Cherryh, C J - Alliance-Union 08 (130 page)

"I can name you a handful," Catlin said, "who can make sure that power stays down."

"You
two take it."

He came around and sat down carefully in the chair next to her, and took the microphone. Catlin perched on the leather arm of his chair; and for a few moments it was all their peculiar jargon and names she did not know, but Catlin and Florian did.

Meanwhile she watched the dataflow. Search negative. She was only moderately interested. It made thorough sense, what Florian suggested; and Giraud could well have gotten the equipment in years ago. They had had all her childhood to set it up, and make sure it functioned.

Kill the airport defenses first, get the plane on the ground; and then figure something could go wrong with the precip towers: envelope rupture would make things uncomfortable for anyone trying to get to the House; figure that Denys might simply have ordered the buses uphill and parked them.

Search:
she keyed,
airport: bus, ser # ?; graph.

The schematic of Reseune turned up both buses, at the front of the Administrative wing.

She keyed orders to the main boards at the precip towers. They were an hour away from the field.

Then she got up and went, herself, back where her Security staff sat talking together: they had heard the net go down and re-establish itself, each and every one of them who had been listening to the net, and that was all of them, she figured.

"We're doing all right," she said. "Stay seated: listen. Florian's taking the defenses down. Wes, Marco, you stay with me and Dr. Warrick, on the plane: we're going to be busy as hell and someone's got to coordinate whatever they can set for our protection. Dr. Warrick's a friendly, but he doesn't know the Rules: if so happen we have to move, you see he does what you tell him. The advance team is going to have to get into Administrative, and Florian and

Catlin are going to be leaders going in. Tyler, you're First after either one of them."

"Yes, sera," Tyler said, a smallish, wiry man, white-haired and crewcut. Tyler had served as one of Ari senior's staff. Two of the others were retired marines, Wes was a Green Barracks instructor, and the rest ranged from diplomatic security to Marco, who was a systems programmer.

"We'll have a number of other Security on call-up," she said. "Take that advisement from Catlin: she's doing the organization, Florian's doing the special work, Catlin will brief you: we've kept this operation in ready-state for the last two years, not quite like we're improvising, all right? We just didn't know our target. Now we do. And we know right where the keys are. All right?"

"Yes, sera."

She patted Tyler's shoulder, walked back down the narrow aisle past the galley and the staff restrooms; and opened the door of the bedroom. Justin was asleep, completely out.

Burns and bruises, Wes had said. Memory gaps were the serious part; but, as Wes put it, you have one go off next to you, you drop a few things. Nothing unusual.

"Wake up," she said. "Justin. I need you up front."

"They're in," Amy said. "That's the Tower. They're on the ground." Grant, leaning on the back of the couch, breathed again. Amy had confused hell out of Security, changing the whereabouts of everyone on her list for protection, lying with one output while she monitored the whereabouts of every Security unit in the buildings they could access, called Security personnel on the Approved list to Wing One, and secured the doors.

While Sam Whitely down at the motor pool arranged transport for Green Barracks personnel and Maddy Strassen and 'Stasi Ramirez and Tommy Carnath had simply gone missing to unlikely places as lies in the net persuaded any inquirers they had taken refuge in B lab and down in the Ag lab.

Call to Family council,
the advisement flashed out on the net:
Ariane Emory, calling emergency session via House System, to consider the question: nomination of Dr. Yanni Schwartz to replace Denys Nye as Administrator of Reseune, meeting to be held at 1700 or as soon as practical.

Grant stood back and folded his arms.
He
had no vote. He was following the scroll of activity on the monitor, that had accelerated markedly ever since
RESEUNE ONE
had entered approach. That last advisement came as a vast relief to more than himself, he thought: a calculated bit of psych, a tag of grim humor: Emory in full flower.

There were Security orders all over the system of a sudden, outpouring from Base One.

Ari did not look up from the screen; and Justin did not speak, following the flow on an auxiliary Florian had used. Occasionally she gave a voice input or pushed a key; and changes happened. Queries were incoming:
RESEUNE ONE's
crew, forward, kept their posts, keeping the plane ready to move away and, if the airport seemed threatened, to take to the air again.

He had much rather stay on the ground; and he wished to hell he had some knowledge of the codes that might have told him where things stood.

"We're all right," Ari said. "Sam's got the trucks up from Green; they're going up the hill—no challenge yet. He's holding inside Administration, probably inside Security itself."

She made more changes.

She could, she said, open any doors that were not disabled or under an outlaw Base's control.

Makes it easier,
Florian had said, stuffing the pockets of his jacket with various small components out of his own kit—probes and wire, mostly, with some sort of system evident. And Florian had taken a small bag from a locker, and another from a second locker; and handled those very carefully, while Catlin had arranged things with the Security agents aft.

They must be halfway up the hill now, Justin thought.

"Sera,"
the intercom said suddenly, communication from
RESEUNE ONE's
crew.
"We've got a phone relay from Administration. Dr. Nye, asking to speak with you personally, sera."

"Don't divert your attention," Justin muttered.

"Damn right. —Put it over the intercom; we're all intimate here. —Justin, punch that yellow button on your armrest and pass me the mike, will you? This one's engaged."

"Ari,"
Denys' voice said over the intercom.
"I
really think you're being a little excitable."

Ari laughed, never taking her eyes from the screen in front of her. She held out her left hand and Justin laid the mike-wand into it. "Are you hearing me, uncle Denys?"

"I'm hearing you fine, dear. I wish you'd make clear exactly what's going on here, and call off your troops before they do serious damage to the wing."

"You want to unlock those doors, uncle Denys? We can talk about this. I promise you'll be safe. I'll even continue Giraud."

"I
don't know what happened in Novgorod: I'm sure it's more than you've told me. Can we talk about this?"

"I don't mind."

"I'm willing to resign. I want protection for myself and my people. I think that's reasonable."

"Perfectly reasonable, uncle Denys. How do we make that official?"

"You stop your people. You guarantee me custody of Giraud's replicate. I'm perfectly willing to accept retirement. I have the means to make taking this place extremely expensive; but there's no need. I have the feeling you must blame me for the events in Novgorod—"

Ari laughed again, with less humor, Justin thought. "I really don't know, uncle Denys. I don't entirely care. I've rather well overrun the course you set for me; and it's
my
time. The changing of the seasons. Perfectly natural. You can have a wing, you can have your comforts— I know that matters to you, uncle Denys. You can work on your books, — I do know about that. They're wonderful. You have so much valuable yet to do. . . ."

"You're very flattering, young sera. I want Seely."

Ari was silent a moment. "Under some restrictions. I can agree to that."

"You don't touch him!"

"I wouldn't hurt Seely, uncle Denys. We can work something out. I promise you. I won't file charges. Your life will be exactly the same. You don't travel anyway; and you'll have Giraud to occupy you and Seely, won't you? You were a damned good parent, you know; and very kind, really you were. You could have done a lot of things to me Geoffrey did to Ari senior; and you took a chance with the program and didn't. I really have quite a warm feeling for you about that, uncle Denys; and for Seely; and for Giraud. Giraud and I got to be really close at the last; and I really don't think he did it, I think it was a worm in Abban's tapes. I think it was something you put there. Maybe not. I may have an over-active imagination. —They're going to take those doors down, uncle Denys; and practically speaking, —you're running out of time."

"Stop them."

"Are you going to come outside, uncle Denys? With Seely?"

"All right. When you get up here. I want a guarantee of safety."

"You have it in my word, uncle Denys."

"I
want you here to control your people. Then I'll open the doors."

Justin shook his head. Ari looked at him and said: "All right, uncle Denys. I'll be up there." She pointed at the button on Justin's seat. Justin pushed it, breaking contact.

"Ari?"

Ari pushed a button on her chair arm. "We're finished. Break contact."

"Ari," Justin said, "he wants you in range."

Ari watched the screen and said: "That might be, but he's in an awfully bad position." She picked up her own microphone. "We've got contact with Denys. He says hold off, he's just resigned. Confirm; pick it up. —Justin:
you
stay here."

"Dammit, Ari, —"

"
I
wouldn't be going up there, except I hope we can do this without a shot. I'm enough for Security to worry about; they don't need another one. If something goes badly wrong, this plane is going back to Novgorod, and you can tell the Bureau the whole damn mess, then do what you like. But I'd prefer you back in Reseune, running another of my sets. I'll even let you pick the surrogates."

He stared at her.

"I have a lot of unfinished business," Ari said, standing by the seat. "If I don't make it out of this—getting me back is a real priority. Gehenna is only
one
of the problems. And you need me the same as I need you."

She gathered up Marco, and Wes unsealed the door, and sealed it again after her.

It was true, he thought as that door closed. Everything else considered, —it was true.

Then he thought of what she had said:
only
one
of the problems;
and:
the same as I need you. . . .

"I don't like this," Florian said, crouched close to Catlin, where the bus and the hill made a little cover a curve away from the glass main doors. His hands were cold, exposed to the air: he protected the left one under his arm and watched the dataflow on the hand-held monitor in his right.

"It's a case of What's he got," Catlin said, tucked down tight, chest against arms against knees.

"Seely isn't sera's kind of problem," Florian said.

Catlin looked at him, quick and hard. "Sniper or something bigger up there. You want those doors?"

"Grenade will handle that. They're doing final prep in there now, I'm sure of it, now sera's left the airport. This whole thing is a set."

"Go, then," Catlin said. "You time it. There's got to be a trigger in that hall."

Florian took a breath, flexed a stiffened hand and an injured shoulder. "Photocell, likely. Floor and body-height, with an interrupt, electric detonator, best guess—I'm first in on this one."

The shockwave shook the bus; and Ari was already ducking when Marco grabbed her and pulled them both down, but she fought to get a look as the bus made the turn.

Smoke billowed up from the area of the Administration Wing front doors. She could see the other bus parked on the slope. The black-uniformed group there was in sudden motion, running uphill.

Her driver stopped.

Marco pulled her flat and threw himself over her.

As the air shook and clods peppered the windows.

Florian picked himself up, wiped his eyes and staggered to his feet as someone helped him, he was not sure who, but it was from behind and it was friendly if it got him up again.

He saw Catlin ahead of him in the dim hall, saw her arm a grenade and wait, the thing live in her hand—because somebody like Seely could give it back to you.

She threw it, but a black blur came out that door.

Florian snapped his pistol up and fired; and the grenade blew the whole doorway to rum. Catlin had fired too. She took another shot, point-blank, to be sure.

Florian leaned against the wall and caught his breath. The net was saying that the teams from Green Barracks had gotten into Security—up the lift shafts from the tunnel system: easy job, till they got to the traps and the defenses.

The whole hall was filled with bluish smoke. The fire alarms had gone off long since.

Catlin walked back to him, swinging her rifle to cover the hall beyond, while he kept a watch over her blind-side. "One more," she said.

He nodded.

He was not glad of this one. Denys had been kind to them. He remembered the dining room, remembered Denys laughing.

But it was sera's safety in question, and he had only a second's compunction.

Catlin had less.

The front doors were in ruins, the smoke still pouring out when Ari climbed off the bus; and Florian and Catlin both came out under the portico to meet her.

"Denys is dead," Florian told her first off. "I'm sorry, sera. It was a set-up."

"What about Seely?"

"Dead," Catlin said.

Ari walked up onto the porch and looked into the hall. Bodies lay scattered in the dim emergency lights, under a lowering canopy of smoke. She had known that place since childhood. It did not look real to her.

Denys gone. . . .

She looked back at Florian and Catlin. Catlin's expression was clear-eyed and cool. It was Florian who looked worried. Florian, who had a gash running blood down his temple and another on his cheek, not mentioning what he had had from Novgorod.