Free Code Breakers: Beta by Colin F. Barnes Page A

patrol on the border territories beyond the Khentii Mountains.
    She checked the location stamp and realised it wasn’t very far from her location, which meant she would likely be found soon if she didn’t move. They’d be expecting a report from their patrol.
    The UAV, it said, was of Criborg design. The third one taken down in the last week. Criborg had stepped up its drone attacks on the Red Widow’s territory by a factor of 5 in the previous month. They had also sunk a Red Widow vessel off the coast of Northern Japan.
    Damn . A secret war had broken out underneath The Family’s nose. But then, she supposed, what with The Family taking down or at least temporarily cutting access to the Meshwork, it made it harder for news like this to spread.
    That gave her an idea: she used the Jaguar’s computer to scan for nodes, which it found none, but it did find a complete absence. Even City Earth’s network hadn’t showed up. They had somehow suppressed all of the networks, and cloaked their own.
    “‘Bout time they realised they weren’t invulnerable,” she said.
    The scanner completed its sweep. She had another thought: the UAV used radio systems to navigate and send/receive messages. With the last few remaining computer nodes and network points down or cloaked, Criborg had to communicate with their device. Which means she could too. And she could recover the data.
    It took her at least twenty minutes to crack the encoded signal. Would have been faster with Gerry , she thought. She had the Jaguar’s computer and radio system array send a signal to the UAV’s control device and it returned a confirmation. She was in.
    It was then she realised: it’d been transmitting all that time.
    Streams of data flowed from the unit, updating the recipient with coordinates, locations, video, and audio.
    She quickly placed the unit inside a metal ration’s box. A hundred questions blossomed in her mind: how much had it recorded, had the people on the other end heard and seen her, were they coming to recover their tech, were they coming to attack Red Widow? And damn! Here she sat, dressed in their robes, in their vehicle. What if they thought she was one of them? And given that it was her only vehicle she couldn’t just abandon it and walk on foot.
    Only one thing for it: send them a message via the signal. Tell them who she was, that she had had their chip inside her. Her hand trembled over the controls as she typed out her message, telling them she was coming to their location.
    She hoped they would let her get that far, but then she had little choice. She couldn’t go to City Earth or Darkhan. She didn’t know the extent of GeoCity-1’s safety, and with the Red Widows crawling all over the land and air, options were running thin.
    Her hand hesitated over the send control. Damn it, girl. Just do it.
    She sent the message, entered the coordinates into the navigation computer, and plotted a course to Criborg’s island. The navigation system flagged up a warning: she’d only make it three quarters of the way of the two hours journey on the current fuel load.
    “Let’s hope you guys read my message.”
    With that, Petal fired up the engines, took off, and headed east.

Chapter 8
    A hour after sending the message, Gerry received a reply from Enna: “Gerry, is that you?” Enna’s voice was right in his head: the AIA patching the signals into his auditory system.
    “Yes, Enna. Or should I say Aunty?”
    “Oh, they told you then. Well, I can explain, I—”
    “No need, just tell me, where’s Petal? I noticed the wreckage of your Jaguar is still out there sending signals.”
    “Oh, Gerry. I’m afraid it’s bad news. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. She, she died. There was an accident with the Jaguar. Jasper’s men crashed it under fire, killing all the crew and their passengers. I’m so sorry.”
    His AIA added a textual layer coming from a different source to the voice and from within a cloaked, encrypted stream