Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition Read online

  Hari spoke up, his dark eyebrows knit in a severe line behind the black rims of his glasses. “We suspect it relates somehow to the situation in North Korea.”

  “No shit,” Sands shot back. He indicated the blinking consoles of the work stations. “So you guys are running the ship?”

  The Drones exchanged glances.

  “No,” Ahmer said.

  “So who is?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Sands stared back at them, one eyebrow arched in question.

  “The whole ship is run by computers,” Bao explained. There was a tone of barely concealed geek condescension in his voice, but Sands let it slide. “We monitor everything from here. When orders come down from the Bridge, we execute them.” He tapped some keys at a console. “But our controls are dead.”

  “But the ship’s still running.” Sands made his question sound like a statement.

  “Sure,” Lani put in. “It’s like we’re the brain. The brain’s been cut off, but the nervous system is still functioning.”

  “But not like a chicken.” Hari looked as if he wanted to swallow his words the moment Sands looked at him, but he pushed on. “You know. With the head cut off. Not going in circles. The ship’s on a course.”

  “So where are we going?”

  Ahmer indicated a digital compass. “North. To the pole.”

  “We think the plan is to destroy the ship,” Desmond said. In his cultured accent, he sounded authoritative beyond his years. “To wreck it on the ice.”

  Behind him, Sands heard Victoria mutter something, but he couldn’t make it out. She had been moved to one of the cots, and Rashid sat at her side. She tossed her head, the unintelligible words tumbling out. Rashid patted her hand, and the muttering stopped. He looked at Sands and shrugged.

  Sands turned back to Desmond. “Sounds shaky to me. These days, polar ice is scarce as hen’s teeth.” He gestured toward Hari. “To continue the chicken metaphor.”

  A snort from Oleg. He got to his feet, wincing as his wrist shifted position. “I heard something else. From the Marines. Something about ‘setting the charge.’ That’s why they were laughing. Nothing’s being left to chance.”

  “You mean—blow up the ship?” A note of panic was in Hari’s voice.

  “But all these people.”

  Oleg looked at Lani with acid irony. “Dregs and Drones.”

  “Okay,” Sands said, as if moving on from a belabored point. “So let’s assume we’ve got a bomb, probably on a timer. Any idea where?”

  Victoria was muttering again.

  “Below decks,” Oleg said.

  “That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

  “Sands!”

  It was Rashid. Victoria had gone into some kind of frenzy, clawing at the back of her head as if she meant to rip off her scalp. Her muttering had become a slurred moan, one word again and again: “The chip—the chip—the chip—”

  Rashid tried to restrain her, but Sands could see her fingertips were already bloodied.

  “The chip—the chip—chip—chip—”

  Lani, who was closest, grabbed one of Victoria’s flailing arms by the wrist. Rashid had the other, but Victoria only slid from the cot and banged her head on the floor, her moaning growing to a shout.

  At the sight of her thrashing on the floor, her arms flailing at Rashid and Lani, fear swept through the other Drones. They backed away, stumbling over each other.

  “She’s a Psych,” Bao breathed. He picked up his hammer.

  Sands grabbed the hammer and pushed Bao aside. “Let’s not start that again.” He swept Victoria up from the floor and put her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides.

  “Victoria! Victoria! Snap out of it!”

  Unable to claw any more at her scalp, she whipped her head backwards, stunning Sands with a blow to the nose. His face was spackled with red, but it wasn’t his blood.

  “Jesus, Rashid, help me!”

  Rashid held a hand over one eye. He’d taken a shot from one of Victoria’s elbows. Lani had gone over the cot and was picking herself up from the deck. Rashid looked at Lani. “The medical kit. A sedative.” Lani went for the kit, but Rashid expressed second thoughts. “But I don’t know what drugs are already in her system. It could be dangerous.”

  “The chip—THE CHIP!”

  Victoria whipped her head back again, but Sands dodged it. His instinct was to squeeze tighter, but the tighter he squeezed, the harder she fought. Instead, he eased the pressure, whispering into her ear. “Easy, Victoria, easy. It’s Sands. I’m here…”

  She ceased struggling, and her body went limp, the wild shouting lapsing into bare mumbling, then silence. Sands eased her back onto the cot. He knelt at her side and brushed her hair back from her face, his hand coming away with a smear of red.

  “I’ll dress her wound,” Rashid said, kit in hand.

  Sands washed the blood from his face and hands at a sink next to the snack bar. As he patted his face with a towel that looked like it had been too long from the laundry, Rashid called to him again.

  “Sands!”

  “Jesus, Rashid, what now?”

  “There’s something here. Under her scalp.”

  Sands came over and looked where Rashid had cleaned away the blood. He saw something dark under the skin. He thought it was just more blood at first, but Rashid dabbed at it with a cotton ball, and its outline became clear. It was geometric in shape.

  “Get it out.”

  Rashid found a scalpel in the med kit, and with just the tip made a tiny incision. The Drones crowded around to see as Rashid probed the incision with tweezers.

  “I’ve got it.”

  He withdrew the tweezers and held up what looked like a bloodied piece of plastic.

  “What is it?” Sands asked.

  His answer came in a barely audible whisper from Victoria. “The chip . . . .”

  “Let me see.” Oleg took it from Rashid, looked it over, held it for the others to see. They exchanged glances that seemed to convey more than Sands could follow. Lani took the chip from Oleg, gave it a thorough cleaning with alcohol and an aerosol duster, and plugged it into a console. Ahmer sat down and tapped a few keys. The monitor came alive with diagrams and data.

  “What is it” Hari asked.

  Sands looked at Ahmer’s wide eyes as they scanned the screen. “Everything.”

  -9-

  The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

  —Gloria Steinem

  Ahmer, Hari, and Bao worked at their separate consoles, poring through the chip’s data. As Ahmer had said, it had everything—blueprints, specs, diagrams—seemingly all there was to know about the design and function of the ship. Oleg hovered over them, commenting on whatever appeared on their screens, directing them to check out this or that file. Sands hung back, trying to get as much of a sense of the data as he could, but letting Oleg have his head. The young Slav saw himself as the group leader, and after the way Sands had humiliated him, it didn’t hurt to let him have a little of his pride back.

  Ahmer pointed at an image on his screen. “There’s the engine room.” Oleg leaned over him, but Ahmer addressed Sands. “If we don’t get control of the ship from here, we could use the engine room controls.”

  “Can we access it?”

  “Most definitely. The plans are uploaded to the system now. Wherever we are, we can access them from our handhelds, and they tell us where to go.”

  “Okay, let’s say we get to the engine room. How do we know those controls haven’t been over-ridden too, just like the ones up here? I mean, it’s just more computers, right?”

  “Find the rudder room,” Oleg said. “It has manual controls. We can change course from there, if we have to.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Sands acknowledged. “But help me understand this. Your handhelds work, your monitors work, so why don’t your ship controls work?”

  It was another one of those momen
ts in which the Drones all paused to look significantly at one another, as if there was some subconscious geek communication going on that Sands wasn’t privy to.

  “What?” Sands prompted.

  It was the first time Sands had seen Oleg smile. He didn’t like it. “It seems we have a ghost interface.”

  “English.”

  “A hidden access to the system,” Ahmer translated. “I think maybe it is some other thing more than that. Maybe a parallel system. We still control part. But some other body controls the rest.”

  Off Sands’ quizzical look, Hari further translated. “He means somebody else.”

  “Like a person? A person on the ship?”

  “I think maybe so,” Ahmer said.

  With a wave of his hand—his non-fractured hand—Oleg dismissed Ahmer’s suggestion. “Don’t listen to him. Why would anybody stay behind just to steer the ship into an iceberg? It’s on autopilot.”

  Sands had to admit Oleg’s point made sense, but he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

  “So if there is this ‘some other body,’ where would he be? Any ideas on that?”

  Ahmer consulted with Hari a moment, scrolled through some files, and pulled up a diagram that was an array of lines converging from all different directions. “This is something strange we noticed. Too much circuitry for no purpose. The ghost interface could be from there. But I don’t think we want to go.”

  “Why not?”

  That smile from Oleg again. “That’s the Psycho Ward.”

  “Remember how it was in the old days?” a voice intoned from out of nowhere. “Before Tastes Like Mom’s?” Everyone looked up at the overhead video monitors, the same as the ones in the prisoners’ cells. They had popped to life, right on schedule.

  “Oh, this is a good one,” Lani said, with no hint of irony.

  Sands looked on in dumb amazement as the Drones watched a black-and-white image from an old television show with the same rapt attention as any Dreg in a cell block. The show was from well before Sands’ time, but he recognized the clip from an episode of I Love Lucy, the one in which Lucy is trying to do a commercial for a horrible-tasting health food called Vitameatavegamin.

  “Jesus, can’t we shut those things off?”

  Sands’ question was answered by a round of laughter from the Drones as Lucy gagged on the foul-tasting concoction. “It’s so tasty, too!”

  “Hey, look at this.” Bao had on his screen what looked like a dossier for an inmate, complete with mugshot. He pulled up another and another, scrolling through them like a slideshow.

  “Must be the ship’s manifest,” Oleg said.

  Sands and the Drones all crowded around, fascinated by the stream of faces: all ages, all races, all nationalities, from the poor and vagrant, whose empty eyes bespoke a life on the margins, to those whose defiant gazes and careful grooming told of a privileged life that must have once seemed untouchable. They were all the “before” pictures, the last images of the persons who had become Inferno’s faceless disappeared.

  “Don’t you boys know it’s impolite to look through a girl’s things?”

  They all turned to see Victoria, unsteady, but on her feet, a weak smile directed at Sands.

  “Hi, soldier.”

  Inspired by the I Love Lucy clip, Sands affected his best Ricky Ricardo voice: “Lucy, you got some ’splaining to do.”

  Victoria didn’t have a comeback. She wobbled on her feet, as if the ground beneath her had suddenly pitched. Sands caught her and eased her back to the cot.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Yeah. It’s a little fuzzy. One of the prison ships.”

  “Inferno,” Sands told her. She nodded as if recalling a forgotten name.

  “Hey,” Bao called from his console. He had continued to scroll through the prisoner manifest. “I recognize some of these people.”

  Everyone gathered around as he read the name under one of the mugshots: “‘Rabbi Sholem Ben-Ezra.’ He won the Nobel Peace Prize!”

  Sands stared at the image in disbelief: A mild-looking man with soulful blue eyes, a kind smile, and a freckled, clean-shaven dome balanced by a thick, salt-and-pepper beard.

  “Bloodyface.”

  He whispered the name as if invoking some forbidden, profane entity. A wave of disbelief, immediately replaced by shocked recognition, rippled through everyone there.

  “How could that be?” Ahmer asked.

  Victoria, still too weak to stand on her feet, explained: “Inferno specializes in political prisoners—dissidents, opposition leaders…” She looked at Sands. “Trouble-makers.”

  Sands forced a smile, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the image of “Bloodyface” from a very different life. Rabbi Ben-Ezra had been a world hero for leading a grassroots reconciliation movement between the Israelis and Palestinians, but hardline government and religious leaders denounced him as a traitor. Sands remembered something about a sex scandal. Everyone seemed to believe the charges were trumped up, but there had been an arrest and a trial. Sands couldn’t remember more than that, but it all had a familiar ring that left a sick feeling in his stomach.

  “But,” Ahmer persisted, “how did a man of such peace become the Bloodyface?”

  No one had an answer for that.

  Bao moved on, and Sands and the others watched as more mugshots flashed across the screen, wondering who they all had been before Inferno, and how many of them were the faces of innocent people.

  “So they’re all political prisoners?” Lani asked.

  “Not all,” Victoria said. “Enough.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Sands interrupted. A face had caught his eye. “Go back.”

  Bao backtracked through the images until Sands told him to stop. Bao read off the name: “‘Ray Leflore.’ You know him?”

  “I know him,” Sands said. He gave no indication whether the beefy man with the thousand-yard stare was an old friend or enemy, but Bao thought from the way Sands stared at the image that the man must have some great importance.

  Sands grabbed a pencil and paper, scribbled some names, and handed the list to Bao. “Here. Check these names.”

  “On it.”

  “Mr. Sands,” Hari called. “I think I found something you want.”

  Sands went to Hari’s console. At first, it just looked like more undecipherable schematics, but Hari pointed to a rectangular space labeled “Magazine.”

  “Doesn’t this word mean…”

  Sands clapped a meaty paw on Hari’s thin shoulder and smiled.

  “Weapons.”

  Just saying the word conjured for Sands the smell of gun oil and cordite. He took a moment to assess his crew. Victoria was still too weak to exert herself. Rashid was fit enough, considering his age and years of imprisonment, but Sands needed a wise head in the Vestibule. He almost regretted now breaking Oleg’s wrist. At least he had some fighting spirit. The rest of the Drones struck Sands as a hopelessly nerdy and action-averse bunch. He needed three men—but he’d make do with what he had.

  “Ahmer, Bao, Desmond—you three come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” Ahmer asked.

  Sands pointed at the screen. “Hari found a cache of weapons. We’re gonna go get ’em…before somebody else does.”

  Sands saw out of the corner of his eye that Hari was hurt at not being included in the party. He didn’t really care, but good team leadership meant keeping everybody in the game and feeling positive.

  “Good job, Hari.” He grabbed from Bao’s station the list of names he had written up and handed it to Hari. “Here’s a list of names I want you to check against the prisoner manifest. Top priority, okay?”

  “Okay, Mr. Sands.”

  “The rest of you, sit tight till we get back. If you want something to do, keep combing through that data for anything that looks interesting.” He turned to his excursion team. “All right, fellas, grab your butter knives and sharpened pencils. Let’s go.”

  “I w
ant to go, too!” Lani piped up, her tuft of magenta hair bobbing with enthusiasm.

  “No girls,” Sands said, biting his tongue too late as he watched Lani’s brimming smile collapse into a girlish pout. So much for team leadership. Oh, well, there was a reason Sands had never advanced to command.

  Sands turned away, his guard down, totally unprepared for the crouching spin move that took his feet out from under him. Before he knew what was happening he was on his back, Lani astride his chest with a perfectly aimed kung fu chop suspended an inch from his throat.

  “Okay,” he said. “Girls.”

  -10-

  There is no education like adversity.

  —Benjamin Disraeli

  “Whoa, look at all this firepower!”

  When Sands unsealed the hatch to the weapons cache, his youthful entourage rushed in like kids at a toy store. He didn’t bother trying to hold them back because he saw immediately that the racks of weapons were all safely locked up. Nobody was going to pull a gun from the wall and shoot their foot off, at least. The room was smaller than he had expected, and despite Bao’s enthusiastic assessment, he found the “firepower” anemic. There were shotguns, handguns, tactical grenades, and a variety of batons and ballistic armor—the usual riot control stuff. It was enough, maybe, to put down a medium-size prison riot, but if the sixty thousand inmates of Inferno ever really cut loose, shotguns and tear gas would be like a flyswatter against a grizzly bear.

  The ship’s plans called the room a “magazine,” which implied explosive armament. But Sands saw nothing in the compartment more explosive than a flash-bang. In size, the cache didn’t qualify as a magazine, or an armory—it was really no more than a weapons locker. And why wasn’t it located above decks instead of below? In an emergency, the number one thing you want in a weapon is accessibility. Were the designers of Inferno really that confident that the inmates posed no threat to control of the ship? Or could it have been that the guards and crew were ultimately just as expendable as the inmates? If it was true, as Oleg and the other Drones believed, that the ship was being scuttled with ninety-nine percent of its total population still aboard, what guarantee was there for that other one percent if the corporate cost/benefit scale were to tip a few grains in the wrong direction?