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RISE AND FALL

  J P Robertson

  Copyright 2016 J P Robertson

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  Chapter 1

  Sydney. It was a city in trouble, there was no doubt. Even though the city was the hub of the remaining research into Climate Management. Even though it was one of two remaining metropolitan areas in the world. Even though most of the world’s history was stored there in the art, literature, and cultural antiquities. It was in trouble, and people needed to know.

  Cindy was feeling the fire begin to burn again. The desire to make a change, to stand up and be counted, and to show the elite Alpha’s that they may have the Government hoodwinked, but she wasn’t going to stand for any of that crap. And she owed it all to Jack. Sure, he had his faults, a shopping list full of them, but once he had his mission set, no-one was going to stop him.

  These thoughts rumbling through her head were starting to pound so hard she thought her head would explode. It was time to kick the mission off, she knew it and so did Jack. The only thing holding them back was Kobeur.

  “You there Jack. You’re quiet. What is the go, we on?”

  There was a moment of silence. Cindy was about to get on the comm again when a slow, deep voice replied over the comm.

  “Sin, slow down, and listen to me very carefully”.

  “C’mon Jack, we need to hit them now, we…”, she was cut off by Jack.

  “Listen to me Sin. I am surrounded by MDC guards, and as good as your kit may be, there is a chance you may be hacked, so for Christ’s sake, tone it down before you get me killed.”

  There was a moment of silence. Jack was in the basement of the secondary research facility MDC had in the city. Not many people knew about it because it was right beside City Hall, and had no obvious entry. The reason it was beside City Hall is the same reason Cindy was fired up, the politicians were now the puppets of MDC. Jack knew this, Sin knew, Kobeur now knew, the conspiracy theorists knew, but that made up about 0.001% of the population, so was a hard story to push.

  Nonetheless, it was a story they were going to tell. Once the good doctor had the relay chip Cindy had crafted plugged into the system, they would be able to piggy-back upstream traffic with their own data skimmed from the internal network. It meant bugger all to Jack, he just knew he needed to have a synchronization device within a hundred metres of Kobeur for a few minutes. A very long few minutes.

  “Right, Sin, I’ve got a signal coming through now. You got this?”

  “Sure do hun. Loud and frikkin’ clear.”

  “Good, I’m going to exfil now. You get ready to hit that gadget of yours if there is anything other than flies chasing my arse.”

  “Got it. Is Kobeur going to be able to get out?”

  “He isn’t planning to. He needs to play the whole ‘everything is normal’ routine for a while longer.”

  There was another few moments silence.

  “I’m not sure about that, Jack. What if he flips?”

  “If he flips, we’re no worse off than we were last week. All he knows is our first names and that bogus crap you downloaded to him.”

  Jack got ready to move out. He didn’t like the feel of things. This was all going way too easy, and if he knew anything about life, the only things that came easy were soon followed by a whole lot of drama. The ease of the Op had caused him to lose his focus more than once. He promised himself that once he got back he was going to cut back on the booze. Not just because of his own embarrassment over his weakness, but also because he now had other’s lives in his hands again, and he owed it to them to keep himself together.

  Removing himself from the building wasn’t going to be difficult in itself, there were only a few guards and sensors in his immediate area. The risk was if he made himself visible. Any sign of his presence would not only cause a full lockdown of the facility, it would cause a full re-build of the system, and no doubt an early detection of their tech.

  Jack waited until the designated time, hoping that Kobeur hadn’t flipped. If he hadn’t, he would trip one of the environmental sensors in the lab above Jack. The guards will leave, and he would simply walk out the back door. Jack stopped himself again, he had to keep in game-mode and anticipate any outcome, there was no easy meal.

  “Hey Jack.”

  “Yeah Sin.”

  “Did you mean what you said the other night?”

  There was a muted thud as jack hit his head against the block wall.

  “Dammit Sin, not now. I’m already having trouble focussing. Leave the damn comm alone.”

  He realized he had risen his voice a little too much. Just as he was about to cock the Timmy ready for the hard way out, the alarms went off. He heard some voices from the adjacent corridor, they were getting quieter.

  Moving into the main corridor, he looked down the structure. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all concrete, with only some ducting and cabling overhead. If he cocked this up and came across anyone, there would be no cover for the next fifty metres. He moved quickly to the corner, stopped to listen for noise, then moved on.

  Once he got to the end of the corridor, he used the RF hacker on his bio-pager to unlock the door, which lead into a service tunnel. It was pitch black, but Jack had IR sensors on his helmet, so he made good ground. All up it had been under a minute, he had another minute before he was clear. It was going to be close.

  “Sin, I need you to EMP the Town Hall in ten seconds.”

  “Roger.”

  Jack ran to the end of the tunnel just as he heard the crackle in the cabling above him. He was thankful Sin had designed an EMP blocker for his kit. He was also glad she hadn’t sold it to anyone else. He flipped the hatch to the ceiling and slid up., the room was dark and empty.

  Jack paused for a moment, observing the surroundings. Nothing was moving, no sound, and only the slight moon light piercing the upper windows. The theatre had raking rows of seats in plush red leather. The drapes were hanging all the way from the ceiling, over twenty metres above him. It certainly lived up to its title of the Grand Room.

  Moving down to the rear of the room, he slipped out the side door into the alley. Betty was waiting where he left her. He jumped on and started up, pulling onto the main street the rain was heaving down now. Rain drops splashed on the ground with an almost hypnotic display of the neon lighting reflecting from it. Jack left his lights off and pulled down his visor.

  Chapter 2

  The echo of his footsteps sounded like elephants thundering down the road. As Kobeur looked down the hallway he saw the rows of entrances into each lab, shimmering with the waterfall of ionised clouds used to sterilize the skin of technicians and scientists as they entered. He stared for a moment, comparing the threshold to the one he was about to cross, assuming he kept his nerve.

  He had been at the heart of all of MDC’s technology developments for a decade, and now, finally, the pieces were starting to fall together. It took a couple of renegades to open his eyes to the truth, that everything he had been working on was a carefully crafted puzzle, of which he was placed squarely in the centre.

  Kobeur was the Director of Innovation at MDC, reporting only to Ivan. In recent years the company had three strings of research that held a lot of the resources of the company.

  The first was not surprising on the surf
ace, as MDC were leading the way with compact energy storage and discharge. The recent direction had been towards Terajoule storage of electrical energy, in the form of Plasma. Kobeur always thought of this as a means to supply power to a battery of weapons, or an outpost, not a single weapon.

  The second string of research was towards metamaterials. Basic materials had been around for some time, but they were now developing materials that could change at a molecular level, allowing mass to be used for multiple purposes on deployment. The initial directive was for covert operations where weapons could literally be changed into an inert object using an electromagnetic pulse, and reversed at a later time.

  The final area currently being investigated was Bioengineering. Ivan took an intense interest in this area himself and kept Kobeur on the outside, only giving him weekly reports. Although he wasn’t completely comfortable with it, Ivan assured him it they were drawing a long bow on the development, and he didn’t want Kobeur’s time wasted if it hit a dead end.

  His thoughts were broken by a voice behind him.

  “Doctor. Hey, Doctor.”

  Kobeur spun around, obviously startled. It was Ivan, and he looked a little agitated.

  “Sorry Ivan, you caught me mid-thought.”

  “Well I hope the thought was on the energy spike we just had. We nearly lost a week’s work tonight.”

  Kobeur quickly gathered his thoughts and replied with little hesitation.

  “Exactly. I noticed some of the discharges this evening were a little different, even for our modern sky.”

  “You think that may be it?”

  “I’m not sure, Ivan, but I am going to head up a diagnostics team now. I will keep you abreast of the investigation, but expect some unscheduled service announcements.”

  Ivan didn’t respond for a moment. He just looked at Kobeur. The doctor was beginning to get unsettled. Did Ivan know what was going on? Should he just come clean and say he acted under duress and planned to flip on the others? Just as he was about to speak, Ivan placed his hand on Kobeur’s shoulder.

  “That’s why I need you Doc. You’re the greatest mind in the game.”

  He patted Kobeur on the shoulder and walked down the hallway towards the kitchen. When Kobeur could no longer hear footsteps he let out a huge breath of air. He didn’t realised he had forgotten to breath for the last half minute, he could feel his veins throbbing in his neck. That was too close.

  Jack saw the feint glow of his biopager under his sleeve. Pulling it back, there was an anonymous message, with the simple word “in”. He knew it was from Kobeur, and he knew it was good news. Jack quickly contacted Cindy on the comm and advised her of the confirmation. As per their plan, Jack would remain in the city for a few hours in-case Kobeur sent out an S.O.S.. Cindy in the meantime would start scanning for data from the indicators Kobeur was hopefully going to leave on an encrypted frequency.

  Now it was a waiting game, which gave Jack time to think. He was sick of thinking, he liked action, but lately he had been doing more of the former than the latter. As he watched the waves lap against the buildings at the old military yard, he realized the world was moving on, with or without him. Soon enough the whole lower areas of Sydney would be submerged, and all because human kind just didn’t know when to stop.

  After a few puffs and some more contemplation, the message came through from Cindy. The link was operational, and data was coming in. Kobeur had done his job, and sent the “all OK” message.

  “Phase 1 complete Sin, I’m coming home.”

  “Roger that, Jack, see you soon.”

  Chapter 3

  Breaking past the city limit, Jack pulled hard on the throttle. As he accelerated past 150 his surroundings began to narrow before he felt the familiar rush as everything changed to hues of red and blue. An object started growing in his rear view, it had been a long night and the last thing he wanted was the cops, or worse an MDC tail on him. Kicking down a gear, the bike let out a whir before the Kinetic Charge system locked in and everything behind him became a dim red glow.

  The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, with the exception of a near miss with a kangaroo that would have turned the bike into a 200kg coffin. He kept his speed up as the focus required helped him avoid thinking. He had done enough thinking in the last few weeks to last a lifetime.

  Shortly after Cindy arrived home, she got a message from Agent Blake. Blake Corten was a Government Agent, and Cindy never felt good when being contacted. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Blake, she thought he was kind of cute, it was that she was never sure if he had the balls to hold up his end of their agreement. She was a criminal, all things told, and even though Blake seemed to be an honourable man, if his superiors ever found out who was giving him intel on the side, they would have her place raided faster than either of them could blink.

  Meeting at the usual place, Cindy had arrived ten minutes earlier than discussed. She placed signal blockers around a perimeter, and kept her car prepped for a quick exit. It wasn’t any different than the other meets, she was just a little more on edge tonight. She looked down the road from the boardwalk and saw headlights dancing back and forth as his car wound up the hill. Her eyes lifted and she saw the rippling of the sky over the smog, catching a glimpse of a few hazy stars poking through.

  As he pulled into the carpark, Blake turned off his comms devices, and disabled the low-jack in his car. He waited until Cindy waved, then got out and walked over to the lookout.

  “Good evening Cindy”, Blake acknowledged her with a nod.

  “Blake, so wonderful to have you hail me at this ridiculous hour.”

  Blake was about to make a snide remark about her being a lady of the night, but thought better of it. He didn’t know her that well, they had only met three other times, and he wasn’t sure if she was going to keep with the programme or flee.

  “Well, Cindy, you are a hard one to track down.”

  “If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t need my services, Blake.”

  “If I didn’t need your services, you would be in jail.”

  Cindy saw red, she gritted her teeth and clenched a fist, but stopped short of swinging at him.

  “Hey, screw you Blake. I didn’t come out here in the middle of the night to get threatened.”

  She was about to turn around and walk when Blake put his hand on her forearm. She looked up and him ready to kick him when she saw his expression was apologetic, not aggressive.

  “Sorry Cindy, it wasn’t meant as that. I said I wouldn’t turn you in, and I won’t. I’ve done some digging on your past, and what you have said checks out. I’m not going to go as far as to say there is a conspiracy, but, your family did get screwed over.”

  “Well, well, well. The suit steps over the official line once again.” Cindy smiled, in a warmer way than the words came out. “ Its good to see you have a bit of Grey in you Blake, looks good on you. So, is that the reason for this visit?”

  Blake let her arm go, realizing he held it a little too long. He didn’t know what Cindy was to him, he tried not to think about it, but he did know that all of this wasn’t protocol, he shouldn’t even be here. Nonetheless, she was the best Tech he had ever met, and questionable activities aside, her help had closed a few high-profile cases for him lately. He was concerned though. She was getting into some dangerous areas now, assuming it was her at the core of it.

  “MDC. Do you know much about them?”

  “Same as everyone I guess. Private contractor for the military, high-tech weapons and surveillance, massive sway in the political arena. That type of stuff. Why?”

  “Well, Cindy, someone has been messing with them lately. There is nothing official out yet, but there are whispers of espionage. And not the usual water-cooler chatter, this is coming from the director’s office.”

  “Really, that is pretty interesting stuff Blake. But why are you talking to me about it?”

  “Don’t play w
ith me Cindy, you are connected, you know what the vibe is around town. I hope you aren’t involved in any of it, but if you are, I’m just giving you a warning.”

  “Official or personal?”

  Blake looked to the ground and shook his head.

  “Cindy, have you heard of Osiris?”

  “Ummmm, maybe. What should I have heard?”

  “That they are a covert agency, operating outside of the Feds, with a lot of resource, and little oversight.”

  “In that case, yeah, I have heard of them.”

  “Well they have a major crush on MDC, and are feeding them intel. These guys are serious Cindy, they play for keeps. IF, and I say again, IF you have someone near MDC, take care.”

  Cindy paused for a moment. Was Blake giving her some slack here, or lining her up to see what she may spill. She honestly didn’t know a lot about Osiris, no-one did. There were few black holes in the tech community these days when it came to Government Operations, but Osiris was at the centre of the biggest one.

  “I’ll keep that in mind Blake. If I need to, of course.”

  “Good, you’re a solid asset Cindy. Also, what do you know about the Autohacking scene these days?”

  “Bugger all really. Just the Alpha’s play things aren’t they?”

  “Mostly, but there is a lot of chatter around at the moment. Some serious deals seem to be going on, and it’s a lot more organized than it was a few years ago.”

  “Uh, huh. Anything else?” She knew he was going somewhere with it, Autohacking wasn’t big on Blake’s radar, usually.

  “There is a Runner around on a heavily modified Panagale. Jet black, rides with no lights. You heard anything about that?”

  “Nah, not me. I don’t like to fraternize with those guys. Usually bad news.”

  “Yeah, well this guy is. Been seen at a few points of interest lately. Just thought you should know.”

  Blake gave Cindy a nod, then turned and walked to his car. As he got in he looked over to Cindy. She had the door up on her car, and the interior looked like Mission Control with all of the screens, holo’s, and gauges. No matter how many Techs he came across, she never ceased to impress him.