At two in the afternoon, after Astro had awakened from his usual sleep (he had decided that being awake at night might be useful, rather than adjust to local time), Azera drove him to a point just outside of the financial district, and they started to walk as if they had a definite destination in mind, while Astro scanned for the signal he had detected earlier. He found it easily, then was able to localize it to an impressive and very modern-looking office tower that stretched high into the sky, looming over the other older buildings in the area. Above its main entrance, glowing blue letters embedded in the stone facade read, 'Imperator, Inc.'
"That's the one," he said casually to his companion without appearing to pay any attention to the building, playing it cool, acting as if he saw this place every day.
"I'll see what I can find out about that corporation for you," Luna linked.
"Thanks, but aren't you supposed to be sleeping now?" Astro replied.
"You are too, you know."
"Hm. I got up half an hour ago, so it's okay. Azera's pretty jet-lagged though."
"I believe it. I'll report to you as soon as I can."
"No problem." He turned to Azera and said, "My contact is going to see if she can discover any information about Imperator."
Azera glanced at him, startled. "How did you get in touch with her, and when?"
"I am robotic—I have my ways; and I was talking to her in the last minute."
The man nodded. "This should be interesting."
A little later, as the two of them were heading back to the car, Luna linked, "I've found plenty."
"I'm listening," Astro replied.
"It's a huge conglomerate worth more money than many whole countries, and it's got its hand in companies all over the world."
"Did you find anything to connect it with the Mellanines?"
"Only a name: one of the members on the board of directors is Dr. Cedillo Mella, but it's a real stretch to say he's got anything to do with them."
"Sure. Thanks." Astro frowned. But humans had died checking this place out. He had to find out more about that signal.
Azera snored softly in his bed across the darkened hotel room from where Astro sat.
"There's something bothering me about Danilo Provinio," linked Luna. "How was it he got caught?"
"The police captain said he had an uncharacteristic weakness for women, and they were able to flush him out of hiding because of it."
"I'm probably wrong, but that seems too easy. All the evidence I've been able to find says these guys are experts at staying out of sight. I think you should act like you've been set up, just in case."
"You mean they deliberately let him get found out?"
"Yup. He could have been a problem for them, and this would allow them to see what the opposition's like, for whatever reason."
"And they got us."
"And they got ... us. That's right; we're a team. Have you had a chance to check out all those files he had on his computer?"
"Yeah. The only one I don't get gives a whole lot of numbers and words like 'widdershins', 'diesel', 'ascend', and 'descend'."
Luna didn't respond for a minute—subtext: busy signal—then said, "They're all directions: go clockwise, or left, then right, and of course up, down."
"That all makes sense, except for: where? What's the starting point?"
"Check all the other files over again, looking for clues or hints. We can only hope he entered it somewhere there."
"Sounds good," linked Astro. "When the city's totally quiet, I'm going to take a closer look at the Imperator."
At four thirty in the morning, Astro left the hotel and ran full speed to the Imperator building. Its base was unexpectedly round, rather than square or rectangular, so he sneaked carefully around it, scanning with his super-vision.
On the second tour around, he was able to determine that there were mathematical sequences to the stonework and windows, and they all had their starting points at one spot. "I can't see anything unusual about this block," he linked as he peered at it. "It's just a block."
"Hmm. Wait! What's the first command on your directions list?"
"Widdershins two four five."
"Um, yeah. Try going left, using that block as zero, and see what you can work out with the numbers."
"I get where you're going."
He backed up and sat down on a low stone wall a short distance from the zero block. After a little processing, he saw that if he counted two blocks, then five windows, then five blocks, he ended up at a door.
"Bingo," Luna linked.
"It's locked," he replied after checking it.
"Naturally. What kind of lock is it?"
"Hold it." He started to press the number pads. "Thirty-two, okay, one forty-nine, okay, seven sixty-five, okay."
'Click'
"The spread-sheet," she linked. "I thought it was for something like petty cash receipts."
"How handy. Your suspicions of a setup are beginning to sound really good to me."
"Yeah. Are you going to go in?"
He cracked the door open, then shut it to reset the lock. "Nope—not enough time. I'll come back this evening so I have the whole night. That sheet of directions is seriously long."
"Okay."
As he walked back to the hotel, he spotted a boarded-up building that had a familiar look to it on a side street. Peering in a broken window, he saw images painted on the front wall, and rows of benches, like in an auditorium.
"It's a church," linked Luna. "I recognize that picture of God from when he was a man."
"Why's it closed up?"
After a moment, she came back, "You'll have to check over there. There's no info about it on our web here."
A check of Suenisian news service archives turned up three-year-old reports of religious riots blamed on the people who ran the country's churches. As a result, the ruler of the country had shut them down and imprisoned many of the leadership. A couple of them had even been executed.
"What have you been able to determine about the signal from the Imperator tower?" Azera asked in Suenisian after he'd had breakfast and returned to their room.
"It is a great quantity of numbers and letters in a code I cannot break," Astro replied.
"Then show some of them to me. Perhaps my field experience would serve us well."
"Very well. Activate your computer display, and I will show them to you on that."
Azera watched the stream of characters for a couple of moments, then shrugged and said, "It is simplicity itself: These are records of financial transactions, nothing more—information such a company would normally communicate to its subsidiaries."
"Could there be any coded information within the data?"
"That would be impossible to determine without a powerful computer at hand."
Astro turned to Azera. "I am such a computer. Teach me."
Once he was sure he understood what the operative was trying to tell him, he went to bed, ready to work on the problem that afternoon.
"So the master chain's two hundred and thirty-five entries long," Luna linked that afternoon, after they had been at it for a couple of hours.
"Yup," Astro replied. "And each chain has one variation in it."
"Uh-huh. And there are fifty-two variations."
"Which, if we assume ten digits, requires an alphabet of forty-two letters: Suenisian. Let me check some documents for a rough letter frequency."
"Okay," she linked. "I'll see if I can figure out which are numbers, if any."
By the time Azera was done dinner, they had worked out a message. "What have you determined?" he asked when he got back in the room.
Astro pointed to the computer display screen. "Please read it for yourself. Perhaps you can make sense of it."
It read: 'The messenger has arrived. Once he has the message, prepare to cast aside the unholy ones. Mella will be in the ascendancy in 35 days."
Azera read it over several times, then said, "It is too cryptic. For instance, who is this messenger, and who are the unholy ones? It would appear that whoever is receiving this communication already knows these things, so that they do not need to be named further."
"There is that name, Mella," Astro said. "If it is not that board director, who or what is it?"
"I think I know someone who may be able to answer some of our questions," said Azera, standing up. "I will return soon."
Once he had left, Astro linked, "You'd better get that message to General Devan right away. Maybe his people can figure it out."
"I'll take it to him," she replied. "He also wants me to be with him to tell him what's happening when you enter that tower tonight."
"Get him to set up a wireless connection for you so you can feed the info right into his computer."
"Alright."
Astro stared along the corridor of the fortieth floor. It was already one in the morning, and he still had half the directions to complete.
Azera had come back just before sunset to report that his contact, an elder in the local religion, had told him that Mella was supposed to be a god or someone acting for their god—the Suenisian word wasn't clear—who would come and set all things right, and inaugurate a new age of peace in the world. Whatever.
The directions were apparently taking him on the only path through the building that didn't have some kind of security device every metre, so he had to be careful not to take a step too far. It was a maze. Why would they construct such a thing in a building that was supposed to be the hub of a financial empire? It made no sense.
Unless they somehow knew ahead of time that such a trap was going to be needed ... He gave his head a shake and checked the directions.
It was three twenty, and Astro was back down on the fifteenth floor, almost out of directions. "One, two, one," he counted, and found himself in front of a rather plain door. He quickly entered the supplied entry code, and the door slid open. The room inside was dark, so he turned on his super-vision and went in.
Suddenly the door zipped shut and the lights came on.
"Welcome, my messenger," came a man's voice to his left.