Nylon Angel (17 page)

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Authors: Marianne de Pierres

BOOK: Nylon Angel
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In the back of my mind it occurred to me that getting in here had been too damn easy, but denial is an insidious monster, so I skulked on down the driveway.
No one was around.
I broke into a side entrance. Basic deadbolts and a motion detector. Not a tough job, but messy because I was tired and in a hurry. No alarms. No dogs. No tek.
Inside, huge wall-sized portraits hung in the corridors, each of the same person, a face so famous that I recognised it immediately.
But I still didn’t add it up.
Nor did I twig to the covered furniture and stale air.
It wasn’t till I powered up the PC in the upstairs study and a muscular himbo crooned at me that it finally sunk in.
‘Hi Razz, darling,’ himbo said. ‘I’ve totally missed you. Where would you like to go?’
My fingers seized above the keyboard.
This was Razz Retribution’s frigging PC, in Razz Retribution’s frigging house.
I was the idiot who must be under observation by the sum total of Viva’s police and media. I scoured the ceiling and round the room for cameras and wondered when they’d stop rubbing their hands together and come out from behind their surveillance bugs to play. How often did a suspected perp turn up on the doorstep begging to be ’cuffed?
The coldest of furies gripped me.
I was going to get out! And I was damn well getting what I came for!
Quickly I tagged my newly upgraded worm on to the operating system. The worm set about burrowing through the firewalls.
While I waited, I tried to focus on alternative escape routes. I sure as hell wouldn’t be leaving the way I came.
But how then?
The worm breached the firewall and started squealing.
My fingers flew along the ’board trying to ride it up over the huge security wave that loomed
behind
the firewall. Secondary vast ice of the like I’d never seen. It rose and rose and rose, smashing the worm downwards into a long, hard gully. It countered every command I could throw at it.
Sweat made my fingers slippery. I’d heard whispers of this sort of stuff . . .
King Wave
.
Diadem
. It had names.
A few seconds later the worm was fish mulch and I was back with himbo. He wagged a pixelated finger. ‘Naughty, naughty! Razz likes her privacy. You’re in trouble.’ He turned and flounced huffily to the background of the screen.
Himbo and Merry 3# would get on a treat!
He was back in a flash in a sprouky white dress uniform and hat, and began reading my rights. The general drift of it was that I was about to spend my life in prison for attempting to breach confidential files of a member of the media.
I blew him a bigger than average raspberry and tried the back-door approach. There had to be a way in. There was
always
a way in.
My fingers galloped over the ’board again using the normal routes, the way Razz would do it. I got to her organizer, which pulsed with a huge lock.
I deftly built a key - the way Teece had taught me - and began to shape it to the lock.
I lost precious seconds while I calibrated.
From the windows of Razz’s study I could see the ’copters drifting in like buzzards to a still-warm carcass and setting down on the expensive, rolled lawns.
The ’pedes would follow soon. One would be a restraint module with neural disrupters and other various fancy paralysis tek fitted to the upholstery for safe escort to gaol.
They say if you got a life sentence in a Viva gaol you lived to be well over a hundred and fifty. All of it spent alone, in serious mental agony - relieved occasionally by bouts of serious physical agony.
The lock sprung and I shoved Lang’s disc in the sleeve. While I waited for the download, I assembled the rifle.
More seconds wasted.
Each ’copter was spilling out four cops. They fanned out. I should have been flattered - all that for little ol’ me - but right now all I could see were odds. Too many of them.
Another noise dragged my attention back to the PC. Not the worm this time, but himbo, shaking his fist and screaming serious trash at me. He seemed faint; see-through almost . . .
The download icons on the screen flashed normal but an unintelligible data flow snaked through himbo, patterning his uniform. I instantly recognised the decoy. The files weren’t transferring but . . . wiping.
Lang’s given me a frigging wiper!
Diadem
had been sedated and the hard drive was leaking information into the ether as quick as I could sweat.
I cold-slammed the disc from the sleeve.
Himbo got clearer again and blew a battle trumpet, but his walls were breached.
I ignored him and turned drawers inside out looking for something else to load on to. When I slotted a zip disk, my hands shook with a rage beyond reckoning.
Precious more seconds passed, but I dumped everything I could scoop up on to it.
Then I shoved both disks inside my tank top and plucked my four remaining charms loose from the bracelet.
Two Wizards, a Trinity and an Angel.
I stepped across the room, keeping behind the cover of the slatted blinds. Two ’copters at south and east.
Two more at north and west and I had sixteen live bodies and all the points of the compass covered.
Two ’pedes slithered along from the nearest street intersection. If I didn’t make a move before they got here it was going take a minor miracle for me to get away.
Who was I kidding? It was going to take that anyway.
I cut a large, rough hole in the security screen with my portable blowtorch and nosed the rifle through the bottom slat of the blind.
The security alarms went haywire.
I sighted on the south ’copter pilot as he leant out of his machine. Unprofessional and stupid, I thought with grim satisfaction.
My shot was a perfect hit. Paralysis in thirty seconds. Then I swung around to the east but the pilot was safe behind his bulletproof bubble. I couldn’t see him, let alone penetrate the casing.
I peeled the tab off the Trinity charm and one of the Wizards and kicked the slats wide open. The ground guys had about ten metres before they reached the house. I prayed that the ones at the back of the house were at about the same distance.
The Wizard took out the four from the east - unconscious but unlikely to be dead, unless they had weak hearts. The south guys had spread too far already and the Trinity only claimed two. I cursed having to use the other one on the same squad, but south was looking like my best chance.
As soon as I’d pitched the second Wizard I bolted down the stairs. If there were any left awake out there I’d have to take them myself; one moment longer and the north and west attack’d be all over my back.
I hit the driveway at three quarter pace and accelerated into a full sprint as soon as I reached the lawn. The charm had done its job and the body count seemed right, so I flattened into a dead run over the final stretch.
Armageddon’s mother broke around the back of the house. The two other ’copters had lifted off after me, leaving their groundies to follow up.
A heartbeat away from the south ’copter, a shot grazed my kneecap. I rolled the last distance in agony. If I’d been wearing my overalls instead of the jellyfish it would have deflected.
Frigging dresses!
I let off a return shot from my sniper and with difficulty hauled myself up over the pilot. His leg was caught in the safety harness, his unconscious body hanging out of the door.
Inside the ’copter’s comm band was crazy with orders. A sliver of satisfaction wedged in amongst my fear and pain. I was giving them some grief.
I stared at the panel of LEDs and touch-pads and panicked.
I couldn’t fly this thing. I couldn’t fly
any
damn thing!
The pain above my knee made it hard to breathe, let alone think. Yet the prospect of a life sentence in a Viva gaol sent my fingers galloping over the panel of their own free will.
The machine can fly itself. All you have to do is tell it to.
The thought came through clear and strident inside my head like a voice - but not. Any other time I would have baulked at hearing voices but right now I’d take any advice, sensory delusion or not.
‘’Copter, take off!’ The ’copter bucked and lifted about two metres off the ground before landing again. Shots were beginning to rock the cabin.
You’ve confused it. It only follows a set pattern of commands and your voice isn’t recognisable. It’s not sure what to do.
Is it sentient?
I asked my inner voice.
Of course it isn’t
, snapped the voice,
it’s just a machine, not even a very smart one.
Angel?
I ventured tentatively.
It didn’t bother to reply.
The pilot stirred and hope flared within me. Maybe I could force him to fly me out of here. I hauled him upright and screamed threats in his ear. But he went limp again.
Drop the pilot.
What?
Drop the pilot. You can’t fly with him hanging from the door. Drop the creature!
Blind obedience isn’t my strong point these days - especially to foreign voices in my head - but I could see its point. I flicked the pilot’s belt clasp and he cart-wheeled to the ground.
Now find the take-off protocol.
I furiously scrolled through help screens, maintenance checks, configuration parameters—
‘Got it!’ I shouted and initiated the sequence.
I took a deep breath. ‘’Copter, fly!’
Nothing.
Call it by its name!
What do you mean its name?
I keyed for the start-up menu and searched. ‘Model Wasp, Keenu Class, Seventy-three A . . .
Fly!
’
Begrudgingly it lifted and nosed south, flying too low over the congestion of agitated ’pedes.
You need altitude, or one of those legged creatures will finish you. Get it up!
Get it up yourself
, I hissed at my unseen copilot. The last thing I wanted was to be further from the ground.
Two more are closing. A general alert is out. Deploy the incendiary weapons.
Incendiary? How?
With immense difficulty I forced my eyes away from the scene of my doom and feverishly scrolled through the manual pages.
I think it’s—
You think . . . ?
The harder I concentrated on the words, the more unreadable they became. Panic had me. What happened to the cool, calm anger?
I took a deep, shaky breath and tried again. ‘It’s got to be these.’
Terror had paralysed my mind, but my hands moved of their own volition, pressing in codes.
Four missiles deployed from the rear shoots. They went way wide of the pursuing ’copters, but it bothered my tailgaters enough that they dropped back and veered off. At least that was what I thought with a split second of relief.
ESCAPE! NOW!
A deafening explosion.
My top blades shot forward off the lid of the cabin, lasered neatly from the body like a slicer through cheese. I baled as the ’copter dropped like a stone into the moat.
How I survived the fall and the wreck is a total mystery. But I surfaced gulping and choking, caftan billowing like a parachute and burning debris scattered everywhere.
Engine noise.
Shouts.
I tried to tear my sodden dress off but it was bunched and twisted around my legs, and then there was the small matter of the speedboat powered up and heading straight toward me.
For a minute I thought it was trying to run me over and I gulped in air, ready to dive. But at the last second it slowed and swerved.
A figure stretched over the side, hands trailing like a scoop in the water. I recognised the outline of the figure.
Loyl Daac!
Our hands connected in a watery slap, and as the boat started to move I was dragged like a fish thrashing on a hook as he gradually reeled me in.
Together we collapsed in the bottom of the boat.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I spluttered. My body felt numb from the fall and the buffeting of the water. My knee hurt. I coughed up water ungratefully. ‘I don’t need rescuing.’
‘You didn’t have to take my hand!’ he muttered, extricating his legs from mine.
I watched as he slid away from me across the deck and slithered down the cabin steps.
The boat accelerated dangerously, slamming around the moat in a wild dash. I slid from one side to the other and cracked my head before I wised up and grabbed a rope hitch.
Ibis was in the driver bubble up to my left, his plump body moulded like putty around the steering wheel. Daac had said he could get me anywhere in Viva. But could they get me out?
Why
would they get me out?
I closed my eyes and gripped the handhold with all my strength. If I survived, I’d have plenty of time to ask questions.
The next thing I knew Daac was shouting at me. He slid what looked like a deflated octopus across the deck and barked, ‘Suit up.’
I caught it awkwardly between my legs and then loosed one hand to grab it. My bad knee shrieked with pain. Holding on with the other hand I managed to hook my left foot in, then the right. I wriggled like crazy to get it up to my waist.
That’s as far as I’d got when the first torpedo detonated near the bow.
A warning? Or a missed hit? Ibis slewed the boat in a radical sideways move, without slowing, and I vaguely registered houses looming on both sides. We were heading into the M’Grey Island canals.
Comprehension eased my dismay. The ’copters had to be careful what kind of artillery they employed in the canals. Wouldn’t do to damage some toff’s holiday pad.

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