by Brian Daley
"Nothing yet, true to form," Victoria reported from the Stray's spaceboat, stationed between Parish Above and Parish Below. "Now, if things will only stay that way." As long as the conflict didn't spill into the other estates or the much more distant tribal zones, theoretically, it remained a private affair.
"No sign of problems," Corva confirmed. "Shall I blow out the accessways?"
"No need," Alacrity decided. "Besides, it might start trouble." He slewed through a small grove, and halted next to the other smarts team. They hopped in too. Floyt closed the side door and the truck howled away.
"Our rounds are firing," the girl from the first team said twenty-five seconds after the smoke had first been reported. Alacrity poured on speed, not wanting to be caught anywhere near the launchers.
"Heart, where are you? Hit those last two gun positions, can you? Soften the place up just a little more, not too much. I think I got all the villa's external pickups, so they won't know where it's coming from."
"I read. I'll be in right after the airbursts."
The second launchers' smart ordnance started flying overhead just then. The truck swooped along, as Alacrity and Floyt waited to hear the report.
"Who are those other people on the net?" one of the alley runners in the back wanted to know. "You didn't tell us about them."
"Shh!" Alacrity said. "Let me drive, will you? Just a little change of plans, that's all."
"Airbursts, on target," Victoria reported from the Stray's spaceboat. "Counterfire coming from the villa, hidden launch tubes. Keep low!"
Alacrity was doing just that as incoming rounds shrieked overhead, bound for the smarts launchers—too late. The special ordnance was already either at target or in the air. To the raiders' great relief, there'd been no midair intercept.
Heart reported, "The sealant blankets are deploying and settling, on target. All chimneys are well layered."
Alacrity heeled the truck around a corner at near ground level and saw it was true. The special rounds had dispersed airburst aerosols that congealed into vast translucent sheets. They settled in layer upon layer over the Repository, centered on four big chimneys from which the green smoke plumed.
The most chancey part of the operation had paid off. The Custodians were destroying their lesser materials—in-house records and codes, routine traffic copies, personal data and private files, and so forth. Now, if they would hold off on doing away with the Camarilla evidence, for even a little while …
"Still nothing from the other estates, except that they're on alert," Victoria said. That would be in keeping with the etiquette of Parish Above; the place was an enclave of independent fortresses, not a mutual defense community.
"Same at the spacefield and the tribal zones," Corva added. "No one's sure what's happening, so they're all keeping out of it."
"Terrific town; sensible people," Alacrity proclaimed.
"We're getting a strong counterattack here," Janusz said. "We could use some assistance."
"Almost there," Floyt replied as Alacrity rounded the last corner to stop near the villa's main gates. They were closed, and an energy curtain rose from the top of the fence. The raiders had expected it. "Victoria!" Floyt yelled.
"First attack run coming now," she answered at once. The spaceboat came flashing down, releasing missles at the two undamaged household emplacements, pounding away at the gates. The gates flew straight up in the air, amid secondary explosions from the villa's last gun turrets. Green smoke could be seen backing up under the draped and clinging chemical sheets.
Alacrity was through the fence, weaving across the rust-red lawn, decelerating. "Janusz, what's your situation?" Corva asked. "Should I bring in the Stray now?"
"No!" The others could hear yells and tumult and an intense firefight in the background. "We don't want them panicking down below and going to total destruct mode. Stand off until I give the word, but come quickly then. Alacrity, where are you? Things are becoming rather brisk here."
"Right with you," Alacrity said as the truck slowed to a halt. He'd heard just the slightest tinge of apprehension in Janusz's voice; it put him even further on edge. Brisk!
"Be careful dealing with the guards," Janusz warned. "They're hard to knock down and harder to keep that way."
"Everybody got that?" Alacrity asked. Floyt nodded; Notch's kids simply stared at him. "That's it, then. Don't forget that special equipment. Pile out."
The group came tumbling out of the truck and headed for the portico, laying down covering fire, coordinating their shots with their steps, aiming for the windows and around the grounds.
They, too, were armed with heavy assault weapons. The kids moved very well and kept out of one another's line of fire, doing as well as most infantry Alacrity had ever seen at work. They carried equipment for the next phase of the raid.
At the portico, the group discovered the bodies of the two guards Janusz and Notch had originally downed. They were slumped over three of the alley runners in the silent aftermath of savage hand-to-hand and a close-quarters firefight. The kids had been nearly dismembered, the guards shot to ribbons.
Alacrity kept his team moving through the smoke and dust, into the gloaming within the entranceway. They kept to cover and moved in frantic dashes. The villa's main lighting system had been knocked out; emergency glow-plates lit the place dimly.
Janusz, Notch, and the surviving members of their team were holding the entranceway area with heavy weapons, hosing their guns back and forth, going through ammunition and power packs prodigally. The four kids who'd come with Alacrity and Floyt moved to reinforce their fellows, breaking out more ammunition. Their firing positions commanded the various stairways and hallways leading into the big entrance area. The bodies of ten guards were in sight, all of them as ruthlessly blasted apart as the ones outside.
"They've dug in just out of range; their last counterattack almost made it," Janusz said, reloading his scatterbeam pistol. "Problem is, shockguns knock them down, but don't always keep them there. They take incredible damage and still keep coming at you. I don't think they're entirely human."
Alacrity looked around thoughtfully, then tossed his shock-gun aside, bringing out the Captain's Sidearm. Janusz was looking at a comint device of some kind that he carried in an armored case attached to a lanyard around his neck.
"I was reading a lot of traffic from the underground levels a short while ago," he said, "between the Custodians and the guards. Encrypted, of course. Now there's nothing from underground and the surface units can't make contact. I think it's time."
Alacrity nodded emphatically. "Very well," Janusz said over his comset. "Astraea Imprimatur, we're ready for you. Corva, get to it!"
"What's 'Straya 'Primatur'?" Notch piped up suspiciously. "And who's Corva? And those others I heard before?"
"Not to get excited, kid," Alacrity said. "Minor change in plans. But everything goes just the way we practiced."
Notch looked from one to another of the three men. "This better not be a double cross."
"You've got a clear field, Stray," Heart reported.
"Coming in now," Corva said tersely.
"Everyone into your protective masks," Janusz ordered. "And get down. We're not sure what we'll be facing once that subsurface area is breached—watch out!"
Then he was shooting and shooting with pistols in both hands. Alacrity dragged Floyt to cover, booming away with his father's gun as a knot of guards, crouched behind a portable vortex cannon mounted on a big, thick splash shield, charged at them from a side corridor.
The raiders' shots bounced off the splash shield, even fire from the heavy weapons. The advance continued, slowed only by the weight of the cannon. Alacrity expected to be killed until he saw that the gun itself had been damaged and couldn't fire. Their bulk and their burden notwithstanding, the guards ran with impressive speed.
"Get down!" Notch yelled, and everyone ducked for shelter, covering their heads. Notch pitched something into the corridor, then hit the f
loor too, hands over his ears. Whatever he'd thrown bounced under the feet of the running guards, and behind them.
Seconds later the corridor was an infernal whirlwind of flying bodies and parts of bodies, twisted metal and explosive forces that threatened to crush them all, implode eardrums, and drive them back through the entrance breach like leaves.
Corva's voice brought them around. "Instruments say I'm right over the target point. Activating the drill now."
"Everyone stay down and get your masks on," Janusz called.
He didn't have to say it a third time. Astraea Imprimatur hovered over the Repository for the next critical step in the raid.
The Stray had been lent to Janusz's group not only because she was fast, well armed, and versatile, but because she'd done planetary survey: she mounted core-drilling equipment.
From a bay in the starship's underbelly, a multi-aperture beam array descended, then activated. Mingled beams pulsed and strobed, or circled as individual projectors in the array whirled. The rays bored and cut.
Abruptly the corridor ceiling was holed by a spiraling cascade of light, unendurably bright. The energy drillbit descended on its tractor beam. At max aperture, it made a hole just over a meter in diameter through anything it encountered.
Corva's attention was all on the drilling operation, the Stray holding her place exactly. Heart and Sintilla, in the Harpy, and Victoria, in the other spaceboat, flew cover. Incandescent gases and debris gushed and belched as the boring bit into the sandwiched layers of special armor that protected the villa's subsurface levels—the ones that opened into abandoned sections of old-time Parish Within.
With a final blast of light and pressure release, the coredrill was through. Corva shut it off at once and retracted the drillbit. Half the villa was in flames.
"Bring the hoisting tackle. Kindly forget nothing!" Janusz called. They gathered up the stuff they'd brought and struggled off after him. Household units were attacking the flames, and Corva dropped four pods of firefighting chemicals on the villa's burning roof, extinguishing it.
The raiders ran along the corridor past the bodies of several guards. Floyt became watchful; more of the behemoths might lurk in the smoke and ruin. Feel sorry for them later.
The raiders found the drillhole, where molten flooring was quickly hardening under the steady rain from the extinguishing system. A little green smoke briefly curled above the hole, then stopped. While several of the alley runners set up a new perimeter, Alacrity, Janusz, and Notch assembled the hoisting tackle and set up its frame over the hole.
There was thunder from outside: Astraea Imprimatur landing on the lawn, ready to take on the evidence as soon as it was found. Gippo showed up with the last team of alley runners.
Harpy and the Stray's boat made passes overhead. Notch glanced at the Stray every so often, looking troubled.
Alacrity checked his proteus. They were well ahead of schedule, but no one could tell what the timetable would be from then on. "We must move vigorously," Janusz announced, a little hard to understand through his protective mask. "A delay now might be disastrous."
He made sure his equipment was secure, then swung himself out onto the hoisting line, to rappel down. A moment later he called up, "Come ahead; it's perhaps ten meters' descent. Make sure your masks are in place; the gas is very thick down here."
Alacrity lowered himself away. Floyt was next, down into the swirling green smoke. He wondered why almost none of it escaped to the upper levels. Thermocline factor? Sealing field?
Floyt went down awkwardly and inexpertly, almost as badly as his very first practice drill off a staircase in Old Raffles. At last his feet touched down, and he found himself standing in an eerie but breathtaking underground world.
The Repository incorporated a part of Parish Within, the old subsurface district formerly used by the aristocracy. The three stood in a groined corridor that, despite the drifting knockout smoke, had the feel of a chapel. There were marbilized walls in colors Floyt had never seen in stone before, and every sort of texture. Decorative flourishes were mounted with gems few of whose names he knew: moon roundels; Athena's Eyes; ice lenses. Floyt half expected to hear organ music or Gregorian chants.
"Notch, make certain your people keep guard on the line, and have one or two more come down to watch at this end," Janusz said. After Notch did that, he and the three men set off, shining handspots this way and that, keeping spread out, guns leveled. The passageways were filled with alcoves and niches; it didn't take Floyt long to see that those were furnished with artworks from Terra, things long thought destroyed in the Human-Srillan War.
He shined his spot into a little meditation grotto where fountains trickled and soft lights played in the gloom. He halted dead, and Alacrity almost bumped into him.
The sculpture was as Michelangelo had shaped it centuries before, Mary seeming almost out of proportion, as big as her crucified son.
"They said the Pieta was destroyed when Rome was," Floyt said, unable to look away or move. Oh, the painful, painful beauty.
Alacrity gave him a gentle push. "We can't stop."
They went on, around corners and bends, Alacrity marking the way with a sprayer loaded with luminescent dye. Floyt saw Flemish masterpieces, Etruscan terra-cotta figures, Tut's burial mask, and much more. "No wonder they never felt any need to go outside."
Alacrity tried a commo check. "No good; something down here's interfering. I can't even get the guards at the hoist."
They passed recesses and alcoves intended for solitude; all around them was the pick of Earth's greatest treasures, and works from a lot of other planets beside. Why the very sight of those things hadn't turned the Custodians against the Camarilla, Floyt couldn't imagine.
They began encountering the bodies of Custodians, stretched out on the floor and over furniture. Many were near fireplaces and burn drums and incendiary bays. There were batches of lesser classified materials that the Custodians had been destroying after the initial invasion of the villa.
Most such documents had been generated on Blackguard/Finders-Keepers, using paper or paper analogs, and with supplies of ink, dye, and such from Parish Ink and Paper. Pieces were still smoldering in the burn drums under backed-up vent tubes … giving off green smoke and the gas that had knocked out the Custodians.
"You weren't kidding about that stuff, Janusz; just look: you can see how fast it worked," Alacrity said.
"It would likely have been effective even without our blocking the chimneys; it disperses almost instantly. But let's keep going; we have to get to the main cache before—"
There was an immense rumbling, a quaking of the ground; they danced for footing. "Sounded like a big explosion, or heavy weapons," Alacrity said. They looked at one another.
"Whatever it is, the others can handle it," Janusz decided. "We'll carry on."
They double-timed then, past more of the side ways and nooks, the stolen masterpieces, and more of the unconscious Custodians.
They came to a T at the end of the corridor. "Could the place we're looking for be on a lower level or something?" Floyt asked. Janusz shook his head, reading another instrument.
"Then it's one way or the other," Notch said. "Why don't we—"
Alacrity yelled, "Look out!" at the same moment Janusz cried, "Stand aside!" Both shoved Floyt out of their way; Notch brought his gun up.
The guard loomed slowly out of the dimness, tottering, sausage-fingers clawing and curling in the air. He didn't seem to know where he was or what he was doing, so disoriented that he'd come at his enemies barehanded.
Floyt brought his shockgun up too, bracing the U in the crook of his elbow. The guard bucked and blackened to the shots from Notch's plasma chopper, Janusz's scatterbeams, and Alacrity's pistol. Floyt couldn't tell if the shockgun had any effect or not.
The guard was jarred and twirled around, legs and arms crumbling. But when the obscene pirouette was done and he was on the corridor floor, when they'd stopped firing, the guard tried
to come on again, scrambling at the floor with burnt stumps of fingers. Alacrity shouldered the others aside, took careful aim with both hands, and delivered the coup de grace.
"Great Creator, what does it take to stop them?" Floyt whispered.
"He was probably the last," Alacrity said. "He was so wheezed up, he didn't even know where he was or what he was doing."
"He knew enough to want to get his paws on us," Janusz countered. "We must be cautious. There isn't much time, and so we'll have to divide forces. Alacrity, you and Hobart down that way if you will; Notch, you'll accompany me, please."
As they went off together, Alacrity said, "Uh, Ho … " and motioned to the shockgun. Floyt shouldered it and drew the Webley, thumbing the hammer back.
"If you see anybody—anybody—spark 'im," Alacrity said. "If it helps, remember what these people have helped do to your world."
Floyt said nothing. They proceeded through the gloom, shining spots around them. That went on for what Floyt's proteus reported to be only a short time, but it felt like eternity. Then they came to a pair of doors.
They were high and reticulated, double doors with carved meanders. There were heavy locks on them, and marks on the locks. Alacrity looked around uneasily but saw no one.
"Get back." He slapped charges onto it and stroked the timers. Floyt scurried into the shelter of a side grotto and Alacrity followed him. They both ducked and covered their ears.
The concussion almost knocked them silly even so, and the corridor was like an oven. They shook their ringing heads and went to see what they'd come up with.
The doors were hanging from their hinges. They went into the room beyond with weapons up and heeled to a stop, back to back, pointing all around, angling guns and handspots everywhere. They were shaken and spooked, and just beginning to realize they'd found what they'd come for.
"Well, I'll be—"
"Holy—"
There were ordered shelves and rotating racks of data, every shape and size and format Floyt could think of, in a chamber perhaps four times the size of Floyt's apt living room. Floyt stood up straight, reached out to a rack, and extracted a folder. He tucked the Webley under his arm and flipped through it.
