"Hello 875," came the ambulance controller's voice over the cockpit speakers, "we read that you have altered course, please explain. "
Sandy ignored it, uplinking instead to the Prasad Tower's presence on the network, studying its layout, its security features, its occupation demographics. The tower's top levels were occupied by a VIP parking bay, beneath the rooftop landing pads for flyers and other larger airborne vehicles. A query light blinked upon the ambulance's com system. Another pressed upon her inner consciousness, her uplink software immediately tracing its origin back to somewhere within the CSA. She ignored that too. Lights blinked upon Prasad Tower's landing pads, the occasional vehicle arriving or leaving from the parking bay beneath ... early evening traffic, late workers headed home. About half of the tower's massive glass sides were illuminated from within.
Her monitoring software informed her of nearby government vehicle trajectories altering toward her. She counted four. The nearest was less than a minute away. The tower's landing control had her slotted now, the windshield display rectangles stretching ahead to match up with the broad opening in the tower's side. Sandy began the landing cycle, automated systems deploying wheels, repulsor engines throbbing as their velocity slowed ... and then the ambulance passed into a floodlit cavern of ferrocrete, the landing systems directing the vehicle to a yellow-striped temporary park beside the main conveyer belt park, as was procedure for emergency vehicles. Wheels touched and she shut down the engines, ducked under the unfolding side door, and out into the echoing, gusty bay. She realised she was still wearing her CDF uniform, and hastily unbuttoned the jacket, tossing it onto the passenger seat.
She ran swiftly toward the through-passage ahead as another cruiser came in for a landing behind, its lights blazing her running shadow large upon the opposing wall. Then into the broad ferrocrete passage, hearing the clank and hum of the parking bay mechanism echoing through the walls above the throbbing whine of aircars. Her uplinks informed her that the next cruiser approaching the entrance bay was an official, black-flagged government vehicle, the exact identity of which remained ominously blank despite her probes.
The passage opened onto the exit apron on the other side of the building. A number of people were waiting on the raised footpath alongside the vehicle conveyer belt, finding their transport waiting in line, nose to tail. A pedestrian crossing light blinked red, advising her not to cross the apron ... Sandy ignored it, ducking and running past the departing end of a cruiser that lifted from the conveyer belt, hovering its way toward the exit. The repulsor field prickled her skin and made hair stand on end as she ran onto the pedestrian platform, and up the adjoining rampway that descended to the occupied, working floors below. It was a long platform, and she had barely started down it when a pair of dark-uniformed security guards appeared at the far end, stopped, and stared at her.
Sandy swore, reversed course and ran back up the ramp, shoving past several surprised suits as she did a U-turn and ran back along the line of office workers waiting for their cars. People stared at her as she passed, ducking several times as people moved to their vehicles on the conveyor belt, doors gull-winging upwards to let them in. The additional commotion in her wake told her that the two security guards were after her at speed. The waiting platform ended, and Sandy leaped down onto the conveyor belt, past the front of one emerging cruiser, then into the dark, mechanical cavern within. Above the entrance, clearly written in bright, red letters were the words: DANGER! MACHINERY IN OPERATION. DO NOT ENTER.
There was no room on the conveyor to squeeze past the next cruiser, so Sandy ran over the top of it, ducking beneath the low overhead as she did. Her vision spectrum-flashed on combat mode, making out the descending platforms ahead that loaded the cruisers onto the conveyor, and the various laser measurement beams that criss-crossed the passage, monitoring the position of all objects moving within. The next platform descended into the unloading mouth, a sleek, expensive cruiser resting within. The mechanism clanged to a stop as she approached, walking to hold a steady place upon the conveyor, and glancing back to see if the security guards were following. And restrained a faint smile to see the two guards waiting until the last cruiser had cleared the conveyor mouth before entering, so as not to stomp bootprints over its shiny windshield. But then, she pondered, private security were locally employed, and would have to answer to some stiff-necked suit in management for such infringements.
Another mechanism whined, and the cruiser on the lift platform rolled gently forward, comfortably matching velocity with the conveyor belt. Sandy walked up on the bonnet of that one too, rolling gently over the roof, then hurdling the rear field generators with one hand. Behind, the two security men edged past the tail of the previous cruiser and came running up the conveyor belt toward her. Sandy stepped onto the empty aircar cradle just as it thumped into motion once more, descending to allow the next cruiser above to slot into place. The two security guards arrived too late, and she spared them a sardonic wave. From the astonished looks on their faces, she reckoned they recognised her-no surprise that, there weren't many people in Tanusha who didn't these days.
"Ma'am?" one of them shouted to her above the whining mechanism. "Ma'am, what the hell's going on?" Then the platform descended into total blackness. Even past the deadening calm of combatreflex, she was touched. "Ma'am," he'd called her-an anachronistic expression that had somehow lingered in Tanusha when it had long since died on other Federation worlds.
The platform then emerged into the main storage facility of the parking level, and moved sideways along its tracks. The tail ends of aircars were passing, each locked into a storage cradle. Sandy peered into the dull machine-light, eyes adjusting to the gloom of a totally automated environment where human sight was not required. The entire broad space, comprising perhaps three standard building storeys and all the space to the opposing wall, was storage racks for aircars. The huge space, echoing with shrill mechanical whines and clanks, was spanned by a series of vertical racks, like those slotted into an oldfashioned beehive. Along each of these racks were a series of vertical mechanisms-a chain of aircar cradles that rotated when one of its occupants was loaded or unloaded, cruisers descending on one side, and ascending on the other. At the very top, a cruiser would be deposited onto separate platforms that ran along the length of the racks.
Even as Sandy pondered the design, her own sideways-moving platform slowed to a halt, locking into place. There, a cruiser was waiting, its owner having called it up. The separate, twin conveyors upon which the cruiser's tyres rested began to move in unison with those on Sandy's platform. Sandy climbed onto the advancing bonnet of the aircar, rolled across its roof, and dropped onto the carrier platform atop the main storage rack. Its cruiser unloaded, the carrier platform took off along its railings, building shortly to a considerable velocity.
Ahead, Sandy saw several rotary chains in motion, and fell flat as the platform whizzed beneath several cruisers being rotated directly overhead, with a clearance of barely half a metre. It whined to a halt, in line with a new rotary chain that cranked empty cradles up one side, overhead, and then down the other ... Sandy got up, crouching, and glanced around. Along this railing, her present platform only went halfway-at the other end another platform trundled away from her to the far wall, laden with another cruiser. She spared a glance down at the tracks themselves-they were just side rails housing magnetic runners. Directly beneath was empty space, a straight drop of three storeys.
Abruptly, the lights came on, a massive, staggered flickering of several hundred fluoros that darted randomly across the broad ceiling. The next cradle in her platform's chain was laden, the cradle's mechanical arms holding a cruiser in a careful grip, moving sideways now and threatening to push her off the platform. Sandy leaped, and grasped the empty cradle arms of the next chain along, swinging above empty space. Hearing at maximum enhancement, she could hear voices above the crashing, whining mechanical echoes. Location was difficult, but she figured they were looking fo
r her. The floor would be an obvious location. And the walls. Which meant that the best way to stay out of sight ...
She swung gently forward, and dropped between three sets of empty cradle arms to land on a cruiser's roof. From there, another cruiser was directly in line, and she leaped to that one, then through a gap between two more. The next chain along was moving down and so she waited until the next occupied cradle came level, and leaped gently onto that rooftop. A fast glance ahead at the approaching side wall showed a maintenance walkway halfway up, with a security guard moving slowly along, peering intently. At this angle, she was exposed, and flattened herself spread-eagled to the cruiser's smooth rooftop, unwilling to move as the rotary chain took her toward the ferrocrete floor. Her cradle reached the bottom of the rack, went sideways one car-width, and stopped.
Sandy nearly swore. To one side now, close enough to be heard above the echoing racket of machinery, came the sound of boots on ferrocrete. The cruiser she was lying on was now suspended barely a metre off the ground, which put her rooftop at barely two and a half. To her left, then, she could see the security guard's head, looking one way and then the other as he made careful progress up the aisle between racks, gazing up at the towering, tight-packed aircar berths above. Damn it, if he turned around at just the wrong moment, and looked at just the right place ...
An overhead whine made her look up. Directly beneath the giant, three-storey rack, she could now stare straight up the inside, between ascending and descending walls of occupied and empty cradles. And directly overhead ran the central platform, headed now back to the wall with a newly loaded cruiser bound for downstairs. In three seconds it would pass directly overhead. Three storeys ...
Swiftly and silently, she swung her feet beneath her, achieved firm purchase atop the cruiser's roof, and assumed a tight, bunching crouch. Leg muscles at optimum, Sandy fixed her eyes directly on the underside of the platform, and snapped her legs straight with a controlled release of accumulated tension. She shot straight upward between the two walls of aircars, and found she was approaching too fast. Twisted in mid-air to get a knee up as well, and hit the underside of the moving platform with a hard thud, hands grasping at the rim of an underside crossbeam, then swinging freely beneath as the platform continued upon its way toward the far wall. Leaping upwards was always an imprecise art, even for a GI. Particularly having been pumped full of drugs the names and effects of which she did not know ... it was easy to miscalculate the degree of muscular tension required to rendezvous with a singular point in space precisely. Although she figured her limit to be about six storeys. Theoretically, she had enough power in her legs to leap high enough to catch low-flying aircraft, if she could hit them. Midaltitude flying aircraft, even-her own body weight was insignificant beside the potential energy in the quantity of synth-alloy-myomer she had in her thighs and calves. But the physics of leverage meant that whatever their power, her legs were simply too short to impart the required velocity on her body to clear higher than thirty or forty metres.
After all, she reckoned with a faint, ironic smile as she hung beneath the advancing platform, structurally, at least, she was only human.
The platform stopped at the wall where the adjoining platforms ran sideways, and began transferring that cruiser on board. To her left as she hung, Sandy could see directly along the midlevel engineering walkway, and several security guards gazing out over the cluttered scene. The nearest was not more than six metres away. She hand-overhanded her way to the side of the platform furthest from him, and quickly hauled herself up. She stayed flat, and rolled under the cruiser on its new platform, peering out between its wheels as the new platform took off sideways, then began descending again toward the ferrocrete floor. Again the descent took her within a few metres of another security guard at floor level, then blackness.
Finally the platform thumped to a halt, light now spilling in from the other end, and the cruiser moved forward onto the final conveyor belt, and its waiting owner in the parking bay beyond. Sandy simply crawled forward, keeping the cruiser above her, and lay flat upon the conveyor belt as it passed out of the ferrocrete passage and into the harsh-lit bay beyond. She could see no security guards or suspiciously waiting suits, just the usual row of commuters waiting on the platform beside the conveyor for their rides to arrive. A further uplink scan of the Prasad Tower vicinity showed her a state of yellow security alert, several orbiting aircars and some seriously encrypted transmission traffic from various unidentifiable sources.
The conveyor belt was segmented, of course, and her own segment cruised up behind two more aircars ahead into which passengers were currently climbing. Sandy performed a quick roll beneath the aircar ahead, hearing and feeling the throbbing whine overhead, and the prickling sensation through her hair ... the repulsor field wasn't supposed to be dangerous, but then they'd said that often enough about a lot of supposedly safe, advanced technology over the centuries. She rolled to alongside the raised commuter platform, and ducked onward at a low run. Those waiting all appeared to be gazing in the other direction, waiting for their vehicles to emerge along the conveyor, and no one seemed to notice her sudden appearance.
Sandy ran straight for the exit ... if she was lucky, one of the government suits would have left his cruiser at an emergency parking bay, all ready to be digitally hotwired. If she was really lucky, maybe a CSA cruiser-she still had plenty of CSA codes available, and knew numerous ways into that network undetected. A commuter cruiser took off past her with a throbbing, low pitched howl, headed for the broad, rectangular opening that led to open air, nearly half a kilometre straight up. On the painted stripes beneath one side wall, Sandy saw there was indeed a government cruiser sitting, and ran to its door.
"Commander!"
She spun, and found a man in a dark CSA suit just ten metres behind, pistol in hand. Anil Chandaram, a familiar enough face around Investigations. One of their seniors, in fact. He was frowning at her now, with no small degree of puzzlement, a gusting warm wind tossing at his hair, his suit jacket billowing out behind him. "Commander ... what the hell are you doing? Who are you running from? I'm your friend!"
Past the deadening combat-reflex, Sandy found herself biting back a curse. Well, it had been a good try. And she had to try, if she wanted to live beyond the next couple of days. Something on the Tower schematic caught her mental eye. Multiple express elevator shafts, running straight up and down to one side of the opening outside. Another cruiser throbbed past, accelerating slowly toward the opening, running lights flashing off the walls.
"Anil!" she shouted above the noise. "Don't follow me! They'll say I've gone nuts! I haven't, I'm entirely sane and I know exactly what I'm doing! Tell them that! Look into my eyes now, and then you tell them that, when you see them."
Chandaram stared at her, orange running lights flashing across his handsome brown face, frowning disconcertedly.
"Commander, I don't ..."
Sandy turned and ran, straight for the exit. For a brief moment, the vast expanse of nighttime Tanusha sprawled before her, a carpet of multicoloured lights and towers, the horizon stained a brilliant orange against the black of the sky, and below, the clustered surrounding towers that stretched up the flanks of the soaring Prasad Tower ... the lip of the exit arrived, and she leaped, straight off the edge.
In that time-slowed moment, the first thought that came was how amazingly beautiful it was-the maze of streets between towers below, brilliantly lit with neon and traffic. Then the tower's side began rushing past, and the wind began tearing at her face and clothes, and she realised that even a GI, and particularly one with long-standing, deep-seated structural damage like her, was going to get hurt hitting the ground at terminal velocity. The express elevators ran down the side of the building to her left ... she folded her arms back, and leaned toward that direction as the roaring wind grew to a deafening gale, and the tower side began rushing past at truly alarming velocity.
One elevator car was rushing by even now, too
close, and she went hurtling past it, angling her trajectory to come in closer to the speeding tower wall. The second was descending below-they went from top storey to bottom at over a hundred kilometres per hour, she knew, and were something of an attraction for joyriders who enjoyed the half-gravity sensation on the way down. But now it was getting close alarmingly fast. As was the ground.
She spread-eagled, catching as much of the wind as she could with her arms and legs, trailing the fingertips of her left hand along the wall at over three hundred kilometres per hour and feeling the burning friction. An updraft almost threw her balance at the last moment, but she steadied with a plunging lurch like a falling leaf, and crashed onto the dome-top of the racing elevator with an almighty bang! as her hands caught hold and her skull smacked a melon-sized crater in the glass. Within the elevator, about twelve passengers yelped and leaped, staring upwards in fright. Her left, cast-bound hand slipped, and for a moment she dangled right-handed from her fingerhold on the upper frame. Still the wind roared, but without the previous intensity, as the descending capsule overtook several slower elevators on the parallel lanes. Sandy gave a calculated heave with her right arm, throwing herself upward and spinning about so as to seat herself atop the hurtling car, and gazed down at the broad, paved thoroughfare that led to the atrium entrance below. To her left, beyond the edge of that paving, were lush green gardens, split by footpaths and park benches.
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