Parador (Juggernaut #2)

Forty Five

Malachi dragged a chair across the thick carpet. The wheels carved a shallow path through the deep pile which faded almost immediately. After a couple of cautious taps at the keyboard the machine beeped and came to life. Naturally it was encrypted. Malachi didn't waste time guessing. Instead, he fished the datachip from his pocket and touched it against the screen. Malachi knew the terminal would automatically begin the handshake sequence to open a channel to the datachip. He also knew that any half-decent security system would ask for authorisation before allowing the unknown chip access to the system. If it rejected the chip now, he would be out of luck. He didn't know any passwords and he was no hacker. But he was counting on the fact that this same chip had interfaced with the terminal earlier that day. Yoshihiro would have authorised the connection. Malachi was gambling that the authorisation was still in effect.

The screen updated and chimed a note of welcome.

Malachi smiled at his good fortune. Bingo.

He ignored the terminal interface and instead went straight to Nina's tools. She had designed them to interrogate systems and retrieve data based on a heuristic matching algorithm, perfect for someone who made their living extracting secure data from old fight systems. In this case, Malachi knew exactly what he was looking for. He entered his parameters and let the program run. The results came back instantly. Their data was still here. He copied it back to his datachip, then hesitated. Should he delete the original?

If I erase it Conway will know I've been here. Or at least his will figure that out sooner or later. I can't be sure that no other copies exist, so what would I gain? Plus, Conway's the one hiding something. He knows more than us, so deleting what he took from us won't do us any good.

Malachi's finger hovered over the command to erase the data.

But how much does he know?

Curiosity won out, and Malachi opened the data on the chip. It didn't seem any different, not at first. There were the same columns of data he had shown Tila back home. There was the cleaned-up version, and there was the hashed jump addresses.

Only they were no longer hashed.

The coordinates glowed on the screen in front of him, drawing him in, promising him their secrets.

Malachi checked the time. He had been here too long. He needed to go. But he couldn't help himself.

He logged on to the public network and queried the coordinates. He frowned at the response. He checked again, adjusting his search in case the first result was a fluke. The answer was the same.

Malachi whispered his puzzlement at the screen. 'Praxis?'

* * * * *

The bedroom door splintered away from its ornate hinges and fell onto the thick carpet with a muffled bang.

Ellie and Jayce whirled around. Jayce instinctively stepped in front of Ellie. Ellie clutched the back of his shirt.

The agent in the doorway carrying the battering ram stepped back. Behind him stood another agent, legs apart, weapon drawn and pointing into the room. The first agent dropped the battering ram on the hallway floor and pulled a palm-sized datapad from his hip as he entered the room.

'Two and clear, captain,' he said. The agent holding the needle pistol stepped moved aside to free up the doorway, and a third agent entered the room.

'Thank you, sergeant,' said the captain. He stood half a head taller than the sergeant, and towered over Ellie and Jayce. The other agents they had seen were all dressed in the same professional outfits of dark grey, as if ready for a board meeting. The captain couldn't be more different. Where the agents wore polished shoes, he wore combat boots. Where they dressed for the office, he was dressed like a soldier. They gave the appearance of wanting to talk. The captain of wanting to fight. He was dressed for a fight. His only concession to looking like a soldier was a pair of thick, white gauntlets tucked into his belt.