“There is another walker moving ahead,” said Jokono, sounding alarmed. “It is down near the bridge, where Sergeant Forrest suggested it might be. It has a limited firing angle on your position, but that will change shortly.” An illustrated diagram appeared on Dale’s glasses, the walker’s position, emerging from behind the mansion’s far corner. “The first walker is turning to investigate the harvester. It’s activating weapons.”
“We’re leaving in five!” said Dale.
“Distractions activating.” The overhead lights glared in two spots upon the rocky ceiling, then a pop and the rush of flowing water as a mains burst. “They’re both turning to look, go now!”
Dale got up and sprinted, catching only a glimpse of the second walker behind the corner of the house, its back now turned, water spewing skyward from the broken irrigation behind. But the first walker was distracted only by the approaching harvester, weapon arms extended, though apparently stunned and swivelling aimlessly beneath the glare of overhead light.
Dale rushed across the grass, still fast for a man no longer young, but Reddy was faster, and now Milek was streaking ahead, a lithe blur of arms and legs. His glasses display showed Forrest, Tong and Kadi close behind, though even now Kadi was falling behind, then coming to a halt.
“Petty Officer move!” Forrest yelled, as the first walker was turning, stomping about in a circle. Dale aimed for the green forest about the mansion’s flanking pools and dove in, finding that Milek had already smashed a window and had disappeared inside. Reddy followed, and Dale paused to stare wildly behind, at Tong and Forrest sprinting in, neither waiting for Kadi who now stood completely exposed, pointing one of his tech devices straight at the walker.
Gunfire roared, chainguns tearing up turf at Forrest’s heels, then abruptly stopped. “I got him!” Kadi said excitedly, his other hand extended before him, as though steering with an invisible joystick. “I got control, just a moment and I’ll reprogram and send him after the other one!”
“That other one’s about to kill you, now move!” Dale shouted, as gunfire erupted inside the mansion. He waved Tong and Forrest past him, and saw Kadi look abruptly right toward the second walker, and start running. A second later, an explosion tore the turf where he’d been. He arrived gasping, splashed in a pool and crouched behind one of the leaning supports.
“I just gotta finish the sequence on the first one!” he announced, and then the first walker was stomping by — three meters tall and heading straight past, heading for the second walker. “I can’t hack both at once, but I can make the bastards fight! There, got it!”
Dale could have wasted time berating Kadi for disobeying his orders. “Get in!” he said instead. “I’ve got your back, move!” Kadi went, Dale following, checking left and right as they went through the broken window. The living room beyond was wide, with a big water feature between furniture and displays, and Tong on one knee, guarding the base of the stairs and positioned to shoot defenders who tried to climb them. Kadi ran up the stairs, heading for the secure room that Tooganam’s intel had said was on the second floor, Dale close behind.
They ran past a dead tavalai on the top stairs, weapon still clutched in one thick hand, then turned left past another dead tavalai, and bullet holes on the opposite wall. Ahead was more shooting, and shouting, followed by a thunder of explosions from outside the mansion.
To the right, in what might previously have been a bedroom, they found Reddy and Forrest, standing over another dead tavalai, and one live one sitting in a corner with Reddy’s gun in his face. On tables before a central atrium with green plants were secure processors with wide displays, all deactivated.
“I got it, I got it,” Kadi muttered, pulling more gadgets from his belt and finding the insert.
“Safe’s in the floor,” said Reddy, as Forrest left to take position outside. “If we used explosives we’d destroy the module.” The processors Kadi was accessing were cabled into the mansion walls, Dale saw. No external access, probably no wireless function at all — those cables would run into a secure ground network, then reemerge elsewhere in the city. Un-hackable, unless you could shoot your way into a place like this.
The tavalai prisoner was staring at Reddy defiantly. “If he makes a move,” said Dale, “shoot him.” The dead tavalai was in a very thick pool of blood, and there was no sign of shooting in the room. Blade-wounds, Dale thought, meaning Milek had been busy.
“Hey Joker, this is Kadi!” the young Petty Officer announced abruptly. “I’ve got you a line, can you read me on this…”
“I read you and have access,” Jokono replied, and with a loud clack! a section of the floorboards moved. Reddy’s rifle fired, catching the tavalai prisoner in mid-leap, and he rolled on the floor.
“Fucking tavalai,” Reddy told the corpse, stepping aside for Kadi to access the floorboards. He lifted the panel, then the lid of the armoured safe within.
“Joker, which one?” Kadi asked. “There’s five modules, they’re all wired in…”
“Second from the left,” said Jokono.
More shooting from outside, and downstairs. “Two guards just tried to come up the stairs,” said Tong. “Both are down.”
“Are you sure?” Kadi asked Jokono.
“Very sure.” Kadi reached, unplugged, and pulled out a very plain, bland-looking black cylinder. It had cable plugs at both ends, and was otherwise featureless.
“Great,” said Reddy, leaving the room now that there was no one left to guard. “Let’s go.”
“Wait a moment.” Kadi inserted his own cables, connected to his personal com-booster, then tucked both into a wet pocket. “Joker I’m connected, have you got that?”
“I have the network codes now,” Jokono confirmed. “It will take a short while to break them from this end, I’m not as fast as Styx. You’d better move, the car is on the way.”
“Everyone move to withdrawal point,” said Dale. “The car is on the way.” He ushered Kadi ahead of him, and they followed Reddy down the hall to the stairs and down, finding two new bodies at their base, drilled by a burst from Tong as he hid behind chairs across the room.
“Lots of shooting outside,” said Tong, as Reddy led them fast through the same broken window they’d entered from.
“That’s the walkers,” said Kadi, now pulling the thing he’d used to hack the walker once more, scrambling through broken glass and into the greenery. Reddy moved low and fast around the mansion to the corner, and peered.
“Two walkers,” he said. “Both dead, looks like they killed each other.” He gestured them on, and Dale saw both ruined machines before him, the near one on fire with big pieces missing, and fallen into the side of the mansion.
They ran past it, as Forrest’s voice came on coms, “I’m just ahead with Mystery Boy, come past and we’ll take the rear.” Ahead, the hulking second walker stood smouldering and limp, riddled with chain-gun holes. Beyond it, the bridge where the mansion’s driveway crossed an irrigation stream… and up that driveway now came a single roadcar, through flanking green fields of cane.
It stopped opposite, popping all doors as Dale’s team ran for it — him to the driver’s seat, Forrest alongside, and the other four somehow squeezing into the back. The car did a fast three-point-turn, then accelerated quickly back the way it came…
“Oh shit!” said Kadi, amidst the crush of limbs in the back as his AR glasses went unpleasantly live. “It’s not dead, it’s turning!” As chaingun fire tore past, and kicked tracers off the road ahead, then a grenade hit the bridge.
“Turn it the fuck off!” Dale yelled.
“I can’t, I’ve got no line-of-sight!”
As Jokono’s remote-control accelerated the car to maximum speed, and they hit the bridge amidst incoming fire, and bounced… and were then weaving away, through cane fields and trees, toward the through-road ahead, and the tunnel in a cavern wall to one side. That tunnel entrance was now closing, as a security door descended, and warning lights flashed ye
llow.
“Joker!” Dale warned. “The tunnel door’s closing!”
“I have it,” came the confident reply. The car turned abruptly left, pressing everyone sideways, as they skidded onto the road. Ahead, the door still descended.
“It’s still closing!”
“I said I have it.” But the door was still closing as the car shot underneath, missing its roof by a whisker. Headlights activated, revealing a high-speed tunnel ahead, and they accelerated further.
“You said you were gonna stop it!” Reddy complained.
“I did not say that at all,” Jokono said calmly. “If I had stopped the door, I could not have closed it again myself due to security overrides. This way, you now have your pursuit blocked, for minutes at least.”
“Clear communication in combat, great,” Tong muttered, fighting to make a clear space for himself against a door. “LT, can we swipe another car? This one doesn’t fit a family of six plus sporting equipment.”
“Joker?” Dale asked, checking his weapon once more. He hadn’t fired it, but most of his old habits were good habits. “Another car would be smart, two cars are harder to catch than one.”
“I’ll acquire you another vehicle as soon as possible.” The old policeman was sounding a little tetchy with all the youngsters complaining at him. “In the meantime, please bear in mind that I don’t have time to explain my every action to you while I’m doing it.”
“Humans complain too much,” Milek observed, via translator.
“Gee thanks, Beanstalk,” said Reddy. The tunnel made a long bend, accelerating to highway speed, then zoomed up an off-shoot tunnel, signs indicating a return to the surface.
“What about the codes?” Dale asked. “Did the codes work?”
“They’re working,” Jokono affirmed. “I’m accessing the State Department network now. Their com logs show there has been no ID request from Chara for nearly thirty hours, so our team has not entered that phase of their inspection yet.”
There were grins in the backseat, and some arm-slapping, plus a lot of simple relief. “Don’t celebrate now,” Dale told them. “Jokono can only keep hacking their system so long as we keep this module active. It’s hooked into the Gamesh infonet, but the minute they get it back, or destroy it, we lose access. And they’re going to launch the entire city security service at us to get it back.”
22
Tif sat in the State Department’s pad holding tower, and waited. Across wide, reinforced windows she had a view of the descender’s huge armoured side, roughly spherical beneath battered armourplate, scarred with the scorch marks of previous descents. Tavalai technicians sat before wide screens, observing the local airspace, though from Tif’s seated position she could not see any of the trajectory markers. That was obviously by design.
A tavalai bureaucrat sat opposite her, in drab civilian clothes. Female, Tif thought, as she was smaller, with less of that bulky swagger of the men. Tavalai gender differences were closer to those of kuhsi, she thought, and the size-difference was pronounced. Humans had narrowed the performance difference between genders to a degree that kuhsi conservatives found alarming, given the degree of human influence over kuhsi society. It had been a scandalous thing just for her to receive her pilot-augments, faintly improving already-excellent reflexes, and dramatically increasing her G-resistance. But though tavalai females could probably pilot as well or better than males, most females seemed content to settle for professions like this one — bureaucracy.
Some of the legal institutions seemed almost two-thirds female, and in tavalai society, women probably held more overall authority. Just like the pragmatic tavalai, Tif thought, looking around at them all, working patiently, never fussing or getting distracted. Tavalai women settled for what they had, and were pleased with the real authority they possessed, whatever their exclusion from the big military roles. There wasn’t much to recommend military service to anyone, really. The risks were high, the rewards often fleeting, and among tavalai at least, the real authority resided with the bureaucrats. But still Tif thought she would always want to fly. In that, kuhsi were more like humans than tavalai — often preferring the less-practical thing because it was more exciting. Back on Chogoth, more and more kuhsi women had been chafing at their chains, whatever the sensible wisdom of elder women who insisted they had plenty of power where they were. Kuhsi were not pragmatists, they were romantics, and whatever her personal determination, Tif feared for her people in the many revolutions that were surely yet to come.
Tif’s earpiece translator gave her snatches of nearby tavalai conversation, technicians talking as clearances were obtained. The all-important ID clearance, for which so much was being risked, on the Tsubarata and on Konik. She hoped that everyone was in position, and that all the plans had worked. And she kept her hands on her thighs, wishing she was seated at a table so that no one could observe the faint tremor of her hands. To hide it, she extended her three main claws to full, and tapped a light rhythm on her thighs. The tavalai bureaucrat looked. On Phoenix, crew had always given in to curiosity, and asked her about the claws — how sharp they were, how strong, how they divided once more when withdrawn so that her finger joints could still bend, only to lock out when extended. But the tavalai only looked. Tif thought she definitely preferred humans to tavalai. They were more restrained and disciplined than most kuhsi, but tavalai made humans look like gleeful children by comparison.
A door opened, and some tavalai entered. Several were armed — the usual security she’d seen in this high-security State Department hub. Tif got to her feet, retracting her claws from politeness. This tavalai wore a head-set that accommodated the big, wide-set eyes, plugged into local operations.
“Your ship has received ID clearance,” the tavalai said, without preamble. And Tif had to restrain a gasp of relief. “Coordinates to the vault will follow as soon as physical inspection has concluded. Then your ship can leave. You, however, will remain here, in State Department custody.”
Tif’s heart, just restarted, now nearly stopped once more. She stared, claws slowly coming back out. Perhaps she’d misunderstood. “Please repeat?”
Was it her imagination, or did the tavalai look… smug? “Your Captain is known to us. His security is not at issue. Yours is. The ship will descend without you. You will remain here, until we receive further instruction from Head Quarters.”
Tif had to fight hard not to take out the tavalai’s eye with a claw. “The descender needs a co-pilot,” she struggled to say. “Kamala descent is unpredictable, even advanced auto-pilot is unsafe — two sentient pilots are mandatory…”
“Your Captain informs us that his First Engineer is an adequate co-pilot.” Tif’s panic worsened. Po’koo had told them that? The deal was that the descender must have a Phoenix pilot aboard, to safeguard the Phoenix team raiding the vault… and now he was giving her up?
Po’koo had probably betrayed her, she realised. Probably he was the one to make them doubt her ID — on that descender, everyone’s ID was suspicious. State Department put up with it because the descender was on a Fleet mission, and State Department had to give Fleet access to the vault by law. State Department could only single her out for suspicion if Po’koo had pointed the finger at her in the first place. Or maybe they’d recognised her from Joma Station… but how could they? Given that travel from Kazak System to Kantovan System was only possible within this short period for a ship as advanced as Phoenix… and while tavalai Fleet had a few ships that came close, they weren’t sharing any of those with State Department.
If the descender went to the vault with only Po’koo at the controls, the Major and her team would be in terrible danger, their only access and escape piloted by someone who they absolutely could not trust, and was probably now working for someone else entirely. And with State Department monitoring all communications from here, the Major would have no idea that Tif was not aboard.
Tif extended a trembling hand, and pointed a claw at the descender beyo
nd the window. “I must be on that ship!” she insisted.
“No,” said the smug tavalai, as the guards at his sides readied weapons. “You must not.”
Trace crouched low amidst cargo pallets in the loading warehouse, and listened to the voices of tavalai State Department workers in light environment suits. It was an inspection team, though she could not see them, nor had any need to. Her armour suit’s highest sensitivity audio settings could calculate the number of people making noise in an enclosed space, and she did not need to risk exposing herself. Three tavalai, the suit calculated now, walking back through the extended cargo arm to the descender’s lower holds.
The State Department base on Chara was not heavily manned, and the warehouse pallets were automated on light wheels. Most of the cargo on its way down to the vault would originate from elsewhere, while Chara remained on standby only for necessary emergency supplies. Ninety percent of Chara was a privately run gas refinery, the costs of producing many kinds of heavily used industrial gasses being cheaper here for reasons that Trace was neither business person nor chemist enough to understand. State Department’s portion of Chara was mostly a logistics hub for in and out-bound traffic, and produced very little. Its primary use was that equipment was more accessible here than it was in orbit, where transit times got dangerously long for a secure facility that required rapid response in the event of emergencies. And for the vault in particular, Chara’s role prevented any foreign vessel from attempting a direct landing, since no one was entirely sure where the vault actually was.
The voices faded, and Trace extended a shoulder antenna, its camera projecting an image onto her faceplate. Across the steel floor, stacked with containers, she could see the side-access to the main cargo arm. Past the projected image, in direct line-of-sight, was Staff Sergeant Kono, also on a knee in a doorway. They waited a minute, then Kono indicated something moving behind her.
Trace redirected her camera antenna, and saw a single tavalai walking the cargo arm. He arrived at the access door, opened it fully, and made a quick gesture without really looking inside, then went back the way he’d come. A descender crewman, telling them the way was clear.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 34
