He took some time to explain the different angles of defenses and attack, making sure that he was understood on each point. Finally he was ready and indicated that to Gloria.
“Right, my people,” she said briskly. “It’s time for us to take our destiny in both hands. Don’t fuck it up. Remember what the battle plan is, but always be open to the moment. Let us prepare.”
The women linked hands, so that they formed a chain that ran around the camp, leaving out the men and the companions. Then Gloria began to chant. High, wild and keening in tone, it ran over three repetitive notes that rose and fell in a round that was taken up by other members of the tribe so that the notes ran over one another in rippling waves of sound. Listening to the women, and watching the expressions on their faces, rapt and caught up in a mass display of emotion that swept them up into a wave of power, Krysty felt her spine tingle, and her sentient hair begin to ripple and wave like the sounds around her. There was the intimation of the danger to come, and yet also an exultant feeling that it could be overcome.
Gloria stopped the chant, and the ripples died away as one by one the voices of the Amazons fell silent. It was as though they had counted the number of notes they had chanted, each voice stopping when it had reached the allotted number. When the Amazons were silent, Gloria spoke quietly.
“We’re ready.”
THE MAIN PARTY LEFT the lobby area that had been used as base camp, Ryan casting over his shoulder a terse reminder to the raiding parties headed for the service ducts and entrances to shoot out the sec cameras as they went down the corridors. It was possible that anyone watching might guess their intent, but it would be stupe move to let them actually see it through a camera left carelessly working.
Gloria and Ryan headed their party of warriors down the main corridor, as it was wider, with the remnants of plush marble fittings now dulled with age lining the route toward the sec doors at the far end. It was obvious that this was the main corridor if only from the fact that walls delineating it were bereft of any other doors, with no offices leading off as there were from the lesser corridors.
There were only three sec cameras along the 150-yard route, all spaced at regular intervals, and all of them fairly low and visible, with little attempt to hide them.
“They want us to know that they know we’re coming, a pretty stupidworks move if you already know that,” Gloria remarked as she shot out the first camera with her blaster.
“And we do know it,” Ryan murmured in reply as he leveled the Steyr to take out the second at a longer distance.
The third camera was claimed by Gloria’s Vortak, by which time they were almost on top of the elevator.
Gloria and Ryan exchanged glances as they reached the elevator doors. The warrior queen assented with a brief nod, and Ryan tapped in the sec code that was used in all military installations to open the elevator doors within a redoubt. It was a gamble that the code would also serve for a surface elevator, but not so much of a gamble that the military codes would also be used by a group like the Illuminated Ones. From their previous encounters with the group, Ryan knew that they used old military ways because many of them were working within the military-industrial complex, as well as serving as part of the covert organization.
Once the code had been entered, the sec doors swept open with a hiss of compressed air and whirring transistor circuits strained into life.
“Up on our level—lay you odds that’s not by chance,” Ryan muttered with his jaw set in a grim line.
“Best leave nothing to chance, then,” Gloria said softly.
As one, Ryan and Gloria stepped into the empty elevator car. It was large and had recesses to each side of the door. Gloria swiftly covered these with the Vortak, but both were empty. Ryan had meanwhile reached up and thrust hard with the Steyr at the service hatch on the roof of the car. It gave way easily at the blow and was knocked backward on its hinge so that it hit the roof of the car with a dull thud that echoed inside.