Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [83]
Near-miss nukes. Moh thought of the news: the Kyoto suburbs, the Sofia streets. A memory of shelter sweat made his skin itch.
‘And are you doing all this?’ was all he could think of to say.
‘Course I am. I got calls on hold right now, man.’
‘How are you paying for it?’
Logan grunted a laugh. ‘Checked our earthside account. Money’s coming in, earmarked. Could be capital investment from a Bolshevik bank robbery back in 1910 for all I know.’
‘Close enough,’ Moh said. ‘It’s from the Black Plan.’
Logan stared at him for a longer time than the transmission lag could account for.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I think it was me that stirred it up,’ Moh said. ‘I was poking around yesterday. Something in the system asked me for a code that I remembered from way back when Josh was writing it. That was when things started to happen—’
‘Josh wrote the Black Plan?’
‘So Bernstein says.’
Logan nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s something to do with the Star Fraction, I know that much. Fact is, my mind’s got a bit – shit, I don’t know, maybe screwed up with some memory drugs I got exposed to. Good to get some confirmation, yeah? The other thing that happened is this load of encrypted data got downloaded to my gun’s computer, and I wondered if you might have some idea what to do with it.’
Logan frowned. ‘Could be pre-emptive backup. If I set up the rig that the program’s telling me, it’ll be able to pick up tight-beam transmissions. That’s real dicey, especially if it’s encrypted. Lose one digit and it’s junk. OK, you can get around that, throw redundancy at it like there’s no tomorrow. Even so, if nukes are in the picture you get emps, you get borealis hits, comms out for days.’
‘You think that’s on the cards?’
‘Nukes? Ne. If you’re right, though, about when the thing was set up, you can see why—’
‘Shit! That’s it! Just before the last one!’ Goddess, that was a relief. Up to a point.
‘—it’s got a real sensitive ear for rumours of war.’
‘So. What d’you reckon, I should take this into space?’ Moh crushed a stray syringe under his boot, wondering how he’d scrape the fare together. Work his passage, ride shotgun…
‘You kidding? Haven’t you heard, man?’
Moh shook his head, suppressing the impulse to give Jordan a kick. Eyes on the net, that’s the sodding job description…
‘Yanks have declared an emergency; space traffic and launches are bottlenecked. Nobody with any form’s gonna get out until the face-off with Japan’s over. With a load of encrypted data? – forget it.’
‘What about all this stuff you’ve ordered?’
‘It’s all clean,’ Logan said. ‘Empty storage, legitimate supplies. And it’s on its way. Expedited before the crackdown.’
‘Neat,’ Moh said. Somehow it didn’t surprise him. ‘So what do I do with this chunk of non-access RAM?’
‘Go to the ANR,’ said Logan. ‘Safest place.’
‘Ha fucking ha.’
‘I’m serious. The knaboj, they’ll look after you. Anyway, it’s theirs. The Black Plan.’
‘You know what I think?’ Moh said, looking down at the gun’s memory case. (The Party must always command the gun; the gun must never command the Party. Mao.) He looked up just as his words reached Logan. ‘They’re its.’
Logan stirred, shifting without noticeable attention into one of the isometric exercise routines that low-g folk had to keep up if they were ever to be one-g folk again. ‘There’s a lot going on,’ he said. ‘A lot coming down the line. We know about the offensives and…things are moving out here, too. The space-movement fraction I told you about, we’ve made progress, we’ll do what we can—’
‘Hey,’ said Moh, ‘is there any connection between these comrades and the ones in the Sta—?’
Logan smiled, his face moving towards and away from the camera.
‘Don’t even ask,’ he said. ‘Gotta go. Take care.’
Click to black. Then, unexpectedly, the screen came on again:
Message To: mk@cheka.com.uk
From: bdonovan@cla.org.ter
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