“Who?”
Maslovic frowned and turned back to the screen. “Let’s see if we can find out. What’s that down at the base of the atrium, Broz? I thought I saw it as we were descending until we got sidetracked on the pictures.”
The ferret’s cameras turned back and then down. “Looks like the top of some kind of statue,” she said. “Pretty big, too. Comes up not quite to the second floor itself. Must be real impressive when you come through the door.”
“Get around and down a bit. I want to see as much of it as we can without actually touching anything on the ground floor for now.”
“Can do. Now zoom out and—what the…?”
The position of the ferret allowed them to see the head and a bit of the neck of the statue, and it was not exactly as expected.
It was the devil, all right, complete with horns, pointed ears, and goatee, but it was one happy devil, with a grin from ear to ear and the happiest overall expression ever seen on a human or humanoid face. And on top of his head, balanced on one of the horns, was an outrageous top hat tilted to one side.
“He looks rather chipper,” Captain Murphy commented. “I wonder if he’ll break into ‘Melancholy Baby’?”
As Ferret One made its way back up to the second floor and began, along with its companion, a survey of that level, Broz said, “They’re not serious, are they?”
“Very serious,” Maslovic shot back. “That statue’s a thumb in the eye to all the religious types who might get in for some reason or another. These aren’t people who are comedians, Corporal, they’re people who are supremely confident.”
“So far, all they look like are a study in the rich and lazy,” Broz responded.
“Well, now that we’ve met Saint Phineas of Barnum himself, maybe we’ll be able to see a bit of what they’re up to,” Murphy said hopefully. “But the greatest show off Earth won’t be here, it’s gonna be on them three worlds in the pictures. Too bad we ain’t yet found a map to the places.”
Maslovic thought about that. “We’d run the legend on the Three Kings when we went to identify and quantify those stones,” he told the captain. “Now it seems that we have a more basic link. Not that those places looked like paradises. In fact, they don’t look all that different than other worlds in these areas. Interesting, though, if they’re true pictures of the real thing.”
“That garden one looked pretty good,” Murphy noted. “I could see meself lyin’ there while voluptuous nymphs peeled me grapes.”
Maslovic nodded. “And if I had to pick the one I’d least trust, it would be that one. Compared to the other two it’s like sweets to a baby. It’s the one we’re supposed to look at. The hot, stormy, volcanic one, though, looks too unstable for any kind of base for any sort of advanced civilization. It must have a function, because if those three are real, then they were either built or terraformed, designed that way, but staying alive and staying healthy would be a full-time challenge there. No, if I were hiding out and running things, I’d go where nobody was likely to pick. I’d go to the smaller, dark, barren one. Not on the surface—that’s the blanket you hide under. Underneath. Under the ground.” He looked over at Murphy. “Those aren’t mystical or nostalgic pictures, they’re guides. And if I knew where they were, I’d use them to take me right to the enemy.”
“You seem pretty sure they’re an enemy.”
“They aren’t acting like anything else. We’re cut off from our mother world and more than half of all that’s human, and if you aim at the area where they were that we can no longer reach, you find the place boiling, almost a hell of gamma ray eruptions strong enough to sterilize the whole sector. They don’t tell you that because if they did the combination of panic and despair would be incalculable. We’ve seen such things happen before, but never this close, never even in this galaxy. Until now, there was no reason to think that it wasn’t natural, some kind of thing that just happens in the physics of the cosmos. Now, though, we have a question. So far, all the major emissions have been away from us; it’s barely been a ripple here. But if they were to go off in this direction, or almost anywhere in this sector, all of us, and everything we’ve ever known, everything that is left of the human race, would be gone forever. All life gone, a sterilized museum.”
“You really want to fill a man with cheer,” the captain commented. “And you think all this is a part of that?”
“We don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely that we encounter this kind of nasty business wielding this kind of power and have it not connect.” The sergeant turned back to the controls. “Full second-floor sweep done?”
“Yes, sir,” Broz responded. “Large formal dining room, a number of meeting rooms, library, formal study, that sort of thing, as well as one heavily sealed security zone right in the center behind the atrium stair. House maintenance has started, so we’ll have to watch it. Lots of robotic cleaning and polishing, but if they happen to detect the ferrets, then they’ll bring security on full.”
He nodded. “All right, then, we’ll ease down to the ground floor. Watch the floors and lower halves of the walls, though. Keep to the inside walls. This will be where maximum security would be deployed.”
“I’m well aware of that, sir,” Broz responded. “I know my job.” Even as the ferrets descended on either side of the giant statue, though, the controller looked at the monitors and the instruments and suddenly had a sharp intake of breath, freezing both ferrets.
“Corridors in back of the security column aft of the statue,” Broz noted. “Both sides are protected with pretty strong force fields powered from within the security unit and separate from the house power. These are full fields, backed up with lasers and ray sweepers. They sure don’t want anybody or anything going back there.”
“Think we can get in there?”
“I’m running the checks now. The security room’s out of the question. Sealed right, best I’ve ever seen, and in a vacuum as well. That woman and her company know the business. No way to tell if it runs over all the way to the back of the house through the ceiling. Not without ripping up the ceiling from the top, which is more than these ferrets can do. Under is even less likely. Under that fake polished-wood veneer is an energized plasma running through layers of weapons-grade material.”
“How does the air get in and out?” Maslovic asked.
“It appears common air molecules pass without hindrance in and out and through the force field. Interesting effect, too. Note that thin line of material on the floor there? That’s dust and pollen, possibly a few insects. The air that gets through is purified as it goes.”
“Messy. How do they clean it, I wonder?” the captain mused.
“Eh?” All three of the military team there turned and looked at him in puzzlement for a moment.
“Fancy pants like these, they sure as hell won’t let some nice, thin lines of dirt show up so clearly just beyond the entrance. What would Lord and Lady Triplefarts think when they came for tea? You see what I mean?”
“No,” they all answered at once.
“You just don’t have no experience with these kinds of folk. That floor, and that line of crud, has just got to be the most cleaned up and maintained little place in the whole damned house. And if it even cleans the dust and pollen in the air, then it’s got to happen just about all the time, not just when the house is bein’ treated, y’see. I’ll bet you that the two lines are vacuumed and polished every couple of hours. No longer, surely.”
“So it’s blown and vacuumed. So what?”
“No, no. Can’t be. That just winds up with a lot of it goin’ back and forth into the air. We’d have dust all over, and we can’t have that. It’d show on the white gloves. And there’s no border or seam, so the thing has to be close vacuumed or washed and then repolished, and I mean repolished directly under the beam. Are you gettin’ it now?”
Maslovic gave a low whistle. “You’ve saying that something, some gadget, is immune to the force field. Either that, or the force fiel
d’s off for a few seconds, maybe longer, while that happens.”
“Got to be.”
“Let’s see. Broz, keep one ferret on that force field where it meets the floor. If the captain’s right, it shouldn’t be too long considering the size of that dust ring right now. The other we can use to carefully survey the rest of the place.”
“Fair enough.”
The sergeant turned and looked at Murphy with unusual appreciation. “How’d you figure this? You a better thief than I took you for or what?”
“That, perhaps,” the old man admitted. “At least in me own day. That and the fact that I come from a family with a pretty long line of charwomen…”
It wasn’t quite as quick as Murphy guessed, but, eventually, they saw it: a tiny round robotic cleaner with a fanlike action that came out of an eight-centimeter-high compartment on one side of the opening and seemed to glide along picking up the accumulation right along the force field, half in and half out. It was lightning fast and the field above it ceased only so long as it was traveling its small route along the floor, a width of no more than fifteen or sixteen centimeters, but for that very brief time and in effectively constant motion, there was a gap.
“Sloppy,” Broz commented. “Lots of small remotes could get through.”
“Yeah? Then how come you didn’t think of it?” Murphy asked.
Broz ignored the insult. “The only question is, is there a second line of defense inside that would make this meaningless? If so, then we’re still stuck and we might as well just blow the thing. If not, though, it’s a lapse in either logic or cost that can get us in. That is, if you want to risk one of the ferrets.”
“Why not?” Maslovic responded. “I have a feeling we’ll have to blow our way in there anyway, but at least we can see what we’re up against. If it’s destroyed, we’ve got a dangerous problem. If it gets through, then the security’s basic and for show.”
“Not like your security, of course, which thought of everything ’cept maybe three wee girls compromisin’ your whole security system,” Murphy said with a half smile.
Again, his comment was neither acknowledged nor returned.
They almost missed their next opportunity, even though it was something they should have expected. The next time, the cleaner came from the opposite side back towards where they’d first seen it. Fortunately, the ferret was smart enough to refigure the angle and keep to the basic instruction, which was to breach the force field. At the precise moment, it leaped and passed over the cleaner at an angle, giving it just enough time to clear the field.
“We’re in,” Broz said needlessly.
“Better than in,” the sergeant responded. “There are the basic controls at that wall panel. Doesn’t even look like a code pad or biometric pass. Don’t go for it yet—it still might set off an alarm. Let’s see what’s back there.”
The ferret had no choice but to be on the floor at this point, but got back on the side wall as soon as it could do so.
The two sides of the hallway around the sealed security master console joined again on the other side and, in the area beyond, descended into a large semisunken chamber that could be seen only using the ferret’s high-capability, low-light system.
The room itself was out of another age, but not like the house. Instead, it seemed from some ancient time, a burial vault in ancient Egypt, perhaps, or some long forgotten prehistoric civilization. If it hadn’t been so antiseptically clean, it might have been taken for something original rather than some kind of show business set.
“I’m half surprised he doesn’t have robotic rats and cockroaches and such scurryin’ about,” Murphy noted. “Kind of loses some of its atmosphere without ’em.”
“But it gets it back with that central altar,” the security man replied.
And, in fact, that was the dominant part of the room: a raised rectangular object made to look as if carved out of solid stone, and on top was space enough for a human of average build to lie in a concave area designed for that purpose. From the sacrificial area came careful channels running off and down to the sides, and then down to a depression that went completely around the altar stone.
“Spectroanalysis on the stains along the channels and sides, please,” Maslovic ordered.
Broz adjusted some controls, focused on a particularly promising spot, and almost immediately began getting data.
“We don’t have to go very far in the analysis to figure this one out,” Broz commented. “It’s blood.”
“What kind of blood?”
“Human. Beyond that we’d need a sample for DNA analysis.”
“Hardly worth it. We probably wouldn’t know them anyway,” Maslovic replied. “So, he’s loonier than even we thought. I bet the ceremonies here are right out of ancient thrillers. I’m not sure we need to see much more. We can feed this to the local cops here and they’ll have a field day, but I’m beginning to think now our best interest is in assembling the team and going into the bush.”
“If Macouri has this much guts in town, in this surveillance paradise, to do this, imagine what he does out there, where there’s nobody to catch him,” Broz said.
“I doubt if he’s any more, or less, dangerous out there, but I don’t think he uses the bush for that kind of cover. No, he gets off by doing this under the noses of everybody. The risk is part of it for those types. The idea that he’s doing this sort of thing right here, in a rich section of the city, under the noses of the best human and automated policing systems around. That said, I want to nail this bastard out of the city if possible.”
“With this sort of evidence? Why not make it the locals’ problem?” Broz asked him.
“Because he might beat it, or it’s possible he has a very efficient trap under there or in that sealed security module that might eliminate not only the evidence but several square blocks around including here. No, as much as I’d love a crack at that house and particularly the records inside, all this has convinced me that we have to move on him now, where he is, while he’s away.”
“And me?” the old captain asked him. “I was thinkin’ of the girls, y’see. I did bring ’em, after all. And others, too, before ’em.”
Maslovic turned and looked at him. “Were all your previous passengers women?”
“Well, no, come to think of it. And not all the women were preggers, neither. But these are, and it don’t mean that some folks I was responsible for didn’t wind up on that slab in there.”
Maslovic shook his head. “No, Captain. We train for this. We practically know how one another thinks, and we have all our own gadgets as well. You can follow with the techs, but you have to stay with them until we finish what we have to do out there and signal that you can come in.”
“I figured as much on that. But the girls… You’re not gonna git ’em in the middle of a firefight, are you?”
“We’ll do the best we can. Just remember that they aren’t captives, they’re a part of it.”
“But them devil’s gems—”
“Those things give them power and direction, but I didn’t have any sense that they hadn’t knowingly put them on, nor that they had any intention of fighting the power and influence. No, Captain, this isn’t the rescue of the innocents. What happens to them will be partly their own choice. We’re after not only the bastards like Georgi Macouri, we’re much more after the ones he’s serving and the ones behind those devices. If we’re all lucky, the girls will have a choice, but only a choice. They can help us, or the others.” He turned to the two techs. “Recall the ferrets as soon as possible. I’ll get Lieutenant Chung and we’ll start prepping the team. Let’s move!”
VIII: A DEVILISHLY FOUL FELLOW
They were named Sanchez, Ndulu, Rosen, and Nasser and they all looked like they liked bending barbells with their bare hands as warm-up exercises.
Sanchez and Ndulu were female, but you could hardly tell that until you were pretty close, and in the case of the strike team seemed irrelevant anyway. T
hese were not in any way the kind of folks Captain Murphy thought of as normal.
He met them only briefly, as Chung and her tech team set up in an aerovan they had rented and then definitely violated the lease renovating. He would remain with them, and watch and hear the action secondhand. Chung would coordinate wearing the same sort of virtual command helmet she’d used to fly the shuttle; it would augment her senses and abilities sufficiently to effectively monitor all of the automated backups for the team at once, and to effectively watch the combat personnel’s back. Darch would insure that all of those things, including Chung’s apparatus, were deployed and working properly and he would manually back her up; Broz would oversee the equipment they’d assembled in the van as well as the shuttle’s own protective systems just in case they were spotted, even though they would be several kilometers away and in the middle of nowhere when it all went down.
Murphy was surprised they didn’t use robotic soldiers for all this, maybe controlling them like Chung ran the show, but then, he thought, these people were the closest thing to combat robots that he knew and probably both biologically designed and cybernetically augmented for just the jobs they had. He felt helpless, though, just sitting there in the van watching and listening as others determined everything, even though he had no desire to be one of these people.
Maslovic had hoped to put this sort of thing off until he had the full navy task force at his disposal, with any personnel, supplies, gimmicks, and whatnot backing him up, but he felt now as if events were overtaking them. The fact that Macouri hadn’t destroyed the Order’s headquarters when he’d left pretty well said that he expected to return to it, but the manner of his leaving and the totality of the lockup said that he had no plans to return soon.
That left the question of where the rest of the members of the Order were, for there were surely quite a number of them, and also what the hell three pregnant girls from a rural backwater world had to do with all this.
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