by Marko Kloos
“Curried sausage,” he said. “The classic peon lunch.”
She took a little tray of fried yam sticks and covered the yams with squirts from the red spice sauce dispenser, then the white cream sauce, making the traditional lattice pattern across the sticks with the lines of condiment. Then she placed the side dish next to her sausage bowl and shrugged at Berg.
“You are not joking. You have eaten this before.”
“I told you I don’t really belong on that top floor. I do my own laundry, I wash my own dishes, and I like curried sausage.”
He put the same meal choices on his plate and replicated her move with the condiments, adding a little swirl of mustard sauce with a flourish at the end. The canteen was busy, with a roughly equal contingent of uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives sitting down for their lunches. Some of them shot her curious looks as she walked past with Berg, who was greeting people here and there as they went. There were some smaller tables free in the back of the room, and Berg walked over to one of them. Five steps behind them, Solveig’s bodyguard Cuthbert followed, looking conspicuous and out of place in his business tunic and without a meal tray in his hands.
“There’s no table service, I’m sorry to report. If you want more, you need to get back in line. And when you’re done, the tray goes over there.” He pointed at a rack along one of the walls.
“Just like university,” Solveig said.
“Is he not going to sit down?” Berg said with a glance at Cuthbert, who was taking up position with his back to the nearby wall, far enough away to give them privacy but close enough to jump to her side if it was required.
“He’s going to stand there and look stern while we’re eating,” Solveig said. “I told him that I probably don’t have anything to worry about in the middle of the police headquarters. But he didn’t want to wait outside in the nice weather.”
“How long have you had bodyguards assigned to you?”
Solveig shrugged. “I can’t remember a time where I didn’t have one. They were kind of hands-off at university, though. I only had to let them know whenever I was leaving the campus. They kept their distance in the residences and the lecture halls.”
“That must have made dating a little awkward, I imagine. Going out to eat with someone, and there’s a big man with a gun and a frown sitting nearby and watching everything that happens.”
“I didn’t date much at university,” she said. “But the ones I did go out with were usually really well behaved.”
Berg laughed. “I bet they were.”
Solveig tried a bite of her curried sausage. Berg watched for her reaction as she did.
“Better than the ones in the canteen at the university,” she proclaimed. “But still a canteen version. Not as good as the ones from a proper sausage shop on Savory Row.”
“I concur. It’s just good enough that it keeps me from blowing my whole lunch break on a dash down to the Row. But sometimes one of us goes out and brings back orders for the other people in their office pod.”
He glanced over at Cuthbert, who was standing with his back against the wall and his arms folded across his chest now.
“So that time I ran into you in that noodle shop, did you manage to ditch your shadow, or was he just hanging way back?”
She smiled and took a bite of the fried yams, which were as barely okay as the sausage.
“Sometimes I like to slip the leash for a little while. I’ve been playing cat-and-mouse games with the security detail since I was little. You wouldn’t believe how much I know about network security and anonymity layers.”
“You would be great for our information forensics division, then,” Berg said. “They’re always looking for people. Just think—you could eat like this every day.” He gestured at their food trays.
Solveig laughed. “A tempting proposal. I’ll consider it if the whole corporate executive track doesn’t work out for me.”
“You seem to be doing just fine in that field, Miss Ragnar.”
She shook her head lightly.
“We’re having our third meal together. We’ve been talking on the Mnemosyne for weeks now. I don’t know where this is going to go from here. But I think that once you have more than one meal together outside of work, you must be on a first-name basis. Solveig,” she said. “My first name is Solveig.”
She was aware that he already knew her first name because he had investigated and interviewed her before in his official capacity. She knew his first name because he had left a calling card with his full name when they had first met. But going to first names was an important formal step in the hierarchy-based and class-conscious Gretian culture, especially between an upper-class corporate heir and a low-level civil servant. She hated that it was already so ingrained in them, that they were both so used to the convention that she had to make the offer because of her higher status.
“Solveig,” he repeated. “I’m Stefan. And I think this is our two-and-a-halfth meal. Technically speaking. I never did get to try that beef fillet.”
“Let’s correct that as soon as we can,” Solveig said. “You got the short end of the stick so far. At least I got some curried sausage.”
At the nearby tables, some heads turned, and Solveig followed their gaze. At the beverage station by the entrance of the canteen, a female soldier was filling a drink container from one of the dispensers. She looked out of place with her dark skin and her dull green armor. As she filled her cup, she shrugged her shoulder to move the rifle she had slung over her shoulder out of the way of her elbow. Stefan turned to see what was going on.
“Pallas Brigade,” he said. “I wonder what she’s doing here. In full battle gear, no less. The joint patrols have been suspended for weeks.”
“Maybe they are starting again,” Solveig said.
“Everything is possible, I suppose.” He turned around and redirected his attention to the food in front of him once more. Solveig watched the Palladian soldier as she finished drawing her beverage. She was a short, powerfully built woman. When she was finished, she glanced around the room, and Solveig briefly made eye contact with her. The Palladian’s expression looked a little sad and tired. Then the woman turned and walked out of the canteen, holding her beverage mug in her armored fist.
“I have a confession to make,” Stefan said.
“Isn’t that usually what you make other people do?” Solveig said with a smile.
“Occasionally.” He grinned. “When the day goes well. But now I’m on the other side of the table.”
“So what secret are you going to spill?”
“I was just thinking about the day we met at the noodle shop in Savory Row. And I must tell you that ever since you gave me your node address that evening, I’ve never quite stopped thinking about you.”
Solveig laughed even as she felt her face flush.
“That sounds terribly distracting, to be honest.”
“It is. But it’s a welcome distraction.”
He leaned back in his chair a little and smiled. Then he blew one of those unruly curls of hair out of his eyes, and her heart felt like it was doing a jaunty little extra beat.
“I’m not usually that daring,” she said. “But it felt like the right thing to do at the time.”
Somewhere outside, there was a new sound cutting through the everyday hum of activity in the building, the powerful and insistent whine of gyrofoil engines that were increasing thrust quickly. Stefan looked up at the ceiling, and she saw irritation and a bit of puzzlement on his face.
“Someone’s forgotten how to—” he began.
Above their heads, it sounded like the sky over the city was splitting apart in one cataclysmic spasm of thunder.
The building seemed to rise and buck her out of her chair. Solveig felt a sharp pain across the side of her forehead. Then she was facedown on the floor, and her ears felt like someone had shoved a rusty nail through both of her eardrums. She tried to gather her breath for a scream, but found that the
re was no air left in her lungs, and she rolled over to gasp for oxygen. The lights in the room had gone out, and the air smelled like smoke and burning fuel. All around her, people were shouting and screaming in the darkness.
Solveig sucked air into her lungs. It stung her throat and felt like she had just inhaled hot smoke. A strong pair of hands grabbed her by the arm. She struggled for a moment until she realized that it was Cuthbert, attempting to help her up. He got her to her feet and shouted something at her, but she couldn’t quite make it out among all the noise and the ringing in her ears. He kept one arm wrapped around her and started to pull her with him. The table where she had been sitting was turned over onto its side. Stefan Berg was struggling to get to his feet next to it, using one corner of the table for leverage. She pulled away from Cuthbert and grabbed Stefan by his arm to help him.
“We need to leave, miss,” Cuthbert shouted and reached for her again.
“Help me with him!” she yelled back. To her relief, he didn’t try to argue. Together, they helped Stefan to his feet, and Cuthbert kicked the table aside to clear the way for them. The emergency lighting around the exit cut through the smoke and the semidarkness like a pulsating green beacon. She had Cuthbert on one side of her now and Stefan on the other as they rushed across the room toward the way out, navigating around fallen chairs and flipped tables. Something had caught fire along one of the room’s walls near the door, and the flames intensified and roared up toward the ceiling, where they fanned out.
“What happened?” Solveig yelled at Stefan and Cuthbert. “What is going on?”
“Someone flew a bomb into the building,” Stefan shouted back. “In a gyrofoil.”
Out in the atrium, pieces of the ceiling were raining down onto the floor, some of them on fire and bursting apart and spreading burning chunks across the marble. Ahead of them, people were rushing toward the main exit vestibule. Solveig looked up and saw that half the building was gone, blown apart and dashed to pieces, floors open to the atrium or pancaked onto each other at steep angles. There were fires everywhere she looked. On the other side of the atrium, the security ring around the vestibule blinked red, and an alarm started to wail.
“Wait!”
Cuthbert yanked her back roughly, and she yelled. Before she could voice her protest, she saw that he had his gun out. He pushed her back into the doorway of the canteen just as gunfire sounded from the entrance, shockingly loud even among the din of the yells and the dozens of alarms. In front of them, people were scrambling to get away from the entrance now. Solveig caught a glimpse of bulky, armored figures wearing helmets and carrying large rifles, walking into the adjoining lobby and aiming and firing their guns in methodical and almost clinical fashion. Then Cuthbert and Stefan had her turned around and back inside the canteen, where the smoke was now thick enough to obscure the back of the room.
“Back door, straight ahead,” Cuthbert shouted. “Go, go, go!”
He had a high-powered light on his pistol that sliced through the smoke and the semidarkness when he turned it on. Cuthbert aimed the bright focus of the light at the back of the room, where a set of double doors was framed between two meal tray racks that had spilled most of their contents all over the floor, carpeting the area in front of the door with shattered plates and dirty utensils. Behind them, the gunfire in the atrium continued, punctuated by screams and shouts. Stefan had drawn his service sidearm as well, and he was moving in a way that told her he was shielding her from behind.
They reached the double doors in the back. Cuthbert kicked them open and dashed through the opening, weapon at the ready. Inside, the canteen’s scullery was in total disarray. Solveig followed into the room and stepped into water that was pooling all over the floor. Overhead, a water line had broken, and the spray soaked all three of them before they were halfway into the room.
“I don’t know this building,” Cuthbert yelled at Stefan against the blaring of the alarms. “I just saw these doors earlier. Get us to an exit.”
Stefan pointed at another set of doors at the far end of the scullery. “Out through there and straight ahead. I’ll lead.”
Cuthbert nodded and gestured for Stefan to go ahead. When the policeman was past him, he took over the guard position behind Solveig, shielding her from the direction of the canteen. There was more shooting from the atrium, but it had a different rhythm to it now, two distinct sets of rapid-fire weapons, interspersed with the weaker report from a smaller gun firing single shots.
Stefan opened the next set of doors only slightly and scanned the space beyond with his weapon at the ready. He shouldered one of the doors aside and waved them on.
“This way. Stay behind me.”
They rushed out into a long, dark corridor that was only sparsely illuminated by the strips of green emergency lighting running along the walls near the ceiling. The acrid smell of smoke was stronger back here, and the air felt hotter. Solveig had never been claustrophobic, but the idea of going deeper into a dark building that was on fire made her feel a wild, fluttering sort of panic in her chest. She looked to the left and right and saw that the rooms on either side were storage for food and kitchen supplies.
“We need to hide somewhere,” she said.
“We need to get out of here before this building falls down on our heads,” Cuthbert replied, urging her on from behind.
Behind them, a new and intense barrage of gunfire came from the direction of the atrium and the canteen, making Solveig jump and lending added urgency to Cuthbert’s statement.
At the end of the corridor, Stefan turned left but stopped in his tracks. Solveig came to a halt behind him and saw that the path to their left was blocked by a collapsed ceiling.
“This way,” he said and led them to the hallway on the right. “We have to go around this mess. Stay behind me.”
“If I tell you to get down, you drop,” Cuthbert told her. “Just like the security drills.”
This is nothing like the security drills, Solveig thought wildly. She’d had her biannual refreshers with the corporate security division for as long as she had been able to walk on her own, but now she realized that she had taken them too lightly, and that she had not been prepared for the sheer terror she was feeling now. Whoever these people were, she knew they weren’t here to kidnap her for ransom, that they weren’t aware of her at all beyond the fact that she was a convenient target.
At the end of the hallway, Stefan led them to the right and into a small skylift lobby. The doors of the skylift capsules were closed, and red lights were blinking on their control panels. To the right of the skylift bank, there was a door, outlined in pulsating green emergency lighting. Stefan briefly touched the door, then yanked it open, and another alarm went off to join the chorus of the dozens that were already wailing in every part of the building.
“Down two floors,” he said. “That’s the garage for the surface pods. We can get out of the building through there.”
They rushed into the stairwell and down the first flight of stairs. When they reached the landing of the floor below, one of the stairwell access doors on that level burst open, and both Stefan and Cuthbert had their guns up and aimed at it in the fraction of a heartbeat. Solveig yelled as Cuthbert pushed her down roughly with one hand, but her shout was drowned out by gunfire that was cataclysmically loud in the confines of the stairwell. The ear-splitting reports from the pistols were followed by the brief rolling thunder of an automatic burst.
When she looked up again, a body was writhing on the landing, clad in the same armor she had seen briefly on the men that had burst into the atrium. Cuthbert ran up to the prone attacker, shooting as he went. The armored man got back up to one knee and tried to renew his grip on the rifle he had almost dropped. Cuthbert kicked it out of his hand, and it slid across the landing and clattered down the nearby staircase. Then he bodychecked another man with his shoulder and sent him sprawling on his back, following him as he went down. When he was on top of the attacker, he pulled on the un
derside of the man’s helmet where it was sealed against the soft armor covering the neck, wedged the muzzle of his pistol into the gap he had created, and fired three times. The other man convulsed once and went still.
“Go to all the hells,” Cuthbert panted in the near darkness. “You and your fucking armor. Detective, go grab that rifle, see if it has a biometric safety.”
Stefan went down the staircase and retrieved the weapon, then checked it.
“No bio-lock.”
“Good. We’ll need that if we run into more of these assholes. Fucking hardshell. I’m not getting close in with a pistol like that again.”
Somewhere on the floor on the other side of the open door, a burst of gunfire rang out, and Solveig heard the muffled screaming of several people. A targeting laser flickered in the darkness, followed by another short rifle salvo and more screaming.
“They’re going from room to room in there,” Cuthbert said. Stefan tried to push his way past him, but Solveig’s bodyguard grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and pushed him back.
“You go out there, they’ll shoot you, too,” he said. “There’s too many, and they’re wearing armor. You want to be stupid, go ahead. But leave the rifle so I can get her out of here.”
Stefan glared at Cuthbert but made no attempt to push past him again. Somewhere in the staircase above them, they heard footsteps and scattered voices, several people making their way down the stairwell. Beyond the doorway, rifle fire cut through the noise again, short bursts followed by single shots. Cuthbert grabbed Solveig by the arm and guided her down the staircase.
“We have got to go, now.”
He led the way with the light from his weapon, pulling her along with him as he went down the stairs. Behind them, Stefan followed, guarding their backs. Solveig couldn’t even begin to estimate how much time had passed since the explosion had knocked her out of her chair in the canteen. She was running for her life in the dark with no control over what was happening to her, utterly powerless and at the mercy of others.
