Perfect Dark: Second Front Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  PERFECT DARK® BOOKS

  BY GREG RUCKA

  Perfect Dark: Initial Vector

  Perfect Dark: Second Front

  GREG RUCKA

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  PERFECT DARK®: SECOND FRONT

  Copyright © 2007 by Microsoft Corporation

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  www.perfectdarkzero.com

  Microsoft, the Microsoft Game Studios logo, Perfect Dark, Perfect Dark Zero, Rare, the Rare logo, Xbox, Xbox 360, and the Xbox and Xbox 360 logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation or Rare Limited in the United States and/or other countries and are used under license from owner. Rare Limited is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Copyright © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rucka, Greg.

  Perfect dark. : Second front / Greg Rucka.—1st trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-765-31572-4

  ISBN-10: 0-765-31572-6

  1. Bounty hunters—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Second front.

  PS3568.U2968P47 2005

  813'.54—dc22 2006024311

  First Edition: January 2007

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This novel is dedicated to

  Gabrielle and Jennifer,

  who could both teach Jo a thing or two

  about kicking ass and

  taking names.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The trick of a second novel is doing the first, but better, which is not unlike catching lightning in a bottle … two times in a row. It takes nerve, grace, wit, and perseverance, and it can never be done alone. Below are the names of some—and only some—of the people who helped make the catch, so to speak.

  Starting at Rare, where Joanna Dark continues to be a glutton for punishment, thanks go out to Duncan Botwood, Richard Cousins, Dale Murchie, Lee Schuneman, Tim and Chris Stamper, and especially Jim Veevaert. Additionally, the author would like to thank Chris Kimmell’s frog, who was there when the going got tough, and Chris Kimmell, for having the foresight to have a frog in the first place.

  Over at Microsoft, profound gratitude to the following people: Kevin Browne, Sandy Ting, Brian Maeda, Steve Schreck, Jeremy Los, Alicia Hatch, Alicia Brattin, Michelle Ballantine, Joe Bishop, and, of course, (the real) Ed Ventura. A very special thank-you to Nancy Figatner, as well.

  As ever, to David Hale Smith, who continues to impress.

  At Tor, a thank-you to Eric Raab. Trust us, all that hair you pulled out—it will grow back in. Really.

  Finally, an enormous thank-you to Eric Trautmann. Weapons-grade wise-ass and storyteller extraordinaire, may your coffee always be hot, and your sights always be true.

  Mud Bay—Approximately 1.5 km west

  of Olympia, Washington

  January 17th, 2021

  When the pretty young woman with the dark red hair and the sapphire-blue eyes tried to kill Zentek CEO Georg Bricker, Georg Bricker’s suit fought for his life.

  It did this in several ways, activating countermeasure after countermeasure in the spread of mere microseconds. Sensing its owner’s sudden change in heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, Bricker’s clothes correctly concluded that his fight-or-flight reflex had engaged, and dumped a massive dose of designer epinephrine into his system to augment his already natural release of adrenaline. On every out-facing surface of his suit jacket, millions of almost undetectable quills emerged at once, each coated with an artificially synthesized version of tetrodotoxin, the cumulative dose enough to momentarily paralyze an assailant’s central nervous system. Georg Bricker’s vest, which had appeared only seconds before to be a charcoal and gray serge, like the rest of his suit, both thickened and hardened, growing snugger around his torso while secreting a resin that, given the opportunity, would become hard enough to deflect all but the most determined bullet or blade.

  While his suit switched into defensive mode and the pretty redhead brought her Falcon pistol to bear, Bricker’s Z-sleeve—the integrated PDA grown into the lower left forearm of his suit coat—automatically switched over to panic mode. It broadcast emergency requests for assistance to all local law enforcement agencies, as well as sending a separate priority transmission to Zentek corporate headquarters in Berlin, notifying Zentek’s internal security of his status, situation, and location—the last by providing Bricker’s GPS coordinates. Additionally, it commenced streaming live A/V to Zentek’s corporate data-hub in Frankfurt, in an attempt to record what was happening for posterity or, at least, possible future legal action.

  And finally, the Z-sleeve emanated a 120-decibel oscillating screech, in an attempt both to dissuade the redhead from continuing her efforts and to alert anyone who might be nearby as to Bricker’s dire straits.

  As a demonstration of the integration of technology and fashion, of the inventiveness and creativity of Zentek’s programmers, engineers, organics engineers, and fashion designers, it was a truly flawless display. Under different circumstances, Georg Bricker would certainly have felt a surge of pride at the quality of craftsmanship evident in his corporation’s work.

  As a means of saving Georg Bricker’s life, it turned out to be entirely useless.

  Bricker’s day had begun at his home outside of Frankfurt, and it had begun poorly, with his Z-sleeve alerting him to an urgent incoming message while he sat at breakfast with his wife and son. The message was terse, stating simply that Zentek stock had jumped on the Tokyo, Sydney, and London exchanges, up sixty-three dollars and seventeen cents. In other circumstances, such a change could only be seen as good news, but Bricker knew better, and with one call to the office, his suspicions were confirmed. Beck-Yama InterNational, the hypercorporation second only to dataDyne in terms of size and power, had gone public in its takeover bid of Zentek, and the stock price had subsequently skyrocketed in anticipation of a buyout.

  The news dismayed Bricker, but it did not surprise him. Since the third quarter of 2018, Zentek had been tottering on the brink of financial disaster. Attempts to revitalize the company over the past two and a half years with the latest iteration of its signature “living clothing line” and by similarly introducing the same biomorph
ic technology to the home market had failed to stanch the corporation’s financial hemorrhaging. Zentek’s problem, and Bricker knew it but was too proud to compromise the fact, was that the corporation made quality material. Cutting costs meant cutting quality of work, and the thought was anathema to him.

  As early as January 2020, almost precisely a year ago, Bricker had seen the writing on the wall: unless Zentek brought to market something as revolutionary as dataDyne’s null-g technology or as ubiquitous as Core-Mantis OmniGlobal’s “ring rings,” Zentek would go the way of the dodo.

  There were board members and CEOs who would have deployed their golden parachutes then and there. Several of Georg Bricker’s own corporate officers already had, in fact. But, in the same way that compromising the quality of Zentek’s work wasn’t an option, fleeing the company he had nurtured and guided for almost twenty years wasn’t one, either. Zentek wasn’t simply his company, it was his family, and he felt a strong and almost irrational sense of loyalty not just to the business but to his 1.2 million employees. Beck-Yama wanted Zentek not for its market share but for its trade secrets and technology. Of those 1.2 million people, at most ten thousand would find work under a Beck-Yama-controlled Zentek.

  It had been in early 2020, then, that Bricker had come to an all but unheard of decision. Rather than allow Zentek to become the victim of a hostile takeover, he instead decided that some Zentek was better than no Zentek at all, and he set about looking to broker a merger with another hypercorporation.

  Once he’d come to that conclusion, Bricker had truly only one choice, only one hypercorporation he could turn to. Carrington Industries was even smaller than Zentek—not to mention that Carrington’s “Institute” was decidedly biased against big business. Core-Mantis OmniGlobal, while much larger than Zentek, had its own successful fashion and body-modification lines.

  That left dataDyne, the monster of them all, the largest hypercorp on the planet. So big, dataDyne could swallow Zentek whole, absorbing his 1.2 million employees without so much as a pause.

  His conclusion reached, Georg Bricker swallowed his pride and sent a politely worded letter—written by hand—to dataDyne CEO Zhang Li. In the letter he spoke of his admiration for dataDyne’s accomplishments and business acumen, for the quality of its services and its standards of product. He spoke of his belief that Zentek shared these qualities. He concluded his letter with the proposal of a merger of the two hypercorporations, one that could certainly benefit dataDyne. All Bricker had asked was that he be allowed to preserve Zentek under dataDyne’s auspices.

  Much to his surprise, Zhang Li had responded almost immediately—or, more precisely, a phalanx of attorneys the dataDyne CEO employed in the mergers and acquisitions division had responded—saying that, yes, dataDyne was interested in brokering such a merger. A full accounting of Zentek’s resources and assets was required, of course, and an exhaustive audit, but once these things were in hand, merger language could be negotiated to satisfy both Zentek’s and dataDyne’s needs.

  Bricker had been relieved almost to the point of tears. Zentek’s attorneys had gone to work at once, and the immense and tedious task of reconciling the one corporation with the other had begun. Work had been slow, but it had been steady, and Beck-Yama, sensing dataDyne’s interest and not wishing to antagonize the world’s largest—and, not coincidentally, most powerful—business entity, had backed off.

  Then Zhang Li had unexpectedly disappeared from public life along with his daughter, Mai Hem, and for much of 2020 there had been nothing from dataDyne regarding the proposed merger. Bricker’s attempts at contact went unanswered, and Beck-Yama once again began moving in around Zentek in a manner that could only be described as vultures circling a prospective corpse.

  Only to back off again when dataDyne announced the resignation of CEO Zhang and the appointing of Dr. Cassandra DeVries to fill his position. Bricker immediately attempted to contact the new CEO, sending DeVries both his compliments and congratulations and inquiring as to the future of the merger. Since DeVries’s appointment almost two months earlier, Bricker had made eleven attempts to contact the new CEO. He received no response. Not a letter, not a call, not a memo, not a word.

  Bricker didn’t know what to make of it.

  But Beck-Yama did, and this morning announced, publicly, their intention to acquire and then dismantle Zentek.

  From his home, Bricker flew to the main office in Berlin, where he presided over a meeting of the board of directors and a video conference with Zentek’s division heads around the world. He declared his intention to fight Beck-Yama and did his best to rally his troops. Despite his efforts, morale remained low. Back in his office, he once more fired off an urgent letter to CEO DeVries, all but begging for a response, and now all the more certain that one was not coming. Zentek stock had jumped another fifteen dollars and seventy-one cents in the last three hours, now trading up almost seventy-nine dollars from its price of the day before.

  Bricker called a strategy meeting with his CFO and the upper echelon accounting staff. Pacing restlessly back and forth past the window-monitors in his office, they discussed options, attempting to build some sort of strategy to keep Beck-Yama at bay. Of immediate concern was the stock loss, and his CFO made it plain that a buyback had to begin at once, or else Beck-Yama would hold controlling interest before the end of the day. But a buyback would cost money, and money was Zentek’s problem; there wasn’t enough of it to counter the billions of dollars that Beck-Yama was now spending, eating Zentek stock like a cancer. Worse, the longer the day wore on, the higher the stock price climbed. Something had to be done immediately, or else nothing else could be done at all.

  Against all his principles, Bricker did the one thing left for him to do. He ordered two of Zentek’s manufacturing divisions closed. In so doing, he put 68,000 of his employees out of work and freed almost 3.2 billion dollars to be redirected back into Zentek’s defense. The buyback began at once, and the stock price began to stabilize. Bricker remained in his office through the night, surrounded by assistants and associates, monitoring trading on exchanges around the world. By midnight in Berlin, Zentek had stabilized, and by three in the morning—midday in Tokyo—it seemed that Beck-Yama International was once again backing off, if only for the moment.

  Bricker could only guess that he’d taken them by surprise, that in his ivory tower overlooking downtown Tokyo, Beck-Yama CEO Takashi Noto had been given pause, forced to reevaluate his takeover strategy.

  Bricker left the office at a quarter past three in the morning, boarded his private low-orbit transport, and flew to Seattle. He did not want to go to Seattle. He wanted to return to Frankfurt for some much needed rest and some even more needed time with his family. But he went, because he felt he had no choice. Playing at the Zee Arena that night was a concert by the performance icon Candee, the concluding stop of her forty-eight-city tour of North America. Both the tour and the arena had Zentek’s name on them, and that, combined with the events of the day, made Bricker feel that it was vital he be seen in public, that he attend to show his face and thus show his faith in Zentek’s future. The fact that he loathed Candee’s synth-pop music only slightly less than he loathed the young star herself didn’t enter into it.

  In point of fact, he felt he was doing penance. He had spared Zentek from Beck-Yama for a day, perhaps two at the most, but the cost, he felt, had been too high. Sixty-eight thousand men and women out of work at his word; sixty-eight thousand men and women whose lives he had irrevocably altered, if not destroyed.

  For Georg Bricker, sitting through two and half hours of Candee’s glass-shattering whining, whinging, and preening about on stage was a small price to pay.

  On the ground in Seattle, Bricker was met by a null-g limousine sent by the local Zentek office and, with his security escort, was whisked quickly into the heart of the city. On approach to the venue, Bricker could see the floodlights illuminating the dataDyne Spire, where the Space Needle had once stood. DataDyne had
purchased the structure in 2010, shortly after Zentek had offered sponsorship of the arena, and in characteristic fashion had then torn the Space Needle down, only to rebuild it as a much taller and more commercially successful venture.

  The limousine pulled to a stop at the main entrance to the arena, and Bricker emerged, surrounded by a phalanx of Zentek security that escorted him onto the red carpet. Candee Canes—predominantly young women who strove to emulate Candee in all things, right down to her Zentek wardrobe—greeted him with shrieks of delight without having the slightest idea who he was. Their noise and their energy momentarily distracted Bricker, and for that reason, he did not note the media presence until the reporters and their cameras were upon him. He made the walk into the arena with their questions shouted at his back, flashbulbs and null-g cameras assaulting his vision from every angle.

  He spent most of the first set in a private box suite with Candee’s managers, agents, attorneys, and hangers-on. The view, as befitted such exclusive seating, was excellent. On the stage, Candee thrilled the crowd with precision choreography and holographic dance displays, her costume changing from moment to moment, Zentek living fabric sliding over her body to reveal calculated expanses of bare skin and perfectly toned and tanned muscle. More than once, Bricker found himself wondering how it was he had ever been convinced to sponsor such a display of near-pornography.

  For the most part, however, he ignored the show in favor of the requisite glad-handing. He smiled politely through insipid conversations, nodded earnestly, and feigned interest. Twice during the first set, he ordered his suit to medicate him, each time with a buffered analgesic.

  All the same, when the message from Cassandra DeVries came, it was a mercy in more ways than one.

  Candee was just coming off the stage, and the crowd in the private box beginning to move en masse to join her backstage, when Bricker’s Z-sleeve began vibrating. Bricker held back to examine the message now scrolling across the screen, vaguely puzzled. An unidentified caller, no ID signature, and that was unheard of; direct access to the Zentek CEO’s Z-sleeve was theoretically impossible, as all calls had to be routed through Zentek Security back in Berlin. No one contacted the CEO without identifying themselves first.