Derecho

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Derecho - book excerpt

Prologue

One singular, inescapable thought dominated Special Constable Daisy Mori’s failing mind…That she had burnt down the home and terrorised the parents of the person who was responsible for what would happen to her next. — The person who was standing over her now, clutching a scalpel and studying a data stream on her Ktab.

The inevitable decay had finally caught up with her. The slow creeping death that had begun the very first time she had donned her experimental Quantum Sub-Locker suit.

The QSL suits had been a stroke of unparalleled genius, the pinnacle of a technology which would have seemed miraculous just a few years earlier.

… No, that wasn’t quite true. They weren’t the pinnacle — that had come later. She hadn’t been good enough for that. Her brain wouldn’t work with the more advanced COBRA suits the way it had with the QSL suit. That might have saved her... She might have had what they had. But there was no more time for what might have been.

Mori smiled; she’d won... in a way…She’d outlasted all the others who had worn the QSL suits. One by one, each of them had fallen prey to the wretched decline which ate away at you from the inside from the moment the suit first connected to your thoughts. She’d beaten them all, she’d lived the longest — and now she was going beat death too.

Chapter 1

Home

“Gideon, move it will you, our ride’s waiting, let’s go!” Chris Fan was obviously excited; his eyes were disconcertingly wide, and he didn’t seem to be able to keep one foot on the floor for more than a second or two. Nervous energy was bursting out of him, and it was making Gideon feel somewhat unsettled.

“You go ahead Fan, I’m right behind you.” Casting an eye around the Cobras’ new home, Gideon Rayne fought down a wave of introspection which threatened to swallow him whole. Since their return from the Frozen North, the surviving Cobras had been treated like royalty. As an orphan growing up under the watchful gaze of Miss Burnett, he had often ended up sharing a room with several other children and had relied on a mouldy cellar to find rare moments of solace. His possessions had been limited to a battered old Ktab, a small handful of clothes and second – or third hand sundries rescued from waste bins. It was all a far cry from the opulence surrounding him now.

Aloysius Kroll, the head of Kaoteck and CEO of New Britain, had personally seen to it that the Cobra team were lavished with their heart’s desires. Gone was their old, spartan quarters — replaced with almost an entire floor of the Kaoteck pyramid, filled with leisure and training equipment. Anything they wanted for was delivered to them without question. Gideon and his fellow Cobras were regarded as the company’s most valuable assets and nothing was too good for them.

An executive Dragonfly was waiting for the Cobras in a nearby launch bay. The craft was of similar design to the Constabulary versions they were used to, only painted in gleaming white and without the additional weapons and sensor arrays. Climbing aboard, Gideon was surprised to find Fan and Kristy already ensconced in oversized comfy-looking leather chairs and the cabin floor covered in a thick, plush carpet. The inner hull of the craft doubled as a display for the external cameras, allowing the passengers to feel as though they were flying in a transparent globe with an unobstructed view of the scenery beneath them.

The luxury cabin gave him pause for a moment. A vivid memory forced its way into his mind’s eye. He was lying, immobile and traumatised, on the bare metal floor of a Dragonfly with his armour caked in gore. His breath caught in his throat, and he batted the memory away before the others noticed anything was wrong.

“Check this out!” Kristy held her arms wide, beaming gleefully. “The Khalifas would have loved this!”

Gideon nodded and shot her a rueful smile as he settled into one of the oversized chairs, “Yeah, they would. I imagine Warwick wouldn’t have been quite so impressed though.” The spectre of the fallen Cobras hung heavily over the team; the loss of Warwick Bayna still sent a stabbing pain through his heart when he thought of her. They hadn’t known each other long, or even well, but there had been a definite connection between them — right up to the moment she had ‘died’ in front of him. The company strenuously denied she was dead of course, but they all knew the truth. It was just another of Kaoteck’s lies.

The lies were why they were here, in the back of a luxury Dragonfly on their way home. The Cobras badly needed to talk about what had happened to them in the Frozen North, and there was no way it could be done in the Kaoteck pyramid while the building’s semi-sentient A.I. ADA was around. Not without compromising themselves and the breakaway group known as ‘The Family’ they had encountered out in the wastes.

The flight passed by in silence, with each of the team relishing the peace, lost in their own thoughts as the toxic waters of the south rushed beneath them. But as the craft passed over the wall into the Rainbow Zone, Fan’s face drained of colour and he pointed off into the distance, “Are you guys seeing this? It’s worse than I thought!”

Plumes of greasy black smoke rose from the horizon, daubing the sky with dark smudges. Even from high altitude, it was clear things had changed dramatically in the Rainbow whilst the Cobras had been locked away in the Kaoteck pyramid. “It looks like the charneys have upped their game.”

“But how could they have penetrated this far into the Rainbow?” Kristy wondered. “Even allowing for breaches in the wall and tunnels underneath, it seems unlikely anyone could make it this far from the Factories without being picked up by the Constables.”

Neither Gideon nor Fan had an answer, and their time together was running out, Fan came from a wealthy southerly family and his drop off point was coming up fast. “Remember what I said about the game,” said Gideon, trying to sound casual, as the craft began its descent. “We should all go check out a murderball match while we’re here. I’ll be at the south entrance at fifteen hundred hours on Saturday if you want to join me.” He raised an eyebrow and widened his eyes, giving the others a knowing look.

Fan shot him a wink, grabbed his bag and unclipped his harness as the Dragonfly settled down in the middle of a wide boulevard. “Yeah, maybe mate. If not, I’ll see you back here on Sunday though, have fun.”

He stepped off the ramp into the brilliant sunshine and Gideon caught a glimpse of what looked like Fan’s entire neighbourhood coming out to greet him. The crowds gawped up in amazement as the craft lifted off again and dipped its nose before making its way towards Kristy’s home.

The next leg of the journey took place at lower altitude, giving Gideon and Kristy a better look at some areas of the Rainbow neither of them had seen before. Several boroughs were in total darkness, other than the light of flames here and there. The length of the journey surprised Gideon, the non-military version of the Dragonfly flew a lot slower, and despite being lumped together by Kaoteck as a single privileged ‘zone’ for the wealthy, the loyal and the lucky; the Rainbow was still a big place.

“I recognise where we are now,” said Kristy eventually. “We’re nearly to mine, looks like the lights are on around here, thank goodness, are you going to be alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” lied Gideon. He had no idea what charade to expect upon his return, but one thing was for sure, he wouldn’t be believing anything Jakub had to say.

The luxurious craft started its descent, this time the landing zone was a rooftop in a built-up area. Kristy waved down at the small group of figures huddled together against the downdraft from the Dragonfly’s fanless motors, and Gideon realised he should be thankful. Unlike the others, he wasn’t about to be reunited with a loving family knowing full well he may never see them again. It was a small mercy given what was to come.

“See you at the game on Saturday,” called out Kristy, as the ramp closed behind her, leaving Gideon alone in the cabin.

Eventually, the craft reached Gideon’s neighbourhood, and the inexperienced pilot spent several minutes searching for a space he felt confident enough to put down in. The appearance of a bright white Kaoteck vehicle circling overhead was enough to bring out every man, woman and child onto the streets as they stared up at the unusual sight.

Squabbles broke out amongst the crowds, as they argued about what the craft was there for. Accusations started to fly, swiftly followed by fists, and Gideon was surprised to see an unfamiliar armoured cruiser arrive. A squad of Constables, in gleaming new riot armour, disembarked and started beating the crowds into submission without any hesitation or warning. Several of the more aggressive agitators were shot on sight and left where they fell.

The pilot turned the craft away and called out over the intercom, “Sorry, I’ve never been up this far before, I can’t find a landing site and it looks pretty hot down there anyway. I’ll have to set you down a fair way from home, shall I summon a pod to lock in on your Ktab and pick you up?”

Gideon rolled his eyes and sighed. Not so long ago, the thought of being able to summon a pod would have been an impossible dream. Automated Kaoteck pods, or Kpods, were the most effective way of getting around in the Rainbow, but access to them was strictly restricted by CP and cost. They were the next best thing to actually having a company provided personal car. Turning up at the home in one would have been a poor substitute for turning up in a Dragonfly, but still beyond anything he could have dreamt of a year earlier. But after what he had just witnessed, something told him a more discreet entrance might be for the best. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ll make my own way, just get me as close as you can.”

By the time he arrived at Miss Burnett’s, evening had turned to night. The flickering holo sign above the door to the 'Kaoteck Industries Home for Children of The Rainbow' glowed in the moonlight, a welcome beacon of familiarity. Not for the first time that day, Gideon cursed himself for even coming back at all, but the Cobras had sworn to maintain their pretence of loyalty, and part of that was gratefully accepting all the luxuries Kroll was throwing at them. Drawing a deep breath, he raised a hand to the entry scanner and was just about to press the intercom when the door flew open and an over-emotional Miss Burnett exploded out in a flurry of fake fur and perfume and wrapped him in a bear hug.

“My boy, my boy, my little Gideon!” she wailed, loud enough to wake half the street. “You’ve come back to see me.” She hurriedly stole a glance up and down the street before yanking him inside and sealing the door behind them. “When I saw the aeroplane overhead, I just knew it would be you! You’re late you know, I made you a special supper and now it’s gone cold!” She ruffled his hair, gazed at him fondly for a moment, and dashed off to the kitchen shouting something about making everyone a ‘nice hot cup of tea’.

“Hey bud, how’s life in the pyramid?”

The moment Gideon had been dreading had arrived. Jakub emerged from the lounge with a wide grin on his face. A thousand questions burned in Gideon’s mind, chief among them was, had Jakub been here the whole time? Or had he arrived back at the home ahead of him in order to maintain the pretence? Maybe that’s what the pilot’s sudden inability to land had been about, had he been stalling? Resisting the urge to use his newly improved fighting skills to pound his former friend into a meaty pulp, he instead went to throw his arms around Jakub in as convincing a manner as he could manage, but fate intervened and the building was plunged into darkness.

“Damn blackouts, that’s the third one this week,” said Jakub. “I’ve started carrying this around with me,” he unclipped a torch from his belt. “We’d better go make sure the kids are alright.”

The power was restored after a few minutes, and Gideon spent the evening regaling everyone with fabricated stories about his life in a mundane support role for the Constabulary, being careful to drop in real-life details about the tube train and the grand atrium in the pyramid. Acutely aware of the fact he was under observation, he was careful to assure the children that Aloysius Kroll was just as amazing in the flesh as he was on the net, prompting a great deal of gushing from Miss Burnett. Jakub remained oddly distant, as though unsure of how to act around this new version of the boy he had grown up with. Gideon wondered if he was struggling to get back into ‘character’.

Once the children had all been sent to their rooms and the small talk dwindled into the realms of the forced and awkward, he was able to make his excuses about being tired from the journey. Miss Burnett fussed around setting him up with blankets on the same tatty old couch he had sat on the day he had first learnt of his successful application to Kaoteck.

Finally, alone except for the ever-present eyes of the home-feed, Gideon lay back and used his Ktab to de-activate the cameras that would be sharing his every moment live to anyone who cared to watch the home’s feed channel. With that done, he slid the VR band out from his Ktab and placed it over his eyes. It secured itself in place with a faint click and used his body’s own electrical system to connect with the bio-disk embedded in his wrist. As the system started up, he felt some of the tension that had built up in his body fade away and a smile crept across his face. At long last, he was able to do what he most looked forward to every day — it was time to ping Avery. Since his return from the disastrous mission to the Frozen North, he and Avery had grown closer, taking every opportunity they could to meet up virtually in the company intra-network known as ‘the E-scape’.

The E-scape was a secure virtual environment, where Kaoteck employees who were restricted to the pyramid could live out their company-approved fantasies of walking on a beach, or base jumping off a snowy mountain. Or even visiting a simulated version of a typical Rainbow Zone civic centre and basking in a moment of dreary, non-company related mediocrity.

His and Avery’s schedules and area clearances had yet to allow an ‘IRL’ or real-life meeting, so the E-scape had been the next best thing. Although infinitely more restricted than the civilian version, the E-scape had provided enough opportunities for the two of them to share as much of their scarce spare time together as possible. He had found himself profoundly conflicted by their relationship. On one hand, he wanted desperately to tell her about his plans to run from Kaoteck, and to beg her to come with him. But on the other, he didn’t want to put her at risk, and knew that every second they spent together would make leaving her behind even more painful. Even so, he found her completely irresistible, and the two of them had worked their way through the list of approved E-scape scenarios and activities together. They had ultimately realised that what they wanted most of all was just a place to chat and be together. Which made it all the more frustrating when a ‘CONNECTION NOT AUTHORISED. ACCESS DENIED’ message flashed up in the display. “Damnit!” he ran his access codes again, there was no reason why his top-of-the-line Ktab couldn’t use the civilian network to access the company E-scape portal. He had full access clearance and had checked with ADA before leaving that it wouldn’t be in breach of any protocols, but no matter how many times he tried, the result was always the same… access denied.

Writing it off as a non-starter, he grudgingly admitted that a very-real wave of tiredness had washed over him. So, he fired off an apologetic message to Avery, placed the VR band back in its slot on the Ktab and snuggled down underneath the bobbly blankets. But every time he closed his eyes, he was haunted by images of angry faces with T-shaped tattoos, laughing as flailing tentacles emerged from their open mouths and sliced deep into his flesh.