The Centauri Conspiracy

by G Russell Peterman

Chapter Sixteen

  Night attack

  The elevator door opens on Bakman’s floor early in the morning an hour before work while Duffy and Dee sit on the couch talking. They paused and looked up. In the open elevator doorway Breen and Morgana stood.

  "Did you sleep well?" Breen asks from open door.

  Beside Breen is orange-haired Morgana wearing rose-colored makeup, a bright red and lime-yellow flowered tunic on her barrel shape, and carrying a black Zee-like purse.

  "Yes. Why?" Bakman replies with a smile at Morgana’s costume and wondered about the purse.

  "An intruder, an assassin, tried last night to ride a small single-person hover across to the roof of this building. Sensors picked her up halfway. We always keep one person and two mechanicals on guard on top. Morgana was filling in on guard duty for a sick friend. When a female intruder landed, they disabled the hover with a laser cut. Our intruder refused to surrender, fired on the guard detail, and died. The assassin wore the same clothing, a black hooded tunic, and carried the same poison dart weapon as before”

  Breen pauses for any questions, but hearing none charges ahead. “But, this one had two weapons. One a double ball and one ready to fire a poison dart. There was nothing on her person or equipment to tell us who sent her and the hover was stolen from Satola Street, first level causeway, two weeks ago. We'll dispose of the body the same way. Okay."

  "Good work, Morgana and Breen."

  As they talked Vee and Zee walked into the room.

  "Thanks. Mary was on standby, and Harry did not wake up during the incident. I'll tell him about it later today. I've got to go double-check on cleanup," Breen explains as he turns to push a number on the elevator panel and accepts Morgana’s purse.

  A smiling Morgana steps off the elevator but Breen remains. As the elevator door starts to close Breen half-shouts, "Vee, the pictures are on 16H91T2."

  "Good morning pretty lady," a smiling Bakman says to Morgana.

  "Dee. What are we going to do about your man flirting with me? Do you think he's serious?" Morgana asks with a huge smile on her round face.

  "You're not going to take my man away from me . . . are you Morgana? Dressing like that sure does seem to have caught Duffy’s eye," Dee answers Morgana’s tease with giggles and smiles.

  "Dee Honey, that poor man of yours must be starved to death for some sweet hugging and kissing. Have you been neglecting your poor man?"

  Dee, who was sitting beside Bakman on the couch, reaches over, hugs him, and kisses his cheek. "I try not too," Dee answers with a smile on her face and his.

  "Before we start on the West Club this morning could we go and look at last night's incident," Bakman asks and gets nods all around. Zee, Vee, Dee, Bakman, and Morgana walk out of the room to the Communications Center in the wide main hallway. Vee's fingers work the panel while they all find chairs to roll in to sit in front of the screens.

  The roof recorders fill four panels. All four show a dark overcast sky, a threatening rainstorm, and the air is filled with a slight fine mist making small speckles on two of the four lenses. The moon is only a thin sliver sending weak shafts of dim light through a few holes in a low dark overcast sky pushed southwestward by a brisk wind. The roof sensors record the wind at seventeen from the southwest with gusts up to 29 miles per hour.

  After more than ten seconds of seeing nothing else they finally realize they see a dark dot passing in front of dim shafts of moonlight. As their eyes study the now-you-see-it and now-you-don’t dot, it grows larger and larger until they can identify it as a small single black hover unit. The tiny craft’s platform is no more than thirty-inches wide and an inch less than three-foot long with short rails across the front.

  A risky craft in heavy traffic on a causeway, but a brave single person can ride one for half price. Something remotely resembling a person is on it flying the small craft toward the OpDyke Building’s rooftop. The small craft darts crazily in gusts but is stubbornly steering closer.

  Finally, curving dangerously in a rising gust the dot swings in front of a shaft of moonlight and they can make out a single crouching small framed person clutching the rail with one hand and the other is busily working the controls. A dangerous way to fly on a calm day in daylight at treetop height; but almost thirty levels up on a dark windy night, it was almost suicidal.

  More than two long minutes later they have to admire the small hover’s sliding sideways touchdown in a dying gust and observe a short slender black hooded figure step off in light sprinkles. The figure remains bent over and runs toward the stairway door. As the figure crosses a shaft of dim moonlight they can make out for the first time that the figure is that of a short slender female carrying something in each hand, short pipes like wands.

  On the other side of the moonlit spot the woman in black stops in a crouched one knee down stance, looks around, gets her bearings, rises, starts walking bent-over soundlessly on tiptoes toward the recorder on the roof’s manned lookout tower. It is too dark to identify whether she is holding a black double-ball pipe or laser wand in either hand. They, the guards, on duty are only certain both are weapons.

  A streak of unexpected red light from a laser slashes across her hover. It explodes in the flash of light and noise. Loudly Morgana’s deep gravely voice yells, "Surrender!"

  The small woman in black dives for the roof, flat on her belly the intruder points her right-hand weapon at Morgana’s voice, and tiny twin flashes of light bursts out of her weapon with a puff-puff sound of a double ball’s short double burst in semi-automatic fire. Off where the guard tower and stairway meet two explosions, two small flashes of light, and almost instantly two more explosions.

  Zee says, "Double ball."

  Before anyone can say anything else, two small puffs from the guard tower, two small explosions, and twice the woman jerks. One hits just below the shoulder of the gun arm and the other hits her in the exposed right side. Just after the first jerks, her body jerks again from two smaller inner explosions muffled by flesh. Three or four times the assassin’s feet kick, quiver, and then the intruder lie still.

  Flood lights flash on showing Morgana in a blackened face wearing a black tunic and pushing back her hood exposing bushy black hair and sided by two similarly attired mechanical guards. All three step forward toward the intruder with double-ball tubes pointed at the corpse. Carefully, they check to make sure the assassin is dead.

  After they know that she is, Morgana reports into her collar, "Threat neutralized."

  The recording has a break, a bright clear screen for two seconds, and then returns showing two men lowering a stretcher to the ground. They lift the intruder’s body onto the stretcher, pull a sheet over it, and move off to the freight elevator. A mechanical cleaner spreads blue powder over the kill-area and waits a full quarter minute before spraying a liquid over the powder. His cleaning machine moves over the area as sprinkles increase. Only half finished the cleaner and his machine hurry away toward the freight elevator as rain starts. A drenched cleaner closes the freight elevator door in a downpour.

  On another bright clear panel Breen's face appears to report, "Cleanup is complete."

  Bakman looks at each of them, but none of them has anything to say. He steps forward to touch Morgana’s arm and tell her with affection in his tone and facial expression, "Pretty lady, we are grateful for what you do for us?"

  Morgana giggles in her deep womanly voice, touches her orange hair, and tells Dee, "Duff’s such a sweet fuddy-duddy. Vee hit 3398RT."

  Vee's fingers tap quickly. On their multiple screens appear views of all rooms of the planned West Club.

  "We've rented one place down on the ninth floor, not open for any business. Everything will be the same in all clubs. This demonstration place will continue. When anyone wants anything all they have to do is send a view-screen of that room with the item circled, and we send a replacement. I have my sixteen area managers hired and trained to date and my controller is working setting this up.”

>   Morgana smiled. “With seventeen people playing these games, drinking, eating club food, and dancing we'll get the wrinkles out it before we start selecting and training regional managers. I hope it is not a problem that of the seventeen we have three more ladies than gents.”

  Morgana looked around the room. All heads shake no to it being a problem. “That’s a little awkward testing out dances . . . could M send me three,” Morgana giggles, “handsome preferably single men during their noon break. They do not need to know how to dance . . . just be willing to try. Make it an extra half hour and we will feed them lunch too. Do you have any questions or suggestions?"

  "In the food area you're trying to make them think they are eating outside, roughing it. In the center of the room would a fake campfire help?" Dee suggests.

  "That's a great idea, Dee."

  "Not everyone knows how to do old Western dances. We could have dance instructors offer free classes during the morning when the dancing traffic would be light. We could make it a moneymaker, but I think free would be better. We could deduct that as an expense in some areas and lower our local taxes on profits."

  "Duffy, that's a great idea. Any other areas we need to look at?"

  "Security," asks Zee.

  "Communications," wonders Vee.

  "Good points! We haven't worried about anything other than the club part of the operation," Morgana responds.

  After a review of each area a general discussion of the levels of security and communications needed, follows a first hour on details of security, and then another hour on communications. At the end of this, they stop to take a short break.

  "I've got to go downstairs to a meeting. Dee, come down when you finish," Bakman says as he rises, kisses each of the women on the cheek, and walks to the elevator door with Zee at his side. As the doors open, he waves back at the group saying, "Ladies." As the door closes Zee takes his arm.