Skybreach (The Reach #3) Read online

  “There she is,” he said.

  They turned as one to watch as Talia appeared at an entrance labelled Gate Five. Even from a distance she looked nervous and sweaty as she raised her hand to present her ID. The Enforcer lifted his scanner and touched it against her fingertips, reading the data on the chips embedded therein, then turned back to the terminal behind him. He asked Talia something and she nodded, then glanced around her. She hadn’t spotted the three of them yet.

  At that moment Knile thought he heard something – a far off rumble, like a distant landslide, and he sensed a slight change in the air around him.

  Vibrations? What the hell is this? he thought, looking around, but Roman and Silvestri had not reacted in the slightest. In fact, Roman had a stupid grin plastered across his face.

  “She’s through,” the boy said, his relief obvious. Over by Gate Five, Talia was making her way hesitantly forward, a black duffel bag slung over one shoulder. Roman took a few steps forward and managed to catch her eye, and then she too smiled.

  “Wait, Roman,” Knile said. “Those Enforcers might still be looking for us after the stunt we pulled last week at the gate.” He turned to Silvestri, frowning. “Hey, did you just hear something?”

  Silvestri’s smile faltered, sensing Knile’s unease.

  “No. What is it?” He glanced around. “Do you think they’re onto us?”

  “No, it’s not…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just thought I heard something strange.”

  “Should we get out of here?” Silvestri inclined his head toward the gates, where more people were filtering through. “The rest of the Skybreach team are coming through now.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Knile said dismissively. “I’m just on edge, that’s all. Hypersensitive.”

  “If you say so,” Silvestri said, but Knile’s sense of doubt seemed to have rubbed off on him. He looked about nervously as if expecting a threat to come at him from the gloomy corners of the Reach at any moment.

  Knile turned and was surprised to see that Talia was already upon them. She linked one arm around Roman’s neck and the other around Knile’s and drew them tightly to her in the mother of all bear hugs.

  “Hello, men!” she said joyously, planting a kiss on each of their cheeks. She held them both to her, then gave them another squeeze before allowing them to draw back.

  “About time you made it, Tal,” Roman joked. “What took you?”

  “Well, I didn’t get the express ride into the Infirmary for a start,” she said with a grin. “Quite a stunt you pulled there, Roman.”

  “Believe me,” he said earnestly, “I don’t recommend using Brimstone for fun. I’m going to try some Breeze to get my kicks next time.”

  Her face softened as if she were on the verge of tears, and she reached out and touched his cheek.

  “So good to see you well,” she said affectionately. Then she turned to Knile. “And you, Redman killer–”

  “Hey, don’t say that out loud,” Knile smirked. “You wouldn’t believe the number of autograph hunters I’ve had to escape this week.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He shrugged. “Besides, that was more Lazarus’ work than mine. I can’t really take credit for it.”

  “Where is he, anyway?” Talia said. “Your friend the Redman.”

  “He’s a little difficult to move around unnoticed,” Knile said. “He’s hard to miss.” He smiled at her quizzical expression. “Just wait till you meet him, it’ll all make sense.”

  Silvestri had broken away, but now he returned to them, looking pleased with himself.

  “Almost everyone has come through,” he said. “They’re breaking off into their assigned teams. From there they’ll gather the equipment and make their way up to Gaslight so that we can regroup.”

  “What about Aksel?” Talia said. “Isn’t he with us?”

  “Aksel?” Roman said, disgusted. “You mean the kid who hacked the Consortium network and activated the alarm while Knile and I were in the Infirmary? The kid who tried to kill us?”

  “He was acting under orders from Emil,” Silvestri said patiently. “You know that. He did what he was told to do, nothing more.”

  “Yeah?” Roman said, unconvinced. “Well he–”

  “Here he comes,” Silvestri said. They turned to see the young man walking slowly toward them, his face buried in his holophone, his spectacles reflecting the white light of the screen, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him.

  “Kid’s going to fall down a manhole doing that, one day,” Knile remarked.

  “He does enjoy his toys,” Silvestri said.

  As Aksel neared, Talia called out to him.

  “Aksel, let’s get out of here.”

  In response he held up his index finger, never taking his eyes from the screen.

  “What’s he doing, trying to get a new high score?” Roman said irritably.

  Even Silvestri seemed to have lost his patience. “Aksel, we need to–”

  “Stop!” Aksel said vehemently, raising his head and glaring up at them.

  Knile stepped forward, ready to berate him for making so much noise, when suddenly a siren blared all around them. Red lights began flashing in the ceiling, and the hundred or more people in the foyer stopped dead.

  Talia opened her mouth to say something, her eyes wide with terror, but before she could speak, the gates that led to the outside began to slam shut with such force that even the Enforcers were seemingly caught off guard. Those nearest the gates cried out and reeled back as the panels cracked back to their default positions, loud as gunshots, like hammers snapping home on giant mouse traps. One of the Enforcers was struck in the face and was thrown through the air, landing on the floor with blood pouring from a scalp wound.

  Knile heard Silvestri beside him over the din. “–the fuck is going on–?”

  In all his time in the Reach, Knile had never seen anything like this happen before.

  “They’re onto us!” Talia exclaimed, looking about wildly.

  “No!” Aksel said, pushing in close. “This is what I was trying to figure out a minute ago.”

  “What’s going on?” Knile demanded.

  Aksel looked down at his holophone again. “The Consortium monitoring system just went berserk,” he said. “It’s lit up like a star map. Red lights across the board. It’s mayhem.”

  Knile thought of the rumbling sound, the vibrations he had felt not long before. A cold shiver went down his spine.

  “Do you know what it is?” he said to Aksel.

  “It’s just coming through now,” Aksel said. “It looks like someone just attacked the Consulate on Level Forty-Two.”

  “Consulate Six,” Knile said, recalling the place. He’d been there several times in the past. “That’s what this is about?”

  Aksel nodded. “Yeah, but–”

  “That’s not a smart thing to do,” Knile said. “Whoever is crazy enough to try that is going to be up against Redmen. The Crimson Shield protects every consulate in the Reach–”

  “No,” Aksel said slowly, shaking his head. “You don’t understand. They didn’t just attack it. They blew it to pieces.” He glanced uncertainly at Silvestri. “It’s gone.”

  3

  Robson stared at the terminal in Scimitar’s surveillance room, tapping his finger on his lip in agitation.

  “This is bad,” he said. “Very bad.”

  “So what the hell was it?” Duran said, leaning down to peer over Robson’s shoulder in order to get a better view of the carnage on the camera feed. He quickly found that the proximity didn’t help; all he could see was black smoke billowing across the screen amid bright patches of flame.

  “Some sort of improvised explosive device, I guess,” Robson said. “Or more accurately, several of them.”

  “But how did they get inside the consulate?” Duran said. He glanced across to where Zoe was leaning against the wall, silent but with a troubled expression on her face. She
offered no response, so he turned back to Robson. “I mean, what happened to the Redmen?”

  “Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, I guess,” Robson said. He wound back the footage to several minutes prior, before the explosion went off, and pointed to a group of insurgents making their way across the marketplace toward the consulate. “These guys,” he said, tapping the screen. “The ones with the circles on their heads. Look at how many there are.”

  Duran leaned in closer, glancing at several of the faces on the terminal.

  “Who are they?” he said.

  “I don’t know at this point.”

  Duran raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I thought you knew everything around here.”

  “I’ve seen them around, sure, but I uh…” Robson shrugged. “I didn’t think they were dangerous. I just thought they were another one of those religious cults that had sprung up lately. Y’know, harmless weirdos.”

  “So what’s their endgame?” Duran said. “Why attack the Consortium?”

  “Eradication,” Zoe said suddenly. Duran looked across at her, noting that the frown had not left her face. “They want to push the Consortium out. What other reason could there be?”

  “Maybe they went looking to steal blank passkeys or something, and things got out of hand,” Robson suggested.

  “Then why were they hefting so much firepower?” she said. She shook her head and pushed away from the wall. “No, these guys only had one intention. This was a suicide mission.”

  “Then they wasted their time,” Duran said. “There are close to ten other consulates throughout the Reach. This won’t even slow the Consortium down.”

  “No, wait a minute,” Robson said, holding up a hand to stall him. “Take a look at this.” He switched to another camera view and began to backtrack even further through the footage, to when the insurgents had first emerged from a doorway on the other side of the marketplace. “This guy,” he said, pointing to a tall, thin man in dark robes who had remained behind after the others had left. Like the others, he too bore the imprint of a circle on his forehead. “He was the only one who didn’t join the fight.”

  Now Zoe moved closer as well to get a better look at the screen.

  “Who is he?” she said.

  Robson pulled up a database showing the man with a dated mugshot.

  “Facial recognition found a match a few minutes ago. Says here his name is Jozef Gudbrand. Arrested for leading a demonstration in Link over ten years ago, but since then he’s been off the radar. No other convictions.”

  “So all we know about him is that he’s one of the fanatics,” Duran said. “Maybe he was supposed to join the attack with the others but chickened out.”

  As the footage continued to roll, a young female fanatic turned and hastened back toward Jozef, bowing before him. He delicately reached out with his slender fingers and seemed to touch her face, murmuring something to her, and then she rejoined the others and continued on her way.

  “What was that?” Zoe said. “A blessing?”

  “Something like that,” Robson said.

  “So this guy is definitely an authority figure of some kind,” Duran said.

  “The leader?” Zoe said.

  “One of them, at least,” Duran agreed. “What do you think? Should we–”

  At that moment there was a noise behind them, and de Villiers and Jovanovic appeared from the gloom of the corridor outside. De Villiers’ face was blackened, as if he’d been covered in soot.

  “What happened to you?” Robson said.

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” de Villiers said, shoving his backpack onto the floor in disgust. He flopped into a chair and exhaled noisily, evidently disgruntled.

  “You were at the explosion?” Zoe said.

  “No, not exactly. On the same level when it went off. I was tracking a target at the time.” He shook his head. “From what I could see, that fire didn’t just wipe out the consulate, it set fire to half the damn level.”

  Zoe stared at him, shocked at the implications. “But that would mean–”

  “Yeah,” de Villiers said soberly. “The body count is rising. With the shitty ventilation in this place, there was a lot of people who were being overcome by smoke. I saw it come rolling down the corridors like a goddamn fog. That’s when I got the hell out.”

  “We just examined the footage,” Robson said. He pointed to the image of Gudbrand. “This guy looked as though he was calling the shots, and he walked away before everything went up in smoke. This might not be the last attack.”

  “So what do we do about that?” Jovanovic said. “Are we just going to sit here talking about it? Are we tracking him?”

  “What’s the Enforcer response at this point?” Duran said.

  De Villiers snorted. “I haven’t heard anything come through the comms, but I figure they’re going to be pissing their pants. They’re not used to this kind of confrontation. Not here in the Reach.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Jovanovic said. “Are we going to follow through?”

  They all glanced at each other. “Be careful where you go with this,” de Villiers said pointedly. “At first I wondered if an attack like this might actually help us, create confusion amongst the Enforcers and allow us to get the upper hand. But if it keeps escalating…”

  “Then there’s a chance the Consortium could pull out, and then we’d have problems,” Zoe finished for him. “Say goodbye to the economy around here.”

  “Right,” de Villiers said. “So it’s in our best interests to keep things in check.”

  “If we want to go after them, at least we have a starting point,” Zoe said. “This Jozef–”

  “Wait a minute,” de Villiers said. “There’s something I have to tell you.” He grimaced and seemed reluctant to go on. “I already earmarked Gudbrand as a target six months ago. Saw him involved in some arms deals in Gaslight.”

  “What? You knew about this?” Zoe said, disbelieving.

  “That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

  “So why the hell didn’t you tell us about this before?” Zoe said.

  “Tell you what? That I saw some guy buying weapons? There’s no shortage of assholes like that around here. He was just one of many.”

  “So what happened?” Duran said.

  De Villiers shrugged. “I stopped tracking him. His movements were too hard to predict. He had no routine. I mean, it’s not like this guy has a day job or goes grocery shopping at Chow’s Convenience Store every Wednesday. He spends most of his time out of sight. I figured he was a recluse, y’know, some kind of prepper nut. Stockpiling weapons to protect himself for when things invariably went to shit.”

  “What about his goons?” Duran said. “The others with circles on their foreheads. There was thirty of them involved in this attack. Surely their numbers must have made you wonder what he was up to.”

  “I never saw more than five with him at any one time. I had no idea there were more than that.” He spread his hands wide. “Look, all I can tell you is, there didn’t seem to be anything special about this guy. There were maybe a dozen guys just like him that I was tracking at that time.” He leaned forward angrily. “How was I supposed to know which one of them would turn out to be the goddamn mad bomber?”

  “Forget about that now,” Jovanovic said, stepping forward and laying a hand on de Villiers’ chest placatingly, pushing him back into the chair. “It’s done, and we can’t change it. The question is, what are we going to do now?”

  Duran considered that question for a moment. He thought back to the reason why he’d returned to Scimitar in the first place – to hunt down his old nemesis Knile Oberend. In truth, everything else in Duran’s life had taken a back seat to that obsession in recent times. There was a burning desire within him to find Oberend and make him pay for what he’d done.

  In the past few days Duran had tried repeatedly to convince Robson to help him track Oberend, to nail down his location in the hope of event
ually cornering him. He was here somewhere in the Reach. Duran could feel it in his bones.

  However, he’d hit a roadblock. De Villiers had stepped in every time he’d brought up the subject and effectively overruled him, labelling the pursuit of Knile a ‘fucking waste of time’ more than once. As a result, Duran had been forced to bide his time.

  As he considered it, Duran knew that he wanted nothing more than to have Knile under his heel, to have him staring down the barrel of his .40 and begging for mercy. But right now he had to admit that there were larger issues at play. These insurgents could spell disaster if they were allowed to continue unchecked.

  He couldn’t let his personal vendetta cloud his judgement. Not now.

  There would be time for Knile after this Jozef Gudbrand had been taken out of the picture.

  “What if we go after Jozef ourselves?” Duran suggested, voicing the question that was in everybody’s head.

  “It’s a possibility,” Robson said after a moment, “but I’ll need to see if I can find out more about him first. Examine his movements over the past few weeks. If he’s as hard to track as de Villiers says, that could be difficult.”

  “Do it,” Zoe said. She looked at Duran, then at the others. “I agree with Alec. We have to try.”

  De Villiers nodded. “I hate to say it, but for once I agree with Duran. If we’re true to ourselves, if we really believe that we’re here in the best interests of the Reach, we have to go after this guy.”

  “What about the Enforcers?” Robson said. “They’re probably thinking the same thing we are.”

  “We have no idea what they’re thinking,” Jovanovic said. “And I’m not prepared to sit around and wait to see how they handle this. By then it could be too late.”

  “Go ahead,” de Villiers said to Robson. “Let’s see if we can track down the location of Gudbrand’s cells for a start. If one of them starts moving, we need to know about it right away.”

  Zoe pursed her lips, contemplating. “If the cells are autonomous, then taking out Jozef might not change anything.”

  “Then we go to Plan B,” Duran said.