"Be logical," Julia urged. "My company's infiltration of the Colonel Maitland's 'ware systems is total. Whatever questions Charlotte answers for you, whatever she says, wherever she is in the airship, we will hear them. There will be no advantage to your backers now. I offer you this: if you release her my security crash team will leave you alone, you may even have free passage to the destination of your choice."
Nia Korovilla gave a guttural laugh. "And I will tell you this. The whore is too valuable for anyone to risk harming her. Except for me, I'll have nothing to lose in a last resort. If anyone, you or the tekmercs, tries to interfere I will break her elegantly crafted little neck."
Julia made her voice austere. "You will not be allowed to leave with her."
"You may not have her; Nia Korovilla growled.
"Stop it!" Fabian Whitehurst wailed. "Stop it, stop it. Let her go. Just let her go." The creases down his cheeks were like an old man's.
"Don't get in anyone's way, Fabian," Charlotte Fielder said, her voice was very faint. "These people won't even notice you."
"I revise my offer," Julia said.
"I'm listening," Nia Korovilla said.
"Contact your backers, we will explain the current situation, and I'll offer them an atomic structuring manufacturing partnership with Event Horizon."
For the first time Nia Korovilla seemed uncertain.
Suzi stepped into the den. Her Browning pistol was held level with her face, one eye closed.
"If you—" Nia Korovilla began. Directly above her left ear a circle of hair one centimetre wide puffed into bright, almost invisible flame, singing the surrounding strands. She fell backwards, knees buckling.
Charlotte Fielder staggered forwards as the grip around her neck and arm was relinquished. She twisted to look at the maid's body, lying with limbs akimbo on the decking. The eyes had rolled back, leaving only the whites showing.
Charlotte Fielder groaned, looking as if she was about to be sick. Then she found Fabian Whitehurst who was staring numbly at the body. They moved into each other's arms, and locked like magnets.
Internal camera, aft fuselage access way. The four tekmercs of Frank's squad had begun to climb the transverse frame ladder up to the midsection of the engineering bay. Eighteen maintenance drones were lined up along the side of the ladder. Another two glided down their rails and stopped.
Julia organized twenty separate drone-handling subroutines inside the lightware crunchers, loaded them with instructions, and plugged each of them into a maintenance drone.
The last tekmerc started up the ladder. The first was still twenty rungs from the midsection walkway.
Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.
Tekmerc three: What is it with these drones?"
Tekmerc seven: "Lacey, hey, Lacey, they're in love with you." Kissing sound.
Tekmerc three, identified, Lacey: "Go suck it cold."
Frank: "Come on, let's show some discipline here."
Tekmerc seven: "Hey, this one's moving."
Julia's primary routine initiated the attack, handing over individual drone direction to the assembled subroutines. Welding lasers fired at the muscle armour suits' photon amps. Strut-repair waldos reached out and began drilling through the armour with monolattice carbon bits, aiming for wrist, elbow, ankle, and knee joints. Riveting guns punched metal pins into the jetpacks.
Internal camera, aft fuselage access way. A scene of terrorized chaos; machine versus machine. Metallic humanoids fighting vulpine robotic insects. The tekmercs thrashed and kicked as the drills penetrated; all the while desperately clinging to the ladder. Every time an armour boot hit a drone it would crumple the casing, smashing the hardware and hydraulic systems. Violent movement dislodged the waldos, but they would reach out again instantly, monolattice stingers blurring with speed.
Blood began to seep out of the drill holes, running down the outside of the dark armour. It mingled with hydraulic fluid, slicking the ladder.
The tekmerc below the leader lost his grip, dropping down a metre. He was halted momentarily by three waldos that had punctured the armour, but the force of the jolt ripped their drills free. He fell, rebounding off the fuselage framework, arms and legs flailing madly. Then he hit a clear section of the solar cell envelope head on, tearing straight through.
External camera, aft fuselage keel. The tekmerc was a black pinwheeling doll against the calm blue ocean. Shrinking rapidly. He must have tried to activate his jetpack. Whatever damage the maintenance drones had inflicted, it was drastic. The jetpack erupted into a shower of minute slivers, dismembering the rest of the muscle armour suit.
Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.
Tekmerc seven: Continuous unintelligible shout.
Frank: "Leol—the drones, the fucking drones. They've gone mad."
Leol Reiger: "What's happening?"
Frank: Screams. Shouting, "Help us for Christ's sake. It's the drones. They're killing us. Blind. They've blinded me. Can't hold. Oh God, my hands—" Screams.
Tekmerc five: "Holy shit, listen to them, it's likely they're being eaten alive."
Leol Reiger: "Shut up. Everybody, drones are hazards, shoot on sight. That goes for any other piece of mobile hardware. Ian, Keith, Denny, get up to that MHD chamber. Someone doesn't want us there. Help Frank if you can."
Tekmerc eight: "Jesus, Leol."
Leol Reiger: "Just flicking do it. Right? Snuff anything and everybody in your way, but do it. Now move."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Charlotte Fielder really was astonishingly pretty. She was the first thing Greg saw when he came into the MHD chamber after Suzi, all dark-gold skin and tight white cotton. Nothing else registered at the same level, it was as though the background had suddenly become monochrome.
She and Fabian Whitehurst were clinging to each other. Greg reckoned a muscle armour suit would be hard pushed to prise them apart. They both stared at Suzi in trepidation.
"Don't piss yourselves," Suzi told them, lowering her Browning. "I'm one of the good guys. Right, Julia?"
"Yes," Julia said, her voice booming out of speaker stacks. "Greg and Suzi won't hurt you, Charlotte, nor you, Fabian, they work for me."
Greg looked down at Nia Korovilla's body. She looked so tranquil in her prim maid's uniform. Hard to imagine her as any kind of hazard. Maybe Suzi had been right, after all. It irked him to think that she knew him better than he knew himself. But she certainly hadn't hesitated to shoot.
Nia Korovilla's presence kicked off a whole cascade of trepidation in his mind. Julia had squirted her data profile into his cybofax; according to that she had served on the Colonel Maitland for eight years. It meant she was a sleeper, a watcher keeping tabs on Jason Whitehurst. Which made no sense to Greg; if she'd been feeding someone with snatched bytes of Jason Whitehurst's trading deals for eight solid years, then the old boy would have known. So if she hadn't been doing that, what was she on board for?
"Leol Reiger has dispatched three more tekmercs up here," Julia said. Her face was replicated in six flatscreens, dominating one wall of the den. "I won't be able to delay them, not now they have been warned about the drones being under my command."
Greg glanced hurriedly round the MHD chamber. It reminded him of home, the kind of grotesque merger of gear and pets that the kids slapped together as various interests went through nova bursts of intense devotion, only to be abandoned a week or month later. It was an archaeological record of a boy's development. So much for his intuition telling him there was something out of phase about Fabian Whitehurst.
He tried to look at the MHD chamber from a tactical point of view. There was only the one door, and the walls behind the panels were solid alolithum. The tekmercs' rip guns could break through that easily enough. Suzi was prowling along the line of gear consoles below the flatscreens.