The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (20 page)

They walked briefly through what appeared to be a long-abandoned sewer pipe. Iggy made sure they all rolled up their pants before they entered it. The sewer was just small enough to force Spencer to crouch down almost double. He immediately developed a painful crick in his back, which was made worse when a rusty pipe caught him right between the shoulder blades. He tried to concentrate on the pain in his back as a way to avoid thinking about the thick ankle-deep brownish-black goo they were walking through. Every step through it seemed to release a new and more foul odor, redolent of every sort of death and decay.

It was some consolation that Dostchem liked the trip far less than Spencer did. She had shed her robes and set out in worker’s coveralls. But she stayed barefoot, and the slimy refuse in the sewer was congealing on her ankle fur. She complained bitterly to Iggy, and was rewarded with a highly creative suggestion as to where she could put the muck.

At last they came to another manhole and climbed out; emerging into a large sub-basement, a cavernous room that receded into the darkness, seeming to stretch out forever in all directions, fading into the echoing gloom. The huge room was empty, but for the supporting pillars that held up the massive building above. “We’re inside th’ StarMetal building now,” Iggy announced. “The tunnel we were in was supposed to be a flood drain, but they never had a flood and it just got forgotten. Now, there’s a janitor’s closet over this way—you guys can hose down a little there.”

“Igor, are you sure this is a wise moment to take the time to clean up?” Dostchem asked.

“Hells’ bells, lady,
you
were the one bitchin’ about the stink. I don’t give a good goddamn if you’re clean—I just thought you wouldn’t want the security guards upstairs wondering what it is that smells like festering rotten eggs. So c’mon.”

Iggy led them through a forest of supporting pillars until they could see the wall of the massive room looming up out of the darkness. They turned toward the right and followed the wall until they came upon a door in a rather ramshackle wooden wall.

Iggy opened the door and led them into a small corner area of the sub-basement that someone had taken the trouble to finish off a bit. By the looks of things, the builder hadn’t taken the trouble to get company approval for the job beforehand.

The materials used had the look of being scrounged rather than allocated. The sub-basement’s sancrete foundation material was covered over with what looked like kitchen flooring, shopworn pseudowood paneling was glued down over the sub-basement walls. A bedraggled, presumably pilfered light fixture dangled on a long cord from the far-off ceiling. A couch purloined from somewhere or other was backed into a corner, and showed evidence of serving frequent duty as a bed. Other odds and ends of furniture were scattered about the room. A small food cooler sat in one corner, and a fairly sophisticated three-dee box sat opposite the couch.

The same improvisational spirit that had inspired the room’s builder in the first place had led him her or it to try his hand at plumbing as well. Iggy pulled back a curtain in one corner of the room to reveal a small chemical toilet and a crude shower, really nothing more than a garden hose carefully strung up with wire. A drain channel was cut into the sancrete below it to draw the water away from the rest of the cubbyhole. It occurred to Spencer that the water must end up in the sewer pipe they had just come out of.

He looked around at the little compartment. It was obviously a very enterprising being’s attempt to shirk work. Down here, where no boss would ever dream of looking, the owner had jury-rigged a nice little place to hide from the job, get cleaned up, grab a snack, and catch forty winks.

Spencer wondered how their guide came to know about this little hidey-hole. Was this
Iggy’s
place? Was he embarrassed to admit that he was nothing more than a junk-cadging, work-shirking menial instead of a big-time operator? If this place was not his, how had he known about it, and how else would he know the owner would not show up and object?

If this
was
Iggy’s place, if this was his sanctuary, then that was flat-out criminal waste. Not that he had borrowed a few broken-down odds and ends of office furniture, but that a being of his ability was trapped pushing a mop while some chuckled-headed human, hired by virtue of being someone’s brother-in-law, fumbled his way through a job Igor could have done better.

Iggy had said they were to hose down, and that was what he meant, nothing more or less. He unfastened the hose from its shower fitting, turned on the old-fashioned spigot and played the jet of water over his pants leg and his boots. The other members of the party did the same, Dostchem making sure she went first and got her legs and feet well-cleaned up. Spencer couldn’t really blame her—it was bad enough having that scum on his shoes. He was glad when his own turn came.

Iggy sat down on the rumpled couch as the others cleaned themselves up. “This is as far as I go,” he said, almost apologetically. “I dunno the upstairs part of th’ building, so I wouldn’t do you no good anyway. And on this sort of job, you don’t need extra bodies along for the ride. I’m gonna stay right here—if the security goons spotted our entry and they come looking down here, mebbe they’ll settle for finding me snoozing on the couch.”

Spencer felt angry, shortchanged. Their guide was chickening out. Then he calmed himself and nodded. Iggy was probably right—even if it smacked of cowardice. “Fine,” he said. “But how do we get upstairs from here?”

“Cargo elevator. Runs all the time, day and night, no one’ll notice it droppin’ down here to get you. I’ll show you where it is. C’mon.” Iggy stood up and led them from the hidey-hole to the elevator bank, back toward the center of the looming darkness of the sub-basement.

An elevator car was waiting for them, and Spencer noticed that the monitor camera and the voice-command mike had been smashed out—just by chance, or merely so it
looked
like chance—it didn’t matter which.

Sisley, Suss, Dostchem and Spencer went aboard. Maybe they could have done without Dostchem along, but she was carrying a toolbelt, and getting past internal security might be trickier than Iggy had suggested. Spencer was glad of the company. “All right, then,” Spencer said. “Let’s go. Iggy, if we’re not back in four hours, you’re on your own. Thanks for your help.”

No one seemed to want to say anything more. Sisley reached over to the manual control panel and punched in her floor number. The doors began to shut, leaving Iggy watching them, and Spencer wondering what the proper etiquette was for saying good-bye to a Capuchin.

The doors slammed shut and the elevator began to rise.

Spencer turned and faced the others. “Listen, there’s one thing. There’s no point to this job if the information doesn’t get out. If they jump us up there after we’ve got the data we’re after, whoever is carrying the information gets out first, with the rest of us protecting her or fighting rearguard. That’s the priority. It will probably be Suss carrying the download in Santu—which means
she goes first.
Of all of us, Suss has the best chance of breaking clear on her own if it all craps out. Dostchem, I know this isn’t your fight, but we’ll be your best bet if it gets ugly. Stick with us if you can.”

And if we can stay alive long enough to get that far,
Spencer thought to himself. But those were not the sort of words a commander said to his troops.

###

With a whoop of glee, Chief Wellingham dropped the detector and let it dangle at the end of its cable. He didn’t need it anymore. He could
see
the little monster, lurking in the recess between two circuit blocks. There was just enough clear space underneath for him to fit in one of the smaller sample holders there. He fumbled for the sample holder, held it underneath the parasite, and dropped it into the container with one deft move of the cook’s spatula. Wellingham snapped the container shut and held his captive up to the light. “We’ve got you now,” he said gleefully, watching it slither around the interior of the jar.

Wellingham knew that capturing the parasite in and of itself meant nothing—not when the people who had sent two of the things could send as many more as they liked. But now he had proved that the detector on his back
worked.
He had the other detectors on the job already, and they were going to
stay
on the job from now on, no matter how it screwed up the rest of his section’s duty schedule. They would have to stay on guard against these—

“Petty Officer Jasper calling you, Sir,” Wellingham’s AID announced.

“Put him through, Waldo.”

“Sir, we’ve spotted two of the things, but we can’t get at them,” Jasper’s voice said through the AID’s speaker.

“Why not?”

“They’re stuck to the outside of the hull, as best we can figure. I’m between the inner and outer hulls right now, and the detector is showing two G-wave sources on the outside. I can’t get an accurate fix on them, though—they seem to move around a lot.”

“Trying to find a way in, no doubt. Good work, son. Note the location and we’ll schedule frequent sweeps of the area to make sure we don’t lose track of them.”

“Ah, Sir, shouldn’t we go out after them?” Jasper asked.

“Negative! How do we know there aren’t four more clustered near the hatch waiting for you to try that? The last thing I want is more of those things alive inside the ship. We stay buttoned up. But nice work all the same. Wellingham out.”

Damn! The chief looked at his captive once again, not quite as pleased with himself as he had been a minute before.
Good news mixed right in with more bad news,
he thought. Bad: they had more parasites; good: they had them spotted and that they were outside the ship; and bad: he didn’t dare so much as open a hatch to go get them.

Under siege. It suddenly dawned on him that the
Duncan
was besieged, a Warlord-class cruiser cut off from the outside universe by a few featureless blobs of silver. He glared at his captured parasite, suddenly feeling a bit less victorious.

###

Up on the bridge simulator, Tarwa Chu was feeling a lot more confident—even brave enough to order the first watch bridge crew in to rehearse the maneuver with her. She had tried sailing the
Duncan
clear eight times now and hadn’t wrecked the ship or the harbor on five of the last six tries.

She felt a little anxious as the bridge officers filed in. The captain had ordered her to launch the
Duncan
over five hours ago, and she had heard no further word from him since. Was it still so urgent that they launch? Captain Spencer had never explained the crisis in the first place—maybe it was over by now. No, she told herself. She was supposed to obey orders, not second-guess them.

And perhaps she had already stalled too long. Maybe she should skip the simulation with the bridge crew and go right to the real thing. She glanced at the chronometer and was startled to discover it was the middle of the night. No wonder the first watch bridge crew looked sleepy—they had all been asleep for hours when she had ordered them to come here.

But the mere passing of the hours wasn’t the real problem. Chu had been running the simulator for daylight conditions and had completely lost track of the passage of time. Her heart sunk once again. She knew she could never manage the tight passages of the harbor at night. Even in full light, she knew the currents and tides of København Harbor would be tricky. The bridge crew would need daylight to work with as well.

At first light, then, she thought. They would sail at dawn.

Chapter Twelve
Wirehead

“Go!” Dostchem hissed. Suss, Spencer, and Sisley rushed through the opening door. Dostchem pulled out her test leads, and dove through herself. Once the door controller was no longer tricked by Dostchem’s false signals, it snapped shut, almost catching the Capuchin’s tail. “Is that the last one?” Dostchem asked. This was the third time she had nearly lost her tail.

Sisley nodded wearily. “Yes. We’re here. There are no electronic guards on the rest of the doorways—at least none that I’m aware of.” Iggy had been wildly optimistic in his assumptions about security: Santu’s on-board security sensors, backstopped by Dostchem’s detectors, had seen them through seemingly endless booby traps and hidden sensors. The cargo elevator had refused to take them above the twentieth floor because of a security lockout. Getting up to the thirtieth had been a nightmare.

Every security system seemed to be switched on and cranked up all the way, to the great inconvenience of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of beings in the building legitimately.

And to the massive inconvenience of the security forces as well. Alarm bells and beepers were sounding constantly, and there seemed to be new false alerts going off every few seconds. Spencer’s party twice hid in darkened offices while teams of StarMetal’s private cops rushed down nearby corridors after some other, imagined threat.

Perhaps Dostchem and Suss even missed a sensor or two or accidentally set off a silent alarm. If so, the home team was so busy chasing phantoms they didn’t catch on to the real invaders.

In the parlance of communications and detection theory—Dostchem’s specialty as an instrument maker—the signal to noise ratio had gotten too high, to the point where the “static” of false alarms was drowning out legitimate warnings.

Dostchem Horchane didn’t much care why they made it inside. She was just glad to be past the last barrier and in. Objectively, of course, this was probably one of the most dangerous places they could be.

At least Sisley’s floor was only occupied during the day. They’d have some privacy.

The risks, therefore, probably weren’t any lower now that they were inside, but at least they
seemed
lower, and Dostchem was willing for that much human irrationality to seep in.
Any
source of relief was welcome.

Of course, wishful thinking was not going to get them in and out tonight. “Come on then,” Dostchem snapped, “let’s get on with it.”

Sisley started to move in behind her desk, but Suss held up her hand to stop her. “Santu, do a scan.”