Another of the Brits readily agreed with the assessment. “It makes sense.” He looked around the table. “Someone—or more likely, some organization—does not want the Covenant mission to succeed. Does not want the colony on Origae-6 to be established. Whoever it is has people who are willing to go to any lengths, including sacrificing themselves, to achieve that goal.” Then he hesitated. “But who? And why?”
One of the other Yutani executives had taken a sip of the expensive whiskey from a glass he had half-filled with the golden liquid. Careful not to mar the wood, he put it down on the table and voiced a single word. Or rather, spat it out. Politely, but with sufficient emphasis as to leave no doubt as to how he felt.
“Jutou.”
Of all the companies that had sought to take over Weyland Corporation following the disappearance of Peter Weyland, none had given Yutani more trouble or made a stronger effort than the giant Chinese combine. Enormous sums had been bid back and forth, promises had been made under other tables besides the one fashioned of kinoki cypress. Careers had been put on the line, individuals had been compromised, and a great deal of the corporate equivalent of blood had been left on the floor.
In the end, Hideo Yutani and his company had triumphed. The takeover was complete, a done deal. This was understood and had been reluctantly accepted by all the other failed corporate bidders.
Except the men and women running Jutou.
They continued to probe and prod, raising issues wherever possible, challenging the legality of the merger, striving to compromise individual personnel, seeking to undermine the takeover in every way possible. Their position was well-known. They would not go quietly about their own business. There was too much at stake: Peter Weyland’s scientific legacy, his property. Factories. Irreplaceable human resources. Control of the human colonization of space.
The David patents.
Weyland-Yutani now had all that. Jutou Combine still wanted it. As their company history showed, when sufficient assets were at stake, the Chinese giant could be relentless. It could be persuasive. It would do whatever was necessary to achieve its goals.
The third Brit spoke up. “Certainly likely Jutou is a reasonable explanation, but would they really go so far as to resort to corporate sabotage? Even assassination.”
“Mr. Davies, I fear you are naïve.”
Hideo Yutani addressed the speaker. The comment stung no less for having been delivered softly. The executive named Davies seemed to shrink into his chair. The company president turned his attention to the rest of the board.
“Myself, I would put nothing beyond the people who run Jutou. I know that from having had to deal with them long before these recent incidents. As yet, we have no proof they are responsible. It would be premature, not to mention potentially libelous, to confront them with direct accusations. Before we can contemplate challenging them openly, we need more than supposition.”
“A confession from one of their operatives would be a good first step,” said the Yutani executive.
“Indeed.” Yutani folded his hands on the table in front of him. “Unfortunately, we find ourselves short of candidates, since two are dead, and another successfully vanished onto the streets of London. We have no witnesses and no proof that Jutou is responsible for anything.” He leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply. “We have only our suspicions.”
Having finished his shot glass of whiskey, the executive who had spoken earlier moved to refill it. As Hideo Yutani turned in his direction, the man froze, his hand halfway to the decanter. The frustrated company president waved irritably in his direction.
“Go ahead and indulge yourself, Shiro. Maybe the whiskey will inspire a suggestion or two. It seems as if we are not going anywhere sober.”
It was an invitation to drink, not to get drunk. Shiro could read between the lines as clearly as any of them. Two other executives helped themselves to the sturdy tipple as well. Their companions limited their imbibing to water. Eventually the British woman broke the silence.
“Assuming Jutou is behind this, what do they gain by stopping the departure of the Covenant?”
“I think the answer to the question is obvious,” Jenny Yutani said. “The longer they can keep the Covenant from departing, either by damaging the ship itself, compromising its personnel, or somehow compelling us to refrain from allowing it to leave, the more Weyland-Yutani’s competence will be called into question. With so many lives at stake—indeed, the future of the human colonization of space—more and more questions will be asked, and public opinion will begin to harden against us. Eventually, the legitimacy of our takeover will come into question.”
She looked around the table.
“It would be nice if this was simply a matter of company business,” she continued, “but the media would harp on issues like ‘the fate of mankind’ and ‘the lives of innocents.’ It is hard to fight intangibles. While we are forced to struggle with such issues, Jutou will work behind the scenes, with the help of various governments, to undermine the status of the merger.
“If the company breaks up, if the merger is undone, Jutou will certainly be there to pick up the pieces.”
Davies spoke up again. “Nothing can break the union of Weyland and Yutani,” he said, agitation clear in his tone. “Not other companies, not individuals, not even governments. Nothing!” As he spoke, he raised his voice.
Narrowing his gaze, Hideo Yutani looked over at him.
“Mr. Davies, all of us have great confidence in the soundness of our union, and in our corporate future. Your enthusiasm is to be commended, but it is misplaced in this setting. I need answers, not reinforcement.” His smile was encouraging but cold. “You look tired. A little fresh water to the face might both revive and calm you.”
Davies paled. It was almost a dismissal. Rising, he made his way around the table and moved toward the boardroom portal. As transparent as the wall into which it was set, the doorway opened at his approach. No one looked at him as he left. As the portal closed behind him, the discussion in the boardroom resumed—without him.
Steadying himself, he headed for the corporate washroom, located some distance away. On the way he happened to glance at another transparent wall that separated a large greeting area from the rest of the offices on the floor. At this hour of the night there were no secretaries there, no official greeters. There were only the company bodyguards who had accompanied several of the executives, including the boss and his daughter.
Davies halted, confused.
The bodyguards were very busy.
Three figures clad entirely in black were engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the four security personnel. Everything he could see seemed to be taking place in slow-motion: the disarming of the bodyguards, the use of edged weapons, the splattering of blood on the outer wall. Too engaged to look in his direction, neither the bodyguards nor their assailants noticed the stunned, staring executive.
Davies turned and ran. Fumbling with his comm unit, Davies called to alert downstairs Security. It seemed like it took hours for them to answer. He hissed an alarm into the comm, afraid to speak too loudly. Finally bursting back into the boardroom, he ignored his colleagues’ startled looks and the expression of silent outrage on the face of Hideo Yutani.
“We’re under attack! Our people are fighting with—I don’t know who they’re fighting with!”
One of his colleagues rose abruptly. “That’s impossible! No one can reach this floor without alerting Security.”
Davies whirled on him. “Tell that to the intruders with bloody swords. You go tell them that their presence here is impossible.” He looked to Yutani. “I’ve already notified Security Central. They should be on their way. Meanwhile, I think we should really consider using whatever emergency escape route might be available.”
“We would have to get to the roof.” He remained calm, though his expression said differently. “If these intruders are already in the outer office, our path to the lifts is blocked.” He lo
oked around at the board members. “We will have to wait here and hope that our people prevail.”
“If th-they d-don’t?” a male member of the Weyland contingent stammered.
“One crisis at a time, Mr. Beckman.” Yutani reached for his own bottle of Yamazuki. “Meanwhile, I suggest we all follow the lead of Arioki-san and fortify ourselves as best as we can.” Half filling his glass, he used it to salute the other Englishman. “I applaud your quick thinking in alerting Security, Mr. Davies. With luck, our people will keep the intruders confined to the hallway until building security arrives.” He smiled encouragingly at the others. “That should not take long.”
VIII
Five minutes earlier…
The bodyguards were well-trained, but it was late, they were tired, and there was no special reason for them to be unusually alert or on guard. As far as they knew, all they had to do was chat, keep an occasional eye on the lifts, and wait for their employers who were meeting in the boardroom. Readouts and audible alarms would alert them if any of the elevators came their way.
The lift indicators were as quiet as ever when the three black-clad intruders emerged from the compromised service elevator. Only one of the four armed escorts heard the parting of the silent doors on another part of the floor. As he looked around, he drew his pistol from its shoulder holster. At the first sign of motion as he started to shout a warning to his colleagues, he was hit in the throat by an airborne, electrically powered shuriken with a miniaturized integrated guidance system that sent it speeding unerringly toward its target.
Instantly alert, the other bodyguards managed to get off several shots. Most missed their intended targets. Two that hit home were deflected by the flexible body armor the intruders wore beneath their black outer clothing. The interlopers, however, favored more classic methods of dealing murder—powered throwing stars notwithstanding. Knives were much in evidence.
Like the intruders, the bodyguards wore undergarment armor of their own. That did not protect them from accurately wielded traditional weaponry that had been modified to contemporary standards. Racing toward the invaders, one guard took a throwing star to the forehead. Its ancient predecessor would have stuck firm, wounding the target.
Propelled by a tiny integrated motor and guidance system, the star cut through skin, flesh, bone, and brain to shoot out the back and bury itself in a far wall, its miniscule engine still sputtering. As a network of severed arteries spurted blood ceilingward from the crevasse that had appeared in the man’s head, he slowed to a stagger. His eyes were still open when he toppled over sideways.
More massive than his assailant, another of the bodyguards succeeded in grappling with one of the intruders. A powerful arm forced aside the attacker’s arm. Immediately the intruder let go of the knife he had been holding.
Guided by the sensory chip embedded in his left eye, the ceramic blade launched itself out of his hand and into the throat of the startled bodyguard. Stumbling backward and clutching at himself, the bigger man wrapped thick fingers around the self-powered weapon. As he struggled with both hands to pull it free, the tiny engine in the tang continued to push the point deeper. Blood from the pierced carotid artery flowed down the front of the guard’s previously immaculate jacket.
One by one the bodyguards were sent, broken and bleeding, to the floor. There followed the surreal spectacle of the board of Weyland-Yutani looking on with a varied mix of astonishment and horror as the intruders stepped over the four bodies they had rendered immobile and made their way toward the boardroom.
* * *
As the intruders came within sight of the boardroom and its occupants, Hideo Yutani feigned disinterest with the aplomb for which he was famous. As the rest of the board members stood and reacted with various degrees of alarm, even terror, the diminutive Takeshi ignored the proceedings entirely in favor of slowly and methodically draining his neighbor’s untouched bottle of Yamazuki 24.
“Keep calm, everyone,” Yutani said as the black-clad intruders approached the other side of the glass wall. The knives they wielded were menacing and bloody, which made it all the more difficult for him to remain calm. Nevertheless, he felt it his duty to do so.
“These bandits are on the other side of a wall of solid quartz glass,” he continued. “I see no sign of explosives, and the access code is changed every day, so they cannot have it.”
He exchanged a glance with Shiro. Lowering his comm unit, the young exec shook his head slowly. Yutani nodded back. The intruders would have been stupid indeed not to force their way in without first establishing some kind of communications block.
Turning back to the inner wall, he looked on as two of the intruders broke out matching laser drills. Several of the executives retreated further into the boardroom as one man began to melt a hole in the wall, while his companion started working on the door mechanism. A third was busy snapping together the components of what looked like an industrial-strength water pistol.
As soon as the first intruder had bored a hole in the wall, he stepped aside to allow access to the man wielding the pistol-like device. Poking the barrel through the hole, he fired.
Davies and his female colleague dove under the Hinoki table while several of their associates sought cover elsewhere. Yet no projectile emanated from the gun. Instead, the air in the room suddenly took on a faint smell, ironically, of cherry blossom.
The tabletop was no protection. Davies thought the scent quite pleasant before collapsing to the thickly carpeted floor. Already half unconscious from a steady draught of expensive whiskey, Takeshi passed out with his head on the table.
* * *
Everyone was unconscious by the time the second drill operator cut through the door and the three intruders entered. Behind them, a distant hum indicated that the main passenger lifts were in operation.
“Get a move on! They’re coming!” The speaker rushed down the hall toward the elevators. Utilizing his laser drill, he began welding first one set of lift doors shut, then the other. It wouldn’t permanently stop the security men from emerging, but it would slow them down. Others doubtless were making their cautious way up the fire stairs. Expecting to meet resistance, they would ascend slowly.
“Here!” While one of the intruders got his hands under the arms of the insensible Jenny Yutani and hoisted her up, his associate removed a small cylindrical atomizer from a belt pouch. Placing this beneath her nose, he pumped it twice. When she began to blink and cough, he quickly moved to gag her. The antidote was as powerful as the gas it counteracted. By the time they had her hands bound behind her back and her legs secured at the knees, she was fully conscious.
“She’s cursing us with her eyes,” the first intruder observed. “Be glad you can’t hear what she’s thinking.” Ignoring her muffled protestations, they half pushed, half dragged her out of the room. Seeing her cast an anxious look backward, the second intruder hastened to reassure her.
“Don’t look so concerned. They’ll all sleep for an hour and wake up with terrible headaches, but the gas isn’t fatal. Even your ignorant, uncaring father will be fine by sunrise.” As they headed toward the service lift she began to struggle with them, and he added more sharply, “Pay attention. It won’t do us any good if you fall, and it’ll do you less good. We’ll just carry you, and not gently.”
* * *
She glared at him but did as she was told, assuming that this was nothing more than an elaborate kidnapping. Her abductors would communicate with her father, a suitable ransom would be agreed upon and paid, many security personnel would be fired, and life would return to normal.
Her eyes widened as they passed the waiting area, and she saw the carnage that had occurred there. The bodyguards lay in unnatural positions, and where she could see a face, the eyes stared sightlessly. Blood from the individual bodies had merged to form a single large pool around the corpses.
Then her kidnappers started to push her into what at first glance appeared to be a dark and very empty elevator shaft
. Before she could be shoved inside she tripped, letting out a muffled curse and nearly falling as the high heel of her right shoe broke off. A couple of seconds of pure fear were replaced by relief when she found herself standing on a flat, stable platform instead of falling more than a hundred floors to the service basement at the bottom of the shaft.
Two men flanked her, and a moment later they were joined by the last of their company.
“Did you blow the door to the emergency stairwell?” one of her captors asked the new arrival as the lift doors closed behind him. The third intruder nodded. Yutani wished she could see more of their faces than just their eyes, but the retro, pseudo-ninja gear kept them thoroughly anonymous.
“I left it cracked just enough.” The man gestured back the way he had come. “When they scan the floor for us, the first thing they’ll see is the open emergency exit. They’ll think we’re up on the roof somewhere, waiting for a chopper pickup.”
While she couldn’t see their faces, Yutani could hear their voices. Though just an initial assumption, she decided that only one of the kidnappers was Japanese. The others sounded thoroughly European. That was curious. At least it suggested that the Yakuza were not involved. Non-Japanese Yakuza recruits were as rare as a snow monkey in a private sauna.
The portable folding platform started to descend, the motor that powered it making virtually no noise. Behind her gag, Yutani realized that arriving security teams wouldn’t be able to hear it. They would assume—at least initially—that the heavily secured service shaft was not in use.
With no elegant, mirrored walls enclosing them and only the bare walls of the shaft on all sides, the kidnappers and their victim descended in silence. Thinking she heard security personnel on the other side of the wall, racing to the ninety-seventh floor even as their quarry was heading downward, she tried to scream, but her gag had been professionally applied. All she could make were subdued, muffled noises. Her abductors said nothing, but their expressions indicated they were well pleased.
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