The next floor had larger offices than the lower ones, along with conference rooms and what looked like middle-manager offices. “The server room is one more up,” Roff volunteered, “and then the executive suites above that. Derecho’s penthouse office currently has our drop ship squatting on it.”
“I saw,” Fergus said. “Humbling, I expect.”
“One would like to hope so, sir,” Roff agreed.
Okay, Fergus thought, I kind of like this kid. I hope I don’t have to zap him. The fragments were definitely on this floor, and he headed down one row of office doors, the first few open as soldiers rummaged through desks, clamped data-downloaders onto the consoles, and pulled every bit of memory and storage for later analysis.
There was a water fountain in the hall, near a set of restrooms, and Fergus drank enough that Roff started coughing meaningfully at him. “I get thirsty,” Fergus said.
Roff nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Fergus wiped his lips with the back of his hand, still listening intently to the electricity all around him. The fragments were close. Very close. He looked around to see if he was missing something, and spotted one of the Digital Midendian guys at the end of the hall. The guy was talking to a soldier, but his eyes did not leave Fergus and Roff.
“Yeah, in here,” Fergus said, and pushed open the door to the restrooms.
“Impressively fast work with the water, sir,” Roff said.
Fergus looked back. “Are you smirking at me, Private?”
“No, sir!” Roff declared.
The restrooms were the usual row of sinks and evaporators, one very old-fashioned towel exchanger with a retrofitted anti-germ unit, and four separate small doors to the individual toilets. The fragments were so close, he could feel them like a shiver up and down his skin, raising his arm hair in little prickles as they tried to connect to him, adapt him into their structure or vice versa. And on the other side of the noise and pull, there was again that screeching, slithering, gnashing sound, more eager than ever.
“Sir?” Roff asked.
“There,” Fergus said, and pointed at the towel exchanger.
“What?”
Fergus ignored him and grabbed onto the front edge of the exchanger case, pulling as hard as he could. It didn’t budge. He tried to lift the towel return flap, but it wouldn’t open, so he bent down and poked at the unit from underneath, then tried pulling out the single dangling towel, which was stuck fast. The grout around the edges of the exchanger was a brilliant white, in contrast to the fading, off-white lines between the rest of the tiles on the wall. “I think this thing’s new and welded closed,” he said, trying again to knock or wrestle it open, but the exchanger case was rounded on the edges, hard to get a good grip on, and definitely not inclined to move.
“Sir, if you’d care to stand back,” Roff said.
Fergus did as the soldier asked. Roff stepped forward, shifted his position slightly a few times, then raised one big, booted foot and kicked the exchanger so hard, it pulled broken tiles with it when it crashed against the far bathroom wall.
Fergus crouched beside it, almost afraid to touch it for how loud the fragments had become, how shrill and interested the party on the other side, but he steeled himself and flipped it over. The back of the exchanger had a hole cut in it, and Fergus reached in and one by one pulled out all eight remaining core fragments.
I have them all, he thought, amazed, and more than a little terrified of what came next.
“What are those, sir?” Roff asked.
“Stolen extraterrestrial technology,” Fergus said. “This is what I came here for. Uh, we. Well, the Science Team. Which is right now just me. But you know what I mean.”
“It’s all broken pieces,” Roff said. “It wasn’t because I kicked—”
“No, no, Private, it was already in pieces,” Fergus assured him. He looked around for something to carry them in and, finding nothing, knocked the bits of tile still attached to the exchanger off the back and put the fragments back inside. Then he picked up the exchanger. “We have to get these out of here and back where they belong,” he said. “There may be interference when they realize we found them.”
“Right. I’m ready for some interference,” Roff said, and cracked his knuckles. The soldier tapped his earpiece. “Command? This is Private Roff. I’m coming down from the third floor with the Science Team Guy. We have an acquisition.” He listened for a moment, eyes darting over to Fergus several times. “Commander wants to talk to you directly,” he said. “Go to channel 443. It’s secure and private.”
Fergus switched over his earpiece channel. “Dr. Cheefer here,” he said.
“Tell me what you got,” the Captain said.
“The pieces,” Fergus said.
“How many?”
“Eight.”
“How did you find them so damned fast?”
“Science,” Fergus answered.
“I am sending additional support up to your location. Where are you specifically?”
“In the bathroom,” Fergus said.
“Stay there until support arrives. I want no less than a dozen armed soldiers within sight of you the entire time you’re heading down, and if you see less than that, you stop where you are, take cover, and call for help. You understand me?”
“I understand,” Fergus said.
“And you, Roff?”
“Yes, Commander,” Roff said. “But—”
“People have died over these artifacts, Private.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Roff said.
The line terminated, and Roff looked at Fergus. “I suppose you can’t tell me what the hell those things are part of?”
“I can’t,” Fergus said, “but your captain’s precautions are not an overreaction.”
Roff grunted. “Well, that sucks,” he said. “Support’s here. Let’s go look for trouble, eh?”
“After you,” Fergus said, and they stepped back out of the bathroom, Fergus holding the towel exchanger against his chest, arms wrapped around it, trying to silently, desperately shush the pieces within it to sleep.
There were two Alliance soldiers in the hall right outside the door, and a line of them down the staircase. The Digital Midendian guy at the far end of the hall was openly staring, in a hostile, homicidal fashion. There were at least six armed soldiers between him and Fergus, but not wanting to be scrutinized any longer than necessary, Fergus turned quickly and headed down the stairs, Roff at his heels.
It was both comforting and nerve-wracking to be so surrounded by the Alliance, knowing if they had any idea who or what he was, he was utterly incapable of escape, and at the same time genuinely relieved that they were between Digital Midendian and him. More than either worry, the fragments pressed against his chest, trying so hard to pull him into their chorus, made every step he took, every second of resistance, the hardest effort of will he had ever expended.
He was also stupidly thirsty again, and that was definitely a distraction he didn’t need right now. Unfortunately, their corridor of soldiers didn’t exactly make room between them for a quick dash to a water cooler. Soon, he thought. He was almost out of there.
They were met in the lobby by Commander Quinn. “That was extremely fast, Dr. Cheefer,” she said.
Fergus nodded. “It’s all in a day’s work for science, ma’am.”
“Okay, show me what you’ve got,” she said, and waved her had at the towel exchanger, then the desk.
Fergus looked around. Aside from the large number of Alliance soldiers in the lobby, most but not all of whom were going about their work, off to the side of the lobby under armed guard were Derecho, the CEO, and his small entourage. It had grown to four, with the addition of the far-too-familiar forms of Mitch and Kyle, and they were all looking directly at him.
“Uh, here?” Fergus protested.
“Yes, here,” the commander said. She tapped the desk sharply. “Now.”
There were now more soldiers paying attention, and Fergus was keenly aware of how armed every one of them was. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He set the exchanger face-down and reached through the hole in the back, and pulled out the fragments one by one, trying to stand so that his own body both obscured Derecho’s view and kept him from being able to study his face for too long.
The commander picked up one the pieces and turned it around in her hand. One of her eyebrows went up, and she played with it a little longer before setting it down hastily with the others. “Well, that’s as described,” she said. One by one she picked up the rest. “And they’re all here. Excellent work.”
Fergus started to put them back into the exchanger, but the commander stopped him. “We have a case,” she said, and snapped her fingers. One of the people working the status display on the desk went over to the equipment cache against the wall and came back with something about the size of his now-sunken toolbox. “Thanks,” Fergus said, and set the pieces into the foam grid inside. There was something active in the base of the box, but he couldn’t be exactly sure what it was doing; when he closed and locked the lid, it didn’t seem to diminish the fragments’ calls, though neither did it interfere with him trying to get them quieted down again.
He picked up the case, and the commander put a hand on his shoulder. “These are going straight up to the Alliance orbital station,” she said.
“Uh, Dr. Derf gave me strict instructions to bring them back to our secure science facility in Albany,” Fergus said. “He was very insistent, said it was my head on the line. I can give you a signed receipt for them, though.”
The commander laughed. “A signed receipt? Sure. Someone get us a piece of paper? Anyone? No?” She turned back to Fergus. “If I found paper, would you sign your real name?”
“Excuse me?” Fergus said, even as the pit of his stomach tried to desperately flee south.
“Interesting that when I tried to call the Albany office, we detected a glitch in the system that had rerouted our call to an automated dropbox where a very human-sounding voice answered and vouched for your credentials,” Quinn said. “Soon as we detected the intrusion and started a trace, the line dropped and completely wiped itself, but not before we figured it came from somewhere in Earth orbit. I give you full credit for chutzpah, whoever you are.”
“What?” Roff asked.
“There is no Dr. Cheefer or Dr. Derf, and of course no one at the real Terrestrial Sciences unit in Albany knows anything about a science team being included in the raid—scientists are not big fans of guns and violence, in my experience, except when it serves them at a safe remove,” Quinn said. “Also, they seem very preoccupied at the moment with having been ripped off by an impersonator.”
Roff frowned at Fergus. “Aw, c’mon,” he said. “I liked you. Am I going to have to shoot you?”
“Sorry,” Fergus said. “You might.”
The commander handed Roff a pair of wrist-binders, and Roff rolled his eyes and waved his index finger in a circle, indicating that Fergus should turn around. He complied; there were at least forty people with guns in this room, and he wouldn’t make it two meters closer to the door before being brought down. And he wouldn’t even get half that distance without revealing his secret, which guaranteed a much more ignominious end.
Roff snapped the binders on, not cruelly tight but in no way loose. Fergus hung his head in defeat. For a moment there, he actually had thought he was going to pull it off, and unless an opportunity came up real soon, the fate of the world was going to be in Zacker’s hands.
The sudden realization that this might just be it, and he didn’t even say goodbye to anyone, was a bitter thought.
“Privates Roff, Hensley, and Walsh, please escort ‘Dr. Cheefer’ here to the dropship,” the commander said. “It’s waiting now out on the lawn. Roff, accompany our fake doctor up to our orbital and make sure he is placed in secure custody, and that the recovered artifacts are handed directly over to Station Commander Zheng.”
Roff put one hand firmly on Fergus’s upper arm as another officer picked up the fragment case, and they marched him toward the front door. Fergus tried to keep his head down, but out of his peripheral vision he could see Mitch nudge Derecho with his elbow and then tell him something too low to hear.
Whatever it was, it didn’t escape the attention of Quinn. “Hey, Derecho,” she called out. “Looks like I found your ghost in the machine before you did. Tough luck.”
Fergus ducked his head farther down.
“No shit, you’re that guy, huh?” the woman walking beside them with the case said, looking back at him appraisingly as Roff pulled him out onto the lawn, still messy with soldiers and equipment, but now with a military orbit-hopper sitting like a big gunmetal fly next to the trucks. “Project Monkeywrench.”
“What?” Fergus asked.
“We’ve suspected for a while that DM was undercutting us, but it wasn’t until they got desperate trying to catch you that they tipped their hand too far and we finally had our first proof. We have a betting pool on who you’re working for. We also had one for how far you’d get before they killed you, but you ran out the clock on everyone on that.”
“I can’t believe you’re a bad guy,” Roff said, disappointed.
“I’m not,” Fergus said. “I’m an unaffiliated good guy.”
“No such thing,” Roff said.
Fergus shook his head sadly, not knowing how to rebut that, not expecting it would matter, anyway.
Roff led Fergus up the fold-out ramp into the hopper and put a hand on Fergus’s head to duck him under the doorway and in. The private shoved him into a reclined jump seat and pulled down the overhead bars, locking them into place. It was uncomfortable with his hands behind his back, but Fergus didn’t figure complaining was going to do him any good. “You ever been to space before, or you need a barf bag?” Roff asked, taking the seat directly across from him.
“I’ll be fine, but thanks for asking,” Fergus said.
“You sure? I’ll be mighty unhappy with you if I have to deal with barf globs floating around in here. And I’m the nice one; Hensley here might just shoot you.”
The woman smiled. “No lie,” she said. She put the case of fragments in a flight bin and sealed it, then took the seat next to Roff. “So, you torched Barrett Granby’s house, huh?”
“Not me,” Fergus said. “One of his followers.”
The third soldier, Walsh by process of elimination, checked in on them and then closed the door from the outside, sealing them in. “Clear!” they heard him say over the pilot’s radio, and the engines of the hopper started up, adding another layer of electrical noise to the chaos Fergus was already starting to find overwhelming. He must have started to look a little pale, because Roff waggled his finger at him. “No barf,” he reminded Fergus.
The hopper lifted off, and the acceleration pressed him down against his seat. Well, shit, Fergus thought. This is bad. Now what?
“Look,” he said, and both Roff and Hensley raised their eyebrows, as if surprised he was still there. “I’m really not the enemy. If you would just trust me—”
Both Roff and Hensley burst out laughing.
Fergus felt the shift in the engines before his inner ear, still being flattened by acceleration, noticed the difference. “Uh,” he said, “I thought we were going to orbit?”
“We are,” Roff said.
“Not right now,” Fergus said. “We’re not going straight up anymore.”
“Bullshit,” Hensley said. “I’d feel it . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Roff reached up with obvious difficulty and punched the intercom button on the overhead. “Private Roff back here,” he said. “What’s our situation? We’ve changed course.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,�
� the pilot’s voice came back, then nothing more.
Roff hit the button again. “Hello?”
The hopper leveled off, and the door to the flight cabin opened. A man in an ill-fitting Alliance uniform came back, and Fergus could hear the whine of the energy pistol charging to full in his hand. “This is your inflight service,” the man said with a grin that wasn’t at all friendly. “No peanuts, no pretzels, no wasabi crackers, just a gun.” He pointed it over at Roff and Hensley. “Which one of you is authorized to open the bin?”
“Neither of us,” Hensley said. “It can only be opened when we reach the station.”
“You better hope that’s a lie, because if that’s true, I don’t have any reason to keep either one of you alive,” the man said.
“I can open it if you free me,” Fergus said. “But no shooting anyone.”
The man shook his head. “No way in hell, Monkeywrench. I was remote-piloting that drone in the woods in Tanzania, and I don’t know how the hell you took it down, but I am not letting you loose in here. You get to go down with the ship, so to speak. Can’t guarantee I won’t mess you up a little first.”
“ ‘I’m gonna mess you up,’ ” Fergus mocked. “Of course you are. That’s what, first week of Villainy 101 For Dummies? You people are so predictably unoriginal, it’s just sad.”
“Who the hell are you?” Hensley demanded.
“Well, this big dumb oaf is Digital Midendian, obviously,” Fergus answered. “If you mean me, I’m nobody. Nobody but still really sick of assholes who want to ‘mess me up,’ like I got nothing better to do. I’m kind of under a deadline here.”
“I can just shoot you,” the man said.
“Sure,” Fergus agreed. “Why don’t you? Because then you’ll never find the rest of the pieces. And with those”—he pointed with his chin toward the wrong overhead bin—“I have them all.”
The Scavenger Door Page 38
