Darklight Pirates

“It’s stealing, Mama. I don’t want to do it anymore.” Bella sat on the floor in the corner of the room, knees drawn up and hugged tightly to her chest. She tried to bury her face but kept looking up to see her mother’s response.

Kori Tomlins stared at the desk display in front of her. Using a full HUD posed problems. Energy use, bandwidth, the chance that Weir had learned enough to track them down through the layers of the master computer Bella tapped so easily. She dared not underestimate Weir after he had consolidated his power so quickly. Bella was a superior programmer, but Weir sat in the capital with all the trappings of power around him. Her only consolation was that Aaron Riddle had wrested control of the military from him and posed a threat to those in power, should Weir falter.

And he would. She would make certain of that. After Weir failed, Riddle fell quickly because he was such a fool.

“The exchequer never noticed our withdrawal.”

“It was billions, Mama! Even a small amount will show up in the weekly audit. That much will stand out like a big orange thumb, no matter how I tried to bury it under tons of other numbers.” Bella stirred, relaxed a little, but did not stand. She looked pathetic.

Kori held back her contempt for such weakness. Ebony would have been a more stalwart ally, but her programming skills had been feeble compared to Bella’s. As hard as it was for her to believe, genetics did enter into the ability to mesh with the computer’s neural network and use it to the fullest. Courage wasn’t required to loot the nation’s vaults, transfer money into thousands of accounts and even give both Eire and Uller unexpected influx of funds to egg them on with their military adventurism along the borders. To date, Riddle held them at bay, but the Low Guard was spread thin. Cletus had insisted on developing the High Guard, which had been necessary to combat the growing threat from pirates based in the asteroids, but it had sapped the Low and Middle Guard of both funds and competent personnel. Who wanted to slog about on the ground or drive a tank when bonuses and quick promotions were common among the space force? Nothing matched being a captain of a cruiser or dreadnought, not even flying the trans-sonic fighter-bombers of the Middle Guard. Warriors wanted action, not barracks time and endless spavined training exercises.

“We are in a fight for our lives. Do you think Weir will let either of us live if he catches us?”

“He only imprisoned us when he took us prisoner before.”

“Do you want to live in a cell the rest of your life? The only reason we were locked up was that he needed to know what we knew. What I know. If he had found out, we would have been turned to plasma so our bodies would never have been found.”

“We can make peace with him. I know it, Mama. Let’s try.”

“He knew that your father and brother weren’t dead and used us as bait.” Kori tried to hold back her fury and failed. She swept her hand through the holograms on the desktop and caused them to shimmer and shake in resonance with her anger. “He wanted to show how cowardly the men in our family were. They left us to die, Bella. They left us, your father and brother.”

“No, no, it doesn’t seem possible.”

“It happened. You would have seen it yourself if you hadn’t been so busy being afraid.” Kori waited for the holograms to reform. She reached out and moved some more gently. As she pushed, they slid to new positions.

The markers showed how Eire deployed guerrilla units to attack the aqua culture farms with an eye toward annexing them, but another segment of the virtual display occupied her attention. She had fed money into a dozen different partisan urban groups opposing Weir. For the most part, the people only slowly realized Donal Tomlins no longer controlled their fate, keeping the flow of commerce undisturbed and in their interests. No matter how Weir claimed the former Programmer General had died in an unfortunate Drop accident, the people’s day to day existence had changed little. They cared little who kept the gears of commerce moving and grinding if it didn’t affect their bellies or bank accounts.

Kori sneered at that. She had thought Donal worked for the people. She had even believed that. Now she knew he had thought of himself first. She had benefitted and that galled her even more now. It was as if she were a carrion bird pecking at the carcass killed by another, killed by Donal for his own pleasure. She fed well enough, but it was off the pickings of another’s efforts.

“It’s time to set things right. These groups appear to attack in the capital on their own. I have fed them money and plans for a coordinated attack that will let us into the palace during the furor. Let Riddle declare martial law. It won’t matter once we reach the Residence’s subterranean rooms. From there we can use the safe tunnels to reach Weir.” She clenched her hands until her forearms ached. Only force of will let her relax. “He will be easy prey if he is diverted by a half dozen rebel groups attacking in concert.”

“You’re going to kill him? What then, Mama?”

“You were trained to be Programmer General. With Weir gone, the entire country will collapse without anyone directing the master computer. Weir has effectively hobbled those under him who might take over. You told me about your father’s control algorithm. Can you open it and take complete control?”

“I know his techniques. Some hints that he dropped make me think it’s possible, but I don’t know without actually examining it and trying to find the source code. It might take days or weeks to open the kernel and get inside to recode it.”

“You are as adept as Goram Weir. More than him since you are bred for the job. He seized power and reduced the ranks of the junior programmers so only those loyal to him remained. Or those who wouldn’t oppose him. The most experienced were all killed or sent into hiding.”

“I can’t do it all myself, even with the control algorithm cracked open. I’ll need most of the inner cadre Papa depended on.”

“Let me worry about that. I’ll take care of Weir. Riddle, too, since he seems to be increasingly important in maintaining power over the populace. Throw the military into disorder and then promote a few loyal officers. I know several who will be glad to move up the ranks.” She forced herself to relax her fists again. “I know the senior officers who resented Cletus being given command of all the military forces. They will join me.”

“I’m not sure my training is good enough, Mama. Remember how you always complained about the hours Papa spent on the job? He had both knowledge and experience, and it consumed him. I’ve learned some of that fascination from him.”

“I hope that’s not all you learned from him. You have the knowledge and youth. And you have me supporting you.”

Bella turned paler and licked her lips. A tear ran down her cheek.

“We’ll die if we don’t do this. I know it. I don’t want to die, but I’m not sure I can fit into the neural net and stay there long enough to do what’s needed to keep Burran from disintegrating. I know I can never run the detailed projections.”

“You can. You’re genetically bred for the job, my dear. Now get ready. There’s a carrier waiting to take us to the capital. It’ll be a longer trip than I like, but we can’t fly there directly.”

“I heard Herold telling you of the cordon around the Eastminster airport. Riddle isn’t letting anyone in or out of the city.”

“There are other fields where he doesn’t have his soldiers positioned. Hurry, now, we have to leave before he sends a commando team after us here.”

Kori shooed her daughter to get together what scant belongings they had and made a few more adjustments to the desktop display, transferred more of the money pilfered from the exchequer and then started the chain reaction to destroy all her notes. Any computer yielded its secrets--unless it was turned into a puddle of molten glass. Since being abandoned by Donal, she had spent a great deal of time considering such things and had turned into a freedom fighter second to none.

Scorched land, leave nothing and no one behind.

#

The carrier bucked as the fighter fired a laser just in front of it, causing a wavefront of boiling air to burn off the fake insignia and blister the windscreen.

“Turn around and return to your point of origin. No air traffic is allowed in or out of the city. Do you read?”

Kori watched as the fighter blasted by. Their pilot glanced in her direction and nodded once. It was time for them to leave the carrier. At such a low altitude the danger multiplied, but she had no alternative other than a high altitude low open HALO jump, which neither she nor Bella would likely survive.

“Go,” she said, crowding her daughter toward the side hatch. “All you have to do is jump. The jet rescue pack is set to automatically fire and lower you when you get within a hundred meters of the ground. Don’t touch it. Trust it to operate.”

“You’ve told me that a dozen times, Mama. I don’t know if I can do this.”

The carrier lurched in the fighter’s turbulence as it rocketed past for another pass. This time the laser caused spalling on the left wing, forcing the carrier to bank sharply.

“Stay and die. Now jump.” Kori rushed forward, caught Bella in her arms and forced her out the open hatch.

She screamed as she fell. The heat from the damaged wing seared at her face and arm. Then she plunged below the carrier. The pilot sheared off and retreated, being herded by the fighter. If her luck held, the carrier blocked her and Bella from the fighter’s sensors until they got low enough for ground scatter to mask their descent. The air rushed past. She closed her eyes and imagined she didn’t fall but instead soared. It had always been her dream to become a bird and fly. As a girl she had made tiny wings and jumped from trees, pretending to be an angel sent by the pope, a bird, a soaring creature able to climb to the stars. Her mother had always punished her for that fantasy, but rather than extinguishing it, the dream had grown more vivid.

Kori flew now. She had attained her dreams. That dream. She opened her eyes and saw the ground rushing toward her an instant before the rescue pack turned warm, then kicked hard as a trio of jet blasts spiked downward. Her speed changed from two hundred kilometers an hour to a feather-light drift. She brought her feet up, knees bent and landed gently. Her footing on the uneven ground betrayed her and sent her stumbling, the jets still firing.

As she fell forward the jets cut off so she wasn’t bumped along on her face. Heart hammering, Kori lay motionless until she regained some composure. She rolled onto her side, then sat up, her head spinning. She shucked off the rescue pack and fumbled about under her short jacket for the lasepistol. It felt cool and reassuring under her fingers. This was how she would remove Weir when she got into the palace.

When they got into the palace.

“Bella! Where are you?” She scrambled to her feet and looked around. A smoldering patch of grass drew her attention. “Bella!”

She ran to where smoke curled upward, giving away their position if a surveillance drone happened overhead. Her daughter sprawled on the side of a ditch. Her jets had ignited dried grass. Kori looked around, saw nothing to warn that they had been discovered, then made her way to Bella’s side to pull the rescue pack from her shoulders. The release had failed, and she had to use her lasepistol to burn through the straps.

“Mama, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Can you stand?” Kori helped the girl to her feet. Not giving her a chance to regain her strength, she guided her toward nearby woods. “Keep walking. Don’t stop.”

“That’s where we want. I recognize the plinth.”

“Where’s the statue?” Kori saw the square stone base but had thought a replica of John Thomas Kelly should have been atop it.

“It hasn’t been there since Ebony and I were tiny. We used to sneak out here. You and Papa never knew, did you?” Bella giggled. Kori thought shock had unsettled her and started to shake some sense into her. Bella pulled free. “Cletus told us he had blown it up with a homemade rocket, but we never believed him. Something else happened to the statue.”

Bella went to the polished granite base, dropped to her knees and ran her fingers along the edge. She stopped, leaned forward and grunted. The side of the stone popped open. A smile came to her lips.

“This brings back such memories. Ebony and I--”

“There’s no time for that. Get in before a drone spots us.”

“Cletus said he laid down chaff on the undersides of the tree leaves to keep us from being found out.”

“He lied. There’s no way he could do that. Anyway, that was long years ago. Any chaff would have degraded.” Even as she herded her daughter into the small opening and down the ladder, she looked up at the trees. A curious silvery sheen made her wonder if Cletus had treated the leaves. She shook off the notion. He would have told Bella that to see how gullible she was. The leaves would have fallen in autumn many times over.

Contempt rose for her lying son as she scrapped her back and shoulders crowding into the opening. She tugged on the door and pulled it shut until the latch clicked softly. From below she heard Bella moving about in the dark. Carefully placing first one and then another foot on the rungs leading down, she worried that she had not anticipated such utter darkness. Before she reached the floor, a dim light filled the small room.

“I found our glowsticks. Ebony and I always kept a few here.” Bella held up the palely glowing green cylinder.

Kori nodded in approval. The minor chemical reaction generating the light wasn’t detectable through the ground by a drone using heat or radiation sensors. Listening hard, she couldn’t hear any sounds ahead in the tunnel. She drew her lasepistol, just in case, and motioned for Bella to lead the way. The girl did so, almost skipping along the well-remembered path back into the Programmer General’s Residence. Less than a kilometer brought them to a chamber so large the roof remained cloaked in darkness as Bella held up the glowstick.

“Stairs leading up into our bedrooms.” She pointed using the glowstick. “Over there is another stairway. That leads to Papa’s office.”

“Did you ever spy on him?”

“What? No! We’d never do a thing like that.”

Kori knew Bella lied. Young children would find such a lure irresistible. Peering into their father’s office while he worked, as he greeted dignitaries from every province in the country. She wished now she had known of this entry point earlier. She might have discovered Donal’s treacherous nature earlier, before his betrayal.

“Did you ever see him with other women?”

“Mama! I told you. We never spied.”

“So there were other women?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Is there anywhere you can link with the neural net other than in his office?”

“My practice control helmet would be useful, but that’s on the other side of the Residence in the auxiliary room.”

Kori looked up the spiral staircase circling up more than five stories. She took the glowstick from Bella, then began hiking up the steps. Before Weir had seized control of the government, she would have been out of breath within a floor or two. Since she and Bella had been living by their wits, she had gotten into shape, running from soldiers, even fighting for their lives. More than this minor conditioning sent her racing up the stairs, drawn by the promise of burning a hole in Weir’s skull with her pistol. When he died, Bella could don the control helmet and order would be restored within a day. Less. Kori had worked diligently on a plan for the passing of power--for Weir’s passing from life itself at her hand.

She doubled her speed.

“Quiet, Mama. Don’t make so much noise on the steps. The sound carries up and we might be overheard.”

Kori slowed and let her daughter catch up. Bella walked with a deliberate step, almost silent. Eyes closed to listen more intently, Kori thought she heard a distant roar. A smile spread. She had funneled enough money into a dozen insurgent groups and had sent them all against the residence at the same time. The unrest had grown into open rebellion now. This would guarantee Weir was in his office where he could monitor and control his defenses. It would never occur to him to turn tail and run--or to leave his defenses entirely in Riddle’s hands. Such would be counter to how she saw Weir and his overweening ego.

“Do you smell that, mama? Smoke. The Residence is on fire!”

Kori grabbed Bella’s arm and kept her from retreating.

“This is our only chance. If you want to make Weir pay for Sean’s death, we must do it now. Courage, girl, courage.”

Bella stood a little straighter at the mention of Sean Scarlotti. Whatever it took to regain power, Kori would do. Playing on the CIO’s death was the least of what she would do. She gripped the cold handle of the lasepistol, sucked in a deep breath and caught increased ozone in the air and realized the Residence wasn’t on fire--the acrid smell came from repeated laserifle fire. The soldiers were cutting down the demonstrators and would soon rout them. Weir had ordered deadly force sooner than she expected. Or was this Riddle’s doing?

“There,” Bella said, tugging on her arm and pointing down a narrow corridor. “Not twenty meters away from where we can see into Papa’s office.”

Kori forced herself to remain calm. She needed her aim to be accurate and the first shot deadly. If she missed, Weir might escape. Step by step she trailed Bella to a spot where a small alcove opened off the shoulder-wide corridor. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. The musty, closed-in odor was oppressive. She stopped and looked at the bare wall.

“I expected a viewscreen.”

“With the way Papa swept the office for spy devices?” Bella chuckled. “This can’t be picked up on any detector.” She pressed her palm against the wall and twisted.

A small point of light caused Kori to shy away. The dim light from the glowstick had caused her eyes to adjust to near dark. Squinting, she pressed her forehead against the wall and looked into Donal’s office--the office for the Programmer General. The surge of anger made her realize she would shoot whoever was there, be it Weir or her husband. Both were traitors and back-stabbing bastards.

“Do you see him?” Bella crowded close, trying to peer through, too.

“No, he’s not at the desk.”

“Sometimes Papa would wander about the office. The control helmet isn’t hardwired, though I wanted him to cut the wireless link. There’s always a chance of interference, in spite of the room’s shielding, and it’s possible to tap into anything that isn’t hard-linked by cable.”

Kori ignored her daughter, moving from side to side to get a better view of the room. She caught her breath when she caught a blur of color at the very limit of her field of vision. Backing off a little, she ran her left hand over the wall while clutching the lasepistol in her right.

“You can’t shoot through the wall. It’s got a lot of metal embedded in it. Not just mesh but also solid plate.”

“Copper?”

“Much of it is, but not all. There are armor plates, too.”

Kori looked back through the peephole. It was an actual hole through the wall, but it was sheeted over with a transparent lens. If she had designed this, the lens would be clear sapphire, tough, hard and making a shot difficult.

“It’ll transmit the pistol frequency,” Bella said in a small voice.

“Thank you.” Kori hadn’t expected this information.

“For Sean.”

“For Sean,” Kori said. Her heart almost exploded in her chest when she saw movement in the room. She pressed the muzzle against the opening, tried to guess when Weir would be directly in front, then fired. The pistol hummed and lashed out with its beam of coherent light.

She pulled it away and looked. The sapphire lens had evaporated, but what she saw beyond galvanized her. Spinning, she threw her arms around Bella and knocked her into the far wall of the hidden passageway. They sank down as the office wall exploded.

“It’s a trap.” She pushed Bella toward the stairs, rolled over and fired through the gaping hole. Her shot drilled through the soldier’s eye, killing him instantly. That had been an accident. Her next three shots sprayed all around the Programmer General’s office, scattering the soldiers there.

She scrambled to her feet and herded Bella along to the stairs spiralling down. The explosion knocked her down, even as it saved them. The secret corridor collapsed, blocking immediate pursuit by the soldiers.

Kori and Bella got to the stairs and raced down. The entire way Kori seethed. Weir had set a trap for her. How had he known? How?