The Covert Academy (4 page)

She disengaged the active camouflage and rerouted the jumpsuit’s power to
its limited anti-gravity ability. Instantly she felt like she weighed half as much as her original lean physique. The trade off was that the fluctuating colours of her jumpsuit faded to a regular dull blue, rather than attempting to blend in with the environment by bending the light around her body in real time.

Sarah was now exposed, but this was one of the few buildings that still offered an unobstructed view of the area so close to the Colonnade. That also meant she could expect it to be guarded.

She had better slow down and be careful, she chided herself, as she replayed the conversation with the doctor...

‘General Withers has the bio-ID tech,’ Dr. Prewett had said.

‘What
is the bio-ID and why are you telling me this?’ Sarah hung upside down on the street corner while she’d questioned the doctor. At least she had looked crazy enough to conduct an interrogation.

Dr. Prewett looked like a broken man already when he’d nervously checked over his shoulder. As if he had expected someone else to jump out at him, other than the nutcase hanging above his head.

‘You've got to get me someplace safe. I can pay,' he said, looking up at Sarah like a lost little kitten.

'Tell me first and I'll do what I can,' Sarah said guardedly.
His money was useless outside of Confederate controlled territory. Not that Sarah needed it anyway.

The doctor drew himself up, f
inding courage in her promise. ‘The bio-ID is a special set of code that allows the iPC it is installed in, to scan people’s faces and tell you everything about them,’ he said.

Sarah sighed, ‘They have had that for years, how is this any different?’

‘It tells you
everything
,’ the doctor said, ‘Where you are. What you’re doing. What you’re saying. What you’re thinking. What you’re about to do... with enough practice and study, potentially what you plan to do weeks in advance.’ He ploughed ahead, his voice rising in pitch, ‘Do you see now? Once you’re scanned, it’s all over. The data is stored forever on any device the bio-ID is installed on. It’s big-brother with unlimited access to everything that you are or will ever be.’ He was shaking, and had looked ready to run for the hills to live off the grid as a hermit.

Sarah paused a beat for the doctor to get himself under control.

‘You can prove this? How do you even know?’ Sarah had tried to look menacing with the blood rushing to her head.

‘Look I just know all right? I work i
n the lab where the bio-ID was made,’ Dr. Prewett said. ‘The General showed up less than an hour ago for the prototype and I overheard him say to his aide to set up a meeting with the Confederacy leaders. Put two and two together and it’s obvious he is making a power-grab over the others.’

Master Casey
Jayne, remaining silent until now, spoke up on Sarah’s iPC. ‘Jensen, we have had thermal imaging sweep your area of operations during this mission. Six minutes ago there was a small explosion near the top of the Tower. Heat signatures match a small object, likely a body, falling out of a window.’

Sarah glanced at Dr. Prewett, the question of his safety on her lips. Plus he was far too valuable to just leave there.

‘Leave the doctor there,’ Casey answered, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Your backup will pick him up and deliver him to the base. Ryan can handle it. Your new objective is to find the impact site near the Tower, clear the area of hostiles and recover anything of value.’

Sarah now focused on her task as she reached the top of the building she’d crawled up. To find the impact site, she had to get a good view. She wasn’t about to walk up to the Tower guards and ask for a tour. This ugly, squat building would have to do. On the plus side, it was right next to an alley connecting with a quiet, lonely corner near the base of the Tower. If there was anything left to see, she’d see it from here.

Sarah
paused and gripped the lip of the building’s roof. She tucked her legs under her body and hung off the side of the building in a squatting position. She switched her iPC imaging to thermal. Three guards patrolled the roof. She risked peeking her head up to check for drones. There was yet to be any reliable technology for detecting the radar-jamming drones. Thermal was useless too. They still needed normal visual contact.

No drones in sight up here. A lucky break.

Sarah watched the pattern of the guards’ patrol for a few seconds, getting a feel for their movements. Silent as a mouse, she leaped up onto the roof and took cover behind an air conditioner vent. The nearest guard walked by oblivious, the smell of plastic and cigarettes invading Sarah’s nose, threatening her to gag. The Confederates rarely trusted even their own people with dangerous weapons, in case they got ideas of desertion. Therefore this fellow was equipped with one of the Confederacy's bulky cannon-shaped stun guns, which had become known simply as "Stunners". It was highly effective in crowd control and detaining troublesome suspects, but only lethal to citizens with weak constitutions.

Not a problem for Sarah.

She did a quick check of the thermal imaging in her rear-view for the other guards. When the closest guard had moved far enough for his back to be facing Sarah, she took one step out of her cover. She put her left hand on his right shoulder and her right hand over his mouth. She twisted his head around with a sickening snap. The guard slumped, but Sarah held him up until she could lower him quietly to the ground.

The two other guards hadn’t noticed.

She crossed her first victim's arms under his head to look like a classic sleeping pose, just in case. No need to raise any unnecessary alarms just yet.

Sarah made short work of the two remaining guards. The first went down
, choking and gasping, in a cloud of smoke laced with a toxic drug, from a pellet Sarah threw at his feet. The other guard saw and panicked, but with Sarah standing right behind him, she only had to trip his feet to send him sprawling. A swift kick to the back of his head, caving his skull, finished him off.

‘Distractin’ them would have been better, Jensen,’ Casey said in her head.

‘There’s no guarantee that lab tech, Prewett, was telling the truth,’ Sarah replied. ‘This could all be just chasing after shadows. Besides, the body that fell from the Tower will be getting cold soon and thermal will be useless.’

‘Fine,’ said Casey. ‘Then hurry up and get yer ass into position and find out what we’re dealin’ with.’

Sarah didn’t bother to reply. Casey was in charge of the operation, as he was with almost everything in the Academy, but Sarah and the rest of the students were trained to think for themselves. That included making their own decisions in the field, not only in how to complete an objective, but whether to attempt it at all. The choice every student faced on their first mission was whether they could take a life. While encouraged to spare the Confederates whenever possible, since they were only human after all, the mission objectives came first.

Maybe Casey was just getting sentimental in his old age
, Sarah thought with a smile.

She crouched and crept up to the edge of the building that faced the Tower, which loomed over her. If the broken window was visible from here, she didn’t bother to look for it. She switched on thermal imaging once again. Not the best tool to search for a dead body, but if she had been quick enough, traces of heat would still be visible.

A soft glow registered below her. There in a dumpster, was the body. She switched her iPC view to regular vision and zoomed in on the torso. The pockets were turned out... and there, his eye socket was empty.

‘Damn,’ she breathed. ‘Casey, the target has been searched and his iPC is gone. The mission is a fail...’

‘Who’s Casey?’ said Joshua.

Startled out of her wits, Sarah swiftly drew a short curved blade tightly strapped to her left outer thigh. She whirled around to see a scrawny youth dressed in filthy rags, layered with months old blood stains and grime, holding an eyeball by the optic nerve.

A bullet ricochet pinged off a metal panel in the space between Joshua and Sarah, bringing them out of their
standoff.

Joshua flinched and fell to the ground.
I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead
, he thought. To have come this far...

After that insane jump across the alley he’d run from room to room and down each hallway looking for the way out into the next street. That was far more difficult than it initially seemed, with many of the walls of the empty apartment block decayed or crumbling, and the staircases leading down were blocked with rubble, impeding his progress at every turn.

To make matters worse, the second drone had chased him the whole way. Sometimes it flew right past him as he doubled back to try the next floor. By the time Joshua had got to the roof, he suspected the
drone had meant to only keep its cold eye on him while the soldiers tried to take him alive. Drones didn’t have any non-lethal weaponry, and it could have killed him long ago.

But he was alive. He yelled at the girl, ‘Get out of here!’ Joshua looked up at where she’d been standing.
Gone
. He looked around frantically, forgetting for the moment that he thought he had been dead just seconds ago. The icy cold rooftop reminded him where he was, and he snapped his head down to check his body for the bullet wound.

He came up empty.

The Confederates have been using stun weapons until now… maybe the bullet wasn’t meant for me
, he wondered.

The drone that had been chasing him flew up out of the alley to hover a couple metres above the roof. It washed the red scanning light over the area in a tight search pattern.

Joshua didn’t need to move out of the way, since the drone was facing off to his right. He did anyway. The drones were not something to take lightly. And the Confederate soldiers would not be far behind.

He crawled on his stomach to the corner of the building. A quick glance over the side showed the three soldiers scrambling over to another fire escape further down the alley. They’d be up here in just a few minutes. The one that had scaled the opposite building was looking up at Joshua from two stories below. The soldier was defeated and he knew it. He made an obscene gesture. Joshua just grinned down at him. Of the soldier that had run inside the building there was no sign at all.

Lost in the labyrinth below with any luck
, thought Joshua.

A beep from the drone caused him to whip his head around. There, for a moment, the red light caught a shape in the night, the contour of a female arm pressed to a low wall. The drone opened fire.

Hundreds of live rounds, modified to illuminate the area of effect, slammed into a blank wall. The firing stopped, and Joshua’s ears twitched at a rustling sound, then soft padding footsteps fading into the night. Whoever she was, she was amazing. Joshua had never seen anyone move so fast, as though she had been born and raised in the dark, with the lightning reflexes and eyesight of a cat.

But the drone had not run out of tricks yet. Rather than using the tight search beam or waste its ammo firing at shadows, the drone floated higher in the air and pointed down. The red beam expanded into a wide area light, casting the entire rooftop in a soft bloom. A concealed hatch slid open on the side of the drone, and miniaturized flares popped out one after the other, loosely following the direction the girl had run. The drone spun in mid air, scanning the area as it moved along the line of flares.

No way she could hide forever. Joshua leaped to his feet. Even though the drone seemed fixed on locating the girl, it was sure to be transmitting its imaging to the soldier’s helmets as well.

No room for hiding now
, he thought. As if on cue, the three soldiers clambered up the top of the fire escape on the other end of the building, and ran straight for Joshua’s position.

The best Joshua could do was to break direct line of sight with the soldiers. He spun right to put his back to a tall air conditioner vent, and a low edge-wall to his side. In the tight corner the Confederates would have to close to within arm’s reach to get a shot off using their Stunners. Exactly what he was counting on. Joshua risked a peek around the edge.

The first soldier almost ran right into his face. He jumped to his left with a yelp to create some space between them, and aimed his Stunner. Joshua anticipated the action and took one long stride toward the soldier, getting inside the effective area of the Stunner. If the soldier fired now, they’d both go down. Joshua continued his momentum, bringing his elbow up under the soldier’s chin. The young man’s he
ad snapped back with a crunch, and he involuntarily squeezed the trigger on the Stunner. Joshua dived low and hard onto the concrete past the soldier, narrowly avoiding the million volts discharged into the air. The soldier was not so lucky. He collapsed in a twitching heap.

Bruised and bleeding, Joshua rolled underneath an elevated air vent. His thin bony arms were screaming in agony.