Snow. The frosty air was crisp until it congealed with the smell of exhaust fumes coming from Connor’s Jeep. The engine hummed, idle, as Kelly ran through some last minute adjustments to the plan with Connor. Then, Connor took off on the road into the trees and lefty Kelly and Rebecca on the snowy ridge. Kelly hopped on her off-road motorbike and kicked it into gear.
‘C’mon,’ she said.
Rebecca, somewhat nervously, planted herself behind Kelly and wrapped her arms around the captain’s slender waist, feeling the solid texture of her leather white-camo jacket. She wore a white beanie, too, strands of deep red hair waving out beneath the cotton. Kelly had a compact sniper rifle that folded in half for easier carrying tucked in a sleeve on her back. A submachinegun—an FN-P90—hung on her hip. Rebecca carried a heavy-duty laptop case slung over her shoulder.
The snow drifted through the silvery tinge of the afternoon sky. Small metal posts marked the road to the top of the cliff. Kelly handled the motorbike with ease, a white cloud kicked up behind them as they cruised past pale trees and snow-covered rocks. They pulled up to a ridge overlooking the trainyard.
There, Kelly laid down, practically invisible in the snow. She unslung her rifle and snapped it into place, sliding in the clip and loading a round into the chamber.
She pressed her finger to her ear and said, ‘Yuri, we’re in position.’
Rebecca lay next to Kelly with her laptop opened in front of her. She scanned the trainyard using her binoculars, looking for anything she could hack. She also had a quadrotor drone sitting in the back of the Jeep – armed with a submachinegun and an automatic targeting system based on the DNA reader tech that Rebecca had been working on earlier. As a safety precaution Bec had warned the others to steer clear of the quadrotor during auto-combat.
They spotted Yuri standing outside the main entrance with his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
‘Man, Boris owes me bigtime for this one,’ he said. ‘Captured by the damn Bratva, what a moron.’
‘You can make fun of him after he’s out of danger,’ Kelly replied. ‘Connor, how you doing?’
‘In position. Clear road to the exit point.’
‘Good. Yuri, you are clear to proceed.’
Now they could only wait while Yuri made his way through the trainyard to Boris’s location. The radios went silent for ten minutes. They picked up on murmurs and pieces of conversation in Russian. Rebecca shifted uncomfortably. What would happen if Yuri got caught in there? Would they kill him right away?
‘Relax,’ Kelly told her. ‘Focus on tapping into their systems. Don’t worry about Yuri.’
Rebecca got to work and managed to hack the trainyard easily enough, giving her access to security doors, cameras, alarms. She’d initiate a DOS the moment something went wrong, fry all of their systems. But the armoured train operated on a different network, with highly complex cyber security measures that would take a lot longer to crack, and the team didn't exactly have time to spare. To make matters worse, a large electrical signal suddenly pulsed from the train. It's engines were firing.
‘Shit,’ Yuri cursed. ‘They’re putting him on the train.’
‘Maintain your cover Yuri but get on that train. We can’t lose him.’ Kelly snapped her rifle back into its compact form and slung it onto her back, then loaded her P90.
Rebecca activated the quadrotor, switched the feed to her phone then packed her laptop away. The mounted 50-cal on the roof of the train would cut their vehicles to shreds the moment they got close. Rebecca steered the drone overhead as the train left the station. She targeted the gunner then turned to Kelly for confirmation. Kelly nodded. Bec fired, a spurt of blood as the gunner collapsed.
There was no shock, no impact as Bec watched the man die through the live feed on her phone.
It wasn’t me, she tried to tell herself. It wasn’t my choice.
But as Bec lifted her finger from the button an icy chill ran from her hands and into her chest. She snapped back to reality and quickly switched the quadrotor to automatic, to let the machine terrorise the gunmen on the train, rather than do it herself.
Kelly tossed the motorbike keys to Rebecca.
‘I’m gonna need you to drive.’
With Kelly behind her Rebecca twisted the throttle and took off in pursuit of the train. The front wheel wobbled in the snow as Bec fought to stay balanced. She could ride a bike, but not as well as the captain.
Yuri’s voice crackled over the radio with a new sense of urgency: ‘My cover’s been blown but I have Boris.’
‘I’m on my way,’ said Connor.
‘We’ll divert their attention to the back of the train,’ said Kelly. ‘Get alongside it,’ she told Rebecca.
They followed the maintenance road alongside the track, slowly gaining on the train, hearing shots fired up ahead and angry Russian’s yelling as the bratva agents took cover from the quadrotor’s machinegun fire. Bec closed in on the train’s rear guard and Kelly sat as high as she could and aimed over Rebecca’s head. Bec didn’t appreciate the loud bursting fire of the submachinegun so close to her ears, and certainly not the painful ringing it left in her skull.
Rebecca pulled in as close as she could to one of the flat carriages at the end of the train, allowing Kelly to grab hold of the railing and hurl herself onboard. Two of the bratva were there and they fired on Kelly the instant they saw her, their bullets tinging off the steel floor as Kelly rolled behind a crate for cover. With a rifle at the ready one of the agents rushed forwards to peer behind the crate. Kelly circled around it and picked off the man at the back, he jolted as the bullets ripped through his torso, and she turned in time to catch the gun of the remaining bratva agent under her arm. Kelly brought her P90 up to his belly, he pushed the weapon aside as she fired and now they were locked together. She had to disarm him, a heavy blow to his elbow and the joint crunched as it bent unnaturally, then she kneed him in the groin, followed by a blow to the head with the butt of her gun. He collapsed writhing in agony She didn’t hesitate to put a bullet in his brain.
Rebecca had veered away and followed along as Kelly worked her way up the train, drawing as much attention away from Yuri and Boris as she could.
‘Things are clearing up on my end,’ Yuri finally announced. ‘I’m going to hit the emergency brakes. Connor, get ready.’
Kelly braced herself as the train’s brakes locked and it squealed to a stop. Up ahead, the Jeep skidded along the snowy dirt road and Yuri and Boris dived inside. In a cloud of snow, the vehicle skidded along the icy road and away from enemy.
Kelly ran from the train as well, jumping onto the back of the motorbike as Rebecca revved and took off after the Jeep. The bratva agents that remained were either trying to shoot down Rebecca’s drone, or cowering in the safety of the cabins.
Boris’s muscles bulged under his tank-top as he boarded the cargo plane that would take them back to Tokyo. Rebecca could tell that he was a dangerous man, not just by the scars on his knuckles and his short – almost tribal – mohawk, but also by the unimpressed look in his eyes and the constant snarl of his lips. Rebecca decided she didn’t like him, but then again, she didn’t have to, she just had to play nice until she fulfilled her end of the bargain.
Turbulence, as the plane took off, almost caused Bec to knock Kelly over. After that entire scenario in the frozen trainyard outside Moscow, Rebecca’s opinion of the captain had been shaken; she still didn’t like her, thought she was uptight, but perhaps no more than Rebecca herself. When they were out in the snow Bec saw the determination in Kelly’s eyes, a look of pure focus, of someone who would do anything to get the job done, and she respected that. They could never be friends but maybe they had more in common than she thought.
As for the rest of the team, Connor was cute and loyal, but unlike the captain he had no real interest in any of this; he’d patch them up when they got hurt, follow Kelly’s orders to the letter and forget about all of it when the job was done. Yuri was a bit of a joker, Bec thought, by the look of his crude smile and the amount of sarcasm he spewed—he’d be the kind of guy to make bad jokes in tense situations. Rebecca was yet to meet Akira but supposedly they both came from the streets; maybe Kelly rescued her the same way.
It was up to the captain to formally introduce Boris and Rebecca, a formality they were both reluctant to participate in. Boris extended his large calloused hand and as they shook he looked her up and down.
‘Another criminal,’ he said, in a deep Russian accent. ‘All due respect, captain, I had hoped you were going to Australia to hire a professional.’
Rebecca drew back. ‘Hey, fuck you!’
‘That enough, Rebecca!’ Kelly stepped in. She turned to Boris. ‘Yes, she’s had dealings with Nexus Rogue in the past, that’s part of the reason why I recruited her, but it’s not all. She’s the best at what she does and she will help us shut them down, I can vouch for that.’
In response Boris said something in Russian then went and sat down. Rebecca found her own seat away from him and looked at her phone until the captain elegantly sat down beside her.
Bec looked up, then gestured towards Boris and said, ‘So, what’s his problem?’
‘He, uh, doesn’t like your type.’
‘My type?’
‘Just an old grudge,’ Kelly reassured her. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’
‘What’s he do here?’ Bec asked, she didn’t really care but was also curious all the same. ‘What’s his job?’
‘He used to have your job. R&D, tactical support, but he’s been around longer than you, and me, and he’s done a lot more fighting. There was a cyber-attack a few years ago, hit a big industry mining site, caused a lot of damage, people died. Boris was assigned to the team trying to prevent the attack but the mission was a failure. Now, he’s our weapons specialist and requisitions officer.’
Kelly left Rebecca alone and Bec put her earphones in – the old kind, not the wireless ones – and listened to music while she worked with her laptop, digging up whatever information she could find on her old contacts. Meanwhile, Boris and Yuri were compiling their data on the man that this entire trip to Moscow was about. After an hour or so Kelly flicked an earphone out of Bec’s ear.
Then she turned to Boris and said, ‘Your report, please.’
Boris began by activating a small holoprojector that displayed a rotating image of a man, grizzly-looking with thinning hair but a full dark beard, and small shining plates implanted in the left side of his face, covering the scars that remained from a very old injury.
‘Dimitri Aleksandrovsk,’ Boris announced. ‘Ex-Russian military, ex-bratva, now a confirmed member of Nexus Rogue.’
‘We also confirmed that Dimitri was recently in Moscow, as you said, captain,’ Yuri went on. ‘It seems he was contracted by someone – we did not learn this person’s name but we believe they go by the alias White Rabbit.’
In that instant Rebecca looked at Kelly. Yuri noticed this and waited for an explanation.
‘We know who White Rabbit is,’ said Kelly. ‘An Australian hacker named Robert Teach. He’s dead now.’
‘I see.’ Yuri contemplated this information before continuing on with the report. ‘As I was saying, this White Rabbit had hired Dimitri to secure large plots of cyberspace.’
Boris picked up the report from here. ‘He’s been locking down dozens of servers and making them inaccessible to even the best technicians.’
‘Where were they getting the servers from?’ Kelly questioned.
‘It is a tricky question to answer,’ said Yuri. ‘All we know is that they were purchased by an anonymous buyer right before disappearing.’ Yuri snapped his fingers. ‘Like that, completely undetectable.’
Kelly nodded slowly as she contemplated this information.
‘Good work you two. Looks like we have some leads. I’d like to know who this anonymous buyer is, and also what Nexus Rogue are using those servers for. You can write up a full report when we return to HQ, in the meantime get some rest.’
This new information about Robb had already embedded itself deep into Rebecca’s mind, just one more thing she didn’t know about the man. Again, she struggled to stay focused after that. She kept thinking… What were you doing, Robb?
ns 172.70.178.23da2