Chương 97: KK3 - #21 THE GREAT MASQUERADE (2/3)

We arrived at the end of the steel column. Unplanned urbanization had turned the hazardous street into a tunnel and we had to continue in the dark towards the cargo stop within its rotary shell. I could feel Ali's heartbeat as her hand clenched on her gun. Under the layer of rust falling from the ceilings, it was hard to tell if we were stepping over robots' carcasses or human corpses. We finally reached the elevators that took us inside. Here we could enter the station's top and walk in the low artificial gravity.

Crossing the clean administrative departments, we accessed the security center and Doc's office. Naturally, we took a backdoor to avoid exposing our faces despite our new FID crafted by Winston.

"Monday! You still here?" Oppenheim shouted as he stormed into his office. He was addressing his secretary who had just joined us. She was a young brunette with a sandy complexion who wore a gray blouse with large shoulder pads.

"Fuck off for the day, girl. Go home!" After having violently chased her away, he presented us his terminal that was sleeping on his desk: "You can log into the station's network using my access codes," he panted while taking out of his coat a 3 1/2 magnetic disk chained to his belt. The key inserted, he hit the monitor's frame to make the whole system unfreeze.

"What now?" Ali asked as we saw the green lines of the data-core take shape. Meanwhile, Doc offered her his faux-leather seat as Nora silently started inspecting the room's shelves. Doc coughed.

"Check the new surveillance videos. Watch carefully." The data-core had accumulated numerous video clips of the comings and goings in the maintenance corridors. But occasionally, one of the passers-by would pause near the control consoles before moving on. A few minutes later, the terminals, although protected by armored cabinets, would jump as if hit by a shaped charge.

"He hacks his way into the short-range consoles with disconcerting speed," Doc explained after cleaning his mask filter.

"Sparking hazardous short circuits."

"Which is incriminating to you," I replied.

"The latest videos prove you killed the wrong person because the attacks are still going on."

"Civilian collateral casualties don't matter," spoke the bounty hunter as his purifiers hissed.

"The corporation is desperate to find the terrorist and these recent videos will get us there!" Ali let out a sarcastic sigh as she tapped the screen which crackled. She then said: "Doc? You betta wash off the mist over your eyeglasses…"

"What do you mean?" our friend snapped. Nora went closer before bending over Ali's other shoulder.

"She's right. Has your mechanic come back from the dead? Because here he is again on the security cameras." My humans had hit the nail on the head. Oppenheim, as inexpressive as ever, merely scratched his masked chin: "This time, that smart ass took the guise of a dead Terminal engineer to cover his tracks. You think of a holosuit? It's impossible." Indeed. A holosuit cost hundreds of thousands. People here were gobbling up Blue like miso soup when the Hook'n'Tacos was temporarily closed by the FDA.

No way any of them could afford such experimental equipment. Unless it was a mercenary from an important competing firm.

"Wait! Let me try something," I intervened. I jumped on the console and typed on the mechanical keyboard. As I requested it shortly after, Ali plugged her wrist terminal to the computer, allowing me to browse my deck and use a more extended memory. I loved watching the instructions and lines of code dance across the screen between the pulses of the fading plasma, especially after it proved my interesting theory.

"This can't be true…" Doc coughed as Ali handed me a blank floppy disk so I could save my progress and store it on the Kitty. Such a concealment program had to be scrupulously studied.

"Don't tell me he's falsifying his appearance directly on the recording program…" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"That would have come handy back in the Black Haven," Nora deadpanned. It was a pity, however, because as she pointed out right after, the reconstruction obtained by the computer remained of poor quality. The silhouette that emerged could have been any of the station's inhabitants. Our hacker's sabotaging job was, nevertheless, not entirely perfect as I found out a couple of seconds later. Our bomber never thought of blurring his trail. We could track it across Down Terminal directly through the wireless network.

"We should be able to set up a trap," Nora suggested.

"I'll let you work on that. I have to report," Doc said, his metal disk back in his coat. In passing, he claimed to have to pick up from the corporate vault the Awen encryption key requested by Braun and the DIA. Nora proposed to come with him but he refused.

"Doc's become a little sycophant," I opined to my partner as she looked over the desk. Doc's hunter badge rested on a corner, under a thin rusty case. It lay alongside a fine collection of cough syrup bricks and empty shell casings; evidence of an appeal for powder-based tonic cocktails.

"I don't think the Gods or the corpos are his only problem," Ali replied, noting the same thing I did. She put down a brick of mushroom elixir after pouring herself a glass. At her grimace, the medicated liquor aged with radiation wasn't her taste.

"Are you bringing up an interesting lead?" Nora asked, arms crossed and leaning against the wall behind us.

"More complicated than I expected, because this hacker is talented," I grumbled, picking at the repeated error messages.

"But I'll come up with something to track him down!" While my decryption program ran, I tried to learn more about the station and the potential objective of this so-called terrorist. Ludwig's security codes, always functional until the console was shut down, allowed a high level of access. Down Terminal ran like a basic space station. The dashboards targeted for sabotage were used to maintain a stable orbit. By blowing them up, Down Terminal could drift off the celestial highway.

This would mean the end of its economic activity. The trail of an ill-intentioned competitor was getting stronger. But this wasn't my only finding…

"This isn't Ludwig's first blunder. The Alliance has spent the last month covering up its mistakes."

"How many?" my partner asked.

"Twenty-seven. Including police officers. Still less dangerous than Hemingwest at his peak. What's his problem?"

"What a mess," she sighed.

"What were you up to all these years, Doc?"

"The white phosphorus melted his brain," Nora said, passing over a picture of Doc from his time as a Marine in the New Worlds.

"How long before a fit of madness makes him turn his gun on us too?"

"Our friend, if he once was, seems long gone," I concluded as Ali swore again.

"If the suits don't zero him, the Alliance will go after this. And their MKs aren't among the gentlest." My tracking program was complete and both my partners downloaded it on her wrist-computer.

"Someone's coming," Nora whispered as a LED flickered behind her eyes.

"The secretary." As predicted, Monday appeared in the doorway facing the office, her finger on the trigger of a 2. 5-inch Colt Python pointed at us. Unfortunately, our conversation hadn't gone unnoticed.

"You're here for him, aren't you? You're bounty hunters too."

"I'm way too cute to be just another bounty hunter," I said as Ali held up her hands.

"You see me blush at this offense, my dear." The arming sound of the hammer made me freeze. It was rarely a good omen. But that didn't stop my sapiens from continuing the conversation by stepping gently across the desk: "What do you mean by… him?"

"The one who defends us all down here. And no new bounty hunters will stop him." The thesis of sabotage by a competing corporation vanished in my mind. The social fable was therefore topical.

"Listen, kid…" Nora tried. The shot went off and grazed Ali's cheek. She immediately took cover behind Oppenheim's desk by tipping it over, knocking all the plastic bricks that bounced on the floor. Swearing, my sapiens drew her gun, but when I looked up, the young woman had already disappeared before the cloud of rusty dust had dissipated.

"If she warns the rest of the station, we'll face a revolt…" Nora growled, helping Ali to get up. She hadn't taken cover; nor even flinched.

"We gotta move! Fast!"