Hoisting Costa’s top half, he leaped on a joist line and sprinted for the cart. He set her down next to it and returned for the rest of her.
Five seconds, Commander, Veronica said. In the background, Fred could hear the screaming turbine of her van’s dynamo.
Costa’s lower half lay like discarded trousers. He turned her hips over and scooped them into his arms and carried her to the cart where he set her next to her top half. That seemed wrong somehow, and he moved her pieces to align them, top and bottom, then threw himself down with an awesome thud.
SOMETHING COLD LIKE an icy finger touched the back of Fred’s neck. He jerked and opened his eyes. He was lying in total darkness. “Lights!” he said, and his immediate vicinity lit up. He lay on concrete, under a metal cabinet.
“Hello?” he said.
This is Marcus, said a familiar voice. You’re on duty, Fred. You’re in the basement of a residence at 2131 Line Drive in Decatur. You passed out for a few minutes. Your suit says you’re uninjured. Orient yourself with your theater map.
Without trying to move, he did so and saw kill flags splashed across his visor frame. He tried to read the icons but couldn’t focus his eyes. His scalp itched maddeningly, but when he tried to scratch, he discovered he was wearing a blacksuit. Things started to trickle back. He crawled from under the metal cabinet. It was a cart. He stood up, and his suit illuminated a debris-filled cell. He had a sudden, panicky impulse to look up. When he did, he saw a peaceful view of the night sky through a ruined roof.
Fred tried the map again, and now he could read it. There was a vehicle flagged killed that had a friendly jerry inside it, also flagged killed.
“Medic!” he cried.
Three minutes out, another mentar said.
The jerry’s flatline timer said he was already five minutes dead. Three more minutes was pushing the odds of retrieval, even for a jerry.
There was a triangle icon of a dead mech on the porch—Fred was in the basement of a residential house. He was here with an inspector named Costa. On his map there were five icons labeled Costa in the basement, and four of them were flagged killed.
Fred rooted in the wreckage of what had been furniture and found her lower half. The blacksuit had already begun to chill it. Nearby he found her upper body. She was unconscious, and his map listed her condition as critical. Fred returned to her lower torso, tore open the first aid pocket on her thigh, and slipped the cryosac out of its tube. He unrolled and armed it and pulled it over her head, service cap and all, and cinched it snug against her throat. But she jerked, and the stub of her left arm flailed at it with missing fingers. Fred said, “Easy there, Inspector. It’s me, Commander Londenstane. You’re hurt, and I have to sac you.”
But she didn’t settle down until he loosened the cryosac and pulled it off her. Her eyes were darting all over the place.
“I have to leave you to help Michaelmas,” he told her. “I’m going to tie the sac into your suit. It’ll only deploy if it has to.” He sacced her head again and left her struggling to get it off with her stump. Fred clambered across the basement and climbed up to the front lawn. Whatever illegal-as-hell weapon the tuggers had used had shorn away a whole corner of the house. On the porch, the warbeitor was a puddle of slag. A knot in Fred’s gut that he didn’t know he had—loosened.
The tuggers’ van was gone. Fred sprinted down the street to the GOV and searched the wreckage for Michaelmas. Found him in the mostly intact cab. He seemed to be in one piece, but flattened inside the blacksuit, and trapped by twisted steel. Someone had already reached him, however. There was an inflated cryosac covering his head. It was frosty white. It would hold him till help arrived. Fred stepped back and looked at the wreckage. There was a burn mark around the GOV; it had indeed been hit from above.
“Veronica Tug,” he said.
She responded immediately, in no apparent distress. Glad you’re all right, Commander.
Cars were landing all around him on the lawn and street, and a horde of media bees had broken through the cordon. Carts rolled off tenders to extinguish fires. Others climbed into the building.
“I guess I owe you one,” Fred said.
Only one? I count three.
“Three then,” Fred said and jogged back to the house. In the basement, a crash cart had lifted Costa’s two main pieces into its saddlebag hoppers where its dozens of busy little hands were cutting away her blacksuit and ministering to her wounds. The cryosac still covered her head, but it hadn’t been deployed.
Fred swiped the cart, and it said, “Yes, Commander?”
“What is her condition?”
“Fair,” said the cart, or whoever was waldoing the cart. “Clean cuts, well-stabilized organs, full brain function. I’d say we’ll have her glued back together in no time.” The cart lowered its hopper lids, blocking Fred’s view of her, and added, “I must go now, Commander.”
Fred said, “Copy me updates.”
“Acknowledged.” The cart picked its way through the debris. “Oh, and Commander, see if you can find her three missing appendages. It would save her considerable tank time.”
Fred turned to the procedure cart, where a russ and a free-ranger were working. They dug the cart out and set it on its wheels. Except for dents and broken arms, the cart seemed undamaged. “Open it up,” said the free-ranger, but Fred came over before they could unscroll the door.
“Step away from the cart and ID yourselves,” Fred said, swiping them his own badge. They did as ordered, and they checked out as a guard and a medical technician from the Roosevelt Clinic. A frame opened beside the cart, and a tall, gaunt man in a white coat joined them.
“Good evening, Commander Londenstane,” he said. “I am the mentar Concierge of the Roosevelt Clinic, and these are my employees. Please allow them to complete their work. A life is at stake.”
“Yes, yes, proceed,” Fred said and waved them back to the cart. He stood next to them as they opened the locker. The controller, the tank, and the girl inside all appeared undamaged. The girl was still stuck in her own private moment, and Fred wished, for her sake, that they’d defrost her soon.
The medtech shut the locker, and mentar Concierge said, “You and your team will receive commendations for your work here tonight, Commander. Now, if you would kindly release her to me, we have much to do in very little time.”
Fred raised his hand and said, Well? Anyone?
Libby said, You may proceed, Commander.
But he waited a little longer, giving anyone out there with objections the opportunity to speak up or forever hold their peace. No one did, so he swiped the cart. The mentar vanished and the two clinic staffers lifted the cart and carried it to the stairs.
The russ guard paused to grin at Fred. His eyes moved to take in the destruction piled around them and the missing parlor above and Swiss-cheese roof. “Such a deal,” he said.
2.29
Blue Team Bee and its wasp still maintained their stakeout on the roof of the building across the street from the Kodiak building.
ON THE STARDECK at Rolfe’s, the lulu Mariola pointed to the Skytel and said, “Oh my God.” Everyone looked up. The train of billboards were all displaying the same huge skullish head of a man. Mariola and the others tuned to the Skytel channel to hear what he was saying.
“Someone hacked the Skytel,” Reilly said incredulously.
ON THE ROOF of the Kodiak charterhouse, the housemeets watched the Skytel in openmouthed horror. Their two dozen Tobbler guests squirmed with embarrassment.