by John Ringo
"You're right. You're in my business," she snapped. She was having to fight misting up, but no way in hell was she going to let him know that. She had no idea what the fuck was wrong with her. She took a deep breath. It wasn't so much what he said as the way he said it. Okay, so it helped. He still needs to mind his own fucking business, and Grandpa has a big mouth. Enough. But it was enough, and she dialed back in. All the way back in.
As they jogged down the hall to the secure room, she heard Grandpa clap the other man on the back. "I knew I liked you," he said. In any other circumstance she'd have been thinking what the fuck? Or contemplating killing someone. And later, she might even decide to wring Grandpa's neck. But that would be later. The only thing in her head right now was: mission.
They had done something right with their security. There were no dedicated guards on the door to make the room scream out, "Place Where There Is Something Interesting, Valuable and Important!" Unfortunately for them, but through no fault of their security people, the team already knew what it was, and where it was, so the lack of extra guards was going to bite the bastards in the ass. Too many places arranged their security in such a way as to announce, "This way to the secret documents." If he hadn't gotten a couple of breaks, it would have taken George several more days, at least, to find the device with this setup. There was another thing they had done right: there were very few groups and no individuals, that she knew of, who were capable of subverting an AID.
Epetar and Winchon wouldn't have given the security people a better view of the risks. None of them had any idea Michelle O'Neal had anything like these contacts, resources, or any will to use them. All they would have expected to face was garden-variety industrial espionage—played according to a Darhel-style version of hardball. For the kind of threats they thought they faced, and within the constraints put on them by the bean counters, the security people had done their jobs right. They would probably get the blame, anyway. Cally felt almost sorry for them. Almost.
AIDs had a real bad habit, hard programmed in. The Darhel were so confident of the AIDs' ability to infallibly record and transmit their data load that the AIDs wouldn't scream for help on their own initiative, they just transmitted their load on the prescribed schedule, when tapped from a higher authority than their user, or when told by their user to call someone or send something. Maybe that had a certain processing efficiency value. The Darhel were frighteningly smart, and more deadly than even Cally had expected. They just had some real odd blind spots, one of which included being slow to change and update. The same AID sniffer that told her when Pardal's AID had just uploaded its data take told them when the AID guarding their target had uploaded its own no doubt boring recording of nothing happening, as usual.
The AID was Tommy's problem. After he cracked the door and went over to treat it to the electronic version of an intimate rear intrusion with no lube, she helped George carry Michelle's decoy over while Grandpa opened the black box sitting, alone, on an ordinary steel pushcart in the center of the room. The lid off of their own decoy, all three saw the same problem.
The base artifact had not been reproduced by Winchon or Michelle—perhaps they had not even been able to reproduce it yet. That was fine as far as it went. Michelle's toy matched up on the surface. Unfortunately, for these people to tweak and change it to learn new tricks, they had connected cables to it in seemingly random places, hanging off and doubling back in a black tentacular mass that would have done credit to H. P. Lovecraft. To top off the similarity and the problems, the entire device sat within a mass of translucent, green, gelatinous goo, which moved and dripped, almost as if it sensed their presence.
Cally looked at the thing in the target box. She looked at the thing in Michelle's box. Michelle's gizmo had it going on with the tentacles just fine, only there weren't enough of them. Not by a long shot.
Tommy had apparently gotten the next AID violation set on automatic, because Cally felt him peer over her shoulder. "Looks like the suit undergel we had in ACS," he said. "Well, except for being snot green." He looked at Cally. "So, what now?"
"You tell me. How is that goo going to react if we scrape off as much as possible and swap out black tentacle thingies."
"Dunno," the ACS veteran said.
"You don't suppose we could, kinda, rip off some of those black thingies from his box and tape them to our box, or something, do you?" Grandpa asked. Technology still wasn't really his thing. Unless it went boom.
"Probably not," the three younger operatives said, almost simultaneously. Growing up in the virgin age of television apparently left a guy . . . different . . . from growing up just a few decades later. Very different.
"Okay. Here's what we try. Tommy, you pick up the gooey shoggoth or whatever the hell it is, and scrape any goo you can off it—keep as much goo as you can in their box. George and I will pick up the decoy and put it in there and see if we can get any of the goo to stay on it. Maybe they still won't notice for awhile," Cally said, doubtfully.
"And me?" Grandpa asked.
"Uh . . . go watch the door, Grandpa. Somebody needs to watch the door," she said. He harrumphed grumpily at being shuffled off. Everybody in the room would hear someone approaching the door, so a watchman was strictly unnecessary. She expected he'd grouse at her about it when they got home. But they had to get there first.
Tommy picked up the object of their endeavors with about the enthusiasm of a fourteen year old boy for a baby's dirty diaper. The goo tried hard to stick to the device, but by dint of a lot of brushing and pulling and wrestling, the big man managed to get about half of it to stay in the box.
At least, it stayed long enough for them to fit the decoy in. Then, to their immense relief, it swarmed up and around the decoy as if they were best friends. If nano-goo could have friends. The bits on Tommy even crawled down his arms and into the box, obediently wrapping around the decoy. Both devices had less goo, but at least their decoy had green goo. She'd been really afraid of how the stuff would react.
"Gross," she said. "Lids on the boxes, me and George. Tommy, finish up with that AID. Grandpa, how're we looking?"
Instead of answering, he held up a hand and slid silently out the door, moving sideways down the wall.
After her AID terminated Erick Winchon's call, Prida sat and stared, silently, at the far wall. Dahmer had, of course, made a valiant effort to insinuate itself into her affections over the couple of years she'd had it. The artificial Human personality was limited, however, in the fundamental lack of same in the psyche of its charge. Prida had known, and still knew, of the machine's efforts. They amused more than alarmed her. She had never become attached to her AID for the simple reason that she had never been attached to anyone, in anything but the most temporary physical sense.
When debating her course of action, in any circumstance, the functional psychopath had and used an excellent poker face. Now, she was considering the amount of trouble and risk someone would have to go through to kill or incapacitate a Darhel, as well as the amount of power that indicated. She had idly considered, herself, what it would take to kill a Darhel. She had investigated only to the extent of hitting absolutely no tripwires. Paranoid herself, she had an uncanny ability to estimate where others would put measures in place for their own safety. In particular, she had noticed very early that the Darhel tended towards the same self-honesty in their emotions as she did herself.
Anybody with the will and ability to eliminate a Darhel necessarily had the ability, and perhaps the will, to eliminate Prida Felini. Erick Winchon was a good employer. She had found some of their interactions truly delicious, although she had been a bit piqued that he had not derived equal pleasure from their mental trysts through the machine. It would have been so much more convenient if he had.
She knew Erick's psyche, more or less. If she left his employ, even precipitously, he would simply write her off as no longer in his employ. She would not have believed the indifference if she hadn't found it such a persistent irri
tation. She would also lose a terrific salary and unparalleled fringe benefits.
On the other hand, there was someone in the game who not only could take out a Darhel, but had. There was also the probable reaction of the other Darhel upon anything or anyone in the vicinity. Fringe benefits or not, Prida had four hundred and eighty years in which to find and enjoy jobs as good as or better than this one. Provided she was alive to enjoy them.
Yet, one didn't want to jump the gun and throw away a good thing needlessly. Perhaps good old Pardal had just gone off and had himself a major snit, all by himself. One heard of such things happening to Darhel now and again. The thing to do, she decided, was to appear to be totally invested in the project for as long as possible, while covering her routes of escape if things suddenly blew up. Literally or figuratively.
"Dahmer, get me the head of security," she said.
"Security, John Graham here, Ms. Felini. What can I do for you?"
She absently inquired as to Erick's orders and more or less repeated them, telling the security head to also take over and coordinate the loaner guards from the military along with his own people. This was harmless cover for her real announcement—that she intended to spend the night at the facility, or several nights if necessary, and therefore would be making a brief run to her apartment to pick up a few necessities.
She declined the assistance of a staffer to run the errand for her, of course. Wouldn't dream of it. Morons.
There. She could keep herself out of the way of any real hazards until she was more confident the situation was stable, and without jeopardizing her job. After all, she would be doing her job, and doing it well. From a safe distance.
Jerry Rydell did not appreciate being called in on a weekend, for no damn reason at all that he could see, to patrol a damned near empty building. Entering middle age and already picking up a little weight, despite a job that kept him on his feet and walking, Jerry didn't often get dates with attractive women. Felicity Scarpelli was about as good as it got for him. Pretty, about six years younger than he was, only a bit plump herself. Having to cancel his date with her had put him in a goddam lousy mood. Especially not when what he got in exchange was having to walk the floors with Nigel Pinkney, otherwise known as Nigel the Prick.
"So, bet you're real glad to be in here on Friday, mate. Do a little honest work for once," the prick said.
"Nigel? Blow me." He'd been up one sixth floor corridor and down the other with this cheese-dick and it had gotten old before he'd taken the second step.
"Eh, what? Don't like the sixth floor, do you?" In some stupid attempt to play up his name, Nigel affected a very corny English accent, copied out of old pre-war stuff that had been badly holo-enhanced to fill in the dead air in the wee hours of the morning. He seemed to think it helped him get women. Jerry allowed that that might be so—but only the stupid ones.
He clenched his fists as they walked, yet again, past the old biddy's office. Said woman was some nameless corporate drone on the sixth floor who had the most grating voice he could imagine—worse than his mother in law from his first marriage. It didn't matter what time you walked past her office, day or night, she was loudly talking at her PDA, on some kind of call to someone, with that grating twang that echoed halfway down the hall in both directions. On and on and on. In his nightmares sometimes, he'd be patrolling this hall and stop, wrenching her face open with a crowbar. Inside would be only a buckley and a large, round speaker, embedded in miscellaneous wires and plastic casing, droning on in a computerized loop, forever.
They were really responsible for both the sixth and seventh floors, but on this job that meant walking the halls of the sixth floor in endless loops, trying futilely to break the pattern by looping here instead of there, running the route backwards, etc. But no matter where you went on the hall, you could always hear the old biddy, at least a little bit. He had, more than once, fantasized about breaking into her home some night and bludgeoning her to death in her bed. He wasn't a particularly violent person, but it was the only way he could conceive of continuing to draw his paycheck while never, ever having to listen to that scraping, screechy, rasping voice ever again.
They could only patrol the sixth floor because the big boss and his bimbo minion were housed on the seventh, and they were too good to be bothered with the presence of lowly rent-a-pigs. Jerry's fists clenched tighter and he harrumphed silently. Damned snot-nosed suits. Except—her highness the bimbo was out of the building and the creepy big boss was out of town. They were allowed to patrol the seventh floor when their majesties weren't there.
"Hey, Nigel. We really oughtta do a few loops around the seventh floor, seeing as we're on such high alert and the suits are all out. Ya think?" Please let him not be a prick just for once, the portly man wished.
"Right you are. I could do with a change. That old bird could peel paint off the walls, if you ask me."
What a prick. "Let's take the elevator." As a rule, Rydell avoided stairs.
"Shall we, then?"
Papa O'Neal heard the squeaking in the elevator well and had his back to the wall by the time it dinged. The first guard, a little weaselly man, hit the floor, sapped and stunned, but not out. The taller, fat one was still slightly in the elevator, and had to be grabbed before he could hit the door button. The neck break would have normally only worked for someone catching his victim from behind, by surprise. Those men did not have Michael O'Neal's squat, muscular build and gorilla-like arms. His massive upper body strength and juv's agility let him muscle the guard's neck around by main force, snapping it like a twig.
Almost as an afterthought, his heel jammed down, hard, on the neck of the first man, before he twisted, bringing the opposite knee down, with his full body weight, onto the spot where his foot had been just an instant before. Both hands buried in the little man's hair, he pulled it up and back, past a right angle, until he heard the familiar crunch.
A body in each hand, he dragged them free from the elevator doors before that conveyance could start complaining too loudly about the obstruction. A novice killer, or someone who had not yet made up his mind to kill a particular individual, could be hesitant—read "slow"—in action. Decisions to target or not target took time. Thinking about which move to use next took time. The techniques of an active martial artist, who had only trained but never killed, took time.
It is a truism in fighting that reaction takes longer than action. The techniques of a practiced, active, master who had killed many times at close quarters, and had already targeted a particular man, took very little more time than the remorseless fall of a guillotine blade.
The oldest O'Neal had come into the facility classifying all its employees as not only enemies, but "bad people." The guillotine blade had felt no more nor less for those it once felled than he felt for his own kills. Now, he no longer classified them as either enemies or bad people, simply as bodies in need of safe disposal. Safe, in this case, being defined as providing the least risk to the mission.
Around the corner, Tommy Sunday gestured him to the open door of the closest empty office, stripping the PDAs and security cards from the bodies as they went. Working quickly, he dumped their buckleys down to emulation level one. He was relieved to see that they had only been on three in the first place. A three would not have had enough initiative to place an alert call on its own. He routed their security radio feeds, over very short transmission, to earbugs for Cally and Papa. Each also got a working secure card in a front pocket, guaranteeing that every member of the team could get through almost any door in the place.
"So much for a quiet, subtle switch," Cally said, frowning at the bodies.
"We already had to leave one downstairs," their cyber confessed.
"It couldn't be helped," Schmidt explained.
After giving all three of them a chastising glare, Cally took point, followed by Tommy with the box and cart which were flanked by Papa, with George bringing up the rear. Sunday, with his massive size, was the only one
able to carry the cart down the stairs, in his own arms, quietly and without help. He could make twice the safe speed on a staircase as any other pair of them.
"Dead people," she grumbled. "A whole goddamn trail of dead people. Can't take you guys anywhere."
The O'Neal, as even he thought of himself occasionally, didn't like having his granddaughter on point one little bit. But she was a professional, a damned good one, and the most likely to befuddle the mind of any real security officer they encountered for at least long enough to deal with the problem. In a practical sense, this meant that stunningly distracting assassin "patrolled" like the security guard she was supposed to be, for long enough to get to the next door or corner and see beyond it, then beckoned the rest forward.
