The Sum of Her Parts (16 page)

Similarly, the sight of the floater’s starboard and port multibarreled weapons was usually sufficient to convince even the most heavily armed intruders that they were seriously outgunned and that their best chance for survival lay in surrendering their arms. While on Kruger’s watch the heavy weaponry had only been fired once in anger. Two minutes after they had been unleashed, it was impossible to separate the bodies of the intruders from the floater in which they had been traveling. His own forensic specialist had taken one look at the mess and declared his inability to identify any of the remains.

Instead of explosive shells, the single forward-mounted Gatling fired darts filled with a powerful soporific. The contents of one or two was usually enough to put even a big lod Meld to sleep. If weapons had to be used Kruger much preferred this quieter and more humane method of taking down illegal visitors. For one thing, the chance to question live intruders provided information that could be added to the facility’s security bank. Names, places, facilitators, could all be stored for reference against future intrusions. For another, cleanup was infinitely easier and less time-consuming.

The particular intrusion he and his team were presently on their way to confront had been detected by the company satellite that stayed in synchronous orbit over the central and lower Namib. Able to complete a full high-resolution scan of the region every several days, it was not perfect. But it did make it impossible for any vehicle bigger than a kid’s shufslide to remain in the area long enough to do any harm. It was theoretically possible for a well-equipped intruder to get in fast and get out fast without being picked up by Nerens-based security. If an intruder was willing to
risk their life for some vit and a few pictures, Kruger could only admire them. That was real dedication and he did not concern himself with such transitory violations.

It was those who came hoping to spend time in the Sperrgebeit that set the facility’s, and his, alarms to ringing. Most of them were after diamonds. Some came seeking rare animals they could sell on the black market. A thousand-year-old
Welwitschia mirabilis
was worth a great deal of subsist to wealthy plant collectors. While industrial espionage was also always a possibility, in his tenure as chief of security he had never encountered an interloper who had entered the Sperrgebeit with that in mind. Few outside the inner circle of the SAEC even knew there was a research and manufacturing facility at Nerens. Those who did had no reason to suspect that it was engaged in anything other than mining studies.

Early morning in the Namib was beautiful no matter where one happened to find oneself, no matter which direction one looked, no matter what time of year it was. It helped to have an appreciation for the beauties of desert terrain. Not everyone could tolerate such a lack of greenery. Kruger loved the peacefulness and the solitude, the banded colors of the rocks, the way the wind coiffed the crests of the barchan dunes. The money.

His work consisted mostly of running routine checkups of procedures and equipment that never went wrong. It was repetitive but satisfying. Another man might have been bored to death. Not Kruger. Having seen plenty of action in his youth he was more than content to enjoy what amounted to an exceptionally well-paid semiretirement. True, at the facility he was occasionally exposed to sights and sounds that puzzled and confused him, but interpreting their meaning was not his job. Having survived being shot at for real, he knew that shooting other people while ducking fire was a scenario far better played out on a vit immersion than in real life. Bullets burned, getting hit hurt, and losing body parts even in a day
and time when they could nearly always be replaced or substituted for was not nearly as exciting or invigorating as some of his younger and less experienced colleagues supposed.

So he was gratified when word came from his scanner operator that there was no sign of movement at the location they were speeding to investigate.

“Dead quiet ahead, sir,” the woman told him. With her right hand she slightly adjusted the perception helmet that covered her entire head. The three slender part flesh, part metal tentacles that emerged from her left shoulder were plugged deep and wirelike into the console in front of her.

“Nothing at all?” Kruger spoke softly into the tiny vorec mike suspended in front of his mouth.

“Nothing, sir. There’s a floater there all right. Imaging people were right about that. I’ve got it on reflective now. The silhouette is sharp enough for me to analyze the composition—but nothing’s moving. No heat signature from the vehicle and nothing bipedal in the immediate vicinity. It’s—quiet.”

“Maybe they’re sleeping.” The port-side gunner stroked the back end of his weapon as if he were caressing a cat. “If so they’re gonna get a nasty wake-up call.”

“Take it easy, Raki.” Kruger recognized the tone. Like so many of his ilk the younger man was bored. Rotation was a problem in every department at Nerens, including Security. The isolation, the lack of things to do, the restrictions on individual movement both outside the facility and within, tended to result in rapid burnout among the personnel. Few stayed more than a year. Even fewer were on track to remain in their posts until their recruitment period was up. Among employees he was something of a dinosaur. Occasionally the strain of fulfilling an employment contract combined with the remoteness and desolation caused an employee to crack. Like that unfortunate Ouspel fellow, for example.

As the floater turned due west he found himself wondering what had happened to the vanished employee. It was likely that he had fled on his own, propelled by his own personal psychosis. If so then he would have perished out in the vastness of the Sperrgebeit just like everyone else who tried to leave the facility without going through formal discharge procedures. Somewhere hyenas were gnawing the technician’s bones.

“I have target on my screens, sir.” The pilot’s limbs gently adjusted instrumentation and the security craft slowed. “Orders?”

With a sigh Kruger sat up straight in his seat and pulled his legs off the console. Time to go to work. “Sipho, where are you?” The security chief knew he could have answered his own question simply by checking one readout on the console in front of him, but it was always good procedure to have verbal confirmation of your backup’s position.

“Coming around from the southeast, Het.” The voice in the security chief’s earpiece was clear and devoid of distortion. “ETA in approximately five minutes. You want us to go in or stand off?”

“Stand off and stay airborne but move in close enough to establish visual. So far we’ve got nothing. I don’t like dealing with nothing. It implies concealment.”

“You think they’re waiting for us?”

Kruger considered. “There’s no way they can know that their presence here has been discovered. I doubt they’re expecting company so soon after entering the Forbidden Zone. One of my gunners thinks they may be sleeping in. It’s possible, especially if they had to ride out yesterday’s sandstorm. That doesn’t mean they’re not equipped with automatic alarms, or for that matter, automated weapons. I’ll go in first, make the usual circuit, give them the usual warnings. Then we’ll see.”

“
Minaqonda—
got it.”

The second armed company floater was just visible hovering on
the eastern horizon as Kruger’s craft topped the last low rise and the target came into view. One did not need the security chief’s practiced eye to tell that something was wrong.

The shredded bodies half buried in the sand were proof enough of that.

“Circle,” he directed the pilot. “Distant but within range. Gatlings powered up.” Sobered by the sight of so many motionless human forms being slowly claimed by the desert, none of the floater’s gunners cracked wise. They kept their hands on their triggers, the electrically powered weapons ready to run riot at the touch of a switch.

“I’ve got nothing moving, sir.” The scanner operator’s fingers and tentacle tips efficiently worked her console. “No heat signatures, either. Individual reads are cold.”

“Might be somebody alive inside and shielded.” Kruger was thinking out loud. Given the presence of so many dead on the ground outside the downed craft it seemed unlikely anyone had survived within, but one of the hallmarks of his administration of security at Nerens was that he was always ready for the unlikely.

“Close pass,” he ordered tersely.

The floater pilot performed a second circumnavigation of the silent transport. The scanner’s follow-up report was as void of life as its predecessor. As the security craft gradually orbited in closer and closer to the crash site, Kruger was able to make out details without the aid of supplementary lenses: the hole in the vehicle’s windshield, the open port, and the main doorway gaping wide. From the spray of sprawled corpses that fanned out like palm leaves from the vicinity of the portal he could tell that those inside the downward craft had managed to get out. The question that nagged at him was what, if anything, had managed to get in? He was close enough now to be able to see where weapons had been dropped beside bodies.

What had happened here? Had the intruders fallen to arguing among themselves, with fatal results? His interest was purely personal. From a professional standpoint the intrusion had conveniently resolved itself.

“Find a level spot and set down near the intruder’s front end,” he told his pilot. “Raki, you stay at your gun. The rest of you make sure your sidearms are charged and loaded and get ready to disembark.” He directed his last words to a console pickup. “Sipho, move in close but stay aloft.”

Nothing challenged him or his subordinates as they raced quickly down the ramp that the pilot deployed from the side of the company floater. Outside the armored transport the air was utterly motionless. A common-enough atmospheric condition in the Namib, and one that was especially appropriate given the grisly scene that was spread out before the wary security personnel. Standing in dead air Kruger slowly took stock. It seemed as if the carnage had even intimidated the wind.

Naturals and Melds, men and women alike had been felled by unknown adversaries. The identity of the latter soon became apparent. Spreading out to count the bodies, Kruger and his team came across a number of far smaller corpses scattered among the deceased humans. Broken, smashed, half incinerated, several of the deceased meerkats still carried quivers of poison-tipped spines on their backs or clutched weapons improvised from bone and scavenged, coarsely reworked metal and plastic. As if the presence of their embattled dead was not proof enough, the ground was covered with thousands of tiny footprints.

A shuffling Maranon joined the security chief as Kruger nudged a huddle of dead meerkats with his right foot. There were half a dozen of the small twisted bodies in the pile. They looked as if they had met their end at the same time, cooked with a single shot. A practitioner of Brazilian mechcandomblé, Maranon was visibly
uncomfortable in the presence of so many unexplained undersized fatalities. Dead humans, Natural or Meld and in any number, did not trouble him. Armed meerkats were something outside his experience, and it showed in his voice and expression.

“What the hell, Mr. Kruger, sir? I mean, what the
hell
?”

As a scientific explanation of the lethal biological anomaly that was spread out before them, the subordinate’s observation left much to be desired. Viscerally, however, Kruger found himself in complete accord with the other man’s remark. Raising his gaze he began to scan the surrounding landscape, searching for any sign of movement. Especially small mammalian movement.

“This is unusual,” he commented with characteristic understatement. “Decidedly out of the ordinary. There will have to be a report.” Lifting his wrist, he spoke into the communicator that was strapped to his lower forearm. “Sipho, we’ve got a real anomaly here. Remnants of a massacre the likes of which you won’t believe. Set down and deploy your people in a defensive perimeter around the site. Tell them to—tell them to keep an eye out for meerkats.”

Incredulity was prominent in the other man’s reply. “ ‘Meerkats’—sir?”

“Yebo, meerkats. Someone, somewhere, has been engaged in some extreme magifying. At least we won’t have to deal with the intruders. They’ve already been dealt with.”

“Dealt with, sir?” came the other man’s voice. “By whom, sir?”

Kruger hesitated a moment. “By the natives. And not the ones you’re thinking of. As soon as you set down come on over and you’ll see for yourself.”

Lowering his arm and breaking the connection Kruger resumed hiking away from the downed floater. Several of the dead humans had so many Codon spines sticking out of their bodies that they looked like desert succulents themselves. One still clutched her pistol in a death grip while the rest lay weaponless. Either they had
panicked and abandoned their floater while it was under attack and the rest of the intruders’ guns lay inside, or else someone had carried their weapons away.

Could a meerkat aim and fire a weapon designed to be utilized by a human? Kruger pondered the possibility. Even a small gun would be too big, too heavy, too clumsy. But several agile meerkats working in tandem, now …

Having not enjoyed a single comforting thought since setting down in this haunted place he looked forward to returning to the comfort of his apartment and office back in Nerens.

At least his report would be able to include a full description of the intruders. Though individually they were a flutter of aliases, there was more than enough information in their floater computer to mark them as operating on behalf of the Yeoh Triad out of Guangzhou. What the Triad was looking for in the Sperrgebeit, Kruger had no idea. Maybe someone had given them a line on a diamond deposit and this team had been sent to check it out. That made sense, the security chief told himself. If they had entered the Forbidden Zone only to validate information and then leave, they could reasonably assume they would be able to do so before he and his people had time to respond to their intrusion. The lack of any mining gear on the downed floater lent further credence to such a theory.