Zero Day Exploit

  Graham McNeill

  The sky over the Bouguer Crater reminded Hydraq of the day he’d come to the conclusion he hated Mars; awash with the thousand-year-old detritus of lethal ordnance, streaked with toxins and heavy with regret.

  A hard wind was coming in, freighted with tonnes of polluted Martian ash billowing skyward as it hit the far edge of the crater. Within the hour those metallic flakes would descend into Bouguer in dry, choking blankets.

  His team had cover, of course, but nothing was ever proof against the insidious nature of Martian dust. Despite the protection of tan-coloured Tallarn desert smocks and shemagh, he and Aurora would still be picking jagged granules from each other’s skin weeks after this job was done.

  Standing on a ridge of excavated soil, Hydraq lifted a hand to his glare goggles. He adjusted the spectra-focus at the side to try and penetrate the incoming storm. A futile exercise, he knew; Forge Basiri was a powerhouse of manufacture that never ceased its labours or the despoiling of its surroundings.

  He couldn’t see it, of course, just a hazy cherry-red thermal bloom on the inner face of his goggles. Three hundred kilometres of cratered hinterland separated Hydraq from Archmagos Alhazen’s mighty forge, but after so long spent studying the picts Enaric had supplied (and, more pertinently, the detailed schematics Simocatta had coaxed from the deepest layers of the noosphere) it was hard not to visualise its pearl and jade minarets, its golden towers and geodesic manufactorum domes.

  Basiri was a hub of war-industry, where armoured vehicles of the Astra Militarum and engines of the Legios were wrought by the millions of tech-priests, servitors and indentured slaves who laboured there day and night.

  Hydraq scrambled down the ridge and made his way to the rugged floor of the crater where they’d set up camp. The going was steep, and his breathing was laboured by the time he reached the bottom. Too many hours spent linked to his cogitator, too much stimm-glanding, not enough sleep and far too much tension.

  He was out of shape and he knew it. With his skills, he could easily divert funds enough for anatomical enhancements to resculpt his body, enjoy the benefits of a dozen juvenat treatments or surgically end his stimm-dependence.

  But he didn’t. He liked these reminders of his humanity and the creeping encroachments that told him life was finite and to be enjoyed while it lasted.

  He paused to scan the upper cliff edges of the crater, switching his visor to detect human neural patterns. Hydraq saw no one, but kept one hand on the rubberised grip of his wrath-pattern plasma pistol. This job didn’t require a weapon, but there was always the possibility of meeting some unfriendly types in the wastelands between the forges, and the size of their camp was likely to draw some attention.

  From a distance it was indistinguishable from the thousands of other archaeotech sites scattered all across Mars. Up close, it was a different matter entirely.

  Prefabricated hab-trailers sat in a herringbone pattern beneath billowing cameleoline tarps shimmering with a bruised mixture of reds, ochres and umber. Not enough to keep out any determined orbital surveillance, but sufficient to maintain the illusion that they were nothing more than a clan of nomadic tech-scavs.

  Three of the prefabs were just what they appeared to be: rough and ready dwellings for a close-knit family grouping, where the servitors were being kept. However, the fourth was a hermetically-sealed neurosurgical pod. Magos Enaric had provided it and its specialised chirurgeons expressly for this job, and they’d appropriately weathered it to blend in.

  Buried generators powered swaying lines of storm-lumens strung between the shelters, and a pair of ancient earth-movers sat in makeshift shelters dug into the rock.

  A third shelter concealed another vehicle, one faster and more advanced than anything tech-scavs grubbing in the dirt might possess, but it was shielded from view by far more sophisticated tech.

  Hydraq navigated the trenches the servitors had dug this morning, their extent marked by a reticulated grid of taut wire. Marker flags fluttered in the wind, indicating promising avenues of exploration. They were all placed at random, but this was necessary to maintain the fiction they were exactly what their outward appearance suggested.

  He descended a chain-link ladder into the deepest trench and followed its downward slope to where a hanging square of canvas hid an entrance cut into the rock. A vac-sealed airlock kept out the worst of the Martian environment, and by the time Hydraq finally entered the buried bunker, his skin was raw from ultrasonic dust-blasting and rad-scrubbing.

  Inside, the walls were bare metal, cold and sterile. A single corridor ran the length of the bunker, with four identical chambers on its left side. He unsnapped his pistol belt and unwrapped his shemagh, before removing his goggles and hanging them all at the main door.

  Hydraq ran his hands over unshaven features and through his thinning hair. He held his hands out before him. Silicate-rich grains glittered on his palms.

  ‘Bloody sand,’ he said.

  He wiped his hands on his thighs and made his way to the first of the bunker’s chambers. Its deck plates were rolled back to reveal a freshly dug pit and a rusted sheath of data-trunking buried deep beneath the Martian bedrock.

  Three metres in diameter, the curved upper surfaces of the trunking had been carefully removed with a plasma-cutter. A pair of infocytes lay along the length of the enormous pipe with tentacle-like hands buried in the nest of wiring within.

  ‘Do you have full connection yet?’ asked Hydraq.

  One of the infocytes looked up from the pit, his augmetic eyes filled with rolling lines of static. Hydraq thought his name was Chivo, but couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Not yet. Soon.’

  ‘Get a move on, we’re on a timetable.’

  ‘Adept Hydraq, there are–’

  ‘I told you, don’t call me that,’ snapped Hydraq.

  ‘Update. As you wish. But there are tens of thousands of possible connections within this trunking and most of the serial identifiers are illegible. Thousands of years have passed since this trunking was first laid. The attrition of time makes this task incredibly difficult.’

  ‘With what I’m paying you, “incredibly difficult” isn’t a phrase I want to hear coming out of your mouths,’ said Hydraq.

  They went back to their work, and he left them to it.

  He bypassed the second chamber, where half a dozen data-miners were hardwired into the noospheric network on single-use readers with scrubbed ident-codes. They parsed the enormous volume of data routed through the Sinus Sabeus quadrangle, alert for any indication that what they were doing, and what they were about to do, had been detected.

  The final two spaces were supposed to be identical, but could not have been more different. These were where the real work would be done.

  The first of them, the space he’d set aside for himself, was clean to the point of spartan. An iron-framed cot-bed was pushed over to the far corner, and a grav-couch he’d stripped from an Aquila sat in the room’s centre. Beside it was a blocky console of polished bronze, an inload cogitator equipped with myriad unsanctioned black upgrades. The sort of internal modifications that got a junior adept into all kinds of trouble.

  The machine was waiting for him, but he wasn’t ready for it.

  Simocatta was already in place in the last chamber, his skeletal frame reclining on a latticed metal gurney. His body was surrounded by banks of humming machinery, controlling a complex network of gurgling intravenous tubes hooked into his neck, head and spine.

  In contrast to Hydraq’s workspace, Simocatta’s was cluttered with Icon Mechanicus totems, hung with devotional palimpsests and littered with empty fluid packs. How the man could stand to work like this was a mystery, but his skill bought him a measure of leeway in matters of hygiene.

  Like Hydraq, Simocatta was a spiker-for-hire, a masterless adept who specialised in the penetration of forge temple security, data-siphoning, factional defections and outright kidnapping.

  This mission would be a mix of all four.

  Hydraq had met Magos Enaric face to face for the first time five months ago under the pretext of a Conclave Frateris held on the slopes of the Tharsis Montes. Their dialogue had begun a year previously, via a series of laughably simple, blind communiques and encrypted vox-thieves that rerouted messages to appear as though they were coming from ever-multiplying sources.

  Enaric believed he was being careful, but any halfway competent data-miner would have hunted him down within minutes.

  Fortunately, Hydraq had hijacked Enaric’s comms in the first instant of his opening missive, and thus all that passed between them remained unknown to all.

  A clandestine rendezvous had finally been arranged to take place during a break in the Conclave, with Hydraq posing as the Executor Fetial of an obscure forge world Legio seeking partners on Mars. In service to this identity, Hydraq negotiated trade deals he had absolutely no authority to broker with numerous Mechanicus forges. He smiled every time he thought of some backwater planetary governor’s surprise when a fleet of Martian bulk-haulers arrived laden with weapons and armoured vehicles.

  Under such pretence, he and Aurora had come to Ascraeus Mons; him still in the role of Executor Fetial, she as his armed life ward. The meeting with Magos Enaric took place in a great gallery of crystal and bronze on the north-western flank of the great shield volcano.

  Polari sed walls filtered out the worst of the atmospheric pollution, offering views of unparalleled clarity across the Tharsis plains. The towering might of Olympus Mons lay a thousand kilometres to the west, while the infamous battleground of Mondus Occulum lay much closer to the north.

  Far beneath the volcano were the battle engines of the Legio Tempestus, and many of the uniformed personnel enjoying the view were clearly Titan crew. Hydraq hoped none of them engaged him in conversation. Magi he could fool into thinking he was Legio, but he wasn’t sure actual princeps or moderati would be so gullible.

  ‘Enaric’s early,’ said Aurora.

  Hydraq had already seen him pacing the metalled floor, practically wearing a sign that said he was here on a secret rendezvous. They introduced themselves, engineering the encounter to appear natural and almost accidental. Enaric was typical Mechanicus, chimeric and flesh-spare, but with enough humanity left that he couldn’t hide his fear.

  Not recognising them, the magos tried to brush them off. Part of Hydraq wished he’d let him. He pressed on, subtly weaving in numerous previously agreed code phrases before one finally registered.

  The light of comprehension was almost comical, and Aurora had taken Enaric’s arm and all but marched him towards the tinted glass looking out over Tharsis.

  ‘Calm yourself, magos,’ said Hydraq. ‘You’re drawing attention. That’s bad. You have a task that requires a certain expertise, yes? If that’s the case, we can talk. If not, my companion and I will walk out of here and you will never speak to us again. Signal your assent with a single nod.’

  Enaric nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Hydraq extending his hand and giving the magos his most winning smile. ‘Now smile and nod and talk as if we’re about to negotiate a particularly lucrative trade deal. While you’re doing that, tell us what you want.’

  ‘Here? Now?’ asked Enaric, his panic rising again. ‘There are listening devices woven into the very air.’

  ‘It’s nothing I can’t handle,’ said Aurora, tapping her right ear, where a vox-fractor nestled. ‘Trust me, no-one’s hearing anything of interest right now.’

  ‘Speak,’ said Hydraq. ‘And be succinct.’

  To his credit, Enaric adapted quickly and told a scathing tale of Archmagos Alhazen of Sinus Sabeus, whose forge lay within the Schiaparelli Crater. Alhazen, a close ally of the Fabricator-General had seen unprecedented success in his uncovering of lost Martian techno-arcana over the last decade.

  Caches of lost technology, standard template construct fragments and items that were said to date from the Wars of Unity and before. The technotheocrats claimed Alhazen was blessed by the Omnissiah himself and their approbation appeared to be borne out by yet more priceless secrets delved from beneath the red sands.

  Throughout this bitter recitation, Hydraq was learning that Enaric liked the sound of his own voice and letting those around bask in the glow of his acumen.

  Hydraq wasn’t so sure. He’d done his own research.

  He knew Enaric’s skill wasn’t the equal of his ambition. He knew the magos had virtually exhausted his resources and the goodwill of his fellow magi in numerous risky ventures to advance his standing within the Martian Synod. None had borne fruit, which advanced him to the meat of the matter.

  ‘Are you familiar with FM-2030?’ asked Enaric.

  Hydraq was, but said nothing, knowing Enaric would elaborate.

  ‘He was said to be one of the first transhumanists, from before the time of the Cult Mechanicus – a being who eventually transcended the limitations of flesh to become one of the first Binary Apostles. A founding father of our planet, he brought much of the First Tech from Terra to Mars. The Cartographae 20-30 is said to be a map that lays out the precise locations of his first proto-forges, forgotten caches of the very technology that built Mars.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Hydraq. ‘You think Alhazen has it?’

  ‘I do,’ said Enaric, his optical implants glittering with avarice. ‘And I want you to get it for me.’

  Hydraq heard a whisper of motion behind him.

  But only because she let him.

  ‘All clear up top?’ asked Aurora.

  ‘You almost certainly already know the answer to that.’

  ‘Only almost?’

  ‘Fine, definitely.’

  ‘You’re right. I do know,’ she answered.

  ‘Then why ask?’

  ‘I like to hear you tell me things as if you’re in charge.’

  ‘I am in charge,’ he said.

  She smiled and he forgave her as he always did. He nodded towards the supine form of Simocatta, unable to keep a grimace from his face at the man’s emaciated flesh.

  ‘Duqu’s not bitten yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Aurora, her voice clipped and utterly devoid of accent. He’d heard her speak like a Terran hiver, a Jovian doxy and a Bakkan aristocrat. He didn’t know for sure what her real voice sounded like, and she claimed not to remember. Had a life spent training with the tech-priest assassins of the Cydonian Sisterhood erased her true voice?

  ‘He’d better bite soon,’ said Hydraq. ‘There’s only so long the forge’s long-range augurs will believe we’re a scav-clan.’

  ‘He will. I watched Duqu for three months in Basiri. He’s the type to bite. That’s why I chose him.’

  Aurora moved past him and his impressions came, as they always did, in sharp jolts of awareness, as though each element was only revealed at a moment of her choosing. Midnight-blue drakescale bodyglove of non-reflective polymers, slim physique with a fractional augmetic lengthening of the skeletal structure. Narrow hips, narrow shoulders and long coppery hair worn in a tightly-wound plait. The overriding impression was of verticality, and her facial features were no different. Ever so slightly tapered; chin, sweeping blades of cheekbones and large auburn eyes that appeared natural, but almost certainly weren’t.

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘You always say that before we start.’

  ‘It’s true,’ he said, taking a step towards her.

  ‘Careful,’ she said, with a quarter turn. ‘I’m armed.’

  A pair of short, rapier-like knives with dulled black handles emblazoned with a bull’s head was sheathed at the small of her back. A matching pair of matte-black pistols were slung at her hips, unique in the truest sense of the word.

  ‘So am–’ he started to say, before remembering that he’d hung his wrath-pattern by the main door. Aurora shook her head with a grin. He sighed.

  ‘Is your speeder ready?’ he asked, to change the subject.

  ‘As ready as it can be without actually moving.’

  ‘Good, I got a feeling when this is over, we’ll need to make a sharp exit.’

  ‘Trust me, when I get behind its controls, there’s nothing within a hundred light years that can see it, let alone catch it.’

  Aurora made her way towards the door and Hydraq’s eyes followed her. Only a wheezing intake of breath from Simocatta made him drag his eyes away.

  ‘And we’re in,’ said Simocatta, his eyes blinking and milky with tears as they refocused on his surroundings. Tubes gurgled and the web of drips and intravenous chem-shunts began feeding him fresh nutrients and electrolyte-rich fluids.

  ‘Has he bit?’ asked Hydraq, moving closer only with great reluctance.

  ‘Of course he bit, my sceptical comrade-in-arms,’ said Simocatta, sighing as the stimms hit his system. ‘Didn’t I tell you he would? Our dear Duqu found the data-spike just where I instructed Mistress Aurora to leave it, and, reading its heraldic sigil of Archmagos Alhazen, carried it within Forge Basiri. From that moment it was a statistical certainty he would slot the spike in a commendable, albeit foolish, desire to determine its ownership.’

  ‘Omnissiah, bless the naïve,’ grinned Hydraq. ‘How long before the code exloads to his sensory augmetics?’

  Simocatta reached up to an intravenous dispenser and adjusted his nutrient cycle with practiced ease.

  ‘I work with the craft of Hephaestus and the speed of Hermes,’ said Simocatta with an elaborate wave of hand, like a nobleman’s salute to his subjects.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means the link is established and the polymorphic is wearing away Adept Duqu’s defences as we speak.’

 

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