The Rhino Score (6)
May. 28th, 2011 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolPart Six. I think this is near the halfway point.
I had to admit, McMillan's gang had put together a decent plan to break into the Museo Nacionale. Tunnelling up from the sewers, team one would create a hole as thick around as my finger in the floor of the main gallery. A stream of microbearings would be pumped up onto the floor at a high rate of speed. This would be too light to set off the floor pressure detectors. Once the floor was covered with a layer of the bearings, they would electrostatically lock and optically mimic the surface below them. This would make a good load-bearing surface that would also pass visual and tactile inspection.
Team two would insert via glider on the roof of the dome. The gantry to fix the spire I had broken off was in place and would be their landing platform. They would remove the temporary cap, exposing a hole two meters across looking down onto the main gallery. They would rappel down and secure various objects of art to the bearing floor.
Team three would storm an unmanned satellite owned by the Mastazi government. It contained a space elevator they used for military purposes. The team would take over the elevator's functions and drop the cable. The satellite would be overhead for about five minutes. During that time team two would guide the cable down through the hole in the dome and fasten it to the electrostatic floor. The cable would then reel everything up, breaking the severed dome away in the process and hauling it up with floor, artifacts, criminals and all. They had a Black Angel to escape in – the traditional fast, stealthy freighter of smugglers. I coveted it.
We were going to have to screw up all three facets of McMillan's plan. Furthermore, we need to do it in such a way that nobody in the Museo realized they had almost been robbed. Swam1 had said so.
"How come we don't just wait for them to take the stuff and then take it from them?" I had asked.
"Because their plan won't work," Swam1 had told me. "They're as good as dead anyway. We might as well fleece them of their gear and keep them from tipping off the authorities."
Well, all right. I split our group into three pieces. Lopez and three of the Chulkos took the sewers. I used _Wash_Me_ to boost Grabsy into orbit and plant him on the satellite; he didn't need oxygen, and his tough hide would let him survive on the hoist's exterior for a long time. The remaining Chulkos and I stalked the insertion party.
"Lopez, you recording their comm bursts?" I asked.
"Loud and clear," Lopez replied. "Should have enough to spoof a transmission here in a minute."
Swam1's ability to know all the details of McMillan's plan, down to the comm channels the teams would use, was both useful and suspicious-making. How did I know that Swam1 wasn't really a creature of McMillan's? What guarantee did I have that we weren't just playing into McMillan's hands? We had none. But we also didn't have a better idea for what to do.
Team one was at work down in the sewers. Team three had the Black Angel in parking orbit, waiting to swoop in on the satellite. That left team two, who were waiting on the roof of a downtown pyramid-skyscraper. There were eight of them, all humans, wearing night gear. They had their ultralight gliders ready and were waiting for team one to tell them the floor was ready.
Me and my Chulkos had broken into the building through the loading dock and were hiding in an electrical room just below the roof level. The comm crackled.
"Okay, Jackpot," said Lopez. "I've got enough comm chatter to spoof team one's messages."
"All right, let's jam the signal and get these guys."
"The comm is jammed," said Lopez, "and now I'm diverting the river."
Having hacked into the Balboa City municipal grid, Lopez closed a series of sluices and opened others. Suddenly a torrent of water emptied into the sewers. Any panicky comm traffic from team one would have been drowned out in the static. Meanwhile, Lopez's Chulkos had welded manhole covers down for a mile downstream of the Museo. Team one wasn't getting out alive.
Lopez had rigged a sturdy net across the sewer outfall where it spilled into the river. "I've got four… no, make that five bodies," he reported. "That's all of them."
"Have the Chulkos pick 'em clean and get rid of the net," I said. "Then unjam the comm and let's move on to stage two."
A voice came on McMillan's comm signal. It sounded like the team one leader, but I knew it was Lopez spoofing his voice electronically. "Okay, we're through the floor," he whispered. "Starting pumping."
"Team three here," said another voice. "We're moving for skyhook intercept."
"Roger," said Lopez. "Five minutes until the floor is locked in."
"Team two leaves in two minutes," said a guy on the roof.
"That's our cue," I told the Chulkos. They stared at me blankly. I pointed up to the roof, then smacked a fist into an open palm. The Chulkos grunted and nodded to each other.
We climbed stealthily up the stairs to the roof access door. "Lopez," I whispered, "Jam their comm again."
"Yep," said Lopez.
My Chulkos were all armed with makeshift clubs built from junkyard scrap pipe. I had the stunrod. I turned off the lights in the stair, then cracked the door and started tiptoeing across the roof. The Chulkos followed me. They were bulky and not too sharp, but they knew how to move quietly when they needed to. Team two was silhouetted nicely against the illuminated downtown skyline while we had the dark at our backs. We closed in.
"Team one, say again?" I heard one of the guys in black say. The leader, I thought, and zeroed in on him. "Say again, status report please?"
My Chulkos reached the first of McMillan's men. There was nothing subtle to this part of the plan. A series of wet thuds and shouts commenced. Unfortunately the leader was able to react before I could reach him.
"We're made!" he shouted into his comm, then dove for the roof's edge. I leaped forward and caught his rear stabilizer, then braced my legs against the skyscraper roof's parapet wall. The team two leader's glider went over the edge, stalled, and slammed into the side of the building. I let the stabilizer drop and the glider fell away.
The leader was a quick one. He had himself unhooked from the glider before it had fallen far. He did something with his hands – it was too dark to see what – and the window next to him was suddenly yawning wide open. He caught the floor two levels down and pulled himself through the window.
"Shit," I said. My chulkos had the rest of team two well in hand. I ran for the stairs and bounded down them to the level the team leader had entered.
There were a series of office spaces on this level. I guessed at which would be the right one and kicked the door down, then hit the lights. There he was, a guy in a ninja suit, coming out of the executive boardroom. He pulled up short and put up his fists.
I grinned. "Son," I said, "you don't bring fists to a fistfight. Not when you're fighting these fists." I put up my own dukes. I had a good foot of reach on him, and probably fifty kilos of weight.
Not long on the snappy patter, my opponent closed in. It was then that I noticed his fists were blurry; there was a kind of cloud of movement around them. Suspicious, I backpedaled as he advanced. He lunged for me and I ducked back through the office door. His fist intersected the doorframe, and a hole a good foot across bloomed into existence where his hand was. His hands never made contact; they simply disintegrated the material, leaving a pile of fine white dust.
I retreated into the hall. I had heard about something like this before – filament gloves. They had carbon filaments that, when activated, extended six inches and vibrated at a high rate of speed – fast enough to eat through just about anything. They were supposed to be used for mining, but I could see how they could be applied to fisticuffs as well.
Ninja guy jumped out into the hall after me. I reached down, grabbed two handfuls of office carpeting, and yanked up a strip. I might not have vibrating fists, but I'm strong enough to pull the rug out from under a guy. The team leader lost his balance, giving me the chance to run back down the hall.
I pulled a metal drinking fountain out of the wall and threw it at the ninja. By then he had regained his feet and calmly shielded himself with two fists. The hunk of metal broke in half and flew harmlessly around the guy. Retreating, I came across another door. I broke it in, pulled it off its hinges and thrust it at the guy. His fists cut through like it wasn't even there; it cracked in two and fell aside. In desperation I grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall and hurled it at the team leader's head.
His fists intercepted it, but the container exploded. A fine powder burst in his face, blinding him temporarily. That was the edge I needed. I stepped up and kicked his balls up into his midsection. His hands instinctively went to protect the damaged goods and, well, what happened next wasn't pretty.
I got on the comm. "Lopez, it's done," I said.
Lopez unjammed McMillan's channel. "Team two away," he said in the team two leader's voice.
"Grabsy, how's it hangin'?" I asked.
"They're docked," he said. "They haven't noticed me; I'm hiding in the cable drum. There are two guys in suits on the far side of the satellite cracking open the control panel; I think there's at least two more in the Black Angel."
"Okay," I said. "Do you think you'll be able to link the cable spool to their ship?"
"Already done," said the big cactus. "When they start unreeling the skyhook, it'll tear ship and satellite apart. Just another unfortunate navigational error in low orbit."
"I love it when a plan falls apart," I said. I stripped off the team leader's filament gloves and tried them on.
"Pretty," I murmured.
I had to admit, McMillan's gang had put together a decent plan to break into the Museo Nacionale. Tunnelling up from the sewers, team one would create a hole as thick around as my finger in the floor of the main gallery. A stream of microbearings would be pumped up onto the floor at a high rate of speed. This would be too light to set off the floor pressure detectors. Once the floor was covered with a layer of the bearings, they would electrostatically lock and optically mimic the surface below them. This would make a good load-bearing surface that would also pass visual and tactile inspection.
Team two would insert via glider on the roof of the dome. The gantry to fix the spire I had broken off was in place and would be their landing platform. They would remove the temporary cap, exposing a hole two meters across looking down onto the main gallery. They would rappel down and secure various objects of art to the bearing floor.
Team three would storm an unmanned satellite owned by the Mastazi government. It contained a space elevator they used for military purposes. The team would take over the elevator's functions and drop the cable. The satellite would be overhead for about five minutes. During that time team two would guide the cable down through the hole in the dome and fasten it to the electrostatic floor. The cable would then reel everything up, breaking the severed dome away in the process and hauling it up with floor, artifacts, criminals and all. They had a Black Angel to escape in – the traditional fast, stealthy freighter of smugglers. I coveted it.
We were going to have to screw up all three facets of McMillan's plan. Furthermore, we need to do it in such a way that nobody in the Museo realized they had almost been robbed. Swam1 had said so.
"How come we don't just wait for them to take the stuff and then take it from them?" I had asked.
"Because their plan won't work," Swam1 had told me. "They're as good as dead anyway. We might as well fleece them of their gear and keep them from tipping off the authorities."
Well, all right. I split our group into three pieces. Lopez and three of the Chulkos took the sewers. I used _Wash_Me_ to boost Grabsy into orbit and plant him on the satellite; he didn't need oxygen, and his tough hide would let him survive on the hoist's exterior for a long time. The remaining Chulkos and I stalked the insertion party.
"Lopez, you recording their comm bursts?" I asked.
"Loud and clear," Lopez replied. "Should have enough to spoof a transmission here in a minute."
Swam1's ability to know all the details of McMillan's plan, down to the comm channels the teams would use, was both useful and suspicious-making. How did I know that Swam1 wasn't really a creature of McMillan's? What guarantee did I have that we weren't just playing into McMillan's hands? We had none. But we also didn't have a better idea for what to do.
Team one was at work down in the sewers. Team three had the Black Angel in parking orbit, waiting to swoop in on the satellite. That left team two, who were waiting on the roof of a downtown pyramid-skyscraper. There were eight of them, all humans, wearing night gear. They had their ultralight gliders ready and were waiting for team one to tell them the floor was ready.
Me and my Chulkos had broken into the building through the loading dock and were hiding in an electrical room just below the roof level. The comm crackled.
"Okay, Jackpot," said Lopez. "I've got enough comm chatter to spoof team one's messages."
"All right, let's jam the signal and get these guys."
"The comm is jammed," said Lopez, "and now I'm diverting the river."
Having hacked into the Balboa City municipal grid, Lopez closed a series of sluices and opened others. Suddenly a torrent of water emptied into the sewers. Any panicky comm traffic from team one would have been drowned out in the static. Meanwhile, Lopez's Chulkos had welded manhole covers down for a mile downstream of the Museo. Team one wasn't getting out alive.
Lopez had rigged a sturdy net across the sewer outfall where it spilled into the river. "I've got four… no, make that five bodies," he reported. "That's all of them."
"Have the Chulkos pick 'em clean and get rid of the net," I said. "Then unjam the comm and let's move on to stage two."
A voice came on McMillan's comm signal. It sounded like the team one leader, but I knew it was Lopez spoofing his voice electronically. "Okay, we're through the floor," he whispered. "Starting pumping."
"Team three here," said another voice. "We're moving for skyhook intercept."
"Roger," said Lopez. "Five minutes until the floor is locked in."
"Team two leaves in two minutes," said a guy on the roof.
"That's our cue," I told the Chulkos. They stared at me blankly. I pointed up to the roof, then smacked a fist into an open palm. The Chulkos grunted and nodded to each other.
We climbed stealthily up the stairs to the roof access door. "Lopez," I whispered, "Jam their comm again."
"Yep," said Lopez.
My Chulkos were all armed with makeshift clubs built from junkyard scrap pipe. I had the stunrod. I turned off the lights in the stair, then cracked the door and started tiptoeing across the roof. The Chulkos followed me. They were bulky and not too sharp, but they knew how to move quietly when they needed to. Team two was silhouetted nicely against the illuminated downtown skyline while we had the dark at our backs. We closed in.
"Team one, say again?" I heard one of the guys in black say. The leader, I thought, and zeroed in on him. "Say again, status report please?"
My Chulkos reached the first of McMillan's men. There was nothing subtle to this part of the plan. A series of wet thuds and shouts commenced. Unfortunately the leader was able to react before I could reach him.
"We're made!" he shouted into his comm, then dove for the roof's edge. I leaped forward and caught his rear stabilizer, then braced my legs against the skyscraper roof's parapet wall. The team two leader's glider went over the edge, stalled, and slammed into the side of the building. I let the stabilizer drop and the glider fell away.
The leader was a quick one. He had himself unhooked from the glider before it had fallen far. He did something with his hands – it was too dark to see what – and the window next to him was suddenly yawning wide open. He caught the floor two levels down and pulled himself through the window.
"Shit," I said. My chulkos had the rest of team two well in hand. I ran for the stairs and bounded down them to the level the team leader had entered.
There were a series of office spaces on this level. I guessed at which would be the right one and kicked the door down, then hit the lights. There he was, a guy in a ninja suit, coming out of the executive boardroom. He pulled up short and put up his fists.
I grinned. "Son," I said, "you don't bring fists to a fistfight. Not when you're fighting these fists." I put up my own dukes. I had a good foot of reach on him, and probably fifty kilos of weight.
Not long on the snappy patter, my opponent closed in. It was then that I noticed his fists were blurry; there was a kind of cloud of movement around them. Suspicious, I backpedaled as he advanced. He lunged for me and I ducked back through the office door. His fist intersected the doorframe, and a hole a good foot across bloomed into existence where his hand was. His hands never made contact; they simply disintegrated the material, leaving a pile of fine white dust.
I retreated into the hall. I had heard about something like this before – filament gloves. They had carbon filaments that, when activated, extended six inches and vibrated at a high rate of speed – fast enough to eat through just about anything. They were supposed to be used for mining, but I could see how they could be applied to fisticuffs as well.
Ninja guy jumped out into the hall after me. I reached down, grabbed two handfuls of office carpeting, and yanked up a strip. I might not have vibrating fists, but I'm strong enough to pull the rug out from under a guy. The team leader lost his balance, giving me the chance to run back down the hall.
I pulled a metal drinking fountain out of the wall and threw it at the ninja. By then he had regained his feet and calmly shielded himself with two fists. The hunk of metal broke in half and flew harmlessly around the guy. Retreating, I came across another door. I broke it in, pulled it off its hinges and thrust it at the guy. His fists cut through like it wasn't even there; it cracked in two and fell aside. In desperation I grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall and hurled it at the team leader's head.
His fists intercepted it, but the container exploded. A fine powder burst in his face, blinding him temporarily. That was the edge I needed. I stepped up and kicked his balls up into his midsection. His hands instinctively went to protect the damaged goods and, well, what happened next wasn't pretty.
I got on the comm. "Lopez, it's done," I said.
Lopez unjammed McMillan's channel. "Team two away," he said in the team two leader's voice.
"Grabsy, how's it hangin'?" I asked.
"They're docked," he said. "They haven't noticed me; I'm hiding in the cable drum. There are two guys in suits on the far side of the satellite cracking open the control panel; I think there's at least two more in the Black Angel."
"Okay," I said. "Do you think you'll be able to link the cable spool to their ship?"
"Already done," said the big cactus. "When they start unreeling the skyhook, it'll tear ship and satellite apart. Just another unfortunate navigational error in low orbit."
"I love it when a plan falls apart," I said. I stripped off the team leader's filament gloves and tried them on.
"Pretty," I murmured.
