Ladriya was the tough Anglo-Indian who handled their on-site tech. She was also the only woman on the team besides Major. When Ladriya talked, she sounded as though she came from south or east London, though her family was originally from somewhere in southeast Asia. To hear Ladriya tell it, her folks hadn’t been thrilled that instead of taking a job close to home, she’d wound up all the way in New Port City, doing work she could never discuss in her weekly video chats with Mum and Dad. The Major was grateful for Ladriya’s wanderlust. The woman’s technical skills were part of what kept the team on the bleeding edge, and like most of Section Nine, she was more interested in results than in salutes and protocol. Today, Ladriya sported a sonic piece on her right ear for work and a gold ornament on her left as an assertion of personality.
Ladriya was carefully ignoring Borma, whose machine-optic eye implants raked over the room. If there had ever been something between those two, it had never followed them to the job. What the Major knew about Ladriya’s professional past was the kind of deliberately hazy narrative that belonged to someone from the intelligence community. Borma and his skill with explosives suggested a former career as a demolitions specialist.
Saito, the group’s primary sniper, glanced in her direction, his unblinking hawk-eye implant fixing her for a brief instant. He came from a mercenary background, from years working as a private military contractor, and he was another of Aramaki’s personal recruits. She wondered what had swayed Saito away from a lucrative profession as a shooter-for-hire and into a new role with Section Nine. As always, the chief played his cards close to his chest on that matter, and Saito was in no hurry to open up about it.
Ishikawa, the last member of the team, was Section Nine’s resident information warfare specialist. He had his father’s surname, his mother’s Afro-Caribbean good looks, and almost the same London accent as Ladriya. Ishikawa also looked very young, just out of his teens, despite his scruffy beard. Something seemed off about him this morning, and it wasn’t just his usual hangover.
“So, what do we have on Osmond?” the Major asked.
Ladriya knew that the immediate information was required. She was sorry she didn’t have more to give. “So far, very little.” She turned on the holo-floor in the middle of the room, which projected three-dimensional images of the late Dr. Osmond. Everyone took a seat to view the data. “He was the head of Hanka’s robotics division. Human, but of course cyber-enhanced.”
They all knew a man in that position would have had the most highly developed cyber-protection in existence implanted in his neural system. Batou voiced what everyone was thinking. “So, how did they hack him?”
The hologram now displayed the fatal attack on Osmond in the banquet hall. The Major indicated the action being played back in the hologram. “Somehow this geisha bot got past his encryption.”
It was never wise to ignore the Major, but Togusa couldn’t help it. He was distracted by a change in Ishikawa. The man had had some sort of new cyber-enhancement done, made more provocative because Togusa couldn’t readily decipher what it was. “Something’s different.”
Ishikawa sighed softly.
Togusa refused to be put off. “What’d you get?”
“Why you always think he’s out there enhancin’?” Ladriya teased. Ishikawa had a few low-level neural enhancements and a couple of simple bio-modifications, but it was an open secret that he wanted more than that. These days, it was the equivalent of what getting a new piercing or a tattoo had been, back when those had been considered slightly daring.
“Because he is,” Togusa replied, defending his original question.
Ishikawa removed all doubt by pulling up his shirt and displaying the crimson line of a fresh surgical scar across his belly. “Cyber-mech liver,” he explained. This was a combination of computerized and robotic components. “Been savin’ up for a while.” He grinned. “Now it’s last call every night.”
Togusa was appalled. “You got enhanced so you can drink more?”
Ishikawa grinned wickedly, clicked his tongue and winked.
Ladriya gave a snort of laughter at Togusa’s reaction. “Embrace the enhancements, Togusa. Me and the Major? We wouldn’t be here without it.” True enough. Almost everyone on the team had been wounded in action at some point and had required cyber enhancements to save their lives. And everyone knew the Major was nothing but cyber enhancements, except for her brain.
Togusa hoped the Major didn’t take offense, but he was proud of the fact that all of his skills were honed by practice and experience, not technology. “I’m all human… and happy, thanks.”
The Major did not respond to his words. Instead, she remained focused on the mission. “Any more information on the ceased geisha bot?”
The holographic display now showed the red-clad bot that had pleaded with the Major; lists of printed information scrolled alongside the image.
“Hanka’s running scans,” Togusa said. “Dr. Dahlin will have the report ready by—”
He broke off abruptly as the hologram of the geisha bot vanished, replaced by the Section Nine S9 logo as Chief Aramaki entered the conference room.
3
INTERFACED
Everyone rose swiftly and stood at attention on Aramaki’s arrival. The chief did not bother with verbal greetings. Unlike most men commanding military units, Section Nine’s top officer did not shave or crop his hair. Instead, he wore it in a style that was wide on either side at the top and tapered in more closely to frame his lined and firm features, giving him the look of an old but still fierce lion that was for some reason inside an office building instead of out prowling the veldt. He perpetually wore the kind of stern expression that was better suited to some hard-ass schoolteacher or an unforgiving mob boss.
At the chief’s nod, everyone in the team sat down on the couches again. “I have been speaking with the prime minister,” Aramaki informed his subordinates. “He wants a full report. Togusa.” Aramaki indicated that the man should speak.
Togusa obediently activated a hidden control, and the room dimmed as a crimson-hued hologram display rose up out of the floor and swiftly sketched in a series of holograms showing three different people that the Major had never seen before. Aramaki sat now as well, concentrating, as Togusa summed up what they’d uncovered so far. “Following last night’s attack, three more Hanka scientists were murdered at the company’s central laboratory.” There had been several other recent Hanka deaths, but those had, until now, been chalked up to ill fortune with petty criminals and coincidence. No more—even without the attack in the banquet room, this proved a pattern.
“The first two were shot,” Togusa continued, inhaling softly as he indicated two of the holograms, “and the third was beaten to death by his own service robot.” He moved to indicate the third hologram, which displayed a dead scientist slumped over a desk that had fist-sized holes pounded into it. “All showed signs of cerebral hacking.” Togusa manipulated the hologram so that it now focused on the dead man’s quik-port.
“The same as the geisha did to Osmond,” Togusa added, even though his colleagues were well aware of this. “And all were senior figures in Hanka. Just like Osmond. A message was left at each of the crime scenes by someone identifying himself…”
Togusa brought up a new hologram. It was fuzzy and incomplete, but part of a face was clear, a young Caucasian man peering out from under a hood. Togusa finished, “…as Kuze.”