Counting Heads

2.28

They moved quickly through the front rooms, Fred pausing only to glance through the laser holes in the walls, which all seemed to angle back to the main parlor. A few hundred scouts remained strung out on the ceilings to provide comlink. Forensics had reported no bloodstains, and except for the zoo flakes, this had been a strictly machine-on-machine skirmish thus far.

In the parlor, the procedure cart scanned free of booby traps, but it was locked. Fred swiped its panel and said, “Libby, pass this to Nameless One.”

Behind him, Costa said, “Nice.” She was taking in the room decor, which was not only aff but elegant, and the space, itself—grand. But it seemed cluttered to Fred with dozens of armchairs, lamps, and little tables. A clubhouse?

There was a large framed painting covering the better part of one wall. It had acquired holes and scorch marks in the firefight. As had the deeply dyed Persian carpet on the polished hardwood floor. The carpet was as vast as his and Mary’s whole living room, and it was still smoldering around the edges of three melon-sized holes. The warbeitor had fired into the basement from here, the basement where the broadcast had originated.

A half dozen of the armchairs had taken hits too. Their innards were spilling out. There were shards of broken glass on the carpet. Yet, oddly, there were no scuppers scurrying about trying to set things right. In fact, there were no machine sounds at all in the room, except for the ticking of an antique mantel clock. Ticking, like they did in old movies, wheels and cogs powered by springs.

You have it, Commander.

Fred shook off his thoughts and swiped the cart’s panel again. Costa came over to watch as he scrolled open the metal door. Inside was a small hernandez tank and portable controller. The glass tank was filled with bubbly green amnio syrup. Floating on top was a brunette head, still frozen. Its expression was frozen too, flash-frozen to her face at the height of her passion: at the moment the helmet flange clenched her head from her body.

Still, to Fred it wasn’t an uncommon expression. He’d seen it a number of times over the years: the gaping eyes, the twisted mouth.

Costa took a good look at the girl, seemed satisfied, and went to wander among the armchairs. Fred glanced at the tank controller to see if the machinery was working.

Everything’s nominal, Commander, Libby said. Fred took that to mean he could close the cart locker, which he did.

But Costa seemed to take offense at the mentar’s remark and marched back to the cart. “Libby—” she said and paused. “Libby—” she said again, as though unsure how to phrase what she wanted to ask. “Libby, why weren’t we informed of this?” she said at last, gesturing at the cart.

Our apologies, Inspector, but we were as surprised as you by this turn of events. Obviously, we are researching it. In the meantime, please stay with Myr Starke until Roosevelt Clinic comes to collect her.

Costa opened her mouth but closed it without another word and went to pace among the armchairs again. While they waited, Fred consulted his theater map. It had assigned the warbeitor a green triangle, which was still firmly planted on the porch. Fred opened a window on the scout network and toured the upstairs rooms and storage spaces. All was quiet.

Suddenly Lieutenant Michaelmas in the GOV jarred them with a shout, Take cover! Take cover!

Fred and Costa looked quickly about the parlor for something solid to jump behind, and finding nothing, they dropped to the floor just as a brilliant flash outlined the window blinds and lit up all the laser holes in the walls. Before it faded completely, there was a second flash and a ground shock that rattled the whole house.

“Michaelmas,” Fred said, “come in.”

We have lost contact with the GOV, Libby said. In the map, it was covered with a kill flag.

Still lying on the floor, Fred steered the scout view to the porch and got a look at the warbeitor, half exposed in molten packing foam, its powerful legs still encased, still hog-tied. It was no longer slumped, however, no longer in lockdown mode. It appeared to be ejecting things from three ports along its arched spine. Just what kind of things was hard to tell. They appeared to be smoke rings, and the warbeitor was blowing dozens of them into the air—like some kind of bizarre smoke signal.

Fred stood up and moved cautiously to the hall. “Libby, Nick, anyone, report.”

We have been attacked by a suborbital drone, Commander, Libby said. You and Costa should lead the cart out the rear entrance. Fred’s map drew a path from his hallway location.

But before Fred could react, Veronica Tug broke in—Incoming! At twelve o’clock!

A piece of ceiling dropped on Fred, and he jumped aside in time to watch a smoke ring drift slowly to the floor. It wasn’t smoke but some sort of vapor. The ring was a half meter wide and seemed to vibrate with inner force. When the ring touched the hallway floor, it kept going as though the floor weren’t even there. After it had passed into the basement, a perfectly oval hardwood disk of flooring gave way and dropped after it.

The edge of the new hole was clean, with no sign of scorching. A plasma weapon? Coreware? Whatever the ring was, there were a dozen more just like it dropping from the ceiling. Costa sprang to her feet, and Fred shouted “Heads up,” but his warning was too late, and he watched helplessly as a vapor ring pegged her like a ring toss at the arcade. She raised her arm to fend it off, and her hand went flying across the room. Her blacksuit immediately snapped battlewrap over the stump. The vapor ring sliced Costa diagonally from her right shoulder to her left hip. Costa’s awareness was struggling to catch up with her situation, and as Fred rushed to help, she had that same stupefied expression as the girl in the tank. Her blacksuit was snapping wildly, trying to stanch her trauma. Fred grabbed her arm, but it peeled off her shoulder, and her top half tumbled forward. Fred dropped his carbine and caught her. Her bottom half fell against his shins.

“I’m—” she tried to tell him. “I’m—”

Clutching her chest to him and dragging her by her leg, Fred dodged the falling rings. The battlewrap seals over her gaping slices were taut and transparent, like packaged meat at the market: ribs and roast. While watching the ceiling, Fred stepped into a hole in the floor and tripped. A ring passed through Costa’s right leg, and her booted foot tumbled into the basement, where vapor rings hissed like snakes as they sank into the concrete pad of the foundation.

Veronica Tug broke in again, We see no clear path, Commander, and suggest you seek cover. You have ten seconds. I repeat, harden your suits and seek cover—ten seconds!

Fred was about to inform her that hardened suits were useless against the rings, but then he realized she meant to seek cover from her. He looked all around. The rings were coming down like a springtime shower, and the floor was eroding away. Lamps and armchairs, their innards sprung and convulsing, were toppling into the basement. Then Fred noticed two relatively untouched lines across the floor, and he realized that the warbeitor was aiming its ring toss away from the floor joists that supported the floor under the procedure cart. It wouldn’t do to send its prize crashing to the basement. For that matter, Fred noticed there were no ring strikes closer to the cart than about a meter.

Hoisting Costa’s top half, he leaped on a joist line and sprinted for the cart. He set her down next to it and returned for the rest of her.

Five seconds, Commander, Veronica said. In the background, Fred could hear the screaming turbine of her van’s dynamo.

Costa’s lower half lay like discarded trousers. He turned her hips over and scooped them into his arms and carried her to the cart where he set her next to her top half. That seemed wrong somehow, and he moved her pieces to align them, top and bottom, then threw himself down with an awesome thud.

SOMETHING COLD LIKE an icy finger touched the back of Fred’s neck. He jerked and opened his eyes. He was lying in total darkness. “Lights!” he said, and his immediate vicinity lit up. He lay on concrete, under a metal cabinet.

“Hello?” he said.

This is Marcus, said a familiar voice. You’re on duty, Fred. You’re in the basement of a residence at 2131 Line Drive in Decatur. You passed out for a few minutes. Your suit says you’re uninjured. Orient yourself with your theater map.

Without trying to move, he did so and saw kill flags splashed across his visor frame. He tried to read the icons but couldn’t focus his eyes. His scalp itched maddeningly, but when he tried to scratch, he discovered he was wearing a blacksuit. Things started to trickle back. He crawled from under the metal cabinet. It was a cart. He stood up, and his suit illuminated a debris-filled cell. He had a sudden, panicky impulse to look up. When he did, he saw a peaceful view of the night sky through a ruined roof.

Fred tried the map again, and now he could read it. There was a vehicle flagged killed that had a friendly jerry inside it, also flagged killed.

“Medic!” he cried.

Three minutes out, another mentar said.

The jerry’s flatline timer said he was already five minutes dead. Three more minutes was pushing the odds of retrieval, even for a jerry.

There was a triangle icon of a dead mech on the porch—Fred was in the basement of a residential house. He was here with an inspector named Costa. On his map there were five icons labeled Costa in the basement, and four of them were flagged killed.

Fred rooted in the wreckage of what had been furniture and found her lower half. The blacksuit had already begun to chill it. Nearby he found her upper body. She was unconscious, and his map listed her condition as critical. Fred returned to her lower torso, tore open the first aid pocket on her thigh, and slipped the cryosac out of its tube. He unrolled and armed it and pulled it over her head, service cap and all, and cinched it snug against her throat. But she jerked, and the stub of her left arm flailed at it with missing fingers. Fred said, “Easy there, Inspector. It’s me, Commander Londenstane. You’re hurt, and I have to sac you.”

But she didn’t settle down until he loosened the cryosac and pulled it off her. Her eyes were darting all over the place.

“I have to leave you to help Michaelmas,” he told her. “I’m going to tie the sac into your suit. It’ll only deploy if it has to.” He sacced her head again and left her struggling to get it off with her stump. Fred clambered across the basement and climbed up to the front lawn. Whatever illegal-as-hell weapon the tuggers had used had shorn away a whole corner of the house. On the porch, the warbeitor was a puddle of slag. A knot in Fred’s gut that he didn’t know he had—loosened.

The tuggers’ van was gone. Fred sprinted down the street to the GOV and searched the wreckage for Michaelmas. Found him in the mostly intact cab. He seemed to be in one piece, but flattened inside the blacksuit, and trapped by twisted steel. Someone had already reached him, however. There was an inflated cryosac covering his head. It was frosty white. It would hold him till help arrived. Fred stepped back and looked at the wreckage. There was a burn mark around the GOV; it had indeed been hit from above.

“Veronica Tug,” he said.

She responded immediately, in no apparent distress. Glad you’re all right, Commander.

Cars were landing all around him on the lawn and street, and a horde of media bees had broken through the cordon. Carts rolled off tenders to extinguish fires. Others climbed into the building.

“I guess I owe you one,” Fred said.

Only one? I count three.

“Three then,” Fred said and jogged back to the house. In the basement, a crash cart had lifted Costa’s two main pieces into its saddlebag hoppers where its dozens of busy little hands were cutting away her blacksuit and ministering to her wounds. The cryosac still covered her head, but it hadn’t been deployed.

Fred swiped the cart, and it said, “Yes, Commander?”

“What is her condition?”

“Fair,” said the cart, or whoever was waldoing the cart. “Clean cuts, well-stabilized organs, full brain function. I’d say we’ll have her glued back together in no time.” The cart lowered its hopper lids, blocking Fred’s view of her, and added, “I must go now, Commander.”

Fred said, “Copy me updates.”

“Acknowledged.” The cart picked its way through the debris. “Oh, and Commander, see if you can find her three missing appendages. It would save her considerable tank time.”

Fred turned to the procedure cart, where a russ and a free-ranger were working. They dug the cart out and set it on its wheels. Except for dents and broken arms, the cart seemed undamaged. “Open it up,” said the free-ranger, but Fred came over before they could unscroll the door.

“Step away from the cart and ID yourselves,” Fred said, swiping them his own badge. They did as ordered, and they checked out as a guard and a medical technician from the Roosevelt Clinic. A frame opened beside the cart, and a tall, gaunt man in a white coat joined them.

“Good evening, Commander Londenstane,” he said. “I am the mentar Concierge of the Roosevelt Clinic, and these are my employees. Please allow them to complete their work. A life is at stake.”

“Yes, yes, proceed,” Fred said and waved them back to the cart. He stood next to them as they opened the locker. The controller, the tank, and the girl inside all appeared undamaged. The girl was still stuck in her own private moment, and Fred wished, for her sake, that they’d defrost her soon.

The medtech shut the locker, and mentar Concierge said, “You and your team will receive commendations for your work here tonight, Commander. Now, if you would kindly release her to me, we have much to do in very little time.”

Fred raised his hand and said, Well? Anyone?

Libby said, You may proceed, Commander.

But he waited a little longer, giving anyone out there with objections the opportunity to speak up or forever hold their peace. No one did, so he swiped the cart. The mentar vanished and the two clinic staffers lifted the cart and carried it to the stairs.

The russ guard paused to grin at Fred. His eyes moved to take in the destruction piled around them and the missing parlor above and Swiss-cheese roof. “Such a deal,” he said.