“Wait a minute. You can tell if these guys are on their phones or head-thingamajigs or whatever. How many of them are down in there with their whatzis on?” Wheeler pointed downward into the building.
“Four hundred thirty-seven,” the machine answered.
“Any of those the same as the ones that showed up to that meeting?”
“No.”
“How many are in the meeting, and where’s that?”
A ghost-transparent hologram of the building came into being in front of the two men. Built with antigravity technology, it was the typical Indowy squared-off soda straw. Troops from early in the Posleen war had compared some Indowy cities to an order of french fries, only organized. Notably, the comparison had come from troops who had spent the prior three months on a near-exclusive diet of MREs.
This particular french fry had a red dot in one corner, almost a third of the way down. The dot blinked wickedly as the AID spoke, “Two hundred nineteen targets are in room fifty-seven point twenty-five point twenty-five.”
“Uh, yeah. So can you show dots for the rest of them?”
Flares of red coalesced into fine mists of dots grouped together in various locations throughout the building.
“Which one has the most lumped together?” Karnstadt asked.
“Waitaminute,” Wheeler broke in while the AID obediently started one group blinking. “If we whack the guys in the meeting room, by the time we get to another group, all the guys in the building will have scattered. You can’t keep this shit quiet — no, I mean the screaming you can, but these little fuckers will be able to communicate. If we go to that lump first, then the guys in the meeting will have scattered, along with everybody else. This ain’t gonna work.”
“Our projections are that one human is sufficiently violent to operate alone,” the AID said.
“No, huh-uh,” Karnstadt shook his head. “I don’t care if these guys are pacifists, if we don’t have two guys closing in on them from each side, at least, they’re gonna run. You need a minimum of two teams, and even then you’re only going to get the first two lumps of the critters.”
“That evaluation is not consistent with our best projections,” the AID said.
“Your projections are shit,” Wheeler pronounced. “Even if you’re using combat experience, all you got is Posleen.”
“Negative. Our systems contain substantial data and analysis of human on human violence,” the machine said distastefully.
“Indowy aren’t human,” Karnstadt said.
“We have far more experience of the Indowy than you.” The AID’s tone was patronizing as hell. “You may back out of the agreement and forfeit payment if you choose. A fee for the shuttle service, and early contract termination, will be charged. Are you choosing to abandon your agreement?”
“Hey, we warned you. If you want to ignore us and decide you know best, that’s fine, and we’ll do it, but we don’t take the blame and lose our pay if you’re wrong. Right?” Karnstadt glared at the little black box balefully.
“Agreed,” the AID conceded grudgingly.
“Okay, it’s your dime. Which lump of these guys, altogether, do you want dead worst?”
“We… find the members of this group the most adverse to our interests.” The AID choked it out, as if it had inherited the inhibitions of its creators, making the big clump in the work bay flash a bright, blinky red.
“Got it. When we get there, you just highlight these guys in order of the ones you want, um, gone the most. Works for you?” Wheeler asked the box. He found it easier to talk to it if he treated it like a field radio with someone on the other end.
The AID’s long pause did not appear unusual to either man, who had never heard the term “processing speed.” They therefore didn’t know to infer distance communication with speed of light lag. The machine, of course, didn’t enlighten them.
“First priority is painted red, second is yellow, third is green,” it said.
“You’re the boss,” Wheeler spoke for both of them, talking to the imaginary man behind the box.
The door from the roof down was, of course, unlocked. It didn’t even have a lock — what need in a species with no theft?
Neither man had ever been in an Indowy building before. Not being Indowy-raised with their height deliberately stunted, they had to walk crouched to avoid banging their heads on the low ceilings. Karnstadt especially had to work to squash his two-meter frame under a ceiling not much over a meter and a half. They wouldn’t have been able to move through the crowded halls at all if the Indowy hadn’t seen two armed, vicious omnivores and sought any door to make themselves scarce. That both men were grinning only made them more frightening to the denizens. This particular grin, combined with stony eyes lit with the barest hint of an eager twinkle, would have frightened humans, too.
“Hey, look at us, we’re Moses,” Wheeler joked, gesturing at the parting wave of Indowy opening before them as they went.
“Mow what?” Karnstadt echoed.
“Twit.”
A brief flicker of hurt crossed the blond man’s handsome face before his attention shifted back to the job.
Led to a tube by the AID’s holographic show-me light, the men bounced to the access level for the first work bay. As rarely as Prall was used for construction of large items, contracts still could change over the centuries. The killers stooped through the door and into the bay the AID indicated.
Whatever else Indowy were, they weren’t stupid. Unfortunately for them, they also weren’t very fast runners. Wheeler felt like he was in a giant game of whack-a-mole, one of the odd, retro machines in the arcade back in town. He and Karnstadt were really getting their cardio in, chasing the little buggers with glowing red dots hovering over their heads. Yeah, guns were nice ranged weapons, but there were all these tanks of stuff in the way and ricochets were a bitch. Besides, they didn’t know exactly what would happen if whatever was in those tanks spilled out of bullet holes. It was proving safer and more efficient to just chase the buggers down with a machete. It only took one whack to drop most of them, like they went into shock immediately on being sliced.
The Galplas floor must have sloped ever so slightly in places, because Wheeler noticed that the blue ichor, when he hit something spurty, tended to trickle in a specific direction rather than pool. He noticed this absently, without stopping the grisly work. The object of the game was to kill as many of these buggers in as little time as possible, so they could satisfy the damn black box and get on to the next job. He chuckled slightly, despite his jumpsuit getting uncomfortable from the soaking it was taking. It was the first time he’d ever felt blue over killing something.
It really wasn’t all that much blood, considering. The little buggers were so small, not at all like killing Posleen. Besides, Posleen fought back. Red, yellow, orange. You usually ended up soaked to the armpits between one thing and another if you ran into a batch of them. Unfortunately, there were always too few humans to sweep through fast enough to keep isolated ferals from joining together into packs, occasionally even a damn God King. So this blue shit was new, at least. But ye gods, the smell! It was like hot copper mixed with sour milk. Oh, well. Nobody’s blood and guts smelled very good, when you got right down to it. Better them than him. Lot less risk than killing Posleen, too.
Of course some of them got away. The AID was surprised, even if Wheeler and Karnstadt were not.
“They ran away,” the machine stated unnecessarily.
“No duh, box dude,” Karnstadt answered it, breathing hard.
“This was quite unexpected.” The AID sounded perplexed.
“Uh, yeah. That would be unexpected by you,” Wheeler told it.