“Hahahahahahaha!” Skippy laughed, and the beer can’s hysterical laughter made the joke extra funny to Williams, who could have lost his grip on the recessed handhold. Fortunately, the computer controlling the powered fingers of the gloves had learned what Williams wanted to do, and the glove automatically curled around the handhold until he flexed his fingers to release. What he had told Skippy was true; the powered suit was doing most of the work to climb all the way down the access shaft. Williams knew he was still going to be stiff, especially his pinky and ring fingers. Because Kristang had only three fingers and a thumb, humans using their suits had to jam two fingers into the last opening of the glove. Suit wearers got used to the awkward motion after a while; it helped to keep fingernails well trimmed and wrap both fingers together in gauze. “Lt. Williams,” Skippy announced, “you need to concentrate on climbing down, I will keep Petty Officer Jones occupied.”
“You are not singing to me,” Jones warned.
“Fine,” Skippy huffed. “I’ll tell you some jokes I got from Doctor Friedlander. A Kristang, a Ruhar and a Thuranin walk into a bar-”
In a building halfway across the city, the SAS team was having second thoughts about trusting an alien AI. “This does not appear to be a tremendously good idea, Skippy,” Smythe said unhappily after he and Robertson manually forced the lift doors open. When the beer can had suggested they use an elevator shaft without a car, Smythe pictured using the power-assisted gloves of their armored suits to slide down a cable like Batman. That idea, while dangerous, at least had the advantage of sounding cool. Unfortunately, high-tech Kristang elevators did not use cables, only a smooth track on each side. Smythe switched on his helmet lights, peering one way then the other. He did not see the ladder or handhold that he expected. Nothing he could use to climb down. “Not even a mildly good idea.”
“Trust me, Major, this will work just fine,” Skippy’s voice was jolly.
“You are not about to fall two hundred fifty meters down an elevator shaft,” Smythe retorted.
“Neither are you. Well, heh heh, I don’t think so. There is a low but non-zero probability of you plunging to a horrible death.”
“I am not bursting with confidence,” Smythe looked over at Robertson, whose face was pale.
“Uh, hmm, the good news is, if you do fall, the impact at the bottom will be so violent that you’ll never feel it. Did that help?”
“You daft bugger, what do you think?” Smythe demanded.
“No? Ah, anyway, don’t worry, I got this.”
Smythe did not see any possible way for the two of them to descend the smooth surface of the shaft. The tracks for the elevator cars were also smooth, as if the only moving part in the entire elevator mechanism was the car itself. “Please, Oh Wise One, explain this to me. I know these suits have a super gecko grip on the gloves, boots and knees, I do not think they can adhere to such a smooth surface all the way down.”
“Correct, I estimate the gloves and boots would lose adhesion immediately, the big problem is the lubricant contaminating the shaft. The Kristang are not so particular about cleaning parts of the building that no one sees. Please be quiet and allow me to explain before we run out of time. The elevator mechanism replies on magnetic pulses; pins on each side of the cars ride in the slots you see. My plan is for each of you to insert a glove and boot into one of those slots. I will energize the outer surface of your glove and boot, then use the magnetic track to safely lower you to the second floor. You will force open the door there, then take a seldom-used back stairway to the street level.”
“We put a hand and foot in one of those tracks?”
“That’s the idea, yes. I have checked the measurements, it will work.”
Smythe used the rangefinder built into the helmet. The tracks were on either side of the shaft, according to the rangefinder each track was four point two meters from the edge of the door opening. “We can’t reach the tracks from here, and there isn’t anything to stand on. Do you have any idea how we get to the tracks?” The AI did not respond. “Skippy?”
“Well, shit.”
“Well, shit?” Smythe asked incredulously. “You sodding bugger, how could-”
“Hey, I can’t think of everything! Let’s, uh, let’s keep this little incident between ourselves, huh? No need for Joe to hear about this.”
“Oh,” Smythe shared a look with Robertson, “if we get out of this, we will be inviting Colonel Bishop to afternoon tea, where we will eat crumpets and tell him in great detail exactly what happened.”
“Crap. This isn’t the first time I forgot some tiny little detail,” Skippy admitted in a snarky tone. “You know, here is a case where it would be useful if you monkeys hadn’t lost your freakin’ tails. That is totally your fault.”
“We could jump,” Robertson suggested in a tone meaning he was not advocating that idea. “I think I can get a glove in that-”
“No!” Skippy fairly shouted into their helmet speakers. “If you miss, it is a long way down. If even one of you missed, you will hit the elevator car at the bottom, then this whole building will be swarming with lizards and you’ll both be screwed.”
“Major,” Robertson reached into the shaft, dragged his fingertips along the smooth surface then studied his gloves. “The surface is covered in dirt and oil, my gloves wouldn’t stick. If Skippy can get a cleaning bot here to remove the oil-”
“Skippy?” Smythe asked.
“Ok,” Skippy sounded happy. “Finally, the two of you are using that mush inside your skulls for something useful. I have control of the cleaning bots, but that will take too long. I have a better idea.”
Smythe gaped, open mouthed, at the bizarre contraption hanging in the elevator shaft. “This is your better idea?”
“Yup. Great, ain’t it? I told you, trust the awesomeness.”
“What I said was a question, not a statement,” Smythe explained. “How is this thing holding itself up?” Skippy’s brilliant idea used a maintenance bot instead of a cleaning machine; the bot he chose to employ for the task was tall with four long tentacles. The bot had come scurrying around a corner without warning, prompting both SAS troopers to almost shred it with their rifles before Skippy warned them not to. Under Skippy’s direction, the bot had leaned through the elevator door opening and stuck two tentacles into the elevator guide slot on one side, then swung itself into the shaft and extended the other tentacles to maximum length into the slot on the opposite side.
“Magnets, I told you that already. Hurry, jump out there, grab onto the arms and use them to get a hand and foot into the slot. One at a time, please, the bot is barely holding on by itself.”
“The bot appears to be unsteady, Skippy,” Smythe tried to judge how much power-assisted force to use, without overshooting the mark and
“That’s because that bot wasn’t designed to do this. Hurry! Move!”
Smythe leaped first, easily catching a tentacle and wrapping two hands around it. The bot lurched under his weight and began sliding down alarmingly, until Smythe reached out with a foot and got it into the slot. He felt a tingling through the boot, so he let go of the tentacle with one hand and jammed that hand into the slot, then let go of the bot. Immediately, the bot stopped sliding downward. And Smythe was held securely in place. “It works!” Smythe announced as he worked his other foot into the slot. “Can you bring the bot upward?”
“Yup,” Skippy announced, as both Smythe and the bot rose to the level of the doorway. Robertson repeated Smythe’s maneuver, and shortly they were both hanging onto a slot with both feet and both hands. The bot swung itself out of the shaft without any fuss and scurried off, presumably back to wherever Skippy had found it. The door closed, and the two men began moving downward in an encouragingly controlled fashion. After a few seconds, the drop picked up speed. “Don’t worry, I will gradually slow you down as you get near the bottom, you need to proceed with alacrity.”
“With alacrity?” Smythe asked, amused.
&nb
sp; “It means quickly,” Skippy explained. “Come on, you Brits use fancy words for everything. Hey, since you are sort of riding an elevator, I think this is an appropriate time for some elevator music.” His voice began warbling off key. “Miiiiidnight, not a sound from the paaaavement, has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone-”
“Oh, bloody ‘Cats’. My Mum dragged me to see that,” Robertson complained. “Ooops, I am losing my grip. Too bad plunging to my death will mean I miss the end of this song.”
“Not funny, Robertson,” Skippy blessedly paused his warbling long enough to reply. “In the laaaaamplight, the-”
“Think of it as training to resist interrogation, Robertson,” Smythe suggested. “After ten minutes of this torture, anyone would talk.” Fortunately, Smythe could see they were approaching the bottom and Skippy was slowing them down. “We are to stop at the second floor and force that door open?”
“That’s the plan, yes.”
“Mmm. Any thoughts on how we are to get from these tracks through that closed door?” Smythe asked hopefully. “Skippy?”
“Well, shit! Crap! Damn it! I hate my life,” the beer can grumbled. “Ah, this kind of sucks for you, huh?”
“We are greatly touched by your concern for us.” Through the clear faceplate, Smythe could see Robertson grinning. “We can handle this, Skippy. Halt us about two meters above the door.”
The doorway they departed from had a lip just below that Smythe had examined as a potential handhold. On their descent, he had inspected each doorway as they went by; all the doors were the same. Robertson insisted on jumping first once they stopped. He easily caught onto the lip with both hands, but the material then began twisting and bending under his weight! Moving quickly, Robertson jammed one hand between the doors and used the powered mechanism of the gloves to force the lift doors apart wide enough to get a hand in, then he let go of the failing lip and forced the doors open with both hands. He pulled himself up to flop ungracefully on his belly, then rolled to his feet and held the doors wide open. “Ready for you, Major.”
Smythe pulled his feet out of the tracks, swung back and forth twice to get momentum, and soared down through the open door, trusting his suit’s stabilizers to keep him from crashing. “That is how we do it monkey-style, Skippy,” he said with a wink at Robertson.
“Yeah, yeah, very impressive,” Skippy scoffed. “I’ll give you seven out of ten for that jump, Major, you didn’t stick the landing.”
“You try it.” Smythe checked his weapon.
“Very funny. Move, quickly now, down the hallway and to the stairwell, I- uh, crap. Another freakin’ complication. Damn it! A Kristang has just entered that stairwell from the bottom, you will need to get past him.”
“Is he armed?” Smythe placed a finger next to the safety button of his rifle.
“No,” Skippy replied. “but you should not shoot him, that would alert everyone in the building. If he doesn’t come back soon, the security team will notice he is missing. Major, put on your police outfit. The lighting in there is dim, I will cover your face with a hologram and I will do the talking for you. Please hurry.”
Working quickly, Smythe and Robertson helped each other don their police disguises; a crest that attached to the top of their helmets, an armband that encircled their left biceps and a triangle that fitted to the chest. Skippy changed the camouflage pattern of the armor to the black and yellow of clan police, with the crest, chest triangle and armband displaying the proper symbols. The armor they were wearing was heavier than standard police issue, and their rifles slightly longer than police-issue carbines, but hopefully both would pass in a casual inspection at a distance. “Ready,” Smythe reported. “Show me this hologram trick.”
Robertson’s faceplate went from matt black to clear, exposing his human features. With a flicker, his image of the face morphed into that of a Kristang. “How is this, Major?” Robertson said, and the lizard’s mouth moved appropriately.
“Good,” Smythe peered closer. The hologram was not perfect. “Skippy, will this be good enough?”
“It will if you don’t allow anyone close to you,” Skippy said quickly. “Also, don’t make sudden gestures, I am controlling the holograms remotely, and there is a bit of a time lag for me to deal with. Go now, it is best to meet this Kristang in the stairwell where the lighting is poor.”
Smythe left his rifle’s safety engaged and tapped the knife attached to his right hip, Robertson understood the silent gesture. If the Kristang needed to be neutralized, the SAS men would do it quietly, no gunfire that would echo in the stairwell.
They heard the Kristang before they saw him, footsteps clunking on the stairs. Smythe checked Robertson’s holographic lizard face, it was more convincing in the stairwell’s dimness. Walking with purpose but not running, the two men crossed the landing and began descending, startling the Kristang who pressed himself up against the wall to let them past. “Remain in the building,” Smythe heard the translation of what his suit speakers were telling the lizard, and he gestured with one hand to emphasize his order. For a brief second, his eyes met the eyes of the Kristang, and Smythe saw surprise but not the shock or alarm that would accompany the alien recognizing a human face. Then they were past, pushing through the door onto the first floor.
“It worked,” Skippy announced. “He is continuing up the stairs and he is not running or calling building security. Go to your left, then another left, you will exit the back of the building.”
“What’s out there, Skippy?” Smythe asked when his hand was on the lever to open the door.
“A lot of people. Chaos. Civilians are leaving the center of the city to get away from the fighting; there are still friendly fire incidents occurring regularly. That door opens into an alley not much different from an urban alley on Earth; it is dark and narrow and crowded and dirty with refuse containers. There is a delivery vehicle at the end to your left, I suggest you go to the right and onto the sidewalk.”
Smythe went first, pushing the door open and sticking his head out into what Skippy had accurately described as a narrow alley between two buildings. The alley was empty except for a lorry parked against one side; Smythe could see into the lorry’s cab and it was empty. Skippy had also been correct about chaos in the city; the streets at both ends of the alley were jammed with vehicle traffic on the streets and panicked Kristang hurrying along the sidewalks. “Robertson, this is going to be interesting. Remember, we are clan police officers, we own these streets. We move and act with authority, and no one will stop us. We are Kristang police; if any civilians attempt to bother us, brush them aside, use the butt of your rifle if needed.”
“Got it,” Robertson agreed, holding his rifle in front of him, checking the safety was on. They walked quickly and purposefully down the alley, taking long but unhurried strides. Both men took a deep breath before stepping from the darkest part of the alley into the pool of light coming from the street. With the city under emergency conditions, most buildings were dark, with the only lights at street level. Even those were a dim, sickly yellowish haze, other than the rotating red lamps at intersections. With the city ground traffic system controlling all movement in the streets, vehicles rolled smoothly along, with a string of five vehicles almost nose to tail, then a gap. Across the street, a bus glided silently to a stop and no one got off; Kristang on the sidewalk pushed and shoved and argued to get on the bus that would take them out of the now-dangerous city. The bus did not have a driver, and the controlling system did not care about the fears of its occupants, for the doors suddenly shut and the bus rolled away, apparently leaving some females on the sidewalk while their children were on the bus. Frantic females raced after the bus, which smoothly accelerated away and switched to a higher speed center lane. Smythe and Robertson looked at each other and each shook their heads. They felt sympathy for the wailing females, who still tried to catch the distant bus despite the crowded sidewalk. The SAS men, the humans, would not get involved in Kristang aff
airs. Except for assuring the Kristang were no longer a threat to Earth, problems of the alien society were of no concern to anyone from Earth.
With Smythe in the lead, they stepped from the alley into the sidewalk. The crowd parted for them, civilians keeping a distance between themselves and the feared clan police force. The SAS men walked down the center of the sidewalk, keeping their rifles in front of them, using the rifles to nudge aside civilians who did not move quickly enough. In the dimness of the city’s reddish emergency lighting, no one looked too closely at the pair of ‘police officers’. The two figures in their hulking black and yellow armored suits were a menacing sight that did not invite close inquiry.
Smythe had to use his SAS training to maintain razor-sharp focus despite the swirling confusion around him, and the mind-blowing experience of strolling along a street in a Kristang city. Despite the bizarre circumstances, all was well until Skippy alerted them to a problem. “Major Smythe, there is a problem and I do not know how best you should cope with it. A pair of real city police are about to come around the corner to your right; they are checking identification of people before allowing them to proceed.”
“The hologram faceplate trick won’t work?” Smythe thought he already knew the answer to that question.
“No, those police will insist you lift your faceplate. You have only seconds now.”
Across the street and to the right, Smythe saw a crowd forming, civilians being stopped and inspected or frisked or scanned or whatever Kristang police did. Instinctively, Smythe pulled his zPhone out of a belt pouch, held it up, and shouted for a male Kristang hurrying past to stop. “Citizen! Halt!” He prayed whatever Skippy-translated words booming out of the helmet speakers was correct for the situation.
Robertson followed Smythe’s lead, taking out his own zPhone and pretending to use it as a scanner. “Identification, now!” He shouted at the nearest pair of civilians, holding up his rifle menacingly. With the zPhone, he waved it up and down each one, pretending to scan them while they babbled fearfully at him.
Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4) Page 39