Angeleyes - eARC

by Michael Z. Williamson

  “Let’s move,” he said, and dragged me from under.

  I hobbled behind him as he pointed up the ladder. Sebastian led the way, applied a power shear to the lock and opened it. We climbed up and were in a ventilation and power conduit.

  Those all look the same, and I knew what we needed.

  “Over there, behind the plenum,” I said.

  Once there, I found the access door. You can actually walk inside them, and the engineers do, for maintenance. Sebastian cut it, Shannon opened it, and a gust blew dust all around. That wasn’t good, because it would be a sign of us, but it also meant they didn’t get back here for at least days at a time.

  The airflow isn’t fast because there’s a lot of volume in there. It’s a slow breeze. There is noise from the fans, but it’s tolerable and not dangerous unless you wanted to live there.

  “Did I kick your thumb?” he asked.

  “Yeah. But you got him.” Goddam it hurt.

  He looked it over and had me wiggle it.

  “Seems to be mostly soft tissue. Analgesic and a quick genstim when we get back.”

  “If we get back.”

  “It’ll take more than a few of those dorfs to stop us,” he said. He held up one of the carbines and a coder. They’d block signal on that soon, but in the meantime, we could make distance. On the other hand, they might try to track where it got used. I said so.

  “Oh, I don’t plan to use it,” he said. “We’ll pull some data, though.”

  “What will that do?”

  “Maybe nothing, but it’s all intel. This guy’s movements, that schedule, some incident. Add it all up, pattern it all out, eventually some of it becomes intel for the fight.”

  I knew that was how intel worked, but I didn’t see how this one would matter.

  “Caught your breath?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “My thumb and my tailbone hurt.” They weren’t crippling, but they were going to be sore for a few days. I wouldn’t be lying on my back comfortably.

  I don’t know what they did in there, but they installed some kind of small module.

  Shannon had two carbines as well, and extra ammo sticks, and handed me one. It was easy to figure out. Insert, cock, release, shoot.

  “Ever shot anyone?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You will very soon. Are you okay with that?”

  He sounded so matter of fact and educational.

  “Better than getting shot,” I said.

  “Exactly. Don’t shoot unless you need to or hear us, but then shoot fast and think later. Get past the hurdle. These people want us dead.”

  “I know,” I said, gripping my bruised thumb for a moment.

  Bast did something with the coder.

  “General call. I’d hoped to avoid this, but we’re going to have to shimmy as far as we can and shoot our way through, then get underdeck as soon as we’re in another area.”

  Shannon nodded and boosted him up into the plenum. He pulled me up, then we both pulled Bast.

  “I have no idea where this goes,” I warned them.

  “It goes toward main pressure,” Shannon said. “For now, that’s what we need.”

  “Will they figure out where we were?”

  “Depends on if we get out unseen.”

  I said, “I won’t know where we are until we get out, and I may not even then.”

  “We do what we can.”

  “Okay.”

  The duct twisted around in several long curves and dips. We slithered to keep quiet, and stirred up dust that blew behind us. I shifted sideways so Bast’s dust didn’t get me in the face, but there was still some. It was fluffy clumps, probably from static.

  We came to a dip and had to slide down, the joints between sections caught and bruised me. Then we had to crawl up the other side using those joints for fingergrips. G wasn’t high here, only about .3, but it was still tough to haul myself up by fingertips. Then the duct split three ways. They were secured with large metal mesh.

  Shannon looked at something in his hand, pointed to the right and said, “Hub is that way.” His voice was a whisper, and it echoed.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  He held up a clear disk with markings and a pointer.

  “EM and grav compass. It’s tracking the emergency nav marker, and the rotational G.”

  “Ah,” I said. I knew what a compass was. I’d seen and used them in training, long years back. This was something different. “I hadn’t realized the station had that.”

  “Most do, or else light beacons. If everything fails, emergency crews need to orient.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  The echoes ran down the conduit and turned into scary feedback. I didn’t want to talk much.

  Bast pulled out a tool and tightened it around one of the bars, then kept cranking it with a lever. It was some sort of shear blade that wedged its way through a bit at a time until there was a loud pop, almost a bang, and the bar snapped. He repeated at the other end.

  With a section removed, he whispered very quietly, “Can you fit through there?”

  It was only two squares wide with sheared ends sticking out, but I got my head through, then one shoulder, and the other got stuck until I shimmied a bit. The sharp end at the bottom gouged me but I got past it. Then my ass required serious gyrations to get my hips through one at a time.

  After that I was through.

  I sat there while he cranked the wedge through another bar to create a V-shaped hole that he could get through, with difficulty. Shannon slid right through.

  Then it was back to crawling along ducts and watching the dust blow.

  After a lot of that, we came to a grating over industrial access.

  “I vaguely know where this is,” I said.

  “Good, get us to the ship.”

  Why hadn’t we come in this way, I wondered?

  Bast had a tool that reached through the grating, around, and undid the fasteners from the outside. Shannon caught the mesh as it came loose, and hauled it up.

  “You’re down first, Angie. Shoot anything you see.”

  I gulped. “Okay.” That order seemed to be a complete violation of the Law of Armed Conflict, but I realized it was probably the only thing we could do.

  Bast dropped down next to me, Shannon stood on his shoulders, and reattached the grating.

  I stood there sweating, with my pulse racing. We were standing in a passage, and there were cameras somewhere around here, and sensors that would want to see ID chips we didn’t have.

  Nothing happened, and we moved at Shannon’s gesture. We were clear for now. His tracker told him to turn right, which was spinward, then left again for south.

  We came around a passage bend and ran into an entire squad of police in riot gear. They were about ten meters away and closing in our direction. Eight of them. They’d obviously been alerted because they were moving in leapfrog and cover.

  They started pointing weapons at us, and it was obvious they weren’t in any doubt as to who we were. It took me only a moment to figure out I should be shooting at them.

  Shannon already was. He caught one right under his visor, above the neck armor, and right through the chin. That spot is barely a couple of centimeters wide. He nailed it. While advancing.

  Bast had hit one in the thighs, one shot each, right above the knee armor where there’s a gap. The guy staggered and fell. He screamed and convulsed and screamed more from the damage.

  All I managed was suppressing fire. I buzzed a burst and watched it ricochet off walls and visors.

  With three down and two limping, they started to retreat, falling back in echelons in good order.

  Then Shannon threw some sort of grenade. The bang was deafening and the walls flexed. Two more of them flailed. I watched their limbs flop like hoses. The human body doesn’t bend that way.

  He led, Bast brought up the rear, prodding me along as they went. I figured whatever we’d wanted to do was wasted, and
we were just trying to unass the area as fast as possible.

  As we passed the downed wounded, one of them pointed his weapon at us. Before he could shoot, Bast swung, fired and kept moving. The guy was dead, hit in that hollow near the throat.

  Klaxons and sirens started, and we were at a run.

  We reached a marked entry point just as four more cops did. I butt stroked the nearest while exhaling in a “Yah!” I followed with a kick to his shin, one to his knee, and basically stomped over him as he went down. Screwing up my face, I smashed the edge of my foot down against the throat joint of his armor. Then again. It hurt. He flailed and tried to grab me, then clutched at his throat.

  Bast just stomped on one as he ran over him and beat the next into the bulkhead. Shannon damned near ripped the fourth’s arm off, twirled her like a dancer, grabbed her head and pulled. I heard the neck bones crunch and the girl dropped, twitching like she’d been shocked. Residual neural impulse, I was sure. She was dead.

  I was pretty sure if mine wasn’t dead, he was going to be in critical support unit for days.

  I’d followed their lead and not opened fire, so I’d kept noise and sensor tag to a minimum. I was proud of that at least.

  The door blinked and slid open and we were out.

  There was someone at a reception desk, and Bast shouted, “Get down!”

  The guy did.

  We were out the next door and into public area.

  “Lead, Angie,” Shannon said. He reached out and gestured for my carbine. I handed it back.

  We were still in government cube. I slowed to a walk, and waggled my arms down and away. As we passed a recycle post, I heard one of the guns go into the waste can. I turned to keep us moving south on the station axis line, toward commercial space.

  I know we were being watched on camera. I had no idea what to do, but I got us into back commercial passage. There was a rear employee’s exit for something, and someone just coming out. We went past them, I grabbed the door and held it.

  The woman coming out said, “Hey! That’s—”

  I winked at her and said, “Shhh!” with my finger up over a coy grin as the guys went ahead of me. She looked flustered and embarrassed and said nothing.

  The door latched behind us.

  “We’re in the Hilton,” Shannon said.

  He peeled out of his coverall and tossed it into a rag bin. Bast and I did the same. We were naked, and needed to dress up if we were going in public.

  Bast pulled three vacbags out of his kit. One of them had a blazer and tie for me, the others had jackets and pullies for the men. I found someone’s brush on a shelf, and hoping it was clean, dragged it through my hair.

  Then he went to a trash can and dumped three severed hands into it. They had patches over the stumps. I’d completely missed where he got those.

  “Biobatteries,” he said when I looked at him.

  “Is that how we got through the checkpoint?”

  “Yes.”

  Fuck. If we got caught at this point, we’d killed cops, mutilated bodies, violated security, and goddess knows what sabotage was about to happen. If we were lucky, they’d just space us.

  We walked through the doors to the rear of the public area, and there was one guest by the slide pod.

  I improvised, “I think we’ll need to move some of the tables from the middle.”

  Bast got it at once. “How many guests was it?”

  Shannon said, “Forty-three.”

  “That should work, then.”

  By then we were around a corner and out of sight.

  “I have an idea,” I said.

  I found a door that I was pretty sure went to table and chair storage. I pointed to the lock, Shannon whipped out some small tools, and in five seconds the door was open.

  Yes, that’s what it was.

  “We can hide here for a few.”

  “Only a few,” Shannon said. “Breather, water, keep moving.”

  Bast pulled out a ProTeem bar and took a bite, popped a water bulb and swigged. He handed them to me and I took a bite and gulped a couple of gulps. Shannon finished them, crushed the bottle flat and stuffed it and the wrapper in a pocket.

  Shannon also had an actual comb. I cleaned up my hair a bit more and rolled the back. He straightened his. Bast combed his luxurious wave over his right ear.

  “Okay, where to?” he asked me.

  I led us out the front in plain view of everyone, toward a restaurant I’d heard of, because I knew they had a back entrance into maintenance space. We were able to go to the restrooms then out the back.

  “How are we going to avoid alerts since we don’t have any chips now?” I asked.

  Bast was the bag of holding. He handed me a visitor tag from a faramesh pouch.

  “Damn.”

  “It’s clean,” he said, as he grabbed two more. “We’ll need to change appearance.”

  “That’s why you wanted makeup.”

  “Yes. Make me swish,” he said.

  Which was silly. He was more masculine than anyone I knew, and none of my makeup would match his skin tones.

  I did what I could with some violet and a touch of glittergloss around his eyes. A dusting. He pulled his hair back and swept it over his ears with a bit of lift in the middle.

  “Thank you,” he said, and it was uncanny. He did swish.

  Shannon had already flattened his hair, run a dark streak through it, and slouched. He presented totally differently.

  I squeezed a green dye on top of mine and rubbed it through. Bast had a towel for me to clean up with, and I suddenly looked younger and poutier after I did my lips. I love that combo in the themed clubs.

  From the Hyatt, we went across the main passage to the Vista. We went into one of the family restrooms, changed again, jimbled our way through the dance club and took a side exit to a cross passage.

  From there, we hit another club and joined a glitter parade, which I figured would screw with any sensors. From there to another, then I found an entrance to backspace. We made it around unhindered.

  The dock, though, was buttoned down tight. They’d already had an alert, which was why we’d gone the way we did.

  They were swabbing every person.

  Right. We’d left unmistakable DNA in those suits. It wasn’t just residue, it was very clear evidence.

  “Can you get us around, Angie?”

  “I haven’t been here recently, and not in detail. I’m sure there’s an access tunnel, but I have no idea how it’s secured or controlled.”

  “If you can find it, we can crack it. We have a few hours.”

  I had to think. Those conduits came from main power directly to the dock. They probably had interfaces outside the dock, so they could be cut and revert to emergency power.“Where’s the emergency plant for the dock?”

  “Radius forty-three.”

  “We’re at fifty-two.”

  We made our way around, and it wasn’t a straight shot. Older stations like this one have longitudinals more than latitudinals. We had to go back and forth, and up and down.

  I found it at .25G, level three, radius forty-one.

  “It should be this,” I said. “But I don’t know if we can get into it.”

  Shannon said, “The lock is well used and has scratch marks around the latch.”

  He went at it with a toolkit while Bast and I stood there and tried not to appear suspicious. Three people went past, but none of them gave us a second look.

  I was sure there would be an alarm, but he opened it and nothing happened.

  “Disabled,” he said.

  “Probably too many panic responses to nothing,” I said.

  We slid through and closed it behind us. It latched, but we could get out. They’re always one-way to allow trapped workers to escape.

  We needed to move north longitudinally. Shannon’s indicator showed us that way, and I was glad, because I’d gotten turned around. We went in that direction.

  “Dusty enough I
don’t think anyone’s been here recently,” Shannon whispered.

  “You’re right,” I said. I was still in a burning overload with my pulse hammering. It hadn’t stopped. I was exhausted from sheer mental tension. When were they going to catch us and how were we going to die? Because I knew we were going to die. Even if we weren’t spies or clandestine combatants according to law, we were incredibly dangerous to them.

  I still wasn’t sure what they’d actually done back there, and couldn’t ask yet.

  There were air breaks every hundred meters or so—like airlocks, but they just latch rather than locking. There was a spot where someone had been working.

  “Looks like he came from that lateral,” Bast said, pointing at a cross-passage just ahead. Even his whisper carried.

  As we reached it, the maintainer came around that corner. We were face to face for about a half second before he clutched for his phone.

  Bast grabbed the phone and the guy’s neck, Shannon stuck a knife up inside his skull from behind the ear. I watched his eyes twitch and roll as his brainstem was scrambled, and he died in a gooey mess of shit, piss and blood.

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “Sorry, dude, you were in the way,” Shannon said. “Let’s move.”

  I ducked under some hanging cables and banged my head on an access panel door I didn’t see. I saw sparkles and my head throbbed. I made a loud “eep” noise and kept it to myself, but fuck, it hurt. It should have been funny when Shannon did the same, but it wasn’t.

  And then I saw the exit hatch ahead, marked with reflective symbols. I waved my hand and pointed.

  It was ironic. I’d just found the right exit when the alarms started panicking.

  I mean every alarm there was. Fire, vacuum, toxic leak, power failure, collision warning, everything.

  “I think they found our package,” Shannon said.

  I didn’t ask. We got the hatch open, and took a careful look, but everyone in UN uniform was in a freak and running off the dock.

  We walked straight across to the tram and took it to our radius, then a cable dolly down the gangway.

  I was wondering how we were going to bull our away into a ride, but there was no need. Everything was unattended. Bast grabbed an inspection tug and we crowded into it, greasy and stinky and close enough to really notice it. He burped the jets manually to get it out of the bay and across to Bounder.