Cassandra Kresnov: Breakaway Part 13

"That'd put them at odds with their old FIA contacts," Sandy pointed out. "With the whole old League Intel network here, like the people who instructed Sai Va to hack Lexi. If it's really changed, we could be looking at a local League civil war between old regime and new regime operatives here."

Ari smiled at her, pleasantly surprised. "That's amazing, you're a natural at this stuff."

"I'm a natural cynic, if that's a compliment. I always count on League dark ops trying to screw everything up."

"They've certainly been trying," Ari agreed.

"Only Sai Va's an anarchist lunatic who doesn't care which big organisation he screws," she ventured, "and so a few buddies in the fellow lunatic scene ask him if he knows anyone big they could try and blow up, and he offers them Lexi."

Ari nodded, chewing contentedly. As if further pleased she was doing so well.

"It's certainly the only way that bunch of amateurs could draw a bead on Lexi," he agreed. "So now the GGs have put two and two together a and made five, incidentally a and they're after Sai Va." Sandy raised her eyebrows. "His main hideout's been ransacked, I was just there this morning, and the GGs might just have enough favours to call in from enough people to put him in real hot water, because, of course, they don't want to get the blame for blowing up Lexi a So Sai Va's gone to ground before they can extract revenge one toe at a time."

"And now the League's here," Sandy added. Ari nodded, speechless for a moment with a mouthful. "And you just know they're going to want to clean up their mess a" She didn't feel at all happy about it. Ari nodded again, reluctantly conceding. "a with GIs."

He smiled, finally swallowing. "And that's why I invited you along. Even up the odds a bit."

Sandy gave him a very flat, dark look.

"Gee, Ari, you really know how to make an invitation to lunch into such a romantic occasion."

Art shrugged. "What can I say? I'm just a romantic, dashing, handsome kind of guy."

ri hadn't chosen Zaiko just for the view. Cl.u.s.tered, busy urbanity crowded thick and close to the river bend. Ari led Sandy along a roadway busy with midday traffic holding to centrally governed speeds. The pedestrian traffic was mostly office workers, cl.u.s.tered into cafes and restaurants along the stretch, crowding streetside tables beneath rows of towering neon signage. And beneath gleaming towers soaring higher still against the clear blue sky.

They crossed at a ped-crossing, into the mouth of a huge, open mall flanked by holographic displays, the awning-style ceiling stretching over them many storeys overhead. Everything in this place, Sandy noted as they walked, was tech. Other regions of Ta.n.u.sha had many stores with traditional clothes, ethnic restaurants, chic fashion, books, ornaments, traditional medicines and others. Downtown Zaiko, it seemed, was all rad-tech fashion. Clothes stores sported displays of wild hair, neon colours and body piercings. Tech stores abounded-display sets, interlink modules, vehicular upgrades, net intel appliances, plus all manner and range of gizmos and generally useless yet trendy junk a which accounted for a good half of the Federation consumer tech market, she recalled hearing one economist saying on TV. A particularly plushlooking shopfront advertised an upstairs surgery with "the latest advances in sensory enhancement technology." And another announced a special package deal to "get a visual and audio upgrade, we'll upgrade your net interface to a VX-1800 for free!"

"Sounds real quality," Sandy suggested dryly, nodding at the frontage as they pa.s.sed.

"Oh no," Ari said unconcerned, "they're not too bad. Everyone here's registered, licensed and legal. They're just low-cla.s.s establishments for people who can't afford better. You wouldn't catch a professional there, legal or otherwise."

"Where do the pros go?"

"Well, of course, legal pros get it paid for by their employer a in my case, now, the CSA. That's a full hospital job a though, of course, if you're rich enough you can afford that too, so long as it's legal. Of course, CSA has access to a whole range of stuff that's not available to the general public."

She knew that well enough, Vanessa had capabilities that would have gotten a public citizen arrested. But she also knew that not all public citizens abided by those restrictions. She had no doubt that the man walking beside her had numbered among them, before his CSA days. Maybe that was part of the attraction of joining? For his comrade Kazuma, in particular, she could well guess.

"And where do the illegals go?" she asked him.

"I'll show you."

He led her into a nondescript corridor off the main mall between two Chinese restaurants, and past a few small shops beyond. The corridor turned left at a decorated Chinese-style gateway, and an even more nondescript flight of stairs headed underground on the right. An led her down with the confident stride of someone who knew precisely where he was going, dark boots rattling a quick descent. A pa.s.sageway opened to the right of the stairs, past the stairway's faded wooden railings. Sandy stared about in astonishment as they reached the pa.s.sage and kept walking.

The pa.s.sageway was gloomy, the lighting a poor industrial fluorescent, shadowy in patches. The floor was a worn and untended ferrocrete, the walls little more than the ferrocrete base of the buildings above. Torn posters adorned the walls, new plastered over old, pictures advertising what might have been music, parties or other gatherings a it was hard to tell, the writing was mostly a combination of Chinese characters, Hindi, and something that she vaguely recognised as stylised Sanskrit. Her memory implants allowed her to read just about any language ever written, although slowly, but this stylised, jargondense, colloquial stuff was difficult. There were no doors along the immediate stretch ahead, just posters, the occasional graffiti and some exposed plumbing that looked suspiciously ferry-rigged through rough holes drilled in the ceiling and floor.

"Wow," she said, keeping a brisk pace at Ari's shoulder, "this is the first genuine dump I've seen since I've been in Ta.n.u.sha."

"You haven't seen anything yet, this is just the first level." Ari's long strides ate up the distance quickly-GI or not, her shorter legs had to hurry to keep up. "The planners weren't as omnipotent as they like to pretend. There were lots of sites like this underground, intended for storage, parking, underground manufacturing, whatever. As the city grew it became apparent that some of them weren't viable for their original designation. No one wanted them, the official real estate agencies wouldn't touch them with bio-sanitation gloves. They got bought up and renovated by whatever groups could find a use for them. And being underground, they're not made accountable to the style and culture police."

"What's wrong with the style regulations?" Shifting to local network scan, and finding an immediate, G.o.d-awful ma.s.s of heavily shielded local systems. "They certainly keep the city beautiful."

"They're mandatory," An said with emphatic humour. "Can't have it, you see. Some people don't like anything mandatory."

Sandy gave him a sideways glance. "Friends of yours?"

An shrugged. "Maybe. On my bad days." And he reached into his right pants pocket, withdrew the pistol Sandy had spotted long before, and handed it to her. She took it wordlessly, withdrew it briefly from the tight holder, and gave it the usual once-over. Once finished she tucked the holder into a thigh pocket, checked the safety a final time and pushed the pistol into her shoulder holster beneath the jacket.

The pa.s.sageway ended at an open doorway to the right, blocked only by a curtain of dangling beads. Ari brushed through it first, Sandy following to find herself on a walkway a level above the broad, open floor of what looked like a restaurant. More decorative than she'd have guessed from the pa.s.sageway. Suspended lights and decorations along the ceiling above a floor filled with tables. A large, open bar along the far side, the wall behind stacked with a profusion of drinks.

A stairway led down to the floor. Sandy eyed the lights and holography rigging along the ceiling corners, rotating reflective panels a the place would come alive at nights. Now it was empty and echoing, table surfaces bare but for standing menus and gla.s.ses. A man polished gla.s.ses and arranged drinks behind the bar, and a robot server stalked on backward, bird-like legs among the tables, polishing and preening.

She kept an eye on the robot as they made the floor. It was not a common sight in Ta.n.u.sha, most restaurateurs preferring human service to automated. And the rapidly acc.u.mulating security map on her uplinks showed her enough non-standard barriers and access points to make her suspicious of all kinds of unsuspected internal setups. Robots of any kind could integrate into that, there was no telling what a few technical wizards could implant into its CPU-integrated soft ware.

"Ari!" called the broad, jovial man behind the bar. "What brings you down here at such an unG.o.dly hour?"

"Hi, Ahmed," said An, walking over to lean upon the bar. It was cut into a wave shape, stools along the bends. Sandy remained behind by one of the tables, fully uplinked and watching the long-toed, stalking gait of the server-bot that wound its way among the tables like a tame, headless heron. The aircon whirr was particularly loud a they were under a tower/retail complex, two levels down, and a reflexive hack into the publicly available building schematics showed her the relevant blueprints. The air venting wasn't even connected to the main system above, it was all separate, as was the powergrid. And, of course, the comnet. Highly inefficient. Unless someone was paranoid enough to want to limit all points of access. Which explained the complicated barrier functions at limited access nodes in the comnet, restricting all unauthorised use.

And there was a certain, unnatural sweet smell in the air that caught her attention a purifier, from the aircon, self-recycling. She knew that smell very well, from s.p.a.ce stations and other self-contained facilities, usually military. And now this limited entry, a single pa.s.sageway leading down to a restaurant a manned by a single sentry plus robot while all the others who lived and worked down this way would no doubt be fast asleep from a long night's activity. She was beginning to form an idea of exactly what kind of place this was.

"I'm looking for Arnoud," Ari said to the broad, Arabic man behind the bar, "is he around?"

"Oh, gee, I dunno," said Ahmed with theatrical ignorance. "Lotta people looking for Arnoud lately, you know? Lotta people a but I could check a" And got a better look at Sandy as she took slow steps out from behind An, keeping the stalking server-bot in view, and getting a better reception of room-mounted scanners. She'd detected four so far, all heavily shielded. "Oh baby! An, who's your new partner, huh? My faith in you is restored, my man, much better taste than that other little slanty eyed b.i.t.c.h a" Leaned forward heavily on the bar, the open top b.u.t.tons of his shirt revealing copious amounts of black, curly hair across his bulging, muscular chest. Grinning unpleasantly. "Hey, baby! What's your name, honey?"

"You don't want to do that," An told him, smiling broadly.

"Why not? She frigid or something?"

"Just trust me. You don't want to do that."

Sandy ignored them, having found a vulnerable gap through one of the remote security nodes that linked the monitors from this room to a central system a she acquired the signal, probed and received a reply. Reconfigured that coding's barrier elements into her own mutation-basic League-configured military applications, it all ran pretty much automatically through the internal visuals in her head. The mutation confirmed itself complete a micro-second later and she sent it a the security node accepted it as one of its own coding family, and then she was in, and the local network opened up before her. It wasn't very big, geographically, just this little underground area, one large city block coming within a hundred metres of the river. But it contained a she did a fast count, and came to 296 separate, self-contained, heavily barricaded networks. A living warren of independent network ident.i.ties. A hacker haven.

"Arnoud's not in," said Ahmed, continuing to watch Sandy as she strolled, his eyes trailing up and down appreciatively. "He's moved, didn't say where a guess he wanted a change of scene."

"Okay, that's what he paid you to say," Ari said pleasantly enough. "Why don't you quit s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g me around and tell me before I get angry and hurt you?"

"Ari An An a" Ahmed turned to him, much aggrieved, hands wide and imploring. "I do no such thing, I tell you he's gone, that's all he tells anyone, he doesn't exactly advertise, you know?"

"Arnoud," Ari had briefed Sandy in the remainder of their lunch, was a close a.s.sociate of Sal Va's. He lived down here with his own little tribe of friends, fellow netsters all, ama.s.sing considerable fortunes through legal work and paying taxes like any regular citizen a which provided an effective cover for all his other favourite activities.

"Ahmed," Ari said with measured calm, "if he'd left, I'd have heard. I haven't heard."

"Hey, you know, even you can't keep up with everything, Ari," Ahmed said reasonably.

"Don't bet on it. Now if I just walk in there, I'll trip his security systems and there'll be trouble a I'll make sure you get blamed for it, Ahmed, believe mea"

"They've been branched," Sandy announced the instant her netsearch found it. Ari and Ahmed both stared at her. "Someone's spliced the intranet triggers. I can see it clearly, it's a League format program, doesn't show up real well on Federation systems." Racing along internal visual schematics, a quick scan of relevant corridors and elevator shafts a "There's at least another four ways into here. I think someone's inside, I can't pin where, that security's a different format entirely."

Ari pulled the pistol from the back of his waistband and levelled it at Ahmed's chest with the cool expression of a man about to pull the trigger with no remorse at all. "I see the League XO-grid barriers you got from the Verdrahn GGs doesn't seem to be working today, Ahmed I just know you can read that stuff when it tries to break in."

"How big's the leak?" Sandy asked, calmly pulling her own weapon, accessing as much from the local grid as she could without causing alarm to any tripwires the intruders would surely have placed alongside the usual security mess. Ahmed stood frozen, eyes wide and previously expressive mouth firmly shut.

"Could be real big," said An, "not many people use League infiltration software around here, narrows down the options. Ahmed, talk."

"*Bout what?"

Sandy strode over, grabbed his arm and yanked him flying over the bar counter. He hit the ground with an awkward flail of limbs, face down as Sandy twisted the arm up behind him. Too startled to even yell.

"As you probably just figured," she told him, "I'm a GI. Talk or I'll rip your arm off. Who's in there and what are they after?"

"GGs," Ahmed gasped, recovering from the stunning impact, they want Arnoud, they think he helped Sal Va. Revenge, you know? Not real happy boys, don't like to be screwed around a"

"Let's go," said An, moving out from behind the bar, headed across to the pair of doors in the far restaurant wall a Sandy saw the leftside doorway move from the corner of her eye, snapped her right arm out and levelled a rapid burst, sending the emerging gunman flying backward, heavy rifle flailing away a tumbling slowly in the dazed slow motion of abrupt combat reflex. She registered the model. The falling body. The long cloak and jacket. The wild hair. The TS-4 a.s.sault sweeper, military grade and hardly befitting even Ta.n.u.shan mafia. And she guessed what was coming.

"Get down!" she yelled at An, whose pistol was only now coming up to meet the falling threat. Sprinted across the table-strewn floor, across the doorways as weapons fire erupted, destruction shredding tables, chairs and walls in a deafening roar as she reached the side wall at full acceleration. Sprang up and ran three paces across the vertical surface, gathered before falling, and leapt full power back across at the doors, firing in mid-air trajectory. Rounds struck the splintering doorway, already shredded from the other side, then she hit the wall in hard collision ten metres from her springboard, then hit the floor.

The man she'd first shot exploded back through the door, apparently unharmed, his weapon swinging down onto her a She scythed his legs from under him with an explosive twist, grabbed a shoulder in mid-fall to smash his head to the floor-noting the hardened thud of body armour even as she disarmed him-and smacked through the still-swinging doorway. Bludgeoned the big man beyond with the rifle and was amazed when he caught it and swung back with his meaty left a which she caught, leapt an explosive knee into his midriff, hammered an airborne right foot into the corridor wall for the leverage to smash him into the opposite wall as he doubled over, crunched and rebounded as violently as the physics of a confined s.p.a.ce would allow.

The corridor beyond was clear, the doorway she'd just come through was a nuisance, so she kicked it off its hinges in an explosion of wood fragments, broken hinges taking pieces of old wall with them. Spun one-armed back around the corner in time to find Ari already going through the second doorway a d.a.m.n. Uplinks raced ahead through surrounding schematics-barrier functions locking down potential threats, isolating access points, colonising transmission nodes a it triggered counter alarms and traps but she didn't care, an activated trap could not surprise, she hated surprises. She covered Ari's doorway, noting the scene of ruin in the restaurant, Ahmed scrambling terrified back behind the bar for cover, miraculously untouched amid the shattered kindling of chairs and tables, a huge swathe of devastation that included a vicious line of holes through decorations and paintings along the far wall. The server-bot stalked gingerly through the ruin, long-fingered arms reaching to remove bits of wreckage and place them on its body tray for transport, seeking the previous orderliness. Not so smart after all.

An's doorway was missing a big central hole where the gunman had opened fire with something very heavy from the other side a her own rounds had gone through that hole, she knew she'd hit something. But the body armour. She'd never heard of Ta.n.u.shan mafia being so well armed. Or trained-remembering the big man catching her first blow. Seriously augmented reflexes to match her like that. Fast, augmented, heavily armed and seemingly ruthless. Not GGs. Which meant a "This guy's gone," came Ari's voice on uplink. "You hit him, there's no bullet holes a must be body armour, hallway's clean, you clear?"

"Clear. I got two a and a better weapon a " Crouching as she formulated, searching the fallen man's coat for magazines, her weapon still covering Ari's door and her own corridor simultaneously. "Who are they?"

"More anarchist types a call them a.s.sa.s.sins, we've got a few, don't advertise them much, GGs hire them for big jobs a I'm going after Arnoud, take the other corridor, you'll get there faster a "

"No way, you stay there and wait for mea " The spare mags locked together on electro-lock, snapped in turn to the loaded mag, and she spun back to collect the big man's weapon where he'd fallen. "You go in there uncovered against this lot, you'll get killed a "

"Sandy, I can't wait, you follow the corridor to this point a " An encrypted attachment came through in a rush of adjoining data that unfolded across her internal schematic a "Get there fast anda "

"Ari, I'm ranking combat ops here, I'm giving you an order! Ari!" Grabbing up the second weapon and mags, and wondering again at the lunacy of working in an organisation that only issued her with popguns on field ops against military-spec a.s.sault rifles and body armour a An, you f.u.c.king lunatic!" And a "s.h.i.t" to herself, audibly.

Couldn't operate with two heavy weapons out of a suit, she needed a free arm for leverage a Placed one weapon's muzzle to the floor and kicked down on it, breaking it explosively inwards, and moved off at a light, springing jog down the dark corridor, reluctant to leave ammo behind but not dressed to carry it. Anyway, with aim like hers, fire volume wasn't an imperative.

The local grid was a mess, it was difficult to get a clear look-individual barrier functions were activated, isolating and attacking her own probing seeker functions and disrupting her reception a she winced as the schematic overlay flickered and buzzed, figuring the possible points of entry for the infiltrators as she ran, cross-referencing that with the location Ari had fed to her. The corridor ended in a T junction, a broad ferrocrete hallway lit by flickering neon a the schematic showed her stairs, doorways, adjoining rooms. Darted a quick look each way, found it empty and ran right.

Macro-scan graphic had now pieced together enough glimpses of the entire layout to give her a general overview of the place-it flashed to life across her internal vision, a big, three-levelled rectangle of right-angled corridors, each lined with separate rooms. A few common rooms on the lowest level, a generator function that routed power from G.o.d-knew where, but mostly just accommodation, like a big, dull ferrocrete hotel. With corridor ambience like this, she reckoned it should have been d.a.m.n cheap. But somehow she doubted it was.

Locked doorways along the sides as she ran, residents typically asleep at this hour, she guessed. If they weren't asleep, they certainly wouldn't be coming out now. And heard popping fire echoing from where Ari could have been a she couldn't reach him, had neither com nor scan reception in this much local shielding and fragmentation. But basic tactical awareness told her where he ought to be a She took a hard left down a dingy narrow corridor, edging sideways past big protruding sewerage pipes, booted feet scuffing echoes off the walls a the air smelt different, and that told her something of the ventilation too. Paused at the opening to the next, larger hallway a it stood empty and shadowed with industrial fluorescent. Heavy doors lined the walls with irregularity, security keypads prominent by each. Sounds of muted footsteps echoed on maximum enhancement, voices, something high pitched that could have been a whimper a plus the everpresent hum of ventilation, the tick of improvised water pipes, a rustling that might have been a small rodent. Super-enhanced hearing was not always useful, it was difficult to prioritise. Next corridor down, the schematic showed her. This was main-residential. People lived here, isolated, cut off from the teeming ma.s.ses of the city above. Gloomy existence, she registered vaguely beyond the overpoweringly sharpened combat reflex.

She darted a quick left, ran along several doorways, spotted the stairwell doorway, grasped the handle and yanked, flattening herself to the wall alongside a the door-trap exploded, door, debris and dust erupting violently across the hallway. Sandy ducked straight into it and rattled down the stairs beyond, figuring the device was a recent plant, again military grade and anti-personnel, probably a five gram nitro-charge with laser trigger on the doorframe. It had been planted low on the opening side, standard operational b.o.o.bytrap to cover an exposed flank. The lower stairwell door had one too, this time on her side of the door a She took aim from the stairwell bend and fired. Everything vanished in a flash of blinding debris through which she ran and dived, rolling out into the hallway beyond.

Shot the gunman ten metres away who was still flinching from the blast, then snap-rolled up into a spinning sidekick on the poor unfortunate who'd been sheltering beside the doorframe-he flew four metres through the air, bounced diagonally off the wall, tumbled and bounced away in a spinning flail of limbs. Rearranged her shoulder holster back into place as she resumed her fast jog a The man she'd kicked was still alive, thanks to the body armour, and her kindly impulse to limit his flight to a mere four metres-when the far end of the corridor would not have been beyond her. Ditto the man she'd shot-one round low to the left abdomen where the vest would absorb enough power to keep the wound shallow. She'd seen blood, but heatscan showed the continual pulse of warmth through his jugular, he'd only lost consciousness. Shaved head but for a central strip of hair tied back into a long ponytail. Dark shades askew. Black trench coat, rings and a few tattoos. Self-appointed renegades, getting their jollies on some techno-warrior fantasy-serious enhancements, militarygrade weapons, pay cheques from mafia in need of jobs performed a a great life for the anti-socially inclined. Utterly disconnected from the grander scheme of reality and consequences. This guy probably never reckoned on the real world ever leaping up and biting him on his tat tooed, unsuspecting, pathetic, ignorant a.r.s.e.

"Think again," she murmured to herself, the corridor ahead a ma.s.s of colour-swathed blues and greys, and red footprints of recent heat. And further distant sounds that echoed the corridors on frequencies the unaided human ear could not hear. Two rounds fired so far a probably ammo wouldn't be a problem after all. Flank penetrated, it would probably take the remainder another few seconds to respond a A rifle appeared around a corner ahead, scanning remotely a Sandy shot it from the wielder's hands, and accelerated explosively as a grenade followed-standard timer-fuse, she had time to note as it flew. Someone had panicked and forgotten to count off. She was past it and diving across the adjoining corridor before it exploded, firing low on semi-automatic as she flew half-propelled by the blast, cutting the gunman's legs from under him. Came back around the corner as fast as she could recover her momentum, spared a brief check of the downed man as he sprawled screaming and convulsing-there was a lot of blood, but she guessed his micro-augmentations would shut off the blood flow before it got dangerous, and probably knock him out cold too for safety.

Further progress was blocked by a heavy metal grill-door across the corridor, with full security precautions. She smashed it off its hinges with a front kick-not caring about the alarms it doubtless triggered through the complex-and proceeded around the twisted, sparking gate, noting the trailing wires and guessing their function. Crouched low, with rifle levelled at the heavy security doorway ahead that terminated the corridor. A bubble-recess in a wall alongside for full-spectrum scanners was the most obvious of the surveillance measures, and the door itself was heavy inset metal, chip marks around the frame where it appeared to have been ferry-rigged into a standard doorframe. She guessed it was locked tight like a bank vault.

She put a round through the bubble, which exploded in scattering fragments, and another into a less conspicuous indentation alongside the door from which she could sense active scan emissions a they'd know she was here, subtlety was pointless now. And tried a fast override-and-hack of the door systems with her most capable attack barrier on the network a it broke through one barrier, was blindsided by another, and then the whole visual picture in her mind's eye began to disintegrate as hidden counter-functions materialised from the network in swirling snarls of electronic mayhem. Secondary barrier elements reconstructed themselves behind the first, impeding further progress. d.a.m.n underground netsters, she should have guessed they'd have better defensive software against League attack barriers than the government did a And she wound up her best sidekick, executed with full and proper technique from the close-combat manual a WHAM! The impact reverberated through the narrow ferrocrete corridor like a pile driver concussion, billowing dust erupting from about the doorframe as ferrocrete shattered from the force, and the whole heavy door framework rocked backward several centimetres. A second kick, this time not connecting quite properly as a hip-flexor protested unexpectedly-she rammed herself backward several metres, flew through the air, hit and rolled backward to her feet, suppressing a curse. Overhead an exposed water mains broke, hissing water spraying the walls and floor. d.a.m.n muscles weren't allowing her to execute with proper technique. She only weighed sixty kilos, smashing something with a force of several thousand kilos pressure per square centimetre would throw her ten metres back down the hall if she didn't execute properly. The Chinese had figured the mechanical basics out over a thousand years ago a now she just had to convince her less-than-optimum body to perform it properly. Though if she'd had another firm wall to put her back against, she could have just levered it open like a hydraulic jack.

She walked back amid the drenching spray of water, feeling the slightly awkward, rolling gait brought on by the hard contraction of steely leg muscles. The door looked like it had bent away from the frame just a little at the top right corner a she visualised the physics of it, the weakness and the required point of impact, tensioning and rippling the required torso, leg and shoulder muscles for the motion to come. Acquired the proper tension, a hard, bulging pressure beneath her skin, and leapt. Full shoulder rotation, the hips came about and slammed the right foot heel-first through the door at blistering velocity, sending the impact straight back up her leg and thigh a The door exploded off its reinforced hinges and rammed edge-first into the wall beyond, exposed circuits crackling smoke beneath the water spray as she completed the full spin and sprang through the twisted doorframe a and found that someone had beaten her in.

A broad living room spread to the left of the narrow entrance hall across which the main door was now impaled, sliced into the opposite wall. A huge hole gaped in the living room's ceiling, a pile of dusty, crumbling ferrocrete scattered upon the stone-paved floor a she recognised the signature of an explosive charge immediately. Shaped for maximum downward force, it made a precise, clean hole through concussion-vulnerable materials like ferrocrete, bending the support struts like so a She edged forward, rifle slowly pivoting, examining the hole through one side of her peripheral vision, noting the telltales.

The part.i.tion to the second half of the room was low, the interior s.p.a.ce spanning a broad floor paved with more dark stone. Low, dark, modern furnishings and dim, moody lighting. A big wall-vision unit on the left above the dining table, the sleek gloom cut brightly open by a large, brightly lit fish tank in the far wall, colourful fish floating dreamily in an oasis of light. But for the explosive entry, there was very little damage, and the heavy-security residence retained its intended darkly sophisticated feel of moody atmosphere. Underground techheads liked it, she guessed, edging past the main part.i.tion into the broad living s.p.a.ce, noting the full VR headsets and immersion hookups trailing wires about the thick leather sofa set, and the broad bank of display units surrounding the twin chairs in the far corner by the fish tank. The floor beneath those units, she saw with little surprise, was soaked with blood.

She rounded the side of the display setup, and found a body sprawled, machine-pistol limply in hand, a single round drilled neatly through the centre of his forehead, a similar hole in the wall behind where he would have been sitting when the intruders had blasted their way in through the ceiling. A light weapon, for it not to have taken his head off. Short range, light, mobile, good for close-in fighting. Professionals.

The display screens were off, connecting cables ripped clear. The body pulled far enough aside to allow one or two people to sit or stand, access the terminals, get what they'd come for and leave the way they'd come, up through the ceiling. She took a deep breath, rifle unerringly sighted upon the darkened room that to combat-vision looked alive and gleaming with bright and complicated detail. She knew exactly what this op was, she'd done them herself. She could have been revisiting the scene of her own past history. Only she'd have hoped to put a hole through this half-competent techie's shoulder, not his head. No need for it, normally. Someone was on very strict orders.

She did a fast search of the apartment's other rooms, finding only empty, if moderately flashy, residential quarters, bedrooms and a bathroom-all recently occupied and occasionally littered with empty cans or bottles, display readers or technical manuals of varying description. Finished her search in time to hear a scuffing of sound beyond the outside hiss of water from the broken pipe, then coming through the door a just the right sound and pace to be An, she guessed. He wasn't bothering to slow down, evidently having guessed who'd caused the carnage outside. He came in somewhat less wet than she, paused briefly to consider the scene in the living room, then came striding over to where she was re-examining the body by the terminal centre. He was breathing hard but by no means exhausted. His right hand grasped an identical TS-4 to her own, its muzzle glowing red hot to her heat sensitive vision, though whether that had been from his own firing, or that of its previous owner, she had no way of telling.

"This wasn't any bunch of amateur a.s.sa.s.sins," she told him without preamble, "this was professional combat ops. The only professional combat ops in Ta.n.u.sha who aren't working for us just arrived in the League Emba.s.sy."

"GIs?" He looked surprised, but only a little. Paused at her side to consider the sprawled body on the floor, and the precision of the bullet hole. Exhaled with a hard grimace. "Yeah, I'll buy that. How'd they get in and blow a hole without triggering alarms?"

"Same way the League always does it," Sandy replied, moving to a covering position in the centre of the room as Ari stepped over the body and began examining the monitors and equipment around the workstation. "I think that's what I picked up before, it wasn't the GGs' thugs at all, it was the GIs. The GGs must have put people to cover their flanks, then discovered they'd been beaten here, I'd guess they've gone off to look for them."

"Yeah, well, they better hope they don't find them." Peering behind one terminal unit to examine the damage. "This is all f.u.c.ked, no prints or anything a any more bodies?"

"Nothing. If there was anyone here, the GIs took them with a this guy's probably only dead because he resisted and the mission brief didn't include carrying injured targets."

"Um a I reckon instead they got out early, maybe someone tipped them off." Ari straightened up, glancing about, biting absently at his bottom lip. Halfway between boyish indecision and cool, measured consideration. Dark-browed eyes narrowed with a certain intelligent intensity. "There's no point in hostages, the data's in the mainframe, you get that and get out. Hostages just get in the way."

Sandy nodded, it was logical. "What data?" she asked. "Sal Va's contacts? Locations?"

Ari gave her a sceptical sideways look.

"Dammit, if they got just a quarter of what these guys are involved with, it'll be a lot more than just Sal Va." Pointed at the corpse at his feet. "That's Lu Fayao, the SIB has been trying to get enough evidence to bust him for the last three years. He's got access formulations to parts of the network even Ibrahim's not allowed to have. a.s.suming this was League GIs, who's it likely to be and how many?"

Sandy took a deep breath, vision fixed upon the precise, personwide hole in the ceiling. Visualising the broader regional schematic, the number of troops required to infiltrate, cover, execute and fade a "I'd reckon a single tac-section, five GIs, probably mid-20s." Pause. "Maybe higher." A wary look from An. She didn't blame him. She didn't like the idea much herself. "They'll be decked out for black ops, real silent stuff, nothing dramatic. Their intel will be excellent, to get in like this without detection."

"Yeah, well, we got a lot of League contacts after the big blowupbut we were never going to get all of them a" He performed a brief recheck of his new weapon, handling it with an easy familiarity that raised Sandy's suspicions of Ari's previous a.s.sociations even further. "a let's go, we might still get something if we move fast."

"This job's a half hour old, Ari," Sandy replied as he strode past, "they'll have gotten out within five minutes the way these guys operate "Uh-uh." Ari shook his head, pausing beside the pile of ferrocrete rubble beneath the ceiling hole, eyeing the ragged rim cautiously. "These guys have at least two other contacts down here in the warren, if they got in this quietly they'll have searched those places too a" Gave her a quick, distracted look. "You coming?" And leapt-with the easy grace of athletic augmentation-caught a handful of rim onehanded and hauled himself quickly up and out of sight.

Sandy stared. And followed, restraining her frustration with an effort. Leapt, caught and yanked herself through with a fast vault, and found herself in an upper apartment room with similar furnishings and lived-in appearance a no sign of the occupants, possibly tied up in an adjoining room. She had no time to check, and Ari was already headed out the front door, which was closed but unlocked, evidently hacked the quiet way.

"Ari!" she snapped on the private connection, and he paused to let her edge past and sneak first look into the main hallway. When she didn't draw fire, Ari moved to go past a Sandy grabbed him by the jacket collar, pivoted smoothly and thumped him back against the wall of the entrance corridor. He blinked at her in dazed alarm as she fixed him with a hard, point-blank stare.

"You didn't say anything about other sites," she whispered harshly a uplinked communication was probably smarter in the hallways, but she needed to make a point. "What else haven't you told me?"

"Sandy a look, this is very important a"

"D'you know why they never a.s.signed me with a direct commanding officer for field ops in Dark Star? Because they knew d.a.m.n well I'd shoot him if he f.u.c.ked around with the lives of my team, and they knew it was d.a.m.ned unlikely he'd know better than me what to do. Do you think you know better?"

Ari blinked again, somewhat stunned. Not your s.e.xy, cuddly pet GI now, huh? She kept her stare dangerously direct. He took a hurried breath.

"Sandy, this isn't a Dark Star op, there are civilian concerns here and you don't know all the angles a"