“Women,” Jack snarled, but headed for the nearby exit.
“You’re the fools what want to live with us,” the horn blared back.
“Not live with you, just—”
Kris got Jack good in the ribs.
“Throw that one back where he came from, honey, we can get you a better work partner.”
“The last one was all hands. I’ll take him. He’s just a lot of talk,” Kris answered.
“Well, you hurry along. I’m out of here. There’s a gray goon that wants my observation station, and he can have it. Maybe they’re getting overtime. I sure ain’t. Now hurry along.”
Kris did, for about thirty seconds, then took a turn and headed up again.
“How long before a gray spots us?” Jack asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. A gray can’t know the plant layout like that nice woman did.”
“Big mouth you mean.”
“You’re just mad ’cause she turned you down for a date.”
“I assure you, young woman, when I offer a woman an evening, I do it most graciously, and I am never turned down.”
“What’d that woman say? ‘You’re the fools what want to live with us.’ ”
“I don’t want to live with her.”
“Who does live with you?”
“No one. I’m never home anyway.”
“So you live with me.” That got no answer for several steps. Jack was just opening his mouth, Kris anticipating his reply.
“Freeze where you are,” growled a voice behind them.
23
Kris froze in midstep. Jack, mouth open in mid banter, a statue beside her.
“Now turn around. Do it now. Do it slow. Nothing fast, or I’ll shoot you both dead.” The voice was high, tending to crack in the upper registers. Just what Kris needed, a nervous finger on a gun aimed at her. She turned slowly, one hand raising high. The other still holding the tool box. Jack did the same.
“We’re doing what you want,” Kris said in a soothing voice. “We don’t want no problems here. We’re leaving. We just wanted to get Jack here’s new thermos. He paid one of those latte places to fill it,” she rambled on, stepping forward and just casually coming between Jack and the gray-clad security guard.
“Everybody got told to get the hell out of here.” The young man licked lips already raw and chapped. Very nervous type.
“Yeah, but when has the boss man ever meant what he says when he’s panicking and ordering everyone around?” Kris said, seeking sympathy. “And we got really good coffee. You want a cup?” she said, stooping to put down her tool kit, giving him a good view down her only partially zipped overalls and the one falsie she still had.
The youngster stared, part distraction, part confusion, and no part alarm. He nodded. A split second later, he collapsed slowly as Jack put three sleepy darts into him.
Kris grabbed his automatic pistol before it hit the deck. She popped his ammo belt off and snatched his wrist unit, stuffing it down her bodice. “Nelly, crack that net. We got any bugs we can spare?”
“I have twelve. I am working on the net.”
“Send one bug zigzagging off that way,” Kris pointed. “Have it switch off every camera it can. Do the same with another bug in the opposite direction.”
“Doing.”
“Which direction are we going?” Jack asked.
“I think we’re close enough to the wall. Time to take the exit like we were told,” Kris said, dodging around the elevator.
“Right behind you.”
“I had Corporal Stout report that he is pursuing two people and gave a bearing that follows my first decoy,” Nelly reported.
“Good,” Kris said as she opened the service hatch behind the bank of elevators. “In you go, Jack.”
“I thought you were going to lead, and I got to follow.”
“Change of plan. You missed Chivalry 101 and failed to open the door for me.”
“Damn, and me out killing some of your dad’s opposition the day it was taught. They said I’d never miss it if I worked for a Longknife.”
“That’ll teach you to trust what other people say about those damn Longknifes,” Kris said, leaving a whizbang on a ledge next to the door. “Nelly, leave a nano. Blow the charge if something gray or ninja comes in here.”
“That leaves us only nine,” Nelly pointed out.
“Nine will have to do. What’s happening on net?”
“SureFire Security is dividing its forces between problems on Level 26—that’s us—and Levels 51 and 39. One of those must be Tom and Penny. There are also crowd control problems on five other levels. Kris, people are panicking.”
Jack glanced down at her; she shrugged. She’d known when she started that evacuations were not orderly affairs; people got hurt. Whatever happened in the next twenty minutes had to be less deadly than what would happen when the station started whipping around as the yard blew out. Calculated risk.
Climbing went quickly. Gravity grew less the closer they got to the hub. Jack went hand over hand up the rungs, Kris right behind him. There was a shout from below them followed by a burst of rapid fire. A second later the whizbang went off. Noise, flashing light, and smoke turned the shaft into no place to be; Jack opened the next exit hatch and made good use of it.
“We’re not quite at the hub,” he told her. A glance showed a high ceiling, gray work spaces, heavy machinery, and from the smell, a wastewater treatment plant.
“Am I going to spend the rest of my life doing penance for that little bomb topside?” Kris snapped.
“I’m sure you’ll earn worse karma,” Jack said and ducked behind a whirling green generator.
Two grays were headed their way at their best attempt at a run in this gravity, arms and legs flying.
“Put your hands up,” one bawled. Kris did. Jack snapped off two shots; the grays tumbled and slid along the deck.
“That cuts it,” Kris said. “We fight the rest of the way.”
“The security net has squawkers reporting those two down,” Nelly added.
“That way,” Kris pointed. “The wall can’t be too far over.”
Problem was, that direction had four grays coming around a corner at a run. Kris took them down in one burst that pounded shredded bodies against the wall. A glance at the gray pistol she’d picked up showed only one setting: deadly.
“This is for keeps,” Jack said, switching his weapon from sleepy to lethal. That wasn’t what Kris intended, but Sandfire was calling the tune now.
She half-trotted, half-skated for the corridor the grays had just left, careful with her steps in one-quarter gravity. A stairwell’s door gaped open. Ahead of her loomed a long open space, dotted with the occasional humming machine, pipe run, stairwells, and control stations. The far side of this big space was the wall. She spotted a room built out from it and pointed it out to Jack. Kris tossed a sleepy bomb in the stairwell, closed the door, and made fast, tiny steps for the wall.
Kris heard footsteps before she saw them. Going to ground behind a large yellow pump, she searched to the left. The legs of the grays came in sight first. This close to the hub, the pronounced curve up of the floor made for a close horizon. Kris waited, then drilled them as their bodies came in view.
Jack caught up with her, paused for a second, then said, “Cover me,” and launched himself for a pipe run.
Kris was up as soon as Jack got down, low trotted past him and across the floor to drop behind a compressor. Jack was up and moving while she was still bouncing.
On Kris’s right, a gray turned the corner of a green-painted bank of pipes, seemed startled to find herself already in the fight, and turned to run as Kris dropped her. A fusillade of fire to Kris’s left made a lot of noise and resulted in spent darts ricocheting off the ceiling but left no target for Kris. NELLY, GET A BUG OVER THERE.
ON ITS WAY.
It showed three grays squatting behind a very solid generator, occasionally sticking their machine pistols out enough to fire but never enough to aim. Kris chalked them down to a risk not worth pursuing. Maybe others would catch their attitude if they lived.
Far to Kris’s right, an elevator door opened, followed by an explosion, smoke, and flashing lights. Kris snapped off a burst and waited. Jack dropped but held his fire. Nothing came out that Kris could see; she wiggled around to the other side of the compressor for cover.
KRIS, THERE ARE OBSERVER NANOS OUT NOW, Nelly announced.
KILL THEM.
I AM TRYING, BUT THEY ARE TOUGH FIGHTERS.
Kris risked a look. A red-clad body lay just outside the elevator doors. Sandfire’s harem had caught up with them.
Kris backed off and half-ran, half-sailed for a spinning turbine. A grenade flew out of the car to smash itself against a piece of massive machinery. Smoke swirled to cover the entire elevator landing. Jack liberally hosed down the smoke, but now there was return fire, and it spread out. The reds were loose.
“Follow me, Jack,” Kris shouted. The two of them dodged and weaved as they fired and ducked their way across the industrial floor. Rounds flew from both directions. A pump took punishment it wasn’t designed for, sending a spray of oil or other industrial-grade chemicals flying in lazy globules. Some caught fire, adding smoke to the mess before the lack of nearby oxygen suppressed the flame. The oil did send one swift-moving red into a pratfall. Kris got a good shot at her face. Now blood added its red to the wreckage.
Three grays came running down the decking over a wire run to Kris’s left. They emptied their magazines at Jack to no apparent effect as Kris snapped off a fast volley in their direction. Suddenly, there were no more grays.
“Those damn fools,” came from behind Kris. So the reds didn’t think much of the grays either. Kris loaded a new clip and emptied it in cover fire as she lunged for the wire run.
Her orange coveralls ran red from the slaughter as she slid under it, but the fire that chased her did not catch her. She slammed a new magazine in. Shouldering two full ammo satchels, she grabbed a machine pistol from one of the fallen, reloaded it, stood, shouted, “I’m covering,” and let loose with both guns.
Jack did a fast trot for her. She waved her head, pointing him for the stairwell the three dead grays had used, and he changed directions. Snagging an extra machine pistol as he went by, Jack sailed into the stairs as Kris emptied both magazines.
Now Jack covered her as she made the dash, crashing into the stairwell as Jack slammed the door closed. A grenade bounced off it with a clank followed by an explosion. Someone was at least using only low-order stuff; the door bowed in but held.
Kris frowned. There should have been dents where darts stuck in the outside. Lots of dents. “Somebody wants us alive?” she muttered as she followed Jack up the stairs.
“That was the idea, remember? You naked, Sandfire and Smythe-Peterwald with knives. Looks like his harem of red ninja wanna-bes has got that word.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I haven’t liked it for some time. You got another one of those whizbangs?” Kris passed it to him. He cracked the door a bit and rolled it out. Three seconds later, noisy, flashy hell broke loose. He counted to three. “We run now.”
Staying low, he rolled right from the door. She rolled left, then wiggled for cover behind a bank of pipes. This ring was also industrial gray. Slugs cut the air over her head. She wiggled some more and spotted two attractive legs in red tights behind an elevated walkway. The legs led to a very intense face behind an assault rifle firing on full automatic. Kris was immediately in love with that rifle.
One shot, and a lovely face vanished.
Kris crawled forward, spotted another shooter, and knocked her down with a short burst, then finished her off with a single shot to the face. To Kris’s right Jack handled similar problems. A few more wiggles, and Kris had the assault rifle. Not a Marine M-6, but it looked like a good knockoff. NELLY, CAN YOU UNLOCK THIS RIFLE’S FIRE CONTROL SYSTEM?
NO, KRIS, IT IS HIGHLY CODED WITH LOCKOUTS.
DAMN, DOESN’T SANDFIRE TRUST ANYONE?
Nelly did not grace that question with an answer.
Kris studied the manual controls. If it did mimic the M-6, this dial should jack up the power behind the darts, squirt more juice into the fire chamber. She maxed it to the right and looked around for someone to test it on. A red was working her way across the floor. Kris waited for her to make her next move. A shot to the chest sent her spinning; she did not get up.
Super Spider Silk might stop a pistol. A slug from an assault rifle on maximum power was something else.
She checked Jack’s quarter, found two antagonists, and brought both down. The floor became suddenly quiet as even the echos of fire died off.
“Jack, I think we got them all.”
“Wait one,” came back tersely.
She did, keeping a roving eye on the gray on gray of the industrial plant. NELLY, YOU HAVE ANY SPIES IN JACK’S AREA?
YES.
YOU SEE ANYTHING?
NO.
Was Jack just spooked? Kris had a wall to drill and a plan to get moving. There had to be more trouble on its way. Time was wasting. But Jack knew what he was doing. If the hackles on the back of his neck said the bugs were missing something, Kris would trust his short hairs over Nelly’s eyes.
A short burst came from behind Kris. She whirled to see a black-clad lump slowly tumble out of a long pipe, outfit changing to red as blood dripped slowly. A black staff, no a tube, crumbling under the fallen body.
“That’s a blowgun, not a fighting staff like I thought,” Jack said. “They do want you alive.”
“Yep,” Kris said, taking a look around. This floor had an office loft perched against the yard wall. Whether it was a supervisor’s lookout or control station didn’t matter; Kris wanted to be there. She pointed; Jack nodded and followed her as she trotted for it. He took short detours to pick up some ammo pouches and another long rifle.
Kris made it to the station and up the ladder with no more shots fired. Jack slammed the door behind him, then shoved a desk up to block it. Kris zipped down her coveralls and pulled out the laser.