Armageddon, page 10
part #5 of Liars Series
He checked the phone screen. Plowman. He answered. ‘Hello?’
‘Jarli.’ It was Anya’s voice. ‘I’m with Plowman. We need your help.’
‘Anya.’ A wave of relief hit Jarli. ‘I’m glad you’re OK.’
‘We are back at the prison.’ Anya sounded strangely flat. ‘The tunnels are flooded, so we need to get past the robot somehow.’
Jarli rubbed his eyes as his brain kicked into gear. ‘It’s still guarding the door?’
‘I am looking out the window right now. It is still there.’
‘Have you got anything you could use to make another EMP?’
‘We have nothing. And remember, the EMP did not work on the robot last time.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Jarli frowned at the workbench, not really seeing it. He turned the problem over in his mind, examining all the angles. Anya and Plowman didn’t really have nothing—they had a phone, and clothes, and a filing cabinet, and the prison itself. But Jarli couldn’t think of a way to use any of that to deal with the robot. So he had to find some extra equipment and give it to them. But the robot would stop him from approaching the building.
Tricky.
‘Can Plowman control his drones from there?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I am not sure. I will put him on.’
Plowman came on the line. ‘Jarli.’
Jarli suddenly remembered that he had locked Plowman in a cell.
‘Uh, hi, Mr Plowman,’ he said awkwardly.
Silence hissed in his ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jarli said. ‘I should have trusted you.’
Plowman just grunted.
Jarli cleared his throat. ‘I’m gonna get you and Anya out of there, OK?’
‘OK.’ Plowman didn’t sound like he cared one way or the other. Viper had really messed with his head.
‘I’m going to make something that will help you deal with the robot. But I need a way to get it to you. If I text you an address, can you get one of your drones to pick it up and deliver it to you?’
‘I suppose,’ Plowman said slowly. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know yet. Give me a sec.’
Jarli ended the call, and started looking around Viper’s workshop for something he could use. There was a fire blanket. Anya and Plowman might be able to hide under it as they crawled out the door. But Jarli wasn’t sure how the robot would react. He needed to know more about it.
His phone started ringing again. Unknown number.
Viper, Jarli thought, though he had no reason to think so. After holding the phone like a live grenade for a second, he answered: ‘Who is this?’
‘Jarli?’
Now that he heard his real father’s voice, he wondered how he could ever have fallen for Cobra’s impersonation. His eyes filled with tears. ‘Dad?’
‘It’s me, Jarli. God, it’s so good to hear your voice.’
There was a painful lump in Jarli’s throat. ‘You too. Where are you?’
‘I’m driving, with your friend Doug. We’ve almost reached Axe Falls. Your school nurse found us and let us out of Viper’s prison—’
‘The school nurse was Viper, Dad.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
Jarli repeated the words. Saying them out loud made them real somehow. The betrayal stung all over again. His anger grew.
‘Why did she let us go?’ Dad asked, after Jarli had explained everything.
‘I don’t know. Apparently all the other prisoners were taken away in a transport truck. Maybe she wanted them out of the way before she releases the botulism. I think she’s going to drop it from a drone, above the defence minister’s flight path.’
Doug came on the line. ‘Jarli. Are you there?’
‘Doug,’ Jarli said. ‘I’m so glad you’re alive.’
‘Yeah, well, I nearly wasn’t. I got attacked by a robot. Tell you all about it sometime. But before that, I overheard some guards talking when I was in the prison. One of them said something about a rocket.’
‘A rocket?’
‘Yeah,’ Doug said. ‘So maybe she’s not using a drone.’
Jarli felt sick. Unlike drones, rockets usually weren’t designed to be controlled from a distance. Jarli wouldn’t be able to hack a rocket remotely. His only hope was to get to it before the launch.
‘Did you get a close look at the robot?’ he asked.
‘Way too close. Why?’
‘It’s got Anya cornered at Throwaway. I’m trying to work out a way to disable it.’
‘Oh, no! Uh . . . I didn’t see any obvious weaknesses,’ Doug said. ‘It looked pretty tough, Jarli.’
‘Could we block its anaesthetic squirter-thingy somehow?’
‘With what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jarli said. ‘Glue?’
‘The pressure would just blow it out, no matter what you used,’ Doug said. ‘And you’d have to be right up in the robot’s face to get the glue or chewing gum or whatever into the nozzle. And this thing is fast. Even if you succeeded somehow, it’d still be able to zap you with a stun gun.’
‘OK, OK.’ Jarli sighed. ‘It was just an idea.’
‘Could you make some kind of EMP device?’
‘We tried that. The robot is shielded somehow.’
‘In that case,’ Doug said, ‘go for the eyes. If it can’t see Anya, it can’t attack her.’
‘How many eyes does it have?’
‘Six. Wraparound, so it can see in all directions. But if you chucked a blanket over it, or a bucket of paint, I don’t think it would be able to see.’
Jarli wondered how close Anya would have to be for Doug’s suggestion to work. It seemed risky—but Doug had given Jarli another idea.
‘What if the robot saw Anya,’ Jarli said, ‘but thought it was seeing Viper?’
‘Why would—wait. Does this thing have facial recognition?’
‘Plowman thought so. He’s there, too. And Scanner.’ Jarli realised that he hadn’t heard Scanner’s voice on the phone when Anya had called him. He hoped the antivenom had worked.
‘Hang on,’ Doug said. ‘Your dad wants to talk to you again.’
Dad’s voice came back on the line. ‘Where are you, Jarli?’
‘I’m at school.’
‘What? You’re still in Kelton?!’
Jarli swallowed. ‘We—’
‘You have to get out! The . . . thing, the bacterial weapon, it will be released in less than two hours!’
Jarli didn’t tell his father about the WARHEAD. He checked his watch. He was alarmed to see that it was already 10.14 a.m.
‘I still have time to stop her,’ he said.
‘Jarli, listen to me. For once, please just listen. You need to leave, right now. It’s not your job to stop Viper.’
‘Someone has to.’
‘She might release the toxin early,’ Doug said in the background. ‘It could happen at any moment.’
‘She won’t. She can’t.’ Jarli looked at the map on the wall. ‘I figured out her plan, Dad. She’s waiting for the defence minister’s plane to fly overhead—’
‘Jarli.’ He could hear his father getting angry. ‘You need to leave.’
‘But I can save the town.’
‘Forget the town,’ Dad said. ‘I care about you. Please, just get out.’
‘Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’ll see you soon.’ Jarli ended the call. He sniffed, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Then he looked at the map and dialled Bess.
SELLING SILENCE
Aaron Fisher sat in the business class lounge, a half-finished macchiato in one hand, watching one of the screens on the wall. He was flying by private jet, so his flight wasn’t listed. But the screen helped him keep track of the time.
Other screens had cricket, or news. They played quietly, unlike the TVs blaring at maximum volume downstairs in the economy lounges. There weren’t many announcements up here, either. The business class lounge isn’t here to sell gourmet coffee or hot towels, he reflected. It sells silence.
His deputy, Rizvi, was looking at flight paths on her phone. ‘We’re going to fly right over Kelton,’ she said.
‘Thirty thousand feet over,’ Fisher said, without taking his eyes off the screen. ‘Relax. The general tells me the shockwave will be much less, and in any case, the detonation will happen an hour before we get there. It’s not nuclear. No fallout.’
‘Maybe we should tell the pilot to plan a new course,’ Rizvi said.
‘If we take the long way around, that will give the opposition an extra hour to spin this before I land,’ Fisher said. ‘Honestly, Sandra. You just don’t think like a politician.’
Rizvi didn’t look as offended as he thought she should.
Her phone rang, disturbing the hush in the lounge. Fisher glared at her as she answered.
‘Yes?’ She looked alarmed. ‘Where did you hear that? . . . It’s not our policy to comment on—’
Fisher grabbed the phone. Apparently his deputy had no idea how to kill a story. No comment never did the trick.
‘Who is this?’ he demanded.
‘Minister!’ He immediately recognised the cheery voice of Dana Reynolds. ‘We’ll soon be reporting that you’re planning to drop a thermobaric warhead on the town of Kelton. Care to comment?’
‘I’m planning no such thing,’ Fisher lied, wondering how fast he could find and fire whoever had leaked this information.
He heard Reynolds’s phone beep. LIE
‘Thanks for confirming,’ she said smugly. But he could tell from her tone of voice that this conversation wasn’t live on air. There was a chance to fix this.
He couldn’t blame the explosion on Viper if Reynolds started reporting it as a military operation ahead of time. He needed a new plan.
‘You’re referring to one of many options that was presented to me by the assistant minister,’ Fisher said, and he saw Rizvi’s eyes widen. ‘I said it was completely off the table. There will be no bomb—if you report one, you’ll wind up looking very foolish indeed. And you can quote me.’
He hung up and tossed the phone to his shocked deputy. ‘Call the general,’ he told her. ‘Tell her to abort the launch. We need another way to stop Viper.’
A MASSIVE SECURITY RISK
Bess limped out onto the covered balcony before answering the phone. Her mum, Jarli’s mum and Jarli’s sister were all in the hotel room behind her, quietly freaking out. She had a feeling that they wouldn’t like whatever Jarli was about to say.
She was right.
‘Bess,’ he said, before she’d even opened her mouth. ‘I’m still in Kelton. I’m going to stop Viper, no matter what, and I don’t want to hear any guff about saving myself and abandoning the town.’
‘Did you say “guff”?’ Bess asked.
‘It just came to me,’ Jarli said. ‘So are you going to help, or not?’
Bess glanced back through the glass. Kirstie looked curious, but the two mums were ignoring her.
‘I’ll help you,’ she said. ‘Obviously I’ll help you. But what can I do from here?’
‘OK.’ Jarli sounded relieved. ‘Firstly, I need to get Anya out of prison.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m about to email you a document. Does the hotel have a printer?’
‘I don’t know. Probably.’
‘Well, I need you to print out the picture, cut it up and bring it outside. One of Plowman’s drones will be there to pick it up soon.’
Bess felt like she was dreaming. ‘Print a picture, cut it up and wait for a drone to collect it?’
‘It’s a mask. You’ll understand when you see it,’ Jarli promised. ‘I figured out Viper’s plan—she’s going to use a rocket to release the botulism into the air above Kelton, so the defence minister will be poisoned when his plane flies through it.’
‘Wait. Won’t Fisher avoid flying over a town which is about to become uninhabitable?’
Jarli was silent for a moment. ‘Probably,’ he said finally. ‘But Viper’s rocket might be long-distance. Fisher wouldn’t have to fly right over the town—just within range of it. Anyway, the problem is that I don’t know where she’s planning to launch the canister from.’
‘Right,’ Bess said slowly. ‘You need me to look up the flight path of the plane? And look for any hilltops or tall buildings under it?’
‘No. She left a map behind with the all flight paths marked. I need you to work out which plane the defence minister will be on.’
Bess rubbed her eyes. She’d been up all night. ‘How can I find that out? In fact, how would Viper find out?’
‘I don’t know. I’m guessing she has sources we can’t access. People she’s chipped, who have to do whatever she says.’
Bess watched the rain splattering the street for a minute. Jarli often depended on her to get him out of tough spots. But this wasn’t just tough—it was impossible.
‘You could call the government, posing as a reporter, or something?’ Jarli suggested.
‘They wouldn’t give that information to a reporter.’
‘They might if they were asked in the right way.’
‘We could call Dana Reynolds,’ Bess said. ‘She might have an idea—’
The sliding door opened behind Bess. Kirstie stepped onto the balcony. She closed the door behind her. ‘That’s Jarli, right?’ she said. ‘Give it here.’
Bess held onto the phone. ‘Kirstie, this is important.’
‘You guys are always off doing something important,’ Kirstie said. ‘And you’ve never asked for my help. Not even once.’
‘This is not something you can help with, Kirstie.’
Kirstie snatched the phone out of Bess’s hand. ‘Jarli,’ she said. ‘Are you gonna save the town or what?’
Bess could hear Jarli’s voice: ‘I don’t have time for this, Kirstie.’
‘Whatever you’re doing, you need all the help you can get,’ Kirstie said. ‘Tell me what’s going on, or I’m putting Mum on.’
‘Look, I’m sorry we never invited you to join us on our thrilling adventures,’ Jarli said sarcastically, ‘but unless you know how to find out which plane the defence minister is on, you can’t help us this time.’
‘He’s on flight CA 215,’ Kirstie said.
Jarli and Bess both fell silent, stunned.
‘Are you joking?’ Bess asked finally.
‘No,’ Kirstie said.
‘How could you possibly know that?’
‘My UFO forum. One group keeps track of flight path data. Whenever a member sees a politician at an airport—somebody who might be involved in a cover-up—they take note of which plane they got on.’
‘That sounds like a security risk for the government,’ Jarli said.
‘A massive one, yeah. But the more they try to silence the conspiracy theorists, the more it looks like a conspiracy. Anyway, someone saw Aaron Fisher get on flight CA 215 about twenty minutes ago.’
‘Wow,’ Bess said.
Kirstie raised an eyebrow. ‘So. Anything else you need?’
‘Uh, no,’ Jarli said. ‘That was it.’
‘Well, come here as soon as you can. I’m bored, and the wi-fi here sucks.’ Kirstie tossed the phone back to Bess, poked her tongue out and disappeared into the hotel room.
Bess put the phone to her ear. ‘Your sister is amazing.’
‘I know,’ Jarli said. ‘But don’t tell her that—you’ll never hear the end of it.’
PART THREE: INCURSION
I’m going to stop updating Truth. I’m not sure the world should have a lie-detector app.
I can’t erase it—other people have already copied my code and made their own versions. But I can stop contributing to the problem.
A friend once told me that trust is more important than truth. I’ve finally realised she was right.
—From the documentation for Truth, final version
EIGHTY-SEVEN PER CENT
The pouring rain made it hard for Anya to see the drone until it had almost reached the window. It had no lights—it was just a menacing silhouette, hovering over the street like a giant dragonfly. Its wingspan was almost two metres across. She wasn’t even sure how it stayed in the air.
A satchel dangled from a hook under the chassis. Anya leaned out the window to get it. As she did, she looked down. The robot was still outside the door, waiting with infinite patience. Ready to zap anyone who came out.
Anya unhooked the bag and pulled it inside. The drone beeped cheerfully and zipped away into the clouds.
Plowman was coming up the stairs. Anya held up the bag. ‘I got it. Let’s see what Jarli has prepared.’
When she saw what was inside, her heart sank. Two pairs of dorky glasses with no lenses. The frames were covered with spots and blotches. When Anya picked them up, they weren’t even plastic. They had been printed on thick paper, then folded into shape.
Plowman took one pair. Some of the light came back into his eyes as he examined them. ‘Hmm. Not bad, Jarli.’
‘Eaton does not even wear glasses,’ Anya objected. ‘How will these fool the robot into thinking we are her?’
‘Machines don’t “see” the way you or I do,’ Plowman said. ‘These spots are digital signals for the camera. Jarli must have found some photos of Eaton’s face—probably on other people’s social media feeds—and converted them into a pattern the machine can understand.’ He put the glasses on. ‘You were right. He is a genius. Although he wouldn’t have had time to write the conversion script himself. He must have modified—’
‘Are you really saying that wearing these will stop the robot from shooting us?’ Anya interrupted. She put the flimsy paper glasses on her nose.
‘One study showed that glasses like these were capable of fooling a computer eighty-seven per cent of the time.’
‘How reassuring.’
‘There’s only one way to be certain,’ Plowman said. ‘Come on.’
Anya pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear the robot outside—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Machines didn’t need to breathe or adjust cramped limbs.
