Hellflower (v1.1) (4 page)

I untucked my ears from between my knees and pulled a comlink out of my jacket pocket. The RTS let Pally and me talk to and hear each other and that was it; this’d let him hear things around me-like challenges from the securitronics patrolling the Det levels. It meant he could answer them in tronic, too, which would contribute to increased life expectancy for Yours Truly.

All this was assuming the comlink worked, and we wouldn’t know that until we tried it. But what’s life without a spirit of inquiry?

"It is not too late to change your mind," Paladin said through the transponder in my head.

"Already paid rent on the speeder." I eased the door open.

No alarms just a dark empty office. I opened the door farther and stuck my head out. Still nothing.

Pally’d heard there was budget cuts for the civil services when he’d been cakewalking through the City Computer. Wanderweb justice being what it was, there wasn’t anything down here anybody could want to steal, but we’d still been expecting getting in to be harder than this. I started making plans for the rest of the evening at a bathhouse I knew and made to step out.

"Wait," Paladin said. I waited. "There’s something there." I froze. "There is some form of security device in the room," said Paladin. I leaned farther out and saw it. It was about one meter across and less than half that high. It squatted malevolently in the middle of the floor glaring impersonal-like at everything in sight and didn’t seem to notice me.

Noticed or not, I couldn’t stay here all night. Maybe I could scramble its brains and have Paladin pick up the chat before anyone noticed. "It is in contact with the Justiciary computer. It is likely that any interruption of that contact will constitute an alarm."

And maybe I could just teleport to Security Detention.

I swung the door open the rest of the way. It crashed against the wall with a well-oiled thud that damn near made my heart stop.

"No change in status," said Paladin. "Are you all right?" "Terrific," I said. If I couldn’t get past this thing, Tiggy was going to have to forget about being rescued and I’d have to start thinking seriously about a career of being dead.

What would set it off? Sound hadn’t, motion hadn’t, and with so many lizard-types in your Empire and mine it’d be pretty damn dumb to go with the old body-heat dodge.

So what did that leave?

Vibration. Spidey’d been interested when the door hit the wall but not very. If I set foot to floor how long until I was up to my absent blasters in Guardsmen? If that wasn’t it there wasn’t anything else I could think of.

Great. Now all I had to do was get out of here without walking across the floor-and me without my A-grav harness.

I looked up. What there was, was an air vent. The vent was just below the ceiling, a little to the left of the top of the cabinet and big enough to hold me on a skinny day if I gave up breathing. Three cheers and a tiger for impecunious bureaucrats and Free Port owners that want to save every credit. Even for the Outfar this was backward. "Butterfly?" Paladin demanded in my ear. It gave me the weirdest feeling-no room for anyone to be standing behind me but he sure sounded like it.

"Securitronic sweet for the shaky, seeming. So I’m going through the air vents instead of over the floor."

###

We will pass lightly over me climbing to the top of the cabinet, leaning out into infinite space to get the grille off the vent, not dropping the bolts on the floor, and managing to get a handhold on the edge of the vent-shaft to pull myself in, and go directly to where I was jammed into the air vent with slightly less than no room to wiggle.

"Pally? How long’s it been?"

"One hour five. Butterfly, are you sure this is a good idea?" "One helluva time to bring that up," I told him, and started up the shaft. I could hear Paladin inside the vent, which augured well for our future deceiving securitronics together, but I’d lose him by time we got to Security Detention. By then it would be up to me and Tiggy Stardust. I knew more or less where to go to pluck my hellflower, thanks to the mindless faxhandler who decreed all Justiciary levels be laid out to the same pattern. The floor plan for this level was classified-but the floor plan of the identical level two floors up wasn’t. The lift we wanted was just outside the main sentencing arena.

Six subjective eternities and the loss of my pant-knees later, Pally and me came to a promising grille. It looked down from a good five meters into what looked like one of the sentencing arenas, and the room was full of tronics. I pushed the comlink up against the grille and waited for Pally to give me some glad news.

"Fortune is with you, Butterfly," he told me a few minutes later. "This is the main sentencing arena-the housekeeping and security tronics use this for their central dispatch area during Third Shift. The lift to the Security Detention levels is just outside the door. You can walk right through."

"Yeah?" I said. Leaving aside for the moment Paladin’s definition of luck, there was the minor matter of more rude mechanicals down below than I ever really hoped to meet. And securitronics tend to be irritable.

"’Yeah. Housekeeping and Security are programmed to avoid each other-I will provide them with the proper code, and you will walk across the floor and out the other door. As long as they receive the proper codes, the tronics will not care who you are. Just move slowly, as if you were another machine."

"If this is so easy, why don’t everyone come dancing in here? Think of the valuta they could save on fines."

"In the first place, the recognition codes for the security devices are changed by the computer on a random sequence. In the second place, it is generally accepted that breaking into a prison is an unnecessary exertion."

I ignored that. I also knew there wasn’t any other way in.

I got a pocket-laser out of my bag of tricks and took out the grille. I passed it over my back into the airshaft, eased out through the hole until I was hanging by my fingers, and dropped. I came up with the stunner ready, but I couldn’t see a thing. Heard the whine of servomotors as a securitronic waddled over to me. It was a handspan taller than me and much wider, with all its come-alongs and keep-aways and don’t—worrys arranged neatly on its chest and arms. Its optical sensors glowed red in the dark but most of its dull gray hide was a dull gray blur. I wished I’d brought some night-goggles, but they would of raised eyebrows at the front desk when I was scanned and the info Pally had said the Justiciary was kept lit at night on all levels. On the other hand, if I died right here I wouldn’t need to see anything.

The tronic turned and walked away.

"I told you so," Paladin said smugly. "Machines are stupid."

I was challenged twice more-once by another securitronic, once by a housekeeper-and each time Paladin answered for me. I carded the little access door set into the big "for-show" courtroom doors and slipped out.

The hall outside wasn’t dark. It was pitch black.

"Helluva time for the high-heat to start economizing," I muttered, staring/not staring into the dark. "Now what?"

"Hm," said Paladin, just to let me know he was still there.

I could tune my pocket-laser to a torch, which the manufacturer does not recommend you do. I was just about to see if I could do it by feel when I heard heavy tronic-steps coming toward me and the whine of a housekeeper’s treads coming up behind.

Paladin sang out in a flurry of musical notes as I scrambled the securitronic right between its little red eyes with my stunner and then whipped out another shot to about where its brain ought to be. The guard hit the floor with a clatter, and the housekeeper nuzzled up to my ankles and went around me.

The nice thing about a solenoid stunner is that it’s completely harmless to organics and death on tronic brains.

By the glow of my retuned laser I could see the housekeeper merrily disemboweling the ex-securitronic. The lift to Security Detention was a few meters away.

"Here’s where thee-an-me subdivide, Pally," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

"I will monitor all city-wide communications," he said, not sounding really wild about all this either, "and brief you when you come out."
When you come out.
Thanks for vote of confidence, little buddy. "Won’t be long," I said.

The lift door opened. I got in and stood there for a while feeling stupid, then it reopened on Detention level.

I was looking at a man in a CityGuard uniform standing in front of a console with a securitronic on either side of him. I scrambled both of them, and while he was still trying to figure out why they didn’t work he let me get close enough to him to hit him over the head with my stunner.

Never depend on your technology.

Then I was past the check-in point and running down a long corridor three tiers high and lined with doors. I’d borrowed the Guardsman’s blaster, so I used it to zap two more tronics. I wished I had Paladin with me to tell me about all the alarms and excursions being raised all over the place.

Tiggy’s cell was at the very end, but at least it was on the bottom. I switched the setting on my borrowed blaster from "annoy" to "leave no evidence" and blew the lock out. The cell door sprang right open, and there was my hellflower.

He was chained hand and foot for punishment drill, and spread out on the wall pretty as a holo. The Justiciary’d took his jewels and all his clothes in payment of fines, and he was wearing a pair of Det-ish pants that didn’t fit by a long shot.

And the look on his face was everything I could of hoped for.
"Chaudatu, "
he finally said. "Not you again?"

"Yeah, me. I’m here to rescue you."

Later, when Paladin got his, um, hands on an alMayne lexography, we found out that
"chaudatu"
means "outlander," except that what it really meant is "anyone who is not alMayne and therefore not a real person." Unfortunately, even if I’d known that at the time it wouldn’t have made any difference.

I got out my picks and got to work on Tiggy’s shackles-feet first, then hands-and hoped that Time, Fate, and bureaucratic cock-up would give me the fistful of nanoseconds needed to get the ‘flower loose and on his feet. After that, I figured my troubles were over. All we had to do was get us out of here alive, and Tiggy and me could go hide out. He could be grateful, and then I could bugout for Kiffit and write the next chapter of my memoirs.

He dropped to the floor when I got the last cuff off and stretched all over like a cat. Real pretty. I handed him the liberated blaster. "Can use this-here?" I said in broad patwa.

He looked at it briefly. "Yes."

"Reet. Now hear me, che-bai-thing rigged for ‘kill,’ okeydoke? Not to dust organics with it. Fragging people buys bad trouble. Shoot at wartoys. Right?"

While I was talking, I was looking out into the corridor. The quiet was spooky, and there should of been more guards, but I didn’t see any. I looked back and Tiggy was regarding me with the expression of a hellflower what hadn’t understood one word I’d said.

"Look, che-bai; shoot tronics, not organics. Zap-zap. Ch’habla. Understand?"

"Shoot only at security robots.
Dzain’domere, "
said Tiggy gravely.

"Je, reet. Just don’t shoot people." I was nervous and didn’t have time to remember my Interphon.

He glared. I thought he was thinking of shooting me and to hell with freedom, but he nodded. We single-footed it out into the corridor. I wondered what jane-doh-meer meant in helltalk.

The wartoys on the tier above us started shooting.

I pulled Tiggy back against the wall and out of their line of fire. I remembered my plasma grenades and wondered if I should use them now. They were small, but still big enough so I didn’t want to risk it unless we were in real trouble.

Six heavy-duty securitronics came trundling down the corridor toward us. They were about the size of the Imperial Debt and all business. I could see riot-gas launchers extruding from the chest of the leader as it came on.

We were in real trouble. I rolled a grenade toward them, bodyblocked the ‘flower back into his cell, and prayed.

The grenade went off.

There was smoke. Tiggy burned the wartoys on the tier above as I was finishing the six-pack on the floor. Grenade’d gone off right behind the leader, and the blast had splash-backed to destroy the next two. The other three was confused enough with memory-purge and magnetic bubble scramble for Tiggy to totally blow them away as we jogged past. There was probably alarms going off from here to Grand Central, but they was all silent-at least I couldn’t hear them. I overrode the lift’s lock-command from the main board out front. It wasn’t that different than some Pally’d coached me on. Tiggy covered my back while I did it; his eyes was blazing like burning sapphires and he was grinning like he was enjoying himself. We picked up a couple rifles.

"Ten minutes, ninety seconds. Ten minutes, ninety-five seconds. Eleven minutes." Paladin was counting off, on the chance I’d be back to hear.

The corridor was still dark when we got back up to Sentencing. Then the lift shut behind us and everything went really dark. I got out my much abused laser. We had to get out now before word of our presence spread.

"Here we are, boys and girls," I said for Paladin’s benefit.

"Are you all right? No alarm has been raised: The city is quiet, the Justiciary is not calling up any reserves, there have been no transmissions from Security Detention."

"C’mon," I said, to my hellflower and my partner. "This way. We’re both fine for now—" that was for Paladin "-shoot any mechs you see, no matter what. And kid—"

"Do not shoot the people," Tiggy finished. "I know,
chaudatu,
but I think you are a fool."

There’s gratitude for you. Not having dusted anyone in our escape probably wouldn’t do us any good if we were caught, but I was feeling superstitious enough to think that virtue might be rewarded.

We made it out of Sentencing and back into Records. There was more light here. A quick riot-gas grenade would cover us on the way out of Receiving and -