in his skull do its thing. He had missed the use of the equipment and all of the benefits it provided over soldiering stock.

  Within a few seconds, a vague map appeared in the corner of his right eye, suggesting a dozen shooters at various points across the area. Mitchell rose up from behind cover to eyeball it, ducking back down as the defensive fire rained in. The space was large, a number of transport vehicles and containers arranged along an open floor plan and giving the enemy plenty of places to hide.

  "I used to play a vid just like this," Michael said. Mitchell had forgotten he hadn't turned off the transmitter, giving home base a look at his every move. "Only the tangos were zombies, not... well, I guess they still are zombies."

  "Either give me some good advice or shut up," Mitchell said.

  "Do you have any explosives left?"

  Mitchell checked his pockets. He was out. "Did you save any pucks?"

  Katherine examined her pockets, drawing out one of the discs. "Yes, sir."

  "We have one," Mitchell said.

  "Can you give me another visual?"

  "Cover me," Mitchell said to Katherine. She leaned out from the side of the pedestal and put down suppressing fire while he looked over the top, scanning the room. Then he ducked back.

  "Hold on a sec," Michael said. "Okay, see if you can toss it about fifty meters, towards the transport on the right side, the one with the red writing on it."

  "Roger," Mitchell said.

  He tapped Katherine to indicate she should cover him again. When she did, he rose up, set the charge, and threw the puck towards the truck Michael had identified.

  "Brace yourself," Michael said.

  Mitchell grabbed Katherine yet again, holding her down behind the pedestal as first, the puck exploded, and then the truck beside it went off.

  Screams rang out as shrapnel flew out on either side of the pedestal, and a wave of searing heat washed over them. The entire building shook again, and a fresh cloud of smoke followed.

  "Alfa this is Bulldog, what the hell did you just do in there?"

  Mitchell wasn't sure. "Michael, what the hell did I just do?"

  "The writing on the truck translated to 'Caution, flammable,'" Michael replied. "You blew up some chemicals. The good news is the dock should be clear."

  "Are you okay?" Mitchell asked Katherine.

  "Sweaty, but alive," she replied.

  They stood and h
eaded for the light through the smoke. Mitchell found a single survivor among the security detail, a one-legged man trying to crawl to where his gun had fallen. The man looked up at Mitchell as he approached. "I'm coming for you Miiiitcheeeell. If you escape, I'll find you. I want you dead."

  Mitchell shot the man in the head, silencing him.

  They stumbled out of the loading dock together. The sounds of sirens pierced the air, drawing close. Too close. They hadn't gotten out quickly enough.

  "Burn the gear," Trevor said, appearing out of the shadows. He was wearing civilian clothes, slightly wrinkled and dirty. "We'll lose them in the confusion."

  Mitchell shifted his rifle, opening a small control panel on the stock and setting it to self-destruct. Katherine did the same, and they tossed the weapons back into the building. Then they both shrugged out of the ballistic fatigues, revealing fitted street clothes beneath. The sirens were stationary now, outside the building but keeping a looser perimeter.

  "How are we going to get past that?" Katherine asked.

  "I have a way," Trevor replied. "Follow me."

  6

  The building next to the Nova Taurus facility had started to evacuate after the first explosion. That evacuation had picked up in pace after the second, giving Mitchell, Katherine, and Trevor an opportunity to mix in with the escaping crowd. It was still a minor challenge as they joined the rest of the crowd, owing to their appearance compared to the majority. Mitchell and Trevor were both nearly a foot taller than most of the fleeing workers, and they were fortunate that unlike in the future where Watson could enslave anyone with a networked p-rat, he was limited here to those he had already implanted a device on. That excluded most of the police force, and while the AI could use their video feeds and networks to put out a bulletin on them, he couldn't make the entirety of the Jakarta Police do whatever he wanted.

  They reached the quickly erected barricades, following the rest of the civilians through a choke point where officers were quickly scanning the escapees for signs of involvement. Somehow, Trevor managed to find two other non-native workers in the throng, and they moved through the barricade behind them. The officer's gaze lingered on the headsets they were wearing but didn't stop them. The devices were hardly uncommon.

  Mitchell looked up when he heard a whine in the sky above them, and watched a drone pass over the scene.

  "Michael, is that LE or Watson?" he asked, knowing the team back home was watching and would be able to run the profile through databases both public and not so public.

  "Watson," Michael replied a few seconds later. "Try to stay out of sight."

  Mitchell put his hand on Trevor's shoulder and pointed. "We've got company."

  "He might see us," Trevor replied, unconcerned. "What's he going to do out here? Start throwing missiles?"

  "That's what I'm afraid of. He's destroyed entire planets. One crowd of humans doesn't mean a damn thing to him."

  Trevor paled at the idea of it, keeping his eyes on the drone. Another joined it a few seconds later, circling the chaos.

  "How do we know he hasn't seen us already?" he asked.

  "We don't. Let's keep moving anyway. Stay with the crowd."

  Most of the people were gathering together beyond the barricade, not quite sure what to do next. The three of them cut through the masses, moving slowly, keeping their heads down. They would be hard to identify individually from the air. As long as Watson didn't decide to take his chances and open fire, they would be able to put some distance between themselves and the destruction. While Mitchell knew Watson wouldn't hesitate to kill humans, he didn't think the AI was ready to make a statement of intent like that just yet.

  "Alfa, this is Bravo," Max said.

  "Go ahead, Bravo," Mitchell replied softly, in case the drones were trying to listen in.

  "We've made successful rendezvous with Charlie, and are awaiting your reception."

  "Negative, Bravo. I think Bulldog and me are going to head out for some drinks before we hail a ride home."

  "Understood, Colonel. We'll keep our eyes and ears open, and await further communication. The bird will be nesting at drop point Delta."

  "Affirmative. Alfa, out."

  Mitchell's eyes twitched as he moved to the p-rat's menu, scrolling through to the new item that had been added, the one that would put the system on standby and prep it for quick reactivation. While all of the networking functionality had been removed from the interface, replaced with the portable unit that he could turn on and off at a whim without losing his tactical enhancements, it was still safer to disconnect it when he didn't need the combat-related systems.

  They reached the edge of the crowd and paused, watching the drones as they began to widen their scan of the area below. When Watson's spies moved out of sight, they rushed across the street and down a narrow alley between two of the kilometer-high skyscrapers that dotted the skyline of modern Jakarta. They crossed it without incident, finding a second stream of pedestrians to merge with as they came out the other side.

  "What now?" Trevor asked.

  "We aren't out of this yet," Mitchell said. "Take a look around. Any of these people can be under Watson's control or a configuration of Watson." There were less likely to be configurations randomly placed in the streets, but it wasn't safe to assume anything.

  "Not to mention cameras everywhere," Katherine said, pointing to a thin rod that acted as both a street light and network access point. "If you asked me where I'd most like to get stranded behind enemy lines, Jakarta wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list of choices."

  "We need to lay low," Mitchell said. "Drop out of sight. The Core's simulations were close, but not quite right. Michael, do you copy on that?"

  "Affirmative, Colonel," Michael replied. "You knew there was only an eighty-three percent confidence rating on this location."

  "I'm not trying to lay blame. Hopefully, the Core can use the new data to improve ratings on future targets?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "At least we took out the production facility for the amoebics, whatever they are," Katherine said.

  "One facility," Mitchell said. "It will help, but if there are more-"

  "Then we'll deal with them, too."

  Mitchell nodded. He liked her attitude.

  They lowered their heads as they passed one of the poles, trying to avoid the cameras. The hardest part of every move they made was making it without falling under Watson's ever-watchful gaze. Modern society was a passive surveillance society, one where cameras and microphones ruled nearly everything behind algorithms that decided what was and wasn't important. This wasn't much of a problem when thousands of disparate machines were managing hundreds of separate systems, and the benefits outweighed the reduction in privacy, but when a single entity could combine all of those systems and track them in unison, it turned the idea of a big brother into a terrifying reality.

  Nobody wanted Watson as a big brother.

  They wouldn't know right away if he had seen them. The second greatest difficulty in dealing with Watson was the fact that as humans, they needed to sleep, while the AI continued to churn on and on, making trillions of decisions per second, calculating probabilities, following logic branches, and otherwise plotting beyond anything they normally would have been capable of.

  Only two things had allowed them to keep pace. The Core, and the fact that Watson didn't want the rest of the world to know he was here just yet. Maybe not until he was able to complete his goal of creating duplicates of himself. Full Tetron cores, not just secondary configurations with a highly limited subset of his intelligence and capabilities. Maybe not ever, or at least not until the future where Mitchell, and more importantly the Creator, were born. Mitchell had killed the Creator in his original timeline, but he would exist again in this future.

  It wasn't as though the Tetron needed to hurry. If Watson stopped them, he could let the Dove launch as expected. It would make a simple hyperspace jump, prove the tech, and come back. Mank
ind would spread to the stars mostly as before, and the intelligence would have hundreds of years to prepare for the arrival of the others and their eventual conquest.

  In fact, he had already done so to some extent. A limited replica of Watson was present in the videos he had seen of Katherine from some prior recursion. He had followed her through Times Square in New York City as she and Origin had worked to prepare the Dove for delivery to him. He had managed to supplant Captain Pathi with a second configuration, and even Origin hadn't known the potential damage he caused during his centuries on Earth. The same centuries that the original Tetron had also been present biding her time and following Mitchell's forebears in order to keep them safe and ensure he would be born. He certainly could never have done as much damage as the full core would cause, but ancient history had proven he had done enough.

  Mitchell shook the thoughts from his head. He needed to focus on the here and now and to get himself and the two members of his current team out of their current predicament. They were experienced enough that they could do a decent job staying out of sight, but he also knew that all it took was one wrong step, and the Tetron's forces would be on their tail once more.

  They reached a crowded city street, one of the main thoroughfares that cut a straight line through the city. The population was being shunted to one side of it, as flashing red LEDs and workers in bright red vests dotted the other side. At first, Mitchell wasn't sure what the construction was for. Then he noticed they were building a ramp leading off the main street and down beneath the city. It seemed to be an early version of the hyperlanes he was familiar with.

  "That way leads out of the city," Trevor said as they stood at the corner.

  There was good pedestrian flow on both sides, and a number of foreign tourists mixed into each. It was a good opportunity to finish their disappearing act, escape the urban center, and make their way to relative safety. Once there, they could call in Verma and the VTOL for pickup.

  They were about to angle themselves into the outbound flow when they heard the sound of sirens approaching in a hurry. Four police carriers streaked by a moment later, moving to cordon off the egress points.