MECHWARRIOR: DARK AGE #24: DRAGON RISING

Justin Pierpont drove northwest, easing his hover up a series of bluffs that led to the reactor facility. The heater was going full-blast, but Pierpont was freezing. His stomach was tied in knots. He slipped his right hand into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a slim, gurgling flask. Steering with his knees, he untwisted the cap and tossed back a mouthful of scotch. The liquor went off in his stomach like napalm: a nice, hot glow.

He shouldn’t drink. If his boss smelled booze, he’d be canned in a second. If everything went according to plan, though, this was the last shift he’d ever pull because then he’d get the hell off this rock, and go be with his wife and kid, and then get his ass planted someplace where they didn’t have booze or cards or men like Tony Yamada.

He’d taken his one big shot at backing out about four weeks ago when Dasha hadn’t shown for work. Normally, she came by his station twice a day. They’d chat, ha-ha, just like friendly coworkers, while the whole time he was slipping her documents on data crystals.

The first day she didn’t show, he thought: Okay, a fluke. By the third, he worried that maybe something had gone wrong. He’d worked all day in an agony of suspense, expecting that the next people through the door would be carrying laser rifles. No one did. So, he thought maybe Yamada and Dasha had gotten caught. Or maybe they were dead, and he was in the clear.

The fourth day, he’d whistled on the way out the door, past security. The night air was crisp and spicy. Hard stars sparkled in the sky. Nightfall came early these days, and all the sodium vapor lights were on in the parking lot. The asphalt twinkled. As he approached his hover, he dug into his pocket, pointed the remote, popped the lock. He dropped into the driver’s side, strapped up, flipped the rocker switch to power up the hover’s compressor . . . and then felt cold steel press below his right ear. His eyes flicked to his rearview, and then an icy fist of dread squeezed his lungs.

‘‘Hey, Pierpont,’’ Yamada said, ‘‘how ya doing?’’ Conversational, like he didn’t have a pistol jammed against Pierpont’s neck.

‘‘Uh.’’ Pierpont swallowed. Yamada’s eyes glittered in the low light from the dash. ‘‘Where’s Dasha?’’

‘‘She took a couple days.’’ Yamada’s filed incisors were pointier than ever. ‘‘Didn’t want you to get lonely. So, how’re things coming?’’

To this day, Pierpont didn’t know what got into him. But he said, ‘‘I’m not writing one more line of code unless you let me get my wife and kid off-planet.’’

‘‘I just want them off, okay? I’ve done everything you’ve asked. This is the only thing I’m asking for in return.’’

‘‘The only thing, my ass. I’m canceling your debt, right? You get to keep certain valuable pieces of your anatomy, right? Only thing, my ass.’’

Pierpont felt those certain valuable pieces of his anatomy try to retreat into his abdomen. ‘‘You need me. I’m the only one who can do this, and do it right. So, either I’m taking them to the spaceport tomorrow, or you’ll have to kill me.’’

He watched Yamada’s eyes, watched the man work the decision tree, ticking off pros and cons, figuring angles. Saw the moment right before he knew that Yamada would agree. In the end, maybe Pierpont’s victory was hollow. But it still felt good, and now, at least, his wife and daughter were off-planet and safe.

He spotted the three natural-draft cooling towers from ten klicks out. Each tower was one hundred twenty meters high but seemed much higher because the reactor was set on a bluff by the sea. The complex was entirely surrounded by a perimeter fence, though security had never been much of a concern. (The physics involved with a fission reactor was so archaic that no one seriously considered there was much risk.) There were three entrances: southwest, west and a third gate to the north used exclusively for cargo deliveries and the landtrain.

The complex housed two working reactors called, appropriately, Reactors Two and Three. Pierpont worked in Reactor Two’s control room. All control-room personnel worked a six-week cycle, rotating through the various shifts: days, afternoons, nights. Pierpont was on a team currently rotating through days. But he absolutely had to work tonight. So he’d feigned an emergency and switched out of rotation, volunteering for this duty shift. He wouldn’t know his coworkers on this shift. That was fine, because they wouldn’t know him, either.

Getting in was easy. His change of shift had been duly noted in the complex’s computer database, and the guard, after verifying his story against the computer, checked Pierpont via a portable retinal scanner and then waved him through.

Pierpont’s office was in a five-story building adjacent to Reactor Two. The adjoining lot was about one-third full, with most of the vehicles clustered in pools of yellow light like gazelles fringing a watering hole. Pierpont skimmed the lot, bypassed the other cars and then nosed his hover to the far right beneath the naked limbs of a maple. He engaged the stand and then killed the compressor. The hover wheezed to silence.

He didn’t get out. Instead, Pierpont sat, wondering what the hell he was doing with his life. He listened to the silence outside and the thunder of his heart in his ears. His eyes drifted southeast to the spindly forms of cranes and the blockier outlines of a ConstructionMech highlighted against the illuminated shell of a half-completed parking complex.

At the entrance to his building, he repeated the ID and retinal verification. Satisfied that he was who he said he was, the door sighed open. Once inside the main lobby—a sterile, well-lit space smelling of floor wax and manned by two bored-looking guards—he emptied his pockets and walked through a scanner. The guard gave him back his watch, told him to have a nice night and that was that.

His shoes slapped linoleum. The sound was like that plastic bubble wrap his daughter liked to pop. The overhead office light clicked on as he entered. Once inside, he powered up his computer, entered his passwords and then he was in. He wore laced-up oxfords, and he now reached down, untied his right shoe and slipped it off. He used a fingernail to pry a pin from the heel. Then he swiveled the rubber heel to one side, turned the shoe over and shook a ruby-red data crystal into the palm of his left hand. The facets caught the fluorescents and twinkled like a gem.

He fitted the crystal into a data port. His computer queried as to which decryption program he wished to use. Tapping the screen, he selected one and waited while his computer worked. In less than twenty seconds, it chimed. He paused, a finger poised, like a symphony maestro about to cue the violins. Then he tapped <Upload>.

The program would not tie into the control room station where he’d be working. That system was password-protected by several firewalls. Once he was in the control room, Pierpont would suddenly remember that he needed information stored on his office computer. He would then bring down the internal firewalls, retrieve garbage, and re-erect the firewalls.

Within twenty seconds of retrieval, his virus would begin its silent, deadly work on the Safety Parameter Display System.

His computer chimed again. The upload was complete. Ejecting the data crystal, Pierpont returned it to the false heel, fit in the pin, and then slipped on and laced his shoe.

Thirty seconds later, as he headed down the hall, he passed a bank of windows that faced southeast. He saw a landtrain slowly inching its way toward the construction site. The landtrain must’ve passed through security without a hitch.