The CRES code

Chapter Fifty Seven - The Hay Barn

     The troupe of sixty workmen left the city early the next morning, accompanied by Randall, Loach, half a dozen of Loach's thugs, Duke Latimer, four Barons and fifty members of the city garrison. Forty six of the soldiers were marching in a column, looking splendid in their shining steel armour, the tips of their long poleaxes shining in the winter sun, while the other four scouted the way ahead, making sure there were no orcs somehow still in the vicinity.

     "There's really no need for you to be here yet," Randall told the Duke as they walked behind the wagon carrying their equipment and supplies. "It'll be at least a day or two just clearing the site before we're ready to descend."

     "Just protecting my investment," the Duke replied without looking at him. "Wouldn't want any of that gold to go missing before I get a chance to look at it."

     "You don't trust your men to keep an eye on me?" asked Randall with amusement, but he already knew the answer to that question. The amount of gold Randall had told him was down there would buy the loyalty of every man in the procession a dozen times over. If it had been the other way around, Randall would have done the same thing.

     Randall waited until they were five miles outside the city before quickening his pace to catch up with Loach and walk beside him. Loach looked across at him, and Randall made a hand gesture for him to move a little way to the side of the column, out of earshot of any other members of the expedition. "Are you picking up any transmissions in the area?" he asked.

     "One," replied the mob boss. "It's been following us ever since we left the city. It's currently a little way ahead of us, up in those trees." He gave a slight nod of his head to indicate the general direction.

     Randall looked but didn't see anything. "Some kind of drone?" he said. "The machines satisfying their curiosity?"

     "It's a pigeon," Loach replied. "There are dozens of them in the city. Robots, I imagine, covered with genuine bird flesh and feathers. They first appeared a few days ago. Looking for us, no doubt."

     "And you didn't think it necessary to tell me this earlier?"

     "You'd have been edgy and scared every time you saw a pigeon. The machines would have noticed. This way, you've been acting normally around pigeons, not acting suspicious. Luckily the machines don't know what we look like. So long as we act like everyone else and keep our head phones in flight mode they've got no reason to suspect us."

     Randall nodded. The other man had made the right choice, he realised. "Still, it's a problem," he said. "With all that military grade stuff in your head, is there any way you can disable it? Take it out of action while making it look like it just malfunctioned or something?"

     "I've got a bunch of military grade viruses but they only work on twenty first century computers. These modern machines use a completely different operating system. Probably simpler to just shoot it. Have someone put an arrow through it. Even simpler to just leave it alone."

     "We can't let the machines see what we're going to do at Gorsty Common. We're supposed to be just digging a camouflaged barracks but they'll see immediately what we're really doing. Does that combat app of yours let you use a bow and arrow?"

     "Of course."

     "Then borrow a bow and shoot the thing."

     Loach nodded and crossed to where one of the soldiers was walking. He spoke to him for a moment and the soldier handed his bow across with a smile. Loach fitted an arrow to the bow, raised it and searched around in the trees they were passing for the pigeon. It took him a few minutes, but then he saw it in the branches of a large oak growing to one side of the path they were taking. "Pigeon stew for supper tonight," he said in case the pigeon was picking up audio. Perhaps it was, because the pigeon immediately took flight and sped across the sky.