Chapter 12 #2
Her subvocalized words came over his earwire. “The other suite on this floor is empty. Stairs beyond it, marked emergency only. Probably alarmed and monitored.”
Renner could fix that if necessary, but it would expose his active talent. Fortunately, the lift doors opened a second later, and they stepped inside the capsule.
Charrascos kept the annoyed look until they all made it out of the building’s front doors and turned left toward the outdoor pedestrian lift.
N’Dwama’s tone and voice came over the earwire. “I heard your exit and freed the flitter. Want me to come to you?”
“No,” Renner subvocalized. “Walking is faster.”
For someone with short legs, Charrascos moved surprisingly quickly. He lengthened his stride and caught her attention. “Ears.”
Nodding, she tapped her earwire and subvocalized. “Bitehead was clever. Where are we going?”
He reached out with his talent to look for people and power surges. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
“Restaurant. Tōn Ko, scout ahead for an unpopular lift. Minan, what does ‘three strikes’ mean?”
“Copy,” said Tōn Ko, breaking into a fast trot and quickly moving ahead. He’d never been in the military, but he was picking up Minan’s terminology.
“Ancient sports term meaning three wrong things, enough to be more than coincidence. The lobby desk had a new occupant and too much dust.” Minan’s precise Standard English diction came through even when she subvocalized.
“The XRAC people were all different. Forty minutes ago, their reception desk had personal stuff and a float chair. The new staff didn’t recognize their own board members.
Does Ridderth street slang have a word for ‘I have a really bad feeling about this’? ”
“Yeah.” Renner scowled at the world. “Fucked.”
He knew criminal crew setups, but didn’t know shit about high-class charities. Minan had been in the security business longer than he’d been alive. He trusted her judgment. If Charrascos didn’t like it, she could ream them all later. “Let’s move.”
They followed Tōn Ko’s directions to the lift he chose and took the shortest route to the restaurant’s rooftop.
N’Dwama had obviously picked up on their unease and launched the flitter a second after they sealed the doors.
Renner opened his coat and pulled the safety web across him.
Tōn Ko did the same, then opened the cold box and pulled out a pouch.
“Sir…” He caught himself and shook his head.
“Arco, want some water? We force-marched you for nearly a kilometer.” She’d firmly insisted they call her by her first name, not a title or any of the various cultural honorifics.
Renner compromised by using her last name.
“In a minute.” Charrascos struggled with the seat web to pull her pink tablet out of her coat pocket. “I’ve seen the woman from the lobby before.” She finally freed the tablet, then unfolded it.
Minan, jacked into the flitter’s console, swiveled her chair to face Charrascos. “Today?”
Charrascos closed her eyes for a moment, then looked down and started interacting with her tablet at her characteristic lightning speed. She hadn’t told her team she was a filer, so he suspected the tablet was a cover for searching her eidetic memory.
Renner turned to look out the window. He knew fuck-all about taking care of people. He should have—
“Shit!” Minan spun forward. “N’Dwama, dump traffic control and climb! Go suborbital south if you can.”
N’Dwama slammed the control to force-exit the TCS and sent the flitter up at a steep incline. The flitter’s engines howled, and the hull creaked in protest.
A water pouch whizzed past his ear toward the back. Charrascos clutched her tablet to her chest.
Tōn Ko fought to swivel his seat around so it could support his back against the acceleration g-force.
Minan’s voice came over their earwires. “Emergency AIs are requesting prioritized passage to respond to five explosions across the city.”
The ass-end of the flitter wobbled like it had been hit. Something came loose and thumped loudly. Another water pouch escaped the cold box and bounced off his shoulder on its way back.
“You want to fly by skulljack?” asked N’Dwama.
“No, you’re better,” said Minan. “I’ll navigate. Ease vector to three-ten by south minus eight. Level to two-seventy once you hit fifteen thousand meters.”
The g-force pressure shifted from his back to his ass as the flitter’s ascent became more horizontal. Tōn Ko finally managed to close the cold box.
Minan’s voice again. “Continental TCS wants to connect.”
“Decline,” Renner ordered. “Tell it we’re trainers doing flight recovery exercises. We’ll connect once we’re too far from Arazak for them to make us come back.”
“Copy.”
He glanced at Charrascos. Her eyes were closed, but her hands still cradled her tablet.
A few minutes later, the pressure eased as the flitter assumed a fully horizontal attitude and the compensators kicked in. Renner slid himself upright from his acceleration-influenced slouch.
Minan swiveled her seat toward him again.
“Do you want me to use the training excuse for why we exited Arazak TCS…” Her eyes blinked in rapid succession.
“Holy shit. Another explosion just flattened half a city block. Ground zero was the building we left twenty minutes ago. Casualties are already estimated in the hun–”
Charrascos interrupted. “Minan, stop your queries. If it’s an attack, they’ll filter the net for undue early interest and flag you.” She sat up and freed her tablet. “As much as I want to go back down there and do my job, we need to go back to Ridderth. You fly. I’ll collect the news.”
Minan nodded. “I’m off the net.” She frowned. “What about that woman you saw?”
Charrascos blew out a frustrated breath. “I need more time.”
“If she was still at that desk, I doubt she survived.” Minan’s expression turned grim. “I doubt any of them did.”
Renner recognized Charrascos’s inward-focused look. They’d be getting no more responses from her unless they actively interrupted her.
He leaned back in his seat and tried to doze. When that failed, he practiced a seated version of the relaxed-focus sequence Soleil taught the ex-Jumpers in her studio and tried to clear his mind. He still tanked at the exercise, but it passed the time.
Forty minutes later, Charrascos folded her tablet. “Okay.” She winced as she rubbed her neck, tilting her head left and right. “Do we have any water left?”
Tōn Ko nodded and tossed her a pouch from the cold box. Minan swiveled her seat around to face Charrascos. N’Dwama put the flitter on autopilot-by-planetary-TCS but stayed at the controls.
Charracos opened the pouch and downed several swallows.
“Reports are still coming, but six other cities in this hemisphere got hit like Arazak, including Ridderth. Riot rumors trended at first, but the Citizen Protect Service spinners just put out a statement taking credit for a successful coordinated raid operation. They claim a planet-wide minder-supremacy terrorist organization was using various ex-Minder Corps veteran groups as a cover.”
Tōn Ko’s eyes went wide. “The CPS bombed veteran groups?”
“No, they claim the terrorists rigged all the buildings across the continent to blow if one got breached.” Charrascos rubbed her neck again. “Local and planetary police say they’re investigating.”
Renner recognized her calm tone as the one she used for reporting. It gave no clue as to how she personally felt about the news.
“Sure they are,” muttered Tōn Ko darkly. “Funny how it’s always veteran groups for minders.”
Arco continued. “The eight locations in Arazak were all veteran groups, but Ridderth had at least twenty targets that weren’t.
A martial arts studio, a media company, a warehouse in the Canals, an industrial lab, a joyhouse, and so on.
I hired a data diver to compile a list of planetwide targets, collateral damage, and casualties.
” She frowned, then shook her head. “Not enough confirmed data to draw conclusions yet.” She closed her eyes and dropped her head, her chin almost touching her collarbone.
Renner’s hands chilled. “Martial arts studio?”
She angled her head toward him and opened one eye. “Not your friend’s place. Not Novo G’s building, either.” She dropped her head again.
Renner curled his fingers into fists a couple of times, but they still felt clammy. The targets she’d listed sounded like a map of his life. For a frozen moment, he was a starving Canals kid, with only instinct and superstition to keep him alive from one day to the next.
He shook it off. He was no longer anyone’s blindfolded or short-leashed pawn. His path was his own.
Tapping his wristcomp awake, he let it sync to the net. He started to open a contact, but an event reminder he’d forgotten about demanded attention.
He’d been planning to skip the wannabe resistance group’s “hit the CPS where it hurts” meeting. However, now he could use it as an excuse to see Haseem and check on the damage in the Canals.
He hesitated, then powered down the wristcomp. Pinging anyone right now was a bad idea. Charrascos had made him wary about leaving a trail through the net.
He caught her eye. “When we get back to Ridderth, I need the night off.”
“Okay.” Charrascos squared her shoulders, but looked away. “When will you be back?” Her tone sounded tight, distant.
It occurred to him that she was more worried about the situation than she was letting on. Maybe even worried about him. An unexpected urge to touch her in reassurance arose in him, but he smothered it. She’d hired him for personal security, not comfort.
“Breakfast.” He kept his tone nonchalant. “It’s savory strudel day at Berte’s food cart.”
She said nothing, but the corner of her mouth tilted up with a hint of a smile.
He foresaw more teasing in his future. He could live with that.