by Paul Barrett
“How are you going to handle it?” Gerard asked.
Staring down at it from her position on the wall, Laura considered her options. She didn’t want to shoot it. Even at this range, a shot could go astray and not kill it instantly. An unexpected bark or yelp of pain from the animal would cause trouble. She also had no idea where to shoot it. Logic dictated its brain would be located in its large, hairless head, but she had seen creatures before that defied logic.
“I’ll have to neuralize it and hope it works,” she answered. The neutralizer ran through the entire body instantly and fried nerve endings. Quick and hopefully, quiet. Hopefully.
“Good luck,” Gerard said. “Who has a bead on it?”
“I do,” Ashron said, “although I have no idea where to shoot it.”
Laura couldn’t help but smile as she attached a cable to the top of the wall and prepared to lower herself to the trosh.
“Aim for the chest,” Hawk said. “I read they have a large heart and a small, sturdy ribcage. That cannon of yours should take care of it if it comes to that.”
Laura fervently hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She hung upside down and descended the titanium fiber wire like a spider on its thread. Good luck had the creature staring into the courtyard with its small, rounded ears laid back. As she drew closer, she caught the animal’s odor. It reminded her of a horse that has worked up a good lather; unpleasant but reassuring in its earthiness. Not at all the scent she expected from such an ugly beast. The smell also told her she was downwind, another piece of fortune.
She came within striking distance. If the trosh turned now, she would have almost no chance to escape before it attacked or raised the alarm. She pulled the neuralizer from her pocket with exaggerated care. With equal caution, she extended the weapon. Once it touched the animal’s back, she discharged it. The trosh unceremoniously collapsed in a dead heap. Its slimy yellow tongue flopped from its mouth and thumped against the ground.
“Good work,” Hawk said. Laura flipped over and placed her feet on the ground.
As she paused to let the blood drain from her head and get Gerard’s assessment of her surroundings, she scanned the compound. Two guards stood nearby, highlighted by the dim light from Kalatos Three’s silver moon. Floodlights beamed down the wall at irregular intervals.
“Clear,” Gerard said. “Nothing unusual in any spectrum. No nearby alarms or traps.”
“Roger,” she said. “Keep an eye out for more critters.”
“Roger.”
Laura slid from shadow to shadow until she reached the stone wall of the house, fifteen meters from the outer wall.
“Off sight,” Ashron said, letting her know he no longer tracked her visually.
“I’m on,” Tasha affirmed. She now covered Laura’s approach, ready to aid with well-placed firepower.
Laura glided along the inner wall until she reached the back corner, keeping herself in Tasha’s visual field. She put a hand on either side of the corner and concentrated. With a deep breath, she began to climb, pressing the ciliaside gloves and shoes against the house’s rough surface.
She reached the second floor and moved horizontally, shoving her feet into the tiny mortar crevices. Even with no ledge to use, she moved quickly, seeking to reduce her exposure time on the sheer surface. It had to be her imagination, but she could feel the eyes of a guard staring at her, trying to determine if the movement on the wall was shifting shadows or a camouflaged intruder. Though her suit chemically adapted to the patterns of her surroundings, it wasn’t perfect. An alert observer could notice discrepancies. Sweat born of tension and exertion trickled down her back. After five meters she reached her destination and stopped. “Anything?” she whispered
There was a pause as Gerard checked his monitors. “Nothing.”
Laura pulled out a black box, no bigger than a sugar cube, and set it against the window. It vibrated for half a second, sending receptor waves through the room. While she waited for Gerard to analyze the data, Laura shifted position to keep her rapidly tiring leg muscles from cramping.
“Looks good,” Gerard said. “The window is real glass, and the room has no photosensitive receptors on any spectrum.”
Putting the alarm detector away, Laura pulled out a small plastic vial with a mist applicator and sprayed some of Gerard’s special concoction on the top panes. The glass bubbled, turned to liquid, and ran down the window. As the liquid touched the other panes, they too bubbled and turned liquid. When the last of the glass melted away and ran down the wall, Laura used a mirror and then one of Gerard’s cameras to check the inside of the window for any triggering devices. Finding none, she removed the windowpane framing and attached it to the wall with a small glob of adhesive. Slowly, very slowly, she slid into the open window.
She found herself in a well-decorated study full of dark paneling, darker furniture, and ornate curtains. All of it spoke of money and vanity. A large holo-painting of a fearful-looking gray-haired man with domineering eyes towered over the faux fireplace. A placard on the spiral gold frame read, “In memory of my loving father.” Laura thought the man in the painting wouldn’t know the meaning of love.
The room had two doors. Laura knew from the plans she had studied that she wanted the closer one. The one across the room led to a hallway, but the one on the left-hand wall hid Salakon’s office.
Fearing pressure sensitive alarms, which the trap detector could not find, she swung around and clung to the wall, avoiding the floor. She pulled the interior window frame back into place with one hand and secured it with the gelatinous glob. She couldn’t do anything about the melted glass. She had to hope the frame would serve for a casual inspection from outside.
She crept along the wall, no mean feat considering most walls were cluttered with ornaments and not designed to be walked on. This one was no exception. She also had to apply more pressure to get the ciliaside material to dig into the smoother surface.
“Hold,” Gerard said. “I hear something. Switching to enhanced x-ray.”
She froze on the wall and heard a noise behind her, in the hallway.
After a second, Gerard said, “Guard making his rounds. He’s moving on; give him a moment, and he’ll be out of range.”
Motionless, Laura waited for Gerard’s signal. Her muscles throbbed like overwound guitar strings, and her breathing had quickened. She didn’t know how much longer she could fight against gravity and fatigue.
Suddenly, her cramping muscles loosened, her body cooled, and her breathing turned even and easy. She felt as if she had just emerged from a cooling shower.
“Your vitals were getting ragged,” Gerard said.
Laura nodded, knowing Gerard would see the motion in the monitors. She didn’t like using boosters since she knew too much about the long-term damage they caused. She accepted this as a unique situation. Better to allow future harm than invite immediate disaster.
“He’s clear,” Gerard said. “Go.”
She continued inching on the left-hand wall, slid around a short green flowerpot, and reached the door. After going through the usual checks and scans, she reached down and tried the doorknob. Locked. Damn. Oh, well, it was worth a try.
She pulled out her lockpick set, chose the appropriate pick, and went to work on the door. She didn’t consider picking with one hand while clinging to a wall an ideal situation, and knew she wouldn’t have been able to achieve it without the enhancement coursing through her blood. She soon heard the click of tumblers falling into place. Smiling, she secured her pick and reached for the knob. She stopped short. What’s wrong with this picture?
Not finding an answer, she quietly posed the question to Gerard.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but my ‘hunch’ went off. Something’s not right, and I can’t place it.”
Hawk’s voice slipped in. “No alarms.”
“You’re right,” Gerard said. “There hasn’t been a single one yet, has there?”
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“And not for lack of looking,” Hawk said.
“Do we call the mission?” Gerard asked.
“Your choice, Laura,” Hawk said.
She considered the options. They should have spotted some alarm, even a simple motion detector, by now. The lack of any interior security meant one of two things: either they expected someone to break in and planned to spring a trap, or Salakon felt confident that the walls, guards, troshes, and tanks on the grounds would dissuade any intruders.
She could go back and forth with the pros and cons all night with her only accomplishment being to make herself paranoid. “We’ve gone too far to back out now. I’m continuing”
“Affirmative,” Gerard said.
Laura studied the door. Taking a calculated risk, she stepped down in front of the doorway. No alarms or traps went off. She crouched, reached for the knob, turned it, pushed the door open, and did a quick scan.
“Looks clear,” Gerard said.
She slipped inside the office, which she found decorated much like the study. Warm colors permeated the room, soft browns and muted reds. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with paper books, a true sign of wealth. Several thickly-cushioned chairs were placed strategically throughout the room. The air smelled of exotic cigars and strong cognac, another ostentatious sign of affluence. The russet carpet, though worn and well used, was made of a very expensive weave. Several statues and objects d’art adorned the chamber. A fist-sized silver globe rested on a pedestal in one corner, providing illumination. It lit the room in a subdued fashion, even though the sphere itself seemed to have no light coming directly from it. Laura found something disconcerting about its glimmering, dark surface. After a moment’s glance, she turned away.
A large wooden desk dominated one end of the office. Laura glided to it and searched it for anything out of the ordinary. Finding nothing unusual, she pushed the chair aside and discovered her target underneath the desk. A thin cable ran down from the desktop computer to a hole in the floor. Most systems were wireless and used encrypted digital radio waves to send their information and code. Those signals could be intercepted and deciphered with special surveillance equipment. People concerned about that sort of thing used wire since intercepting them required a physical splice in the cable.
Laura pulled out a small black strip of “tape” coated with thin metal pins and a transmitter. She applied it to the cable, splicing into the signal. Mission accomplished. It almost felt anti-climatic after so much effort to get in here. She started to stand up.
“Look…” was all she heard Gerard say before everything went black.
“…out” Gerard yelled into the microphone, knowing even as he said it that he was too late. The world viewed through the monitors tilted crazily as Laura fell back underneath the desk.
“Laura’s down,” Gerard said, his voice even but urgent. “Go.” He was surprised Hawk hadn’t already launched Ship.
“She’s not dead,” Hawk said.
Gerard glanced at the display of vital signs and saw Hawk was right. The indications all showed she was merely unconscious.
“So what?” Trey said in a tight voice. “She’s in trouble.”
“She’s not in trouble yet,” Hawk said, trying to project calm over the speakers. “If we go charging in without knowing what’s happened, then she will be in trouble. We need to be calm and wait.”
“What’s that?” Trey asked. One of the monitors had gone dark, its source camera smashed. Another monitor showed a small silver globe floating in the air.
“That’s what hit Laura,” Gerard told him. “I have no idea what it is.”
As Gerard talked, the globe floated back to its pedestal and settled down, again throwing its strangely muted glow across the room.
A second later, Gerard heard a sound in the room. He touched a few buttons on the panel and increased the sensitivity of the external microphones. Another control sent the audio to Ship’s speakers.
The soft tread of someone walking across the carpet, followed by the heavier steps of several people. One camera caught the bottom of a shoe as a person stopped next to Laura. A hand came into view, and the world moved rapidly as Laura was pulled from under the desk. A face came into the cameras’ view.
Moran.
Only two monitors showed anything, which meant that Laura was lying on her stomach. Gerard frantically worked the controls, trying to get a better view of the entire room. They could hear voices. One of the monitors soon revealed Salakon, the head of Unicybertronic, flanked by several armed guards. The image shifted as Laura was rolled onto her back. Moran’s expression changed to one of maniacal delight, and he let out a victorious laugh.
Salakon’s gray eyebrows shot up. “What have you got?”
Moran reached down and unceremoniously snatched the headset off of Laura. He held it up close to his face and grinned. “You lose.”
The monitors went blank as he dropped the unit and crushed it under his boot.
“Son of a bitch!” Hawk’s voice reverberated through Ship’s passageways. Footsteps echoed as he came down the ladder from the bridge and stormed into the Operations room. He stopped beside Gerard. Punching the panel with a finger, he said, “T.L. to Hawkeye one and two. If you haven’t already, get the hell out of there.”
“Roger,” Ashron said.
“Roger,” Tasha echoed.
Hawk kicked a nearby chair, sending it rolling across the deck. “Dammit!”
Plopping down in another chair, he leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “Damn,” he said softly.
Trey looked over at Wolf, who sank back in his chair with his arms folded across his broad chest, square face devoid of any readable emotion. Trey turned his attention to Gerard, who seemed to have lost focus and looked at the dark monitors with a blank stare. The expression of defeat on Gerard’s pale face scared Trey.
He was about to speak when Hawk jumped out of his chair.
“Okay,” Hawk said, drawing everybody’s gaze. “Ship, did we get it?”
“Yes, Captain, everything. It’s very interesting.”
“What we expected?”
“And then some.”
“Zip it and ship it. Firefall priority.”
“As we speak,” Ship said.
“Good girl.” Hawk hit the microphone button, then took his finger from the panel. “Not a good idea. Gerard, how far?”
Gerard spoke an equation as the fingers moved on his gold arm. He closed his eyes for a few seconds. “They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“Good. I’ll be in my cabin.” Hawk started for the hatch.
The other three glanced at each other and then Gerard said, “What’s the plan?”
Hawk turned back. “We wait.”
Unable to contain himself, Trey said, “Wait? How can we just wait while he’s got Laura? He might hurt her.” His throat and face hitched as he held back tears.
Hawk crossed the room and knelt in front of Trey. “What else can we do?” he asked gently. “The next move is Moran’s. He’s not going to do anything to harm Laura. We have something he wants, and he’s going to use Laura as a bargaining chip. She’s safe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Hawk assured him, “because Moran knows if he hurts Laura, two things will happen. He won’t get Ship, and we’ll spend the rest of our days hunting him down.”
Trey struggled to accept that, and as he did, something else occurred to him. “We’re going to wait here?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t they be searching for us?”
“Of course, but this is one of the last places they would expect us to be. Plus, we have the new paint job. And if they get too close, Gerard can manipulate us into invisibility.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gerard said.
“I have faith in both you and Moran. He’ll organize a half-hearted search which will look for us in all the places he would hide, and he’ll contact us by noon tomorrow.”
“How will he contact us if he doesn’t know where we are?” Trey asked.
“Laura’s headset.”
“I thought he crushed it.”
“He did,” Gerard said, taking over for Hawk. “It’s a simple enough matter to take apart the transmitter and get the frequency we were using. All he has to do then is broadcast. He knows we’ll be listening.”
“He could also contact us through Laura herself,” Hawk said, “if he realizes she has an implant.”
“Oh,” Trey said. He hated doing nothing but realized there was nothing he could do.
“Ship, I’ll be in my quarters. Let me know when Tasha and Ashron arrive.”
Moran pointed to two of the guards standing beside Salakon. “Tie her to that chair,” he said, indicating a sturdy armchair sitting against the far wall.
The two soldiers snagged Laura and tossed her into the seat. They glanced at each other and then quickly scanned the room.
“What?” Moran asked, noticing their confusion.
“There’s nothing to tie her with,” one of them said.
“Check the pockets on her jumper. She’ll have something you’ll be able to use.”
One of the men found the black disc attached to her wrist that held her titanium fiber cord. He yanked the disc off and used the cable to bind her arms and legs to the chair. The other started to tear off a strip of cloth from her jumper sleeve.
What are you doing?” Moran asked.
“I was going to use it as a gag,” the guard answered.
“Don’t. I want to talk to her.”
Nodding, the guards moved back and rejoined their comrades.
Moran strolled over to a small recessed bar and poured himself a three finger shot of Parathian Brandy. Downing about half, he walked back over to Laura’s inert form and threw the rest in her face.
Laura sputtered and shook her head. With a gasp she squeezed her eyes shut as the liquid burned into her orbs, the acrid liquor searing in its intensity.
“So sorry,” Moran said in mock sympathy. “I imagine that stings a bit.”