by Jaine Fenn
Paula landed a little behind me, though still clear of the stone floor.
This room was full of glass cases. The cases contained what could only be described as military memorabilia. Swords, pikes, suits of armour and, as a centrepiece, a replica horse and rider, all clad in scale mail which, in normal light, probably shone bright as gold. Like everything else seen through the hudglasses, the place appeared to be lit by strong moonlight. In the first two rooms with their outdoor artifice, this had been apt, even relaxing, but here, amongst all the gleaming weaponry and glass, the effect was disconcerting. We checked the cases methodically. I found one sword which claimed to be the genuine article, imported all the way from Szechuan by a named executive I’d never heard of to celebrate his promotion; by implication everything else was a replica, as I’d assumed. The Eye wasn’t here.
I paused on the threshold of the final room until Paula had done her checks. All clear.
This last room also contained glass cases, plus some free-standing exhibits. Rather than martial treasures, here we had jewellery, fabric, pots and incense burners. The free-standing figures – which looked disturbingly lifelike through my hudglasses, save for their blank eyes – were dressed in silk costumes straight out of the old Imperial Court.
No immediate sign of what we were here for, though. We worked our way back. And there, against the back wall, was the Eye of Heaven. Sitting in its black cradle on a black plinth, it was easily the brightest thing in the room. Even in the lo-light the Eye shone like a giant pearl coated in rainbows. It wasn’t quite a perfect oval, being more egg-shaped, like something you might expect a phoenix or other mythical creature to hatch from.
Paula came to stand next to me.
The other exhibits were close-packed, but the Eye had its own distinct space, with nothing save air for a metre on each side. Which could just be part of the whole Feng Shui effect, giving it the room to do its spiritual stuff. Or it could indicate invisible security measures. ‘That’s a suspiciously empty bit of room they’ve chosen,’ I remarked
‘Sure is. I’ll check it out.’ Paula knelt and extracted her equipment from her backpack. I stepped back to give her space. I’d come up with a provisional schedule for the job, though I’d had to built in plenty of contingency, given our incomplete intel. By the timings I was using as a baseline, we were running seventeen minutes late. I reminded myself that it was just that, a baseline; not a deadline. There was leeway built in.
Paula finished running a hand-held detector over an area of wall at the right-hand edge of the Eye’s exclusion zone, and returned to her stash of gear. She selected what looked like a shiny cosmetic compact, laid it flat on her palm and opened it sideways, like a little hardcopy book. She turned away from the Eye and flicked her wrists. The mirrored ‘book’ extended out to a metre-long conduit, two slivers of mirror connected at a ninety-degree angle to each other, foil-thin but rigid.
I’d seen reflectors like this before. They took a lot of skill to deploy, and they only worked on certain types of light-grid. I had to assume Paula knew this was such a grid. She stood the reflector on the floor. I stepped back. The bottom edge had nano-grip technology, but it would still teeter if knocked. Next, Paula fitted a pair of black rods, so slender they were barely visible, across the top and, after reversing it, the bottom of her mirrored conduit. With the rods in place, she picked up the reflector, and spent a while just looking at the Eye and its surrounds. Then she edged forward. She stopped, and adjusted her grip to hold the reflector’s base just off the floor. Moving so slowly she appeared not to be in motion at all, her face blank with concentration, she extended her arms.
I realised it had been some time since I’d taken a breath, but my chest was too tight to let much air in.
Paula lowered the reflector the final couple of millimetres to the floor. Her shoulders lowered by about the same amount.
Stage one complete. Now the tricky bit.
She crouched down then turned her head, checking the (to me) invisible beams. I could have reset my hud display too, but seeing what Paula was seeing wouldn’t make me any less nervous. I had to trust her to do her job.
Placing one hand on the thin connector rod running across the top of the reflector, she began to move her fingers apart. Her other hand was still half extended, not quite touching the reflector, like a magician in the middle of a conjuring trick.
The two halves of the reflector began to slide apart. Now they were connected only by the expanding rods at top and bottom.
Would the alarm be silent, if she tripped it? I had an idea not, at this stage. My ears hurt from waiting for the klaxon.
The gap widened. Now the two slivers of mirror had clear air between them – clear of any sort of detecting light beam, that is. If I was only ten centimetres wide I could slip in there right now.
The gap widened further. There was a trade-off here: the bigger the gap, the easier it would be to get through, but the farther apart the two halves of the reflector got, the less stable they were, even with their nanotech footing. I consoled myself that this was probably easier in Martian gravity before remembering that Paula came from Earth. Was she assuming one G, not a third? Should I point this out? I opened my mouth, then closed it again. She didn’t need me whispering in her ear unexpectedly.
The gap was a good forty centimetres now. Paula kept teasing out the upper supporting rod, which was slaved to the lower one. I saw a ripple of tension in her thigh, the muscles protesting at being held in a tense squat for so long. Perhaps we should have brought a folding stool.
If the alarm was silent, the guards would be here any moment.
She stopped, with the gap at what my hudglasses told me was fifty-two centimetres. She stood and pummelled her aching legs – but gently, so as not to disturb the reflector. With it set this wide, fierce aircon might sway it and it only took a tiny movement to misalign the beams currently being reflected back to their source in the wall. At which point, we’d be blown.
‘We good?’ I whispered. Then I made myself take a proper breath.
‘We’re good.’
She looked past her handiwork to the plinth with the Eye on it. ‘No case. That because of the Feng Shui energies?’
‘Most likely.’
‘The plinth’ll be rigged. Won’t know how until I get in there.’
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Stay back unless I say otherwise.’
‘Got you.’
Despite the tension, I did relish seeing a master at work.
Paula gathered a subset of tools into her backpack and slung it round her neck, facing forward. Then she crouched down and sidled sideways towards the gap between the two halves of the reflector.
Part of me wanted to watch, but that part stopped me breathing. I looked away, because this was the messy human bit of the job, where a slip or a sneeze could mean disaster.
When I looked again, Paula was straightening on the other side of the invisible doorway. She approached the Eye with all the care I’d expect, taking readings, holding out a palm, cocking her head.
‘I reckon we’ve got a basic pressure-trap here.’ Her voice was all business.
‘You reckon? You can’t be sure?’
‘Not without touching it, and I want to have everything prepped before I do.’
‘But you can deal with whatever you do find?’ We were thirty-two minutes behind schedule now.
‘Yes and no. Fooling the weight-sensor shouldn’t be an issue but this is a no-expense-spared set-up, so it’s likely to have spatial sensors too.’
‘Meaning?’
‘When I lift the Eye from its cradle, we’ll need to replace it with something as near as possible the same shape. Some of those pots back there—’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘We need to take the cradle too.’ I should have mentioned that earlier. Bad Lizzie.
Her head swung round, though her face was blank behind her hud. ‘What?’
‘That octagonal holder it
’s sitting in? We can’t lift the Eye from it.’
‘Can’t as in…’
‘I’ve been instructed to bring the Eye of Heaven out in its holder.’
‘Do we know why?’ Her voice was cold.
‘Because those are our instructions.’
She nodded, and said nothing. Then finally, ‘You’re the boss.’ She turned away and resumed her observations and calculations. A minute and a half later she said. ‘Actually that’ll make it easier. I’m picking up some odd environmental readings but no obvious security on the plinth itself.’
‘Good. And you’ll monitor those odd readings?’
‘Of course.’
She stepped closer, and touched the plinth. No alarm sounded. She shucked off her backpack and selected the micro-tool kit, then bent over the plinth. After less than a minute she straightened, put a hand on either side of the Eye, then lifted it free, cradle and all. I savoured the lack of obvious alarms.
‘Hhhmm.’ She sounded disappointed.
‘Problem?’
‘No. Opposite in fact. The cradle was just screwed into the plinth. No security on it at all. Perhaps our patron knew something about the Eye’s holder, and decided it was beyond anyone’s skill to deal with it.’ She appeared to take this as an affront to her skills.
‘That could be it.’ Not that I had any more idea than she did why Mr P wanted the Eye of Heaven in its not-at-all-handy carrying cradle. I’d had to accept this as one of his quirks. He was paying, after all.
I wondered if Paula would just hand me the Eye but she stuffed it into her backpack and slung it across her front.
‘Are you going to be okay like that?’ The Eye wasn’t quite head-sized, but it had to be heavy. It would pull her off balance when she did her crab-through-a-crevice routine.
She just grunted. It wasn’t like I could intervene.
It was even harder to look away this time, but I needed to let her concentrate. When I heard a small gasp I screwed my eyes shut, like that would help. When I opened them she was frozen in place between the two halves of the reflector, both hands on the floor, pack swinging dangerously free. She’d fallen forward, then caught herself.
‘Can I –?’
‘No. I’m good.’ She leant back, getting her weight redistributed. Then she shuffled out from between the two reflector posts. Once she was sure she was clear, she stood, and eased her neck from side-to-side.
I waited until she had ironed out the kinks before saying, ‘I’ll take the Eye now please.’
‘Why?’ Her hud was still opaque, but I suspected she was looking askance.
‘It’s nothing personal. Just another of the patron’s conditions.’
‘And the patron will know we obeyed this particular request how?’
‘Look, I know it’s a pain, but let’s do this by the book.’
‘Whatever.’
Time was ticking. ‘Let’s just swap packs.’
‘Sure.’ She sounded tense.
Getting Paula’s now-heavy pack on my back proved tricky. When she offered to help I didn’t object. What can I say, I was tired and stressed and in a hurry. Standing behind me, she supported the pack while I threaded my arms through the straps. As I shrugged the pack onto my shoulders I felt her step away to the side.
Something stung my cheek, a needle-prick of cold. I went to swat at what I assumed must be a biting insect. Reality dawned somewhere between brain and hand.
Paula McIntyre had just shot me.
The stunguns Ika had procured for us were fast-acting and, pissed off though I was, I was still conscious. It had been Ika’s idea to give our newest team member untipped darts ‘just in case’. If we’d had to deal with security guards that would put us at a disadvantage, but weighing up the odds of getting into a fire-fight versus a potential double-cross from the lovely Paula, I’d concurred with the fixer.
I drew my own pistol from its waist holster and stepped back, keeping the reflector in the corner of my eye. Tripping over that would not improve my situation.
Paula was giving her gun an incredulous stare. She didn’t look happy. Her resume hadn’t mentioned combat skills. I hoped it had been accurate.
She shot again. Our skinsuits would protect against a stun dart so her target was small, just the unprotected lower half of my face. She missed.
My target was equally hard to hit, being the lower half of her face. But I had to take her down quickly.
Mum hadn’t been big on combat skills, but Ahmed, the boyfriend she’d kicked around with during our year in Afghanistan, had been all for training me up because, he said, ‘girls are often at a disadvantage’. I’d been thirteen at the time, and full of fury at the world. I’d paid attention during his lessons.
Instead of cracking off a wild shot I stepped backwards, once, twice, keeping my eyes on the target and the gun raised, taking aim even as I put distance between us. I couldn’t risk more than two steps back thanks to the forest of display cases, and the fact that, having shot again, she was now closing on me, her face full of angry desperation.
Now or never. I fired.
No recoil, unlike some of the weapons Ahmed had put in my hands. I missed: she kept coming.
I stepped back again, and banged my heel on something solid. I fired through a flash of pain from my bruised heel.
She was at lunging distance now. She lunged.
The lunge became a fall, her eyes defocusing as the drug kicked in. Thanks to the display case I’d backed up against, I ended up catching her in my arms. Her anger had drained away, under the influence of industrial-strength sedation and, perhaps, acceptance of the inevitable.
As I lowered her to the floor her gaze sharpened and she smiled. Her eyes fluttered closed, but just before she went limp she murmured, ‘Mr Lau sends his regards.’
Five
What the hell was I supposed to do now?
Stick to the plan, that was what.
I could work out what Paula meant later. Right now, I had to get out of here.
I had the Eye, and the lack of guards, alarms or security lights suggested that, despite Paula McIntyre’s duplicity, the job was still on. I shifted my pack more firmly into place, and left my traitorous accomplice to her drugged sleep. By the time I was through the first room I was all but running. Jumping the pressure-pad in the doorway between the armoury and garden rooms felt like flying. Then I landed, and the Eye shifted on my back. I stumbled, then caught myself. I was pumped, more alive than I’d been for a decade. And that was dangerous. I made myself walk across the garden and through the statues.
When I reached the door, I pulled at the handle. Nothing. Not pull: push. I pushed. It didn’t move. I was locked in.
No: think, Lizzie. The security on the door was to stop people getting in, not out. I looked to the side. There it was, a palm-sized black panel set into the wall. That had to be an override for the door. What I didn’t know was whether it would set off an alarm as well as opening the door.
Option one: press it and see.
Option two: get Paula’s toolkit out, and apply what little I knew about intrusion.
Given how little that was, option two was as likely to lead to tripping an alarm as option one. And it would take longer.
I pressed the panel with one fist while pushing the door.
It swung open. Silently.
I paused inside the entrance, listening, catching my breath, and adjusting my hudglasses. Ideally I should shut the door after I left so anyone walking past wouldn’t realise anything was amiss but with no external handle –
Then I remembered why not having Paula McIntyre any more could scupper the job.
The next part of the plan involved riding an elevator to the building’s basement. Paula would have bypassed the lift security, that being, as I’d just reminded myself, outside my area of expertise. Perhaps if I could raise Nico he could hack the lift from his end, but even if he wasn’t tied up with his own prep, our comms were deliberately low powered to
avoid detection, and there was a lot of Martian rock between me and him. Perhaps if I stood at the top of the lift shaft and he happened to be standing at the bottom… Might as well try shouting.
My mind went blank for a moment. Think. There would be a way out of this.
Just like the external doors, any elevators giving access outside the complex needed a pass. Therefore, all I actually had to do was get hold of a staff pass. There: a simple solution, at least in theory. I called up the map on my hud.
The senior staff would all be out enjoying the New Year’s celebrations but some of the up-and-coming execs would be happy to work overtime to prove their worth. I needed to head into less exclusive territory.
I kept my eyes and ears open, pausing at every corner, taking a slow, stealthy path through the corridors of corporate power. Even if nothing we’d done so far had tripped any alarms, it was only a matter of time before I ran into more guards, or someone noticed the open door to the Celestial Colonnades.
Despite the need to concentrate on the here and now, Paula McIntyre’s parting words haunted me.
In order to know Mr Lau she must work for Everlight. So why would she help steal their greatest prize?
Firstly, because she didn’t know I was after the Eye until we were deep inside the Everlight complex.
Once she knew she could have ‘accidently’ tripped an alarm, or alerted the guards who passed us by. Why hadn’t she? But I remembered her response to the Colonnade doors, and to the security on the Eye. She was proud of her work. She wanted to know she could defeat Everlight’s security.
Which would be odd if she worked for them. But I suspected Paula McIntyre was what her file claimed: an independent security specialist. And she was working for Mr Lau.
He’d probably sent her here to keep tabs on me. Maybe I should be flattered. She might have had a hand in Xiao Fei’s fate – or that might have been coincidence. They did happen.
It was safe to assume she wasn’t here officially. No doubt my ex-boss had his own reasons for following me beyond the ends of the Earth. He might even have been after the Eye himself; imagine if Everlight had lost the Eye of Heaven, only to have it returned by prompt action from the agent of a relatively minor exec. How much face would Mr Lau have saved his employers then? When it came to shafting colleagues, the criminal underworld could learn a lot from the corps.