Chimera

Twenty-Eight

Coren watched the TBI team sort and ready their equipment for the third time. The comm unit bead in his ear fed him updates on the status of all the other teams. He still could not quite believe they expected to pull this off-the final count had been thirty-one sites on the ground, and eight on Kopernik, all targeted to be hit simultaneously. It was ambitious.

But the clearances had come through from the Aurorans, which, no doubt, would cause a furor within Spacer circles-several sites were Solarian- or Keresian-owned.

Coren's own pack lay at his feet; he had arrived prepared, and had never been one to check and recheck his equipment in nervous anticipation. He glanced around the edge of the bay, toward the warehouse across the alley-the same one where all this had begun. He distrusted tidy closures like this, but it seemed the most logical place for Tresha to go. She was either here waiting transport, or she was already on Kopernik-in which case, Sipha would grab her.

At least this time I don't feel like I need a bath…

Ariel sat nearby, her back to the wall, eyes closed, arms folded over her chest, legs outstretched with ankles crossed. She gave the appearance, at least, of a seasoned field agent practicing patience, waiting for the Go signal. At this point, for all Coren knew, she was-everything he had assumed about her had turned out to be insufficient for any reasonable assessment. Ariel Burgess did not conform to easy descriptions or predictable definitions.

Like Nyom, he thought, only completely different…

The TBI team leader approached her, and squatted down to talk. She spoke quietly and intently, instructing the ambassador on what she was expected to do. Ariel nodded and rose smoothly to her feet, then crossed the ancient floor of the bay and sat down. A dozen agents huddled around her for one more question-and-answer session.

Telemetry chittered in Coren's ear. Suddenly, he heard: "Set. Good to go."

He looked up and met the team leader's eyes. She nodded. The huddle broke up into scurrying efficiency. In less than a minute, everyone was loaded up and waiting for the word.

Coren pulled his mask down, hoisted the pack onto his shoulders, and jumped from the edge of the bay. He sprinted across the alley and leapt onto the apron of a mirror-image bay. He pressed against the wall and waited while the TBI team flowed throughout the alley, taking positions to cover him.

Coren took a five-centimeter-square chit from his thigh pocket and slid it into the reader set in the wall. The bay door rumbled up and he ducked inside.

Three dockworkers looked up from the workstation around which they stood, shocked by the sudden intrusion. Automatically, their hands went up as TBI agents rushed in, aiming weapons at them.

"Down!" Coren hissed at the workers. They dropped to the floor obediently. "How many inside? Where?"

"Um…short staffed," one of the workers said. "Don't, uh…there's a special shipment, private…uh…"

"Okay," Coren said, tapping the man's head. "Quiet."

Coren set the pack down on the loading dock. The sounds of the warehouse and the distant port thrummed in the vast open spaces, constant and oddly reassuring. Trucks, dollies, crates, containers, all furnished the area.

He scooped out a handful of vonoomans and began methodically activating them. Upon release, they scampered into the recesses of the warehouse. He sealed the pack then took out his palm monitor.

"Give them a few minutes," he said to the team leader. He waved to an agent and pointed to the three workers. Immediately, they were restrained and moved out of the way. The team leader spoke intently into her comm.

Coren unfolded the monitor. Within seconds, a map of the interior sketched itself. The little machines showed bright green on the schematic. At no point did they change color to indicate human presence-not until one reached the transfer bays on the far side, where the bins for the shuttles came and went on automated tracks. Then several blue points appeared, huddled just outside one of the bay doors. Coren tapped Ariel's arm and pointed.

"That's them, then?" she asked.

"I assume so." Coren refolded the monitor and stood. He looked at the team leader. "Ready?"

She nodded silently.

Vehicles rolled into the alley outside.

Shouldering the pack, Coren started forward. Now he felt anxious. He wanted to get out there and find Tresha and whoever else she had with her.

He was beginning to accept that Nyom had died coincidentally, the result of a power struggle between forces that in all likelihood had not even been aware of her existence. Accept it, yes, but he would never be at peace with it. All that remained for him now was to find those responsible. After that…

He would never be able to work for Rega again, even if Looms were willing to have him.

I wonder if Ariel's offer is real…

At the rear of the bay, they ascended a short staircase. The door at the top let them into an office area. The squad seemed to fill it.

Coren was unconcerned about tripping warehouse security monitors-he doubted any of the normal internal systems were on right now-but his targets might have placed alarms at various points. He opened his pack again and took out another mass of tiny machines. He keyed them and let them out in the corridor beyond the office. Scavengers, they would hunt down and eradicate any telltale devices they found.

He sat down before a comm and waited, watching his monitor. When all the lights showed green, he nodded to the team leader.

Swiftly and efficiently, the agents poured from the room and disappeared into the warehouse, each member with a preassigned location. One of them remained behind.

The bead gave him new updates, reports from the various locations. Ariel listened to the same data, nodding silently to herself.

Coren inserted a decrypter into the console before him and initiated the invasive routines. Within seconds, the data stored in the warehouse systems was isolated from the DELETE protocols that would have erased everything upon a single command-a command, Coren noted, which had not yet been given. Secured, he opened a comm channel and began sending all this information to another site.

"Done," he announced. "Let's go."

The trap was closing as Coren and Ariel hurried through the administrative areas of the warehouse. With Palen coordinating on Kopernik and Agent Harwol coordinating on the ground, the global sweep was underway. Warehouses, shipping firms, and ships were being seized. Executives were being picked up for questioning.

Alda Mikels was about to be arrested again.

He entered the same office area he had been in five days ago, overlooking the gridlike expanse of the warehouse proper. So familiar and so strange-things rarely formed neat closures or elegant symmetries in his profession. There was a mirror-like quality to this, though, that gave him a sense of validation, confirming his choices and assuring him that his purpose was necessary and sufficient. Perhaps this feeling was wrong, an illusion, but he could use it. He moved unhesitantly.

Halfway across the grid they heard the first blaster shots. Then shouting. Coren recognized the stentorian timbre of TBI commands. Arrests were underway.

He crossed the apron to one of the open doors leading out to the transport grid. Agents stood above eight people who lay face down on the floor, hands clasped behind their heads. Nearby sprawled three corpses, smoke still coiling listlessly from their wounds.

Coren went from prisoner to prisoner, then to the bodies. No Tresha.

The maze of cargo bins beyond was motionless, the power cut. Huge cubes scattered across the vast field hovered on their self-contained antigravity cushions.

In his ear, Coren continued to hear reports of successful raids, arrests, a few casualties.

But no cyborgs.

He pulled out his optam and scanned the field of inert blocks. No movement. He strode onto the grid.

"Coren-"

Ariel came after him, the TBI agent trailing behind. "Where," she asked, "are you going?"

"They're here," Coren said. "They have to be." He turned away and continued walking.

"There are agents at the other end," Ariel called.

"I know!"

The TBI were very good at these sorts of things-they rarely botched a raid-but Coren wanted the confrontation. Things were going too well-the sites were being taken efficiently, arrests made quickly, few fatalities-but he wanted more of a mess, an excuse to get angry and desperate and violent.

He moved quickly, though cautiously, among the eerily-still cargo bins. The air smelled of ozone, and he felt a faint, dry tingle over his skin. The maze stretched a good two kilometers to where the port machinery sorted out the containers, those arriving and those departing going to separate chutes to the correct shuttles.

He stopped. He could not see the warehouse end now through the forest of cubes.

"Gamelin!" he called, voice echoing. "Did you know who she was? The baley runner you killed?" He listened to the answering silence. "Nyom Looms! Do you remember that name?"

He continued walking. "She was your sister, Gamelin! Did you know you had family?"

Coren stopped and looked to his left. He glimpsed a tall shape, dull gray, slightly crouched, standing outlined against one of the bins.

Coren raised his blaster.

Suddenly, the shape came toward him faster than Coren had ever seen anyone move. If it were not moving directly at him, Coren doubted he would have been able to discern a single detail.

But the moment seemed infinite in what he could see:

A face, pockmarked as if by horrible disease. Wide-set unblinking eyes. A hairless skull. Wide shoulders. A runner's build. A dead-alive intensity, unchanging, mutated into an expression of profound resentment.

Coren wanted more than anything to run.

He fired, too late. The charge slammed into the cyborg's torso, but momentum carried it into Coren. He felt as if his entire body had been slapped all at once. He flew back, into one of the cargo bins, and dropped onto his buttocks painfully.

Coren rolled and slowly rose to his feet.

When he turned again, the cyborg stood less than a meter away. He suppressed the impulse to try to shoot it-he doubted he could raise his weapon fast enough.

"Gamelin?" Coren said.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, human," it said, its voice a rasp like dried paper scraps and crushed bone. "We don't know each other, do we, gato?"

"Maybe, in a way. Is that your only name?"

"Only need one."

"How about Jerem?"

It cocked its head quizzically. "You have a name?"

"Coren Lanra."

"That's two names. Never figured that. What, humans got to have more than one of everything? How come you never give anything else more than one name?"

"You know better than that. Look at your homeworld. It's got four names: Nova Levis, and Cassus Thole."

"Don't forget the star now. Tau Secordis. Six names. But other living things? One name."

"Are you a living thing?"

Gamelin shook its head. "Not really. But I don't mind. It's not so bad being dead. You should try it." He took a step forward. "What was that you said about a sister?"

"You killed her."

"Not possible, gato. I don't even have parents."

"You did."

Gamelin looked puzzled. "How'd I kill her?"

"Broke her neck when she wouldn't breathe your poisoned air."

Gamelin's eyes blinked, very slowly. Coren could not read its expression. The cyborg's eyes narrowed briefly.

"Not acceptable," it said.

"Coren!" Ariel's voice called.

Gamelin looked around. Coren gripped his weapon and brought it up.

The cyborg moved fast, laterally. Coren fired. The bolt struck a cargo bin, punching a hole in it. Something within it had been under pressure and now shot out of the wound, sending the entire container careening off its track into another one. Within seconds, they dominoed off and into each other, and Coren watched, stunned, at the sudden pile-up.

The grid's AI tried to compensate. Bins that had been immobile now began precipitously changing tracks and rearranging to avoid the collisions. Enormous piles of metal rammed each other. Bins bounced around like toys. The drumming of colliding bins filled the vast chamber. Somewhere the violent hiss of escaping gas cut through the thunder-the bin he had punctured.

What was I thinking about this being too neat and efficient…? Coren wondered.

Through the din, four harsh blaster shots, like air tearing, focussed his attention.

"Ariel!"

He looked around for her-just as Gamelin grabbed him.

Coren felt a bolt of terror pulse through him as he was lifted off his feet by one arm. The hand that gripped him compressed muscle and bone on his forearm, impossibly strong, and he understood how Jeta and Damik and the Brethe dealer and others unnamed had died. The blaster fell from his hand.

Now, was all he thought as he looked into Gamelin's face. Ariel ran. Cargo bins careened in her wake, seeming to chase her. When the inert cubes had begun to move to compensate for the sudden threat to property, restarted by a watchful but uncreative AI, she expected to be crushed between them.

She glanced back. One bin bounced randomly among the others, a thick spray of gas squirting powerfully from a hole in its side. She considered shooting it again, but that might only make it worse. She kept running.

Finally, near the warehouse end of the transport maze, the banging ended and the shifting bins stopped shifting. Ariel looked back into the altered landscape and thought, Even if very little is damaged, getting all this straightened out is going to take some doing…

When it was clear that nothing else was moving, she started back.

"Ambassador." The TBI team leader came up alongside her. "The warehouse is secured, we have nine people in custody, and we found four robots in stand-by niches. Your assistance is required to secure them. "

"Are they moving?" Ariel asked.

"No-"

"Then they already are secured. Forget about them. Coren's out here."

"Ambassador. " The woman stepped in front of Ariel and stopped. Ariel came up against her outstretched hand. "Please go back. We'll find Mr. Lanra."

"You can accompany me. "

"Please, I insist-"

"Something started this disaster," Ariel said, waving her hand around at the jumbled bins. "Coren's vonoomans located no other people than those you already have in custody. Which means?"

"Ambassador-"

"Which means you can accompany me, but I'm going. "

Ariel stepped around the agent. She heard a sharp hiss of breath-a signal-and then running feet. Two more agents joined her, along with the team leader.

They spread out laterally and worked their way through the labyrinth of containers.

The number of damaged bins grew the further they went. Clusters of toppled containers formed tangles. Ariel held her blaster in both hands, her pulse racing.

I must remember in the future that I don't really have to do this, she thought.

She heard voices. Moving toward them, it became clear that one of them was Coren, but the other-rasping and low-was not even clearly human.

Ariel came around a pair of mashed bins and saw Coren dangling by one arm from the grip of the cyborg. Coren nodded as the cyborg spoke to him, its head tilted forward on enormous shoulders.

Ariel licked her lips. Now what?

In those seconds of indecision, the cyborg suddenly straightened and looked around. It saw Ariel.

Indifferently, it dropped Coren.

In that instant, a blaster shot splashed against its back. "No!" Ariel shouted, then pressed the stud on her own weapon.

Gamelin's pain came out like dust-laden wind. The cyborg took a few more steps, and fell. Coren squirmed and pushed and managed to crawl away. The stench of scorched fabric, melted plastic, and meat filled Ariel's nostrils.

Ariel hurried forward, along with the TBI agents. One of them grabbed Coren's jacket and dragged him further from the cyborg.

Ariel stopped a meter from it, keeping her weapon aimed at its head. It lay face down. Smoke wafted up from three burns on its back and shoulders.

The team leader took its arm and heaved, turning it over.

Gamelin surged up suddenly, brushing away her weapon and clutching her jacket.

"Oh, kill me slow, gato," it said. "It's the only thing I have left to feel."

It placed one enormous hand over her face and squeezed. Bone snapped with sickening delicacy, and the team leader screamed.

Ariel jerked the trigger of her blaster; the shot grazed Gamelin's arm. The cyborg stood and tossed the body of the team leader at the other agent, turned, and fled. Ariel tried to hit it again, firing repeatedly. But none of the shots found a target, and Gamelin soon disappeared among the cargo bins.

Ariel's breathing came heavy as she went to Coren. Sweat covered his face, but he was conscious.

"It knows," he said. "I told it."

"How bad are you?" Ariel ran her gaze over him, settling on his right arm. She reached for it.

His other arm came up and stopped her. "Hurts."

"We'll get help."

"Tresha must already be in transit," Coren said. "Contact Sipha…make sure…"

Ariel felt momentarily frantic about his injuries, but she nodded and stood. She went to the other agent, who held the team leader in his arms. Her face was turning black already. One eye bulged hideously.

Somehow, though, she was still alive.

Ariel raised her comm and started issuing orders. Derec listened absently to the tense comm traffic being monitored behind him. He gazed out of the office across the empty dock, waiting for the instant the bay doors opened and the shuttle for which they waited slid into the station.

Masid came up beside him.

"Reports from groundside indicate a rousing success, " Masid said.

Derec glanced at him. "How come you don't sound pleased?"

Masid raised his eyebrows. "It's not finished. I'm never happy till it's over."

"All the Settler bays in question have been seized," Derec mused. "We have prisoners, some of whom are already giving up information-"

"Ah, but they don't really know a lot. Most of it won't amount to very much unless we can persuade this one-" he nodded toward the bay below them "-to talk. Tresha's the key to the whole thing."

"You never struck me as a pessimist. "

"Pragmatist. Big difference."

"Coren's been hurt," Palen announced.

Derec and Masid turned toward the room. Harwol sat behind one desk, hand to his ear. Palen occupied another desk opposite him. She looked at Derec.

"Ambassador Burgess is all right," she said. "The cyborg got away."

"Damn," Masid said.

"Is Lanra hurt badly?" Derec asked.

"Crushed forearm," Palen said. "Reparable. Tresha is in transit." She touched a contact. "Look sharp, people-the main fish is coming into our net. "

Derec turned away. One cyborg still loose. They had found no others. Part of him was reassured-at least they would not have to deal with any more right now-but he could not convince himself that these represented the only two. From what Polifos had told them, it was an old and ongoing program. Somewhere, there were more.

Maybe Tresha could tell them.

"Damn it!" Palen shouted. "Her shuttle is changing vector. It's heading to another bay. Who gave clearance for that?"

Harwol looked up. "I'm moving my people now. Do you have the new destination?"

Palen listened intently. "Working on it…come on… shit, it's going to a Solarian dock."

Masid leaned close to Derec. "What did I tell you?"

Derec went to an empty chair and pulled himself to a comm. He tapped in a code and waited. Ambassador Setaris appeared on his screen.

"Ambassador," he said, "we have a new situation. Our last target has switched destination from the Settler dock she was scheduled for to the Solarian section."

Setaris's eyes widened. "What do you need, Mr. Avery?"

"We're moving on her regardless," Derec said, glancing at Palen and Harwol, who both nodded. "You might want to start working on smoothing things over with Ambassador Chassik now."

"Thank you for the warning. Good luck. "

"Move, " Harwol said, looking at Palen. "Your station, your arrest. "

Palen jumped up and headed for the exit.

Masid nodded for Derec to come along. When they reached the dock in question, Solarian security-Keresians-blocked access. Palen pushed her way through the knot of TBI and station security. She brought her face close to the chief of Solarian security.

"Chief Palen," she said. "Stand aside. This is a lawful entry."

"I have orders-" the Keresian started.

Palen shoved him to one side and stabbed the access panel. The door opened.

Her people poured through.

They crowded into the control booth. Operators started to abandon their positions.

"Sit down!" Palen shouted. "You're receiving an unauthorized shuttle. When will it be in the bay?"

"Your pardon, Chief Palen, " one of the operators said, "but we received authorization fifteen minutes ago."

"From who?"

"Our embassy, of course."

Palen stared at the man. "Are you going to tell me that this shuttle is under diplomatic protection?"

"I-well-"

"Entering the cradle now," another operator said.

"Bring it in," Palen ordered. "Embassy clearance or not, that shuttle is impounded."

Below, the huge doors opened. Tractor lines drew the sleek, bullet-shaped shuttle into the, bay. Once it had cleared the opening, the doors sealed and the bay started pressurizing.

Palen moved to the access hatch. "Security, with me. Avery, you get on the comm and do liaison with your people. Masid, you do the same with Harwol."

"Pressurization complete, " an operator announced.

Derec went to the comm console and tapped in a code. The channel to the Auroran Embassy, Earthside, showed open.

The hatch slid aside and Palen led her squad of police down the stairs. The hatch closed behind them. Derec went to the window and watched the security teams spread out around the shuttle.

Masid joined Derec. "Now maybe I'll start being optimistic," he said.

Derec looked at the chief operator. "Who issued the clearance?"

"I'm not at liberty to-"

"Don't. A name. Was it Chassik?"

The man looked embarrassed and uncertain. "Derec," Masid said.

Below, the shuttle hatch opened. Palen took a position at the base of the ramp, hands on hips. A woman appeared in the hatchway. For a long, long moment, she gazed down at the security people and Palen.

There was a faint series of flashes around the bay door. And then, between one instant and the next, the door itself blew outward.

Derec flinched back. The shuttle lurched off its cradle, the prow rolling over Palen. Bodies lifted off the deck and sailed out the gaping hole. The shuttle itself caught against the sides of the dock, wedged briefly.

Then it exploded.

There was no sound. Derec fell to the floor. He could hear the walls of the control booth creaking under enormous stress, but they did not yield.

Minutes later, he managed to stand.

The bay was empty of anything that might have been loose. The walls were stained black, and the hatch itself was buckled outward. The shuttle was gone, and no one remained in the now airless space.