Authors: Joel Shepherd
"There is no one at the door," the minder informed her in a pleasant, unworried voice. Sandy considered a fast scan of the hotel networks, and decided against it.
"Who just knocked at the door?"
"I am not equipped to answer that question," the minder said. "Would you like me to call the front desk?"
"No," Sandy murmured. "Shade the windows." The night light faded to black as the windows lost their transparency. To Sandy's combat-activated vision it made no difference. She pulled the covers aside, rolled smoothly off the bed and dropped to the floor, fully dressed except for her shoes. Moved forward to angle the pistol up at the door, propped on an elbow.
"Minder," she repeated, "is there anyone at the door?"
"There is no one at the door," the minder replied. Sandy knew better than to trust it. Mentally accessed the door control, and fed it the correct code ... which was readable for a network observer, but she preferred that to opening the door herself. The door swung open, and showed her an empty corridor wall.
She rolled forward, propped her back against the hall side. And ducked her head out and back, barely long enough to flash her eyes left and right. Delay-stored and processed those images, and found that the minder was right. Moved cautiously out into the corridor, back to the wall by her doorway. Using her peripheral vision to scan both directions while staring directly at the wall opposite.
There was a piece of paper on the floor outside the door. She spared it a brief consideration. It was harmless — and a quick vision shift showed it free of contaminants. A single-word message, 'downstairs'.
Well, she had asked for it, she supposed. Whoever they were. Downstairs it was. But first she went inside to put on her shoes.
From only nine storeys up she took the stairs. Faint heat traces showed on the steps, pressure marks, but indistinct. Someone had been wearing suitable shoes.
Emerged onto the second-floor balcony overlooking the atrium, beside the elevators. Tucked her pistol away as she went to the head of the main staircase, scanning the atrium. Two staffers were on duty at the main desk. A lone woman crossed the broad patterned carpet, past the smoothly carved wooden elephants. Besides her, the elephants and an idle luggage robot, the atrium was as empty as she'd have expected at this early hour.
She descended the curving staircase, all senses primed. The water tinkling in the atrium fountain assaulted her eardrums, a sound like smashing glass. She noted the desk staff's demeanour. Even heat distribution, steady pulses. Not alarmed. She performed a brief, casual turn at the bottom of the staircase then walked to the desk. The woman on duty looked up with a customer-friendly smile.
"Hi, I'm Stephanie Dravid from room 903. Have there been any messages left for me?" The woman appeared surprised.
"Er ... yes, just ten minutes ago a handsome young man left you ..." She searched for a piece of notepaper. "... this." Producing the paper. Sandy took it. "He said his name was Mahud."
Despite her control Sandy's heart nearly stopped. Resumed again, a fast, desperate thudding. Her fingers unfolded the notepaper, unhesitating. It was an address, written in pen. 113 Jardeja Road, Jardeja. She flashed the woman a smile.
"Thank you." She pocketed the paper as she walked off, headed for the main exit. A quick scan of a city directory would have been safe enough, being a heavily travelled route, but she decided against it. She walked out the sliding main doors of the Chennai International Hotel and into the cold Tanushan night. Jardeja, the maglev station display told her, was in the northern development zone. Uninhabited. Somehow that didn't surprise her.
She took the maglev to the nearest stop. From there, a connecting lightrail line performed a loop out near to the inhabited perimeter. From there she started walking.
Meticulously planned city that it was, Tanusha's perimeter construction progressed in neatly outlined zones. At one point, a single main tower stood tall and proud, agleam with sophisticated lighting. To the south, metropolitan Tanusha, a seamless feast for the eye. To the north, all construction.
Sandy walked along a deserted street under a recently completed ped-cover. An aircab stand stood new and empty. Work holes dotted the pavement, surrounded by barriers of orange safety tape — traffic control infrastructure being laid. The small-scale buildings to either side looked like regular, middle-density urban zoning, much like Vanessa's suburb of Santiello. That part of it anyway. Already, though, the large trees had been transplanted to line the roadside, missing in sections where the crews had not yet reached.
All looked eerie and silent in the sporadic, yellow streetlight. Sandy's footsteps would have echoed, if she'd let them. She walked in the shadow of the ped-cover, hands buried deep in jacket pockets as she stepped around sections of incomplete paving, breath frosting in the cold night air.
She took a shortcut across an open courtyard, surrounded by the multiple levels of a shopping complex and what would soon be outdoor café seating. For sale signs and exhibition schedules stood by the empty glass shopfronts. It was dark away from the streets. She kept her vision tuned for any sign of movement as she walked. Some birds had made a nest in a nearby tree. A red line of tiny paw-prints across a walkway marked the recent passing of an urban bunbun. Bats flitted overhead sporadically. Their sonar pulses felt strange to her ears. One species, she'd discovered, gave her a bad twitch, a signature that felt uncomfortably similar to a Federate-model personnel hand-tracker. Thankfully that species was uncommon. These were chasing insects. If she concentrated, she could hear the thrumming of leathery wings.
A sign by a pathway displayed a local map. 113 Jardeja Road was clearly marked — it was a major tower. She glanced up. The tower loomed overhead, standard height for A-level Tanushan office space. That meant enormous. It looked complete, but no interior lights showed, only exterior navigation lights.
Interesting. With combat reflexes raised, she allowed herself no more than that one, mildly curious thought. She did not ponder the possible identity of the man who had left her the message, or what it might mean. She knew it would distract her. She pulled the pistol from its holster, deactivated the safety and continued.
113 Jardeja Road was, in typically Tanushan fashion, designed for style rather than security, although both were evident. Multi-level shopping malls stood deserted in the pale yellow streetlight opposite, newly installed windows blank and empty. Pedestrian walkways linked malls with the tower, in anticipation of the crowds, shoppers and retail commerce to come. In other districts workers toiled all night on generous benefits. Only weeks from opening, this subregion about Jardeja Road was slowly approaching completion. Things progressed more leisurely here. At this hour all was deserted.
Everything was linked below ground, through the usual maze of malls, walkways and shopping thoroughfares that proliferated about Tanusha's commercial districts. Sandy got in through a road underpass, the only barrier some red tape and a warning sign. Beyond, the floor was bare concrete, messy with sand and recent construction. She walked softly, pistol in hand, vision-scanning the way ahead.
Past empty recesses that would soon be shop-stalls, dark and echoing. Many were under development, shelves, counters and displays installed. Unadorned glass in the windows, reflecting no light. All dark and off-limits to casual wanderers.
Several corners and bare corridors brought her to a web of security tape, making a red plastic wall of the way ahead. She paused, squatting against one wall, pistol ready. Parted the tape with the other hand, scanning on multiple spectrums. Beyond the tape were laser-trips, a series of red lines across the floor at knee height. Those were easy. The molecule-sniffer implanted in the wall beyond wasn't.
She hooked into the local network, a quick rush of data-sensation ... frequency was bad here, underground, and the network incomplete, but she could get in as quietly as the League infiltration keys in her implants had ever allowed her to. Found the correct security branch and made a fast, clean access past the unimpressive civilian barriers, turning off the relevant systems. Quietly and without fuss or alarm, the red lines on the floor vanished. Sandy ripped the tape aside and strolled through. No alarm.
More perils of an integrated network, she thought as she moved silently down the corridor beyond. If all systems were connected, then all systems could be accessed, legally or not. Military systems were frequently independent. It made info-networking a problem, but where security systems were concerned it was more important that they simply performed their job of preventing unauthorised access. The convenience of the user had to be balanced against the need to inconvenience the opposition. The latter was clearly more important.
Up a long flight of steps from what she guessed would eventually become a food court and she was in the tower's main entrance foyer. Paused, scanning the broad, open floor. Tall glass on all sides, a huge, typically ostentatious space. Dark, but for the pale yellow streetlight beyond the glass, a splash of colour across the broad, shiny floor.
An infrared scan moved across a nearby wall, and Sandy aimed her pistol... security droid, she guessed by the steadiness of the light, and the speed that it moved. Headed this way. She moved quickly and soundlessly across the floor, heading for a point where the foyer gave way to tall, marble walls and broad glass elevators. She jogged toward the stairway entrance. The door was locked. She hacked the system and opened it in barely three seconds flat. A long, steady climb up flight after flight. No more security though, which made things faster. If someone was using this tower as some kind of base, or was merely occupying it temporarily, they would probably be at the top. It had the best strategic view. And long drops were of little concern to a GI.
Ten minutes later she was at the top. The top-level doors had not yet been installed. She stepped calmly through the opening, pistol tracking, all senses keen ... nothing. She was standing in the middle of the big, open, entirely deserted top floor. Up here at the tower's narrower top the windows went around in a broad, 360-degree circle. Beyond the yellow-specked darkness of Jardeja, and the shadows of middle-distant, neighbouring towers, the lights of Tanusha proper sprawled with undimmed brilliance. Her shadow cast along the bare floor behind her at a hundred different angles, half of the window-circle alive with colour.
She moved soundlessly across the deserted floor, turning in slow, gentle circles. Alert for traps — the floor rigged to blow, soldiers suspended above a window outside, ready to drop in and surprise her. She breathed through her nose, but smelt no explosive, no recent working of relevant tools. Her vision showed nothing but bare floor and windows ... and a doorway that led to the roof. She headed that way, moving cautiously. In Dark Star, she would have gone up out a window, or blasted through the ceiling, anything to avoid the deathtrap of a single entrance. But this was not Dark Star. Everything was different.
The door was newly installed. Safe, her vision told her. She opened it fast, dropping to a knee, pistol straight-armed up the stairs. Empty stairwell. She followed it up, covering each turn, moving fast and without sound. Paused at the step by the door, listening. Tuned to the clear navi-beacon, a pulse from directly above. Active trackers, part of the aerial traffic network. And recalled the radio tower she'd observed from the ground. Formed that mental picture clearly and pushed open the door.
Stood back from the doorway, cool in the night breeze. Braced for fire, crouching low, back to the wall a metre from the doorframe — a high-calibre weapon and a good guess from its wielder could have nailed her through the wall, and thus have lost the initiative. He who fired first against Sandy, and missed, was dead. One of her guys would have known that. One of her guys would be unlikely to take the risk.
"Mahud!" she shouted. The stairwell interior made her voice echo, and pinpointing impossible. "Are you out there?"
"Course I'm bloody out here!" a male voice replied, high above. "Where else would I be?"
Combat nerves or not, Sandy's heart nearly stopped. She felt cold all over. Her skin prickled. The voice sounded familiar. She could hardly believe her ears.
"I'm coming out!" she called. "If you shoot me, I'll be very angry!"
"What do you think I am?" came the reply. "Stupid?"
Sandy stepped out from the doorway. The tower rooftop was mostly flat, and mostly empty. Some nearby plant-holders suggested the beginnings of a garden. Railing ringed the perimeter. And in the middle, a broad gridwork transmission tower fenced with wire and warning signs.
Up on a platform near the top sat a man. A long way up, legs swinging, leaning on the protective rail within the tower structure. Sandy stared, vision zooming ... oh God. Night breeze ruffled hair about her face as she stared upward, pistol dangling limply by her side. For a long, long moment, she could not move.
Abruptly she sheathed the pistol in the shoulder holster, walked briskly to the tower and leapt ... cleared the fencing comfortably with a grab at the metal cross-supports, and swung herself inside to the personnel ladder. Scrambled up at high speed, feet and hands flying over the rungs. Past one level, then another, approaching the third ...
And stopped, half emerged onto the top platform, staring at the man sitting directly before her. Light brown skin. Youthful, handsome features. An interesting nose ... she recalled, in a daze, that she had always thought so. Dressed in civvies, jeans and sports jacket, neatly groomed, the weight of a hand weapon in one pocket ... God, he looked like a Tanushan yuppie. His eyes were unblinking, intent.
And slowly a broad, delighted smile spread across his face. Sandy swung around the ladder grip, slid in beside and hugged him, ferociously hard. Mahud hugged her back. For a long time they sat on cold, bare metal, locked together with force enough to bend steel, alone in the cool night air. Sandy's heart hammered frantically against her ribs. Combat reflexes all dissolved, barely able to breathe past the lump in her throat.