‘What have we got?’ I asked.
‘What you see and two other areas. One is rec and changing, the other is admin, storage and what looks like a design room – all clear,’ Rannu answered. I thought he sounded almost bored.
‘Make the other areas safe,’ I told Rannu. The ex-Ghurkha nodded. They were never going to be safe but at least we could prepare as much as possible for the inevitable breach. I headed back to the reception area.
I found Gregor looking amused and peering out the window. He was sat on the reception desk.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘A couple of corporate rent-a-cops just came round the corner, took one look at me and scrambled on all fours back out of view,’ he said.
‘You’re getting high on power, man,’ I said, smiling, and triggered the security door, which began sliding down. ‘You send out the crawlers?’ I asked. Gregor nodded and texted me the link to the small robot cameras he’d set loose outside the facility. It looked like one of them was shooting from inside a landscaped part of the mall. Around the corner from the node facility I could see the two cowering rent-a-cops. They had guns in their hands and looked like they were sub-vocalising frantically. I laughed; maybe the cops thought They had invaded. Gregor began putting motion and sound detectors up against the door and exterior walls while I redirected the external and interior security camera feeds to my internal visual display and ensured they were disconnected from the net.
A blinking icon on the reception console told me that someone was trying to contact the node. I opened the link. The face that appeared on the screen was overweight, nervous, sweating heavily and so obviously an overpaid hostage negotiation consultant it was difficult to look at him. He’d probably never had to handle a situation this serious before. He opened his mouth to talk.
‘I’ll only speak to the commander of the HRT or SWAT team you’re sending in here. If I haven’t heard from them in five minutes I’ll kill a hostage,’ I lied and then killed the link. Gregor looked over at me. I shrugged. ‘He looked like an arsehole.’ From the external cameras and the concealed crawlers I could see the local security establishing a perimeter.
‘You got it here?’ I said, diverting the reception comms to my own.
Gregor nodded.
‘And don’t kill anyone. If we’re not done then we buy enough time for Morag and Pagan to finish, but once they’re in, it’s over,’ I said and turned, heading back to the studio.
‘What about Rolleston?’ he asked. I couldn’t read his warped features. I gave this some thought.
‘Well, there’s an exception to every rule.’ My voice sounded hard even to my own ears.
‘I’m not going to be captured again,’ Gregor said to my back. I stopped. I hadn’t considered this. I was dying so I guess I hadn’t really thought about what was going to happen to the others when they were inevitably handed over to Rolleston and his cronies. That was assuming things hadn’t changed that much by then. I looked over my shoulder at the freakish mess they’d made of my friend. I realised then that he didn’t belong anywhere. Nobody would accept what he was. Maybe Them, if we did manage to make peace, but after the war he would never be able to accept Them. I wondered how much he hated himself.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ I heard myself saying.
Back in the studio I realised that we didn’t have nearly enough guns. Not if Buck and Gibby were going to be fucking around playing music and Mudge was going to be weirdly exercising his ego, but I guessed it didn’t really matter. The absurdity of the situation made me smile.
Rannu appeared on the catwalk above us and gave me the thumbs up. The first floor was as ready for a breach as we were going to get. Already a couple of the motion detectors had gone off. This was presumably a SWAT team drilling through the walls and pushing monofilament cameras and smart AV bugs through.
‘They won’t be able to breach the external Spoke wall but they will try and come through the transport and the docking arm, probably with armour, so we’ve left a few surprises in the transport. Balor, I want you covering the docking arm.’ If they were going to send exo-armour in here after us, and they would, I was sure that Balor could and would want to go toe to toe with it. ‘Rannu, I want you up on the catwalk. Conceal yourself as best you can and make sure you’ve got line of sight on both the doors and the gallery. If necessary you will provide fire support for Balor and me down on the floor,’ I said over the tac net. Rannu nodded. ‘Gregor, I want you pulled back to the studio but looking out covering the reception area. They will definitely breach that security door. It’s the weakest point.’
‘Why don’t I just stay out here?’ Gregor came back.
‘Because you may as well see as much of the fun as we get a chance to have,’ I answered. Moments later I saw Gregor move back into the studio and kneel down by the entrance to the reception area, the massive Retributor at the ready.
I could see a comms icon flashing on my internal visual display. It was the re-routed comms line from the reception desk. I opened it up and routed it over the tac net to Gregor, Rannu and Balor. The comms icon I saw was of a hard-faced black woman. She was dressed in the lightweight hard armour and inertial undersuit common to SWAT and Cyber SWAT units. Her eyes were black polarised lenses, her hair shorn down to stubble. I reckoned she was short and stocky like many special forces operators.
‘I don’t have time for this. You don’t have any hostages so we’re going to come in there and get you out,’ she said in an American accent. I considered asking her where she’d been, but for a job this prestigious I figured her for ex-Delta. She reminded me of Ash.
‘I’m in love,’ Balor muttered.
‘And you are?’ I enquired politely. She seemed to consider this. My feed from one of the crawlers showed her some way back surrounded by a group of similarly armoured figures. They had an armoured ram tank specially designed for use in the Spoke. Behind that I could see African-made, Praetorian powered-armour suits. I could also see Praetorians and a number of police gunships hovering around in the air outside the node.
‘Watch Commander Cat Sommerjay,’ she said. ‘Now stop fucking around, Sergeant Douglas. If you don’t come out now then all you’ll get is dead, you know that.’ So she knew who I was.
‘Getting a lot of pressure to breach?’ I asked. ‘People want you to come in before you’re ready?’ She hesitated. That was good, that meant she cared about her people.
‘Sergeant-’ she began.
‘Just call me Jakob,’ I said.
‘You smooth bastard,’ Gregor said. I glared at him. I seemed to have pissed off Cat – as I found myself thinking of her.
‘Look, arsehole,’ she snarled. ‘I’m not the fucking negotiator. You want to make friends, you shouldn’t have hung up on him. Either you come out or we come in, your choice.’
‘I’m definitely in love,’ Balor confirmed. ‘Let’s surrender.’
‘Look, Cat,’ I said. ‘We haven’t killed anyone, we’re contained and we will only fight to protect ourselves. We need a little time and then I promise you we’ll surrender,’ I said, trying not to think about my promise to Gregor. Cat opened her mouth to reply but stopped, looking irritable.
‘Wait a second,’ she said, and her comms icon froze on hold.
‘What was that?’ Balor asked.
‘At a guess, a priority comms override from the Cabal,’ Gregor said.