Death Drop (68 page)

She pulled out the access box Mac had given to her and tapped the top. The unit lit up, and Dezmara touched the word ‘Interface’ on the screen with her finger. Two metallic prongs ejected from the bottom of the apparatus with a sudden click. Dezmara flinched a little, jerking the small tablet away from her body out of instinct before refocusing and inserting the data prongs into the receptacles on the door. A small light-emitting diode flashed purple and then gray, and she removed the mechanism. The barrier retreated into the wall of the tunnel and then slid to the side. As she stepped inside, Dezmara couldn’t help but notice how exactly the colors of the flashing lights on the portal matched the strange hues of Mac’s eyes, and she wondered if the entire security system was biometrically based.

She moved quickly down the long corridor in front of her. Lights flickered and buzzed above her as they warmed up in welcome of her authorized access to the maintenance tunnel. Dezmara didn’t make an all-out run for it—she didn’t want to draw attention to herself from anyone who happened to be watching on a monitor somewhere—but she walked as fast as she could without looking suspicious. The passage opened up into a plush lobby at its end, complete with regal-looking chairs and a matching couch. The elevator entrance, and the buttons to engage its operation, were richly decorated with elaborate engraving and gilded in tolocnium. The space was obviously designed to impress wealthy guests as the Gamoratta took them on a tour to flaunt their affluence. She pressed the button to go up and the door glided to the side to reveal another revolting display of the Gamoratta’s slave-powered empire: the textured paint covering the inside of the lift glittered with copious amounts of tolocnium flakes. She walked inside and fought the urge to shake her head in disgust as she pressed the button for ‘Up-hub.’

Chapter 43:
The Jeweled Calaboose

H
er elevator ride was smooth and noiseless, and it took less time to cover the massive distance between the hub and the upper part of Trillis than she expected. The doors slid apart as silently as they had shut, and the sounds and colors of a bustling city crashed through the opening like a tidal wave. Gone were the simple walkways and humble building fronts of a scientific research community, and decadence seeped from every pore of the refaced city like a sparkling plague.

Dezmara stepped from the interior of the elevator onto a sidewalk made of smooth, white stone flecked with swirls of gray. Throngs of Trillisians hustled by her, and as they passed, Dezmara could tell who was on a roll and who was down on their luck. The winners were neatly dressed in tailored coats and fine dresses. The men wore crisp-brimmed, Tredarkian-style hats with matching gloves and meticulously pressed shirts. Several reached out with jeweled canes, cockily prodding the ground for show rather than support as they strutted along and talked boisterously with their companions. The ladies’ fashions were more varied: some wore flowing dresses made from Calibani silk; others, tight-fitting outfits designed to flatter each race of woman that strutted along arm-in-arm with her escort. Regardless of the style of the attire, all the women seemed to be accessorized with an abundance of large, shiny baubles, and Dezmara wondered whether her guns and the gleaming edges of her blades would suffice to fit in.

The less fortunate had their unique style as well. Some wore clothes just as fashionable as any high-rollers’; only their less kempt appearance hinted at recently hit tough streaks. As they trudged along, their coat jackets flapped open to reveal untucked shirt ends overlapping pants whose sharp creases had faded under the heat of despair. Still others were much worse off. They dressed in dirty rags and frantically looked over their shoulders every few steps for the Gamoratta, who were sure to appear at any second and drag them off to the mine.

Since no one in the crowd seemed to give her a second look, Dezmara decided it was safe enough to look around. The streets were crafted from gray cobblestones to match the accents in the walkway. The hooves of large, eight-legged creloks clipped and clopped in a staccato rhythm as they trotted quickly over the stony grid, carriages hovering on jets of blue flames in tow. A raised median, lined with an endless row of elaborate fountains gushing purple, luminescent liquid, divided the congested street into opposing directions of traffic. A rumble from across the way announced the approach of a train that flashed past on the median and then disappeared down the boulevard.

The structures in front of her looked like a billion others on any planet before the Durax came to power. They were all shapes and sizes: some blocky, some round, others curving and spiraling in bold, artistic expressions. Many hung from the ceiling like growths made of glass and metal stretching down from the roof of an exotic cave. The underside of the ceiling was one giant screen that projected any number of programmed scenes with amazing accuracy. At the moment, millions of stars winked at the Up-hubbers—a scene of the Kiloma Galaxy that lay light-years away. Dezmara wondered if Down-hub had the same luxury. It had probably been equipped that way originally, but she doubted the Gamoratta cared enough about the dregs to turn it on, and Dezmara wondered how many Down-hub Trillisians would actually care to look out on places and things they’d never see or touch again. Ironically, the Up-hubbers shared the same fate: they would never be allowed to leave. For now, most of them had large credits with the house and winning streaks that could distract them from the cold truth of the matter:
everyone
was a slave in Trillis. They might not swing a hammer or haul asteroids, but even the Up-hubbers were at the mercy of the masters of the fortress city.

Dezmara’s gaze followed the train as it rumbled past, and as her head turned, she was assaulted by bright lights from across the street. Her destination sat beyond the median, across the tracks and just down the block: Tolocnium Palace.

The building was actually three separate, spiraling structures—each one looking like giant hands had gripped their tops and turned them while their girders were still glowing red from the forge. The constructions were arranged in an equilateral triangle with one building closest to the street. The foremost edifice curled and soared all the way to the cap, but its sister buildings were only half as tall. The three were connected by several circular, twisting rings that ran through their bodies as high as the two smaller buildings would allow. True to its namesake, every inch of the Tolocnium Palace was covered in the precious metal, and its shape, along with its gleaming exterior, made it look like a giant crown.

The finned marquee was lined with innumerable rows of sparkling lights that danced and flickered in unison as they arched from the building and called to the passersby. The building face itself was decorated with strategically placed bulbs that cast perfect, curving rays onto the Palace’s tolocnium gilded surface so that it glimmered all the way to its top and outshone anything in the city, even the billions of faithfully reproduced stars that glittered above. Enormous spotlights played their beams across the face of each pinnacle, then into the air and back again like gigantic staffs of light swinging wildly in a silent battle. The reflection was almost blinding.

Dezmara looked down the median and noticed a stringy figure working on one of the signals for the train, and she had an idea. “Your guns’d give you away pronto,” she said in her best Mac impersonation. Dezmara turned into a stream of Trillisians headed in the direction of the Palace and started walking. She huddled as close to the swarm as possible without drawing unnecessary suspicion, and as she shuffled along, she quickly unholstered her autos and slid them into the outside pockets of her flight jacket. She kept her eye on the street, and as she drew parallel with the lanky engineer, she veered from the crowd, looked briefly both ways down the avenue, and stepped from the curb onto the cobblestones.

The street was crowded, and she dodged left and right through the traffic. The creloks, with their forked heads on thick, muscular necks, eyed her nervously and made loud chuffing sounds through flared nostrils as she dashed by. “Hey, watch it!” a driver called out as he cocked his whip back, looking like he was going to lash it at her. Dezmara paused to scowl at him from beneath her hood as her hand flashed up the back of her jacket and touched the handle of her right blade, but she knew better. Dezmara put two fingers to the brow of the kranos and snapped them forward in a gesture of apology; then she dashed across the rest of the street to the median.

The lanky engineer was just a few yards in front of her when she paused, pretending to scan a glowing projection that mapped the location of each casino in Up-hub. The engineer turned from the signal he was working on and dug through an open toolbox at his feet. He found what he wanted before too long and, apparently happy at being called up from the mines, or perhaps the slums of Down-hub, turned back to his work and began whistling a tune.

The rumble of another train shook the platform, and just as Dezmara had hoped, the engineer took a step back from the signal and watched it intently. She walked behind him and knelt down, quickly extracting two long-handled tools and sliding them inside her jacket before standing up and watching the sides of the train cars pass noisily by. “Ha!” the engineer shouted, turning to see if anyone was close at hand to admire his efforts. “Works like a charm!” He motioned to the purple light shining inside the housing in front of him and smiled at Dezmara. She nodded her head in agreement, waved her hand in a polite ‘so long’ gesture, and crossed the tracks and the street beyond as fast as she could.

She merged with the crowd of Up-hubbers on the sidewalk and drifted as close to the buildings as possible, in case the engineer noticed his missing wrench and hammer. Dezmara figured Mac could get the tools back to him, and she planned to leave them in the elevator along with Mac’s access box after she was finished with Fellini; but, for now, she needed them to complete her cover. She pulled the implements from her jacket and slid one each into the now empty holsters on her thighs.

The crowd moved quickly—most of them excited to be out on the town and showing off their luck—and she was soon standing in front of the radiant cage where she assumed both her friends were imprisoned. Dezmara looked down. No shabby red carpet here, just a solid plate of tolocnium stretching from the curb, across the sidewalk, and up to a massive, revolving door. The heavy, wide flanges of the entryway were made of tolocnium as well, and three round windows, encircled with sparkling red gems, ran down their centers. Just like Mac said, two Gamoratta goons stood on either side of the fluttering portal.

They looked like typical thug muscle—all shoulders and arms and very little brains. Both of the men were well dressed, but it didn’t do much to hide the fact that they were hired goons: neither made any effort to conceal the large-bore Turillian automatics they were packing under their jackets. Dezmara placed a hand on the top of each tool sticking out of her holsters and swaggered in behind a group of gamblers headed for the entrance. After a thorough check for access passes, the guards let the crowd in front of her go by. Dezmara lagged behind to show them she knew the rules, and when it was finally her turn, she reached for her pass. Before the tips of her fingers could slip insider her jacket, the Gamoratta thugs went on alert.

“Whoa, there, fella!” the one on the left shouted, “just where in the hell d’you think you’re goin’?” He was big, covered in purple fur, and had one of the smallest heads Dezmara had ever seen on a creature of his size. His tiny black eyes were almost invisible on his face, and she had a hard time telling who was talking to her because his mouth was equally miniscule. His hands, however, spoke loud and clear as one was raised in front of him in a signal to stop where she was and the other firmly grasped the handle of his gun. “Hey, Jomo, get a load of this guy, would ya! Hey, pal, what the hell happened to you, huh? Get your head caught in an auger or somethin’? Hahahaha!”

The tiny-headed thug laughed the bellowing, dopey laugh Dezmara expected from a meat-head, but the other guy—Jomo—actually scared her a little. His entire head swept back to a nasty looking point, and he scrutinized her with hungry red eyes. Perhaps what frightened her most was his mouth. Instead of lips, Jomo had a cluster of long, knuckled appendages that looked like the jointed legs of something that crawled in the deepest, darkest parts of an alien sea. As his body shook—presumably with laughter—they waved back and forth in the air, making a skittering, clicking noise that made Dezmara want to jump out of her skin.

“Durax ate my face,” she replied through the cold, electronic tone of the kranos. She smiled uncontrollably as the hoods instantly stopped chuckling and looked as if someone had just walked over their graves. Even Jomo looked ashamed. “Gnawed the meat down to the bone, sucked out my eyeballs, and ripped out most of my throat.” Jomo didn’t look like he had the musculoskeletal structure that would produce complex facial expression, but the thug on her left looked like he was about to lose his lunch. “Do you wanna see?” Dezmara reached up with both hands and made to remove the kranos.

“Shit no, man, leave it on!” Both men now had their hands up and had taken a few steps back, as if Dezmara were robbing them, and she had to make a serious effort to stifle the laugh building inside her gut.

“Don’t you want to see my pass?” she asked as she lowered her hands from her helmet and reached inside her jacket.

“No big deal. Elevator maintenance, right? Just go on through. Sorry we bothered you, man!” Both thugs backed away from the entrance like Dezmara was the owner himself, and she strode past them without a second look.

The opulent sections of the revolving door swung by with a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, and Dezmara stepped between them and slipped inside. She walked onto the floor and into the foyer, pausing for a moment to get her bearings. The Gamoratta could afford to spare no expense, and the Palace was a testament to the fact. The inside of the vast building had a vaulted ceiling, rich décor and row after row of chance games where Up-hub Trillisians could feed the illusion of freedom that swirled in their eyes like a powerful spell. Directly in front of her was a large fountain similar to the ones outside on the boulevard except this one was made out of tolocnium.