Then he pressed the door button and when the id scanner popped out he put the little black rectangle over it and waited. It clicked and hummed, the door light flashing green, then red again, then green. Jolo pushed on the door and it opened, and he was in. He touched his suit again to turn off the warmer, hoping he hadn’t used too much juice, and stepped into the corridor. He pulled up the schematic and headed for the end of the hall, the Colt out in front just in case.
Inside, he could hear a steady grinding noise, almost like he was standing on one of the tower drills. The white floors and walls were perfectly clean and the air was warm and smelled like a med bay. The main bank of logic arrays should be two down on the right. He headed in that direction, but before he got there he heard voices coming from a connecting corridor at the other end of the hall. He started to run to it thinking to get a closer shot, but then remembered that’d be a bad idea and instead plastered himself against the closest door, which was set into the wall about ten centimeters. Most of his body was in full view, but he stood there, holding his breath. A BG Lord and two more Jaylens walked past. The black mech was so tall it had to hunch down, its heavy, metal foot pads clanking against the floor. Jolo gripped the Colt with sweaty fingers, but the black beast and the blond girls walked past without a glance in his direction.
Jolo stepped into the logic array room and there, between two large banks of computers, wires snaking between, was a Jaylen. She was sliding a board into the array near the floor. “Did you bring the conduit feeders?” she said. She looked right at Jolo, her head tilting, a confused expression on her beautiful, synthetic face. For a split second Jolo thought of his Jaylen, and he paused. And then she started to stand, her eyes narrowing, staring right through the blend suit, but then Jolo raised the Colt and fired. The gun made a muffled THMMMP sound and her legs lost power and she fell to the ground like a human, but that’s where the similarity ended—no blood anywhere, and a slight whiff of smoke slipping out of the hole in her forehead. Jolo dragged her to the corner of the room and waited. Soon enough, another Jaylen came holding a box. She took two steps in and another THMMMP brought her down. And Jolo leaned her up against the other one.
He accessed Koba’s instructions on his computer and found an open port and inserted the small memory chip. This was the moment of truth.
Koba said one of two things should happen: either the virus would get into the system and shut the whole operation down, one section at a time, which would send all of the slaves to their quarters and have the BG technicians chasing down phantom hardware issues, giving Jolo a nice bit of chaos in the machine to find Barthelme; or nothing, in which case things got a bit dicier for the solo half-human armed with a Colt against an ice-harvester full of BG workers, Jaylens and one big Mech Lord.
“There are two different computer systems on the Mark IV, depending on where it was made,” said Koba. There’s no time to program two so we’re going to go with an educated guess as to which one it is.”
“What if you guess wrong?” said Jolo.
“Then its up to you if you want to go through with it,” said Marco. “If you need to bail out just take the homing beacon and get off the ice harvester. The suit will keep you warm until the Argossy comes.”
If the program worked the lights would go out and many of the core systems would start failing one by one. A repair team would be sent from Holsted, but it’d take them at least 36 hours to get there and then they’d have to find the bug.
If Koba guessed wrong then Jolo would have to find Barth and get him out with the lights on and all security systems active. If they spotted him he’d have attack drones roaming the hallways that wouldn’t be fooled by the suit.
Jolo jumped on top of one of the logic arrays and waited. It was a few meters off the ground and he had a clear view of the door. If anyone came he could take them out before they knew he was there or he could just lay still and let the suit do its thing.
Fifteen minutes later and the lights were still on and the harvester was still moving. No signs of Koba’s virus taking effect. He sat up and let his legs hang off the side. George had given him a 7.2% chance of success if the virus didn’t take effect. He wanted to forget that number, but couldn’t. With the virus in action and all hell breaking loose he had a 41.7% chance.
Jolo thought back to his last moments with Katy. Right before he crawled into the drone. “You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Duval needs Barth,” said Jolo.
“Don’t do it.”
“I have to.” And then he gave her a hug. “For Duval,” he said, which was a lie. He was doing this for himself. Barth had pulled him out of a hole once, and now he would do the same for him.
Jolo jumped down onto the floor, pulled out the Colt and whispered to himself, “Stealth mode.
