all.'
' Stimmt,' said Otto. Lehmann jogged off.
The light of day was growing stronger, heat coming with it, taking the chill off the autumn. Otto led them to a building whose sides were made of ragged cement sheeting, cracked single-glazed windows high up in its sides. He slid the door aside and stepped into a dark space shot through with mote-laden sunbeams. Efforts had been made to insulate the insides of the building with foamcrete, but it had been inexpertly applied and was full of gaps. Rusting girders dragged from other buildings propped up the roof. An array of computer hardware was stacked carelessly in a horseshoe round a mouldy desk, a tarpaulin strung above it. Farm machinery lined the walls, unidentifiable with age and splattered with foamcrete. The place smelled of old food and strong cannabis.
'Kolosev. Lazy. He should have set up in the office. His cables probably aren't long enough to reach his satellite dish, and he could not take the time to move his fat arse and buy more.' Otto looked around. 'He's still in here.'
Chures drew his gun. 'What about the offices?'
'Not bedtime yet,' said Otto. 'Little hackers are allergic to the sun. He's probably just finishing up for the night.'
'This is normal, to hang around when you're coming to visit?' said Valdaire.
'He doesn't have anywhere to go,' said Otto, 'and a rat's maze like this, he'll see it is a good place to hide. It's either that, or booby-traps and a remote camera to catch us all being blown up. Gloaters, lurkers, runners — your three kinds of reluctant informant, so Richards says. Kolosev is a little of each.'
'Great,' said Valdaire.
'Kolosev won't blow us up. I know him, this is all he owns, all he's ever likely to own, because no matter how well he does he always loses it all because he can't bear to be parted from his mama. No,' said Otto, 'he's still in here.' A coffee mug sat on Kolosev's desk, cooling in Otto's IR capable eyesight from yellow to green. He walked over to it, touched the back of his hand to it. 'Still warm, so is the chair.' He pulled out his gun. 'Amateur.'
'Kolosev!' called out Chures. 'This is the VIA, come out now!'
' Genau, if he's not already shitting himself, he is now,' said Otto. 'Go easy on the threats, Chures, there's nothing these little hackers fear more than a visit from the VIA, and your agency's busted him a lot of times. He didn't much like his last stretch in the freezer. You will make him run.'
'I was about to say we are only here to talk, Klein.'
'It will not make any difference.' Otto indicated upwards with his eyes.
'What?' mouthed Valdaire.
Otto pointed to Chloe. I can hear him. Otto sent the message via his MT to Chloe, his thoughts writing themselves across her screen. Breathing. Otto pointed his chin to a roof crux, flaking steel butted by a makeshift half-floor. A creak, audible enough for the others to hear. 'Come down, Kolosev! Uncle Otto has come to say hello!'
Kolosev wasn't hanging around. There was a series of rapid scuffs followed by a crash as he flung himself out of one of the barn's filthy windows. Otto ran to the door to see Kolosev bounding through the wheat at close on fifty klicks an hour, high atop a pair of 'roo springers. 'And there we are,' said Otto, and tore off after the hacker.
Chures put up his gun. 'Klein can handle that, let's crack the pendejo's system and see what he's got.'
'I could do with some help.' Valdaire grimaced, sweeping aside the sticky detritus of food, joints' butts and crusty tissues cluttering Kolosev's desk. She placed Chloe down on the cleanest part.
'You'll get it, in a moment,' said Chures. 'Klein was right about one thing. I need to sweep this place for booby traps.'
Otto engaged his full suite of cybernetic and biophysical enhancements as he hit the man-high corn, pushing his body well past human norms. His secondary heart drove doctored blood hard through his body, assisted lungs wringing the air of oxygen. His adapted adrenal glands issued synthetically optimised ephinephrine, feeding his muscles with energy at an accelerated rate. Otto's enhanced biochemistry was not intended to make him stronger, although it did, but to enable his body to keep pace with his secondary polymer musculature. These muscles, contracting to carefully timed impulses drawn off his rewired nervous system, were what provided him with his inhuman strength, driving his limbs like pistons as he hurtled across the field. Without boosting, his organic muscles would be ripped to pieces by the actions of the polymer bundles.
Wheat stalks whipped at his hands and face as he ran. Kolosev was ahead of him still. Kolosev had aged badly, fatter, pastier than his mugshots. Passing into middle age, he dressed like a child in stained Gridkid gear, tight luminous pants and puffsleeved shirt. On the 'roo springers he ran like a cheetah, a simple mechanism of levers and springs known for a hundred years lengthening his legs, mimicking the efficiency of a kangaroo's limbs. Under Kolosev's own power, the rig would have sped him, but like Otto's limbs the springer was heavy with polymer muscle bunches, lending the fugitive speed that Otto could not match. He tore through the wheat like the wind, rig bouncing over the summer-dried earth in bounding strides. Past harvest and ploughing, it would have been different, for Kolosev's rig would surely have foundered in the sticky black chernozem. Right now Otto could never catch him.
'Oleg!' Otto shouted. 'Stop, or I'll have to shoot you! Oleg!'
The fleeing hacker kept his face forward. Kolosev leapt high as he cleared some obstacle, and Otto lost him to a wrinkle in the steppe. Otto let out a long string of hard German expletives and ran on. His shoulder hurt, and his stomach burned with acid reflux. He could keep a pace of thirty kilometres an hour for a couple of hours, even at his age, but this speed was draining his resources fast.
Otto burst into the open, stubble beneath his feet. A hundred and fifty metres to his left the staggered wall of giant harvesters droned forward slowly. Staple-shaped front ends terminating in multiple wheel units, flails on a wide drum between them, cutting and winnowing. Long hoppers ran behind the main bodies, raised high off the ground, rears supported on pillars with their own wheel units at the base — from the air they looked like insectile letter Ts crawling across the earth. Chaff escaping from secondary pods harvesting waste for biofuel blew in a constant stream toward Otto, obscuring his view in showers of shivered straw and grit.
Otto stopped to get his bearings. A glimpse of movement, quicker than the harvesters; Kolosev was well ahead of him, nearing the wall of machines and its shroud of dust.
'Oleg! Stop!' The Ukrainian carried on running, each step a high leap.
Otto levelled his caseless automatic two-handed at the fleeing hacker. His adjutant ran his ocular magnification up to the absolute maximum. The Ukrainian bounced around in his vision like a fly trapped in a jar, close to the furthest effective range of Otto's pistol, and he wished he'd brought a bigger gun.
If I hit him, it's his own fault for running, he told himself, and fired.
The bullet missed.
Otto squinted down the barrel of his pistol for another shot, and lowered it. Kolosev was too far away.
' Scheisse.'
His MT lit up. Lehmann. Don't worry, Leutnant, I have him.
A gun fired, way back behind him. A second later Kolosev staggered. Lehmann's shot took the 'roo springer's left heel assembly out, the sound of the shot following the bullet. The springer's damaged leg dragged. Otto accelerated. Panic showed on Kolosev's bearded face as he undid the springer's straps, hammering at the quick release until his legs popped out of the rig. He fell free and made a hopping run toward the nearest harvester. He was up the ladder on the left wheel pod pillar as Otto reached the vehicle. Otto was on to the ladder as Kolosev scrambled round the harvester's machine cabin.
Otto followed hard behind.
Kolosev stood in the middle of the catwalk that spanned the width of the harvester, looking wildly from side to side, shirt stained with sweat.
'Kolosev, stop. You've nowhere to run, and I'm getting indigestion.'
Kolosev stared at the hopper full of wheat kernels, as if he were thinking of jumping in, and thought better of it. 'You're getting old, Klein,' he panted. He stepped back as Otto holstered his gun. Kolosev was unmodded: the real Grid experts never wore hardwired mentaugs. Kolosev was free of cybernetics, not even base-level healthtech; they knew how it could be used against them.
'Look at yourself, Oleg, you're out of shape. Don't run like that again, you'll have a heart attack.'
'You come in here with the VIA? What was I supposed to do? After all I've done for you in the past, you bring them here! I've been busted out of every place I've ever been by them. Ten years' cold storage they've cost me.
