... Continues the Book of Hephaestion:
There was a rain shower just before sunset. For twenty minutes the rain bounced off the city streets and sidewalks, the roofs of tenements and shops, the flat gray chrome of the massive Bhavaja buses that outnumbered private vehicles two to one. The bad wind that brought the storm rushed away before full dark, leaving behind a city gasping for air. It had been a warm day. The evening was now cool. The storm stole the warmth, which was usually the case in late spring.
Bhavaja's curfew was 2000 hours. In the Month of the Torens, this was thirty minutes after dark. Meanwhile, the city spent its final hour of relative freedom in painful restlessness.
Hephaestion observed the city from a bench about a kilometer outside the wound that was still Karsbrasova Square. During the day, urbane executives, local and foreign, making a living in the surrounding bulwark of glass towers, brought homemade lunches or purchased meals to consume in one of the stone parks that had cropped up outside the restricted zone.
The business district employed its own police force and boasted to the world that its measures kept the heart of the city inviolate.
Holbek loved it that the Kinder team intended to steal from the Ministry of Science.
Hephaestion sat facing the Ministry's stone facade, its columned and porticoed entry. A brace of glass doors, already locked and armed. There was a man in its marble lobby who did nothing but watch the doors.
Hephaestion felt the man breathing, held the man's breath inside his own consciousness as he began reaching toward the block-wide structure with his power.
Skocz, Wastagh, and Zedric-- Zone, Edge, and Rock --had been dropped off by a utility truck on Cholykur Street, adjacent to the Ministry. There was no parking along or inside the business district. If they saw a privately owned vehicle stop for more than a moment, the security staff called the police. The Ministry received its deliveries off Ruzo Street, which was controlled by gates. Phanuff-- Dance --took the truck into traffic after her drop, lazily drifting behind one of the behemoth municipal buses.
Zone, Edge, and Rock were waiting now for Angel to do his thing.
Recalling the plan of the building, Hephaestion located the room with the UPS-- uninterruptable power source --equipment. The room held a large unit capable of juicing the security system for ten seconds if the Ministry lost city power. Within ten seconds, the Ministry's massive generators would take over. A narrow and focused disruption was required to take out station power, the UPS, and the generator feeder.
First, the UPS.
A surge, but not much of one.
And there.
The command and control center was now seeing a UPS failure alert on its alarm system.
Hephaestion waited.
The breathing of the man in the lobby caught, then settled. A second man joined him. He would be the rover, a response man, sent to look into the UPS trouble. The equipment room was through the lobby and along a service corridor, behind access control.
The two men spoke.
Neither seemed alarmed.
Hephaestion waited.
The rover took off.
Hephaestion felt Zone reaching the Ruzo gate.
Now.
He located seven life forms within the block that comprised the Ministry. He did this carefully, because he did not want to kill anyone. Just float a charge along an invisible and intangible wire, connect to the people, each one at the same moment, and send them to sleep. It happened without warning, from their perspective. No time to use the duress switches or drop-dial comm lines to the police.
Next, he penetrated the command and control station, sending a surge through everything. Good-bye, station power. Hello, generator failure. Carefully, carefully. If there was smoke, the fire alarm would dial up a central monitoring station and alert the police. He wanted to stop the recorders, allow Zone and his team time to manually release the gate, pry open the shipping and receiving door, and make it to the morgue.
Again, Hephaestion waited.
He was on a bus bench, wearing a long black coat and expensive shoes. He made sure his features seemed relaxed, although no one passed by. The city streets used security monitoring systems. Anyone watching would see a well-dressed man waiting for the bus. Later, when they tried to watch the recordings, they would find that he was only a blur. Image recorders had difficulty capturing him when he did not want to be taped.
A kilometer away a bus heaved its bulk onto Karsbrasova Avenue. Hephaestion slowly stood. The expected response. He slipped his hand into his pocket, palmed the bus token.
Zone had now been in the Ministry of Science one and a half minutes.
From Cholykur emerged Dance and her truck. She glided past Hephaestion without looking at him, turned slowly onto Ruzo Street, and disappeared through the gate that Zone left open. To the casual eye, she was just another evening delivery. Only expected deliveries were received after hours.
The bus lumbered forward, surprisingly silent for so huge a thing.
Hephaestion saw now that a person was crossing the street from the Novo-Syrt side of the stone park. A late worker, bundled against the chill, making for the bus. The person held a rolled magazine and carried a small dark bag. A woman. Nothing to cause concern, yet Hephaestion reached toward her anyway, to taste her life and be sure of her place here in the night.
She halted, raised a head that had been lowered, and stared at him.
He startled. Were they everywhere, now, people who noticed his mental touch, his power? Maybe he was just jumpy, wanting to connect the woman's behavior to his touching her with his mind. Although certain adepts, psychics, and suitably trained humans sometimes sensed his probe, he realized soon enough that in this case it was not the reason for her stopping.
The bus reached the corner of Cholykur, already veering toward him.
The woman started forward, forcing him to stare. She was uncommonly tall, the long legs in their dark slacks negotiating the walkway with palpable grace. There was just the smallest sway in her hips, which were slender and full at the same time. The rest of her muted by the coat. There was her face. Black eyes, black skin, and a mouth curving faintly with amusement.
She was not shy about eye contact. She stared until the bus hissed to a halt. Then she was right in front of him.
"After you," she said.
A Ussurian accent, of course. She was a woman of the desert, a foreigner. Possibly a lawyer or banker. Meanwhile, she fetched a bus token from her bag. Buses were preferred in a city that roadblocked its thoroughfares and forced searches of all privately owned vehicles.
Hephaestion, astonishingly, was speechless.
"After you," she repeated. There was a deeper, knowing smile. Apparently, she was used to the effect she had on northern men.
Hephaestion woke within himself. She had stopped because he was handsome, and because he was alone. She was looking now for a sign that he was unmarried.
"Curfew is less than one hour," she said.
He glanced at his wristwatch and so caught a glimpse of Dance piloting the utility truck, her team, and Manegold's corpse onto Karsbrasova Avenue.
A simple operation. And it was over.
Hephaestion was aware, suddenly, of inexplicably intense sexual desire.
The woman, being a woman, was aware of it as well.
How easy to go with her, sleep with her.
He shook his head, apologizing with a shrug. Check-in was in a quarter hour and he had two buses to catch.
The woman flicked her hand, grinning now. "We will miss our bus, my dear, if we do not possess ourselves."
Get control, she meant-- overcome the attraction, return to the stream of life.
He allowed her to get on the bus first. She turned to view him in the artificial light, pausing only a little to take in his unusual eye color. Then she strolled down the aisle, settled into a seat, and became a footnote in his history.
There was a rain shower just before sunset. For twenty minutes the rain bounced off the city streets and sidewalks, the roofs of tenements and shops, the flat gray chrome of the massive Bhavaja buses that outnumbered private vehicles two to one. The bad wind that brought the storm rushed away before full dark, leaving behind a city gasping for air. It had been a warm day. The evening was now cool. The storm stole the warmth, which was usually the case in late spring.
Bhavaja's curfew was 2000 hours. In the Month of the Torens, this was thirty minutes after dark. Meanwhile, the city spent its final hour of relative freedom in painful restlessness.
Hephaestion observed the city from a bench about a kilometer outside the wound that was still Karsbrasova Square. During the day, urbane executives, local and foreign, making a living in the surrounding bulwark of glass towers, brought homemade lunches or purchased meals to consume in one of the stone parks that had cropped up outside the restricted zone.
The business district employed its own police force and boasted to the world that its measures kept the heart of the city inviolate.
Holbek loved it that the Kinder team intended to steal from the Ministry of Science.
Hephaestion sat facing the Ministry's stone facade, its columned and porticoed entry. A brace of glass doors, already locked and armed. There was a man in its marble lobby who did nothing but watch the doors.
Hephaestion felt the man breathing, held the man's breath inside his own consciousness as he began reaching toward the block-wide structure with his power.
Skocz, Wastagh, and Zedric-- Zone, Edge, and Rock --had been dropped off by a utility truck on Cholykur Street, adjacent to the Ministry. There was no parking along or inside the business district. If they saw a privately owned vehicle stop for more than a moment, the security staff called the police. The Ministry received its deliveries off Ruzo Street, which was controlled by gates. Phanuff-- Dance --took the truck into traffic after her drop, lazily drifting behind one of the behemoth municipal buses.
Zone, Edge, and Rock were waiting now for Angel to do his thing.
Recalling the plan of the building, Hephaestion located the room with the UPS-- uninterruptable power source --equipment. The room held a large unit capable of juicing the security system for ten seconds if the Ministry lost city power. Within ten seconds, the Ministry's massive generators would take over. A narrow and focused disruption was required to take out station power, the UPS, and the generator feeder.
First, the UPS.
A surge, but not much of one.
And there.
The command and control center was now seeing a UPS failure alert on its alarm system.
Hephaestion waited.
The breathing of the man in the lobby caught, then settled. A second man joined him. He would be the rover, a response man, sent to look into the UPS trouble. The equipment room was through the lobby and along a service corridor, behind access control.
The two men spoke.
Neither seemed alarmed.
Hephaestion waited.
The rover took off.
Hephaestion felt Zone reaching the Ruzo gate.
Now.
He located seven life forms within the block that comprised the Ministry. He did this carefully, because he did not want to kill anyone. Just float a charge along an invisible and intangible wire, connect to the people, each one at the same moment, and send them to sleep. It happened without warning, from their perspective. No time to use the duress switches or drop-dial comm lines to the police.
Next, he penetrated the command and control station, sending a surge through everything. Good-bye, station power. Hello, generator failure. Carefully, carefully. If there was smoke, the fire alarm would dial up a central monitoring station and alert the police. He wanted to stop the recorders, allow Zone and his team time to manually release the gate, pry open the shipping and receiving door, and make it to the morgue.
Again, Hephaestion waited.
He was on a bus bench, wearing a long black coat and expensive shoes. He made sure his features seemed relaxed, although no one passed by. The city streets used security monitoring systems. Anyone watching would see a well-dressed man waiting for the bus. Later, when they tried to watch the recordings, they would find that he was only a blur. Image recorders had difficulty capturing him when he did not want to be taped.
A kilometer away a bus heaved its bulk onto Karsbrasova Avenue. Hephaestion slowly stood. The expected response. He slipped his hand into his pocket, palmed the bus token.
Zone had now been in the Ministry of Science one and a half minutes.
From Cholykur emerged Dance and her truck. She glided past Hephaestion without looking at him, turned slowly onto Ruzo Street, and disappeared through the gate that Zone left open. To the casual eye, she was just another evening delivery. Only expected deliveries were received after hours.
The bus lumbered forward, surprisingly silent for so huge a thing.
Hephaestion saw now that a person was crossing the street from the Novo-Syrt side of the stone park. A late worker, bundled against the chill, making for the bus. The person held a rolled magazine and carried a small dark bag. A woman. Nothing to cause concern, yet Hephaestion reached toward her anyway, to taste her life and be sure of her place here in the night.
She halted, raised a head that had been lowered, and stared at him.
He startled. Were they everywhere, now, people who noticed his mental touch, his power? Maybe he was just jumpy, wanting to connect the woman's behavior to his touching her with his mind. Although certain adepts, psychics, and suitably trained humans sometimes sensed his probe, he realized soon enough that in this case it was not the reason for her stopping.
The bus reached the corner of Cholykur, already veering toward him.
The woman started forward, forcing him to stare. She was uncommonly tall, the long legs in their dark slacks negotiating the walkway with palpable grace. There was just the smallest sway in her hips, which were slender and full at the same time. The rest of her muted by the coat. There was her face. Black eyes, black skin, and a mouth curving faintly with amusement.
She was not shy about eye contact. She stared until the bus hissed to a halt. Then she was right in front of him.
"After you," she said.
A Ussurian accent, of course. She was a woman of the desert, a foreigner. Possibly a lawyer or banker. Meanwhile, she fetched a bus token from her bag. Buses were preferred in a city that roadblocked its thoroughfares and forced searches of all privately owned vehicles.
Hephaestion, astonishingly, was speechless.
"After you," she repeated. There was a deeper, knowing smile. Apparently, she was used to the effect she had on northern men.
Hephaestion woke within himself. She had stopped because he was handsome, and because he was alone. She was looking now for a sign that he was unmarried.
"Curfew is less than one hour," she said.
He glanced at his wristwatch and so caught a glimpse of Dance piloting the utility truck, her team, and Manegold's corpse onto Karsbrasova Avenue.
A simple operation. And it was over.
Hephaestion was aware, suddenly, of inexplicably intense sexual desire.
The woman, being a woman, was aware of it as well.
How easy to go with her, sleep with her.
He shook his head, apologizing with a shrug. Check-in was in a quarter hour and he had two buses to catch.
The woman flicked her hand, grinning now. "We will miss our bus, my dear, if we do not possess ourselves."
Get control, she meant-- overcome the attraction, return to the stream of life.
He allowed her to get on the bus first. She turned to view him in the artificial light, pausing only a little to take in his unusual eye color. Then she strolled down the aisle, settled into a seat, and became a footnote in his history.
-- Next Chapter
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