The static in Cormac's aug stuttered, burping up just a time and one word. The time was twenty minutes and the word was "chainglass." Obviously, out there, an AI or agents of ECS had some idea of what was going on in here, but what were they trying to tell him? Twenty minutes was perhaps how long it would take them to get to him—too long, he suspected. But «chainglass»? He glanced across at the autogun. It was one of the very first designs of such a weapon, but the design had not changed very much since. Rather than solid projectiles he could see that this one fired pulses of ionized aluminium, which could cut through just about anything, given time. However, he abruptly realised he was wrong about the speed of this gun, for it would take at least a few seconds for those same pulses to cause a collapse of the incredibly long molecules of chainglass, and the weapon was sitting in a chainglass case. He realised then that the calculations of ECS went deeper than Carl supposed. The AIs knew that Cormac's presence here would draw Carl out because Carl was arrogant, and those who were arrogant tended to be overconfident, and make mistakes, like this one.
Cormac threw himself towards the drop-shaft, sudden pulse-fire lighting up the display case and a thunderous crashing behind him. Something slammed into his right shoulder blade as he rolled over the lip and dropped into the deactivated shaft, and he smelt burning flesh as he fell. Not again, he thought, visions of autodocs hovering over him. But he would be lucky to survive long enough to end up in a medbay, rather than a morgue.
The drop was only ten feet, which was more than enough, especially when Cormac fell back slamming his shoulder against the drop-shaft wall. He swore then thrust himself through into darkness—the power obviously completely out in the "esoteric weapons" section.
"I am through to you now," said a familiar voice in his head.
Forcing himself to subvocalize, Cormac replied, "Sadist, so it was you…" He moved through the darkness, bumping against display cases, just trying to get as far from the mouth of the drop-shaft as he could, utterly aware that a mosquito autogun's vision did not depend on light.
"What was me?" the attack ship AI enquired.
"Sent me the clue about chainglass."
"Oh, no, that was the Cavander AI. It will be able to get an ECS team to you in eighteen minutes now. It doesn't want to send anyone in until all possible exits are assessed and covered. Carl must have a way out that he thinks is secure so it needs time to find that."
Great, so Cormac's function was to keep Carl here for that long. That those eighteen minutes might cost Cormac his life was probably factored into the calculation, but at an order of magnitude lower than the importance of capturing someone who had CTDs to sell. Cormac resented that, but even so knew it to be absolutely right. The lights came on.
"I reckon I have about fifteen minutes before they're on their way in," said Carl, as he stepped from the shaft, the autogun squatting at his feet like some faithful chrome dog. Fortunately there were display cases intervening, though the autogun was not firing. Perhaps Carl did not want to damage some of the stuff in here. Cormac's gaze strayed down to a nearby plaque saying "Sneak Knife." The device inside, upon a glass pedestal, was just an opalized blade without a handle, though closer inspection through its translucence revealed some intricate technology inside.
"Can you help me?" Cormac asked Sadist.
"I would like to, but I am not authorised to do so."
"What? Why?"
"There is one thing I could do, had you been a member of ECS. However, you are a civilian, and in the weighing of values, the loss of a certain item for research purposes outweighs your usefulness."
Cormac wondered what that item might be and what calculations were being made. On what basis did the AIs that ruled make their calculations: on the loss of human life, potential suffering, danger to themselves, the Polity, or something beyond the exigencies of beings of flesh?
"I hereby rejoin ECS," said Cormac.
Carl sent the autogun off like a sheep dog, around the display cases to his right, while he walked round to the left. Complicated code arrived in Cormac's aug, weird code, something he had never seen before. Some elements of it seemed quite archaic, while others strayed into the nonsensical. He could load it, but he was damned if he knew what it would do to his aug or even his mind.
"The author of that is one Algin Tenkian," Sadist informed him. "The device coming under your control will impress on you, hence its loss to the AIs who have often studied it. It will be yours henceforth."
Pulse-gun fire slammed into the opposite side of the "Sneak Knife" display case, and Cormac threw himself backwards, immediately loading the supplied code. The data expanded in his aug like some sort of computer virus, subsuming memory space, deleting information and rewriting the aug's base programming. It felt like the device was burning into the side of his head and that somehow the synaptic connections actually inside his head were worming deeper. He hit the ground, his shoulder in agony, scrambled and threw himself behind another display case and something, something in this room connected. Standing, he felt a presence, just like he had felt with Sadist, but it spoke no words and he sensed at once that it was incapable of doing so. It wanted something, at a computer code level and almost at an instinctive level. When he peered through the display case at the autogun beyond it, that other presence seemed to be sitting at his shoulder, and he felt a species of fierce joy thrum through his connection with it.
The thing in this room had found what it wanted: a target.
Carl now stepped into view, his gun pointed casually at Cormac's head. The autogun was also moving into position and in a matter of seconds he would be in its range of fire too. Carl grinned, enjoying the moment. Doubtless he would have some last words for Cormac, some last sneer. Training with the Sparkind, Cormac had learned one thing that stayed with him always: never grandstand, never hesitate, if you have an opportunity to kill an enemy do it at once, for that opportunity might pass.
A high whine penetrated, and Carl looked up, puzzled, the words yet to leave his mouth. The whine turned to a shriek and a nearby display case exploded into white powder, its chain molecules disintegrating. A glittering wheel skimmed from the falling cloud, straight towards the autogun. It hit with a sound like a high-speed grinding wheel going through a tin can, and the autogun's body clattered to the floor, separated from its legs.
"What the—?" Carl began, as Cormac again turned to him.
Target.
The glittering wheel turned at right angles and shot towards Carl. It came up from the floor, across him and beyond. He stood there, his expression still puzzled, then a red line appeared at a slant across his face from chin to temple. He staggered, and the upper part of his head above that line simply fell away, then he slumped to the floor, blood pumping into a spreading pool from the exposed face of his brain.