Exile to Hell

Kane kept close to the right-hand wall, and Grant walked down the center so he would have a clear field of fire. The tunnel opened onto a scaffoldlike assembly made of pipes and heavy wooden planks. A staircase of two-by-fours extended down into the room twenty feet below. The scaffold was built at an angle to the tunnel mouth, so Kane had to creep forward to get an unobstructed view.

The room was square, maybe fifty feet wide, the walls reinforced by heavy timbers and sheet metal. The walls climbed to a ceiling of chiseled rock that was part of the cliff itself. Ten light fixtures attached to wall stanchions provided weak illumination. Taking a wary reccee of the room, Kane understood the absence of guards in the tunnel.

Only four people were down in the room, all very busy packing reams of paper and odds and ends of electronic equipment into crates. Obviously most of their force was outside, watching the Cliff Palace complex, making sure the Magistrates weren’t moving in on them.

Milton Reeth supervised the packing. Kane recognized him from the pix he had seen during the briefing. He was a tall, dark-skinned man, the sides and top of his head clean shaved, but a clump of dreadlocks dangled from the back of his skull, falling down the center of his back like a quartet of greasy black snakes. He wore a puffy-sleeved, powder blue bodysuit with a touch of green lace at the collar. A red, yellow and blue snake tattoo coiled across the right side of his face, its fanged jaws gaping open as though it were preparing to devour his eye.

Beside him stood his strong-arm. She had an identical tattoo on the left side of her high-planed face. She wore a brass-studded, red-leather harness that left her heavily muscled arms bare. Her lank hair was styled like Reeth’s. She was a stickie, and Kane realized the guard he had killed was probably one of her kin, either a brother or a cousin, or maybe even a son.

Slaggers like Reeth never went anywhere without a strong-arm, but rarely were the combinations of bodyguards and jolt-brained coldhearts women. Kane had never heard of a norm placing any kind of trust in a mutie, especially a stickie. Obviously Reeth was more than a slagger. He was something of a dev, as well.

On the far side of the room was a tangle of electronic and computer equipment, a nest of wires and keyboards and monitor screens that took up almost the entire wall with shelves and worktables. Kane saw a whining, gasoline-fueled electric generator with dozens of feed conduits sprouting from it.

The black-and-white images flickering across the four monitor screens showed different perspectives of the complex, including a rear view of the blastermen posted behind the floodlights on the ledges outside.

Light also flashed from a large tabletop console computer screen. Numbers and words scrolled across it with a dizzying rapidity. On the same wall as the tech nest gaped an open doorway.

One of the men packing a crate asked Reeth a question, his voice muted by the rumbling whine of the generator. Reeth responded petulantly, his sharp, high-pitched voice carrying easily to Kane.

“We’ve got to wait until all the files are downloaded, don’t we, Neal? We can’t just cut and run and leave everything, can we, Neal? That would be foolish, wouldn’t it, Neal?”

Neal mumbled something and returned to his packing.

Kane gestured for Grant to join him on the scaffold. The big man stepped forward and gazed down into the room without expression. When he saw the female strong-arm stroke Reeth’s snake-adorned face with suction-pad-tipped fingers, he drew in a quick breath of revulsion. His Copperhead rose. Kane laid the noise suppressor of his blaster over the barrel of Grant’s gun and pushed it down. Grant stared at Kane, mouth opening in surprise.

Shaking his head vigorously, Kane touched a finger to his lips and stepped back into the mouth of the tunnel. Reluctantly Grant moved beside him. Kane covered the transceiver grid of his helmet with a finger, and Grant hesitantly did the same.

“I want him alive,” Kane whispered.

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