They rounded a corner and found themselves on the edge of a circular plaza. Shops and restaurants faced the plaza, which wasn't flat, but fell in levels toward a circular stage. At the moment four jugglers were busy tossing daggers at one another, catching them and pretending not to, thrilling the audience with a series of close calls.
Neem glanced at his wrist term. "Come on. We've got some time to kill." The Il Ronnian made his way down the steps and McCade followed with a disgruntled Reba tagging along behind.
Neem slid sideways down a half-filled aisle. The Il Ronnian seemed to step on every third foot, leaving McCade and Reba to make his apologies.
The jugglers had finished with the knives and were moving on to Rath snakes by the time all three of them were seated. Rath snakes are somewhat irritable to start with, and the process of being thrown around did nothing to improve their tempers.
As they flew through the air the reptiles twisted every which way, hoping to sink their poisonous fangs into an arm or hand. But the jugglers were a blur, anticipating every move, whipping the snakes back and forth like pieces of green rope.
Then something went wrong. One of the jugglers missed a catch. A squirming Rath snake soared out over the audience and started to fall.
The crowd let out a collective gasp and people scrambled to get out of the way. All except for a man in baggy coveralls. He seemed frozen in place as the snake fell toward him, his mouth hanging open in stupefied amazement, his hands opening and closing as if unsure of what to do.
McCade's hand went toward his blaster, but he knew it was hopeless. By the time he drew and fired, the Rath snake would already have its fangs in the man's flesh.
Then just as the reptile was about to land in his lap, the man stood, snatched the snake out of midair, and threw it back.
A juggler caught it, tossed it into the air, and the crowd realized they'd been had. There was loud applause as the fifth juggler took a bow, stripped off his coveralls to reveal a colorful costume, and hurried down to join his friends onstage.
"Now would be the time to pass the hat," Reba remarked thoughtfully. "They should do pretty well."
"Chances are they've done pretty well already," McCade replied. "Look at the crowd they drew. I'll bet the stores fronting on the plaza pay them to perform."
McCade turned to Neem. "By the way, which store belongs to your friends?"
Neem chuckled. "None of them. My 'friends' as you call them are right in front of you."
McCade looked toward the stage. The jugglers had just activated thirty laser torches and were preparing to toss them around.
"You'd better have your eyes checked, Neem, the jugglers are human."
"They look human," Neem agreed, "but they aren't. They're cyborgs."
Il Ronnian cyborgs designed to look like humans? It couldn't be. But as McCade watched the jugglers he began to wonder. By now the laser torches were flashing through the air at incredible speed. Speed that defied human reflexes. And why not? If Neem was correct, the reflexes weren't human and never had been. They were wired, servo-controlled, and computer-assisted.
No wonder the jugglers were willing to throw Rath snakes around like so much rubber hose. A bite wouldn't even pierce their plastiflesh skin much less poison them. Much as he hated to admit it, the whole thing made sense. By posing as human jugglers, the Il Ronnian spies had a perfect excuse to travel around and poke their noses into all sorts of places. And given their skill people probably begged them to come!
All of a sudden the enormity of it struck home. There could be hundreds, even thousands, of Il Ronnian spies roaming the Empire sucking up secrets like so many vacuum cleaners. Swanson-Pierce would go crazy!
But wait a minute, what would stop humans from doing the same thing? Among the millions who'd seen him on Imantha had some been human? Fellow Terrans locked inside electro-mechanical bodies deep inside an enemy empire? If so, each and every one of them deserved a medal.
McCade's thoughts were swept away by the sound of loud applause. The jugglers took a series of quick bows, and when the audience started to leave, the cyborgs started to pack.
Neem motioned for McCade and Reba to stay put and pushed his way down toward the stage.
"Where's Neem headed?"
"You're going to find this hard to believe," McCade replied, "but according to Neem the jugglers are Il Ronnian spies."
As McCade explained Reba's eyes got larger. When he was finished she shook her head and laughed out loud.
"Well, I'll be damned. It makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. I'll bet both sides have been at it for years. Sister Urillo will have a fit! She'll see Il Ronnian spies under every bed."
McCade nodded and felt through his pockets for a cigar. The best he could find was broken in two. He stuck the longer half between his teeth and puffed it into life.
Down on the stage Neem had just sealed some sort of agreement with a very human handshake. McCade blew smoke toward the deck and watched Neem climb the stairs. Strange though it seemed, things were looking up.
Twenty-Three
Morris Sappo had spent a lot of money to make himself both comfortable and safe. Not satisfied with what Tin Town had to offer, he'd commissioned a sort of annex, a blister on the habitat's hull built to his own specifications.
According to rumor, Sappo's quarters were luxurious beyond compare. A farm boy once, Sappo hated Tin Town's small spaces and hungered for the vast skies of Regor Il. In order to satisfy his craving for openness he covered his home with transparent duraplast. If he couldn't have the blue sky of his boyhood, he'd have the heavens beyond.
Having started with the stars themselves as decorations, Sappo was challenged to do them justice. Fantastic holograms, each one a work of art, rippled across his walls in harmony with Sappo's moods. Expensive furniture, much of it specially crafted for his small frame, dotted his combination office and living room. And water swirled this way and that beneath his feet, trapped there between two layers of duraplast, tinted with multicolored dyes and programmed to match the walls.
That's what rumor said anyway, but if their plan worked, McCade would soon know for himself. Two standard days had passed since the Il Ronnian cyborgs had performed in the plaza. Now they were about to take part in a performance of a different kind—an assault on Sappo's private quarters.
Neem had anticipated a certain amount of resentment, even resistance, from the cyborgs, and was surprised by their cheerful cooperation.
Unknown to Neem, or so he claimed, Teeb had provided him with an authorization code so powerful that the cyborgs regarded him as the direct embodiment of the governing council.
In addition, they were astounded to discover that Neem was running around the human empire protected by nothing more than a flimsy disguise. So they not only jumped to do his bidding but hung on his every word as well.
While McCade and Reba found this quite amusing, poor Neem was quite taken aback and spent a lot of time ordering the cyborgs to treat him just like anyone else.
Unfortunately the cyborgs took his entreaties as a form of divine humility and reacted by elevating him to new heights. From Neem's point of view the whole thing was quite disconcerting.
But regardless of their attitude toward Neem, the cyborgs were quite competent. This became clear during the two days spent planning and preparing the raid. Each was a specialist recruited from the various branches of the Il Ronnian armed forces. With but one exception, all had been severely injured during combat prior to recruitment into the Cyborg Corps.
As Leeb, the explosives expert, put it, "The decision becomes relatively simple once your body is almost completely destroyed."
The single exception was their leader Ceex. Ceex was a professional intelligence officer so devoted to his job that he'd voluntarily given up a perfectly healthy body to become a cyborg.
In Neem's opinion Ceex was a few planets short of a full system, but since the anthropologist was a head case himself, this seemed like a case
of the pot calling the kettle black. Still, it did seem as if Ceex had taken patriotism a step too far.
But looney or not, once Ceex understood the situation, he wasted little time in coming up with a plan. He didn't know where Pong was but felt sure that Morris Sappo did. The two men were often seen together and it was common knowledge that Sappo routinely purchased large quantities of Pong's stolen goods.
Given that, and given the limited amount of time to work with, Ceex suggested the direct approach. Bypass Sappo's security, break into his quarters, and force him to tell whatever he knew.
It wasn't very subtle, but given the stakes involved, and the need to get moving, McCade was in no mood for subtlety.
A scouting mission by Leeb and weapons expert Keeg confirmed what everyone already knew. Sappo's quarters would be a tough nut to crack. He had guards everywhere. In addition there were elaborate alarm systems, robotic sensors, and automatic defense systems.
"What you're saying is that the front door's locked," McCade had responded thoughtfully.
"Correct," Keeg agreed. He had the appearance of a pleasant young man with blond hair. "The back door, however, looks a good deal more promising."
"The back door?"
Keeg grinned an extremely human grin. "Yes. From what Leeb and I saw, Sappo's security system assumes that intruders will come from inside Tin Town. And a quick scouting trip on the surface of the hull confirmed it. Oh, there's plenty of nasty stuff out there as well, but compared with the inside approach, the outside is wide open."
And so it was agreed that they'd attack Sappo's quarters from the surface of Tin Town's hull. Now they were in place and about to venture out onto the habitat's surface. The cyborgs waited patiently while McCade, Neem, and Reba checked their space armor.
When all three had given Ceex the thumbs-up, he palmed the lock and waited for the atmosphere to hiss away. This particular lock was just outside the edge of Sappo's security systems.
Like the rest of the cyborgs, Ceex wore no body armor. He didn't need any. Outside of his brain and spinal cord he didn't have any biological parts. His internal life-support system would keep both organs well oxygenated and protect them from physical trauma. Still, it seemed strange to see a man step outside without a suit.
Tin Town's surface was a labyrinth of harsh shadows. A cooling fin towered off to McCade's right. It was back lit by a large sign that read mama saldo's shipyard and threw triangles of black across the habitat's gleaming hull as it flashed on and off.
An automatic weapons turret swiveled around and around to McCade's left, its sensors probing the heavens for some sign of hostility, its twin-energy projectors waiting patiently for the order to fire.
And up ahead a maze of ducts, sensor housings, and clustered pipe waited to slow them down. And beyond that McCade could see the Beta end of the spindle, blazing with light and hanging against the stars like a big silver ball.
Movement caught McCade's eye and he looked up to see a sleek freighter fire her steering jets, pause, and slide out of sight beyond the hull's horizon.
The cyborgs drifted between the obstacles like so many ghosts. Their infrared beams probed the darkest corners, their transceivers sampled all the radio traffic in the immediate vicinity, and their optical scanners watched for signs of movement.
But even cyborgs are fallible, a lesson all would learn a few minutes later.
Although Tin Town didn't have any government as such, it did offer a number of police companies, one of which offered robo surveillance service. The service was designed to discourage unauthorized excursions over portions of privately owned hull. And the key to the service were the small globular devices called robo sentries. They didn't have much brain, but they bristled with weapons and flew preprogrammed patterns over the hull's surface.
The robo sentries were launched and retrieved via large pipes that passed through Tin Town's hull at various points. Although McCade didn't see the silver ball sail out of a pipe behind him, he did see it burn a hole through the rearmost cyborg's back and splash blue fire against the hull beyond.
The cyborg, an individual named Seeo, staggered but managed to stay upright. A mist of white fluid rose to envelope him.
McCade's energy rifle spat blue light as the robo sentry spun right and tried to line up on Neem. Though heavily armed, the robots didn't carry much armor and the silver ball exploded in an orange flash.
For a moment Neem was showered with pieces of hot metal and plastic. Then they lost their inertia and slowly drifted away, each one reflecting tiny shards of light.
"Sorry about that." It was Ceex's voice in McCade's helmet. "It looks like the cyborg's out of the bag."
A part of McCade's mind registered the joke. The rest was busy staying alive. The robo sentry had sent out a distress signal before it died and now silver balls were flocking to the spot like sharks to a feeding frenzy.
McCade took cover behind some sort of metal housing and began to pick them off one at a time. First he'd compute a robot's trajectory, next he'd pick a spot just ahead of it, and then he'd squeeze the trigger. Nine times out of ten the robot disappeared in a flash of orange flame. The others joined in and pretty soon robo sentries were popping like so many party balloons.
The battle was not entirely one-sided however. While McCade and the others fought off most of the swarming globes, five or six managed to surround Seeo and soon finished him off. Like the professional he was, Seeo died without uttering a sound.
Seconds later his life-support system confirmed his death, triggered his built-in demo charge, and blew up. Two of the silver balls disappeared along with Seeo's body.
"Damn." Reba's voice sounded hollow in McCade's helmet.
"Yeah," he replied. "Damn."
"Let's move," Ceex said, sounding like every noncom McCade had ever heard. "Sappo's quarters are just ahead."
They were running now, a sort of fast shuffle that ate up the distance but maintained their contact with Tin Town's hull. They knew that each passing second would bring more and more opposition and give Sappo's household security troops that much more time to get ready.
McCade welcomed the movement. After all the deception and delay, it felt good to do something for a change. Even if the something was dangerous as hell. His muscles strained, his pulse pounded, and the ragged sound of his own breathing filled his helmet.
Every now and then another robo sentry would appear, loose off a bolt of energy, and disappear in a flash of light as someone blew it away. Once you knew about them they weren't that hard to handle.
"We've got security troops up here," Ceex said grimly. "Get ready to take some heat."
McCade climbed over a low pipe and saw a strange sight waiting up ahead. Four members of Sappo's household troops had exited through his private lock and come face-to-face with the Il Ronnian cyborgs. But Sappo's troops didn't know that the men who faced them were cyborgs. And not knowing they stood frozen in place wondering how humans could enter a vacuum and stay alive.
None of them lived long enough to find out. One after another they fell as the strange apparitions shot them down. Two died without firing, the third got off a single shot, and the fourth killed Keeg a fraction of a second before Leeb drilled an energy beam through his visor. The cyborg blew up just as the man's visor shattered and the vacuum sucked him out through the hole in his helmet.
It wasn't a pretty sight, but McCade didn't have the time to look. He was too busy helping Leeb place explosives around Sappo's private lock. A few seconds later and the cyborg was pushing McCade toward cover.
They were just barely behind a boxy piece of duct work when the charges went off. McCade peeked around the corner just in time to see the outer hatch fly off its hinges and spin into space.
Neem and Reba were right behind him as he and Leeb dashed for the lock.
"We've got more troops out here," Ceex warned. "Geev and I will hold them off while you secure the lock."
"Roger," McCade replied.
&n
bsp; The tunnel had decompressed as they blew the hatch, but there was another lock just fifty feet in. It had been placed there in case the first lock failed.
"Just a sec and I'll blow it," Leeb said, reaching for his demolitions bag.
"Whoa," McCade ordered. "If we aren't careful, we could decompress Sappo's entire area. He won't be much good to us if he's dead."
McCade palmed the door and it slid open. It seemed all the security measures had been lavished on the outer door, leaving this one unprotected.
McCade chinned his radio. "The lock is secured, Ceex. Time to join us."
The cyborg arrived a few seconds later. His energy rifle had disappeared along with his right arm. White hydraulic fluid spurted from the stump and half his face was burned away. "Sorry I'm late. Geev won't be coming."
McCade remembered Geev's dark plastiflesh, his flashing brown eyes, and his ready smile. He hoped that whatever Sappo had to say would be worth the price, and wondered if that was possible.
The outer door closed, air hissed into the lock, and the inner door cycled open a few minutes later. They were all on the dock with weapons ready, but nothing could have prepared them for the hail of lead and coherent energy that reached out to greet them.
It was Reba who saved the day when she stood up and lobbed a grenade down the corridor. She was still standing there waiting for the grenade to go off when Neem reached up and jerked her down.
The grenade turned the other end of the corridor into a slaughter house and Neem threw another just to make sure. Like the first one it went off with a deafening roar. They waited for a few moments, but there were no signs of life, so one by one they all got up.
All that is but Leeb. A piece of shrapnel had lanced down through his chest ripping his life-support system apart and destroying his motor control subprocessor.
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