Nicco took Werrdun’s necklace in both hands and pulled it from around his neck. It was lighter than its size suggested, and once again Nicco wondered if it really was magical, but there was no time for philosophy.
Nicco opened his shirt, exposing the fake paunch, pulled a small zipper on its side and pulled out a small canvas bag. Inside the bag were two small omnimag grips. He removed the grips, put the necklace in their place and fastened the bag, then attached the grips securely to the bag’s straps. He creeped over to the door to check it was fully closed, then moved across the room to the single small window looking out across the sky.
Nicco pulled open a small panel underneath the window. Set into the hull wall was an emergency opening lever. This was risky, as the Astra was cruising at several thousand feet. The pressure differential between the room and outside would be enormous. And pulling this lever would normally sound an immediate alarm on the bridge. Nicco hoped the black noise generator would take care of that.
He pulled the lever. The window seal popped with a loud hiss, opening just a crack. But already the suction was fierce, raising up the bed sheets like a snake charmer. Nicco steadied himself. He had to be quick, very quick, to avoid getting sucked out and dropped into the Nissal Straits below.
Deep breath...
He opened the window with one hand, shoved the canvas bag through it with the other and slammed it back against the outside of the hull. The omnimag grips hit the surface with a metallic clang. Nicco pushed the sealing button and let go, hoping they would work quickly enough. He pulled his arm back in, slowly, fighting against the suction that threatened to throw him into the clear sky. A pillow flew past his head and through the window. He pushed against the interior wall with his free hand, using it as leverage, twisting his body to pull the other arm back in...
It was in. Nicco pulled the window closed again, then raised the emergency lever. The window seal closed with a satisfying slurping sound.
He’d done it. He’d stolen Werrdun’s necklace.
Now came the hard part.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“HE’S RESTING. YOUR colleague is watching over him, and I have given him instructions for when those medicines arrive.” Nicco closed the bedroom door behind him and headed for the suite door. He talked fast, hoping to distract the guards from his suddenly appearing several kilos lighter than when he first entered.
One of the room guards moved to block his exit and said something in Varnian. Nicco didn’t understand it, but it was clear enough that the guard didn’t want him to leave. He looked the guard in the eye. His nerves were jangling like a brass band, but he maintained his composure and sounded deadly serious.
“Young man, right now there are more than a hundred other people on this ship who need my help.” Nicco glared at the guard. Could this man even understand him? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to try his own rusty Varnian on him. Nicco just tried to sound as ominous as possible. “There is nothing more I can do for Governor Werrdun—he is safe, and sleeping through the pain. Now stand aside and let me do my job.”
Whether or not the guard had understood what Nicco had said, it seemed to work. The guard reluctantly stood aside and let Nicco past.
Nicco walked through the door, briskly but not so fast he gave his nerves away. When it closed behind him he finally allowed himself to breathe out, then started to jog down the corridor, retracing his steps back toward the restaurant. He checked his watch. By his reckoning, he had about two minutes before the room guards went to check on Werrdun. They’d see their unconscious colleague, of course, and immediately start looking for ‘Dr Karth.’ How long from that point until they noticed Werrdun’s necklace was missing? No more than another minute, Nicco reckoned. He’d tucked the old man under his bed sheets before leaving, but as soon as the guards checked the governor was still alive they’d pull back the covers and notice. So that gave him two, maybe three...
Nicco turned a corner and collided with someone coming from the opposite direction. Stumbling to keep his balance, he looked down and saw a dark-haired woman, green to the gills and leaning on the wall for support. Sweat beads peppered her forehead, but she was upright, just about, and looked determined to stay that way. And with her was a doctor. A real one.
The woman looked up at Nicco from under heavy eyelids and spoke with a heavy Varnian accent. “How... is he?”
Nicco realised who she was and why she was headed toward the guest suite. Mirrla Werrdun, the governor’s daughter. He slipped back into the role of Dr Karth, calm and reassuring.
“He is resting, miss, but stable. He will be all right.”
“Who in the fifty-nine hells are you?” said the doctor, with no accent. He was the local medical support, probably the ship’s doctor.
“I am Dr Karth, of Varn,” said Nicco. “I attended the governor immediately after his collapse. He is in his suite.”
“So you know what this is? Because if it’s ordinary food poisoning, I’m a bloody Praali adept.”
Nicco shuffled from foot to foot. He didn’t have time to try and con a doctor about symptoms and made-up disorders, but to just up and leave would raise suspicion.
“Indeed, no. It may be some kind of allergic reaction, I am not sure. Please, I must now attend to others.”
But the doctor didn’t budge. Nicco wondered if the man was playing for time until security came by. “Allergy? I hadn’t thought of that. But what kind—”
“Aaaaaah!” Mirrla Werrdun grimaced and doubled up in pain. “Never mind... your bloody theories... just get me to a bed!”
Nicco took that as his cue. “She is right, she needs rest.” He set off down the corridor at a fast pace. “I will check on the other passengers!” He didn’t look back, hoping Mirrla’s distress would keep them both engaged.
It seemed to. He rounded the next corner and broke into a run. That little exchange had cost him thirty seconds. He had maybe a minute and a half at most to reach Locker 72A.
Turn left, forward fifty yards. Turn right, pass two more corridors. Turn left. Ignore the heaving passenger on the right...
Finally Nicco stood at the end of the back corridor he’d visited before take-off, along with locker 72A. He ran to the end, pulled the locker card from his trousers and shoved it in the lockpod, which showed green and slowly opened. Nicco yanked it open, grabbed a medium-sized cardboard box, slammed the locker door shut, retrieved the card and made it to the nearby bathroom in two long strides.
The bathroom was occupied.
Nicco froze, unsure of his next move. He cursed himself for not slipping the hastily scrawled OUT OF ORDER note on the bathroom door. By the watery saints, what a stupid oversight!
He hammered on the door with his fist. “Hey, hurry up in there!”
A muffled giggle, a woman’s laugh, came from inside. Then a man’s voice, also muffled: “Find another one man! I’m busy!”
Nicco recognised the voice: the ageing rock star, the one with the escorts. He sighed.
He couldn’t wait. He’d been lucky to get this far without the alarm being raised. There was no sense in pushing it. He’d just have to get changed right here in the corridor.
Nicco opened the box. The steward he bribed to stash the bag for him before the passengers boarded had thought he was secreting a present for the governor, from one Varnian abroad to another. And sure enough, at the top of the box was a Turithian fish carving, a common souvenir from the island nation. But underneath the carving, under the packing materials holding it, were a skyfall suit, a pair of goggles, a pair of omnimag boots, two handheld omnimag grips and a grav belt.
Nicco laid them on the floor and began to undress. He pulled off his suit jacket and shirt, then unstrapped the empty paunch-bag. Next were the shoes and trousers. All the clothes were fitted with quick-release fastenings, a trick he’d learnt as a child from the girls at Madame Zentra’s, and within ten seconds Nicco was naked except for his underwear.
The bathroom door opene
d.
The rock star and his girls—all three of them, Nicco noted with surprise—fell out of the bathroom and onto the carpet, laughing all the way down. When they looked up and saw Nicco standing there in his underwear, they laughed some more.
The rocker picked himself up and leant against the wall. “Bathroom’s free,” he laughed. His words were slurred, and Nicco remembered he hadn’t seen any of them at dinner. They must have spent the entire trip up till now in the bar. “Here, if you’re that desperate, I could always lend you one of the girls. Sharla...?” He looked around hazily.
Sharla, if that really was her name, looked Nicco up and down and smiled. “No, sorry... Nice bod, but I can’t stand beards.” They all laughed and staggered away.
The beard! Nicco had forgotten about it. He ripped it off, followed by the eye glasses, then threw everything he’d removed into the box. He scooped up the new gear and leapt into the bathroom.
The skyfall suit was pro-quality: fully padded and insulated, with integral gloves and socks and a lined fabric hood to protect his ears from the high altitude winds. Nicco slipped the goggles on before pulling up the hood. Next came the boots, more military than pro, with secured fastenings and one-touch omnimag activation. He pulled the grav belt around his waist, then clipped the handheld omnimag grips to it. He was ready.
Nicco opened the bathroom door and poked his head out just a little to check the coast was clear. No-one around, but he could hear running footsteps from elsewhere around the ship. Maybe they’d found the unconscious guard. What about the missing necklace?
It didn’t matter. Nicco only needed another twenty seconds.
He stepped out of the bathroom and kicked the box a couple of feet across the floor. There was one more item inside, taped to the lid—a cigarette lighter. He lit it and held it to the packing materials inside the box, igniting them immediately. The fire spread quickly. Nicco dropped the burner inside the box and ran down the nearby stairs.
The floor below housed the ship’s emergency escape pods, non-steering grav vehicles that would drop anyone escaping the ship safely onto dry ground or sea. As Nicco sprinted along the corridor to the nearest pod, he counted in his head. The fire should destroy his disguise, more or less, but more importantly, burning the fish carving would produce thick smoke, smoke that would hit the ceiling of the corridor any second now.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One...
Sirens blared. Emergency lights flashed. Ceiling water extinguishers sprayed.
And the doors to the emergency escape pods automatically unsealed with a satisfying hiss.
THIS SHIP HAD forty escape pods. Each pod was accessed by a double-skin door that led directly from the main ship interior to the pressurised pod cabin, and which was normally fully locked down. Only a few things could unlock these doors: direct activation by the captain from the bridge, an emergency activation by two senior crew members on the floors above this one... or a fire alarm, which automatically opened the locks.
The system was simple. Once the pod was full and everyone had locking straps on, the escapee nearest the door pressed a big red button helpfully marked LAUNCH, which closed and sealed the pod door, then ejected it from the airship to float gently down to earth.
But there was also an override, a manual switch on this side of the door that could be used to seal and launch a pod in case of unconscious escapees.
Nicco hit the switch.
The pod door closed silently. Magnetic repulsor rings around the pod bay housing powered up with a hum, glowed sky blue, then pulsed three times. The pod shot from the bay in silence.
Nicco smiled. Tracking that would keep them occupied for a while.
He bent down and pressed the button to activate his omnimag-soled boots. They attached to the floor with a deep thud. Nicco braced himself, then pulled open the door to the now-empty pod bay. The pressure differential hit him again, but this time the boots kept him safely inside.
Not for long. Nicco walked into the bay as quickly as he dared. If he lost his grip now, he’d be sucked into thin air; but if someone came down to check on the pod and saw him still here, he may as well throw himself off anyway.
He reached the end of the bay and took the omnimag grips from his belt. Holding one firmly in each hand, he leaned forward and reached around, clamping them to the external hull. He hit the seals with his thumbs. It was too noisy to hear the grips’ activation hum or the oddly wet sound of the seals coupling against the surface. And it was too bright to tell whether the soft green light was on or not.
Oh well, thought Nicco. Here goes nothing.
CHAPTER NINE
THE GRIPS WORKED. That was the good news.
The bad news was that holding onto them at an altitude of ten thousand feet was a lot more difficult than Nicco had expected. As he crawled around the Astra’s hull on all fours, he lost his grip several times. Only his other hand and the omnimag boots kept him in place each time, a tiny, unnoticed figure clinging to the ship’s exterior like an ant traversing a balloon.
Struggling against the rushing wind, he made his way round the ship, careful to remain unseen. There was a six-yard region around the hull’s equator that couldn’t be seen by either the upper or lower viewing platforms, and Nicco stayed within it as much as possible.
Finally, he neared his destination. He’d lost all track of time. Had it taken him five minutes, or fifty? His arms and legs ached like never before. Nicco had scaled hundred-storey buildings in storms using omnimag grips, but this was a whole different kettle of tanglefish. With a grunt he crawled the last few feet upward, over the equator of the ship, toward his goal, Werrdun’s bedroom window, where Nicco had left the bag.
It was gone, along with the omnimag grips that should have been holding it to the hull.
Nicco’s mind raced. Had the grips failed? Had he let go of them too soon? Had he been discovered? Were the security guards patiently waiting for him inside, laughing at his amateurism?
Nicco’s thoughts were interrupted when his hand came away again, losing his grip on the hull...
He stared at the omnimag grip in disbelief.
Then his boots came away too.
AS NICCO PLUMMETED to earth, he found himself smiling serenely.
He’d read the Astra brochure when planning the job, and it made a big deal about the ship’s security measures. The war may be over, but people were still nervous about air travel. What if some extremist nutters in the middle of nowhere decided to take potshots at a commercial flight? What about all those floating magnamines still up here in the sky, waiting for a passing ship to attach themselves to?
That was what Nicco had overlooked. Azbathaero claimed that the Astra was completely immune to magnamines. Of course, it hadn’t gone into detail; but now that he was falling to earth at terminal velocity, Nicco could hazard a guess. The boffins on Turilum had been making great strides in active surface coatings: holovid displays as hard as steel, for instance, and waterproof digital smartcloth.
A recent breakthrough he’d read about reconfigured its molecular structure when it sensed nanomagnets. They were supposedly still at the prototype stage, but maybe Azbathaero had got hold of some before official production began. Or perhaps they’d developed their own. Maybe this one just changed constantly, cycling through different molecular formations.
However it worked, the bag had fallen afoul of it, probably dropping into the Nissal Straits after just a few seconds. Nicco guessed he’d only stayed on the hull as long as he had because he was constantly moving. As soon as he’d stopped, the grips had failed.
He was halfway down, five thousand feet above the ocean and facing the Azbathan skyline. In front of him lay the docks, the industrial ghost town and longtime thorn in the city council’s side. To his right the steel needle of Azbatha’s famous Lighthouse Tower pierced the sky, gleaming in the pink afternoon sunlight. To his left, the whole of Turith stretched out across the ocean, and directly below him the Nissal Straits beckoned,
black and cold. He did his best to push through the air, skyswimming to get closer to land, but it was too far and Nicco was falling too fast. He’d just have to swim.
Five hundred feet above the ocean, Nicco activated his grav belt. It kicked in almost instantly, resisting his terminal velocity and slowing his 160-feet-a-second freefall to a slow, gentle drop within a few seconds. He floated the last couple of hundred feet and landed in the water feet first.
The grav belt would keep him afloat during the swim to shore, and Nicco was a natural swimmer. He just hoped the skyfall suit would keep him warm for long enough. Out here in the sea there was a good chance you’d die of exposure long before you drowned.
As he began the long breaststroke to shore, Nicco felt that, overall, the job had gone well. Despite the omnimag problems, he’d stolen the necklace and got away scot-free. Now all he had to do was lay low for a couple of days.
He wondered if he’d make the top story on tonight’s news stream.
CHAPTER TEN
HE WASN’T THE top story so much as the entire stream for the next twelve hours.
Nicco finally returned to his apartment, damp and shivering, a couple of hours before sundown. He undressed as soon as he got through the door and threw the wet clothes over the back of a chair. He hadn’t dared take the monorail to get back—he would have stood out too much, and all it would take is some wiseass cop to notice, think about what had happened on the Astra and put two and two together—but on the bright side, the walk back to his apartment had given him time to dry off a little.
He picked up the remote and flicked on the holovid, setting the stream to autosurf.
“Political outrage and an embarrassed mayor this evening, as an unknown thief steals visiting Varnian Governor Jarrand Werrdun’s priceless necklace...”
Stealing Life Page 7