“We could kill ninety-nine percent of humanity instead of just the ninety,” I said.
Nicholas laughed a little. “You know, some of the great revolutionaries of the pre-Conquest era thought that women could never become truly devoted followers of the Revolution. Women were too sentimental, too emotional, too attached to the traditional family to reshape the world. I see now that they were right. You’re a brilliant woman, Kat…and yet you still fret about all the poor little children who might get caught in the crossfire. It’s a pity you’re a beautiful woman.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I said.
“If you were an unattractive woman,” said Nicholas, “you would know on a subconscious level that you would never marry and have children, and so you would be more emotionally willing to accept the necessity of total war to achieve victory. Instead, you are an attractive woman, and therefore have a husband and a son, so when you think of casualties, you imagine your own son in their place. Hence, you are held back from achieving your full potential.”
“I’ve heard you say a lot of morally bankrupt things,” I said, “but arguing that I would be more comfortable with murdering children if I was unattractive has to take the cake. Good night, Nicholas. I hope you die of an aneurysm in your sleep.”
I picked up my backpack and turned to go.
“Don’t you want to know what I’m working on down here?” said Nicholas.
“Not really.” But that was a lie.
“Catch,” said Nicholas.
He picked up a small object from the table and tossed it to me.
I caught it out of the air. It was a thumb drive, a common thumb drive. You can buy them for five dollars at gas stations and drugstores.
Except there was something odd about this thumb drive.
For one thing, the connector was wrong. It should have been an oval-shaped UDE connector, like every other computer device I had used in my life, but instead, the connector was a small hollow rectangle of metal and plastic. For another, the thumb drive had a shell of white plastic, but it had turned yellow and brittle with age.
This thing was old. Ancient, maybe even pre-Conquest.
“What do you notice about it?” said Nicholas.
“The connector’s wrong,” I said. “It should be a UDE plug, but I don’t recognize it.”
“It’s called a USB connector,” said Nicholas.
“USB?” I said. “I’ve never heard of it.
“It stands for Universal Serial Bus,” said Nicholas. “It was a connection standard for computing devices used in the last two decades before the Conquest. It was also employed for several decades after the Conquest, but the High Queen and the Elven nobles became irritated at the incompatibilities caused by differing versions of the USB standard. They created the Universal Data Exchange standard, and all computers have used UDE ports ever since.”
“Great history lesson,” I said. I tossed the thumb drive back to him. “So, let me guess. Vault 19 is the Inquisition archives or part of them. The thumb drive in Box 547 is something from before the Conquest. I suspect it has something to do with Jeremy Shane and Operation Sky Hammer.”
“Very good,” said Nicholas.
“And what you’re building,” I said, looking at the table, “is an adapter to let you plug an old USB thumb drive into a modern computer.”
“Correct again,” said Nicholas. “No such device currently exists. For one, the filesystems on pre-Conquest computers are totally incompatible with modern systems. For another, there is the problem of EMP…”
“EMP?” I said.
Nicholas thought for a moment. “You don’t know the term?” I shook my head. “Electromagnetic pulse.”
“Oh,” I said. “So…the amperage or the voltage or something is wrong, and you might accidentally fry the drive.”
“The problem is more fundamental than that,” said Nicholas. “An electromagnetic pulse produced by a nuclear explosion causes massive voltage surges in electrical and electronic equipment. Before the Conquest, one of the primary fears of the major governments was that a rogue nation or terrorist organization would detonate a nuclear weapon in the stratosphere and cause a global electromagnetic pulse. Every electrical and electronic device would be destroyed, and the resultant chaos would have caused global war and civilizational collapse.” He tapped one of his computers. “The High Queen feared that EMP would be used as a weapon against her. In the fifty years after the Conquest, electrical and manufacturing standards were changed to include shielding against EMPs. Now the threat is a relatively minor. A nuclear explosion powerful enough to generate an EMP capable of disabling modern electrical systems would also be strong enough to burn off the Earth’s atmosphere, rendering the question moot.”
“Sounds like your kind of weapon,” I said.
Nicholas only smiled. I felt a chill. Was that what Operation Sky Hammer had been? Some kind of EMP weapons project? Though if modern electrical systems were shielded against that type of attack, what good would it do Nicholas?
“Fortunately,” said Nicholas, tapping a small black box, “I have built an adapter capable of handling the problem. See?” The black box had a pair of USB ports on its side, and a UDE cable hanging out its back. Nicholas unlocked his computer, plugged the box into its side, and then slid the USB thumb drive into the port. The computer chimed, and after a moment I saw the thumb drive’s filesystem mount.
“Neat trick,” I said.
He looked at me with cold eyes and smiled. I suddenly realized that I had moved closer to him, too close. He had just called me a beautiful woman, and I could tell from his expression that he was thinking about that.
God! He had just been with Hailey.
Revulsion filled me, and suddenly I could not stand another second in the presence of this evil, brilliant, cruel man.
I grabbed my backpack and walked from his workshop without another word.
I found myself wandering through the truck docks, my shoes tapping against the weathered concrete. Maybe I would just sleep down here tonight. There was enough loose trash that I could get a good fire going, and…
A shoe clicked against the concrete.
I whirled, calling magic to myself, and Murdo stepped out of the shadows, frowning. He was still wearing his suit, though for once he was not wearing a tie, the top few buttons of his shirt undone.
“Murdo,” I said.
“I heard you and Nicholas shouting at each other,” he said, “and I came out to see what was wrong.”
I snorted. “Nicholas decided to screw his girlfriend on my bed, that’s what’s wrong. I walked in on them.”
Murdo winced. “My condolences.”
“Yeah,” I said, gazing at him.
I came to a decision.
“Listen,” I said. “Nicholas just explained to me how it is totally acceptable to murder children to achieve his goals. That’s the kind of monster we’re both working for. I have to ask you a question, and if you don’t answer it honestly, we’re done.”
I expected him to get angry, but he only nodded. “Ask.”
“You know why I’m working for him,” I said. “I was forced into it. Why the hell are you working for him?”
Murdo took a long breath, and let it out. “All right.”
I folded my arms and waited.
“There’s a woman I love,” said Murdo at last, “and she’s in Nicholas’s power.”
I hesitated. “It’s…it’s not me, is it? Because that would be strange. We just met.” I felt like an idiot as soon as I said it. Of course it wasn’t me.
Murdo smiled. “No, this started long before we met at the Rocky Mountain Mile. But Nicholas can kill her any time he likes. And if I don’t do as Nicholas says…”
I nodded. “He kills her.”
“You see the problem,” said Murdo. “It’s not the entire truth, I’ll admit. There are other things going on. But the main reason I’m here is because I failed this woman once before and
I can’t fail her again, Miss Stoker. I can’t.”
“I think I understand,” I said.
We stood in silence for a moment.
“I’ll keep the secret,” I said at last.
“Thank you, Miss Stoker,” said Murdo.
“Hell,” I said. “We’re both part of the ‘coerced by Nicholas Connor’ club. You can call me Katrina.”
He smiled a little. “Only if you call me Rory.”
“Rory?” I said. “No, I just can’t do it. Rory sounds like the name of a stuffed bear or something.”
“It is my name,” said Murdo.
I laughed. “Just like Katrina Stoker is my real name?”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment of the point.
“Let’s make a deal,” I said. “No matter what happens at the Royal Bank, we’ll make sure both of us get out alive. For the sake of this woman you love.”
Murdo nodded. “And for the sake of your husband and son.”
And just like that, it was done. I had an ally who would watch my back even as I watched his.
Though I knew getting out alive would be easier said than done.
Chapter 12: More Fun With Food Service
“These uniforms are terrible,” said Hailey.
Corbisher all but snarled at her. “If you don’t like them, Miss Adams, you’re welcome to do better next time. But you will wear the goddamn uniform.”
“Hailey,” said Nicholas. “It is necessary for the success of our mission.”
I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the argument.
April 8th and the night of the gala at the Royal Bank had come, and with it, a thousand problems had arrived.
The bombs in the utility tunnels had been the first headache. Placing the bombs at the last moment had turned out to be an excellent idea because crews from the power company had been doing maintenance work in two of the four tunnels for the last five days. At last, we had been forced to hack into the power company’s computer and change their schedule, and then Morelli and I were able to place the bombs. I didn’t like that. The hack left one more breadcrumb that could lead to us, one more loose thread in the tapestry of lies that could cause disaster.
The second problem had been the catering company itself. As Corbisher had informed us (repeatedly and at great volume), setting up a catering company from scratch was a monumental challenge, especially a catering company that had to handle an event as prestigious as Duke Maelaeyar’s gala. He couldn’t just order two hundred pizzas and twenty kegs of beer and call it good. The food had to be presentable enough to serve to the highest level of Elven nobility in the United States, along with various governors and high-ranking federal officials.
As much as I hated to admit it, Corbisher was up to the challenge. Whatever Nicholas’s flaws, he was not the sort of man to surround himself with incompetents. In about two weeks, Corbisher managed to assemble a functioning high-class caterer. He did it by hiring every single temp worker he could find in the Washington DC area that had even a modicum of experience with food preparation and service. He also hired some other companies that specialized in doing restaurant setup (I hadn’t known that such companies existed) and paying them lots of overtime.
I didn’t like any of it. It would take just one Homeland Security officer getting a little too curious and putting the dots together to realize that the Duke’s gala was getting catered by a company that had only existed on paper a few weeks ago. If that happened, we were in big trouble. For that matter, the whole thing might collapse into a disaster if anything went wrong with the preparation of the meals.
Of course, Corbisher had me to deal with the little speed bumps that came up.
The biggest problem was when one of Corbisher’s supplies canceled an order at the last minute. There were going to be two thousand three hundred guests at the gala, and I knew there were going to be two thousand three hundred guests because we had ordered that many chicken breasts to feed them all.
Except the supplier canceled the order at the last minute due to logistical difficulties.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to find twenty-three hundred frozen chicken breasts with two days’ notice?
I didn’t, but I sure do now. Morelli and I managed to fix the problem, but let’s just say it involved a judicious application of bribes, some favors exchanged with Morelli’s criminal contacts, using the Mask spell to disguise myself as a Homeland Security health and safety inspector, and the temporary theft of a semi truck.
Ugh. If I lived through this, I vowed I was never, ever going into the food service business.
And now Hailey was complaining about the damned uniforms. I wanted to smack her. More so than usual, anyway.
It was 5 in the morning on the day of the gala. Nicholas, Corbisher, Murdo, Morelli, Lorenz, and I were getting ready to drive to the catering company’s facility to start work. Corbisher had hired an army of servers to carry the food to the banquet tables, refill drinks, and fetch plates. The waiters would wear white tuxedo shirts, black bow ties, black dress slacks, and black dress shoes. The waitresses would wear sleeveless white tuxedo shirts, black bow ties, tight black short skirts, and high heels to show off their legs to good effect. I think Hailey had been looking forward to wearing that costume.
Instead, she would be working in the kitchen with the rest of us, which meant a black t-shirt, black jeans, black running shoes, and a loose black jacket and apron. We’d also have to wear hair nets, and I had taken a black bandana to cover mine.
“I joined the Revolution to free mankind,” snapped Hailey. We were standing in the gloomy truck dock, the only light coming from an electric lantern on the floor. “Not to cook meals.”
Corbisher started to snarl out a response, but Nicholas interrupted him. “It is a necessary part of the disguise. All of us will be in the kitchens together.” He pointed at the door. “You can get changed in my workshop. Do it quickly.”
Hailey glared at him, then picked up the bundle containing her uniform and stalked towards the workshop door.
“Kat,” murmured Nicholas. “Make sure she hurries up. We’re on a timetable here.”
I rolled my eyes, but he was right. If it had been up to me, we would have left Hailey behind, but she was surprisingly good with the Seal of Binding, and Nicholas had been unwilling to teach me the spell.
I followed Hailey into the workshop and closed the door behind me.
“What, did Nicholas send you to babysit me?” said Hailey. She started to get undressed, scowling all the while.
I began to say something cutting and decided I didn’t care. “Maybe. Or I didn’t want to get undressed in front of Lorenz.”
Hailey’s mouth tightened with disgust. “He is a creeper, isn’t he? I can’t believe Nicholas made him into a Gatekeeper. A washed up Mexican soap opera star, and now he’s a Gatekeeper. Nicholas should have listened to me.”
I took off my clothes and got dressed in the catering uniform as quickly as I could. Not that I cared if Hailey saw me undressed, but it was freezing in here. Hailey took her time, complaining about Lorenz and Nicholas.
“Does Nicholas ever listen to you?” I said, adjusting my hair net.
Hailey sniffed in derision as she stepped out of her jeans. “More than he listens to you. He loves me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Nicholas loves you so much he made sure I would walk in on the two of you.”
Hailey had a nice complexion, but the downside was that when she blushed, she blushed hard. I suddenly felt bad for her. I had thought she would be smug about the incident in my room, flaunting the fact that she had Nicholas, but instead, Hailey had been mortified. She had started to turn red every time she spoke to me ever since.
“I didn’t…I didn’t like that at all,” said Hailey, refusing to look at me. “I just didn’t. I can’t stand you, but…well, you’re right, that was creepy. But it was Nicholas’s idea. He thought you were too proud and that it might embarrass you. I didn’t wan
t to do it…but Nicholas is a great man.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
“He is!” said Hailey. “He’s going to free mankind from the Elves. And I’ll be there the entire time to help him. He’s a great man. You couldn’t understand that, but I can.”
Some flicker of pity compelled me to speak. “Nicholas doesn’t love you, Hailey. You’re just…fun and games to him. Once he’s tired of you, he’ll get rid of you. And he has other women on the side, ones you don’t know about.”
“You’re just saying that because he dumped you,” said Hailey. “You’re jealous…”
The door opened, and Lorenz stepped into the room. I was already dressed, but Hailey had been busy ranting and so was still in her underwear. She shrieked, her arms jerking as she tried to cover everything that needed covering at once, and Lorenz grinned at her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking a step into the room. “I thought this was my changing room. Why don’t you…”
Fire spun from my hand and hurtled towards Lorenz’s face. He yelped and took a step back, my fireball whirling a few inches in front of his nose. That close the heat from the fire had to be painful.
“If you’re not out in five seconds,” I said, “you’re not going to be pretty enough to be an actor.”
Like I said before, Lorenz was smarter than he pretended. He retreated at once, closing the door behind him.
“Idiot,” I muttered, dismissing the fireball. I glanced at Hailey. “You’d better get dressed.”
She snapped out of her paralysis and started yanking on the black uniform. “God, I hate that man.”
“Since he’s friends with Nicholas,” I said, “maybe that should tell you something about Nicholas.”
Hailey hesitated, just for a moment, and then shook her head and kept getting dressed.
“Stoker?” she said as he pulled on her hair net and bandana.
“Yeah?”
She didn’t look at me. “Thank you for scaring him off. He has a Dark One inside him as well, so I can’t terrorize him with the mindtouch spell.”
Cloak Games: Hammer Break Page 19