Shadow of the Warmaster

7

The entrance to the subterra was wedged open a crack; a short distance inside a roving-guard was lying against a wall. Tezzi Ofka knelt beside him. “Still alive,” she said, speaking in a throaty mutter that dropped dead less than a bodylength away.

“Knocked out?”

Tezzi Ofka shook her head. “No bump or bruise. N’Ceegh is working on a thing he calls a stunner. Could be something like that.”

“They aren’t worried about someone finding him.”

“Looks like.”

Elmas Ofka frowned along the grimy corridor, glanced over her shoulder at the other branches fading into dimness as they dipped downward. “They seem to know where they’re going.”

“Kind of them to mark the way for us.”

Elmas stretched upward, touched a small white splotch high on the wall. She settled back, looked at her finger, rubbed her thumb against the sticky white stain. “Marked more than one way. Let’s go.”

Following the trail of white splotches accented with the bodies of unconscious guards, N’Ceegh’s spotter in her hand, Elmas Ofka led them deeper and deeper into the maze, making better time than she’d expected thanks to the alien invaders who’d cleared the way for them. Down one level, two, three…

The needle jumped on the spotter; Elmas stopped, signaled Lirrit. The isya dropped to her stomach and wriggled around the bend on toes and elbows, vanishing for several seconds before she came back the same way, jumped to her feet and brought her head close to Elmas Ofka’s. “Aliens. Two. Stopped. Watching something.”

Elmas Ofka thought a moment, then took the isyas back around several corners until she came to a branching tunnel. Eyes on the spotter, she turned into it and began picking her way to a point equivalent to where she’d been; twice the spotter jumped, twice Lirrit Ofka went ahead and darted the unlucky wanderer, then Elmas Ofka rounded a bend and saw the end of the tunnel; beyond that there was what looked like a vast open space. After signaling Lirrit Ofka and half the isyas to wait, she led the other three toward the opening, keeping close to the wall, moving warily, ready to dart anything that popped into the arch.

She dropped to her knees and eased her head past the edge.

The room beyond was immense; the ceiling was three levels up, aboveground, with a series of slim horizontal windows circling just below it, windows with one-way glass in them, black now because of the fog and clouds. The floor was another level below where she knelt; it was laid with black and white tiles in a swirling pattern that made her dizzy when she shifted her eyes too quickly. At the north wall there were several tiers of theater seats with a separate thronechair for the Imperator; at the south end, near where she was, a large curved screen, blindingly white, took up part of the wall; in the space it left there were three inconspicuous doors, one to the east of the screen and two on the west. A guard stumped back and forth in front of the single door, the scrape of his footsteps loud enough to send her heart knocking in her throat.

She frowned; the chamber was filled with shadows, except near the screen which seemed to gather in and amplify what light there was. Nothing moved except the guard. Why was he still moving? Was he beyond the range of the alien’s weapons? They were at least ten yards closer to him than she was. Did they have to be almost on the man before they could take him out? Why were they waiting? What did they expect to happen? She glanced down at the spotter, stared at it, startled; there were two spikes on the line, not one. She shifted it slowly back and forth, watching the spikes shift. Something else was out there, something closing on the guard. She moved her eyes slowly over that dizzying floor; whatever it was, she couldn’t see it, no matter how hard she searched. She looked at the scanner. The two spikes had nearly converged.

A section of floor reared up. She heard a hum like an angry bee. The guard dropped. There was a short whistle, then a small alien with brownish fur was standing over the guard’s body, waiting.

8. First the video room (that’s what it looked like, giant size), then the operations cell of the mainBrain.

We parked the miniskips on the stage, out of sight behind some low railings and got into the subterra with almost no difficulty. Adelaar had sense enough not to argue and let Pels take the lead, she’d seen a little of his work on Weersyll; besides, she was carrying a heavy pack she cherished like a child, her tools. I had a launch tube slung across my back and half a dozen clips for it in a pouch on my belt; the darts in the clips were loaded with bang juice strong enough to take out a wall if the need arose. Portable back door, you might say. Pels was in huntmode and harder to see than a black ship in the CoalSack. Shadow made him a special stunner, one small enough for him to carry in his mouth; he had it in his fist now and used it whenever he came on a guard we couldn’t avoid or some idiot with weak kidneys heading for the can. There weren’t many of them, thank whatever. It was late and most sensible folk were sleeping.

I was navigator, reading the chart, calling the turns, laying on rubwhite to guide us should we come back this way when the job was done. I shot it up near where the ceiling met the wall, where not many people would notice it.

We didn’t have much trouble; Pels laid out half a dozen, I shoved them against the wall and on we went. Boring, eh? If you plan right, that’s the way it should be. You don’t want interesting experiences at a time like this. We used about fifteen minutes reaching the place Kumari took one look at and called the video room. Then we waited while Pels sneaked up on the guard. It was slow and tedious, nothing we could do but watch our backs and sweat out the computer’s reaction time; some of the men Pels blanked had to be guards, at least one had to have missed a check-in by now, maybe even two checks if our Luck went sour on us. We were counting on redundancy; there’s no gadget made by man or god that’s foolproof, you have to include some sort of back check to make sure an idiot particle hasn’t wandered where it shouldn’t.

Stunner hidden in his mouth, Pels eeled forward on toes and elbows, his fur mimicking the pattern of the tiles; if you were as high as we were and you knew what to look for, you could find him; the floor would shift a little as if something moved a lens across it. But if you were down there walking a tedious stint like that guard, you’d most likely never see him until he had you.

As Pels got closer, the guard’s nervousness increased. He kept looking around, snapping and unsnapping the flap of his holster, pacing jerkily about, wheeling and glaring at each whisper of sound. Pels changed his technique. He moved and froze, moved and froze, timing his progress to the jitters of the guard; the operating range of that stunner was just under two meters so he had to be very close before he could trigger it and hope to do the job.

Before he went down, Pels got a good look at the man. “Fiveworlder,” he said. “Looks like the local bigass has brought some muggers home from exile; I suppose he feels safer with gits like that keeping the crawlers off his back.”

Squat and powerful, sniffing trouble even if he couldn’t see it, the Fiver swung his head back and forth as if questing for a scent. He was good all right, I wouldn’t want to be the one to take him, but he’d never gone up against an Aurranger Rau in huntmode. Pels got him going away, laid him out like butcher’s meat.

Adelaar and I sprinted along the ramp that led down from our tunnel, moving like the devils in hell were chasing us. We got the door open and she went to work; she’d spent some time over what the EYEs had told her about the system, so she needed about thirty seconds to put a hold on the alarms. Pels and I nosed about. The place looked empty, but we weren’t taking chances, we checked every shadow. There was no one about, no techs or guards, just the interface ticking over by itself. When we got out front again, Adelaar’d begun the tedious process of switching the instructions of the alarm system. I could see it wasn’t all that difficult, she was clucking and snorting as she worked, scorn oozing from every pore. Watching her was about as interesting as watching grass grow, so I went to help Pels carry the guard inside.

We’d just dropped him behind a bench when the door slammed open.

“Don’t move.”

Pels and I froze; there was a load of menace in that whispery female voice. I took a chance and turned my head. Seven more females in black with knitted black socks over their faces followed the first through the door, spreading out so they could keep their weapons on us from half a dozen directions. Definitely not authorized personnel. The wormholes were having a busy night. “Can I straighten up?” I said, as mildly as I could manage. “I’m getting a crick in my back.”

The leader used her free hand to tap twice at her weapon. “The darts these shoot don’t stun,” she said, “they kill.” The look in her eyes which was all I could see of her face said don’t push it, I like you about as much as a bad smell. “Three seconds for a man your size. Less for your friend.” She thought that over a moment. “Probably less. Keep that in mind. Get yourself straight. Slow and easy. That’s right. Now. Both of you. Step over that bench and flatten your backs against the wall. That’s good.” She glanced at Adelaar who hadn’t been interested enough to look around and see what was happening. “What’re you doing?”

“Don’t bother me,” Adelaar snapped; hands briefly stilled, she scowled over her shoulder at the speaker. “Unless you want a load of trouble landing on your necks.”

“Talk as you work.”

“No.” Adelaar turned back to the board and went on with what she’d been doing.

I didn’t like the way that conversation was going. Adelaar had no intention of being reasonable, especially since she was right; what she was doing was more important than this woman’s curiosity. However, I was fairly sure the woman wouldn’t see it that way. “Uh,” I said, “I can tell you in general terms what’s going on. She’s not playing games with you, you’d better let her concentrate on what she’s doing; it can get touchy, changing the rules on an alarm system that complex.”

The woman’s eyes switched back to me. She wasn’t liking me much more than before, but she was willing to listen. “What do you mean?”

“You came across some bodies on your way here?”

“Yes.”

“Some of them were guards. You know how they check in?”

“We know there’s something they’re supposed to do.”

Fools and drunks, they say Luck looks after them, maybe they should add angry female rebels. Going into a place like this with no preparation… ah! “Every twenty some minutes they touch a thumbplate set up along their routes. That tells the Brain there that they’re on the job and where they should be. If a guard doesn’t report and all systems look clear, the lid blows off. My friend is changing the rules, making touch and no-touch equivalent states. In other words, it doesn’t matter what a guard does or doesn’t do.” I snatched a look at Adelaar. “No, I’m wrong, she’s done with that. She’s putting together a clear corridor so we can get out clean once we have what we came for. Did you use those darts on anyone?”

“Why?’

“The ones we knocked out, in an hour or so they’ll wake up with a sore head,” I was talking quietly, keeping things relatively abstract, trying to cool down the situation; seemed to me it was working, so I kept on, “it’s been our experience that guards like them, unless they’re terminally stupid, when they find out there’s no sign of trouble they keep their mouths shut about going to sleep on the job. You see, they won’t remember what hit them, the stunner wipes out the last few seconds before they go down. With you leaving bodies about, that’s not going to happen. Shit. Can’t be helped, I suppose.” I gave her a grin. “Anyway, it’s you and your friends who’re going to get the blame for all this.”

“No doubt. Who are you and why are you here?”

“You’ve been importing slaves.”

“Not me.” She made the two words sound terminally grim.

“Whatever. We’re here to collect some of them. My friend there, the reason she’s a bit testy, she had her daughter snatched.”

“I see.” She inspected Adelaar’s back. She had very bright eyes, hazel, expressive. Good figure. Athletic. Despite the cowl I thought I’d know her again if I met her in other clothes and other surroundings. Reminded me a little of Shadow. I relaxed; she wasn’t going to use that darter unless we were thicker than usual and forced it on her. She caught me smiling; she didn’t like that, but she was cool about it. “Clear corridor. Explain.”

“Deactivating traps, alarms, scanners, acoustics, melters, whatever, so we can scat like our tail’s on fire once we’re finished.”

“Scanners. It was you took them out?”

“My furry friend did. He’s good at that kind of thing. But the techs here, they’ve probably replaced the burnouts by now, and maybe someone has come up with the idea the flare was sabotage, so we don’t have all that much time. If you’ll just calm down and let us work…”

“Seems to me we haven’t interfered all that much.”

Adelaar dug in her pack, brought out the black box she called her crazyquilt; Pels was watching avidly, the smooth black plastic didn’t give him much to go on, but he was blasting into his memory the points where she clamped the leads; he’d hung over her like a worried mother when she started tinkering on the EYEs, but she chased him, saying he made her so nervous she was botching the work. Actually, I think she didn’t want him or anyone else around her when she was using her tools, look at the fuss she made over Kinok’s snooping. She had her secrets and meant to keep them.

“Maybe we could get together on this.” I was trying a little basic persuasion, push but not too hard. “We need information; you want something or you wouldn’t be here.”

She thought that over, those bright eyes flicking from me to Pels and back, then she nodded. She didn’t put the darter away, she held it loosely so she could snap it up if she needed to. “Don’t push at me,” she said, a much more amiable tone to her voice. “You say you’re here to take some slaves home. We can certainly stand the loss. What’s she doing now?”

“Getting past the blocks; when she’s through, she’ll be looking for slave lists. Who’s where.”

“Ah. If she can do that, what do you want from me?”

“Mind if I move away from the wall, my leg’s getting cramped.”

“If you’ll remember…” She flicked the darter at the silent women watching us.

“I hear you.” Moving slow and easy, I stepped over the bench and crossed to Adelaar. “About how long?”

She jumped, glared at me. Sweat was beaded over her face and there was a wild look in her eyes.

“Del, cool it, will you?” I know that wasn’t the most tactful thing I could have said; I didn’t mean to be tactful; I thought she needed an excuse to blow up, so I gave her one. She cursed me for half a minute. I don’t know Sonchйri, but those words didn’t need translation, they sounded like a couple of k’yangs snarling at each other. When she wore out her vocabulary, she dragged a hand across her face, gave me a disgusted look and went back to watching the readout dials on her black box.

I left her to it and ambled over to another work station, swung the chair around and sat straddling it, my arms crossed over the padded back looking cool and friendly. Nothing like a clichй to comfort the edgy. “Hanifa,” I said which MEMORY told me was a courteous honorific for an important femme, a good description for the one facing me, “might be a good idea to send a couple of your people outside, keep watch for rovers looking for trouble. Maybe the tall one there could put on enough of his uniform,” I jerked a thumb at the unconscious guard, “to suggest he’s still on guard. Another idea, my friend here is rather good at stalking, you see him take the guard? Right, then you know what I mean. You’ve got us two as hostages for his good behavior, why not let him help with the patrolling? He’s an amiable soul if you don’t coo at him too much. Women do, you know, it’s the curse of his life.”

She surprised me. She laughed full out, a pleasant noise over the faint hum of the interface and the ticking of the shutdown readouts, made me feel like smiling for the first time since she jumped us; those other grins and grimaces were just policy. She waved the tall chunky one over and told her to get to it, called a little one who looked like she was made of springsteel and hard rubber and sent her up into one of the holes to keep watch there and pot anyone who showed his nose. She gazed thoughtfully at Pels, then nodded and waved him after the women. When he was gone, she set her hands on her hips and looked me over. “I understand about her,” she nodded at Adelaar, “Why you?”

“Gelt,” I said. “It’s how I make my living. She hired me and my Crew to help her find her daughter and on top of that I collect so much a head for every captive I bring back.”

“Crew,” she said. “You have a starship.”

“I didn’t walk here. The lists in there, they’re going to say something like this person arrived at such and such time, he was sold or rented to such and such an individual living in such and such a town. We need someone to get us to the right houses. Or lay out maps for us.”

“That might be arranged. We can talk about it next time we meet. Mostly he rents them, Old Pittipat I mean.” She scratched at her chin with the barrel of the darter, stopped that when the front sight snagged in the knitted cloth that covered the bottom half of her face. “You noticed the Warmaster.”

“Hard to miss.”

“What do you know about ships like that?”

“It’s big. If it set down here, it’d grind this city to dust and just about empty the lake. When it has its full complement on board, it carries six or seven thousand, which includes crew, support personnel and strike force. You have any idea how many men your Pittipat keeps up there?”

She made a soft angry sound. “Not mine.” She tapped the darter against her hip and went back to watching Adelaar. After a minute she said, “I don’t know. Maybe she can get the Brain to tell us.”

I took a look at what Adelaar was doing. “When she has a moment free, shouldn’t be long now, I’ll see what she can turn up.”

“How much to take us up there?”

“More than you or a dozen like you could afford.”

“You don’t know what I can afford.”

“Maybe not, but you don’t know how nervous that thing makes me.”

“Bolodo takes pay in rosepearls. Other things too, but mostly them. Have you seen rosepearls?” That straightened me up and got me interested.

Adelaar had mentioned the profits from the slaving, but she hadn’t gone into details. I still wasn’t willing to risk Slancy in something so close to a sacrifice mission, but if that Warmaster were seriously undermanned which I suspected from the way it acted, hmm, it was an interesting thought. “I’ve seen a few, didn’t know where they came from.” I kept my voice easy, noncommittal, but I don’t think I fooled her much; she could smell a deal, but she was smart enough not to push it. “Let me find out what the Brain says,” I told her. “I don’t consider suicide an acceptable option.”

“Nor I.”

Adelaar started digging through her pack again; apparently she was in solid, because she brought out the duper and began attaching it to the black box. After the marrying was done and the run started, she went a little limp, scrubbed at her face with her sleeve and swung her chair around to face me; she looked a bit like she’d been having great sex with an inventive group, tired but with a kind of glow to her. “She’s a slow bitch,” she said, “it’ll take maybe twenty minutes to get it all. Aslan first, then I’m pulling everything she’s got about Bolodo. When we get back, those skells won’t know what hit them.”

“You think you could dig out what’s in there on the Warmaster?”

“Explain.”

She listened while I sketched the Hanifa’s proposition. Not quite a proposition yet, but a suggestion that we might work out some sort of accommodation. I could see the spark of interest in her when I mentioned rosepearls. It looked a lot like mine. She listened without saying anything and after I finished, sat staring at the floor for several minutes. Finally she looked up. “Aslan first.” The words hadn’t much force behind them. She’d spent time, sweat and a lot of her gelt to reclaim her daughter, but teasing a profit out of her pain was so seductive a thought it almost obscured her original purpose.

“Agreed,” I said, “that’s in the contract.”

“We need to make sure we’ve got legs for getting out of here.”

“Right. Slancy’s my income, I’m not hazarding her; you know how hard it is to get hold of a good ship. The tug’s different. We could pick up another like her in a couple of months.” I gave the Hanifa a half-grin, making sure she felt she was in the game; whether this happened or not, I wanted her kept sweet. With rosepearls in the pot, I was definitely coming back here once this business was finished. “Just looking won’t hurt.”

“Uh-huh. I think we’ve had this chat before.”

“I hear. Crew and me, we run on equal shares once Slancy’s serviced.”

“Five shares?”

“Four. Kinok/Kahat count as one. Five with you. One time.”

“Done.”

I shifted to the Hanifa. “If the brain says it’s doable, we’ll do it, say you and I agree on terms.” I gave her the grin again. “Anything else you’d like to buy?”

She thought that over a minute. “I need to talk to my people.”

I checked my chron. “Plenty of time. The dupe run has to finish before my friend can pull the Warmaster stats.”

Adelaar watched the woman gather her raiders together and start whispering at them. “Until a year and a half ago, local, a little over two years std., Aslan was here. Right here, inside these walls.”

“What happened?”

“She disappeared. Ran. There’s some more, but I haven’t tried reading it yet.”

I nodded at the confa group. “Maybe one of them knows.”

She pushed absently at her hair, her face gone blank, her eyes narrowed. I hadn’t a clue what she was thinking. “Not here,” she said finally.

“Mmf, maybe you better explain that some more.”

“This is no place to twist answers out of anyone, too many ways we can get dumped on; besides, I left my kit behind, didn’t think I’d need it.”

“Twist answers. That’s not too swift an idea.”

“Rosepearls.”

“I can see their shine in your eyes too.”

She managed a thin smile. “I won’t dispute that. You think you can trust them?”

“Not half. Fanatics. They’ll do whatever they want to do and hell with any contract.” I yawned. It was getting later by the breath and I was tired. And I was getting nervous, stuck in this hole, waiting for the locals to pour on the troops. “Whatever they come up with, you keep hold of the data until they provide the pearls.”

“We agree on that much anyway.”

“Listen, say we lift them up there, if they can take that monster out, it’ll make getting away clean a lot easier. And getting back in. Look, Del, we’ve got the inside track with these people, an exclusive as long as we can keep the location quiet.”

“That won’t be long if your gamble pays off.”

He shrugged. “One or two trips for me, but Adelaris could have a longhaul market here.”

“Gray or black?”

“Does that matter? Lets you hike your prices.”

“I don’t know enough about this place…”

The Hanifa came back. “The clear corridor,” she said, eyes hard on Adelaar. “Can you leave it and hide what you’ve done?”

Adelaar ran her tongue over her lips. “Probably. The wards they’re using aren’t all that sophisticated. I’ll have to put the alarms right before we leave, but…” She frowned at the woman, I could see she was thinking keep it simple, you don’t want to irritate this one. “I can loop a path out of the guard circuits and pinch off access. Um, it might be better to set up several corridors, make them operative on different days, um, switch from one to another in, say, a seven-day rotation. They’ll be harder to spot that way. Safer for your people, they won’t be coming over in the same place same time every time.”

The Hanifa’s eyes glittered, but she controlled her excitement and gave a short sharp nod. “Can you find the files on suspect Hordar? Perhaps the Sech’s plans for dealing with them?”

“I can take a look. Some of that might be stored in local branches.”

“There aren’t any. This is the only mainBrain on Tairanna.”

“Your Pittipat doesn’t like to share his power?”

“No.” She didn’t object to the your this time, too much into getting what she’d come for to worry about little things like that. “We want those files.”

“Right. I can also erase them, if you want. Turning them over is more complicated unless your equipment can mate to mine.”

“You can fix that.”

“Probably. Not here.” Adelaar had relaxed all over; she was back in her personal groove, selling her services. “Not for free either. Make me an offer.”

The Hanifa moved her feet apart, set her hands on her hips and prepared to fight. “For your work and the files, five creampink, ten to eighteen grains.”

“Seven corridors, files out and erased, eight midrose, twenty grain minimum, for my time, one of your creampinks.”

“Seven corridors, two midrose; for the files, we’ll have to see them to rate them, guarantee of one midrose, for erasing them one creampink, bonus points negotiated according to how much is in the files; your work, one creampink. Eighteen to twenty grains.”

They went back and forth for several more minutes until they settled on a price that pleased both; by that time the dupe run had finished and Adelaar settled to work pulling the Warmaster stats, dumping them in the duper and at the same time flashing them on a readout so I could look them over and get an idea if a sneakraid was doable. While she was busy with this last, the tall local came inside, murmured something to her leader and went out again.

The Hanifa came over to me and stood watching the stats run past; Adelaar was into schematics now, line drawings of ship segments. “A guard came nosing about,” she said after a moment. “Your friend stunned him. He said to tell you it was part of the standard rover pattern, he was expecting the man, it doesn’t look like anyone is exercised about the scanners going out, the guard was normal-alert, not hyper.”

“I hear you.” I checked my chron again; seemed like we’d been down here a year or two, but it was just over an hour. “There’s a shift change coming up in a little while. We’d better be gone by then.”

“You seem to know a lot about what happens here.”

“I’m a cautious man, Hanifa. I like to know what I’m stepping in.”

“How?”

“Observation and experience.”

“Observation?”

“Electronic surrogates.”

“You recorded what they told you?”

“I’m a cautious man, Hanifa.”

“Willing to sell it?”

“Not worth much. Once top security here wakes up to what happened, there’ll be changes. Tell you what, I’ll throw that into the pot with your suspect files, a little sweetener.”

“Why?”

“Call it good will. Now that I know about you and what you’ve got to offer, I plan to be back, do some trading for this and that.”

“Rosepearls.”

“Naturally. And whatever else seems worth the trip.”

She gave me an odd look and moved off. Like she hadn’t thought through what it meant, us being there. Not until now. There was a big wild universe out there and she didn’t know how she felt about linking up with it. Maybe a touch of panic.

I pulled my mind back to what was happening on the screen in front of me. It was looking good. Total complement was around two hundred and more than half of those were support and services, whores, cooks, valets, you name it, everything you needed to keep three score techs, sech snoops and guards happy in their isolation. No wonder they didn’t notice us, they wouldn’t have noticed a grenade in their laps, to quote one of Pels’ favorite expressions. Why favorite I haven’t a notion, some kink in his psyche I suppose. Most of the ship was mothballed. My palms were starting to itch. Cumpla doomp, I wanted that ship. There was no way I could afford her, the fuel bills alone would be enough to bankrupt a small empire, but taking it would be so easy. For a minute I indulged in fantasies of charging across the universe with the power of a god under my hands, then I shook myself back to reality. Probably wasn’t enough fuel in her tanks to get her across the system, let alone to the nearest fuel dump.

I still didn’t like the thought of trying to nose up to that whale without it noticing me. Hmm. The guards were rotated every half-year local, that meant we could probably pick up someone who’d been up there recently and knew the drill. The screen blanked. I looked around.

“That’s it,” Adelaar said. “How long have I got?”

“Shift change ninety-five minutes. Pels got a guard, but he says there’s no fuss yet. Don’t dawdle over anything you can double-clik.”

“Even doubling, it’s going to take the better part of an hour to finish and that’s saying I don’t screw up somewhere and have to start over.

“I hear.” I slid out of the chair. “Don’t push it, I’ll see what I can do about arranging a meet with our client so we can get paid for this.”

“You do that.” She bent over the eviscerated terminal, forgetting me and everything else but what she was doing.

I went to pump the Hanifa and her women for everything I could get about the local setup.