by Patty Jansen
I was already way past the main gate of the Inner Circle. If this continued, I’d crash somewhere in the streets of the First Circle complex and I would have no way of getting back to Thayu and Nicha, and I had Ezhya’s feeders, which they needed if they had any hope of defending the hub.
Hang on! I caught a glimpse of Nicha turning his drone. He was coming after me. What for and what he thought to do, I didn’t know. I held on tight, bracing for the inevitable crash into the street or roof or some such.
Damn, where had Nicha gone?
“Cory! Up here!”
I looked up.
Nicha had turned his drone upside down and hung from his seat, arms hanging down to me. I reached up and managed to grab one of his hands. His grip was warm and strong. I let go of my falling drone and dangled in the air below him, with the hot exhaust from his drone’s engine buffeting my legs. He righted the drone, causing me to half-fall, half-fly in an arc. Sky and city spun around me. I landed roughly on the seat in front of him. Thank the heavens for strong Coldi arms.
I looked down for signs of a crash, but instead of crashing in the streets, my drone had come back to life. It soared over the roofs, turned and came straight for us.
“Nicha, that drone is coming for us.” The drones had collective memories, right? And this infernal piece of equipment had worked out that I had been one of the people who had destroyed some of their fellows. Ah, we’d flown over the spot where it had happened and I’d thought about it. While wearing the feeder that linked into its memory.
Stupid.
Nicha glanced aside. “I see it. Does it have the side flaps folded out?”
I peered into the light. “I think so.”
A sharp crack pierced the rush of air that buffeted me.
“Shit. It’s shooting at us. Hang on.” Nicha made the drone swerve sharply to evade fire. Up, then down again, and sideways. Charges crackled through the air like bolts of lightning. We soared around the building with the damn thing at our tail. I wrestled my gun from its bracket and made a few attempts at firing at it, all of which missed.
You know in movies, where the hero shoots the bad guys from the back of a speeding motorbike? Well, reality is not like that. When you’re in a speeding vehicle and have the typical weapons skills of a diplomat, you can’t hit anything for shit.
In passing in front of the building, I caught a glimpse of Thayu and Raanu at the window in the corridor next to the hub. Since I had come through it with Veyada and Sheydu, someone had repaired the security grille, and Thayu was taking it out again. Nicha steered around, ever faster. The other drone was still gaining on us.
Thayu helped Raanu climb into the window.
Nicha steered around again and out towards First Circle. What was he doing?
A sharp turn back to the front of the building. Nicha made straight for the window. I closed my eyes and hung on. Right now, I knew I had to trust him, but it looked awfully like we were going to crash. I held my breath.
The drone slowed down suddenly. I opened my eyes just as it flew in through the open window. It clipped the frame with its wings and toppled. Nicha jumped off, dragging me with him. We landed unceremoniously on the floor. The drone flipped on its back and skidded down the corridor before coming to rest against the wall.
Also in movies, it would explode. It didn’t, and sat there looking crumpled. Was it now inactive? Was it going to turn back and shoot at us?
For a few seconds, everything was quiet.
From outside came the pops and crackles of a fire. Black smoke rose past the window. Evidently, the other drone had crashed onto the roof.
Phew.
Neat skid marks, by the way.
I took off my helmet and breathing mask. The breeze through the corridor chilled my face. My sleeve came away black when I wiped my face.
“What did you do to your drone?” Nicha asked.
“I think when we flew over the spot where we shot the others, it picked up my memories and recognised me as enemy.”
Nicha’s eyes widened. “I’ve always wondered if that was a myth or the truth—shit.”
The fallen drone hummed to life.
Nicha grabbed his gun.
“Don’t!” Thayu pushed the barrel aside. “Don’t be stupid.”
“What? I will turn against us.”
“Maybe, but if we can stop thinking about what just happened, it can still be useful to us. If you shoot it, we’ll have to deal with all the wall-crawlers. The window doesn’t shut anymore.”
The drone righted itself and folded up its wings. One of them had bent and didn’t fit properly in the recess anymore. The panel that was supposed to cover it hung halfway down the side.
“Let’s go,” Thayu said. She grabbed Raanu’s hand.
We had gone not more than a few steps when there was the sound of people running from elsewhere in the building. It sounded close, perhaps around the corner. I’d been here before and remembered that the corridor at the t-intersection ahead ran to the lifts.
Thayu ducked against the wall, pushing Raanu behind her. Nicha and I followed. Nicha clicked the gun out of its bracket.
Thayu cursed. “What are they doing in here? The guards should have stopped them getting into the lift.”
“We didn’t use the lift.”
She gave me a blank stare. Right. One didn’t make jokes with security in action. I should have learned that by now. Silly Delegate. I took my gun out of its bracket. “I’m almost out of charge.”
Without taking her eyes off the t-intersection, Thayu handed me one of her spares, a weapon much heavier than I was used to or happy with.
I turned on the gun and waited until the charge light showed yellow. It had a few capabilities that my own simple gun didn’t: infrared scan, metal-cutting mode, auto-variable intensity. Whoa, this was a serious weapon.
Nicha gestured me to show it to him. He turned the beam strength setting up as far as it would go. The look in his eyes was penetrating.
We’re on my territory now. I know you like to save lives, but this is no game and we take no prisoners.
I nodded, feeling sick, determined to fire over people’s heads unless there was no other option.
He held my arm. “Please, Cory. Don’t be stubborn about this. Anyone you don’t kill is likely to kill us. Promise me you will play by our rules.”
Coldi rules. Kill your opponents before they can kill you.
I nodded. Sweat was pouring down my face. Outside, both suns had cleared the horizon and the light was no longer filtered by the low-hanging haze. A piercing beam of light shone into the window.
“Can you hear anything?” Nicha asked.
“I’m not getting a feed,” Thayu said. “Something is blocking the local network feed.”
“Taysha,” Nicha said, his expression grim.
“Probably.”
“I still got infra red,” Nicha said. He was looking at his comm. “Whoa, someone coming.”
There were footsteps and someone peeked around the corner.
Like a finely-tuned bundle of nerves, Thayu fired. A sizzling beam of light shot through the corridor and made contact. The figure exploded in a ball of flame, and fell down, still burning.
Raanu squeaked and sheltered her head with her arms.
I pulled her against me, so that she didn’t have to look at the burning body on the ground.
Smoke drifted into our section of the corridor. I wanted to avoid breathing the sickening air, but I had to preserve my coolant for when I really needed it.
Shit.
How did she even know that this person was hostile? It could have been one of the domestic staff.
“What if he was alone?”
“He wasn’t.” She showed me the screen of her infrared visor, with a couple of light spots in the lift foyer. Coldi rarely were alone in any case.
There were also a bunch of spots in front of the hub door.
“Who are those?”
“Guards loyal to Ezhya.”
There were at least ten of them.
“I’ve got control of the drone again. It’s finished repairing,” Nicha said.
“Have you got a visual feed?” Thayu asked.
“I do. Not a very good one, but possibly informative.”
“Check out these guys.” Thayu showed him the screen.
Nicha sent the drone ahead into the corridor. It trundled off quietly, lights blinking. It disappeared from view.
For long moments, nothing happened. Thayu kept her gun trained at the t-intersection. Raanu clung onto my suit. I watched Nicha, his expression one of concentration.
The light outside grew brighter.
Something moved at the window. A thin metal rod rose over the wrecked remains of the security grille.
“Nich’.” I jerked my head at the window.
He glanced over his shoulder.
The rod grew longer and was joined by another one, this one bent with a camera attached to the end. Then came the edge of a metal plate and a dull red window.
It was one of the wall-crawling drones. I should have known that it would come, and we couldn’t even close the window since Thayu had done an even more impressive job demolishing it than Sheydu had.
“Stand still,” Nicha said.
Raanu gave a small squeak and jammed herself between the wall and my back.
The thing crested the windowsill and crawled down to the floor. The wheels whirred. The arms at the front probed and tasted. Slowly, it made its way towards us.
Shit. Now we were under siege from both sides.
Unless . . .
Veyada had given me the code. Could it be controlled through the feeder?
I checked my comm for the number that Veyada had sent me, and pushed off from the wall. The drone stopped. A few lights blinked on its “head” and along the legs. I held the gun in my hand in case things went wrong.
The blue beam tracked over me. Then the dull red window said Input code.
Slowly and clearly, I read out the numbers. “Six, nine, four, twelve, two, seven.”
I waited.
It blinked. The red window pulsed with light while it digested my reply.
Then: a yellow light.
Phew.
Maybe it made a difference that I wasn’t wearing a helmet.
Thayu had been watching me, and lowered the gun she’d held pointed at the drone.
“Watch out,” she said, jerking her head.
The other drone had come back around the corner. It turned slowly. Lights blinked on the side facing us—
—and it stayed there, blinking, not doing anything.
“What the hell is it doing?” Thayu asked.
“It didn’t find anyone live, although there are a bunch of bodies in the foyer,” Nicha said. He brought his hand to his temple. “It wants to know what to do next.”
Thayu frowned at us. “Bodies? The people we just saw?”
“I don’t know. Seems unlikely, or they would have shown up on the infra red.”
While they were still warm. I shuddered.
“Then where did those people go?”
Nicha shrugged.
“Damn it. What the hell is going on?”
“Looks like we’ve walked into a stand-off in progress.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’d like to go into the hub,” Thayu said.
I said, “Why don’t we send this drone ahead as decoy? It can spring any traps that the disappearing guards have set.”
“The hub is only around the corner. I’ll be much happier to send it from there.”
“Our task is to defend it. Not necessarily to get in. Will the guards let us in? As far as I know, Ezhya’s command key is still in control.”
Thayu spread her hands in an Are you trying to do my job? way.
“He’s right,” Nicha said.
Thayu rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “I want to get into the hub, because the hub is defensible, because it has only one door. This corridor is as defensible as fuck.”
I said, “You’re right about that, too, but those people we saw will be waiting for us to do something stupid.”
“No, they’re waiting for—”
“Thay’, have a look at this.” Nicha handed her his comm. She glanced at the screen.
“Shit.”
“What?” I looked over her shoulder. The screen on the comm showed an infrared scan of a huge group of people coming up a set of stairs somewhere else in the building, walking in the classic association formation.
“That’s our father on his way up here. He must have heard that Taysha’s people got past the guards.”
And no doubt Asha Domiri wasn’t coming up here to defend Ezhya’s position. This was a grab for power from both men.
“Do you know where Taysha is?” I asked.
“I guess we’ll find out soon. There will be a lot of fireworks.”
Up until now I had thought that neither Thayu nor Nicha were terribly emotionally attached to their father. But Thayu’s wide-eyed expression sent a chill through me.
“We can . . . help him, if you think—”
“He would never accept that.” Too curt, too snappy.
“But we . . .” I let it rest. She was right, he would never accept offered help and moreover, it would make me look like a foreign idiot.
Then what was the best thing for us to do?
Hope that we could get past the guards and shelter from the coming firefight until the victor came into the hub? Try to convince that person that supporting Ezhya would be best?
Like that would ever work.
It might also mean we’d have to confront Asha Domiri if he managed to get past Taysha. And neither Thayu nor Nicha would have the strength to do that.
Damn.
If I tried to stop him, would he kill me?
Or his children?
I didn’t think so, or at least I hoped not, but that was just wishful thinking, because I had no idea if the Coldi instinct to occupy a vacant higher position was stronger than family ties.
He certainly wouldn’t have any hesitation about me.
Was I meant to come out of this alive?
My very human instincts screamed at me to get out of here. We shouldn’t have come. There was only so much a non-Coldi person could meddle in Coldi hierarchy. I endangered not only Thayu and Nicha, but Raanu as well.
Thayu’s instinct clearly told her to find a safe place and bunker down, because the upcoming showdown was going to roll on like a freight train and our presence would not make one iota of difference. She was right, this corridor was as exposed as fuck.
But it was too late to withdraw.
We waited.
Nerves made me shiver.
Thayu stood against the wall, holding her gun raised at the t-intersection. The drone still sat in the middle of the intersection, lights blinking as if waiting for some sort of input.
I guess the tumble into the window had done more damage than at first apparent.
The smaller wall-crawling drone had come to a halt next to me. I could send it out into the lif
t foyer so that I could see what was happening, if anything started happening.
I sent a command through my feeder and it jumped backwards, banging into the wall.
Crap.
“Shh,” Thayu said.
I wiped my face, slick with sweat. “I want to make use of this thing.”
“You’ll need better control.”
Probably, but I could also do something else with it. A seed of an idea was forming. These people liked fireworks, huh? I’d give them fireworks.
I closed the drone’s connection via one feeder and tried the other feeder. It returned a more detailed control menu. Clearly one of the feeders was more suited to this task. I had never been aware that there were different types of feeders. Any I’d used had always been the same.
I sent the drone moving slowly towards me. Raanu whimpered, hiding behind my back.
In my pocket, I found the explosive pad that Sheydu had given to me. I unwrapped the cover, crawled to my knees and stuck the pad on the underside of the drone’s belly. It was soft and squishy, fluid in a clear membrane. I ripped open the bag with the detonator, pulled off the backing and stuck it onto the squishy membrane. The outer cover of the wires was sticky, and I pulled them along the drone’s belly so that the antenna stuck out from underneath.
There.
I sat back. Nicha nodded.
His feeder probably picked up my intentions, never mind that my feeder input was all messed up. It would probably be better if I removed one of the feeders, but I didn’t dare to because I needed to keep in contact with the drone. And Ezhya, if he arrived in the building.
I’m going to send it in there. I pointed to the t-intersection.
Neither Nicha nor Thayu objected.
While the drone trundled through the corridor, I worked out how to get a visual link from it.
It turned the corner, past the burnt body and went towards the lift foyer, which was, as Nicha had established, deserted except for a couple of blackened bodies that weren’t going anywhere.
I focused on the closest one. This guard lay facing away from the drone. The top half of the body was blackened—but the temperature suit still intact. The remains of a red sash lay on the floor behind the guard’s back.
One of Ezhya’s guards.