02.11 - Decoding

     “So what are we going to do now?” Espy’s worried trill was music to his ears. And her fears weren’t a mystery; Jasper understood her loyalties to the doctor, and Rika, and himself. Anyone that had ever worked with her was a comrade; anyone that gave honest help was a resource to protect.
     “I don’t really want to go looking for that thing Espy, but we can’t go home. If it can track us, there’s no way we want to lead it to Rika.”
     “Then where are we going to go?” He could imagine the sad look in her eyes as she snuggled closer, head resting on his shoulder and pointed up to talk in his ear. “I know we can’t stay in Crownhaven but that was my home … I don’t think I’ve ever had a place I’ve felt that way before.”
     Silence was his only answer for quite a while. Having driven several hours in circles around the sector that Adus Gray had called home, Jasper stayed busy scanning the traffic for signs of the burnout. They had seen no sign of such a thing, and it had the raconid very worried. He wasn’t one to imagine such things, so where was it?
     “I don’t know. Janus will come up with something. He’s got people all over the place. He’ll get Rika and all our stuff moved, you’ll see.”
     “As long as he gets Rika.”
     “And our things?”
     “You can replace stuff Jasper. It’s only stuff after all. Next to people, it doesn’t mean a thing.”
     He smiled. “I thought you’d think so. You don’t seem to mind losing the bike.”
     “Well, the bike or me, that’s no contest.”
     “Absolutely. … Espy?”
     “Yes?”
     “Who were the Lir? What are they?” He felt her stiffen behind him, and it made his heart ache. He expected her answer.
     “The Lir are just another people Jasper. How would I know any more than that?”
     “Because you’re one of them. Aren’t you?” She blinked, fingers clutching involuntarily at his chest. He pulled the cycle into a vacant parking lot and shut it down. She started to dismount, but with a sigh he took her by the wrists and held her tightly in place. A long moment passed before she pressed her face against his back. He felt her words go through him despite the synth-leather jacket that he wished was not between his skin and hers.
     “I never met my father so there’s nothing I can tell. My mother… there’s never been anyone like her, in all the people I ever knew. The stories she told me were handed down; her parents were among the exiles from their home world. But she was so much older than anybody … you can’t understand it … I can’t understand it. That much time between us … I really thought she just wasn’t all there …”
     Again he took his time to answer. Still holding her wrists, he squeezed. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not your mother I want to know about. It’s not your past Espy … it’s your future. I want to be there. I want to know what to expect.” When she didn’t answer, he sighed again.
     “A full dermal reconstruction Espy! You shouldn’t even be out of bed yet. And here you’re just a little ‘sore’. You mentioned broken bones … Gray said he took pieces of a ladder out of you. There was never anyone like your mother? Espy, there’s never been anyone like you!”
     The tremor in her was his only warning, face still buried in his back, she started sobbing. It took work to disengage from her … the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life, to be gentle enough, to pry free and turn in the enclosed cockpit of the cycle, and get himself turned about to face her, and hold her while she cried.
     “Shhh,” he whispered. “It doesn’t change a thing.”
     She only cried harder. “It changes everything!”
     “How?” He asked. “I don’t see it.”
     She gave a snuffle and pushed him backward. “Stupid. How can you be so stupid? How can I be The One?” When she saw his reaction she couldn’t stop her tears. She would have crumpled in the rear seat of the cycle, had he not caught her. But despite the shock on his face he shocked her more when he laughed. Laughter: it made her eyes snap wide open, more so when he pulled her back into his embrace.
     “Silly girl. How could you be The One?”
     She stiffened, and in a way he was relieved, yet still he held her tight. She trilled angrily, “How can I not be? I’m the last of them!”
     “But only in part, correct?”
     “Part or whole, what difference does it make? Who else is there?”
     “I don’t know.” Again she pushed him back and this time he allowed it, but took her hands in his own. He was still smiling and despite her emotions it chipped away at her ire. “Bartholomew was clear on one thing. He said we weren’t to face this scientist … this Andrew. He said we were to give The One a foundation…”
     Espy’s head tilted. “We? You and me … or you and …”
     “Us. All of us, including you. Because Bartholomew said ‘he’ whenever he mentioned The One. And if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that you are no ‘he’.”
     One blue brow arched high. “That doesn’t cut it Jasper. And you said he was crazy.”
     The raconid nodded. “Yep, and I believe it. But now I know why. And I believe him. Maybe ‘he’ isn’t enough, but Bart also said that The Betrayer calls The One a wanderer with no true shape of his own.”
     Espy drew back, blinking. “He said that? What else did he say? And why do you believe him … why now?”
     “He told me about the Tree and how they were summoning things. He said that The One will be here, and that he too has been summoned. And that the scientist isn’t himself anymore; whatever that means. But I do believe him Espy, because if one gave away their soul … if one set aside their … goodness … to gain immortality … power, and watched their world go to hell in return, how would they react when they realized what they had done?”
     Wide green eyes glittered. “ … because he is not Him …”
     A flicker of surprise passed through silver eyes before Jasper broke into chortling laughter. “O’Sama right? Oh Espy I’m sorry I didn’t give him a better listen. I’m sorry that they took him from you…”
     Her face dipped low and she slid closer, leaning forward, into him. “He liked you. He was such a good man … I wish I’d gone to see him more. I wish I’d thanked him … for mother …”
     “What did he tell you? Espy?”
     She was frantically digging in a belt pouch, squirming on the seat like her tail had suddenly burst in flame. Again he queried, and she ignored him until she gave a cry of relief, her tail shooting straight out behind. Her hand rose between them, a thin gray bar of plastic firmly gripped between the points of her nails. Turning it this way and that, she looked up into his eyes. “What sort of secret is this to die over?”
     Jasper gulped. “To die?”
     Epsy nodded. “O’Sama gave me this just before they killed him. And I don’t have a clue as to what it is.” She turned it over in her fingers. “He said the answer to my question is in the Core. But I don’t know Jasper … what do I do?”
     He closed his hands over hers. “No Espy. What do we do?” They smiled at each other, but despite the assurance each had the exact same thought.
     What do we do?

~

     “Anything?” Ripcord stood behind his hacker’s chair as Slyph poured over the collection of video files for the uncounted time. Three banks of monitors flickered and danced in synchronization, showing the various reports filtering across Federal news channels. Slyph shook his head and pointed to the three screens directly in front.
     “The first two are static; very little editing done on the second. But number three is a slash job. I can see the pixelation factor rising and falling frame by frame.” A black haired human with pale skin and a hawkish nose, he turned to the red headed woman sitting beside him, manning the feed switches of the station console. “Roxanna, run the first clip at normal speed.”
     With a push of a button the first monitor showed the now well-known video sequence of a raconid and lizardine stealing a Trifold Master motorcycle from an Enforcer trooper. Caught by dozens of comm. cameras, played on hundreds of Data-Net channels, the vid was straight forward, following the pair until their pursuer fell from his too small cycle, becoming the eye catching star of a snuff vid by rolling under a heavy hauler sled.
     Roxanna hit the pause button at the last moment the pair on the stolen bike were firmly in focus, the lizardine’s wide green eyes staring directly at the camera lens. She tapped the monitor with her stylus. “As you know Rip, this is Espy, the one that Janus asked us to help track down. A relative unknown when this vid was taken, Espy had no positive match on the criminal database. With so many cameras picking it up, this was ‘flash data’ … news today, forgotten tomorrow … fifteen minutes type stuff.”
     “What of the bandit?”
     “Nothing on him either. A comp scan suggested he was wired, but we discounted it because he didn’t jack the bike.” Slyph then nodded and the woman hit the switch to play the second monitor. The video showed the same lizardine rolling out of the junk shop, plowing through the Enforcer patrol and again driving off on a motorcycle. Roxanna let the clip play through, and then rewound it to the beginning and played it at one-quarter speed. Slyph talked through as it replayed.
     “The first issue with this vid is that Enforcer Services had a go with it. They said this was a sled mounted camera, but there are two angles. Neither track has sound either, so we lose that data. You see when she walks out she’s not looking straight ahead. There’s a twist to the shoulder that suggests she wants to look back.”
     “All right, I buy that. But what does that mean? She didn’t finish the job?”
     Slyph smiled. “I don’t think she did it at all. Roxanna?”
     The woman adjusted a dial on the console and slowed the frame rate further; the lizard standing in the door was suddenly rolling across the sidewalk several feet from the door of the shop. Ripcord stood straighter while gripping the back of the chair. “Wait! What was that?”
     “That was what we call a data-edit. Someone’s taken a chunk out of the vid. Notice something else? Where’s her gun?”
     “Still in the holster?”
     Slyph laughed. “That’s right. But the Fed in the interview said the lizard was shooting at them.”
     Ripcord nodded. “That’s right, I remember that. And wasn’t he a little crisp for having just been in combat?”
     “With non-regulation eyewear hanging off his pocket even.” Roxanna pointed to a flickering monitor frozen in pause above. “He wasn’t any regular on patrol.”
     “All right. So we’ve established for certain they lied. No surprise there. What are you getting at?”
     “The Fed in the interview called the lizardine a Lir. But no one’s really seen a Lir in decades … no one’s filmed a positive ID.”
     Ripcord stared at the monitors. “You don’t find those lizards running around though… could she be a Lir?”
     Roxanna answered, “Possibly, but even if she was, they never operated in such a manner. Assassination, blackmail, arson … not in their repertoire. The Lir would call their enemies out in the open … put their grievances out in the public eye. If they felt the need to take someone out of the picture they were more likely to put it to a vote and then move in masse on the target.”
     “And if there were but one left?”
     “That’s the thing. The last recorded meet of the Lir had them discussing leaving the planet altogether. And we know many did leave.”
     “All right, so the Lir are out then. Then what the hell ripped through Overden?”
     “Well, we’re working on that.”
     Ripcord looked down at his hacker. “What do you mean?”
     Slyph turned to his assistant. “Show him.” Roxanna ran the third video, the newsbot report of the Enforcer lockdown of Overden. Again Slyph talked through it.
     “News channel nine operators shot this footage on the central access ramp for Overden. Most of the routes in are one-lane … small roads for small people. Enforcer patrols had those shut down and barricaded throughout the day. You can see here though, that the Greenshadows battalion kept the central access open for their own use. There’s a command carrier there … that’s where you’d find the operative in charge.”
     “The command post. Lesicue?”
     “Not necessarily, though he is the type to run things near the front. The people really like him; he stays atop things, solves problems and works with the troops. He’s not the kind to sit and direct from the rear.”
     “A good commander. But what has this got to do with anything?” Ripcord folded his arms but remained patient. Slyph laughed and jacked into the console, slumping into his chair while the redhead carried on.
     “Nothing … and everything. Overden has their own Enforcer battalion, quite capable of policing their own turf. In point of fact, the Overden patrols should have been better trained at close quarters combat. There aren’t too many warrens like the Lupis dens elsewhere, and Greenshadows is full of wide avenues. The two couldn’t be much more different. Yet Overden units were overwhelmed and the Greenshadows battalion came prepared …”
     “I know they brought the majority of the battalion not manning their own patrols. And they still took a lot of damage. What makes you say they had done anything different?”
     It was the question the two operators had been waiting for. From within the system Slyph slowed the video loop and paused on the exact scene. Roxanna tapped the screen with her stylus and enlarged that point of the picture. In the background a trailer five times longer than the standard heavy wheeled haulers leapt into focus. Gaps in the structure were filled in with a mesh that could be seen through, and yet for some reason the video quality was so poor much of the transport could not be clearly seen.
     Ripcord was not a fool; it took him only a moment to lean forward. “Wait a minute, why is it only the trailer is blurred?”
     Roxanna answered. “More editing. The news bots weren’t allowed to show this feed without Federal approval.”
     “So what weren’t we supposed to see?” The masking was flickering even as he asked, the pixels shifting under Slyph’s manipulation. The hacker’s voice came over the console speakers.
     “We were not supposed to notice the trailer in the background. And why would Enforcer Services need a plasma tank carrier for a few rogue Lir? There are many different smaller high impact vehicles that could have been used for that purpose.”
     “You’re having trouble breaking that scrambled signal aren’t you Slyph?”
     “It is a coded encryption Ripcord. I have gone through the usual data-ciphers that come from Enforcer channels already and have come up blank. This is much bigger than Overden.”
     The cybered human nodded thoughtfully, fingers of his mechanical hand tapping the chrome plates over his other arm. “How long do you think it will take to figure out?”
     The man inside the console answered, “I do not have a clue. I may never get it decoded Ripcord. I do not have the experience with Federal code that we need here.”
     “So what are you telling me here Slyph?”
     “I have this contact …”

~ ~