After what seemed an eternity, but was actually no more than three or four seconds, the Moc lay in a puddle of yellow fluid, still twitching, its limbs lopped off, its thorax chopped into several pieces.
Ruiz got painfully to his feet. His shoulder ached fiercely; soon he might have difficulty in moving it. He wiggled his arm experimentally; it felt like someone had driven a nail between his shoulder blade and his arm. He directed his in-armor medunit to apply a ject of local anesthetic and an anti-inflammatory to the joint. After the tiny sting, the shoulder began immediately to feel better.
Albany was already at the door, peering down the dark corridor. “No reaction yet,” he said.
Huxley stood at the edge of the platform, apparently unhurt, peering at his detectors. “Nothing here either,” he said.
Ruiz looked at the tram, where the false Yubere still lay, belly down, propped on his elbows, watching the scene with no great interest. He seemed uninjured, and Ruiz sighed with relief.
Unfortunately, Durban the beaster had either stumbled attempting to leave the tram, or had fallen backward from the platform in trying to avoid the sweep of the Moc’s graser. He lay on the tanglefoot mat, staring up, eyes blank, jerking as the wires extended their barbs into his torso.
Albany looked at Ruiz. “What now?”
Ruiz stepped over Durban, onto the tram. The beaster looked at him, and it was plain that he was a dying wolverine, cranked all the way down into his hindbrain, what small humanity he once possessed lost forever.
Durban started to lift the splinter gun he still held, but Ruiz kicked it away. Durban snarled and writhed against the grip of the tanglefoot, but he couldn’t move his body, and the attempt caused the tanglefoot to fire more wire into his skull. He shuddered and screamed, but only for a second, until Ruiz bent down and triggered a merciful burst into the center of his forehead.
Ruiz helped the puppet up. “Let’s go,” he said, unsealing the leash. “Mind the tanglefoot.”
The puppet jumped nimbly to the platform.
“Where are we?” Ruiz asked.
The puppet shrugged. “I think I’m at the top of my pipeline; don’t you think so?”
“So it seems. Tell me, why do you have so few people here? Two Dirm guards, a Moc? That doesn’t seem much to guard such a valuable secret.”
”Secret is the operative term here. The fewer that know a valuable secret, the better — and better yet if they’re aliens who have no way of understanding the secret’s value.”
Ruiz considered the false Yubere. Was there more guile in the puppet’s voice, now that they were approaching their goal? That made sense, since the instant the false Yubere took control of the real Yubere’s operation, Ruiz would become a liability. Presumably Publius had issued dire orders to his puppet regarding that moment.
He guided the puppet across the platform and gave the leash to Albany. “Sit on him for a minute,” he said.
Albany nodded and wrapped the leash around his fist, though his attention remained on the corridor leading away from the platform.
Ruiz went to Huxley, who was wandering about, his detectors extended. “Nothing,” Huxley said in wondering tones. “I can’t find any sort of surveillance. It’s miraculous.” Indeed, Huxley’s face glowed with a sort of superstitious awe.
“Don’t get carried away,” said Ruiz. “Remember the Clearlight security network; we know Yubere has it installed throughout the stronghold.”
“Then why haven’t we come across it yet?”
It was a good question, and Ruiz resolved to consider it. But first he lowered his voice and said to Huxley, “Without being obvious, check the puppet for built-in weapons or comm devices.”
“You don’t trust our employer?” asked Huxley.
“That’s a foolish question,” said Ruiz wearily. “Do you trust me?”
“Well… yes, in fact.” Huxley seemed taken aback by his question. “Albany speaks well of you — and also I’m usually perceptive about such things. We don’t expect you to die for us, or anything so melodramatic, but I think you’re probably as honorable as anyone in this business can afford to be.”
Ruiz sighed.
A minute later Huxley wandered back. “He’s got a one-shot pinbeam in his right index finger and a small bomb in his belly.”
“‘Small’?”
Huxley shrugged. “Relatively small… but I wouldn’t want to be within a hundred meters if it pops.”
Ruiz considered. He stepped back aboard the tram, and slipped off his packframe. He strapped it to one of the main cross-girders, and tapped at the faceplate of a tamperproof timer. Then he stood and divested himself of the heaviest of his weapons — the sniper gas gun, a midrange graser and its powerpack.
He retained only his knives, his splinter gun, and a rack of light concussion grenades.
Albany raised his eyebrows, giving Ruiz a questioning look.
“Got to be quick,” Ruiz explained. “We’ve got a slippery devil here.”
They trotted along the corridor, Albany fifty paces in the lead, Huxley with the puppet’s leash sealed to a harness ring on his armor, Ruiz trailing a hundred paces behind.
Ruiz attempted to keep his attention focused on the moment, on the dimly illuminated metal that formed the walls and floor of the corridor, but after a while, as nothing dire occurred and Huxley detected no evidence of surveillance, his thoughts wandered. It seemed to him that he had been spending a great deal of his life lately walking down empty corridors, bound for events over which he had insufficient control.
He became self-indulgent, which led to philosophical musings of the least useful sort. He began to see himself and his people as maggots wandering through the mineralized veins of some dead steel colossus, frantically searching for some remaining bit of carrion to feed on.
Eventually he was forced to laugh out loud at these pretentious, egocentric fantasies. Huxley glanced back, as if wondering what Ruiz could possibly find amusing under these circumstances. Ruiz smiled at him, which did nothing to allay the cyborg’s puzzlement.
“How does it look, Huxley?” asked Ruiz, speaking softly into his helmet mike.
“Still no sign of the Clearlight system. You know, I’ve developed a theory. Would you care to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Well… the target is running a secret operation here — so secret that he needs to keep it from his topside security forces — the SeedCorp shock troops you mentioned. Or, if they’re Genched, from his techs and service personnel. And of course, even Genched troops can’t be any smarter than they were before their processing; they’re as liable to say stupidly revealing things as any real person. Anyway, he fears attack only from above, it looks like, and so maybe we’ve got a clean conduit right into the heart of his levels.”
“I hope you’re right,” Ruiz said without much conviction.
They trudged on, and shortly Ruiz’s attention wavered again. He found himself reviewing pleasant memories of Nisa — her face in the sunlight, her face in the soft colored lights of the barge. When he realized what he was doing, he was frightened. Something deadly might come his way at any moment, and if it caught him mooning over the woman, he would never see her again.
He shook himself, and tried to firmly grasp his mortality and the probability of imminent destruction.
“Stop,” whispered Albany. “Come, Ruiz.”
Ruiz ran swiftly forward.
Albany knelt at the foot of a ramp that bridged a discontinuity in the tunnel. Apparently the stack had once fractured, displacing the corridors so that one floor was a meter higher than the other.
A high-ceilinged nexus opened on the far side of the break, and bright lights glared down the corridor.