“No one is admitted while the alarm is active,” the putative senior repeated.
“Why don’t you take me there and let someone in charge decide?”
The nominal superior took off at a trot. Foile and his team followed at a quick walk. He led them past all the elevators and around a corner. In the middle of that wall was a door made apparent mainly by the red-lettered sign that proclaimed NO ADMITTANCE.
There the guard stopped and shrugged.
Foile walked up to the door; there was no sign of a lock or place to swipe an admit. He looked right, then left. A camera made a slight noise as it focused on him.
Again he held up his credentials and identified himself and his business. This time he added. “I am on special assignment from the Prime Minister himself. I require admittance. I strongly suggest that you admit me.”
His other agents joined him, their credentials also held up for inspection. The camera made noise as it changed direction a bit, then adjusted its focus to take in each of the agents. Finally, the door clicked open, and Foile and his team entered.
The scene inside was ordered and cool. Men and women sat at stations going about their business. If the alarm hadn’t continued to buzz and the red light above the door whirl, it might have been an ordinary day. While the worker bees seemed well in order, the same could not be said for what Foile took for the command center. There, four people stood, clad in black uniforms, doing a good imitation of bickering.
As Foile closed on them, it became apparent that they were indeed arguing.
Half wanted to turn off the alarm. The other half weren’t quite ready to.
Foile cleared his throat to get their attention. The indecisive noise of human disagreement rumbled to a halt.
“Your security has been penetrated by Princess Kristine Longknife and two of her associates. My best guess is that she wants to spend some quality time with her grandfather.”
“Our security has not been breached,” the taller woman in black shot back. “We have everything under control.”
Foile took the time to scratch behind his ear. “I really don’t think so.”
“There may be some problem with those damn browns and their paperwork, but we’ve got everything under control in here. No problem at all. Just look at the video take from the loading dock. Nothing at all. Totally normal.”
Out on the work floor, a young woman stood from her workstation. “I think we do have a problem,” she said, clearly uncomfortable to be disagreeing with her superiors. “I just ran a cloning check on the last thirty minutes from that station and it gives a twenty-three-percent chance that this is not original film. No one’s moved during that time.”
“They’re new hires,” the short man in black snapped. “Hanson’s doing his usual heavy-handed thing. Look, he’s just sitting there, reading one of his girly mags.”
“Yes, sir, but I just did a poke at his commlink. It showed him inside the receiving area.”
“So he needed to piss.”
“Inside the receiving area while he’s also sitting at his desk reading, sir?”
That finally broke down the wall of invincible ignorance, saving Foile from having to take a sledgehammer to a couple of cast-iron heads.
“Get a guard out to the receiving area,” the tall woman ordered.
“Have all stations report in,” the shorter woman in the command group ordered. Foile watched as the worker bees broke out of their normal business and made frantic calls to everyone on their watch list.
The young woman who had forced the issue was the first to report. “I have no answer from the receiving dock.” A moment later, she turned back to the command desk with a frown. “I also have no report back from the subbasement support guard.”
“Send us the camera coverage,” the tall woman ordered.
“There is no camera coverage of the subbasement. It was dropped in the cutbacks last summer.” The troublemaker glanced at some empty floor spaces. The marks on the carpet showed evidence that there had been workstations there. Was the much-vaunted Longknife Tower security just a Potemkin village? Foile weighed just how much that might increase the chances of a certain princess getting to see her grandfather without getting anyone killed.
Or not. Foile remembered all the machine pistols he’d seen in the hands of people who looked like they needed a whole lot more training on crisis management as well as time on the shooting range.
Even if Princess Longknife started shooting with her sleepy darts, there was going to be a whole lot of blood on the floor. In this situation, with lots of lead flying addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern,’ you could never bet on who got hit with what.
Once again, the command team was divided and arguing.
“We have no idea where those three are,” the short man said. “We have to release the nano hunters. They’re the only things that can search the areas where we don’t have camera coverage.”
“We only cut back on the cameras because we bought the little twerps,” the short woman added.
“But every time we turn them loose, we lose ten percent of them. Who wants to sign for that cost?”
The tall man in the black uniform usually stayed out of the bickering. Now he spoke. “We don’t need to turn them all loose. Think about it. This Longknife girl is at the bottom of the tower and wants to get to the top of it.” He glanced at one pair of workstations that showed no activity.
“We’ve got the elevators locked down. That leaves her only the stairwells, unless she’s climbing the outside of the building. Has anyone checked there?”
Suddenly, there was mad activity at one desk. Two breaths later, a man reported, “No one on the outside of the building, sir.”
Foile considered the statement and decided he wouldn’t bet against the Longknife princess.
“So turn loose the nanos in the stairwells,” the tall man said. On the work floor, two people moved to obey. For five minutes, things were quiet. Only the hooting and ringing of the alarms disturbed the people hard at work on the flood.
There was also no sign of the three they hunted.
Reports came back from the visual inspection of the receiving dock and subbasement. The guards there were down but unhurt. They retrieved ceramic sleepy darts from both of them, identical to the ones Foile’s team had recently pried out of a wood support beam at a certain mountain cabin.
Leslie grinned. “Princess Kris won’t kill anyone.”
“Anyone?” Mahomet asked.
“Anyone she can avoid killing,” Leslie corrected herself.
For five long minutes, the search went on and turned up nothing. Even Foile found himself wondering if they really were there.
Then the lights went out, and the alarms quit hooting.
A second later, the backup systems kicked in. Dim lights came back on. There was still a buzzing alarm, but a lot softer.
“What the hell?” came from the tall woman.
“She’s killed the main power from the subbasement,” the short man said. “Not to worry, the backup power supply is on the seventy-fifth floor.”
“Get me camera coverage of that floor,” the tall man demanded.
“We can’t, sir,” the short woman answered. “We are operating on local backup for the computers here in this room, but there’s nothing coming in, sir, from the rest of the building. We’re blind.”
“Apparently the princess has made it to the seventy-fifth floor,” Leslie said sardonically.
“We’re not only blind, but dumb and deaf as well,” the tall man growled. “The nanos. They’re supposed to be on their own power. What do they see?”
Someone on the floor, it was hard for Foile to see by the dim light, stood. “The nanos are not catching anything, sir. She must not be in the stairwells.”
“And we have all the elevators locked down,” the tall woman said. “She’s going nowhere.”