On The Edge of A Knife
C8 Data Solutions was a testbed for the technologies of tomorrow. High-performance ultra-dense servers capable of crunching oceans of data every second. Memory storage capacity measured in exabytes. Proprietary hybrid cloud infrastructure to support fast-moving digital enterprises. Liquid immersion cooling with minimal environmental footprint. Solar glass and tiny wind turbines to harness renewable energy. On-site graphene nanofluid battery-based uninterruptible power supply in the event of a blackout. Government-grade security solutions to safeguard confidential information. Hardening against EMPs and wireless hacking. It was the manifestation of the marriage of big data and big memory.
It was a monument to the glory of the cube.
Six stories tall, smooth and inscrutable, it was a vision of machine perfection. Dark glass windows drank in all light, converting it to electricity. The gray concrete walls were pristine, untouched by time, by entropy, by the corruptive air of Babylon herself. More than just a building, it was a statement, the ultimate expression of the vision birthed by machine gods for the final fate of the human soul.
Quantified. Digitized. Homogenized.
A reduction and distillation of everything that made a man into bits and bytes, interchangeable with every other bit and byte, his value measured only by his utility to an all-consuming power.
It was amazing how much information could be found about C8, and how little. It had begun life five years ago as a private business. The company swiftly carved out a niche for itself, serving the needs of the rapidly-growing data mining, machine learning and neural network industries. It boasted about its features and services in specialist publications and websites, many of which were openly available for perusal.
Two years later, after the Temple Commission went to work, a low-profile investment group bought out C8. The sum and terms were undisclosed to the public, but Peter determined that every single one of its cofounders took early retirement and disappeared from the public eye.
Shortly after that, C8 dropped off the radar. The few times it appeared in open sources, it was held up as an example of cutting-edge tech. An engineering company listed C8 as one of its clients. A scattering of firms used C8 as their data management provider, most of whom were connected to the Singularity Network or the Void Collective in one way or another.
It was still a private business, but it was also a massive money sink. The new owners had spent over twenty-five million dollars to earn less than ten million. There was no law against stupid business decisions, though. So long as they filed the paperwork and paid their taxes on time, no one cared.
Sited in Electric City, the electronics and late-night entertainment mecca of Babylon, it was the highest and lowest-profile business in the district. In a neighborhood filled with dazzling lights, service bots and eye-catching holograms, C8 was the blandest building in the area. Its nondescript nature made it a novelty. But with nothing to see and nothing to do there, no one bothered themselves with it.
Gregory worked his magic. PSB long-endurance surveillance drones took to the skies of Babylon, in support of BPD. As they crisscrossed Electric City, they captured overhead imagery of the site and fed the imagery to Peter’s workstation.
C8 occupied an asphalt island, isolated from its neighbors. A head-high wall, tipped with anti-climb spikes, served as its most visible defense. There was a single point of entry, protected by a reinforced cubical guardhouse. Pedestrians had to pass through an automatic mantrap, ground vehicles needed to clear a vehicle gantry, and fliers must have the appropriate transponder codes. Retractable bollards lay in wait just past the gantry, and the aerial warning system was always operational.
The dead space between the walls and the cube were dedicated to parking. Beyond the cars, there was neither cover nor concealment, nothing but the hidden infrastructure demanded by city regulations. It was totally dead—or, rather, it had never hosted life at all. Smart poles ringed the premises, combining lighting, cameras, sensors and wireless hot spots.
Past the main entrance, the cube was a mystery.
Almost.
Zen and Peter penetrated the digital defenses of the engineering firm that had worked on C8. Inside its databases, they found floor plans, technical drawings, notes. The assaulters studied the documents and replicated them on the warehouse floor.
Using copious amounts of duct tape and repurposed furniture, Teams Black Watch and Red Raven mocked up a scaled-down interior of C8. A glass house, in CQB parlance. They studied doors and hallways, they measured angles and fields of fire, they reverse-engineered the internal logic of the building. They simulated the flow of people within the four walls—how the staff would travel from room to room, how assaulters would take the building down, how defenders would strongpoint it against an invading force.
In full gear, they drilled.
The insertion. The breach. The assault. The consolidation. The defense. The extraction. For every critical phase of the mission, they prepared four plans: primary, alternate, contingency, emergency. They war-gamed possible scenarios, and figured out solutions. They discussed the kind of defenses and security systems they would face, and prepared the right gear to defeat them. They brainstormed how the opposition might react, and planned their playbooks.
It was the no-tech approach to mission rehearsal. Which was why the New Gods wouldn’t find them. Not until it was too late.
A job like this demanded manpower. Twelve operators weren’t anywhere near enough for a mission of this magnitude. Not when they had to expect a swift and violent response from the opposition. But twelve was all they had.
The A-Team couldn’t assist this time. Every BPD SWAT officer had been called to duty. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, every day, for the duration of the emergency. During their time off, they had to remain contactable, and ready to respond to a callout within an hour.
Sergeant Lee was the only exception. Gregory had arranged for a medical team to make an emergency off-the-books surgery. The bullet had passed through the meat of his forearm, severed a tendon and fractured his radius and ulnar bones. The paperwork claimed that he had accidentally stabbed himself while training at home with a live blade. It was a black mark on his record, but better that than admit to going rogue. Between his transgression and his injury, the brass had placed him on desk duty.
Hernandez and Gilbert were busy too. Not that they could help, anyway. An op like this went way beyond their skills.
There was no one else from the STS they could call up either. At its height, the STS numbered just over 120 operators. They were now scattered across the country, either doing everything they could to check the growing influence of the New Gods, or hiding deep underground. Team Red Raven was the only team available on short notice.
“And me,” Gregory said.
Yuri raised an eyebrow. “You’re going in?”
“I can’t just sit back while you do the dirty work.”
“When was the last time you were in the field?” George asked gently.
“I’ve kept in shape,” Gregory protested.
Not at the operators’ level. Everyone could see it. They were lean, muscled, hard, every one of them. Gregory was just sleek. Not fat, not overtly strong either.
“You can contribute most effectively by running the TOC,” Yuri said. “That frees up Peter to focus exclusively on cyber.”
“Wish there’s more I could do to help,” Gregory said.
“Know any guns for hire we can bring on for this job?” George asked.
Gregory shook his head. “For an op this sensitive? No. Not unless you’re willing to disappear them after the job.”
And that was a line they would not cross.
“Peter, what about you? Know any reliable contractors?” Yuri asked.
“Contractors, no. Reliable, yes,” Peter said.
“Who?”
“The Angels.”
Yuri had deployed gynoids in combat once before. He wouldn’t trust them with complex tasks, tasks that required a human intelligence. Peter had to personally program and debug their scripts multiple times before they could be deployed at the BITE. An op like this could get real complex, real fast.
But for static defense…
“We could use them,” Yuri said.
“They are at your disposal,” Peter said. “But leave two here to provide security.”
That meant six more guns. A third team of shooters, all of them as accurate as snipers, and as useful in a firefight as six-year-olds. Which wasn’t to say they weren’t dangerous, only that they had to be emplaced properly.
Their first mission was reconnaissance. All throughout the day, Angels made solo walk-pasts of C8, recording everything they saw, heard, and smelled. There was only so much that overhead imagery could do. There was no substitute for ground truth.
They recorded foot and motor traffic around the area. They measured distances between critical points. They looked for cameras, sensors and other objects that could only be seen from ground level. They emplaced miniature spy cameras around the block, then sat in stationary vehicles to monitor the feeds and relay them to the warehouse.
As the days and nights passed, critical intelligence flowed into the warehouse. C8 was a 24/7/365 operation. During normal business hours, there could be up to sixty people on site. Most of those were administrative, maintenance, support and management. The operations team—the technicians who interfaced directly with the hardware—numbered between three to five per eight-hour shift. There was also a four-man security element on site, the guards easily recognizable by their black and white uniforms and the pistols they wore at their hips.
“Plan for at least eight guards,” Zen said. “We have to assume that the VC guards don’t drive or fly to work. Not when they can teleport directly into the security office.”
C8 was too important to be protected by a third party contractor. The Sinners and the Void would deploy their own troops to handle security. Being only human, the Sinners would have to drive to work. The VC, being the extensions of an alien power, didn’t have to.
“We’re looking at a minimum of between eleven to thirteen pax on site during off-peak hours, eight of them hostile,” Yuri mused.
The guards worked a twelve-hour shift. Two men manned the guardhouse at all times. Every so often, one of them would walk the perimeter, both to stretch his legs and to check for anomalies. The remainder were stationed indoors. They stayed at their posts throughout their shifts, and rotated positions every day.
Armed with this fresh intelligence, the teams modified their plans. They had to strike a fine balance between addressing a known threat in a known location and remaining alert to unknown dangers. In their mission rehearsals, they prepared to take on an opposing force twice, even thrice, their number.
But there was only so much they could do. The glass house was nowhere near a full-scale replica they would have built in the STS. They could only drill one floor at a time. They couldn’t run live fire exercises, or conduct a force-on-force session with living roleplayers.
They didn’t even have the most up-to-date interior plan. Karim attempted to explore the inside of the cube with Aethersight. He quickly encountered multiple layers of heavy-duty wards. Penetrating them would be impossible, not without setting off alarms. Zen and Peter had bandied about the idea of sending in an Angel to pose as a customer. Yuri had nixed the idea: an Angel wasn’t anywhere near adaptable enough to handle social engineering. Deploying a contractor or some other asset was a no-go too. The Network and the Void would record and remember whoever they sent. Once he showed his face, everyone in both factions would know what he looked like. That person would have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
In the end, with their limited resources and capability, preparation could only go so far. The clock was ticking, the New Gods were scheming, and the city balanced precariously on the edge of a knife. Every passing day drew the world closer to the final showdown between gods and monsters. Under ordinary circumstances, they would have spent weeks, even months, studying the target and preparing to take it down. Time was the one thing they did not have.
Three days later, at three in the morning, they rolled out.
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