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BONCHANCE
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After shutting the window as Clea made her exit, I sat there for a moment, conflicted. She had been assertive and made her feelings known, along with the fact that she had known what my feelings were. I was not completely naïve in the ways of the world; when I was still in the Academy, I was promised to marry, but that had collapsed when my family was ruined. After that, I had had dalliances, some free, some that I had purchased…I was no ascetic, after all, but I had not believed that there would be anyone actually interested in someone like me with no real future.
Clea knew who and what I was, and it appeared that she simply didn’t care, and it sounded as if she had come up from just as low a position of status as I had descended to.
Still, she felt completely on a different strata than I, and her clear desire confused me.
Shaking my head to clear it, I grabbed my small kit of tools and returned to the living area, where I obtained the assistance of Simon and David to move the table directly under the ceiling fixture as silently as they could. Then they lifted me up atop it to minimize any scrabbling sounds and began to speak about how attractive some of the women they had seen on the street were and how they compared poorly to the Countess, and then were wondering whether the Countess or Lord Bonchance would let them go out and get some beer?
As they were speaking, I was quietly unscrewing the clamp that held the microphone cable to the power cable to the fixture. Once that was removed, I cut a small slit in the insulation under where the clamp had rested and fished some of the strands through with the tip of my smallest screwdriver before pushing them back through a slit in the other section of wire, shorting them out. Then after moving the cable so the slits were against the ceiling, I carefully replaced the clamp to conceal my work.
Climbing down, I helped move the table back.
“Is it done?” Simon asked softly.
“It is,” I said in a more normal tone. “Michael, can you see her?” I asked as I put on the data glasses.
“She’s right here, milord.”
There was Clea walking through the cold night in Rice as a drone, controlled by Michael back at the bunker, hovered overhead.
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CLEA
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Walking through the cold night air, I was glad I had a wrap. The first location was a machine tool shop that was headquartered in Harris, according to Clark’s annotations. The type of business made it unlikely, but I felt as though I should check it first.
There was a watchman, not unusual, so I made my way to the side of the building and, after checking for any sort of alarm with one of Mara’s devices, a smaller and less specific version of the one that Chance had used to detect the microphone, I used a piece of wire to shim the switch, before slipping the latch with a probe.
The window rose easily, and I was inside, closing it behind me. The first floor was all machinery and crates. Nothing of any particular interest unless you wanted to buy some machinery or were a thief. There was a small office with a kettle of chicory brewing and a lamp on a desk next to a broadsheet. Obviously, the watchman’s space when he decided to come in from outside. I quickly headed for the stairs before he reentered.
There were other offices and more rooms full of crates up here. I spent some time opening locked cabinets and searching for any secret compartments or panels before determining that this building was as it appeared to be.
Making my way past the now snoring watchman who had fallen asleep reading, I exited as I had entered and was on my way to the second location.
This one was farm implements, also not my choice of a good clandestine disguise for such an agency. It would actually require the staff to be knowledgeable and sell things. Any dead weight would be quickly noticed by the customers. Still, it met the other criteria of being based in Harris and exceptionally eager to trade. This one was not nearly as secure, with no alarm and an already sleeping watchman.
Rummaging through the records there revealed nothing, and I was off to the last location.
I had thought this would be the one when I had first started the list, but I had left it for last because of its difficulty; it was a bank that had been offering to set up a business in Edgertown.
“Michael, how many guards can you see?”
“Searching…Four. All on the first floor.”
Moving to the alley side of the building, I climbed the drainpipe and swung over to a window. Using the small electric saw and its abrasive wheel, I chopped through the iron strap that secured the shutters in less than two seconds with a loud screech. The lock now swinging freely on the inside. Then, I climbed quickly up to the roof and lay flat.
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“Is there anyone investigating?”
“Yes…someone just exited the building and entered the alley…They’re looking up with a lamp…” I could see the glow, “Now they’re slowly walking around to the northside…they’re making a full circuit…”
I continued to wait.
“And they’re back inside.”
“Thank you.” Returning to my drain pipe, I went over the side and pulled the shutter open. The window did have an alarm, but that was easy enough to bypass, and with some work, I managed to get the draw bolt back. This window had not been opened in a while, so it took some judicious use of my little pry bar to break it free and open it far enough so I could squeeze inside. Shutting it so the cold air flowing in wouldn’t alert those below, I pulled out the glasses and small lamp that Mara had given me. The room lit up quite brightly as long as I viewed through the glasses, but otherwise, it was pitch dark.
This was a file room, and a quick search showed nothing but customer records. Exiting, I was now on a mezzanine looking down onto the main bank floor below. I was above the lamps, but still, I crouched and began checking all the doors on this level.
“Countess,” Michael’s voice came over my ear.
“Yes?”
“I am now seeing six people inside the building, including you. The Eight appeared downstairs to your north, and he seemed to appear from nowhere.”
Mara’s voice cut in, “Thick stone can block thermal. Can you see anything from your position?”
Peeking over the balustrade in the indicated direction, I saw the bank vault with a section of wall swung out beside it. The new man was leaning and chatting with one of the others before he lit up a cigar.
“There’s a secret room built beside the vault…” I whispered.
“It would be nice to know what’s inside,” Mara said in response.
“I agree. I think I can do this without revealing myself, but they will know somebody got in.”
“Can you do it without support, or should I contact Bonchance.?”
“I can do this,” with that, I moved as quietly as I could to the stairway down from this balcony and watched and waited. Eventually, someone decided to come up the stairs, and from my position behind a chair, I was able to grab and remove him with a strike to the back of the head from my prybar. Dragging his body back to the file room, I returned and watched the flow of the guards below. Seeing my chance, I stepped over the side and drove one face-first into the floor with a quick thud, dragging him behind a counter before the others could see what made the noise. One did come over to check, and I dragged him down as I stabbed him in the throat.
With only one left, visible and now looking for his fellows, I circled around and had him down before he knew I was there.
“Impressive,” Mara commented.
“Thanks.”
Heading to the hidden door, I decided to try the easy way. Standing to one side, I knocked.
“Yeah?”
I knocked again, louder this time.
“What is it?” the man inside said as he began to open the door.
Grabbing the edge, I yanked it wide open, causing him to spill face-first onto the floor.
Wrapping his neckerchief around his eyes, I put my knee in the small of his back and, with his belt, secured him as he cursed.
“You have no idea how much pain you’re in for! The Emperor himself will come down on you like God’s own hammer!”
Pitching my voice down and rasping it, I said, “Why would he? This is just a bank.”
Dragging him to his feet, I shoved him, still blindfolded, into the secret room. There were headphones and pads of paper with notes jotted down, along with a telegraph set and a series of cabinets filled with files. After tying him to a chair and gagging him, I got to work rummaging. There was a series of files on the ‘Duchy of Ceedo’, so I took them and then started taking all the others as well and piling them in the center of the bank’s stone floor before making sure the cover of the Duchey’s folder was atop and to one side. All the notepads were tossed on as well, and I found the matches that the cigar smoker had to have. After planting the small listening device that Mara had supplied me with on top of a lighting fixture, I lit the Duchy’s folder and let it burn half down so the title was still legible. Then I dropped it so it was clear of the next blaze when I set the stack afire before rushing up the stairs and exiting the same way I had entered. From there, it was simplicity itself to return to the hotel, and soon I was back in the room; Chance and Simon, with weapons prepared, waiting tensely.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine…You were worried?”
“Yes,” he said before he kissed me.
“I should make you worried more often. I have the reports on what they know about Ceedo and have muddied the waters on whether anything was taken or everything was destroyed.”
“So, a success?” Simon asked.
“A success,” I agreed.
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HARI-9
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Cleaning the body of all its organics had been annoying and slow. Hot water and a knife followed by burying it underground for a month so that the worms could get at it, and then more hot water had finally removed the last of the tissue from the corpse of Lord Malcolm.
HARI-9 had had to keep this process mostly secret, as the reactions the other residents would have had would probably not have been beneficial, and had additionally performed the largest amount of the work with the unemotional ‘Predator’ overlay in place as the ‘Mara’ overlay was having much the same reactions if at a lower intensity.
Once the cleaning was done, though, she could get to work and start examining the revealed cybernetics.
At first glance, the designs looked familiar to those in the bunker’s database, but there were some small changes in construction…a level of reduced quality and almost unfinishedness that was surprising. Even more surprising was that the components had no identifying marks on them, even ones that were not purpose-built, such as the actuators. There were no maker’s stamps or indications anywhere, and looking at the surface of some of the myriad integrated circuits revealed that any hot stamps had been removed.
The ICA unit with slow charger was also a different design than what she had; it was actually an earlier design, produced earlier than the Final War, according to the documentation she found in the database, less efficient and larger but simpler to construct. She continued to examine and realized that the ICA housing had been manufactured from alloys only produced in Zero-G.
She began going through the remainder of the cybernetics and checking the composition of the various materials. There were more and more examples of orbital manufacture as she probed deeper into the mass of wires and machinery.
There was no question that this was Hi-Side manufacture, but how and why had it ended up inside a raider? Were the Hi-Siders the gods he had spoken of? And why were less modern components being used?
She returned to the still sealed safe that she had no good method of opening without risking the destruction of the content and the map that she had removed from Malcolm’s wall. The map marked, ‘Federal Workshops, Government in Exile’.
Switching off the lights and securing System Maintenance, she returned to the Main Level and the command station at the back of the large room. Logging in, she contacted the lone satellite and commanded it to do a slow thermographic sweep of its full search area. If there was anyone using Old World technology, she needed to find it.