S. Andrew Swann - Hostile Takeover 02, page 19
Fourteen. The trajectory mapped perfectly on to the computer track. The horizon rose across the van’s windshield. Below, Zanzibar saw the ziggurat walls around the high-priced enclave that purported to protect its suburban residents from Bakunin’s harsher realities.
Twelve. The horizon slipped out of Zanzibar’s view above the windshield. Godwin spread below her like a holo map. Everyone checked their strengthened crash harnesses.
They were going to need them.
Ten. The ground closed with deceptive lethargy. Lights flashed by the comm on the van’s dash. Enclave security had seen the van, and tracked its possible terminal point.
Eight. Individual buildings resolved themselves. Zanzibar could see the antiaircraft batteries around the perimeter of the enclave tracking the van.
Six. The enclave doubled its size, filling half the windshield. Zanzibar could see the Ezra mansion now, and she adjusted the trim of the van so the nose was pointing at it.
Four. Lasers lanced by the van. Ellipsoid rainbows broke across the nose as their military class force field soaked up the AA fire.
Three. The enclave had doubled in size again. The landscape was expanding now with visceral speed.
Two. They’d dropped from under the A A fire and were now over the wall.
Residences shot by below them, too fast to make out any details. The only stationary point in the universe was the Ezra Bleek mansion, ahead and below, growing to meet them. As the van shot toward its target, Zanzibar could see people scrambling around it, like ants.
One.
“Hold on!”
The van skipped across the acreage in front of the mansion like a rock thrown into a pond. As it plowed toward the mansion, it tossed up sod, dirt, and former garden. The impact threw Zanzibar against the crash harness as she tried to control the collision. She maneuvered the van using only its fans.
The van plowed through a marble fountain, spraying water across its nose. Outside, blue-and-green uniformed guards scattered from the van’s path, many unlimbering weapons and firing. The armor and the force field took up all the small arms fire.
The van’s nose plowed into the wall of the mansion. It was a secure building, but it was a residence, not a bunker. Despite the polyceram reinforcement, the van blew the wall aside, coming to rest nestled in kindling that used to be hardwood floor.
As soon as the van stopped moving, Zanzibar hit the quick-release on her crash harness. She left half the team to defend the van against the security forces and repower the contragrav for their exit.
Bleek’s private army was large, but confused. With their pretty uniforms and stylish laser sidearms, they were a ceremonial palace guard who had suddenly found themselves in a real war. The lasers firing through the hole into the ballroom were powerful, but monochrome—no hope against a military-class force field.
Zanzibar led a pair of commandos through the halls of the mansion. They ran over hardwood floors, past expensive tapestries and off-planet artwork. They were halfway to the core of the building, and the elevators, when they met the first heavy resistance.
Laser carbines sliced in at them from a forward intersection. Two of the Bleek palace guard had positioned themselves ahead, where the corridor ended in a conservatory. The guards were backlit by the unnatural white glow from the sunlamps in the room, hidden behind exotic plants that grew from the large marble planter they were using for cover.
Zanzibar and company had to flatten against the walls of the corridor. Unlike the laser sidearms, the carbines were high-power enough to give any personal force field trouble.
Unlike the guards, Zanzibar’s team wasn’t armed with lasers. They each carried a Dittrich 15mm High Mass Electromag. The fifteen millimeter HME rifle fired rounds of steel-jacketed uranium.
It only took one volley from Zanzibar’s people to reduce the marble planter to stone shrapnel and brown dirt. The planter exploded, burying the Bleek defenders under off-planet foliage.
Zanzibar’s team ran through the conservatory and into a larger corridor that headed to the heart of the building.
The central room with the elevators was of a different character than the rest of the house. It could have been a room in Bleek’s corporate headquarters. The walls were unadorned chrome, the floor a mirrored sheet. Diffuse shadowless light came from fixtures hidden in the tops of the walls. The elevator was armored, and the whole shebang was defended by at least ten heavily armed guards.
There was no time to be neat about things. The guards were aware of them coming down the hall at the same time they were aware of the guards. Zanzibar unlimbered her other weapon—a one-shot disposable plasma cannon.
As the guards massed to repel the invaders, Zanzibar hit the ground, waited half a beat so her three companions could do likewise, and fired the cannon into the room.
Plasma weapons had a nasty habit of backwashing in enclosed spaces. The firestorm that erupted into the room blew back an acrid rolling fireball across the ceiling of the corridor.
For a moment everything was red light, whistling air, and heat that taxed her force field to the point of failure.
Then the noises were alarms and klaxons. Cool white foam spilled over her. Zanzibar got up and looked into the elevator room. Blackened metal creaked and popped, foam hissed and crackled as it flowed from the few undamaged fire control systems. The smell of smoke, superheated metal, burnt synthetics, and charred flesh assaulted Zanzibar’s nose as she stepped forward.
Have to remind myself, this is a friendly takeover.
The room was ankle-deep in white foam, which spared her from seeing the corpses of the guards. The elevator door had warped away from the shaft, making their job easier.
Fitzgerald, her security man, got to work with a small powered jack and soon had the elevator door off of its track, leaving them access to the maglev shaft.
The inside of the shaft was streaked with soot and white foam. The fire alarms were still going.
Zanzibar hooked a line to one of the magnet mountings and lowered herself down the shaft. Fitzgerald followed her.
Down the shaft three levels and the smell and leftover heat was no longer as intense.
The elevator was at an upper level somewhere. That made Zanzibar nervous.
The bottom of the shaft was knee-high in fire-suppressant foam. It was hard to move because the stuff was beginning to harden. Fitzgerald got to work on the door as Zanzibar kept him covered with the rifle. As he worked, someone at the guard’s command-and-control must’ve had a brainstorm. There was a sickening screech from above them, and Zanzibar looked up to see the bottom of the elevator hurtling toward them.
Zanzibar pointed her rifle up, as if she could defend herself with it, and prayed.
The shaft shook with the agonized cry of abused metal as the elevator slid past the open door above them. The elevator stopped.
Zanzibar stared up the shaft at the bottom of the maglev elevator. The shaft up there had been warped by the heat of the plasma blast. The elevator was hung up on something.
It couldn’t last.
Zanzibar was still hearing the sounds of bending and tearing metal. It wouldn’t be long before the weight of the elevator tore itself loose and it resumed free-fall.
“Hurry,” Zanzibar said.
As if in response, she heard a hydraulic wheeze, and the level of foam in the bottom of the shaft began dropping. The doors in front of them opened and Zanzibar pushed Fitzgerald through the half-open door as she scrambled out of the shaft.
The two of them stumbled out into an empty corridor. The furnishings, carpet, and artwork all could have been part of the mansion upstairs. However, the overall effect was spoiled by the red flashing lights and the sirens. There were two ways to go. Zanzibar chose the left.
Before they reached the end of the corridor, she heard the tearing screech of metal, and the shattering collision as the elevator slammed into the bottom of the shaft. A half-second later, a small wave of fire-suppressant foam washed by her feet, ruining the expensive carpet.
The corridor they ran down ended in a cul-de-sac. Its main feature was a vast armored window. Zanzibar approached the window cautiously, allowing Fitzgerald to cover her. Behind the window, she could see lab equipment, holo terminals, and a room done up in hospital whites and chromes. The door was a brushed metal air lock. She couldn’t see any motion inside the room beyond.
As she approached, the air lock door slid open. Zanzibar leveled her gun at it, and was greeted by a lab coat being waved like a flag.
She raised her hand so Fitzgerald wouldn’t fire, and allowed a surrendering trio of doctors and lab techs—all young women—out into the hall.
Once Fitzgerald had the prisoners covered, Zanzibar walked into the air lock. The room beyond looked like an intensive care ward. She wove through ranks of equipment until she reached an armored door at the other end of the room. The door had a keypad next to it, flashing red.
“Send one of them back in here to open this,” she called to Fitzgerald.
The blonde doctor walked in. “Are you going to hurt him?” she asked.
“No.”
The doctor looked indecisive.
“If we blow the door, we might hurt him by accident.” The doctor sighed and punched in the combination. The door slid aside.
Zanzibar expected to see something that looked like a hospital ward. Instead, what she saw was a lobby leading into a softly lit library. The library had a four-meter ceiling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that held clothbound volumes that must have been worth megagrams. In the center of the room, reclining on a chair under a toroid-shaped reading lamp, was Ezra Bleek.
He snored loudly.
Zanzibar walked up to Ezra Bleek and thought, the man must sleep like the dead.
Despite his alleged incapacity, Ezra Bleek looked as healthy as a horse. He certainly had a healthy snore.
Sirens were still going off. There was even a flashing red light set high in the wall of the library. The smell of distant smoke and suppressant foam filled the room.
And still, in a bathrobe, book steepled on his lap, Ezra snored.
He looked like a short prophet, with white hair and beard unkempt and going everywhere. The toroid reading lamp hung over his head like a cockeyed halo.
Zanzibar stepped up and shook Ezra by the shoulder.
A sucking snort came from Ezra’s open mouth and he mumbled something that Zanzibar couldn’t make out. She shook him harder.
Without opening his eyes Ezra yelled, “What? You waking me to say it’s bedtime again? Or perhaps you have a meal I’m not hungry for—”
“Mr. Bleek—”
“Go way! You have cameras everywhere—I’ve lost my privacy, the least you can do is leave me when I am sleeping.”
Zanzibar shook harder, “Mr. Bleek!”
“Take the tray away. It smells horrible—” Ezra’s eyes blinked open. “ ‘Mr. Bleek,’ she says?”
He sat up and turned, looking at Zanzibar for the first time. “I’d say something odd is going on here.”
“They broke in—” started the blonde doctor, who had followed Zanzibar in.
“Please!” Ezra snapped at her. “I’m savoring the novelty. And I am not senile. I can see she isn’t staff. I doubt my beloved daughter would hire some schwartze amazon as a day nurse.”
Ezra took the book off his lap and stepped out of the easy chair.
“Mr. Bleek—” Zanzibar started again.
He shook his head, smiling. “Please, before I find I’m being kidnapped or killed, let me savor that little respect.” Ezra held up his hand, “ ‘Mr. Bleek,’ “ he said slowly. “So long it’s been. Always it’s these shikse nurses, Ezra this, Ezra that—or worse, ‘we need to eat’ or
‘time for us to go to bed.’ It saps an old man’s dignity.” He took a deep bream, coughed a few times, and lowered his hand. “Please go on now, my polite intruder.” Zanzibar looked over her shoulder, and saw Fitzgerald covering the entrance to the pseudo-ICU ward. Apparently, with the elevator out of commission, they had some time before the Bleek guards descended to this level. She turned back, took a deep breath, and said, “Mr. Bleek, I represent the Diderot Holding Company. We wish to purchase your interest in Bleek Munitions.”
“Oy. No wonder you have to break in. My children would never approve. They’re afraid that someday they might have to work for a living.”
“Would you consider selling?”
“I’m a businessman, much as my family would deny it. I’ll consider anything. What are you offering?”
“Fifty grams a share.”
“For fifty grams my children would sell.” Ezra shook his head.
The unmistakable sound of a uranium bullet slamming into something unyielding came from down the corridor. Zanzibar looked at Fitzgerald. He was still there, guarding the entrance to Ezra’s quarters.
“Sir—” she said, trying not to let too much urgency slip into her voice.
“I know. Time. Things go so fast on this planet. Yes, for fifty grams you have a sale.” Ezra raised a finger. “If—”
Zanzibar looked from Bleek to the exit. More sounds of gunfire were reaching them over the noise from the fire alarms.
“If?”
Ezra hiked his robe about himself and said, “Why, as long as you deliver me from this gilded dungeon.”
“Come on,” Zanzibar said. She grabbed him by the shoulder and maneuvered him toward the exit. To his credit, he didn’t ask to stop for anything even though he was only clad in robe, briefs, and slippers.
The two of them passed by Fitzgerald, who was covering the remaining medical staff but looking worriedly through the window at the hallway. Zanzibar noted that Ezra gave each woman on the staff a wide smile that seemed to drip with irony.
Once she, Ezra, and her backup cleared the front air lock, she closed it on the medical staff and shot out the controls.
The noise of gunfire was very loud now, and she couldn’t see her way to the elevator shaft because of a hazy smoke that clouded the corridor. They would be walking into a firefight blind. Zanzibar stood there, listening for a while.
It was definitely a single HME, one of her people, backing toward them. As she waited, she could see occasional flashes of energy weapons. The man by the elevator had been firing a delaying action all the way from the surface. He had to be close to the limit on ammo.
All of them were in a cul-de-sac. In a few seconds they’d be pinned to the wall. They did have a contingency plan. She only hoped that Ezra understood—
“Forgive the imposition,” she whispered at Ezra before slipping her arm across his chest under his arms, and lifting him off of the ground.
Zanzibar sucked in a breath. Then she yelled, as loudly as she could, “We have Ezra Bleek! Lay down your weapons and step away from them or your leader dies!” Zanzibar hoped this would work. The guards probably thought they were protecting Ezra, rather than holding him prisoner.
Ezra was helping matters by frantic yells of “Don’t shoot!” She didn’t know if he was yelling at the Bleek guards, or her.
The sounds of shooting ebbed, and she slowly advanced. Soon she caught up with her second comrade, Davidson, who had been dragging an elevator door back toward the cul-de-sac as a hunk of portable cover. Zanzibar passed him and waved him forward with her gun hand.
The squirming Ezra was pressed to her chest while her right hand angled her HME
rifle up toward his head. It wasn’t the best way to wield the weapon, and if she ever fired she’d probably decapitate both of them in addition to breaking her wrist. However, the posture was essential, because suddenly she was facing a forest of blue-and-green uniforms, who had, indeed, dropped their guns and had flattened themselves against the walls.
“Remember,” she yelled at them. “We’re carrying personal fields. Mr. Bleek is not. An energy weapon will probably fry him before I decide to pull the trigger.” They passed the elevator. It was a mess. The descending capsule had blown out a good chunk of wall.
“Okay,” she said, whispering to her own people. “We take the stairs.” They continued down the corridor, past the knot of guards. She walked point, with Ezra as a shield. Her two comrades faced behind, walking with her, back-to-back.
The problem with the stairs was the fact that they were badly located, and gave them a lot more exposure to the palace guard. They passed dozens of them. Fortunately, while their progress was slow, the guards set down their weapons as they passed.
From that point on it was a textbook case of corporate kidnapping—an unusual, but not unheard of, method of conducting business on Bakunin.
They emerged from the stairwell at ground level. They passed more knots of guards, all well away from their weapons. As they closed on the ballroom, the smell of smoke thickened. As they rounded the conservatory, they came across open air. The whole second floor above the ballroom was gone, and what was left of the third was a charred ceiling that was slowly collapsing. Charred debris covered the floor, and Zanzibar had to step carefully over wreckage and bodies to make it to where the ballroom had been.
The van was there, but the ballroom itself was gone, mostly a blasted crater that burned and smoldered in dozens of places. The only remnants were a few sticks of hardwood flooring that had survived by being within the van’s field radius. The two defenders had done well with the arsenal that had been left.
As Zanzibar and company closed on the van, the doors opened.
She pushed Ezra inside, and quickly followed and sat at the controls. The contragrav was powered and waiting for her. Fitzgerald and Davidson piled in last, and she was goosing the contragrav even before the door slid shut.
“Hang on,” she said as the contragrav shuddered slowly into the air.
As the van started to slide out of the compound, the Bleek guards still didn’t fire upon it. However, in an apparent failure of communication, the antiaircraft batteries at the walls of the enclave did, as soon as the van topped out.
Zanzibar’s exit was more grueling than her arrival because of the slow acceleration of the beast they were riding. She had to duck and weave the van through laser fire for nearly half a minute before they cleared the walls of the enclave. Worse, the enclave defenders were also firing high-caliber projectiles at them. The van shook several times with impacts against the armor.
