Song Ching looked at the gray-purple rock walls and understood what he meant. To
go to these lengths, this group must have had something really important to hide
and work on, something that, like all technology, required power. Satellites
overhead could monitor even the smallest differences in temperature, pressure,
and energy below, even through the densest clouds, and when they spotted
something in an unauthorized spot, they immediately flagged security on the
ground. Technologists’ cells were rare in this day and age, but the few who
remained were the best.
She was the sort of woman men fantasized about: small but perfectly
proportioned, her face one of classical Han beauty, her gestures and movements
somehow always erotic. Her looks masked her extreme intelligence: Her IQ off the
measurable scale, and she was an authentic genius whose mind worked so fast and
on so many levels it often seemed more computerlike than human. She was not
without flaws; as the oldest child of the chief administrator of the Han
district, she was spoiled rotten, and her intellectual and physical development
had not been accompanied by any real emotional growth; there she was almost
childlike, a situation her parents kept excusing because of her age, although
she had just turned seventeen.
The colonel did not like having her there, but she’d been forced upon him by his
superiors. They didn’t know what this cell could be working on, and they needed
her fine mind to figure it out before it was either destroyed or confiscated.
Others might have done as well, but as the daughter of the chief administrator
she had pulled her own strings to get here. It was an escape, however temporary,
from her luxurious prison, from the reality she didn’t particularly like.
She did, however, appreciate the irony of her being here, for she herself was
the result of illegal technologists, her looks and her intelligence achieved
through elaborate genetic manipulation. Like all the administrators, not just on
Earth but throughout the Community, her father chafed at the restrictions placed
upon him and his power and dreamed of some sort of end run. His own solution was
an attempt, at great risk to his position and his life, to breed a superior line
that might eventually be bright enough and fast enough to figure a way out of
the trap the human race had woven for itself. Song Ching appreciated the goal
and approved of it, but she did not like her own role, which was not to find
that solution but to breed those who might.
Burners locked on! someone reported over the ship-to-ship channel. All ships
in place, troopers in position and shielded. Awaiting orders to proceed.
Commence firing, Colonel Chung ordered without hesitation.
Immediately the five skimmers rose to preset positions, now visible to whatever
lookout devices the cell might employ, and opened fire with bright rays of
crimson and white that struck the rock face and began to cut through it. Ships’
computers now had control, and once penetration had been achieved, the five
attack skimmers moved in an eerie ballet, cutting through the imposing rock face
as if it were butter.
Just before the circle was completed, a different skimmer rose and shot out a
purple tongue of energy which struck the center of the cutout, and as the entire
area was separated the thick purple ray receded, pulling the rock cutout with
it.
Suddenly revealed was a honeycomb of tunnels melted through the rock. It
reminded Ching of a glass-sided ant farm, although there did not appear to be
any ants here.
Now the troops, two hundred of them, sprang from cover on ledges and slopes
opposite the target and flew into the air using null-gravity backpacks and small
compressed-air steering jets.
It’s very large, she noted to the colonel. I wonder why anybody who built
something that large wouldn’t defend it.
They’ll defend it, he assured her in an absent tone, his attention on his
status screens and on the view out the control port. When they find that their
escape exits are blocked, they will defend or surrender.
Almost in answer to his comments, there was the sound of distant but large
explosions which echoed through the valleys and passes of the high mountains,
and from some of the revealed tunnels came large puffs of gray and black smoke.
Over the ground-to-air intercom came lots of shouts, curses, and screams. The
colonel cut in.
Ground, do you require reinforcements at this point? he asked calmly, as if he
were some distant observer of a football game between two teams he hardly cared
about.
Captain Li here, came a thin response. They detonated explosives along the
main tunnel walls leading to a main chamber. Only a few casualties, but we’re
having to burn our way through. Give us ten minutes, then send in second wave.
Acknowledge.
Acknowledged, the colonel responded. Stand by, second wave. Ten minutes.
Song Ching stared at the colonel and wondered how he could maintain such a calm
demeanor. She herself was feeling a tremendous rush of excitement, and she only
regretted that she wasn’t allowed down there to experience it firsthand. She
longed for the real thrill, the adrenaline rush, her life on the line, her mind
and body against another’s…
She was paying the price for stealing the skimmer when she’d been just fifteen
and zooming along the rivers, panicking the peasants in the fields, going under
bridges and zooming full speed at low levels through valleys between the hills.
She’d finally blown two enercells and had to make a glide-in landing in a rice
paddy, and it had been the most fun she’d ever had. However, the cost to her
father in favors granted, promises extracted, and all-out trouble to cover up
the incident had clamped the lid on. Even then, totally covering it up had been
possible only because no one believed that a fifteen-year-old girl with no
pilot’s training could take up and fly something as complex as a skimmer.
I want to go down there, now, she told the colonel.
He gave a low chuckle. You know better.
I said I want to go now! she snapped. Arrange it!
I am not one of your servants or your parents’ functionaries, he responded
coolly. You did everything possible to put yourself here, so you are under my
command and you take my orders. I do not take yours.
She grew angry. How dare you speak to me that way? I will have you cleaning out
toilets in the paddies!
No, you will not. You will sit back and calm down and do as I say or you will
be sent back and severed immediately from this operation. Your parents briefed
me on you and gave me full authority in this matter. They want me to kick you
out, if you must know. You are presenting me with an excuse and a temptation I
find difficult to resist.
No one speaks to me in that way! What do you want me to do? Scream rape?
He was unfazed. A mindprint would clear me and indict you, and since it would
be in another jurisdiction because of your rank, your father couldn’t get rid of
that evidence. You are already coming close to the inevitable day when you will
commit an act that your family cannot cover up or patch over. I am too busy for
this. You have a choice. Go back over there and shut up, or persist in any way
and I will have you restrained and taken back where you—not me—will bear
responsibility for delaying or imperiling this operation. One more word and you
may complain to your father at a later date, but it will not get you down
there!
She was furious, but she wanted desperately to get down. Clearly he could and
would do what he said, and she had no choice but to sit and sulk. She would get
him, though. She would make him burn, somehow, somewhere, someday.
It took almost four hours to clear and secure the technologist cell. At the end,
forty-seven had been killed and almost twice that number wounded, but all but
two of the three hundred twenty-four technologists had been killed. Those who
were not killed in the defense committed suicide, taking their families with
them. The only two survivors were young boys who had been felled in an explosion
and had been presumed dead by their own. They would be taken to Center for
interrogation and disposition. The rest could hardly be blamed for choosing
death. There were punishments far worse than death for people like them.
Finally, when the whole place was scanned and the remaining booby traps were
dismantled, the signal was given for the follow-up technicians to come on in,
and that included Song Ching.
It had been bitter cold outside, and the tunnels were not much warmer, although
they offered protection from the outside winds. She entered wearing a sable coat
and parka and matching fur pants and fur-lined boots, but she was still cold.
Didn’t they have any heat in here? she griped.
Plenty, one of the officers responded. They actually had a home-built fusion
reactor in a chamber well below here, although they had air locks on the tunnels
to keep any temperature changes from registering on the monitor surveys. Had it
rigged to blow, too, but we got lucky and intercepted the destruct system. Like
most amateurs they never expected to be hit from the rock face side; they
thought in terms of defending from attack through their entry and exit tunnels.