Gemini Gambit

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Gemini Gambit

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Gemini Gambit

  D. Scott Johnson

  © 2015 Scott Johnson

  ISBN: 978-0-9863962-0-5 (Kindle ebook)

  ISBN: 978-0-9863962-2-9 (ePub ebook)

  ISBN: 978-0-9863962-1-2 (Trade paperback)

  Cover design by Melissa Lew

  Interior layout by Lighthouse24

  For Pat Johnson

  Sorry, Mom. I just didn’t write it fast enough.

  “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

  – C. S. Lewis

  “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.”

  – Robert Heinlein

  Chapter 1: Kim

  Twenty years from now

  Alexandria, VA, February 19, Saturday, 10:20 p.m.

  The chaotic thunder of the firefight ever so briefly evaporated into complete silence. Not even a phantom shimmer betrayed the physics of the simulation. The ringing in Kim’s ears had just started to subside when another shell blasted the cliff face above her.

  She shouted Russian into her comm set as dirt and rocks rained down. “Repeat, our laser designator is in-op, I need that unit taken out now! Use the maps, damn you!”

  “Negative. Egressing from target. We are Winchester.” The pilot above her banked his jet. “Two AH-64s en route, cleared hot, ETA five mikes.”

  Kim cracked off a few more rounds, sending an opponent tumbling down the hill.

  “Lieutenant, what did he say?” Tonya shouted over the comm.

  “They’re out of ammo, more help in five!”

  “Goddamn it, Kim, I don’t speak Russian.”

  It took time she didn’t have to switch back to English. “Five minutes!” They’d be lucky to last half that. If they wanted to qualify for the finals, she had to find a better answer. There was a goat trail behind her, heading uphill. Bingo.

  Kim grabbed her sniper rifle and rolled away from the sandbags. She really needed to trade the construct in for something that wasn’t as tall as she was. If they made it through the next two minutes, she might actually do it this time.

  “All, LT is scalp hunting.” Time to earn the big bucks. “Keep their heads down!”

  Their rate of fire ticked up, rattling like rocks against a sheet of tin. It would be enough to cover her. It had to be.

  “Run fast, stay low, run fast, stay low,” she chanted, running in a crouch up the gravel path. They had to finish this. The quarterfinals were next, the final four. Rifle rounds chewed up the rocks behind her as she leapt across a gap in the cover. Dust gritted in her teeth and coated the back of her throat. The bullets were way too damned close that time.

  The trail got so steep it forced her to crab-walk. She changed her chant. “Be the goat, be the goat, own the goat.”

  Kim rolled her eyes at the chorus of baas that came over the comms. They never missed a chance to goof on her, even here. Another shell detonated, blasting a pit into the cliff face just a few feet away, close enough to damage her avatar.

  At the top of the trail, she hit the dirt, but not before getting a good look at what they were facing. One team setting up a heavy weapon on the other side of the valley wasn’t surprising. It was surprising to see three. She’d have to act a lot faster this time around.

  Kim crawled to the edge of the cliff and got ready. The rules of the game meant she’d have a chance to hit the ammo those weapons used, but it wouldn’t be easy. The target for a critical hit was only a few inches across.

  A priority chat window opened so wide the beveled screen blocked her field of view. “Hi!” The text flashed up with a cheerful tinkle. “My name is Mike! I wondered if you’d have time to talk to me soon?”

  Kim snapped it closed, vowing to kill whoever set the “must have most recent security patches” requirement on the arena’s participation contract. She hated patching just before a meet, because there was no way to tell what would break ahead of time.

  Strangling would come later; there was a job to do. The top edge of the first ammo pile lined up in her sights and the Barrett bucked as it fired a bullet bigger than her thumb downrange at more than three times the speed of sound. She’d admire the explosion later.

  Two to go.

  The window opened again. “I know you’re probably busy, but I really need to talk to you.”

  She flicked the window closed. Of course the bug would open up the chat channels right now. There was so much free time. The next target swam into the flat chroma-limned view of her scope and she squeezed the trigger again. The kick pushed sharp bits of gravel under her uniform.

  One to go, but the mortar team’s loader already had a round in his hand. As if on cue, the chat window opened again.

  “How about I leave you my contact information?”

  The mortar slid down the tube and bounced toward her team.

  “You’re really quite hard to reach. I hope you don’t—”

  Flashing thunder blew everything away.

  Kim opened her eyes, back in her living room and in more than a little pain. She scratched at her skin, only to snatch her hand back with a hiss. Normally she loved the field set to full haptic, but normally Kim wasn’t the one on the receiving end of high explosives. The neurosilver chain of the pendant phone made sure even her fingertips felt the burn.

  As the pain subsided, her anger took over. Two years of prep work. The strategy alone had taken them more than six months to master. In less than two seconds, this Mike, whoever the hell that was, had destroyed their chances. It would be three more years before the next Cup tournament. Kim bashed the arms of the overstuffed chair and threw her head into her hands.

  An insistent trilling drilled its way through her thundering pulse. When she looked up, the sprites in her augmented vision swirled a warning button to life. She punched it and the illusion disappeared. Her phone replaced it with a grid of messages.

  “Oh no,” Kim whispered as her rage was snuffed with nauseating ice. The messages all said the same thing.

  Breakdown.

  Completely breached security.

  Kim had to run. Right now.

  The bugout bag was just as heavy as she remembered. That was all there was time for. Move fast; get inside their decision loop. That was how she stayed alive.

  Kim had spent five long, terrifying years on the run. A stranger’s stare that lingered, a chalk mark she couldn’t explain, and she’d drop everything to start all over again. But it was never like this, never this close. Sirens weren’t blaring yet, but cops were absolutely on the way. Some of them had to already be in the building.

  Kim tucked her hair underneath her baseball cap, adjusted her glasses, and then took the stairs down two at a time. She hit the bottom and pushed the stairwell door open just a little too hard, making the bellman’s cart on the other side bang away in a rattling roll; she couldn’t have made herself more obvious if she’d tried. The glasses she wore were real, with lenses thick enough to seriously distort her face. She needed to see but didn’t dare break disguise or character. Kim had to risk active sensors.

  Sure enough, the spy program that overlaid her vision showed no fewer than four people watching her. Kim picked up her pace. She had to relax, had to fit in. She was just another tenant going out for the night, but not through the lobby. Turning right, she walked away from the main doors down the hallway to the loading dock.

  That got rid of all but one of the watchers. All of her effort, all of that isolation, and there was someone in the lobby of her apartment building hunting for her. Even the A
I noted the lack of noise behind her.

  One man, no shouts for her to stop.

  There was no team. He wasn’t a cop. No, he could only be a Quispe enforcer. Someone who could use a knife on you for days, make you weep for a bullet. He was closer than anyone had gotten in five years. Nobody got away from them when they were this close. Nobody.

  She spun around a dozen paces past the deli entrance, just in time to catch a glimpse of a dress shoe. He wasn’t just good. He was the best she’d ever seen.

  There was one last chance to get away from this death trap. Forcing him into the deli bought her a few seconds, but as soon as she turned away, the spy program showed him back in the hall with her and closing.

  Kim started counting as soon as she pushed the door open. She had to make six strides of identical distance at exactly the right speed, or the computer wouldn’t arm the trap. The Mite-Cam at the top of the doorframe acknowledged the sequence with a flash in her vision as she quickly got behind the corner of the building.

  She drew the silenced pistol from under her coat and activated the gun sight. It appeared in her vision just as she heard the door open. The trap’s firing notice blinked in the left corner of her eye.

  It had activated, but that didn’t mean it would actually work. She finally began to breathe again when she heard the fire extinguisher hit the floor and whoosh to life. There was a shrieking crash and the lights went out. It was supposed to hit him, but even if it’d missed, a fire extinguisher flying around and knocking out the lights would still disorient him. There was no time and she had only one chance. Kim pulled the pistol out, thumbed the safety off, then turned the corner.

  For once in her life, bad luck had happened to somebody else. His body was motionless, buried under a mangled pile of metal and glass. The extinguisher must’ve gone straight up and knocked the light fixture off its mount.

  Kim was on the road with minutes to spare.

  Chapter 2: Aaron

  FBI Special Agent Aaron Levine held the grab-handle over his head again as Agent Park slewed the car wildly around an ambulance. The fading scream of the sirens matched the ones he was barely keeping inside his head.

  “Go with Park,” they said. “He’s been chasing a ghost for eight years. You’ll learn a ton and you won’t get shot at.” So right out of the academy he asked for exactly that. The next thing he knew, he found himself working with the Asian Terminator himself.

  Then not two months later, also known as three minutes ago, Angel Rage, the mother of all unsubs, the person nobody was ever going to catch, exploded onto the radar screen. Nobody’d heard a peep out of Rage + the Machine, a group of “hacktivists” that’d terrorized corporate America and then vanished off the face of the earth, in five years. Hell, half the bureau was convinced Angel Rage in particular didn’t exist.

  Yet here he was racing toward her last known location. As far as he knew, this was the first time anyone had ever located her in realspace. He couldn’t laugh to relieve the tension because Park didn’t get jokes. Aaron wasn’t completely sure he knew how to smile. Aaron had never seen it happen.

  Park stopped their car behind the blue pinball circus of local police cruisers.

  Aaron still couldn’t believe his luck. “Nobody’s ever gotten this close before?”

  They were almost at the apartment’s loading dock when Park finally said, “Once. Back when Rage + the Machine was active, a security guard managed to take this.” A grainy video sequence of a young woman wearing dark glasses, floppy hat, and dark clothing appeared in their shared vision. Her body language was weird, as if she was trying to stay away from everything around her. Rage’s companions stayed so far away from her they took different doors as they exited the building.

  “Wow. So the Donald wasn’t kidding after all?”

  “No,” Park said in his trademark monotone. “She really did destroy the quantum stacks that ran Trump Tower’s networks. A sealed room under fifteen feet of earth and concrete didn’t even slow her down. I’ll send you the guard’s interview when we’re done here.”

  Great. More homework. He couldn’t get too frustrated, though. Park truly was a great teacher. Robots usually were.

  The sergeant in charge turned from readouts only she could see and then walked over to them. “Agent Park, Levine,” Sergeant Flynt said, shaking their hands. “If you’ll follow me?”

  Portable lights threw the scene into white light and black shadows. Park knelt and pointed his flashlight at the mangled pile of metal in front of him. “Will the vic make it?”

  “EMTs didn’t seem optimistic,” Flynt replied. “It was a pretty nasty head wound.”

  Aaron walked over to a small empty alcove on the wall, just able to make out the piston that’d pushed the extinguisher out of its cabinet. It was a tiny thing, camouflaged perfectly; nobody would have ever seen it if they weren’t looking for it. The extinguisher had completely trashed the loading dock. “Makes you realize how much energy is in one of those things, huh? How’d she manage to aim it like that?”

  The sergeant raised an eyebrow. “She? Really?”

  Park nodded as he stood.

  The sergeant continued, “Okay, well she didn’t. They’re only supposed to knock people down.”

  “This wasn’t the first one you’ve seen?” Park asked.

  “No.” Flynt shook her head. “It’s the seventh trap we’ve found like this in about five years.”

  Five years. The ghost had been right under the FBI’s nose, the entire time since she’d vanished. Aaron was surprised when Park blushed slightly. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or frightened at his boss’s first human reaction.

  “It’s only the second one that’s ever been used, though. We were investigating them as drug cases until you guys showed up,” Flynt said.

  “Why drugs?” Park asked.

  She shrugged. “The first one knocked a Quispe enforcer through a window. We made four busts just by staking them out after we found them. Nasty guys—murder raps mostly—all connected one way or another to the sunrise trade. You’re telling me it’s not drugs?”

  The FBI had kept that connection secret. At the end, Rage + the Machine had gotten involved with the drug trade that was sunrise. The stuff was worse than heroin; it was frozen chaos and death.

  Park nodded at him, so Aaron cleared his throat and asked, “You ever heard of Rage + the Machine?”

  “You’re kidding me. You mean all this time…?”

  Park nodded. “You were chasing Angel Rage.”

  She whistled low. “So she really does exist. What broke the case?”

  Park shrugged. “We’re still not sure. The Firing Range is trying to work it out. They told us she just suddenly appeared on their screens.”

  Aaron couldn’t believe those realm nerds had actually ended up being useful. As far as he knew, nobody ever saw them outside their strange little lab.

  The sergeant peered up at the building behind them. “So that’s why we had to check out that apartment so quick?”

  “It was a long shot, but we had to be sure. What did you find?”

  She shrugged. “Not much. Some clothes, an expensive bicycle. The food in the fridge was still good and the place was neat. No personal effects at all.” She shared a view of a closet and used her pen to pull out a clothes hanger. “We did find this. Turns out she’s a manager at a Taco Bell somewhere.” The black uniform hanging on it zoomed in. “No name tags or ID, though. I was about to call our forensics team when I got your note. Do you guys still want me to do that?”

  Park shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. Our van’s already on the way. If you could make sure the site stays secure until it arrives, that would be a big help.”

  “Sure, no problem. So. Angel Rage is managing a Taco Bell, huh? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

  Chapter 3: Kim

  A normal life? Since when? She laughed as she walked down the hotel’s hall. It was that or cry, and she had no time to cry
. Her life would never be normal, not in a million years.

  Not ever.

  Kim entered the hotel room and threw herself onto the bed just as her phone rang. She checked the clock. 12:30 a.m. on the dot, just as she and Tonya had agreed. It was time to make sure everyone was safe and that they wouldn’t try to find her. She had to disappear again.

  Lose everything again.

  “Tonya, are you all right?”

  “Yes. Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?”

  “No. They don’t know about you. They can’t know about you. Any of you. I’m so sorry, Tonya.”

  “Never mind that. Kim, you vanished. I wasn’t even sure you’d be the one answering the phone. Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Kim closed her eyes. She’d have to spend at least another three years alone. Three years. The whisky bottles and loaded pistols were already calling to her. “Eventually, I’m sure I’ll be okay. I’m sorry, but I have to go. I can’t command the Phoenix Dogs anymore.” The tournament felt like a million years ago, even though it couldn’t have been more than an hour. As if it ever really mattered. No, that wasn’t fair. It might have been a game to them, but they’d saved her and now she’d never be able to tell them why. “Paul should have the access he needs to take over. Could you tell him?”

  “Sure, anything you need.” Tonya laughed. “So I don’t get to pretend to be you in realspace? I thought that was gonna be fun.”

  Kim couldn’t stop her smile. “No, we never really needed to do that, did we?” What a grand scheme it was. They’d all wanted to win so badly, but it wouldn’t work without her. She figured out a way to stay behind the scenes. Tonya would be her public “face.” It’d been so much fun learning to imitate each other.

  It was stupid and dangerous, another sign that she’d gone soft. They hadn’t even managed to get past the qualifying round. She relaxed and opened the strange perception in her mind that once made her Angel Rage. Altering the records that made the substitution work set her ears ringing as if a pistol had gone off in her head. It was a noise only she could hear. It’d been so long she’d nearly forgotten the pain, but now nobody could connect Tonya with her.